SHOPPING!! 8D

This week of school has been pretty nice. Nothing much. I had a bad day where I got super, super frustrated with my class on Monday night, but my amazing Tuesday class made up for it.

Saturday, however, was the best day by far. I wanted to go shopping because I needed a few more Christmas presents and I needed to pick up some more things for the box I'll be sending home to my family (soon... I promise... just as soon as I find a post office).

So I hit Namdaemun market again, this time with Kendra. Tara was going to join us, but she had a date (let's face it, dates with boys will always trump shopping with your girlfriends). I had fun anyways. We basically just wandered around for, like four hours. We saw lots of fun stuff in our wanderings.

First off, we saw a pair of jeans that our friend Spencer back home would have thought were awesome. He absolutely loves Audrey Hepburn. :)



I also saw the Korean twin of my Mom's furry tote (which we have named Fifi).



There was one point where we were going to head back the way we came because we were getting out of shopping and into food, but then Kendra caught site of Oreos and Cheez-Its! Caught by surprise, we went in to see what other American treats were in this little store. It was too cool! They had toothpaste, shampoo, lotion, GUM, chicken bouillon (FINALLY!), and fancy schmancy Nutella.



We only found out the name of the store after we left. I thought it was an appropriate name. :)



Right next door was a great temptation that we didn't give into. Mostly because we were scared of what the answer to, "How much?" would be. They were probably pretty expensive.



We did get some candy, but it was TRADITIONAL Korean candy, also the guy said it was good for you (yeah... I'm not so sure it's "good" for you, but not as bad as caramacs, I'm sure). The candy is called Dragon's Beard. It kind of looks like white shredded wheat covered in powdered sugar with nuts inside. The outside is made out of a hardened rock of sugar and syrup that he then dipped into rice flour, stretched, twisted, and folded a jillion times until it looks like hair. He then wrapped it around some chopped nuts. Good stuff. He put on a great show (in English!). It was hilarious. And the candy is delicious.



This is what it looks like when it's done. Kind of like little hairy cocoons.



There were tons of stores selling celebrity stuff and I got Kendra a calendar of one of her favorite actors to hang up in her apartment. Oh, Jang Keun Suk, you are a pretty boy. :)



I also got Jesi the pig from our favorite drama My Lovely Sam Soon. Isn't it cute?



As we were walking, we saw a couple eating what Kendra called a heart attack on a stick: it looked like a corn dog, but instead of the normal corn bread coating it looked like it had crinkle fries all over it in a giant fried mass! So we kept in search of that. We were finally able to find it, but then we saw him making these pancake things that smelled like Heaven. So we got pancakes in a cup! They were fluffy with cinnamon, butter, and sugar smashed in the delicious middle. Yums!



As we walked, we came across this place:



Yay! A HAPPY store! Let's ditch these semi-depressed stores and go into the HAPPY store!

There were a lot of booths with sweat shirts and since that has been on my list of things to get (the one I brought is no longer suitable to be worn outside of the apartment), I decided to try to find one I liked. Well, I liked a lot of them but finding one to fit a fat American is a little more difficult. I finally found a stall that had one design in a larger size. At first I was kind of "meh" on the design, but as I was walking away I realized that I was in the happy store and the sweatshirt said "joy" on it! I bought my joy sweatshirt in the happy store!



I was also able to find the gay ties my dad wanted! When he was here, he got a pink tie with little crystals on it. It was such a hit at church that he asked me to find him two more: one in violet and one in blue. Totally found them. Dad probably could have gotten a better price, but I'm not as good at bargaining as he is.



After we were done shopping, we stopped at the mall and caught the new Narnia movie (which was excellent, by the way). While we were waiting for the movie to start, we looked around the mall. I found one store that had a ton of movies for really cheap. And they are legit movies, too! Not counterfeits. Good times! I was good and only got two movies (only 4,900 won each... about $4): Andrew Lloyd Webber Celebration and Singing in the Rain. I know. I'm a dork. And I don't care.



The only other thing of note from this week is that they sang Messiah at church today (a few chorus's and solos; not the whole thing). The woman who sang "There were shepherds abiding in their fields" was absolutely amazing. For a church choir, it was a really great performance. The best I've ever heard live. All the soloists were obviously trained singers and the choir did an amazing job as well. I was way jealous of them being able to be up there singing.

The only thing that bothered me was that we didn't stand for the Hallelujah chorus. That was just strange. No one even made a move. I was looking around, kind of fidgeting and I told Tara that it was weird not to be standing. She just gave me a funny look and said I was "so cute." Whatever. You're supposed to stand during that part!

And that has been my weekend.Good times. Next week is Christmas! Yay! And because people keep asking me: I do not get a Christmas break. I work Christmas Eve. We get Christmas day off, but I don't work Saturdays anyway so it doesn't really matter for me.

I'll have to make a post with pictures of all my Christmas decorations.

Mexican food and a noraebong!!

Just a warning: this is a video heavy post: 4 videos total and lots of pictures for your viewing pleasure. It might take a while to load... I apologize in advance to those of you with slower internet connections.

Saturday was such a nice day. Hanging out with friends, eating delicious Mexican food, and singing it up at a noraebong. Allow me to elaborate with prose, pictures, and video. :)

The day started off pretty great. I got a box from my parents with peanut M&M's (probably one of my favorite candies and it's pretty hard to find in Korea and is also kind of expensive here... sad day), cherry cough drops, two movies (Elf and the new Alice in Wonderland!), and a mini nutcracker to decorate my apartment. What a great start to a great day.

Then Kendra and I headed over to Jessica's house to watch a funny k-pop music video of F.Cuz (pronounced "Focus"), eat lots of snacks, talk, and watch Elf. Good times. I love Jessica's apartment. I can overlook most of its faults (older building, fifth floor and no elevator, up on a hill) for the fact that it has a BATHTUB. That's wicked awesome.

Jessica decided that we need to learn the dance for the awesome F.Cuz song we watched and perform it sometime at a noraebong. We decided that the dance might be doable, but since it's all in Korean it might be a little difficult to actually sing along. You have to watch this, though. It pretty much encapsulates everything awesome about K-pop: pretty boys (by pretty I mean PRETTY as opposed to handsome... some of them could very well be girls), strange clothes (my favorite is the hat with the chin tail and spikes), random bad English, and cutesey hand moves in the dance.



We headed out to Sincheon at about 5:30 to meet up with a bunch of people for Brooke's birthday! Along the way we passed a bunch of people dressed as Santa. All foreigners. We're not sure why but we think it was a game to see who could get the most pictures with random Koreans while dressed as Santa. I should have grabbed one and gotten a Santa picture for Mom. Dang. I just thought of that. Sorry, Mom. I'll try to catch one next time.

Anyways, we got to Sincheon and then headed to On the Border.



Yes. An actual Mexican Restaurant. Oh, so happy. It was mucho fun. And very delicious. It started us with chips and salsa. The chips were taco shells broken in half and the salsa looked more like cheap pizza sauce, but it was still yummy.



Adam and I decided that if we were going to splurge on expensive Mexican food (about $15 for an entree... not TOO bad but more than I usually pay to eat out), we might as well go all out. So we split a virgin peach margarita schooner. That was yummy. Here's a question though: does it really need the salt on the rim if there's no alcohol? Hmm...



I got the tres enchiladas: spicy chicken with sour cream sauce. Just what I wanted. Tons of sour cream, black beans, Mexican rice, and though it was a little on the bland side (could have done with a little more spicy), but it was still delicious.



*burp*



The waiters even got a poncho and sombrero for Ms. Brooke to wear for her birthday song!



Check it out. We're in Korea, at a Mexican restaurant, and the waiters sang in English. That was awesome.



If you are ever in Korea and feel a need to find foreigners (i.e. not Koreans) then this is the place to go. I would say over 50% of the tables were people I would have felt fairly confident I could go up to, speak English, and that would have been their native language.

Also, the girl that sat next to me is from South Africa and this was her first time ever eating Mexican food. We were all really excited to introduce her to the different options. She is in love with it now and we promised that we'd take her for her birthday.

After the dinner of awesome, we headed around the corner to a luxury noraebong. Yay! I was finally able to accomplish #3 on The List of things to do in Korea. And it definitely did not disappoint.

For those of you who don't know, a noraebong is a place to sing karaoke. Unlike the United States, you don't go to a bar to sing, you get your own room, they got snacks, drinks, and booze, along with bongo drums, tambourines, and maracas to accompany your singers.

This was a luxury noraebong so walking in was kind of like walking into a hotel in Vegas. Complete with chandeliers.



We were directed to a room where we had to take off our shoes before going in. That's one thing about Korea: you can't wear holey or mis-matched socks because you never know when you might need to take them off to eat or, apparently, noraebong. The room itself was great. Lots of seating, a little stage at the front for your more performance inclined group members, awesome lighting, more chandeliers...



First thing, Robyn was on that option book plugging in ABBA songs to start us off. Heck yes!



Dancing Queen! Young and sweet, only seventeen! (Left to right: Corrina, Darcy, and Robyn with Shannon's head in the bottom)



After a few minutes, one of the attendants came in with "service": a bunch of free waters and a few peach waters (one of my favorite drinks here) for us. Sweet! That giant remote control thing is what we used to plug in the numbers for the songs.



Here's the birthday girl and some girl whose name I don't know singing "Faith."



Darcy accompanying some people with her maraca.



Corinna belting it out. Probably another ABBA song. They were popular last night.



People choosing songs while others are singing.



The place itself was really cool. Lots of couches and several raised areas with steps to sit on if you were so inclined. Two video screens so you could stand on the floor and sing or on the stage and face the "crowd" to do your thang. The videos behind the words had absolutely nothing to do with the songs. It was a running loop of clips from music videos, previews for dramas, and probably some other stuff that we didn't get. Also, at the end of your song, it would give you a score and yell something at you in Korean. They were all high scores like 98%!!! 좋은 직장을!!!

Here's a video of one of my personal favorite performances from the evening: Eye of the Tiger!! I wanted to get a video that showed the different sides of the room, like the light show in the back.



Now, technically, I'm not supposed to be singing, right? Well, I told myself that I would only sing one song, maybe two. Well, that didn't happen. I sang probably five songs: "I Want to Hold Your Hand," "Mama Mia," "All I Want for Christmas is You," and "Piano Man." Maybe bits of a few others. Other than that I stuck to the tambourine and maracas. I still think I was pretty good considering how much I WANTED to sing.

My throat is a little sore today, but only about as bad as it did on Thursday after teaching two classes. Dad gave me one of his Looks when we were on Skype, though, and did the "You're a grown up now; you can make your own decisions." *grumblegrumble* Way to make a girl feel guilty.

All in all, it was an amazing weekend. We'll have to do noraebong again. Maybe I'll have to wait another month or so, though, until my voice is completely healed up. *sigh* I also will have to remember not to scream at the Bi concert on New Years Eve. So excited for that! I'll be even more excited once I am able to get the website working so I can purchase my tickets!

Bang Trim

About a month ago, I got bangs. Honest to goodness, straight across my eyebrows bangs. Well, funny thing about those kinds of bangs, when they grow, they get in the way of your eyes. It finally got to the point where a slight curl under still wasn't keeping them out of my eyes and I conceded that, yes, I needed to trim them.

Being the procrastinator that I am, I put it off for about a few weeks until this week it finally became too much. So I grabbed my scissors and prepared to trim my own bangs. *dramatic music*


The only time I have ever cut my own hair was when I was about six years old. After that, I wasn't allowed to touch scissors for a week. Then when I trimmed the hair on my red teddy bear, the scissors were AGAIN taken away from me (I still stand that the bear needed a hair cut). Needless to say, I was a bit nervous. Not that Mom would take away my scissors again. I mean, she's over 6,000 miles away. What is she going to do? No, I was scared that I was totally going to botch this and end up with those two inch long Mom-won't-pay-for-a-haircut-and-just-kept-cutting-until-they-were-kind-of-even bangs that you see kindergarten girls go around with all the time.

I vowed I would stop before that happened, even if the bangs weren't even.

After about a half hour of searching for how to videos on youtube, I finally mustered the courage to whip out the scissors and start hacking at my bangs.

Before:


After:


Hurray! I have eyeballs again! Look at those blue peepers.

It was a strange process because it is rather difficult to see what you are cutting when the bangs are right in front of your eyes. I'm not sure how it happened, but the bangs are even and just the right length. I can see again and I nobody was seriously injured. I would call that a success.

Christmas Music

During my week of silence, I watched a lot of Christmas movies and listened to A LOT of Christmas music. It is my personal tradition that the playing of Christmas music begin on Thanksgiving. And then I usually listen to it nonstop until at least Christmas day. I will often turn it on in the middle of the Summer just for kicks (ask my mom... I totally did this Summer after sorting all her Christmas scrap booking paper).

So, just like my list of movies, I decided to share 25 of my favorite songs for the holiday season. I tried putting them in order of how much I love them, but I realized that I love them all for different reasons. :)

And here they are!

1. Glory to God (Handel's Messiah)

2. Grown Up Christmas List (Michael Buble)

3. Thankful (Josh Groban)

4. Percy the Puny Poinsettia (Elmo and Patsy)

5. Twelve Days of Christmas (Vocal Point, a BYU acapella group)
This song is hilarious. My favorite part is when they sing "Rise and shout the Cougars are out!"



6. We Need a Little Christmas (Glee cast)

7. Where are you, Christmas? (Faith Hall)

8. The First Noel (David Archuleta)

9. I'll be home for Christmas (Bing Crosby)

10. Baby it's Cold Outside (Zooey Deschanel and Leon Redbone)

11. Dream a Dream (Charlotte Church)

12. White Christmas (Bing Crosby)

13. Christmas Don't be Late (Alvin and the Chipmunks



14. The Nutcracker Suite, especially the Russian Dance (Tchaikovsky)

15. We Wish You a Merry Christmas (Weezer)

16. All I Want for Christmas is You (Mariah Carey)

17. You're a Mean one, Mr. Grinch (Thurl Ravenscroft... or Jane Lynch)

18. What's this?! (Nightmare Before Christmas)

19. Feliz Navidad (I don't know...)

20. What is Christmas? (Trans-Siberian Orchestra: Lost Christmas Eve)

21. December Will be Magical (Kate Bush)
This lady is hilarious. The music video with her crazy eyes totally makes the song worth it. I always think of my old roommate Gena when I see Kate Bush.



22. Silent Night (Sarah MacLachlan)

23. Christmas Wrapping (Spice Girls)

24. Spirit of the Season (Polar Express soundtrack)

25. Santa Baby (Eartha Kitt)
Must be Eartha Kitt. She is so awesome. Go Cat Woman!

Back in the world of the speaking

I went back to the hospital this morning and after another quick look with the scary throat camera (double ICK), I have been told to take my meds for another five days and that I should be good to go. I don't need to go back to the hospital unless I have recurring symptoms.

I was able to look at my throat video from last week and the one from today and you could see a huge difference. For one: both sides of the vocal chord... things were the same size! The one on the left wasn't all swollen and crazy looking. Much better.

So I can talk! I am going to call my boss and tell her I'm good to work this week. I'll take it easy on the voice for a while: no yelling, no singing, try to speak in a lower register, that sort of thing. Hopefully speaking again won't aggravate it back up again. I'm pretty confident. My throat doesn't hurt at all anymore. :)

Unfortunately, this also means no Messiah for me this year. *sigh* I'm really sad that I don't get to do Messiah this week. I mean, really sad. Singing it was totally going to make my Christmas. Oh well. I'll just have to settle with watching it this year.

In other news, Dad told me to send some reassurance out there. Some of you might have seen on the news some stuff that's going on over here between the north and south. It's calmed down quite a bit, so don't worry too much. Yeah, it is kind of a big deal: it's the first time that actual South Korea land has been hit by what is indisputably North Korea. However, the island in question is within the "disputed" area, so it is technically a "legal" move (I didn't know that there was legal vs illegal warfare... whatever).

There are a bunch of people that are registered with the army at my school (every male has to enter the army at some point here, apparently... interesting) and so if anything really serious did happen, then a lot of the guys in our branch would be called to report for duty and I'd know that something was going on. Also, I'm on a call/e-mail list for the U.S. Embassy. If anything really big were to happen, I would get a call telling me and I would high tail it out of here. I regularly check the embassy web site as well for any information about air travel risks in my area, just in case.

So, no need to worry. Everything is fine and if it gets to the point that it's not fine, I'll leave.

Is everyone all reassured now? If not, I don't really know what else to tell you, peoples.

Now, to diffuse the tension after talking about serious stuff (geez... who wants SERIOUS stuff on a blog?), I give you this happy holiday video of Bi (known as Rain in the States) who I might get to go see in concert on New Years Eve. :)



Isn't that man adorable? :)

A mute adventure to Namdaemun Market

Rather than sitting around my apartment FOREVER, I decided to have my own solo adventure today. Now, there are only so many things you can go do without needing to ask questions or speak at some point, so I decided to go on a small adventure. I packed up my purse and headed out in search of the Alpha Stationary Store near Namdaemun Market.

I had not yet been to Namdaemun which, I discovered today was a mistake. That place is AWESOME!! But I'll get to that in a minute. My main reason for going was I had heard of this five story stationary store and I had to go check it out.

The directions I got online were kind of crappy. They said to walk straight out of exit five and that there would be a staircase and a yellow sign past the optical store. So I set out walking from the exit looking for an optical store.

There were three right outside the exit.

Ok. So, we know that landmark isn't going to work. So I'll look out for the stairs and the yellow sign.

After walking up and down that road, I still hadn't found any stairs with a yellow sign that said Alpha. There were stairs going underground to a clothes place but no stationary store. Rather than cry and head home, I decided to just walk around and enjoy the market. So I turned down the first road that I came to and what do I find? A yellow sign with Alpha written on it! No staircase OR optical store in sight. I was just lucky.

I'm not sure it was worth all the fuss of searching for it, but it was still pretty fun. The whole time I was in there, I was thinking, "Man, Mom would have a hay day here." They had all kinds of junk. The first thing I saw was a big wall hanging with paper that Mom would have gone nuts with. I personally liked the one with all the black swirly stuff on it.

Beads beads beads beads beads beads beads beads beads...

Lots of fun clay molds for Tia Bette. My favorite was the one for tiny desserts. That might have been because I also so these really cute baby cupcake earrings on the lower level that I should have gotten to go with my cupcake necklace. Maybe next time.



I thought Mom would especially like these. They are like cardboard molded masks in different shapes. They got the normal kinds (bunny, cat, regular face) as well as some more "Korean" style ones.



I could have used these this summer making Diane's bridal shower invites! I needed loose paper flowers but I was never able to find enough. Oh well. These were only 300 won, about 26 cents... though I don't know if that's for one, a dozen, or what.

After the stationary store, I decided to spend some time walking around the market. Namdaemun market is HUGE. I didn't look around a whole ton, only about an hour and a half. I would have stayed longer, but I was honestly scared I would get lost. I am not really good with directions and with all the different stalls looking very much the same, it was difficult to find visual landmarks. While I could normally just ask "Hoehyun yok?" and someone could point me in the right direction of the subway, I didn't want to break my vow of silence just for that. Also, it's just never as much fun to go shopping without friends. Next time I go back, I'll have to bring some peoples.

I did find lots and lots of fun things, though.

There were lots of stores devoted to merchandise based on celebrities like posters of adorable Korean men, key chains for K-pop bands and even Korean drama paraphernalia. Take this store for example: you can see the stuffed pig thing from My Lovely Sam Soon (which happens to be my absolute favorite drama) as well as a full size pig rabbit from You're Beautiful. Jesi would be jealous! I kind of really want the pig...

The holiday season has also started up in Korea! There were a few Christmas stores along the way with cheap Christmas decorations. I was hoping to find a nice ornament to commemorate my Christmas in Korea, but nothing yet. I'll have to check the mall.

There were also big indoor areas. One area had clothes, clothes, clothes. There were about three stalls in there with hanboks. I kind of made the lady angry that I was taking pictures of her hanboks, though. Won't do that next time :/

Lots and lots of stores like this next one, too. Just assorted junk like toys, masks, and paper goods. You can see some cool hot air balloon paper lanterns hanging up. They were really pretty.

I also saw the cutest earmuffs known to man. They looked like strawberries!! Too cute! I would have gotten them, too, but they were more than I wanted to spend on silly looking earmuffs and I couldn't talk the price down (since, you know, I can't TALK!!! Man, this is frustrating.).


Speaking of not talking, I decided to learn how to sign "I can't talk" in ASL. I found that it is a very effective way to deter salespeople. When they talk to you, just use this sign, and they will get a dumb look on their face and either walk away or just smile and nod at you while you continue to shop. Either way, it shuts them up. :)

At the end of the day, I made very few actual purchases. Actually, only two. At the stationary store, I got a little set of origami-esque paper dolls with costumes from around the world. I thought this would be a fun way to waste time while I was bored for the next few days.

I made a few while I was on Skype with Mom (who has been kind enough to waste time with me when I'm not really doing anything... I don't have to miss home with Skype). They little dolls look really cute sitting in my little Christmas tree. :)

I also got some individual facials. I saw some in front of this store and thought the sign said that they were 1,000 won each. That's a pretty good deal so I grabbed two and headed inside to pay. She then told me it was 10 for 4,000 won. THAT is a super AWESOME good deal! So I went outside and grabbed another eight. When I went in to pay, she walked back out and came back with an extra one as "service" meaning "free item to get you to come back again." I love service. It's like free samples at the make-up store but BETTER.

I got a bunch of different "flavors:" pomegranate, herb, tomato, grape, green tea, lemon, cucumber, red ginseng, and "brightening" essence. The ones I usually get back in the States are just a packet with a bunch of gel that you put on your face. These were even cooler. It's an actual MASK that you put on your face! It feels kind of like a moist towelette but wetter.

Much as I would rather have kept this to myself, Mom insisted on pictures. Actually, she insisted on a picture of me reclining on the futon with the mask, cucumbers on my eyes, cotton balls between my toes and a towel on my head. I think this is a fair compromise.

After putting on my pomegranate mask, I closed the eye flaps and laid back on my couch with some Barry Manilow playing and took a nice twenty minute half nap.

And I got ten more of these suckers to use. YES.

Costco!!

So far my week of silence hasn't been too terrible. I got kind of bored on Tuesday, but ended up just spending extra time chopping and freezing veggies for stir fry. It's broccoli season apparently because this is the first I've seen of broccoli in the stores. I want to try and stock up because it is my absolute favorite vegetable and being without it has been kind of sad... not to mention kind of vegetable-less.

But Monday was pretty fun. I had heard that Costco was near the church but had never managed to find it. After the singles linger longer (free Hawaiian haystacks!), Kendra and I got a friend to show us where the Costco actually was. It ended up being pretty close. Maybe six blocks total from the subway station. Sweet! We were in business.

So Monday we headed up to Costco. It was a wonderful sight.

We got so see lots of familiar American things. They had Martinelli's sparkling apple cider by the case.Rice Krispies for the padre.

And CHEESE. REAL CHEESE. Have I mentioned before how it is hard to find real cheese around here and how it is really expensive? Well, I was even able to find my very own taste of home: straight from Oregon, it's Tillamook cheese!

Then, of course, there were some not so familiar items. Such as really fresh fish. Still swimming. Actually, they just kind of hovered around the bottom of the tank. Silly fish.


You could also get frozen fish on a rope! What do you think? Is it the new soap on a rope replacement for Christmas stockings?

We ended up getting stuff that is very AMERICAN. While the giant bunches of delectable fruit, frozen corn dogs, and other giant bulk items were extremely tempting, we were limited by our tiny fridges/freezers, and the fact that we had to haul all this back to the subway. I got me some lunch meat (ham and spicy salami!) and pepper jack cheese. We also split a giant bag of frozen tortillas that are currently taking up about half of my freezer space. I definitely planning on going back before Christmas to buy a bunch of sweets to haul to the singles Christmas get together.

We HAD wanted to go to the food court for lunch after but apparently you can't go back after you've paid. We're not sure why... but we just shrugged it off and decided to get hot dogs another time.