each day i discover more idiosyncracies. today's latest: the number 4 is an extremely unlucky number. my room at the sin den is on the 4th floor, so on the elevator all the other floor's are numbered, but for 4 there are the letters fl. i don't know why there's this superstition, i just know it exists. fair enough.

today i complete my first "full" week of work, and i'm pleased to say that i have all my students' names memorized. i also think the kids realize that i'm not there just to watch them crawl all over the furniture while i talk to them in english, i actually want to impart knowledge. we'll see how long that lasts...in the first class there are only two students--sam and aaron. the're probably 4 or 5 (oh yeah, sposed to be 6-11 year olds, but apparently the owner will accept anyone as long as they pay, including a two year old who, up until yesterday, would just sit in the lobby and cry. but she was crying in english, i could tell). aaron is my favorite. it's hard to discipline him when he's sitting in your lap mumbling in korean with one or two english words thrown in the mix. he's probably the worst-behaved student there. but he's also got these dimples and tiny teeth. and he likes to say "what" in korean over and over and over. it sounds something like "boooryo."

in my second class, i have steve, greg, and bob. there are a bunch of other kids too, but these are the three that stand out to me right now. steve is constantly picking his nose. i would never want to touch his arm or anything remotely close to his hands, which reminds me that he touched my phone a lot yesterday, so i've probably got booger bits in my ears at this point. but cooking with him on monday will be a real treat. he's constantly digging, sometimes to the point of bleeding. and i dunno if he just hasn't been taught that it's sort of gross to pick your nose all the time in public, but maybe i'll try to get him to understand that in english. i guess he's still too young to be self-conscious about anything. greg looks like an old man in a little boy's body. he also has this perma-smirk on his face so that he constantly looks like he's really annoyed by everything. i think he's annoyed by the fact that he sort of finds me and julie entertaining, but he would never want to admit it. and then there's bob. bob cries a lot and is missing his two front teeth. he's very cute but he likes to pick fights, mostly with steve the booger eater. yesterday we all gathered around to read, and bob started hitting steve and crying because steve was sitting the closest to me and helping me turn the pages with his gross fingers. the girls in all my classes are really good and well-behaved and like to look at/touch my eyelashes when i wear blue mascara.

in the next class i've got a kid named crocodile. he's the one who likes to pick fights in that class (seems like there's one for each group). no one in this class wants to call me jamie, so instead there are constantly competing little voices screaming "teacher!" it doesn't matter if i'm two inches from their faces, they still scream teacher at me. there's one kid named jim who always says teacher and then folds his hands as if he praying or something. he's begging me to acknowledge him and acts like everything--for example, the fact that he didn't get to choose his own writing utensil--is literally breaking his heart. he's also one of those kids that you know exactly what they'll look like when they're 30. he's the oldest in the class and the worst at english.

next class is my babysitting class. they're all just too young to do anything besides color and run laps around the tables. i'm lucky if i can hold their attention for 5 minutes. they've very cute, but they also enjoy screaming really loudly.

my last class has the most well-behaved and best english-speaking kids in it. we get through the lesson plans really quickly and then they play a couple games of go fish, which is fine with me as long as they say "go fish" in english. next week i'll probably deviate a little more from the lesson plans with which we've been provided, this week was just to get a feel for everyone's level of proficiency.

today is supposed to be the day we act at school. i have no idea how this is going to work. i'm a little scared...i think it would be funny to print off a transcript of svu and have them act that out. i should start thinking about who's my mariska hargitay....

yesterday in the crane game there was an mp3 player. i was tempted but i didn't have time to play. when they put an actual ipod in there, i'm all over it. i'll drop 20 bucks fer sure.

did anyone else watch the ultimate fighting championship and think that the guy who won didn't deserve to? i think his name was forrest. anyhoo, it's sort of weird to see these two guys beating the crap out of each other to the point that they're both covered in blood, well, mostly just the one guy's blood. even when they weren't fighting and were standing, there's just blood steadily streaming down both of their faces. i remember in basketball we had to leave the game if we even scratched ourselves--there was such an aids/hiv paranoia. but this was one of the only channels i found in english. i know it sounds like i watch a lot of tv over here already--i don't--but the noveltly of everything i watch is much more pronounced and noteworthy given the circumstances. anyhoo, i was taking a shower, but i left the door open so i could watch the 4th round of this thing in the bathroom mirror. i'm funny....

still snow on the ground here, and it's kick ass...it will be interesting to see everything turn green in the spring, especially the mountains. i'l become an outdoorsman yet!

for those wanting pictures, i have taken a ton, but i have to wait until i get to my apartment on a better computer before i get them on the blog. fear not, you'll get some images.