(no subject)
Hi everyone, my name is Elena and I'm a workaholic.
Ok, technically this time it is not my fault. One of my co-workers unexpectedly departed the country recently, which meant boatloads of work for everyone else. Esther hired a replacement for her lower-level classes pretty quickly, but two of us who were substituting her higher level classes got stuck with them for over two weeks. Then another teacher had a family medical emergency, and another teacher is on vacation this week. So the middle management has gotten stuck creating all these weird shuffled-around classes for everyone, all of us filling in various spots and having basically no preparation time.
And guess what I learned over the past two weeks? If I don't have my prep time, I have to work overtime to get my own work done. A LOT of overtime. Bah.
Also, my eye has been doing that creepy twitching nerve thing, that it used to do when I taught seniors. And I yelled at Steve yesterday, who basically never deserves to get yelled at.
But, I think it is almost over. Ami and I both showed up crazy early to work today because neither one of us had finished writing our monthly tests for the honors club kids. But, we both finished and then proceeded to enter into the Great Photocopier Battle that was waged, once again, between all the teachers.
I relaxed a bit over the weekend. David got tickets to a big festival in Incheon. There was a lot to see, a flower exhibit, a robot show, concerts by famous Korean singers, chances to win cars, exhibitions about what the future could be like according to various companies, exhibits about various cities and countries around the world...and thousands and thousands of people.
Too many people.
We stayed for a few hours, and then David couldn't take it anymore (he developed a massive headache after a 3-D motion picture ride thing), and we left. We met his friend that he used to study with and had all-you-can-eat samgyepsal (as it turns out, I can't eat that much), and then we both headed home. Evidently there is a lot of traffic on Saturdays.
Sunday after church I went to the church picnic/barbeque (American-style barbeque, not Korean) and had hamburgers and hot dogs and Mountain Dew and Greek Salad and baby dill pickles and talked to various interesting people, including both our priests (Fr. Alex Kim and Fr. Steven...Kwon?), and a couple guys from the Myeongdong Parish (Brendan and Brian, who were really cool). Good times. Silvia and Sun Ah didn't come though, alas.
Then, after some difficulty with transportation (ahem Colin ahem), I made it back to Gangnam to meet David so we could go to the Gap.
Well, it wasn't the real Gap, as it turned out. It was a warehouse of bins full of clothes. UMass had the exact same thing back in the day: giant room full of bins of clothes that aren't too awesome and that everyone is pawing through. So we made some attempts looking at the jackets but in the end we just left. Then! We got to go to the flower market!
I bought a yellow orchid. I am SLIGHTLY terrified that I will not water it enough, or I will water it too much, but...it is awesome for right now, at least.
Ok, technically this time it is not my fault. One of my co-workers unexpectedly departed the country recently, which meant boatloads of work for everyone else. Esther hired a replacement for her lower-level classes pretty quickly, but two of us who were substituting her higher level classes got stuck with them for over two weeks. Then another teacher had a family medical emergency, and another teacher is on vacation this week. So the middle management has gotten stuck creating all these weird shuffled-around classes for everyone, all of us filling in various spots and having basically no preparation time.
And guess what I learned over the past two weeks? If I don't have my prep time, I have to work overtime to get my own work done. A LOT of overtime. Bah.
Also, my eye has been doing that creepy twitching nerve thing, that it used to do when I taught seniors. And I yelled at Steve yesterday, who basically never deserves to get yelled at.
But, I think it is almost over. Ami and I both showed up crazy early to work today because neither one of us had finished writing our monthly tests for the honors club kids. But, we both finished and then proceeded to enter into the Great Photocopier Battle that was waged, once again, between all the teachers.
I relaxed a bit over the weekend. David got tickets to a big festival in Incheon. There was a lot to see, a flower exhibit, a robot show, concerts by famous Korean singers, chances to win cars, exhibitions about what the future could be like according to various companies, exhibits about various cities and countries around the world...and thousands and thousands of people.
Too many people.
We stayed for a few hours, and then David couldn't take it anymore (he developed a massive headache after a 3-D motion picture ride thing), and we left. We met his friend that he used to study with and had all-you-can-eat samgyepsal (as it turns out, I can't eat that much), and then we both headed home. Evidently there is a lot of traffic on Saturdays.
Sunday after church I went to the church picnic/barbeque (American-style barbeque, not Korean) and had hamburgers and hot dogs and Mountain Dew and Greek Salad and baby dill pickles and talked to various interesting people, including both our priests (Fr. Alex Kim and Fr. Steven...Kwon?), and a couple guys from the Myeongdong Parish (Brendan and Brian, who were really cool). Good times. Silvia and Sun Ah didn't come though, alas.
Then, after some difficulty with transportation (ahem Colin ahem), I made it back to Gangnam to meet David so we could go to the Gap.
Well, it wasn't the real Gap, as it turned out. It was a warehouse of bins full of clothes. UMass had the exact same thing back in the day: giant room full of bins of clothes that aren't too awesome and that everyone is pawing through. So we made some attempts looking at the jackets but in the end we just left. Then! We got to go to the flower market!
I bought a yellow orchid. I am SLIGHTLY terrified that I will not water it enough, or I will water it too much, but...it is awesome for right now, at least.