I am still alive

Hey folks!
I realize I haven't made a post in over a month, but have no fear, the commies have not stolen me from my bed and locked me up...yet. It's been a busy month of moving, getting settled, being sick, going to Hong Kong, coming back and getting sick again, starting my new job, and then getting ready for Christmas.
For anyone out of the loop, I ditched Korea and am now living in Hangzhou, Zhejiang, China. I found a job at a language training school downtown, and a nice apartment to the northwest of the city. I will be posting a freak ton of pictures in the next couple of days, but for right now I have other more pressing things to take care of.
Shortly after moving here, I had to take a day trip to Hong Kong to get my work visa. Hong Kong was very beautiful, and I really liked it. It was still in the 70's in the beginning of December, and everything was really green and pretty, next to these huge skyscrapers and really modern downtown area. Basically, it's the best of Asia, with none of the bad stuff, and I salute England for creating such an awesome place. On the way home, however, I got stopped by Chinese immigration because the picture on my passport (taken when I was 19) does not look like me, apparently. They asked to see my driver's liscense, which is 3 years older than the passport, so then they still didn't believe me. It took 2 guys almost half an hour to decide to let me through, at which point I had missed my bus to the airport, and had to take the next one, resulting in me almost missing my flight back.
My job here is teaching English after school to kids, mostly around the 6-10 year range. The classes are evenings and weekends, 15 hours a weeks total. It's pretty easy, all they really want the native teachers to do is just play games and keep the kids happy, which isn't too hard. The hours are kind of annoying, but I knew that was going to be the case.
Me and Charlie decided to throw a Christmas Eve party, since that was my one day off last week. We invited a bunch of people to my new apartment, and had about 10 confirmations...until the last minute when they all cancelled. We ended up having just 3 people over, but it was still a nice dinner party. I cooked all the normal Christmas food (which is meatloaf, in my house) except for Charlie's sweet potato casserole, which he did himself. Afterwards we went to a nice restaurant/bar in town and had some wine. Christmas day we didn't do much, since I had to be at work that evening, but we did spend some time downtown just walking around.
It snowed yesterday, for the first time this winter. It was very pretty, but not much stuck, since it isn't quite cold enough. Nevertheless, Charlie was very excited, so we went to the lake and took some pictures, and just enjoyed it.
That's about all for now, I promise pictures by the end of the week.

Bye Bye Korea

Sorry I haven't posted in such a long time, but I've been really busy, getting ready to move...drumroll please...to China! I found a decent job, with a lot less hours than I'm working now, in Hangzhou, where Charlie lives, so that pretty much settled it. I haven't been to thrilled with Korea these past couple months, and the job had been really hectic, so I'm glad to be leaving. My flight leaves here Tuesday, so I'll be in China to spend Thanksgiving with Charlie.

The only thing I will miss from Korea honestly will be the friends that I've made here...it hasn't been but a couple months, but some of these folks I feel like I've know for years. We're having a little going away lunch for me tomorrow, then it's off to China I go. Anyways, the Great Firewall of China blocks this site, so I probably won't be posting as frequently, but I will still be on to update yall.

Happy early Thanksgiving!
See you in China!

My Babies' Non-Halloween

So today was supposed to be our kindergarten Halloween party at school. Originally they were going to go around to their apartment buildings and trick-or-treat for their mothers. Then plans changed and they decided to keep them all in the building and just have a party here. So this morning I was supposed to pass out the candy the mothers sent in and keep the kids entertained for 40 minutes before the party was supposed to start. At the hour of the party, however, we found out that one of my kids from my class who was absent today had swine flu, so they didn't want the kids to all be together so they cancelled the party. I was told to keep them busy just doing work and stuff, then about 10 minutes later they brought me a mask and told me to put it on...not sure why I needed one, seeing as how I was the only person in the room capable of covering my coughs and sneezes ;) Anyways, another 5 minutes pass and my coteacher comes and tells the kids to pack up, my students parents are coming to get them and they have to go home now. All this is going on and my kids are just looking at me going, "Adrienne teacher, why no Halloween?" I was sad for them, because we hyped up this party so much and then they got nothing really. So they're not coming back to school until Tuesday, and I had to go to the hospital with my coteacher to get tested, and then sent home for the day too. I actually do have a fever today (I thought so) but it's apparently not swine flu. So it's 3:30 and I'm home until this time Monday. I'm really sad that I'm missing today actually because I had all sorts of fun Halloween stuff ready for all my afternoon classes, and now I'm not going to be the one who does it with them.

Anyways, I'm glad I took my camera out first thing this morning and started taking pictures, so I actually have pictures of my kids in their costumes to show:

This is Tom (somebody from the movie Cars) and Ryn (Minnie Mouse)

Tom again, Joey (Spiderman) and John (a Power Ranger)

My only girls. Ryn again and Christina (a ladybug).

I took some pictures randomly as we were waiting for parents to come pick them up. I love this one because you can see the utter chaos I deal with nonstop with these kids- all the blurry arms and hands, everyone doing different things, no one sitting. Obviously this was a bit different because it really was kind of a free-for-all at this point, I was just the referee. I swear some days they get like this during class though too.
Here's my class: two Spidermans(men?), two Power Rangers, a Batman with a broken arm, a vampire, someone from Cars, and two girls hiding from the camera, plus one more boy home with swine flu.

A Halloween Story

This is a story that one of my students wrote for me yesterday:

Once upon a time there was who named Adrienne witch and Ester princess. Adrienne want to be a princess so, she make Ester to a Easter. But, Ryan prince went to fight with Adrienne. Adrienne said, Change to a frog but, Ryan prince use a mirror but, Adrienne became a Tiger. In real Adrinne was Jeniifer. Jenifer was the first princess with Ryan.

A-freaking-mazing. Peter, the author, is now the only student in my advanced afternoon class, after the other 3 left because of petty mothers. Now since it's just him, we finish lessons pretty early and I try to let him do some fun stuff to keep him happy. Yesterday we had about 5 minutes so I asked him to write me a story about Halloween- this is what I got. All the names are teachers at our school. Peter is a third-year kindergartener, so that would make him a first grader at home.

I just wanted to share this bit of Halloween awesomeness with you.

Fall!

The days are cool, the wind is downright cold, and I've had to break out the jackets- fall has arrived! This is my favorite time of year, and it's especially beautiful here. The trees are all brightly colored and striking against the perfectly clear sky. I noticed yesterday evening that the park was looking quite nice, so I decided to go back this morning and take pictures. Here ya go:

I like how this lady's red jacket matches the trees :)

China!

Sorry it's taken me so long to write this, but I've just been super lazy since returning to Korea ;) I spent 4 days in China visiting Charlie at his home in Hangzhou. Hangzhou has historically been known as the prettiest city in China, and while that might not be apparent out where Charlie lives, the city center was quite nice. Not that where Charlie lives is a dump, it just looks like the outskirts of any city- lots of concrete, not a lot of excitement. Downtown there is a beautiful lake where we spent a good bit of time- we kept returning hoping to find it not so crowded, but that never worked. It was a week of national holiday in China since they were celebrating both the fall harvest festival and the 60th anniversary of the Communist party's takeover. This meant that downtown was chock full of people, many of them Chinese tourists with their faces buried in maps. It was a nice relaxing trip; we just spent a lot of time wandering around different parts of the city and seeing the sites. Hangzhou is definitely a nice city, and somewhere I want to go again for sure.

Here's the sunrise, and the view from Charlie's window.

Charlie, looking extremely tall. Notice the people turned around staring.

Me, in front of the West Lake.

And a pretty view of the sunset over the lake.

Chuseok presents

Well it's almost that time of year- time for Chuseok, of course. What's Chuseok, you ask? It's basically the Korean version of Thanksgiving, apparently. I don't really know much else about it. I know we're having a party for the kindergarteners on Tuesday and they're all going to be wearing traditional hanbok, so I will definitely have pictures to show, but that's about it.

I have gotten Chuseok presents though. One of my student's mom sent in a box of pears for each of his teachers, so I had a huge couple poound box of pears last week. I shared half of them with coteachers and students and took the rest home. Korean pears are about 4 times the size of pears at home, so I only had 4 pears at home but it was still a stretch to eat them all. They were very yummy though, and it was very nice of the mother to give them to me. I wish I had taken a picture, but I didn't really think about it until they were gone.

Also on Friday the head office sent presents for all of the teachers. A few weeks ago we had a sign up sheet where we got to pick one of two gift boxes that we wanted. One was full of spam and oil, the other was toiletries. Needless to say, I got about a year's supply of toothpaste and shampoo, as well as some soap. Just to share the scope of this with you, I took a picture:
So yeah, happy Chuseok everybody! I'll update again after the party to show you my kids in their traditional costumes.

Countdown to China: T-minus 4 days