14

The countdown has officially begun.  Actually, it began a couple of weeks ago, but I haven't had the inspiration to write a post recently.  I am leaving on June 29th and I am very excited.

I have eight teaching days left, and I'm so ready to go home.  It has been way too long.  And I need a vacation.  It's very weird thinking about leaving after I've spent the past 14 months adjusting to a new country.  I'm also a little weirded out by the idea that I will be able to understand everything everyone says again.  I've gotten so used to walking around in a fog of Korean.  I have many plans that include eating steak, salad, sleeping and getting ready for grad school.  I am also taking a brief vacation to Miami for my friend's wedding.  Super excited.

Seoul seems to have had a very harmful effect on my skin.  I don't know what it is exactly, maybe it's the air, the stress, dirty children germs, the diet or a combination of all of these.  I'm really hoping it clears up when I get home and have less stress and cleaner air.

I've noticed I've picked up some very odd English after being exposed to Korean-English, or Konglish, for so long.  For example, they call the United States, "America", and wet wipes, "water tissue." I'm sure there are others that I've picked up but it's going to make for some interesting English conversation when I get back.

I know that I am not completely up-to-date on American politics, but after living in a country where there is national health care, I don't understand why there are people who are, or in the past have been, against government run or regulated health care.  I had minor surgery twice last summer to remove a cyst on my lip, and in total, including doctor visit, prescriptions, and followups, it cost me about $200.  I went to a nice hospital, didn't have to wait longer than normal and it was exactly like, if not better, than care that we already get in the US.  In the States, this probably would have cost me several thousand dollars, and been impractical because it was non-life threatening.  This month, I have been to the doctor three times for various reasons and have not spent more than $100 so far on visits and prescriptions.  While they tend to over-medicate here (which is not terrible if you don't go to the doctor for every little cough or sneeze), the affordability of healthcare here makes it much more likely that people who become seriously sick will know it sooner and be able to receive treatment and recover.

The expense of the American health care system means that people are less likely to know about serious illness until it is too late to effectively treat it because they are hesitant to spend the money needed to see the doctor unless it is necessary.  This is a terrible way to maintain the health and productivity of a country.  While I am really looking forward to returning home, I am somewhat reluctant simply because I do not have the same excellent health care options, and will instead have to pay ridiculous premiums just for basic prescriptions and brief visit to the doctor.  This is something that I will have to deal with, but I sincerely hope that the country finds some sort of solution to this problem and stops bickering just because they want the other party to be wrong no matter what.

April Showers Bring Late April Flowers?

Spring has sprung, and was then subsequently drowned in two days of continuous rain.  The cherry blossoms started coming out last week.  The street where I lived was beautiful, with pink blossom covered trees lining one side.  I was planning to go see the blossoms in the park this weekend, but I was interrupted by the rain that started in the middle of the night Friday and continued through Sunday.  Unfortunately, the rain knocked most of the flowers off the trees, so they're not so pretty to look at anymore.  There seems to be a little recovery, with new blossoms opening, so maybe it will be nice again by this weekend and I'll get to go.

I started taking official Korean classes on Saturdays, as well as having language exchanges once a week with my Korean co-teacher, whose name also happens to be Sarah.  I am extremely determined to make the most of my last two months here and I should at least be functional in Korean by the time I leave.  I'm crossing my fingers.

My internet was turned off on Friday.  It is entirely not my fault.  The internet company is trying to force me into linking my internet account with my bank account, but I whole heartedly refuse.  Instead, I seem to recieve my internet bill quarterly, not monthly.  I when I first noticed that they weren't sending them monthly, Jamie spent a half hour on the phone with them arguing about who was to blame.  They said that it wasn't their fault, it was the delivery service's fault so they wouldn't take any late fees off my account.  This is when they suggested I hook it to my bank account so I never would have late fees again.  I hadn't gotten my bill for 4 months and they finally decided to turn it off.  I was planning on calling them tomorrow, when surprise, my bill was waiting for me when I got home.  I really don't understand.  Hopefully they'll turn it back on after I pay tomorrow.  You may be asking yourself, "Then how is she writing a blog post?"  I am using my phone as a hot spot.  Thank you iPhone.

For those of you that I have not been informed, I am coming home at the end of June, instead of July.  I have too many things to do to get ready for grad school.  I am also overly stressed and have developed a chronic under-eye twitch from what I assume is a combination of not enough sleep, too much caffeine and stress.  It needs to stop.

Speaking of graduate school, I have been accepted, and will be attending the University of Southern California in the the fall, and I couldn't be happier.  Okay, well I could be happier if they give me a large scholarship, but I'm still pretty darn happy.

And now, to clean my apartment!

Korean number of the day: 십사 (sheeb-sah) or 열네 (yeol-nay) - fourteen
Korean word/phrase of the day: 봄 (pome) - spring, 봄이에요 (pome-ee-yay-oh) - it's spring

I went to my first Korean wedding yesterday.  It was very nice, but I definitely prefer the Western version better.   It was the wedding of the art teacher at my school, Tiffany, who was the designated punisher of small children.  She recently quit because she didn't have the new principal in her pocket and there wasn't going to be a class of four year olds to teach this year.  It was apparently a huge wedding in terms of Korean weddings.  There is still a ceremony, that is similar to a Western ceremony, but it is much shorter, and there wasn't even room for everyone to sit.  Also, many people skipped the ceremony all together and headed for the food.  There is a public ceremony and a private, more traditional ceremony afterwards while people are eating, but basically the focus of the wedding seemed to be food.  It was all held in the same building with the food buffet a floor down from the ceremony.  They had huge screens of the ceremony set up in the banquet hall so that you could eat and watch.  The bride and groom didn't even eat with the rest of the people, they came in much later and said hi.  There was no dancing, no cake, no speeches, nothing like that.  It just seemed really impersonal and more focused on the food than on the union of the two people getting married.  It was also ridiculously crowded.  I personally prefer the Western style.

After the wedding I had some lovely shopping time with Kelsey and finally fulfilled my dream of owning a trench coat.  It is blue and lovely.  I also got some awesome polka dot heels.  The trip reminded me why I don't go shopping often.  I have a problem.

A new teacher arrived last week.  Her name is Carly and she seems very competent and has a lot of experience teaching already so I'm fairly excited.  She moved into her new apartment and apparently during cleaning they had taken away all of her towels and sheets and things that Erik had left, like most of the foreign teachers leave for the new teachers.  I mean, what are we going to do with a pile of bedding and towels, take them back to the US?  It's just not logical.  It's also much more helpful to the new teachers because then they don't have to worry about finding these things right after they get here and haven't been payed yet.  It's not in our contracts that they provide these things so I guess they thought it was okay to throw them out.  Still sucks though.  I gave her some pillows and blankets.

The weather really sucks lately.  Today it's rainy, windy and disgusting.  It wouldn't be so bad except for the wind.  Thank goodness for rain boots.

Korean number of the day: 십삼 (ship-sam) or 열세 (yeol-say) - thirteen
Korean word/phrase of the day: 짜증나 (jjah-jeung-na) - How annoying!/That's annoying!

Unfortunately I'm not Irish

It's so strange how you can be an integral part of a child's life everyday for almost a year and then never see them again.  Being a teacher is way different than being a parent, but I still feel like a second mother to the kindergartners that I had last year and it is such a strange feeling not to see them everyday and that I will probably never see them again.

I have noticed something very strange as late, as I am trying to find new spring/summer work shoes:  Koreans have a fascination with really nice, name brand sneakers and they are readily available, but when it comes to nice dress shoes that don't cost an arm and a leg, Korean stores are severely lacking.  Cheap dress shoes are plentiful, but often these very poor quality and not comfortable at all, especially when they have heels.  When it comes to shoes, it is very important to me to buy well made, good quality dress shoes.  It can really screw up your feet if you are wearing ill-fitting, uncomfortable shoes as well as making your day worse because your feet are killing you.  I'm going to need to go on a good shoe spree when I get home.  Le sigh.  I miss TJ Maxx  and outlet stores.

I took a little adventure for St. Paddy's Day.  I went on a booze cruise with Erik, Brittany and a Korean helper teacher who has been wanting to work on his English.  It was fairly entertaining.  It had the best beer that I've had in almost a year.  Have a mentioned that Korean beer is all very light and has no real flavor?  It's no good in my opinion.  There were people walking up to the boat carrying their own bottles of everything you could imagine.  I personally found this strange because it was an all-you-can-drink cruise that you had to pay for so I don't understand why you would want to pay for alcohol to take onto the boat full of unlimited alcohol that you had already paid for.  The food was pretty good too.  There was a pig roast and a variety of wraps to choose from.  We made a stop half way through the three hour cruise at the dock again to "buy more alcohol and use the bathroom" but I really think it was to see if some of the drunk people would wander off and never make it back to the boat which was ridiculously crowded.  St. Patrick's Day is a very strange holiday to explain to Koreans, as well as being a strange holiday to celebrate at school considering we don't celebrate Independence Day or several other more meaningful American holidays.  How do you explain to small Korean children that the holiday we are celebrating is about some guy who lived a long time ago and we wear green and drink lots of alcohol to celebrate?  It just doesn't make sense.

So instead of explaining, we just painted their faces and made shamrock crowns.  Two of my kids wanted to be painted like a tiger and a cheetah.  It was adorable.

Why is my gym always closed on days that I have off?  Those are always the days I want to go the most because I'm not pressed for time and don't typically have to get up early to go.  Stupid gym.  Make me get up at 6, get dressed and everything and then be closed when I get there.  Not cool.

I have officially changed my internal clock.  I can no longer sleep past 8am.  It's a very odd sensation, especially considering my past sleeping habits, ie college time.  It's very weird to just pop awake at 7:30am after spending 23 years not wanting to get up until 10.

I finally made it to the gourmet ice cream place.  It was fabulous.  I will probably make another trip there this weekend, assuming that I am not hella lazy.  They had some really unusual flavors.  I got lavender-honey and carrot cake.  They were both delicious.  They also had a carrot orange sorbet, nut job (mixed nuts), fennel, and lemon cream just to name a few.  Very odd sounding, I know, but the guy who owns this place is an ice cream genius.

The weather has been unseasonably warm as of late.  It got up into the high fifties a couple of days this week, and has been hanging out above freezing.  I don't know whether it's just teasing or if it's actually spring.  I feel like if I mail my sweaters home now it will get really cold again and I will be sad and cold with not enough layers.  I've actually resorted to wearing my rain boots because apparently as soon as it gets a little warm it starts raining like nobody's business.

Big surprise: CURLY HAIR!!  I got a perm.  And no, it's not the 80s.  They now how to do them in a tasteful fashion now.  It's somewhere between curly and wavy, but slightly more on the curly side.  I almost wish it were a little curlier so that I didn't have to put product in it to bring the curls out as much.  Pictures will follow I'm sure.

I am officially off coffee and sweets (minus occasional dark chocolate and ice cream), for the rest of lent.  This means lots of tea and no highly sugared things, whether it is baked, candy, or otherwise.  So far the coffee thing isn't so bad, but I literally keep forgetting about the sweets thing and will remember after I've eaten something.  It's gradually getting better.

Happy Leap Day!

It's that special day that only comes once every four years: Leap Day!!  If you haven't yet, I recommend you watch the most recent episode of 30 Rock. You will understand when you watch it.

These last two weeks have been busy and a little ridiculous.

First, major drama.  The new teacher ran away.  She was here for one night and then didn't show up for training the next day.  According to her, things had been bad at home and then she got news after she arrived here and had to go home within 24 hours of arriving.  This seems kind of ridiculous.  Personally, I think she got freaked out and ran away.  We had a very panicked 24 hours at work trying to figure out what the heck to do.

In the process of dealing with the crisis, it was discovered that Yina is no longer coming to teach here.  Sad face.  She apparently got her dream job in the US and is not coming back to teach in Korea.  Excellent for her, sad news for me and the school.  We finally got a who taught over our month of winter intensive courses to come back and teach for a couple of months until we get a more permanent solution.

I have spent a lot of time prepping my class for graduation and I even had to write my own speech. If you know anything about my writing, you know that I am a huge procrastinator. I finally finished it the night before graduation.  Then my babies graduated.  They all did an excellent job with their speech during the ceremony.  I said my speech.  They said goodbye.  I cried a wee bit.  I will miss my little munchkins.

Today was Erik's last day of work.  Tiffany, the Korean teacher in charge of arts and crafts and punishment, is also leaving.  It's always weird when teachers leave and we get new ones.  It kind of throws off the whole atmosphere of the office.  He's not leaving Korea though, so he'll still be around occasionally which is nice.

I have the day off tomorrow, but I left work with the news that one of the students in my new kindergarten this year quit, leaving my class with only two people.  To open a class, there need to be three people enrolled in it.  So I'm freaking out.  I don't know what's going to happen our how it's going to be resolved.  I really want to have a kindergarten class this year.  I think it's in my contract that I'm supposed to have a kindergarten class.  In any case, there are two less kindergarten classes this year so we don't have as many extra classes to go around.  Even with the one that I'm supposed to have, I would still have five fewer class per week because of the lower class to teacher ratio.

I'm getting my hair did tomorrow.  Surprises to follow.

I have Valentine's Day Chocolate overload

It's that time of year again, when people show their love through consumerism.  Now don't get me wrong, I love chocolate, I just think it's stupid to designate one day a year to show you love someone.  It's really the greeting card companies' faults.  In Korea, Valentine's Day coincides with a holiday that they call Red Day.  On Red Day, girls are supposed to give gifts to the boys that they like.  One month later, on White Day, boys who got things from girls are supposed to give three times what the girl gave them if they reciprocate the feelings.  That leaves April 14th, Black Day, for all of those who didn't get presents to celebrate.  I assume this means eats lots of candy and cookies and cry into a gallon tub of ice cream as a group.

Will miracles never cease?  I stumbled upon a Popeye's chicken fairly close to my apartment.  I have never seen one of these in Korea and was completely dumbfounded.  I mean I can't even remember seeing a KFC (although I know they exist here) and KFC's parent company has pretty well invaded the market with Pizza Hut and Taco Bell.  Also, Korean's don't seem particularly partial to spicy, or at least foreign versions of spicy.

At this point, I am impatiently waiting to hear back from graduate schools.  I have a huge range of dates in which I could hear back from them and I'm pretty darn antsy.  I have all of my taxes done and I almost (stupid website) have my FAFSA completed so I am in the home stretch and have pretty much nothing left to do but wait.  Ugh, waiting.

I had a very eventful day last week.  It started with two of my kids hitting each other (which they know they are not supposed to do) and me taking them to the teacher's room because it had happened one too many times.  The kid who was doing the most hitting (who is also the kid who stole some stickers about a month ago and got caught) got in so much trouble that he had to go downstairs and talk to the principal and almost got sent home.  He then came back to class crying, which is something I have only seen him do twice, once because he got soap in his eye and once because he felt sick.  This all happened within the first 40 minutes of class.  Everything went pretty pleasantly for the next hour or so.  One of the girls was complaining that she was really hungry because she didn't like snack so she didn't eat it.  She was starting to look like people do when they're so hungry they can't function.  About ten minutes before lunch time, she proceeds to ralph all over her desk, sweater and tights.  Luckily, because she hadn't eaten anything for a while, it was mostly just liquid.  We got her cleaned up and she tried to eat a little bit of lunch, then went downstairs to sleep until her mom could pick her up.  Thankfully, the rest of the day went pretty normally.

It's almost the end of the school year.  My little kindergarten boogers are graduating in a week and a half and I'm getting pretty sad about it.  I'm not really a big crier, so I don't think that will be a problem, but only two of them are coming back to afternoon classes in March.  Have I mentioned that I have to make a speech at graduation  as well?  Yeah, still not done with that.  I am a major procrastinator.  A new American teacher is arriving on Wednesday as well.  She is going to replace Erik.  At the very least, this week won't be boring.
New person next week

The usual

One of my kindergartners has been out of school since our Lunar New Year's break.  It's going on three weeks now, and it's kind of ridiculous.  At first, she wasn't going to be back from her grandmother's house until three days after break was over, then it was ridiculously cold and she got to stay home and now I have no idea why she's not back yet.

I had a lovely food adventure last week. Erik and I went to the Chinese neighborhood in Seoul and got some very authentic Chinese food.  It was so authentic, in fact, that the menus were completely in Chinese with Korean subtitles and no one working there spoke English.  We ended up ordering the dishes from the blog post that he had found the restaurant from because we really had no idea what any of it was.  We had kung pow chicken wings, a spicy tofu thing, and their specialty, a beef noodle soup that had cilantro in it.  It was all quite delicious.  I have developed mad chopstick skill and was able to pick up the peanuts with the chicken wing without thinking too hard about it.

Porridge: the Korean version of oatmeal.  It's kind of the same consistency of baby food, but don't let that turn you off.  It might be slightly closer to grits.  It comes in tons of different flavors like pumpkin, pine nut, squid kimchi and beef and mushroom.  It's quite delicious.  It used to be quite elusive and I didn't quite know where to get it except the not as good kind you get in those little chef boyardee-esque containers.  I found out yesterday that there is a whole chain of restaurants that offer it for take out and there's one right around the corner from my apartment.

Unpleasant Noises

In general, my apartment is pretty sound proof, unless there is someone in the hall or you're in the bathroom.  In the bathroom, I can hear all lovely things from other people's apartments, from flushing toilets to people hocking loogies in the shower in the morning.  Most unusually, I regularly hear the person in the apartment above me puking their guts out.  This is at least on a daily basis and always at really odd times and it is quite disturbing.

Yesterday night I was awakened from my grandmotherly early bedtime by bloodcurdling screams outside my building.  This went on for at least 30 seconds.  I couldn't see anything out the window except more people looking out their windows to see what the heck was happening.  I found out from the other American teachers the next day that they could see two people talking and then heard some giggling after the screaming so apparently it was a domestic conflict and not really serious.  That and the police weren't called leads me to believe that it was someone doing something stupid, but it was still hella annoying and disturbing.

This week is turning out to be excruciatingly cold.  The high today was 15 degrees Fahrenheit.  This makes my twenty minute walk to work extremely unpleasant.  I could not feel my face when I arrived.  There is also a layer of ice on everything because it snowed really hard yesterday then melted a bit and made everything ridiculously slippery.

I started filing my taxes this week and it's making my brain hurt.  I need to have them done so that I can fill out my FASFA so I can have financial aid for grad school.  So many extra things for foreign income which I don't have to pay for anyway because I only have to pay those taxes in Korea.  GAH.

bubbly bubbles

I was wandering around my neighborhood looking for dinner when I made a new discovery.  There is an outdoor ice rink about two blocks from my house.  I knew there was one down town, but this one is well hidden because it is below street level but with an open top and walls around the hole so people don't fall in.  I may need to take advantage of this while it is still cold.  Hopefully their rental skates will be somewhat decent.

I managed to drop a half used bar of soap in the toilet today while I was taking a shower.  How did I manage to do this you ask?  Well my bathroom is basically a large shower with a sink and a toilet thrown in.  If I don't want the toilet seat to be eternally wet, I have to life the whole seat up when I take a shower.  If you are not familiar with soap, it can be quite the slippery little devil.  And plop, into the toilet it goes.  So now I have a chunk of soap sitting at the bottom making the water bubbly and pineapple scented.

A ten year old girl beat me at arm wrestling today.  Ouch.  There goes my street cred.  She then proceeded to beat her classmate who is a skinny 10 year old boy.  At least I have that.

I wonder all the time what people are talking about when they speak Korean.  I feel like because I don't understand and it sounds so nice they're probably saying really unusual and interesting things.  I would probably be disappointed because I'm sure it's just as stupid as some of the things that people talk about in English.

Fun with Art

I found Yogurtland style froyo in Seoul today.  It was amazing.  Lovely plain tart yogurt and a bar full of toppings which you then pay for by the gram.  WIN.  This may become a regular haunt.

Trickeye Museum is loads of fun for the whole family.  Basically it's a museum full of renditions of famous paintings in which you can participate.  It is quite entertaining to take pictures of yourself, for example, getting eaten by a cyclops,

maybe being stabbed by a rhinoceros,

or maybe that you grew wings and flew away.

I made my way over to the Nation Museum of Korea as well, but it wasn't nearly as entertaining picture wise.  It was ridiculously huge though.  There were three floors of things to see and it took me about an hour a floor of browsing quickly and not reading too much.  I did skip a floor and a half because my feet were starting to hurt.  It was mostly about the history of Korea and there was quite a large amount of pottery from all over Asia.  Admission was free so even though I didn't see everything, I can always go back and not worry about having to pay.

Vacation = Love

Interesting (/gross) experience of the day:  I was walking around downtown Seoul when a guy walking in the opposite direction stops to look at something in a store window and lets rip a loud, wet one.  Luckily, I wasn't in any position to smell anything.

I spent my first tourist vacation day wandering around down town Seoul in below freezing weather for 4 to 5 hours today.   One of my small children definitely gave me a cold which made my wanderings quite a bit less comfortable.  I tried to go to the National Museum of Korea but was unsuccessful.  I shall have to try again, seeing as how they have a very large statue of Buddha which I would like to see.  I wonder if they let you rub its belly for good luck.....

I attempted to go to a falafel place that I was told is excellent, but it was closed, I'm hoping just because of the holiday, and not for good.  I ended up getting a burger instead, my first burger in probably six months.  Since I eat them so infrequently, I don't want to taint the experience by getting a Whopper or a Big Mac.  I went for the good stuff, ie $8 burger.  Yay lots of garlic and real meat.  Surprisingly, Korea has a very good burger chain, called Kraze Burger.  They've started exporting it to the US, I think the first one is near DC.  Unlike with Mr. Pizza, where they took the pizza and added all kinds of weird stuff to it making it wholly unlike American pizza, Kraze Burger just makes pretty standard burgers with lots of topping choices and fairly good quality meat.  Now the only problem is my mouth has the metallic-y post-garlic-consumption taste.

While I was walking down town, I wandered up towards the area where "the Blue House" (read, 'Korean White House) is and some how still didn't see it.  This is like my fourth time up there hoping to see it and just missing it completely.  On the plus side, there were lots of old style Korean houses, or 'hanok' 한옥 in the area which I got to see.  On the negative side, I forgot my camera at home on my bed.  Not that I would have enjoyed exposing my fingers to the air long enough to take a decent picture.

I love vacation.  I can sleep in tomorrow and go to the Trickeye Museum and eat gastronomic ice cream.  Very exciting.

On a random note, I received a box of cup cake mix in a care package.  Seeing as how I have neither a conventional oven or a toaster oven, I shall be attempting to make cupcakes via microwave.  Apparently, it has been done before.  Wish me luck.

Happy Lunar New Year!

Monday is Lunar New Year, otherwise known as Chinese New Year.  In celebration of this holiday, I have a glorious five day weekend.  I shall be spending this weekend relaxing and being a tourist in a rotating schedule.  First order of business, pajama day.

For some reason, in Korea, eggs come in packs of ten.  Why this is, or why in America it would be a dozen, I have no idea.  Who decides these things?  Is it an arbitrary number?  Are there commitees that decide how many eggs should be in a carton in different countries?

I recieved a lovely care package this week from a one, Ms. Erika Hartley.  She is fabulous.  I now have Cheez-its, orange Milanos, a cute hat, some warm socks, glass markers, an assortment of other wonderful things and these things called Magic Milk straws.  Magic Milk straws are amazing.  I don't know when they came out but basically it's a straw you stick in a cup of milk and use like a normal straw but it makes your milk flavored.  It makes any milk awesome.  I have strawberry and they're almost gone.  I may be buying in bulk soon.  Yum yum yum.

Another thing that was added to my collection of random stuff this week was a tub of that fart noise making goo.  Kelsey got some in a package from on of her friends.  I really want to give it to one of my kindergartners who is a little cheeky monkey and see what happens.

Speaking of kindergartners, I believe one of them has given my a runny nose considering she had a river going for like two days this week and now I'm finding myself needing to blow mine every half hour or so.  Booo getting a cold again.

Somebody ate my mandarin orange.  It was in a baggy at work with a hard boiled egg for a couple of days.  When I looked on Friday, there were other oranges in the fridge, but only a hard boiled egg in my bag.  Momentary sadness.  Luckily, oranges do grow on trees.

I'm getting bored of short hair, so until further notice, I am growing it out.  I will probably get bored of long hair in like five months and cut it again, because that's how I roll.

A Little Taste of the Past

Some experiences are beyond explanation that anyone else will really understand fully.  I had one of these on Thursday.  While she was here, my mom had mentioned a vegetarian restaurant run by a buddhist monk, but we didn't have time to go.  So Kelsey and I decided to go for dinner just for an interesting experience. The restaurant is called Sanchon 산천 and it is tucked away in a little alley in the more traditional part of the city called Insadong 인사동. It was set up like a traditional tea house inside with lots of plants and old wood work and was really quite lovely. The best description I can give you is that it looked like the inside of a Japanese building or house you'd see in a movie set before the modern era.  We sat at a floor table and at first the floor heat was really nice, but the longer we sat there the more boiling hot it got.  Booty melting temperatures.  We were the presented with a 23 plate meal of mostly unidentifiable green things.  There was a plate of appetizers that was more familiar, with things such as mushrooms, fried kelp, acorn jelly, some kimchi and spicy lettuce and Korean pancakes 파전.

Then came the plate of mysterious green things, one of which smelled like feet. We were very amused by the whole situation and spent most of it giggling. It wasn't a bad meal, in fact, some of it actually tasted pretty good, it was just very unusual and not something where I would wake up one day and be like "I really feel like eating monk food today." Next, came the dancing.

There were three different performers who each did two dances a piece.  A couple of them were really interesting, but I swear there was one where all she did was walk around the stage and play with her skirt like you would right before you curtsy.  There was about a half hour of dancing followed by about 10 minutes of drumming.  The three women came out with drums and played them over a drum and flute track playing in the background.  It wouldn't have been so painfully funny if they had rhythm or decided not to use a background track.  They would get off and you would hear two sets of drumming off beat from each other and it just sounded horrible.  The girl playing the pan was particularly bad and she had the loudest instrument.

For some reason we can't explain, Kelsey and I found this night ridiculously entertaining.  We spent the whole way home bursting out in laughter from the whole ordeal.  In any case, if you are either really serious of have a good sense of humor I would totally recommend doing it.  It's a nice look at traditional Korean culture although it is a little on the pricey side.

I had my first brush with duck last night.  At least I think it was a first, I can't really remember if I've had it before.  We had to have reservations because they had to cook the duck in a clay pot for three hours before we got there.  It's basically like chicken.  It had seasoned rice for stuffing and several different kinds of spicy kimchi for side dishes.  Altogether, it was quite good, and something I probably wouldn't have thought to try by myself.

Starting next Saturday, I have my second longest vacation ever, through the following Wednesday.  We get this time off for Lunar New Year, which is technically when every Korean citizen turns one year older according to their age system.  Interestingly, all of the major theme parks have discounted tickets right after this holiday.  Totally taking advantage of that.  Some of them are indoors so it's not as bad as it sounds.  I'm definitely not planning to go on any outdoor roller coasters in below freezing weather.

Strangely, I may be adjusting to the cold.  I was a little bit to warm on my walk to work.  This is extremely weird for me.  For those of you that know me, I have a high aversion to cold.  I avoid it like the plague.  Hence part of my marvelous four year excursion to Miami and my probably one to Los Angeles for graduate school.  I mean yes, I was wearing a sweater, but I was wearing one less shirt than normal and leggings instead of pants.  I could get used to this.  I hope this doesn't make summer suck even more than last year with all of it's sticky sweaty rainy-ness.

Another interesting thing about winter: apparently all of my layers makes be appear more Asian because it covers most of my whiteness and I like to hide 80% of my face beneath a scarf and hat.  Since the winter season started, I've had more than one person come up to me and start blathering in Korean even as I'm trying to tell them that I don't really speak it.

Korean number of the day: 십이 (shib-ee) or 열둘 (yeol-dool) - twelve
Korean word/phrase of the day: 만두 (mahn-doo) - dumpling

I finally got my winter sweaters and boots and it's freaking awesome!!!  So much warmer.  I also have amazing fleece leggings that are warmer than my pants.

For some reason, my apartment has obscene amounts of dust in it.  I dusted my head board yesterday and there is already visible dust on it again.  I had to buy a dust cover for my computer to keep it out of the keyboard.  The heat is all done in under floor water pipes and I haven't had the air condition on in ages.  I have no idea where it's coming from.  It's maddening.  I know, I'm a little bit of a clean freak.

I can very happily say that I now own a nice, authentic little tea set.  I'm very excited.  I do love tea quite a bit.  I'm going to have to wait to use it though because if I open it here, I will never get it back home in one piece.  The lady packed it very nicely and I'm going to ship it home and pine after it until I return in July.

Since I mentioned it, I will officially announce that I have extended my contract and will be here until the end of July unless things go badly with grad school applications.  If things do go badly, I am unsure as to my plan of action at that times.  But as for now, Korea, I will be seeing you for another 6 months.

I got new glasses.  I look super nerdy.  I kind of like it.  So do my small children who have glasses.  It has encouraged one of my smaller kindergartners to reveal that he even had them and now he wears them and looks like Asian Harry Potter.  Super cute.

We recently finished remodeling a new floor for the school.  This floor is specifically being used for the teeny tiny kids, the ones who are preschool age.  In the last two weeks, the three preschool classes have been moved upstairs to the fourth floor, vacating more than half of the second floor.  As a result, my class has moved down to the second floor from the third.  This move has really tripped my kids out.  They keep wandering out into the hallway and just staring at the other classrooms because the new floor is completely full, while the previous floor was not.  It's also making them super moody.  I really hope they perk up.

Snow today?  Maybe it will stick.  That would be marvelous.

Korean number of the day:  십일 (shib-eel) or 열하나 (yeol-ha-na)
Korean word/phrase of the day:  차 (cha) - car or tea

메리 크리스마스!!!

In other words, Merry Christmas!!!!! A little bit late but ish happens.

For example, last week my mom and brother came to visit. Therefore, I obviously didn't have time to blog while preparing for their arrival or after they got here. I did all of my end of the month grading and tests the week before so that I wouldn't have to worry about them during the visit. I also had to thoroughly clean my apartment.

Anyway, Mom and Phil came to visit for a whole week! It was most excellent. We did a lot of touristy stiff which I probably wouldn't have thought to do if left on my own. We went to see the main palace, Gyeongbok 경복궁, near where the president's Blue House is, walked around in a traditional part of the city called Insadong, went to the Korean Folk Museum and a bunch of other random things. Two of my favorites were going to a bath house and going to N Seoul Tower.

If you have never experienced a traditional Asian bath house you are missing out. Okay, so you have to be naked, but let's face it: in western society people are generally overly uptight about nudity. Here, they are more uptight about some of the things you are allowed to show when you wear clothing, but in more private circumstances with only one gender, such as a bathhouse or a gym locker room, they let it all hang out. It's a very weird juxtaposition between are to cultures. In one, you should never be completely naked but you can be pretty damn close as long as you're wearing something, and in the other you should not show any excessive skin in public but can go completely nude at appropriate times. If you can stand being naked in front of others of your own sex, going to a bathhouse is quite literally like being given your choice of multiple giant hot tubs and a sauna on the side for around $10. There are sometimes tubs outside too and it's quite odd (but still amazing) to use them in the winter.  When you're done with the tubs you have your choice of food and snacks and even spa services such as massages and facials, but these come at an extra cost.

N Seoul Tower is probably the most iconic part of the Seoul skyline, and it is one heck of a tourist place.  It's at the top of a large hill in a park near downtown Seoul and it has a great panoramic view of the city, when it's not cloudy out that is.  It also has a very unique museum at the base of the tower.  It features the history of Korea modeled by teddy bears.  Every display moves, too.  It is quite entertaining simply in its ridiculousness.  I highly enjoyed it.  N Seoul Tower is something neat to see on any day, but what made this one of my favorites (besides the teddy bear museum) was that we went on New Year's Day.  To celebrate the New Year (at least I assume that's what it was for), there was an exhibition of various cultural things.  There was a group of drummers, who did a performance that was at least 15 minutes long and hella awesome, followed by a demonstration of traditional Korean weaponry and fighting techniques.  I got some awesome air shots of a sword fight.

Something else that is very unique to Asia is the fish doctor.  I took my mom and brother to a nice little cafe with coffee, tea, etc, normal things you would find at a coffee shop.  What makes this cafe special is that you can also have a 15 minutes session with little fish eating away the dead skin on your feet after you've finished your drink.  It's like having an organic pedicure.  Apparently my brother had the grossest feet because they all swarmed around him.

On a side note, have I mentioned that I finished my graduate school apps?  WOOO!!!

Korean number of the day:  십 (sheeb) or 열 (yeol) - ten
Korean word/phrase of the day: 발 (baal) - foot