Gonna git me some vitamins Friday

So, I'm still feeling really down. Well, mildly really down, not 'there's no hope in the world my life sucks why don't I just end it all' down, but 'Oh poos... I don't want to get out of bed... I'm just going to cry about it' down. Now, I think I've mentioned this before, but ever since I had that brush with depression about 4 years ago, I am terrified of any mood like this that lasts longer than a day or two. Terrified. So, although I've only been feeling bad since the weekend (so, almost a week now), I am taking action. Exercise will be done, friends will be chatted to, and multi-vitamins with B-complexes will be taken. Screw you, low mood - you will not win!

In other news, tonight I have a date with some zombies. Well, two dates, actually. 1st date is using my zombie phone app to do some walking/running (I'll try to run a bit, better depression fighting chemicals that way). 2nd is playing some more of The Secret World. I haven't gotten very far yet because I restarted with a new character because I wanted to use swords instead of a gun and I didn't want to waste my starting points.

Also, I lied. I'm not sorry. I'd do it again. I told Mr. B I want to go to the bank, so could I please leave work at 2pm (it's another one of those 'there're three people in the office and no kids at all' work days). He said sure, so now I get to go home early and have a slightly longer weekend. Win!

And tomorrow I'm going out with Amy in Seoul to see a show, which hopefully will be awesome. I'm forcing myself to go, as really I just want to stay home and sleep, but I need to go. Sunday can be sleep and play the computer day.

You'll notice there's a distinct lack on Andy in this weekend's plans. That's because he's doing some weird, unexplained, pulling away thing. For the first almost two months I saw him pretty much every day, now this week I've seen him twice in 8 or 9 days. It's confusing and hurtful, but he is proving to be rather difficult to discuss this kind of stuff with. So the current plan is that he can do whatever the heck he likes and I'll live my life happily (I'm working on it, ok?!) without him, and he can come back if/when he wants to. I'm torn between 1) trusting that he's a good person who is just working through issues of his own; and 2) telling him to go fuck himself for abandoning me when I need him. Sadly, because of my impaired mood and brain function, I don't trust myself to be reading the situation correctly and I don't want to make a mistake.

Bah! Anyway, only two hours until I can go home and play with Zombies!

P.S. it actually did rain today :D

boys vs girls Thursday

It goes something like this:

~~~

*ring ring* (that's my phone ringing. It doesn't actually ring, but it's impossible the reproduce the tune in text)

Sam: Hi Andy! How's it going?

Andy: Good. You?

Sam: Yeah, I'm ok. Just walking to catch the bus.

Andy: Oh.

*Long pause*

Sam: Er, yeah. So, what's up?

Andy: They say it might rain tomorrow. Or sometime this week.

Sam: Really? Well, that'll be good. It's been so dry. The farmers will be happy.

Andy: Ok.

*Long pause*

Sam: Um, right. Blah blah blah.....

~~~

Sam leaves this conversation thinking: Man, our relationship must not be that great if all he wants to talk to me about it weather. I feel unfulfilled by this conversation.

Andy thinks: I'm glad I told Sam about the rain. I like to help her.

Well, that's my working theory, anyway.

Great Day Wednesday

So, I've been having a bit of a hard time of it, emotionally, these past few days. Nothing in particular that I can tell has caused it, but I've been pretty down. But! Yesterday I got my birthday parcel from home! So awesome!!

Twisites as packing material - genius!

Such a nice pen!

Mum knows me well

I actually thanked you out load when I saw this mum!

Chocolates and stickers

Best pins EVER!

I'm wearing the hearts today.

Apparently this used to be a chocolate frog. He... uh... didn't make it. He was, however, still delicious after some time in the fridge :D

Cracked me up (but also: how did you know I wanted more!?)

I was hopeful...

But had to eat the carnage with a spoon. Still totally delicious!

Seriously awesome birthday presents!

And I wore my snazzy sheep hat to go walking!

Also, I just finished my 3rd day of awesome classes. I've got 4-5 kids showing up to summer camp classes, and we're having a great time. They're all willing to talk and play in English, and are just competitive enough to make games fun, but not so extreme that anyone's upset. This morning we had an excellent scavenger hunt, and I'm so proud of their effort :)

Also, I bought the 'Secret World' game and finally got it running this morning. It wasn't easy! First, I bought it online and that went ok, but then it simply crashed every time I went to run it to download the game. The program would not even start. So, I did some research and tried a few different things from disabling my antivirus, to changing my screen resolution. I wasn't very systematic about it, so I'm not 100% sure what worked, but I got it going after some fiddling. However, then it REALLY warned me about my super outdated graphics card drivers. So, I tried to update them, and again, nope. It just brought up a failure notice every time with no extra info. So, I ended up having to uninstall my old drivers, and then install the new ones. That worked, and I got the game running (after over 9 hours of downloading!!) this morning. I managed to create a character and run a few steps before it was time to catch the bus. So, tonight after work we'll try killing some zombies! I'm really hoping my laptop can handle it and it doesn't crash or anything - I just wanna play.

And yesterday evening I did my first walk with the Zomies! Run! app I got on my phone. It's so much fun! It's a story played in between your music tracks, and it used GPS to see where you are, and zombies sometimes chase you and you pick up items along the way to put in your base (on their website). It made going for a walk a bit different, and I got so involved with the story :) Haha, pretty fun!

Madness on a Monday

Hey blog! Long time, no see :)

I will be putting up a few select pictures of Japan here, and whole heap more on FaceBook when I manage to collect them all off Andy's phone. Suffice to say, Japan was awesome, but very extremely unpleasantly hot. But, the reason I haven't update my blog since I got back is there all this feeling a pressure to write about my holiday, but that's such a big job, it puts me off writing. So, instead, I'm not gonna. I'm just going to blog like normal.

Today's the first day back after my vacation (always sucks), and work tried to stick me with 32 hours of teaching in 4 days this week (note this is only teaching time, not the time I spend at work). My contract specifies I can only teach 20 during this two week period, with a maximum of 6 more hours paid over time. They were going to give me 12 extra hours, not give me over time, and never even asked if it was ok. I'm super bad at confrontation and feel really guilty about "not being a team player", but 32 hours is a crap ton of teaching. So, I talked to my co-teacher about it, and he changed it so quickly that I suspect he 100% knew he was violating my contract. So, Now I'm doing 16 this week and 16 next week, which is SO much better. And legal.

You know, if they'd talked to me, asked me beforehand, offered me the overtime pay I'm entitled to, I totally would have agreed and helped them out of a tight spot. But no, they try to get it past me and hope I won't notice they scheduled me for a week of ridiculous hell. I was hoping to re-sign at this school, but now... maybe not so much. He even tried to blame me, saying it was because I went on vacation. The vacation I'm contractually owed. Bah!

And now I feel bad and like no one will like me because I didn't do what they wanted. Which is stupid!

Anyway, funny story time. Yesterday, I went to the COEX mall, just for a wander and a browse. As I was coming through the main entrance an older Korean guy starts welcoming me to Korea. That's normal, happens fairly regularly. They don't ever ask how long you've been here, but love to say 'Welcome to Korea! Where are you from?". Well, this guy welcomed me and asked if I was American. I was not in the mood to talk. Sometimes I humour them, but I get a bit annoyed sometimes - I'd never stop a person and talk to them because they came from another country! - but anyway, I was like "No, New Zealand", and he goes "Oh, England". I said no, NZ, but he insisted that because we both have the union jack, NZ and England were 'the same-same". 

Ok, fine. 

Then it got interesting. He wanted to know what I did, and I said 'teacher'. The guy actually looked me up and down, with an expression of disbelief on his face and said "Oh. Not gentlemen?". Um, no you perv. My job is not 'gentlemen'. 

Not sure what even gave him this idea, or if it was just wishful thinking. I was wearing no makeup, no jewellery (unless you count a digital watch), flip-flops, my hair was pulled back tight in a ponytail, and the dress I was wearing fell to mid-shin and showed no chest (as anyone who knows me would know). So, weird. I was just like, 'yeah, ok, bye', and walked away. He told me I was very beautiful and followed me. He wanted to know if I had one or two boyfriends. I took a sharp turn and he took the message and left. Good times.

So, it's 35 degrees, 56% humidity, and two hours until home time. 
Here's a few random picture of Seoul yesterday:

An outfit I didn't buy.

Street sculpture in Gangnam.

Holey building!

Summer flowers

Danish I thought would be great, and it was, but made me feel ill.

I want the day off too! Friday.

Today is 'work experience day' at school (I only know this because I just google-translated the Korean written on the board in the staffroom). There are no students and it looks like I'm the only teacher who has to come in. It's just me and the admin staff. First of all, thanks for telling me (read with extreme sarcasm), and secondly - why make me come to work? It's not like I have work to do. Mr B., you cancelled my after school class, and I gave you the entire summer camp lesson plan yesterday... why? WHY?! All the other teachers get the day off... I guess I'm special.

Shit - this means there's no school lunch today. And I obviously didn't bring any food with me... so it's overpriced fruit from the supermarket down the road, or unhealthy disgusting junk food. Oh, woe is me.

At least it's Friday, right?

Very wet Thursday

Apparently there's a typhoon on the way! I'm not too sure what this means, but I think there's going to be lots of wind and rain. It's already pretty wet, and also really humid. I'm so sticky! But it's not so bad, so far :) 

Japan is very close now - only 5 days to go :) and only three of those are work days, so really only three days to go.

Interestingly, Mr B. has not requested a plan for summer camp, which starts the same day I get back to work from being on holiday. I have the whole thing done, planned, and prepped, but he doesn't know that. There is a lot of discussion around the office about English Camp (but that's all I can understand of it, it's in Korean), and I saw Mr B. making some sort of lesson plan on his computer that had the same dates as camp. So, either he's teaching a camp at the same time - which is totally possible and likely - OR he's making a camp plan that I'll have to follow. Which would be weird. I've never heard of that happening before, and I'm not sure why he'd do that other than he's a control freak or my lessons weren't acceptable. Rather than try to talk to him about it (frustration central, seriously this man misinterprets just about everything I say unless I'm asking for money or time off - that he understands), I'm just going to leave it well alone. I'm doing the best I can in this weird system!

Not much is going on this week. It's hot and wet, overcast, and I'm getting some teaching time in but nothing amazing. Oh, I did have an open class yesterday though, that I thought went really well. When I tried to ask Mr B. for some feedback he just gave me a round of applause, which was nice but not helpful :) Also, no sign of the promised info about whether the school can keep me for another year. Maybe tomorrow.

Today's five things:

1) Rain storms are a bit exciting - as long as they're short lived!

2) Lunch today was good - I have no idea what any of it was called, but it was tasty.

3) I've decided to try and get a university job. When I get back from Japan I'll start things moving in that direction and see what I can get. Korea has a crap-ton of universities, so hopefully I can find one in this area. If not, I'll stay at this school, or get a hagwon job until I can move on up to a uni position.

4) Japan soon!

5) I have no plans for the weekend. Maybe a walk, maybe go out, but I want to spend a big chunk just relaxing.

Good day (touch wood) Monday

Right so, the weekend.

Friday night Andy and I went and had Korean BBQ for dinner, which is pretty normal, but this time we went to a duck restaurant and at a whole heap of BBQ duck meat! It was yum! But, mum's duck is still the best :)

On Saturday I caught the train into Seoul and met up with Amy and we went to the 63 building. It was an ok trip. Not really very 'Korean', but really touristy. We went up the the 59th floor, I think, and saw the view, which was good. We got quite a clear patch, and it was only after went came back to ground level that it started raining. As well as going up so high, we also went to a boring 3D dinosaur IMAX movie, and ok aquarium, and a pretty funny wax museum. None of the attractions were actually that wonderful, but put them all together and it was a pretty fun day. 

On Sunday Andy and I went to Dongtan for lunch. We ended up having sushi again, and it was really yummy. Then we went to a coffee shop by central park and I had a hot chocolate and Andy had some weird Turkish ice cream. It was weird because it was all kind of gooey - I wasn't very impressed by it. Then we had a walk in the park, and it once again stopped raining just long enough for a walk, which was nice. Andy also ordered me some memory cards and stuff that I'd been wanting, using a Korean website - which worked out to be about a million times cheaper than buying them regularly, so that was awesome. I'll finally be able to back up my photos and this blog! And take pictures on my phone - which I think will be convenient since I don't carry my camera 100% of the time.

Sunday night we went to a BBQ place I've been to a couple of times, but actually hadn't eaten their BBQ food. Turns out it was amazing! Seriously good galbi. Andy liked it too, so I guess we'll be going back. Well, I hope so anyway! It was super tasty.

And that was my weekend. Pretty good overall :) Next weekend I want to do a bit of walking/hiking, and also pack for Japan. Only 8ish days to go!

*     *     *

Ok, so today is Monday again. So far, so good. I totally did not want my nice relaxing weekend to end, but oh well. With my summer holidays just around the corner, it makes getting to work easier. Haha, not sure what I'm going to do when they're gone, but I'll worry about that when I get there. Plan a weekend away or something, I guess. Jeju, anyone?

Today's been good. I've taught 3 classes, and one's been cancelled, so that's me done for the day. Lunch was tasty, and I'm pretty happy. Touch wood, I can keep it up.

Today's 5:

1) Good classes today.

2) Mr B says he'll find out about me renewing this week. I'm not sure which outcome I'm hoping for :-D

3) Andy is going to buy us money for Japan from the bank so it's cheaper than the airport. As if he wasn't awesome enough already?

4) I fancy cooking something this week. I didn't cook dinner at all last week. I'm thinking some chicken satay would be nice.

5) It's quite cool today, a nice break from the intense heat and humidity. I'm all about the variety.