Konichiwa, bitches!

Fukuoka was awesome! Awesome and really, really expensive!

I spent my first day there getting my visa sorted out and then totally crashing out in my hotel room and sleeping for 12 hours. Woops! I did eat some amazing sushi and walked around the downtown area for a while. My hotel was really cool, though. It was modeled after a tea house and looked very traditional and Japanese. I had a single and I felt like I was in the middle of Memoirs of a Geisha or something.

My second day, I was up and about all over town. I went to the big park in the middle of the city and looked at pretty gardens. I took a hike up to the ruins of the Fukuoka castle, then walked downtown to do some shopping. I ate tons of sushi and ramen. That night, I went to the area with the street food stalls and had some great ramen and a nice big glass of warm sake.

My last day there, I finished up shopping and walked around the downtown area I hadn't hit up yet. My trip ended on a less than great note when I threw a temper tantrum at the airport because they tried to take away my Bumble&Bumble curl creme, but hell...you can't get that in Korea! My hair needs all the help it can get.

The Fukuoka pictures can be seen here:
http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=63860&l=e237e&id=854760437

General updates:
-I have a new housemate. Jennefer has left and I have a subletter until Linda Fung (!!!) gets here in February. Cannot wait for that to happen!

-I play a game with my students called "sleeping bear," where they pretend to be hibernating and can't wake up (it's saved my sanity on several occasions!). Ashley took the game to heart and when she "woke up" today, she bit my arm really hard because bears are hungry when they wake up.

-We won 2nd place at the local pub quiz this week!!! I'm way too happy about this.


-Claude hates halloween...here's some pictures from that wonderful holiday
http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=65625&l=358a3&id=854760437

-I'm writing this from a cafe where I've been sitting for about two hours, trying to download season 1 of the UK Office and drinking glass after glass of wine. The dude totally knows I'm using all his bandwidth!

Japan!

I leave on Thursday for Fukuoka, Japan to do a visa run and I am ridiculously excited about.

This is my first trip in Asia outside of Korea. I feel pretty proud of myself for how much travel I've done within the country but now...broader horizons! I feel like once I break the seal, I can do some more weekend trips around the area.

I'm staying at a very traditional place my first night and then Friday I'll be at a hostel that caters to younger people. It should be a lot of fun and I can't wait! Gah!

Happy Chusok

There are two major holidays in Korea, Lunar New Year and Chusok. Today is Chusok, which is basically the Korean equivalent of Thanksgiving, with some ancestor-honoring thrown in for good measure. The best thing about this is that in order to worship one's ancestors properly, one must go to one's hometown so the day before and the day after are taken off for travel time. This means that this little migook gets a five day weekend! Assah!

It has been heaven. I originally thought of taking a trip to Bali or some other exotic destination but since I have to make a visa run to Japan in a couple weeks, I opted to stay in Seoul. It's been the most relaxing time ever. I got to spend an entire day nursing a nasty soju hangover and I didn't feel bad since I had four other days off!

I kicked off the weekend with some bowling. Some friends and I have started going bowling every Friday night and it's so much fun. You can bring your own drinks to Korean bowling alleys so it ends up being a very cheap night out. I actually did really well for the first game but as my soju intake went up, my bowling skills went down and my third game was in the 50s. Woops.

On Sunday, my friend Hannah came up to visit from Daejon. We went shopping in Itaewon, where I found a sweet ass Casio calculator watch...assah! It's incredibly awesome in a Dwight Schrute sort of way. Yesterday, I made a birthday dinner for some friends and drank an obscene amount of wine and today, I took a nice long coffee break/walk/late lunch with my friend Paula. And I still have one more day off!

Kindergarten is still going great and I actually miss my students over this break. Not enough to want to be at work, of course, but I do miss them. Allan told me he loved me last week and it was very sweet. Dylan, on the other hand, grabbed my boobs. Oh, kindergarten!

Insanity!

Whew! My new jobs have been keeping me incredibly busy! I've ended up teaching at the kindergarten full time and I've got 4 different business classes. I'm hopping around the center of the city all day but it's been fun. I feel so much happier now that I'm not working at CDI. I'm cooking more, getting to see friends more, and I'm just feeling a lot more positive about life now that I actually enjoy the teaching. The kindy in particular has been great. The kids are awesome and it's a lot of fun. It can be a head ache sometimes but for the most part, I'm loving it.

I've also been leaving the Itaewon area when going out, which is a lot of fun. Hongdae has great dance clubs I've been going to and it's nice to be around more Koreans. Again, have come across more and more foreigners who are kinda anti and it's odd. Hi, you're in KOREA. Eh, what can you do?

One thing about being here is that it always feels like a time of transition. This time, though, I might be justified in thinking that. On Tuesday, Justin will be leaving Korea for his year-long trek across Asia. It seems very strange to me that he'll be gone and I won't be able to ask him questions, talk to him about the random stuff we talk about, or have him kick my ass at Halo. I'm not taking it as hard as our neighbors since I know I'll see him in the Northwest but I'm still going to miss him. For one thing, this means I can't share the coffee expense with anyone.

I also have to say I'm incredibly grateful to Justin for the way he introduced Seoul and Korea to me. I've recently met some people who've been in Korea for years and they were woefully ignorant about the culture, food, and people. They had no idea about things I've taken for granted, like dongdongju and pajon. Thanks to Justin, I was thrown head-first into life here and never went through an "I don't eat Korean food" phase. I learned the Korean alphabet so quickly because I thought that was expected of me. I shudder to think what my life here would have been like had I not known the joy of dongdongju. This weekend will be the last hurrah for Justin. A few of us are going to the beach on the west coast of Korea. Should be good drunken fun!


The other big change is that I've started my new job. Instead of teaching at an academy, I'm now teaching at a bunch of different places, all of which is arranged by my agency. So far, I've taught businessmen at Samsung and Posco, a major Korean steel company. It's been great, I only taught about 4 hours this week but next week, I'm subbing for a kindergarten and starting another business class, so I'll be very busy. I like it so far, very nice not to be on CCTV all the time! I also like how I'm moving through the city all day, I'm getting to see parts of Seoul I didn't know about.

Seoul in the Summer

Ugh, I haven't been posting in months because it's just too much fun to be outside, doin' stuff rather than writin' about stuff. It's been a fun summer, too!

First trip was to Busan, at the southern tip of the Korean peninsula. I went with Jennefer and Maria and we got to stay at a kick ass love motel. The beach was great, although cloudy and a wee bit windy. I got to eat some good sashimi and fall asleep on the beach, which was the purpose of the trip :)




We had a kick-ass Canada party that had us banned from having any more parties on our roof...so sad. It was worth it though because it also was Jen's housewarming. Ah, it was good fun. I won mad money off Justin playing a (sometimes violent) GoStop tournament. Here's some pictures from that and some random summer fun pics.






My birthday weekend was pretty kick ass. On the actual night, a few of us went to dinner at my favorite hof to eat pajon and drink dongdongju, my favorite Korean booze. Craig and Justin said that if I finished an entire bowl to myself, they'd tell people I'm 24 indefinitely . It wasn't pretty but I managed to put the bowl down. The next couple of days a whole bunch of us went to the beach on the west coast for mudfest. The mud is supposed to be good for you and you paint your body and dry out in the sun while enjoying cass and the ocean. It was a lot of fun and I was very sad to have to come home.





A couple of weeks later at the end of July, Victoria, my old roommate from Seattle, came out for a visit. We had 9 days of insanity. She brought with her homemade cookies from Neil, our other Seattle roommate and Justin's BFF, and Black Butte Porter, the most delicious porter ever. It was amazing.

We saw what feels like everything in Seoul and I got to do a lot of touristy stuff I hadn't gotten around to. It was so much fun and her visit ended way too soon.


Now things still kinda bumpin'. Paige and I are in training for the Seoul marathon, I'm switching jobs, Justin leaves for his huge Asian trip (and I get the big room in the apartment...assah!), and I've discovered the swimming pool next to the Han river. Still plenty to do but I will be a bit better about the blog posts!

It's Official!

I have now lived in Seoul longer than I lived in Seattle...madness. In a couple weeks, I'll hit the 6 month mark and the half-way point of my time here. I've heard from a few people that the last 6 months are going to fly by and I have to say, May has been going by in a blur.

Yesterday was the Lotus Lantern Festival. Every year near Buddha's Birthday, they have a big parade from City Hall to Jogyesa temple. Everything is centered around lanterns and the floats are basically giant lanterns lit by electric lights. People holding lanterns were dressed in all sorts of traditional Korean clothing and there were a lot of drummers. It was really beautiful but sadly, my effing camera battery died and I had to buy a disposable camera so now pictures just yet. There were some really amazing lanterns, ones you could tell were hand-painted. One group had lanterns made to look like flags of different countries and the group's big float lantern was a Buddha sitting on a globe.

This whole thing gave me one of my "oh holy crap, I live in Asia" moments, which are getting few and far between since I've been here for a while now. Everything about the parade was so distinctly Asian...I mean, first off, it was a major Buddhist celebration and there were delegations from all over Asia marching in it. It was pretty cool.

I got a sports massage this week at a sauna. I found it hilarious that not only are you dressed for it, but the masseuse put towels over my back. This cracked me up. Salespeople have no problem yanking my clothes off me, I've been felt up by an ajuma in the sauna pools, but when I get a massage, they have to be cautious about touching. Oh, Korea.