Tonsillitis

I have it

Hey Ya'll

sorry about mentioning new posts and leaving you with none. As it turns out I have had a run of pretty crummy luck this past week. I got a mild sore throat about a week ago that got gradually worse with time. I can't drum up too many sympathy points though because I have friends leaving Korea and have been out almost every night and have done a pretty poor job taking care of myself.

Last night I skipped a good friend's going away party to try and finally kill this thing. I am waking up around 10 AM (after about 13 hours worth of sleep) and finding myself in worse shape than ever before. I have already called my coteacher to let her know that despite my best efforts I will be relenting to the treatment of a foreign hospital. This should be fun!! I went on WebMD and I really can't figure out what this is. It has closed up almost completely today and I really can't do much of anything without it hurting. It's by far the worst sore throat I've ever had so I am really hoping I can get into a hospital today (it's a national holiday here so I wonder how many will be open).

Vacay

I was in Busan this past weekend and wrote a vague and poorly written synopsis - coming soon to a city near you!!

To quote the wise Samuel L.
"Hold on to your butts."

since this is just a filler I thought it might be nice to throw in this observation--
How awesome is it that of my 16 followers one is myself (done by accident) and two are my mom!

Don't Tread on Me

No taxation without representation, I do declare.

The Backdrop:

I received and paid for my heating bill in these past few days but it turned out to be an exorbitant fee. I have on good word that I was not unjustly charged and that it comes at a fairly standard rate. The only problem in my particular situation is that (a) I have no control over when my heat is turned on or off and (b) the heating in my apartment works poorly and I really don't have heat at all. They could just make a number and I'd be essentially forced to pay it without even having the ability to influence the price.
My thermostat has actually been punched through the wall which coincides with my current predicament. One might wonder why I have not complained to apartment management. Well~ I have!! After inspection and through translation I was told that "There might be a problem with the pipes. We could try and investigate and repair but there is a chance that your apartment might blow up."
As you can imagine, though I don't think I was actually given a choice (nor should I have been), I passed. I sit here now dejected and despaired, a young man of 23 who has no choice but to pay King George's ransom.
A bright note is that it actually got over 60 degrees today - still trying to find out what land I stepped into where this happens. Should come crashing back to reality soon!

Yes, I watched the John Adams series on HBO and yes, it was quite good!

woo hoo some more!!

A few bits and pieces ::
- My Uncle Patrick is in Spring Branch with my parents this week and I was able to Skype with him a little bit!!
- Finished Catch 22 -- it was fantastic and I think I need to read it again quite soon.
- My friend Ben will be the new Okey Dokey (private academy) English teacher at Hae Song so I will be seeing him every day. Okey Dokey is their program's nickname.

woo hoo!!

I got Rosetta Stone up and runnin' --

Italian, Spanish & Korean with the emphasis being Korean of course!!

An Entry from my Memoirs

Dated 4 February 2010

I can not figure out if the women who work at McDonald's at the E-Mart food court (where I frequent for grocery shopping and snackery) gawk at me because they think I'm a handsome foreigner or if they do it because they think I eat at McDonald's too much.

I think the answer lies somewhere in the middle leaning towards the latter. They have shamed me from consuming McD's.

K-Pop

The big song in Korea right now is "Oh" by Girl's Generation (aka So Nyeo Shi Dae or SNSD). I guess I never really explained the Korean music business but I think I mentioned that a new hit will be played ad nauseum. The music biz in Korea is faaaaaaaaaaar less varied compared to the US.

SNSD is a group of 9 girls who were all signed at an early age, given dance and singing lessons, and then placed into a group by their record label. It's not quite the garage band scene associated with many American groups. There will only be 5-10 different music groups on the radio. This means that when a new hit comes out you hear it, a lot! Fortunately, I enjoy about 95% of the songs that come out so it's not that bad for me. If you give them a listen I am sure you will find them pretty catchy:

Oh by SNSD

Gee by SNSD (older song by Girl's Generation)

Fulfillment

I have had an excess amount of free time these past two days. I don't see the 5th graders this week freeing me up to teach one class per day. We are in the closing stretch of school before a 2 week break and the start of the new year. Yesterday I spent a whole lotta time doing a whole lotta nothing. Today my official list of things I needed to accomplish to feel like I didn't waste my day are as follows:

- Figure out my vacation schedule for the foreseeable future

- Make a blog post

- Take a nap

As far as I'm concerned, when 33% of one's list of objectives includes a nap it doesn't get much better.

Yes, I checked the vacation schedule and the blog post speaks for itself. The nap did NOT in fact occur. Listening to the Gladiator soundtrack and discovering that Leon (The Professional) was on youtube took precedent.

here's the scoop on los campamentos de invierno

I have actually completed two of the three camps taking place during the winter season. I started with 6th graders on the first and took 5th graders the second go-around. The last week of February will be our last camp held for 4th graders. A lot of the other EPIK teachers have had to make everything from scratch and run it themselves. I on the other hand have the benefit of coming into a team of English teachers and a school that had been previously running them. This meant my responsibilities fell to planning 2 subjects (of 4 total) and running the orientation. Matthew, who ran winter camps last year, gave me one piece of advice before he finished his contract at Hae Song. "Focus on having fun," he said to me, "don't worry as much about the English." I did just that! He was right too by the way because with two 75 minute lessons a day if you just focus on having fun the English follows in line rather nicely.

Orientation consisted entirely of goofy ice breakers and was crazy easy. I chose my words carefully just there because I did in fact teach them .. gasp! .. using crazy as an adjective to mean "very." They really enjoy using the phrase "that __________ is crazy crazy" (No worries, they know it's slang and that they should only use it when addressing their elders, principals and other people of influence - har har).

I've mentioned this a few times but for the sake of everyone hopping in now - Matthew and Blair left school at the beginning of January thrusting me into the role of longest native-English speaker at Hae Song. Janice, the head of the English Dept. left about a month before they did and now Amy our teaching assistant has gone too. I used this influence and divine power to swing my choice of winter camp classes. I didn't want to be greedy so I only asked for PE but (you can tell by the pictures!) I got cooking too. This really gave me a carefree two weeks consisting of cupcakes and capture the flag. I had a wonderful time doing it and it was a pretty drastic change up in terms of work load from what I've been used to. In fact, since about Christmas my schedule has been pretty easy-peasy. School will be starting up at the beginning of March and I'd tell you a schedule if I had one but I don't so I won't. I am relying on the oft-reliable fact that I won't know my schedule until a day prior of it starting.

If there was lots of word repetition and generalized general silliness throughout this post you can blame it on my current reading; Catch 22. How did I go this long without reading this book!?!

Photos from Winter Camp

Here are a few photos from Winter Camp at Hae Song Elementary. The rest are here

From Top to Bottom:
1. Myself enlightening the impressionable minds of 5th Graders to the higher levels of cooking.
2. My crazy and fantastic student Emily.
3. Gingerbear of my doing
4. My student Annie who holds a special place in my heart

The Simple Joys

On the walk home from school today I strolled by a young boy beating a stick on the ground with another stick. This is both a grand and simple reason for why I really like teaching elementary school (grand in impact and simple in nature!).

Quotations I enjoyed on a trivia website sporcle.com (Great place to waste time and at least feel like you are slightly more knowledgeable for it:

Don't cry because it's over. Smile because it happened.
- Dr. Seuss
I don't care to belong to a club that accepts people like me as members.
- Groucho Marx