It's getting colder

..... but not as cold as a winter back in Wisco.

Things are still going really well over here! Liking teaching, liking the routine, loving the people and loving the food!

Ben and i started taking Korean lessons in Seoul 2 weekends ago. We found a 학완 (private teaching academy) called "The Korean Language Academy" in an area of Seoul called 강남 (Gangnam). We'll be going every Saturday morning from 10am to 1pm. We've only had 2 classes as of now, but we've been very impressed with the school so far. We really wish we could go to take classes there 2 or 3 nights a week and move a little faster, but we live an hour and a half away from the Academy, so it'd be really rough to get there on a week night after school. We are pretty impressed with ourselves so far though! We've learned the alphabet (a while ago) and can now order food, tell a cab where to go, follow directions, and carry on a very simple and broken conversation in Korean!

제 이름은 크리스틴입니다. -My name is Christine.
나는 밴의 여자친구입니다. -I am Ben's girlfriend.
저는 영어선생님입니다. -I am an English teacher.

we'll get there!

November 3rd was Ben's birthday. He turned 24; but he is actually 25 in Korean age. (I am 23 Korean age). In Korea, everyone turns another year older on Jan 1 instead of on the actual date of their birth. For example, right now.... everyone who was born in the year 1987 is 23 in Korean age. They will all turn 24 on January 1st. This was a very confusing concept for us the first few weeks we were here. We wondered why all of our high school freshman, though they said they were 16 and 17, acted SO much younger, (giggling, screaming, typical immature teen early teen behavior) and why highschoolers took until they were 19 years old to graduate. Those freshman are actually only 15 US age, and the seniors only 18 US age- everything made so much more sense after that.

Anyway.... since Ben's birthday was on a Tuesday, we celebrated it the weekend before (also Halloween weekend). On Saturday morning we headed into Seoul to see the 63 Building. It is the tallest building in Seoul and it has an IMAX theater, a wax museum and an aquarium inside of it. You can also take an elevator up to the top floor to the "skyview" room and look out over most of Seoul. We decided to do the IMAX, since those are pretty cool, and the aquarium, since we had heard good things about it. Unfortunately it was raining out, and super cloudy- so we figured it wasn't the best day to go up to the top. At the IMAX, we saw a movie about "Yellowstone National Park", and found it kind of funny as Ben and i were probably the only 2 people in the audience who had actually been to the park. It was interesting to see how the Korean's portrayed Yellowstone. The aquarium was fun too... the only part that i hated about it was that the cage for the penguins that was really disgusting. It was too small, not cold, had no fresh fish, and just did not look very fun. The penguins did not look happy :( Aside from that, however, we saw some pretty colorful fish, watched a couple seals balance balls on their noses and catch rings, and got to pick up a couple baby sharks in the "touch pool". Our favorite part, however, was the tank full of small, minow-like fish. You can stick your hand in their tank, and they will come up and eat the dead skin cells off of your fingers. It really tickles and is supposed to be really good for your skin. Not sure if it was real or not, but our hands did feel softer after dangling them in the tank for several minutes! We're now on a mission to find some to keep as pets in our house...... After the aquarium and IMAX, we headed over to the Myeongdong area of Seoul to see a musical called Nanta. It's a Korean musical, but there's hardly any talking, so it's really popular for foreigners to go see. It is set in a kitchen, and the "cooks" use spoons, chopsticks, pots, pans, etc. to create entertaining beats a la STOMP! Unlike STOMP!, however, there was an actual storyline, and the drumming wasn't quite as intense. It was still really fun, though... especially when I got called up onstage as an audience participant. I tried SO, so hard NOT to make eye contact with the "cook" when he came out into the audience looking for volunteers to bring up onstage but, alas, he found me and dragged me up to bang around some spoons and rythmically make korean 만두 (dumplings) for a while.
After the musical, we headed over to Itaewon (the area near the US army base; a very popular place for foreigners to go out in Seoul) where were had plans to meet some friends a little later on. We first had middle-eastern food for dinner- a delicious change from the mono-spice Korean dishes we've been eating for the last 3 months, and then headed over to meet our friends at a jazz club, where we watched a small, Korean jazz band perform for the next couple of hours. They were excellent, in my opinion, and we were even able to luckily score front-row seats for the event. I thought the tenor sax, the guitar, the drummer, and keyboardist were all fantastic but that the trumpeter could have squeaked out a few higher notes to show off though. Regardless, I remembered how much fun listening to jazz music is. When they finished playing, it was still fairly early, so we went across the street to another dive bar for a few more drinks. Since it was Halloween, there were quite a few westerners dressed in costumes. With the mix of people there, someone walking into the bar wouldn't have been able to distinguish it from any other college bar in the States; which was kind of a strange site to see in Korea. When Ben and I started to get tired, we went across the street to a jjimjilbang to spend the night (since the trains stop at midnight and don't start again until 5 am, and since a taxi home would be over $50). In a jjimjilbang, you pay around $10 per person and you get to go in and use the baths and saunas- no clothes allowed! (facilities separated by sexes) and after you're clean, you get to put on the pajama-like outfits they give you and head to a common room where there are more saunas (clothes required), a bigscreen TV, a snack-bar, exercise equipment, and a big floor space where you can lay down mats and sleep there for the night. These saunas are everywhere in Korea and are great places to pass out for a few hours after a night of drinking! So, pass out we did... and got up at about 10am Sunday morning, had another free shower(!!) and headed back to Siheung... a successful birthday weekend indeed!

On Tuesday night, the night of Ben's actual birthday, I took him to play ping-pong at a 탁구장 (basically a ping-pong hall) near my house. We played for a few hours. First just me and Ben... and i was kind of feeling bad, since i'm not exactly a challenging opponent for him.... but then a bunch of my students came in (you know, at about 9pm when they got done w/ school for the day) and we played them for a while, which was fun, but they were still no match for Ben. Finally one of my students knocked on the owner's office door and had him come out to play Ben....... long story, short- Ben got stomped on, chewed up, and spit out by this guy... I'll let him tell the actual story though. I'm sure he'll have it up in his blog soon enough (www.bcinnz.blogspot.com)

Other than that, we've just kinda been living. We've gotten into a pretty nice routine of going climbing and to the gym a couple nights a week, and going to a Korean language exchange on Tuesdays. I'm getting paid extra to teach an after school class on Fridays, which is kind of a crappy day to do it, but the money will pay for a plane ticket to.... somewhere in Southeast Asia- Ben and i want to take a vacation over winter break. We haven't decided on the exact destination yet, but we are open to any suggestions that anyone has!

I'm on my computer at school right now, otherwise I'd have put up a few pictures with this post too. But check them out on facebook if you haven't!