The Strange, Beautiful, and Humorous

Lunches from last week:

Oh, gosh...that pile of cold spinach stuff. Surprisingly, though, I actually enjoyed the octopus soup.

 

The seafood pancakes were cold and soggy...ugh, but they gave me three of them. The leafy soup was okay, but the texture started getting me at the end and I couldn't finish.

And because you might have been worrying about the yogurt drinks I bought, fear not! They are "human friendly":

Random painted pianos in the Myeongdong shopping area of Chuncheon:

I don't know what they were for. People were randomly playing them. But I just took pictures for future inspiration. I will paint a piano one day. It's on the bucket list (has been for a long time, actually).

My new Halloween classroom decorations! Until I can find a piano for a canvas, I will just have to enjoy paper-plate artwork: 

My students' favorite was the minion, naturally.

AAHHH!!! Guess what exciting thing happened last week??! My oven came: 

It showed up at my apartment door one day after class. I was so giddy. It was almost better than Christmas. Thank you, Park Geun-hye. I may show up to the Blue House with freshly-baked chocolate chip cookies sometime.

It's a convection oven, so it took me a little bit to figure out. But I made popovers!

Another exciting thing that happened last week? LDS General Conference! It is the first time that the "welcome to members listening across the world" thing has applied to me. I took a picture of my clock to prove that I actually watched the Saturday morning session at 1:00 AM my time:

I actually stayed awake all session and took really good notes. And then Aubree thought, "I'll set my alarm for the afternoon session and just take a small nap in between..." HAHAHA.

So...teaching Korean children English is a lot harder than expected. My weeks are exhausting and I may or may not have binge-watched some Netflix series. I really look forward to my weekends. Can you guess where I stayed in Seoul this weekend?? 

Hahaha...a jjimjilbang. Duh. This time, I paid $30 and had a half-naked Korean ajjuma scrub me down with exfoliating gloves. Weirdest thing ever and super funny. But it was just something I had to do once. Plus, it was nice to shed all that dead skin that you had no idea was clinging to you...

Hahaha...oh...asking the ajjuma for a scrub was super awkward. They do scrubs and massages and all those services 24/7. But when they have no customers, the ajjumas sleep or watch TV in a little room outside the shower/bath room. So...here we are, naked and dripping wet after our first shower, and we had to wake up a sleeping ajjuma who doesn't understand a word of English. Luckily, another jjimjilbang patron saw our distress and did the awkward "waking of an ajjuma masseuse while I am naked" thing for us. Koreans are so nice. 

The jjimjilbang was super hot and stuffy, so I sweat all night again. On a hard floor. With a styrofoam block beneath my head. Uhh...I'm getting kind of sick of jjimjilbangs...lesbihonest.

What I'm not getting sick of? Dunkin Donuts! 

Don't worry. No coffee. Just cold milk in my cup. Yum yum yum.

Cris and I explored Home Plus. And I found baking cocoa!! And chocolate chips! Yay! 

We also found the pet section: 

Emily, your only souvenir is going to be this blue frog. I hope your roommates won't mind.

And Josh, you get a snail.

[Actually, haha, one of my 1st-grade students came to class one day this week with a container and two giant snails in it. It must have been "show-and-tell of your pets" day. But, oh my gosh, the snails were huge! Like, the shell alone was the size of my fist and then the body was the size of my other fist. And to think I high-fived this kid after class (my normal end-of-the-day routine). Yuck. I washed that hand quickly.]

Ahh, gotta love Korean grocery stores: 

These aren't pets. They're for eating, of course.

I took Cris to Mullae art village to show her some of the cool graffiti and art. I...don't think she found it as interesting as me, haha. But it was still fun.

An artist's home or workshop, maybe? And his cat just chillin' in the alleyway: 

[Oh, happy Hangul Day, by the way! October 9th. I know it's not our writing system, but we should still make this a holiday at home and enjoy the day off... Takers?]

Cris and I made our way to our real destination, the Trickeye Museum in Hongdae. 

What a cute entrance with these umbrellas and chandelier, right??

And then there was this nude man. I made him kind of modest for you, though. This is a respectable blog, after all.

Uh, just a sign in the bathroom of the museum:

Hahaha...

And then this was on the back of my stall door: 

Okay, and now for all the museum pictures: 

Life's goal has been accomplished...I rode a unicorn...

And surfed on sharks...whaa??! 

Just levitating. The usual.

I've found him. This is the one, mom and dad.

Ohh...I take it back: my blog is about to become "not respectable"...I apologize in advance...

Those are definitely red-carpet tennis shoes.

Our ticket also got us into the Ice Museum, which was freezing cold. Everything was sculpted out of ice. 

Yes, there was a little present in the toilet.

I look so cheerful to be in this ice living room. But, in reality, Cris and I couldn't leave fast enough. And no, we did not slide down the ice slide: 

Okay...well, we made it through the museums and I don't think my blog's reputation has been tainted too terribly, right? Just be glad I didn't go to the Love Museum, which was in the same building:

Art. Just, art.

Hongdae is fun. Hongik University is in Hongdae, so it's super crowded with college students. It's the party district--apparently there's always something happening. It comes alive at night, too. 

I didn't participate in any clubbing or drinking. Cris and I found an awesome Italian restaurant and had pasta! Oh, yeah, living it up in Hongdae, deprived-of-food-American-style.

We met our other friend, Araceli, at a pizza place where she was at nearby. Araceli and Cris are both bilingual and speak Spanish. There was a table of Spanish-speakers next to us and we were trying to guess where they were from because they had non-Mexican accents (according to Araceli and Cris). We were just saying they couldn't be Colombian, when the guy at the table heard us and turns around, "Actually, we are Colombian." Anyway, Araceli and Cris talked to the group for awhile and, come to find out, it's the Colombian ambassador and his family. Super nice people, not that I understood any of the Spanish. (I'm kind of used to not understanding language around here, though...)

Did I mention that Hongdae is a really crowded area?

Subway...

This wasn't even the worst of it. Later on this night, Cris and I took the subway on our way to a jjimjilbang. There were soooo many people. I have never been in a crowd that big. People just kept cramming in the subway car and pushed us clear up to the doors. It was insane. Poor Cris got super claustrophobic and we made a hurried exit at the next stop and took a taxi the rest of the way...

On Saturday, I met up with Lawson again and we hiked Bukhansan National Park. He told me this is the most trafficked national park in the world per area, or something like that. 

[Josh, you lucky dude, I saved a small pinecone for you...]

Incredible views! Ahh, it was so beautiful. The hike was brutal, but worth it. (I can barely walk today, my calves kill so much...)

Ahh, it's Autumn! How beautiful is this?!

At the top of our hike was this gate...

Lots of cairns and rock piles...

I am so majestic.

I didn't know what these bright purple berries were. So I tried them. Juuust kidding...

I decided I needed an arm workout, in addition to my grueling leg workout...so...I went kayaking on the Han river. Lawson and I met up with some other YSA folks and we bravely took kayaks on the river in the middle of a lightning and thunder storm...(our tour guide assured us it was safe, so, okay, do as the Koreans...)

Ugh, candid shot...I stole all these pics from my friend's facebook...

This was probably the coolest experience I've had in Korea thus far. The weather thankfully cooperated and the rain stopped before we got on the river. It was actually perfect weather and surprisingly not too cold. And the night lights from the river were amazing! Oh, it was so cool! 

We kayaked to one bridge and back to another and then back to the dock. Just enough to make my shoulders sore and work up an appetite for Korean fried chicken, which was delivered to the kayaking place as part of our deal. So yummy!

I stayed Saturday night with one of the YSA girls in Seoul and then we met up with some more girls at another apartment today to watch a session of conference (Korea watches it a week later than Utah). And then I came home to Chuncheon (I slept the whole train ride back).

I'm so excited to not be sleeping on the floor tonight, oh my goodness. And later this week, I get to sleep in hotels!! BECAUSE MY MOM IS COMING FOR 2 1/2 WEEKS!!! I am so excited.