Global Gathering

On October 9th, a bunch of foreigners from Iksan took a bus up to Seoul for the Global Gathering festival...an all day, all night DJ extravaganza. Before heading to the festival, it was essential to eat at Taco Bell in Itaewon. I've never thought Taco Bell tasted so delicious as I did that day. There were a lot of excellent DJs, the main event being Fat Boy Slim for two hours. Thousands of people were jumping and swinging their glow sticks around. After the festival, everyone caught a train back to Iksan and slept like babies the whole way home. It was definitely worth the money and the pure exhaustion on Sunday.

Sunchang

On Saturday we took a bus from Iksan to Jeonju, Jeonju to a little two road town in the country called Sunchang to visit our friends Ruth and Andy. It was great to see the difference between Seoul last week and rural Korea this week. Sunchang was enchanting and I can't wait to go back to visit them again. Everyone knows who they are, everything is walkable, and something so simple as going to the movies is a treat in a different town. We went to the driving range where a Korean woman insisted Ruth and I hit the balls just to her liking, ate delicious sam gyeop sal, and played card games all night at the only bar in town.

Chuseok Visitors

Last week was Chuseok, or Korean Thanksgiving. Everyone spends the day with their families, cooking food, and exchanging presents. Our boss gave all the teachers either a big box of apples or pears for Chuseok. Fruit is expensive in Korea so it was a really great gift!

The best part of Chuseok though, was that my mom and Colin's brother came to visit. It's been 6 months since I'd seen my mom, and 9 months since Colin had seen his brother. We even managed to get the entire week off of work! It was a longer vacation than our summer vacation! It was wonderful spending time with them, as well as seeing Korea through fresh eyes again. I've gotten so used to everything here, that I forget about the strange and wonderful things about this country sometimes. It was fun reliving everything...like how difficult chopsticks really are, how every kid says "Hello, How are you? Nice to meet you" on the street and how it can still be sweet, the brilliance of noraebangs, and the little exercise machines in all the parks.

I enjoyed showing them around Iksan and taking my mom to all of my favorite restaurants and introducing her to my friends, as well as Kiwi Soju. They came to our school one day and it was fantastic seeing all the kids bow to my Omah and work really hard because they wanted her to be proud of them. She brought them Twizzlers and York Peppermint Patties, and boy, was it HILARIOUS watching them eat it for the first time. Smelling it, shaking it, bending it, looking around to see what the other kids are doing, then finally taking a little nibble. Some of them hated it, others loved it, and for some it took a while to get used to, then they asked for more!

We climbed a mountain one morning near our apartment and realized how fit and spiffy Koreans are in all of their hiking gear, passing us up the mountain. We took a day trip to Jeonju and enjoyed the Traditional Hanok Village. We spent 5 days in Seoul, which was actually my first time there as well.

We went up Namsan Tower, ate at Namdaemun Market, went to the DMZ, devoured Western food in Itaewon, and walked around Gyeongbokgung Palace. Seoul is an incredible city and has a great feel to it, but I'm also glad that they got to see our little town...the real Korea without all the tourists and foreigners.