Hit the ground running...

Is the name of the game here in Korea.  Hi everyone!  Sorry I haven't been in contact.  I haven't had any decent internet, but I am getting my own internet on Monday.  Yay!  Leeching from other people's wi-fi hasn't worked so well, I keep getting booted off after only 1 minute or so.  Today however seems to be an auspicious day, for I have had a connection for over 30 minutes now. 
So, I have gotten all moved into my apartment here in Sang-ju.  It is one room, about the same size as my apartment was in Japan (maybe a little bigger).  My bathroom scares me, since the whole bathroom is the shower (it's kinda hard to explain, once I have my own internet I will do a walk through with those of you that have web-cams). My landlady is really nice, though she doesn't speak a word of English.  Her oldest daughter just entered high school and is pretty good at translating between her mother and me. 
Rena is within walking distance of my place (seems most everything is within walking distance, except for my schools).  She really lucked out and ended up in the same apartment complex as almost all of the new EPIK teachers (mostly South Africans).  I thought about trying to move, but my landlady is the sister-in-law of my co-teacher, and I think it would be seen as an insult if I asked to move.  I like my place anyway, and like I said, my landlady is awesome.  She is always bringing me food!
Sang-ju is a really spread out city, but fortunately most of us EPIK teachers ended up in the downtown area.  So all of the stores and restaurants are a really short walk away.  It reminds me a bit of Monterey, as in the downtown area is much smaller than the city as a whole.  Unfortunately all of my schools (I teach at 3 schools, all elementary level, so I will be receiving the "multiple school" extra bonus of 150,000 won a month, oh and Dad, I did end up getting the level 1 pay scale of 2.5 million won a month) are outside of the downtown area, my furthest one, called Gonggeum, is about a 20 minute car ride away!  As I don't have my own car, the teachers have figured out a system of one from each school picking me up every morning and then driving me home in the afternoon.  It is nice of them to do it, but it sucks being reliant on them for my transportation.  My base school is called Sa-Beol, it is the most modernized of the bunch.  This is where my co-teacher, Mr. Choi works (he is the one who drives me to and from this school, his English is pretty good).  However, he is really not my co-teacher, as I never teach any classes with him since he is the P.E. teacher, not the English teacher so he really is more like my supervisor rather than my co-teacher. I am supposed to go to him if I have any problems, and he drove me down to Daegu on Monday in order to apply for my Alien Registration Card. It sucks not having my ARC, I can't do anything without one.  I can't get a cell phone, or even open a bank account (though apparently there is a way to open a bank account with your passport, I heard the process was very difficult but Rena said that she managed it, so I might try it out on Monday if I can get away from school for a bit).  My co-teacher is a special contract teacher named Kim Sunyea (Christina) who only comes to Sa-Beol Elementary school on Tuesdays and Thursdays.  However I only teach at Sa-Beol on Tuesdays and Wednesdays, so we only teach one day together.  I have no idea who I will be team teaching with on Wednesdays.  Perhaps the homeroom teachers?  They threw me into a class on Wednesday after the Entrance Ceremony with no Korean teacher and me not even knowing the schedule or anything so I didn't even know what class I was teaching!  I did not expect to be thrown into a class before even knowing my schedule, so of course I didn't have a lesson planned.  I tried my best but needless to say it was a disaster.  Hopefully next week will be better. 
Gonggeum is my second largest school and I am only teaching 5th and 6th graders there.  I go to Gonggeum for half of Monday and all of Thursday.  The vice-principal is the one who picks me up in the mornings (yikes!) and she doesn't speak much English, however she does want to practice with me.  On Thursday they also just thew me into class before I even knew my schedule for this school, but fortunately I was a little more prepared than Wednesday and I have great co-teachers (the 5th and 6th grade homeroom teachers).  Their English isn't perfect but we understand each other well enough.
On Friday I went to my third and smallest school, Baekwon.  I will be going to Baekwon on the other half of Monday and all day Friday.  The 2nd grade teacher is the one who drives me, her English is so-so, but she also wants to practice with me.  Thank goodness I didn't have to teach, so I was able to get my schedule and am able to get some lesson plans done before they throw me into class.  Out of all the schools, the teachers at Baekwon are the friendliest.  I think I will be team teaching with the homeroom teachers for the normal classes and then this guy, whose name I don't really know, for the English elective classes.  Out of all the schools though, Baekwon is the lowest tech-wise, and they don't have an English room like the other two schools have, so I will have to go around to the individual classes.  We will see how it goes. 
They really expect you to hit the ground running here.
All of my schools are really small which is nice.  I think the largest class I have has 15 students and the smallest has 7.  So the classes can have a more personalized feel.  With some classes I will be teaching out of the textbook, some classes I get to do whatever I want.  In some ways that is nice but in other ways, I feel like everything is all over the place and I am being asked to do 20 different things all at once.
It doesn't help that I caught a horrible cold yesterday.  It came out of nowhere too.  On Friday I was fine, a little under the weather perhaps but I chalked it up to being exhausted from working non-stop for the past 3 days. Then Saturday came and boom! I was sick as a dog.  It is a weird cold too, like nothing I have ever had before.  I am not congested at all, but I have a cough.  And my body aches, the whole thing!  It is really quite painful.  I also feel very weak.  It feels like I got trampled by a heard of buffalo.  My body temperature is also out of wack.  One minute I am burning up hot and sweating like a rugby player and the next minute I am freezing and nothing I do warms me up.  I might have had a fever yesterday, but I think it broke around 11pm last night as I started feeling a little better then.  My landlady took me to a pharmacy yesterday and they gave me some medicine that seems to be working.  I also have DayQuil and Ibuprofen seems to work well enough for the aches.  I have also started taking Cleratin again in case allergies is what is causing this.  I would like your opinion, Cathy.
Anyway, love you all and miss you.  I am having a bit of a hard time now,  and I keep thinking "what the hell am I doing here?".  Hopefully things will start to get better.  I have made some good friends though, especially Rena and some of the South Africans.  And I really like the lady I co-teach with at Sa-Beol, Kim Sunyea (Christina).  She grew up here in Sang-ju so she knows all the good restaurants and she said she would introduce all of them to me. 
Hopefully I will be getting internet tomorrow and will be able to call everyone sometime soon after that.  I tried testing Skype with Rena, but the connection I am leeching from is so crappy that our conversation kept getting cut.  So I will wait until I have my own internet before I call everyone.