drop everything now...

it's a new year... which means new adventures. i will be staying in korea for another year worth of adventure. it's going to be a good year. 

before i get into talking about how my first christmas was away from home, new year's, prepping for my new school and plans for vacation, i found this and had to share: 

so first off my first christmas away from home. i spent it with dani and a bunch of other people up in the mountains. we cooked a traditional american christmas dinner including turkey, ham, 3 different types of stuffing, gravy, salad, cranberries, and mashed potatoes. it was wonderful. it was nice to be around people and to be able to share the holiday with some awesome people! after dinner, we did dinner, we had a white elephant gift exchange... that was extremely entertaining. 19 people participated and after steal after steal after steal everyone finally ended up with a present they were happy with. i ended up with a brand new very nice pair of goggles to use when i go snowboarding. which will happen in february when we get back from indonesia. the next day, to break up the extremely long trip back home, we stopped in itaewon and went to "the flying pan blue". amazing restaurant with amazing food! best french toast with bacon ever! almost good as home... closest you are going to get. 


new year's was spent out with stephanie and sarah. we went out to gangnam for much needed dancing and drinking and rang in the new years together. ended with multiple drunken phone calls to the states including mark, my sister, the parents, my aunt, and a few other people and a taxi ride home with stephanie. 


new year, new adventures means new school and new procedures to get to the new school. this involves a new health check. which we did on friday. that involved chest x-rays, urine sample (which i still find really gross) and getting my blood drawn. everyone knows how much i hate needles and getting my blood drawn. i am anemic, which means when i get a lot of blood drawn, i get extremely light headed and have been known to pass out a few times in the past. so i told the nurse she needs to take blood from my right arm, not my left arm because you can't ever find a vein in my left arm. so what does the nurse do, takes my left arm. and after attempting to find a vein and digging around i my arm for a minute or two, she couldn't get it and pulled the needle out. and go figure, she went to the right arm and found a vein and drew the blood right away. my left arm now has a giant bruise. me with bruises, go figure. 


after the health check, clara and i went to the immigration office and extended my visa and alien registration card (ARC). so now i am legal in the korea until march of 2013. 


in 5 days i will be on my way/in indonesia for the next 17 days! i can't wait! dani and i are flying out saturday night/sunday morning and we will be in indonesia by the afternoon. i'm so excited. we will be flying into bali, getting our visitors visa, and then staying till tuesday when we will be headed east to do some island hopping, then we will head back to bali for 4 or 5 days. from there we will head south to surababy/java. i will be flying out of surabaya back to korea on the 31st.

i finish my second grad school class this week. if all goes well i will hold my 4.0 gpa. i have my final revision of my paper i finished today. sent it to my professor for one final check. then i will submit that. all i have left is a 1-2 page reflection paper to write and submit and then i will be completely finished with my class. my goal is to do all this while i have to desk warm ALLLL week. yep that's right, i am required to be at school for the next 5 days, for 8 hours a day to sit there and be present. what am i supposed to do you ask? whatever i want. it's required for me to be there, but i'm not teaching. which means each day i will be getting up, going to work and crawling right back in bed to sleep. after that, i will be having lunch and then i will be working on homework, prepping for indonesia, and wasting the copious amount of hours i am required to be there.