budgeting for may

so for those of you who are interested in working in korea i will once again write about my spendings and some of my earnings. so really for those of you who want to come here...for others this is probably boring.





ok, so the things i have to pay for compared from april to may:

income tax - 3% which comes out to about $70

housing management fee - $25

gas fee - $12 down to $5

Water - $4

electric - $7 to $10

internet - $37

cell phone - $20

and i will have to pay insurance which comes out to about $75 a month.

now as for what i control as compared april to may:

food - $95 to $79

eating out - $61 to $51

school fee stuff - $20 to $59 (this increase is because of teacher's day gifts and bday parties)

transportation - $25 to $45

drinks - $38 (same both months and this is me paying for other people....and drinking western drinks....soju and maekju are much much cheaper. pick your friends wisely. :)

doing stuff - $13 - $106 (this increase is me taking people out and just overall doing a lot more than the month before... and doing it by myself or treating others)

shopping - $64 to $318 (i bought a digital camera this month for $300....so really i spent less but went clothing shopping more. but the way i shop i can get shirts and skirts for $5 each. i like it that way!)


So i think i can spend about $300 to $500 a month. i think that is understandable and not too much. granted, as i said before i dont keep food in my house. between eating at school and eating out with friends, well i dont really have to eat at home. so i hope this helps. please let me know if you have any questions. :) hahaha

things i miss

i miss sitting in the yard at home in the sunny afternoon reading a book. then falling asleep in the sun and taking a nice afternoon nap.


ahhh.

teachers day

http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2014322&l=0a3a0&id=100300061 - may days

so the past two weeks have been cake. between working one day...by that i mean teaching morning classes two weeks ago and then last week working 3 days...and friday doing absolutely nothing. it was crazy. and now i am getting ready to enter into a 5 day week. but on the bright side, i only work two full weeks then we get june 6th off. hahaha. so no complaints. i do love these public holidays. :)

wednesday night i went to another FC seoul game with my friend sanghoon. it was enjoyable though the weather was pretty good.

thursday was teachers day which meant letters, flowers, crazy gifts and pizza! unbelievable! truly! then on thursday Sejong University was having its festival so baejee invited me to come hang out with her. so i got to see where she goes to school and met some of her friends. the two of us went to a ghost house which was cool. hehe, baejee screamed like a crazy woman the whole time -and we even had a male escort! haha! then we were watching DJ DOC perform and we ended up meeting some Italian guy which i had to interpret between Baejee and the Italian whose accent was so thick that i struggled to understand him. :) good, random times. haha!

so this weekend was crazy despite a slow start and a thoughts that it would be pretty chill, but somehow i have a way of not allowing that to happen....so friday as i said, i spent the day just making letter flashcards and random odds and ends i have been wanting to complete. taught 3 crazy afternoon classes which went pretty well.

on saturday i met up with my language partner lee and worked on my korean for 3 hours, which is coming along. slowly but surely. i am trying to get more serious about it. though i have great vocabulary deficiencies i can plan to meet people in korean and even text in korean. hopefully i will continue to improve. :) then i went to itaewon where i went to foreign world. and found TEXAS PETE!!!!! yes, im not even kidding! you can't get it in western new york, but i found it in SEOUL! i was sooooooooooooooooooooooo stoked! i mean, i am stoked! so i guess a party with some chicken wings is on the agenda for the month of june! yanny and baejee, prepare. i love party planning! :) anyways, so i jump from korean to texas pete to swahili. i met up with my friend mary and we had dinner in a cute irish pub.

speaking swahili in an irish pub. :)

then we moved to an african pub where they ate - and they even had the bowls of water to wash their hands before they enjoyed ugali. swahili was flying around. and actually i met a guy who is a professor of swahili at a korean university. is that sweet or what? so it was an evening of africana. i love cities! i love multiculturalism! loooooove it!

then sunday church and such great cultural convos. there is so much i am leaving out right now!!! but i will fill in the gaps. then lunch with church friends. then i met up with sanghoon to visit the museum to see korean art work (korean treasures) and then to a buddhist temples and then out for dinner. which, mom and lacie - you will remember soondae. i think we all do. well i think what i ate was a variation of that, soup style. so soondae which is either cow or pig intestine. i dont remember which. well yes, so soup of beef intestine. it was ok. hahaha. not soondae. which i am building up the guts to try again....:)

so thats my life in a nutshell. i hae been having some great cultural convos and i will fill those in. i think this entry is so lame because its like me listing my day events rather than how i am doing or what i am doing.

in case you were wondering, im doing great. i did today think of my family - my pastors parents were visiting - so i though of my sisters and family and i almost started to cry.

almost.

and i thought. ok, yes i would love to see my family! i would absolutely adore it! but then what? you know, a weekend would be great to eat, drink and be merry together. but then what? so i miss people and if i could pay money to transport them to see me for even just an evening, that would be amazing. but i do love what i am doing here.

your amber ;)

may day!

so i find myself wondering if there is any specific moment in time when i will feel like im not just visiting and i am really here. is it when my inbox has more new emails with korean characters than english? or is it when i get more text messages than email in general. or is it when i feel comfortable going to the grocery store? or when i can have a conversation in korean? haha, that might still be a long time but i am working harder.

lets see what have i not updated on....well saturday i met with 2 language partners. one who i met before and is really good because he is like a teacher and makes me work hard. the second one i met for the first time and he is so funny! he thinks i should learn sentences which is good, so we do more speaking together. problem is i really need everythign written. hahaha, so i think they will both help me out. they both have studied in australia so i think we have some afternoons in a pub watching footy in the future! :) but very good and very fun to meet new people.

work was soo easy last week only teaching one day and then taking pictures like america's next top model every other day. we went to a farm for field trip last wednesday, then made cakes for parents day on thursday and then friday is my easy day. then no school today! man, next week is going to be hard! but this week thursday is teachers day so that should be fun. we have a dinner together. and then next week we have a picnic. may is a great month!

hmm, i went to the world dj festival 2 weekends ago and found my home. :) hahaha, went to the lantern festival - these pictures are all posted on facebook. i got a camera so im back in business though i have to admit that i didn't even pull out my camera at the west coast because everyone had one and they all are so good at making people get in pictures and taking different pictures that i thought there was no point. so hopefully ill get a hold of those sometime soon. :)

hmm, thats about it for now. i know i have so much so i promise that the holidays are over, ill be back on schedule with my updates and entertainment news. :)

west coast

sooo much has happened so far and the month is almost halfway over! can i start by saying that i can't believe it is already may! everyone in the states is getting ready for summer break and i can't even believe it because life goes on as usual, i feel like its still the beginning of school for me.

so yesterday i went to the west sea with one of my teachers, vivi. (she went to the folk village with me) once a month her and her 6 college friends - they are the 7 princesses - get together and go somewhere. this particular month marks 10 years since graduating from college. it was so cool to hang out with this group of friends who were so different in personality but each so nice and so welcoming! it was crazy to me, and actually trina mast told me before i left for south korea that it would be like that. i would feel like friends with them so fast! and so far that has been the case. i know that there are mean koreans here and i have no doubt they exist but at the same time i know there are mean americans. my point being that when i do meet a mean korean or have a bad experience i know that it happens no matter where you are. so just a random sidetrack for you.

so we stayed at a cute little guesthouse right on the west sea or the yellow sea - that which is between china and korea. we played around in the water and took tons of pictures! then we ate and talked and it was so nice! though vivi told me no one speaks english very well, that was not true. or at least i thought there english was fine. the way i determine if english is good or not, is what type of ideas are we able to share. i mean, last night we were talking about japan and korean relations, religion, friendships, relationships, pop culture - soo much! the fact that we can have conversations about important issues means that the english is fine! whether it is broken or not is not really important to me - if you have ever spoken to me in America, you know im not the best english speaker.

so this morning we went back out to the ocean and then we went to a small buddhist temple on a mountainside. this temple was much much smaller than the one in seoul and it was crazy because i was the only foreigner there. it was so interesting to see all these people celebrating buddhas bday in this beautiful location. quite majestic! then i slept most of the 4 hour ride home.

so i had a fantastic time!

here i will take a short interlude to talk about men in korea. ok, here is this get together for the 7 princesses but only 5 showed up. then one husband and 2 boyfriends. the guys cooked dinner, set up for dinner, cleaned up for dinner, took pictures the whole time we were there whether the girls asked or not....they treated them like queens! and from what i can tell this seems to be a reoccuring theme. (again i know this is not always true) actually vivi was telling me about her boyfriend Q who is from Pusan and he doesn't help clean or cook because thats not how he was raised. but in vivi's family her father always helped out. ...but i just thought it was amazing that these girls were free to just relax and have a good time and the guys just took care of everything around them. they didn't get mad when the girls drank too much or gave them crap for different issues. wow. hopefully i will get to hang out with them more in the future so i can see if this is always true. hahaha...soooo different than many of the men i have met in my lifetime. interesting. :) and there were 3 of them there! haha