COEX Aquarium: couldn't have been better timing

the day after my arm breaking we went on a field trip.
where did we go?
oh the COEX aquarium.
Just inside the COEX mall, opposite end of the subway entrance. it's probably best to get to it by going in near the Lotte Duty Free.


Anyways...
so fun. there was more than i expected there, and even a hands on selection of starfish for the kids to pick up and play with.
i mean, this was by far, the least actual 'learning' experience you could possibly have in an aquarium. you probably needed a good half-a-day to go through this place and talk about fish, habitats, preservation, salt water vs. fresh water and the ecology of aquatic life... we went through it in two hours. it was rushed albeit, but still fun. i tried as hard as i could to just let them be kids while they were there... mostly just tried not to lose them in the crowd...

persistent thought of the day, 'hold hands dammit!'

birthday blog

just a collection of morning kinder's birthday cakes, silly hats, victory signs (yes another 'fake' year older) and classroom shinaningans. we'll see how many i remember to take pictures of...

jin

andy

what's next

[i'm going back in time to write this                       5.....4....3...2..1.]

there are only a few things that could have possibly made me really upset here in korea.
one) dying. obviously, i haven't died yet, there's just the constant fear of death via getting hit by insane taxi drivers, eating bad kimchi, or starvation/malnutrition.
two) would be getting terribly ill far away from anyone who actually cared that i was getting ill... well we all know how this turned out. i survived. okay so, i got sick... really sick, and i was really sad and depressed about it because it took a huge chunk of my 'getting-to-know-people' time, going out and doing things and just in general feeling more comfortable in a place that wasn't being particularly comforting.
three) hurting myself, badly. again, far away from comfort or care/help from anyone i know. wow. waddya know? i'm at a two/three... this does not sit well.

so you may be asking, how does this occur? well, let me explain. i have a simple equation you can follow:
hair rinse (conditioner) plus a clean tile floor plus water equals a crushed radius bone, detached wrist and nearly 7.5 weeks of wearing a crooked splint in the hottest and wettest part of a korean summer.
oh not to mention it happened just a few days before the ten day summer vacation for our school. and i had just bought a new bike. both of which i couldn't enjoy because of pain, heat and the stupidness of broken limbs.
i felt so restricted. so limited. it was so hot out and my arm was bound in a cast from finger tips to up and around my elbow. i felt like i was trapped in a horrible horrible nightmare.
so if you want here's a few of the details from my arm breaking experience, start to finish
oh the horrors... of horrors

- i opted out of the million won surgery, come to find out, you're then given medieval treatment of bone alignment. i had one man pulling in each direction whilst another squeezed them into place. yabba.
- the pain killer that they gave me wasn't nearly enough to even stifle the pain for the first couple weeks. every bump and accidental wiggle made me want to chop off my arm. or at least detach it and put it on a regrowth stand in some high tech hospital... wait we don't have those yet. ugh, where's the adamantium when you need it?
- insurance in korean is kinda a pain in the butt. avoid getting sick or hurt. it just makes everyone's life easier. i'm still not sure yet what or when i will get back money for my arm, but for my previous hospital bills i spent a little over a grand and received back nearly half. a good return, here's to hoping for another.
- prescription cocktails. this is probably my least favorite, but at the same time favorite part of the whole sha-bang. i didn't get proper painkillers, however i did have a regimented 4 pills three times a day with an extra pills for the morning and evening. forget getting them in english. that was hard to pull off... luckily i had a ton of help from my korean staff, otherwise i would have been completely clueless.
- i'm glad through all of this i had at least one person willing to bug me and dig me out of a depressive hole i was curling into. porter came around often... played chess with me and talked about books and things of enlightenment.
- going places for the most part was out of the question. i had every intention to go on an extravagant backpacking trip through the northeastern mountains... nope. i had plans to ride my bike to other cities... nope. i had the want to just step out of doors and enjoy blazing hot summer weather... nope. it just sucked all around. i'll never do it again.

here's the good news. (fast forward from that last sentence) it's been almost nine weeks. i'm out of my cast, and it's fall.

w.h.a.t.s.n.e.x.t.

hongdae | heat

had an afternoon of walking with desma a new teacher at LCI. she wanted to see a little bit of hongdae and i happened to be going there for the open art fair anyways.

what was most interesting was walking into the festival there. i had no recollection of hearing about the seoul international  'create and art park' festival. it involved suspended dancing, world/prog music, belly dancing, interpretive dancing and some live body painting. really very interesting to walk in on.

it would be hard to actually re-tell how this day went. i just remember walking around hazily because of the heat. it was almost as if i drifted through this entire day:

one of the big inner-road crossings of hongdae

around this point you need to ask yourself what kinda of drink you need, the answer should always be... one that's in a pouch sir.

visit vinyl

 while enjoying your pouch drink, feel free to walk anywhere through the artists markets on the weekends and observe the latest trendz

 in the evening catch some suspended dancing-lazer show extravaganza

 some suspended Yoga

what progressive art fest wouldn't have a prog-rock line-up along with performance pieces

and what would the whole thing be if you didn't have an interpretive dance while being body painted?

and get washed clean by water

and then we saw "it" just as we were walking to the subway. not as extravagant as i was hoping given its name, but korea is a very conservative country. we were shocked to even find this.

unfortunately our side visit to condomania cost us a subway ride (doh!) so we had to finagle the bus system. congrats to me for being able to read hangul and get us home without having to pay for a 30,000W taxi.

우리 집

[from the entry way]

[from the corner]

[from the wardrobe]

[lespo b.o.u.n.c.e.]

[fred, butters and marty] 

[unknown, beans and basil] respectively

for the love of kite snails... save the lazy's

we have made our classroom a paradise of flight, snails and science experiments

everyone made a kite, a snail (to represent our new class pet, Lazy) and we all made hot air balloon name tags for our door that was already covered in clouds for them 

my only two girls. in a class of 7 kids

jane (left) | annie (right)

these are our own Lazy's. snails with 3-D shells to help us learn how they live inside... wah wah wah

l-room very excited to receive their very own class pet, lazy snail. 

it took about a million tries, but we narrowed the names in the end to lazy, violet and porroro.

violet is a girl's name, so i had to explain to them that snails aren't girls... but they aren't boys either. that was interesting. and porroro, if you don't know is a famous children's cartoon here in korea, and i said the name had to be different... so the final vote landed us on lazy. i made paper books for them with drawing space, and every thursday we write and draw about lazy.  

today was dreamy...

it was

pleasingly wholesome

saturated fully

 intoxicating-ly palpable

dulcet  

and 

just mine