thailand bound.

i'm currently in the seoul airport, just said goodbye to my little apartment, my friends, just watched ali get on his flight back to england, and am getting ready to say goodbye to korea. i take off for thailand in about an hour and a half, and will be meeting jen at the bangkok airport (oh please oh please God let us find each other...), and our southeast asia journey begins! it's been a bit of a rough week trying to pack, sort out terrible work situations and pay checks, saying goodbye to everyone and everything i love here (which ofcourse included a few late nights in hongdae and an up-till-4-am nuribong karaoke session), but i'm glad it's over and now i'm ready to move on to the next thing. like a month long vacation! :) i can't believe in just 7 hours i will see jen! family! someone completely unconnected to korea and completely connected to every other part of my life. it will be a nice transition into going home i think.

i'll try to keep the blog updated as much as possible as we make our way through thailand and laos. the plan for the first section of our travles is a day in bangkok, a night train up to chang mai (northern thailand), a couple day hill trek through the back country of thailand, and a 2 day slow boat trip into laos, where we will hopefully not get washed away by the laos floods (boo rainy season!), and will be spending a couple days doing the classic vang vienne river tubing. i'll let you know how it all goes!!!

let the games begin.

THE OLYMPICS ARE STARTING THE OLYMPICS ARE STARTING THE OLYMPICS ARE STARTING THE OLYMPICS ARE STARTING!!!!! (i'd do the little circle olympic symbol thing but i'm just not that computer savy.) jolly good. i'm more than thrilled. mostly because the opening ceremonies tonight will give me a wonderful distraction from the fact that one of my best friends and college roommates is getting married tonight and all 6 of my college roommates have been together all week. :( so just a quick shout out to katie helder and nolan wiersma!!!! happy wedding!!!! but i'm also pumped to watch the olympics this year because i was at the olympic stadium in beijing just 6 months ago. infact, exactly six months ago. wow, really? i just realized that. yup, exactly 6 months ago. CRAZINESS!

i'll be off to thailand in a week and 2 days. i'm trying to chip away at packing and doing all those ending tasks that one must do when they are leaving a place they've lived a year and love, but running around with my head cut off the last 3 days i'm here just seems inevitable. i did, however, get two big boxes packed and shipped this week. yes, i've resorted to shipping boxes as i've found out i'm only allowed a total of 44 pounds on my trip from seoul to america (which i'll be doing right after thailand. in fact, i have about 2 hours to get off my flight from bangkok, sprint through baggage claim and customs, meet my friend who will have the rest of my luggage, and re-check in for my flight to america. it will be a miracle if that all goes smoothly...), yes that's right 44 POUNDS!!!! when i came here, i had two massive suitcases weighing 160 pounds. go ahead and make fun of me, but let's all keep in mind that i am not simply packing for vacation. this is my entire life in these suitcases. everything i own essentially. anyway, so hopefully i'm not over. (my friend was on the same airline as me and was over and got charged nearly 500 bucks...eeeesh)

wohoooo summer olympics 2008! go america! (who's excited for gymnastics? i've been watching you-tube clips on shaun johnson all week...)

squash. (the sport not the thanksgiving food...)

this morning i woke up, pushed the snooze about 8 times (mondays...sigh...), and attempted to slowly with eyes half closed edge down the stairs, when suddenly i realized my body was not moving as it should, even for a monday morning. i quite literally had trouble bending my legs (sitting on the toilet took great effort), and even found it hard to find the muscle in my right forearm to squeeze the shampoo out of the bottle in the shower. every inch of my body is aching in painful despair!!! reasons...

#1. ali and i played 2 hours of squash on saturday. i knew the gym near me had squash courts, and, assuming that sqaush and raquetball were the same thing (seriously, they look the same in pictures...), and keeping in mind that i've played numerous rounds of raquetball with my dad (completely non-competetive and for fun only. ha.), i thought to myself..."my chances of winning are high...the odds are in my favor..." and so ali and i had it out on the squash court. anyway, 2 hours of squash playing and fighting for my life and athletic integrity later, i walked out of the gym feeling like rocky balboa (appologies for the analogy...the movie was just on tv this weekend...) leaving his boxing ring. the important thing is that i won. barely. but i won. (there were very few words exchanged the next hour...)

#2. yesterday, mina, ali and i went to the incheon pentaport rock festival. it was no lollapalooza (HAVE YOU SEEN THE LINE-UP THIS YEAR!?!?!? the one year i leave chicago and lollapalooza pulls a fast one on me...), but it was seriously, seriously, incredible. crazy korean bands in the afternoon and hard-fi, feeder, underworld, and KASABIAN!!!! probably one of the best shows i've ever seen. i had this surreal moment during their show where i felt completely elated as i looked around feeling all the energy from the crowd, completely covered in mud from my knees down and thought..."i'm in korea! watching kasabian! surrounded my koreans! this is crazy!" it was just one of those moments. anyway, the jumping up and down and banging of the head and dancing didn't do much good for the body either. but oooooooh so worth it. here's some pics from the festival:

hard-fi...

reeeeeallly muddy...

hot, sweaty, and happy music lovers...

kasabian!!!! mina and i nearly jumped the stage and became their groupies dedicating our lives to go wherever they go, but we all saw how that turned out for kate hudson in almost famous...

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!!!!!!