Life in Korea

It's been a while since I've posted (over a week). For some of my blogging friends, that's nothing, but for me, that a long time. So, here's what I've been up to.

1. English Festival.

All our practicing and snacking paid off as seven of my students and I hit the stage for the Incheon Middle School English Festival. I had a freakin' blast hanging out with 8 students (7 dancing, and one in charge of the ppt) for two straight days. I don't think I can explain to you how completely I love my job. There are times I get frustrated, sure. There are times when I feel like no one has any idea what the hell is going on in my classroom, including myself. Yes, sometimes I just want to grab a student around the neck and say, "SHUT UP" but honestly, I have got it made here. The students really aren't that bad. My co-workers are friendly and nice. The food at my school is known to be amongst the best in Incheon. I only teach for 18-20 hours/week. I choose to stay later than I need to in order to talk to each of my students and do whatever I can. And I get to sing and dance and look completely foolish in front of 200 people at English Festivals. I mean, really, can it get better than that? I DON'T THINK SO. There isn't much to say about the festival. There were about 30 schools represented, and they did everything from skits to game shows to dances to re-enacting Harry Potter scenes (completely with British accents hahahahah). I was the only teacher who did more than just recite some lines or introduce the group. My students also fell in love with one of the other native english teachers who was there. His name is Mike; he's from England. He's really tall and terribly skinny. He is also in my Korean class. I'm completely uninterested, but my students are OBSESSED. Picture to the right. They followed him around everywhere (including to the arcade down the street on our break) and would say hello and then just giggled awkwardly while I had to make uncomfortable but hilarious conversation. He does have a fabulously British accent, but I can't emphasize enough how very skinny he was. Anyhow, here's the video of Shinheung Girls Middle School students and Native English Teacher Allison performing School's out from Disney's High School Musical 2 for your viewing pleasure:



2. Planning Lessons

So I'm not very good about this. It's hard because I am in Seoul every weekend preparing to go to Manila for the Asia-Oceania Ultimate Club Championships and Worlds Qualifier. That sounds so official. Basically, I spend every weekend in Seoul doing only three things: playing ultimate frisbee, drinking A LOT, and sleeping on the floor at disc hotel (a.k.a. Bekah/Beth/Dave's place a.k.a home away from home away from home). As such, all my work must be done at school or at home after I get off work. The problem comes into play when I have other errands to run or things to coordinate, including but not limited to, English Festival practices, going to the bank (which is a 10 minute bus ride/walk depending where I go) to pay bills, going grocery shopping (at least 20 minutes each way via bus or foot depending on the weather), taking Korean classes (twice a week, an hour each day, plus a 2 hours round-trip commute, which I am questioning the worth of), and trying to eat, sleep and stay sane. So basically, I have the time I am at work plus Sunday nights after I get back from frisbee. Most of my free time during the week (non-teaching time) is early in the week, which is difficult because I am usually trying to work the kinks out of the lesson I am teaching that week and haven't even begun to think about the next week's lesson. I should be planning more than a week in advance but it's been hard because it was a catch-up game from square one. Luckily, it's only Monday and I have a good idea of what I am going to do next week (follow-up for this week).

3. Frisbee
Two weekends ago was the League finals and league party. You all probably saw facebook pictures of the disaster than ensued (it got its own photo album because it was that ridiculous). I don't have time or energy to upload photos here which is okay because facebook contains every picture that I or anyone else took on my camera from that evening. This past weekend was a hat tournament down in Daejeon. Let me tell you what, ladies and gentlemen of Ultimate, this was an impeccably well run tournament. I don't know if it's luck or what or Korea being awesome as usual, but there was free food and candy and water and vita500 (an orange flavored vitamin c drink) and two parties with drink specials and free pizza and great prizes. I think it helped that it was a fairly small tournament, with just 4 teams. My team went 0-3 in round robin, but kicked it up for play-offs, winning in semis and taking home second place with a 1-4 record. Also, I was awarded the female mvp of the tournament award (Tweezy took home the male mvp award... haha). for winning we got little necklace thingys that are of no value, water bottles and a bottle of soju each. Upon receiving our soju bottles, everyone started cheering one shot, one shot, which is the korean version of chug chug chug chug. Keep in mind, friends that soju is typical 25% alcohol by volume and is sold in bottles roughly the size of beer bottles which are a mere 4-7% abv. I promptly said no, but Tweezy, being the gangsta he is, popped his top open and promptly chugged one half of the soju and handed it to Woody, the TD, who then passed it right along to me. At this point, I threw my hands in the air and said what the hell, and proceeded to finish off the bottle, washing it down with a little Cass beer. Needless to say in about 20 minutes I was wasted as can be. And it was 5:30 p.m. BUT, I was the MVP. We managed to stumble to the love motel (we being 6 of us or) which is the cheapest way to board in Korea besides jimjilbangs, or public saunas. Changed into halloween costumes (was a cowgirl, with the save from ben's cowboy hat!!!!!) and rolled over to BonBon for the party. Had some pizza, drank some beer, danced, flip-cupped, went back to the love motel, slept, played ultimate sunday afternoon.

No pictures. Sorry. I didn't take any.

So yeah, I've been busy busy busy with school and work and frisbee. It's been intense.

Did I mention that my students now swarm my desk and office before and after each class to talk to me and earn stamps to win a prize at the end of the semester? So, I spend probably an hour or more talking to my students and stamping their pairs in an assembly line style. It's good in the sense that more of my students are speaking English, but bad in the sense that the students who really want to learn english and came to my office to talk to me anyways no longer can do that. Instead, they are forced to wait in line and be rushed through. I feel bad for Sara and So-un and Audrey and Scarlett because I know they want to talk to me and they hardly get to at all. :-/ so it goes.

I hope I will be able to post soon about real things, not just the shallow day to day of my life.

xoxo,
A

p.s. I am going to Manila, the Philippines this weekend! OMG SO EXCITED. Keep your fingers crossed for the Korean Ultimate National Team (check the acronym), and hope hope hope that we get a bid to 2010 WORLDS in Prague. Seriously, that would be SO kick-ass.