First, I wanted to share a couple things about my apartment that I realized I hadn't mentioned yet for some reason. The main wall in my place is lined with pink flower wall paper. Every apartment in this building is too, so I can live with that. What I don't understand is why my co-teacher felt the need to purchase me pink bed linen and a pink flower pillow. She gave me this stuff on the day I moved in and I was really kind of confused. Granted, she had never seen me before, but she at least knew my name. You'd think that when she saw Robert, she would have opted for a more masculine set. Nope. Here I am in my pink flower-themed apartment in Korea. Awesome.
The other thing I forgot to mention was my shower. Now, I know I talked about how my shower is really just the bathroom in disguise, but what I didn't mention is that I only have so much hot water. I found this out the hard way when I took my first shower and had to do the final rinse in cold water. What I have to do is turn the shower on, get myself wet and turn it off. Then I shampoo my hair, turn the shower on to rinse it and turn it off again. Then I put the conditioner in, turn the shower on to rinse and turn it off again. I'm sure you get it from here. Now, I'm thinking this won't be so horrible in the summer when it's warm, but it's not summer right now. It's winter. When I turn that water off, it's freezing and it sucks. You have no idea how much I look forward to that final rinse where I can be in the hot water for longer than 20 seconds.
Okay, so now on to my day today. It started out normal with my co-teacher picking me up and taking me to school and hanging out in the teacher's lounge when I got there. Then when her and I went to the computer classroom, where all the English classes are held on Wednesdays, she was called to a meeting with the principal. She asked me to have the students log on this one website and begin working on the English lesson that's on there. Okay, no problem. Except for when all the children show up and their logins for the website aren't working. Problem. I felt so helpless. Here I was with a classroom full of 5th graders who could barely say a word in English trying to figure out how to get this freaking website to work, which by the way was in Korean. Of course, they're all kind of rowdy and wanted none of a fun little Q&A session with me like the students yesterday. I had nothing prepared to kill the time until my co-teacher got back. I'm standing there racking my brain for something, anything to do with these kids and I was totally drawing a blank. You could imagine my relief when my co-teacher finally showed up to help fix the problem with the website. Wow was I totally unprepared.
We had lunch again in the cafeteria today and again there was no beverage made available to us. Even the students didn't have anything to drink. I'm beginning to think that it's some sort of Korean thing where they believe the soup you get with your meal is your beverage, because Brent and I had the same sort of problem when we were going through training. The drinks we were given were in these tiny little cups, hardly capable of hydrating two full grown Americans. I just don't understand it. Maybe Roy can shed a little light on this for us.
Speaking of lunch, there was this very nice little 5th grader who came up to me today and said, "I'm sorry we didn't have a chance to talk more during class today." This kid speaks really good English. I actually remembered him from class, because he said to me, "Sir, what do I have to do after I've finished," and I wasn't sure, so I told him to check with the teacher and he responded with, "Okay, thanks for the advice." So adorable.
At some point during the day my co-teacher informed me that we would be going out for dinner with the staff after volleyball. She didn't know where yet, but she knew we were going out. This is just another example of Koreans not planning ahead. If I had made plans to do something after school today, I would have had to cancel them, because you can't just say no things like this. When the principal says he's taking you out, he's taking you out. Now, I didn't have anything planned, but still, it would have been nice to know going into the day, you know.
At 2:30 p.m. we hit the gym for our volleyball practice. I walked in and no joke, they were doing drills already. I honestly thought, holy crap what am I getting myself into. I joined in on the drills and after about five minutes of hitting that stupid volleyball with the lower part of my arms, they were sore. We played for about two and a half hours and I'm not kidding, the side part of my wrist, where I would normally wear my watch, is totally swollen. Freaking volleyball. The team I was on won the majority of the games, which was cool, but I definitely need more practice, as I haven't played volleyball since junior high. I did get a couple spikes in today though, believe it. Also, during our little breaks between games, they would give ua Hite beer. Beer is the last thing I want when I'm doing something active! Do Koreans know anything about proper hydration!
After volleyball, we all went to a restaurant that specializes in duck. Actually, quick funny story. When my co-teacher was duck, I thought she was saying dog. I asked her about three or four times, duck or dog, and I swear every time it sounded like she could have been answering with dog. Finally I said, "Dog?! Woof woof?" and she said no, so I was in the clear. Wow, I really thought I was being taken to a restaurant where they serve dog there for a minute. Anyway, I wasn't too thrilled about going to a duck restaurant either, but I decided that I was going to have to try something exotic while I'm here, and duck isn't that exotic so I thought I'd go for it.
When we got there, it was one of those sit Indian-style on the floor places of course, which sucks. The food itself wasn't bad, though I wasn't really fond of the duck. It just tasted weird, I don't know. I finally drank soju and confirmed that it really does taste like watered down vodka. People say it's stronger than vodka though, but I'm not so sure, because I had about four shots and a couple beers and I honestly felt fine. Maybe the food I was eating softened the alcoholic blow. I participated in the Korean "give and take" thing, where you give your glass to someone else at the table and pour soju in it for them to drink and then they give you the glass back and pour soju in it for you to drink. I did this a couple times to make sure everyone knew I was participating. These little traditions and customs that they have are very important to them and they really do like it when you partake. Anyway, I ate all kinds of different duck meat while I was there, including duck soup and duck rice soup. For dessert, we had some sort of bean-ice thing that tasted similar to tapioca. When I mentioned this, someone at the table said this dish eventually evolved into tapioca. Who knows, but it's kind of cool to think that I guess.
During the dinner I was informed that we would be going to play ping-pong afterward. I honestly just wanted to go home, but at that point I did feel like I was bonding with these guys. The principal gave a sort of toast to thank me for coming to the dinner and I was actually having casual conversation with everyone for really the first time. All through my co-teacher's translations of course. So after dinner we all up and went to play ping-pong at a place right down the street. I actually had fun and must say, my ping-pong skills were undoubtedly more advanced when I left than when I walked in. We actually had to leave pretty abruptly, because my co-teacher went to sit in a chair she thought was behind her, but wasn't, and fell to the ground and really hurt her back. She was able to walk to the car and drive me home still, but said she was going to the hospital after she dropped me off. She told me that if she can't go to school tomorrow, she would call me and kind of gave me directions on how to get there by public transportation. I'm doing some serious praying that she can go to school tomorrow, because she hasn't shown me any of her lesson plans and I have no idea what I'm going to do with all those students tomorrow with no lesson plans.
Anyway, sorry for the back-to-back posts, but I thought I'd share my day, since so much happened. Hopefully by the end of the week, I'll have some more fun stories to share with you.
Showers in Greece... much the same.
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