Pepero Day

Last Sunday, November 11, was Pepero Day in Korea. It's an unofficial holiday here (similar to Valentine's Day) and people give Pepero sticks to one another. It's held on Nov. 11 because the date 11/11 resembles sticks of Pepero. It's also kind of a big deal with displays set up in and outside of stores - see the photo below. Pepero sticks are similar to the Japanese Pocky sticks, basically a pretzel covered in chocolate, strawberry, or chocolate and almonds (my favourite!). A lot of students at school brought them to give to friends and teachers, so I've been eating a ton of them over the last week!

this is the display outside of a store near my apartment

I just read on Wikipedia that Pepero Day was possibly started by girls who exchanged Pepero sticks as gifts to wish one another to grow "as tall and slender as a Pepero". Pepero means thin like a stick. I'm not sure if it's true, but it doesn't surprise me in a country that is somewhat obsessed with being thin!

Storytelling Contest

A few weeks ago my school had an English Storytelling Contest. The older kids told stories or sang songs by themselves and the younger ones sang songs as a class. A couple of the younger classes were so cute, I thought I'd put a couple videos up so you could see them!

This is Cute class, the 4 year olds (about 3 western age), singing 'I'm a Little Teapot'

And here's Funny Class, the 5 year olds, singing.

My Neighbourhood

It turns out I'm really not that good at blogging! I'm definitely not a born writer - my brother got all of that talent in our family!! So it's been far too long again, but I'm going to try and get better at this. I thought some of you might be curious to see what the area I live in looks like so here's a peek:

These are what the vast majority of apartment buildings in Korea look like. When I first got here Manda told me that every place in Korea looks the same; I thought this couldn't be possible, but it turns out it's true... no matter what city you go to most of the buildings look exactly like this. They're all sponsored by different companies - Samsung, Hyundai, LG, etc...






These are some of the buildings on my walk to school.

more on my walk to school...













This is my apartment building, it's actually called an officetel which means that all of the apartments are studios and many of them are actually used for offices.

Here's where I do a lot of grocery shopping. It's kind of like a Korean version of Wal-Mart, they sell pretty much everything.

And here's the area at night

Vacation in Thailand - part 2

After 2 nights at Lonely Beach we decided we needed to see more people around, so we moved to the main beach on the island - White Sands. We found a hotel there that was right on the ocean and also had a pool. The rest of the week was great, very relaxing, it consisted of a lot of lying in the sun, swimming and sleeping. Here are a few more of the highlights:

- While still at Lonely Beach we wanted to take a taxi to White Sands, but none were driving by so we started walking in that direction. It wasn't great; mostly uphill in sweltering heat; but after about 2 km we happened to look up in the trees to see a group of monkeys in the trees. They were just climbing and swinging, it was pretty cool. Unfortunately none of the pics turned out, but it made the walk worthwhile!

- One morning we woke up early-ish and booked a scooter so we could ride to the National Park and see the waterfalls. I was a little hesitant because I'd never driven a scooter before and 'they' say that helmets aren't necessary on the island. It turned out to be a lot of fun even though it started to pour on the walk up to the falls. But the waterfalls were beautiful and riding the scooter was great, even in the pouring rain. However, a few days later we were told that during the high season on the island about 2 -3 tourists die every week from scooter accidents. So next time I'd wear a helmet.

- On Thursday afternoon we went on an elephant trek. Chang means elephant in English so it seemed fitting that we went to see them on Elephant Island. First we went down to the river with the elephants so that we could bathe them, then we went on a ride for over an hour, and at the end we got to feed them. The elephants were amazing, their size is phenomenal but they are also very gentle. It was a great experience.

- On Friday afternoon we were walking down the main street when we looked up to see more monkeys! This time 3 younger monkeys were eating bananas that someone had placed on the top of a phone booth. The would swing on the power lines to reach the booth, grab the bananas and then race away so they could eat them. There were also 3 or 4 older monkeys a bit further back sitting in the trees. Unfortunately I didn't have my camera with me, so there aren't any pictures of this sighting either :(

- All of the restaurants along the ocean set up tables on the beach at night. You could go up and see all the fresh seafood they had, order what you wanted and then they grilled it for you, it was great!

- On our last day in Thailand we flew back to Bangkok in the morning so we could spend the day there and finally see the Grand Palace. We made sure it was our first stop so that we would have time to see it. It was worth it, the palace was amazing and very beautiful. After the sightseeing we did a little more shopping at the markets and then went to the airport to catch our flight back to Korea. It was supposed to leave at 11:30 pm but was delayed an hour. This meant we didn't get into Seoul until 8:30 the next morning, so needless to say work was not fun that day! But all in all it was a great vacation and I'd love to go back sometime!

Next weekend I'm off to Beijing for 5 days so I'll write about that soon after. Hope you're all doing well :-)

Vacation in Thailand - part 1

At the end of July I went to Thailand for my summer vacation with my friend and co-teacher Manda. We were so excited for the trip, I really needed a vacation!!

We left Seoul on Friday night and arrived in Bangkok very early Saturday morning. We checked into a guest house and had a good 6 hours sleep. Manda's friend Barb from Australia happened to be in Bangkok at the same time and we stayed at the same place, so we met up with her on Saturday morning and then headed out to see some sights. The first thing we did was go out and buy some fruit from the vendors on the street. It was great; fresh mango, pineapple, guava and cantaloupe for about 30 cents each! We spent the day browsing the markets and wandering around. Bangkok is a very colourful city and busy any time of the day.

On Sunday we had another early start because we were going to see the floating markets outside of Bangkok. We were up at 5 and on our way at 6:30 am. It was quite a drive to the market so we were able to get some sleep on the way. Once there we took a speedboat to the actual market, it was beautiful, but a little overwhelming - so many people and so much to see and do. We wandered around for a while and bought some souvenirs and food and were on our way back to Bangkok by noon. Our plan for the afternoon was to go to the Grand Palace, but it got derailed after we got taken in by a classic Thai scam - the tuktuk ride for 20 baht (about 75 cents). It sounded too good to be true and it was, if we hadn't been so tired and hungry we probably wouldn't have agreed to it!! The driver ended up taking us to an out of the way restaurant - which he likely got comission for. But we ended up having a great meal - and it's all part of the experience... right? Live and learn!! But anyway, by the time we got back to the palace it was closing in 45 minutes so we didn't have enought time to go in. We ended up wandering around the area and seeing the National Art Gallery and other sights. That night the 3 of us went for dinner and a Thai massage, I'd never had one before and I was in desperate need of a massage. It was great, so relaxing and cheap! I ended up going for 4 massages during the entire week!

On Monday morning it was another early day because we were catching a flight to Trat on our way to Koh Chang island. The Trat airport was like no other airport I'd seen before. It was entirely outdoors, the check-in desk, security, boarding, etc... all outside! We then took a ferry to the island and arrived at the beach at about 1 pm. The area of the island we were staying at is called Lonely Beach and it was definitely lonely! It was low season and because Lonely Beach is towards the southern end of the island there were hardly any people there. But it was great for a couple nights to get away from everything. We had decided to spend the first few nights in a traditional hut at a resort that was recommended to us by Barb. It was quite a climb up to the hut and when we saw the inside we realized we were really roughing it! But the view was amazing so we decided it wouldn't be too bad for a night or 2. The first afternoon was spent napping, laying on the beach and swimming in the ocean. That night a huge storm hit the island, but it was really cool to hear the storm mixed with the sounds of the ocean while sleeping.

The next morning after a feezing cold shower we decided that we'd had enough roughing it, at least we gave it a shot! So we decided to move down to one of the hotel rooms on the beach. We had to pack up a few things in the hut and when Manda opened her backpack to put her towel in she found a scorpion sitting there!! We remained pretty calm considering this; Manda told the guy that had come up to help us down with our bags and he then found something to get it off the bag and killed it. After that we were happy to leave the hut behind and knew we had made the right decision to move!

to be continued...

Chocolate Cheese Update

I thought you might be interested to hear how the choco cheese went over with the kids at school. The day before summer vacation I took the cheese to my homeroom for their morning snack. The kids were so excited, they were all saying "Yay, choco cheese!" So I passed it out and they all eagerly unwrapped to cheese. Moments later the classroom was filled with sounds of disgust, something like this - "Ewwww, Carrie Teacher, choco cheese very, very yucky" All 12 kids were not happy, after they took one bite they threw it in the garbage! It was very funny. So now I don't have to try it; these kids will eat almost anything, so if they didn't like it I'm pretty sure I won't either!

I'll have a post on here soon about my trip to Thailand, I had a great time and need to write about it before I forget everything. Miss you all!

Some interesting food choices in Korea

Have you ever had a craving for some steak & pasta in a waffle cone?? How about some chocolate cheese?? If you have then you should get to South Korea ASAP! These are 2 of the things you could try here if you wanted... Most of the food here is so good, but there are some very different combinations. And just in case you think I'm kidding, here are some pics!

Some of the yummy pasta and waffle cone combinations

Andrew enjoying his choco cheese!

Experiences in Korea

Last week a few funny/weird things happened here. I've become used to things like this over the last 5 months but these have stuck out a bit!

Last Saturday I went to McDonald's for the first time since I've been in Korea. While looking at the menu and deciding what to have I saw a few things you can only get in South Korea. The first was a shrimp burger, but this didn't sound good to me! Then I saw the funniest thing, a 'crazy hot chicken folder' ! That's the real name from the menu - it was basically a chicken breast in a taco/pita bread. This sounded tempting (!?) but instead I had the always safe McChicken and fries and it tasted exactly the same as in Canada! One of our friends had the crazy hot chicken folder and he said it wasn't even that hot and it fell out of the folder! That crazy chicken...

Then at school on Wednesday some of the teachers were frying up some new potatoes that had just been brought back from the farm. When they were ready they brought some out and called over Alysa, Manda and I to have some. We dug in because we were starving, like usual in the middle of the afternoon! But after one bite we realized that the fried potatoes were covered in white sugar! We thought it was salt, but no.... and FYI this is not a good combination!

And on Friday Manda and I stopped for a coffee at a new place that has opened near our school and were sitting there enjoying our drinks when all of the sudden Mariah Carey's 'All I Want for Christmas is You' came on. I was like 'wow, I love this Christmas carol, but it's so not the season!' I think we were the only ones who realized it was a Christmas carol - too funny...

Anyway, it was a funny week.... more to come soon on my visit to the DMZ and other goings on.

The $18 cantaloupe!

This is something that I've been wanting to write about for a while, the crazy fruit prices here! Here's a picture with the price of a cantaloupe here:
Yes, that's 14,800 Korean won, or about $18 Canadaian, for one cantaloupe! It's comes with a nice bow and stand, but still... And this is actually a bit of a bargain, ealier in the spring they were about 25,000 won. Recently I think they've gone down to about 10,000 won, so I should probably snap them up while they're so cheap! haha...
And here's me with more fruit, in the top right corner you'll see what I think is called a dorian (??? not sure of spelling) and it's a steal at 56,000 won! And on the left, other melons ranging from 17,000 - 34,000 won.

So, long story short, I don't eat near as much fruit as I would like to here and right now I'm really missing all of the summer fruit from home!

Buddha's Birthday

Hey all! I'm still trying to get caught up with the blog, I'm only a little over a month behind! Haha.... hopefully in the next couple of weeks this will happen.

May 24 was a public holiday for Buddha's Birthday here and during that week there were a lot events and festivities planned to celebrate it. One of these was the Lotus Lantern Parade. My Dad was visiting during this time and we happened to be in the area of the parade while it was on, so we stopped to watch for a while. The lanterns were beautiful and there were hundreds of them. Here are some pics from the parade:

Children's and Teacher's Day

Well, better late than never, as they say...

May 5 was Children's Day in Korea. It's a public holiday here and my school celebrated it 2 days before by having activities all day at a park. It was lots of fun. All of the students and their parents attended and we had obstacle courses, relay races and, of course, dancing to Korean pop songs!

Then, on May 15 it was Teacher's Day. Unfortunately it's not a public holiday, but it was a lot of fun. The best part for me was the cards that the students made for us. They were so cute, here are pictures of some of them:
















This one cracked me up. Bella was one of the naughtier students in my homeroom, so I wasn't sure if she was saying I was tired because of her or that I really am tired! Both were sometimes true...































One that is open to your interpretation: is Lucy writing 'Teacher' or 'To Cher'??? I'm still not sure...

My Stay at a Buddhist Temple

Okay, this this took way longer than a few days to post. I've finally found time to update, so here it is!

At the end of April I went to stay overnight at Buseoksu Buddhist temple with my friend Jeong hee. We took the bus to Yeong ju and were then met by a man whose passion is this temple. He had offered to drive us to the temple and show us around at no charge - so nice! Unfortunately I'm not sure of his name - one of the drawbacks in Korea is that people rarely call each other by their actual names. Case in point, all of the Korean teachers I work with are called Funny Teacher, Sunny Teacher, etc; the names of their classrooms; and after 3 months none of us know their given names.

Anyway, we arrived at the temple and it was beautiful, it is up in the mountains which I was told makes it one of the nicest in Korea. Our guide showed us around for a bit and then we went to 'check in' . We were greeted by a monk who showed us our room, we would be sharing it with about 8 or so other women who would be coming and going all night from prayers in the temple. After he showed us the room he invited us to come have tea with him. Jeong hee told me this almost never happens and it was likely because I'm from Canada. So there are some benefits to being a foreigner! We went for tea and chatted with him for awhile, he was very kind and friendly.

The strangest thing for me to see was that all the monks had cell phones! Here we were in this peaceful, serene temple and then heard cell phones ringing and saw many of monks walking around talking on them. While we were having tea I think the monk was interrupted 2 or 3 times by phone calls. Somehow I imagined them living this very barren lifestyle without technology, boy was I wrong. The also had the latest computers with huge flat screen monitors in their offices. Crazy....

That night we had dinner at the temple and then went to the drum ceremony and then to the evening prayers at 9 pm. One of the highest monks in Korea was speaking that night, but it was all in Korean so I didn't get much of it. After this the meditation started at 10 pm so we decided to stay for a while, well, at least we thought we could just stay for a little while... when we got up to leave at around 10:40 we were told by about 4 older women to sit down and stay. This was pretty common on our visit, we felt like we were following orders for most of the weekend! So we sat down and stayed until 11 when there was a break, then we decided to head to bed! We thought we could get about 4 and 1/2 hours sleep before the dawn ceremony at 3:30 am!!

It turned out that sleep was a bit hard to come by. We got to the room and discovered that all the blankets and pillows were taken. After some rearranging we were able to find a spot on the floor and one of the ladies offered us a blanket. We used this as a cushion on the floor and then had to figure out what to do about pillows. I was able to use my jacket, it was hard as a rock, but better than nothing and Jeong hee ended up using some books that the monk lent to us. She said it wasn't too bad, but I'm not so sure.... After we finally got everything arranged I attempted to fall asleep, but it was almost exactly at that moment when one of the women in the room started snoring so loudly! Then people started coming and going and turning the lights on and off and I thought 'this is never going to happen', but miraculously it did. So we got about 3 hours in before the morning alarm sounded.

We went to the dawn ceremony until 4 am and then back to our room. I could only stay awake for about 15 minutes and was then fast asleep until the 6 am alarm sounded. We got up to have breakfast and this was a different experience for me. Breakfast was almost exactly like dinner the night before, it included rice, tofu soup, spicy kimchi, hot peppers, dried seaweed and a few other things I can't remember. I did my best but it was far to early in the day for me to eat kimchi, despite how much I like it! I was craving cereal or toast, but made do with rice and soup.

One of the funniest parts of the weekend was that I actually scared a few of the older women. They must have been expecting to see only Korean faces and when they saw me a couple of them gasped in surprise and one woman actually screamed a little! A quiet scream, but still... I also looked up to a few times over the weekend to see strangers taking a picture of me. So weird....

That morning we went for a long walk and to buy a souvenirs, as many of you may know, I can't pass up a souvenir stand! Then we had tea with the monk a second time and were on our way. I had a great time and definitely want to go back at least one more time while I'm here. Sunday afternoon we went to an apple blossom festival with our 'tour guide' but I think I've written enough for tonight so I might write about that in another post. I must be making up for taking so long to post again, this is really long. Hope you've been able to stick with it and read it all!!

It's been a while...

Wow, I have totally fallen behind! This has been on my list of things to do for the past couple of weeks but I just haven't been able to get around to it... Two weekends ago I went to stay the night at a Buddhist temple, what an amazing experience. I will write all about it in the next few days. Some pictures from the visit are already on Ringo if you want to check those out. Other than that nothing too exciting has been happening here but for some reason I've been really busy! It's warmed up so I think I'd rather be out than sitting at home in my apartment, aka 'the shoebox'. There have been some recent field trips at school, we went on one today to the telephone company here - KTF. We spent all of an hour there and saw some robot dogs and the switching centre. Not too exciting for me having spent 8 years at SaskTel, but the kids loved the robots. Anyway, more to come soon!

My Korean TV debut!

I mentioned in my last post that I made my debut on TV here after the performance at the cherry blossom festival. It was funny, we were leaving the performance and a TV reporter and cameraman stopped Manda and I to see if she could ask us a few questions, she said it would only take a couple of minutes so we said 'sure, why not'. So they turned on the camera and she started to ask me about the what I thought of the show, where I'm from, how long I'd been in Korea, etc.... It was good and over pretty quickly! Unfortunately I have no idea what channel they were from so I will probably never see it air, but Jeong hee took a few pics, so here's one:

Cherry Blossoms in Seoul

I've spent the last 2 Saturdays in Seoul walking around to see the spring cherry blossoms. They are so pretty, this beautiful pale pink and there are just tons of them right now.

Last Saturday Jeong hee, Manda and I went to near where the parliament buildings are in Seoul to see the Cherry Blossom Festival. It was a lot of fun, I couldn't believe the amount of people there. We walked for quite a while looking at the blossoms and then watched a traditional Korean show. It was great, we even got to sit in the front row. They had mats all laid out right in front of the stage and no one was sitting on them, then one of the coordinators for the show motioned that we could sit there. I'm not even kidding when I say maybe 5 seconds later there was a stampede of people racing to sit on the mats after they saw us sit down! We ended up hardly having room to cross our legs but were lucky to be able to see so well. The show ended up being quite long so we left after about an hour and 15 minutes because I was hungry. I know, surprise, surprise! haha... On our way to leave we were stopped by a t.v crew and asked if we would do an interview! More on my television debut in the next post!

This Saturday Jeong hee and I met in Meongdong to go to Mount Nam (or Nam San in Korean). We took the cable car to the top of the mountain which was fun. I'm not great with heights so I was a little apprehensive, but it was okay. It was a pretty short ride and not a super tall mountain so that helped! Then we walked down the mountain to look at all the blossoms. They were amazing here, in some places they covered the road in an archway.

Here are a few pics, as usual there will be more on Ringo, enjoy!


The blossoms at the festival, so pretty...









A parade at the festival













The traditional show we watched










The blossoms on Nam San











Beautiful, so many blossoms!

A dining experience!

A bunch of us went out for Korean Barbeque for dinner tonight. It's delicious, you order the style of pork BBQ you want to be grilled in the centre of your table and it comes with a lot of free side dishes; lettuce salad, fruit salad, kimchi, radish, and more. I was really looking forward to the lettuce salad because I've discovered salad can be hard to come by in Korea and this one is really good.

So tonight the salad arrived and I placed a bunch in my bowl, then I took my first chopstick full and what did I see??? A long dark hair hanging out from the leaves!! ewww... I wasn't sure what to do at first because that's the first time something like that has happened to me here. Yuna, my Korean friend, told the owner about it and he had a server take the salad and our bowls away. After the owner and server left our table we all had a short conversation about whether or not that would be seen as being as unhygienic as it is in Canada, the US, etc.... We concluded, that yes, it probably is because no one likes to eat hair!!

Just after we finished talking I looked up to see the owner with the hair in his hand closely examining it. We all thought this was pretty funny... but it got worse! Moments later he walked over to our table with the hair. He went up to Yuna and told her in Korean that it wasn't a hair from anyone that worked in the restaurant. I don't understand a lot of Korean but I could tell that he was showing her the root and saying it wasn't Korean!! We couldn't believe it because it definitely didn't come from any of us that were near the salad, we all had shorter and lighter coloured hair!! Yuna was quite disgusted and just told him to go away!

We had a good laugh about this because it was such a different reaction than we would have gotten in a restaurant at home. There they would be so apologetic and probably give you a discount on the meal, and here they bring the hair back to your table to prove it didn't come from the restaurant (and no discount)!! Afterward I was thinking I should've had someone take a picture of it, but it's probably best we didn't, I'm not sure anyone else would want to see it! It's always an interesting experience when we go out!

A visit to Kwangjang Market

Happy Easter!

Last weekend I went to Kwangjang Market in Seoul with Jeong hee and Manda. It's a smaller market, all covered which was great since it had been raining on the day we went. It sold mostly food, fabric and traditional Korean clothing and wedding gifts. Most of the food looked really good and some was interesting. I'm always trying to stay open minded about new foods, but it's more difficult with some things... However, we did try a mung bean pancake that was delicious. Jeong hee had done some research on the net and found out a place that was famous for making them was in the market, so we ate there. Afterward we went for a walk along the river and then stopped in Insadong to have dessert. I have to find out what they're called in Korean, it's deep fried dough about the size of a small pancake filled with a sugar and honey mixture, not that healthy but one of my favourite things here. Anytime I see them I have to have one!

Here are some pics, it can get complicated to add too many here, so I'll put the rest on Ringo. Enjoy!

making the mung bean pancake

Jeong hee, Manda and me before we chowed down!

pig snouts and hooves, one of the things i can't see myself trying...

traditional wedding gifts
Hanboks - traditional clothing - for kids and adults

Another field trip

Last week my school went on another field trip, I mentioned in my last post we went to the Samsung Transportation Museum. It was fun, they had a lot of really cool cars, I'd like to go back when I have time look around more!! The kids loved it though, they got to sit in some of the cars, honk the horns, step on the brakes, etc.... totally a great place for them. More on that visit to the market last weekend soon, I'm too tired to type much more tonight. Here are some pics from the field trip:

With my class












Alysa with her class - Angel class (you gotta love the class names)












Manda with her class - Joyful













Had to get a picture of this - one of my favourite 80's movies












Manda with David

An experience at the gym...

On Thursday I joined a new gym here. Normally this isn't something I'd write about, but it was interesting for a few reasons. It's called the Hyundai Sports Centre - it seems almost everything here has Samsung or Hyundai in its name! (On Thursday we also went on another field trip to the Samsung Transportation museum!) It's really nice gym, it opened a couple years ago so everything is quite new.

Anyway, I arrived fully prepared to do my own thing at the gym as I always do, but when I walked out of the change room I was greeted by a trainer from the gym who just said "come here" (his English was limited). He walked me over to an area of the gym where I proceeded to be weighed and measured. After this I still thought I was going to do my own thing. Boy was I wrong, he proceeded to be my personal trainer for the day and lead me through a workout, including a ton of abs, squats, lunges, dead lifts, the treadmill, bike and some jump rope thrown in for good measure! Towards the end of the workout he told me I would have to jump rope 300 times, I think when he saw my eyes bug out he realized he has said something wrong. So then he said no, no... 30 minutes in the treadmill and 20 minutes on the bike. Okay, that was a lot better.

While I was on the treadmill I saw the funniest warning sign. It said 'Please use caution when exercising in, on, or around children, invalids or the disabled' That's right, IN or ON children, invalids or the disabled. This made me laugh and took my mind off the pain in my legs for a few minutes. After the workout I saw the second funny thing, a sign in the bathrooms that says 'Clean Toilet, Clean Korea.'

Now, I knew my muscles would be sore after, but I had no idea exactly how sore. By the end of Friday I was moving at a slow hobble and saying 'ow' with every step. When I got up this morning I could hardly move. It's better now, but definitely put a crimp in my plans to hit the gym yesterday and today! Oh well, back at it tomorrow.... I did go into Seoul today to a market that had a lot of very interesting food. I'll write more about it in the next day or so!

School Field Trip

Last Thursday my school went on a field trip for the morning. There are about 80 students at the kindergarten and they range from 4 - 7 years old Korean age, this is about 2 - 5 or 6 North American age, so some of them are very tiny! I have the 7 year olds in my homeroom class which is also called Wise class. We went to a Housing and Civilization museum, it was very interesting. Unfortunately for me almost all the information was in Korean but they had a lot of pictures and diagrams which helped! The museum showed the change in Korean cities over the last hundred or so years from small traditional houses to the apartment blocks that are now everywhere.

Here are a few pics:


My homeroom













Manda with her homeroom class - the Joyful class












My class with their gift from the museum - a pink piggy bank!

With my homeroom













Elizabeth and Alice with their piggybanks







On the bus!

Some Konglish

Today I thought I'd share some Konglish (Korean English) with you. The following are the instructions that came with an ice pack I bought from the pharmacy. I kid you not, this is what it really says, including all the spelling and spacing errors:

How to use
- For micro wave: 3 - 4 minute operate after seaes part (eith belt protecting is a more then 1 - 2 H/R)
- For hot boiling: we have not micro wave pack in the boiling water about 20minute
- Refrigeration (cold storage)/ keep in cold storage user long terms operate cold storage in 2-3 H/A

Suggestion
1. For fomentation hot or cold: must use of wrap up in a towel
2. For fomentation only hot: punctual to the minute when boiling 4minute over (because worry about get damaged)

Caution
- Don't shock, No pierce the pack with knife, drill, etc
- Keep in a cool & dry place, no expose the pack directly to the sun
- Not eat though be harmless as the human body

Sometimes they do a really good job translating to English, and sometimes they don't! It can be funny though :-)

Along the river

Yesterday I went for a walk along the Tancheon "river". I put river in quotations because it's actually more like a big drain! But it's quite beautiful to walk along. There are great running/walking paths along it. Spring is just starting here so some of the trees are blooming.


















If you look close you'll see a white spot, this is a pet bunny a woman had on the grass. Very cute, it wasn't on a leash she was just feeding it and playing with it!


The were so many kids along the path, I was nearly hit in the knees by a few small rollerbladers and some kids on bikes! Actually there are so many kids everywhere here! I have never seen so many small children in supermarkets and just out with their families, but it's nice to see.