4 day weekend

So this past weekend was actually a four day weekend. I was happy to get some extra days of. I realize that I'm going to have to cultivate my own teaching style. Hopefully by the month mark I will have something I'm confident in. The other teachers have been saying I'm doing a good job but I feel like I'm not. The biggest thing for me is lesson planning. I'm not an organized person so I usually just "go out there" in many things I do and either wait until the last minute or freestyle. It works a lot of times (and worked in college many time), but it's not good practice and it's something I'm trying to get out of. So I've been lesson planning ahead of time and putting them in Word documents in order with time blocks. My co-teacher actually made me do this which is a good thing.

So anyways back to this past weekend.

Friday: I didn't do too much except for catch up on some tv shows. Particularly the final 2 episodes of Heroes for this season and the last four "The Office" episodes. I just download them from sites and watch them back to back.

Saturday: I was supposed to get up and go to Costco at 9am with some people from the church but clearly I watched my tv shows until about 2 am and knew I wouldn't feel like getting up so I had to cancel. I also had taken 3 Benadryls (is that safe lol) on Friday night because my allergies are HORRIBLE. I'm allergic to some type of plant here.

So the rest of my Saturday was spent chilling and getting ready for the dinner that teacheslkorea.com was having for the teachers that they helped get to Korea. It was at 6 and I had to take the subway and despite getting lost a few times I managed to make it to the place where they were meeting.

On my way there I met a guy named Jered whose blog I have been following for some time about how teaching in Korea was like and also met his friends Khiana and Leonard. Finally some black people to talk to in Korea!! lol.

So we get there and I meet some more friends of theirs, also black, who went with the same recruiting company. We talked for awhile getting to know each other and when everybody had met up at the place, we then walked over (about 40 people or so) to a Galbi place.

Galbi is a type of Korean cuisine in which types of meat such as beef and ribs are grilled and you can put the meat in sauce. It was an indian style restaurant with the food cooked right in front of you (you and your friends are the ones who have to flip and cook the meat) It was fun and it was delicious. I took some pictures which are below and it was good to sit and eat and get to know new people.

Afterwards many people were headed to a fruit soju bar, but of course I wasn't interested and I had to get back on the subway before they stopped running unless I wanted to stay in Seoul until 7am.

So I headed back and got off on the last subway and had to take a cab back home because the buses stopped running. And boy on my way out of the subway there were quite a few drunk Koreans wandering around lol.

Also the people I met on the way to the dinner I told you about invited me to come with them to Everland Amusement Park on Sunday.

Sunday: Went to Church at one. I'm glad the service starts at one because it means I get two days of good rest and not having to get up at 7:30 AM.

Afterwards, I proceeded to catch the bus to Everland. They were already there but I made it there at around 4. I didn't plan on riding any rides because I wasn't in the mood for rollercoasters. Everybody else was geeked to ride them but in the end a lot of people didn't because of the ridiculous long lines...we're talking 3 hours for one ride. Me, the guy Leonard, and another friend of theirs I met Joe, ended up playing some arcade games and we headed through this animal zoo thingamajig...I can't remember the exact name lol. Anyways, only in Korea would you find hyennas, lion cubs, and CHEETAHS in glass boxes. The funny thing about the cheetahs is that they had National Geographic playing in the background of their nice little box, as if they were being educated. At best they were seeing what real Cheetahs got to do when they weren't captured by humans.

All in all it was a fun day being there and hanging around and meeting more great people. Unfortunately everybody lives north of me (about 45 minutes or so) so everybody was on one bus back, and I was the only one that had to take another bus lol. It was cool though...give me my ipod and I'm cool.

So I got back and relaxed and got a nice rest.

Monday: Now me being the introvert I am, I enjoy hanging around people, but I had to use most of this day to "Recharge" so to speak. People think introverts don't like hanging around people when it's really we get our energy from being alone. Once we're alone for a period of time to "recharge" hanging out with people is no problem. But once we hangout again, we get drained again and may kind of "check out" and people may wonder what's wrong with us lol.

Anyways I slept in and then took a five minute bus ride to get my Alien Registration Card. It didn't take long and I was back home within a half hour.

Later on at 6:30pm, I met up with a friend from church who is Korean. He's in University and it was just a hey I'm bored let's get something to eat type of thing. He also said he'd call and let me know when his friends were playing pool.

Tuesday: I didn't plan on doing anything, but decided to head to Coex Mall in Seoul for a few hours to see if I could find any CDs by Toko Furuuchi who is a japanese artist. I've been looking for them so I won't have to order from Amazon, but it looks like I will have to. I didn't find any so I took some pictures and then headed back on home.

So that was my 4 day weekend. I forgot to mention I also washed clothes for the first time and not having a drier is really annoying. I have to hang my clothes to dry and it takes at least a day and a half to dry.

I get to open my bank account tomorrow and I get paid on the 15th yeehaw.

Also I'm expecting a deposit from my website that I've been working on for awhile. It looks like things may be starting to "snowball". It's coming up on the two year mark for the site and I need to figure out how to get my MAC configured so I can keep updating it because traffic to it is really starting to jump.

So pictures are below and click here for my flickr account for the more "artsy" pictures that I don't want to upload to facebook because they say they own all pictures on there.

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