Singapore weekend!

went away for a long weekend in singapore last week!  everyone says you only need a couple days there,  but I would definitely go back for all the things we missed!

Cambodia

home from an epic 10 day trip to Cambodia!

about to start year 4.  moving my house and school in 1 week.  lots of changes are coming!

weekend in 경주

went to gyeongju to stay in a pension with friends this weekend.  it was the first weekend of nice weather all year.  good times.

last Wednesday was Korean labor day so I had off work!  many other Korean workers also had off because they were out heavily drinking on Tuesday night.  I just went to meet some friends for dinner and went home on the subway before midnight.   however,  I still witnessed a man projectile vomiting into the street from the sidewalk.

the best /worst part is when I got on the subway.   my friend rode with me part of the way home before she had to transfer.  the whole time there was some girl who was passed out who kept leaning her head on me.  there was a guy next to her who was also passed out.  they just looked tired.  as my friend was about to get off the train, we were trying to decide if the two knew each other or not.  once my friend left, the girl was totally sleeping on top of the guy.  so then, the guy dragged himself to a standing up position facing the door because he was on the end seat.  I assumed he just wanted to get away from the girl...until splatters of vomit flew through the air around me.  it smelled terrible.   random people ran over to give the girl tissues and an older man tried to put down some newspaper.  

the best was when I got home and spotted a drop of puke on the top of my head...in my hair.

cherry blossoms at 제천

rode the slow train about 2 hours south of seoul to see the cherry blossoms last weekend.  there were supposed to be thousands lining the street leading to the lake, but unfortunately, due to the cold weather they were barely budding.  plus side:  there weren't too many people!  it was still a nice day out of the city.

cherry blossoms at 여의도

went on a Thursday to avoid the crowds...still so many people stopping every two seconds to take selcas!

last night

Last night was weird.  On my way home from meeting my friend for dinner, I encountered two strange things.

1.  While waiting to transfer to line 6, I saw down on a bench.  A few seconds later an older gentleman sat down next to me.  I proceeded to look through facebook on my phone.  I heard the man start talking and assumed he was crazy and was talking to himself (as a lot of old people do tend to do).  Unfortunately, I glanced his way and realized he was, in fact, talking to me.  He then opened his CORN icecream (shaped literally like a corn on the cob and probably corn flavored) and tore it in half.  (shock! horror! this old man is trying to give me half of his icecream bar with his bare hands)  I tried to kindly refuse by smiling and waving both of my hands in an effort to get my point across without speaking.  He kept pushing it towards me while I waved my hands.  I finally said, "no, thank you," thinking he would realize I am a foreigner and run away.  He just kept talking in rapid Korean, holding both pieces of the icecream bar and snickering about something I didn't catch.  He continued to talk to me about who knows what while I tried to stare at my phone screen.  He then asked me in Korean where I was going and I tried to answer in English, "my home."  Luckily the train came a few seconds later and he got up to throw away the icecream wrapper and I ran away to a different door.

2.  On my walk home from the subway station, I spotted a man sprawled out, face down on the road.  Well, half on the road and half on the sidewalk.  While I have seen many, many passed out people during my time in Korea, this was possibly the strangest of all.  I stopped just a few feet after passing him with the intention of taking a quick photo, but I never got a chance.  I waited for people to pass so nobody would see me, but by the time the coast of clear, another man was straddled over him, trying to wake him up.  Then a few police officers came to help to.  They eventually turned him over, sat him up, hoisted him off the ground, and I guess somehow got his address to take him home or took him to the police station

back for the long haul

TGIF!  It's the first Friday of the new semester.  We're back for good now with no vacation days in sight until a day off in May for Buddha's Birthday.  This week has been way too easy.  I guess it's good to ease in though.  Monday, no classes/Tuesday, only 4th grade/Wednesday, only 4th grade/Thursday, only 1 3rd grade class/Friday, only 1 6th grade class.  Life is rough.  It's gonna be a rude awakening when the real schedule gets underway especially since the classes in each grade are probably gonna be all on different sections of lessons and I have 4 co-teachers to coordinate with.

finally made it to apo island after 2 days of being in-transit.  our flight out of manila turned around when we were 30 minutes away from dumaguete because the weather was not good for landing. 

so we ended up hanging out at a hotel pool for the afternoon before catching a flight to cebu in hopes of catching a night ferry.  we got to cebu and it was still raining so we ended up staying overnight and try for the morning ferry which was then cancelled.  we finally caught the ferry at 3:30pm after hanging out in a starbucks and shopping mall for about 5 hours to kill time.

by the time we arrived in dumaguete it was too late to take a boat over to apo island so we missed out on both nights of our stay there.   bright side: we got to stay at the nice hotel we had booked for only 1 night for 2 nights!

farewells suck

I had to say farewell to two more of my first friends in Korea last night.  By the time I get back from vacation, they'll be on their way to Myanmar.  It's sad to see them go, but I'm so excited for them to begin their year long journey around the world.  (plus I made out pretty well taking their stuff..crock pot, humidifier, blender/food processor)

As for me, I gotta finish packing because I'm leaving for the Philippines  today!!

guess who got this...

...delivered to her door for breakfast??  this girl!  mcdonalds now allows you to order delivery online.  this could be dangerous every saturday morning..

went to the hollister in sinsa tonight. .was surprised by more than one thing.  1. it is super nice inside..4 floors with really nice wooden stairs and mirrored walls and  2. the employees are totally american style hollister wearing kids who greet by saying "what's up, welcome to the pier"

5 more days of school...

...in which I have 7..maybe 4 classes total.  Starting today, the kids started going home after lunch so there's no afternoon classes anymore.  Next Monday and Tuesday are part of the Lunar New Year holiday.  Then, we come back to school from Wednesday to Friday for..??  I think 6th grade graduation is on Friday morning, and everyone usually goes home by 11am.

Philippines, here I come!!

That one time...

we went glow bowling at Pierrot Strike in Apgujeong and saw Gdragon from Big Bang.  No big deal.

Going to be here this month...

...just gotta get through 2 more weeks of pointless classes at school!

I've seen at least 3 different people wearing plaid pants in the past 2 days..they were not school uniforms.  really hope this isn't where spring fashion is headed.

DMZ

after 2.5 years here, I finally made the trip to the DMZ.  the most interesting part of the trip was def the JSA or joint security area.  we got to go into the meeting room where north and south Korea meet and even got a look at a few north Korean soldiers.  although, at one point there was only one left standing in clear view and hid behind a pole for a little while. 

we also got to see the north Korean propaganda village from a distance.  apparently nobody actually lives there (except recently maybe a few factory workers) and it was built just to show the south how luxuriously they are living.

the south's "freedom village" is basically also propaganda except with actual residents.  they said a little over 200 people live there.  they make an average family income of over 80,000 us dollars by farming the surrounding rice fields, untaxed.  the men are also exempt from the army so women are allowed to marry in, but men aren't.  they spend all their money on nice things and cars and I assume on multiple lavish trips into Seoul throughout the year.  they just have to stay in the village for 240 nights per year to stay a resident.

kimchi pancakes

saw no less than 3 piles of vomit..what we kindly refer to as kimchi pancakes..on the way to the bus stop today.

cultural Friday

last Friday after camp, instead of going home to nap the day away, I met a couple of friends in insadong.  we had a traditional Korean lunch and then wandered down to samcheongdong to check out some museums in the area.

first, we ran into the art sonje center and decided to go in to see the collection by the Japanese artist, Shinro ohtake.  some of his stuff was really good and interesting, and others were just collages of old boxes a scraps of paper.  anyway, it was worth the 5,000 won to get out of the cold.

the next place we went was the gallery Hyundai to see the collection of "erotic" paintings from the joseon dynasty.  there were no English captions for the pictures so that was disappointing, making up our own stories was just as fun.  plus, we brought along a friend who can speak Korean so he helped translate when we needed it.  my favorite story of the day was about a picture of a woman squatting over a pot trying to preserve her "woman juices."  God knows what they needed to do that for.

Seoul grand sale!

almost every store in the city is having a huge sale right now.  last week at h&m, I got 4 shirts, 1 pair of pants, and a dress (that's way too small) all for 34,000 won ($35!).  one of the shirts was literally 1,000 won.  how is that even possible?!

also, I guess normally I only buy things in sm/m/l because the two things I bought in my "normal" size fit at least 2 sizes smaller than they should.  what's up with that, h&m?  way to make people feel large.

back in the frozen land

I've been back in Seoul for about a week and a half now.  I have to teach 3 weeks of winter camp and then go back to school for 3 weeks before "spring vacation."  I'm already halfway finished with camp which is sad because I actually like camp days..I finish at 12:10 everyday and go home to nap or meet friends!  it's pretty awesome.

currently I'm sitting in the subway station waiting for my friend to arrive to go shopping and eat delicious food!  I haven't gone anywhere more than 20ish minutes away from my house since I've been back so this is quite the adventure today^^