::A Geek in Korea::

With my new schedule in effect for the next two weeks, I’ve got some excessively long class hours for someone that is supposed to be "part time". I leave sometime around 8:30 in the morning, eat lunch at home around 1:00 PM at home, and don’t finish teaching and walk back in the door until around 9:00 PM on some nights. Eight to nine hours of teaching is enough to wear anyone out. Not only that, the holiday in the intensive schedule next week needs to be covered on Saturday this week. Money or not, this is probably the last time I’m going to offer to cover classes on Saturday, as it eats into my leisure time enough when I can’t get home at a decent hour during the week.

To make it through the day, I have my arsenal. I bring warm water to ever class to help my vocal chords. Hours of "repeat after me" lessons wears down my voice. I also bring maesil juice, made at home , to cool me down and refresh me without caffiene. I bring several fruits to eat between classes. I had the first batch of peaches we bought at the street market, some grapes, and a few bananas today to keep me going. My only cheat is an ice cream bar a day purchased from a convenient store to keep me cool when I return from taking a taxi at lunch. It’s been extremely hot since we’ve gotten back from the States, and I need a cool down as much as my dog does on the veranda all day.

I’ve got nearly all my students names memorized by class now. I’m doing much better than I usually do, as I’ve got anywhere from eight to fifteen students in each class. It helps that each class has about five names that repeat. I teach a "Sally", "Kevin", "Jane", "James", and "Tommy" in almost every class. Sometimes I have multiple Kevins in class and get to call them  by their last name, or make up a nick name for them.

My new temporary substitute foreigner coworker seems like an interesting guy. He’s South African, but taught in the Philippines for a few years and decided he needed a change. He went from laid back rural village to Daejeon and said being in a city again has left him in a bit of a culture shock. He’s only been in the country a few weeks, so I gave him a few cultural pointers when I could to help him out.