Jeju Times

Last night I watched Big Mama 2. Funny what types of American things make they’re way across the world. Did Big Mama 2 even come out in the movies in America, or was it one of those straight to video release situations? Clearly not the highlight of my day, but I did do many exciting things nonetheless. Perhaps most exciting was my first time betting at the racetrack! Korea has two horse race tracks, one in Seoul and one in Jeju. My host dad is a company partner so I had the opportunity to sit in the VIP section and watch. I placed two bets, and ended up on top by 2 dollars. After I realized how to bet, I stopped winning. Yes, that’s right. I should have just followed my intuition. Anyhow, I understand how betting can become such an addiction. When I return to the states I surely want to attend some of the big horse races. Who knows, maybe our next family movie can be Sea Biscuit! I am eating so many different foods I am astounded with myself. I guess there is not really a choice when it is forced upon you, I suppose that is exactly what I want or rather need.


Tomorrow I start school. I teach 18 classes a week, which means I need to learn approximately 800 students names…what a challenging task. A teacher’s worst nightmare, I only see my students one a week if not only once every two weeks. Although it takes little planning on my part in terms of creating lessons, meaningful learning and solid retention is hard to come across in 45 minutes a week. Like Tom Robbins babblings about his Remington sl3 typewriter in “Still Life with Woodpecker” I am going to make a brief interjection-I use commas a lot. In odd ways at that. Does it read strangely? I rarely vary my sentence structure…perhaps I should work on that.

BACK- So I suppose the time I wont be using towards lesson planning should go towards memorizing my student’s names. I think I will attempt to do that at the beach. Unlike Alex, my classroom does not overlook an ocean landscape. But, I can still get there quickly and until the summer is over, I look forward to planning most of my lessons there. The good ol’ Mac book might need to stay home for safekeeping. Wouldn’t want my pride and joy to get damaged by the waterside. I think some of the jejusi girls are getting together to share stories tomorrow.



Everyday I go up and down between I could totally do this for a year to “what am I doing living like this!” A great example of the language barrier occurred while discussing my cell phone today. A conversation that in any other context would have taken 5 minutes took ½ hour. Needless to say it included many dictionary references. My cell phone only costs 12,000 won a month. Sounds great, and too good to be true. So I inquired about the price, what it included and so on. Apparently I am set up on the economy plan-don’t use too much or it becomes expensive. I tried to convey to my host mother that Fulbright pays 100,000 won a month for my cell phone bill and that I wanted to make sure I got a plan that covered all of my needs-ie. Excessive texting and longer phone calls. Anyhow, I am not sure how we did, but I told her I wanted a plan in the 40-50 dollar range. I have no clue what those plans include, but I assume they will be adequate. Unfortunately I might be spending too much, but I have no knowledge of how the cell phone business works here so I can only assume it is somewhat similar to the US. In that case I want to cover my bases so I don’t have 100,000+ phone bills.