Costco Heaven and more!

Posted by Nicole in December 2, 2011

Good Afternoon !   This week has just flown by and it’s already Friday again! Last weekend, I had a quiet Friday night. Met up with some friends (Phillipa, Daniel, Therse, & Kerry) downtown for dinner. We ate a delicious Korean Italian restaurant! I was in a pizza mood so got a veggie pizza and it was delish. Then we went bowling afterwards. I was feeling a little tired so decided to catch the bus home and save up my money for the Costco trip!

Saturday morning I did a little house work and cleaning. Crazy how messy my little apartment can get when I neglect it and just sleep in it for a week. Then I decided to run a load of laundry so it would be dry when I got home on Sunday. Only ran into a little problem, to meet up with friends in Daegu I was supposed to leave my house by 11… I put the wash in around 930, usually it takes about an hour. So 1045 comes around and its just about to start another rinse cycle, i try to figure out which button is the spin, the drain that water and just dry things… as I push the button water starts filling the basin again… oyee. So I turn it off, and just hang things sopping wet in the wash room, since its not a part of my house and it wouldn’t matter if the floor was wet.. Well got home sunday and nothing was dry.. Hung things around my house and they dried, but some things smelled. So tried again on Monday. Nicole : 0 Washer: 1

Anyways, headed on my way after the laundry disaster. And becoming a pro at Daegu. I got off the bus, walked to the subway station without looking at my phone! Then figured out where my friends were and met up with them, easy peasy now days. Goodness I remember when I was sooo confused about everything and where to go. Now its like second nature. My friends were at a traditional market, shopping for winter clothes. There were sooo many people it was so hard to get around. The little Korean ladies just push their way around and get through. So it can get a little old, also inside the building was sooo warm and we had so many layers on trying to stay warm outside.

After the market we went downtown and met up with some more friends for a delicious lunch.. not sure how to explain it. But it was meat and stuff on a frying pan at our table, then after you eat the meat and mix of veggies. they make fried rice for you. It was a little spicy but very delicious. All for like 5 bucks. After that we hung out downtown and did a little shopping. My ladies from South Africa really don’t have any warm clothes because its kinda similar to AZ but warmer. They finally found coats, we headed back to Stephs, hung out and chatted for a while. Then headed to the bowling alley near Stephs house. It was a good time, we brought our drinks in and had a great time. I didn’t do too shabby, but fingers were a bit tired from bowling two nights in a row!

After bowling we headed to a Korean restaurant for some Makoli, or rice wine at a korean restaurant.  After that we headed downtown to meet up with some other friends. The whole night I had been drinking my favorite drink here, Soju and aloe water. (Aloe water might sound strange but it is the most delicious drink ever, so obsessed with it and apparently it makes you have really good skin? But it tastes sweet, and has chewy chunks of aloe in it) I will be bringing tons home with me, don’t worry. You can try it. Anyways tonight was the first night I have to admit that the Soju caught up with me. I was really tired and a mess haha. OOPS! Marlene & I headed back to Stephs around 2 and got a nice night of sleep.

In the morning we had a silly morning chatting about the occurrences of the night. Then getting ready to head to Costco! The taxi driver didn’t know where we were pointing out on the map when I showed him costco. We had to call the help line to help the taxi tell him where to go.  Once we got there we had to get some pizzza. A huge pizza was like 1o bucks just like it is in the states! Then after that we started our shopping adventure. There were sooo many people all over the place. But i was def willing to be patient to sit through it. There were so many great finds, if only I wanted to spend tons of money, and haul it all back with me on buses and taxis.  I ended up buying crasins, tampons woooo, pasta, peanut butter, oatmeal, a lent roller, a warm fuzzy pink jacket, a fuzzy purple blanket, celery, and a huge bag of individually wrapped chicken breasts. It was definitely a haul getting all of the stuff home but I managed and am so grateful now!

The school week has been rather uneventful again. My afterschool class we read the story, Little Red Riding Hood and I made a word search to go with the lessons on the 5 senses. Yesterday I had them write lines to Peanuts Cartoon Strip. They colored and figured out which picture they thought should go first and then colored the pictures. They are not quite finished with them but they turned out very cute.

The weather the end of this week has been ridic. Raining constantly, very windy, and cold. Before the rain it was a bit warmer which was such a nice change. But the rain has cooled things down, and apparently brought snow to the northern part of  South Korea. So glad i’m really far down south!

At orientation they said we would probably attend a wedding in Korea, unfortunately this hasn’t happened yet. I attended a Korean Funeral on wednesday. It was a very interesting experience. The Fourth Grade teacher had been sick for a few months now. They had two different permanent subs. One was this very cute old man who was always happy. The next one was sooo strict, the students would always come up to me complaining about how mean he was.  Their original teacher passed away on Tuesday night, the funeral was held Wednesday. I’ve only been to one funeral in my life and i was 7 I think so I don’t really remember much about my great grandma’s funeral but we all sat in the lobby of the hospital. i played on my phone because no one was translating for me. Then we walked into this one room of the basement of the hospital, and a bunch of teachers crowded into the room. Kneeled down on their hands and knees, did this about 5 times.. similar to what I did at the first temple I went to at orientation. The sons of the teacher were leading the bowing, kneeling. The teacher was only 57 years old and died of cancer. I’m not sure how old the sons were but they couldn’t have been a whole lot older then me. Then they walked out of the room and all sat on the floor for food.  The sister of the teacher came over and thanked us for being here and said eat this feast, for its my fathers last one given to you, or something similar to that. They had oranges, tomatoes, rice cake, almonds, korean spicy soup, rice, pork, and a few other traditional korean side dishes. Along with soju, beer, water, tea, and soda to drink.

It’s becoming a bit of a pet peeve when Koreans tell me that i’m good at using my chopsticks. I know that i use them in correctly and inefficiently but thats what works for me.. I literally learned how to hold them a month before leaving so I don’t have a problem with being bad at it… these people have used them since they started eating food. Some of the teachers said that to me at the dinner so I was annoyed but told them, basically what I just wrote, in a nice simple way!

After eating we all just got up and left.. They didn’t say anything during the ceremony just the bows.

The new kids were all freaking out the next day when they got their new permanent teacher. Literally every 4th grade student was coming up to me saying Nicole teacher, new teacher is very very handsome. He is very very tall. He is 180 cm tall. He is single..  It was soo funny. He has kind of a Justin Bieber style hair cut of Korea, and I don’t really find him that attractive. But this is the most excited I think i’ve ever seen some of these kids.  They are very happy to have a new young teacher who is not mean. Apparently the new teacher is moving to an apartment near mine.

My youtube account will only suggest ESL songs for me now.. thats a little sad but I guess life when you spend hours upon hours researching the best song about teaching the Colors or other things. haha

Have a wonderful and blessed weekend! Miss you all very much! xoxo

Nicole