Relaxin' at Home

May is kind of a 'family month' in Korea, with Children's Day, Parents Day, and Grandparents Day all in 'holidays' within it. The only one that gets us the day off work is Children's day, which was yesterday. I made my kids a little present for children's day using the photos I took of them at the beginning of the year. Of course I forgot to take a picture of them, but they were pretty cute. I'm sure their parents appreciated the little present, if only for the time taken to make them. :)

It was nice to have a day off in the middle of the week and I didn't fill it up with plans because I've been feeling a little draggy lately. Thankfully I'm almost to the end of the 3rd season of a new show 'Army Wives' that I downloaded... I've been stuck to the computer since I got it and I think it's been affecting my moods spending so much self-imposed time inside!!


I took Mags in to the vet to get fixed. They did a bunch of preliminary tests just to make sure she was 100% in the health department, which she was (yay!). I can't imagine the stress of bringing a child to the hospital for a health check with bloodwork etc., as I just had my puppy and my stomach was in knots the whole hour I waited there for the results. New amount of sympathy for parents I tell ya!! Mags is coming home tonight after my Korean class, so I'll keep you posted on how she's doing. They called me yesterday of course when she came out of surgery and said that she did well. They kept her overnight to allow her a bit more rest, I really missed her last night!!  :)

The temperature here was incredible yesterday, we got up to 27C... I checked the weather at home on my little weather network icon and it said Alberta was -1C... ugh!! Was I ever happy to be over here and not there!! I enjoyed the weather out walking around in my tshirt, shorts and sandals... the air was thick with moisture, it was so muggy, but I loved EVERY second of it!

HaYoung and TaeJeong came over yesterday to hang out. It's the first time I had anyone visit me at home, so it was a little strange, but nice! HaYoung manicured me all up with pink and white polkadots (very cutesy Korea-style) and then I taught her how to write in cursive (she said it looked like arabic script, lol, I didn't see the resemblance!). When TaeJeong arrived we cooked up some ramyeon for dinner (you know Mr Noodles? Same thing but spicy instead of chicken). I was relieved I had bought an extra set of silverware last week, lol, at least the 3 of us could eat at the same time!! Once it was cooked we didn't all fill our bowls, like we would at home... the pot went into the centre of the table and we just served up noodles into our own little side bowls a bit at a time, it was funny to me... eating like at the Korean restaurant, lol...

After we ate they spied my pile of card-making stuff on the bookshelves so we spent most of the rest of the evening stamping and making stuff, spread out all over the floor, lol... I actually had lots of fun, and got to practice my Korean a bit - yay! Korean class tonight and then tomorrow is Friday - yay!!  I was going to head out to a temple stay this weekend, but due to the puppy situation I think I'll be rescheduling for a bit later. I'll fill you in on my trip into Seoul last weekend too once I get all caught up... I started writing but I didn't get it finished!

I'm off to pay my bills for the month (wish me luck, I haven't attempted that yet and it all has to be done IN the bank where nobody speaks English!)... Hope you're happy (and warm!), talk again soon... S.

Sunday Night Out

What a great weekend I had! It was so good to get out of the apartment, and it was really nice to spend some time with friends instead of only pallin' around on my own. Don't get me wrong, I'm really enjoying my independent exploration of things these days, but it was a really nice weekend!

Sunday after Butterfingers I met up with Chelsea and Christina, two of my partner teachers from work. Christina is my classroom partner, she looks after my kids when I'm not in the classroom. She has just gotten a job as a junior graphic designer, so she's leaving sometime in April - booo! They both speak a lot of English, and though Chelsea is a bit braver, Christina has a much bigger vocabulary - they both kick butt over my Korean, let me tell you! We went to a theatre that I didn't know about up by that crazy mall I showed you before (AK Plaza) to see the movie Titan (I think it's called Revenge of the Titans at home?). It was pretty good. By the time it had ended we had decided the world needs more Perseus (or Per-see-oos as they kept calling him)!

After the movie we went to La Merce, a little Mexican place the girls at work talk about sometimes. I think you might even be able to see it in the video I posted when I was at AK last time. In true Korean style, Chelsea and Christina did not order ANYTHING Mexican off the menu, we ate Korean, lol... I really giggled when the food arrived, I'm sure they thought I was crazy. I explained to them that typically if I go out to an ethnic restaurant of any kind, I tend to order that food from the menu - Korean restaurant, Korean food: I wouldn't order a hamburger when I went out to New Seoul, you know what I mean?? However, we shared an order of chicken with mixed rice and ddokk-bok-ki, a dish I'll have to show you a picture of sometime because it's hard to explain (it's on the left in the picture below).

Around 7pm. 2 of Chelsea's came out to visit. One (TaeJeong) said she didn't speak much English (though it sure seemed fine to me!) and she was really nervous to come, and the other (Jun) spent 2 years in India so his English was pretty good. Taejeong is working part-time in a shop up the road, and Jun works for a hairdresser as an apprentice, they're both really cute (and all 4 are so young). I drank long island iced tea (otherwise known as Rong Tea), and they shared a 2000cc mekju (beer) which came in this crazy thing...

Chelsea (right) and TaeJeong (left) with mekju

The seafood dokkbokki is on the left, the chicken and rice on the right... Chelsea is cuttin' up the chicken because typically out with Koreans you order a few different dishes and share them all...

My partner teacher Christina, she's wonderful!

After a couple of drinks and dinner, we made our way back to our respective abodes (4 of us in one direction, 1 in the other on the train). We wandered up the same little street and bought chicken-on-a-stick (I should have taken a picture, though it's really just hot chicken and peppers on a skewere - it's wonnnnnnnnnnnnnderful!), which came in very handy in Jun's lesson...

If you've read my blog or looked at my Flickr photos before, you might have seen the billboard ad in the subway station for "ManStar", where there are 2 nicely dressed men at the urinals, and one is gasping in awe while not-at-all subtly ogling the guy next to him over top of the partition... now all I could self-translate was "Man Clinic" from all of the words on the sign. I thought, surely, this wouldn't be an ad for enlargement, would it?? Really??! In the Subway station??!!??!! Nahhh.....

We passed the same ad on the way home Sunday night, and Jun explained it to me like this...

[he wouldn't look at me while holding up the sticks because he didn't want to be associated with the explanation, I was almost doubled over in laughter when I took the picture]

So Jun said, "Ok, ok, I'll show you, here... Korean man, (holding up 1 short skewer in right hand) Foreigner man. (holding up 3 regular skewers in left hand). What you think about that?"
 

I nearly died of laughter right there on the subway platform!!!! Sometimes things really are just what they seem, aren't they?