Hi Korea, I'm Here!

11/30 Ashley invited me on a field trip with her school to Suwon's Hwaseong Fortress. I got to meet her awesome 6th graders, got my name written all pretty, and got to shoot some arrows :p If I have enough money, and I'm living by myself or not with children yet, I want a house with a large large lawn and a fence so I can shoot arrows :p Ashley's school treated us to the entire tour and even food at Lotteria after :) Picture on the left is the first day of snow in Seoul.. beginning of November!


I took a sick day the next day because the kids had midterms so there were no English classes anyway. Jang and Lee both did the same :D I took my mom to Insa-dong even though she kept complaining about the cold and how expensive things were, how things weren't so different from Chinese things, blahblah, but eventually I was able to convince her to buy souvenirs. I also had to use the whole, think about the exchange rate thing. This 3000 won item is actually like $2. Isn't that cheap?? -_-. After Insa-dong, we went over to Yongsan to experience a Jimjilbang together. It was my first time to one so the whole lets all be naked together thing was a little shocking to me too but I had to be the brave one to make my mom get used to it. First thing we did was shower, then sit in a bath with water massaging things, then attempt to go into a sauna but that plan failed b/c my mom ran away, then dry up and reclothe, then get a massage (I got a sports massage.. never again.. I was in pain for days, my mom got a back oil massage), then get eggs to eat and then.. out of the jimjilbang! There's a lot more to it than we did but I could only push my mom so far. We went to the Dragon Hill Spa right next to Yongsan station so we had dinner at the I Park mall. I think I complain too much in general, but you haven't seen anything yet until you live with my mom and she gets familiar enough with you to unleash her complainingness. Thank goodness I had to teach the next day :p
Since my mom wanted cherry tomatoes (I had bought a box of them for 1.5k or something and mistakenly told her about them) I had to walk home from school in 20F weather to be able to go to the grocery store that had them. Unfortunately they were 2.5k by that point but my mom still liked them. I introduced my mom to Daiso and for once, SHE WAS HAPPY. Daiso makes everyone happy. A little too happy though b/c we needed to go to the grocery store and she needed to cook still. Anthea invited us to a musical that night so we had invited her over for dinner. Now that I think about it, my mom may have been attempting to stall and do whatever she could to just not go. Anywho, we managed to get home in time to fix up dinner, eat dinner, and get to the musical. It was freakin cold. It hurt so bad. . . . The musical was worth it though. My mom had a few good laughs too. She got to learn how the kids are in class here. Like how they have to raise their hands up as a punishment if they won't stop talking or do something bad :D When I got home, I checked the weather and it said it was down to 7F lol. Guess that's why it hurt so much.

Umm.. so my mom left back to the US on Saturday. Tony arrived here on Dec 9 (Friday) so another weekend of fun came along :D I should post more often so these entries aren't so freakin long. Anyway, to sum it up.. Tony is my Santa Claus. He gave me cookies, a big bag of Sunchips (which I devoured in 3 days), tons of tea, and tea cups and a tea pot!! I was in heaven :D Saturday we met up with Ashley and Anthea at Myeong-dong to go shopping. We're not very good at being tour guides for guys. We're also not in a big rush to do everything since we're here for a year unfortunately, so we actually don't know Seoul too well :x We did end up going to Hongdae (where I had my first men's bathroom experience) to eat dinner :) It was at a nice Chinese restaurant. We also got cool sticker pictures. Unfortunately, I have no idea how to sign up for an account so we couldn't have them sent to us by email. The next day Ashley, Tony, and I went to Yongsan to look for the lil LCD screens. But like everyone says here, cheapest way to get electronics is to order online, and even then, it's still more expensive than back home generally. Ashley found what he was looking for on gmarket but since he was leaving on Monday, I'd have to send the lcd to him and it would make it cost just as much as having it imported to the US from some dealer. Tony went back to Japan on Monday early early morning (an early good morning to mr. same bus driver again) and I went to school~.