pictures woo!

My first week here I met a guy down the street who owns this awesome little photo shop and speaks English so he's helped me with a million things since then. This week he ordered me this cool gadget thingy that plugs into my computer and i just pop my memory card into it since I lost my camera cord and would have to go to Seoul to get a new one. Soooo, I'm just going to put some pics for this post!

Last weekend we went to Busan for the long weekend! Friday was gorgeous and I, of course, got totally fried.




Ok. This is HUGE. When I visited my friend Kristy in North Carolina when I was in high school I fell in looooove with this stuff. And you can't find it anywhere on the west coast...but you can get it in Korea????




Woohoo!


Busan at night




Saturday and Sunday it poured...we walked by this group of kids playing a baseball game before it started monsooning out (not sure if "monsooning" is a word...). Love the kid with the megaphone:)


Saturday night we went to the aquarium in Busan which is the biggest one in all of Korea...and they had SHARKS! Anytime I see anything to do with sharks or dinosaurs I automatically become about 5 years old. I could live in this aquarium for the rest of my life and be perfectly happy.







I had no idea that you're not supposed to be on the beach if a tsunami happens... :)


These pics aren't from Busan but I found this amazing route about a half mile from my house that is my new favorite place to run. Not only does it remind me of Trinidad but there are no people!




Welp, that's all for now! I love reading all of your comments even though I'm horrible at responding to them. Keep em coming!

Elderly

About a month ago I finally got a new computer that wasn't about to blow up and I was stoked because I could finally upload pics onto my computer instead of having my Korean photo friend do it for me and what do I do? I lose the cord that connects from my camera to my comp. Doh! Sorry folks, I'll have pics soon.

This past weekend I experienced the "I-just-want-to-pretend-i'm-not-in-korea-for-a-hot-minute-because-i'm-so-annoyed-disease"...or at least that's what I diagnosed myself with. I was just kind of exhausted from the miscommunications due to the language barrier, being elbowed in the face by people on the subway, having to plow people over on the sidewalks (this should be a blog in itself. just walking on sidewalks becomes pretty frustrating because of the walking pattern of people over here...or lack thereof), and constantly being stared at. The being stared at thing gets on my nerves more than anything and it's weird because some of the english teachers have said they don't really notice it anymore but I really think it's because of my hair. I know that sounds silly but I suppose I would stare too if I had never seen an afro. Needless to say though, going into Monday I was a bit of a grump. About a month ago, all of my kids wrote letters to pen pals and my mom did an amazing job of distributing them to schools all over Tucson so for this week's lesson the kids got to read their letters and had been ruthlessly asking me about it up until that point so it was a pretty big deal. I go into my first period class where all of the girls are so great except for one team/group that gives me a hard time every single stinkin week. So I pass out the letters and all of the girls are going absolutely nuts because they are so excited...except that one group. I look over and they are pouting more obviously than I have ever seen anyone pout so I walked over to ask what was wrong. "I hate Kelly" says one of the girls and points to her letter. Apparently, because their letter was shorter than all of the other teams they decided to throw a hissy fit. So being a very mature educator, I grabbed the letter and muttered under my breath "Well, Kelly doesn't like you either". Hahaha I know, grow up right? Ya, someday it will happen. But in my head I'm thinking "Come here Samsung, I'm gonna throttle you and dropkick you to freaking China you little punk."

It's funny how things happen though. Without fail, whenever I have the crappiest days, there's always a ton of little things that happen the next day that remind me why I love being here. I've really gotten to know a lot of my students and I can predict down to the minute now when certain girls will come into my office throughout the day. Donald Duck is definitely the most frequent visitor, but I have one student that for the past two weeks has decided to change her name every single day. Most students call me "Ashleigh Teacher" or "Ashoree" but in Korean, the word for teacher is "seon-saeng-nim" so students will either address their teachers as that or "Sam" which is kind of funny. But this girl is one of only a few kids that calls me "Sam" so that morning after my near blowup the previous day, she slides open the office door and yells "Sam! Name today! Elderly!" So the entire day, I nearly died every time I saw her because I had to call her "Elderly"! Then, maybe twenty minutes after that, Crazy Minji comes in and had forgotten her school slippers, which if that happens the students just wear their socks around all day. But she had made these shoes with paper and tape and it was HILARIOUS because she struts in with two other girls and starts doing the runway trot to show off her new fashion creation. Then, today I'm trying to explain a game to Elderly's class which tends to get kind of loud and crazy so I will always say "chill out" or "settle down" when they start getting wild, and whenever I do they always mimic what I say. Normally when I want classes to be quiet I'll just stand there and wait and one or two other students will quiet everyone down but I started to get impatient and I clapped and yelled "Hey listen!" and Elderly, who was "Pencil Case" today, says "Oh Sam chill outa" and stands there smiling. Haha, if I knew they were doing it to be turds it probably wouldn't be funny at all but these girls are so wonderful it's hard not to smile.

I'm probably going to sound like Mary Poppins when I say this but I think one of my favorite things about South Korea, at least while it's warm, is the birds. They are so loud but not in an annoying way, more of like a feeling of being on vacation. It reminds me of growing up and spending tons of time in Scottsdale, Arizona with my grandparents. One of my favorite memories ever. So it's kind of cool to feel connections to stuff like that if that makes sense. And yesterday, I got lost and it ended up being the most amazing run. I felt like I was running through the hills of Trinidad with all of the trees and the humidity. I might be going crazy. But either way, even though it's annoying sometimes to be so different, Korea is a pretty rad place with some pretty amazing people.

Gangster.

Even though I've gotten pretty used to the fact that I live in Korea I still am constantly wanting to tell people about the crazy/funny/absurd/awesome things that I experience on a daily basis. But, I've realized this week that I've become a bit of a yak-o-matic. I've moved into a bit of a selfish dimension where I think that just because I witness an ajumma spitting on the floor of the subway station or have famous Korean boy bands on my school campus, that everyone wants to hear about it all the time. Sure, it's exciting and makes for some good stories, but there's also some pretty big stuff going on back home. I think part of the reason I talk so much is because there's certain things that I don't want to think about missing out on, like the college volleyball season. A lot of you might not understand it but it's hard to even explain. It hurts my heart to even think about it. My huge little brother just granulated from college and is moving back to Tucson with his awesome wife. My best friend finally moved back to western Washington right after I bailed and is having another baby. My youngest brothers and sisters are growing up so stinkin fast. Good friends are graduating from college and moving to other planets called Alaska. Others are coming back from some pretty big time injuries so they can dominate during their senior seasons. I hope that I can be as great of a support to these amazing people as they have been to me since I've been over here...I've been blessed big time!

And to top it all off, Los Angeles is playing Phoenix in the Western Conference finals. This is HUGE. If Phoenix wins I will be the happiest person on planet Korea.

Speaking of blessings though, I started going to a church here about two months ago that I love. It's at Taejon Christian International School and is entirely in english with most of the community being teachers from the school or from other schools around Daejeon. The very first day I was there, I met a girl who coincidentally was the assistant volleyball coach at the school and told me that she was leaving in June and wouldn't be around for the next school year. So, she called up the head coach who played volleyball at a college in New York and has been coaching and teaching in Korea since and told her about me and right then she asked me to think about coaching with her next year. A friend and I went to play that Thursday so I could officially meet her and I soon realized she is an absolute monster (not in a bad way) because she can crush the ball. So, in short, I'm so so SO stoked that I will get to be around the game during my time in Korea!

Ok, last thing. So, when you walk around the streets of Daejeon, or anywhere in SoKo I'm sure, you are bound to see someone wearing a shirt that makes absolutely no sense. Last week I saw a girl wearing a shirt that said "Catnip Foundation Revolution". I've also seen some girls walking around wearing a shirt with some kind of derogatory word that is used towards females in HUGE letters and I guarantee you they have no clue what it means. This past Sunday, I was walking home from the subway after running a 10k that morning, which was a miracle that I survived because the night before I ate my bodyweight in pizza and Krispy Creme and stayed up until 3a.m. watching Harry Potter (I'm a wild one I know)...and then decided to eat a Fiber One bar right before the race. Don't eat FIBER before you run...ever...fyi. Needless to say, I kind of felt like I was going crazy when all of a sudden I walk by an ajumma, which is the term used for an older Korean woman, wearing a shirt that said "GANGSTER" in huge letters and had sparkly four-leaf clovers all over it. Hahaha. It was too funny to be true, so thinking that the donuts and fiber were getting the best of me, I actually walked back around just to make sure. And then I got the ajumma stare...but it was worth it because I wasn't seeing things.

Someone in our group of teachers found these ROKetship comics and they are so unbelievably funny because they are right on as to what it's like being a foreigner here in Korea. This...is the ajumma stare...


Welp, I think that's it for now! Adios muchachos.

We Are Martian

My friend Joe is a clever bloke. He says some pretty good one-liners and the other week I was telling him how excited I was (for the 80 millionth time) to have two of my friends come to Korea. He was saying how it's really kind of funny because when our family and friends come to visit, we will have them pretty fooled into thinking we know what we're doing. Although there are times where I know what's going on, there are many others where I have not a clue. As he put it "they will look at us like we're martians, when they will have just gotten off the ship", which is brilliant. I could probably fool a few people into thinking I'm a martian...for a while. Then they would realize that most of the time, I'm actually still stuck on the dang ship.

He also told me yesterday that my volleyball serves were like "a boy with no arms throwing a beach ball". I even googled "best comebacks ever" and couldn't come up with one nearly as clever.

Fridays are a kick. I only have boys which is a drastic change from the girls. While the girls are hovercrafts, the boys just stare at me through the classroom windows during passing periods and run off screaming and laughing whenever I look at them. Today was "Game Day" where we play some kind of review game so they are put into teams and get to choose a team name which is always hilarious. One class had some money team names like S.A.N.G (Sexy And Nice Guys), S.A.H.G (Smart And Handsome Guys), KBS (Korean Broadcast System), and Miss Kim. My co-teacher here is also the funniest guy. Many Koreans will throw some extra vowels on the end of english words so you hear "lunchee" for lunch or "changee" for change. He's a very kickback guy and today one class was getting pretty wild so I told them to quiet down and when they wouldn't he says "Please-a be-a quiet. If-a you want to die, please-a keep talking." and I almost died. Of course he's kidding and all of the students love him but I wish people could see how funny it is when he says stuff like that.

Also, thought you all might like another commercial. This one's hilarious.

I love TV

So, I have a few TV channels that are in english, but for the most part I watch Discovery Channel like I'm getting paid to do it...which would be the same as if I were living in America. But Korean TV is really weird because instead of having commercials every 7 minutes or so, they basically play the whole program and then have 15 minutes straight of purely Korean commercials and they play them over and over again. This week, I taught a total of three classes either because I was sick or my classes got cancelled so I had a TON of time to lesson plan...which was great because I really did get a lot done but at about 11am everyday I hit a lesson-planning wall and ended up watching youtube or frying my brain with facebook. So, I decided to share one commercial that I probably see 80 million times a week. No exaggeration. Sometimes I even wake up with this song in my head. It's pretty stinkin goofy and kind of catchy though...I might try to replicate it one of these days when I'm really bored:)



The past 2 out of 3 nights I've also dreamt that I was the Biggest Loser. Good news is I woke up feeling like a million bucks. Bad news is I think this is a sign that I watch too much TV. I don't really care though because I take pride in the fact that one of my best friends and I have repeatedly watched entire seasons of LOST and 24 in one sitting. We've been called pathetic on multiple occasions but we press on. And I feel like I need to uphold my end of that talent, even if I'm in Korea. It's like when a person is blessed with incredible athletic abilities, it would be silly for them not to play sports right? Totally.