Settled

Since my last post, some things have happened. Today, I bought a fan. I have an air conditioner, but it's positioned around the corner and at the furthest point from my bed, and is aimed down the side of the fridge. I also started teaching properly, but more on that later. I cooked my first meal on my gas dual hob. Unfortunately, it was no gastronomic masterpiece. Here is what happened: there was some food on my shelves when I arrived. I assumed, since the previous occupant had moved out the day I moved in, that this was for eating. No. It was off. Some of it went off in 2006. I only found this out after I'd returned from the Korean Tesco - Home Plus - for basics. Bread, beer and Frosties. So I arrived home, expecting to cook up something tasty, like noodlesoup or stuff, and was confronted with a feast of expired food, and... Spam. I hadn't eaten all day. I made Spamghetti.

I did, luckily, buy some hot sauce, though. Hot sauce makes everything edible.



Last night, the six ESL teachers at our school met at the local meeting place, a 24 hour convenience store on the main street, with the intention of going for something to eat. We didn't, in the end. We just had soju, and went to noraebang. Noraebang is Korean karaoke, only you hire a cosy room just for you and your friends, and soju is a little green bottle of hate. More on both at a later date.

Teaching. I've had two full days of classes now. Mixed bag. I have a class in the morning - twice in a row - who try my patience like nobody has tried my patience before. They are shits, the lots of them. They're either fighting, running around, shouting at each other in Korean and talking back to me, or the other extreme, lying prostrate and motionless on the floor or crying. They're by far the worst. Every other class has its redeeming features. I have the pleasure of talking with some ridiculously advanced 5 year olds twice a day, and a class of mischievous but extremely intelligent and focussed-when-they-need-to-be elementary school dudes, who I have to say are my favourites. Or as they'd say: favorites. I can't get them to spell the correct way. They laugh at how I say tomato too. Curse the North American dominance of the ESL business. It's 50/50 at our school incidentally (although the other two Englishers are a Liverpudlian and a Teessider. Poor kids. They already look confused..)

We've not had the sun here for a few days, and the smoggy-ish blanket of cloud enveloping the city is making for humidity akin to that of a sauna that has just won the award for being the most humid sauna in Sweden. Muggy. Tomorrow I'm going to go exploring. I have my tube map, I have my Oyster card-type-thing, and I have a Palinesque sense of adventure. I'm going searching for a three-holed adaptor plug!