2 Month Mark

Long time no blog! I am 2 months in now. The fall weather is here! Korea is gorgeous during the fall season, although I am not too happy about this cold front coming in. Burrrrrr!

In Korea, they don’t have heaters, only heated floors. Heated floors can be REALLY nice actually, but unfortunately for me the heated floor in my apartment seems to take FOREEVVVEERRR to heat up. Luckily for me, my relatives here got me a heated bed mattress. I crank that sucker up at night and I am good to go!

This weekend on Saturday we are having Father’s Open Class Day. It is a day where the dads come in and sit in on your classroom to watch a “real” class, when in reality it is a bunch of lessons we had been practicing for 3 weeks to make sure it is done perfectly on the open day. I was not here in Korea yet when they had Mom’s open class day. Supposedly preparation for that was A LOT more stressful. The parents put a lot of pressure on the teachers to make sure their child is doing well and sometimes that can be hard to show when they have a child who is not on the level as everyone else in the classroom. This week we will just be practicing the lessons more and making sure the school looks presentable. It will be interesting to meet all the fathers of my students! We went around the room to ask what each of their dad’s did. I have 5 dads who are “businessmen”, one pilot, one lawyer, one English teacher, one dentist, and one boss (haha yes, one of my students said “My dad is a boss.”) The kids love to ask me what my dad does because I just say “He is a computer man.” And they all start cracking up hysterically. I guess computer man sounds funny to them, but it was the easiest way to say it for seven year olds!
I feel like I am in the swing of things now. The only things I still feel hesitant about are the subways and the buses. The subways seem pretty easy, but I still feel like I feel more comfortable when I am with someone else who knows what they are doing. As for the buses, I am not sure if I will ever be able to truly figure them out!

This weekend some friends and I went with a tourism company called Adventure Korea. We went to a Ginseng festival. Ginseng is a root from a plant which is supposed to be very healthy for you. The Koreans love it here and make drinks and food out of it. We got to shave our own root and then make Ginseng wine out of it! Then we went to a traditional Korean village which was my favorite part. We got to stay in an actual Korean village and sleep in a traditional room with the heated floors and had to sleep on the floor. The next morning, they took us to the most beautiful hike I have ever been on (even though this was only my second one). It was a 4 HOUR hike—about 2 and ½ hours up and 1 and ½ hours down! After lots of swear words and jello legs, we did it! The view was amaaaaazing going up as well as at the very top! There were waterfalls on the way up as well as a Korean temple we visited. Here are a few pictures from the trip:

2 1/2 hours later...at the top of the mountain!

The little Korean village we stayed at

My friends and I posing with the ginseng root mascot

My very own ginseng root I harvested myself!

A field full of ginseng...