Easy like Sunday Morning...
This weekend we finally cashed in on our grand prize for our musical fireworks as the YES Youngdo Christmas Staff Party back in January. Here are some pictures from our brunch at the Hyatt... REAL coffee, crepes, salmon, steak, lamb, CHEESE ... it may not seem too impressive to most of you, but in a country where spicy fermented cabage is the staple dish, a little champaign and orange juice on a Sunday morning can just about save your life (and by life i mean sanity)...

Typical
I died when i saw this. This video clip basically epitomizes exactly what i've been talking about... and by that i mean KOREA...

http://www.cnn.com/video/player/player.html?url=/video/offbeat/2006/02/19/vo.pajama.day.reut

annnnnnd... drumroll

i put in a new nose ring (Sorry mom and dad... i know that you'll both hate it).

That's the Way I Rike It...
My obsession with breakdancers continues. This weekend, some friends and i went to watch 'B-Boy Unit Volume 8", an international bboy competition being held in Seoul. It was HOT. The dancing was amazing. I can barely wrap my mind around it. It was SICK... seriously. The thing is, i love everything about it! I love the dancing, the music, the bboys ;)... but i think that if i were any where apart from korea, i never would have taken to it as much as i have.

Really, the most appealing thing about the hip hop/bboy culture here is that it's just that... a total sub culture in, what can sometimes seem to be, a nation of robots. It can be so frustrating some times talking to my kids... the little ones are great because they're still young enough to have free minds, but once they get into middle school it often just seems like they are being molded to live in a very black and white, yes and no society.

So, yeah, i love watching break dancing... but i love seeing people in korea that are moving against the grain... people with piercings, and tatoos (which is illegal here), and crazy hair, that don't comply with this Korean ideal that every man must be and think this way, while every female must act and make herself that way. The forum for individual expression in this country is meager at best. And, although it is not publically frowned upon, it seems to me... and all i really am, is an outsider looking in... that society doesn't allow much leeway for anyone to stray very far from its own precieved notion of sucess...
rambling... sorry, this wasn't even what i was going to talk about... hence the title of this blog not corresponding with anything i've just written. This is all generally speaking ofcourse. And, like it said, all my own opinion. And really, what do i know.

Basically, i was going to say that, apart from the dancing there were two highlights to the night:
1.) getting amazing seats simply for being foreigners!

and

2.) a guest preformance by this amazing korean beat boxer who sang... 'B-BOYS! That's the way, uh-huh uh-huh, i RIKE it!!!'
that's the way i rike it too!!!

My Little Monsters
Note my favourite child EVER... wearing the tiger head hat. She also wrote the story about the fat dog blowing up. BOOM!

This is Enda and Andy. Andy (right) is one of the cutest kids ever. He has a little mullet, but it's okay.
These girls are great. They're not in my class anymore. I miss them...
These are some of my kids from before Christmas.