T-Minus 1 Week

One week from today, I will be in America.

It's funny how time seems to speed up when you least want it to. My week has been so chock-a-block full of dinner dates, errands, and packing that as soon as I get out of school I'm going nonstop until about now... which is 1am. I do have downtime in school, but that only serves to heighten my anxiety. There's not a lot of things that are worse for moving-related stress than having to sit idly in an office and think about all the things you could be doing. I'll try to write more once things calm down a bit (i.e. once I move out of my apartment on Sunday and into Coworker's house, where she graciously invited me to stay for the 2 days I'm homeless). But for now, just know that I'm stressed, excited, sad, happy, overwhelmed, and anxious. So, just all of the feelings, really.

More soon.

Notes from Asiapalooza

I'm back! I'll post a full Flickr set of my pictures soon, but first, here are some notes from my trip.

I have:

-taken 10 flights in 9 days
-set foot in 5 countries

-visited major world heritage sites like Angkor Wat and the beach where The Beach was filmed

-watched a 6-year old boy dance on a beach with a flaming baton

-gotten rather excessively intoxicated on Koh Phi Phi

-possibly been (but almost definitely was) peed on by a monkey in an overhead tree

-been invited to a party by a Thai masseuse

-listened to a soft-rock rendition of "Oh Holy Night" in a Thai cab at 4:30am

-flown to the wrong Cambodian city and had to purchase last minute flights to the one that really is next to Angkor Wat

-waited out a monsoon holed up in a tuktuk with our driver

-witnessed the abrupt end to a Khmer cultural show when Chinese tourists leapt onstage to pose for pictures 

-watched more American TV than I had in the past year in a Cambodian hotel room

-decided that Singapore looks more like the CGI mockup of a city than an actual city
-become bunk bed buddies with an elderly Pakistani man
-successfully crossed the street in Hanoi without being hit by a motorcycle
-made an unplanned overnight visit to China when my flight from Hanoi was delayed, causing me to miss my connecting flight to Seoul and forcing the airline to get me a 72-hour visa and put me up in a 5-star hotel
-cried my way into getting a free half-hour of computer use in the hotel's business center because I had no money and no way to contact anybody to tell them where I was
-traveled to places I would have never dreamed I'd see
-had, overall, a most excellent adventure.

Adventure time!

I'm going on an adventure!!!

Ok, fine, I know I'm reusing this gif from a couple weeks ago, but I don't care because it's accurate. Also I love it.

I'm leaving today for Asiapalooza. With two of my friends, we'll be hitting up 4 countries in 9 days: Thailand, Cambodia, Singapore and Vietnam.

I was up most of the night packing, so I'm ready to go.

-sunscreen? check
-spare contacts? check
-lots of tank tops? check
-binder full of every itinerary, resesrvation confirmation, and visa document? check.
-3 new books? check. check. check. (While nothing beats the smell of a real book, I really love my Nook Simple Touch for travel.)

I'm ready!

I'll try to write a blog post or two while I'm there, but no promises. Vacations are kind of like a busman's holiday for travel bloggers.

So until then... catch you on the flip side!

Korea in August

Not exactly a sunny summer paradise. 

Yay Korea! Table Buttons

One of the (in my opinion) great things about Korea is that it's a no-tipping culture. This affects your experience in ways that I didn't really think about before I came here.

My personal favorite is that when you're eating, your waiter or waitress leaves you alone. No awkward interruptions every five minutes to ask if you need anything. Instead, if you want something, you just push a button! It sets off a little tone (and sometimes a light) to alert the staff that you want something.

 

These little buttons are at the end of the table in almost every restaurant. It's so simple! No awkwardly flagging down a passing waiter or having him interrupt your meal. Push a button and your waiter/waitress comes right over! It's genius.

 

A Week of School Lunches

I decided to document every lunch I ate for a week. Korean school lunches are profoundly different from American school lunches, and I am convinced they play a vital role in why Korea doesn't have the obesity epidemic currently facing America.

Monday: Stir-fry noodles, pork ribs, seafood soup with bean sprouts and octopus tentacles, rice, and kimchi. 

 

Tuesday: stir-fried mystery meat, a roll of rice dough, spam soup with other mystery meat, rice, and kimchi.

Wednesday:  Special food day!

This was a disappointing special food day. Some days we have 'spaghetti" or "pizza." This week it was bibimbap, friend octopus bits, pineapple(!!!), seaweed soup, and kimchi. 

Thursday:  Sesame spinach(?) Donkasu (fried pork cutlet with gravy-ish stuff), tofu soup with peppers, rice and kimchi

Friday: Dalk Galbi (spicy stir-fried chicken), corn on the cob, kimchi, seaweed soup, and rice. Friday was special because we got lettuce to make little wraps with our chicken and rice.

So this is a typical week of lunches for Korean students. I'm no expert, but if I had to go out on a limb and say why Korea has a vastly lower obesity rate than America, I'd say this has something to do with it.

Looking and Seeing

A while ago, I submitted an essay for a contest hosted by EPIK about challenges we've faced in our school.

I'm excited to say that mine was one of the ones they selected!

It's about making sure you really see your students as individuals, instead of just a mass of faces.

Sorry about the PDF. It's on the EPIK website like this, too.

If you click the little < on the top left corner of the frame below, you can minimize the annoying sidebar.