Happy Lunar New Year!

Now I can say we are officially in the new year. 2014 started a few weeks ago for the western calendar, now Asians join in the new year at last! It is a bright new year day, with a cold wind but a warm sun and the light it good for the soul. 

On Wednesday we had our last school day of the year 2013, and all the school found itself covered in silk. There was only one kid that did not wear hanbok, Julie in my class, but she still dressed up in a big pink dress. I felt sorry for her (I think her mom is a reasonable as mine, preferring to buy her a really good quality hanbok when she is grown up enough that she won't need to buy her many as she grows up) because every single kid in the school had theirs, a couple of which were bought the day before and worn for the first time. Winter hanbok are so cute with the small fur jackets. 

Silk is so warm, whatever the quality. I'd been freezing at school everyday lately, but I was sweating all day in my hanbok last Wednesday. We did not do any work with the kids during that time, we just did crafts: There were three different things kids did in the morning: Korean traditional games in the gym, Korean crafts and Korean traditional manners and new year etiquette. The two other foreign teachers and I taught the craft part all morning, the school being divided in three groups, the groups moving from one activity to the other.

As I did not want to ruin my hanbok with glue and make it dirty, I wore the silk apron my mommy bought me when she was in Korea. I actually like the dark green on the pink skirt. I originally wanted to buy a completely new hanbok this year, and take the time to choose it better than the first one I got (I don't like how the skirt falls, I don't really like that both parts are pink, I don't really like that the top part is high, I'd rather have the long pans at the front and back, like princess dresses), but after seeing the matching of the green and pink, I think I could probably just get a new top that would go with it.... À suivre.

Hillary, my little princess. She requires so much attention in class and hates doing anything that implies writing, but she is a beautiful princess that loves dancing, singing, imagine herself in the craziest stories... she is really sensitive and has some trouble associating with the others. She reminds me a bit of me, in the socially awkward part, and the fact that she has so many talents, but knows not how to put them forward.

This kid is my little genius. Monica. She is beautiful, and she knows it. She is the princess who knows her worth and she does not take any bullshit from anyone. Not even me. But she is not rude or obnoxious about it, she is sweet. Her mom always gets her the weirdest hairstyles and they look great with the fashionable clothes she wears. Everyday is a surprise.

Claire and Mary, from Evan's class. The highest level class of the school. They are basically all fluent, and some of them have lived abroad. Their parents are so demanding, those kids basically do the work we ask of 15 years old kids, in another language, while they are only 6 years old (7 years old Korean age).

4 years old princesses, Eileen and Jamie <3

3 years old Tyranno, Edwin and Rachel <3

5 years old Paul, from Stormy's class, in his hanbok. It might not show on the picture, but the quality of the silk of his costume was crazy. It was probably ordered and fitted especially for him. His parents are both crazy rich designers so I would not be surprised. He is soooooo cuteeeee

In the afternoon, thank you Ian for the link, we watched FROZEN with all the kids on a big screen in the gym. Frozen is by far, one of the best Disney movies they have made since the 2000's and it's a big thing in Korea right now. The songs are being played everywhere in Coffee shops, and bars (??).

6 years old (korean age) Stormy's class

4 and 5 years old (korean age) Doreen and Elly's classes

 Couple of selfies, because I felt sorry for the time I took doing my hair and the amount of pictures taken of me.

Lovely

Before

On this picture it actually looked pretty okay, but I was not entirely satisfied with the haircut of this one doll I made. 

I liked that there was volume, I liked that I had put the bangs on the side instead of a straight line, but it was a bit of a failure, for the tidiness level. I had intended to make nice curls in the pigtails, and that turned up wrong. The amount of hair I left was too intense for the curls and they died.

So I took my needle and gave it a new fix. I tried with the curls one more time, but this time, with much less hair, it sorts of stayed better. I guess I'll have to try with a bigger stick next time I try curls, those are really tiny.

They are the perfect fit for this doll, tho, because she is supposed to be "Love, the girl on her way to confess her love to the one". Anways, that's according to my teacher. Since I completely changed her haircut, maybe I can call her something different...

After 

Control Freak

*****CAUTION, WEIRD RANTING AHEAD*****

I find myself quite curious as of whether if people often reflect on who they are as selfs and as social beings. 

I personally just can't stop thinking about that kind of stuff. Most of the time, it's mostly going in circles, but once in a while I discover something about myself, a new way to comprehend a few of my own behaviours.

I am a control freak.

I used to think I was a very social being. Facts were speaking for themselves: I've always seemed to be surrounded by people as I grew up. People I knew well, and less well, were always coming and going around me. I never had to call people to hang out, it would just happen naturally. I had good friends, best friends.
And a bunch of those very very close ties you have, that you can just show up at their place or them at yours, uninvited, and there'd be a place for you.

Those friends.

The friends you make young enough for the friendship to last through long times without seeing even a glimpse of each other, but that when you meet them again, nothing has changed, because while everything around has, the essence of the friendship has not.

Those friends...

Now that I re-think about it, I might not be a social person, at least not as much as I used to think. I love people, no news here. Just maybe not as sociable people do.

If you ask ANYONE who has spend enough time with me to see me act relaxed and careless around them, they'll tell you that I am a crazy talkative extrovert. I think out loud, and it comes out as a beautiful diarrhea of words (who would not associate diarrhea and beautiful eh?), more or less relevant to any conversation topic. It is true. I talk a lot. Mostly irrelevant stuff.

As for the extrovert part I don't know.



I keep telling people that I am a failure as a woman in that I cannot multitask. A person talks to me, I either give them 100% of my attention, or nothing. I either give a 100 or nothing. That's why when there are tons of people talking, I either stop listening or I just listen to one person, and forget the others.
It's a mistake, with me, to assume that, if I go "hm hm" "oh really?" to your story while I am knitting, or  worse, while I am reading something or looking at a painting or a drawing, I am listening.

I am not.

While I love people, there are only my very best friends, that I can be with forever, without feeling burdened. I talk like crazy, but as opposed to what it seems, it DOES drain my energy. It's as if, when I am with people, I feel like I HAVE to give them my energy, and one of the means to do that is talking. Well, I get tired of it after a while. And I stop talking. Or I stop listening. Or stop caring. Or stop being "there" altogether.

I DO multi task. 

In my head.

When I think, I think in layers. My mind is just completely restless, at all times. I keep putting every single thing that happens to me, every situation I did not like, and think of a different way I could have reacted, for example, wondering if there was a way for me to change the resulting situation. Even writing a blog is hard for me, because my thoughts scatters so much that I often don't get the time to write everything I originally intended to write.

Because not only does my mind keeps at it all the time, I have a VEEERA bad short term memory. That goes for names and new words, when I learn a language - they need to be said tons of times for me to remember them, but then I don't ever forget. 

It's annoying in a sense, because I think of so many things I feel worth remembering, plan things in my head and re-see them happening, but I don't remember them after a few minutes. That's the reason I keep many calendars, and use them all. So I write and re-write all the information, not to forget. And I still forget, mind you.

As people always ended up showing at my place I'd end up being the person organizing everything, taking all the space. I would organize Club activities, games, parties and small random stuff happening at my place.

I don't know if I really like organizing stuff.

I am a control freak.

Which means (1) that I love to have control over all that is happening, how it is happening, who is making it happen and how it ends. Gets to the extend that I want to control the very people in those activities.
That's why I am scared shitless of taking control. Ironic? If I make my mind that I get things under my control, if it goes wrong, of if I lose it, I just lose my mind. I go berserk. It's not pretty.

Same for my place. I love having people over, and preparing a flawless snack, appetizer set, lunch, placed nicely in the table, in a nice clean kitchen. But it's tiring as hell. So I don't know if I like to have people over or not in the end. Split personality?
Last time I organized a birthday party at my place, I cleaned and put things in their respective place half of the time (the other I drank and played games, no worries). I say I am OCD, but really, I don't go crazy if something is unclean. That is if I CHOSE that I would let it be unclean. Really, the problem is that I NEED to decide for things to be the exact way I want them to be. Not sure it's really healthy.

Anyways. That's why I cherish my time alone very much. Because I know exactly what will happen.

I hate time.

I hate schedules.

Because if I am doing something I want to do it through. And schedules usually end up messing up that notion of things well done.


I love being alone, but I am a hopeless romantic, and as much as I fail in finding decent matches, I crave the warmth of love/butterflies in the stomach.

But love is also another of those things where I leave the control remote to someone else, and it scares me shitless (again, I suppose having gone through all those crazy ass failed relationship doesn't help with fear).



Happy Lunar New Year

Dongtan and Dramas

 You ever saw those bums somewhere on your TV/computer screen?

Does this place tell you anything?


No?




Okay.

Still nothing?

And now?

 If you don't recognize the place, you either have (1) no imagination, because you never saw the place covered in snow, or (2) you haven't seen the Korean drama HEIRS. I suppose the answer is probably the latter.

 I learned quite late, that the Heirs had been partly filmed in Dongtan. Such a shame to know Lee Minho was actually chilling in the small city I live in, and never got a glimpse of him. I resent some of my coworkers for that, since they haven't told me and all seemed to know. 

This High School is just insane. Not only the size, but the facilities and the setup. They seem to have so much... I wish I had studied here. Maybe I can look if they need a teacher....? But I am not sure I'd be a good High School teacher. 

Dongtan is a new city, and most of the people who live around the area are rich families, so everything is kind of expensive and high class looking. Everything looks new.

It is, however, some 40 minutes away from Seoul, so it's not that busy a city, depending on the day of the week, weather and time of day. I noticed that this makes it an ideas location for drama shootings. Heirs has filmed in Dongtan International High School, another drama I haven't seen and forgot the name was filmed in a Coffee Smith right by my apartment building, and a recently popular drama "Replay 1994" (haven't watched it yet either) has used a Korean BBQ place right in front of my school.

 I can only wait to see where they will be filming next. It's kind of exciting living in Dongtan...

Taiwan in December

My end-of-year trip to Taiwan was filled with randomness, bad lucks, nice discoveries and warm and rainy weather. It was probably the weirdest trip I've been too, filled with sweetness, just as much as bitterness. 

The trip started on a bad note. 

We set our alarm to 5AM because the flight was at 9h20, so we'd be there around 6h30 and would have the time to chill at the airport. After missing one flight back home from Japan, for the amazing price of 2.5K$CAD, I always feel reluctant to get to the airport late.

The alarm didn't ring.

I woke up in a wayyyy too relaxed state, and looked at my watch. 7h38AM.

Fuck.

Wake up Heather, run out of the apartment with our stuff - that was luckily ready to go - and wait in line for a cab. We can make it.

7h45.

No cab.

7h50. Maybe we can make it?

Cab comes, we get in, tell him the time of our flight. That he would be the greatest cab driver in the world if he brought us in time.

At 6AM, there is no traffic. It's too far from the 9-5 schedule.

At 8AM, however, it's a different story. 

The cab was silent. I stopped trying to make conversation after the first 20 minutes. Neither of us had had coffee, so talking was the second worldly most dangerous thing to do, after deep sea crab fishing.

We got to the airport at 8h40. 

...And $50 and 5 minutes later, we had ran to the Cathay Pacific Airways counter.

35 minutes to the flight.

They had filled the seats with people on the waiting list.

Had closed the check-in counter.

Fuck.

We were re-directed to a travelling office counter, one floor below, in the huge airport. Had cancelled our flight reservation as they told us, since we haven't gotten to use the reservation.

Casualties assessment: - CAD$600 (cab, flight ticket)... CAD$1,018 if we take into account the yet non reimbursed previous flight ticket we had bought. 

The trip started on a sour note.

But we got on the plane alright, and after the 30 min delay before takeoff, we were finally getting there.

We also, almost missed our flight back to Korea. Isn't that amazingly incredible? I am starting to believe that this year was really the start of my samejae 삼재(三災）* explanations in detail at the end of this entry...

Taiwan was nice though, it was nice to walk along the streets. Temperature was mild and nice, I had a day I took off on my own and walked back the streets I used to walk when I lived in Taipei some four years and half ago. I also got to meet up with a long-time-no-seen friend who gave us some time out of his busy schedule. End of year, is end of year. I never expected to see Taipei so busy.

We told my friend that we wanted to chill in a nice place with drinks. He suggested we go to a nice bar in a big hotel, where his friend works. We get there. And the place has been rented out for an event. (samjae? or New Year?) 

We then get in a cab to go somewhere else. When we get there, the place looks nice. I mean, as nice as an empty coffee shop can look? I was not quite grasping the idea of a coffee shop being a good replacement for a bar, but at this point, I remember thinking: Okay, let's just go with the flow, I don't want to bother anymore, too many badlucks in one day. Coffee shop? Sure. 

But it was not really a coffee shop.

Do you know what a "Speakeasy" is?

I didn't. Those are bars that opened in the States during the time where alcohol was illegal, and people just started running those fake coffee shops that had a hidden room at the back, a hidden bar. 

There was a sections with a heavy wooden wall, and doorbells put in frames. One of the frames on the wall had a hand pointing down, towards a button. That was the doorbell of the Speakeasy. After waiting a moment, the massive wooden wall opened and a white dude dressed in old style bartender clothing gets us inside.

It felt like we were doing something bad, something secret. It felt amazing.

 We got an amazing Thai massage one night. I really liked it. It was funny to have the people giving massage, not able to communicate completely with us (bunch of non-mandarin-speakers) and having a massage that usually requires a minimum of communication to do the moves correctly.

 All in all, I was happy I got a feel of Taiwan after all those years, even if the timing has not been the best, and couple of bad lucks tainted the trip. I am happy I got to try- retry and hang out with my two coworker for Sanbon <3 that I don't get to see as much since I moved to Dongtan.

Next time I go to Taiwan, I want to try a couple of the things we did not get to do during those few days: hot spring, clubbing, foot massage, go back to the hill where you can see all of Taipei, do some KTV, eat more taiwanese food.

The term “samjae” means three years of misfortune, based on zodiac birth signs. In the old days, people attributed samjae to the disasters of war, infectious disease and famine. It also implied calamities such as fire, flood and wind. In modern times, it refers to a recession of our activity, constrained circumstances, and unexpected obstacles. People often say, “Oh my samjae starts from this year, I have to be careful for three years now.” If you know your birth year by zodiac, you can easily figure out in which years you’ll undergo the ill luck. In 2013, those who born in the year of the pig (1959, 1971, 1983, 1995), the rabbit (1951, 1963, 1975, 1987) and the sheep (1955, 1967, 1979, 1991) will be in samjae. The possible hardships are slumps in business, deadlock in financial circulation, being swindled and distress with diseases. People also try to avoid or postpone important events such as weddings.