Happiness is a Hobbit!

Secret geek that I am, I was incredibly excited, then pissed off, to see the trailer for "The Hobbit". Excited because it looks AMAZING! (as everyone knows it will be) and pissed off because it's not being released until the 14th of December NEXT YEAR. What the hell Peter Jackson you tubby jerk! Why would you release the trailer a year before the movie is released??? So grr on that one. For anyone less than Martin Freeman in the title role and the fabulous Sir Ian Mackellan I would refuse to see it when it came out on principle.... Mind you, a year is quite a long time - by next December I'm sure I'd have conveniently forgotten that oath :)

Of course, there are those out there who it will be frankly wasted on, like this moron.

For those not in the know, this is the meme for 'not sure if ... or ...'. E.g. "Not sure if incredibly stupid or just trolling. Stupidly."

Apparently there is a bunch of behind the scenes photos etc on Facebook if you are into that kind of thing and have either the curiousity or the Facebook to see it.

Oh and weirdest yet of the conversations I've had with my weird first year girl's class, class 1-1. For some background, this is the class who fooled me into mis-pronouncing a bunch of K-pop groups' names wrong and sometimes randomly start singing in harmony with each other when I ask them questions. Anyway, today while two students were trying to get me to 'fess up about whether I had a boyfriend or not (I fooled them into thinking I was dating Rain for a while) and ordering me to "No joking! No lies!" I had another student stroking - yes, STROKING - my jumper (which while soft is not particularly so and doesn't have a particularly interesting weave or anything) and screaming in my other ear about how she'd killed her hamster from "too much stress" and showing me how she used to pet it and cuddle it.. with both hands.. The Dead Hamster girl is also the one who gurns at me from the back of the class, so sometimes I'll look up at her and find these faces staring back at me (amongst others), often in quick succession >

Sometimes it's really hard to keep a straight face :p Today's expression was her classic 'happy pyscho' face that looked something like these guys >

If you can imagine a 12 year old girl grinning widely and miming gripping a hamster so tightly and stroking it so heavily that it dies, you'll know what my morning was like.

Anyway, only 3 sleeps until Christmas! Woohoo! Can't wait to break into the Christmas goodies my lovely parents sent me :)

Saying goodbye to November and my sanity

Just had class with one of the terrible first year boys' classes - the one where there was almost murder once if you remember? Anyway, they're little ... idiots... in that class. In most classes, but particularly in that one because there are so many of them. Luckily there is one kid I really like in that class too, Jae-Gwan, and I love that his number is 1 and that my co-teacher for that class makes them sit by number because it means that I have him sitting right at the front with his eager beaver smile beaming up at me and it makes the rest of the class not seem so bad. Still bad, but not so very bad. And that's saying a lot because they're terrible. There are actually a few good kids in that class but they mostly get drowned out by the others. For example, one of the others, Jeong-Won, who is actually quite bright, always without fail gets sent to stand at the back (actually with that class it's pretty pointless because there are never less than five students standing as punishment and once there were as many as nine of them arrayed around the classroom which is a lot for a class of 29) and today was supposed to be kneeling quietly because the back of the room was full. I looked up at one point in the lesson and he was rolling on his back and holding his knees with his legs in the air, pulling faces and apparently trying to lick his own butt. Or he could have been trying to Marilyn Manson-esque it up. Anything's possible. Another kid that I dislike with extreme prejudice (on the grounds that he's an ADHD little meathead with no off switch) put the whole class in an uproar for five minutes by answering the question "what animal do you think this is?" with "SEX MONKEY! F***K YOU!" at the top of his voice. *sigh* Even my extremely unimpressed death glares of disapproval don't work on them and my co-teacher for that class is lovely but useless and does nothing, so it takes ages to restore order, especially since they're teenage boys and don't know how to listen. Just another reason I'll be glad to be going home in February. I've adamantly shot down the idea of having summer or winter camps for first grade this year on the grounds that they would be a waste of time and effort, and with examples like that I think you can see why.

Anyway, so that was my Monday. The rest of the day was ok though and I don't have any after school classes so that's ok. I think if I go home, get a bottle of wine (or a big cup of tea first, more likely), Skype to Franniken, watch a movie and then go to bellydancing slightly drunk, I'll feel a lot better. You are more than welcome to join me dear readers, in spirit if not in body :)

But I shouldn't be so down. I actually had quite a lovely weekend, which is perhaps why today was so sad, what with the downswing from it and all. First of all, my KBFF II, Christy (haha, don't worry Lara and Nat, you guys still retain respective KBFF 1 statuses!) came to visit pokey old Cheongju for a weekend of gossip, good food, wine, more gossip, more wine and general merriment. We discovered a new restaurant called JJ's Grill that had less opaque glass than we thought, had a Thanksgiving potluck with some friends (i.e. we all ate ourselves into a food coma) and hit up a noraebang. I miss Facebook for the photo sharing aspect so I'll just post a few choice pics.

 So it was a lovely Saturday ^_^ Sunday saw poor Christy off on her long trek home (3.5 hours on a bus and another hour or so on the subway), and me off to Seoul to do some shopping and see "In Time" with Mr Smiles (my code-name for the new boyfriend I can now mention publicly^^ - so called because he is a very smiley person). And lo and behold the movie actually turned out to be a good one! Most of the Western stuff that ends up being shown in Korea is generic Hollywood crap ("Immortals", "Columbiana" and "Skyline" anyone?) but once in a while something good gets through and luckily this one had Justin Timberlake and Amanda Seyfried in it to pass muster as popular enough to show in Korea because it was a good movie! Well, I thought so anyway :p If you haven't heard of it before, it's about a kind of dystopia where time is currency. Humans have been engineered to live to 25, at which point they both stop physically ageing and their body clock kicks in and they have a year left of time to both live and spend, meaning millionaires can live virtually forever and buy anything, while poor people scrape through day to day existences where seconds and minutes can make precious differences. The story kicks off when a guy from the ghetto (Justin Timberlake) ends up being gifted with 110 years from a millionaire sick of living and finally manages to break free of his 'time zone'.

Anyway, if you have the time and especially if you're in Korea and the choice is this or Breaking Dawn (Mr Smiles is, sadly, a Twilight fan ... *아웅*ㅠㅠ;;) I'd definitely recommend seeing this one. Both JT and Amanda Seyfried put in some good performances, as does Cillian Murphy, who plays the 'Timekeeper' (police) hounding our protagonists.
 

Oh and lol, yes, Korean men like shopping. I have a very cute blue fluffy Totoro doll for my cousin's baby daughter (hopefully she'll love it without questioning what it actually is for years to come) as a consequence :) After the movie, we went for dinner at La Grillia and I had real gnocchi in a real gorgonzola sauce! It was chestnut gnocchi, which I've seen but never had before, and the waiter was quite surprised that I ordered it and thought I should pick something else because it was quite heavy (not to say fattening). I'm guessing he's never seen a girl eat that dish before there, and was probably even more surprised when I not only finished the whole thing but also had dessert too. Hehe^^ Pictured is our vanilla ice-cream, almond and Earl Grey pannacotta, grapefruit wine jelly and blueberry yoghurt. Delish!

So anyway, here's hoping that the rest of the week improves from today. I have most of the rowdy classes under threat of making them do more work after exams rather than letting them watch a movie so fingers crossed that they all remember me telling them that last week. How about you, my lovelies? How's life out there in the Real World?

Warning: possible overshare ahead

What have I been up to since last week I hear you not actually ask? Well, Saturday was an interesting night in which I almost got assaulted by some random Korean girl that one of my friends befriended out of pity that we then couldn't get rid of. Very friendly, but very agressive. Some things she could have done with knowing: if people want to leave, let them leave - pick up the clue that they may in fact be escaping; don't try and pimp your new friends out to your old friends and think that this is funny; affectionate is cute, grabby is not; 'holding on' to someone's bag to prevent them leaving is not a good idea unless you want things to end very badly, and throwing a temper tantrum as a last resort in a packed bar when that person wrestles their bag back and goes to leave will not make said person want to stay any more. Luckily, it was also Emma's birthday and this was only after we'd done the majority of the fun stuff celebrating already. As she had sent us all a text message saying "What are you doing tonight? I want beer and a face full of cake!", she got her birthday wish and the subsequent face full of blueberry preserve and egg tart. So at least the night started out well!

Warning: the story ahead may be a little more than you ever wanted to know. In fact, I just remembered that a bunch of us were talking about this only last night and I actually specified the rule that any detail about bodily emissions was an overshare, so I apologise for my slight hypocrisy. Don't worry, it's not that specific.

So I say started, because it ended with me going home after a couple of hours feeling a little queasy, despite not having drunk an inordinately large amount of alcohol. Nothing that couldn't be fixed with some cup 짜파게티 (jjajangmyeon ramyeon) I thought - little did I know that my night wasn't over yet and that I was going to wake up again repeatedly sweating with a fever over the next six hours continually running to the bathroom and trying not to hurl my guts out. You could say it was an improvement when I finally managed to, except that I then spent the rest of the morning pretty much sitting on my bathroom floor sobbing into the toilet and wishing it would stop between bouts of whatever else was pouring out of my body at the time. Part of this melodrama might have been the fact that I couldn't even keep any water down, and since I had had a few drinks the night before, I was getting pretty dehydrated.

Anyway, thankfully the vomiting stopped after four hours, and I managed to have a shower and some sleep. Later on, watching "Killing Bono" with some food and tea with Eadaoin also helped - great movie by the way! Stars Ben Barnes as Neil McCormack (Prince Caspian) and Robert Sheehan (Nathan from 'Misfits') as well as Martin McCann as (according to Eadaoin) an eerily lookalike Bono. It also had Pete Postlethwaite in it in his last role before his death from cancer earlier this year, looking tragically remission gaunt rather than cocaine-chic gaunt, but doing a great job (as always) nonetheless. By the way, best quote of the movie from Pete Serafinowicz: "Don't boo me, I went to Eton!" haha^^

Monday saw me with more stomach pains and sleeping through both my deskwarming and the two classes I had (they were watching movies anyway) and Tuesday slightly less so (probably because I skipped two meals entirely and didn't have any carbs or dairy) but still sleeping all afternoon at my desk. I'm feeling much better today so I'm going to see how I go with lunch and if it comes back then it's probably doctor time. One of my co-teachers kept trying to get me to go home yesterday but I didn't want to go since a) I've already taken a few sick days off, b) my vice-principal doesn't like me as it is, and c) I can sleep just as easily at school as at home (there's a very comfortable couch in my English room office). So instead she's been giving me a bunch of extra medicines and a kind of back massage-pummelling to help circulation or something. Another got me some 죽 (juk) or rice porridge for lunch since I didn't want to risk the kimchi fried rice and hotdogs that were today's lunch, so I am being very well taken care of :)

At any rate, I can easily say that of all the indigestion meds (소화약) I've tried, by far the best have been these herbals ones called 보화환 (bohwahwan) and 생록천(saengnokcheon). I think that 보화환 might actually be a generic name for that type of medicine, but it basically looks like little choco-balls, or really big brown silica gel balls, and goes with the 생록천 drink. Apart from dried orange peel and ginseng, I have no idea what is in either of them, but they work really fast and last for a good couple of hours at least. You can take them three times a day and were 3000 won (about $2.80) at my local chemist.

So that's the update on the state of my digestive system. Hopefully things get better and I don't have something awful like the last couple of times I didn't think I was sick and ended up having tonsilitis and then a kidney infection. If you don't hear from me, assume that I've got stomach cancer or appendicitis and have been hospitalised... or more likely that I'm fine and just lazy about blogging. Peace out y'all! Hope your tummies are feeling less grumbly than mine :)