May

I took a little time off from writing last month, but I would like to provide a quick recap of events that happened in May.


Trip Home
Well the big event for me was my journey across the Pacific to visit some friends and family.  For anyone contemplating this kind of trip, 6 days is definitely too short when you have to spend a total of 28 hours in a plane.  My sleep schedule was completely messed up in the U.S. and it took me more than a week to get back to a normal sleep schedule in Korea.  Nonetheless, I had a great time visiting as many people as I could.  I even spent a night in a suite in Atlantic City with 15 or so people from college.  It was a pretty epic trip and I'm glad that I got the chance to get home because I won't be home again for almost a year.


My First Student Threw Up In My Class
This was certainly an interesting experience.  In hindsight, I really should have seen this one coming.  One of my students had thrown up on the bus before coming to school and he thought it would be funny to breath in the other students' faces.  Well one of the kids apparently had a pretty weak stomach cause he threw up almost immediately after the kid breathed on him.  Unfortunately, we don't have a janitor in our school so I got stuck with the clean up and my room had a slightly funky smell for the rest of the day.



Attended My First (And Probably Last) Korean Wedding
This was one of the most interesting cultural experiences I've had in Korea.  One of my buddies tied the knot and I had the privilege of attending.  I was the only white guy other than the priest (who I think was German) and therefore I got my fair share of stares.  Overall, it wasn't too different from normal weddings in the United States.  It was a Christian wedding, so it was obviously held in a church, and the bride and groom wore typical Western wedding attire.  One strange difference was that everyone clapped while the bride and groom were walking down the aisle.  People were also talking throughout most of the service.  So overall, it seemed a lot less formal than most weddings that I've been to in the United States.  I also got to attend a brief ceremony that took place after the main wedding ceremony.  The bride and groom switched their clothes and wore hanbok, which is traditional Korean attire.  I think it was basically just a well-wishing event.
 

Trip to Seoul
I wrote about this trip in much more depth in one of my previous posts.  It was basically notable because of my visit to the DMZ and my consumption of sannakji.  The DMZ is one of the biggest attractions in Korea and is the most heavily fortified border in the world.  I even got to go into one of the buildings that straddle the border between North and South Korea and therefore I technically got to go to North Korea.  I followed this day trip up with a night out in Seoul and I of course started the night out with some food.  My food of choice was sannakji, which is baby octopus.  The interesting part is that the octopus is cut up right before it is served and therefore the arms continue to move and the suction cups continue to function for about five minutes after it is served.  There were even a couple arms that tried to make a getaway across the table. 


So there's my May summed up in one short post.  What are my plans for June?  Well this coming weekend I'll be heading over to Japan to explore Kyoto and Nara.  I've gotta keep on moving.