xteethx

Happy New Year jiggas

 

about 16 days late but better than never. aight so lets see where I left off…

Christmas! Well on the sunday before Christmas, we had a gift exchange at the North Korean Hanaro church:

Afterwards i went to see my church Jubilee put on a great Charlie Brown Christmas play. It was quite amusing and entertaining as the setting was changed to Seoul; Charlie was a hakwan teacher going nowhere. The cast also did a good job in portraying the nuances of living here including loud and annoying sales girls doing the Wonder Girls song, not being able to catch a cab if your Korean pronunciation sucks, girls who takes pictures of themselves at cafes and on the subways, etc. The props and the music were impressive too..

Charlie trying to catch a cab to Kangnam…

버스

This guy Lucas was incredible with the guitar…

Actual Christmas Day was good, busy and a bit lonely as it is every now and then. Sometimes I feel so busy and pulled in different directions or dying for some alone time and then there will be times when no one can have dinner with you.. haha. But Christmas service was really good nonetheless. I went to a joint English service with about 30+ English-speaking churches in Seoul. It was exciting to see such a large and diverse congregation meet together to sing and worship in one heart. People from different churches came up on stage to rap, perform body worship or do skits but the main feature was a choir that came from Indonesia; they were awesome. One guy I used to go to church with more than 10 years ago played the guitar…such a small world after all.

죽 (juk or rice porridge) in Myungdong. It was at one of those franchises that I was curious about and it exceeded my expectations. I had the seafood type; I’ll have to try their other varieties later on.

Afterwards I fought through the ridiculous crowds in Myungdong to get to the train station to go to the NK prayer meeting. The way it can be crowded here is way busier than the way it can ever be at Rockefeller the week before Christmas. I learned a long time ago just to shove back, even if they’re like 80 years old because no one will fight back or even say anything; they just yelp at the most.
Christmas was nice with Tim Peters & gang. I met some interesting gals…a law student at American U. who’s here on vacation, a government employee, and an English teacher who asked me if my teeth were real and told me I should be a teeth model. That made my day. We shared stories about damaging our teeth and getting root canals.

New years day was also fun; couldn’t have been better actually. I stuffed myself on BBQ at the North Korean pastor’s house. Pastor Yoon had people over for dinner. Afterwards I went to Kelly’s where Kelly, Adrianne and I talked over wine and cake. I was dead tired and went in and out of sleep…then they decided to get samgyupsal (pork bbq) at 3am in the restaurant downstairs. I went with them although I didn’t have a bite since I was still stuffed from dinner. They both cracked me up; but then again, I’m easily amused at anything, especially when I’m half asleep. We went back up to the apartment where we tried to watch Guys and Dolls but ended up konking out. In the AM I went home after some coffee and toast…

My work schedule became crazy for the first two weeks in January since a lot of students go to 학관 (hakwon or private academy) when they are on vacation from school. The education and competition here is so ridiculous. A lot of teachers are working without breaks and so are the students, and half of them don’t want to be there. I had to teach history on the fly as well as anthropology. I lost it one time I started laughing during anthropology because my student and I were both exhausted and hungry. I was trying to stuff dumplings down my throat because I was starving by the time 3:00 came around and he looked miserable and sleepy. We were both haplessly in this unwanted ridiculous situation because of Korea’s competitive culture of studying…

The crazy hours are over now; I’m only teaching English from 9-1 now although I do have my private lessons too. This doesn’t leave me with a lot of spare time; esp. with all the preparing I have to do for teaching. I definitely have to continue my Korean studies when I go back home, which might be in a month or so. I enjoy it here and I know once I’m back in the US, I will miss the reliable and speedy transportation, the food, the shopping, and the people here but there is a time for everything.

Have to leave a sampling of what I’m eating here:

i went to one of those ghetto cheap restaurants with the plastic chairs and plastic store front and you put your jackets in plastic bags cause there’s no room for it elsewhere and it will reek. But the food was so good…the LA style kalbi was so good.

soondooboo near my 학관;so lovely…

This spicy chicken killed me last night but it was still addicting and good.I must have gone through 100 tissues to wipe the sauce off my fingers and lips and to blow my nose that was running like a faucet; I also sweated a lot and teared….it was such a workout.

And for some dang good gelato in apgujung:

p.s. So what are your thoughts on the taiwan’s parliamentary elections?