Second Week in Cheonan

So Saturday night it hammered down....I mean really hammer it with thunder and lightening to top it off...although I was informed that this was only mild and that it can get much worse in the Monsoon period. Good job I brought my coat with me! (I'm not an umbrella person)

Sunday was peculiar in the fact that the cleaner for the hotel I was staying in knocked on my door. She doesn't speak English and I know very little Korean and she was holding this bag and chatting away so quickly that all I could think of was to wave her in and let her get on with whatever it was she wanted to do. She smiled, came in...did a quick check of the room, left and came back a few seconds with a large slice of watermelon for me. I didn't know quite how to react and ended up in an awkward bow. Maybe she thought I was some poor hungry and neglected child? I packed my bags that night ready to move into my new apartment.

Monday was a terrifying experience. My first day teaching on my own with very little idea of what I should be doing, despite the TEFL course and the previous weeks observation. For some reason, everything I seemed to have learnt flew out the window. My first lesson with the Gemini class went too fast and I got told to slow down. After that things picked up and by the end of the day I felt like teaching wasn't impossible. After the last lesson (8.15pm) I was escorted to the new apartment and found my bags were already there, waiting for me. The guy gave me a very quick crash course on how things worked then left me alone. I didn't know where the rubbish went, where the post was, how to navigate from the flat to the school, the internet didn't work, I didn't know my address...

Tuesday arrived and I got lost on the way to school. Turned out I was going around in circles! The school is in fact 4 mins away from the flat but I managed to make it over half an hour. Lessons went better and in the evening I went down to Lotte Mart (huge supermarket) to stock up my fridge and cupboards. I got lost coming back but it wasn't too bad...luckily Cheonan is like a huge grid network...one street runs parallel with another.

Wednesday and I didn't really do much apart from get up, eat, teach and sleep. I finally finished putting in the finishing touches to the flat as well as finding out where everything was. I found an iron in one of the wardrobes and a huge stash of ear-buds in a grapefruit flavoured tea box.

Thursday (one of my favourite days) was about the easiest day I'd had for a while...it was also the day that I woke up with a cold. My voice was soar, my nose all bunged up and I had a horrid cough. It's something that everyone gets when they first come here but I let Ian know and within 10 minutes he'd got someone to bring me some tablets to take (I don't know what they are or what's in them but they worked like a treat). The only down side with having a cold was it made teaching a challange. Try saying 'Green light go, Red light stop' fifteen hundred times. The kids know you can't shout at them and so are noisier that usual and like to make jokes. One kid asked me why I was talking through my nose...nice. What makes it even more annoying is when you hear them sniff and cough and sit there with their runny noses...so that's where I've caught it from! Because of those little angels I missed out on a night on the town with some of the other teachers.

Friday was the day that felt like it would never end plus I had tests to do for two classes and reports to write for three classes! The students didn't like the sound of a speaking test; 'No, Teacher, no speaking test!' I smiled and just nodded...my voice was diminishing but the rest of me felt great. But by 8.15pm I was in no mood to write up reports and called it a day. I got home and just zonked out. Who thought teaching could make you so tired?

Saturday, after exploring more of Choenan by foot and getting sore toes, I skyped my Mum, Dad and my brother for the first time since comming out here (I have e-mailed them). We spent about 4 hours catching up with the latest news and it was gone two in the morning when I said night. It rained that night, and one of the other teachers had told us that Saturday was going to be the start of the Monsoon season.