Saturday part 1: Indian food and Busan Tower

** The next 2 posts are missing some pictures because I am waiting for some good ones from other people. But I decided to go ahead and post them, then add another post with the missing pictures later. **

On Saturday mid-morning, a series of texts went out to the group planning to go to Busan debating on if we should go, what we were going to do etc. because it was cold. The majority decided we still wanted to go but would potentially do indoor things instead. Jackie, our organizer, likes surprises, so she planned out the day and didn't really tell us what we were going to do.

A group of 7 of us met at the bus terminal shortly after noon, got tickets and rode the bus to Busan. It was packed and the guy next to me fell asleep and snored on and off during the trip. It was quick until we got close to the city where we sat in traffic for a bit. When we got to the terminal, we dropped into Diaso so Jackie could get a few things. We attempted to meet up with one of her friends, but directions got misinterpreted and we ended up at 2 different restaurants. Everyone was hungry so we decided to just meet up later.

We went to an Indian place called Bombay Spices. They had only been open for 10 days, although a different Indian restaurant was there right before. Oh well. Our waitress, whose name was Linda, was super sweet. She's a student at Silla University in Busan. She's from China and speaks Korean and English as well. She actually had to leave after taking our order to teach Korean to other Chinese students. Apparently there are now students from 40 some-odd countries in her department.

The starting 7 - Todd, Meg, me, Jackie, Linda (our waitress from China), Amanda, Kathryn, Laura

We ordered a ton of food, sort of by accident, and it was slow in getting to us because there is only 1 chef in the back. It was decent though. I had chicken takki, which is spiced rubbed and grilled, naan bread and I split samosas with Amanda, a newish girl who I met on the street about a week ago. The naan was really good, the rest was average.

My lunch - Naan and chicken takki (with pickled onions)

After lunch, we found Jackie's friend Conrad and his mom who is visiting. We all hopped on the subway and went closer to the downtown area. This is where we started a running joke about how it felt like we were little kids on a field trip because every time we got off the subway to transfer or leave, someone counted to make sure everyone was there. Then we walked for a bit and went up a series of escalators that were all under arbors of lights. It was very pretty but the pictures don't capture it right.

It looks like I don't have a neck because I have on a huge scarf and am shrugging my shoulders.

Light statue at the bottom of the steps when you get off the escalators

At the top was Jackie's surprise destination: Busan Tower. The tower is in the middle of a "park" called Yongdu-san Park. This translates to Dragon's Head Mountain because the surrounding mountains look like a dragon rising from the water (apparently - I didn't see it).

The tower and a statute of Yi Sun Shin (the inventor of turtle ships and a brave warrior) and the bell pavilion from the base area

Dragon statue at the bottom of the tower

Bell

Now, most of you know my (ir)rational fear of tall buildings, so this wasn't high on my list of things to do. But I decided to suck it up and not say anything. I'm glad I made that decision because even though I had a couple of queasy moments, most of it was fine.At the base of the tower, Jackie told us to get the combination ticket. It was only 5000 won so none of us complained about that. Then we went into the tower. There was a quilt exhibition and some of them were really cool.

This is where you go into the tower

One of my favorite quilts - although to me it looks more like early American life than Korean. I'm pretty sure they never churned butter here.

Another fav - this was even more colorful in person

Another newish girl named Meg and I got cut off from the group because we didn't fit in the same elevator and had to wait. The elevator shows you how high you're going up and I had a brief drop stomach moment when the doors opened. Luckily, the design of the building made me comfortable. I think it's also because there are no outdoor platforms on that tower. The tower was built both for observation and as a television tower. It is 120m tall and was completed in 1973.

View of downtown Nampo-dong from the tower

View of the harbor

Tiles all along the wall inside the tower

North side of the tower

After we walked around the observation area, we took the elevator back down into the gift shop area where we found out the second part of our ticket: an exhibition of musical instruments from around the world. I have no idea if that is a permanent or temporary piece, but it was still fun to see. The bottom floor has stringed instruments and some wind instruments. It is amazing to me that people have basically developed the same instruments (although obviously slightly different) no matter which continent they're on. Every culture has some form of violin, guitar, flute, maraca and drum.

Cellos and nutcrackers

Guitars and the like from around the world

The upper level has all the percussion instruments which you are allowed to play (well some of them). It was fun getting to bang on drums, even though the ones at the Seoul drum festival were a little better.

Me and some giant drums. The one in the center behind me looks like it was made out of bark and skins.

This is a slit drum...and a person

Meg played drums with the curator

This picture should be horizontal, but you get the picture. It's a Cambodian bell ring. It had a very beautiful sound.

Here are some colorful Zambian maracas

The the oddest instrument to me, the scissors. I didn't know I was playing an instrument for years! These are also huge.

I don't remember what this was called. It was fun to play though. The gourds made a cool plonking sound.

When we left the museum, we met up with another group of Jinju people who decided to do other things during the day. Jackie showed us that she had bought locks for us at her Diaso stop earlier. We all signed one of three locks, then locked them together and put them on the fence. It was cute idea and I'm glad she did it.

Carolyn, Todd and I signed one lock

Me on a heart

A display of more lock around the tower plaza

After the locks and the tower, we decided to go to dinner. At this point there were 15 of us. Two decided to go back to Jinju because they had to take buses to smaller cities and didn't want to risk getting stuck. So the 13 of us when to a Thai place and that's where part 2 begins...

Vacation

So my winter vacation was the Wednesday - Friday after Christmas. This is more than some hagwon people get, so I'm ok with it.

On Wednesday I did nothing and it was wonderful. I started the sixth season of Dexter, watched Flight and The Five-year Engagement. I skyped with my brother (very briefly) and my mom. I made spaghetti. That was about it.

On Thursday, I slept in, then went shopping for some birthday presents and cards and for some more things for my sister's Christmas present (yes I realize it's late, but I still can't figure out what to really get her). I opened a present from my mom that I had forgotten about when I got home. After that I went to Brandon and Jamie's house. They invited some people over for burritos and Catan. I met a new to Jinju but old to Korea couple who were very nice. After I got home from that, I wrote some belated Christmas and birthday cards and watched Harry Potter. Then I watched some more Dexter episodes.

Over the night it snowed. And I mean it really snowed - 7-8 inches worth. That is crazy unheard of for Jinju. Many schools, especially ones out in the country, were closed because buses couldn't get out there. Some of the schools closer in the city went half day. By mid-day the snow was cleared from the main roads, but the side streets were still covered. A lot of after school programs still had classes even though regular school was canceled - such is the life of a hagwoner.

Snow along the river late afternoon. Picture stolen from Jackie :)

I went out around 4ish and went to a coffee shop and read for awhile. Josh met me there, then we went out for dinner. After dinner we looked at a couple of different local stores to see if he could find a 3-prong adapter. We couldn't. I'm sure there are some in the city at a bigger electronic store, but we didn't feel like trying to find one. Instead, we walked to Josh's school. He has a key to the school and his office where he left an adapter. The stairs were quite scary even though what his students did all day was clear the steps! While we were inside, a janitor/night watchman of sorts stopped us on our way out. I guess he wasn't expecting anyone to be there (although there were some students watching tv). He couldn't speak English and said something to us. Josh waved his keys, said "teacher" in Korean and we just walked right by. It was one of those "only in Korea" moments. Then we walked down the stairs which was even scarier, but luckily we went slow and neither of us fell. We walked back into town the long way to avoid more stairs and went to another coffee shop where we talked for 5 more hours. Then I went home and ate some almond M&Ms. They were good.

Street outside my apartment at midnight...still covered!

Same view but with the flash - that's how foggy it was. Luckily I don't have to walk far.

My vacation wasn't as productive as I had planned, but then again most things haven't been that way lately. Still, I went outside, met some people and got some reading done, so at least I did something! Tomorrow I'm supposed to go to Busan with a group of people, but it might get canceled due to weather. I hope it doesn't because I'm excited about the reason we're going (I'll tell you in the next post...maybe).

We wish you a Merry Christmas

It didn't really feel like the Christmas season this year for some reason. Last year maybe I wasn't expecting any lights or decorations so every time I saw something I was excited. This time, maybe I was hoping for more decorations other than the coffee shops and churches.

On Friday, I brought my cookies to school and the kids seemed to like them, so I'm glad I tried at least. My co-worker Lucy brought all the teachers Roti buns - which I hope to write more about later because they are delicious. One of my students made me a card and a bunch gave me random candy. I stayed late because my adult class, which meets on Tuesdays and Thursdays, would be missing 3 classes (Christmas, vacation and New Year's day) and my boss asked if I would mind teaching later on Monday - I didn't.

EXL board (set up in our entryway) done up for Christmas

Inside of the card - super cute right?

Outside of the card

After that class I met Todd and his friend Jun and we walked to the church for a candle light service. It was very nice and somber - Brandon read some passages, we did some group response prayers and both sang and listened to carols. Then I stayed and talked for a bit.

After the service I went home and made this for the church party the next day. Well first I washed a sink full of dishes, then I used those dishes to make the dessert. It's very annoying to wash your dishes just to use them and put them all back in the sink! As I was cooking I was listening to Christmas carols online so it felt very Christmas-like. After cooking, I watched Lord of the Rings and went to bed.

On Christmas morning I woke up, and went to Jamie's house to meet her and Corinne to slice vegetables for sandwiches and to help make some other things for the church party. I also ate a sugar cookie that they made as one of Brandon's family traditions. Then we walked over and helped set up. There was a fairly large crowd and we had a good time eating! My dessert was good, but, as my mother would say, very rich, so you could only eat a couple of bites.

Food table - make your own sandwiches, pizza, kimbap and salad

Tilted dessert table

Top of a cheesecake

After eating we drew numbers for the gift exchange. I gave a grey scarf and gloves. My number was 9 and the present I got was a super soft fleece blanket with snowflake designs. I was happy with that, although most of the gifts this year were pretty good.

The bag mine was wrapped in - very Christmasy right?

After the gift exchange, we cleaned up a bit and Jamie and Corinne set up a "photo booth" with fake mustaches, glasses and other props. It was very cute.

IEC ladies - I've got double glasses

Elder Kang, Pastor Brandon and Deacon Jung

Hannah, Corinne and me in our formal bowties and mustaches

Then we set up the Wii on the big screen projector, but nobody really felt like playing much. We had some leftovers and made some take home sandwiches. That's when we found out that Korean people didn't really understand the process of make your own sandwich. Three different girls asked me to tell them how to properly make a sandwich. It's one of those cultural things we never think about! We helped Jamie and Brandon finish cleaning and carried stuff home with them, then I went home and opened my presents from my family while watching Die Hard on TV.

Thanks for the gifts!

I ended up staying at home, watching Elf and eating my leftover sandwich while snuggling in my bed. It's cold here! While different from last year, it was still a good Christmas. Hope all of yours were merry!

Here we go a caroling

On Sunday, after IEC's service, some of the members of our church met up with member from the Jinju church (and other foreigners who are not church affiliated) and went caroling. Krista, a new(ish) girl and I both made the comment that it was odd that the first time we caroled was in Korea, but there you go.

It wasn't quite what I was expecting, because in order to do something like this, which is considered a religious event, you have to get a permit from city hall. Simon, the pastor at Jinju church, was able to get one. But that meant, unlike the traditional caroling that I was picturing, where we walk in a big group from place to place, we all stayed on this stage-like place near a bank downtown.

We had the permit for an hour, but we were a little bit late because we couldn't find where we were supposed to go. So we stayed for about 40 minutes. It was cold and windy, but still fun. We sang 1 or 2 songs that I had never heard before and got stared at a bit from the Koreans walking by. We mainly got ignored, but it was still fun. The only bad part was that my brother and cousins tried to call me, but I couldn't hear them and then my phone died so I didn't get to talk to my family while they celebrated Christmas. Oh well, maybe I'll get to talk to them on real Christmas.

Seriously I don't know why it posts them vertically - I didn't even rotate it in editing. Bizarre. Anywho, this was our set list. We didn't sing all of them, but we did quite a few.

After singing, Krista, Keung He and I went to a coffee shop and sat and talked for a couple of hours, then we went to some stores to find Krista a small table for her apartment. We found one, then went to a bookstore. Krista wants to learn Korean and Keung He offered to do a language exchange with her. I'm going to join as well. While we were looking for a book, a lady came up to me and asked if I found my table. I didn't really know what she was talking about, then I remember that we never got Krista's table out of the back of the cab. Luckily, the cab driver was a super nice guy and had actually brought the table inside the store and left it at the check-out counter.

Me and creepy thumbs-up Santa who "dances" when you get near him. We also got accosted by a giant snowman who gave us lollipops with super long sticks.

After that, we dropped off the table at Krista's apartment, then went to dinner at a gamjatang place. It was very crowded, but the people next to us were very nice and told us what we should order. We had soup, ramyan and rice mixed with kimchi and seaweed things. I really like the soup, but could do without the seaweed rice.

Keung He took lots of random pictures while the guy was making rice at the end.

After dinner we went grocery shopping because I needed a few things for the dessert I was going to make for church (after the cookies didn't work out) and then we all went home. I like those girls and we all said it's nicer to eat with other people, so we'd have to meet up more often. All in all, it was a nice day.

Cookie Fail

This week is the last week of advent. On Tuesday, my church is having a Christmas day party. It's a sort of potluck and then we're having a gift exchange. So, I decided for my potluck offering, I would try to make peanut butter blossoms (or for those not in the know, the peanut butter cookies with the Hershey's kiss in the middle).

I decided on those because I knew I would be able to find all the ingredients here, plus they are relatively simple to make. I decided to make a trial batch on Saturday to see if I could do it. I started off by going to E-mart (the walmart of SK) to get supplies. I needed measuring spoons (check), measuring cups (could only find the kind for liquids but decided to try it), a wisk (check), spatula (decided to get a rice scoop because it was $3 cheaper) and a bowl (check). I didn't get potholders, which were on my list, but that worked out ok.

Then it was onto the ingredients. Saturdays at Emart are crazy. Lots of people, no order to where they are going, and all kinds of shoving. I try not to go there on the weekends, but I am lazy and didn't go during the week, so I didn't have much of a choice. The upstairs wasn't too bad, but then I went into the food section downstairs and it was like everyone in town decided that was the place to be.

I didn't have a problem finding most of the stuff. Brown sugar here is more granular than ours, and doesn't stick together, but it can't be that much different. Then I ran into a snafu in the flour section because everything is labeled "rice flour" or "wheat flour", but I couldn't tell if it meant "whole wheat", especially since most of them were in brown paper packages (alas, they were not tied up with string). I decided to go for it and got a small bag labeled "wheat flour". Luckily, it was what I needed.

The next issue came out of left field. I was looking for Hershey's kisses, which I know for a fact they have here. I have seen them in my local store, but didn't buy them because they are like $4 for a little pack. Emart didn't have any. I looked all over the candy aisle and some other places too. I almost decided to get abc chocolate, but it's not very good quality, so I got mini Hershey bars and decided I would break them up and put little chunks in the top of the cookies.

Now a little aside about Emart's layout. The store itself is 3 levels. The 1st (street level) floor has clothes and accessories and shoes. The 2nd level has house supplies, appliances, sports equipment etc. The B1 level is where all the food is. One thing that is awesome is that it has flat escalator things so you can go to various levels with your cart. You can check out on either the 1st or B1 levels. The bad part (and which I always forget until it's too late) is that if you check out on the B1 level, you are stuck. You are not allowed to go back "in" the store to take the escalator back to the ground floor. You have to take an elevator. There are 3 elevators but they are constantly packed. One reason is because, in addition to the 3 levels of store, there are 6 levels of parking (3 above and 3 below). I have never seen a completely empty elevator in Emart.

Another quirk (at least to me) is that Emart, in the last year or so, stopped giving out plastic bags. They have paper ones, or you can bring your own. The other option, when you have quite a few things, is to go over to the side and box up your items. They provide flattened cardboard boxes and tape, you go over, put your box together and fill it with your stuff.

Today, I had a full cart. The check out lady wouldn't give me bags and told me to box up my stuff. So I went over to the boxing area and was immediately uncomfortable. There were too many people all around, shoving and grumbling. A nice old lady was next to me and I cut some tape for her and she was very sweet. I ended up with a huge, heavy box and a smaller box and kind of jammed them in my cart. Then I waited for an elevator for not quite 10 minutes. The guy next to me got impatient and went around the back, so I followed him. There were more escalators, unfortunely, they only went down to parking levels. But I had already gotten on one, so there you go.

Luckily, this level also had a boxing station and nobody was there. So I took out my huge box and broke it into 2 smaller ones. Then I snuck into an elevator on this floor (the people on it were not happy) and made it out! The exit is blocked by stone squares so you can't take a cart out to the road. So I had to unload my boxes, run over to cab, put one in and run back to the others. The cab driver was nice though and drove right up next to my apartment building so that I could unload them.

After the Emart debacle, I decided to take a break for awhile and watched some of the Two Towers on TV. Then I started making magic. I actually mixed up the dough with fairly little trouble, especially considering the fact that I don't have a counter and was mixing on my stove top. Then it came time to bake them. I don't have an oven, only a toaster oven. So I could fit about 6 cookies to a sheet. Oh, and as I menitioned already, I don't have a counter, so the toaster oven is on the floor.

The first batch taught me that I couldn't put them in as balls because the tops would burn before the bottoms would cook. These also broke apart some. The second batch got burnt in the back. The next ones were ok, but the chocolate didn't work quite like I'd wanted it to, so I ended up just making peanut butter cookies.

What you can't see is that these are sitting in my living/bedroom on some cardboard boxes because there was nowhere else to put them.

They don't look pretty, but they taste ok. I suppose they could have turned out worse! I decided I would take them to work instead of the party though, because I didn't get that many out of the batch of dough and I realized that they aren't cheap to make!

Thursday seminar

My uncle recently mentioned in an email that I hadn't posted in awhile. Sorry about that, but honestly, sometimes I don't have anything interesting to add, and usually I just forget, or wait until it's really late and I don't like writing super gibberish (that's even more gibberish than usual!).

On Tuesday, my boss mentioned to me that I would have to attend a mandatory foreigner seminar on Thursday morning. Apparently there is one of these every year, but my last boss didn't make me go (and he didn't make the girls who work there now go this year either). I think the main reason for these is to keep tabs on the foreigners. Public school employees don't have to attend. Before they start teaching, and randomly during the year, they get other training things they have to go to. We don't get that. We generally get thrown immediately into teaching.

I had to get up early and get to the university on the other side of town by 9:30. Being a person who likes to be on time, meant I was there a little before 9:30, not knowing that the seminar didn't start until 10. Luckily I knew some other people and was able to chat while I waited. Right before we went in, a girl I knew from last year, who now lives in Geoje, showed up. We sat next to each other and caught up during the program.

While we waited for the program to start, they had an episode of Tom and Jerry playing on the big screen at the front of the auditorium. After about 15 minutes, the program started. The first speaker was the head of the English department (I think) at the university. His English was really good and his topic was about the differences in speaking and the difficulties of teaching English to Koreans.

I actually found this part somewhat interesting. We talked very briefly about word order, the fact that Korean doesn't have articles, and some phonetic differences. One of the ones we talked about the most was the "bright" L and the "dark" L. I had never heard of those terms. He said the bright L is the l sound in "love" or "letter". Basically when L is followed by a supporting vowel sound. The dark L is l sound in "jingle" or "bell" or "film". So when it is followed by a silent vowel or consonant. Emily (my friend) and I debated this, because we were saying that it's really the preceding vowel that controls the sound. Either way, the "dark" L sound is difficult for Koreans to pronounce because they don't have this sound in their language.

He also briefly talked about some customs and how we shouldn't be offended when asked personal questions because that's typically Korean. He said that asking "Did you eat" or "Did you have lunch" is a polite thing to say. It is kind of a greeting like "how are you?" and is based on the fact that 50ish years ago they didn't have enough food, so asking if someone ate was a way of checking up on them.

His talk ended and we had a short break. Then we went back in and got to watch a video about Korea and things you can do, and of course Gangnam Style. Then we saw 15 minutes of college kids dancing. Seriously. (The best part starts about 2 minutes in when the guys start break dancing).

After the dancing, another guy got up and read from the materials for 20 minutes about immigration issues and what documents you need etc. This information is only helpful for people BEFORE THEY LEAVE their home countries. Also, this is stuff the hagwon owners should already know as they are the ones who really have to deal with immigration.

As he was talking, staff workers walked around and handed out forms. We had to fill them out with the name of our school and our names. After he finished the immigration talk, we got to leave. They stamped the forms, kept one end and we had to turn in the other to our bosses. Apparently last years was much longer, so I got out lucky. For some reason, I didn't feel that lucky. Oh well, it could have been worse :)

Learn Something New Everyday

One thing that's great about teaching is that you often learn new stuff on a regular basis. Either you have to teach something different and you do some research, or you have to explain something and you never thought about the material in a specific way before, or your kids (students) tell you something you didn't know.

The other day I was teaching how to write before/after sentences. The text book would give prompts and then the kids had to write full sentences. For example, (get dressed/take a shower) (after). So the sentence would be: After I took a shower, I got dressed.

Before they wrote the sentences, we went through each example and determined which event went first. Some, like the above example, were obvious. Others were more interesting. One question was (lock the door/leave the house) (before). Well, to me (and I believe most Westerners, but feel free to correct me), first you leave the house, then you lock the door. To my students, that is not the way it works. We ended up having a 5-10 minute conversation trying to figure out why.

What it boiled down to, is that an individual apartment isn't "the house" according to them. The apartment building is "the house". So they lock the door (to their individual apartment) before they leave the house (the building). I'm glad we talked about it and figured it out. I think these like these are the cause of some cultural issues. If you don't take the time and figure it out, you end up thinking the students don't understand, or that they're stupid, and they think you're an idiot or a jerk for not listening and then they get frustrated.

The other example was dinner and dessert. To me, dessert is a separate meal of sorts. You finish dinner, then you have dessert. To my students, dessert is encompassed in the meal of dinner. You don't always have dessert, but if you do, it's included with dinner. So you have dessert, then finish your dinner.

I love learning little facts like this. It's part of why I like being in other countries and I think it helps me learn how to be more tolerant of other people and their customs. Or at least makes me pause and let them explain before I give judgement.

Motivation

I have fallen back into my old routine - which I didn't intend on doing. I don't have to go to school until 2 pm, and I live 3-5 minutes away depending on the traffic light. So I don't leave my house until 1:50, which means I don't have to get up until late in the afternoon. Which then means I don't have to go to bed until 3-5 am. This is a problem.

I often set my alarm earlier than I need do. I'm not talking crazy times like 8am, because let's face it, that's not realistic :) But 11 am isn't too bad, all things considering. The vast majority of the time, I grab my phone and sleep for another hour plus instead of getting up and out of the house. This is a problem.

I have always been a people pleaser. In grade school I did the best in classes where I liked the teacher. I get up to meet people for lunch, or coffee, or whatever. I used to get up for jobs. I have to have a reason. And the reason can't be because I should. I need a person, or people or some other good motivating factor. This is a problem.

For the last month, I've had a bible study every Tuesday morning. I got up, got dressed and made it to the church every week. In part I enjoyed the study and actually was motivated to learn. However, the fact that other people were there and relying on me to show up (even though I knew it would still happen without me) helped push me to not hit the snooze. The study ended yesterday and the next one won't start until mid to late February. This is a problem.

I thought about taking some sort of class - like a TOEFL or other test, or getting a masters in education or working on a teaching certificate. The main problem with all of these is that they cost money. And not a little bit of money, but semi-significant money. And the honest fact is, even if the money wasn't much, it's still money that I don't have. Not to mention my apartment isn't conducive to me studying which means I would have to go to a coffee shop or the library to work/study (which isn't a super huge problem unless you factor in the coffee money). This is a problem.

I need something and I don't know what it is. I'm planning on joining a gym soon, so hopefully that will help, but honestly, I need some reason to go there too. Once I get into a routine I should be ok, but starting that routine is where I need the push. A lot of it is mental. Coming back isn't what I was expecting. I still see some people, but it's not quite the same. So I'm a little bit sad and missing that connection that I used to have. I'm sure I'll adjust and get to a good place soon, but right now I need some motivation.

Any suggestions?

Winter Wonderland

Jinju is in the southern part of South Korea, so it doesn't snow here often. Lucky for me, I left warm, sunny GA/NC and ended up in freaking snow. It snowed on Wednesday night a tiny bit, but didn't stick. Then, Thursday night it snowed again...and stuck. Then snowed some more on Friday during the day. The forecast is calling for more this weekend as well.

Now I don't mind the snow in general. I think it looks beautiful and I would much prefer snow to sleet or freezing rain or wintery mix. The problems that I have with snow in Jinju are that 1 - bathroom windows are usually open. This includes my bathroom window. In my house. If I don't keep the window open, it never dries. So even when there is actual snow falling from the sky, my window is open. Which means the toilet seat is freezing. 2 - People here don't understand the snow. It's like when it snows in Atlanta. Smart people become stupid. One of my friends posted that his apartment manager was "clearing" the snow by spraying it away with a hose. The kind that squirts water. 3 - Unlike Southern drivers who go unnecessarily slow when it snows, Koreans, especially bus drivers, pretend that nothing is different. Meaning they run right through that red light, as usual, and skid to a halt at the bus stop. The also continue to do the "slow stop" where they don't actually stop the bus completely and just want you to hop on or off, even though the steps are super slippery due to all the snow and water.

That being said, the kids are all super excited because they got to build snowmen and have snow fights. There isn't enough for any type of sledding yet, but maybe there will be later. Also, all of these pictures were taken from friends' facebook pages - thanks for letting me steal guys!!

GNU campus

Olivia's first time in snow

Jinju castle covered in white

Beer bottle eyed snowman

Cup arm snowman...and mouse?

Now the question is, I wonder if we will have a white Christmas?