Hello Again

It's been a few weeks since we've written and I'm wondering if people are starting to lose interest. I hope not. When you go on vacation, you remember how to relax, but you also forget your normal routine of life you were living before you went on vacation. That's where I'm at right now. I'm back from vacation (have been for a week and a half), but it's taking me some time to remember how I got everything done in the time I am given. So it's been pretty hard to do it all and the blogging ball got dropped. Sorry about that, my faithful ones who check this regularly.

Right now I'm at Nowon English Village, a different branch from the Suyu one that we normally work and live at. Rebs is in class, "training". The teacher she's with said she was tired and was just going to have the kids play games. She's tired because she's filling in for someone. But this is just an example of how laid back Nowon is compared to Suyu. For those of you who don't know, Rebs is going to be transferring to Nowon starting next week. The job came open a couple months ago and she wasn't doing so well with the type of environment that Suyu is--spontaneous and chaotic mostly. I've been managing okay. I think I just learned when to check out and mind my own business. But it's hard sometimes because you have to not care too much about anything you're doing. That type of environment encourages complacency. So I walk the fine line of non-caring complacency and intentional laid back teaching.

How did I start talking about Rebs and end up on myself? Anyway, Rebs is transferring. She's looking forward to it, where you sometimes work full days, and sometimes you don't come in until 2pm. You have a break in the middle of the day from noon until 4pm always. The classes are smaller and the administration is supposed to be reasonable. It's a small enough environment that it's easy to build relationships and when something's wrong, it can actually be fixed. There is a very small chain of command so things are less likely to get lost in translation.

Why am I here, you ask? Well, all this week, Rebs and I are working at a restaurant. Yes, I know we came to Korea to be English teachers, but leave it to Korea to decide we're going to be restaurant employees for a week and it to make total sense in their heads. We did it last night, but had no idea what was expected of us until the moment we started. We had been told to wear a white shirt and black pants because it was a nice restaurant, and that we would be working from 6-9pm. Other than that we knew nothing but to come to Nowon. So we showed up here and looked around a bit. Rebs observed a class while I read a book. Then at 5:15 a girl rushed in who we'd been told would take us there. She acted in a hurry and said, "okay, I'm ready to go." She said it as if we should have been expecting her at any moment. So, being the smart people we are, we followed her. When we got to the restaurant, they had us change clothes and sit down. We met the owner who spoke broken English and then ate dinner. Then the people from Gangbuk district office, the people who had arranged the event, showed up. All the people acted scared because these people were of much importance. I think if you don't stand up and give certain people the most respect, you can get in alot of trouble and lose your job. So we met them and shook hands. They decided to sit down and practice on us, even though we didn't know what was going on still. They practically picked Rebs up out of her chair and handed her a menu. I guess it was time to start. She took their order and talked with them. They had her sit down. She talked with them for several minutes. Then some other customers showed up and it was my turn. This ended up being what we did all night. Take orders and sit and talk with people. I guess you can consider that work.

Anyway, I have to go now and do it all again.