10.19.2009

Hello -

This weekend I went to the Incheon Global Festival. It has been going on for almost 3 months and this is the 2nd to last weekend. We went on Saturday at about 6:00 and it was freezing cold and very windy. The festival is a bunch of big tents and buildings with little exhibits. One building (pictures below) had different booths from different countries and cities in Korea. Each one had a display and some information about the different places. Another big tent we went in was full of flowers (also, pictures below). This was pretty cool, there were a lot of different flowers and many different arrangement shapes. There was a cheap little carnival ride, The Viking. I don't know if anyone knows that this is, but it's a boat type thing and it just swings from side to side. Also, there was a batting cage so I did one round of hitting baseballs. It was really fun to hit baseballs, I missed playing softball this summer so it has been a long time. There was also a really cool fountain in the middle of the complex. The main attraction of the festival is 3-D movie type things, but the lines were too long and we didn't feel like waiting in lines in the cold. (just uploaded the pictures, I forgot about the lego booth. There are also several pictures of a lego city and some lego people)

The next pictures are of dinner after the festival. I had my first unique food in quite some time. We ordered some regular meat and also pig skin (pictures below). The pig skin actually tasted pretty good but the texture was a bit disturbing. It was a lot like chewy jello. One side (the skin part) is more chewy and the inside is the part that feels like jello. It is really weird but once you get used to it the taste is quite good.

The weather is getting much colder. I am sitting here in sweatpants and a sweatshirt drinking my coffee and the wind is actually still a bit chilly. We have also had some really big thunderstorms this weekend and one during the week last week. Things are still good, my students are still quite a handful but time is going really fast. I just got a trip home OK'd for around Christmas. I am getting excited for that and but the dates are not yet set in stone. That's all for now,

Kevin

10.13.2009

Hello -
Time is still flying by for me in South Korea. I have been here for over 5 months now, I think in about 3 weeks I will be at the half way point. My updates feel like they are lacking excitement, but I think that means that I am officially settled into the whole Korean teacher lifestyle. I generally spend the weekdays at work during the day and lay low during the night. I figured that there are some episodes of some of my favorite tv shows on youtube and I have been watching quite a few of those. The baseball playoffs are on TV in the mornings here sometimes, so that is always nice to see.
Several of my friends have left over the past few weeks. My friend Jeff went home for a few weeks, another friend left until January, and another 2 left for awhile. Seems like most people seem to renew their contracts after the year runs out, but as of now I have not made any decisions about what to do when my year runs out.
I went to an indoor pool a few weekends ago. It was quite interesting. There is a little wave pool, a little lazy river, several different temperature baths, a pool bar, and doctor fish. The doctor fish were quite an experience. You pool was divided in 2, with the fish divided by size. It takes awhile to get used to the fish biting/sucking on your feet. The fish scatter if you move your feet at all and that made it difficult at first because the fish tickle your feet for the first few minutes until you get used to it. I tried to small fish as well as the big fish and I don't really know if it did anything medicinally, however, it was quite an experience.
About 1 month ago my head teacher at school quit and last weekend another teacher quit. We have a new head teacher and also a new teacher to replace the one that left. We went out last weekend for awhile, we had dinner at a nice Chinese restaurant and then went to a karaoke lounge. It was a lot like the first time that we went (I think I talked about that in one of my first ever posts) with the teachers dancing and playing drums and everything. This time I was a little bit more relaxed and I didn't start to perspire as soon as I held the microphone. It was a good time, but I will miss my teacher that just left. It turns out that she has a friend that moved to the U.S. with her husband while he finishes his Masters degree. We were talking awhile ago about where I lived and where her friend lived and it turns out that the man is actually studying at MSU. It's a small world.
I think this weekend I am planning on going to the Seoul tower. This is a tall building that looks kind of like the space needle. It looks out over Seoul and I guess the view is great.
The weather has been beautiful for the past month. After a whole summer with an absense of sun and pure humidity, the weather has been about 70ish and sunny. I don't know the exact temperature because they use the Celcius scale and I actually don't check the forecast regularily. Every day has literally been almost perfect. Now, the nights are slowly getting colder and the days are slowly getting shorter. Had a rainy day today, we had thunder storms in the morning and again toward the end of the day. I don't really have any more stories as of now, this is just a quict update on what's going on, hope to hear from you soon.

Kevin