In two days I’ll be leaving for Canada. But under quite different circumstances than last year. I have a job that I enjoy and a car that will give me freedom unlikes the which I have yet to experience in Korea. Mind you, I am afraid of embarking on this latest mission of driving in Korea. But I digress.

My second year in Korea is coming to a close. This year I got more of a culture shock than I experienced in my first year. Most likely, it was because I worked for a public school with no english speaking teachers. It can be a bit isolating and I do have a lot of time on my hands. However, I did accomplish a lot. i completed a university course. I am finishing a tesol course. Caught up on all my t.v. shows. Anyways I have been blessed by being welcome back by a school who appreciates me. i am looking forward to my final year in Korea.

I also learned that a lot of my rants of the first year were more than rants. I learned that there was much truth to them.
I have much to be thankful for.
I am looking forward to seeing my family under better circumstances. Though it feels llike they see me as a kind of Daddy Warbucks bailing them out of the recession. And while the power gained at their helplessness could be great for a sadist, it leaves me uncomfortable and dreading what can amount to the inevitable clash.
I do hope that when I go home i can be viewed as a sister and daughter, rather than a miracle worker. I am imperfect and noone’s saviour and I do not wish to have that role.
My mother has said that coming to Korea was something I needed to do. That it has made me stronger. She is probably right. It has made me see the truth of people, even those once looked up to. And alas, the fantasy is gone. Noone can ever live up to a fantasy. Once you let the illusion go, you can truly appreciate the person for who he or she is.
So with that knowledge, I am going home to appreciate my family for who they are. Finally laying to rest the fantasy and just enjoying their company and I hope they can do the same.

Little ole me, has a cyber stalker. Someone who feels the need to use language thats unbecoming to make an ambiguous point. I really have no idea what this person’s point is so I don’t even post the comments.
You haven’t made it till you too have a stalker.\
Seriously though, I do hope this person gets the medical help he or she needs to cope with whatever issues are holding them back. Good luck.

I am feeling incredibly guilty over my behaviour as of late.  I have behaved very badly on several occasions.  As I am a person that makes mountains out of mole hills, my evil acts may seem small to you but are racking me with tremendous amounts of guilt.

I have written in my blog in the past that anger is a wasted emotion.  Unfortunately I have given into the emotion too often as of late.  No one person in my life here in Korea has been spared from my wrath, though many would be unaware of it.

Though these people will never see my confessions, writing t down and admitting to myself that I have been wrong will help.

To the Korean boy talking loudly on the cellphone,  I am sorry that i really wanted to hit you.  My only relief is that I didn’t carry it through.

To my coteacher today, for my devious act with the computer.  I hope you understand the instructions so that you could get to that file easily.  I should have never did what I did in the first place.  My penance is that now my computer is screwed up.

To my students that I didn’t say hi to because I deliberately had my mp3 player up so I couldn’t hear anyone talking.

To the people that mean the most to me, I am sorry for shutting you out.  You have been wonderful, amazing really and I am so glad to have you in my life.

There is no excuse for my behaviour.  All I can try to do now is eliminate this unjustified anger inside of me in a healthy, positive way.

I hadn’t gone out with God for a while.  We kinda lost touch as I had my priorities all wrong.  Its amazing what can happen when you spend a few hours alone with God.  We went to Outback.  It was great.  I turned to the Bible, so I could immerse myself in his word.  And a few things stood out during our time together.  First, I was having a hard time getting through one book.  But as I was going through Jeremiah, it was really speaking out to my feelings over the past few weeks.  He definitely had it rougher than I’ve had it, and so I definitely have newfound respect for him. But here is a guy who over 23 years was telling Judah to turn away from sin, only to be ignored.  He did it faithfully for all that time with little if any change in behaviour in Judah.  He was lonely and depressed and unable to marry for it would continue the downward spiral of Judah.  He wept on behalf of his people and kept pleading with God to be merciful.  A misfit in his own community.  He often cried out to God wondering what his purpose was for.  I think we have all been there.  We wonder if we are useful to God or needed in this world. 

So the interesting part was God and I picked up right where we left off on our last date many months ago.  He forgave me for taking a path he never wanted me to go down and now he is putting me on the path that he wants me to be on. So my hope has been renewed and my view of the future has been filled with joy for I rest my future in God’s hands, for he is the only one that will, or can take care of me.  He can take care of you too in the same way if you let him.

I have been taking for granted the little things in life that make me smile.
1. I get off the bus and the police officer greets me by my name (and i haven’t even committed a crime)
2. The fourth and fifth graders come up and ask for hugs.
3. Skipping with the kids, even though I am terrible at it, terrible thing that gravity.
4. Things that are basic to me like playing badminton or playing baseball that seem to wo the kids I teach.
5. My mother’s voice, my mother’s hugs.
6. My sister’s children
7. God’s sense of humor
8. The smell of men’s cologne
9. Falling asleep on my heated floor.
10. Waking up on the heated floor because my butt is burning.
11. Koreans earnestly trying to have a conversation with me in korean and pretending to understand what they are saying.
12. that first taste of chocolate after a long day
13. that first taste of ice cream on a hot day
14. that first sensation of water hitting my body as i enter the sea or swimming pool on a hot day.
15. first walking into my apartment and seeing my cat at the door waiting.

Since making reservations for Thanksgiving dinner at the Seaman’s club, I have Christmas on my mind.

What do you get for someone who has 2 of everything?  Or at least a lot more money than you to buy two of everything.  So I found two sites that I think may fit into that category and if you are having the same problem I am, then these sites may help you out.

http://www.fao.com/catalog/factories/muppets.jsp …This one is through fao schwarts which does ship to South Korea but it takes 3 to 6 weeks.  You can design your own muppet.  I had fun playing around with it, though mine looked like a gaudy streetwalker.  Anyways its a tad expensive but definitely a unique gift that noone else would have.

The second site is for those into the odd, sometimes geeky things, that you may not find in regular stores.  thinkgeek.com is full of gadgetry and gimics, and has given me so many ideas.  Not too badly priced either.

Hope this helps you with that person that is hard to buy for.  I will add more to this blog as soon as I find them.

Happy Pepero Day!

This is the second holiday that makes no sense to me.  Let me start with the first.  Once, my friends and I ventured to the US, sometime in October one year I think.  We were visiting one of the malls and I noticed all these signs saying Sweetest Day.    I asked my friends if they knew what this day was.  Noone could think of what it would be.  Finally I asked an American.  He told me that it was like Valentine’s Day, only in the fall, because greeting card companies wanted to have a holiday so they could generate more revenues.  Think about it.  How many people send cards on Halloween or Thanksgiving?  So now couples are expected to celebrate both holidays and single people have two holidays in which they can lament being alone (if they aren’t happy with the status).

This brings me to Pepero Day.  This is a day manufactured to generate more sales in the lackluster product. Thats not what astounds me.  It makes good business sense to invent a holiday to generate sales.  What astounds me is that people buy into it.  Of course, perhaps this is how someone felt when gift giving during Christmas became the norm or when gifts became required to celebrate the day someone was born.

Still..this seems to have less relevance then either of those holidays.

As I now live away from bakeries (thank goodness), I have time to explore my own baking again. I was going to buy an oven. But why??? When i can use my own microwave.
Last year I conquered the microwave cake. These last two weeks I have conquered sugar cookies and chocolate chip cookies. While they don’t live up to how i make them from scratch and in the oven, they taste better than what you can find in Korea and in half the time. It only takes 1 minute to cook six at a time (which is the most i would recommend doing at one time) as opposed to 7 to 9 minutes for 12 in the oven.

On Saturday night, after the festival, subway line 3 had fireworks of its own.  Obviously the cars were all stuffed with people.  There were warnings on the subway not to get mad and hit people because of this.  And yet..this did not stop two Korean women.

My friends and i were trying to make ourselves as comfortable as we could when it started.  All of a sudden a woman shouted. Then the other woman shouted back. And this continued for quite some time, before the hitting began.

I feel shame because I tried to take picture of this.  But them catching me try to take a picture, stopped the argument.

However, it didn’t stop the one woman from making a snide remark before leaving the subway.  I guess she had to have the last word, which started the other woman talking as she left.

This episode is why there are warnings about keeping tempers cool during crowded situations like this.

Before I went back to Canada in August, I was strung out about money.  I had debt.  I had inherited money that people were pressuring me to spend.  By people, i mean my parents were begging me to give it to them..well demanding I do actually.  The won was higher and I was all wound up about any type of discussion about money.

Then i had six weeks of doing nothing but spending money in Canada.  I had time to relax and think.  As I have mentioned in previous posts, I have everything I need now.  This is different from everything I want.  I am debt free now.  i have savings and i still have money in the pension. I spend when I want to now and not so tight about budgets though that may change when I get my first paycheque since coming back. but not much really because I have nothing to spend my money on..other than people.

So why do I think my attitude change came just in time?  Because if it hadn’t changed, I’d be having a nervous breakdown at whats happening in the markets around the world.  One thing I am definitely glad I didn’t do.  I didn’t invest my inheritance in stocks. I put it safely in a savings account.  Thats why  it pays not to be greedy. I have lost money in my rrsps which I am confident will go up.  And any money here is just bonus money.  SO at some point it may be worthless but it will cover my cost of living here and really thats all that matters.

Making sure money and materialism are not idols is a freeing exercise.  This is what God wants from all of us.  He doesn’t want to be enslaved by the lure of possessions and what money can buy.  As can serve as a testimony to that, just observe the stock market patterns around the world.

Thank GOd, I got out of that mentality just in time.