Almost the Start of a New Year

Okay so I'm back on the peninsula and I was thinking that when I got back I'd try to be more consistent with these blog updates as my New Year's resolution, well seeing as today is the 14^th of the month I can't quite say that I've succeeded. However, if I go off of the Lunar calender then it isn't the New Year yet so I'm ahead of the curve. When I got back to Korea I made sure to eat the foods pretty soon that I missed in the short time I was gone. It's funny that here I was with a list of restaurants and foods that I almost had to eat get into my belly while I was stateside and then coming back to Korea there were foods that I had to eat when I got here. Jet lag didn't really hit me when I was flying to the states. I was up for almost 48 hours before my flight with a couple naps so I slept like a baby on the plane and then all I needed was the occasional nap on James's or Grandma's couch. When I came back however I suffered from wicked jet lag. I thought I was a bear there for a short period as I just needed to hibernate.

Before I left and since I've been back I've been riding the train and I used to ride the slowest train almost all the time, but then I branched out and road the medium speed train and then this weekend going to Scott and Heana's I road the KTX (the higher speed, less stops train). I've noticed that the stewards on the trains differ according to the price of the train tickets. The cheapo train that I usually take has dudes that come through to check tickets. Then the medium level and KTX have long legs, skirts and cute faces. However, the customers are usually the same on all three of them. I sat next to one gentleman that I swear I thought I'd have to midwife at some point as his legs were poised so far apart that he could birth a calf. Oh well, what can ya do.

When I was headed up that way after class on Saturday, I had a quick layover in a town for about 20 minutes. I decided since it was 9:50 that I could quickly run into Costco that was right next door to the station before it closed at 10:00. I ran in and was trying to tell the girl at the front I only needed one thing, but she didn't seem to care as long as I was in the store before 10. I was shocked when I got inside as there was no rush by people in the store to be making their way to the counters to start to check out. I grabbed my two giant blocks of cheese and checked out, got back over to the train station and got back on the new train.

When I visited Scott and Heana's I got my Christmas gift box of cookies from Joyce. Heana didn't enjoy them as much. She made Scott and I put them away because they were too tasty. My favorites were the lemon shortbreads. They were quite addicting.

What a deliciously addicting book to read.  Also please note:  This isn't the only type of book I've been reading lately.

There wasn't anything that said I couldn't eat the box.

Someone's belly is happy.

One of my classes this new term (I say new term, it did start in December) is a mid-upper level class that is filled with 3^rd and 4^th grade girls, 10 of them. They definitely make me smile and keep me on my toes whenever I have them. That being said, they produce some of the best quality work that I have seen by students of similar levels.  It's actually become something that I've started copying their homework out of their books and posting it on my walls.  This got my other classes to increase the quality of their work because they wanted their work posted as well.  Now I've got one of my five minute breaks every class making somewhere between 5 to 10 copies of pages in books that are just awesome.

The peninsula is unusually colder right now than it was this time last year. In Suncheon it's not snowing, but it's not warming up to melt the ice that's been on the ground since I've been back. When I got into Seoul after my plain landed there was black ice everywhere and it was hard as hell to walk around with my boots on. Since it was colder I bought a ceramic fan or my apartment instead of using my floor heater since my bed is no longer on the floor and it was one of the best things. Turn it on and have it oscillating and it has a timer on it so it will automatically turn off that way I can put it on, fall asleep, and not worry about waking up as a crispy fried onion.

Melanie and Cathy are making sure that my head and ears are warm.  :-)

Today we had a short meeting and I made barbecue chicken sandwiches with mac and cheese, bbq beans, creamy corn and bread pudding.  Yummy 

Ok that's about it. Love y'all and this will (fingers crossed) be the beginnings of a trend of posts to come. Here's to the New Year and a healthy blogging habit.  I just need to post whenever I tell my mom that I'm posting so that she doesn't give me flack about not following through on my promise of a post.