Livin' the Dream

So I think I thought of a tidy analogy to describe how I can sum up my first few months and how I try to look at life. So here it is Adam original thought.

"I live my life like eat my gummy bears. The unsavory yellows and greens first, so that I can enjoy the reds, oranges, and clear ones."

-side note, it shouldn't at all surprise you that I used gummy bears with my thoughts since maybe 2% of my conscience thought is devoted to them. Will maybe towards candy 2% is closer... Anywho

So there you have it, I really like it in life where you can get the hardest part over with first. Now this quote might be useless to anyone else, since they probably just believe that "getting started is the hardest" school of thought, but something with candy makes it click better with me. Pertinent to me presently, the quote sums up the beginning part of Seoul. I feel like I have made a good foundation at church and work with friends and people to be able to do stuff, and feel comfortable in either arena. There are still times where I get lonely and miss people, which to me is a little weird since I didn't have many of those feelings at all on the mission, but I feel good about each day, and there isn't a part of my life that I dread right now making it hard to have a tough day.

Dang It's been a few weeks since I have blogged! Yikes! I'll keep trying to do better and hopefully keep them down to a more manageable size to make. Well, we had a week off for Chuseok which is Korean Thanksgiving, it was really nice to have a little time off. Unfortunately, it was a week of cancellations and rain! The rain was pretty crazy, I have never seen it rain so hard, there were huge puddles everywhere, and some places where water was coming up from under the pavement of the street! Some of the things I did get to do were more noraebang, eat at Outback Steakhouse, play basketball with some people from work against Koreans, a small hike, night shopping all night, office season 6 party, and more but I am having trouble remembering since it was more than a week ago. The basketball was really funny. Where we played is kind of a park area where a lot of people are, and the basketball hoop didn't have a net, and the court surface was brick. We played 2 on 2 for awhile and then a group of Koreans who regularly meet at that court came and played pick up against my fellow teachers and I. The teachers I was with are pretty close to my height, but some of the Koreans were huge! Like some of the biggest koreans that I had seen in my time here and they all decided to play us. The people that were just hanging out at the park started taking an interest in our game and reacting when things happened it was pretty funny. The night shopping was really fun too. In some areas of Seoul, they have markets that don't open till one in the morning, and others that stay open for most of the night until sunrise. It is pretty crazy to see. Apparently, in this one area of Seoul, there are enough clothes to clothe the world... which I think is not an overstatement at all. We went to several different stores and walked around for quite awhile, but I got pretty tired. At about four in the morning I was going up several floors using escalators, and I would look in the mirrors that are on the sides of the escalators, and I kept seeing this foreign person. It took me a few seconds to realize that it was me. So once I would settle down, I would go to another floor and go through the same, who the heck is staring at me in the mirror thing. This happened on four consecutive floors and I was pretty sure at that point that I had hit my wall.

So just a quick summary for this weekend, I watched BYU lose again which was really sad, and had dinner at an Indian restaurant with a girl I met at church. So I have never really had good Indian food till I got here to Seoul! I really like it though, samosas and the garlic nan are definitely my favorite. I also saw a movie that turned out to be rated R oops! It was Resident Evil Afterlife, which is based like a video game and pretty much felt like you were watching a video game... Luckily there wasn't anything outrageous, but there were only two english movies to choose from so I was a little limited.

My kids are so funny at school. Each week, my first graders have a writing workshop, where they have a guided prompt to write about. This time the prompt was "make a creative story". Well maybe not the most creative prompt, but the kids really outdid themselves. All but one of the kids decided to write about me (or Adam Teacher in the stories) fighting a monster, saving people, or in one case a weird explanation of how the sun and moon were a long time ago? I must be fairly adept at using weapons and fighting in the kids minds. Some of my skills and weapons included swords, guns, scratching, long arms, hairy arms, and taekwondo. The settings ranged from at their family's Chuseok dinner, to the swimming pool, to their elementary class. I am not sure how they intended me to feel, but it definitely put a smile on my face. The one girl who didn't write about me fighting someone, wrote the following (paraphrased):

"A long time ago, the moon was called suji and the sun was called mingming and there was Adam Teacher. Adam teacher touched the sun and said owww that's hot. Then, he touched the moon and said owww that's cold. Then, the moon and the sun told Adam teacher, "Don't touch me." and Adam Teacher said, "Ok."

I am really lost on this one.

Alrighty food time! I have the food at the top and it is called Pat Bing Su, which is really hard to spell without korean letters and make it sound right. Anywho it is shaved ice topped with fruit and mochi and ice cream with red bean paste. The red bean paste isn't hot or anything and has a really nice texture with the ingredients. One thing about Koreans is that they really like remedies. Whether you have a hangnail or a cold or gout, you can be sure that Koreans have some food or recipe that you should eat for your specific ailment. I ate this with a Korean girl that I went on a date with, and she explains that Koreans ate the red beans to prevent seeing ghosts. Now mind you, not all ghosts just a specific type of ghosts. The red beans prevent only the ghosts that you see when you are really tired after exercise or a long day. I have yet to see any ghosts under these parameters, and have only the red beans to thank.

Alrighty! See you in the future!

Oh p.s. if you were to leave a comment, and google asks you to type the word so it knows your not a robot, write down what word it asks in your comment I always think those are funny.

One more thing here is my address if you feel the need to give me presents!

Adam Murphy
3rd Floor, Heonghwa Brown Building, 75 Dongsomoon-dong-4-ga
Sungbuk-gu, Seoul, South Korea
136-033