no way!

i'm stealing this link from amanda's blog. :) (thanks amanda.) gotta watch this...

heavy metal priest

roar.

if i have to walk out my door to a giant disgusting drooling monster of heat and humidty one more day, i just may build a cacoon in my nicely air conditioned apartment and not come out until the morning of august 17 when i fly out of this wretched sauna and into...the even hotter sauna of thailand. but seriously, every day i wake up and look out my window to the same thing. gray skies, rain on my windows, drooping koreans loathing every minute they spend in between one air conditioned building and the next. it's so depressing! go away rainy season!

so maybe it's largely due to the gloomy and oppressive weather, but i have suddenly been hit with this urgent longing for the next month to whiz on by so i can be off to my travel adventures and then home! my entire family is vacationing in seattle this week, and it's suddenly made me so eager to see them!

my new job is pretty good. since i'm only here a month, i've decided to be affected by the small annoyances of yet another new school as little as possible. i have no breaks today? oh well, shake it off, atleast the day will go faster. you want me to work till 8 even though i told you i can never work past 7? hmmm, that's irritating. but atleast i got to sleep in an hour later. you want me to work half my day at a kindergarten down the road? whatever, just tell me where to go, and i'll put my teacher face on. basically, i'm completely uninvested in this school, which makes it easy not to get upset about the unorganization..ness. :) (if i ever come back to korea, i will defintely only be working for a school that has been opened atleast 5 years...) the truth is that i'm just grateful i found a job the last month i am here! so i can stand to be a little flexible i think...

friday night ali and i went out to hongdae for dinner and dancing...we went to the same club that we danced at last weekend for debbie's birthday and i must say, hongdae and dancing may just be two of the things i miss most about korea. i figured out yesterday that i only have 3 full weekends left. next week we're going to a music festival to see the band kasabian, and the 3rd weekend will be my goodbye party, so i'm suddenly filled with this frantic urgency to do as much as possible in the time i have left combined with a sort of emotional seperation from this place to prepare myself for leaving. the ends of things are always so strange...

LAST DAY OF TANGO PANGO!!!!

I'M FINISHED I'M FINISHED I'M FINISHED!!!! gotta watch this video. and i added just a few more pictures. i promise these are the last pictures of adorible korean kids for awhile...i just can't stop. :)


what's the weather like today? ask my class...

tick tock

i guess time FLIES when you're having...summer in korea. life is so crazy right now! and i just don't think it will settle down muchuntil...er.....christmas? hopefully by christmas my life has settled down. hopefully. anyway. so tomorrow is my last day of tango pango. whoop whoop! get me out of there! i will miss my kids dearly and in ode to the time i've spent with them, they get their pictures on my blog. what i will not, however, miss my crazy boss, getting paid 2 weeks late without warning, and working for


a school with no organization and no hope for a future. but other than that, i have wonderful memories! i've already started working for another school part time and i will transition right into full time this week when i'm finished at tango pango. it's a small school that does one-on-one tutoring (or in some cases on-on-two if parents want siblings to be taught together, etc.) from kids to adults. i really like it and am really grateful that i found a place to work my last month. it will be a really nice change. ooooo, and i get to play board games! there's two brothers who i basically just get to play board games with the whole time, and i LOVE IT. seriously, no matter how old i get, there's nothing like a good ole round of monopoly. last week we played uno for nearly an hour and the younger brother (highly competetive) kept cheating and
we all know how i feel about cheating (unless it's me who's doing the cheating) and then i couldn't keep them from talking in korean to tell each other what cards they have so they could gang up on me and let me tell you, i've never been dished so many draw-4s in all my years of uno playing, and that is a lot. what could i say? i wanted to throw my cards down, break out in angry tears, scream "IT'S NOT FAIR!!!!" and stomp out of the room with a big slam of the door. but i held it together and remembered that i was the teacher and was getting paid to not give into my competetive urges. but it was tough let me tell you.

so anyway, i leave korea in less than 5 weeks. BAAAA! i can't believe it. time seems to be in the olympic race of the 100 meter dash (speaking of the olympics, it starts in 2 1/2 weeks! and it's happening right next to me! and i saw the olypmic stadium when i was in beijing. COOOL huh...). but i've been filling my time with oodles of stuff to make sure i'm getting the most of korean summer.

things i've been doing:



eating hot dogs at baseball games.









watching koreans play baseball and wishing it was the cubs.








arriving to the symphony 20 minutes late dripping sweat from sprinting from the train to the music hall, and not being let in till the second half. and being very upset.







rockin out the back streets of seoul.











nuri bong!!!!!! (korean karaoke...)








and more nuri bong!!!!!!

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...