bring on year 24!!!

"happy birthday to me.
happy birthday to me.
happy birthday dear me-eeeeeeeee.....
happy birthday to me!"

(it's mary's birthday tomorrow so we're sharing a birthday toast on the left.)

so technically it was yesterday (well actually, technically technically it is today since i was born in america and in america, it was march 20 today), but who has time to blog on their birthday? actually i totally had time, but i had so many birthday e-mails, facebook messages, and phone calls to reply to (i felt SO LOVED!!! thanks for that to all who remembered...). here were some of the cool things about my 24th:

• talking to katie and dena and my parents on the phone! (gotta love skype)
  
• getting an i-tunes gift certificate (brilliant) from kristin, grant, tricia, jen, and andrew. thanks guys! can't wait to go music shopping!
  
• walking into the doors of tango pango to be bombarded by 19 sets of arms grabbing my legs and screaming "happy berday calolyn!!! calolyn is or berday!!!"
  
• getting 19 very artistically decorated birthday cards from those same sets of arms with very intense efforts of writing "happy birthday carolyn" that looked something like "hajky bfetday canaiyn." or in some cases, just "~~__`>c~~_" or something like that.
  
• a gift from a friend who was traveling through india that included a little brass bottle of holy water from the ganges river. how many people get holy water for their 24th birthday? not many i bet. thanks ali!
• taking a beautiful walk through lake park (it was 60 degrees and sunny yesterday) with debbie as the sun went down.
  
• and to finish the night, hanging out with matt and mary and wicket (their dog) for drinks at the GS (a little convenient store type thing in our courtyard where people often sit outside on little plastic chairs around little plastic tables--very classy) and lots of laughs.
• getting a big can of fruit cocktail as a birthday gift at about 1 am from my security gaurd mr. kong, which you can see in this picture on the bottom right. definitely the strangest gift i recieved this year.

so all in all, a great birthday! we're celebrating saturday night in the city with a big birthday bash b/c mary's birthday is tomorrow and our friend lydia's birthday is this week as well, so the celebrating has only just begun! (birthdays can be so exhausting...)

freudian slip.

so last night i was at my private lesson teaching my two high school kids, and the topic of horoscopes came up. they were unclear of the meaning of the word, so i attempted to explain. i said something like this: "horoscopes often predict the future and sometimes you see them in magazines saying things like 'you will have great success at your job next month' or 'you will have lots of luck with the number 34 tomorrow' or 'you will have horrible sex...'"

did i just say the word sex?

yes. i did.

i just said "horrible sex" in front of a 16 year old boy and a 14 year old girl.

ok, so i didn't mean to! i think i was trying to say success, and i just said it to fast and it came out as "sex." but maybe i was thinking that a lot of horoscopes do predict your love life and so i was thinking about sex and it just came out? i don't know! but it was not on purpose! the result of my slip was about 10 minutes of uncontrolable laughter from all ends and stifled laughter for the remaining 45 minutes of our class.

this may sound like no big deal, but let me tell you, it WAS! you do not say "sex" in front of a 16 year old boy who was probably already thinking about sex to begin with and to a 14 year old girl who is sitting in the same room as her older brother. it was SO awkward. and thomas, the boy, could NOT stop laughing for the rest of the hour. the worst part was that the topic of our article for that day was "what is success?" so i probably had to say the word success about 27 more times, and every time i said it, thomas put his head down and started laughing and mi-ho (the girl) looked like she was about to cry.

our relationship will never be the same.

i do.

today i went to my first korean wedding. wow. so. funny. it's totally vegas style. it lasts about 10 minutes, there's about 4 different weddings in the span of one hour, there's people from all the weddings talking loudly through the entire "ceremony," they
all use the same flowers, the same set-up, the same pastor guy
(who sounded like he was comanding a group of soldiers ready to go into battle rather than two people in love who were about to spend a life together..."DO YOU TAKE THIS WOMAN TO BE YOUR LOFTLY WEDDED WIFE. WELL!?!? DO YOU!?!? DO YOU!?!?! IN SICKNESS AND IN HEALTH!?!?!? you listen and you listen good. you may now kiss the bride OR ELSE! KISS THE BRIDE!!!!" it was obviously in korean, but that's what it sounded like to me.) and then they played some star wars type tune and two girls in flight attendent outfits held up big shy swords and out they went. mary missed 3/4 of it cuz she had to go to the bathroom.



so after the wedding, everyone who attended got up to take a picture. mary and i were the only foreigners, so naturally people stared at us. but it may have helped if i had worn black like everybody else. (if this is what koreans wear to weddings, i'd like to see what they wear to funerals.) but instead, i was wearing a bright red dress with white polka dots, purple tights, red striped shoes, and yellow cardigan, and blue jewelry. needless to say, i did not blend in. no i did not. not at all.



this is random. but isn't it funny? you know, just your friendly little squid and octupus inviting you into the resturaunt. mmmmmm.

what?

today i was so warm at school, i TOOK MY TIGHTS OFF!!!!!! that's right. off with the gray and black checkered tights, with only my bare legs poking out under my blue skirt. it's only march 12!!! HOLLA!!!!!!

carrot juice and apples muffins.

today, i met elly in hongdae for a little shopping and hanging out at her friends' cafe, which is where we are on the left. the cafe had a volkswagon bus inside of it. SO COOL! and also some of the best carrot juice and apples muffins i've ever had. yum.




my entire weekend, actually, was just really fantastic. saturday i had accupuncture at a new place, and i REALLY like my korean medicine man. he has very kind eyes and and a gentle smile. unfortunately, he doesn't speak an ounce of english so i spent a solid 20 minutes watching my friend amelia and him have an intense discussion about me and my health and how i can help my stomach and they talked very fast (korean always sounds very fast to me) and looked at me a lot and it all sounded very detailed and extensive. i sat there quietly looking from one to the other, nodding like i knew what was going on, and finally, amelia turned to me and i said, "ok, what did he say?" she said, in these exact words: "he wants to know if you ok with drink a korean medicine that taste very bad." i looked at her. i looked at him. i looked back at her and said..."really, that's all he said?" "yes," she said with confidence "it taste very bad, but it will help you." it's times like these where i've learned to just smile, take a deep breath and say..."ok. sounds good."

saturday night we had a girls night that consisted of an exciting trip to costco and amelia, debbie, mina, and i squishing on my little couch for dinner and a movie. sometimes i think that's my favorite way to spend a saturday night.


I LOVE TEACHING KIDS YOGA!!!! i had the time of my life. they were so IN to it! it was the cutest and most beautiful thing i've seen in awhile. i even taught them how to meditate at the end! it was just so rewarding and i'm so pumped i get to do this every
week. hooray! i've found yet another calling! :)

i feel a change comin on...

lots of good stuff happening in life:

*there are a few 50 degree days in the 10 day forecast and i say with full confidence that spring is ON IT'S WAY!!!! i don't think it's a false alarm thing like you get in the midwest this time of year. i have a suspicion that korean spring comes sooner, and it also comes with less drastic weather changes. every morning as i'm biking to school, the air has more and more of that earthy dirt things-about-about-to-start-growing smell.

*because i no longer what to curl up in a ball and hibernate every time i step out the door, i can start running outside again! i took a bit of a break from the running game this winter (about mid-january i felt my body screaming at me..."HEY!!!! CAROLYN!!! we need a break. we're tired of running. let's do something else for awhile.") but the past two mornings i have been able to run outside and i feel very refreshed. (and a little sore.) it's just so nice to connect with nature again and listen to my feet crunch the dead leaves and hit the dirt path around the lake. i think i might try to go hiking this weekend so that me and nature's relationship can get fully back on track.

*we started the new kindergarten this week (no, this is not the good thing b/c it's adding more work and taking more energy energy from my life), but the good news is that every friday, guess what i'm teaching my little korean chatter-boxes? YOGA!!!! that's right, i am officially a kids yoga teacher. how did this happen you ask? they suggested we bring someone in to teach the kids yoga on fridays (you gotta love the difference b/t physical education from americans and asians), and somehow it came about that i do yoga, and while i tried to hold back my urge to lunge forward and scream "I'LL TEACH IT!!! I WANNA TEACH IT! ME ME ME!!!!" it became quite clear that i would become the tango pango yoga instructor. i've got oodles of ideas from the internet and from my yoga teacher, and i am anticipating hillariousness mixed with utter chaos mixed with me feeling depressed b/c the kids are better at it than i am.

*it's my birthday this month!

*every day after school, i teach private lessons and they have turned out to be a wonderful thing. on mondays wednesday and fridays, i teach my boss's son, who actually is turning out to be one of the coolest people i've met in korea. he's 20 and is heading to america for college this summer, and i'm helping him become fluent and learn how to write english essays. out conversations are stimulating and honest and inpsiring and i always leave feeling energized and that good feeling when you've really connected with someone. on tuesdays and thursdays, i teach 2 kids ages 14 and 16, and last night i shared with them the beautiful gift of gaucomole, which they'd never had and never heard of. (mexican food hasn't really taken off here for the obvious reason that there are no mexicans.) they loved it. if they remember nothing else from our lessons, they will remember that gaucomole.

a new look.

i got new glasses! i've still been wearing the ones i got when i was 17 (which are most definetely not strong enough anymore) and i am so excited! i can actually wear glasses out and about again! they are red--sort of a darker red, and despite the very difficult time i had during the eye examination trying to communicate with the korean dude (even though my korean friends were there to help me translate), it was all quite quick. i was in, i found the ones i loved, they made the lenses, and i was out. ya! korean glasses shopping seems much simpler than in america. WHAT!?!?! i found something in korea that is easier to get done than in america!?!?!? WHAT!?!??!