Intensive

Holy crap, it's intensive month. Forget all those ridiculous stats I gave you about December. You see, I was sick and tired of waking up when I felt like it, lazing around in bed for an hour after that, and then lazing around in my apartment for another couple hours before going to work. Now, instead of working 2:30-10:00, I'm working more like 11:00-10:00 on the long days, and 11:45-10:00 on the short ones. On the bad days, I get a break from 1:20 to 2:20 and from 6:20-7:05, and on the good ones I have maybe another 90 minutes spread out throughout the day. My reward for this: the staff loves me even more than they already did, and will also give me some extra money on my next paycheck.

Speaking of paychecks, I get my first one in exactly a week, at which point all of the pennypinching skills I've been making use of will become wholly unnecessary. I've been trying to think of ways to spend my massive salary. Top ideas so far include:
- a toaster oven
- a rice cooker
- a swiffer
- a dresser

I don't know what else to do with the rest, so I think I'll probably make some street vendors' days by buying large amounts of fruit from them. The asian pears (or as they're called here, pears - our pears are supposedly called "english pears," though I have yet to see any) are most delicious. Crisp, juicy, sweet, and huge, for about 75 cents each from the lady on the corner, or 1.50 each from the supermarket. And speaking of supermarket price gouging, I'm reminded that I was nearly sent into schock upon noticing that broccoli here, on sale, costs more than beef in america. It's about 14000 won/kg, which works out to something like 5 bucks a pound. As if I needed another excuse not to eat vegetables...

Back to the intensive class stuff - January is intensive month because all the kids have off from public school, meaning they can work harder at private school. One morning class in particular is pretty fun. Most students, even the really good ones, are too shy to talk, so I've really warmed up to this particular kid who is a bit of a jerk but who talks a lot and makes jokes in English. We were talking about music and he said he played the violin; I asked the other student what he played, and the first kid said "Nothing. He's a monkey. He plays the banana." I know it's really not all that funny, but if you put yourself in my shoes, you'd crack up too. Then, we read a little article about the Japanese claiming ownership of an island called Dokdo. This kid then said that Japanese people are "psycho stupid monkey homo donkey lesbians." Impressive vocabulary, no?

Alright, I've now got about 15 minutes to figure out what to do in my next 5 hours of classes. With the older kids it's easy, since they like to - whoa, two little ones just ran in to the computer lab and started pointing out errors in the title up there. Whoopsies. Must leave.