Goodbye July

So I'm mostly writing right now just for the sake of having a July post. But I suppose I could talk about something happening in my life right now. I've settled into my apartment and job in South Korea. My place is pretty small and I get awoken by little Korean kids shouting at the top of their lungs at 7:00 in the morning, but I can't complain too much about a free apartment with internet, kitchen, and laundry. Also, my shower consists of a drain in my bathroom floor and a shower head, why I'm learning to enjoy a lot. I've been raiding a wide assortment of hygiene products that the girl who lived in my apartment before me left, and my skin has benefited greatly from the mud-based cleansing foam. Other than that, I'm glad I packed a lot of Pepto Bismal, because finding food that I can cook well (and understand the directions to), and junk food that agrees with me well has been a process.

This past week was one of my vacation weeks - a fact I found out only three weeks ago. I said "To hell with travelling," in part because I had just had a thirty-hour trek to South Korea, but also because I'm travel-broke until my next paycheck or two. So I sat around, slept, explored the city a little bit, and slept all week, all while enjoying the fact that I still get paid for it.

So, I've made decent friends with my co-workers, but they all kind of hate each other. There's four different groups, only 9 of them. It makes things rather complicated. Either way, I just can't stand when they talk shit about each other to me, when I don't really have a problem with any of them (so far). Not like the problems I have with Poelhuis.

Also, apparently I'm a really good teacher, and really good with kids. Who knew? At least I don't have to teach a sex ed. unit. But I do have to avoid lmao when I here the kids try to pronounce words like "mall" and "palm". I'm getting a lot of the really advanced classes, such as the students who are basically fluent because they lived in English-speaking countries for over half of their lives. Which also means I have to actually grade papers and create lesson plans for books the school hasn't used before, and lead reading comprehension discussions and debates over character development and conflict and shit. This is all because apparently I'm the most qualified of my co-workers to run these classes. What?

Anyway, my next vacation is from Saturday, December 25th to Sunday, January 2, meaning plane tickets home around Christmas and then around New Years are likely to be hella expen$ive. But a mid-week ticket? Probably not as bad. So who wants to spend New Years in Seoul or Tokyo? Tickets are only about $600 round trip. Just throwing that out there...

Stay classy, western hemisphere.