It's almost the middle of December...how is time going by this fast? I still feel like I should be settling into this place, but I've been living in Gurye for over a month already. Way too fast. But excited for the new semester, a fresh start right from the beginning will set a nice pace for the rest of the semester, hopefully.
The week got off to a rough start. Actually, so rough I started to lose my voice. Grade 2s will honestly be the death of me. I have never yelled that much in my life, and I actually wish I was exaggerating. These kids will push you to the absolute brink. Should have been fun, we were playing hockey in class, how could it not be fun? Well clearly they don't like it over here. Half of the class just didn't stop talking, so adopted a little punishment of making them do squats while holding a marker straight in front of them as a "penalty" for 2 up to 5 minutes. They did not like that, death stares across the board. They had it coming. So that put a bit of a damper on the week already. Plus it was just one of those days and nights. I ended up sleeping through all 4 of my alarms in the morning and woke to the sound of my co-teacher banging on my window. Felt like an idiot, but it happens. Then the night was just one of those nights where I would have killed for a bit of familiarity.Ah well.
Sports lesson reviews continued and luckily they liked tennis way more than hockey. It became like dodgeball with a tennis ball, so it was fun, plus they were ace with the review. Both the grade 1 and 2 classes had exams so the review was to prep them, hopefully it did. Apparently I used review questions that were actually identical to the exam questions so it should have helped for shiz. Then Wednesday was hit and miss, brought in an idea for a bucket list since they are all moving onto high school and kind of wanted to get them to think about the future. Didn't really work out. Their creative minds aren't exactly heightened over here, so unless it's written in the text book most of them couldn't really answer, but it was still fun. Then met the rest of the foreigners and the school board for a conference and dinner. It was fun, but it was still feeling like one of those weeks so I just wasn't feeling it too much, so I left a little early to catch up on some sleep. I think these weekend excursions are slowly starting to kill my weeks. Luckily for me Thursday brought me no classes, and no teacher workshop except for my co-teacher and I talking for 2 hours about life. That was a solid afternoon/recuperation day to bring me back up a bit.
But, rest doesn't last long as I was quickly off to Suncheon for dinner. Coordinating with the buses can be a bit of a pain in the butt. But I was off to pick up a Christmas tree and meet some people. Fitting, too, since it was the first snow and I had my Christmas tree in hand. So that was just good timing. A solid rest of the night was spent watching Frosty the Snowman and decorating the tree. Definitely a good time, brought me back home for a bit. Then Friday my classes were mostly cancelled, so my morning was free. A much needed call home was made and that helped make up for the crappy beginning of the week. Luckily, too, is that the bucket list idea worked better for my only class. A few tweaks made it a lot better. Then a so-so lesson on hip hop music, wasn't really feeling it too much, mostly because I prepared crap for it. Definitely showed. But they still enjoyed it enough to get by.
A quiet Friday movie night was followed by a random Friday. After some cleaning and tidying around the house a last minute decision to jump out into Gwangyang was made and I guess that's where I was going to spend the night. It's a small city-ish place, way bigger than Gurye and has way more, but still felt very small-townish, but we were staying in the slower part of the city. Basically an invite at 2pm led to a bus at 330 for dinner in Gwangyang by 530 then Suncheon by 11. Random and unexpected but definitely fun. Maybe a little too much fun. Solid though, showed them Koreans how to play some foosball and represent. But in typical Korean fashion we left the bar around 230 to head out of the city, back in around 3-ish, but no sleep til past 5ish, then up again in the morning for some city exploration. First Korean bowling experience. No grip shoes suck, but it was fun, no 5-pin though, which I was looking forward to, but oh well.
May have planned for a quiet weekend at home, but it was anything but. Which also means no rest for the wicked until the new year. Gwangju next weekend, Boseong for Christmas, Seoul for New Years then I guess it's vacation but can't relax on my vacation so I'm hoping to travel some more, it's split in two so hoping to go somewhere for one half, then tour the country for the second part, then in between is a mini-winter camp, and following the second part is a legit winter camp, so time off will be coming...March-ish? Coffee is definitely becoming a huge savior.
Oh! And I think I'm getting the hang of Korean food. I've been trying my luck at different foods here and have been trying to cook with them, and on Friday I made a bibimbap of sorts and I will say it has actually become one of my favourite meals in Korea. Or just sheer luck. We'll see when I jump on that a second time, and test it in front of some Koreans. Ah well, I'll jump that bridge when the time comes. Hopefully this week filled with Christmas lessons will be way easier and way more fun. Rudolph, Shrek, paper snowflakes and brownies, how can it not? Actually, I take that question back.
댓글 없음:
댓글 쓰기