What a busy and exciting weekend I had! I decided that since it wasn't freezing this weekend, that I would make the most of it, and not be a giant lumpy of lazy like I am most weekends. So on Saturday I got up early to face a dismal looking sky. The weather report said it was going to be cloudy, but only drizzle and be windy. So I got ready and headed out with my umbrella. It was 10am or so when I left, bit it honestly looked like 6pm that sky was so dark.

I took my first trip to the bakery section of Seoul called 방산종, I found out about this area online, and was more than excited to check it out. I followed the directions I found online, which left me completely lost, I had to ask two different people where to go. But finally, I found it, heaven in Seoul. I went to two stores, the first one was called d&b which had a wide array of baking equipment, pans, cookie cutters, knives, etc. I was overwhelmed with the amazingness of it all! I bought a ton of stuff since Megan left me her mini oven, I got three tart pans with removable bottoms (one big and two small), a pie pan, a spring-form pan, a dinosaur shaped cookie cutter (!), piping bags and tips, and a bamboo steamer! Plus a few utensils, and a few little tins. And it was all pretty cheap, the pans were all less than 7,000 won I think.

After that I went to another store (keep in mind, this area is a bunch of tightly packed, tiny buildings, so there weren't many places there, but enough for me to be genuinely happy!) which had ingredients. I was able to get chocolate chips, yeast, condensed milk, almond (nuts are really expensive here), jell-o, cranberries, powdered sugar, REAL vanilla extract, and sprinkles!! Again everything was reasonably priced. I even found cherries from OREGON! I was so excited I almost creamed myself! I wanted to tell the shop owner that I was from there, but I didn't think he would find it as exciting as I did.

After that I met up with Mr. Jackson. We were supposed to go to the St. Patrick's Parade, but I didn't know what time it started, the weather looked horrible, and Tim was hungover. So instead I decided to go to his part of town, and we went out to celebrate our Irish heritage with Mexican food! We went to On The Border, which is really the closest thing to Mexican food that Korea offers. It was no Hillsboro cuisine, but it was ok. I got a Dos Equis though, which made my day! Ha ha and the Korean staff all said "adios" to us when we left, which Tim and I found hilarious.

After an overly filling lunch, Tim and I decided to go to a place called Times Square, which was supposed to be the largest shopping building in all of Asian. We stopped in the subway station and put all my baking stuff in a locker, and how cool is this, the locker was fingerprint activated! no key or anything, all I had to do to open it was to put my finger on the scanner. Times Square was nice because it was an actual mall but it was most likely not the largest shopping center in Asia. We did find out though the the weather was terrible because there was a Yellow Dust storm from the Gobi Desert in China! At first the sky was just dark, but as the day progressed, it actually turned yellow. Apparently that stuff is really bad for you because it picks up a lot of the pollution from China.

So that was my Saturday. On Sunday I decided to go to Insadong, which is a big tourist spot because it has tons of souvenir shopping. It took me a while to find it, simply because I couldn't really understand the maps, but luckily I asked a few people and they pointed me in the right direction. Insadong is basically a long road with tons of shops on both sides. Most of these shops have Traditional Korean items such as silk bags, tapestries, jewelry boxes, chopsticks, key chains, small sculptures, tea sets, and a load of other stuff. You kinda need to look around because although most places have the same prices, you can occasionally find a place that sells it cheaper. So I bought a few souvenirs to send home, found a few things I want to pick up later. There are also some side alleys with food and tea restaurants, a few places that sell antiques and Buddhist sculptures. There were a lot of foreigners, but that was okay.

I finally tried 국화빵 which are little flower-shaped snacks made of pancake like batter, which red bean paste in the middle. They come out super hot so I burned my mouth a little bit, but i got 7 of them for 1,000 won, which is really cheap. After Insadong I went to Samcheongdong, which is supposed to have a bunch of shops and museums. I got a map which turned out to be shit and I got a little lost, but I did find myself in a Hanok Village, which are home to Traditional Korean houses. I tried to find a few museums, but no luck. I was able to find the signs pointing towards the museums, but could never seem to find the places themselves. They should probably have bigger signs on the front of the places.

After Samcheongdong, I went back down Insadong to look in a few more places.A nd then from there I decided to walk to Myeongdong (which I have mentioned before). They opened a new H&M which I decided to check out. There were tons of people though, I mean, Myeongdong is always really crowded but this was pretty bad. So instead I went to Forever 21 (my favorite store from back home) even though I wasn't holding out much hope of finding anything in my sie. I was able to get a few shirts though, and some cute jewelry. By then, I had probably walked 3 miles over the course of 5 hours, so my feet were killing me. Plus it was getting towards 6 o'clock so I decided it was time to head home.

Here's a little write up of my birfday weekend!

On Friday, I was presented with three, yes three, cakes in celebration of my birthday! the first was from Colleen, Alyssa's mom who I work with. So the kindergarten kids got to have a little party. The kids even sang me Happy Birthday, it was really cute! And the second was in my afternoon class, two of the parents somehow found out it was my birthday and got a huge cake. And the last one was from my director, they wanted to have a little party right after work, but alas I had to take the KTX to see Daniel. So I decided to take the last cake with me, and Daniel and I were going to eat it. For the most part, Korean cakes look fancy, but don't really taste that great, usually dried out. But still it is customary in Korea. to celebrate the anniversay of one's birthday with lots and lots of cake.

So I went to visit Daniel, and I gave him his present right at midnight, and he loved it! I was happy, and it fit too, and looked really good on him. I only saw it online, and I was glad that it looked good in real life. It has this cool MC Escher rhino print on the back, and on the front it has the Hounds Tooth design transform into rhinos. I kinda wanted to keep it for myself actually. Daniel got me a present from Africa, but it hadn't gotten there yet, so no present for me. And what a doofus, he special ordered me flowers, and forgot to pick them up. But it really is the thought that counts.

That day we didn't really do much, I made him birthday pancakes because pancakes are one of his favorite foods. And we mostly just stayed in, slept, we got food at one point. At night though, we went to Jinju, which is where Daniel used to work, and I got to meet all his friends. On Sunday he was playing in a soccer game so I got to watch that which was really fun. Most of the other players where English, so it was funny hearing them curse out loud in their Britisg=h accents. It was really cold, but it was fun to watch. And after that we all got dinner together, then we drove back to Daegu and I took the train home. Nothing too exciting, but I enjoyed it!

Thank the lord, February is over. Seriously most stressful time in my life. Worse than that time I decided to take Constitutional Law, Environmental Geochemistry, and Political Theory all at once and had all the finals on the same day. Why so stressful you ask? Well for starters, I had to move, twice. First because there was a mix up with my lease, it turned out it was over at the beginning of the month, not the end of the month. So I had to be moved to a tiny little temporary apartment for the month of February, then at the end I had to move into a different apartment, one that a teacher just vacated. So I never had ALL of my stuff, some of it was still in the old apartment, some in the temporary apartment. Then all my food went missing, and my kitchen stuff. The cleaning lady who cleans the apartments is a klepto, and I think she stole all my food. I got my kitchen stuff back, but I'm still missing my spaghetti strainer!

So I was stuck in this tiny apartment for a month, an Dexter was going crazy, I had no cooking utensils, and it was far away from everyone else I worked with. On top of that, I got bronchitis and a sinus infection. Technically I've had the bronchitis since New Years, but it got really bad at the beginning of the month, and I had to go to three different doctors (remember, doctoral incompetence is extremely high here). Eventually I got rid of the cold, only to get a severe sinus infection, and I couldn't breathe out of my nose for about a week and a half. I went to a very nice ENT doctor here, where he shoved a camera and suction tool up my nose, and eventually caved in and gave me antibiotics after I showed up the third time in a week.

And then there was the Annual Performance. I cannot begin to describe for you how crazy the parents of these kids are. Things literally have to be perfect for them. And from what I gathered, if a parent is unsatisfied by their singing and dancing on stage in front of hundreds of people, then they will just pull the kid out of school and send them somewhere else. So we had to spend a lot of extra time practicing, but we still had to do the same amount of work (which basically left no free time in the first place), and our direction became a total insert preferential female curse word here about the whole thing because these little 5 year old kids could not line up and say their speeches perfectly. So everyone was highly stressed out, and there was total lack of communication between the Korean staff and the foreigners and to what exactly was supposed to be done. This led to a lot of last minute changes that the kids didn't understand.

On top of that, tensions really began to rise between me and my supervisor. She is a perfectionist, which you can't really be with 5 year old kids, it just doesn't work like that. And she does not like to take any suggestions or constructive criticism, thinks she knows better than everyone else, yet has no idea what her job title entails, and makes mistakes multiple times a day which leaves me scrambling to correct them. Words were exchanged, comments made, I don't want to get into it because it just pisses me off. So I had that to top off my plate of unhappiness that month. So I was basically in a bad mood the whole time, and I could feel myself taking it out on the kids, but I just couldn't help it.

Then at the end of the term, we had to move rooms and decorate for the new term, and long story short, mine and Jeff's supervisor did not give us enough direction as to what exactly we needed in our rooms, and we had to go in to work when everyone else got to take the day off. Not happy.

But worst of all, three good friends at work all finished their contracts and left. Miguel, the gossip queen of the school is now back in Hotlanta and I will no longer be able to run to him and tell the funny things that my kids say without realizing they are so funny (like when one of my kids said to another one "do you swallow" when referring to food). Gabby left, she is doing some traveling now. She was fun to hang out with and let me crash at her place a few times when in dire need. And Megan left. My confidant, my gossip partner, my Itaewon shopper, my "yes I want to take a tax"er, my care-taker of Dexter, my supplier of left-overs, my "whose kids are the worst" debater. Very very very sad to see Megan go :(

But enough about the complaining. There were a few highlights. My kids did very well at the performance. Cute as pie ,they was. Especially my little Thomas, the one who didn't know a word of English at the beginning of December gave the best speech of them all. They got to get dressed up in really cute outfits. And a while back Megan volunteered me to perform for the teacher performance (much to my dismay) so I had to get up and play the guitar in from of everyone. I have TERRIBLE stage fright. And I was sick, so I was petrified. So either it went well, or my co-workers just felt bad for me because I sounded awful and were trying to make me feel better by saying it was good (most likely the latter).

My new apartment is nice. Dexter loves that it has two floors. The upper floor is basically just my bed and a dresser, not all the grand. And its about 4 inches shorter than I am (no idea why they would make it like that), so I have to crouch when I go up there, which makes putting my clothes on in the morning kind of awkward. The kitchen is really small, I only have two stove tops, it the washer is under the stove, so I can't cook and wash clothes at the same time. But it is a washer/dryer combo which is nice. I'm going to get a couch for the place, to make it more comfortable and enhance my ability to entertain company.

Things with Daniel and I are going really well. I made him a cute heart shaped pillow of Valentine's Day, and I got to stay with him for Lunar New Year. It's my birthday next week, and wouldn't you know it, of all the guys I could date in the world, I had to find the one that has my same birthday. Bummer. I love my birthday, and now it's not my birthday, it's our birthday. But at least now I know I can never forget his birthday!

I did some major shopping the other weekend, got some great shoes, and a new leather purse. I also got an oven from Megan, so I went to the Foreign Food Mart and got some (highly over-priced) spices to I can cook real meals. And I got to hang out with Kyla, a fellow co-worker that I really never hung out with one-on-one, and we had a lot of fun. I have become completely addicted to a store called Skin Food. It's a skin care, face care kind of store, with way more variety than American stores, and all their products are made from natural ingredients. I'm currently in love with the Peach Sake line, as well as their Grapefruit Hand Sanitizer, and Apple Vinegar Face Foam.

Ohhhh, and I am VERY excited, The Beast gets neutered this month. Hopefully that will calm his crazy ass down. I don't know what the hell is wrong with that cat, but I'm really hoping that getting his balls cut off will help with it.

We also got to celebrate Lunar New Year (which is the same as Chinese New Year) at school. All the kids wore their hanboks, which are the traditional Korean attire for special occasions. The teachers even got to wear them as well. We got to play games with the kids all day, and comment on how cute they looked. It was a grand time.

So February had its ups, but mostly downs. I'm really hoping that March turns out better.

Sorry I haven't posted in more than a month, this has seriously been the worst month of my life. Stressful doesn't even begin to describe it. But don't worry, I am still alive over here and will be sure the post a month-update shortly.

Things I miss about America:

Food

• Mexican food: Korean's don't really know how to make ethnic food, so unless there's a legit Mexican in the kitchen, the food usually tastes terrible
• Ranch dressing and ketchup: living in Pittsburgh for 4 years, I have grown a refined taste of Heinz ketchup and can easily taste an impostor such as Hunt's. It seems all they have here is impostors. And asking for ranch with my fries, I get some sort of weird, possibly homemade, not that great tasting, white ooze. Not that swell.
• A good sandwich: I don't think a Korean person could make a sandwich to save their lives. I recently had one that was alfalfa sprouts, egg salad, mustard, crab wrapped in ham, and I think tuna. Gross. I really want a good deli sandwich, the kind where you get to pick your bread and toppings and cheese, with the little toothpick in each triangle piece, and a huge pickle on the side.
• Diet coke: all the seem to have here is Coke Zero. They made Coke Zero to taste like regular Coke, but I do not like regular Coke, I like Diet Coke, therefore want something that tastes like Diet Coke.
• Bacon and cheese: you cannot find regular bacon in a typical grocery store, I have to go to Costco to get it. And finding cheese is hard, even in the big food stores, they have "pizza cheese" and Kraft singles type things. Occasionally you can find Parmesan or mozzarella, but it's ridiculously expensive.
  
• Raspberry jam: all they have here is strawberry. Sad face.
• Good beer: Cass and Hite are the beers of Korea, and they basically taste like something a few small steps up from Natty Lite. And getting imported beers in rare, but expensive if you do. I had a Paulner Hefe for dinner tonight, and it was 7,000 won.
  

Internet

• You know how in America you can watch your favorite TV shows on their network website, or catch up on old episodes in good quality on hulu.com? Well, once you leave America, that option is out. Some sort of copyright laws prohibit me from watching my favorite shows, so I have to watch them in poor quality from places like fastpasstv.com, and wisevid.com
• I don't get EPSN360 either, so I could never watch a college football game online.
• Pandora is also out of the question. So my outstanding taste in new and interesting music that Shayla relies on me so much for has begun to dwindle.
  

Appliances

• Oven: god I miss baking, making things like enchiladas, potatoes, casseroles, and any other random recipe I Stumble upon. I can buy a little mini oven, one that looks like a slightly bigger version of a toaster oven, but they are upwards of $100+ which I'm not really looking forward to paying.
• Microwave: yes that's right, I have no microwave. So unless I like my leftovers cold, I try to avoid making that much food. I really should buy one, but again, money, and the fact that I have to where to put it!
• Drier: I have a washing machine (one that has no hot water) but alas no drier. They can cool washer/drier combo machines here, but ya like my school would fork out for that? So instead I have to line dry my clothes so they have that weird crunch to them.

Social life

• Being polite to people on the streets: never happens here. Korean mentality is "if I don't know you, I don't care about you, and I am willing to push you out of the way, spit entirely too close to you, and fall asleep on you on the subway." Heaven forbid if I should smile at someone on the street, I just get a cold look in return. Even a lot of foreigners do it, they are turning into Koreans!
• Magazines: I wish I could find magazines in English. I miss Glamour, and Vogue and all those magazines that try to help me dress fashionably for less but wind up repeating the sames things in nearly ever issue, just changing the colors.
  
• Current events: I don't have TV, and don't read the newspaper, so keeping up on current events basically doesn't happen for me. I didn't even know the Olympics were coming up, or the State of the Union.

Language

• English: I miss it. I miss being easily able to read street signs and building names, being able to tell the taxi driver where I'm going, being able to answer the phone, going to the doctor or pharmacy by myself, ordering food accurately, reading the buses.

Medical

• Doctors here seem pretty incompetent. They rely only on Korean medical knowledge and make no attempt to learn from the outside world. Doctors' offices are kind of dirty. Misdiagnosis are common, they look at you for 2 seconds and decide what's wrong. If anyone back at Pitt remembers me complaining about that Asian doctor Dr. Tsai, it's like having a whole country full of them. There are a few good places, with good services for foreigners, but they are expensive and not close to where I live.
  

So I thought I would give you a little insight into what exactly I am teaching these little bundles of joy. My kindergarten class (the 5-year-olds) have 4 books that we go through in a day. First book is our Hats On book. This book is designed to give generally vocabulary to the kids, teach them to associate English words with pictures, basic sentence structure, and what not. I have to do one unit a week, and each unit is eight pages. So I span it out for a week, about two pages a day, more or less depending on what the material is. If it's things Like sentences, I like to spend more time on it to make sure they at least kinda, sorta, maybe understand it. I spend about 40-50 minutes in this book each day. So last week, we learned how to say "I have a ..." so I have to teach them the meaning of the word "have" through examples, then I ask each student to tell me something they have with them, and the girls kind of make it a contest to see who can say the most impressive thing, while the boys make it a joke to see who can say the silliest thing. So Dorothy will say something like "I have a red crayon and a blue crayon" while Thomas will say something like "I have a box." The hardest part is getting them to deviate away from the examples in the book or the examples I give them, and have them thing creatively for themselves. Also in the Hats On book, they work on letter sounds and spelling. Luckily at the bottom of every page, it gives you a list of words or sentences that kids should try to work on. The last page of the unit though, simply has three numbers, with three pictures next to each number, and no instructions. When we get to that part, I basically say one of the pictures and the kids have to circle the right ones. I'm going to be honest, most of the boys in my class aren't that bright, and they don't really care about learning, so whenever we do something in class, and I need to make sure everyone answers, I have to write in my book, and they basically copy it. I've found that in the Korean system, they are more concerned about making sure the kids do their book work correctly, than the kids actually learning the language well (very frustrating).

The next book is called Activity Phonics, which mainly focuses on word sounds and letters of the alphabet. Each unit usually focused on one letter, and is usually four pages long. The first page is always the letter page, and it has picture that start with that letter. Sometimes though, I can't tell what all the pictures are. Take the "Q" page, I can see a quail, quill, quilt, question mark, queen, I am assuming the ducks are quacking. But then there are random things that I'm not sure if they are supposed to start with Q or not, like the thing the ducks are on, or the magnifying class, or the random chandelier. So most of the time I have to wing it. To give you a bit of understand of the minds of my kids, they know full well we are working on the letter Q, so I ask "Ok, what in this picture starts with Q?" and they will say "bird!" to which I will have to remind them that bird does not in fact start with a Q but with a B. Along with letter sounds, we also learn about uppercase and lower case letters in this book, which they have to circle/underline/color, depending on the instructions.

Then we have our Little Phonics book ("Teacher, blue book?" is what they say). I absolutely hate this book. This book is entirely too difficult for them, which frustrates me when they stop listening because they don't know what's going on. Like I said before, the kids have to complete their work every day, very important, and if they don't do it, or if they spell something wrong and I miss it, I get in trouble. Anyway, this book deals a lot with spelling, simply things like"hen, pen, jam, ram, jet, net" three letter words. There is a lot of fill in the blanks, and spelling, and they are simply too young to put two-and-two together in their tiny little brains. This would be a typical class conversation with one of our activities:

Me - "Ok Miffy Class, the word "pen" does it end with "en" or "et"?"
Class - "et!!!!"
Me - "What?? "pen" ends with "et" it sounds like "pet"???"
Class - "Noooo!"
Me - "Ok then what is it, "en" or "et"?
Class - "et!!!"
Me - "pet?!?, this word is pet?"
Class - "nooo, teacher! "en"!!!!
Me - Ok, so how to you spell "pen"? p-p-p-pen"
Class - "b"
Me - "B??"
Class - "nooo, P!!!"
Me - "Ok, P, what comes next? p-en, p-en"
Class "A? T? E?"
Me - Yes! E! Ok what next? Pen-n-n-n"
Class "e-t?"

And that's about when I go crazy. Luckily I have a few good spellers, and Becky has at least gotten the bright idea to look at the spelling in her book and yell it out loud. And then we have pages like this one, where they can't understand i->ig->wig-> they first don't know how to spell wig, and then don't understand that on the exact line below it (where there is still the picture of the wig!) that you should write the same thing as above. So instead of the page coming out somehting like this:
i->ig->wig
i->ig->wig
i->ig->pig
i->ig->pig
i->in->pin
i->in->pin
i->in->fin
i->in->fin
Sally will write something like this:
i->ig->wig
i->ig->wig
i->ig->wig
i->ig->wig
i->in->wig
i->in->wig
i->in->wig
i->in->wig
So I definitely have to help them step by step, letter by letter. And a lot of them still can't write the whole alphabet, since they kept adding kids to my class halfway through the term when we already learned the alphabet but I don't have time to go back.

We also have a math book. This one is hit or miss, sometimes the work is too hard, but right now, we're simply working on counting and writing our numbers, so the kids do it pretty fast. But when we have to match up, or color patterns then they get confused and I have to show them step by step (which of course takes more time). And finally we have a reading book that we do, we get a new one every two weeks. I don't really know if my kids are reading, or if they are just memorizing what I say. The books are a little advanced for them, things like "I see the elephant, it looks big." I'm pretty sure I couldn't read that when I was five, and that was in my native language. I think most of the girls are actually learning how to read, but the boys, ugh. Thomas is doing ok, but I think he's memorizing, Daniel is doing a lot better than before, but John, oh jeez. Seriously, this is how he read the sentence about the elephant "I the the elephant e the big" not even being sarcastic, and every time I tell him what the words are, he just doesn't seem to be picking it up.

I try to get the kids as entertained as possibly, purposely writing or saying the wrong answer so they can correct me, having them yell out answers, having tables compete, volunteering to help teacher, playing games, but some days all I have time for is book work, especially days where everyone is misbehaving and not paying attention to me. But that's a whole 'nother blog!

So there you have it, my morning schedule with the class (in the afternoon we do something like science or art or practice our performance). We have to do about 7-8 work book pages, plus attempt to go through our reading book, all in the span of about 2 1/2 hours. Plus, I'm supposed to find time for them to have play time, but a lot of times they take to long in their books and we don't have time. I really wish they had more time to get out and have fun, I feel like they would be a lot less restless in class, but here in Korea, it's all work and no play, even when you're five!

You would think that being in a country with a completely different language, you would pick up the new language really quickly. Well, when you hang around people that only speak English, and you work at a school where they are supposed to only speak English, and the natives speak so fast you have to clue what's going on, and there is barely anyone that can translate select words into English for you, it is very hard. I have two books I use to teach myself Korean, but even the books are different. They have saying that people don't really use in modern day, plus Korea has a system of respect where you have to use different endings to your sentences, depending on who you are talking to (i.e. elders and superiors). Plus it's a whole new alphabet with sounds we don't really make in English. So once you learn the basics of how to survive, going beyond that gets difficult.

Luckily I have Grace, and she really helps me out a lot, but I still have a hard time hearing what she says, because some of the letters in Korean are so subtle, you can barely hear them. And some letters sound almost the same, but change depending on where in the word they are (like the g/k-sound ᄀ or the d/t-sound ᄃ). And then there are sound that are almost similar (ch-sound ᄎ and j-sound ᄌ). And the vowels, holy crap, no book in the world can help you with the vowels. There's ᅡwhich is easy (sounds like ah), but then it goes to ᅮ (sound like oo like "soothing"), next is ᅥ(sounds like the o in "song"), then ᅩ (which is the basic "oh" sound), and finally ᅳ (which is more like "uh"). Now typing it out, they all sound dissimilar, but when the Koreans actually say them, it's really hard to differentiate, especially when they are saying whole words.

So far I can say this in Korean:
Hello.
My name is Colleen.
I am American.
I am from Portland, Oregon.
Where are you from?
I'm sorry.
I don't understand.
I don't know
Yes.
No.
I am a teacher.
Take me to my apartment please. No, go straight, take the next left/right.
Where/ where is...
What/ what is this/that.
I like/ I don't like.
That's expensive.
This/that.
Here/there.
Cat/dog/mouse.
Give me a gimbap please.
What's your name?
How much is it?
Can I have a bag please?

Here are some helpful phrases to know if you find yourself in Korea:

I'm sorry - 미안합니다 (me-ahn ham-nee-da)
I'm American - 미국사람이에요 (mi-gook sar-am-ee-ay-oh)
I speak a little Korean - 조금 한글말 (cho-gum hang-gul-mal)
I don't understand - 몰라요 (mo-lie-yo)
What's this? - 이것 뭐예요 (ee-go mwo-yay-yo)
Where's the ... - ...어디있어요 (oh-dee-so-yo)
What's your name? - 이름이 뭐예요? (ear-yum-ee mwo-yay-yo)
Thank you - 감사합니다 (gam-sam-nee-da)
Straight - 직진 (chick-jin)
Left - 왼쪽 (win-choke)
Right - 오른쪽 (o-run-choke)
Take me to ... (in a taxi) - ... 가주세요 (ka-jew-say-oh)
Give me ... (when ordering food) - ... 주세요 (jew-say-oh)

When dealing with counting, that's a complicated story. There are two counting methods in Korea: Pure Korean number method which is used for counting amounts (like how many stickers I have given a child, or how many glasses of water you have. It's also used when telling time), and the Sino-Korean number method which is used for counting monetary amounts, saying telephone/building numbers.

Here are the Pure Korean numbers
1 = 하나 (hana)
2 = 둘 (duel)
3 = 셋 (set)
4 = 넷 (net)
5 = 다섯 (da-sot)
6 = 여섯(yo-sot)
7 = 일곱 (eel-gohp)
8 = 여덟 (yo-dorp)
9 = 아홉(ah-hop)
10 = 열 (yol)
11 = 열하나 (yol hana)
12 = 열둘 (yol duel)
13 = 열셋 (yol set)
When telling time you take the Pure Korean number, and add 시 (o'clock) to the end. But note that if you want to add minutes, you use the Sino-Korean method (makes perfect sense, right?)

1 o'clock - 한시
2 o'clock - 두시
3 o'clock - 세시
4 o'clock - 네시
5 o'clock - 다섯시
6 o'clock - 여섯시
7 o'clock - 일곱시
8 o'clock - 여덟시
9 o'clock - 아홉시
10 o'clock - 열 시

And here are the Sino-Korean numbers

1. 일 (eel)
2. 이 (ee)
3. 삼 (sam)
4. 사 (sa)
5. 오 (oh)
6. 육 (yuk)
7. 칠 (chil)
8. 팔 (pal)
9. 구 (gu)
10. 십 (ship)
11. 십일 (ship-eel)
12. 십이 (ship-ee)

When refering to money, you use the Sino-Korean numbers, but there are a few things added in. Instead of saying 10,000 won using 십 (as would be logical), you say 만 won (or 만원)
1,000 - 천원 (chon won)
2,000 - 이(2)천원 (ee chon won)
3,000 - 삼(3)천원 (sam chon won)
10,000 - 만원 (mahn won)
11,000 - 만천원 (mahn chon won)
12,000 - 만이(2)천원 (mahn ee chon won)
13,000 - 만삼(3)천원 (mahn sam chon won)
20,000 - 이(2)만원 (ee mahn won)
21,000 - 이(2)만천원 (ee mahn chon won)
22,000 - 이(2)만이(2)천원 (ee mahn ee chon won)
23,000 0 이(2)만삼(3)천원 (ee man sam chon won)

Are you utterly confused yet? It took me a really long time to work all this out. As long as I buy something for less than 100,000 won, I can tell what they are saying, but once you get higher that, I get confused. Ok, that's enough Korean for today!