Cinderella and Seoraksan

What an eventful week. 

I had an easy teaching week, because my 6th graders and 5th graders were on various trips, so I basically had 7 classes for the whole week, since we also had Friday off to celebrate Hangul Day. That's the Korean alphabet. King Sejong and all that. Cool stuff. 

Highlights from school include:

Young Ah and I don't know why
we are crawling towards poop haha. Look
at how much bigger my eyes are!

I cannot for the life of me eat this soup. Crab
is hard to eat with chopsticks.

On Tuesday, I skipped Korean class in favor of, what else, a musical. We wanted to see Yang Yoseob from Beast perform as the prince in Cinderella, and so we had to time the day well. Thanks to some discount scouring on the Korean site, I found an amazing deal- S tickets 1+1 for 50,000 won. That may mean nothing to you. Let me explain. That's 2 S seats for 50,000, where normally 1 S seat costs 80,000. We got 4 tickets for 100,000. That's crazy.  Ces and I met up with Janell and Grace to see the show.

The area around the theater inexplicably does not have a ton of food, but we mannaged to find some delicious bossam.

Bossam is boiled, thinly sliced pork belly that you wrap
with other things

YUMMY. Enjoying the food!

wow there, this is a family establishment

We headed over to the theater. It wasn't crowded at all, and of course we got the usual "omg foreigners" stares. Grace is constantly surprised by the attention Cesca and I get. 

Our lovely cast 

I think the fact that the cast was mostly idols or pop singers did not entice many people to come, which is sad, cause the show was gorgeous and amazing and wonderful.

Excited to see Yoseob

He was adorable!! 

the set was awesome

Loved it

yay

We got home late but I was too excited about the show to sleep. The costumes, sets and score were amazing, and the actors had great energy. I was not disappointed at all and I wish I could go again! I looooove this version of Cinderella. When I got my wisdom teeth out, I rewatched the 90s Brandi version and listened to "10 minutes ago" on repeat for ages. 

Thankfully, I only had drama club and my afternoon classes Wednesday, so I could take it easy. I did my hair up and my kids thought I cut my hair. So silly. 

You should have seen the look on my kids faces,
even though I do my hair like this relatively often

It's simple and looks elegant, like a princess,
as my co workers said. d'aaaw

I had no classes Thursday, so after lesson planning and studying Italian and Korean, I took a break. During my break, it was snack time! I love snacks. What would I find?

Oh look, it's a hot... dog... bun...

With cream inside...?
It was pretty good.

Thanks to Hangul Day, Cesca and I decided to try for the top of Seoraksan again, since it was raining on our last trip and we could not get to the top. 

The day started out super early, and went from bad to worse really fast. Our 2 hour bus ride went on and on. 

3 hours in and we stopped at a rest stop. Only halfway there,
Cesca and I worried about even getting to Seoraksan

Finally some mountains in view

After 5 hours on the bus, we had to take a taxi ride to Seoraksan, where we got caught in traffic again. Our taxi driver told us it would be a half an hour to walk, but the weather was nice so we decided to not waste that time or money in the taxi. 

We got to the park...

gorgeous!

But we saw a disheartening message... the cable car was closed because of high winds. Operations suspended. IE, we spent 5 hour on a bus, 30 min in a taxi and 30 min walking, only to find out that we could not accomplish the thing we had set out to do. 

We didn't break down and cry, even though we wanted to. Deciding we should rest for a bit, grab some food and shake off the disappointment, we looked around for food, taking some pictures along the way, before deciding to just get food at the cable car building, because it was cheaper. We also wanted to charge our dying phones. 

we decided to just enjoy the nice, non Seoul air,
and the beautiful fall weather, instead of being upset

at the old cable car model, we took "disappointment pictures" 

Then we made jokes about how we came all the way to Seoraksan to try the food.

mm so different from Seoul ddeokbokki

While we were eating, we heard some of the staff discussing the wind, the cable car, and heard some people saying "get ready" and "you're going up" before some staff members frantically gathered their things and ran upstairs.

I went to one of the managers and asked if the cable car was going up, and he said yes and told me to hurry and buy tickets. We got to go up immediately.

we couldn't believe it

disbelief

not gonna question it, thanks universe!

My god the weather was gorgeous.

The views were magical.

The photos were epic.

Time to finish our mission

it was a harrowing and windy journey

we did it!

It was cold being up that high, and we were honestly a bit terrified by the windiness, so we headed back down after taking in the view and relishing in how strangely awesome our seemingly horrible trip turned out.

We got ice cream to celebrate

After waiting foreverrr for a taxi (long story short, we gave up one to a family with a grandma and had to wait another half hour. Then someone tried to steal ours and this awesome KOrean family was like NO IT'S THEIRS and the taxi driver was like FOREIGNERS I'M HERE FOR YOU. We got back down to Sokcho, the city near Seoraksan, and headed to a cafe to recharge while we waited for our bus. The drinks were cheaper than Seoul, and much cuter!

In true roller coaster emotion fashion, our bus back to Seoul was late, and the arrival time was expected to be like 11pm. So we had another 4 hours to look forward to on the bus, which prompted us to make these faces.

We tried to amuse ourselves on the admittedly super comfortable bus

haha STD.

Despite some back to Seoul traffic, our driver managed to take just over 3 hours to get back to Seoul, much to our overwhelming joy. 

Exhausted and hungry, we stopped at McDonald's on the way home to discover this devilry. 

automated ordering screens, which were kind of
cool but also awk and annoying. And terribly placed.

 After our whirlwind day, we finally got home, thanked our lucky stars for the strange coincidental luck we had today, and went to bed. 

I normally could sleep in on Saturday, but I volunteered to do some overtime this weekend. I had to help supervise a group at a mini C-40 environmental conference at the Seoul Energy Dream Center near my school.

We just had to help the kids do a project about how the area here called Nambit city, is a model for turning a landfill into an energy producing area. The area features great energy conservation and things, so the kids had to study one of 40 cities (c-40) and compare the cities and talk about what the cities could learn from this area. It wasn't the most interesting day, but it was nice to talk to students who can understand me better.

The result of my group working hard.  Chaos
on the desk.  They got 3rd place!

I was again exhausted, so I got dinner with Lauren (who also had volunteered to work) and Cesca. We hung out for a bit before turning in. It had been a long day and long weekend, and it wasn't over yet. 

On Sunday, Cesca and I slept in a bit and then worked on cleaning up my apartment, which had become quite messy after the early mornings and late nights the weekend had produced. Hiking clothes, backpacks, etc had been haphazardly cast around the room, but we managed to make it livable again. 

We headed out to dance class, where we tackled the insanely difficult refrain of "I Need U" by BTS. We knew it would be crazy hard, but it was fun and I felt like we kiiiind of got it, even though I don't think I'm suited to this style much haha.

On the way home, I saw the remnants of a rainbow!

Quite the week I've had here. Fall weather is finally here, I've got another musical under my belt, and Ces and I accomplished something we've been itching to do for ages. Talk about a good time. 

~~

In a Cinderella mood, I also found some audio from the show, if you want to hear how Rodgers and Hammerstein sounds in Korean!

Singer Younha singing In My Own Little Corner



Yoseob and Younha singing Ten Minutes Ago, though in Korean they sing something more like "The first moment I saw you" ( 처음 그대를 본 순간)



Do I Love You Because You're Beautiful?