I wonder if this place will ever cease to amaze me. In five months? Maybe nine? Cause as of now, it continues to offer enough excitement every single day to keep my head spinning. Yesterday as Bender and I were walking around town looking for some food, a herd of middle school girls came storming out of Lotteria, the Korean food version of McDonalds. They all surrounded us. Bender managed to escape and now thinking back on it, I had no idea what was going on. This one girl kept screaming and pulling my arm. The others were all laughing. I got away eventually, but for the rest of the day, I had to keep asking myself, Um what the hell happened before?

I've pretty much gotten used to the stares on the streets now, although there's still that occasional drunk guy who will be walking along and then just stop. Right in front of you. It usually takes him a few seconds and then he says "Nice to meet you." They all say that. From across the room in a restaurant. While waiting to cross a street. It's weird to me because I view nice to meet you as something I would say as I'm shaking someone's hand and telling them my name. Here I guess if you exchange some sort of sketchy eye contact, you've "met." It's all good, though. Last week was the first week without the old boss and man, it was downright glorious. While before I was always trying to be quiet and avoid getting into any conversation in the office for fear that she might join it, things opened up quite nicely last week. Hmm good yeah, but I can also see myself getting into trouble if I fail too far into a casual carefree mode at work.

I made my first trip to E-Mart today. As you can guess, it's Korea's version of Walmart and after walking around for a few hours, I was able to find someone to point me in the right direction. Once inside, the place was an absolute madhouse. I felt like I was at the circus. It seriously took me about an hour to find my bearings in the store. Several times I put down my basket and considered just walking out and going home. I got a grip eventually, although I really couldn't buy any food since I didn't know what anything was. I got some noodles and some drinks, it was a sad effort. Once I got home I immediately realized I had completely forgotten to buy what I had meant to. Socks. I think I'm going to try to snag some from a street vendor tomorrow. Oh and the subway today, I saw this: a woman walking her dog. The dog was wearing some sort of sweater. It was also wearing.....wait for it......a diaper. A FREAKIN DIAPER. A DOG. AHHHHHHHH.

For my discussion class with the genius girls this week, I made a terrible choice. Since I knew one of the girls was in love with the Harry Potter kid, Daniel Radcliffe, I found a story online about him. Only problem was the story was about how Radcliffe was going to be starring in a new controversial role where he would be naked. Not only would he be naked, he would be naked and riding around on horses for sexual thrills. Hey, those are the words from the news article. So we read the thing in class and I break up the class into two groups, one side to argue that it's a good idea to take the role and the other to argue that it's not. The girl with the crush, yeah, I put her in the group arguing good idea. Stupid teacher. The first reason she gives for why it's a good role: "He has a shapely body." This girl is 11 years old. She then went into a monologue about how in five years, when she's 16, she is going to find Daniel Radcliffe and they are going to start their life together. As if this wasn't horrendous enough, the debate quickly turned into the girls playing their favorite game where they decide if they like how lI ook on whatever particular day it is. Radcliffe crushgirl, after telling me Daniel also has a six-pack, poked me in the stomach and said I have no muscles. Then discussion moved to my glasses. "You shouldn't wear glasses. You look weird." "No, no, he looks better with glasses." Can you imagine American students having these kinds of discussions in class, especially with the teacher in the room? It's one of the biggest differences between the cultures. In Korea, looks are everything.

I met a Korean guy at a bar last night who was fluent in English because he had gone to NYU before he got kicked out for smoking pot in his dorm room. He brought Bender and I a tray of fish skin. That's right. Skin. No meat. Not wanting to offend him, and in Korea, if someone gives you something to eat, there is no refusing, I stuffed most of the fish skins in my pocket when he wasn't looking. Bender was disgusted by this, but I still contend that it was the only option at the time. So anyway, this Korean guy who goes by the name Wilson, calls me today from the airport. He's heading to Australia for a week. He's also been in Korea for six months just "hanging out." I talked to him for about 10 minutes, about nine of which were about how he's going to call all these hot Korean girls and get them to hang out with us. But that other minute he spent telling me about how liked my nose and my eyes. I was baffled for a second and then ahh, that's right, no GayDar. During a middle school class the other day, while the kids were eating pizza, I turned around and I did a triple-take, there it was, one of the boys was sitting on another boy's lap. Not in a wrestling or fooling around type way. More in the way a couple would sit together on a couch and watch a movie. I had to leave the room for a minute. Once again, just too much.

Every week at work gets easier as far as classes go. I've pretty much found ways to keep control of every class. During my last class on Friday, I let the middle schoolers teach me Korean. They absolutely love this. Of course, they just teach me words like nosebleed, punch and stupid. But I still plan on making it a regular activity as even the troublemakers in class are mesmerized when I try to pronounce something properly in Korean. Sometimes I even have trouble with English. Not really, but during a listening class, the kids wanted to know how to spell "irritated" and I made the grave mistake of turning back to look in the book after I had written "irr" on the board. They had a real field day with that one.

(Photos- top- Bender and a couple natives at a bar, and me pretending I'm Korean.)