Photoshoots and the Chimac Festival
Last Friday was Selestia's birthday, but it was a fun day for all of us. Liam and some of the other teachers used the Duty Free Shop (aka market simulation room) in the school to create a "photo room" to surprise her. The market is always the students' favorite room because there are tons of dress up clothes and silly things to play with. The kids go nuts! But from looking at these pictures, you can probably tell that we hate this room! We were forced to put on some of the clothes and take pictures with each other after the students left. After work, we took off for dinner and had a fun night out in Changnyeong - which of course included our staple activity: noraebong. Liam's brother and sister were also visiting from Canada so they got to join us for the festivities.
Saturday's extremely hot and humid weather - about 94°F - was absolutely miserable, but we persevered and headed to the Daegu Chimac Festival anyway! "Chimaek" is a combination of chicken and maekju (beer), so we were all pretty excited about this festival, but really didn't have a clue what it would be like until we got there. Although Korea is not a big player in the beer industry, craft breweries have been popping up a lot more lately and they actually have a pretty decent selection! We found our favorite tent, Farmers, where a 14 oz craft beer was only ₩3,000 ($2.70) so we stuck with that all night.
There were tons of events and performances going on all day long - Zombie Performance Team, belly dancing, limbo competition, zumba performance, trampoline fitness performance, and more. The highlights of the day were definitely when Liam and his brother, Kieran, volunteered for a beer chugging contest where the contestants had to chug their beer through a straw. All instructions were in Korean, followed by a bit of dancing, and then the chugging began. Both brothers made it into the final three and were given some participation prizes, but neither had won. Right after that event had ended, three people were selected to go up on stage. Two guys were selected who had been dancing in the audience during an earlier performance, and then I see the host point to me and say "ooman" (konglish for woman) and then "girl". I look behind me, nobody was raising their hand. He pointed at me again and I thought 'what the hell' so I ran on up to the stage with absolutely no idea of what I was about to have to do. A few Korean instructions later, he pointed to each of us one at a time to let us know when it was our turn to dance. As soon as I realized it was a dance competition, I was relieved and thought, "I got this!" Uptown Funk started playing, he pointed to me, and I went to the front of the stage and danced for about 15 seconds when he told me my time was up. The two other contestants were pretty good, especially the third, so I was a bit skeptical about being able to win, but he ended up giving all three of us participation prizes and telling us we did well and to go sit down. Hysterical and such a fun time!
That evening there was an EDM concert and was freaking awesome! We were all so hot and sweaty from the day and then being in the middle of a huge crowd didn't help so when the bass dropped and we all got soaked with water, we were on an entirely new level of excited. Liam and Kieran were lifting multiple people up onto their shoulders, Luke, being one of their victims. They also scooped up a man who was wearing a chicken head and had no idea what was about to happen. The crowd just automatically parted into two and gave them the perfect pathway up to the front of the stage. Fortunately, nobody was injured!
Luke and I have finished our nine weeks of Cyber School and are back in the classrooms. Currently teaching the same students for the next 3 weeks in between all of our vacations for the Summer Intensive program. It is definitely nice to be on the same schedule as the rest of the teachers, but it may take me an extra week to get back into the groove.
Next on our agenda is Tokyo - THIS WEEKEND!!! We have referred to this vacation as the "Hot Days" vacation as it is the hottest days of the year. From Saturday - Wednesday the 2nd, we will be in Tokyo with my BEST childhood friend, Kerstie, and her husband, Michael. I am sooo so excited to see them and to experience Tokyo for a few days. The next weekend we will meet them in Seoul to show them a bit of the country we've been living in for 8 months! And one week later we will be off on our summer vacation with Luke's family. Hong Kong, Indonesia, Singapore and Malaysia are all on our list so we will be super busy, but we are so excited to see some new countries and friends and family all at the same time. If you made it this far, thank you for sticking with me. I'm glad to finally have some slightly more exciting posts coming up!
Lastly, two special videos. The first is an amazing video Luke made of our winter vacation in Thailand and Cambodia. Check it out! The second is my 15 second dance on stage at the Chimac Festival.
[youtube=://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kGLBgqwOPaQ&w=854&h=480]
[youtube=://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j52wG-zriuE&w=854&h=480]
