plane tickets and schools closing and boys and things...

sooooo much new:

1. tango pango is closing in 3 weeks. july 15 is my last day. a month and a half earlier than my contract stated. and i was just told. the school is just not making money i guess, so on july 15th it will close its doors. surprisingly, i didn't freak out. since i get to stay in my apartment until august, the plan is, i'm going to try to find a summer camp to do for a month or some part time teaching for a month until august 17 when i'm...

2. GOING TO THAILAND!!!! AND LAOS!!!! AND MAYBE CAMBODIA!!!! cousin jen is meeting me in bangkok and we're making our way around southeast asia for nearly a month. the itinerary is in the works. then i fly back to korea and immedietely i....

3. fly home! i've just reserved my ticket. crrrrazy that this year is almost over. the plan for next year is that i have no plan yet. :) but i might find myself in england at some point to see....

4. a boy! it's the guy i met when i went to beijing last february who was staying at my hostel and after spending a dreamy 16 hours together we kept in touch as he traveled around the world and a week ago, he moved to korea for the summer so that we could be together. :) so yes, i guess you could say i have a...errr...uh....boyfriend. from england! he he. very hollywood movie-esque isn't it??? :) anyway, he's wonderful, we're happy, and i'm grateful. wanna see pictures of him? i would if i were you. click here

and for more fun pictures, check out me with my kids in the little field trip we took to the playground...click here

to the east sea and back again.

ok. i feel like i've been a big blogging slacker these days. sorry to all my readers. i will try to do better.

so. this past weekend we had friday off so me and 6 of my friends traveled to the east sea of korea, a province called kangwondo. we stayed in our friends' condo right in the most famous mountains of korea, saraksan. it was soooo beautiful. we did some serious barefooted rock climbing through
waterfalls in the mountains, we swam in the

way-too-cold-to-be-swimming-in ocean, we ate fresh sea food straight i mean STRAIGHT out of the ocean, as in i watched them kill the fish and about 10 seconds later i was eating it's insides...(who knew sushi could be so amazing?), and i got to spend 3 whole days with people that i really love. the downside was that i didn't really sleep for any of those 3 days cuz 4 out of the 7 people staying in our small little room snored (PET PEEVE!!!), but i managed to thoroughly enjoy the holiday anyway. click here for all the pictures, which will hopefully be able to tell and show you what we got up to.

in other news, summer has arrived in korea. last week there were signs of rainy season beginning early, as it rained every. single. day. causing seriously depression and sadness in the life of carolyn given the fact that i bike to and from school 3 times a day. i think i may need to invest in a big colorfully polka dotted rain coat and perhaps some of those cool rubber rain boots. but this week it's only supposed to rain a couple days, so perhaps we've still got a few weeks before rainy season is in full blast.

the little devils i call my students are, well, still little devils which means i still love my job. :) (what fun is it if they're always good?) today i came to school and heard hysterical bawling all the way from the bottom of the stairs. (what a great sound to hear first thing on monday morning...) anyway, i opened the doors of the school to find little danielle sobbing i mean SOBBING like world had just run out of playgrounds. after 15 minutes of wondering what she was blubbering in korean to our korean teachers, worrying that perhaps something really dreadful had happened to someone in her family, or maybe she had had a big 5-year-old falling out with one of her best friends, i found out that the reason behind the record-breaking tears was that she didn't like the pants she was wearing today. right. i didn't really like the pants i was wearing today either. so i completely understood.

happy birthday mina

last night was mina's birthday party in hongdae. lots of fun as shown below....










me and the birthday girl!







at bricxx...








chohee on the left (the poor soul who tries to color my hair) and mina and i...

ASA!!!!

this is my favorite korean word. it means "ALRIGHT!!! WOHOOO!!! HOORAY!!!" and i made great use of it this weekend. i spent my entire sunday at a tennis tournament with my friend lucy watching her friends' team compete. it was so cool! a big group of korean men re-living their glory days of university (some members are still living those days as the team was really diverse in age) and we cheered them on from 9:30 am till 7 at night! and they WON!!!! ASA!!!!!!!! i think i learned every korean cheering word this language has to offer. ASA CAHYOTEE! (cahyotee means sting ray so i don't really get why this is a cheering word) and CHATTAHSAYO! (good job) and WHITING (with a strong emphasis on the "h". this is the equivalent of "let's go!" which makes no sense because it's not a korean word but they got it from the english word "fighting" and then somehow it turned into "whiting" and then it turned into meaning "let's go.") anyway, enough of the korean lesson. the point in, i cheered my little heart out and totally felt like their groupie. and i think they all very much appreciated my presence if i do say so myself.

so, a green hair update. i went to my korean friend who's a hair dresser and via my korean friend who translated (hair dresser friend speaks no english) i tried to explain highlights. for 45 minutes. yes, for 45 minutes we sat there and i tried to explain that i just wanted strips of my hair dyed (especially over the green parts) and NO not dyed, just highlighted. the next thing i know, they are fully dying my hair, brighter blonde than it's ever been. sigh. i guess this will just be my hair in korea. there's no getting around it.

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.