Pet peeve of the week....

In the US when you call pretty much anywhere you have sit through, press 1 for English, press 2 for Spanish, press 3 for Portugese, press 4 for Vietnemese, press 5 for Japanese, press 6 for French, press 7 for…..and so on and so forth…..

Now here I find myself in Korea, and I totally understand that Korean is their 1st language, but couldn’t they have essential things translated, at least in English?

This rant is started because I just got my washing machine installed yesterday, and of course all of the buttons are in Korean….which is a pain in the butt…but even the fricking owners manual is all in Korean, no translated section, pictures with English words…nadda…..hence the fact that I just managed to shrink my socks, because the water was on what I can only imagine was SUPER HOT….because my socks now look like they could fit a smurf.

Okay…now that I’m done bitching….about my last few days….which have been really good.

Sunday night I went with Tessa to the Vagina Monologues, she was in it. A group of about 20-25 women put together the first V-Day here in Changwon. It was AMAZING! The women were great, some parts of the performance were very emotional, which is the point of V-Day to help raise awareness and to stop violence against women and girls. They expected 30-50 people to attend and ended up turning away people at the door after selling 180 tickets. All of the proceeds went to a local women’s shelter. It was great!

Afterwards there was an After Party at a local bar that the foreigners go to, called O’Brien’s Irish Pub. It’s a pretty tight group of foreign teachers from all over the world and a group of Navy guys from Jinhae base. They had a ton of fun games, raffles, and prizes, all of the proceeds also went to the Masan Women’s Shelter.

I am halfway thru week 3, which is amazing to me…how has the last three weeks passed so quickly?

I haven’t gotten out much, I have been looking for a travel buddy, and finally realized that I am the best travel buddy I am going to have, so I have decided that at least one weekend a month, hopefully two, I am going to go to the local bus station and get on a bus to a new location. I may not know anything about where I am going…but I want to experience this country while I am here. I don’t want to say that I spent a year in South Korea and never left my apartment or Changwon.

I am going to go see my friend Stacy in Jinhae the first weekend in April for the Cherry Blossom Festival. There are a couple of other people that I know through friends of friends (and online), Cali, April, and Pamela who are here in South Korea that I am hoping to travel to see them in Busan, Ulsan, and Dageu. I’m a little nervous but I am looking forward to getting on a bus and just going…taking pictures and wandering around this beautiful country. The weather is starting to get nicer, turning to Spring and I am eager to travel around and see the country.