never thought i'd be making a potty-training update (Someone Special)

So my new roommate and I have had… our ups and downs. Over the past few days, I’ve posited to several people that my wittle kitten might be retarded, because it’s unable to understand the litter box thing. (The one we bought is, in fact, too tall for the cat to get into—ahaha. So we improvised and created a mini litter box out of a small cardboard top to one of our sets of English tapes. Nice!) But for the past two days, the cat has been ignoring it and just making poopies on the floor. Actually, it’s all just a gross yellow goo of milkshake consistency. I would know, because I’ve been cleaning it up. And it’s been pissing me off morning, noon, and night. (Literally.) But tonight, we may have had a breakthrough. I caught the cat starting to poop and grabbed it and threw it in the litter box. Then I surprised it mid-pee a few minutes later. And I tried to give positive reinforcement, but that’s difficult with cats. I petted it, wiped its feet, and let it sit on my bed. It has, despite its small size, figured out how to get up onto the bed—by clawing its way up the comforter. I stopped it for a little while by tucking the comforter in under the mattress, but the little bugger is resourceful and got up anyway. (Maybe she’s not retarded after all!)

I’d hoped she would get litter-trained before she figured out how to get on my bed. She’s still too young to clean herself, at least I haven’t seen her do it, and she’s always got gross litter feet. But part of our positive reinforcement is playing-on-the-bed time, which we’re doing right now while I blog. She hasn’t devised a good system for getting off the bed without falling to her death though, so she’ll still need to sleep on the floor. I’m praying that the litter thing has stuck, and that I’ll wake up to yellowy goo in the litter box tomorrow, instead of just under the piano. She’s started to grow on me a little, but she’ll grow on me even more when she stops peeing on the floor.

And potty training has basically been the most exciting thing about the beginning of my week. Three of my classes were cancelled today, so I only taught one, and I got all of my lesson planning done for tomorrow, which was cool. I went to Gwangju to visit Tim, and we had dinner and watched Someone Special again. It’s so good! I love it! Maybe I will write a review of it tomorrow.

Okay, it’s now Wednesday morning, and I’m in the mood, so here’s a review of Someone Special. I give Someone Special 4.75 out of 5 Bs, because I love it. I will concede that Jeong Jae-Yeong is the lead male character, which may influence my opinion somewhat, but I feel that it’s a good movie even aside from that. It also marks the second romantic comedy I’ve liked, which means the number of romantic comedies I like has doubled in the past two weeks. Mind-boggling. It’s just so cute! And the best part of the movie, which I know Kate would enjoy, is the random four minute “movie within the movie,” in which the main characters of Someone Special also play the characters of the mini-movie. It’s “unbearably amazing,” to sort of quote the movie within a movie. There are just so many wonderful aspects, not the least of which was tight baseball pants. Anyway, in this movie, a guy is told he has lung cancer and will die in three months, then he meets a girl who has loved him all her life. And I can’t tell you anymore, because that would ruin it. But take my word for it, it’s amazing.

And now, a random funny language thing that happened. So my host Mom comes in my room the other night to talk to me about something, and while we’re talking the kitten makes a beeline and runs for the door. At which point my host mom points to it and busts out with “Exodus!” So I do what anyone would do in that situation: I start laughing hysterically. Because really, this woman knows roughly 100 English words, so I find it interesting that the one she came up with to describe the situation was not “escape” or “exit,” but in fact, “Exodus!”

And now it’s time for my exodus from this blog entry, so that I can go teach my first class. Take care!