Teaching, Cleaning, and Sleeping!

Last week, was my first week alone, without Lauren. It was a bit lonely, but I had a lot to do to keep me busy. Monday, was my first week with the grade 3's and the grade 6's. It was a rather busy week at school because there are two more grade 6 classes this year and because I need to teach them twice a week, plus teach the grade 3's once a week, I was teaching five classes a day. It was my first time meeting the grade 3's and they are as adorable as ever. I'm very excited to teach them this year because Enee has agreed that the textbook is crap, so she is letting me choose my own lesson topics to teach each week. I spent Monday and Tuesday cleaning my apartment because it got dirty with Lauren being here and I didn't get a chance to give it a real clean since I moved in. Basically, I scrubbed down the walls, counters, bathroom, everything and swept and mopped the floor. Wednesday, I decided to go for a 90 minute walk around my neighborhood to check it out and later I met up with Nicole, Chris, Nick, Andrea, Holly at Mad Max for Tim's going away party, but he had already changed venues, so we just e-njoyed one round, I didn't drink, before heading to US 66 to say our good-byes to him. I didn't want a late night, so I turned in around midnight with Holly. Thursday, was just an average day at school and I came to the conclusion that teaching grade 6 is boring because of their curriculum and unwillingness to care about learning English. Thursday night Nicole and I had plans to meet up with our Korean friend Byungwoo for drinks in Sinchon (Seoul) because he is moving to Canada for a year. The three of us met early and had some delicious chicken for dinner and then Carmela and Chris met up with us. We headed to a local watering hole and enjoyed some drinks, while we waited for Kyungsu to join us.

I came to the conclusion that this Korean pose is best if you have food in your mouth at the time of the picture or are worried there might be food stuck in your teeth. Then Carmela and Byungwoo caught on to the concept and agreed with my logic :) Kyungsu is one of the funniest Korean guys I know. He never fails to make us laugh. "Nice hair cut Kyungsu." "I got handsome man hair cut. Now, I am handsome man..." Hahaha! If you say so.

When he finally showed up we decided to head to another bar, but Carmela and Chris decided to head home instead. Kyungsu took Byungwoo, Nicole and I to some bar in the area where we enjoyed drinks (soju and beer), more food and Nicole and I took over the jukebox. Kyungsu ended up leaving early to go meet some girl, so Nicole and I were pissed because we came all the way to Seoul on a school night to hang out with him and say goodbye to Byungwoo. Eventually, we decided to go and meet up with him in Yeoido and have some more drinks. However, the night took a turn for the worst, so around 3:00 a.m. Nicole and I said our good-byes to Byungwoo. The cab ride home to Incheon was interesting. Nicole and I were K.O.'d in the back seat until the taxi drive abrubtly slammed on the breaks and woke us both up. He was sure he knew which way to go and he even had GPS, but when he got to this overpass he turned on the off ramp, only to question himself, *slams on breaks,* so he backed up and headed back down the main highway (overpass). BUT, then he realized that going off on the off ramp was the right way, so he backed up again, on the overpass and headed back down the off ramp. CRAZY!! We did get to the BYC in one piece, but we never went home. Nicole wanted McDonalds, but when we got inside I was like, let's go to Jijjame instead. She agreed, so we headed there and ordered a beer each and enjoyed some food while dancing along to the K-Pop songs we requested and be laughed at, stared at and pointed at by the Koreans who were watching us. Finally, around 5:00 a.m. we decided to call it a night and head home, we did have school the next day...