Day 5 and 6 and 7 morning

So I’ve been keeping pretty busy, day 5 looked a bit like this:

went into work, and it started to really dawn on me that i’d be teaching kids for a year. I sat at my desk just thinking, “holy crap, am i really going to be able to do this?” I’m not gunna lie, I’m a bit scared. But everyone keeps assuring me I’ll be fine, and to just take it easy and take everything that happens with a grain of salt. So, that’s what I’m hoping to accomplish.

Also, I broke the laminator in the upstairs office : ( (but Joe can apparently fix it.)

In the afternoon, Devin and I started going over all my classes and we made a lesson plan for my Monday classes. Hopefully this gets the ball rolling and I’ll have all my week’s planning done soon.

Georgia moved t0 her new desk downstairs, which means I get very lonely now. Erica’s never at her desk, Sharolyn is, but she’s always pretty busy, so I’m basically isolated upstairs. I’m not sure if that’s good or bad. I kind of like to be in an environment where I can see others working hard around me.

Anyhow, the day finished and Devin, Erica, Amanda, Wattchala (I hope i spelt that right), Anna and Meg went out for “All you can eat” umm,…something. Basically, you’re sitting at these traditional tables, where you’s down on a mat and in the middle of the table is a metal pot where they put hot coals. on top of the pot, flush with the table, they put down a metal grate, and it was help yourself to any kind and any amount of meat.

Most of the meat was pre-cooked, so we were basically warming it up, but i ate SOOOO much! the bad thing was, you couldn’t sit properly and it was hot and humid to begin with, but now we were all sitting around hot coals so the whole lot of us were sweating all over the place.

The way you eat it, is you grab a leaf of lettuce, grab a piece of meat, maybe put some sauce on it, and then they have any number of other items to put on it. various kinds of kimchi, sprouts, etc. VERY good.

So after I had all I could eat, I left my share of the bill, and met up with Britney and Alix. We hung out in their apartments for a bit until Christine and Georgia met up with us and I decided to join them for dinner and have MORE than I could eat. It turns out Korean food fills you up temporarily. For me, anyway.

We ended up going to this small noodle house and it was the most ridiculous fiasco ever, because Britt ordered her food and got it, I asked for the same thing and got nothing, Christine asked for sushi and got hers, but then Alix asked for noodles and got sushi as well! then, Georgia asked for noodles with chicken, and got nothing. Then, this other couple came in and ordered what is apparently called “OmRice.” which is basically a big omlette wrapped around rice. with delicious sauce. So I asked for the same. Alix ended up getting a noodle soup with vegetables and Georgia went back to Chicken and Beer for some spicy boneless chicken.

We then went to the department store, HomeEver and did some shopping before turning in for the night.

a side note for the evening, Italian food is really popular here. if you don’t mind spending the little extra for it, we passed by a whole bunch of Italian restaurants on our way to the noodle house.

day 6:

So i’ve been here almost a week! I think I might start writing one post for the week, and with less detail, because if I keep this up, I’ll have a novel written in no time.

Moving into Saturday, my feelings of unprepairedness increased and in an effort to ease that incoming stress, I went to school on my day off to grab my notes and files to go over at home. I’ll go over all opf that stuff today (Sunday, day 7).

I joined Devin, my boss and her boss in one of the empty rooms, since Saturday is only one AM and one PM class. We sat, listened to some music and talked and drank beer. (yeah, at work. also, it’s socially acceptable to be drinking beer practically anywhere. also, corner stores sell beer. you can buy a BIG bottle for less than 4 dollars!) Anyhow, they were warm beers because Devin had them in his bag all day, but they weren’t bad. After, Devin and I met up with his buddy Albert and hilariously, managed to swap out the remaining warm beers for cold ones at the Seven-Eleven. We drank those outside and then made our way to Devin’s place.

There, Devin started packing and I moved my suitcases into his place. I would be moving in officially on the 31st (today). I ended up joining Britt, Alix, Christine, Georgia and Gavin for spaghetti and in the same vein as the day before (but opposite order), skipped out early to meet up with Devin, Erica, Amanda, Meg and others for their going away party. But first, (a second) dinner! We went to a place called Kraze burger. (we decided it was supposed to be pronounced “Kray-Zee” but all the Koreans with us insisted it was pronounced “Kraaze” with a long A and a softish E. I’m not sure if i’m using the right words to describe that…) Anyhow, at this point, there was maybe 18 of us all together.

We all pretended it was Dev’s birthday and the staff brought us an ice cream cake with candles. We gave him the slow-clap. and a big, single “Devin!” cheer.

After a mediocre “American burger”, we headed out to a different Monkey Beach. It wasn’t as bad as the other one, This one had fun lights and fire spinning and pize winning basketball hoop thing, tables with poles where people could step up and dance on them and it was FULL of drunk westerners and LOUD club music.

I had a bit of a headache, so I didn’t drink much, but Erica won a bottle of tequila and Nigel was gifted a bottle of triple distilled vodka by some random. Amanda and Devin marched off with the bottles, basically coaxing our entire group to take a swig from each bottle. Eventually, people got extra drunk and one of the girls with us had to be helped out of the bar, because she had clearly drunk WAY too much. Outside, and actually, a bit inside the club, emotions came pouring out and Meg and Amanda (who were teaching partners at Maple Bear) did a bit of boo-hoo-ing.

I was about ready to pass out, thankfully, so was Nigel and He and I took a cab back to Yatap. He started chatting up some random girl walking alone on the street. He deduced that she was a prostitute, but she basically just seemed confused by two guys talking to her in english. We grabbed water, and as it turns out, he lives right across from the Love Hotel.

So that was my last two days. I woke up this morning, watched Star Wars episode 3, packed up my last remaining bag and checked out. I’m now at an internet cafe wasting time until a time that I can safely assume Devin will be awake. That’s all! The adventures continue soon!