"Nice to meet you and you?"

So, every week so far I've had a "Phrase of the Week" for my kids which are either words in English slang or some kind of English saying. They get a kick out of it and it's even more of a kick for me to hear them repeat the actual phrase. This week though, the phrase we had was simply "Good morning/Good afternoon/Good evening" because I would say that 99.1729% of the time I see them outside of the classroom the first thing they say to me is "Hi, nice to meet you and you?" which drives me absolutely insane! It makes you realize how monotonous their English classes are outside of having them with a native English teacher because half of the time they don't know what they're saying. When asked how they are, they are taught to basically say "I'm fine. And you?" so I think that's how they end up tacking the "and you" onto everything. It's true though, everytime I walk into class and ask them how they are, they all respond at once saying "I'm fine. And you?". So really, Jurassic Park could actually happen and T-Rex could be wreaking havoc on all of SoKo but if I asked my kids how they were in the midst of a dinosaur tearing the roof off the school, their response would probably be "I'm fine. And you?". This week it was my mission to break that cycle so I told them that everytime I see them outside of school I want them to practice saying "Good morning" or "Good afternoon"...or even "What's up Ashoree?"...I'm cool with either:) However, on my walk home from school yesterday, after an entire week of trying to drill this in, I counted and had 17 students say "Nice to meet you and you?"....ahhhhhhhh!!! They are hilarious though, and there have been atleast a dozen times now where I've had to leave the classroom for a minute because I can't stop laughing. They have the greatest personalities and are so stinkin fun to be around. Today we were talking about proper nouns and I had "man" and "woman" on the board and asked for an example of each. One girl raises her hand and goes "Michael Jackson. Both." I almost died.

The most difficult thing at school so far, aside from trying to stop the "Nice to meet you and you" madness, is peeing. I'm not sure if you have ever seen or heard of the Korean squatting toilets but alot of the women's restrooms have them. Unfortunately, that's all my school has.

When I was younger I wanted to be able to stand up and pee like my brothers...this is not exactly what I was going for...

It's like being in the woods everyday when you're at school...except if the angle is off by a couple degrees, if you know what I mean, then you can't just walk it off. Instead you get to go into a classroom full of students. Not, that this has happened to me. I've only officially used the toilet twice at school...just in case you were wondering.

Another interesting fact: A lot of the restrooms here, especially in public places, are joined. The first time I went into one of these I had no clue and when I came out of the stall there was a guy standing there peeing at the urinal. And the sink is usually between the stall and the urinal...so it's kind of weird sometimes. Especially when you walk out of the stall and it's one of your friends who you didn't know was in there using the urinal.

This could very well happen.

In other news: One thing I really took for granted at schools back home were the die-cutting paper machines that let you cut things super efficiently. Here, we have X-acto knives which is really scary considering the family that I come from. There is a good chance I'll be hospitalized several times throughout the next year.