wae, wa, way?!

I usually update on Tuesdays, but I chose to watch episodes of "How I Met Your Mother" online instead.  A friend gave me a website link that allows you watch pretty much any TV show or movie online for free, with minimal pop-up ads and few restrictions. While I am happy to be able to watch TV, I have to admit I'm not as productive at work, or home. Lol.

This past weekend I decided to stay in Gumi to save money. Friday night comes around and I figured someone would want to go have dinner or go out for a couple drinks. Turns out not many people were in town and by 9pm I was sitting on my bed, watching TV online, in my pajamas, and eating popcorn. That was until a friend messaged me on facebook asking if I had any plans for the night. This resulted in me getting dressed around 11pm and meeting up at Corona, the western bar downtown. Since I hadn't been there in awhile I figured it would be fun. So, I met up with Tracy and a friend of hers for a few drinks, which turned into a 4:30am night/morning! I blame this on the group of people from Brazil that I ended up meeting. Only one guy in the group spoke minimal English, the rest spoke Portuguese. Turns out most of them could speak Spanish more than English, so I used my basic Spanish knowledge (which isn't the best, but not too shabby) to talk to them! So take a little Korean, alot of Portuguese and English, and throw in a bit of Spanish...you've got yourself an interesting night of conversation!

Saturday I slept in...due to my staying out late the night before. Wasn't hungover, actually didn't drink that much, but I was of course super tired. I ended up meeting Ali downtown to search for a place called Dr. Fish. It's a place where you can get a "pedicure" by putting your feet/legs into a pool with fish in it and they nibble the dead skin off for you. They say it tickles, but works really good. We've been wanting to go to the one in Daegu, but never had time, so we heard there might be one in Gumi. Well, we found the place, but it is now a coffee shop instead of a Dr. Fish. So, we ended up meeting with Rita for a coffee and a drink downtown. We then ventured to Ali's neighborhood to get some food and wine for a dinner at Ali's apartment. Our plan was to watch a movie, but the three of us ended up just sitting around talking all night.

On Sunday Ali and I were supposed to ride bikes around Gumi and lay out in the park. Since Paul was out of town I was going to borrow his bike. But, alas, Ali didn't feel well, so I ended up doing my own thing Sunday. Which was me laying out in the park across the street from me (in shorts and a shirt lol). Koreans stare if you even show your arms, so getting some sun is gonna be difficult without offending anyone. That's why I'm excited to go to the beach soon! Now that the weather is getting warmer we can go to Busan and enjoy the beaches before "beach season" starts on July 15th. You won't see many Koreans on the beach until then, so they say the best time for foreigners to go is between now and then. And trust me, I definately need some sun exposure! If I were in Texas right now I'd already have begun the tanning process. Here in Korea I am super pale...and my lovely fellow foreign friends love to point this out, lol.
So, after "sun bathing" I wandered around downtown Gumi and did some shopping. Found a new satchel purse and bought a few supplies for my classroom.

I'M A STUDENT AGAIN:
As I said, every Tuesday night I take a Korean language class in Daegu. This means right after work, I take my normal two buses back to Gumi, then get to the train station about 10 minutes before the train leaves to Daegu. I go with 3 other friends so they are nice enough to have my ticket ready for me. Once we get to Daegu we have some time to kill so we usually grab a snack and some coffee before our 7pm class. Last Tuesday the class was a basic introduction to the Korean alphabet, consonants and vowel pronunciation and writing. We also learned to read a few simple words. Our homework was to write the alphabet a few times and practice reading. This week however, class got more difficult. We learned the rest of the vowels that we didn't learn last week. These vowels are tricky because they all sound the same. There are three different symbols that all sound like "WAY" but each is pronounced slightly different...wae, wa, and way. GRRR! haha! With time I hope to atleast sound like I half way speak Korean.

TEACHING:
This week's lesson is by far one of my favorites. I mean Bingo was fun and easy last week, but this week is even better. I started my lesson on sports. So instead of talking about them and having them write about them, I am having them act out the sports and the actions involved. I introduce the sports with pictures and have them tell me what it is. If they don't know it, I explain how to play it and what it's called. Then I go into a guessing game where I reveal one part of a picture at a time and they have to guess which sport it is. The next part is for them to stand up and do all the action words I describe, like jump, run, kick, swing, pitch, etc. I threw in the word dance for fun to see how many students will do it. I feel like I'm the only one dancing each class, haha!

Finally, the last part is the actual cherades game. I show them the name of a sport with a picture and they have to act it out for their team. Instead of yelling out "soccer" I had them answer in complete sentences. Examples, "You like to play soccer" or "You like to go swimming." In the first part of my lesson I also briefly discussed the words play, go, and do so that they could get an idea of which one to say. Some students did simple actions, while other went all out. One boy was acting out golf and pretended to pick some dirt off the ground, as if to see which way the wind was blowing.  I even had a boy climb on the table to sit cross legged with his arms in the air to act out yoga, lol. Even my co-teachers were getting into acting out the action words with the class. I thought one of them was gonna break a hip trying to act out diving, haha!!

RUNNING:
Last week I also decided to start running again. The weather is getting a bit warmer finally, so I try to get outside as much as possible. I noticed a river in town when I was on one of the buses, so I figured I'd start there last Wednesday evening. Well, turns out the path to run along the river ends quickly so I headed through downtown back to my neighborhood. I continued on to Gumi mountain, where I figured I could run around the lake reservoir that's on top of a hill. By the time I made it back to my apartment I noticed I had been out walking/running for 2 hours! Needless to say I was feeling it the next day, so I just walked on Thursday.

This Thursday I decided to run, but this time I figured I'd just stick with the path around the lake. I timed myself and the actual run around the lake took me 15 minutes. My future goal is to make it around the lake in 10 minutes! I wanted to run again today, but it is raining...lame!! If I can atleast get into the habit of walking/running for an hour a day, I'll feel good. :)

Ok, it's now Friday morning and I am ready to get this day over with and start my weekend!! Hopefully this weekend I can take some pictures, I'm starting to slack on that.

XOXO,
Amanda