"Mom, you'll never believe what I had to do when I went to the United States!"

It has been ages since I've blogged. I know this. You know this. If right now you're saying, "No, Marianna. I do not know this." Look at the blog below this one, friend- it has been over a year.

Why have I neglected this blog for so long? It basically comes down to three things:

1)Lack of inspiration/blogworthy events

2)Being busy with other things

3)Laziness

Now, each one of these things contributes on some level to my own personal lack of blogs. However, I think the main issue is reason number one.

I feel very strongly about this. And I'll tell you why.

But first, let me remind you of how long it has been since I blogged: 1 year, 3 months, and 3 weeks. I have gone from Frequent Blogger to Occasional Blogger to Blogger-Who-Hasn't-Blogged-In-A-Long-Time-And-Really-Needs-To-Get-Her-Act-Together, and finally, to Former Blogger.

However, there's a chance I may return to Occasional Blogger status. I am currently working with an international student exchange program and I supervise university students who come to the US to work during their summer break. And now we have come full circle - reason number one: blogworthy events.

Today, I came across a scene so blogworthy, I was inspired - nay - compelled to blog about it. Let me explain.

There are currently 15 students living in a 3400 sq. ft., 5 br house here in town. They have all moved in over the last two weeks. There have been some heating issues at the house, so they have been using radiators along with the furnace. The house also has two wood stoves. Today, someone brought by some firewood for them to use. I had spoken with the landlord about the heating and some other issues, and I went over to the house to meet him at around 4:30 this afternoon.

When I walked into the house, I saw one of the students standing next to the wood stove in the living room. He had work gloves on, but no shirt. There was a nice fire burning in the fireplace, which you could see clearly, as the door had been taken off and was lying on the hearth. Also on the hearth, were a couple chunks of wood, a large butcher knife, a cardboard box containing small kindling-esque pieces of wood, and tiny bits of wood covering everything on the hearth and the carpet in front of it. Are you picturing it? It was ridicularious!*

Me: Uhh.. what happened to the stove?

Student:We started a fire.

Me:Is there something wrong with the door?

Student:I took it off.

Me:Can you put it back on?

Student:Yes, but then the heat can't come out.

I'm not kidding- that was the conversation. And here is the explanation for the comic scene I stumbled upon:

- The students wanted to start a fire, but they didn't have any kindling. Nor did they have an axe. Hence the butcher knife.

- However, carrying in a bunch of firewood and hacking it up with a butcher knife is a good way to get splinters. Hence the gloves.

- As you can imagine, without the door on the stove, that fire was burning pretty hot. Hence the shirtlessness.

I'm still not really sure why they chose to butcher the wood inside the house, rather than outside. I'm also not clear on why they thought you had to take the stove door off in order to let the heat out. But in a way, the rest of it makes sense. Doesn't make it any less funny, though.

*ridiculous and hilarious. Yes, I did just make that up.

Kids' Camp

Well, it's that time of the week again. For those of you who remember, or have just been paying attention, seven weeks ago I decided to start video blogging. Every week. On Tuesday. And I've been very good about it.

However, I am currently teaching extra classes, yesterday and today we had testing - which meant even more work (11 hrs total each day), and I was gone all weekend at a summer camp.

Summer camp would have been a great opportunity to take videos, right? And I thought I took a few, but I think that a couple of them may have accidentally been deleted (alternatively, I may have just imagined them). Consequently, here it is 11:00 pm on Tuesday night and all I have to share with you is one rather pathetic excuse for a video clip. In the spirit of consistency, I'm going to upload it anyway and supplement it with a few pictures and a blog about the camp, ok?

So here it is, the camp report.

Camp was great. I'm really glad I went, even though I didn't know anyone before Friday. Two weeks ago, I saw a notice in the bulletin saying that they were looking for volunteers for Vacation Sunday School for the weekend of Aug 8-10. I assumed that it was VBS and they just needed someone for a few hours during the day. I tried to talk to someone after church, but nobody was available. So I tried again after church last Sunday. This time I was able to talk to one of the children's church leaders and later, the children's pastor. At this point I found out that it was a children's camp. The leader that I talked with was very excited that I was volunteering and said that they needed more volunteers. They were heading out on Friday morning, but he said I could carpool with some other people who weren't able to make it Friday night.

So after work on Friday, I met up with some other volunteers and headed out to the camp. By the time we got there, it was nearly 11:00 and most people had gone to bed. I was fortunate enough to be sharing a room with three other women, rather than a room full of kids. Don't get me wrong, I love kids. But after teaching all week and having extra classes, then spending the weekend at a kids' camp - it was nice to at least get a break at night!

I had a group of 6 six kids - 3 boys and 3 girls. But most of the time, we combined our group with another group. A lot of the kids were friends and a few of them could be a bit difficult, so it was easier for Misol (the other counselor) and I to combine the groups. Here we all are!:

On Saturday, we went on some waterslides. We only had about an hour, though, so I decided that it was not worth the effort for just an hour and I wasn't going to participate- I'd just go alone. But when we got there, I saw that these were not your typical waterslides. Behold:
It appeared to be astroturf with hoses spraying it down. After a bunch of people went down, they told us that you really don't get all that wet - just a sprinkle on the legs - but it was a lot of fun. So Misol and I caved. Naturally, just as we were about to go down, tons of water started spraying everywhere. We got wet.

It was fun, though. I'm glad we went.

Kids' camp in Korea was a lot like kid's camp in the states. We had Bible stories:

In this picture, the kids were acting out the story of Jesus coming to see Mary and Martha after Lazarus died. The kid lying down isn't just taking a nap - he's supposed to be Lazarus.

We had crafts and games:

Our group won the games on Saturday night, which meant they got all the snacks they wanted. You can see that they were pretty happy about that.

We even had a campfire. Alas, there were no smores to be had, but this kid seemed to be enjoying the fire anyway.

We also lit candles to symbolize a commitment to share Jesus with our friends. This is where my ever-so-brief video comes in:


Campfire from Marianna Willey on Vimeo.

Like I said, I'm really glad I went. I haven't really been involved in my church since coming to Korea. I didn't know anyone before this weekend and I basically just go to church and leave right after the service. But helping out at kids' camp showed me how much I miss being involved and now I know some people, too! It was also a good opportunity to spend more time hanging out with Koreans. Including me, there were only three foreigners at the camp this weekend. I have a few Korean friends, but I spend most of my time hanging out with foreigners. So it was nice to get to know more Koreans.

I said that kids' camp here was a lot like kids' camp back home, but one thing that was a lot different was the food. Although I like Korean food, after eating kimchi and rice with every meal for two days, I was happy to come home and have a salad for dinner and breakfast food for breakfast the next morning.

So that's it for today, folks. I'll do my best to have a better video for you next week!

Burgers of Mass Destruction

This is one of my favorite things about teaching. The kids are hilarious. Click on the picture to enlarge it.

Galbi

Galbi (갈비) is one of the best things in Korea.

Really.

Watch the video.

Intro to Galbi 101 from Marianna Willey on Vimeo.

Wanna try some? All you have to do is come visit me, and we'll go enjoy some hot, tasty 갈비 on me. That's right, I'm offering to buy you dinner! How can you pass that up?

So, who's first?

Eeewww...

Monsoon season is here.

Before coming here, I was somewhat nervous about what the summer in South Korea would be like. I had heard that summers in Korea were very hot and very humid. Summer is my favorite season. I love the hot weather, the beach, sunglasses, flip flops, the beach, iced coffee, barbecues, and I even kind of like the beach. But I CAN"T STAND humidity. Actually, it's okay if it's at the beach. Because, well, it's the beach.. With all of that water, humidity is inevitable, but the breeze totally makes it okay. And anyway, it's the beach... so.. yeah. Did I mention that I like the beach?

It actually hasn't been as hot here as I thought it would be. But humidity? GROSS. It tends to hover around 90-100%. And as much as I love the rain (shhh.. don't tell), I do NOT like the rain when it is 85 degrees out. Today I was walking around in shorts, a tank top, and flip flops... in the rain... carrying an umbrella. So of course, my feet are getting wet, I am in immediate danger of eating pavement (flip flops are not built for traction - at least not the $4 (actually ￦4,000) flip flops that you buy at - you guessed it - the beach), and my arms are getting wet because the rain can't follow the rules and keeps sneaking under the umbrella. So I have that nice, cozy, cold, wet, sticky, hot feeling. It's great. I'm a really big fan. Not.

But I can deal with all of this. My A/C works well and I'm quite comfy in my little home. I ought to be - my utilities cost me $100 bucks more last month than they did the month before - I can only attribute this to the A/C.

So what's my real issue? Clearly I'm not a fan of humidity. Or monsoon season. But I've just stated that I can deal, so what's the point?

Cockroaches. I CAN'T DEAL WITH COCKROACHES. Seriously. I can deal with a lot of things, but I am TERRIFIED of cockroaches. I'm not kidding. I realize that the extent of my fear may be a bit irrational. Although cockroaches are gross, they probably won't kill me.* Also, I am much bigger than them and if I could overcome my fear, I would have a fighting chance of killing one. But my attempts at being logical are not helping. I live in constant fear that I will discover one in my apartment. Just writing this is giving me the heebie jeebies and I want to climb up on something where I know I'm safe. I don't like spiders, bees, or most other bugs and creepy crawly things but I can deal with them. If there's nobody else around to do it for me, I'll kill the nasty little things. But I'm afraid if I ever find a cockroach in my apartment, I'll be more inclined to just move out. I don't know how much longer I can talk about this, or I won't be able to sleep tonight. I'm totally serious here, guys. You know me, I've held snakes before, caught lizards, pet a tarantula once (this wasn't a pet tarantula, it was one a friend found in Mexico - admittedly, petting it was ill-advised), killed many spiders and bees, but I don't do cockroaches.

I'm scared because I feel like there isn't much I can do to protect myself. I know there are precautions I can take that will help, but I can't really prevent cockroaches from getting in my place. It's like when everyone around you gets sick, you think it might be a good idea to take vitamins, and get plenty of rest, and eat healthfully. And it is a good idea. And maybe it will keep you from getting sick, but there's no guarantee. THERE IS NOTHING YOU CAN DO TO GUARANTEE THAT YOU WON'T GET SICK.

Part of what has me so paranoid is that last week, there were a few cockroach sightings at work. One of them was at my desk. Fortunately, I wasn't sitting at my desk at the time. But my friend Emma (who sits next to me) said that a cockroach was running around on my desk and hers. Then they discovered that it had LAID EGGS UNDER MY KEYBOARD. Yeah. Really. Suffice it to say that I cleaned my entire desk area (fortunately, someone else cleaned up the eggs and cockroach remains first) and for the rest of the day, whenever I was at my desk, I was sitting with my legs crossed in my chair and my iPod turned up to drown out the fear.

Writing this at night was not a good idea. Now I need to go to sleep but I'm too creeped out. Maybe if I clean my living room (which is also my summer bedroom - the A/C is in the living room) while watching some TV, I'll be able to sleep in an hour. If I have roach dreams tonight, I'm going to be VERY unhappy.

* According to this website, "Cockroaches can carry pathogens that cause asthma, allergies, abscesses, boils, bubonic plague, diarrhea, dysentery, gastroenteritis, intestinal infections, leprosy, lesions, typhoid fever, urinary tract infections and more."