I'm Sick :(

Wishlist:

3 cans of gingerale
Big box of tissues
A back rub
Chicken Noodle Soup

Can somebody fly to Korea to take care of me? :( Please....

Goodbye Five Year Olds

End of the school year this week in Korea, so as of next week I get a new kindergarten class. Unfortunately I will no longer be teaching the five years, but instead will have to suffer the seven year olds. Heather and I had both asked to have the five year olds again, not particularly because we love them so much, but their schooling is way more fun and easier than that of the seven year olds. Anyhow for whatever reason Jason gave neither of us the five year olds, and instead gave them to two teachers who don't want them. So I guess as long as everybody is miserable on the Poly front than the directors are happy.

My afternoon classes are seemingly better this semester and I will be teaching a lot of high level grammar classes which is what I asked for, plus I get a spare, although one of my grammar classes is such a high level I think I might have to use the spare for prep, rather than Facebook shenanigans.

Yesterday was the kindergarten graduation and they went all out for it: caps, gowns, and rented a huge auditorium. It was quite the event, and pretty boring, which is exactly why I skipped all of my graduations. I got some nice presents though, vitamins, perfume, candy bouquet and make up, plus we finished our morning an hour early because of it, so it was a pretty sweet deal.

The rest of this week is fun and games time as all the class work is finished and each class will be devoted to snack party and movie time so that's a nice change of pace for a few days.

Korean Dentists

Was pretty sure I was never gonna venture down the road of Korean dentistry. As beautiful as my students look with all their shiny gold and silver caps on their teeth, I prefer to leave the caring of my teeth to Dr. Kindree and my friend, Listerine.

But as some of you, who have known me since I was a little kid, might know, my parents genetically gifted me with absolutely horrible teeth that took years of braces to somewhat correct. After that, I had bonding added onto my teeth to fill in the awful middle gap in my mouth.

Thursday night I was sipping a drink through a straw and felt something get stuck in my teeth. To my horror, it was one of the bonds, and it had fallen off, leaving me with a small gap in the middle of my mouth, and made one of my front teeth smaller than the one right beside it. I will admit, I had a mild freak out, and tried to figure out a way I could manage to fly home and get it fixed over the weekend. After calming down a bit, and admitting to myself that the gap wasn't that noticeable, I decided that Korean dentists must have a little bit of a clue when it comes to that kind of stuff. So today Heidi took me to the dentist she's gone to for crowning and whatnot, and he was perfectly capable and spoke really good English. I must have seemed pretty aprehensive because he asked me if I was nervous and I said yes, and nervously laughed and that made him laugh, too.

The worst part about dentists here is that they are WAY more technologically advanced so there was a computer monitor right above the patient chair, and they take a little, teeny, tiny camera and show you all the happenings of what's going on with your teeth and inside your mouth. If I wanted to look inside people's mouths I would have become a dentist myself.

Anyhow, not only did he fix the gap, but he did it way better than it was done before, and now I can smile again :)

Flip Cup

Never. Drinking. Again. (hahaha, yeah right....) After having dinner with Richard, Ashley, and Martin last night I met back up with Heather, Chandrie, and Heidi and we headed over to Brickhouse where there was going to be a flip cup tournament.

Flip cup is a drinking game/relay race. Each team has four people, and each person has a plastic cup. Everybody on the team gets their cup filled with beer, and the first person has to drink their beer as fast as they can and then put the cup on the edge of the table and flip it over. Once you flip your cup over, the next person in line goes, and the first team to get all their beer finished and their cups flipped wins. We did not win. We tied for last place. Fortunately we only had to drink a few ounces of beer each time we played, otherwise it would have been really messy, because every team had to play each other for the best two out of three and there were six teams. Our team name was The Mother Flippers...we're crafty with words like that.

Mix that beer in with the wine from dinner, the malibus that Heidi bought for us and various other drinks throughout the night and I was one hurting girl when I woke up this morning, errr, I mean afternoon.

But it was worth it because it was a lot of fun, it reminded me of the games we used to play during the summers in Dorset. Yep, that's right, I'm 26 and still playing the same games I played as a teenager. I'm so mature.

Was supposed to play poker this afternoon but instead I'm laying in my bed, drinking Powerade, and feeling a little shell shocked.

babble

Made it through the week without anymore catastrophies. I'm glad to read by your comments that you were all SO sympathetic to me. The flu bug is going around here like wildfire, and strangely enough, so far I've been immune to it, despite everyone around me having caught it. Hopefully it stays that way.

Didn't get up to much of anything last night, for a brief moment over dinner we got all geared up for going out, but then by the time we were finished dinner we decided to have a quiet night. The long work days and getting up early for the gym, makes it really easy to stay in on Friday nights, which gets a little boring, but at the same time it's nice to be up early on Saturdays, without a hangover.

This weekend is Richard's last weekend in Korea, so a few of us from last year are gathering for a dinner and a send off, so it should be a fun night out. There is also a FlipCup tournament happening at Brickhouse, which is some sort of drinking game, but I don't think I'm gonna be able to convince Richard that we should go there, being that it is his least favorite place.

Still keeping up with the running during the week, but I think we've pretty much accepted the fact that the half marathon is not happening. I don't know the date of the run yet, but most likely we will be doing a 10km, which is good because I know that I can run the whole thing now, I just need to work on getting a bit speedier, which is what I'm off to do now.

Hope you have a good weekend, by the sounds of it you will be shovelling a lot of snow!! :P

Gross

It started out as a normal morning at work; me lamenting about my job and how much I detest children. This morning I even ventured as far as to say that little kids are gross, due to their fingers being up their noses, and in their mouths and wherever else. Everyone else around me just kind of laughed it off as one of those typical Diana comments.

Then fifteen minutes into my first class, Mimi throws up all over the desk, her crayons and her book. Gross. My point exactly.

Now in Canada, and anywhere else where common sense seems to be in supply, if a child is sick you send them home, you don't let them go back to class and contaminate the rest of the children, but this is Korea. So the Korean teachers cleaned Mimi and the room up and class went on as usual.

Lunch time came around and nobody thought anything was wrong with giving her rice and curry and oranges for lunch. And then hey, she's feeling better, so let's let her go to gym class and bounce around all over the place, that's gotta be good for her.

Five minutes before kindergarten ended for the day, the kids are getting lined up, I'm zipping up coats and making sure shoes are on the right feet, when Mimi, whose all bundled up decided to give a second performance of this morning. But this time, one of the other students, June, must have thought that it looked like a fun thing to do, and he proceeded to vomit on the floor as well.

My Wednesday was great... hope yours goes just as well!

Back From Seoul

Seoul was a good time, wasn't the tropical paradise we were dreaming of when we thought about Lunar New Years, but it was still a little escape from reality for a night.

We headed up yesterday morning and headed towards Lotte World Hotel in hopes of a room. Heather had come down with the stomach flu so she didn't join us so it was just Heidi, Chandrie and I. We managed to get a room at a really good rate considering we were staying at one of the best hotels in Korea. Due to the fact that everything was closed because of the holiday we spent a lazy afternoon lounging in our hotel, going swimming and using the sauna facilities.

For dinner we headed to Sizzler (don't laugh, it's good here). Heidi and I ate dinner, while Chandrie looked at our food queasily and determined that she, too, was not feeling so hot. So after dinner Chandrie headed back to the hotel while Heidi and I went to Lotte World, which is the biggest indoor amusement park in the world (take that Edmonton Mall), and as well it had outdoor attractions as well. Went on the dropzone ride a few times, a really great roller coaster and a few other fun rides. During one of our waits in lines we befriended a girl from China and her father, but then one of the ride attendents came around and asked her father how old he was and he said 58, so they told him he was too old to ride and made him get out of line (can you believe that???) . So we continued to talk to the girl, who spoke really good English, and Heidi started telling the girl, as a joke, that I was really scared of rides and cried when we went on rides, and the girl believed her, and I know what you are thinking, come on, it's funny when I do stuff like that.... So the girl kept telling me not to be scared and not to worry, meanwhile Heidi was having a great time with it all.

We stayed at the park until close and then headed back to the hotel. In the morning Heather felt better and came up to join us. We spent most of the day shopping and eating and riding around on the subway. Both her and Chandrie felt kind of rough but they were troopers. We think they may have gotten food poisoning from some oysters that they ate on Tuesday night; and maybe I jinxed them but when I heard that they had eaten oysters the day before I said, "I would never eat oysters in Korea...they would probably give you food poisoning." Oops....

Anyhow it's Saturday which means the holiday is almost over and that makes me grumpy cause I don't want to go back to work. In fact, I don't want to work in general, ever. So if anyone knows the winning numbers for the next lottery, or an easy get rich quick scheme, please let know :)

Tuesday is the new Friday

Hooray for five days off! Happy Lunar New Years!

Starting the vacation off with a little poker action tonight. Tomorrow is going to be a day of lounging around, and getting bus or train tickets sorted for going to Seoul. Still haven't booked a hotel for Thursday, so we could be sleeping on the streets for all I know.

Got a few presents for the holidays; a box of 70 rice cakes that were filled with red bean paste and weighed a ton. Same box I got back at Chuseok that just sat on the floor of my apartment until they were moldy, so I decided to regift them and shared them with all my students today. Got a dozen Dunkin Donuts that I pawned off on some of the other teachers. And then I got two pair of socks as well. (Koreans give weird gifts).

As of next week I'll have been back in Korea for six months, crazy eh? On the count down to home ;) Maybe....

Weekend!

That felt like a really, really long week.

First off, guess who's in first place in the poker tournament? This guy girl! That's right, I rock. Until Tuesday anyhow, when I'm sure I'll be booted out of top spot.

Had a nice quiet night last night. Went to TGIF's for a cheeseburger, which was delicious, then we went to Emart, where I bought Nintendo DS (cause apparently I'm a little kid again) then Heidi, Chandrie and Heather all came back here and we watched a movie.

Think we are laying low all weekend, going to attempt a 10km run in a few hours and then we will probably watch movies and hang around. There's a going away party tonight for a girl who's been here a few years, might make it out to that, we'll see though; it's always somebody's going away party/birthday party/coming back party around here. I'm not spending tomorrow hungover and in bed like I did last weekend so a quiet night sounds good to me right now.

Next week is Lunar New Years, and due to the fact that everybody and their mother seems to be travelling the only thing we are going to do is head to Seoul and tour around. Think we are going to try and stay at the Westin and take advantage of the luxuries of a nice hotel, but we haven't booked it yet so it might be full already.

Anyhow that's all I've got to say for now, have a nice weekend!