Hi Korea, I'm Here!

Random daily stuff.. last post!

2009-02-27T19:58:00.005+09:00

Last post of the crazy update.. Sorry for the length.. I'll try to post more often :[

In other news my carrot sprouted leaves and had lil roots coming out of it. I performed surgery on carrot and eventually made it into small carrot sticks. I should have taken pictures during the surgery, but I was too into dissecting the carrot. :[

Oh I also got another hair cut at the same place. Anthea got a hair cut elsewhere a few weeks back but it cost 10k without hair washing and styling. Mine only costs 20k and has both :D I decided to go ahead and get a haircut because my ondol was broken and I didn't want to take forever washing my hair by dumping boiled water on my head. It took long enough to wash my body that way. After the ski trip, I came home and turned on the heat.. it was working for a few hours but all of a sudden the power would go out. Good thing I knew where the circuit breaker was. I flipped the switch back on but it would immediately overload again. I don't have much plugged in so I went ahead and disconnected everything before I tried again. Next try, nope back into the dark. I walked around trying to think what could be wrong. Only thing else to disconnect was the refridgerator. Since that would have really been bad I didn't even want to try it :p I then saw the ondol control pad and was like.. HMMMMMMMMMMMM and pushed the red button so it would be off when I flipped the switch again.. and wa la! It worked. I left it off for about 3 hours before I turned it back on. It was fine all night long.

But the story continues.. I had school that day so I turned it back off after my shower and went to school. When I got back I turned it on for the heated flooring.. everything was fine and dandy until 7pm and boom~ there pops the breaker again. It made me sad :[ This time I left it off all night long until the next morning.. next morning when I turned it back on for hot water it was working fine! See the pattern.. it's slowly dying. I thought it was ok though so when I mentioned it to Jang, I was only joking. But on Friday when it tripped the breaker again I finally messaged Jang and was like, it's totally dead. Jang said "boil water with a stove. cheer up." She's so nice. She called the landlord so the landlord and the repairman would come on Saturday night and fix it.

That morning I tried my luck with the ondol. When I turned the hot water button on, something in the gas cabinet was rattling like crazies. I was in my room at the time so I kinda thought it was just some sound from the neighbors. So I'm like cool, at least I can still take my shower. Nope..... once I turn the hot water on in the bathroom, the power goes out lol. Thankfully though, hot water seemed to still work out of my kitchen faucet so I got a large bucket of that and also went ahead and boiled water in my teapot. After I finished the water in the tub, I put in the boiling water and started adding cold water from the shower to the tub but I had accidentally pushed the handle just a tiny bit past the middle and the lights went out again. It was pretty frustrating.. Just a tiny little tap to the left killed the power!

So that's when I decided to just go get a haircut :D I thought it would be ok since when I got back everything would be fixed.. but no...... Jang messaged and said that the landlord and repairman would instead come the next morning. Anyway when the guy finally came and looked at it, I had thought my landlord said "4" (ne in Korean) so I thought she meant it would take 4 days to fix. But in reality, she meant "I/me" that she would be coming back with the repairman to fix it the next day. I was pretty surprised and relieved to see them the next day. I was also going crazy b/c they kept using all my clean things. They used my clean bathroom shoes, used my expensive toilet paper to wipe stuff, used my clean tub to catch the water they needed to drain, my new clean kitchen sponge, etc etc.. I kept trying to get them to use the stuff I have to dirty things but they didn't understand. I was cringing everytime they picked up something else. I did get some yummy Daeboreum rice + seaweed from the landlord though. It made me have a crap load of leftovers b/c I had cooked that day (enough for a few meals) but it was still yummy :p

Since the other post is unbelievably long, I'll just add it here.. Ashley and I went to see Marley and Me on the 25th and omg it is tear wrenching!! The movie was really really good but everyone in the theater was crying.. My tears kept streaming.. I was on the verge of sobbing haha. Few days before I had been watching all of the 2nd season of Clannad so I was already in sad mode.. I balled while watching that btw.. With all that said, if you have time, watch the movie!!

currently uploading videos of my students.. will edit post when it's finished~

School stuff!

2009-02-27T19:22:00.006+09:00

A Snowy Day at my school :D

Winter camp ended successfully :) We had some problems because the Principal came into my class when I was showing the 4th graders a movie and because the Korean teachers were nowhere to be found, but I think he's ok with it now since the 2nd time he came in to observe, he happened to come see the talkative 5th grade class that explained everything they were learning to him. Apparently he had instructed the Korean teachers to help me during camp, but just about none of them did. He wasn't very happy to see that ;D Oh well..

I got a new coteacher. The one replacing Jang hasn't been decided yet though.. and school starts on Monday. I don't really understand why they do everything so last minute here. Anyhow, the new coteacher doesn't really speak much English. She really tries though. She told me she's going to study all spring break. I hope she does. I can't really communicate with her too much b/c if she doesn't plan what she wants to say, it comes out as a total jumble with other random words thrown in. So far though, she seems to be having trouble becomming a member of the group of teachers we're in. Other teachers have noted a bit about her mood swings and not being really sure what her personality is like. I don't know either.. all I know is, she does what I ask her to do in class. I'm a little afraid of how she's going to teach the students though.. at least she's only teaching 6th graders alone once a week.. rest of the time she's just disciplining the students while I teach. I hope the teacher replacing Jang will be a bit better.. that teacher will have 5th graders and 3rd graders alone once a week since I don't teach 3rd graders at all.

There have been a few instances where I could tell she's not really accepted. When we were going to visit the VP in the hospital (he broke his leg skiing) she was taking a lot longer to get out of her office so we didn't wait and went down so I could go ahead and change my shoes. After changing my shoes we see her coming down the stairs so we proceed to where the car was parked. We assumed she was following us but when we got to the car she was nowhere to be seen! It was really odd. After visiting the VP everyone was waiting for the elevator to go back down and I had heard her say 'restroom' in Korean so I knew where she was going but she didn't really tell anyone so when the elevator got to our floor, we all went in. I kinda forgot to check to see if she was out yet b/c I'd been busy talking to Jang and the music teachers but in the elevator we were like.. oh crap...... temp teacher missing! @_@;.. It's so bad to forget someone :x

During the farewell lunch we had for the 15 teachers that were transferring to other schools, she totally didn't talk at all and left earlier than us. I find it strange because I was able to converse with the teachers more with short phrases in English while she wasn't able to join the conversation at all. Oh well.. we'll see how this year goes. Here's one of the times I'm glad I have my own office and aren't stuck in the middle of teacher drama.

Graduation was on February 19th and February 20th was the last day the teachers had to come in. February 19th we had a fake field trip where we supposedly went to the movies after the lunch and February 20th we had another fake field trip where we supposedly hiked all day long. I found out later that we had the fake field trips because the group of teachers I'm with actually didn't want to have to do any field trips with the male practical arts teacher. He's pretty annoying..... I mean he's nice, but he's egotistical, VERY RELIGIOUS & pushes it on everyone else, and kinda odd overall lol. I understood after they explained to me XD I don't want to suffer through another debate with him either!

This week is my school's Spring Break. Since I opted not to use my vacation days, they required me to go to school everyday. Jang told me I could leave at 12pm everyday though which is cool. I think it's like during my winter camp where they wanted me to go home right after teaching b/c they didn't want to deal with how I'm going to eat lunch everyday. But it's all good.. I can avoid the awkward meals where I just sit there in silence while they talk and talk and talk in Korean. I have learned to eat even slower (if that was even possible.. everyone knows I eat slow already), but now I do it in even slower motion. That way when it seems like they're finally finished talking, I'm not super super full from constantly eating, but I'm content!

On Thursday, GEPIK had another meeting thing set up with the teachers. This time we were to go to the auditorium at the National Museum of Korea. Some people thought that we'd just be getting a tour of the museum, but from what Jang said, it just seemed like a lecture. It was definitely a lecture.. I could live without such detailed description of hour the gold was melted at whatever temperature to solder the gold balls onto the thing. I fell asleep many times and there was a person snoring behind us. After the lecture, they fed us some traditional Korean snacks that were very yummy :D Upon exiting, they give everyone a free ticket for the museum but it is only good through this Sunday. I highly doubt anyone actually used the ticket.. we were all dead after watching the presentation. I did like the stuff on the Hanbok though. It was the only thing I didn't fall asleep for.

Happiest thing about school right now is.. the 6th graders are gone!! bwahaha.. now the middle schools can deal with the children. Here are some class pics I took.. and the new temp teacher took when I wanted to be in them:

6th graders..

Class 6-7 First class I tried taking pictures of.. hard to control! But generally one of the better classes.

Class 6-6 The class I like.. the boy in the middle volunteered himself as the "best English student" in the class -_-;..

Class 6-5 bad class.. see the boy in the maroon?

4th graders

Class 4-7 Starts off good.. then the formation dies when teacher wants to get into pic -_-

4-8, favorites :D They have the smallest children.. They also clean the classroom. Cleaners are 3 tiny boys, 2 very chubby boys, and one girl. All of them very happy children.

Two months worth of trips / weekends / celebrations

2009-01-26T22:37:00.019+09:00

My camera is kind of dead. Pictures come out somewhat blurry, the battery compartment can't stay closed (even with tape), and the battery dies after maybe 20 pictures. So most of the pictures I put up now will have been stolen from Ashley's/Anthea's/Penny's cameras.

January 17th&18th

For Anthea's birthday on the 19th, we went to TGIF in COEX mall to eat (celebrated the weekend before). We also met Anthea's friend Frank, who's here for one year in the navy marines (or something like that), and hung out with him in Yongsan, Insadong, and one of the palaces. Ashley and I gave Anthea the last cat from the three smelly cats, Kuro and gave her hand warmers to put in Kuro. I have Kuta, Ashley has Mike, and Anthea now as Mike. We also got her a Green Tea Icecream Cake from Baskin & Robbins. I thought there would be some cake in the icecream cake, but no.. their cakes are completely icecream. It was a gigantic ball of green tea icecream.. It was good though XD

January 25th
Since my last post, I've gone on 3 snowboarding trips!! They were all super fun :D First one, Ashley, Anthea, Jack, and I went to Konjiam (곤지암). To get there, you go to Gangbyeon station and take a bus from there all the way to Gonjiam. From there, you take a shuttle bus up the mountain but I think we got off a stop too early so we ended up taking a taxi (only cost 5k won though). We were cheap so we didn't buy lift tickets, but it was ok b/c the courses were really really short. We were able to walk up the mountain every time to go down it. We're all beginners so it's not like we needed the super slopey ones anyway :D We were extremely tired after that day though.. lots of exercise climbing up over and over! The lift price was 41k I believe for afternoon and then rental for the board and boots was 27k. Pants rental costs 15k.

January 24th & January 26th
The day before Gonjiam, Anthea, Ashley, and I went to Anthea's coteacher's house for the Lunar New Year's dinner where you eat a bowl of rice cake soup. After you eat the soup, you gain a year in age. Ashley came back to Guri with us and slept over at my place so we could head to Gangbyeon together. After Gonjiam, Jack and Ashley crashed at my place again :D I like it when people stay over! My place is too big and lonely.. I download so many tv shows on my computer now because it's too quiet without something playing all the time. Anyway, the next day Anthea and Frank came over and cooked spaghetti and meatballs! It was yummy :D I didn't have a can opener at the time so Frank showed us his useful army skills by cutting open the can with my knife lol......

January 27th

The next day we all met up for some samgyetang (sp?). It's an entire chicken cooked with sticky rice in ginseng soup. It also has a jujube which adds flavor but because my mom forced me to eat too many of those, I kinda don't like them so mine goes to Ashley everytime :D We met Jack's friend Jihun and Jihun's friend but I don't remember his name...... Ashley and Frank also ate some bugs. I think she said, "YUMMY" and downed one really fast. Ashley is weird. I like what Anthea said in Chinese: "You have bugs in your stomach." Anyway, after that, Ashley and I went to take some pictures of ourselves in Hanboks at the tourism center. The first picture makes it look like Ashley is the daughter and I'm the mom :( Everyone else went to the Seoul Tower (Namsan?) but I'm scared of heights so I didn't go :p We ended the night at the Dokbokgi street with some really good cheese dokbokgi and seafood dokbokgi.

January 31st & February 1st
Our next snowboarding trip was to Jisan. It was a really fun trip because we decided to spend the night there :D Jihun, Frank, Anthea, Ashley, and I spent a night in a tiny pension sleeping on the ground. It was really close to the slopes so oh well.. it was an interesting experience anyhow! Jihun taught us how to play this Korean game with 4 sticks and a board. It was a lot of fun, especially when Ashley goes, "Ok I'm on Jihun's team." and he goes "Ok let's make teams." and then she goes again "Ok I'm on Jihun's team." and he again denies her lol. Anthea and I bought a package where you get lessons for 2 days and it also pays for rental and lift fees for 180,000 won. It was totally worth it! Both days we had one instructor dedicated to the two of us.. so it was pretty much private lessons! We can both go forwards and backwards and do beginner turns now. I'm still really bad at turning from forwards to backwards though. We both busted are butts and knees the two days. It was expected though.. if you don't go all out and bust your arse practicing and doing whatever the instructor says, it's a waste of money!

I ended up getting Jihun to take me to the medical center before we left because someone had run into my hand with their snowboard (ran into me completely but board hit my hand) so I just wanted ice. They used something called "Mentopas" (we call it menopause :D ) that's sorta like a very liquidy bengay/icy hot. Since the lady had a ton on her hand and asked if anywhere else hurt, I decided to get some on my knee. Oh my goodness it hurt soo bad when she started applying it. She didn't just lightly apply it.. she freakin rubbed it in! And then she wrapped my leg up extremely tight so that I couldn't bend my knee at all and it smushed my bruise @_@;.. I think I'll wait for ice next time. It was more painful that falling on the knee. Penny came to ski with us on the 2nd day so we went back with her to her hotel to spend a few days with her. So for how much we spent on everything: Taxi there shared by Frank, Anthea, and me because we missed the bus - 85k/3; Lessons/rental/lift - 180k; hotel - 24k; food ~ 20k.. = 242k. Not bad :D

February 2nd & 3rd

Penny's hotel was really nice! I got to take a really nice hot bath @_@ It felt soo good. Anthea and I had some problems sitting up b/c we strained our neck muscles way too much from having to get up so many times after falling. I had to claw the wall to sit up from the bed lol. I figured out a better way after a few times though. If you use a hand to lift your head up from your neck, it's much easier b/c then you don't need to use your neck muscles! During our time with Penny, we went to COEX, Myeong-dong, and Hongdae with her. We also got some interesting sticker pictures XD A bunch of these pictures were taken with Penny's phone.. it has a lot of interesting settings >_>

February 7th
Unfortunately b/c my school seems to have short breaks or something, I had to go back to work on the 4th (Wednesday) so we couldn't plan anymore trips/outings that week :[ But Frank, Ashley, Jihun, and I did meet up on Saturday to go to a free Korean class at Sookmyung University station (kongbubang.. if interested, look that up in google) and then to Yongsan to shop afterwards.

February 14th (VALENTINE'S DAY!!)
The weekend after, Anthea went home to NY, and the rest of us met up again on Saturday. Jihun and I had lunch together, and then Frank joined us for ice skating. Ashley was sick :[.. but we still met up for class. We went to Wolfhound pub in Itaewon for dinner because Reach to Teach had a gathering there, but we were a little too early so the pub people didn't let us sit at the tables. So instead we just had fun sitting at the high tables and ate a yummy dinner! The hamburgers are wonderful there by the way. They're seasoned very well all the way through and the portions are large so the cost was very reasonable. After dinner, we went to say hi to the Reach to Teach people before leaving to get some ice cream at Coldstone. Ice cream is good..... :D

February 21st
Our very last snowboard/ski trip was last Saturday :) Ashley was still sick so she stayed home and read a billion books on her ereader instead lol. Frank invited one of his friends so we had 4 in total (perfect for the # of discount tickets we had). We ended up paying 7,500 for rental and 31,000 for lift for the morning and afternoon times. It was super cheap b/c the bus ride there is free as well :D Jihun was really nice and stayed with me the entire time, even with me going down as slow as possible. As Frank says, "That's not snowboarding." Jihun had enough patience to wait for me XD. The slopes were pretty clear in the morning so I could go down without being too scared of being hit, but the afternoon session brought a lot more people and I started getting run into. I got hit 5 times.... I only got hit bad 2 times though, other 3 I managed to fall as hard. It was a really good day! Because of the lack of people in the morning, Jihun and I went down the two hardest slopes one time each. I ended up going down completely straight on the slopiest one though b/c it was soooooo scary!! Closer to the bottom it's not as scary but when you're at the top it's bad.. I slid at the top b/c the snow is more packed/icy from the faster boarders/skiiers and couldn't get back up for a while lol. I kept sliding everytime I tried to get up b/c it was too steep and icy. But just to say I have, I've gone down the steepest slopes at Jisan thanks to Jihun :D I wanted to start on the easier slopes but I was DENIED. The New Orange lift broke down while we were in line so we ended up going to the Blue and Silver lifts. The right most slope is fun :D It's really curvey but it's super long and fluffy. The snowboarders do their tricks on two parts of that slope so it's fun to watch them. Next time, I don't think I'll go snowboarding if my knees are still messed up though. I think I strained them more purposely trying to not fall on my knees b/c when I got home, everytime I got out of a chair or my bed, my knees would give out lol. Yesterday was bad.. so I tried to stay on my feet all day cleaning instead of sitting down. Everytime I sat down and stood back up I had to use my desk to push up and had to keep my knees bent for a while before they could lock properly

February 24th
Jihun's birthday! Jihun opted to celebrate his birthday at my place so that we could do the cooking thing on his list of things to do. His mom made chopchae (sp?) and he brought over ingredients for dokbokgi! We also ordered a pizza and I cut up a bunch of veggies to eat with dip & washed some strawberries. We also ordered a sweet potato cake for him. I'm not a huge fan of sweet potato and Ashley isn't either so we made sure he took the rest back home with him XD We watched "Secret" while we ate everything. It was a really good movie! Parts of it was kinda creepy (especiailly the opening music) but it was a nice story and I liked the piano parts. If you haven't seen it, I recommend watching it :) Jay Chou is the main character and he's also the director/one who wrote the movie. For his presents, Frank paid for the pizza (wa ha ha), Ashley bought him a LED light thing that was shaped like a person that had suction cups on its hands and legs so you could stick him anywhere. It was pretty cool :D Jihun definitely had a lot of fun playing with it lol. I made a crochet cat for him with "POSCAT" on it. Jihun had this weird story where he says POSTECH has a club called POSCAT where they observe cat behavior. Their campus has a ton of stray cats so it's really easy for them to study the cats. But in reality, that's not true.. there is no such club that observes cat behavior but everyone believes him b/c POSTECH is known to have a ton of cats -_-;.. It's the name of the club he's in and it actually stands for Postech Computing Algorithm Team. LAME.. Anyway, we walked Jihun and Frank to the station and Ashley came back to my place to stay the night :D Jihun being in our group makes me feel even older. When I was picking up the cake and the lady asked how old for the candles, I automatically said "24" and had to correct myself to 21.

I like the men's bathroom pt. 1

2009-01-03T18:31:00.011+09:00

Anthea and I at the beginning of the stream :)

Anthea asked me whether I wrote about it on my blog yet and nope.. I hadn't yet. It wasn't the most memorable experience but since I've done it 2x now, maybe I'll just comment :p There is always a long line for women's restrooms, especially in coffee shops because there is only one stall. While for the men's restroom, there is one stall plus one urinal. So if you gotta pee, you're just in and out. Those that need that stall don't need to block the others from doing a number one. While for women, the line just gets longer and longer. This time it was another emergency-- it was almost time for the countdown for New Years! Happy New Year by the way! I had 10 mins (or 15? don't remember) when I started waiting, by the time there was 4 minutes left and the men's restroom was pretty empty, I went over there and had Anthea block the door for me. We made it in time for the countdown but I think wherever we were, it wasn't the place the website says. The website says theres a big screen TV and a light show. Well, we were at the mini fireworks/scrolling light stuff but there was no TV in sight! I think Anthea was kind of disappointed :p But it was fun still!

We walked up and down the stream that night, took a bunch of pictures, got to watch a live concert of CAN, Park Ji Young, and some other duo that was popular 20 years ago. We also found a super cheap ice skating rink! We ended up going ice skating for our New Year's Day plan :) The rink is at exit 5 of City Hall station. It's really big, you can't miss it. It's much smaller than the picture online, but hey it's super cheap. It's 1000 won per hour to enter plus you get skates. If you need gloves, its 500 won to rent. Lockers are also 500 won. You buy a ticket for a time slot (to control the crowd.. there are a ton of people) and then line up for skates when it gets close to time. They redo the ice every hour cuz it gets scraped up like crazy with the amount of people but it's a good amount of time. I usually take a break at the hour anyway :p

cowfish~

The next day (1/2) we met up with Ashley at COEX for the aquarium to see fishies! COEX is a huge mall with a lot of high end stores, restaurants, coffee shops, and it also has REALLY awesome restrooms. :D The aquarium was fishy fun like always but it didn't only include fishes. It had frogs, tarantulas, alligators, "korean squirrel" aka chipmunk, monkeys, and many other things. The exhibits were a lot more crowded than the aquarium back at home in Atlanta, but they were very interestingly laid out. One room turned all household appliances, sinks, water tanks, phone booths, bed stand, toilet, anything you can think of into mini aquariums. It was really neat :D Once you get to the last souvenir area and exit that, you're completely out of the aquarium and back into the mall. It was an odd feeling.

Anyway, since we had past by a dimsum and noodles restaurant we wanted to try earlier, we went back to that to eat. It was Jackie Chan's restaurant. Really :p There's pictures of him doing kung fu poses on the outside too. There wasn't a long wait for seats, but they were understaffed so things moved a little slow. They also ran out of a lot of food and it was still only 4:30pm. All the dimsum items I wanted to try (though overpriced) were already sold out. I ended up getting "SangHong" or however you spell it. It had a crispy outside (like a fried spring roll) but the inside was some sort of sweet potato paste. It was pretty good :D Ashley's and Anthea's meals were pretty good too.. we need to go back there sometime! As the waiter said when I asked him 'What is Sang hong?' he replied, "It's delicious."

New gadget I bought that lets me turn my laptop into a tablet!
PNF Duo~ 69,000 won :D

They voted on the best turkeys from each table~

Hmm so what other important dates did I not blog about? Let's see..
11/27: Thanksgiving! Awesome Turkey day! I taught my kids about Thanksgiving all week and about how we call it “Thanksgiving” and not “Thanksgiving Day” like the stupid book teaches it. My coteacher helped explain it by telling the kids you say Halloween, Thanksgiving, Christmas, etc. without adding the –day usually while for things like Memorial Day, President’s Day, Labor Day, all regular words? you add a “day” to it. At this point they would do the “Ahh..” to indicate they understand. The 6th graders had a chapter on it but the 4th graders didn’t so I made them draw turkeys and listen to some funny turkey songs on youtube. http://jp.youtube.com/watch?v=B0GWAwV5uBY and http://jp.youtube.com/watch?v=hd4h5xKLGuE . However, because they watched these, the kids gave the turkeys sunglasses, dragon tattoos, and afros.. They did learn the proper sound a Turkey makes though: Gobble gobble! Or .. Turkey turkey! ;D That night, we went to Doorae Church in Guri for Thanksgiving dinner. Sarah, another teacher in Guri, invited us to go eat with them. It was soooooo good. We even got to take home leftovers. I was in heaven :D

11/29: My birthday! I had to work that day (Saturday class) so I met up with Anthea and Ashley at night at Gangnam to go eat at Outback Steakhouse! Outback Steakhouse in Korea is all about service. While we were waiting in line, they handed each of us a small bowl of cheesy fries with ranch dressing (I think). And then at the end when we asked for boxes, they boxed everything up separately into nice bags and gave us each another loaf of bread sealed in plastic and a ball of butter. My steak was super awesomely yummy! If we ever go back, I'll probably get the steak again. It was the flame grilled steak I believe. Ashley's ribs were completely worth it too. The full rack was definitely a full rack, unlike back at home when I got the "full rack" it was smaller than a half. After eating, we walked around Gangnam and had Tanner buy me a scarf and a hat. We wanted to shop around more but unfortunately since I didn't get back from teaching till kinda late and Outback Steakhouse was farther than I remembered (saw it one time when I walked to the next station to look around the area on my own), we ran out of time. We separated around 11? Anthea went back home and I went to Ashley's place to sleep over!

(note: these being posted backwards so they show up pt 1, 2 and then 3 on my page)

Major update post 2 (I like the men's bathroom pt. 2)

2009-01-03T18:10:00.011+09:00

Ashley donated a dollar at Myeong-dong and we ended up with a bunch of
fruits!I got the pear I wanted! yay!

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!

12/2 My mother arrived. I left school early after my classes finished and rode the airport limo to the airport. From Guri, it costs 11k one way but it takes you all the way there and it's a really nice nap :p I had been lacking sleep so I totally passed out on the bus. The bus drops you off on the floor for departures, so if you have to go to arrivals, you just take the elevator down to the 1st floor. For some reason, everyone I've picked up so far has come out of gate D but I remember coming out all the way at the end. The bus to go back to Guri is at Gate/Doors 8 near gate D. The airport doesn't have that many restaurants. There are a few really nice ones, but it's all fastfood or small coffee shops. I treated my mom to Cafe Pascucci and happened to lose my Happy Point card there :[ I was super tempted to ask them if they found it one of the 2 other times I had to go back but I was too lazy to try with their lack of English. The bus ride back happened to be the same driver (bus number 5749). The bus ride back to the airport to drop off my mom also happened to be the same driver. I think the bus rides to pick up Tony was also the same dude but I'm not sure.. I remember one time it being a different bus but I went on the same one enough times that he recognizes me now @_@.

Thought this was cute.. so I took a picture.
2nd picture was the result of me taking a picture of the 2 boys :p Oops :D

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.

Our 50,000th christmas cake and the HO bar at Hongdae.

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~.

Major update post 3 (I like the men's bathroom pt. 3)

2009-01-03T14:39:00.010+09:00

The next few weeks we did stuff, crocheted, planned lessons for winter camp, bought supplies, I got really sick, and eventually I took my first real sick day! I'd been running on about 3 to 4 hours of sleep for the past month so I completely crashed and didn't wake up till 9:40AM on Tuesday when my coteacher called me. I'm kinda sad I missed Tuesday.. it was my last teaching day before winter break. Wednesday I already knew there would be no classes :[. It gave me 4 extra hours to sleep though! I used the day to bake cookies, finish the rabbit I was crocheting for Jang, and look over winter camp lesson plans. Jang was like, "so.. you didn't rest on your day off??" :x I reallllllly wanted to bake the cookies and give her and Lee gifts for being good coteachers. Both won't be my coteacher next year :( Lee is off for maternity leave and Jang will be teaching 2nd graders next year. Lee's present wasn't finished so I didn't give it to her until the first day of winter camp. She was helping me for the 2 days she had duties :)

Ok before I get into camp and beyond.. December 24th! Christmas Eve! Ashley and Anthea came over to sleep over, watch Wall-E, decorate my apartment, and just to celebrate :) We ordered Papa Johns successfully and had a good Christmas Eve dinner :p The next day we went to Suwon with Ashley to look around her mall and have lunch/dinner. Twilight was sold out everywhere practically (evaded us 4 times) so we ended up never getting to watch it. However, we did get a good pho/fried noodle Christmas dinner though lol. After Suwon, Anthea and I went to Gangnam and shopped around the station. We found some "cheap" 5000 won clothes, but they're just that. They're cheap and poorly made. All the things we bought that were that cheap turned out fitting really weird and didn't look good at all :[ Back to buying overly priced clothing!

These are kinda long but this was out
attempt at ordering pizza :D Lots of long pauses~

The weekend after that Anthea was on a trip with her school to go skiing so Ashley and I went to Gangnam to sit in a tea shop to crochet and study. She crocheted while I studied. My hands were still in pain from crocheting as fast as possible for Jang and Lee's gifts. I finally studied a tiny bit of Korea XD My kids would be proud. Everyday after I took my textbook to school, they had been asking me, "Teacher, study?" and I'd sadly shake my head and say "too busy.." with my dark circles and they'd reassure me that it's ok!! What good children! I like them :p I can't wait to see them in 2 weeks. This coming week is 3rd graders, next is 4th, then last is 5th.

Example of my dinner lately.. reason why Jang is concerned lol.

The 2nd graders that came for camp were better than I expected. The first class stared at me blankly whenever I said anything, but they knew the colors, letters, numbers, AND they could read! The 2nd class was much better as they could understand 30% of what I said and were really enthusiastic XD By the end, both classes were singing the colors song I taught them pretty well and could keep up with my speed colors quiz (point at color and they say it ;D) It's amazing how fast kids can learn. The first class really understood nothing I said unless I started the answer for them.. like let's count from 1 to 10.. 1... 2... then they'd join.. Or say the ABC's as I point to them! A.. B... The last class day I had them make pies with clay or whatever they are. They could understand me and answered my questions when I went around asking them about their pies :) They made apple pies, purple cherry pies, toxic pies, hamburgers, sandwiches, kimbab, pizza, ice cream, and many other things. They’re really artistic! One kid put a ball of purple and a ball of blue in between 2 lighter layers and then cut it in half. It made it look good to eat like there’s filling inside! It's not even that they're shy so they weren't saying anything in the beginning, they truly had the "what in the world is she saying" look that I give to Koreans when they attempt to talk to me in Korean lol. It just takes me a lot longer with my old brain to pick up things.

And that takes me all the way back to New Years! Hope you don't get a headache from my posts~

Peppero day is awesome!

2008-11-16T15:40:00.007+09:00

I really like presents :p Especially from little kids. It makes you feel all warm inside. So my kids had introduced me to "Peppero Day" the week before November 11th while they were playing with me in my office. Once I heard that couples give each other peppero I immediately thought of Valentine's day. What did we do as children on valentine's day?? We gave the teachers and each other valentine cards and candy!!!! So that meant, I'd be getting free snacks ;D And indeed, look at my stash!! I continued to get a few more on the 2nd day too.. I was in heaven :D

Talking about snacks.. I give out candy to winning teams whenever we play games in my classes. One of the candies is yellow so a boy kept on asking me "lemon? lemon?" in a really cute voice!! I was like ;_; I'm sorry, I have no idea!! I should try out the candy before giving it to them. I'm really glad I'm teaching elementary school. They can be monsters but they're cute monsters :D

Continuing where I left off on the last post..
November 1st was my first day of "Saturday English Program." The class for the 3rd and 4th graders went really well. I spent many many hours and lost a lot of sleep preparing the powerpoints and activities for them so if it bombed, I would've been sooo disappointed! My co-teacher had originally thought that the books we bought would have movies or animation for the children to watch on the TV.. even though I already informed her that it was only a sound clip reading out the stories in a very boring and slow voice. I don't think she was expecting me to have to put so much work into the classes. My class for 5th-6th grade was really boring. She wanted me to teach them from these boring educational Discovery science books and since I was an Astronomy major, she wanted Astronomy related. She rejected my airplane book. It probably would've been more interesting to boys, but at least it was a story and girls still have fun doing activities.

We went with a book on Stars where I had to create a bunch of activities and required specific items that ended up being substituted with other items that made the experiments not work lol. I wanted them to make a kaleidoscope but since mirrors were potentially dangerous, the idea was rejected. I then wanted them to do an activity with a glass bowl, water, foil, black paper, and a flashlight, but instead of glass bowls I was given plastic cylindrical tubs. It didn't work at all :( I felt bad that the students had to sit through the boring reading and explanation of the book and do an activity that didn't work out in the end. Fortunately, for the class yesterday, my coteacher decided to just do a super quick summary of Chapter 2 and move on to the activities rather than to actually read the book lol. Yesterday I had them make constellations out of foil, glue, and black paper so it was simple :D It took a lot of time so class ended 30 mins past time but the kids had fun! Now I need to find glow in the dark paint/glue for the next class. The 3rd and 4th graders are working on making a "moving tiger." My prototype 1 Tiger turned out really.. weird. He had uneven skinny legs, his body was really fat, and his ears kept drooping lol. Prototype 2 came out ok but some of the holes were misplaced and he had too many stripes so it would take forever to color. I'm proud of the final tiger :D He's cute!

Anyway, back to what I've done for the past few weeks..

11/5: Teacher's field trip! Jang abandoned me when she found out we were going to the sea rather than going hiking... I was left to talk to the male "pragmatics" teacher in her office for the whole bus ride. Going there was fine, he just explained some stuff and pointed out locations and showed me where we were on the map.. but coming back was horrible. He wanted to discuss religion and politics. Two of the things I probably hate "discussing" the most. Real discussions are ok, but people forcing their opinions on me is not ok! My life is just going to be filled with forced opinions when it comes to religions and politics. Other than that, the 4th grade teachers saved me by accompanying me on our walk around Sangam Dong Sky Park. They are really nice :) I love their students too :p The park used to be a waste area but the government eventually cleaned the area and planted a bunch of plants there so now its a huge field high up :D The other teachers pressured me in walking on the red balls in the picture above.. it hurt like crazy but it was "good for my health." right.....

The next destination was the Sorae Port of Inchon (dunno if this is an official name). I was warned by one of the 4th grade teachers to not have any expectations and really, it's not a pretty area lol. We did get to explore a bit and did have a really good seafood dinner. We had sashimi (I don't really like Korean sashimi.. theres bones...), steamed crab, and a spicey fish soup. The steamed crab was awesome :D I didn't try their octopus sashimi though.. after it's cut up it STILL moves.. it was creepy O_O The 4th grade teacher said it sticks to your mouth while you chew it too @_@

11/8 : Anthea and I decided to go exploring in Guri for Homeplus and Lottemart. I had found them on a map online the day before but we only had time for Homeplus. And boy were we disappointed. It was a Homeplus Express. It was only a grocery store and the store was tinier than my local grocery store. After Homeplus Express we headed off to get Ashley a cake and to Gangnam for her birthday dinner at Dos Tacos. To get to Dos Tacos you go out exit 6 and walk really far down until you see Tous Les Jour. Turn left down the alley before Tous Les Jour and you'll see Dos Tacos. It's a tiny but good Mexican restaurant. I had a chimichanga as usual and as every restaurant makes their chimichangas different, this one was also different and I am unable to compare. BUT it was still yummy. After dinner, we headed off to sing (Noraebang?)! Ashley picked some really scandalous songs.. bad Ashley... it was fun though :D After singing we took some cute sticker pictures :D It was a pretty cheap night! We each chipped in about 20k~ The night ended with Ashley coming to sleep over at my place :)

11/9: Ashley and I went on another expedition to Costco and back. This time I think we bought more than when I went with Anthea. I was in a lot of pain from carrying stuff when we got back to my apartment :x We got some yummy Swiss Miss hot cocoa, Dole peaches, more bagels, ground beef, glass lock tupperware, Nature Valley granola bars, and a bunch of other stuffs. After Costco we went to find the Northface and Redface near my place and to find a place to eat. Ashley and I had some good bibimbap (sp?) for only 4000 won and she was able to try on her Influx jacket :D I'm probably going to go to that bibimbap place again since it's so cheap!!

This past Thursday my school was closed because Anthea's school was hosting important high school exams. It was kinda annoying because they forced me to use a paid vacation day and didn't allow me to just come in and sit instead. But that day Anthea and I finally went to Lottemart! It was pretty large and we only explored one of the buildings but I was still kind of disappointed. I didn't find a good towel, no filter for the faucet, and no lint catchers. Butterknives were way too expensive to buy as well >< After Lottemart, we met up with Ashley in Gangnam so she could visit the Northface over there and check for her jacket. She ended up buying a small size black influx jacket :D The guy gave her free socks too haha. We had Quiznos for dinner that night but it wasn't what I expected. The combo (6500 won) only included a soda and a sandwich. The rosemary mozarella bread was also an extra 300 won :( I was having a bit of a hiccuping problem from the soda too haha. After dinner we headed down to the Kyobo bookstore and to Hottracks to get some more pens :D I need to stop buying pens.. I left a bunch at home because I was too lazy to bring them.. now I've bought more :x

In case anyone is reading this from Guri and wants to know how to get to Gangnam-- you take bus 1115-2 or 9-3 to Gangbyeon terminal station and hop onto the subway for line 2 (green line), then you ride all the way to Gangnam. Any of the 9 buses will take you to the station too but they all take a roundabout way besides 9-3.

To get to Costco from Guri, take bus number 201, 2227, or 2228 from Doldari stop and get off at Mangu Station bus stop (you'll hear it announced). After you get off, cross over the street twice (so you make a diagonal line to the other corner). Walk further and you'll see Costco on your left. Emart is also nearby and you should be able to see it from the bus stop. After that bus stop, the bus will loop like crazy. If you miss Mangu Station, stay on it all the way until Sangbong Bus Terminal stop. It'll be one of the median bus lanes and Costco will be on your right (the bus loops in a full circle before going back to Guri). To get home, just hop onto one of those buses and it'll take you back home.

My kids needed 119 :D

2008-11-16T13:54:00.009+09:00

As Anthea says, "Ok so.. Susan has crazy 6th graders.." When we were leaving my school around 6pm some of my 6th graders were playing in the park next to my school and they spot me and start yelling numbers.. So they aren't exactly the brightest students but they are one of my favorite classes.. they yell to me "117".. and other numbers until they finally correct themselves and say "119" and then I'm like O_o?? You need the police?? That's when I spot a boy on top of the roof of one of the gazebos. Before we decide to cross the street to get closer to them, a small firetruck comes by. Apparently my landlord (who's also the school nurse) had already called for help XD. It was pretty interesting, partially because my 6th graders are again classified as crazy but also because they couldn't get the numbers right AND told the nurse and me that they were class 6-2, when I just had them on that day.. they were class 6-6. It's not a big deal, kids climb on roofs and get stuck like cats right? XD Everyday is an interesting day in elementary school.

I've been incredibly busy and unable to update :( But right now I'm yet again proofreading a paper.. but this time this paper needs to be completely rewritten. I retyped it into word because I was only given a hard copy and I've been tracking changes. It looks completely red :x The teacher wants me to use red pen to correct so I'll give her this red edited electronic copy and her hard copy back with red all over it. Wonder what she'll think? :o I did get bribed with a "sponge cake" which happened to be a crumbly cake rather than spongey but it's been a good breakfast the past couple of days. I needed a break from the paper so I decided I'd finally do a post. So what have I been up to since last post? Here's a "short" summary:

10/17 weekend: Jack came over and Jack, Anthea, Ashley, and I hung out all weekend! On that saturday Anthea, Jack, and I went to Sinchon to look for cellphones. We failed in finding a place that would give us a SK plan without a 200,000 deposit/have a Korean friend sign their name so we decided to come back after some rethinking and when Ashley would have her bank account and ID card. Since I'm stupid, I left Ashley's phone number at home. I had intended to call her that morning before we set out but it was really early and I ended up not calling her. The paper was left on my desk :( We went to Sadang hoping she'd just come anyway but after waiting about an hour we gave up haha. We did get a really good lunch in the Sadang area for pretty cheap though!

After that, we went to Insa-dong to look for I Love NY stickers for Anthea. We didn't find any, but we did get to explore the cool cultural area. We also got some free popcorn and hot cocoa and a dude insisted on putting on weird lotion on our hands.

On Sunday, we met up with Ashley and explored Myeong-dong, shopped at Migliore (got our shirts that say "This is my Saturday night shirt. I also wear it on other days when it doesn't smell" and found Mari's store), ate at Myeong-dong Gyo-Ja (yummy!! It's a popular Chinese place with only 2 or 4 different dishes), and then went to the crochet club. Jack went home on Monday after observing 2 of my classes :D

10/24 weekend: The cable guy came and after some investigating, he concluded that there is no possible way for me to get cable TV and cable internet -_-;.. Something about the box missing from the roof and something about no replacement?? Anyway, I went with Jang to look for materials for our Saturday class and then ate at Pizza Hut together. Her treat :D
That Saturday, Anthea, Ashley, Mi-Young, and I went to Namdaemun to look for some fake coats. We found a bunch of male "Black Face" jackets XD but no jackets for girls :( We did end up buying some purses though ;D We headed to Dongdaemun after that. I found a coat at BangBang for about 50k won. It's really too big though. I don't see how their "small" 90 size fits the girls here. They're skinnier than me! Oh well.

Our next destination was Sinchon. We finally got our cellphones! They're pretty :D Though after buying a cord for it and everything, there's no way I can transfer things to my computer or onto my phone :( For the cellphone, go out Exit 8 of Sinchon station and go straight. On the left there will be a KTF/SK/SHOW place where a bunch of people work. Most notable are 3 young but fun/nice guys. The cellphone cost 70,000 won with a 30,000 activation fee (spread out on our bill for the first 3 months). They gave us a charger, clear cellphone case, and a USIM card. We did have to sign up for an internet plan though. I found out later that you can cancel the internet plan at any time and they'll only charge you for the days you've had it (not the whole month)!

After cellphones, we went to fulfill our main objective of the day. Go to the cafe for Coffee Prince in Hongdae!! It was a lot of fun :D Drinks were incredibly expensive but we spent a lot of time there chatting and taking pictures :) There was even a really cute kid that liked to explain the whole menu to people. After Hongdae, I got sick and we pretty much went home..
Sunday, Anthea and I went to Kyobo for more materials for my class and Costco to get some much needed western foods and items :D It was a pain to lug it all back though.

Ok last thing in this post (I'll continue in next)--> I finally got internet at home :) No more wire rack as a desk and sitting outside on my balcony. I signed up with Hanaro Telecom (SK) b/c they offered 1 month free with the contract, no modem fee, no activation fee, free gift (still waiting for it), and it's 35k a month. I've slowly been getting back into knowing what I can do now that I have internet at home. It's really weird to not have internet for a whole month and a half. I know there was internet at school, but my computer at school is like 10 years old and everything is blocked on my school's network. Only thing I can do is chat on gchat with Ashley while being logged into gmail -_-;.. Sometimes I still walk to my balcony and open the window and try to guess if it'll rain today before I realize, oh I can check the weather online... It's weird being reconnected.

I got a cool new desk and internet

2008-10-23T16:42:00.008+09:00

It's really cool. Look at my new setup:

I even get to listen to the pitter patter sound the rain is making on the roof. My new desk is made out of wire. It also functions as my drying rack. Multipurpose, isn't that awesome?

I've got a lot to write and lots of pictures to post up about last weekend but I've been too busy to do that at school. I have to start preparing for the Saturday classes I'm teaching :[ I received my health card today as well as a break down of my pay and the deductions for this month, but that wasn't the things that I'd been really waiting for. I want my internet and cable TV!!

So the cable/internet guy was scheduled to come at 5pm on Wednesday. That fell through. He had pushed it up to 4pm (called at 2:30pm to let me know). Kinda sucked because I needed to go to the bank to set up internet banking so I had to leave school in a hurry. After getting home at 3:30 from the bank, I get a call from my coteacher informing me that the cable guy had just cancelled the appointment (it was 3:40pm by this time) because of the rain. Pissed off as I was, I decided to find my own internet. I proceeded to my table next to my kitchen b/c Ashley had said she was able to pick up internet on top of her microwave, but no luck for me.

I didn't want to give up.. so I went out onto my balcony and yay, 2 networks in range!! One unsecured!! Because Korea's slowest internet is faster than fast internet in America, even with a crappy low connection, it's still faster than back at home. I found that if I lowered my laptop any lower than the bottom of the windows, the connection would cut off. That meant either holding up high constantly or finding something tall to prop it up. I decided to use my drying rack.. With that, I had to stand. But I wanted to sit down! So I grabbed a dining room type chair and stuck it on the balcony. I now either kneel on the cushion until my knees hurt or sit on top of the backing of the chair until my butt hurts. It's all worth it though, I have internet :p

He rescheduled for today.. and he did come even though it was raining just as much as it was yesterday but after examining the lines and seeing how oddly they're set up and kinda go out the windows down to the first floor, he informed me that he'd be returning tomorrow. :( I think it's just not meant to be! I should just cancel totally and forever use my balcony as my computer room. I think it'll be a lil cold in the winter, but it'll also keep my laptop's temperature down~

That's all. I posted new pictures of my wild students in between the paragraphs because they're just too cute (even if they're wild). I wanted to smack some of my 6th graders today though. I'm glad my coteacher freely yells at them. The most I do is glare until their friends are like "Susan teacher is staring at you!!" which gets them to stop fooling around. And if they're supposed to be watching the monitors (TV died today lol) then I grab their heads and turn them in the right direction. I'll post about the fun weekend later~ Oh, lunch is still super yummy :D

A Walk Along the "Artificial Stream"

2008-10-16T11:05:00.010+09:00

On to the food and fun! So Anthea and I went into a restaurant where the menu was completely in Korean and there weren't any pictures. We had the owners pretty much translate/use hand motions to describe the dishes on the menu. We ended up ordering Samgyopsal and rice. It was sooo much food! I'm still not used to the massive amount of food that Asians eat. If I weren't walking home everyday and ate barely anything when I'm home alone in my apartment, I'd definitely be so much fatter than when I came. I have to mention again, school lunches rock ;p

Cooking for 1 is a hard task. Sometimes I undershoot and end up having to supplement my meal with snacks/yogurt.. but quite often, I cook way too much. Korean beef is extremely expensive.. I found that out the hard way when I bought a small smaaaaaaallll lump of beef for 20,000 won (~$20 US). The price was labeled as 3980 in the case but I didn't know that was by 100 grams until she weighed it and asked if that was ok. Because the other meat department people in the grocery store I went to (department store grocery store) were kind of making fun of me when I asked where the beef was -_-;.. I just wanted to get away as soon as possible and ended up taking the beef with me.

So I've been trying to make some of the dishes my mom cooks at home with the beef. I don't eat a lot so one dish takes me forever to eat.. that small lump of beef is down to 1/4th the size after 2-3 weeks. I don't have internet at home so I can't really look up receipes so I've been doing stuff by what I THINK is right. One dish = tomatoes (cherry tomatoes b/c that's all I had), garlic, soy sauce, and beef. My mom later told me that she never adds soy sauce to that.. oh well. Another dish = Beef, garlic, soy sauce, sugar, and seasame oil. I added onions, green onions, bits of carrots, some kind of stringly white mushrooms, and the dokpokgi rice cake things. It turned out um ok/looked ugly? Last one I tried was beef, garlic, soy sauce, onions, and oyster sauce. That turned out incredibly salty. I mixed up two of the recipes my mom mentioned.. you don't need soy sauce lol. I ate a ton of rice with that one XD

For veggies, I've just been frying them normally. I've noticed that the rice here is kinda hard.. and gets hard after one day in the fridge. I've been cooking 1 1/2 cup of rice with 1 3/4 cup water and have been letting it sit in the water for about 15 minutes before cooking but it's still harder than I guess the Japanese rice. I'll try 2 cups of water next time. Just for anyone who likes the tofu skin sushi thing and want to make it themselves.. One and a half cups of rice is more than enough (1 cup might even be enough). As you can see from my picture, some of my tofu things exploded b/c I put too much rice lol. There's also 14 skins in a pack so either prepare to eat a lot/microwave next day, or make them only when you have guests to eat them with. It took me 3 days to finish mine with me stuffing myself all 3 days. Anyone else have good simple recipes, please let me know!!

Aside from food, we went to Seoul last weekend! Ashley is here now so we went exploring :D Anthea came over to my place so we took the train to Yongsan together. We met up with Ashley there. It took us 30 mins to find her b/c none of us have cellphones lol. After finding her we went to Yongsan Electronics Market to shop around and mostly to survey what's there. I think we explored most of the area. I can't really tell b/c the map online didn't help too much.

After Yongsan, we headed over to Dongdaemun to meet up with Mi-Young (Semi's friend). Mi-Young is really nice and overall an awesome person. Her personality is really funny and matches with ours pretty well. We went to Doota to shop for clothes and then went to dinner. It happened to be Samgyopsal again but it was just as good :D Mi Young kept eating these really spicey peppers and she was addicted and claimed they weren't too hot. But then she dipped the pepper in the hot sauce and after biting into it she finally said oh too hot! That didn't stop her though.. few minutes later, she repeated the process. It was really funny to watch XD

After dinner, we walked along the "artificial stream" all the way to the end of the stream. It was a really nice walk. She said it was about 4 km and we walked maybe 2/3 of it. She did this all in boots. Craziness. I wish I was able to walk in heels as long as Korean girls. My feet were hurting from the little amount of time I had to walk in heels yesterday. I don't know how they do it all day long and on uneven ground.

Ashley came back with us to Guri that night and spent the night! The next day we had McD's in the morning for breakfast b/c it's right next to where I live and explored my market a little bit. I can't wait for this coming weekend. We're going to be exploring more of Seoul again and going to a crochet club. Jack might be coming up this weekend too :D Unfortunately, no Guri teachers were on the list for GEPIK orientation so we all have to stay at school and teach, but I'll just make up for all the fun this weekend :)

Open Class~

2008-10-16T10:32:00.008+09:00

I've been so busy since my last post! To start off, here are two pictures from the front door of my apartment. Today, 6th grade has midterms and I happen to only have 6 graders on Thursday so I'm finally free to post up pictures/write up entries.

One day my coteacher comes to me and says "So you said you have no friends here? There's a foreign teacher at the Guri middle school next to us." This got me excited b/c it was still only maybe the 2nd or 3rd week I was here and without internet and without any other fluent English speakers besides my coteacher, I pretty much had no one to speak in English to. I could already feel my English deteriorating like it did in Taiwan XD Anthea came over to my office after the work day ended and we talked :D I had originally thought it would be a teacher that has been here for a while but it turned out she was slightly newer than me haha. That was just as fun though b/c then we could go exploring together! My English is still deteriorating from having to use super short/easy sentences and speaking slow, but at least it's slowing down XD

Teaching has been going pretty good. I'm slowing finding ways to make my students speak and to keep up their interest in English. I dislike the book/curriculum provided so I only loosely follow it. One of my coteachers doesn't like the CD at all while the other one does every part of the CD. I'm trying to slowly do half/half so both are satisfied and I can still do whatever else I plan for the students.

I've been using a whiteboard game to supplement the "Let's Write" section and the "Let's read" or whatever. It forces them to write/read as fast as possible and forces them to help each other in their groups. If one person makes a mistake in their group before putting up all their boards and yelling finished, their group gets disqualified for that round. The first group with all boards up and correct gets a point. I've started giving the first 2 groups that get their boards up so that I can end up giving each group at least one point. The kids don't pay attention to other groups enough to know who was 2nd, so it encourages groups that otherwise wouldn't participate as much when they notice that, oh they have a point too and they could possibly win :D

We had an open class yesterday. We were kind of hoping not too many people would come so it wouldn't be so nerve racking (for my coteacher.. I'm new so they don't expect anything from me yet :p) but a ton of people came. The whole back of the classroom was super filled and the hallway was filled too with teachers looking in through the windows. It made the classroom really hot but the students for the class were awesome. My coteacher picked her favorite class but it was still iffy on whether they'd volunteer or not with so many people watching. Luckily they all responded loudly and did everything like incredibly well behaved children. Two groups ended up tying in a couple of short quick games we played so they received candy, but at the very end, my coteacher asked me to give candy to the rest of the students too since they were so good :D

The meeting was pretty long and completely in Korean (besides when I had to speak) so I don't really know what the other teachers thought. I'm planning on emailing them all and asking for feedback in English.

Besides that stuff and watching the kids while the play soccer after lunch, I'm pretty much just busy with making lesson plans. I finally received my ID card in the mail on Tuesday though. My coteacher and I will be going to the bank to open up an account at the end of the day. Hopefully.. HOPEFULLY I'll have internet and a cellphone soon!!I'll continue writing about life outside of school in my next post.

edit: Just wanted to comment on the playground. They usually have like 2 soccer games going on at once (but only 2 goals on the playground..) and then all the other students are running around on the playground as well at the same time. It's pretty interesting watching little kids run across the field fearlessly as balls are being kicked everywhere. I'd be too afraid to play on the playground :x

First week of teaching!

2008-09-30T14:22:00.014+09:00

I always run out of things to say when giving presentations. No matter how I practice it and calculate the time, I end up like 15 mins early or something!! First class I taught on Monday was a 5th grade class. I ended up ending early so the coteacher used the time to administer a chapter test for the previous chapter. My coteacher is really good. She's better than any foreign teacher they could hire (including me!!) During the class, she was constantly translating and really co-teaching rather than standing on the side. If there were any breaks in the class she'd handle it with ease with more practice and keep their attention. I wish I could do that. Anyway, first 2 days ended ok!!

Today, along with the rest of the 5th graders, I had two 4th grade classes. The co-teacher for 4th grade is the one who speaks in 90% Korean during her class. She's a really good teacher as well and really strict-- they all listen to her and she's loud. During my class, she mostly stood on the side and translated when they really seemed like they had no idea what I was saying. She also gave me pointers during class when they were busy doing a game inside the book as to how to use the CD activities. 4th grade was easier to teach even though it was sooo basic and they pretty much knew it already. I just began with introduction and getting their names/group names, taught the lesson on the board, used the CD for listening & repeating, and then played a game with them at the end. I like them :p My 5th graders are a bit harder to teach. Half know the material from cram schools while the other half doesn't. If I had to sit through a class with that material, I'd fall asleep. I need to find more interesting things to do in class.

My classroom is super nice! I don't think we have air conditioning, though there's this big unit in each classroom, I think it's a heater.. I dunno. It's cold in the morning and cool in the afternoon with a breeze but without a breeze it's still really warm. With a classroom of 40 students, the classroom gets pretty hot. I can't pull the blinds up to let the air in either because the sun is too bright and just adds to the heat inside. Anyway, my classroom doesn't really look like any other classroom in the entire school. It has 6 meeting room type tables, a computer in/on each table, a huge screen tv in the front, and a surround sound system. The curtains are even different. They spoil me too much here. My own huge office, my own nice classroom, and my huge apartment. Aside from the distance from my school and my apartment being old enough that everytime it rains the water turns brown, everything is pretty awesome :o. I think I will go broke from living in a market area though. I can't stop shopping. Maybe after I get the internet I won't go out as much. I don't even have to buy a lot of groceries.. the grocery store is like 10 ft from my building. I buy food only when I'm out, so everything is fresh!

Teaching aside, lunch is still awesome as always :D My coteacher also bought us (extra curricular + English teachers) Rapokgi and Dokpokgi. One has ramen in it and one is just plain rice cake stuff in hot stuff with veggies. Ashley's Korean Teacher had told us about it so I mentioned it to my coteacher a week earlier. She's really good at helping me enjoy life here :p It was really yummy :D I noticed people here sweeten everything rather than salting. Is it more healthy this way or just a preference?

EDIT: To post pictures.. go through Picasa program.. select the pictures you want on your drive, then click "Blog This" -- it'll still give the access denied page but it will post. :D Bad thing- only posts 4 pictures at a time I think. If you know html, you can probably just upload to picasa and then type it in yourself.

I got a present :D

2008-09-30T14:10:00.008+09:00

Hi all! It's been a while! So for some reason, the Vidalia/Tor plugin stopped working for me. I was too lazy to try other methods in connecting but it seems like I'm still not going to have internet at home until maybe next week. We went to the immigration office yesterday to apply for my ARC and my multiple reentry visa (Atlanta only gives you a single entry visa). It cost a total of 64,000 won. They'll mail the passport and stuff to my school next week. THEN I can finally open a bank account, get a cellphone, and get internet!! I'm at school at 7:30AM in the morning just to use the internet. So sad :x

Kids here have to clean up the school everyday. They rotate on who cleans when and where. Last Thursday, 4 students from grade 4 came to my room to clean it during lunch. It's awesome having them clean ;D They don't do a spotless job or anything, but it's much better than nothing! They came back after their classes ended and played in my
office for about 2 hours. Half the time was spent teaching me Korean and other half was spent just chatting/playing. The next day, one of the students comes to my office in the morning and gives me a present! It's so cute :D I forgot that one of the perks of being a teacher (especially a foreign teacher) is you get presents from students. She gave me a cute lil purse/bag thing. It's too small for pencils, too big for money, so I just kind of use it as a camera case.

Another perk of being a foreign teacher is the snacks that other teachers give you/buy for you! In general, Asia doesn't really know what it's like in America. They usually see it as more of one culture like it is here, and that you can't get the food you eat here in America. Soo, everytime I'm out with my coteacher on some errand and she sees some snack (manjuu yesterday) she buys it for me ;D They also give me a bunch of snacks at school.

Most of the people here are really nice to me. My coteacher says that people at our school at all nice, but beware of people outside of school. She fears for my safety :D Most of the people outside of school including vendors have also been nice but I have met quite a few clothing vendors that are just plain rude. I can't understand them, they can't understand me, but when we're writing down numbers and pointing (basic basic stuff) and then they turn to the nearest Korean and laugh at you, that's not very nice. It's not going to get me to buy anything ever from them. And no, I'm not mistaking their laughter, it was like pretty mean make fun of the foreigner laughter-- even the other customer looked really uncomfortable that the vendor was laughing at me.

Ah.. yea so that aside, I tried to go clothing shopping this past week. Clothes here are really expensive! If you can, don't do like I did and bring a bunch of bath supplies (unless it's something of quality that would be expensive here.. they have Aveeno here but it's very expensive), instead, bring enough teacher/plain clothes. Every nicer looking thing is either super expensive (minimum 40,000 won) or too fancy with frills and whatever. The cheapest shirt I've found so far was 3900 won and that's plain white, without any shape. I bought a long sleeved one for 4900 b/c I thought, they wouldn't sell things that looked bad right? no, it really did look bad.

This Sunday I went to Seoul to visit Tanner's friend Joonho and his family. Him, his wife, his daughter, and his son pretty much spent all afternoon with me. Sunday was his daughter's birthday (age 8) so there was a birthday party for her for lunch. Food was great :D Joonho's wife is a good cook! His daughter, Emily, had pretty good English since she had her early years in the states. His son (5 years old?) was super cute! They're both really good behaved children. Anyway, in the afternoon, they drove me around Seoul and took me to Myeong-dong. We shopped around there for a bit. It's like shoppers heaven lol. Anyone who wants to shop in Seoul should definitely go there! We also went to Migliore department store. It totally was nothing like a regular department store. The inside is made of tons of small clothing shops like at a market. Clothes were fairly cheap. I got a nice white wrinkle free blouse for 23,000 won. Ashley, we're going back when you get here :p

Sunday was also the first day I went on the subway. The subway is actually fairly easy to get around. There's English on all the signs and they announce each stop in English after they say it in Korean. My landlord had given me a U-pass card to ride the bus but I thought she had said it was just for busses. I found out that it worked for trains too after I bought a T-money card at the subway station lol. So now I've got 2 cards that do the same thing- work for busses and trains. I don't know how much the U-pass costs to begin with, but the T-money card cost 3000 won. The card comes with a really handy subway map and a map of Seoul. It also comes with a coupon book of I guess famous attractions/stores in Seoul that you can use the coupons at. Some of the coupons are specially labeled "foreigners only" lol.

Aside from clothes shopping, I explored my area a bit more and bought a whole lot of other stuff. I've spent maybe 400-500$ in household items, food, transportation, stickers for students and other stuff for school, clothes, and other random stuff. It really does add up!! I brought $1000 US with me to start with and I think it's a pretty good amount because unless your coteacher and school is crazy speedy in getting you your health checkup and then ARC, you're not going to have access to the 300,000 won settlement allowance. I think my first water bill is also going to be sky rocket high because they didn't clean the apartment until after I moved in.. as in all the water they used while scrubbing, washing, wiping, and all the cleaning I did on my own is all going to be on my bill :x

Some key things that you should buy when you get here: Kitchen faucet filter head, dish scrubbers and soap, dish tray, drain unclogger, tissues, TP, paper towels, washing machine lint catchers (super useful.. I took the ones on the washing machine off b/c they were old and dirty), cleaning spray, vacuum cleaner (my apt had one..), rice cooker, kitchen towels, indoor slippers, bathroom mat, bathroom shoes, bedsheets+blanket+pillow, desk lamp, extension cords/extra adapters, toothbrush and other stuff holders, swiffer type mop, and clothes hangers. There's a bunch of other stuff but I'll list them in a huge list with prices later.

They clamped me down!!

2008-09-24T08:53:00.009+09:00

Ok so they didn't really clamp me down.. but they stuck clamps on my wrists and ankles and a bunch of suctions on my chest during the health checkup. After that they measured height, weight, bust size, vision, hearing, blood pressure, andddd blood! So Ashley, they do draw a tube of your blood lol. Start preparing for that now.. like maybe get loud rock music on your ipod or something. If you need to and you go when I don't have school (weekend or something?) I'll volunteer pinching your other arm over and over or slapping you somewhere to distract you :D I have to go back on Thursday to pick up my results.. I wasn't supposed to eat anything for breakfast and lunch but in the 5th grade teacher break room there were these rice fluffs with sweet stuff so my coteacher let me eat one :p She took pity on me... After the check up she also bought me ice cream lol.

Oh goodness, today I got to observe the rest of the 5th graders and then a class of 4th graders. The last 5th grade class was pretty unresponsive and only answered if prompted. There was one kid that was chewing gum and he was supposedly found smoking one day. As for the 4th graders.. they're wild lol. The teacher for the 4th grade classes is really good at controlling them and getting them to respond but she speaks mostly in Korean with them. She's going to be doing a whole lot of translating when I teach :x I'm a little scared of the 6th graders.. my coteacher said they're really bad..... oh well, guess I'll see tomorrow!

My students refuse to give up on figuring out how to sign me up for cyworld.. since I teach 4th graders all day on Wednesdays, I take my breaks in my office. They come in every break lol. Oh well, I don't have much else to do anyway. Since they promised to come back even during lunch I sped ate my lunch @_@ It was sooo good~ I wish school lunches were like this back at home. Zha Jiang Mian, kimchi, pickled radishes, and the tofu skin/wrap type thing with rice stuffed inside plus apple juice. Ok that's weird, instead of students, theres a teacher in my room now talking on her cell phone lol. My office is multipurpose....

Yesterday after the testing, I went ahead and bought my rice cooker!! My coteacher said 52000 won for a small rice cooker was a good price (the one I saw at the LG electronics store) so I went ahead and bought it. And guess what?? The cool dude gave it to me for 50,000 without asking! I was contemplating taking out my useful phrase book to ask for a lower price but I was like screw it. My rice cooker is so cool. You can see the ugly smelly old rice cooker behind the beautiful redness infront.

Anyway, after bringing that home, I went out to get a much

needed haircut!! My bangs were yet again an inch or 2 below my chin. I went to Park Seung Chol Hair Studio (http://www.pschair.co.kr). My stylist's name was Soon Mi Yang. If you're in the Guri area and need a good haircut, then go there. It's definitely not cheap there (cheaper than back home) but my stylist could speak English and did a really good job. She cut my hair, super layered it, washed it, blew dry, cut bangs, did more trimming, blew away bits of hair, and then used a straightener to straighten it. All for just 20,000 won :D Btw my hair no longer looks like that in the picture. Without it straightened, it's a puffy mess from the humidity. She also mentioned a magic perm but that would cost 130,000 won, while in Taiwan it cost me 2000 NT (divide by 32 for US conversion). In Taiwan, he charged me less than normal I believe but still.. that's a big difference. I think I'm just going to look for a straightener here. I should've brought mine from back home but it would probably have made me go over weight limit lol. I did get a large can of Mise en something hairspray for 4000 won from a nearby beauty shop though. Hopefully that'll help some. Since I didn't get to eat all day, I decided to treat myself to a nice dinner for once :D I kept passing by a place called Teriyaki really close to my apartment on the main street that looked good and cheap. I was able to get 10 pc sushi + Maki + Udong + side dishes all for 8000 won. The sushi was a little strange.. the rice tasted kinda powdery? Maybe they add something different to it in Korea. But it was filling and good nonetheless!!

My last task ended with buying rice. Ok I thought that since rice is from Asia (the kind I eat anyhow) it would be cheaper here. No, definitely not. So I bought a 10kg bag for 29,000 won yesterday. The large 20kg bag was 43,000 but how does anyone buy that without a car or something to carry it in?? 10kg bag was already making me sweat before I reached the stairs to my 5th floor apartment. (a side note: a police siren just went off nearby.. students in the hallway are now mimicking the sound.. like my dog does). Anyway, hopefully that bag is going to last me all year. If not, I'll go back to buying ramen or eating frozen dumplings :p

Tomorrow is a full day with 6th graders. I wonder if they really are bad.. I can be mean if I need to, but I'd rather not.

Battle with Appliances

2008-09-22T13:55:00.009+09:00

I like my new notebook. It has a cool saying :p

So this weekend was pretty much a battle with my appliances and I guess the rest of my apartment. After finally getting a bus (waited 1 hour, bus 9 guy said he doesn't go where I need to-- he lied. I saw plenty of bus 9's go the same route as my bus 6-3) to go home, I started cleaning my refrigerator. I was only able to clean out the bottom half as it was soooooo dirty!! I left the freezer and outside of the fridge for Saturday. Posted pictures are before and after shots of my nasty but now clean fridge!! One of the things that my apartment came with that I'm very very happy it did is my cool vacuum cleaner! He's my new Korean best friend :p I also cleaned up and bought a billion things for my sink area including that cool bunny friend and towel hanger :D My towel hanger involved melting the wax on the back side and then nailing him in. I hope the landlord doesn't mind holes in their cabinets lol. I'll make a list of prices of everything I bought once I have internet. I keep forgetting to bring my log book to school with me. BTW, it's a very good idea to keep a logbook in Asia b/c unless you have a credit card here, you'll mostly be using cash. This is the only way to keep yourself in check with how much you're spending. It's also good as a small journal in case you want to see what you did on what day :D

Other appliances/stuff I battled this weekend include microwave (just as nasty as fridge), toaster, toilet, bathroom drain, cabinets and rice cooker. The rice cooker won :( I quit cleaning it after I unscrewed it in many places, cleaned whatever I could see, and it still smelled. So I'm going to go buy a new one today!

This blog is taking forever to write.. I keep having a billion students come into my office lol. First group mostly played amongst themselves. 2nd group played scrabble by themselves and helped me figure out where the keys to the cabinets were.. but now they're attempting to get me signed up on cyworld @_@;..

Back to writing!! I also had the time to explore the market area that I live in. I live down the street that has the green arch. I went up and down the main street away from the GS Square (GS Square is right next to the subway), and all around the outdoor market. I bought craploads of stuff again :x Approximately spent $150 so far lol. I did get a free "service" with the nail polish remover I bought though. I was asking the lady where to buy the cotton wipes to use with the nail polish and after discussing with hand motions she pulled it out and said "free service." :D

Another thing that I really like about my school is that lunch is provided and it's really good!! It was a self serve type of thing so I could have gotten more but that was already too much for me. I also found that the kids play in school whenever they have a break. The 10 mins between classes is enough time for them to run to the playground and play soccer and then come back. It's an awesome way for them to use up their energy. My coteacher said that they get 2 hours of PE, but it's not enough so they play in between. My first day at school observing classes was a lot of fun :D I noticed something interesting though.. you know how my sandals have a heel? My coteacher's sandals have an even bigger heel lol. I have to go introduce myself to the rest of the teachers now :x This morning I had to introduce myself to the students through their morning TV broadcast (blahblahblah~ Gamsahamnida).. And then to the teachers at the meeting (blahblahblah~ Jal bu tak Deu rim nida).

And to end this post.. here is my class schedule:1st period: 9:00-9:40, 2nd period: 9:50-10:30AM, 3rd period: 10:40-11:20AM, 4th period: 11:30AM-12:10PM, 5th period: 1:00-1:40PM, 6th period: 1:50-2:30PM. Lunch is from 12:10PM to 1:00PM.

I got lost on the bus lol

2008-09-19T09:55:00.003+09:00

Today.... I spent an hour on the bus. Normally a bus ride of 5 mins turned into a bus ride of 1 hour.. Why, you ask? Well... I believe I missed the stop the first time around so I had to sit on for a whole another loop! I'm not even sure if the bus driver was supposed to stop where he did for me but he took me straight to the school when I noticed I was far far away haha. I really like the bus drivers here! I'm forever going to tell the bus driver my stop from now on so they point it out for me each time. Maybe at some point I'll figure out where I am and figure out how to get the bus to stop >_>;.. I saw a buzzing thing on the ceiling but no where else.. are we supposed to press that?? What about the short people? :x Anyway, my day started out with an adventure, at least I now know where the LotteMart is XD

Back to continuing yesterday's post!

edited out apartment stuff.. found a picture ;D

Yesterday, the Vice Principal came up to my office to visit and greet me :D I really like how everyone puts the effort to try to communicate even with broken English and hand motions. He kept having to leave the room to maybe look up sentences he wanted to say or ask someone how to say it. It was really cute haha. I learned that everytime I describe the Principal as nice, they laugh (does that mean he's really scary behind his nice grandpa look??). I also learned that the Vice Principal's son is in I think either Middle School or High School studying sciences. He wants to be in a Chemistry field later on in life. So, the VP respects me (as a scientist??) and thinks it's nice to have females in the sciences field too. Apparently there aren't that many here. After about an hour of discussing/him going in an out, he informed me that we'll be having lunch in the meeting room. They ordered pimbimbap (sp?) delivered with nice bowls and trays of appetizers. I really like how the delivery orders here aren't all paper and plastic.

"Nice Guy" - termed such because on the first day I went to school, they told me that if I needed any supplies to see him and he'd help me set up the internet.. so he was a "nice guy" and is now always referred to as "Nice Guy" instead of his name, and the manager who carried the heavy luggage up took me to GS Square to buy stuff after school around 3:30pm. It was really funny when they debated on how to tell me the 300,000 won was going to be deposited straight to my bank account b/c they couldn't figure out if I had any money at all on me lol. Eventually they pointed at the line in the contract (Umm they don't even know what "GEPIK" is..) and then drew this schematic lol. The manager really loves to write and scribble constantly. On the housing contract (the 2nd apartment we looked at.. he scribbled ALL over it even
though we didn't get it in the end). I also busted out my ds for the touch dictionary program I had on there to act as a translator at some points. Anyway, after we get there, we stop at the grocery floor. I ask if we can get Shampoo and some bathroom supplies and so we do! Goodness their Pantene big bottles are freaking $9!!! I ended up buying some Korean brand that had 2 big shampoo bottles and 1 big conditioner bottle for $12. The store helper lady gave us a little extra 'service' and gave me a free small bottle of shampoo haha. Afterwards she helped me find everything else I needed. 24 rolls of toilet paper = $15 (I'm so going to go broke from just TP), All purpose cleaning spray = $7?, Soap tray = $2?, Bath towel = $2, Detergent = $7, umm either I'm forgetting something or something was more expensive but the total came up to be $46. I'm very used to getting CVS deals where everything comes out to be close to free so this was a major shock for me lol. I see why they give us the $300 settlement allowance!!

When we finally got up to the floor with the household goods (bed sheets etc) they stopped and tried to decide how to ask me about money again. I already told them I exchanged a lot at the airport but I guess they didn't understand last time lol. So they ended up calling my coteacher to have her translate and after translating they still decided that the department store was too expensive and I probably don't want super high quality stuff (GS Square is like a SOGO or Shinkong Mitsukoshii) and took me back to my apartment to drop off my stuff. When we got back there was some notice on my door that ended up being just a notice that the gas people were going to come to check for leaks since the gas repair dude came in the morning. I had been taking icy cold showers for 2 days lol. It's fixed now so it's all good.

The manager dude left after checking for hot water and me and nice guy went to the market in my area to do economical shopping! Ah, I love markets! There we got a "bed cloth"-- something like a thin blanket to place on the bed instead of sheets, and a pillow. Nice guy helped me haggle a dollar off XD We also got cheap shower and indoor shoes and got me some groceries :D Nice guy was amazed my frozen dumplings I picked would be enough for dinner :o After grocery shopping, we stopped at the cheap Sheng Li type of shop (many things for $1 or something cheap) and picked up utensils and shower hanger/hooks and a toothbrush holder. It's really inconvenient not having a sink in the bathroom. I have to hang everything everywhere! Oh well.. one less thing to clean. Nice guy was very nice.. he patiently waited for me to choose everything and made sure I bought all I wanted and carried ALL of the bags. I feel bad that the guys keep insisting on carrying everything. (picture = first home cooked meal XD.. I forgot that I hate the juice in Asia too.....)

Anyways, since this is getting long.. to summarize the rest really quickly.. I've been spending the rest of my time cleaning my office and apartment and making things comfortable for me :) I'm really liking it here! I didn't really like the apartment at first (too big.. somewhat dirty) but I really love the location and after clean up it's awesome :D I still need to buy some things but with that dollar store near me, I'm happy to go shopping!! (Pictures are of the inside sandals they gave me to wear at school. There is a heal b/c the students are too tall lol)

I'M HERE

2008-09-18T12:02:00.004+09:00

View out my office window :)

Hi everyone!! I'm finally here :) So to give a detailed account of my flight here and what I've been doing for the past few days!!

I took a flight on Korean Air from ATL -> Seoul ICN airport. The flight was about 15 hours and was pretty good! I've been a little stressed recently and when I'm stressed multiple things happen including loss of appetite XD Not that I don't get hungry at all, just I don't get hungry often and can't eat much. So I finished lunch for the sake of finishing it but didn't finish dinner. I noticed that Koreans eat something like pickles too.. I dislike them :[ there were quite a few in my meal lol.. The lunch overall was good but the dinner was a choice between Salmon pasta and Chicken pasta. I went for the Chicken pasta but just like everywhere else in Asia, pasta sucks and it ain't pasta! I got maybe 3 hours of sleep before the flight.. and 3 hours of sleep during the flight. I don't like missing the food even if I'm full so I like staying up :p I ended up watching 4 movies - Sex in the City, 10 Items or Less, My Mighty Princess (funny Korean movie!), umm there's another one but I can't remember what it was that I watched....

After arriving at the airport it took about an hour and a half to get through immigration, get baggage, and exchange money. Ashley-- make sure you exchange money at the Korean bank all the way at the end (near baggage claim 1) right before you exit the doors to the general public area. There Mr. Kim picked me up (they put up signs in 2 places in case you don't see one of them :p). He only works at the airport so him and his coworker took me to the bus I needed. I got on the Jamsil bus heading for Sheraton Hotel. His coworker was cool-- his English was better AND he was fluent in Chinese!! Anyway, I hopped on the bus and when it got to Sheraton, the
bus driver kindly notified me :) An English teacher from my school and the school manager were there waiting to pick me up :D Teacher Jang (the English teacher) is super nice and very fluent in English. It's like that type that sounds as if she came to America for exchange at some point-- less of an accent. The school manager's English isn't as good but is still ok with hand motions XD He drove us to my apartment afterwards and carried my heavy 50 lb bags up 5 flights of stairs to my apartment!! Crazy man..

My apartment is absolutely gigantic. After the first night, I asked them whether they could find something smaller closer to the school but after they cleaned out the previous guy's belongings and I cleaned up the place after they left, it seems alright! It's located in the Guri market area right by the metro so it's a very convenient location. The school is about a 5 min bus ride from there. I have a large living room, 2 bedrooms, and 1 bedroom/closet. It also has a bathroom (no sink??), kitchen, and balcony/laundry area. They spent a good portion of yesterday cleaning it out.. today we're going to go buy the things I still need.. like sheets that fit the bed, a pillow, cleaning stuff, etc.

Yesterday I also got to meet the principal and a few other teachers. We went out to eat lunch with the principal and the teacher manager. The restaurant was a really nice Korean restaurant situated on a hill. Omg the appetizers were enough to fill me!! The appetizers filled the entire table.. after giving us maybe 10 mins to eat that, they came out with another table full of food >< I'll just be observing them teach all next week. Apparently I have 700 students.. They have 1500 students here and I'll be teaching grades 4-6. Craziness!! Ok I need to go buy stuff, I'll post the rest tomorrow!

ALMOST there

2008-09-12T05:56:00.000+09:00

Ok so my blog lies, I'm not there just yet. I just wanted to make it now. I got my letter of appointment and contracts back in the mail yesterday! So today, I spent a while going to the consulate in Atlanta to apply for the visa and to Hsu's to eat lunch (and get a stamp for free parking.. it says free parking 11:30AM-2:30PM if you eat at Hsu's but I got there at 11AM.. nice parking deck guy still let me go for free ;D). I'll be heading back there tomorrow to pick up my visa app!

After that, I went over to get some errands done. Errands being shopping!! I went to AE to exchange some pants but the short sizes were way too short so my mom is just going to alter my regular one for me and I went to Victoria's Secret to use one of my coupons. Buy any beauty item, get a "Berry Kiss" line beauty item for free! After that, I headed over to Kohl's to use my $5 coupon to $5 socks lol. Completely free for me :D I forgot to swing by ULTA to get another free gift but oh well, I have enough lip gloss.. like 5 different kinds and a few mini ones. I'm going overboard with them! I just wanted the Mini Buxom (sp?) from BareMinerals because theirs is tingly hehe.

Now it's time to pack! I'm going to be booking a spot for the plane that leaves on Monday so I can get there on Tuesday the 16th. Wait for me Korea, I'm almost there!!