This song is taking over the world...

My eye sockets hurt

It's Friday 2:30 pm and I'm sitting waiting for the clock to strike 4:30. Why? I want to go home! Yes I did just have five days of vacation, but who doesn't like time off?! Plus, I haven't felt too well the past two days and am ready to not work or be around sick children who just keep reinfecting me. Note to self - next week a lesson on how to sneeze/cough covering mouth. I don't really know what's going on with my body. Am I getting old? I am a whopping 26 (soon to be 27) years old. I also just can't seem to get over this tendonitis; it's either in my knee or my foot and now I think I'm getting the flu. Last night I laid in bed with an ice pack on my right foot, heating pad on my face while moaning "my eye sockets hurt, my forearms hurt, my left palm hurts, my insert body part hurts." This went on for a while until I stopped myself and finished season 10 of Friends. I don't know the last time I've been so pathetic. It's Andong's big Maskdance Festival this weekend and my friends and I have literally planned since moving here to experience the festival together. With that said, I need to snap out of this sinus infection/flu/tendonitis thing and get back to normal! I also can't believe I've never had the desire to watch Friends until recently. People have always said it's a great show and I would just roll my eyes and say "mmk". They were so right. What a great show! 

Chuseok was a great mini vacation. Like I've told a lot of people at home, it's similar to our Thanksgiving holiday and since it's only really celebrated by Koreans most foreigners see this as an opportunity to travel within and outside of South Korea. I myself ventured to Busan! Only 2.5 hours away and plenty of sandy beaches to lay on. The weekend was filled with a birthday celebration (hopefully you had a great time Steven), great food, shopping, drinking way too much, seeing old and new friends and spending WAY too much money! All worth it. I did unfortunately encounter some weird experiences. Before the actual weekend really started I did have a conversation with my friend Suzanne and I was telling her how I don't like talking to strangers. Not because they're dangerous (I'm sure some are), but because every time I open that door something weird happens or I can't get rid of them.

Weird encounter 1: Myself and friends went to Wolfhound (a pub) and barely started our night when this guy (I believe his name was David) comes over and points out another guy and screams, "Who's attracted to him because he wants to get L***." Just imagine my facial expression at this point. I don't really remember what exactly happens next, but this guy was clearly really intoxicated and feeling a little bad for him I laugh it off and ask the usual questions, "What's your name?" "Where are you from?" I figured by ignoring the question and moving on we could stop the situation from escalating. I was wrong. I've blocked most of this out of my memory so I don't really remember the details, but there was a lot of rubbing my love handle, back, shoulders etc. Also a lot of kissing my cheek except not just a simple kiss but his lips lingering on my cheek. I do recall at one moment I pushed his face away and screamed, "STOP TOUCHING ME!" Things basically continued until his friend came and took him away. His friend did say, "I'm not gonna let you disrespect my boy anymore." REALLY! I don't think you know the definition of that word Mr. Friend.

Weird encounter 2: I was lucky enough to have this weird encounter the next day. We of course decided to go out again and within ten minutes okay maybe thirty a girl comes up and wants to join in. I say why not, I don't ever really mind when more people want to join in. Right away she is clearly hitting on me. I didn't know what to say so I was just nice and kept simple conversation. HOWEVER, as the night went on she literally pissed everyone off. She was being very crude (I'm not even going to write what she was saying) and obviously saying things just to piss people off. She continued to hit on me and at one point I had to be blunt and tell her that I'm not a lesbian. I think she got the hint, but at the same time she kept asking really personal questions and I kept finding myself saying, "that's none of your business." By the end of the night I couldn't dodge the inappropriateness and went back to the hotel...alone. The girl stayed and continued to make friends annoy others.

New jam thanks to Tom!

Kookin' in Korea - Bacon Avocado open sandwich

I really wanted to make something with avocado and after searching recipes for a few minutes I came across this. Not only does it look absolutely amazing, but I was inspired to try it out! What you see pictured below is my attempt at creating something similar. Doesn't look much like the website, but it was still pretty tasty and worth a post. Plus, I went through the effort of taking pictures so I'm posting it. For the most part this is a pretty simple recipe and not hard to put together; except for the egg bell pepper part. I had a little anxiety going into that and as you can see I had a lot to worry about.
 

Need:

sliced bread

bacon

avocado

bell pepper

eggs

lemon, salt, parsley

  

The ingredients are pretty basic and easily located at any mart. Avocados can be a little difficult to find, but are usually at Home Plus or Emart. I know I've randomly seen them in other marts so you just have to look around. They are a little pricey here. At home they are 2 for $1 (I think, it's been a while), but here in Korea they're more like ~6,000 won for two which is between $4-$5....I KNOW EXPENSIVE RIGHT?!

First, fry up that bacon! I like mine a little crispy, but it really doesn't matter how well you cook it - just get it cookin'.

 

Use any color of pepper you would like. I only had two options at Feel Mart. Moldy red or wrinkly yellow. I went with the yellow.

Next, cut the bell pepper. I originally saw this on Pinstrosity and didn't understand why so many people had difficulty doing this. I soon found out. I'm not sure if it's because I didn't cut the bell pepper wide enough our if it's because I flipped it; either way it did not look like the picture. I also don't care for sunny-side up so flipping was a must.

Still edible.

Once the egg disaster is complete cut the avocado. For this part feel free to go crazy. I chose to have long slices, but you can also cut the avocado into chunks or make a spread. Go wild!

Toast the bread...

...and let's start piling on the ingredients. Bacon!

Avocado: after placing them on the toast, I sprinkled salt and squeezed lemon juice on top. I just love what salt and lemon does to avocado.

And now the finale...egg/bell pepper mess. I also squeezed a little more lemon juice and added a little more salt and parsley.

I suppose it wasn't too much of a disaster. It still tasted pretty good and aside from the 4 pieces of bacon and 2 slices of bread pretty healthy! If you try this at home good luck with the egg!

I found monsoon season

I mentioned in a previous post that monsoon season had yet to arrive. Don't worry I found it. It arrived almost two weeks ago and has even unpacked it's bags to stay a while. I was planning to go for a power walk tonight, but canceled due to an oncoming headache. Thank goodness I did; I would have been really upset getting my baby blue Nikes wet.

Right before vacation my 4th graders started unit 5: How much is it? Yesterday was my unofficial official day back to school and it was not only filled with a full day of class, but me actually teaching. To start class, my coteacher first reviewed the previous units where I then took over and picked up where we left off in unit 5. To start today's lesson I showed a Talk Talk Talk clip, which is a 2 minute video of a role play on the book's CDrom. The clip included two sets of friends; two young boys who wanted to buy a kite and two young girls who wanted to buy a doll. This particular part plus the students reaction absolutely cracked me up. The clip begins with the two girls hovering over a table looking at various items to purchase. One girl is gazing looking at various object when all of a sudden her eyes widen as she says, "It's so pretty!" The video then quickly jumps to a doll laying on the table. GASP from students. The gasps and comments from my students didn't stop at the initial sight of the doll, but continued as the video slowly and creepily zoomed in. The doll from the video basically looked like the doll pictured below except it had long disheveled strawberry blonde hair with bright blue crazy eyes. When I first saw the doll I didn't think much of it, but as the day went on and the fact that every, and I mean every, class either reacted by gasping and screaming "TEACHER, CHUCKY!" or all of the above I started to realize these students were on to something. Don't worry I handled the situation by telling my students it was not Chucky, but instead his sister.

This Sunday my friends Lisa and Leozanda attempted to spend the day relaxing on a boat, but instead somehow ended up on a six minute speed boat ride. Needless to say I was not ready for that situation and basically had a panic attack the entire six minute ride. A few minutes into our speed boat ride the captain quickly turned and said, "camera." took two photos and was back in his seat driving speeding away.

The behavior charts seem to be a HIT! All classes are up to par and know what is expected. For some reason the students were really impressed with my artistic abilities and even applauded me while chanting, "Bravo teacher!" This made me blush.