안녕하세요!
Hello everyone! Welcome back! I hope the past several weeks have treated you well and that you're being positively challenged by the things in your life. I hope that you've strengthened connections with people that are important to you and spent at least a little bit of time loving yourself. On that note, thank you for taking a little bit of time to read read this. This is the three-month checkup, and it's a long one! Grab your bootstraps, cause it's time to go wandering. This post begins with me traveling on a train to a training conference. There was a two-day teaching conference on Tues, Oct 23 and Wed, Oct 24. All Avalon teachers had to attend at least one day. It was at Ori station, which was an hour and a half away from my apartment by train. Unfortunately, the train ride was long and the presentations were mediocre; but they did give us free Subway sandwiches for lunch. And I made plans with old friends to hang out on Saturday at a beer festival. Clare and I stopped at Nowon station on the way back to work to pick up some lunch and I ate a tasty cheesy black sesame bun. The bakeries here are ubiquitous and delicious. However, that night was a full moon and the students had transformed into werekids for the day. All of my classes were just wild. Even the ones that are usually very quiet and pay attention. It was literal lunacy. Trivia: Apparently every full moon of the year has a name. The one on October 24 was called the Hunter's Moon. On Sat Oct 27, I went to the Great Korean Beer Festival. It was outside on the rooftop of a mall! Unfortunately, the wind was blowing hard and was bitterly cold. I kept warm with porters and stouts. There was a great live band that performed jazzy renditions of popular Western songs, but I didn't catch their name and I can't find it online! Nevertheless, they were fun to listen to and sing along with while we were huddled around our beers and space heaters. I left early to go to swing dancing class, which was probably a good thing because my nose was turning red. From the cold, of course. The next day, I went swing dancing some more! It was at an event called Weekend Live which featured The Shirt Tail Stompers. There's something magical about dancing to live music, and the musicians played so beautifully. I felt very fortunate to see/hear them perform. There were several guest musicians that had flown in from Stockholm as well as a Korean woman who was petite but had an impressively powerful voice. In between sets, music was played over the speakers so the dancers could keep dancing, and the bassist joined us on the dance floor for a few songs! The event was organized by Jea - the president of Swing Pop (the group that I'm taking classes through) - so I knew many people there. It was a well-organized, fun event, and the music and dancing were unforgettable. Jea, you threw a thoroughly classy party, a delightful shindig, a jocund jamboree. On the way back, I saw an enormous rainbow bridge between Jamsillaru and Gangbyeon stations. And then it was Halloween week. On Oct 30, every employee stayed an hour after work to decorate the school; it was truly transformed. All the fluorescent lights were covered by colorful, translucent plastic to give the school darker, atmospheric lighting and we taped dozens of silver and black balloons to the ceiling (picture below). Watching my (usually quite stoic) co-workers hop on top of desks and run around being silly and creative was actually pretty fun despite the lateness of the hour. Halloween itself happened the next day. If you've ever been to the School of Witchcraft and Wizardry: Science is Magic event at the University of Alberta, our event was reminiscent of that. Each room had a different activity that the kids could do and they were completely free to choose the order they did them in. They received candy if they completed all the rooms. My room was called Candy Walk, which was like musical chairs but with numbers taped to the floor that the kids stood on instead of sitting on chairs. It resulted in nobody pushing or shoving one another! I listened to numerous Korean pop songs. On the walk home, I saw someone wearing one of those inflatable T. rex costumes and someone wearing a ghillie suit costume. On the first day of each month, I receive an email from Action for Happiness. Each month they send a calendar that gives you small daily tasks. The tasks are designed to gently challenge you to increase the happiness in the world around you. If you'd like, please take a look at their website and see what you think. But there's no pressure. :) The final swing dance lesson of Beginner Level 1 was Nov 3. After the class, our teacher, Rudra, gave us all "sleeping socks". I now have little snowmen with hearts to warm my feet at night. Everyone went out for dinner afterwards and we had some excellent global representation: our class was comprised of people from Korea, Russia, China, the States, and Canada. Afterwards, there was a Halloween celebration at the dance studio. The lighting was dim, the room was warm, the floor was bouncy and wooden, and there were freshly cut persimmons and homemade pumpkin spice brownies. It was a nice night. On Nov 5... I watched V for Vendetta! I also ate eggy in a basket to commemorate the occasion. It's still an amazing movie and I hope you watched it, too. During the week of Nov 5 to 9, I didn't have internet. One of the downsides to being a newly landed alien, I suppose; however, they were very productive days. I did yoga. As soon as I had internet again, I ordered dancing shoes online and downloaded Destiny 2. Ah yes, I knew I was forgetting something - LangCon Festival. All of the Avalon campuses across Korea participated in this event. In early October, kids auditioned for acting roles in plays written by the teachers. There were four teams at our campus. Every foreign teacher and Korean teacher was expected to either direct the kids in acting, singing, and dancing, or to make props and costumes. From Oct 24 to Nov 9, all the teams met after class on MWF from 8:40-9:30 and rehearsed. I wrote our script, which was a slightly less repetitive version of Dr. Seuss' Green Eggs and Ham. Thankfully, Alina did almost all of the directing during rehearsal time. Everyone helped with the dancing and singing. Ashley made the props and costumes by herself at her apartment in her spare time. Basically, we all busted our tails to make our group presentable. The performances happened on Sat, Nov 10. We had stayed late the night before to decorate, and arrived early to greet the parents. Our director, Susan, was very kind and bought us all coffees and lattes. Our team went first and it went off without a hitch! Whew. During intermission, Cameron (a male foreign teacher at our campus) danced for the parents. That was a unique experience. Then Patrick (the head foreign teacher) and I performed "You and I" by Ingrid Michaelson. Then we learned the results - our team won the campus competition! Hooray! And Susan was incredibly kind and bought us lunch in the form of tasty chicken burgers. After LangCon Festival, I went to Lotte World Mall with Brandi, Erika, and Stephen. The mall was a vast, scintillating sensory overload. There was a Studio Ghibli store! It had a giant stuffed Totoro and Catbus (pictures below). I bought several articles of clothing for a costume to be Belle from Beauty and the Beast at a swing dancing party later that night. The (very belated) Halloween party was at a new dance studio called Bat Swing. My dance instructors said that we'd learn more from attending social dances than we would from lessons, and I'm inclined to agree. At social dancing, you learn how to take chances, try new things, and fail over and over again. If failing is learning, I learned a lot about dancing that night, haha. When I got home, I ate my first persimmon (picture below), which I had bought on a whim at the grocery store. Please allow me to attempt to describe the way it tastes. The outside is delicately, deliciously crunchy - kind of like the outside of an apple, but easier to bite through. The inside is very soft and juicy. It has a bright flavor and an almost creamy texture. It tastes very fresh. It reminds me of the way the air smells after you've cut grass, but with a fruity sweetness. It's so sweet, it's like candy. Thanks for indulging me. You should eat one. :) On Nov 11... I went dancing again. I just realized that most of this post is about swing dancing. What can I say? I like it. Come dance with me. This event was very special because it was a Korean pre-wedding party. Not the actual reception, but a pre-reception party. I think. Jea knew the people who were getting married, so he invited everyone from Swing Pop. Again, I learned a lot and even danced with the groom for one song. I think he was expected to dance with everyone at least once, though. And Jea taught me so much Korean! He taught me a bunch of body part names and some phrases. He also taught me so much about dancing, since he's been doing it for ten years or something crazy like that. Oh, and the food was amazing. There was fresh fruit, tomato-mozzarella-basil skewers, meat skewers, muffins, and ice cream cake. At the end, we made a big circle and anyone could jump into the middle with their partner and show off some moves (I didn't do that). Regardless, it was really fun to be a part of. And now, for some music. If you want to relax and feel calm, I highly recommend the album Woodland by The Paper Kites. Things We Do by The Collective West is also great for when you're cooking dinner or just want to listen to some upbeat, folk, indie kind of stuff. Also, it may be old, but Outbound by Bela Fleck and the Fleckstones is simply phenomenal music. So is the album Ultra Ego by Feed Me Jack. As for progressive metal, if you haven't heard Polyphia before, you may wish to consider listening to them. Their songs are technical, intricate, and are emotional magic. The first thing you should do tomorrow morning is put in some headphones, close your eyes, and listen to their song "Light" as you lay in bed. And that's the end. I feel really fortunate to have you all in my life, even if the most we ever interact is you reading and liking these posts. Okay, have a great couple of weeks. I'll write to you again in a while. :)
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AuthorAshley is a Canadian teaching English in South Korea. Although between the Korean, swing dancing, and general life skills, she's probably learning more than she's teaching. Archives
June 2019
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