it is 4:30am

last weekend i went to seoul and met up with brucey for lunch at a bomb 설렁탕 place in 동대문 which was perfect because it was pouring alllllllll dayyyyyyy..i was so sick of walking in puddles!!! after lunch we shopped in 명동 for a bit and just walked around eating random stuff and just catching up...now that i think about it, brucey and i are quite the traveling bahddies.

 

then we went to go see nanta in 강남 and i loved it! we got bomb seats really last minute too. i thought we would miss the show cuz there was standstill traffic, but as luck would have it, a lady with awesome seats couldn't go to the show anymore so she offered them to us yohooo~!

taking discreet pictures was a fuhreaking mission, because i didn't know what their photog policy was...so this was the best one i got...so full of action...OMG brucey got chosen to come on stage but he couldn't go cuz he took his shoes off so he only had wet socks on!! hahahahaha jeez the chef guy moved on and picked brucey's replacement...who looked exactly like brucey.

after the show we met up with danny-kun [who was furious with me at the time because i had to keep ignoring his calls during the nanta show] but it was SO GOOD TO SEE HIMMM so of course we were so happy hahaha and the 3 of us chilled in a coffee shop until dinnertime which is when lyn FINALLY joined us ^^, and it was like a beautiful little micro-reunion.

고기 고기 고기!!! finally got to grill outtt~ and our grill was this cute little turtle that lets the grease run down its shell, off its tail and into a little dish. thank you, turtle.

hi dannykun! one of my dearest besties. i suck at remembering to take pictures. so there are none of anyone else...after dinner lyn left us and brucey, danny and i went and met up with danny's buddy 히수 and we stayed out reminiscing until about 5am. i slept an hour and a half at danny's place and then caught the 8:50am train back to 용문 just in time for work! i felt like a crazy. that day was the first day of the adult program, and now that the first week is almost over, i must say I LOVVVVVE MY STUDENTS! college kids are so much fun~~~ and we have 4 weeks together hahahah i love it~ but it is SO MUCH MORE WORKKK, i have to prep every night about 2 to 3 hours and i can't ever just go into class and wing it. tonight i graded like a million fake resumes, made flashcards for a game, prepped powerpoints, printed out dialogues, looked over drill charts...it goes on and on and on...it's neverending.  but i read the funniest resume by one of my students who wrote his resume as clark kent. that junk was so creative and funny, i was dying.

they were filming a dating/variety show on our campus, and i had to take a million books up a brick walkway in a red radioflyer-type wagon and it was making THE LOUDEST RACKET, and the entire crew was staring at me but i couldn't help it! class was starting like in 5 minutes! jeez, i was here first...

do you see the guy on the way left? that's the guy from DJ D.O.C! the only DJ D.O.C member that i would ever recognize...i wanted his autograph but they filmed for a rather long time and i couldn't just wait around..

sorry if this post doesn't make much sense or if it lacks the usual sharpness...i'm dead tired.

trying to figure out how to watch transformers this weekend! 

mr.Q night

friday nights are me and ern's mr.Q night...i will never get sick of mr.Q and mannn i'm gonna miss it when i leave! i think i'll def miss eating kimbap whenever i want, too.

before i go any further, i must say: I MISS COOKING! i miss the publix produce and seafood section, cooking from scratch, watching food networkkkkkk........apart from my friends, that is probably the only actual *thing* i miss about the states. everything else i can handle. i can handle the non-existence of dryers, the funkybunky smells, i can even take how all "salty" korean snacks are still kinda sweet, and everything else. but. i get insanely jealous when i see people buying raw vegetables and meat...that they get to cook later in their kitchens...

i really do miss all you my-buddies though. you know how in the very beginning i said all the teaching staff was pretty chill and cool right? well.......they are actually...pretty retarded. only a handful are cool. by handful i mean like...six. there are a lot of people here that i have to straight-up ignore and actively avoid [in the nicest way possible, of course] just so i don't go insane. you all know that i'm a person easily annoyed [my biggest struggle] so...i don't even know where to begin. just know that all you beautifully intelligent and charming and witty and 눈치있는 peeps are sorely sorely missed and all the more appreciated.

now that that's over, on to the good stuff! wednesday night we went to the last korea soccer match of the world cup qualifying rounds versus iran...13 people packed into a van, a lot of them were the annoying ones. it was hard. just bit my lip the entire time. i at least was sitting in between my besties, ernie and iris. iris is definitely my favorite person at EV!

so we made everyone jeal by taking fun pictures by ourselves! hahahah ernie's smile is sooo baby. like iris' glasses with no lenses in them?? hahahah love herrr

props courtesy of the EV drama class

that skull thing is on a long black stick, so it's like a skull staff HAHAH perfect

ernie needs frizz control, stat.

after running laps around the world cup stadium two full times trying to find where to pick up our tickets, we finally got in!  this is the section where i WISH we were sitting.

so cool! sittin with all the old peeps drinking their booze and eating their fried chicken.

have you noticed the weird haze? that would be humidity. it was icky icky icky in thurr.

i was trying to take a "my favorite girls" picture, and somehow JD managed to get in...notice how thrilled i am. hahaha i didnt mean to but ernie took the picture..

aww i love them~~~ do you like how my shirt isn't tucked in at the front? super fashionable.

after the game, they were gonna kick soccer balls into the stands that were signed by the entire team! i wanted one soooooooooooo bad so chris and i went down to the bottom section to try to get me one...but look at how few balls are in front of the section we're in...i was very sad.

there were so many cute soccer players! but i dont think they were the good ones cuz i never saw them on the field during the game HAH..

the vice prez loooves soccer and went with us to the game [he drove] and HE GOT A BALL!!! i was soooooooooo envious~ i hope his sons loved it, his youngest is my FAVORITTTE at EV...ew fob does NOT look good on me. but it was late. and..i just woke up from the ride home. and..it was so humid. lolll

anyways the game was awesome cuz iran scored first and time was running out and then park ji sung scored and everyone went craaaazy~ and it was just soo cool to be able to be a part of that!

tomorrow i'm going to seoul again! to see david [brucey], hopefully lyn, maybe danny, maybe andrew...if not, then it'll be just me and brucey! hahaha well that is if i don't get lost on the way, i've never gone to seoul by myself before...then it'll be just brucey awww....

goodnight loves!

no more fancy names cuz no more kids =*(

you thought LAST week i was shooting up the ranks?? well in the past 2 days, i put together 3 different adult program schedules and this morning i worked in the VP's office, writing letters for him and looking through resumes for potential future teachers! and he wants me to phone interview some of them! how did this happen?? i thought i was here for the kids! well, the upside is that i get to do new things every day. but i didn't even get a chance to get sick of kids yet...sad.

okay so about my lakers dream. so as the whole world is now forced to acknowledge, lakers are numero uno, senores. when i found out the score, i seriously couldn't stop cheesin' SERIOUSLY looked like a complete idiot. even though i was thinking "i look stuuuupidddd" the smile would NOT go away. for hours. it was freaky.

that night, i had a dream. it was minutes after lakers won the championship and me, david sutton, jojo, and diana were IN THE LAKERS LOCKER ROOM. celebrating. with ERRBODY! and it was just the players, no media frenzy. but they were running around, hooting and hollering and taking pictures with us and hugging us and stuff. i distinctly remember at one point kobe was even like "where's julie! i need to take a picture with julie!" HAHAHAHA it was actually kind of quiet in the room because the guys would keep running in and out randomly so there was only the occasional whooping and yelling. i specifically remembering seeing [SUPER CLEARLY] kobe, odie, farmar, lukie, sasha and fish. and taking pictures with all of them. well the only time i saw sasha was when he poked his head into the room and was like "have you seen my girls?" i guess in my dream, all the lakers dancers loved sasha. the reason why i said that this dream was super vivid and realistic is not cuz the sitch was realistic cuz yeah right who am i kidding, but because in every other dream in my whole life, my stream of consciousness was WHACK, like all kinds of crazy stuff would be happening, but it would make sense to the me in the dream. but in this case, i remember celebrating..and then whispering to jojo "...how did we get to come in here?" and he just started laughing and shrugging. and i remember thinking that we must have won SOMETHING or another..the dream was long as heck but i remembered every second when i woke up. that also NEVER happens. anyways best dream ever.

but actually i had ANOTHER dream the night before that, and i was cooking with michael cera at michael cera's house. yes, michael cera. i love him to death i wish he was my best friend. well in this dream he was. and he had this insane stove that looked like a regular gas range but about 4x as big. you know how gas ranges flame up bigger right at the beginning with the first gas whoosh? well when michael cera reached over to turn it on, a humongous fire blasted out and burned michael cera's arm! and all of a sudden, we had to leave immediately, for no apparent reason. i think it was bad guys coming to get us. so we were suddenly in a rush, and i had to find first aid stuff for michael cera's crazy burned arm so i was panicking and going through random cabinets in a house i didn't recognize, michael cera's house...and all i remember after that is bandaging up michael cera while we were hiding somewhere and i think that's where i woke up. michael cera michael cera. hahahaha didn't think i mentioned his name enough so...

i'm going to a soccer game tomorrow. korea's last one in the world cup. versus iran. i can't wait, i've always wanted to go to one and wear red and be crazy with everyone! when korean women's soccer played the USA, the usa fans looked at us like we were the most annoying things on earth, because they don't know!

i would write here every day but i'm trying to play it cool. i hate seeing entries that get 0 comments hahahaha whatta loser.

shooting up the ranks!

yesterday bless was at EV [english village] since it was wednesday, but they were wearing just regular clothes, and i actually saw them in the line at the caf getting food, but the students didn't even notice them there cuz they didn't recognize them, but anyways those guys are much cuter in person than in pictures or on stage hahahah! i was already sitting down eating with everyone but when the cutest one [don't know his name] was almost through the line i said "안녕하세요!" and he smiled and 인사ed to me! i have to admit i was a little bit starstruck hahahah, next week i'm gonna stalk them a little so i can take a picture with them and get some autographs, and i'm making ernie come with me cuz i'm gonna be scared.

remember my adorable kids last week? and how i said i'll forever compare my future students to them? well, it turns out that i only have one more batch of kids to compare anyway. you see, this week i didn't teach at all because i was put on the prep team for the upcoming adult program. so this week i have been confined to the teacher's office staring at a computer monitor from 9am to 5pm every day! typing up lesson plans, creating welcome packets, sitting in ever frequent team progress meetings...i have less work than the other veteran teachers though, who are designing theme classes and putting together exams and material for the textbook getting printed next week. it has been DRAINING. but the days do go by much quicker than when i'm teaching.

but anyways next week will be my last week teaching kids and then the following week after that, the adult program starts! i'll be teaching a 2-week-long future teacher program, and a 4-week-long college student program. i heard that the college student group will be mostly guys ooh-la-la! hahahah and i'm gonna be with them for a whole month so i hope i like my homeroom students. i have to figure out a way to look WAY older though...

today is a pretty hectic day actually. besides creating/studying the lesson plans for the classes i'm teaching for the adult program [1.drill&dialogue, 2.conversation, 3.interview&resume] i'm tutoring 3 high school kids at 2pm, teaching one science theme class at 4pm, and then i'm going to be the question-asker at tonight's EV Golden Bell program from 7-8:30pm HAHAHAH did anyone watch that korean game show? where there's 100 students, each with their own mini whiteboard and they write the answers to questions and hold them up, and it's like an elimination quiz game...? i used to watch that all the time in high school. anyways ernie's coming to watch, and he's taking pictures so i'll put those up afterwards kekek.

i'm actually updating from the teacher's office right now...i needed a break =_=

on a brighter note, tomorrow is gonna be pretty chill, just gonna crank out some work, and then andrew is coming to EV and staying for the weekend so i'm ecstatic! even though i have to work sunday.....again...

yea...that just happened.

my first weekend in seoul was DEFINITELY an experience. wow. let's see, where to start. well friday night a bunch of us teachers went out to unwind after a long week, so i def slept in saturday, woke up and ate lunch with ernest and watched anime until about 4ish, being super lazy. we met up with erick and chris and got on the seoul bus at about 7:40pm? we got into seoul past 9pm cuz of traffic and we were pretty hungry...so we got some japanese ramen!! 

seriously? soooo good~ they had 4 different kinds, we tried 3 of them: shouyo, miso, and donchokosomethingsomething. anyways they were all really bomb~~ we also got yakisoba and hot sake...that yakisoba was the besttt i've ever had fo sho. i definitely want to go back cuz they have a huge menu...i wanted to order like 10 different things.

we checked into our hotel at 11pm, which was actually a love motel HAHAHAHAH so there was like condoms next to the bed and...

a window to the shower!!! HAHAHAHAH wtheck right!? well me and ernie were sharing a room so we just hung the blanket off of the air conditioning to cover it..but it was hilarious. ernie and i could not stop laughing while looking through the room. but it was hecka nice besides all that...ecky love stuff [my best friend's wedding reference]...

anyways after dropping off stuff, we headed out to 동대문 at about midnight, and would alternate between shopping and eating/drinking...we finally got to drink in a 포장마차 which was like one of my dreams hahaha and we ate 순대볶음 for 안주 and i definitely thought of you eunji! =( and was sad. it was good, i know you would have loved it. oh and erick taught us about shanties, which is mixing beer with cider, which is reeeeally delish!

when we finally were done....it was this light out. it was about 5:30am, the stores were finally closing, but there was still maddddd people outside! seriously no matter what hour it is, it is crowded in seoul...i was amazed. that's a street cleaner. bless his heart.

we headed to our hotel and slept til about 2pm...erick told us to turn this knob all the way to the right for the a/c but it was actually the floor heater so when i woke up and got out of bed, i burned my feet off. why would they even let it go that high???? anyways when we got up, guess what we did? shop some more! i honestly don't think i've ever shopped this much before in my life. i think this weekend we shopped for a total of 10 hours at least. easily.

i found the vijayjay pants, oonj! and guess where??? at zara of all places! yea...your favorite color too. they're 25,000won so i shall get us matching ones once payday comes around hahaha it will be....too awesome.

that is chris. this is in 명동, i believe. i can be wrong because i was just blindly following erick around. i ended up buying 4 shirts, sunglasses, SWEET new chucks, earrings, and lots of socks. which doesn't seem like much after 10 hours of looking at floor after floor after floor after floor but i definitely feel the emptiness of my wallet. i dropped some serious cash this weekend. mostly on food, drinks and travel. gotta eat caf food as much as possible for a while cuz we tentatively planned another seoul trip for the 28th!

gotta get street food! can you see my face is getting fatter? this beautiful thing is a potato. i love it. i also had pineapple on a stick and a corndog that is coated with french fries [genius!]. and some crazy korean hairy candy [see below].

they put all these new glass panels into the seoul stations because of the recent rise in suicide rates in korea...to keep people from jumping in front of trains. that made me really sad.

it was ern's first time on a subway. he was very excited.

on the last train home back to 용문...*cue lostprophets song*

i still don't like shopping in korea very much because of the aggressive salespeople. and high pressure buying situations. i am a very laid-back shopper but that just doesn't cut it here. erick kept saying "girl, get your fighting gloves on!" not my style at allll. but im learning to embrace it, i love shiny new things too much...

fedora

another one of my students, in the beginning i couldn't call on him without laughing but by the end of the week, i felt like it was actually a real name hahahaha...a girl's name though so still inappropriate. 

there's a group called 'bless' that comes to give a mini-concert at english village once a week, and a bunch of teachers go to watch it almost every time; me and ernie decided to go check it out, and they are pretty good! their looks are a little bit whatevs but they can sing...

that would be sugar, getting one of their cds that was signed by that little guy, he was definitely the most popular with the girls.

so this is my class!!! T-T i'm gonna miss them for surrrre, they were the best students ever and i know i'm gonna compare all my future students to them and be sad. notice the girls are all covering their faces...apparently that is very pretty. the more of your face you can cover the prettier it is hahaha whacks.

another crazy name from my class is jonweek. reminded me of jonquiqui.

going to seoul tonight!

sugar

sugar became my best student within the first 10 seconds of meeting her at orientation. no joke. she loves me. she refuses to move up to a more advanced class because of me...heeeee.

anyways yes, today was my first day of actual teaching! at the english village, the classes are split up by levels and each class has a korean teacher and a foreign teacher. the scheduling is complicated so i won't get into that but basically, i could be either, but this week i'm a foreign teacher. i'm assigned C-1 and C-2, the two lowest levels, who basically know extremely little to no english. each class has about 23 students, and this week there's 14 classes so it's a pretty big middle school that came in...everyone says C-1 is always the hardest class to control and toughest to teach but i had a lot of fun with them today, they are so funny~~~ freaking fobs trying to speak english, man. gratuitous entertainment. 

plus this week, the theme class i'm teaching is DANCE! definitely one of the toughest theme classes to teach~ because there's vocab and dance moves and it's very hectic with lots of voice-raising lol...so without a doubt i'm losing my voice this week.

it's pretty crazy having my own class now, because basically you make your own teaching material~ i'm working on some listening exercises right now actually...

everyone here keeps assuming that ernest and i are dating or married or engaged! i think we need to just start telling people that we are siblings because sometimes they don't even believe us when we say we're just friends.

yesterday my 작은고모 and family drove 3 hours out to visit me at the village and buy me dinner which was so sweet of them, and then me ern and chris [another teacher] went out in 양평 for drinks and just hanging out. and i TOLD chris i don't sing in public for free, but still somehow we ended up at 노래방 hahahah ernie tried to sing boom boom pow but BEP just can't be sung on karaoke...

i wish i had a kitchen.....