Happy Valentine's Day!

This is the Valentine's Day card I made for Hoon:

Please ignore that big blue piece of paper in the middle. I accidentally forgot to take a picture before I actually wrote a note, and I didn't really want to share a personal letter to my boyfriend for Valentine's Day on the internet for potentially hundreds, thousands, or millions of people to read (I know, I'm thinking grand thoughts assuming that millions of people would ever read this lowly blog) so I had to cover it with a scrap of paper.

Instead, imagine that the whole middle section is that lovely rose pink color behind the blue paper.

It turned out really well, and it took way less time to make than that darn pop-up Christmas Card I decided to make two months ago. Unfortunately, this means that once his birthday rolls around, I'll have to come up with some new, even better card to give him, and idk what I'll do then.

In other news, there is some bug on my blogger-droid app so I can't post from my phone. BUMMER. It was working on Saturday just fine.

xoxo
A

Korea

A full update on my life was promised so here goes. The good and the bad.

1. I got food poisoning on Wednesday/Thursday. I was up all night doing, you know, food poisoning-related things, and not sleeping at all. I called in sick because at 6:30 when my alarm went off I was like oh good, I've slept a total of 40 minutes or so, and I just threw up 20 minutes ago. This doesn't bode well. So I slept all effing day and ate nothing while trying to let my body recover. Korea is dealing with some serious livestock diseases, but i don't think that's what got me. I think it was veggies that came in contact with raw meat and then weren't cooked thoroughly. But anyhow, I'm all better now thanks to lots of sleep, and plenty of water.

2. On Tuesday I bought two first floor standing tickets to the Big Bang Big Show which I am SUPER excited to see. I'm basically dying, I'm so happy. I will be among the first people to see Big Bang perform new songs live after a two year hiatus from Korean promotions. Granted, they have performed at YG Family Concerts and last year's Big Show, but nothing new, so this is super exciting. Their album will release the day before the concert and I will go get it and memorize every song in 24 hours if it kills me. Then I will buy the official Taeyang usb drive at the concert sales booth and then I will fangirl spazz for 2 hours while my boyfriend questions why he ever started dating me.

3. I bought the Taeyang Solar Concert DVD. I made a youtube video about in case anyone hear reads my blog but hasn't subscribed to my youtube channel (Uh... SUBSCRIBE NOW PLEASE). Anyways, it's awesome except for this one hilarious and awful English mistake where a page reads, "Let's get start it" which obviously makes no sense. This is disappointing because YG has tons of high level English speakers, and you'd think that for once they would check something like this. Over 100,000 of these DVDs were produced and no one thought to go to a native English speaker and say, hey, is this right? Listen, YG, I'm your girl. I can do this free of charge (except every English grammar proofreading required document must be personally delivered by either Taeyang or Se7en, but that can be arranged, right?)

4. Frisbee practice started this weekend. We had practice on Saturday and Sunday and I am sooooo tired. But it was really fun, and I'm really really looking forward to more practices in increasingly warmer weather.

5. Last weekend I played in a volleyball tournament. I've never had so much fun playing volleyball. Somehow, I think I got better at volleyball via not playing it for 8+ years. I remember kind of sucking back in my freshman year of high school and thinking, welp since I literally can't do anything except blocking (I was a beast at blocking but I couldn't hit, which made me mostly useless) I'm gonna go ahead and quit and focus on bball. And I did just that. But volleyball was awesome and it makes me wanna play a whole bunch more.

6. Tomorrow is Valentine's Day. I am actually pretty excited for it. Hoon and I are going to have a quiet night in. I am going to make dinner (maybe a revised hopefully even more delicious than last time tomato cream sauce pasta with garlic bread if I can figure out how to make garlic bread without an oven; can't I just crush some garlic, mix it with basil and butter, spread on a thick slice of baguette and sautee?) and give him my gift. In Korea, V-Day is different than back in the States in that only a girl gives a gift and the boy will give a gift to his girlfriend or crush or significant other on White Day which is on March 14th. So I will give a gift, which I will take a photo of and post later, and we'll do something again in another month. I like this time because Feb 5th was our 200 day anniversary (they celebrate every 100 days or at least the first couple, plus 1000, and then they stop, I think), then valentines day, then white day, then one month later is Hoon's birthday, and then two weeks after that is my birthday so it's like nonstop celebrations until May rolls around (but then our one year anniversary will be in July~ hahaha)

7. I might go skiing this upcoming weekend with Hoon and his family. Except we will go only one day and only at night, from like 9 p.m. until maybe 5 a.m. which will basically kill me (I have to go to frisbee the following day at 11) but I am really looking forward to it. Hopefully I can not totally suck at skiing so Hoon won't think I'm a completely uncoordinated loser.

8. I am trying to convince Hoon to get some of his Physical Education classmates to make a frisbee team to send to Jeju. I said I could be the coach. I think it'd be really fun and since they are all athletes (we're talking seriously jacked, run a marathon and then benchpress twice their weight, and then swim 4 miles and then take a 100 question exam on history of sports, sports rules, and human physiology without hardly breaking a sweat-type athletes... this includes the girls) they would probably dominate all the other beginner uni teams because they can run for hours without getting tired. Plus then I'd be obligated to get in better shape and practice frisbee with them too. Win-win, you see?

9. My school had graduation on Friday. I went, and it was only a little sad for me because I was still recovering from food poisoning and had to concentrate really hard on not falling over from fatigue during the ceremony. But, now that I think about it more, I'm pretty bummed. I've known all these students for two years, and they are AMAZING girls. I've gotten to known some of them (maybe about 15 or so) really well and I will certainly miss their smiles, hilarious jokes, helpful Korean lessons, sincere interest in English, enthusiasm for my class, and all-around good attitudes. The prospect of having these students in my classes later in the week helped me get through all the whiny, misbehaving, snarky students I had to deal with from time to time. I will miss them!!!

Also, in case you didn't know yet, I have a tumblr at www.reallywally.tumblr.com. It's basically 100% Korean culture all the time. Emphasis on kpop, but also with touches of food, drama, models, konglish and other interesting tidbits.

That's it.

xoxo
A

An assortment

So today I got off work early. My co-teacher, whom I call Mrs. Oh and is like my second mom, asked the vice-principal if I could go home early today. He said yes, so here we are.

So at about 12:30 I left school, with my new stuffed giraffe (thanks mom&dad!) under my arm. Got home, dropped off giraffe-y poo, and headed back out in search of food. I didn't really want korean food (even though I had some of the best donkasu in my life near Arts Center yesterday before Korean class) so I was kind of on the hunt for something different. I went to Sorrento (this mediocre italian chain) but the waiters were nowhere to be found, so I didn't get seated and I bounced.

While walking around, I almost gave up and headed to the nearest korean restaurant, but luck smacked me right in the face. Well, almost. I saw this japanese restaurant and walked towards it, but it was almost empty, and there were lots of plaques that certified the restaurant was "good for international visitors" which basically means is over-priced and not very good, so I quickly walked away. While headed away from the japanese restaurant, I stumbled across a sign that read La Famiglia. ITALIAN food! Well, here, italian food is usually a shot in the dark. More often than not it's pretty sub-par or just average and really really expensive. I was feeling optimistic though. Walked over, and headed up the stairs. I was pleasently surprised to see the red painted walls on the stairwell up, decorated with small pictures of various pasta dishes and a worn white metal banister. Went inside and found a restaurant that was small (max seating: 30 maybe) and cozy, without being overly done-up or cutesy, the eternal blessing and curse of Korea. White walls, blue plush chairs, snapshots of the restaurants OWN food, small pots of herbs on a wide, bright windowsill, and four glass jars of various pastas: ziti, bowtie, spaghetti, and the like. I ordered the Pane (pasta alfredo in a bread bowl) and a cider. This was the lunch special. For 11,000 won, I had a hearty pasta dish with a just spicy enough alfredo sauce and a mildly sweet bread bowl. Another couple who was there ordered a pizza that looked positively DELISH. The only real downside was that the garlic bread they also gave me was painfully sweet, as is traditional and accepted here in the land of the morning calm (and sugar and garlic combinations). I had a wonderful lunch, alone, but wrapped up in John Steinbeck's Cannery Row which thus far has been nothing less than a beautiful piece of fiction just like all of his other works, which I'm truly falling in love with.

Here are the pictures for you ravenous people you:

 

Afterwards I did my usual, that is, studying Korean at a coffee shop for a couple hours. Here are some various pictures I've taken over the last few days/weeks, but haven't yet posted anywhere.

you know, this is how ALL my afternoons look these days. Earmuffs, coffee, korean. Add an ipod to the mix and you've got it!

 

Early morning on my walk to work. You can see the moon.

 
 

These are the Valentines I made for my friends here in Incheon. The one on the left is a BIG BANG card, and the one on the right, 2PM. Kpop reppin'

 
 

I'm finally figuring out how to do my own-make-up. My hair, which is crazy here, is a different story. This was when I went to the club the day before v-day.

 
 

Mmmmm, Valentines Day Dinner at Outback

 
 

Converse shoe sculpture (it's suppose to look like a converse shoe) at COEX mall in Seoul.

That's it for me here!

xoxo

A 

 

Valentines Day

While my Valentine's Day started horrifyingly bad, it turned out pretty good, with Outback steakhouse (sirloin steak, medium rare, heaven), hilarious conversation, adorable coffee house and perfect iced americano, and then watching tegan & sara videos for like 3 hours until 2:30 a.m. Seriously, their concert banter is hilarious and the music is absolutely addicting. If you want some funny stuff to occupy several hours of time, I highly recommend footage from the Manchester shows. Here is a video of them performing Monday Monday Monday, appropriate because it's Monday here: