Another Weekend Gone

As I write this, I'm pretty emotionally torn. Part of me is SO excited to be back in America in three weeks and part of me is so sad to leave all the people who made my time in Korea so memorable and special. This past weekend I spent a lot of time connecting with my co-teachers and their families which made me realize that I wish I had even more time to spend with them.

On Saturday morning I met my co-teacher SuJin in Chuncheon and she drove us to Gapyeong where we met the rest of her family. All of us were set to camp on an island in Gapyeong together Saturday night. I was really excited to be included in her family's weekend plans and was honored to have the privilege of meeting SuJin's sister and her sister's family. It's so nice to know that SuJin feels comfortable sharing so much of her life with me. Camping was so much fun! I loved playing with SuJin's two daughters, as well as her niece and nephew. It was also nice to talk with the adults. They were so welcoming and seemed genuinely thrilled to have me join them on their family vacation. The camping trip was really relaxing and relatively low-key. I generally think of camping as roughing it a bit but that wasn't really the case here. There was no hiking, getting dirty or any of that. Instead there was a pool with blow-up inflatables for the kids to play on! We also had two grills and plenty of amenities. I was really surprised that many of the other campers even set up huge projectors and just watched tv!

Amy, the other ETA, SuJin's daughter and I at the campsite

SuJin's family after the pool

Me reading to SuJin's daughters

We left the campsite at noon on Sunday because the kids were exhausted and didn't seem like they could last much longer. Luckily, that gave me plenty of time to meet up with another co-teacher and her family on Sunday. Every Tuesday (and now Fridays) the KyeongHi, the school's librarian, joins me and a few other teachers to cook and talk. This weekend her younger sister whose a college student was visiting her in Chuncheon. Since her sister is only a little younger than me we made plans to meet up this Sunday. KyeongHi's husband and son also joined us. I thought we would just chat over coffee or something small and was shocked when I found out how much KyeongHi planned for our day together. We first drove to Cheonpyeongsa Temple in Chuncheon and had a delicious lunch at the bottom of the mountain. I was treated to a huge feast of many traditional Korean foods, including fried root (surprisingly delicious).

The fried root!

KyeongHi's son munching away

After our lunch the five of us hiked up the mountain a bit to the temple. It was a gorgeous short hike complete with waterfalls. I really enjoyed the walk up. The temple, like most Korean temples, was nestled beautifully in the mountainside. The view was incredible.

I'm next to KyeongHi and her sister is on the right.

Outside the temple

After finishing at the temple we drove to a neat cafe located in a traditional house in the farmland that surrounds Chuncheon. The cafe was gorgeous and I was able to try many traditional foods as we drank coffee and chatted some more. I really wished I had invited KyeongHi to do something together earlier because I really enjoyed my time with her family. Her sister was also so sweet and welcoming. Unfortunately, it was getting late after we finished coffee and her one-year old son needed to get home for a nap. I also needed to start my trip back to Hwacheon so we parted ways after coffee. It was an amazing end to my weekend. I will really miss all the people who have made my year in Korea incredible!

Birthday Festivities

These past two weeks I've been having a blast celebrating numerous birthdays, including my own. Last week it was my co-teacher Myeong Jin's birthday. She is one of the teachers I meet with every week so we threw her a birthday party during our normal meeting time. It was really nice to be able to celebrate Myeong Jin and get her a birthday present. I've really become close with the teachers in my Tuesday group and Myeong Jin was the one who first reached out to me and invited me to spend time with them. Without her I probably wouldn't have been lucky enough to get to know so many of my co-teachers on a more personal level.

This week my host mother's birthday was on Monday and we obviously celebrated by having cake for breakfast. Even funnier, we had the leftover cake for breakfast the next morning. A typical Korean breakfast is identical to a Korean lunch or dinner and includes rice, soup, meat and numerous side dishes. Therefore, Koreans often struggle to understand why Americans only eat certain foods at certain times and don't think anything of having sweets for breakfast.

My birthday was on Wednesday and I started the day by having cake for breakfast for the third day in a row with my host family. What a week! At school my co-teacher, SuJin, ordered patbingsu for my birthday. It was so sweet of her.

SuJin's daughter and I

After school I met the other three ETAs at a coffee shop. We chatted and walked around town a little bit. It was great to be surrounded by so much birthday love. Two of the ETAs then went home for dinner and my friend Rachel and I went to our favorite restaurant in town. We then ate and drank to celebrate my birthday. After dinner we went to the one Western bar in our small town. Neither of us had ever been there before so we figured it was about time. The night was extremely fun and we were both amazed that the bar had a flag celebrating the South!

"If the South would've won we would've had it made"

I was also fortunate enough to celebrate my birthday one more time with some of my other co-teachers. We had cake and fried chicken- an unbelievably Korean combination. I'm pretty sure Koreans use any excuse they can to order fried chickens. In my small town there are at least 15 different fried chicken restaurants. My co-teachers were so sweet to think of me on my birthday though and I was so moved when they all showered me with gifts. It wasn't really something I was expecting and reminded me how much I'll miss all the people I've met in Korea. Despite how far I was from home on my birthday, I felt so loved and that's mainly due to the incredible people I've been able to connect with here. Korea truly does feel like a home of sorts.

Visiting Suncheon

On Friday I spent a long seven hours on a bus to make my way to Suncheon, a city in the very south of Korea. I had yet to visit either of the South-Western provinces and therefore figured it was worth a go despite the long bus ride. One of my ETA friends Ben lives in Suncheon and gladly welcomed me. On Friday, after I arrived, we went to visit his all boys high school. Even though it was 8 o'clock on a Friday all of the students were at school. Most high schools have required self-study hours on the weekends. Additionally, nearly all of his students board in order to maximize their time spent studying. I was able to meet most of the first and second year students but was unable to say hello to the third year students because they needed to focus on studying. It was really fun to meet all of Ben's students since they are so different from my elementary school students. The dynamics of an all-boys high school are very unique as well. After I finished my grand tour of the school Ben and I met his co-teacher and four of his students for a late dinner. The four students who came to dinner with us had participated in YDAC (Youth Diplomacy and Activism Conference) earlier in the day. YDAC is a conference sponsored by the US Embassy at which high school students debate various current events issues.  The conference is only for ETA's schools and is conducted entirely in English. Therefore, it is extremely difficult. After participating in this exhausting competition all day Ben's students returned to school and wrote an essay for an English essay competition. Needless to say, the students were very deserving of a special meal out to reward their hard work. It was the first time the students ate at a restaurant in months because they eat every single meal, including weekends, on campus. I am consistently in awe of how hard Korean students work.

Dinner with Ben's students

After dinner, Ben and I went back to the bus terminal and met two of Ben's Korean friends who were visiting from Busan. The four of us then went to a HOF near Ben's house and had some beers. Since you always have to order food with your beer at Korean bars we ordered deep fried chicken intestines. It was both mine and Ben's first time eating chicken intestines and although I can't say I'll eat them again they weren't too bad. They were just a bit too chewy for my liking.

The next day the four of us went to the Suncheon World Garden Expo. The Expo was huge and included a man-made lake constructed to look like the city of Suncheon complete with islands, that represent the mountains in the city. Additionally, there were representative gardens from various countries all over the world. Unfortunately, the American garden wasn't very impressive. It was created to look like a backyard and therefore was mainly shrubs rather than flowers. The four of us all really enjoyed the Expo despite the incredible heat. We were all completely drained by the time we finished exploring the Expo. It took us about 5 hours to see everything!

The four of us at the Expo

Ben and I on the dream bridge.
Each of the tiles are a Korean students
drawing of their dream.

Of course Ben and I were filmed for a television ad.

 

Me and the fish sculptures.

In order to recharge, I took a long nap Saturday afternoon before meeting Ben's host family around dinnertime. It was really nice meeting Ben's family because they are extremely different from my own. Ben has three siblings in elementary school and they are just full of energy. The three of them could not sit still the entire two hours I was there. It was fun to be surrounded by so much energy given my quiet, study-filled home stay. Ben's host mother was an extremely gracious host and even gave me a neat leather bracelet she had made.

On Sunday, I spent the morning with Ben and another Fulbright friend who came to Suncheon late Saturday night. The three of us visited beautiful Suncheon Lake and had a late brunch at a restaurant overlooking the water. Suncheon had so many gorgeous natural spaces since it is the ecological capital of Korea. I was incredibly impressed with how much green I could consistently see since most Korean cities have strict divides between natural and artificial spaces. I had to leave early Sunday afternoon to make the trip back to Hwacheon but I was really glad I accomplished so much in the little time I was in Suncheon.

Busan: Sharks, Sand and Succulent Snacks!

This past weekend was a long weekend giving me a full four days off from school. I wanted to take full opportunity of the chance to travel and went to Busan, a large port city in the South of Korea, with a few friends. Busan is about 6 six hours from Hwacheon so I had only been there once before even though it’s the second largest city in South Korea. Last time I went to Busan it was for the Busan International Film Festival and I went down on Friday and came back on Sunday so I was very eager to spend more time exploring the city this time around.

Luckily, my co-teachers were thrilled that I was traveling to Busan and printed a guide that discussed many of Busan’s highlights. This guide was very helpful when my friends and I went to the famous Jalgachi Market. The market is extremely famous for it’s seafood and is located right on the water. Nearby there are other markets that sold numerous goods and that sold delicious food. My teacher’s guide directed my friends and I to the best odeng restaurant. Odeng is what Koreans call fishcake and I’m not sure I really want to think any harder about what it actually is composed of. We also had delicious hoddeok. Hoddeok is a popular Korean street food that is basically fried dough filled with cinnamon and ground up peanuts. The Nampo Market area in Busan is famous for a special type of hoddeok where the patty is sliced open and stuffed with sunflower seeds. It was absolutely delicious.

Our breakfast of odeng

My friends eating seafood pancake- we tried to eat as much seafood as possible

Sarah and I with our hoddeok

Rachel and I outside Jagalchi Market

 Another highlight of the weekend was visiting the Pusan National University area. One of my friends taught at the University during the winter and was really knowledgeable of the area. He also joined a CrossFit gym in the area during the two months he lived at PNU. The owners of the gym knew he was in town for the long weekend and invited him to a workout. Since Ben knows how much I enjoy a good workout he invited me to join. I was extremely intimidated by the workout that was posted on the board and the intense warm-up did not ease my fears. Once the clock started though I was able to kick it into high gear and completed the workout in a really good time. I even beat two of the regulars and more importantly, proved to myself that I can do a tough workout that included doing 20 pull-ups in a row!

Ben and I after our workout. Our instructor is in the middle.

This weekend was also a wonderful weekend to be in Busan because of the Haeundae Sand Festival. There were lots of performances throughout the weekend and the beach was covered with impressive sand sculptures. Most of the sculptures were based off movies because Busan is also home to an international film festival. The festival drew large crowds and lucky for me many of my Fulbright friends decided to also come check out the festival.

I don’t want to make this blog entry too long but I did save the best part of my weekend for last. On Saturday, I was able to live out one of my dreams by swimming with sharks without a cage. The Busan Aquarium offers cage-free shark diving and I had been planning to go for a long time. I was unbelievably thrilled that my time had finally come to get up close and personal with sharks. I absolutely loved cage diving with great whites in South Africa and was thrilled to have another chance to interact so closely with sharks. When I arrived at the aquarium I underwent some training to learn how to use the scuba equipment and then I was escorted on a 30 minute dive in the main tank of the aquarium. The tank contained stingrays, massive groupers, smaller fish, sand tiger sharks, white tip reef sharks and blacktip reef sharks. One of the highlights of the whole program was actually the training because the reef sharks swam in between my legs twice and even rubbed up against my legs! During the actual dive the reef sharks stayed further away because they were intimidated by the group of five divers. Luckily, the sand tiger sharks and groupers were not intimidated and came right up to us. It was an amazing experience. I even was able to collect shark teeth off the floor of the aquarium during the dive. I can’t imagine a better way to end my year in Korea then with this shark dive.

My friends and I right before our dive

Inside the main tank

A Weekend of Reunions

This weekend I was fortunate to reconnect with some of my Korean friends I had not spent time with in a while. On Saturday I went to Everland with my host family. Everland is an amusement park in Seoul that was suprisingly big. I spent the entire day on rides with my host brother although unfortunately he wasn't particularly brave and I was unable to go on the largest roller coaster in South Korea. Everland reminded me a lot of Six Flags, mainly because it had a safari and water park attached to me. The park also had a small zoo which made me a little sad. The animals just seemed so miserable and were in such small cages. Ironically, the animals are the only thing I photographed throughout the day.

My host family and I finished at Everland a little before dinner time. We were all exhausted because we left Hwacheon very early that morning and were in the sun all day. I said goodbye to my host family and happily hopped on a bus to Seoul where I was meeting my friend Rachel and her cousin, Amy, for dinner. I was extremely excited because Amy just returned from studying in America this week and I hadn't seen her since I spent Christmas Eve at her house. Amy and her family have been such a positive part of my experience in Korea and I am always eager to spend time with them. The three of us got dinner at a delicious shabu-shabu restaurant before heading back to her home for a sleepover. I loved being able to catch up with her and hear about her time studying at a SUNY.

Amy, Rachel and I at Amy's house.

This morning I ate breakfast with Amy and her family before heading to Chuncheon for another much anticipated reunion. Today I spent the day with my Chuncheon host family. We had been trying to meet up for several weeks now and I was relieved to finally spend time with them. When I arrived we headed to VIPS, a Western buffet, and enjoyed a very long lunch. It was great to be able to tell them what I've been up to in person rather than just through texts. After lunch, my host mom, brother and I met my host mom's friend and her daughter at a nearby cafe. I had met the friend and daughter during February so it was nice to see them again. The daughter is a 1st year middle school student but speaks English amazingly well. I enjoyed our conversation because HyooJoo gave me a really good understanding of what it's like to be a middle school girl in Korea. I love hearing her perspective on the Korean education system, Korea pop culture, etc.

The five of us outside the coffee shop

The biggest downside of both my reunions was making plans to say goodbye. I only have five more weekends in Korea and am traveling for four of them. During my last weekend I will meet Amy's family to say thank you and goodbye. Amy's parents have been so unbelievably kind to me throughout this year and I'll really miss visiting them. It's remarkable how close you can feel to people despite a language gap. Luckily, Amy will return to study in NY in the fall so I will be able to see her in America during her winters. I also made plans to spend my last night in Korea with my Chuncheon host family. The month I spent living with them was the most comfortable I've been in Korea. I absolutely adored the family and really felt like I was just another family member and not just an extended house guest. I was very upset when February ended and I had to leave their home. I am so fortunate that they are eager to have me sleep over my last night in Korea. There's no place I'd rather be. The family also in true Korean fashion invited themselves to my wedding and reminded me that I really should find a husband soon because I'm not getting any younger. I can only hope they really come to America whenever I eventually get married.

My Chuncheon host family and I at VIPS