Monday, May 28, 2007

Buddha's Birthday, the Korean Concert, Our first Noraebang and the Ball Game.




Well, it has been another great week in Korea!

Below is the low-down of our past few, exhilarating days in Korea. It is pretty detailed, so prepare your eyes, grab a bowl of popcorn and enjoy the next seven-to-nine minutes...

Thursday was a holiday, as it was Buddha's Birthday, so we all had the day off! Leah, Andy, Ian and I decided to take advantage and hike one of our lovely nearby mountains. Unfortunately, the day started out dreary, but we headed up the mountain, prepared for our adventure. We initially climbed to a Buddhist Temple and stopped in for a visit, then proceeded to climb to the top of the mountain. For anyone who knows me relatively well, you know I am not 'the hiking type.' With all my allergies and asthma, you are more likely to find me playing tennis or any building with a wooden floor, tap shoes in hand. Regardless, Ian and I were really proud of ourselves for making it up to the top in less than a few hours time, as we aren't as experienced as Leah and Andy. Once we topped the mountain, we found a semi-comfortable area to pull out some chicken sandwiches. We had ourselves a quaint little picnic but had to make it quick as the rain started to sprinkle.

Since the rest of Thursday consisted of rainy-day activities, Leah, Andy, Ian and I decided it would be a perfect opportunity to head to the movie theater in Nowon.
(Interesting sidebar about Korea: the brand name "Lotte" is everywhere. There are Lotte grocery stores, food, name brand department stores (with Mac, Clinique, Guess- you name it), the Lotte baseball team (the Yankees of Korea... more about that later) and even Lotte Movie Theatres. So if you feel like 'fighting the man' and refusing to go to anything Lotte in Korea- good luck.)
We ended up watching Pirates of the Caribbean 3: At World's End at 12:30am on Friday morning (Thursday night.) It was opening day and it was playing in 5 of the 9 theaters! We all thought it was a much better film than the sequel and and recommend it to everyone!

Since Friday was a holiday for the kids too, by the time they got to Plus Academy, they were bouncing off the walls. Needless to say, Friday felt worse than a Monday. By the time Friday night rolled around, all of the Plus teachers were relatively beat. Friday evening turned out to be a very chilled out night. Ian and I decided on staying in and drank some Soju (brewed locally), beer and champagne while striking up some fierce competitions during War and Scrabble. It was a quality evening to say the least! Definitely nice to have a quiet night, though.

That brings us to Saturday. Ian and I headed to Myeongdong (where I was pick pocketed last week) to check out the Catholic Cathedral. (Mom, Dad, Nanny: Are you proud?!) The cathedral is substantially old as it was built in the 1800's and quite beautiful. Parts of the outside are currently being restored, so Ian and I wandered into the church to see what waited before us. The church is built on the shape of a cross, so it has 4 very long hallways and these hallways are lined with Plasma screen televisions, which Ian and I thought was hysterical! There also just so happened to be a wedding taking place during our time in the church, so that was quite neat to see!

After our cathedral visitation, Ian and I quickly headed home to meet Leah, Andy and some of the Korean teachers from Plus Academy for dinner before going to a Traditional Korean Concert. The dinner was fantastic and the menu at the "Family Garden" offered an incredible variety, as the restaurant offered a fusion of Japanese, Korean and Western food. I had something that resembled a perogie pizza, (Think "Boston Pizza's Perogie Pizza, back home. Ash and Ornob, you know what I am talking about!!!) Ian got Pad Thai, Andy got the salami pizza and Leah got the duck! From there, we headed to the Nowon-Gu Art and Cultural Center to watch Korean women play their traditional instruments. The instruments are traditionally played by only women and this concert was a new age way of playing the these beautiful instruments.

The concert was wonderful and the women finished off with 2 Beatles songs; "Let it Be" and "O- bla-di, O-bla-da". The Korean B-Boy break dancers also made an appearance, and they were awesome to see live. (Check out the pictures, links on bottom of post.)

After Joy (one of the Korean teachers) got her CD autographed, we headed to the GS to have a few drinks. After a few hours there, Leah, Andy, Ian and I headed back to our apartment where we played some drinking games (Leah and I dominated almost every round) and decided at 3:30am to go to the Noraebang (Singing Room) that is close to our apartment. After 2 and a half hours of singing karaoke, we headed home at 6am to get some sleep before the afternoon's baseball game at Jamsil Sports Complex.

It took about an hour of bus and subway riding to get to the 2pm baseball game, but when we did it was worth it! The game was a blast, although it was so hot out, so we were all sweating like crazy! Two of the substitute teachers at our school, B-Rod and Tina met us for the game and it was a great time consisting of hating on the Lotte team, devouring Dippin' Dots (the best ice ream ever, hell yeah!) and stealing the baseball cheerleaders arm movements.

All in all, it was a great weekend!

We'll post some more brilliant info this week regarding our daily lives here in So-Ko, as well as more of our day-to-day school life.

Hope all is well, wherever you happen to be reading this from!
Cheers!

Links:
Pictures:
and
Videos from the Traditional Korean Concert:
Video from the Baseball Game:
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