Hace frio

Hello friends. I am writing this blog huddled on my floor, floor heating in Korea is awesome, and trying not to think about my freezing trek into the Arctic aka Seoul tomorrow morning. I know I always complain about the weather in my blog (a sign that I'm quickly assimilating into a boring adult) but it still blows my mind everyday. In my happy, delusional days of California glory I actually considered 5 degrees C cold. Right now, I can't wait for it to get that warm again! Do you know what -10 feels like??? It feels like little elves are shooting ice darts at your face at 70 mph. So much for trying to look presentable for work. Today I got a glimpse of myself in the elevator mirror and what I saw was a crazed banshee staring back at me through a mismatched combination of hats, scarves and jackets.

The holidays are approaching which means more people are leaving. Two of my good friends are leaving within the next three weeks. It has been a rotating door of people over here, everyone is always coming and going. But I do feel confidant that I will see the important people that I've met over here again in the future, and I do have excuses to go all over the world to visit amigos.

I finished my Discover Spanish podcasts and I've been searching around for a new one. I was bored so I googled "how long does it take to learn a language". According to VERY credible websites (shrug) it takes 720 hours to be a "functional" level. Hmmm... 720. I giddily logged in my hours and.... it came to about six and a half. I was starting to feel disheartened until I thought, oh, why don't I look up spanish words for something that I'm independently interested in? Michael Cera, travel, beer? I settled on beer and it worked. (At a bar) Quieres una botella de Hoegaarden por favor... (ten minutes later) otra cervaza por favor (ten minutes later) hmmm Quieres vodka y agua tonica.... un doble! (ten minutes later) aye, mi cabeza!! por que??

(*Side note: One of the reasons that I didn't want an ipod is because I didn't want to get obsessed/addicted to it, and that is exactly what happened. A couple days ago I misplaced my ipod, I was about 99.9% sure that it was in my house but it wasn't in any of my "obvious" places. At first I distractedly looked around for it, then the irritation grew, which quickly evolved into dread, until finally I was frantically ripping my room apart in an internal panic convincing myself that somehow someone had broken into my apartment and taken it. Of course, in typical Nadja fashion, it was balled up in my top blanket. When I shook my blankets to look for it, it was happily wedged in between and stayed hidden for about 24 painful hours)