Thought I'd start it off with a little Konglish I've found in the last couple days. Lets & Joy is on a bottle of Banana Milk, actually the bottle has a whole blurb in English that is absolutely hilarious. It makes no sense, but that's Konglish for you. Cafe aSoul is a place I found in Suncheon this weekend, got a solid laugh out of it. Great name for a cafe.
The week was all ups and downs. Monday was a writeoff. It might have been the exhaustion from Seoul, but probably a combination of that plus the grade 2 shmucks. Mind you it was also my bad, my lesson was dry and not exciting and I lost their interest almost immediately. Longest day of life saved by my afterschool grade 3s. Solid easy class. Without them I'd be lost.
Thought I was going to have to put on my first teacher workshop. At least that's what I was under the impression of, but instead we went out to lunch. But it was good to talk to the teachers and just meet some new faces. We had this snail soup thing, I can't remember what it was called. Imagine walking onto Wasaga Beach and taking in the smell of the detritus and tasting that smell a little bit. Sounds worse than it actually was, but the spices covered it nicely. Afterwards went to my country school. On Friday we had an open class with the grade 2s. I thought it was supposed to be in front of parents, but it ended up being in front of other teachers and the vice principal and principal. So my nervous level went from nothing to 70%. Plus, when I saw that they were actually grading the class, really got me jumping a little bit. After that it was lunch and at lunch the vice p leans in and says that she wants to speak to me alone in the teacher's room. Definitely worried thinking about what she was going to say about the class. She just wanted to talk haha, it was a while since we were able to have a conversation so she wanted to catch up. So nice. Then everyone congratulated me on a good lesson, so that was definitely a relief. Definitely a good experience though.
Oh, back track to Tuesday. Ran into guy named Tom from orientation in the streets on my way to the bus terminal. First time since being in Gurye that I ran into him. Caught up a little bit, but then guy named Jin who is a foreign teacher came up to us and started talking, first time meeting him. Then ran into a third foreign speaker named James. All did Korean bbq and got to know each other. Go all this time not seeing any foreigners outside of the teacher lunches and in a span of 10 minutes I'm having lunch with two other random foreigners. So nice. Now there's only one guy I haven't met but I'm sure I'll see him around somewhere sometime.
Made the first roadie to Suncheon. Thought it was a lot further than what it actually is and I can make it in a solid half hour, with a bus ticket of $3. Brilliance. It's the closest city to me, plus huge foreigner population and so many people from orientation are in that city so it's great to catch up. Organized a month-in reunion and about fifteen of us were able to get together. It was definitely a blast. They lucked out in the city. All of the apartments in Sidae, the area the foreigners mostly live in, are side by side and the majority of people actually live in the same building so that's nice. Makes it so easy to get together with people.
First night found us in an international bar that just stocked up with international beers, so many. The booths are in the shape of Berry-go-Rounds, so that was pretty sweet. It's also a hookah bar so we all got in on that. Was just a chill intro to the city and get to catch up with people I haven't seen in a month. Called it a night round mid and that was that. Caught an episode of Idiot Abroad, if you haven't heard of that, check it out. Funny show.
Next day hit the streets to explore. Checked out a HomePlus, which is basically like the Korean Sears. Will definitely need to get back there again in a couple days. They have Christmas trees so I'll be grabbing one of those to set up for sure. Plus, dirt cheap things for the house, for the most part. Want to buy an oven. Missing the oven baked goods. Only so much frying and boiling before it all rolls into one. I need a little something something else. Plus jumping into the city means dinner with peeps from the area, so double plus. Luckily the buses run every half so that makes it so easy to jump back into Gurye.
After met up with the other foreigners and hit the streets of Sinae which is the shopping alleyways. It all looked like a mini Gwangju, but it was nice. Need to get back there as well, cheap shops. Found some killer jackets for about 60k. Tried on a few but they were alll wayy too small, need to get into the rest. Plus, dirt cheap shoes. Converse for 28k, so definitely jumped in that. It's about $25, how can I turn that down. Good to know there's some place so close for cheap shopping. Plus, bartering is big, so I can probably knock those prices down a bit.
Night outing in Suncheon. Start the night off with bbq (it's slowly becoming my favourite meal choice, not just the food, but the experience of it all). Then hit the foreigner bar which was chill, but definitely foreinger. Then, naturally follow-up with noraebang. Here's how nice Koreans are: We jump into one noraebang place, but it was all filled up, so one of the guys who worked there ended up walking us to the nearest noraebang and took us exactly where we needed to be. So nice. Next three hours were well spent in there. Out by 1am=food. Kimbap and fried chicken is phenomenal at 1am. By this point it was only about 8 or 9 of us. Only 2 of us wanted to keep going after food so me and this girl Ellen hit the town again. We were both new to the city (both rolled in at the same time on Friday) so we just went back to the foreign bar. Experienced my first last call. It happened at 4am, but I was starting to think it didn't happen in Korea. We still stayed there until 4:30-ish, when the owner basically yelled get out and we slowly made our way out. By the time we rolled up to the apartment we were staying in it was 6-ish, still stayed up for a while. 7am night outings are becoming more frequent than I would have imagined. I think this is the 4th or 5th since being in Korea. It's a totally different night culture out here. By 2am back home all the drunks are stumbling out of the bars and clumsily making their way back home, but here 2am means nothing and hardly anyone is stumbling through the streets. It's great to be in that kind of environment. So refreshing. We lucked out with the place we were staying in. It was our friends Soy and Alex's place, and they just gave us the spare key, which definitely helped for the 7am bedtime. Good weekend for sure.
Now back in Gurye, probably should have spent this time lesson planning as I don't really have anything, but ohhh well. I don't really feel like it. Ps, skype is offishall up and running, so if anyone wants to skype just give a shout over, be good to catch up with all of you!
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