Nic Trips

Christmas is my favorite time of year. So of course, I brought the holiday into the classroom as soon as the holiday season rolled in. I set up a Christmas party class, the same as last year, on the days before Christmas for each of my grades. This school year, I have WAY more students than last. So this meant spending my entire Sunday baking 400 cookies and mixing up several sets of colors of icing to decorate them with. I spent hours with my after school class making decorations for fill the classroom with some Christmas spirit. All this work? TOTALLY worth it. I had so much fun, the kids had a blast and all around everyone enjoyed the week. Same as last year, I tried to take as many pictures and videos during the classes as I could to compile a fun music video! Merry Christmas~! I would begin each class teaching the kids a little bit about how we celebrate Christmas in the USA. In Korea, Christmas is celebrated as a "couples' holiday" (more similar to V

Here's the video I made for the 2015 EPIK Life Video Contest! It's a contest for all of the EPIK English teachers in Korea to make a 5 minute video about their lives here. Last year I got 4th place... This year, I won grand prize! The reward was 500,000 won (about $480). So have a watch and learn all about what teaching in Korea is really like.

Since last year I tried to climb this mountain, but wasn't able to finish it before dark, I decided to give it another try this year and start much earlier in the morning! Sinbulsan is not the tallest mountain in Ulsan, but it is one of the toughest mountains to climb in because it is so steep. The Korean word for hiking, "등산" (deung-san), literally means "mountain climbing" and this is one hike for which that meaning is as literal as can be. I mapped out our trail afterwards using Google Earth so you can see it in the image above. We started to the left and went around clockwise. Our base starting point was at an elevation of 70 meters (230 feet). The peak is 1,159 meters (3,802 feet). We hiked for 6.5 hours (4 hours to the top, and 2.5 hours back down), and only covered a distance of about 5.4 miles (8.7 km). The hike started of slowly and steadily, with a stream and a nice waterfall called 홍류 폭포 (Hong-ryu Waterfall). Shortly after leaving the

  The Seoul Lantern festival was started in 2009 and is an annual festival held in November along the manmade stream Cheonggyecheon (청계천). It lasts two weeks and brightens the stream with it's paper lanterns of various sizes and styles. It runs the 1.9 km stretch from Cheonggye Plaza to Supyo Bridge. Each year, the 4 sections of the festival will be currated according to the various theme chosen that year. The 2015 festival that I attended had themes as follows: Theme 1: Amazing World heritage in Seoul Theme 2: From local governments and overseas invitation Theme 3: Corporation and the character Theme 4: Light Art author show The pictures below were taken from my favorite section: the world heritage theme. Here there were first many lanterns depicting the famous things or places of Korea, then there were a few lanterns to represent other countries... Japan's Lantern India and China's Lantern USA's Lantern The lantern above depicted a common

Korean food has become my favorite food in the world since my first month of living here! Many of the tastes that were very different and new to me I was unsure about at first, but have since grown on me to the point of craving them! Even the cold, spiciness of kimchi (김치), a taste that I thought I would never grow accustomed to, has become sometime I reach for willingly for every meal. I find myself wanting the taste in between bites of other foods just as the native Koreans do. I have know for sure for a long time now that the things I will miss about Korea the most when I leave is the food. The typical Korean meal always consists of a main dish of some type of meat (most commonly pork or beef, but also fish or chicken), soup, rice, and a plethora of side dishes called banchan (반찬) that will always include kimchi. Let me point out the parts of the meal pictured of above... First, you can see the soup in the large, hot stone pot at the center. Inside is a type of stew

Cheomseongdae (첨성대) is the oldest astronomical observatory in East Asia. It has been dated to the 7th century, during the Silla Period, whose capital was Seorabeol (now Gyeongju). Cheomseongdae means "star-gazing platform". The tower is 5.7 meters wide and 9.4 meters tall. The site of the main palace, called Banwolseong (반월성) (literally meaning "half moon fortress"), at Silla's capital in Gyeongju is currently just an archeological site. However, one part of the palace grounds was restored from 1986-1975: Donggung Palace (동궁). It was originally constructed in 674 and consisted of Imhaejeon (임해전), which was the crown prince's palace and quarters, and Anapji Pond. Though there used to be 5 pavillions built around the outskirts of the beautiful pond, only 3 were remade during the reconstruction project. The are believe to have been used for parties or gatherings headed by the kind or crown prince. Now, Anapji Pond is a favorite visiting site a