Pages

Wednesday, February 17, 2010

Lunar New Year Weekend

Happy Korean New Year! It is the year of the tiger. Rawr.

In honor of the new year, my branch had Monday off. Awesome! Although I have to make it up on Saturday.* Traditionally, Koreans spend Korean New Year (which does, as you may suspect, generally coincide with Chinese New Year, Vietnamese New Year, etc.) with their families doing basically what we do on Thanksgiving. Traditions include eating Tteokguk (떡국), giving money for good luck, and wearing traditional dress.

Since us foreigners don't have any family out here, we decided to meet up in Hongdae, the university part of town. Jon and I ate at an awesome Greek place and then went to a cafe called A Twosome Place, which we thought was apt because we were a twosome. We got these enormous, rich cakes and sweet coffees. After eating them, we both felt sick, but in a good way.

Yes, that is a macaron on top of my cake. 

[Also, why are there huge gaps between my pictures? I don't know how to use this thing.]








Next we met up with our friends for some soju-drinking. It was Sara and Quinn's birthdays last week so we were there to celebrate. After summoning sufficient courage, we headed to a swing club. I never actually thought my swing dancing skills (and by skills I mean the fact that I took a weekly, one-credit class from which I remember very little) would come in handy! It was a lot of fun and there were a few Korean couples who were very good.

 
It looked a little sketchy from the outside.
 
But the door said "Swing Dance" so we figured it was OK.

*******

On Sunday, a bunch of coworkers met up for some games, mainly Guitar Hero, which was totally awesome.

Monday, I went to Jamsil with Jon since he had to work  (*cough* loser *cough) and then we went back to Butterfinger Pancakes, or Heaven, as I like to call it. It's this brunch place that seems taken right out of Southern California. It's hard to describe, but if you can imagine if IHOP were designed specifically for college students, complete with suede orange armchairs, huuuuge portions, and an eponymously named dish which is exactly what it sounds like. Butterfinger pancakes. They also have this ice cream waffle thing, featuring five types of ice cream (yes, cookies and cream is one of the flavors). Anywho, it was amazing but we spent so long there that the subway shut down and we had to grab a taxi back to Pyeongchon.

So I'm back to work now and we're in week 12 of the 13-week term and the students are a little distracted. They find out whether or not they get to go to the next level this week. And pretty soon I'll find out my schedule. I have this unfortunate sinking feeling that I will be teaching on Saturdays next term. Updates to come.


*Actually, I was told that those of us who have only one class on Monday (which I do) would most likely not have to make up the class on Saturday, so I spent the entire weekend bragging to everyone how I didn't have to make up my class. Of course, in a classic case of karma, or Murphy's Law or whatever I find out today that not only do I have to make up the class, but they're combining my class with another so I have to teach twice as many kids on Saturday.

1 comment:

  1. Actually, I don't think I'm going to call back today. I have work super early tomorrow (at 8 am WTF) so I think I'm going to have an early night.

    ReplyDelete