What a week!

What a weird week!

The talent show is next week so it has resulted in many complications.

My 3/4 coteacher forgot that we had class after lunch on Friday which made my class even more disastrous than it usually is, but I won't see that class for like 3 weeks so it's fine. They really wear me down though.

Lots of meetings and my cos running around and me having to do things that are entirely unrelated to teaching Engish but whatever.


I'm just tired a lot. But that's okay!


I made some dope sauce on Monday to eat for the week, which was nice since I haven't been able to cook for myself in a long time. Lots of busy schedules.

Bam, bam, bam

Tuesday was hectic at school with my 6th graders, since all of them are getting to that really difficult point. But I had my 4th graders and I had to catch them up and they were my perfect angels. The lesson was about food, so they kept asking Seunghee to ask me things like if I could eat kimchi. Or eat white kimchi. Or what the English name for ddeokbokki is (it's ddeokbokki) or bulgogi (it's bulgogi) or literally any Korean food name (it's literally any Korean food name). They're adorable and I wish all my students could be like my 4th graders.


Tuesday night I got surprised by being asked to run my study group for my language exchange since my leader wasn't there. I agreed, since why not, and was even more surprised to arrive and meet only 2 of the usually 6 or so group members. The English part went well, then the guy who has been helping my leader with me stayed for the second part of the Korean class with me.


Okay. I've been holding off on this because it's all still pretty new to me and I wasn't sure how much I wanted all my business out there, but here it goes: we're dating.

I have a boyfriend! Weeeeeeeeeeeeeee!

His name is Namho, and he's been the one studying English and Korean with me since I started the language exchange.

Me wearing my boyfriend's (wow that feels weird to say) sweater.

We already have had a funny mishap where we were asked by our language exchange friends when we started dating and he answered "last week" and I answered "yesterday." I thought when I brought the subject up that we were officially dating was our start date, but he seems to think it was the first time we went on a "date" and held hands, which was at the hockey game. My friend said the same thing happened to her with her Korean boyfriend, so I'll have to clear it up with him. Hahaha.

I'm having a lot of fun hanging out with him, and even though the language barrier is hard we both have good reasons to continue learning the other person's language. It's an weird adventure to be on, but I like it.

He plays hockey so he's already a winner.

So Tuesday we went for a drink with his hockey friend who lived in the Philippines so he spoke English really well. So we hung out for a while before he took me home. I'm pretty pleased so far because he takes me to the bus stop near my apartment and doesn't insist on taking me to my apartment but also doesn't just drop me at the subway. He knows I live alone but hasn't mentioned anything untoward, as I have heard of happening here. So I'm feeling pretty good about his chivalry here.

I got home way too late and was tired Wednesday, where I had another weird day at school. It must just be excitement from the talent show. My 6th graders were actually phenomenal that day, and my worst 3rd grade class managed to get through everything. ???????


We had a staff outing on Wednesday after classes. We (the 6th grade teachers) were supposed to go to some flower festival but it was so crowded that we just wandered around World Cup Stadium for a while before getting dinner. It was pretty fun, especially when I can string together sentences in Korean to impress some of the older teachers who don't speak very much English.

Afterwords, I was going to meet Namho. So Jung has known about the whole thing, but none of the other teachers do. Until now. Because I was going the same way as the two sports teachers, we were chatting because I usually go the opposite way. I told them I was meeting a friend when asked why I was going that way, but I cannot keep a straight face or not blush when talking about Namho to anyone so when one teasingly asked if it was a boy my face gave everything away. They thought he was another English teacher and kept thinking of other foreigner things he could be, and I surprised them even more by saying he was Korean. Haha. One of them lamented that he didn't have a girlfriend because "Fall is very good time for boyfriend. It's cold, so..." then proceeded to make hugging motions. Hilarious. Oh well. It was really funny, and I know they texted So Jung about it,since she reported how funny it was to me later.

Our comedy of dating continues.

We saw Martian, which was pretty good if a bit long. Namho fell asleep during it, and I was unaware of the all-star cast so I kept being surprised by who was in the movie. We strolled around outside after the movie then got ice cream before he took me home again.

The only picture I have of us together so far.

Thursday was crazy. We had a fire drill with the school and I was helping So Jung with the 6th grade class, which was a disaster. If there's a fire, we're all dead.

We also got a new student in my worst 6th grade class. He's a baseball player and he transferred so that he could go to the middle school near here. But it makes the already crazy boys in that class even worse. Sigh.

I went to my language exchange again, where my relationship with Namho was outed. I'm not stoked that he just announced it to the two I'm closest to, since he didn't ask if I was okay with it. But I am okay with people knowing. I didn't know if he was. Clearly so far the thing I am learning is that we need to work on communicating. Not that the language thing is an excuse, but it sure takes things to a different level.


Finally it was Friday. This was the day that my co forgot the afternoon class because she was busy with stuff for the talent show, so that was a disaster. Oh well.

I met with Tina for Indian food and felt revitalized, then I went to my Korean class.


Saturday Tina and I checked out the market that was near my apartment. There are a lot of churches around so there was an annual market thing for that. We got some good deals and good food.

Making mandu!

Buying mandu!

Later we tried to go to the beer festival in Itaewon with Lauren, but as there were 2 other festivals happening simultaneously, it did not pan out. We did make it up to Cali Kitchen on my friend's recommendation, which was fabulous. We got the last burger!

Cali Kitchen's decor is really cute. It was like this when he bought the place I guess.

Dat last burger doeeee

Me enjoying my burger and time.

I left Lauren and Tina to go meet up with Namho again. Incidentally there was a beer festival in Sinchon as well. We passed on that in favor of a smaller bar, and we just sat and talked for a while.

I went to Tina's and slept there for my one shot at sleeping in for the week. Her friends, Liz, Casey, and Andrea, skyped her so I joined in for that before we headed to dance class.

This week we revisited an old favorite, Big Bang's "Bang Bang Bang" since so many people had wanted to learn it but hadn't gotten the chance, plus we have new people.

I thought it would be easier since I already knew the dance and have been doing it with my students, but it turned out to be a lot more exhausting since I could do the moves better than the classes where I am just learning the dance. Grace, Tina, and I had a lot of fun messing around, but I also felt that going through the dance slowly again helped me get a lot better at it. Good for when I have to run it with my students for the talent show!


I'm pretty tired and currently dealing with my washing machine continually having an error during the spin cycle so my blanket is soaking wet. Guess I'll go deal with that!

This week I have no clue what's going on with my classes since the talent show will screw up everything.

Then I have the show and the teacher trip to look forward to! Just gotta keep on keeping on.


Til next time!

I Need U (To Continue to be Amazing)~~

Hello hello!

I had a pretty easy week. 2 classes Monday. None on Tuesday. Only Wednesday and Thursday full of classes. Then Friday off!

Nevertheless, the week was full of amazing things ^^


On Tuesday night I skipped my language exchange to go see Cinderella with Beast's Yoseob as the prince!

It was AMAZING.

SERIOUSLY.

LOOK AT HOW ADORABLE HE IS.

See my previous blog post for videos.

It was even better with friends~~

I got home late but whatever. The show was amazing. The music is awesome. Korean musicals only last like 3 months but they spared no expense in the sets and costumes. I wish I could go again. I want to, but I should save my money and time. Yoseob is only in it until the 20th, and I want him to be the lasting image of the prince I have. 

Ugh I have been listening to it all week and just so happy!!

Wednesday was a bit long since it was back to my full schedule of teaching, but I was pretty stoked from Cinderella. Also I had good after school activities planned.

Normally I just go home and watch TV on Wednesdays, but this week I had special plans. A guy from my language exchange plays and loves hockey, and the professional Korean teams were playing at Mokdong Stadium on Wednesday. Mokdong Stadium is like 10 minutes from where I live! So I met up with him and we went to watch the games.

Hockey is not so popular in Korea.

 It was really fun! I forgot how much I missed hockey. And even though Korean University and Yonsei killed their opponents like 8-1, it was really fun to watch the games. And he's a pretty fun guy~^^

We ate some weird hot dogs at the arena. 

I made my way home and managed to take the bus in the wrong direction because I was a little bit distracted and not paying attention... But all's well that ends well. I even got to skype my friend Bryan from Bona's. I had a week full of Skype with Megan, Bryan, and my parents. Woo!

Thursday's are always long but fun since I have 6 classes, one of them being dance with Bang Bang Bang, and then my language exchange. After, I went over to Tina's and skyped my parents, then we went to bed. We had a long day ahead of us on Friday, so we got up hella early and set out for Seoraksan~

The express bus told us a 2 hour ride was in order, so we thought our 8 AM bus would get us there with plenty of time to hike and explore.

We took this at the rest stop because we weren't sure we would actually see any nature that day.

5 hours later, we were exhausted and frustrated. Then, lo and behold, the cable car was closed when we got to the park. It was really windy that day, so it wasn't running. The whole reason we came back was because it was rainy and dangerous the last time we were there and we wanted to climb to the top...


Alas. We looked around for some food. I wanted pizza, but it was like $18 for a basic one. We ended up at the cafe in the building of the cable car, resigned to chilling and charging our phones before heading home and calling it a lost day.



But then something strange happened. One of the food managers kept checking the glass doors behind us and then told the workers to get ready. Curious, we asked him. Turns out, the wind died down. They were starting the cable car!

At 2:45, we got tickets. At 2:50, we were on the first car up the mountain for the day.


I had joked that we wouldn't get to Seoraksan until 3, and at 3 we emerged from the trees and set foot on the top of the mountain. Amazing.

The leaves changed a bit! 

Views~

Reminds me of home~

Our final destination

Climbing

We kept saying how beautiful it was.

I seriously still can't believe we made it.

Feeling very World of Warcraft up here

Getting to the top!

I'm pretty sure they told us not to climb up to the top because of the high winds, but my Korean wasn't good enough to understand and my ambition wasn't weak enough to listen anyway. We braved the treacherous climb to the top, and with the wind threatening to blow us off we took in the views, still stunned that we were even up here after the day we'd had.

If you look closely, you can see the fear. 

View from the tip top

I didn't realize how close we were to the sea because last time we couldn't see anything.

Beautiful! Ehhh Tina's here too.

Clutching our phones as the wind tried to rip them from our grasp.

On top of the world.

Again, Tina, thanks for always having these adventures with me~~

Colors on the way down

Never thought I would smile like this that day.

my feelings after the 5 hour bus ride and the news of no cable car

my feelings after making my way down the mountain 

<3

Okay so the whole time Tina kept singing a song and here is that song:

Beast's "Bad Girl" contains the words "Down, down, we gotta get down" but Tina kept singing "Down, down, we're gonna get down" when she was scared when it was so windy and I was listening to my shuffle on my itunes and this song came on and I spit my drink everywhere. Also debut Beast is amazing to watch. I love this song.

Victory! 

It seems unreal that we got to accomplish our goal. We didn't get to do any other hikes, but we got what we wanted. We had some incidents at the taxi stand of people trying to shark our taxi, but we managed to get down the mountain.

We bought bus tickets and then headed to a cafe to chill.

Best Hot Chocolate I've had in Korea. 

I got worried because the bus times seemed long, and my suspicion of a long ride was confirmed on the bus, which was also late. But the 4 hour suggestion was an overestimate and we made it back home to Tina's apartment before midnight, which was shocking.


Thank you, Universe, for giving me not the day I was expecting but a wonderful day nonetheless. I'm so glad I have Tina here to share it with. And to take these sick pictures!

In that moment, it felt like the whole world was mine.

There's so much world out there left for me to see~~

After a long day, we chilled Saturday. Like napped and got Gusto Taco and straight up chilled. 

Sunday brought us back to our regular schedule with dance class, which we knew would be a doozy.

Our song? BTS's "I Need U." BTS (Bangtan Boys) is on par with EXO in popularity with my students these days, and I've seen them a few times at concerts and whatnot. They're pretty good! Really new - 2013 maybe? But after "I Need U" their popularity skyrocketed.

Their dancing is INSANE. With other groups we learn about a minute and a half to two minutes of the song. For BTS? 40 seconds. The hardest 40 seconds I've danced in this class. But man was it fun!

Here's the pros doing it:

The actual dance starts at around 45 seconds AND OFF IT GOES SO FAST OMG WHAT.

Holy shit. This dance isn't that hard in each step, but combined and at that speed it is killer. Like, oh my god I am so sore. But it was so fun! We all went in knowing we would have trouble, but we have a lot of good-natured people in the class and we're here to have fun, so it works. Our teacher is awesome too and she knows how we are, so she had fun teaching us this difficult choreography. Here are our attempts:

Tina's group, Group A

My Group, Group B (or group BTS as I dubbed us) featuring two girls from the LA Dand Joa studio and our Korean friend who hasn't come to class in forever on account of all the girl groups and performances we've had. 

I think the whole class did such a good job with this one! I loved it. I hope I can practice it more. Someday I should bust it out in front of my students. Instant popularity.

Another funny thing that happened: To leave our classroom. So Jung and I started quizzing the students on the vocab, having them spell the words. We did past tense, so we would tell them the present tense then they had to say and spell the past. This time we decided to give them the Korean and they have to say and spell the English. This requires me to speak Korean, which most of my 6th graders don't know I can do. We did insist to them that So Jung wrote out the pronunciations for me and I don't speak Korean to keep the illusion. Strictly speaking, So Jung DID write the pronunciations... in Korean... But all my kids were FREAKING out. Some were like "No it's weird stoooooooop" and some kept asking me to say more words. I can't wait to shock them someday and say a full sentence. Their heads might explode.

If you like BTS, you'll love their other song. When Tina and I first watched this, we thought they sped up the chorus because there's no way they can move that fast. But they really are that good.

This song, like last wee's GD and TOP song. is called "쩔어" but instead of "Zutter" it's translated as "Dope" or "Sick." So here is BTS doing 쩔어:

I love this song, but the dance looks like it would literally kill me to learn.

Here's the actual "I Need U" video. I prefer the dance version though. 

This week will be back to a normal schedule, I think. My energy is so high from these last few days and weeks that it's hard to be sad that I am back to my normal workload. Everything seems to be going my way these days. I'm enjoying my time here so much! I can't believe it's like halfway through October and it is just now FINALLY feeling like fall. SO HAPPY~~^^

Love you all! Can't wait to see what else October has in store.

^^

This week, 쩔어, Jeju, 쩔어, My Life, 쩔어

Hi all! 

It has been a crazy couple of weeks, but here we are in October, which may be my favorite month. 

Everything really is 쩔어. That means "Dope." Like awesome. But 쩔어 or Zutter, or Juttah as it sounds like to me has more impact. Especially after learning the dance. Which I will have to post later. 

Anyway, here's the dance practice for GD and TOP (of Big Bang)'s 쩔어 since I love the song but don't care for the MV:

The background dancers slayyyy. 

Anyway. the highlight of the last few weeks has been Chuseok. My trip to Jeju was everything I imagined and more. I did get realy sick on the way back because a typhoon sent some pretty bad currents our way just in time for our ferry ride, but overall I had an awesome time. A lot of my students are on a field trip this week, so I get to recover a bit and relax.

For my whole Jeju album, look here: Jeju~~

After a late start (2AM on Saturday morning to take the bus... we almost didn't make the ferry at 9 because of Chuseok traffic and as such had a 4 hour stretch of no breaks) we made it to the ferry and on to Jeju.

Now a quick rundown of the highlights:

On the ferry that would try to kill me on the way back.

"Loveland" is a strange and wondrous place full of lewd and provocative sculptures 

I always try to imitate statues but I couldn't stand on my head on the concrete. Sigh.

It was pretty fun!

We then headed off to our hotel, Blue Hawaii, which was a really nice hotel but was quite remote. It took like 40 minutes to get into Jeju city, and even longer to get to many of the attractions of the day. Still, it was nice.

The view!

We went down to our first beach and got some relaxation and food in before heading back to the hotel. 

The beaches here are wonderful.

We got up bright and early to see the Manjung Gul Caves. It's actually a lava tube. And I took a lot of shitty pictures because of the lighting. It was actually pretty hard to walk in since it was not level and was, you know, lava, so the floor looked cool. It was hard to look at everything since we didn't have a ton of time. But it was cool to explore. It was freezing and scary like any good cave should be. I felt really World of Warcrafty this whole trip.

The well-lit area.

The end of the cave with this cool formation.

After hightailing it out of the cave like we were being chased, we headed to Seongsan Crater.

We have to climb that???

(Un)Fortunately there were stairs the whole way up the crater to climb it. It was really hard but the views... Oh man the views....

It's so shocking to see after living in Seoul for so long that I was dazzled. It was a tough climb up the stairs, but we made it!

Desiree and I pretending we aren't dying.

It's so green!

It was really windy up there.

We made our way down and wandered around the area for a little bit more before buying some chocolate and heading away.

It really is such a stunning island...

Sooooo windy

After a long day of exploring, we went to unwind at another beach, Hamduk.

The volcanic rock and stuff here is pretty cool.

We went back to the hotel before heading into town and getting some food.

On Monday we headed to the Cheonjiyeon waterfalls. By my Niagara Falls standards, they weren't much, but by my living in Seoul standards they were amazing!

Look at the colors!

So lovely.

I love Jeju.

After some more stairs and walking we got to the second one, which was also amazing. And the most waterfally of the waterfalls.

The third waterfall had a couple hundred stairs to get to it, but it was also beautiful:

I can't help but think I have never seen such a pretty color of water. Love it.

Afterwords, we hit some museums and then it was beach time! This time, Jungmun Beach. Finally we were at the beach when it was hot out, so we got lots of time in the sun before the clouds rolled in.

Okay but this sand literally never came off of anything.

After swimming and chilling for a few hours, we went to our buffet dinner and got treated to the most wonderful food along with the most stunning sunset:

The tour group made a reservation at this bar called Monkey Beach, which we have in Seoul too, so all of us headed there to get some free alcohol and have some fun. I have no idea how the bar made any money that night...

Everyone got a free bucket and 2 free shots. I do not want to tell you how much alcohol is in this bucket, but you can probably guesstimate that it is "a lot."

The buses took us back to the hotel where we prepared for our final day and journey home.

The last day we spent lounging at another beach, Gwakji.

It was quite windy and a little bit chilly, so less swimming but more chilling and relaxing occurred. 

I also got some awesome fish & chips.

It was a great day.

We made our way back to the ferry and got ready to go home.

When we were at Jungmun beach, I met some surfers who said that the waves would be 3 times as high the next day. I did not connect that it would make my ferry ride back almost hellish. Turns out some aftermath from a typhoon in Japan had made it's way to our area.

I had an absolute saint of a seat partner and some good friends giving me motion sickness cures the whole trip. Despite throwing up about 8 times, I kept in good spirits. I had a good vacation, and there was literally nothing I could do except endure. I knew it was finite. As Tina has me saying, "It's just pebbles." I couldn't let it trip me up for long. 

Aside from that, my trip was amazing. I loved it. I want to go back again. There is more to see and do, and I want to go back in spring or summer. Aside from Chuseok, it's not too expensive to go. See you again soon, Jeju!

I had Wednesday off, thank god, since I arrived at my apartment around 4 AM. I immediately came down with a bit of a cold, but quickly recovered. 

Saturday brought us to another Kpop cover dance performance with some friends. We did our AOA and Apink routine again, and we got some good spots for the concert the following day.

This was actually one of the most legit stages we performed on. It was after a marathon. Not sure why, but we got really good spots for the concert out of it, it was fun, and we got to meet up with old friends and make some new ones.

The concert on Sunday came after we slayyyyyed in dance class, so I was a little tired.

But we got escorted to our nice view and had a great time.

I took a few photos of each artist and then put my camera a way to enjoy the concert in the moment UNLIKE SOME PEOPLE WITH SELFIE STICKS AND DSLR CAMERAS AND STOOLS BLOCKING VIEWS.

hem hem.

Anyway:

Zhoumi from Super Junior M with the MC, Leeteuk from Super Junior.

Henry (Super Junior M)

He played the violin and piano because he's amazing.

Next we had the only girl group:

Red Velvet

And finally the group that I was most excited about, D&E: Donghae and Eunhyuk from Super Junior!

This is their last scheduled performance before they enlist in the army. I'm sad because I love Donghae. He's my bias in Super Junior. And I met Eunhyuk at his cafe. And they're awesome dancers and it's sad to see them go away for two years. Two other members are in the army from SuJu, and one more is set to enlist this year. I have never seen all of Super Junior perform together and perhaps I never will. They're not my favorite group anymore (I listen to Beast and Big Bang more these days), but Super Junior has such a special place in my heart for introducing me to Kpop.

Anyway, they were easily the best performance of the night. They have 10 years of SuJu experience and stage presence, and they were awesome and did my favorite songs. 

As such I took the most picture of them.

Eunhyuk

Donghae, 사랑해~~ (I love you!)

NOTE THE STUPID SELFIE STICK PEOPLE BLOCKING VIEWS. 

I know people love them and want to remember the performance, but do you have to record the whole thing? Are you really going to rewatch the cellphone video of a two hour concert over again?

Super Junior's Yesung (who just got out of the army) snuck on!

Perhaps my favorite dance, 촉이 와 (Choke-ee Wah or Can You Feel It?)

The one shot I got of Donghae without his silly glasses.

It was a great sendoff. Best of luck!

The moment we had been dreading finally arrived. EXO was on. Nevermind that I think it was a bit rude to put the younger group EXO as the closing after the much more senior and going-into-the-army Super Junior members (this is normal for SM to treat SuJu unfairly though since they sell themselves... SM puts no effort into them...) but the fans for EXO are insane.

We had no problems with people shoving around to get better views during the other parts of the concert (EXCEPT WHEN CHANYEOL WAS FEATURED IN THE RAPS AND PEOPLE WENT NUTS) until EXO. Then suddenly the stools and camera and elbows were flying.

Tina was not amused.

I love EXO's music. It's so fun to dance to. It's catchy. Them boyz iz hella fine. But their fans are crazy and ruin everything.

Thankfully we managed to get out of the way and enjoy the dance circle we made since we all knew Call Me Baby, a song we danced to the day before. So we still had fun. It's just rude and annoying to try and enjoy something and have so many people blatantly disregard everyone else for the sake of a video or picture.

And honestly? EXO looked terrible. Their stylist should be fired. But man is their music fun!

Those salmon suits do them no favors.

We took advantage of the stage setup and all of the crazy fans to take a picture that the security and press people also found amusing:

That is EXO so close on the stage behind us. Woo!

Selfies with EXO.

Overall it was really fun. Even the EXO part, because you just have to laugh. I was a 17 year old girl once. I know how exciting boy bands can be. But damn.

Thankfully all sorts of field trips are happening this week so I had 2 of 5 classes on Monday and I have none today, Tuesday. We also have Friday off for Hangeul Day, which is when they honor the Korean alphabet being made by King Sejong. Look at me, knowing things about Korea. I'm mostly happy for the day off.

So this week I get to coast a bit. I only have 2 days of teaching.

And I'm going to see Cinderella tonight! When we booked tickets to Beast we found out that Yoseob, the main vocals of the group, would be playing the prince! So we got tickets. So stoked!

So here's some music for this week:

D&E 촉이 와 (Choke-ee Wah or Can You Feel It?). Seriously, it's so adorable and fun. 

"Growing Pains" Ugh I love this song. I love them.

And an old favorite and the first chorus dance i ever learned, "Oppa, Oppa." I love how ridiculous this song is from start to finish. Ah man. I'll miss these guys a lot.

On to Cinderella:

My two favorite songs:

"Do I Love You Because You're Beautiful?" From the Brandy version because I freaking love that version.

And my top favorite song:

"Ten Minutes Ago." It's slowed down in the Broadway version, which I really like.

Anyway, here's a clip of Yoseob (the girl is from the drama "Let's Eat" with Beast's Doojoon, which I also love) as the prince singing "Do I Love You Because You're Beautiful?" The song starts at like 30 seconds:

Isn't he so adorable and dreamy? UGH so excited to see it!

Off to plan some lessons for next week! ... Or to just listen to Cinderella all day. Either way, I'm off to enjoy! My life is really 쩔어 (zutter) right now~^^