Training

Both jobs that I've now worked for in Seoul have both been very good about training. At my last job I had 6 or 7 days of training, and her I get 6 days of training. I am very grateful for this. But, I must say, I hate observation. Especially now, for my second job, also another SLP, I know how to teach a class. It's nice to see other people's teaching styles, but you can only take so much of sitting in the back of a classroom and watching someone else teach this mind numbing grammar or whatever before you start to go nuts. My papers have little drawings all over the margins. They look like my student's book's margins. I still have four more days of observation before I start teaching on Monday, and I may just go nuts.

They have no real work for me to do in the office. I wouldn't mind some lesson planning or homework list making, or writing syllabi right now because there's only so many times you can check facebook during break times before you start to feel unloved because nothing has changed since the last time you checked it, 5 minutes before.

I can't believe it's only Tuesday. Tuesday, before classes have even started, for that matter. This must be the longest week on record and it only just started.

Anyway, in other news. I finally found a dresser, and we bought a comforter set for the bed on Gmarket (Korean version of Amazon, or whatever online shopping site you use) last night. It wound up being about 70,000 won for the whole set (only duvet, not a blanket) which felt a little expensive, but it was one of the cheapest we could find. The other other cheap one had bad reviews. This one had generally very positive reviews.

So, the apartment is just about completely ready. Once I get the comforter set up, maybe I'll take some photos to put up here.

I'm having cell phone issues. As I mentioned in an earlier post, I lost my cell phone 2 days after getting it set up on a new prepaid plan. While I debated what to do next, my boyfriend found a phone from a friend of his. He won't charge me any money for his nice phone, but the deal was I had to pay his bill. Well, he hadn't used it for 4 months, but the bills had still been piling up, so there was a 78,000 won bill. After going all the way to the SHOW service center I got the bill all cleared so I could use the phone. But, the second problem is that I need a converter for the cell phone charger.

See, all cell phones in Korea need to be able to use a single, standard phone charger. Sounds genius, doesn't it? Except that most new phones nowadays are either too small to fit that charger, or are too cool to put that old school charger on their phone. So, their solution? Make a cell phone charm that adapts the charger socket to the old style socket. So, you're stuck with this ugly phone charger adapter as your cell phone charm when you could have something cool like a hamburger or chili peppers or something just as inane.

My problem is that my boyfriend's friend lost his. So. No charging my phone for me until I get that little adaptor. The SHOW service center didn't have it. I need to go to an Anycall (my phone brand) service center. I got directions by phone this morning from my boyfriend from looking at a map online, but unfortunately, the conditions on the ground were not quite what the map appeared and I wound up missing my turn and consequently didn't make it to the service center and was quite nearly late for work on my third day. No good.

So, anyway, I'm still unreachable for the most part. But at least I have a job, dresser and comforter in the mail.

So long til next time.