Kids, Laundry, Food, etc...

So I'm starting my third week here, and it kind of feels like I've been here forever already. People keep telling me that my time here will fly by, but it really doesn't feel like it so far. I've got a normal 5 day week this week, and then next weekend is the Lunar New Year. We get next Monday and Tuesday off for that. Then the following Friday is a training day, so next week I only have to teach on Wednesday and Thursday. It is waaaay too early for me to already be this desperate for a short week, but I really can't wait. Last week was rough because I didn't have many lessons prepared, and I was kind of winging it, and it made for some stressful classes. Today went much better though. The day goes a lot faster when you know what you're doing.

I've gathered that 2009 is a bad year for getting days off for national holidays, and it's kind of a shame that this really long weekend came up so fast, because it is really expensive to get tickets to go anywhere this late. A few people from the school are going to China, but they booked the trip long ago. I got invited to take the train and then the ferry to Japan, but I haven't even gotten paid yet, and I feel like I haven't been here long enough to already start taking trips, so I passed. But apparently a lot of holidays fall on weekends, so we're not getting as many 3 day weekends as we normally would. Chusok, the Korean version of Thanksgiving, is on a Saturday. I've heard that if it would've been on a Wednesday we probably would have gotten three or four days off, but now we will probably only get the Friday.

So far I've only gone to the gym that first morning, which is no surprise at all. I'll try to go a couple times this week though. It's pretty nice in there though, they give you a locker, and you get a little gym uniform to wear (I'll take a picture of myself in the mirror next time I go, it's a dead sexy outfit), so you don't have to worry about sweating in your clothes. You're supposed to bring your own gym shoes since you can't wear your outside shoes into the gym. Since I didn't bring an extra pair of tennis shoes, that means I worked out in my socks. They have a couple of funny machines there, like the one that is just a belt that wraps around you and goes back and forth and jiggles your fat, and the one that you lay on and it turns you completely upside down so all of the blood rushes to your head. Then there are a few others that I couldn't figure out what they did at all. The best thing about the Korean gym is that there aren't a bunch of intimidating buff dudes walking around. In fact there were a few times when I put MORE weight on the machine I was using, which is much different than my standard method of assuming that I can do about half of whatever the person before me was doing.

Below I've got some pictures of some of my classes. The first three are all kindy classes, so they are 6 or 7. Then the last two are of my Kiwi 3 class, which is one of the classes I've had since the beginning. They are probably my favorite class, they're the oldest (maybe 8 or 9?), so I can talk with them more easily. They also drive me the most insane, but I enjoy it. The younger ones took to getting their picture taken much better. I just told them to smile and they started popping peace signs like crazy (the national Korean photographee's pastime). The older kids were a bit more bashful, but eventually came around. Little Sunny even progressed from crouched in the fetal position facing the wall to facing the camera with her hands covering her face. The girl in the middle in the black and white sweatshirt is Angel, and she is the really smart girl I mentioned before. She is probably my favorite student, but man, is she bossy. I just end up letting her have her way a lot because she complains more than everyone else combined.




















































Here is a shot of my laundry machine. I couldn't find ANY instructions online that gave me a clue how to use it, so I just started pushing buttons. And it eventually washed my clothes. So, awesome. Some of them were easy enough. The one on the far left that looks like a faucet is just hot or cold water, and I actually had a few "in between" options. The next one to the right is just how large of a load is it. The two that look like a finger and a play/fast-forward button totally stumped me, so I just kept pressing them until the timer on the left went as high as possible, which was 92 minutes I think. On the first try it started going for about 15 minutes, and then just stopped with 70 something left on the timer. Nothing was happening. So I pressed a bunch of buttons again, which ended with me turning it off and turning it back on again and starting the whole process again. That time it went the whole way though, so, whatever. After the laundry is done, the clothes gotta dry, so thank you whoever left me an enormous drying rack. Here is what a full load of laundry looks like hanging out on a drying rack (taking up my entire kitchen/dining room/living room/foyer.)

This is one page of the menu from Papa Johns, and then the delicious Spicy Chicken Ranch pizza that I got. Unfortunately I think the glare totally whited out my selection from the menu, whoops. Also you get 15-20% off for takeout, so the prices aren't as outrageous as they might seem. (About $15 for a large Spicy Chicken Ranch).









































Tonight I actually got crazy and ate something besides pizza though! I went to this Japanese place and got a wonderful fried pork thing that came with mucho side dishes (which, to the best of my understanding, is the Korean side of this Japanese place showing.) I got a few nigiri style sushi pieces and a couple of maki rolls, some kind of cabbagey thing with thousand island dressing(?) on it that tasted like cole slaw, some crazy thick noodles, and a huge clear POUCH of liquid, that I'm thinking was tea, but I did not open. I've eaten a lot of new things over here, and while most of it is all right, I really miss burritos. I don't think I've gone over the crazy stuff they serve at lunch yet. I've had rabbit and squid multiple times. Sometimes they have these little tiny fish, that you just eat whole. It's just a tiny 1.5-2 inch fish. And you just chew it - eyes, scales, bones and all. It's weird. All of the meat has bones. Ugh. I hate school lunch so bad. At this point my lunch is 90% rice. I stopped trying to like kimchi about 3 days after I got here. Worst food ever. (Editors note: Korean food in general should not be judged by the quality of food served at the cafeteria at Mike's school.)

This weekend was thankfully a bit more low-key than the last. On Friday night I went to Exit again and once again had a grand time. It was a lot of the same people again, but I also met quite a few new people, including the group I accompanied to a noraebang at about 3am. This is actually a great way to do karaoke, because people are much more likely to make complete idiots out of themselves if they know everyone in the room's name. I didn't even have to sing, in fact I wasn't even asked once if I wanted to.


















That night I once again couldn't remember the word for Suji Middle School (I now have it etched in my memory (until I'm drunk again) - Suji Jung Hakyo (probably spelled wrong (who is digging all of these parentheses within parentheses?))) - so I went to a group of cabs, said it in English, and one of them waved me in. He then dropped me off in some area I had never seen before. I said "Suji Middle School?" and he nodded, so I got out. Nevermind the fact that this was not the Suji Middle School. So I started walking and it took me a good hour to get home, luckily I eventually saw a church that is on the bus route from our school to our apartment. It was pretty fantastic considering I started off about a 15 minute walk from home.

Oh yeah, and before going to Exit I went with a bunch of the teachers to this breakfast place called Butterfinger's that was kind of like Korea's take on a Denny's. It was very good - I got eggs, hash browns, ham, sausage, pancakes, the whole deal. As I mentioned before, breakfast is apparently a big deal for the other teachers, so everyone was pretty excited about it.

On Saturday night I just stayed in the Villa (which our apt. complex is commonly referred to as) and went next door and played poker and hung out with some of the other teachers. And I was in bed by midnight or so, which I wasn't sure was possible on a weekend in Korea.

This website is great for humorous Korean shirts: http://www.baboshirts.com/. A lot of them are spot on.
1) The kids LOVE scissors, rock, paper. At first I thought, "aw, that's cute, he said them out of order." Then I realized that everyone here says scissors, rock, paper, and I'm the one who sounds like a jackass when I say rock, paper, scissors.
2) The kids have all been trained to say "I'm fine, thank you, and you?" when you say "How are you?" And they just yell it in this ridiculous 1-2 cadence that leads me to believe they have no idea what they're saying. And yes, it sounds like they're saying "pine" when they say "fine". I just about lost it the other day when I was playing memory with one of my classes. Each vocab word had a card with a picture of the object, and then a card with the actual word. One of the kids who had been closely monitoring what the other kids had been turning over pounced on the cards when it was his turn. First he turns over the word "rock" and yells "Rock!" and then confidently flips over a picture of a lock and yells "Rock!" It broke my heart telling him that those did not match, because his memory was spot on.
3) Soju is already one of my favorite things about Korea, and it definitely makes me "not afraid of the cops" or talking to girls in the bar.
4) The shirt with the two hands making a point with the index fingers really made me laugh, because that is a reference to the fact the kids for some reason love sticking their fingers up your butt. Not making that up - people who have worked with kids in America - is this common for kids all over? I rarely yell at the kids, but that is just crossing the line.
5) The "I'm a Englishee Teecher" one is funny because Koreans hate ending words with consonants. I'm constantly having to correct kids for calling me Teacher Mikuh. That is when they're not calling me Teacher Mariki (their former teacher (female)), Teacher Cola (they saw me drink a Coke once), or Teacher something in Korean (I'm assuming these are not complimentary endearing nicknames.)

Speaking of funny things the kids do, last Friday we were playing games a lot and I let them pick team names in four of the classes. These were the four resulting match-ups:
1) White Dragon vs. White Dinosaur
2) Dangerous Snake vs. Super Power Monkey
3) Jet vs. Fire Dragon
4) Snake vs. Spider

I <3 those kids.

Also I had an incident last Friday where a few of the girls were suddenly alarmed and yelling at me that one of the boys was "bad speaking". Then they told me that he made the "F finger." I just told them I had no idea what they were talking about.

Oh, and for those requesting Engrish (Tim) - I found a great little bit right in my own apartment! The other day I just happened to glance at the teapot that had been sitting on my stove the whole time I've been here. It says Sweetberry Bear on it, but below that, in very small writing, it says: "With incredible magic of the pretty bear, you too will be the best friend like a lot of many people all over the world." Poignant, no? I tried to take a picture but the writing is really small and it wouldn't turn out right. I tried to google for it and interestingly enough the first few results for "sweetberry bear" (in quotes) are nsfw. Gotta love the internet.

That reminds me... the other night a few of the teachers were exchanging stories about all the porn that turns up when they look up (seemingly) totally innocent things in front of the kids. One lady said that she tried to look up country music and porn came up - I'm not really sure how that happened. (I asked her if she forgot the "o" in country, got a few laughs, and did NOT credit Family Guy.) Some of them make a little more sense - snake, box, fox. Anyway, the moral of the story is - do all of your internet searching before class.

Finally, I was going to upload a video that I took of class. I tried to do it last night but it was taking forever to upload, so I let it go over-night. This morning, it was still not uploaded, so I'll have to try again tonight.