The glorious stages of culture shock...

Going into this whole experience, I think there are a lot of us who would admit that we thought the idea of culture shock was a load of poo...which is extremely false. It wasn't necessarily easy to leave home, especially considering that the night before I left I all of a sudden realized that I probably wouldn't get to see 99% of the people in my life for atleast a year which resulted in me being a mess the day I left, but I really did think culture shock was a bunch of bunk.

They say there are three stages: the honeymoon (no description needed), the negotiation-where you get kind of irritable because you realize that things are so much more difficult since you dont speak the language and that you don't have access to pretty much everything that you took for granted back home, and finally the adjustment phase. I think last Monday I started the negotiation phase because I woke up super frustrated and almost punched about 12 people that day...not sure why. BUT, here's the good news. I know for a fact that I'm done with being Moody Marsha because of the fact that for the first time in my life I absolutely love my job and a couple of things happened during the course of last week that made me realize I am so blessed to be able to hang out with some pretty amazing kids all day every day AND get paid for it.

First, I don't know if any of you have ever seen the movie "Love Actually" but it's the best movie ever and there's this scene where this French guy Jamie goes to this small town in Portugal to ask Aurelia to marry him. So he goes to her house to find her and her family follows him to the restaurant where she works but by the time he gets there the entire town has ended up following him to see what's going on. My morning walks to school are very similar to this because when I walk out my door I almost always hear "Ashoree!" within the first 3 minutes and at first have 2 or 3 girls walking next to me, but by the time I get to school there's atleast ten girls surrounding me. That's the first thing that made me realize how cool this experience is.

Then, I was teaching a class on I think Wednesday, and the girls were finishing up these pen pal letters that they're sending to students at my sister's school in Arizona. So they're trying to figure out how to spell things and one girl calls me over and goes "Help me spell! Lifa!" and I was thinking "What in the world are you saying?" So she keeps saying "Lifa!" and I eventually just wrote down "lifa" because I could not figure out what she was saying for the life of me. Everyone started cracking up and another girl trying to help her says "Con!" and I was so confused it was unreal. Then she made this motion with her arms, pretends to pull a trigger, and shoot another girl who falls down to the ground, convulsing, which made it the most hilarious scene ever. Then I realized one was trying to say "riffle" and the other was saying "gun". Hahahaha.

Friday I'm at an all-boys middle school and my classroom is next to one that has the greatest kids in it because I don't have them for class but they always come in to say hi and then sprint away laughing. There's two boys in that class that are physically disabled to the degree that it impairs the way they walk but not much else and they have a few learning disabilities as well. My very first day at that school I noticed how kind the other boys were to the two that were a little different and I loved watching how they interacted because it didn't matter. This last Friday though I was in the elevator going downstairs to leave when one of these two boys got into the elevator with another much taller boy that I recognized from his class. This little boy is the sweetest kid ever and is ALWAYS smiling when I see him. He is much shorter than all of the other boys in the school and has this face that looks like he's smiling even when he's not because he's just such a happy kid. So they're standing in front of me and the taller kid puts his hand on this boys back and then puts his arm around his shoulder and they just stand there like that the whole way down. I thought that was one of the most awesome things I've ever seen because I would be floored if I saw a middle school boy care for another who has some difficulties the way this kid did. Granted, in Korea people are a lot more touchy feely but I still thought it was the coolest thing to see kids looking out for each other like that.

Welp, I took a Benadryl about a half an hour ago and am beginning to feel like I'm in the Twilight Zone so I'm not going to write anymore but I do have some random pics to put up so I'll throw those up and say good day!


This is the biggest tuna you have ever seen


In downtown there's an entire block of pet shops and I want a Yorkie so bad. So so bad, and I'm determined to get this one. I'm totally serious too.


Downtown Daejeon at night!

Korean Cribs and a pretty cool story

I finally have some pictures to post of my flat, or the "tuna can" as I prefer to call it, so that you can all get some kind of idea of what the living arrangements are like over here. The first time I walked in here, I'm not gonna lie, I was pretty bummed...actually depressed. Instantly. But I soon realized that I'm an incredibly spoiled person and that this is quite the norm over here. Plus, it makes a huge difference just to have a few pictures up and your own stuff everywhere. I took a short video at first instead of taking pictures but decided after actually watching it that I really dislike the sound of my voice when I hear it on a recording...and that always happens! I really don't like my voice and I'm not sure if that's a common thing, actually I know it's not and I sound like a loon right now, but ya...definitely not a fan of my own voice.

This is my entry way...also known as the kitchen


This is what you see when you first walk in my door. I know I kind of overdid it with the colorful random quotes on the wall but I had to cover up some pretty ugly outlets. Also, I brought with me my favorite Younglife blanket and bought a new white comforter because while I was thankful for all of their awesome efforts, the bed set that my school bought me looks like a flower barfed on it.






The bathroom that also turns into a shower with the turn of a knob...


Took a while to figure this one out...

So, the cool story. I was telling this to my friend Beth over email the other day and it's definitely one for the books. We were talking about our good friend Nellie who I know most of you have probably heard of even if you have never met him because he was a pretty amazing man. Actually, a lot of you I know were super close with him but either way you'll enjoy this story. Nellie was from Singapore originally and had a disease called Arthrogryposis which basically meant that his joints from the neck down were frozen so he was in a wheelchair. He went to PLU and then was brought on by Frosty Westering as an assistant football coach after he graduated and was an amazing mentor to athletes and students for years. Ok, so now that you have the background info I'll get to the real story...

So the first week of school I made this power point to show the kids where Arizona and Washington are located as well as some pics of my family and friends. The three things that they had a MILLION questions about were my brother Christian, the PLU volleyball team, and Nellie. I was telling Beth it was really cool because they genuinely were interested in why he was in a wheelchair and thought it was so neat that he was a football coach. If you read back a couple of weeks ago about the girl that speaks amazing English and wants to go to school in America...and made me cry...well the next day after she made me feel like a complete ninny I went up to my office after school and she was there waiting for me. So we started talking and I moved the mouse on the computer and a picture of some friends including Nellie came up on my background. She asked if I would tell her more about my friends and pointed to him so I told her more and then told her that he had just recently passed away, which I hadn't told to any of my classes. She got kind of quiet and then said "He is a beautiful man. I bet you miss him." And I was floored. All I said was "Yep. A lot." because I never imagined that a little girl on the other side of the world who had never even met him would say such an awesome thing. Then Beth nailed it when she said that people knew he was different and not just by the way that he looked but by the way that he lived. He wasn't afraid of standing up for what he believed in and shared his faith without shame or doubt.

So, there you have it. Definitely something I'll never forget that's for sure.

I wanna be Jackie Chan.

During the tail end of college and for a couple years after, 3 of my best man friends and I would go trail running once or twice a week and it was the best thing ever. They were always way faster than me, and I was usually the one that wiped out (one time just days before one of their weddings which I was in because his wife is one of my besties...so I wore a tea length dress with scabbed legs) but it was still so fun. I've decided that running around the streets of Daejeon is very similar to trail running because when you run trails you're always having to side step big roots or jump over a stump...and here, you're either jumping over a 6-year old coming home from school or doing a pick-n-roll on a grandma. (Speaking of the pick-n-roll, I'm getting up at 6am to watch the Huskies destroy the Lobos so it had better happen...and Berg's, I'm glad your Zags aren't choking in the tournament for once:)I've also, unintentionally and very uncoordinatedly, started free running. If you don't know what it is I looked it up on Urban Dictionary just for you:
Free Running: A sport where mad-men (or women*) attempt death-defying stunts and Jackie-Chan esque acrobatic feats.

While nothing I have done is death defying, I have climbed several walls and scared many Koreans when jumping off of said walls. A couple of weeks ago I went running up to a point near my house that a friend and I had found days before and the hill going up to the top is a bear. I experienced this first hand because I had eaten an entire Costco muffin about an hour before and I didn't feel so hot on my way up but the minute I got to the top I up-chucked the entire thing. Or "urped" as my grandma would call it:) But, the view from the top is pretty stinkin sweet. It's right on the border of the city and you can really see how different the lower income areas are compared to the downtown area farther out.


Also, thought you all might like this next pick. Alot of the restaurants that serve seafood, possibly alive, have these tanks out in front and I'm pretty sure they just grab whatever they need out of the tanks when people order. I know for sure that's what they did at the restaurant where I ate the live squid or "thrashing barf bombs" as Heather would call it.

The creatures on the far right in the top tank make me gag just looking at them.

I took some sweet pictures of downtown at night as well as one of a tuna the size of Free Willy, so since Lame keeps bugging me about it I'll put them up as soon as I can!

Food for thought...

So, I don't have any cool pictures to post (although I will put up a video I took of my "flat" when I can), but I thought I would throw out a couple of tips for you all in case you ever do end up coming to Korea...
1. If you don't like people staring at you in the first place, don't wear running tights around town.
2. People in Korea are very pushy, by Western standards, if they don't know you and need to get somewhere. I never thought I would want to toss a grandma out of the way while getting on the subway but it's happened more than once.
3. If you have a sensitive gag reflex you will return to your homeland with a six-pack. Gagging is an excellent technique for strengthening the abdominals.
4. If you are a teacher at a middle school where there are girls, get used to them screaming when they see you, then screaming "Hello!" or "I love you!", then bowing as they run away, still looking at you, and almost nailing a wall or a pole everytime.
5. When you are at school all day and have to speak sooooo slow while exaggerating every letter and syllable for your students...you will eventually start talking that way to your friends who actually do speak English.
6. If you didn't smoke before, you will when you get here. Even if you don't take up the habit you're doing it simply by breathing.
7. Gyms are expensive. If you are frugal like me you might get your workout in by climbing up random walls on your run, running along the top of them, and then jumping down right in front of a random person walking down the street who will probably end up having to change their pants when they get home because of you.
8. If you lie to your school because you don't want to eat weird things and tell them you are a vegetarian even though you are the farthest thing from it, they will generously bring you vitamins and carbs until you feel like a brick and have to go running on walls in order to burn it off.
9. Burping in public is perfectly acceptable...which is awesome.
10. Learn Korean.

That's all I got:)

Almost the best day ever...

So today was one of those days where anything that happened either went terribly wrong or terribly right. I started my day by being woken by my mom on skype and being especially snappy to her since she woke me up...even though my alarm had gone off an HOUR before since I had intentions to go running which obviously didn't happen. Don't worry though, I apologized to Lynne for being snappy:) However, the night before my clock had run out of batteries so when resetting it I thought "Oh, well my computer says it's whatever time, and since I'm 7 hours behind it must be this time"...NO. After dropping my coffee directly on my shoe, for the second straight freaking day in a row might I add (I think the guy in my coffee shop thinks I'm a drug addict), I get to school an hour stinkin early because while I set my clock according to Seattle time I wasn't aware that the whole "spring forward" thing had taken place and my computer changed automatically. So, I'm at school at 7:30 in the morning, soaking wet because it was pouring the entire way, and with one brown running shoe because of the amount of coffee that it's absorbed over the past 2 days. I'm pretty sure if I just ate my shoe I would have a decent amount of a coffee fix. And to top it off, when I would've been walking to school it was sunny out. Frick.

Well, then...even though we went through a week long orientation before we started our jobs, they're making us do 2 more hours of training after school for 3 weeks and it's the same exact thing we've already gone over. So we all sat there for 2 hours today poking at our eyeballs and wishing we were being tortured by Jack Bauer rather than sitting through this thing. Not to mention, the same shoe was wet yet once again as I stepped in a puddle the size of Lake Michigan and then dropped ketchup on it. I think that eventually this training might cause all of the native teachers to revolt (that's what they call us)...and if you're picturing people standing on street corners in loincloths holding torches then you're probably pretty accurate.

Yet, God is good. And this city is pretty amazing. Had the best Korean BBQ of my life tonight. Found Sprite. I'm now the owner of a 20 lb jar of peanut butter from Costco. Found a burger joint that looks amazing, a Krispy Cream, and another Northface store...and I just started pushing buttons and all of a sudden have a million TV channels with one of them being Discovery...in English. I love my life.

Taco Roll, the Thrashing Octopus, and "The Poisonous Passing Gas Boy"...

Ok, so I have a ton of time right now and since I have 3 very important things to write about I figured that I would just do it now since I probably won't have time for a couple days...don't worry people, I have a life outside of blogging:)

First: TACO ROLL
A friend and I walk by a restaurant called Taco Roll the other day and I was thinking "Sweet! This is amazing!". So we go in and the first thing we see is this...

It has nothing to do with the story but still...it says something about a place when they have time to dress their statues in a bikini. So we sit down and the menu is all Korean food! Except, they did serve spaghetti. Are you serious?! Being from the great Southwest, I take offense to a Korean restaurant claiming to serve Mexican food. I also take offense to the fact that Taco Bell considers itself Mexican food (but I still love it even though I feel like blowing up minutes later...) Really though. Name your restaurant "Korean Roll" or "Spaghetti Roll". I don't care. But don't juke the poor New Mexicans who would give their right arm for a taco. Which leads me to my next story...

THRASHING OCTOPUS
My worst fear came true last night as I went out to seafood with the teachers and principal from my school. Yup, there's a big bowl of boiling water with vegetables and they bring out these squid that are big enough that you would need two hands to hold them in these Caboodle type cases...alive. (For the men, a Caboodle is something that girls kept their makeup in, in the 80's) They take the squid out with tongs, stick it in the water, cut off it's head and legs, and serve it up.

Next, (if you have a weak stomach then take a short break) they cut a slit in the heads and this black stuff comes out and seeps into the water. Then they eat the heads. Whole. And last, when you have this black soup, they add noodles and you eat it...Alright...

Last story: "The Poisonous Passing Gas Boy"
Today I walked into my classroom and one of the teachers had posted projects the boys had done last school year with the native teacher who taught here. Hahaha...I wish I would have gotten to meet this girl she seems awesome.


The end.

Our bucket lists cont...

So, when we made our bucket lists, one of the things that we both had listed was to own a motorcycle at some point…preferably with a sidecar. We’ve talked about this extensively and I’m thinking since these crotch-rocket type bikes are pretty inexpensive here I could knock one off of each of our lists by just buying one here and adding a sidecar when I get back home. Yep, I think I’ll do it.


It also snowed buckets yesterday so I took a couple of pics around my street..

Woosong University across from where I live


I just thought this was a cool shot...these girls were singing Rhianna at the top of their lungs when I walked by. Hahaha

Another reason I want one though is because after about a week you realize how exhausting it really is to walk everywhere. I take the subway a lot but its about 20 min just from my house to the sub. The past couple of nights when I’ve gotten off of the sub and had to walk a good half mile to a mile to get to where I'm going I just run. I'm like the Forrest Gump of Daejeon. I make sure that I’m wearing my running shoes, strap my bag across my chest and end up I’m sure looking like a frantic American, or Mi-guk as my students would say, rather than someone trying to get a workout in. Last night though it was so stinkin funny because I’m running back to my house at probably 9:45 at night. I'm in black sweats and a sweatshirt with a black puffy vest over it and hauling down the street probably looking like I'm in a street gang. This girl about 10 yards in front of me turns around because she hears me coming and gives me this look of absolute terror and takes off running! Haha, so funny. But really, while I enjoy the exercise I’ve noticed the past couple days that when I’m walking around town that I have to keep my hands in my pants pockets or my pants fall down…which was not the case 3 weeks ago. I think they need to have a Biggest Loser in South Korea. Who needs Bob and Jillian when you can wither away for free?

At school there are only 4 teachers who can speak English well enough to hold a conversation but even then a lot of things get lost in translation. So, sometimes it gets a little lonely not being able to just have small talk with someone. In fact, I’m pretty sure there is a staff meeting going on behind me right now. They could be devising a plan to have me exported and I wouldn’t even have a clue. AND I was thinking that if there is a fire in the building I am really in for it. There’s no doubt in my mind that I would be a Washington shishkabob because the students run around here like there’s a fire anyways so I would probably just sit here and smile…while on facebook. Wouldn’t that be a sad story.

Oh, but last week in one of my Thursday classes this student calls me over and just starts talking to me like she is one of my friends. I stood there stunned because I was teaching this class simple conversational phrases like “I am from Korea” so I was super confused. She told me later that she has paid her way for the past 3 years to go to English camps at universities during every break because she wants to live in the U.S. eventually. It gave me goosebumps especially because the area around my school is the poorest in all of the city. And we are talking really poor. So some of these kids come from some pretty rough situations. Today though she called me over, and I can honestly say she speaks English better than any Korean I’ve spoken with yet. She asked me if I would help her write this giant essay for an English contest because if she wins she gets a scholarship and would be able to attend a high school in America for 4 years. She says “I know you are busy and don’t have time to waste on a person like me but maybe if you could help me once a week…” and I was like “Are you kidding! I want you to come to my office everyday from 3:30 to 4:30 and we will work on it or anything else you want to work on” and when I said that she started crying, thanked me, and then ran off to the bathroom. That’s all I needed to be reminded of why I’m here.

On a lighter note, I’m going out for Korean seafood with my co-workers here in an hour. I’ve heard stories of other native teachers eating “thrashing octopus” which is legs of an octopus, obviously, that have just been cut off and are still moving…and you pry it off your plate and swallow it before it latches to your tongue. I would still be terrified that after I chew it, it suctions to my esophagus and chokes me to death. If this does in fact happen I just want to say my goodbyes. It’s been fun…

why is the rum always gone?

I may or may not have just figured out how to pirate movies off the internet. It depends on what you consider pirating... and since I think of rum and eye patches I'm innocent. I've always wanted to be a pirate though so either way I'm ok with you calling me a pirate.

So I just ran my Korean washing machine for the first time and I was really proud of myself until I went into my laundry room and found it flooded with water. One of my team teachers came over after school just to show me how to use it so I covered it with pink little labels so I know what each button means. That is one thing that is amazing about this culture. They are so kind and will absolutely go out of their way to help you in anyway that they can. Everyday when I leave school I am bombarded with girls who will run up to me and say "Hello! Hi teacher! How are you? We love you!" and that is the most refreshing thing in the world especially coming from middle schools in the U.S. where alot of students purposely avoid you and on occasion call you names that make you wanna cry. And just as a side note, while the teachers at my school call me "Washington!", my students, especially the girls are enamored with my curly hair and so now I have been promoted to "Beautiful Curly Washington!" But I digress and as a matter of fact I took a short break from writing this paragraph to discover my laundry room flooding for real. I totally jinxed myself by exaggerating earlier and now I'm waiting for my non-English speaking landlord, who by the way is another wonderfully selfless person, to come and save me.

Interesting story from this weekend that I was just telling one of my friends whose name rhymes with Seth over email. So Friday, I changed out of my work clothes in the bathroom of the subway station into my normal attire of bum clothes i.e. sweats and flip flops, on my way to meet a friend. I'm on the subway and remember that I need my card to scan off of the sub as well so I flip open my bag and...my bra flies out and lands in the middle of the floor while about a million people stand there staring it. Also, I had been wondering why these older women kept staring at me and realized after I picked it up that I had been sitting in the seats reserved for senior citizens. Way to go. Ash 0 Korea 2. Then I met Lyndsey and she forgot how to get back to her house so we were lost in pouring rain for over an hour. Not exaggerating. So Saturday and Sunday she spent all day making a map to her house, haha. Gotta love her.

Saturday and Sunday I went on some amazing hikes. It was freezing cold and pretty overcast but well worth it as you can see...

This is from Uam Historical Site...I can't really remember the history behind it but we found it at night and it was so cool. Plus the view of the city was amazing.

This is from the top of Mt. Bomun...I think that's the name anyways...but I definitely wiped out a good one on the way down.

There are also a bunch of natural springs on the way up. They have little cup things that everyone just grabs and drinks out of...but I wasn't adventurous enough to drink out of a little plastic thingy that had a million other mouths on it. I know, call me lame. But I did it the rogue way which is way cooler.

I think the hardest thing about being this far away is that I'm missing out on some big things back home. But I suppose big things happen all of the time so there's really no good time to leave for a year. Anyways, my friend Heather is pregnant with her second child and I'm pretty bummed that I won't be there when he's born (I know it's a he, I just know these things). Also, the thought of not being around for PLU volleyball for the first time in 8 years absolutely kills me. I really do feel a little sick when I think about it. And I just miss EVERYONE. So ya, just thought I would vent about that for a hot minute.

Last thing, saw a woman pick the biggest booger out of her nose on the subway the other day. I was trying so very hard to be chill about it but I gagged a good one. Oh my gosh it was so awful. I can't do boogers.

Oh. My. Gosh.

So, I wasn't planning on doing one of these deals today but I just have to tell you all this. Four days of the week I'm at an all girls middle school and on friday I'm at an all boys middle school which is only 10 minutes from my house. My first school is about a 25 minute walk and is in the middle of probably the poorest part in all of Daejeon. Basically, if you walk thirty minutes north from my house you're in the newest part of the city and if you walk thirty minutes south you're in the lowest income area in the entire city. So at the girl's school, I was kind of suprised my first day because they had said at orientation that we are going to be floored with the technology our classrooms have at our schools...but I have a chalkboard. That's it. And I don't have a classroom either, I have to travel from classroom to classroom and bring my computer with me. I do have an office but it's just going to take some major creativity to get these girls involved since I don't have the resources.

But, I just got to my second school and I have my own English lab that had over $80,000 put into it last year. I have two gigantic computers at my desk that I can do video editing on. There's twenty computers in here, two projectors, a computerized podium, and an entire office that's seperate just for video editing. And I have A BLUE SCREEN in the back of my room. You know the things they use in action movies to make stuff look real?? Ya, I have one of those. IN MY ROOM. So stinkin cool. I might just produce movies for the next year and do that for a living when I come back.

Alright, that's all I got. Except I have been asked by 4 boys so far today if my hair is real...
Hmmm.

I'm getting married...

Well, I just went out with some of my friends in the city and two of them figured out that in our contract it states that if we are to get married during the time of our contract we have an additional week off...so one of my friend's and I decided we would just seal the deal. He couldn't get under the table to propose but I still accept.

I have realized that I am currently experiencing the kind of celebrity status that Britney Spears does after a concert while I am at school. Anytime I walk down the hall the girls will flock towards me, say hello and bow, and then run away screaming and giggling. It's so funny. For the past two days I have shown them pictures of my family, friends, Seattle, Tucson, and my PLU volleyball girls and all they want to know about are "my celebrity volleyball players." I let them loose today in class and just gave them the chance to drill me with questions hoping that it would kind of get it out of their system and these are the questions I got:
"Do you have a boyfriend and when are you going to get married?"
"What is your blood type?"
"Why do foreigners have big noses?"
"Have you ever had plastic surgery?"
There were a couple of others where I just stood there for what seemed like 20 minutes and tried to figure out how I was going to respond.

Also, I have pictures! I'm only going to show you a few but here's a couple that will show you what life is like over here...



So, this would be the octopus that I semi-attempted to eat. I know you can see the veins in my eyes (it was a long day) and my chipped tooth is quite visible (compliments of Anella Olbertz...even though she'll deny it) but I still feel like I'm almost more brave than Bear Grylls.



I pretty much live smack in the middle of this University. I don't have any pictures of my place uploaded yet but they will be coming once I make it look presentable:)




This is the street I live on...I couldn't pronounce it if I tried.



This is a picture I took as I was walking into the city the other day...every single one of those buildings is an apartment...crazy huh?
Thanks for following! I love reading your comments:) More pictures to come soon!

Smash.

Life in the Tuna Can...

So one of my friends here the other day brilliantly came up with the term "tuna can" for our flats over here. It's totally appropriate especially for mine because when I look out my window all I see is the wall to another building. Haha, tuna can. It's perfect.

So today I started school and I didn't get to teach because it's their first day of the school year so there were alot of different things going on. In middle school over here it's different because you stay in the same classroom the whole time and the teachers come to you...and your schedule differs every day. The kids are in class from 8:30 until 4:30 straight which is not that bad considering in high school they get to school around 7 am and leave around 11 and sometimes 12...at night. That's how seriously they take academics. Anyways though, I have a total of 22 different classes a week which also means that I plan ONE lesson a week and teach it 22 times. Saweeet. It also means though that since classes have 35 students at the minimum, I'm going to have around 760 students in total. Considering I can't remember birthdays I highly doubt I'll remember each and every name...

Since I travel from classroom to classroom I have an office and it's pretty tight because it looks out over the city. I was pretty much cooped up in there all day though and before I left I walked into the administrative offices and when I did everyone stood up and yelled "Washington!" So funny. One guy even got out his English translation book and was trying to talk to me so I pulled my Korean one out. We had the most unsuccessful conversation ever...he asked me at one point what I did over the weekend and my response was "orange". I had meant to say "shop". What a noob.

P.S. the pic on the top of my blog is of my mini brother and sister, Christian and Hannah. They're wonderful and one of the reasons it's so cool that I'm getting to experience this is because Christian is actually adopted from South Korea. He's the most wonderful kid on the planet and I'm really hoping I can get him over here.

Last thing, I made a friend who owns this photo shop down the street the other day and he speaks super English. So tomorrow he's going to put all my pics on a disc so I can actually upload them onto here and you guys can see what it's like on the other side of the world!
Annyonghi! (That means goodbye...if you can say it then you officially know as much Korean as I do).