End of my First Week

I officially had my first full day of teaching on Friday, and I survived! It went fairly smoothly, I just need to come up with some creative ways to keep the students entertained. And I have all different age groups too. I have kindergarden age until about 1:30 pm and then I have a bunch of different age groups like 8 yr olds, then a class of kids 11-12 yrs old, and then high school age kids until 7:30 pm. On Mondays my first class isn't until 1:20 pm, and then the rest of the week I start at 11:30 am. So it's a pretty good schedule, and I have a few 40 min periods throughout the day in which I don't teach a class so I can prepare my lesson plans then. And my schedule will be changing end of August like I said before because summer classes will be ending.

So Friday night was Matthew's last night (the teacher I'm replacing) so all of the teachers at Songdo ECC went and had Korean BBQ! It was sooo good! There's a grill type thing in the middle of your table and you put these really thinly sliced pieces of beef on it, then once they're done (it cooks really fast) you drop it in this amazing spicy BBQ (which I asked if I could buy at the supermarket but it's the restaurant's own recipe, so sadly no) and then you wrap it up in a lettuce leaf and eat it! There are also tons of small bowls of various toppings you can put in the lettuce leaf with it too. Or you could just eat the beef alone. They also give you rice, salad, soups, and kimchi of course! I didn't bring my camera, but found a pic online that looks fairly similar to what our setup was like, but ours was actually nicer:

You can see that there is a lot going on! And I did my best to eat with chopsticks, but they were metal so it was a struggle (the owner came by and brought me a fork haha) but I plan on becoming an expert with metal chopsticks while I'm here!

So then after Korean BBQ, we went to a bar that had a huge selection of foreign and domestic beer and hung out for awhile. The prices were pretty much the same as foreign beer back home, I was surprised.

Today (Saturday) I was going to go into Seoul with Cassie (one of the other teachers) but I had to do my health check instead : (  sadly. I went to the Hospital with Bora, my boss, which was packed, but we actually got right in. So first was the drug test ( you know, the bathroom, the cup, you get it) and then they took a blood sample. Now in the States we get orange or apple juice after we give blood right? Well here you get Black Sesame Seed Juice! Yum yum yum! Haha actually not, it tastes a bit like a milk mixed with what I guess black sesame seeds taste like. I had one sip and then tossed it. Yes, it was in a juice box!:

Yep looks delicious right? So next I took a blood pressure test, checked my vision and hearing, and then took a full body x-ray. Basically more than I've had checked in the past 7 years by any doctors in the US. Oh and then some questions I had to answer. But it all went very quickly, South Koreans have a very efficient healthcare system.

After we went to the Hospital, Bora and I went to Starbucks for some coffee and lunch. Yes, Songdo has a Starbucks! So if I'm ever needing something familiar than I can just go there, since they are exactly the same all around the world. Songdo has some really random American places like Curves (the women's gym), 7 Eleven, and Papa John's Pizza. There are no American Fast Food restaurants in Songdo as of now (which makes no difference to me since I don't eat it back n Texas anyways) but all of the other teachers are so excited because they just built a Taco Bell in Seoul! Haha they thought I would be really excited about that, and I guess if I ever get really desperate for Mexican food I can go there, but I told them we don't really consider that Mexican food in Texas. But it would be fun to go there and see if they have any different things on the menu that are geared towards Koreans.

I also went to the supermarket again today and spent about an hour and a half there just looking at all the different things they had. This might be weird but I really love walking about grocery stores, I can spend a lot of time there. Not necessarily buying things, but just looking at all the different food they have. It may be a strange enjoyment, but my mom likes to do it too so I know I'm not the only one. Anyways, here are a few of my purchases:

They have those 6 packs of mini cereal, so I bought one of those, then some Digestive cookies, instant coffee since I don't have a coffee maker just yet, microwavable veggies and rice porridge, and then some cranberry granola bars. I have a few fridge items too (like eggs, yogurt, sliced ham, apples, oranges) along with a loaf of bread but don't have a picture of them.
Here are a few of my lovely non-matching dishes from my last trip, also bought some silverware, a skillet and spatula:

So let's see what else, oh here's a picture of my Bank book, thought it was interesting:

 The inside is really cool looking but I don't know what part is my bank account info so I probably shouldn't post that on the internet.

And then here are a few Korean bills:

Sorry, not the greatest view of them but you get the jist.

That's all for now, a few of us are going to go to a professional Baseball game tonight as long as it doesn't rain, so I need to get ready for that!