bleach

for some reason i never feel like bathrooms are clean unless bleach is involved. i don't think my parents instilled that in me... i'm not sure where it came from. but i do know that i love the smell of bleach because it smells clean.

that being said... i just doused my bathroom in bleach. yay!

hopefully the fumes are not slowly poisoning me and madeline...

praise the Lord for bleach!

good morning!

so... i just found out that the finals that i thought were over yesterday are still going on today, so i don't have classes all morning! wahoo!

AND i found out that i don't have any classes next tuesday for the same reason! DOUBLE wahoo!

except then my co-teacher seemed upset with me because i didn't go to her first when asking a question about my pay. oops! now i know...

praise the Lord for final exams! (and that i don't have to take them anymore haha!)

currently obsessed

i love bill.

here goes nothin...

i'm about to attempt a new strategy with my devil first graders... update in 45 minutes.

update: it worked... kinda. they were still crazy, but at least they were yelling the answers instead of just yelling things in korean and running away! it was funny because the one girl that is usually the worst started crying because i didn't give her team points every time. she was better than ever about participating though... then i found out how important the stickers were to her when i saw that she stole all of her teammates' from them! little turd.
anyway... hopefully with repetition this will be what works.

praise the Lord for stickers.

two things

so yesterday at my middle school i learned that they built a new cafeteria. haha... i had no idea they were building one, but all of a sudden there it was! anyway... i was confused because the old cafeteria seemed just fine (the new one is nice, but it's not that much nicer). and mrs. oh (my co-teacher who i just want to hug all the time. she and her husband declared themselves my korean parents. i love them) told me that they are just tearing down the old cafeteria! what?!
so today, during our walk, i told jenny (my favorite co-teacher, who i work with at the elementary school on wednesdays and take a walk with every week because neither one of us ever has anything to do in the afternoon) about it. she explained that every year the POE (provincial office of education) sets a certain budget for each school. if the school doesn't use the entire budget, they get however much they didn't use cut from the next year's budget (so if they get $1000 but they only use $900, the next year they would only get $900). so at the end of the year all the schools rush to use up whatever money they have left so that they get their full budget the next year. it's funny because i've noticed a lot of construction projects going on, but i didn't realize why until she told me that. it's pretty stupid. and it's funny the things they choose to use the money for (pretty sure there are a lot of things jocheon could use more than a new cafeteria!). anyway... it baffles the mind. but, like they do here, i don't ask questions. i just go with it. that was random, but i found it interesting. i think it's a good example of the weird little things that go on here...
and this is a funny thing that happened a couple weeks ago that i remembered today:
so jocheon (my middle school) went on a field trip a couple weeks ago (i actually took pictures and have more stories to tell about that... so that will be a different post). for the first part of the day, i hung out with mrs. kim (one of my main co-teachers there. she's somehow completely intimidating and completely awesome at the same time. i still can't figure it out). anyway... so we weren't really talking about anything in particular, when all of a sudden she tells me this little anecdote:

"there are three things that you will never find on jeju--beggars, thieves, and fences."

it was completely random, but interesting. i didn't really think much of it until later in the afternoon, when i was hanging out with mrs. oh. we were looking at pictures in this museum when, again out of nowhere, she told me this:

"there are three things that jeju has too much of--wind, rocks, and women."

what?! did they get together and plan to inform me of these little sayings or something? it was so weird! but good to know i guess! and it was especially funny because normally people would say them together, but neither one told me both. they each just told me one. (by the way, the women part is because jeju traditionally has a lot of fishermen--makes sense--and they would be gone all the time fishing so the island would be overrun by women. this is also why jeju women are considered stronger than any other korean women... they have always had to take care of themselves while their husbands were away.). here ya go: read about it
anyway... both of those are super random stories. and they have nothing to do with me or my life here... just jeju information. sorry!
anyway... i like it.
praise the Lord for putting me on jeju!

flash

today i taught my middle schoolers about flash mobs.
i started off with this video:



the best part of the whole thing was when the students would hear the song start and every single one would sing along.
the things these kids know and like never ceases to baffle me.
love it.

currently obsessed

i can't get this effing song out of my head.
i love it though.
contrary to what you might think walking around here, there is actually lots of good korean music that is not kpop.