Whew! I just finished my first week of school, I have my lesson plan all lined up for next week...I am hoooome free. The week went much better than expected. I was really expecting a bunch of bored, indifferent students (y'know, high schoolers), and what I actually ended up with was 410 cute, excitable, hilarious guys. One of whom has already asked to marry me. So I'm all set up in that department. Actually, I would say 2/3 cute excitable students and 1/3 sleeping, unconscious students. I feel so bad for them! They work too hard! For a few days I didn't even see Yong Ju, my host brother, because I would be in bed before he got back from the academy and he'd already be at school by the time I woke up in the morning. And he's only even in middle school. He's reallyreally busy because he's preparing for this big national genetics test. He had a partner, but no he's all alone 'cause his partner took a trip to Atlanta and decided to stay there for the school system...not that I blame him. They take tests EXTREMELY seriously here, thougg. Yesterday I got all confused because there was no bell before each period (a bell, by the way, which sounds exactly like the little tinkling of a cell phone ring...the first few times I heard the bell I was looking around the office to see who had left their phone on). Anyway, it turns out that the bells were off because the 3rd graders (seniors) were taking an exam and couldn't be distracted. Kind of like how during the English listening portion of the KSAT (the big Korean SAT that determines which university students go to and therefore the quality of the entire rest of their lives) across Korea airplanes are banned from landing and taking off. HA.

OK, here's an issue. My computer at school is entirely in Korean. For instance, beow this window instead of "Post Entry" there's a little button that says "게시물 게시." Kaysheemool kayshee. Right. Internet Explorer, MS Word, WINDOWS Explorer....all in Korean. So now every time I make a choice when some warning or error window comes up I have to pray I haven't just told my computer to delete all recent files and self-combust. 'Cause you know Microsoft would let you do that. This morning I had a torturous IM conversation with Olivia, her working away on her shiny new Mac, me randomly jabbing at my ancient PC, trying to figure out how to split cells in MS Word tables. No luck. So, if anyone who's in an English-speaking country right now and is running ~Windows 98 and would like to help me out, tell me how to switch languages! Of course, the instructions would have to be along the lines of "go to the second item of the menu, press the third checkbox, etc." No actual words. It could be a fun challenge!

Ah, I also opened my bank account today...at a bank that is aimed mostly at farmers (???). Mr. Kim also really wanted me to sey up online banking, but that was made impossible by my lack of 13-digit national ID number. Mr. Kim was AGHAST that I had no such number. Is it me? Did I miss something?

Last night I was ironing my shirt for today and Fresa came over to say, "Oh, you're ironing! I hate ironing! Mm, my husband has a very important meeting tomorrow, he has to look perfect!" Hint hint. God help me if I've ever ironed a pair of men's pleated trousers before. Poor Dr. Lee. I hope I didn't mangle them too badly.