hello, friends! things are really hot in korea, today. it's probably around 90 degrees...better than any day i saw of the "summer" that erie had. ha. the elevator is broken in this building but i was not aware of this situation because i refuse to get in it because of the little incident we had on the first day i was here. the other people were bitching but i don't even care. ha. i win!

last night, we went to this AMAZING indian restaurant. surely, it will turn into my new haunt. muahaha. i've always wanted to say that. so, it was REALLY awesome because they had a vegetarian portion of the menu!!!! i ate so much food. omg. it was the best thing of my life. everybody has been really grilling (hahha.) me about this vegetarian/pescetarian thing. i'm constantly asked why i don't eat not seafood. blah blah. it gets old but i've been calm (surprising). so, one of the guys that works upstairs, eric, sat across from me and was asking me about it. meanwhile, i'm thinking, "oh, this old chestnut." (compliments to chrissy) anyways, he said that he grew up in california with big hippie parents and he was raised vegetarian. thank you for someone else!!!!!!! wooot! however, he's been pretty lax (sp?) because it's pretty difficult to be a strict vegetarian here, which i am not doing. he said this first time he ate pork was in korea. haha. so, there's this other girl and she's like, "yea, but you have to at least TRY everything because then you can say you did." perhaps, i will. however, this girl is the person who was bitching at my welcome dinner that she wasn't going to be able to eat anything and everything would be too spicy. i should tell that girl shut the hell up. ha. or maybe, i'll just shove a chile in her mouth and she'll zipper the lipper. enough.

tomorrow, we are going to korean class!!! i'm so excited. i hope that i don't suck. i have a feeling i may. haha. no, really, i've already learned the alphabet and both sets of number up to 10. i've learned some phrases and try to remember things. after we go to class, we're going to lunch and then.... SAMSUNG LIONS BASEBALL!!!! THUNDERSTICKS!!!! oh yes, thundersticks. i will be getting some. i will be taking my $2.00 bottles of beer into the stadium, sitting on the third base line with the super fans, and beating the crap out of my thundersticks. once i can figure out how to load certain pictures on my computer, there will be many. haha. i'm super pumped for the baseball game despite the fact that the lions are nooooooooo good. oh well, neither are the seawolves. can i get an amen from the erie-ites? what is important is the screaming, beers, and popcorn.

i have found the mystery items: hairspray, nail polish remover, and mops. they are located at the british version of walmart: home plus. it is my new favorite place, regardless of how much i despise walmart. i know that it's bad but you would understand if you were here and couldn't find anything, anywhere. haha. i try to mostly buy my goodies from the wolbae market but that can't always happen because i don't see any little, old ladies growing hairspray trees. these women, by the way, sit in the market all day. you can buy freshly peeled onions if it's too much of a hassle for you to peel them yourself. pretty tricky situation, i'd say. plus, these women have severely bent backs, some bend over at almost a 90 degree angle. it's pretty bad.

well, i'm going to continue sit here with my tracy chapman and my korean workbook that robert just gave me. perhaps i will learn something, maybe not. haha.

oh yes, "look me in the eye" is a good book about asperger's. check it out. (random thoughts)

THE face.

things have been going well here. i have shadowed the teachers at all of the stations: dance, police, kitchen, and telephone. today, we took away kitchen and are replacing it with art gallery. i'm a little concerned because apparently i am teaching art gallery today. my boss was like oh by the way you need to memorize these scripts in two hours but then, she didn't tell me that i was actually teaching...interesting...korea. anyways, the kids are hysterical and are constantly yelling, "teach-a! teach-a!" a little girl showed me her phone which had a picture of a blonde hair, blue eyed anime character. she said, "teach-a, it's teach-a!" haha. oh man. also, these kids never stop touching each other. there is constant poking, prodding, picking, hitting, slapping, etc. it's ridiculous. they love the game telephone and get really upset when they don't beat teach-a.

the other day, we went to my welcome dinner. We had to take our shoes off when we went into the restaurant. They seated us in the back in our own special room. They had those tiny tables and we sat on the floor on these black pillows. That was cool enough but then Kris ordered ALL this food. First, the lady brought shrimp in this pan and there were burners built into the table. Oh man, she put the pans on the burners and the shrimp were still ALIVE!!! They started hopping around all over the place. We were all freaking out and laughing. The people I was with took a video of it. It was pretty disgusting. So then, while the shrimp were dying they brought about 40 dishes worth of sides (no exaggeration). So, there's food all over the table and everybody just kind of shares and eats out of all the dishes. We ate the shrimp after they were all cooked up. THEN, this lady brought BIG pans with all kinds of seafood: octopi, shrimp, crabs, scallops, squid, random other things. And THOSE animals were alive, too. The octopi kept trying to get out of the pan. Oh my God, sick. That's when everybody really started videotaping. Kris was laughing at all of us because we were seriously freaking out. So, it was pretty vile but I ate it and it was really good. We kept asking Kris and Danny what everything was and they were laughing. There was something that looked like brains but really we thought it was intestines. Megan said, "I've been her almost a year and this is pretty intense for me. How do you feel on your first day?" haha. So, I guess I got one of the crazier things out of the way. While we were eating they were playing this game with a soju bottle top. Soju is kind of like vodka and apparently extremely popular. So, if you flick the twisty thing off the top, the people beside you have to drink. Kris was the first person to have to drink and we were all laughing at her. While we were doing this they just kept bringing more and more dishes and more and more drinks all the time. It was pretty ridiculous. I guess the Koreans give you things for free just to say thanks for eating at our restaurant. Margaret told me that a coffee shop gave her a free cookie once just for coming back to buy another coffee. Anyways, that dinner was probably the most insane thing I have ever seen in my life. I don't think that would be a good place to go for you. hahaha. Oh yea, and Kris payed for everybody so that was nice and everybody liked that. Afterwards, we went to the Fish and Grill and met a table of Koreans. They were really nice and we talked to them. We gave them American names: Sue, Mel, Sunny, and Lena. They liked that and thought that was funny. Everybody here thinks everything is funny. And they really do that thing like on Iron Chef, where they cover their mouths and laugh. It's cute. haha.

this weekend, margaret and i went climbing up three pencil mountain. oh man, i thought i was going to die. it was actually really fun but extremely tiring. the whole thing took almost 7 hours. we could have kept hiking but i think we might have died on the mountain and been eaten. hahaha.

yesterday, i went shopping at the grocery store. it is nearly impossible to find anything that is "normal". this is probably because, unlike the U.S., shipping products in from every point on the globe is not a popular thing to do. it took me about two hours to find almost everything that i wanted. i have yet to find hairspray. it is apparently a mystery object. i've been trying to make my apartment look nicer. it's been going pretty well. at the store, i bought a new pillow and a tablecloth. i will post my pictures when i have more time and i'm not trying to memorize scripts. :(

so, i have finally arrived in korea and today is my first day of school. i'm going to be shadowing the other teachers for a couple of weeks. we have too many people right now so we have to double up until one of the other teachers leaves. she will be going home at the end of october. i'm not sure who i am working with today but it doesn't really matter because everyone seems really nice. i guess we are going to dinner tonight. i messed kris's, my boss, plans up for tonight. they told her that i don't eat meat i thought she was going to seriously freak out. haha. i don't know what she wants from me. oh yes, i decided that it might be a good idea to get stuck in the school's elevator with two other koreans today. that sucked. thankfully, the woman spoke english, however, she decided to say that she was scared that the elevator was going to fall. of all the things she could have said in english, that was her choice? HA.

i've mostly been wandering around daegu breathing through my mouth. it would seem that nobody else is affected by the smells that are roaming around this place. i guess they're just used to it. although, it is pretty interesting how everyone just lays their food out on the sidewalk and you can walk right up and buy it. there are people sitting EVERYWHERE on the sidewalk. they basically have everything you could imagine, some appetizing, some not so much.

it's a little difficult to communicate with people but if you just smile and nod, everything is cool. i think some guy was trying to tell me that i was pretty today and gave me a discount on a bag i was buying. haha. i have no idea. i just say "i don't know" and shake my head then they smile at me. also, little kids say hello to me everywhere i go. they get really excited about it. i thought that this would just be popular among children but no, the old women like to do the same thing. lol.

hopefully, today goes well and my first day of school is fun.

Test.

-Tamz