choongday

this weekend, we went downtown to go to the bars in choongday (another part of cheongju). these bars are like U.S. bars on steroids--koreans love their bright lights. it almost looks like a carnival/circus lights. a little strange, but somewhat normal if you block them out. they also have the strangest games on the street you can play. koreans love their arcade games and you will find them frequently playing outside bars. you can also pay 500 won (almost 50 cents in the states) to try and win a baby bunny!

although i think the food here is fine, i haven't found anything i really like. last night was the first time since i've been here that i was completely satisfied with what i ate. i went to an indian restaurant and i had some spinach/herb chicken dish with naan (bread). hopefully i'll find some korean food here that is tasty (soon!). right now i've been eating a lot of tofu (i'm so lucky i like it). i've been trying to find food online that have less sodium in it. the amount in the dishes here is ridiculous, although you can't even taste it in the food. but, no luck so far.

i still need to take pictures of my neighborhood. there's a park right up the street from me and yesterday there were a ton of little kids and their parents out playing. it was nice to see them there, the playground is very quiet during the week since all the kids are studying.

school is still going well. i taught my first kindergarten class--i learned i have eyes in the back of my head. that was the hardest class to control because they know so little english. amber, one of the teachers here, has taught the korean kids for a year and gave me some korean phrases to use on them. during one of my breaks she came into the office we all share for a minute and told me to come look at her classroom. there was a small child sitting underneath the table and wouldn't come out. she said it was like that all day. i also learned that one of my little girls in my 1st-2nd grade class is 4 (5 in korea). i'm assuming that my kindergartners are around that age and maybe even a little older.

today i plan on going on a hike with a few of the teachers. there's this mountain really close to my apartment that has a good trail. at my school, you can look out the stair windows and see the mountains--they are so beautiful! i can't wait to view them from the trails. i also plan to finally get around to e-mailing people other than my dad and jane. the time just flies by here!

a few more things about korea and their culture:
-there is this thing they believe in called fan death. same with air conditioners. they believe if you have a fan on in a room where the windows are closed, you could die. the fans they sell here have about a 3 hour limit before they automatically shut off. i keep my conditioner on at night with the windows closed and nothing bad has happened to me yet...
-the other day i was correcting homework with a red pen and wrote their name with it. i had to go over every single name with white out because koreans believe writing names in red pen is cursing death on that person. i knew that they believed this, but it slipped through my mind.