week three, check!

last sunday a group of us went to check out Watchmen. it actually opened up a day early here- though i have no idea how that works out.

i was really psyched to see it, and thought it was a good adaptation of the graphic book, now i want to read it again. alas, my copy is in loaner limbo back in the states. bummer.

afterwards i caught some dinner and a movie with one of the other teachers. monday turned out a little odd, everyone i had been hanging out with had food poisoning or something. guess i just missed it. i’ve been congested all week, and it finally feels like it’s letting up a bit tonight. hope it finally breaks, i could use more sleep and less coughing.

the week was still hectic. i’m wondering when i’m going to feel comfortable at this. when will the routine settle into my brain? although there are new teachers at the school, everyone except me and my korean teaching partner, have done this before- oh, and we have the youngest/ newest classes of kids.

everyone else seems at ease. i feel completely lost most days. didn’t help that some water pipe busted over my kindy room. large flood on monday, and a second one at the end of the week. i wasn’t there both times- in another room teaching, but my friday kindy classes all got moved to another room. like those little ones needed any more distractions.

thursday night i got invited to a trivia night at a very ‘foreign friendly’ bar one subway stop down. it’s not quite the same set-up as the ones in boston, but it’s still a nice excursion. the only problem is that it starts pretty late. other schools go much later into the evening. a lot let out around 10 or 11pm. walking around, i’ve even seen the buses letting kids off around midnight.

anyway, since the winners of last week’s trivia game are responsible for making the questions for the next game, everyone needs to wait till they get out of work. it was fun, but i don’t know if i can pull that late a thursday night every week.

saturday was both white day, and st. patrick’s. white day is sort of a response to valentine’s i guess. here, on valentine’s day, girls give boys treats. . . and on white day, boys return the favor. either way there was a lot of chocolate and treats being passed around, and sweets left on my desk. . . . yum.

st. patrick’s was in seoul. camille (another teacher) and i took the train into town to meet a few more of her friends. it’s a pretty big thing for a lot of the foreigners, and even a number of koreans. we didn’t stay for the actual parade. it turned out that it’s really just a parade of all the festively dressed attendants about part of town. it was fun to see everyone garishly dressed. . . and mascots dressed as foam topped guinness filled glasses, but i didn’t mind moving on.

we headed to itaewon, another area where there are a large number of foreigners. hence a larger number of stores catering to our objects of desire. . . like books, cheese, and recognizable cough suppressants. i even found dryer sheets. (for some reason my dryer has a weird smell. everything comes out smelling a bit like corn chips. the dryer sheets would be nice, but i think i’ll hack a set out of some febreeze and a hand towel. for a sam’s club/ bj’s size box of dryer sheets, it was nearly $20. trying the hack now. corn chip smell has faded to neutral.)

anyway, i picked up a few things and got to see another part of seoul. i did spot a coldstone creamery, and we ate at a fairly ‘western’ restaurant for lunch.

all in all a pretty good weekend. i spent today doing some cleaning, laundry, reading, and working on my syllabus. maybe this week will jive a bit better for me. i’m not holding my breath though, we’re throwing a st. patrick’s day party and a march birthdays party both this week. should keep things busy.

check out the pics below.