Last Classes for 3rd Grade; Oh the Blessed Pure-of-Heart; Shopping for Halloween Costumes; T-Shirts That Make You Pee Your Pants

At Dong Sang, I have been teaching the 3rd, 5th, and 6th grades. I will be teaching 5th and 6th grades with the whole time I am in Korea (at least until next August), but 3rd grade is a little different. I was told that I would be teaching 3rd graders for September and October, and then in November and December I would switch to 4th graders during the periods previously occupied by 3rd grade class. So, this past week, I had my last 3rd-grade classes. They are so cute, I am going to miss them. For the last class, we gave a listening test, and then taught them the Hokey-Pokey...that pretty much took up the entire class time. Such is the stress of my life...singing and dancing with cute little kids...I know, sounds horrible, right? At the end of one of the classes, when my co teacher told the kids that this was my last day teaching them (because 3rd grade English class was being moved to either a Monday, Thursday or Friday so that I could teach the 4th graders), a few of the girls ran up to me and grabbed my arm and hugged me. Haha. It was so cute! They are so adorable. Later that day when I saw some of them in the hall they did the same thing...haha. I feel a little bad though, I wonder how the other teachers think of me when they see the kids grabbing onto me and hugging me...I hope it doesn't create any negative feelings.

Anyway, so after school, today I was determined to take my bike to the shop. I was telling my co teacher at Dong Sang about my bike issues, and later on during the day she said, 'you know, if you would like, I can come with you to take your bike in - I'm just afraid I won't be able to help much because my English is not very good'...! I was so incredibly excited and thankful to hear her say that! She had graduate school after work, and she offers to come with me to the shop before going to graduate school...even though there was absolutely nothing obliging her to do so in the least. So we went back to my apartment to get my bike and then headed off to the shop (mind you it is about 15 minutes to walk to my house, and then another 20 to get to the shop, so I am also taking her on somewhat of a tiresome errand since I don't think she is used to all of that walking right after school, especially sine my place is up a big hill...). So while we are walking to the shop, I am trying to explain to her what I did to my bike, and realized, hey...this actually isn't so easy to understand...even someone who speaks English fluently might have had a little bit of trouble understanding the explanation of my thought process for..essentially breaking my bike. But we worked it out so she understood the basics - ultimately, the people at the shop didn't need to know WHY my derailleur was no longer on my bike, but I wanted to try and explain because if not I look like even more of an idiot...haha.

Before getting to the shop, I told her that if it was going to take them 1 or 2 weeks to fix the problem, then I can do without having the derailleur fixed, and we can just have them fix the chain (and if the chain was going to take very long, then I could just buy a new chain and do it myself...hopefully...haha). I was thinking it was going to take at least 3 or 4 days. But once we got into the shop and she explained what was going on (and after I had sheepishly taken my derailleur out of my bag to show them that I had so intelligently removed it), I heard the man say "sahm sheep boon", which means 30 minutes...I looked at my co teacher in disbelief, wondering if what I had heard meant the amount of time it would take for them to figure out what was wrong with the bike, or if it indeed meant the amount of time it would take them to fix it. She said that they had told her the latter; the only problem was that I forgot to bring the bolt to secure the derailleur, and since there are soo many different lengths and widths of bolts, they could not find one in the shop that matched the dimensions of the one that I left at home...bah. So they said that they could find something to hold it in place until I brought the original bolt to the shop, and until then, they would fix everything that they could fix without the bolt. The owner actually offered to lend me his bike so I could ride home to get it!!! (I told him that I had to be somewhere at 7p, so I wouldn't be able to walk back to my place and return to the store and still have enough time to meet my friend) I couldn't believe that - he was going to let a foreigner, whom he had only met once before, borrow his seemingly brand-new bike to ride a few km away...unbelievable. But I said I didn't fee comfortable doing that, because the streets/sidewalks of Busan are not the safest in the world, and if I happened to slip on something (there was plenty of construction between my place and the shop) and scratch the bike, especially since it looked so new, I would not be able to forgive myself. So I said I would return the next day with the bolt.

So I thanked my co teacher a thousand times, and headed off to meet my friend to shop for Halloween costumes. We met in the PNU area to do some serious shopping, because there are lots of stores there, many of which are very very cheap. Althoug in this area there are also relatively expensive stores, but they have ver good quality, so we hd the best of both worlds. Or just both worlds, I guess. Anyway, we went through racks like it was our job. And I spent money like I had a company credit card with which I was encouraged to use to buy things of partial necessity. But we won't talk about that much...let's just say I got a lot of great things, all of which were insanely cheap compared to the prices I would have paid in the States (I did need to buy more clothes, though - it wasn't like I was intending on just buying a costume...), and I also got a fantastic costume. At least I think so. I basically bought a bunch of clothes that were all different shades of mismatching orange, and a green knit hat with a big fluffy pom-pom thing on the top. Can you guess what I am going to be? I'll give you a hint: it's a delicious vegetable...

So Wednesday I gave up going to practice (the only one of the week since my coach was still in Bali on Tuesday) to get my bike back ASAP. So I went to the shop after school (and actually my coach met me there because I had something of his that he needed back by Saturday) and picked up my almost-fully functional bike (I had to readjust the quick release levers after riding it for a few minutes because the wheels were not spinning freely, but that was an easy fix). I took out a monkey-load of money, not knowing how expensive it was going to be...and it ended up being around $8!!! I could not believe it - I looked so shocked, and I kind of feel bad because I think the shop owner might have thought that I thought that was expensive...but I didn't want to say, 'wow, that is cheap!' because I didn't know if that would be insulting...so I am just like, seriously? wow...and he goes through the breakdown of the prices...anyway. So I am going to stop by the shop sometime soon and drop off some fruit or something, as a thankyou. It has only bee about 40 hours since I got my bike back and I have already ridden it 4 times, a total of about 2h 20min. Haha. I love having a trainer in my house...

Oh, so briefly...haha - so one of my friends who is also teaching in Busan told us about a t-shirt that one of the kids was wearing in her elementary school. It said: "Shit Happens When You Party Naked." (Hey, an elementary school student was wearing that in school - if that is ok, then I think I can write it in my blog.) Hahahahaha. That is SO amazing. The thing is, most of the time I don't think that they know what their shirts mean when they display saying like that. Kids would probably be suspended in elementary schools here if they had that on their shirts...haha. Ohhh Korea. Amazing.

Tonight is Halloween. I'm so excited to go out and forget about the stupid things that are weighing me down and just have tons of fun. Hopefully I will have some great pictures to post as well. :)