January Cont'd

So a few people have been asking about an update. I guess it has been a few days, but there hasn't been too much to report. Work is good at my school, I got treated to some cake and crispy creme donuts the past couple of days..so thats always welcome! Last Friday and this Monday I was given work at Manchon to help all the teachers get caught up on their marking. I marked Essays for Curtis for 5 straight hours on Friday, and marked some SAT writings for Shelly for 5 hours yesterday. After those shifts at Manchon I then had to go to Chimsan and teach my regular classes..so I'm pretty wiped by the end of the day. I basically leave the house around 7:30 and don't get home until 9:00. I don't mind at all though because its good money, and its totally different work so it doesn't get repetitive. The essay marking was pretty fun actually, there were four of us in an office, drinking coffee like fiends and sharing all the funny sentences we come across. You couldn't purposes create some of the comedy gold that we find in these essays. The students sometimes use a similar looking, but totally wrong word, or they punch words into the thesaurus to try and use larger more intelligent sounding words. You either chuckle because the sentence is so destroyed that you can't even begin to make out what they are trying to say, or you can follow their train of thought- but they have a limited vocabulary so its very convoluted. A memorable answer was a paragraph about how jetty's or break walls were in place to try and stop the sea from eroding the sand, but it wasn't working. Only, he had used a thesaurus and found the word "groin" which apparently can mean break wall / seawall / jetty / etc. He used the word groin like 10 times - "there were groins all along the beach, but the groins were making the erosion worse". That wasn't even the funniest one at all.
Another good moment was when Curt and this new guy Chris were sent on a coffee / headphone / lunch run. Shelly is a New Yorker with one of those ten-adjective-long Starbucks coffee orders. Latte- shot of this - milk this-etc... Curt wrote it down, but something still went wrong. After waiting an hour, and me having to listen to Shelly moan and groan for the hour, the drinks finally arrived. Shelly's cafe latte extreme turned into a black tea latte not so extreme. I think I saw tears in her eyes...

Heeduk's brother Heedal is heading back to New York to finish his Ph.D. (i think) and thus I was told that I would be covering some of his classes at Manchon next week, leading me to believe that next week I'll be pulling doubles Monday through until Friday. However, I won't get my hopes up because I know how these things change, and for instance, Roy recently sent an email to Heeduk begging him to save him from the rodeo that is Samduk. Anyways, I'm going back to Manchon this Friday, so I'll find out then. Since I mentioned Samduk, I hear that the new teachers aren't too thrilled with it either, even the girl that was all "I love my kids" a week ago. I knew the honeymoon wasn't going to last. A few people were sad to hear that my January schedule got messed up, and I know I sounded really dejected, but as long as I'm not at Samduk I'm happy! If I ever go back to that school you will know I have hit rock bottom.

Today I just wanted to sleep in because of the long hours I pulled the day before, but I had to go to the immigration office in the morning to change my visa. It was a single entry visa meaning that if I left on a small trip, I wouldn't be able to get back into Korea (I already entered once when I originally came here). Single entry visas are all that we can get back home, and we have to change it once we are in country. It was easy enough and cost 50$. I only knew I had to get it done because a friend had pointed it out, otherwise I could have easily been stuck somewhere in Asia after a trip. I have 5 days off coming in February for Chinese New Year- I think its New Years in a lot of Asian countries. Relatedly, this makes it a busy travel time, so I'm not sure if there are any cheap deals like are around all the rest of the year. I want to go somewhere tropical if at all possible, but if airfare is ridiculous then I might head to Japan ..not too sure. After the immigration office I was off to my Korean lesson, it was a test day for me. I was assigned about 2 pages of dialog to memorize, being able to play both parts. She gave me an 80% on both pages, although I deserved closer to a fail on the second page. She is going to give me the same test next week +2 more pages. If I get perfect she will buy me a coffee, but she thinks thats impossible and that it is highly likely that I will fail in which case I will buy her a coffee. She says it in jest, buts its funny because its true. She appreciates that we are both adults so she understands if I am too busy to study my notes a lot, but at the same time she pushes me because neither one of us wants to waste each others time. That's it for now, sorry there are no pictures!

Oh - one more thing. We tried to go bowling at this place called Billa Bow. It had a blown up bowling pin so we were sure it was a bowling alley. Actually, Billa is short for Billiards. Imagine a miniature bowling ally table - like a super stretched, narrow pool table with wood grain. You use a pool cue to shoot a ball at a bunch of miniature pins. Its actually quite fun, and not that easy to get a strike. Good fun in the end, but we still want the real thing!