Beer and Bananas

First order of business. In our last post I mentioned our favorite Korean TV show. After searching long and hard (or just asking Sunny Teacher) I found out the name and the concept of it. It's called 1 Night 2 Days and it's a travel show where a group of guys travel around Korea on the weekend. Here is a clip of it. I encourage you to watch at least 5 minutes of it. We generally have no idea what's going on but it's hilarious!

1 Night 2 Days

Our last meeting before Lunar New Year, or Seolla as they call it in Korea, our director handed us all envelopes with, "Thanks for teaching hard. I am proud of you. Happy Lunar New Year!" written on the outside, and $100,000 Won on the inside! Well...my envelope said that she was proud of me, but Dave's didn't. It is customary for your boss to give you a gift for the New Years. I was a nice surprise and very generous of her. As for our friends Kirsten and Keegan, they were not so fortunate....they got a box of very expensive apples. Let me put it in perspective for you. They come in a fancy box of 8 and cost roughly $80 USD. Each apple is individually wrapped in cushion foam and accessorized with a gold sticker. Luckily for us, Kirsten and Keegan wanted to share their mini fortune with us.

The most expensive apple I've every eaten

Last weekend in lieu of the holiday we decided to throw our first party at our apartment. Earlier in the week we sent out Facebook invites (surprisingly very popular and effective here in Korea, unlike home). Our friends Aaron and Jess walked in with a huge bag of packing peanut snacks. They told us it was their gift from their director for Lunar New Year. When their director gave it to them they thought it was just packing peanuts surrounding a gift, but the packaging WAS the gift! It was a huge hit for laughs, not so much for food.

Side story:
In Korea they are notorious for their "illustrious" snacks. You can find these snacks all over the place. You can find them at every convenient store, ever grocery store, they serve them to you at bars, and kids bring them to class. They're everywhere! They come in huge packages, small packages, and everything in between. These snacks all taste and look like Styrofoam.... Styrofoam made in a variety of shapes and colors, that is. No one seems to know what these snacks are made of.

A picture of our party....with the snacks in the middle

A sample of snacks

Another sample of snacks

Our party quickly turned into a flashback of 5th grade. The girls and the boys had little interaction. The girls sat around on the couches and chairs talking about girl things, while the boys hovered around the 2 maps that we have hanging in our apartment. (So typical!) After a while we got the brilliant idea to head to a norebang for some singing. We found ourselves at a live band karaoke dive bar. The place was dark and practically empty, except for a group of about 10 middle aged Koreans sitting across from us. We bought a round of drinks and before we knew it the North Americans stormed the stage. Pat, Tia and Dave started jaming away on the drums, guitar and bass. Pat even started singing! They sounded so good! Everyone in the audience was dying! The Koreans got up and started dancing and waving their arms. We followed. It was hilarious! Here is the video:

Pat, Tia and Dave's First Korean Band Performance

If you notice, Pat is singing only two words "kam-sah-aha-mnida" (which means thank you in Korean) and "Juseyo" (which means give me please in Korean). I like to think of a role reversal and a Korean coming to a live karaoke dive bar in the US and not knowing any other words but "Thank you," and "Give me please," and singing them!

After that, we sang a few karaoke songs together as a group and danced until our feet hurt. At one point in the night one of the guys from the group of Koreans pulled Dave and I aside and gave us a beer and bananas. Strange, I know. All in all, it was a fantastic night.

At school we are starting this new project for all of the students to video record themselves speaking English. Instead of our normal routine and classes we are now dedicating a week to writing, preparing, and practicing for their projects. Depending on the level, they are doing anything from singing a song to explaining the timeline of their lives. Yesterday we started writing and I got A LOT of funny essays. If I found a funny essay I would leave class and photo copy it so I could bring it home. (Genius, I know) Here is an excerpt from one of them from Steve, (who a few months ago fell off his bike and broke his front teeth and didn't want them to show so he would talk with his upper lip covering his teeth all the time) This is his timeline:

"My parents married in 2001. Why did they marry? I want to ask my father but not yet. I will. Anyway I was born in Mokpo in 2001. My brother was born when I was 5. I entered kindergarten near my house. When I was 6 years old, I hurted my head. I still have the wound. Do you want to see it? No no no. When I was 8 years old I entered school....."

This one is from a girl named Ellen:

"I was born in 2000. When I was a baby I used to suck my finger until six. So my tooth became strange. Recently I am treating my tooth. For my heath tooth I am exercising very hard...."

And, I had the class with my mean girls yesterday. At first they didn't want to do the project but they finally got into it. When I say they got into it, I mean they really got into it...in real detail. One of the girls, Holly, asked me how to say that her mom didn't have her the normal way. She made gestures to her stomach with a cutting motion. I asked, "Ohhhh your mom had a c-section? You came out of her stomach?" She said yes so I wrote "C-section" on the board. The other girl Stephanie, using a mix of words, gestures and phone translations to communicate she was "coming out the wrong way with her feet in the air" So, she was coming feet first which forced her mom to have a c-section. I thought it was so ridiculous but for once, I enjoyed the class.

This project is going to prove to be a bit stressful, tiring, but worth it because it makes me laugh!

That is all for now!

Much Love and many hugs
-Lindsey