A look into my daily life.

This Thursday was the kid's last day in Kindergarten. They're starting Elementary school. I took my camera and took some videos to give you a glimpse of my current life. Prepare to have your mind blown.

Mind-Numbing Inefficiency

Hello. Well, February is winding down. My contract is winding down. Hopefully, my visa renewal goes as planned and my second year at this school will begin March 2nd. March second will also be the end of 14 months, the end of a completed year at my current school, and the beginning of my final 12 months. A year if you will. Confused? Me too. Usually.

Things are good. Our performance went really well-the kids did a great job and we're all super stoked that it's over. We have been talking about schedules and such for next year, and it's getting exciting. Remember- the Korean school year starts at the start of March. I do not know why-it just does.

It's been great having Peter here. He's doing a good job-the kids love him- the parents love him-the teachers love him-Sophia and I love him-it's good. Sophia and I can remember that we do like work again.

Socially, I've been hanging out with Ian, Sophia, and Peter. We have a lot of fun together. Sophia is officially leaving June 2nd, and I'm a little upset about that. Anyone want a job?

I have decided to put a few pictures up, but first I'm going to show you two lists. One of the things I say multiple times a day to the kids and one of the things we hear the most from them. Daily.

From the mouths of babes:

• Teacher! I am pinished! (f and p are interchangeable)
• Teacher! Liam me hit! (Liam was an example name; this means Liam hit me.)
• Teacher! Molly Korean! (Molly was an example name; this means Molly is speaking Korean)
• Teacher! Me water!
  
• Katie Teacher bad.
• Katie Teacher me no like.
• I love Katie Teacher.
• NO!
• AHHHHHHHHHHH!
• Teacher! See please! (Teacher, please look at what I am doing)
• Help me please, teacher.
• Meat more please. (lunch time)
• (Anyword) spelling is what?
• (Anyword) is where?
• This is what?
  

Teachers:

• Sit down please.
• What is this?
• Where is (anyword)?
• How do you spell (anyword)?
• Sit down.
  
• No running please.
• English only!
• Are you speaking Korean?
• SIT DOWN!
• Stay in your seat please!
• Who's sitting properly?
• Walking, walking, walking.
• No touching!
• No kissing!
• SIT DOWN!
• No Korean please.
• Yay! Story time!/LTR time!/Drama time!/English Village time!
• You're making me crazy!
• (any word) spelling is what?! I don't know...
• teacher water?! I don't know...
• Why?
• What did you say?
• Why are you running?
• Is this play time or class time?
• SIT DOWN!

Got the picture? Can you see me here? Sometimes, if I stop and think about it, it blows my mind too. Don't worry.

Robot Class boys at Performance. I think this was their music costume. Alex 2. Samuel. Alex 1.

Welcome to Puppy Class, Peter! His 3rd day of work-field trip.

Kevin. I have no idea where he got this face from.

Big John in The R.O.K!

Big Man. Small Tunnel.

Lunar New Year week rundown.

Sunday: Ian and Katie prepare to go to the airport to pick dad up from the airport. Upon a last minute email check, we discover that Katie has confused the time differences and he is still in San Fransisco.
Monday: Katie goes to work and is excitedly waiting for a phone call from her father. Dad makes his way to Katie's house! It is super exciting. We go to dinner and dad tastes his first Korean meal-pork galbi and kimchi. He enjoys it.
Tuesday: Dad and Katie wake up at 4:30a.m. Dad and Nick's mom go to the DMZ. Katie goes to work. Dad is excited to see the DMZ. Katie is sad about work. They regroup for dinner with Katie's amazing friends-BigGuyBill, James, Ian, Elise, Sophia, and Peter. Dad gets to try beef galbi, soju, a makli bar, Korean pancakes, and a favorite foreigner bar. They get home at 4:30 a.m. Dad is awake and busy for 24 hours. He liked it.
Wednesday: Dad and Katie are moving slow in the morning. They make the journey to Suwon with Sophia where they meet SaraBrown for lunch. Then to the Suwon fortress to meet up with Ian and see some stuff in Suwon. After an hour or so on the wall, Sophia and SaraBrown head home. Ian, Dad, and Katie wander through the streets of Suwon and manage to get lost. Eventually make their way back to the station where they sit down for beer and chicken. We decide to continue our evening of fun and go to Ian's town for "one drink". Katie has entirely too many Long Island Iced Teas and can't move on Thursday.
Thursday: This is the official New Year. With the thought process that everything will be closed for the holiday and we're tired, we chill out all day. Watch movies, walk around, show dad my school, go to the grocery store, and just laze around.
Friday: Dad and Katie wake up and head up to the Korean War Museum in Seoul. They learn a lot about every war Korea has been involved in. Ever. Learn a lot. See a lot. They then make the journey home and go to beef and pork galbi in Suji. Dad meets more friends: Yoanna, Sabine, Ian, James, and Peter. We have a fun dinner complete with beer and soju. The next step of the night was not Katie's idea and Dad experiences a norebang, Korean singing room, karokee. Dad and friends love it. The next leg of the journey is the Underground. It was a pretty standard night there ending with Ian, Dad, Sunny (bartender) and Katie in a 5 a.m. dart game and Sunny requesting that we go home. Ian, Dad, and Katie sit in a park, have meaningful conversation and beers and then notice that the buses are running again and we should go home. We get home and go to bed at 6:30.
Saturday: Wake up at 2. Move slowly and lazily. Eventually go into to Suji for dukgalbi with Elise and Sophia. We then have a few drinks at Batman bar. Then hometime for a movie and to check email to see how Little Man is doing at Regionals.
Sunday: Little Man got 3rd! Yay! We pack Dad up, go for a walk and Korean pizza and send Dad on his way.

Recap: it was a great week. I think Dad got a good taste of Korea. He met and seems to like my friends, and they like him. We walked a lot and I tried to make sure Dad got to try all of my favorite foods. It was a fantastic week and I'm sad that he left. I'm posting a few pictures, but Dad has a ton more that I'm sure he'd like to share with you if you ask nicely.

I'm not looking forward to this week at work. I have some administrative nonsense to deal with concerning my future as well as a performance the 15th that we are trying to get ready for. I'm betting on a pretty stressful week. IN OTHER NEWS! Peter has been here and working. And it has been fantastic! The kids love him, the parents love him, the teachers love him. Sophia and I have been working on making him our new best friend and he really likes that. So yay!

Dad at the DMZ-3rd tunnel.
D is for Dale!

First night-Makli Bar

On the Suwon Wall.

Desperado in the norebang. Dad, Peter, Ian, James.

Dukgalbi on Dad's last night. Notice the chopsticks?

The kids are bummed about not getting to meet Dad, so we took a picture of him in front of my school to show them.

Good news!

I don't really have much to say about life in Korea. Work is the same. It's still fun. I still like it. I do have 2 exciting things to share though. First, Peter, our new teacher should be here by the end of next week, so hopefully life will slow down a little bit for Sophia and I. Second, DAD'S COMING TO VISIT ME!! February 2,3,4 is the Lunar New Year, so we have some time off. It hit me that it might be a good time for Dad to come. So I made a suggestion and he agreed! Yay! I'm very excited. The big news here is that Dad is missing Wrestling Regionals to make this journey. That's unheard of.This was Rex's last day. He and Molly were playing with teacher's face. He didn't leave my side all day. I miss him, but life is a lot easier in Robot class without his shenanigans.

So it was a pretty good week. The kids did good. I was lucky enough to get a lot of Sophia time! We found a Mexican restaurant! We stuffed ourselves with nachos and fajitas. It was beautiful. Friday night, Ian, Sophia and I went to dinner at our favorite galbi place. We then decided that it was time to see Sunny at Underground. The night went in the normal direction from there. We laughed a lot and it was fun to hang out with Phia again.

Some other exciting news is that SaraBrown has returned to the ROK. I haven't seen her yet, but I'm excited!

Today, I'm going to show you pictures of my friends. Not the kids. The kids haven't done anything cute to photograph. Although, I do have a quote. Justin, 10 years old, the boss' son. "Justin, what do you want to be when you grow up?" "I want to be a president, like Obama. Or a singer. Teacher, can Obama sing?" "I do not know." "I think he is dancer good. I like Obama."

Elise. Canada.

BigGuyBill. America.

SaraBrown. Pittsburgh.

Yoanna. Korea.

Sophia. D.C

Ian. Canada.

Katie. (me)Indiana.

One Year

Happy 2011!! I have officially been in the ROK for one year. 14 months til I come home! Heyoo!

It is Sunday night, the last night of vacation. Back to work tomorrow. Yay. Breaks always make me think that as much as I enjoy my job, I really like not working.

I didn't really do anything awesome over break. I slept a lot, I went to the post office, watched some movies and t.v, read, hung out with Sophia and her family, hung out with Ian, hung out with Elise, hung out with Yoanna, Sabine, and James, slept, played and lost a lot of games.

For New Years, Yoanna, Sabine, and I went to Ian's for dinner and Nintendo Wii. Then we went to a bar and played some darts and pool. It was pretty laid back but I thought it was a fun way to bring in the new year.

I am now 25 Korean age. 23 in real life.

Some pictures for you to admire.

Sophia Teacher during our first Christmas Party.

Me and Erin.

Happy 2011!! Yoanna, Me, Sabine, Ian.

Happy Boxing Day!

I don't know what Boxing Day means. Merry Christmas! I hope you had a wonderful holiday weekend! I'm pretty pumped for 2011, I don't know about you, but I'm not that sad to be moving on from December. This month sort of kicked my ass. I've been an expat for 51 weeks. Next Sunday will officially be my one year mark. Yay. 14 months to go. Yay.

Let's see. This past week we had a birthday party and 2 Christmas parties, sort of. On Thursday after school the teachers dressed up in Santa suits and went to four housing places. We sang and danced and Santa gave all the kiddos presents. They loved it. We were cold. Then on Friday, we did Christmas type activities including a newspaper "snowball" fight and crafts. Then we ate lunch early and had the "Christmas Party" which entailed trying to keep everyone in their seats and eating a lot of junk food. With our elementary kids, we watched movies and ate pizza. Pretty fun.

For Christmas Eve, I went to Ian's and made him watch White Christmas. We skyped our families and went to dinner and to a bar for a bit. Christmas morning, we did some more skyping then went to see Harry Potter with some orphans. After the movie we went back to the orphanage and had dinner. I wish I could give you more details about that whole situation, but I can't really. I don't really know how I got into it and don't really know what to say about it. I do feel pretty good about it I guess. It was strange.

This week, I am NOT in Thailand. I don't know what I'm going to do. I need a haircut and I need to go to the post office. That's all I have.

Other big school news is that Rex will no longer be attending our hagwon. (English kindergarten) His mom has some issues with some teachers at school and just decided that Rex was finished. I'm pretty sad about that.

Still working on getting a new teacher here as soon as possible. That's been fun. I'm the go between for my boss and the new guy. I feel like it's sort of counter productive considering that 1. I barely have my shit together and 2. I came to Korea as a result of the following Google search : Jobs in Korea. So hopefully it will all work out. I'm frustrated with it all though and am just ready for 2011. Yay.

I always wonder about breaks. It seems like every year that I can easily recall, especially college and now working at a school, that the week leading up to break is always terrible and break gets here just in time to keep me from going off the deep end. My question is, if break wasn't coming, would things be as terrible? If they were, how would I recover? Do they just get bad because you know its almost over? Does that make sense at all?

Enjoy the holidays! 5 days of 2010 left to go! Woah. Skype me. kadale09. Email me. Facebook me. I love you! I miss you!

The Boy with the Golden Fingernails

안녕하세요!! (That says hello...an-yang-ha-say-yo)

By now you have seen my amazing video and may be thinking to yourself, "Katie, what the F!?" Let me explain. To be fair this has the potential to be a long and mixed up post. I'm currently dealing with more emotions than I am used to dealing with and it's messing with the reasoning portion of my brain I think.

So as you may recall, Jason, my close friend and co-worker, returned to America for his best friend's wedding and a week with family. He left on Friday afternoon. On Monday night, he called me on Skype and asked me to call his girlfriend, Carly, and have her get on Skype because he missed her. I did and it did not connect. My phone only works about 50% of the time, so I told him he'd after to get someone else to do it. Ten minutes later he called me back yelling "did you know?!" I said "know what?" Turns out Carly had a panic attack about the tensions on the peninsula and made a mid-night run back to Canada on Sunday night. Midnight runs are when the foreign teachers leave the country with no notice, breaking their contracts and essentially black-listing themselves from the country. So Carly is gone. One Thailand-trip partner gone.

During the week Jason started to freak out about returning. The US media and his family's fears were getting to him and he didn't know what to do. Remember, Jason, Carly, and I were going to Thailand together for Christmas and Jason and I were re-signing our contracts for another year. The day before he was supposed to get on the plane to come back to Korea, he flipped out and we talked for a while. I was attempting to be rational and convince him to come back to Korea and at least finish his current contract, which is up in March. He went to bed with the promise to contact me asap with his choice. At this point I was a wreck. This call woke me up on Saturday and my day was shot. So I called Ian and told him he needed to make me laugh all day. Hence the movie.

I went to Ian's and we watched movies and TV and drank vodka and the Legendairy movie was created. First I banged on the guitar, then I banged vodka bottles on the ground, then I whistled, then we did the jokes. He mashed all those recordings together and we put it to the video. There was zero editing, which is why we are laughing and talking at the same time. Sunday morning, I checked my messages and we thought we were in the clear. Ian and I were watching soccer when I got a call from Sophia. Jason stayed in Canada. He made the flight from Texas to Canada and couldn't talk himself back on the plane. She was crying. To be fair, Jason and I decided not to tell her about his debates because she was already dealing with some boyfriend drama, so she was totally sneak attacked.

I came back home and Sophia and I cleaned out Jason's apartment and called our boss. This week at work was terrible. Our friend, Elise, works in Suji (the town I used to live in) and she works at her school from 2-8, so she is able to fill in for the morning classes. This has been a god send. Sophia and I are working a lot more and it has been very hectic.

On top of the work stress, I am very confused about how to feel about one of my best friends bailing on me like this. I'm hurt and mad and sad and frustrated and exhausted.

I canceled the Thailand trip. Ian looked into going with me, but his plane ticket would have been too expensive.

We got a new teacher signed up and he should be here in a month or so. He actually worked in Suji and has been home for a few months looking for a new job.

I have been promoted to head teacher, which essentially means that I am really good at charades. I am the go between for the Korean teachers and foreign teachers. It's really just cool because now I can put something sweet on my resume.

This weekend I met a Chinese-Korean man who went to Purdue. Small world.

Because of the stress and the weather, Sophia and I are both fighting some fairly annoying colds. Lots of snot.

I may be moving into Jason's apartment. It's bigger. But I'm fairly lazy, so I'm not sure.

Rex had his fingernails painted gold all week. That's why that's the title of this post. It's also going to be the title of my life in Korea, Volume II. Volume I being "Knitting with Chopsticks".

Sophia and I found a gym in our apartment complex. It has like 6 treadmills, 3 bikes, and some weight machines. We signed up for 3 months. It was about 60 dollars. I have only been once so far because I was so tired all week. But it felt good to lift and use some muscles. I'm going to try to add it to my daily routine at least 3 days a week. We shall see.

Just to be clear, I do not think a war will happen. I have registered with the embassy and have asked my co-teachers to promise to tell me when it is time to leave. Noone here is worried and Marco, my Wooster track friend who has been here for 3 years and speaks Korean has promised that there is nothing to worry about. He also promised that if something does happen, we will be able to get out and he will get me before he leaves. So, I'm not worried. You shouldn't be worried. Things are fine.

Line 1- KAtie Dale
Line 2- Green Tower Building 495-3
Line 3- Jukjeon - 1 Dong
Line 4- Yongin-Si
Line 5- Gyeonggi-Do
Line 6- South Korea
Line 7/Zip Code line- 448-803

I hope you're all doing well. I love you. I miss you. It doesn't feel like Christmas at all. It's strange being away from family and friends. I love my friends here, but I have known them for 11 months at most. It's all weird. Kisses!