A Strange Trigger...

I had a bout of homesickness this week and it was triggered by the strangest thing. Remember how I was actually able to buy capris and use a dressing room? Well that did it. I was elated by the discovery but it made me long for the easy shopping I experience back in North America where everyone isn't "free size" and as an extension it made me miss all other North American things and people.

I'm over it now but it was a tough week. I'm still frustrated with not being able to do/find certain things here but overall I love Seoul and I have never expected it to be exactly like North America, nor did I want it to be. That was the whole point of moving somewhere and trying something new. Anyway, maybe it was silly homesick trigger karma since now my new pants have been stained at work by the dreaded, deadly board markers we use. It's just a tiny spot on the back but since it's light pink/white on black pants you can see it. (T T) This isn't the first piece of clothing that has been sacrificed either. Matt lost a pair of dress pants and his beautiful (expensive!) pink shirt last week. Feck. I'm not throwing the pants out but I think I will just wear these to work and try to go back to Uniqlo and find some more. They were only $10 after all and maybe I can get some more colors... Cross your fingers for me!

Otherwise, this week has been busy but interesting. Matt has been working late a lot on account of having so many students (and therefore so many assignments, tests, report cards, etc). So I've had to fend for myself a bit. Look at the super ghetto dinner I picked up for myself the other night. Ramen noodles, triangle kimbap and a lemon popsicle for dessert. Haha! I'm glad he's switching levels and getting more free time.

Work Post

So we're almost 5 months into our contract. What this means is that now I've gone through a whole rotation for the Tuesday Thursday classes and so more of my students will be leveling up and next month I'll receive some new ones. It also means that now I know what kind of work I have to do to fix my program and make them the best I can with what I have. So I have to fix a lot of the Big Tests in the next little while. I could have just said nothing I suppose but I'm a bit of a perfectionist. Anyway in other work news, Matt is getting switched to a different level which is relieving to him since he's had a lot of grief with one of his levels and he also has the most students so he is constantly marking essays, trying to squeeze in phone tests, presentations, etc. There are also murmurs that he will receive a small raise as compensation for his troubles but I'll believe it when I see it.
I took some general pictures the past couple days. Here you can see Vicky, who actually recently transferred from our Seocho branch. And you can also see her classmates, Betty (pink) and Julie. I have a lot of fun with my "Ee" class (say their names and you'll understand why I call them this). It's nice having all girls. Betty's actually going to Vancouver for about a month and a half on an exchange this summer. Julie is the student that swapped erasers with me so I have the awesome popsicle eraser.

Next you can see why I like teaching the lower level kids. I actually can define some stuff with my pathetic Korean vocabulary. Hahah!




One of my students gave me this cute sticker to put on my attendance folder. The top part means "smile" and the bottom part means "I'm happy". Cute! I don't know why the first picture is turned the wrong way since it's not like that in my picture folder. Stupid Blogger.


You can tell it's humid when my hair is left curly/wavy. Yeah it's going to be a long summer, I predict. Also you can kind of see my new shirt in this picture.

Work is going okay and we are basically just counting the days to summer vacation like everyone else. Heheh.

General Goings On...

The last couple of weekends have been fun but more on the mellow side. The weekend before last we were supposed to go to Gumi with our book club but I was a lousy cripple so we did a lot of resting and then spent some time with Dana and Curtis playing board games. I even snuck in a little Guitar Hero. Last weekend started off a bit late. It's the end of the month here, which is by far the busiest and most hectic part of our job. We have to get our syllabus finished, give tests and then mark all the tests, do our report cards, etc, etc... You get the idea. So even though I was really looking forward to the weekend I was busting my butt at work until almost 10:30pm on a Friday night. Then I waited around a little for Matt and we went off and finally ate supper. Yeah, I know. Crappy.
We got home at a half decent time after having some chicken galbi. We mooned over the cute puppies at the pet shop (they all wanted to go home with us) and wondered just how "happy" the happy happy hour could be at a bakery.

Saturday we headed over to Gangnam to browse around and then hang out with Margot Teacher. We arrived a little earlier than she did so we had time to do a little bit of shopping. I saw this cute t-shirt that made me think of Stephie but I didn't buy it.
We had some delicious smoothies from Smoothie King (summer is definitely coming- it has been so humid-ugh!) and ended up in Uniqlo. I have to admit, I've never really been in this store but Carter says it's her favorite. I have basically resigned myself to the fact that I can't find clothing (at least not reliably enough to count on it) when I am in Korea so I always bring what I think I will need for the year. Last year I lost weight so I had to get rid of a lot of clothes and then when I was in Canada it was fall/winter so I wasn't able to really replace a lot of my cooler weather clothes. As a result, I have no capris and basically my summer wardrobe consists of a bunch of cotton skirts I found here in the subway last year. At Uniqlo I felt like I was back in North America. They had sizes!! Not a huge selection of sizes (it's pretty obvious they overstock the XS and S) but actual sizes! And best of all, fitting rooms! I ended up finding casual capri pants on sale for $10 and a cute top for $5. Ahssa!!! Matt also got a shirt but his was regular price ($30) but still. So exciting!!
At this point we'd found Margot and were chatting it up when I noticed that we were in the same area as the English speaking fortune teller that I'd gone to months ago. Matt decided to give it a shot. Highlights included the guy telling Matt that now that he's 30 (Korean age) he's considered to be in the ajoshi category (old man), that in 7 years he'll start making a lot of money so I need to watch him because he might cheat on me and that a good time for us to make a baby is this month or next month! To which Matt replied, "That won't work- when does the next baby bus arrive?". I thought Margot was going to die from choking on her laughter. It also confirmed what we have all long suspected, Matt is a woman inside. That works out since apparently I am a man inside.

We had dinner at Big Rock (yum burgers!) and then watched Indiana Jones 4. I have to say I really liked it but I know it's not because it's an awesome movie. Really I could go on at length at what I didn't like but because I have such love for the original three it was great seeing Indiana back in action. I have to say though, I want to slap George Lucas. He should be banned from using CG. We did not need CG animals, really, we didn't. I'm sure he had CG everything and Steven [Speilberg] was only able to reign him in so much and settled for some gophers and monkeys. Hell, I don't even like Star Wars but I mourn for what George did to the last 3 of them with his overproduction. I like Ebert's review of the movie. I think he's right about his sausage analogy.

Anyway, Sunday I had lunch at a delicious Thai restaurant with my sisterfriend Rachel. She's so adorable and like a little sister to me. She just starting dating for the first time so we had lots of girl talk. Good times. We'll have to get together again for a double date or maybe some more norae, even though she blows everyone out of the water.

So there you have it, we haven't been up to a lot. It's getting really sticky and humid. Matt's mystery black lung seems to be going away but he still has yet to find a decent doctor around here. We're busy with work and need to plan our summer vacation trip to Beijing/Shaghai. We've got the plane tickets and that's about it. What are you up to?

Most Shocking T-Shirt EVER!

Man, I really wish I'd taken a picture of it but I was seriously so outdone. Plus at that moment I'd done something stupid to my camera (which I figured out how to fix luckily). I ran to work and immediately told Garrett about it because I had to tell someone. Our conversation:

A: Dude, I just saw the MOST RACIST shirt in the whole world.
G: Really?! Racist against whom?
A: EVERYONE!!!!!

What did the shirt say? Well it was in giant capital letters, "I F*CKING HATE..." and then went on to list every racial/ethnic slur I'd ever heard of and possibly some new ones. And at the end it said, "AND ESPECIALLY (the N word)!!!". Ohmigod! I did a quadruple take. I don't think you could create a more offensive shirt if you tried! So who was wearing this extreme fashion statement? An adorable lady cheerfully riding a bicycle. I wonder what she would say if she only knew...

Keep an eye on these boys...

Meet Sean (white shirt) and Joey. Take a good look because these boys will be the ones running the world in 15 years. I'm sure of it. Not only are they adorable but they are brilliant, funny and incredibly polite too. I really can't say enough good things about them. Currently they are both in my A1 class but could easily be in the next level but their parents (equally as smart) are letting them progress through the program naturally. This is something that you don't often encounter here where parents are constantly pressuring and pushing their kids and where certain parents would rather have their kid in the highest level class even if they have no idea what's going on. It doesn't seem to matter if they are really learning anything as long as they have bragging rights with the other mommies. So it's really refreshing that these boys aren't being exposed to that right now. As a result they have really shown amazing progress and improvement in the past couple of months and I have to say, their penmanship, grammar and speaking is often much better than any of my A3 students. They level up next month and I am really going to miss them. I'm sure I will see them in 5 months in my A3 class though.

"Graffiti"

Check out what I noticed on my walk to work. I wonder what bad ass wrote that? Brown on brown too- how ballsy! Hahah! I wonder if they tried to plug in the Korean equivalent of the "f" word into a translator and ended up with that?

Has South Korea Started Recruiting Child Soldiers?

Nope, just a regular day in my neighbourhood. We sure don't have pellet guns like that back home!

Humorous Finds

We saw this t-shirt when we went to pick up the air mattress and had lunch with Dana, Curtis and Curtis' parents in Bundang. Either it makes no sense OR it's talking about Korean pop sensation Rain. He's so in now that Stephen Colbert is talking about him.

The next one is more a tragically named product than actual Konglish. A tip to the manufacturers, "Acnes" isn't the best name for a face cleanser. I certainly wouldn't want to smear Acnes all over my face.

Happy Teacher's Day!

We've had a pretty busy week since Ali and Byrun left on Tuesday. I must have been having sympathy pains (or else our bed just sucks) since my back has been bothering me all week. I even got acupuncture for the first time ever (and since I have health insurance I paid half the rate- $7) but it didn't help much. I'm starting to feel better but it meant that we had to cancel our big weekend plans to go with our book club to Gumi. (T T) Another time, maybe.
Thursday was Teacher's Day and I didn't really have high hopes since we don't know our students as well as we knew the ones last year and last year was pretty outstanding. I did get some thoughtful little presents though. A lot of carnations, some small snacks, a couple of face washes- one made from green tea and another peach scented, some green tea vitamins, a large basket of flowers that I'm keeping on my desk, some awesome magnets I put on my fridge already. And then my favorite gift, and most surprising since it came from a student that just changed classes and therefore I no longer teach him. I got some Anna Sui cosmetics! I'm not much of a cosmetics or a designer type of girl but this was pretty cool. I have a gorgeous compact and a lip gloss that doubles as a phone charm. It's on my phone now and is a flattering color, unlike the infamous tangerine lip gloss I received last Teacher's Day. I hope everyone had a great Teacher's Day!

Claw Machine Goodies

We mentioned claw machine wins in the past (this is where we got our sacred Jesus lighter). Well we tried our luck again at a different machine while Ali and Byrun were there and with a couple small Korean boys watching. Matt was on fire and managed to win twice spending only a dollar. The little boys were thoroughly impressed and we weren't sure exactly what we won. It turned out to be car air freshener fan things and a couple of "Love Letters". We didn't know what this meant so I opened one (to make sure it wasn't inappropriate to give to the kids) and it turned out to be the hugest eraser ever! I wanted to keep an eraser but we'd already given them to the kids so we went back later to try to get one for me.
There were some Koreans out with their adorable baby and they watched as Matt failed to win anything. Then one of the guys in the group tried his luck and was a winner. They gave the prize to us (aww claw machine karma!) and exclaimed "Friend!". It was really sweet. The prize totally cracked me up though. Look at that watch!! The pictures really don't do it justice. It's fuzzy leopard print with brassy/gold and rhinestones. Hot. I also got a large eraser but it's not as giant as the ones we gave away. Such is life. We decided to be funny and the next morning we told Ali we bought her the watch as a present. Bwahaha! She was totally gracious and didn't bat an eye. Then we confessed it was a claw machine watch and she was so relieved. Hahah!