I love whales

I just got back from Home Plus - I needed groceries and shaving cream and blush. All the employees at Home Plus HOVER. They are overly eager to help you find things and see what you buy. I was having a hard time, so I asked one lady where the shaving cream was, and she brought me to 4 bottles of men's shaving cream. Not what I was looking for. So then I went to the makeup section and asked the lady for blush, and she brought me to brushes. So...not so successful. I will have to try again.

Saturday there was an English festival at Ulsan Grand Park. There were about 20 booths, tons of English teachers, tons of English-speaking Korean teachers, and MILLIONS of kids. Jenny picked me up early and I helped with the last-minute set up stuff. She was one of the people in charge, so she had a ton of things to do. My booth was card games, and I had to read tarot cards. I do not know how to read tarot cards. So I made stuff up. There was a line of kids out of every single booth all day long. When 5:00 finally rolled around we were all exhausted. I went out to eat with some friends and then we all went home and went to bed.

Sunday I went to a whale festival! Korea loves festivals and will throw one for just about anything. Now, for a little history lesson :) Whaling used to be legal in Korea, and in Jang Saeng Po (where I work) there were whale boats and a whale meat processing factory and whale meat restaurants. Most people were employed by whales. Not that long ago it became illegal to fish whale, so most of that stuff shut down. People still do it though - some of my students' parents are whale fishermen, some own whale meat restaurants...So, because whales used to be a really big deal and kind of still are, they have a festival every year. The first thing we saw was this performance. We don't really know what it was about, but we liked it

Monster/alien creatures

Instruments made to look like sea creatures played by people on bicycles. Amazing!

This one had a keyboard and a drum inside

We met the monster

My friends ate whale meat. I've already had it, so I passed

But I did take some pictures this time, because the Koreans I was with would not have liked it if I took pictures the first time around

Then I ate some pastries shaped like whales :)

We also went in the whale museum, where we saw lots of skeletons and whale fishing equipment and some really graphic photographs of the whaling process. Then we went to the "Whale Experience Hall" With a name like that you expect to see some whale things right? Wrong. There were a few aquariums of tropical fish, and some animals that were advertised as whales but were actually dolphins. I hope they know the difference between those 2 animals. But it was fun, the dolphins played with a hose and some balls. Because this festival was near my school, I literally saw half my students on Sunday. Some of them were really excited and wanted to talk, and some of them just waved and walked away pretty fast because they didn't want to speak English in real life. 

Yesterday my 5/6th grade class got to have music day because they earned 10 stars. We did a listening activity - they listed to a Justin Bieber song - and they said it hurt their heads. When we were done with that I let them listen to whatever they wanted. One boy requested "The World's Greatest" by R. Kelly. That song is from my childhood - I have no idea how he knows it. It was a fun day!