I seriously need to do laundry.

Spent an interesting weekend--and when I say spent, I mean SPENT, because I went shopping and bought SO MUCH that I might have set back my saving plans by weeks. Lord.

But I now have a pair of THE coolest boots on the face of the earth. For less than 40 bucks. And who can beat that, anyhow? I went shopping with Kristen, the girl who works at Avalon down the street from me. She's a lot of fun, and it's great to have a girl around again--especially one that likes to shop, bwaha. But I definitely spent too much too quickly.

I went dancing on Friday night at the 'hiphop' style club in Dunsan-dong called Cocoon. It's an intriguing place... good music, to an extent, but dancing there is slightly awkward. People watch you but don't approach you, and when they do, they're usually 20 years old, and their idea of dancing is basically to just latch onto you like a leech and try to suck the blood out of you. A friend told me that everybody at Cocoon was really young, and I didn't quite believe him (because he's old, haha). But once again, I'm realizing that I might be the 'young' one (at the remarkable age of 22, which apparently is really strange here), but the people on my level are much older--27-28-29. In fact the people that I most enjoy being with are around the 30s range. And while I love having an older group of friends, it's also a testament to how difficult the younger ones can be--like when you go to Cocoon and have awkward boys all over you.

Anyway after spending all Saturday shopping, I went to a birthday party of a friend of a friend over at the KAIST dorms. (And the dorm/apartments are much nicer than mine. Putain.) Failed at playing Korean drinking games, (which was a consumption disaster, I will tell you that), then ended up at--of course--Sponge, where I ran into friends who like to play pool and darts for drinks. All in all, we can say that I got the week's stress out of my system, and then spent all day Sunday at the jjimjilbang recovering.

This jjimjilbang that I went to was great though, they had all kinds of stuff in there. The outside waiting area, where the entrances to the saunas were, had a fake waterfall with little bridges and cars and people. And it was awesome. In the bathing area they had a really hot room with a really cold pool, and I loved that. I met a woman who had lived in DC for five years, and at first I had no idea that she was even Korean. Her English was so good that I thought she was foreign. (Is that a bad assumption?) Anyway I had a great time chilling out, and then I went home and napped.

Things at work have been stressful. Rumor has it that the husband is watching the cameras from the wife's center, and while I've heard nothing about how I am 'misbehaving' or 'not teaching properly', my boss has called up my coworker to tell him super anal things. I'm worried that the hands of corporate Korean hagwon madness are going to start closing on my already dwindling soul. I'm struggling to be a better teacher, but the weight of things is just pressing too hard. Once and a while I just need a little faith. Someone to say--"you're doing okay." or, "You handled this correctly." Instead of this constant silence, thin smiles, and continual avoidance. Or, my least favorite thing, "Maggie, why did you do this?" And it's been five months, so now it's really hard for me to say "I just didn't know." But there are things that I just don't know, because nobody tells me anything. And contrary to popular belief, I don't read minds, and I didn't really have much training, and someone who as worked with a program for 5 months, simply doesn't know the same amount about it as someone who has worked there for five years.

Sigh. At least it's getting warmer.