A Day in the Life... (So cliche!)

The summer has been flying by, the humidity is almost to the point of unbearable at times and the students in our classrooms need some serious discipline. I was thinking today of how Ian and I try to update you all with the exciting moments of our lives here in Korea, but it is rare we really let you in on what it feels like to be here on a day-to-day basis.

Today, I woke up bright and early and Ian had to as well. After running some errands, I came home and took a nap while Ian had already taken off, headed to one of Plus Academy's other branches in Chang Dong to teach the last of his summer intensives. Like we have explained before, we come to school at 2:30. Today, Ian and I met at school and then went to the bank to transfer money to Vietnam Airlines for our upcoming vacation. The bank machines are very high tech and most of them have the English option, which is great.

On the way back to school, I stopped in to one of our new favourite local spots, Issac's. They make a mean ham and cheese toasted sandwich for only a little over a dollar. The best part of the Issac's experience for me, though, is the cute husband and wife who own the place. Everything from buttering the grill to packing up the sandwich is done oh-so-delicately and they are too sweet for words!

Back at school, right now it feels like we are all swamped with essay marking. I feel like every time I get through a stack, another one is waiting for me on my desk! I think one of the Korean teachers upstairs was feeling our pain today though, because when I came in to work today, a little can of orange juice was next to my stack of essays. What a cute gesture!

I have 6 classes in a row Mondays and Fridays and they start at 3:40. I have my young, cute kids first called "B2's". They are really sweet and quiet, and I am slowly working them in. My goal is to try to make them laugh each class by doing a dumb dance to a song on the tape, by making silly face or doing crazy voices. It is starting to work! It is just hard because they don't know much English at all!

My other classes that I have today are usually good, but today they were all so hyper! I gave them candy as a special treat today if they did their homework, but I must admit, I usually run a 'tight ship' so to speak. I am not going to have the little Korean children walk all over me! But I do try to do fun activities and creative projects with the classes I see often. Right now I am doing a "Pen Pals" project with about 4 of my classes. They all wrote letters to my Stepbrothers YMCA camp in Florida! They are eagerly awaiting a response! Last semester, I had some classes make a newspaper, write stories, and some of my classes did show and tell too.

Right now, it is 9:07 p.m. and Ian went to the basement of our building to get some Kinder Surprises. There are hidden treasures on every floor of this building including Chinese Acupuncture clinics, music, English and science academies, pharmacies, skin care clinics, gelato and sandwich places, restaurants, lounges and much more! Sometimes we order food from the basement up to us at work and the older Korean women bring it up with big trays and/or plastic bowls on their head. We are used to it now, but when we first got here, it was so surreal to see!

Anyway, tomorrow we are going white water rafting and bungee jumping with Erin, Justin, Jeremy, Jen, Beth and some friends from Erin and Justin's school down in Suwon. That was one of Ian's Birthday presents, and hopefully the weather cooperates because we were supposed to go last week, but they postponed it due to lightening warnings! I am sure you will hear from us on the blog with the events that take place tomorrow and we will obviously load pictures as well. We have to get up bright and early tomorrow, so we will be takin' 'er easy today, probably get a pizza after work and watch a movie.

Hope all is well with you, whether you are at home or traveling. We really do miss all of you lots and I hope I gave you some insight to a typical day here in Nowon-gu, Seoul, So-Ko. Caio for now!