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I am currently doing everything in my power to avoid packing. This includes, but is not limited to, writing this blog, and going to James's apartment to watch movies and eat dinner with him and Cherita. I've known for a few weeks that I have to move apartments this weekend. Normally this would be a looming task that would require at least a week's worth of preparation and packing. But seeing as how I brought 2.5 suitcases with me, and haven't purchased anything of any significant size or worth in the past 3 months, there's very little of my own things to pack. Everything is else is also minimal, and mostly furniture. Therefore, I have very little actual work to do, so I've been putting it off until tomorrow - the day before I move. 

I'm not really looking forward to moving - It'll be about a 25 minute walk from work now instead of a 10 minute walk. There's also an overpass that I have to walk up stairs and then down, and I'm on the third floor. Normally all these stairs and walking wouldn't bother me, but with my knee, it's just gotten to where I can walk the 10 minutes to work without too much problem. I am, however,  looking forward to being in the same building with Gina, my partner teacher (I'll also be three doors down from Cherita). I've been helping her with her homework, so now I'll be able to do it at home, instead of staying late at work. She's taking two classes at a Univeristy in Seoul, both educational theory taught in English, and she's having to do A LOT of work. It's pretty close to the stuff I had to do for my bachelors. But it's in her second language. So I've been sumarizing some things in her textbooks, and checking her grammar on her assignments. It's fun, really, and it's gotten us talking, which we didn't really do the first month or so I was here. I sit next to her in the office every day, and we share Lemon and Cherry class, so I think it's really important to have a good relationship with her, in and out of work. 

So James is cooking "spag-bol", which is short for spaghetti-bolonase? It's just spaghetti and meat sauce. He calls it minced meat, we say ground meat. Either way, he's cooking for the three of us, and then we'll watch movies until it's time to go home. We invited the Korean girls, but they all have schedules and can't ever seem to get together with us (probably because we're always last minute with these movie nights). I did manage to get out of all of them that the 6 of us will have dinner together the Friday after Chuseok (a harvest holiday here that we don't have to work). It'll be the first time that the 6 teachers have been together, without our boss, since I got here, and apparently since James or Cherita got here too. Julie is taking the 6 of us out to dinner on Tuesday to a galbi restaurant, but it's a different atmosphere when your boss is there too. 

Once a month

The school takes field trips with the morning classes about once a month. We also go out to dinner, just the teachers and Julie once a month. Today it was both. 

We took a field trip to a light museum, about half an hour from the school. I kept trying to find out details about how the field trips work, but was never really able to get that much information. So aside from not knowing that the kids have partners and walk two by two, I wasn't able to understand the person leading the trip through the museum since she only spoke Korean. This means I couldn't tell when she was asking a question, or when she wanted the kids to be quiet and still, or when she wanted them to move around and touch things. Not only this, but the Korean teachers didn't really seem interested in keeping the kids under control. So the trip started out ok, but about half-way through, the museum had turned into a 3-dimentional walk-through, where the kids were in hospital rooms, classrooms, kitchens and the like, where they were talking about mood lighting, light therapy, etc. So imagine 40 kids in a house, with couches, remotes, bedrooms, kitchens and dining rooms with the table set with fake food, and then a person in a corner trying to talk to everyone.

(This was the first time most of them had seen a real chalk board. And I'm pretty sure most of them don't really know what it is.)

(My lemon class in the little light village that I wouldn't let them run through.)

It took everything in me not to bring everything to a screetching halt and make all the kids sit on their hands and look at the speaker. The only reason I didn't was because I didn't want to interrupt the speaker since I had no idea what she was saying, and I've only been there for two weeks. I did make it absolutely clear to my 6 kids when we got to a place where I could pull them aside that they were to stay with their partners, they were not to run around and their behavior up until now had not been acceptable. And when the other kids were running through the displays when they were supposed to be waiting, mine were sitting quietly on the floor where I could see them. 

After class today, Julie took all of us to dinner. It was absolutely delicious. It was a bit of a walk, but apparently Julie teacher picked it because she knows I don't like spicy food and most of the food was tasty but not spicy. There were about three or four things I couldn't eat, but the rest of it was great. I have no idea how much it cost, but I imagine it was rather expensive, since there were 8 of us, and a lot of food. Afterwards James, Cherita, Gina and I had a beer at a bar down the street from HP and had a rather lively conversation. And then I headed home. All in all a rather interesting day.

They grow their own mushrooms. They're delicious!

My boss, Julie teacher, and the other Korean teachers at the table.

They put beef and about 7 different kinds of mushrooms into this stone pot on the table, and you cook it as you eat. 

And this is what passes for dessert - ice shavings, red beans, fruit, and some sort of powder that you mix up into a slushy type thing.