Whoa! A lot of teaching Wednesday

Wow. So, Mr. B told me this morning that I'd be teaching alone and what he wanted me to teach. I was like, "yup, sure thing", but then when we got to class, he taught to and we taught something entirely different from what he told me in the morning. Ok, fine - but I got lots of class time. Then, last period, he managed to loose some super-secret piece of paper and had to spend the whole period panicking and looking for it, so I got to teach the first grade class entirely alone! It was awesome! Apart from one kid managed to get a bloody nose. Not too sure how he did that, but he went and fixed himself up and came back ok. Not sure if Mr B and his budding moustache found the confidential paper or not. What a durr-brain.

I booked my flight home yesterday! I'm headed home for over two weeks in about 5 weeks time. I am so excited!!! I am going to do so much baking and candy making and then eat all of it. Well, I'll share it with mum and dad, I suppose - seeing as they let me live in their house and drive their car for free :D

No other news for today - and nothing for yesterday either. It's been quite quite and relatively normal. Well apart from the moustaches, bloody noses, missing confidential papers, and whatnot. 

Today's five:

1) Lots of fun teaching today. A whole five hours!

2) My flights home are all booked. I also booked a time to go into the immigration office to get my visa changed. I'm hoping it just goes smoothly. If not, I'm screwed.

3) I bought these delicious yoghurt-berry desserts from the supermarket. Yummy!

4) I was thinking of going away this weekend, but I changed my mind. Instead I'm going to stay home and work on some craft projects and then go to an ice hockey game on Sunday. Might just go alone if Andy doesn't want to come. I've heard rumours of a Taco Bell having opened in the area - might have to check it out.

5) Wednesday is almost done - over half way to the weekend!! Only 30 days of work to go. If we take out the weekends and public holidays, it's only 20 days.

Moustache Monday

So, I'm having a pretty good day. No particular reason, but it was just made about 100 times better when I realised that Mr B seems to be growing a moustache. This is a thing of true brilliance, and I really hope he is, and I really hope it has grown in well before I leave because Korean men grown the most epically hilarious moustaches ever. Moustaches are already very funny to me, but check this out:

(there were supposed to be some awesome pictures of moustaches here - but I can't find any)

Yet another wonderful weekend. On Saturday I stayed home all morning and read my book (sorry Jenni - I thought I was going to be out, but we could have skyped after all), and then in the afternoon I lead the meetup to the ice hockey. Heaps of people (around 20!) showed up and I got us all to the rink, got tickets, and watched the game. It was a good game, and my team won! Also a couple of guys from the last meetup I went to were there, plus a couple of others I knew, and Nathan came too, so it was a good mix of new and old people. After the game some people left in their own groups, but a smaller group of my friends went to CoEx for dinner. We ended up at TGIFs, and I spent much of the evening laughing so hard I cried. It was a really good meetup. Andy didn't come to the hockey as he had to go to the doctor in Seoul, so I saw him after I got home from dinner.

I ended up telling him about how I was feeling about the way he's been acting and after a bit of talking (and me telling him that if he was going to continuing being 'this Andy' rather than the Andy he was when we started dating, I didn't want any part of it), I think he understood and is going to be a bit more considerate. It's been two days and so far so good.

On Sunday we went for a late breakfast before I left to back into Seoul to meet with Amy in Gangnam. She and I went and had some delicious hamburgers for lunch and the went to a jimjillbang for the afternoon. We went in the sauna, soaked in the hot pools, and got a full body scrub from the old ladies who work there. Such a super relaxing afternoon. I'm sad she's leaving, she's really good fun to hang out with. Plus, once you've spent the whole afternoon hanging naked with someone, you know they're a friend :D

I was pretty bummed this morning that it was Monday, but it's turned out to be a very pleasant day, so far. It's warm, but not hot, I've been involved with (but not taught) three classes, and have got a little work done. I'm seriously looking forward to skyping with mum this afternoon. Andy's also said he'd like to have dinner together tonight, so that'll be nice. I think I want to go to Busan this weekend, too - so lots to look forward to.

Today's five things:

1) Moustaches

2) Feeling totally fine about hanging out with friends, naked, for hours.

3) Katy Perry's 'Teenage Dreams" CD which is currently on repeat on my MP3 player. It's my trashy-guilty pleasure.

4) Boys who are interested in dating you, even if you don't want to date them. It's flattering.

5) Feminism (in it's 'true' form, not it's misconstrued man-hating form) rocks my socks.

Friday again?

I'm really not sure where the time is going! But I think that means I'm not bored :)

Ok, last night I had a fantastic chat to Jetts. She had heaps of good stories to tell and some super wise wisdom about boys, life, and teaching small children to share. It was just like we'd gotten together for real, only I didn't have to leave my apartment. Thank goodness for Skype! It was seriously good to talk to her. 

Today has been busy because Mr B has had tests to mark so I've taught all of the four classes. Well, apart from most of one because he got on a real snit about something and told them off for about half an hour (intermittently). I actually couldn't tell that they'd done anything wrong. He tells them off for things I can't understand and then just lets the kids who show up to class without books or pens completely off. I dunno.

Um, not much to report today. Lunch was good - Pork thing that's kind of like spicy goulash. A fair amount of teaching, and a couple of periods free. I haven't done much with my free time today. It's Friday and I just felt like surfing the net, so that's what I've done. I am going out to dinner tonight with the Osan group - we're going for galbi, so yum! I think I'll have to eat something before then though - I'm starving!

As for Andy, yep he's still missing in action. Didn't hear from him much at all yesterday and despite the fact that we ALWAYS hang out on Thursdays, he never showed up or told me he wasn't going to show up. Luckily, I had a hunch he'd ditch me, so I had stuff for dinner. Why don't I just ask him what his plans are, I hear you ask? Because he gives me answers like "I'm not sure", or "I have no idea" instead of a yes or no. I'm getting kind of sick of it. I'm kind of thinking you should know if you want to come over for dinner in a couple of hours or not, right? And if you've spent every Thursday hanging out with a girl for the past three months, it's polite to let her know you're busy this Thursday, right? So, I'm currently implementing 'Plan: Make my own plans' where I do whatever the heck I want and don't bother to invite him because he's shown no consideration for my time or planning, so I'd better show some respect for myself.

I'm back cutting down on the refined cabs and junk food and I feel great. I all but leaped out of bed this morning! Mood is pretty buoyant, and I'm feeling quite energetic. Go paleo!

Ok, today's five things:

1) Putting coconut oil on salad makes it feel totally luxurious. And it's yum!

2) Skype with Jetts was awesome.

3) I did re-watch The Holiday and I still loved it.

4) It's the weekend! Got good stuff this weekend :) Friends, dinners, ice hockey, naked spa time - It's got it all. Well, maybe no romance... but it has everything else!

5) I secretly really want to buy a tablet (you know, like an iPad but I'm probably too anti-apple, so I'd buy a different brand), so I've made myself a deal. It's kind of a pointless buy, maybe, but I'm young and have savings and I NEVER buy awesome fun stuff. So, I've said that when I can do 5 regular push ups I can buy a tablet. That doesn't sound like much, but I can not even come close to this (I can't even do half of one) right now - and they're a fantastic exercise. So. That is my goal. I'm currently working on building my strength doing knee push-ups before I move on to toe-incline ones. I'll gradually lower the incline until I'm doing 5 good form, regular style push-ups. I'll be one teaspoon more awesome then.

Gorgeous day Thursday

It is an absolutely gorgeous day today. Perfect sun, totally blue skies, cool breeze - fantastic. At first I was a little bummed, I have to work until 6pm tonight. The day will be gone by then. Then I though 'I bet the kids want to be outside too', so I've planned a lesson we can have outside. We're going to learn some describing words, do a scavenger hunt, describe some stuff outside, and then write some autumn haiku poems. Nice :)

So, dinner last night with Nathan was great. Sadly (as is so often the case here in Korea) the Peruvian restaurant had closed, but Nathan knew of an excellent Mexican restaurant nearby, so we went there instead. I'm not very familiar with Mexican food, but American people seem sort of besotted with it. I had soft tacos (and apparently no true Mexican eats crunchy tacos - they're an American creation) with beef and corriander. They tasted so good! And I can definitely remember where the restaurant was so I can go again. 

Nathan was good company (though he seems to not like about 95% of life in Korea, so I'm not totally sure why he's here), and we discussed some ideas for running future meetups. He seems quite keen to volunteer lead. I'm sort of keen, on an intermittent basis. It's so much work, and people can be so dumb and demanding, and don't seem to register the fact that you're a volunteer and are getting NOTHING for leading the group around. Well, I've got my ice hockey meetup on Saturday and Nathan said he'd probably be there, so that'll be nice. He also said he knows an amazing hamburger place in Seoul for the group to go to afterwards, which could be awesome.

And today's been pretty uneventful, so far. Oh! I went for a lovely walk by the river yesterday afternoon after work. The weather was so nice and there were a million dragon flies. I sat and watched them, and the way the sun caught their wings and they all flew in this kind of swarm made them look like a ball of magic or something. It was quite beautiful.

Today' five things:

1) Fantastic weather - has made me feel happy all day.

2) This song is the most stupid thing I've ever hear and I keep listening to it because it makes me laugh every time. I usually listen to songs with such serious/meaningful lyrics that I keep trying to figure out what she's singing about beyond the obvious inference. I'm kind of hoping that the 'peacock' means the guy's amazing, yet hidden, personality that she wants to see :D

3)  I'm going to watch 'The Holiday' again tonight. It's one of my favourite movies.

4) I moved on to doing a more difficult type of push up this morning. They are harder! But the others had become... too easy!

5) Uuuuuuummmmmmmmmmmm...................? I know! Cold water when you're thirsty is awesome. Done!

Got an extra banana Wednesday

No teaching for me today. Once again I'm in the English room with my laptop while Mr B speaks in Korean. I've been working on some new research and writing about using needs analyses with young ESL learners. I want to submit it to an ESL teaching website and see if they'll publish it online. I've got the draft maybe just over half done. I was so engrossed in my writing that at one point Mr B was asking me a question during class and I didn't hear him until about the third time. Turns out he wanted to know if I knew of the song 'My Heart Will Go On'. I was like, 'yes', and that was it. That was all he wanted. Then one other time he wanted me to do something, he said "Sam teacher, can you do step 3 please?". I said "Sure, what would you like me to do?" (It was some sort of writing exercise, they'd already done it and I wasn't sure if he wanted me to check everyone's answers or what). Anyway, he just looked at me like I'm the dumbest person ever and goes "Ok, I'll do it", and swings away before I can reply and does it all in Korean. He didn't act angry or annoyed or anything afterwards, but it's so frustrating. I'm more than happy to help, but sometimes I need to know what he actually wants. I believe the problem actually is that his English isn't strong enough, or he is not confident enough, to explain to me further, so he does it himself to save face. I will be extremely happy when I don't have to work with him any more.

Dragging myself through the job everyday sure is wearing thin. I'll make it to then end, but man, it drags! I'm trying to organise lots of fun things to do each day so I have something to look forward to. And things that don't involve Andy because I'm just not convinced my happiness is one of his central concerns. It's not his fault, but I have been spending most of my time looking forward to the time I get to spend with him. This makes the time when I see him kind of special and a really nice part of an otherwise shitty day or week. But when he shows me he doesn't value out time together the same way, it makes me sad. Like last night I had spent all of Monday and Tuesday looking forward to spending the evening with him. We usually have dinner together and then hang out at the coffee shop, or walk, or whatever. Last night though he went home right after dinner - I'd only seen him for about an hour and half and it was only about twenty past eight at night. I felt bad that he obviously wasn't enjoying my company enough to stay any longer, and it was obvious (REALLY obvious, like he knew) that I was sad about him going, but he just left any way. He's done that before, left when I'm upset, and it's not very nice. Makes me think he's perhaps not very supportive? But then he called me later and asked if I'd like to go away with him for the weekend in a few weeks, so I don't know.

Anyway, long story short, it's not good to rely on another person to make you happy, so here I go finding other fun things to look forward to. For example: Tonight I'm having dinner with Nathan to plan some future evens for the Lost in Seoul Meetup group, on Thursday I have a possible Skype date with Jetts (and if not I have a bunch of chick flicks with my name on them!), on Friday there's an Osan teachers' dinner, on Saturday I'm leading a meetup group to the Ice Hockey, and on Sunday I'm Skyping mum and then going into Seoul to go to a Jimjillbang (Korean Bath house) with TMI Amy. Phew - that lot should keep me quiet!

Ok, new topic. After school class yesterday went pretty well. I had three 2nd grade girls, which is a pain in the butt number of students because it's hard to play team games, but at least they're easy to control :) We had a good chat about Justin Beiber. I've got a whole lesson on Justin Beiber that I think we'll do next week, they should like that :)

And now for today's five:

1) The super-cute kid who always says 'hello' gave me his banana after lunch today. We have been given fruit at lunch maybe twice since I've been here, and today we got surprise bananas! I guess he didn't want his because he came into the teachers room and gave it to me. It was really sweet. And they're really nice bananas!

2) I'm so looking forward to the jimjilbang on the weekend. I want sauna and spa, and a scrub, and a massage. Oh, so relaxing!

3) It's sunny today. I'm wearing one of my favourite dresses - the black and white polka-dot one.

4) I'm going out to dinner tonight - probably to a Peruvian restaurant. I have no idea what kind of food that is, but it should be a nice night.

5) There's a cute, cute dog that lives on the same street as my building. I see him most mornings and he ignores me, but he is so adorable. He looks a bit like Benji. Along with him and the Mortal Kombat/Rocky theme song arcade games, my morning is a win :)

Like this only all beige.

Raining cats and dogs Tuesday

That's one of Andy's favourite sayings. I think he likes it when it's raining cats and dogs :) Also, he told me to tell you (the Internet) that in Korea everyone takes a worming pill every 6-12 months because they believe that eating some kinds of meat will give you worms. The whole family has to take a pill or it won't be effective. He tells me pretty much everyone in Korea does this regardless of any symptoms. He decided on Saturday that it was time to get de-wormed, and included me in this... endeavour. He then said "Sam, you should write about this on your blog", so here you go Andy :) I wasn't happy about taking a pill meant to kill something I was pretty sure I didn't have (what else does it kill, huh?), but he insisted that it was safe and a good thing to do. So, I guess I don't have worms now. Which is a good thing :)

I got a call yesterday evening from a lady from a Kindy in Dongtan. She wants me to go in and check out the school and have an interview. She hadn't read my resume, so kind of wasted my time by asking me questions she could have read the answer to, but ok. He biggest selling point for the job seemed to be that the accommodation has "a big window. It's perfect accommodation because of the window. All the foreigners say 'Wow, it's such a nice window'". Haha, ok - why don't you and the window get married, lady? Anyway, she has yet to email me the details like she said she would and the school is only open while I am at work, so I'm not sure anything is going to happen there.

I really just want to go home and go to bed (though I always feel like that at work when I'm not teaching - when I actually do get home I don't go to bed), but I have to work until 6pm. But, with any luck my afterschool class will go well and the kids will be interested. I want to take some photos of their work to submit with my latest article. I started drawing the draft of the comic strip to go with it last night :) Most annoyingly, I brought a home made nut bar to work today as a snack. I have to bring one on days when I work until 6, as it's a long time between lunchtime and hometime on those days. Only, this morning Mr B told me afterschool clases were cancelled, so I ate my nut bar for morning tea. Then, after lunch he said they'd been un-cancelled, so now I have no snack and it's pouring with rain so I can't really walk down to the shops. I will be hungry by the time I get home!

And now, today's five things:

1) I forgot to mention the other day, so it can go on today, that Andy sometimes brings me fresh vegetables from his family's garden. On the weekend he brought me a bag of home grown onions, including some red ones! Which deserves that exclamation mark because I haven't seen red onions for sale here.

2) I wrote a big information sheet for the teacher who comes after me. It includes stuff like buses, paying bills, getting mail, and all that good business. I am such a nice person.

3) Because it's very rainy, there are a lot of puddles everywhere. Puddles are awesome. I enjoy stepping in them and I like it when the bus drives through big ones that spray everywhere.

4) There was a ... peal? roll? clap? something of thunder this afternoon that lasted for at least 30 seconds. It just kept on rolling and booming for ages. I was so impressed!

5) The P.E teacher who sits next to me in the teachers' room has just finished watching TV shows on his laptop and it now taking a nice nap complete with snoring. Haha, and the other day when I went to find the VP to get my *^#%@ book signed, Mr B informed me I couldn't because the VP was probably taking a nap. Oh! The PE teacher just woke up. Now he is using some toner on his face or something. He smokes, so gotta keep that skin fresh somehow, I suppose. Yeah, a smoking PE teacher who naps and snores at his desk. Good times.

~ I swear, I couldn't make this stuff up.

I've done so much work Monday

Another great weekend! Andy came over after the gym on Friday and we had dinner at the nice BBQ restaurant. Then on Saturday I took the subway to Anyang to meet up with Amy. We had a delicious lunch of Gorgonzola+garlic pizza, which you dip in honey. I was totally sceptical, but it was so nice! I bet it would be totally amazing if you made it in NZ using real cheese.

Speaking of NZ, I have now officially been away from home for exactly one whole year! But more on that later. So, Saturday evening Andy came over and I cooked him chicken satay, which he praised mightily (and it was pretty good). Then we went for a big walk and it was a lovely evening. On Sunday I lay in bed thinking over the last year that I've been away from home. Woah, have I done a lot! It's amazing. I certainly had a lot of fabulous things to remember :) Then Andy took me out to a nice restaurant in Dongtan for brunch, and it was delicious. It was buffet, but super good food (well, super good food for a Korean Western-style buffet). I enjoyed it a lot. Then, because I was celebrating my 1 year travel-versary, I bought the ingredients to make banana cake. I haven't baked since NZ, and haven't had banana cake either, so I thought it was a nice idea. It turned out pretty good. Andy had NEVER made a cake before and had NEVER eaten banana cake. I didn't feel he was as impressed with the whole thing as I thought he should be :D haha, so I ate his share when he wasn't looking!

And now it's Monday and Mr B has been doing all the teaching today (but for some reason told me to bring my laptop to the English room instead of just staying at my desk, but whatever). So, I got the whole new open class lesson planned and made, which is good. It took me a lot longer than I expected! But I enjoy lesson planning, so the time went really quickly. I also just finished writing the first draft of a new article/lesson plan I'm going to submit to try and get published (I STILL don't have an answer from the first one!). All I have left to do for the draft is draw up some worksheets and trial the lesson in my own class and take some photos of it (I think original materials and classroom photos will make it more likely to get published).

I've also been researching the D10 'looking for work' visa. I woke up this morning and was like "Ergh, MONDAY I HATE YOU". And then I was like "I wanna go home!", closely followed by "Nah, not really, but it'd be nice for about a minute", and theeeeen I was like "I could do that!". So, new plan is (because my current school will pay my airfair back to NZ!) - finish my job here, transfer to a D10 visa (which sounds (touch wood) like it'll be a piece of cake), take a 2 week trip back home, come back to Korea early November and get a job (and bum around have an extended holiday while I look). This plan is a win all around! I'll probably be just in time to help mum and dad move - payment for staying with them for a couple of weeks? Mum? Yeah? Nothing is for sure yet, but I've found no indication of why this plan wouldn't be totally awesome. Only thing I have yet to work out is whether I can apply for the D10 2 weeks before the end of my contract, or when my contract finishes. I've seen reports of both. This problem should be easily solved by calling immigration though. Hooray!

The only problem is that I did ALL my work today and now have nothing to do tomorrow. More research and more writing? Make a list of all the stuff I'm going eat when I go home on holiday? Make a list of all the Korean stuff I still want to do? Write a thing for the new teacher giving details about buses, how to use the washing machine, and all that stuff? Yup, that all sounds like it'll keep me busy for at least a few hours.

So, with only half an hour left to my work day (and leftover chicken satay for dinner - yum!), here's today's five things:

1) I feel so proud of myself for the past year! It hasn't been really tough, but I'm so much more confident in my ability to deal with things and wait out my own emotions. I know I can stick with a less than great situation as long as I need to, and learned that a job with no work is actually not my idea of fun. I learned that I have a huge tolerance for being alone for massive amounts of time, and that friends and love come from places you don't even look. I also learned that the Great Wall of China is the most amazing thing in the world and that everyone should experience it's awesomeness.

2) I made banana cake and it didn't suck.

3) I patted (petted?) the cute beagle on the way to work today.

4) I wrote an article about improving student responses to "How are you?". That sounds lame, but if you've asked that question to a bunch of Korean kids you'd know their answers leave a lot to be desired!

5) Exciting plans for a break from work and possible trip home!