"Twilight" Fear

It's 7:49 PM. Ten minutes ago, I was on a treadmill in the exercise room in the other dormitory. Because I'm feeling a little sick, I decided just to do a brisk walk at an incline ... nothing too big. So, to pass the time, I had my iPod and a book to read. Earlier in the evening, I heard a sound like the door opening and closing, which was strange in and of itself since no one was in the dorms at the time (it's study hall time). So, I was a little on edge. I was reading my adolescent sparkly vampire drivel (a.k.a. "Twilight"), and had gotten to an almost suspenseful part (you know, where the idiot girl realizes he's a vampire) and ... the lights in the room went out. Talk about timing! I almost fell off the damn treadmill!

So, I ventured (carefully) out into the hallway (fine, call me a chicken - whatever. I've always been jumpy ... and being alone [or almost all alone] in a five story dormitory wasn't any picnic) and started walking towards the lobby area where the stairs are ... Got to the stairs, and almost flipped out because THE DOOR TO THE ROOM BEHIND ME SLOWLY OPENED. I'm not joking. Like, slowly ... should-be-creaking-opened. Turns out it was one of the dormitory supervisors or something ... well, I'm not sure, but I know that he's nice, so I managed to explain what happened and by "managed to explain" I mean I uttered a few words in my poor Korean and then I simply led him down the hall to show him. Which he then fixed with a smile. Thank you, nice man who scared the crap out of me. I appreciate that greatly.

Yesterday, 2-1 drove me up the freakin' wall. Frustrated the crap out of me. So, I decided to do something productive about it. I went to Tongjin, picked up eggs and butter, came back to my room, and baked several dozen cookies which I then dispersed amongst the various teacher offices. They turned out alright. Next will be banana bread - I bought a huge bunch of bananas and they're already kinda going gross (I don't like bananas anyways unless they're slightly green, so to me anything other than firm and green is bad). Anyway, I didn't know what to do with the bananas since I have a baby-sized fridge ... so I put them in a plastic bag and hung them in my bathroom. Don't judge. Now my bathroom smells like wet dog (see the previous post) and bananas. Gross.

Now I'm watching MacGyver (surprise surprise - and it's one of my favorite episodes, too) and trying to figure out a way to teach my lesson tomorrow WITHOUT bombing it again. Today was a neat day - aside from the crashing and burning in my lesson (well, my perceived crashing and burning). Normally at lunch time, I would wait until 11:40 or so (lunch starts at 11:20) to go down because there's a lot of people there. But I've started going to that lunch time praise music that I mentioned earlier, and in order to do that, I've been going to lunch right on time. Anyways, today I got in line downstairs, and there was a really nice teacher who was like, "sit with me, let's talk" so I ended up sitting at a table of some other teachers. The one who asked me to sit with them was really nice and tried really hard to engage me in conversation. Anyways, I went down to dinner later tonight, and after he finished he saw me and came up to me and was like, "tomorrow night, come down to dinner earlier and eat with us."

So, I'm working on that whole "opening up" thing. And the teacher leading the praise session surprised me yesterday - he handed me the sheet of music with Korean AND English lyrics!!! Today, too. And tomorrow. I'm really lucky - he's so kind! And another teacher wants me to teach her how to bake cookies. So, yeah. Today was cool. Except for my bombed lessons.

But, maybe I'm allowed a bombed lesson or two. And maybe it wasn't THAT bad. Well, okay. I think it was pretty bad. Tomorrow'll be better.

That's all, though. Mainly I just wanted to share my story about the sophomoric vampire tale and the treadmill. :)