Hot Hot Heat!!

Again it has taken me a few days to sit down and blog. I've actually been really busy lately with extracurricular activites, so I'm barely home long enough to blog. Since my "sick" day Monday things haven't slowed down. When I went to school on Tuesday Jiny and Mrs. Kim were being so sympathetic towards me. It made me feel even more guilty about being fake sick, but Koreans overexaggerate everything when it comes to being sick. They expect if you have a headache or simple stomach ache that you should go to the doctor. Anyways, I skipped out on lunch on Tuesday because Jiny thought that would be best for my stomach. Well, lasting the whole day at school with no lunch and no snacks was really hard, but I pulled through. The best part of the day was that Jiny decided I should go home early, after my last class, to get some rest. I got to go home at 2:00 p.m., which was awesome because I had a two and a half hour nap before I headed to taekwondo. After taekwondo I went to the market to buy Jiny and Mrs. Kim gifts for being so great to me while I was "sick". I bought them each a potted plant, some chocolates and a jar of fruit candies.

Wednesday I gave Jiny and Mrs. Kim their gifts and they were surprised and very appreciative of them. I don't mind buying my co-teachers gifts for helping me out and being so damn nic eto me.

My day was spent with the grade 3's. Oh, how I love them. They are still on the birthday unit, so the classes were spent with the students exchanging birthday cards, doing a role play and listening to North American Nursery Rhymes. *On a side note: Next week and the following week there is an English speech contest for grade 3-6. Basically, the sudents in each grade compete against each other for who has the best English speech. Afterwards, I interview the students about their topics.* Anyways, I brought this up because in each grade 3 class this week Mrs. Kim and I had to listen to the students from each class who wanted to compete and then pick the winners in each class. It was a really hard decision to make because some of the topics were so in depth and most of the students spoke great English. We had to base our decision on which group had the best pronunciation. I couldn't believe some of the topics the students came up with. A couple talked about Incheon, Song-do (International Free Economic Zone) where our school is, they discussed MeunWooGuem Elementary School, etc. One student, Tae-Ho, who is reading Harry Potter in English and only in the third grade wrote his entire speech by himself with no help from his parents and his topic was 'Poverty.' He used words that most of my co-teachers wouldn't even know if they tripped over them. I'm quite excited for the English speech contest, so I will definitely dedicate a post just to that.

Wednesday night I went to the gym after school and I was sweating before I even started. It was even hotter outside that day and the air conditioning didn't start running until my work-out was almost over. I'm not looking forward to the hotter summer months because the smell of sweat will be far to unbearable. It's already too unbearable and the summer is only just beginning. After the gym I met up with Tracy and Nick and we had some dinner in Yeonsu. Afterwards, we checked out a new bar that opened in Yeonsu called Beer Story. It was really nice and had a wicked patio. It's so hard to find a nice patio here in Korea that's not some random table with chairs just scattered about on the sidewalk. It was an actual patio with picnis table, nice umbrellas and nice patio lights. Left: Tracy is pictured with the 'bong' full of beer that Nick ordered. It even poured like a tap. It was amazing and only 8,000 won. Right: The addicting nuts they serve you while you drink and they keep refilling them, so you can never escape them.

While we were trying to enjoy our beverages and nuts this drunk Korean man appears out of nowhere and decides to choose me to poke and ask where we were all from. Then Nick told him to have a good night because we didn't want to talk him. Well, he decided to sit on the stairs behind where Nick and I were sitting on the patio (there was a fence between us) and then he pokes Nick in the side, scarying the shit out of Nick and causing him to spill some beer out of his mug. That is completely unheard of with Nick and then the man kept poking him really getting on Nick's nerves. He kept asking Nick for a little bit of beer and Nick wouldn't give him any and the man got really pushy. Then the waiter noticed him bothering us and told the manager/owner and she came over and told him to move, he put up a fit, so she sent the bartender who walked around to where the man was sitting, helped him up and dragged him to a park bench far away from the restaurant and us. Nick made sure not to leave out that he noticed the man had peed his pants. Gross! Left: Evidence of Nick's spilled beer thanks to drunk, pants peeing Korean man. Right: The end of our beer bong, how very sad :(

Today was a good day at school. I was a bit tired, but all in all the day was good. I taught the third graders first period and then had a break where I actually did work and put together my presentation for tomorrow's teacher's class. Just before my last class of the day I got Jiny to help me buy two tickets to the Big Bang concert in Seoul next Sunday. I don't think I've told you how much I love Big Bang, they are a HUGE Korean boy band and I actually really enjoy their Korean songs with the occassional English word thrown in. I think I have found my KFC in Tae Yang. I had no idea I would succumb to Korean culture so quickly, but I have come to love Big Bang. You can be sure there will be a blog dedicated to that concert as well.

This is Big Bang. Try not to get to hot and sweaty at the sight of them ;)

Below: I heart T.O P. Who knew I could fancy a Korean afterall.

Anyways, the rest of my classes for the day were with the grade sixers and they are always a treat. I feel like they could care less about learning English and most days I don't blame them because the curricuulum is so boring. They are learning dialogue that they will likely never use, instead of learning basic grammar, sentence structure, pronunciation, etc. Anyways, now with the weather getting slowly hotter and hotter and the school year winding down the kids minds aren't in full force and they have become lazier. Today in one grade 6 class a kid in the back was sleeping sitting up, another student was so hot he had a bad headache that he was sleeping with his head down, two girls were talking and one girl kept trying to stab or cut her friends hair with scissors and this ditracted her the whole class. About halfway through I couldn't take it anymore, so I took the scissors and pencil case from her (she started to cut the pencil case). One boy kept stealing books from the girl sitting next to him, so in the middle of the lesson when Jiny was talking I yelled at him to stop an dhe puts at the girl like it was all her fault. I was like, I don't care give her the book back. I'm almost positive the heat is getting to their heads and causing them to care less and less about school. The heat is getting my head. I sweat as soon as I step outside. I literally have to wash my clothes after one wear because of how bad I sweat during the day. The school has no A/C and the only air you get is from the ceiling fans and that is only if they are turned on. Opening the windows doesn't even help with the heat. I'm not sure how I will survive the summer here, but where there's a will, there's a way.

After school I headed to Tracy's to hang out until taekwondo. Taekwondo was ok, but we worked harder than usual today, so we were sweating within minutes of the class starting. Now, I'm going to head to bed for the night.