Bored at work Tuesday

On Sunday I went to a fantastic park that Mr Beak told me about. It was only one train station north of Osan, and it only cost a dollar to get in. It took me two and a half leisurely hours to walk around and included plenty of themed gardens, like a topiary garden, hedge maze, bonsai garden, fernery, tropical house, insect house, and even a small art gallery. I went primarily to see the autumn leaves, and I wasn’t disappointed! The weather was sunny and warm, and I had a very nice time!

 

Some of the trees were really amazing.

I think these were supposed to be birds.

The whole park was very pretty.

And they let you cross the streams on stepping stones!

Some of the leaves very very vivid.

This is some sort of ferm/moss garden.

It was a beautiful day.

I loved this bonsai's shape.

All the shades!

Then I came back to Osan to do my grocery shopping. I went to E-Mart because they have both guinea pigs and a Baskin Robbins. I had a new flavor – Peanut Rocket – which was lumps of chocolate coated peanut butter in vanilla ice cream. It was amazing.

 

Work has been very slow. I’ve taken to reading free ebooks on my work computer. I’ve got Pride and Prejudice lined up, but right now I’m reading ‘How to Analyze People on Sight’… it was one of the most popular downloads, so I got it out of interest. It was written in 1921, and is pretty hilarious at points. Memorable lines include:

 

“Because it is difficult to turn their heads, extremely fat people seldom are aware of what goes on behind them”

 

And:

 

“By the time Chubby gets into the parlor and passes a few of her sunny remarks the wheels are oiled for the evening and they don't run down till the last plump guest has said good night. So it is no wonder that fat people spend almost every evening at a party. They get so many more invitations than the rest of us!”.

It’s political incorrectness and insistence that you can tell everything about a person from their body type, and that this is 100% irrefutable scientific fact. Make for fun reading. They did have one good thing to say:

 

“Human life faces the same alternatives that confront all other forms of life—of adapting itself to the conditions under which it must live or becoming extinct. … you can move from your city or state or country to another, but after all that is not much of an advantage. For though you may improve your situation slightly you will still find that in any civilized country the main elements of your problem are the same” (Benedict and Benedict, 1921).

 

Well, I’m not sure I have a ‘problem’, but certainly, I am exactly the same person with the same struggles and worries in Korea as I was in NZ. I have a somewhat insatiable need to be planning for ‘the next dream’, and am always somewhat discontent with what I have, thinking I will be happy if I can just get to what is around the corner. Korea was what was ‘around the corner’ for so long, and now that I am here, I can see it’s just another place for my same old habits to play out J Haha, not all that surprising, really. However, one of my big things about coming to Korea was hoping to meet some new people.. Now, there is nothing wrong with my friends at home, they are great! But, travelling and meeting new people sounded so good. However – where are they? I thought there’d be tons of expats here, all keen to get together and make new friends. I’ve found it a little trickier than that so far, especially living just a tad too far from Seoul. I have not exhausted my options yet, though. I will keep trying.

 

So, I need to work on making friends and being happy with what I have. Sadly, my brain keeps coming up with an awesome new plan each week, all of which I actually want to do. Perhaps I need to work on being happy with what I have, but also working towards what I want to do. This is uber tough, because the working towards things almost always carries an added bonus of ‘I’ll be happier when I get there’. Isn’t that why we do things in the first place? To make ourselves happy?

 

Anywho, my current new fad is an awesome 28 day trip I found on the Intrepid travel website that goes from Cairo, Egypt, to Istanbul, Turkey. Both are places I’ve wanted to visit for a while. I’m thinking if I can stay in Korea a few months more, budget and save, then I can go to the Middle East for a month. It will be spring by then, so I’ll have had all the snow and stuff in Korea, and probably be ready for some Egyptian sun J.

 

Also, I want guinea pigs. Not right now, obviously, but sometime once I settle down.

 

I’m also working on plans for the weekend. I’m going to go and explore the Hwaseong Fortress in Suwon, and because it’s so close, I’m going to put an invite on Facebook for anyone to come with me. I’ve but a few sort of ‘does anyone want to get together’ things on there, and the response rate has been low. Like only one person at a time. The person who responded to my last one sounded super unenthusiastic, and looked like a weirdo! I know that’s not fair, but they were also much older than me, married, and looked rather odd. Nothing ended up happening anyway, as they never replied to me. I’m thinking that perhaps a concrete invite might go down better – like meet here at this time and we’ll go do this. Give it a go, anyway – and if no one wants to come I can still go alone.

 

*     *      *

 

Yesterday’s afterschool class, for which only three students turned up, was fun for me, but not particularly successful. I was teaching a lesson I’ve done before with a variety of students, of different levels and ages, and it’s always been a good one. We talk about crocodiles – an unusual subject that usually get people a bit interested, even if just because it’s a relief from talking about jobs, or foods, or whatever. So, the kids (all three of them) did get interested. They came up with some good stuff, and one even knew the word ‘reptile’. So then we moved on to discuss a poem. Students normally complain the poem is too hard because it has some tricky words like ‘treacherous’ and ‘guile’, but these words are easy to simplify, and the message of the poem is very simple “beware the crocodile, he’s a bit evil”. We got this far with much prodding from me. They’d tell me the right answer to my question, we’d go over it, then I’d ask them the same question, changed slightly, just to check understanding, and they’d have lost it again. Like, we all agreed the poem was about a nasty crocodile –they told me!- and discussed what words showed us this (‘crafty’, ‘dishonest’, etc.). Then, I’d ask, “so is this poem telling us crocodiles are nice or nasty?” And I’d get total blankness. Obviously, something was amiss – I am missing something here!

 

The next task was to copy the style and grammar of the poem, only to write it about nasty humans who kill crocodiles. We had a good discussion of how humans can hurt crocs – they came up with good ideas like hunt them for food, turn them into handbags, pollute their water, drive boats in the rivers, eat their fish. So, they were at least thinking in the right direction. Then it came time to write, they had multiple samples of both the original poem and other student’s work, but they choked. One kid did ok, and wrote a short poem, and the other two wouldn’t write a thing. I ask what was wrong and they told me they were stuck for words. I said it was ok to use a Korean to English dictionary if they were really stuck. One guy still did nothing… he just sat there looking helpless, even when the other guy tried to help him. The girl looked like she was really getting into it, until I realized she was just translating word for word from Korean. She ended up handing in this:

 

Beware the hate you human

Who swear to you the behind you don’t know.

You smile to above mentioned

There to not be deceived.

And the human is the smarter

So talk to other You are shortcoming.

 

Ever meeting and socialize to nice humans

and I’m you are come to best friend and

nice human.

 

You can kind of see where she’s coming from, but she clearly has no idea it makes no real sense in English. Did I aim this activity too high? I don’t think so. They just had to string a couple of sentences together about evil humans. Maybe more examples of correct language? I actually think the problem is that they are completely unaccustomed to independent language creation. In class they are always parroting or only slightly modifying existing examples. Maybe this is something to work on more rather than shy away from because it was difficult. Anyway, I’m attempting the same lesson with hell class this afternoon, only I’m going to make to writing a group activity rather than a singular one. I may need ice cream by the end of today :D

 

I just found out I don’t have to have a convo class with hell class on Friday this week, so that’s nice. I’ve got five hours of free time at work today, hence the long blog post. We’ve been learning the song ‘Angels’ by Robbie Williams in the 3^rd grade class and they totally surprised me by asking if they could sing it! I thought we’d just got through the words, listen to it, fill in the gaps in their lyrics, listen again, blah blah, but they wanted to sing! So they did J. Mr Beak kind of indicated it would be my lesson, but again, I was just used as an accent model. Boo!

*      *     *

Ok, so I taught hell class the lesson and it went great! I think they actually did better with the discussions than the higher level class!? Only four students came, but one girl was really on top of things and wrote a great poem. The others struggled big time with the writing, even though they had clear models to follow, but oh well. So, that was a nice end to a super boring day. I really 100% love teaching, but this job is driving me crazy. I spend all day doing nothing and then get to actually teach for less than an hour and a half four times a week. :(

Saturday's cancelled because of rain.

I had big plans this weekend, but the constant rain has ruined them! I left for Seoul last night so that I could get to Soyosan (a mountain) by 10.45 this morning to climb it with a bunch of other expats to see the autumn leaves. I've decided to try to save a bit more money than I have been, so I booked a dormitory room for the first time ever. So, not only did I sleep poorly, but it rained all night and all morning. I got up early and go ready to go, I even went to the subway station, thinking 'oh it's just a little rain'. Then I checked the weather forecast at the station (they have all these electronic info map things with a bunch of maps, weather, etc., etc.), and it just said it was going to be cold and wet. I only had one set of clothes with me, and was over an hour and a half from Osan (more like 3+ hours if I got to Soyosan), so I didn't go. I would assume the others didn't either. Who climbs a mountain in the rain? Not me. If it's fine tomorrow, I'm going to go to a big park a bit closer to home to try and check out the leaves.

Instead of a mountain, I went to the Seoul art gallery. I've been before and I really enjoyed it (and it's 100% free), but the exhibits today were weird and creepy. Some are I will never understand. Like the type of art where you don't know if it's actually stuff on display or stuff that hasn't been cleaned up. I was only there for about 20 minutes. It was still raining. I was tired, and freezing, so I just got on the train and came home. Then I had a nap, chatted to Matt on MSN, and am now trying to decide what to do with my evening.

1) I really like tuna samgak kimbap (a little like a triangular sushi package). I had it for lunch, and it costs about a dollar.

2) I had some really nice biscuits from the convenience store. most of the biscuits here that I've tried have been soft, more like muffin in biscuit shape, but these were good and crunchy and chocolate.

3) I had a very nice chat with my baby bro.

4) I got on the right train to some home and didn't have to transfer.

5) I'm reading Harry Potter again and I like it.

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.

Mystery Cakes Wednesday

Well, I’ve been living in Osan and working at Namsa middle school for two weeks now. Things have certainly settled down a lot. The kids are still polite and say hello, but are not falling over themselves to say ‘hello teacher’. Though, they still do talk to me in the halls, at lunch and after school.

However, my view of the students as polite, well disciplined, and eager to learn was completely shattered during my afterschool class yesterday. I know I’ve only got about 3 months teaching experience, but I have taught a lot of different students at a lot of different levels during that time, and this was the worst class I have ever had. They were sullen and unresponsive, talked straight over the top of me constantly, refused to do the work I set them, refused to talk to each other in English, and just overall sucked. They weren’t rude to me, as in obnoxious, but they were very disrespectful, and made teaching them very unpleasant. I’ve just got to keep going though. If the behavior keeps up, I’m going to let the ones who want to leave go home. One of the boys kept asking me if it was home time yesterday, and next time I think I’ll just say ‘yeah, if you want to. I’m going to stay here and teach, but feel free to leave’. Not really sure I’m allowed to do this, but I’m a firm believer in it’s better to ask forgiveness than permission in some cases J.

Another illusion of Korean culture that was shattered yesterday – the strict hierarchy and extreme delicacy required so that no one ‘loses face’. I’ve read over and over that no matter what you should not get visibly angry or agitated with people, especially your boss, of people older/ ranked higher than you. Yesterday, however, one of the ladies in the office here had a huge screaming match with the vice-principal. I was sitting at my desk when they started ‘talking’, and was thinking ‘Man, it always sounds like Korean and Chinese people are angry with each other when they talk. Our cultures have such a different way of communicating”. Lol, and then they got louder and more and more angry until they were full out yelling, then the lady stormed out and slammed the door. So, they were actually angry J. Everyone completely ignored it though, so, so did I.

I have a lot of spare time at my desk! I have fully planned the next four weeks of afterschool classes, and have two – three weeks after that partially planned. I don’t want to bother going too far ahead because a) I’ll probably leave, and b) with the way things are run around here the schedule/class/what I’m supposed to do/everything could change at the drop of a hat. So, I figure four weeks is enough to plan at a time. Now though, I don’t have too much to go on with, though I could find thing if I want. I like to make it at least look like I’m doing English related work though, so I don’t go on Facebook, or plan holidays, or research guinea pigs at work J.

The best part of my day is school lunch time. I wait every day to see what weird and usually tasty thing the sweet lunch ladies have made. Because I’m a teacher I get first dibs on the food too – and I usually get to serve myself, which means I can have as much as I want. Today we had tteokbokki and I actually liked it. It wasn’t too sweet or spicy, and the rice cake things were small enough so they weren’t huge gluggy masses. There was also yummy battered chicken drumsticks, which I only took one of, but I should have gotten two! I had to eat it with chopsticks and a spoon, but I covertly watched how the other teachers did it and copied them, and got on just fine. All in all, a very tasty lunch – and no spam in sight! They really like spam here… you should see the bumper packs at the supermarket. There must be like 20 cans of spam taped together for a discount price. Ew.

Speaking of the supermarket, they sell stuff with weird add-ons. Like some of the stuff has other stuff taped to it as a promotion. Like buy this, and you get what’s taped on fo free. Often they are completely unrelated! I’ve seen normal ones like ham with free mustard, or shampoo with free soap, but the other day I say beer with a free pack of 4 toothpastes! Not just one, but four full sized tubes of toothpaste. With beer. Because what do you want to do after drinking your beer? Clean your teeth!

 

So, I helped teach three classes today, and all three were reading lessons. I had to read each reading aloud, bit by bit so the students could repeat after me multiple times. And that was it. It took maybe 15 minutes at the beginning of each class, and then I had to sit and do nothing while Mr Baek spoke in Korean. It is better than sitting at my desk, though. This pretty much sucks donkey balls. And no one likes that.

*       *        *

Ok, today's after school class was much better. They are the slightly older kids, and I have them every second day, alternating with the class from hell. Today's class is awesome. They make me feel like I really want to be a teacher. They're responsive, enthusiastic, and today I actually saw a couple of the kids improve in their writing and speaking, and I managed to get everyone involved and speaking by the end of the class, and correctly using the target language. It's like the angel class and the devil class! Yesterday's class was so awful! I'll just have to work on them.

And after school, I went to put my stuff away in my desk to go home for the day and some mystery person left me a pack of two mini-cakes! They were yummy! I think it was probably Chloe, the lovely, but shy, lady who sits across from me, but she wasn't there so I couldn't ask her. Whoever it was, it was lovely :)

Plans Monday

I went to my co-teacher's house for dinner last night. His wife didn't speak any English, so I was a bit worried that it might be really awkward, but the evening was actually really nice. They'd gone to a lot of trouble and made me spaghetti, and all these other bits and pieces including pork schnitzel, very yummy capsicum rice-paper rolls, chicken wraps, and a salad. It wasn't at all Korean, but it was one of the best meals I've had here. I remembered to take a box of chocolates with me as a gift, because I've read that it's really polite here to take a present when you go to someone's house. I think I did it right. Anyway, then we went for a walk along the river for maybe half an hour, and then Mr Baek dropped me home. The evening was short, I was home by about 7.30, but it was very nice.

One strange thing - they gave me a big glass of milk to drink with my meal. We already had iced tea, but then they gave me this milk. No one else had milk. They didn't ask if I wanted any, they just gave it to me, so I felt compelled to drink it. I have a really hard time drinking milk, so I kind of just held my breath and gulped it down, being careful not to finish it before the end of the meal in case they gave me more! Perhaps they think it's normal for Westerners to drink milk with dinner? Or maybe I looked like I needed milk? Either way, it was very thoughtful :)

So, yesterday afternoon I ended up at the Osan Market again, but this time it was in full-swing. I found out it operates all the time, but is at full size on the days of the month with a '3' or an '8' in them (i.e: 3rd, 8th, 13th, 18th, etc.). Bit of a weird system, but it was a great market. I was really unimpressed when I went last weekend, but yesterday they had everything for sale, including lots of great looking, and slightly cheaper, fruits vegetables, and meat. I will try to do some of my shopping there in the future.

The Osan market was fairly busy on Sunday.

Some sort of kimchi pancakes. I haven't tried them yet.

Great selection of mushrooms, etc.

It's all so fresh looking!

This is a whole lot of dried stuff. I have no idea what it's for.

Big selection of spicy stuff. It even smelled spicy!

So, today I was supposed to start 'really teaching', but it just seemed like a glorified version of last week. My co-teacher constantly interrupts me with Korean translations, or disciplines the kids while I'm talking to them. He also gives them activities to do during 'my' section of the lesson that are vastly different from what I had planned and explains it to them in Korean, so I have no idea what they're doing or why. I can understand that he's been through this same material for years and probably know's it very well, and how to teach it effectively, but it does make me question what my point is in the classroom. Like, why bother having me there and spending all this time and money on me when I'm not really being utilised? Ah well, I'm not here to try to change their system, I'll just have to fit in.

I did have my first after school class. There was only 6 kids, so it was really nice and I could pay attention to all of them. They were grade 3, the oldest in the school, but their English level was so low - way lower than the beginners I had in NZ. What's a bit frustrating is they haven't been taught the 'parts of speech' in English (like what nouns, verbs, prepositions, and stuff) are. So when I say "you're missing a preposition in that sentence", or "you need to use a verb with 'ing' on the end for this answer", they have no idea what I'm talking about. All the instructions given to them by their textbooks or by Mr Baek are in Korean. Perhaps I can start by going back to basics and teaching them about verbs, nouns and such. It should be quick, I'm sure they know it already, they just don't know it in English.

I got home about 6pm and made a huge pot of chicken soup to keep me fed over the next few days. I've made some big plans for the weekend too! I'm planning on going to stay in Seoul for two nights. I really wanted to go and see the autumn leaves this weekend, and there's an expat group going on a mountain hike to do just that, so I've signed up to go along. It would take me about four hours or more to get there straight from Osan - and they leave at 10.45, so I'm going to stay in Seoul on Friday night, go on the hike on Saturday, stay in Seoul that night, and then visit Hongdae, Taco Bell, and the art student's market there on the way home on Sunday. I'm going to book my accommodation in the morning :)

Update on a Sunday

Well, the tail end of my week has been fine. Friday was sports day (or 'P.E. Festival' they called it), and I thought I was going to get to help out, set up, referee, or even play a bit with the kids. However, I had to sit a watch them all and didn't get to do anything. Then my co-teacher, very kindly, made me take about a litre of different traditional Korean medicines and teas for 'the very bad cold' he thinks I have (it's just a regular cold to me). It tasted ok for the most part, but I tipped one small bottle down the drain when he left the room because it was disgusting. I don't think it did anything other than make me really need to pee about 20 minutes later :)

Me and some students on sports day.

I didn't get to see which class won sports day because I had to go back to the hospital and get one of the tests re-done because something had gone wrong with the first one. The second one came out fine (after waiting around for over a hour), so that's all good.

I had an awesome chat to mum and dad on Skype yesterday, and they suggested that a good way for me to view my time here was like I'm on holiday. I guess I am, a working holiday :) So, after talking to home for a couple of hours I went out and caught the train into Seoul. It was a good thing to do because the journey was long and crowded and I didn't have time to dwell on the fact that talking to home just made me want to be there more!

Imagine this so crowded with people they're squished together.

I went to the giant COEX mall in Gangnam. It took me a good two hours to get there, and about three hours to get home again, because I got on the train headed in the wrong direction twice! I just strolled around the mall, looking at some of the shops. There was a Hello Kitty store which sold everything with Hello Kitty on it. I'm not kidding, they even had Hello Kitty toilet rolls. Seriously. There were a bunch of cute stores all together, and in one of them I found some awesome stamps! I bought a few, and an ink pad, to put on student's work (if indeed I actually ever end up teaching them and having work to mark!). I may have to set them work they have to hand in, just so I can use my snazzy stamps :) I also found a sweet stall selling things like sour gummy worms and whatnot, and I bought some. They are one of the few things I've gotten that has tasted like I expect it to! A lot of the food over here (not counting vegetables ad meat), even if you recognise it and think you know what you're buying, it turns out to taste quite different from what I'm used to.

That's a lot of Hello Kitty!

Everything is so cute! It's a cute overload!

Awesome stamps!

For example, after travelling for three hours to get home, it was about 7pm and I was pretty tired. I wanted something a bit healthy for dinner, and as I was walking out of the Osan train station I saw that the stalls were selling cooked sweetcorn on the cob. I bought some and took it home for dinner. I put some butter and salt on my first piece and got ready to bite into my crunch sweetcorn! Only when I did it has the texture of chewy pork rind! You know when you cook a roast pork and some of the skin doesn't crackle, but turns a bit chewy and gooey? Like it sucks on your teeth? Well, this corn was exactly like that! It tasted fine, but man the texture was weird! I'm going to put the rest of it in a chicken soup.

Here's the food stalls at night.

Also while on the train, there was a girl with awesome, pretty, sparkly nails polish, so I bought some on the way home and painted my nails. I haven't had painted fingernails for ages!

Ooooh, pretty!

So, I didn't get home until 7pm. I was planning on going out to an open mic night at a nearby cafe, but not only was I exhausted, but a bunch of the people going to perform had to cancel because they all caught a cold (same one as me??). It's on every Saturday though, so maybe next week or the week after. I'm thinking that next weekend I might go and stay in Seoul for the night. I want to go to the park to see the (reportedly) amazing autumn leaves, and I also want to explore the Hongdae area some more, and perhaps venture into Itaewon. It's too far to travel in and out on both days of the weekend, so if I just sleep in a cheap hostel for the night, that might be a good solution.

Today I'm just going to hang around Osan. I need to clean my apartment, do some cooking and shopping, take some more photos of the area, and then go to dinner at my co-teacher's house.

I have resolved to stop talking about wanting to go home. I still do, but it's not very interesting. I'll know when the time is right to go, so I'll leave it at that, unless it has some bearing on events, or I really need to write about it.