Loser Bus Drivers, Trivia, and Plastic Surgery

So this weekend being my birthday weekend me and Kyle and Amy headed out to do something Mattish - in this case exploring the river spot that we found some more (see last post). We met to take the bus and that in itself is always an adventure, because there's no english, and bus guides, no internet bus guides....its pretty lame. Anyway, I successfully read the sign, asked a bystander for confirmation, and thought I'd ask the bus driver too, just to be safe but he was a turd - didn't answer yes or no, didn't try and understand, just yelled at me and chased me off the bus. Picture the poor sad foreigner taking his fledgling Korean skills for a test drive, just standing on the steps of the bus, sweetly asking if the bus went to Kanhyeon....and the moronic bus driver waving his arms angrily and say "no questions, get off" . It felt great let me tell you. He's lucky his bus didn't get a nice souvenir from my tripod on the way past. Anyhoo....alls well that ends well though, it started pouring moments later and we wouldn't have wanted to be out in the rain anyway.

We had a trivia night on the night of my birthday, a gathering (enabled by the omnipotent facebook) of the foreign English teachers from Wonju. According to facebook there's about 90 of us, but there was a solid 25 or so at the event. Lots of Aussies, New Zealanders, some Americans and a few Canadians. One girl went to Columbia Bible College in Abottsford....small world. It was fun to speak English and meet some more people, as this has been a rather isolating 7 weeks or so...one guy from Michigan talked hockey with me and Kyle for most of the time. Lots of newbies there, all talking about being lonely.....most of the people were couply types, so that was a little lame...but it was definitely a good thing to do. Hopefully we can do some community building around here....Our team won by the way, but we deferred the spoils (writing the questions for the next event) to our co-winners.

On Sunday I headed out to the river to make amends for the previous days rain-out, and find the rumoured waterfall....I took the train this time, not because of the bad bus experience, just for fun. I did eventually find it, but it wasn't particularly spectacular...nice but that's about it.

Closing story - The latest rude student quote is quite a winner. (This is completely out of the blue during a lesson) "Teacher.....you......go doctor.......change face.....nose, eyes.....change"

Teaching ESL does wonders for your self-esteem. I don't have any words to describe how much I can't wrap my head around ten-year-old randomly saying that to his English teacher. That reminds me, stay tuned for a scathing blog entry on plastic surgery here and the idolization of the west....coming soon....