Chuseok & more

So, last weekend was Chuseok, the Korean version of Thanksgiving... so we had a 4-day holiday from school that was very nice :) On Thursday night I was able to go out to dinner with some of the teachers in town that I don't get to see very often- Sarah and Scott, a couple from the Boston area, and Jessica and Julian, a couple from South Africa. We went to a new restaurant for me and had lots of fun sitting and talking til late in the night! I'll try to post pictures of them if they post to facebook... Then Friday, my neighbor Dan and I went to dinner at a restaurant our co-teachers had told us about that supposedly serves both Western and Korean foods. It's in a really cool looking old-style mud and timber building that reminds me of the very old buildings in Mexico or the Southwest... Once we were seated we realized that their menus were entirely in Korean- no English and no pictures- and since neither of us knows much Korean we were only able to ask the waiter to bring us "what's good" :) We ended up with chicken wings and mustard sauce... apparently our waiter's favorite- and it was quite good. I suppose we were lucky that his favorite wasn't pig intestine soup or some such thing! We went for coffee afterwards at the favorite coffee shop of all our local expats- a little place with big soft couches (not easy to find here in Asia!), great coffee, and good music, usually old time jazz but sometimes more modern things too, that night it was Nirvana and assorted 90's music :) A very fun and mellow night! Saturday we decided not too be quite so lazy and went hiking here in town. E-Mart is our local version of target- about a ten minute walk from our apartment building- and behind it there's a quite spectacular little mountain with trails for hiking and mountain biking. It takes about an hour to get up to the top and an hour back down (maybe a little less for people in better shape than I am!) It was a gorgeous day in the woods and since it was a holiday weekend, there were lots of families out hiking and picnicking along the trails. We made it all the way to the top where there are spectacular views of our whole little town and a couple neighboring towns as well, along with the nearby mountains and our little river that winds through the rice paddies. We got back down to the bottom just in time as it was starting to get dark, went home for showers and new clothes, then out to dinner again- 3 nights in a row for me! We decided to stop into a little place we had seen on our walk back to the apartment that looked nice and served beef and pork dishes (you can tell by the signs on each restaurant of big smiling animals- whatever their specialty is there.) It turned out be one of my favorite places so far! We were smart this time and brought a phrasebook with us, but still decided to ask the waitresses helping us what their favorite was. They brought us a huge plate of very thickly sliced bacon and sliced mushrooms that we were able to grill ourselves on our little tabletop griddle along with whole cloves of garlic and sliced onions and, being Korea, about 20 little side dishes with vegetables, sauces, salads, and the like. Once the bacon was cooked, we cut it into bite size pieces with the scissors they gave us and dipped it in a sweet sesame sauce, then wrapped it with the mushrooms, garlic, onions, and red chili paste in leaves of lettuce or sesame- sort of taco style. It was a lot like the pork ribs I had eaten with my co-teachers, very tasty! After dinner we went to one of our favorite bars (which really means one of the only bars we've been to in town!) for a couple beers and to listen to the live music that the owner plays. All Korean this time- sometimes he plays English or American rock music- but very beautiful. Another very nice evening. Sunday I decided to be lazy again, but did make it back down to E-Mart to get some shopping done. Then Monday I spent a few hours wandering around town taking pictures and that night Kelsey, Dan, Sarah, and I all went to yoga at a studio here in town. Kelsey has been going for a while (she got here about 6 months before the rest of us) and Dan had been before, but it was the first time for Sarah and I. We joined for the month and are trying to go together about three times a week. We all went Monday and Tuesday, then Dan and Sarah went Wednesday, and Kelsey and I went Thursday. I was very proud of us (and only a little sore!) It's a little more intense than the yoga classes I've been to in the states- at one point she had us leaning on our shoulders and necks with our backs arched up in the air and said okay, I'll be back in 15 minutes :) Right now I'm just one of the clumsy foreigners, but we're all hoping to get better over time! :D School's still going great as well. I'm still trying to get a feel for which lesson plans work really well and which ones get the kids too excited to concentrate, but for the most part it seems to depend on their moods at the time! English Town switched over to new lessons for October, so no more pizza snacks Thursday mornings but I get to teach Halloween games now and make masks with the kids! Very fun! We'll see how quickly I get tired of the Monster Mash song after an entire month of it! :) I stayed home from the Film Festival this weekend since I'm sick- finally caught that cold that's been circling through all the teachers at school the last few weeks. So instead of artsy movies and famous celebrities I got to learn how to ask for medicine at the pharmacy and sleep in layers of warm clothing... equally exciting, I'm sure :) It's turned out to be a nice and relaxing weekend. This coming week I'll only be teaching 3 days... I have my lessons planned to make my 6th graders tell each others fortunes (they're learning future tense) and my 5th graders learn how to play vocabulary battleship! Should be fun :) Then I'm off to Gyeongju with my co-teacher and nearly all the foreign English teachers in our region for 2 days of teacher training with EPIK. It will be nice to be able to see everyone all together again. Haven't decided yet what I'll do with my weekend... maybe hang out an extra day in Gyeongju to see the local historical sites, maybe head down to Pusan to catch the end of the film festival since I missed it this weekend, or maybe head back home depending on what other people are doing. Should be a nice relaxing week in any case, which will be good while I'm getting over my cold. I'll post pictures of our hiking adventure and there are more on facebook too.