Wednesday, March 11, 2009

but as it is, i'll dream of her tonight...

so the parents came and it was just as bad as i thought it would be. we had to go down to an assembly and stand in front of everyone and introduce ourselves with a microphone...they no doubt did not understand a word of what i said. i think maybe a couple of them speak a little english...but from what i'm told, no fluent speakers. they came into the class for 15 minutes and they were looooong minutes. i had the kids for about 2 hours before and we basically practiced those 15 minutes over and over. "sing the fish song!" and "what are these pictures of?" and "do you know how to shake hands, wave, smile, nod, etc?" and "oh, that didn't take up as much time as i thought it would, let's make an origami fox!" then we went to the bank and i opened an account but we didn't have time for me to make a deposit, so i have a card and account w/no money..."oh, it's easy," says the native korean speaker "just go in and deposit money some time." as if it were the most natural thing for me to walk into a foreign bank and do this w/out speaking a word of korean.

i realized that i haven't really listened to music for about a week. i charged my ipod last night and took a walk...it was great. i realized a few things: 1)the beatles are definitely the best band, not the kinks and 2) "help!" is a terribly underrated album! the song "i need you" alone is a forgotten gem and the song "i've just seen a face" is a classic for a reason...oh it's so good...on the way back from the megastore, where i failed to figure out which cleaning item was laundry detergent, i listened to "abbey road" and sang on the way home. surprisingly, i didn't get that many looks, but i don't have a car anymore and so i have to sing along to music at some point. i called it an early night tonight...i think i'm just going to have a beer and watch flight of the conchords and maybe some colbert report...i found that i can watch colbert online over here, though hulu and most other online viewing outlets remain locked in to the US. i need to buy a guitar soon. i can't stand not being able to play. i bought myself a nifty melodica or as they call it "air horn." it has about 2 1/2 octaves w/real keys and a big tube so you can blow into it with it sitting on your lap. it was about 18$ and well spent it was. hope everyone is well.

2 comments:

  1. Have you learned to speak any Korean yet?

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  2. i know how to say "hello, how are you?" and "fine, and you?" and "thank you" but that is it. i haven't spent a lot of time learning phrases because i don't know the alphabet yet...i don't want to learn phonetic versions of korean...but i am so busy...maybe i'll learn the alphabet tomorrow since i am sick and am not going out.

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