22주

by - 23:51

At the beginning of the month I went to Pyeongtaek for a Native English Teacher workshop. There were about 80 other foreign teachers and we spent 2 days discussing EFL teaching and learning new techniques. We stayed overnight in dorm rooms and it was actually a lot of fun - except that I had a headache from speaking so much English. There was also a cafeteria there and the food was surprisingly good.
At the end of the first day they had a performance for us, and it was a band playing traditional Korean instruments as well as a pansori singer. I'm actually really interested in pansori, which is a form of musical storytelling which originated in the 1600s. I've been trying to compile the pansori madang but it's difficult because they aren't very accessible to non-Korean speakers. Even though I can't understand the stories, I still think it's nice to listen to and I appreciate how complex it is to sing pansori. The singer who performed for us was lovely.
I think I have a new favorite restaurant in my town. They have real pizza! And pasta! With an alfredo sauce that isn't terrible! However, I went to this restaurant three times with three different friends in the same week and the same employee took my order all three times, so I need to not show my face there for a while.
Update on the cats: They're enormous. The above photo was taken shortly before Junsu broke that tier off the cat tree. Now all that's left is a sad cat tree base.
Last Monday was the first day of summer break, so all of the teachers went on a hiking trip. It rained all day. We walked around this lake and got soaked, then went to a nearby restaurant for lunch. It was a fish restaurant. I was given an entire fish on a plate, which is pretty much my worst nightmare. I basically moved the fish around my plate until everyone was done eating.
After lunch we went to a cafe which is owned by a famous actor (I've never seen any of his movies or TV shows, though). It was on a lake and there were gardens to walk through. It was pretty. We were there for maybe an hour and I spent a good amount of that time trying to get the attention of a German Shepard that was sleeping on the porch. I was mostly unsuccessful.
Thursday and Friday I had English camp with some of my students. My camp was supposed to be Wall-E themed and we were going to watch the movie and talk about it, but the students ended up having so much fun doing the other activities I had planned that we didn't have time for the movie. I had them make paper Wall-E dolls, they designed their own robots and made those, we played Wall-E themed bingo, and we made dirt. That was funny because they were like, "This looks gross." Then they ended up loving it.
I'm desk-warming all this week, then next week I'll be in Jeju-do!

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3 comments

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    1. HEY, You removed my comment ???!!! Ouch

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    2. I sure did. The blog administrator. That me.

      YA BURNT.

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