Monday, December 27, 2010

Being of Service

I spent several hours helping my friends get things packed up in their swanky apartment so they can jet out to Thailand in a few days.

Aside from the general fact that I'm always happy to help a friend, it felt surprisingly great just to be of some use.

Although I love my job, it really is pretty easy. I am teaching kids how to chat casually in my native language. Mostly they learn the hard stuff from their Korean teachers- I would say I remind them of grammar and vocabulary more than I teach it. My function is to push their best pronunciation and make conversations start for them. It ain't hard. As someone recently put it, I'm just a little bonus for financially set children attending extracurricular classes at an academy which doesn't even assign real grades.
I'm lagniappe.

And with my new schedule, most classes will only be 20 minutes long. It's underwhelming, to be sure.

So, yeah- putting some other skills to the test and rolling up my sleeves felt terrific.
Plus, I got to bring home a few goodies.
Win-win.

Anywho, Christmas was lovely. Lots of good homecooking and a little gathering here at the apartment- cozy. It even snowed all night. I do believe this counts as my first real white Christmas!

And my buddy TMZ is back in town: Well, back in country, anyway-- so it gives me an excuse to trek over to Busan for a weekend soon... which has been on the to-do list since I landed here. It's a big city on the beach. What's not to like?

Hmmmmm..... now to grade some papers and try to sleep; in the morning I've promised to take myself to the dentist to check on a toothache... but I've broken that promise a few times this week, so I can't really be trusted.

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