Saturday > Friday

Saturday was so much better than Friday, y'all.  I still woke up crazypants early--at about 5am, after going to bed at 2:30--but I put some soft music on my iPod, put on my eyeshield thingy, and forced myself to go back to sleep....and it worked!  I woke up at about 10:30, then went into school for some more training with Jenny, the [basically] principal of the school.  We went through a lot of information about the curriculum, the school, and what I'll be teaching; it was a lot to remember, but it helped clear some things up for me.  Yay!

In the afternoon, I watched some Office with Jake, my temporary roommate.  He'd never seen it, but he really liked it.  Yesss...a convert!  Then, I took a nap (darn jetlag....) for a couple hours, and got up and got ready to go out.  Most of the teachers at my school were going to Itaewon that night, which is an area of town with lots of nightlife.  It's near the US military base(s), so it's kind of a hub for expats.  It's also got kind of a reputation for skuzziness, though....I've heard it referred to as "Shitaewon."

Most of the teachers were splitting cabs over to Itaewon, but Jake wanted to take the subway because it'd be a few thousand won (a few dollars) cheaper, so I tagged along.  I've pretty much been tagging along with Jake this whole time, and I wanted to try out the subway with someone else the first time, so it seemed like a good idea.  Before we went, we stopped at this little 24-hour noodle place downstairs from our school (and near our apartment), and it was really good!  I had ramyan, which is what Americans know as ramen, and it was quite tasty.  It also had two dumpling things in it, which were delicious.  I tell you what, though....it is REALLY DIFFICULT to eat ramen with chopsticks.  I kind of suck at it, y'all.  And Korean chopsticks are metal, which makes them extra-slippery, so there was lots of slurping going on.  Bye bye, American table manners!

When we got to Itaewon, we arrived at the pub, Wolfhound, about half an hour before everyone else.  And I made a couple new friends!  Well, actually, I was already facebook friends with one of them...haha.  A few weeks ago I posted some question on a facebook group for expats in Korea, and this girl Hayley replied, so I added her as a friend.  Then, when I was sitting in Wolfhound, I looked over and had that itching "do I know her from somewhere?" feeling about this random girl sitting one table over.  And finally I figured out that she looked like Hayley's facebook picture, so I went over and said "um.....are you Hayley?"  And she was!  So we chatted quite a bit.  She had a friend named Stefanie who was there, and she's cool, too.  Hayley's from London and has the COOLEST ACCENT EVER....and better yet, she seems to know the whole expat community.  She's very social and upbeat, so I was glad to get to know her; I'm sure it'll be nice to make friends outside of my school.

Once the rest of the teachers got there, I really enjoyed hanging out with them.  Plus, there was a guy who used to teach at our school and is now teaching public school--his name's Eric--who is ridiculously awesome.  So we all hung out for a couple hours, then left to go to...um....Hangdo?  Or something?  I can't remember the name of that section of town...dang it.  But anyway, we went to this place called Jane's Groove, which had a dancefloor, so you KNOW I was happy.  It was almost completely Westerners in there, as was the case with Wolfhound...kinda crazy!  Dancing with the other teachers was a lot of fun, and it helped me feel better about them than I had the night before.  I think my suspicion was correct--that they're essentially cool people who had just had a hard week at work and were letting off steam on Friday night.  Oh, and there were a couple people who hung out with us on Saturday night that weren't there on Friday, like Kyle.  Who deserves his own paragraph.

So I think that Kyle might be the male version of me...haha.  He actually reminds me a bit of the other male-version-of-me, Mark, a good friend from Furman who I also kind-of-dated last year.  Kyle looks a little like Mark and has a vaguely similar personality, so all night I was like "mmmm, Mark....WAIT NO IT'S NOT MARK IT'S SOMEONE ELSE!"  Ha ha....my brain was confoosed.  But anyway, Kyle is awesome, partly because he justifies my nerdiness.  Jake has been making fun of me for being a nerd, but Kyle is nerdy in the same ways!  It's AWESOME.  We were geeking out about statistics at Wolfhound, which was fantastic.  And he also likes art museums and stuff.  I'm sure we'll be hanging out a lot.  (In fact, once Jake and I got home, he was making jokes about Kyle and I making a cute couple....but I think Jake's jealous that I was hanging out with Kyle more than him.  Hehehe.)

Anyway, so Saturday night was SO much fun, and Jake and I didn't get home until about 5am.  Going to bed while the sun came up was quite interesting!  Then, on Sunday, the two of us got up around noon, and Kyle came over at 2.  We'd talked about going to a place called Technomart to get some stuff, so the three of us set off on the subway again.  And....y'all.  Technomart is.....insane.  And also amazing.  And also kind of a zoo.  But also undoubtedly amazing.  It's about 10 or 11 stories high and about the size of a grocery store on each floor, and it's essentially a giant shopping mall of electronic stuff.  Kyle and I agreed that it seems like people rent space, kind of like at a flea market, and sell stuff individually; and the floors have different themes.  They had really nice LCD flatscreen TVs for super-cheap--we saw one big one for 400,000 won ($400) that would have sold for $2000 in the States.  (But Daddy, I'm glad to say that they had my camera for $220, so we got it cheaper in Atlanta.  Woohoo!)  Some of the stuff seemed to be priced similarly to American prices, and some was cheaper; but you could bargain with the sellers!  And let me tell you, bargaining is fun and interesting when the buyer and seller speak two different languages.  There's lots of pantomiming.

I bought some speakers for my computer and iPod for 21,000 won.  Jake and I tested them out last night, and they were AWESOME.  [Sidenote: to ask the salesman whether they had good base, I pointed to them and went "BOOM ba ba BOOM ba ba BOOM....good?  Is okay?" and it seems to have gotten the point across!]  I win!  I also bought a couple outlet converters for 8,000 won together ($8), plus an awesome fan that made sleeping last night SO MUCH more pleasant for 25,000.  Poor Jake had to listen to me being excited about the fan for, oh, about two hours straight.  But I told him he'd change his tune when he had to go sleep in his hot, stuffy room without a cool, luxurious fan.  I told him that when he (inevitably) came knocking on my door at 4am asking to share my fan, I'd make him be Big Spoon.

Last night, Jake and I spread out all our teaching materials and puzzled over what we were supposed to be teaching...haha.  He's only been here a week longer than I have, and intensives (classes in the "high season" for our school) start today, so we're both teaching new classes.  We kind of figured it out, though.

This morning I woke up at 6:30am--so my jetlag is abating, which is good.  Maybe tomorrow I'll wake up to my alarm!  Woohoo!  :)  The nice thing about getting up early is that I can check my e-mail, have some coffee, and update my blog before I have to trundle off to school.  I'm hoping it doesn't rain today, because I'm hoping to wear my favorite dress; it IS my first day of school, after all!  It pooooured yesterday and the day before; Jenny (the principal) said it was monsoon season, and I'm not sure whether she's kidding or not.  So I'm about to embark on my first week of teaching.....wish me luck!!!