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Sunday, February 17, 2013

What do you desire?

This video was just posted on a blog of a fellow English teacher in Korea and I think its message is incredibly powerful. 

Are you asking yourself these questions, everyday, in order to live the life YOU desire?

1. If money didn't matter, what would I spend my life doing?
2. How do I really enjoy spending my time?
3. How can I be a master at "the thing" I like to do?
4. What do I desire? period!

"If you say that getting money is the most important thing, you'll spend your life completely wasting your time.  You'll be doing things you don't like doing in order to go on living... which is stupid!"  - Alan Watts

Friday, February 15, 2013

Our Korean themed Valentines Day!

Happy Valentine's Day everyone!  Since this is my and Aaron's last Valentine's Day in Korea, we decided I decided (let's be honest!) to make it a Korean themed V-day, which basically meant we'd probably wear matching clothes, spend a little time at a coffee shop, hang padlock's together on a love wall, have dinner out, decorate cupcakes together at a cake cafe and then eat said cupcakes while watching a romantic movie together!  Yep, that was the plan!  Fun, right?!  When I got home from work, Aaron handed me this beautiful bouquet of pink roses that he had picked up from his favorite florist on the island on his walk home from work!  Is there anything hotter than a grown man carrying flowers, ladies?! 

He said the red roses were $2 per rose and he knew I'd rather he spend less $$, so he chose the pink, which were significantly cheaper!  He knows me well!  For me, it's not the type, or color, of flowers that he gives me, it's just the fact that he thought enough to bring me some that I love!

So, at 5:00pm, we left the apartment in route to our first stop on our Korean themed Valentine's day date... Angel-in-us Coffee on the 10th floor of Lotte in Nampodong, where we shared a vanilla latte and wrote on our padlocks for the wall!  It's actually pretty hard to come up with a meaningful thing to write when you have 1 square inch to write it in!

But I love what Aaron came up with.  On the other side he wrote, 
"Our Korean bred love is ready to fly away. Buckle up!  I love you."
When our latte was finished and the writing on our padlocks had dried, we took the escalator up to the rooftoop to hang our locks along with hundreds (maybe even thousands) of other Korean lovebirds!  For the record, this is our quasi matching outfit: black shoes, jeans, black sweatshirts, green jackets and light grey beanies... It was the best we could do without looking completely cheesy in perfectly matchy-matchy outfits, which if we were Korean, we probably would have tried a lot harder!

 I've always loved this symbol of commitment, ever since the first time I saw it done on Seoul Tower!  The idea is for two 'lovebirds' to each write on a padlock, then connect them together, link them to the fence and throw the keys to ensure that our vows to never separate are kept!  (Aaron and I decided to actually keep the keys instead, and connected them with a simple red ribbon, which we'll hang on our future Christmas trees in America, to remind us of our padlocks hanging in the city where we fell in love!)
  
Next stop on our Korean themed Valentine's date was dinner!  We skipped out on a fancy dinner and opted for a healthy one... but we figured that that was okay because what's more romantic than eating at a restaurant called The Loving Hut? ...right?!

After dinner, we walked around the corner to Dan Hana Cake, where we were planning to decorate cupcakes together (which is very Korean!), but sadly they were only selling entire cakes to decorate, and we definitely don't need to be eating an entire cake just 12 days before we start living in our bathing suits.  So, we said goodbye and walked in search of a darling cupcake shop that we had heard great reviews for!  But, just like clockwork, it had been turned into something else and was closed when we got there!  I swear no small store, cafe, or restaurant lasts more than 6 months in Korea!  It's terrible... devastating really... because I was really craving those cupcakes!!!

Have no fear though, that frown was turned right upside down when we realized we were standing feet away from a TGIFriday, which I knew would have the perfect desert!  mmmm brownies!

We ate it so fast that I think the hostess thought we decided not to order anything when we walked out of the restaurant no more than 10 minutes after she sat us!  lol  We took a nice little stroll through the busy streets of Seomyeon, hopped on our bus and headed home to watch the latest episode of The Bachelor!  I love it for the romance aspect and Aaron loves it for the train wreck factor! 

Happy Valentine's Day from The Osteens!
행복한 발렌타인 데이 

Wednesday, February 13, 2013

And just like that... It's over.

Today was my last day as a teacher in Korea.  Plain and simple.  
My. Very. Last.
I teach 6th graders on Thursdays, so Loola and I thought it would be fun to play pictionary with them today.  It was a huge success and made for a really fun and memorable last teaching day.  

1 kid at a time would come up to Loola's desk and draw the pictures on her computer in the paint program, which was hilarious!  Have you ever tried to draw a picture with a computer mouse?!  It's bound to look like the rendering of a small child!  So, the pictures would be projected onto the wall and the students could guess from their desks.
I've numbered each picture, so you can take your own guess at what the drawings are. The answers are at the bottom of this post. Good luck!







At 12:00pm, the bell rang, and my last class of students filed out of class giving me hugs and sad faces and even some tears at the door, and I was left with this... an empty classroom.  
And just like that... It's over. 

I'm so thankful for this school... the teachers... the students... the parents. It's been such a great experience working here, and something I won't soon forget.


Pictionary Answers:
#1: bus, toothbrush, octopus, desk, dinosaur, notebook, diamond ring.
#2: home, apple juice, rainbow, computer, chair. 
#3: school, zebra, clock, socks, umbrella, butterfly. 
 #4: birthday cake, pen, computer, island, cat.
#5: elephant, shoes, nose, mountain, pig, 2 trees, hearts, legs.  
#6: giraffe, glasses, snowman, boat, bank. 

Tuesday, February 12, 2013

TGIF... but it's Tuesday!

Last night, I met Okk and Monica (my co-teacher last year) at Lotte Department store for dinner at T.G.I.Friday's.  I hadn't seen Monica since our last dinner together, so it we had a lot to catch up on! She is definitely THE MOST feisty, outgoing, perceptive, and honest Korean I've ever met and these 4 photos sum up our relationship to a T!  We start off normal...

Then we try to be cute...

Then I try to be cute while Monica tries to convince me to be normal again!

Then she realizes I'm not going to stop, so she joins in with me!

And then I ham it up for the camera while she gives up and just laughs at me!  lol

If only I could sit still and be normal for one picture, like these two!

We had the best time catching up while sharing fried mushrooms, chicken salad and chop steak.  

I would have loved to have stayed longer than the 2 hours we spent together, but I had to rush home to take care of my feverish husband and hand off Maverick to his new mommy.  That's a whole different story which I probably wont blog about because it was so sad. I'm missing him like crazy already, but am happy he has a new mom to love and adore his cute little face! 

They call this a job?

This is how my co-teachers and I have been spending most of our afternoons at work lately!
We work HARD during the school year, so we happen to think we deserve the down time as the school year winds down! :)  Okk can usually be found with her back to her desk and her feet propped up while reading a new English book!

Loola can usually be found at her desk, playing on her Samsung Note, texting, reading her friends blogs or whatever else she does on that thing!  :)

... and I can almost always be found at my desk browsing Pinterest, watching TV online, researching autotrader.com and homes in Charleston, watching youtube tutorials about photography, checking e-mails, writing blogs, skyping, researching for Indonesia and our American road trip, making reservations, shopping online, drinking coffee or tea and all around being pretty darn lazy at my desk!

  And they call this a job!  
For the record, I had no intention of posting these photos and I even told them that I was just practicing... but when I saw these pictures, a blog idea came to mind and I couldn't resist posting about our afternoons!

Thanks for 4 years of the best job I've ever had Korea!