over due, sorry!

when things get rolling it's hard to remember to do this, lame.

anyways, lots of changes.

i'm now in my apartment. it's pretty amazing. it's a little bigger than college dorm-sized, but i have a decently sized balcony as well. pictures here: http://www.flickr.com/photos/39476819@N08/sets/72157622124139777/

i got a kitty! her name is fizzgig (she's too old for me to rename her, so her middle name is 'mo'). she's an abyssinian breed. they are supposed to be super friendly and that seems to be the case. she's just staring at the wall right now, but usually she's much more active. the quest to get her was surprisingly difficult. there's a website (animalrescuekorea.org) that helps organize pet adoptions/rescues/foster homes/etc. a girl from songtan, a city a fair ways south of here, was moving to taiwan and needed a home for fizz.

so i took an hour-long bus ride west, where i met an english professor at a local university. really nice guy, just chatted about the same questions every foreigner gets (where are you from, are you teaching, how long have you been here...) he taught me a little about the upcoming holiday and gave me his card with the instructions to call him if i wanted to know anything about korean culture, nice. then after parting ways with him, 30 minute subway ride south. where i got very lost in the subway system, but enlisted the help of one security guard and three cool american soldiers stationed in songtan (lucky). so i followed those dudes, chatted about random military, american, korean things, and finally met up with amanda, fizz's owner. hung around with her for a bit, then three other girls came over, also teachers, and we ordered a crazy amount of korean food. so good. the three girls all live in seoul, so now i have some people to hang out with/rely on when i head up that way.

so after all that, i lugged the 40lb bag of cat supplies in one hand, and the cat carrier in another, all the way back to yongin, fun stuff. so glad fizz didn't pee in the carrier. so glad.

anyways, today is my first full day of teaching solo. no help from the teacher i'm replacing, so i gotta go in early and set up some stuff to make my life easier. homework check sheets from many options are making a come back.

i also got a pencil case, which are all the rage here. every kid has one. some simple boxes, some elaborate contraptions with drawers and compartments, fold out things, it's weird. i got this little furry cow one. it's pretty awesome.

teaching is good so far. though there's a couple classes that are providing some challenge. there's 9 levels of classes at my school. 3 basic, 3 medium, 3 hard. each one has three smaller difficulties. so there's easy-basic, medium-basic, and hard-basic, easy-medium, etc. i teach medium-basic, easy-medium and medium-medium. but i'll talk about school stuff later.

also, hamburgers are terrible here.