Book Club - or how I am returning to being an old person

There is a recent crop of new people to the Jinju area. Around Jan/Feb and then again in March and usually again around September are big turn over times for schools. One of the new people is actually a couple. They took over for some friends of mine who went home but are now coming back to Seoul. Anyway, they both lived in Korea and were just moving to a new city/new job. She participated in a book club in her old area and wanted to see if there was any interest here. I obviously signed up because I am a nerd. Oddly enough, this is my first "real" book club. Her selection of the first book was basically because that's the one her old club was using. She chose "Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close". There is now a movie out based on this book.

Our first meeting was 3 weeks ago and we have met once more. We would have met again this past Sunday but so many people were on vacation/out of town that we decided to push it a week. I have enjoyed the meetings so far. It's different for me because none of my usual friends are in the group. Only one girl I actually know is there so far. I do like the conversation and listening to see how other people read the book though. This book isn't really my fav. It's not horrible, but I wouldn't recommend it; at least not at this point. maybe something awesome will happen and I will change this review. Let's hope!

The only thing I'm not liking about book club is our choice for next month's book. We decided to alternate between Fiction and Non-fiction every month. I am fine with that choice as my selection was actually a non-fiction book. Then we vote. The thing I don't really like is that votes of people who don'y come to book club, but are on the facebook link were counted. So we're supposed to real "23 things you didn't know about capitalism". I don't want to read this. I have no interest in the book and I really don't want to discuss/debate/argue about money or politics etc. But at the same time, I feel like a 5 year old saying "I'm taking my ball and going home" if I just skip this book. Then again, should I waste time/money on something I'm not that interested in? Then again, what if I learn something and/or it's actually interesting?

So, thoughts or suggestions on what I should do?

Year of the Dragon

Today was Lunar (aka Chinese) New Year. It is a national holiday in Korea and everyone turns a year older today (instead of their regular birthday, although now I think the "birthday" is on Jan. 1) and visits their families. The holiday is a 3 day holiday, this year from Sunday to Tuesday. That means I got today (Monday) and tomorrow off of work. This is awesome for 2 reasons - 1- I don't have to go to work for 2 days and 2- it's still winter cram session so I don't have to get up early for 2 days either. Woot.

This weekend was both productive and non-productive. On Friday I went to prayer service. Liezle came with me because she was going skiing this weekend and we wouldn't see each other for quite some time, plus she didn't really have anything else to do. We celebrated Lance's birthday afterward with some donuts in lieu of a cake. Then we played 6 person Catan (Liezle stayed and watched for a bit, but left about halfway through because she needed to get up really early on Saturday morning) and chatted until after midnight.

On Saturday, a large group of church people (around 25) went to Samsung buffet for lunch/dinner from 2-4. Dan ate 7 plates of food. After lunch we went back to church and had games night. I ended up playing about 4 or 5 games of "30 Seconds" (a South African game similar to Taboo - I need to see if there is an American version because it's a good game). A huge group of people left around 8 or so and another group of us stayed and played 6 man Cities and Knights again. This time we had 2 brand new people and a girl who has only played twice so it took us almost 4 hours to finish the game. It was soooooo long. After I got home, I stupidly started reading "The Hunger Games" and stayed up until around 5 finishing the book. It was good - easy read, nothing too thinky.

On Sunday I got up and went to church. I tried to be intentionally late so that I would miss the singing portion because while I really enjoy it, I am not supposed to be singing too much with my voice/cold and I feel bad just standing there not singing. I got there mid-way through the first song. I ended up mouthing the words to the next 2 songs and singing quietly to the last one later in the service. After service a group of about 12 of us went to eat at a fast food type place called Mom's Touch. I thought it was a laundromat when I first saw it. After lunch we went and had coffee at this cute place called Tutto. The lady is really sweet but it's funny because she steals Jamie's baby and walks around the place with her. She gave us free food (weird rice cakes and weird rice cakes). The one kind of rice cake was like glue - it's thick and has bean powder sprinkled on it. The other kind is edible - it's puffy rice, but soft, mixed with honey I think. She explained a little to Lance how it was made and told him there is a class at university where you can learn how to do it. She gave him the rest of the box of the puffy rice things. After coffee we went back to Brandon and Jamie's and played Mafia (a card game of sorts) for a long time - until around 1.

Today, I did a load of laundry then met up with Ilani and Lance for coffee and a game of Catan at the coffee shop (Brandon and Jamie came too and played some cards and chatted with us for awhile but left before we had finished). After the game, Lance had to go and meet his wife, so Ilani and I went to Emart and went grocery shopping. I have never seen that store so empty - it was great! After shopping, I went home, did dishes (and broke a sponge thing I bought earlier at Emart - hopefully I can glue it back together, but it cost $2 so if I can't, oh well), watched a couple of shows, called my mom and talked to her for a bit, cleaned my bathroom, watched another show and wrote this post.

Tomorrow I might do another load of laundry, but if I don't, I won't feel too bad about it. Later in the afternoon, I am meeting up with a group of friends/church people to watch "Puss and Boots" - why, I don't really know. Then I am going to meet Cindy and Liezle for dinner to hear all about their weekends and catch up. Then I need to write 2 finals for Thursday. Then it's back to business for the rest of the week.

So, all in all, the year of the dragon started out nicely. Oh, and my boss gave me $50 so that was awesome. Hope the dragon brings y'all a good year!

Resolutions

I've mentioned some of these before, but I have 4 New Year's resolutions.

1 - floss. This was one from last year, which I am proud to say I've kept up with. Flossing is a pain in the keister,
but those new little floss sticks have made this resolution possible.

2 - more posts. This was one I know I talked about before. This post is an example of me trying to keep this one. We'll see how long it lasts. Probably until the new season of shows starts to come out and I am no longer bored on Tuesday evenings.

3 - read the bible in 180 days. My friend Ilani joined a website last year called "read the bible in 90 days". It gives you a reading plan, and the founder of the site checks in with you to monitor your progress. Two other people from the church did it with her and they all enjoyed it. This year, she decided to create her own website called "read the bible in 180 days". She got help from the people who did it in 90, created a reading plan, and does daily updates and weekly check-ins. I have never read the Bible cover to cover and thought it was about time I should. So I'm in my second (possibly 3rd depending on when I actually post this) week of reading. So far I've kept to the schedule (about 30 minutes of reading a night), but the stories are pretty interesting. There is a lot of incest up the Bible, among other things. Our pastor is also available for questions. I'm really going to try this one and as I have 2 people who I'm doing this for (besides myself) I think I have a good shot at it.

4 - break 150 in bowling. My high game so far has been 144. I just need to settle down and focus. And maybe get my own ball (just kidding). I should learn how to spin it, but I have a feeling I would injure myself. This is a throw away resolution, so if it happens, great, if not, I still have fun.

Bowling League strikes again (see what I did there?)

So we've been keeping up with Thursday night bowling. Two weeks ago Mikey did really well. He bowled his personal best of 160-something and also got 4 strikes in a row.

We've added a couple of people, including English John to the mix. He's a really nice guy and I like him a lot. He's been in Jinju for awhile, but he has a girlfriend, plus he often hangs out with a totally different crowd. I've seen him a bunch in the last few weeks and I'm glad I've sort of ended up in his circle of friends (or that he's entered mine). He's also really good at pretty much all sports - darts, pool, bowling. He's not great, but he's good (and much better than most of us). He's on vacation in China right now. He doesn't have a ticket home because you can't buy boat tickets until you're in China. So, he might not get back to Korea in time for school. I'd be freaking out, but he seems ok with it. Oh well.

Here are 3 random pictures.

This is dried fish cake snack sticks. Gross. But sexy!

We went to a Vietnamese place last week after church. I had pineapple fried rice. The best part is, when you finish eating it (it's less than it look because there is no hole in the pineapple half) they take the pineapple back to the kitchen and slice it up for you. Yum!

This guy was hanging out in front of a restaurant while I was on my way to meet someone. So I took his picture. The grossest part of this is his little leg things. What are those?

Sick

I have had a horrible cold for the last 3 weeks. It started the day after Christmas and was all about my nose. I have a slight fever one day and then spent the next week and a half within arm's reach of a tissue box. It sucked. It's also really dry in Korea during the winter, so sleeping with your mouth open because you can't breathe through your nose is extra sucky.

Now, it has turned into a cough. I am not sure if this is still the same cold or if it's actually something totally new. It involves lots and lots of coughing, usually with a fair amount of goo. I went to the doctor the other day, who I think thought I was trolling for drugs, who basically told me nothing was wrong with me, but that I needed to drink lots of hot water and not talk. Yea. That wasn't going to work so well with my boss. He gave me 2 days worth of cough medicine which pretty much did nothing. I am still coughing but I think it might be slightly better. I decided to take the weekend off from doing anything to try and recover some. Hopefully this will be gone soon!

Happy New Year, 2012

I decided to go with Liezle and Anna to Busan for New Year's. I didn't really want to do the whole bar/club scene, because I've done that before and it is always sort of a let down, but honestly I didn't want to be by myself or sitting in a coffee shop or something either. My favorite New Years are the ones where I'm at home with either family or friends, playing games and laughing. I don't need a club to do that. One of the best times I've had was with my mom and sister playing Family Feud and making Holly laugh so hard she peed her pants. So my expectations for the weekend weren't that high. Not to mention the night before I went to Liezle's apartment where she and Anna were trying on cutesy dresses and I had already decided that I wasn't going to get that dressed up, so then I felt slightly awkward.

Anyway, we left around noon on Saturday and met Dan and his co-worker Hyo (rhymes with Go) at the bus station. When we got to Busan, Liezle and I had an armpit session, so we left the rest of the group to go and find a hotel. There was some confusion because we had hoped to stay in a swanky hotel or possibly at Dan's aunt's house, but those didn't work out. When we finally got to where they were, everyone was in kind of a pissy mood. We (Liezle and I) didn't want to spend alot of money on a hotel and we knew of a cheap place to go. They (the rest of the group) didn't really care about money and booked a different place. So then we split up and just got our own place to stay.

We stayed at the Full House Motel. It was decent, especially for the price. At least it was clean.  It was also so warm that I didn't need a blanket which was good because Liezle, Vera and I shared one, which means I didn't have any covers anyway!

The excellent view from our hotel window. Trash! I could reach out and touch that balcony if I had wanted to. I didn't.

Everything ended up fine and we all went to lunch at a Mexican place called "Fuzzy Navels". I got an avocado and chicken burrito and it was pretty good, but slightly overpriced. Dan, Liezle, Anna and Hyo split a pitcher of Long Island Iced tea, but I stuck with margaritas. We met another friend randomly in the restaurant and hung out with him for awhile. We played a round of darts (I won) then moved on to another bar. We ended up at Thursday Party (it's a chain bar) and played 2 rounds of beer pong. It was pretty fun, but Anna and Liezle wouldn't drink the beer, so Hyo and I ended up drinking a lot of it.

Christmas decorations at Thursday Party.

Bear on the ceiling. Not sure why.

After beer pong we left and went to dinner. We played some drinking games and Hyo taught us some Korean swears (although I don't really remember them now). He had about a bottle of soju to himself and was really drunk. At one point he got all confused and said, "I don't know if I should be speaking English or Korean!" after asking the waiter for something in English. We took him back to the hotel and then everyone got dressed to go out. Vera, who was staying with me and Liezle, came and got ready with us.

Dinner. It's really thin slices of pork. It cooks super fast and is pretty good.

Playing chopsticks

Cooking the meat and some bean sprouts (and garlic on the left side)

Then we went to a bar called Wolfhounds. It was kind of expensive so we didn't stay for long. We saw some other Jinju people there and chatted for awhile. Then we left and went to a club(ish) called Billie Jean's. There was a band playing and they were ok, but not really the vibe we were looking for. I went to the bathroom and when I came back, Dan and Anna had decided to leave, Liezle had ordered a drink and was on the verge of tears and Vera was staying out of it. My only requests as far as clubs went was not to pay cover and to be with people at midnight. It was 5 minutes until midnight when Dan and Anna left.

Midnight was a little anti-climatic for me. There was a count down, but no ball drop, no balloons, no confetti or hats or horns or auld lang syne. I had bought a calling card earlier that night to try and call my siblings and/or mom, but it wouldn't work (it later took my bosses 10 minutes to figure out how to use it, which included calling customer service, a switch of phone numbers and a 3 am call to my sister - sorry Holly!). When I went back in the bar, we decided to play some pool. While we were playing, a random Korean guy wanted to play with us. I was so tired at that point that I could barely keep my eyes open. I had worn my contacts so my eyes were even more tired. The guy was a little creepy and we decided to leave pool and go dancing. On the dance floor we met up with a friend from another city. We danced for awhile and then Vera and I almost fell asleep sitting on bar stools, so we decided to leave. Liezle joined us about 30 minutes or so later. We chatted for a bit then fell asleep.

Busan Christmas lights. It looked like there was a whole display but nobody else wanted to go see it with me. Nerds.

The next morning, Dan, Anna and Hyo came over while we were still getting ready. They left to get some breakfast and to try and go shopping because Dan wanted pants. The original plan was to meet up with them, but I didn't want soup (which they did - it is a popular Korean breakfast. There is even a soup called 'hangover' soup. It's gross. I wanted pancakes, but that didn't happen.) so Liezle and I went somewhere else. We were both really tired and decided to just go home. We fell asleep on the way home and took naps at our apartments. Then we met up with Anna and had dinner. It was an ok weekend. I was glad I wasn't alone, we had a few laughs, but overall I think I am pretty much done with the "party" scene. I'm not saying I won't go out again, but I like other types of bars and activities. I really like beer pong, pool and darts, but I don't like smokey, loud dance clubs anymore. I think I need to be doing something to really enjoy bars and dancing only cuts it for a little while.

I included this Advent calendar here only because I bought it the day after Christmas and ate it the day after New Year's (with some help). Also, it's weird. There is no cat in Christmas stories. Weird Norwegians (at least I think that's who made it).

Christmas in Korea

Christmas day started out with going to Liezle's to help her carry the food to the church. When I got there, Anna was already helping her and our friend Nick was there too and actually drove us to the church. We had a regular church service and then had a potluck dinner. There was a lot of food and it was extremely varied. There was Mexican, American, South African, English and obviously Korean. Luckily it all blended together quite well. After everyone ate, we did a gift exchange. We drew a number and when our number was called we got to pick a present out of the pile. No stealing. We had to open the present up front though so everyone could see. It was fun. I got these push-up handles and I swapped presents with Dan so I ended up with a pair of slippers. They're pretty nice but I like my other ones better. The church also gave everyone a tin of Danish butter cookies which for some reason really reminded me of my grandma's house, so we must have eaten them there, but I don't really remember doing that.

Buffet. Yum. There was another table with almost as much food on it behind this one.

Ilani's present - fleece crazy pants. She gave them to another friend to wear as pj pants (or not...)

After food and presents Anna, Dan, Liezle and I went to a coffee shop. We didn't really have plans, but none of us really wanted to go home. We stayed at the coffee shop for at least an hour (possibly longer) just talking. Then we went to Rock Bar where we had a few drinks, played some pool and some darts. Hardly anyone was there (then again it was around 7pm) so we had the place basically to ourselves which was nice.

Guy on the street dressed as a reindeer. Nobody really paid attention to him because people dress up like this all the time. I wanted to get a better picture, but when I got closer, a friend of his was sitting on him.

Anna, me and Liezle after playing pool

Group darts shot. Not sure why Dan is down so low. Later that night we got a call from the bar owner (who knows Dan) because someone (who gave his number to Anna) left without paying. The owner wanted the guy's number so that he could call the cops and find the guy. I don't know what happened after that.

Us around the Rock bar tree

After that we met up with Mike, Caleb and Eoin for dinner. Mike's parents sent him money for Christmas and he decided that he wanted to buy everyone dinner. We went to a bbq place and stayed for a couple of hours eating, drinking and playing games.

Bbq dinner - pork and kimchi bean sprouts. There was another grill with a different kind of meat on it too. Plus we had rice and some other veggies.

Caleb and Mike playing "chopsticks" which is basically this pointing game

Pretty sure this is blood sausage of some type. I know it's made of intestines. I tried the black one, it doesn't really taste like anything, but it's very chewy. I couldn't try the other ones because they looked too much like intestines.

Anna and Eoin in a shoot out during "Hoe-down"

After dinner we all went to another bar and played some more darts and just sat around talking to each other. It was a really fun night. Totally not a "normal" Christmas, but fun.

Anna, Dan, me and Mike at Beast Bar. 

The group at Beast bar right before we all went home.

Me and the tree from Beast bar

When I got home, I skyped my siblings and talked to my aunt for a bit. I had Monday and Tuesday off, so I slept in and did some laundry and skyped with my family a couple of times. I was able to watch some present opening, but nobody could hear me so it was very awkward. It was nice seeing everyone's faces though. On Wednesday, our winter "camp" started so my hours are now earlier in the day and I have extra classes. M,W,F I have 8 classes and T,Th I have 9 classes. It's very busy, but I actually like camp because the kids are a bit better behaved and the class sizes are a bit smaller, so classes themselves are more fun.

I'm actually starting to get nervous that I won't have enough info after all my holiday posts to actually keep up with my resolution. But I will try.