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.