Camp Week One and Humidity

It happened. I caved. I'm normally adamant about walking to school, even in the depths of winter. But this week was the last straw. I woke up one morning to see the temperature was already around 80, with a humidity level of 86%, making the air feel heavy and thick, and making it feel like it was like 85 degrees. My walk to school is around half an hour, and, sick of arriving a puddle of sweat, I started to take the bus to school. I AM ASHAAAAMED. But also significantly less sweaty.

My friends and I agree that this year is exponentially worse than the last. The humidity was nowhere near as bad, and the rain doesn't cool us down. I hope that this crazy heat dissipates soon, because I feel like this is literally hell. I should have picked somewhere where the heat was at least dry.

Besides melting on my way to school, vacation started, which means I don't have vacation and I have to keep coming in early to each caaaaaaamp. I love/hate English camp. It's so hard to get the kids motivated to do work in the summer, and making them come in to school when they have friends who are doing more fun camps or sleeping in is tantamount to torture, apparently. 

OH AND BIRDS GOT INTO THE SCHOOL
AWESOME

I have a pretty decent group of kids for camp though, so I can't complain that much. Cut me SOME clack. Plus, we can use the air conditioner, so that's nice, since if I was home I'd be wallowing in front of my fan or I'd have to hang at a cafe, since my rule of thumb is to only use the AC when exercising or when friends are over. 

The bright side to this week was also that Young Ah was teaching a jjangu camp that finished at the end of the school day, so we went out for dinner a couple of times after our classes (I have to stay at my desk all day anyway so I get to leave at my normal time). We got Thai food and then Taiwanese food, and it was nice to hang out with her cause she's awesome and I love her. She's finished with her camp tho, which means my week will be lonely  :(

Thai spring rolls

Beef and noodle soup. It was delicious

The Taiwanese place we went had this weird flattened chicken thing we tried, and it was good but wasn't anything special.It just tasted like fried chicken. 

it's basically just thin

Young Ah is also super awesome and always helps my buy tickets to things because I can't get my address to work for the Korean ticket site I usually use, and the English site always lacks the discounts the Korean site offer, which I think is also ridiculously cheap and unfair. Young Ah didn't believe me, but I showed her both pages for booking tickets for Jesus Christ Superstar. The english site only had full price, but the Korean site offered discounts for seeing a matinee and for having 3 people. Waaaaamp. 

But thankfully, Young Ah was willing to buy the tickets for me using her card, cause she's an angel and she saved me like $100. She always says she's happy to help, even when I feel like an imposition or a burden. But now I have tickets to some shows, so some of our plans are all set!!!! 

Camp takes up a lot of my non Korean class time, so here are more pics from the week!

I'm clearly doing a stellar job teaching phonics and spelling, eh?

I literally bought
into the long skirt
trend over here in Korea.
It's so cute!

Camp survival pack includes convenience store
coffee and ramen.

Living it up over here. Cesca and I spend a
good portion of our time messaging each other
about dramas we watch together

Now, it may seem like I'm not working, but you must understand that during camp, I have 5+ hours of prep time every day and only 1 class or 2 to prep for, so when my handler doesn't give me massive projects, I'm free. 

She did, however, give me a big one Friday, which was definitely a mistake on her part.

you see, I'm not actually super crafty. I also have terrible skill with exacto knives, which was necessary for this project. my weak wrist and shoulder don't lend themselves well to this disaster.

I spent my Friday trying to recreate the well done version my handler left for me. Usually her grunt work for me only involves making copies or cutting things. With scissors. Which I can do. I also check her grammar.

She made this one and wanted me to make
enough styrofoam piece to make 26 of these

The kids will also add pin to the dots and then experiment with marbles to learn about probability.

So after my ramen lunch, I set to work

I calculated that I'd need over 300 styrofoam pieces of various sizes, and thought "I actually like repetitive work. This may not be that bad!" because I also had like 3 hours left to get started, and it was not for Monday anyway

It quickly devolved into a stupid mess

You see, I'm not good at cutting styrofoam apparently. It's thick and takes a lot more stress and pressure than my bum shoulder and wrist can handle (my wrist has gotten stronger from usuing chopsticks. appaarently not that strong)

i made over 80 pieces before I texted my
handler and basically told her the situation.
She said I could stop cutting and it was fine,
but I feel bad I couldn't accomplish
a seemingly simple task. I wish
you could really see how horrendously
bad I am at using a box cutter like that.

To unwind after a frustrating afternoon, Cesca and I met up for dinner and then headed downstairs to my neighbor's apartment, cause he's a good friend and was having a Cards Against Humanity game night. That game is the best.

SO MUCH FUN AND AWKWARDNESS

The next day, I headed out early to meet Cesca and Sarah, but not before I ate a healthy breakfast of hard boiled eggs

I must have no skills. HOW DID ONE
SIDE GET FLAT?!?!?

We headed out to look at COEX mall, Express Bus Terminal and Myeongdong for some shopping for things that we won't die wearing in summer, which is largely a lost cause. 

stopped for a refresher at starbuscks and got
a beach ball?

aaaaaaaaaw makes me think of my mamma
cause she sang this to us every night

We got a text from Cesca's friend Helen while we were close to Myeongdong, asking us if we wanted to join for PANDA EXPRESS, which of COURSE we did!

damn I miss american chinese food

We got home late so I watched a bit of tv with Cesaca and went to bed. I woke up in the morning to find a HUGE PUDDLE OF WATER in my kitchen, because apparently when I adjutsted the temp down a bit in my freezer, it decided to DEFROST ITS STUPID SELF AND MELT ALL OVERRRRR. 

I'm cursed with flooded kitchens. Plus side, the floor is clean and ALL of the towel I own are freshly washed, so that's... cool. Crisis was mostly averted, I think, but it was not the best start to a Sunday. 

I barely had time to clean up and shower (after I panicked and mopped up for what seemed like foreverrrr) before I ran to get to dance class (I didn't have a lot of time because I slept in laaaaate haha. This was all mostly my fault). 

I went to dance class and had a fabulous time learning another girl group dance, this ime he adorable Mr Chu by APink. I definiely feel more comfortable wih he girl group dances and style, since they're usually not as complex and I feel like I actually accomplished learning them. Boy dance are fun too, but man are they intense. Not that the girl ones aren't, but I'm totally way less sore and exhausted today. 

This song was mega popular, it's adorable, fun and awesome. I love it and I can't wait to practice it more.

I spent the evening making worksheets for camp tomorrow and watching Oh My Ghostesss with Cesca, and also lamenting with my computer about the humidity, since the keyboard regularly stops working in hot weather. I am typing this whole post on a backup keyboard I bought last summer when the same thing happened. Apparently this is the tantrum my comp throws when it's too hot -__-


I had such a good, but long weekend, that I can't believe it's time to go back to work and do another week of camp. Buuuuut that means it is sooooo close to when Veronica gets here, so I am over the moon excited.

Hoping the humidity chillaxes a bit and leaves us alone, but I'm probably hoping for a miracle at this point. Stay cool, kids. 1 week of camp left.


~~

Did I not share this video? I'm too lazy to check, but it's one of my favorite summer songs from the super dorky, super awesome, Super Junior



And here's a mellow one to balance it out. This is actually the Park Hyo Shin song I've had on my ipod the longest, but not because I knew it was him. He sang it for a drama I watched last year, and even though the drama was terrible,  the OST was awesome and I downloaded it. After researching in my post Phantom frenzy, I realized I had been listening to this song without knowing who it was for a while. I swear I'm normally not dense. Regardless, just listen. It's beautiful.