A Week of Goodbyes and I Told You So's...

Hey everyone out there that reads my blog, it's tuesday night and though I'm quite comfy in my new set of sheets (thanks mom) I must admit I'm feeling a little down. The past week has been a bit rough, I'm facing some of those cultural differences and frustrations that I was warned about, and I'm hitting it right on the 8-12 week mark, geeze do I have to be so predictable? Stupid UCLA study abroad homesickness chart making me feel like a statistic instead of an individual mutter mutter...I don't really want to get into it on a public blog, but lets just say I'm going through the "makes you stronger" part of my experience.
I also had to say goodbye to two good friends in a 24 hour period. My friend and coworker Sean left on monday. Remember the guy that I wrote about who helped me out at the club when the creepers were creepin? Yeah, he's gone back to the land of Bogans and Utes... don't get the reference? Here's an easier one, their country's stereotype tell's his "mate" to play "knifey spoony"... He's back in Australia. We all gathered for an epic night on Saturday, in which most of my friends did incriminating things that I'd love to write about but.. you know... the whole public blog thing, but I can say it was a good night and a nice send off for him. He was one of the main people that I spent time with so I'm sad he's gone.
Then today my friend HyunDok came to Sinchon to have a final lunch with Tyler and I before he leaves for the US indefinitely. He's a really nice guy and I wish I had had more time to get to know him. After we ate we walked around Ewha and had some coffee. During our final chat I had an experience that I don't think I'll ever forget. We were walking along the street, I was on the side with the cars and he was on the inside and he switched spots with me.
He started to explain to me,"In Korea, when men and women are walking, the man should walk on the outside, next to the cars, because it's safer-" No sooner had the words escaped his mouth, when I was startled with a loud sound, I heard the most terrible crash. I looked and about 75-100 ft in front of us a motorcycle was flipping over in the air and crashing into oncoming traffic. I just gasped and froze. A taxi had rammed into the motorcycle and it had hit a wall and then flipped over. I started looking for the person and all I could see was a helmet laying far away from the crash.
HyunDok and I walked over and the man was laying in the street in the most unnatural position and I almost started crying. I was sure he wasn't alive. The taxi driver got out of the car and checked on the man, but he didn't move. Everything happened so fast, we waited for the police to come and finally the man started moving around. I was so shaken up. HyunDok even went into oncoming traffic to retrieve the man's helmet. He was really calm but my nerves were flying all over the place, and when we were walking home and got to the corner a motorcycle drove by and I irrationally grabbed HyunDok's arm (the motorcycle was a good five feet away from him), and he looked at me and asked quite nonchalantly, "haven't you seen something like that before?" No, no and I would have liked to keep it that way. He went on to explain that due to the dangerous driving in Korea, accidents like that happen all the time.
It's been a strange week and I'd like things to go back to the way they were. But even during these rough times I still have great friends. Tyler even drew me a nice comic that had a silly picture of me with stink lines radiating off my head, with the caption: Nadja Smells. Awww. It did make me laugh though. It's a Simpson's reference by the way... hopefully I'm a little more Annie-esk in the next entry.

yellow dust!

A billboard on the building across the street from my office is telling me to "enjoy temptation" with a picture of a tantalizing slice of pizza. Yeah right, you media serpent, you can't trick me into eating the forbidden pizza, it will open my eyes to a world I don't want to know... a world with, with... sweet pizza! sweet garlic bread! Nooo! I want to go back to the garden of garlic and salty Italian food! But I can't...
Today I didn't start work until 8:30 am (my usual starting time is 7:00am) and I had a rare night of eight hours straight of sleep. I did wake with a start at my standard waking time of 5:30 (yep, those dodged 8am classes that I recoiled from are starting to seem like a piece of cake these days) only to happily close my eyes for an additional hour and a half. I have a nice burst of energy today and I even tried this morning. Gots myself lookin' all purdy.
This past weekend I had my first encounter with the dreaded yellow dust (dust that comes over from China). The yellow dust comes in SK during the spring months and sits in the air like an eerie yellow mist, and yes I finally caved and I have a surgical mask. The weather has been pretty bad this year. Not only has winter decided to stick it's uninvited ass around for a bit longer (Screw you groundhog!) but instead of getting the beautiful spring sun, we instead get her ugly sister Yellowdustilina. Why are the pleasant months always the ones that seem to get shafted? Why is spring two weeks but winter is five months?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Asian_Dust
Luckily the dust had cleared by Saturday night and I was able to see Frida and some of my Korea friends who are also from California. We went to this cute little basement bar where there is an hourly charge of 2,000 won, but then the drinks are about 2,000-3,000 won each. Basically an insanely good deal. It was a nice night out in Sinchon.
On Sunday the weather was much, much better and Tyler and I went to go meet another tutor and their student who is moving to the US. We had a going away party for him at Castle Praha, and we stayed for a LONG time. Er... five hours? But it was such fun, it didn't seem that long at all. I met someone for a potential language exchange after I finish my April classes. yay. I also got to skype with a lot of people from back home which was really fun. I have some awesome friends :)

Another Friday at the Office

I'm in my office and I just had the best overheard-at-the-office moment. My coworkers are talking about "kiddy fiddlers" or as I know them, pedophiles, and Tyler said that a priest in his area was arrested for that. To which David replied, "there was one at my school as well. He never bothered me even though I was a really cute kid!" Oh, David, he's one of the funniest people I've ever met. Gotta love the English sense of humor.
It's another TGIF, and I'm about to start a nonwork weekend. Two.Whole.Days.Of.Freedom. And how will I use my precious, precious time? I'll go to three museums, walk up the Yonsei mountain, take the train out of the city and then pratice for the 10k I signed up for...you were reading that as sarcastic narrative right? I see much sleep in my near, near future.
Today will be quite productive though, I'm signing up for Korean classes for next month. Everyday from 12-2pm. Yikes. But I've been here almost three months and learned hardly any korean, who would have thought that only speaking english would result in not learning korean? April will be rough with the classes, but it's only a month and I'll be taking the classes with Kathy and Mark.
I hope everyone had a good St. Paddy's day. I went out and had some "green" beer at Beer O Clock, more of an off green. The gang enjoyed a couple pints and some fries with waaay too much mayo and then headed off to bed early. Surprisingly enough, that was the most "wild" St. Patrick's Day I've had in years, mid march finals week in not inducive to Irish style drinking, thanks UCD!
I'll write more after this weekend, which WILL be exciting

Why is it still snowing?

California dreaming on such a winters day... So after a couple glorious days of warm weather and sunshine (one day I even wore a shortsleeve shirt without a jacket, whhhaaaa??) the sun yelled, "haha, just kidding!" and flew up behind the clouds and grey skies and cold temperature ensued. Not cool. If it had stayed at a constant cold spell, I would have just sucked it up, but the teasing bits of sun giving me false hope is just rude. Two days ago we had a mini snow storm. As you know, because you know me, I'm from California and we don't do snowstorms so guess my surprise when I was caught outside during the worst of it.
Tyler and I were coming back from work and he decided to stop at the health antonym, the root of obesity, the shrine of regret... okay, maybe I got a McDonald's dinner too... don't judge me! I've already judged myself enough. Anyway, after we left McFatty's, the snow was still falling and I had my handy umbrella out. We carefully walked up the street to avoid repeat falls while the wind started to pick up. Great. We started walking faster when all of a sudden multiple, unmerciless gusts of wind beat us from every direction. My umbrella fought a short, pitiful fight before crumpling under the wind's strength. The snow was coming down too hard and too fast so I couldn't see and I just continued to blindly move forward, with people and wind bumping me from every side.
Then another gust of wind hit down like a tidal wave and women started screaming! I had no perception of where Tyler was and the limp skirt that was formally my umbrella directed me right into (like, inside) of a tent! Oops.
Luckily, this was only about fifteen seconds, but boy... those were a long fifteen seconds. After the winds subsided and the people started to move I heard Tyler calling my name and we made it home safe and sound. The Micky Ds was cold when we ate it, but I deserved it after that scary walk!

Seoul Microbrewery Challenge

Sitting in my new office with the sunshine pouring in my window and some free time inspired me to do some further research on the Seoul microbrewery quest. I've been eagerly awaiting the Korean Herald's follow up article on microbreweries north of the Han river ever since I read the first one about the southern microbreweries. http://www.koreaherald.co.kr/NEWKHSITE/data/html_dir/2010/01/29/201001290056.asp I've already knocked two of the breweries off my list, Platinum and Castle Praha. I liked Castle Praha a lot, the atmosphere was nice, the beer was good and the staff was great and spoke perfect english. They only had three beers on tap, but all three of them were good and their flight deal is pretty good: 10 beers for 35,000 won, which can be split among multiple people or not shared for the more ambitious types. Platinum had a bigger selection but the beers just weren't good. I prefer quality to quantity. While I was researching, combing through the dismal web results for "seoul microbreweries" I was surprised to find review after review praising Platinum. The brewery has two locations and I've only been to one, but I would be pretty shocked if the quality of beer differed that drastically from one restaurant to the next. I'm determined that there is a better brewery out there and I'm going to find it.
Since I have 40 weeks to go before the end of my contract I want to try all the microbreweries on the Korean Herald list, as well as hopefully finding a couple gems of my own to contribute to the tiresome search for a perfect pint in Seoul. I'm tired of settling for Cass and I'm not willing to pay 13,ooo won for a pint of Guiness so I'll search, sample and update whenever I find something good and if anyone else knows a good direction to point me in, let me know. Cheers.