Rakhi:The celebrity status is still in effect! Today Joel and I were followed by a group of girls from my school around the supermarket! We hung around in front of the beansprouts for about 5 minutes to see what they'd do and they just waited behind us until we moved again. They even tailed us outside of the supermarket and followed us down the road and accross the street! Very bizzarre indeed!

They're not all weird stalkers though, so of them are really sweet. Friday was my birthday and some of the kids made me cards, wrote me letters, gave me earrings, necklaces, chocolates and sweets, which was all very kind. My birthday celebrations started with me waking up to a flat full of balloons and presents from Joel. He really did his best to make sure I enjoyed my first birthday away from family and friends including appearing at the front door after work with a birthday cake and candles. In the evening, we met up with some friends of our training course and went to some cool bars in Hongdae. We ended up in a tiny little club where the DJ played all our requests so much fun was had. Then on Saturday Joel and I went to a massive amusement park in Seoul and although we were feeling slightly tender from the night before we went on some of the rides. As is always the way though, the best rides had huge queues and we couldn't be bothered to wait so we will be returning to go on the jet-ski rollercoaster ride!

Tomorrow is the first actual lesson that I will be teaching. I've planned my lessons and drawn about a hundred clocks today (i'm teaching one grade how to tell the time) so hopefully all will go well. I reckon my lesson will be a shock to the system for some of the kids as all they are used to in English lessons is watching an awful CD-ROM. I don't know who makes these language CD'S but my co-worker insists on using them all the time. Basically the whole lesson is planned for the teacher, just press start. I refuse to use them though as they are mind numbingly stupid and teach really bad American English. It's not 'soccer,' it's 'football!' And, it's 'mum' not 'mom' OK!
I'm on a crusade to eliminate the use of American English...