In the past month, what have I done? I'm not even really sure myself... Poor memory... O_O Um... Let's see, I got to visit with some friends from home, went to Korea's World Cup Qualifier against Qatar (which they won :D), visited some parks, took a lot of pictures, did some shopping, and had lots and lots of coffee/tea and food. Oh, and I did attend a "co-teaching" workshop which was actually more of a "let's be creative and then do a lesson plan with a Korean co-Teacher (KT)" workshop.
I've put in more time into my lesson plans than most NETs do, as I've been told numerous times by my KTs, and it was running into my personal time. For example, I planned a fun lesson for my fifth grade students to reinforce the English words for different tastes: salty, sweet, spicy, bitter, etc. In the lesson, the students were put into 3 groups, and then each group sent 1 student outside. Each student ate something I had bought the prior night, and then came back into the classroom and described what they ate: "It was salty", "It was bland", etc. Their groups had to guess, from a list of various foods, what they ate. The thing is, it took me a while to buy the items... I ended up running late to meet some friends that night. So... I'm going to try something new. No taking work home. No big, amazing lesson plans... Especially since I very rarely have enough time to do all of the activities I have planned. SO... Hopefully I will be able to do a lot more and, as a side effect, maybe update this more often too. :D
My good friend from home didn't get to see my home while she was here, so I'm going to post this on here for her. Hopefully she will see it :D She was also the one who showed me that my phone actually has a "panorama" setting on it. I never knew! I'm going to be using this function all the time from now on. :D
My apartment
So that's it. That's my apartment in Seoul. Pretty small, huh? Or maybe you can't tell from just the picture. Well, I wasn't standing in the middle of my apartment to take either of those photos. I had to take a couple of steps backward to take them... O_O But, it's a nice apartment nonetheless. I don't need that much room, especially if I don't want to carry home five suitcases or mail home ten packages...
Oh, and the appliance under the stovetop? Washer. Yeah, that's right. I don't get an oven, or a dryer for that matter :**( ... That's pretty common though. Most apartments put the washer where the oven normally goes. Most Koreans never get to use an oven. In the training I had recently, we went overnight to a training facility outside Seoul. They had a kitchen there where they said they had month-long classes for KTs, and they got to bake cookies and other things. They said, for most of the KTs, that was the first time they had even used an oven.
The heating system is the ondol system (heating with water under the floor) and there's an airconditioner above my bed. I have to turn on the ondol to get hot water. Apparently it must be an acquired art, or perhaps it's simply my apartment, but I haven't been able to get a steady stream of reasonably hot water for a shower. It changes between scalding hot and freezing cold, although sometimes I can get it to a reasonable temperature for about a minute, then it goes back to the extremes. I need to see if there's a fix for it.
Let's see... What else about my apartment? Oh, mold is a bit deal here. It apparently occurs very easily here. I haven't had the problem quite yet, but I've been told it does. Which is why Koreans often "air out" rooms, which I'm not entirely sure helps, but whatever. My landlady knocked on my door about a week into living here, saying that I needed to open the windows to prevent mold... Not sure how she knew I hadn't been doing that, but I've been trying to open the windows when I think about it. My apartment was very clean when I first got here, in fact, the landlady told me she had just finished painting the ceiling (pink, mind you) the day before I arrived. But I've heard horror stories about mold in apartments and landlords not doing anything about it. Also stories about mold being covered up with paint and wallpaper. I don't think my apartment has this problem. Or rather, if it does, I'd rather be ignorant.
That's all for my apartment. Later, I'll tell you about paying bills in Korea. Which is interesting since Korea doesn't use checks and everything is in Korean. But I've been able to muddle through. :D
No comments:
Post a Comment