Apples to Apples

Have you ever played that game, Apples to Apples? It's a really simple game that provides hours of entertainment by mearly matching adjectives to nouns. Flip an adjective from the top of the pile, and everyone chooses an noun from their hand. A judge needs to decide which is the closest to the adjective given. For example, for the adjective "quiet" you could put down "hat" because it makes no noise or "Anne Frank" for purely statistic reasons. The game becomes quite entertaining seeing the random cards people match with the adjectives.

Now, imagine playing this game with one other American, three Koreans, and a British guy. There are many words that have very strong emotions for Americans (it's an American game), like "infomercials" for example, but have little or no meaning for Koreans, or possibly even Brits. Same goes for actors or particularly TV personalities that make their way onto cards. "Rosie O'Donnell" has endless opportunities for amusing matches, but if you're not American (or at least North American) you're probably not ever going to get them.

I've discovered that playing this game with an international crowd has come down to judging the judge of the round and thinking what card HE (or she) will understand the best. My opinion no longer matters in the game. Anyway, it's a new strategy that never occurred to me while playing with all Americans back at home. An interesting cross-cultural experience for you today.

As usual, tensions with North Korea aren't even conversation worthy...

By now, most people must know that on Tuesday (11/10/09) there was a naval skirmish between the North and South along the disputed border region off the west coast of Korea. No one is talking about it. No one cares. I jumped in surprise as I read it that evening and said to my boyfriend, didn't you hear? There was a skirmish today between North and South. "Yea, I heard. So what?" was the only reply. "It's happened before". Ok, but it's been 7 years. Shouldn't this be at least conversation worthy? Nope. I mentioned this on a Facebook thread, and another Korean friend chimed in "Yea, so?". It's amazing how little the Koreans care about this topic. But, I am much less nervous about it than I would have been a year ago. Maybe few more years in this country, and I'll say "Yea, so?" too.

Where oh where should I exchange my money?

Since I'm leaving in a week and a half (*gasp*) I have to decide what to do with my hordes of money. I know I could just transfer it all into my bank account at home, but I will lose money on either end if I do that. I was thinking I might take some of my money (maybe not all, that would be a little much...) to an exchange house in somewhere like itaewon, namdaemun or dongdaemun and exchange it to US dollars. Does anyone have experience in this area? Is this the best way? and if so, do you have somewhere to recommend?

Thanks my loyal blog readers...

A very Potter halloween!

Professor Dumbledore, though he looks as though he's shaved for this photo...

Ready to ride the Hogwarts Express (they must be first years, they look a bit nervous)
Tackling Platform 9 3/4. Hedwing looks ready...
Hagrid tring to rescue the Weasly car from the Whompping Willow

Snape's classroom, ready for potions Class

The Weasly car is still up in the tree...

Olivander's Wand Shop

Snape and Belatrix Lestrange at work in Potions class

Malfoy, Harry Potter and Ron with the school shield

Bonus: Fornax and Jupiter (my old preschoolers) all dressed up. My favorite is Zorro in the front...

The End Is Near

I will be departing from Korea on Nov. 21st. I haven't quite come to terms with this, and people keep asking me if I'm excited. Why do I feel guilty saying no. Yea, Thanksgiving and Christmas will be great. It'll be great to see some family and friends whom I haven't seen in over a year. But, I know the actual day to day grit is going to be as boring as hell. Everyone will be working and I don't even know who will be around in my hometown to see. Maybe I'm crazy, but I can't go more than a week without work (or something) before I start going absolutely nuts. Or maybe the problem is that I don't go nuts, I just spend hours upon hours glued to my computer doing absolutely NOTHING. I think I gained 5 pounds in a less than month period between my last job and this one in Korea.

Anyway, these are my goals for while I'm home:

1) Find a job for Christmas time, either at Macy's or Border's.

2) Wallpaper and redecorate my room and turn it into a TV room for my mom when I'm not around (which tends to be most of the time).

3)Figure out something for my bank account situation. I like my bank, but it doesn't accept international transfers, which is more than slightly inconvenient, as I live abroad. Either a) get a new checking account, b) get my name on my mom's account so it doesn't look like she's the king of some South Korean money laundering business every time I transfer my money into her account to pay my bills or, c) some other solution... like a Swiss bank account..

4) Figure out a better way of investing money. I have a 6 month CD which makes 0.9% interest. What's the point?? Maybe I'll roll it into a 3 year or something... or start thinking Mutual Funds... but I'm scared of the stock market...

5) Go to Ecuador. For a month. And just chill and do some reforestation.

6) Go through the wonderful visa process again...

7) Find a cheap ticket back to Korea, seeing as how it doesn't look like I'm gonna get much money in that department...

8) Study Korean. Every day. (nice thought...)


As for my remaining 2 weeks (less, really) I need to get a lot of stuff done....

1) Go to the pension office and get that crap cleared away.

2) Go to the dentist and get a cleaning.

3) Give a way a crap load of clothes that I've incidentally acquired while being here...

4) Eat all the food in my house.

5) Spend quality time with the Boyfriend

6) Spend quality time with my friends

7) Clean.

8) Pack. Strategically.

9) Secure my next job.

10) Figure out if it's better to exchange money in Itaewon, rather than at a bank.. and if so, where...

11) Make sure everything is set for my extended stop-over in San Fransisco.

12) Catch swine flu while I still have health insurance and can afford Tamiflu.

13) Probably boat loads of other stuff, but I can't think what...

Anyway, dear blog readers, not to fear, I hope to be back in the ROK by late February. In the mean time, you can enjoy stories from San Francisco, home, and possibly even Ecuador if things go according to plan...

Odaiba

Our last stop in Tokyo was Odaiba. I guess there is a lot to do here, but as it was a little late (after 7:00), and raining when we got here, we didn't enjoy it as much as we'd hoped... It was still nice though, I guess...

Rainbow Bridge. We were wondering where the name came from, since we saw no rainbows... but evidently there is a light show of sorts every hour. We missed it though. Of course.

Battling the winds and rain to get one lousy picture.


Strange, I didn't think I had left Asia, not sure where this one came from....


That famous Ferris wheel... Probably should have ridden it.. huh?

Escaping from the rain.....

Meiji Shrine

Sunday morning we walked to the Meiji Shrine from Omote-sando station. We walked through a very high class neighborhood filled with stores like Burburry, Calvin Klein, Bvlgari... etc. Finally we found our way to the Meiji Shrine. The shrine is located in the middle of a large park, so you need to take a nice forest walk to get to the shrine. We finally arrived, and it was not quite as big as I'd expected, although it seemed as though parts were closed off for some sort of ceremony going on.

I had looked up some info on the Meiji Shrine on their official web page before going and found that they often had various cultural events. I found on Sunday there was to be a performance of some Japanese traditional dance called Hogaku and Hobu. We made it just in time to see the beginning of the performance.



We saw two different performances. The first was a male dancer with a fan.


Then after this dance, what I thought was a female geisha came out to the stage...
Turns out it was actually a man... I don't know much about Japanese dance, but I guess it's tradition for the man to dress like a woman and perform?

Best part about the Meiji shrine was all the Kimonos! They are sooo cool looking! And the kimonos were out in full force on Sunday!