I love my life. I love my life. I love my life.

My break is sadly over and had to go back to work today. Not only did I have to go work but my day started out awesome! Woke up last night with a horrible headache after taking an Ambien to sleep siince the night prior I decided to stay out til the sun was up and slept til 3pm (oops). I, of course don't have any Ibprofen because I eat it like candy and I'm out from what i brought from the states and I don't know what they use here in Korea yet to buy some AND I'm out of water because I drank it all to nurse my hangover from my late night. AWESOME. I finally fall asleep and get up to take a shower only to find out I don't have any hot water, WTF?!!! Holy hell, that was a cold shower, though, it did wake me up. I don't understand why i don't have hot water so I fiddle with my thermostat (which is all in Korean) thinking I hit something to turn off my water heater (which technically I'm suppose to turn off and on to save energy but screw that!). I go to work, to have an actually not to bad of day (which is a miracle) only to come home to a house that is 90 degrees because I apparently turned on the floor heater... Jes-us! On the bright side, I do have hot water, but now I don't know how to turn off the floor heater and keep the water hot....URGGGGGHHHH. To drown my sorrows, I made myself a cold tuna fish sandwich on white (franz like) bread with processed cheese (think kraft singles)and iceburg lettuce with a side of buggles, thank you Korea.

Meet my thermostat.

Pictures from my vacation to be posted soon....

Chuseok Celebrations

It has almost been a month and I got my first week off for the Korean holiday Chuseok. Though, I'm bummed because i don't have any money to go anywhere since I don't get paid a full paycheck until Oct. 10th but I'll make the best out of it.

Chuseok is Korea's biggest holiday, their Thanksgiving. They get 3 days off and they celebrate it with their family, specifically their grandparents. The children wear traditional Hanboks (see below) and bow in front of their grandparents and then receive a present(s). They make Song-pyun which is rice dough filled with a sesame sugar combo or raisins and then formed into a half moon shape then eaten.

The week before the  holiday the children during school got to wear their Hanboks and participated in making song-pyun and Chuseok games. 

My AM kindergarten class in their Hanboks with their song- pyun  they made. (from top left; Eileen, Kevin, Jay, Jinnie, Alex, Tom, Mark, Peter, and Daisy)

Every "special" activity we do in school, they have to have pictures. For this they had professional photographers come in to take group and individual shots along with the korean teachers taking pictures of there own. Oh, and note that this activity is done in a total of 45 minutes and that include putting on and taking off the Hanboks. Which by the way, they all put their hanboks on in the class room and this is done by them all dropping down in there drawers, all boys and girls! Not something I was expecting...

I'm officially Curl-Ean! :)

Haha, Funny, right?!! :) Thought you all might have missed my jokes!

Been here a little over two weeks now, and I finally got my "green card," moved into my apartment, John took me to get a cell phone (thanks John), AND I got a bank account yesterday! whoo-hoo, I'm moving up in the world people, watch out! I'm not struggling to get around as much either...I've learned how to say the basics (or at least I think I do!), haven't taken any taxis to any place I don't want to go, I've ventured places on the subway, haven't managed to transfer but haven't had to either. Still haven't done anything that doesn't involve drinking, but lets be real here, it's not like I did do that back in the states. :) Though, the bars did close at 2am making it easy to know when to go home....here I seem to make it out just in time for the sun to rise...awesome. FYI, if you want an awesome skype call in the Afternoon your time, 7am my time, keep your skype on! I'm still doing horrible with taking pictures but here's a few to give you a little piece of my life!

My Kitchen

My living quarters

Your bed for when you come visit!!

The Bathroom

They don't use shower curtains just a head shower, and notice no bath tub, it's kinda like an all-in-one bathroom.. Not so bad except once you take a shower the floor and toilet seat are all wet.

My place is nice. It's the largest one out of all the teachers who teach at my school and they say it's the newest (yay, me!). The apartments usually only come furnished with a twin bed, dresser, table, tv, phone and gas range, wash machine and a fridge but the teacher before me left a bunch of stuff so I didn't have to go out and buy it. She left me the basic house hold items plus a futon, chair, lamp, exercise ball and weights, and a bunch of other random crap AND instead of a twin bed I have a full!! It's not the most comfortable thing but I'll take it! SO...there is lots of room for who ever wants to come to Korea!! :)

Here are some other random pictures for the last few weekends...

I have arrived...

My hotel room that I had to stay at unbeknownst to me for a week before I got to move into my apartment.  Super small, lots bigger in the picture then it really was. Id probably say it was a 7x7' room.

Nice view though

Of course I meet up with John. First ride on the scooter, holy hell....I'm not in America anymore!

A little late night street food action, a moroccan sandwich...delicious!

Welcome/ goodbye dinner with my school. We ate Shabu shabu, it's a mulitiple course dinner but basically its like how you do fondu but in a broth and you cook all your veggies, and meat in it, then after it the server puts in noodles, then after the noddles, the server makes like a rice porridge. I liked it! 

Went to a mall to check some electronics with John and a friend, needed to kill some time so did a little shooting at the shooting range next to the food court...no big deal. 

Gangnam

You can drink anywhere....

Met some Korean friends...John and I beat them at shuffle board earlier!

Went out in my neighborhood with some girls from work, found a hof (a sports bar) this one happened to be a baseball one. Koreans love their baseball...who knew...