Busy Under Unpleasant Circumstances

July 5-11, 2010

Well this week started off pretty boring. Since I was hired to be a teacher primarily for the middle school level at this new academy, and it was public school testing time, we had no kids to teach. Therefore, I had to hang out Monday and Tuesday from 2-10pm with nothing but the books we will be using for the middle school level to look though. They do seem more interesting than the books we used at Avalon last year (mostly because they aren't iBT TOFEL) and during my short stint with DYB, so hopefully things will go good once I get to start using them.
Anyways, as I was saying, things were boring to start the week but soon turned around. Unfortunately, my coworker Mike had a friend commit suicide back in the states and took off Wednesday afternoon, having only heard the news the night before. This meant that when I showed up for work on Wednesday I was told that I would have to cover his elementary classes for the rest of the week and into some of the next week. This was fine by me since I had been doing nothing for two days already. I quickly grabbed Mikes books and schedule and started going to each teacher to see just what the deal with each class was. The usual, where are they and how are they, questions were answered by most teachers; though there were a few who just didn't understand why i would be teaching and why Mike wasn't there, and a couple who without saying it, refused to help me out. In the end everything was fine and I covered Mikes classes for the week and really enjoyed myself, and from what I was told at the end of the week, the kids enjoyed having me.
The rest of the week went by pretty well. I spent my time before work figuring out where Mike had left off with the kids and what I would be continuing with, and most nights came home after work to hang out and watch movies with Goah. We were watching movies because I wasn't aware that I indeed had internet and cable (though the cable is garbage) pre-installed in my apartment until Thursday when my director finally called the landlord to figure it out. But, while figuring out my cable and internet situation, she neglected to figure out my stove situation, and I have had no way to make food at my place, so have been eating out since I moved. She promised to figure that out the next week.
So now with cable and internet available, I went out Thursday night with Blake, Nathan, and Danielle for Kalmagisal in Sillim. Danielle wanted to have it one more time before she leaves Korea on the 24th. After dinner we hit up a patio bar and had a few drinks until just after 1am and called it a night. Friday after work, I picked up some cables on my way home so that I could check out this new cable and internet situation. As it turned out my cable doesn't include any of the regular channels, and my internet, though good needed some tweaking to make it work.
I was staying in Friday because a bunch of us were planning on going to Muuido Island for Saturday and Sunday to celebrate Alex N's birthday. This gave me a chance to plug in my internet and find out that the cable I bought had a slightly small end, and that the wall jack was lightly over sized. These two things together meant that my connection could not be maintained unless I held it tight. And, I'm sure you can imagine what kind of frenzy that put me into. I was ready to rip the internet right out of that wall, so I got out a screwdriver and calmly took it out to inspect it. I thought that maybe there was a way I could make the wall jack tighter, and when I saw that there wasn't the only thing I cold think of to tighten it up was to jam on of the screws into the jack on top of my cable that way it would press down hard enough to maintain connection. I did so and success!! Feeling good about my new internet fix, I finished my fried chicken dinner that I picked up on the way home and went to bed.
I didn't go out Friday night because as mentioned above we were going to the beach the next morning. Louise, Alex's girlfriend, had organized a bit of a party for those who wanted to attend, on the island just off the west coast of Inchon. So, Blake and I said we would be there and met up on the subway at 1030 Saturday, for the 2 hour trip out. We had to take the subway to the airport, a bus to the ferry terminal, a ferry for like 3 minutes across to the island, and then another bus across the island to the beach. Luckily as we got to the ferry we met Danielle and Magee, who were also going to the beach. Together we went to the beach, beating the rest of the group, who had said they were going to be at the beach by 11. We found a good place on the beach and set up shop just in time for everyone else to show up, then we all got beach huts to sleep in for the night and began the party. We grabbed some beers from the store and sat around on the beach for several hours. It was a little over cast but nice nonetheless, and even found some people to play volleyball with. As the sun began to set and the tide went out, we grabbed some galbi for diner then hit up the store one more time to get supplies for the night. After stocking up we hit the beach and just sat around chatting and such until the beach fire was started. We had nothing to do with starting it, but joined in and enjoyed for the few hours it was going, where I had some great conversations with several different people, one being from home and the other a girl named Lauren form South Africa. Eventually people starting calling it quits around 2am, but James and I stuck it out at the fire until around 430, which wasn't the best idea, because the longer we stayed out the more we consumed. So when we had had enough, and had stopped a girl from sleeping in the way of the incoming tide, we called it a night and hit our huts.
We didn't get to sleep for more than about 6 hours before we had to get up and give back the keys. Sleepy and a little hung over we all gathered on the beach and laid out our mats again, and set up for what was looking like a beautiful sunny day. As it turned out, the tide had come in and gone back out all in those few hours of sleep, so for the first half of the day we were left sitting on the beach just watching the water come back in, in the distance. Eventually around 230 with the sun blazing hot, the water came back in and we were able to get into the water. It was a great way to spend the rest of the weekend, and James even got to ride on the police hovercraft after kindly swimming way beyond where the police deemed safe to rescue a family's inflatable raft. We all had a good laugh, and at 6pm packed out things and made our way back towards Seoul.

Another week down, another sunburn on the list.