안녕하세요, Readers! (that's fancy Korean for hello)

Hey guys, it's me, TRISH!  Soooo, what's up?  Cool cool cool...same here.  Want some deets?  Well get ready, cuz they're comin atcha!! (God, I'm a loser)

Since Jeju Island, I've been working like cray-cray (nothing new), but I've managed to squeeze in some fun along the way.  Last night (Saturday) I stayed in and cleaned my apartment like a BOSS.  Seriously, you could have made one sweet-ass movie montage to the obvious tune, "Mambo # 5" "Everybody's Workin for the Weekend" by Loverboy.  Tricia sweeping-->cut to Tricia mopping-->cut to Tricia wiping sweat of her brow with an accompanyting deep breath out-->cut to Tricia going to TOWN on the bathroom tile a la Mr. Clean (or in Korea Mr. Homestar)  -->cut to Tricia collapsing on the bed (yeah, I have no other furniture) and blowing the bangs off her forehead with a sigh of relief.  Can you picture it??  I know I can, but then again, I was there.  How nice is it to wake up to a spanky clean apartment?  Wait, that doesn't sound right...shiny clean? No....What IS it?? SQUEAKY CLEAN!!!  Man, that took me longer than this blog illustrates.  Sometimes I think I have early onset-Alzheimer's.  Or I'm just too smart and there is no more room in my melon for organized information.  Let's pretend it's the latter,

.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.







 I jacked something up with the formatting up there, and I have no idea how to fix it.  It's seriously driving me NUTS.  Serenity now, Power.  Harness your chi. 

A couple weekends ago, Elyse and I made a photo scavenger hunt to do around our neighborhood (The rough streets of the Gangdong-gu...pretty sure they've been referenced by Dr.Dre).  All in all, it was Ah-Maaaaah-zing.  Everyone had a really awesome time; we embarassed ourselves just enough without being too culturally insensitive and it was super fun.  We had three teams of 4 or 5, and we had 2.5 hours to complete as many tasks as possible, each with a predetermined point value.  Obviously the easy ones (like take a picture of a Korean in acid-washed jeans', or 'find 2 koreans on one bike') were only 2 points, but trickier ones ('get a team jumping photo on a rooftop', or anything involving drinking) were worth more.  Here are some highlights from "Team Balls":

'Get a part-time Korean job (uniform required)'



Here she is in all her glory!

'Jumping high-five with 2 random Koreans'



'Ride on the back of  a Korean's bike for 2 extra points'

'Couple Wear!!'

'Take a photo with a waiter at Davinci's Italian Restaurant'

'Find a bad-ass Korean with tats' (This is quite rare, actually)



'Make an obscene guesture behind an old fart'

'Chug a triple at Bier Garten'

In unrelated new, there are only 2 more weeks in the semester, and then I'll be switching from Knder to Preschool in the mornings.  They are going to seem so smalllll...and dumb!  I'm certainly up for the challenge  pants peeing and all, and don't tell my kids, but the preschool kiddos are way cuter...  There are more preschool classes next semester, and I will actually be staying on the Kinder floor, so I'll still get to see my dudes and dudettes in the hallways.  YIPPEEEE!  Here's my all-time favorite Earthling from Earth Class.  This is Ethan.  Trouble-maker, super-smart, voice-of-an-80 year old-smoker, extraordinaire.

Two more weeks also means it's almost time to say goodbye to my best friend, Alex.  This makes me incredibly sad, but I know that his feelings about staying are really similar to mine.  We couldn't live here forever, because we wouldn't want to be so far from our families. We love Korea more than ANYTHING, but we kind of feel like it's so far-removed from our real lives in North America that it seems as if everything back home will be on hold.  But it's not.  We might not be 'living' there, but everyone else's lives are moving forward (hello 50 marriages and babies this year!).  It's almost like staying here is delaying the inevitable of starting a "real life".  Not that this life isn't real for us, because it is, but no one at home can ever truly understand it.  To quote Wedding Crashers, "we're not that young".  I need to find a place in America, and find me a man, and have some babies...I was BORN for babies, and I don't really want to end up a creepy cat-lady.  But I mean, cats are cute.

The kids might be sadder than I am when Alex leaves.  They absolutely worship him.  He's like the super creepy cool Uncle that everyone dreams of, who has endless energy and makes you giggle more than anyone else.  Okay, this is coming out creepy, but that's not my intention. Exhibit A:

Ok, I've been working on this for wayyyyyyyyyyyy too long, because I am blog-illiterate and everything keeps getting jacked up.  So, I'm going to stop now before I punch a hole in my laptop.  And yes, I'm strong enough to do that, so please don't challenge me.

LOVE YOUUUUU! <3

P.S. Here's a couple pics of my little neighborhood from the roof of my apartment building. Cute, huh?

In other news, apparently I'm a part-time peeping tom. ^^

Jeju-do!!

I'm baaaack!  Aren't you proud of me?  I know I am!  I had a little vacation from school last Saturday-Wednesday and I took the opportunity to travel to Jeju Island off the Southern coast of Korea.  It's been likened to Hawaii, a paradise, and even Disneyworld.  These are rather inaccurate, BUT it was righteously awesome and quite beautiful.  The night before our morning flight I partied pretty hard til about 5:30 AM.  No one ever looks back on their life and says, "I wish I had gotten more sleep", riiiight?. 

My friend, Jin (whom I met last time I was teaching in Seoul) had always wanted to open a hostel at Jeju, and talked about it often.  Lo-and-behold, HE DID IT!!  How effing cool is that? To have a legit dream, and straight-up accomplish it??  He bought the land, and literally built it himself (with the help of some builders and his hot-ass partner.  More on him later)  This picture is my friend slacklining on part of the roof. Anywho, it was super awesome to have him there because he picked us up at the airport and we stayed at his guesthouse for 4 days and had a damn good time.  I thought the island would be smaller, but it's in fact more than twice the size of Seoul.  Beautiful scenery, beaches, waterfalls, palm trees etc.  All the fixins for a rad trip.  I went with my new friend Alison, who turned out to be a perfect travel partner, since we have very similar laid-back traveling style. It was just laughs adventures and happy hearts all week.  Aaaaaaaaaaand copious amounts of booze.  Derrrrrrr.  Here she is! (I have a bajillion pictures of her since I was the only one with a camera)

Jin has 3 workers at his guesthouse who each work 10 days a month and live there for free instead of getting paid.  It was weird, because even on their days off, they chose to hang out there anyway, so they must really love it.  This place was SPOTLESS, and they washed all the floors and bathrooms daily (sometimes more often!)  No one wears shoes, which I loooooved, and the kitchen is open for anyone to cook anytime.  We made a couple meals to share with the staff, and they shared everytime they had anything as well.  Such a generous and welcoming group of peeps!  THE  BEST PART??  Jin made bagels from scratch every single day for breakfast.  WHAAA??

I feel like if I tell about my whole trip this blog is going to blow up my computer so I'm going to give you my Jeju Island crash course.

Waterfalls and holy freakin humidity! (here's my friend Jin by one)

Amaaaaaaaaazing locals (this guy stayed at the guest house and some chicks were asking for his autograph...Korean singer, I guess?)

<------Bush Maze!  This was where we met a cute couple (Korean guy and Chinese girl) who ended up driving us home and inviting us to their wedding in Seoul.  <3

Health & Sex Museum

Adorable Korean Marine Corps boys (we met them swimming at the beach then went out to eat and noraebanged (karaoke room)



Soju Soju Soju

Hey, it's me!!

This is Jaka.  THE coolest person I have ever met in my entire life.  He was sitting outside his Cafe jamming with his friend on ukulele and the drum.  Little kids were dancing and they were singing beauuutifully.  We randomly started talking to him and he spoke English perfectly (with a British accent, to boot!)  He was recommending a restaurant to go to in another town, and ended up driving us, eating and drinking with us all night and swimming at the beach til the wee hours.  He has traveled the world, worked as a journalist, photographer and lumberjack in the countryside.  He studied from this super wise old Korean man and learned how to make the purest, most natural healing Soju.  His stories never ended!!  There is actually a reality show in Jeju about him and his friend biking, playing music, cooking, meeting people and learning shit  Here is a link, but it's all in Korean...haha http://www.kctvjeju.com/popup/Vod_hd.asp?vodfile=http://www.kctvjeju.com/a/201207/120726bic.asx&num=23135
Words just cannot do this guy justice.  I hope you get the picture a LITTLE bit atleast.

Korean BBQ!

These are the lava tubes underground...sooo cool!

This is Jin's partner, Myong-Woo.  He was a jack of all trades.  This night he walked in with a squid in each of his hands then proceeded to slice them up in the sink while they were still alive (ink spewing everywhere) and serve it to all the guests..NUTS! Sidebar: Alison used the exact same kitchen scissors the next day to chop off all her hair in the hostel shower room.  Epic. The next morning he was outside welding a frickin anchor out of scrap metal with flames flying every which way.  And do you SEE THOSE PANTALOONS??  hot. He seriously rocked them.  He even gave me a pair of his crazy pants because I loved them so much...How kind!!

  I will tell one more story though.  Alison looked up our flight info heading back to Seoul late Wednesday night, so we planned to get to the airport with over an hour to spare.  When we approached the counter they were giving us really weird looks and asked when our flight was.  We told them and they said the last flight out was already boarding.  They had to call the plane and tell them we were there and to wait for our stoopid foreign butts.  TURNS OUT, Alison looked at our arrival time instead of our departure time and we got to the airport only 10 minutes before our flight LEFT!  Amazingly, we made it on the plane and got home that night...ONLY because it happened to be delayed 15 minutes.  Otherwise we would have spent a glorious night in jeju Airport.  Wouldn't have been the worst thing in the world.  There's so much to love about Jeju... 

We had many more shenanigans and adventures, but I just can't do it captain. I don't have the POWER!!  Hope you enjoyed sharing my Jeju journey.  More posts to come, I promise!

Back in the Motherland

Sooooo, I realize that I wrote very little about my travels in India, but in true Tricia fashion, I'm choosing to abort that mission and just move on.  Why do I suck at finishing stuff?  I am the damn queen of abandoning books before they are over.  All I need is ANYTHING else to distract me, and I'm over it!  As an example, I only read 6 Harry Potters. (cue the gasp) I straight-up DIDN'T FINISH THE SERIES!  Everytime HP is mentioned I politely ask people not to mention how it ends.  Ya know, in case I ever get to it.  THAT, though, has a lot to do with the book's gerth.  I mean it's huge.  It's like lugging a boxy toddler around...I just don't have the guns for that.  Maybe my guns would be more toned if I carried Half-Blood Prince around for a year or two.  That or I'll develop scoliosis or some shit.  With my free time I think I'll just re-watch episodes of Happy Endings on my computer instead.  Oh, and BLOG!  Yes, I should blog more.

So I'm back in the land of kimchi!!! I've been in Korea for about 3 weeks now, and everything is just peachy!  I am living in a different apartment buidling, but there are a lot of teachers from my school here, so that's quite nice.  I am doing my best to frequent my favorite Korean bar, JJ's....now THAT I am good at.  Cheap beer and cute Korean boys? YES PLEASE!!  But serrrriously, smoking is ass-nasty and I cannot believe it isn't banned here yet.  It's ga-ross.  Thank god for Febreeze!

It's been sooooo nice reuniting with some peeps (and tiny students!) that I've missed (agghem, Alex & Elyse).  Alex leaves in a month, so I'll probably cry.  Wasn't there some old candy that was sour and was supposed to make you cry?  I think it will feel like I am chowing down on 2,000 of those.  In a bad way. :-(  Elyse will be here til November (thank Allah!), and she continues to take ridiculously awesome photos everywhere we go.  Saturday she concocted a photo booth to take pics at a going-away party for our friends, Mark & Bobbi.  They're moving to Germany so it says goodbye in Korean and hello in German.  RAD MUUUUUCH???  It's rather inspiring. 

I'll post some mediocre photos that I've taken with my bad-ass professional camera soon.  Hopefully she can teach me some shiz and I'll blow your minds right to smitherines.. (what the shit does that mean? Whatevs, I like it)

Okay, that's all you get, but I PROMISE I will try to write semi-often to give you the Disha on Tricia. (see what I did there?)  If you're reading this, I probably love you, so DON'T FORGET IT!!

Peace in the Middle East,
T$

My travel map!

I've been insanely busy these past few weeks travelling all around (Florida for 2 weeks, Chicago, Buffalo, Torontooooo yikes) but now I am home and will certainly get back to my blogging ASAP.  Just trying to unpack my room, where I haven't lived in a DECADE, but it feels comfortable as ever.  The crusty stain on the floor from the gooey sparkle gel I spilled is still intact.  So that's good.

Non-sequiter time.  Here's my travel map.  How fun!  Still soooooo many places to see though.  In good time!  :)

1. Siem Reap, Cambodia
2. Seoul, South Korea
3. Darjeeling, India
4. Rome, Italy
5. Chicago, IL, USA
6. Interlaken, Switzerland
7. Paris, France
8. Jaisalmer, India
9. Prague, Czech Republic

• Create your own travel map or travel blog
• Great vacation rentals at TripAdvisor

"Hello Madame!"

My initial intention was to write aboutthe beef-n-deets of India, but I kept getting side-tracked (not to be confused with the gay night club in Chicago). Soooo, that's enough of my random stream of consciousness for now.  Let's chat about India!! (Don't worry, after I get you guys caught up on my life, my ramblings will continue...so keep your pants on.  Or don't, that's your call.)

Liz, Chera and I had to leave our apartments in Seoul around 5:00am on Sunday morning.  Luckily it was raining, so that was perfect for walking with my gigantor backpack in the puddles.  We had stopped at JJ's the night before (for a final brew and farewell) and I got home around 1:00am with swollen red eyes from the goodbyes.  I was a hot mess.  I looked like a toddler post-tantrum, snot-stained t-shirt and all.  I stopped back in the bar at 5:00am to see everyone still there drinking (that's Korea for ya!).  The girls and I (plus Elyse & Sarah) met for 'breakfast' (cheesy ramen, spicy noodles, fried mondu, all the usual suspects) at our favorie Korean fast food place, "Yellow".  Open 24 hours, for cheap yummy deliciousness, and friendly old lady workers.  What more could a weigooken (foreigner) ask for??

It was a sad morn.

Sooooo we take the airport shuttle (a seriously luxurious ride for a mere 10,000 won) and fly to China (Guangzhou) for a few hours, then to New Dehli.  BY THE WAY, Korea's airport can be likened to a spa getaway.  It's clean and fancy with great food, stores and amenities (free swanky internet lounges anyone??).  It's like the rest of Korea : flippin awesome.  TAKE NOTES WORLD!

When we arrived in India, our hostel had arranged for a taxi pick-up (thankfully, because airports and transportation in general are efficient CRAZY INSANE in India.)  You get completely attacked by rickshaw and cab drivers when you step outside, and you really don't know what anything should cost, let alone where you're really going or if they will really even take you there.  It seems like a hundred voices shouting to you at once,

"Taxi, madaaame?"

"Where you going?"

"Very cheap!"

"I take you, Madame.  Follow me.  This way, ok, ok."

"Rickshaw?  Rickshaw?  Rickshawwww?"

We stayed at the Nirvana Hostel, and the guy who ran it was hilaaaaarious.  His name was Vicki and he was this over-confident, personable guy who lounged on the couches all day chatting in his cell phone.  He was the first (of many) people to tell us, "In India everything is possible!"  Every once in a while, I would catch him squirting copious amounts of this "oil" onto his hands, and he would proceed to rub it into his (already greasy) hair rather vigorously.  It was disgusting interesting...

Here's a couple random photos of our first delicious samosa treat in India.  Mmmmmm mmmm good!

 

Our hostel  was a little outside of Dehli, but it had a subway stop about 20 minutes away walking.  It was an interesting walk, to say the least.  As we ventured down this long dirt road the next morning, dodging cows and stray dogs every 20 steps, leaping over giant 3 feet-deep holes in the ground filled with stagnant trash-water, we first started to feel the burning of HUNDREDS of Indian eyes staring us down.  This was the only city where I felt seriously overwhelmed by the staring and attention, but it was something I simply had to accept and embrace, in a weird "this is how it's gonna  be" way.  If I had let it truly bother me, I probably would have been on the next flight out of that shit-hole place.  Based on the stares, I figured I must have grown several alien heads, or perhaps my hair had ignited in a hideous raging inferno, but neither was the case.  We were just foreign white girls.  "Take a picture, it'll last longer", I said.   Most people did.  We were an absolute spectacle everywhere we went.  Whatevvvvs!

Here's a picture of a barely-congested street in Dehli.

In our days touring Dehli, we started to get a feel for the chaotic city, and saw some pretty crazy shit.  We spent a day at the Chandni Chowk (which is a nutty street bazaar) consisting of hundreds of winding, connected alleys full of madness, animals, and shopping, where your nose is continually filled with the aroma of spices and cow shit.  It was a straight-up adventure.   From the bazaar, we took a bicycle rickshaw (there's one in the picture below on the left)...

to some touristy palace place nearby, and en route, we witnessed a little fender bender between 2 man-pulled carts.  One guy took a turn a little too close and brushed against the other guys cart.  The bazaar was so packed that we had been at a standstill for several minutes in our rickshaw by this point, so we got to sit back, relax and enjoy the show.  The man who's cart got scraped went Tom Cruise crazy.  He started shouting at the other guy at the top of his lungs, and although I couldn't understand the actual verbage, I imagine their conversation to have gone a little bit like this:

Indian Man # 1: "You gently scraped my shitty cart with your shitty cart, ya jerk-off!"

Indian Man# 2: 'I didn't do it, YOU DID IT!"

Indian Man# 1: "Me??  Are you INSANE?  Who do you think you are, Tom Cruise?"

Indian Man# 2: "Your cow was all up in my junk, now I'm maaaaaaaaad."

[Indian Man# 1 then angrilly removes his sandal and begins jacking Indian Man #2 on the head with it.]

Each irate Indian man's respective friends hold him back, the traffic begins to inch forward in the alley, and all is right in the world once again.



Our new buddy, Scooter



In Dehli, we also had the once-in-a-lifetime (gasp!) opportunity to visit a serious terra-cotta wonderland, AKA the Jantar Mantar Observatory.  It has something to do with old school time-telling using the sun, or some other bull crapola.  Whatever, it was kind of neat, and then we took a sweet nap on the grass.  All-in-all a successsful visit.



We also stopped by "The Taj Mahal of Dehli" which was really beautiful.  Not much to say about it, though.  Here it is:

Alright, I'm sick of writing, and Maddie (my dog-niece) will NOT stop farting.  I almost passed out after one of them.  Britney Spears would probably call them toxic.  Heading out to dinner with Marty, Grandpa & Grandma at Smokey Bones soon.  YUMMMM!

More to come later!!  <3 Smooches <3