Get Down

Work lately has been NUTS. We haven't gotten a replacement for a teacher who left three weeks ago, so a few of us (ahem... me) have had to pick up an extra class. Then last week, we had two teachers sick on Monday, one on Tuesday and Wednesday, and one teacher left for vacation on Wednesday. I taught an extra class every day except Friday. Yuck. We have another teacher leaving in a couple of weeks and two more teachers have vacation next month. All I can say is that they better get us a couple of new teachers soon!

On top of this, I have essays coming out of my ears. They're all between 300-600 words and Definitely Not Fun Times to grade. Then yesterday, intensives started. This means that I teach an extra 2-1/2 hours per day. So right now, I'm teaching about 6-1/2 to 8 hours per day - which wouldn't actually be that bad if it weren't for all of the prep work.

But anyway, with all of the craziness last week, there just weren't enough teachers to cover all of the extra classes, so we ended up having to combine some of them. One of my friends had to teach one of these combined classes and was determined to make it fun.

Behold the results:


D.O.W.N. from Marianna Willey on Vimeo.

Getting Back into Blogging

Ok, so, I was absent for a while, due to lack of internet connection. Then I got wired, managed a grand total of 3 posts, and went AWOL again.

I'm not going to say that I didn't have the time to blog. We all have 24 hrs per day, and how we spend those hours is up to us. Ouch. I'm not gonna dwell on that right now. I'll save that for post-blog.

Anyway, I definitely haven't been bored recently. Want to know what I have been up to?

Running - I've been running recently. I started running as a way to exercise without having to pay for a gym membership. I've always run on a treadmill because I am very goal-oriented. Knowing how far and how fast I am running and being able to measure my progress every time I exercise motivates me.

But there is a river just a few minutes walk from where I live, with a path running alongside it. The section that I run even has the kilometers marked out on the ground for you, and it is about 3.5k long.

Let me tell you, I don't think I could have asked for a more conducive atmosphere in which to run.
It is beautiful.
I usually run after work (around 10pm), so the sun has set, it's starting to cool off, and there are streetlights illuminating the path and the river. Even at 10 and 11 at night, there are generally quite a few people, young and old, out walking, biking, rollerblading, and running. The path features a basketball court at one point, and exercise machines at another. These are fully taken advantage of.

So, anyway, I discovered that I can run a whole lot farther than I thought I could. On the treadmill, I would never run below a certain speed and I was always very aware of how far I had run. Running by the river has allowed me to focus on running at a pace that is comfortable and distract myself with the scenery and my own personal soundtrack (read: iPod Cardio Mix). So now I'm planning to run a 10k (6.2miles) with a few friends in about 3 weeks. My personal goal for the race is 1 hr 5 min. I've only run 10k once so far, and it took me several minutes longer than that. But honestly, it still surprises me that I can even run for an hour without stopping. That's something I never thought I could do. So even if I don't make my goal, I'm happy.

Teaching - Duh, It's kind of my job. But at my institute, the terms run in 3 month sessions. My first term started the day after I got here and just ended last month. The next term started last week. And it has been quite a switch for me. I had 7 classes last term and 4 of them were practically the lowest level our school teaches. Each lesson has a story, and for this level the story went something like, "The frog is hot. He stands under a tree. He is still hot! He lays on the grass. He is still hot! He jumps in the pond. Now he is cool." The stories are a little longer, but you get the idea. This term, my classes are way more advanced. In fact, I am teaching a debate class. At this point you may be saying, "What? Debate? I thought you were teaching English. Do you even know how to teach debate?"

No. I don't. Never even took a debate class. Yet this week, my debate class and I are discussing the KORUS FTA. That's the free trade agreement between the US and South Korea. Thinking back on the weeks prior to my arrival in South Korea, it's funny that one of the questions I was asked the most was, "How will you teach them English if you don't speak Korean?"

Instinctively, people assume that if you are teaching a person English, that person doesn't speak English. Makes sense, right? The thing that people fail to consider is that there are levels of fluency and teaching English as a second language is not necessarily rudimentary. A few of the words that came up in my debate class last week were charlatan, proliferation, vitriolic, and sycophancy. I had to look up sycophancy. And I'm the teacher. Ahem.

Other things - There were some other things that I wanted to mention, but it's 3 am. So rather than rushing through them, I'm going to refer to them here as "other things" and hopefully elaborate tomorrow.

We interrupt this silence to bring you -an update!

I HAVE INTERNET! HOORAY! I got it on Wednesday, at which point I made the comment that I felt like I had just won the lottery. I realize that seems a little bit ridiculous, but I think the last time I lived without internet (at home - I did still have access at work) for 6 weeks, was when it didn’t exist. Unless you count the time a few years ago when I spent 2 weeks hiking in Spain, 2 weeks traveling in Morocco, a week in London, then a week in Ireland. But I was traveling - plus there was a day in Madrid and a week in London where I had internet access at the place where I was staying. So, yeah...

Ok, so now I feel like a spoiled brat.

Umm.. I’m just really happy and thankful to have internet at home. I realize that there are millions of people in the world that have much bigger things to worry about and home internet access isn’t actually vital for life - but I’m happy to have it. K?

So anyway, I’ve been pretty busy with work, but Wednesday and Thursday nights I stayed up way too late taking advantage of my internet access. I had lofty ambitions for what I would do within the first 24 hours of gaining home internet access: Skype every single one of my friends, post 27 blogs, catch up on all of the news for the last 6 weeks from my 3 favorite online news sources, etc.

So what did I do?

Randomly surfed the net. Tried to find an online tv schedule for South Korea. Researched training schedules for runners.

Hey - that last thing at least seems beneficial, right? But the week before last I ran 6 days out of 7. Haven’t run since I got internet... ouch.

Then Friday night, I came home and went to bed soon after. It was a long week, and my school had an all-day workshop thingy on Saturday. But Saturday morning (yesterday), I woke up with a fever and a stomachache, so I slept pretty much all day - didn’t even use the internet. Then today, I slept about half the day and am feeling 100% better now. I guess it was just a 24-hr bug.

Speaking of being sick, this is the second time I’ve had a stomach bug since I’ve been here, in addition to the worst cold ever, which lasted about 3 weeks (I actually think that I got a second cold about a week after I got the first one - I had felt like I was starting to get better, then BOOM - it hit me. I actually went to the doctor. This was the first time in my life that I went to the doctor for what I believed to be a cold). Anyway, hopefully now that I’ve adjusted to living here, I won’t keep getting sick.

But I digress. Repeatedly.

I’ve managed to catch up on some of my blog reading and decided that it was way past time I blogged.
The problem with going 6 weeks without blogging - especially during the course of something eventful, like..oh... moving to a foreign country - is that it’s difficult to know where to start.

Consequently, I decided to just jump on in there and ramble.

I think I'm going to shoot for a basic overview of what my life is like in the ROK (Republic of Korea - not to be confused with North Korea). If you want to know more about any particular aspect, just leave a comment.

The teaching is going pretty well. It was a bit nerve-wracking the first couple of days. I taught my first class the day after I got here. I had less than 2 hours of training and wasn't even able to observe a class before I started teaching. By the end of the week, though, I was pretty comfortable with it. The curriculum requires very minimal preparation - so that helps. I work with about a dozen other foreign teachers and a dozen Korean teachers. Out of the foreign teachers, one is Australian, two are Brits, and the rest are about evenly divided between Canucks and Yanks. They're all pretty cool.

My apartment is pretty cool, too. It's very small, but I do actually have a bedroom, so that's nice. Most teacher apartments are studios. The commute isn't bad, either. I just have to cross the street :) My church is a bit farther away, though. I have to cross the street, then turn right and cross the street again. It's a really cool church, though, so I don't mind going the extra distance. It's called Global English Ministry, and they have English services every Sunday morning. I like the worship, too - we sang Days of Elijah a couple of weeks ago, though - that threw me for a loop. Anyone who was in MC from '99-'00 knows what I'm talking about....

The food is awesome, too. I like it a lot more than I thought I would - not that I thought I would dislike it, but I was a little afraid of kimchi and wasn't sure what to expect from the rest of Korean cuisine. It's good stuff. Me likey. There's about a bazillion types of kimchi, I like some of them, but some are downright weird. My favorites are kimbap, bibimbap, and jajangmyeon. Oh! And curry. Curry donkasu.

I have so much more to say - it's probably going to be a while until I get you up to speed after 6 weeks of silence. But it's 1:30 am here and I want to go for a run tomorrow morning before work. I've been running by a river about 10 minutes from my house. There's a path alongside it which even has the distance in kilometers marked on the ground. I've been talking with a couple of friends about running a 10k in a month or so. Fun times.

But anyway, that's pretty much my life in a nutshell.

Oh - and a week ago, I got my hair permed straight.

Ahhh, before I go, let me leave you with one food pic:

curry donkasu - pork cutlets with curry sauce and riceYummy