Hi Friends!

Sorry for the delay but my inclination toward laziness didn't change with the time change. I'm glad some things stay the same.

Anyway, so as promised this update will include Mr Lee, Chuseok Holiday Preparations and our trip to Insa-dong!


So, starting with Mr Lee.

We went hiking a few weekends ago with our former roommate Christina. (for those of you who don't know, she was our motivation for coming to Korea). Anyway, we went hiking at this beautiful mountain practically IN the city. The pictures are attached to the last entry. So, as we're hiking up we stop to take in a Vista and this older Korean gentleman stops to compliment Christina on her hiking shoes. He continues chatting with us and ultimately just finishes the hike with us and takes us this totally crazy off the trail way back down. He's 72. He retired when he had to at the age of 63 after teaching History for 30 years and before that he was in the Army. When he retired he took up studying english and hiking (incidentally this was his 2nd time up the mountain that day). He takes any opportunity to practice his english and our hike mostly consisted of us listening to him practice his lectures. he'd prepared one on JFK and on Douglas MacArthur. He also loved to memorize English Proverbs. It was really interesting to find out which proverbs also exist in korea. Of course, at this point (three weeks later) it's hard to remember which ones exist in both languages. Anyway, he took us out to dinner and then invited us back to his house for apples and tea. It was super fun and really exciting to meet and hang out with Koreans. He even invited us to Chuseok (Korean Thanksgiving) but only Christina could go (and she said it was great!) Anyway, we've tried to call him again, but we haven't been able to connect.

Chuseok preparations.
Chuseok is like the Korean Thanksgiving and is one of the biggest holidays of the year. Koreans visit the family tomb or grave, clean the up the tomb site, feast and, most importantly, give thanks and respect to their ancestors. The week leading up to it is crazy! On Chuseok there is gift giving so all the stores have gift sets and sales and the supermarkets are packed. There's traditional clothes (hanbok) on sale everywhere for children (it reminded me of easter when all the little easter dresses get put on sale) and the clerks dress in Hanbok as well. Everyone talked about it for weeks leading up to it and because it's a travel holiday many of the schools took off an extra day so we got a four day weekend! However, checking back in with everyone the next week was kind of funny. I work with mostly women so the weekend is especially hard for them as most of the families visit both graves (paternal and maternal). And, in korea the people who have to do the cooking and hosting are the families of the eldest son so many of my co-teachers came back from the holiday break exhausted. At least that's the same everywhere, holidays are great times to see relatives and catch up but are often very hard on the people doing the cooking and hosting. Anyway, jamie and I took a road trip with friends, which i'll tell you about next time.


Insa-dong!
Well, we have a video. the two women in the video are our Co Teachers. The one on the right is Jamie's and the one on the left is Shannon's. These are the women who take care of everything for u! here you go: