Level Up!

Today is the last day of the traditional Korean school year. Tomorrow we have the day off for a national holiday (I THINK I remember being told it was Korean independence day) and then on the 2nd everyone goes back to school a grade older and wiser. We haven't seen any kind of class schedules yet so we'll have to see how these changes work for us foreign teachers, which classes we keep, which classes we don't, and what the redistribution of students is like.

So as some of you know, my Dad's been working in Taiwan for... about a year now, assuming I can do my (I can't.). Last weekend he had to leave the country for a long weekend due to stipulations with his work visa, so he came to Korea to visit me!

Friday he came into school with me, and the reaction of the students was... incredible. When Josh was here they just acted like their normal out-of-control selves. But my father... his sheer present scared them poop-less. Even on a test day I have never seen them so quiet and well-behaved! Although there was a pig-pile of third grade girls who proceeded to scream "WE LOVE HANNAH-TEACHER!" and then ask my dad and I if we liked each other. Mr. Lee, our supervisor, also took my dad on a tour of the school. WE HAVE PICNIC TABLES ON THE ROOF. The things I still don't know after six months...

Saturday I took my dad to the National Museum and the Folk Museum. Then we walked to Emart and check out the market behind my apartment. You can buy live weather loaches to make soup with for like, a dollar a scoop. If you didn't know, a weather loach is a type of fish. Emart was a little disappointing as they did not have their squid tank out.

Sunday we grabbed breakfast with some of my friends and then went up to Wonhyosa Temple on Muedong Mt. We took a taxi to the top, and then hiked the entire way down before grabbing a bus back into town. Monday morning he had to fly back to Taipei to keep working.

Other than that bit of excitement it's been pretty routine. I'm getting by and counting down the days til I'm no longer a teacher. I'll be finished in a little over four months, and I am very, very excited for that day to get here. We got our new schedules today, and I have almost entirely new classes, so it will be interesting to see how everything works out. There's also CCTV in our classrooms now and while I feel generally apathetic about it, hopefully it will prove helpful in getting the students to behave. Now I have tests to grade and an apartment to clean before my single vacation day!

~Hannah