well the weekend was packed with fun adventures. Nichole (who is living by the North/South Korean boarder and Sophia (who is from Nanimo YEAH!!! and is now living on the East coast of South Korea) came over for the weekend to go white water rafting. I ended up having to bail because i had to go direct the english play that i'm doing mid-oct (it's a redition of the karate kid, complete with wax on wax off and everything). it turns out that it was bloody cold so i didn't miss all the much.

we spent the rest of the weekend eating good food, going on hikes, watching movies and hanging out into the wee hours of the morning. everyone left on sunday afternoon and the rest of us prepaired for a relaxing afternoon.

what happened instead was kent (another american that lives here in yeongwol) came by and asked if we wanted to go fly in a light plane. so off we went. we each took turns being the passager. it was amazing. we got to see the whole city and because it's open you can feel the wind on your face which is always a bonus.

the internet is getting (hopefully) hooked up today so i will start adding some pics then.

so now i'm sitting at my desk as the students have thier mid-terms today. in the afternoon the teachers are all going on a hike and then a picnic so that should be an experience.

well i just got back from Chuseok (Korean thanksgiving) and 5 days of craziness. so it started with going to Wonju to get cell phones (my number by the way is 010-7164-0858 for any who may be so inclined as to call me). Alex (my boss technically although he is more like our friend) helped us out with the translation and setup extravaganda. i never realized what a "basic" model actually was. i swear they have cell phones that do your taxes for you now. mine has yoga positions. WTF?! well after the cell phone fun and a quick stop at e-mart (korean wal-mart) we headed back.

kate and i were suppose to head to seoul on monday to meet up with some friends and braden (my friend from CBC) but we got a call from pete inticing us to come out on sunday. so being the spontaneous girls that we are we jumped on a bus. after mauvering our way to our hotel we headed into the night. we met up with some intoxicated friends of ours who were fearless of both cars and Nigerians yet terrified of the hookers on hooker hill (yes, that's right. there is a hooker hill). kate and i split up for a bit and i ended up with pete and some of his friends in a bar shaped like an igloo (only in korea). well the night came to an end and we all headed back to crash (or in some cases sober up).

kate, pete and i headed to the bus terminal to meet up with braden. we found him in front of crispy creams (ahh america influtrating the world one donought at a time) and went for some chinese food. pete headed by home and us 3 remaining went to go look around seoul. we went to the outdoor market which was really cool. ate some turkish ice cream (so good) and then headed to braden's town (about 2 hours south of seoul on the coast called sosan). we arrived at night got some korea BBQ with a friend of his, Mike. then we met up with another friend of his, Abi and headed to do some kareoky. that was fun. 2 hours later we all climbed into a cab and headed to braden's. the next morning was the official chuseok day so EVERYONE was travelling. there was only one bus to wonju so we had to go to seoul. even with buses leaving every 20 minutes we had to wait 2 hours for one. we got into seoul too late to take a bus to yeongwol so we decided to go to the sauna.

in korea you can spend the night in the sauna for about $10. we spent about 1 1/2 in the sauna (which consites of a variety of different pools of different temperatures. you go from hot to cold and back and forth. oh and it's all same sex nudity). then they give you some pj's and you head to a big room where all the men and women sleep on the floor with a leather thing for a pillow. not the best sleep in the world but cheap and do-able. we got up early the next morning and went to the sauna again. then we took an 8am bus back to yeongwol. and that was our adventure

so for any of you google earth obsessees here are the coordinates for the place i'm sharing with kate in Yeongwol

37 degrees 11' 01.91" north and 128 degrees 28' 15.03" east

well this last weekend Kate (the brit) and i headed to chuncheon (the capital city) for the weekend to hang out with some of the other english teachers. well i don't think i've ever eaten so much in my life. we went for famous chuncheon chicken for lunch (with enough left overs to feed an army) then for dinner we had chinese food, then snakes. i don't think i will have to eat again for a week. it was fun and a good break from spending all week siting at a desk.

I've decided that to solve the problems in my apartment i'm going to move into kate's with her. she has a big apartment with lots of space and so i'm going to go korean (get a sleeping mat for the floor) and join her. then we will turn my apartment into the guest house for when we have visitors. this will work out better because kate's apartment is on the same floor as 2 other english teachers (mine is 15 minutes away) and the 4 of us have been making and eating dinner together every night anyways that it just makes sense.

I also started teaching today. well that was a bit of a gong show. boys are...well they are very difficult. they don't like to listen so you spend most of your time trying to keep control of the class. basically, it's going to be a challenge (thank goodness i'm not soft spoken). at least with each class i get a better idea of how to control them and keep them listening (or at least not talking korean to their friend). the key seams to be bribery (candy, games, etc...) any way to bargan with them to listen for 15 minutes and then give them a game (but little do they know that with games they are speaking english also [insert evil laugh here]).

I've never had so many offers for boyfriends before. the typical question when i meet a new class is: do you have a boyfriend? when i say no they usually scream and laugh. well today the boy who asked me stood up and shouted "me, me!". i asked him if he had a girlfriend (usually the best way for them to get embarassed and move on to something else) and he said "yes, you!" so there you have it. aparently i wasn't no time in getting a 14 year old korean boyfriend.

Sometimes it just takes way too much time and energy to be honest. so because i didn't have my work visa when i was entering the country i had to buy a ticket for somewhere else. i ended up with a ticket for japan which was fine because once i got in the country as a tourist i emailed my travel agency and they refunded me the amount. well i had to submit my invoice to my school so they could pay me back. well things got really confusing when i mentioned that they needed to pay me less than the amount on the invoice. i then spent the 30 minutes trying to explain why they needed to pay me less and no one was understanding. finally my co-teacher understood (or gave up trying) but then he had to phone his supervisor and they talk for a while until they all agreed that they could pay me less.

*sigh* wow maybe to save myself the heartache i should just be dis-honest next time :)

I think i've descovered a new sport...speed eating. now most of you have probably seen me eat and i'm a pretty fast eater but here in korea i'm unbearably slow. everyone has finished and left the table before i've even gotten started. i swear they don't chew, breath, anything. they just shovel, shovel, shovel. it's almost mesmorizing.

WARNING: This is not an accurate representative of what my life is like at all times here. this is a vent.

well i've had a great (sarcasm) weekend. first i went to chuncheong on friday to get my visa and resident card sorted out. that wasn't too bad although it did cost me $110 and now they have my passport which hopefully they will mail to me next week or i'm stranded withtout a passport. after we met up with some other epik people and went to e-mart (korean equivilant to walmart). well with girls shopping like well girls and with finding out that pretty much everyone has a better apartment than me i was ready to stop and rest for a bit. I headed back with my friend Pete to see his town (it was on the way back to mine) and that was all good but (and now things start to get interesting) the next day Pete was going to come see my town so we headed down to the bus terminal and with my great brilliance we ended up going in the complete opposite direction somewhere up north of the province (yeah i'm so smart). luckly it was beautiful up there and a great ride with lots of bridges and mountains that the mistake was more of an adventure then a bitch-fest.

when we got back to Pete's town we had some dinner and then i headed (on the correct bus this time) back home (it was too late in the day for Pete to come and return in time). well it took me over 3 hours to get to my town then i lost my way a few times in downtown so by the time i got back to my apartment it was past 10pm and the whole time i'm carrying things i bought from e-mart. one such item was a toilet seat. you see my apartment is not only old and dirty, it's kinda falling apart. my toilet seat is one of those foam ones but it's been ripped and well...that's not very sanitary so i got a new one which i had the joy of installing this morning. the holes in the back where you screw in the toilet seat are too far back so i can't have a lid and the seat only covers about 2/3 of the bowl (yeah!). also my sink and my shower don't drain very well even after an entire bottle of korean drano. at least my shower heater mostly works (luke-warm is much better than cold). oh and my stove top doesn't work. so i'm having a great weekend. i've now designated this apartment a "sleep only" apartment.

hopefully things will start to get better this next week. well thank you for listening to my vent. i think i'm ok now. i'll try to write when i'm happy and satisfied next time so as not to depress you all.

After about a week of orientation i'm now in my placement in Yeongwol, Gangwon-do. I'm teaching in an all boys middle school of about 500 students and they are crazy. my co-teacher is this really sweet man named Mr. Na. he's a quiet man who is dying to be an extrovert.

today i went to my school to "meet the teachers" and ended up "introducing myself" to 6 classes for 25 minutes each. that was a bit of a shock. if it wasn't for starcraft and harry potter in some of my classes it would have bombed like nothing else.

my apartment is interesting. not quite as bad as my apartment in mongolia but nothing like canada. i was ok with it until i saw the other apartment that the other foreign teachers had. all of theirs are new with air conditioning, big screen tv, new furniture and a nice kitchen and i got the left overs. aparently the teacher who was in this place before was not the cleanest and i'm finding evidence of that all the time (the expresion "so that's where that smell was coming from" has been used on a few occasion). oh well, the other girl are more girly than me so it's probably for the best. the hardest part is that they are all on the same floor and i'm in another building in another part of time. but i'm going to stop complaining now.

there are 6 american here (3 boys, 3 girls), a british girl and me so we got a good group here and many others are about an hour away. tomorrow i'm going to chucheon (the capital of the province) to sort out my visa and resident card. so cross your fingers that everything gets worked out ok.