Crystal Balls, Bikes, and Suyu

I suppose if I was spending well over $1000 per month on kindergarten, I would want to see what the school was all about. So, after more than a month of rehearsing lessons and songs, a dozen Moms shuffled into my classroom on Wednesday to watch the Panda Class Variety Hour. It went well! There were pleased gasps when the children spoke in full (rehearsed) sentences and smiles when they sang. Moms are happy= teacher is happy.

AND within 5 minutes of the moms leaving, Shawn Teacher's tie was off and wrapped around a kid's head. Even with several hours of class left, it already felt like time to celebrate. So, after work, my co-teacher, assistant teacher, Mel and I went to Apgujeong for drinks and fortune tellers. Apgujeong is one of Seoul's wealthiest areas so our fortune teller even had valet service... nice.

The fortune teller was 5,000 won per question which sounded like a fair price to put my hand on a crystal ball and play with tarot cards. We both decided to ask about our careers: what kind of work should we be doing, should we go back to school, how long should we work in Korea, etc. Yes, we're 28 and we still don't know what we want to be when we grow up. The fortune teller told Melodie that she would feel less stress in Canada, she can leave Korea in 2011 but might stay for a man, and she's going to get into a fight with a co-worker in June. My fortune teller told me that I won't be working as a teacher in Canada but my job here is good for me now. In fact, she said that there is nowhere better for me to work so I shouldn't bother changing schools when contracts come up. She said I should stay until 2012 and that I can't really count on my co-teacher. This was pretty funny because my co-teacher, Jamie, translated this information for me.


And then we drank for 7 hours. Hahahahaha. All of the teachers sat a lot in Panda class the next morning, children were used as pillows... it was great.

On Saturday, Mel and I decided to go biking along the Han River. It's one of my favorite areas of Seoul, and we've always talked about renting some bikes and spending some time cycling there. When we were choosing our bikes we saw some tandems, and that "bicycle built for two" song started dancing through our heads, so we paid our 6 bucks and cheerfully rode off on our funny bike.

After a little while, Mel even let me ride in front so her hands were free to take some pictures:


We stopped for a drink at a convenience store patio and enjoyed the weather for a bit, before going to the COEX mall for some cheap British crisps. I don't know why this one random store is selling them for two bucks a bag, but I'm gonna keep eating those greasy bad boys until they disappear as all yummy foreign food eventually seems to around here.

On Sunday we went to Hyewha, because we'd read that it's an artsy place worth checking out for its shops and restaurants. It was a pretty cool spot, and you notice the culture as soon as you leave the station: there's loads of theaters, galleries and a nice park as well. We shopped around for a few hours and agree that it's a nice area... sort of like a mini-Myeongdong. I was having a mad Kraze Burger craving so we got some eats and then decided that, since we were already so close and it's normally quite out of the way, we'd go to Suyu.

Suyu was the first place we ever lived in when we moved to Korea. We spent our first two months there until our Suwon school was ready, and we'd always planned to go back and check it out. We hadn't been there in years, but it's still pretty much the same. Suyu is part of Seoul, but it feels a lot smaller than even some of the outskirt cities we've visited. It's a more modest area as well- more Bang Bangs and Basic Houses than TNGTs and Zara. But I remember when we moved to Suyu we thought it was so big. I took all these pictures of these 15 story buildings because I thought they were soooo tall.

I guess Suyu is just a typical mid-sized pocket of Seoul, but to us it's kind of special. It was quite fun to walk around the area and remember unimportant things I'd forgotten long ago. We were all "that's where we had chicken on a stick on our last night!", "that's where we had our first galbi!" and "that's where we had shots with those bartenders!" For any former Suyu people who might be reading this, here's your official Suyu update: TGI Fridays is gone (how would we know when to get off the bus now?), Hot Tracks is still there (and still wonderful), and yep, they're still playing MIDI music outside of the station. As we caught the bus home I couldn't help but think, as much as I love Gangnam, wouldn't it be just a little bit more special if there was more MIDI here?