Where to next??

As the reality sets in more and more every day that Farmboy and I will be leaving Korea in a total of 80 days (scary stuff!) the question becomes not "What" but...

Where to next??!!

Any ideas?? I'm thinking Europe!

*Choices*

For the past month, Farmboy and I have been waiting to hear about a job that we had applied for at a Private English immersion School here in Daejeon.

We waited ages for an interview, which went well, and then waited ages for the result.

We found out today that we didn't get the job :( very sad faces.

We have had to make some difficult choices over the past few weeks:

1) Stay with our current schools and EPIK

2) Move to Private English Immersion School

3) Go back home to South Africa for 6 months and come back to Korea in the second intake in August

4) Go home and study more/find a job/teach somewhere else exciting

Up until yesterday, we had decided that if we didn't get the Private School job, we would go home to South Africa with the intention of coming back in August. Now this is a reality,  suddenly I don't feel so sure. You see, there are also reasons why I don't really want to stay with my current schools. For starters, the work has become mind~numbing. I mean, to be perfectly honest, Teaching English here at the Elementary level is easy, and most of the time rewarding. You get paid realty well, you have the opportunity to travel to all sorts of interesting places in Asia...life is good. But the biggest part of it for me is that the work is not intellectually stimulating enough for me. Its different for my friends teaching at Middle Schools...they have to plan all of their own lessons (which has its pro's and cons'...its a lot more work but you decide what to teach). With elementary, we teach full stop for full stop from the textbook, with the added bonus of an exciting or fun activity thrown in every few days or so. But apart from that, its a bit *blaahh*

I really don't want to ruin the experience for anyone else out there planning on coming over here, its a fabulous opportunity and I would recoomend it to ANYONE with the slightst inclination towards children or teaching...but for me...I want more....

Which is what the Private job was going to provide. But things didnt work out there, so that now leaves a host of diferent choices and doors open to us. Scary? Hell yes! But exciting at the same time.

And sad too. Sad because I've loved mt time in Korea, so much so that I write this blog and publish tons of info on places people probably don't even care to know about...but I love doing it. So the thought of this blog coming to an end makes me really sad. But I know that it will still provide a good reference for people wanting to come here and for those already here.

SOOOOO...what does this mean??? I'm not really sure, I guess it means that we will trust that God has bigger plans for us. So in the mean time, we will continue to enjoy the next 3 months that we have left in Korea, look forward to our AWESOME trip to the Phillipines with Farmboy's brother, John, and sister-in-law Nats and wait and see what the next few months have in store for us...yay!

*Crafts* and things...

As everyone who lives here in South Korea knows, there are millions of fabulous shops filled to the brim with every kind of craft material you can imagine. So with all of these things at our disposal...where do we even begin to think of things to make :)

We stumbled upon this amazing website called CraftGawker, filled with ideas to get those heads spinning! From amazing ideas for making your own Advent Calendars to hints and tips for stocking filers!

Wherever you are in the world, bring a little Christmas cheer to your home this Christmas :)

Interesting facts about sleep...

*Spelling*

This is a small apology (well in some cases its a little bigger than small). I do it, and I do it often...(*thanks mom for sending me countless emails where I have mispelt "quiet" & "quite"*)

*S*P*E*L*L*I*N*G mistakes! You wouldn't say that I competed my undergraduate degree in Enlglish Literature, and am now an English teacher, would you :) Well i just want to say sorry If I've made anyone mad...I just get so excited when I blog (and I've never been very good at proof reading) ...I will try to be better at checking my spelling (*stupid spell checker faulty thingy!)

Thats all...

Musical festival = no class for me!

I was so very excited for this today...so very excited. Today is Kyochons Music Festival, and tomorrow our school has the day off. Now, silly me for thinking that i would be home cuddled up and in bed by 11 o clock.

Alas, I am still at school now, and will be until the usual 4:30 home time. Well I'm still lucky, my co-teacher has to stay here until 9 tonight! The Festival has been split in half. This morning was the first session, and at 6pm the second session will kick off. Without me that is :)

By then, i will hopefully be nestled up, nice and cozy in my bed, drinking hot chocolate and watching lost :)

Now to get back to my Korean studying....yay

Puppy love...having a pet in South Korea

So I've been doing some thinking...this happens from time to time when I run out of things to write on the blog, or when i have the odd bit of free time :)

And I can't keep lying to myself...I am desperate for a puppy! To all my friends, this is ridiculious.

"What will you do when you go away?"

"What happens to it when your at school all day?"

"How will you take it back home when you leave?"

"Haha! What?!"

have been some of the most common questions. I know, its completely impractical, and yet, I still cannot get the idea out of my head. I have even gone so far as to find out all the info for taking the puppy home (whenever that may be) and its not cheap! I can't believe the price..and the quarantine would break my heart.

So then I thought about one of these:

There is a man here in Old  Downtown who has this really  mean game where you pay  W500 and then pick a piece  of flapping card. If your  chosen piece of card  corresponds to his little  "key" you win a bunny! Well  needless to say, Ive spent a  fortune there and still no  bunny. But I will keep  trying!  I think I'm slowly  starting to realize its not to be, especially after a great deal of W500 coins has passed into his hands.

My friend Claire suggested  make a donation to this really great Animal Adoption Site called Animal Rescue Korea which has loads of animals which need homes. This is probably the most practical thing to do, but its not the same! Alas...they also have a really great Facebook group and they organize weekly trips to the Animal Shelters around Seoul. People often head there from Daejeon, Busan and other major cities. If your interested pop onto their site/Facebook group and let the organizers know. They could always use a few extra pairs of hands to play with the many dogs and cats. They are also always in need of people to foster animals until they get adopted...hmmm another idea! But I probably wouldn't be able to give it back!

*For  info on taking your pet back home to South Africa from Korea click here.*

But, i guess in the meantime, I will just have to be content with pictures :)

This i how I feel...

Its cold here, or rather its FREEZING here. Im sitting at my desk, with a steaming cup of disgusting black liquid (which I refuse to call coffee due to the fact that it came in a tiny plastic sachet)  trying to warm my hands up. Whihc is impossible because as soon as I warm up the one under my new soft anf fluffy leopard print blankie, the other one develops frost bite from having to type out in the cold that is my classroom. Its ridiculous. In Summer we melted into little pools of sweat because the Principle refused to put the aircon on in our classroom, and now I'm afraid I won't make it to see another day...

This picture adequatley describes how Im feeling right now.

Plus Im super home sick right now, possibly due to the fact that I stumbled across this...

and now i really feel like my moms delicious pork bangers and mash. In fact, i just feel like being at home, sitting outside on the pation, with a warm cup of rooibos in hand,      listening to my dog, the pretty black poodle Xena, chase hadida's (picture on the right) around the garden.

But I have found the perfect thing to make me feel better....*GMARKET* I have just ordered myself a wonderul new coat, some stunning jersey's and an array of other winter goodies...yay!

When the going get's tough, the tough go shopping! Il be nearly as cool looking as these guys:

P.S If you need any help with Gmarket...click here

Dear Diary…the beginning

I feel little iffy about personal blogs. I can't help it. I feel that the other people out there couldn't care less about how I had an argument with that mean co-teacher who often ignores me on my walk to school and today just wouldn't stop snorting next to me in the staff room while yakking away on her cellphone and broadcasting her "neeee"'s throughout the room???? But...I thought to myself, why not write something a little more on the personal side about my life so far here in South Korea?

I'm gonna try my hand at writing about some of the actual happenings out here. And this time, you have a choice about whether you want to read it or not. These posts will be filed in their own private section of the website, so you won't get bombarded with stories about how frustrated I am, or who is irritating me today, or which student told me I look pregnant...you control just how much "Roxy babble" you want to read...cool hey!

I'm not gonna make any promises that there won't be spelling mistakes or that I will write often, let's just see where the road takes us shall we...So enjoy/skip/read/ to your hearts content :)

Over and out...

Roxy

xox