It’s funny. As soon as we reached October 1st, BOOM! Fall is here. It’s suddenly too cold to eat and drink outside. I’ve officially unplugged my air conditioner. It’s hard to believe that a few weeks ago it was sweltering.We’re getting back into our routines now that vacation is over. Elly is still proving that she is the English Nazi. I think we’ll start calling her “Evita.” I walked into work Friday, and she had a bunch of kids lined up against the wall, berating them for something. Her two big rules are “Don’t speak Korean” and “Don’t run.”
And it’s great. We feel empowered. She actually wants us to send children to her when they’re acting up or speaking too much Korean. She tells them, “If you want to speak Korean, do it at home, not in school.” And she has threatened to send children home for doing so. This is a big difference from Eric and Trisha, who would just pat the kids on the head and send them back to class. We actually have the ability to send the children to the office, just like when we were kids.
She also started working with me regarding my problems with teaching science. I presented my evidence I had been collecting on how bad this program was. She said she would call the company to complain. On top of that, she started working with me to make it so that I wouldn’t have to teach science so much. Instead, I’d take over some of her art classes. We’d trade. In the end, I’m sure we’ll decide to keep things the same, but it’s a big change to have someone work with me to solve a problem.
We actually had a debate on which classes foreigners should teach, and her arguments were very good and convincing.
Brant and I offered to help her move into her apartment this weekend, but she never called us. She has a boyfriend, and I’m sure he helped.
Yet Eric again proved his uselessness and incompetence. He drastically raised the tuition for the students in one of my afternoon classes, and they both quit. And after that, he didn’t bother to tell me. I had to find it out through other people that I no longer had a class.
Friday night, we checked out the Chinese pub we had been scoping for a while. We hadn’t gone there before because it was a little separate from the other businesses in the area, and we thought, hmm, ordering Chinese food in Korean? How do we know what the Koreans call the Chinese dishes?
Turned out that, again, our fears were unfounded. They had English menus and a very friendly yet exotic set up. For one thing, the window booths require you to take your shoes off. The dishes go from conventional chicken wings to skewered chicken hearts and feet. And the prices are reasonable. We tried some fried platter and stir fried spicy duck.
After the pub, we met Jeremy and Liz to try out the new Bon Jovi bar. I’m pretty sure Bon Jovi’s people aren’t aware of this trademark infringement. But we had to check it out because it sounded so cheesy.
And the bar itself was nothing spectacular. They worked hard to keep up with the Bon Jovi theme. There was a mural painting of the band on a wall. When we walked in, they quickly changed CDs to more rocking fare. The major drawback was there was no draft beer. It was all overpriced bottles and cocktails. And the service took forever.
Brant went home after that, and the rest of us headed to Magic Castle. We walked in right during the cocktail show. As usual, there were birthdays, and I got to bum some really good cake off the parties. I saw a few regulars, and talked to one Korean girl, who’s married to an American, about our gripes about the foreigner community in this area.
I was heading home when Liz and Jeremy convinced me to go to a noraebang. The big factor was that Injoo had invited two girls to come with us, one of them I had tried to invite in the past.
It was a good night in the noraebang. Casey from Magic Castle, and the married girl later joined us. I got to know the girl Injoo invited, Soo Jeong, fairly well, especially since she didn’t speak a lick of English.
The rest of the weekend I spent working on editing all the video we shot and coming up with a system for posting it on the web site. I’m getting the hang of it.
Brant and Young Joon went to the grand opening of a bar owned by a former waitress to the bar they usually go to in Apgujeong. Brant bought her some candy as a housewarming gift. Young Joon bought”¦ toilet paper. Brant thought he was crazy, but it actually made her laugh. She loved it. Young Joon can be a genius without knowing it.
