almost xmas time!

whew! this day flew by! i had the day off because the students would be taking high school entrance exams (now that i think about that it doesn't make sense lol ...well, anyway they were taking some kind of test and i didn't have to be there!) so that was nice.

i got up, had breakfast, did stuff on the internet and then i realized it was almost 12pm! so i did the mountain of dishes we had lying on the counter, took a shower and then started in on stuffing envelopes with our christmas letter and addressing them. it took forever! i'm still not done. i had to stop at 2:45pm to take the dogs to the vet to be groomed.

it's always funny walking down the street with two dogs- especially since they look so similar and usually walk side-by-side all cute :o) it's especially noticeable in korea since most people either don't have dogs or don't walk them outside. anyway, i told the vet the dogs might be staying with him for a few days this winter in between friends of ours who will be watching them and i let him know we'll need a certificate of health for the two dogs when we take them back to the states with us.

i keep wondering what the dogs will think when we get to the states!

anyway, after dropping off the dogs i went and mailed the letters that i had finished so far. it was only 11,000won so that wasn't too bad. i don't remember how many letters it was but it was quite a few- maybe 20!

at this point i hadn't eaten lunch so i went into paris baguette and got this cream cheese croissant thing that was pretty good. then i grabbed some potatoes at yeonsan mart for dinner tomorrow night.

the weather was really nice today which surprised me because the forecast was snow. it was pretty sunny and not too cold- either this texan has really adjusted to cold weather or it just really wasn't that cold lol

it was nice walking around that area- it's around where we used to live and there's this long outdoor market along the street. it's quite small but nice. we used to walk our dogs through there and everyone would ooh and aah lol

i walked back home and felt glad i had gotten out in the sunny weather for a bit.

back at home i started putting together the presents for my teachers. i got coffee mugs, mini candy canes and a small xmas ornament for all of my co-teachers, the 2nd grade staff room teachers (because my main co-t is a 2nd grade homeroom teacher and i have a desk in their office), for my english lab officemate and for the teacher's english class teachers'. all in all it's 19 mugs. plus i got a cute gift for the japanese teacher i befriended this year. after getting those ready i started assembling the goodie bags for my english club students. it's 10 students and i got them cute socks, noisemakers, firecrackers, erasers, xmas stickers and candy. it's pretty cutesy but high school students here seem to like cute stuff more than ones back home. i think they'll like it. if anything they'll appreciate the candy :o)

i took a break to go pick up the dogs from the vet. they're still cute but i like them more with longer hair. we needed to get them shaved because we're about to hand them off to dog-sitters for a long time and their hair would get really gross after a while.

at 8pm i took a break from wrapping presents to eat dinner. i just made a couple quick veggie fajitas and ate while i watched canada's next top model. i was watching season 1 and i was really disappointed to find out that no episodes past 8 are on youtube :o( so i just started the next season.

after dinner i wrote aaaaaallll the xmas cards for the teachers and by 10pm i was finally done! lol that took way longer than i expected lol

on another note- i found a bunch of pictures i thought i had lost forever!!!! way back in august i off loaded pics from ben and viv's visit to jens's computer really quickly and when it was done i just grabbed my camera and left. later i went back to find the pictures and they were nowhere to be found. jens searched his computer too and he couldn't find them. i was so devastated! it was all the pics from our trip to seoul with ben and viv and then some. i had totally written it off until today when i off loaded more pics from my camera to jens's computer and then couldn't find them. this time i knew the exact name i had tagged the photos as and was able to search for them and find them. turns out they were in the same place as my long lost photos! windows photo gallery! duh! lol i dunno why jens couldn't find them before lol anyway, i've got them and i should be adding them to facebook soon. so that was a nice surprise today :o)

it's back to the grind tomorrow. i'll be handing out all my gifts. (i already gave the principal and vp their gifts on tues. ) i'm gonna feel like santa! lol i'm hoping it goes a long way to persuade the p and vp that they should let me take the vacation i planned on. all the foreigners are having a really hard time with this vacation nonsense. the education office is basically totally changing everything at the last minute and making a lot of people very angry. it sucks. jens and i are gonna stand our ground and hope we get what we want but if it comes down to it we're just gonna quit. it's not worth it to stay. we have a great vacation planned that we've been wanting to take for years, the tickets are booked, it's pointless to hang out at our schools all winter doing nothing and i think it's just wrong of the educ. office to change everything on the foreigners at the last min. so that's that! we'll see what happens. i have a feeling my co-t will bring i up tomorrow.

anyway, i should get to bed. it's 11pm. i've managed to update a couple days in a row now so maybe i can continue the trend. i stopped updating for a long time because i just got really busy and i've lived here so long i feel like i don't have anything extraordinary to write about anymore. i'm so used to living in korea now lol but even the mundane might be interesting to someone. so we'll see.

ok goodnight!
ps- IT'S SNOWING! ^^