All planned Thursday

I now have all my after school lessons planned up until Christmas. And they're pretty cool, too, if I may say so myself. I've got so much free time at work during the day, I've almost run out of planning to do. I don't feel there's much point in planning beyond Christmas! I might end up doing it out of total boredom, though. I've spent the past hour making Christmas card templates, so that in the time between the end of exams and the Christmas holidays, we can make some cards and practice writing Christmas messages in them. Not to mention colouring. I always have to be careful not to incorporate too much art into my English lessons, as it is always my inclination to make projects arty and creative, because that's what I not only enjoy doing myself, but I love seeing what they student's come up with. However, it's not everyone's cup of tea, and I'm sure they'd get pretty sick of it (plus, it's about SPEAKING not drawing), but Christmas is the perfect excuse to get arty!

So, out of an eight hour work day today, I have been in the classroom for only three hours, and all up I spent only half a hour in total interacting with the kids, and that was once again reading them a story sentence by sentence as they repeated after me. For the rest of the class time I did nothing. Mr Baek spoke to them in Korean. One class he gave a huge lecture about them being so passive in class. It lasted over twenty minutes and cut ten minutes into lunch time. I'm not sure it helped the class. Most of them seemed to sleep through it. After lunch, he spoke at them for the whole 45 minutes, and not a word on English was uttered, but students or teacher. I don't know what he was saying. I don't like to ask in case he thinks I am judging him. Which I am, but I don't want him to know that :).

This is the road to school.

Some trees outside the school gate. Very yellow for autumn.

This is the school.

Teacher's Office.

My desk with the school laptop.

The lunch ladies are my favourite people in the whole school. The rock my socks. Those ladies cook a mean lunch, and are so nice! Today there was a really yummy rice cake and beef stew thing, and fries! The fries were cold and unsalted, but I loved them! I love lunchtime and I love the lunch ladies. Here are some loving pictures of lunch. Every day I wait for lunch, and the after lunch I with it was the period before lunch again, so I could have more lunch. Namsa school lunch + lunch ladies - you make my life at work bearable. I might go insane otherwise. All praise school lunch!

Lunch ladies dishing it up!

The staff lunch table. We get more side dishes.

My fav brown beef thing in the middle. I didn't have soup, hence the empty hole.

Fries! And yummy beef rice stick thing. Again, no soup today.

Students eating.

Lining up for food. As a teacher, I get to push in at the front.

The 'field'. Covered in sand.

You have to take your shoes off and wear sandles inside. These are my snazzy $4 sandels.

The boys play soccer every lunch time.

So, I am setting off tomorrow for my weekend in Seoul! I've also started planning next weekend. I've found that having a big something to really look forward to make the five days in between go quite quickly. Next weekend I'm thinking of going to this gorgeous looking arboretum, which Mr Baek told me about. It's only one subway stop away, and had a ton of themed gardens and stuff. I just hope it's not all dead. All the plats here are starting to look all awful and brown and dead because of the cold. So, hopefully the gardens are kept nice. And then on Sunday I'm thinking I might go to Suwon and visit the Hwaseong fortress there. It's an old fortress wall you can walk around. Not sure how interesting it'll be, not many walls can compare now I've had such an amazing time on The Great Wall, but it's in the area, so I feel I should visit.

I've almost eaten my way through my massive pot of soup. I'm thinking of branching out next week. They sell this meat and marainade combination at the supermarket that looks pretty tasty. Maybe I'll get some of that, chuck in some broccoli (don't know why but I want broccoli), and have it with rice. At home there's no way I'd be happy eating the same thing for dinner all week, but here I don't seem to mind at all, as long at it's quick and tasty. Perhaps the awesomeness of lunch makes me not care about dinner?

This is my kitchen, complete with soup!

This is a lot of soup.

This is my favourite thing in Korea - Popcorn.

Today after school I am going to go to E-Mart, and Lotte Mart to browse, look at the guinea pigs, buy some soap and colouring pencils (for school), and possibly add another Baskin Robbins flavour to my challenge. Did you see? It has it's own page up the top on the left there :). I like wandering around the huge supermarkets here, they are such a novelty. I enjoy marveling at all the wacky things there! And they have EVERYTHING! Except porridge.

Now, I will attempt to start actually doing '5 things' again. I had to stop there for a while, because they were either non-existent, or so pathetic as to make me feel worse (you know, when you're really scraping the bottom of the barrel and have to say things like, 'well, I have two legs', or 'I'm not freezing to death'. I know that would sound horrible to people without legs, or who are freezing to death, and I am actually very greatful (and touch wood!), but you know what I mean. So, today's things:

1) Lunch. Lunch. Lunch! Yum.

2) My down jacket is super warm and I love it.

3) It was sunny outside at lunch time and some of the girls started dancing to the music that was playing. It was cute and funny.

4) I have all my lessons planned.

5) It is Thursday, which means tomorrow is Friday, which is a good thing.

Ok, they are a little bottom of the barrel-ish :D

Sunset in Osan this evening.

On my way to Lotte Mart from the bus stop.