The Adventure Gets Tested...Day 14 in Korea

I woke up a little later on Wednesday. I took this to mean that my body was getting accustomed to the time change. I took this to be a good sign.

For breakfast, I had ham, eggs, waffles, and toast. (Just kidding. I had stick coffee.) I spent the morning showering, shaving, getting ready for work and Skyping. I also posted a checklist on my door to make sure that I left with everything that I needed for work.

At the appropriate time, I ran down to the gas station to ride in to work with Mrs. Yoon.

Every Wednesday at the school was Test Day. This meant that all of the elementary school children showed up at random times during the day and took a test from their teacher. My tests were all supposed to be speaking tests. For most of mine, I either asked them questions for which they had learned English responses, or I would ask them questions about pictures using words that they'd learned. I spent most of the morning making tests for all the classes that I taught (There are about 8 different ones for the elementary kids). One of the other teachers, Justine, was playing music (in English) on her computer. Some of the stuff that she would listen to included Josh Groban, the Beatles, and jazzy stuff. I asked her if she'd ever heard of Norah Jones (I may or may not have a huge crush on Norah Jones). She didn't know her so I played a bit of "Don't Know Why" on my computer using a jump drive that I'd brought with me. After a few seconds of listening she said "My daughter like this music. Hmmmm. I like this music, too." I hoped that she wasn't just being polite, but honestly who can't like Norah Jones. She's almost as beautiful as her voice.

Norah Jones, my future ex-wife.

Some of the kids showed up at around 12:30, but wanted to go study in the computer lab before taking their tests. Jenny and I each took a classroom and waited for the students to come. We were waiting for a long time and were both hungry, so we decided to see if Justine would go get food for us. Jenny asked if I would buy her lunch. I told her yes, of course. (Pretty girls should never have to pay for food when a guy is around. Remember this, gentlemen.) We found Justine and I gave her some money and asked her to go get some gimbap and takkahngjeong. Just as she was leaving, pretty much every kid in the school showed up and we had to go back to our testing rooms. We probably spent the next 4 hours administering tests to most of the elementary school students. Some of them were really picking things up fast! I managed to take some pictures while I was waiting for students to arrive.

The classroom I used for testing

Same classroom, only from the back.

Some Korean graffiti on the classroom wall. 

This is the classroom that Jenny was using. The two girls who were taking their test hid when I took this picture. (One of them is under the table) 

By the time that we finished testing the kids, Jenny and I were both starving. Our food was waiting for us in the office, where it had been sitting for hours. I was so hungry that I still thought it was awesome. 

A few more kids came in and we got their tests out of the way. By the end of the day, we were exhausted. Mrs. Yoon asked if we wanted to go out for "some cold drinks." I took this to mean beer, of course, and agreed very strongly. Jenny also agreed, so we headed out to the main street of our part of Seongnam. While we were deciding where to go, Mrs. Yoon had to take an important phone call so I took the opportunity to snap a few pictures of our little part of Seongnam.

It was night and my camera on my phone wasn't very good.

I think this was near our school. 

Jake. He typically wears this look of curiosity.

Mrs. Yoon on the phone

Mrs. Yoon wasn't able to get off of the phone for a while, but she guided us down to a little restaurant for coffee and dessert. We wound up getting water and two bowls of a kind of Korean ice cream. It consisted mostly of ice, a sweet sauce, corn flakes, and some rice cake things. The idea was to mix it all up and eat it. I must say it was pretty good.

It looked pretty similar to this. Yes, I forgot to take a picture of it. Shut up.

Mrs. Yoon was finally able to get off of the phone. She told us that the person who'd called had been someone who'd bought her book series. Apparently the person really liked it. I made the comment that she was famous, and she told me that Jake was more famous because of a picture in the book. She told me that there were copies at the office and that she would show it to me the next day.

After we finished, we left the restaurant, said goodbye to Jenny, and then headed home to Gwangju-si. Mrs. Yoon dropped me off at the gas station and I hurried up to my apartment. I changed clothes and walked down to the park. This time, I walked along a path on the opposite side of the river. This path went on for miles. At one point, it passed under what looked like an incomplete bridge, with a big gap in the middle. I thought that it might be a drawbridge, but wasn't sure what it was for. I walked on the path until I reached the end, and then walked back on a road that was beside the path. I decided that I really enjoyed the night walks I'd been having. On this particular night, my walk lasted for almost 2 hours.

I was walking back to the apartment when it happened. I could feel it coming on for the past couple of days. I'd felt happy and energetic, and my energy-level had been building during the long walks. It happened as I was turning up the road that led to my apartment complex...I just started running. Walking just felt too slow. I wanted more. It's difficult to put into words...I started running because I just had to. I ran up the hill, past a few other apartment complexes until I reached mine. It was pretty slow, not a long distance, and I was out of breath when I reached the door to my building, but it felt amazing. I decided that I wanted to start doing it regularly.

Once inside, I showered, and then got in bed. As I lay down, I started a Korean lesson with the intention of practicing for about half an hour. It hadn't been 5 minutes before I drifted off to sleep, where all of my dreams were available in English.