Teachers Share their Experiences While Living Abroad!

Spending Christmas and the holidays in a different country can be difficult for some of us. Growing up, I’m used to having a giant Christmas tree hung with ornaments, presents surrounding the tree, and having a great meal with friends and family. But, this is no reason to feel down during the holiday season. Here are some great places that you can visit and feel the holiday spirit during this winter season in and around Seoul.

Insadong is one of the larger outdoor markets in Seoul.  It is best known as the art district is Seoul, but there are plenty of antiques to be found there as well. There is a ton of shopping and street performers galore. As an English teacher in South Korea, Insadong has become of my favorite places to visit when I am in Seoul.

Last weekend, a fellow English teacher and I were walking around Insadong and were commenting on how good all of the food looked. Being a huge fan of street food, as well as trying new things, we ended up with the obvious conclusion that we needed to attempt to eat our way through the district.  Our task would be to stop at as many street food venders as we could before reaching the subway station.  As with any challenge, we wanted to be thorough about it, so we walked to the end of the street and prepared ourselves for the guttural task ahead of us.

We began by treating ourselves to a good ole fashion lemonade in a Ziploc bag. Our reasoning was twofold. First, we were bound to get thirsty. Second, we decided it would be good to increase the difficulty of our challenge by having something hard to hold on to throughout our journey.  On a side note, it has become very popular for venders to sell drinks in this fashion.  There was even a second cart next to this one that sold cocktails that come in a convenient bag.

When teaching English in Korea, it's important to know basic phrases and names of places, but it's also important to know how to address people. As one of my last 'editions' of Korean 101, here's a list of how to address people in Korea.