Island Life, pt. 1

This week I'd like to share some short, one-off adventures I've had on Geomun-do so far. I hope you enjoy!

Dog

Yesterday I saw a dog roaming around the elementary school. It looked like it had a collar so I was worried that it escaped from someone's house, but when I tried to get close to it, it ran away from me. I ended up chasing it for ten minutes before I finally gave up trying to catch it. When I called my co-teacher, she told me that it was just an island dog and it didn't have an owner. In hindsight, I should have asked her before following it so far away. I'm still worried about the dog, but hopefully someone found it who knew what to do with it.

Shopping

When I first arrived I was missing a lot of things, especially rice, so I went to the convenience store to stock up. I had been rehearsing what I wanted to say the whole way there because the store clerks don't speak English. When I finally arrived, I confidently asked for a bag of rice in Korean. Unfortunately, the clerk asked me a follow-up question and I got stuck. I asked him to repeat his question, and even to write it down, but I couldn't understand what he said, so I left the store rice-less and defeated. I'll get it next time!

Gaming

I've started playing League of Legends. For the last 10 years I've tried to avoid it, but I suppose it was inevitable. I play with 2 of the middle school teachers, a man who works at the elementary school (I think he's the building manager), and the school bus driver. Only one of them can speak English well so most of the game is people yelling things like "Will good" and "Will top go". On the other hand, I've tried to learn some of the Korean phrases that they use while playing, so hopefully in a few months we can communicate entirely in Korean. It's nice to have a gaming group again.

Korean

Speaking of learning Korean, I've been trying to put myself in situations where I can practice more. Right now, the two main people that I can talk to are the bus driver and the librarian. I take the school bus home every Thursday and Friday, and since I'm friends with the driver we try to talk about different things, such as gaming. He is good at lowering his speech to a level that's easy for me to understand, so I'm comfortable talking to him. I think he has a lot of practice from talking to the kids on the bus. The librarian also rides the bus with us, and while her speaking is a little harder for me to understand, she's very outgoing and easy to hang out with. Sometimes when I have time off at school I will go to the library to talk to her, too. Her son is also one of my students.

Banking

Last week I was nervous because I had to go to the bank by myself. There's only one bank on the whole island, and it's too far to walk so I took the school bus to the downtown area. I was able to explain to the tellers that I wanted to change the phone number on my account, and that I needed to get a special card to buy things on the internet. I was expecting something to go wrong, but I made it through without any issues, and then later I asked a store clerk for information about the bus times. There are a lot of days when I feel frustrated with my lack of Korean ability, but days like this help to remind me that I can get by when I need to.

And Last

I started a YouTube channel and I am planning to update it soon. Please follow along for more content!
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCbZcvoxO86DnomF73a_UDMQ