Neon crosses and hungry kittens

I had a very small and very hungry kitten follow me home yesterday (meaning I was out for a walk and it was yowling so pitifully and so constantly that I decided to take it home).

I love animals, and miss my babies that I left in the states (who, I've been recently informed, are both doing well), but I don't want the responsibility, and mess, and expense, and cat hair, that comes along with a kitten. So I gave it a warm bath and some food, and let it stay the night in my apartment, curled up in the crook of my arm. But I had to move this morning to a new apartment, so on my way out to get coffee this morning I let it back out on the street. I would have like to have given it to a good home, or at the very least to a vet, but I didn't want my boss to think I'd had it in my apartment this whole time, so hopefully it found someone else to take care of it. 

The move itself was rather painless. The new apartment is nicer than my last one, with a better layout though a bit smaller. It has an actual window with a decent view from the back porch. It took less than an hour to pack all my things in a truck and move them into the new place, and another hour to unpack and put everything away.

Another bonus - there's a church right next to my building. There was one at the other apartment too, but at the new place I was finally able to get a decent picture of something that I find odd no mater how many times I see it. Churches here are often not in their own buildings, but in complexes along with restaurants and other businesses. To denote their presence, they often place neon crosses on top of the buildings, and at night you can usually see several of these crosses in any direction. This is not the odd part, but rather the color that most churches choose for their neon cross: red.

Some of them are white, but most are red. I tend to find this a rather sinister color to choose to bring people flocking to the house of God. But maybe that's just me. 

No title required

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. 

It's ok.

(Amy)

(Lewis and Irene)

In the switch between classes in the morning the kids are briefly left "unsupervised". I say that in quotes because all the classrooms have cameras in them, and the monitors can be seen from the front desk and the main hallway. So I left Cherry class (the babies - they're about 4yrs old) very briefly this morning to go get their clocks that I had left at my desk. When I came back in, Amy was crying, and kept saying "Lewis say 'It's ok'" over and over. Of course, my first question was "What happened?". She then proceeded to show me with her hand 'push'. So I asked "Did Lewis push you?" (he's been known to do worse). Her reply? "No. I push Lewis and he say 'It's ok'". So of course I asked her why she pushed Lewis. She started crying even harder and said "I don know". I had to work really hard to hold back a smile and looked over at Lewis, who seemed more concerned that Amy was crying than anything else. I asked him if he was ok. He said "Yes. Amy, it's ok, it's ok." I don't know what made her get so upset, but she calmed down after a big hug and a few minutes.

I love my kids.

Just a quick note or two

I changed the name of my blog. I wasn't too thrilled with the original one, but seeing as how my default user-name had been used by myself about 6 years ago for a class project, I opted for the next best thing. I have changed the name to my name in Hangul (it says "beh-ri-ahn-nah).

I've also been compiling a 'list' of sorts for a while. There's quite a few things I see here on a day-to-day basis that just don't seem either blog-worthy or have become so common-place now that once I've seen them I promptly forget about them. This list is still in draft mode, as I know there are about 20 things I've forgot to put on there, but as soon as I have been reminded of them, the post will show up.

On a school note, we had our monthly birthday party today. The requisite massive amount of pictures and pizza with fried chicken and noodle soup were all present. Afterwards someone had the bright idea to take the kids on a walk by the river, seeing as how it's a lovely bright and sunny day (it's been raining, or had the threat of rain for the past two months almost every day). Imagine taking about 50 kids, ice cream in a bag in one hand and their partner's hand in the other, on a walk down by a river full of insects, flowers, joggers, bikers, ajumas, and other fascinating things for a 6 year old. My class of 7 was mostly well behaved, which is more than can be said for some of the other classes. Part of it I'm sure is that my class is the oldest and has been with EWAS the longest. The other part is they know better with me - I don't let them misbehave, I don't care how old they are. The kids were hot and tired when we got back to the class, and Fiona teacher took all 50 of them into the Fun House, so the rest of the teachers have a relatively easy day today.