Blog time part 1

Hello everybody! I know that it’s been a while, but here I am. So, these last few weeks have been pretty busy. Two weeks ago was mom week, meaning that moms had the option to sit in on our classes. This made me more than a little nervous, but I think it went pretty well.

The same week as mom week was when Matt and Mark came to visit. It was really nice seeing some familiar faces out here. I guess you can say that them being here helped energize my batteries, and I think that I did a pretty good job balancing their visit with my daily responsibilities. We had a lot of fun going out together on the weekends and at night, while they kept themselves busy while I was at work. As far as I know, Mark is planning on coming back here with Steve around March, so I guess you can say that they had a good time. I was happy to show them the food that Korea has to offer. I’m not exactly sure how well-known Korean food is outside of Asia, but it’s quite good and quite healthy. I put on a pair of jeans the other day, which I haven’t worn since I’ve been in the States, and they were substantially looser than last time I tried them on. They also helped me find good beer out here. Most Korean beer isn’t anything worth writing home about, but we actually found some microbrew quality beer. They also experienced the noribong, which is something that I want to talk about a little later. All in all, it ended up being a wonderful week, which I will treasure in my memory. Another very welcome sight with Mark and Matt was a bag of very necessary things that are very hard to find here from my mom and sister. So I want to thank them again here. Thanks guys, it really helped a lot.

This past week was a slightly different story. It was Halloween week at the school, and the celebration was on Friday. I’m not sure how prevalent swine flu is in the states right now, but swine flu seems to be in a lot of places in Korea, not excluding my classroom, where we had two confirmed cases. In effect my class got canceled for the week. This really sucked, because I look forward to seeing my kids during the week. I was still required to go to work, but I just helped in other classrooms. It ended up being a pretty good experience, I saw how the other teachers managed their classrooms, and I also got to know their kids better. Pretty cool. A couple highlights of last week: I got an antenna cord for my TV; I got a cord that hooks my laptop up to my TV, so now my TV works kind of like a DVD player; I got a cool TV stand; And last but not least, I got an awesome couch (thanks Veronica!).

Ok you guys, this is going to have to be a two-parter, because I want to go get some food. I’m going to leave you with a link to a series of small comic strips which represents the cultural differences that a foreign teacher experiences here quite wonderfully. I’ve experienced a good number of them, so I highly advise you to check it out. http://www.roketship.com/
Bye guys!

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