Lately

A lot of eating, playing and teaching.

Who doesn't love breakfast for dinner (brinner)? It was almost perfect with pancakes, scrambled eggs and something we have decided to call "beefcon". What looks like the pork bacon that we are all used to turned out to be slices of beef. Didn't taste like bacon but it worked.

Saturday night was spent in Itaewon, which is known as the foreigner district. It is really close to a big US military base and the area caters to the foreigner crowd. It has bigger clothes, mexican food and even more English friendly then other areas of Seoul. Found a great mexican restaurant where we sat at the bar enjoying margaritas, chips and salsa, a wonderful bar tender named Dean (who sang along with David to the cover band playing Eric Clapton)

Talking with Smiles, who we met at the reggae bar...not quite the same as Boundary Bay reggae night.

Sunday night after a long day of eating spicy noodles and watching Harry Potter we decided to have some comfort food and made chicken wings and mashed potatoes. Special note about movie watching in Korea: Since we don't know how to check movie times it is best to head to the theatre whenever you feel like it and buy a ticket to the next showing. You also get to choose your seats in the theatre when you buy your ticket. Kinda sweet when you figure out where the best seats are.


In regards to teaching it has been getting a bit easier and a lot more fun as I am getting to know the kids better. Had another wonderful conversation with Sam (Cat in the Hat is a crazy monkey boy). He was trying to tell me in the best English that he could how he watched a documentary about dolphins having hands when the dinosaurs were alive. And how when a "giant rock crash the earth" the dolphins moved into the ocean and lost their hands. This was news to me but I told him that was called evolution and he said "yes yes teacher" and went back to his pokemon cards without a second thought. Next it is just one week of teaching until my two week Summer break!! First week will be spent exploring Tokyo!! So excited and will undoubtedly take a million pictures!

And lastly a video of a lovely Korean monsoon. This happens all day sometimes.

Mud is Love

So this weekend David and I trekked down south to Boryeong to partake in their annual week long Mud Festival. The day started off with an early morning train ride to take us the 3 hours south. Once we got there we were greeted by David's co-teachers and two rooms in the "love motel", a place that the Korean's are not used to having people actually spend the full night but only a couple hours. From there we went to join the masses in the mud! Everything was centered around a big amphitheater that was having contests and playing music all day. My favorite part was the self paint stations down on the beach. There were just big things of mud with paint brushes in them to paint yourself/others. There was also a mud wrestling pit...kind of crazy but oh so much fun. Other highlights of the weekend include: a never ending shellfish feed (so proud of myself for actually enjoying eating those guys) where we got to cook everything right in front of us, fireworks in the rain, having a very random morning with the boys in the hotel room, getting to chat on the phone with my family, finding real life elephants and getting to watch David turn into a little kid with excitement, getting to see and swim in the ocean, having a strawberry shake while waiting to leave for the train and getting to relax on the way home knowing that pizza and bad tv were waiting. One of the weirdest things was that although it was mainly tourists enjoying the mud and beer there were also quite a lot of Korean families there too. There were also a TON professional photographers sticking their cameras in everyones faces. Apparently there is a huge photo contest and everyone is hoping to catch the best shot of the festival. It was strange to just be walking around or playing in the mud and all of the sudden have 5 or 6 huge cameras in your face. There must also be about a million pictures of David and I covered in mud. Great fun, even if I think there is still mud in my ears.









You know...just feeding elephants. In the middle of a beach town.


We spent a couple hours here watching the people still crazy enough to play in the mud despite the never ending rain and wind.

Bye Bye Miss American Pie

This is how we celebrated American Independence in Korea


The afternoon began with finding a dry spot to set up camp and fire up the grill. We ended up under the coverings by the soccer field at the park. As 4th of July tradition states we had hamburgers (Australian beef, Koreans don't care too much for US beef) and hot dogs. We even found pepperjack cheese for the burgers!!

The field was quickly taken over by a hoard of boys playing full field soccer. It was the perfect entertainment.

However, when it started to rain heavily all 22ish boys joined us under the covering in an attempt to stay dry. We learned that they were pretty much all 11 years old and that one of them was from Delaware. They were funny and when they said they were hungry from the intense soccer game they had been playing David handed out the bread we had brought as well as a gatorade. Cus really, who needs gatorade on the 4th of July when you have good old OB BLUE to quench your thirst.

When the rain let up a Korean family invited us down to play soccer with them. We were then invited over to their table for kimbab (kind of like sushi), popcorn, steamed potatoes and yellow melon (a close friend of the watermelon we were informed). They family was super sweet and very excited to use the English that they know. While Grandpa (who claimed to be 73 but didn't look a day over 60) said he had learned English as a child in school, the Aunt said that she had learned from the Internet and tv. Crazy. We kept saying how something like this rarely if every happens in the US. When was the last time you saw a family invite random foreigner strangers over for lunch? It was wonderful.

After eating WAY too much food from the generous family, it was time for more games. Big David and little David had a face off while Andy waited for his turn to join the action.

Later that evening (after a much needed beer/food induced nap) it was time to head back to the park for fireworks. Although we only had sparklers, bottle rockets and fountains the American spirit was in the air. I made sure that a Leonard family dance of the sparklers happened.

All in all it was the perfect was to spend America's birthday outside of America.

i just wanna dance

around the entire world