Korean Women

Here are a couple pictures... Korean pancake pizza made with kimchi, spicy chicken soup, and my own homemade chicken stew, some birds out in the snow, and the picture of a building is someone moving into their apartment and they use a lift to get all there stuff up to the high floors!!




So this weekend I worked and slept! Eddie started to feel sick so I gave him vitamin C. Already he is looking better!! His immune system is so much stronger than mine! I get jealous at times! haha. So Monday I taught Enzongcha then I met up with Hyein in Myeongdong which is like Dongdaemun with all the shopping and coffee shops and fun stuff. I met her online at my Seoulstuff.com page its like a myspace for people in Seoul. I knew I liked her the minute I saw a picture of a smoothie shop in one of her pictures! We went out for dinner (omelets with rice and cheese) then we got smoothies. We sat in Smoothie King for about an hour maybe more trying to think of things to talk about. It was a little awkward because it was our first meeting so I tried to make it comfortable but there were constant awkward silences. I sat there sipping my smoothie way after its contents were gone. It was something to do so as not to appear completely stupid just sitting awkwardly smiling. Anyways it was fun but a little stressful. She speaks English pretty well and with her cell phone she was able to look up the words she didn't know. I think she and I have the most in common out of all the girls I have met so I was really excited to meet her. She doesn't really like going to clubs or drinking (like me I just go out to meet people) and she loves horror movies and taking pictures with her REALLY nice camera. She also loves eating! Thats one of my hobbies so it was nice to meet a Korean women who wasn't "on a diet". She finished her omelet and had a smoothie then we went and had coffee. We were both full but we needed something to do! She is the same age as me and she lives at home with her little brother and parents. She has a curfew at 11pm each night!!!! She is 23 in Korea and she has a curfew!! That amazes me but I guess my other friend Yeon Jae was 26 and she had a curfew of 12 but wow! I can't imagine having to come home to my parents! After coffee we wandered around MyeongDong and I bought some cute stickers and some mascara from a cosmetics shop! She said next time she will take me to a really delicious noodle shop in Hondgae! I love noodles so I obviously said DEAL!

Yesterday I worked out for the first time in over a week and I learned while I was out sick they had cleaned out their shoe cupboard and they threw my shoes away!!! AHH!! They were my $140 running shoes from South Sound Running and they fit me perfectly and I loved them!! Anyways I asked them what happened and they said they were gone. They also said they would go look for them and asked me to describe them then another guy came in and spoke perfect English and he translated that my shoes were gone and it was my fault that I had lost them. Then I said thank you and they bowed and apologized! ARGH! Those were my good shoes! It was strange how they first said they would look for them though because it really gave me false hope. They just don't say things straight out I guess it probably keeps people calmer. I was upset but I stayed calm of course. I worked out in my socks mostly doing sit ups and rode the bike for a while but I stayed away from the heavy weights so as not to lose a toe!

After working out I headed home to prepare for my lesson with Sery. When I got there she was sick and coughing all over me so I finished off my pack of Vitamin C and continued to teach. She wanted to learn but her face was ll puffy and her eyes low so it was difficult to keep her attention. She was definitely sick! After that Eddie met me at the subway and we walked to the grocery store and did some shopping. They give us stickers for every 5,000won we spend ($5) and we put it on a sticker sheet. Our sheet it almost full so I think next time we go we'll be able to get the prize or discount or whatever it is... anyways thats a highlight in my life!!!

Today I am working from 3:30 to 9pm and of course add on an hour both ways so its a full days work for me. I have Sean at 3:30 he is a good kid but really bad at English but its tricky because he is good at certain things so its confusing! I think he understands then he really doesn't then I think he wont understand and he does... hmmm... he is at multiple levels at once so we'll see how that goes. Then I have my regulars Jane, Tom, Emily, and Melody. They are all progressing nicely and seem to be doing better in school I think because of my help so thats always good news!

Something interesting I have been learning about:
ALL the young women I have talked to (6) don't want to get married and 4 of them don't want to have kids and dislike kids entirely! I don't know if its a coincidence that I met the few women that don't want to marry but I thought it was very strange. Hyein the last girl I met up with said she didn't want kids or a husband she jsut liked being single! That was the 6th person in a row to say this!! The 2 women who said they might want to have kids said they want to raise them on their own. They don't want to be with one person their entire lives. This seems so different from my perception of Korean women. All the adults I have talked to and the books I have read have shown a stay at home mom kind of life for almost all Korean women and now they want to work full time jobs and MAYBE have kids... I talked to Danny about this a while ago and he said that more and more women are becoming political and getting into the government soon he said there will be no men in the government (as a joke). But it really seems like women are leaving their dishtowels behind to work in the big businesses. It seems like it is only in my age generation because I've meet women in their thirties and they already have kids...

I am still working on my book Chopsticks-Fork Principle and still loving it she is a very good writer and seems really wise about all things!