kimchi chine

I've been hearing this song everywhere since I first came here in August, and I could not for the life of me figure out who sang it, but today I figured it out! Yay! The song is called "Abracadabra" from Brown Eyed Girl s .  Thought I'd share this with you. I am totally doing the dance right now... don't judge me.

My newest obsession is this Korean drama called You're Beautiful.  It is about the behind-the-scenes look at an idol boy band. The newest member, Go Mi Nam, is actually a girl pretending to be her twin brother while he's away in America getting his eye surgery fixed.  So that his absence does not cause a scandal for him, she secretly portrays him whilst picking up his quest to find their long-lost mother who abandoned them in an orphanage so many years ago.  How long can she keep her secret hidden?  What will happen to her relationships with the band members, the fans, and herself? Well, I don't actually know yet, but I'm super excited to find out.  Here's a clip of it, and though it is in Korean, the acting is so over-the-top that you'll be able to follow along like the best telenovelas around! This happens to be the part that I stumbled upon while flipping through the channels a few weeks ago...

Oh my goodness, this was the funniest thing.  My school had exercise day in our auditorium last week, and the little kids were sooo cute! I took as much video/pictures as my little phone could handle before running out of memory.  Anyway, these little ones in the videos are the kids that I actually teach... I like the light green class the best.  The dark green class, the ones that unfortunately kept winning, I like the least... the VERY least. Anyway, enjoy the videos/pics.  Absolute highlight of the day, (and I really wish I had gotten video of this) was when the 5 year olds (Western age 4-year-olds) were racing, and one of the boys, Jae-ho, was in the lead, and then lost his footing. He didn't fall, but he fell behind and lost the race and then burst into tears!  It was sooo cute! Vlog 5.1: Exercise Day from Chine Anikwe on Vimeo . Hit the jump for more video and pictures.

Sooooo, it turns out that the doctor may have been right about the whole flu thing.. go figure.  Not only did I work through the pain all last week without treatment, but developed bronchitis and mysteriously half of Purple class (one of about 4 groups of classes that I teach) was absent last Friday.  Something about the flu.  Anyway, I still maintain the fact that they gave it to me.  Now, I'm holed up in my apartment for 7 days (well, about 4 more now) because in SK, anyone who contracts the disease must quarantine themselves for 7 days to protect the general public. Sigh. What have I been doing for these past few days? Mostly sleeping. And watching both good and bad TV.  Example of good TV? The Real Housewives of New York City 2 (haha, sooo good). Bad TV? Ghost Whisperer... I am still so ashamed.  Also! I've been reading through these FABULOUS magazines that Jo sent me and eating chocolate and cookies... and then feeling like I'm going to throw up beca...

These acts were kind of entertaining, but not so great.  They just happened to come first. The really cool stuff is after the jump, so check that out. Vlog 4.1: K-popalicious from Chine Anikwe on Vimeo . These ladies danced to a very popular Korean girl band song, though I can not for the life of me figure out who sings it! Anyway, you see this a lot in Korea... inside stores, on the streets. Girls dancing and "singing" to the tune of hit K-pop bands. Quite catchy, no? Vlog 4.2: And now for the highkicks from Chine Anikwe on Vimeo .  I'm not quite sure what this act was doing in a semi-popular Korean amusement park/zoo, but it was quite entertaining.

I'm sitting in a coffee shop at the end of my work week, and man what a work week it has been! It started off with the end of a fairly good Chuseok holiday which should have left me well rested and prepared for the start of classes, right? Absolutely not. Not only did I wake up late, I ended up meeting my first class in the elevator and walking with them to my classroom. Jane, the head English teacher, had previously told me that she needed time to prepared October's lesson materials, which I took as her saying she'd have them ready on Monday morning. Not the case. She meant, prepare something from the lesson book for the first day back... whoops! So there I was frantically flipping through the lesson book in front of an expectant group of 6 year olds, fresh off their three-day holiday, presumably rested and ready to start the first day! Did I mention my first two classes are the rowdiest and therefore I hate them like them less than my other classes? Luckily, right af...

O-World was adorable!  It's this mini amusement park with cute rides and a great atmosphere.  It's not somewhere to go if you want the thrilling rides found at Kings Dominion or Six Flags, but I'm fine with that.  The best part about going the Friday before Chuseok?  No one was there! Zero lines=lots of fun.  I hate waiting.  We started the day with some high-quality O-World entertainment at the main stage (check out Vlog #4 for the video).  Then we moved onto the rides.  We then went in for the highlight--> African Safari, wooot!  The animals were so close you could practically hear them saying " help me welcome to Daejeon Zoo!" We then saw even more animals in the actual zoo part of the amusement park.  Very cool.  We ended the day in Flower World... yes, Flower World.  It's actually exactly what it sounds like.  Anyway, that's not before I heard a little voice call out "Chine Teacher!" (shit, I knew I could...

Well, you don't have to... I didn't, but I might have if I were invited somewhere. You would not believe how many Spam gift sets I saw leading up to last weekend's festivities... wait, I'm getting ahead of myself. I'm talking about Chuseok (추석)! The most important Korean holiday of the year (next to Lunar New Year, of course), it's the 15th day of the 8th month of the lunar calendar. This year it happened to fall on October 3rd, meaning Friday, beign a very busy travel day, we had off! (Ha! See ya, kiddies!) A lot of foreign teachers had been invited to their co-teacher's houses for the holiday. I was not so lucky ('Chine, what are you doing for Chusoek?', 'Oh, I don't have plans...', 'Well, take a rest then. See you!') The weekend was looking pretty grim (there are only so many Canada's Next Top Model episodes a person can take) when my friend Linda called me. She's in the EPIK program, so she knows quite a few people...