Hurricane a Comin'!

Hurricane; sandstorm...same thing.

Long time with no update. I think...I actually don't remember when my last update was. However, since my last update I have found out that I will have a busy and exciting May! My dad has bought tickets to come visit me in May from the 4th-16th. Brighton has bought tickets to visit me from the 10th-30th. So they'll both be here from the 10th-16th. Which I think will be good because they can keep each other company when I'm at work. So I'm super excited about May. I just need to get through April (which is a sucky month because it's long and I have no days off). May should go by fast with my visitors. Then I'll only have 3 months left! Woo-hoo!!! I need to start planning stuff to do with them while they're here.

Usually I think of Koreans as being fairly technologically savvy (stereotype alert), but I swear the majority of Koreans (at my school, anyway) are total morons when it comes to computers. Half the time I know the problem would be easy to solve, but I can't do it because the operating system is all in Hangul (Korean). Some things I can do because I remember what buttons are what, etc, but still there's a lot that I need legible text to figure out.

Anyway, at the end of the day today a new computer was delivered to my classroom. And a giant new desk to go with it. The computer guy and my co-teacher were discussing forever how to set everything up. So now we have 2 gigantically huge desks and one normal sized desk in our room (which is too small in the first place). I looked around and said to my co-teach, "I think we need more desks in here." She just looked at me and said, "Ok." Uhhh...I don't think she got that I was being sarcastic (my old co-teacher did tell me that sarcasm was very hard to learn while learning English). So a part of me hopes that I don't come in tomorrow to another desk. But another part of me thinks that she didn't understand what I said and her "Ok" was just a noise to indicate, "Yeah, whatever. I don't care what you just said." I hope it's the latter.

So now we have 2 computers in the room as well, which is nice because now we both have our own. The crappy thing is, I'm betting they won't be able to figure out 1) how to connect them both to the printer (which is also fairly new and super huge--a color laser printer), and 2) how to connect them both to the internet. I really hope they figure out the last one. But since everything was all disconnected in moving things around, we won't have the internet until late tomorrow. Which really sucks because I'm supposed to teach 4th graders tomorrow, but they're going on a field trip so I have no classes. No classes and no internet. What am I going to do??? My co-teacher said something about having a pancake-making party. I don't know what she was talking about. In our class? Huh? (Korean pancakes, not normal pancakes). So tomorrow should be interesting.

I've actually been doing a crap load of Sudoku puzzles as of late. I'm getting pretty good at them. It was funny, because currently I'm doing the medium skilled levels. But today I was doing one in my book and thought it seemed a little more difficult. Then I start the next one and it's seeming way harder. I then notice that I somehow had flipped to the "difficult" section of the book. Haha...no wonder they seemed more challenging. Because they were. Nice to know I was able to complete a difficult one, though. In pen, no less.

So I know I mentioned about a month ago how yellow snow fell in Korea because of the sand from China. So anyway, it's now sandstorm season in Korea. Koreans are all out buying face masks to wear when they walk around and stuff. Initially I'm like, "Overreacting a little?" But on Saturday I was getting ready to leave my apt and I glanced out the window. "Oh, it's foggy. I should bring my umbrella in case it rains later." I then leave my apt and go outside. "Wtf? It's not fog...holy crap, it's the yellow sand!" The sandstorm was so bad it looked like a haze of fog. By the time I walked the 20 minutes to the bus stop I could feel it coating my throat and I could taste it in my mouth. It was really gross. Now I really understand the whole need for masks. I guess that sandstorm was the worst one in over 4 years. [My co-teach said that 5 years ago they had one so bad that it looked dark outside like an eclipse or something] It's supposed to be really bad tomorrow as well. They have warnings where they tell people not to leave the house unless they need to or at least to wear a mask. I'm not privy to these warning, however. So that's fun. Here's an article about the sandstorm that I found interesting: South Korea choking on yellow dust. It's [the sandstorm] actually quite unhealthy. My throat is really bothering me (but it has been for a long time). I don't know if it's because of the yellow sand or because I've contracted tuberculosis. South Korea's TB deaths on the rise. Maybe it's the hypochondriac in me, but sometimes I swear I have TB. I've also included a picture below of the sandstorm passing over Korea and heading to Japan.

Since I'm linking to SoKo articles, here's an interesting article on racism in SoKo. It's about Hines Ward, the Korean-African-American football player who won that football award. Koreans really are pretty racist (that I've noticed), particularly regarding black people. Whenever they see a black person on tv or something, the kids will giggle and call them 'Africa.' [Which actually sounds like 'Ah-puh-ree-ca,' but I digress]. They also make fun of classmates who are darker-skinned (but still all Korean...I don't think there are any kids at my school who are part black). Sometimes they call them 'Africa.' It's really sad. Especially since they don't know enough English where I can talk to them about it, etc. Anyway, I think it's an interesting article and you should read it.

On a humorous note, check out the word origin for the word 'hello':

This greeting is much newer than most people think. The use of hello as a greeting is only as old as the telephone. The first recorded use is from 1883.

It does, however, have earlier origins in other senses. It is a variant of hallo, which dates to 1840 and is a cry of surprise. That in turn is related to halloo, a cry to urge on hunting dogs. Halloo dates to about 1700, but a variant, aloo, appears in Shakeepeare's King Lear a century earlier than that.

And there is an even earlier variant, hollo, which dates to at least 1588 when Shakespeare used it in Titus Andronicus. There are also cognates in other Germanic languages.

Hello was not a shoo-in for the telephone greeting either. It competed with several other options, including Alexander Graham Bell's suggestion of Ahoy, but pulled into an early lead and by the end of the 1880s was firmly ensconced.

http://www.wordorigins.org/wordorh.htm

I so wish we answered the phone saying, "Ahoy!" That would be hilarious. It reminds me of Korea in that they have different 'hellos' for the phone vs in person. In person: Anyeong. On the phone: Yobaseyo?