De-dumpifying my apartment.

Ok I'm admitting it. They say that's the first step right? My apartment is a dump. The whole thing is mostly pink (and since I'm not a pink kind of girl this is not a great big plus) with the piece de resistance being an entirely - like floors, walls, counter, cabinet, all of it - Pepto Bismol pink bathroom that is always cold and horrible. Plus its what they call a wet room which means there is no separate shower area, you are just supposed to take a shower in the middle of the room where there is a drain. Nice huh? Additionally, the floor mat is all lumpy and lifted. There's no hot water. Apparently if I open the water so that its just at like 30% strength (my school manager's words not mine) then I can get hot water. We'll see tonight cuz I'm sick and tired of cold showers in 20 degree weather. And to top it all off, the walls were full of mold when I moved in. Despite all this I am determined to make it my own homey little place for the next year. I've made sure its all clean. Today my school's manager went and cleaned it up with mold killer??? I'm getting internet hooked up there and I think in the summer the bathroom won't be so miserable. In all seriousness, Cuba is way worse, as far as bathroom and the hot water situation is concerned, and I don't really hate it there. Which makes me think that the biggest contributor is the cold weather.Speaking of which. Today is absolutely freezing. Like frigid cold. Since Daegu is completely surrounded by mountains it becomes a freezer in the winter and an oven in the summer. I asked the academic director why the weather was so bad and she said "because its Daegu." Poetic, I thought. I am beginning to like the city more though. Wandering through downtown is fun and full of interesting people. I love to people watch there. The stores are all so cute. Just this sunday I was walking through some really shady back alleys that I found. It was cool. Just little Korean ladies selling stuff. Then I walked into one shop and the lady made me sit down and have tea with her. They just kept speaking in Korean and looking at me quizzically. But most importantly I was able to buy a good space heater for \27,000 won.

Now that I think of it I forgot to mention that this Saturday was a lot of fun. Nate and David (two of the other teachers) decided to have a Taco Party (a mexican-ish themed pot luck) and so we all got together and made some stuff. I made chilli although, as any of you that have had my chilli will totally back me up, i make some excellent chilli but with the lack of proper ingredients it just wasn't up to par. The party itself was great. We mostly just hung out and talked. I met Stella, the Korean girl that Nate is talking to, and she's really cool. We talked a lot and I think she's my first official Korean friend. This saturday is her birthday and we're all supposed to go out. She also promised to take me salsa dancing. Imagine me actually finding a decent latin club in South Korea. That would be soooo kick ass. After a while (as people got more drunk) we started dancing. Somehow I got talked into doing my horrible immitation of the worm (and they all laughed) but then I did that really cool backroll thing I can do - most people will have no idea what I'm talking about - and everyone was really impressed. I also tried to teach them bad phrases in Spanish. Gabriel (the other teacher that's from Canada but is actually Uruguayan) is dating a Korean woman named Uni. I taught her how to say "vete pal carajo" and he got so mad at me. He pulled her away and said we were bad influences. Overall a very fun night.Teaching is also getting better. The students are getting to know me more and I'm trying to do fun activities for them. Just yesterday I made a tic-tac-toe game that incorporated the lesson. They had to use the right kind of sentence to get the box. They really liked it. Today I got to teach more kindergarten kids. They are sooo freaking adorable. Right now I need to go home (to my dumpy little apartment), make myself some dinner and try to do my lesson plans for tomorrow.
PS: As soon as I get internet I'll try to post some pictures that I've taken.

Here we go: David took some cool, creative pictures at the Taco Party.

----- Hanging out with Stella at the party.
-----Our little collection. We're so bad.
----- The black and white pic.
-----My Fav...