Recapitulate

Monday 11/22
A normal day of work followed by delicious grub with my coteachers and Brian. It was called 삼계탕 or "samgyetang". It's a Korean soup served in a warm stone bowl with a whole chicken in it. It was probably one of the most delicious soups I've had since being in Korean, but to be honest that's not a hard title to win... the school soups are generally atrocious.

Tuesday 11/23
Went to a movie with a coteacher and some of the fourth grade teachers and the music teacher. I had a good time hanging out, but the movie was relatively bad. Also, it didn't help that it was a Spanish movie with Korean subtitles. That being said, I don't feel as though I missed any amazing dialogue. This review makes the movie sound fantastic- please do not let it fool you. I felt like the director or artistic director took a semester long course in the "Artistry of Film" and made a checklist out of the notes he took. After the course finished he decided to make a movie about Bach and ticked his checkboxes one-by-one as the movie was filmed; "long flowing shots followed by a 20 second freezeframe... check. Self-playing piano... check. Dancing horse... check. Naked woman taking a shower... check. And last but not least [and the only saving grace] truck driver sitting in the passenger seat playing Bach on the harmonica... check." You no longer need to see the movie, instead- put in a Bach CD, close your eyes, and picture the afore mentioned.
Anyways... the theater was awesome- though unheated- there are pictures floating around somewhere on my coteacher's camera. I'll acquire them.

Wednesday 11/24
The fourth grade teachers, whom I love and adore, decided to cook kimchi pancakes in the teacher's room during the afternoon. I was there and willing to help, though took a supervisory role as I realized I didn't know how to help... that means I sat back and watched. We invited a bunch of other teachers to come and eat and drink with us; it was great! Afterwards some of us decided to go bowling! Seven of us loaded up in two cars and proceeded to go across town to a bowling alley. We rented two lanes and played one game just for fun- what I didn't know was that the first game was played to determine team makeup. Teams were split so that the team of three had the 1st, 4th, and 5th best and the team of four had the 2nd, 3rd, 6th, and 7th scorers. Having scored 3rd, I was on the team of four. As a preface... noone in the initial game scored over 110, with the lowest score being around 30 (her first time bowling, ever, seriously).
The 1st place player, a 4th grade teacher by the name of Park, opened up with a strike... followed by four consecutives strikes during his next turns. It was unbelievable! By the 5th frame he had already beaten his top score of the last game, and I was sitting at a lowly 30. I felt the pressure and I knew I had to impress my Korean entourage so I channeled by bowling chi and scored three strikes in a row! Little did I know this would be the only turkey I would see this Thanksgiving season. Needless to say, our team of four just barely managed to win. Park scored a 204!!! Next was Sonny with a 133, me with a 132, and the numbers just get lower from there.
Afterwards we all went out for takalbi which was DELICIOUS. I love that stuff.
Three teachers left, including my coteacher, so there was just four of us. When my coteacher left she said "go with them" and she was smiling about it, I'm fairly certain it was because she knew what lay in store for me. Turns out that we were going to eat a second round (Koreans can seriously put it down). I don't know how to say this... but I ate korean barbecued pig intestine- not the normal looking kind that just looks like a long sausage, but little bits of it. I can't even find a picture online to show you. I'll have to make that a mission.
This was a fantastic day! I finally got to hang out with teachers outside of the school environment and we had a blast! Apparently they felt sad that it didn't happen sooner and they are pretty eager to make it happen again, next time we'll be going for 삼겹살!

Thursday 11/25

Friday 11/26

Saturday 11/27

Slack

A lot has happened in the past several weeks and perhaps I'll mention most of it here.

I went hiking two weekends ago! It was so much fun although incredibly tiring. Korean mountains just go straight up, there are no switchbacks like you see on US trails- they opt for ropes tied to tree as extra balance for the really steep parts rather than zig-zag trails. One of my co-teachers took a few pictures; I plan on stealing them from her at some point.

Brian and I have established contact with two Korean English Teachers that we met whilst Noraebanging with friends on Halloween. We met them for dinner the day after the norae experience- I was so hung over I couldn't even touch the food (first somaek experience)... not the best first impression. Luckily, they stuck around and we're now meeting them once a week for language exchange. Learning Korean is super fun!

Today, 11/11, was Paepaero day. Look it up.

I'll add more later, I'm super tired... experiencing my first cold in Korea ("that's too bad") and I also kind of lost my voice... which made teaching English a difficult task today. Luckily my goal for most classes is to get the students to speak WAY more than I do, so it could have been worse had I failed goal.