"Oh my gosh! I thought it was branches!"

I went to dinner last night at a "traditional" Korean restaurant. My friend Kathryn is also a lactose intolerant vegetarian, so when she pointed to one of the many side dishes strewn about the tabletop and said, "This is so good, seriously... have some," I didn't give it a second thought. I was well into my third precarious chopsticked bite, mid-chew, when our friend Billy sat down at the table.

"You guys know that's squid, right?"

I nearly threw up.

After hastily chewing the remainder in my mouth and trying not to gag as I swallowed, I washed it down with some water. As much as I didn't want to think about eating squid- something I never even ate as a non-vegetarian- it was probably really funny for Billy to witness two known herbivores chowing down on squid. Needless to say, I'm pretty certain that this will be an ongoing joke of ours for some time.

This week at work started out a little rocky. I inadvertently made a boy cry. We made up by the end of class though, high 5-ing like old pals. Monday and Tuesday were frustrating because it seemed like over the weekend all my students forgot every word of English they knew. By today though they all got it back. One of the rather funny aspects of my job is giving vocab tests. It's probably inappropriate to say what some of my students have mistakenly written down, but it always makes me giggle nonetheless.

The BEST NEWS of the week is that my boyfriend booked his ticket to come see me! He'll be here in 2.5 weeks. Don't worry, I'll save everyone the sappy anecdotes on how I feel about him coming here. Just know that I am beyond happy :)

I'm starting to feel a lot more settled here. My mom asked me today the key differences that I was feeling between living in NYC and living here. That's a hard question. Obviously there's the language barrier. I want to learn some Korean, if for nothing else, so I can just not seem rude when people talk to me! I don't even know how to properly say hello! Also, there are no sidewalks in the neighborhood I live in, and the streets are very narrow. So every day walking to work it seems like I'm constantly within millimeters of being hit by a (slow moving) car. But so far, I traded one city for another, so it's going to take a little more time for me to have a nice long tally of differences. That should be an ongoing list I make. Noted.

Going to the hospital tomorrow morning to get my physical for my alien registration card. This is so bizarre!