Yogurt bread??

Today was my last day of training, and my first day in the Direct English branch I'll be teaching in. I sat in on a couple of classes. In one class, the teacher spent about thirty minutes trying to help the Korean student pronounce "war" and "wall." This proved to be extremely challenging, because "r" and "l" are pretty much the same consonant here. They are written with the same symbol, but pronounced "r" in certain situations and "l" in others. So I got to sit there, quietly observing, while for thirty minutes "wa" noises were made nonstop by both the teacher and the student. I thought I was going a little crazy.

By the end of my orientation, I had been there for about an hour and half longer than I was supposed to, mainly because a student whose class I was supposed to observe chose not to show up. On my way out, the Korean girls behind the front desk took pity on my grumbling stomach (it was almost 9pm, and I had been there since 3) and offered me a piece of bread. It turned out to be a sweet roll filled with what tasted like chocolate yogurt.

I'm constantly being surprised by how important youthfulness and beauty are here. Students keep telling us how popular plastic surgery has become, the reasons often being to get job promotions. A Korean businessman (the same one who couldn't distinguish between "war" and "wall") was expressing some worries he has about his job - he's 37, and according to him it's very common for Korean businessmen to lose their jobs around age 40-45, only to be replaced by younger men. So, since businesses only want to hire young workers, these laid-off middle-aged guys struggle to get new jobs. They either sit around at home and do nothing, leave Korea to work abroad, or put up with a lower pay scale job that nobody else wants to do.

I have finally decided on a name for this blog. Suitable, I think, because I've never lived in a city that is also an active tourist spot.

First real day of work tomorrow. Rock.