Day 77 -- Making Friends, Students' Travel Advice, Pimp-My-Laptop, and Bad News :[

BAD NEWS

The bad news first because I'm one of those types: my family asked today if I would be okay cooking for myself for a few weekends. Yes, that means I am apparently not invited to (1) pick-up Sae Yeob from his TOEFL prison, (2) the host uncle's wedding, nor (3) Chuseok (Korean Thanksgiving). I'm pretty bummed about the wedding and Chuseok, but I understand. There may be other weddings, but Chuseok is only once a year so I'm disappointed that I'll be missing it. I guess, instead, I'll have to take a trip around the peninsula or something with my week of vacation to make up for it. Maybe Japan if anybody's up for it?


MAKING FRIENDS

On to the good news! I've been hanging out with one of the other foreigners here, Hallie, and she's great. She's here for the same cultural-curiosity that I am, so we're on the same page with interests and goals for our year in Nonsan. We got together a few times over the weekend, and--as I was sure would happen--once I had somebody to be brave with, we mustered up the courage to go out to the college hangouts. There, we met a lot of people who were curious to talk to a foreigner, but a handful of them wanted to actually become friends, so we've all been talking to one another since then. I'm totally pumped about this and even if the friendships don't last, I think that it'll be easier to build a network now that I've gotten over that initial hurdle and made a few contacts. Hurray! There are pictures, but Hallie hasn't put them up yet?




STUDENTS' TRAVEL ADVICE

With my week long vacation coming up, I wanted to know if there was anything quintessential to do in Korea during the fall. For example, in America, we have apple picking, hay rides with bonfires, and watching football. Essential autumn activities. In Korea... well, it appears they lack these things, judging by the brainstorm I asked my students to do for our Advice Giving lesson today.

PIMPIN' MY LAPTOP

For a while now I've been looking for the perfect Hangul letter stickers to put on my keyboard. I finally found them when I went to Daejeon this weekend and they are pretty sweet. Now, my right-hand shift key has a little white dog saying "Hi" and the words "mung mung" (Korean "woof woof") and my other shift is a panda saying "Keep smile", for example. PERFECT.

TODAY

was a pretty good day. My last-minute oh-man-what-will-I-do lesson plan went over really well, probably because any lesson that uses 6 commercials is usually not so bad. Next week will be review because the week after that is midterm exam week (that's where that week-long vacation comes in). Teaching has become not-so-scary now and the students are getting more comfortable with me, stopping by to say hello, bringing me a flute and asking me to play in between their classeswaitwhat.

Yes, today a student stopped by with his flute and a book of music. He looked at me very earnestly, waving his arms a bit at me. "Teacher, you, flute." (Many of the conversations with my students involve only verbs. Also, most my students just call me "Lindsay" so this was clearly Serious Business.) I took this to mean "I will play my flute for you" but then two girls walked in and, between all three, I understood that they wanted me to play. It's... it's been a while. I managed to find a piece in his tattered collection that I had played for a competition back in the day, so muscle memory helped out a lot.

I, uh, I think that I'm signed up for the school festival now without ever wanting to be an act. So that's... gonna be interesting. I don't even own a flute in Korea, but things like that are minor details here.