food, classes, rain...

I am loving the food here! Here meals are meant to be shared with lots of people so they serve you lots of food. Heather and I have been going out to this same place and sharing a meal of bibimbop. The meal is seaweed soup with these random white animal heart looking piece of things (we don't eat those), a side of kimchi, a side of spicy sauce, a side of awesome salty chicken stuff and then the main part is a huge pot of rice with bits of carrot, sprouts, seaweed and other random stuff on it. It only costs us $3 a person and is plenty of food. 

Everyday our school also gets a snack for us around 5:30. It has been fun to see what the daily snack is going to be and even more fun to try it. One day it was black noodles wrapped in pig intestine, another day it was cup of noodles, one day it was tomatoes and bananas, one day it was sushi, one day it was dumplings with kimchi and vegetables inside them, and today we had some sort of green tea cake....very interesting. :) I've also discovered this cool snack. It's a cookie of sorts, but it has 13 different kinds of nuts and grains in it. It is sweet, but at the same time very grainy so it's an odd taste.

Today I taught one of my two kindergarden science classes of the week and it was hell. These kids are so cute, but just completely horrible and naughty. I have about ten of them so it's hard to get all of their attention at once. I will try to help a few kids, but while I'm doing that the other kids will start throwing things and tearing the room apart. My class pretty much consists of an hour of me chasing the kids around the room. Today they decided they were going to eat paper and then spit it at each other. I don't know how many spit balls I got to the face. My problem is that I will get mad at them but then they'll do something funny and I can't help but crack up. So then my evil face has turned into a laugh and they don't take me serious any more. I've got a pretty good evil eye that I give the naughty kids, but then they're just too cute and I can't hold it. I hope either this class improves, or I become a better teacher. :)

The rain has started falling. I guess with spring you always get rain, but here it's a different kind of rain. It's acid rain. Because there is so much pollution in the city the rain is acidic. I didn't think it was a big deal, but now I think it's screwing with my lungs. Being outside in the rain kind of aggravates my lungs and gives me this little cough. ...or maybe it's the yellow dust from China that is causing that...who knows. Speaking of yellow dust, it's yellow dust season and people have started wearing masks. I think it's pretty funny actually. Some women will wear a hat, a mask, long pants, long sleeves and even gloves on their hands. And then here comes the American Ellie walking down the street with a tank top, capris and flip flops on holding my head high and breathing in all the glorious yellow dust. Ahhhh, I love this country!