Childlike joy...

“I do not miss childhood, but I miss the way I took pleasure in small things, even as greater things crumbled. I could not control the world I was in, could not walk away from things or people or moments that hurt, but I took joy in the things that made me happy.” 

― Neil Gaiman, The Ocean at the End of the Lane

     There have been a lot of emotions going on lately in my friend group.  There has been heartache, fear of the unknown of returning home, anxiety over our futures, and anger towards dripping ceilings(more on that later).  So to deal with all of this we did what every mature adult would do, we played.

On Saturday, Beth and I started the day with getting haircuts.  My first experience getting a haircut in Korea was interesting to say the least.  The poor man tried his hardest to get my hair flat and straight, but its just not going to happen.  After two hours of blow drying, thinning, and pulling my hair straight he told me, "straight perm, then beautiful" oh Korea.  

After the haircuts Beth and I went to a Mustoy shop.  This is a shop where you get a white ceramic figurine and you color it with markers. Since I am lacking artistic talent, I decided to try and make mine into the character sadness from the movie Inside Out.  While I think mine is cute see where my lack of artistic skills comes in?  

Now don't read too much into me choosing sadness (trust me mom, I am OK) and if you have seen the movie (which you all should) you will know that one of the big lessons in the movie is that sadness is important and part of all of our lives.  Also I just think the character is adorable. 

So to add to my embarrassing lack of artistic talent Beth made an amazing Batman.

 The best part of the whole Mustoy experience was the little scenes the shop had set up for you to photograph your dolls once they were colored.

 Every time I look at this I just have to laugh, its looks so sad, just my doll staring at the sky by herself in a convertible.

I'm considering taking this with me on all future trips.  How great would it be to have photos of this confused/sad looking doll in front of famous monuments?

 Then because coloring dolls and having a photo shoot was not enough childlike fun we got monster cupcakes!!! 

Saturday was fun but we really went for it on Sunday.  Sunday we went to Vaunce Trampoline Park.  

Yes that would be just a giant room full of trampolines.  

Apparently I stick my tongue out a lot while jumping, who knew?  Beth and I were the only adults jumping and we were a hit with the kids.  Wherever we went we had a crowd just watching us.  We couldn't really tell if the children were impressed or terrified.

Jumping on trampolines is very hot and sweaty work.

Sometimes its necessary to just have some good simple fun.  

Now onto the hatred of dripping water.  A week ago Friday night, I heard the drip of water.  At first I ignored it, but then half way through the night I realized it might actually be a problem  so I turned on my light and found this:

Not that bad right?  Easy fix, find the leak fix it, take the light down and only cut out this tiny square to replace?

That night:                                                                    and Sunday morning: 

Over the week it just kept growing and growing, I'm now very good at falling asleep to the sound of rain inside my apartment. My biggest concern was the ceiling caving in under the weight of the water, that should not have been my biggest concern.  What should have been my biggest concern was the fact that the water was going through the light so when I went to poke the ceiling I got electrocuted.  Yeah thats right, an electric current was running through this entire beast.  You will see in the second picture that a nice man who seemed like he knew what he was doing came in and taped up the wires.

This is how big the beast was on the surface after a week of dripping.  Friday night the water magically stopped dripping. 

By this time the beast had spread to my wall, thankfully my father has taught me well enough that I knew enough to turn off the breaker so there was no chance of more electricity running through.

Saturday evening I came home to this:

They had torn the wallpaper off, yes I have wallpaper on my ceiling.  Saturday night, the dripping started again.  Only now the wallpaper is not funneling all the water to one place, so now I have 4 containers trying to collect all the drips.  

The landlord comes almost every day and he seems like he's trying to fix it and wants to fix it.  However he is an 80 year old man who speaks no English so I have to go through my boss to try and get everything sorted.  He came one day while I was still sleeping, so I had to jump out of bed and put clothes on.  He then gave me money and told me to go eat.  This morning he came once again while I was sleeping.  This time he was ready with phrases already translated in his phone.  While they were definitely not translated correctly it was adorable that he tried.  One of the messages said, "Yesterday I see the water fowl."  I'm assuming he is not telling me he saw some geese, so hopefully this means they found the problem.  

A week after the US's Memorial Day, Korea had their Memorial Day.  I would like to say we went to the War Memorial because it was Memorial Day but honestly we forgot it was until we got there.  I will also preface these photos by saying we tried really hard to be stoic and respectful, but that's really hard and not much fun.  Also the Koreans were not being somber so we figured we were ok.

These boats are called turtle boats because they have hard spikes covering the top.  These ships are apparently very important to Koreans (they helped defeat an invading Japanese force in the 1500's) because my kids can tell me all about these but they cannot tell me about the Korean War.  Random story from my classroom: Yesterday one of my kids told me they were going to Hawaii, so I told him he has to visit Pearl Harbor and told them a little bit about what happened there.  Somehow that conversation moved to the Titanic to turtle ships.  I was a little bit more proud of myself than I should be that I knew what they were talking about. 

This was a very cool art piece representing all the soldier, Korean and foreign, who died during the Korean War.  A video played having the tear drop of dog tags drip.  Everytime it dripped the dog tag and name of a soldier who died showed on the floor. 

We got excited thinking this was going to be an interactive part.  It was not.

They had a green screen to take photos with.  Unfortunately there was a line, or we might have taken a photo with every background available.

 We heard an announcement in Korean, but since neither of us speak Korean we ignored it.  Apparently the announcement was about a Korean Special Forces Tae Kwon Do demonstration.  We go there to see them pack up their mats.

The tanks are cool but the reason I took this photo was because of the kid.  He thought he was so cool standing in front of that tank.

Remember when I said we couldn't hold the stoic and respectability for very long?  A Titanic pose was a must on the war ship.

I also visited a palace and the "Secret Garden." When the palace was in use only the kind and queen (and hoardes of gardeners) were allowed inside the garden, which is what makes it secret.  Now its still secret because you are required to go on a guided tour if you want to see it.  Since it was more a forest with ponds and pagodas than a traditional garden, I would have much rather just walked through on my own.

 Look mom, hostas!

And finally to end this great weekend we went to a Canadian restaurant.  I know what you are thinking, how can you have a Canadian themed restaurant?  Well its quite simple, paint everything red and white and play hockey on a giant screen.  We of course ordered poutine and our drinks came in sports water bottles. 

Life has changed quite a bit in the past month, two of my close friends have left and a new teacher has started at my school.  On top of that I only have 2.5 months left at my school! Crazy right? I can't believe time has gone so fast.  However just as I adjusted to moving here, I will once again adjust to this new chapter.