A Wandering Soul Outside of Seoul: All You Need to Remember is Pizza and Fries

A couple weeks ago I had another public school training course and on our last day we went on a field trip to Icheon, an area popular in Korea for traditional Korean pottery. We visited a pottery studio for the day. First we were shown a video about how to make pottery (in Korean). Next, we were given a tour (again, in Korean) of the studio and shown some of the finished products. They then showed us how to use the pottery wheel (you guessed it, in Korean). We were taken to a studio to make our own clay pinch pots. During our arts and crafts time I had the chance to learn how to use the wheel and practice with some clay. The Korean pottery that we saw in Icheon was really intricate and beautiful. Some pieces ranged from small tea sets to gigantic pots that were almost as tall as me. The colors were really peaceful jade greens, blues, and soft browns. I was impressed at the amount of time and craftsmanship that go into making a piece of art like that. After finishing up with the pottery studio and browsing some gift shops, we ate lunch at a traditional Korean restaurant. Not a bad way to spend a paid day away from school.

pottery studio in Icheon

Korean pottery

using the pottery wheel

pouring some makkoli at lunch

Last week as I mentioned, I took over the after school English classes. I had 5 extra classes a day to teach in a small cold room after school. It was draining on top of all my other work, but the students were really adorable and their English levels were high, so we had some fun while pushing through their required curriculum.

cute kiddos in the after school English class

Check out a video of these little darlings: http://www.facebook.com/video/video.php?v=10100124321410759&subj=6804238

Christmas Eve some friends and I decided to go and see the Nutcracker ballet in Seongnam-gu (the city I live in) at the Arts Center here. It was a Russian ballet and was beautifully done. After the ballet we enjoyed a Mexican dinner for Christmas Eve and had a drink at the local bar before calling it a night. It was a lovely way to spend Christmas Eve away from home.

the Nutcracker ballet in Seongnam

ladies at the ballet

Merry Christmas Eve

My friend Sam and her friend Lucas came all the way up from Seosan (about 2.5 hours away) for the show so they stayed with me for the night. I had to get up at 5:30A.M. for my ski trip the next morning and I was looking forward to a good rest when I got home. As soon as we walked in the door around 12:45A.M. there was a terrible eye-watering, lung filling smell in my apartment. I had never smelled anything like it and it really freaked me out. We spent the better part of the night trying to figure out where it was coming from. We turned off my gas, opened the windows and doors, and decided to see what would happen. Around 1:30A.M. the smell was not any better, so Lucas went down to see if there was someone in my building office he could talk to. He came up after having talked to a security guard in broken Korean (or Konglish= Korean + English), and we thought that he had called someone to come and check it out. An hour later and no one to help, we decided to go to bed with the window open. A few minutes later the smell grew even worse and I went out in my hallway for some air. I saw my neighbor’s door open and decided to peek in only to find them trying to put out an electric fire from their heating pad that was now burning through their mattress with water. The entire room was filled with smoke and I now knew where the awful chemical smell was coming from. Lucas tried to convince them in Korean to take it outside, but they would not listen. Finally I went to bed with the covers over my face in hopes of getting a couple hours of sleep and we heard them taking the mattress out through the hallway a little while later. I cannot believe how idiotic you have to be to keep an electrical device like that plugged in for so long. Lord knows how many hours they were gone and what would have happened if they had not come home when they did. They could have burned down our entire apartment building. Definitely a Christmas Eve to remember.

I was a little cranky the next morning getting up so early to head into Seoul to catch the bus for our ski trip. The first day I fell a lot, but the second day was much better and I did not fall at all. I only stayed on the bunny hills, but was proud to have basically taught myself how to ski with a little help and some pointers. Christmas dinner was accompanied by lots of soju and was followed by a small gag gift exchange at a noraebang. We drank and sang away the rest of the night. Saturday night we went to check out a casino near the ski resort. I had no idea until that night, but Korean people are not allowed to step foot into any other casino in the country except this one. The reason being that this is the only casino in Korea that does not serve alcohol. I have mentioned Korean drinking culture before and they are a people who easily become addicted to things like alcohol and gambling. We all know that when you mix the two it can be bad, so the Korean government has banned Korean people from entering any casino with alcohol. The result of this was a casino jam packed with Koreans sipping free juice and gambling away their lives. These people were nuts. Some had cigarette packs or coats on chairs of slot machines they were using and if you went anywhere near it they would push you out of their seat and yell at you in Korean that it was ‘their’ machine. The tables were surrounded by people playing three deep because there weren’t enough seats and so many wanted to play. The most annoying and interesting casino experience of my life. Sunday traffic was really bad and it began to snow as we got closer to Seoul. What was supposed to be a 2.5 hour ride ended up taking us 7 hours. Korean people are really poor drivers with normal road conditions and it was chaos with some snow added to the mix. By the looks of things on the road you would have thought it was blizzard conditions outside, but there were only a few measly inches of powder. People were stuck, going backwards, outside on the highway pushing their cars. It was quite a sight. Once we got back to Itaewon we enjoyed a delicious last meal together and then headed home. It was a fantastic weekend with new friends, ski slopes, soju, noraebang, numerous GS 25 stops, Disney references, You Tube videos, casinos, and lots of laughs.