this blanket is freezing, it's been out in the hall

Here's the picture I snuck of my two students when they surprise visited me at home and my host mom invited them in to have lunch with us. CJ and MJ, who I can only hope will eventually become a couple, because he's hopelessly in love with her.

This is my new little brother I've adopted, CJ. Friday was my last official day at Dongkang, aside from the winter class, and they were also taking their club pictures for the yearbook, so I got called out to be in the English Conversation Club picture, even though I technically had nothing to do with it. So then a bunch of the third grade girls wanted to take pictures with me, which was cute. But CJ was the only boy who wanted to join the group picture at first, both because he loves me and because the girl he's in love with was in the picture. But then I took this individual picture with him, and several other boys piped up with "Me too!" It was really cute.

Most of the third grade girls and a few of my favorite boys. It wasn't really goodbye yet, because most of them are in my winter class, which is the next week or so, starting Monday. But they're so cute. They all wanted to take a picture with me on their cellphones. The kid on the far right is the one who drew me an amazing picture, which I'll have to post here when I remember. He joined my winter class late, because my co-teacher talked him into it, although she explained it as: "He has come to love you, so he wants to join." He's really smart and pretty good at English, plus he knew Eric Bana.

Oh boy, I have an amazing story about this boy, SS. He's one of the three boys who smoke, and everyone knows it. So I saw some awesome socks at the stationery store for 50 cents, and I bought a pair for all three of them. They show a stick figure smoking, and then a red circle and slash over it. And I was able to translate that the text on it said "Don't (something)!" So I assumed it said "Don't smoke." But then my co-teacher laughed at me for like 20 minutes. What it says is some kind of slang for "Don't be arrogant." Which, come to think of it, fits too. He's going to the technical high school.

Big eyes. :) This is SI--he was the surprise winner of the speaking contest, and he just cracks me up.

This is HB. He's one of my bowling boys, the one who's really big and used to get charged middle school bus fare when he was in elementary school. He's never spoken a word of English, aside from my name, but he may or may not be enamored of me. He follows me around anyway, and often frightens off other students who want to talk to me. Friday, he came up behind me and started giving me a massage, which was funny. I'll miss him too.

So anyway, last night while Meghan and I were eating pizza, it snarted snowing. This is only the third snow I've seen, and both previous ones were tiny flakes, but this was some pretty seriously ginormous flakes. It didn't stick while we were out, and I went back inside and went to sleep. Until this morning my internet broke, I had a fight with my host brother, and I stomped out to go to PC Bang and found... like six inches of snow. Only four days late for Christmas.

This hat was one of the presents from my host family, and it's cuter than it appears here. So am I. :)

Hmm... I feel like I need to play a lot of catch-up. I think the last entry was mostly about the Christmas parties thrown for me at Noan, although I didn't put up pictures, so I'll give you those now.

I sincerely hope this isn't meant to be a faithful representation of me. But it was part of the decorations, so I took a picture. :)

This was the balloon path they made to guide me down blindfolded. Koreans sure know how to decorate quickly in the ten minutes between classes, huh?

The heart of honor that the path culminated in.

This piggy bank was one of my presents. I'm only including it because there's an awesome story related to it. It glows in the dark. So the other night I moved it, from on the floor where it had been for a few days, to on top of a big stack of boxes on top of the piano. So you guessed it... I scared the shit out of myself when I rolled over and saw a glow-in-the-dark pig levitating 10 feet in the air.

These were taped to the door. :) The middle one says "I love you" in Korean.

Haven't you had a lot of conversations like this while professing your love? Even more instructive is the heart on the far right, which as you can see, says: "I kill--"

So cute.

Maybe because it's the end of the year, I've recently been giving a lot of thought to whether or not I did a good job, or taught the students anything. For example, I've been trying to come up with a situation in which I, as a native speaker, in America, would ever have use for the phrase "You die." It's grammatically correct, sure, but really... :) My students are, however, very prepared to compliment people's relative attractiveness, as you can see from the messages on the board.

Let's see... I think that's all the pictures I've got. So anyway, the parties at Noan were really wonderful. The party at Dongkang was also very nice, with another two cakes.

Oh yeah! I need to tell you about my holiday! I hesitate to mention that I've been sick, because I know my Mom is really worried about me, but I think it's getting better recently. Starting around... Monday? I started feeling really sick to my stomach. Like... clutching, cramping pain, and queasiness, and, you know, that other unpleasantness that typically accompanies stomach pain. Anyway, Monday was Christmas Eve, so Meghan and I worked, and then headed to Gwangju (the big city) for dinner at TGIFriday's. We received a super-pleasant surpise in that Friday's was serving free chips and salsa while you waited, but thankfully, we didn't wait long. I ordered chicken quesadillas, as always, and they were delicious until I started feeling really sick, which continued for the 40 minute bus ride home. We watched a movie that night, I think, and then parted. My host family had left Christmas presents on my bed, including the above-pictured hat and a bunch of other crap, but it was nice of them. We had no tree, and we didn't say anything about Christmas. The kids, I don't think, got any presents. I think my host mom said something about them being Buddhist, which isn't what I thought she said that first night we met, but whatever. So it was nice of them to make the effort, so I gave the kids some crap on Christmas day.

The next morning I met Meghan for fried chicken lunch, which we ate while picnicking at the park, and then met two of my students, MJ and CJ (pictured above), for DVD bang. CJ hates horror movies, but MJ loves them, and he loves her, so we watched a horror movie, of course. I'm pretty sure watching The Exorcist on Christmas jeopardized my immortal soul, but whatever. Then they wanted double feature, so we watched a Korean romantic comedy about plastic surgery that I'd seen before. Then we parted, and I went home. I didn't mention, my co-teacher made all the students make me Christmas cards, so I re-read them and it was an okay Christmas after all. OOOOOOOOOOH! Awesomest part of that: CJ, the adorable boy, gave me a Christmas card he'd bought. Unfortunately, it was actually a new baby card. The front showed the stork and said "It's baby!" I laughed for about 82 minutes. I didn't say anything to him, because it was sweet, but Meghan and I had a good time with it. We posited that either a. he was referring to the birth of Jesus, or b. He knew something I didn't about why my stomach hurt so much.

Did I mention one of the second grade girls knitted me a scarf? CUTE. Anyway, my stomach continued to hurt every few hours, for a few hours, really bad for the rest of this week. I was up a lot the last three nights, although it seems to be steadily improving, and hopefully today it will be gone for good. If not, I'll go to the doctor Monday.