My Daily Schedule

7:45 Wake up, eat some cereal, watch some Korean morning tv
8:30 Bike to work, say hi to all the little kids that say hi to me as I walk to my room
9:10 Class starts. By now I've hopefully unlocked the room, turned on the computer, and looked at whatever lesson plan I'm going off of that day
12:20 Lunch begins. I walk down to the teacher lunch room (which also doubles as a science classroom) with my co-teacher after she washes her hands (I'm not a big hand washer). This begins my daily 20 minutes of self-prescribed Korean time, where me and the two teachers I sit with talk only in Korean. So far my daily average word count is in the high teens. Lively conversation evades me for obvious reasons.
12:41 I walk back upstairs with my co-teacher and explain to her whatever I'd been trying to say in the lunch room. We head off to our different rooms.
12:42 If it's Thursday, I'm set. Classes are done for the day.
If it Tuesday, I just have one more class of 4th graders.
If it's Monday or Wednesday, I got a class of 1st graders. Things that we're currently studying include the phrase "Are you married?" (believe it or not, little kids love asking me this in Korean so I figured I'd just teach it to them in English), a picture book called "What Do Insects Do?", the first episode of Spongebob Squarepants, and the letters 'i', 'j', and 'k'.
If it's Friday, I get the pleasure of doing a psycho version of what I just said with the 2nd graders. It's my most insane class of the week due to the fact that it's two classes combined into one. 40 kids instead of 20.
To top that off, the 2nd grade teachers have decided that sending the kids to my class at 12:40 instead of 1:10 is in the best interests of everyone. It used to really tick me off, and I was gonna complain, but then I got smart and just started playing a movie. We're currently traversing Shrek.
1:50 Classes are officially finished. Time to collect myself, take off my flak jacket, and prepare for the next day.
3:30 If it's a Friday, classes are actually not officially finished. It's time to teach an English class for some of the other teachers. It's the first time I've taught adults. Initially it was a little rough, but now things are working smoothly. It's taken us 6 weeks to get through the first half of the first episode of Friends (their choice). So far we've learned a lot of spoken English (i.e. 'gonna' 'wanna' 'kinda') and a couple grammatical set-ups (i.e. "should have" "supposed to" "to get through something). My crowning achievement occured last week when my co-worker, talking about her past week, said "I hanged out...no. I hung out with my friends..." (Most Koreans use "meet" when they should be using "hang out").
4:40 That magical time of the day comes: the last bell. I go to my shoe locker and trade out my work sandals for normal shoes, and bike it back home.
4:50 The world is mine. I have a myriad of choices to choose from: play XBox, eat dinner, take a nap, call my girlfriend, write in my blog, clean my place, study Korean, go food shopping, work out. Whatever the soup du jour happens to be, it always comes with a healthy dose of Korean TV. I'm a firm believer that immersing yourself in a language is just as important as studying the basics. I watch a lot of little kids' shows and cartoons, and strictly avoid the news and sub-titled American tv. As I write, I'm watching a Korean-style talk show where a bunch of Korean celebreties sit around and say very (apparently) funny things. I'm often straight-faced for all of it, but I have a sinking feeling that they'll be even less funny as I learn more of their language.

My bedtime is highly varied cause I supplement it with naps depending on my girlfriend's schedule (I swear I'm gonna write about her next time. Pinky swear.) Either way, I sleep on a folded-over mat that's on the floor next to my bed. It's Korean-style all the way, and much better for my back.

p.s. Somewhere in there I manage to talk to my broker and move a couple securities and high-yield bonds around. I do a little snorkeling on Mondays if I have the chance as well.