On the work front, I think I’ve learned all of my students’ names. There is the occasional moment where I’ll look at a student and have no idea what their name is until I consult the list and eliminate the ones I know. Otherwise, I can call out the kids’ names when they are chatting or I want them to answer my question.
My schedule is okay. I had a lot of prep hours for a couple weeks after summer intensive, but the branch did hire another Korean teacher and open up new classes, so my schedule became more normal looking after that. They took away my three middle school classes that I had for a grand total of 3 weeks, which means I’m teaching only sixth grade now. My Friday is completely prep hours. It is evidently convenient for the branch to have me sub on the Friday if someone is sick or if they are on vacation. I do feel pretty lucky that I have such a solid chunk of time to work on lessons (unless I have a whole day filled, which then sucks because I allocated that time in my mind to working on lessons).
Coming up this week at work is the essay contest for the students. They all hate writing essays, so I doubt they’ll have too much fun. Chuseok is coming up the next week after essay contest though. Everyone will get a nice break at least. I wanted to go to Taiwan for the holiday, but flights are super pricey during that time. I had not started planning my trip early or anything because I didn’t know what I would be doing exactly or realize that it would be that busy.
The vacation will still be fun though. I can try to get to somewhere in Korea or stay in and work more on my personal projects. I have fallen behind a little in my art progress. I think my reasons for falling behind are somewhat valid. I picked up two things that I go to in the mornings that eat up a lot of the time I used to be able to put toward it.
The first new part of my routine is bikram yoga class. Coworkers were talking about it one Friday after dinner and I decided to go check it out. After that lesson, I went ahead and committed to paying for an introductory unlimited month. I wanted to try something new and exercising was never something that I did. They have lessons every day of the week two/three times per day. I tend to go three times a week on Sunday, Wednesday and Friday during the morning one. I couldn’t go to the afternoon ones even if I wanted to anyway because of work.
The second new activity I’ve committed to is Korean lessons. Those take place on Tuesdays and Thursdays in the morning, so that is pretty much my whole week occupied. I could of course go to yoga on Monday, too, but I wanted a day to sleep in. My month of yoga is expiring the end of September, and I’m still on the fence about paying for more classes. It will depend on the pricing probably. The Korean classes are free because the company is paying for us to go. We did have to buy the textbooks, so it wasn’t completely free. The commute to Seoul for the class is on us as well.
That’s mostly what I’ve been getting up to. I feel tired from my morning commitments, but I tell myself that they’re good ideas. It was fun to hear the body parts I learned in Korean class pop up during yoga instruction. They instruct in English (at least whenever I am or another foreigner is there), but they also do it in Korean.
Anton was here for the duration of this month. He just left today actually and he can’t be back for a couple months. We had a good last night adventure eating chicken in soy sauce with glass noodles, takoyaki, taiyaki and a blueberry smoothie. The chicken was our dinner at a sit-down place, but the takoyaki and taiyaki we got from two different shops on our walk around. The blueberry smoothie was a purchase from a pricey (to me) cafe called Muggle, which was Harry Potter themed.
Pyeongchon park was busy this month with a Youth Film Festival, the Anyang Citizen Festival, and a Street of World Culture. I peeked the setup for the two festivals in the park on my way to work since I always passed through the park. The Street of World Culture was something that Anton and I happened to stumble upon when passing through the street next to the park on our walk last night. Apparently, the park is a happening place. I wonder if there are any fall themed things that will occur.
The time that I’ve spent in Anyang has surpassed my Suwon days. I definitely feel much more comfortable here, but I do miss being able to go to Daiso. That store is pretty much nonexistent in Anyang as far as I can tell. It will be interesting as the teachers I’ve gotten to know start to leave.
