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.