Reconnected with the world

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Oh, to have internet. After 2 weeks, we finally have internet! It feels so good 😊

So it's a little after midnight and I'm eating a pickle and jalepeno tuna sandwich. I realize how gross that sounds but I can't quite explain how good this is! YUM! I'm just starting to adjust to this teaching schedule. Being up until 2 or 3 in the morning and not heading to work until about 3pm. It's kinda weird.

I've been teaching for almost 2 weeks. It really is going by pretty quickly. After Wednesday, it's a breeze. Most of the students are pretty great. However, some of them are terrible. They combine the fact that they absolutely hate being there with their extremely rude bluntness...and they drive me crazy. It is very common to hear things like "bad teacher, bad teacher." Or "Why is your nose so big?" to Jake. A few boys make fun of my eyes being so big and one of them was like "stop, stop doing that with your eyes," when I was looking at him with a face that said "GET TO WORK." I will attach a picture that the boys drew of me. It's lovely. I will be in mid-sentence and 3 different kids will be yelling, "teacher...teacher...teacher..." I want to scream, "EXCUSE ME! Do YOU SEE THAT I AM BUSY?" There is no concept of interrupting or speaking out. The biggest problem is that they are speaking Korean most the time. Our boss has been asking all of us teachers to really crack down on the no Korean in class rule but it's way too late. They're used to doing it and it seems that it has been allowed thus far so it's extremely difficult to enforce. They could be talking crap about me the whole time for all I know. Besides speaking Korean, the hardest thing is that 90percent of the kids would rather die than be at English school. They come in completely miserable and then I have to hand them 3 hours worth of usually very boring material and they hate it. I'm trying to think of ways to make it more interesting and fun but I can't stray from the curriculum because everything I do is on video and anyone can be watching it at any given time. It's a great feeling.

I went to church on Easter Sunday at the only church in Cheongju with an English service. It's a MEGA church. Jerry Falwell would be proud. Actually, it's presbyterian so maybe not. ha ha. Anyway, the owner of our branch of CDI goes there and she told us about it. I went with Ben from Tennessee, and Brittany & Josh from Illinois. This church is CRAZY huge fancy nice! There are loads of buses in front that bring people from all over. The english service had about 75 people there. The pastor was from Canada. Everyone was very friendly and we got lots of hard boiled eggs. After church, EVERY Sunday, EVERYONE eats. They have a massive cafeteria and tons of people cooking to feed this huge church. There are MANY different services going on throughout the day. I met people there from Florida, Canada, UK, and some other states that I can't remember. They do a lot of things for the group of foreigners. Next week at 2 they are all playing volleyball in the massive and nice church gym (there's a library, cafe, classrooms, etc.) and in a couple weeks there is a 5 hour hike that's about a 3 hour drive away that I am hoping to go on. So that is pretty exciting! They said they try to do an outing every month and there's also Korean classes, Bible studies, and a few other things.

I can't forget to mention that in the first week of living in Cheongju, I was awoken TWICE by Jehovah's Witnesses. They brought a pamphlet and said they are looking for foreigners in the area. They were very nice and one of them said he's going to come back and invite us to dinner with his family. They also left Easter hard boiled eggs on the door handle. Ha ha good times.

We went downtown this weekend for the first time. We took a bus and it was about $1. There were 9 of us that went and it was pretty fun. Everyone else had been so they showed us around. We started at a food market, which progressed into a random objects market, and then became clothes, and then became very high end fashion with restaurants and coffee shops. New Yorker coffee was my favorite! It's 3 stories high with all glass windows and there's people EVERYWHERE in this area so I'm dying to go back there and people watch while I read a good book. I paid way too much for a caramel macchiato though. We went to a sushi place for dinner with a rotating conveyer belt and I of course had coconut prawns. Real shrimp like, huh? I ate 2 of the 3 and then the lady server came up to me totally laughing but trying not to and made hand gestures until I realized she was taking my plate to heat it up. Apparently I ate it the wrong way but it tasted fine to me! ha ha oops.

Anyway, I'm not feeling very blog-creative tonight and it's getting late so I might get to bed.

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Photos

View
from my classroom on the 7th floor

Jehovah's witness
Jake got a hold of their pamphlet

Church
It's much bigger than it looks

Ha ha
However funny this is, he seriously is one of the strictest teachers

Comments

[Mom/Tina]

Wow...again!!!
I love you guys and WHO/Where/What you ARE! Mom DeVries

[Stephanie]

Loving this!!
I seriously need to get ready for work, but I'm just loving these! I love the pic of you saying "pay attention!" And the real one of you lookin like a teacher!! You look great. And I love that I can totally relate to what you're talking about... like the grocery store that turned into a random things market and a clothing place... even though I've never been to Korea. :o) Keep blogging... I'll keep reading.