I have internet!

Hey everyone! I have internet in my apartment so now I have no excuse to be lame. It took a while because I wasn't sure if I would be staying in my stinky apartment but apparently Korean people cannot smell, so I have to stick it out until it is unbearable again (and hopefully that will not happen). Anyhow. A lot of things have happened, obviously. And I know most of you are super dorky, so I am going to try and include weblinks so that you can further research some of the cool Korean things I am experiencing. Here are some...

"Work" Life:
I am in my sixth week of teaching at the Mokdong-2 branch (http://job.cdi.co.kr/teaching/PhotoList.aspx?BranchIdx=86). I am finally getting the hang of it. I teach three different classes (but two of them are similar and since my school is so small, they don't have enough teachers to teach them separately so I have to double up). I teach English Chip Level 3. English Chip is the lowest group, so it's the most draining to teach because you have to entertain 10 year-olds who are tired because they have already gone to school, the music academy, math tutoring, etc. and then they come to the English academy from 7pm-10pm. Some of my students say they don't go to bed until 1 or 2am!!! EC classes meet 2 times a week and I teach four of them, so out of my ten 3-hour slots, 8 slots are EC3. My other two slots are Interactive Listening and Interactive Reading Level Par (for Interactive they use golf terms, so the lowest is Par, then Birdie, then Eagle, then Albatross. Yay! I know golf talk!). Par is the highest level for my school and I love teaching it! Listening is easier because you just have to play sound clips and then discuss them with the students. Reading is the other class and it is harder than Listening, so only five students (all girls, haha) are in it. It's nice to have a small class but it's harder to get them talking. They are getting more comfortable now, so it gets better each week. Most of my favorite students are in the Listening and/or Reading classes.

These are some pictures of my EC3 students, being crazy with the Photobooth on my awesome new computer!!! I had to bring it into work with me the day I bought it. (The picture on the left is supposed to be them on a rollercoaster. You can kind of see it above Billy's left hand. The other biy is John and the girl is Julie.)








Here are pictures of the classroom. The girl in the front of the right hand picture is my favorite student! Her name is Sally and she is SO cute and sweet. Another teacher, Phil, tries to take her from me, but she loves me too much to fall for his tricks. John from above and Sally are cousins. I want to hang out with their family. They must be cool and a little crazy.

Play Time:
There has been a lot of fun times had. Unfortunately there is little photographic evidence to support that claim. But the norebangs ("singing rooms") are amazing. When I went to visit my friend Debbie, we stayed at one until 6 or 7 am without even realizing it! People stay out so late that there are just as many people singing and walking around at 6am as there are when you start norebanging at midnight. (Sidenote: Sheila, I need your help dealing with pictures! Right now they always paste into the top. Do you know how to fix that or if Blogger just has photo albums? Thanks. :) ) So here are some of the highlights of playtime since I have been here...

Here are people from work. Every Wednesday (we get off early on Wednesday because we start at 2pm instead of 4pm) we go into Hongdae or Shinchon (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hongdae_area and http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sinchon) to "revel" as wikipedia put it. Left to right: June, Phil, Eric, ME, Sandie, Fabienne and Androuche. I don't know how to rotate the photo... :(


This is from the nght that our boss to everyone from our branch out to eat, drink and nore! Mr. Lee is the one dancing around and making everyone drink tornadoes (beer and soju, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soju)


Here we are eating silk worm larvae, called bundaegi (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bundaegi) which looks like roaches or something. That kid Ben bought some to challenge people to eat it. I accepted, of course. I think this youtube video captures the experience pretty well: http://www.ifood.tv/video/korean_food_silk_worm_larva_bundigie


This is us digging for sweet potatoes. We think it was really just slave labor...


But I kicked ass and got lots of sweet potatoes to take home. We made them with chicken, apples and cinnamon. yuuuuummmm...

Well, I have to go see fireworks. It's only about 1:15pm, but we have to get good seats and alcohol to occupy our time while we wait. I'll post about it!