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As the MadLib title indicates I'm slowly fixing up the old homestead. I picked up a bunch of furniture from Matt and little by little the place is looking less hovelish. I'm even thinking of getting a tiled roof but the local thatcher in my gundoeng would probably burn foul incense and disrupt my feng shui in retribution. I now have a bookstand which my tv rests on, I plugged the cable in and saw that I have about four channels. I also noticed that the color on my tv is all messed up- somethings never change. I got a knee-high traditional korean table for my laptop and meals (with a nifty little pillow from Emart to help complete the illusion that sitting on the floor is cool and posh). I also got a nightstand with some drawers (for my rapidly dissapearing socks and undies, laundry day is tomorrow by extreme necessity) and a reading lamp. Well okay its actually more of a hydroponic lamp, but I told Matt I'm gonna use it to grow my mind instead of growing weed. He high fived me and told me I was his hero. True story.

Matt still has a plant (a legal one) for me and I want to pick up a few more to add some colour to my place. Patrick let me know that the walls in our building are solid cement so putting any art up on the walls is going to be tough, methinks its time to buy a hot glue gun and thank Confucious that I didn't put down a security desposit.

I tried to buy the combo range/oven thing but ran into some troubles. I found one that looked perfect but had trouble telling the clerk that I wanted to buy it. She wanted my address for delivery and I tried to tell her I didn't have the address. But she thought I was saying that I didn't understand what she meant by address. So she called over another clerk, which I figured was to translate. But no, this other clerk spoke less english than the first but was slightly louder. By some stroke of luck a third employee was walking by, and although similiarly linguistically challenged he was skilled in the art of pantomime. I was rifling through my berlitz pocket book but couldn't find the phrase "I have not been told my actual address despite repeated requests to my employer, perhaps I could return at a later date with this information" because the editor had obviously omitted that since the only situation that would come in handy in would be far too humourus to cut short. So I pulled my conversational ripcord of "Sorry. Not now. I come back later.", which I spoke in good enough Korean that the fourth guy they called over (yes fourth!) seemed to understand. So at this point as I was crouched by the display surrounded by four friendly E-mart employees, I thought to ask if the appliance in question was gas or electric powered. It was gas, and I don't have a gas hookup at my place. Whoops. So after wastin all of thier time I ended up getting a medium sized toaster oven that I now balance my hot plate on and convince myself that it is neither ghetto nor a firehazard.
I am really doing my best to learn enough of the language here to get by but it is slow going. The 2 'learn korean' cds I have are either too limited in scope (four lessons to introduce yourself t rest to invite someone to a restaurant and tell time) or just memorization of very speciic phrases. I am picking up at least a few words/phrases each day and at this rate I should be able to get by decently in about three or fours months. Right now I am surviving on the patience of Koreans I talk to and little notes written for me by my co-workers. I had an interesting cab ride today where I was trying to get to the elementary school I teach at twice a week and told the cabbie the name of the school and handed him a sheet of directions written for me. He took me to the wrong school half a block away, I repeated myself and pointed at the directions again. He went around a few blocks and then proudly dropped me off at my hagwon (my regular school) seemingly oblivious to the fact that he had pickled me up there not ten minutes before. It was frustrating to say the least.
So tomorrow is friday and it should be an easy enough day for me, all my afternoon classes have tests which I suppose I'll have to write at some point during my lunch break. But that's not so bad, I have a long lunch and will honestly just print out the tests that Matt had done when his classes had gone through the same textbooks/units. right now I might hit the sauna at the gym, which is just a cool place to take a real shower and relax at the end of a day. Showers in korea seem to consist of a handheld showerhead tube attached to your bathroom sink and you just shower in the middle of your bathroom floor. That isn't just my place either all the other foriegn teachers have them. So a real shower, even a public one, is nice. Had some old guy quite pointedly checking out my package yesterday. Ken, you're gonna love it here.