40 Days Until I See Joleen!!!!

I really need to start taking notes on things I think of to write about, because when I sit down to email people or write an entry in my blog I suddenly forget everything. Very frustrating.

Today all the students had finals. Which means they were taking tests the whole morning then they got to leave and go home after lunch. So I didn't have to teach any classes today. I also didn't have to administer any of the tests since the students take all the tests in their homeroom class. Being an English teacher, I have no homeroom. After lunch I had the fortune of grading all their English tests. There were a lot of perfect scores. The test was really easy. I didn't make it--Ms. Lee did. All the 5th grade teachers (I'm considered a 5th grade teacher even though I also teach 4th graders) got together in one room to do all their grading together. As is always the case with Koreans when they do pretty much anything, we had a bunch of food to eat. Dunkin' Donuts (yes, there are Dunkin' Donuts' here), coffee, tea, this food that is kind of spicy and has ramen noodles in it as well as this weird rice cake stuff and some other substance which is foreign to me, and a crapload of kimbap (like sushi but sans seafood). Quick note about Korean coffee: it's 90 percent sugar. Everybody gets the kind that's on individual packages. One package makes a little cup worth (like a smallish Dixie cup). I swear the coffee mix itself takes up a quarter of the cup. Almost everything that is poured out of the package is sugar...although yes, there is a small amount of coffee included. I quite enjoy it, however. I never liked coffee in the US, but here I drink too much of it. Because I like it so much my co-teacher says I'm "turning Korean." If only I could become Korean enough to like more of the food! [For those who don't know, I really do not like the taste of sesame oil. I detest it, in fact. Unofrtunately, it's in approximately 50 percent of the food. Another 30 percent is seafood, which I also am not a fan of. That leaves 20 percent that I enjoy. Ok, that's not true, I do like more than 20 percent of the food, but there is a lot I don't like...especially in the school lunches.]

I'm super excited because Joleen decided to visit me here over my winter break instead of my summer break! Woo-hoo!!!! A visitor!!!! She just bought her plane tickets and she'll be staying here just shy of a month. I only have about 13 (consecutive) vacation days, so the other days she's here I will have to go into work (teaching English camp). But we still have the weekends. Plus, she can come in to school with me. The students will love it and undoubtedly flip out. So now my task is to plan out stuff to do while she's here. Man, the pressure...

I also got a package from Joleen yesterday and from my mom today. Exciting!!! Amongst many awesome things in my sister's package, there were a few things that made me positively giddy when I saw them. 1) a big baggie of home-made beef jerky. It is delicious, let me tell you. I seriously need to try and control myself so I don't eat the whole thing in a week. 2) These awesome truffle things. Short anecdote regarding these: They were in the bottom of the box and the box was sitting on my floor. The floors in Korea are heated. I opened a truffle and bit into it and the inside part was completed melted. Oops. I waited a while, ate another one and still the inside was totally liquified. I was a bit worried I messed up the structural integrity of them for good. But today I had another one and it was back to normal. Crisis diverted. 3) Cheese. Cheddar and jalapeno jack. Enough said. 4) Home Alone dvd. Can it really be Christmas without watching this movie? I don't think so. 5) The most exciting of all...home-made christmas cookies!!!!!!!! Ah man, those took the cake. And my faves--frosted sugar cookies and ginger creams. They are scrumptious. Thank you a million times over, Joleen! There was also other great stuff in the package, but I will spare everyone the tedium of a complete inventory. There were a few wrapped presents in it as well, so I have to try to wait until Christmas to open those. I hope my curiosity doesn't get the better of me...

My mom's package contained all wrapped gifts. Which is very exciting, but the mystery of what they contain is dampered slightly by the fact that you need to list what you're sending on the customs slip. So I pretty much know what they all are...except one thing is a dvd set...and I don't know what dvd set it is. So that'll be a surprise. :) I told my co-teacher I was really excited because I had wrapped presents and she says to me, "Ah, you are young." Huh? Do Koreans not wrap Christmas presents for each other? What's up with that??

Here's another example of Korean last minute-ness that has pissed off all the UWers here: Ok, we all (English teachers from UW) have this website where we can post messages to each other, etc. Last week someone posts this message asking if anyone else has heard about this mandatory "reunion," aka seminar, at the "resort" that we all met at the first week we arrived. No one had at the time. This seminar starts Friday afternoon and goes until Saturday afternoon. So it's just a bit over a week before the stupid thing is going to take place and the majority of us hadn't even heard about it yet. Which is incredibly stupid and rude being as it impedes upon our weekend. And we don't get paid for it. So my school didn't mention it to me all last week. Saturday morning a teacher at my school calls me and asks, "Are you going to the meeting next weekend?" Ok, I only knew what she was talking about because of other people in the UW group. Otherwise I would have been completely clueless as to what the hell she was talking about. So I tell her, "Umm, yeah, I don't really know anything about it." "Oh, well I have a schedule for you. They really think you should go." Ok, I guess I'm going. Anyway, that's just one example of not knowing what's happening half the time. It gets old. Fast.