In the end, all you take with you is your story.

-Australia-

4.05.2010

Dye, Not Die

Students in Korea who attend Hagwons, or private academies, are given English names, much like the names we (Americans) received in Spanish or German class. In an attempt to learn some of my students' English names, I have been asking them to write their English names along with their Korean names on their papers. I was walking around today looking at their names and I noticed one little boy wrote 'Atom'. I am sure he meant 'Adam', but I give him mad credit for phonetically trying to sound out the word. Too cute.

I found a PowerPoint presentation about Easter to show some of my students last week. There was a page about dying Easter eggs. In every single class students starting pretending like they were choking themselves, shooting their neighbor, falling over in their chairs, essentially 'dying' at the mention of the word "dye". This spurred a short impromptu lesson about homophones.

Sean and I tried a little Korean noodles place by my apartment for lunch on Saturday. The noodles were served in a big bowl as a kind of soup with broth and clams. They had some of the best mandu (dumplings) that I have had here. It was messy, but delicious!


a staple in a Korean diet, kimchi


Korean noodles and clams


in Korea it's ok to slurp your noodles!

Saturday night I met some friends for a pillow fight in Seoul. Apparently there are pillow fights in different cities across the world that all take place on April 3. Kind of cool that I took part in one of them. I was a little skeptical of people actually showing up, one, and two, actually fighting with pillows. But alas, as you can see from the pictures below, it happened. It was fun watching all these foreigners (and some Koreans) beat each other with pillows until the feathers came out. After everyone had exhausted their pillows and we had exhausted a batch of Jello-shots, a few of us headed to a BBQ place for dinner. Afterwards we hit up some random carnival games and hookah in Gangnam. I surprised myself at the shooting game by hitting almost every single target. Sean says it's because I'm American and we supposedly 'love our guns', but I just think I'm that good! ^ ^


pillow fight!


BBQ and Jello shots

I hope that everyone had a wonderful and blessed Easter holiday. As I have mentioned time and time again, it is always difficult being away from family and friends on holidays. I really missed my family celebration this year. It also made me miss my grandfather thinking about how he used to put old coins in some of our eggs during our egg hunt. Because I couldn't spend the holiday with my real family, I spent it with my Bundang family. Sean, Sara, Aly, and I woke up super early on Sunday morning to catch what we thought was an English Easter service. It turned out to be solely in Korean, but we got a bit of translation using head-sets. The service was held at Suwon World Cup Stadium. I couldn't believe how many people were there and what a huge ordeal they made out of the Easter service. There were all kinds of performers and singers including a crazy tae-kwon-do group, a saxophonist, and various children's praise groups. The best part was that they actually got a Korean pop group, U-KISS, to perform at the service. We got to see a free K-pop show! (Well two songs.) Check out their website here: http://www.u-kiss.co.kr/


performance at the Easter service


U-KISS


Easter din din

After the service, Sara, Aly, and I went shopping for Easter dinner. Jen and Becca joined us at Sara's place and we all cooked and prepared our meal together. It was so yummy. We had roast chicken, veggies, garlic bread, two kinds of mashed potatoes, alfredo pasta, and of course, wine. We sat on Sara's floor like an indoor picnic and enjoyed our little feast. After dinner we walked to Cold Stone for dessert and finished off the night with some Sex and the City and girl chat. Overall a fabulous Easter Sunday.

“Maybe mistakes are what make our fate... without them what would shape our lives? Maybe if we had never veered off course we wouldn't fall in love, have babies, or be who we are. After all, things change. So do cities. People come into your life and they go. But it's comforting to know that the ones you love are always in your heart... and if you're very lucky, a plane ride away.”

-Carrie Bradshaw, Sex and the City


Namaste

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