Farewell Party

We had my farewell party at work last Friday. You know what that means...only 9 more days of teaching and I am finished! Wow sometimes I can't believe the year is already up!

We went out to a Korean restaurant and had Shabba Shabba. This was also the first meal I had with my staff soon after I arrived so I guess it was fitting :) Basically it is just thin strips of meat boiled in some water with vegetables in it. Its pretty apetizing despite the description but man it gets hot when you are sitting in a closed room with 3 pots of boiling water in front of you. The soju makes things even worse!

back: Jeremy, Andy, Eric, Sinatra
mid: Ben, Sue
front: Elly, Shani and Paul


Afterwards we headed off to a noraebang to sing some karaoke. I always forget how great a singer I am until I go there and recieve applause after everyone of my songs (what? they are clapping that it is over? oh I see.) Well after a year in Korea I was able to sing 3 Korean songs - not well mind you. I can read their characters fast enough now that I can handle it for the most part and a lot of old style Korean songs sound the same so its easy to pick up on how it should sound. Its really fun to do that ~ sing in another language and have no idea what the words mean~ I could have been singing "I love to eat dog and kill white people" for all I know ;0

Mt. Dobongsan

We had Tuesday off so Martha, Laila, Alex, Gu won and I decided to climb Mount Dobongsan which is in a National Park just north of Seoul. I think it is the most visited park in Korea and I can attest to that. All the way up the trail are hundreds and hundreds of people. However we actually were able to take a little side path and escape them. Overall it was the most enjoyable hike Ive done in Korea. It was not really steep at any point and we took a leisurely pace and it was nice to take our way to the top rather than rushing there like on tours.

A cool place for a picnic!


The views from the top were pretty nice too. It wasn't too smoggy so you could see Seoul in the front of the mountain and wilderness in the back. It was neat to see all of the apartment buildings in Seoul that were exactly the same height and color. Not much variety. I think they look like dominoes and if you knocked one over, they all might go.

A rare sight in Korea - no buildings in sight!


Dominoes


On the way back down, Tess and I stopped for a dip in the stream that went along the side of the hiking path. The water was cool but it was definately very refreshing after the long hike up the mountain in the heat and humidity. As we were swimming we noticed a sign beside the pool. Some rudimentary Korean translation told us that it meant swimming was prohibited and could result in a $200 fine. Ah well!





Afterwards we went to a restaurant nearby. This place was really cool. It was on the side of the mountain and everything was outside. It was sort of like a BBQ back home, with campires burning everywhere and there was even a band playing music. The food was good but the atmosphere was amazing. It was hard to believe we were only 10 minutes from the big city.

BBQ Zone

Canada Day

A few of got up on Sunday, put on our red and white and went to a Canada Day party they had in Seoul. It was held in a riverbank park and they had a BBQ, games and some Canadian bands playing. The weather sort of sucked with it sprinkling rain for most of the day but we still managed to have a good time. We got our faces painted (I got a beaver) and drank a lot of Mooshead beer. There was also a big mud pit in front of the stage and a lot of people were sliding in the mud but I managed to keep fairly clean.

Tess and I


In front of the stage


What are the chances they had a tipi at the entrance to the campground?


Afterwards, we headed to Rocky Mountain Tavern in Itaewon (the foreigner district). The place was packed to the rafters and their air conditioner wasn't able to keep up but this is where the real fun started.

Going to the Grey Cup!