Korea is funny

FIRST, OMG today we went to a sauna/jjimjilbang/mogyoktang and it was the best decision i made all day. it felt soooo amazing to just relax and sweat and go from hot to cold to warm and back and forth all over. this is probably my 3rd trip just since orientation started and i can honestly say they're some of my favorite times of orientation. =) i got my 2nd ddeh massage this week (sunday and today!) and it was amazing. This one was cheaper than in seoul and so much better. i felt like air when i was done. this week was rough. for no particular reason. it went by really quickly and we didn't have workshops or anything but it was just really tiring. i think it's because we've hit that midway hump when i'm running out of energy and the end is just barely in sight. hopefully, my second wind will kick in this coming week!

anyway, camp fulbright ended today and it was a little sad to see some of the students leave. here are a few cute stories:

1. i worked with teh lowest level students (who were still pretty good btw) but the students used "oh my god" to mean "look"/"i don't understand"/"he/she is doing something bad"/"please help"/"this is too hard"/etc. anything that required my attention. so i got a lot of "teacher oh my god teacher oh my god" and i had to figure out what was needed just by observing the situation with my eyes. it was a bit difficult and sometimes comical.

2. one of the students came up to me and was showing me his wrist and said "teacher i hurt here" and i asked what had happened, the following is his response: "yesterday night. we are playing and run. then wet. i WOOOONG~~~ (he made a wave hand motion) then KWANG KWANG KWANG (as he bounces lower and lower to demonstrate he fell down some stairs). you know?" hehe they are so cute i had no choice but to say "OH NOOO are you ok?" and try not to laugh at his story

also brilliant are some of our fellow GIKs, one of the girls here was so brave (in my opinion) and went to get her watch fixed without another korean speaker. her story goes something like this: she went into one jewelry store and as soon as she walked in the store owner said NO ENGLISH and pushed her out the door in a panic (not in a mean way but she was like scared of laura) so laura found another jewelry store and went there, she walked in and took off her watch and showed it to the lady and said "tick tick tick 없어요." which basically means "there is no tick tick tick" so after a few iterations the woman took out some batteries, but laura's watch is a windup, so she took out some double AAs from her bag and said 없어요 (=there isn't) again. the woman spoke in korean and laura shook her head that she didnt undertsand and so the woman spoke LOUDER (apparently that didn't work) and pointed to a calendar to a week from that day. laura retruned a week later and the woman pointed again to the NEXT week. this last time laura took a korean speaker with her only to find out the woman had gone on vacation and wouldn't be back for a while. we are guessing she might have run away with the watch. we'll see what happens.

so after my 2nd lesson this week, my observing instructor made comments about my lesson and this was one of the things she said: "so i don't know if this is just your voice in general, but there were some times i thought you sounded testy and/or whiny towards the kids. i mean it was weird bc it didn't seem like you were in that kind of mood at all, you had a lot of good energy but you just sounded testy" i told this to some of the other GIKs and ppl couldnt' stop laughing bc i am kindof known for my whiny voice and they thought it was sooooo funny. =P oh well

WE ALL MISS OUR MOMMIES!!! my roommate and i were talking and there are quite a few of us GIKs who keep having urges to ask our korean language teachers/cafeteria ladies/calligraphy teacher/random women on teh steet to give us hugs. we think it is because we miss our mommies. a lot. even though i've been away at school for so long this feels different because it's so hard just to get my mom on the phone and hear her voice when i want. the time difference is so weird and it's psychologically farther knowing i won't see her for a LONGER period of t ime than ever before and she's not just a 1 hour plane ride away.

also i miss my daddy. (and of course my sister and friends, etc). today was one girl's bday and she got a big bouquet of flowers and we waited for her to see who they were from and she said, "OH! it's from my dad!" and i started tearing up and cried alittle because i miss my daddy so much and want to see him!!! =( it just made me think of how much my daddy loves me and how much i want to accomplish to make him proud of me. =T