So have been SOOOO busy the last few weeks. But finally some time to sit down. With so many stories.

FIrst of all - The next few weekends up til November 10:

- Doing a farm stay with a rural Korean family down in the Southern Jeolla Province. A day in the life. I CANNOT wait.

- Doing a templestay in a buddhist temple. Another day in the life (and spending the night there). We eat three meals prepared at the temple, and help with daily chores and living there.

- Apple picking and making apple wine, as well as listening to traditional Korean music

- Going on a fall hike in one of the prettiest fall mountain ranges in Korea - Mount Seoraksan!!!

Sooo I should be pretty busy for the next month or so.

Otherwise, things have been pretty slow. Mostly work and weekend trips. Anna and I went to Toma Tilla (sp?) which is a mexican place in our mall. It was so good, and I especially loved the man throwing back a brew at the register. This is the Taco Bell equivalent of Korea, and please imagine a man sipping on a draught beer while cashing people out. Only here. Though at maggie moos i've considered it a few times.

On the school side of things: Each day, we have to assign writing assignments. These can be creative, thought provoking, or more autobiographical, but we tend to change it up each class. So anyway, we were going over grammatical usages the other day, and one of our students was reading aloud. He was reading the differences between "who" and "whom." Sidebar, this is still something I will NEVER understand. Who the hell ever uses this the correct way? That and determining what every single part of a sentence is. What is "then," "to" "except" ..... i was an english concentrate for 4 years at a great college. Yet .......... no clue. Is it a conjunction? Preposition? Yiiiiiikes.

So ANYWAY he's reading aloud. "When writing, you will have to choose between using 'who,' and 'wahm.' Everyone looked up .... and I can't even justify why this is so funny. WAHM. instead of whom. In a korean accent ...DYING laughing.

Next, we are writing about things that make us sad or angry. Many of the kids wrote about having a bad day at school, getting a bad grade, or getting into a fight with friends. Same kid? "I'm sad when I have crabs. (sidenote - the food)... I ate crabs and I got sick. I do a throw-up on the train. I do a throw-up in the car. I do a throw up on the bed. I do a throw up at house. Crabs make me unhappy." .........The grammar is just phenomenal. I can honestly say doing a throw up makes us all very unhappy.

One of our vocab words last week was "recollect." I can already tell these are going to serve endless entertainment for me. As always, a definition and a sentence are required. Recollect (v). to remember something. Sentence: I recollect s***.

No joke. I recollect s***. I mean I gave him credit. He used the word correctly. So after laughing out loud and really wishing I had my camera to take a picture of it, I wrote "please do not use this word in class," and gave him a +1 for his bonus credit.

Lastly, we visited Gyeongbokgung Palace today, and had our first experience with a Chinese man coming up to us and taking our picture, because we're white girls, naturally.

He also asked us to pose with him as his friend took a picture of him with us. I've heard that this will happen. I'm just so glad it finally did.