Mid West to Far East

Had a great 26th birthday here in Korea! This year fell on a Tuesday, so not much partying going on but still very eventful.

Around 11:30am, Chels told me we were going somewhere special for lunch. We went downstairs and the whole English department from school was waiting for us. We hooped into two cars and drove 30 minutes south to Bondang to the Daily King’s Diner “The Original American Dining and Brunch” Let’s just say it was well worth the drive. Actually I’ll not say a little more as it did take Bryan a lot of convincing of our coworkers to get them to travel that far for lunch.

After much, painful deliberation into my important birthday lunch eating decision, I settled on the Daily King’s Chili Burger. This thing was staked with all the fixings, some surprising very good chili and fries on the side and a Coke to wash it all down. The meal was quite the delight. Let’s see if I can remember what the others got as well:

Megan got the BLT (her fav), Chels got a bacon cheeseburger, Bryan got chicken parm, Ran hee got chicken fettuccine, Ray got chicken parm, Isaac got the Daily Kings omelet, and Grace got the bacon cheeseburger.

We then got treated to a free desert waffle with whip cream and syrup. We were all stuffed and needed to get back to Dongtan for work. The weather has been pretty crummy this week, lots of rain and this morning some snow. It was raining pretty bad on Tuesday when driving back and as such we hit a car accident on our way back. We were stuck in traffic for about an extra 25 minutes.

We finally drove past what was left of the accident and saw a lone BMW with no front in, followed by its motor that had been seperated somehow during the crash. The other, I think five cars, had already been towed away. I hope everyone was okay, because the cars were far from it.

Now on to the wonderful presents: Chelsea got me a keyboard off of Gmarket, still waiting to have it in my hands, but it’s on its way. Isaac got me a badminton set and a package from my parents arrived that day as well which had some wonder summer sausage in it! I can safely say I cleaned up.

Throughout the day then, my students wished my happy birthday, a couple classes sung and so some small gifts from a few here and there. To end the day, my coworkers came out with a lite cake around quitting time and tried to sing happy birthday to me in English. It was fantastic to see and the cake was delicious, thanks Rachel.

If this happens to be my only birthday in Korea, at least it was a good one, but I have a feeling there will be more :)

~Ian

We had a great dinner the other night with some coworkers at a restaurant called Puffin down in Osan. The food was great, I got some nachos while Chels got some fajitas. It was nice spending some time with our Korean coworkers outside of work and we hope we can do it again soon. Here are some photos from the night.

Isaac, Me, Chelsea, Ranhee, Christina, Mrs. Lee and Rachel

Ray, Isaac and Me

Chelsea and Ranhee

Megan, Bryan and Rachel

Megan, Ranhee, Bryan and Rachel

And the best for last is us, of course!

~Ian

Okay, January has been a long month with lots of work and some fun along the way. We had NYE in Seoul, which I covered earlier as well as our trip to the Andy Warhol exhibit, both with Bryan and Selina. I’ll post some cool videos after this post as well of some fun things we have seen.

We also got to watch Iowa win the Orange Bowl here in Korea. Wasn’t the same watching it on my work computer in the morning, but was still great to see.

We had some fun nights out with Andy and his girlfriend Arum and Bryan, Selina and Megan and of course Chelsea’s birthday. For her birthday we started the night at On The Border Mexican Restaurant in Seoul with about 12 people.

Chelsea and her favorite new hat!

Bryan doing what he does

One of our tables at On The Border

Megan and Shane playing with their food

We had a big crew at the restaurant: In no order; Shane, Megan, Nick, Nick’s Air Force Friend (sorry can’t remember name), Alex, Alex’s friend (sorry again), Andy, Will, Brent, Bryan Han, Bryan Parnell, Selina, Kim, and Pierre. Pierre actually met Chelsea at the bus stop as he saw the invite on facebook and wanted to meet some fun people, which we are of course. We had a lot of fun at the restaurant with great food, a birthday song for Chels from the staff and lots of drinks. We then headed to a hookah bar back around the Gangnam station called the Rainbow.

Selina leading the group to the hookah bar, Rainbow

Chels enjoying a cranberry n’ vodka bucket at the Rainbow

The Rainbow was a really cool bar, unfortunately didn’t get many good photos with the lighting and the lack of flash on my iPhone. We had a nice area for the group though and had fun hanging out. Around midnight we decided to change venues and headed across the alley to a classic rock bar called Woodstock. The bar was full of westerners and playing some good music. Chels got them to play Tom Petty almost right away. Bryan and I shared some Jager Bombs, mmm, and then Kim and I worked on our dart shark skills…we need some work…We were having a blast at the Woodstock and I completely forgot about photos, sorry.

After the Woodstock our group shrank some more as Andy, Will, Bryan, Selina and Kim all headed home. The rest of us hit up a night club, the name of which we never learned and proceeded to hit up the dance floor with their paid dancers…

Check out these moves!

The night was an amazing blast! Chelsea, I and Pierre shared a cab back to Dongtan and we got there flawlessly! That’s a first! Was glad to meet Pierre, who’s a pretty cool dude, with a beard and hanging out with Kim some more who’s a lot of fun. The rest of the group were great as usual! Can’t wait to hit the town with them all again!

But, now on to other things, here’s a quick shot of my student Brendan…well being Brendan with his new found jacket, courtesy of Ann, Mrs. O’s daughter.

The kid is a handful!

I’m trying to get better at taking more photos and as we’re getting back to the regular schedule this week, should have more time and energy to blog. In the meantime, I’ll be putting up some random videos we’ve collected shortly. Annyonghaseyo!

~Ian

Hello everyone! Are you dying to see the city of Dongtan?!? To see it from the streets just like we do?!? We’ll you’re in luck!!

This week I finally found a site that is the equivalent to Google Maps Streetview for South Korea. Streetview. The map is centered directly over our building with an arrow on it. To get to to Streetview, look right above the navigation buttons for the map, there are four tab buttons, click on 로드뷰 and it will highlight all the roads blue and put a webcam icon on the map. Double click anywhere on the blue roads or drag the icon somewhere and it will give you a 360 degree view of that area. As you can see Dongtan itself isn’t too big, but there’s still a lot here. This will give everyone who wants a feel for the city a bit and I know we’ll be using it to know every part of the city. I believe the pictures are about 1 1/2 years old for the streetview as our building isn’t quite done in them. Enjoy!

~Ian

That’s really all I’ve got for today…So go check my past couple posts, I’ve added some more photos.

~Ian

What an excellent weekend. First off it was a whole THREE DAY weekend! We typically have a one day weekend so this was huge. We got off work around 6:00pm on Thursday, New Year’s Eve, and met up with Bryan and Selina around 8:30pm to take the express bus to Seoul. We did some pre-partying on the bus and 30 minutes later were dropped off in the district of Gangnam in Seoul and jumped onto the subway for two stops to get to our destination.

We were off to a huge party at the Grand Intercontinental Hotel in Seoul, but first we stopped by Selina’s brother Khalil’s apartment which was a couple blocks away. We played a couple quick drinking games and then were back into the cold, and man was it cold, to go to the party.

Khalil and his friend Danny had already gotten us wristbands earlier that night so we were able to jump the line and go straight in to the coat check. The place was already looking crazy with two stages for DJ performances, four VIP areas with bottle service and two bars.

We got ourselves some drinks and headed out onto the dance floor in anticipation of the upcoming countdown in 15 minutes. The place was packed when midnight hit and the celebration was insane. There was SO much confetti that came out at the beginning of 2010 and the volume on the beats got knocked up to 11.

The rest of the night was spent going back and forth between the two stages and listening to acts like Steve Aoki and Pete Rock. Somehow I managed to get us in the VIP backstage area at the main stage and there we had a blast.

One of the things that stood out most that night was the fact that, while there were many westerners there, there were a great deal of Koreans there but it seemed to be a 100% English speaking party. Almost everyone we spoke with had amazingly good English even if born and raised in Korea. It was quite nice.

Another amazing thing was that Bryan met some guy who was from the same small Canadian town of 100 people as him. They were about five years apart in age, so didn’t know each other, but what are the odds?

After much partying, drinking and rocking we decided to call it a night, get our coats and see if we couldn’t try to make it back to Dongtan. We found ourselves a cab as the bus was not running and the subway didn’t start back up for another two hours and negotiated a deal to get us all back for 50,000 won.

The driver didn’t really know where he was going so it was a bit tricky, especially when everyone else passed out and I was left trying to navigate him back, not knowing where the heck we were, but we made it!

We ended up giving the cabbie an extra 5,000 won for Bryan puking in the back seat and whatnot, but well worth it to be back in our own beds, where we stayed for the good portion of New Years Day, only getting up for a pizza run.

On Saturday we headed back to Seoul with Bryan and Selina on the bus to go see the Andy Warhol exhibit at the Seoul Museum of Art. We had a general idea of where we were going, but were not 100%, which turned out to be kind of a good thing.

We saw Christmas carolers, street break dancers, a Korean rock band, a cool ice skating rink in the middle of the street, a musical play performance, an ancient temple, ate some great food at The Place and all this while wandering around trying to find the Seoul Museum of Art.

As it turns out the subway map showing the museum completely mislead us and had us walking for over an hour in the wrong direction. We finally figured out where we were going and another hour later we were there, a little worse for wear.

The Warhol exhibit was fantastic, with all his best work as well as many artifacts from his personal life such as family photos, personal letters and many other items from many of his “time capsules.”

After a couple hours at the exhibit it was about dinner time and we headed over to Outback Steakhouse which was nearby and quickly walked back out after seeing the prices. We wanted steak, but not a $40 ribeye.

So we got back on the train and headed to the bus stop where Bryan said he knew of a Mexican restaurant. And if you know Chelsea and I you know we love nothing more than Mexican food, so it was a done deal.

The restaurant turned out to be On The Border and the food was amazing. We’ve already decided that the restaurant will be the venue for Chelsea’s 25th birthday party on the 23rd.

We then headed home to rest our tired bodies and digest our food. Sunday was a pretty lazy day at our house with some cleaning and many movies watched. Bryan and Selina invited us over for dinner that night though, and we were out the door again to meet up with them.

Bryan cooked us some excellent stir fry and then we swapped some movies and TV shows with each other and we introduced them to It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia.

Now were starting our super long schedule of 8am to 6pm six days a week…January is going to be a long month…

On Monday our director took us out to eat at the chicken restaurant downstairs along with the whole staff to celebrate the end of the year and the one year anniversary of the school’s opening. It was the first time the whole staff had gotten together outside of work and ended up being so much fun.

Isaac, Ray, Ranhee, Rachel, Megan, Chelsea and I

We started the night out with food, Chelsea tried squid for the first time but didn’t really care for the texture. Her face while trying to put it down was priceless. Then out came the beer and Soju and man was there a lot of both!

Me, Isaac and Ray

Bryan was pouring us shots and letting us know that if we start doing shots we have to do at least three in a row before stopping. We did our best to stay true to that philosophy.

Ranhee, Rachel, Megan and Chelsea

About an hour in to the party the senior director for our region arrived and gave a nice speech to the staff congratulating us all on our hard work and his high hopes for the next year.

Mr O

Right now I got to get ready for New Years Eve in Seoul. Looks like we’ll be going with Bryan and Selina to a big party downtown where DJ Steve Aoki from Japan will be mixing the beats. From what I hear he’s amazing and it should be a great night, wish us luck!

Our Senior Director of the Region, Miss Kim, Our Director, and me and Chelsea

Chelsea and Christine

What a good weekend. On Saturday we made our way to the Lotte Cinema via bus and taxi to see Sherlock Holmes. The  7:30 show we had wanted to see was all sold out so we had to wait for the 9:50 showing.

With the extra wait time we went to eat at a restaurant called “Western Hof”. We had garlic chicken, which was okay and lots of Cass and just hung out.

Come show time we got our snacks, which are SO much cheaper than movie theaters in the states and headed in. There is also assigned seating for all movies, which is really nice.

Sherlock Holmes as a movie was okay, not Ritchie’s best work, by far, but a sold flick. We then took a taxi home and called it a night.

Yesterday we traveled up to Suwon station in hopes to exchange one of my Christmas sweaters. Unfortunately with no receipt and not being able to find the shop we were out of luck.

Suwon station is a huge shopping mall connected to the subway station. It has seven floors of shops and restaurants and a movie theater. We explored the area for a little over an hour and then got ourselves some lunch at Burger King.

I thought I would be happy to be eating good ole fashioned American fast food again, but after my Whooper and onion rings I felt sick to my stomach. I think it’s a good sign to try to stay away from that stuff going forward.

Andy and his girlfriend Arum then met up with us and we jumped on an express train to Yongsan, in search of a replacement XBOX 360 power supply for my blown up one. The train ride took about 30 minutes and was a very nice ride.

Yongsan was just as big as Suwon and the digital city was full of every kind of electronics. The place was amazing, however we were unable to find a replacement power supply. All they had were 220V power supplies which were not compatible with my XBOX.

We kept exploring though and Arum was able to haggle a good price on a humidifier for her and Andy, I picked up a pitted Chicago Cubs hat and Chels checked out some cameras but didn’t settle on one.

We then stepped outside so Andy and Arum could grab a quick smoke and stumbled upon their winter wonderland setup which looked pretty good as when were inside shopping quite a bit of snow had piled up outside.

By 5:00 we were exhausted and headed back to Suwon on the express train and said our goodbyes to Andy and Arum. We then jumped back on the Subway to Dongtan and then onto our bus back home.

For dinner we made some cheese and beans quesodillas for dinner and then we were out for the count. A good end to a great weekend.