I just got home from my first Hapkido class and I'm so excited. My head is kind of spinning. It was pretty awesome overall but it was also a lot. The instructor does not speak any English and at the speed he was talking any word in Korean I may have picked up was completely lost. At the beginning of the class we do stretches and some really basic exercises (jumping jacks, sit-ups and the like). I pretty much knew that as soon as people saw how flexible I am they would expect me to be good at everything. And I'm not. In fact, other than the flexibility things (I'm the only one in the class with a split and straddle--which made everyone stare at me and make comments that I couldn't understand although they were obviously good things) I suck at everything else. My balance is horrible and my strength... let's not even go there. But if I actually do go 5 times a week I think that i will improve quickly. Then for the partnering stuff he put me with the one girl in the class that has a pretty good (at least basic conversational) level of English but she weighs at least 20 lbs more than me. So when it came time for her to drop me she could put me down gingerly which, since I actually know how to balance my weight and make myself lighter, I also helped. But when I had to drop her I actually...dropped her. I felt so bad but I can't hold up 130-140 lbs with my arms. It's not happening just yet. And since, of course, I'm the only weiguk (foreigner) in the class everyone pretty much stares at me when I try to do stuff. It makes me feel very self-conscious. I also feel like we also did so much stuff that I can't remember all of it. But I have class again tomorrow night so it should be a little bit better. Now I am sitting here sweaty, and pretty stinky and I need to make some dinner and go to sleep.
The rest of my day was pretty decent. Thursday is my lightest class day with only 6 classes (right now) though I'll have 7 after February 19th, so I was done by 5. My Thursday class is pretty good, but I was soo sad. Katie, the new teacher, got all my best students from my Intensive C class in her class. When I saw that I told her "You are so lucky. They are awesome kids." And after her class with them she walks up to me and says, "Oh my God. They're great. I get to hang out with them twice a week." I started laughing. But I'm soooo jealous. And I was talking to Gina, who one of the smartest kids I've ever met, and I asked her, "Is Katie teacher nice?" and she says, "Yes (reluctantly), but I want Susy teacher." I was so incredibly flattered. I want my kids back :-(.
After work I met up with my new friend Yunji (the daughter of the lady who owns the hair shop where I dyed my hair, who I am now meeting with every Tuesday to just chat--for her to practice English and for me to practice Korean). We went to the movies (for the first time since I've been in Korea) and we saw "Cloverfield." I had not heard of it but it was really good. Then we took the bus and hung out at Paris Baguette until it was time for Hapkido class.
Overall a pretty cool day.
Thursday, January 31, 2008
Wednesday, January 30, 2008
It just keeps going and going and going...
Winter Intensives are finally over, so you'd think I would get some relief...Yea. Not so much. This month my schedule is much worse than January. Not just that but all my classes are brand new which means I no longer get to teach all the students that I love and got all attached to. It really stinks. I'm very sad that I don't get to have my intensives students anymore. They were so bright I just really enjoyed teaching them. The writing project that I had previously mentioned actually worked. On the last day of Intensives each student in the class got to take home a book of their own writing. I was so proud of them. I photocopied all their stories and Hannah teacher made me a book. I was really happy. Hopefully we will find somewhere to post up some of the best ones.
----- Me with my Winter Intensives Kids.
----- They're showing off their books.
But right now we are currently short one foreign teacher and until the two new teachers come at the end of February I am teaching the Kindergarten classload of two teachers. 5 hours a day of Kindies is enough to bring me to my breaking point. By 2 all they want to do is not do any work and just sit there and play with my hair and I just want to let them. Btw the funniest thing happened today. Jin, one of the kinder girls is so sweet and so cute but apparently she has a bad habit of picking here boogers and eating them. Nathan, her previous foreign teacher had warned me of this, but having taught her a few times before and not having seen this I didn't entirely believe him. Well, he was right. Today I catch her picking her nose, the booger is all down her face (lovely picture, I know) and she's sticking out her tongue to lick it when I was like "NO JIN! STOP!" So I ran and grabbed a tissue from my basket and made her blow her nose. It was really gross.
My afternoon classes were no better. I've been used to teaching the Playground and Carnival English levels (which is about intermediate levels, these kids were at least conversational and could follow instructions). I totally had the hang of Playground and Carnival. Now this month most of my classes are Wake-up, which-as the name sounds-is for kids who do not really speak much english. I couldn't even get them to answer the right question. It went a little something like this:
Me: What is this? (pointing to a picture of a flower)
Them: The tree is big. (ignoring my question and just reading the first sentence in the book)
Ugh! I wish I had my old classes back. There's one specific class which is gonna be sorry. They behaved so bad today. I think they were testing boundaries. They will rue the day they messed with Suji teacher. Lol!
But my day was not all bad. After work at 8:30 I walked the two blocks from my school to the Hapkido dojang and got to watch a class. It was AWESOME! They were flipping and jumping all over the place. I'm going to start tomorrow night! I am soooooo excited to start. I'm also really nervous that I'm going to kill myself since i have not really done much physical activity in the last two months. Unless you count the fact that last Saturday I spent about 3-4 hours up on a table dancing...
So last weekend I went to Seoul to visit Jure. On Saturday we went with several of his coworkers to a supposed "Mexican" place, called Casa Loca - random funny side note: it used to be called salsa loca but apparently in Korean salsa means diarrhea, so they changed it. I will go ahead and clarify now that I am extremely skeptical of labels here in Korea because things are usually not what they seem. But wouldn't you know it. It was actual Mexican food, with an actual Mexican in the kitchen cooking it. The food was delicious and after we finished eating I went over and chatted with the chef for a while. He was super nice. Then on Saturday night we headed to Hyungdae (I think) with Som and Jeremiah, who have apparently become our partying buddies. Hyungdae is where a big university is in Seoul so there were a TON of foreigners there. I even ran into a Dominican guy, that was funny. But we ended up at this bar called "Tin Pan" and there were these big long tables in the middle of the bar and before I knew it Som and I were up there dancing. It was really funny cuz I don't think most Koreans can dance (or have even seen dance that looks like) the way I dance. When we finally left at 5AM I was exhausted, and I was sore in my legs and back and butt for like 3 days. Randomly, Jure thought it was really funny to touch my leg while I was dancing but I guess this gave some Korean guy the wrong idea cuz he decided to try to touch my leg and as soon as I felt someone touch me I totally (out of reaction) kicked, and I ended up kind of kicking him (oops, but not really) and then I shook my finger at him and was like "NO!" It was one of those weird but randomly funny things.
-----Me and Jure at "TinPan" in Hyungdae (?)
----- Som and I on the table dancing.
OH and BTW (in case you hadn't notice) my hair is (almost) black now. I dyed it last week. Just a side note.
----- Me with my Winter Intensives Kids.
----- They're showing off their books.But right now we are currently short one foreign teacher and until the two new teachers come at the end of February I am teaching the Kindergarten classload of two teachers. 5 hours a day of Kindies is enough to bring me to my breaking point. By 2 all they want to do is not do any work and just sit there and play with my hair and I just want to let them. Btw the funniest thing happened today. Jin, one of the kinder girls is so sweet and so cute but apparently she has a bad habit of picking here boogers and eating them. Nathan, her previous foreign teacher had warned me of this, but having taught her a few times before and not having seen this I didn't entirely believe him. Well, he was right. Today I catch her picking her nose, the booger is all down her face (lovely picture, I know) and she's sticking out her tongue to lick it when I was like "NO JIN! STOP!" So I ran and grabbed a tissue from my basket and made her blow her nose. It was really gross.
My afternoon classes were no better. I've been used to teaching the Playground and Carnival English levels (which is about intermediate levels, these kids were at least conversational and could follow instructions). I totally had the hang of Playground and Carnival. Now this month most of my classes are Wake-up, which-as the name sounds-is for kids who do not really speak much english. I couldn't even get them to answer the right question. It went a little something like this:
Me: What is this? (pointing to a picture of a flower)
Them: The tree is big. (ignoring my question and just reading the first sentence in the book)
Ugh! I wish I had my old classes back. There's one specific class which is gonna be sorry. They behaved so bad today. I think they were testing boundaries. They will rue the day they messed with Suji teacher. Lol!
But my day was not all bad. After work at 8:30 I walked the two blocks from my school to the Hapkido dojang and got to watch a class. It was AWESOME! They were flipping and jumping all over the place. I'm going to start tomorrow night! I am soooooo excited to start. I'm also really nervous that I'm going to kill myself since i have not really done much physical activity in the last two months. Unless you count the fact that last Saturday I spent about 3-4 hours up on a table dancing...
So last weekend I went to Seoul to visit Jure. On Saturday we went with several of his coworkers to a supposed "Mexican" place, called Casa Loca - random funny side note: it used to be called salsa loca but apparently in Korean salsa means diarrhea, so they changed it. I will go ahead and clarify now that I am extremely skeptical of labels here in Korea because things are usually not what they seem. But wouldn't you know it. It was actual Mexican food, with an actual Mexican in the kitchen cooking it. The food was delicious and after we finished eating I went over and chatted with the chef for a while. He was super nice. Then on Saturday night we headed to Hyungdae (I think) with Som and Jeremiah, who have apparently become our partying buddies. Hyungdae is where a big university is in Seoul so there were a TON of foreigners there. I even ran into a Dominican guy, that was funny. But we ended up at this bar called "Tin Pan" and there were these big long tables in the middle of the bar and before I knew it Som and I were up there dancing. It was really funny cuz I don't think most Koreans can dance (or have even seen dance that looks like) the way I dance. When we finally left at 5AM I was exhausted, and I was sore in my legs and back and butt for like 3 days. Randomly, Jure thought it was really funny to touch my leg while I was dancing but I guess this gave some Korean guy the wrong idea cuz he decided to try to touch my leg and as soon as I felt someone touch me I totally (out of reaction) kicked, and I ended up kind of kicking him (oops, but not really) and then I shook my finger at him and was like "NO!" It was one of those weird but randomly funny things.
-----Me and Jure at "TinPan" in Hyungdae (?)
----- Som and I on the table dancing.OH and BTW (in case you hadn't notice) my hair is (almost) black now. I dyed it last week. Just a side note.
Tuesday, January 15, 2008
Tired-ness
For some strange reason I am super duper unnaturally tired this week. Not just me, all the people at work seem to be suffering from the same sleepiness. Maybe its the below freezing temperatures, -3C today (and lets face it we - in Daegu - have it easy compared to the people in Seoul who were at -8 C today, and its supposed to get down to -10 C). Anyways, maybe its the cold or the fact that we're right smack in the middle of the winter intensives, which are extremely draining, but we're all pooped. And its only Tuesday. But in all honesty I do not have that much reason to complain (other than about the weather because i will totally continue to bitch about the fact that its 2o F here and 70 F in Miami, but that's neither here nor there).
Classes are actually going pretty well. And my mission to get these little Korean kids to use their imagination is working, on some of them at least. I had them write a story about an imaginary pet that they wanted to have, and I told them it could be anything. I for one decided to plagiarize JK Rowling and have a pet dragon named Norbert. A couple of the picked regular animals but there was also an alien, a dinosaur, and one girl just wrote about her online pet named Chiro (which I made the mistake of pronouncing Kiro, and was quickly told its pronounce Shihiro...ok???). But there's this one kid who insists on making lists. For two and a half weeks now he has not properly done homework for me once. I spend a substantial portion of my class talking to him, trying to get him to understand, and I send him home everyday with specific instructions, and still, everyday he comes back and he has the exact same thing as the day before. I really think I'm going to have to get Ashley teacher to call his mother and threaten him or something, cuz if he doesn't get it then he will have gotten nothing from my class.
On that note. Just the other day it hit me how uncommon it is for people in this culture to express, let alone write, their creative ideas. One of the more bright girls in my class, Jasmine, left her paper at home during the morning classes so I told her to bring it in during the evening classes since I see her 3 times a week in the evenings as well as 5 times a week in the mornings (she should be sick of me by now). When she brought it in, she had written one work in Korean because she did not know the English word for it. So, since I obviously speak less Korean than she does English, I had no idea and we had to ask Kathy teacher. Well, Kathy teacher was soooo impressed with what she had done. She kept asking me if Jasmine had copied it out of a book. I found that question so odd. And then it hit me that this is not at all a common thing for these kids to do. They are taught to just copy, memorize, and regurgitate. I want my kids to surpass that, and I am confident that (at least in some small way) some of my students will.
Classes are actually going pretty well. And my mission to get these little Korean kids to use their imagination is working, on some of them at least. I had them write a story about an imaginary pet that they wanted to have, and I told them it could be anything. I for one decided to plagiarize JK Rowling and have a pet dragon named Norbert. A couple of the picked regular animals but there was also an alien, a dinosaur, and one girl just wrote about her online pet named Chiro (which I made the mistake of pronouncing Kiro, and was quickly told its pronounce Shihiro...ok???). But there's this one kid who insists on making lists. For two and a half weeks now he has not properly done homework for me once. I spend a substantial portion of my class talking to him, trying to get him to understand, and I send him home everyday with specific instructions, and still, everyday he comes back and he has the exact same thing as the day before. I really think I'm going to have to get Ashley teacher to call his mother and threaten him or something, cuz if he doesn't get it then he will have gotten nothing from my class.
On that note. Just the other day it hit me how uncommon it is for people in this culture to express, let alone write, their creative ideas. One of the more bright girls in my class, Jasmine, left her paper at home during the morning classes so I told her to bring it in during the evening classes since I see her 3 times a week in the evenings as well as 5 times a week in the mornings (she should be sick of me by now). When she brought it in, she had written one work in Korean because she did not know the English word for it. So, since I obviously speak less Korean than she does English, I had no idea and we had to ask Kathy teacher. Well, Kathy teacher was soooo impressed with what she had done. She kept asking me if Jasmine had copied it out of a book. I found that question so odd. And then it hit me that this is not at all a common thing for these kids to do. They are taught to just copy, memorize, and regurgitate. I want my kids to surpass that, and I am confident that (at least in some small way) some of my students will.
Thursday, January 10, 2008
Kim Soojung...
So yet again it is like 3:30 AM and I am awake. Tonight I got home from work at like 7:30 and sat down to do some work on my computer and I passed out - with the lights on and the computer in my lap. I'm not really sleeping at night (as is obvious) so I'm exhausted all day. I think I may need to start taking some sleeping meds but whatever. Anyways, this week has been pretty good, if a bit long. Winter intensives are a pain in the butt. Basically, these kids get a month off in the winter and one in the summer. And what do they do with this time off you ask?? Well, they take more class. They come in, in the morning, to take an additional 3 hours of English class per day in addition to their normal 1 and a half. And on top of that the Korean teachers get constant phone calls from the parents (moms) complaining that their kids are not getting enough homework!!! Of all the crazy things I've ever heard in my life...
Overall my classes are pretty good. I'm still trying to get my lesson planning done but I have not really had the time to do so. I need to just buckle down and get it done. Additionally I've decided that I have two missions. #1 is to find a way to get into these kid's heads that in English there is a difference between an r and an l. If you know about Korean you understand why its a problem. In Korean there is one character for both letters and when they pronounce it, its actually somewhere between r and l. So I've been making my kids say "Ryan the lion roars," which leads to some pretty comical sounding sentences but whatever. Now I've added "Why did you break Blakes bat?" Yea, that one's gonna take a while. But Susy the Phonics Nazi is officially out!
As for the title of this blog... its my new Korean name. One of Nate's Wake-up students was always walking up to me and asking "teacher, korean name?" and I told her I didn't have one and that she should pick one for me but she never did. Then I told her I wanted my Korean name to be Michin (which means crazy in Korean) but she didn't like that. Then last friday I was at a bar chatting with some random Korean people and I asked this Korean guy to pick a name for me and he thought about it for a minute and said "soojung." I asked him what it meant and he told me that it means crystal in Korean and I thought that was really pretty, so my Korean name is Kim Soojung. And for good measure, in a very interesting gchat with Diva today it was decided that we needed to translate my nickname into Korean. So she found the word for breast in Korean, which is yupang, but then I talked to Kate (my best Korean friend) and she said that the word for boobs is gaseum. So I guess my nickname is Gaseum. Lol!
And the best part of my week... I decided a while ago that I wanted to make dinner for all the teachers at ECC. So I invited everyone to come to my house yesterday. I made arroz moro, pollo en salsa de tomate, boniato fritters, and salad. I did some prep work during lunch - and I had gone to Costco on Tuesday night to get chicken and some other stuff - and then I rushed home after work to make everything. Between 7:30 and 8:00 all the foreign teachers (Liz, Nate, David, Ian, and Jenny, along with her bf Eric) got there. But all the Korean teachers were not there yet, they're not known to be the most reliable at showing up for social outings with foreigners, so all my fellow teachers started looking at me with these pitying faces. Like "poor susy, she has no idea that they're not even gonna show up." But they actually DID! I was so excited having everyone (the aforementioned foreign teacher and the Korean teachers: Kate, Erin, Michelle, Ashley, Julia, Kathy, and Hannah - the academic director) at my apartment. And they all really liked the food. We just hung out for a little while and ate and talked. Then Jenny and Eric, Liz, and Ian stayed til later. And Jenny, who is a saint for this, did my dishes. So overall a pretty good week.
And now tomorrow Jure is coming down from Seoul to spend the weekend here so it should be a good relaxing weekend.
Overall my classes are pretty good. I'm still trying to get my lesson planning done but I have not really had the time to do so. I need to just buckle down and get it done. Additionally I've decided that I have two missions. #1 is to find a way to get into these kid's heads that in English there is a difference between an r and an l. If you know about Korean you understand why its a problem. In Korean there is one character for both letters and when they pronounce it, its actually somewhere between r and l. So I've been making my kids say "Ryan the lion roars," which leads to some pretty comical sounding sentences but whatever. Now I've added "Why did you break Blakes bat?" Yea, that one's gonna take a while. But Susy the Phonics Nazi is officially out!
As for the title of this blog... its my new Korean name. One of Nate's Wake-up students was always walking up to me and asking "teacher, korean name?" and I told her I didn't have one and that she should pick one for me but she never did. Then I told her I wanted my Korean name to be Michin (which means crazy in Korean) but she didn't like that. Then last friday I was at a bar chatting with some random Korean people and I asked this Korean guy to pick a name for me and he thought about it for a minute and said "soojung." I asked him what it meant and he told me that it means crystal in Korean and I thought that was really pretty, so my Korean name is Kim Soojung. And for good measure, in a very interesting gchat with Diva today it was decided that we needed to translate my nickname into Korean. So she found the word for breast in Korean, which is yupang, but then I talked to Kate (my best Korean friend) and she said that the word for boobs is gaseum. So I guess my nickname is Gaseum. Lol!
And the best part of my week... I decided a while ago that I wanted to make dinner for all the teachers at ECC. So I invited everyone to come to my house yesterday. I made arroz moro, pollo en salsa de tomate, boniato fritters, and salad. I did some prep work during lunch - and I had gone to Costco on Tuesday night to get chicken and some other stuff - and then I rushed home after work to make everything. Between 7:30 and 8:00 all the foreign teachers (Liz, Nate, David, Ian, and Jenny, along with her bf Eric) got there. But all the Korean teachers were not there yet, they're not known to be the most reliable at showing up for social outings with foreigners, so all my fellow teachers started looking at me with these pitying faces. Like "poor susy, she has no idea that they're not even gonna show up." But they actually DID! I was so excited having everyone (the aforementioned foreign teacher and the Korean teachers: Kate, Erin, Michelle, Ashley, Julia, Kathy, and Hannah - the academic director) at my apartment. And they all really liked the food. We just hung out for a little while and ate and talked. Then Jenny and Eric, Liz, and Ian stayed til later. And Jenny, who is a saint for this, did my dishes. So overall a pretty good week.
And now tomorrow Jure is coming down from Seoul to spend the weekend here so it should be a good relaxing weekend.
Sunday, January 6, 2008
Extremely Belated Christmas and New Years Blog
So I've been so busy with the end of the month and being out of town for both Christmas and New Years weekend that my poor blog totally paid the price. Since I can't write (or really remember) everything from the last two weeks I'll be giving the jist.
Christmas was really nice. I ended up working like a freaking elf (hee hee) to get everything for the kinder kids (Ivy Kids) event but it ended up working really great. All the kids loved it and their moms had fun so it was great. My room was, of course, the biggest hit since we had "FunLand" with games and snacks. Then the afternoon kids had their Christmas Carol contest (that I mentioned earlier) and almost all of my classes won. In fact 3 out of my 4 classes won and got to have snack parties. They were so cute and they did such a good job. I was so proud of them. Although I made sure that before they went out there I told them "No matter what Susy teacher is very happy and proud. You are the best for Susy teacher." Because Julia (one of the Korean teachers) told me that her class cried when they didn't win and I didn't want that to happen. :-)
For Christmas weekend I headed up to Seoul. Mostly we just putzed around and walked in the little shopping area near his apartment in Sungshin. We also went to this awesome place called Dongdaemun Market which is really famous. It was great. I got a scarf and a necklace and Jure bought me a cute hat for my Christmas present. Then some of the people from Jure's school were getting together and ordering Turkey from some fancy schmancy hotel on Christmas Eve so we went to his friend Chris's apartment and had this uber-traditional American Christmas dinner in the capital of South Korea. The oddness of it kinda hit all of us. Nevertheless it was absolutely delicious.
----- My epitomal "so-I'm-in-Korea" picture (near Dongdaemun Market).
----- Walking the side streets in Dongdaemun (the weird stuff they serve at some of these restaurants you can't even imagine - they sell these little octopuses/octopi?? that you're supposed to eat live and as you try to swallow them the little suction cups thingies get stuck on your throat... ok that's gross and I'm not normally squeemish)
----- The pretty lit up pyramid outside Doota dept store in Dongdaemun.
I came back to Daegu for a really short work-week. The I headed back to
Seoul for New Year's weekend. On Saturday Jure and I met up with his best friend Jeremiah and his wife Som, who is the cutest girl ever. She's Thai and her english isn't too great so far but she is soo much fun. So we headed over to Itaewon (an area of Seoul where there are a lot of clubs and a lot of foreigners go there to go out). It was funny cuz as soon as we got off the subway I heard salsa music and I was like WTF. But at the time that we went in there it was pretty empty so we went somewhere else instead. We ended up at the UN Club (??) where they played hip hop music. At first it was mostly me on the dance floor by myself (I needed my Titi and Suki and Putz very badly) but then Som got inspired and came to dance with me and finally we got the boys off their butts. We danced until 5:30 in the morning. How great is that? We got to just take the metro back to his apartment since it had restarted. I felt kinda bad thou cuz Som felt pretty drunk and Jeremiah had to carry her on his back the whole time (what a good husband).
----- In Itaewon getting a couple of beers.
----- Dancing with Som
Then on Monday, December 31st, we hadn't really decided what to do, so we just met up with the people from Jure's school in Downtown Seoul. We were right near the ECC Head Office at the Jogno Sam-Ga stop, so that's like in the middle of it all. There were millions of people there and we got to see the bell being rung right at midnight by these monk guys. It was pretty cool. Excluding the fact that it was absolutely, completely, ridiculously freezing. I really thought my toes were going to fall off. I could barely walk. Additionally, there wasn't like an official fireworks display. It was just people with roman candles shooting them off. I don't know about you but the idea of a bunch of crazy drunk people (foreigners) shooting Roman candles is not exactly comforting. A couple of people started shooting them down at the floor so they would bounce around and hit people's feet. Yea, it was both as bad and as funny as it sounds. After the impromptu/informal fireworks display we all headed back over to Itaewon to dance the night away. We ended up in a place called Polly's Kettle (again ??) but it was pretty fun. I got to dance and Marni (a girl I knew from mine and Jure's orientation) and I got up on these tables and started dancing. It was pretty funny cuz the manager guy came over and we thought he was going to tell us to get off but instead he just told Marni to put on her shoes and then he told the bartender to start flashing lights at us. I loved it. Yet again, we were out til the morning. We didn't head back until about 6AM. And the subway ride was interesting. We met a couple of drunk Russians (who couldn't even walk straight) and then some silly Korean girls (who i think for some reason thought i was gay??? i'm not at all sure why??). So for the second time in one weekend I didn't go to sleep until the sun was out. But at least I had fun.
----- All the people and the fireworks/roman candles in downtown Seoul.
----- The first kiss of the new year (for good luck ;-p)
----- Dancing at Polly's Kettle with the Seoul ECC crew.
The lack of sleep did not really make for a very good work week once I got back to Daegu. Especially because the ECC (school) month officially finished and the new month began which meant a lot more work. At the end of the month we have to set up a ton of things for the next month and do evaluations and progress reports for each child. So that's what I've been doing most of this week. It also did not help that on Wednesday I started to feel super sick. It was not pretty. I made myself some chicken soup on Thurday and tried to rest (and took a lot of Sudafed) so I feel a lot better now. And now I just need to prep all my lessons for this month and clean my apartment. Any words of motivation?
And I promise to be better about the blogging thing from now on.
Christmas was really nice. I ended up working like a freaking elf (hee hee) to get everything for the kinder kids (Ivy Kids) event but it ended up working really great. All the kids loved it and their moms had fun so it was great. My room was, of course, the biggest hit since we had "FunLand" with games and snacks. Then the afternoon kids had their Christmas Carol contest (that I mentioned earlier) and almost all of my classes won. In fact 3 out of my 4 classes won and got to have snack parties. They were so cute and they did such a good job. I was so proud of them. Although I made sure that before they went out there I told them "No matter what Susy teacher is very happy and proud. You are the best for Susy teacher." Because Julia (one of the Korean teachers) told me that her class cried when they didn't win and I didn't want that to happen. :-)
For Christmas weekend I headed up to Seoul. Mostly we just putzed around and walked in the little shopping area near his apartment in Sungshin. We also went to this awesome place called Dongdaemun Market which is really famous. It was great. I got a scarf and a necklace and Jure bought me a cute hat for my Christmas present. Then some of the people from Jure's school were getting together and ordering Turkey from some fancy schmancy hotel on Christmas Eve so we went to his friend Chris's apartment and had this uber-traditional American Christmas dinner in the capital of South Korea. The oddness of it kinda hit all of us. Nevertheless it was absolutely delicious.
----- My epitomal "so-I'm-in-Korea" picture (near Dongdaemun Market).
----- Walking the side streets in Dongdaemun (the weird stuff they serve at some of these restaurants you can't even imagine - they sell these little octopuses/octopi?? that you're supposed to eat live and as you try to swallow them the little suction cups thingies get stuck on your throat... ok that's gross and I'm not normally squeemish)
----- The pretty lit up pyramid outside Doota dept store in Dongdaemun.I came back to Daegu for a really short work-week. The I headed back to
Seoul for New Year's weekend. On Saturday Jure and I met up with his best friend Jeremiah and his wife Som, who is the cutest girl ever. She's Thai and her english isn't too great so far but she is soo much fun. So we headed over to Itaewon (an area of Seoul where there are a lot of clubs and a lot of foreigners go there to go out). It was funny cuz as soon as we got off the subway I heard salsa music and I was like WTF. But at the time that we went in there it was pretty empty so we went somewhere else instead. We ended up at the UN Club (??) where they played hip hop music. At first it was mostly me on the dance floor by myself (I needed my Titi and Suki and Putz very badly) but then Som got inspired and came to dance with me and finally we got the boys off their butts. We danced until 5:30 in the morning. How great is that? We got to just take the metro back to his apartment since it had restarted. I felt kinda bad thou cuz Som felt pretty drunk and Jeremiah had to carry her on his back the whole time (what a good husband).
----- In Itaewon getting a couple of beers.
----- Dancing with SomThen on Monday, December 31st, we hadn't really decided what to do, so we just met up with the people from Jure's school in Downtown Seoul. We were right near the ECC Head Office at the Jogno Sam-Ga stop, so that's like in the middle of it all. There were millions of people there and we got to see the bell being rung right at midnight by these monk guys. It was pretty cool. Excluding the fact that it was absolutely, completely, ridiculously freezing. I really thought my toes were going to fall off. I could barely walk. Additionally, there wasn't like an official fireworks display. It was just people with roman candles shooting them off. I don't know about you but the idea of a bunch of crazy drunk people (foreigners) shooting Roman candles is not exactly comforting. A couple of people started shooting them down at the floor so they would bounce around and hit people's feet. Yea, it was both as bad and as funny as it sounds. After the impromptu/informal fireworks display we all headed back over to Itaewon to dance the night away. We ended up in a place called Polly's Kettle (again ??) but it was pretty fun. I got to dance and Marni (a girl I knew from mine and Jure's orientation) and I got up on these tables and started dancing. It was pretty funny cuz the manager guy came over and we thought he was going to tell us to get off but instead he just told Marni to put on her shoes and then he told the bartender to start flashing lights at us. I loved it. Yet again, we were out til the morning. We didn't head back until about 6AM. And the subway ride was interesting. We met a couple of drunk Russians (who couldn't even walk straight) and then some silly Korean girls (who i think for some reason thought i was gay??? i'm not at all sure why??). So for the second time in one weekend I didn't go to sleep until the sun was out. But at least I had fun.
----- All the people and the fireworks/roman candles in downtown Seoul.
----- The first kiss of the new year (for good luck ;-p)
----- Dancing at Polly's Kettle with the Seoul ECC crew.The lack of sleep did not really make for a very good work week once I got back to Daegu. Especially because the ECC (school) month officially finished and the new month began which meant a lot more work. At the end of the month we have to set up a ton of things for the next month and do evaluations and progress reports for each child. So that's what I've been doing most of this week. It also did not help that on Wednesday I started to feel super sick. It was not pretty. I made myself some chicken soup on Thurday and tried to rest (and took a lot of Sudafed) so I feel a lot better now. And now I just need to prep all my lessons for this month and clean my apartment. Any words of motivation?
And I promise to be better about the blogging thing from now on.
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