Big Ball Bowling

Not a terrible lot to report; I have another week of teaching under my belt. That is, if you consider three days to be a week (which, for those who are keeping track, I do). Of course, with Monday being the Chuseok holiday, I only had classes Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday, so it was a very pleasant week. I really, really love my Tuesday-Thursday classes. The Monday-Wednesday classes are also good, aside from one class of kids.

If you're wondering why i'm not including Friday, it's because Friday is never really work anyway. Sure, we still go in, and sure, we still get paid. But once every couple of weeks, we have a Kindergarden class that comes in and stays for about an hour and a half - the rest of the day is either spent in preparation, training, or in some kind of staff-bonding activity. Tomorrow happens to be one of those days - Kindies from 11 to 12:30, then the afternoon spent in some sort of team-competition.

The odd week, we have what's called 'Hello GEC' - Basically, since our private school is partially funded by the government (subsidizing tuition so that poorer families can attend), the government also has us set up activity-days in different elementary schools throughout Incheon. But again, it's not reaaaallly work.. Unless you consider doing face painting, ring toss, or dizzy-races to be work.

Anyway, this week was fairly quiet. On tuesday night, the foreign teachers went to Gimpo (a town about 15 minutes away) to play some Bowwwwling. The kind with the big balls - and the kind i've never actually done before. In a way, I find it's a little easier to predict where your ball's going to land, because the heavy weight centers gravity a lot better. And yes, I know that big-ball-bowling isn't entirely foreign, since it's freely available everywhere, but still; it was a new experience. And it was fun. I didn't do terribly well, but I somehow finished first in my team with a whopping 82 points.. although I think everyone was in the same boat as I was. I've just played too much Wii Bowling to entirely suck at it.

The bowling kind of reminded me of the last session of Wii Bowling I had, with my Grand-Maman. This was about 3 or 4 months ago. Maaaan, did she ever kick my ass. After playing all of three times, she was getting scores of 230-240. She was chuckling some well-deserved laughs at me. It's funny how the oddest things'll remind you of the people you love.

Wednesday night, myself and a few other teachers went to a Japanese restaurant. I ate a combination of things that resembled curry, but wasn't quite liquid enough to fit the bill. Still good, though. I'm really enjoying tasting not only Korean food, but all types of asian dishes. It all tastes so genuine. It's not difficult one bit to notice the differences between Korean, Japanese, Chinese, and even Thai food. I don't think I could've ever made that distinction back at home.

So aside from that, tonight was supposed to be a night out - in honour of me. See, once a month, the GEC gets together and celebrates all of the birthdays for the month. All the teachers (foreign and Korean) go out to dinner, everyone pitches in for a gift and for the meal, and the people celebrating a birthday get, well.. a meal and a gift. Except that i'm the only teacher who has a birthday in September. I'm not exactly fond of the limelight, what with me only having been here a month and all, but it's a nice gesture. Anyway, as I was saying it was supposed to be tonight - though the Korean head teacher forgot to remind the Korean teachers about it. No big deal; it's been postponed to next thursday. It at least gives me a break to update everyone on what i've been up to, and to practice that guitar a bit more. I'm really enjoying it so far - and i've managed to find a bit of time to practice every day. Switching chords with any sort of speed is still tricky, but i'm gettin' faster.

So, on that note, I hope everyone has a good week. Enjoy all of those Season Premieres (Ahh, Boston Legal & Dexter, how I miss thee), the beginning of training camp for the Sens (which began a couple of days ago) and the first exhibition game on Saturday! (vs NY).

Cheers