TGIF

So today was my first Friday...thank God. I am so excited for the weekend so I can sleep in. Last night I went out with my co-workers for the first time; Spencer, an American from Annapolis, Maryland, and Walter a native Korean who speaks with very little accent. They invited me out of dinner and I decided "why not". We went out for chicken wings, which actually turned out to be pretty good. To be honest I didn't think I was going to like Spencer much because in our first few conversations we didn't seem to have a lot in common (he isn't in to sports at all) but I was surprised at how similar our experiences on coming to Korea were, so the 3 of us had a good night and at least now I can look forward to going out and having some fun once in a while.

Today for classes I was feeling a bit lazy so I decided that today would be a "free speech" day where the students could talk about whatever they wanted. This actually worked out pretty good and I was glad because nothing is more uncomfortable when there room is silent and are desperately trying to get people to say something. At the end of the class I decided to ask the students to teach me some phrases in Korean that I could use to get by a bit and they happily obliged. I asked them to teach me phrases such as "Hello" "thank you" "excuse me" "I don't speak Korean" "how much is that"and "I want to fight you". They were all pleasantly surpised at how well I was able to mimic the worlds they said and they told me I had excellent pronounciation. This even caused one girl in the class to exclaim "You use your tongue so well!" to which I replied "That is not the first time I have been told that!". Only one of the students got the joke, which I was ok with...but I thought it was funny! The even stayed after class for a while because they were having so much fun...which made me happy. Then...to my surprise I even got a bag of groceries as a gift today! One of my older students brought me a bag of oranges, a bag of apples, some milk (not as bad as the first time...but smells and tastes a bit too much like corn), some sweet potatoes, and some bread. Not too shabby, eh?

I still have to go back for second half of the day in 2 hours...but since I told everyone to bring in a favorite song that we were going to play and then they had to tell me what the song was about in English...I don't expect the day to finish on a down note. I am still trying to decide what song to play for them...but I am leaning towards "One Day" by Matisyahu or "Johnny Quest thinks we're sellouts" by "Less than Jake". Matisyahu is a nice and peaceful song...but I really do love me some ska music.