Thursday, May 19, 2011

Doctor Fish???

So, I wanted to share a little experience I had yesterday. So, Sarah and I were texted by our co-worker Alicia asking if we wanted to go to “fish n din” the other day. We were curious, so we asked what kind of food it was. We got a reply “Oh, I don’t know what we are doing for dinner yet, but we can decide later” (or something to that effect) We then were informed that Doctor Fish (which im not really sure how fish n din was explaining this dr. fish place, but…whatever) Is a place that you get a drink like a smoothy or shake or something and then you pay $2.00 to put your feet into a little area where feeder fish (the goldfish you get at fairs, basically), and the fish eat all the dead skin off your feet. At first when I put my feet in, I couldn’t keep them in because the feeling was so strange, but after a little while…It just felt like tickling or soft scratching. Apparently my feet had a lot of dead skin, cuz out of the 5 of us, the fish swarmed(??) to me and one of the other girls’ feet. At least it’s not a sign of being dirty. We did, also, end up eating at a “western” restaurant ‘BONBON.’ I had pesto spaghetti. Delicious. :P

Meeting Ki, and almost getting mugged (allegedly)

5-16-2011

So, I have been really lucky, since I’ve gotten here, to have some fun stuff to do on the weekends. This weekend was great! This weekend I met a friend that I haven’t seen in almost 3 years. (he went to SUNY Oneonta with me for 2 years before coming back home to do his mandatory 2 years in the Korean army) I can’t believe it has been that long. It is part of the reason I looked for a job in Daejeon, but knew that since he was in the Korean army, I wouldn’t see him for a while. LUCKILY, he had a weekend break! KiBum graced me with his presence this past weekend. It was soooooo nice to see him. Finding each other... was really funny and quite a process… we were at different corners on different sides of the road, him jumping, waving and doing stuff to try to get me to notice him…then because I was not near him, he got some strange looks from people…He said he asked some woman where CGV (movie theater) was and she just stared at him. :P AFTER finally finding each other, we got some food at a bbq place that was overpriced and not very good. The guy that was working there was kinda creepy. Oh well. We decided to just walk around and go back to my apartment. We just decided to catch up and hang out and watch movies. It was so comfortable We walked around and checked stuff out and got some pizza from “Pizza School” and hung out til he had to go home for dinner with his family. He’ll be out of the army in July, so I’m looking forward to that.

I also, for the first time, went to this shopping center “Home Best”. I went with Sarah. On the way there, we were just walking and all of a sudden, a guy falls into the back of us…like his head was at our feet. I guess when he tripped, his foot or leg hit Sarah, cuz she had a red mark/scratch on the back of her leg. He was dressed all in black and was running. (The fact that he was wearing black has nothing to do with it…just adds suspense/makes the story more interesting. He was also wearing a mask over his mouth, which is also really common here too…) I THINK he was planning to steal our purses or something cuz WHY would someone be SO close to you? It’s not like he didn’t see us. He was (or acted like he was) hurt after he got up, but followed us for a while. I don’t know exactly what happened or why he was so close…weird. Guess he would be a good candidate for “World’s Worst Criminals.” ANYWAYS…It was a beautiful day so we ended it by sitting outside by the river that is really close to our apartments.

Tuesday, May 17, 2011

Interesting places/pics..more to come!

Dr. for butt problems...obviously
The street I live on :)
Music on: 06:00 pm Music off: 04:00 am
Haven't been here yet...but a guy passing said it was "VERY DELICIOUS" with a smile.
If you figure this one out...let me know....

Maninsan :)

5-7-2011

Today me and Sarah decided to go to a park. Maninsan.. Anyways…I went to Sarah’s to skype with mom in the morning which was nice (cuz I STILL don’t have internet), and we copied down the directions Alicia (another coworker) gave us. We got ready and left together. On the bus we realize…no directions. Sarah and I have interesting/ not so good senses of direction. She is most certainly better than me, but yeah, still both new to this city. So- we went on what we remembered. We took a bus to Daejeon station then found what we were pretty sure was our bus. We got on it and hoped for the best. Several stops and about a half hour to forty min. later we were still on the bus, looking for a place we didn’t know the name of, because that was also written on the paper. That being said…we couldn’t even ask how to get to this place because, we didn’t know…”mann—“something…? The bus was headed towards the mountain, so we were just waiting. We finally found where we were pretty sure looked like a nice park to hang out in and have a pb&j picnic! yay, it was! There were a lot of people there. I thought maybe we had crashed a party or family reunion or something…who knows? We always get strange looks, so even if we had done something wrong, the looks wouldn’t be any different…i don’t think. Anyways, we walked around a couple trails and just sat outside. It was a beautiful day. The way back home was interesting… We took the same bus back to Daejeon station, and looked for our next bus back to our “dong” or neighborhood. Well, we couldn’t find it. We walked up and down this one side of the road 4 times. I think some of the old women selling fruits and herbs probably noticed we were lost because after the first 2 times, they started smiling at us. Well, we got so tired of walking that we just took a cab back. So much for the stupid bus we were looking for, for probably about 40 minutes or so. After getting back I had my first Bi Bim bop..which was really good. It’s rice in a bowl with a bunch of different veggies or something on top of it around the outside such as seaweed, carrots, bean sprouts, etc., then there is a fried egg over top of koju jong (spicey paste). Mmm. Yum. In conclusion of today, Sarah and I decided we really need to learn the Korean han-geoul…it will def. help us.

Saturday, May 7, 2011

Weird/Different situations/ things I have noticed...

SO…I have been here 2 weeks now, and have experienced a few interesting things. I would now like to share. The thing I will have to get used to most is bathroom activities. First, here, because the plumbing is so bad…you don’t flush your toilet paper…you throw it away in a garbage can (specifically for that use, of course). Second, some places don’t have toilet paper in the stalls. You have to take the amount you think you will need from a tp dispenser outside of the stalls. You best hope you don’t need more than you think. There is also a soap pole or rod or something, I dunno what it’s called…but it’s a metal thing sticking out of the wall that has soap on the end of it that you just grab to get soap. Like a bar of soap that covers a pole. Weird..I’m not a fan..I’d rather use a soap dispenser. Sometimes there are really intense buttons next to the toilet seat for heating, or cleaning the rest of that region, along with some other buttons I’m not sure of what they do..haha. Lastly, with the bathroom stuff…today I was informed that there is a “courtesy button” in some of the bathrooms, that you can press in case you need more time and don’t want people to know that you are doin number 2. Apparently it sounds really fake anyways, so it doesn’t even serve a purpose, but..i think that’s awesome.

Korean people for the most part are pretty helpful. If you don’t know how to do something or seem lost or something..they generally try to help you out. This is usually true with directions, help at a restaurant figuring out the menu that has no English on it, stuff like that. On the other side, there are a few things that are a little hard to get used to, so far. I have had so many people, boys, girls, old people, kids, doesn’t matter…STARING at me/us. At the festival the other night, 3 guys came over to us and asked if they could take a picture with us. I’m pretty sure this was because they couldn’t sneak a shot of all of us from a distance, which we caught them trying to do earlier. That has happened on a few other occasions as well. Today, me and my friend Sarah were walking in a market and were called out by someone saying “HI! HI!, where you from??” Everyone then turns to look at us…awesome. Then a guy turns his video camera on us as we were kind of answering the guy so we could get away..we could be on the news, who knows. I’m kinda interested to see what happens next, but at the same time….

dun dun dun...Work..

Work~finally.

I started working on Monday 5/2/11. I have a pretty sweet schedule. I work from 11:25 to 5:45 OR 7pm. Those few hours, however---feel longer (so far). My first day was nuts. I have a class that has kind of a bad reputation, which isn’t good when they are only 4 and 5 year olds. There are only 8 kids in the class, 6 girls and 2 boys. I have other classes of other levels throughout the day, but 2 to 3 classes in a row with them every day depending on the day. Ugh. I’m trying to get a hold of them. “Laying down the law” is kinda hard when communication is an issue AND they are 5. All the rest of the classes, the toughest thing is dealing with the middle schoolers that don’t wanna be there because they are just coming from regular public school, and have that age’s attitude, AND, following the book pages and getting all the pages and workbooks and stuff like that straight. I am co-teaching with a Korean teacher..so, I teach one or two pages in a book and the Korean teacher teaches the pages before or after the ones I taught. It’s just confusing. I hope I can get a grasp of it soon. Anyways…I worked Monday to Wednesday. Why only 3 days, do you ask? Because I came at a spectacular time when it is “Children’s day” on Thursday and for whatever reason we have Friday off too, which I am certainly not complaining about. Oh, and wait for it…I have never been so interested in Buddha, until I found out his birthday is Tuesday and we ALSO have that day off. Thanks Buddha! Happy Birthday to you. J (for the record I DO know that’s horrible) I DO however, want to see if I can get near or go to some temples that are nearby-ish. There has been decorated paper lanterns put up all over the city, so I am very intrigued. I hope I can witness something very interesting. I’m not sure if it’s possible, but I would love to learn more about stuff like that here. J Very different. Wednesday night I ran into something very cool. A girl I work with invited me to “girls night” which is every wed. So, I went. We ended up going to an International Food Festival at a campus really close to our apartments. Well, after having some Indonesian food, we went to the concert/afterparty for the birthday of the college (so it said on the banner, “Happy Birthday Kaist”) a.k.a—anniversary. Pretty good night…free beer, free concert and got to see a K-pop singer , that apparently is popular –G.NA- ill take it…whatever, it was fun. Anyways, for the break...I will stay at my apartment that I FINALLY moved into on Monday, and do some stuff/ hang out with one of my co-workers, Sarah, who isn’t going anywhere either. Should be fun.