Ok back to me...
One thing that I am proud of is that I made my very own Korean style pancakes without any help. I mean I asked how to make them, but I had already pretty much figured it out and just wanted to make sure that I was correct and wasn't leaving anything out. These pancakes are not really the typical pancakes that we would think of. They are a combination of eggs, flour, milk, usually scallions, and any other vegetable that you want to throw in there. Kind of like an omelette with a bread-like taste as well. It is very hard to explain the taste but I am sure that you can imagine from the ingredients. They were very tasty for my first try and the Korean teachers at school even said that they were really good. The food here is hard to learn how to cook especially since I have no microwave and no oven. There are also not many ready-made foods here (other than Spam...lol).
I am posting some funny pictures on facebook of my room after I did the laundry. Now, this may not seem funny to you now, but when you see them and you can't really see my room at all, you might think it is funny! I waited a couple of weeks between doing laundry this last time and accumulated a rather large amount of garments to wash. I decided that while I was at it, I would go ahead and wash my blankets and sheets as well. All of it ended up being about 3 loads, which is a lot for one person, and I had to hang everything around my room to dry. I think they have dryers in Korea, but they just don't purchase or use them for some reason. So, everyone uses drying racks. I happen to be lucky and have 2, a large one and a medium sized one, which is all I have ever needed up until this last laundry day. All of the clothes pretty much fit on the racks but the blankets and sheets were another story. My place is pretty small, like maybe the size of a dorm room with a bathroom. I felt just like a kid again with all of my blankets hanging around my room. It was like when you are little and you build forts with whatever you can get your hands on; couch cushions, blankets, pillows, pretty much anything. For those of you who know me well, you know that I am somewhat of a neat freak and a little anal about my organizational tactics. I had to leave my place like that for about 3 days because the stuff would just not dry! It almost drove me crazy, especially getting up in the middle of the night to use the bathroom and running into everything!!
At work, we got a new head teacher who is turning out to be pretty decent, but things are changing and some of the ways that we do things are being questioned. We don't find out some details until the very last minute which can be very frustrating. The kids are pretty great though! They are very smart, but don't like to do their homework all of the time. I love working at a private school because I can just tell one of the Korean teachers when a particular child doesn't do his or her homework and that teacher will call the child's parents. I never even have to deal with it really. It is quite nice not to have to hear the whining of the parents and all of the negative things that they have to say as well. When the kids are good, and they complete their homework, we reward them with something we call stickers. These are not really stickers like you would think. It is a homework notebook that has to be filled out and signed by the parents every night. When the child brings their homework and the signature, they get a signature from the teacher and that counts as one sticker. These stickers are like money and once every couple of months, we have what we call a Market Day. How many signatures they have gotten, determines how much money they will be able to spend on Market Day. They can buy things like school supplies, toys, food, etc. and we play a movie. It is basically a free day for the kids. I just had my first Market Day and things went pretty smoothly. The kids played, ate, drank, and watched Toy Story 3 in English! It was actually pretty cool except that I hadn't written Market Day into my lesson plans and therefore had to change them a little.
We also went on another field trip at school as well. I know, I know it sounds like we go on so many field trips which is absolutely true. I think we go on about 2 a month which I guess is not that bad, but there are a few parents who complain that they are paying money for their child to learn English, and we are taking them on too many non-English related field trip. My solution for the complaining parents was for them to not send their child on field trip day and they can have one day of tuition knocked off of their next month's bill. I don't think my boss much liked that idea because she just stared at me when I said it; like I was speaking a foreign language to her or something(which is mostly true)! The most recent field trip was to the Gwacheon National Science Museum. It is definitely a place that I am happy I got to check out while I am here. It is a museum with a mock rocket launch in the courtyard as well as a planetarium. There were dinosaur bones, advanced medical machines, a full sized model airplane that you can actually go inside of, and many other great things. Check my pictures for all that we saw. Here is a link to the website of the museum in English. I advise that you check it out because it is so very cool!
http://www.scientorium.go.kr/en/
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