Singapore!

I am in Singapore, and it is amazing and beautiful and wonderful and ugh. I have many pictures, here are a few!

More to come when I return, but for now I am off to do more exploring!

holy moly. Kim Jong Il has passed.

Honestly, I’m not sure what I am more surprised about, the fact that he is dead or how ridiculously normal things are around here.  I didn’t even find out about it until half way through the day, my Korean co-teachers didn’t really even seem phased by it.  When I mentioned it they all already knew and were quite nonchalant about the whole thing, the other foreigners and myself were quite taken aback.  However doing a little reading has put me at ease.  Even though South Korea has heightened it’s security and observation of North Korea, there hasn’t been any unusual activity at all.  The Korean Government has urged everyone to carry on business as usual and well, they have. 

As far as I know this will not affect my travel plans at all and I am still heading to Singapore on Saturday!

I just got home from work a few hours and put up Christmas lights that I received in a very lovely care package from my family!  I’ll post pictures soon, I need to tidy up a bit before my apartment is on display for the public.

Tomorrow is going to be a hectic day as it is our English Festival, which is a program that we put on for the parents to show them how wonderful their children are and how great the teaching staff is.  I will try to get some videos and photos of that as well…should be pretty entertaining!

I hope to post again before I leave for my trip, but I just wanted anyone with concern to know that all is well over here!

Thanksgiving!

Well, Thanksgiving has come and gone and I have been here for 5 months already, crazy!  Not going to lie, I was super homesick for a good portion of that week.

Thanksgiving day was weird because it was just like every other day.  I went to work, came home, met up with some friends.  No turkey, no family, no warm cozyness and scents of amazing food being cooked, it was just weird.  I think it was even more difficult on Friday because that was the time when everyone back home was celebrating.  Seeing facebook status updates of everyone being with their families and eating turkey was kind of a bummer, and then I slept through an alarm to skype with my family at their Thanksgiving...I did get to chat with my parents, Erin and her husband (which is still really weird for me to say), but I reallllllllllllly (all of the l's are for emphasis) wanted to see my grandparents, being here for five months means I haven't seen them in that long, and I miss them terribly!  I did call them though, and chatting with them is always nice!  They are so impressed with how well they can hear me when I am in Korea, it's so cute when they talk about how well they can hear me and how impressed they are that I am talking to them from my computer.

Being here is really lovely, I promise, but sometimes I kind of wish everyone would stop doing things so I wouldn't be missing out on things back home.  Erin and her husband hosted their first Thanksgiving in their new home, that is something I really wish I could have been around for.  I did, however, have my own little gathering and that helped the homesickness SO MUCH!  As I have mentioned many times before I have some really great friends here, plus my friend Laura from University lives a little over an hour away so she, Holly and Alice came over. I made chicken, blue cheese mashed potatoes, and rosemary flat bread, not really a traditional Thanksgiving meal, but it didn't taste at all Korean so that was really wonderful!

My apartment smelled like homemade food, was warm and cozy, and I was with some very lovely people, which was exactly what I needed.  We ate dinner and hung out and it was really really lovely!

This past week went well!  We just got a new foreign teacher at my school to replace Cassie and the two girls who fled, yes fled, but that is kind of a long story, they're gone and I think the new girl will work out well!  Wednesday was also my last day of my adult class, and although I enjoyed teaching it I am kind of glad it's done, I now have my week nights back!  Teaching that class made for some long Wednesdays, and having to prepare materials which took a few more hours every week in addition to my normal teaching job just ended up being a lot of work and left me pretty worn out by the end of the week.  It was definitely a good experience though, and I would probably take on another if given the opportunity.

My kids are still so wonderful well, at least my youngest ones.  I have a play list with Ella Fitzgerald, Frank Sinatra, and some classical music on it, and one day one of my favorite little nuggets came up to me and said, "Amy, you make me feel so young," she's 5, I melted.

This weekend was also really great!  I went out with friends on Friday night and the bar was filled with foreigners, I felt like I was at a bar at home, it was really nice.  Saturday I volunteered and it was so great!  The first hour we taught the kids English as usual, then the second hour we had them make Christmas decorations and it was so great!  Usually when 3:45 hits the kids get their snack and leave as quickly as they can, but this past Saturday they stayed until 4:00 without even realizing it was that late, they were all so wrapped up in making paper chains and snowflakes, it was pretty awesome to see them all working like that and really enjoying themselves.

Lola is still wonderful, she loves to sit in my lap whenever I am on my computer, so she is a little annoyed with me right now because my computer is on my lap.

This is what she prefers, and those who have skyped with me are pretty used to seeing this.

Oh, I am also going to Singapore for a week over Christmas!  I leave Christmas Eve at 6:00pm and will be in Singapore by 5:00 Christmas morning.  It is only an eight hour flight, but we have a four hour layover in Beijing.  It will be weird to have a Christmas without snow, but I think the white sand on the beach will be pretty ok too.

I'm sure there is more I could say, but I have some things to get done before I skype with my parents.  

I hope everyone is enjoying the holidays!

where should I begin?

My word.  It has been a month since my last post, if that even counts.  I have done some pretty cool things the past few months, so I will do my best to share my experiences!

Way back in September I did a temple stay in Seosan with some good friends and it was wonderful!  First, incase anyone was wondering, I have not converted to Buddhism, but going there was a great way to learn about and appreciate the religion, as well as a wonderful way to relax and de-stress.

When we first got there we changed out of our street clothes into clothes provided to us by the temple...they were quite the stylish get-ups.

This is myself along with some of my friends who did the temple stay.

Once we were changed into our lovely orange numbers we watched a video that educated us on staying in the temple and being respectful to others and the religion, it was pretty interesting.  After watching we realized that we had already broken almost rule that we were supposed to follow, unintentionally of course, and we were now much more cautious.  

Next came the bowing. Oh my goodness, monks have some stamina.  We only did on  108 bows and that was painful, the monk informed us that he has done over 10,000 at a time, I can only imagine the pain that he must have felt after that.  The coolest thing about this part of the experience is that while we were bowing we were also make a necklace and putting one bead on for every bow, everything was going pretty smoothly until bow number 78 when I dropped one end of the string and all of my beads fell off.  I kept going to finish my bows and out the necklace back together once I was done, here is the finished product:

This is probably one of my favorite photos from the whole weekend, it's mine and my friend's hands with our finished necklaces, which also work quite nicely as bracelets! (I wear mine almost everyday) 

After the bowing we had worked up quite an appetite and were relieved to know that dinner was next and man do monks eat well!  The food was delicious!  They are not allowed to eat any animals but have some pretty tasty meat substitutes that had me fooled.

After dinner we had a little break and then yoga with the most authentic instructor I will probably ever come in contact with. 

Incase you weren't sure he is the little bearded man in the middle.

I am pretty sure he was made of rubber, he could fold himself into the tiniest little man ball and it was so cool!  Unfortunately, he wouldn't let us do many of the poses because we had just, "taken the dinner" and he did not want us to disrupt our digestion, regardless, it was still pretty cool.

After yoga we had some tea and were then in for quite the performance from the monk who lived at the temple.  At first he was singing some traditional songs which were very beautiful, then he started singing some Korean Pop and encouraging us to dance. It was awesome. Once the performance was over we sat around to talk with the others who were doing the temple stay and were treated to some lovely rice cakes and wonderful conversation.  We had the opportunity to sit and talk with the yoga instructor, which was definitely one of the highlights of our stay.  This man was so enlightened and at peace with everything.  Our conversation with him felt like one of those enlightening conversations that only Hollywood could script, but it actually happened, and was so so so cool!  Our temple mom had to cut the conversation short though because bed time was at 10:00 pm, and for good reason, we were waking up at 6:00 am to climb a mountain!

Once we went to bed it turned into a giant slumber party.  I felt like a little kid at camp, there were 7 girls, all close friends, and we sat around and giggled and talked about everything, it was so great.  6:00 came much too soon but we all woke up climbed to the top of the mountain in Seosan that I posted pictures of a while back, it was pretty cool.  Once we returned to the temple we had breakfast, made a really cool lantern, had tea with the monk, and then our temple stay was over.  The sense of relaxation and rejuvenation that I had after that weekend was incredible, and I definitely see myself doing a few more before I leave Korea.

Fast forwarding to where I am now my friend group has almost completely changed, solely due to the fact that contracts ended and friends left and new friends came.  A few weeks ago I had four goodbyes in two days, that was tough.  Fortunately, the new people who have come are pretty wonderful! I also now have a really good friend from University here!  My friend Laura lives in Daejeon which is about an hour and a half bus ride from me, not bad at all!  I have seen several times and it is so nice to have a bit of home here in Korea!

Well, I need to move onto other things, sorry if this post is really jumbled, it was really bothering me that I hadn't posted anything in quite some time.  I will try my hardest to do a few more posts in the near future so that this is finally up to date.

Still loving living in Korea.

: )

i am alive!

and doing very well! I have just been really busy but I promise I will try to give a complete update very soon, I have done some pretty cool things the past few weeks.

But, as this is not going to be a complete update, I will just leave you with something adorable the one of my favorite students did.  I told my kids to draw their favorite things, and this was one of the results, enjoy!

It says, "My favorite things are lunch and Amy I love and flower and I love and apple."

It makes no sense, but it is absolutely adorable, and one of the many reasons why I love teaching and my kids!

just a little update!

My week:

Work: A little rough, not due to the children, all is well now!

Life (outside of work): Lovely! I received two very wonderful care packages in the mail!  One was from my mom and had some of her wonderful homemade salsa, some Frank's hot sauce (my favorite! but I can't get it here), honey, and some other wonderful things from home that I miss.  The other package that I got was from Dani, she also sent me some wonderful love! Not only did I get mac n' cheese (also not available in Korea), but she made me some really wonderful things as well!  She made me a pillow that says HUGZ on it, she sent it because when I was talking to her one day I told her I really just wanted a hug from home, so she sent me one the best way she knew how.

That is Lola and me with my HUGZ pillow...Lola wasn't too excited about the picture...the box also contained another pillow case that says Thugs n' Kittens...that is an inside joke of sorts because we like to sign our emails Thugs n' Kittens instead of hugs and kisses...hmmm...perhaps that should have been kept inside, oh well!  There were also some lovely headbands and a really really really good cd that she made for me.  Both packages certainly made me feel very, very loved and made for a lovely surprise!

The not so lovely part of my week was this morning when I had to send off another friend.  Man, this is tough, and certainly my least favorite part of living here.  I said this before, you get so close with people here, and I have found such an awesome group of people that anyone's absence is certainly felt, but I welcome the new people and look forward to seeing those who left in the future!

Well that sums up my week. Now I am going to try and be productive with my time and get some lesson plans done, go grocery shopping, and hopefully clean up my apartment a bit. 

dang, rereading the last part it does not sound like I am just a kid on some traveling adventure, but like I am an adult who actually moved across the world and has become quite settled.

crazy.

Happy Chuseok!

Ok, so this post really has nothing to do with Chuseok at all, but I don't work today or tomorrow because of Chuseok so I am quite happy about that!

Everything is still going well but I was getting a little homesick a few days ago and as I was skyping Dani my friend Sabrina knocked on my door and invited me to her place for dinner, she said it was going to be a Chinese meal with three other people who could not speak English, but I gladly accepted the invite.  It was kind of funny, as I was sitting there listening in on a conversation I could not understand, eating delicious food that was completely foreign to me my homesickness went away.  Even though I miss my friends and family from home so much, I have such a great little family over here that homesickness doesn't last too long because we all look out for one another, and it is pretty great.

Not too much has happened since my last post, this weekend was a fun one though, filled with noraebang and the usual Seosan shenanigans.  I have spent a good portion of today looking into the GRE and getting the itch to go back to school, I am also trying to figure out how get my camera fixed because some pretty cool adventures are being planned right now.

Also, I was finally able to upload pictures of the view from hostel in Busan from about a month ago.  These were all taken right across the street from my hostel.

The building on the left is where my hostel was.

Holy wow, I almost forgot how awesome that place was...I'll probably have to go back soon!

That's all for now.

Keep it real.

i am berry berry berry berry berry i love you Amy Teacher and love you Lola.

Everyday I begin class with my youngest students by asking them how they are doing.  At first their responses were a quick happy or angry, etc., then they began to say berry (very) about a million times, so I had to limit them to only 5 berries, which I used to count but they now do that themselves.  After a little while they began to get more creative with their responses, Griffen would say he was, "berry berry berry berry berry popcorn," so I wrote his name on the board as Popcorn, then students would say they are very hot summer, a berry berry berry berry berry terrible and catchy k-pop song.

When I first got Lola I brought in a picture of her for my student's to see and now, and for about the past two weeks, almost if not all of my students will say, "I am berry berry berry berry berry berry I love you Amy Teacher and I love you Lola," ugh.  I melt every morning.  Now I can't walk by their classroom or go through a portion of class without a student raising their hand to tell me that they love either myself, Lola, or both of us. It is wonderful.

I was also anxiously awaiting the day when my students would draw me and, that day has come!  Here is the first picture that was drawn of me by a student:

This was done by Sky, he is not in the class that I mentioned previously, though he is the student who told me I was his little kimchi...so I am pretty sure he does like me.

The next two were done by girls in the class that I was just talking about...they have a very interesting depiction of my insulin pump...

And, last but not least...SUPER LOLA! 

That is almost an exact replica of the picture I draw on the board every day...probably because I am just that bad at drawing.

School is going very well!  I also started another teaching job last night, my boss is putting me on loan to another hagwon to teach an adult class.  At first I was very nervous, not only am I teaching adults but his wife is also in the class; however, after last night I am pretty confident that the class is going to go very well.  I was nervous about how to go about teaching adults since I am used to instructing 5-12 year olds, but I was quite comfortable in front of the class and their level of English is much beyond what I expected so I think it is going to be a fun few months with them!

Other than that I did go to a baseball game a few weeks ago and it was a lot of fun! No pictures though, I still haven't gotten my camera fixed.  I also went on a wine train this past weekend and that was just as much fun as it sounds!  I sat on a train with my good friends and drank wine, it was lovely!  

This weekend brings another break, yay for Korean Thanksgiving!  I don't have plans to go anywhere though, I think hanging out in Seosan will be nice and relaxing and give me an opportunity to put a dent in the book I have started, address the post cards I wrote out about three weeks ago, and do a little yoga, plus I think Lola will enjoy actually having me in the apartment for more than sleeping.

Life is good, really really good.

: )

shoot, I was afraid this was going to happen.

While looking at Dani's blog I realized that I have completely neglected my own for quite some time, and for that I apologize.  I also apologize because I don't have many new pictures to put up : (  My camera died a few weeks ago so I need to figure out what to send in to use my warranty and get it fixed.

However, just because I don't have many pictures to put up does not mean that things aren't happening.  First, I am still OBSESSED with Korean t-shirts, this one is my best find yet!

Seriously?! How awesome.

This next one is a close second:

When I took the picture I didn't know how to use the flip function on my computer, but incase you can't tell that says, "Boston, MassachuBATTS." ugh. so good. 

Also, after much thinking and talking with friends, I decided to get a cat. Her name is Lola and she is so incredibly wonderful.  I have lovely friends here, but it is so nice to come home to something!  Here she is: 

Once my camera is fixed I am sure there will be many more photos.  She is sooo perfect.  She sleeps next to me, hops up on the couch when I pat it, and is so excited to see me when I come home from work. 

I haven't been on any crazy adventures lately, but staying in Seosan has been nice.  My students are wonderful as always.  I have several classes that I am particularly fond of and I refer to them as my sugar dumplings, when doing that one day my student, Sky, replied, "Teacher, if I am your sugar dumpling then you are my little kimchi," how absolutely adorable. I melted. 

Last night was the first time that I had to say goodbye to a friend and, unfortunately, many of the people who I have become very close with will be leaving within the next two months.  I realize I have not known these people for very long but goodness, we have such a tight knit group here and when someone leaves you certainly feel it.  It was a bummer to say bye, but I know we will keep in touch and in coming here I knew that I was replacing someone and someday someone will be replacing me, unfortunate that it works that way and that people come and go so often, but that is only more wonderful people to have in my life, more couches to crash on and places to visit when I get back to the states!

That's all for now, but plans for a baseball game are in the works for this weekend so hopefully some fun will result from that!

I'll try to shorten the distance between this post and the next!

my mom reminded me that it had been a little while since i had posted anything...

Sorry about that...

My last post was during my vacation and right before I went to Busan!  Busan is a very lovely city on the southeastern coast of Korea, I went there with my friend Joe and we stayed there for four wonderful days.

We left Seosan on Thursday afternoon headed toward Daejon to catch the KTX (a train that goes super fast) and got into Busan around 9:00 on Thursday night.  The Korean countryside is really pretty, here are some pictures from the KTX:

Once we got to the hostel we were staying at we received a warm welcome from Tiger, who runs the hostel, and all of the other travelers there.  It was pretty cool, everyone was hanging out like they were at a friend's house and discussing their plans for the evening, which they wanted to make sure we were included in!  We had missed dinner with them so we went to grab a bite to eat and met up with them a little later on in the evening...Tiger certainly knows how to show his guests a good time.

Once we woke up on Friday we went venturing around Busan, it is a pretty big city but has a very great public transportation system, as does most of Korea, so getting around was really easy.  We had planned on going to the beach but instead wound up spending the majority of the day wandering around different shops and I bought a really cool pair of orange shoes for 5,000 won (about $5.00), and was quite pleased.  That night we went out to dinner with a group of people from the hostel and had Korean BBQ, I seriously cannot get enough of it, it is SO GOOD!

There were quite a few of us, i'm not sure where everyone was when I took these pictures, but these were all that I took at dinner...

After dinner we went to a bar called Thursday Party, it was MADE for foreigners.  They have a beer pong table, darts, and reasonably priced beer, it was lovely.  Once we decided we were done there we moved on to a different Thursday Party (there are 8 in Busan) in another part of town where I met several people from MN and a bunch of other foreigners who live in Busan, it is always lovely to meet new foreigners.  We decided to end that night a little earlier than we had the night before, which was fine with me, so we hopped in a cab and went back to the hostel.

Saturday we went to the aquarium, it was pretty cool, and I took a ton of pictures!  But, before heading in to the aquarium Joe and I thought it would be a good idea to get artificial tattoos of cats, they made us look pretty tough.

We also ran into some large dancing fish people...they were pretty cool.

Then, we entered the aquarium!

There were some pretty cool fish there, unfortunately, I cannot remember what many of them were...

After the aquarium we went back the hostel to see what everyone else was up to and plan our adventure for out last night in Busan.  First we went to dinner with some of the people from the hostel and had sashimi which is raw fish!  I was nervous, but it was actually really good!

These are all of the complimentary sides they give you.

Including shrimp...with eyeballs still attached...

This was the sashimi.

After dinner they gave us soup, complete with a fish head and brains still inside... 

When dinner was done we wandered off to the beach in search of a music festival that we could not find so, instead, we sat on the beach and enjoyed some games, lovely conversation, and watching the tide, which was crazy because there was a typhoon in Japan on its way towards us.

Fortunately for us, the typhoon changed its path and went to China, though it was pretty serious, several of my friends were stuck in Shanghai for several days on their way back from Thailand because of it and around 200,000 people had to be evacuated from their homes.

We made it back without too many complications and I think now, over a week later, I am finally caught up on sleep.  I was going to post some pictures of the view from my hostel, which was right across the street from the ocean, but after an hour of trying to upload them I am done waiting.  I will try again later and write more soon!  I also have today off for Korean Independence day so I am going to go wander around and find a good place to read my book and write some postcards!