Merry Christmas!

Hello, all. I'm just writing a quick post to let you all know that I'll be offline for about a month while I'm back stateside for the holidays. J may post sometime in there to update on school stories, but there certainly won't be regular updates for a little while.
I hope everyone has a wonderful holiday season and I'll see you all next year!
Cheers!
-K

An Expat Thanksgiving

Hi, all. Katy here. This past week we celebrated Thanksgiving together with our fellow foreigners. Or, as Koreans like to call it, we celebrated the American Chuseok. Unlike last year, when J and I did our best at a Thanksgiving meal approximate, this year our foods were a bit less traditional, but shared among more people. That being said, if I had to choose between the classic taste of thanksgiving and having loved ones to share it with, I'd choose the latter every time, so I was happy! Though Canadian thanksgiving was weeks ago and I am unaware of any others, we had Canadians, British, and South Africans at our feast this year. We ate dumplings, potato salad, macaroni and cheese, ham and greens, chicken wraps, potato chips and cake (all eaten with chopsticks of course), that we each contributed as part of a potluck meal. And to wash it down we had beer, scotch, and an Asian plum wine. Finally, in classic Goheung Gang style, we celebrated long into the night with board games and stories from our travels. It was a non-traditional, but wonderfully special Thanksgiving to remember for sure.
-K

Pepero Day

Happy Pepero Day, everyone! K, here. Pepero, if you didn't know, is the Korean equivalent of Japanese Pocky. A sweet snack that is like a thin, crunchy bread stick coated in chocolate or other sweetness. Because they look like sticks, or 1's, the 11th of November (11/11) is known as Pepero Day here in Korea and the event is reminiscent of Valentines day. Stores even stock their shelves with huge  decorated gift boxes of "specialty flavors" and unique designs.

This year, the event happened to fall on a Saturday, so on Friday, when J's students held a festival, there was a pepero making station for creating your own. This was exciting for me, not only because I got to make candy, but because I rarely get to interact with J's students. They are tons of fun and love to oooh and awww over my blond hair and blue eyes (while giving J a thumbs up). It's all very flattering. The next day, J went out and bought two small boxes of pepero flavors we hadn't yet tried, and we celebrated by munching away while watching the latest episode of Game of Thrones. Here's a few pictures of our quirky little Korean holiday. Enjoy!
-K

Made by dipping thin breadsticks in what is essentially a travel fondue pot of
hot chocolate and then spooning some sprinkles on while they dry. Yum!

It's a cruddy cellphone photo, but you get the idea.
Blueberry and chocolate oreo yay!


Autumn Colors

Hi, everyone! It's solidly autumn here in Jeonnam. We celebrated Halloween last week (we, as in the English teachers with our classes). As usual, J & my personal Halloween celebration involved a comedy zombie movie, chocolate, and a cocktail (this year it was Shaun of the Dead and Hot Toddy's). For classes, no one went too overboard but it's safe to say all of the school aged children in Goheung can now say "trick or treat" and expect candy as praise.

For the weekend we went out to Gurye, which you may remember from a previous post. There isn't a ton to say that you won't get from the pictures, but it was absolutely gorgeous! The maples were a shade of red that I'd never imagine could happen in nature. We did some hiking, visited the temple, and gazed out the window to our hearts content. And took pictures... lots of pictures. It was the perfect way to make peace with the ensuing cold weather. Enjoy!
-K

Fall lunch on the patio! Mushroom soup, baked fish, pickled bamboo, tofu,
 quail eggs, bean sprouts, onion pancake and fried eggs.

Daydreaming and coloring in my Puuung (look it up) coloring book.

The jars on the left are for fermenting



Being a dork and throwing the gingko leaves around

Drinking fountain at the Temple

Picked my favorite leaves for pressing

Leaves floating on the creek

This handsome man strolling around the Temple

Goofy School Wall Decorations

Hey all, Jamie this week! I think Katy covered some of this in last week's post about funny English, but I wanted to share some of the goofier decorations from one of my schools. Bongne Middle School on Outer Naro Island.

 

Here we have the stairwell at Bongne. This island is even more obsessed with space than the rest of Goheung, since there's a big "Space Experience Center" interactive museum for kids, and I think it's where a lot of the actual launches of satellites happened. 

 Can you feel "it"?

 Eatcher terrifying leprechaun letter cereal kid, and you can't fail.

 The bathroom has motion sensors that control the lights, but it also triggers classical music whenever you go in there. This mandatory, soothing experience is rounded out by plastic flowers and replicas of Van Gogh's paintings.

I don't know if you can see it well in the picture, but that on the left is a photograph of the coastline of the island Bongne is on, which a satellite awkwardly photoshopped in to the top left corner. Inspirational. 

I took a close up of this one to capture the glory of the kid's face, but he's staring at another photoshopped piece of space technology on that sunshiny background. I'm pretty sure he's photoshopped in too. 

 Marty's saying, "Waaang, I'm really jealous of Bongne Middle kids." And why wouldn't you be, when they get to see this every day?

 She's saying, "Our workmanship... is a masterpiece."

 The astronaut's chest reads, "Bongne-ese". I actually think this one is legitimately inspirational, but I'm pretty sure America already has dibs on the moon. 

 "I love Bongne Middle... FOREVER."

This one's pretty self explanatory.

I hope you've enjoyed this journey through the confusing stuff somebody decided to put on the walls of Bongne Middle School! To be honest, I took most of these early on when I still found them weird. I hardly notice anymore, which probably doesn't say anything good about my sanity. Well, except for the kid with the paper airplane. He still weirds me out pretty majorly. 

Have a great week everybody!

English, kinda

Hello! K, here. It's been a pretty uneventful first week back since the Chuseok holiday. So instead of tell you stories of our adventures, I'd like to share a little collection I've been putting together for the last year or so. This is my collection of "English" signs and labels I've seen around that have totally cracked me up. Now this is in now way to say that Korean's can't do English well. Most signs are pretty clear and grammatically correct. But then there are these. These gems that tickle me to my core as a native English speaker. Enjoy!



 





Perhaps the best example, because it marks J's classroom at one of his travel schools. Obviously this sign was not designed by a native English teacher.



A menu for a "New York" style pizza shop in Gwangju we found last winter.

I love this, because it's an intentional play on words. But who
designed this I will never understand. The small print specifically
rings of Korean high school student speaking "cool" English.

This beauty, or some version of it, can be found in most big city public restrooms such as the airport, shopping malls, etc. My favorites are "no scribbling" and "don not climb on toilet." Believe it or not, climbing on the toilets is actually a problem in a country that has just recently graduated to sitting toilets rather than squatting toilets. Some people are still more comfortable doing their business in a squatted position.

I think I used this photo in a previous post, but it still gets me. It's a pizza place called "I love Jesus" that opened in 1992 and I honestly don't know if the owners made this sign on purpose or if it's just the cutest coincidence.

And then there are prints like this T-shirt. I'm not even sure what to say about it, except that
English is "cool" here and so often you'll see clusters of words like this that almost....
almost make sense.

This beauty was printed on a re-usable grocery bag at my favorite little dollar-type store.

And this motivational speech printed on my coffee cup just makes
me feel better about life in general.

I may have posted this before, but if I haven't, shame on me. This is the motto of our beloved Goheung. It says "High Goheung, Happy Goheung" which is supposed to be a shout out to the aerospace industry here and the kindness of the people in the countryside. But then, without knowing that it can be interpreted many ways...

And last but not least, another T-shirt print. Again, it almost makes
sense. You kind of want to respond with "totally!" even though it's
hard to say exactly what they were going for.

And there you have it. I hope a few of those made you laugh as hard as they make us laugh when we come across them in our daily life. It's a nice little reminder that English is valued here, and also, that we have some amount of job security as English teachers.
Cheers!
-K

Itaewon

So it's been a couple weeks since we've posted, mostly because the weeks leading up to this last one were entirely uneventful. But this last week was Chuseok, a holiday you may remember from our blog posts around this same time last year. Chuseok is often compared to an American Thanksgiving holiday as it is a celebration of the harvest when family travels to one member's house for a few days of feasting. For foriegners with no Korean family, however, it is a ten day holiday with no obligations. Yay! We decided, having spent the last year traveling from one city to another, learning Korean and Korean culture, and hitting most of the major landmarks in the country that we would allow ourselves this vacation to indulge in western life.

Gimlet & Caprese

For us, this meant starting by renting a room in the most American apartment in Seoul. The room was in a large apartment owned by a newlywed couple, an American in the military and a Korean. This place ticked a lot of boxes, with their American wall outlets, real bacon in the morning, and English conversation. And, best of all, the apartment was located in Itaewon, which is the foreign neighborhood of Seoul (think little Italy or Chinatown in New York City). The area is split up into regions, with lots of European eateries in one place, and some streets catering largely to a middle eastern crowd. There are Canadian pubs called "Canucks," micro-breweries, Mexican tiendas, and best of all, real, big, western brunch served ALL DAY.

Our plan on arrival was to spend each day rolling between restaurants with naps in between. Seriously, nothing else sounded as heavenly as waffles for breakfast, tacos for lunch, and brewery hopping in the evening. What more could we want after a year of kimchi, rice, and soju (not that we have anything against those thing, but it's a pretty limited palate)? We ate our weight in dark bread from a German bakery, pesto pastas, deep dish pizza, creamy soups, little French pastries, and washed it all down with big bodied red wine. It was heaven. But the pique of the culinary experience for me was a Southern barbeque joint called Linus. That night we split a mound of pulled pork, a full rack of ribs, mac and cheese, coleslaw, onion rings and toasted buns. Even the beer was nostalgic. For anyone who lives on the west coast, we were impressed to find that Lost Coast Brewery has done remarkable well in Seoul and can be found in most pubs in Itaewon. We enjoyed a good bitter IPA and called it a night. If you've lived overseas you know nothing brings you so close to tears as a meal reminiscent of home.

I may have cried

German bakery (same place as pictured above with wine)

when you order a mimosa here, you get a
mini bottle of champagne, and separate
orange juice to mix your own. Cute!

Even the street art was reflective of the diverse population of visitors that Itaewon attracts! Check it out.



multi-language welcome

I don't know what was happening here...

While we didn't arrive in Seoul with many plans beyond simply eating our way through Itaewon, we did in fact find that there were lots of other supportive services and shops for foreigners, including multiple clothing and shoe stores labeled "big and tall" which was a relief after desperately trying to find shoes for Jamie, and even shirts with long enough arms for me. A note on shopping in Korea, though... I've never felt quite so normal when I walk into a boutique as I do here. Usually I walk out with a bag full of mediums. A size that would look like a tent on me in the states! Anyway, it was nice to go into a dressing room or sit down to pull on a shoe and not have it squeeze the life out of us. We also spent a few hours one day in the foreign grocers, picking up such staples as refried beans, crunchy peanut butter, and tortillas, while also picking up treats like black tea, kombucha, dark chocolate and tabasco. It was a relief not only to see familiar brands on the shelves, but to be able to read labels at all!

A sampling of our purchases (there's plenty not pictured)

Finally we found the Powells of Seoul. For those of you unlucky enough to have never spent an afternoon at Powells in Portland, OR, it's an enormous bookstore with a coffee shop attached where you can sip tea and look through your books before you buy. This place in Itaewon, the Book Park, was similarly four stories, and had not one but two coffee shops (one more for drinks, and the other serving sandwiches and soups as well). The English selection was pretty small, but we succeeded in spending a couple hours on the few English books we found, photography books, and of course, just chatting. We didn't buy anything there, because we are trying not to have to buy another suitcase just to get back to the states, but a few hours later we stumbled into yet another English bookstore where we didn't exhibit such self restraint. Four English magazines and a book of world history later, we were home free to pack up and go back to little Goheung.

In total we spent six days in Itaewon, and though we were ready to get back to our own pillows, it was hard to leave such a foreigner friendly piece of Korea behind. Now home, Jamie has one last day of vacation to revel before it's back to work. I've got a yoga class starting again soon, and classes to finish. But we are reenergized, excited to eat rice again, and happy to see through another great year thanks to Itaewon.

Goodbye!

Have a great week, everyone!
-K