Howdy.
I'm sorry it's been so long. I haven't had many adventures to speak of, just day to day humdrum routines. I will try to make this stuff remotely interesting as best as I can so bear with me.
I guess the biggest thing is that my school FINALLY got another new foreign teacher. Ross and Nicole left the week I got here and the new teacher just got here last week so it took them roughly three months. I would be in the teachers room and just hear Korean and basically be ignored by everyone at the school all day, every day. It wasn't terrible and they're perfectly nice people but it got really damn annoying sometimes. I especially hate when I hear them say "blahblahblah Kimberly Teacher blahblahblah." I just have to sit there and stare at them until they're done speaking and then say, "um.... what's up?" I mean, most of them speak decent English so I think that's kind of rude. It's never anything bad, it's usually just something about my class and whatnot, but it's like nails on a chalkboard when they say my name and I don't know what they're saying. Anyway, the new teacher is Jennifer and she's from Illinios (she moved around a lot but I'm just saying that to make it easy). She's a Christian who doesn't drink booze or coffee, doesn't smoke, and has never had a boyfriend. I'm not trying to say those are bad things AT ALL, it just means we are very different. All that matters is that she's a perfectly nice girl so I like her and I'm so glad she's at our school. I've tried to be a good host and I've introduced her to some other foreign teachers in the area who we've gone to dinner with and I took her to a trivia night. She's in good hands!... or is she?
It's the end of an Era- I got a Costco card of my very own. It made me elated and melancholy simultaneously. I thought "Yay! My own Costco card!" then, "oh no... I'm an adult. Nooooooo!" This is because when I think of Costco I think of going with my mom saying, "can I have this?" and her always responding with a half-hearted reluctant "oh, alright" or "sure! it's cheap!" I have a lot of good Costco memories which is an odd thing to say but thats where I'm either with my mom or dad (or the one time I went with Erin for "the tiramisu incident") and we run into people we know and have samples and it's always a merry ol' time. And every single time I go home after travelling I am beside myself with excitement when I hear the inevitable, "I'm going to Costco, you want to come?" A trip to Costco at home is something I look forward to with relish every time. I now have a card of my very own and when I went two weeks ago it was the first time I had ever been in a Costco by myself. I got an external hard drive that's 2 terabits which is A LOT of room. Everyone here downloads their favorite shows and movies and now I get to be one of them because I finally have enough storage space. I also got some salsa.
In other techno-nerd news, I purchased an Amazon Kindle! It came a few days ago and it's gorgeous. the screen actually looks like paper so it doesn't hurt my eyes and my friend here found some pirated packages of books online so I now have roughly 2,000 books on this tiny thing that I can take with me everywhere. I have always hated buying books. I absolutely love libraries (I have four library cards- home, New York, New Zealand, and Australia) but finding English books here is difficult and frustrating be they free or not. Now I have enough books to read for YEARS on one tiny fabulous device. I love my Kindle! I'm also going to back up my books on my external hard drive so I'll always have them. Technology is a beautiful thing.
The downside of Korea: I've gained weight and my skin is awful. It's really strange because most of the foreigners I see (the girls anyway) have bad acne and the Korean girls here have gorgeous skin. It's happened to me and I'm thinking of having my mom send me some ProActive or something because it hasn't been this bad since high school. The weight isn't a huge issue cause I have a gym membership and I can take it off with a little effort but the skin thing is reeeeeeally bothering me a lot. You know how I keep saying being here is like being in college? That's the weight and skin for ya. Not eating well and all the drinking is not doing me any favors but that's what people DO here, dangit! If I didn't do those things I'd be sitting at home by myself bored outta my wits week after week. I'm in a bowling league and I go to trivia night (at a bar, of course) but socially there's not much else people do. If I knew how to sew maybe I could form a sewing circle but I don't. Also a book club would be nice but no one can get books. I need a project.
I stood up for myself to my director the other day. Some days, she wants us to come in early. This week, she told all the Kindergarten teachers (that's me although I'm also an elementary teacher) that we had to be at work on Monday at 10am, even though we had no Kindergarten that day and my normal classes started at 3pm. She told us we'd be decorating the rooms and tearing down the old projects so I thought nothing of it- it's just work. I get there and help clean for an hour and then I'm told that my help is no longer needed. This left me sitting in the teachers room for HOURS doing absolutely nothing. I became insanely pissed because I could've just been in bed that whole time (I couldn't just go back home- once you're at school they want you to stay there). We had the day off Tuesday because it was a national holiday (Independence Day). I was told there's no Kindergarten on Wednesday and when I asked what time I should come in to the head Kindergarten teacher she told me 10 and I said "what are we going to be doing?" She stared at me blankly and then said "nothing, really." To which I replied, "why do I have to be here if we have nothing to do?" and she said meekly, "Mrs. Park said she wants us to be here..." Mrs. Park is the director, and that's when I flipped out. I asked the head teacher if I could talk to Mrs. Park through her (Mrs. Park speaks no English despite running a private language school) and she couldn't then and she asked if I'd wait an hour until after she was done with class. I wanted to go home because I was done for the day but I was so pissed I said, "I have to talk to her because I'm extremely upset about this." So Mrs. Park finally comes in with the head teacher translating for her and I basically argued with her for 30 minutes. She kept saying things like, "She just wants you to be well prepared; she's just concerned about the school; she doesn't like how the other Kindergarten teachers didn't do such-and-such" while I kept saying, "I do all my work and other people's and there's still always extra time where I'm sitting around doing nothing; it's not my fault other people aren't prepared, why am I being punished because they're incompetent? I do everything I can to help co-teachers and the school and I always do more work than what's expected; the thing is, I don't mind the work at all, I don't mind helping people and I don't mind helping the school with administrative work, I just HATE DOING NOTHING." Finally I was asked, "what time would you like to come in?" And I said, "well 1pm because I don't have classes until 3 and that gives me more than enough time to plan my own lessons and help Jennifer plan hers." She said, "can you come in at 12?" At this point I wanted to scream because that's when everyone is having lunch anyway so it's not like any work is going on but I just was so sick of arguing that I said, "fine. Thank you." I don't want to get on bad terms with my employer but the fact is I'm a really hard worker and I never shy away from extra work (organizing materials, grading other teacher's essays, laminating flash cards, etc) but doing nothing, FOR HOURS, just makes me insane. You might be able to tell that from this long tirade.
I want to talk about something happy now. I love living alone. When I first heard I'd be getting a small apartment all to myself I was scared. I thought, "it'll be so lonely all by myself with no roommates." Now that I've been living alone I don't know if I can ever go back to having roommates. My space is so... mine. That's really the only part that makes it special. I love love love living alone.
This weekend I plan on loading my Kindle with hundreds of books, downloading movies and tv shows, cleaning my room and going to the gym. Hopefully I'll avoid the bar, but I highly doubt it. I wanted this to be more of a photo blog but I don't really have any related to any of this nonsense and the other ones just plain won't load. Hopefully more photos soon.
Regards,
Kimmy J (this has become my nickname in Korea)
