"Yes, it's too late to turn back now."

I'm so glad Halloween is over.

Here is a picture of me with Meredith Teacher. I wore my Taekwondo uniform as my costume. Most of the kids loved it. Some of the kids were like, "Teacher! My belt, it is black!" Of course it is, kids. Of course.



Here is Jasmine Teacher. She's really too cute for words. She's a Starbucks fiend, so this picture is perfect.



We have a birthday party at the end of every month. Here are the students with October birthdays. As you can see, they were all docile except for Spiderman in back (Brian).



Here is Harry who is in one of my afternoon classes.



Sometimes what gets me through the day is walking into the classroom and seeing something like this written on the board.



Going out with my fellow teachers on Halloween night sucked and it was painfully obvious that I no longer drink. So I went home incredibly early.

Anyway, I started Taekwondo two weeks ago. It's so hardcore. On Monday night I pulled my groin during warm-up (go figure) and was out of commission the rest of the night. I took Tuesday night off. I went back on Wednesday and my groin didn't hurt because my knee pain took my mind off of it. My ankles are swollen and I have busted veins in my left foot. I really like the discipline of it and I hope my former flexibility will come back to me soon. My instructor, Master Kang, teaches mostly in English. Most of the people who attend are foreigners who are here for various reasons: teaching, acting, marketing, etc.

I am going to the DMZ with Meredith T. and Meredith D. in two weeks. I'm kind of excited about it but it seems more like something I NEED to visit while I'm here.

Oh yeah, I said I would talk about the traffic here. I decided I need to have my grandparents make me a shirt that says, "Dear diary, I almost got hit by a car again today." Drivers have no regard for pedestrians here and it infuriates me (and Meredith). You should see us walking somewhere together. We yell, "Fuck!" and "Peace!" in unison quite often because that's what happens when we almost get nailed by a motorcycle that is speeding down the SIDEWALK. I don't drive so I've never understood the concept of road rage, but now I do. Once my heart stops pounding wildly and my life stops flashing before my eyes, sometimes I want to kick the car or motorcycle really hard...which would be easy because it's usually inches away from ramming my knee. When I'm in the United States I'm pretty good about not jay-walking, but that doesn't even matter here. When I'm at a crosswalk and the light changes, I still wait for the two or three cars that are bound to run the light. Sometimes I feel like I'm in a video game where drivers score points if they hit a pedestrian. It's terrifying.

Election Day is coming up and I feel very detached from it even though I sent in my absentee ballot last week. Let's hope for the best.

xo,
Carly

Peeeeace.

I'll do a blog entry sometime this weekend. It's Halloween tomorrow so I'm sure I'll have some fantastic pictures from school. I've been listening to my kindergartners and it sounds like there will be very little variety when it comes to costumes. We're going to have a lot of witches, princesses, and Batmans. I'm going to wear my taekwondo uniform and I'm sure my kids will love it.

So, this weekend you will hear (and see) more about:
-Halloween at SLP
-learning taekwondo and all the pain that goes along with it
-our plans to visit the DMZ in a couple weeks
-drivers not caring about pedestrians WHATSOEVER

♥

"I'm gonna go where the green is...don't wanna live for brown."

Today I took the subway to Ttukseom Forest because I had an overwhelming desire to see grass, flowers, and trees.





I stopped at a tiny store before I left Ttukseom and they had "IGA" on the door. It made me happy.



I walked around the Ewha Women's University area to find a piercing parlor because one of my earrings fell out yesterday and I can't put it back in by myself. I never found Crow (the parlor that's supposed to be by the university) but I did find a cell phone charm. I told myself I would never buy one, but then I found this one. It's dumb and oh-so-Western, which is why I love it.



This week has found me very sick and tired of my job and Seoul in general.

Dear Amanda,

Oh, yes.




Blissfully caffeinated,
Carly

Yesss!

I FINALLY HAVE INTERNET IN MY APARTMENT!!!

OH, GLORIOUS DAY!

"The city...it moves on despite me"

First, I want to give some people (you know who you are) a gift from yousendit that expires in 7 days. Imagine that. ♥

"The City" by Carina Round

I have obviously been slacking when it comes to keeping my blog updated. :(

I have an additional kindergarten class now and they are great, aside from James who steals various things from the other students. We went on a field trip to The Toy Museum last week. Here is Julie drawing a picture. She rarely focuses on a project for more than 15 seconds, so I had to get a photo of this momentous occasion.



Meredith has a boy named Huey in her kindergarten class and he's hilarious...but her impression of him is even more hilarious. Anyway, he has a huge head, his hair is cut way too short in front so his bangs stick straight up, and he has silver caps on some of his teeth. When he gets bored he does ballerina spins around the room. He jabbers a lot and we thought he was speaking Korean but the Korean teachers can't understand any of his "Korean." So Huey has his very own language, I guess. Every time he sees me in the hallway he screams, "What is your name?!" even though I've told him at least 15 times. And we are constantly reminding him to wait until he gets IN the bathroom to start taking his pants off. During the field trip Meredith's only responsibility was to make sure Huey didn't run away or break something.

We have a birthday party at the end of every month. Here is Dana after a lot of birthday cake and soda. She's soooo cute.



I know I wrote about Sam in another blog entry, but here is a picture of him.



As Meredith likes to say, "That kid is CRACKED." Here is a recent conversation I had with Sam.
Sam: "Carly Teacher, I'm not going to be here next Tuesday."
Me: "Why are you going to be absent?"
Sam: "I am going on a trip with my family."
Me: "That sounds fun! Where are you going?"
Sam: (who draws a map to where he's going) "We are going to stay in a hotel and I'm going swimming."

Here is our conversation on Tuesday:
Me: "Sam, I thought you were going to be gone today!"
Sam: "What?"
Me: "You told me you were going on a trip with your family."
Sam: "What?"
Me: "You drew me a map and you said you were staying in a hotel and you were going swimming."
Sam: "What's a hotel?!"
Me: "Forget it. It's good to see you."

Other reasons why Sam makes my life more amusing:
--Pete had Sam in class one day and Sam was pretty vocal about how much he disliked drawing and coloring. Trevor said, "Sam, yes you do like coloring. I like coloring." Sam got a very serious look on his face and said, "Trevor, YOU are not ME."
--We were reading a story about making snowmen and snow angels and Sam yelled, "Chicken nuggets!" at the top of his lungs for no apparent reason.
--He removes posters from other classrooms and tries to put them up in random places throughout the hallway, which is hard to notice because they end up being at my knee-level.
--He hides my white-board erasers on a regular basis.
--Practically every time I turn around I catch him with my bottle of water or tea, mid-sip.
--He walks to the corner of the classroom and does all the different swimming strokes. I usually join him because it's good exercise. Here is the butterfly stroke:



This is what I look like when Sam grabs my camera away from me and I'm not sure if he's going to take a picture, stomp on it, or throw it out of the 3rd floor window.



Ok, that's enough about school. I feel like I live there.

I went to HomEver quite awhile ago to buy my bicycle and stumbled upon this lovely pagoda in the park by the World Cup Stadium.



I found a kick-ass English bookstore called What the Book? in Itaewon. And I bought a bookshelf last weekend, which makes me feel more at home. :)

It was sweltering here and then one day last week it abruptly became Fall. I love it.

I'll try to do a better job with these updates. Thankfully, I was feeling anti-social today and just wanted to sit and reflect on the past few weeks since they flew by.

♥
Carly

"You never knew why you felt so good in the strangest of places"

I haven't posted anything in awhile so I don't even know where to start...so this is going to be disorganized and disjointed and you're going to like it, ok? :)

A few weekends ago I had to get a medical exam for my alien registration card. They herd you like cattle through vision tests, hearing tests, chest x-rays, etc. I bombed the vision test. Surprise, surprise. They have you look at the eye chart with your left eye covered, then your right eye covered. How about letting me use both eyes to read the chart just one time? That would be helpful, jerks. So then I was trying to explain that I was born with cataracts and do just fine with contacts in, but it was like I was speaking a foreign language--because I was speaking a foreign language. It all worked out in the end. I had to talk to a doctor before I left and she wrote down the most recent vision results I got at my Minneapolis eye doctor and I was on my way. Anyway, my test results came in a huge envelope and this is why:



Um, weird and random. I opened the envelope at school and felt very exposed and vulnerable.

On a whole different note: I was wandering around a couple weeks ago and stumbled upon this journal and had to buy it. Duh.



In John Irving's book, Until I Find You, one of the characters has tattoos all over his body with lyrics and bars of music from his favorite songs. I was considering doing that but decided to just get the journal instead. I fully intend to fill it with entries about what songs move me at what time and for what reason.

Will (from Chicago) and Pete (from London) had their last day at SLP on Monday. Maria (from California) and Meredith (from Ohio) got here a little less than two weeks ago to replace Will and Pete. They're both incredibly nice and I feel like I can be myself around them. I DON'T feel like that when I spend time with Darcie and Meredith (the other Meredith--we have two Merediths now).

Note: Ha! The Right Moves by Josh Ritter is playing right now at the coffee shop!

A couple weeks ago we had a birthday party for Will on the rooftop of our apartment. All of us have tried taking pictures at night from there but they never turn out, so I took some good ones during the day.





Here is the birthday boy in his Hugh Hefner robe that he wore all night.



And apparently the red plastic drinking cup is universal. Someone politely handed me one filled with water and I thought to myself, "I could have fun with this." This is my "relapse on the rooftop" picture.



Things at school are going much better. I finally feel like I hit my stride this past week. I think my confidence was boosted now that I'm the "veteran" afternoon foreign teacher since Maria and Meredith just started teaching on Tuesday. The first week of the month was really busy since I had to make homework sheets, lesson plans, and spelling test lists for all of my classes. I have a class of six boys who are trying my patience but other than that my classes are going smoothly. I have Sam in Hi, Kids 1 who is a riot and I WILL get a picture of him this Tuesday. He is incredibly bright yet his actions rarely have logic behind them...like walking to the corner of the classroom and miming all the different swimming strokes. The butterly stroke was by far the most entertaining. And he tries to smuggle random classroom posters out of the school on a weekly basis.

I bought a bicycle last weekend but have only had time to go on one bike ride so far. I plan on going on one this afternoon so I'll take pictures of the river for you!

I'm going to go start researching where I'm going to travel to during Christmas vacation! I'm so excited!

PS: Mary, how on earth do I resize my pictures so they're not larger than life when you click on them?

♥