First off Friday at the school was pretty fun for the most part. The entire time with the kindergarten kids was just taken up by Christmas festivities. First off they had Nick and I dress up as Santa Claus and hand out presents to the kids, which was kind of neat. Its the first time I've ever dressed up as Santa and the reactions of the kids was largely favorable. Some of the younger kids seemed confused at first but once they realized we were giving shiny presents away they warmed up to our act considerably. Some of the older kids tried to point out that I wasn't Santa but in fact Kevin, which I denied vehemently. It was tougher to keep up the ruse when Nick pulled off his beard cause he got some hairs stuck in his throat. Then Nick and I played some songs for the kids. I'm not the best guitar player but the songs were simple enough, although I thought we would have more time and only got to do Rudolph and the 12 days of Christmas. Frosty the Snowman was our showstopper but we never did get a chance to break it out. We had managed to put in some 'Oooga Chuckas' (a la Hasselhof's 'Hooked on a Feeling') in the song in place of the 'thumpity thump thumps'. Patrick had taught the kids Ooga Chucka about six months ago and he says its the one thing that stuck with them.
After that point we all went on a bus ride to a theatre across town and watched a musical production of 'The Nutcracker'. Now this is the first time I had ever seen the Nutcracker, it was one of those Christmas stories that I was always aware of growing up but never really heard it. Well now I have heard it. In Korean. Its still largely a mystery. Muscials are very visual so I did get the general plot but for a lot of it I was just entranced by the spectacle. It was just about what you would expect from a Canadian kids musical with a decent budget except that it looked like everyone was dressed by the costume designer of Final Fantasy 9. i realize that comparison will be lost on most everyone who reads this, but rest assured its a very good comparison. Overall the musical was relatively enjoyable and the kids seemed to like when something on the stage involved blinking lights or confetti.
The rest of the day after that was business as usual but you would think with so much cool stuff going on in the morning I would have some good pics but all I managed to snap were some pics of our kids getting ready to go into the muscial. They're the kids in the back, I don't know who those kids in the front are.
The other teachers were taking lots of pics of us when we were dressed as Santa and hopefully I'll get some of those up soon.
After school I got a call from Ken and went down to his neck of the woods to meet up with him. It was about a 40 minute subway ride, which is unfortunate b/c it means we probably won't be able to meet up all that often most regular work days. In any case i found that Ken's area of town is fairly upscale and more westernized than my area. The corner I met him on had both a Starbucks and a Dunkin Donuts among a few other western restaurants. I also saw a lot more westerners walking the streets than I do around my area. Ken seemed to be doing alright, besides being in complete denial about having jetlag. I saw the place that he's staying in for a few weeks till his apartment is ready and it looks like he will have things a little easier overall than I did when I started out. Bastard.
He was still a little anxious about some things so we went out for dinner so I could show him how easy it was to order food in Korea. Now the problem is that I don't really go out for food much and really don't speak much useful korean. I've been keeping up with studying it but sometimes learning how to say 'the young boys jump' just isn't immediately useful. We went to a grill house and I knew I was in a little trouble right away when I saw that the menu was written in a calligraphy, so I stumbled a bit with ordering since I couldn't 100% figure out what letters were there. Then the waitress asked me something and I had no idea what she meant. I knew she was just asking for further details of the order but I couldn't recognize the words she was using. After apologizing for not understanding a lady at the table next to us helped me out. Turns out the waitress was asking if we wanted our pork ribs with or without bones. Well now I know the word for bone. We had a good meal and a few drinks. My stomach was feeling better and I was very hungry from not really eating all day (aside from a dozen maalox) and I even enjoyed the beer and soju. We hit a bar after the restaurant mainly just to keep talking and so I could impart what little tips and hints I had. Most of these tips seemed to be sliding off Ken's half asleep face. The jet lag was obviously catching up with him so we made plans to meet the next day. I showed him how to use the subway and I was off.
Today he showed up and i let him use my internet phone to call home and he updated his blogs and stuff. Then we just did a little bit of exploring, I tried to help him order some food throughout the day and although it never really went smoothly he started to understand that it didn't usually go smoothly for me either. Invariably a waitress or clerk will say some random thing you don't understand, but by the time we had dinner tonight Ken managed to handle the ordering all pretty well. For a good part of the day we just hung out at my place and talked, but we did head down to the docks so I could pick up tickets for the Christmas dinner we're going to. Nick was supposed to come along for that too but after calling him and finding that he was in that borderline dead state of being hungover we just did it ourselves.
It was kind of odd for me to be kind of the tour guide here since although I've been here two months I really don't consider myself that knowledgeable yet. I haven't been confident enough to go outside my comfort zone too often.
But it is great to have Ken here, I've met a lot of friendly people here but its nice to have someone here I feel really comfortable with. Its also nice to have a friend who is similar to me in not always wanting to go out drinking. I don;t mean to offend or judge those ESL teachers here that do that I just choose not to myself for my own reasons and its nice to have someone here to hang out with in other situations.
Plus I figure it should make learning the language so much easier if we just split it up. I'll learn the nouns if he'll handle the verbs and adjectives. Should cut my study time in half at least.
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