A Busy Blogger Is A Blogless Blogger!

To say these past couple weeks have been busy would be a HUGE understatement, which means two things:
     1. I neglected to blog.
     2. I have SO MUCH to tell you.

Let's start from the top. May 17th was a national holiday here in Korea- Buddha's birthday. Since I had the day off from work I decided that I would go to a nearby temple to see what was going on. It's a small temple, but very beautiful and it was full of people when I arrived around noon to see what was going on. I was quickly noticed being the only foreigner in the bunch, but it didn't seem to bother anyone. Someone took me by the arm and showed me the proper way to pray to the shrine in the side hall and then had me join them for free lunch at the temple. They served a dish called bibimbap, meaning mixed rice. Bibimbap is one of my favorites here, but at temples it is a bit different. Since followers of Buddha don't eat meat it was solely vegetarian as opposed to the beef and chicken and ham thrown in that I'm used to. But it was still DELICIOUS.

This is a picture of the shrine a really kind temple-goer showed me how to pray to.

Lanterns strung up for Buddha in the square of my favorite shopping district.

The weekend after Buddha's birthday was my Hapkido competition. Boy was I surprised to find out it was a national competition instead of just regional. We woke up really early, put on our uniforms, and drove to the competition about 45 minutes away. My Master teaches twice a day- a morning class and a night class, so he entered us as two teams instead of trying to find time for us to practice together to enter as one.I have to say that my team really gave it their all. Maybe we were just excited by the wide space we had to perform in, and the music, and all of the other teams in their various uniforms, but by some luck of the draw my team took home SILVER. Can you believe it?! I've been studying Hapkido for 3 months and am already a part of a national silver-medal winning team. It was such a wonderful surprise and I can't begin to say how thankful I am to be a part of the team. You really did it, guys! Let's take gold next year, okay?

Both of our school's teams with our Master, taken just after we finished performing.

After competition I thought things would cool down, but my life is crazy so OF COURSE something else happened.

One of my Korean friends called me out of the blue one evening as I'm getting ready to meet a friend for dinner.

"I found a kitten," He tells me. "I can't keep it. Can you help me?"

I am not really a cat person, but for some reason I really wanted to help. I agree and we meet up for him to pass off the cat...

...and to my surprise the "kitten" was actually one a couple days old, still with an umbilical cord and with it's eyes and ears still closed.

"He has to be fed every four hours," my friend tells me. "Keep him warm, and make sure you help him use the bathroom. He can't go by himself."

I brought the cat to the vet as soon as I could, and he didn't seem very optimistic about my little guy's chances of survival but I wouldn't give up on him. I brought him to work, I kept him in towels with hot water bottles, I fed him with a syringe every 2-4 hours as much as I could get him to eat. But he wasn't gaining weight, he wasn't staying warm. I did everything I could for him....

And two weeks later, I now have a loud, obnoxious, wide-blue-eyed, three week old tabby kitten! In the time I was bringing him to school my students argued over what his name should be.

"김치만두! (kimchi mandu-kimchi dumplings)"  " 호랑이 (horangi- tiger)" "노숙자 (nosookja- homeless)"

Finally, the vet and I decided on the name 호범 (Hobum). Hobum is a Korean male name. I pick the Ho from horangi (tiger) and bum is a common name ending, but I later found out it also means tiger if you use the ancient word for tiger. So I guess his name is TigerTiger. I usually just call him Bummie. He's doing SO WELL now and I can't wait to bring him to the vet for his 7 week shots to really show off what a good job I did with him.

Most recent picture of my little man, looking guilty as I caught him trying to claw his way out of his box.

Annnnnd that is why I haven't been blogging lately. Currently I've got my cat on my hip, my computer on my lap, a book nearby, and some Oreos. Time to de-stress before another work-week starts.