subway throw down

Koreans form impeccable lines for the bus. For real, I've never seen anything like it. Sadly though, their line forming skills fall short in most other areas. Along with cosmetic surgery and boyfriends carrying their girlfriends purses, line cutting seems to be a sport here. And sorry to my mister readers, but most of the time, when someone cuts in front of me, that line cutter has a Y chromosome. Age makes no difference, they are both young and old. I don't know if people see me as an easy target because I am foreign, but it happens ALL THE TIME AND I HATE IT!

So Thursday afternoon I was meeting a friend at a subway stop. This particular station is a busy one, with only a few machines for putting money on fare cards. So when I had a few minutes to kill before meeting her, I decided to go ahead and put my money on my card, since I needed it for my return trip, and there was not much of a line at the machines at that moment. As I approached the machines, they were all taken, but there was no one else waiting. I patiently waited behind, but was CLEARLY waiting for the machines. As the user ahead of me finished, a Korean male and his friend, both probably in their early 20s walked right past me and towards my machine. I tried to cut him off, but no dice. Usually I try to be a good representative of my country, and always on my best behavior here. But I had a momentary mind snap, and thought heck no, this is not happening, I was clearly the next user!!! However, "no" being the only word from that sentence I know how to say in Korean, I simply reached my hand out and swatted his back with the back of my hand. As soon as I did it, I thought hmmm, I probably should not have done that. He turned around with a stunned look on his face, I gave him my best "it is not your turn" look. He sarcastically held his hands out in an "after you" gesture, and stepped away from my machine. Victory! I gave an equally sarcastic "thanks" smile back at him, and proceeded to reload my card.

As I was telling my mom last night, since I have been away, there are often times I really miss home. I feel like I miss so many things-weddings, babies, my sister's awesome performances, baseball season, Thanksgiving, etc. However, recently I have been so happy to be away for one reason, and for one reason alone-Koreans really don't seem to care about the royal wedding. It's quite refreshing. Granted I still read the news from various English websites, so I get a full dose of it online, but it's really not been on the tv much here. Really, can someone please tell me why the fascination? In addition to ridding our language of lame words like knickers and posh, wasn't freedom from a monarchy one of the reasons our ancestors sailed across the Atlantic in boats that were barely seaworthy? People say it is a fairytale. Really? In what fairytale does the prince fall in love with the princess when she is modeling lingerie? In what fairytale does Prince Charming wake up with hair all over his pillow and a bottle of Rogaine in the medicine cabinet? Ahh, I shouldn't hate because of his appearance. The guy is fighting a losing battle with a gene pool that is the result of way too much intermarriage. He had his hotter younger years, but when P Chuck is your dad, you really can't stay hot forever. It's physically not possible.

Speaking of missing things at home, it's been a trying couple of weeks with friends here. It sucks, but it makes me truly thankful for the good friends I do have. So I need to give a shout out to this girl.

Joni has been one of my best friends for over 15 years. She's been my running buddy, my roommate, my coworker, my travelmate, and my emotional support. We've baked countless batches of delicious cookies while watching cheesy movies. She shares my love of Indian food and Coffeemate creamer. She bought me Oreos and chocolate Redi Whip when I backed my car into a dumpster. She held my hair back when I got car sick and threw up in a Burger King parking lot somewhere in Georgia. She sat with me on the Champs Elysees sidewalk and let me cry on her shoulder after a Monoprix security guard accused me of shoplifting. She has been my friend through thick and thin. Through my bad moods, my crazy moods, and everything in between, she has stood by me.

SOOOO, Joni, congratulations to you and Clark on becoming parents! I am sure you are an awesome mom. I can't wait until I am home and can meet your precious daughter. Until then, keep the photos coming!

PS

The head teacher has been having parent conferences the past week. She got the skinny on the picture from two entries ago. Apparently, when the girl was 3 (she is now 6) a man went out on the roof of her apartment building, shot several times, then jumped. Aside from the shooter, I don't believe anyone was injured, but whoa. Sad story, and so sad how my student remembers it...and includes it in her family portrait.

신당

That says Sindang. It is the subway stop by my apartment and one of three Korean words that I can read. The other two are 김 and 이 which are Kim and Lee respectively. If you can learn those two last names, you will be able to read the last names of 99.99% of Koreans. 11 months in Korea, and I can read 3 words. It's like I have this natural ability for language. Haha. But really I am trying to at least learn to read Korean. I devote about 1-2 hours a week to studying the alphabet. My study time is spent entirely on the subway. The material I study is not a book, but rather the signs for the subway stops. A friend told me that is how she learned to read Korean. So I've been doing it. I actually am getting better. I know most of the consonants, and three vowels. I feel like once I learn to read Korean, things will be golden. Gone will be the days of walking around in my ignorant bubble, wondering what each sign says. Instead, I will be able to point to a sign and proudly proclaim, "That sign says 'hasdogeu gong-geub eobche'" I won't know what it means, but I will be able to read it. Win! And in case you were wondering, according the the read phonetically option on Google translate, "hasdogeu gong-geub eobche" means hot dog vendor.

It's FINALLY starting to feel consistently warm. One day, the temperature even got above 65. The high that day was 66. So I am still waiting for the mercury to reach that magically glorious 70 degrees, but I am optimistic that it will happen in May. But, temperatures in the 50s and 60s are still better than how it was. Plus, everything has started to bloom. Two weekends ago, I went to a cherry blossom festival. It was mad crowded, but I at least got to get up close and personal with the flowers.

And a few unrelated to cherry blossom pictures from the day of the cherry blossom festival

Tower power! In one of the observation rooms of N Seoul Tower, a bunch of cities are listed, with their distance from Seoul. I don't remember how many kilometers away it said that Chicago was, but it's a lot.

Han River! I hesitated to even show this photo, because I feel it does not do Seoul justice. I remember as I was sitting there that day, I was thinking "Wow, this is so beautiful" This picture makes the city look not so pretty.

Yellow flower! I can identify all plants and flowers, just like my mom.

So yeah, things are good. My kids are getting cuter by the day. I'm going to Hong Kong in a week and 3 days, and I'm super stoked. I also just bought a ticket to Thailand for July. I was trying to be prudent on the summer vacation plans. But when I find a ticket deal that good, and my credit card happens to be sitting right next to the computer, I just can't stop myself. Like everything else I do, I've justified it. It's ok. I made a good choice.

1. It will be monsoon season in Thailand. Lame, except that is how I got the ticket so cheap. Not lame. And Thailand is one of the places I had to go before leaving Asia. So my other option was to go in October, when I am finished. BUT, average rainfall for October is WAYYYYY higher than July. Plus, from what I've read, there are parts of the country that do not get heavy rains usually.

2. Even if it does rain, mangoes (the reason I am going) taste divine, regardless of inclement weather .

3. I used my amazon credit card, which I am saving points on in order to get a super sweet discount on a Kitchenaid stand mixer, preferably pink. So really this ticket to Thailand was like an investment, an investment in my future baking endeavors.

4. I've been talking with a friend of mine about going to Thailand. I was going to wait and see if I like traveling alone/where she is going for that time off. But...meh. Vacation is vacation. And I think I'll enjoy traveling solo.

5. The dolla dolla is super low right now, so it's a good time to buy things that are priced in dollars. I don't even know if that makes sense. In my head it does.

With all those reasons, how could I afford not to get this ticket? Yeah. My computer isn't turning on properly most days. So I should buy a new one. My shoes that I wear almost every day have giant holes in them. I should buy new ones of those too. But I can't now. I have to prioritize my spending, and shoes and computers just don't make the cut. Ho hum.

WWFD?

That stands for what would Freud do?

A week or two ago, my supervisor came into my room in the middle of class. She was carrying a stack of white paper. She asked me to have the kids draw a picture which included their family, a tree, a sun, and their house. She was going to use these pictures to psychoanalyze the kids. I am sure back in the day, there was a version of this test that was legit and the product of a a PhD's years of laborious research and study. But now, my guess is that this "test" is widely circulated as a Facebook quiz, created by a bored high school student after watching a particularly interesting Discovering Psychology with Philip Zimbardo video in his 4th period psychology class. "Laura just psychoanalyzed herself. Click here to view her results. How well do you know yourself? Click here to find out."

Anyway, most of my kidlets' pictures were cute albeit typical little kid scribbles. Then I received this gem.

It is a little hard to see, and I am not computer crafty enough to figure out how to zoom in. But in case you can't see, in the lower right corner of the picture is the entire extended Kim family, smiling, enjoying the day outside under the orange sun, next to their purple apartment building. Now please draw your attention to the top of the apartment building, that is a man with a knife in one hand, and a gun in the other. I wish I could make the picture clear enough so that you could see his face, he is screaming, he has scary glaring eyes, and she colored his entire head red. It was creepy/awesome.

This girl just turned 6 years old last month. She wears a lot of pink and always wears bows in her hair. She asks me every day if we can watch Mickey Mouse cartoons during snack time. I have another student who many days I think is possessed (but one of my favorites, she is an animal). If she gave me this picture, I would think "Yeah, that seems about right..." But of the girls in my class, I never expected that picture from this particular student.

When I showed it to my supervisor, she didn't seem to bothered by it. Umm...

red and seedy

June = perfection. I am not just saying that because my birthday is in June. It really is the perfect month. The baseball season is in full swing (no pun intended). In Illinois, the weather is perfect, except for the occasional tornado warning. And, although it doesn't apply to me anymore, there will always be a feeling of freedom and relief. Coats and book bags are tucked away in closets. I live for Christmas...and June. And, if June had a taste, it would be strawberries.
MMMMMM! Strawberries! Aside from Funfetti cake with Funfetti frosting, is there a more perfect food? Delicious and healthy. By themselves, in a savory dish, in a dessert, or on top of pancakes. YUM YUM YUM. So, a few weeks ago when a sign up sheet was posted for a trip to a strawberry festival, I was pumped. As were many other people at school. However, the enthusiasm faded and by Friday, only two names remained on the sign up sheet, so much for an office unity building day. I felt slightly annoyed by the flakiness of my coworkers. However, that annoyance was soon forgotten when I started thinking of the flakiness of pie crust, topped with strawberry filling. Come hell or high water, I was still going to that festival.
So Saturday morning, I set off for Nonsan with my friend/coworker/fellow strawberry enthusiast and two of her friends.
I could barely contain my excitement. What kind of strawberry deliciousness was waiting for me? Strawberry pie? Strawberry ice cream? Strawberry cookies? Is there such a thing? Strawberry milkshake? Strawberry smoothie? Strawberry waffle? Strawberry tart? Nevermind the fact that it is still decently chilly in Korea, so I have no idea how/where all of these strawberries are grown. That didn't matter. What did matter, and I should know this by now, is that I am in Korea. Expecting good dessert in Korea is like expecting good skiing in Illinois. In my strawberry induced excitement, I forgot that tidbit. I ate zero strawberry desserts at this festival. Womp womp.
The pièce de résistance of the strawberry festival seemed to be the giant strawberry rice cake. For those of you I haven't talked to about rice cake yet...where to start? I don't hate Korean food, quite the opposite actually. I do however, hate rice cake. If you are curious about what it is like, go eat a spoonful of Vaseline. The texture is slightly different, but basically the same idea. Flavorless, and no amount of chewing really makes it any easier to swallow. But Koreans go crazy for this stuff, and they were super excited about their long strawberry rice cake.



Then this lady broke it. Luckily, rice cake is like putty, and they could just stick it back together.


And of course, because this is Korea, there were photo ops aplenty. No one in this picture looks particularly jazzed to be at the strawberry festival.


Another display at the strawberry festival was the sad zoo. This was a tent that had a diverse array of animal life in it. I did not say wildlife because in three of the cages, there were cats. There were also a variety of big disgusting snakes, a big hairy spider, a donkey, baby bears, a wolf/dog (not sure, the signs were in Korea), a few animals that I have no idea what they were, and this sad pen, containing a skunk, a turtle, a bunny, and a monkey with a chain around his neck. At least he wasn't drinking a beer like the chained monkey I saw in the Philippines.



The most important thing is this: TRAIN NORAEBANG. I can't make this stuff up. And never in my life has a train ride passed so quickly. If you don't know what noraebang is, look it up and tell me that doesn't make you want to come visit me. In my opinion (which is fact, let's be real), it's Korea's greatest asset.


So, despite the strawberry festival not being at all what I imagined, I had a great day. I bought a kilo of delicious strawberries for about $6. The weather was warmish, with blue sky and SUN. I was with good company. I got to noraebang on a train. I give the day an A+.