Year in Review (Yes, One of Those =p)

In 2010, my New Year's Resolution was to move to Korea. Mission accomplished.

I spent New Year's Eve this year with Stella and Jessica, which was eighty thousand times better than my original plan of pizza and cleaning my apartment (which still hasn't happened). Stella pointed out that New Year's is a projection of your entire year, so for me, 2011 will involve losing at Pop-o-matic Trouble, The Game by Milton Bradley ;), seeing Calvin, knitting, spending way too much money (*ahem* 70만원) on clothes and shoes, and laughing way too much. And eating Indian food. Of course :)

So, in review - moved to Korea at the end of January (i.e., Happy Birthday, Mom! Your daughter is moving to the other side of the planet!). As I have overcome a lot of culture shock, I don't really remember what initially traumatized me. Lots of getting lost was involved. Met Lisa, and friendship was immediately formed. We may or may not have become absolutely insane when we went shopping together and realized that we had way too much in common.

Early spring didn't raelly bring warm weather, but it did bring Beck! I hadn't seen her in years, and we had a night I will probably never remember (well, what parts of it I *can* remember). Beck introduced me to Tim, who became my every-weekend buddy in spring and summer....and who introduced me to the fun of Korean department stores. And Coach. And to the idea that I really don't have to take crap from people if I don't want to. And to Park, which was ehhhh, but Park introduced me to Calvin (이선구) who ended up becoming one of my favorite Korean friends - even though he is the busiest person on the planet (sorry, Obama, you have nothing on this kid).

Tim then introduced me to Siobhain, who introduced me to Siobhain, a fellow knitter, who introduced me to Cait, Caroline, and Riah....and to Dongdaemun. When the tragedy of TIM LEAVING FOR AMERICA occurred, Sio helped me fill my sorrow with yarn. Lots of yarn. At first, I was really good about being responsible and buying only what I could knit.....but now I have a giant container of it on the floor of my laundry room.

Fall brought much closeness to Siobhain, Cait, Caroline, and Riah. I don't think I was what they expected and vice versa, but they are now my family here. Thanks to our awesome common interest my knitting leveled from Giga to Eagle (yay for CDI level references).

Winter brought the end of Lisa, my BEST FRIEND IN KOREA (^^^) :( However, I'm not too sad because it's really obvious that she will be back.

This year's resolution? Don't get caught up in boy drama. And knit a positive amount of yarn (in other words, have less yarn in my collection than I do now). And, you know, lose weight, stay in touch with family better, learn Korean, blah blah blah ;)

Loss and Gain (or, The Final Shopping Trip and Yarn+Hello Kitty)

Last weekend brought one of the worst things since coming to Korea. Tim, one of my closest friends here, moved back to America for grad school. It was like a giant fist with the words "HAHA TEMPORARY!!" flew through the air and smashed me right in the liver. I (metaphorically) doubled over in pain, gagging like crazy, and when I looked up, he was already back in America. Tim's Last Weekend was awesomeness that involved a "surprise" birthday party (that he asked for and made the guest list for and requested the location for) and then a final day of shopping (don't worry concerned parties (again, parents), I avoided The Gap and went to Uniqlo, which has Target prices).

Like the passing of the Olympic torch, Tim ended his time by passing me his Shinsegae point card.

Tim filled a pretty big void in my life that I thought I'd left behind in America when I said bye to Joey and Chase (who, thank goodness, have stepped in with some fantastic Skype conversations the last few weeks...even though Joey really needs to get a microphone ASAP): the platonic male friendship in which no topic is taboo with an understood wavelength that just automatically synchs, so that there's no need to explain what we're not looking at when we talk about it (or, well him ;)), or to provide context for a thought that comes out of nowhere.

This weekend, I had all intentions of staying in bed. One, I'm allowing myself a weekend of wallowing in minus-Tim depression..and, two, Intensives are kicking my butt and I'm quite sleep deprived. However, it was Siobhain's birthday, and she really wanted to go yarn shopping...so I crawled out of Suji and arrived in Seoul 3 hours late. The idea was that I'd miss Dongdaemun so I wouldn't be seduced by things that I didn't need, but then we ended up at Banul and I saw this yarn and....just couldn't help myself *^^*

Now to figure out what to make with it. I have 3 balls - they're each different dye lots, but they're pretty similar.

The original plan involved seeing Inception - which Cait and I had already seen, but could totally handle seeing again - but the only showings by that time started at 10:00 pm. As only one of us lives a decently-priced cab ride home away, we decided to forego that, and go to the Hello Kitty cafe in Sinchon. In case you haven't noticed from lack of pictures on this blog, I kinda need to charge my camera (for a few months now *^^*), so I didn't have it on me and OH MY GOSH DID I REGRET IT (which only means I have to go back). It was just the right amount of cuteness AND the coffee was decently priced for a novelty cafe! We got Sio a cute Hello Kitty cake with candles. When Cait and Caroline add their photos on facebook, I'm going to tag myself in them ;p

So..when this intensive nightmare is over, I think I'm going to go through my yarn and tag it all...plus make a list of patterns on ravelry since I'm constantly haunting that site..