It's Raining Rain!

 And I've never been happier!^__^

Or actually, sadder too because tomorrow (Tuesday, October 11th), my beloved husband Rain goes to the army to (finally) get started on his military service. It will be a long 18 months without him :( And yes, I know he's not classically K-pop idol good looking (as in, he's not girly and he doesn't have double eyelids) but that's exactly why I like him. Or rather, that's why I like him after the fact that he can actually sing AND dance and has some videos with some amazing choreography.

So to farewell his fans, he hosted a free concert on Sunday in Gangnam, Seoul, and of course I went! And it was pretty damn amazing! First of all that they closed down about 500m of one of the busiest streets in the area outside CoEx Mall and the KEPCO building (seriously, who else would they do that for??? NO-ONE!!!!! That's who!), and secondly of all because he really went all out to amaze, and didn't skimp on anything (except possibly clothes.. he could certainly have done with less of those...^^).

Oh Rain, you sexy beast you ^__^

What a waste of an opportunity!

 Oh and thirdly because he's very charismatic and has a great stage presence and his MC-ing between songs was genuinely funny - like teaching the audience dance moves for one song, and then stopping it because people weren't doing it enthusiastically enough and threatening to stop the whole concert until they joined in, or responding to chants of "Jeong Ji Hun!" (his name) with "네, 알겠어요." ("Yes, I hear you.")



 
He also made some lucky fangirl's day when he got her to come up on stage, sang a song to her, hugged her and gave her a huge teddy bear and flowers! But he was a little taken aback to find out she was in fact 20, not a high school student like he thought - appropriate crazy fangirl age! Michelle and I kept joking that he likes them young, because he also kept calling out to young girls (who of course went crazy!). He also was very awesome and told people off for pushing too much when he saw a woman with her 10 year old kid getting a bit squashed.

It was SO FRICKING AWESOME!!! Michelle and I got there at 6 (it started at 7) and luckily were just in time to jump on the end of a queue for free wristband tickets to get into the main central area right in front of the stage. Cali Amy came a few minutes later and ALL of the wristbands for all of the sections (there were 8000 people just in that bit alone apparently!) were gone but luckily found a really nice and sympathetic security guy who let her in since we were already in there. A bunch of contestants from Superstar K (the Korean version of Pop/Australian/American Idol) came on first to warm up with 널 붙잡는 노래 ('Love Song') and the whole crowd immediately surged forward, then muttered disappointingly, and of course when Rain actually came out everyone rushed forward again, so we got REALLY close. And then at the end he got into this cherry picker type thing and swung out over the crowd in our section so we were even closer - as in, close enough to see the sweat on his beautiful face! (The photo on the left is from that). Below are some photos from the concert, of course chosen by how sexy he looks ㅋ ㅋ ㅋ ㅋ ㅋ ㅋ

Oh and lol, I told one of my co-workers about it today at lunch and she laughed and responded with "Oh, because you always use him in examples! I think you like large men, right?" (She's about 150cm and her husband is apparently not much taller). Haha, I guess I do ^__^

Videos to follow when Youtube finishes uploading.

AT LAST!

Finally managed to shut Eun-Jong up! Told him that he had five chances, and every time I had to say his name, he lost a chance. When it got to five, the WHOLE class would be kept in from lunch for five minutes. He got up to three (seven minutes into class) before the rest of the class lost it and started screaming at him. Attention-seeking little ADHD monkey got the message and put his head down on his desk for most of the rest of the lesson, only perking up to read through the dialogue with the rest of the class, then slumping down again.

I think that that was as close to perfection as class 2-6 will ever get. I actually high-fived my co-teacher afterwards.

guhh?????

I have no idea what's happening. With anything. Primarily with my school. Today has had some ups and downs. Firstly, the drama with Friday. Friday is our school's foundation day so we have the day off. Or so I thought. This morning my co-teacher Paige told me that the Vice-Principal had decided that actually, only the students have the day off but all the teachers should come to school, so if I wanted to take the day off I'd have to use one of my leave days. Ok. *Big sigh* This was a little disappointing as I had been planning to go to Seoul and go shopping in Myeongdong while everyone else was at work and generally just revel in the relative quiet compared to the usual weekend rugby scrum. For those of you not familiar with this sporting term, it's when the players all bunch together to get the ball, except in this case instead of a group of heavily muscled men crashing into each other as they scrabble for a tiny ball, it's about two thousand people pushing and elbowing each other for a) space or b) a bargain. It's also waaaaay nastier because everyone has heels, manicured talons and/or a huge handbag to bring into the fray. Add into this the crazy religious people predicting your afterlife in hell and the couples walking arm in arm coat-hangering half the crowd and the people randomly stopping or moving much slower than anyone else and you've got one of the most frustrating shopping trips you'll ever have. A standard Saturday there is seriously worse than the New Year's sales in Sydney. *sigh* The things one does for Forever 21.

Anyway, so as Paige was apologising for giving me this awful news even though it was the VP being an arse and not her (I hadn't made a fuss about it, she was just apologising because she didn't want to be at school either and  knew what I was thinking), my other co-teacher Ms Kwon told me that the VP had also decided that since I went on the 2nd year camp last year (actually we stayed in a rather nice hotel on the coast), I shouldn't be allowed to go again THIS year and would have to instead stay at school for 3 days and deskwarm. Despite the fact that unlike most teachers, I actually WANT to go! This is because the students from Ms Kwon's homeroom 2-2 and the next class down 2-1 are some of my favourites from last year's Super Duper English club and I could also have helped (vaguely) Ms Kwon out a little. So a little disappointing, especially since I've been telling the girls in those classes that I'm going with them - one of them even told me that she was going to do nail art for me on the bus! So much for that. *Double sigh*

However, this was not the end of the matter! At lunch, the school secretary guy Mr Jeong (the teacher that does most of the actual organisational work at the school) had found out about Friday and asked me what I was doing. When I told him that both Paige and I were told we have to be at school he harrumphed a bit and said he would check. He worked his magic and lo and behold! We don't have to come in after all. Huzzah for Mr Jeong! He's a lovely man and his English is actually good enough for us to talk, and I think because I helped him fill out a form for his daughter's enrollment in some prestigious boarding school somewhere in the UAE last year he tries to look out for things like this where he could easily just not bother.

Anyway, so that was the down, then up for the morning. Keeping in tradition of ending my posts on a positive note (and I need to focus on the positive after having class 2-8 today who are keeping up their own tradition of being noisy little ratbags), I am most elated because the five students from my special English after school class who we entered in an English essay/speaking contest ALL won prizes! One of them won the top prize of extra points towards her academic record (these count towards their high school entry scores) and the others won 2nd place awards from the company that runs the competition with our Education Office. You might remember me bitching about having to check and rewrite five 1 to 2 page essays over three days on top of all my other work a while back, so I'm happy that the hard work (both mine and theirs) paid off and they did well. I actually wanted to run out and buy them a cake to celebrate but Paige pointed out that the other students might be a bit upset since we hadn't even told them about the contest so I fought the urge.

Other highlights of my week have been the consistent answers from the 1st year boys about what makes people sad - I asked them why a young girl in a picture was sad and most of them answered "because her dad/mum/baby died". It became much funnier during the next activity on giving advice with class 1-5 when I asked them what you say when you can't really give advice to fix someone's problem, and gave their own example back to them as "my dog died yesterday".  They thought that I said "dad" and also that I was serious so the whole class went quiet and looked horrified except for one boy who shouted out "OH NO! TEACHER! SORRY!"

Today a student in class 1-8 also told me that he was happy because his friend Dong-Wu is very ugly. And then another told me that his partner, Jeong-Bin, was an octopus, upon which the whole class immediately launched into their best octopus impressions.

But the funniest thing I heard today has to have been the compliment from Ms Kwon: "Your forehead is looking very wide and shiny today! It is very beautiful!" haha she's such a sweetie ^_^

Off to go blot my giant shiny forehead, over and out!

Who?

Neil Gaiman, that's who. AND Doctor Who too to be precise! I am so freakin' excited to see this episode ("The Doctor's Wife) I really do feel like a geek :p What makes it even better is that I heard about this ages ago and completely forgot, and then remembered over a conversation with a friend, and then read a new post from Neil Gaiman's blog and looked it up to find out that it's premiering in America on April 23rd. I haven't managed to find it anywhere else online (YET!) so I'm assuming that's also the world premiere. And you know what? I think one of the reasons that this is so exciting, despite being American, is that they've actually taken the show and shot it in America rather than an American TV network taking it and "Americanising" it (i.e. changing it completely and turning it into rubbish) like they did with Coupling and Red Dwarf (neither of which made it past three of four episodes) and which I believe is currently happening to Skins. Anyway, exciting stuff!

Also, the new thing I learned this week was about the game called "hamburger" in which students (ok, boys) see how many people can dogpile on top of each other. Last time I saw my 2nd year students doing it they only got to about 6 people before we walked in and my co-teacher at the time Ms Shin (who is normally pretty calm and mild with the kids) went ballistic, making them do that downwards facing dog punishment in the corridor where they have to balance on their knuckles (luckily we have lino here, not just concrete) for 15 minutes and gave them a good scolding that actually left some of them in tears. This time, it got to about 14 people before I arrived but they very quickly all got up and went back to their seats when I walked in and yelled at them. Unfortunately, I didn't realise that the person on the bottom had been one of the tiniest boys until I saw him sitting with his head down on his desk, red as a beetroot, doubled up in pain and sobbing in that awful way you do when you can't breathe. Eventually the others explained and I sent him off to the nurse's office, and gave the others a good telling off for being little ratbags (in English unfortunately but I think they got the point). Then my co-teacher Ms Yun turned up and having passed the poor kid on her way up and gotten the story from his friend, launched straight into "angry Korean teacher" mode. Ms Yun gives the best tellings off - she works her way up from them being immature, then goes to disappointment and finishes with a good ole "what would your parents think of you behaving like this?" before demanding an explanation from the usually now sniffling student. If they've been really bad this is usually where she gets out her ruler and whacks them across the palm of the hand, but she usually doesn't even need it. Anyway, I think the bottom bun hamburger boy was eventually ok. Hopefully it won't happen again, or at least they'll do it to someone a bit less fragile.

Anyway, uh, what's a positive note to end on? ... well, it's Friday! That always makes me happy. In fact, that's my example sentence for 1st grade at the moment to talk about feelings and giving reasons in Ch 3 - I feel ____ because .... (I feel happy because today is Friday!) It's also been a pretty nice day (I power-walked home in 2nd period to get my camera for Paige for our students in the speaking contest and quite enjoyed it) with plenty of sunshine. I'm going to go to Homeplus and stock up on tonic and fresh lemons (no limes here ㅠ_ㅠ) so I can have a gin and tonic to help me through my Korean homework (thanks Costco for the gin!) of which I have an absurd amount. Lovely (the G&T not the homework) ^_^

Have a good weekend all!