stranger

that would be the name of the korean ahjushi that mans the english village guardhouse at night. so when you come home at night, you get to say "hey stranger!"

yesterday there was a mock teaching of an insect class for teachers who never got to teach it yet, and all the teachers got to make these little shrink art keychains hahah it was so fun, i made a lakers moth of course. oh and i didnt get to watch the game cuz i was too tired this morning but i knew we would win so...feels good to be back in the finals!!

so, erick took me and ern out to dinner last night. he said he tries to do this with all the new teachers, he watches out for all the teaching staff, esp. the younger ones. a big puerto rican poppa bear. we went to a meat place and stuffed ourselves silly, then walked around "downtown" 양평 and got ice cream from baskin robbins. dudes, baskin robbins has ice cream fondue! brilliant. we didn't get it, but that doesn't mean i'm gonna stop thinking about it anytime soon.

another great thing about korea: green tea ice cream is literally available everywhere. you can get it wheneverrr you want. even at the tiniest ghettoest store. dream world.

after walking off some of our meat and ice cream, we went to this amazing tea house called 천년찻집 that was like a little bit outside 양평 past about a million neon love motels. they had these notebooks that you could write notes in, very korean. we drank some tea that was really good in the beginning when it was nice and scalding hot, but then it tasted like acupuncture office after it cooled down and became bitter. but i felt like it added maybe 10 years to my lifespan. 10 years of life for 5,000원...pretty good deal.

thousand-year tea

no i didn't do that, but i thought it was really cute.

random mini zoo outside the teahouse...those bunnies were to die for...so clean and white and cute and friendly and i definitely want one.

taxi driver bought us 뻥튀기 on the way home, we said hi to Stranger, and then called it a night~ oh yea the taxi driver blatantly ran a red light and erick was like "ahjushi!" and the taxi driver was like "빨간불 means 빨리 빨리!" 

then i woke up this morning with crazyyy HIVESSS...EPIC. FAIL. the big ones this time with lots of swelling, not the small redder kind. yes there are different kinds of hives, i am rather familiar. anyways they are passing fairly quickly but still realllyyy sucks. i guess i need to be more careful with what i eat? jeez why is my body such a pansy...

i remember one time like 3 years ago i got really sick and sutton said "dude you would think that your immune system would be better than this since you freakin laugh all the freakin time. oh man maybe if God didn't make you such an easily amused person, you would be dead by now. maybe you're supposed to be a lot weaker than even this." and...i think that's really true. both of my parents were reallllly weak as children. my dad as a baby was actually pronounced dead for like a whole day. my mom never could participate in gym class and actually even stayed home from school a lot all the way through high school. anyways back to the main story: hives suck.

because i'm so hivey, i've been just taking it easy today..ordered weird korean pizza..watched anime with ernest..probably just gonna watch a movie and maybe go into town for dinner and drinks later on. i gotta get better by tomorrow cuz i have to teach! boo to teaching on sundays~

erick is taking us and this other teacher brani [new zealander chick] to midnight shopping in 동대문 next saturday~ aka the hunt for the weird saggy-butt spandex pants to buy as eunji's souvenir!!

emma watson

one girl even changed her last name hahah.

there was another girl whose name was mary, and on all of her papers she would put "i'm mary" instead of just her name hahahahah man these kids.

i've been eating ice cream every day. yikes.

let me have a geeky moment here and say...i'm pretty sad that i'm gonna miss like 3 months of naruto...i can still DL the bleach torrent from dattebayo but since dattebayo dropped naruto and i can only watch it on hulu now..which doesn't work outside of the U.S...anyways yea i'll stop now.

the cheetos in korea suck pretty hard but they have these sweet prizes, you punch out these tiny plastic pieces and slide them together to make stuff. so far i have a motorcycle and a top. the top is probably the best top i have ever had. the motorcycle is so cool too, but there is also a jet that i want. they are so tiny and cute, i want them all. shoot, is this another geeky moment? the cheetos are really no good, though. no flavor.

my ride....it's a lotte.

i'll be watching the lakers game tomorrow morning with the guys here, they know some website, so we'll be projecting that in one of the classrooms. that makes me one happy girl! except i'm definitely the only lakers fan in the whole village. story of my life!

r.kelly and stevie wonder

so from now on, i'm titling my entries with the best names i come across that day. 

yes, there was an r.kelly and a stevie wonder in class today. so imagine the teacher saying "r.kelly, please tell me about your family." how do you not laugh??? and stevie wonder actually spelled his name steive wonder on his nametag so the teacher kept calling him steve wonder. you just canNOT ask me to keep a straight face for that. i kept biting my lip and tried to think of dead puppies so that i wouldnt start cracking up by myself in front of the whole class.

some more awesome things about korea: teachers get FREE ICE CREAM from the soft serve machine! and teachers get to cut EVERY STUDENT in the caf line! i know, i am living the good life.

so i promised pictures, no?

as you can see by our sign, we mean business.

so the building you're looking at is the fitness room/auditorium/gym..hopefully you can see what i mean when i say i feel like im on a fake set. there are pretty much mountains all around, pretty mountains.

yongmoon is like the closest townish thing so me and ernie decided to take a walk down there...so purrry right? [that's how my momma says pretty]

mr.Q's chicken kinda rocked my socks a little...that is dduk on top if you're wondering

there was a dduk place under the mr.Q's...i could eat these errry day. there was the sesame seeds and honey water inside.

so to answer some questions...

yes i am in the shigol...but it doesn't feel like it because im in the...village.

no im not doing p90x because they do it in a different room, not the fitness room. but i have been working out every day!

i guess that's it for Q&A because those are the only Q's i can remember.

erick, one of the staff members, is taking us out for galbi tomorrow! stoked.

is it really only thursday?

i already feel like a vet here...i guess that's a good thing?

i have like 10 seconds cuz i have a staff meeting in 10 minutes but i just wanted to say...

+a girl in one of the classes...her name is beyonce. self-given, no doubt. she like da chocolate.

+we're teaching kids the "do you love your neighbor" game and one boy, instead of saying "i love people who..." he just said "i love...men"

i'll do another update later today when i have more time, with pictures!

holy crap a long day

when the weather's nice and clear, the surroundings are pretty bizarre. imagine the buildings i mentioned earlier with a backdrop of korean mountains towering over you...i'll take pictures soon..anyways it's really gorgeous in a strange way. i feel like i'm on a set and if i lean on the clock tower, it'll just fall flat like a piece of carboard and knock over the painted mountain mural right behind it....that kinda thing.

so the english village is like a government-sanctioned facility that sends different students from different public schools. so there's like a 5-day program, a 1-day program, and event programs all going on at the same time. basically, it is CRAZY. staff meetings are always hectic, you see a million different kids every day, and there are so many different classes...

but to be perfectly honest, it's really fun. the kids are cute and the teachers are easy-going and the classes are super interesting...

my aunt sent me a cellphone to use here...and it is so freakin cute but i feel like a dum-dum when i use it because it has this really unusual button system that i will probably never master.

ernie just whined that he's not getting mentioned in this blog so...there. officially mentioned.

ok i think ernie's getting restless because he's pressing the button on his phone that makes it read out the time to him...in korean...which i'm 100% sure he doesn't understand. so time to work out! keep reading, eunji! the only person that i know for sure reads this thing! hahaha 

first day of school!

you know what's one cool thing about korea? when you look at facebook, it feels like you're from the future!!!!! and you feel slightly superior hahahah it's cool, trust me.

so i fell asleep with my laptop on my bed, and i knocked it off in my sleep and it landed, while still open, face down, on the faux wooden floor. not good. it made a little laptop tent. i've never been so sad to see a tent.

yesterday in order to procure a cellphone for ernest, we hitched a ride with some of the teachers that teach in different towns on sundays, so we spent the majority of the day in a van. BUT we also got to uh, go to a random person's wedding, eat freaking korean bbang as if all the bakeries in the country were gonna blow up tomorrow, and run away from our driver [the VP of the english village] as often as possible. quite tiresome. 

oh and we also got our voltage converters, they are pretty humungo as far as voltage converters go, but it looks so cute now that it's all set up and stuff...and i love that little aluminum monster...that thing is what's keeping my spoiled american butt going...

2 days ago the former president of korea jumped off a cliff and committed suicide. it was a pretty gloomy morning during the ride into town. it's heartbreaking.

okay, gotta get ready for my first day! 

first post

hi there, americans!

shoot, my battery bar just turned red, i have a mere 18 minutes to say vassup! i'm bruno! [check reference to sasha baren cohen's new movie] and i probably won't be posting again until i get a voltage converter for all my american electronic goodies..

so i'm here in...the mountains..in the yangpyeong english village...which looks like a mix between colonial virginia and new england-style college dorms. with random anglo-references like a statue of liberty fountain and red telephone booths and a british guard. there are also posters of 꽃보다 남자 all over the place because they did some filming here...there are many many posters. um, i never was even remotely interested in that drama..and seeing those "f4" boys faces like super huge on posters makes me wonder why other people were even remotely interested...i mean...well..maybe the way they acted made them goodlooking, i shall give them the benefit of the doubt.

it's 3 am here, btw, i just woke up from the most colossal nap. there is a gym and a pool here and i am looking forward to getting into a regular workout sched again...one of the ladies here said that the guys play ball and the girls do aerobics...but then she was like "P90X 이라고..." hahahah i died.

so wow i'm really out of time, so i'll leave you with the only picture i've taken so far...