Goals Made and Goals Met

Dear Mom,
Pardin me four my grammer misteaks in laste weak's blawg.

So, I had every intention of doing this blog yesterday, but after watching "Marley and Me "on TV, I couldn't bring myself to sound remotely happy or humorous. So, here I am on this Tuesday sitting down to write my 30 somethingth blog.

I don't know how much I'll end up saying, but I do know I have a good amount of pictures to show you Westerners out there. However, I don't have a picture, although there is one, to go along with the story of how the lizard died :( Tuesday afternoon I strongly urged the boys in my 5:30 class to let that poor lizard go. I should have followed them outside and did it myself. Instead, the boys forgot about the lizard and the next day they were quick to tell me, "teacha, lizard die." I won't go into much detail of how he died, but they had a video on their cell phone and it was not a pretty sight. Boys.

Overall, the week really dragged on. I felt like I haven't written a blog in 3 weeks. The week was a little frustrating. There were a few cultural clashes with coworkers and taxi drivers. Without really saying too much, I just really miss the concept, "treat others how you want to be treated," (no matter the race, age, or career). I know America is not perfect by any means, but I do believe we have a leg up on South Korea concerning this concept. On top of this, the flowers are really blooming and I'm seeing buckets of petunias, which makes me a little homesick for good ole Dixon, Illinois.


I DO love Spring here though. It hasn't been too hot and the flowers are so beautiful. Seems like there are new types popping up everywhere. This past week, I've really noticed all the roses, and yes, I often stop to smell the roses.



The weekend finally came. It was one of the first weekends I didn't have anything planned, which was kind of unfortunate since we had a 3 day weekend. Monday was Korea's Memorial Day. Nonetheless, I gave myself some goals. 1) clean the apt 2) clean Lily's cage which had gotten a little out of hand and 3) update the resume.

On Saturday I decided to do a little exploring on the new bike I got. Here she is in all her glory:

Her name is Rousseau, but I call her "russ" for short.

She's pretty dependable, minus the pedal that just broke off yesterday. She got a whole lot of use this weekend. I rode all around the part of Gunsan that is fairly close to my house. I also decided that I would count the "hello's" from people. And I must say, it's going to take some getting used to coming home to a place that doesn't treat you like a celebrity. I counted 4 hellos (2 from 2 different groups of children and 2 from adults), 1 wave from a man that was working on a ship that was docked, numerous bows, countless stares, a "hello, teacha!" from one of my students and my personal favorite a "hey, how you doin?" from a not-so-bad-looking American Airforce guy.

I didn't really see any other foreigners biking, well, except these kind folks:


But the ride was beautiful. In many of the parks around my area, there are so many people. So, I found this trail along the Geum River, this river runs along Gunsan and into the Yellow Sea. There were not many people and so I was able to somewhat enjoy an afternoon without mobs of paparazzi ;)


I know it's not as mighty or as magnificent as the Dixon Dam, but hanging out around this made me feel a little more at home..now if only there was an exaggerating fisherman named Jesse to teach me how to fish, it would have been exactly like the Dixon Dam.

Almost as pleasant as the Rock River. ;)


I also, accomplished goal #1 on Saturday. The apartment was finally clean. Now if I could have only gotten the motivation to clean Lily's cage. Instead, I enjoyed some chicken from LotteMart and watching Pirates of the Carribbean for the zillionth time on TV.

Sunday was another beautiful day weather wise. The man who does Children's Church is currently on vacation, so Elizabeth and I are filling in for him while he is gone. Besides the bruises I have from all the flying paper airplanes, it went really well. I forgot how nice it was to have children actually understand you when you give instruction.

Sunday night, I tackled Lily's cage. I think she liked swimming in her own "dung" and is a little perturbed with me at the moment since she has to rebuild her nest. But it sure does look and smell much better in her vicinity. Goal #2 finishee.

Monday was Korea's Memorial Day.
this of course meant NO SCHOOL! Again, I didn't really have any plans. One of my friends was wanting a day at home and a few of my other friends are visiting the States for a couple months. But I managed to fill it up, after all, I still had one more goal to accomplish. So, I started out the day by going over to my friend Melanie's house to do this crazy awesome work out video. It was pretty intense and staring at these toned, beautiful, tanned, busty Californians just gives you that much more motivation! After that, I decided that I wanted to start my new book, "The Help," while simultaneously soaking up the sun so I could further resemble those workout video women ;) So, I went back to the same bike trail I had been to the day before and found this perfect spot. I expect to do this at least 5 or 6 more times before my time here is up.

I planted myself here for about 2 1/2 hours and have a little sunburnt nose to prove it :) But the funniest thing happened to me on my way to this spot. I was riding through town and this man chased me down. "Yogee oh" which means like, "I'm here!" So I turned around and I see this man panting, so I stopped and he says, "Do you speak Korean?" And I said, "no" so he says, "that's ok. I am a photo artist. Can you come to my studio and I can take your picture?" I think he noticed my surprise and hesitation so he further explained that he is trying to capture the image of Gunsan for a project he is doing for the city. He even showed me a picture of this little studio and said "Can you come here at 3?" I thought about it for a minute because it probably would have made for a good blog story, but I decided against it, not that I didn't trust him, but I just thought I looked terrible and I really wanted to start my book and ok, I thought it was slightly creepy. But I did give him my email address so something still could come of it, but really, do I properly represent the city of Gunsan, South Korea? However, maybe he saw this picture from my facebook and noticed the preciseness of my Asian peace sign.


And on second thought, maybe I don't need to update my resume since all I seem to need is this moneymaker (pointing to face) ;) ...I'm totally kidding.

Nothing too exciting happened while I was reading by the river, but a man did stop and ask me where I lived in Gunsan. Again, I sort of lied due to the potential creepiness of the question. After reading, I noticed some movement in the water. So I went down to look at it and there were probably about 50 little crabs sunbathing and playing some form of "king of the hill." It was pretty neat, and I really wish my camera would have had battery, but no worries, I'll go back again soon.

I left the reading spot and headed back into town. There are many cafes, so I've decided I'm going to visit as many of them as I can while I try to learn how to read in Korean. However, on this particular cafe visit, I decided I really should accomplish goal #3 and update that resume. So, after spending a few hours updating and fighting with the margins, I was able to update it. Therefore, I met all my goals for this long weekend and had a few interesting stories to go along with them. Success!

Hope you had a wonderful week and that you are able to do something fun and relaxing during Summer 2011! Someone go to the drive in for me :)

I leave you with this picture of my 7 oclock class and I on our field trip to Paris ;)