There and Back Again: Gee Gee Gee Gee Baby Baby Baby

It'll be a short post this week as I only had 3 days of school. The beginning of the school year is always a bit hectic and stressful, but I am working with Young Ah and Sun Kyung again, and my new co teacher, Hyun Jung, really wanted to be the English teacher and she seems very nice.

The first day on Wednesday was a bit of a blur...

we had to decorate for the first grader welcoming
ceremony

A lot of the day was spent getting my schedule ready. Thankfully, it seems to have worked out well. I have 22 class hours this semester, which means I don't have to do drama club!!!

Thankfully, my grades are all grouped.
It's boring but easier to teach the same thing
5 times in a row.

On Thursday, my cos and I went to the English room to clean it up, because they were building an elevator over break and it was a mess. Dust everywhere. Sigh. They hired a cleaner for the classrooms, but apparently the English room doesn't get the same treatment. Or it gets it way later, possibly. But we have classes tomorrow so we couldn't wait till then.

They also bought these horrencously red chairs
for the bi weekly staff meetings. Okaaaay

On Friday, we had a staff dinner to welcome the new teachers and celebrate the new school year. It was at a galbi restaurant, which is my favorite, so I was happy. Everyone was really nice to me and I got a lot of "I didn't know you were studying Korean" comments and such that usually come this time of the year. The new head teacher in the office even made a point to tell me that I'm the 5th native english teacher he's known, and I'm the prettiest. I would feel better if this wasn't coming from a man twice my age, but you know. I think he meant well.

I won a cute umbrella in a raffle at dinner!

After dinner, Young Ah got roped into going to round 2 (noraebang) with the head teachers and a few others, so I went with her because the principal was like "I WILL SEE YOU TWO LATER" when she came around for soju shots at dinner. I sang a Korean song, Love Battery, which went well and so the principal (a few drinks deep, of course), came up to me and was hugging me and Young Ah and saying "I didn't know we'd be this cloooooooose" and such. Another head teacher told us that our friendship was nice to see, so that was fun.

I ended the evening by going out to tea with teacher's from my office. I can pretty much listen without feeling too lost in their conversations, but even so, 5+ hours of straight Korean was exhausting, but satisfying. I'm sad that my chances to have fun with my coworkers are winding down.

Thankfully, I could relax Saturday. We had plans in the evening, but from morning to late afternoon, it was raining so hard that going outside was not enticing at all. So I cleaned up some stuff in my apartment and lounged around till it was time to meet my friends.

got to use my new umbrella~ hehe

Grace is finally back in Korea and her bro was visiting, and Ga Hyeon had the day off, so we all decided to grab some American BBQ at place that opened up in Mokdong.

Round 2 Bingsu

It was fun to laugh and chat and eat delicious smoked pork. MMMM.

Afterwards, the boys wanted to play pool.. so we went to a pool place (they're pretty common in Korea) and first watched the boys play the Korean version of the game.

Then, when a classic table opened up, we tried our hands at the original pocketball.

Ces and I ended up being on a team vs Grace, her BF and brother.

I ended up getting a couple in, and after I made a particularly difficult shot, I got so excited I accidentally punched a hole in the ceiling with the pool cue. Oops.

Post hole in ceiling. Trying to compose
myself.

Grace scratched on her 8 ball shot, so Cesca and I won!!!

we got home to discover that we coincidentally wore the same
socks

We got home late, so we slept in Sunday, caught up on TV, had a rare food delivery mishap (ugh... don't even wanna talk about it) and then headed to dance class, where we learned part of Girl's Generation's Gee, which is arguably their most famous song. It was fast, fun and adorable!!!