On Sunday after eating, I met one of the kids on the youth triathlon team to help him with essay writing. Let it be known that I am not accepting money for this because I know it is against my contract to do so...incase anyone from EPIK happens to be reading this. :) Also I don't want to feel committed to tutoring anyone here, so refusing money will prevent any obligatory feelings. Anyway, the boy (I will refer to him as M) and his father came and picked me up at Starbucks because I forgot the map that his father had drawn me which showed where they lived. Then we went to their apartment. Uhm...first of all, any place in Haeundae is beautiful, because Haeundae is just a beautiful place all around. It is the most expensive place to live in Busan because of this. But their apartment was particularly nice - the interior was beautiful, and then they had a huge glass window overlooking the beach. Oh MAN. It was amazing.
So M and I go in to study. He didn't have anything particular prepared, so I had him show me some past essays that we could take a look at. He actually went to elementary school in Canada for two years (he is in middle school now) and goes to an English academy twice a week, so he is very good at English. He is probably one of the best English speakers that I converse with in Korea. Anyway, so in the back of my head I was thinking, ok, he doesn't have anything specific that he wants to go over...so...hmm - I wonder how I am going to go about this in a way that will benefit him. But since I wasn't accepting money I wasn't too worried about it. So we took a look at one of his essays, and I just started writing down tips that I thought would be helpful in general for writing essays based on what I was reading. For example, I would make lists like "words to avoid when you begin a sentence", and alternatively "words that can be helpful to use to begin a sentence", since his writing seemed advanced enough to tell him that it is better to try and use different words/vocabulary at the beginning of a sentence. We also talked about some general grammar rules, etc, and then looked at his essay and made some changes. I was only planning on staying for an hour, but we ended up working on this for about 90 minutes. It was actually really fun. Aside from feeling good about helping someone, especially someone on the team, I also can work on my teaching skills, and thinking/organizing-on-the-spot skills. After we were done, his father invited me to use the sauna in their hotel with M's mother - apparently the hotel has a really nice sauna and swimming pool. I don't doubt it by the appearance of the hotel. But I had biked to practice on Sunday and I didn't want to be riding home in the dark so I said maybe next time.
It took about 20 minutes for me to get to practice from my house in the morning, so of course I am estimating that it will take the same amount of time on the way back. Also, I always try to be conscious of landmarks when I am going somewhere for the first time because I know the road will not look the same on the way back, especially if there is a hidden land-tributary which could make things confusing on the return trip. Which is what happened ...causing my 20 minute commute to become 60 minutes of riding around the streets of Busan, a trip which consisted of moments where I thought I might have to take my bike in a taxi and get driven home...haha. But I eventually found my way...and once I knew where I was, I was glad that I had gotten lost, because it added on an extra 40 minutes of outside riding :)
This past week was pretty boring. My Korean lesson was great, as always. But I didn't go to practice Tuesday or Wednesday, mostly because I have an open class next Tuesday where the Principal and Vice Principal and other teachers will be coming in to watch my class at Dong Sang, so my co teacher and I have to spend extra time preparing this lesson. Also this week I have just been feeling kind of out of it, sleeping a lot and also doing non-triathlon related things. Which is ok, because the race is still more than 5 weeks away, and I still don't have my heart rate monitor yet. Once the 19th comes though, and especially once I get my heart rate monitor, I am going to be very strict with my exercise. So this week can slide a bit.
Along these same lines, I decided to forego my second workout on Thursday to go to the International Choral Festival. One of my co teachers told me about it, and printed out the schedules in English for me :) There are many groups singing at one time, but each night there are groups which are featured in the main hall. On Thursday, the choruses in the main hall were from Indonesia, Korea, The Philippines, and Russia. So of course I wanted to see this night! Especially since there was only one group from Russia, and most other countries were represented by many choruses. I almost didn't end up going at the last minute because the person I was going to go with had to go see the doctor, but I called up another friend and luckily she said she was up for going. We ended up getting lost on the way to the Cultural Center (where the concert was held), but luckily they were letting people in during the concert. And we only ended up missing about 10 minutes even though we were 20 minutes late. So it worked out well! I'm really happy that I ended up going that night because although all of the groups were good and very interesting, the Russian group was by far the best, at least in my opinion. And I'm not just saying that because I like to sing in Russian... :) Their costumes/dress were very lively and vibrant, as were the singers. And listening to the Slavic tongue reminded me of how much I love those languages - Croatian, Russian, and the like. Listening made me want to pick up a Russian textbook and study. Sigh. But anyway, it was fantastic.
Today, Friday, I don't have class. Kind of. I apparently have one class in the afternoon but we are just going to play a game the whole class -which will actually probably be more tiring than a normal lesson, because the sixth graders are crazy noisy. And I'm not really feeling well today so it will be interesting. But for this morning, no class - so I started looking up some geography, because I was talking to my friend last night about visiting Russia and realizing that I wasn't exactly sure where St. Petersburg was situated. Looking up a map of Russia turned into reading about all the facts of Russia, turned into 'how many countries are there in Asia?', turned into 'I should really know the geography of the world...or at least want to...', turned into me deciding that I am going to try and learn about 2 countries every day, starting with Asian countries. Today I learned about Yemen and Vietnam - I'm starting from the bottom of the list because it will make me feel like I am making more progress, since the first letters of the countries change more quickly at the end of the alphabet (e.g. there are 4 Asian countries that start with 'A' and 5 that start with 'B'). But learning all of this really hurts my head, because I just want to know more and more and more and I don't have time to do it! For example, when learning about Yemen, I noted the capital (of course), which is San'a' (or Sanaa or Sana'a...), its geographical location (in the south of the Arabian Peninsula, amongst other reference points), the political orientation (republic, since 1990) and how the system of government works if I am not already familiar with it,the important government figures (which I won't state here, if you are actually interested you can ask me or look it up :) ), the HDI (Human Development Index...I didn't know what that meant until today and it is very interesting...), the flag, the monetary unit (rial), and of COURSE the language (Arabic)... and that is where I get lost and confused. I decided that I wanted to know how to write the name of the country in the country's official language, so I tried to find "Yemen" written in Arabic in bigger script than where I was getting my information, since I don't know Arabic and couldn't make out some of the strokes. So..to make a long story short, I ended up on a page which teaches you the Arabic characters, and how to write them...I then found myself on a page which has simple Arabic lessons...helpppppp. Oh god this is so interesting. I wish I were back in school and my job was to learn about languages and how they were derived and the alphabets and sounds and not feel a bit guilty that I should be doing something else with my time. Anyway, so that's that. And then I learned about Vietnam and Vietnamese language...how it was primarily influenced by Chinese and much of its vocabulary and grammar are such related (apparently many of its sounds sound similar to Cantonese...that's for you Mom), but when Vietnam was invaded by France, French succeeded in imposing some of its phonology...(I'm not sure at all any of these specifics unfortunately...yet...). Anyway, that's what I have been doing all morning (other than writing this entry). Teaching is fun, but I wish I could do this all day!
Back to learning!
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