Katie Teacher Day

Today was another packed day of touring Busan.  I got to start my day with Katie at her school.  Teaching is so different here than in the states.  She has a different schedule each day and moves from classroom to classroom.  She typically teaches little babies that are 2-3 yrs old in America.  Here in Korea, you are 1 year old as soon as you're born.  Crazy, huh? Her class typically consisted of 8 little cuties that were WILD.

So cute you just wanna squeeze their cheeks!

This is her home room class.  She is with each class for 40 minutes.  Today they practiced drama play of The Three Little Pigs.  Their English is quite impressive considering their age.  Then it was snack time.  What was their snack you might ask?  Slabs of tofu with some soy sauce.  YUM...  She then had two breaks...so this added up to about 80 minutes of free time.  We went downstairs to a coffee shop and enjoyed coffee and a baked pretzel.  Can you teachers imagine doing that in the states?  

All the kids posing with Katie Teacher Friend

When we returned it was lunchtime and "Katie Teacher" served up their trays.   All of the students call her "Katie Teacher" so obviously my name was "Katie Teacher Friend".  How easy is that to put together?  Anyways...lunch was interesting and I had to try it.  Check it out.  

A standard lunch for the little ones.

Bottom left is soup, so basically water with some random veggies in it, bottom right is rice, top right is some type of pancake with meat and veggies in it, middle is fried squid? and radish kimchi, and the top left is cucumbers.  How appetizing is that?  

 Then we went back for her last two classes.  She sang some great songs during these times while the little Korean babes used their nice set of lungs to scream every word.  It sounded more like open mouthed yelling.  Wow!  What an experience.  So after that, we were done! Her work day was from 10-2:30.  However, students here spend the majority of their day at school. It is not uncommon for a student to be in school until 10 p.m.  They also don't have vacations like we do. It is education all the time! 

Katie's 2nd class singing songs.  So cute!

The most ornery one of them all!

The cutest! Her name is Daisy.  Parents typically
pick out an American name for their children.

After school we hopped straight on the metro and went to Gamcheon Cultural Village. This is a village where people actually live.  It was just unreal.  The sidewalks are so steep and skinny, and the doors to the homes are SO tiny.  There are mostly older villagers that live here too.  It was just a beautiful sight.  

There are so many pictures for this beautiful place so brace yourself.  I can't even explain its beauty!

Tiny sidewalks, tiny doors!

Look how tiny this door is!

Another beautiful view of the village.

A wall of recycled art. 

Pretty sidewalks walking throughout the village.

Sitting in the House of Peace.  These were just
walls of concrete.  Nothing exciting!

These fish were found throughout the village.  We could follow them to find our way so we didn't miss anything.

After we hiked through this adorable little village, Katie took me back to Nampo to the Jagalchi Fresh Fish Market.  This place was FRESH.  I pretty much gagged my way through the whole adventure.  These people will eat anything and everything from the ocean.  There was first a street we walked down the just had freshly killed seafood of anything you wanted slung on some wet boards.  GROSS!!! 

Jagalchi Fresh Fish Market -- EW!

Fresh octopus...eat up!  Katie said these are very popular to prepare and
chew on.  They are often found at baseball games instead of peanuts.

This looks so clean...sack me up a few of those.

A plate of seafood upchuck.  GROSS!!

I wouldn't even know hot to eat this.

How many times have you gagged?  There's more coming...she then took me inside to the live fish market.  This was everything about fresh.  I really don't know how this was sanitary.  There are just tanks upon tanks of live EVERYTHING.  Check out my video on Facebook.  Workers just wear their waders and wet coat and sling live fish around.  I watched who I thought was an innocent Korean lady straight knife off some fish heads.  SO GROSS!!!!

EVERYTHING IS ALIVE!!!  Except maybe that one floating.

These are called "penis fish".  I know, inappropriate, but the men
eat these for more testosterone...or so the theory goes.  So gross!!

This was just absolutely repulsive.  I didn't really like fish before, but now I really don't ever want to eat it.  VOMIT. 

Thankfully we soon left and walked around the little markets of Nampo some more.  Then we hiked up to the Busan Tower, but decided we didn't need to go up in it.  

Busan Tower

By this time, I could basically feel my ribs so I made Katie Teacher take me back to Busan and feed me.  She took me to Shabu Shabu.  This was another great Korean experience.  It reminds me of fondu a little bit.  They bring you a pot of broth that sets on an individual hot plate.  You get to choose beef or pork and cook the meat in the broth.  They bring plates of fresh vegetables and you wrap all of this goodness up into rice papers.  It was quite a treat!

Rolled me on the left, pot of broth and plates full of veggies.

One of my many masterpieces.

So that was our day today. It was packed full of goodness thanks to Katie Teacher. It is also about 98% humidity here so we both look and smell really fabulous now.