i am now making my way from kuala lumpur to ho chi minh city over the next 2 months. i am writing this from an internet cafe in kuala lumpur.

thusly, the food is amazing. the weather is hot. the people are really nice. i crapped my pants this morning. we can check travellers diarrhea off the list and hope that its not going to happen again.

i am planning to wander the gardens tomorrow and eventually make my way to a train or bus to start heading north. not too sure on any of the details.

today, i went to a mall and it was so much like america i could barely believe it. i saw a rom-com and went to chilis. if i didnt know the severity of my homesickness before, its definitely sunk in now. i am going to enjoy every day of this trip, but 2.5 years is a long time.

biggest concerns at the moment are my access to news and getting rid of some of the crap that i packed. 3 days in and i dont want to carry that heavy bag anymore. ill be headed to a post office very soon to send it home.

life is, without exception, very good.

most recently, i left my position in daegu and accepted a job in cheonan. its a bit further north. not near as big as daegu, but super super close to seoul. so, ive been here for a couple of months and things are coming along well. my new school is much more professional and i work much harder. no more two hour days! this is actually awesome and nice to keep busy. the weeks have flown!

my apartment is three times the size of my place in daegu. so thats awesome. and i have a bathtub and big oven. may not seem  like a big deal, but for those in korea… you can close your mouth now and come over! ill bake ya some cookies while you take a bubble bath!

ive made some new friends that are really great and it was actually a nice transition as many of my daegu friends have left the country recently. change, while sometimes unnerving, has an amazing way of keeping life fresh. and its really really great to be out of my old school and completely rid of all of the problems that came with it. i truly was living one of those awful horror stories of korea towards the end there. the most obvious downside to changing jobs is that i cannot visit home this year. i had $2000 worth of airline tickets that have gone to waste, which is unfortunate and upsetting. but, more than anything, i feel fortunate to have employment opportunities and giving up a vacation is an easy price to pay for that.

today, i was messing around in gmail and stumbled upon some random pictures of me is a picasa account. i dont even have a picasa account! it was really awful – unflattering club pictures from college. as much as i pride myself on my own space of privacy on the internet, it is just not so. as convenient as technology is, i would truly hate for something as simple as a tagged picture from a bar to diminish an opportunity in the future. yikes!

so, whats next for ashley? well, i was shopping around for a new job. i like mine loads, but i live kinds far from downtown. while it has its perks (getting my water from a spring!) it is also sometimes tedious and expensive to get downtown. i was also pretty interested in moving to seoul at some point. however, i have been sick and lazy and didnt even want to think about moving and getting another visa and going through all of that awful paperwork again. hello!? ANOTHER apostille certified background check? i dont even know how i would go about that in a timely manner without going back to america. and even that process was the pits the first time.

my boss really wants me to stay. we talked it over and i am staying at my school. but i get a whole month of vacation in december/january, a raise (although small), and probably a new apartment! i really like my apartment. but its pretty small. i want more space. oh, and i may may may be getting an iphone. he is really pulling through so far and i think he is going to make it happen. with the apartment at least. and i am so stoked on getting to go home this year for christmas! i cannot wait to eat delicious american food! see friends and family! read and comprehend everything, everywhere! its a long ways away, but believe you me i am already planning on meals, shopping trips, and a crazy publix run to mail myself non-perishables.

my friend here, julie, will be living in france by that point. soooo, on the way home (to korea) i will make a stop and see her and france and maybe turkey too! its a good thing that its so far away, i really need to save for it all. clare and i will be going to vietnam next month. after that, no more excuses! i need to cut back on spending so that i can do everything i want to do for my christmas trip! yay!

speaking of spending, i am so completely thrilled to go to costco on saturday. they have the best selection of western products in daegu. oh, all of the cheese!!! i could just eat an entire brick of gorgonzola, its been so long! ive only been there once. lately, i have been missing western food real bad. ive taken up cooking as it is the only way to eat what i really want. my skills in the kitchen have definitely improved since college! i made eggs benedict recently and the hollandaise came out perfect! i found a ‘magic bullet’ in my apartment and have been putting that to good use as well.

my friend liz will be visiting from taipei soon, and i believe that she is going to bring me some basil and cilantro seeds. as soon as those puppies grow, ill be in culinary heaven. if she cant find them, i am sure that i can rustle some up on the vietnam trip where i fully intend to gain 15 pounds from overeating.

sounds disgusting, but its true.

i leave you with a few pictures… my street with all of the cherry blossoms and mountains, me and a vj from mtv korea, and the view at haeinsa temple. the spring was eventful.

i think my favorite thing about the warm weather is the smell. everything has a scent. when everything is cold, it doesnt seem to smell like anything. now, you can smell everyones dinner cooking while walking through the streets. the smoke from burning herbs at the chinese medicine clinic downstairs from my school has begun to crawl up the stairs again (making the place smell a little like weed). and, strangely enough, my kitchen has once again started to smell like red ginseng. whoever lived here before me must have had stock in the stuff. its great because i came here in august and it was only warm for a month. now, smelling all of this stuff reminds me of when i first came to korea and its like getting excited about the same stuff all over again!

this year has already been full of adventure. nicole came and visited. ive seen more temples. went to pohang. weht to everland. going to jeju island this weekend. and for every weekend that i havent been out and exploring the country, i have started a fun new way to explore daegu. i have decided to go to every subway stop in daegu and chronicle my experience. we have only done this once – ive been doing too much stuff on the weekends to allow time – but i intend to continue this practice whenever i am in town on the weekends.

so, i will be blogging this adventure and hopefully there will be so so so much to say. i cant see how there couldnt be. the first day, we found a freaking POPEYES!!!! oh america, the only merit you have is your cuisine. speaking of, if taco bell isnt open the next time i go to itaewon, i am going to flip out. how long does it take to open a taco bell?! it takes less than a week to tear down a business and open a new one everywhere else in korea! get with the program!

and i am really excited about korea at the moment. i ordered some books online from a store in seoul (whatthebook.com) on tuesday. then on wednesday, i paid for them at an atm. today (thursday) they arrived by courier at 2:25. koreans are too efficient for words.

it should be noted that i have been excited about korea everyday. for 6 months now. still. i learn new things every day and i cant get enough of this place. i will definitely be doing at least another year. i love it here so much, i could easily see myself living here indefinitely. that means you should be saving up to come and visit if you want to see me again. i will be visiting the states at the end of my contract though. but itll be less than a month. then a month or 2 traveling. then i will be back in the land of the morning calm!

for my christmas vacation, i went to taiwan! i stayed with my friend, liz, in her mini house on the top of a 15 story building in taipei. it was an amazing trip! we were able to see loads in just the week we were there. she has a great view of the taipei 101 building – which was at the time the tallest building in the world. if you keep up with architectural news, you would know that the record was beat the monday after i came home. we went to the 101, wulai hot springs, yehliu geopark, and tons of other stuff.

i even ate cobra soup! this was of course after i drank shots of cobra blood, bile, venom, and semen. other regional fare included stinky tofu, pearl milk tea !!!, and these delicious custard apple things.

we had a lovely time. our hosts were so so so gracious. celebrating new years in taipei was nuts. but all good things come to an end, and i had to return to a literally freezing apartment. its not so bad though, as i mentioned. i am still loving the crap out of korea!

besides that, we spent some time in itaewon – which is a community in seoul that caters to foreigners. and we went out at night in the university club area. holy crap. there are so many people in seoul. 24.5 million in  the metro area. and you never forget that fact. and there are so so so so many foreigners! white people everywhere. it was really overwhelming, trying to take the subway and people all over the place. and not knowing hangul AT ALL. but it was also lots of fun. i think it is one of those places thats great to visit, but wouldnt be so rad to live in. it may be different if you had your own place though… we stayed in a hostel, so there was never a point in the weekend where i could have privacy or two minutes to myself! 

i went with my friend, sybil, and she has been a few times so she took the reins with getting around and figuring out what to do. thank god. on sunday, we went to LOTTE World. its an amusement park owned by LOTTE, and LOTTE owns what seems like half of korea. one can get a bulgogi burger from lotteria, or go shopping at lotte department store, or live in lotte castle apartments. 

anyways, lotte world was amazing. i cannot tell you enough how much i enjoyed it! it is the worlds biggest indoor theme park and only half of it is inside. i really think they had some people from disney come over and do consult work because there are so many similarities! mainly the costumes and the niceness of the rides (it was more disney than six flags, if you catch my drift.) it was super fun, and because we went after 4pm it was cheaper. only like $22 for a pass that included all of the rides. we also went through one of the scariest haunted houses i have ever been to. 

in all, my first trip to seoul was a success. i had tons of fun, spent too much money, and got ranch dressing at a restaurant. im easy to please. and i really like ranch dressing. 

speaking of, you can send packet mix and bottles of ranch to:

203 1449-8
dowon-dong. dalseo-gu. dae-gu.
704-803
south korea

just sayin!

we slept in tents on the beach. it got pretty chilly at night. there were a dozen or so people, mostly from tongyoung, in the group. i can say for sure that i am totally glad that i came to daegu and not a smaller or bigger city. while it was a really cool area, there just isnt as much to do. and the expat community is soooo small. its nothing for me to see white people walking around town here. there, everyone knows eachother because there is only like 20 of them. they explained it as not getting along with people but not having a choice. yuck! there are a couple of people i have met in daegu that i didnt ‘click’ with but i never see them! a smaller town would super suck.

sigh.

the first thing i did was buy a couple of home coloring boxes. i know, i know. but the salons in my neighborhood dont speak english. and i was being impulsive.  the result was… nothing. it looked the same, maybe a little lighter at the roots. meh.

so i decided to go to a salon. i got my boss to talk to them on the phone and eventually he stopped by to help out. i asked for light brown/dark blonde. i didnt realize there was such a discrepancy of opinion for that color. i even picked out a hair swatch.  i ended up with bright orange hair. seriously. and i wouldnt leave the salon (hahaha) until they tamed it. in the end, they brought me to a strawberry blonde shade and asked for me to come back the next day to finish up the job. the ladies were really nice, they even bought me lunch and refused to let me pay for it. but really, i cannot stress enough how many times i said “no orange, no yellow, no red.”

i had to go into work looking like ginny weasley from harry potter. the worst part is, while i wanted to die of embarrassment over my strawberry blonde hair, koreans think this is beautiful. all of the students couldnt get over ‘how beautiful ashley teacher is’. really. the girls wanted to touch it, and not a soul could understand why i hate it. even my boss tried to talk me out of returning to the salon because this shade is “perfect”.

i give you the photographic evidence here. 

you think i would be happier knowing that the sorting hat put me in griffindor, but some people just cant be pleased.

i went back the next day and say for another 4 hours. thats right, 2 days and 8 hours later i have my lackluster results. my hair is a manageable color. blondish brownish reddish. not thrilled, but not going to do anything about it for sometime. my hair was totally fried in the process. if anyone has home remedy suggestions for fried hair, do share. its either that or i try my luck again with another hair salon for a treatment…

this past weekend, a group of us had a birthday gathering for a couple of expats on a roof and then went out to a noraebang. noraebangs are little karaoke rooms that you rent. think ‘lost in translation’. it is quite possibly the most beloved pastime of koreans. we have some in florida, but nothing to this magnitude. you cannot throw a rock without hitting a building with a noraebang. 

the only problem with noraebangs is that they dont let you bring in drinks. now, its easy enough to sneak them in but we couldnt make it work on saturday. we ended up buying some beers there. after we drank and shotgunned them we figured out they were non-alcoholic. silly wagooks. 

photographic evidence of the last couple of trips downtown. noraebang, rooftop shot with new neighbor, sparklers in front of the bag drink place (i will certainly explain this another time). oh, and vitamin water. i finally found a place today that sells it. if i beg hard enough, do you think they will carry ‘formula 50′? a girl can dream. 

there are a few things i do know for sure. korean thanksgiving is in october. as an early birthday gift to myself (love those, right?) i will be going on a long weekend trip to japan with some friends. to say i am excited would be an understatement. 

today, me and the girls went to seomun market. i am pretty broke at the moment, as teachers typically do not get paid for a month or more after arrival so i did not spend much money although there was LOADS of stuff to buy. fear not, i get paid on september 10th and will be going back to seomun for some cute apartment stuff. 

korea has no shortage of cute things. for the first time in my life, i am decorating my apartment pink, blue, and purple. i just cant help it. everything has got buttons or puppy cartoons on it. 

cheri just got a care package from her mom which included RANCH DRESSING, so we got some pizzas and watched a few johnny depp movies after the market. a pretty good way to spend the evening no matter where in the world you are. by the time the movies were over, the subway was closed and i had to take a cab home. sitting in the back of that cab, driving along the mountains on the highway is still thrilling to me. looking out over the city at night, glowing lights and neon signs i cant for the life of me read. i am so blessed to be here, to be able to travel, to be able to see this nook of the world that is so different from anything that i have ever experienced. i had the goofiest smile the entire time, not able to get over the fact that this is my life. this is life!

i literally could not ask for anything more.