24 hours in Osaka (Japan)!

Wake up: 5:00am
Leave apartment: 5:15am
Run to Jukjeon to catch bus. Bus comes: 5:30am
Exchange money: 7:30am This was very strange because we came in with 150,000won and got like 4 bills. We had no idea how far that money would get us, but that's all we could afford anyways so we had to make it work.

Flight leaves: 8:45am When we got to the airport, there was literally zero people waiting. We were like "Hello? Are we in the right place? What is going on?" Then a bunch of flight attendants started showing up and no passengers. Then when we got on the plane, all the seats were full. We were like "Where were all you people before???" The plane had children from all countries on the walls. Someone decided to peel down the fingers of one child and make an inappropriate gesture:

Arrive in Osaka:10:45

Explain to 4 different sets of people that we have no where to stay for the night: 11:00am

First we told the man checking that our forms were filled out all the way. Then we told the man who actually checks the form. Then we told our flight people. Then we each told the separate person who checks the form again. Lesson to take from this? If you have no where to stay, MAKE IT UP!

Communicate in broken English that we want to go see the temple in Teonngi: 11:30

Get off the train and eat McDonalds: 12:30...DON'T JUDGE we were starrrrrrrving and wanted to see if Japan McDonalds were any different than Korea or America. It wasn't. It's actually more similar to American than Korea. OH, but it shall be noted, I ate my FIRST Big Mac ever. I've never ever had one before, and I had my first one in Japan. That's pretty cool, right?

Walk to temple and explore it: 1:00

This temple was awesome. There was a cool tower thing you could go up that was lined with little gold things you could buy. But it was like 4 stories of spiral stairs. Pretty awesome. Otherwise, the temple was pretty similar to other temples in Korea. Although much much less busy. 

This is the building with 4 flights of spiral stairs to walk up. Pretty cool! Oh and all around the bottom is a zen garden type thing. A bunch of rocks that the monks come and rake. 

Next we walked through the garden area where the zoo was. We got yelled at by an old man because we were going somewhere we weren't supposed to. Although we didn't even know what he was saying. We then came across an A Capella group...some high schoolers. They sucked. I've honestly never heard more pitchy and off key singers ever in real life. And they were singing for a huge crowd! We were like what is going onnnnnnn people! Why are you still listening??
Then we made our way to the "castle." I say "castle" because it looked more like a palace. OH but first, when we got of the subway, there were a bunch of girls standing around with signs. We had no idea what they said, but our first instinct was, like, prostitutes. However there were girls of all ages, young old, some who cared, some who didn't, some dressed nice, some not. Then as we got closer to this arena, we realized there was a boy band concert and all those girls were trying to buy tickets. What a relief.
THEN we went to the castle. We made a new friend. We called him Freedom. He was from Austria. He told us his real name but we couldn't remember it and he also told us his name means freedom in English so we just decided to call him Freedom. He stuck around with us a while as we got some soft serve and rested a bit.

Austrian friend, Freedom

I forgot to mention this before but we stumbled upon a really awesome cemetery. I've never seen anything quite like it.

Next we made our way to the hipster, shopping, neon lights part of town. It was really cool. We ate some dinner. Ellen had a traditional octopus ball thing. I had some meat in a bowl with some rice and it was delish!

Head to bar to change into night time clothes: 7:30 pm

Meet up with couch surfers: 8pm

We happened to meet one Japanese person, 2 Polish people, a French dude, and his Scotish friend. 

Have fun until: 2:00pm

Our original plan was to stay out all night since we had no place to sleep. Our backup plan was to go to a PC bang an sleep there for a few hours. What actually happened? Couch surfers shared their floor with us at their hostel! How kind. We got a solid 5 hours of sleep. Good thing too, cuz we were exhausted on Sunday as it was, imagine ZERO hours of sleep. Not our best plan.

Eat breakfast: 8:00am

Go to Aquarium: 9:00am

We saw some awesome fish. This aquarium is known for having the biggest tank in the world. And it happened to be holding a whale shark! COOOOOL! Also, there were a few other animals that freaked me out. Crabs that held on to the wall. Otters the size of humans. Yes, I think I literally screamed when I saw how big it was. A giant fish the size of my torso. A weird, hairy, half pig, half beaver type thing. And singrays with stingers 6 feet long (I kid you not). 

Crabs that climb walls. 

Otters the size of people. 

Fish fatter than my torso. And probably as long as I am.  

Weird mix of a creature.  

The whale shark!!!! In the biggest tank ever made. It's like 4 stories. It was pretty big and pretty cool! 

I kinda got the stingray's tail in this picture. But still, it was really really REALLY long. 

Stop for some traditional Japanese food: 12:30

Get to the airport: 2:30

Flight attendant tells me I missed my flight: 2:40

That's right. Somehow, when I booked the flights (not sure how cuz I literally booked MY flight AND Ellen's flight, at the same time...) I booked mine for 11:00am. And Ellens for the intended 4:00pm. I really really have no idea how this happened. The whole entire time I had in my head that our flights left at 4. Cuz that's when I booked them. But the nice lady informed me otherwise. And my immediate response was to say "WHAT" a bit louder than I expected. Fortunately, this airline has the craziest refund policy ever. Something about still getting a refund up to 30 days after you flight has passed and stuff. So she refunded me the 93,000 for the flight I missed, and charged me 130,000 for the new one. Not a shabby deal and BOY am I lucky there was room on that flight!

Buy awesome flavored KitKat (cheesecake): 3:30

Board the plane: 4:15

Get into Seoul: 6:30

Bus home: 7:05

Arrive home: 8:30

SLEEP! 

What an awesome whirlwind of a trip. I feel like I saw what I needed to see. Japan is REALLY expensive, so spending any longer there would have made me more broke than I wanted to be. And I have now been to Japan. Missions accomplished!

My Move and Unfortunate Illness

I have been sick for the last 4 weeks. I know what you're thinking...you probably weren't THAT sick...but here's the thing: my illness kept me out of the gym for FOUR WEEKS. First, I had an illness and finally went to the doctor on Thursday and he was like "It's a viral infection, no antibiotics, but I want to check you swollen thyroid for bad things. I give you free ultra sound." Well free ultra sound, that's cool. Potential issues with my thyroid? Not so cool. So yes, I had my first ultra sound ever, all to find out that the skin that surrounds my thyroid is just thicker than most peoples, nothing to worry about. He prescribes me some meds for 3 days. Well those are gone on like, Sunday. Wednesday my illness starts to change. Thursday, around 2pm I feel myself getting a fever. I take some Ibuprofen and carry on with teaching. I keep taking it the rest of the evening because I keep feeling the chills come back. Then around 3 am I wake up with an insane fever...you know the kind where you're freezing cold but your skin could melt off? Yeah. I had already taken Nyquil and Ibuprofen so I didn't know what to do. Thankfully, Doctor Dad helped his poor ill daughter out from across the globe and an hour later my fever broke and I went back to sleep. Naturally, Friday morning I went into the clinic again and this time he gave me 5 days of antibiotics. I had a fever the next 4 days. :( Not fun, especially when you have to move to a new apartment during that time period. I went back the following Thursday (again!) because he originally told me if I wasn't feeling better half way through the pack, to come back for more (clearly I wasn't since I had a fever 4 of those 5 days). He gave me 5 more days of pills and tonight at dinner time, I shall be finished! WOOOO. Healthy once more. Enough so to try out the new crossfit gym tonight. They offer 2 classes. One is a beach body class and the other is crossfit. Tonight I did beach body because I was quite intimidated by the pictures I saw of the crossfit and the people who were doing it the day before who were randomly running up and down the busy Jukjeon road as I was walking to work on report cards at 900 last night. Anyways, regardless of how sore beach body makes me, I think I'm going to try crossfit tomorrow because the classes are free this week and then I can decide which one I want to be in.

As for the move. Even though I was sick, I had 4 of my coworkers helping me move and a car and we got it all moved from one place to the other in less than 50 minutes. I was very impressed. After that, my feverish self rested a bit before going to get a couch I had found on craigslist with my friend, Jason. We drove to the girls house (who happened to be a friend of Tiffany's who I'd met once before in Mammoth...random tidbit that shows how small this world is) and got the couch, hoping it would fit in the car and not be too difficult to get into my apartment. Fortunately, both worked out perfectly! The only casualty from the move was poor Jose Cuervo. He took a crash on the ground and broke, spilling tequila all over the cement :( This Jose had a special place in my heart because I bought him in Korea, took him to the Philippines, brought him back to Korea, and then had him ever since. And he just died. So suddenly. With so much life left to live. We will forever mourn your death, Jose.

Here are a few pictures of my apartment, before I moved in, once everything was moved but I was too sick to unpack, and after most of the unpacking was done.

Before:

An unfortunate change from my awesome shower to this little guy that doesn't stay warm for more than 30 seconds :(

But a normal toilet seat!!

 During:

R.I.P Jose

The couch BARELY fit in Jason's car. Although it makes a perfect bed! Camping trip? 

 After(ish)

I have a couch!!!

The Magic Number

At 6 months they say your time in Korea starts to fly. I can certainly imagine that being so, as I'm coming in to warm seasons. If spring is anything like the end of September and October weather wise, spring and fall will go really fast, as well as summer. It will be my time left in Korea dwindling away, as well as awesome things such as my birthday, mudfest, my summer break (of either Bali or Malaysia), and my fam coming to visit me. The weather has already started to change, and all of a sudden the cherry blossoms are popping up all over the place (how pretty).

I'm mostly here to tell you SIX things I've learned in the past SIX months:

1. I have become reacquainted with my love of small children (I mean very very young ones...as my 5's class (3 or 4 in America) are my faves for their sheer adorableness). 
2. I have become aware of my strong desire to have my own classroom again. Although last year I was sharing a classroom with the best teacher mentor ever ;) I felt as though those kids were my own. I saw them everyday, all day, for a whole year. Not so much the case here and I have very little connections with some of them. Needless to say, I want my own classroom.
3. They always say "you'll find out who your true friends are when you're gone for so long" and I always said "I know who my true friends are." Well they were right, but so was I for the most part :) cheers to good friends!
4. I've learned how to live on my own. As far as literally living by myself is concerned. Many of you know of my fear of mold. And a few of you have had to deal with my leftovers in the refrigerator before. I now take care of that all by myself. Go me. However I haven't had lights in my bathroom for approximately 6 weeks because I cannot physically remove the light fixture (yes, I've tried 3 times and had a very strong male friend give it a go as well...I think my landlord might come try tomorrow?)
5. I've truly realized my strong work ethic and would like to give a shout out to my parents for raising me that way. Way to go guys!
6. Lastly, being abroad is probably going to be the most life changing experience I'll ever have. Who knows where being married or having a small life form of my own to look after someday will rank on this scale, but living in Korea for a year is pretty high up there and I am so thankful for that. 

I love you all. I miss you all (unless of course you're reading this from Korea, then I'll see you soon, like tomorrow or the next day). 

Oh, one last thing, a list of things that I really miss in Korea that I didn't think I would miss quite so much:

1. I'm dying for Ben and Jerry's (the oatmeal cookie one or the cookie dough brownie one...it's been so long I don't even remember their names).
2. French bread for like 2 bucks from Freddys. (side note, I had a dream about both of those things...)
3. Reese's are real hard to come by.
4. So is Mac and Cheese although I'm stalked pretty well right now thanks to my fairly recently departed (from Korea) friend Steve.
5. Butterfinger (which I didn't realize I missed so much until my mom just sent me some today). 
6. Cheap fruits and veggies. I've been splurging more lately because I just want some broccoli sometimes, ya know? 
7. Ramen and Rice....JUST KIDDING those are the two most ample food groups in Korea. 

LOVES!!!!

A Weekend Among the Cherry Blossoms (and rain)

A few weeks back, Ellen and I decided to sign up for a cherry blossom bike ride. We thought "How cool! A bike ride around a lake through lots of cherry blossoms! What a great idea!" So we paid our deposit, made our coworker, Sara, and our other friend Melissa come with us, and waited the few weeks till the trees were in bloom. As time grew closer to the ride, we started to get worried. The weather hasn't been warm much yet this spring (maybe like 2 days) and we were hoping that this hadn't stopped the trees from blooming. On top of that, we chose the weekend it was supposed to rain. Originally we were supposed to ride bikes on Saturday and then do cool touristy things on Sunday. However because of the forecast, our schedule got switched. Bright and early Saturday morning, we wandered in the rain to the subway station, took a 40 minute subway to where we'd catch the bus, and then took what was supposed to be a 3 and a half hour bus ride 5 hours until we arrived in Gyeongju. The fortunate thing was that I actually was able to sleep on the bus since I had my own row to myself and this helped the time fly by. Saturday we actually spent a lot of time on the bus because it was so rainy. We did, however, make it to a temple with a really cool stone buddah that you're not supposed to take pictures of, a beach with a island tomb, another temple, some other tombs, our hotel, dinner, and a really cool night time rain walk.

The stone temple buddha thing was actually quite amazing and, so they say, an astonishing feat that happened waaaaay back when, and apparently even doing so today would have been astonishing. They apparently didn't have the math for it back then or something (not quite sure, sorry, but it was REALLY cool looking). The walk to the buddha itself was cool in all the misty fog with colorful lamps.

Those stones you see in the top right corner are what has preserved this cool stone buddha for many many years. He lives under it underground!

The beach would have been REALLY nice to hang out at if it was a sunny day. However since it was raining, we weren't there for very long; we ran out, went to the bathroom, bought some snacks, took a picture, and were on our  merry way.

That's the island with some tomb on it...and Koreans running away from the ocean water. 

We went to another temple, which was really cool and had some special monk crystal or something (again, sorry, I wasn't paying too much attention) The temple itself was pretty with many cherry blossoms, a creek, and a little pond or two. My second favorite temple I've been to while in Korea.

Our first trip was some tombs (which I've learned at this point just means mounds of dirt...). Again, these looked really cool with the fog pouring all around them.

Dinner was less than satisfying but the soju helped the rest of the night move riiiiiiight along. We ended up splitting from the group to walk along the cherry blossoms that were lit up, in search of this pond with a giant Pocahontas type willow. The lit cherry blossoms were quite cool! Although the path was very very VERY wet and I'm pretty sure my shoes (fuggs) are now ruined. It's ok, one less thing to take home in October. We finally got to the pond...paid our dollar to get in, and found the GRAAAAAAND willow. As I said to a friend later that night in my response to the grand willow....What's better than seeing the grand willow, you might ask? The grand willow at night. What's better than seeing the grand willow at night, you might ask? The grand willow at night in the rain. What's better than seeing the grand will at night in the rain, you might ask? The grand willow at night in the rain after having some soju (yes soju makes many things much more entertaining...like the ladies walking around in high heels and short skirts and the insane amount of couples). Just to give you a quick comparison, here is a picture of the willow from Pocahontas:

She's HUGE 

She's MAGICAL 

And she has  FACE and CAN TALK!

So naturally my hopes were really high. However, we finally found the GRAAAAND willow and this is what it looked like:

IT BARELY LOOKS LIKE WILLOW!!!! ha.

Don't get me wrong. I sound very cynical right now. However we did enjoy every bit of this rainy journey on Friday. It's all about these experiences we have, and who we have them with. Saturday was nothing but a good time (although much of it felt very sleepy) and it was followed by an even better time on Sunday.

Sunday we wake up, eat a muffin, have some coffee, look at the snow that fell overnight. And prepare to freeze our asses off on our bikes. We get to the bike shop, buy some cotton gardening gloves, and load up on our adorable cruiser bikes (I've always wanted to ride one!) Let me just inform you of how many layers I was wearing; a tank top, a long sleeve shirt, my fleece, my snow coat, and my rain jacket on top. All of this kept me very warm though,and I thoroughly enjoyed the bike ride. The clouds would come and go, it wasn't too cold (with those layers) and we saw some beautiful sites, and most of all, got to get out of Seoul, into the fresh air, a little sun, nature, and be HAPPY! Again we decided to split from the group. We ended up riding around the whole lake (which we were the only 4 to do so) and then stopped for some lunch and rode back to the bike shop. We strolled around the market a bit and then sat and enjoyed the sun until it was time for the bus ride back. 

All in all it was a fantastic weekend away, a great bike ride, and beautiful sights! Here are some for the road...enjoy :) 

Cherry blossoms lit up at night. 

Cool tower thing with rainy puddle reflection!

Me among many cherry blossoms (our first mass cherry blossom experience) on day one, very RAINY day. 

Bike ride day....cherry blossom in the back, snow on the car...

My bike! Cuuuute.

Selife...and I got Sara in the background (totally not safe)

Some coliseum back there. 

Right outside of where we had lunch.