Sunday, March 22, 2009

Lazy weekend

I'm right smack dab in the middle of one. Actually, technically speaking, I guess I'm coming to the end of it, but it was awesome. Friday I cooked dinner for Mi Sun and Mi Jin, the two girls I work with who are around my age -- I figured, maybe they get tired of eating Korean food all the time, so I'd cook them a hometown favorite, Mom's spaghetti. It turned out pretty good... we had a nice little lettuce salad with cherry tomatoes, onions, and vinegar and oil dressing. They were really confused by the vinegar, apparently Koreans don't really use it for anything except pickling. Then, spaghetti with meat sauce and three-color pasta from Italy, "espinaca e tomate" I think it's called, red wine... yum. And strawberries for desert. The strawberries here are freakin fantastic. Big and juicy and not too sweet... mm-mm-mmmm... So we hung out and listened to music for a while and just had a chill evening.

Yesterday Jill came over and we cooked again... I had leftover ground meat from before and a bit of sauce and noodles left, so we made more spaghetti. And more salad, and more strawberries. And it was good. Then we watched some episodes of The Office and called it a night. Today, I slept in, made myself an omelet with the veggies I had leftover (red pepper, onion, mushroom, zucchini, and broccoli) and I've done exactly nothing since then. Watched the Korea-Venezuela game from the World Baseball Classic (Korea won -- heading to the finals! America plays Japan tomorrow... well, Sunday night in the States). And uh... yeah. That's it. Now I'm blogging. =)

I did learn a useful Korean word this weekend: kwen-chan-ah-yo. It means... lots of things, actually. "That's ok," "that's alright," "don't worry about it," etc. Also, "Are you ok?" "Is something wrong?" "Are you hurt?" "I'm fine," and more things, I think, that I can't remember now. It's a good one.

Also -- did a bit of cleaning/organizing/rearranging recently. It occured to me that I've always had a nightstand, bedside table, what have you... until now. I had kinda wondered why that pile of crap next to my bed would never really get cleaned... books, shoulder bag, cell phone, charger, papers, keys, coins, all that junk that gets taken out of your pocket or your bag when you lay down. And then, after 3 months mind you, I finally realized: Huh... something's missing here. So, I look around a bit, you know, take stock of my surroundings, and realize that my desk came with a filing cabinet that has to this point gone completely unused. So I found (after a ridiculously long search considering the size of my apartment) the key that would unlock the drawers, filled it with all kinds of miscellany, and carried/dragged it over next to my bed. Then, naturally, I realized it has 2 wheels in the back, and feet only on the front. Would have made things much easier, as would dragging it first then filling it with stuff, but sometimes I ain't got a lot of common sense. Whatcha gonna do, right?

Ooh! I wore shorts and flipflops yesterday going to the market. That's always a freakin happy day, I gotta say! The first shorts/sandals day of spring, when you can walk outside without socks for the first time in months -- I guess, since Thailand for me, but the first time I've done it in Korea period. Naturally, it rained last night and now it's back down in the low 50's, but definitely a promising sign of things to come. Can't wait for warm weather! =)

Hmmm... oh yeah -- this Wednesday is payday! Nothing more really needs to be said about this, just "Awesome!" It's nice to watch the ole balance grow... like letting the big dog eat, ya know?

Going to Seoul and the DMZ next weekend, so look for pictures and stories next week. There are unfortunately no pictures from Busan last weekend. I didn't realize until we got there that my camera batteries were dead, and of course the charger was sitting purposefully on top of my fridge. I mean, that is his home and all, just not the most helpful place for him to be when I was several hours away and needing to take pictures. I could have used the cell phone, it was suggested to me. And while that's technically true, I don't have a way to get pictures from the phone onto a computer or any other easily viewable platform, so it would have been largely useless anyway. Next time, ya'll, next time...

So, teaching. It's a lesson in patience, and I think I was starting to fail that lesson by the end of it. But after a couple of months off, I now have 6 classes on Monday at school, followed by 5 sessions at the Global Center on Tuesday-Friday, along with 2 hourlong extra classes on Tuesday and again on Friday. Then I'm trying to go to the gym every day after work, and you're looking at 11 or 12 hour days. Plus my body still hasn't caught on that this is its reality now, so I'm still having trouble getting to sleep before about 12:30 or 1am... so yeah. All that combined, I was a little on edge come Friday afternoon. Don't worry -- I didn't beat any small children or anything. Just thought about it. A lot. As long as we stay in the preliminary planning stage though, I think we're good.

And that's my life. Thanks for sharing.

1 comment:

emily said...

So does no pictures of Busan translate to no stories about Busan?
:(
I want to know where you went and what you did. So that i can reminisce about the old times.
Then later I'll ask questions to see if you met any of the people I used to know who probably don't remember me.