I am loved!

Pretty impressive that I got 4 votes, considering I only see these girls once every two weeks.

Grade 2 students dancing, screaming, and singing along to an Infinite performance which I played before class.

Is it only Tuesday? ^^ 

Actually today wasn’t bad, even though I had to lead two classes with my totally useless coworker. The students weren’t too awful because we did some group work. In each group, 2 or 3 students didn’t even try, but at least the other 3 worked hard. And I successfully came up with a new lesson plan after my first class had already started because the computer wasn’t turning on and I couldn’t use the Powerpoint and game I had prepared. By the way, the computer wasn’t turning on because the power strip had been switched off. I didn’t even think to check it. It’s always on!

After school I waited for the bus that goes from my school to the nearest subway station. I was waiting with a group of local high school boys. God, I’m so glad I don’t have to teach boys. They are totally cute with their big-frame glasses and tight little school pants! Plus, they are INSANE. They were chasing and kicking and punching each other. They were all at least 16. Then they noticed I was a foreigner so they started talking about me in Korean and yelling “Hello nice to meet you how are you oh I’m fine thank you and you?” over and over again in my presence. I was so glad when they all got off a few stops later. 

I met my lovely friend at Bina, an Indian restaurant in front of the main gate of Korea University. This is a great area because it’s right in the middle of the bus route between our two areas. The prices are standard and the food is good. Plus, the Indian couple who own it are nice and speak English, and they have a cute little boy who comes back from school at 6 and eats a snack and watches TV at his own table in the restaurant. When he comes in, they change the TV from Bollywood videos to cartoons for him. Also, he speaks Korean. When he yelled “Dad, turn up the volume!” in Korean, I almost died from the cuteness. 

AND I went to the gym after that, which makes me feel very proud of myself.

Now I’m catching up with the most recent episodes of two of my favorite American TV shows and trying not to light my hair on fire from the aromatherapy candle on my desk. It’s so cozy in here! It was really cold here today. In the morning, the temperature was almost freezing. Luckily, my apartment has doors blocking my main room from my front door and my windows (one of my doors is a sliding glass door, so I can still see outside,) and it seals in the heat really well. 

I’m going to paint my nails and hope I don’t asphyxiate on the fumes!

Lately, I feel like I have really bad luck. It started when the first USB I had broke. Then, I bought another, and it disappeared after I’d used it for just one day. Then, in the past week, I’ve fallen up the stairs at my school and hurt both my legs; got stepped on by my friend’s very sharp stiletto; and bit my tongue so hard there was blood running out of my mouth while eating with my boyfriend.

It was the first time we’d seen each other in a few days and we only had less than an hour to meet so we decided to eat quickly at Mr. Pizza. Then my mouth decided it would be a good idea to bite my tongue. It hurt worse than usual and then I realized I was bleeding. Eventually it stopped, but my food did taste like blood for a while. I still have three bloody gashes on my tongue but they’re starting to heal up.

What is wrong with me? When am I going to stop getting hurt and losing and breaking stuff??!

Sometimes I really think of what a small world it is in Seoul. Last night, when we were at a Korean drinking place, I saw a guy who I recognized as a friend of my friend. This place usually has no foreigners and is very secluded so it was strange. Then this morning, walking by the coffee shop inside the subway station near my house, I saw my friend and her friend and got a drink with them before meeting my boyfriend. I feel like I could go almost anywhere in Seoul and see someone I know. When I meet my friends after work in Itaewon for dinner, I always see at least three people I know (for various reasons) walking out of the subway while I wait for them to arrive. Small world!

I still need to finish my lesson for tomorrow. I know I should finish all my work at school, but I feel to drained after classes to do anything other than look at stuff online or chat on my phone. I need to start being more productive at work! Seriously. I hate spending my Sunday evenings doing lesson plans and Powerpoints. 

I’m not looking forward to this week at all because the students have been getting more and more loud, disrespectful, and rowdy in my classes (particularlywith the one teacher who does nothing to stop them.) I teach six of my classes to a crowd of screaming girls, and maybe five are actually trying to listen to me. It gives me a headache and makes me want to cry. I hope they’ll behave better this week because I’m making a game.

Monday morning is my most difficult day of the week (I have five classes; I only have a 45-minute break in the morning and an hour for lunch in the middle) but being able to return to my English room made today good. 

My school, like most public schools in Seoul, has a nice and super-expensive “English Only Zone” outfitted with a touch-screen smart board, TVs, computers, and books. The TV and computers at my school (except for mine) are all unplugged, and no one ever reads the books, so it’s kind of a waste, but I love the English room. I can stay here between classes and relax and do stuff online (or watch music videos, like I did today.) Sometimes I sleep on the couch in the afternoon (I’ve walked in on one of my co-teachers doing this twice so I figure it’s okay for me to do as well.) It’s definitely better than teaching in the homeroom classes, which are kind of unpredictable. Will the temperature be freezing cold or burning hot? Will my PPT work on the computer or will I have to improvise a 45-minute lesson on the spot? Will I lost my chalk/USB/book/worksheets/etc. in the classroom and then have to retrace all the steps I took during the day to track it down again?

My English room had been out of commission since August because the lamp inside the smart screen broke and was too expensive to replace (I heard it costs 2,000,000 won. Whoa.) The school installed a projector and screen and besides sometimes not wanting to turn off, it works wonderfully.

I enjoyed customizing the classroom with a seasonably-appropriate Big Bang desktop wallpaper, which my students really enjoyed. By the way, what is up with Seungri’s face? It looks like a rat!

I’m also excited because I just got an invitation to the wedding of one of my co-teachers (we don’t really teach together, but she did sit in the English room office during my winter and summer camps.) She is marrying the ‘office guy’ (official job title unknown) and their wedding is in three weeks on a Saturday. They kept their relationship a secret. The rest of the school found out over the weekend, but I was actually the first person to know. I think she told me because we happened to take the bus and subway at the same time after school let out and she ran out of things to talk about. It’s funny because you would never guess they’re together. They don’t even acknowledge each other at work. I’ve been dying to go to a Korean wedding for over a year, so I’m happy I finally have my chance.

On Friday, I got to skip out of school to attend a teachers’ workshop for the middle and high school foreign English teachers in my district and two surrounding districts. The workshop was in a really nice conference room at Konkuk University, and the food was amazing. Plus, our speakers were good, even though they didn’t really provide any helpful information. This was the best workshop I’ve been to so far, and I’ve been to four or five at this point.

Unfortunately, they split up the middle and high school teachers, so I lost track of my friend all day, but… there was a field trip! I guess they couldn’t think of enough stuff to occupy us for the eight hours allotted for the workshop, so they took us to the Amsa-Dong Prehistoric Settlement Site.  It was really nice being out in the nice Fall weather for a little bit. However, there wasn’t much to do there except look at some recreations of historic huts and some ancient pits. All the information was in Korean. The people who brought us there actually let us leave almost two hours early. (This was kind of rude, though, because we were all the way at the end of the pink line, and they told us we had to find our own way home, and they claimed to not know where the subway was. We had to walk for about twenty minutes to get there. I was really not pleased with this.)

Since I was going to meet my friends in Sinsa in a few hours, it didn’t make sense to go home only to immediately go out again, so I hung around Kondae (the Konkuk University area.) I got a coffee at a Caffe Bene, got a new USB at the E-Mart, and hung around the shopping complex until my friend finished her portion of the workshop and then hung out with her in Starbucks. And we also went to the Bandi & Lunis bookstore to pick up the new “1st Look” magazine which had G-Dragon on the cover (<3 throb, throb.) 

I think it’s funny that I used to never hang out in coffee shops, and now… I kind of do all the time. I don’t even like coffee! (Although I really like the double chocolate latte at Caffe Bene.)

It’s kind of a joke with foreign English teachers in Korea that we are always the last to know something, especially when it involves us. I think every foreign teacher has had a moment like this (“X Teacher, why are you here? You have class now!” “I don’t have class until next period…” “No, no, no! We changed the schedule today. Didn’t we tell you?” “No”) or this (“X Teacher, you can’t go home now! Tonight is the school eating and drinking and noraebang party until 11 PM!” “Oh. No one told me… Guess I’ll cancel my plans”.) They just told me this morning that I have to be at Konkuk University tomorrow at 8:30 AM for an eight-hour long workshop. A workshop on what? I do not have access to that information. All I have is a map of the Kondae area with “8:30” written at the top in pen and a Konkuk University campus map I found on their English website which seems really unhelpful. This means I’ll have to wake up an hour earlier than I usually do and sit through a series of boring and totally unhelpful lectures about ‘co-teaching’ or ‘using technology in the classroom’ or whatever. I really appreciate that the Seoul Metropolitan Office of Education pays us all so much money to come and stay in Korea, and organizes these workshops for us, but I never learn anything from them or feel that they’ve helped me in any way. At the last one I went to, the only helpful bit of information I got was a good website with free worksheets, and I could just have easily found that on Google. Sigh. My life is so hard!

OK my life is not actually hard at all. For example, since it’s midterms today, I spent all morning messing around on Facebook and Gchat and my phone, made a few lesson plans, and watched the most recent episodes of three of my favorite American TV shows. Now all the teachers are in a meeting in another room and I am the only person in the main office. It’s very quiet and peaceful. I wish it was just my job to sit in a totally quiet office and update my Facebook, Tumblr, and email all day long. Does a job like that exist anywhere? 

I finally met my 자기야 last night (he hates when I call him that; it means ‘honey’) in Jongno after his job interview and we had yummy Korean-Chinese food: 자짱먼 (noodles in black bean sauce, except we ordered the extra-spicy kind) and sweet-and-sour chicken. I haven’t had Chinese food in awhile and I was really craving it. After that, we got ice cream at Baskin Robbins, which is kind of our couple tradition. They have my favorite flavor from Halloween last year, Monster Halloween, again! Unfortunately, I think I’m now more into Lovestruck Strawberry because it has big chunks of chocolate. However, Monster Halloween does have little Pop Rocks. Korean people LOVE Baskin Robbins. The line was out the door. Even though it was chilly. It’s funny because I used to not like ice cream in America very much. Since coming to Korea, I’m down for Baskin Robbins or Coldstone any day. I’m just glad I don’t live particularly close to either of these places (the closest Baskin Robbins is like 20 minutes away, and I actually have no idea where the closest Coldstone is) otherwise I would no longer be able to fit myself into Korean ‘free size’ clothes. As it is, I can usually only fit into something meant to be over-sized. 

Tonight, I want to go to the gym, since I haven’t been there in about a week,  eat some of the awesome pre-made Korean side dishes and kimchi dumplings I bought last time I was at Lotte Super, and find a good Korean horror movie to watch.