Every Thursday Danielle and I have been going to the temple to teach English. Up until last week we were teaching two girls, both about 25. One of them Eun- Chil was getting pretty good at English and worked really hard but since she has now been in South Korea for about 5 months the government was giving her an apartment and so she was leaving the temple. Now we only have one student, Eun- Hee who has a much lower English level. It makes teaching her a little more difficult since neither Danielle or I knows much Korean that would be useful in that situation. She has a great attitude and is fun to spend time with though. After we have our lesson we have lunch with some of the monks. This last Thursday was the day of the big test that seniors take. This test seems to be pretty much the culmination of years of studying and attending academies and it seems that their entire futures rests on their scores. It will effect not only what college they get into but also what job they will be able to get after college. Students who do not get a good enough score will take the next year off and do nothing but study for it. When the test is happening school is delayed for elementary and middle schools so that there isn't a lot of traffic on the roads and airplanes are diverted so that there isn't a lot of noise distracting the test takers. At the temple it was the final day of what had been 100 days of praying for many mothers. Some had even been praying for the entire year. Unfortunately,  we could only see the praying on the CCTV in the house where we have lunch as the temple was completely full with mothers. I can't not imagine the pressure of knowing that your mother was spending every day at the temple, or church praying for your test scores. One student was caught using a bluetooth to cheat on the test and I can only imagine how harsh his parents are going to be on him.
We have been in our new branch for the last couple of weeks and I am getting used to it. It is not a great location but since I only have 3 more months I am not getting too worked up over anything. Yesterday Danielle and I went on what ended up being a fairly rigorous hike behind our apartment to see Seuk Bo Sa temple (it means Rock Buddha temple). It was well worth the near vertical climb to get there as there are beautiful Buddha's carved into the rock face of the mountain behind the temple. The weather was gorgeous and we caught the very end of fall foliage. There will be pictures to come. Its just beginning to get cooler but there weather has been very nice. I am hoping that continues as I will be taking my vacation next weekend when Aaron, Sarah and Pete visit! I am very excited to see them and to spend some time not working! We will spend most of our time in Seoul and then visit Aaron's family...somewhere (I don't ever seem to be able to remember what the town/city is called where they live). It will be great to have a break from work and really get to see more of Seoul. When I get back it will be the start of my last term and I will pretty much be focused on saving money and planning my travels with Danielle! I can't believe its already been almost 9 months but I am definitely getting very excited to do some traveling!

Halloween!

Amy Winehouse, a hippie (cheapest costume ever because I could just wear my own clothing) and the 99%

Cactopus

One of my students (the really cute Jenny which has been featured on this blog many times) thought that a cactus was called a cactopus. It was adorable. Anyway, this weekend I finally made it down to the Jalgachi fish market. Pretty amazing place, particularly as Koreans eat all the weird seafood you can think of and unlike the only other fish market (Sydney) that I have been to, Koreans wont stand for any sanitary organized shit. They just stick it all right out there in bins and scream at you to buy it. All this fish is sold by adjumas (the grumpy middle age/old ladies that shove you around). Definitely a lot of very unappetizing fish (some fish just do not look like they should be eaten) and some very appetizing fish.

So these were still thrashing around and alive but later on we saw some that had been cooked and looked delicious

Very sassy with all of her shell fish that I did not recognize

They were quite good at displaying their wares

I just really don't see the appeal

These had teeth that look like they could kill you

Yum

Stingray

Not delicious looking but fairly picturesque

Pete were these the knives you wanted? Cause I didn't get you one

No matter how many restaurants I pass by with these guys swimming in tanks in my face I will never think these taste (yes I have tried them, shocking I know) or look good. They are monsters and should be left in the ocean.

See! Monsters! He leaped out of his bin of water and began running in front of us and I had opened toed shoes on, not a good choice.

Only the foolish Americans stopped to take photos and gasp while all the Koreans just stepped over it and calmly informed the lady that her octopus had gotten away. When she picked it up she then shoved it in my startled friends face. Thank god it hadn't been me because I think I would have had a heart attack

Cool looking but in the same way that monsters are "cool" looking. Only in pictures.

Just chopping up some eels

I look just like Julia Roberts

On Thursday I went with Jen to a temple near our school to help her teach some of the nuns and some refugees from North Korea English. We had been connected with the temple through this amazing woman, Judy, who owns a great restaurant above our work. She lives with the nuns at the temple which is also a place that some North Koreans come to when they first get into the country. It is a pretty amazing opportunity for us to work with people that we would have no other way of having a relationship with.
The temple is beautiful and so quiet compared with the rest of the city. I didn't have the chance to really look around but there was a huge garden on one side where they grow all of their vegetables and which also serves as a community garden for people in the area. There is the main temple where people can come and pray whenever and then the houses where the nuns live and study.
The class was with two nuns and two North Korean women who were about 25. Both of the North Koreans are unique in that they made it out of North Korea without being forced into a marriage. Typically single women end up in a marriage in China (they can't go directly to South Korea) because they cannot support themselves alone. I am not sure how long the two of them had been in South Korea but it seems that it has probably been a while because they both seemed very happy and open, there was lots of laughing at their efforts to speak English. At this point all of their English levels are very low and we will mostly just be trying to teach them vocabulary and some simple grammar but they have been learning very quickly so hopefully we will be able to communicate with them more.
Jen is pretty good at Korean (after 5 years here) which seems to be a big help in teaching them, I think it will be a struggle if I go alone to communicate with them and the other nuns.
The class is only an hour and then we are given lunch with some of the nuns. They are all so nice and welcoming. My favorite was this very old nun (I guess she is the oldest at the temple) who seems to be done with silly pleasantries and small talk. She just kind of sat around at lunch looking bored. When one of the other nuns took a picture of her with Jen, Jen was smiling and posing and the other woman just looked bored and not at the camera. Somehow she all of this while still seeming to be a wonderfully kind person. It was just as if she had lived a very full life and understood how inconsequential all of our behavior and conversations were. The one thing that did get her excited was this app on one of the woman's smartphones of a animated cat that would repeat things you said in a cute cat voice or you could punch it on different parts of its body for different reactions. This game kept her entertained for way too long.
I am definitely excited for the opportunity to get to know both the nuns and the North Koreans better and hopefully help them with their English but I am a little nervous about going on my own with my total lack of Korean. Though I think I will like spending time with the nuns as they are very complimentary, one of them told me I looked like Julia Roberts which mostly just indicates that she has never seen a picture of Julia Roberts.

This was the only photo I took on a recent weekend in Daegu. I love how eggs look and I don't know how they can have this huge stack of them on the street without people breaking them.

Phone Photos

This is pretty much the funniest Korean I have encountered while here, pretty lazy student though.

Our friends just got this adorable puppy

Angry Birds is very popular here at the moment and most of the kids have some sort of Angry Birds clothing but this is by far the best that I have seen.

We are now halfway through the term and it has gone by very quickly. I got lucky with my classes this term which makes everything a lot easier. Unfortunately everything else at work seems to be falling apart. Our Branch Manager is extremely pregnant and will be leaving at the end of a month and the woman that is replacing her has not exactly won me over. The first email message that we received from her reminded us to "obey all commands of our head instructor and branch manager". Probably a lot got lost in the translation but still not great. In addition the one amazing Korea teacher that was very helpful and attentive had to leave to take care of her mother and it seems her replacement does not speak English. Its a pretty big bummer not to have any good Korean teachers because they are the only ones that seem to have any discipline power over the students. So without her we pretty much don't have any way of really punishing students that continually misbehave. It is pretty clear that the students are aware that we (the foreigners) are very limited in what we can do in terms of punishment and some of them can be totally out of control and rude.
On top of all the staff changes we will be moving buildings at the end of the month. It seems that the new building will be much nicer and hopefully we will have bigger classrooms as mine is tiny right now. The only bummer is that it is a little bit further away and a bit of a walk from the subway. Hopefully that switch will go somewhat smoothly.
The Busan Film Festival is currently going on but figuring out how to get tickets and what to see was way to confusing so instead I am going out to dinner with some friends and then we are going to go to the casino (it will be my first time). Gambling (along with all other fun activities) is against the law for Koreans but foreigners are allowed (I wish they had these kinds of rules for other things). Anyway, should be interesting! Speaking of breaking the law, the big drama for all the middle school girls is the one of the members of Big Bang one of the most popular boy bands here (thing 'NSYNC in their hayday) got caught with a joint. My students said that his story was that a fan gave it to him and he thought it was a cigarette. When I told them that that was obviously a lie and he probably smokes weed they looked at me with shock and confusion.

Fall

So last week it was in the 90s and now it is in the 60s and 50s. Apparently it is now fall. Almost done with the first month of the term. Classes are going well, I like my students and the classes I am teaching this term a lot more than last term which is nice. Everything else is pretty much the same as always, no new excitement. I did have an extremely vivid dream last night of being in a restaurant in New York eating an amazing meal with my lovely aunt Sue which tells me several things: first, I have awesome dreams about food, second I clearly miss New York and Sue and should probably get back for some delicious food.
Yesterday one of my students informed me that he had a sore throat. When I asked him what he would like to do about it he simply replied, "I will endure". Wise words, especially because I woke up this morning with a horrible sore throat. I guess I will just have to endure.

Panda

So I had a real creative idea for this post involving lots of photos but due to my not having every photo ever taken of me on my computer and facebook changing for the worse it is going to be less creative. Less photos, more words, and as an avid blog reader I know no one likes reading so I'm sorry that I wont be able to illustrate this moving story with images but since I'm only related to/friends with highly literate people (so the only people that read this) you guys shouldn't have too much of a problem.
So for those of you who are not familiar with my traveling/teaching partner Danielle we studies abroad together in Australia and our friendship was pretty much based on going to concerts and whatnot. Australia had a number of musical highlights that bonded our friendship (this is where I would have including pictures to capture our budding friendship and the concerts that we attending). Anyway, this continued all across American including stops in Austin, TX, Palms Springs, CA and Sheldon, VT. Now that we are in Korea the key to our friendship (concerts) has pretty much been stolen from us because Koreans seem to be deaf and listen to K-Pop. So far we have attended a whopping two concerts while here, my new six month low. Luckily our friendship has been able to survive and shockingly even grow without this integral aspect.
Last night we attended the second of our two concerts- Gold Panda. And it was a pretty fucking sweet show. Now I realize that someone starving would argue that any food was the best they have ever had as someone that once used to attend quite a few concerts in a six month period I feel that I can separate my music starvation from my critical judgement of a musical event. Anyway, the show was awesome, even the opener was awesome. Just one guy (British apparently), kinda mellow ravey, electronic- so all you old folks would probably hate it. It was great to see some good live music. One benefit of living in a place devoid of cool music is that when it does appear people get extremely excited (like me) making the show even better- nothing worse than a lame audience (I must say I found the DC audience for Yeasayer the most uptight of any I have been part of, probably cause everyone wants a government job where they will potentially be drug tested and so don't ever have any fun unlike Burlington where they don't let you in if you look too straight). Anyway, great night and it rained all day today (shocker) which was actually perfect because I was hungover and all I wanted to do was watch TV, a task I definitely achieved, finished Breaking Bad, got caught up on Project Runway, Jersey Shore and Real Housewives of Beverly Hills along with watching Midnight in Paris and its only 8:43! What a busy day!