Happy Day in Donghae

So I think my Fridays might be glorious here.  No middle school classes!  Yay!  And school ends early, yay!  I love having a head start on the weekend. 

I survived my first full week.  Can't lie, teaching is much rougher than I expected.  Discipline for my middle school kids (especially my M2 class of boys) is ROUGH.  I'm trying some new things, and I think I'll make behavior a part of their grade, 'cause I'm sick of their shit.  And I will hopefully get some long term curriculum/semester planning done this weekend so I'll feel more on top of my game.  Ideally would have done that before school started, but since I had no information about anything until less than 24 hours before I came here, it really wasn't an option. 

So I've been passing out a lot of hard candy as bribes...I mean, rewards...and naturally, well, when candy's just sitting there, I gotta try some, right?  So today I had a little oopsie and ended up with a chipped tooth.  Fortunately, Allison is religious about getting her teeth cleaned and was planning on going to the dentist. So we went together to Charm Dental.  And they were charming. Most of the staff spoke great English, especially one of the dentists who Allison knew (I think she's the mom of one of the kids at our school).  Korea may be disorganized about a lot of things, but it has healthcare figured out.  Korea has a pretty awesome national healthcare plan, which apparently includes dental care.  I haven't gotten my official Alien Registration Card, but the amazing dentists there did an inspection and polished off my little chip for free, and told me to come back for a proper checkup and such when I got my ARC. 

Then I had a bit of retail therapy and bought a flannel shirt, which will be nice when winter hits.  We got "teacher discounts."  Just a couple dollars, but super sweet.  Korean people in general are very nice. 

After that, Allison and I grabbed some coffee at a place called French Kiss.  Well, Allison had an iced coffee, I had a "sweet potato latte."  Adventure!  I was expecting to be slightly squicked out, but it was AWESOME!  It was like drinking liquid mashed sweet potatoes-delish.

Then we went our separate ways until later tonight, and I finally wandered into a Korean beauty store (Etude House).  So I am currently trying a mask.  Maybe I, too, can have skin as lovely as a Korean woman's!  Meh, probably not, but a girl can try.  And I'll just go ahead and ignore that it's probably full of weird parabens and other "beauty" chemicals that I would never put on my skin in the US. 

So, outside of school, I'm enjoying Donghae alright.  Hopefully I'll get to do some hiking and visit a jimjilbang this weekend.

Ciao, dahlings.