Day 48

Day 48 Febuary 3 2009 Tuesday

I went to the bank today and finished my wire transfer. It was successful. I just checked my wachovia account and its currently processing! After wachovia takes their cut I will have $988 left. All of that is going to my bills for Feb and March plus bills I owe from December and January that my mom and sister paid. I should be able to start sending out payments in about 5 days. 1,419,987won equaled out to $1,000 usd plus a 20,000 won fee to wire the money from my Korean bank (Woori).

Today's exchange rate was 1399 won=1 usd. I finally have it figured out. the lower the won the more money a dollar is worth. I always thought the won needed to be high but it needs to be low. So I want the won to go down instead of up!

I got my gas bill today. It was 51,000 won for January. I paid it while I was at the bank.

My first class was good. One of my students told me that her birthday will be on sunday and that she is leaving the second class early because her brother's birthday is today. Today we talked about an animal band and B-boys. I had to teach 2 lessons today and we didn't get finished with both. there just isn't enough time for 2. All the students in the class are well behaved. They ask tons of questions when we are doing the workbook. I'm running around the room to help everyone. They are all calling out "teacher". I help one then I go help another one. I have one student who doesnt like doing her homework. I told her that if she misses it again I will give her detention.

My 2nd class is always rowdy. Today was no exception. I have 4 girls and one boy. The major troublemakers are 8 of the boys and 1 of the girls. I kept telling them to be quiet. They just don't listen. I wrote down 9 of their names and asked the korean teacher to call their parents. I didnt write down one of the boys names. He never causes a problem. And there are 3 girls who are good. We had to go over 2 lessons and I didnt get through with both of them. I hate how about 10 minutes before class is over the students say "bye bye". I tell them "we still have 10 minutes left!".

My 3rd class is middle school. I only have 2 students and they are very good. Today we learned about birthdays. We went over the material in the book which is way too short. Then I gave them an activity to do where they fill in the blanks with vocabulary words. Then I gave them a word search with vocabulary on it.

My 4th class is good also. There are only 3 students in the class. We actually finished all the material in this class. We were talking about the first day of school. One of the students described his Korean teacher as 'inexorable' (he looked it up in his dictionary). The girl in the class said I was her favorite teacher. The girl is in 4th grade and the 2 boys are in 6th grade. The boys were telling me they were in 5th grad in 2008 and 6th grade in 2009. One boy said he wanted to study math but his mom wanted him to study English. The girl said studying English was fun.

I found out that I owe the school 40,000 won for a housing deposit for something that we don't get a bill for. probably water. 20,000 a month. I asked the foreign teacher why they just didn't take it out of our check and he said they wanted to tell us about it first. I wouldn't care if they had just taken it out of my check. Also we don't get a stub to show what we make. I don't even know if they took out taxes or medical or pension. we don't have a payroll stub. The other foreign teacher is going to tell the teacher in charge of foreigners that we want a record of what we make.

I talked to a Korean guy on the phone tonight. We met on myspace. We emailed back and forth for a while before he suggested that we meet. I decided I would since he took the reasonable route of contacting me. Emailing a while before asking to meet. He is 24 so that means he could be really as young as 22. He actually speaks good English-said he started studying English when he was 9. He wanted to meet someone to help him with English. And I need someone to help me adjust to Korean life. He's never been in Uijeongbu before so he is going to meet me at the subway station on Sunday afternoon. He lives in Seoul.