As of last Friday, I have officially been in Korea for one month! And boy did it go fast, I'm sure the next eleven will be slower as I get more and more into a routine, but still, I can't believe how fast it is going!
The past week at school was by far my most stressful week... With the supervisor leaving and everything, I was getting a lot of feedback and observations from the head supervisor and my new supervisor in my kindergarten and first grade classes. It wasn't anything negative, more just constructive and positive feedback but still, it made for a stressful week! Then on Saturday morning, I met the parents of my first graders during their meeting with the head supervisor. I mainly just had to say positive things about each child, and then they also asked for negative things or the things each child could work on, which I wasn't prepared for so that was a little stressful! But overall I think the meeting went well. Hopefully this upcoming week will go smoother...
A quick funny story...I have been running a lot more now that I'm more comfortable with my schedule but the other night when I was running I fell! As if I didn't stick out enough being a) a runner, and b) a white person... but they have these paths along the river that are almost like sport court material, or indoor track, I don't really know how to describe it, and it's completely flat for the majority of the run, literally... So I'm running into a new direction that I haven't gone before so I look up for literally a split second to read the sign to see what city I'm running towards and all of a sudden my foot hits something and I do an awkward half lunge type thing and use my hands sort of to just push myself back up. I laughed to myself and just kept running faster.. My knee's a little scraped up but I was more just embarrassed!
This weekend I didn't do too much, Friday night I was completely exhausted after the week so just hung out with a couple of the teachers and went to bed relatively early. A lot of people have been getting sick so I'm trying to be smart and not do anything to weaken my immune system either. At the school, you don't get any "sick" days...Saturday, after meeting the parents, we headed into Seoul for the FC Seoul soccer game! It was "Foreigner Night" at the game so almost all of the teachers at my school went, and a bunch of teachers we know from our area. It was only 10,000 won (so a little under 10 dollars) and you got a free beer and free hot dog with it so it was a pretty good deal! They played at the world cup stadium, but it was pretty empty. I don't know if it was because it was a 5pm game or maybe their games just aren't really that popular? Either way, the game was fun to watch, but they weren't very good, at least in my opinion. FC Seoul ended up winning 4-1 against Daejeon. It did really make me miss playing soccer though, and all my teammates back at GAC.
After the game, we headed back into Suji to go to a bar called Gecko's to celebrate one of the teacher's husbands birthday. It was a pretty nice bar and restaurant (and expensive) and since I was still feeling really tired and wary of getting sick, I just hung out, had some birthday cake, and we walked home about 1:00am. Her husband works for Samsung and so a lot of his co-workers were there also, and one of them was french! So I did actually speak french for a little bit, probably not well, but he was from Paris so it was nice to talk to someone about that and dust off my french skills at least a little.
From talking with the Samsung employees and just from other conversations, Koreans work very long hours. A lot of them leave at 8 in the morning and don't get home until after 9pm, except for Wednesdays which is "family day" and they get home around 6 or 7. The teacher's husband's boss even told him once, "Samsung comes before family, Samsung comes before wife..." which I think is pretty extreme! It's also quite hard for someone to work their way from the bottom to the top.
We have a three day weekend this upcoming weekend because of National Foundation day on Monday, so we are headed to Seoraksan National Park for a hiking trip along the different trails! I'm super excited for it especially if the weather stays how it has been this past week. It is still about 75-80 and sunny here, so that's one reason I'm glad I'm not in MN still! Everyone says fall is the best time of the year in Korea so I'm trying to do a lot right away since the winters get pretty cold here and summer is the rainy season, so it's pretty much now or never for some stuff! This is also our last vacation day until Christmas break... I don't know if I'll last! I counted (naturally I had to analyze it to death...) and we have 11 full weeks before Christmas after next's week four day week... That is a longgggg time! At least I'll be counting down to the Philippines which as of Saturday, was 3 months away!
I forgot to bring my camera to the game... so I'm going to get some emailed to me from other people and also put up pictures of my apartment this week hopefully, if not, I'll put up more pictures after our hiking trip :)
Have a good week!
Love,
Meghan
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