Sunday, instead of waking up at 8a to go to practice at 10am, I woke up at 5:30a to get to practice by 7am, because earlier that week Coach asked me if I wanted to bike with the youth team (and of course I said yes!) Usually I get to Haeundae when the kids are coming back from their ride so it was exciting to be able to go out and ride with them instead. So there were probably...I don't know - 17-30 kids there (not counting me and the other older kids (like S and K, a parent or two, and Coach and his wife, etc - of which there was about 9 or 10), and we rode for about 100 min, about 35 km (roughly 25 miles). It was really fun, and a great feeling to be able to help out - for we were riding on a busy road so the older riders obviously are making sure that the younger kids are safe. I also met (well, not actually met, but saw and rode with) another teammate who had been injured - I actually haven't yet introduced myself to him - I will refer to him as 'J'. He seems really nice, and pretty much doesn't speak English so that will be good practice for me :). So that was a very fun day :)
On Monday after school, my Vice Principal and Principal (from Allak) came to my apartment to check things out - make sure everything was ok, and just see where I am living. They got to see that the focal part of my apartment is my bike on the trainer...haha. My principal seemed to really like it though! (He almost got on it...haha) Apparently after we got back to school my co teacher told me that they said that they want to take me out to dinner sometime soon... :) Yay.
After that, my co-teacher and I FINALLY got the online banking thing set up - it took us a while because it ended up being wayy too complicated of a process, mostly because there are so many letters in my name and since Korean names are usually 4 syllables maximum (but usually 3 or even 2), my 6-syllable last name was a little too much for the computers to handle..haha. Yea it sounds funny but it was horribly annoying to have to go to the bank like 4 different times to change things so that I could do various things. Also, later that day we went to the post office to mail my absentee ballot - that was a relief to finally send in too. My co teacher has been soooo great in helping me with all of this - it would be soooo much more difficult for me to get these things done without her!!
For my Korean lesson Monday, they decided to go to an Italian restaurant. Initially I was kind of bummed...because I love Korean food - but if nothing else it was a good experience...haha. I would eat anything on Mondays though because I am buying them dinner for helping me and so I would eat live eel if thats what they wanted to eat. But we went to an Italian place...and when I saw the menu at first I was really excited because it was in both Italian and Korean...but at a closer glance...it wasn't really Italian...it was Koralian...there were so many typos in the Italian names!! Haha. I wish I had brought my camera...I can't remember exactly what the typos were because pomodoro and caprese were spelled correctly, but there were come words that had more than one typo in t hem that I didn't even recognize and had to ask my tutors what it meant in Korean...haha. But one common typo was an 'lr' or 'rl' in place of an 'l' or an 'r' - for example, pomodoro could have been spelt 'pomodolro'. It was very very interesting. :) We focused on conversation and identifying vowel sounds for this lesson, and while my identification skills definitely improved, my listening to conversation did not progress how I would have liked... :( ugh. I really have to start immersing myself with vocabulary - thats the only way I am going to learn is just see the things written over and over and over and eventually be able to see them in my head when they are spoken. So all of my free time this week, maybe save 4 hours to spend with friends, will be studying :)
Phew. All caught up. Hopefully nothing too intensely interesting will happen this week so I won't get so behind again, but you never know with Korea...
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
No comments:
Post a Comment