Anatomy of a Night In

My nasty cold has turned into a truly nasty cough which kept me in tonight despite the fact that my boyfriend and my friends are downtown at this moment drinking St. Patty's Day beers and enjoying their evening. But I stayed home because I wasn't really in the drinking mood and also because my pharmacist friend from university has told us many times about how taking cold medicine after a night of drinking is like dropping a bomb on your liver.

Not like I'm doing my liver any favors with the amount I'm drinking these days anyway, but I choose to ignore that fact.

Back to the point. I spent my evening:

Wasting time on the internet. Also, my new internet obsession is Pintrest. You can find me here. This website is pretty much the coolest (and prettiest) website ever.

Boiling water for my Theraflu and letting the kettle whistle just a little more than normal as a thank you to our neighbors for that time this afternoon when someone stood outside and rang their doorbell non-stop for about 10 minutes. We can hear everything that goes on in the hallway.

A cup of medicine and a good book.

Snuggling under the covers on the futon. I have been kicked out of the big bed with Ryan until I can make it through the night without waking up coughing like I have TB. And believe me I am looking forward to moving back in because our neighbor in the building opposite ours leaves their light on full blast all night long so that when I wake up at 3 every morning the room looks like this:

No joke. The only nice thing about it is that I can be sure that no monsters are climbing out from under the bed. It's like the biggest night light ever.

PS - I forgot how much fun it is to take pictures that are black and white or sepia.

PPS - Just in case you were curious I wrote this post about two months ago and yes, I am just posting it now. It's partly due to not thinking about it and also partly because my Macbook got very sick and erased everything on my hard drive including all the fun pictures that I had been taking for posts like this one.

A quiet morning ...

My 5th graders went on a field trip to our local planetarium (a place I plan on taking myself soon; who cares if I won't be able to understand anything? Stars are still stars, no matter the language) which means that I have had a fairly quiet morning all to myself in my shared office.

So far today I have been hard at work cleaning out my Google Reader, checking out Pintrest and debating the merits of baby girl guinea pigs names with my cousin via Facebook photo comments.

So far the main contenders are Maxine and Ginger. Isn't she cute??

I also recently acquired the entire Beatles discography and have been listening to it on shuffle for the last two hours. Auditory bliss. The White Album is my favorite cooking/baking music. I have also realized that my cooking and baking habits have some very specific rituals attached to them. Ryan is just glad that I'm going to start playing something other than Ghostbusters (another cooking time favorite) when I cook dinner.

This afternoon should be a little more productive, however. I (hopefully) will have all my lessons planned and worksheets made and emailed to my co-teachers, will have made it to the bank to get a piggy bank's worth coins turned into cash and have Skyped with BFF Hilda - who I have been missing more than normal lately. I really hate not being able to call her whenever I want to, stupid 8 hour (or so) time difference.

I would be a much, much crazier person if it weren't for Hilda.

On a completely unrelated note:

I think I'm going to change the format of my blog posts a bit. I've realized that when I feel like I have to write about something, I can't (won't?). For example, I've taken two HUGE vacations in as many years and have written a total of 2 posts about them. Combined. That's just sad.

So look for this space to evolve into a bit more of a weird stories about my life/weird pictures of my life/hobby type things rather than the life journal type thing that The Flip Side has been up until this point. The beauty of this being my blog and all is I get to change it up whenever I feel inclined to do so. HOORAY!

Wholecusan Park ... Home of Bitch Mountain

Here is a bit of advice for you: If you ever go hiking in Korea (or really anywhere, I suppose) and you notice that the other people getting ready to hit the trail are dressed/equipped much differently than you are, you might want to consider re-thinking the hike you are about to go on.

1. Some beautiful colors from the start of the hike.
2. Our little group of adventurers making their way to the start of the tail.

Yes, the scenery is amazing and the misty morning really makes you feel like you can do anything. But mist and pretty leaves will not give you the ability to hike especially when you are out of shape. And carrying a pack on your back? Forgetaboutit.

I guess was making some version of this face all morning,
every picture taken before the hike looks like this!

When the Koreans are all walking around with teeny tiny packs and, not one, but TWO walking sticks ... that's when you know that your hike is probably not going to be the leisurely stroll that you may have been imagining it to be.

Although, to be fair, I probably should have realized it wasn't going to be a gentle slope when Ryan informed me that we were going on a 6 hour hike (someday I will learn ...).

However, despite almost collapsing on multiple occasions and laying down to take naps every time we stopped for more than 5 minutes (read: lunch time and when we got to the top of the first summit), I am really glad that I did it. Why?

One part insane views:

One part awesome hiking friends:

You know you have a solid group of friends when
1. they let you sleep on the hike and
2. still hang out with you after wards (I was pretty slow).

One part being able to say that yes, I did hike climb a mountain and yes it did take 6.5 hours (!!!) and yes I only fell down once thankyouverymuch.

And then also this totally sweet bridge:

Greetings from South Korea!

I know you've probably been wondering what happened to me since the last time I talked about moving out of the country.

Well *spoiler* I moved out of the country! I am currently living in South Korea. In a town called Gwangju. It's in the southern part of the country. Also, I live down the street from the World Cup stadium. It's pretty sweet.

This is where I live now. GAH.

We haven't done anything worth mentioning since we've been here, which I cannot believe has already been a month. Teaching has its moments of awesomeness (like the other day when I student read a sentence and realized that yourself should have been yourselves. I wanted to kiss him) and it's moments of total despair (like when I'm teaching almost totally by myself and I ask the kids a question and get nothing but blank stares as an answer).

I also really want to learn how to speak Korean. Mostly so that I can tell taxi drivers where I want to go and then have them understand and take me to the place I want to go. Also, knowing what is going on around me would be nice.

I've already learned the lesson that when someone rings your doorbell and you aren't expecting people you shouldn't open it, or if you do don't let the people inside, because it will probably be crazy church people who will preach to you about God for an hour (in broken English) after you already started the conversation by telling them you were a Christian. Also, then you will have to lie to get them to leave. Sorry, God. It was the only way.

At this point in the post I would love you be all, "LOOK AT THESE PICTURES". But they are on my laptop, which is not at school with me today, and I forgot to bring the little thingy that lets me read the spanky new mini USB card I got for my camera before I left the country. So instead I will leave you with promises of pictures and this picture of the back of me taken in a pretty sweet cafe/bar thing in downtown called The Ethnic Cafe:

There are also lots of nooks and cranies for making out.
Armini and I are totally going back on date night. RWAR.

It's Been One Year!

I love me some anniversaries. So much so (apparently) that I am not only having one here, but also at the other place that I blog sometimes (it's called Master of my Money) when I want to cry over how much money I don't have in my bank account talk about things that are much less interesting than the time that I broke up with Mexican Food or how I hate politics so much that I would be willing to move to a deserted island with a monkey butler to get away from it all (but seriously, who wouldn't want to move to a deserted desert island with a monkey butler?).

Anyway. Today marks the one year mark of this little internet hideaway. One year since I started to write about my life somewhere other than Live Journal (and no, I am not going to link to it. Much too much angst for anyone to handle that is over the age of 15).

If you are at all like me and have a thing for first posts, you can click right here and read it. I AM going to warn you however ... it's a little TMI. I even read it and thought to myself "Really? This is a lame first post. Maybe I should just link to this one instead. It's way more awesomer ... sort of". But I know you that you are probably smart enough that you would figure out that I lied and then I would be known as 'Super Careo: The Super Liar' and no one wants that.

Um ... well, yea. That's about it.

I would write some glorious post about how this blog has changed my life but I can't help but feel like the last month or two of posts have been really depressing. Or really long and involved and I would really like to try and lighten up the mood around here.

So instead, I'll just say this: If you have read this far down, Thank You for being a reader of my words (bonus points for clicking on links). I live for your blog comments. I live to read what you write. And I hope that someday we can be BFFs in real life.

Here's to another great year. Hopefully.

Sometimes I just have to stop and think about how awesome I am.

I know, the title of this post is the polar opposite of my post from last Monday. But such is the natural ebb and flow of life. In one week you may feel like your life is literally crumbling around your ears and end that same week feeling invincible. It doesn't mean that the bad things that happened are any less important, but just that life marches on and most times you will find a little sunshine mixed in with your doom and gloom (even when you try really, really hard not to).

I have been meaning to start posting a little more about my half marathon training (or the training that I am currently in to get in good enough shape to be ready for the actual half marathon training) and after my run last night, I am motivated to.

Armini is my trainer/workout maker since he did that whole cross country thing in high school, plus the soccer and the fact that he has run a WHOLE marathon. Plus, I don't have to pay him money (waggles eyebrows) so it works out for everyone. For the past three weeks I have been doing a combination of swimming, yoga and treadmill running (yes, I know that it's not the same as running outside but it's still cold here. I don't run outside in the cold) which started at 30 minutes a go and has now increased to at least one 45 minute run a week.

Last night I did my 45 minutes ... and I covered 4.3 miles. That is the longest I have ever run. EVER. PLUS, I warm up and cool down but I don't count it towards the 45 minutes. I'm not sure why exactly except that I feel like such a bad ass when Armini asks me how long I ran and I can say "45 minutes exactly dude, no walking" and then have him be impressed. It gives me a sense of pride. And yesterday I challenged myself to work on my endurance at a faster pace by running at a 5.0 treadmill speed for 25 minutes sandwiched between 10 minutes of running at 4.5 treadmill speed. I didn't die, I didn't walk until I was supposed to AND one time I went almost 10 minutes not staring at the clock waiting for the minutes to tick by (this is a big step for me). AND it was a good run overall and my favorite songs came on during my cool down so I got to dance a little while I was walking, which is AWESOME.

Although, while I was dancing I noticed a guy sitting on a bench outside the window where he could plainly see me flailing my arms on the treadmill. But that didn't stop me. I dance like nobody's watching! All the time! It's awesome!

But I am feeling quite proud of myself and thought I would share. Go Me!