Subconscious

I feel a bit of a weight around my heart but I can't seem to place a finger on why I am feeling this way.

relationships

how many friendships do you sever in order to sustain a relationship? it feels like the people i get along with are lost along the way and in the end we gamble it all on just one person hoping that they're able to be everything and more. why is it we can't sustain a meaningful relationship while keeping all your friends?

HAPPY BIRTHDAY!!

To my lovely sister! Happy birthday!

wallpapering

who woulda thunk that i'd ever be helping out at a little ma and pa shop wallpapering and renovating a place so that a my friends can begin their new life together. it made me think about how nice it would be to open my own little cafe that would serve bagels and other little pastries for breakfast, pasta for lunch and the most awesome cheesecake in town.

i often like to imagine my life to be something completely different than it really is. i could see the cool little place in my mind but is it what i really want to do? probably not. it was just a nice thought at the time. in the span of one day i think i have about 1000 useless thought run through my head. most of which just contradict each other but still...i hate always wondering what it is i really want from my life. it usually starts when i wake up and drag my ass to the gym. too much walking time to drown in my own thoughts.

korean skin care

i bought some hand and feet masks today. they're basically gloves and slip ons for your hands and feet to keep them soft and pretty. i was really bored and wanted to go shopping. i thought they were cool and so i bought some. i'm typing with the gloves on right now. gosh...i get bored too easily here. i should bring some for my sister. i think she'd like them. :) cause she likes weird things like me. and she's coming out to see me in september and i'm planning to go to vegas when i come back to the states. woooot!!

my poor baby..

this little puppy died yesterday...we don't know why. he was so cute...whenever he saw us he would run over and put his ears back and make us pet him. he would sit next to us and just constantly wanted to be with people. i was just playing with him on saturday. i hope the rest of the puppies will be ok. :'(

talking to myself

when i wake up in the morning and i'm still lying in bed because of this internal struggle between remaining in bed or walking the 20 min to the gym to be tortured by this skinny pretzel woman for an hour and then walk back after all the energy is drained from my body.

Productive Me: gotta get up...gotta go to the gym

Lazy Me: don't go, it's raining out.

Productive Me: you hafta go, you paid for it.

Lazy Me: but you can go tomorrow.

Productive Me: yah but i ate pizza last night. and today is monday, i should start off the week right.

Lazy Me: but you can go again when it's not raining.

Productive Me: get up...get up...

Lazy Me: *rolls over*

Productive Me: *rolls out of bed*

Lazy Me: damn it...fine, but just today

it pretty much goes like this most days. especially when i'm still aching from the day before or had a really late night out. *sigh*

i find that when i first started blogging about my life in korea i had a lot more to say. a lot more things were happening and everything felt new. the lack of updates shows the steady routine of my days. except for the array of new people that i have just met everything else is the same. of course there are things that i wouldn't blog about that happens but for the most part things are good. i think it happens once a year around summer when i start to get anxious about going home and so i get more tired of living my routine life without my friends from home. there are plenty of cool people here, but needless to say it's still very different from being in the comfort of your own home, laughing with company that you've spent so many years building relationships with. it's that time of year again when the homesickness starts to eat away at me. i can't seem to find enough things to keep myself distracted. sure there are the crazy parties, loud bars, and endless amounts of booze but i'd like just having a fun night going bowling and playing DDR at the bowling alley. or even just dinner and arcade games at dave and busters. of course i have lots of complaints around this time, and i never talk about the good parts of my life maybe i'll include some balance.

i have cool coworkers, awesome students, a sweet and understanding (for the most part) boyfriend that loves me and all my crazy psychotic breaks. i have a steady job, a nice apartment that overlooks most of the city, no debt, and lots of money put away. sure that sounds more like maybe someone in their thirties but often i forget that i am no longer in school, i'm not 21 anymore, and a lot of people are starting to get their lives sorted. it's not like the times when renting a cabin with 20 people and playing taboo, pictionary, and guesstures all night was something we did regularly. life is more serious now, people are getting married or engaged left and right. people are in medical school working to become doctors! sigh...i'm learning to grow up day by day.

cycles

i go through cycles of self improvement and self destruction. the self destruction cycle is over...it's about self improvement again. hitting the gym, cutting down on coffee and alcohol. after awhile self destruction will come again...but for now...i have my sanity.

culture shock?

so i've been hanging out with our new teacher. i'm glad she's cool and fun to hang out with. i guess i forgot how it feels when i first came to wonju and i didn't know anyone and didn't know the language. the loneliness can be quite overwhelming. you miss all your friends, your life back home, and the comforts of living in a country where you can actually communicate and get around. you get here and everyone feels it. the alienation...so we make friends real fast and try to stay above water. i tried to stop hanging out with foreigners because they always end up leaving me.

when i had my friends here it felt like every day was so much fun. but then their time was up and then they're gone. forever. and then i'm here alone again. of course i know bum's here...and i know i have my korean friends and my students, but sometimes it's just nice to be able to communicate with people without getting lost in translation. lately i'd been sucked into that english comfort zone...you know the drink until daylight, dance like a mad man, forget about your worries and pretend you're in america zone. i was losing my mind but it was a lot of fun. now of course i'm trying to maintain normal relationships with friends, having girls night eating pizza and watching sex and the city. i'm practicing for our wedding band performance on saturday. the couple who own the bar where we are regulars at, are getting married this saturday and we're gonna play the wedding songs. i'm playing bass guitar. haha...lots of practicing is needed.

oh and i had an interesting run in at the bank today. i dunno whether i was getting hit on or just being asked out for the purpose of practicing English. my usual bank teller who i'd gone to for the last 2 years changed last month. i was bummed cause the guy was cool and usually took care of all my translation problems at the bank. i was trying to get the new guy to set up my atm card to send money home so that i didn't have to go upstairs every time i wanted to send money home. he told me he didn't really wanna set it up cause then i'd have no reason to go see him. i just brushed it off and figured koreans are just like that when they're around english speakers. then i went in today to tried to use my card to send money home but that didn't work either. so sure enough i had to go upstairs to see him. it took an hour to get everything sorted out. i mentioned going back to the states in august and he was relieved when i said it was only for vacation. again he said he didn't wanna get the atm thing done cause then he wouldn't get to see me. then he proceeded to ask me when i had time we should go get some coffee or something to eat. i pretended i didn't hear him and asked if my transaction was done. i thanked him and left confused. this man had a huge gaudy wedding ring on his finger and so i figured i wasn't getting hit on but normally if this was in the states this kind of behavior is not common right? it made me feel uncomfortable and so i asked bum if this was normal korean behavior and he said the man is stupid and asked where he worked. lol korean culture is weird...is it possible to still feel culture shock after 2 years??

sorry for the ranting...i know i should have more substance in these updates but life is "same same" as they would say in korea. i'm just excited for vacation!! about 2.5 more months before i get to go HOME!!! HOME SWEET HOME!!! :-D

deja vu

sometimes it feels like i'd once dreamed of this life before. everything feels like it's happened before and although i wasn't aware of it, i had already lived it once.

earthquakes

everyone in california ok?

English

So today I sat in on this English grammar class. The teacher is this weirdo with long super curly hair like Benjamin Franklin (except with black hair). He kept flipping his hair and looking at his own reflection. He laughs at his own jokes (as most professors tend to do) but anyway, this isn't about his looks. At first I just let weird Konglish (English made up in Korea) go when people I knew used it but today I was this man teach it to a class. It was a fill in the blank. On Saturday night, I started to sneeze. I ______ a cold in the afternoon. He told everyone it was "I had catched a cold" in the afternoon. Everyone in the class wrote it down. Of course since I wasn't registered for the class I couldn't just stand up and correct the teacher. Also he wrote on the board, "If you wash the dishes, I cook the dinner." This was supposed to be an example for the students to write down. It wasn't for "fix this sentence" either. He is an awful teacher. He didn't explain anything, he gave out a bunch of handouts that I bet some native speakers couldn't understand and expected them to figure all this shit out. I wonder how much they're paying this guy.

One handout he gave out was "Read the following text and underline all gerunds and infinitives. Then identify the function of each one." He gave it out waited for people to do it and didn't go over it. He only said look at it at home. It's on the test. There was another sentence that was weird, "Susan didn't come to the movie with us. She ________it." He said the correct answer was "She had forgotten it." He was not open to other answers. I thought it was supposed to be She had already watched it. or She had forgotten about it. MEHHHH!!! That's why Koreans need to learn basics before studying grammar. At this level, they don't know what anything really means. When we first learn a language we learn words! Not sentence diagramming! *sigh* my laptop battery is gonna die. I'm done ranting :P

BLAH

ok ok so i know i haven't posted anything significant for many months. i just don't think that they're interesting or post-worthy. there are a couple of new teachers in town that i've been hanging out with lately. i have a killer hang over today because we were all out last night.

there's not really that much to do here or even that much time to do it. it's always work work work and then the weekend comes. hang out with bum, play video games, drink with friends...etc..and we're back at work again

i just got a new class about 2 weeks ago. i swear to you two of them in that class are lazy as hell. they don't do any homework and they still can't write their numbers and colors. and the worst part is when you yell at them, they just stare blankly at you. what sucks is there's this really bright little boy in that same class and it sucks for him because the other students are slowing him down. he's so adorable. all teachers have favorites...it's hard not to. some students are just so loving and bright and willing to learn. i actually never thought i'd like kids so much, they're such awesome little people. sometimes they'll say something that as an adult you would never say because we're socially trained not to say them. it's so hard not to laugh when it was the exact thing you were thinking but just can't say.

i was playing a lot of guitar last month, but then i got bored of it and so i'm taking a break. i've been watching lots of korean movies. some are good, some are so cliche blahhh i when i say "some are ____" it reminds me of the book one fish two fish. i think i've probably read that book a million times. "some are red and some are blue. some are old and some are new. some are sad and some are glad and some are very very bad." see i told you my life only revolves around teaching....>.<

i did some cooking for awhile. cooking and baking and all that good stuff but washing dishes sucks so...i stopped doing that too. i've been playing wii and DS games a lot. everything's in korean though so sometimes i just press random crap. it's intimidating when so much korean appears all at once. even though if i slowly read it i could probably understand. ohh been watching lot of anime too. yumeiro patessiere and yakitate. i love yakitate it's still good the second time around. fairy tail is a good new series too.

i can't think of anything else new...so that'll be it for now. i'll try to post more frequently...keyword is try :) sometimes i have stuff i want to say but then get too lazy to actually do it. i gained weight lately...need to start working out once this crazy weather is all out of the way. it was still snowing last week. my friends had their baby last week too! she's really cute. hopefully she'll be strong and healthy.

lost for words

of course lately i have lots on my mind but i find myself unable to express it into words. good and bad i guess. which is why i haven't posted in a long time. when i am ready i will post a long update.

Population of 300,000

but this damn city is still too fucking small.