Meagan is from Texas and Dave is Australia. They met and fell in love with South Korea. They've continued living the nomadic expat lifestyle and are currently residing in Kazakhstan.
One of the most famous attractions in Busan is the Busan Aquarium. It’s located right on Haeundae, Busan’s most popular beach. If you go, watch out for those pesky birds. As always, click on any picture below to see the full size image.
The aquarium is nice, but it’s actually quite small. The entrance fee is 18,000 won (about $16.50). We thought that was a bit too expensive. It’s definitely good to get it checked off of the To Do List, but we won’t be back.
After the aquarium, we stopped off at the darts booth and Andy and I threw some darts at balloons. Here we are with our prize seashell necklaces…
Our next stop was Fuzzy Navel for drinks and chips and dips… and more darts.
Afterwards, we headed to the Wolfhound Pub and had some Irish food and played more darts.
In Korea, mountains are everywhere. It’s really different for me because I come from Texas and it’s very flat there. I love being able to look into the distance and see the mountains. My friends and I decided to take the cable car up one of the mountains here so we could visit Mt. Geumjeong Fortress. It was a super easy 20 minute hike each way. You can look at the pictures below.
This slideshow requires JavaScript.
We weren’t sure what to expect, but we definitely weren’t expecting to only see a stone wall. Apparently there are several different “gates” like the one we saw, but they are quite spread out. If you take certain hiking trails you can see the walls of the fortress span quite a distance. I’ve seen some of my friends pictures and it’s really a great site. That’s definitely on my to do list.
Well, I guess it would be more accurate to say I’m a mill-won-aire. Payday is the 25th of every month and I got my first check on March 25th. My salary is 2,000,000 won, which is roughly $1,800. That might not seem like much, but every month I am able to send half of that home.
My friends and I wanted to do something nice to celebrate making it one month through our contracts so we decided to go to a nice dinner. The place we went to specializes in vegetable dishes and was 25,000 won per person (about $23). You can check out the pictures below. I am a little disappointed that I failed to take a picture of the eel. I did try it and it wasn’t bad… I was proud of myself!
The Jagalchi Market is a giant indoor fish market. It’s one of the most famous places in Busan. It’s a must see. It’s located in a really great area so you can get a lot of touristy things out of the way just by getting off the subway at Jagalchi and making your way down to Nampo-dong (where you can visit PIFF Square and Busan Tower). I have been to Jagalchi twice in my two months in Busan. You can see the pictures and video below.
*Click on the pictures to see the full size image.*
Outside of the market – a woman preparing an octopus
Walking tour of the inside of the Jagalchi Market
If you head outside of the fish market you will run into some outdoor markets and restaurants.
If you live in Busan and you have never been to the Jagalchi Fish Market, I recommend you go. And if you are visiting Busan, you should definitely check it out. If you live across the world and will never experience the market, I hope you enjoyed the pictures and videos.
Blogging is more work than it seems. Between being sick for so long and being a terrible procrastinator, I’ve managed to get about two months behind on my posts. I decided to go ahead and blog about my birthday weekend and then I’ll go back to playing catch up.
Friday
I love going to baseball games so I decided that’s how I wanted to start my birthday weekend. Busan is actually famous for baseball so the games are a lot of fun. Our team is the Lotte Giants. I don’t know what their record is, but they have lost both of the games I have been to. Maybe I’m just bad luck.
I charged my camera battery before the game, but forgot to put the battery back in before I grabbed my camera and left for the game. You can take my word that it was a fun time. We even made a few new friends, but I had to steal pics from friends to prove it.
Afterwards we went to Fuzzy Navel in Seomyeon. We ended up getting there just in time for one of the fire performances.
Afterwards we talked, danced and had a great time.
Saturday
I ended up sleeping until about noon and then meeting up with my friend, Faith, to explore the city. We went to Nampo-dong and had Pizza Hut. The Pizza Hut is in a great location in PIFF Square, on the second floor so there are lots of opportunities to people watch.
Afterwards, we made our way to Busan Tower. The tower is fairly inexpensive (just 4,000 won) and the views are great.
We took the subway back to Seomyeon after visiting the tower. We hoped to see a movie, but there weren’t any good English movies showing at either of the theaters. Afterwards, we both headed home.
Sunday
Even though I celebrated all weekend, Sunday was my actual birthday. I ended up waking up to tons of Facebook messages and a few KakaoTalk messages from people back home. Later on, I got some hilarious voicemails from my best friend which put a huge smile on my face. I wasn’t able to speak directly with anyone back home, which was really disappointing.
I went back to Nampo-dong on Sunday for lunch with some friends. We had Indian food and then headed to the beach. I ended up getting some great gifts and cards from my friends and had a great time. I got two cakes, a gorgeous necklace, a beautiful potted cactus (that is now sitting on my desk at work) and some amazing birthday accessories (sunglasses and a party hat).
At the beach we had soju popsicles and some cocktails. We didn’t stay out too long though because the sun decided to hide and the wind started blowing too hard.
Overall, it was an amazing birthday weekend. I had a great time in Busan with my friends. I am keeping my fingers crossed that 27 will be my year!
Sunday is Teachers Day in Korea, and it also happens to be my birthday. Right now the 6th graders are learning about birthdays so a few of them know that my birthday is coming up.
I taught 5 classes of 6th graders today and it was not a fun day for them because they had 3 tests: vocabulary (writing), listening and speaking. Even though it was the busiest day I’ve had, I enjoyed the day because it meant I had one-on-one time with all of my 6th graders.
During my second class, one of the boys got up from the speaking test (he only answered 1/4 correctly) and very sweetly told me, “Happy birthday!” Moments like that make my heart melt. Ahhh they’re so sweet!
During another class, I was still out in the hall giving speaking tests during the passing period when 3 girls came to class singing me happy birthday. It was super sweet. After class they came back with gifts for me. I got a card, a letter and two artificial flower bouquets. I absolutely loved it! You can click on the pictures of the gifts to enlarge the image, but in case you still can’t make out the writing, I have typed it out below.
Congratulations! You deserve whatever you get.
Hello! Magean~^^
I’m Grade 6-3 Kim Min-Ji.
You’re happy birthday!
Happy Birthday to you!
Happy Birthday to you!
I celebrate you~
Teacher! Happy Birthday
and Happy Teacher’s Day
Bye! Bye! – Min Ji -Kim-
Magean teacher..
Hi~Magean teacher~ my name is Kim da un.
teacher ~ May 15th is Magean teacher’s birthday~!
Happy birthday to you ^^
And, teacher is very beautiful ~
Thank you!
2011.5.13
-Da un-
Later in the afternoon my co-workers surprised me with a birthday cake. It was a good day.
The best part about being a teacher are the students. Some of my favorite moments happen outside of the classroom, though.
One of the first lessons the 4th graders had this year was “Good morning/afternoon/evening/night.” Now I have one 4th grade girl who greets me with the time of day every time I see her, and it’s usually multiple times a day and usually in the morning. She definitely seems excited when she sees me after lunch so she can use “Good afternoon.” And just once I saw her at the end of the day and you can imagine the smile she had when she was finally able to say “Good evening.”
I have another student that loves to ask me, “Teacher, how are you?” When I ask her back, she almost always says she’s “Happy!” We have this exchange several times per day.
I always talk to my 6th graders before class and they are the biggest self-esteem boosters. The girls always love my hair, my accessories and they notice every time I change the color of my fingernails. “Teacher, your hair good!” “Your manicure beautiful!” “Teacher… S-Line!” I did get an interesting comment from one of the boys one day though. I asked him, “How are you?” and he said “Scared.” When I asked why, he said, “I saw your eyes… and they scared me because… blue!”
I know you’re not supposed to have a favorite class (or favorite students), but I definitely do. The 6th grade boys are so funny. I’m not sure what the fascination is, but many of them have renamed themselves some variation of my name. It started out as Meagan 1, Meagan 2, etc., but now they have named themselves things like Angelina Jolie Meagan, Ke$ha Meagan, Lady Gaga Meagan and Meagan 10,000.
I only teach 3rd-6th grade, but I love saying hi to the younger students because I get some of the best reactions from them. Many of them actually respond back with a shy “hi” or “hello” but a lot of the time I get a bow and “annyeong haseyo.” I’ve also gotten embarrassed giggles and then I hear the student saying something to their friend about “waygooken,” which means foreigner. They probably are just saying something like, “The foreigner just talked to me!”
Sometimes students just come and stand next to me and stare. You can tell that they really want to talk to me, but they just have no clue what to say.
I really want to take a video camera around with me when I walk through the halls sometime because it’s chaos. I’ve had students that were literally in the middle of a race down the hall with their friends stop dead in their tracks and turn around just to say, “Oh, Meagan! Hiii!”
The kids run around the halls like crazy people and it’s just something I’ve gotten used to. I was pretty much sick for the first two months here. One day I was feeling awful and just wanting to go home and go to bed when I saw a student running down the hall. I didn’t think anything of it until I realized she was running down the hall to give me a hug. Things like that make even the worst days better.
Last night the English teachers from my school went out for a night of food and bowling. We ate at a shabu-shabu restaurant. This was, by far, the best food I’ve had in Korea. If any of you come visit, we must go eat at this place. They bring out a pot of seasoned broth and you boil the broth then cook very thinly sliced beef in it. You are also brought loads of veggies and rice paper. You wet the rice paper then fill it with veggies, meat and sauce and then wrap it. It’s so good! The girls said that it’s like Korean/Vietnamese fusion.
After dinner, we walked to the bowling alley, which is located about a subway stop away inside of Home Plus. Bowling was such a blast. There was tons of high fiving going on, even for gutter balls. The ladies I work with are super sweet. I was in second place the whole game, but I had a comeback on the last two frames and won.
Something I thought was really neat about the bowling alley was the way you rent shoes. The shoes are actually distributed through venting machines. The fee is 1,500 won (about $1.40). You insert your coins into the machine with your shoe size and the shoes drop out of the bottom. So cool.
After the game we walked around Home Plus to buy some snacks and supplies for the English teachers’ office. My two co-teachers shared a taxi back and JuHye and I took the subway. I only live two stops from where we were and I wanted to find out where the subway station was so I could come back on my own sometime.
I look forward to many more teachers nights in the future.
March is kind of a crazy month at my school. It seems like there’s always something going on, like first day ceremonies, student elections and placement tests. Today’s distraction was Open Class. Back in the states it’s called Open House and the parents come up to the school at night time. Here it’s a little different. All parents are invited to school during the day. There was a ceremony in the auditorium at 10:00am. I was required to attend because all of the new teachers were introduced. I sat while all of the full time teachers were announced, then the contracted teachers were introduced. My friend and co-worker, JuHye, cued me when it was time for me to stand. I bowed as the principal called my name and said a little bit about me. Afterwards, I asked JuHye what he told the parents about me and she said that he told them that I am the new native English teacher and I graduated from the University of Texas. Hmm… Close enough? I told her that he basically told them that I’m cooler than I really am. I thought it was funny.
On Wednesdays I usually teach 5 classes, but because of the Open Classes I only really taught one class today. I taught at 9am and then at 10am I had the Meet the New Teachers thing. My co-teacher taught that class alone, but I made it back in time to play the game with the class. Third and fourth period classes were cancelled because the students had to stay in homeroom for the Open Class. The parents are allowed to stay and watch the students while they are in class. I thought I was going to teach again at fourth period, but I just found out that it’s cancelled too. The students get to go home after lunch so I don’t teach fifth period either. I don’t have a computer in my new office so I don’t have anything to do. It’s going to be a long day!
Earlier I asked my main co-teacher if she was going to wear green tomorrow for St. Patrick’s Day and she had no clue what I was talking about. After I explained it to her she said I should teach the students about it tomorrow. So I get 15 minutes to explain St. Paddy’s Day to the 5th graders tomorrow. Should be fun!
Tonight I’m going bowling with some of the teachers from school. We planned it last week for this Monday, but we had to reschedule because my co-teachers forgot it was White Day. I Korea, Valentine’s Day is split into three parts:
Valentines Day, February 14 – Women buy the guys chocolate
White Day, March 14 – Men buy their ladies candy
Black Day, April 14 – The single people eat some kind of noodles with black sauce
I think tonight will be fun. The teachers are all pretty nice. I’ll post all about it tomorrow night.
Life at my school is pretty good. We moved offices not that long ago. It was nice to be able to have my own desk, but I soon discovered that I’d be sharing an office with this…
One of my co-workers and I ended up carrying that darn shark all over school. Our new office is on the 3rd floor so we carried it down to the second floor science lab to see if they wanted it, but they didn’t. Next, we carried it down to the first floor to take it out to the trash. The man we took it to said he actually tried to throw it out before, but they didn’t want to. Oh well. It’s gone now.
Life Outside of Texas 