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!