I walked out my door this morning and noticed that there were wet shoe prints on the stairs. As I continued down to the first floor, I looked outside and noticed that everything was blanketed in snow! I had to run back up to my apartment and grab my hat and umbrella. It's been snowing all day and it's beautiful!

It's a good thing I bought my Uggs yesterday. I went to a huge shoe store in Myeongdong (crawling with koreans and japanese tourist shoppers) and they had one pair of chocolate classic tall uggs left... and it just happened to be in my size. coincidence? I think not. Someone was watching out for me fo sho!

As much as I have always scorned southern californian bimbos who for some strange reason find it necessary to wear uggs in perfectly nice weather, I don't think I'll ever take them off again. It's like sinking my feet into clouds. Before my plush boots, the foot that i hurt a few weeks ago was killing me cuz it's been so cold. But with my new shoes... the pain just disappears.
The one drawback? If it's any warmer than 40 degrees, my toes would turn to prunes from the sweat.

I like Seoul, but i LOVE home. A big part of it is that I really am a loser/loner here. I have friends, but no one i have really connected with. Just lunch/dinner/shopping buddies...

i LOVE to sleep, but for the month of january, i'm a slave to early mornings. mon, wed, fri, i teach from 7:50am until 12:10pm. so i've been waking up every morning at about 5:30am to eat, check e-mail, read my Bible (which i plan to read through this year but i keep getting stuck at numbers!), and leave by 7. it only takes me ten minutes to walk to school, which is FANTASTICO, but i like to get there early to get my head ready... which is odd, cuz i always seem to be running five minutes late to class. oh well.

now, i go to sleep every night by 11:30pm and wake up at 5:30am. it's become a habit cuz i'm afraid that if i sleep late one night and get up late the next morning, it'll make it harder for me to sleep early and wake up early for class. so even on my days off, i'm up when it's still pitch black. it's been nice though. i finally understand why my roommate at yale went to sleep every night by 9pm and woke up every morning at 4am. but i plan on sleeping late and waking up late when i'm home... hold on laziness... i'm coming home in february!

teaching is really fun this time around too. Almost all of my old students are taking the class again, and the new add-ins are pretty cool. i have about 35 students all together.... and all the shy, silent, introverts are in my level 2 class. it feels like i'm pulling teeth in there trying to get some of them to talk. i think most are just really embarassed and shy about using english... but we only have one month together, and i need them to practice if they want to improve. any ideas? i'm using some scripts now that they can refer to, but other than that, i'm lost.

in my level 4 class, i have 16 students, so we went around saying our names with an adjective attached that begins with the same letter as our names... ex. eager esther. there were about 10 "J" names... so by the last one, she had no other option but to call herself, "Japanese Jiwoo" even though she's korean. i have this guy in the class... i guess the adjectives i would attach to his name could be: oversexed, horny (i hate this word), lascivious, salacious, concupiscent, etc. whenever a girl couldn't think of an adjective he kept volunteering words like, "sexy" and "yummy" and so on and so forth. any girl interested? he really does make you laugh though...

i teach a junior class at the main campus on tuesday evenings which is fun too. i have two of the same genius students i had last time and i LOVE them! one of my students told me that he was slapped by his math teacher in december cuz he went into his homeroom when his math teacher called him over. my poor little boy said that the slap was pretty harsh and he cried in class cuz it hurt so much.

seriously! as much as i joke about wanting to kick bratty little kids, i would never really physically harm a kid... people who do suck!

PICTURES AND BIDEO!
for those who are not on "crackbook"

Cousin's X-mas X-travaganza!

A photo essay on everyone's haul this year:

yeah... i'm still trying to figure out how to rotate the pictures on xanga...

joyce and una in a meaningful and deep conversation

At eating club's $5 gift exchange, mia got the BEST present EVER! a tiki torch lighter that not only delivers a flame at the whim of your thumb, but also has eyes that light up red. it's like they're twins.

i couldn't figure out how to black out people's eyes, so i figure, the cups full of alky-hol block out enough of people's faces : )

alright, peace out. i'm tired and i'm sick of staring at this page.

Last day in Tahoe.

I went snowboarding the other day, and it was really, really painful. My knee are sore, and my arms and shoulders scream in pain when I try to put on my jacket. But, it was very fun too. scary, but fun. MAYBE I'll try again in the future... maybe.

It's really beautiful up here. We're staying at the Marriott which is right at the base of the ski slopes. the gondola that takes you up to the runs is right outside the back door of the hotel. You can see the entire lake from up there

It's a good thing we're staying in a suite, cuz I'm here with my parents, my three cousins and two aunts. I think I've gained about ten pounds.

Isn't the room nice? except, now it looks like a tornado blew threw with clothes and gloves and goggles and beanies and scarves.

At the end of the snowboarding lesson, we went up the easy lift. While getting off the lift, everything seemed fine, even my instructor was saying, "nice job!" Then, I ate it BIG TIME. I fell on my face and I slid about ten feet and my jacket and sweater rode all the way up to my face. To add insult to injury, all this snow got lodged into my button holes (the kind you squeeze together) of my jacket and it turned to ice, so I couldn't even close my jacket.

i don't have documentation of the fall... except in the memory of my instructor and the twenty other people who were lingering in the area.

i drove around the lake with cousins and aunts, and it was beautiful, but icy... i thought my heart was going to explode out of my chest at one point. There's this super icy road with a sheer drop on both sides. while everyone was oohing and ahing at the view, i was clutching the steering wheel willing myself not to kill us accidentally.

I'M COMING HOME!!!!!!!!!!

I NEED sour cream!!!!!! and American friends!!!!

Esther's Christmas List:

My first edition of things I must get done over my 3 week break at home...

1. Learn how to snowboard (if my foot heals in time)

This is how I'd like to look...

But this is probably closer to reality

2. Spend time with family in Tahoe, including my cousin who not only appears in her birthday suit in a frickin 3 page article in Esquire magazine, but also online

I may have to take this one down eventually in case older family sees it.

3. Eat at Caffe Panini 1 billion times! which will equal 1 billion goat cheese/red pepper paninis, 1 billion bruschettas, and 1 billion non-sweet iced teas.

4. Watch the Golden Compass, cuz it's not coming out in Korea til December 19th.

5. Wear t-shirts without an underlayer, a longsleeve, a sweater, a jacket, a scarf, a hat with ear flaps, long underwear and jeans.

6. Get a SWEEEETTTTT massage

7. Buy boots

8. Drink in the blessed sight of big dogs

9. Spend time with friends... English speaking ones only : )

Old ones...

Older ones...

the Oldest of all... family Christmas get-together where richard and jemi can torture little children

Gotta peace out now, cuz I think I'm going to "spread the sawdust."

This picture was taken after the most excruciating hour of my LIFE. My mom, my aunt, my cousin Miyuki, and I all almost vomited our intestines out on the little plane tour of the Nazca lines...

This is how I feel right now....
I think I ate a bad melon... or maybe it was the squash soup I made... cuz that's all I ate for dinner. Oh man, i think it's gonna run both ends.

In less than three weeks, the motherland will be holding elections for president. There are an unprecedented 12 candidates running. Interestingly enough, or should I say sadly enough, the fervor leading up to the elections here makes me view the American politics with far less cynicism than before.

At the forefront of the dirty dozen, is the former mayor of the capital. He supposedly has the strongest support and many predict that he will win. Seriously, seeing this play out is like watching some sort of Monty Python movie. The raging debate between the two opposition parties is not about healthcare, or education, or such. The opposition party is claiming that the strongest candidate has committed 16 crimes whereas the candidate's party declares that the number of crimes he has committed is no more than 14.

How on earth can a convicted felon, fourteen times over, run for president?! let alone garner the support of a majority of a country. AND, there's a current scandal going on about how he played with the stocks of his company. He insists that he had no knowledge of what was happening... but honestly, 14 crimes? fool me once; shame on you. fool me twice; shame on me.

his picture is up on banners all over the city, and I have to say that he looks sleazy. he has beady eyes. there's something so untrustworthy about beady eyes... like richard gere.

speaking of corruption... one of my students shared his experiences of corporal punishment in high school. he started the story by saying, "some teachers are very perverted." this didn't bode well.

his physics teacher used to punish his students by having them all face the wall and strip down NAKED! this punishment wasn't just for rulebreakers either. whenever they had a test, all students who didn't achieve a 100% on the test had to take off all their clothes. My student assured me that all the teacher saw was their butts. but, he did go on to say, "sometimes he would have them turn in a circle, and he would see everything, front and back."

hmmm.... how many years would a teacher, outisde of a confucian/ asian society, spend behind bars for that?

I hope we never find out.

That is my foot... it broke my fall down the cement stairs leading to Hyehwadong subway station. I'm thankful that my fall was broken, but i wish it was broken by something else... preferably a really soft, squishy person like the marshmallow man. The upside is that my tumble was witnessed by scores of people in front, beside, and behind me.

I missed a step and fell on my twisted foot and ended up on my knees. my right knee took the brunt of my weight, which explains why a large blue and purple mountain has decided to take residence on it:

I was going from church to my grandparents' house; thus i can only assume that i am being persecuted for my piety and my sense of filial duty.

Although I couldn't partake in a delicious, organic home-cooked Korean meal, my roommate was kind enough to buy us sweet potato pizza... delivered... yummy:

Three cheers for good roommates and the two slices that sent me to nirvana. i'm sad to report that my binging days are over. only two pieces and i felt like i had eaten a mound of spontaneously-regenerating ugali (corn meal paste stuff we ate in Kenya). at least my smaller portions have led to a loss of weight which enabled the bones in my foot and knee to bear the combined force of my weight and gravity without shattering.

This is the church I've been attending for the past two months. I'm still very much on the outskirts of the community cuz I'm shy : ) but i've met a couple of people and they are all great. The facilitator of our Bible study (we've been going over N.T. Wright's Simply Christian) asked me to join the adult education committee. I always seem to end up in something related to education at churches. But if timing works out, I think i'd really like to. the committee proposes and votes on adult Christian education programs for the church.

I was on the bus coming home from some shopping (dude i've got some fob clothes) and this girl was staring at me, so i finally looked at her and she started speaking to me in English. She was this 15 year old student and she thought i was in high school. hahaha! probably cuz i'm one of the few korean girls who don't wear heels. well, that and it was getting dark outside. anyway, we were conversing and she said, "you are so gorgeous." i started laughing cuz she was totally breaking out whatever English she had learned in school:
teacher: repeat after me, "you are so gorgeous. He is so handsome. She is so pretty."

It's a line my mom often uses whenever she's feeling confident, "the flowers are so gorgeous."

i'm still loving teaching. my students are fantastic! they make me laugh and they're starting to get really comfortable with each other... enough to make fun of each other every class time. We were doing time expressions last friday and my oldest student is a 40 year old professor. when i asked them, "when were you born?" or "how many years ago did you begin your university studies?" all the students looked at my oldie and asked her, "can you count back that far?"

For my other class, we were practicing telling stories, so i have them play the story game where three or four people have one real story each but they have to pretend that each story is theirs. and the others have to ask questions and figure out which story belongs to which person. well, one of my students is clearly into korean dramas, cuz each of her stories were ridiculously dramatic:
1. I fell asleep at the wheel: "Last week I had to take my mom to the hospital because she was having gastric pain. We think she might have stomach cancer so they had to run tests that took a long time..."
2. I bit my friend: "My good friend is married, but she's having an affair and so I tried to tell her to stop, but when she wouldn't listen, I bit her."

Also, if someone could do me a HUGE favor... my cousin is supposed to be in Esquire magazine this month as one of the "best and brightest." the only esquire magazine here is the asian edition, and apparently, she doesn't pick up the phone when her mom calls : ) so if someone could buy the magazine and then send it to me asap since i'll be coming home soon (yay!), i would SOOOOO appreciate it... and i'll pay you back for the magazine AND postage!

anywho, i gotta go change the ice pack on my knee, so peace outside everyone!
THREE WEEKS AND COUNTING!!!!!!

It's SNOWING!!!! like, really, truly, full-on snowing here. i like it now, since i'm inside, warm, and reading good books, and preparing for classes this week. but tomorrow i'll be out all day, and traversing to the other side of the city. booo!!!

last week in one of my classes we learned about giving advice. so i handed out a scenario to each student, and they had to share with their partners and then give each other advice. one of my students took on the character of a step-mother whose step son was horrible. so my other student advised the "mother" to "set a trap for your stepson and call the police so that he will be taken away to jail and locked up!" when other students expressed concern for the morality of the advice, he replied, "oh don't worry, i already told her 'you are a very bad mother!'"

i had dinner with some students last week, and they are so great! i'm really enjoying teaching here, and i seriously love all my students! an old ahjusshi banker is taking one of my classes, and every class time he brings the entire class refreshments. he's super sweet!

i'm so sad that i'm missing thanksgiving this year : (
this will be only the second time that i've spent thanksgiving away from family and home. one year i stayed in connecticut, but i spent the day eating a traditional thanksgiving meal with awesome friends who definitely understood the spirit of thanksgiving.

so this past week i was talking to my brother and my roommate, when i realized why when i'm less than a month from going home do i feel more homesick than before. there are all these christmas decorations going up around seoul... christmas lights, sale signs and department stores, etc. christmas isn't really a big deal here. most people i talk to say that christmas day is just a day where they don't have to go to work or school. or at the place i work out, the girls without boyfriends are always saying how lucky the other girls who have boyfriends are since christmas is right around the corner. my roommate was telling me that in korea, most people prefer to hang out with their significant others on christmas rather than hang out with family.

it seems so empty and meaningless, so it made me feel empty and meaningless too. thanksgiving is about giving thanks to God for all God's blessings, and it always has been (even though the earliest "blessings" came at the cost of native american lives and dignity). christmas is about the coming of Christ and this amazing gift that God gave to us. AND, it's about family. i'm realizing those things more and more... a meaningless life apart from God, and just how important family and good friends are.

i think i will feel much better when my church starts advent services in december. i lOVE advent!!! it helps remind me why christmas is such a special time. AND it'll soon be time for "It's a Charlie Brown Christmas." ive already downloaded it onto my computer and i'm waiting to watch it the night before i leave for home : )

the BEST christmas tree EVER!

i tried looking for the one where all their mouths are perfect "o"s

If i could dance like any one of them, i wouldn't walk anywhere... i'd dance my way through life!

I hope everyone has second and third helpings of turkey, mashed potatoes, cranberry sauce, candied yams, and pumpkin pie!!!!!!! my roommate and i discussed ordering a whole friend chicken for our thanksgiving meal.

Before this past Sunday, I could never quite understand how girls could go crazy over guys in uniforms. Before this past Sunday, I could never quite comprehend how Catherine Zeta-Jones could marry Michael Douglas.

11/11: A day that owes its auspiciousness not only to its designation as Pepero Day...

but also as Rememberance or Veterans Day for Commonwealth countries. So, in addition to receiving a box of peppero from one of my students,

And a bottle of grapefruit juice from another,

I attended a special service at my church this past Sunday. We had service in the main chapel, which is really beautiful. And due to the holiday, there were a number of dignitaries present for the service including the ambassadors from South Africa, England, New Zealand, I think Australia, Pakistan, India, Malaysia, and other countries I've already forgotten. Has anyone ever noticed that the word "ambassadors" has "ass" in it?
Well, there were also a number of dignitaries from various divisions of the armed forces, including an admiral person from Great Britain...

Yes, he was at least 50 years old, and yes, he is a fighting man, but there was something about him that was extremely attractive. Tall, impeccably dressed in uinform with all these medals and ropes and ribbons, British (i think) accent, with a startling resemblance to Morgan Harris in Anne of Avonlea. I think that for the first time I could sympathize with Calvin's totaly depravity of humankind as I sat in church thinking about how attractive a guy, or shall I say, man, is.

It was a really nice service, but I couldn't bring myself to sing "God save the Queen" at the end. It just seemed so odd to sing a song about a political figure in a church.

Confession:
I LOVE PHO!

I had pho Saturday night with my aunt, and then again on Sunday with some church friends. I couldn't get enough, even though I would emerge from Hao Binh restaurant smelling like dirty water and onions. At least I gave those riot police something to ponder other than keeping the protesters at bay. My church is located right by city hall, so on my way there, I noticed tons of riot plice buses and riot police in the area. After a delicious lunch of brisket Pho, I came out onto the street only to be confronted by walls of riot police with their helmets securely fastened, their shields locked in a solid phalanx, and their very long and thick sticks strapped to their backs. I tried to walk to the bus stop, but they completely blocked off streets.

A friend said I could go underground and use a particularly long subway terminal to get to the bus stop I needed. So I did that, only to find that police were blocking off subway exits too! I heard one officer tell a civilian that it would only be for 15 minutes. But just in case, I decided to take the subway home instead. Lucky thing I did too, cuz when my uncle was giving me a ride back home that night from my grandma's, all the streets were still blocked off... SEVEN HOURS LATER!!!! That's Korean time multiplied by 3.5

On a happier note, my grandma is super cute. She's about 4'10 and shrinking, and last saturday when we went to a concert, she was wearing a mink coat and a beanie with puffy ball on the top.

If you're a guy, you might want to stop reading/scrolling down here.

I had to buy some overnighters for my monthly visitor, and I just grabbed a package cuz I was in a hurry... turns out I should have looked a little more closely, cuz instead of overnighters, I think I picked up diapers...

Scary huh?

Last night I had my students debate the legalization of medical marijuana. They started going on and on and on about the "equivalency" or something about drug use, and then about Clinical Phases... they kept going back to clinical phase 3 and blah blah blah. I just sat back and tried not to snore too loudly.... not because it was boring, but cuz I had no idea what they were talking about.

A doctor who seems as young as doogie howser (sp?) and looks exactly like a Korean Archie with glasses asked about how to tell parents in English that they're son is going to die. One student brought up the possibility of telling someone, "he's a goner." I tactfully explained that there are many other ways to tell someone's family that one of their members is going to pass away.

The cubicle I use in the faculty office.

Every faculty office has a sink... it makes it seem like a bathroom.

The heater I blast on right in front of me during office hours. My favorite inanimate object... besides my laptop.

This is a building at the university from which my mom graduated... Kyunghee University.

A pretty street in the campus

It's weird to think that my mom actually studied here... I took this picture figuring that the dilapidated bridge has got to be as old as my mom... not that my mom is dilapidated... you know, wood rots faster than human beings.

This is my roommate and I at Changyungung (something like that). The apartment is super close to all the palaces, and since the leaves were changing, I really wanted to go... apparently, peak foliage won't occur until next week.

In the palace garden area.... I think.

I'm still trying to get used to my camera... this pic doesn't do justice to the colors. but this next one does.

A pretty path in the palace

It's been a bit chilly lately, so after the palace, we had tea at this tea place that I really like called Wednesday. If youre thinking that the vessel containing my ginger tea looks more like a bowl than a cup... you're right. it was a fairly large bowl of steaming, spicy ginger tea.

This is a courtyard area of this place that used to be the private entertainment center for the dictators of the past. apparently, they would have lots of women-folk come up here for the exclusive use of foul, power-hungry tyrants. but it's a beautiful area with beautiful traditional buildings.

I finished the first week of teaching today... and i am EXHAUSTED!!! but it was a lot of fun. I have about 20 students and they all seem super nice and eager to learn. We tend to laugh a lot in class.

I joked a couple entries ago about how for human bingo I would have to write down "find someone who has performed or seen a brain surgery." I didn't actually put that down, but I guess I should have, because one of my students is a brain doctor person.

The classes are comprised of an interesting mix of people. There are some nurses, some doctors, some professors, a banker, dental students, a psychiatrist, stem cell researchers, cancer researchers, medical technology engineers, and other really nerdy folk. One of my nerdy students has an e-mail that starts with "concentric" and he went on about something about circles and whatnot. My brain shut down after his first few words.

I spent hours preparing for the classes, and now I really want to go to sleep.

we read an article today that had a lot of slang. stuff like, creep, in my league, i'm a catch, killer smile, etc. and i asked them to use them in a conversation with partners. then i had them share a statement with the class. one of my doctors said, "you are quite a catch, and i believe that someday you will find someone in your league."
hahaha!

ok, i'm super tired. hope all are well and happy! it's really cold here!
autumn pictures to come...