[eastern landings]

안녕하세요....  
so a while has past.
i apologize.
i've been spending late-night weekeds
neglecting to carry around my camera.
and fearing the rainy season will destroy it if and when i take it out.
i regret to say that since i've been sick i have only been on one hike.
i'm late to every saturday language class (but i still go).
and i still haven't managed to purchase my new bike yet.
sometimes i feel like everything small i've wanted to do has slipped away from me for either
a) lack of money (since i sent so much of it home last month)
b) the sheer heat and raining moisture that has been bestowed upon seoul in the last 2.5 weeks
and c) going out... ugh, such a lame excuse

however, many a time i just never brought my camera. i spent a lovely sunday afternoon in olympic park with my friends robert and susannah (cuppy). we enjoyed one of the last dry warm days of spring... we rented a pedal car (hopefully someday i will have pictures of these) drank wine and enjoyed the warm grass in the shade of lovely trees.

i've been making different cheeses here in my apartment. seoul has a wonderful variety of milks, that are bringing me all sorts of wonderful products. cream cheese, mozzarella, fresh dry cheese and even one that turned out almost butter-like.

i started a mini garden in my apartment. my northern window-sill has basil and chives growing. my basil has just begun to peak above the dirt, i'm concerned about the chives. but if they don't come out soon i've been germinating some type of red/kidney/pinto bean that i acquired from the market to replace them. some of the beans were freshly sprouted already before i went to soak them. hopefully i will have some bean plants growing as well in the next few weeks. i'm keeping my eyes peeled in the dumpsters on my way to and from work for anything that could possibly hold my bean plants... keeping it cheap here.

and now often my week nights are spent just walking in the street looking in plant shops (im in the market for some more) or cooking in my apartment. i don't eat out much... the lunch at school is plenty for me and not to mention free... and i'm usually not hungry when i get home, but i enjoy walking outside... there are a few neighborhood parks with play grounds, swings and lots of trees that i've found to be really relaxing after work and not as far to walk as olympic park. sometimes i feel as if i'm rushing home at night  from there if i go that far.
and mon, wed, and fri i've taken up jogging along the han. it's pleasant and even thought it's extremely hot outside during the day, when the sun gets low on the river a very nice breeze picks up and it makes jogging there really tolerable.

a weekend or so back i wandered around insadong, an artsy area of town. and even through the forcast predicted rain, i brought my camera. i still wasn't feeling up for an ambitious hike that day so this suited me...

early in my morning i stumbled upon a lot of old men 

playing othello in a park

this side street i wandered down

found me these dreamy ivy covered walls

and very nice restaurants for relaxing in their shade

my later afternoon was spent in an open air mall/market of local craftsmen/women. delicate handy work, handmade clothing, organic clothes and food and even a few local university galleries were mish-mashed together in a five story open-air building. the walls of the market were covered in hand drawn graffiti, sketches, and tacked on knick-knacks.

the market/mall had about four or five levels, and you walked up it in a gently sloping spiral and it had corridor style stair wells going down the outside of it hosting smaller shops, coffee/muffin shops and snack stalls.

while the center and atrium of the market was completely open air.. some of the restaurants boasted (like the one below) various ways they grown some of their own produce

and at the very bottom, reaching into the basement levels of the mall, were a few tantalizing korean restaurants and the gallery/small studio space of a local design school.

~   ~   ~   ~   ~   ~

so i apologize for my lack of postings. 

maybe this will satisfy 

till the next one goes up, which i know will be sooner than how long this took.

i will try harder

i will take my camera around more often

and...

backtrack --> actual date: june 3 - things that fly

i self designed an art project for my morning kinder class. i decided as a class we should have a personal summer theme for our projects and class research time... things that fly in the summer!!!


i started us off with hot air balloons. in which we spent the first half of the month learning about how they work, watching youtube videos, listening to old and new music about them and flying, singing songs about being in the air and planes and flying, coloring hot air balloon cut outs at playtime and building zeppelins with our class ken-nex blocks.


our art project in the end was to make our own hot air balloons that would be hung from the ceiling using paper-mâché, blow-up balloons and origami boxes.

the class, after our first round of covering the balloons

a few days after they dried we decorated. 

we're not yet to the point of using paint... maybe next time

our final balloons, now hanging... just in time for open class! whew!

pictures of the newly re-decorated classroom to come.

all the ducks are swimming in the water... appendicitis in korea

i apologize for the delayed postings, but i have recently recovered from being pretty seriously ill.

here's a nice short-er and sweet-end of how it seemed to go down:

the weekend after my weekend trip to foukoka i essentially spent in a fever haze laying in my apartment thinking i was going to end my days lying in my korean apartment whilst my insides exploded with pain. i wasn't entirely sure (and still am not) what was happening to me. but i do know that friday night i was able to go out with friends and play trivial pursuit at a bar, while coming through saturday morning, shortly after my language lesson, i was overcome with a crazy intense body pain radiating from my abdominal area. i relaxed at home for most of my saturday afternoon drinking coffee, tea and venturing out into the city only once later in the evening to do a little bit of book shopping since i had finished stoker's dracula.
this adventure i feel nearly led to my death in the subway, barely escaping my own demise by a fortunate empty train in which i was able to sit instead of stand my entire 45min ride home.
saturday-late afternoon. back to me going out and getting my books. i arrived at what-the-book in itaewon, hoping to replace my stoker novel with a few classics and contemporary books i haven't read yet. i was still feeling a bit under the weather. some major back pain, fever and fatigue, but i didn't think it would hurt to step out for a couple hours for books and a quick dinner. oh how wrong i was.
after making my purchases i spotted an indian food restaurant just across the street, i was at the time fairly hungry and this sounded delish... not the best idea. i know it wasn't the food specifically because i was already feeling horrible, but it didn't help my situation at all that just moments after i ate, my entire abdomen seemed to explode inside itself, making me look like at mid-3rd-trimester pregnant woman. ugh! at the time i was completely horrified, sick to my stomach, in immense pain and extremely uncomfortable... if i had, had any foresight at the time i truly wish i could have taken a picture of it, because i can assure you i no longer have this problem, and it would be slightly amusing to look at it now.
so stumbling haphazardly through the subway stations through 2 transfers, i slowly made my decrepit way home. the only thing i could think about was lying down and curling into a ball to stop the pain.

later saturday-night. i had made it home... not much to remember from it. i think i was so hazy at some point during my subway ride i must have blocked it mostly out of my memory. upon waking up though, my stomach had reduced in size. though slightly bloated. i decided tomorrow would be the day i visit the dr. since again all i could think about was sleeping.

sunday. i made it (with the help of my friend sam, who helped me find directions) to the hospital, only to be told that i needed to wait till monday so they could perform a CT scan.
back home. sleep. drink. pain. sleep. sweat. wake. pain. puke. pain. sleep. sleep. sleep.

monday. i went into school early, as early as i could. i couldn't sleep really anyways, having fevers and sweats so bad at night. but i had one of the korean sups take me to the hospital, where i was poked prodded sampled and tested in all aspects from head to toe and inside and out.... only to first be told that i had acute appendicitis... (and then eventually when they weren't entirely sure about that... there was some ordeal about physiological fluid, wwaaahh??!!) eeeep!

the general dr wanted surgery asap, but my surgeon instead sent me out of the hospital with only some pain medication, telling me to come in tuesday morning for a WBC. which turned out to be dropping and returning to more normal levels (as found out on tuesday)

so bonus for me no operation.

but i never truly did find out exactly what was wrong with me. i guess it's wrong to question dr.'s in korea or suggest things to do... or to expect detailed explanations as to why they are giving you antibiotics when they should just be taking your appendix out (not that i'm complaining, my insurance didn't cover that surgery anyways). but i suppose i never will find out. I tried obtaining my CT scans and the ultra sound the did on my abdomen, but there were to many hoops to jump and my korean sups were asking very demanding questions as to why i would ever want them, and in the end i just got tired, and wanted to get better. i was so tired of being sick. every night, up until this past friday (so another entire week!) i was still having feverish sweats at night... at first i was worried the antibiotics weren't doing anything, and again i was terrified i was going to disappear into the depths of korea by way of my apartment this time knowing full well that my insides would be exploding in me and being unable to prevent anything, but eventually my cramping stopped a few days after the pills and i stopped getting fevers... and now mysteriously everything... and i feel nearly 100% better.

i don't know if i will ever be able to say it was truly appendicitis, but if it was there's always a higher chance of it coming back, or so i hear... but then again, i was the first time i've ever heard of it being treated with antibiotics.

huh.