so, I went on a little vacation.

and it was wonderful!

Singapore is such a wonderful country!  It is absolutely gorgeous, the people are wonderful and there is so much culture and variety.

Holly, who is one of my closest friends here, and I left Seosan around noon on Christmas Eve and got to the airport four hours before our flight took off, a little earlier than we would have liked but we did get to catch a K-pop (Korean Pop) performance of Grease!

It was, well, not quite the Grease I am used to, but entertaining nonetheless!

Once we got on the plane we were only in the air for about two hours to our first layover in Bejing.  Language barriers made security interesting, as they could not fully understand what my insulin pump was or why I would be carrying juice with me, but after that was over we found an airport lounge and had a few drinks. 

The first was probably one of the worst bloody marys I have ever had...oh well!

Next was a beer, with flavor!

Here is the lounge, it really didn't look that cool, but the flash on my camera makes it look much more appealing than it really was.

happy new year!

So, I am back from Singapore and it was AMAZING! But, I don't have enough time to post about that right now, so here is a link of my favorite little nuggets singing at the English Festival a few weeks ago.
Enjoy!

English Festival Song

p.s. I am really sorry that you can probably hear me singing...

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!