The Life and Times of a Korean Bed Slug

I am turning into the laziest human being possible these days.

I live five feet from my job, have no cash, and a laptop with fast internet.

I downloaded the Hobbit in HD, extended edition, in 22 minutes. That's how fast we're talking. I started it, walked to the Lotte Mart last night, bought milk and cereal for the week (they discount their milk if they put the new expiry date out, who knew!) and came back to three hours of Middle-Earth. And it was glorious. (I still want the actual physical DVD because let's face it, I've been feeling guilty since it happened. But I hadn't seen it yet and was desperate.)

My days consist of walking to the convenient store, lying in bed, and bouncing around between watching the Vampire Diaries, Monogatari, True Blood, and whatever else I can think of in desperation. (I still need to finish Mad Men, also, so now that I'm all caught up on TVD I'll probably start in on that.)

At some point I'll be figuring out the PC Bang though, which is right around the corner, and then at least I'll have that. Who knows, maybe I'll make some gamer friends. That don't speak English. And are all guys. Sigh. Whatever, it's not like that hasn't BASICALLY been my MO for the past decade.

I want Dan to be here. (He doesn't come to South Korea for three more weeks, and we can't Skype because his laptop is broken and I don't even know where he is right now and the radio silence is turning me into an actual bona fide crazy person.) I want Ein. I'm waiting to find out if the landlord will let me get her, and THEN I need to get paid, and THEN I need to figure out the adoption process. It's soooo complicated. I can't blame them. With the high turnover rate of pets and pet owners, combined with how most foreigners aren't really here for long-term stays (like me) it's probably very hard to find someone who is actually looking for a dog for forever and not just the year they're in the country before they have to fly home.

But I want Ein for forever, and I'm willing to NOT buy a Wii U or a PS4 or whatever stupid gadget I was looking to get with the 200+ dollars it would take to fly her home with me next November. I wish I could convince them of that so I wouldn't have to jump through all these application hoops. It's daunting and stressful and all I do is watch videos of her over and over and wish she was just here already.

I don't know what I'll do if I find out I can't have one. Probably stay in bed and watch my one video of Amber over and over and wish I had just packed her with me. She'd like it here. The floors are heated and there's no other dogs, ever. (Seriously, I've seen two vet hospitals but only one dog being walked. Where are they all?)

I finished my first week of teaching. 

I kind of skipped the frying pan and got thrown straight into the fire. I'm not really sure what the story was, as I kind of just smiled and nodded, but I ended up teaching the final week of classes in lieu of their normal teacher instead of just observing. So I was suddenly in front of four different classes of kids teaching material for two different classes I wasn't trained in. On like, day three of being in this city. It was pretty daunting.

The first day I definitely sucked. I went too slow and we ran out of time and it was completely my fault. But the kids seemed to like me enough? Day two was even more stressful - this time I went too fast and we ended up with too much time! But the kids didn't mind and one of them even raised their hand and went "Teacher, you're going so fast." And I started to get upset and apologized and she just went, "No, we like it." So at least they don't hate me. Well, a couple of them do, but I'm their teacher, and "so it goes." And by day three, I had a completely new set of classes and new kids and I wasn't trained in the structure at all. But it was fun enough. The only problem was, I've noticed that the older the kids are and the lower the level is, the less they're interested. Which makes sense. But it makes my job a lot harder when it's a class of five middle-schoolers and none of them know the answer to something we just went over for ten minutes.

I teach again on Tuesday, the first day of the new term, and that's finally what I've trained for. But it's also a lot harder than anything I've taught so far - it's a higher level and much harder to teach. And I'm not teaching the other class I was trained in, but two other different ones instead. So anything after that day...here there be dragons.