S is for Spring in Seoul and ...Snow?

i must apologize. something is seriously wrong with the formatting. for some reason, it won't listen to any of the html commands i'm giving and has decided not only to randomly format it, but to make my font blue halfway thru my blog. enjoy!!!



"BBBrrrr..." I'm freezing.
"You are really lucky you came now. This is not cold. You missed the winter."
"Really? It's not going to get cold again"?"
"Nope...once it starts to warm up, that's it. It is springtime."
Lies. All lies. I ponder these malicious spoonfuls of false hope
as I stumble my way through the snow. I wonder at the conspirators, if they all secretly planned to mislead me, the poor southern girl that shivers when the weather get's to 59.5 degrees outside.

I am covered from head to toe, layered in a long sleeve shirt, a sweater, and my overly large (men's size medium) down jacket. it is quite a comical sight to see me in this jacket. it appears that the great puffy ghost in ghost busters devoured me...but being the stubborn redhead i am, i will not be completely devoured. my little head sticks out of this gigantic body...when my students saw me in this jacket, they all erupted into laughter, proceeded to point at me with their fingers and yell "teacher is sooo FAT!!!!" haha. hilarious. no. teacher was cold.

my students laughing about my coat.













along with my life jacket of a coat, i am adorned in a colorful knit hat, a brown scarf, and brown shin high boots. the boots are quite comfortable and keep my jeans from getting damp at the bottoms which is wonderful because i hate the bottoms of my pants to get wet and/or muddy. (i know, i'm weird). however, the fashion statement i seem to be making is, "hi! i'm from the south, and i love horses." i know, because i had a guy at a gas station in charlotte exclaim to me quite energetically , "oh! you like to ride? me too!!" oh yeah...i love riding horses...18 years ago.

i'm sure that my appearance is strange to the locals who live for fashion. the korean girls always look like they are going stepping out of a fashion magazine. as i was stomping through the snowy sidewalk (and quite awkwardly i might add) korean girls were wearing stilettos, mini skirts, and one girl was even wearing really tiny shorts with tights. interesting.


some korean guys stopped in my shot as i was trying to get a picture of the snow.

so the weather is very unpredictable here. much like my hometown. monday will be bright with the sun shining at a lovely 74 degrees and then by wednesday, bam! she's pissed off and it's freezing cold. welcome to seoul! apparently sc and seoul are relatives! the one thing i cannot understand is why am i seeing bugs in my apartment? little floating nats. it's SNOWING outside and there are nats! what kind of place is this?

sunday i wanted to go to a different part of the city, but i was defeated by the confusing subway system. i also failed to remember the number i entered which left me wandering my very large neighborhood for quite some time. everything looks the same to me here. and in fact, much of the landmarks are the same. for example, every 20 feet there is a family mart. there is also a paris baguette restaurant, KB banks, and little restaurants all with white and red korean letters. i wasn't too worried because i knew that if i couldn't find my way, i could at least ask someone where Emart is, and i can always find my way from there.

i didn't really find anything that interesting on my walk. i came across a flea market, only to discover that it should have been called fish market. other than selling fish, there were booths set up where you could buy and eat food there. one man and woman were making what looked like pancakes. but truthfully, the fish smell really wasn't helping my appetite, so i passed.

there are tons of little streets in korea. one of them i came to, a group of about 15 adults were dancing and having some sort of celebration. there were flags strung above and everyone had flowers in their hands. as i passed, an older korean man gave me a yellow rose. it was a really sweet gesture. especially when i have heard that a lot of koreans really don't like that expats are here. i mean, if you think about it, what do they gain? most of the people that come here, are graduates from college that majored in some type of liberal arts degree. we aren't able to find good jobs in the state so we come to korea to teach. many expats that come don't speak proper english. many of them don't know how to spell correctly, and many of them come because they think they are coming for a vacation with a little working on the side. the korean teachers are better educated, have a much heavier work load, have to deal with parents (even if it's the fault of the expat) and they are paid less and do not receive the housing benefits we do. it is no wonder that not everyone in korea is happy to have us here. so it meant a lot to me, the flower. it might be cold here in korea, but the koreans hearts (and floors) are very warm. (insert cheesy laughter here).



on the streets of seoul with the flower in my ear.