Last night I couldn’t sleep, so I decided to go on an after-midnight cleaning spree.  After sweeping I had a lot of fine dust particles that were seemingly stuck to the dustpan and after trying to get the dust off with the brush into the trashcan for what seemed like forever, I decided to shake the dustpan out the window.

Well. Apparently the bin and the handle are detachable, so while enjoying the cool night breeze and shaking my dustpan I freaking CHUCKED MY DUSTPAN OUT OF THE WINDOW. I live on the second floor. It fell 2 stories and landed on the ground with a thump

Korean learners of English as a foreign language tend to have trouble with the distinction between “ed” and “ing.”

“Oh teacher, I am interesting!”
“Yes, yes you are.”

CP is pretty rural. In fact, though geographically I’m pretty close to Gwangju, I can’t go out late at night because the last bus leaves from Gwangju at around 10:15, which means that if I’m downtown with friends like I was last Saturday, I have to leave around 9:30 if I want to make it back home. If I miss that bus, it’s actually cheaper to spend the night in Gwangju than to take a cab.

I didn’t particularly want to leave, but I hadn’t been feeling too well and I knew that I wouldn’t want to stay out as late as everyone else, nor did I have a place to stay, so I decided to call it quits and leave downtown right as everyone was getting in. I took the bus to 서방 시장 (Seobang Market – the transfer point that is closest to downtown) to wait for my CP bus, and then I hear-

“TEACHER! HIIIII!”

Turns out it was one of my students, who apparently goes to Gwangju every Saturday. After she finishes supplemental classes at school she buses into the city and goes to an art academy where she paints all day, and then takes the last bus back to CP.

“Teacher, what are you doing?”
“Oh, I’m going home. I went to a birthday party but I must take the last bus back to CP, so I had to leave early.”
“Oh,” she pauses, “I think you must be very boring.”

It took the SG post office 15 minutes to figure out where “Georgia” the country was, but I sent off all 59 letters! Thanks to everyone who volunteered and who recruited volunteers for me, you should be getting letters in 1 – 3 weeks.

Also because it’s the day after Easter I keep getting hardboiled eggs as presents. What a delicious and nutritious teacher’s office snack! If only I was going straight home after school… I’m a little scared that these hardboiled eggs are going to explode in my bag.

A LOT has happened so I’ll update you in bullet form and expand in blog entries later.

Recent wins:

• Woke up at 5 am yesterday to go with underclassmen to cheer for the 3rd graders (high school seniors) taking the 수능 (Suneung), which is a test that students start preparing for in elementary school. If you don’t do well on this test you can’t go to the college you want (or even college at all in some cases). Most of my students in the academic track stay at school until 10 pm or later every day doing self-study… pretty much just for the Suneung, and even the kids that are not in the academic track stay late and study. I was there before any of the teachers (got there at 6, most teachers got there at 7:30/8) and got to hang out with my students in the freezing cold. Apparently foreign teachers never go and cheer for the suneung so my school was really shocked (and very happy) that I went, and since I went with my host sister and not a teacher apparently they didn’t even know I was coming.
• Almost finished with book 2 of piano, going on to book 3 in a few days.
• FINALLY figured out how to do a dora chaugi kick in hapkido (watch the video, he does one at 0:24).
• Went to the hapkido night class one day instead of my usual afternoon class and saw one of my trouble maker students. This kid is about 6’4″ and has to weigh at least 250 pounds, he’s massive. We had to practice blocking practice and I was paired with him and I completely took him out. I can now say I beat up one of my students.
• I’ve been practicing with a core group of 7 students for the English competition (we have to sing a pop song) that’s coming up and today we finally nailed the difficult harmonies in the chorus. My students were so happy!
• I taught a lesson on Dr. Horrible’s Sing-Along-Blog to my advanced kids.
• I bought some sweaters so I won’t die!
• Discovered a duck pond in my “downtown”
• Went to Daegu/Busan with friends last weekend and built a sand-castle.
• Tomorrow I’m going to the United States ambassador to Korea’s house for a Thanksgiving dinner with most of the first-year F*bright English Teaching Assistants.

Loses:

• I’ve been sick.
• I lost my VOICE which is absolutely awful if you’re an English conversation teacher.
• Korean vocabulary has recently been stagnating and grammar is definitely getting worse.
• I STILL don’t know what I’m doing for Winter Break.
• I feel like I’ve hit a wall in my relationship with teachers at school due to the language barrier and I really want to build deeper relationships but I don’t know how/I’m too tired to keep trying.
• I have had 5 times as many spam comments as actual comments on my blog. Hint hint.

More later, I promise. As well as actual pictures eventually.

I went to the Baskin Robbins in my town yesterday with my host sister. The woman working there told my host sister that she recognized me, not just from living in my town and because I walk around a lot, but specifically because I had gone to Baskin Robbins “a lot.” I haven’t gone to Baskin Robbins in 2 months. So either this means that I ate a ton of ice cream in August/early September, or what I had suspected is true and everytime I get ice cream everybody knows and remembers.

If Baskin Robbins remembers me I would hate to think what the GS 25 near my apartment thinks of my ice cream eating habits o.O

Compared to many of the other ETAs I’m relatively isolated, or at the very least it feels that way. I’m definitely not as isolated as Megan up in North Korea (just kidding parents, she’s just relatively close), nor as isolated as some of the ETAs that are further south, but relatively speaking I’m isolated. I’m the only F*lbrighter in my county, there’s Joelle who is one county over and 20 minutes away by bus but after that it’s Sam who’s 40 minutes, Katie who’s… something, I’m not sure (she’s more rural than I am and her bus system’s a little wonky – haven’t attempted that trip yet) and everyone else is an hour away or more. I try to keep it in perspective by reasoning that for many of the city ETAs who are technically near each other it can take up to an hour for them to meet because they’re on opposite ends of the city. However the city ETAs seem to have a “crew” if you will, and seem hang out together rather frequently, or at least once during the week. Maybe it’s because I’m in a rural location but we here in Chungnam don’t seem to a crew. Even though I’m only an hour from Cheonan, which again is about the same amount of time it takes many city ETAs to meet, we don’t have weekly Cheonan meetings. I’m not bringing this up to complain, just to state a fact that during the week I don’t see people. Joelle and I are trying to change that and make a once a week coffee sanity date, but thus far it hasn’t worked too well. I do end up seeing people on the weekends a fair amount because I travel, but it’s these long weekdays that are difficult. I’m really lucky in that I really like everyone that’s placed close to me, however they’re a little difficult to get to. When I have a really rough day at school due to either students misbehaving, or a cultural misunderstanding, it’s sometimes difficult coming back to my apartment and knowing that I don’t really have a “crew” that knows what I’m dealing with in terms of students, or understands my American perspective, that I can call to meet up and decompress. I just have to either be content with videochat/email/gchat etc, theoretically (I haven’t done this yet – too long of a trip to make on impulse) check and see if Joelle or Sam are free and navigate the rural bus system (i.e. sometimes the buses don’t. freaking. come. I hate the 7:20 Y-H bus. Also buses don’t run very late… I’d have to leave Sam’s place at 9 at the latest, and Joelle’s at just after 10) or just suck it up. I’ve never been good at isolation, I’ve always been a people-person, so this is a very good experience for me. A difficult one, but a good one.

What this does mean is that I value my time with people more, and I see people I probably wouldn’t otherwise. If I had a crew I’d probably stick with them at least a little bit (it’s easier to stay within your city than to go to another one, right)? As practically everyone is an hour away from me that means that it’s almost as easy to go meet people across the country as it is to go to Cheonan (the largest city near me).

So what am I doing this Friday night? I’m going to celebrate Guy Fawkes Night with Joelle the rural way – Instead of partying under big city lights, or meeting up with my crew, I made chocolate chip cookies and we’re going to pop “V for Vendetta” into Joelle’s laptop and chill. And honestly? I’m really, really excited.