Angry, Upset and Confused

I was left angry, upset and confused by a trip to the supermarket in Suwon this week. I was trying to find that most basic and important of commodities; tea. I found the aisle with all the usual brands of coffee you see in the UK; every type of Nescafe, Maxwell House, etc, and all the usual brands of Hot Chocolate, and then found the tea section, and it was a big section.  There was barley tea, corn tea, ginger tea, soybean tea, blackbean tea, silk tea, dong suh tea, grain tea, green tea, yellow tea, purple tea, pink tea, mint tea, plum tea, apple tea, strawberry tea, honey tea, lemon tea, vanilla tea, garden tea, nut tea, but no flipping Yorkshire Tea (the only real tea!) Dark times! 

Not being able to read Korean makes food shopping something of a lottery, as some products might have an English word on to give you a hint, like 'soup' or 'tea' but as far as a product description or whats in it, or how to cook it, no chance! So the tea I bought, turned out to be not what I would class as tea at all, and after speaking with more experienced westerners over here, it seems its impossible to buy proper tea. So friends and family, please send me tea!

On a happier note, I've finished my first week of teaching, and its been crazy hectic! My timetable has already changed at least ten times, the Vice-Principal that hired me has already left, and some of the kids have even decided to change their names! (So Korean kids all have their Korean names, and then they also have random 'English' names that their parents or their kindegarten teachers or someone will have chosen for them, or maybe they chose them themselves. So I've got kids with some pretty cool names like Aurora and Hera, but mostly normal names like Tony and Vicky and things like that.)

The little kids are all super cute, and all I'm really doing with them is telling stories, singing songs, and playing games. They work through different units, where the songs and stories will have a theme for them to learn, but their Korean teachers do all the grammar and rules and homework and stuff like that, I'm just they're for entertainment value and my delightful English accent! The kids pretty much just want to climb on me, hold my hand, hug my leg, and yell "Teacher! Teacher!" at me and then smile when I look at them. They've also all been taught to answer the question "How are you?" with the answer "Happy!" Which I've never heard a westerner say, but I like it!

Anyway the plan for my first weekend here is to go see the local football team and Asian Champians League winners the Samsung Bluewings in their first home game of the season at their World Cup 2002 ground, The Big Bird Stadium. Naturally I'm hoping to see some of my favourite Sesame Street characters there too. And if I can find somewhere to get a decent cup of tea aswell, that would be a bonus . . . . .