This weekend I met up with Shannon, a girl that I had worked with at ECC and had travelled to Vietnam with a few years ago.  We went to Dr Fish, which seems to be the new craze in Seoul.  When you walk it it looks just like any other cute little coffee shop.  But at this place after you’ve finished your drinks, you can pay a little extra to see the Dr Fish, which are little minnow type fish that eat dead skin cells.  So you take off your shoes and socks, roll up your pants, and put your feet into a tank filled with hundreds of these crazy little fish that attack your feet.  (Now, you all know that I love reflexology, so I thought I was sort of immune to having tickelish feet, but those little fish sure made me squirm! You would finally get used to the weird sensation of all the fish bombarding your feet and shins, when one would get between your toes or and make you jump.)  What a crazy idea!  But it was sure fun to try it out!

I’ve been back in Seoul for almost 2 weeks now, and I’m pretty settled into my apartment and job.  Full time kindergarten starts tomorrow, so we’ll see how the kids do when they actually have to study and do worksheets instead of just playing and coloring for a few hours.  On Friday, one of my little 5 year old boys walked up to me, grabbed my hand, and gave it a little kiss.  It was so adorable!  Then later in the afternoon,  a different little 6 year old in a different class, walked up to me while I was crouched on the floor helping the kids with their backpacks, and gave me a little peck on the cheeck.  No student ever kissed me before, then it happened twice in 1 day!  I must be turning into a guy magnet.  (Well at least for 5 year old boys, anyways.)

I’ve been back in Korea for almost 5 days now.  I’ve moved into my apartment, meet my boss and coworker, and had a hour session with my new kindy class.  So it’s been a busy week!

 Dealing with my apartment was a bit of a challenge.  I thought that the school had already arranged an apartment for me, so I wasn’t too excited when they told me that we would have to go apartment hunting, and that the school was only providing us with $400/month for rent.  Lauren (one of my co-workers), Steve (an administrative person from the school), and I ended up finding a few apartments that were in our price range.  So I am now living in a tiny little studio about 6 subway stops away from my school.  At first I was freaking out about having to live there for a whole year, but when my furniture arrived and I had arranged and unpacked it started to feel a bit like home.  My favortie thing about the apartment is that there is a really cool little traditional Korean Market only a few blocks away.  So I can just wander down the street and buy fruit, veggies, homemade tofu, kitchen stuff, and pretty much anything I would want from little stalls on the side of the road.  I love not having to shop in those Wal-Mart type stores!

My school seems pretty good, but I was not prepared for how many hours we would be working in the day.  I am with my kindy kids from 9:30am until 2:30 pm with albsolutely no breaks!!  (Well, 30 mins for lunch, but that doesn’t really count.) Than I’ll be teaching elementary school kids for 4 hours after that on Monday, Wednesdays, and Fridays (again with no breaks)!  I knew there had to be a catch, for the school to be paying me so much.  I’m trying to look on the bright side, but that is a lot of teaching and no prep time or down time between classes.

I am teaching a 6 year old (Korean age, so really 5 year old) kindy class.  The kids and their moms came to school today for an hour to meet me and have a little meeting with the principal.  1 of the little boys took one look at me and then started bawling for about 45 minutes.  (I’m the first westerner most of them have seen, so I must be pretty scary!)  But luckily by the end of class he had joined in to sing songs and was giving me high hi’s.  I have a few kids that are super smart.  One girl spoke in full sentences, knew how to write in English, count, knew all of her colors and numbers etc!  I will also have an assistant teacher in my classroom with me all day, but she doesn’t really speak English so that will be interesting.

Well, that’s pretty much it for now.  I’ll let you know how I’m settling into new life later on. 

Well, as most of you know I spent about a month in the States visiting family and friends gefore heading out again.  It was great to catch up with everyone and just unwind!  I spent 2 weeks in MN and a week in Ft Myers, FL.  (Boy was it nice to have a break from the cold weather.  After living in SE Asia, I don’t think I’ll ever be able to coop with a MN winter again!)

I’m back in Seoul, Korea now.  I’ll be working at SOT (School of Tomorrow) in Gangnam.  I just arrived last night, so I haven’t seen the school or any of my co-workers yet.  My flights were pretty uneventful, except for the fact that a zipper on a little compartment of my backpack opened.  I can just imagine my dirty laundry laying on the runway in Tokyo or something. 

The school was nice enough to send a car to pick me up at the airport (ushually they just tell you to take the airport bus into the city).  And they are putting me up in a great hotel room, so I’m living a life of luxury at the moment!  My hotel room has so many great ammenities, like the biggest flat screen tv I’ve ever seen. (It is seriously at least 5 feet long!)  Also, there is a computer with free Internet, a jacuzzi bath tub, and a fridge!

I found some gimbap and aloe juice for breakfast and now I’m just chilling out until someone from the school calls me or comes to get me.

Yes, that is something that one of my students actually asked me.  I have 2 rowdy 12 year old boys (Eric and Steve) in one of my classes.  They are pretty smart, but just like to goof off and are actually super funny.  Obviously they always like to sidetrack the class and have bizarre conversations with me about anything, but their reading books.  So on Friday, I wasn’t surprised at all when Eric said that Hwan (a girl in the class) had seen his “panties” (his words not mine).  That got them into this weird frame of mind.  Then they started telling me I looked like Brittany Spears (they’re good at sucking up and trying to get on my good side) including the hand motions for an hour glass figure.  It was too fun.  Then they were both up out of their seats strutting around the classroom doing model posses with their hips jutted out.  While doing the posses they kept saying “ass line”.  (I’m pretty sure they were referring to a curvy body making an s shape.)  So that resulted in them saying “teacher, can I see your ass line”.  They wanted me to strut around the room sticking my butt out.  I don’t think so.  These boys are to hilarious!  They always make my day interesting.  Thought I’d fill everyone in on my quote of the week. 

Like I always say, I love Korea, because I embrace the craziness.  You can either get annoyed or you can laugh. 

One of my favorite things about Korea is that random, bizarre, funny, and interesting things happen to you everyday.  Since I’ve been back I’ve really noticed how Koreans go out of there way to be friendly to you at times.  (Don’t get me wrong they also push you and spit and stuff.  2 of my friends were unlucky enough to be walking in the wrong place at the wrong time this week and got hit by flying spitballs, on accident.  One girl’s shoe was spit on, the other was much more unlucky and it landed on her head as someone spit out the window of a building she was walking by.)

Anyways, I’m really enjoying the random friendly things.  Today I was wandering around on Namsan Mountain, I had been at the Global Village Museum (waste of time, it’s a tiny museum and nothing is in English).  Anyways I was walking a few paces behind these 30 something Korean women for quite a while.  One of them stopped and came up to me.  She said, “lunch” and made eating hand motions.  Then she said, “single” like are you alone come eat lunch with me and my friend.  If she could have spoken a bit more English or I could speak Korean, I might have taken her up on this random offer.  How often do you get asked out to lunch by random women in the US?  Never. 

A few days ago Tim (my coworker) and I were wandering around Sinchon and random business men invited us to eat dinner and have soju with them.  (They might of thought I was a Russian prostitute though, so I definetly didn’t think twice about taking them up on their offer.)  And then a different time I had a great conversation with this sweet little old man and his grandson in the subway when they offered to help me with directions.  And then today I had this highschool boy stare at me for about 10  minutes while I waited for my subway (and not in that you’re a bizarre alien from another planet way).  When my subway pulled out of the station he stood on the platform waving like crazy at me.  Very cute!

Plus my kids are super sweet this year.  They are sort of suck ups.  Some of the little girls come into the break room between classes and give me backrubs.  They always offer me candy and stuff.  Plus a bunch of the girls ask me if they can touch my “golden” hair everyday.  I know my “newness” at school will wear off so, but it’s still amusing.  (I’m the only foreign girl that has worked at my school in quite a while, so it’s something different for the kids.) It’s so much fun being a minority!

Well, I’ve been in Korea for about 9 days now.  Things are going really well.  As I said before, my school is very cool and laid back.  Also, my coworkers seem pretty nice.  My apartment this year is part of a villa, which is basically a house converted into apartments.  It is much bigger and nicer than I expected.  I have 2 bedrooms and the school did end up buying me a few odds and ends for the kitchen (including a few plates, a kitchen table, and a telephone).   Here are some pictures of my apartment and also the view from the front door.  (It is pretty cool how the area around my house seems really old and traditional, but then just 2 blocks away are the super fancy highrise office buildings and apartments.)

 Here is a picture of my school building.  It is a 3 story building and Mapoewha (my school) has the whole top floor.  On the basement is a grocery store, so it’s really convenient.    (Sorry, I’m having major problems with the computer, you have to look at it sideways.) 

 I’ve been having a good time meeting up with my friends.  On New Year’s Eve, Tim (my new coworker), Yenz (his friend), and I headed to Rocky Mountain Tavern in Itaewon.  Basically as soon as I walked in the door I bumped into 4 of my friends from last year.  They were people that had lived in my neighborhood, who I went out with a lot on the weekends.  Then when I went upstairs I ran into a whole different group of friends from last year (my old coworkers from ECC).  What a random coincidence.  Almost everyone I know in Korea was at that bar, and it was totally unplanned.

During the week I’ve pretty much been laying low and saving money, since I haven’t worked for 8 months!  Shannon a good friend from last year, invited me out yesterday (Saturday night).  We went to Pita Time (the best sandwich place in Korea) and then went to Rocky Mountain Tavern to met up with friends and watch a Canadian Hockey game.  I’m not really a big fan of watching hockey games on a blurry tv, but it was fun chatting with my friends.  Then Shannon and I went to Hongdae to met up with one of Shannon’s Korean friends, Sidney.   We hung out for quite a few hours, drank lots of soju and then went to Tin Pan with a different group of friends.  It was a very fun night, but a bit too long.  I don’t think I’ll be starting a Saturday night out at 5:00 again.  Me and Shannon made it back to my apartment by about 3:00am and crashed.

Then we woke up this morning and went to Ewha.  We ate lunch at an awesome pretzel place and then got our noses pierced.  (I’d been talking about getting my nose pierced for the last 3 months, so I was really exicited.)  The place was very clean and sterilized and the piercing didn’t hurt too much.  (Leanne took an awesome picture of me with the huge needle sticking out of my nose, that I’ll post on here as soon as she emails it to me.)  So now I have a cute little pink sparkly stud in my nose.  Yeah! 

Here’s me with the nose piercing:

I made it to Korea safe and sound!  My flights were pretty good, but the one to Tokyo didn’t have the little tv screens so it was really boring. 

In true Korea fashion there was a bit of drama getting settled in.  The principle and manager picked me up and drove me to my apartment, which is only about a 2 minute walk from my apartment. (Yeah!)  Anyways, they got a new apartment for me, and it turns out that neither of the guys really knew where it was.  We were wandering around these tiny little alleys that a car would never fit down.  So the 3 of us carried all of my stuff for miles until we finally found the apartment.  We dropped off my stuff and they said that I should go to a small party with them.  By this time it was already midnight, and I’d been up for at least 24 hours.  But oh well, I went to the party, which turned out to be all of my coworkers sitting around in a little bar drinking some beer.

All of my coworkers seem really nice.  I’ll be working with 7-8 guys.  I’m the only female foreign teacher, so I guess the odds are in my favor (too bad none of them are really my type).  They all seem really friendly, and the school seems pretty organized (for Korea).  (Winter Intensives start on Tuesday, but they don’t have a schedule or anything made yet.  But remember this is Korea after all.)

My apartment is pretty nice.  It has a small kitchen and a traditional Korean style bathroom (don’t worry there is a normal toliet), but the shower is basically the whole bathroom so everything gets wet everyday. I have a really nice big bedroom with a queen size bed (too bad they told me it was a single bed, so I bought single sheets before I left, but oh well).  And there is a tiny second bedroom too.  It’s really nice, the main annoyance is that since I am the first teacher to live there, nobody left any stuff behind. There are no plates, cups, pots, pans, garbage cans, clothes hangers etc.  I’m going to talk to the manager guy to see if they’ll pay for some of that stuff, because it will get expenisve buying everything for the apartment.  Also, there is hardly any furniture, really it’s just my bed and a tv.  (But I do have a microwave, so I’m super happy about that!) 

Well, I’m at work doing about 1 hour of training before I start teaching on Tuesday. I’m sure there will be more craziness to report.

It is my 24th birthday today!  It seems like the last year flew by.

To celebrate my birthday I went and got my Yellow Fever Vaccination today (for my up coming trip to Africa).  Fun, huh?!  Tomorrow, I’m going out with my coworkers for a birthday/going away dinner.  On Thursday, I’m going to go to Norabong with some other friends.  I love norabong (kareoke)!  It is one thing that I’ll miss for sure when I leave Korea.

Countdown until trip: 4 days!  (I’m going to Singapore, Malayisa, Thailand, Cambodia, and Vietnam)

I’m leaving Korea in 5 days!  Crazy!  My life completly changed when I came here a year ago, and it’s going to totally change again.  It’s fun, but also a little bit scary.  Seoul has really started to feel like my home.

On Friday night, I got together with my Nowon friends for a little “going away” get together.  We ate some Korean BBQ and than went to Dragon Bar and had a few drinks.  (That was sort of fitting, because I orignally meet my Nowon friends at Dragon Bar about 10 months ago.)  It was fun to just hang out and chat.

I’ve finally started to seriously pack up my stuff, too.  I sent one box home by ship on Friday and it only cost $30 for a 25 lbs box (it takes 30-90 days to get there).  I have another box or 2 to send back this week.

I’m sure I’ll miss Korea, but it doesn’t even seem like I’m really leaving yet. 

For the past 2 months, I’ve had to take long subway rides(about 1 1/2 hours each way) every morning at rush hour (in Korea they call it Hell Hour).  When I lived in my old apartment I got on at the end of the line, so it was relatively empty.  But now that I live closer to downtown my trips are crazy!

The subway pulls up and already there are people literally squashed up against the windows and doors like bugs.  Then, as if by magic, me and about 15 other people push our way onto the already overflowing subway car.  (Every morning I have to stand in the 2 inch space up against the doors and push off the door frame so that I can make it safely inside the sliding doors.) 

It’s crazy!  It really seems like a magic trick or something!  And at the next 5 stops more and more people some how manage to make it onto the subway.