So I've been alerted that it has been once again over a month since I posted. I guess we've all figured out that I am not a very good blogger. Really, when I started this I thought it would be much easier to maintain. Something cool would happen and I would sit down and write about it, unfortunately that more often turns out to be, something cool happens and I get on skype or facebook and chat or talk about it. But here I am once again making an attempt not to dissapoint those wonderfully amazing individuals who keep checking back to see if I have written anything new. So, here goes. There's not a lot to say.
The last time I wrote was just after my birthday in december. My bday came just 5 days before payday and ayone who knows me won't be surprised to discover that I was nearly flat broke. I brushed aside any real birthday plans in the making with mumbled excuses about other plans and planned to lay low. However on the actual day I was at home being bored and doing what I normally do in such situations and hanging out on FB. One of my friends here noticed my activity and wisely deduced that I was sitting at home alone on my bday and invited me out to lunch. How could I refuse. I don't know, but I didn't try too hard. Zeng is a pretty cool Chinese American lady from Miami who is also here teaching English and lives right here in my little town of Maseok. While we were wandering around in the cold trying to decide where to eat ( our first choice was closed) we ran into Suzi, another American from Florida waiting on the bus to take her to Costco (yes, we have one of those here).
 |
| Zeng on the left and Suzi on the right, in case you couln't figure that out. |
For some reason on the way to meeting up with Zeng I was struck with the desire to photograph the little delivery bikes that make up about half of the traffic here. Just about every restaraunt here can be ordered from for home delivery and they don't use delivery cars here but small moped and motor bikes with baskets on the back. Some are just plastic crates attached to the back and some are real delivery cartons as pictured below.These bikes are everywhere, and because they are small they tend to not wait for lights, or drive on the sidewalk, whatever they have to do to get their delivery made. I wonder if they have a time limit the Domino's uses to. Oh, we have one of those here too.
Well, my birthday lunch turned out to be a nice way to spend part of the afternoon. We ate at Lotteria, which I thought for a couple of months was where you went to play the lottery, but is as it turns out like the Korean McDonalds. The food is alright, if there are some interesting choicses like squid rings, corn salad, shrimp burger (quite good) and a burger that has two sticky rice patties in the place of buns. We ate and talked for well over an hour and then I went back to my place, played the sims and watched movies.
The next weekend, after payday, I got a few friends together to have a birthday dinner. Two of the Korean lady's I invited, AhRa and Yoon Jung, also have december birthdays. We went out for Shabu Shabu and had a great time eating and chatting. However there were three Koreans and three English speakers(all from different countries) and we quickly segregated into two groups. This was helped by the fact that the food was served 3 people to a soup pot. Even so, it was still a good time, no one was nervous or stressed trying to communicate and we all enjoyed ourselves.
 |
| Back right is Yung Joon across from her is Yoon Jung, AhRa is in the Pink and up front are Dani and Alec |
The following week at school december 20-24 was the last week of school before winter break. All of my regular English classes were canceled as well as my before school classes. It snowed nicely on tuesday or wednesday and the 5th grade teacher decide to use his gym class time as a class wide snowball fight. I think he might have enjoyed it even more than the students. I thought about joining in but after my first misile went wide of it's mark and all of the students realized I was a target, I decided to simply take pictures from the safety of my office.
The 2nd grade teacher told me there was a christmas tree stored somewhere on school grounds, I asked her about it and she kindly dug it out. I used my last afterschool session with my 6th grade girls to decorate it on thursday. I haven't had that much fun decorating something so small in longer than I can remember. Then we found someone to take lots of picture of us doing sill korean poses(you can't just smile in Korean pictures). Then we went back to my office to warm up, they insist that fresh air is good for you so they leave the outer doors and window open in the main school areas even in the freezing temps, we ate snack cakes and I read them "The Night Before Christmas" as they watched along on an animation I found on youtube. I don't know if they understood anything I said but they told me "Miss Myes, you have nice voice to read." These girls are my absolute faves and I am going to miss them terribly come March when they move on to middle school.
 |
| Left to Right: Me, May, Ann and Karrie 3 of my group of 5 6th grade sweeties |
Here school goes straight up till Christmas. Since Christmas Eve was a friday it is up to to the individual principals as to whether or not there was school on that day. My principal chose yes. We had a half day which was mostly taken up with cleaning the classrooms and an awards ceremony for some reading program. I didn't attend. It was a half day and the faculty and staff all went out to lunch on the Principals dime. Then we headed back to the school and pretended to work till it was officially time to go. I didn't do so much pretending to work as pretending that I was not playing the Sims3 whenever someone walked past my office. When 4pm rolled around I packed up and made the rounds to each room offering caramels (they really seem to love those) and Christmas wishes to all my coworkers. During my rounds I discovered that I needed not have pretended so hard not to be playing computer games at work. Man I Love Korea.
Korean Trivia #6 It is apparently imperative that you make a peace sign (usually pointing at your face) in every photo taken in Korea. I have no idea why this is or how the phenomena started, but I do know that not only is it quite silly it is also highly contagious. After three months in the country I find the need to sit upon my hands in order to stop the two v-forming fingers from creeping up to my cheeks whenever I see a camera pointing my way.
