Let me start by saying that teaching is difficult if you cant speak. If their are any mute teachers reading this blog, I take my hat off to you, its not easy. The week started off well, but then on Wednesday I started to feel sick, by the end of the day my voice was vary horse and I was congested and feeling a bit feverish. When I woke on Thursday morning I could not speak at all and I mean at all. I couldnt even make a sound. This obviously presented me with a few problems for teaching that day, in the States I simply would have called in sick and been done with it, but In Korea you only get 3 sick days per year, they require a doctors a note and since I am knew I didn't want to call in anyway. So I went to work and was amazed at how compassionate all my students were to my illness, they were on their best behavior and they all seemed genuinely concerned for my well being. So I used a lot of the tapes that accompany our books, handed out a few crossword puzzles and had the students do some book work and I made it threw the day without incident. On Friday morning when I woke up my voice was still horse but I had it back again and I was able to go back to business as usual. On a separate note I watched several Cleveland Cavaliers playoff games this week, we are currently up 3-2 in a best of seven game series against the Detroit Pistons, GO CAVS!!!!!!!!!!!!. I am able to watch TV from the States via a device called a slingbox, it is hooked up to my TiVo back in Cleveland and it streams(plays video for the computer illiterate)live TV and all my recored shows directly to my computer in Korea. I can watch all the same TV I did in the states, its wonderful. However even if I didn't have a slingbox I would be able to see the s as they played them live and during prime time on cable here in Korea. They love basketball and have had most of the playoff games on cable here this year. They also show a few regular season games per week I am told. Its a very small world! The last thing I will talk about is trash. Its different than in Cleveland. In Korea you have to separate your trash. They sell prepaid bags for your Food and non recyclable waste, which you are legally required to separate.The fine is steep if you are caught putting trash out incorrectly, several hundred dollars for repeat offenders. They also require you to separate your recyclables into bags(any plastic bags will do, you don't have to buy these), you have to separate Plastic,Paper, Glass and Metal. So basically under my sink I have 6 different trash bags, two of which cost me money and there not cheap, its like $1 a bag. I of course am happy about this as I recycled back in Cleveland and I am happy they don't add food waste to their trash dumps, this is a much better system than in Ohio. Its more like California's or so I'm told as I have never lived their. In Lakewood the city where I lived in Cleveland you had to use blue bags for recycling but you could buy them or just use blue grocery bags and you didn't have to sort it, the city took care of that.
