Reservation at AA

The 3rd week of December was a heavy one.  

Heavy handed with the drinking.  

How my liver and myself are alive is a question that I can't answer but leaves me ever so thankful to have properly working enzymes.

~~~

First there were drinks Tuesday night (12/18) to celebrate that the following day was both a National Holiday* and James' 30th birthday!

I was meant to be on a budget.  

I was meant to only have two drinks and get the subway home.  

Instead I had a ton of drinks and was out till nearly 5 in the morning.  

~~~

Then there was a little Christmas dinner and drink get together with Rachel and Michael in Nampo Friday night (12/21).

I had lessons to teach the next day.

It was meant to be just a few casual drinks and an early night.  

Instead it was drinks, shots and then a bottle of Jager shared amongst friends and a brain that went black to try and protect itself.

~~~

Then it was Christmas Eve.  And since we aren't home with our families - dressing up and heading off to church - some of us choose to go out for dinner and a few drinks.

I was definitely meant to be on a budget.

It was meant to be a fun night celebrating Christmas.

Instead it was another night of drinks and too many shots.  A few rounds of me behind the bar bar(pre)tending and next thing I know I don't remember all of the night.

~~~

And next up is New Year's. 

God save me and my liver!

*Elections in Korea merit a day off!! And the 19th just happened to be the big election - the presidential election - so all civil service workers got the day off!

Shoop Shoop

Such an amazing weekend.

It was fantastic!  

It was brilliant! 

It was so good, that even when shitty skiers/snowboarders got in the way - they only added to the fun by increasing the challenge of the already excellently laid out runs.  It was so great, that even when I fell - I was still smiling.

It was that great to be back out on skis, shoop shooping down the mountainside!

We had some bumps and setbacks getting to High 1 Ski Resort, but no matter!!  

Once it was all worked out and the skis were on, nothing could upset me!  

I was going skiing!!  

Conditions at the top of the mountain on Saturday weren't the best.  Visibility was limited to about 20ft in front of you.

Thankfully, the snow was thick with moisture which made it great for carving your skis into it and cutting your way back and forth across the slopes.
And it made the few falls I had a lot easier to take as well. ^^

I didn't care.  I was skiing!  Having the best day ever!!

Andy, Alex, Chris, Martin, me, Jay, and John

sorry for the shoddy videography it was a bit difficult to keep a steady hand, while cruising down the slope, but you can get an idea for what it was like ^^

Sunday, Alex and I got up at 9 to have a few more runs before we headed back to Busan. 

And I'm soooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo happy we did. 

 The skies were prefect at the top of the mountain!  You could see out over the entire resort.  

We quickly called Andy and told him he had to join us.  And then we were off!! 

Over night, the snow had turned to ice crystals, which made for some unfriendly turns.  But it was all part of the challenge - master the snow and survive the Advanced Intermediate runs that Alex was taking us on!!  Oh man.  My nerves were freaking out a little!!

The last time I went skiing was (1) in Ohio and (2) back in 2008 when I got home from Africa!!!!

I was a little rusty.
But I was still holding my own.  Enough to keep up with Andy and Alex!!
So I went for it.   I told myself the only way to finish was to go down so I pushed off and… shooop shoooooop.  

Had the best weekend ever!!

Updated:

I signed my third contract today.  I'm staying another year.

Fact

Last night Michael, Mallory and myself found ourselves back at Thursday Party Nampo* because of some undesirable circumstances.

Drinks were needed and it was the perfect place to go!  

You know how in the theme song to Cheers "Taking a break from all your worries, sure would help a lot.  Sometimes you want to go where everybody knows your name, and they're always glad you came"?  That's us and this place.  It's a second home.**

So we went and we started drinking.  And who knew that Sundays are GREAT nights in Thursday Party Nampo!!

We put some alcohol in our bodies and started to forget the bad stuff.  

We hung out with our friends who work there.  

Listened to great music.  

And just let the night carry on.

And then we met a lot of new people!!!

One of the new people we met was Korean-American.  So I asked him, maybe a beer-or-2-fueled, if his last name was Kim.

He said racist.  I said fact.

And it actually is factual.  I know, I've already looked this up for a past post!  Plus I'm not racist. 

That's another fact.

Here's the facts of family names in Korea.   From the most reliable source on the internet - Wikipedia!

And perhaps you are thinking - What does Wikipedia know?  Well, they know a lot!!  I checked Wiki's facts against the Korean teachers at my school.

***

AND!! I counted myself in the total number of teachers at Daepyung and since I am NOT Korean I don't count in the name game, so the percentage at my school is even higher!!  

48.84% have the last name Kim, Park or Lee (I didn't even count the Choi's or the Jung's)

Boom.  

Fact.

* You have to say which Thursday Party it is, because there are 12 of them now! 

** Second home not because we booze endlessly, but because of the staff/our friends who work there. 

*** Kevin Kim, Jay Park and Arlen all work at Thursday Party Nampo.  The staff there didn't conform to the facts, but as stated there are some of the common last names there and the rest of them are just the outliers.  ^^

Pampering

I think I might have said it a few times already, but…

Asia is really pret-ty amazing!! 

For many, many thing!!  But especially for their love for cosmetics and personal care items AND for selling them cheap!

Grant it I don't buy many - really hardly any - cosmetic or personal care items from Korea.  I'm too worried about hidden bleaching agents.  But there are some products that I do use and some that I see and want to try.  Usually I don't buy them; either am too nervous or I'm worried I won't understand how to use them.  It might be cheap, but discounted items that you can't/don't use are still a waste and that's something I hate doing.

So for this particular item, after months of seeing it in stores, I decided it was time to properly check it out.

I stopped into the store a few times (each time a different shop) looking at the pictures on the back and acting like I understood the Korean instructions.

I texted my Korean friend about how to use it.  And then, with her guidance, I finally went ahead and bought it!!  (Best part was it was half off its already cheap price!  Yay!!)

What is it?  

It's a foot peeling kit from The Face Shop.*  

Haha I know it just sounds gross, but it's supposed to do great things!!

What is it/do?  It's two packets of special foot peeling solution and two plastic booties that you have to wear around like a dork for 90mins in order to make your feet get all nasty and peely - so that they can be all nice and smooth.

I don't know.  Cow wasn't so sure either.  But we'll see how things turn out in 4-6 days.  

Where in the World

I don't mean to play favorites, but it would appear that I do.

And my favorites seem to be my 5th graders, which is surprising and shocking and frankly miraculous because some of those kids are the biggest little shits there are!  But on the whole - I like them.

Really, I like all the grades at my school (*notice I said "grades" and not "students".  I definitely don't prefer all my students); but the 5th graders are the ones that either (A) have the best subject material/topics that allow for creative activities (B) the students themselves are more willing and eager to do creative activities or (C) I just like them more.  And the answer is…

I dunno.

But whichever one it is, maybe a bit of them all, we do fun(er) activities in my 5th grade classes.

And despite the fact that the year is officially coming to an end for textbook lessons, I thought I'd pull out one more big project before we moved into the free-for-all that will start next week and go all the way until the term ends in February.


Our last lesson was 'Where are you from?'.

Not a challenging lesson.  Not even something they had to learn.  They already knew the countries, how to answer, even how to identify whose flag was whose!  My work was basically - make a worksheet, make a PPT, make a bomb game, and come up with something that didn't have them wanting to stab pencils into their little eyeballs.

Thankfully, they don't mind doing the fundamentals on a obligatory worksheet, the PPT was fine because I Googled pictures that pushed the known landmarks/images and found ones that even got me excited, and this is Asia - these kids go mad for a bomb game even if they play one everyday!

So all that was left to keep the pencils a safe distance from their eyeballs was to come up with a project.
**And let me state beforehand that this project is not new, I didn't create it, I'm sure every kid in the cultivated world has probably done something like this at one point in their lives!  But the difference is that my kids had to do it in their second language!

So what did we do?  

We made country posters.  

(See I told you it wasn't new)

Working in groups of 4-5 students they: picked a country, researched 5 facts using FactMonster and created a poster.

Simple and easy.  Or so I thought.  Again - my kids were doing all this in their second language.  I should have remembered that when I was planning out the time allowance!  No matter, we don't need to review for the final when we have posters to make!!!

The extra day really was needed.   Group work, internet searching AND using their second language - all proved to be a bit too much for one 40min period, so without the second day there would have been only 2/20 posters finished.  Which would have been a bit of a fail.  And we couldn't have that for the students or for me!

So the extra day was given...

               

 

               

 

               

 

               

 

               

 

and the posters came out great!!