생일축하합니다!

Saeng-il ch'ukahamnida! This is basically a week of birthday festivities for Kristen's 23rd birthday. She went back in time. 24 to 23. It's so weird thinking in North American ages for our actual birthdays. It's no longer any fun turning a year older on our birthday because we're already a year older than the year we're turning so it kinda seems pointless at times. But then I remember the presents and parties and it's no longer pointless. So to start off, the first birthday festivity was a combined birthday between Kristen and Kyle with our worship band after practice on the 15th. His birthday was the day before I think so we celebrated them both. As well as Joseph leaving worship band for Seoul. He just finished his required two years in the army and is heading on up to Seoul! We will miss him so much!

Birthday Festivity: Part One - The combined early celebration

The birthday cake in question. It was actually pretty good compared to some birthday cakes I've had in Korea.

Kris and Kyle blowing out the candles. Kyle made a big deal about them taking pictures of pretending to cut the cake. He wanted them to hold hands and pose for pictures. Kristen couldn't stop laughing and neither could I. It looked exactly like a wedding picture cutting the cake, but since they don't do that here in Korea no one else knew what was so funny. However, since we usually laugh hysterically at absolutely nothing (we have decided that we think we are the funniest people in the world, but we're the only ones that think that so no one else ever thinks what we think is funny thus making us just look stupid. not like we care though) no one really thought anything of it. I have a video of it. It's hilarious.

Sharon (from Colorado. Leaving Korea in a few weeks after five years here. I don't want her to leave!) and Rachel, one of our awesome worship band singers!

Diving into the cake with chopsticks!

Joel trying to decide if she'll stuff the whole thing in her mouth or not and Joseph looking on and wanting to smush it into her face...

Birthday Festivity: Part Two - The surprise!

I am like the best friend ever. I planned a mini surprise party for Kris. Made her banana fudge ice cream cake, took over balloons and friends the night before her birthday and we had a mini partAy!

We even snuck up the stairs so she wouldn't hear us. She was really surprised. The surprise was even almost ruined when she went to throw out her trash and Gabrielle was outside waiting for us to show up. Gab though Kris saw her and then ducked behind a car and pretended to be playing with the neighbourhood cats. Kris didn't see and the surprise still worked out perfectly!

We had a mini dance party after cake and presents.

Birthday Festivity: Part Three - The dinner

Kris, Gab, Somi, and I went to Mi Piache for dinner on her actual birthday.

We are regulars and apparetly that has it's advantages...

I told Somi to secretly tell them it's her birthday so they'd sing a song. Unfortunately in Korea, they just play a song and the computer was broken so they couldn't play it. Since we are regulars and they LOVE us there and felt bad for the computer not working, the manager went out and BOUGHT a Paris Baguette cake and gave it to Kris! We were so surprised!

Birthday Festivity: Part four - Seoul

Ice (Our friend from Thailand that we visited while we were there in February) was in Seoul for vacation. It just so happened to fall around Kris' birthday so we went there to meet her and celebrate some more.... and of course to see some cultural stuff! We went to the Lotus Lanturn Festival in Insadong, Seoul.

This dude is painting my name in Korean on the fan I bought. That was part of the deal. It was so cheap too!

The Parade.

This sign says: Cho.Kae.Sa. No idea what that means. There might even be a piece missing at the top that you can't see. Who knows?

Most paraders performed later in the night. I have some pictures, but not of these guys. They were doing back flips and the whole bit. It was pretty awesome! They were also the only ones who visibly noticed the three foreigners in the crowd and got excited and waved. The one guy there is just starting to wave.

The parade was so cool. I love going to cultural things where you see another culture at their finest and what is important to them as a people and country. (Although, there are an insanely large number of festivals in Korea compared to other countries. They live for festivals here, but that only makes things more interesting for travelers!)

These are the lanturns that lined the streets and temples. This is inside the Insadong temple.

This guy was pretty cool. I want to be just like him one day.

Some of the performances after the parade.

After a while, we got bored and went for a walk around. This ice cream guy was putting on a show giving ice cream out to people. He noticed us and decided to single me out. He wanted to know my name ect. and wanted me to buy ice cream. I said I'd only take it if it was for free. That was about the worst thing I could have done. He took that as a challenge and I sure got it after that and I didn't even come away with free ice cream! He told me to come over. Tara's mistake #1: I listened. Tara's mistake #2: He can speak Korean. I can't. I knew he was talking about me to the kids because I heard "miguk" which is "American" in Korean. He obviously thought I was American. But I didn't know a word of what else he was saying. I'm guessing it was somewhere along the lines of:

"hey kids, watch this. I'm going to play around with this stupid American and make her think she's getting free ice cream, but really, I'm just going to joke around so that you guys can have a laugh at her. Make sure you laugh hard ok?"

Tara's mistake #3: For a split second I thought he'd actually give me a free ice cream. That was when he gave the ice cream cone, but since I wasn't paying attention, there was two cones and I ended up with only the outside cone and a kid ended up with the first cone and the ice cream. I almost threw the cone at him.

Tara's mistake #4: I stuck around.

He did basically the same thing again, but I ended up with a napkin and no cone. I wasn't impressed. Told him he was mean. He laughed, apparently thinking otherwise.

I refused to buy his ice cream. He didn't deserve my money.

Next came these dudes who were making honey cakes which used to be a Kings food for important guests. These guys were hilarious! They had a whole sing song thing going on while they made the honey cakes. It went back and forth between Korean and English for all watching and was highly amusing. I bought some of those and they were delicious! I also learned how to make honey cakes and because of their sing song, remember a lot of it.

Later that night we met up again with Ice (we met her for dinner earlier) and headed out for a night of super fun rockin' fun. I'm going to miss that girl. She's back in Thailand now. Bangkok of all places. Not a great place to be living right now. I hope you all read the news and know what's going on. Weird to think I was there a few weeks before this all started. The Canadian Embassy keeps sending me e-mails warning us to stay away from Bangkok. This morning I got one warning us to stay away from all of Thailand in general. I'm glad I went when I did because it's an amazing country.

Ok, this is the end of the birthday festivities.

Next up is my Monday at Family Land with Samgye. So fun. My school picnic this semester was an amusement park. Only grades one and three went because grade two is in Jeju for the week. So is Samseo. I haven't had many classes this week. Five to be exact. Usually I teach 23 a week. May has been a wonderful month for me. Next week it's back at it again though. ANYWAY. Family Land. I was the only non-korean in the entire park. It was amusing at times because everytime I did something stupid everyone would notice because I was the only foreigner there so I stuck out like a sore thumb.

Cindy's face before I got her on every ride in the park.

Her face after I took her on Chaos which she didn't see run before going on it. I told her it was fun and then spent the rest of the ride laughing so hard I started crying because she was screaming so loudly. All the teachers and students watching heard her and were also laughing. She collapsed the minute we got off and I basically carried her off the ride. I got her to go on again at the end of the day though. She's a trooper.

Everyone watching the next group of students on Chaos while trying to calm Cindy down.

The roller coaster. Here's a bunch of grade three students just starting the ride. I took Cindy to the front of this ride. The announcer thought it was hilarious. Cindy didn't. She went again right away though.

Eventually we had a posse of grade ones following us around. It was so cute. The boys were always trying to figure out how to ask me if I'd ride the next ride with them. I'd pretend not to know what they were trying to say until they could get the English out.

A group of my grade three girls.

Cindy has most of the pictures from the day because her camera is better. When I get the pictures from her, maybe I'll post them. There's so many funny stories from the day. I got only a small tan and was the only one not hiding under and umbrella all day nor a hat nor wore sun screen. I am amazing.

Summer is definitely here in Korea. It was 27 today. 31 and 32 the next two days. The gross bugs that I have been dreading since coming here are now entering my aparte. I am so disgusted by them. I hate grey fuzzy bugs and flying green cockroach-like things. Hee Jae called me a half hour ago and laughed and laughed and laughed when I complained about the bugs.

The good part about summer is baseball! My wonderful amazing sweet kind mother mailed me my ball glove. Kris and I went out to buy her one tonight and a ball. I am so excited to play!

My word/sentence/phrase of the week: 외톨이야. Try to figure out what that means. Actually, it wouldn't be hard. It's all over the internet. After you figure it out, copy it into youtube and listen to the song. In my head ALL the time.

Embarassing story of the week: I slept through my alarm on Tuesday so badly that I had less than 10 minutes to get ready to leave. Problem: I needed to shower (and subsequently blowdry my hair and straighten it), eat, dress, pack my books, brush my teeth. Yeah, right. Shower was out. Thankfully it was pouring rain all day and on those days my hair goes nutso anyway. I didn't have baby powder so I stuck some flour in my hair to try to make it look less greesy. Though maybe it's baking powder you're supposed to put in? I don't remember. Either way, it only worked until lunch. By 5pm my hair was disgusting. Thankfully my lack of classes meant I could hide in the teachers room. I blame the sleeping through my alarm to my alarm clock, which died. So now I'm using my phone because I can't figure out how to work my other alarm clock for the life of me. My phone alarm apparently doesn't have a sleep button because rather than sleep I push off. Bad idea. Hopefully this doesn't happen again in the next three months.

I feel like there was a lot more stuff I meant to post, I just can't remember any of it. Either way, this is long enough anyway. Tomorrow: HOLIDAY! the big man's birthday. Buddha. Happy old age. I forget how old he is. It said it somewhere.

Kris: HAPPY 23rd BIRTHDAY! "you're my heart heart heart heart heartbreaker!" And while I'm at it, HAPPY BIRTHDAY to Phil as well! Although I know you don't read this, this still makes up for not writing on your wall on your birthday. Adelle, you better tell him I wrote this.

The day(s) that Tara is bored

I know what you're thinking... "Two posts in less than a week?!? Tara actually remembers about us poor people out here in Canada?!". YES, two posts in a week. Not because I love you all and want to update this though, but because I'm bored to death on this five day break of mine and have nothing else to do.
Yesterday I spent the day cleaning (and finding rotten potatoes that I bought last week. Turns out they were the source of the smell... no one told me they'd go rotten if I left them in a closed bag!), cooking, playing guitar for hours, reading about everything you could possibly read about in the news on the internet (pirates, Greece debt problems, neanderthals, junk food, escaped prisoners, the Blue Jays, NHL, and achilles tendons), grocery shopping, and finally getting to go out with my girls for coffee/tea/frozen yogurt at night. Today I'm talking to Marijka on facebook chat and it's awesome.
ok, so last week Kris, Gab, and I went on a leisurely walk through our dong and out to Jungoe park to see the spring flowers.

These flowers are everywhere! I've been picking flowers to put in my house, but I have to be sneaky about it because I don't think I'm technically allowed to do that.

Now that it's spring, you can see the bottom of the pond. My earlier thoughts of wanting to jump into it are no more. There is the thickest seaweed in the world down there it's disgusting! It's just as bad as Elim. If I had jumped in when I wanted to after a long run (although I'm pretty sure all the Koreans would have freaked out if I did) then I would've got the grossest shock of my life!

On Wednesday, the first day of my holidays, was a National holiday - children's day! So we all decided to go hiking at Mudungsan, Gwangju's mountain. Jae Kyung bailed on us just before we left because she slept in and Gabby, the new girl in our dong didn't show so it was just the four of us. We had tons of fun. I haven't been hiking in so long! It was well worth everything!

Some guy offered to take our picture together. He told us he was a professional photographer and knew how to capture a good picture. When he took Kris' camera though, he had it upside down and asked if this was the button. He was pointing to the tripod hole. So we told him he had it upside down and backwards. Professional photographer... HA! But in his defense, this picture is nice. He also met up with us later on to practice his English and he was really nice.

The bridge and an Adjumma's backside.

Onlookers were laughing. Probably thought we'd never been hiking before in our lives. We just love pictures.

It was beautiful! I kept picturing going riding along parts of the trail where it was actually possible to take a horse.

Eating our Gimbap lunch. About the best thing to have on a picnic! Gab had bibimbap though.

I picked and gave flowers to everyone and then put them in my hair. Joel said that in Korea, that means I am a "crazy girl". Crazy in Korea literally means crazy. She was a little embarassed to be seen with me after that.

The spring had the smallest trickle of water ever. We had to ration our water until the top where we could get more.

Pretending to climb through the bush at the top of the section we climbed.

There was a helicopter pad at this section and that's where we crashed for an hour or so. It was so warm and sunny. I got a sunburn (no surprises there). Korean's walking by would laugh the minute they saw us all passed out on the ground. Probably thinking that we didn't know the kind of dirt and bugs that were on the ground. Little did they know we were talking about how we felt ants climbing on us, but were too comfortable to actually do anything about it!

On the way back, Kris' ankle was hurting and Gab was tired so we went the gravel road way. This was part of the view on the way down. We could see Gwangju! It was beautiful! So that city way back there... I live somewhere in that midst! Apparently, to climb the entire mountain it takes eight hours to go up and down. I plan to do it before I leave although finding a willing companion is proving to be rather difficult and it's no fun to hike by yourself!

So now we are back to my holiday. BORING! but I guess it's better to be bored at home than bored at school. Why didn't I go to Jeju like I previously said I was planning to do? Couple reasons. One: traveling alone isn't fun. I like talking too much and I'd probably get put into an institution if I started talking to myself all trip... Two: I was so busy with lessons and school I didn' t have time to really look into where on Jeju I wanted to go. Three: I didn't book anything. Four: I didn't book anything because I was too busy freaking out about the May 3 deadline for what I'm going to do next year that I just kept putting off booking anything until I didn't feel like going anymore. Kris and I are going to take our floater day sometime in June and go though so it's not like I won't get to go ever.

So now, if you thought this would be an interesting post and you were thoroughly disapointed because it was only about a walk, my bordom, and hiking, well...I don't really care! It killed a bunch of time for me today so you can suffer through choosing to read my blog about it!

Time for me to go grocery shopping again since I forgot some things and birthday shopping for Kris whose birthday is in FIVE days!

Photography, Slow Walking, and the DMZ!

April turned out to be just like March in one way. I was still insanely busy. Thankfully May has a billion holidays so my life will be slightly less chaotic I hope. School is basically the same. I still love my grade 2 and 3's and still want to strangle my grade 1's. Although, they are getting better so that's a bonus. The weather is so hot some days that I have come to realize that I really truely and going to melt to death this summer. We've had Canadian July weather here. Korean July is triple ours. I'm not looking forward to it! My apartment still hasn't been cleaned well. I did the dishes and laundry today though. I broke my vaccum cleaner again so I can't vaccum. I managed to completely break the flickering light in my bedroom so now it's completely dark. I almost burned my house down baking again. I left myh straightener on too many times during the day. One time I left it too close to my worship book for church and the pages were really hot when I noticed.
So, to the good stuff. Three main events happened in April. One a weekend.

First up is the Photography Awards. I may have mentioned something about this. Or maybe not. I don't remember. Sam, my photographer friend, won a prize in a photo competition (oh wait, I do remember saying something about this. I went bowling with my school and didn't get to go to the competition. Kris and Gab went though and are now being displayed in the Bus Terminal in Gwangju because of Sam's amazing photography work). ok, I just explained it in the parenthesis. Yep so even though I didn't go to the competition, Sam invited me to come along to the awards ceremony with them. It was shown on TV and one of Kris' teacher saw us on TV. Or a student? Or maybe it was my teacher? I'm not sure. Anyway, we were seen on TV. Probably because we were the only foreigners there.
At the awards show. Sam stole some rossettes for us. They were HUGE! Sam getting his award. I'm not exactly sure what place he got. He didn't win (his friend did), but he got a placing, that's all I understood.

Sam, Gab, and Kris with Sam's photo of them at the blossem festival.

The photo that's now displayed in the Bus Terminal.

The free lunch afterwards. We met Lee Byung Woo here. He's the highest guy in the Jangseong brewery. His company was the sponser I think. They were supplying this new kind of plum wine that's just hit a few stores already. It was delicious so we told him and asked for free wine. He gave us each a bottle. It's expensive stuff to apparently. Now we're getting free tours of the soju (A Korean alcohol incase you don't remember) factory. Connections are awesome.

Next up we have the Slow Walk Festival. It was in Wando (beach town in the very south of Korea. I went there two weeks after coming to Korea) and as you can see from the name tag, it's the Cheongsan Island Tour...with Foreigners no less! That made us laugh. It was a free trip for us because they really wanted foreigners there. Bus paid. Ferry paid. all meals included. Oh, and we had cameras in our faces all day. I practiced slow walking before the festival. I was so ready for it.

First glimps of the island.

On the ferry. Notice the Koreans outfits? Hiking is basically a national sport and pasttime in Korea. They are obsessed with it. If you go hiking, you better wear proper gear. Proper gear being hiking shoes, a hat (this may range from a normal hat covering all skin so the sun won't eat you to flashy Adjumma hats), hiking track pants, and of course, the brightest and most colourful hiking jacket you can find. Add into that a picnic lunch of gimbap or in some cases, a full meal of fish soup, coffee, and kimchi.

The minute we landed we saw TV cameras....aimed at us. They didn't leave the entire day. This here was our welcoming band thing.

Our lunch meal of bibimbap. One of my most favourite meals in Korea. Delicious!

Opening ceremonies. They did stretches. For slow walking. hmmmm.

While they were going on and on in Korean, I told Gab that I bet they parade us in front of everyone. Five minutes later, parading in front of everyone we were! A bunch of us made a bit of a scene trying to let them know we were from Canada, not USA. The camera's were really in our faces after that.

We came from somewhere down there in the village. This island was absolutely gorgeous and the day was perfect!

Some house from some Korean drama. The Koreans were all taking pictures. We toured it, it was cool.

Old fashioned plowing. I didn't mention the point of the Slow Walk Festival is to show the slow way of life these people live here. (that or they ran out of festivals to have so this is what they choice. Korea is FULL of festivals. The butterfly festival was this weekend. I didn't go)

We've walked 6,000 steps so far. Approx.

Around the island.

Circling back to the beginning. The tide is now down and you can see the rock formation. This was built so that when the tide goes down, the fish get caught on shore and they go pick them up easily. I decided Stanley should use this method. Maybe then he'll actually catch enough fish for dinner...

On the way back, we manage to get into the only room on the ferry because it was cold outside. Unfortunately for us, the Koreans thought they could all fit in the room and actually tried. I had a lady sit on my leg and another lady sit on my back. She thought she could fit between me and the lady behind me. She was large. The spot was small. She ended up on top of me. All us foreigners were scarred for life after that experience.

Our dinner of BULGOGI! Only the BEST meat in the world. (well, Galbi is pretty fantastic as well). What we didn't know was that we'd be eating abalone. Seafood a great. But when the abalone starts moving because of the heat from the burners...we found out we were cooking them alive. Talk about a fresh meal eh? They weren't alive long though and they tasted delicious! The abalone are the green shells in the main dish.

Overall though, the day was fantastic and I'm so glad I went. (like I wouldn't go on a free trip!)

Part three of the awesomeness of traveling: The Demilitarized Zone! I don't know how much you've been paying attention to North-South Korea issues, but last time I mentioned about the sinking of a South Korean ship. All of South Korea knows it was torpedo from North Korea, but obviously the North is denying it. Problem. Then I mentioned how the North said the South must stop all tours to the DMZ or something tragic might happen. Kris and I decided to go pronto. If they stopped the tours before I could go... so not cool! So we went this past weekend. Unfortunately, since we booked it the day before, we couldn't find a tour going to both the PSA and the third tunnel. We opted to do the third tunnel tour this time and hopefully soon we're going back for the PSA tour. (The PSA is the only area where N and S Korea coexisted until the axe murders in I think '76 or something. Now the area was split in two. Half of buildings are the N and the other half the S. It sounds excitingly dangerous (even though it's not) so I want to go)

Here we are at the Dorasan Station. It's the only train going into North Korea. It brings supplies.

The Dora observatory. I got in trouble here for taking pictures of things I wasn't supposed to be. I told them I didn't take a picture of the guard posts they were talking about (hey, I was behind the no picture line so how was I supposed to know?) and now I have a picture on my camera that shouldn't be there. A few actually. This isn't one of them in case you're wondering. Most of the soldiers there spoke really good English. They have cool army uniforms. They have some extra stuff on it that the soldiers in Gwangju and Sachung don't have.

Third tunnel. Cindy has pictures from inside and took a video. That was also strickly prohibited. I'll have to get it from her sometime.

The same olf DMZ that everyone else takes a picture with.

Imjingak. A park/amusement park thing. I don't remember the exact reason for it, but something along the lines of the North and South going there together...um yeah. I forget.

From the tower over looking the status that represent the two Koreas eventually coming together.

The whole area leading up to the DMZ has barbed wire along the highways and patrols every 200 feet or so. This was at the park. The ones along the road were blurry pictures.

The freedom bridge where some number of Koreans crossed over at some point to freedom.

A train. There's a story behind it. Here's the two second version. (I'm really tired, sorry) Korean driver man ditches the train when it was bringing supplies because of the fighting (Korean war). He runs to the south. Later they brought it back to restore it. He's now an old man and remembers the day clearly.

So that about sums up my month. It's Grandpa Heeg's birthday tomorrow (well, my time tomorrow). I'm supposed to know by tomorrow if I'm staying or leaving this year or next. I still have no idea. Oh dear.

I think I'm going to Jeju island this week. I teach Monday and Tuesday only and the HOLIDAY! I need time to think, I think. It'll be good for me. I'm going alone.