There's Such a Lot of World to See~

Thanks to Sports Day on Wednesday, I had a super short week! I taught Monday, but on Tuesday we just watched the Doctor Who episode Blink so that my classes wouldn't get off track. It was fun to watch with the kids, even if it is a little scary. They really enjoyed it. 

We were worried Sport's Day would be cancelled because it rained SO MUCH Tuesday, but it wasn't. It was sunny wednesday morning, so the teachers and students rallied to clear the playground of water with anything we could find. Dustpans, rakes, shovels, garbage cans, etc. It was still a little we for the events, but it was manageable. 

The first graders throw little bean bags into baskets.
The poor 6th graders had to help out and stand under the poles

After an easy week, we had an exciting long weekend planned. 

Around Monday, Cesca and I discovered that the show The Three Musketeers was having a holiday weekend sale, and through much suffering, we secured tickets for 50% off. Annoyingly, the English site usually does not receive the discounts, so I had to go through the arduous task of getting the Korean site to work. It takes forever, involves lots of steps and security settings and is overall annoying, but we got them! Huzzah! Because of the discount, we got really good seats for the price of cheap ones!!

We have seen a couple of these actors before, so we wanted to
see their new show

We were the only distinct waygookin there

NO ZOOOM SO CLOSE!!!
I usually buy the cheap seats, so this was awesome

We stayed after to meet one of the actors, and he remembered that we had seen him in Dracula as well!

hehehe he was so good! 

I only roughly understood the show, but it was kooky and fun and full of swordfights and explosions. Super fun!!

I didn't get him to sign my dracula stuff last time!

The weather was back to crappy Friday, so we hung out at home until late afternoon, when the rain had subsided a bit. 

Lauren sent us a cat snuggles pic 

The craft beer festival was happening at Coex, so we checked it out. It wasn't a great space for it, but we managed to try a few good beers and some good food, so with good company, it was nice.

On Saturday, we dragged ourselves out of bed early for a trip out of Seoul to Gapyeong, where there are a few famous attractions.

Getting there was a bit of a task, because we had to take an express train (with crappy instructions on how to get tickets, tho we managed fine) and then take a very crowded shuttle bus to get to the location. The train ride was almost an hour, and the bus was over an hour because of traffic that apparently nobody anticipates when making timetables. 

Once a few people got off and we had seats, it was better, but dang was it crowded in the beginning. I guess that's what happens when everyone has the same time off. It was a rough start, but we managed to have fun.

 We saw Petit France, which is supposed to be a "French Culture Village" but it was really just cute buildings with a few random museums and shows. I was hoping for more... Frenchness. But it was pretty to walk around and take pictures. 

Sadly, my backpack broke like 3 minutes into
the trip.

The famous drama My Love From Another Star
filmed some scenes here, hence the cutouts haha

The Little Prince was also popular there

There were a lot of menacing looking
bugs here, so I was frightened

We hopped back on the shuttle and thankfully got seats for the much longer than scheduled ride out to the Garden of the Morning Calm. It's a beautiful, relatively large garden with lots of different styles of gardens and flowers to see. 

playing Jenga with wishing rocks like hooligans

It was beautiful but I was worried cause there were quiiiiiiite a few bees that were very scary and that came at me a lot. I shrieked a few times.

It was another bus, train, subway and bus ride before we got home, exhausted. We'd gotten up early and walked so much, we were spent. I think I went to bed before 10:30. But spending the day with Cesca, Helen and Cherie was super fun, and we accomplished a lot! It was a great day!

Ces and I slept for a good 12 hours before mobilizing for dance class, where we learned Bang Bang again. We're working on something special for the end of the month, so stay tuned!!! Grace and Pau were back in class, which made it SO MUCH MORE FUN!!! We missed them!!!

Now I'm sitting with icy hot patches on trying to rally myself for school tomorrow. It was such a great weekend that I'm flying high from that, but weekends like this make me a little sad I'm leaving Korea, since they were so nice. Though, they also remind me that I've seen and done a lot here and that there's a lot more to do out there, so moving on isn't the worst thing in the world. I'm sure gonna miss it though. Not the terribly inaccurate timetables, but the fun and friends.

Too much to do before I leave to dwell on it though! Looking forward to another exciting few weeks. Good things are coming, I can feel it!!

HAPPY MOTHER'S DAY MAMMA AND HAPPY BIRTHDAY TEDDYYYYYY

~~

This is Cesca, Shannon and me killing Bang Bang~ Wooooo so fun but so tiring!!! Feeling it in my neck and shoulders now haha. More to come soon~

It's gonna be May

It was a slow and attractive week for me, as I finally had time to get my hair done. Mostly cause I'm lazy and cheap, I let it go for a while longer than I should have. Oops.

Sun Kyung told me I should wear my hair like this
all the time...

Gotta keep up with the face masks. This
was a lotus one~

On Wednesday, we went on a teacher bonding trip. Now, these are okay, but this was a schoolwide one and involved taking a bus to an island to explore. Not sure why we had to do this Wednesday, as it messes up the schedule and is also inconvenient because we got back to school well past 9:30... I have 5 classes Thursday, so energy is really needed. I cannot get energy if I am out all day and get home after 10...

But it was nice to spend some time with the teachers, and they get to learn a lot about me. I found out one of the teachers in my office has been to Siena! So we bonded about how beautiful that is.

We went to an island that has a big tower and some bridge that uses tidal power to produce energy, then hiked around a bit. At least it wasn't the difficult hiking that I have come to expect in Korea.

The other teachers were scared of the glass walkway,
but I've been over the Grand Canyon, so I know
what's what. It was fun~

The hiking trail had this at the start to check how
healthy your  body is. If you're in your 20s you should be
able to fit through a 21 cm gap or something.
I could fit through 20s but not 10s, which means
I'm the right size. 

The hike wasn't bad, but it was a little gloomy.

Because it's an island, we had seafood for dinner. I'm not a huge fan of raw things, but especially raw oysters and clams and sea cucumbers. I can, however, manage raw fish. Everyone was really worried about me being able to eat, which was sweet. I ended up eating a lot of the fish but let the others eat the raw shelled stuff. 

not my fave but not bad.

I don't really think the teachers thought this trip through tho, because my principal likes to drink a lot and some of the other teachers, uh, enjoyed the alcohol way too much, which meant a lot of people were suffering on the ride home. Like, come on, we're adults and you didn't think about not getting wasted before riding on a bus for 2 hours back to Seoul? Sigh. It's not every Korean or every school, but it's part of the culture I sometimes can't get used to. It's fun to have a drink or two, but binging isn't really my thing. 

This actor is super popular in Korea right now and
one of my students gave this to me after she saw
me laughing at it on her desk. I didn't love the drama
but he's cute

Then we made the best discovery:

REESE'S MCFLURRIES ARE AT
MCDONALDS!! This is shocking since
they don't usually have reese's stuff here?

Cesca and I went to a make your own ddeokbokki buffet on Friday before seeing Captain America, but we were pretty sure the guy misinterpreted our request for slightly spicy but not too spicy ddeokbokki. We ended up with a mixed spicy black bean sauce? It was good but not what we wanted. We basically messed up 100% of that process haha.

Cesca's "this doesn't seem right' face

But then we got to see Captain America before everyone so
that was awesome, even tho it felt more like an ironman
movie.

On Saturday, Ces and I hung out and met Lauren for dinner. We lamented about our jobs like usual, but had a lot of fun girl talking and such. 

On Sunday, we had a fun but tough Beast dance session for class, then ran out to get across town and go to Olympic Park for an Andrea Bocelli concert. He was only in Seoul for one night, and after debating the ticket cost, we decided it was totally worth it to go, since he's one of my favorite singers. 

Our tickets were on the side, but it seems like either a lot of people cancelled or the ticket site was being dumb and blocking off the center, cause most of the seats at the top center were empty. We and like every other Korean decided to move over and got great seats. 

Arg it was so good. He even sang Music of the Night!! I loooooved it. Not much to say besides awesome, amazing, fantastic, wonderful, etc. He's incredible live. SO happy we went.

So that's why I'm late this week... We got home well past 11 and, on a school night, that's super late. I went to bed with Nessun Dorma ringing in my head and my heart happy. 

Plus, I have an easy 3 day week this week. Huzzah! 

Sports day tomorrow followed by a 4 day weekend~ Got some great stuff planned for it, too. 

May already? My May schedule is packed, so I have a feeling it will fly by. Yikes! 

~~

I hope we get to learn this dance, because Twice's Cheer Up is my current kpop obsession~