Monday, November 29, 2010

Happy Birthday, Mom!!

My amazing mother turned 50 this week.  Can you believe it?  I know I can't.   I was a terrible daughter and left the hemisphere the very same year that she was to reach this landmark birthday, and all that she asked of me was a birthday blog.  So, here it is, my favorite places and the places that I go (just about) everyday. 


Happy Birthday, Mom.            






 

The lovely park. 


 <3

Camera timers are amazing :-)

The most exercise I've gotten since I've been here. . . :-)


It does say "Happy Birthday" you'll have to take my word for it.

This is the street that I walk down every single day to get anything at all.  We live at the top of the hill.

I'm there, see??  These are the steps from my apartment up to the bus stop at the top of the hill.


My bus stop.

The bus stop I get off at when I come home.  They put little tents up for the cold and the wind.

My street, after my bus stop, after coming down the stairs.  This is my home every night.

The front of my building looking especially unattractive. . .and our little homeless mascot.

My apartment building.

My apartment door.  #14 :-)

The English Table, where Lindie and I take Korean lessons.  It also says "Happy Birthday!"

A cell phone store that we walk by after Korean lessons.  Thanks for letting us use the balloons!!

Paris Baguette, where we get lunch everyday after Korean.
The after-Korean bus stop at the bottom of the hill.

How I spend most of my time.  Waiting on the bus. 

Lindie made you one, Mom!  :-)  This is Lindie's apartment where I spend all the time that I'm not waiting for a bus.



On the bus.  In the rear view mirror.  Cool, huh?  Thanks Albert!

My desk :-)

Department store near my work.  Merry Christmas!

A really beautiful tree near my work.  Also, McDonald's deserved some recognition for being part of my almost daily life. :-)








       



















































Happy Birthday, Mom!  I love you so much!  I'm so sorry that I couldn't be there for your birthday, but I hope you know I was thinking about you all day.  I miss you a lot.  Thank you for being the best mom in the entire world :-)  Happy Birthday!!  I love you!

Saturday, November 27, 2010

Thanksgiving :-)

Thanksgiving is my favorite holiday.  I know, Christmas is wonderful, but there is really something special about Thanksgiving.  It's a lovely family holiday, and my family has always made it such a wonderful day.  So, I was scared to death about celebrating it here, actually I've been dreading it since I sent in my application for the job to begin with, but you know what, it was a wonderful day after all :-)

Thanksgiving, in South Korea.  :-)



It's all thanks to this awesome person :-)  And she had never even celebrated Thanksgiving before :-)

We were going to go to this place in town that was going to have a Thanksgiving dinner, but it kind of sounded like it was going to turn into a huge party, and at work I was getting really ridiculously sentimental, so I texted Lindie and asked her if we could just do something at home (which, of course, included her cooking) and if we could just have a small thing at the apartment.  :-)  So, that's what we did :-)

Soup, soup, lovely Thanksgiving soup!  Here she is slaving away in my tiny kitchen. . .

. . .while the rest of us did nothing.  :-)

But then it was time to eat!!  Yummy chicken, mushroom, and potato soup and lovely garlic bread :-)  Fantastic :-)

Me, happy as a clam.  :-)  Thanks to my Korea family :-)

And it ended up being a really wonderful night of just hanging out and getting ridiculously stuffed.  Just like Thanksgivings are supposed to be!!


And, here's a preview for Christmas!

Happy Thanksgiving!!  :-)


Tuesday, November 23, 2010

Lines+Lines+More Lines+Dancing=Seoul! :-)

Seoul, Seoul, Seoul :-)

In keeping with our usual style, Lindie and I decided to go to Seoul at the last minute and without any expectations--things always tend to go better that way.  Let's just go and see.  Dave went as well, and he has been to Seoul a couple of times so he became the official tour guide (a job that proved to be a little more stressful this time, since it was a weekend. . .and we had made no plans. . .at all)  Albert went as well, and the brand new YES teacher in our building decided to brave a weekend away with us as well.  Jackie had been here four or five days before we took her half way across the country, so, she's a brave soul :-)

We met up at about 10ish am on Saturday morning, headed to a taxi (or rather two, since taxis really don't want to take five people at once) and set off to find the newest branch of the KTX.

The KTX is a high (very high) speed train that spans the country.  Until last week or so, the closest KTX station to us was in Busan, but they just opened one in Ulsan and it's about a ten or fifteen minute cab ride from us.  It's really just barely open, and still very much under construction, but it is a way to make a six and a half hour bus ride into a two and a half hour cruise.  :-)


Say hello to Jackie!

Albert, Jackie and I all shared a cab, Lindie and Dave were in the other, and our drivers were literally racing each other.  Good times.
 The only problem with not having any sort of plan and it being a Saturday morning and it being a brand new thing was that the trains were sold out until the middle of the afternoon.  After painstakingly deciding whether it would be better to go to the bus station and start the six hour ride or wait here and take the KTX we decided to wait.  It was about 11 and our train left at 2:20, so it was time to wait.

Waiting.

But look who got to come along!!!  :-)

Then we moved inside to wait. 

And wait.

And wait some more. :-)

But then we FINALLY made it to the platform!!!!  Soooo exciting!


We ended up having to spring for first class in order to get seats at all.  Which was nice, lots of leg room and very comfy seats.

This woman very nearly fell asleep on Albert many times.  It was pretty entertaining. 

We even got to watch a movie!  Well, four mini Korean movies.  But it was pretty fun to make up what they were saying. 

This is a pictures in the glass. . .Ghost Lindie.

This is where Lindie and I moved to the next evolution of the "kill shot" game.  This is when it was just a bummer to be shown the "kill shot"  later it would become deadly to see it. 

Eventually, it became like the punch bug game, but very quickly moved from being a friendly game to serious business.  We both came home so badly bruised we decided to make it just a weekend game.  :-)  That's what happens when you have to wait in too many lines.

We finally arrived!  And the first thing we hear is a Mexican band playing.  How random is that??

This is the Seoul terminal.  The Ulsan terminal was nice but it didn't have restaurants and shops everywhere!

We decided that it was time to eat.  Bennigan's, good old home food.
By the time we finished dinner it was about time to try and find a hotel.  We didn't think that it would be the literal hardest thing we've done since we got here, but turns out, it basically was.  We walked up and down the street, asking every other foreigner "do you know where we could find a hotel??"  They all told us that we should be able to find one just a little further down, just a little further down, for about an hour or so.  Then, we decided that it was time to try to cab it.  No one would take all of us so Dave and I got in one and Jackie,  Albert and Lindie were in the other.  Dave's and my cab driver was lame and acted like we were the biggest inconveniences ever, even though we were paying him to just drive around and find a hotel.  The other driver was making fun of our driver.  We called everyone, even city hall, to try to find a place to stay, and eventually ended up at an expensive place that didn't have much for us but at least had beds for everyone.  Which was awesome.  So, after the unbelievable effort to find a hotel, we finally got to put our stuff down and we headed out again to explore the crazy Seoul night life.



Lindie and Albert, post line, post bus, post hotel drama, we were all a little shell shocked at this point.


Where's Lindie??  :)

Crowded place.  We decided not to stay long.

We decided not to stay out too long because we were weary from our long journey, so after seeing a little bit more of the overwhelming street shopping, crazy foreigners, and representations of almost every country and culture you can imagine there in street carts and the restaurants.

The next morning I woke up early, and so did Jackie, so we went off and got some coffee and started to explore the neighborhood.

It looked a lot different in the light of day.  Also, it seemed a lot less scary to explore the side streets.  We found everything there!  There were a lot of Korean souvenirs, a lot of Arabic shops, and restaurants from all over the world, including a really, really lovely one that had delicious hummus, falafel, and pita.  Yummmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm, I really missed that!

It was awesome and a good place to do some bargaining.

So much to see.  I'm sorry I didn't take more pictures of just the streets. . .I really should have, but I left my camera in the hotel room that morning because I'm a dork.

So, after a day of exploring, riding the endless subways, and lines, lines, lines we went back to the KTX to get our tickets for the way home.  It was four-ish and we were hoping that we would be able to get tickets home more easily than the way there since we weren't planning on leaving right away, buuuuuuuuuut a lot of things were sold out. . .so we ended up paying the same that we paid for our first class tickets for standing tickets. . .lame right?   So we bought tickets to leave at 8 and Dave, Lindie and I left for Seoul  Tower.  From the top of Seoul Tower you can see the whole city along with most of the rest of the world...or something like that.  It was really beautiful but it was hilarious too because it was yet another section of line city.  :-)

In the first line I decided to take pictures of this new part of Seoul.  Nice right?





The trees sure were pretty.

Some men behind us thought we were interesting so they started to talk to us about random stuff, asking what we knew in Korean and then make fun of us :-)  la la laaaaa

Lines with Lindie

To get the tower you had to take a cable car.  I don't know if I've ever been on a cable car, but I KNOW I've never been on one as crowded as this one!

By the time we got to the car it was dark.  See?  :-)

This is out of the first level.  Pretty city, right?  A little hazy, but pretty.

If you paid more money you could take an elevator up even higher!  So, we thought we needed to do that. . .

We made it to the first level :-)  Then we had to climb about six million stairs.  Literally.

We made it, and were rewarded by this pretty little pagoda. 

Isn't it pretty?  There was a whole little town up there, restaurants and everything.  It was nice.  Then we got into another line to get on the elevator to get the the very, very top.

Pretty cool, right??

You could see everything from here :-)




Seoul.


At this point we were 6,872 miles away from NY.  That's not too bad. . .





:-)

These were Christmas trees that were made of locks.  Two locks locked together to be more exact.  It was a couple thing, apparently, you lock your locks together with a note and then you leave them at the top of Seoul Tower and then you'll be in love forever.  :-)

See?  Locks of every shape and size :-)
Lindie, being Lindie, decided that a digital camera was not the best way to go and got herself a lovely Polaroid.  Which turned out to be a really cool idea, so I thought I would share some of the shots.  :-)

First three.  Jackie on her, I think, second day, Albert, and my SC bear :-)

On the train ride home.  Let me just explain a little about that.  Two and a half hours home and we had standing tickets.  We were told that if there was an available seat that we could sit in it until the ticket holder got there, so we made Dave sit in the seat and Lindie and I stood in the squished hallway between the bathrooms, which was the only space at the time.  It turns out to be a really awesome time, we just shared my headphones and danced for two hours entertaining everyone.  That's the picture with the peace sign and the headphones. . .dancing near the bathrooms :-)  good times, actually.  Then Lindie posed in the hallway (to give you an idea of the space we had) and the other one, that's the kill shot, that's when we actually got seats for the last half hour.  It was a fun trip home :-)

Our hotel room.  :)



Polaroids are awesome.  Great idea, Lindie!!

So, then we were home.  I think we might go back in a couple of weeks to catch some of the things that we didn't see this time because we were waiting in line or looking for a hotel.  :-)
All around pretty awesome weekend :-)