해피 음력 설날!!!!

Hope everyone has a happy lunar new year!!!!

So things that have happened recently have included a birthday, a trip to a Korean monument, dogsitting and just hanging out.

I've been good and the temperature is actually rising here in Korea now. Like 88% of the snow on my block has melted, and yes that's my true scientific statistic, you can go again and check for standard deviation if you must.

One of our group's teacher friends, Trina, had a birthday last week. Thai food, and J&J's at the main gate were what the festivities consisted of and it was fun. Birthdays can be tough for teachers in Korea, and I remember mine came at the same time as my "three month slump." So it's nice to help someone feel better about their birthday when you've gone through yours and you know how it can be.

This past weekend was so much fun. I went to Suwon, which is known as the provincial capital of South Korea. We hit up the market and the Art Street, which is just streets among streets of shops and food. The city of Suwon is best known for the Hwaseong Fortress, a huge landmark in SK. The fortress was built in 1796 during the Joseon Dynasty. Here's a video of when we first began our journey at the south end of the fortress. The walk up was pretty steep, icy, and tiring, so pardon my condition in this video.

There's a bell halfway through the fortress and we got to ring it. That was pretty fun and it was great being able to walk through such an important piece of Korean history. It was reminiscent of my trip to the Great Wall of China. Here's a video of me ringing the bell at the fortress.

After the walk around the fortress, which includes seeing all of the city of Suwon atop of it, I was glad I did it. I still have one great Korean landmark I need to see during my time here, which is the Seoul Tower. Granted, I've seen it from a distance as you have to drive around it to get around Seoul. But I've never been in it, so it's definitely something I want to do in the very near future.

I was also done with my dogsitting assignment yesterday. Mr. Lee and his family brought me some great souvenirs from Taiwan and Rocky was an ease to take care of. It was nice living in Osan too, finally going to an E-Mart, and getting to know the area a little better. I'm privileged in the fact that I live in Songtan and that I don't have to go out of my way to really understand the businesses there. To prove my point, I went to Family Mart (a chain Korean establishment) to buy some juice and the manager said "Happy New Year" in English. Yeah...I don't think that kind of stuff happens in the regular Korean cities. So it was interesting being in Osan and calling for cab and ordering food. It wasn't difficult because I know survival Korean, but it was definitely different than Songtan. Here's Rocky, the dog that assured my stay in Osan for three days (even though I still made my way into Songtan and Pyeongtaek to see people):

All in all this past week has been good in me experiencing Korean culture in that I got to see a great Korean landmark, lived in the home of a Korean family, and the other day some friends and I gathered at this awesome restaurant in Pyeongtaek to have some Korean spicy chicken.

감사합니다 for reading! (thanks for reading)