ㄹeaㄹy?

I don't think today's blog entry will be as long as the last two days, but it does give me joy that I’m sitting down to write it. It’s about 10:20, and I just retired to my room after some quality bonding time with the family. Today was the best day of the week so far. We had a really tasty breakfast—I think my stomach and taste buds have finally resigned themselves to Korean food. I never really intensely disliked it, but I did feel perpetually disappointed in the cafeteria at Kangwon University. But now, I don’t feel depressed by every meal—probably because my host mother’s cooking is much better. I’ve come to appreciate kimchi a little more, and there’s usually some sort of egg and non-fish meat that I can use to choke down copious quantities of rice. Today, I think, was ham. Joy of joys.

Then my co-teacher came to pick me up and we drove to school. I was feeling better than I have for a week, which is still not to say great, but now I just have an annoying cough. I realized that I had four conversation classes in a row (1st-4th period), so I quickly made copies of a lesson from the teaching manual. I wasn’t sure how it was going to go, but the kids were surprisingly receptive and cool. I taught the two first grade classes first, then the two second grade classes. We practiced R and L pronunciation, which most Korean people agree is one of the most difficult sounds to pronounce in English. This letter ㄹ has a sounds that’s somewhere between r and l (and the soft ‘d’ sound in water, apparently). Pronunciation is difficult to teach, particularly when I can’t explain in Korean how to arrange your mouth. It’s mostly a lot of pointing and exaggerated mouth movements for me. But the Korean English teacher, Mr. Kim, can explain the mouth placement but he can’t accurately make the sound himself sometimes. It’s a conundrum. I just made them growl for the ‘r’ sound, and sing for the ‘l’ sound (la!)—I think they thought I was crazy, but they smiled at least.

We also practiced the ‘V’ sound, because it doesn’t exist in Korean. I think some of the kids actually got better on that one, which was gratifying. Then we played a game where students had to identify which word I was saying (Rebel vs. Revel, Drive vs. Tribe, etc.) I didn’t come up with it, but it actually went really well. And they’re so cute! I’m still happy to be teaching middle school—the high schoolers might be equally cute, nice, and naïve, because this is Korea, but I really like them. I think the only thing that would be better about high schoolers is that they might be a little more serious, but so long as I make the lessons fun, I think we’ll have a good time. I hope they don’t make me teach to the book too much. Oh yeah—I had them pick class names as well: 1st period-Amazing Class, 2nd Period-Rainbow Class, 3rd Period-Beautiful/Handsome Class, 4th period- Mad Class.

My voice was starting to give out by the end of 4th period, especially with all the “Repeat after me…” - so I was happy to be finished. Lunch at school was 만두 (dumplings) and 보도 (grapes), which was way exciting! It was about 1:00 when I finished classes and lunch, and I really didn’t want to go home. I like home, and it would have been empty anyway, but there’s still no wireless, and it’s waaaay to hot just to hang around doing nothing. And my co-teacher told me I could just stay, so I did! I did a little lesson planning and mostly just surfed the internet and checked email. And… best news of the century—the cute administrative secretary guy is going to pick me up and take me home every day! Unfortunately, he’s married to the school nutritionist, but he speaks a little English, so it won’t be totally awkward silence like the principal or scary bus! Yes! I know, I was thrilled too.

I gave the principal his gift yesterday. He didn’t seem to understand why I was giving it to him, and just appeared perplexed, but whatever. Today, I gave the Vice Principal his gift—which was… coffee and beef jerky, I think. Everyone in the office was pretty excited about the coffee, and smelled it a lot, but then everyone was highly disappointed that it needed to be ground. (My bad!) Still, I think maybe the VP will warm up to me a little now. I left school around 3—the principal insisted on driving me again (I think maybe he just doesn’t like to work), but the non-scary guy who’ll be driving me from now on, Mr. Goh, came too. And I’m a little sad that I won’t be going back to NMS until next week. I really like teaching! Have I mentioned that? :)

After school I went to the store for more orange juice. Thankfully there were no scary random new relatives here, so it was peaceful. I took a nice nap for an hour and a half. I think I might need that everyday even if I’m not sick—teaching takes a lot out of you. After that… hmm. There seems to be some large part of my memory missing. Oh yeah, I went upstairs to use the internet for a little while, then came down when Host Mom came home. Then I prepped for tomorrow a little, studied some Korean, and ate dinner—another tasty mixed-rice dish! Yes! :) After dinner I studied some more and cleaned my room, and then Mom and the kids walked me to the coffee shop where I’m going to be meeting the teacher who is taking me to school tomorrow. (Tomorrow I’m going to DMS Middle School for the first time. I go there on Thursdays and Fridays.) It was good, because I got to see a different part of the neighborhood and found a 문방구 (stationery store) and other cool stuff. It was good, because I needed to buy wrapping paper to wrap my gifts for tomorrow. After that, I hung out in the living room a little more while wrapping my gifts, for bonding purposes. I was going to blog out there too, but it was later than I thought, so instead I retired to my 침대 (bed). I’m sure that’s spelled wrong, but whatev. You don’t know better. :) Well, most of you.

Oh. You might have noticed some changes to the layout of my blog, and the new link on the right… I’ve decided (over-ambitiously?) to create a new journal where I’ll be posting the writing I’m going to force myself to do for the next year. 250 words a day is my goal. So if you’re interested, feel free to check it out, and leave comments. Yep—a much shorter entry tonight. But tomorrow will no doubt be another awkward exciting day, so stay tuned.

<3

eta: I slept the whole night through last night for the first time since the very first night! It was amazing!