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..

Korean cell phone ; The tiniest tangerine

So, I got my Korean cellphone late last week.  It's a Samsung phone which is incredibly confusing and difficult to use. But, every phone that I've used seems to be about equally confusing. It's got some music-playing capability built in, though I haven't put it to use yet. Soon, I shall!

Pictures!

The phone and all of the packaging. The grey box houses an extra battery for the phone. Pretty convenient!

Side view of the phone. It's slim!

Phone's open. The keyboard buttons are kinda hard to push.

Closer view of the phone. (You can see my reflection, haha.) The bottom part has controls for the music playing. 

A kid gave me this tiny, tiny tangerine. SO LITTLE! And also so delicious.

A new month means all new classes for me. Well, not ALL new. I'm still doing 2 of the same classes I was doing last month, but I'm doing new essay writing classes and one-on-one classes with individual students. Most of these extra classes are being offered for free- the school wants to ensure that the families enroll their kids for another year of classes, so they're having me give lots of "extra services."  I don't mind-- I'd rather stay busy than sit around doing nothing.

One of the Kindergarten teachers is very, very pregnant, so I'm going to be gradually taking over her class (starting tomorrow) so that I'll be ready to replace her completely if she should give birth before the end of the month.  I've already taught her class before, they're pretty good kids, so, I'm not too worried about it.

Well, I don't really have much to say. I'm so sleepy lately!

Cell phone and other adventures.

I don't have a whole lot to say in this post yet, but I'll try to cover some neat stuff. I've been busy with classes and life.

So here's a buncha random things!

FIRST: Food! I know that Dad loves food pictures, so I thought I should post some.

This is "okonomiyaki" -- sometimes called "Japanese Pizza" for no real reason. It's a round, flat .. cooked stack of dough with cabbage and other seasonings inside, and usually some type of meat or seafood. I got shrimp! It's then smothered in some mayo and a brown sauce. It's cooked in front of you and and you serve it to your own plate, bit-by-bit to keep the rest warm. Very tasty, an Osaka special!

This is something that I'm not sure the name of. The main dish is a rice porridge with vegetables and an egg cooked on top. That cup on the right is full of Ume-shu (plum alcohol). It was really sweet, I think it's my new favorite drink.

This is a meal I got at a 'college student chow' sort of restaurant. The portions are huge for a super cheap amount. It was pretty tasty. (That's teriyaki chicken and some fried fish on the left, and miso soup on the right.)

I got a cellphone! It was kind of a hassle-- I had to get a 'permission form' from the store, then go to the City Hall to register. I had to go and register as an Alien anyway, so I just did both at once. Then I went and bought the phone. The company is called "softbank" and they offered a discount for foreign students. It's a lot of money up-front (you have to buy the phone, approx 160 dollars), but the monthly plan is super cheap-- about $2.50 dollars. Softbank to Softbank is free (calling and email, both). Outside of network, it costs 41 yen per minute (a bit less than 40 cents), and 3 yen to send an email (less than 3 cents.)
I checked out all the other options available to students, did the math-- this was the best deal.
There's a 6 month contract, so my plan will be canceled in August. The cancellation fee is higher than the monthly fee so there's no point, haha!

Here's a close-up of my little cellphone charm buddies. The left is a cute pig for no reason, the golden cat is the popular "Maneki Neko"-- a good luck charm. Since he's gold, he'll bring me good fortune and wealth.


Of course, I went to the city today to get my registration stuff done. Here's the area near the city hall-- a park. Very nice and peaceful!

Here's a slice of Japanese bread. ITS HUUUGE! You can see that it's huge in the right picture, compared to my hand. I didn't have a ruler, but I wanted to properly show the thickness. The left picture is the bread compared to my gameboy. My gameboy is about .85 inches thick-- the bread is thicker. Bread is sold in bags of 5 slices, or so. Very strange.

I met my Homestay Visit Partner (the daughter who is about my age, of my family) earlier this week. She was really nice. We had lunch together and talked. I'm going to meet her again soon. So far she hasn't invited me to go to her house yet.. I hope that I can visit soon. I feel like I'm not getting enough exposure to Japanese.

Tomorrow I'm going to go into Osaka proper (the real city), so hopefully I can get some adventuring in, and lots more exposure to Japanese

WORD OF THE DAY (not really) IN JAPANESE!

Again, Dad requested that I give a little bit of Japanese information with my posts, so here's a starter. Let's see, what's a good word to learn?

Let's start with a word I hear a lot: TAIHEN. (Similar to spanish phonetics. Basically you'd say it as to rhyme with "my pen")
"Taihen" is hard to explain, but the dictionary lists the meaning(s) as: "difficult, terrible, tough, enormous." Basically, you use it to describe something that's quite bad. I mostly hear it used in the past tense-- that something "Was terrible." This would be, in Japanese, "taihen deshita" in a formal way, or "taihen datta" informally. I use this phrase a lot. If something was bad, but you want to de-emphasize it a bit, you can say "chotto" before either of the above phrases. It means "a little..".