COLD

IT IS COLD.

It's beyond cold. Going to church today was a super trial because it was so cold.

Let me back up.

The week started off cold with a little bit of snow, annoying but not too bad. Temperatures kept dropping until yesterday the high was about 10 degrees. Not the best weather to go out in, right?

What did I decide to do? Go shopping of course! This involved much more outdoor walking that you would normally think.

First I met up with Tara and Shawn at an eyeglass store for a new pair of glasses. Usually, even with insurance covering the frames and part of the lens cost, my special blind girl lenses end up costing upwards of $100. Glasses are expensive.

I got a pair of frames for 10,000 won (about $8) and then special lenses for 100,000 won ($80). That means even without insurance, these glasses only cost me about $90. That is nice. My friend Tara will pick them up for me on Monday (the store is only open while I'm at work... strange hours) and I'll be getting them when I see her next. Yay!

After getting the glasses, we got on the subway and headed to Myeong Dong and met up with Tommy at the giant Forever 21 there. We had dinner at a Chinese place and walked around some of the outside stalls a while before going into this indoor mall thing (lots of stalls, inside).

The guys headed home first and Tara and I walked around the subway shopping a bit. We found this awesome little boutique with the coolest jewelry. I got this awesome pendant of an owl with a magnifying glass in the body. The lady was really excited to see us and shared her snack with us. Fish jerky! Yum... Tara is more polite than I am and just chowed down the whole thing in a few bites. I took a big bite (part of my goals list here in Korea) and it wasn't really all that bad, but not good enough that I was willing to finish it without something to wash it down with. So I took it out with me and abandoned it on a box (public trash cans are virtually nonexistent here).

Sometime soon I need to take Tara to Namdaemun market because she would love all the shopping there.

Also: it was SOOO COLD. Walking around, it was probably getting below zero. And it was windy. Brrr!

And this is why there are no pictures. We kind of booked it while walking around outside and then I kept forgetting while we were inside. I'll try to get some pictures up for next week.

Today was even colder. The high was 5 DEGREES FAHRENHEIT. The online weather report said that with the wind it felt like -9. It was really hard to want to go to church. The worst part was that the boiler at the church is broken. Oh no! It was okay in the chapel but downstairs in the Sunday school rooms the heater wasn't working at all. They had some radiators for some classrooms, but plugging those in kept kicking the breaker off so we couldn't have that on, even. The thermostat in the room said it was 17 degrees celcius (about 62 degrees fahrenheit) but it was totally lying. It was freezing. The kids were all wrapped up in coats. They said that if the heater isn't fixed next week, they'll just cancel Sunday school. Why didn't they do that today, I wonder? Coldest day YET and we still had to sit with no heat. Whatever.

And that's my week. Cold, cold, and colder. :) This week I get to do practice exams with my reading classes so that's awesome. Means lots less work for Ms. Olson. Hopefully it warms up a bit this week.