"Krista teacher, thank you.--Julie's grandmother

Yes, I realize that I am not in fact Krista (my class' previous teacher, from February until I came in August) but the fact that she made a special effort to say thanks was so sweet because the woman doesn't speak ANY English. So the gesture was a sweet one, I thought. And she really is a sweet lady who is raising her granddaughter. She seems like a class act.

And yes, today went pretty well. As soon as the curtain opened, Willy freaks out and starts giggling, and he seemed like he was so excited, and he totally sang as loud as possible about two seconds ahead of the entire song, but really, I couldn't do anything but smile. SO cute. They did a pretty good job today, and I'm proud of them.

Here's me and my class, in their costumes, looking cute. Why is Pitt winking?

And this is the entire school, or what I could get of them all, singing "Silent Night" and "Jingle Bells." You can kind of see my kids on the far right. Willy's the one not in line... typical!

So that was my morning. I even got two presents today, and they're actually awesome! One is a daily calendar, with an old school Disney pic on every page, and the other was Elizabeth Arden perfume, which I actually like the smell of. Yay for Grace's mom, who LOVES. :) And tomorrow the kids get their presents from Elly and I, and I'm giving Elly her scarf, and it's awesome. And then I leave Saturday morning. YAY! I realized on the walk home today, that I am really happy. Today was a good day.

Another awesome thing about today: Starting in January, I'm going to be teaching this reading comprehension/writing class to kids with really high levels of English. I'm excited because a) this is the stuff I KNOW how to teach, and b) kids who can speak good English is NOT something I'm used too, and it will be an aweome change. So today I had to give these new kids an assessment test, so I didn't have to teach my ONE class for the day. And most of the kids showed up a bit after three, so I just hung out with Elly for, like, 20 minutes and she looked up hot Korean guys for me. This is my new boyfriend:

He's mixed--he's half Brit and half Korean. Um... COULD you be the hottest guy EVER? Possibly. I'm just sayin'... And he does ads here for a store called Bean Pole and the Gwyenth Paltrow is in the ads too. Um... Neat. It still freaks me out sometimes, when I see her in commercials. Whatever, a girl's gotta make a living.

So... yeah. Good day, good week, hopefully good vacation coming up. Speaking of, I should get back to packing. Balls... I hate packing.

Merry Christmas

Much love.

"He only works one day a year. What do you think he does the rest of the time?"--me

Here's a fun holiday quiz, to get you all in the spirit.

Your Elf Name Is...

Spicy Eggnog Breath

What's" Your Elf Name?

So that was fun, eh?

Not much new news to report but I did call about the puppy today... and I said yes. I'm going to take him. I had a name picked out, but now I don't like it, so I'm looking for suggestions. I want something literary... leave suggestions in the comments. He's brown and white, and a shish tzu, if that helps. Oh, and a boy. :) Suggest away...

One thing about the RENT movie (on my fourth watch... it's FINE) I forgot to mention... Sarah Silverman as Alexi Darling? GENIUS. Awesome.

Tomorrow's a busy day. Christmas performance in the morning, so my kids will be dressed up in costumes and singing for the parents, because this is somehow a measure of how much the kids have learned... I know, I can't figure it out either. We did a dress rehearsal today, and it looked something like this:

Worthwhile learning? Hardly. Cute as all heck? Undoubtedly. But apparently the parents think it's a huge deal and my kids pretty much sucked up their second song, "Baby, it's Cold Outside." Nice. Notice Lucy trying to sing into the mic. She was pretty much obsessed with it.

Don't ask me what's up with the background. I don't know. And that huge Santa hand you see? Yeah, it's one of two HUGE blow up Santas on the side of the stage. Okay, fine. But if you saw his face... Let's just say the Santas look like they were smoking some illegal substances in the sleigh. I'm JUST sayin'. I'll post a pic of it later, so you can see what I mean...

So... That's tomorrow. And apparently there's some sort of Christmas party or something at work... whatever. I guess last year the principal took everyone out for a fancy dinner at an expensive restaurant and what are we getting? Word on the street is pizza. Wow. Do I ever feel appreciated! Pizza! Gee!

Bastards.

Wish me luck tomorrow! It'll be cute if nothing else.

Much love!

"No other road, no other way. No day but today."--RENT

I finally succeded in buying RENT on bootleg and have susequently watched it twice. I'm seriously contemplating starting it again... I think I have a sickness. I need HELP! But it's all good. I'm a little bit in love with Rosario Dawson as Mimi, which I thought I would NEVER take to, but, well, here we are. Let's just say I'll probably be watching it every day from now until when the real DVD comes out. It's FINE.

Also visited a possible addition to my family yesterday, a little shish tzu puppy. I'm going to decide, probably by tomorrow, if I'm going to take him or not. I really just want to make sure that I have enough time to spend with a puppy and a life-style that's conducive to having a little guy around. I really want some companionship, but I want him to have a good life too. So... advice is appreciated. :)

Let's see... this weekend was good. Class Saturday, Youngsan for DVD's, then home to watch my new movies, then I went out with Joanna and Kelly, after visiting the puppy. Good times were had by all and free drinks are pretty much key to all of life. Just a tip.

Today was really nothing, bought Christmas presents for my class and went to church. Also ran out to get a "costume" for the teacher's performance on Friday. Joanna and I are dancing, using the moves we've picked up from dance class. It should be good, we'll see.

This week was pretty rough at school, but by the end of the week I was feeling pretty good. I think it was just a lot of factors combining and it made me snap. But a full recovery is expected, especially since I will be leaving for vacation in less than a week. YAY!!!!!

The best part of the week was the birthday part we had. It was for two kids, Jenny and Eric. Eric is my mullet kid, and I've taught him to say, "I have a wicked mullet." Awesome, I know. But the best thing was: HIS MOM CURLED THE MULLET. CURLED IT. WITH A CURLING IRON. Eric was crying about it in the morning because he KNEW it wasn't right, but there it was. A curled mullet on a 5 year old kid. And here it is for you to enjoy. Take a moment... I don't mind.


Oh man... It's awesome. And here are some other pics from the party, just so you can see how cute my little babies are.

Eric and Jenny, the birthday kids.


And here's the whole class shot. We've got, from left to right, Willy, Jinni, Jennifer, Jenny, James, Joon, Caroline, Eric, Julie, Lucy, Grace, Pitt. This is actually a good pic of them, they're all kind of doing what they were asked to do.

Well, I guess that's about all I have to report. Another week begins tomorrow... then VACATION!!!!!

Much love.

"Teacher, I know Foo Fighters!"--Jennifer

Yes, I have taught my kids Foo Fighers as well as James Taylor. We will be singing "Big Me" for our January performance and they will LOVE it. My Korean 5 year olds know Foo Fighers. Ha ha ha, I rule!!!

They've been doing really cute stuff lately, which is awesome because today's the first day all week that school hasn't made me so mad I serioulsy thought about quitting. Ugh... working for an idiot SUCKS. And she is. A complete idiot. But moving on... Joon, my little genius kid, says the following to me the other day: "Teacher, yesterday night, my back was killing me." How CUTE is that? And a complete sentence with a verb in the correct place, no less. I nearly died, it was so cute.

And James today made me take a star away for speaking Korean, the same thing they have to do if they speak Korean. So cute. He's not very good at English, but I tell you, that kid is a star. I just love him.

Let's be real... I love them all.

Gotta get to bed, but wanted to relate cute tales of my kids.

G'night.

Much love.

"My passport was in there!!"--me

Had a nice weekend. Friday night I just hung out, watched some sweet Lost with J, then hit the hay. Class on Saturday was good, I'm really enjoying it. Korean is a little bit the best that I know of. :) After class, I had to run out to Itaewon (again) to finalize Vietnam stuff, pick up my Visa, all that kind of thing. So I meet up with J, have some sweet Subway, and head over to Unique Travel, the place we've been planning our trip through. We get there and see this:


Yes, that's a building ravaged by fire. Our travel agent is in said building.

I proceeded to freak out because my passport, along with Joanna's, was in there. Awesome. So luckily, J kept me nice and calm and everything worked out, we can still go, and life will be glorious in two weeks. Joy. :)

After that, I headed out to COEX mall to meet up with Lindsay to hopefully buy Christmas presents for my kids, but to no avail. My mission failed. So balls, that's still on my plate to do. But that night, we ended up meeting up with her boyfriend, John, and going out. First we went to this Canadian bar, where "Bobbie" greated us with a shot of tequila... Can't really complain. Even though I'm pretty sure I was the only person from "The States" there, it was still good times. We moved on from there to a bar called Just Blues, where we met up with JohnandLindsay's friend from Finland, Tommy. Gotta love it. We just chilled and listened to this band. They were pretty good, and the drummer was real cute, so it was a good time. Fun Saturday night.

Sunday was a chill day, cleaned up all my crap on the floor and cleaned my bathroom (so necessary, I can't even tell you...). Then J and I headed to church. After church, she went off to dinner and I stayed and hung out with church peeps. We went to rock some sweet kalbi. Here we all are at the restaurant.


That's Erin and me, Solomon, Fredrick and Mark. Erin I met on Thanksgiving, Solomon I met last week (and he was obsessed with my scarfl... he's wearing it in the pic...), Fredrick's from Korean class, and Mark lives two stops away from me so we hang out. He came to HP with us last weekend.

We had dinner across from this HUGE building that's a giant techno mall, and the landscaping there was really nice. There was this huge staircase with rainbow colored lights going across it, and I just had to take a pic.

Pretty cool, huh?

Oh, and early Sunday morning, while I was sleeping, I heard the great news. My Lakers are National Champs AGAIN!! That's three times in four years baby!! And I managed to talk to my friends who went, and damn Crystal made me cry. She got to go this time, and she was so excited, so I talked to her to see if she'd had fun. And she's all, "yeah." "I'll tell you one thing," she says, "these people adore you." And... I lost it. Luckily, I was just leaving so I had an excuse to not BAWL my FACE off. Oh man...

And then today, I get an email, and it leads me to this:

It's a pic from 'Bama, and it's the Coot Memorial Service. My spirit's there in the middle.

I felt it, guys. I love you! :)

Much love.

"Long Duck Dong!!!"--me

Since I haven't updated in a few days, I thought it was time. I wanted to last night, but it started getting late and I just went to bed.

Nothing too exciting to report, but Joanna and I did go see this show called Jump!, which is a martial arts show. There was very little talking, so we understood it and it was awesome. Funny and amazing. And let me just say, boys flipping through the air and dancing are a little bit hot. After the show, we even got to meet the cast and get our posters signed. Oh and of course take pics.

Me with my head in the poster... nice.


This guy played the dad in the show... he could do some sweet jumps.


Is it just me or is this guy Long Duck Dong? Trust me... the Dong-er knows! Anyway, he was so dang cute I wanted to put him in my pocket.


These two guys played robbers who break into the house where the family lives, and get thier bums beat by the martial arts loving fam. Anyway, the Afro dude is TOTALLY HOT (and his 'fro was real... well, a real perm anyway) and the other guy, while quite tiny, did some flips in the air that I'm pretty sure weren't human.

It was awesome, and I'm so glad I went. I just love shows and stuff like that. One crazy thing though: we were sitting in the very last row, probably up 6 or so feet, and this guy tried to leave and fell hardcore off the back... I think he thought there were stairs there or something. Yikes!! I think he got hurt but I really don't know. It was kind of weird.

In other news, I'm pretty sure they took our staff room away from us and I am SO PISSED about it that someone's getting an ear full on Monday. I mean, I don't kid myself that I work for a real, legitimate school, but COME ON!!!

Grrrrr.

Well, gotta get ready for class and head off in a few.

My Lakers are in 'Bama this weekend so GO LAKERS!!

Much love.

"This is the best day in Korea...EVER!"--Me

Let's be honest... it's totally true. Not only did I fall in love this morning (his name is Daniel, he's British, that's all you need to know, it's fine...), although I'm not sure how it'll actually work out, but it's nice to have a new Korean class crush. Whatever. Then I hung out with people from class, Dave and Corinne (and Joanna) at Namdemun, which is pretty much my favorite place ever here. I'm a little bit obsessed with it and go there pretty much every weekend. Whatever. Also paid for the Vietnam tix, so that was exciting. :)

Then it was HP time. Let me just say that I LOVED IT! A)Victor Krum is HOT (totally hotter than silly old Cedric, Jo!!). 2) Ron and Hermione LOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOVE eachother. D) I think they did a pretty nice job with it, considering how much was left out. Oh, and Ralph Fienne is the BEST that I know of. I loved it. It may have just been my excitement, and the feeling of home-ness that it gave me, but I really, really loved it. I did kind of miss the Fab, though, just based solely on principal. :(

But here's the best part, when we left the theater, it was snowing!!! Real, actual snow falling from the sky. So beautiful and amazing... I love the first snow!!

Me and Gandalf, outside the theater, in the falling snow... ain't life grand?

I can safely say that I have never seen snow-covered flowers...

Or snow-covered bamboo. These are the three girls we went with, Joanna teaches one, Yulrie, and the other two are Gi-Sue and I-Yo. They are cute.

I can't even describe how magical it was... and Joanna said it wasn't like this at all last year. It must be just for me! I was missing the snow, and home, and having a crap week, and here it is, a first beautiful snow fall.

And my light just came back on...

I'm going to bed happy.

Much love.

"Teacher, 24 sleeps and then snow!"--Pitt

Ick. I had a crap week. It was just one of those weeks when everything's just a little bit wrong and it all adds up and makes one big ick. For example, I'm sitting in the dark right now because my light doesn't work, AND I broke my lamp. How great is that? So now I have to buy a new lamp, but I won't have time til Sunday, so basically I'll be living in the dark til then, and hopefully my light can be fixed on Monday. Gah. AND I had to clean up a bunch of dead roach carcasses because homeboy sprayed last week. Awesome.

Also found out that come February, the girl I thought was staying with me, the other Michigander who got here two weeks before me, put in her two months notice. So... neat. In February it'll be me and Rodney, the Newfie who's English I can barely understand. Fire. Up.

Sorry, I'm just grumpy. Grah. BUT, on the bright side, I get to see HP4 tomorrow, which will be KEY to my LIFE. I can't wait!!

I'll leave you with a final cute story from my kids. The quote at the top, "Teacher, 24 sleeps then snow!" was from my little Pitt on December 1st. Now, if you think about it, there's no way he could know that in 24 sleeps it would snow, so I was confused... until I realized that he meant Christmas. My kids think snow and Christmas are the same thing! How cute is that?!

Admit it. It's damn cute.

Much love.