things are good :o)

so last friday jens and i had some korean friends over for dinner- his co-teacher (kim ool ji), her boyfriend (___ seon oo - don't remember surname. he is a p.e. teacher at my school) and pak ji on (a young, male, 6th grade teacher from jens's school). they're all younger than us- like 23-24. we made fajitas and they liked them. then ji on grabbed jens's guitar and started playing so jens broke out his electric and they started jamming a little. then ool ji noticed we had a violin (which i thought was broken) so she got it out, tightened the strings and started playing that! it was so cool! at one point jens and ool ji did an interesting rendition of la bamba on guitar, harmonica and violin lol

we also looked at arlington, tx and mokpo on google earth and had strawberry shortcake for dessert Po: it was a great time! we're gonna go to ji on's this friday and have korean food so that should be fun. i'm hoping he makes something we like! lol

sat. we went to kat and alex's for brunch and they made some yummy east coast canadian style food: fish cakes, baked beans, fried eggs and fruit. it was so good! then we just hung out and chatted into the afternoon. we talked about their current jobs/our future jobs and what we'd want them to keep in the apt. for us. i'm SO excited about having a bigger place! it's got THREE bedrooms! one will be our bedroom, one will be the office and one will be the yoga room/guest room.

sunday we had a book swap at a coffee shop near our place but not many people showed up. then that night we went back over to kat and alex's for a game night. shanna, joe and jason joined us and we played chez geek, catan and madgab. oh and katrina had made some amazing chilli for dinner! omg it was awesome! i'm definitley gonna have to make chilli sometime here. i guess i never did before because beef was so expensive for so long and then jens and i started eating vegetarian at home. but i'm definitely going to make some sometime Po:

the past two days at work have been alright. i was a little frustrated monday but i got over it lol i won a small battle with my co-t. she wanted to show the kids this horrible, slightly racist role play video on the cd-rom but i prepared another activity to do instead and she gave in :o)

next week i'll be starting a conversation class with the 6th graders. it's not really an extra class. i won't get paid for it because it won't go over my hours i'm alotted in the contract. each day after lunch 1/2 of a 6th grade class will come in and have a very informal convo class with me for 20 mins. i only do it 4 days a week. so that amounts to 80 mins. a week. the schedule will go like this: monday 6-1 girls, tuesday 6-1 boys, thursday 6-2 girls, friday 6-2 boys. and it'll go on until i've gone through all six of the 6th grade classes and then start over again. so each group will see me like once a month...that's really not much. but korean people love to look like they're doing something worthwhile lol

anyway, in other news- we got an english world map! this 2nd grade teacher randomly gave us one! i dunno where he got it! i was gonna get one but didn't know where to buy one in korea and didn't really wanna spend the money to get one shipped from the states and then lo and behold one appears! pretty cool! so now the kids can finally find the various countries on the map that we've been talking about the past 3 weeks lol

another thing that recently appeared in mokpo and that i'm even more elated about is a tom 'n tom's coffee!!! it's this cool coffee shop that sells pretzels :o) like the good handmade kind with different toppings :o) mmmmm. jens and i went to one in seoul and liked it and now we have one in mokpo! yaaaay! mokpo's really moving up in the world! lol

this weekend we've got that dinner with our korean friends, then it's our friend's b-day party sat. night and sunday jens is having a chess tournament at ti amo (coffee and gelato place). so it'll be another busy weekend!

we've just got about one month til we move and change jobs! i think we're actually going to get one day off to move and arrange our apt. which i'm really happy about. i was afraid we'd have to call in sick or something lol

overall things are going well. we're making it through our last month at our school, jens has started writing his second novel, we've been exercising in various ways, having fun with friends, cooking new foods, and having a good time! :oD

second week down

this past week was our second week of school in which we actually taught classes. we have 6 6th grade classes and 6 3rd grade classes. we see 6th grade twice a week and 3rd grade once a week. we have a seating chart for each class which i think will help a lot with discipline and it's already been helpful in calling on students. i'm doing to write the romanization under each korean name so that the new girl can read it when she first gets here. most likely she won't know how to read korean yet...at least not perfectly.

so things went pretty well. we just introduces the rules and punishments to each class. well to the 6th grade at least. in the 3rd grade classes my co-t didn't want to tell them about the punishment procedures for some reason. i think she thinks the 3rd graders will be so good that we'll never have to discipline them....yeah i know, it's crazy! lol i think i'm going to talk to her this week about letting them know the system the next time we teach them.

we also had a bit of a disagreement on how to dismiss the students. she would tell them bye and wait until they were halfway out of their seats to tell them we had a specific procedure for leaving the classroom. THEN she would tell them how to leave. it was unneccesarily confusing. but not that big of a deal.

a bigger deal was that she went over time in every single class and then the homeroom teachers kept having their students show up early. i told my co-t we should have the students line up outside the door until it's actually time for class so we can actually have a break but she said- can't they come in and sit in their seats? i was like well we need a break between classes. and she just gave me a look that let me know she was going to completely ignore what i said lol so yeah, all the classes have been coming in early but i'm still taking my breaks between classes. i need them to stay sane. i have to have that 10 mins. to just sit down and prepare my mind for the next class.

lunch has been more fun than usual now that the 5th and 6th grade p.e. teachers have been sitting with me and talking to me in english. it makes a world of difference! they're really funny. they talk about the most random things sometimes. i guess because they're not sure what to talk about and also they have limited english. the 6th grade p.e. teacher is dating jens's co-t so we're having them and another teacher from jens's school over this fri. we're gonna make fajitas. it'll be really nice to have some korean people over. we haven't been that successful in making korean friends here. the two we have live in other cities now and it's hard to see them. in fact we have a 3rd korean friend but she lives in australia! lol

anyway, the weekend was nice. i think we stayed in friday night and all day and night sat. there was a hike planned sat. but it actually SNOWED sat. morning! isn't that crazy? being texan we couldn't really get over the fact that it had snowed and couldn't bring ourselves to go out until like 5pm lol we took the dog for a walk, got a few groceries and then went in again for the night.

sunday i made biscuits and i used the baking powder abby and j brought us from canada for the first time and MAN did it make a difference! korean baking powder is crap! it makes all our baked goods smell like chemicals for some reason! like bleach! it's horrible. but not only did the canadian baking powder not smell like bleach but it also made the biscuits taste better than any biscuits i'd ever made with korean baking powder. they were AMAZING! if i do say so myself ;o) lol

then i met up with a bunch of my girl friends at ti amo (coffee and gelato place) to vote on who we thought would win this season of america's next top model! :oD we're all putting 10,000won in "the hat" and whoever picks the girl who wins will get the money pot! we did it last season and i won, which was nice :o)

then that night we had dinner with a and j.

and today was monday! we're doing the second part of lesson one with 6th grade this week and it's all about "where are you from" so i gave 10 kids a different country's flag each and then i asked them where are you from? after they told me i looked up that country on google earth and they loved it! they thought it was really amazing to see real pictures of all these different countries and cities. i showed them my parents house and our school and it was really fun :o) i LOVE google earth!

no one has mentioned extra classes to me and i'm wondering if they're going to have me do any before i leave. like i said before i gave my co-t a list of my "demands" lol but i dunno if she really understood the fact that i'm either gonna do that or nothing. i'm worried they're planning it all out a different way and they're gonna come to me and say oh here's what you're teaching next month. the kids have already signed up and the parents have paid, etc. and if it's different than what i said i'd do then i'm gonna be pretty annoyed. i'm just gonna have to say no. i told you what i would do and this isn't it. it would be so AWESOME if i didn't have to do any at all before i leave though! i'm loving having the afternoons free. it's such a relief to come back from lunch and be DONE!

i know a lot of people would consider me lazy because i'm complaining about possibly having to work one more hour a day but i've just always hated working! i dunno what it is! i mean i know a lot of people don't like to work but i've also known a lot of people who have said- i like to work to keep busy. i dunno what i'd do with myself if i didn't have to work, etc. i, on the other hand, truly, truly hate it. i'd be ecstatic if i never had to work again! i mean i've really liked some of the jobs i've had at the beginning. but it doesn't matter how much i like it in the beginning i ALWAYS get sick of it! and i wonder if that's how it's always going to be. if i'm never going to find a job that i don't get sick of after a couple years. i have ideas of jobs that i think i'd be interested in and possibly passionate about but i worry that i'd just get sick of those too. i wish i could just not work and just volunteer doing things i'm really interested in and enjoy doing and i can hop from one thing to another so i never get tired of whatever i'm doing! that'd be great!

but for now i guess i just have to stick this out! :oP

alright i'm gonna go make dinner! have a great day!

the first week of school is done!

so this past week was the first week of school. kind of weird to get back in the swing of things. i have the same co-teacher as last year. she didn't want to teach english this year. she wanted to be a 4th grade homeroom teacher but she was denied. she actually threw a tantrum like a two year old which was pretty weird but hopefully she's gotten over it and won't be a horrible co-teacher...

the best part of the job this year is we have our own english classroom! we spent the first few days cleaning it and organizing it. it made me want to bring the wonderful invention of the 4 foot long broom to korea. all the brooms here are like 2 feet long and you have to bend over to sweep. and for some reason they don't use vacuums in schools so it takes FOREVER to clean the floors. they don't even bother mopping...

there's a desk at the front of the room which will be my co-teacher's desk and we'll use her computer for teaching the class. i have a desk at the back of the room and it took all week to hook up my computer and get the internet going. so needless to say i got a little restless. i cleaned, i read, i tried knitting but didn't like the yarn i was using, i slept, ate hershey's kisses and doodled.

finally i got internet on my computer thursday at 4pm and spent all day friday on it...making up for lost time i guess lol

i've tried talking to my co-teacher about this next year but she's not been very receptive. i made a rules sheet and then she acted like i had wasted my time. i suggested a punishment system and she avoided talking about it. i asked her what she wanted to do for discipline and she said she'd think about it and then never brought it up again. i told her what i would be willing to do for extra classes the next two months and she said the parents would decide (???), so i didn't bother telling her my ideas for classroom procedures or how we should teach. since she's been so resistant and i'm only there two more months i don't feel like pushing too hard. i have a feeling that even if i got everything set up wonderfully that once the new girl gets here my school/co-t would still do whatever they want. so whatever...

we have a new principal. i've seen him but haven't officially met him.

we're teaching 3rd and 6th this year. korean students start taking english in 3rd grade so they should be really easy. 6th graders on the other hand start out normal and then turn into little demons...glad i'm not gonna be here for the end of the semester/year lol

we've been talking to alex and kat about their schools. we're taking their jobs at the end of april. sounds like both schools are gonna be pretty awesome. alex has some new co-teachers and he says they're all pretty cool and kat has a new co-t who's a young girl so she's easy to work with. i'm hoping things go really well with these new jobs. i hope we want to stay two years. having the bigger apt. is gonna be great! i can't wait for that! :o) we're gonna have THREE bedrooms! freaking awesome!

friday night we had a little welcome back dinner with friends at the gamchatang restaurant and then song's beer. well after dinner a bunch of us went to ti amo and had coffee and ice cream before meeting up with the others at song's beer. it was fun :o)

yesterday jens and i chilled at the house and then alex and kat came over for dinner. i made irish stew and i have to say - it was amazing! lol i hadn't ever really made anything like that before - a dish you have to cook for a loooong time. it was soooo gooood :o)

then this morning there was a book swap at dunkin' donuts in hadang. it was the biggest one i had been to. lots of people showed up so that was cool. we weren't going to take any books but we couldn't help ourselves lol

after the swap some of us had lunch at little jakob's. then jens and i went home and took the dog for a walk. it was actually not freezing today! makes me think winter might actually end!

after that we came back to the apt. and jens played video games while i watched a movie. i watched american teen a movie which is a documentary about some real life teens. it was good! made me somewhat nostalgic for high school but also really glad i'm a lot wiser than i was in high school lol sometimes i wish i could go back as the person i am today...i think i'd have a lot more fun than i did back in the day!

the weekend went by really fast. i guess cuz we did so much. this next week we start teaching. the first lesson in every class will just be intro though so that'll be easy. teaching the book will be easy too but i'm a little apprehensive about it. i guess it's just cuz i haven't worked for soooo long. i'm out of the habit lol

i think this semster will go by really fast though because we're changing schools. i think i'm gonna volunteer at the orphanage too so i'll be busier. a bunch of my friends volunteer there and i'm looking forward to being involved in that.

jens met some guy at the book swap that has pretty much all the same music tastes as him and loves to perform music so i think they're gonna try to jam soon. jens said this guy wants to learn the drums so maybe that pressure will be off me now lol drums were fun but i don't think they're really my thing...

a friend of mine is talking about leading some yoga sessions on the weekends which i'm really excited about :o) jens and i have been pretty good about doing yoga on our own but i usually have to lead our sessions (unless we use a yoga video) and i really prefer following someone else. so i'm happy to hear there might be a class situation in the works! esp. in english!

anyhoo, that's about all for now. hope you all had a lovely weekend! peace, love and happiness to everyone!!