andrew goes crazy, andrew breaks into his own apartment

so. today was semi-halloween day at work. i decided to go as a ninja from naruto since so many of my students seem to like the show. this entailed me going to work in shorts, a t-shirt, flipflops with socks, and a big, black, wooden sword. i got many strange, strange looks on the bus and on the street, haha. but it received generally good reception, so i suppose it was worth it.

i finish up the day and come home. i forgot my keys, all the way back at work, which is probably closed by now. lame. but i have a third-floor apartment on a 3-floor building. our roof has a little patio area. so i go up there, walk along the roof a little bit, and work my way down to my balcony. success. good thing i left my porch door unlocked this morning. or i might still be trapped out there. because i'm not sure if i could get back up the same way i got down. as i write this, i am hoping no korean neighbors saw this, and called the police, that might get a little awkward.

my hair is a mess from wearing a hat all day.

andrew the... model?

alright. so there's a burger place right near where i work. the girl who runs it is amazing, and worked for the chef on 'hell's kitchen'. gordon ramsey. she makes really good hand-made burgers and the best egg-sandwich that i have ever, or will ever eat. it's a popular place with the foreigners in the area.

yesterday she asked me and two co-teachers if we wanted to pose for a giant advertisement that will go up on one of the store windows. hopefully sometime this week we'll go in before work and have a photographer take pictures of us eating food and having a good time, then in the not too distant future, be on the wall.

the best part of this plan? we're not telling any of the other foreign teachers, especially the ones who frequent it more than we do. we're hoping that one day they go in, and just see a GIANT picture of us. i really hope i'm there when it goes up. i'll try to get some pictures of the place/ad if and when this happens. i get a lot of complaints about the lack of pictures, so someone yell at me if i don't follow through.

screen golf!

i went screen golfing this morning with irish joe. he's irish. screen golfing is just like normal golfing, except you do it in a room on the third floor of a building. basically there's a tee set up and a machine to put balls on it, then you wail the balls against the projection screen. and it displays what would have happened were you playing actual golf.

i am very bad at golf.

we played a quick 9 holes for 12,000 won (about 10-11 dollars), they brought us free water and hot cocoa, which was delicious. i was 30 over par. so that means what should have taken me 36 shots, took me 66. whoops. joe beat me by about 15 strokes. we're having a rematch soon. we're going to go in the evening and order dinner while we're there. so we can just eat food and play golf, in a toasty room, in the middle of winter. korea is awesome. anyways, since we got there before 2pm, it was also 30% off. so we can play 9 holes before work for 9,000 won (7-8 dollars). hooray.

weird, kinda lame

so, you actually see the stars tonight, weird in itself. curse you air, polution.

but i could see orion, one of the very few constellations i can easily identify. it reminded me of home, which is weird, because it's terribly far away. but i'm so used to looking up and seeing it in the states that looking up and seeing it here made me feel pretty nostalgic.

so. this weekend i'm going to the dmz. that's the area between north korea and south korea. it is pretty crazy. basically it's one of the most militarized area in the world with an insane number of soldiers, land mines, weapons... yeah. you're not allowed to wear inappropriate clothing, anything that looks militarish, shorts, jeans with holes, etc. once you get near the north korea side you aren't even allowed to point.

american citizens aren't currently allowed into the country without special circumstances, they won't stamp your visa or anything like that. other countries still are like canada, germany, etc. so during the tour you get to take a couple steps into north korea, but that's it, that's as far as you can go.

this week north korea also was test firing missiles which means tensions are a little bit higher. i think this might be kinda scary, but still pretty awesome. i'm not sure how much you're allowed to take pictures, but i'll do my best.

pictures woes

flickr isn't letting me upload any pictures. troublesome. so i'm trying to find an alternate way of doing that for the time being. here's one from a cool local park, after playing with my new camera toys last night.

also. people in korea are crazy! well, probably no less than any other country, but yesterday was hilarious. i went to seoul before work to grab my new lens/tripod. i head to the bus stop to come back, and there are two cars blocking it off (a fairly big 'dont ever do that' in korea). apparently there was some sort of accident. a woman rear-ended the guy in front of her, from what i understood.

she. freaked. out.

once the police got there she was yelling and screaming at the dude, at the police, at all the strangers who were giggling at her for freaking out so much. the police make them both move their cars so the buses can stop. the guy moves his car and.... there is absolutely no damage to the girls car. not a scratch, not a dent. but she keeps screaming even more! and all the random people were laughing at how ridiculous it was. which again, prompted more screaming. so i had to walk a mile or so to seoul station to get on another bus. barely made it to work in time, haha.

update fail #2

anyways! it's been a month already, crazy.

i have today off (friday) because of chuseok, kind of korean thanksgiving. so the plan is to venture into seoul and pick up a few things with my shiny new paycheck. goals are: new camera lens, camera tripod, remote shutter for camera. and in the 'maybe if i feel impulsive' category are: xbox360 and some games.

i am definitely going to spend around 25% of my paycheck today, haha. but i'm okay with it. because both are investments in keeping me entertained for the next year and beyond, and not short-term rewards. some of my coworkers went over to hong kong for the long weekend, some went south to the beach city of Busan. i'll just be hanging out here with some of the other stragglers.

one of my students gave me this crazy facial care kit yesterday for chuseok, i didn't know FILA made facial stuff. weird.