The day the yellow couch came into my life...

One day last week, I noticed this beauty on my way to school about 50 meters from my house. I had a moment of disappointment knowing that I was going to school and I would not be able to take it back to my house by myself. Somehow I missed it the next day, but what I can only discribe as an awesome act of God, I saw the couch again on my way home the next day. 
I texted my friend Jackie who lives 10 minutes away to see if she could help me take it to my apartment. She did a size test so we could see if it would fit in my apartment, and you can see above. (P.S.- Jackie's awesome) 
Anyways we decide it will fit and carried it up to my apartment! My apartment was instantly changed into a living space instead of just a huge room with a bed and a refrigerator! I love it!
BEST STREET FIND EVER! :)

Korea: The land of bandaids (a.k.a. plasters)

 I looked down at my foot the other day and I had the moment where I realized the ridiculousness that I was viewing. On one foot I had four band-aids! Four Band-aids? How is that even possible you may ask...

Well, for starters I signed an agreement in my contract that I would cover my tattoos at school, and since it is still warm weather, I refuse to wear socks. This leaves the best option of covering my tattoo with a band-aid.

Secondly, I had an epic bike ride that I will share more later about that left me with a chunk missing out of my knee and a puncture wound on the back of my heal. (I still love my bike though...)

Thirdly, I have a blister on the back of my heal from my new running shoes that I used to hike 14 kilometers of just stairs...7 up and 7 down. 

Forth, my inside sandals that I wear at school have given me blisters on my toes. Again, this would be helped with wearing socks, but like I said before, that will not happen until it has to!

So in the near future I will be rocking the bandaids! Anybody interested in sending me some fabric ones from the States? They would be very much welcomed... :)

Andong Mask Festival

Around the time that we found out our placements, we told Curt that we would come visit him in Andong for the Andong Mask Festival. Andong is known as a very cultural part of Korea, that even the Queen of England visited for her 73rd birthday! 
It was a neat festival with many different masks, performances and activities.
 

 

When we were at the festival we decided to make our own mask. We were given a blank white mask and some colored foam stuff that would dry hard. We could make any design that we wanted, and I decided to attempt to make the creepiest, weirdest combination mask that I could think of. I ended up with a mask that embodies a Korean Guy Fawkes who is supportive of gay rights... I don't know how this happened...It just did! ahah

My finished mask- Thanks for the picture Curt!

We tried the corndog with french fry pieces on the outside... It was interesting and strangely sweet!

We watched a traditional dance and had no idea what was going on!

There were fireworks at night but because of some rain they were cut short and postponed for the following weekend... sad faces!

Take me out to the ball game...

 

I believe that I was in desperate need of a fall athletic event to cheer for. I'm missing football and the atmosphere of the game in the chilled evening air. To try to replace these longings for football, we went to the last Daegu Samsung Lions game of the year. There were a few interesting points during the game that I would like to point out:

1. When we purchased tickets I was under the impression that we would have a seat. This was not the case. I think they oversold by about 1000 tickets or so. People were sitting/standing in the isles everywhere. Definitely against the fire codes in the States...

2.  You were allowed to take in your own food and drinks! Koreans were walking in with a dozen pizzas and cases of beer and tubs of chicken! It was crazy! They also so tons of food there too!

3. The Korean Chants: They were wonderful! We made up the words because we had no idea what was being said... It was still fun to join in! The tunes were very familiar to us...just not the words.

4. Something I have not seen since my days in pee wee baseball. THERE WAS AN INFIELD HOME RUN! Say whaaaaaaaaat? And no, it was not done by our team... I couldn't believe it!  

We ended up losing the game, but it was still a great time. Koreans do really love their baseball! It is a different kind of atmosphere and game than in the States. It is a lot more livelier and dramatic! I look forward to going to more games when they start back up in the spring.

 

 

 

 

Chuseok- Jirisan

Chuseok- a time to spend with your family. Since none of us have family in Korea, we spent it with our new family! I feel quite blessed that I have found some new friends that can be my makeshift family over the next year! 
Since this was our first major holiday in Korea, none of us even knew if we would have our ARC cards in time to leave the country, so we decided to check out something in Korea. We decided on Jirisan National Park. 
Jirisan was the first national park established in Korea in 1967. It is the largest mountainous national park in Korea as well. 
At the base of the mountain, we went to Hwaeomsa Temple. It was constructed under the Silla dynasty in 544, burned down during the Seven Year War in 1590 and rebuilt thereafter.I thought that it had some of the best temple buildings that I have seen in Korea thus far. They were painted differently than the others I have seen.
Oh, I forgot to mention our visors...PROTECTION FIRST! This was a purchase at the bus station. I believe Darren and Chris (the Brits) were the first to keep the sun off of their faces and the rest of us followed! Those Brits aren't used to the sun, and it was quite sunny... I'm sure we got even more looks than normal, but it was really fun and now I have an awesome ajumma visor for when I am over 60 years old! Love it!

Emily (New Zealand), Erin (Canada), Darren (England)

Sian (South Africa) and Matt (England)

So we went on a hike... Emily picked out a hike that was one of the easier ones. That being said, it was the hardest hike I have ever been on. ahah! After the first hour, I was wanting to die. It was a 7 kilometer hike straight up- all stairs. Well not all stairs...the first kilometer was different stones you walk on. (Like pictured above) The next 3 kilometers was intermediate stairs, with no level parts, always going straight up. My legs were gone after the this, and we had looked at the map, so we knew that the next 3 kilometers were the advanced stairs! Advanced stairs means we walk up the drainage rocks where the trees don't grow... It was pure madness. When we reached the ridge and finally go above the tree line, it was a great view. When I hike I like to see something, and since I spent the entire time looking down to watch my step, we couldn't really look around. I was dizzy at times! ahah

AND, the whole time I knew that the way down was going to be even worse. Not of my lungs, but on my surgical knee. There aren't too many things that I find much of a problem with my knee now except snow skiing and walking down steep slopes or lots of stairs. 3 kilometers down, I couldn't bend my knee right and took all the large steps with only one knee. No fun! 

After we finally made it down we jumped in the creek. I'm pretty sure that the Koreans thought that we were completely mad because it was FREEZING! I actually thought I was mad. I think it was the coldest water I have ever been in. Sian, who is from SOUTH AFRICA, was the one who was pushing to go in. I find that interesting...

Matt, Chris, Sian, Marie, Erin, Emily, Darren, Ben (American- Wisconsin)

We found a nice spot that was our go-to swimmin' hole for the 2 days we were in Jirisan! 

Chuseok Holiday- Busan

The Chuseok Holiday is very similar to the Thanksgiving holiday in the States. And they year, Chuseok fell on a Thursday, so it seemed even more similar. For the first part of Chuseok, I went to Busan to visit my Kiwi friend Emily. I'm so glad that I can say that I have a Kiwi friend that I love! It was a mission of mine from the start! It is just a bonus that Eeeeemily (as I like to call her) is AWESOME! :) 

It was a beautiful 2 days in Busan. Busan is an hour away from Daegu by KTX train and is on the south eastern coast. It has a few great beaches and to be honest, most foreign teachers not placed in Busan are a little jealous of the teachers that are placed there...

We went to a part of Busan that was very colorful and had a lot of art painted on the walls. It was also I great view of the city. 

The next day we spent a bit of time at the beach. I hear that it is quite a site to see when the beach is "open" because every square inch is filled with umbrellas! I will look forward to seeing that at some point in the future. During this weekend, there were some Koreans, but mostly foreigners because the Koreans were visiting their families for Chuseok!
It was a low stress couple of days with Emily just doing what we wanted and exploring Busan! I loved it and look forward to going back for Halloween and the Firework Festival! :)

Sharing Life Festival

Our team name...

Korea is full of festivals. This one, "Sharing Life Festival" was in Daegu and since many of us were still getting acclimated to Daegu we formed a team! 
The first part of this day was a scavenger hunt. This involved doing some different cultural things, but also finding things here in Daegu. For instance, we needed to find a matching couple...( that was easy), a person playing a video game on their phone, a mother with a baby on her back, and much much more. We had over an hour to see how many we could get. We didn't win but we had fun trying to find all of the things listed. We didn't do the "donate blood" one though...

After the scanvenger hunt, they provided food that came from multiple different countries, and there was a DJ and paint. It was a bit of an odd combination of events, but we made the most of it and had fun... After the paint, soju might have been involved to increase our dance skills. 

My favorite quote of the night came when we were all sitting in a circle after the DJ/dancing and what I presume was a homeless Korean man came up to us and wanted some soju. We gave him a shot, and he motioned for more...So we gave him another shot, and he motioned for more... This time Chris turned to him and said... "Well, can't you say please??" He said this knowing that the guy would have no idea what he just said and I cracked up to the point of tears! ahaha! I guess you had to be there...

Daegu International Bodypainting Festival

I love that in Korea, there is a festival to go to almost every weekend! It creates many great photo ops and also keeps the culture flowing in all of us foreigners. I am actually running into the problem of overbooking. More than one awesome festival on the same weekend? Not cool! I guess that means I will have to stay in Korea for 2 years...
On my first weekend in the "real world" Korea, we found out about this festival in one of our local parks, Duryu Park. Being an artist I thought the idea was really intriguing, and wasn't until I went that I was pleasantly surprised! Some of the models were so cool! The artist did an amazing job!
This also was the first time that I was exposed to Korean photographers. My cousin had warned me on this subject, so I knew to make sure that I got my elbows up so that I could get a good spot to get a good photo. So when you looked through the crowd of Asian men with cameras, my face definitely stood out a bit... After a while of sitting on my knees, a nice man next to me gave me a mat to put under my knees! It was a lifesaver! :)

This was actually my favor artist/model combination! Unfortunately I moved some settings on my camera and didn't realize that I was overexposing all of the images except for this one as the model was leaving the white background! Lame...