All Grown-Up and Going to China

The count is down to hours now! I leave for Seoul tonight and will live for China in the morning! Woo-hoo! Talk to you later!

Best Moments of My Day

Best Wordless-Exchange: A smile between me and the lady on the corner who sells eggs. She seems really sweet.

Best Exercise of Patience: Waiting at the bank. I had #245 and they were serving about #207.

Best Gift: Citrus Tea from my coworker.

Best Compliment: "Your eye color is a mystery" (from the young Korean butcher at Kim's Mart. And I didn't even buy the bacon he was selling...).

Best Freebie: A 4-pack of tissue from Kim's Club.

Best Workout: Carrying 3 Kim's Mart Bags (plus the 4-pack of tissue.) and loading them into the taxi.

Best Attempt at Using Korean: Giving the taxi driver directions to my apartment using the Korean words for "leftside" and "rightside"

Best New Korean Word I Learned: chikja (it means "straight"; see above). Okay, actually this work came up in Korean class last week, but I never would have remembered if the taxi driver hadn't started using it.

Best Same-Same: Toward the end of the taxi ride, the driver said "I'm sorry" and I said "Mian hamnida" (I'm sorry).

Best Exercise of Courage: Walking past this enormous mountain of trash near my apartment in the dark. You can't see around it and you don't know what's in it. Usually, I don't walk that way but as I'm sure you're starting to realize, the taxi driver and I had communication issues.

Best-Tasting: My homemade deviled eggs (that rat from Ratatouille has nothing on me) or the fish bread (fish shaped) from the street vendor.

3 and 1 Pizza

This is "Seafood Island" pizza, available at a downtown pizza restaurant. On of top of the crust is some sort of breaded shrimp (the appetizer). The pizza has different types of seafood toppings (main course). Inside the crust is a sweet potato filling (dessert). I enjoyed the appetizer and dessert, but I'm still a plain cheese girl when it comes to toppings.

Eskimo

The way the heat works in my building is that there is some sort of central heat in the classrooms. The office area has space heaters. The hallway, stairwell and bathrooms have no heat at all. Usually, I'm in the class or the office so I stay pretty warm. However, something is wrong with the central heat in the classrooms. Today, I froze. I was wearing a down vest with a fur-trimmed hood. By the end of the day, I had the hood on and buttoned up tightly around my chin. A coworker walked in the classroom laughed and said I looked like an eskimo. It didn't bother me. You do what you have to do. I was hoping looking like an eskimo might also convince the powers that be that it really was time to repair the heater. Tomorrow it's supposed to be 24 degrees.

Snow! (sort of)

We got a little bit of snow today, but none of it was sticking. Too bad. I'd love a good snow! Not a whole lot new is going on here; it's pretty much business as usual. However, in two weeks (if all goes according to plan i.e. I get my visa), I should be in China getting ready to celebrate the Chinese New Year! Woo-hoo

Toni gives the animal hat a try...

Peyton's Polar Bear Hat

Style

These are pretty popular right now. Almost as cool as Davy Crockett's beaver hat, don't you think?

Happy 2008!

A belated happy new year to everybody! It was so good to be home for Christmas. I had a WONDERFUL time seeing my family, and I got to see a few (not enough!) friends. There's just nothing like English, Wal-Mart, and American food.