A-team Shenanigans

I can't believe it's September already! I know I have been really slacking on the blog entries and basically the reason is because work has been frantic. The end of August was insanity and I am pretty amazed I survived it at all (and got all my paperwork done on time). September looks like it will be much of the same since my classes are getting bigger and bigger. I went from having 36 students to 55. That means extra essays to mark each week, as well as extra phone tests, reports cards and stress in general. This is modest compared to how many students some of my coworkers have but it's still a big adjustment for me, especially when the kids are at the beginning level and understand minimal English. I think Matt has more students but he can communicate with them much easier so I think it balances out.

Anyway, my job isn't always hard work- last week we decided to have a dinner with the A level teachers. We're a small group and we ended up having a pretty wild time. As a result we're all super close now. My coteacher is Minjung (her English name is Claire but I don't call her that) and then there is Garrett and Kelly (Yongwoo- she's wearing black in the picture). We had a really fun time chatting, laughing and eating lots of galbi and gimchi. It's so important to have a good relationship with the other teachers. It was a bit of a late night but was totally worth feeling sleepy the next day.

Later in the week Minjung brought some special mandu in for Garrett (and the rest of us). One of Garrett's favorite things to eat here is mandu (Korean dumplings) and it has become quite the joke. As it turned out, that day Garrett had brought his own mandu to work as his snack! Bwahaha! So we had FOUR kinds of mandu: gochu (hot pepper), gimchi, gogi (meat) and fried. Delicious!