I'm a talented person!

I'm a talented person. Why? Because I can play yo-yo, and painting caractor. Many people paiting caractor and play yo-yo, but I am great. Another person. Why yo-yo and painting is talented? Now we can start my talented yo-yo and painting caractor.

I like my picture, because my picture, is great (?) I like painting a picture. My picture history is very intresting. In eight years, I was like piture, and I had one titleless notebook. Now I see titlelss notebook, I'm laugh on the floor.

I started yo-yo at seven years. In seven years, pride a great, I played the yo-yo. In now, I play ingenuity of yo-yo. I breaked many yo-yo. I think six or seven yo-yoes. One day, Steve told he can yo-yo, but I saw, it is not yo-yo ingenuity.

My talented is two. One is yo-yo and one is painting picture. My dream is cartoonist, and great yo-yo woman (?). Why I has talented? Because I pratice and pratice. Do you want has talented? They you started pratice. It is your talented's manure.

i've been grading a lot of essays over the past couple of days. honestly, i'm impressed with the form that some of these kids utilize. in these parts their fans of the 4 paragraph (or 4 sentence for the little kids) essay. even if the engrish is botched, they're getting the grasp of essay structure.

i just finished my first week of work in ilsan/seoul. i have worked sunday through saturday, with my own branch of the hagwon's grand opening tomorrow (i have to give a speech and wear a dress. honestly don't know which is worse...). despite the fact that i 've had to commute 3 hours/day into/out of seoul from ilsan to train, i am loving everything about my new arrangement.

a week ago i arrived in seoul. i first went to sign the contract and figure out other logistical nonsense, then i went to my hagwon and just scoped it out. on sunday, there was an open house/meet the parents extravaganza at another branch of the hagwon in suwon, so i went to that just to be another foreign face in the crowd. before i went though, i had the opportunity to go to my boss' house. that's saying something right there, the fact that he has an actual house (and a yard!!!!!!!!!) in korea. dudeman is loaded. i gathered from a reliable source that his house cost approximately 10 million dollars. good gad. that's a sign that he's successful and there's money to be made if i align myself with him. and align myself i have. oh yeah, he had a dude drive me and some other peeps in his bmw. that was pretty sweet. i felt very important stepping out of that car....

a lot of people who asked me questions about the new gig were met most commonly with the answer "i don't know" or the slightly varied "i have no idea." here are some facts: my hagwon is brand new. there are other branches, but the ilsan branch is brand new. they're still in the process of recruiting students, so i've been commuting every day to observe other teachers at other branches and to grade/assess copious amounts of essays on varying socially important topics (the most creative essays in response to the prompt "do you think your school menu should change?" seriously, it's so interesting to read the [broken] english logic of little korean kids. endearing to the max). anyhoo...my first day of training was monday. i was going to just observe other teachers, but one of the teachers was in a horrible motorcyle accident, so his girlfriend was staying at the hospital with him. so i got to teach all 5 of the girlfriend's classes. some people might find the idea of that terrifying, but it was actually pretty chill. of course there was a time when the thought of teaching 5 classes at a school that i knew nothing about would have made me shit my pants, but i had already gathered just how systematic an organization this was, so it was cake. rice cake.

also, i had been expecting a one-room/studio apartment. so a porter and myself lugged all my shit up to the 13th floor of a generic korean high rise apartment building on saturday. i opened the door and almost cried. there was the smell of fresh paint and just so much natural light flooding this remarkably spacious area that i have the pleasure of calling my abode for at least the next year (unless i decide to ditch out early on this gig too. that's a joke). i have a kitchen and a really cute bathroom and a living room and a bedroom. plus, my little deck/veranda area is bigger than the one at sidae. it's actually a lot like sidae, but there's more light and it just feels fresh and clean. my judgement could be skewed by the glaring newness of it all. but right now, it's a perfect space for me.

oh yeah, back to the job being very systematic....so all the branches provide all the kids with books. there's a huge room that you walk into full of the books designated for each grade level. they actually do level tests that are standardized. there are consequences if students don't do their homework. there are parent/teacher conferences and there are grade cards distributed. plus, a vertitable fuckton of students are associated with this hagwon. i believe i heard around 11,000 students just in the seoul area. despite the numbers, dyb is a finely-tuned machine. there are a shitton of korean teachers also. all the levels do the same thing, no matter the teacher--same books, same level test. it's amazing. each day is a different focus--listening, speaking, etc. there are also a lot of teachers at this main branch, so it's nice to actually get to build some comaraderie whilst hanging out in a bonafide teachers' lounge.

so i haven't had too much free time in ilsan, because of the commute, but right now my life is good. i genuinely enjoy subway culture too. despite some of the questionable smells and the glaringly obvious lack of convenient trash cans (seriously, why should i have to carry an empty coffee cup for an hour). sitting on the subway, counting down the stops to my ultimate destination makes me feel important. i'm not busy really, all i can do is wait, but it makes me feel busy. it's urgent that i get somewhere. it's nice to have that time to be responsible for absolutely nothing besides listening to music.

in short, everything is adding up (so far, fingers crossed) to me feeling important and valued. i haven't had to struggle for anything either--no pointless weekly state of the union addresses featuring the same mounting, unresolved issues of the past year (hint hint: city hall in suncheon). you can only beat a dead horse for so long. after 9 months it doesn't even look like a horse anymore. i'm just guessing, as i've never actually beaten a dead horse.