Archive for ‘March 2010’

What a busy and exciting weekend I had! I decided that since it wasn't freezing this weekend, that I would make the most of it, and not be a giant lumpy of lazy like I am most weekends. So on Saturday I got up early to face a dismal looking sky. The weather report said it was going to be cloudy, but only drizzle and be windy. So I got ready and headed out with my umbrella. It was 10am or so when I left, bit it honestly looked like 6pm that sky was so dark.

I took my first trip to the bakery section of Seoul called 방산종, I found out about this area online, and was more than excited to check it out. I followed the directions I found online, which left me completely lost, I had to ask two different people where to go. But finally, I found it, heaven in Seoul. I went to two stores, the first one was called d&b which had a wide array of baking equipment, pans, cookie cutters, knives, etc. I was overwhelmed with the amazingness of it all! I bought a ton of stuff since Megan left me her mini oven, I got three tart pans with removable bottoms (one big and two small), a pie pan, a spring-form pan, a dinosaur shaped cookie cutter (!), piping bags and tips, and a bamboo steamer! Plus a few utensils, and a few little tins. And it was all pretty cheap, the pans were all less than 7,000 won I think.

After that I went to another store (keep in mind, this area is a bunch of tightly packed, tiny buildings, so there weren't many places there, but enough for me to be genuinely happy!) which had ingredients. I was able to get chocolate chips, yeast, condensed milk, almond (nuts are really expensive here), jell-o, cranberries, powdered sugar, REAL vanilla extract, and sprinkles!! Again everything was reasonably priced. I even found cherries from OREGON! I was so excited I almost creamed myself! I wanted to tell the shop owner that I was from there, but I didn't think he would find it as exciting as I did.

After that I met up with Mr. Jackson. We were supposed to go to the St. Patrick's Parade, but I didn't know what time it started, the weather looked horrible, and Tim was hungover. So instead I decided to go to his part of town, and we went out to celebrate our Irish heritage with Mexican food! We went to On The Border, which is really the closest thing to Mexican food that Korea offers. It was no Hillsboro cuisine, but it was ok. I got a Dos Equis though, which made my day! Ha ha and the Korean staff all said "adios" to us when we left, which Tim and I found hilarious.

After an overly filling lunch, Tim and I decided to go to a place called Times Square, which was supposed to be the largest shopping building in all of Asian. We stopped in the subway station and put all my baking stuff in a locker, and how cool is this, the locker was fingerprint activated! no key or anything, all I had to do to open it was to put my finger on the scanner. Times Square was nice because it was an actual mall but it was most likely not the largest shopping center in Asia. We did find out though the the weather was terrible because there was a Yellow Dust storm from the Gobi Desert in China! At first the sky was just dark, but as the day progressed, it actually turned yellow. Apparently that stuff is really bad for you because it picks up a lot of the pollution from China.

So that was my Saturday. On Sunday I decided to go to Insadong, which is a big tourist spot because it has tons of souvenir shopping. It took me a while to find it, simply because I couldn't really understand the maps, but luckily I asked a few people and they pointed me in the right direction. Insadong is basically a long road with tons of shops on both sides. Most of these shops have Traditional Korean items such as silk bags, tapestries, jewelry boxes, chopsticks, key chains, small sculptures, tea sets, and a load of other stuff. You kinda need to look around because although most places have the same prices, you can occasionally find a place that sells it cheaper. So I bought a few souvenirs to send home, found a few things I want to pick up later. There are also some side alleys with food and tea restaurants, a few places that sell antiques and Buddhist sculptures. There were a lot of foreigners, but that was okay.

I finally tried 국화빵 which are little flower-shaped snacks made of pancake like batter, which red bean paste in the middle. They come out super hot so I burned my mouth a little bit, but i got 7 of them for 1,000 won, which is really cheap. After Insadong I went to Samcheongdong, which is supposed to have a bunch of shops and museums. I got a map which turned out to be shit and I got a little lost, but I did find myself in a Hanok Village, which are home to Traditional Korean houses. I tried to find a few museums, but no luck. I was able to find the signs pointing towards the museums, but could never seem to find the places themselves. They should probably have bigger signs on the front of the places.

After Samcheongdong, I went back down Insadong to look in a few more places.A nd then from there I decided to walk to Myeongdong (which I have mentioned before). They opened a new H&M which I decided to check out. There were tons of people though, I mean, Myeongdong is always really crowded but this was pretty bad. So instead I went to Forever 21 (my favorite store from back home) even though I wasn't holding out much hope of finding anything in my sie. I was able to get a few shirts though, and some cute jewelry. By then, I had probably walked 3 miles over the course of 5 hours, so my feet were killing me. Plus it was getting towards 6 o'clock so I decided it was time to head home.

Here's a little write up of my birfday weekend!

On Friday, I was presented with three, yes three, cakes in celebration of my birthday! the first was from Colleen, Alyssa's mom who I work with. So the kindergarten kids got to have a little party. The kids even sang me Happy Birthday, it was really cute! And the second was in my afternoon class, two of the parents somehow found out it was my birthday and got a huge cake. And the last one was from my director, they wanted to have a little party right after work, but alas I had to take the KTX to see Daniel. So I decided to take the last cake with me, and Daniel and I were going to eat it. For the most part, Korean cakes look fancy, but don't really taste that great, usually dried out. But still it is customary in Korea. to celebrate the anniversay of one's birthday with lots and lots of cake.

So I went to visit Daniel, and I gave him his present right at midnight, and he loved it! I was happy, and it fit too, and looked really good on him. I only saw it online, and I was glad that it looked good in real life. It has this cool MC Escher rhino print on the back, and on the front it has the Hounds Tooth design transform into rhinos. I kinda wanted to keep it for myself actually. Daniel got me a present from Africa, but it hadn't gotten there yet, so no present for me. And what a doofus, he special ordered me flowers, and forgot to pick them up. But it really is the thought that counts.

That day we didn't really do much, I made him birthday pancakes because pancakes are one of his favorite foods. And we mostly just stayed in, slept, we got food at one point. At night though, we went to Jinju, which is where Daniel used to work, and I got to meet all his friends. On Sunday he was playing in a soccer game so I got to watch that which was really fun. Most of the other players where English, so it was funny hearing them curse out loud in their Britisg=h accents. It was really cold, but it was fun to watch. And after that we all got dinner together, then we drove back to Daegu and I took the train home. Nothing too exciting, but I enjoyed it!

Thank the lord, February is over. Seriously most stressful time in my life. Worse than that time I decided to take Constitutional Law, Environmental Geochemistry, and Political Theory all at once and had all the finals on the same day. Why so stressful you ask? Well for starters, I had to move, twice. First because there was a mix up with my lease, it turned out it was over at the beginning of the month, not the end of the month. So I had to be moved to a tiny little temporary apartment for the month of February, then at the end I had to move into a different apartment, one that a teacher just vacated. So I never had ALL of my stuff, some of it was still in the old apartment, some in the temporary apartment. Then all my food went missing, and my kitchen stuff. The cleaning lady who cleans the apartments is a klepto, and I think she stole all my food. I got my kitchen stuff back, but I'm still missing my spaghetti strainer!

So I was stuck in this tiny apartment for a month, an Dexter was going crazy, I had no cooking utensils, and it was far away from everyone else I worked with. On top of that, I got bronchitis and a sinus infection. Technically I've had the bronchitis since New Years, but it got really bad at the beginning of the month, and I had to go to three different doctors (remember, doctoral incompetence is extremely high here). Eventually I got rid of the cold, only to get a severe sinus infection, and I couldn't breathe out of my nose for about a week and a half. I went to a very nice ENT doctor here, where he shoved a camera and suction tool up my nose, and eventually caved in and gave me antibiotics after I showed up the third time in a week.

And then there was the Annual Performance. I cannot begin to describe for you how crazy the parents of these kids are. Things literally have to be perfect for them. And from what I gathered, if a parent is unsatisfied by their singing and dancing on stage in front of hundreds of people, then they will just pull the kid out of school and send them somewhere else. So we had to spend a lot of extra time practicing, but we still had to do the same amount of work (which basically left no free time in the first place), and our direction became a total insert preferential female curse word here about the whole thing because these little 5 year old kids could not line up and say their speeches perfectly. So everyone was highly stressed out, and there was total lack of communication between the Korean staff and the foreigners and to what exactly was supposed to be done. This led to a lot of last minute changes that the kids didn't understand.

On top of that, tensions really began to rise between me and my supervisor. She is a perfectionist, which you can't really be with 5 year old kids, it just doesn't work like that. And she does not like to take any suggestions or constructive criticism, thinks she knows better than everyone else, yet has no idea what her job title entails, and makes mistakes multiple times a day which leaves me scrambling to correct them. Words were exchanged, comments made, I don't want to get into it because it just pisses me off. So I had that to top off my plate of unhappiness that month. So I was basically in a bad mood the whole time, and I could feel myself taking it out on the kids, but I just couldn't help it.

Then at the end of the term, we had to move rooms and decorate for the new term, and long story short, mine and Jeff's supervisor did not give us enough direction as to what exactly we needed in our rooms, and we had to go in to work when everyone else got to take the day off. Not happy.

But worst of all, three good friends at work all finished their contracts and left. Miguel, the gossip queen of the school is now back in Hotlanta and I will no longer be able to run to him and tell the funny things that my kids say without realizing they are so funny (like when one of my kids said to another one "do you swallow" when referring to food). Gabby left, she is doing some traveling now. She was fun to hang out with and let me crash at her place a few times when in dire need. And Megan left. My confidant, my gossip partner, my Itaewon shopper, my "yes I want to take a tax"er, my care-taker of Dexter, my supplier of left-overs, my "whose kids are the worst" debater. Very very very sad to see Megan go :(

But enough about the complaining. There were a few highlights. My kids did very well at the performance. Cute as pie ,they was. Especially my little Thomas, the one who didn't know a word of English at the beginning of December gave the best speech of them all. They got to get dressed up in really cute outfits. And a while back Megan volunteered me to perform for the teacher performance (much to my dismay) so I had to get up and play the guitar in from of everyone. I have TERRIBLE stage fright. And I was sick, so I was petrified. So either it went well, or my co-workers just felt bad for me because I sounded awful and were trying to make me feel better by saying it was good (most likely the latter).

My new apartment is nice. Dexter loves that it has two floors. The upper floor is basically just my bed and a dresser, not all the grand. And its about 4 inches shorter than I am (no idea why they would make it like that), so I have to crouch when I go up there, which makes putting my clothes on in the morning kind of awkward. The kitchen is really small, I only have two stove tops, it the washer is under the stove, so I can't cook and wash clothes at the same time. But it is a washer/dryer combo which is nice. I'm going to get a couch for the place, to make it more comfortable and enhance my ability to entertain company.

Things with Daniel and I are going really well. I made him a cute heart shaped pillow of Valentine's Day, and I got to stay with him for Lunar New Year. It's my birthday next week, and wouldn't you know it, of all the guys I could date in the world, I had to find the one that has my same birthday. Bummer. I love my birthday, and now it's not my birthday, it's our birthday. But at least now I know I can never forget his birthday!

I did some major shopping the other weekend, got some great shoes, and a new leather purse. I also got an oven from Megan, so I went to the Foreign Food Mart and got some (highly over-priced) spices to I can cook real meals. And I got to hang out with Kyla, a fellow co-worker that I really never hung out with one-on-one, and we had a lot of fun. I have become completely addicted to a store called Skin Food. It's a skin care, face care kind of store, with way more variety than American stores, and all their products are made from natural ingredients. I'm currently in love with the Peach Sake line, as well as their Grapefruit Hand Sanitizer, and Apple Vinegar Face Foam.

Ohhhh, and I am VERY excited, The Beast gets neutered this month. Hopefully that will calm his crazy ass down. I don't know what the hell is wrong with that cat, but I'm really hoping that getting his balls cut off will help with it.

We also got to celebrate Lunar New Year (which is the same as Chinese New Year) at school. All the kids wore their hanboks, which are the traditional Korean attire for special occasions. The teachers even got to wear them as well. We got to play games with the kids all day, and comment on how cute they looked. It was a grand time.

So February had its ups, but mostly downs. I'm really hoping that March turns out better.