gah

packing for my 5 day trip is making me freak out. when i have to pack to move from korea, that's going to make me have a heart attack, i think.

so i'll probably be out of touch until next sunday/monday. hopefully when i get back i have really amazing pictures and stories. if not, sorry. haha.

weird seoul things

have i mentioned these before? there's these big tv screens along one street in seoul. they have touch screens and cameras built in. so you can play games on them, take pictures, etc. it's quite cool. my friend ashley and i were walking by and took one, and it gave us the option of e-mailing it to someone. after we took some and had them sent to us, it opened up a gallery. there were like 32,000 pictures people had taken at these things. it was awesome.

all times of the day, people alone, people in groups, people fake punching each other in the face, i hope they put it online at some point.

rain, shabu shabu, and long hours

so, it's summer vacation. WHICH MEANS THE OPPOSITE OF VACATION FOR KOREAN STUDENTS.

i think i've covered this again, but to recap: no school means more time to go to the 'academies' during the day. so all academies offer extra classes and extended hours. you can guess how excited the kids are about this, since the workload at our academies is much higher than school. so it's more work than not-vacation.

luckily, the summer vacation is shorter than the winter vacation (weird, american students, right?) so this will only last about 3 weeks, give or take a few days. maybe 3 and a half. my schedule is pretty decent, probably the best i've had all year. but i've been really unlucky, and established myself as someone who could handle a lot of classes, so they kept giving me more. even when i'm head teacher and supposed to have the easiest schedule, haha. on wednesday's, i teach for less time than i'm not teaching. 70% of my day is breaks/preparation time. other days i'm not as lucky, but they're still only a little more work than normal. doable.

so before i went in at 2p and worked til 9:30p, now i'll go in at 9:15a and leave at around 5-7p. depending on my breaks. and we get extra money for teaching more classes, hooray.

today is a work lunch. where we all go out together to bond and be happy. it's nice to talk to the korean teachers in a more casual environment. and the school pays for the food, which is double-ly awesome. today we're going for shabu shabu.



you basically have a plate of meat, a plate of vegetables, and a boiling pot of water. then you make soup. it's delicious. and fun to say.

the only downside is that we already have long classes today, and lunch is 2 hours before work starts. so work is almost 10-11 hours long today. ouch.

but one day this week, two days next week, and then vacation!

traveling down to jeju island with my friend ashley and her friend diana. my first real vacation in 11 months, hooray.

screen golf

8 days? geez

bad andrew, 8 days without a post.

anyways, things are... steady. and boring. mostly boring.

but boring for a good reason, i guess? i'm in antisocial-annie mode to save money. it's very difficult to do things with other teachers WITHOUT spending lots of cash. screen golfing, going to the city, having dinner, etc. so i just come home after work and catch up on things. tv, books, podcasts, whatever is available.

still practicing my thai. working on the alphabet and general survival terms: hello, how are you, thank you, i'm sorry, goodbye, etc. it's going slowly, but going.

i'm overly excited for thailand, so it's putting a damper on things here i think. in thailand i'll be teaching purely to teach. there's no profit involved, no business, just teaching. here, i'm teaching for money. the school is a business and the business comes first. that's not nearly as fun or rewarding.

even when i'm in thailand i'm not planning on traveling. i just want to spend as much time teaching as i can, when i have an opportunity to teach in a situation like that, why would i WANT to travel? this is going to be 10x better.

no pictures this time either, sorry! this weekend is a picture trip, so i promise i'll try to get some up then. and 28th onward is my vacation, which should be some beautiful tropical photos. please be patient!

poor, poor student

one of my students: link (named after the zelda character, awesome) came to school today in what i thought was a costume. it was very bright blue, a tiny bit see-through and looked home-made... it was.

his mom made it for him.

and he had to wear it all day, to school and his afterschool stuff.

if you imagine Aladdin's outfit from the disney movie but with Jasmine's colors. that's what he looked like. and it was class picture day.

he was in surprisingly good spirits, i'm a little bit surprised (but happy) the other students didn't pick on him for it.

will try to get copy of the class picture later to post.

thai

learning this language is very difficult. learning the korean alphabet was relatively easy. every character has one sound, no special way to say it. ka is almost always ka.

in thai, there's three tiers of letters, low mid high. and each of those tiers you have to say in a certain way depending on where it is in a word. so every letter has a beginning sound and an ending sound, one of three classes, and 5 potential tones.

this may take me awhile to learn.

i think it's pretty similar to learning chinese. (LEARNING CHINESE IS VERY, VERY HARD. AHHHHHHHHHHHHH)

uh oh

andrew's going to thailand?

was accepted by the school i applied for. so it looks like that's the next stop in andrew's world tour. the blog lives.

it's still a couple months off, but i'm excited. for map:

CLICK HERE