Korean Lessons

Last Tuesday I spoke to my coteacher, Mr Lee (actually Ee) about taking some Korean lessons over the winter vacation at the university in Kwangju. The vacation will be almost two months long for me, so I figured that I could afford the time.
He called that night to tell me that he knew a woman, whose daughter went to our school, who would be interested in teaching me in exchange for some english help. Pretty sweet deal, because I get to keep my money, so I said yes. We (Jessie and I) were invited over for dinner the following night to meet them.
It was a great dinner. We sat on the floor, of course, and ate some surprisingly delicious raw beef, some less than delicious raw pork, and some of what appeared to be raw fat. They seemed really friendly. It also became rapidly apparent that the lessons were not just for me, but for both Jessie and me. And they were not just for the woman, but for the whole family, her and her husband, two daughters and a son. They proposed that we meet everynight of the week, we said weekdays. We began on Thursday night.
We didn't have too much prepared, and just planned on asking what they wanted to learn, and attempting to communicate to them what we wanted to learn. They, of course, knew much more english than we knew Korean. Everyone knows at least a little here, and the father really knows a lot, which is really good for us.
We went back on Monday, with pictures of Jessie and her friends and a handout that I had prepared for my class that I thought they might find useful. It was really good. They enjoyed the pictures, and the handout proved to be very helpful for both parties, with them writing in Korean translations for us to take home.
Then we decided that every weekday was too much too. It's pretty typical here. We are two of the three foreigners in town, so people try to monopolize our time once they have an in. They have to, because they know that we can get what they are offering from anyone. So they want to isolate us as much as they can, or so goes my theory. It's not only lessons, they also will try to make weekend plans with you, and to have you over for dinner before lessons, take you hiking, pop in unexpectedly...
So, last night, I went alone. Jessie had a puppy to sit (for Sylvia, an english teacher from the girl's highschool) and some work to prepare for today. I tried to break it to them gently that we couldn't meet every night (It's not you, it's me...) because it's very important to be very careful to save face here. I told them that we wanted to meet on Mondays and Thursdays (lots of weeknights for other things, work, weekends stay open for travel, non-Korean hanging out) so that we could prepare better lessons and have more time to practice between lessons.
That took a LONG time to get accross. Once they got it, the mother went through every day of the week "Why noy Tuesday?", "Why no Wednesday?"... It's very difficult to explain that it is easier to learn when it isn't a chore or a drag to come. And that we wanted to do things other than learn Korean at night.
Anyways, I managed to get it all worked out, and gave them a quick little geography lesson on Canada with the help of a globe.
I'm going back on tomorrow. I'm actually excited to be learning a little bit, even though it is really slow coming.