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.