A real Thanksgiving and other stuff too!

Yes, I did manage to have more of a "real" Thanksgiving than the meal at church. On Thursday, Miriam and Ben (both Americans, yay!) and some people from school went out to Bennigans and then to nori bong (Korean kareoke). It was a good meal and good company, and much better thatn whatever I did last year, which was so lame I can't even remember it. It was seriously what I needed 'cause I've kinda been in a funk of missing everyone lately. One set of holidays away was enough, another set's going a little rougher. But I'll be home soon (!!!) so that's awesome.


Anyway, here are some nori bong pics. This one is me singing "Please Don't Go Girl" by New Kids on the Block. That's how I roll.


Heck. Yeah. And here's another of Ben, me and Miriam doing... well, you guess what song we're doing...


If you guessed "YMCA" then you win a prize. I'm not sure what that prize is, but you win it. Feel special, kids. Feel very special.

Friday morning I called the fam who was still celebrating and I cried when I talked to Grumpa. It's fine, whatever.


The weekend was pretty much me spending a disgusting amount of money. But, I bought a plane ticket and nearly all my Christmas presents (and a new 80 gig iPod because I wanted it and I deserve it because I am awesome) so that's awesome. I spent SO MUCH money... It's kinda gross to think about. But I don't care, I feel good about it. :)


I also got to eat Cold Stone on Saturday (OMGTHEYHAVEACOLDSTONEINKOREAISTILLCAN'TGETOVERIT!!) and it was KEY to my LIFE. Let's be honest, I wanted to go shopping in Insadong JUST to stop buy the Cold Stone on the way home...even though it's kinda NOT on the way home. Plus, Seeta snapped this fun picture of me outside the place.


It was surprisingly hard to get up there, and ever harder to hold that position without sliding down. Anyway... I've seen this sculpture a bunch of times and never taken a picture of it. So here it is, finally.

Sunday I went to church, then met SeetaandJames and Rodney and Deborah for brunch (KEY!) then went on to Youngsan where I bought too many bootleg DVDs and a new iPod. It's fine. Whatever. I sold my old one so I can buy a new one right? And I got a better deal than even Rodney (360,000 won plus a free case) and he hates me for it. It's awesome.

In completely unrealated news, there are these trees outside my apartment building that were so pretty, I had to take a picture of them. And now I'll share it with you.

I just thought they looked cool, but the picture doesn't really do it justice. As is the case with most pictures.

Anyway, Karen's replacement showed up today and I already don't like her. It's my resolution to be mean to her until she stays the heck away from me and leaves me alone. Plus, she's got a b!^&#y looking face. CLEARLY, she will not be better than Karen, therefore she sucks, therefore I don't need to be nice to her. And, oh yeah, I have two months left. She better TRY to say something to me 'cause I'll tell her how it's gonna be. We also got a new guy (okay, middle aged man) who's so California it's painful. I can already see CIS NOT being the place he envisioned. lol

I love not caring about work anymore.

Much love.

NOT how we roll

What little security I have in life was interrupted on Tuesday. Usually we have our fieldtrips on
Thursdays but what with The B!^@# running things now, apparenlty we just do things all willy-nilly and shake up my tiny little routinely structured life. PLUS my class and I had to ride on a bus with a different class then we've ridden with SINCE THE FIRST FIELDTRIP WE EVER WENT ON. Um, hi, clearly heads have been inserted into @$$es. It's fine.

Anyway, we went to some robot museum that was full of, well, robots. And then we watched a 3D movie. And then we came back to school. It was SUPER lame, especially since NOTHING was in English so I couldn't even read about any of the displays. Whatever. Anyway, here are pics.

This is the kids playing with a remote control robot. It would have been cool, had there been another robot for it to fight with and we could have had real robot wars, but alas, there was only one. So it spun around and went forward and backwards. Thrilling.


I'm not even sure who's controlling it at this point. Maybe Caroline.

The movie was in Korean so I missed pretty much all of it, but the kids looked super cute in 3D glasses, and watching them watch the movie was funny. They kept reaching for stuff and trying to dodge the stuff coming at them. Kinda the cutest thing ever. Check out Jenny in the shades...


She kinda looks like she might be on some illegal mind altering drugs, but still, super cute. And here's Karen with Jinni, Christina, and Julie. And the glasses, of course.

Man it's gonna SUCK when Karen leaves. It's. Gonna. SUCK.

It's not gonna suck when I leave... I can't even wait!!

Weekend plans are underway, and I might be spending the most money I've ever spent in one weekend. Looking forward to it.

Much love.

Sometimes things don't turn out the way you planned...

Tuesday I got my passport stuff taken care of and it was a friggin' NIGHTMARE. What COULD have taken an hour and a half took three because I had to wait at the embassy for pretty much ever. Thank you, American government efficiency. Serioulsy, it was so bad I almost wished I was Canadian. Almost. Anyway new one should be arriving next week so all will be well.

Also at school this week it was aweful because we had to get our pictures taken, like, every day. And the kids would just look at me like "Why?" and I'd look at them like, "I have NO idea" and it was just ridiculous. First of all, they were posed classroom pictures, making each kid pretend to study or read a book with me and then snap a picture of it. Then we had to have the graduation pictures with a cap and gown on (twice, 'cause two kids were absent the first time) and a whole class picture as well. It was all so fake I could barely stand it. It was seriously gross. But, I did have Karen snap one of the group pic for me, because Lord knows that the school wouldn't be nice enough to us to give the teachers one. That would cost money, and show us some appreciation. Heaven forbid... Anyway, here are me and my babies.


The rest of the week was fairly uneventful and very little actual instruction went on, through no fault of my own. Apparently, I work at a three ring circus and not a school. Whatever. Friday night Miriam, Seeta and Phil came over and we had a potluck and watched a Christmas movie. It was a little bit awesome, and Miriam wins for making cookies. *sigh*

I also found out that my supervisor was fired. This story was confirmed by Karen herself on Saturday when we went shopping. And the best part? She was fired because the principal can't fire the person she should. And, oh yeah, there are TWO MONTHS left. I might work for the SUPIDEST PERSON ON THE PLANET. I CAN'T STAND her! Seriously... But Karen seems to be okay with it, and she's got other stuff going on (getting married, moving down south, getting a real job that doesn't SUCK) so that's awesome. It just sucks 'cause I've never once complained about the work she does, and this explative fires her for a crap reason. Um... It's a good thing I have 7 weeks left or I'd probably get fired.

Saturday was shopping with Karen, picking up some Christmas presents. I'm going to try and finish it all up next weekend. Yay! After shopping, I was planning on going out to a Sun Radio show, but I couldn't get a hold of anyone and no one bothered to call/message/get a hold of me back, so I stayed home. Bummer. I watched a movie and hung with Lancelot, so it was okay in the end.

Sunday I went to E-mart and bought cream cheese (yes, I go to a specific store to buy one specific item... it's fine) and then headed to church. Mark got is back from Canada, so I got to see him, and after church we had a Thanksgiving dinner on base. It. Was. Awesome. The turkey was dry and the ham was too salty, and the stuffing was kind of dry too, but I didn't even care. I ate like a hog and LOVED my life.

I've really been missing everyone at home lately, and just bumming that I'm missing yet another holiday, and it was nice to just eat like I was at home surrounded by friends, who are the best thing I've got for family over here. Anyway, here's a pic of HeeJun, me, and my pal Cam. Good times, noodle salad.


And let's talk about how delicious pumpkin pie is. 'Cause it's awesome. Seriously.

Anyway... I'm counting down the days until I can kiss CIS goodbye and take a whirwind tour of the world. Oh yeah, and go home for Christmas. :)

Much love.

More on North Korea and the rest of the weekend

Blogger loves me again. Yay! And I updated my blog to the new beta version so now I can tag my entries. Yay!

Um... I just realized I'm a SUPER big nerd for even knowing what that means. ANYway... Here are some more DMZ pics. This one is a picture of The Bridge of No Return, where prisoners after the war were allowed to cross. If they chose to cross over, however, they could not turn back. No one has crossed it in, like, 50 years. Hence the name. And yes, the song from Phantom kept running through my head, over and over.

Here's a cute one of Miriam and I, flirting with a plastic cop. Fun times. Next to him was a plastic girl. One military guy was trying to convince another to "hump it" for the comedic value of the photo. Class. Y. And hilarious. Or not.

This piece of art is obviously about reunification, but it was really beautiful and moving, so I took a picture of it. It's funny, North Korea to some Koreans seems like a deep shame, and to others it's sad, and still to others it's just the way things are and they really don't think about it. Most belive, however, that all Koreans share the same "spirit" (like team spirit, I think...).

Finally, the obligatory group picture.

James, Me, Rodney, Seeta, and Miriam. These last three photos were taken at the site of the tunnels, where we went after lunch. There are 6 tunnels that the North Koreans began digging (well, blasting, but details...) into and under South Korea with the intension of invading. Of the six, there is one that is open to the public. We went in, of course, but I don't have pictures of it because you weren't supposed to take any. Miriam did, of course, but hasn't posted them yet so I can't steal them from her. :( There is a point in the tunnel where it tells you that the N. Koreans painted parts of the tunnel black so that they could claim they were coal mines and not tunnels into enemy territory. Now, to a person back home this would seem ridiculous, but to me it just highlighted the behaviors of the people I deal with on a DAILY basis.

This tunnel was key because I could kind of stand in it and I didn't freak out like I did in the tiny one in Vietnam. Although the 12 degree incline for 300 meters was NOT my friend.

After the tunnels and a short visit to a museum there, we left the DMZ and I got home around 4:30, walked the dog and rested because I'd already been up nearly 12 hours. Balls. That night, I went to Rodney's for a bit for his tiny birthday celebration, but left before nori bong. I just was too tired to sing, much to Steve's chagrin.

Sunday I spent shopping in Ueijeongbu with Phil, my new gay husband. He is CLEARLY awesome. I tried on this coat and go, "Do I look like a cute chick who wears guy's clothes or a big lesbian?" His response? "You look like a cute chick who wears guy's clothes but might swing both ways. I'm just sayin'." Needless to say, the coat was not purchased. Acutally, not too aweful much was purchased, but I did manage to get a coat and two skirts for less than $50. KEY. But I'll have to go back to get some shoes made, 'cause Phil's guy closed, apparently. Balls.

All in all, an excellent and informative weekend. :)

Much love.

Remember when I went to North Korea?

Yeah, it was yesterday. Seriously. I was in North Korea.

Okay, okay. I was in a building that was built half on S. Korea and half in N. Korea, but still. I crossed the line. I was there.

It was a completely unique experience. The tension was crazy... the RoK (Republic of Korea) soliders were standing in a "modified tae-kwon-doe" stance and looked friggin' HARD CORE. Like, these dude could screw you up BIG time. I was scared of them. And they just stand guard all day with their "enemy," like, 50 feet away. The guide said sometimes the N. Koreas will even come to this certain building and try to rile everyone up by making faces and stuff, and the dudes just have to stand there and be cool and totally still. It's crazy, man. Cra. Zy.

I think it would be best to relate my tale with pictures, so here we go. First we have me and a RoK solider in North Korea. Dude's seriously a bad @$$. He doesn't even have a weapon. That's how bad @$$ he is. He DOESN'T NEED A WEAPON.


This is a picture of the acutal line that separates the two sides. Where there are buildings and pavement, the boarder is marked by these concrete slabs. Where there is just land and trees or whatever, the boarder is marked by white poles.

On the other side of the line, about 200 feet back, is this. Yes, those are North Korean soliders just hangin' out, like ya do. I don't know what this building is for, but behind all the windows are people with cameras watching people like us. They're waiting for someone to slip up and point or wave, so they can use it as propaganda. Yowza!

This is a picture of a piece of art that stands in front the Peace House (We walked through the Peace House and behind it I took the pictures that you've seen already.) The Peace House was erected to reunite families that had been split up, but The Crazy won't let people defect, even to join family members, so the house never served it's purpose. The sculpture is supposed to be of two hands clasping. It's kinda hard to see here, but I like this picture because of the red tree.

This is a picture of the flag of North Korea. This flag pole is 160 m. tall, and holds one of the biggest flags in the world, weighing around 600 lbs. Yeah, it's BIG.

So because Blogger hates my guts (yet again), I'm gonna do this in two parts. So the rest of my weekend is to come soon.

Much love.

My quest to see stuff continues

Here's the usual weekend update. I know you've all come to expect and love it as much as I love living it. :)

Friday night I went out for kalbi (Korean BBQ) with SeetaandJamie. It. Was. Good. Anyway, I LOVE me some kalbi so it was a joyful evening.

Saturday I accomplished an amazing feat. I finally coordinated with the dry cleaning guy and hopefully my clothes will be dry cleaned and delivered tomorrow morning. KEY! They LOVE to deliver stuff in this country. It's awesome. After I got ready I headed out to get my hair cut. My hair was turning into a mullett and I could almost put it into a ponytail. Um... clearly time for a trim. And I totally have a crush on the guy who cuts my hair, so it's key all around. After that I had to high-tail it to the USO office to pay for the DMZ tour me and a bunch of people from school are taking on Saturday. It's one of the biggest tourist things to do here, and I haven't managed to do it yet and neither have a bunch of people from school so we're going. Anyway, it should be interesting. But, on my rush to find the office and pay, I saw this:



A giant dragon sculpture in the median. Normally, I would think this was weird but this is a part of town called Youngsan, which means "Dragon Mountain." See? It's one thing in Korea that does make sense. It happens sometimes. Anyway, I thought this was SUPER cool, so I took another one, a close up this time.



I'm not really sure what it's made of, but it looks like either thin ropes or thin, plyable wood of some kind. It's all wrapped around a frame. Anyway, big dragon sculpture=cool.

After paying, I met up with my friend Corinne and some other people for lunch. Mark's going home for a couple weeks, so we had a little safe travel meal. He got off fine, and I got to spend some time with Corinne. Bonus!! So we didn't really do too much, shopped a bit and walked around, but we did manage to make it up to the mosque in Itaewon, which I'd heard was worth seeing. Of course, here's a pic.


It was pretty cool to see, although we couldn't go inside. Glad I took the time and the walk.

Saturday was also a special day for the little man in my life. It was Lancelot's birthday. I bought him a new shirt, and made him pose for pictures, because that's what it's all about. So here's his one year photo in his new shirt. I'm trying to turn him into a badass. Clearly.


And here's one more, with the ridiculous sunglasses I bought yesterday.

That might officially make me a bad person. lol. But it's effin' cute, let's be honest.

Today I got up and went to early church, hoping to have brunch afterwards. Brunch was a bust, but I had a pita instead, so life wasn't too bad. After church I came home, walked the dog, and settled in to watch this epic Indian movie that Seeta lent me. It's called Mohabbatein. I have NO idea what that means, but it was a total Bollywood musical love epic and I loved every dang second of it.

Which brings us up to now, when I'm updating. Clearly, a productive day. :)

Parent teacher for B.C. tomorrow. Gag me.

Much love.

Last weekend's sans-internet adventures

I've tried to post these pictures literally about ten times. For some reason, Blogger doesn't want to let me post them, either directly from my computer or from the internet site where I keep a lot of my pics. So that's awesome. But apparently now it loves me so here's my post from last weekend, with pictures.

Saturday morning I devoted to getting strips for my glucometer/trying to fix my internet myself. The strips were sucessfully comandeered (pretty much the easiest thing EVER in Korea...I was shocked) but the internet was another story. After and epic journey and several trips back and forth the same strip of road on a bus, I bought a new cord and discovered this was not in fact the problem. NEAT. And I couldn't call the people to come fix it because hi, they speak Korean and I don't so I kept buggin Karen and then the people were stupid and the whole thing made me so pissed I cleaned the crap out of my apartment. It happens. But it's super sweet to have it squeaky clean. :)

After an epic morning, I went shoe/costume shopping with SeetaandJames. The shoe shopping was totally unsuccessful because the shoe store we went to (I heard it sold big sizes) was in fact an evil lie. NO big sizes. My heart was broken over a pair of boots... I still can't talk about it. Then we went to 남대문 (Namdaemun) Market, which is one of my favorite places to go, to see if they could find a Halloween costume. I had to buy some yarn. Both missions were somewhat successful. Excellent. I also managed to find some silly things to put on and take pictures of. That's always fun.

Wow, that's hot. Tee hee. Halloween stores in Korea are fun!

After that, I was pretty beat so I came home, ordered dinner (my first time and it was AWESOME... they bring it to your house and take the dishes back again. Hot.) and watched Slingblade, which I bought in China and have never seen. Uh huh. Not what I thought it would be, but a good movie. Uh-huh. :)

Sunday I got up early and went to church. After that I went with Mark and 인석 (Inseok) to see a palace. 경복궁 (Gyeongbukgung, The Palace of Shining Happiness) to be exact. Turns out, I'd been there before for a school fieldtrip but this time I was sans kids and got to see a whole lot more of the place, which is really beautiful. I love this time of year because all the leaves changing just makes everything look so great. Everyday trees become so much more amazing. Anyway... it was a great excursion and of course, here are some pics. This palace was destroyed by the Japanese in the late 1800s and has been rebuilt, and is still being rebuilt, so we couldn't see everything. But we did our best.

This one is the part of the palace where they would have royal feasts. All the water was man-made, not natural.

Next is the throne room of the palace.

Couldn't get any closer than that, but still cool. Next is a pagoda the king comissioned. He liked to walk on the dock that lead out to it, apparently, but it doesn't seem like it would be a very satisfying walk 'cause the dock was about 100 ft. long. The king was clearly a fan of short walks.

My favorite thing about that picture is the crane in it. He's down by the stone wall near the water, near the middle of the picture. Can you spot him?

Finally, here's me with the pagoda in the background. A nice pic, if I do say so myself. That Mark's a good photographer.

Overall, quite a satisfying weekend. I'm proud of myself for seeing something touristy, which I haven't done in ages. I need to get on the ball, though, 'cause I'm leaving Korea in a mere 3 months...

I can't believe it!

Much love.

The Halloween Post

So... Halloween was on Tuesday. As can be expected it was a whirlwind of costumes, kids, and enough candy to send anyone into a diabetic coma. It was actally pretty fun. The kids were all excited, of course, so that kind of made it cool. You forget what Halloween was like once you get old like me, but they still feel it. They still get that it's about fun and free candy, and don't we all need a little more of that in our lives?

The way it worked was each class rotated to each classroom, where the teacher had some sort of activity. In my class they were supposed to Trick or Treat... for 10 minutes. So I hid the candy and made them find it. Exciting, I know. Anyway, without further ado, here's Halloween 2K6 at C.I.S. This first one is me in my costume.


I was a penguin, which was super cute because all the kids knew what I was, and it's a lot more fun than what I was going to be, which was a cow girl. And it cost me about $8 to do it. That RULES.

Next we have the obligatory class picture.


From the back left we have Grace the witch, Julie the princess, Jenny the wizard, Jennifer the witch, Caroline the angel, Jinni the princess, Lucy as Snow White, Alicia Teacher the penguin, (and down to the front row left) Willy the gay pirate (really he was Captain Hook sans the hook but COME ON... the costume's so gay!), Pitt the reaper, Eric the dinosaur, James as Spiderman, and Christina the unicorn. They are cute, I know.

Next we have my favorite costume of the day. Now, this is the tiniest kid in the school (he comes up to a little above my knee... SO TINY) and he's friggin' CUTE as heck. And here he is on Halloween:


Louie as Harry Potter. I know, I died too.

The Korean staff didn't dress up (party poopin' lame @$$es) so the foreign staff monkies had to pose for the camera and make nice like we love Halloween more than life itself. Here's the result.


As you can see, I'm CLEARLY thrilled about Rodney wearing that damn mask. Which he wore for two days before hand, and continues to wear at random times to terrify me. It's awesome. Or not really. Anyway, there's Rodney as a scary monster, me, Miriam as Kart Rider (a video game character here), Nate as Space Ghost, James as Marc Antony, Seeta as Cleopatra, Phil as Woody from Toy Story, Gareth as himself (okay, he was really a pirate but that's pretty much what he looks like every day, lol), Ben as Mr. Tumuns from Narnia, and Adam as...something we have yet to figure out. The missing member of Kiss? I don't know.

Now I've saved this last one because it's so special. This is a picture of the pumpkin my class carved (read: I carved while my class played with the gook inside and got it all over the room).



Now, the special part is not that I managed to carve a bat in a pumpkin without a serrated knife, but that the idiots we work with can't even figure out that the candle is supposed to go INSIDE the pumpkin, not tower above it like a freakin' beacon in the night. CLEARLY I work with geniuses.

So that was my Tuesday. Not much else to report about my week except that I saw The Prestige on Thursday night. A)Christian Bale. 2)Hugh Jackman. D) DAVID BOWIE! CLEARLY this movie was awesome and I recommend you go see it if you haven't. There is a secret Christian Bale treasure at the end of the movie that is JOYOUS. I can't say what it is without spoiling the whole thing, but it's key. This was the best movie I've seen in a long time. Go see it.

Much love.