A weird weird day

Today has been a combination of awesome and awful. I'll spare the gruesome details, but will share this:
1. I broke a girls' spirit while playing review Jeopardy. She almost cried. She is the best student in that particular class. I was emotionally distraught
2. I was only emotionally distraught until I started filling in birthdays and American holidays on my new 2010 HELLO KITTY calendar. Oh. My. God. It is so cute.
3. My coteacher informed me there was a three day training thing going on in the middle of the time Thomas is coming to visit. I wanted to cry. Luckily, they are working it out for me.
4. After lunch, I have just one class. It is grade 1, class 1. I HATE THAT CLASS.
5. One girl in grade 1-1 made me cry today. She was incredibly disrespectful, and I had no co-teacher to monitor the situation. I almost lost it and swore and screamed, but I held it in. It was heartbreaking though. There are some really really good students in the class, and I feel incredibly bad for them because they want to learn, and there are about 5 girls who blatantly interrupt their ability to learn by being talkative, disruptive or rude for no real reason, except that they are poorly behaved and mean-spirited.
6. One student brought me a BigBang/2ne1 poster! SO HAPPY.
7. I am finally learning names. Lots of them. There is: Chrissy, Scarlett, Amy and Audrey, plus Jeong Yeon, Ha Eun, Eun Yeong, Jin Ha, Minji (times 3), Ara, Jinsu (times 2), Areum, Saerom, Hyeju, So-Yeon, Hyeon-bin (who has a pet goldfish named poo-poo. seriously, I can't make that shit up), Sara, So-un, Eun-bin, Da-eun, Da-un, Hee-Jin(school president) and some others than I'm forgetting at the moment but legitimately know. It's so hard.
8. My Korean teacher said that for the next term I should go to the intermediate class. HOORAY!
9. Delicious dwaeji-kalbi (bbq pork) for dinner.

It sounds like on the whole, the positives outweigh the negatives, but that one girl in my grade 1, class 1 really irritated me to the point that I questioned whether or not I can handle being in Korea for another year. I am over it now (sort of), but I think that now I will have this awful bias against this one girl.

On a lighter note, Christmas is in full swing here. Hooray! Pictures from Christmas in Korea:

At Myeong-Dong, the busy shopping area in Seoul. I wish I had taken a picture of the obscene crowds. At Christmastime, there are easily THOUSANDS of people crowded in this 5 block x 5 block shopping district. It's intense.

This is Etude House, a make-up/beauty store in Korea. It is very famous and popular amongst younger girls. It is adorable for Christmas, I think.

Also, I went to Lotte World (but only the ice skating rink, not the whole theme park)on Saturday with Ara. We had coffee and chatted (and met with Guenwoo, another former ELI student) and that was quite fun. Then we went ice skating which was AMAZING. There are some good pics Ara took up on facebook, including my new Korea-tastic profile picture. I was terrified at first (it's been almost 10 years since I've ice skated), but I got back into it in no time. However, my ankles were beat by the end. Afterwards, we went to Omuto Tomato, which is an omurice place. Here are pictures (AND VIDEOS) of that.

This band came on the ice and played instruments, while these two weird Disney-esque rip-off characters ice-skated around and sort of danced in a poorly choreographed manner.

It seemed to me like they were only concerned with actually choreographing only the band's movements and tiny portions of the characters ice dance, as much of the "dance" included off beat head bopping and knee bending, and occasional sidelong glances at each other in an obvious attempt to figure out what the other was doing and then mimicking it lamely. But the band was pretty good.

Video 1- The Doxology

Video 2- O Come All Ye Faithful