i don't ask a lot, girl

new haircuts !! as a reference point, this is the stalker picture that i took of a girl in bargules while joanna pretended to pose because i was too shy to go ask her for pictures of her hair:


so, in his defense, it's not the clearest picture. but it's pretty obviously a bob with bangs. now, the reason i keep going back to this two (the adorable couple that owns the salon) is that, despite his complete inability to copy a picture, he always does amazing things. so, without further ado, the george harrison:


ps sweet new glasses: $10 frames, $15 lenses. 담양, 사랑해요~

sleepover!

in keeping with my need to post in large clumps, i present you with a review of my weekend in seoul with chloe teacher (my partner teacher/bestie).


the cherry blossoms were in full bloom, and we even caught petals for good luck! (it was significantly more difficult than it appeared, i will have you know.)


also, korean boy scouts?!

the palaces in the city are so awesome, because even though you're in this seriously ancient-looking structure, seoul's assortment of modern architecture is clearly visible in the background:



king sejong! chloe was really impressed that i knew it was him, even though at a distance it was a guess (since, you know, he's the only king i can name), and also his name is printed on the pedestal (shhhh).


joanna attempting to channel cute daegu girls, chloe being korean. ^^v

also, i fell in love with this little boy:


after we left the palace, we headed to myeongdong for some final shopping (before we started our month-long detox, which is going pretty well, i might add). i also purchased my first kpop albums: t-ara (breaking heart) and g-dragon (heartbreaker). in. love.


chloe and joanna point out chloe's newest vocabulary word.

AND THEN !! we had a sleepover at chloe's house! her mom was so cute and said all of her english and applauded our shit korean. she made us a magical spread of food: 잡채 (cold noodles with vegetables and egg), 김치전 (kimchi pancakes), some sort of 갈비 (beef) dish, and her delicious kimchiiiiii. word on the street is, her dad wants us to come over again soon. which is good, because i'm looking forward to the opportunity to talk to her brother about his amazing film collection.

대구~

i am the worst blogger in the history of blogging, which i believe says a lot. i will, however, attempt to recount the past three or so weeks for my eager public.

a few weekends ago we went down to daegu to max and relax, as well as see a temple. the ride down was rather arduous:


after a nine-hour workday, we took a bus to the metro to a two-hour bus to the ktx which, oh by the way sorry we forgot to mention, requires UTTER AND COMPLETE SILENCE FOR THE DURATION OF THE RIDE. it was only an hour, but seriously, korea?


buuuuut we finally made it to daegu in one exhausted and mildly-to-extremely inebriated piece:


after significant drama surrounding where to stay and whether or not we would be permitted to drop off our luggage before going out, michael found us a room in this quaintly inspirational love motel:


(the word behind the hite bottle is "spore," i believe.) and, speaking of quaintness, check out this vending machine:


yes, those are sex toys. yes, they are for rent.

the next morning we headed for 해인사 (haeinsa), a temple up in the mountains about an hour and a half from daegu, though it is inexplicably still considered to be a daegu attraction. it was one of the most beautiful places i have ever been. i kind of forget that, even though we live in the 'burbs, the air here is just not very clear. once we were up in the mountain, though, it was pretty evident. the air was so clear and beautiful and there were trees and the implication of forest creatures, even though i didn't really see any because THERE ARE NO NON-DOMESTICATED ANIMALS IN KOREA. allora:


we got up a small hill before we decided we needed to take a beer break in the parking lot:


the temple had a few different levels, it's apparently the most sprawling in all of korea. this is us near the bottom, trying to coax a reluctant john to stop smoking at, you know, a temple:


near this spot was a sort of prayer maze, in which you walk through giant swastika shapes on the ground while praying (which i just typed playing, because i am korean).


i know that the swastika was buddhist first, but i still have trouble reconciling its presence everywhere sometimes.

i didn't get as many pictures of the actual temples/area as i would have liked, because it was really hard to do them justice. hopefully with my new camera that will change?!


some detailing on the ceiling of one of the temple buildings.


i couldn't stop being in love with all of these lanterns, especially with the backdrop of the mountains:


also korean girls' innate ability to walk anywhere in heels, even down stairs that i felt i almost needed to sit on and scoot down:


later, john tried to convince a man guarding these wooden tablets of the entire buddhist canon to let him in to do, you know, journalistic research, we were escorted away, but towards this older structure behind the main buildings:


also, i don't know why i found this so fascinating, but i was super intrigued by the prospect of buildings still being constructed in the asian temple style:


and now, pictures of nature:





and a snack stand:


following our tragically unwanted descent from the mountain, shannon koh and our crew parted ways, as she could no longer handle what comes with being around ... some of my friends? (SORRY SHANNON)


then, on a beksaeju run, michael scored us some fake eyelashes and we were ready to go.


... so obviously we followed the birthday g.i. to a bar where salsa was king. not salsa music, allow me to clarify. just really, REALLY serious salsa dancers. there was a lot of pressure, and clearly we couldn't live up to it.


after a sufficient amount of jiving, the night ended as any should: with a three a.m. trip to 김밥나라.

sunday morning i spent about an hour watching adorable puppies squirm over each other and wake up and relocate for naps:


while they waited for their fancy time:


after the most amazingly western breakfast this side of the west and some traumatic piercing, we finally headed home sunday afternoon. and, to be fair, i rather appreciated the no-heavy-breathing rule on that end of the ktx.

workplace

in case anyone is curious, some pictures recently surfaced of our office. for some reason i feel like they're of interest, mostly because i feel like they're a visual representation of the clusterfuck that is our administration's organizational methods.

(these are from ryan/abby/alex/scott's last day, which is the cause for celebration. wahoo!)


(so attractive.)

literate

i learned the korean sign language alphabet last night! i am now more fluent in korean sign language than american. this will be super useful for speaking to all the deaf koreans i know, as i can now spell out the forty words that i know rather than mouthing them.

weight off my shoulders

STILL ALIVE

for all my loyal reader (anna cotter), i provide you with a summary of the past month:

four of my coworkers finished their contracts; three left the country. among them are besties ryan and abby, who are currently tanning and doing drugs in thailand and regularly reminding me how wonderful their lives are now. super jealz.

we have new teachers, both foreign and korean, and it's definitely changed the work atmosphere. more importantly, i have a new kindergarten class. my old 6b kids still go to our school (thank god), but they're in seven-year-old classes now, and i'm teaching the lowest-level six-year-olds we have. it's already been an insane challenge - it's already hard to get a room full of four-year-olds (they're six by the korean system, but most of my kids won't even turn american age five until the fall) to sit down and stop talking, but when they don't understand what you're saying it's borderline impossible. it's incredible what they've picked up already, though: in a period of five weeks, all of my kids can fluently say, "may i go to the bathroom, please?" and "can i please go get some water?" they can repeat pretty much everything i say to them, and today laura said, completely on her own, "teacher, i love you very very many." my heart melted.

i haven't gotten that many pictures of them, unfortunately - i'm too busy wrestling them into their chairs or trying to distract them with "do, re, mi" - something else they've been picking up pretty quickly. i did manage to catch a few during easter, since my amazing coteacher chloe was in the room and kept them under control for me.

with tony. he's adorable and looks like an old man most of the time, except when he gets really excited. he tends to get really worked up about minutiae, but not in an upset way. a few weeks ago he forgot to change his shoes to go home, and we didn't realize it until my boss pointed it out when he was waiting in line for the bus. she muttered, "oh god," and when he looked down and looked back up at me his eyes were wide and yelled "OH GOD!" he then BOLTED back to our classroom, as i tried to follow him to ... help out? he just kept yelling "OH GOD!" and "OH NO!" alternately, until he made it to his shoes, which he didn't even have time to put on all the way before he about faced. he was hauling ass until he ran into chloe teacher and realized he absolutely HAD TO TELL HER WHAT HAD HAPPENED. it was possibly the most adorable thing i have ever seen, ever.

lisa and emma. emma is usually a little less unimpressed than this, but not much. lisa is ridiculously on top of her shit - not only one of my best speakers, but also the oldest kid in the class, so she has the best motor skills and general cognitive function. she's the one who always has to explain the assignments to the other kids or show them how to use rubber bands. the other day she was writing notes to emma on her project in class, but she had written emma's name in korean - 에마 사랑해! (emma, i love you!) i got jealous and told her she should write "건갱님 사랑해! (teacher, i love you!) so she thought about it, and wrote: 클로외 티차 사랑해! (kuh-lo-ee teecha, i love you!)

this is the aforementioned laura. she's actually way more adorable than this picture conveys - she's about two feet tall and has a ridiculously high-pitched voice. she's also the only one to repeat the things i ask the class to say, ever.

nancy, irene, and tristan. nancy barely talks, except to say "NOOOO!" when the other kids say that i'm a monkey or flower or whatever. "TEACHER IS TEACHER!" irene demands to be held at all time and has an amazing koala-like grip. tristan is the son of one of our korean teachers, and despite being a complete spaz, he's a tank and is generally hilarious. he pretends to understand everything i say, even when is acknowledgment of understanding goes in complete contradiction to his every action.

this picture makes them look so much calmer than they have ever, ever acted. tristan looks especially displeased back there. probably because i made them all dig their bunny ears out of their backpacks so they could wear them for this picture.

aside from the new class, not much has changed in my life. kindergarten is definitely far more exhausting than it used to be, physically speaking. we get to do fun kindergarten-y activities, like coloring and singing songs, and way less in the way of book work like i used to do (but will do again soon, worry not!) i do FAR more wrestling/holding/running than before, though, so it evens out. elementary has gotten easier, as i have one less story class, which means one less class to do intensive planning for, so i can devote more time to the three i have, and i have more subject classes, which are generally more low-key.

the geography class that i created for kindergarten seems to be going pretty well, but i haven't really bothered to sit down and plan much farther than i already had, so i'm a little concerned about what's going to happen in the coming weeks. i had a sort of show-and-tell thing for class this week, and the majority of the school's parents seemed to misunderstand the instructions, even though the korean teachers clearly understood when they communicated it. the problem here is that i just discovered that i'd planned show and tell for next week, too. oh well, we're moving onto world geography soon ... i hope.

quick recap of non-work things (which make up an extremely minor portion of my life):

1. i've started going to seoul during the day now that it's warm out! i actually haven't been out partying in the city since ryan and abby left, which is actually kind of embarrassing, but kind of refreshing in that i'm no longer spending 100 000 won every time i want to drink. instead, i do things like go to museums! namely, the seoul city museum to see some warhollllll.

this is actually the only picture i managed to score in the actual exhibit before i was caught with my camera, but it is DEFINITELY worth a read. they were all like this. so magical.

this is my life motto.

my stale 4 000-won sweet potato tart. there seemed to be some artistic minimalism in its excessive serving style.

aaaaaaaaaaand the most ridiculously mind-bending sculpture ever. this picture doesn't even do it justice, since it looks like it's just been resized. in real life it gives me an actual headache, as my brain attempts to reconcile the bizarre proportions.

2. i bought a bike! i haven't bothered to take a picture yet, but i've been riding it to school and we're planning on many a bike ride in the near future. as in, this weekend, during which we will have a picnic lunch and read books and generally be awesome.

3. i have a library card! hopefully i will finally become well-read, but it's doubtful. the jukjeon library has a pretty decent english section, but it's inexplicably at least 9% star wars novelizations and extensions. this wouldn't be that big of a deal, except there are only about 300 books all together. i guess i'll just become an expert on kashyyk. or else i'll just settle down with their spanish copy of bill clinton's autobiography.

ice-uh!

two weeks ago shannon came up from daejeon for a trip to the hwacheon ice festival. she and joanna and i left jukjeon around 9.30 on saturday morning, and after missing our first bus out of seongnam by four minutes, as well as our bus out of chuncheon due to over-fullness, we managed to make it to hwacheon by 3.30. here are shannon and joanna attempting to recover from four hours of bus ride over some bibimbap:


hwacheon was adorably tiny. it's a small mountain town close to the border with north korea (we actually crossed the 38th parallel on the way up), and i believe that this fishing/ice festival is their biggest event all year. all over town were these adorable fish lanterns, winding through fences and occasionally sending us messages of love:


when we finally made it down to the festival we only had about two hours to spend there, or else we would have missed the last bus back to seoul from chuncheon. this turned out to be super upsetting, as the festival was AWESOME. there were giant snow sculptures galore. some super creepy:


and some super baller:


here i am entering the cave of wonders:


on the inside it was even cooler than aladdin would have me believe. it was completely lined with giant blocks of ice backlit with colored lights. we heavily desired photo ops (we went through twice), but it was a little overpopulated to get the effect we wanted. hence, the presence of this guy:


to be fair, i wouldn't be opposed to being his buddy. we also got arty:




wacky !!

afterward we scored free tickets (probz because we're white) to this massive ice slide. we sat in inner tubes and were shot out onto ice, where a dude holding an inner tube was responsible from stopping us from running into a wall. sweet. here are shannon and joanna being terrified in anticipation:


the entire river was frozen over (if we had had more time, we could have gone ice fishing and immediately cooked up our fish on a number of barbecues). there was also this sweet ice formation under a bridge with those fish lanterns and trees attempting to free themselves from it, which i will now share with you:


another activity offered was hand-fishing, wherein the fisherman (or woman) would get into an almost-freezing pond in a t-shirt and shorts to try to, you know, catch fish by hand. it was highly popular:


in an attempt to find the mythical room full of ice sculptures (which we only managed to discover minutes before our bus left, so upsetting), we found more adorable snow sculptures. here i am with my bestie, that cartoon penguin that i see everywhere:


look at all the fish and lights everywhere! hwacheon you are so cute !!


we were very sad to leave, as it was a legitimate cultural experience/we really wanted to see ice sculptures. fortunately i scored this sweet christmas picture to remember it by:


lots of love, 화천 !!