Cleaning Cleaning Cleaning

I'm out of my apartment in three days (early Saturdayish), and have begun my final "OMG CLEAN EVERYTHING" stage. Bed area, bathroom area are clear. Kitchen, computer, couch area, not so much.

I came with two giant bags of things. I think I'm going to be leaving with half a bag. Lots of stuff is getting thrown out for various reasons. Don't need it anymore, useless, or in the case of clothes: stained with dry erase marker. No other teacher seemed to have this issue as much as I did. Though getting in dry erase swordfights probably didn't help.

My best friend here, Ashley, leaves the same day I do, Sunday. BUT, her school kicked her out of her apartment today to move the new teacher in, how kind of them. So she has to crash on my awkward couch instead of her nice, usual bed. We finished moving her out of her apartment early this morning. She's the planner in our friendship, but she went way overboard with her luggage. In the end, she had one giant suitcase, one giant dufflebag, a backpack and her purse. Both the suitcase and dufflebag took two hands for me to lift. She wants to travel to four different countries in the next two months with them? ...no. So now we have to repack everything of hers again to send more stuff home in boxes. Should be interesting.

Here is the state of my apartment, haha:

last week

ahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh

farewells again

not mine.

larry, the teacher who's been here since i've been here (he arrived one month previous to me) is leaving this saturday. we were good friends, and i'm sad to see him go. he's moving to austria next to teach, and he loves the german language, so i'm happy for him. but it's still strange. for that one week between when he leaves, and i leave, i'll be the senior person.

i know i've already been the senior person since december when i was promoted, but it's different. it's very strange to see the next era of teachers taking over, they've already coined new words and terms for work that me and larry don't use. it's weird to see the office shift so quickly.

what can be learned from stories

this is the question i gave my students today. name a story and four lessons you can learn from it. by far the winner was Cristin. a tiny little student that squeaks when she talks and giggles more than she breathes.

Story: Cinderella
Lessons Learned: Be Pretty, Don't Kill Your Parents

technically, those are both the lessons the stories teaches. a dirty, servant girl can't find love unless she wears beautiful clothes and has a makeover. and well, i think the second one is pretty self explanatory.

3 weeks. Crazy.

So in exactly 3 weeks I will be on my way to, or in Thailand. Weeeeeeeeeeeeird.

I'm still doing terribly at packing, and I haven't bought souvenirs for everyone yet, or anything else. I need to stop slacking. Did find out how to ship all my stuff home to America since I won't be heading there directly, that's good. Now I just need to go buy the boxes, pack the boxes, bring the boxes back to the post office, then I'm golden!

Kimchi has found a new home with a new teacher, I'm very happy about that. Was not excited about maybe giving her to a stranger. Wish I could bring her with me to Thailand or back to the states, but it would just be too expensive/difficult. Sorry Kimchi, I still love you! Even though you bite me and scratch me ALL the time...

Things are good to go in Thailand, and soon I figure out if my friend going into the PeaceCorps will be stationed there as well. If she is, that will be incredible.

3 weeks...

the cutest day in Korea

on saturday, ashley and our friend holly decided to go on a tour of all the cafes we'd wanted to visit. this included: Giocat, Hello Kitty Cafe and Charlie Brown. Giocat was a cafe where they just have about 30 cats, and you play with them while you drink tea/coffee. Hello Kitty and Charlie Brown were just themed places.

giocat was definitely my favorite. the drinks were super expensive, but so is taking care of that many cats. they were everywhere in the place, all over the floor, on the ceiling, on the walls, tables, chairs, benches. everywhere. cats aren't terribly popular in korea, so it was strange to see so many koreans adoring them so much here. some of the people were really struggling to keep cats on their laps, even when it was clear they didn't want to be there. but still a good time, i feel bad for the cats they shaved to have super poofy tails. they looked like cat poodles.

hello kitty and charlie brown were nice, but other than the themes there wasn't a whole lot special about them. HK was more stylish, but Charlie Brown was just a much nicer place to hang out in.

Jeju Part 2

More pictures!

All from the mountain "Hallasan" Mt. Halla:

Try to see how far that trail goes. Far. In the heat.


The long trail DOWN the hill. All stairs, my poor knees.


A nice view from the trail above:


The marker near the top of the climbable parts. 1700m high. Almost died. For serious.

Jeju Island Part 1

I'm way too tired to type any of the adventures yet. So here are some pictures.

Pool on our hotel's roof:


View from our hotel's roof (ocean in the background):


Took this on a bridge near the shore:


The ocean again: