Week(end) in review.

This has been a bit crazy of a week. Unlike in the U.S., kids in Korea change grades in the spring. So March 2nd was their "first day of school." March 1st in Korea was a holiday, so everyone had the day off. This also means that we lost some students--students who just started high school now and have no time for English classes :( We also gained some new younger students, and had our teaching schedules rearranged a bit. All this to say, Friday was a little stressful, what with balancing new classes we hadn't taught before.

It was a bit depressing to lose some of my students. I actually had one of my older middle school boys approach me as I was walking home to say "Teacher, no more English class." It's only been 2 months, but after awhile, you just get used to their presence in class :( But such is the cycle in the hagwan business.

We spent Wednesday celebrating the departure of one of our fellow foreign teachers, Lloyd (from Wales). On March 1st Paul and I went hiking again behind our apartment (boy, we're never gonna have this set-up again!) on Mt. Cheongdaesan. This time we played it smart and brought water with us. It was beautifully sunny and clear, and we ended up going further than last time. We found a small exercise park on the mountain where hikers had stopped to stretch, lift weights, and the like. Kind of a funny concept we thought, though we understood it--hike up a mountain so that you can do more exercising ;). Paul tried his hand (or hips, should I say) at the hula hoops. Some of these folks looked seriously in shape, like Olympic-athlete-in-shape. One man was doing revolutions on a set of parallel bars, and I watched in in amazement. There were also expert jump-ropers, hula hoopers, and crunchers. We were probably the youngest ones up there, but we felt seriously flabby next to them!

That night we went out for bosam with Ara and Mark (another fellow teacher from a different school), and then to our first Korean class! Mark has been here for over 2 years, and has learned quite a bit of Korean already. He agreed to give classes to us once a week on Thursdays.

This weekend has been very gray, cold, and rainy. Apparently it's supposed to get cold enough to snow again this week. I wanted to find the other lake, Lake Yeongnangho, which is just north of us a bit (we live near Lake Cheongchoho). It has hiking trails around it. We took the 7 bus, which was supposed to take us there. But I had us get off too early, near the Sokcho lighthouse overlook. So we walked along the pier and onto the beach. There were many seagulls out and a few fishermen too. We headed to the lighthouse and climbed the stairs to get a really great view of Dongmyeong Port. But viewing the scenery (though breathtaking) isn't fun when the cold sea spray is blowing in your face! So we headed down to check out the fish market of Dongmyeong.

At 4:00 we went to the cultural center of Sokcho for a piano recital. Yon Sei, one of our students (and the son of our directors) was scheduled to perform with the rest of his Amadeus Academy. But there were about 30 students in the line-up--and he was supposed to go last! But it was really fun to watch all of these kids play classical pieces...they were all dressed up in rented tuxedoes and gowns, with styled hair to match (and most of them wore sneakers!). It was quite a formal affair, with most of the kids receiving bouquets of flowers as they left the stage. Yon Sei ended up playing an extremely difficult Beethoven piece (one I certainly wouldn't have attempted at his age!) He is quite an accomplished pianist, especially for his age (14). His mother, Yang Su, told us that most middle schoolers don't play an instrument, because they lack the time to practice (how sad).

Won Gi and Yang Su (our directors) had come to the recital with Won Gi's mother and their niece. They generously invited us out to dinner with them after the recital. So the 7 of us headed to the Kensington Stars Hotel, a resort on Mt. Seorak, which serves a buffet on Saturday nights. It was really good! Chestnuts wrapped in bacon, several salads, grilled shrimp, fried rice, beef and gravy, sashimi, sushi, parfaits, mousse, roast duck, salmon, etc. The Kensington is a resort for folks visiting Seorak, so it is rather posh. We felt severely underdressed in our jeans and sneakers, but it was a great time having dinner with the Kim family.

Today we went to church and our friend, Jong Mahl, ended up sitting next to us. And when it was raining afterwards, our friend Sara gave us a ride home! I tell you, it's starting to feel like we're establishing friendships here. We met our friend Jenny (a Korean teacher) for lunch at the Herb Paradise, a restaurant on the north side of Sokcho. Herb Paradise serves many different herbs and fresh vegetables, direct from the mountains. We had a special bibimbap with many different types of mushrooms, roots, and seaweed. They also served a rice wine and a couple aphrodisiacs "on the house". And upon hearing me sniffle and wipe my nose over and over (blowing your nose in public being forbidden--and I have a bad cold!), they brought over some special tea made from tree bark (I'm convinced), which they assured would help me recover.