Photo Store

Well, my attempts to get more sleep via forcing myself to sleep in proved ultimately unsuccessful. I woke up at 7 am again, which was extremely frustrating, but I got over it by watching various television shows that I streamed at school the previous day. I can’t wait till I get internet so I can start doing that sort of thing on my own time.

Around 1 pm I went on an adventure to the photo store, which is on the same street as Avalon English (the school I work at!). Yung Sun, the secretary who helped me out with the medical exam, gave me a sticky note that said what I needed, so I gave it to the photo shop guy, and he sat me down for the picture. Then he went to his computer and clicked around for a good five minutes. It turns out that they always photoshop pictures in Korea! It’s just the thing to do. So I got my pictures – 8 instead of 2, no idea why – hit up the Lotte Super, and headed back home.

School was both terrifying and fun, because I had to teach all three elementary school lessons. Well, by teach, I mean I started to teach, and then Sasha, Sean, and Jenna would jump in at various intervals to help me out. I think that when it’s just me teaching I’ll do better, because I won’t have someone watching and critiquing everything I do. That way I’ll be able to make mistakes without fearing embarassment/disappointment. I figure I’ll be more by-the-book, like Jenna, for the first couple of months until I get my bearings.

For dinner we went out, because while we usually only get 20 minutes each day at 7 pm, on Wednesdays there’s some sort of deal where the Korean teachers teach all the first classes for middle school, so the foreign teachers get an extra hour. We went to a Korean BBQ place right across the street, where I met Nick. Nick is a foreign teacher working at a public school about 20 minutes away. He’s British, and I quite liked him. He reminded me of Jono, probably because they’re both British! Oh, and the restaurant had free ice cream, which was just plain awesome.

I met some of the highest level kids in the school – Peter, Eminem... I can’t remember the rest. But their spoken English is very good, and they think they’re absolutely hilarious. And for the most part they are. Peter apparently told Sasha that he was born on the moon, which I think is a perfectly legitimate birthplace. They like to joke around, and from what I understand, so long as the joking is in English, and the work gets done, teachers and students can have as much fun as they want.

There are apparently plans on the weekend for Jade’s pre-birthday bash. It will involve a “booze cruise”, which is basically a cruise down the Han river in Seoul, followed by going to an “ice bar”. I think the idea there is that everything is ice themed, although I’ll have to wait and see, obviously!