Best Taekwondo demo ever!

*sigh* I still lament the fact that I never got to do Taekwondo as a kid. I don't think we had the diversity to have lessons in our area and my parents (well ok my mum) always seemed hopeful that I'd one day turn into a princessy girl and to this end made us do ballet (short and unsuccessful) and fan dancing. Having said that, we did also get to do Little Athletics, which I remember liking since I was pretty good at high-jump, and play netball (which is, granted, a fairly girly sport) and soccer. Anyway, that's a pretty roundabout introduction to this video which is awesome because a) it's a frickin' AMAZING show of taekwondo skills and b) they picked two good songs to do it to. Yay! ^_^

This is the link to the site if the video doesn't work. Thanks 9gag!

And not to trivialise it, but Happy Special Day to my mum and dad and beautiful sister! It was our first family event where all of us were there (mum being pregnant with Fran at the time) so it was a very special day indeed. Sadly the Post Office didn't share this view and as a result, I still haven't gotten my new Terry Pratchett book and acoutrements that mum had sent me three weeks ago :(
 

On the upside, I did get a pretty new mp3 player as a gift yesterday, thanks to the wonderful Mr Smiles :) And yes, it's bright pink, but I love it anyway, especially because it combines the gadgetry of Samsung with the only feature of Apple products I actually like - the design. Isn't it pretty? Oh and lol, I used this picture because it looks like the player is being pervy and has a fetish for women in sports bras, but I'm pretty sure this was supposed to allude to its Fitness mode. Anyway, it's very cute and has its own USB jack in the bottom so you don't need any extra cords or anything to connect it to your computer.

Oh and since today is a slow day, I've been watching The Lion King and LOVING IT! Like you needed to be reminded of it's awesomeness but here you go anyway. I love how you can re-watch "children's movies" from your childhood and now find it doubly brilliant because you now also get all the references they put in for parents :)

Haha^^

Hope everyone's having a lovely Wednesday out there :)

Happy Pepero Day!

A usual 'BUY! BUY! BUY!' flood of Pepero on crack display

Happy Pepero Day everyone! Or for everyone else, Remembrance Day. Although not happy because that would be in slightly bad taste. Pretty sure I wrote a post about this last year, but it's the day you give Pepero (a chocolate covered biscuit stick) to people you like/get them from people who like you. One of the charms of this day is that it is competely and utterly upfront about being 100% a made-up commercial holiday by the company that makes Pepero and is called Pepero Day because the '1's in the 11.11 date looks like four sticks of Pepero. And of course, this year being 2011, it's triple/uber/ultimate Pepero Day! Or Pepero to the power of 3 perhaps? I dunno. All I do know is that there is a hell of a lot of Pepero around today, most of which started being sold something like 3 weeks ago when the ads started running too.

Anyway, so this year I've done significantly worse than last year, probably because a) I'm in a different staffroom that the kids aren't allowed into unless they're there to specifically see a teacher and b) I've been a complete hard-arse to most of my students this year and have completely lost my noodle at and punished at least 13 of my 17 classes at some point in the year (deservedly). So I've not exactly been going for 'soft cuddly teacher award'. Oh and also, they're teenagers, and I see most of them once a week so the amount of crap we give about each other is fairly low. Last year I think I got them because I had a Year 8 conversation class after school. Can't say I'm particularly surprised or fazed :p Possibly because I already got an awesome Pepero bon bon from someone already ^_^

So T-bo, I know you were hanging out for a good blog, but sorry, I don't have much to write about right now (hah! write to right about) that's blog-appropriate. I guess I should throw something out there about the weekend which I am looking forward to with great relish for various reasons, one of which the beautiful Sophia and her lovely Phil are in Seoul so I'll be seeing them. Hooray! Another of which is that I think we only have three weeks of Korean lessons left, and since I've been getting more and more bone-tired from bellydancing etc. lately this is very good news as I am looking forward to reclaiming my Saturday morning sleep-ins. Although of course I will keep studying (and this time I actually will!) after they finish. Edithe has been telling me about some awesome sites that she's been using so I guess I should get into them.
Oh and also try and watch some more TV/movies in Korean. Still not going to budge on the drama issue though. A) because lately I don't need a TV for drama, I've had plenty of infinitely more interesting drama going on in my own life and b) because, well, I find dramas as boring as hell. I only like TV shows with good enough writing to keep the storylines at least semi-unpredictable and create well-drawn characters (and preferably witty dialogue), regardless of genre, and dramas do not cut the mustard most of the time, being formulaic and not funny enough to get away with bad acting. Except Passions, which is in a league of its own haha^^ (By the way, I didn't watch the whole episode below, just the first minute or so, but it's a pretty good indicator of the brilliance of the show.) Harsh? Yep. I'm a hater. Sadly, this is a disadvantage to learning Korean and also making friends in Korea as most people here watch dramas and one of the first things they often ask you is about which one you watch. Anyway, I'm going to give it a go with watching movies at school instead and downloading stuff at home and watching it at school as well as actual studying.

 

Anyhoo, that's about it from me for now. Hope y'all have great weekends, kicked off by great Fridays! Regardless of whether they are Pepero filled or not :)

No Mention of Peppero Here Whatsoever...

... actually, I lie. If you want to go outside at ALL in Korea on the 11th of November, you better be prepared to be inundated by people waving peppero at you EVERYWHERE. In fact, really, you should be prepared for this all week, because the advertising starts early (in the tradition of pushy advertising) and if you are dumb enough to go to a supermarket like I was last night, you should be prepared to see grown adults in a near scrum over boxes of these chocolate covered biscuit sticks. Which is quite interesting seeing as this isn't even a real holiday, and in fact is widely acknowledged to have been encouraged, if not actually started (and heavily denied) by the Peppero company about 8 years ago (?) because the number 11 looks like two peppero sticks. Never mind that it also looks like many other things that are sticks or even sticks themselves - where's the profit in that?

Adorable if a little scary.

At any rate, for those of you not in the know, on Peppero Day you usually give peppero to people that you like such as your friends, people you respect (like teachers) or that crush you've been looking for a subtle way to express your feelings to. So I can't be too cynical about this day, as I did quite well out of it. I ended up with about 9 different lots of peppero, and a chocopie in lieu of peppero because one student didn't have any peppero to give (presumably because by the time they remembered to buy some, the shop shelves had been utterly ransacked) but the colours are the same so it was a pretty good substitution! To give you some idea of how crazy this gets, Min-Jae (scroll down for a picture of her) told me that she got more than 20 from her friends! But her brother only got one ㅠ_ㅠ...

Above is a picture of the ones I didn't scoff for recess, as well as a really cute card here on the left from one of my loveliest students to go with the peppero that she gave me. I thought it was awesome, even though she drew herself with a kind of screaming zombie face.

As you can see, in the face of all this peppero, Remembrance Day barely gets a look in. In fact, when I was doing a lesson on special days earlier in the year and we were going through a list of days celebrated in Australia, and I asked "so what is celebrated on the 11th of November?" , even though it was written down in front of them, most students STILL said "Peppero Day!" with what I thought was extreme optimism. Needless to say, wearing a red poppy seemed a little bland. At any rate, I still wore red today (no poppies) and as most peppero packets (or chocopies) are red too, it was quite fitting.

And here we move onto Reason #2 for why I started this blog - the food! (good guess Naomi ^_^)

Because today was not JUST Peppero Day - it was also a great food day! In both amount and quality. So I am quite lucky in that my school lunches are really good and always edible AND recognisable, and also that I'm quite used to Korean food (we all know that means I LOVE it and could easily eat my way out of a vat of it) and, not to put too fine a point on it (because I know that the school lunches are one of the biggest continuing problems that foreign teachers have with their schools), willing to give most things a go, even if I know it's probably going to burn like the bejeezus on the way... through... : s So I never go hungry during the day. BUT I am also incredibly lucky in that I have been somewhat adopted (yes, again) by the lady who runs the supermarket near my house. Which in Korea means that I never have to buy my own kimchi again! This is especially fortuitous this year as following a number of typhoons earlier in the year, the price of vegetables has skyrocketed, and it's possibly the first time that buying ready-made kimchi has actually been cheaper than making your own (which is also a big part of Korean culture and food). The whole family is also super friendly and the kids are absolutely adorable so it's really easy talking to them all in Korean and they don't make me feel like a complete moron when I make mistakes.

Super Onni's "simple dinner" minus the 파전 and 미역국

So today Hee-Jeong (I call her Super Onni because I both love bad puns and she is!) invited me over for some dwenjang-guk (된장국) or bean-paste soup, which is a bit different from dwenjang-jjigae (된장찌개), the bean-paste stew that you usually get (or rather, got, pre-vegetable crisis) with any kind of Korean BBQ'd meat. This mostly just has the bean paste and a kind of Korean silverbeet in it rather than the basic Korean stew vegetables and clams, and is of course delicious! Being very lazy and with the weather going CRAZY outside with wind and rain and all sorts of a hullaballoo storming it up, I skipped the gym and had a nap. In retrospect, I really wish I'd made the effort to go, as "just 된장국" turned out to be 된장국 plus the requisite side-dishes you always get with a good Korean meal, plus beer, plus pajeon (파전) or savoury pancakes, plus MORE beer, PLUS miyok-guk (미역국) or seaweed soup because it's her daughter Min-Jae's birthday tomorrow and it's a Korean tradition to eat 미역국 on your birthday. (This is to commemorate your mother giving birth to you and eating seaweed soup to restore her iron levels.) Needless to say, I ate and drank far more than was good for me (yes, I eat like a man and can never resist just one more bite)!

With Super Onni's kids, Min-Jae and Min-Seong

And just when I thought the food overload was done, Super Onni gives me a 2kg container full of kimchi and about four other containers of other side-dishes to take home with me! ...Seriously, gym next week for sure. And of course, because he is a gentleman and his sister had just given me about 3kgs of food, Super Onni's brother Jin (who is a champ and always makes an effort to speak in both Korean and English with me) walked me home and carried it for me. Granted, it was only about 300m away, but I was grateful nonetheless.

So to summarise, I put absolutely NO effort into feeding myself today. Most appropriate quote for the day: "I have always depended on the kindness of strangers..." Except change 'strangers' to Koreans. Great day : D



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