i tell them to dance and they ask, "how high?"
Spring break is almost over. One day more!
Tomorrow we'll be far away.
Tomorrow is the Judgment Day.
Tomorrow we'll discover what our God in heaven has in store.
One more dawn,
One more day,
One day more!
I've also discovered the amazingness that is the .
I'm actually not too bummed, because the sooner break is over, the sooner I can get back to teaching, and then in a few months GO HOME!
I've been trying hard not to get homesick, but it always hits me right before I got home. Très sad. It's not like I haven't had a wonderful time here, living in another country, growing, exploring, learning, teaching my hysterical fifth graders, it's just that I'm sick of my sucky housemates and not having any friends. I know, I sound whiny, but all the other teachers (that are my age) hardly ever invite me anywhere. They've actually gotten better, but they'll still occasionally put up Facebook pictures of when they all went out and didn't ask me to come along. I'm too nice* to comment some like, "oh that looks like fun!" "hey, why am I not in these pictures?" "that day I was sitting at home alone :(" At least I can laugh about it. It's not like I'm this horrible mean person, I have a ton of friends and family back home who think they're all jerks. It's just that I came a month after everyone else, so they all got to know one another. Then I come and it's hard for me to make friends - I'm too shy & quiet at first. So they stopped inviting me to places and I had to learn almost everything about living in a new country all by myself.
However, despite my venting, it's actually gotten a lot better. 4 of the other Korean teachers are good about inviting me out once every few weeks. It's just my housemates that are the death of me. The older one, she's like 35 or so, is just a nasty person. She teaches music at that school and ALL the kids hate her. If I believe half the stuff they tell me, she screams at them, says mean things, calls them names, won't give them a chance to sing, and so on. Then she tells me my students are behaving badly. Which, yeah, they probably were. But they're fine in my classroom - how come I can control them - and you can't?? But I don't say that, I just smile sympathetically and tell my kiddos that they have to be respectful. Politics. Yikes.
My other roommate, who's my age, is Korean-American and she's NEVER here. She comes in after midnight, most nights, then goes in the bathroom FOREVER. My room is right next to the bathroom. Now over the years of actually sharing a room with various girls, I've gotten used to sleeping through anything - once I'm asleep, I sleep like the dead. It's when I'm ALMOST asleep that she comes in. I kid you not, she is in there for a least an hour. And I have no idea what she's doing in there. I'll hear the shower door open, 10 minutes later - opened, another ten minutes - opened, toilet flushed, opened shower door. I have no idea what's going on. But I'm awake the whole time until she's finally finished. That graph I made the other day, so true. I wish I was exaggerating.
Even though she's gone most of the day, the other roommate comes home, complains to me about something that I did/didn't do, then watches her Korean game shows loudly and laughs loudly. The most annoying thing about the shows is that they don't have a studio audience (Koreans are too quiet - funny story**) so they have 2 tracks - one of laughter and clapping and one of gasping - that they use over and over again. I want to punch something. So I go in my room, shut the door, and watch the Office and Lost loudly on my computer. It's so sad. When I come home and she's cooking dinner or vice versa I'm always, "hi!" and, if she looks at me, I usually get a grunt. Occasionally a "hey." One one these days I'm gonna snap and say, "I said 'hi!' I don't know how it is in Korea, but in America when someone says hi, we respond, you jerk.!" It's worse in the mornings. I usually get a snarl. I've started leaving super early just to avoid them. Now they complain about me tiptoeing too loudly. Next time they say something like that, I AM going to say, "I'm sorry, but with your _________ (tv-watching) (showering) (laundering) going on so late last night, I just couldn't fall asleep. So I'm extra-tired. Probably why I'm 'making so much noise.' Sorry." Yep. That's exactly what I'm gonna say. Just you wait!
Anyways, I only wanted to post something so that my calender on the side would make a cool shape. It's gonna look like a snake now that I've finished this. Yep. Rambling on and on - that's my style. So that's my life in a nutshell right now. Despite all this, I somehow keep my wacky sense of humor :D
*read: a wimp
**So my BFF Sonia (Eun Seon) who is Korean, but acts nothing like a typical Korean*** was an exchange student at my college my senior year and we're soul sistas now. She's 4 hours away and doesn't get to visit me often. However she came during Christmas and stayed a few days and we went to Lotte World (which is a knock-off Disneyland, seriously their logo is a lined-castle with an arch over it) and we were watching their Christmas show. They had song and dance and some impressive acrobats. Well Sonia and I and a few small children who didn't know any better who were cheering throughout the whole thing. We were clapping and screaming at the top of our lungs and just dying laughing. Everyone thought we were freaks. Now I come from Sacramento, the loudest city in the US (Guinness Book of World Records if you wannna check), but any American city would cheer when a guy jumps through a ring of fire, right? No Koreans though. Dead silent. Gotta love 'em.
***Typical Korean: polite, nice, respectful, hospitable, will shove you to the ground to get on the bus before you.
Tomorrow we'll be far away.
Tomorrow is the Judgment Day.
Tomorrow we'll discover what our God in heaven has in store.
One more dawn,
One more day,
One day more!
I've also discovered the amazingness that is the .
I'm actually not too bummed, because the sooner break is over, the sooner I can get back to teaching, and then in a few months GO HOME!
I've been trying hard not to get homesick, but it always hits me right before I got home. Très sad. It's not like I haven't had a wonderful time here, living in another country, growing, exploring, learning, teaching my hysterical fifth graders, it's just that I'm sick of my sucky housemates and not having any friends. I know, I sound whiny, but all the other teachers (that are my age) hardly ever invite me anywhere. They've actually gotten better, but they'll still occasionally put up Facebook pictures of when they all went out and didn't ask me to come along. I'm too nice* to comment some like, "oh that looks like fun!" "hey, why am I not in these pictures?" "that day I was sitting at home alone :(" At least I can laugh about it. It's not like I'm this horrible mean person, I have a ton of friends and family back home who think they're all jerks. It's just that I came a month after everyone else, so they all got to know one another. Then I come and it's hard for me to make friends - I'm too shy & quiet at first. So they stopped inviting me to places and I had to learn almost everything about living in a new country all by myself.
However, despite my venting, it's actually gotten a lot better. 4 of the other Korean teachers are good about inviting me out once every few weeks. It's just my housemates that are the death of me. The older one, she's like 35 or so, is just a nasty person. She teaches music at that school and ALL the kids hate her. If I believe half the stuff they tell me, she screams at them, says mean things, calls them names, won't give them a chance to sing, and so on. Then she tells me my students are behaving badly. Which, yeah, they probably were. But they're fine in my classroom - how come I can control them - and you can't?? But I don't say that, I just smile sympathetically and tell my kiddos that they have to be respectful. Politics. Yikes.
My other roommate, who's my age, is Korean-American and she's NEVER here. She comes in after midnight, most nights, then goes in the bathroom FOREVER. My room is right next to the bathroom. Now over the years of actually sharing a room with various girls, I've gotten used to sleeping through anything - once I'm asleep, I sleep like the dead. It's when I'm ALMOST asleep that she comes in. I kid you not, she is in there for a least an hour. And I have no idea what she's doing in there. I'll hear the shower door open, 10 minutes later - opened, another ten minutes - opened, toilet flushed, opened shower door. I have no idea what's going on. But I'm awake the whole time until she's finally finished. That graph I made the other day, so true. I wish I was exaggerating.
Even though she's gone most of the day, the other roommate comes home, complains to me about something that I did/didn't do, then watches her Korean game shows loudly and laughs loudly. The most annoying thing about the shows is that they don't have a studio audience (Koreans are too quiet - funny story**) so they have 2 tracks - one of laughter and clapping and one of gasping - that they use over and over again. I want to punch something. So I go in my room, shut the door, and watch the Office and Lost loudly on my computer. It's so sad. When I come home and she's cooking dinner or vice versa I'm always, "hi!" and, if she looks at me, I usually get a grunt. Occasionally a "hey." One one these days I'm gonna snap and say, "I said 'hi!' I don't know how it is in Korea, but in America when someone says hi, we respond, you jerk.!" It's worse in the mornings. I usually get a snarl. I've started leaving super early just to avoid them. Now they complain about me tiptoeing too loudly. Next time they say something like that, I AM going to say, "I'm sorry, but with your _________ (tv-watching) (showering) (laundering) going on so late last night, I just couldn't fall asleep. So I'm extra-tired. Probably why I'm 'making so much noise.' Sorry." Yep. That's exactly what I'm gonna say. Just you wait!
Anyways, I only wanted to post something so that my calender on the side would make a cool shape. It's gonna look like a snake now that I've finished this. Yep. Rambling on and on - that's my style. So that's my life in a nutshell right now. Despite all this, I somehow keep my wacky sense of humor :D
*read: a wimp
**So my BFF Sonia (Eun Seon) who is Korean, but acts nothing like a typical Korean*** was an exchange student at my college my senior year and we're soul sistas now. She's 4 hours away and doesn't get to visit me often. However she came during Christmas and stayed a few days and we went to Lotte World (which is a knock-off Disneyland, seriously their logo is a lined-castle with an arch over it) and we were watching their Christmas show. They had song and dance and some impressive acrobats. Well Sonia and I and a few small children who didn't know any better who were cheering throughout the whole thing. We were clapping and screaming at the top of our lungs and just dying laughing. Everyone thought we were freaks. Now I come from Sacramento, the loudest city in the US (Guinness Book of World Records if you wannna check), but any American city would cheer when a guy jumps through a ring of fire, right? No Koreans though. Dead silent. Gotta love 'em.
***Typical Korean: polite, nice, respectful, hospitable, will shove you to the ground to get on the bus before you.