I'm not unemployed anymore - I actually have a very fabulous job as a preschool teacher with the University of Michigan child care centers. But I'm still posting, albeit a little more irregularly, and I don't want to ignore the personal progress I've made since starting this blog by renaming it.

Blog inspiration: I read 48 States in 48 Days by Paul Jury in the summer of 2011. It was fabulous...although he planned way less for his roadtrip than I would have. And at the same time, my lovely Anna was constantly reminding me that our lives were awesome, despite the fact that we didn't have job prospects, new cars, boyfriends/husbands, houses, etc., like so many people we knew. So, in an effort to appreciate my life and the crazy uncertainty that it is, I started writing this blog about the little adventures I have. (And by "writing a blog," I mean "making a list" because I make lists, not narratives.) Even if there isn't a BIG adventure that happens every day, I try to find at least one thing to list :)

Friday, March 23, 2012

Help! (Mar 23)

Today has been an incredible day. I will definitely post for the last 2 days but this one deserves to go up now (pictures to come) :)

  • First, I got up after only 4 hours of sleep to go get my Alien Registration Card with Winter! (“Winter” is Ji Hyeon’s English name, just for future reference.) Woohoo, I’m officially an alien resident of South Korea! On the bus ride home, Joey called me and we talked for a while, it was really fun :)
  • Then, my kids weren’t actually that crazy today. Woohoo! One of my troublemakers was gone in grade 1, so half of those issues were solved automatically. The 2nd graders were loud, like normal, but seemed sweeter today (a few were gone from that class too). And my craziest student – Do Hyeon – was REALLY sweet to me! He seems to like me a lot more now and stays after class to just hang out. Today, he asked me how to say things in English and helped me clean up the classroom a little. He was SUCH a demon the first 2 weeks and now he’s being adorable. I think I may learn to love him :) Finally, my 6th graders were totally amused that I can say “Oh my God” just like the 2NE1 girls do in “I Am The Best”. It was really funny.
  • After school, PP and Anna and I got ready for our Seoul Adventure. We made the 6:20 bus and the bus was really nice – except that the heater for the whole bus was under Anna’s seat. I didn’t believe her about how hot it was until I traded seats with her halfway through...it was horrible! I was really dying. But PP and I got to talk for a long time and I told her all about TaLK, including the teacher-y/organizational things that I knew she’d get. But she’s thinking about doing it at some point...woohoo! Also, there was a man behind us who asked me if I would help him with his English. At first, I wasn’t sure if he meant long-term (like he was from Pohang) or just for the duration of the bus ride (did he want me to start from the beginning???) but then he pulled out an English workbook; he just wanted to check a few things with me. It was so cute! On and off throughout the rest of the ride he would check things with me (English is such a confusing language – I’m so lucky to have it as my first, even if it is my only, language). And he helped us figure out whether to take a taxi or the subway to the hostel.
  • So we arrived in Seoul and got off the bus...on the side of a road. Further investigation revealed that we were, in fact, close to the bus station. We wandered around and through it (fighting with an ATM on the way) and after asking for directions (which turned out to be relatively unhelpful), we found the subway station. We bought subway tickets. THEN...we were stuck. We couldn’t find directions to the line we needed and were literally just standing there looking at a map. Luckily, a really nice Korean man came to our aid. He told us which line we needed to take and then led us up (confusing, as we were riding the subway) to the train. Then he explained the subway map, which stop we needed, and how many stops away it was to us. THANK YOU KOREAN MAN. His directions were perfect and, coupled with the directions from the hostel, we found our way without a problem. OH, and we met a really eager Korean man. He was really excited when he found out PP was from Chicago, as he lived there for 4 years, and he talked to us about a lot of things. He was almost creepy but not quite – kind of like a used car salesman. Before he got off at his stop, he handed us each his business card and told us he’d give us free dental check-ups and coffee when we return to Seoul. And that we needed to send him our email. He repeated that at least 3 times – we thought he was going to get shut in the doors! Haha. So...anyone want a free dental check-up in Seoul?
  • Getting to the hostel wasn’t too hard and when we went up to the office, the guy who checked us in (Nemanja – he’s from Serbia!) was REALLY helpful. He gave us super detailed information about getting to all the places we plan to go and then offered to take us to go get food. We dropped our things off in our room first. It’s a 6-person dorm that we get to ourselves this weekend! Which is good because staying in it with 6 people would be REALLY tight. But it’s adorable. The hostel itself is great. It is only 12000 Won per night and, as Anna put it, it’s not nearly as sketchy as it should be! It’s off-an-alley entrance, slightly rundown appearance and cheap price make it seem not-that-great but it’s awesome: close to everything and the staff is great. I’m so happy with our decision! So after putting our stuff in our room, we wandered into one of the main shopping districts of Seoul, Dongdaemun. Several malls and tons of small shops/booths and it was totally alive, even at 1 in the morning! And this is just the shopping district...I can't imagine the nightlife areas. Crazy.
Anyways, I’m really happy to be here and I can’t wait for tomorrow :)
Posted by at

No comments:

Post a Comment

Subscribe to: Post Comments (Atom)