Happy Barf-day to me. :oP

So last week was a whirlwind of action, good food, new places, goodbyes and, unfortunately, new relationships with the porcelian throne. On the first I was able to move out of the 'Love Motel' and into my new apartment. I'm trying to look on the bright side, but let me just say it's a good thing I have experience living in Third World conditions. Haha. Besides needing to be drenched in Clorox and vigorously elbow-greased, the apartment is very nice and the previous owners have left many items which can, at times, be confusing- tamborine anyone!? But the location is great, less than three minutes walk from where I work and literally on top of a convenience store that offers everything a Wawa would except for the hoagies (and the day-old meatballs).

Pictures of my new home. Where's Waldo?

For most of the week we newbies were thrown into teaching so we were busy during the day preparing for that and the evenings were spent trying to figure out how to get our clothes out of the Korean washers which are all in Hangul and will only let you have access to your clothing when IT wants you to. I'm on the fourteenth floor and if need be I can repel down this fire escape shoot thing that is built into the wall Batman-style....oooohhhhhh yeeeeaaaaah.

...I never liked her anyway. (Jean shop in a local mall).

The night before my birthday was great. I hung out with the other teachers at this great Korean Barbeque place and had a ball talking about our classes. After dinner we went over to one of the teacher's apartments and hung out until wee hours of the morning. Later that day, I woke up feeling a little under the weather, but well enough to greet the maintainance guy and have a conversation with him. Just as he left my health took a turn for the worst. I had been drinking Gatorade that for some reason was GINGER flavored thinking it'd help my health and that I was just dehydrated or something.

I didn't feel the need to hurl, however, until one of my fellow foreign teachers came knocking on my door asking if I wanted to come walk around with her in town because it was nice and sunny. In the middle of her sentence, I pushed past her into the bathroom, closed the door and lost the contents of my stomach. It was only seconds later that I realized that I had just closed myself in the bathroom with the light off and was standing in the dark. After a couple beats there was a tentative knock with a quiet 'are you okay?' coming from the other side of the door. 'Yeah,' I managed to splutter. She eventually said that she'd come see how I was doing later and quietly left. For the next day and a half I got to know my new toilet VERY WELL. The only thing that kept me sane was the fact that I had several good books to read in between puke sessions.

I woke up this morning exhausted but stable and made my way to the immigration office to apply for my Alien Registration Card. So, you know, I won't be deported or anything. I have slowly been feeling better and was able to eat solid food for the first time it what seems ages. As we were finishing up our meal at our favorite cheap place to eat near school, everyone started to get all shifty, but I was still tired and out of it. I didn't see the cake with candles coming until they burst out singing and it was plopped in front of me. The owner of the restaurant came over and gave me a hug. I was bright red and the cake had four (I turned 24) candles and a cute chocolate coffee cup on the top. It was heart-shaped and lovely. I was pretty touched, I nearly cried in my kimchi. The rest of the day was great. I had two gregarious classes that made it easy to teach, except this time I refrained from throwing fart putty at the kids because it sent some of the girls into hysterics.

All in all, life is good. :)

Surprise! That cake was soooooo good and cute! So nice of my new friends.