A Normal Day

I have been here a little over two weeks and already there is a routine in my life. I have no internet and I have no TV so my entertainment is largely self made. One of the things that I do to keep myself busy and avoid the homesickness (I figure if I keep my mind occupied I can delay it another 11 months and deal with it on my flight home) is write. I would say write in “this blog” but at this stage my writings are just on my computer. If I were a girl it would be a diary. Thankfully I am a guy with a journalism degree so I will call it a travel journal or something to the like.

Well, I have finally caught up to present time and have nothing else to write before I have the internet and go “live.” This means I am bored. Like, really bored. I would play solitaire but the other day I had as close to a perfect game as they come. I’m actually pretty stoked and I wish I wrote down my score but you never expect something to amazing to happen when you are sitting around in your underwear now do you? Almost every card dealt by the computer was in order and this will probably never happen again unless I get a physical deck and cheat. Come to think of it I probably spent my allotted luck in life on computer solitaire.

Here is my average day here in Korea:

10am - Wake up and decide against sitting around and playing solitaire until work. Set my alarm for 12:30pm or hit the snooze 30 times and go back to sleep.

12:30pm - After rolling around for an hour finally get up and get ready for work. Before work I usually walk to the convenience store and buy Kimbap and hope that is not filled with something disgusting.

1-2pm - Sit at my desk and read email and Facebook messages while drinking coffee and water from the machine.

2pm - 4pm- Help out in a few classes by reading various sentences and then repeating them. On really bad days I have to sing or do the hokey pokey or both.

4pm - Usually have lunch upstairs. This usually consists of rice and a half-dozen side dishes. I try to sample each dish but tend to veer away from the ones that have eyes that are still intact. Also, Koreans have a tendency of masking squid legs as noodles so beware!

5pm - There is a rush of various kids coming in. The three boys come along with a few girls of the same age. The girls walk by and say hello to me having briefly peeled my eyes away from Facebook. The three boys say hello only if they are physically dragged over and forced to. Also the girl called Clara comes in and usually plops herself down in the chair next to me and tries to talk to me. She almost never understands me and also sometimes forgets who I am and will speak Korean but she is a hoot. On the day of this writing they did not give us lunch and I skipped my Kimbap and was beginning to die from starvation (or at least get a bit honery). In walks Clara with a bag of food. She gave me half a jam sandwich and I didn’t even pretend to be polite and refuse it. So we sat eating our (her) sandwiches while everyone else worked. I felt kind of bad being the teacher that takes a students dinner but she did have two sandwiches and I didn‘t take any of her yogurt…

6pm - Teach a class or two and then return to Facebook to talk to Kelly who wakes up horribly early in the States.

7pm - Eat a dinner much the same as lunch. Once there were two cold chicken nuggets in the side dish container. I was pretty stoked about this. Also, sometimes they put out the sesame oil and a kind of spicy and thick ketchup that adds a whole ton of flavor to the rice.

8 - 9pm - Sit around on the computer (read: Facebook or the T&G website) while everyone else writes out progress reports.

9:10pm - Go home or, if I am still hungry, go buy another Kimbap or ramen.

9:10:45pm - Get home, perhaps drink a beer or two (or eight) while reading or studying. Currently, I am reading The Silmarillion despite the fact that I have tried a few times before but never made it through it. I already finished The Hobbit and I will read the rest of the trilogy after that. Hey, just being abroad does not cure nerdiness! I am also learning Hangul, the alphabet and written characters of Korea. I don’t have much hope in learning the language in just a year, but at least knowing the letters and pronunciation should improve my quality of life. As it is signs and menus appear to be written in Wingdings.

12 - 1am - After showering, go to sleep while listening to people talk as they walk into the building. The other day I heard Americans! I must find them and make them be my friends!