Slow goings

Life is starting to get somewhat monotonous here in Korea. I'm fairly acclimated at work now, but every now and then something stirs things up. The other week one of the teachers up and quit. She just didn't show up for work. I guess she wanted to take a leave of absence to go with her husband on some business trip. The owner wouldn't let her.

We had a recruiting event the other night at school. The next semester starts in February and we are trying to get new kids to sign up. Apparently we are losing more kids than the owner had hoped. Some are going to elementary school, which is understandable. Most of the students that are leaving are because their parents cannot afford to pay the tuition. The recruiting night was interesting. Less than half of the people that were supposed to come showed up. I also found out that there are other branches of our school, as one of the other owners showed up. She came to give support, which basically meant giving the presentation because our owner gets the mumbles and shakes when she is talking to a big group.

I found out last week that I will be dressing up as Santa for the kids. The sad thing is that it wont be the first time I have dressed up as Santa. I guess the old owner's father used to do it. Apparently his vision wasn't so good, so he messed up a lot of the kid's names when passing out gifts. The good thing for me is that I know most of the kids names, with the exception of most of our four year olds. I never use their names in class so I only know the names of the ones I have in after school classes.

I have realized that whenever I do make it back to America I will miss the public transportation system here. I love being able to hop on the subway or take a nice, clean cab anywhere in the city. I haven't used the bus system yet, mainly because I don't know the routes. I also like that some of the subways have random underground mini shopping malls.

I went out last night with Dan to a foreigner bar. It was nice to go out and socialize with people who speak English. They played really good music and you could request anything you wanted to hear. I met some interesting people and got to see a new part of Seoul I hadn't been to.

Today I had to go shopping for groceries. I bought some hot dogs and I am interested to see if they taste weird. One thing I have noticed is that the vegetable choice here is fairly limited. There are a few reasons for this:

1. Korea doesn't import much produce, with the exception of some fruits.
2. It's winter
3. Some vegetables just aren't used here

I really would like some green beans, sweet peas, and carrots. I have been eating canned corn to supply me with some vegetables. As far as fruit goes, I have been eating bananas, oranges, apples, and persimmons. Every now and then I see strawberries, but they look way too shiny and perfect.

A cool thing about markets over here is that they charge you for plastic bags. It's good for the environment and leaves you with less trash. I use the big fabric bag I got at the flea market last month for carrying my groceries.

I have a two week vacation coming up after Christmas. Dan and I are looking into some ski resorts to stay at. We saw a poster for one in the subway that has an indoor water park. I just want to go skiing so that I can say that I have done it at least once. Other than that I have no idea what I am going to do. I'll probably just try and do all the touristy stuff, and maybe do a temple stay at one of the many Buddhist temples.

I hope I have provided enough reading material to satiate your cravings. I know I haven't posted here much lately, but there isn't as much new or interesting stuff right now.