When I walk around the city, go out and actually do social activities, or really any time something interesting happens, my mind always starts composing witty entries to make. Once I sit in front of my computer though, all creativity flees and more often than not if I can be bothered to post at all, I'll blather on about something unrelated or just post pictures.

I think the only reason I'm even forcing myself to string words together is because I'm reading Perdido Street Station, and the author's brilliant mastery of the English language has shamed me. I'm supposed to be an English teacher! Well, only by Korean standards, but barring that, I'm theoretically well-educated and well-read. Despite that, I'd much rather post 2 sentences in a half-broken 'endearing' voice, and then a link to something silly or cool on the internet. Maybe I should try harder to make a habit out of posting intelligently.

Perhaps though I should try to pick my battles. I don't enjoy writing. I do however, love my adorable children, and I suppose it's good enough that I'm even trying to record my adventures for MY MOM to read.

Jumping off of that meandering note, today's photo theme will be Art and Other Hilarious Things by Five Year Olds!

This actually isn't from my class, but from one populated by 7 year olds. They apparently make birthday cards and bind them together into little books on the day of a kid's birthday, and this was written by the girl's best friend:


There's something particularly awesome in that wall of text. Here, let me crop it for you:


From another kid:


Aidan, in my class, is super super cute, and weird as anything I've seen back home. He's basically a five year old Korean Steve Erkel. SO cute ♥


My afternoon class's assignment one day was to draw a picture of an animal they thought laid eggs, and to write "I think that ___ lay eggs". Obviously this girl had no idea what was going on since she never listened, and always just did what she wanted. Priceless treasures ensue.


My morning class is GOLD. Here's Ruthy's illustration of King Bidgood, currently residing in his bathtub:


Unrelated to the theme, but fuck it:



KOREAN FASHION



Extra bonus! A Korean baseball game in video highlights form!

I love you guys. HunJae brought up the very good point that Korean age 19 could very well mean American age 17, if he hadn't had his birthday yet this year, so I'm sure you all want me to embrace my Cougar side, but I'm not ready to commit statutory rape.

Ah, American values.

I'm pretty excited about my day to come. It's Saturday morning, and I'm drinking instant coffee while trying to blink the blearyness from my eyes. By the way, instant coffee is fantastic. I was a disbeliever for the first week or so after my arrival here, but everyone drinks coffee in the form of tube wrappers filled with a tid bit of instant coffee kernels, and the rest of the room taken up by sugar.

I...I...I'm going to miss it a little bit when I come home and go back to the real stuff.

I also discovered free Korean classes on Saturdays, so I'm going to investigate this afternoon, and hopefully come away being slightly less incompetant at 한국말 than before. It's sad, I love the Korean alphabet so much because it's SO logical, but I'm starting to become aware of all the different counter-words that Korean has ajdbsdjdibakjndnasjdksafffffff


TIME FOR PICTURES



This is in Hongdae, my favorite area in Seoul, it's like Greenwich Village+Soho except affordable and with more karaoke.


Also in Hongdae!


Old ladies here have the most...um...confident fashion sense ever. I'm in love. Until you have to actually interact with them and they glare at you only long enough to jam an elbow in your side and push you out of their way. UGH. AJUMMAS.


It's hard to see, but it's frog toilet paper!


Back to Hongdae. Did you know, I'm a nerd!


My coworkers decided to go out karaoking last saturday, and after two hours of completely rocking out, everyone decided to take demure group shots. Rachel, my co-teacher is the one standing behind me in the yellow shirt. She is awesome.


Doesn't this look like Alanna? It totally does. I miss you so much TAT

I had such an adorable experience on my walk home from work just now.

I had just left the restaurant where I had gotten 라보끼 to go, (I hope I spelled that correctly...) listening to HP and the Goblet of Fire on audiobook, because I am a gigantic nerd, and out of the corner of my eye I noticed someone trying to get my attention!

So I take off my headphones, and I'm able to turn my full attention to this guy, who's sort of awkward precious-egg-esque-cute, and he says, "Um. Uh. Telephone number, please?"

And all I can process during this adorable cross-language attempt to ask me out on a date is the fact that he has shiny, silver, braces.

Braces.

I asked him how old he was. 19. Korean 19, which means 18. I felt terrible about informing him that I was way too old for him, because it obviously took a lot of courage to randomly ask some lady on the street for her phone number, without thinking to possibly, um....introduce themselves, or try to hold any sort of conversation first. But more power to you, Precious Egg! May your next try be with someone less than 6 years older than you ♥

Did you know, I went to Japan this summer!



July was basically a countdown to Dia-Liz-Anna 'o clock. I flew over to Tokyo Sunday afternoon, and tried not to make everyone else hate me over my lack of jetlag. TOKYO. Going back a second time, it's still awesome. It's, in fact, even more awesome now that I've gotten to see more. It was also nice getting to look at the non-nerdy aspects-


Oh, I mean. That's pretty nerdy, but that's the only-




Okay, but I swear we did normal things after th-


GIANT ROBOT OH MY GOD.



Dia and I also started a tradition of pretending to pose for the other so we could secretly snipe photos of otherwise objecting Japanese people behind us.
Here are two adorable MAIDOS from Akirabara-




And here's some random guy on the subway who looks even more like an asian Orlando Bloom than the picture really shows:


Tiny adorable car!


Brb, going to Cephiro




Goddamnit, Richard Gere, or whatever your name is


Furry foxtails in Harajuku. Great.


Hey look at these chicks in this magazine


God yes.


A shrine next to the big temple in Asakusa


Oh hold up~


.....Japan.


So Tokyo was fab, and then we met the fantastic teams. This is my new friends face -


Oh my god, my precious cupcakes from Australia make BOSS faces


AkiraAkiraAkiraAkira ♥


Nom nom nom Italy. Made me start reading BLAME!, which is awesome, by the way. Sorry that I'm a decade behind everyone else.


I LOVE RAYEARTH


Stealing Dia's costume


Team Finland and China in our Tokyo room so we could kidnap them all and take them home make new friends.


My little :C face dumplings!



At the karaoke party, we broke out the myspace angles:


Iris and I are off to wear slutty outfits and rule the world.


THIS GUY IS 16. SIXTEEN. PRECIOUS EGG INDEED>


BRB living in Thailand in the arms of the hottest ladies ever



oh yeah, I made Jeanne. And then forgot to wear the forehead thing. And then took it off after half an hour because it was raining, and no thanks walking in that for a parade.

Jeanne is definitely a work in progress, but I wanted to show off my skirt, and re-done wig. It's really tough not having any patterns, I'm used to relying heavily on them because I'm incredibly lazy. Hey, nothing wrong with that...



Also, have some random photos and a video of random clips assembled over the weeks:

It's the least of anyone's worries but my own, but through nobody's fault I feel like my vacation is rapidly vaporizing. I wish something definite could happen, so at the worst I could just make other plans. Oh well, the random mooch should stop complaining.

Perhaps I should take the opportunity to describe what on earth my job entails. Perhaps it's a good thing that I took two months before making the post, I've needed the time to figure out what on earth I'm supposed to even do. My one issue is the lack of real training, but I knew that going in, and besides, if I really wanted to be on top of things for this job, I would have majored in education.
Although, considering I absolutely don't wish I had majored in education instead of music, this is a really fun job.

The school, which is technically a cram school, or hagwon (sorry, I can't type in hangul on the classroom computer for some reason) actually operates during daytime hours since its bread and butter is kindergarten. I *think* how Korea operates is that there are private kindergartens kids can attend from age 5-7 (Korean age, which starts you at age 1 at birth, and then you gain another year at the Lunar New Year. I think. This is all conjecture. I refuse to go by my Korean age though, because I already feel old here)
After that, kids go into elementary school, and then middle and high school like normal. Then they continue to go to cram school in the afternoons/evenings, because parents here are REALLY into education.

At first I thought all the cram schools were basically restricted to the upperclass since it costs a fortune, but I think many families have both parents working just to give their kids an edge too. Sometimes several jobs, too. It makes me feel like a slacker in comparison, but then I remember that I worked my ass off in public school too.
Haha, oh man, what happened.

SO! All the foreign teachers live in the same apartment building, which is a leisurely 15 minute walk away from the school. It's a glorious commute, through a park too, but it'll probably suck in the winter. Not nearly as much as the 2 hour subway commute for my last job, haha!
We don't really need to be in the classroom until 9 am, but I like to roll in around 8:45 to get a little downtime before the swarm descends. My morning kindergarten class is five days a week from 9:30-2:30, and then Monday, Wednesday, and Friday I have 2 afternoon classes, each an hour and a half, and I get done at 6. Tuesday, it's one afternoon class until 4:40, and Thursday I'm freeeeeeeeeeeee after 2:30.

It's apparently a brutal schedule, and the first couple of weeks were tough, but I think I've figured out how to manage my energy, and that's by being super strict and not letting the kids act out.
But these kids. These kids. Specifically my morning class, because they are basically billingual after only a year and a half of english. Oh man, these guys are some seriously precious cupcakes. I adore these kids so. much. I wish I could post pictures/videos of the munchkins, but I'm not letting images of my precious cupcakes loose on the wild internet sea.