Kamsahamnida!

Word of the day: overwhelmed. I only had my second day of Korean classes and already my brain feels like its going to explode. The teachers are moving so fast and I can't keep up. I definitely have a few hours of studying to do tonight. I have never had to really study for anything, minus a quick glance over before the actual test. I'm not used to having to remember things to use past the exam. But here I actually have to learn it so that I can use it in everyday life. Maybe I'm jumping the gun a little, since it is only the second day. But I have a feeling I'm going to have a lot of difficulty with this language.
After our morning classes I had a meeting with the other elementary ETAs where we had a former ETA come and talk to us about her experience teaching. It was pretty interesting and made me very excited to actually start teaching. I'm most likely going to be teaching kindergarten through sixth grade, and I'll have each of the classes anywhere from one to three times a week. This means I'll be teaching the kids starting with the alphabet. I think it will be a lot of fun, and I'm already coming up with ideas of fun ways to teach them everything. I've already decided I'm going to let the kids pick American names, just like I was able to in my h.s. Spanish class. I was looking through a book written by some Korean high school students that one of the ETAs had, and they chose names like "Avril Lavigne", "Beyonce", "No Name", and "Anonymous" haha.
After class we had our "fittings" for our Taekwondo uniforms. Turns out our fittings consisted of having our name called, being told to stand up for a few seconds, and then sitting back down. Apparently our TKD master is also a master of sizing people up. Can't wait to see if the uniforms actually fit.
For dinner tonight, we went out with our guest speaker/former ETA for "dakgalbi". Dakgalbi is what Chuncheon is famous for...its a very spicy chicken with vegetables mixed in. Its served sort of like hibachi, where we all sit around a big skillet and have the food cooked for us. Then we all share the food right off of the skillet. Apparently most food in Korea is meant to be shared with a group of people. It goes along with the whole group mentality of the culture.

Well, I'm off to go study!

At the dakgalbi restuarant.

The waiter cutting up the chicken.

My fellow ETAs..second from left is the former ETA.

Why can't we have cute little characters for our gov't agencies?