Tuesday, June 25, 2013

24


June 19 marked my 24th birthday and 4 months in Korea.  That called for a celebration, right?  Yes.  Not only did I have a two-day long birthday with getting messages well into June 20 because of the time difference from home, but we also celebrated all week long.

It actually started on June 15 when I was in Daegu visiting my mom's friend.  We were on a US Army base for a Father's Day cookout.  Now the cookout itself was amazing.  So much good food!  Then after a while, Don and Poki called me over in front of where a bunch of people were sitting to a table with a birthday cake waiting for me.  Of course then everyone started singing!

On Tuesday the 18th, a group of us from church went to dinner to celebrate Alex’s birthday and mine.  Alex being one day older than me.  I’m very thankful for the friends that I have made at church and the community we have there.  It's making a very positive difference in my experience here.  Not sure how I would be doing without it.
Lovely presents from Nicky!  I love buying random girly things for presents, so this was perfect and such a nice little surprise.  Thanks girl!

On my birthday, I spent the whole work day giving speaking tests to my students.  This actually lasted all week and I just finished them today.  I really enjoyed this though because I met with the students individually.  They came out to the hallway and randomly picked three questions out of ten and had to talk to me about them.  It was nice meeting with the 1st graders (7th grade) because I haven't been teaching them yet but will start to in August.

After work, I headed to Shinsegae at Centum City with two friends, Jen and Laura.  This is the world’s largest department store and I wanted to go to H&M and stop by Smoothie King.  I forget the name of the place we had dinner, but what I know is that I had a bread bowl.  Anything somewhat similar to Panera sounds great to me!  Now the soup wasn’t the most amazing soup, but it still was a bread bowl.  I miss Panera.  Panera and Target, I miss the most!  After dinner, we went to H&M.  I really needed/still need more clothes for work for this hot summer and I figured I wouldn't feel bad spending money on my birthday.   As I had a bag of clothes to try on, some announcement came over the speaker and it sounded like they were about to close!  What?!  We booked it over to the dressing room and after a bit of begging, they let us in.  I pretty much gave up though because I really didn't have enough time.  It was only 8 p.m., so I couldn't believe they were closing.  The reason this was such a bummer is because it's about a 45 minute subway ride each way.  I also couldn't get my familiar home treat because Smoothie King closed as well.  We ended up going back downstairs and got some ice cream.  That bag of clothes I wanted to take my time to try on, though?  Don’t worry, I went back to H&M after work on Friday!

Once I got home Wednesday night, I finally had a chance to open my package from my family and I talked to my Aunt Linda, dad, mom, brother, and sister on the phone, Skype, and FaceTime.  I went to bed way too late, but I’m glad I got to talk to them and see some of their faces.

The celebration continued to the weekend.  On Saturday Laura and I had a mini beach day!  I’m pretty sure most of my Saturdays are going to be beach days and I am very okay with that.  After lying on the beach for a bit, we grabbed some lunch and then Cold Stone.  Couldn’t pass that up.  I'm really talking about food a lot aren't I?!  Once we were done there, we met two other friends in Seomyeon to go to a norebang.  Now this was my first norebang experience so I was hesitant to go, but it was so much fun!  A norebang is a karaoke place where you have your own little room for you and your friends.  We had one rule being that we were only going to play 90's pop music!  They only had one Spice Girls song, though.  What’s up with that?!

As if I didn’t extend this birthday celebration enough already, I returned to my desk at work on Monday after some more speaking tests and I found five cards from home!  Five cards in one day?  Talk about a good day.

I heard from so many people from around the world--Korea, Switzerland, England, and home in the US--this past week.  Thank you for all of the sweet messages and for making it a great birthday so far from home.

Friday, June 14, 2013

Priceless Sleep

If there's one thing that I've learned about my students, it is that they love their sleep.  During one of our lessons at the beginning of the year, many of them said their favorite hobby is sleeping.   Then one student said that sleep is a priceless gift when they learned the meaning of "priceless" this week. When someone happens to fall asleep in class, I really don't blame them.  Not only do the students sit through school all day, but so many of them go off to their academies in the evenings.  Also known as hagwons, which are private schools.  They really don't even go home in between.  They have enough time to walk around with some friends and grab something to eat.  Then they're off to class again.  On my walk home from work, my students are usually around walking in the same direction.  They ask me where I'm going some of the time and I do the same because I'm so curious about how often they go to academy and for how long.  A couple months ago, one girl shared that she goes to academy twice a week for math and three times a week for English.  Each of those being a couple hours long.  Then another girl goes to academy Monday-Friday from 6-10 p.m!  I was talking with her two weeks ago as I was hurrying to get home because it finally was Friday and I was so tired from the week.  I just couldn't imagine going off to sit through another four hours of class.  I just feel bad for them.

The students here really do seem to do well in school and care a lot.  Whenever there is a big test coming up, they say, "Teacher, I'm stressful. Study."  I said "Happy Friday" to a class once and they said, "No teacher! Study all weekend."  They really do concentrate when it comes time to study and try to do their best, but they have so much pressure on them to excel.

We had June 6 off work for Memorial Day here.  Of course I went on another hike up a mountain with some friends!  The next day, I asked one of my classes if they enjoyed their day off.  My co-teacher kind of giggled and then one girl said, "Oh, I came to school anyway."  What?!  She came to school anyway probably to study.  Good for them for doing their best in school, but when do they have time to be kids and have some fun?  I did run into a few students on my way to and from the hike and they all seemed to be going to the movies. Good!  That's what they should be doing.  It's no wonder they love sleep so much, though. They don't get nearly enough.