Van Gogh and Namsan Seoul Tower

Weekend in Seoul

We decided to go to Seoul for the weekend because we had a district conference meeting (for church) so we planned the whole weekend as a get-away. I researched some things that I wanted to do and I had the whole thing planned a few weeks in advance. I will just tell you now that it didn't turn out like I had planned, some things we didn't even get to do because we were so worn out. I was proud of myself for not caring!

FIRST the bus ride.. We did not encounter any snomit this time.. Praise the FROG! Nick slept most of the way... and so did the rest of the bus..

After we go there we went straight to the Museum of Art and used the bathroom! I immediately spotted a girl in the line, wearing the dress I just ordered online. I was interested to see how it looked on a real woman with curves. So I struck up a casual conversation with her before I asked if I could see how the dress looked. She laughed and we became friends. After the bathroom escapades we came out to find our men had found each other and were also talking. We had a lot in common and found them fascinating so we exchanged numbers. We found them again later in the art gallery and decided to stick together. I don't think I was allowed to take pictures of the paintings, but I didn't have my flash on and if they said no pictures I didn't understand. This painting was one of my favorites.

It's of a crab that is upside down. HA

       After we went to the souvenir shop and got a few things, we decided hot chocolate was in order.  We found a nice place that happened to be right outside the concert hall.  We arrived right as London Philharmonic Orchestra began their concert. Where we were sitting in the lobby area, we could hear the music they played and were able to view it via a large screen above the entrance.
 
        We made plans to see our new friends on Saturday to eat some YUMMY burgers and we left to check in at the temple. This time we did not stay at the dorms. When I called to reserve a bed they told us they had a four bedroom house and that we could have one of the rooms. This was the first time Nick and I slept on the floor in Korea. They gave us a pad to put on the floor and some blankets. We knew this was how they usually sleep, but it was a pleasant, unexpected surprise. We dropped stuff off and headed to Namsan Seoul Tower.

         We thought it was only going to be a short 2 hour adventure, but it turned into a 5 hour adventure. We left at 8 pm and got back and in bed at 1:00 am. So we left and caught the subway to our first destination. Then we jumped on the bus to go up to the tower. When we finally got there it was about 9 and we were starving. We tried to eat at the burger place there but they had just closed down :( We waited in a VERY long line to go up to the observatory deck. Which was well worth the wait. It was so beautiful up there and we loved every minute of it. Here are some pictures looking out from the deck.

 They say that Namsan Seoul Tower is a romantic place.  Their commercials consist of a bear who is trying to help the guys make a move on girls. For example there is a boy and girl sitting on opposite sides of a bench and you could tell they liked each other.. well the bear comes along and sits in the middle and bounces up and down until the bench is broken and forces the couple to slide toward the middle. Very cute. They had these benches outside. Anyways in the tower they had cute postcards that you could purchase, write on, and mail from there. We wrote one each and sent them to some special people in our lives. When you get them you'll have to post on            
                                  the blog and let everyone know!

After we finished and left we were starving.. We decided to eat at the first place possible which happened to be McDonalds.. well if you know anything about Nick he hates McDonalds, but he ate it anyways. Above is a picture for proof.
We caught the subway partly back to the temple but we were kicked off a few stops before our destination because it was closing for some reason we do not know. We found some women who also did not know what was going on. Turns out they were from Taiwan and going to the same area so we shared a taxi. We finally made it back to our room for the night and we passed out. We woke up early to find  A LOT of Koreans dressed in their Sunday cloths sleeping in the main room outside of our door.

After the temple we did some shopping and then met our friends for lunch..
The restaurant was called Salt and Butter. YUM!

We went for a walk and found this person.. for school food he sure does look angry.. maybe it isn't good food?

 A shoe tree..

Check out the spelling of phone here.. AWESOME!

We also ate at a Mexican place called On the Boarder. It was a little pricey but worth it to have real Mexican food. Nick was super excited as you can tell in the following photos..

             

The second night in Seoul we stayed at a traditional Korean guest house. We had a very small room and we slept on the floor...again.... It was great! Mr. and Mrs. Yoo were really awesome and spoke really good English.  This palace was right next to where we stayed.

Well that about sums up our awesome weekend in Seoul.. We will leave you will a pretty awesome picture.. No questions asked.

Everybody was kung fu fighting

 We ventured out this weekend and bought some of these guys. They sale them at the same stand as the waffles. We have been wondering what they were and our friends Brandon and Amanda (From Canada) said they were awesome. At the first bite I was in HEAVEN. They are delicious! They were warm and fresh and oh so yummy.

We stayed with the Gordan's this weekend and they had a lovely boxer named Zoey. She is a great dog and I fell in love with her. She reminded me of Lacey, the boxer my family had when I was younger.

 Monday, Nick and I didn't have Taekwondo so we went for a hike. On our way we passed an old man who asked Nick to help him pick up a LARGE rock. He gave Nick his gloves and then they rolled/lifted the rock into a cute tracker/truck. We continued walking and instead of going to the  reservoir, as planned, we walked up a path  that we found in the woods.

It wasn't long before we came across some burial grounds. For those of you who don't know, Koreans bury their dead above the ground. I didn't know this for the first 2 months we were here. I just thought they were random hills with statues or monuments. Now I see dead people everywhere we go.

We also saw this on our hike. It overlooks both sides of the mountain, but it doesn't look very sturdy. One side of the mountain overlooked a golf course and the other side overlooked the fields.

Our hike ended at the road behind our school and apartment. If you drive up it you will go to the golf course. It was really nice outside and we really enjoyed exploring.

We had our Taekwondo exam today (Tuesday, February 25,2013). We had to perform what we have learned as white belts and if we passed we would get our yellow belts. Watch the video to see us in action.

If the video doesn't work for you here is the link to it on youtube:

 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rLUj42sK4Zk&feature=youtube_gdata 

Nick and I are extremely excited to finally have our yellow belts. We can't wait to continue and learn more butt-kicking skills.

Lunar New Year 2013

This past weekend we celebrated Lunar New Year. Adam and Shae took us to a cute little town, Miryang. It was about a 45 min drive through mountains. It reminded us of our home in North Carolina. On our way home we stopped at a temple and walked around. You may wonder what I am holding... Well that is Flat Stanley. Flat Stanley was sent to me from the school I used to teach at in NC. I am suppose to take pictures with him and record what we did together. Then he is sent back to school with some goodies and they share his adventures with the class.

The entrance gate

The building surrounded by lanterns

Stanley wanted  a closer look at the lanterns.

Stanley wanted to ride the dragon..we tried to talk him out of it but he wanted an adventure... and an adventure he got. However, I don't think Stanley can swim.

Stanley spotted kimchi pots and had to get his picture taken with them.

He also wanted to ring the bell but we wouldn't let him.

This is the coolest police station we have seen here. I wish all of them looked like this but they don't.

After our fun Saturday we went home and packed for our other adventure. We woke up extremely early Sunday morning to start our trek to church. After we stood out in the freezing cold for an hour we remembered that it was a holiday and that the buses might not run. On our way back to the apartment Nick waved down a taxi that took us to the bus station. These buses luckily were running and we made it just in time to jump on ours. We were 15 min. late for our 9 o'clock meeting.

      After church we jumped on a bus to Busan. Nick and I sat in the last two seats available and the rest of the people had to stand. We had two stops before our stop. At the first one a lot of people got off and Nick and I were able to find two seats together. A lot of people got on and the bus took off  again. The next stop was short and sweet, only a couple of people go off and a lot of people wanted to get on but they didn't want to stand so they got off. At this time a couple got on the bus and the lady stood next to my chair and her boyfriend was in front of her facing the driver. The ride took much longer that it was suppose to because of stop-n-go traffic. The bus was hot and smelly and everyone was ready to get off. Nick and I tried to nap through it thinking it couldn't get much worse. Then it did..... the guy who was standing in front of us (So grateful for that) Sneezed vomit! Let me repeat we heard a sneeze and looked up to see vomit coming from his nose and mouth, spraying all over the seats and people in front of him. OH THE SMELL, OH THE HORRIFYING PICTURES OF THAT MAN THAT I CANNOT GET RID OF IN MY MIND. I dug through my backpack and found napkins and tissues I pushed to his girlfriend. She tried to hand them to him but he just stood there with snomit all over his face. Snomit is our new word (it is sneeze and vomit together). When the people got over the shock they started to act. The back of the bus opened the vent in the roof and that helped the smell go through. The lady at the front grabbed some newspapers and cleaned off the seats and put them on the floor. We did not arrive to our stop until about an hour after this happened. 

The first thing we saw after getting off the bus was this frog with a cape. We were so happy to be off the bus we took a picture if it.

PRAISE THE FROG!

 We made our way to our motel

 We had no idea what we were getting into here. It had "mood" lighting in the room.

 We had slippers and robes waiting for us as well. It was a cheap and fun experience.

We both took showers to clean off the nasty snomit and then to sleep.

We woke up and went exploring in the shopping district of Busan.

This is a HUGE Crunky bar

 Nick loved this guy. He had statues all over the shopping area.

 Our breakfast.. Nick thought the baguette (that said it was garlic) would actually taste like garlic. Instead it tasted like sugar and garlic.. It went to the trash.

Welcome to the Fish market!

 This bad boy got out of the bucket and tried to leave. The old lady grabbed him and put him back in.

 Some random man jumped in the picture.. It was great.. Oh and the thing I'm hold is a twisted potato that I thought was fried and salted.. IT WAS SUGAR! (This also went to the trash)

Welcome to Busan It was a great first visit. Can't wait to visit again!

We met Adam and Shae in Busan for some Costco shopping before we left. On our way home it started snowing.  I will leave you with a picture of Stanley and the snow!

The CEV Bunch! (Nick singing Brady Bunch tune)

Life has been so much fun (and stressful)
Our work schedule has finally changed back to the evening instead of morning. I am not sure which one I like best though. They both have their perks. We have been working nonstop it seems. We have finally completed our new English Camp book and hopefully they will publish it soon. Someone in our awesome little group came up with the great idea that we could do a Brady Bunch Theme for our book cover pictures. We also took pictures of us in the rooms for the title page of each section.

This is our amazing group! From the bottom up you have Nick the Tourist, Lauren the Scientist, Brandon the Doctor, Becky the Techie, David the Grocer, Amanda the Artist, Adam the Postman, and Shae the Banker.

Here are two pictures that we took individually for the Brady Bunch picture (where they are all looking at the Mom and Dad in the center) we are looking at the CEV logo in the book.

Shae is counting out some money for me.

 Adam is helping Nick mail a package.

 I am checking in Nick and Shae for their flight.

 Photo bomb!

 You are not suppose to put sciency things in your mouth. It could be dangerous.

The boys are so good playing pretend.

We had a lot of fun creating the workbook pages for the new book. Nick and I were in charge of the Science section. We had to come up with science experiments that wouldn't cost a lot of money on materials especially for materials that we would have to consistently purchase. I did the beginner book and most of the advanced book because Nick was busy teaching cyber school. 

Okay enough about our awesome work place that everyone should be jealous about. 

We had a lot of fun this week cooking. Nick was in the mood for dumplings and he has never been successful in making Grandma Bunny's famous dumplings, so he let me try. They came out perfect! Thanks Grandma Bunny for the amazing recipe , we brought it with us to Korea and thought about you as we made them. I think at one point Nick told me... "Well that's not what Grandma Bunny does" It was great!

Oh and here is a picture for proof!

We  got a package this week and we were overly excited about it. Thanks Mom and Dad Stevens!

This week after church we decided to walk around and explore. We found this door for levitating midgets!

We finally went on a walk next to the river. This river is right in front of the church, but you can't just walk across the street to get to it. We are grateful to our friend Jason for exploring with us.

This is a cool walking path across. You can be a scaredy cat and walk in the middle or you can be crazy like us and jump rock to rock.

We are having such a great time! We finally started back with our Taekwondo lessons and hopefully we will be yellow belts soon. We have a four day weekend because of Lunar New Year! Nick and I are traveling to Busan for the first time and we are going to explore there. Well that is it for now. Guess I will leave you with the amazing picture of Nick eating an Oreo with chop sticks!  This is truly the only way to eat Oreos since your fingers never get wet!

Korea Quirks

Nick and I were naive when it came to the Korean culture, so when we got here we had a lot to learn. We have been here almost three months and still struggle with some things. We thought it would be AWESOME to do a Korea quirk blog of the things we have had to get use to.

#1 The bathrooms: I have heard that we are lucky that our bathroom has a tub in it but, we still don't have a curtain. We have gotten use to the bathroom and really like it. When it comes to cleaning the bathroom we spray the whole bathroom in cleaner, scrub it down then,turn on the hot water and rinse.

#2 Toilet: If you need to go to the bathroom your best bet is to try and hold it until you get home. If you can't make it home, well, good luck to you. The bathrooms in the subway are just EVIL, I don't even consider them a bathroom. I have never seen anything like it in my life but, once, I had to pee so bad i had no choice but to brave it out. I now call this kind of "toilet" the squatter because that is what you have to do to use it. Don't even ask me how to flush it because I tried and I made the mistake of pushing one of the MANY available buttons. Next thing  I knew someone was yelling at me over an intercom. For a quick second I thought to myself... to speak or not to speak. I chose not to speak and he got louder and louder until I said, in English, SORRY I'm American and I don't know what I'm doing. Finally I just left the squatter full of urine and left.
The squatter looks like a metal covered hole in the ground that has a pee guard so when you squat your pee doesn't hit the door.

The next thing about the toilets is that you throw the toilet paper away in a trash can. Some bathrooms have toilet paper for free and some you have to purchase out of a machine.

 
I had no Idea what I was doing the first time, all I knew is that I had to pee really bad and I couldn't find toilet paper anywhere. When you go to purchase the TP out of the machine you get what essentially is a travel size pack of Kleenex tissues

#3 When you receive or give anything to anyone you are suppose to act like you are presenting it to them by holding your arm that is holding the item. So, say you are going to pay for something, whichever hand is holding the money the opposite hand is brought to the elbow to prop it up. We have recognized a change in the way they treat us when we do or do not use this.

#4 Insulation: There isn't any!  All the buildings are made of cinder blocks and when they finish construction, the finishing work amounts to pasting wallpaper on the walls and calling it good.

#5 The shoe rule: We don't use many of the shoes we brought because they are inconvenient. We are usually outside for only a minute to walk to work, so why wear nice, cute shoes when you are going to take them off and teach in slippers all day. When you enter public places, shoes are okay but, if you are going out to eat at a Korean restaurant, wear shoes that you can take off and slip on easier or you will look like an idiot as you take forever to put your shoes back on, yes Nick and I have both been that person.

#6 Chopsticks: Nick has always loved chopsticks and his skill with them has improved in the short time we've been here. We don't eat with a spoon or fork unless it is soup or cereal usually. Nick decided to challenge this at a friend's house by using chopsticks to pick up a spoon and eat. You can watch the video here http://youtu.be/k1HfkLafmXY

If you watch close enough you will she the famous "Lauren look" I give!

And here is a picture of me using my chopsticks to pick up a chip!









#7 Driving: There is a reason Nick and I take the bus and subway everywhere. You are taking your life in your hands when you jump into a car in this country. They all drive like they are distracted, one minute going super slow and the next like they have just remembered they have to be somewhere right NOW. They have no regard for lanes or traffic signals. Most times they don't even use their blinkers to switch lanes.  The hazard lights are like some sort of multipurpose signal that signifies the intention to change lanes, excuses stopping in the middle of a freeway or intersection for no good reason, or just as a friendly hey I exist here sign. They never check their mirrors and move freely lane to lane, even in bumper-to-bumper traffic. They honk when they are mad. They honk when they are happy. They honk to let you know they exist.

#8 Sidewalks: If you think it is scary to hop in a car, then don't walk on the sidewalks. You are probably safer in the car. Sidewalks should be called scooter-lanes because before you know it you have a kamikaze scooter who decided he did not want to stop at the red light headed straight at you. Honking his dinky little horn as a warning. Some don't honk and just drive beside you. Oh and on these scooters we have seen dogs and children down where your feet go.  The other purpose for sidewalks is extra parking.  For instance, to get to our church, you have to walk in the busy road because the sidewalk is stuffed full of cars.

#9 Lines: They don't exist. There is no such thing as waiting your turn. You have to push back or you will never get where you want to go. Oh and hope you are comfortable with having NO PERSONAL SPACE!

#10 Recycling: Everything here is recycled and we also have to recycle everything. Our leftover food is put in a compost that smells really bad, and our trash has to be in a pink bag. We carry all of this to the designated trash pit in our town about once a week. I do think it is a good idea to recycle. Nick and I recycles when we lived in NC, but we have had to get use to the compost thing.

There are other quirks about this country however, these are just our favorites. Hope you enjoyed our little quirk session.