agosto finito!

It's over, August is over and thank fuck for that! This had to be one of the hardest months ever and now it's done. glory glory. School is back to the normal starting time of lateness, where i get myself in there by 2:20 each day. this means back to yoga morning classes and getting to stay at the gym for 3 hours a day. this equals happiness. It's a great cycle of me feeling normal and therefore not fighting with the boy that i'm a smitten kitten with. but we still fight. and i've turned into a throwing, screaming crazy sometime over the past month too, and hopefully i will shed that skin and leave it to rot with august.

September makes me happy. last year september saw me recovered from the salmonella hell that poisoned me for most of the month. and it also brought me decisions (because i don't bring them to myself that's for sure) one of which was to come to korea and i'm happy that i came here. I'm very happy that i came here.

Soup is nice and makes me happy, as does bread and cheese which i have just ate a mountain of. missing people (even though this is sad) makes me happy because i know i have made strong connections with people and i think about them and they think about me.. (you better be freaking thinking about me assholes!)

blogging funnily enough makes me happy. it's too bad that now i've started to narrate my life in my head in lieu of making a post.


ciao bella!

weekend fun

Over the weekend we went to Cheongchon and Gangchon two small towns in the Gangwon-do province. Cheongchon was a hole in the ground really though.  After sleeping in an awesome round bed love motel (love motels are motels used mostly by hookers and business men or husbands or what not, and they are pretty cheap at $30 a night and are usually pretty clean and the love decor can be quite pleasing), we rented bikes to bike around Cheongchon's brown dirty ugly lake. My god, lonely planet told us that this was the gateway into the east of korea, well it was the gateway into grumpy andrea et louis. We moved on to Gangchon which is a town 30 min away by bus (it costs 80 cents to take the bus there). gangchon is notorious for being the student party town and as soon as our bus pulled in we saw lines of scooters, ATVs and bikes for rent. 

We rented a scooter which was amazing, and i actually drove the thing which i though i wouldn't be able to do. Of course i drove like a freaking granny and would slow down 100 meters from anything, but hey i drove. so if it counts as driving, i drove for my first time ever! It's kind of the laziest form of fun, i kept thinking about how this would be so much fun on a bike, but god, all that pedal work! We also took a spill off the scooter, oops! but luckily we were turning and going ohhhh about 2 km an hour when we fell.

when we were in Cheongchon we ended up finding this outdoor pool (in the middle of nowhere it seemed) and spending some hours cooling off there. Beside the outdoor pool was this weird zoo/amusement park that was totally run down and semi decrepit. This is the video of me harassing the poor caged monkey. There were even bears there in these tiny cages. it was SOOO sad, we couldn't figure out how they had the money to run the place, because it was also a ghost town. the zoo seemed to exemplify certain aspects of architecture and profit and no planning in korea. I feel so ignorant / arrogant making blatant blanket statements about korean culture (and architecture and planning) and what it's like here, because who the hell am i to judge/impose my cultural idealism etc etc, but sometimes i'm just like "ohhhh korea, you are so ....korean." 

 The zoo was like that. built and let go.

tiny town

I belong back in the 20's where all the ladies go to finishing schools and are all lesbos, knitting and making embroidered goddesses with hair the looks like mine. Well maybe in my mind i belong there, so maybe i'll just romanticise about it for awhile. because the romanticising stops when you have to think about what they did after the finishing school (well the white ladies with the money who went to the finishing school) when they probably left all their lesbos lovers and went off to be beaten by the ex solider husband and never became the car mechanic with the embroidered tool holders. 

 This sounds like a bad movie.

 I bet it is a bad movie.

All around me korean children are armed with nets and are out and about catching dragonflies and butterflies and other flies that are swarming around the semi suburban landscape.

There are these huge bugs in the trees that make this electrical sounding sound that i can't get over. At first i though it was a bird gone electric or super crazy wire noises but it's not it's a cicada. One of my students came to class with one of these giant ugly looking things in his pocket. While screaming and swatting him and the bug with my book i managed to get him to trow it out the window. In the end of it all the bug wasn't that big, but all i could think about was it getting tangled in my hair.

i love you mary blair.

"If I could put my words in song
And tell what's there enjoyed,
All men would to my gardens throng,
And leave the cities void."

green tea ice cream yum

it's hot, soo hot, too hot and humid like a mutherfucker to boot. for example you put some chips in a bowl to share over a nice friendly monopoly game and by the end of the game the chips are soggy because of the humidity! and i know, you are thinking, oh andrea  it takes like 6 hours to play monopoly that's why you had soggy chips but no...we even finished the game way early. then there is the cereal that goes soggy inside the bag inside the box. and jenny warned me about drying your clothes and how it takes 3 days for them to dry i was all like sure sure, whatever. but no...it takes 3 days for them to dry.

a whole bunch of us were supposed to go camping this weekend on the islands just an hour or 2 outside of seoul, but thank you monsoon for ruining our plans of tents and bonfires. this would also be the fist time in a longgggggg time that i would hang out with the windsor crew (there were at one time about 40 kids here from windsor ontairo teaching, but now i think about 10 of them remain) which i was really looking forward to. A girl named andrea from windsor used to work at my school and we became friends and then i became friends with all her friends which was like having friends again!!!! but then andrea left and that was sort of my connection to that social group. but i'm not going to whine about not having friends because it's not that hard to meet people here if you really want to.

yesterday was a national holiday, maybe another independence day (i feel like there are 3 independence day holidays) so louis and i spent the day lazing around, going to the gym and drinking and eating bad food to counterbalance our productive gym session. we ended up playing pictionary at a terrible bar with a sports theme to it. but the pictionary was fun (except when i got the word sonar and felt like an idiot because i really didn't know what the hell sonar was.) anyway, it was amazingly wonderful to have a mid week day off of work and of course spend it with louis. i don't understand how we are not sick of each other yet. the whole expat situation makes it this way though. it's intense here! you don't know many people, you can't speak the language, you are lacking in friends etc etc this must lead somewhat to the intensity of  relationships.

the sun is beaming in the window and i'm happy that it hasn't rained yet today.

sushi x 10

Japan, oh Japan. how can i sing your praises so, maybe in a magically magic way and then magically korea will become you. 

infrastructure that is competent and working, bicycles bicycles bicycles and bicycle lanes that are not part of the sidewalk which is filled with people. the kids here in korea are taught to hate hate hate their neighbours from such an early age due to the atrocities that

the Korean people endured during the loooong japanese occupation in korea. come on Japan admit that you were wrong, get on it with it. 

We took the train (the fast train to Busan is so reasonably priced and gets you across the country in 4.5 hours). Then we got to the ferry terminal by taxi, and then took a ferry to Fukuoka. It was super early when we arrived, we fell asleep in the park like the gross travelers we are.

 

And also sticker booths are everywhere.

instant satisfaction

my instant camera that i ordered online from the korean ebay-e type store, came in the mail today! Happy bday to me! Of course i spent the morning taking pictures of the many little children swarming all around me and ended up wasting my precious film on their grubby little faces.

 haha.. i don't really mean that.

This picture however was not taken by an instant camera of that kind, but an instant camera of another. It's Friday and thank fuck! I'm exhausted from this week. I only slept for 4 hours last night which leaves me feeling like a bag of shit. But we are going to Japan tonight so i gotta pull it together or just try try try tyrrrrrrryyyy to sleep on the bus/train/boat combo - which i know i probably won't end up doing. Anyway, it's leaving season here in Korea, most of the people i've met here have now left. It's a strange feeling because you make these sort of strange friendships with people knowing that you are all the opposite of static from here on in. It leads to strange goodbyes that's for sure! Lisa left last night and it was like, "well see you around", which is like WTF no!!!! it's not see you around, maybe i won't ever see you again! but ya, no it's still see you around.

cats and dogs

the monsoon and i are not friends. Before life was ok between us, it seemed that whenever it was raining i was conveniently inside somewhere or other, maybe the gym, my little apartment, or school... oh ho ho...friend no more.

 Because I'm me of course i still bike through the rain, but now it's like biking through a swimming pool. I always just assume that oh...the rain has GOT to stop sometime, and of course this stopping time will magically coincide with my departure time. but no, it's swimming pools ahoy and wet pants and dangerously slippy flip flops that make me go flip flop flying at every step on the wet tiled curbs, lane ways etc etc

So today i was all like, "that's it!! it's lunchtime i have some time i will bike home" and literally as soon as i stepped out of the door the skies opened up... why am i rambling about the weather...maybe life is boring today. Here is a photo of a zucchini that says something in Hangul.  wait it says ah-ho-bak. yeah...i have no idea... but it did freak me out when i took off the packaging and it was all like ah-ho-bak andrea.. ah-ho-bak.

hungry...

i just got home from school (i always feel like a kid when i say that or write it.... on the other end of the spectrum when i say my kids or my children (instead of my students) i feel like a granny, and i'm hungry. food rules my life. it's kind of unfair. many reasons and reasonettes and much outrage on my part that i am so controlled by it. basically if it's not put in my body at the exact time i'm hungry i turn into a beast...and for those who live with me i would say i become more like a beast of burden. thank god i'm such a gem or i would end up alone in this world.

This picture is from our recent trip to ullengdo, a small island off the coast of korea. The island was actually a pirate island years and years ago, it's in the middle of nowhere (3hrs ferry ride out east from any land) Also I think it was more like a pirates retirement island. the koreans seem to be embarrassed about this bootylicious past and there are no plaques or theme parks of any kind commemerating their history. Ullengdo like most of the country side in korea, was absolutely breathtaking. Most of the time I felt like i was in the jungle, the lushness of it all makes you want to paint the world green...or something like that... Louis (he's french it's louie) and I hiked our asses off and got across the mountains and through the island in 2 days. We also were accosted by a pastor to stay at his house (we hung out in the church for a bit), we hitch hiked with a mini tour bus filled with a korean family and sank bus karakoe with them, and we were woken up at 5 in the morning when we camped by accident on the army's terrain. The situation was pretty funny (though not funny at all) because i was half asleep and trying to speak broken korean to a military soilder boy man with a huge gun ... we actually tried to convince them to let us stay and sleep for a few more hours... this did NOT fly and we had to pack up the tent and leave.

This weekend we are going to Japan to party it up in the wilderness.

as we speak i am being pampered with baguette and brie. de-lish.

sweet potato pie

i like this picture because i look about 12 years old in it. it also reminds me of the winter that i stole mark bucks bunny fur hat and usually slept in a pile with 4 or 5 roommates/friends/lovers/cats. i am at school right now and my stomach hurts because i tried to eat 4 sweet potatoes in a row. gluttony sweet potato styles. So this blog is probably going to end up being an extension of my live journal, which was i guess an extension of my hairballs site... by which i mean that the sole purpose of this blog will be to narrate the voices in my head to you dear reader. so I'm guessing this will be a messing of the mind etc ps. life is great.

it's a yeasty irsh cake... hrm...