Happy New Year!

There were posters around town with images of fireworks exploding above Hwaseong Fortress, so we put two and two together and decided there must be some kind of New Years' celebration going down at the wall.


Jo thought it would be a good opportunity to hand out candy to random Koreans. We each had a pocket full of little hard candies and handed them out with a cheery "Happy New Year!". Apparantly, no one ever taught Koreans to not take candy from strangers because they seemed pretty happy about our free sweets.



When we got to the fortress there was a mob of people hiking up these stairs. It's a good 10-15 minute hike, but the view of Suwon is awesome from the top. On the way up, one Korean guy handed me his cell phone and asked me to say "Happy New Year" into the phone to his friend. Ah, my english is such a novelty here.






We got to the top with about 5 minutes to spare, and we waited patiently to be overwhelmed by awesome Korean fireworks. At 12:00 the fireworks in the above video went off. We felt a little ripped off and made our way back down.

We took the opportunity to segregate ourselves by country. All the Canadians...




The Americans...



And representing the UK.... lol


Seconds after these photos were taken the sky lit up and we were treated to the New Year's fireworks we'd been waiting for. Above is a quick video. In true Korean style, the fireworks went off at about 12:15am. Koreans love "taking a rest". They are the slowest walkers you will ever race past. They go to a restaraunt and eat salad for four hours. It's a laid back mentality and who are we to demand prompt fireworks?


We capped the night off with a drink at the Beer Garten, our local haunt. Mel and I ordered a plate of chicken and the owner kind of tried to warn me that it was a spicy dish. Fearless for 2007, I ordered it anyway. Tears running down my face after my first bite I look up and the owner and his wife are laughing, giving me a total "I told you so"-look.


So we watched fireworks over a fortress wall and burned our tongues on chicken. What did you do?

A Day In The Life

A little tour through a typical Meloshawn day...

This is when the magic begins! 7:32am. I haven't woken up that early since high school. Or maybe if I had to catch a flight or a bus. Neither of us are morning people. I've gotten into the routine of showering the night before and hitting snooze until the last possible minute. We make sure our clothes are all picked out and our bags are packed and ready the night before. Mornings- blah!

We are about 20 minutes away from work, on foot. It's been really cold this past week... around -14 in the mornings... so we've been opting to take cabs. It's so cheap! 1900 won (approx $2 Canadian) to get both of us to work warmly. We've let the other teachers in on our secret to arriving so early and yesterday morning we had a full cab, each person contributing about 50 cents.

We don't start teaching until 9:30, but the school requires us to arrive by 9:00 so the first half hour of my morning is usually spent pressing the "refill" button on the coffee machine or staring into a computer screen. Yesterday, however, we decided to spend our half hour naming adults. A lot of Koreans take english names, especially if they work around a lot of foreigners. Above is the new Grace, Ben, and Steve. They seemed really excited, wore their nametags all day, and even began responding to their names. Mel and I made the "Ben" tag.

Then it's off to class! Yesterday I taught "board game" class at 9:30. It's my favorite class because all I have to do is play cards, scrabble, or jenga with kids. Well, actually... I don't think I even have to play with them but it makes the time pass and I now kick ass at the popular Korean card game, "One Card".

I had no classes between 10:15-1:30 so I decided to go home. My schedule is like that on Thursdays and Fridays, but I have no free periods at all Monday-Wednesday... so it's not all breaks and slacking, just so you know. On the way home I picked up a Popeyes burger and then kind of felt disgusting when I realized it was about 10:45am and I was eating a fried chicken sandwich and curly fries. What a healthy breakfast. Oh well, it hit the spot!

I followed that up with some sleep, and then it was back to work.

I taught a class of "Golden Bell", which is a quiz show for the kids, and then my homeroom group practiced and performed their play "Mud Puddle" for the school. It was my third week in a row performing "Mud Puddle" so I probably could've put it on as a one-man show, but I let my kids have their moment.

Last period of the day (and the week!) was graduation. We give out certificates to the standout kids in each group, show them a slideshow, give goodbye messages and then they're urged to get our signatures and take our photos. There is nothing, NOTHING more awkward than a dozen girls circling me with their camera phones, flashes going off, each one yelling "teacher, teacherrrrr look here!!!".

Sometimes you take a photo with kids you actually like. The one on the right is named "Monkey", and the two closest to me in the pic taught me "One Card". The other kid was just annoying, I'm not sure how he made it into the photo.

After work most of the teachers went to "Beer & Joy" to cap off the week. At some point in the night we were able to get Jamie and Jo to kiss (4th and 5th from the left) which brought Jo's grand total of kissed co-workers to 3, and counting...

Afterwards, and some 15 hours after leaving for work, we returned home for a game of Blockus. As evidenced by the photo, Sarah was the only one that cared that Sarah won.

Everyone went home so Mel and I relaxed with some soup and two action-packed episodes of "Days of our Lives" that we downloaded. We both watch this show wayyy more now than we ever did at home and trust me- it's getting good!

Well, it's officially New Years Eve now, and although it's not really a celebrated holiday in Korea, we'll find something to do and blog about. Hope you all have a good time- Happy New Years!!

Christmas With the Keddy's

To the best of my recollection, my Grandfather was born in 1914. Some highlights from the year 1914 include: the first Mother's Day, the first successful blood transfusion, Archduke Franz Ferdinand was killed and World War I began, Babe Ruth played his first game of professional baseball, stainless steel was invented, and Jerry Siegel (co-creator of Superman) was born.

Yesterday my Grampy (and Grammy) chatted with us over Skype. When we'd hung up, Jason told me he said: "jesus christ, that was some thing going on there with Shawn, amazing"

Pretty cool! Here are some kind of weird pictures from our chat.

I only had to move 15,000 km away to become the center of attention :P

Merry Christmas and Thank You

Love from home is never more welcome than on Christmas day, so thank you one and all for the fun packages that made our morning special!




Rubber chickens, Reeses, pictures, miracle whip, ROOT BEER, magazines, curly hair shampoo... you guys didn't miss a thing !




Lots of Korean couples have matching hats like these and we don't look a bit foolish wearing them, do we?

"mini" Pringles from Emma... odd! The chips are the size of coins and are eaten quite quickly.



Because it's fun to say "FLUMPS"



Big burger from Mel :)


Last but not least, we got enough of our precious Timmies coffee to last until Valentines Day at least- *hint hint*

Well, we're off to dinner at Jo's and then perhaps some festive skating. We hope to be in touch with all of you by phone, skype or email over the holidays.

xoxo

Meloshawn

Staff Christmas Party

The directions were clear. Friday morning Stella wrote the following on the whiteboard in the staff room: "Staff Christmas Party, 6:30pm, the Korean Restaraunt". Ohhhhhhhh, the Korean restaraunt. Obviously. If I look out my bedroom window I can see about 25 Korean restaraunts. Regardless, we were all quite excited about a night out on the company's dollar.

First up was performance and graduation. These were my kids from this week and they did an amazing performance of "Mud Puddle". At graduation we were all rock stars again, signing autographs until the carpel tunnel kicked in. We all went back to our apartments for a quick change and then headed back out to the Korean restaraunt.

This is us on the road, lost, looking for the restaraunt. One of the Korean teachers called "114", (the Korean "411") and got directions for us.

We went to a galbi place, which is Korean BBQ. You can kind of tell from the picture above that the meat is bbq-ed right at your table, and there's a vent that sucks up all the smoke. Usually you flip the meat yourself, but in this case the waiter took pity on us and cooked it for us. It was the most tender beef I have ever, ever eaten. Delicious! Superb! Please note that the table is full of side dishes, which is customary at a any korean restaraunt, and once you've finished a side dish, more is promptly brought out. Please note we are also sitting on the floor. We got a private room, but out in the main area of the restaraunt everone was sitting in chairs...

There is a drinking tradition in Korea which involves one person pouring a shot for another person, and then vice vera... uh, something like that. Anyway, a lot of shots were had, but mostly by the koreans who were pouring them. One of the evenings highlights was definately getting our boss, Stella, to do some shots. The proof is in the video above.

Mel and Cavin. Later in the night Cavin admitted that his hair is "imitation".

Shawn, Bruce and Cavin's glasses

Of course, there was no other way for the evening to end but at a norebang, where Mel promptly found the stash of tambourines. It was a mix of familiar pop songs and obscure Korean music, but everyone was singing and dancing around. Listening to a group of Korean male adults sing "The Greatest Love of All" is priceless. By the end of the night the floor was soaking wet and covered in glass, but Jeannie really wanted to sing "What's Up" with me... and judging by the video it kind of looks like I really wanted to sing "What's Up" with her too...

When we were done at the norebang we headed back to Jo's apartment with a small group. We ordered pig's feet and chatted a little bit before heading to bed. Unfortunately for Jo, her bed was kind of "being used" at the end of the night.

Is this what your staff christmas party was like?

Korean Litter Observed

sys·tol·ic –adj

(of blood pressure) indicating the maximum arterial pressure occurring during contraction of the left ventricle of the heart.

Celebrity Endorsements

What do Kirsten Dunst, Gwyneth Paltrow, Jessica Alba, and Pierce Brosnan have in common? Besides the fact that they're big US movie stars? They hawk clothes in South Korea, of course! And why not- it's an easy way to make a few extra million won. Though they would most likely never appear in an ad campaign for American Eagle or the Gap, these three actors have their faces plastered all over a few stores here as their official spokespeople.

Snaggletooth AKA Kirsten Dunst shills for a store called "Thursday Island", which specializes in 200,000 won hippy sweaters, ponchos, potato sacks, etc. Some of the clothes are ooookay but the prices are scandalous!

Fishsticks AKA Gwyneth Paltrow is the face of "Bean Pole", which is an LL Bean-type of store owned by Samsung. Their clothes are nice and they look well made, but again, I refuse to

pay 175,000 won for a hoodie. Is this post making me sound cheap...?

Forget Cover Girl, it's all about Isa Knox here in Korea, and the lovely Jessica Alba is their spokesperson. I'm not going to pretend to know anything about this company other than saying that Jessica Alba is hot and anything she sells us must be great.

The dashing Pierce Brosnan is the spokesperson for "Galaxy", which is just around the block from our apartment. It's one of those stores at which you know you can't afford to even window shop so I've never gone in the door, but I can tell you that it's a suit shop and all of the employees look like Korean "Bond"s.

When Children Drive You To Drink

We finished our first complete week teaching at Happy Suwon Binglish Village- Woo hoo! Friday was a big day as each teacher was working with a group of kids to put on a play- no easy feat in a second language- and then we had a graduation ceremony for them. This was my group of angels:

They did a really good job with "Mud Puddle", and were rewarded with one Canadian penny each!

After work I went to Bennigan's with Mel, Jo and Sarah. I really only wanted to eat there because it's Butters' favorite restaraunt on South Park. Well, Butters has good taste! There was a kick ass salad bar and free ice cream, so it passed the Shawn test.

Then we went to Beer & Joy, because with beer always comes joy...

We ordered some "bear"...

Which came in a Keg!!! It was 22,000 won for 6 people and I'm pretty sure we got about 20 glasses out of the barrel. Sweet! One of the most charming aspects of Beer & Joy was the table decoram. You know how some restaraunts will use old ads or newspaper articles to decorate? Well, the newspaper used to decorate our table was from the New York Times issue printed on September 11th, 2001! Nice, very uplifting.

Last night we went to Jo's apartment for a festive get-together. It's pretty convenient to go to a party that's just down the hall because you don't have to put your shoes on. Last night we got our first snow of the year (that didn't disolve upon touching the ground), so we went outside and made a snowman. Kudos to Mel for randomly having a carrot!

I think she'd get along well with our maggoty jack-o-latern, don't you?

Modern Technology

We'd gone three months cooking on a hot plate so we decided to treat ourselves to an oven on our last payday. We'd looked around and found one we liked at the Hi-Mart (pronounced Hi-Mart-uh), but for some reason we couldn't just take it home- it had to be delivered. I'd run into this problem before at the Home Plus (pronounced Home Plus-uh) so I think it's a Korea "thing". Well, one of the key aspects of the delivery system is the store's ability to call you before they deliver your item and we didn't have a phone. So we agreed to return to the store 4 days later to pick up the box ourselves. So what did we do all day Saturday? BAKE. Mel made some awesome hashbrowns to go with our breakfast, than I made us BBQ chicken pizzas for supper and then we ruined a batch of cookies. They were more pancake than cookie but I blame the wonky Korean ingredients: such as the brown sugar that was clearly just white granulated sugar colored brown, or the baking soda labeled 'eating soda'. Learning curve: the thermostat was in celcius and that's why the hashbrowns cooked so quickly...

After work on Friday Stella asked us to stick around for a few minutes because she was going to "offer us some cell phone" so we did, as we realized earlier this week having a phone can come in handy sometimes. It took us over 24 hours to figure out how to turn our phone on (Chris showed us- you hold down the red button). I was playing with it at Jo's last night and I was pretty impressed- it's in english, it's small, it has an mp3 player, camera and games... but then our Korean friend Jamie stomped on our dreams and told us it's an "ajumma phone"... which means it's an uncool, old lady phone. She said her Mom has the same phone. Koreans definately have nice cell phones, but ajumma phone or not, at least now I can stare hypnotically into my cell for hours on the subway like the Koreans. When in Rome...

Media Coverage

I mentioned in the last post that there has been some videos and photos of us taken at work this week, but in the last few days this has really been stepped up a notch. Monday was our first day teaching and cameras came into all of the classrooms. It's rather interupting. We each have a homeroom class that we met with Monday morning, and a photographer joined me with my group of kids. My homeroom was in the 'post office' class, but I do not teach post office. Regardless, the photographer got me to hold up some of the classroom materials and pretend to teach my kids about the class. I showed you guys the picture in my last post, and it turns out there was a story in the newspaper about our school the next day and that is the picture they chose to use! I don't usually buy korean-language newspapers but my students told me I was in the Tuesday edition. I wish I'd bought a copy! Who would've thought that my picture would be in a newspaper in Asia? LOL! You can read the article here. (if you can read korean)

At lunch time Mel, Sarah, Aaron and I posed for more pictures with a selected group of photogenic students. The photographers instructions included: look at Aaron, pretend that you are helping this student, everyone look at this one girl, look like you care about this boy, etc...


Tuesday and Wednesday photographers come into our classrooms sporadically but it wasn't as overwhelming as it was on Monday. However, yesterday- Thursday- was the official grand opening. Hundreds of people in suits walked by our classrooms and video cameras were everywhere. We were instructed to keep the children in class at all times and if they asked to use the washroom we had to say no! Melodie had a camera film over a half hour of her 'homestay' class, and in the middle of her 'board game' class she was asked to start teaching 'airplane' to a group of kids that had already had airplane class... so it could be filmed! Poor kids! Poor Mel!

I was teaching science class and we were making soap. Unfortunately, when the soap melts it burns the eyes, it's pretty stinky and the room gets smokey. In hindsight, it's probably not the best activity to use for that class. Just as the classroom got as smokey as it could hundreds of VIPs, including the mayor walked by the class to see all of my students rubbing their eyes and complaining. One student asked if they could get some air and I said no! It's their fault anyway for forgetting their oxygen masks in their lockers.

So this morning when we got to school we watched a video clip of the news story that ran on KBS news last night. If you watch closely you'll see Mel teaching her fake airplane class and me playing "mafia" with my students. Click HERE to see the video.