Hurray!

Lucas and I (and all MoonKkang'rs) just got a 200$ raise starting in May. It comes in the form of a credit card and we can spend how we wish. How rad is that? I'm pretty stoked. Going to buy some new shoes...some make up...some random things, any thing I want. Oh yes. I can see the possibilities....

A Rainy Sunday Morning

It has been raining constantly since 930 last night. The rain was such a comforting sounds when I was reading. Yesterday, we spent the day with Bev and Rod; practicing our throwing for baseball today. I'm happy that I can say I can still throw, but my arm is protesting me this morning. They had some news for us, which made me quite sad. They will only be in Korea for one more month. I fully and completely understand the reasons, but it doesn't make it suck any less. So no baseball games against them. We're going to try and take them out to Palgongsan and Woobang before they leave, since they have not had the privilege. We headed out with them to Kyobo downtown to get some books that Rod will be giving as presents. I bought another book (even though I just got 6). One about a man who was in the North Korean Gulag for 10 years, and then escaped to South Korea. Luc and I then went for our White Day date at Italy Italy and then Luc signed up for his Fooseball League. He's excited about receiving an actual jersey for this, and it was only 25$ instead of 40$.

After that, we began to head home. The rain was just beginning. We hung out with Whitney and Neal, playing Super Smash Bros. on the XBox. I headed upstairs a couple hours before Luc as I wanted some quiet reading time. The rain outside fell constantly, never letting up. When I awoke throughout the night, the rain was still falling. This day will give me an excuse to clean, do laundry, read, and cook. I'm going to attempt one of my coconut tapioca dessert recipes. Luc's my guinea pig, even though he has no choice.

Sometimes, it's nice to have a rainy day. Now I just need to put on some chill music, and try and get better (I woke up with a sore throat and stuffy nose....ColdFX, work your magic!)

I have an address too!

I finally figured out my branch address and mom and I had a test run with it. The card arrived and so now I feel confident to give out the address!

Erin Scott
c/o MoonKkang Foreign Language Academy
Nambo Building 3F
212-10 Beomeo-4 Dong
SuSung Gu
Daegu, South Korea
706 822
Telephone (of the branch): 53-746-3543

This weekend is Luc and mine's first baseball game. We're pretty excited. Meeting up with Bev and Rod tomorrow afternoon for lunch and some ball throwing. I just hope I'm not too sore after tomorrrow for the actual game. It's going to be interesting trying to find where we're playing Sunday, so we'll have to leave early. I feel kinda sorry for Lucas becuase he's now going to be missing what's left of hockey to play softball. Muffin. BUT. He's going downtown tonight to pay 50$ to join a baseball pool, and then tomorrow night pay 40$ to join a fooseball league. HA. Good Luck Lucas.

Shafted!

Lame-o. I sent money home yesterday, but it was 100$ less than last time because of the stupid money markets. I just lost 100$!!!! ARRRGGGH!

Palgongsan

What a beautiful place. The weather was glorious, a tank top and capris were the way to go. I had been prepared to do some hiking, busted out the Merrels and all. But we drove to the top of the mountain, no hiking. Though there were a few hills and lots of stairs to get to where we were going. I was the most in shape person in our crew of Whitney and Jeong Hui, and what does that say??? Let the pictures do the talking. All I have to do now is figure out how to get there without a Korean driving us in their car! I got a bit of a sunburn, so today I went out and bought some expensive clinique sunscreen for my face, and some nivea sunscreen for my body. (the Nivea stuff was all I could find, it was weird, but it'll do the trick smashingly). Need the sunscreen for next week because baseball is starting up. I even bought myself a hat to wear. Pink with a sparkly pink cat on it. Oh yeah. I'm set. Hopefully on Saturday, Luc and I will meet up with Bev to get our gloves and practice a bit...but not too much so we are not sore for our first game! Luc and I are on the team "The Holy Grillers", so we went there for dinner tonight to meet a few of our team members. The captain of our team is actually the league's coordinator, so we've got the in on things.

Well, as no interesting movies came out this week, Lucas and I are heading off to watch "Bee Movie". We saw The Kite Runner last night. Unfortunately, the majority of the movie is in Arabic, and being in Korea, the subtitles were Korean, we didn't get much of the movie. Fortunately, we had both read the book. And the book, by FAR was way better. The movie did not do the book any justice. We were both somewhat disappointed. What can you do. All I'm waiting for is The Other Boleyn Girl to come out. Mom, can you imagine how excited I am for this movie? Henry VIII, Anne and Mary Boleyn; Lord have mercy! :D Except it's called 1000 Scandal here. OOOOooooh.

Fat Free Fried Chicken. They did it! coughcough. I had chicken soup. Yes, that is a whole chicken, in my soup, bones and all. I felt sick after eating it.

What's That?

Here we are in another week, just have to sit through twelve classes of presentations, and it's the weekend again! The weeks here just fly by. One day it's a Monday, the next, a Friday! Luc and I are almost halfway through our fourth month, I have trouble believing it.

Yesterday, we finished our second round of Korean lessons. I don't know about Lucas, but I still can't say much. We did end up going to an all you can eat bibimbap place, and it was mighty delicious. Guess where we are taking you parents!

For the last couple days, we have been waking up to find it looking foggy out; or rainy; or snowy; or very polluted? But is it really? We go outside, only to find it beautifully warm. I actually busted out my capris! Oh yeah! WOO! We began to investigate this interesting weather phenomena with our Korean partners. Every one who is outside is wearing masks, and there aren't as many people out as usual. What is it, you ask? YELLOW DUST. The Yellow dust season has began. The dust is from the Gobi Desert. Yeah. The Koreans already think China is dirty (which, apparently, it is, at least Beijing), and I'm sure this does not help. This yellow dust is insane, you can't see very far, it warms up the place (think of the greenhouse effect), and when you blow your nose, it doens't look very decent. Last night the moon was blood orange becuase of it, and the light that gets through the dust is the same colour on the ground.

And yes, the pizza "Mr. Pizza" 's slogan is "Love for Women". I had a laughing fit over it. It's not chocolate.

P.S. Koy plays fetch.

Potluck

Yesterday, Lucas and I hosted a potluck at our house. I spent the day cleaning, and lucas and I made another trip to pick up more alcohol at Emart. A few people couldn't come becuase a friend's birthday was also yesterday.

The party turned out to be a lot of fun! The food was rad, we had gimbap, spring rolls, salad, casserole, peanut butter cookies, grandpa squares, cake, chili, apple crumble, and quite a lot of wine, vodka, and soju. The music was playing, i ate sweets (i'm trying not to, in an effort to try and lose some weight), and the liquor was flowing. At 11 we headed downtown to meet up with the birthday party at Old Skool. I only had a mint choco shot ("there was alcohol in that???") and I was done. I wasn't drunk, at least I thought I wasn't (turns out this feeling I have this morning means I actually was). Luc was out of control last night :D He had the mint choco shot, plus a tequila shot, AND a southern comfort shot. All this after beer. Remember kids: beer before liquor, you've never been sicker; liquor before beer, you're in the clear. When we got back to the apartment, he went to bed, passed out with an angry look in this face, and stayed that way all night.

I did a little tidying before I headed to bed, which made for a better morning for me. I just have a headache, ug. And i'm doing laundry because I spilled kimchi on my spring coat, which I just busted out for the first time yesterday. It's been so beautiful here I can get away with a thin canvas jacket in the day time. I hope it lasts and doesnt go back to those stupid cold snaps.

I was just on castanet and saw this huge thing for Bust'n Loose. And right there, I see Aunty Janet. hah, nice!

Koy is driving me crazy.

This weekend was so gorgeous out. The sun was shining, and it was the perfect temperature for paintball. Didn't need a jacket, ah, lovely! I was awarded two lovely bruises, one on my arm (which my students are impressed about), and one on my leg. I was telling my kids about it, and how I was a pretty good shot, and they were all scared of me, it was great. There was a duel at the end, which I wasn't really down for, and Luc was disappointed becuase he wanted to shoot me.
Koreans have a thing for rest stops, as Luc said before in his blog about going skiing. These stops are huge places. One of them, out in Pohang (where paintballing was, two hours away from Daegu), was right on the ocean. Can you imagine, sunset, beautiful bright blue ocean, and me not seeing the ocean for four months. I definately put my feet in. It wasn't very cold, but the Koreans were looking at me like I was crazy. But the waves were rad, and the view was amazing.
Sunday, I also didn't bother with my coat, it made me happy. If I can walk around in my Lulu hoodie and be comfortable, I'm happy.
So today, I wake up becuase of the cats, and it's SNOWING. It's been SNOWING all morning. What the heck? Where did this bad boy weather come from? SNOW?!?

So Koy is still peeing on things. How do I stop this??? I thought getting him fixed would solve the problem. No he peed all over my belts this morning, and quite a lot too. I noticed that the apartment smelled pretty bad, and when I got up to clean the amassed pee, I noticed poo track marks. Oh yeah, Koy had stepped in his poo, and walked all around the house. Today was not a good morning. These cats were going bonkers all night, not letting us sleep.