FIRE!!!

Between my sister and I, we are going to give my parents a heart attack.

In November, a guy with a gun walked into my sisters Engineering office on the 8th floor of a crowded building and started shooting things and people. Thank goodness my sister was able to run and get out of the building before he got to her cubical and call 911. Others were not as lucky and 5 were injured, one killed. It was a very traumatic experience, but she is ok. Thank you God!

On Friday, I too had a very traumatic experience at work but I am also ok! It started off as any other day at school. Fridays are my longer days but it was going pretty well so far. Then we had a foreign teacher meeting where we were informed that someone had to teach a 3 hour Saturday class every weekend. I decided to sign up for the one the next day to get it over with. After teaching 9 classes that day I was exhausted but decided to stay after school to plan for the Saturday class and since Caroline was still teaching, I figured we could walk home together anyway. I was in the big office on the 2nd floor of our school going through tapes with Devon, another foreign teacher, when a Korean teacher walks in and says "I've heard the news that's there a fire next door." She didn't seemed concerned but Devon thought she would go check it out. Sure enough, there was a small fire in the vacant building next door that has been in the process of being torn down for awhile now. Devon came back and reported what she saw and the two of us continued to search for teaching materials. Within minutes a little boy walks into the office (I am not sure exactly why) but he turns to us and says "Big fire, teacher." He was also very calm. Then the fire alarm goes off. Its very quiet and seems distant. I turn to my principal who is close by typing away on the computer and I ask her "Is that OUR fire alarm?" She says "yes" nonchalantly and goes back to typing. Devon and I are confused and go to look out the window again to see if it is in fact our alarm and if the fire has gotten any bigger. This time I go too. Devon was the first to get to the window and see big pieces of fire hitting OUR BUILDING. She yells and starts to run back toward the big office when I am able to see out the window too. The building next door to ours is about 10 feet away and is up in flames- HUGE flames. Our building is being hit repeatedly with fire and we are both convinced ECC is on fire. Devon and I run back to the big office quickly to inform the 2 Korean teachers making phone calls at their desks and our principal typing away on the computer. We both yell "FIRE!" but nobody seems to move. We yell it again and again before it hits our principal what is going on. Rachel (one of the Korean teachers) tells the parent on the phone she has to go because she thinks there is a fire or something and then gets off the phone. Devon and I grab our stuff and I run to the small office to grab Caroline's stuff before running to the stairs to find Caroline. It takes a little while before kids start coming down the stairs and Devon and I act as police men directing traffic yelling for kids to go downstairs and to get out of the building! It isn't a few seconds before those kids are running back up the stairs toward us panicked. Our principal is now directing those kids and all the kids coming from the 3rd, 4th and 5th floor in to the 2nd floor lobby. The lobby quickly fills with all of the students and teachers and is full of chaos. Students are pulling out their phones calling their parents frantically and a secretary is trying to yell something on a megaphone that isn't working. Our principal yells and everyone all of the sudden gets super quiet. She yells orders all in Korean and everyone except the foreign teachers seem to know the next plan of action. Next thing we know a firefighter is running up the stairs of the 2nd floor where we are all huddled and telling us all to go downstairs and get out of the building. As I am running out of the building I pass 3 frantic and crying moms who are looking for their kids to come out. I grab random kids and we started running/walking fast because there is ice on the ground making it hard to full out run. While we are running, huge embers from the fire are landing on all of us. A big one lands on my head but is quickly put out by another foreign teacher running beside me. Not too much later I find myself yelling at Caroline that there are embers on her coat and am patting them out for her. I am scared something or someone is going to catch on fire from the embers but all I can do is run and hope we are all ok. At one point we all stop running because we think we are far enough from the fire but the wind continues to blow huge pieces of fire on to us so we continue to run some more. By the time we stop again, ECC buses have arrived and are picking up kids. I am not sure if they had a system but I was pushing all of the students near me toward the bus to get them on. Finally, all of the students are either on a bus or at least way out of sight.

I can not even begin to explain how chaotic all this was. Students and teachers were everywhere and nobody knew exactly where we were supposed to stop or even where all of their students were. It was a mess but eventually there were no students anywhere in sight and a bunch of the foreign teachers had somehow found each other. We waited in fear for what was happening to our school a long way down the street. Finally we all decided we wanted to see our school's fate and walked together on the other side of the street back toward the fire. The embers weren't falling nearly as bad now and we had to know what was happening. I thankfully had my camera and began to take pictures. All of the pictures have been posted to facebook. Keep in mind these pictures were taken a good 30 minutes or longer after we evacuated the school so the flames were actually much bigger and scarier than you even see in the pictures. And during all of this, the road was not closed to traffic. There were all sorts of cars going both ways past the fire and at one point the fire fighters had even hooked up a hose to a hydrant across the street and it was being run over by the cars. Cars drove over the hose for awhile until a van drove over it and broke it. The hydrant had to be turned off and the hose fixed before being turned back on to help put out the fire that was still burning strong. Everyone in Gwangju gathered across the street and watched the building next to ECC burn down to nothing but the metal frame.

After watching for awhile all of the teachers decided to meet up at a local coffee shop to wrap our heads around what just happened and talk about the next plan of action. On our way to the coffee shop all of the Korean teachers were called back in to school to make phone calls to parents letting them know the evening classes wouldn't be happening and what just happened. The foreign teachers still met at the coffee shop and shared our traumatic stories. We got word that the owner of our school told all of the Korean teachers that they had to be back at school the next day (Saturday) at 9am to help clean up after the fire. The foreign teachers decided that we wanted to show our support and would all be at school at 9am to help too. Come to find out, our help was not needed as the damage to the school was beyond what we could clean up and a cleaning team was being called in. All of us went in the school to check out the damage and take pictures. There were broken windows from the heat on the 4th and 5th floor, glass on the floor of the bathrooms, ashes everywhere, and out back we could see our owner and our school technicians cars that were crispy on the hood and in the engine sitting where they were parked the day before, waiting to be towed. On the fifth floor where the kindergarden classrooms are (middle school classes in the afternoon and evening) one room was in need of serious repair. There were a couple big holes in the ceiling that I guess the fire fighters made to drain the roof of all of the water that was sprayed. Lights were hanging down and drywall was absolutely everywhere. Surprisingly, I think this is the only room that wont be in commission the next week or so.

Everything is now sorta a blur and I can't really explain what was going through my head on Friday night. I know I wanted to get all of the kids out and was concerned about them first and that's why I acted as a police directing traffic on the stairs rather that running out of the building myself. But looking back everything was really just done on impulse. I don't remember thinking about anything, it was like my body just knew what to do. I don't remember thinking about grabbing mine and Caroline's purse, I just did it. I guess it was also impulse to wait to find my roomie before leaving the building as well. I can't remember what the kids looked like whose hands I grabbed and ran with, I just know I was concerned with them getting to safety. I don't remember seeing a lot of fire trucks or a lot of fire fighters but our school principal told us yesterday that over 200 fire fighters and 50 trucks responded to the fire at some point or another. I don't remember a lot of the details but the overall experience I will never forget. It was scary and something that I hope never has to happen to anyone. I am glad the building next door was empty and was in the process of being torn down anyways and I am glad that as big as the fire was, that nothing in the surrounding area really got hurt too much. A middle school backed up to the building and it is just fine as is the electronics building that is on the other side of the building that caught on fire.

School is still scheduled for tomorrow but I am kinda curious how many students show up, especially from the evening classes that were there for the fire. Anyways, I hope my Monday turns out to be way less eventful than my Friday and I hope your Friday was less crazy than mine!

I LOVE you all so much and miss everyone like crazy!

CHRISTmas and New Years!! :)

Merry Christmas and Happy 2010 everyone!!! It seems weird to me that its already 2010. 2009 seemed to fly by! Boy has it been an exciting year!

This Christmas was my first one away from my family (and extended family). I always spend Christmas in Ohio and I get to see all of my bagillion cousins, aunts, uncles and Oma who I haven't seen since the summer. I was expecting Christmas to be rather hard since I wouldn't be with who I am always with or where I am always at. However, thanks to skype it was a lot easier than expected and although I missed everyone, I wasn't nearly as homesick as I thought I would be.

Christmas and New Years this year had an unexpected twist that I absolutely loved. One of my bestest friends ever, Austin, came to visit me for 11 days and spend the holidays with me. When I moved to Korea, I told all of friends that they should really come visit me over here and although I really wanted it to happen, I was sorta just kidding. However, Austin actually came and we had an absolute blast!!

ECC gave us 4 days off for Christmas, then we had to work for 3 days, then 4 more days off for New Years. Too bad we had to work for those 3 days in between but I guess in the long run it was kinda good because Austin ended up getting sick and thank goodness it was only during those 3 days. So Austin got here late on Wednesday and Thursday was our first day off. Poor Austin got a couple hours asleep before we woke up the next morning around 7am to catch our bus to Sokcho. Sokcho is a city in the north-east part of the country super close to the border. It is known for its national park- Seoraksahn. We had never been here but I had read good things about it and it was supposed to be pretty awesome and beautiful. Plus some of our co-workers were going so we figured why not. The last thing I wanted to do was stay in Gwangju for Christmas and think about how I wasn't in Ohio with my family. It ended up being Caroline, Steve, Jason, Erica, Austin, and me who went. It was an awesome decision to go because it was in fact beautiful and we had loads and loads of fun!

The bus ride up was 5 and a half hours long and because we hadn't really eaten much for breakfast, all of us were starved when we got up there. We walked for a bit until we found the first place where we could go inside and eat. It happened to be a Chinese restaurant. We ended up eating some really good chicken and fried rice. After eating we had to hop on another bus which was supposed to take us to our hostel. Hosteworld kinda let us down with the directions because all it said was get on this bus- and that's it. So once we were on the bus we weren't sure where we were supposed to get off or anything. We got off at the last stop which was at the entrance of Seorak National Park but there was no hostel in sight. Lets just say after lots of debate, broken conversations that didn't really help and lack of another way to really get there, we decided to walk 20 minutes back to the town we past while we were on the bus on the way in. When we got to the town we didn't see a sign for our hostel but on second glace, with the help from my eagle eyes, there was in fact a tiny sign that read our hostels name. We checked in and then it just got crazy. The guy started showing us random rooms and none of them had more than 1 double bed which was not as expected because we thought we were getting one with 4 beds. So after a lot of craziness we finally ended up in a 1 huge room with one bed. It was actually more like 2 rooms, one being a kitchen. Anyways, we all decided we would sleep in the one room and close the curtain-ish door to the other room because for some reason the floor in that room only got hot in places and we figured we would be warmer if we were all in one room. It was like a huge sleepover and was actually pretty fun all being in the same room.

So the rest of that day we walked around the area checkin out what was happening, which wasn't much and eventually ate dinner at a traditional Korean BBQ place. It was alright, but nothing special. The next morning was Christmas Eve America time which was when I planned to talk to my family since this is when ALL of my aunts, uncles and bazillion cousins are at my Oma's house celebrating. It was really neat because my mom and sister made sure EVERYONE in the family said hello to me via video chat on skype so I felt like I was actually there. By the way, I have 12 aunts and uncles and I think 21 cousins so that was fun getting to see and talk to all of them like I would if I was actually there! :) After my long skype talk, Austin and I headed to the park to meet everyone. When we got to the park we found them almost right away and did some walking around together. We saw this HUGE Buddha statue that was pretty neat and I of course got some pretty cool pictures of it with the mountains in the background. We then all took a cable car up one part of the mountain. According to the cable cars pamphlet the ride up was supposed to be "one of the most unique adventure attractions on Earth. It was pretty cool but I don't know if I would go that far. I got some great pictures though. When we got to the mountain we all sat for a bit to take it all in. There were frozen waterfalls off in the distance, snow in the mountain tops, and the view was gorgeous! Then, the boys and I decided we wanted to hike up this other little part of the mountain which looked pretty steep. Caroline and Erica sat and enjoyed the view while we took this scary climb up. It was definitely more than worth it because the view only got better! Plus, a guy at the top was selling medals and whistles that he would engrave with your name, I guess for making it to the top. Being the little teacher I am and always thinking about when I get my own classroom back home, I decided a whistle would be a perfect souvenir. I am going to need something to call my students in from recess and this was engraved with my name in Korean, Mt. Seorak, and the date (Christmas!) I wouldn't forget where I was for Christmas 2009 now. We enjoyed the view from the peak and took some fun pictures in front of a Korean flag before going back down to meet the other 2. Once we got down from this climb, it was awesome because it started snowing. It ended up snowing for only about 5 minutes but at least we could say we had a "white Christmas" right?! We took several more photos and enjoyed the view fr awhile and then headed back down on the cable car. Once we got to the bottom we took a long hike through the park to get to a waterfall. We saw a couple smaller half frozen waterfalls along the way. The hike, the view, and the sound from the waterfalls were awesome and quite peaceful. I really enjoyed it a lot. Once we got to the waterfall we kinda just chilled out there for a little while and once again enjoyed the scenery. It really was beautiful in this park! We met up randomly with a couple of Steve's friends and the 8 of us began our trek back to our hostels. We took a shortcut through the woods and over a river and finally made it to our hostel. We cleaned up a bit before heading up a road beside our hostel to a fancy hotel that had a western style restaurant. We wanted something nice (and fancy seemed fun) for Christmas dinner and we got just that. I opted for Chicken Cordon Bleu which was absolutely AMAZING and by far the best thing I have eaten since being here. Others opted for Salmon, Calamari, Steak, etc. It was delicious! Plus, all our meals came with 2 hot dinner rolls with real butter and a very yummy salad with Italian dressing!!!! Let's just say Christmas dinner was AWESOME and exactly what we were looking for. After dinner I spent awhile on skype with the fam since now it was Christmas morning their time. Then we all just stayed up watching a movie, talking, laughing and enjoying each others company.

The next morning Steve, Erica, and Jason all got up super super early to go hiking on this super steep part of the mountain while Caroline, Austin, and I decided to enjoy sleeping in and just check out more of the park. We ended up seeing a temple, some other traditional Korean architecture and more of the park and the mountains. It was lots of fun and again we took some pretty fun pictures. We spent several hours walking around before we all met up again. Caroline, Erica, and Jason decided to get the only bus home that afternoon because it had been a long but exciting weekend, while Steve, Austin and I decided to stay. When we went up to Sokcho I had read about a huge water park that had many hot springs and stuff and I really wanted to check that out. Plus Austin told me before coming that he wanted me to find a hot tub in Korea. Austin and I like to spend a lot of our time hanging out in my hot tub back at home, so he joked that I had to find one here so I did just that. I wasn't about to go back to Gwangju without going to the hot spring water park. I am really glad we stayed because that day turned out to be super fun. We went back more in to the city (away from the park) and found another hostel to stay at for the night. This hostel was nice and the owner was full of information. He helped show us what to do and where to eat. So the three of us spent the rest of the afternoon checking out a pretty awesome light house. We got to go inside which was really neat and check out the water and the view from the top. Then we climbed to the top of a hill and went in this temple looking pagoda thingie (I know, I give some pretty great descriptions ;) ) and enjoyed the scenery from there too. Then we walked around for a bit before catching a bus to the water park. The water park was called Waterpia and was as awesome as expected. Let me just try to explain this place. Its more of an adult water park than a children's place. When you get inside you go to your respective locker rooms and get changed. Let me take a step back. Now, Koreans are usually very conservative. When they go to the beach ALL of the girls wear clothes or cover-ups over their bathing suits in to the water. You wont see any girls with just bathing suits on. So, when i walked in this locker room I was expecting everyone to be modest but let me just tell you they weren't! There were Koreans from 1 to 100 just walking around, lounging, hanging out completely naked. Yes, you might say well duh Whitney its a locker room, but seriously I expected everyone to be conservative even behind closed doors based on how conservative they were out in public- they weren't! Anyways, so you could go out 2 doors- one led to the saunas full of nakedness and the other led to the pool area. Because it was the 2 boys and me and the saunas were separate for guys and girls, we opted for the pool area. We found a couple hot tub like areas but they were packed and I knew there were more so we went on a search for the others. They turned out to be OUTSIDE. That didn't stop us though. We went from hot tub to hot tub checking out the many different kinds. There were several different kinds all of different temperatures and contained different jets and stuff. When we got bored of one hot tub we would get out and literally RUN to the next one. The air was EXTREMELY cold, especially after being wet, but ti only made the hot tubs more enjoyable after getting in them. We spent several hours at this water park and all of us enjoyed it immensely! After Waterpia we went to eat a late dinner. We ate at this place that let you pick your own meet which was marinated in different sauces and you could have "all you can eat for only 7,000 won." This is about 6 dollars and was definitely worth it. It was delicious and you couldn't beat the price. We passed out pretty hard that night and caught the morning bus the next day that got us back to Gwangju around 3pm. It was a FANTASTIC Christmas break!

I went to school the next 3 days which seemed to actually fly by. Austin was sick and was feeling like death so he laid around those 3 days while I was at work which if he was going to get sick this was the perfect time. He finally started to feel better on the 3 day which was perfect because the next day we planned on going to Seoul for New Years. Seoul "gongs" in the new year with a HUGE bell. Basically its the Times Square of Korea and one of my partner teachers from school even ended warned me "don't die!" We woke up in the morning with our bags packed and everything only to get a phone call from some friends from school that were going to go with us telling us to go look outside. It had snowed the night before!!!!! There was about 6 inches of snow on the ground and the roads had not been salted or anything yet. After much debate we all decided not to go get on a bus for 4 hours in the snow and bad road conditions and that we would just enjoy the New Year here in Gwangju. This turned out to be a lot of fun and I am not disappointed that we didn't end up going. We spent that day (New Years Eve day) with several of the ECC foreign teachers. Jake, Devon, Erica, Jason, Steve, Caroline, Austin and I all headed downtown to walk around. We walked down "Art Street" the only famous attraction in Gwangju, but not much was happening, like always. It was still fun though. We shopped for a bit and just enjoyed each others company before heading back home and just kinda hanging out for a little while before going out that night to celebrate. The same group of people along with 2 more foreign teachers from ECC, Sam and Steph and Alan ( the guy from China who we often hangout with who showed us around Beijing when we went in October) all went back downtown that night to celebrate the new Year together. Let's just say we had a LOT of fun!!! I am glad we ended up staying and celebrating with everyone!

The next couple of days went by super fast. We played in the snow and enjoyed Gwangju. Austin and I went to see Alvin and the Chipmunks the Squeakquel one day. We did a little night hiking one night which was lots of fun and one day we went skiing. Skiing was a blast but ridiculously crowded! We still enjoyed ourselves though and I think everyone was glad we went.

Basically my Christmas and New Years were AWESOME! I am soooooooooo super glad that Austin came and I had a ridiculously good time hanging out with him! This was his first time out of the country and I think he really enjoyed his time here too. I am definitely glad he came!

I hope everyone had a great Christmas and New Years too!!! Happy 2010! I hope its a great year for everyone! I love you all so much and miss you tons and tons too!!

Thanksgiving (FINALLY!!)

So, I promised two things in my last blog- one was that i would post again soon, and the other was that I would tell you about my Thanksgiving here. I guess the first one won't be happening, but at least I am giving you the Thanksgiving update right?!

Anyways, so Thanksgiving here in Korea turned out to be a lot of fun, but boy did I have to work for it. There were several speed-bumps along the way, but nothing sopped the foreigners from celebrating Thanksgiving in Korea. Let's just say that Korea is missing a few essentials when it comes to Thanksgiving. The first being Turkey. That's right, Korea doesn't do turkey. In fact, many of the Korean teachers have never even tasted it before. And what's Thanksgiving without turkey. We made due and opted for Chicken instead. That turned out to be speed-bump number two. We ordered the chicken (over the phone), I'll get to why we didn't cook it our self in a minute, but as you know neither Caroline or I are great at speaking Korea. The 200 random words we know do not include anything that could have helped us order it except the word chicken which is the same in Korean and English. Erica was at our house too, but she too only knows a little Korean so it became a game of whether or not we thought we could do it. Our first attempt we thought went pretty well. We struggled with the language barrier but with our newly learned numbers we thought we were going to be good. We remembered how to say our address and was even able to clarify which of the five Line Apartments in our area that we live in. We got off the phone super excited and couldn't wait to see if we had done it. One hour goes by and finally our door bell rings. The guy hands us ONE tiny box of chicken that maybe has 8 or 10 small pieces of chicken in it. We thought we had ordered FOUR boxes. But we couldn't get that across so we just payed the guy, thanked him, closed the door, and then panicked! That was definitely not enough to feed 14 hungry foreigners plus who knew how many Korean teachers we invited were actually going to show up. So, we got back on the phone (with a different place- we were too embarrassed to call the first place again) and tried again. The second time we called was just as terrifying as the first and the short time I was on the phone I probably said "yes" about 15 times- about 12 of them I wasn't exactly sure what I was agreeing to but I recognized a couple words so I just said yes. My guess now is that they were probably asking where I lived or for me to repeat the order but I just kept agreeing in hopes of them just bringing something to our house. Thank goodness this time the order only took 20 minutes and we got exactly what we ordered. Success!!! With two major speed-bumps taken care of, what else could possibly be troublesome right? Did I mention that our apartments here are very nice but that none of us have an oven. Let me tell you how hard it is to make and cook food without an oven to bake things in. Not to mention, 90 percent of the foods we eat on Thanksgiving back home are not easily or even at all found here. Everyone picked a dish and was in charge of bringing it, and let me just tell you how impressed I was with the spread. Between Caroline, Erica and I, we made mashed potatoes, deviled eggs, cooked carrots medley, corn and sliced some veggies to snack on. The other foreign teachers brought fudge, stuffing, rolls, cranberry sauce, sweet potato fries, fruit, cornbread and other delicious goodies. Everything was DELICIOUS!!!!!!!

I forgot to mention that there were 9 foreign teachers there and 8 Korean teachers, so there was a good amount of people in our small apartment. It was lots of fun though. Caroline and I turned a long end table into a couch so we had 2 and there were a couple pillows on the floor, so it worked out pretty well. After eating we all played a Korean version of jacks that was really fun and just hung out. It wasn't as weird as I thought it would be not be home for Thanksgiving and having a bunch of friends from school that I now call family definitely helped!

I miss everyone a lot! I am still having tons of fun and enjoying myself though and look forward to the rest of my time here!

Its been one month to the day since I last updated...

Man, oh, man! For the past week, I have told myself that I was going to update my blog, but every time I thought about doing it, I became overwhelmed because SOOOO much has happened since the last post and decided I would just put it off some more. I have finally built up enough guts to write it now, and have just come to accept that it is going to take me many hours to write, and I am just not going to get to tell you everything. So here it goes...

My school, ECC, truly likes the foreigners and really does its best to make us happy. I LOVE ECC because of this but their timing seems to be a lot like my dads- not the best. So 4 weeks ago (wow that sounds like forever ago... I really need to update this more...) ECC took all of the foreigners on a field trip to 3 different places. We went to a temple, a traditional Korean folk village, and to the bay. They all turned out to be super duper fun, but I am getting ahead of myself. So, they pack all of the foreigners, who are all coughing and not in good moods because we are all ridiculously sick, into a small ECC van and drive us an hour away to our first stop. This would normally have been something we all looked forward to because we all like to hangout with each other and travel on the weekends together, but this was the first week that EVERYONE in the office was sick, and the Swine Flu had even hit a couple people. However, it became an unspoken but well known fact that this was pretty mandatory so coughing, sore throats, runny noses, upset stomachs and all loaded the bus. I personally had come down with the office sickness and had it not been mandatory I would have stayed in bed all day in my pajamas. It was bad news bears. But like everyone else, I loaded the van and immediately fell asleep on the way to the temple. When we got there, I was immediately in awe (and maybe it was the fresh air, but I started feeling better, and at least functioning) because there was fog all around us and the sun was hiding behind it but was starting to come out which made for some pretty awesome pictures. And the temple itself was just really pretty and really cool. We even got to see some monks in the temple praying which was pretty sweet too. It was a really big temple and it's hard to explain what exactly it looked like, but it was neat. And I had just learned a week or two before how to properly use my Macro setting on my camera, so I spent the whole time macro-ing EVERYTHING. Thank goodness Erica like to use this setting as well, because at one point we split off from everyone and got some AMAZING pictures. I know this is a side tract, but the macro setting on my camera makes me soooooo happy and has made me realize that I really want to get a super nice camera with a special macro lens and become a professional photographer- BUT only ever take macro pictures. If you don't know what I am talking about, you should check out my facebook album titled "Let's Macro That!" Anyways, so back to the temple... I got some awesome pictures, enjoyed being there, as well as the company and had lots of fun. Our next stop was at a traditional folk village. I didn't know what to expect but it was pretty cool too. We saw tons and tons of hut like places that were made out of mud with roofs made from hay. We also got to walk on a huge wall that went all around the village. This was fun and in a way reminded me of walking on the Great Wall of China. There was a HUGE swing there too that looked super fun but I never got to go on it because I was in the front of the group and got corralled to be in a group picture. The people in the back fell behind and went on it for a bit before someone ran back to get them to make them run and get in the group picture. Oh well, next time I'll go on it. After the village, we went to the bay. This was lots of fun too. A group of us hiked up the mountain to get an amazing shot of the bay. It was AWESOME and quite the view. It was worth all of the hard work to see water surrounding us, with mountains in the background. Korea is so beautiful. And it is soooo neat to be able to see mountains all around us all the time. This is quite the change from Florida, that's for sure. The field trip ended up being loads of fun and I think everyone enjoyed the trip, sick or not.

Two weekends ago, all of the foreign teachers went up to Seoul together because it was Prairies last weekend to travel and she really wanted to see the DMZ (Demilitarized Zone- the division line of North and South Korea) so we all went up for that and took a half day tour of that together. It was really cool. First, we got to see "Freedom bridge" also known as "The Bridge of No Return". This the only bridge connecting North and South Korea and was the bridge where over 13,000 war captives crossed. There were fences and barbed-wire everywhere and also ribbons and flags. It was very interesting to see, but it was very rainy and extremely cold so a but miserable, but none the less, super neat. We stayed here for a little while before boarding the bus again and going to a museum. This museum told all about the DMZ and the history of fighting and friendship between the north and south. We also learned about 4 tunnels that North Korea dug leading right in to Seoul. North Korea originally denied they built them and even went through the trouble of even putting black coal ashes on the ceilings of the tunnels so they could claim their miners must have gotten lost and they were all accidents. However, there is no coal in this area so that lie obviously doesn't stand. Anyways, so after the museum we got to walk for awhile in the 3rd tunnel South Korea found. This was awesome. Its over 2o stories underground and we got to walk for a long while in it which took us super close to the North Korean border. There was a blockade at the ending point of where we could walk, but if you looked closely you could see North Korea which was super exciting. After going through the tunnel we boarded the bus again and got to go to a lookout point where you could see quite a bit of North Korea. Its a lookout point but its funny because you can only take pictures from behind a line which is kinda far back. This was a little strange but I guess its because North Korean doesn't want us getting a good look of their country... or at least not any good pictures. You could pay about 50 cents and look through binoculars to get a closer look of North Korea. I fo course did and it was kinda neat because with them I could see some buildings and stuff and even a basketball court. It was just cool to be able to say I have seen North Korea. Anyways, after that we to Dorsan station which is an almost completely empty train station. It has only one train that is on a track that leads from South Korea to North Korea. It has never run but it will be the first train to go from South Korea to North Korea supposedly when the two become friends rather than enemies someday. According to South Korea it is "Not the last station from the South, but the first station toward the North." This shows South Korea's hope of there someday being a friendship and no longer a divide between the country. It's a nice thought, but I am not sure if this train will ever run. I guess only time will tell. The DMZ tour was awesome and I really enjoyed going. Next time I might try to take the full day tour that actually lets you go to North Korea. This is the tour my Oma and sister went on 15 years ago when we lived here the first time.

After the DMZ tour, Prairie, Steve (new foreign teacher- Prairie's replacement), and I went to make free "paper arts." We weren't sure what this entailed but we thought it could be fun so we went and all enjoyed ourselves- even Steve. We made paper mirrors and paper boxes. I am thinking he is going to have to give his away as gifts because they are quite girly looking but I think all three of us really enjoyed ourselves and had lots of fun. Later that night we met up with Erica, Jason, Devon, and Jake and went downtown to see a lantern festival. It was really cool and I took a bazillion pictures. There were just so many lanterns of all shapes sizes and of all sorts of things, that I could not help myself. I put up those pictures tomorrow on facebook maybe so you can see for yourself just how cool it was. The next day we went Christmas shopping and Devon and I even got to go to Forever 21 and make some fun purchases. We also went to Itaewon and shopped and looked around and ate and then headed out later that night to celebrate Katelyn's birthday. That night turned out to be a super crazy night but loads of fun. The next day we went to Insadong where we did even more Christmas shopping and I got some pretty neat things. You will have to wait until Christmas to see just exactly what I got... I don't want to soil Christmas gifts by writing what i bought here. :) We left later that night which turned out to be a complete nightmare and super long story but we eventually made it home. Lets just say we were supposed to leave at 5:40 and we didn't end up leaving till 8:45 which got us home around midnight... ugggh when you have to wake up early. But I had a great weekend so it was worth it!

Last weekend we celebrated Thanksgiving Dinner which will have to be a separate post because I need to get this one posted and then head off to bed. There's a ton to write about it too so look for it in the near future. I promise I will do it soon and not wait a month before my next post. :)

Be looking for pictures on facebook and another post soon. Love you all lots and lots and miss you guys too!!!!!!!

Say Kimchi!

This past weekend, Caroline and I along with the two other Kinder foreign teachers, Jason and Erica, decided we would check out the Kimchi festival going on about 10 minutes away (by taxi) from our school. So Caroline and I walked from our house to our school where we met the other two and would catch a taxi. Let me just say first of all that this is standard procedure. Any time we meet anyone for anything we meet outside of our school because everyone else, besides us and one other couple lives near the school. We live about 15 minutes away but have now walked the same one route about ten bazillion times that we could probably walk it with our eyes closed. Anyways, so we walked to school and hailed a taxi. The taxi that stopped for us was probably the coolest taxi ever. It reminded us of cash cab. It was pink and swede on the inside and had a red leather roof. His dashboard had a ton of fun decorations, one being a stuffed spiderman. Jason tried to touch it, but got yelled at in Korean. I guess he is protective of his stuff. :) Caroline, Erica and I were sitting in the back taking pictures and laughing. I guess the guy liked us because he then forced coffee flavored gum in to Erica's hands, which we all ended up eating and HATING. But it was a nice thought. Had this been in America, I would have never taken anything from anyone, especially not a taxi driver, but this is Korea where there is no such thing as crime and he ate it so we did too. We finally got to the World Cup Stadium which is where the festival was setup and began walking around. We found a place that said you could rent free bikes so we did that and played on them for awhile. Erica didn't know how to ride a bike so we taught her. This was lots of fun. Plus, every time we rode up and back this one strip someone would take a picture- it was kinda funny. Finally, a guy stopped us and asked if we would ride up and down this one strip so he could get it on camera. We think he was some sort of press for this event. So we agreed. We were taped walking and waving by one other guy as well. We hoped this was for TV. Sure enough, the next day, one of Caroline's students told her that he saw her on the news. SWEET!! :) I wish we would have seen it. Oh well. So after riding bikes for awhile we started to walk toward a tent that read "Foreigners making Kimchi." We couldn't pass up the photo opportunity or the chance to make our own famous Kimchi while we were here, so we stopped in. First we were taken to be shown what ingredients are used to make Kimchi and briefly how to make it, and then it was our turn. We got to put on these super sweet gloves and aprons and then mix ingredients to make the super duper spicy sauce and then spread it on the cabbage. Although, there was nothing to spreading sauce on the cabbage, somehow I managed to do it wrong cause the guy kept coming over to help me. I think I wasn't putting enough sauce on mine. They LOVE it spicy. After making the Kimchi that we had no intention on ever eating (none of us really like the taste of it) it was packaged up and put in this carrying case for us to take it home. We ended up giving it to the owner of our school, the assistant manager, the technology guy and the 5 Korean Kinder teachers to eat and say thanks for everything so far. They liked it and loved that we made it! :) After making the Kimchi some guy who worked at the festival approached us and wanted to be our interpreter. We didn't really need or want him but he wanted to show us around so we let him. He took us into this building where we got to try lots and lots of Kimchi. Like I mentioned bfore, none of us really like Kimchi but we were up for trying a bit so this was fun. I tried way more than I ever expected, partly because if you linger at the booth too long you are forced to try it by the people working the booth and also due to curiosity because I thought all Kimchi tasted pretty similar. Surprisingly enough, some were actually kinda ok, and then others were absolutely awful. Erica and I got forced to drink this water Kimchi juice by someone and I can honestly say it was one of the worst things I have ever tasted ever. It was SOOOO gross. It tasted like drinking straight up vinegar and dirt. bleh! Caroline and Jason at the same time were being forced to try seaweed grossness that they both agreed came straight from the Ocean just a second earlier. They said it was the saltiest thing they have ever tasted and also equally disgusting. Thank goodness this was the last booth so we were able to leave and immediately find a drink machine where we all opted to pay whatever it cost to get the tastes out of our mouths. After that we rode on the "Kimchi train" and looked at some art all about Kimchi. This was kinda funny. After that we went into a building that told us all about the history of Kimchi. Apparently, Gwangju (where I live) is known for it's Kimchi and Kimchi festival and it is considered to be the best in the country. (just ask anyone here, they will tell you. ;) ) We walked around a bit more before getting kabobs to eat and then going home. It was a really fun day and definitely a Korean experience I am glad we did!

This weekend, our school is taking all of the foreign teachers on a mandatory field trip to this Korean traditional festival place. I am not sure what to really expect and they won't really tell us too much except that it will be lots of fun and we will enjoy it so I guess I am kinda looking forward to that.

I hope you all are doing fantastic and am having as much fun as I am here in korea. I miss you all tons!!! LOVE YOU!

Halloween!

It been awhile since I have last posted... wow. I am getting worse and worse at this blogging thing, but I promise I will continue to do it.

Ok, so Friday was Halloween at ECC. Because we are an English teaching school, we celebrated Halloween, even though this is not a known or celebrated Korean holiday. If you would have asked me about a week ago how excited I was about it, I would have told you EXTREMELY. My school requires that everyone dresses up. I LOVE Halloween and I love coming up with ideas of what to be. So this year I got the idea to be crayons. I recruited all of the Kinder teachers who teach English, which is 4 foreigners and 3 Koreans and we all agreed this would be age appropriate and really cute if done properly. The only guy kinder teacher, Jason, decided not o be a crayon but agreed to be a crayon box. So there were going to be 3 Korean, 3 Foreign crayons. (One Korean teacher ended up getting super sick and wasn't there for Halloween... but that's another story...) Anyways, so all of us went downtown to get solid colored shirts and matching tights. We also got felt and and lots of black markers to start the construction of our super sweet costumes! They only took a couple hours to make all of them and turned out so super cute in the end. You have to check out the pictures on facebook to see for yourself.

Anyways, so like I said, had you asked me a week before I was super excited about Halloween day at ECC because the Kinder kids all get dressed up and then we go to a local park and all their parents come. We parade the kids around and they all sing songs and do dances for their parents and anyone else who happens to be walking around the park. The foreign kinder teachers were also given the assignment to learn 2 dances so we could stand in the front and lead the dance for the Kinder kids to follow. This was a joke within itself because we had 4 days to learn the dances on our own and we all know how much I hate dancing and how scared I am to do it in public. But I learned them and finally accepted that I would be doing them in front of tons of people. However, lets just say Halloween turned out to be not half as fun because we were told 2 days before that it would be inside at our school and the parents were no longer allowed to come because of Swine Flu. Swine Flu is now in Bongseong Dong (which isn't a city, but more like a neighborhood) where our school is, and Koreans are super duper paranoid to begin with and now that its in our area there is no way we can let the kids be around it. This sounds good right, but do you really think that our kids never go outside so we are protecting them. Plus, one of the Kinder teachers I mentioned above was sick and has been out this whole week we all think because of Swine Flu. (although everyone is keeping it on the hush and nobody will confirm that what she has. But I know she must have it because getting a day off when you are sick is almost impossible at ECC so to get a week, she MUST have it...) So anyways keeping kids in a school where it is obviously present is silly, but I guess I don't make the rules and quite frankly have no say in anything, so inside it is. Whats funny though is I overheard a Korean kinder teacher explaining to someone why the parents were no longer allowed to come. I didn't hear the whole conversation and things didn't quite translate but from what I could tell, parents were not allowed to come because they could get Swine. From who? I wondered. And then I heard more of the conversation. Basically, without completely being said, Korea as a whole blames foreigners for the Swine Flu here and basically she was saying something to the effect that the kids are immune to us foreign teachers, but their parents are not. ha. I couldn't do anything but laugh even though I was kinda upset. It was a relief that I wouldn't be dancing in front of the parents, but at the same time, how was this going to be any different than the practices we had been having the past week for this. It wasn't. Halloween took place on the 6th floor in the activity room. The Kinder kids did get to do trick-or treating and us foreign teachers got to pass out candy to them but it still wasn't as much fun as I pictured it would have been at the park.. oh well.

So the Kinders leave at 2:15 then my next class isn't till 3. For our afternoon classes, the way it is had worked in the past is that the kids go around to all of the classes and go trick-or-treating and then all go upstairs and watch a movie together. This was also changed due to Swine Flu and we were told we were allowed to give our kids candy but we couldn't take them around to the other classes. We also wouldn't be watching a movie together and would have to figure out an activity to do on our own with them. I guess a lot of the teachers didn't care though because many teachers were still taking their kids around the school to trick-or-treat and several rooms had multiple classes watching movies and hanging out together. You better believe for my first class I obeyed the rules but when I saw this happening, I decided to do it too. I took my second class around the halls to other classes asking for candy and then I just kinda let them go crazy and do whatever. This is pretty much what all classes on my floor decided to do because there were kids running around everywhere. I guess it was kinda fun. :) Unlike my Kinders, where all of them dressed up, I had one class where none of them dressed up. This is my least favorite class and they are at the age where they think they are too cool for that. Then when I asked if any of them wanted face paint, they all refused (fine by me.. my face painting skills are not up to par) until they noticed that everyone in other classes were having fun with it and then they all asked if I could paint their hands. They still didn't want me to paint their face because they still wanted to be rebellious but they liked me painting their hands secretly. What weirdos.

So that was Halloween. The dance for kinder went pretty well and I was surprised by my abilities. Don't get me wrong, I was still awkward and not good, but it was good for me. We didn't get either of the dances fully on tape but we do plan to maybe tape it on Monday so I have it to post to facebook like I promised. :)

I hope everyone had a great Halloween! I miss you guys!!

CHINA!!!

For those of you who don’t know (which I don’t think is anyone since I was so excited I think I told the world!!), Korea celebrated Chuseok, which is similar to the American Thanksgiving last week. Since my school gave us 3 days off and there was a weekend we had 5 days off which allowed me to go to China! As soon as Caroline and I realized that we had this vacation, we booked our plane tickets to Beijing and applied for Chinese Visas. (Now I have TWO Visas in my passport! This makes me SOOOO excited! Oh the little things….) Three friends from work were also going to China so we made sure we were on the same flight which was fun. At 4am on Thursday, Caroline and I walked 15 minutes from our house to the school where we met Prairie and Katelyn. We took a five minute taxi ride to get to the bus station, a four hour long bus ride to get the airport, and had a 3 hour long wait until our plane flew out. Finally we got on the plane, so excited to be leaving finally for China, but then we just sat. And sat. And sat some more. Finally, about an hour and a half later we took off and were headed to China. The flight was short and only took an hour and forty five minutes. Thank goodness! I was over the whole traveling thing!

One of their friends, who is Chinese and from Beijing but also works at a hogwan in Gwangju was already on vacation in Beijing and agreed to pick us up at the airport and drive us to our hostels and hotels. Caroline and I decided to stay in a hostel over a hotel like our friends because hostels are ridiculously cheap in China and I think they are super sweet so why not. Our hostel cost us only $9 a night and that was the jacked up price because it was the 60^th anniversary for the People’s Republic of China. Can’t beat that price that’s for sure. AND it was actually a pretty nice place that had a restaurant on the main floor that served Western style foods. We quickly dropped off our stuff and headed to Prairie and Katelyn’s hotel. They dropped off their stuff and then we headed to this little art street. It was pretty cool. Not a whole bunch was open but we were able to go inside some buildings and check out some cool art and take some fun pictures.

From Art Street, we headed to a lake. Around the lake there are many bars, restaurants, and souvenir shops. We ate a fancy restaurant but sat outside. The weather was perfect. I had some real Chinese Sweet and Sour Chicken. It was absolutely delicious and similar but about ten times better than what we call by the same name in the U.S.. Dinner was fantastic and pretty cheap… well, if you don’t count the $40 sitting fee we ended up having to pay for no reason. (And that was after Alan argued with the people about how we were not told about this fee and how we shouldn’t have to pay for it. We got it half price. Can you imagine an $80 sitting fee??!!!!) Anyways, so after dinner we just walked around the lake and kinda just hung out. It was cool seeing Chinese lanterns and stuff lit up everywhere. I am not sure if this was for the celebration that day or not, but it was sweet nonetheless.

Friday morning we got up early and met Katelyn, Prairie and Alan. We were headed for The Great Wall. An hour and a half later we got to a non-touristy section of the wall. Katelyn and Alan stayed there because they did not want to hike The Great Wall, while an old Chinese man drove Caroline, Prairie, and me in a very old little toaster van to a different section of the wall. When we were dropped off we were told the hike would be about 3 hours long. However, once we started hiking we were told it was actually a 4-hour hike and with all of our picture taking it took about 4 ½ hours. It was sooooo breathtaking! The view was incredible and the weather was perfect! It was sunny, clear blue skies, the mountains were so beautiful and you could see the wall for miles! The wall itself was pretty awesome. Parts of it looked like they had just been redone, while most of it looked like it had never been touched. It was a rather challenging hike because of the so many stairs, ups and downs, and crumbling stones but something I would definitely love to do again. I posted pictures on facebook and as much as I would like to tell you that the pictures I took could show you how spectacular The Great Wall is, my pictures don’t even do it justice. I skyped my parents after coming home from China and my dad asked me “I’ve seen your pictures now. Is it still worth going?” My response was “ABSOLUTELY!!!!” The Great Wall is definitely something everyone should go and see, and in my opinion, hike. Oh and did I mention that when we finally got to the end of our hike, we met up with Alan and Katelyn on part of the wall and took a zipline down. That’s right- I ziplined down The Great Wall. That was also quite an amazing experience and soooo much fun!! If I ever go again (which I just might do with my family at the end of my contract here!! J) I would love to take another mode of transportation down, such as the bobsled. That option also seemed like it would be super fun. Who would have ever thought there would have been such fun ways to go down?!

After a full day of hiking, we got something to eat and then headed to The Silk Market. Before we got there, however, we stopped at a place called “The Place”. It was just a square like place but it had a super cool moving water picture thingie that I can’t really explain. I will let the picture do the talking. Anyways, it was pretty cool and we got some fun pictures.

Then we went to the Silk Market. This is a 7 story building filled with a million and one vendors. Each floor has a theme and everyone on that floor sells pretty much the same thing. It’s just a matter of who you think you can bargain with the best and who will give you the best deal. Think Mexico but way way more hardcore, if that’s possible. The vendors would literally grab you and push you in to their shop, shove stuff into your hands and then feed you lines about how much you needed the item. The vendors were all around my age, but they were FANTASTIC at what they did. They were all Chinese but could all speak at least 2 other languages pretty well- English and Spanish. It was amazing the phrases they knew and how convincing they were at trying to get you to pay way way way too much for something. Some of them would say things like “What’s your final price. No joking now. I am serious. Don’t be funny and try to go so low.” Others would say stuff like “I can’t give you it for that price or otherwise I will not be here tomorrow when you come back because my boss will have killed me!” Between these lines and calling me beautiful, it was hard to keep in mind that everything was way overpriced in hopes of me paying and that I needed to bargain hardcore if I wanted a fair deal. By bargain hardcore I mean you could often get them to go about 70% cheaper than their initial asking price. I did pretty well though and I don’t feel like I got ripped off- or at least I don’t think. Although, I was converting everything from Chinese Yuan to Korean Won to American Dollars all in my head, so who knows, but I think I did well. I paid what I thought was fair and did sooo much bargaining. Who knows if I could have got things for less, but I was happy with my purchases and the price I got them at in the end so everyone won. It was loads of fun!

The next day, Prairie, Katelyn and Alan left for Shanghai since they had been to Beijing before and Caroline and I set off for some sight seeing. We went to Tiananmen Square and The Forbidden City. So did the rest of China. I guess because China was celebrating their 60^th anniversary of Communism, every family in China thought they should go visit their roots or something or least all go out because the streets, sidewalk, and subway was ridiculously crowded. By this I mean, you couldn’t really walk, you shuffled along with the crowd at its pace. And on the subway, there were police pushing people on and holding them in while the doors closed almost all the way at which point they would quickly pull out their hand and the train would begin to go. It was nuts. Caroline and I felt like squashed bugs in the subway as well as movie stars because people stared hardcore at the two of us. It wasn’t until we stepped out on to the streets that we really felt like celebrities though. EVERYONE took pictures of us or with us. One person would get up enough courage to ask for a picture with us and then it wouldn’t be a second later before we had a line behind them of people wanting to take pictures with us. We took about 20 pictures on the streets on our way to the Forbidden City and about 20 more once we got it. It was nuts! It started out kinda fun and we liked the attention but it soon became frustrating because we couldn’t get anywhere without being stopped and we couldn’t do our own sightseeing and picture taking.

The Forbidden City was pretty awesome though and exactly how I pictured China. The buildings were detailed and had dragons and other animals in front. The roofs were made of bricks that looked almost gold in color and on the corners of the roof there were animals that stood for different things such as protection and stuff I think is what I heard. It was really cool to admire all of the details and fun to say that I was in a Palace. This took most of the day especially with fighting the crowds, but we did manage to see some of the floats that were in the parade from the previous day and just explore Beijing a little. We finished the night by playing badmitten in front of our hostel.

The next day we went to Olympic park. It was definitely WAY less crowded than the Forbidden City which was AWESOME but the number of people who wanted to take our picture was still the same. We stopped for many many photos with Chinese families, kids, groups of friends, individuals, etc before we just kept on walking and pretending we were oblivious to what was going on. Caroline and I went inside the Water Cube and the Bird’s Nest, which was super cool. It was neat to be in the places where so many people from so many countries won Gold Medals the year before. We didn’t end up going inside the gymnastics/other sports building but we did take several pictures outside. The buildings were all just so cool from even the outside. We spent several hours there and have some great pictures.

After Olympic Park, we went to Llama Temple. I have never been to a temple so this was really neat. Store after store on our walk to the temple sold incense but Caroline and I did not realize why until after we got inside. Each time you pass a Buddha, you stop in front of him, light 3 incense and then pray and bow three times to him before offering your incense to him by putting it in a fire at his feet. It was cool to see the Chinese people doing this even though I did not believe in who they were worshiping. It was just something unique to see.

After the Temple, Caroline and I set off to get massages. We saw a sign in front of our hostel that read massages for 28 Yuan, which is about $5 so we were all about it! We were hoping for back massages but they only offered foot massages at this place. After hiking the Great Wall the day before and all of the walking we had been doing, we were pretty excited. We chose some milk something or another to have our feet soaked in. While our feet soaked we got mini shoulder, neck, back massages. It was sweet. Then we got our hour long foot massages which were pretty amazing and surprisingly the lady even found a big knot in one of my feet that she rubbed out and made feel better. At the end we were asked if we wanted some foot cupping done and we said sure, why not since it was less than a dollar and it sounded cool. Basically the lady came at us with some glass cups, a stick and some fire starting fluid. She lit the stick on fire then put the fire in the cup and then twisted the cup on to our feet to make it suction cup on. It was quite strangey. And at the end our feet did not feel any different but it was a funny experience and Caroline and I both laughed a lot.

After our massages, we had just enough time to get some dinner at our hostel before we were picked up to go to an acrobatics show we had bought tickets to. This show was AWESOME. I think I really enjoyed it a lot because it reminded me of circus. And I miss circus a lot. So many of the acts were the same as those at FSU except way more hardcore which made me laugh cause I thought our show was impressive! The girls were ridiculously limber and crazy strong and the guys were unbelievably strong and pretty flexible as well. I took so many pictures until I was told I was not allowed to be taking pictures. Oops. It was neat to go to a Chinese acrobatics show because quite frankly this is something I think of when I think of China because their gymnasts are always soooo good at the Olympics. What a great way to end the night!

The next morning we met up with Prairie, Alan and Katelyn and made one last quick stop at the Silk Market to get last minute purchases. Then we went to a fancy restaurant so we could eat the famous Beijing Peking Duck. You could watch them cook the duck in this fire pit thing. Then it was taken to be cut. The head was cut off and the remaining part of the duck was sliced and served. It was served on two duck platters and the head was placed carefully on the one so that you could see it was a whole that that you were getting. I didn’t know what to expect, but I absolutely LOVED it. Duck is delicious!!!

After lunch we went back to the lake to see it during the day. We shopped for a bit before renting a boat for an hour. The boat ride was super fun and the scenery was really pretty which provided us the opportunity to take several more China pictures before we headed home. After our boat ride Alan drove us to the airport and we were on our way home. We finally got home after the time change and 4 hour bus ride home at 2am. Caroline and I had to wake up the next morning at 8am which was a little rough, but it was definitely worth it. China was a blast and I REALLY want to go back sometime!!

As I am sure everyone expected, this post was RIDICULOUSLY LONG! Like I said, you better just get used to it. Hehe!! I miss everyone tons and think we need to stop slacking and get to talking on Skype WAY more… k thanks. Miss you all!!

p.s- if you were wondering, this post is 4 ½ pages single spaced on a Word document (without pictures) and took me about 3 hours to write! J That’s right, I love you guys that much.