Well nothing too exciting to report over the last week and a half. I washed my floor, spent the weekend in Seoul. Quaffed some ales, met some people, same old story.
Last Tuesday night I was out at a bar in Ilsan and I met some teachers from the area. They were looking to get some people together for a basketball game Wednesday afternoon(wednesday was a holiday). So we met up with a few other teachers and played some three-on-three. I'll tell you, I sore for a couple days after that...using muscles that I haven't used in awhile. I'm sad to say that I'm not as dominating as I would like to remember that I once was. But, then again it has been awhile. We played at a local school yard. One thing I should mention that seems odd to me is that all of the school playgrounds I've seen in Korea are dirt fields. Well not exactly dirt, but more like a kind of sandy clay. Either way, you get pretty dirty. The beauty of the school yard though is thatplaying on 9 foot nets is fun. It's fun to dunk on someone's head.
Lately, I've been thinking about buying a scooter. They're cheap, and it seems like a fun way to get around. Seems fun considering the people that I've seen driving around don't seem to make a distinction between streets and sidewalks.
The intensive session at my school is underway. It's a little different crawling out of bed at 7am when I'm usually crawling into bed. It's not easy considering I haven't started before 2:10 for the last 6 months. Ah well, it's only for 4 weeks and it hasn't been too difficult yet. During the Intensive session I'm teaching eight 40-minute classes per day. I'm generally at work from 8am till 7:30pm but I get a lot of breaks so I can sit around and browse the Internet like I'm doing now. It just makes me appreciated the weekends more. I keep reminding myself that many teachers come to Korea and work this schedule for the whole year.
Looking at the calendar, by next week I'll have been here for 6 months. I'm starting to feel like a veteran. I've learned a lot about Korean culture which I think I'm going to start talking about more often on this website because some of it is quite interesting. For instance, the whole 'name' issue. Basically all Korean names are one syllable. They have a first, second, and family name. This isn't different, except that they say their last name first and then the first and second. If you were going to call someone then you'd use their first and second name. I haven't met a Korean that only goes by one name, if they have two.
However, in general, Koreans don't call each other by name unless they are the same age or good friends. It's even considered rude for brothers and sisters to call each other by name. They use words like Dongsaeng(younger sibling), nuna(older sister to a male), hyung(older brother to a male), oppa(older brother to a male), and unni (older sister to a female). A funny fact that I heard the other day is that married couples don't call each other by name after they have their first child. A husband calls his wife, "________'s mother", and wife, vice-versa. So this means that by the time you hit your 20th wedding anniversary you may have forgotten your wife's name. :)
As far as learning the Korean language, it doesn't bother me much anymore to wander around not being able to understand people. Although I have picked up a lot of Korean, I can barely understand what people are saying unless they are talking to me directly. Even then, I'm basically picking out words that I recognize and trying to guess a meaning based on the situation I'm in.
I can put together badly fractured sentences but then again Koreans usually seem to understand me. Thinking back now, I thought it'd be easy to learn a language when you're living in the country. Now, I've found that when you're only studying during your free time along with speaking English with friends and co-workers everyday, it's pretty tough. But, I'll keep learning and maybe I'll be able to hold a conversation sometime in the near future.
Other than that, I wish people would email me more often and let me know what's happening in their lives. I don't even care if it's bar stories. I'm pretty far removed from things here and I miss you all.
But now, it's getting about time for me to get back to work so I guess I'll leave it at that.
Have yourselves a peachy day!
