Halloween

So for Halloween this year, our school decided to celebrate it! They encouraged all of us to wear costumes and hand out candies to the students. We're also encouraged to do fun activities with the younger students in lieu of a regular class.

I really enjoy these celebrations and any time I can get out of teaching a regular class and have fun instead. However, it does mess up with our strict schedule of getting workbook pages done so that means the next class, we'll have to condense it and include all the things we missed before. Still, I think the good outweighs the bad.

Neil and I decided to dress up, him as a devil-vampire and me as a witch. Finding a costume here in Korea is not that easy and with what little time we had, we did the best we could ;P I youtubed some really dark makeup I could do to go with my costume and I think it turned out pretty good. I looked a bit scary but not too ugly. Some students were surprised with my dark makeup and a teacher thought it was more a club look lol. Thanks Kelly. Neil's costume got a look of attention because he wore a short sleeved shirt that showed off his tattoo and he did a dark eye liner around his eyes to look more devilish. Plus the mask he got already made him scary. It was great! 

The school went all out and gave us all a jack-o-lantern bucket to put candies in and gave us a bunch of candies to give to the kids. Some of us decided to supplement these candies as well - which turned out to be an ingenious idea because the school ran out of candies after the first three classes and we were all scrambling to find candies to give to the kids! A lot of the middle school students didn't get the handful of candies. I think they would've benefited more since those students seem to lack more energy than the younger ones anyways.

I really wanted to take pictures but was so busy that I could only get a few in. I'm hoping to get some from other teachers. It was a fun day but absolutely exhausting! We were both beat and couldn't wait to rest. Since all the teachers were bombarded by students asking for candies we barely had time to sit between classes.

Seoul Anniversary Getaway

For our anniversary, Neil booked us a quick weekend trip to Seoul. He had an itinerary planned out and wanted to surprise me the night before but because we weren't sure if we could go (a seminar was scheduled for all teachers that weekend) he had to tell me early. Luckily the seminar was cancelled. Phew!

We got up early and made our way to the U-Square terminal. The bus runs every 10 minutes so we didn't have to book ahead, plus there's nothing special going on that weekend for everybody except us. 

This time, we stayed in a place in Itaewon. It's a place full of foreigners indeed. It actually looks a bit sketchy to me. So many side-street stands and very busy. It's not as clean as I thought it would be, and things were super busy everywhere. One thing I disliked were the non-existent sidewalks. You need to walk on the street with the cars. It's rather scary.

After we checked in, we went out to look for some food. We came upon a very BC-themed restaurant. I even got to order a caesar! Neil had his fish and chips (which were okay). Next we set out to our next attraction: the Aquarium at Building 63.

They had penguins! It was nice, but a bit strange because rather than look like their normal habitat, there's some spongebob squarepants decorations in the tanks with some of the animals. It's been a while since I've been to the aquarium. Neil thought it was only okay. We did see some kind of underwater performance. After that we set out to our main attraction this weekend: Namsam tower via cable cars.

Another surprise from Neil included an inscribed purple lock with our names and anniversary date. I don't know how he got it, but I loved it! After the cab driver knew where we were going, he kept trying to tell us it's better to take the bus next time because it's super busy there. He was right, the line up was very very long! We waited at least 1.5 hours to take that 7-minute cable car to the top of Namsan. It was something we had to experience, but next time I'd rather walk. After walking around and taking pictures and finally putting our lock on the fence, we decided to walk down instead of taking the cable car (huge lineup again!) The walk maybe took half an hour and it was a nice night and I had awesome company. After we got down, we hailed a taxi to head back to Itaewon for dinner.

After walking around, we decided on restaurant that serves steak and a self-serve appies bar. Both Neil and I had our own steak and it was sooooooo yummy. We have not had steak in Korea much because it's super expensive so that dinner was one of the best we've had! Since neither of us are really into partying, we decided to call it a night and head back. Unfortunately because the walls are paper thin and we're situated right by the entrance, I heard people talking all night long and coming in and out. I could not sleep a wink :( I don't think we'll stay there again - I'm too much of a light sleeper.

The next day, we walked around to see if there's anything we need before heading back to Gwangju. Perhaps something we could only find in Seoul, but we didn't. 

The weekend trip was short but it was absolutely wonderful! We had a really nice time doing the things we set out to do. I can't wait to go back to see even more stuff. And I can't wait to celebrate with Neil again in another year! <3 

Ella's Wedding - First Korean Wedding

On October 18th, we were invited to one of our Korean co-worker's wedding. It was our first wedding and I was really excited! The wedding took place at a church and it was a mass ceremony. It's a shame everything was in Korean so we just sat there looking and trying to decipher what is happening. After the ceremony we took pictures with the bride and groom.

With Korean weddings, people usually give money in lieu of gifts for the couple. When we gave our envelope 'gift' we received tickets for the meal later. The meal turns out to be a buffet and you can sit anywhere you like. Quite a few of our co-workers were also there so we chatted and ate with them. It was an interesting experience and I can't wait to go to more!

After the wedding, Neil and I headed to Home Plus to check out their foreign goods. We spent almost two hours at the store and bought a lot of stuff. It was like Christmas! 

Yangdong Market and Dog Cafe

During the week we had one day off on Wednesday so I decided to meet up with Lily to check out Yangdong market. I wanted to find some cloths to make some pillow cases and some yarn for knitting. Yangdong market is an outdoor/indoor market that sells a lot of fresh produce and seafood and meat. It reminds me of the "see cheurn" (markets) in China. It was really big and a lot of the food looked the same. However, it felt like these places are meant for vendors because all the food you can buy are in really big quantities. I didn't find any cloth I needed but I did find some yarn.

After walking around Lily and I walked from there to downtown along the river. It was a nice and pleasant enough walk and it didn't take long. We did a bit of shopping in H&M and I got a polka dot dress and a zip up hoodie. We also went to Innisfree and got some hand creams and Skin Food for some cleanser. There was a parade downtown so we went to see it for a bit while waiting for our coworkers Tyler and Rosa to join us. Neil wanted to work on his surprise for our anniversary and he didn't join us. When they came, we decided to grab some food before heading to the puppy cafe. A place where puppies are running around that you can play with.

We headed to Oh My Burrito! and enjoyed some Mexican food. We bumped into another co-worker Steve and joined us as well. While waiting to get into the restaurant, I popped into Tony Moly and got their egg blackhead cleanser which I wanted to try for a long time. I also got a membership card :) 

After eating, we made our way to the puppy cafe. It was two stories and most drinks cost about $4-$ each. The whole concept of it was pretty cool but it doesn't seem like any of the puppies were properly trained because the place smelled like dog pee. I think they do try to mask it but you can still smell it. It doesn't seem like the puppies were mistreated but I can't get past the smell, I'm a bit sensitive to smells. I'm not sure I'd got back again to be quite honest.

Gwangju Kimchi Festival

In October, I convinced Neil to go to the Kimchi Festival in Gwangju. He's not exactly a fan of kimchi at all, so needless to say this was as appealing to him as picking up dog poop for complete strangers. We were going to take a bus there but it was a bit complicated ad we were running late so we grabbed a taxi instead. The ride was about $5 and took us like 15 minutes to get there. It's amazing how inexpensive taxi rides are here. It's awesome. 

When we got there, it was super busy! I wanted to try all the different kimichis and there was a row of tents that lets you sample it. Some were spicy, some were sweet-ish and some were pretty sour. It's pretty yummy. But unfortunately nothing really stood out for me. And I can't buy that much kimchi since I'm the only one that will eat it.

Neil got stopped by some university students to ask him some questions about Japanese and Korean food and then took a picture with us. Next to the highlight of the festival, I paid a few bucks and made my own kimchi and put it in a super cute container! Once I am done this kimchi I can use the container to put rice or something. 

There was a lot of mascots at the kimchi festival, they were mascots of vegetables used in kimchi making.