...and the shit hits the fan

In the last two days we've:

-celebrated three months in Korea... 1/4th of our contract is done!

-taught our first group of students in Suwon

-gotten a package from Megan which included delicious and foreign-to-Korea Big Turks!!! Thanks Meg xoxo


-we got stiffed in our pay! I am supposed to pay 200,000 won a month for three months towards a damage deposit for our apartment. Mel pays nothing as we've agreed to share one apartment, however.... they took 200,000 won from both of our pays!! When we asked about it Stella just told us we'd get it back at the end of the year. We were NOT happy about it. She left the room to ask her boss about it twice as we argued and then told us she'd get back to us. Updates to follow...

-A student told Mel she had a small face

-Mel got an e-mail form Ryan at SEV, who found a letter written to her by a student weeks ago. The student wrote the she had "head like pea and body like chopstick" LOL

-I came into my homeroom class today to find the students gathered around the computer. They'd typed 'Suwon English Village' into "Naver" (the Korean Google) and what came up? A picture of me!! They were telling me about the famous photographer who'd taken the picture... I didn't know my picture was being posted and I felt kind of violated, laughed...



-There's actually been a lot of media visiting the school with all this grand opening hooplah. Mel had a video camera inches away from her face as she taught "airplane" today and her voice got shaky...

-We had lunch with the cast of a Korean historical drama and all the actors were dressed in costume. So basically we were in a cafeteria full of people that looked like this:



-I showed a Korean-language movie to my "Suwon History" class but after five minutes one girl put up her hand: "Shawn-teacher, the movie is in Chinese" ...oops!!!!!

-We ate at a pho (vietnamese noodle) restaraunt and got special treatment from the manager thanks to our whiteness. He offered us drinks and then a basket of egg rolls which I accepted and then noticed tails sticking out the ends of the rolls... shrimp... I told Mel to hide them in her purse to be nice, but she wouldn't.

- Our students this week have excellent English! Better than mine! We have 92 kids from 92 schools. Each student won the chance to be in the first group of kids at the school because of their grades. As a result, all of our lessons are too easy and one kids told me the play they have to put on was childesh.

-We don't have to work on Christmas!!!

-Our bathroom smells intermittantly like garlic and cigarettes, the smells are wafting up from the downstairs neighbors' apartment. Mel wants me to mention that it burns her eyes.