Weekend in Korea

So I've been here for about a month now. I still have no internet or phone in my apartment, it keeps getting pushed back. So Thursday I blew up at school to the head teacher about it (it's her job to get these things taken care of). So that day, instead of the usual "tomorrow, tomorrow..." we went right then and there to the bank and opened my account and then we went to SK and got me a cell phone. The internet and phone were supposed to both be hooked up Saturday. Only the internet was hooked up and then it didn't work after the technician left. So I was pissed. I complained as soon as I got to school this morning and a technician is supposed to be coming to fix it for me at 7PM tonight. We'll see.

We all went to see a soccer game in Incheon. It was a crappy game, Incheon plays like a bunch of JV boys. We had a really great time though, we didn't pay much attention to the game, us girls just chatted most of the time..go figure.

Also - I am able to call internationally from my cell phone now and will soon be able to from my home phone -so if you get some weird looking number calling you - effing answer it - it's probably your far-away-land friend.

Love everyone! -2-

Homefront News

Do you guys remember when I had to go to Binghamton the weekend before I left for Korea, to take those two tests for my certification? Well, I got my scores back today and I passed with flying colors - no worries. I always smoke tests like this but I always stress until I get the results back anyway. So yeah, that makes me happy. AND!!! here's the big news - I'm going to be an aunt again!!!!!! Tara and Matt are preggers! It kind of sucks because I won't be there until the peanut is two months old. That's all for now. -2-

The Little Mermaid and other Korean Fun Times

Today has been an interesting adventure in Korean culture. :-)
First off, we loaded up and took all of our Pre-K/Kindergarten classes to see a theatrical production of "The Little Mermaid". The only parts even remotely in line with the Disney vision of this were the Flounder and Sebastian props. It was terrible. Ursala was an ugly old man, Prince Eric was an ugly girl. Ariel and the rest of the gang - for the most part were just puppets - King Triton lost his crown, it was a total slaughter. The kids enjoyed it; that's all that matters - lol.
Then, we were sitting around the office before classes, as usual. Lea and Ellie, two of the other teachers start talking about Lea's martial arts classes and Ellie says that when she first met me she thought that I might like being involved in something like that. I was like "why did you think that when you first saw me?" Well she skirts it for a minute then I eventually get out of her that she thinks I have an "athletic build" - which I'm pretty sure translates from Korean English to English as "dykey" lol. She's funny. But regardless, I am considering taking the classes with Lea because I can feel myself getting fatter by the day and it grosses me out.
After school I went to the grocery store to pick some stuff up. I walk past this older Korean woman and after I pass her she starts chasing after me and bends down and starts screaming in Korean and pointing at my shoe because it's untied. I usually brush people off when they tell me my shoe is untied, because well I just don't give a f*ck, but this lady was INTENSE - hahaha - so I bent down right there in produce and tied my shoe and then walked away with a smile.
Tonight I am going with the other teachers to one of their friends child's birthday party. It's a one year old birthday party, but I guess it's a big deal in Korea. Like they rent reception halls and DJ's and go ALL out.

Love Y'all -2-

So I've been here for going on three weeks. I gotta say - I love it here. No question Korea is way me. I'm so glad that I decided to go through with this. This decision is the best possible direction I could have gone with my life at this point in time. I've never felt more at peace, I've never felt more complete. Don't get me wrong, I miss everyone back home immensely. Almost three weeks and I haven't been kidnapped for sale in the Korean sex trade, I haven't found myself saying "oh man living in another country really makes me understand how great america is and what a great country we live in" - This is so far from anything I feel about this experience. American's who say shit like that are f*cking ignorant @$$holes. America hasn't been a great place to live in a VERY long time, and it doesn't have a whole lot to make me proud of it. I feel more free in Korea than I ever did in America. I feel like I'm allowed to actually exercise and own my natural rights - I feel like the government isn't restricting me in every aspect. Living in Korea has made me realize how much undu stress is put upon the American citizen, simply by being american. If you're reading this and your a little flag waving patriot and I just offended you - stop being pissed at me and start being pissed at your government.

Okay I'm done ranting. haha.

On to coffee!! So the coffee selection here is pathetic. Very dissappointing. All they have everywhere are these little individual packets of instant, which if i doubled up on probably would be a little stronger. However, none of these packets are just straight up coffee. First of all they're all just really weak. Second, they ALL have some amount of sugar or cream in them. I am so deprived and sad about this situation. I haven't found a starbucks yet. I know they're around, just haven't come across one yet. On a more positive note, there is a coffee shop in Seoul that serves a rare coffee that is a delicacy. The beans come from Indonesia and a cup runs anywhere from 33$-100$. This place sells it for 42$. The weird part (yes, weird) is that the beans are first eaten by these cats and then the cats deficate them and the harvesters collect the cat poo and clean the beans off. The enzymes in the cats digestive tract somehow enrich the flavor of this coffee. After the beans are clean they are lightly roasted to seal in the flavors. I'm definitely going to try it.
Love Everyone. -2-

I've been busy the past couple of days. Yesterday Matt, Lea, and I went to E-mart (korea's version of Wally World). It was great, I picked up a lot of the essentials I'd been going without (peanut butter, speakers, a towel - i had been using a shirt to dry myself with). E-mart is a multi-level shopping facility, it has escalators to transport you and your cart to the next level. You might have thought that wal-mart had an abundance of overly helpful associates. No. There is some one in -i swear to god- every aisle waiting to assist you with whatever you might need. Well after our adventures in E-mart we made our way to Mcdonald's and then a movie. We saw Public Enemies (Johnny Depp), it was pretty good. I think we were probably the only people in the movie who understood the dialog without the subtitles. It was a good time for sure.

Jo's back home, which is great! I'm pumped to talk to her, I've been missing her hxc. I downloaded Skype today so we can voice chat. If you're reading this and you have the ability to, I would encourage you to download it so I can talk to you for free too!

School today was pretty fantastic, a lot more relaxed than what it's been. Lunch was questionable, as usual. So Lea and I ran down to the chicken stick guy - he's nice and the food's cheap and as close to 'normal' as it gets. He makes some bangin frenchh fries.

I'm out. Goodnight America. Love Everyone. -2-

i miss my car/driving

i miss going for long drive by myself. hxc.
this is our song. i miss her. even if she is a piece of crap.

Tonight I feel ambitious and so does my foot as it sinks on the pedal
I press it to the floor
I dont need a girl dont need a friend cause my friend lonesomes
Unconditional
Were flying forever bored
And for a moment I love everything
That I see and think and feel
I love my broken side view mirror
Cause its so perfect
Im so perfect youre so perfect youre not here
I hear the change in gear

My pile shakes as I hit eighty on the open road
This is an open road song

The night is beckoning although I have nowhere to go but home
Feels good to be alone
With every turn comes a new frame of mind if I could frame my mind
Where would it hang

I crack a window and feel the cool air cleanse my every pore
As I pour my poor heart out
To a radio song thats patient and willing to listen
My volume drowns it out

But thats ok cause I sound better then him anyway any day
Yeah my voice is sweet as salt
I search for comfort and Ive found it where Ive found it many times before
Times before can be forgotten

Dippin' Dots!

I went to buy groceries last night after work and i took my time this time and spent a little more time looking around. I found a cooler full of dippin' dots!!! I'm so pumped! They're like 1000 won a piece and they come with their own convenient collapsible spoon! I'm enjoying a cotton candy flavored one at the moment :-)
Let's talk about brand loyalty. Cigarettes. Marb's are the only brand over here that any of you would probably recognize; and the only options are the basics (reds, menthol, lights). Well, as I was out and about on my evening constitution through wonderful Incheon, I came across one of the most ridiculous things I've ever seen, and I almost invested. One of the street vendors was selling socks. One of the sets he had was literally black with a giant pack of marbs pictured on the top and bottom of the sock. And it's not even like you would be just buying a pair of these socks; they came in like a five pack. (you could probably buy an actual pack of smokes instead of 10 socks that look like packs of smokes).
One of my students had a birthday party yesterday. It was almost everythign you'd expect of a kindergarten classroom birthday party. With the exception of.....When he was getting his picture taken he got to choose any two girls in the class to be kissing him on his cheeks. They didn't get a choice, but they happily obliged. It was really bizzare to me. Maybe I'm just jealous because I've never had two girls kissing me on my birthday. Whatever.
Love Everyone. -2-

Yesterday at school during the middle of the afternoon the director bought spicy glazed chicken for all the teachers to celebrate the end of the hot season. I kind of compared it to like a labor day type celebration; excluding the fact that we got no time off. I'm glad it's Friday, it's been a long week. Last night after school Freddie, Matt, and I went to another little restaurant on the main drag. It was by far the best restaurant experience I've had since I've been here. Everything was amazingly delicious. We closed the night out by playing some old school sega genesis games at Freddie's place. It was fantastic. I'm excited to be done with Adam's classes and have my own classes. Love Everyone. -2-

Mcdonald's Delivers.

That's right. Mickey D's. Delivered. Probably the best thing Korea's got going. It was rainy and crappy out today so we ordered lunch in, it was good to have actual American food. I went to the store today and picked up some soda, a couple cans of mountain dew, a cherry coke and a orange fanta. The mountain dew cans say "Original, American Taste" on them. Good to know they use the same recipe. Mountain dew is like the only beverage I've found that's available from the pepsi line - so far. I haven't really stepped out of my immediate neighborhood yet. I live in the city of Incheon, which is the fourth largest city in S. Korea. At dinner tonight another teacher told me that it takes like an hour to get from one side to the other by bus. That just blows my mind. After school we all met up and went to this little resturant near the school. We ordered some pretty bangin fried chicken and this battered grass pancake thing (yes just imagine lawn clippings battered and pressed into huge pancake - it was delicious; reminded me of green bean casserole, minus the french fried onions).

And facebook definitely just distracted me for like 15 minutes - and it wasn't even anything relevant. My attention span is just completely shot, that's all. Well, I'm out for now. Love everyone. -2-

Thunder storms

There's currently a thunder storm occurring outside. I keep watching it out my huge window. It's very soothing, in a universal kind of way. There was a lot of internal turmoil today about a variety of things; mostly general frustration in wanting to be home, in my comfort zone. I'm like a plant that has been uprooted, from a long term home, with deep deep roots. Transplanted in completely foreign soil, grasping for stability and trying desperately to adapt. That's what today was like. I came home from school and rearranged my apartment and that helped immensely. I've never really been one for the conventional use of space. I moved my mattress downstairs into my living room (thus solving the muggy sleeping conditions/uncomfy living room situation), and moved my TV etc to underneath the stairs. I have quite the nice little setup now that works pretty well for me. I don't think it's what one would consider typical feng shui, but it makes me feel zen. That's all that matters. I'm sleepy. Love everyone. -2-

Video of my apartment (need quicktime)

Yeah so that's my apartment. This weekend was pretty boring. I mostly just stayed in and watched family guy, played video games, and did my lesson planning. I went over to Freddie's yesterday for a little while and watched the boys play FIFA 2009 and got schooled on the Xbox 360. This morning I went for a hike for about 2 hours in the hills behind my apartment complex. I found this little Buddhist mini meditation hut thing that overlooks the entire city, but it's secluded in the woods. I miss my New York hikes where I typically find refreshing waterfalls to swim in. Oh well. It was like 7am when I was out there but I actually saw quite a few people on the trail. Even thought it was early, it was still freaking hot, I was practically drenched in my own sweat by the time I got back. Ew. Love Everyone -2-

just stumbled upon this link and liked it... http://daniel.fliggo.com/video/6YBbsBAY/

Korea's hot as a bitch. Like damn. My apartment has a loft for my bedroom and it's excessively stuffy up there; I'm considering sleeping downstairs until it cools off a little. Today was my first day teaching completely independently. I have Adam's classes for two weeks while he's on vacation. Things mostly went well today. We took the pre-k kids on a field trip to this place that is like just a huge room full of stations where you can build whatever you want with lego's, k-nex, magnetix; pretty much every erector type toy you can imagine - except lincoln logs. They had demos set up there of like the K-nex rollercoaster and the lego batmobile etc. I had a damn good time, as you can imagine. The kids did too lol. I'm on a break right now, I have one more class to teach, then I get to leave early for the weekend. Score! I don't have any plans for this weekend so far, but that's okay, if you're reading this you probably know me well enough to know that I'm a moment by moment type, so that works for me.

When I was in the US (Kara I think you were with me) I was looking at electricity converters at Wal-Mart and they were like 14-30$. Rip-Off. I bought like two of them last night for the equivalent of $1.00. Everything is cheaper than you could imagine here. dsawertqer <- that was a twitch, it's AC'ed in our office - so naturally I'm cold and I slammed my keyboard. lol. I'm off for now, hope to talk to some of you soon.

Note of interest for Fire Peoples - The hotel I was staying in had a SCBA and PPE (the shiny aluminum kind) on every floor. And I haven't seen a fire hydrant here yet.

Love Everyone -2-

Shadow Teaching

I shadowed Adam today. I will be teaching all of his classes for the next two weeks, he's going on vaca to England. His classes are great the teaching seems to be right along my line of experience and the kids are awesome, like ideal kids. I'm pumped to say the least. One of our classes today consisted of going up to the roof where there were three pools setup. The kids swam and we all battled with water guns, even the director got in on it. It was great. I'm really pleased with how everything went today, but I'm really exhausted. It's taking me a lot of time to adjust to the time thing. The Director and Adam took me to my apartment after school tonight, so I'm all moved in and whatnot. After I got everything put away, Leah, another teacher, and I went to the market to get some groceries and some general things. Notes on Korea: They don't say anything when someone sneezes; no bless you, no ghadzunheit, nothing. Also, it's hotter than hell here, like literally, and it's not even the heat it's the humidty type situation. I'm headed to bed. I want to be well rested for my first official day of teaching. Love Everyone. -2-

The First Day

This is my second time writing this blog, the computer in my hotel room is a p.o.s. I went to the hospital this morning with my director to have my health screening completed. I peed in a cup, they took my blood, measured me and my BP, and took a chest xray to check for TB. I have a little cough from smoking, which is barely noticeable, (many of you know how extreme my coughing fits can be) this worried my director so he took me to the doctor today. The doctor gave me some meds to take for a couple days and said I have bronchitis...there's a shocker. He also gave me some liny little like half inch by half inch transdermal patches. I don't know what exactly they're for, but i'm using them. They go on the middle of my back. Today I experimented with the toilet buttons. You can choose hot or cold water to rinse your bum hole with. Then there's another button that blow dries the poo hole for you. Amazing! -lol- It doesn't take much - I know. The director and I then met up with his wife, Christina, and their two children for lunch at a small Korean Porridge resturant. Then I came back to the hotel and slept for a good portion of the afternoon - it was hot as hell. This evening Adam (a teacher from my school who had come with the director to pick me up from the airport last night) and some other teachers took me out to a Japanese resturant. It was fabulous. haha It was expected for you to be barefoot and sit Indian style. I wrecked shop with those chopstick skills. You know. We walked to an american style bar and had a couple drinks and listened to some good american music on the jukebox. There are q-tips in Korea, btw. Thank Goodness. I'm headed to bed now, I am being picked up for school at 9am. Love everyone! -2-

I got my head checked by a jumbo jet

Kara and Al dropped me off at the Greater Buffalo Int'l Airport monday morning. I've been crying my eyes out for the past two days uncontrollably. Truthfully it has been more like a week off and on. It scares me to be in such a completely, for lack of better word, foreign place, and to be completely surrounded by total strangers, the closest familiarty being many thousands of miles away. I'm not going to lie, there were several points during the flight that I just broke down and wished the plane was going the other way. I would see people getting off my flights and meeting their friends and family, and i just thought about exactly how much I have at home. The flight was mad long, 24 hours, I slept for probably 5 hours during the detroit to tokyo leg of the trip. They fed me like 5 meals on the flight, I literally couldn't eat it all, I didn't have much of an appetite anyway, I was way too emotional. When I got to the airport in Seoul, there was no one to come pick me up - lol. I mini-panicked of course, but they were just running late. It was about 11PM when we left the airport, and the director of my school and another teacher took me to my hotel (i'll be getting into my apartment in a few days). But let me tell you what this hotel room is something else! First of all, the toilet has it's own seperate rooms and like literally 15 buttons, I don't know what they do because they're all labeled in Korean and I don't dare touch them haha. It's also got this PC that i'm writing this on right now, which is awesome because my laptop is dead and well i don't have a 110volt converter for it yet. Back to toiletries -lol- there is a massive whirlpool tub (jets don't work thought, but thats expected when i'm involved), and there's like a seperate shower stall that is like super high tech and has a steam room feature to it. So pretty sweet over all. I think that's all for now...oh no I have to tell you this...there is one painting in my hotel room. It is of a nude blonde chick in a pretty awesome position with a flower over her flower haha. love it! -2-