Meghan은 간다, Meghan ya no esta aqui

shopping and subway

I worked my first day yesterday. I was tired and my eyes burned. Teaching for six hours straight is pretty rough. I had two classes of 3 hours each, and each class has two five-minute breaks at the hour. SO! That was a load of fun. I actually love being the kids, and teaching them, but they were a bit of a handful.

The director said that recycle city in Godeok had called him and that they had a single bed, so Stephanie and I got up this morning and made our way over there. No single bed. But, we decided to go ahead and buy a desk, a bookshelf and an office chair. Those are being delivered tomorrow and we are SO excited because that means all of our junk that is sitting on the floor (and making our apartment look gross) will have a place! My mom would never believe it- but I love being organized. For a bed- I might have a connection someone who is selling theirs online, but it won't be available for a week, and I have to figure out the whole "call a delivery man" system here. Crazy. So for now, I'm still stuck on Stephanie's bed, accidentally kicking her in the face in the morning.

on Sunday afternoons we head over to church. I really can't say enough about how great it is to be able to meet once a week with people who are like minded and speak English. It's just great to have a bunch of connections, and now I am getting to know people better. After the church service is a "fellowship time", where we just stand around and yak at each other, and some of us decided to go get some Korean food after that. It was a good time and of course filled with laughter because of usual cultural blunders. I have yet to master chopsticks. I actually picked up my chopsticks and, no kidding, made a little "wahhh" sound that sounded Asian (maybe Karate sound?). It was just instinct and I was so embarrassed.

I think Stephanie and I have been in a giggly mood because on the Subway ride home we couldn't stop laughing. First, I have to tell you what it's like to ride the subway:

It hasn't ever really been packed when I've ridden it, but usually all the seats are filled and there are some people standing. A lot of people listen to mp3 players, read, or talk to whoever they're with. Pretty normal. What we find funny is how people try to sleep on the subway. You know what it's like when you're sitting up straight, and you're falling asleep and your head is nodding all over the place. Well, we've always commented about how people could really miss their stop if they actually fell all the way asleep!

So today Stephanie and I were standing by one set of doors on the subway and the subway train came to a stop. The doors opened, were open for a little bit and then suddenly a man who was sleeping gets up, and runs to the door. EXCEPT he runs to the door Stephanie and I are in front of, which is the closed door. He turns around really fast and runs out the other door. It was HILARIOUS because that's what happens when you fall asleep on the subway. Of course Stephanie and I are laughing, but nobody else is, and we're trying to stifle our laughter. Not easy, as the situation (watching that man almost run into the door, and then turn around quickly to run out the other door) was quite entertaining.

So that got us in a giggly mood. We found a place to sit down and there was a woman across the aisle from us who was asleep. I nodded at her for Stephanie and Stephanie said "watch what happens when the train starts". So of course I watched and for some reason it was really funny when her head jerked. And THEN the lady next to her was drooping on the man next to HER and it was hilarious.

But we're not done. We left the subway at our stop, and were walking to the turnstile when a lady came up alongside Stephanie and asked her a question in Korean. Stephanie turned toward her and the lady realized she was white, and I think she apologized, then smiled, and walked away. Again, very funny.

All in all, a funny day. The rest of the evening we did normal, boring stuff like grocery shopping (except we did explore a side street market, which was nice). I think I have some more pictures to share, but I'll do that another time.

posted by Meghan @ 6:39 AM