Food, Friends, and Fun!

Instead of a Super Junior music video to start out my blog, I present to you this adorable life lesson of "say no to strangers" as shown by a cute Korean child: 

Anywho, after the events of last weekend, it was inevitable that I would have a slow week. I was coming down off of my SuJu high, and this was not a good week with my kids. They have Sports Day coming up, where they all get to participate in vaguely sports related activities, and I think it's really hard to pay attention. My week was full of me and my coteachers trying every trick in the book to get something from our students, but it was slow going. I even had a pencil stabbing incident, and I also had a child pulling out actual chunks of his hair because he lost a game. Oy vey.

In lieu of exciting events this week, I will post a compilation of pictures I call "This is What I've Been Eating, Mom and Dad, and Please Don't Ask Me What It Is." I've been taking pictures of most of my school lunches (sometimes I miss them when I come straight from 4th grade since I don't carry my phone to the classroom), but here you go! A look into the glamorous life I lead.

Here we have 2 of my least favorite things: Soup with whatever meat STILL ON THE BONE, and cherry tomatoes as dessert.  

I could have eaten the whole tub of this soup myself, honestly.

So this day was incredible. We had watermelon for dessert, a kind of stew as the soup, and MANDU!!!

I must interject on the Manday (That is what I am dubbing the day we had Mandu). When my coworkers asked me what my favorite Korean food was on like the second day I was here, I couldn't remember like any of the foods I had eaten except mandu (they're little delicious dumplings with various fillings in them). So of course, I was like "mandu!" and they nodded in approval. But this week we happened to have mandu for lunch, and OF COURSE someone remembered that "Oh Francesca LOVES mandu!" We were a little short on mandu since everyone took like 3, so they called down to the kitchen and ordered more. Then since everyone knew I loved mandu, they kept giving me more. I ATE SO MUCH MANDU. Had this been a different day with a less likable or filling soup (looking at you, seaweed soup) this would have been awesome. But I was so full from everything but I was so flattered that they remembered I like mandu that I kept stuffing my face with them. And everyone ate well that day.

I cannot even begin to describe the taste or texture of the soup. It was good, but I have no idea what I was eating.

YES BIBIMBAP.

So on Wednesdays there is a special lunch. Two weeks ago we had Bibimbap, which is basically a bunch of vegetables and meats and a spicy(ish) sauce. You may recall that I had this in Jeonju (which I mentioned I had been to and everyone was surprised, especially the phys ed teacher because he's from there.... I think one of Tina's coteachers is from there too) in the folk village field trip portion of orientation. This one lacked seaweed, so I was really happy about that. We also had rice cakes for dessert (the amount of rice cake that was happening these last couple of weeks was insane - the old and new vice principal's schools kept sending rice cake and grapes) but these ones had what was basically grape jelly inside them and they were incredible.

Some days we have lettuce wraps.

Last Wednesday we had spaghetti, which is just as hard to eat with chopsticks as you are thinking it might be. No, it's harder.

 Ahhhh spaghetti. Served in the traditional style with a side of pickles (why???) and a roll that had a mini hotdog in it (also why...??) and eaten just as the Italians would have wanted... with chopsticks. I cannot overstate how much of a problem this was. My coworkers asked me if it was okay (I assume they were asking about the spicyness which they always ask about... it wasn't spicy) and I replied that I hadn't been able to taste it yet and gestured with my chopsticks. They all took turns laughing at (really with... I know how ridiculous it looked) me and suggesting I use my spoon or trying to give me tips. It was just one of those days where I had to laugh. I kind of ended up just putting my face really close to the tray and shoveling it in... I would still prefer spaghetti day over seaweed soup day anytime.

Here we have soup with tofu and mushrooms, and some meat that vaguely tasted enough like bacon that I ate it like it was my job.

Lots of veggies in this soup! And a chocolate waffle for dessert.

Please note that I take about a third as much rice as my coworkers. I have no idea how they eat so much of it. I think it all tastes the same despite different colors and extra ingredients. It's nice to mix with the soup sometimes, although I have no idea if that's a thing I shouldn't be doing? Oh well.

So there you have it. My glamorous food lifestyle.

Now, on to alcohol.

On Saturday I went with Lauren and Janell (Tina's friends can be my friends too!) to a makgeolli tasting! It was so fun! Makgeolli is a traditional Korean alcohol made from rice. This is the way I prefer to ingest my rice, honestly. It's not suuuuper high percentage-wise in the alcohol department, but we tried 7 different kinds and they were NOT shy about pouring. We were supposed to write reviews and I think my last one read something like "19% kind (I couldn't be bothered to figure out the name but it was the highest alcohol content so I think they'll know): Strong. Tastes really good."

Lauren's boyfriend is Korean and he always tries to convince us that Koreans invented everything. Such as this pizza.

We were drinking it out of these little pot looking things, and it was really fun! It's much easier to drink than soju haha. I was sad because Tina is in Dokdo this weekend on a trip with the Seoul Metropolitan Office of Education (SMOE), so we only got to see each other for a bit on Friday, but drinking delicious alcohol with her friends was a good substitute.

On the note of Friday, I went shopping and bought some sweaters, a backpack, some cosmetics (they gave us extra free samples because we're twins haha) and MAMACITA!!!!

Buying CD's here is still legit.

Not only do you get the CD, but there is extra stuff too!

For instance, we got posters (not pictured since Tina has them) and in my copy there was a booklet with all the promo photos from the album!

Each one has a collectible card of one of the members from the group. I got Donghae-oppa!!

 So in the world of Kpop fandoms, you have your "bias" in the group: the person you like the best. In Super Junior, my bias is Kyuhyun (pictured above in the booklet picture on the left and in like all of my other blog posts ever). But with groups like SuJu and EXO having like 13 members (let's be serious, even in SHINee and Big Bang where there are only 5...), it's hard to have just one favorite. So Kyuhyun is my bias, but Donghae is what's called my "bias wrecker." Sometimes he makes me question Kyuhyun as my favorite. It might help that I love the song "Oppa, Oppa" which is only 2 members of SuJu (Donghae and Eunhyuk) and also that he is handsome as fuck.

I mean, come on.

To be honest, like any member of Super Junior could be my bias/bias wrecker at any given time. I just happen to love Kyuhyun's voice and think he is hella adorable. Also he's really witty and sassy.

This video is from way back in like 2009ish when SuJu was still pretty new (Sorry, Sorry had just put them on the map bigtime) and no one knew who Kyuhyun was because he was the last member added and because he's the youngest (the maknae is the youngest, and in other terms he's the dongsaeng or little sibling, like me!). He basically gets to talk a lot less than everyone else. My favorite part of the episode (about 3:33 in this clip) is when they have to write anonymous notes on rice paper for 4 of the members. Kyuhyun is supposed to be really respectful of the older members (using honorifics and formal language), but he's known for being mischievous and totally rocks it in this part. He got offered a position as an MC by one of the hosts of this show because he was so clever on Intimate Note. If I ever watch this video and do not laugh, it is because I am dead or there is an alien posing as me. Be warned.

ANYWAY I tried my best to not go in the kpop direction but we went there anyway. Oh well.

This week was full of other small victories, such as impressing my coworkers by saying the correct phrase for leaving (it's different when you're the one leaving or staying), I got internet that I am currently using, I got a phone plan, and I had a fun week!

One of my favorite victories is pretty awesome. My toilet seat has been kind of broken ever since I moved in and was too small for my toilet anyway, so whenever I used it, it would like move around and was stupid. Well, I finally actually broke it on Saturday night because... reasons that might have to do with delicious drinks combined with my inherent clumsiness. So I had to fix it. I walked to Daiso and bought what looked like the correct size seat and a few other things, then proceeded to get lost when I left Daiso but I found my way to the only bus station I understand (my area has a lot of one way streets so at one stop all the buses go the same way and all stop in front of my apartment) and made it home. I then managed to change the seat all by myself!! My bathroom is becoming more and more purple and I love it.

This is what success looks like.

We're supposed to have Sports Day on Thursday, which means no class! The kids are also supposed to practice on Monday, which also means no class! Except it's supposed to rain both those days, which would move everything around. Either way, I have a holiday on Friday, so I at least know that I have Friday off yayyyyyyyyyyy!

I'm feeling pretty good about life right now.  To send you off, here's a song from the movie Begin Again which everyone in my school has asked if I've seen it a million times. They all LOVE this movie. I did too! Here's a song in English for once. It's "Lost Stars" sung by Adam Levine aka the only member of Maroon 5 that anyone cares about:

See ya!!