Spring has almost sprung.

Aside from yesterday which was extremely sad and cold and rainy (it actually snowed in Gangwon-do, which is RIDICULOUS) the weather has been getting nicer and nicer. It's been sunny and warm and bordering on hot. Sunday I work shorts AND a tee-shirt and was perfectly comfortable. AMAZING.

Aside from my ankle (doctor tells me I tore two of the lateral ligaments in my ankle... level 2 ankle sprain), which is still a bit bothersome, everything is looking up.

I saw Big Bang on Sunday in a stroke of pure luck thanks to two co-teachers and some fast ticket buying at the last minute. To make it even better, due to an unfortunate incident involving SNSD's Taeyeon, everyone got full refunds for their tickets. This means I went to LotteWorld Amusement Park and saw Big Bang for FREE!! Gotta love it. Oh, and Park Bom of 2ne1 waved. TO ME!

Anyways,  my birthday is soon, and I'm gearing up for that, but more importantly, this weekend I am going to Jeju for a frisbee tournament that I'm not supposed to play in because of my ankle. I'm playing anyways.

Also, my baby sister, Melly officially got accepted to graduate school, and put in her deposit at Indiana University and she is going to get her master's degree in Water Resource Mangement and I couldn't be more proud of her if I wanted to. She is growing up and she is becoming a lovely, intelligent, well-spoken, beautiful woman. It's so exciting. I miss her so much. Like more than anyone. I just want her in Korea with me. Korea needs to work on all Resource Management, including water, so I'm keeping my fingers crossed that she'll come here one day. lol. not likely.

I also got my Dream Concert ticket/invitation. It's really complicated because it's not really a ticket. A student gave it to me, then I had to go to this random website to register my number and then there is a random drawing for 25,000 people to go the concert. I also had to use Hoon's name, not my own because evidently only Korean people can sign up, which is dumb.

That's it for now, I think. I have to make exam questions for my mid-terms today!! I can't wait for midterms. It's the start of a nice little mini vacation for me, and I'm very much looking forward to it. ^^

Good Things and Bad Things in the ROK these days

Good things:

Nova: He is finally not sick anymore, and he is also finally getting bigger. It seemed like he wasn't growing much but he's finally hit a growth spurt and so he's getting bigger and bigger all the time. He's still much smaller than Baram, who is pretty freaking big these days. But, now when they fight, at least Nova isn't getting thrown around so much. haha. Nova is eating like a little piggy though. Gotta curb that. No fat kitties over here.

Big Bang Special Edition Album: I got the Big Bang Special Edition 4.5 Album and it's really good. Sure, 70% of the songs are old songs, but those three new tracks are SO SO SO SO SO good. It's mind-boggling. The new direction Big Bang is headed is very western and very exciting. I just hope that their new Western style won't lead them to promote too much outside of Korea. Stay here boys!! PLEASE.

Skype: I got to skype with the League this afternoon. My best friend, Sarah was having a bachelorette weekend in NYC. Her wedding will be May and so all the girls got together this weekend to celebrate before her big day. I was really bummed I couldn't be there with all my best friends, but it was so wonderful to chat with them. I miss them more and more every day.

APRIL = BIRTHDAYS!: April is like the big birthday month for everyone. April 7th was Nova's 100 day birthday. It's not a real birthday, but 100 days usually gets a big celebration in Korea. For Nova's 100 day celebration, I ordered a mini cat tower for the boys. They've out-grown/pulled apart the smaller scratching post for them so it seemed like a good gift

For my boys. It's about 2.5 feet high. They are gonna totally dig it I think.

     Then this Friday is Hoon's birthday. Unfortunately his birthday present is coming from the states and will be depressingly late. But it's still his birthday soon!! And I'll make him some food and take him out somewhere or do whatever he wants. He's not used to birthdays being like a big deal, but I'm making him make his birthday special this year.

     We've also got three leaguer's birthdays: Nickipants, Stella and Nicole.

     Plus my birthday is at the end of the month (April 29th) so yeah!


BAD THING:

1. Dirty kittens: Nova and Baram have this annoying habit of pulling their poop out of their litter box and playing with it or batting it all around my apartment. It's gross.

2. Bum ankle: Yesterday at frisbee practice, during a box drill (a basic cutting and throwing drill) I was making a cut and as soon as I went to plant on my left food, I slid and my ankle rolled underneath me and I fell. There was a pop and a lot lot lot of pain. I went to the hospital later than evening and they said they suspect it's just a sprain but that if after a week it's still hurting a lot, I should come back so they can run an MRI because they only did xrays to check for fractures (none). In the meantime I'm wearing this ridiculously big splint and hobbling around. It sucks a lot and it's particularly difficult with the cats. I can't move fast and I can't bend down easily and cleaning up whatever stupid shit they do (spill their water bowls, play with their poop, knock shit over) is really difficult. I'm taking some medicine but it doesn't help much with the pain at all. Plus I have no idea what the hell I'm going to wear to school tomorrow since my splint is way to big for jeans, and I can't wear stockings or tights or anything.

Yeah, walking in this kinda sucks. It took me 15 minutes to walk what would normally take just 5-7 minutes.

3. Crazy Schedule Changes: Last week I had a crap ton of schedule changes due to some open classes I had to go watch at other schools. So on Friday I ended up having to teach six classes straight with only a break for lunch. That's five and a half straight hours of teaching students which sucked. Like a lot. Plus, I had to constantly switch back and forth between new and old lessons and it was super complicated.

Sick Kittens, more gifts, and sleepless nights

I don't know what is wrong with me, but it seems that all the little things around me are sort of falling apart. It's a miracle I can stand in front of my classes with any semblance of legitimacy given my general lack of preparation as of late. I really try to get everything in order, but I manage to let go of all the strings holding everything together and I have to flip into crazy mode to get everything back together. Examples: a) Last Wednesday I started teaching a class thinking it was the first time I had seen them that year, and I was suddenly reminded that I had, in fact, taught them once already and had nothing prepared to teach them that day. Luckily I whipped out the name cards and stuttered my way through a new explanation. b) Wednesday is the shittiest day every weekbecause I teach four classes, and two of them are to learn previous week's lesson while the other two are on the upcoming week. This means that I have to prepare a new lesson on Tuesday when I have a shit schedule and don't really want to make anything. This week, Tuesday came and went with a search on waygook to find things but nothing solidified. Wednesday morning I threw something together but decided to change the second half of class to accomodate a new lesson (in an attempt to get my classes back on track, and with a new week's lesson starting on THURSDAY!) So I looked online for ideas and nothing really great came of it. I'm trying to change my approach to teaching, trying to incorporate what they are learning in their other English classes, so my class doesn't seem so left field to them. Unfortunately, I can't get all my thoughts down together. So, Wednesday I essentially found nothing and then at 4:15 (I leave at 4:30) I discovered that due to a schedule change my class would start at 8:30 as opposed to 9:00 which is a huge difference when you have nothing prepared. So I brought the texts home but hardly looked at them between frisbee practice, desperately trying to stay awake on the subway, eating, and passing out at 11:00. I woke up early and left for work at 7:30 this morning just so I could arrive early enough to work undistracted until my class begin at 8:30. Luckily, my lesson plan went over just fine. PHEW.

On another note, Nova is sick. I have been taking him to the vet everyday since Monday (it is now Thursday and supposed to be my last day of vet visits) and that has been a huge time drain. I have to go home, get nova ready for the vet, go to the vet, come back home, all before I can do anything I need to do. He gets two shots everyday, one on his back and one is his back left leg. He hates them, but he is getting better at dealing with the shots. He had a big ol' scratch on his nose as well (I to this day still have no idea where it came from... maybe his nose was too dry and cracked. That's my suspicion) and the scab got pulled off Sunday night and he started bleeding EVERYWHERE, which was pretty effing terrifying. Luckily I had noticed the scab on his nose on Saturday so I at least knew that it wasn't something that Baram had caused or something. Luckily, the blood didn't seem to bother anyone buy me. Nova just kept playing around with his nose all bloody, getting blood on some textbooks, his paws, Baram, my planner, and my floor. Luckily that is healing. Then on Monday I came home to Nova throwing up and with more gunk built up in his eyes than could ever possibly be considered healthy. So straight to the vet who doesn't speak english. I stammered out a foolish sounding explanation of what happened and stuff, and he says a bunch of things I didn't understand but nodded to anyways. He gave the shots and we were off told to return each day for another round of shots.

On a more positive note, I've gotten some more presents this week.

I got Hello Kitty stickers, more hella sexy Taeyang/Daesung/TOP pictures and the 2011 FILA BIGBANG back to school planner. Jackpot, right? Well, I'm definitely pretty darn happy with the turnout, I'd say. I was really surprised about the planner, but I guess she's not a huge bigbang fan and just got it with some big fila purchase so now I have it!! hehehehehe. It's amazing.

Wow. Love me some BIGBANG and Hello Kitty

Also, Monday was White Day, but I couldn't meet Hoon because we were crazy busy. Instead, he came over on Tuesday and I made that delicious tomato cream sauce pasta and some deliciously amazing rice krispie treats (thanks melly for shipping me some marshmallows and krispies). Hoon basically fell in love with the krispie treats. He ate almost an entire batch. It was cray cray. I was really surprised that he got me anything for White Day because he thinks that all the Korean couple days are played out. But I like them. And he knows I like them, so he got me a big box and filled it with lots and lots and lots of candy and gave me this adorable clear plastic hello kitty zipper cosmetic bag. SOOOO cute. And, he wrote me an amazingly sweet letter on Hello Kitty stationary. Even down to the little details (the kitty stationary and padding the box with the shredded paper to make it pretty) he did a perfect job. I am so thankful. Also, white day is awesome!

Really love my man!

xoxo

A

Updates from the start of the school year

Well, another school year has started and this means, a couple hundred new students who are completely enthralled with a) my blonde hair, b) my eyes which are green/gray/brown with gold flecks, c) my long eyelashes, d) my height or e) my extremely good grasp of English and ability to type English quickly on a keyboard.

This also means that I get a round of introduction lessons and a pretty painless first two weeks of school. My grade threes are creating facebook accounts and joining class groups so I can send out class information and extra credit opportunities to the students to use English in fun ways outside of the classroom. Hopefully there will be enough participation to do scavenger hunts, crosswords, video game quizzes, etc.

My grade one and twos will be making name cards this week. This of course means we get to do a whole bunch  introductions and I get to learn lots of ridiculous things about my students. For example, a grade two student (this is a girl who is 14 years old mind you), wrote, "My dream is to be a femme fatale." Legitimately, that's what she wrote. As her future job goal. Ridiculous.

My grade ones are adorable and love me and today I got some gifts from my students: a Hello Kitty pen and some really really really sexy Taeyang stickers. SCORE.

Frisbee practice has started up and it looks like we're going pretty hard this year with practicing and stuff. It's gonna be intense me thinks... Track workouts, strategy meetings, all sorts of fun stuff to keep me super busy.

And my babies survived their first few weeks at home TOGETHER without mommy. Nova barely escaped death once when Baram decided to push a bath gift set box (containing a full bottle of body wash and a full bottle of body lotion) off a table and onto Nova's leg. Luckily I was home to hear Nova's howl of pain and I cared for him while scolding Baram who thought that immediately after doing this, with Nova walking around on just three legs, it was the perfect time to play fight with Nova. I had to keep them separate as little Nova kept crying and I was so worried. But the next morning (it was about 11pm when it happened, and no emergency clinics to be found) he was hopping all around everywhere and attacking Baram with as much playful energy as he had been before the injury. So everything seems to be all fine now. But, he's got a vet appointment to get his shots next week and I'll be double checking with the doc to verify everything is all clear.

That's it for now.

xoxo
A