Monthly Archives: July 2010

the best Zoo is a Safari

Posted on by

I am in Japan.

I sent home a mass e-mail to the fam and friends on day one  in Osaka (probably my favorite word to say, ever) and I knew I shouldn’t send another one because well, my e-mails are not short… and that made me sad because I always have so much to say (what? shocking.) and THEN I remembered this awesome thing: MY BLOG!

For those of you who don’t read spitonthestreet regularly, first of all: shame on you and secondly: I am in Japan because Korea SUCKS or mainly the Seoul Metropolitan Office of Education SUCKS and I had to leave the country because my visa was revoked. Which kind of makes me sound really cool and all bad-like, which is not the case. Meh, think what you will.

This has been my first ever solo trip, as in I haven’t seen a single person I know the entire time of travel. I have been excited to take a trip like this for a long time, but I don’t know why since I am such a people person and I haven’t had a single conversation aloud since Tuesday morning. I might just start talking aloud to myself to make sure my voice still works (okay I know it does since I have had to ask people to take pictures of me), and I think my thoughts are getting bored of me. 

Besides the fact that Japan is ridiculously expensive (especially compared to Korea) I have thoroughly enjoyed my time in this Asian country. I did so much site-seeing yesterday that my feet were black from all the dirt I collected while commuting from one tourist spot to the other. I feel as if I have seen Osaka in its entirety, though I know I actually haven’t (I tend to exaggerate, did you know?). Because I saw so many things yesterday I wasn’t one bit put off when I woke up today to a torrential downpour (that means it was raining, I like to use big words sometimes). I decided to head to the Zoo anyway like I had planned and I was happy for the weather because it helped express the mood I was in after seeing so many poor animals caged up. I am not a big fan of zoos (is that the proper plural? oooooh well) AT ALL. I don’t know why I went, maybe because the idea always sounds much more fun than the reality. It has been especially hard visiting zoos since I lived in Africa and saw so many of those animals in their natural environment. I know some zoos are helpful and treat animals well and rescue them and have good living areas, but MOST zoos arent and it makes me sad. I wish that children could all go on a safari to learn about these amazing beasts instead of walking around a dirty caged up pen and looking through glass at some of the saddest creatures on the planet.

I think I was a fan of zoos at one point. I have this vivid memory of going to the Binder Park Zoo with my younger sister, Amber, once when I was little. We went with a church friend and he was so afraid of losing us he brought along those kid leashes, you know the kids with a strap around their middle and a leash coming out of the back? Well, ours weren’t as sophisticated as that, they were strapped to our wrists with velcro and they itched.

This kid’s leash is so much cooler than mine was.

After I visited the zoo and I was feeling pretty depressed I did the only natural thing a woman who has been living in Korea for the past year would do: SHOPPING. It lifted my spirits immensely, though it is very hard to bargain shop in this country. Let’s briefly talk about the shoes though, THEY FIT ME. In Korea, the smallest size shoes for adult women is 225, in Japan that size is labeled as LL, meaning double LARGE, or EXTRA LARGE, I don’t really know… now I know officialy that my shoe size is 222. I may have skipped a meal today to buy an exta pair of shoes. 

my life is a mess, my life was a mess, my life IS a mess.

Posted on by

No worries friends… I am sorting this out. It will be alright in the end. Before I get to the “alright in the end” part though, let me just say that it has been one heck of a stressful week. Wednesday, late afternoon, I received and email from the lady, let’s call her J, at my new job in charge of getting my visa and paperwork sorted out so that I can work for said new job. The email was to inform me that immigration had just informed her of the paperwork I needed by that Friday in order to apply for a change of visa (I am going from an e-2 visa to and e-7 visa, I have no idea what those letters or numbers mean, but I know e-7 is better and cooler because it means you work at an international school) and that I had to apply for this change of visa (do we caps that like Visa, or VISA? whatevs I am sticking with visa if that is alright with you) before I started my new job on August 1st, hence needing to get it in by Friday so J could apply for my visa by Monday, etc…

I thought waking up on Thursday morning with a horribly rash on the back of my neck was bad (I think its from too strong of fabric softener, but I have no idea). HA, nothing compared to the back and forth emotions of thinking I might get my visa revoked and then sent home and have no job and live on my parents couch (when I called my parents to explain the situation my mom’s response was “you mean like for good?” and my dad’s response was, “are they really that on the ball over there? I am sure there are a lot of people here who don’t get sent home for months and months after their visas expire.” THANKS GUYS) and wondering how I would pay off my loans and MOST IMPORTANTLY how I would get all of the great things I have bought in Korea back to the States with so little prep time.

The principal of my current school even called the people who actually hired and pay me (S.M.O.E, aka ‘the devil’) to ask them to give me this one little piece of paper that I needed to change from an e-2 to and e-7 so that I wouldn’t get my visa revoked and then kicked out of Korea. S.M.O.E. refused, they have these regulations you see, no exceptions. Which is fine (and by fine I mean not fine at all due to MY circumstances, I wasn’t doing anything horrible…like cutting out of my contract midway through because I found a better job… besides I am saving S.M.O.E. A TON OF MONEY by not getting my last paycheck, severance, or flight home) I was ending my contracting early… though I would miss only one week of summer camp and then desk warm, watching movies and chewing my finger nails until my contract ended August 24th. THE POINT IS, all I needed was a release letter from S.M.O.E. and they wouldn’t give it to me, even though I am the best darndest English teacher this side of Seoul has ever seen (whose name is Melody and teaches at Youngwon Elementary). The worst is that my school was completely fine with me leaving early and taking this other job. Rules are rules though. GAAAAAAH.

So what is next for this cool cat? Well, I am resigning from S.M.O.E. and getting my visa revoked. Then I am flying to Japan and coming back to South Korea on a tourist visa, THEN my new school is applying for a E-7 visa, THEN once I get my number for that visa I have to FLY BACK to Japan to actually get it (the visa). I wonder if I should be putting this on the internet? Meh, it’s all technical stuff. My new job is being awesome about it though and as my boss said “that is the price we pay for good teachers… and now I expect you to give 200% on the job.”

YES SIR, 200 % it is!

I leave for Japan this coming Tuesday, July 27th, which means I am now leaving on bad terms with my school because I was supposed to teach the English camp until next Friday, July 30th. Perfect. I hate it when people don’t like me. I bought all of my summer school students big candy bars to make myself feel better. It didn’t work.

Let’s Get Dirty

Posted on by

Before I moved to Korea I can vividly remember sitting at the kitchen table in my brother’s home talking to my sister-in-law, Darla, about what to expect from Asia. We decided right then and there that we needed to do a little research. What did we have to find out first? We needed to know about what kind of festivals South Korea had, obviously. The two I found that I was the MOST excited for are known as the Lantern Festival (which I missed out on because I had the swine flu, awesome. Good thing they had another one to celebrate Buddha’s b-day otherwise I might have died of sadness, or the swine flu) and the second festival happened to be this past weekend. What festival am I talking about? You know, don’t even tell me you DON’T know.

Every year, a west coast town called Boryeong hosts a mud festival to share their elite mud with the rest of Korea. And when I say elite, I mean it is full of minerals that are good for your skin… and Koreans like things that are good for your skin. They like it so much they made up a festival solely for the purpose of covering yourself from head to toe, in mud.

This is me NOT complaining. From huge blow up slides, obstacle courses, big mud wrestling pits, colored mud (who wouldn’t want red, yellow, blue, and green mud in their hair?)  to the Yellow Sea I was having the time of my life. I covered myself in mud, threw my dirty body down slides, swam in the sea and then repeated the process all over again.

of course it was sunny and dry the morning we had to leave

I took these two pictures the day (Sunday) I was leaving and able to carry my camera with me since I wasn’t jumping around in the mud and water. I did have a disposable camera on me  the day before (haven’t used one of those since the nineties), I don’t even know where to go to get it developed, hopefully I got some good pictures, we shall see.

mud, mud, mud, LET'S GET DIRTY.

The difference between foreigners in the mud, and Koreans. Here they sit, painting their faces and helping each other getting fully covered. Whereas the day before this pit was full of expats wrestling each other to the bottom of the mud pit and chucking their friends across their backs or putting them in choke holds.

Can’t wait for next year.

the slide, it tempted me.

Posted on by

The list of things I wanted to accomplish during my week of desk warming:

-complete one full push up

-work on my memoir

-write a few farewell letters

-read “The First Days of School” by Harry and Rosemary Wong

-write a mass e-mail home as well as catch up on e-mailing friends

-save someone’s life

-get all my English summer camp activities together

It is now Friday morning and this is what I have accomplished:

Karate Kid, Enchanted, Eclipse, Kung Fu Panda (excellent, really excellent), and the ninth season of Smallville (love me some superman). Really? A whole week of sitting at my desk and nothing to show for it? I remember in college when I would procrastinate so badly I found myself at work in the Writing Center (receptionist/consultant/the grunt girl who did everything no one else would do) realizing at 9 a.m. that I had a paper due at 11 a.m. whipped out the paper by 10:48 and ran across campus to class. I totally got an A on that paper too, what can I say? I work well under pressure.

This week I forgot my lunch at home (a lovely salad sitting on my ‘kitchen’ counter) and actually got the okay to leave the school during lunchtime and go buy something to eat (I have forgotten my lunch before and given no such special treatment, normally I have to get permission on paper from three different people to leave). It was amazing and I was so happy that when I passed a playground on my way to Paris Baguette I saw this really high slide and just had to try it out. The last time I slid down a slide… wow, it has been years. The slide wasn’t that great actually, looked much higher from the ground than it was. I realized afterwards that I probably looked like some weirdo foreigner by myself sliding down slides (which is exactly true) and saw moms lead their little kids away from the sandbox, but  I didn’t care. I was FREE.

to like ROKetship on fb click on the picture.

This ROKetship comic is exactly how I felt this week when I started running in the mornings wearing my t-shirt and shorts and passing by everyone else in their full body suits… haha, for those of you who know me and just choked on your laughter/spit/water/orange juice/ whatever it is you are drinking or eating right now at the thought of me running… I know, I know. It sounds crazy. The thing is I am starting to eat salad and run because I want to be able to spar in taekwondo, and I want to fight people who are shorter than me so I can have an advantage since I haven’t been sparring very long… and in order to fight shorter people you need to go down in your weight class, and in order to go down in weight class you need to not weigh as much as you do. As in, as much as I do. So… I am running? Oh, life. You are so funny.

Goodbye Grace

Posted on by

Today is the beginning. The start of saying goodbye to friends who are finished with Korea. This is what happens when you travel and live abroad though, you meet amazing people and then you say goodbye to said amazing people. I wish it got easier. My friend Grace (we met at EPIK/SMOE orientation last August) is flying back to the USA today after cutting her contract a couple months short because she got accepted into MED SCHOOL.  woot, woot. Go Grace, so proud!

Grace and I on our last trip together, "white water" rafting.

And to all of you who are leaving me in the month of August, one last plea, DON’T GO. I will buy you all a new animal onesie if you stay. I know you are tempted.

Today also marks the first day of the last week of school. I am desk warming (no classes) all week, which means I will be annoying everyone with my constant e-mails and blog posts (or watching Korean dramas) as well as getting ready for my new classroom at Asia Pacific International School.  t-minus 22 days until my new job!

“Service-eeee!”

Posted on by

I had dinner with a friend tonight, and I decided to do something crazy. I finally decided to treat my skin nice and wash it every once in a while, so I bought a face washing kit thing. It’s Korean, and advertised by my favorite Korean actress Koo Hye Sun (who plays a character named Jan Di on the first Korean drama I ever watched ‘Boys Before Flowers’) so I just had to get it. As I was reading the English portion of the face wash stuff in the store I laughed out loud:

“ADefying is a brand name for caring of skin trouble generated by excessive sebum secretion and generation of horny substance due to internal and external blablabla…”

HAHAHA, maybe I don’t want to use this face stuff after all…er….

But I did buy it, and instead of leaving the story with my box of face wash I got a whole lot more than what I bargained for. That sounds bad, I got more than I expected? That might be a better word… One of the things I will miss the most when I leave Korea is ‘service’. I will probably go back home to the States, buy some lotion and when it is handed to me look in the bag saying: “but where is my service?” and the check out person (almost said check out lady which would be totally sexist so I didn’t, phew) will say: “I have no idea what you are talking about, but actually you owe 2 dollars more because we just added a new tax five minutes ago.” and then I will say: “but I want my free stuff!” and then I will whip out my taekwondo moves on her  (I mean him or her) and get arrested and go back to Korea as soon as my family pays bail. Or something like that.

So there is this thing called ROKetship (see what he did there? with the ROK- republic of Korea, get it? get it? anyway you can find it and like it on fb here) and this guy Luke Martin makes these comics, ROKetship comics that is, and he is hilarious, I mean the comics are hilarious I don’t actually know him, but I would totally love to meet him.  He has a lot of material to work with because the comics are basically about my life here in Korea (and what is NOT weird about my life here in Korea?), and by my life I mean all of the foreigners in general who live in Korea.

I am bringing this up because I am about to post the comic that goes with what just happened to me today. I have already posted one of Luke Martin’s ROKetship comics in a previous post called I get upset when I have to hold my trash and walk fifty blocks (because I do, I really do). Moving on. Here is the comic.

I have now fallen in love with ROKetship comics to the point where anytime anything is semi-related to what I am saying you will read it through comic as well, so thank you Luke Martin. Now if I could just get him to write one about spit on the street, can’t believe that hasn’t been done yet…

I am going to go wash my face now.

Happy 4th of July, Korean Style!

Posted on by
Update: This post gets the most hits from people searching for “korean animal onesies” “animal onesies” “korean onesies”, well you get the point, if you are one of those people, click on this link: ONESIES FOR SALE! and you will find what you seek. SIDENOTE: the easiest way to pay is by having a korean friend order on his/her credit card, plus the site is in Korean…
when DON’T you need to have animal onesie karaoke parties? that’s the real question. I am the cow. typical, I know.

This picture may be confusing for some of you… I mean… what normal adults, all in their twenty-somethings, get together and throw on animal onesies? The answer is that none of us actually are normal adults. When you decide to come teach in Korea, the land of ‘opposite culture to western culture’, you throw normal out the window and embrace the abstract. This is Korea.

ALSO, I would like to say: HAPPY 4th OF JULY!!!!

I know that technically the 4th of July, for me, is over. But the nice thing about living in the future is that I can keep celebrating the next day because it is still happening in my homeland, yippee! I hope everyone is breaking out the grills to cook some burgers, lighting up  sparklers,  jumping into the pool, and watching fireworks… maybe not in that order.

I am so lucky the my name is easy to spell backwards (just lots of loops) otherwise I would have been screwed!

I have never actually done this, as in, wrote my name with a sparkler in time to take a picture of the lighted trail. THIS IS AWESOME.

I headed to the the Han River to celebrate my 4th, it was all lit up (not for the 4th but whatever), absolutely amazing

celebrating the 4th of July with Jennifer, Natalie*, Sujin* and Jean (*throw in a canadian and korean and THEN you have yourself a party).

Orange Belt. Fist Pump.

Posted on by

I feel like I can conquer the world now.

Did you know that people who surround themselves with the color orange are happier? The color makes you happy, or so that is what I have heard. Definitely made ME happy.

Also, I love how all of my pictures with my new color belt have to be taken after a testing session, or this one, which is after a test for the belt and then a FULL CLASS. I didn’t just shower, that is sweat making my hair totally soaked. Oh well, makes me look more BA right? Only green, purple, blue, brown, and then red before I get that mighty black belt. Seriously? One day I am going to say “I have my black belt in taekwondo.” Never saw THAT one coming before I moved to Korea!

Rocking the 'victory' (that is what is means to Asians, not peace) sign. A must.