The Countdown Begins!

"They always say time changes things, but you actually have to change them yourself." -Andy Warhol

Looking back at the last ten months of my life amazes me! As the above quote implies, if you want your life to be different you have to do something about it yourself. Yes, time does change some things, but true changes come from within. You have to test yourself to see how far your courage, heart, and mind can take you. Mine has taken me across the world!


I now have two short months left in this mind-boggling country we call South Korea! While I am more than anxious to see my friends and family back home in Texas, I also feel bittersweet about leaving here. The independent side of me wanted to originally do two years here to make the most of my time (and save more money), but the family side of me wants to go home to be near the people I love the most, as well as officially begin my Texas teaching career.


I feel that just coming over here has helped me learn to make better decisions with my life. Just as moving here was like a "new beginning with a clean slate," I feel like going back to Texas will also be a new start for me. I feel as if I lived the past couple years for other people and not myself. But since I moved here I've had alot of alone time that gave me the opportunity to work on myself. And now I feel that I am ready to move forward and make important life changes that will set me up for a successful future!


So, as for the rest of my time here, I intend to see a couple more places that I haven't had the opportunity to go to yet. In our contract we are given 8 work days off in the summer and 10 in the winter. Since I wanted to add more money to my savings account, I have made the decision to not go anywhere outside of Korea for my winter vacation. While China & Thailand were amazing this summer, and I would love to visit a new country, I feel like I should finish seeing things here in Korea and save some money.

From the above map with 9 provinces, I have visited 6 of them. I have been to Seoul & a small town near there for a music festival in Gyeonggi-do, snowboarding & hiking in Gangwon-do, visited a friend in Chungcheongbuk-do, had orientation in Jeollabuk-do, went on a field trip & to the cherry blossom festival in Gyeongsangnam-do, and I live in Gyeongsangbuk-do! So of course I have visited many places in the last province. While I would have loved to have visited Jeju-do, I feel like visiting it in the winter would not be as fun as a summer trip. As for the other provinces, hopefully I can do a bit of research & visit some of them before I leave!

As of right now I'm assuming my "stay-cation" as I call it will be after the lunar new year. My school has only informed me that I will be teaching solo classes (no co-teacher to translate English to Korean) for the first three weeks of January. After that I have no idea what I will be doing in terms of teaching, because my school of course hasn't told me anything!! I'm not sure they even know what they will be doing, lol. 

Also, during the first week of January I will be working a winter English camp at the elementary school next door to my school. Their foreign teacher had to leave earlier than expected, so they asked if I could come over after I finish my winter classes at my school, to assist with their afternoon lesson plans. The best part is that they have already made all the lesson plans, so I will be getting paid just to help out!! 

Another opportunity I've been presented with is to help out a friend who works at a hagwon (private school) during my vacation time. She wants an extra 3 days to travel, so she has offered to pay me to cover for her at work! Now of course this is taking time out of my personal vacation, but I figured since I'm not going out of the country, I can spare 3 days of it for some extra money! Nothing has been confirmed yet, but hopefully I will get to do it!

As for this moment, I am at work waiting to start my next class. This week we only have to work today and a half-day tomorrow. After our half-day tomorrow we have a teacher's lunch outing. Tomorrow is also my birthday, so I hope the teacher's don't make me take too many soju shots at lunch because I have dinner plans with my friends in Daegu tomorrow night! haha! Now I just have to decide what to do with my free time Wednesday to Friday! Then Friday evening begins our trip to Muju resort to celebrate New Years!

That's all for now!

XOXO,

Amanda

Christmas Festivities

Well, it's Christmas night, and here I sit in my apartment. I had an amazing weekend spent with some great friends! Our Friday night Secret Santa party was a success. Jinae hosted it at her place in Daegu and we all enjoyed hanging out, listening to Christmas music, exchanging presents, and of course, drinking wine! I ended up getting a great gift too! I got a new book to read, a red scarf, and some other small stuff...my secret santa did well! Here's a couple pics of most of us...there were 11 girls total:

GIFT EXCHANGE

OUR CHEFS FOR THE NIGHT...SHANNON & SOPHIA

Saturday took me, Kristin, Maggie, and Sophia back to Gumi for a Christmas dinner at one of the restaurants here. Before the dinner they wanted to see some shops downtown, so we wandered around a bit in an attempt to shop. We also go to see some dance performances in front of the train station. It was sooo cold yesterday, and it even snowed! But, we were in Daegu that morning so we missed the actual snow. We just saw the remainder on the ground when we got here. I'm sure I will be seeing enough snow soon enough!!

ON THE TRAIN TO GUMI

 WHAT BETTER WAY TO CELEBRATE CHRISTMAS

THAN WITH K-POP DANCING?!

DINNER @ WAEGOOK COOK RESTAURANT :)

 SOPHIA & KRISTIN

 ME & MAGGIE

 THESE LADIES WERE HAVING 

A GREAT TIME ! LOL

After eating dinner, we had the bright idea of taking the train back to Daegu to go out and celebrate Christmas. To be honest there's not many places to go in Gumi, and we knew the rest of our friends would be out in Daegu. The result of that was us having a pretty great time, and 3 of us taking a train back to Gumi around 6am! Then when we woke up today Sophia (who has been playing chef all weekend) made us cream cheese stuffed french toast! I've never had it before and it was sooo good! I'm not sure if I can eat normal french toast anymore, lol. 

 AT THE TRAIN STATION, HUDDLING LIKE 

PENGUINS TO STAY WARM!!

 HEADING BACK TO DAEGU, LOL

That brings me to where I am now. Realizing how fast this time has gone since I've been here! It's my first time to be away from my family during the holidays, but I managed pretty well! Thanks to my friends! And I can't believe I only have two months left in Korea. I can remember when I had two months left in Texas before I moved here. At that time I could hardly grasp the concept of what my life would be like in Korea. I must say it has surpassed everything I pictured it to be! I mean yes, Korea's culture is definitely peculiar, but overall I didn't expect to make so many close friends! I knew I'd make friends of course, but I never imagined we'd become so close. Pretty much like a second family! A few of us were together this weekend when we skyped with our loved ones back home. It was fun to see my friends' family and friends, as well as for my mother to see mine this morning when I skyped with her :)


I have a feeling these next two months will fly by way too fast! And what sucks is that all of my friends have different vacation schedules for their jobs so I won't see alot of them for awhile. Gotta make the time we have left count! Alright, I'm gonna switch to a new post to talk about my plans for the rest of my time here! For now it's bed time! Hopefully I can continue my writings tomorrow at work. Until then...I hope all of my family & friends had a great Christmas weekend & didn't miss me too much! Can't wait to see everyone soon!! LOVE YOU ALL!!


XOXO,
Amanda

December Craziness!

For the past three weeks, I have lived my life differently. The difference I speak of is the result of the snowboarding trip I went on the first weekend of December. As most people may know, I fractured my right wrist about 10 minutes into snowboarding...if even that long! LOL! I laugh now, but it did hurt like hell when it happened. Luckily, one of my friends, Cindy, was behind me on the hill so she saw what happened and stopped to sit with me while I waited for the emergency crew to come fetch me. The ride down the hill was interesting because they strapped me to a board and a guy skied down to the bottom. Apparently, many people saw me because a random girl told me later, "Oh, so you're the "famous" girl!" Haha! Out of about 180 something people on the trip, I think there were 3 of us who got injured enough to go to the hospital. One of the guys messed up his shoulder/collar bone and the other guy broke two fingers. Eish!!

I was fortunate enough to have someone in our group of friends who spoke Korean to ride with me to the hospital. I also got to experience my first, and hopefully only, ambulance ride! On a good note, the whole experience (assistance in the first-aid clinic at the resort, ambulance ride, shot of morphine, x-rays, splint, sling, & pain meds) cost me only 35,000WON ($35)! I can only imagine what that would have cost back in America! Gotta love Korean insurance!

When I was in junior high I fractured my left wrist practicing for cheer-leading tryouts. I fell doing a cartwheel in the ditch of my front yard, lol. I remember thinking at that time, "Damn, I wish it was my right arm so that I don't have to do my school work!" Well, it looks like I got my wish! However, it's not as cool or fun as I thought it would be! Luckily I don't have to write many things, but typing one handed for the first couple weeks wasn't super easy! The first week of the injury left me in a splint that went up past my elbow. It just about drove me crazy not being able to bend my elbow! But, once they put me in a short splint, things got better. And now I'm in my bright green cast (they only give green-colored casts in Korea for no apparent reason) and I can type fairly quickly and precise, as well as use my computer mouse with the "right-handed" settings once again! It's weird, I actually got used to doing things left-handed for awhile! 


Well, I may as well sum up the rest of December...the weekend after snowboarding I went to a friend's 80's themed b-day party. It was rather humorous that after we left the party, we went downtown, and hardly any of my friends recognized me in what I was wearing. With the high ponytail in a scrunchy, big glasses, baggy sweater, leggings, & leg warmers...I guess I pulled of the 80's disguise pretty well!

Then this past weekend we were able to go to the army base once again for an amazing dinner! Since some of the soldiers have to work this coming weekend, we celebrated Christmas a week early with lots of great food, a present exchange, & games. This time we played taboo (which I sucked at!) and of course, the "friendly" game of Spoons! 

That brings me to this weekend. After a busy week of work (I had my open class & started my planning for January classes) I am happy today is Friday! Tonight the girls are getting together in Daegu to do a "Secret Santa" gift exchange. Then Saturday some of the girls are coming to my place in Gumi to go to yet again another Christmas dinner at a restaurant. Hopefully we can make it to the orphanage on Sunday as well. Even though I wish I was home with my family for Christmas, I'm happy I have a great group of friends here to celebrate with!

Then next Tuesday I'm meeting up with a group of friends to celebrate my 26th birthday! It's gonna be weird not celebrating with Jenna & Leigha! I've spent nearly all of my birthdays since high school with my two best friends! But, I'm sure I will have an awesome birthday here! :) Especially since I'm off work from Wednesday to Sunday! For new years eve weekend my friends wanted to go to a ski resort for snowboarding & skiing. Obviously I wont be partaking in those events, but I still wanted to go to the resort to relax, play in the snow, & bring in the new year with everyone.

That's all for now! Hoping this work day flies by! I intend to write a post soon about stuff that's been going on at work with wrapping up the fall semester, winter camp, & winter classes. As well as discuss other happenings in my life! Hope everyone has a Merry Christmas!!

XOXO,

Amanda