My Students!

Heather made a Vlog about my classroom and students, which it's way easier to post than to make another one myself.

so being the lazy person I am, here is her video!

Birthday!

My Birthday has finally come!

I had a great week leading up to my birthday. My friend came to visit me from america, we partied out at Norebang, drank together, ate food, and now, on my birthday, we went out for galbi, which I mentioned in my previous post.

I actually took the cake video after the galbi, and here it is!

We ate the cake until it turned into a broken heart

Today at school my kids gave me cards saying happy birthday, and I also got some presents. I got candy and flowers!

After work there was a party hosted for those with birthdays this month at school. They sang us happy birthday and fed us pizza and chicken. Pizza and chicken is a pretty universal birthday food I think. After that, I went home with Heather and was just to tired to party. So Lela, Heather and I just chilled at my place, singing, watching comedies, and being dorks together. 

Here are pictures of us trying to practice Aegyo. Which is a principle of being cute in korea.

Yes, my mop is hanging on my wall. 

Well, It's been a great lead up and a nice night, I had a great birthday time. Now I have to remember I'm not special anymore until it's my birthday again next year, and remember to show all my wonderful friends just how special they are when their birthdays come. 

Galbi!

Galbi is Korean BBQ. It's super nummy and one of my favorite things to eat here in korea.
There are many different places that have it, and it costs a lot of different prices depending on where you go.

My favorite restaurant has a pork set for 12,000 won. You get sides with it too, so many sides. The sides are free, you can have as much as you want, if you run out, you can ask for more. However you have to take whatever sides they give you, it's whatever is in season. They also have soup, of which I love the Kimichi Jjigae. It's a soup with Kimchi and tofu that you eat with rice.

Here are some pictures of the meat and the side dishes:

and the Kimchi JJigae

and a video I took at the place

WaterPark!

Today for our adventure I skipped my Korean class and heather and I went to a waterpark!

Now, on the web it was called Tigerworld but when we got there nothing called it that. Maybe the name changed? All the rules were still the same though, and it was in the same place. It's actually very close to were I live too! It was called PlayC or Waterplay... both names were all over.

The entrance is on the main floor of an event center. I forget the name of what it was called. But it was at Location: Gyeonggi-do Bucheon-si Wonmi-gu Sang-dong 572-1          

There are multiple entrances, but just follow the signs pointing towards WaterDolci. Then you should see the main desk. The first thing you should do is to NOT line up. Actually, since Korean's are so pushy and can't form a basic line to save their lives, let alone to be show common courtesy and let the person who go there first go first, you have to get a ticket. 

Seriously Korea, why can't you form a line? Why do you have to push everyone, why do you always think you get to go first? I've seen Korean's fight over who's first, and they weren't even the first ones there! I'm not saying no one else has this problem, but I never really noticed an issue back in Minnesota. We can form lines. LA sometimes there were problems, but still, lines happened. It's like instinct while waiting to form a nice line.  ok ok, seriously, rant end.

Quest: find the ticket machine 

Quest complete.

Quest:  get your ticket by pushing the button on it, then purchase your ticket from the ticket selling person.

                                 quest item: ticket to buy your tickets to enter the waterpark.

Each sales person has a little red number box, go to the one with your number when it pops up.

Quest complete!

Quest: enter the waterpark and have fun!

First thing you do with your new ticket is to exchange it for wristbands.

These wristbands allow you access to your lockers. Your locker number is the number on the wristband. Also, you can make purchases in the park with these, and then when you leave the park and hand over the wristband, you pay for all your purchases at that time.

Here is a map of the facilities

So first you enter through a gift shop. At the gift shop you can purchase or rent swimsuits. Then, you split off into the male and female locker rooms/showers. The women's side was nicely laid out, easy to find your locker. Everyone just walked around naked, so if you go you should be comfortable with nudity. There wasn't an area to change without people seeing you naked. Also, if you are foreign people stare at you all the time anyway, and they will still stare at you as you change. Especially the kids, who for some reason think you'll look different. 

So you get changed, then you go downstairs to a shower area where there are more naked people. You get wet before you enter the pool area, and then you can shower again when you leave. There are also showers in the pool area itself to get yourself wet in. There are many places to eat as well. 

We went through the map like each number was a quest achievement. The spa rooms were very nice, the dr.fish pool was relaxing. The fish were big though, you could really feel em nibbling on you! The lazy river was relaxing, but! Another difference is they don't provide intertubes. You can rent them, or rent life jackets. They do have a station where you can blow up the intertubes though with compressed air, so you don't have to use all your lung power  up. They had different scented baths, like grape bath, pineapple, rose, lavender, and watermelon. There was a pool where you could drink and eat while siting at a table in the water. there were baths specifically to soak your feet. There is an aromatherapy bath too.

There wasn't an adult only area though, simply put, kids were EVERYWHERE. So it was a good day, but super busy in there with all the kids, and not actually as relaxing as it could have ben. Because relaxing in a warm scented tub is nice, but when a kids is kicking water into your face while trying to swim on an intertube, it kinda ruins the mood a little bit.

alright, here is a video of my response after it all, and talk to you guys again later. Hopefully I don't let the blogs all pile up again like this time where I post a couple weeks worth in one sitting. 

Seoul Bus Tour

Since Heather is here, it's back to time to do the touristy things.

We headed into Seoul, and paid 12,000 won for a Seoul Bus Tour. There are many different tours, all costing different amounts and they all give different aspects. First we went to the Korean Tourism Office and talked to them about the tours, and explored there a little. I want to go back there, they had interesting things and a lot of information. Then we went to the tour they told us about.

The bus drives to different spots, and picks you up every hour, so you can decide how long you want to stay at each spot. They have an audio guide to tell you what is at each spot and some history about the places.

We decided to visit two palaces on our journey since we started a little bit late, and we hoped to be able to visit at least one more place. 

we went to these two palaces

We got lost between them so didn't have more time to go to another place, but we did rest at the stream and soak our feet.

Then I paid for an expensive taxi home (30,000 won for like 2 hours of driving because of traffic) because I was just way too tired from the long day to deal with walking back to the station, standing for an hour on the subway, then taking a bus home. So it cost more, but I sat in air conditioned comfort as the taxi driver navigated traffic and only almost killed us a couple times. 

Here is the video I took

Album

Birthday!... almost

So my birthday is almost here and I'm planning going out with friends when it happens, but I also wanted a little party by myself just doing what I like to do best. so I gathered my favorite foods and watched a movie I like with my friend Heather.

First we had a cake hunt, going out to explore.

It was hard to choose what to get. 

But in the end I went with an Ice cream cake from coldstone.

So I had chicken, peperoni pizza, chocolate ice cream cake, soju, plum wine, and Moscato. 

eating some rice cakes

I had an open house recently, and was given some rice cakes as presents. here is a video of me eating them.

Dr. Fish

I went out with friends to explore and go shopping. I can't remember what the area was called but its really popular with the younger crowd, and right next to a university. My friends and I shopped for a while.

If you've noticed, I've been walking all over Korea, and it's killing my feet. So this day, we went to the Dr. Fish. There are advertisements on the street for this, and lots of different places do it and they have different size fish, different size pools. Also different costs. We picked the cheapest place we could find which was 10,000 won for 30 min. They made you change into their shorts, which was hard because as I am a bigger person it took them a while to find shorts for me, but eventually they did.

here are our feet with the fishes!

These fish eat the dead skin on your feet, and tickle like mad.

more about the fishies: (taken from wiki)

the fish are like combfishes in that they only consume the affected and dead areas of the skin, leaving the healthy skin to grow, with the outdoor location of the treatment bringing beneficial effects.