Getting tired then resting! and Merry Christmas!

Since the teachers trip school has finished and preparation for the English Camp I am teaching has started. Its actaully waaayyyyy harder to plan and lessons then I thought it would be and I only had 2 days to plan for 6 weeks of 6 hours of class 5 days per week! Ahhh!!! My prinicpal decided she didn't like my lesson plans and that they needed more activites from outside the text book curriculum we bought for the camp!! Ahhh! Now my job is kind of stressful. but i think I can handle it and modify the lesson plans to make her happy. Anyway I have been having a lot of fun too and its made me really tired! Skiing and meeting friends until late definitely takes its toll after a few weeks! So I came to Busan (the second biggest city in Korea) to visit my friend Miseon who I met while working at the Purdue Writing Lab. I am staying with her family (2 elementary school age boys). It is a lot of fun and also good for me since we are going to bed early and getting lots of sleep! It was about a 4 hour bus ride to get here but it only cost about $20! We are touring all of the famous sites of Busan (which is famous for beaches) and we are trying lots of new foods (Busan is famous for raw seafood) Today I ate raw fish, oysters, touched a live shark, and at a bunch of other raw seafood that I had no idea what it was! I hope everyone has a great christmas! I will post some pictures here eventually!

Teachers ski trip

Last weekend my school took a 2 day trip to Gangwon Province in the eastern part of Korea. It was amazing. The mountains there are so huge and beatiful! Friday night we at grilled beef (beef is expensive in Korea so having grilled beef is kind of a treat) as well as RAW BEEF!!!! This was my first time to eat raw beef and it is really good! I didn't get sick so it must be ok. After dinner we went skiing at High One Resort which was really fun even though it was raining. That resort is huge the runs were 5-6kms long each! After skiing every teacher went to the Singing room to do karoake together! This was also very very fun!! I sang the YMCA song and Crazy by Britney Spears. It was a very long night! And a very early morning as we got up at 8am to go visit a cave! We took a walking tour of a giant cave which was very beatiful! I forgot to take pictures though as usual. After the cave we ate lunch and went to a traditional Korean market to look around and eat delicous snack food! The market was extremly crowded but it was still a good time. When we got on the bus to go home everyone immediately fell asleep! After getting home and showering I went to a party in the north part of Yongin with some friends and met some cool new korean friends there! It was great. Sunday I met my new chinese friend Roy and we went hiking around Yongin City it was new trails and I discovered some great places to go mtb riding that I am hoping to check out this saturday.
Up for this weekend is sking with another teacher from my school on Friday night, mountain bike riding or hiking saturday then meeting friends saturday night in Yongin then Sunday I am gonna go to Gwanak San to go hiking! It should be a fun weekend and hopefully slightly more restful than last weekend.

Driving a car in Korea!!

This past week and a half I realized just how expensive driving a big diesel SUV can be when gas is $6 per gallon! really expensive!!! Also all of the driving I am doing is basically city driving with lots of stopping and going which eats up gas too! I definitely need to balance my driving with some bus riding. Riding the bus works well on the weekends and when I am not in a hurry to get somewhere. Anyway things are going pretty well here! It got cold again so I haven't been riding my bike but this weekend is a big ski trip with my school to Gangwon do which is where the biggest mountains in korea are!. I made friends with 2 of the girl teachers at my school who are young and they both also bought season ski passes to the Yangji Pine resort! So I have a couple of ski buddies now! They speak english too but it will be good for me to practice korean with them too. Last weekend I had dinner at a korean friends parents house! it was awesome we at fresh korean oysters, fish and pork spare ribs all cooked on a grill! It was really fun! In other news I have some korean friends who live in Yangji. They work up at the Asiana country club which is a big famous golf course here. Next week I should have a good update to post after the ski trip.