MONEY

4-21 It's been a while since I've wrote in my journal. School was good last week but wasn't particularly worth writing about. Last week was a great week in that I received my travel reimbursement and my first paycheck! I also got my cable hooked up on Friday right before I hopped on the bus to head to Seoul. I decided to head to Seoul to hang out with Steve and make some new friends. I did good getting there except I didn't select the right exit so when I tried to get off I couldn't! So, I found a small arch intended for little kids to walk through and snuck through. Later that night we met a fw people at the Hof bar for a few drinks. On Saturday we got up, grabbed some lunch and I grabbed a bottle of H20 for our hike. We were hiking the same mountain that we did last time except we hiked the entire mountain this time. Once we finished the hike we headed bac to Steve's where we got ready to go out. We first walked down the street to meet up with a few people before heading to Hangdae, a big bar area and a hangout spot for a lot of foreigners. just on our bus ride there we had a guy from New Zealand, South US, NE US, Canada, Austrailia, and Texas. When we made it to Hangdae it was like I walked into a new world as there were young people and bars everywhere.
There was a chain of bars in Hangdae called "Ho Bar" and the best we could tell there were at least 10 of them! Our fist stop was a club called FF where we enjoyed live music and danced. After FF when wondered around and found some guys playing on the streets and enjoyed that for a while. Throughout the rest of the "night" we visited a few more bars, even venturing into one of the Ho Bars before grabbing a cab at roughly 6am. We finally got back to Steve's around 7am and crashed. I hadn't had a night like that in years, good times. On sunday we grabbed some pizza and then I headed back for Ildong. I was supposed to attend a training on Monday and after missing the first bus, because I wasn't standing in the right place, I caught the second. The first 40 minutes was rought as it was packed.

I was standing up and the bus was very herky jerky. I also wasn't sure I was going. Right near the end Bomi called and said I didn't have training now; thank goodness I was still on the bus! So, I rode the bus back and went to school for the remainder of the day. Yesterday was a crazy day as it was the first day I taught alone. It started out real crazy but got better throughout the day, but was a little nerve racking. I also handout out my first discipline as I made the girl that really likes me sit in the back of class for talking, and she didn't like it at all.
After school I stopped at the big grocery and picked up some steaks, chicken, fruit, etc. It was my largest grocery trip yet, to the tune of about 36,000 Won. After leaving the grocery I stopped at the dvd store and picked up American Gangster. For dinner I cooked a couple steaks with mushrooms, onions, and peppers. Today has been an easy day as all I have on Weds are a Kindergarten class in the am and after school class. starting in May I will also bee teaching English to a few of my students parents on weds as well.