It's COLD!

Cold like, "Put on a jacket, Diana," and "Why are you still wearing sandals in October, Diana??" I am not impressed. And you jerks in Canada are apparently still having glorious weather. It's not fair.

And to make matters worse, I forgot to turn my air conditioner off when I went back to work at lunch so walking into my apartment tonight was not the cozy den of iniquity I was hoping it would be. Alright it's not a den of iniquity either, damn me and my boringness lately!

Anyways, enough complaining (for now, not forever), after work I went for dinner with a few guys from work which was nice because this year my coworkers don't seem to be as close-knit with each other which I really miss from last year, so it is good to get to know them a bit better. Although there does seem to be a love of poker among my coworkers which resulted in a neighborhood game last night, which means I could routinely be playing (*cough* losing) poker two/three nights a week this year! So slowly but surely I guess bonds are starting to form, it took a while last year as well, sometimes its just easy to forget that...

Anyhow this should be a pretty low key weekend; tonight I'm staying in and trying to warm up, tomorrow is a birthday party potluck for Talithea and Sunday, I don't really have a clue what's going on, but I'm sure something will come up between now and then.

Hope you have a good weekend and are thorougly enjoying your Indian summer, because I am really jealous of you right now :(

Canada, Eh!

For my last day off I decided to head downtown and do a bit of looking around and shopping. I was walking through the downtown when suddenly I was stopped dead in my tracks by a GIANT billboard for Roots and a clothing store right beneath it!
Now this is one of those traveller's moments I've talked about before; where something that holds no particular interest for me at home excites me to no end over here. At home I might take a quick look around Roots and then mutter about how expensive their stuff is and not even that stylish.

Today I was all about looking around, even though all of their stuff is Asian sized and I probably don't have a hope in hell of fitting into any of it, I was still excited to be surrounded by clothing that had "Canada" splattered all across it.

Then in all my excitement I got caught up with looking around and found the watch/jewelry stand and started trying on watches. About two minutes later on a total impulse purchase I had acquired for myself a brand new Roots watch! In all fairness to my impulses I have been looking at watches a little over the past few months seeing as the last time I got a watch was from my parents in grade eleven for winning some cheesy school awards.

Anyhow, I'm thinking that if there's a Roots here today, who knows what tomorrow might bring??? Tim Hortons? Canadian Tire? La Senza?? Just imagine...

One Day Left...

And then back to the grind :( Actually the remainder of the week will consist of a kindergarten birthday party and field trip, and the afternoon classes will be monthly tests, so really I will be spending my two days at work eating pizza and cake, and the afternoons playing on Facebook and getting paid for it. I guess it could be worse. Then next week I get Wednesday off for Foundation day...not even really sure what Foundation day is??

So Saturday night I went out and lived it up after taking a month off. It was Heidi's, birthday so we started out at her place with some drinking games and I was armed with a bottle of Sutter House zinfandel which made me a happy girl. I should have been behaved and headed home early because I had to meet Talithia at 8:30 Sunday morning to head to Seoul, but at 3 in the morning I was all up for heading downtown, where we bumped into Tom and his visiting friends from England and had some good times in a noraebang until about 4. Sunday morning I stumbled down the road to meet Talithia and cursed myself for not learning anything after a month of sobriety.

Actually had I had more than 3 hours worth of sleep I probably wouldn't have had any difficulties through the day but sleep deprevation hit me hard. Seoul was pretty good, saw a palace which bored me to no end, but then headed on to COEX mall where I spent a small fortune on books and then on to Itaewon to hit up the foreign food market and eat some Indian food.

Arrived back in Daejeon just before nine and I was dead tired but knew there was poker happening so decided I could sleep later and headed on out to Brickhouse. I was pretty happy about that because it was the first time since I've been back that I haven't had to watch my watch because of early morning starts, unfortunately by 3 I was dead tired and still ended up being the first one to bail out of the game.

Yesterday slept the morning away and then wandered for some of the afternoon before meeting Ivan and Richard for dinner at Vips which is a great steak restaurant. Last time I ordered steak there I ordered it medium rare and it was almost well done, so this time I ordered it medium rare and it was so rare that it wasn't even juicy, it was just a cold piece of meat on my plate; which strangely enough, I still find more appealing than well done.

Today I have done nothing, less than nothing actually... I showered and put my pyjamas back on and it's been fabulous, and these are the days that I LOVE living alone cause I can just veg out and not feel guilty about it (well maybe a little but oh well...all the stores are closed today, and I've got nowhere to be).

Tomorrow I'm not sure what I'm gonna get up to but it's bound to be more productive and exciting than today was!

Chuseok!!

Happy Chuseok to me! Five days off!

Today felt like the longest day in the world because I was just waiting for vacation to start. Got a few gifts for the holiday. About 20 pounds of Dokpyung....which is rice cake filled with red bean paste. Now you are probably thinking of rice cakes like crispy chip things we get at home. Here rice cake is made of gluten and is gluey in texture and Koreans go nutty over them. So one of my kindergarten's mother gave me a box of fifty of them, which is a pretty expensive gift, but I don't have a clue what I'm gonna do with them. I don't mind the first bite of one but after that they are pretty gross. They look like raw perogies and they are even coated in flour, the texture can really put you off.
As far as other gifts go I got socks (the typial Korean gift), a few tubes of lipstick (maybe the moms are trying to tell me something) and some hand cream.

I don't really know what I'm gonna get up to these next few days. Originally it seemed like we were all gonna be around but gradually everyone has gotten busy, so as far as my plans go I am going to Seoul on Sunday with Talithia and one of the other days we are going to have a poker tournament at Brickhouse, but other than that I will probably be hanging out, going to the gym a bit and being pretty lazy, whilst enjoying being kid free!

Oh Korea

I don't think I've posted an "Oh Korea," moment yet this year, have I?

Well the last time I was at my favourite store, Skin Food, stocking up, I was given some free samples with my purchases which is a pretty common thing here.

So today I'm gathering my things for the gym and I throw some of the samples in my bag for showering after.

One of the samples I received was, "Apple Vinegar Fresh Foam," which sounded pretty intriguing. I read the back of it to make sure it wasn't a whitening product, which is pretty common here and this is what it had to say about Apple Vinegar Fresh Foam:

Transparent-type foam cleanser containing a large amount of potassium, minerals, and citric acid that makes drab skin caused by horny substances smooth, and whose honey extract provides more moisture to your skin, and thoroughly removes make-up residue.

Now I don't really know what horny substances are but I gotta say, my face did look much brighter and feel smoother after.

Crap

So I've been trying to upload photos of my students on here so that you don't have to go to my photo website but for some reason the pictures are taking forever and a day to upload which is crap... so I'm giving up.

It is raining like crazy and I suppose I have myself to blame for that cause I was kind of happy about it when I woke up this morning thinking it would give me an excuse to have a lazy morning... 12 hours later it is still pouring and I no longer find it relaxing.

The Poly workshop was even worse than anticipated. Because my phone is broken I have no alarm clock, which meant I was relying on my internal clock and a cheap little stop watch I bought down the street to wake me up at 5:45 yesterday morning, my internal clock woke me up at 4:45 so I went back to sleep. My stop watch didn't go off at all, which meant I woke up with enough time to get to the school, but not enough time to get there looking decent. So looking like a bum I hopped on the bus for a long two hour ride to Seoul. The first presentation was crap. Lunch? Crap. The three workshops in the afternoon? Crap, crap, crap. The bus ride home in traffic? Crap. All in all it was not a pleasurable learning experience.

After getting home and having a long, hot shower I glamed myself up and headed out to meet everyone for Becca's birthday which was good fun. I almost caved and got a drink cause it had been that kind of day but then reasoned it was kind of like running a marathon, getting to that last mile and saying, "Meh, maybe I won't finish." So I drank Coke. Crap.

Was contemplating going to play poker tonight but without my phone I was out of the texting loop to know if it was actually going on. One of the guys sent me a message on Facebook about 10 minutes ago, but it's already passed eleven and I'm all snuggly and ready for bed so I am missing out. Crap.

On a brighter note, next week is Chusok so I work a normal week this week and then have five days off. I would have liked to have gone somewhere outside of Korea but this is the main Korean holiday and everything is booked up because all the Koreans are on the loose. So I'm stuck around Daejeon not doing a whole heck of a lot. But I will take that over going to work any day.

I'll work on those pictures later in the week if you are too lazy to check out Flickr.

Happy Birthday Beth!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Now that I have your attention, let me remind you that this blog is about ME, so too bad for Beth!!! :P (jokes)

In some other exciting or totally exagerated news, I have found myself a husband. As far as Costco Korea is concerned I am now married to one of my coworkers in an effort to save some money on the membership. It's a pretty good deal really, $35 for the two of us, and then a $10 gift certificate as a "Thank you for joining, congratulations on your wedding," gift. So when all was said and done I got a Costco membership for twelve bucks! Sweet!

And the best part of Costco here is that it is EXACTLY like Costco at home, with real English and everything! So trips to Costco are kind of like my portal into North America (which is way cheaper than Air Canada).

I didn't get anything terribly exciting tonight: some fajhita shells, Kashi cereal, a big ol'block of Kirkland Cheddar Cheese and a Swifter Wet/Dry mop, but with my membership I will definety be a frequent shopper there this year.

Tomorrow is Friday but without the excitement it normally holds, as Saturday there is a Poly School workshop where all the teachers across Korea get together in Seoul and pretend to listen to speakers all day. To make it even worse my phone broke and is getting fixed so I can't even break up the day by sending texts to people. Not only does it ruin my Saturday, but I have to be at the school by 7am to get on the bus! Disgusting.

And on a more positive note, as of Monday I will have been alcohol free for one month and on Tuesday night I plan on having a big glass of white wine at poker!

So if I don't post all weekend you can assume I died of boredom at the conference. Have a good weekend and if you see Beth make sure to say Happy Birthday to her...and say it loudly; she's getting pretty old, she might not hear you.

Thinking...

How was I supposed to know my bed was a queen, not a full. God damn bottom bed sheet doesn't fit :(

Payday!

Hooray for payday!!! Not that I've been completely strapped for cash or anything but I have been putting off buying a lot of neccessities until I received my first pay; I figured the money that I had with me was better spent on poker nights and dinners at The Outback (which by the way, is way better in Korea than it is in Canada).

So right after work I headed over to HomePlus and got some food and home neccessities...and some things that were rather unneccessary but oh well...caught up in the excitement of it all I wasn't really watching how much voluminous and heavy items I was putting into my cart and getting up four flights of stairs was no small accomplishment. For some reason my sense of logic deemed it alright to buy two 5kg handweights and throw them in the same bag as my milk (which miraculously survived the trip. I also bought an oversized microfibre pillow because I figured luxurious sheets and pillow cases deserved nothing less. And in amongst those things were several other items that made me teeter and totter out of the store and towards the street for a taxi. Just as a cab was coming up to the curb a Korean lady stepped up quickly behind me and I was expecting her to push past me to grab the cab first, as usually is the Korean way, and I was already to let her have it (and possibly throw a 5kg weight her way) but she surprised me and opened the door to the cab for me, pointing to my bags saying, "heavy." So that pretty much made my night cause stuff like that doesn't always happen here and my arms were about to fall off.

In a somewhat related topic, my sheets arrived today!! My 1200 TC Egyptian cotton sheets and oh my god, they are the nicest sheets I've ever touched in my life. They are in the wash right now and I cannot wait to make my bed and dive in! They are so nice that I seriously contemplated taking them to the dry cleaners to have them cleaned (which is super cheap here anyhow)but then I thought that it might take a few days and I didn't want to wait that long.

Alright, it's quarter past ten and I still haven't eaten dinner or called home or really done anything since work ended so I gotta get to it but hope you all enjoyed your weekend!

Same Old, Same Old

The sun is shining!!! Hooray! I am so sick of rain, due to the full week of it we just had.

The weekend is here again and I'm just lazying about this morning. I went out for dinner with some work people last night and then met up with a bunch of people from the old neighborhood, including Korean David and Richard from my old school. It was great talking to them again. David bought a Mini Coop car and it is sooooooooo cool! I tried to convince him to let me drive it but he just laughed at me... I'm not sure why.

Monday is payday! Woohoo! Can you believe I've already been back for a month? That is just mental. All month I've been saying about things, "I'll buy that after payday." So next week I am going to spend, spend, spend! Well not really, but I do need some necessities for my apartment and a Costco membership is at the top of my list. Plus I found a really great gym this week right behind my school so I'm gonna sign up for that and get into a better routine than coming home from work and watching episode after episode of Prison Break.

Anyhow I think I'm heading out to find a mountain or walk along the river to enjoy the sun and try and catch a little bit of colour.

Have a good weekend!

Tuesday!

Poker!

I think Tuesday might actually be my favourite night of the week. It's such a good break in the middle of the week from the day to day routine of things.

This weekend was fairly low key due to the monsoon-like rain we've been having. It's done nothing but rain since late Friday night, and on Saturday night some Korean stole my umbrella! So I then "borrowed" my neighbour's umbrella that was in the hall and forgot it at a friends house....oops... either way I'm getting wet on my way to and from school now...

The rain was actually kind of nice over the weekend, it gave me a good excuse to hole up in my apartment and relax. I was also quite domestic as I cleaned the apartment from top to bottom and then set about to making perogies for the freezer and a broccoli/chicken salad for a potluck I was going to on Sunday night. That's right, not only am I so lame that I've given up drinking, but I also go to pot lucks. And I joined a book club. (You only wish you could be as cool as me).

Anyhow an hour or so into the book club meeting I got a text that said a game of poker was brewing so I used the excuse of having to work early and high-tailed it over to poker.

And tonight I'm off to win back what I lost on Sunday...