Kimchi and Sweet Tea: Snow for Valentine's Day

We got a really wonderful surprise for Valentine's Day here in Ulsan: tons of snow.

Apparently, it hasn't snowed like this here in forever. When I woke up on Monday, Valentine's Day, the last thing on my mind was "hey look! It's snowing!"
The first thing on my mind was "How does 10:30 in the morning feel so incredibly early!?" *snooze*

I made it through almost all of my morning wash, makeup, dress routine before I even noticed the snow. I instantly texted my manager just to make sure that everything was on schedule (remembering how long it took to get to work last time) and she said that everything was so I left right then to make sure that I would get there on time.

This is how my little road looked:

Not so impressive yet. This was about noonish.

It is snowing, although my camera doesn't pick up snow really well. . .

Snoooooooooooooooooow!

Here's a video!

My bus stop. A LOT less traffic this time, since the roads were actually clear.

On the way to work. It was snowing harder and harder the closer I got to work!

This is the bus stop where I normally get off to go to work. I spend a lot of time waiting for this light here. And get a lot of delicious food from that Paris Baguette. (remember that Busan blog I had a long time ago with Lindie, Albert and Elien? This is the same Paris Baguette.)

A lot of snow here.

This is the alternate bus stop, if I'm lucky enough to catch the 432. Beautiful, right? :-)

Right.

So, I arrived EXTREMELY early to work because there were actually no traffic problems, and walked around for a while, got some coffee, grabbed some lunch, etc, and finally walked into school. I taught my adorable little 2 o'clock class (they're new kids, six and seven years old. There are normally three of them but just two came that day because the buses weren't running. It was a lovely class. There's a little girl in there, Sarah, who is an actual genius and her accent is amazing. She NEVER speaks Korean. She is super serious about her English lessons! Love her!)

Then, I went to my 3 o'clock class, which is a really nice class usually. A LOT of energy, but they are really smart. I walked in and found out that half of my class had moved up to a higher level and therefore I no longer have them, which is really depressing, but I'm proud of them moving up. Anyway, we had a speaking test that quickly turned into teaching them all kinds of snow-related vocabulary because it was an actual blizzard outside. Between my 2 and 3 o'clock classes, Mac told me that Stacy, my boss, told him that we would only be teaching until 5 because of the snow. Anna, the head teacher, came into my class at about 2:30 and said "It's time to go now."

I really think I was more excited than the kids. :-)

So, here are some photos I took on the way to grab a taxi with Mac.

This is the street light across from my school. Ricky, the teacher before me, told me that I would be waiting half of my year at this light. He was totally right.

This is a Montessori school really close to my school, and across from a coffee shop that has the best strawberry mochas and waffles in the world!

The street I walk everyday from my bus stop to my school.

Lindie got the whole day off, so I went to her place to wait for Albert. We were all going to get something to eat. The sandwich that I had bought earlier for lunch was completely dried out, which wouldn't have been as gross if it hadn't been a veggie sandwich. So, I was starving. After trying to figure out what the perfect snow day food was, and after waiting for Albert for about six months, we headed out to get some waffles.

And attempt to keep us both from falling.

We gave Lindie all of the credit for the snow dance. Well, we gave all of the credit to Lindie's snow dance. Wanna see it???

(It was so powerful it actually robbed me of my ability to speak properly at the end of the video. . .that's one magic snow dance!)

Then it was waffle and coffee time. Awesome.

Yogurt and blueberry waffle. Oh my gosh. And it was supposed to be a strawberry mocha, but it was just a mocha mocha. Still really good.

Lindie and Albert got espresso waffles. With chocolate gelato. Perfect snow day food all around.

He was outside of the coffee snow. Too cute.

Since it was Valentine's Day, we decided we needed some wine, which is kind of hard to find close to us, so we had to go to the closest "Home Plus" which is more or less like a Super Bi-Lo. We could have walked there, eventually, but it was snowing and we really wanted to get there and back so we decided to get a cab. No problem, right?

Then it started really snowing. See? Here's a video!

We went to the University, where there are ALWAYS cabs just WAITING for foreigners to get in and have no idea where they are going. But, today, there wasn't a cab in sight, full or empty. Bummer. So, we started walking, keeping an eye out.

So, we decided maybe we needed another dance? Here's a vid!

We didn't get a cab the whole way there. But we did get there. And we did get out wine. And we did get some stuff for poor Lindie to make us dinner (again) And after waiting for a really long time, we eventually got a cab to take us home, up the long, cold, icy hill. In the snow. The cab driver was really sweet (and kept telling us how American is #1 woo hoo!) and he picked up another poor guy who had also been waiting forever for a cab.

Then Lindie made us delicious hot dogs on croissants with fried onions and cheese. So. Good.

Happy Valentine's Day!!

Then it was time for some serious Valentine's Day poker. We've been a little bit addicted to it lately. Lindie and I both have a ridiculous amount of change. (Albert counted that I have about 26 bucks in what's essentially, dimes.) So, we play with dimes. And then we divide it up again at the end of the night. Just for fun :-)

Since we're quite serious about our poker, we decided to show our very best poker faces.

This is Albert's. Well, this is Albert's when he's dealing. . .or something like that.

This is Albert's when he REALLY doesn't want us to know what's going on.

This is Lindie's pa-pa-pa-poker face pa-pa poker face. Quite effective.

And this is mine. I developed it's quite subtleties when I had a very lucky royal flush. I think it's about perfect.

We played for a while, not really getting anywhere, so it was time for the crazy, serious bets to start. Whole dollars at a time were being casually tossed into the center of the glass table. It was very exciting. Really.

See? Blood. On. The. Table.

I won the whole lot with a very formitable pair of Kings (or something equally impressive) The game lasted about three hours so it was time to go to the park!