Monday, October 11, 2010

Open house: finishie

Open House
So I had my first (and, supposedly, only) Open House last week. Basically this meant that all of my student's parents came into the classroom and watched while I gave a very fake lesson.  The students were already prepped to answer, so it was pretty much a farce.  But, whatever. My open houses went .. okay. Not wonderfully-- not poorly. Fine, more or less. So, basically, a success!!

Ruth came to visit me!
Ruth, one of my friends from university when I was 16 (though actually from the same hometown, as well)-- visited me!  She's currently living in Shanghai but she had a few days off, so she visited me just before open house.  Here are some pictures of us being lovely. I would upload more but Blogger's being stupid and not letting me.




Overall
Fall weather has finally set in, the last few weeks. It's been pretty pleasant so far, but I'm dreading the time when the winter weather comes.. That's gonna be really .. not fun.

Videos!
John gave me a video camera before I left for Korea, and, believe it or not, I have made some videos. Mostly very short. Not spectacularly edited or anything, but the quality of the film is quite good anyway.


Stupid korean clothes store.


Ridiculous beaver eating. Silly silly music ahead.


Enjoying the views at a great artificial stream in Seoul, called "Cheonggyecheon"


A small temple near Cheonggyecheon in Seoul. Jogyesan. Pretty.

365 project
Here's some random pictures I've taken for that. (The one for Ruth were from that project, too.)
MR. XCITEMENT

View from my window.

My desk at work.. total disaster zone.

Lazy day at home with the hamster.

Sometimes I ride a school bus home at the end of the day. I was sitting in a backwards-facing seat so I snapped this picture.

The children from my school sitting and waiting for the bus while watching a movie. We call this time of the day "Bus Line."  Fun stuff.

A kiddy walking around in the park I walk through to go between home and work.

Eating cotton candy from a famous vendor in Seoul (Hongdae). With AMANDA!

Back alley near my house.

My kitty notebook and some pose sketches.
Okay, that's all! BYEEEE.

Friday, September 24, 2010

Wow, I suck?

Okay, so, It's been forever and a half since I updated. Having a time-consuming job and trying to maintain a social life have both basically demolished my ability to keep my "internet life" in check.  I feel terrible because I'm falling out of touch with friends and family at home more than I'd like.  I don't know how I can even go back and summarize all of the stuff I've done lately, so, instead, I'll backtrack at some other point and just post some pictures right now.

I recently discovered 365project.org - basically, a project people sign up for to take a picture every day for a year. Or longer.  I figured that taking 365 pictures in a year would probably be better than my current score, so, I signed up.  Here are my first two pictures and captions

September 23, 2010

Went to the COEX Aquarium in Seoul. Small aquarium but charming nonetheless. It was hard to choose a picture. Went with Dan, Amanda, and Ciji. Thursday of Chuseok holiday.

Also, first day of the project. Woo hoo.

September 24, 2010

Bought new shoes today with Amanda and Dan. Had great Indian food after a seemingly never-ending day at work.

----

Alright, well, that's it.

..Bonus freaky piranha.
SO SPARKLY!  Look at that big, staring eye.

See you next time. Hopefully soon.

Monday, May 3, 2010

Rewind, rewind! Then fast-forward!

Where have I been?
Okay, well, my previous laptop kinda exploded, so that left me pretty high and dry. I've gotten another laptop now and PROPER working internet, so.. I can actually update this thing! It's been so long since I've updated, I've got to get a bunch of pictures out of my way.

Apartment pictures!
Long overdue picture dump: what my apartment looks like, starting from the doorway.
Oh, hello room.
The entranceway where shoes are dumped.

The shower! That beige thing on the floor is my mop-head drying.

Bed. AC unit is up there on the wall, but I haven't used it yet. Storagey corner in the left (though I've moved all of that, basically.).  In the lower right hand you can see my table with random stuff on it.
I moved my sofa over to the desk to use as a chair, heee! Though it wasn't that comfortable so I moved the normal chair back over there, anyway.
The TV and stand (which is next to the desk), the coat rack thing. The island of the kitchen with the red microwave on top. The fridge is built into the cabinet, so it's not that obvious, but it's there!
Another view of the kitchen. Fridge is just right of the sink. The range (stove) is there on the left, on top of the washing machine. 
A shot from inside of my kitchen, facing my bed. Little storage unit thingy. (You can also see that table with stuff on it sitting there.)

WASN'T THAT EXCITING?!

Oh here is my kitchen a bit closer. Hello, frying pan and teapot!

HELLO FEET.

Oh hey it's my feetsies. These are my house slippers. I bought them cause they reminded me of Charlie and Boo! (I wanna shout out to my homie g-dawg Dillasaur.)

Then I went to the airport to pick up my friend Rachel. 
Here's some shots of the scenery on the way to the airport.
It was still late February so that's why there's snow. 

It's almost march! Engagement party!
So, at this point, it was almost time for all of my coworkers to complete their contracts and move on.. but before that, we had an engagement party for two.  One Canadian coworker (seen below in the pink cardigan) got engaged to a Korean man, and a Korean coworker got engaged to an American man. Switcheroos~

The two engaged ladies enjoying their finely crafted toiletpaper dresses!
The aftermath. Toiletpaper havoc!

A challenger has appeared.
One of my coworkers got a cat. But she already had a hamster so she lent him to me. Obviously he's not a long-term pet but he's chilling with me for the time being. He's cute but he's really stupid and mean, so, I can't really touch him or anything.

February ends: Graduation!
For the month of February, I was a substitute teacher for one of the Korean teachers. You can see her in the pictures below. You can't really see her body but she was 9 months pregnant at graduation, ready to deliver at any moment! Also the baby was really big, so, I took over her class as much as possible to give her time to rest.
(Click to see a bigger pic of the kiddies graduating.)

March 1st. National Holiday.

It's a holiday to celebrate Korea's independence, so there was a big show put on at the city building. That tall green building you see at the left side of the picture is my apartment. I heard a loud ruckus so I went out to explore it. Lo and behold, stuff!  I took some video clips so I'll post those whenever I get the editing done.
Oh hey, that Korean friend of mine got married! Here she is, gettin' married.


Lychee! It's a fruit for those of you who don't know. The hard outside shell is opened and the inside is a meaty white fruit with a relatively large, smooth pit.  I'm not sure why some lychee are smooth on the outside and some are "hairy" looking. Does anybody know what the deal is? Regardless they both seemed the same on the inside. 

It's your fun! Chicken World! Chicken Castle!
There's so much bad English in Korea, this doesn't even begin to scrape the surface but I just liked the idea of a chicken world.  Anyway, Koreans love fried chicken.  They love eating it and drinking beer.

A trippy time in Seoul?
I went to a strange dub-step show at a "psychedelic" bar in Hongdae. The bar was decorated awesomely though the show itself was a disappointment. These are the only pictures that are even partially visible. The first one was a glow-in-the-dark painting (with a guy sitting in front that came out looking really creepy) and the second picture is of some of the stuff hanging from the ceiling. I know it's pretty much impossible to make out, so don't worry about it.

Views from my window.


Just some views from my window.   You can see my little plant. His name is Plantie.

I went on a picnic.
Mah coworker and mahself, looking a bit haggard from the wind. But besides that, we're very gangstuh.
We went on a picnic near the river. It was a bit too cold and the wind got pretty strong, too. But it was nice. We ate cheeto-type snacks and soaked in the stares of the passing Koreans.

Random chipmunks.
Lil chipmunks for sale at a department store near my school. :C Poor guys? I've seen them several times, though. I took a video too.. I'll have to get that edited and posted, soon.

And that catches us up to about 2 weeks ago. I still have a batch of pictures to update after that, but this is way too massive and I need to get to sleep!  Now I still have to upload tons of pics to facebook. Oh geeze! It's so hard to catch up when your computer explodes for ages..

Monday, February 15, 2010

Happy Seollal (Lunar New Year)

On Friday, we all wore Hanbok (Traditional korean clothing, as seen in the picture) to celebrate Lunar New Year with the kids and take a staff picture together. Here you can see me and one of my coworkers all dolled up.  We played traiditional korean games and took pictures together.

The children were also wearing their Hanbok!  They all looked so cute.

The preschool and kindergarten children all performed an elaborate bow in front of their teachers in order to receive money and blessings for the new year. I don't have my own preschool or kindergarten class yet, but I've been team-teaching a class so I attended all of the festivities anyway.



The school also gave all of its teachers this gift set for the new year. It's one of the two biggest holidays in Korea, so companies will thank their employees with a gift set. This one includes canola oil, tuna, and Spam.  It may seem strange but Spam is super popular (and a bit expensive) in Korea, so, this is a very nice gift set.  The packaging is also nice and came with its own carrying bag.

Anyway, Lunar New Year happened to fall on Valentine's Day this year. It doesn't usually fall on the same day-- it's a bit late compared to most years. I didn't do anything in particular to celebrate, though I did have today (Monday) off.  It was nice to sit back and relax on a Monday, and it's going to be awesome to have a 4-day work week!

In bad news, my washing machine suddenly broke.  It's not a big deal in that I can easily do my laundry at a coworker's place, but it's just going to be a hassle to get it taken care of. Gonna talk to the school about it tomorrow.