So, my sad little LiveJournal has been receiving copious amounts of spam recently. The easiest way to get rid of it is to limit comments and viewing to people who are LiveJournal members...which is not too many of my readers. I've decided to abandon ship, and will now be posting at http://nomadkate.blogspot.com . I hope you'll join me!

In order to avoid wallowing (in self-pity, and also, crapulence) I will skip the stories about the fact that I have been told that I am allergic to Korea (seriously). Apparently, I'm not supposed to go outside, or eat meat. Awesome.

Instead, I have decided to let my readers (both of you) engage in some more interactive blogging. This first game I call "Guess Which One Kate Ate!". If you've ever met me, it should be a pretty simple warm-up. Without further ado, Guess Which One Kate Ate (both are allegedly food)!

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OR

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I also have some pictures below that are copied various textbooks I teach from. Our books are not bad (compared to other ones I've seen!), but sometimes they make me giggle like crazy. So readers, you are hereby challenged with imagining the context for the images below (and no, the last one is not a massacre in Candy Land. I checked).

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Oh, and no context for this one, just proof that there is still some work to be done, as this was un-ironically posted in my school:

...for the radio silence. I had terrible internetz for a while (I tried to upload a video to Facebook and was told it would take 27 hours. Um...NO.), and I've been super busy. Lots to update, but to tide both of my readers over, below is a picture of my new coffee table:





Yes, that's Jesus. It says "the Lord is my shepherd..." in both English and Korean. No, I didn't purchase this item. One of my coworkers (ironically named Mary) had it in her apartment, but apparently his eyes followed her. Whilst not technically from the garbage party, I feel this warrants at least 5 I Rock Korea points.

...and not just by the cutie who sells me pastry each morning at Paris Baguette (more on that later).

I've found that living abroad, particularly with the language chasm, it is really easy to get hung up on what is hard, and what doesn't work. The food you can't find, the places you can't navigate, the cultural differences that seem insurmountable. I am working really hard to be as positive as possible, and this week, I've found myself charmed by a couple of uniquely Korean experiences.

The first was a t-shirt one of my students wore today that read "DJSuperstar StreetCred". Awesome.

The second situation took place on Friday night. I was out with friends, and at 3:30 a.m. we went looking for a noraebang. We ended up having to go to more than one, because the first one was FULL. And had a LINE. AT 3:30 IN THE MORNING. Right on, Korea. Right on.

The last and possibly most charming is in the picture below. I adore the garbage party, but now that I live in a building rather than an apartment complex, the party is greatly reduced in both size and awesomeness. I noticed a plastic mannequin in the garbage, and casually mentioned it to one of my co-workers. She was immediately interested (she claims she will use it to fit the socks she knits. I think she just wanted the I Rock Korea points). By the time we got down there, someone had taken just the top half. So the legs (named Katrina) are living in her (very small) apartment. We plan to take some very silly pictures later. I kinda want to know what happened to the top half though...

Harsh, Korea. Harsh.

...we're gonna rock, we're gonna roll, we're gonna bop, we're gonna bowl!

{5 I Rock Korea points to the first person who can identify the reference!}

As I mentioned in my last post, I may have accidentally joined a bowling league here in Incheon. It has been suggested to me that this isn't actually something you can do ACCIDENTALLY, but I disagree.

One of the previous foreign teachers somehow discovered a bowling alley less than 10 minutes from our apartment building. The details of how or why this person found the place or decided this would be a good group activity have been lost to the annals of time, but the result is that a large group of teachers from both our school, and our sister school (about 40 minutes away) meet up at the bowling alley every Thursday night for some beer and some bowling.

It is probably at this juncture that I should point out that I am a lousy, lousy bowler. Prior to coming to Korea, I had been ten pin bowling ONCE, in HIGH SCHOOL (now more than 10 years ago!) and on that illustrious occasion, I scored 12 points. Twelve. For the ENTIRE game. The first time I tried bowling here, one of my co-workers asked if I was a bowling shark, thinking that perhaps I had scored so badly on purpose, in order to bet on the subsequent game (Set? Match? Test?) and scoop the contents of the betting pool. I was forced to admit that no, my craptacular performance was in fact entirely indicative of my bowling skills. We were both embarrassed by the exchange.

All of that being said, the bowling business has been kind of fun. I'm not the worst at it (!!!!), to such a degree that all of us in Remedial Bowling 101 have our own lane, far away from the serious, superstitious coworkers that are betting on the outcome. However, even our high rollers have NUTHIN on the Korean bowlers that we share the alley with.

I'm not sure why I was surprised, but the bowlers at the alley are S-E-R-I-O-U-S about their bowling! I supposed I had assumed that bowling (in all of its birthday party and ESPN-3 glory) was such a North American thing. To see so many Koreans enjoying it, being good at it, and possessing all of the STUFF (skorts, personalized shirts, their own bowling shoes and some sort of weird metallic Transformers-esque wrist brace thingy, as evidenced by my terrible stealth picture below).




A perfect example of this took place on Thursday. It was St Patrick's Day, and there MAY have been more beer than usual involved in the bowling festivities. One of the bedazzled, wrist brace guys in the lane next to me threw (rolled? Hit? Scored?) seven strikes in a row. One of my fellow Remedial Bowlers didn't even put her beer down before chucking (tossing? Playing? Passing?) the ball down the alley in a spectacularly desultory fashion. She scored zero. He performed a complicated handshake with the woman wearing the skort.

...or actually, Friday February 27th. I left Toronto on a direct flight on Thursday, February 26th and arrived in Korea on Saturday, February 28th, which meant that Friday, February 27th didn't occur for me. I hope you all had a good one on my behalf.

The Crazy Korean Garbage Kitty and I have returned to the land of his forefathers, and are settling into our home for the next 12 months. It's not too big, but it will be totally sufficient for a year. Also, having a too small, undecorated place gives me further incentive to spent little time there, and more time out doing things in Korea. Wembley is less impressed, having managed to lock himself in the bathroom several times while I've been at work, causing him to sit in the dark, cursing his continued lack of opposable thumbs while spreading my various toiletries all over the floor as a form of punishment for my lack of sympathy for my plight. Other than this apparent crime again feline rights, his trip across the planet was uneventful, if not inexpensive.

I'm living in Incheon this time, which is nearly as far west of Seoul as my previous place was East. The school I'm working at has 14 foreign teachers, providing a nearly endless supply of playmates to explore the city with. However, I encountered a sad truth when I got here; when compared to all of the other teachers, I AM OLD. OLD!! Even BEFORE The Birthday That Shall Not Be Named takes place this summer! While I am committed to having more fun than I have been having recently, I am also not in any way feeling that I have to keep up with the kids. Some food, some sojitos and some fun, is totally my new MO; getting home when it is already light AGAIN, having given my liver a terrific workout is less so.

It's a little strange being back in Korea; some things are very much same-same (which is comforting), while other things are TOTALLY different. A prime example of that is the fact that while something crazy like 95% of urban Korean homes have high speed internet, I am doing my part to keep this number from reaching 100% and do NOT yet have internet or a phone at home; it's remarkably inconvenient, and very different from my previous situation where the owner took care of all these things for us. I'm sure it will all get resolved shortly, and I'll be able to rejoin the world of Those Who Are Able to Communicate.

More soon (including details about the fact that people here may still watch Chip & Dale: Rescue Rangers, and the fact that I might have accidentally joined a bowling league), but I mostly wanted to let everyone know that I am alive and well, not precisely IGNORING the emails and facebook messages I have received, and will be better able to communicate soon.

At the risk of sounding like a Krazy Kat Lady, I have to briefly report on my orange and white roommate. To start off, I recognize that my cat is a weird, weird, dude. This pink fingernailed Korean garbage kitty is a few French fries short of a happy meal. I know that, and most of the time, I'm OK with it. I deal with the situational bulimia, the twice-daily Crazy Time and the swinging-like-Tarzan from the curtains. However, it has become clear that when the going gets tough, Wembley is probably hiding under the couch. Quite simply, he cannot keep calm and carry on.

There was an Incident not that long ago with the vacuum. Wembley can't cope with the vacuum, but instead of hiding he ran around, jumped over the vacuum, jumped onto the stove, tried to jump to the top of the fridge, grabbed a glass baking pan by mistake, and somehow managed to beat the glass pan to the floor. He then scrabbled around like a cartoon character (legs churning without generating any forward movement like the roadrunner) before shooting off and down the stairs. Awesome.

Last night, the smoke detector went off (don't ask). Wembley's eyes got huge and he started to spin in circles in the middle of the floor whilst howling. This continued until I managed to get the batteries out of the stupid alarm. Apparently, Wembley is NOT the one you want around in an emergency.

...wanderlusty that is.

I've been plagued by itchy feet of late. I will be going on vacation in March, to Spain & Morocco with my brother, and I'm looking forward to it, but I don't think it is either contributing to or likely to cure my current wanderlust.

When I was in school, everything was broken into years. Anything particularly heinous (like gym, or calculus) could be counted down (a technique I highly recommend). The same thing applied when I was in Korea, counting down to various trips and traveling opportunities, and counting down the number of kindergarten classes left (on par with gym or calculus, even on a good day). However, living the life of a grown up with a full time job with no specific expiry date, not measured one year at a time, is proving difficult. I find that I want some ELSE, possibly because there is no expiry date.

Robin posted a link awhile ago about sleeping in airports, and while that is something I am not particularly wanting to do (though I will likely be dragging out the old blue backpack for one final hostel-and-train-and-traveling-on-the-cheap extravaganza), I WOULD like to be this guy: http://www.wherethehellismatt.com/, except maybe for the dancing (if I could find a sponsor to pay for me to stand in front of things eating crepes and drinking Fanta, I would be set). It looks awesome, doesn't it? Traveling, blogging and writing about awesome places? I'd love to do that...maybe for a year.

…And is perfectly OK with it.

Those of you that know me, know that I’m not a fan of Christmas, (or Hallowe’en, or Valentine’s Day. I am a fan of my birthday {not a national holiday YET} and International Talk Like A Pirate Day, and that’s about it). I don’t mind the eating good food and the family, but I hate the shopping, and the parking, and the malls with a fiery passion. Above all, I HATE THE MUSIC. I don’t care who was kissing Santa Claus last night, or got run over by a reindeer. I JUST DON’T. I particularly hate the fact that retailers put out the decorations and start the music the day after Hallowe’en; maybe it encourages other people to enter a shopping frenzy and stimulate the economy, but it just makes me pa rum pum pum pum my way into an awful mood. I also died a little inside when it became clear that EVERYONE has a Christmas album. Is it really necessary to have so many versions of the same song? Between the coke-fiend issue and their Christmas album, I’m a little sad for the Barenaked Ladies.

I feel it’s appropriate here, and I’m comfortable saying it: bah, flipping humbug.