Anyeong- Hasseyo! Welcome to my blog- you must love me very much if you are reading this. I have, thus far, avoided blogs like the plague, but have been won over by how easy this will make it for me to assure many people at once that I am alive and well, rather than writing constant emails. Besides, maybe I will discover a hidden talent for witty commentary and will be recognized for my brilliant writing. This will obviously lead to me suddenly finding myself rich beyond my wildest dreams.
More likely, I will mostly amuse myself and keep everyone who reads this posted on my daily comings and goings. But we shall see…
Anyway, as you likely know (especially if you are related to me or have spoken to me in the last few months), I am currently teaching English in Korea and will be doing so for the next year or so, unless something goes drastically wrong or I die from eating too much kimchee. Poor tummy. I do love the stuff though, so I guess I have an advantage. It amuses all the Koreans I meet, with the result that eating kimchee is a good conversation piece. That is, if they speak English, since my Korean extends to about 10 words right now. If they don’t speak English, it’s a little hard to get the eating kimchee bit across with desperate sign language, which is how I communicate often. There is definitely something to be said for this language barrier. The first night in my hotel, my internet wasn’t working and I’d promised to send an email to my family. So I called the front desk and tried to tell them that my computer was broken… can you say that in Korean?
Fortunately, computer is the same in Korean as it is in English, so after I said it five or six times, along with hello and a lot of desperate, useless English, they sent someone up to save me. In the end, I suppose I consider that a success.
Over the last few days, I have been in-training and have spent the better part of my waking hours at Little America (my school), though I did get the weekend off. I think doing Nori Bang (Korean karaoke) with my drunken boss and coworkers was probably the most hilarious moment of the weekend. In case you were wondering what soju tastes like, wonder no more. It tastes like cleaning fluid. I do not recommend. At dinner all the teachers came up with creative ways to avoid the constant toasts of soju shots that our director was demanding.
Up and coming- my first week as an official teacher. I hope I survive it. I have three hellions, ahem, sweet four year old boys who are my first two class periods of the day. If they don’t kill me, I expect the rest will go fine. I am afraid though. They came for the orientation last Thursday and it took two other teachers besides me to control them. Yes, one to each child. And even then they were screaming at us in Korean and getting loose. I don’t know how I’ll keep them inside the classroom, let alone teach them English.
Anyway, good night for now. And happy trails!
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