10th Avenue Freeze Out

3-10-2010
Day 3 of 365: After what is now being referred to as "Disaster Monday", Tuesday in contrast was much better. I actually didn't do any teaching whatsoever because of standardized testing throughout the whole school, and basically sat in my office (I have my own office. It has one chair. It's for me.) for 4 hours messing around on the internet and reading a book that I picked up in the states called, Korea: The Essential Guide to Customs & Culture by Culture Smart! My goal is to not get arrested and/or beat up while I'm in South Korea, so if either of those 2 things happens while I'm here, I'm definitely taking the book back when I get home and asking for a refund.

After lunch I went to the hospital to get my health examination. (Note to self: Much like the bank, the hospital is another place that I would hate to go if I didn't have a translator with me) They checked height, weight, blood pressure, drew blood, urine, performed x-rays, etc. The exam was to make sure that I don't have any serious ailments or diseases like AIDS or Ebola. It takes a week to find out the results. It's funny how they made me jump through hoops to confirm that I wasn't a criminal before I entered the country, but they'll allow me to be around their kids for almost 2 weeks before they find out if I'm contagious with a life threatening illness or not.

I got home in the early evening after the examination, and decided to take a walk over to Lotte Mart to buy some groceries. It had been very cold and rainy all day, but when I exited my apartment, the rain started floating and quickly turned into snow! We don't get snow very often in Central Texas, so I was excited. Upon leaving the market, it was still snowing and there was already some accumulation on the ground. The walk home was much more difficult and my face was frozen by the time I made it back. When I got up to my apartment, I looked down on the city; everything was white.

When I woke up the next morning, the first thing I did was look out my window. It had snowed throughout the night and continued to snow as I watched. The first thing I thought of was, "SNOW DAAAY!!!". I got dressed and walked to school with hopes of cancellations and dreams of pegging children with snowballs in the park. It seemed like it might come true because there were significantly less cars on the road during rush hour, and even my recently adopted stepping stone path across the stream was covered in snow. Unfortunately, when I arrived I found a normal day of school waiting for me. However, the lesson for the day happened to be about the weather, and the kids were really into it, so it worked out pretty nice. I'll take a rain check on the snow day.

That evening I just wanted to stay home in my warm apartment (did I mention yet that they have heated floors here?), but my place doesn't have a phone, so I went and got a free cell phone since I can't use my iPhone here without racking up massive international charges. Much like the Korean pop culture, this phone is ridiculous in it's cuteness. I think it was meant for an 8 year old. What can I say? I feel a little more Korean now.