Honestly, now.

After dragging my feet this morning, I finally made it to the gym.  After running and working on the elliptical machine, I headed to the showers.  I was heading out of the gym when one of the trainers stopped me and gave me a mild dressing down for not stretching after working out.  Then, she made me pinkie-swear that I would stretch after working out.

In one year, I have pinkie-swore in the country more than the entirety of elementary school.

Oh, and I was accepted into the CELTA program.  Thailand, here I come, but not until November.

This is more of a side note than anything else….

I love it here.  The people have been more than kind.  I like (and get well paid) for this job of mine.  I don’t need a car.  I don’t need a lot of things.

But it’s a revolving door.  No sooner do you find some amazing friends and everyone starts to move away.  Just as you start to feel settled on on your feet, someone yanks it away again.

And just as bad are the dozens of people you meet in passing.  A month of overlap at a job.  A conversation in the airport.  Every once in a while, I run across someone who is amazing.  The type of person that I can’t help but think, “In a parallel universe somewhere, we are probably close friends.”  Yeah, it happened back home as well.  But not nearly so often.  And it didn’t sting nearly as much.

Today I sent out my application for the CELTA course.  CELTA (Certificate in Teaching English to Speakers of Other Languages) is the best certificate that is out there.  It is backed by Cambridge University and is the ONLY TEFL certificate that is internationally recognized.

Oh yeah, and I’ll be taking the course in Thailand.  Ideally, I will live in a fancy hotel for a month, studying until my eyes bleed and then going swimming on a beautiful beach.  Study and swimming.  Sounds perfect.

A few of my friends my join me (Chis and Corinne).  I hope they do.

Most people have been kinda worried about me lately.  A Korean friend even noticed that I looked rather lonely.  I’m okay.  I’m just trying to figure things out and stressing myself out way, way more than necessary.  The usual.  I’ve dropped about ninety percent of my communication, which wasn’t very much to begin with.  But I’m figuring a few things out.  All I can say is, it’s about time. 

I’m seriously considering dropping Tae Kwon Do.  The instructor isn’t mean enough.  I’m rather lazy by nature, so I’ll pay good money for someone to be mean and push me farther than I’m typically willing to go.  My instructor is just too nice and friendly.  So I’m thinking of finding a gym with an evil trainer who might make me cry.  Here’s hoping.  In the meantime, I’ll see how far I can get by running.  It’s spring time, which is good motivation.  The weather is amazing and it’s still cool enough at night that the track is pretty empty.  I’m so self-conscience that I only like to run at night.

I still plan to be home for Christmas.  I’m really looking forward to it.  As of today, there are only 254 days until Christmas.

There are 186 days left in my contract.  And 314 days until my birthday.

What can I say?  My cell phone has a D-Day function.

Today, we learned about Jordan. The kids read an article, discussed the pictures, and then I asked them questions. There was quite a bit about the daily life of a student in Jordan. I drew a Ven diagram on the board and had the class tell me what things they had in common and what things were different. The article said that the student in Jordan had bread, cheese, and olives for breakfast. A lot of Korean students have bread for breakfast and a few even have cheese. We placed this in the middle of the diagram. I asked if there was anything else. Peter spoke up.

“BANANAS!”

“What?” I said, flipping through the article. “I didn’t read anything about bananas.”

“But teacher,” came the reply, “EVERYBODY likes bananas.”

Eight-year-old’s logic. Cracks me up.

Getting home tends to be interesting.  Unless I’m in a taxi (and even then sometimes), I tend to meet some characters.

On Saturday, I was catching one of the few buses home. It was about ten-thirty at night, and the bus was fairly crowded so I didn’t get a seat.  Typically when I’m this tired, I plug into my mp3 player and ignore everyone.  Headphones are a nice way of saying, “I’m not wanting to talk to anyone, please leave me alone.”  However, they don’t deter everyone.  I didn’t feel like digging around in my backpack while standing on a bus, so I just zoned out for a while.

Out of the corner of my eye, I can see someone leaning waaaaay over to get a look at me.  He was about two people down the row from me and rather tipsy.  He starts pointing me out to his friend.  Both of the men appeared to be in their sixties.  I can over hear them talking about me, arguing about when I’m from.  It was Russian vs. American, but they settled that I must be American (I didn’t hear why).  I was hoping that they would lose interest and find someone else to talk about.

No such luck.

One guy taps a Korean woman, who was standing between us, on the shoulder.  He asked her (in Korean) if she was a foreigner.  She was a little annoyed, but kind enough to tell them that, No, she was Korean.  Then they guy asked if she was my friend.  He asked several times, as if he didn’t believe her.  Then he asked her to change places with me.  I could tell that she really wanted to get away from him, so I obliged and traded places with her.

One of the men had excellent English skills, so we could actually converse.  The guy man spoke a small amount of English, but was kept showing me how strong his hands were (he was a retired General).  Overall, it was a unique conversation.  One I’m not likely to forget.  Especially since I’ve NEVER had someone try so hard to get my phone number.  I had to resort to saying that I had lost my phone.  Then they would only be appeased if I took both of their phone numbers and promised to call them when I found my phone.  They made me pinkie swear.

The funny part is that this is pretty much par for the course.

He sneaks after me when I go make copies so that he can wait by the copy machine to press the warm papers against his face.  He loves reading aloud, despite the fact that he’s rather weak at it.  He loves telling me how old and ugly I am, but is one of the first to notice if I don’t look well.  He often pretends to be a ninja.

This is the kid that, when I told him to stop tipping his chair back, he sat on the floor.  I asked him why.  He shook his head, looked at the chair as if it were his mortal enemy, and shook his head again.

Every time I teach that class, I have a good day.

I slept through the first day of April due to a stomach virus.  No fun.  Other than that, things are just ducky.  Some friends of mine and I are considering getting an apartment together.  I’m looking forward to living a little closer to everything.  I like Bundang, but I’d like to have more to do.  Plus, I’ll be able to save a little more money this way.

In other news, there’s just 199 days left on this contract.

And with that, I have to get back to work.