yellow, green, and red.

yellow: the color of the sky today, which koreans have cleverly named "yellow sky." it happens in the spring due to yellow sand coming over from china. it's strange. how in the WORLD can sand travel all the way across the ocean from one country to the next and just sort of hang in the air? seriously.

green: the color of my hair. NO MOM, i didn't dye it green. the pool did. :( i noticed it a few weeks back but pretended it wasn't happening and kept on swimming anyway. but alas, there's no denying it anymore. actually, i would have kept on denying it but my korean co-worker today exclaimed for the entire school to hear "carolyn! (or actually calolyn--they still can't get the "r" thing) your hair is gleen!" and unfortunately, korea doesn't have those nifty shampoo products they do in america for blonde girls like me who go swimming and get green hair and can just rinse it with the anti-green shampoo and WALLAH! good as new. they wouldn't really have a market for such a product here seeing as 99.9% of the population could live in a bucket of a chlorine while still maintaining their jet black locks. sigh. what's a girl to do.

red: the color of my face when i discovered that my water is shut off tonight, not to be turned on again until friday at noon. THAT'S 2 DAYS FROM NOW!!!! apparently, it's a city wide water shut down. i guess ilsan is ok with everyone smelling and being in a really bad mood for the next couple of days.

no!!!!!!!!

i have bronchitis. :( i've been feeling like there's a large angry animal in my chest for over a week now, and despite the fact that i've been going to bed at 7 pm every night for several days, i continued to get more and more tired and feeling like i was more and more not a member of planet earth and feeling more and more like my life was coming to an end and wouldn't someone please just put me out my misery now!!!! so i went to the doctor. and i have bronchitis. that would explain the inability to breathe and coughing up of the lungs this morning as i tried to go running (stupid) and nearly didn't make it back to my apartment. i'm so devestated and i've never felt more miserable in my life! i just want to be like one my little kids and have someone carry me into my bed and make me chicken noodle soup and put the thermometer in my mouth and rub my hair while i try to fall asleep and give me blankets when i get really really col in the middle of the night and then tear them off of me 10 minutes later when i get really really hot and in other words...mom, would you mind flying to korea and taking care of me please???

and at the doctor i got a needle in my bum. yes, i got a korean injection of who knows what in. my. bum. imagine the body language that went into the charade of trying to explain what they needed me to do and what they were needing to do to me. now i not only can't breathe and think my life is ending from exhaustion, i also have a sore right butt cheek. OH THE MISERY!!!!! WILL IT NEVER END!?!?!?!?

bukhansan

we had today off of school due to "children's day" here in korea. why didn't we have that in the states? it's one of the only holidays that's made sense to me so far in this country. anyway, i went hiking to a nearby mountain with lucy and sauul. lucky for us sauul has been to this mountain over 300 times and we spent 5 hours hiking trails that i'm pretty sure no one else has ever seen. it was so great. really rocky actually and a bit scary at times so it's a good thing i got NEW HIKING SHOES!!!!! wohooo! they were awesome! and if i may so, the best looking shoes on the mountain. they have pink laces, they got me down some of the steepest rocks i've ever climbed, and i named them lucy after my wonderful korean hiking buddy. anyway, at the end of the day as we were sitting on the ground eating accorn jelly with seaweed in sesame sauce and drinking rice wine sitting on a little mat along a stream, i was flooded with gratitude for my life here, for the people God has given me here, the way koreans share all their strange and shockingly yummy food, the way they sit on the ground with no shoes when they eat, the fact that i am able to climb mountains with new pink-laced hiking shoes named lucy, and i felt like i was smiling way deep down in my insides. that's a good feeling.



here's lucy and i enjoying our beer and rice wine and acorn jelly seaweed salad.




and here's lucy again. or half of her. she's the one with the pink laces. see, i told you she was the best looking one of the bunch.

shoo, korean translator. don't bother me.

so, today i taught my kids the muffin man song. you know "do you know the muffin man, the muffin man, the muffin man. do you know the muffin man who lives on drury lane. yes i know the..." and so on. and i even got REALLY clever and pulled out the lyric writing skills for some new verses, substituting muffin for pizza, bagel, and icecream on verses 2, 3, and 4. sometimes my pure genious astounds me. then just to make it a truly magical monday music class (wow! all the "m"s!!!), i pulled out the classic "shoo, fly don't bother me." so anyway, i called in jenny, the korean teacher, to quickly translate just so the kids knew what they were singing about and not just screaming out a bunch of meaningless syllables like i'm pretty sure they do most of the time. this is sort of how it all went:

jenny starts going through line by line. she says to the kids "do you know the muffin man" blah blah blah blah (a bunch of korean i don't understand.) then she stops and turns to me.

jenny: who is the muffin man?
me: uh....the guy in the song.
jenny: so he makes muffins then?
me: yup. exactly. he makes muffins.
jenny: so he is a baker? he makes bread and cake too?
me: um....i guess he just makes muffins.
jenny: so, he just makes muffins all day long? do people eat that many muffins?

good point, jenny. good point.

so moving onto shoo, fly. have you guys ever really thought about the words to that song? let me refresh your memory. "shoo fly, don't bother me. shoo fly, don't bother me. shoo fly, don't bother me. 'cuz i belong to somebody. i feel. i feel. i feel like a morning star. i feel. i feel i feel like a morning star..." you can IMAGINE all the questions.

"who does the fly belong to? a morning star is a star that comes out in the morning? how is that possible when the sun is up? what does a morning star feel like?"

right, so i think the screaming of the meaningless syllables is my best option.

mmmmmountain.

ahhhh, my weekend was so refreshing! i have been restless lately and my life has become too routine, and a weekend full of beauty and korean culture was just what i needed. saturday, i went with mina and amelia to this big hill top where you can look over and see north korea, and then to a little village nearby with ridiculously colorful and therefore awesome shops and cafes, then for vietnamese food, then to a water fountain show thing with cheesy korean music.



here's north korea. that land mass beyond the water. i got really close, huh? i think i saw some little lego-sized north koreans doing things people do when they're under an oppressive dictator. i shouldn't make jokes actually, it's a pretty sad situation.





sunday, i went with my friend lucy who to an island a couple of hours away with a hiking club and we climbed not one, not two, but three mountains on the island. a 12 hour days, with 6 solid hours of hiking. needless to say, i woke up this morning and could barely bend down to sit on the toilet without crying for help from my non-existant roommate. but it was oh-so-worth it.


the flowers you see are the korean native azalia flower. they were covering the mountains, and will only be around about a week. so we went at a good time!








i spent the day with my friend lucy (in yellow), and about 3 korean men, only one of which spoke a little english. it was not a day of deep conversation, but we still managed a lot of laughs! as you can see, i really fit with my running shorts, tanktop, and sneakers. (p.s. i'll never hike a korean mountain without climbing shoes again. i nearly broke my neck on the way down, slipping and sliding all over the lose dirt...)

anyway, those are just a few of the photos. click here to check out the entire album., with more descriptions!

dohp!

when i was about 16, my car was almost stolen. (in actuality, it was absolutely not almost stolen, not even close, but a girl's gotta tell herself things to sleep at night.) it was a friday night, i was cruising the loop (if you don't understand what this means, you didn't grow up in iowa) with my friend, and when my friend took me to where i had parked my car so that i could make curfew, it was no where to be found. we drove around the tiny little town of hull, iowa a bazillion times (there's about 5 streets in hull so it didn't take long) and to no avail. my car was gone. GONE!!! hours later, i finally walked into my parents' bedroom, ashamed and well past curfew and said in utter dismay..."my car! someone stole it! it's not my fault! it's just...GONE!!!!"

well, of course, my car was in my high school parking lot where i parked it every single day. not stolen. not borrowed. no practical jokes involved. only stupidity. i wish i could say that i had a huge crush on the boy who was with me and was distracted by teenage love, or that i had taken a fall at volleyball practice and fractured my memory (can that be fractured?), but i was not in love, and my brain was intact. sigh.

so.

last night, after a long day of work, mary and i hopped on our bikes and 7 minutes later i stood at the bike rack outside of my apartment and went for my keys in the pocket of my purse where i ALWAYS put them. no keys. so i dug through my jeans pockets, the pockets of my jacket, pulled everything out of my purse. no keys. how is this possible!?!? there's a big dangly colorful key chain (that has sentimental value to me, making matters worse) attached that makes lots of noise, there's no way they could have fallen out of my pocket, right? i was flabergasted. so, i re-traced my bike trail to school and back. no keys. i looked in the cracks of the side walks, underneath cars parked on the road, and no keys. how could this be HAPPENING!!! i made the trip to school and back several times. no keys.

so, i go into my apartment building to the security gaurd office and, in tears, explain to a blankless, confused, and incredibly un-friendly looking security gaurd. "me no keys!!! in pocket! fall out! no keys! need in apartment! need key! help!" after 10 minutes of a wild game of charades, he finally caught on and replied. "hana key! hana key! no!" (hana means one.) you've got to be kidding me. one key? i was sobbing at this point and let's be honest, seriously unrational. "SO YOU'RE TELLING ME I'LL NEVER GET INTO MY APARTMENT AGAIN!?!? I HAD THE ONLY KEY!!?!? YOU HAVE A MILLION KEYS IN THERE! I CAN SEE THEM!" and i stomped away to make several more trips to school and back with help from mary looking for my keys, and even went in to try to find my scary boss, but it was all hopeless.

i attempted the security gaurd again, who had softened up a bit to this hysterical foreigner, and finally called a lock smith. i waited. he came. i paid him way too much money for the 5 seconds it took him to open my door.

i got inside, took off my jeans, took off my shirt, took off my bra and...out falls my keys.

my keys were in my bra.

a big dangly keychain, in my bra, and i never noticed.

i know what you're thinking..."who puts their keys in their bra?" in my defense, it does make a nice holding place when you don't have pockets. really, what else can i say? i tried to get angry at myself, but it's just too funny, and i was just too relieved. 2 hours of my life, a lot of tears wasted, and 25 bucks gone.

in my bra. sorry, i just can't get over it.

the color purple.

i got new shoes!!! they are the coolest things ever. for years, i thought i didn't like the color purple, until recently i realized my dislike was completely ungrounded, and it's opened up a whole new world for me!!!! every time i look at them i nearly burst with excitment!!! baaaaa, aren't they just fantastic! my feet are thrilled.




this weekend, i dog sat for matt and mary's dog wicket. we laughed, we cried, we ran 5 miles, he nearly passed out, we walked 6 miles after that, we both nearly passed out, he peed all over my floors, hogged the pillow on my bed, scratched up my couch, tore apart my bright green loofah in my shower (who am i kidding, he basically tore apart everything in my apartment.) but just look at him. he's so ca-uuuute!!!! he may have been a little selfish in bed (as in he took up a lot of room. get your minds out of the gutter...)
but our love-hate relationship grew ever stronger, and it was really nice to have a running partner so i could be like "come on wicket, just a couple more miles...you're doing great! keep it up! you feelin' tired? push through, pain is gain my friend!" and he would respond with a very inspiring "pant pant. eye blink. tounge out." incredibly motivating. and what was even nicer is that i got SOOOO much attention on the lake path! apparently, koreans consider having one of their dogs as being initiated into the "lavish-with-attention" category.