in numbers

1. I have been unreasonably cranky today. I'm not exactly sure why.
2. Does anyone know what the term is when you aren't claustrophobic, but when people stand too close to you it freaks you out? What is strange is that it isn't EVERYONE. Just almost everyone.
3. Several people here volunteer weekly at a couple of the orphanages in the area. I'm pretty sure these would be called "group homes" most places, because many of the kids are not actually orphans (and which could lead to a whole different discussion about why there are so many Korean babies that are available for overseas adoption - the Confucian ideals hold to "the apple doesn't fall far from the tree") and they organized a gift drive for all of the kids. It is awesome! SO many people signed up, and hopefully the kids will have a good time.
4. I'm sort of informally teaching one of the 6th grade teachers and my co-teacher in the afternoons. I'm hoping it won't be an everyday thing, but a few times a week would be really interesting, and after the Korean class in February, hopefully it will be more of a language exchange. Today we talked about the presidential election. Korea overwhelming elected one of the former heads of Hyundai, who left his job because of some sort of inappropriate behavior. And who wants to tie teacher salary to test scores. Because there really isn't enough emphasis on test scores as it is. Oh, wait...
5. Because both of these teachers are young women, I've had really interesting conversations about feminism. The asked me if I thought a woman could be president, with my (VERY liberal) co-teacher saying yes and the conservative other teacher saying no. I pointed out that it shouldn't be gender, but rather ability, and that it extended to school principals, head teachers, department heads... If nothing else, it will be interesting to see where these conversations go.
6. This weekend, it looks like a handful of folks will be heading down to climb at the massive indoor climbing stadium down here. This will be awesome!
7. A friend came down (we didn't have school for election day, so we ran around trying to find a place we could climb that was easy to get to and fun and not too cold) and went to the regular climbing gym Tuesday, and made me feel like I wasn't crazy to think that things were not the greatest environment. I am maybe really American, but I'm not crazy, which is good.
8. I am SO SO happy that I can search for trains in English again! I was able to use the site in Korean, but it took longer. Now it is up again and a million times easier! Yay!