Quick Update.

It's currently Thursday night and I just finished eating a big buffet style meal with my entire school. I met one of my new co-teachers today and she was SO cool. She helped me out in just about every facet, from finding a movie theater to helping me pronounce some fundamental Korean words. She's pretty much fluent in English; I can talk to her as fast as I would talk to another native English speaker, I just have to remember not to use slang, like outta = out of, things like that. Anyways, at dinner, my new co teacher, myself and another new administrative co worker were recognized and we were asked to stand in the front of the room to say a few words. Of course there was no mention of this earlier. Luckily I'm pretty sure even though I was standing in front of a room full of about 30 people, about 3-4 actually knew what I was talking about. I did try and talk slow but I'm still thinking no more than 4 people could actually understand me. We finished our speeches, they gave us some flowers and we sat down. It was a very good meal, one of my co workers earlier in the day said, "We going to have traditional Korean meal but since you American, we have buffet". Normally, I would try and be polite and tell them that, that was unnecessary but at that point I was really feeling the buffet of Western food. Also, I think we may have different forms of politeness because whenever I try and tell someone that they don't need to do something for me and that I can do it myself, they seem to be either surprised or offended, I can't really tell. So I've just started not arguing or trying to explain myself and just let people do stuff for me.

The Vice Principal told me, actually told my translator, that I make her smile, and that other teachers have told her that when they see me, they become happy. I don't know if something was lost in translation there or what the deal was, but that seemed strange to me. It may be because I haven't mastered the system of greeting people here yet, it changes with every person and your relationship to them. If they're older or hold more authority than you, then they receive a new greeting than when you're greeting someone of equal or lesser 'status' than yourself. First of all, I don't know where I stand as a foreigner, and I have absolutely no idea of how old anyone is. So, I will either come off as impolite or silly if I mess up, kinda a lose, lose situation.

About the pictures... I really wish I could figure out how to put them on the side of the page instead of right on top of each other. If you notice the bottom two pictures are in the middle while the rest of them are on more of the left side of the page.... that's me experimenting with Blogspot.... I'll figure it out sooner or later, although it may be a while. I hope it doesn't bug any of you as much as it bugs me. Oh, now really about the pictures, the bottom ones are of my school and it's 'playground' in the back of the school... you can see the projects right behind the playground.... that's because I'm fairly certain there are no zoning laws here, so you could have a million dollar house next to a low income housing project. I mean, naturally there are nicer parts of Daegu, but you can find some houses that seem a little out of place. The top picture is of "guys night" with my principal and some other male employees. We ended up drinking 8 bottles of soju, which really isn't that much of an accomplishment... buy my principal was HAMMERED. It was great. I couldn't believe how drunk he got. I was buzzed I would say, but he could barely stand and was talking about god knows what by the end of the night. I didn't think he had drank that much more than I had... (he must have been sneaking some soju bombs under the table).

Hope this message finds everyone well!