Starting with New Years vacation...way back when. So, I, like Hannah, went to Japan for my vacation. Unlike Hannah I first decided to get in touch with my Jewish roots. I went up to Seoul on Dec 31st and went to the Chabad House for a very wonderful Friday night service. Now, this may come as a shock to none of you who know me, but one thing I have been vehemently missing is my Jewish roots. There is nothing and no one here that I can talk to about being Jewish. I've heard of friends who have friends who are Jewish (or rather, classmates who have friends) but I haven't met one Jewish person in Gwangju yet. This is terribly distressing to me, and I've felt disconnected and slightly at odds with my brain. So I took the opportunity to go up and celebrate Friday night. For those of you who don't know, a Chabad House is a mini-synogugage (excuse my lack of ability to spell right now) thing of the orthodox persuasion. It was a bit different than I was used to, the women were sectioned off from the men, it was super-fast Hebrew (though that might also had to do with the fact that the Rabbi is Israeli). All in all, the services, the dinner, and the company was incredibly fun and it was a good time. The after dinner singing was by far my favorite part, as was the Rabbi's wife trying to convince me that just because I could be polite in Hebrew I could speak it well. While there I met my new friend Sarah. She's an awesome, smart, scientist person who was in Korea visiting one of her friends, Keelah (who is now also my friend). She heard that I had no where to stay that night and offered me a floor. I accepted and after services we went out, with Keelah, to a club. It was really fun, there was dancing, and slight drinking, and I met two more new friends, Michael (from Germany) and Dido (from Rwanda) who I will talk about more later. After my most awesome New Years celebration I was ready for Japan.
My visit to Japan was more for catching up with my friends than sight-seeing. I did the sight-seeing thing when I went for Term III of my freshmen year. The plane ride over was fun, there was an adorable 5 year old Japanese boy who flirted with me most of the ride. I blew his mind when I thanked his father for helping me (the overhead compartments are not for short people) in Japanese. I stayed in a really nice hostel in Asukusa, right behind the major temple there. I forgot how big New Years was though. I made plans to visit with my old Japanese teacher, Mari Akane, on my birthday and since I was staying near the temple we decided to meet right out in front. BIG MISTAKE~! So, for three days (New Years and the following days) it is traditional in Japan to make a temple visit, and wouldn't you know, the major temple in Asukusa was a hotspot. SO CROWDED! There were police and everything to direct the flow of human traffic. They had to shut down the main road in front of the temple and everything! they even blocked off parts of the temple to control the flow of people. So, struggling like a salmon swimming upstream I make my way to the front of the temple. I am right at the gates, and there is roadblock there with a policeman. I try to indicate that I just want to slip through to the front of the gates, but he tells me, WAY TO FAST to go around and directions on how to do so. So like a stupid American I forgot how to ask him to speak slowly (for those of you who don't know, I'm passable in Japanese, sometimes). Luckily a mother and two teenage daughters took pity on me and led me around. We talked a little through my broken Japanese and their phone dictionary. I borrowed the phone to call Mari and we finally reconnected (only, about, 20 mins later than originally planned). We spent the day wandering around, window shopping, having a nice lunch (YAY Japanese food love!>The month of January was intensive schedule, we work from 1-7 instead of 4-9, and we get almost twice as many classes in the day. It was busy and hectic and so much work. I love it here, I love teaching, I could without that schedule. My main redeeming class was my class of Grade 7s. I adore them. They are smart, and smart alecks, but they listened, participated, seem genuinely interested in learning what I have to teach, and they mostly do their homework. I can joke around with them, and get into more in depth stuff with them, and it's so much fun. Unfortunately I only have them until the end of February T_T because then they level up to Grade 8, or as they call it Grade 2. Anyway, above Grade 7 they don't see foreign teacher anymore so I shall lose my favorite class. The main good thing about intensives is that you have the same classes every week for a month so you can do projects and teach them things that run over into other weeks. In one grade 6 class I did a fairly intensive debate unit, and then how to write a research paper (insert laughter from any teacher I've had to write a research paper for. I humbly apologize for everything I ever put you through in my writing.) They failed a lot at writing them. A lot. I'm going to have to curve my grades that I give them. Oy vey. Anyway, with the other Grade 6 class I did listening/speaking/acting unit with RPing. I modified (simplified) an easy RP campaign and ran it for the children. As it was my first time doing this for them it didn't work out perfectly or anything, but it did work. They got into it, had fun, and gave me helpful feedback at the end (now I just have to figure out how to grade it @_@ oops). I will never like Grade 5 (I've discovered) that age is just too difficult for them to be allowed to exist. This goes for all 5th graders, no matter the nationality, they are all evil (unless they are related to me, because all my baby cousins are too amazing to ever be an evil 5th grader). I'm so confused as to my schedule for February so I will update with how my classes look after I figure out what my classes will be @_@.
So, we got lucky this year. The Lunar New Year was on February 3rd, so we got the 2nd, 3rd and 4th off (that's Wed, Thurs and Fri for those of you without a calender in front of you), so essentially we got a 5 day vacation. I am in Seoul with my friend Ellen for the whole thing. We came up Wednesday (we got here in the afternoon) and we will leave Sunday afternoon/evening. So far it's been amazing. Wednesday, after checking into our kinda sketchy Hotel (it's a love hotel, but it's cheap and fairly nice, if rather sketch), we went out and explored Myeong-dong. We shopped, we wandered, we had a great time. On Thursday we split up. I met up with my friends Michael and Dido (who I met on the Solar New Year) and we went to this cool temple/palace thing that I don't remember the name of but it started with a G. I'll double check on Sunday when I post about the remainder of this vacation. Anyway, the history-geek in me loved it, and it was fun hanging out with two awesome guys :) We went to a lovely Greek restaurant for lunch (OMG SO GOOD! Yummy Slouvaki the best I've had since I came back from Greece), and I worried them because I don't eat a lot. Afterwards I went and met back up with Ellen at the COEX mall, and then we came back to our sketchy hotel (there are two mirrors on the CEILING!). Today we went to the National Museum of Korea (guess who's idea that was, MINE! *is a geek*) they were having a special New Years celebration thingy. There was traditional music, performances, and this really cool calligraphy drawing thing. There will be pictures on facebook (I forgot my camera cord in my apartment). After the calligraphy drawing (really, I can't explain it, I'll post pictures) I got interviewed for a radio show. It was nifty, and the guy was cute! Then we went into the museum and wandered a little, mostly in the paleolithic/neolithic/bronze age room. I missed all my classics friends when I wanted to crack jokes about pottery, or stone tools looking like normal stones, or the bronze age and vikings and mermaids. I took lots of pictures inside of the cool pottery and carvings. I had myself a nice little history geek-out. It was tons of fun. Then we went to two market areas, which I forgot the name of and Ellen is not sitting next to me anymore so I can't ask her, and we shopped. I got a messenger bag (finally), and new, really warm, sweatshirt, and presents for my three male cousins so I'm going to send the Hanukkah package finally (my bad...). In my defense it's REALLY hard to find something NOT cute. It's so cutesy/girly here. Anyway.
I hit my 6 month mark last week (I think). I can't believe it's been 6 months! It's flown by, but at the same time it feels like I've been here forever. I love it here, I'm having a good time teaching (most of the time), and life is pretty good at the moment. It's the year of the Rabbit in the Chinese Zodiac, so this is my year (as someone kindly pointed out I was born before the Chinese New Year, so even though I'm 1988 I'm not a Dragon, I'm a Rabbit). I will make the most of it and so far it's looking like it will be a good year! Happy New Year (both Lunar and Solar because I missed the Solar one)! I will try to not wait so long between posts again! Happy thoughts (and because it's the end, YAY KIM CLIJSTERS, YAY NOVAK DJOKOVIC! YAY BRYAN BROTHERS! YAY ESTHER VERGEER! YAY WONDERFUL AUSSIE OPEN EVEN THOUGH NADAL LOST IN THE QUARTERS) Ok, I'm done. Thank you for reading my epic post of epic proportions!
~Lyn~
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