September Flying By~

I found another cool copy of Phantom of the Opera.

Hello all! Wow, September is flying by!

It was another busy week of drama club, classes, Korean classes and hanging with friends. It seems like it was a tough week for everyone. The other teachers were all tired and my friends and I all seemed to have some downer classes lately. But, I still had some good classes and good Korean classes/practice, so I had a decent week. I also had some really delicious school lunches!

Here she comes to save the day! Yogurt lady!
They deliver and sell yogurt and juice and stuff

Mandu soup and quail eggs YUM I LOVE IT

I'm also a huge fan of these coffee pouches they sell
now. You can get one for about $1 and they have
lots of flavors. Delicious and cheap!

On Thursday, I didn't have 5th grade because they were on a field trip, but some guy from the drama club festival organization came to our school today to help my students out with their show. I'm not much help in these instances because of the whole speaking in Korean thing, but I just observed and tried to keep the kids under control.

My kids practicing "The Rainbow Fish"

This dude helped out.

He gave us lots of useful suggestions. My handler and I, along with the kids, have a lot of work to do! We perform in November! Yikes!!! That's only a month and a half away!!!

Cesca and I noticed something weird on the
KFC sign...

an odd combo of ddeokbokki, pumpkin porridge, kiwis and
walnut pie. It was all delicious but weird together

sometimes my students draw stuff when
they finish early

a great likeness!!

On Friday, we went to my neighbor's house to meet with a bunch of our waygookin friends to just eat pizza, hang out and play cards against humanity. It was a nice, stress relieving Friday evening. Mom sent us a bunch of cookies in her last care package, so Cesca and I shared some with our friends. And then we ate a whole box by ourselves in my apartment. Chewy Chips Ahoy for the win!!! Except man they are waaaaaaay smaller than I remember. We killed them off in a weekend. Oops. So good though. I digress.

On Saturday, we met up with Lauren and a guy from my Korean class to try this new place called the Vault, which is an escape room. Apparently, these are all the rage in Seoul right now. 

the menu was secret agent style.

our goal was to steal the diamond and escape. We failed haha.
Apparently only 25% of people make it through. We want to try again!

We stayed out at the Vault for a bit because the drinks were also good and cheap for Seoul prices, and it was fun to hang and chill. Then, Cesca and I came home and watched more Brooklyn 99, which is what I've been watching recently cause it's hilarious and Cesca kept reccomending it to me. 

On Sunday we slept in and got some delicious Korean food from the shop near my house (they didn't have galbi mandu today though, whyyyyyy) and watched more TV. We left early and headed to Hongdae because Cesca wanted a Korean book for her language exchange stuff.

I've been in a very Phantom of the Opera mood lately (of course, but moreso than lately), and I almost made it out of the bookstore without seeing this, but while I was waiting at the checkout with Cesca, the cover caught my eye and I thought, "wow, that'd be a cool cover for Phantom!"

Of course it was and you know I can't resist buying things like that. I tried for a hot second and then I saw the inside. 

Keep in mind I have multiple copies in America, and shouldn't need many more. And yet, here I am.

At home I think I have 2 French copies (One from my first trip to Paris where my friends and I found it in a small bookshop near the river and another copy from the Palais Garnier from my second trip to Paris), an Italian copy from my semester in Italy and probably 3 or 4 English copies just because. 

I may have acquired a couple more...

I can stop anytime, I swear.

When I came to Korea, I bought one copy because I liked the cover (I found it at the English bookstore WhatThe Book in Itaewon), one because it had some Korean vocab in it, one because it was all Korean, one in Japan, and now my last one because it has gorgeous pictures in it. I kind of wish there was a whole manga series in this style. Well, my wallet doesn't wish that. My heart does.

I love this artwork

Look at how ghost like he is! Sneaking around, listening to gossip! Ugh it's so cool. Here are some more of my favorites. 

The Phantom harassing people in Box 5

Christine hears the Angel of Music in her dreams

Christine visits the graveyard at Perros and Raoul follows

the Masquerade ball where the Phantom comes as Red Death.
Christine and Raoul are the black and white dominoes at the bottom

Christine disappears before Raoul's eyes
in the dressing room after the ball

Christine confesses her strange tale under
Apollo's Lyre, where the Phantom is
hiding and overhears it all

After Christine's disappearance, Raoul follows the Persian
down to the Phantom's lair

Christine kisses the Phantom on the forehead
and he's so happy he let's her go and dies in peace

arg it's just so pretty. 

I was so excited to take picures of the book, but first, DANCE CLASS. I haven't been dancing in a while because of days off, illness and last week I went to see Young Ah, so it was a rough class haha. I will be sore tomorrow. 

We learned a sexy girl dance today, Hyuna's Roll Deep, which is quiiiiite sexy. 

We only learned about a minute of the dance because our teacher wanted to spare our poor knees, since the dance involves a lot of knee work, apparently. If you're not into Kpop, you'll probably not like this song. It's not super my style, but I like Hyuna and 4Minute, and I like that Hyuna embraces being sexy even though she gets criticized for it. Basically the song is like "yeah everyone is jealous cause I'm awesome."

Cesca posted the video if you want to see it here

My whole body hurts. The dancers work HARD in that video man. Not just my knees, but my arms and legs and feet are all sore. OUCH. But it felt good and was a fun class, so I'm happy to be back. We miss next week because of Chuseok though... sad face...

I went home and cooled down with some Doctor Who (I'm giving it another go even though season 8 was an annoying disaster). Sadly, the weekend is already over and another week must begin. 

~~

Besides Hyuna, I was super into Phantom again (surprise) this week, and I really hope it comes back to Korea soon. Like, next year. Soon.

I've also been back on a Park Hyo Shin kick this week since Cesca heard someone playing Wildflower on the street the other day and sent me a video. She loves that song now. Lately, I've had "After Love" stuck in my head. 

The music video for the song is very sad but beautiful, but it's also 13 minutes long. Check it out if you have time. The song means more that way.

(You can turn on CC for english captions)

The story is that Park Hyo Shin lives in Swizterland with his girlfriend and his best friend lives there too. PHS finds out he has cancer and has a month to live. Knowing he's going to die, he pulls a PS I Love You and sends her a message 1 year later, telling her to stop wallowing and to meet where they first kissed. Enlisting the help of his friend, he sets up clues so they'll meet on top of a mountain, where said friend will sing the song PHS wrote (as he was dying) for her, called "After Love."

If you read the lyrics, he seems to have written the song from her perspective. In the video, she often calls him Babo or babo-ya, which means fool, as a nickname and the refrains start with "Fool, where are you? Can you not leave me?" and the song continues to talk about memories and yearning for someone that left. Obviously it could be a breakup song, but with the video, it seems like the context is little different. In my mind, he knows she hasn't moved on with her life (the message he sends her says some things like "You haven't washed your hair today right? Or changed your clothes yest? Can't do anything without me, huh?") and he wants to inspire her to get moving and go forward. Since I love PS I Love You kinds of things, I love this video.

I like the song a lot and the MV is really touching and sad. Plus it's shot in Switzerland so the scenery is gorgeous. Take a peek if you have time!

Off to another work week! Enjoy the still warm and sunny weather!