take your baby to work day??

So Friday I met with Yeon Jae and we ate at a new pho restaurant in Hongdae. After Pho we went to a coffee shop called a Twosome Place and had ice cream with espresso poured on top. It was delicious but needless to say I didn't sleep Friday night! We sat at the coffee shop for about 2 hours and she taught me some more Korean. It was fun and I am feeling a little more confident but its really difficult to remember all the vocab and the grammar is an other HUGE frustration! Its kind'a nice to know how my students feel though. It gives me more compassion for what they are doing. After coffee we headed to Kyobo bookstore in search of some English games but we only found a few so I was disappointed! After that we headed to Dongdaemun where we shopped for about 4 hours! It was intense and there were so many shops! I did end up finding a few things I could buy that weren't too expensive! We also went to the shoe area which is a huge floor of shoes! They had every color and brand in Korea! I searched up and down and only found one pair of boots that didn't have a 5 inch heel! So I pondered that for a while but they didn't have my size and it would be about 2 weeks wait and it was 130,000won and they were kind'a ugly so I decided not to go for it! We found a couple other flat shoes but they were all at least 60,000won so I decided I was better off in my Converse!

Saturday I worked and then came home to rest because I literately hadn't slept the night before. Coffee is a dangerous drug for me because my body gets tired but my mind goes on and on.

Then today I taught in Sangdo for a while and I've been practicing my Korean. Sery (my student) gives me homework each week and todays homework is colors so I am trying to memorize all the words for red, orange, blue, etc. On my way home a man was selling purses in the subway station and I found a nice big one for 5,000 won! I was really excited! I love the one Eddie bought me last year but I need a bigger one so I can carry books in it when I'm teaching... So I found a really cheap one and its huge I feel like Mary Poppins!

Tomorrow I'm meeting Enzongcha if she doesn't cancel again then she is supposed to introduce me to a new student... I'm not getting my hopes up too much because many Korean's have a way of not doing what they say they will...

Speaking of.... Danny told me not to buy the tickets for our trip to Thailand that I found online because he found cheaper ones and he was supposed to buy the tickets last month. (He said he wanted to use his credit card because he gets money back for it) So I said that was fine but he hasn't bought them yet!!

Also the students Eddie was supposed to start teaching last month are supposedly starting this Wednesday so we'll see if that happens!

AHH!! Eddie and I were walking around Cheolsan Wednesday and we saw a taxi driver carrying his baby while he was working! There was no car seat in the car he was just holding the baby while he drove!!! It looked like it was about 4-7 months old!! I was so surprised to see this older man holding a baby behind the wheel!!

I guess people are more relaxed about working here. In the gym on Thursday the owner was walking around brushing her teeth in the middle of the gym! And the guy that works at the mini mart is always drinking and watching TV while he works. But carrying a baby around while driving... thats a little too risky for me!



ALSO YELLOW SAND IS HERE!! http://www.koreatimes.co.kr/www/news/nation/2008/03/117_19940.html

Here is wikipedia's definition of Yellow Sand.

"Asian Dust (also yellow dust, yellow sand, yellow wind, or China dust storms) is a seasonal meteorological phenomenon which affects much of East Asia sporadically during the springtime months. The dust originates in the deserts of Mongolia and northern China and Kazakhstan where high-speed surface winds and intense dust storms kick up dense clouds of fine, dry soil particles. These clouds are then carried eastward by prevailing winds and pass over China, North and South Korea, and Japan, as well as parts of the Russian Far East. Sometimes, the airborne particulates are carried much further, in significant concentrations which affect air quality as far east as the United States.

In the last decade or so, it has become a serious problem due to industrial pollutants (previously not a threat) and intensified desertification in China, as well as in the last few decades when the Aral region of Kazakhstan dried up due to a failed Soviet agricultural scheme.
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Sulphur (an acid rain component), soot, ash, carbon monoxide, and other toxic pollutants including heavy metals (such as mercury, cadmium, chromium, arsenic, lead, zinc, copper) and other carcinogens, often accompany the dust storms, as well as viruses, bacteria, fungi, pesticides, antibiotics, asbestos, herbicides, plastic ingredients, combustion products as well as hormone mimicking phthalates. Though scientists have known that intercontinental dust plumes can ferry bacteria and viruses, "most people had assumed that the [sun's] ultraviolet light would sterilize these clouds," says microbiologist Dale W. Griffin, also with the USGS in St. Petersburg. "We now find that isn't true." [1]


Areas affected by the dust experience decreased visibility and the dust is known to cause a variety of health problems, not limited to sore throat and asthma in otherwise healthy people. Often, people are advised to avoid or minimize outdoor activities, depending on severity of storms. For those already with asthma or respiratory infections, it can be fatal. The dust has been shown to increase the daily mortality rate in one affected region by 1.7%.

Although sand itself is not necessarily harmful to soil, due to sulphur emissions and the resulting acid rain, the storms also destroy farmland by degrading the soil, and deposits of ash and soot and heavy metals as well as potentially dangerous biomatter blanket the ground with contaminants including croplands, aquifers, etc. The dust storms also affect wildlife particularly hard, destroying crops, habitat, and toxic metals interfering with reproduction. Coral are hit particularly hard. Toxic metals progagate up the food chain, from fish to higher mammals. Air visibility is reduced, including cancelled flights, ground travel, outdoor activities, and can be correlated to significant loss of economic activity. Japan has reported washed clothes stained yellow."