Platoon Kunsthalle

On Saturday Rich and I visited Platoon Kunsthalle in Seoul with friends- what is Platoon Kunsthalle you may ask? Well I'm still not entirely sure even after attending the "What the @#$% is Platoon" talk.

But I can tell you that Platoon Kunsthalle started in Berlin by a couple of guys who wanted to run a new kind of advertising company and created their office space out of some shipping containers in a vacant lot in central Berlin.

It seems that in a nutshell they support creative projects by accepting advertising jobs. It also seems that most people volunteer to be part of Platoon which ensures there is plenty of money for them to support creative projects.

The space in Seoul is pretty amazing and it's built from shipping crates - there are some artists works on display but it seems to be mainly and event space. There were some DJ's performing when we were there, and it seems that they regularly have other interesting events. I'm really looking forward to going to their night market next time it's on.

Basically it's a cool place to hang out and attend some events - looking forward to heading back there again soon.

Film 20 - The Dark Night

Film number 20 of my new years resolution challenge (110 films in 2010) was The Dark Night, which I watched on Korean TV last Friday night after a long week at school followed up by eating way too much at a teachers dinner.

What more can I say? This film is awesome. I'm not much of a superhero fan - but Batman is awesome - much more awesome than Spiderman.

My Classes

If you have been wondering just how many fifth grade children I teach in a week the answer is ten classes of approximately 36 children. I also teach six hours of high level English class for the most advanced kids in the fifth grade.

If you want a visual of just how many children that is just look at the picture below. My co-teacher made this for our classroom wall - that's really quite a lot of kids!

KicKer chocolate bar anyone?

I think that Korea doesn't have as many copyright issues as other asian countries but when I bought this KicKer bar at Family Mart the other day it seemed very familiar...Like I had seen it somewhere else before back home in New Zealand...

Ultra Kawaii!

Recently in my extra class we were learning about "Pets" and when I was searching the internet for a video to show my students I came across this clip on you tube - it has all kinds of animal cuteness! Including kittens playing soccer.

I also showed them this video of "handheld cuteness" although unfortunately there is a advertisement for a movie part way through.

The video clips are both from the Ultra Kawaii channel on you tube where they have all kinds of cuteness.
I also like this clip of "Fraidy Cats" even though some of the cats don't look that scared!

Sunday Adventures in Seoul

On Sunday Rich and I visited Seoul to catch up with some friends and watch a film.

One of our friends, Camille, attended Ewha Women's University and we were watching the movie at "Arthouse Momo" which is the cinema based at the University.

Whilst we were waiting for the movie to start, Camille gave us a tour of the University grounds, which seems to be a mix of the historic and the modern.

I really liked the buildings in the last picture - although Rich referred to it as a "bunker" I thought it was a really good use of space. Maybe I'm just super modern in my taste in architecture?



The movie we decided to watch was "A Serious Man", which is of course the lastest Cohen brothers movie (and movie 19 for 2010). When I first left the cinema, I thought I liked this film. But the more I thought about it, the more unsatisfied I felt about the ending. Perhaps the film is meant to make you feel this way? If it is then it was a total success. We finished off the night with a coffee at the "Charlie Brown Coffee Shop" which is near Ewha Women's Univeristy. The cafe sold pretty standard cafe fare - lots of different kinds of drinks (I had a milk tea) and Charlie Brown themed cakes, but it was a great way to finish off a weekend. After all, who doesn't love a themed cafe.

Jinhae Blossom Festival

On Saturday, Rich, Dani and I travelled with about 50 other foriegners to Jinhae, near the bottom of the Korean Penisula to take part in the Cherry Blossom Festival.

We spent a huge amount of time travelling, but it was totally worth it, even if the blossom's weren't in full bloom due to the fact that it has been a particulary cold winter in Korea this year and spring is a little late this year.

When we first arrived at Jinhae, the group separated and everybody went to find lunch. We decided against sitting down for lunch and ate street food and had a look around Jinhae to see how many cherry blossoms we could find.





After "lunch" we met up again with the rest of our group and got on a bus to see a turtle ship. Jinhae is a coastal town and there is a strong navel presence, a turtle ship is a type of warship which was at a navel base of some sort. You could have a look on board the turtle ship but the line was very long so we chose to check out the area around the ship instead which included a giant anchor and lots of Korean people taking photos.



When the bus returned to town it was time to walk a huge amount of steps to the top of a hill, and then walk up more steps to the top of a tower (we could have taken a lift to the top of the tower but the line was really long and we didn't want to wait).



We finished up the day with a look around the markets at Jinhae which had been set up for the festival. Most of the stalls were food, but on the upside we did get some great kebab's (it was the first time I've had a decent kebab in Korea).

Shutter Island

Movie number 18 in my year of 110 movies is "Shutter Island" which Rich and I went to watch on Friday night with Joseph and Valerie. It's been a while since we had one of our Friday night movie and dinner sessions with Joseph so it was really good to catch up with him as well as watch the movie.

The movie itself was a good thriller - not really a horror like I originally thought. There is a good twist to the plot but I think we all latched onto this pretty early on but it didn't really matter.

I essentially found the film fairly unsettling which I think it's supposed to be - it was a good way to spend my first Friday night out since recovering from being sick.

Easter Time

It's Easter time in Korea and although a lot of Korean people are christian, Easter isn't a public holiday so no glorious four day weekend for us like there has been in the past.

But that's ok because friends and family (namely my Mum and Jess) sent us plenty of Easter treats and I found this really cute bunny video on you tube today whilst looking for video clips for a class about pets.

It's also good to know that after a very long cold and snowy winter that spring is on the way and it's nearly time to put my big winter jacket away!

Rich and I are even heading to a cherry blossom festival this weekend with Dani in Jinhae - it is five hours away by train. It's going to be a big day trip so fingers crossed the blossom's are worth it.

Happy Easter to everyone back home - enjoy your cadbury cream eggs and your long weekend!

Extracurricular Class

This year at my school I'm teaching 5th grade again, it took the school a while to actually confirm I was teaching 5th grade though but I thought it was always going to happen.

I am also teaching extracurricular English for six hours each week, this class consists of 20 high level 5th grade students - mostly boys so the class is a little bit rowdy.

I have to teach them writing, listening and speaking and also grammar! I hate grammar and I hate teaching grammar but they seem to love it - I guess maybe it adds a little bit of logic (if there is any at all) to the English language.

As part of my class the students have to write an English language diary and give this to me once a week for marking, I get some pretty random things in these diaries, but this week I got one that said something that made me really smile - "I like my English teacher very much. She is intelligent and open-minded. She always tries to give me help and I am thankful for her kindness." I though it was pretty sweet and her English was really good as well!

Thirst

Movie 17 of my new years resolution is a Korean movie loaned to us by Joseph - it's a love story and a vampire movie but no Twilight soppiness here. This movie is really incredible and there isn't really a dull moment from beginning to end, I especially like the end, it's incredible. You should find a copy of this movie and watch it as soon as possible.

Mail, mail and more mail

It's been another bad week health wise, my nasty bug still hasn't left (although the doctor thinks he has now found the cause and changed my antibiotics) but I did recieve lots of mail.

I recieved a get well package from my friend Dani with all sorts of cute things, I also recieved an awesome Easter package from my Mum with SO MANY Easter eggs. We won't be short on Easter Eggs this year! Mum also sent some milo, but the package kind of exploded in transit, but plenty of milo was salvagable. It just meant I had a package of milo coated items.

I also recieved a package from my friend Jess, as we arranged a while back to do a Valentine's Day/Easter swap. I feel a little bad though as I was suppose to send her an Easter package on 19 March but I have been sick for two weeks and haven't posted her package, but it will be in the post tommorrow as I am finally feeling better.

Jess sent me some cool things like the Easter Egg decorations above, I'm going to put them on my desk this coming week as I plan on teaching the children about Easter traditions.

I also recieved a very cute tiny cupcake from Jess, it looks good enough to eat but a piece of paper that was with the cupcake told me I shouldn't eat it - but it looks very tasty.
She also sent me this cute candy Easter Egg painting kit, it's for children but I don't care! I'm going to be painting my own Easter Eggs next weekend and I'm sure Rich will join me. However, not all of my packages made it to Korea from New Zealand unscathed - he's some Easter Chick and Easter Bunny carnage. Rich did make a heroic effort to revive the Easter Chicks but alias it was too late for them - poor souls.
Thanks to everyone for thinking of me and Happy Easter!

A Saturday Night View from our apartment window

Movie update - The Good, The Bad and the VERY Ugly

I haven't had a movie update in a while, mostly because I've been sick and haven't been on a computer much. However, I have made some progress with my New Years resolution for 2010 and I have seen movies 14, 15 and 16 which I refer to as the good, the bad and the ugly.

First of all is the GOOD.

The good is Alice in Wonderland in 3D. This is the first of this new style of 3D I have seen as it was amazing. I have always liked the story of Alice in Wonderland and I love Tim Burton's film making so I thought it was pretty incredible. I know it's had some bad review's but it's not a film that is trying to change the world - it's just a film of whimsy and I like that. Also it's my first 3D movie since the days of the red and blue glasses and I have to say it's so incredible. I really should have made more of an effort to go and see Avatar in 3D.

The BAD.
This is another film I watched on one of the film channel's we have, I remeber it when it came out when I was at University. The plot is pretty lame and the acting pretty average but it's an ok movie - although the ending wasn't as gory as I remeber? Either there were two endings - one less violent than the other or I am getting confused with another movie? Maybe it had a much more violent sequel?

The VERY UGLY
I knew this film would be bad and as you have guessed from my previous movie blogs I do like "B" Grade Horrors. Prior to this film I had never seen a movie with the word "zombie" in the title I didn't like. However, this is simply the worst movie I have even seen as that's up against some pretty strong competition. In this movie there are no zombies! Why the title feels that it can claim there are zombies I have no idea - it is truely truely terrible and should never be watched by anyone - ever.

I'm sorry Mr Snail

In South Korea in the public schools, for a small fee, teachers are able to eat the same cooked lunch as the children do and usually it's pretty good. We always have a soup or stew, rice and three side dishes. Sometimes we even have a dessert like rice cakes or fruit. I have always HATED making lunch for work so this arrangement works perfect for me, even though sometimes the food is a little spicy or unusual - it's edible and to be honest after teaching for four hours I am usually happy to eat ANYTHING!

Last week I was eating lunch with my co-teachers and one of the side dishes was a spicy vegetable salad in the Korean hot sauce. I've had this salad a million times before and I was eating away when one of my co-teachers asked if I liked it, to which I said I thought it was ok.

She asked if I knew what was in the salad, which I had to admit I didn't really know and dread began to fill me as I though of the small chewy bits in the salad. The she told me the salad contained "river snail" which is very good for our health but many foriegner's don't like it.

Just when I thought, maybe she is confusing river snail with another English word she said, it is just like Escargot in France. So no mistaking I was eating a poor little snail - river snail is apparently hugely popular and I have most likely eaten it before. I did notice the chewiness in the salad but I thought it was just my old "friend" octopus or squid - not a poor wee snail!

Now I know about the presence of the river snail in Korean cuisine I can't help but wonder how many snails I have ingested over the past six or seven months.

I know snails are not the most beloved of creatures (especially for gardener's) but I have gone from being someone who would go to great length's to aviod walking on snails when going for an early morning walk or run to a person who quite little eats snails for lunch.

Korea can do strange things to a girl - I'm truely sorry Mr Snail!

Hwagyesa

Last weekend, Rich and I decided to go and see a Buddhist temple just a few stops away from Uijeongbu that his co-teacher had told him about. We were both still kind of tired from our big week of adventures with Sue and Conor but didn't want to waste a Sunday inside so thought it was worth a visit.

The temple was really very cool and easy to get to by subway followed up by a short bus ride.

The temple, which is called Hwagyesa also seems to be very accessible to foreigners with weekly meditation's and discussion's in English which we want to go to sometime soon.

The area around the temple was also very quiet and calm - despite the people and the cars and the monks were very friendly. I'm looking forward to visiting again sometime soon.