YG Family Concert Picture

OH. MY. GOD.

So at the concert, after the encore was finished, Se7en or G-D said, hey, we're gonna take a picture of YG family and the concert goers. I think they only did this for the last concert, but I can't really be sure since I wasn't at the other concerts. Anyways, the picture was just posted on the YG-life Blog, and I pulled up a bigger picture and OMG I am in it. My face is super washed out, but my hand is the one like a whole foot higher than everyone elses. And my boyfriend is next to me (hand also really high and making a peace sign) and you can see him too! It's soooooo cool! Anyways, here's the picture with a convenient circle around each of us. I'm on the left, my boyfriend is to the right. *^____^*

A smorgasbord of things

1. Smorgasbord: I had never known how to spell this word. Thank you google for clarifying with your 'define:' search function. I also learned the correct spelling is: Smörgåsbord and that it is Sweedish, and that in Norway they actually say: koldtbord. Also, this is the title of a children's entertainment album.

A smorgasbord of children's musical fun!

2. Kitty cupcake and cake: On my 100 day anniversary with my boo, as I mentioned in a loving earlier blogpost, I got a really dope Hello Kitty cake. I ate it yesterday with him, his brother, and his brother's equally kitty loving girlfriend (저는 윤경언니같이 키티를 좋하해요! I learned this 같이 phrase yesterday while I was studying! YEAH) at the library where we were studying. It was strawberry flavored and freaking delicious. There was a big hello kitty cookie on top and it's adorable, and I simply cannot eat it, it's too cute. Half the cake still remains in my apartment fridge and must be eaten soon. Also, on the cupcakes take the cake blog, there was a featured Hello Kitty cupcake. Now, Cupcakes Takes the Cake frequently features Hello Kitty cupcakes, but usually they are particularly horrifying or just plain ugly. But these are the best ones I've seen perhaps ever on the site. They aren't perfect, but they are darn cute. Plus she's made of edible fondant. Makes me want to hop on over to etsy and snatch a dozen right on up!

vs.

No contest.

3. Pictures. I will be posting a picture a day hopefully from my school's festival and sports day. I will be using my android blogger app to post them, so hopefully there won't be any crazy mess-ups.


4. Schedule Changes. Jesus Christ, can they just tell me when a schedule changes? I mean, perhaps they try to, but I'm not sure I buy it. Granted, my CoolMessenger (the school-wide instant messenger service that is a Korean-based program) is totally broken on my computer. 50% of the time I can't even log in, and the other 50%, I log in and it registers my newest messages as being from this past April or July. Yeah, it's really helpful for me to know that last April there was some 떡 in the 교무실 that we should help ourselves to, or that there is a time change and all afternoon classes will be cancelled on July 23rd. Completely freaking ridiculous. Today, I lucked out in that my schedule change positively effects me. But, it'd be nice to know, you know, in advance, that I have my most horrid class of the day cancelled. Instead, I had to go downstairs to the 교무실 (the teacher's office) and ask, hey, guys, what's the deal? Was there a schedule change? I was just lucky that an English teacher was there for me to ask.


5. Speaking exams. My grade three students (equal to grade 8 or 9 students stateside) are doing speaking tests with me now. All students must prepare a topic and write about it on a paper and then they memorize the entire thing and recite it to me. It's not exactly the way I'd like a real speaking test to go, but memorization is the norm here. The students were given three topics and they had to choose one. The topics are: 1. What do you think is the most important job and why? 2. If you could meet anyone from the past, who would you meet and what would you ask them? and 3. If you had 1,000,000 won what would you buy and why? The selection has been pretty evenly spread across the three topics, which reassures me that the topics I selected are fair and mostly equal. The 1000000 won question seems the most popular, but only slightly (maybe just about 40% of the students have chosen this topic) but also the most troublesome as 50 percent of the students don't know how to say 1,000,000 in english. Instead, they just say 1 billion, or 1 hundred thousand. I feel like they should figure out how to say, you know, the central words of their speech at least. But oh well. Teacher is the overwhelmingly most popular choice for most important job (followed closely by doctor). Also, three students (the first three students to do their speeches) selected King Sejong to be the person they'd most like to meet.

That's all for now folks


xoxo
A

A Day in the Life

Today really was awesome. I don't know how else to explain it.

Actually, my whole weekend has been awesome.

Friday I went to Hooter's for Miranda's birthday. I got my ears pierced. I sang the shit out of Taeyang's I need a girl (90점 on an all korean song the first time I sang it? hell yes). Saturday, woke up, went on a date. Snuck into a building. Lost everything and got it back. Played 20+ games of go-stop. Ate really really good spaghetti (even by American standards, it was good, and that's saying something here in Korea).

Today, I went to Seoul with four of my students. They are four of my best students at my school. Seriously, they love English, they love speaking English, they love practicing English, and it is students like them that make me want to teach forever. We went to 신촌 and ate lunch at a 고기부페 (meat buffet). We ate 삼겹살 (really thick bacon meat basically) and other meat and lots of soda and it was funny because you can't leave leftovers, but we took too many sides, and 재연, one of my students, put a bunch of the food back in the bowls, which you totally can't do and probably isn't very sanitary, but buffets generally aren't that sanitary anyways, so eff that. Then we went to red mango and had awesome yogurt and got the toppings for free, because 유진 had a coupon. Then we went looking for a sticker picture place and while looking stumbled across a HELLO KITTY CAFE. There is one in Hongdae, but in my opinion the Sinchon one is better. It's less pink, but has way better kitty accessories. It's more demure, I think. We took a detour there for coffee and more sweets (choco bread). Then, we found a sticker picture place and hurriedly took sticker pictures. They weren't the best pictures ever (Christi, Miranda and I got the best ever, hands down) but they turned out cute. The sticker picture place wasn't that good (the one at bupyeong has 반짝반짝 film, or bling bling film to coat the pictures) but it sufficed.

Then we went to 서대문 which is a historic site. It used to be a prison during the Japanese opression. They put political prisoners there and tortured/executed them. It was pretty depressing. The girls had to go there for summer homework and it was kind of near Sinchon (closer than, say, Incheon is) so I went with them. I think their parents were grateful because they didn't have to take them there. Then, we took the subway back.

I'm pretty exhausted now, but I'd definitely say it was well worth the time and exhaustion. The students were wonderful, the date was great in spite of the rain, I had a wonderful time singing and eating and playing with my friends.

The only downside is due to the rain on Friday/Saturday, I fell TWICE. Once going downstairs to Hooters (minor), and once when I was at home taking off my soaked shoes on Saturday (major fall). The fall on Saturday caused some minor hip/leg/ankle/wrist pain, but it's not so bad now, minus the bruise on my thigh). I'm so clumsy.

xoxoxoxoxo
A

Picture Post 2.0

So I'll be doing a few picture posts in the next few days. I don't want to overload anyone with pictures from like a whole hodge-podge of things, so I'll do it in sections. Up first: my birthday.

Me, Kim Gil Sook (L) and Kim Hyo-Jin (R), two of my English teachers

Hamming it up

 

So they really take their cakes seriously here. That's from Baskin Robbings, and the flowers are chocolate, and the pink around the outside is a cookie cake. Also, that cola can is actually at 35mm film camera. Oh, and to the right I'm just rockin' my b-day present to myself-- DUMBFOUNDEAD t-shirt.

Up next will be some pictures from Jeju (and by some, I naturally mean like 2). Then, Melina's visit, which includes drunken fun with Makkeoli, Namsan Tower, Hongdae Free Market and Chonggyecheon Stream.