For example, I was in the teachers’ office at my school with the two other whitey girls at my school.  It was a Friday, it was after hours, we were all getting ready to go and start our weekends of volunteer work and bible study (or alcohol consuption and hangover suffering).  Just then appeared THE DRUNKEN AJOSSHI!

THE DRUNKEN AJOSSHI is the building manager at my school.  The building is 5 floors.  A noraebang (karaoke room) resides in the basement, a motorcycle shop, organic food store, and vet clinic share the ground floor, my school takes up the second and third floors, and there’s a garden on the rooftop.  THE DRUNKEN AJOSSHI is in charge of cleaning and maintaining the staircase, garden, and exterior of the building.  As you should have gathered by now, it’s not abnormal for THE DRUNKEN AJOSSHI to be drunk.  When THE DRUNKEN AJOSSHI is drunk, you never know what to expect.

THE DRUNKEN AJOSSHI was mad.  PISSED.  Red-faced from a long day of soju consumption, he began talking to us.  Then, his speech got faster and faster and louder and louder.  We were able to gather that his anger stemmed from our inability to speak Korean.  “You’re in Korea!” he shouted.  “Speak Korean!”

Since he was standing in the doorway, we were trapped.  I finally got on my phone and called my Korean coworker, who had the sense to turn off her office light and slam her door shut when she heard THE DRUNKEN AJOSSHI making his way down the hall.  I begged her to come out and help us.  She did.  Being Korean, she was bound to cultural etiquette, and had to stand there and politely listen while THE DRUNKEN AJOSSHI bitched at her for 10 minutes.  Finally, he scooted his drunken ass out the door and I ran down the stairs and onto the street with my coworker Emma, laughing at the ridiculousness.

A few weeks later, THE DRUNKEN AJOSSHI reappeared in the teachers’ office.  I had already gone home, leaving my Korean speaking coworker Hector behind with Emma, who was present for the first drunken fit.  This time, though, THE DRUNKEN AJOSSHI had a different issue to address.  He thought we were all wonderful for sticking around at the same school for so long.  He thinks foreigners and Koreans should all get along.  Emma, he thinks, is beautiful.  He is trying to learn English, and as soon as his house is “finished” (whatever the fuck that means), he wants to have us all over.  He wants to buy us drinks.  He knows we think he doesn’t have any money since he’s the guy that sweeps our stairs, but he does have money.  This point was illustrated by pulling out his wallet, extracting a stack of cash, and waving it around.

Clearly, THE DRUNKEN AJOSSHI needs to make up his mind.  And maybe even lay off the sauce for a bit.

I have moved to another URL.

http://thebroadabroad.wordpress.com/

I’m laying this blog to rest. This will be the last post.

http://thebroadabroad.wordpress.com/

R.I.P. What Am I Doing in Korea?

http://thebroadabroad.wordpress.com/

• moved out of that shitty excuse for a city, daejeon
• moved to a legitimate excuse for a city – seoul
• gotten fired from my miserable, sucidal though inducing job with terrible people at wonderland in daejeon
• gotten an absolutely amazing job with people i adore
• signed another 12 month contract, delaying my homecoming until march or april of next year instead of april of this year (which has already passed)
• made plans to visit houston for the first 2 weeks in august

Sorry I haven’t blogged about any of this.  Or my trip to Thailand.

elephant!

  Or my trip to China. 

tiananmen...the coolest place i have EVER been to

on the great wall

 Or my trip to Japan.

cherry blossoms

the sea of japan and me

  I’ve been too busy actually living life to blog about it.  Sue me.

Maybe I’ll get better about updating this thing.  Maybe not.  At this point, I’m pretty sure I’ve lost all of my readers, so what’s the damn point?  We’ll see what happens.

p.s. i think i just figured out how to post pictures again.  if so, consider this my triumphant return to the blogosphere.

then, I was going to add another thailand post tonight…but, well, i stayed up until the wee hours last night watching a live stream of the inauguration.  i’ve been friggin exhausted all day!

i found a streaming feed of the inaugural ceremonies around midnight, korea time, last night.  so i started watching.  i was exhausted when i started, and i was afraid i would either fall asleep before the main event, or end up staying up all night and thus sleeping through my alarm clock the next morning.

my brain empoyed some checks and balances of its own, and i got my priorities in order.  did i really need to listen to a choir sing while news anchors repetitively remarked on the multicultural, multiracial ”sea of humanity” before them?  did i need to be kept up to speed on things such as when obama was to get in the car, when bush was to take his last trip to the presidentail toilet, and the questioning of whether michelle obama’s dress matched the carpet in one of the white house rooms?

no.  so i went to sleep.

i had recruited stephen to call my cell phone as the actual swearings-in started.  and he did.  i woke up, watched biden and obama become official, listened to the address, fed several of my asinine observations into twitter, and went to sleep.

i really, honestly, genuinely fell asleep with a smile on my face.  this is all just so important.  he’s the first black president. i completely see and appreciate the significance of this, but i don’t know how to say what’s on my mind.  really, i feel like i as a white person need to leave that side of the rightfully felt glory to the people who deserve it.  the people whose family histories are riddled with stories of slave ancestors and being denied service for their skin color.  i can empathize with those things, but i certainly can’t sympathize with the historical plight of the african american population.  so on to what i feel like i do have the qualifications to speak about…he didn’t get elected for his skin color alone.  he didn’t get elected for being hip.  he was elected because he respresented the people’s desire for a paradigm shift in politics.  america is obviously tired of feeling disenfranchised from their political system.  we’ve grown weary of inaccessible politicians.  we’ve yet to see what obama can actually do, but even if he turns out to be a dud, i think this all signifies the beginning of an evolution into something that could be incredible.  i just hope people remain half as mentally and emotionally invested in politics as they were tonight.

so no thailand post tonight.  i can barely type a coherent sentence at this moment.  i have a lot of free time tomorrow, so i’m at least going to scratch the posts down on paper.  i’m leaving for beijing (!!!!!) on saturday, so i want to get it all out before another trip clouds up my memories.

i hope everyone had a happy obama day.

with a bag of doritos in my hand, i checked out the room.  jeremy had found and booked this room, and it was pretty awesome.  it had a garage like front room with a couch and a screen door, which was perfect for my chain smoking.  it also had a giant jacuzzi bathtub in the bathroom.  knowing my disdain for bathtubs in general, but hotel jacuzzi tubs in particular, jeremy had cleaned the shit out of it himself and made sure the nasty germ water in the jets had been filtered out.  it took about an hour and a half to fill the stupid thing, but it was a nice  thing to have after being crammed in airplane seats all day.

jeremy was horribly jet lagged and tired, but i talked him into coming with me while i checked out the area around the hotel.  unfortunately, there wasn’t much to see.  as i had read in the hotel’s reviews, it was not exactly in a happening area of town. never mind that, i said!  we walked around, saw some stray dogs, and went back to the hotel.  i bought a pack of cigarettes from the hotel lobby and we went back to our room to get some rest before the next day.

i’m pretty sure we requested a wake up call for the next morning.  i wanted to go to wat phra kaew, and i wanted to hit it early.  we woke up, showered, put all of our essential belongings in the backpack jeremy was going to carry around, and got a cab to the temple.

we arrived at the temple, and i finally got my first real taste of bangkok.  scooters and cars were flying everywhere, people were chasing us down and trying to sell us stuff, tuk tuk drivers were telling us the temple was closed (but of course, they knew of another secret temple they could take us to), and it was loud as hell.  i loved it.  one thing i’ve learned since getting out of houston is that i have a strong affinity for big, busy, dirty cities.  for whatever reason, they make me giddy and excited.  i was a bit overwhelmed, though, so jeremy and i ran down a side street for a bit to collect ourselves.  once we reemerged, we did some browsing.  jeremy bought a giant ugly pair of pants for like $2 to wear into the temple (he was wearing shorts), and i stupidly bought the world’s ugliest skirt before i found out that my jeans were acceptable temple wear.  oh well.

off to the temple we went.  we bought our tickets and walked into the complex.  holy shit.  it was amazing.  i really don’t know how to write about it, as i am no architecture expert and have no idea how to do justice to it.  the buildings were huge, and every single one of them was absolutely covered in tiny shiny tiles, marble…all kinds of stuff.  truth be told, it was all so amazing and overwhelming that everything kind of started to look the same.  every time i turned around, there was something huge and ornate in my face.  we wandered around there for a few hours and took lots of pictures.  we made our way to the grand palace, where the king used to live.  around 3:00, we had made our way through everything and stopped for some drinks  we hung out at the cafe for about an hour and talked while i ate a coconut and smoked some cigarettes.  then, we decided to see what else was in the area.

we wandered off down the street and saw a giant collection of food stalls grouped together in this courtyard type area.  we walked through it, and it led to an alleyway, which we soon realized had water on it.  apparently, we had made our way to the river.  there was a ferry boat going to and from the other side of the river, as well as long tailed boats zipping around.  before all of this, when i thought of a long tailed boat, i thought of 5 or 6 people with paddles propelling it through the water.  reality was much better.  basically, these people had taken tubocharged car engines, stuck a giant 15 foot  pole with a propeller where the driveshaft should have been, and mounted that to the back of the boat.  steering was all a matter of moving the propeller around in the direction the driver wanted to go. 

i saw it and thought nothing. 

jeremy the mechanic saw it and exclaimed “holy shit.  those things are the most dangerous things on the planet.”

suddenly, my interest was piqued.  “oh reeeeeeeeeally?  why is that?”

he explained the set up, then made me realize the obvious…there was a turbo charged propeller spinning at the end of every boat’s motor.  the propeller also bounced around, in and out of the water, as the driver steered.  if we were to crash into another boat, we’d die.  if we were to get to close to a propeller manned by a careless driver, we could be decapitated.  and if the boat toppled over and we all fell out, there’d be a renegade propeller bouncing around and thirsty for human flesh.

of course, this meant that i HAD to ride it.

jeremy resisted a bit, but he was easy enough to convince to go along with me.  i don’t remember how much we paid, but i remember it being way too much.  we were asked if we wanted the tour that went through the canals and to some temple, or if we wanted to go through the canals and see a snake show.  we had already done a giant temple, so i opted for the snake show.  we were ushered off to the end of a pier, and soon enough, our chariot pulled up and we got on.

the driver maneuvered the boat out into the open water of the river, and then he fucking gunned the engine.  we went flying down the river.  we were passing boats twice our size, as well as flying by all of the other long tails.  jeremy started cursing my existence, and i shreiked “WE’RE GONNA DIE WE’RE GONNA DIE WE’RE GONNA DIIIIIIIIE!”  jeremy had his video camera on, and suddenly, he yelled something indecipherable, but with a bit more urgency than his previous comments of hatred toward me for talking him into the boat ride.  i craned my neck to see past the nose of the boat just in time to see that we were headed directly for the ass end (and thus, the propeller) of another long tailed boat.   jeremy’s prophecy was about to come true!  i started screaming, our driver started fumbling around in effort to get the boat to stop, and the other driver saw us coming just in time to swing the rear of his boat out of our way.  seriously, we missed that other boat by less than a foot.  the other boat’s driver started screaming in thai at our boat’s driver, our boat driver started screaming back, and jeremy and i wished the passengers on the other boat good luck.  once our driver got sick of screaming at the other driver, he gunned it again and shot off down into the canals.

the whole ride, we were flying past other long tails, long tails full of people who looked happy to be relaxing on their slow lilt through the canals of bangkok.  jeremy and i, however, had our feet wrapped around the metal pole in front of us to keep from falling out when our driver made narrow turns and held on for dear life while he flew throuh intersections without even considering the act of slowing down or looking for oncoming traffic.  very quickly, we arrived at the snake place.  we got out of the boat, and our driver zipped off down the canal.

as we walked into the snake show, jeremy was telling me how much he hated me and how i had just made the last decision for our trip.  his words – no, his very existence – faded away, however, as i saw a little baby gibbon running around on the table of souvenirs they had set up.  it was way way way cute.  i watched it play for a bit until its owner scooped it up and hauled it away for it’s bath.  just as this happened, the man who apparently ran the operation at the snake place told us to wander around and check out all of their animals for a bit and that the snake show would be starting in about 15 minutes.

so we wandered around.  we were soon grounded from any high that the boat ride had lended us, as their set up was the most depressing thing i have ever seen.  they had monkeys in cages with nothing but a stick, iguanas in cages bigger than the monkey enclosure, a tiger pacing back and forth in a pathetic little habitat, parrots that had plucked out half of their feathers, turtles swimming around in murky green water…ugh.  after getting our fill of this, they announced that the snake show was starting.  we were the first to show up to the ring, so the man made us sit in the very front row in what was supposed to be the best seat in the house.  then the show began.

it was nothing super incredible.  they’d pull out a couple of cobras or some other deadly snake, charm it, then piss it until it struck and they jumped out of the way just in time.  they didn’t really treat the snakes too horribly.  they shoed how to milk their poison, some guy picked up a deadly snake with his mouth, we all got to touch a bunch of poisonous snakes, blah blah blah.  they did pull out a python, though, and proceded to piss it off enough to where it tried to strike.  that made me sad, because come on.  it’s a python.  the only reason he was being so aggressive was because he was being stressed out so much.  still, it was pretty tame compared to what i’ve come to expect from that kind of thing and the treatment of animals in asia.

once the show was over, we began to make our way out.  but my baby gibbon was back!  in her nightgown!  and her owner let me hold her!  so cute.  so freaking gosh darn cute.

so we left.  as we made our way back to the canal, we were hoping that our initial driver had left for good and that a new driver had shown up.  no such luck.  we got back in our old boat, assumed our old positions, and made our way back to the river.

though we were flying down them at lightning speed, the canals were really awesome.  they were lined with old houses, and there were people going about their everyday lives, fishing, doing laundry, playing, or just sitting around and talking.  it reminded me of an asian new orleans.  at one point, the boat stopped and a woman on a smaller boat came over and tried to sell us crap.  keychains?  no thanks.  soda?  no.  water?  not interested.  a beer?  nuh-uh.  a beer for the driver?  shit…she had gotten me into a corner! the boat driver was in on what was going on (duh, that’s why he stopped), he knew she was going to suggest i buy him a beer, and i knew he knew.  the last thing i wanted to do was get him angry and driving more maniacally.  also, i get guilted into things like that easily.  so i gave the woman some money,and she went to the back of the boat and gave the driver his beer (and probably a commission from my purchase).  as we pulled off, i remarked to jeremy how i had just supplied alcohol to our insane boat driver, and wondered if that was such a good idea.   soon, we were back at the river, and by the time we got back to the pier we had departed from, the sun was going down.

we wandered away from the pier and down some street.  it wasn’t anything super special, but we wandered far enough that we were soon the only tourists on the street and were surrounded by people eating delicious looking and smelling food on the street.  and this is where my eating habits become a bitch.  i wanted to try some of the stuff i was seeing, but i couldn’t tell what a lot of it was and had no way to ask.  not wanting to create a scene or end up buying something i couldn’t eat, we decided to put dinner off until we got somewhere a little friendlier and more obvious to my needs.

after wandering around for about an hour, we made our way back to the temple we had started at.  once we got to it, we realized that a GIANT government protest was going on mere feet from us.  we hung out in the park and listened to people give speeches over the intercom system in thai while we tried to figure out where to go.  knowing that it was NOT going to be my scene, but knowing it would cater to my eating dilemma, we decided to head to khao san road.

once we flagged down a cab and fought our way through the protest traffic, we were on khao san road in seconds.  i was horrified mere milliseconds after that.  i guess i just don’t understand why people go to exotic asian countries to flock to areas where westerners congregate.  we jumped into the current of people making their way down the road and walked to the end of it without stopping.  store full of crap, street vendor selling pad thai, bar, store full of crap, convenience store, repeat.  that was the rhythm of the street.  it made eating easy, though.  we got two orders of pad thai, one with chicken and one without, and a few spring rolls for under $2 total.  we found a police station to sit in front of while we ate, and then we got up, got another cab, and got the hell out of there.

it was only around 9 or 10, but we decided to make it an early night.  we had to check out of our hotel the next morning and get a bus to pattaya.  not exactly a place that was high on my priority list, but it was home of the elephant village i wanted to go to, making it a must.

a lot of people told me to skip over bangkok altogether, citing its modernization and  urbane feel as reasons to why it sucked.  maybe it’s my love for cities, but i just didn’t get that.  i was looking forward to the other destinations we had to hit on our trip, but that night, i was already looking forward to revisiting bangkok the day before our flights left.  i had been there for less than 24 hours, but i was already in love with the place.

anyhow, on to the important part.

saturday, december 27th was the first day of my winter vacation.  it was a day i had been looking forward to for a long time, because not only did it mean i was getting on an airplane and flying to warm and sunny bangkok, but it also meant that jeremy would be waiting for me in bangkok when i arrived.  i’ve been in korea for 8 and a half months now, and haven’t seen my boyfriend of almost 5 years the entire time.  that gets a little shitty from time to time.

on friday the 26th, i got off of work and ran home as quickly as i could.  i had bought a new backpack for the trip as i didn’t want to be burdened with luggage while jeremyand i made our way around.  the backpack was already packed, with the exception of the toiletries i had used that morning.  i made sure i had everything i needed, and then i began to panic.

this was the first time i had flown OUT of incheon international airport.  my initial plan was to either sleep in the airport or find a cheap place around it, but i had since learned there really weren’t any cheap places near by.  i talked to my friend devika who lives in the city of incheon, and she told me which daejeon bus terminal to go to to get a bus to her city.  she told me to hurry and get on the 11 PM bus and she’d meet me at the bus terminal.

during this phone conversation, my prepaid phone ran out of minutes, making everything even more difficult than it already was.  but i climbed in a cab, told the driver to take me to the bus terminal.  i got there, fought off all the cab drivers who were trying to convince me that the buses had stopped running and my only option was to take a cab, and bought a ticket for the 11 PM bus.  after waiting a bit, i got on the bus, plugged in my ipod, threw my ski jacket over me as a blanket, and slept for the 2 hours it took me to get to incheon.

when i got off the bus, i found a payphone and called devika, who met up with me.  now, at this point it was about 1:30 am, i was an hour away from the airport, and i had a 10:30 AM flight to catch.  so what did i do?  i went out!  we went to this awesome bar in incheon and ate some tofu and kimchi and drank a few beers (my goal was to make myself sleepy again…).  after maybe and hour and a half of that, we went looking for a love motel for me to stay in.  we found one, checked in, discovered the sex toy vending machine right outside my room, and went back outside so devika could show me where to catch a bus the next morning.  then, devika went on her way, and i went back to my love motel.

at 4ish i fell asleep, giving myself a whole 2 hours before i had to be up.  since it typically takes a sonic boom and a team of elephants to get me out of bed any time before 9 AM, i was worried that i’d sleep through my 6 AM alarm on my phone.  this led to me not sleeping very well at all.  i did wake up, though, and by 7:15, i was out on the street, walking toward the bus terminal.

i decided to save some cash and take the city bus to the airport rather than the airport limousine bus.  it showed up to the stop in front of the bus terminal, and i got on, threw 1,000 won in, and sat down.  about an hour later, i was at the airport!

and now, i was excited.  i found out where my airline, cathay pacific, had their check in desk and began the fairly long walk over.  i was happy to see that every check in desk i passed had short lines.  when i got to cathay pacific’s, however, my little happy bubble was burst.  the queue line was zig zagging all over the place, and even extended past the ropes they had set out, around a giant tree planter, and down a hallway.  great.

i got in line, but only stood there for about 5 minutes before a woman came over and told me to try the self check out kiosks i had walked by without even noticing.  the line for those was short, so i went over, typed in my information, scanned my passport, and before i knew it, a shiny new boarding pass was spat out for me.  laughing at the saps standing in the other line, i walked to security.

security was boring.  much like this entire post, actually.  i went through security, stopped at the terminal’s paris baguette for a bagel and some coffee, and had about 20 minutes to hang out and wait until boarding began.  when instructed, i got on the plane and was soon in the air, flying toward hong kong.

something weird happens to me when i’m on flights alone.  i get all zombified.  i pay no heed to the free headsets or the personal tv screens in front of my face.  i always pack books, magazines, and an ipod, but they usually all go ignored.  sometimes, i’ll pull out the ipod, but i don’t bother with podcasts or movies, i only listen to music.  i tend to not eat or drink anything.  i just stare straight ahead, until i reach my destination.  that’s what i did on this flight.

we landed in hong kong, where i had around an hour and a half to kill before my next flight.  unfortunately, since i had used the self check in kiosk in korea, i didn’t get my boarding pass from hong kong to korea.  i got to stand in another longish line, where a lot of my time was eaten up.  i got my boarding pass, and as my stomach growled protest against my weird, trance-like behavior on the previous plane, i looked for an exchange window so i could get rid of some of my won in exchange for some hong kong dollars for food.  i found one, turned 20,000 won into about 100 hong kong dollars, and went looking for what i could find to eat.

i was starving and in somewhat of a hurry, so I wasn’t going to be too picky.  on my way to my gate, i found a starbucks, which happened to sell hot sandwiches.  i got a glass of tea and a vegetable sandwich for something like 60 or 70 hong kong dollars.  the sandwich was gross and the tea was…tea.  i then found a smoking room, had a cigarette, and went on to my gate.

of course, my gate was located right next to the biggest damn food court i have ever seen in an airport.  i kicked myself for eating that gross sandwich earlier, sat down, and waited for my plane to board.

the initial boarding time came and went, and nothing happened.  the actual take off time was drawing nearer and nearer, but we were still sitting around waiting.  i was getting nervous, and i kept checking my boarding pass and flight number to make sure i wasn’t at the wrong gate waiting for the wrong flight.  finally, they changed the sign and informed us that the flight was going to be delayed until 5:30, or about an hour and a half from when it was supposed to take off.  awesome.  i listened to all of my podcasts, i read a magazine, i spent the last of my hong kong money on some coffee, i visited several different smoking rooms (those things are foul).  again, the clock was creeping up to 5:30, the new departure time, and we weren’t going anywhere.  just as i began to get hungry again and started to consider trading in some more money to eat, they announced that boarding for my plane was to begin.

i got on the plane, which was packed, and got settled and ready for coma-mode.  only this time, i was hungry enough that when they brought meals around, i took one.  i forgot to ask the coworker that booked my flight to ask for vegetarian meals, but luckily for me, they had a fish dish.  yeah, i never thought i’d consider myself lucky to be offered airplane fish.  as much as i hate to admit it, it was a pretty good curry sauce and rice fish concoction.  i ate that, and then i stared at the little airplane on the map on the screen in front of me, representing our position on the planet,  slowly, we inched closer and closer to bangkok, until we finally landed.  i got off the plane, went through immigration, walked past the baggage claim since i had carried all of my stuff on, and began to look for a taxi.

now, here is where i made a poor decision.  i knew it was a poor decision, but the consequences ended up being more of a pain in the ass than they were supposed to be.  i had read that the hotel jeremy was waiting for me at was kind of out of the way and very hard for taxi drivers to find.  i had also heard so much of the “don’t trust these cab drivers and don’t trust those cab drivers”, but I had never really heard who was supposed to be legitimate.  but, i was tired, my back hurt, i wanted to get the hell out of the airport and into bangkok, and i was very ready to reunite with jeremy.  knowing full well that this was on the list of people not to trust, i gave in and walked up to a girl behind one of the counters set up for taxi service.

i told her where i needed to go, and she said it would be 1100 baht.  now, at that time, i had no idea what a reasonable rate would be, but i knew over $30 USD was way too much.  i mean, a cab ride from one side of daejeon to the other is only like $13 USD, and that’s in KOREA, which is nowhere as cheap as thailand.  anxious to get moving, though, i just agreed to the rip off price like a push over and was sent outside to find my cab.

i got in the cab, gave him the piece of paper i had been given at the counter, and sat back.  i was pretty impressed with the way bangkok looked at night, but there was something about it that reminded me of driving down i-45 in houston.  suddenly, my cab driver exited the highway, took a few turns, and was in the middle of a very modern, very busy area with lots of tourists and hotels lining the streets.  something was off.  he stopped at the siam at siam hotel.  i, however, had a boyfriend and a room at the siam societyhotel.  he said “here”.  i said “no, not here”.  we argued for a bit, and he got out and asked a policeman that was parked nearby.  then, he came back and told me the policeman said the siam society was inside the siam at siam.  totally unconvinced, i agreed to get out and ask one of the door people if i was at the right place.  the second i stepped out of his cab, one doorman grabbed my bag from me and another woman was pulling me onto an elevator.  i finally had the chance to spit out “this is not the right hotel!  is this siam society?”

she said no.  she hit the number one on the elevator.  back down we went.  of course, by this time, my $30 cab was long gone.  so now, i was tired and pissed.  the people at this hotel, however, were very nice.  they called my hotel for me, got directions to it, write them in thai, flagged down another cab for me, gave the driver the thai directions, and even write down the driver’s number for me in case he decided to mess with me.  i only had giant bills on me at that time, so i wasn’t able to tip them.  i felt terrible about that…still do.  anyhow, i got in a cab, went right back past the airport, and finally saw the sign for the siam society.  i walked into the lobby, asked where the room number i had was, and they whisked me away in a tuk tuk to the other side of the hotel grounds.  i walked into the bungalow-style-yet-not-a-bungalow room, where i found and subsequently scared the shit out of my poor jet lagged, sleeping boyfriend.

all night, i kept thinking, “holy shit holy shit holy shit…i’m in bangkok!”

so why did i have to keep reminding myself that today was christmas eve?

while christmas is definitely observed here, it’s nowhere near as commercial.  i don’t ever watch my tv, so i haven’t been innundated with holiday ads (provided that even happens here).  also, this is a primarily buddhist country, so while people have tomorrow off it’s not that big of a deal.  even i have to go back to work on the 26th.

the lack of christmasy spirit is probably due largely to my missing out on so much of what i do at home.  the christmas shopping i did just felt like another afternoon browsing the streets and shops.  i also did all of my shopping alone, without stupid greg, which made it all task oriented and no fun.

last christmas went like this:  i woke up at my apartment.  i went to my dad’s house, where my brother and grandparents were in from out of state.  we did gifts, we ate, and then i drove over to jeremy’s aunts house.  i accidentally got a little too drunk off of the wine (oops), we all sat around and talked, we ate, and gifts were exchanged.  then, jeremy and i drove across town to my mom’s house, where my brother had relocated, we ate (again!), exchanged gifts, and hung out.  at this point it was like 10 and i had been in nonstop family mode for 12 hours.  to decompress, i met up with my friends at the bar and we got drunk.

this year?  i’ll wake up tomorrow whenever i feel like it.  i’ll stay in bed until i get the motivation to shower, and then i’ll start packing up my shit for my trip to thailand.  i’ll eventually make it out to downtown to take pictures of the lights and buy any last minute things i need for my trip.  it’s pretty much just going to be another day off, with the added travel preparations.  i’ll go to bed, teach all day on friday, and then i’ll go to incheon and wait for my saturday morning flight outta here.

i’m not really sad about missing out on all of the christmas festivities, but earlier today, I couldn’t help but think about how my favorite time of the year has come and nearly gone with little recognition of it.  knowing that i’m leaving for thailand this weekend definitely helps any strange feelings i may have, though.  jeremy just left for the airport, and i just spent $130 on a backpack to drag everything around in.

for me, this isn’t a bad christmas, just a different and slightly delayed one.  but for all of you at home, know that i’m thinking of every singe one of you and wishing i could be there.   i may be a bit jealous of everything i’m missing out on today and tomorrow, but you can be jealous of me next week as i ring in the new year on a thai beach.   

if you sent me your address, you should have gotten your christmas card.  if not, it got sent out so it’s either late or lost.

have a merry christmas and a happy new year!

while i greatly look forward to seeing the lovely faces of all my family and friends back in houston, i’m a little sad i’ve only got 5 months left.  i miss home, but leaving korea is going to be a sad, sad situation.

enough of that crap.  i’ve got 5 months left!  i’d better spend it wisely.

1. First thing you wash in the shower?  my face.  i hate having a wet oily face.  or a wet made up face with eyeliner and mascara running in my eyes. 

2. What color is your favorite hoodie?  the only hoodie i have here is off white with grey things printed all over it.  it’s pretty awesome, but i got it at target so it fits me like i’m wearing a box.  my other hoodies are IN boxes at home.

3. Would you kiss the last person you kissed again? yeah.  

boo.

i did, however, decide to cook for the occassion.  i paid out the ass for some salmon filets, had my mom mail me some stuffing, mashed some potatoes, and put together some homemade macaroni and cheese.  i kind of forgot to cook the vegetables.  oops.

so i’ve got another holiday away from home under my belt.  it really wasn’t that bad.  the only thing that really bothered me was the fact that i had to work today, while everyone back at home on twitter and myspace was tweeting and talking about having the day off.  oh, well.

as i said a few posts back, i’m supposed to be going to thailand at the end of december.  as of yesterday, the main international airport for the country is being occupied by protestors who want the country’s current leader thrown out of power.  this means all outgoing and incoming flights are cancelled!  awesome!  and though the head of the military says he will not lead one, it’s looking more and more like a full on coup is about to break out.  keep your fingers crossed for me…i’m going to be a little angry if my week of vacation is spent in my apartment looking at my $1500 e-ticket.

all in all, i’m not that worried.  what happens will happen, and whether we’re here or there, at least jeremy will be hanging out with me.  so i still have something to look forward to.

i spent all day following the thai news and the news coming out of mumbai.  at one point, i was staring at the home page at cnn.com and was a little taken aback at how horrible all of the headlines were.  i guess i can’t really complain much about the potential of missing out on a week of bangkok and beaches. 

so to my friends in america, happy thanksgiving.  to my american friends in korea, hope it was swell.