I do not understand Korean parents

The beginning of this week was the beginning of summer vacation for normal schools in Korea.  Unfortunately, it is not the vacation for the kind of private language institute at which I work.  Instead, the kids are coming to take intensive English courses at my school in the morning when they would normally be in regular school.  I'm sure this is not by their own choice.  Sure, it will be really good for their English, but they're overworked kids who need a break.  I would have probably had a melt down if I was in school as much as they are.

Somehow, despite the fact that there are so many more classes everyday now and we had to hire two extra teachers, I ended up with less classes.  Now I don't completely mind this, except that it means my pay check will be smaller because I have been working overtime the past two months.  All of the students who are taking summer intensive courses aren't going to their normal classes that I would teach, so one of my tutoring students is only doing that, and another one of them quit for unknown reasons.  So basically half of my afternoon classes don't exist anymore.  I do not know how I feel about this.

One of my more advanced students is going to Italy for a week over his summer vacation.  I'm really excited for him, partially because they speak a language that I know a fair amount of there and partially because I know they have delicious gelato.  He doesn't know any Italian, so I'm having a great time writing up a list of useful phrases and words for him while he's there.

My Korean is apparently better than I thought.  I'm doing a language exchange with one of the Korean teachers twice a week and she was thoroughly impressed with what little I feel that I do know.  Super happy time for me.  I'm still making slow progress, I'll let you know when I can hold real conversations.

In completely separate news, some of my pants are not fitting quite as well as they used to.  I think it's all of the rice.  Yikes.  I really need to get on that.

Korean character of the day:  ㅠ - sounds like "yoo"
Korean phrase/word of the day: 이것 (ee-guht) - this, 그것 (geu-guht) - that, 저것 (juh-guht) - that way over there