The talk of the town right now seems to be the weather. Luckily for us, Mokpo's climate is similar to back home, where we get the 4 seasons. Winter was starting to feel as if it would never end, but in the past week, Mother Nature (or Mo-nay) has been breaking through into spring. The sunny days are warm, and the nights still freezing. I'll take it. The upcoming week looks to be in the mid 50's with mostly sunny days, except Monday, where it will rain from the sun.
It's the end of the month which means tests at E.Bo-Young. We alternate tests ever other month. This month we have monthly tests, which oddly enough, we only give every other month. This means an easy day of just sitting there watching the kids take a test, but a lot of correcting. We also have quite a bit of work coming up because we have our bi-monthly evaluations of the kids to hand out. The next week is going to be a fight for the computers.
One of the MANY funny things about living in Korea, is the amount of candy/chocolate giving holidays. If you can recall, in our first month we had the very special Pepero Day where everyone exchanged Pepero (which is a cookie like stick that is dipped in chocolate) We are still working away at our, what seems to be endless, supply of that..yes....4 months later. Then, we had our typical Valentine's Day on February 14th. On this day we received a ton of chocolate from the kids. It's not as big as it is in America, but it is still celebrated. A month later...literally...on March 14th we celebrated the Korean version of Valentine's Day...White Day. White Day is celebrated by couples in which the man gives his girlfriend candy...and only candy....not chocolate (we are still confused as to why it's only candy). Either way, we got a ton of candy! So Korea has 2 couples holidays in a matter of a month; you may be thinking, "What about the single people in South Korea?" Well, we have the answer. A month after White Day they have Black Day on April 15, where all of the single people get together, and instead of exchanging chocolate, they eat black food which is usually jajang myeon, and probably sulk with each other. Jajang myeon is a delicious black bean paste Chinesse dish similar to southern Mass chow mein, only instead of the fried brown noodles, it's made with a spaghetti type noodle. Trust me, it's awesome!
Last weekend, it was our friend Pat's birthday. He decided that he wanted to have a little kid themed birthday party. On Saturday afternoon we all met up by the water and we headed to the batting cages. These batting cages were scary! As you could guess, safety not being an issue, there weren't any helmets and the batting gloves they provided were simply gardening gloves. Most of us chose to conquer the slow pitch cage, but the brave boys tried their luck at the high speed cages. Needles to say that didn't work out so well. From there we went to a driving range smack dab in the middle of the city. Koreans love to golf. All of the women there were very serious. Since they didn't have a left handed club for Pat we left and went to the arcade. The arcade was an interesting place. Practically all of the machines were broken and the smell of stale cigarets lingered more than you would hope for at a children's hangout. Around the perimeter there were individual singing booth rooms where you could sing your heart out. Dave and I played a couple of games, but our favorite, by far, was the "Let's Go Island," which is game you sit on and the whole thing moves. The idea of the game is that you are on a terrible vacation and mutant fish attack and you must shoot at them. After the arcade we got a bunch of pizza and went back to Pat and Aly's apartment. It was a fun birthday party.
Kirsten and I playing the best game ever!!!!
On Wednesday our friend Chris Doctor came over to share his melons with us. Chris Doctor is our Korean friend who likes showing us around and introducing us to new and exciting Korean food. He is doing his military duty and he's stationed in Mokpo. He does many presentations and speaks at different companies and in exchange, he often gets food as a gift. Well, this week was melons and we were very excited that he wanted to share a honeydew melon with us. I would go as far as saying it was the highlight of our week. Exciting lives. I know.
I love melons and my natural reaction is to put them on my head!!!! (or have Teddy sit on them)
As for some little side stories...there has been a creepy man at Easy Academy. Emily caught some strange man in there stealing money from one of the other teachers purses! Apparently the same man came in a week or so earlier claiming that he had a cousin in the school and that he wanted to see him. Weird.
In one of my classes I thought the kids called me Oprah. It was going to be the greatest day ever, but I just realized they were saying opera because I had been singing a few minutes earlier.
This weekend we found a new market, about a 20 minute walk from our apartment. It's great! We can get produce very cheap. It's too bad we didn't find it sooner. In lieu of this we bought a blender. Hello smoothies!
Oh, we also found a cool bar called Led Zepplin Bar. It's in a back ally and it is nothing short of awesome. It's not very big and seemingly only open at sporadic times....much like every small business in Korea. It's got big comfy couch type chairs and an sweet music with a wall full of records. We also went to a place called Parthenon. As you could imagine, it was Greek themed. It was a cool place.
We will see where the warm weather takes us but until next time, I will leave you with a few pictures that document our lives here...
-Lindsey
Miller Time bar where you pay a lot of money for crappy American beer....and pay $10 for a plate of delicious seasoned fries (and that's a discount from $14!)
A couple of the many notes I get on my board when I start work
Haven't eaten at this restaurant....
Dog wearing make-up. Doesn't he/she look so happy?!
Our new favorite market!
