Internet Miracle

I am currently sitting in my apartment, stealing wifi from somewhere and it is actually working! Love it! I had major difficulties at Korean Starbucks this afternoon, I was NOT a happy camper. Not only did my stupid drink cost 5,000 won (like $5) but apparently you have to some sort of ID nonsense and sign up and blah blah blah to get on the internet there. I was pretty furious. I had this whole plan to sit at Starbucks, write emails, do stuff, la de dah but instead it took like, 30 minutes to just find internet to get on and then, after all that mess, my computer had like, 30% battery left. Which was another reason to be angry. You see, I bought an adapter yesterday and guess what! It's not the right kind! I went with a girl that I thought knew what she was talking about when she advised me to buy this one. Lesson learned-pretty much never listen to other people because they're probably a moron. The adapter is actually for Koreans to take with them overseas. It works only if I wedge the plug in between something, or it falls out. Also, my computer can be really temperamental and slow sometimes and it drive me insane. It is constantly updating, scanning or reprogramming something and I have no idea whats going on. Most annoying. And I can't really buy a new one because I am not getting paid until April 7 and every time I turn around I have to pay for something new. A health check up, internet (finally getting it installed Friday!), cough medicine, etc. Plus I went to the Korean dollar tree (won tree?) this weekend and lost my mind. It is exploding with cuteness, I can't take it. I tried to stick to necessities for my apartment, but it was hard with so much cute in my face. Also, turns out, where I live is expensive compared to the rest of Korea since it's a big city. It's cool, lots of stuff, very modern...but very expensive. Boo.

Anyway, I also had a bitching sore throat this weekend, which was not fun at all. I was a pretty sad sack Saturday night. I didn't have anything to make hot water or anything else to help soothe it and it was pretty miserable. I was dying for some hot milk and honey but I had none of that. Honey is pretty expensive here and people are kind of stingy with it, I found out the next day. I'm feeling better now but have since developed a lovely cough to go along with it. I think it's the change in the weather, plus new air and all that. It's sooo freaking cold here! Today it was 19 degrees when I left for work! I really don't remember the last time I was somewhere that cold. Thank GOODNESS someone awesome bought me some winter gear before I left or I would be dying right now.

Today we started setting up our classrooms and all that jazz. I got a little taste of the nonsensical mess that will be this year. I mean, the school is pretty organized as far as curriculum and all that, but it's a very roundabout system and there are some ridiculous practices going on. For instance, each classroom is pretty much set up the same way. Each one has a felt calendar with Velcro so you can move around the dates and some sort of system of smiley and frowny faces to give to good and bad kids. Ok, so when you move rooms, you can just leave that kind of stuff in the room, right? Because it's ALL THE SAME....just like, different colors and shapes. Nope, we had to take the stuff from the old room and move it to the new room and vice versa. Again, it's all the same. And instead of just leaving up the crap like numbers, letters, body parts, etc in the new room, it all had to come down. Makes no sense. And super wasteful because we threw away a lot of the crap that we will, at some point, need again.

Another example. Last week they told me I would have to do a health check sometime this week and stressed that it was really important that I not eat anything before because they had to draw blood. Never heard that, but ok fine. They never said when it was, just this week sometime. This morning, they say, are you ready for your health check? Well, ok, yes, but I ate this morning...no one told me it was today. What? Why did you eat?! You have to go to your health check! What the hell! Also, they asked if I had passport photos to take with me. Again, no one told me I needed such things. Why would I have those?!? Whatever. I feel like this year is going to be a lot of smiling and nodding and just moving on with life. Hopefully I can remember that or I'm going to go insane. Another strange thing-we had a meeting for the teachers this morning, but only the foreign (me, Canadians, Brits, etc) teachers and not the Korean teachers. Which makes zero sense because they are supposed to be co-teachers, not assistants (we have actual assistants that clean up, serve food, pass out papers, etc). Especially later when my co-teacher and I are talking and she is either asking me about things we discussed in the meeting or telling me things we already went over in the meeting. Why we couldn't all be together, I have no idea.

Whatever.

Good thing is, I have some internet in my apartment. I got my health check post-poned until tomorrow and I am feeling a teensy bit better. And, in the event my throat flares up again, I have milk AND a pot to heat it up in. No honey, but I do have some Nutella. For some bad news, my hair looks like total garbage and it's quite depressing. I'm embarrassed by it. The kids last week told me I looked like a grandma...apparently Korean grandmas are the only people with curly hair. Fine with me, at least I don't look like a high schooler to them.

Things are good, though. Here is a picture of my cute apartment "kitchen" and the city. Haven't taken many photos yet...it's too cold to take my hands out of my pockets outside. I will soon.
That thing on the wall is my drying rack...I did some laundry! I just pushed some random buttons on the machine and thankfully didn't ruin anything! Gonna get a translation soon...

Dream big people!