all we are is dust in the wind…

deery-lou.
well here it is friday morning, korea time. this week has definitely flown by. but they again they all seem these days. not much has happened this week hence the lack of posts. i seem to have been in this sleepy state all week. going to bed uber late. waking up even later. after months of having skype on my computer i finally used it last weekend. LOVE IT!! i got to chat with two of my peeps. one in washington, dc and the other in england. and it was all for free. got ot love that. to all my peeps out there. if you haven't downloaded skype yet do it. then send me an email and i'll give you my user name. it would be great to chat with some of you. now if i could only get my parents to download. but that would actually mean that they have to unpack and set up the computer. since they moved the computer has been sitting in a box. once again its that time of year: yellow dust. yes the yellow dust of china is blowing into korea at full force. outside cars are covered in its yellow mist. the people have busted out their masks to make their way down the street. i keep thinking i'm going to buy a mask but then i never do. i think i'd feel like a dork in a mask. the last couple of days have been extremely windy. it felt like winter decided to return. however, today it feels a bit warmer. lets keep our fingers crossed. i'm ready for spring. and a spring fling! tkd is going good. i feel like i'm making progress on my kicking. my sahbanim said that i have improved a lot since going to kukiwon. perhaps the black belt has brought with it a sense of confidence. meanwhile back at ils, i lost my kiddy class. that made me kind of sad cuz i liked those kids. now i picked up some new girl in a solo class and a class that use to be horace's. the new chelsea is way smart. i think it'll be a good class. the other class has two students that i taught before: jeff and isabella. its nice to have them back in my class again. there's a boy named peter in the class who likes to feel the hair on my arms and hop around like a frog. he is so cute. then there's james who is rockin a way cool mullet. i will definitely get a picture of that. the rest of the class includes michelle [sara's sister who was in my kiddy class], julie, and jenny. the boys in this class are going to be trouble. i can feel it already.

be well…

funky funky friday

deery-lou.
on friday night i found myself heading into seoul to met up with chen. tae kwon do class had been canceled so it seemed that all signs were pointing me to go. i got to her hotel around 10ish. yes those of us that don't live near seoul must either 1. get a hotel room 2. stay in a sauna or 3. stay up all night. luckily for me chen had a hotel room. we headed off to funky funky to go see this band that chen likes jet echo. when we got to the club we found out there was a $25 cover charge. um, hi deer caught in the headlights. the guy then told us that it was all you could drink all night. chen doesn't drink so we got him to drop her price down to $10. mine stayed at $25. he asked for our email addresses. having three of them i wasn't sure which one to give. especially since i'm thinking about getting rid of my sprintmail one. but thats another story. anyway…after writing down my email he handed me a membership card which grants me free entrance whenever i come in the future. i'm looking at the card now and on the back it says:

free entrance except on soundday
[every third friday]

upon first reading this i thought they spelled sunday wrong. i just realized that sound day is probably a special event. hence the every third friday. hehe! so i guess you can't really beat the price. inside i definitely drank my moneys worth and more so. at one point though the bartender gave me a vodka water instead of vodka tonic. hi. you in the hell drinks vodka water. i made chen take a sip to make sure i wasn't crazy. i wasn't. jet echo was actually pretty decent. the duo were a cross between my bloody valentine and sonic youth with a harder edge. it took me a while to get into cuz i prefer more vocals but they grew on me. the other two bands well lets just say it was like watching a lounge act in the holiday inn. enough said. when all the bands were finished the club started playing 80s tune. that made me happy. so i did what anyone boy would do and had one/two more drinks while i danced. we got back to the hotel around 3 and crashed.

chen had just gotten back from her visa run on friday. she went to japan. while she was there she got me a prezzie. it was a new outfit for amber. so of course when we got back to the hotel i had to put the new outfit on her. i can't believe my doll has an outfit. what's happening to me!!! saturday afternoon we headed into insadong. chen was meeting up with some folks to show two prospective galleries for the exhibit. it looks like they are going with vooks books. chen had an exhibit there before. the place is cool. i got a good vibe from it. its kind of a cross between an art bookstore/cafe/gallery. a majority of the books are in english, too. its going to be a good space. after that we grabbed some lunch and headed back to hongdae to go doll shopping. i ended up buying an asian blythe. so now i have two blythes and one extra outfit. i think i need one more. since three is a magic number.

amber's new outfit

suki

bff!

now for something totallly random. having become totally addicted to project runway i noticed the uk had their own version of the show called project catwalk. so i watched it. elizabeth hurley is the hostess. she sucks. here's what her catch phrase for the show was: "fashion has no mercy. you may leave the catwalk". so i'm now incorporating that into my speech. that was actually the best thing about the show. all right i should motor cuz my hands are cramping.

be well…

students!

valerie balancing pencil holder

deery-lou.
through out the year i took some photos of my students. most of these were taken last year. some of the students pictured have since left our school. also included in this set is the "shygirl" shirt. i can't remember if i uploaded those images to my blog. i searched on saturday but didn't see them. i know i talked about "shygirl" quite a bit. perhaps thats why i'm confused.

student pix

be well…

bali pez

deery-lou.
my trip to bali seemed like ages ago. in truth it has only been 3 months. time sure is flying. anyway while i was in bali i took some pez snapshots. which is what i usually do when i go on vacation. the pez snapshots all started when misty and i took our pez to hawaii. from then on anytime i go on vacation my green insect pez comes with me. so far he has seen hawaii, traveled down route 66, spent some time in thailand, and now bali. i forgot about the bali photos until this weekend. its a good thing i did some organizing.

bali pez pics

be well…

the way we eat

deery-lou.
i spent most of yesterday watching tv, chatting, and trying to organize files on my computer. that's when i realized i had all these photos from last year i never uploaded. oops. looks like i'll be doing that this week. i think i'm addicted to soda. my soda habbit has gotten worse since moving here. i'm drinking far too much. i went from a weekend soda drinker to every day. my body actually craves it in the morning. how sad is that. its like i'm doing all these things in excess, especiall when it comes to food. or have i always done these things this way and am only now becoming aware of them. for instance, when i see korean children eating snacks they put one in their mouth, chew, and swallow. then they grab another and so on and so on. when i eat chips i'm shovelling them in my mouth. often two or three at a time. and before i swallow what i have in my mouth i'm shovelling more in. is this something that all americans do. are we excessive eaters. piling chip after chip into our mouth. is that what we been conditioned to do. i've never really paid too much attention to how people eat back home. perhaps its being in a different culture that i'm now becoming aware of such actions. what is our compulsion to keep the food coming. its like we aren't really enjoying the food but simple eating to eat. i just don't know. although i am going to try to be conscious of how i eat. i don't want to look like a pig eating my chips now do i. oink. oink.

speaking of food, here are some photos from kevin's birthday party last year. cake and snacks were had by all. and yes that's a piece of tissue in his nose. he had a bloody nose. [footnote: i tried three times to upload a photo to my blog but for some reason its not working.] enjoy!
kevin's party pics

be well…

life as i know it

deery-lou.
yet another week has passed here in the land of the morning calm. it has now been 1 year 6 months and 17 days. in a strange way it feels like i've only just got here. this week was filled with hellos, good byes, and drinking. we had yet another farewell dinner for horace on monday. we also welcomed a new foreign teacher. this week at school felt uber hectic. a majority of my classes are started to get maxed out. where are all these kids coming from? i rearranged my classroom this week. it never fails that everytime i do the children freak out. they definitely don't like change. one of my classes wanted superhero names so on friday i put a bunch of super hero names in a hat and had them pick. they seemed to like that. i told them i'd find pictures of the hero they chose and print them out for them. it makes me so happy to see them interested in superheroes. perhaps i will leave a lasting impression on some of them. i saw my friend bill a few times this week. we only get to chat ever so briefly since he's always on his way out. however he always takes a few minutes to say "hi ethan" and tell me about his day. the whole time he's talking with me he's trying to put on his coat, which is almost as long as he is tall. bill method is quite simple. he doesn't believe in unzipping his coat all the way. he leaves it half zipped and puts it on by stepping into it. its quite a sight. this week i always found myself engaged in another "dialogue" with my buddy tae from taekwondo. its his mission to have dialogue with me at least twice a week. he wants to be my korean teacher and i'm happy to obligue. so far i've learned the korean words for train, airplane, ship, bread, and the currency. he would teach some words and then say quiz. he tried to teach me sentences but i told him words would be easier for now. it was quite charming. in tkd i started to learn a new form as well as back kicks and a turning kick. the turning kick is quite hard for me. i can't seem to make myself spin as fast as i need too. my sahbanim always makes it seem so easy. my fellow classmates are also started to notice that i have my black belt. i caught a few of them trying to read my name on it. one of them even pointed to it and then said something to the sahbanim. then they all started to sing the congratulations song. a few came up to me after class and said congratulations again. these kids are really great. my kwang gang nim wants me to help him with his english. i brought in a book the other day but when he looked at it he said "too much english" and got very animated. he then pulled a korean book off his self, opened it, and asked if i could read it. i said no. then he made a comment about feeling the same about the book i brought. i think he wants a book that has both english and korean in it. although i think he can actually do this book. he's just panicked. it was quite funny though. he kept saying over and over his english very bad. i don't think he's as bad as he thinks. i can tell he really wants to learn thought so i will do my best to find a book for him. i met up with young, anna, and christine last night after tkd. they were at our usual haunt: gas station. they have the best friend chicken there. we kicked back some beers and chanted the night away. every time we go we end up getting some free food. its a great little chill place. and now here i am. its almost 4pm on saturday and i've done nada. well actually i watched king kong, the amazing race, and managed to get some laundry done. my life feels like one giant routine these days.

be well…

turkish delight

deery-lou.
i'm not sure where the weekend went. it was one late night after another. friday night chen came into ansan to hang out. i was trying to leave tkd class on time when one of the students wanted to have a "dialogue" with me. it seems that all of a sudden i have sparked new interest with my taekwondo buddies. could it be because i'm now a black belt. i chatted with a group of them for a bit then made my way to met chen who was waiting at red mango, a yogurt shop, near my apartment. chen and i had a candy party. we ate twizzlers and turkish delight. we washed them down with coke. as a child i had fallen in love with the 70s animated movie "the lion, the witch, and the wardrobe" but had never had a turkish delight until now. chen's mom sent some for me to try. thanks chen's mom! as i stuffed myself with turkish delight after turkish delight i felt like edmund. i couldn't help but wonder if somehow chen had mysteriously transformed herself into the snow queen and was fattening me up to do her bidding. we were up until the wee hours chatting. it was a blast. i haven't had an evening like that in a long time. it reminded me of all those nights misty and i would watch bad tv, eat ice cream out of the carton, and talk. sigh… around mid-afternoon on saturday we finally motivated ourselves to head into hongdae. we stopped at an anime store where i found a small asian blythe. unfortunately i didn't buy her at the time. but it looks like i'll be heading back this weekend to purchase her. chen is organizing a group photo exhibit sometime in seoul. she asked me if i'd like to be a part of it. i had hestiations about it seeing that i don't consider myself a photographer but chen has inspired me to work on something. i haven't fully committed but i'm am going to work on a series of photos. mostly concerning toys since they are a big part of my life. that's why i'm going back for asian blythe. she'll be joining amber [surfer blythe] for the shoot. i am a geek. it was nice to hear from someone i respect and admire as a photographer to give me such encouragement. perhaps thats what i needed. thanks chen. you're a doll. around 8 pm we met up with some others and had dinner at an italian restaurant. it was actually quite good. after dinner i parted ways with the group and headed to hyehwa to meet up with horace and young. i spent the rest of the evening drinking at some irish pub. finally around 2am horace and i caught a cab back to ansan. that in itself was an experience. there was brief moment when the cab driver had gotten lost. it was a bit pricey but split between two it wasn't soo bad. don't think i'll be taking many cabs home from seoul. on the plus side chen did show me a inexpensive hotel to crash at if i wanted to stay the night in seoul. i think i'm going to do that next time.

sunday was butt ass cold. i spent the day inside my apartment watching tv shows and working on my scrapbook. scrapbooking is h.a.r.d. i actually made quite a dent in the scrapbook. hopefully it'll be finished soon seeing that i have a pile of crap to put into it. time to finish off the turkis delight.

be well…

p.s. horace left for america today. it's going to be strange not having him here. i wish him well and will definitely see him upon my return. whenever that is.

a work retreat

deery-lou.
three weeks ago we had an office retreat/farewell trip. we headed north to gwangwon-do. on the agenda was sokcho [a harbor town], naksan-sa [a buddhist temple set against the east sea], and seorak-san national park [a mountain area]. the trip there was quite long due to traffic. and the fact that i was nursing a cold didn't help much. i slept most of the way there. breakfast for me that morning consisted of cigs, pringles, coke, two oranges, and more pringles. quite healthy huh. we stopped for lunch around two for some much needed food. soon after that we arrived at the hotel, which was actually a guest house set out in a very rural area. on the road that lead to the hotel was a dog farm. i like to think that they are raising them for pets not food. but a sign said fresh dog, chicken, etc. so i might be foolish to do so. the guest house was quite nice. didn't get any pictures of it though. there were two large bedrooms, one small one with a bed, a living room, a kitchen, and a nice deck that looked out onto the valley. it was quite peaceful. after we unload the bus we set out for naksan-sa. naksan-sa is the only temple set against the east sea. it is dedicated to gwaneum, the goddess of mercy. here's a little history about naksan-sa taken from moons handbook south korea:

naksan-sa was founded in 671 by the traveling monk uisang. after his return from china, uisang came to this spot to try to meet gwaneum face to face. in a seacliff cave, high above the crashing waves he prayed and meditated for days, but she didn't show herself. in frustration , he threw himself into the ocean, whereupon gwaneum immediately appeared and saved him from death. in response, uisang established naksan-sa on this bluff and dedicated it to her.

unfortunately last year there was a huge fire there destroying most of the structures and trees. however what is still there is amazing. its such a beautiful place. standing on the cliffs overlooking the sea was breathtaking. you could feel the energy of the place. christine, young, and i stood there for quite awhile. it was just so peaceful. they are in the process of reconstructing the area. however, i'm sure it's going to be some time before the trees are fully restored.

from naksan-sa we walked down to the beach to regroup with the others who had left. jk told me that during the summer this is a very popular place to come. there were a few hotels along the beach. it seemed quite nice. jk stopped at the fish market to get some food. we were going to have a cookout back at the hotel. that night the owner of the hotel cooked all of our food. we had pork, steak, shellfish, etc. it was like a feast. the steak was like eating butter. so freakin good. once we finished eating we had a meeting to discuss school topics. i did my best to provide input but i felt so out of it that it was hard for me to concentrate. finally around midnight i told them i had to go to bed. i had asked christine and them where they were planning to sleep. they had taken the room with the adjoining bathroom. that left the big room and the small one with a bed. then i asked jk where he'd like to sleep. he said he was going to probably sleep on the couch since he was going to watch the olympics. i figured that it would be all right to take the room with the bed. well, obvisously i was wrong. before i could settle in horace came, jumped in the bed, and said he was taking this side. i told him that i didn't want to share a bed since i felt sick. he told me he didn't want to share a room with snoring koreans and the new teacher. then he threw it that this whole weekend was for him so he should have the room with the bed. not really wanting to argue i grabbed one of the pillows off the bed and said, "if i'm sleeping on the floor i'm making sure i have more than one pillow." and with my stuff i left for the other room. needless to say i was a little annoyed. christine and the others were a bit surprised by it too. when i awoke that morning no one had even slept in the room with me. when i say anna she told me that no one wanted to bother me since i was sick. meanwhile i heard horace come out and say how great he slept in the giant bed.

once everyone was rallied we packed up the car. it was time to leave the lovely guest house and head for seorak-san national park. i had been there last year around with my old taekwondo class so i wasn't really looking forward to it. the whole day was a giant deju-vu for me. the only difference was that there was no snow on the ground. i would like to visit the park again, just not during the winter. i'm sure its amazing in spring or fall. thats when i'd like to go back. we took the cable car to gwongeumseong. i decided not to take the hike to the top since i had done it the last time. while the others were on their way i went to check out the temple. it was a small temple down from where we got off the cable car. nothing to great but the views from it were nice. i meet back up with the others and we took the cable car back to the park. we walked around the park a bit then left. there was brief confrontation between me and a certain someone in the bus. won't go into the details but the gist of it is that someone told me to stop acting like a princess and share. i basically had to bite my tongue and did my best to ignore it. although i really wanted to lash out, i realized that doing so in front of co-workers wasn't cool. so i took the higher ground. the trip back seemed to take forever. i didn't think we would ever see ansan. there was so much traffic. we finally reached the apartment close to 11pm. overall the trip was pretty good. jk did say to me that the next retreat would be in a different country. i won't hold my breath for that to happen but who knows.

here are some pictures from the weekend retreat.
sokcho/naksan-sa/seorak-san photos

be well…

this just in…

deery-lou.
well its official…i'm now a BLACK BELT!!!! yippee!! i'm so excited. and i just can't hide it. i'm about to lose control and i think i like it, like it. how's that for a little song. i'm amazed that i actually stuck with something for so long and got a result. i still in shock. there's a part of me that can't believe its over and done with. it felt like an eternity. when i walked into class my kwangjanim presented the belt to me and said "congratulations". i felt very proud. to actually have the belt in my hands felt good. i had them sew my name in korean. it seemed more authentic that way. i'm such a geek. i would love to know how many points i scored. you needed 60 to pass. me thinks i got 61. hehe. i'm just hoping that now the i got the black belt i don't lose interest. i mentioned something to horace earlier in the day that i haven't been motivated lately. i think a lot of that had to do with the build up to taking the test. it was also before i knew that i got it. i did pay for one more month tonight so with any luck this lack of motivation will be a passing phase. who knows perhaps i'll get my second black belt before leaving korea. wouldn't that me cool. it feel cool to be walking around the gym in my brand spankin new black belt. as we were waiting for class to begin my sahbanim tugged on his belt smiled at me and gave me a thumbs up. these guys are great. i'm so glad i got my belt with them and not my first suck-ass master. i think they were just as happy as i was, especially since i'm the first foreigner they taught. the classtimes was spent mostly on kicking. i think i'm improving ever so slightly. i do know one thing. my legs are definitely going to be one lean mean fighting machines before i leave this country.

new banner of my master thats in the hallway

my black belt [thats my name on the left]

be well…

herb vs. erb

deery-lou.
a couple of weeks ago me amigo prattlepants blogged about the pronounciation of "herb". she had overheard two brits talking on a train about how americans don't pronounce the "h" sound. the bottom line being that as americans perhaps we were just being lazy. then on friday i had an arguement with one of my students over this same thing. as sue was reading she pronounced "herb" with the "h" sound. i immediately corrected her by saying its "erb". she felt the need to reply to this by saying, "no teacher there's an h. its "herb". to which i answered her by saying it was "erb". this went on for a couple of minutes. finally i told her that yes there is an "h" in herb but in america we say "erb". i could tell she looked a bit perplexed. she just looked at me and said, "ok, ok." then wanted to know why. and to be honest i really didn't have an answer. i wanted to say perhaps because we're lazy, but i didn't. while i'm on the topic of herb it makes me think of high school. in my circle of friends we often had code names for different things. the girls, who we called the cuntry, refered to pot as herb. not sure why i thought of that but i did. which in turn meant that i had to share it with you. i think i need sleep.

be well…

my baby

deery-lou.

my baby
my baby Now
a, b, c, d, E, F, g
my baby Now
nice sing
my baby is a nursery shool
a small consideration

poem by brent
[copied exactly from his journal]

be well…

pudding & more

deery-lou.
I LOVE PUDDING!!! both my mom and sister had sent me some boxed pudding. i'm going through it like water. just now i finished off the oreo cookie pudding. there was probably half of it left in the bowl. i even went as far as to run my finger inside the bowl so as to not waste any pudding. how sad is that? its ashame the koreans haven't embraced pudding. i must have more pudding…

now that that little rant is out of my system its time to move on. another weekend has flown by. on friday night horace and i sat in my apartment drinking and chatting. i asked horace to stop by cuz i wanted to see if he could help me with my computer. every since i added a whole bunch of new music itunes is not happy. if i have itunes, firefox, mail, etc all opened at once itunes eventually starts cutting in and out and freezes my computer. whats up with that, yo? we never really did solve the problem. it might be that i need more memory. all i do know is that i drank a lot of nasty k-wine that night. saturday was spent doing absolutely nothing. actually i watched a lot of tv. can i just say that oth was so freakin good. i love that show. the only thing that would have made watching it better was if misty was sitting next to me. sigh… i spent most of sunday cleaning my tiny apartment and removing songs from itunes. it amazes me how fast my apartment gets dirty. i feel like i have to clean every other day or something. around 4:15 i headed into seoul. i was meeting horace at 5:50 in itaewon. sal, a friend of horace's, had organized a gather at queens bar to listen to the complimation cd that he and horace had made. this was the second one that sal had made. anyway i met horace and we had some coffee [actually i had a frozen french vanilla drink] then made our way to queens. inside the bar there were some falafels and hummus to snack on. i forgot how good that stuff tasted. its been so long. in the short time we were there i managed to get slightly trashed off of 4 cocktails. um, hi light weight. it was a pretty good crowd. i met a few people but really couldn't tell you their names. at around 9 or maybe early [i have no clue] a group of us headed over to gecos to eat. i had a very pricey and dry pastrami sandwich. i vaguely remember eating it. i do remember thinking i wasn't going to make it through dinner. after i ate i felt completely fine. it was as if i had been reborn. by 10:30 ho and i caught the subway back to ansan. due to my not really paying attention we boarded the wrong train. we figured this out 5 stops later. we arrived back in foggy ansan around midnight. i came in and immediately crashed. i still feel like i haven't caught up on sleep. taekwondo was hard tonight. while waiting for one student to finish doing his pushups the sahbanim busted me with my eyes closed. oops. he made the sleepy notion toward me. as my kwanjanim about my black belt. didn't really get a straight answer. he did say that if you don't pass the people at kukkiwon call and if you do pass they don't call. he said that they didn't call today. then he went on to say something about a license and that takes two months but black belt should be here in a few days. i felt like saying "huh". i'm still not sure if that means i passed or not? i guess i'll just have to wait for the belt to show up. backtracking a little. while i was stretching i noticed my kwanjanim and some woman talking outside. the woman had her hand over her mouth as if she was laughing. then the door opens and its my friend bill who says "hi" and then leaves. so now i think that the woman was his mother. mfb went out of his way to say hello to me. he's great. ok. i feel the rambling coming on so i'm calling it quits and heading off to bed.

be well…

the great eye debate

deery-lou.
i'm not sure how we got on the topic but the other day i had a big debate about eye color with one of my classes. we were in class and i said something about harry having brown eyes. everyone in the class was like "no, teacher, no!" i looked more closely. yes, they were brown. again the students said no. then they said they all had black eyes. i told them no they didn't. their eyes were brown. this went on and on until i pulled christine in to settle the debate. when i asked her she immediately said black. all the the kids cheered. i looked at christine and said your eyes aren't black. she then corrected herself and told the students that yes their eyes were brown with black pupils. this made them all go "aaahhh!" then they all had to come look at my blue eyes. i told them about all the different colors of eyes back home. they giggled. at least the great brown debate has been solved. and hopefully they will stop saying they have black eyes.

be well...

the tae kwon do banner

deery-lou.
i finally got around to taking pictures of the banner and piecing them together in photoshop. however, i must admit its not the best photoshop work i've ever done. one would have thought that i just taught myself how to use the application. oh well, it serves its purpose. without any further ado i give you…

the tae kwon do banner

close up of my section

the following two pictures are flags of my master that hang in the gym. i want my picture on a flag. how cool would that be!





be well…