Acupuncture and such...

Once again I got carried away with life and forgot to write in this blog. (sorry Mom) My life has been very social these days as well as busy with school. Last week was test week at school which means chaos and craziness. That explains it all.

Lately I've been having horrible back pain so I asked a teacher at school about a chiropractor. She answered by saying that the chiropractors in Korea are very expensive and that I should just get acupuncture done. Conveniently next to my school are two acupuncture places so I checked one out. I lucked out because the guy actually spoke a bit of English. I told him my problem and he said it was caused by my two hour a day commute on the subway as well as crossing my legs when I sit down. Then he prescribed me some herbal medicine and acupuncture. So I've been getting acupuncture done all week and it's great. It only costs $5 a session too!! So far it's helped a little, so we'll see if it will help more as the days pass. I love the whole oriental medicine thing here though.

Apartment life has been good lately and full of social activities. Josephine is always planning things for us and by Sunday night I find that I still haven't relaxed all week or weekend. This has been an ongoing cycle. I am feeling like I want to crawl in a hole and become a hermit for a while. I don't want to do anything social for at least a month. This timing is convenient though because Josephine is leaving Korea in a week. I am very sad that she is leaving, but at the same time happy to have some time to myself. Josephine has been my lifesaver in Korea. She found me all my current friends and pretty much gave me a social life while I've been here. With out Josephine things would have been very different. I will miss her dearly.

With Josephine leaving in a week and Rachel, the other roomate, leaving in January I have decided to move out of the apartment. Actually an open apartment kind of fell into my lap. The apartment is back where I used to live and is directly above Heather's apartment. The apartment is one big room and perfect for one person. Plus it will be closer to my school and right next door to all of my co-workers. I will also be away from the center of the city so I will have more time to myself and I won't be as tempted to be so extremely social. Overall, I am happy to move and think that I will feel better/more energized by this move. Haha, and yes this will by my fourth move in Seoul in eight months. What can I say...I like to change it up every few months. haha!

In other news, two friends Josh and Matt visited on their way to Vietnam and then again on their way back to Chicago. That was fun. It's always nice to have visitors to tour around Seoul as well as see a familiar face again.

Christmas is approaching fast and with it comes Heathers and my trip to Thailand. I am more excited every day. It will be the perfect time to be on a warm beach. I may not want to come back to Korea. :) I have been craving a visit to that third world culture. I am tired of these Koreans and their materialism. I want some strong culture, humble people and peaceful scenery.

News

I know it's been a while since I've written in this blog. I've been really lazy about writing these days unfortunately. I've done lots of stuff since my last blog entry and I have some news as well. The news is that I'm getting married and there's a little one on the way too! Yeah, who'd guess it'd all happen so fast eh?

Haha, just kidding. I just wanted to give everyone who's reading a scare...or a shocker. I am far from getting married and having kids. Right now I am enjoying the beautiful fruit of my youth and independence. :) Tis a wonderful thing!

As for the news, my school is moving! Right now I work at the very far eastern edge of Seoul, in fact it's almost out of Seoul. My commute takes about an hour on the subway each way to work. But where the school is moving to is a bit closer. Not too close, but every little bit helps. They just bought the space for the school in a high rise building in a happening part of Seoul called Jamsil. It's right near an amusement park called Lotte World, a lake, Olympic Park, and lots of shopping and restaurants. So the space is being renovated right now, but come January we should be in the new building. Plus, we are also becoming the Wonderland Headquarters. The hogwan franchise that I'm working for is called Wonderland and I guess our school is currently the most well run and successful that they want our school to be the headquarters, haha wow! The school has been undergoing a lot of changes in the last few months and I guess that is why. Anyway, I am pretty excited for this move and change.

Other news is that Heather and I are now the proud owners of plane tickets to Thailand for Christmas and New Years! YAy!! :) Our co-worker from Belgium's wife is Korean and was able to find us an awesome deal on plane tickets. So we are flying on Christmas day first to Vietnam for a day which should be fun, then to Thailand. So we'll see what kind of adventures we'll get into.

The third piece of news is that I have decided to backpack Africa when my contract is finished here in April. My friend Sheila has been wanting to do that for a while and our contracts finish about the same time so it works out perfectly. We're going to start at South Africa and work our way up the east side and then across the top to finish the trip in Morocco and Spain. It will be an epic adventure I'm sure. It also puts a stop to my high loan payments that I've been able to make since coming here, but I figure I should take these opportunities while I can. I'll just pay the minimum on my loans and come back to Korea for a few more years to pay off the rest of my loans. All the while adventuring where I can. :)

So other than that stuff, I have been keeping busy lately. School is busy and hectic as normal, apartment life is good with my wonderful and sometimes crazy roomates, and weekends have also been quite packed lately. The weekend before last I went to Busan (a city in the south of Korea on the beach) with Heather and Michelle. It was a nice low key weekend. We went to the International Film Festival, visited a temple, hung out on the beach and enjoyed being in a different city from Seoul for a few days. Then last weekend Heather and I went with a tour group called Adventure Korea to do a Buddhist Temple-stay. It was quite the experience. We wore temple clothes, learned a lot about Buddhism and Buddhist monks. We ate the food the way the monks eat, we took part in their services, we did their bows (over 200 full body bows), we woke up at 4am for meditation, we made lotus lanterns and monk beads and overall had a fairly interesting and relaxing weekend. The pictures will soon be on facebook.

Well thats a brief summary of what's been going on with me lately. Soon I'll write another blog based more on my feelings and thoughts that I've been having lately. I think I've done a lot of growing up since coming here, and it's been an interesting process to be a part of, to watch in myself and to experience. ...yeah those are all kind of the same thing... Eh, more to come later.

Cheusak and such

I meant to write this post last weekend since that is when Cheusak was, but I seem to be very behind on my blogs and updates these days...

Last weekend was the Cheusak Holiday and it was somewhat interesting. Here in Korea Cheusak seems to be the largest holiday that they have. Even larger than Christmas. A few weeks before Cheusak all the stores start putting out gift sets. These are gift sets ranging anywhere from toothpaste packages to spam packages. The spam packages were the funniest I thought. It would be a large package with maybe six cans of spam and a bottle of cooking oil, haha! The Koreans love it though! So right before the Cheusak holiday everyone goes crazy with shopping, cooking and preparing. I went into a coffee shop near my school to buy a simple cup of coffee and had to wait 20 minutes because the place was crowded with people putting in orders for Cheusak cakes. It was ridiculous. Then the last day of school before Cheusak I was called into the owner of our school's office. I thought I was in trouble because he never has anything to do with us, but then it turned out that he was giving all the teachers gifts of wine for Cheusak. I was relieved and surprised at the same time. The gift was a set of two bottles of wine and a wine opener. Despite the shadiness of the school, they at least know how to appreciate their teachers on the Cheusak holiday. :) It was nice and I was more than happy to take the wine home. The holiday lasted for three days (I hear it usually lasts for longer, but not this year because it fell on a weekend.) So I spent a wonderful weekend relaxing, drinking my wine, and hanging out with my roomates.

Roomates

Speaking of my roomates, they are awesome. Moving into this 'hole in the ground' apartment with them was the best decision that I have made since coming to Korea. My one roomate Josephine, from England, is miss social butterfly. She seems to know everyone and has been my social connection to all of my latest friends. I was really worried for a while before because I wasn't making many friends. I don't know if it was because I was living on the edge of the city and away from everything, or what, but now I am happy to say that I have more than enough friends. :) I can hardly keep track of them all. It is fun to have things to do every weekend and people to hang out with now. The only downfall is the coming and going of people. It's inevitable here in Korea since most contracts are for a year and a lot of people leave after that, but it's still difficult for me. I hate making friends just to see them leave. It's like a little heart break each time it happens. I think I will only be able to stay here for 1 more year.

Future

I have begun thinking about my future again. I love Korea, but I think that after this year I will only come back for 1 more year. The lifestyle here is just unreal and I think I don't want to make it a habit. It's like being in college again, but having money. The work is fairly easy, yet definitely draining on some days. The money is amazing. The weekends are crazy...as is the night life. It's almost too good to be true. And I meet people here in their 30's who have been doing this for 5+ years. It's a fun thing to do, but I don't think that it is really living life. In fact, I feel like it's avoiding life and the real world. I don't have any responsibilities here other than showing up for work. Besides that, everything is taken care of for me. It's too easy. I almost feel like I'm cheating in a way. I think the longer I stay here, the harder it will be for me to have a life anywhere else. So after another year, I will leave and try to adapt back to the real world of more responsibilities. :) Until then though, I'll enjoy it here to the fullest!

23 going on 30

So really I'm only 23 going on 24, but this year I feel like I should be at least 30... It is the oddest thing I have ever felt. Since coming to Korea I have felt 100% responsible for myself for I think the first time in my life. I'm sure that has something to do with feeling 30, on top of many other things...

A lot of my friends here and the people that I work with are all in their late 20s or early to mid 30s. They are a bit more mature and have a somewhat different mindset than the people I am used to hanging out with back home. I think because I know that they are all in their 30s I feel like I should be too. So when I had my 24th birthday, all I could think was...I'm too young, I should be at least 30 by now. It was a weird birthday...maybe I thought too much than one should when they turn a year older. Contemplating life is interesting. Especially now since coming to Korea. For the first time in my whole life, I don't have a plan. Me, the master planner, now doesn't have a plan. I'm not sure how I feel about that either. I guess it's good because this way I truly live each day for what it is. But it's also bad, because I have no clue of what I want or what I will do with myself... I guess right now I am just floating along the river of life waiting for a current to sweep me this way or that way. While reminding myself that I'm only 24, and even though I feel older I'm not.

So my Birthday was good. My new roomates are amazing, they make my life now!! I came home from work Friday night to Josaphine (the British roomie) telling me that I needed to get ready because we were going out to bring in the first hours of my Birthday. So thats what we did. :) We went to a local bar and at midnight the DJ played a happy birthday song and Josaphine bought me a wonderful fruity, girly, frou-frou drink called 'alice in wonderland'. All night long I met new people, had great conversations, danced and truly enjoyed myself. Finally at about 5am I walked home and stopped on an overpass walk-way. I stood there for about an hour watching the cars whisp by and thinking about life. It was exactly what I needed. :)

The next day I met Heather at a waffle shop in my neighborhood for brunch. I ordered a cinnamon waffle piled high with cinnamon apples, whipped cream, and ice-cream. It was an amazing Birthday breakfast! It was also great to spend some time with Heather since we now life in separate parts of the city. We discussed life, adventures, birthdays, books and families. The conversation was perfect and long overdue. I spent the rest of the day by myself wandering the Itaewon neighborhood that I life near. I window shopped, tried on fun/crazy dresses and outfits, people watched, and just enjoyed the nice day by myself. :)

The night of my birthday I met the wonderful friends that I have made here so far at an Italian restaurant. We ordered dinner and enjoyed the company of each other over pasta and wine. It was fun to eat something other than Korean food for a day. Afterwards we went to a nice bar where I met a few more friends. Then later, the roomates and I headed to a different part of the city for a dj concert by the British group Artful Dodger. Rachel (my Ausie roomate) was able to get free tickets for us from her Korean friend. So we went to the club, inched our way to the front and danced to the Artful Dodger. At one point Rachel grabbed the singer when he walked by us on the stage. She yelled at him that it was my birthday, so he stopped the show and said happy birthday to me, haha it was great! So we danced and danced and finally it was 4am. By that time it was only Josaphine and me because we had lost Rachel and our other friend Charlotte. So Jos and I headed out into the street crowded with the youth of Korea and bought street food. Then we settled into the sidewalk along with all the Koreans enjoying our street food and bringing in the morning of the next day. Finally we got home and crashed. 

It was a grand Birthday!! :)

August re-cap

Oh man, what a crazy month August has been! One of the longest months of the year, mixed with the hottest month of the year does not make a good combination. I am thankful for how quickly time seems to fly in Korea though, because despite all the stuff that happened this month it has gone by extremely fast. Just like all the other months here.

So re-cap:

-August begins with 98 degree weather and 98% humidity on top of that

-I get back from Jeju Island vacation

-Extra summer classes get added to our schedule

-Franzi came to visit for a week

-We lost Shay, a New Zealand teacher at our school

-We gain Sebastian, the new Belgium/Korean teacher

-Heather gets bedbugs in our apartment

-Baron, an American teacher from our school takes Shay's apartment next door

-We trade furniture, it's chaos

-I find an apartment in the center of Seoul with an American girl

-I get kicked out of the apartment because the landlady is crazy

-Monthly test happens at school, it's chaos

-I have to fill out student evaluations to send home with my students

-I move back to Heathers and sleep on a cot

-I find another apartment with an Ausie girl and a Brittish girl

-The weather finally cools off, fall is on the way

-I move in, I try to catch my breath!

Lots of other things happened in-between the cracks, but those above are the main points of my August.

The apartment situation goes like this: Shay who lived next door finished his contract, so I asked my boss if I could move into his apartment after he left. I was told that another teacher would be moving into that apartment, but that I could try to find my own apartment elsewhere and then just get a housing allowance. So I got on craigslist and after a few days of searching and emails I found a place. It was a 3 bedroom with another American girl. Everything seemed great and my boss gave me the money to live there. So I moved all of my stuff across Seoul via taxi and a friend's car. After living there a few days the landlady says that the guys who lived there before us never paid their bills and she wanted us to pay them. We got in contact with the guys and they said to tell the landlady just to keep their deposit money. The landlady didn't agree but finally said ok and then told us that we had to pay new deposit money. She demanded that money the next day and when we asked for more time to pay it she became furious and said that she wanted us to move out! Every day after that she proceeded to march into our apartment and sometimes into my room and scream in Korean that we had to move out. It was crazy and ridiculous. I spent so many hours on the phone with an interpreter trying to smooth out the situation, but the landlady was just ecstatic and crazy and wanted us out.

So all of last week I frantically tried to find another apartment in the neighborhood so that I wouldn't have to move my stuff all the way back to Heather's place on the other side of the city. I had no luck though and had to move all of my stuff once again back to Heather's and my old apartment. Heather was not happy, I was not happy, and while all of this was happening, it was test week at school which means that everyone at school was uptight and chaos was everywhere.

So then I found the apartment that I have just moved into. It is with two girls and it's in the same neighborhood as the last apartment. It's at the top of a huge hill, its a street level apartment and my room is pretty much a shoebox. I have come to the conclusion though, that this is truly all the space that I need to live. I don't need anything elaborate or huge. So this is perfect. The landlady is also very nice. She's Philippino, widowed, about 45, and treats me like the daughter she never had. :)

It's been a crazy time, but I have survived it and come out a better person. I almost wonder if life throws us these crazy happenings just to make sure we're not getting too comfortable. As much as I hate it when crazy stuff happens in my life, I do think I benefit from it. It's funny though, because next week I turn 24, but now I truly feel like I am at least 28. I feel much more responsible for myself and independent than I have ever felt before.

Summertime Heat

It's Sunday and I've been in Heather's and my air-conditioned apartment all morning. I leave the apartment to go buy water at the little store up the street. On the way, I observe many things that make me smile and realize that it's 'summatime and the livin is easy'. :)

It's hot outside, maybe 90 degrees with 70% humidity. I can feel not only the sun beating down on me, but the heat rising up from the blacktop of the street. It rained last night, so everything is clear today. The green trees on the mountains can be seen and the sky is clear blue dotted with fluffy white clouds. The cicadas sing loudly, then softly, and then loudly again. I pass a group of dressed up Koreans coming from Church. They are wearing their heels and their frilly dresses and pressed suits. They talk, smile, laugh. I wonder how they can withstand the heat with so many clothes on. Three boys whiz past me on their bikes. They are yelling to each other in Korean and laughing. The wind blows through their hair and I remember what it's like to be a kid on a bike riding through the Sunday afternoon. The sun beats down on my face and sweat gathers around my sunglasses. I lift them to wipe away the sweat and realize just how bright the day day is. Everything is so clear and the colors are vivid. I'm thankful for the rain that washes away pollution. I keep walking and come upon an old man. He is standing in the shade with his small, white, fluff ball of a dog. As I get closer I can see that he's bending over and talking to his dog. He's talking very gently with a kind look in his eye. It makes me smile. As I get closer to the store I hear faint sounds of techno music. I can see the brightly colored umbrellas shading the outside of the store. I walk under them and smell the sweet peaches that are displayed. I buy my large bottle of water and stop a second to enjoy the pumping Korean techno music that the store is playing. Then I walk home with the bottle of water against the back of my neck to keep me cool. I let the sun grace my face, enjoy the sounds of the cicadas and smile at everyone I pass.

It's summer time in Seoul and the livin is easy. :) Life is Wonderful!

A Big Week

August is bringing about many changes. Just the fact that it is August alone, is pretty crazy. Four months have already passed since I've moved to Korea and everyday I am shocked at how fast the time is passing. I guess time really does fly when you're having fun. This is now the longest I've lived out of the US since I was 12...and it feels good! I really don't know how I will every be able to go back to life in the US. At this point, it seems impossible after living here.

Lots of stuff has happened this week. First of all, it was the first full week of teaching after coming back from vacation. I had one day of teaching last week which didn't seem bad at all, but it was also Friday. Then having a full week of teaching this week was exhausting. I forgot how much energy the kids take out of me. On top of that, this week was said to be the hottest week of the year in Korea. So by the time I walked to work, the heat had drained a lot of my energy. Then I had classes to teach and the combination just made it a tiring week. I also had my first visitor this week! Franzi, my childhood friend from Switzerland came to visit for the week on her way to Papua New Guinea. It's been so much fun to have her visiting and get to show her all the cool things about Seoul and Korea. I just feel bad that she came during our hottest week of the year.

So on top of those things happening, it was also the start of the new month at school which means change. Every month the school changes things around a bit. They get more students, lose more students, change our classes, change the curriculum, get other teachers...etc. This month we lost Shay, one of the foreign teachers from New Zealand. He had worked for his year contract and finished so he went home. It's hard to constantly be saying goodbye to friends who finish their contracts. With Shay leaving we gained another guy foreign teacher from Belgium. It's been interesting getting to know him this week. There has also been some moving of apartments because of teachers leaving our school. Baron, another foreign teacher at our school from the US moved into Shays apartment next door to Heather and me. That was an interesting day because his stuff was out in the hallway of our apartment all day and for the next few days. We also took some of his stuff into our apartment. (like we have room...) So all week it's been Heather, Franzi and me, and a bunch of Baron's stuff all in our one-room apartment. It's been kind of crazy. On top of that, Heather contracted bed-bugs somehow. So now we're trying to figure out how to get rid of her bed-bugs and cure all her bites.

On another note, I found an apartment to move into. It's been fun living with Heather, but we share a one room apartment, have no privacy, and practically live on top of each other. Surprisingly in the last four months we really haven't fought much and have learned how to peacefully co-exist in this small living space of ours. I'm sure we could last the year out, but our contract says that we can each have our own apartment. So when I found out that I couldn't move into Shay's apartment next door after he left, I decided to find my own apartment. I would have preferred to find something close to Heather, but thats not how it worked out. I did, however find an awesome apartment with another girl (from the US) right in the center of Seoul. It's a large, real apartment with bedrooms, bathrooms, a full kitchen, a livingroom, a little balcony and even access to the roof-top! I really couldn't ask for anything better other than the fact that I will now have to commute to school about 45 minutes on the subway each way every day. I will get used to that though. I think it will be good for Heather and I to have this space. Plus I am more social than Heather, so this will allow me to sow my social oats a lot more. :) I move tomorrow.