Well, to say that I've neglected this blog slightly would be a bit of an understatement. If it's any consolation though, I haven't posted much on my livejournal either.
I've been really busy rehearsing for Messiah - I found a community choir starting up here, and we're performing good ol Handel on December 19th. Yes Dad, there will be an audio recording.

I have a confession to make: I really, really like Sorry, Sorry by Super Junior:




And so does that prison!

Holy crap. Holy crap. I just came back from the free (!) concert, Asia Song Festival, and there were a shitton of famous groups performing. I mean, most of you wouldn't care about Chris Lee from China, but HEY I SAW GACKT. I wasn't expecting that one, actually! It was at Seoul World Cup Stadium, and was basically 50,000 screaming girls from all over asia, but of course mostly Korea. And the concert was totally free. FREE 8D

Notable performances include Super Junior, Big Bang, Mihimaru GT (and you can notice me flipping out when I realize that they sing one of my favorite songs from Ouendan) V6, and GIRL'S GENERATION.

I SAW GEE LIVE. GEE GEE GEE MOTHERFUCKING BABY.


HERE. HAVE A VIDEO. Apologies in advance for focus problems, I was pretty far from the stage. Jump to 4:50 for GEE ACTION

When I walk around the city, go out and actually do social activities, or really any time something interesting happens, my mind always starts composing witty entries to make. Once I sit in front of my computer though, all creativity flees and more often than not if I can be bothered to post at all, I'll blather on about something unrelated or just post pictures.

I think the only reason I'm even forcing myself to string words together is because I'm reading Perdido Street Station, and the author's brilliant mastery of the English language has shamed me. I'm supposed to be an English teacher! Well, only by Korean standards, but barring that, I'm theoretically well-educated and well-read. Despite that, I'd much rather post 2 sentences in a half-broken 'endearing' voice, and then a link to something silly or cool on the internet. Maybe I should try harder to make a habit out of posting intelligently.

Perhaps though I should try to pick my battles. I don't enjoy writing. I do however, love my adorable children, and I suppose it's good enough that I'm even trying to record my adventures for MY MOM to read.

Jumping off of that meandering note, today's photo theme will be Art and Other Hilarious Things by Five Year Olds!

This actually isn't from my class, but from one populated by 7 year olds. They apparently make birthday cards and bind them together into little books on the day of a kid's birthday, and this was written by the girl's best friend:


There's something particularly awesome in that wall of text. Here, let me crop it for you:


From another kid:


Aidan, in my class, is super super cute, and weird as anything I've seen back home. He's basically a five year old Korean Steve Erkel. SO cute ♥


My afternoon class's assignment one day was to draw a picture of an animal they thought laid eggs, and to write "I think that ___ lay eggs". Obviously this girl had no idea what was going on since she never listened, and always just did what she wanted. Priceless treasures ensue.


My morning class is GOLD. Here's Ruthy's illustration of King Bidgood, currently residing in his bathtub:


Unrelated to the theme, but fuck it:



KOREAN FASHION



Extra bonus! A Korean baseball game in video highlights form!

I love you guys. HunJae brought up the very good point that Korean age 19 could very well mean American age 17, if he hadn't had his birthday yet this year, so I'm sure you all want me to embrace my Cougar side, but I'm not ready to commit statutory rape.

Ah, American values.

I'm pretty excited about my day to come. It's Saturday morning, and I'm drinking instant coffee while trying to blink the blearyness from my eyes. By the way, instant coffee is fantastic. I was a disbeliever for the first week or so after my arrival here, but everyone drinks coffee in the form of tube wrappers filled with a tid bit of instant coffee kernels, and the rest of the room taken up by sugar.

I...I...I'm going to miss it a little bit when I come home and go back to the real stuff.

I also discovered free Korean classes on Saturdays, so I'm going to investigate this afternoon, and hopefully come away being slightly less incompetant at 한국말 than before. It's sad, I love the Korean alphabet so much because it's SO logical, but I'm starting to become aware of all the different counter-words that Korean has ajdbsdjdibakjndnasjdksafffffff


TIME FOR PICTURES



This is in Hongdae, my favorite area in Seoul, it's like Greenwich Village+Soho except affordable and with more karaoke.


Also in Hongdae!


Old ladies here have the most...um...confident fashion sense ever. I'm in love. Until you have to actually interact with them and they glare at you only long enough to jam an elbow in your side and push you out of their way. UGH. AJUMMAS.


It's hard to see, but it's frog toilet paper!


Back to Hongdae. Did you know, I'm a nerd!


My coworkers decided to go out karaoking last saturday, and after two hours of completely rocking out, everyone decided to take demure group shots. Rachel, my co-teacher is the one standing behind me in the yellow shirt. She is awesome.


Doesn't this look like Alanna? It totally does. I miss you so much TAT

I had such an adorable experience on my walk home from work just now.

I had just left the restaurant where I had gotten 라보끼 to go, (I hope I spelled that correctly...) listening to HP and the Goblet of Fire on audiobook, because I am a gigantic nerd, and out of the corner of my eye I noticed someone trying to get my attention!

So I take off my headphones, and I'm able to turn my full attention to this guy, who's sort of awkward precious-egg-esque-cute, and he says, "Um. Uh. Telephone number, please?"

And all I can process during this adorable cross-language attempt to ask me out on a date is the fact that he has shiny, silver, braces.

Braces.

I asked him how old he was. 19. Korean 19, which means 18. I felt terrible about informing him that I was way too old for him, because it obviously took a lot of courage to randomly ask some lady on the street for her phone number, without thinking to possibly, um....introduce themselves, or try to hold any sort of conversation first. But more power to you, Precious Egg! May your next try be with someone less than 6 years older than you ♥

Did you know, I went to Japan this summer!



July was basically a countdown to Dia-Liz-Anna 'o clock. I flew over to Tokyo Sunday afternoon, and tried not to make everyone else hate me over my lack of jetlag. TOKYO. Going back a second time, it's still awesome. It's, in fact, even more awesome now that I've gotten to see more. It was also nice getting to look at the non-nerdy aspects-


Oh, I mean. That's pretty nerdy, but that's the only-




Okay, but I swear we did normal things after th-


GIANT ROBOT OH MY GOD.



Dia and I also started a tradition of pretending to pose for the other so we could secretly snipe photos of otherwise objecting Japanese people behind us.
Here are two adorable MAIDOS from Akirabara-




And here's some random guy on the subway who looks even more like an asian Orlando Bloom than the picture really shows:


Tiny adorable car!


Brb, going to Cephiro




Goddamnit, Richard Gere, or whatever your name is


Furry foxtails in Harajuku. Great.


Hey look at these chicks in this magazine


God yes.


A shrine next to the big temple in Asakusa


Oh hold up~


.....Japan.


So Tokyo was fab, and then we met the fantastic teams. This is my new friends face -


Oh my god, my precious cupcakes from Australia make BOSS faces


AkiraAkiraAkiraAkira ♥


Nom nom nom Italy. Made me start reading BLAME!, which is awesome, by the way. Sorry that I'm a decade behind everyone else.


I LOVE RAYEARTH


Stealing Dia's costume


Team Finland and China in our Tokyo room so we could kidnap them all and take them home make new friends.


My little :C face dumplings!



At the karaoke party, we broke out the myspace angles:


Iris and I are off to wear slutty outfits and rule the world.


THIS GUY IS 16. SIXTEEN. PRECIOUS EGG INDEED>


BRB living in Thailand in the arms of the hottest ladies ever



oh yeah, I made Jeanne. And then forgot to wear the forehead thing. And then took it off after half an hour because it was raining, and no thanks walking in that for a parade.

Jeanne is definitely a work in progress, but I wanted to show off my skirt, and re-done wig. It's really tough not having any patterns, I'm used to relying heavily on them because I'm incredibly lazy. Hey, nothing wrong with that...



Also, have some random photos and a video of random clips assembled over the weeks: