Hiking at 속리산 (Songnisan) National Park

Over Chuseok, Korean Thanksgiving, Kate and I went hiking with some friends at a National Park that is about 3 and a half hours from Gwangyang. We went up Tuesday night so that we could leave early to eat and start hiking. We stayed a hotel in the middle of nowhere and the rooms where 30,000 Won each, which is about $26. That's crazy cheap and the room wasn't even that bad! There were no bugs, except Pete had a spider above his bed haha, and it was clean, except for some dust and cobwebs. Overall, totally worth it. It had a/c and free Internet. The Internet was spotty but still better than some places at home.

Anyway, we left there around 8am and then headed to the village outside the mountain we were going to hike, ate, bought the awesome rain ponchos you see below, and started hiking just after 10am. It cost 3,000 Won to hike all day. We were there for about 7 hours and it was rough. This was my first ever hiking experience and when you see a sign that read "Danger District" you can't help but get nervous.. Haha

Still, it was a lot of fun and I'm really glad I went. We we did get up to the top, were we up in the cloud bank and it was really foggy so we didn't see the view we were supposed to, but it was still a great experience and I want to go again soon because everyone says fall is the best time to go and it's getting much cooler. We hiked about 16km which is almost 10 miles. Special thanks to PETE. I never would have made it if you haven't carried my backpack over half of the way... Thanks :)

This is from the Boyeopsa Temple which we went to visit after hiking. It was in the park on the way out. There was a GIANT Buddha too.

On our way home, we stopped for food at TGI Fridays. We each got a 3 course meal for about $20. Here is the dessert we all picked!

Eel is Delish! :)

So this past Thursday night my boss took us out for dinner. We went to the restaurant in the picture below. While there we ate a lot of different things including kimchi, ginger, radish, rice, shrimp, a spicy soup that I didn't even realize was spicy (see bottom picture), and eel. I was very excited about trying this, ever since seeing it on TV back home. I was a little grossed out at first because when they brought it out, it was still moving. Check out my other pictures and videos of this on Facebook. However, once the shock of this wore off, I really got into it. Plus they gave us some free eel for being American, or at least foreign.

This is our group, minus me. The lady in black is our new secretary lady and we call her Big Mama. In the white is Michelle. She is our cook. She doesn't know a lot of English but she's really sweet. Across from her is our boss, Jasmine. She speaks good English. Next to her is Kate and then Ivy, our Korean co-teacher.

I added this picture just to show how they cut meat. They never use knives, always scissors and tongs or chopsticks. So here Ivy is cutting the eel while its still cooking over the grill. The other picture right before I tried eel for the first time! It was really very good!!

This is said to be the hottest chili pepper in Korea. I ate it. My mouth was on fire for at least 20 minutes! haha Still worth it. Notice the leaf with eel in my right hand ready to ball up and shove in my mouth after eating the pepper! haha After eating that I chugged some Coke, which didn't help at all, and then we served the spicy soup. I didn't even notice the spice because I just thought my mouth was still not happy about the pepper.. Good times :)

Kindergarten Classes

So, not much has happened really in the past few weeks. During the week I am in school from 9:30am until 6:15 or 7pm depending on the night. Classes are going well. For this month, I teach Kindergarten first (at 10am) for a class called Phonics Vowels which is just the name of the book that I teach them with. Then I teach again every day right after lunch. On Monday's I teach Manners. Let me just say, Korean kids do not have very good manners. So far I've taught them how to introduce themselves and how and when to say "thank you" and "I'm sorry." Alongside that, I have to fill out a Manner's Checklist every day on each student's progress. I have the same checklist for a month. Let's just say, they still haven't mastered what to do yet.
On Tuesday's and Thursday I teach a class called Show & Tell. This is not what you think of as Show & Tell at home however. It's really just meant to get the students speaking in front of each other. We've talked about colors, numbers through 10 and body parts so far. On Wednesdays, I teach Art and on Friday's I teach Blocks. The Blocks class is just about using various manipulates with the students to teach them about different concepts. The one I am teaching them now is time and they are learning to use and read an analog clock. Both of these classes are going pretty well. On Monday's and Wednesday I also teach Yoga. As most of you know, I love Yoga, but I've only done it using Wii Fit Plus. Although you make fun of me (and I love you all for it :)) I still think Wii Fit Yoga is real. Haha I teach my kids the poses I've learned from that and also some other ones I found on YouTube. It's a lot of fun and it gets some of the kids to focus better. Others.. Peter.. I'm still working on.
Tonight after work we are going out for eel with our boss. I have been looking forward to trying this ever since I saw a Food Network or Travel Channel show that Andrew saved for me (I think it was Bizarre Foods with Andrew Zimmerman?)! The episode I saw focused on Korean foods and at first the eel thing freaked me out but after they cooked it, it looked really delicious. I hope I'm not disappointed! I'll let you know how that goes, hopefully with pictures soon!