My little life in Korea :-P

The last few weeks have been pretty fantastic, overall. Nothing too out of the ordinary, just having a good time living my little life in Korea. I've been spending a lot of time with Nick. We've been pretty good about alternating sleepover nights to keep things fair ;-) but I would make the trek out to Siji nevertheless. I've also been going out more than I had been in the past. We've gone out dancing at Old Skool, where Nick knows the owners and most of the people are pretty cool, several times. And it's great that when we go dancing Nick and I just dance the night away. Last Saturday we didn't get home until after 5AM. I've also gotten to hang out with some of the people from his neck of the woods. We did this trivia night thing on Sunday (I need to brush up big time... :-p ) and it was a lot of fun. Nick kicked ass. I love his big, sexy brain!
--- Nick and I at a Bar-B-Q on Sarah's roof in Siji.--- Nick is making his silly face. He's so cute.
I've also been going to salsa pretty regularly. I like it a lot, though I do get a bit frustrated because the salsa on two thing feels so foreign to me. I don't like feeling like an amateur but I think I'm just having to learn to deal with it. The only thing that sucks is that when a Korean guy asks me to dance it takes me a minute to adapt to their style, because they do NOT lead the way men are supposed to. They lead in really vague, soft ways and with very little tension so I get a little flustered. But I am getting better. Salsa Hwang is great and hopefully I will be able to start teaching a salsa class for foreigners sometime in the next month or two. That would be great. My real goal is to start a Rueda class, but it may take a little bit of time for Koreans to be open to the idea of Rueda. Oh well.

My eyes are feeling almost completely better. I do feel that they get a little bit dry sometimes but mostly they're doing really well. The only bad thing is that they eye doctor told me I cannot go back to Hapkido for a month after my surgery. For the record, this completely sucks. The last thing I want to do is delay or regress on all the progress I've made. But I just need to resolve to not spend the next three weeks sitting on my ass. I'm going to work out a lot harder than I have been so that when I do go back to Hapkido I'm even stronger. Nick got me the best present, he installed a chin-up bar in my apartment. For the moment all I can do is dangle from it, and not for very long at that, but I think having it there makes me want to make progress.

The only thing that has been a little tricky is that for some reason I feel like the shit is about to hit the fan at my school. Liz (who happens to be my best friend in Korea) is leaving at the end of July, sniff sniff, and they haven't found anyone to replace her. They don't really seem too concerned about it. Also, a lot of the foreign teachers have been having concerns that are being completely ignored by the management, even though they've been told over and over and over. Megan has a bunch of bugs, Luke's apartment is a shithole, and Liz had been after them for a long time to set up an extension of her contract (which would have helped them a lot more than it would have helped her) and they just haven't done squat, about anything. I'm not currently having any specific issues, other than the fact that I feel like stuff within the school is run really inefficiently, but I think the last thing they would want is a pissed off Cuban in their midst. Hee hee. Koreans aren't really used to confrontation so we'll see what happens, because if Liz leaves and they don't have anyone to replace her and we get stuck with a bunch of extra classes, then like I said... The shit will hit the fan.

On a more positive note: I'm really looking forward to going to Mudfest (on July 12th), which is exactly as it sounds. It's thousands upon thousands of people all gathered on this beach, covering themselves in mud. It sounds FAN-FREAKING-TASTIC. The only sad thing is that Nick goes home for a month right after Mudfest, so I'll miss him. But that just means I'll have to eagerly await his return. Also at the end of July I have a week break. Unfortunately, Liz will be gone, Nick will be back in the states and due to the LASIK thing I'm going to be pretty broke at that point, but I may just head over to Busan by myself and veg on the beach to relax for a day or two. I just won't get to have a big trip or anything. But that's not too bad.

Oh and I almost forgot to mention that I dyed my hair black and it has bangs now. Random, I know. But I think it looks really cute.

I can SSEEEEEEE!!

I finally did it. I finally got my LASIK eye surgery. Yes, I know that I'm slightly crazy for getting eye surgery in a country where I'm all alone (practically) and God knows what could've happened but we all know that I'm wacky and impulsive like that... so it's ok. It actually went well (or so the doctor says). I'm not gonna lie, it was not fun by any means, but the actual surgery was not that bad. The first part feels like they have your eyeball in the palm of their hand and they are squeezing the shit out of it. But that's the worst part. The second part was not really that bad at all. It's kind of nerve-wracking but not painful. The really bad part was afterwards. After the surgery Liz walked me home, because I could not see AT ALL, and my eyes were really hurting. The doctor said to try to get some sleep and it would get better but i seriously could NOT do it. It felt like my eyeballs were on fire. It was one of the most uncomfortable and painful things, I've experienced. So we ended up having to go back to the doctor's office so that he could give me a pain killer shot, which (Thank God!!) allowed me to sleep a bit. I owe Liz sooooo huge for taking care of me and dealing with my grumpiness. I was so bad but I get really cranky when I'm in pain. I don't think it's an irrational reaction. Then around midnight Nick, the bf, came to relieve Liz from Susy duty. He was calling me Jet Girl all night because I was wearing these funny plastic things that were taped to my face and protect my eyes. He found the goggles to absolutely hilarious. I just felt like an idiot. But the important thing is that now I can see and my eyes, though not completely better yet, are improving steadily. The right one is still a little blood-shot and they feel dry and a little uncomfortable sometimes but for the most part it's great just to be able to see.

Aside from the LASIK I had a pretty good week. I spent a couple of night in Siji with Nick. And I'm aware that I've slipped it into the blog kind of inconspicuously but yes, I have a new boyfriend. As I said, his name is Nick and we met a few weeks ago (when I first mentioned him in the blog). We've been having a lot of fun so far and I'm hoping that it will only get better. On another fun side-note, I taught my first, ladies styling class yesterday at salsa. There were only a few girls there but I thought it went ok (especially considering that they don't really speak English and I obviously don't speak Korean).

That's it for me (for now at least).

Two Great Weekends (and an icky week in between)

I just got back last night from Busan, which is on the southeastern coast of Korea. I had a great time. I got to lay out on the beach, sleep, listen to my Harry Potter book on Audio... in short, my own personal heaven. I also got to spend time with some cool new people that I met last week (get to that in a minute) and it was just a lot of fun. Unfortunately, the water was freezing, and there was this really strange man in a thong speedo (Eww!) that kept blowing his whistle if anyone even tried to swim. He wasn't even a lifeguard. I don't get it, but whatever. TIK. There was also yummy food and dancing involved in my weekend. Overall it was pretty great. Oh and I got a little burned... Oh well.

I really needed the break because last week was just annoying as hell. It was the first week of the new teaching month and those are always the worst. You have almost no time to prepare for your new month of classes. It feels like people are pulling at you from every angle to get shit done, and we have to do our monthly evaluations, which take forever. Also, and for the first time, I got really annoyed at work because on Tuesday, like 5 minutes before I have to go teach a class, my partner teacher says to me, "Oh Susy, the kids don't have the [this] book, they have [that] book." Mind you I had an entire lesson prepared for the first book, not to mention that I had already made my monthly lesson plan for that book, and on top of that I have never taught the second book series so if I had known I would definitely have taken a lot of care to be ready for the class. So I walked over to my boss (and I will admit I was a little peeved), and I said told her what happened. I don't think she really understood why I was upset. But my main thing is, how am I supposed to know that something is changing if no one tells me, especially when I had prior to all of this asked (verbatim) "Are there any changes this month that I need to know about?" Um.. hello?!?!? But it was fine, I went into class and I winged it. What else could I do?
Also because of all of this I ended up missing Hapkido for most of the week, since I had evals to do on Wednesday and Thursday, and I left to Busan on Friday morning.

The previous weekend also happened to be great. On Friday, one of my kindie kid's moms came to the school and she gave me two tickets to the opera. She's so sweet. So I took Liz as my date and I got actually go to the opera (and my seats were pretty sweet). After the opera I decided that even if I had no one to go with, I was going to find a place to go salsa dancing. So I walked over to a place that I had found on the internet called Babalu. When I got there it was empty except for the owner and a couple of people but it ended up being pretty cool. We hung out and chatted (as much I can chat with people who speak very little English) and we danced a little. The owner is a guy named Salsa Hwang (which sounds like Salsa Juan if you don't see how it's spelled so I thought that was pretty funny) and he's awesome. He's a little Korean man with a lot of latin flair. Lol. I went back to salsa on both Saturday and Sunday. I was just putzing around doing some old salsa shines and I got offered a job teaching Salsa for the club. How cool is that? I'm pretty excited. For now I'm going to teach a ladies styling class and then maybe we can start a rueda course. Yay! I also got to make friends with a young Korean guy named Song Gu, but he goes by Ron, who lived in the states and actually lived a few months in Cuba, so it's great cuz dances more like Cuban-style salsa and he's my official translator.

Also on Saturday I went to this fight club thing that I had found on the internet. A guy named Nick is doing it and it was also a lot of fun. It's basically just other foreigners (or weigooks as we are called here) just getting together to practice martial arts and spar. I'm not quite up to their level yet but I try. Nick is pretty awesome. He does cage fighting and Tae Kwon Do, so I like hanging out with him. After salsa on Saturday I met up with him, and a few of the other people from Fight Club at a hip-hop club named... Old Skool. Yes, the name is a little cheese-y. But I had a great time. We danced for hours and it turns out that I am (hopefully) going to be in a music video for a local artist named Tony B (and he's not Korean). The video shoot will be in a couple of weeks. It's a lot, I know. Then on Sunday I went to watch Megan and Luke's softball game and after I went to grab food with David (a tall Canadian boy who I met at Fight Club) and Francis (a funny half-Paraguayan boy that I met at softball and who likes to practice his spanish with me).

So the last two weeks have been pretty eventful. But also pretty good. A few things are in the works that I really hope pan out. I always get a little apprehensive when I see things that I really want and may actually be able to have. But that's just my skeptic side coming out. Wish me luck!