I need a break from the break...

So unfortunately 추석 (Chuseok), or what I like to call a 3-day version of Kthanksgiving, was definitely not a very relaxing time for me.  Went to the grandparents and since they keep disgustingly early hours (wakes up every morning at six), they expected me to do so as well.  Sleeping in till 9AM won me the following comments from my understanding (cough) grandmother: How can you be so lazy?!  If you keep these late hours you're going to miss work one day.  You need to wake up at normal times!  So you can go out to exercise.  Cause you're fat.  Look at the size of your butt!  And those hips!  You'll never get married.  Who will take you?  You're uglier than most girls so you'll have a hard time finding a husband.  When someone said you take after me, I was very insulted.  I was beautiful when I was your age!  Blah blah blah.  This is what I heard in a long, continuous, never-ending stream for a good several days until one of my aunts, who is in an even worse predicament than me, finally came and took the nagging from my shoulders.  Thank the Lord.

On a happier note, today was our school picnic day!  The 6th graders are currently on their 수학여행(?), which is 3-days and 2-nights so today the rest of the school went on a one day trip.  Aka no classes :D  I tagged along with the 5th graders (each grade went to a different place. There are 6 classes in each grade and grades 1-5 went. Meaning there were a LOT of buses transporting children) to Seoul Land, an amusement park/zoo.

One of my co-teachers.

Baobab tree. These people are seriously obsessed with the Little Prince...

ㅋㅋㅋㅋ...

My Kname <3 It was the monkey area... It must have an alternate meaning. Something to do with monkeys apparently...

BABY MONKEYS!! So cute~

Some of my students <3

FLOOD of 5th graders...

Seoul Land.

What I'm still kind of impressed by is the fact that all the parents (mothers) of the class president of each class sacked lunchboxes for the teachers to eat.  Apparently your kid being voted the class president is not always a good thing cause there's no way I would've done this for my kid's teacher willingly.

The Love Bus

Current location: 경기도
Reason: to see the grandparents for 추석
Mood: wtf/fml-mode

I was able to get on the bus from 청주 (Chungju) to 동서울 (Seoul) without a hitch (on a VERY nice bus I might add -- felt like a first class seat on a plane), but it was from Seoul to Gyeonggi-do when things took a more entertaining turn of events.  I lolligagged around for about an hour before my bus took off and I was one of the first people to settle in.  Literally everyone who walked onto the bus, minus 3 people (I counted), were in pairs.  Couples.  I felt like I was on Noah's ark, or in this case, bus.  The love bus.  The bus has 4 seats in each row, separated by an aisle right down the middle so it's 2 seats on each side.  Basically I was the only one up until the last minute when the bus took off sitting all by her lonesome.  It was fantastic.  I was giggling internally non-stop.  Then a guy sat down next to me and I cursed my single-ness.  Ah well, it could've been worse.  It could've been an 아저시.

Once I arrived, my grandmother lost no time in feeding me the minute I walked in through the door.  That and the ever-present lecture of the necessity for me to lose weight <3  Afterwards, I looked through old photo albums and discovered that there actually was once a time when my own father was a child.  I took pictures (they're fabulous) and will be posting them as soon as I can, mwahahahahaha...

The Apartment

So this door-to-door sales아저시 went around my apartment building to try and sell those automatic locks where you just put in a code to open the door as opposed to the old-fashioned key-and-lock system.  He stuck his body inside when I opened the door, alarming me, and then proceeded to tell me how the guy downstairs was robbed and showed me a picture on his phone of his broken lock.  He then assured me that I am completely unsafe with my current lock and that I will be robbed.  I finally managed (somehow) to get him out my door, after he shoved his card to me, and almost hyperventilated, semi-sure that someone would break in within the next hour (probably his accomplice to prove his point).  But then I realized, wait a minute, I don't think there is a guy who lives below me.  This is a new building and the only other people I saw move in (I was its first tenant) is the family 2 floors below me.  I was almost duped!  I didn't know salespeople even existed in this country!!

Anyways, here are some pictures.

View when you enter.

Angle from inside.

Very small bathroom.

The rest of the room.

My ukulele is never far ㅋㅋ...

All in all, it's pretty small but brand new (I'm its first occupant), which was lucky for me.  I've heard some horror stories regarding the filth of their apartments inherited from the previous teacher.  The one before me used to have to commute from 청주 (Chungju), which is about 40 min away on a good day so the school decided to find somewhere closer for me.  I'm literally 10 seconds from the school.  But the best part of living in a small, one-room apartment, is that it's cozy and just the right size.  Last time I was staying in Korea by myself for 3 months, I couldn't sleep with the lights off cause the large empty spaces freaked me out...  I'm still convinced there was a 귀신 (ghost) living there with me...

Kadorable..

Today, one of my little 3rd grade boys came up to me before class started and asked, very seriously, "How is the weather today?"  To which I replied, equally seriously (because a serious question warrants a serious answer), "The weather is very nice today."  He solemnly nodded and returned to his seat.  Five minutes later he returned to ask me another question.  It got halfway out, then he seemed to give up and went back to his seat before I could have a chance to answer.  Afterwards, as the class and I were going over Lesson 9: I have two pencils, he once again calmly asked, "How is the weather today?"  The other kids groaned and muttered.  Apparently this is the only phrase he knows in English.

There is a little girl in another one of my 3rd grade classes who looks EXACTLY like those old Asian paintings of women (only the child version).

Only without the crazy hair and kimono.  Whenever I look at her, I just have to smile <3

There is yet another 3rd grade boy that causes me to laugh on the inside every time I look at him.  He looks like the elementary version of Kpop boy-bands.

One of his ears is pierced, he has a faux-hawk dyed brown and is tres trendy.  And he's on the basketball team.  Future heartbreaker.

There are other students who makes me laugh just to look at them.  Kadorable <3  Hopefully there will come a time when I could be bothered to take pictures of my students...

비봉초등학교

Office for me and the 3 other English teachers.

My Desk.  Note the ukulele ㅋㅋ..

First English Class

Second English Class

Front of the school

Back of the school

These English phrases are on every other step...

The Worst Tourist/Korean

I arrived to Seoul, Republic of Korea on a hot, humid day.  August 19th, 2010 to be exact.  And I am only just now finally getting around to starting a blog to log my adventures in an organized manner before I forget everything.  Unfortunately, I must be the worst tourist/Korean ever because I have not taken a single photo during orientation (which was a blast) or my new living arrangements (though I will get to that eventually... I hope...).  The sad thing is, I bought a brand new camera just for this purpose and I have yet to use it.  Fail.

Anyways, orientation was held at... some place near the Seoul University hospital.  There was a dorm (it was nice) and classrooms (not so nice) usually used for foreign students.  I always forget what it's called...  In any case, I met some really cool people there, was sufficiently bored during the lectures and extremely entertained by some things the EPIK staff organized for us (like teaching us that Korean folk dance that only reminded me of 황진이 ㅋㅋ).  But I was looking forward to it ending so I could finally move into my apartment and unpack my oversized bags.

I was placed in Choongchungbuk-do (충청북도) in a very country-town called Ochang (오창).  I teach at the elementary school here, Bibong Elementary (비봉초) and everyone is pretty nice here, which was a huge relief.  I've been hearing stories about co-teaching...  I have 3 co-teachers (they're kind of supposed to be like the disciplinary force while I'm teaching since the kids don't know I can speak Korean. Most foreign teachers can't) and they're the main English teachers of their grades while I'm just kind of there for my pronunciation.  Which is fine.  Co-teachers also function as kind of like the native teacher's babysitter since usually they can't speak the language and need help settling in.  I teach grade 3-6 so that's usually 5 classes a day, 40 minutes each.  The kids seem pretty well-behaved and entertaining.  My CTs assured me that since in this area most of the mothers stay home instead of working, their children are well-disciplined and clean (kkkkkk).  The school itself is only about 5 years old so everything's pretty new.

My apartment is a small one-room, but it's cozy and perfect-sized for me.  Since the apartment is brand new, it's clean, which was a relief since I've been hearing horror stories of the filth left behind by previous native teachers.  So that's a plus but the minus is that it has that new house smell.  It's not like the nice new car smell.  It's this weird, sour wood smell, though I suppose it might have been aggravated by the humidity.  Ugh, the humidity!  For those of you who know me (as you should, else why would you be reading this?), I rarely sweat.  But let me tell you, I am sweating here!  Though today for the first time since I got here there was a very nice, I'd even say chilly, breeze blowing through town.  Do I smell the end of this sticky summer?

Yesterday I just came back from Wonju (원주) where my aunt and her family lives.  It was suh-weet seeing them as my aunt is super liberal/passionate and whenever I see her she's always talking about some new conspiracy theory or another.  My baby cousin, who's 5 now (last time I saw her was 2 years ago) has grown into quite the little smart-alek, which in baby world equates to adorable.

In summary, to bring this blog to a close (finally), I am having an enjoyable time so far.  It still throws me off sometimes, the thought that I'm going to be here for a year.  But I mean yes, it's a foreign country, but how different can it be from my time in NY?  Which, in its own right is practically a foreign country to a Californian.  And I even have the added bonus of speaking the language and having family here to help me out.  I'll be fine. ...

Maybe I'll get a cat...  Jumpstart my career as a crazy cat lady.