Remember, remember...

Remember, remember the 5th of November.....

I can't believe it's already November 5.

Last time I updated this I was all excited about my first trip outside of Seoul. Well, it didn't happen. I still don't know why. I was in the right place, at the right time (early in fact) and I sat, and sat, until it was obvious no one was showing up. A concerned Korean man sat with me and occasionally expressed his sympathy, which somehow made me feel bad, like I was ruining his day. Eventually I found something else to do but it bummed me out.

The day wasn't shot though, I went to the National Museum again right when it opened and got to roam around in blissful silence. Last time the placed was overrun with schoolchildren. I talked to someone about volunteering there and it sounds like there are opportunities for me. I still haven't seen everything; all of the exhibits together cover 4 km!

I had mystery stew for breakfast with a bunch of side dishes. One small bowl was filled with little shrimps with eyes. I ate them first so they would stop looking at me, Muahahaha! Later, when I described the stew to my Korean friends, they explained to me that it was hangover food. Hmmm.. do you think the lady there just saw a foreigner, at 7:30 on a Sunday morning, and made an assumption? Haha, that's funny. My friends described the content of the stew as a variety of "innards". Mmmmmmm... Seriously though, it wasn't bad. So far the only thing I really don't like is pickled radishes. I'm picky about my beverages too, no ginseng wine, milk soda (ew!), pine needle drink, or fresh tomato juice for me, thanks! There's lots of good roast meat dishes here that I can't get enough of and a lot of the stews are great.

I went to the Korean War Memorial now that I've read up a bit on the war. I'm very bothered that I didn't learn much about it in school. (*rant deleted*) Anyway, the memorial includes an outdoor museum of war planes, tanks, missiles, etc. which was really interesting. I've read about this stuff plenty of times but have never seen any of it before. So, it turned out to be an interesting day even though I didn't get to see the Popchusa Buddha as planned.

I finally got a cell phone, a neato one too! It takes as good quality pictures as my camera does and has some fun features like a Korean/English dictionary, a digital subway map, and this really weird thing where I can look at calming scenes and listen to calming sound effects to relax, haha.

I keep running into students outside of work and I get one of two reactions:
1) humiliation "Oh no, there's my teacher, this is the most embarrassing thing that can happen"
or 2) joy "Oh my god! Teacher! Teacher! (looks for mom) Mom! Teacher!"
Both are fun, except for when you run into students and their parents while you are buying beer for a get-together. "Hi, I'm the American teacher from your son's school, aka: Wino�". Oh well.

This weekend was cool too, Kasy and Kay were nice enough to help me get the cell phone (which was an arduous process as cell phone companies do not want to sell to foreigners who so often run out on contracts). We went to dinner, walked around town.. it was nice! Today I met my cousin Jess (how weird is it that I have a cousin here?) and we checked out Insadong. Great
weekend!

Nothing else going on, I miss everyone. Who�s going to come visit anyway? I want to show people around guys!