St Paddys and Fishes

It's been nearly two weeks since this event but I still feel its necessary to write about it, since I definitely and surprisingly experienced the most authentic St. Paddy's Day of my life - in Seoul, South Korea. Us northern city folk (including Meaghan and Devin, the new teachers at my school, yay!) dressed all in green and headed down to City Hall and the Cheonggyecheon Stream, a recently cleaned up area that has become a source of pride for the city. After lamenting that the water was not in fact green (I could have collected bets on the issue, and anyways, how DO they clean up the Chicago river? We decided it must be biodegradable dye.) we found enough other foreigner friends to make quite the party. The Irish Club hosted the day, complete with parade (at the head of which were 2 friends of mine, arms falling off with the weight of a giant green snake, and later on my lovely girlfriends jumped on the backs of the Harleys with what is apparently a pretty hard core Korean biker gang and rode them home - just another English sentence I never thought I would utter) and outdoor concert, where an all-Korean band played some pretty rockin' Irish tunes. I have also never in my life been so excited to belt out Alanis Morisette (they eventually got tired of Irish and turned it over to Random Mix of Pop from Around the World, Any Era Goes). We were later joined by a rather hilarious Korean ajumma (the affectionate term for middle-aged woman) who had most definitely had too much soju to drink and decided we all needed dance lessons. Made for some excellent video footage. As always, there is nothing like a taste of home, even if it's not necessarily your home!

There have also been a few visitors in town lately - Molly's mom came for the week and I think we showed her a pretty good time here in Junggye. And again, it doesn't have to be your own family to really appreciate the value of good mom-chat! My aunt and uncle Frank and Doreen were also here for the weekend and it was such a treat. Being the ocean connoisseurs that they are, we visited the infamous Coex Aquarium and were not disappointed. There are sharks in a mall, that about summed it up for me. We also saw some amazing stingrays (I must swim with them one day) and beautiful jelly fish, sea turtles, amazing coral, and every kind of fish under the sun. They even had an exhibit that had fish in all parts of a normal house - in the washing machine, toilet, as a computer screen saver, in the refrigerator ... I am not sure where the inspiration comes from, but in a way it is just so Korean! Otherwise we just chatted and caught up, talked about the family, and they also brought me brownie mix, which earned some serious points. Thanks guys :)

More soon!