Confusing the Koreans...

"Great art is a great deal worse than no art at all."

- Oscar Wilde

  Two weeks ago for my birthday three of my friends took me to Seoul for the day.  We started the day by going to a pottery painting place.  All I can say is that none of us are artists.  The Korean woman running the shop kept walking over looking at our mugs and going, "oh" and then would walk away.  I wouldn't be surprised if she had fixed the painting on our mugs herself after we left.  Even though none of our mugs will be displayed in any museums any time soon we had a lot of fun painting them.  

Rachael decided to go with splotches as a theme,  Beth attempted painting autumn leaves, Jodi put everything imaginable on hers, and I attempted a street scene.

 Before anyone gets impressed there were stencils that we could use which is how I got the houses on mine.  The stencils were very helpful but some of them confused us.  Like this one.  Is this a giraffe or a zebra?

Beth and Rachael decided to try and be artistic with their photos.  Rachael told me to move as I was in her shot bringing me closer to Jodi, she was not ok with me being this close.

After we finished painting we went to a photo booth.  Now Korea is obsessed with photo booths, these are not your average middle of the mall photo booths.  These have costumes and photoshop.  These dresses are called hanbok and are the traditional Korean dresses.  

The final product is terrifying.  We could have photoshopped these further but we couldn't figure out the buttons to change things.

Then we ate tacos! I have so missed tacos.

After eating we happened upon a Christmas display along the river.

The best part of this entire display was the different Christmas rooms they had set up for you to take pictures in.  This was the "Kid's Room" so of course we had to get a photo.l

Then we had the "Fairy Room" complete with an Ikea kid's table.

At the end of the display was this thing.  Apparently it is art. 

And here is the security line we crossed to take these photos.  Beth was wary of crossing the line I may have said something along the lines of, do you see any police? I don't.  I am obviously a bad influence.

Besides the lights display it hasn't really seemed like Christmas.  In Korea, Christmas is a holiday for couples not for families.  So this week I decided to try and build some Christmas spirit.  I bought lights and two garlands to spruce up my apartment and thanks to my mom who sent a pine scented candle my home now smells like Christmas.  

Today Beth, Rachael, and I also went to the Nutcracker so now I am fully in the Christmas spirit.

 This little girl was adorable. She was sitting in the row in front of us in her tutu.  During intermission she performed her own performance of the Nutcracker.

I broke one of the biggest rules of going and seeing a show, I took a photo.  However all of the Korean's had their phones out taking photos, so if they get to break the rules so do I.  At the end of the ballet the entire cast sang while awkwardly clapping.  It was fantastic.

The rest of the photos are just random photos from the last three weeks.

This past week at work I had a little boy, who I do not teach, come up to me bow and hand me these.  He had drawn sticker stamps for all the teachers. I think it is the cutest thing ever when the little kids here bow to you.  One day at a coffee shop there was a little one year old who kept smiling and laughing at us so we made faces back at her.  When her mom noticed she made the baby bow, cutest thing ever.

Friday night I skipped Crossfit to go bowling with three of the other teachers.  Ironically the bowling alley ended up being directly above the Crossfit gym, oops.  Oh well, I think I bowled the best game I have ever bowled with a score of 114.

For my birthday my coworkers got me a gift card to the big bookstore here in Korea called Kyobo.  This place is not just a bookstore, it is an everything you could ever possibly need store and I am in love with it.  I have always been in love with pens, little notebooks, and school supplies and living in the land of cute stationary overload is not helping.  With part of my gift card I purchased and adult coloring book and colored pencils and have been coloring every since.  

It is crazy that Christmas is less than a week away!  I am really excited and nervous for my trip.  I fly out Christmas Day and fly back to Korea on January 2nd.  I looked up the current temperature in Borneo and it is in the mid 90s.  I have never had a Christmas in a warm place so this will be different.  

Snow and nonsense...

"The first fall of snow is not only an event, it is a magical event.  You go to bed in one kind of world and wake up in another, and if this is not enchantment then where is it to be found?"

- J.B. Priestley

     Its amazing that the last post I wrote was about fall and now here I am writing about winter.  There is something magical about the first snow fall.  All of my coworkers hate the snow but I love it.  

Since Thanksgiving is not a thing in Korea the closest I got was getting this weird piece of pumpkin pie from the local bakery.  It was not a good pumpkin pie and was a very sad excuse of a Thanksgiving.

 The weekend after I met some friends in Seoul to go and see this mall made from shipping containers.  The concept was really cool but we didn't buy anything.

Then as we reached the top floor outdoor area and looked down this is the sight that greeted us.   Hundreds of stuffed animal penguins.  we are still not sure why they were here.

 We also came across these fun signs.

So of course we had to go and take pictures with the penguins.

The penguins were cute but again what purpose do these serve? We have no idea.

On the bus ride home I was able to see on of the Seoul city gates lit up.

On the bus I was also able to check out the Christmas lights on the department store Shinsegae.  The lights on the building seem to grow and change into snowflakes.

From this picture on we just have random photos that I have taken the past couple of weeks.  I took this one when I saw a dog smoking in the bottom of one of my pans.  Anyone else see it?  Or I'm just strange which is probably the case.

 For all the crazy things that Korea does one of the amazing things they do is take-out.  This is just my morning coffee and scone from Starbucks.  At home I would have been handed a cup and my scone.  Here it is packaged up in a pretty bag with a form on the bottom keeping the coffee upright.  They even include three forks because even though their is one coffee the Starbucks workers still think I will not be eating this scone by myself.

 These wings are on a mural on the walking path near the river.  Beth and I walk home on this path after Crossfit every week.  This week I decided I had to get a photo.  I really wanted to channel Angels in the Outfield.

 We ended up getting a couple of inches of snow this week.  Again I loved the snow until I learned that Korea has not learned the beauty of snow plows, shovels, or salt. Snow without these things is not fun.

Each week the kids are required to turn in writing assignments.  Most of the time you can tell that there was not much time or though put in.  I love the kid who wrote this one.  He put more thought into the one page he wrote than most of the kids did in their whole essay and he apologized for not writing more.

I think decoding this child's writing means that I qualify to work for the CIA.

 Snow, snow, and more snow!

Unfortunately with winter comes sickness especially when you are surrounded by snotty, coughing children.  It is also unfortunate that Korea is lacking in chicken noodle soup.  The closest thing I could get is Vietnamese Pho.  This was the first time I got take out from this restaurant and I was very confused as to what all of these containers were.

In the end its actually quite genius how they do this.  The one bowl is full of noodles and the other is the boiling soup base with water so you just need to mix the two together.

I just really hope I feel better by this weekend as it is my birthday and I cannot believe it but in a little over two weeks I will be traveling to Borneo for Christmas!