Restless Seoul : Show Me the Feelings

Hello all! This was such an up and down week. Unfortunately my hands are bothering me a lot today, perhaps from my insistence on overusing them despite the pain. Oh well. Yolo. Only a month left of teaching and about one more after that til we go home. Gotta make the most of it.

Current sunset from my window.

First, my makeup trials:

Sometimes I look nice

Sometimes I drop my eyeliner on my face.

In the process of taking off all my makeup

Hah. Anyway, this week was really hard. I started telling my students that I was leaving, and the reactions ranged from mildly sad to downright mess. I cried when I told almost all my classes on Monday, since 3 of them are my angel baby 5th graders and one is my current fave 6th grade class. I've had all the students in these classes for 2 full years, so they are reeeeeeeeeeally attached to me. Some of my 5th grade girls were TERRIFIED that the previous native teacher would come back (I hate him for making my babies so scared...) and So Jung had to really calm them down. I just hope for a nice teacher who gets along with So Jung and Seunghee and takes care of my babies.

Telling 3rd grade was easy since I'm not too attached and they've only had me once a week for half a year. But telling 4th grade was hard. I'm the only native English teacher they've had, and they were really upset I was leaving. They reacted the most. So much nooooooooooooooooooooooo. But I got to mitigate the situation by asking them to write me letters, and every class in all grades was like "I can't write in English" so I got to surprise them with speaking Korean, and then they were too surprised to be sad.

Except my last 4th grade class. I see them after lunch on Fridays, and I knew the last week of classes I would miss them. But I got surprised when Seunghee told me I would miss them next week, so I immediately teared up. I'm tearing up writing it now. I didn't want to ambush the kids during their last class with me, and that inadvertently happened. So I started crying and they started crying then they left and came back and hugged me and cried more and it was a mess. So Jung basically told me to take the afternoon off because I was so drained from crying so much (and we had nothing to plan).

These next few weeks will be rough. 2 weeks left of school. 2 weeks of camp. So many goodbyes. My heart hurts. Why am I leaving again?

Oh yeah partially because I am still sick. I went to the hospital again and while I don't need surgery, my ears and sinuses aren't quite healed, still. So I have some more medicine that the doc gave me as a precaution but I kept taking since I'm super congested still.

I also have a problem with my hands that I had to drop $150 on for x-rays and medicine and a blood test. And I have to go back again. UGH. And my hand still hurt. LOUDER UGH. Not clear what the verdict is yet. Wednesday we'll find out.

I'm still thankful that I live in Korea for this since I got to see the ENT and the rheumatologist and get the x-ray and blood test done all in the same day. That would never happen in America. Thank goodness for small favors?

For a country worried about drug problems, they prescribe them pretty liberally. Here I am with 2 weeks of ENT medicine and 1 week of hand problem medicine. All for under $30~

It's hard to be away on birthdays. Happy Birthday Daddy! I thought about it all day Wednesday~

Can't wait to be home and celebrate all the things we missed~

I tried to get into a Beast fansign so I met up with Helen and ate good food in Gangnam despite torrential downpours.

Too lazy to turn the picture. Fooooooooooood

Failed to get the fansign, but got an awesome album.

Poster

Album cover

Album back

Some amazing songs on this album in case you still haven't listened:

Butterfly

Ribbon

I also started to get letters and gifts from my students since I told them I was leaving:

I was worried when I got this since Innisfree is expensive but accepting gifts of large denominations is considered accepting a bribe and is really not allowed.

No worries! Face masks!

Friday night Tina and I met up with Grace and Jonghyuk to watch Finding Dory and I fucking loved it.

I loved it so much I'm dying it was so good.

I'm obsessed with Show Me the Money, and on this episode they went to Dunkin Donuts and got the promo item, so I did too.

Getting my rap swag on

So you need to buy and iced americano and a glazed donut, and they put the donut in the top of the microphone part of the cup. Except they didn't have any glazed donuts, so they were like... you can't get it. Tina calmly explained that the donut didn't matter (as we bought 2 other donuts anyway) and they were like well maybe we can use this one kind of donut..? They had to ask the manager and explain that I didn't care about the flavor I just wanted the god damn cup.

In Korea, special orders or customizing is very rare. Case in point, at Subway they ask you what you DON'T want on the sub and put everything on as standard, whereas in America they ask you what you DO want.

The manager allowed us to buy a third donut of comprable size and price to the normal glazed donut, and I got my stupid awesome cup. I'm gonna be a dick and carry it everywhere.

Now I can channel my inner Zion T:

Looks the same.

So I got the donut called "Show me the turntables" because I am Show Me the Money trash and will buy anything related to the show.

Swag.

Tina and I went to dance class and none of our friends showed up, but we still had fun. The song is new!

SISTAR (Shake It and Loving U) "I Like That." It sounds like an anime theme song to me. I like that!

The dance is kind of complicated because they have skirts and all of them do different things and there are curtains and backup dancers everywhere, so we learned a much more basic form.

Here we are trying it:

There are 4 of us so we could really be SISTAR.

It was super fun even though I wasn't into the song and dance as much as last week's Monster, but honestly how could I match that.

This week is all packing up and sorting things and whatnot. Sigh. Moving home is a lot of work!

Thankfully I have a lot of new songs to help me get through it~

Zion T "Yanghwa Bridge"

The chorus keeps saying "Let's be happy, let's not be sick" which I really need right now.

"Good" by Loco and Gray ft. Elo

"Everyday is good~"

Gray is my favorite. He produces music more than he raps, and when you hear him announce GRAY at the beginning of the song you know it's about to get hyphy.