my bad my bad...i haven't written in ages. bad natalie. so my year in yeongwol has finished and i've renewed for another year in wonju. wonju is the largest city in the province (not too big for korea at around 300 thousand). Wonju is not the nicest looking city but it's got a far amount of stuff i didn't have in yeongwol. there are two american army bases and a korean one so there are tons of army guys. there are also tons of foriegners which is very wierd for me. it's full of american restaurants and you can even buy cheese in the stores. seoul is about an hour and 15 minutes away so there will be no shortage of supplies.

seamus also moved to wonju and we have a nice apartment about a 10 minute walk from one of the downtowns. Compared to where i was last year this apartment is huge. there are 2 bedrooms, a hallway, a living room and a huge balcony. the area is pretty nice too, lots of restaurants and bars (but it's still quiet at night). the downtown near us (Lotte Cinema) has a movie theather, a grocery store and many many restaurants including outback, subway, pizza places and coffee shops. basically i'm going to get fat.

my school is an all girls school. i teach gr 1 and 2 (canadian 7 and 8). the classes are bigger than what i had in yeongwol at about 36 students a class. and i teach alone. this is not too bad (although i have to tell them to be quiet all the time) excpet when there are translation problems. it's the worst when you know they aren't getting it and you have no idea how to make it clearer. oh well.

before moving to wonju seamus and i went back to canada to meet the future in-laws and stock up on supplies. his family loves me so that's always good.

this last weekend was Chusok (korean thanksgiving) so we had a 4 day weekend. it gave us time to explore wonju a bit. there are about 3 downtowns and the city is pretty spread out. but it seems like it will be a nice place to live. well that's the update for now

so i'm getting into the habit of abusing my blog. bad natalie. well i can make it up by giving some big news: I'M ENGAGED!!!! some guy actually managed to sweep me off my feet. so if you haven't guess yet it's Seamus O'Ryan from victoria. we've set the date for January 31, 2009 in victoria. should be fun. he proposed 2 weeks ago in sokcho (the city he lives in here in korea). it was very sweet. he brought me breakfast complete with a ring. very suave. hehehe

then the weekend after that we hide from the world. we realized that we hadn't had a weekend to ourselves so we didn't tell anyone where we were going and hide. we stayed in sokcho (so we could actually get some rest) and did nothing. it was wonderful. we read, watched some movies, and basically just relaxed. seamus even surprised me by taking me horseback riding.

this week was pretty good. on thursday it was teacher's day. there was a ceremony where each teacher got flowers and then the students sang us the "teacher's song". didn't know there was one.

this weekend is the KOTESOL meeting in sokcho so back up there i go. there is also a beach party that could be fun. well that's about all for now.

so last weekend was the King's festival here in Yeongwol. one of the kings was held captive and eventually murdered by his uncle and the festival is a reminder of that. the friday i had the day off of school so i could see the sights. in the morning i went with kate to the king's tomb to see all the kids having an art competition. then in the afternoon we headed to the riverside to look at the booths. there was an interesting variety of events there. there was a soju booth (korea vodka) complete with dancing soju bottles (why not), tons of food booth, booths selling various different things and craft booths for kids. we came across some guys dressed as tortured victim and before i knew it i was in a wooden cage with a yoke around my neck for all the see. i then got to flail a man and he did it back to me (this got filmed at put on the news later...got many comments on that). i also got to ride a donkey for free (sometimes it's great being a foreigner).

in the evening there was a concert and fireworks. seamus surprised me by coming that night (he told me he wouldn't be there till the next day). then there was more dancing with the soju bottles and more eating.

the next morning was the king's funeral procession (they recreate it every year). that was really cool. they had a coffin and his wives in morning and most of the town in costumes for his subjects. we took lots of pictures and the reporters even decided that we were more interesting than the parade for a while. so again we got put on the news for watching the parade.

then we headed back to the riverside where seamus joined me again in being a torture victim. there was a marching band and more looking around.

we all headed back then for some food and settlers of cattan (which i won).

the sunday was pretty uneventful. saw a tipe rope walker and said goodbye to everyone. still it was the best festival i've been to in korea and it was in yeongwol. nothing happens in yeongwol.

so this weekend was another one of annie's famous parties. it was to celebrate about 6 different birthdays in march. the theme was 80s and toga (strange combintion but it worked). i headed down with the sokcho crew all dressed in our 80s clothing. we somehow managed to crame about 100 people into annie's apartment and the scary thing is that not even annie knew most of the people there. well it was crazy times for all even complete with greasy macdonald's breakfast the next morning. i love theme parties!

so the other weekend annie, andrew, seamus and i heading heading off from gangneong to samcheuck to see a famous korean park. the legend goes that there was this virgin who was engaged to a fisher man. but the night they were to marry he did not come back because of a storm so unstable she threw herself into the sea. the fishing village soon discovered that she was cursing the village and therefore they did what anyone would do. they erected sulptures of giant penises to appease her. of course why didn't i think of that. so now we have this park...this penis park. the whole park is full of penises. broonze, wood, stone. there are penis chairs and penis canons and yes even a 12 foot broonze penis. and the crazy thing about this is that family comes from all over korea to visit. there are pictures of children taking in front of the statues. it's insainity. only in korea.

I know I know I've been horrible and haven't written anything in...well since vietnam. So I guess you can see by my writing a new message that I didn't die coming back from Vietnam or anything of that sort.

Right now I'm back at school in my second week since classes started. Things look pretty much the same as last semester with the same crazy boys and not so helpful co-teachers but what can you do.

Just before classes started again seamus and I went to the DMZ. We figured we were in the area so why not. It's as everyone has described it as and as everyone would think it to be: a piece of land with some barb wire. But even though it wasn't the most exciting attraction it was pretty cool to see. Once. We even got spoiled by some Koreans. After taking a local bus for about an hour we got to the ticket booth only to find out that there wasn't a shuttle bus to the site like we had previously been informed. We were gonna turn back when this Korean couple (who spoke no English) told us we could come with them. They were so sweet. Not only did they drive us up there in their car but they gave us money for the viewers, took pics for us, and drove us all the way back to sokcho. Gotta love the Korean hospitality.

Last weekend I again went up to sokcho. Friday night was jean's birthday party so we all went over to her place and created mii characters, pigged out on food and played wii. Then Frankie and I caught a bus (both for gangneong and then I left her with annie to head on to sokcho) Arriving in sokcho that night was mostly hanging out with friends (the bus was late so I didn't get in till about 11:30). Saturday was the KOTESOL meeting and then everyone went out for lunch and drinks. The next morning seamus, annie and I were gonna go hiking but well...we got lazy so we ordered pizza and went for a walk on the beach. It was a nice relaxing weekend.

Frankie, kim and I are looking into starting some marital arts soon. We might start gumdo (sword fighting). There are 2 places here and now we just need to bribe jean to come translate for us as we look to see if one of them is where we want to go. Kim and I have also started doing some yoga in the mornings so it looks like it's gonna be an active semester which is great cause I'm feeling so lazy being trapped inside by the cold all winter.