Post dated, this is from August 26, I will post more about the 27th and 28th soon!

Wow, only a day and a half without an entry and I already have so much to update! I’ve taught two classes so far, the first one was really rough. The kids were disorderly and off task, although I think that a big part of this is because of how the teacher I’m taking over for runs her classroom. She’s very lax and casual, and she gives the students free time even though the classes are very short. This isn’t how I want to run my classroom and I think I made that clear in the class I taught today. I’m working with five different groups of kids and they all have very different personalities, though, so things will keep changing, it will always be different.

Some thoughts:
-Every Korean, no matter their age, has a cell phone, and not just a cell phone, a fancy new impressive cell phone. There are five-year-olds walking around with technology more impressive than iPhones here. I got my international cell phone from the school yesterday. I think it says something that they took care of getting me a phone before taking care of my housing. The phone is a hand-me-down, so it’s at least a year old, but it’s more tricked out than a lot of US phones. I can video-call on it! It’s like the Jetsons or something.

-It’s hot here. It’s not just hot; it’s ridiculously humid. The air is so hot and thick that it hits you like a microwaved sponge when you walk out of an air-conditioned room. All of the rooms in buildings are airconditioned (luckily) but the common spaces and hallways are not, so when I walk into the restroom at work everything is dewy and damp, and it’s impossible to know if it is clean. The air outside sticks to your skin and clings on your clothes. It’s not possible to stay dry; every inch of skin is constantly sweating. Luckily, we got a small reprieve from the impossible humidity today: monsoon season reared it’s water logged head. In a matter of minutes it had rained enough to produce foot-deem puddles by the curb, and for twenty minutes their were more flashes of lightning than I’ve seen in my entire life combined! The thunder was quiet, though, far off and non-impactful. After the sudden flood from the sky, the sun came out for the first time since I arrived. There were blue skies and the pavement dried almost instantly.

-Even though Daejeon is a large city, millions of crickets and cicadas still call it home. In the nighttime, the crickets chirp their familiar tunes. The cicadas pop and crinkle in an erratic rhythm. It can become deafening as you cross the path between two trees.

I did norebong last night. Norebong is Korean karaoke, but it’s somewhat different. Norebongs rent out small, private rooms to their patrons. In the rooms, you and five to nine of your closest friends can watch dvds, play wii, play board games, and of course sing. The rooms are all decorated in the absurd styles of pop-culture Asia: like a small child’s over-grown dream. The norebong we went to is called Smile and it’s located in the Time World area of Daejeon. Time World is supposed to be something like Time Square. It’s where a lot of the expensive and reasonable shopping is, there are many bars, restaurants, and clubs, including some Western-style bars, and it’s home to some norebongs.

I feel happy and content with how today went. I started with reading at Coffee Bean and Tea Leaf in Time World, then Mallory and I got a wapple and caught a cab through the rainstorm; I went to work and got to observe many the other foreign teachers and take notes on their styles, and then I got to teach a rather successful writing class. The internet in my motel is no longer working, so this entry will be post-dated once I get the chance to load it, but I found out where the post office is today so I’ll be able to send some mail tomorrow! I’m so excited for that!