What Happens in Two Weeks is a Mystery

The reasons for delay in posting was due to illness and some recent events. I have recently encountered a few opportunities from meeting people here and am working on the following:

1. I am helping promote and re-do a bar
2. I am going to be in a Moroccan TV show or movie that is being taped here about two Moroccan guys living in South Korea. I may help in the production of the show as well as being on the show. This is still being worked out but it is a great opportunity none the less.
3. I am looking into starting a tea company here. I can not provide to much information until we have moved further along with it. We will see what happens but that has been keeping me busy as well.
4. Learning Korean so I can speak and understand it
5. Trying to EXPERIENCE Korea

THE RUN DOWN

Wednesday, Jan 28, 2009: I was teaching at my main campus and discovered that the kids LOVE watching video chats. I would bring my Mac (which many people do not own here) to school and would connect to the Internet to call friends and family from home. All of a sudden, the children are swarming around me to see who is talking on my computer. Many of the kids are shy but they still like to see foreigners across the world.

Monday, Feb 2, 2009: This was an interesting day. The director of Bangduk Campus was not there. I usually teach 25 minutes of one class then 25 minutes of another class. This time the director's mother (who I found out runs the campus) wanted me to stay and actually teach some of the classes for 50 minutes which meant the other classes didn't know what to do. It was a confusing day.

Tuesday, Feb 3, 2009: I came to campus and found out that I was going to be evaluated through out the day. The person evaluating me was named Rori (the name from Gilmore Girls). She speaks English very well because she lived in New Zealand for seven years. She can speak Korean but she doesn't know many complicated Korean terms. She had to follow me around and sit in on all my classes. I felt very awkward but I explained to her how this campus was very different than the other campuses.

As we chatted through out the day we discovered that we had a lot in common and she may be teaching at one of my campuses soon. She works in the main GnB office at the moment but is being trained to work as a teacher as well. She ran into some of the same problems that I had when having to do the e-training. We decided to make plans to have dinner the next night.

Wednesday, Feb 4th, 2009: Since Jenny was gone, I had to teach some extra classes. It was back to being thrown into classrooms and not knowing what to go over. Luckily, I can usually ad-lib and teach the lesson without have any preparation. I made it through the day and then met with Rori downtown for some Korean barbecue. She is going to try and introduce me to her Canadian friend who used to work for GnB. He married a Korean woman and is very Christian (this is how she explained him to me). Rori and I are the same age and we live near each other. I'm looking forward to spending a lot of time hanging out with her.

Thursday, Feb 5th, 2009: I received a message from some of the people that were involved in the Japan fiasco. There was some drama but I am hoping that things get resolved. I am currently dealing with trying to dispute the charge of $230 for the ferry. I guess some lessons in life can be expensive...

Anyway, I found out I was going to go hiking with some of the GnB managers and staff on Saturday morning! Then that night I had a business meeting with my co-president and financial adviser on what steps we need to start taking with the tea business. It's beginning to look like I am going to be having a busy couple of months. Then I studied my Korean late into the night to prepare for my test on Friday from Violet.

Friday, Feb 6th, 2009: I forgot that Violet was not going to be at work today so looks like I have more time to study my Korean. I made it to the gym and then went to work. I got a shorter schedule today! Apparently my schedule is going to be changing at the Bolli campus. It was an interesting day and I got to see Gael ( the high school girl that is the daughter of the director of the Bolli campus). When I was done teaching, I didn't have much time because I needed to go downtown to help run a bar event with Brandi. I had a quick dinner downstairs from the school with Gael and then was given a ride home. Gael, her mother and her sister invited me to go bowling on Sunday and I happily accepted. I am starting to feel very popular.

Saturday & Sunday: I went hiking at Aspan mountain with my boss's family, the guy I interviewed for GnB (Eddie), Rori, Krissy (she didn't have an English name so I helped her pick out this name) and some other people. (During the hike I discovered I was in really good shape.) I kept trying to encourage Rori during the entire hike. It took us about an hour an a half to get to the top of the mountain and another hour to get back down. Supposedly the whole mountain takes about seven to eight hours. I think the best part was me continually screaming, "Aja!" which means fighting.

After we finished hiking, we went out for some traditional Korean food. Rori helped me understand what people were talking about and everyone kept trying to teach me new Korean words. Supposedly, if you can drink well then you are a whale.
Next day, I went bowling! The bowling alley's are much smaller than what I'm used to. I felt like their bowling alley was a little bit outdated. It didn't matter in the end because at least they seemed to work correctly. What I didn't know was that Gael's family didn't know how to bowl! I actually thought it was a lot more fun that they had never bowled.

After winning two out of three, we went to a restaurant where Gael's family often eat at. It was at this time that Gael asked me if I could fill out a letter of recommendation for her student exchange program application. I really hope that she gets to go to America. She wants to live with a host family in either California, Florida, or Virginia (I recommended that she look into going here). Anyone interested in hosting a smart Korean high school student? I wish I could but I don't think they would allow me...

I tried out one of the DVD rooms! You pay 13,000 won for a room and can watch as many movies as you want. It's so nice!

I think that's mostly everything... I will be moving my blog posts about my adventures in Korea to another location. This blog will return to posts about technology and hopefully I will be able to blog about the interesting technology that Korea has to offer. Like their TV/GPS that is in almost every car. It scares me...