Where we live

The science classes I've been teaching recently involve learning about the earth so I've been using google earth and http://maps.naver.com/ to show and talk about the earth. Naver, which as far as I can tell is about the Korean equivalent to google, has really great 360 degree airshots that you can pan around and zoom, so I decided to take a few screenshots of where we live.

That's us in the small building just above the crazy spiral park. I drew an arrow in paint but it doesn't show up very well here. The complex we live in is called Posco, every building on that block is a Posco building. It's nice having those towers right next to us because we can see them from a long ways away.

In the distance you can see the huge bridge. Keep in mind these photos were taken a good while ago. In the photo above there aren't any buildings beyond Posco, but by now, the area above (west side of Songdo) almost full of buildings in various stages of construction. Most of them are finished enough to look like buildings.

From the North now, you can see the building where we work right at the base of those towers (same block) front and center, and our apartment building just peeking out on the right. It's a short little walk to work and the gardens at Posco are beautiful. On many mornings there will be teams of gardeners Putting in new plants or keeping up existing ones or whatever. We'll have to get some pictures of that soon.

Here I panned on down the street to show where go so often to get samgyopsal. If you really look hard you may find the little black arrow I made. It's probably not worth it though.

Andrea and I ordered chicken tonight. That's right ordered. We have a phone. Our gracious new friends and coworkers Jesse and Emily recently decided they didn't want two phones anymore. Wham bam boom, chicken tonight. "Wait a minute Stephen," you might be asking. "How did you order chicken?" Good question. Very awkwardly. Up till now, when trying to communicate I could see the person and could see me. That goes a long way. When the man on the other end said something I didn't understand - which was everything he said- I just repeated my order a few times. Then I finally realized he needed an address so i repeated it a few times in between questions I didn't understand. I got handed over to someone else and we more or less did the same thing. Finally, he said something that ended in -ida which could have been "Thank you we'll be there in 20 minutes," or "I'm sorry sir but I just can't understand you. Goodbye." Whatever it was, we got the chicken and nobody seemed too pissed off. Success. BTW, chicken here is amazing. It's so juicy it's like they inject it with extra fat or something. The first time I encountered this was Friday night when we got soopbul dukgalbi. (It looks really stupid in english but trust me it's good.) I was like, "This place has the best chicken I ever had!" And it was mixed with a bunch of other stuff that was good too. But now we know there are at least two places in Korea that have this super juicy (like, be careful it doesn't drip when you take a bite - does that sound gross? It's not) chicken.

Anyway, enough about chicken, do I have anything else to write about?

Oh yeah, I do.

So last week we had open class as Andrea mentioned. Mine went pretty well I haven't gotten the feedback from the parents yet but whatever. The main highlight was at the beginning we were going to do a little ice breaker where the students all run around and introduce themselves to all the parents and vice versa as fast as they can before time runs out. I picked one girl to show everyone exactly how I wanted them to do this. I wanted them to say "Hello my name is _____. It's nice to meet you." The girl I was going to demonstrate with was Erica. Erica is very cute and very spazz. The kind of girl who looks like she would have the prettiest bubbliest writing, but in fact writes crazier than most of the boys. The girl who has a hard time not ripping her workbook to shreds. I'm approach Erica and shake her hand in demonstration but before I could say anything she says (In front of the class and all the moms) "My name is Erica, nice to kiss you."

And that's how Erica, my little six year old, broke the ice before I did. Adorable.

Meh. I've got to go to bed.

p.s. I cut all my hair off this weekend and I'm hoping my students aren't scared of me tomorrow.

More on that later.

My Greatest Fear

I'm the writing teacher in the afternoon program, which means that I assign a journal topic every Friday for a gazillion students, and grade them, and turn them back into them every Friday. It's a lot of journals. I have to admit, even though it's a lot of work, I generally enjoy reading them.

This one was written by a 4th grader. The topic: What is your greatest fear?

My most greatest fear is girl. Because girls hit me very strong. When girls see me, they hit together. I didn't do anything, but they hit me.

I try to hit girls, but girls are very scary and strong. When girls angry, they're stronger and hit boys. Some boys are teasing girls and girls hit them, but most girls just hit boys.

I don't teasing girls, but girls hit me. So when boys do something, we need to do carefully. We are not free. I hope that the girls don't hit boys.

-Andrea