Happy New Year!!

Hi everyone! It's the Lunar New Year this weekend, so we have today and tomorrow off from school! Last week was very busy (and I was quite sick); on top of our normal teaching and preparations, we also had to work on our curriculum maps (entering our units onto the special website) before our faculty meeting Friday afternoon. After the meeting, the school took us to dinner at a very nice Korean BBQ restaurant (I had tofu and Daniel took home a bunch of extra meat). On Saturday, we spent several hours watching the Olympics Opening Ceremony at our friend's apartment (they can get American television through slingbox), which was a lot of fun (she made us and her other guests delicious homemade banana muffins, crepes, and coffee cake), went shopping at Costco with another friend, and then went to that friend's place to eat Costco pizza for dinner and watch Amadeus. Yesterday, I met up with my elementary school friend (who's also teaching in Korea this year) at the Namsangol Hanok Village in the center of Seoul. It was very crowded--they had several special activities set up for the New Year, and a lot of children were wearing their beautiful traditional outfits (called hanbok) under their coats. It was fun to see kids playing with traditional toys, writing good-luck letters, and making recorders out of bamboo. We also watched a cool performance (video below) and tried homemade rice wine (called Makgeolli--not my favorite). We later went back to the apartment she's currently staying in, which is near Itaewon, and then I met Daniel in Itaewon at a yummy Indian restaurant for Valentine's Day dinner. Today, I need to start doing some work (grading tests and planning my next units especially). We are traveling to Kyoto, Japan for Spring Break (at the end of March), so we've spent a lot of time on the internet and skype the last couple of days trying to find hotels; we've called at least 20 places for the first night we're there (we're set for the rest of the week) and they're all booked, or else very expensive. We'll keep trying! :) I can't wait to visit Japan! We hope you're all doing well!


Playing with hoops.


They had a "man" and "woman" in traditional clothing.


The N Seoul Tower.


Making Korean recorders.


The garden, looking down from the traditional houses.


In one of the traditional houses.


One of the rooms.


Letters people had written.


I loved his hanbok.


Kite-flying.


The performance--look at their hats!


More performance.




The rice wine.


Yummy red bean-filled pastries.


At the Indian restaurant.