dear korea,
i wanted to be sure to thank you for your insertion of a public restroom on every city block. it brings me no small amount of joy (and relief) to know that help for an emergency situation is always just around the corner. at no time is this more appreciated than when i walk past the "pig intestine" restaurant on my way to work. the odor released from that establishment is enough to take down a large elephant. (did you know that before cooking their wares they clean them in the alley that is my route to work?) regardless, thank you again for ensuring that i do not have to regurgitate in the street. im sure you can appreciate how that would add to the air quality of the area.
sincerely
a
ps. my co-workers at the work bbq and daejeon at sunrise.
i realize fully that this blog has been a gross misrepresentation of what my life has been like since i have moved to daejeon and i assume full responsibility for this. the next time that you link to the page and your heart falls painfully at the lack of new information, please picture me pitifully crouched on the floor in the hottest corner of my sparsely furnished apartment in order to maintain the internet quality necessary to convey these thoughts to you. do this, and we will all be better off.
that being said, i will try to catch you up on what i have been doing for the past several days.
saturday was a big day for everyone at my hogwan (korean word for english institute). it was their last day of intensives, a month of hell that happens twice a year where the teachers teach an extra class in the morning, adding up to nine hours of class per day. needless to say, they were all pretty excited to go back to their normal 4:30-10:30 teaching schedule. we celebrated this by hiking a mountain on the outskirts of the city and having a picnic at the top. it was alleged to be an extremely easy hike by the three who had done it before, so, laden down with kimbap (kind of like california rolls), soju, and beer, we set out.
after several minutes of hiking it became clear that this was not going to be the cake-walk we had anticipated. the three who had hiked it before admitted that ours was not the trail they had walked previously. but we were there already, so all 25 or so of us trudged up the steep incline, pausing every 20 minutes or so to cool off. it just so happened that sat was also the most humid day we had experienced in a week or so, and thirty minutes into the walk we were all dripping. we saw this guy on the way up and had to give him props for his support of the tigers. i think he thought we were crazy.
we finally reached the summit, ready to eat and play frisbee, only to realize that we were at the wrong summit and the one we wanted was on the other side of the ridge. as we had still several hours until sunset, we decided to walk over to it. by this point many were cursing their gods that they had decided to come, or perhaps that they had consumed beer instead of water on the walk up. regardless, we made it to the top, explored the fort wall ruins, played frisbee, had our picnic, and saw a mediocre sunset. it was too hazy. this is about half the group at the top.
we left the top a bit too late, not realizing how long it would take us to go the direct way down. and so, our group of 25 unprepared foreigners descended in the darkness without a single flashlight. we only killed off 2 or 3, but i think it was more the bears than anything else.
the next day was volleyball, a sport that has never been my strong suit. but i did alright and my team was undefeated for most of the day.
that evening was my first game of the DAEJEON CITIZENS, daejeon's own soccer team. it was awesome, with fans lighting off flares and chanting all game. the stadium was about 1/10th full and the team is really pretty bad, but it was a great time and we got to meet some of the players afterwards.
then i was on to fukuoka, japan to get my work visa. im legally a teacher, if not yet in practice. the hotel where they sent us was out of this world. this is a view of the sunset out my window. 
as going to the consulate took about 30 mins both mon and tues, we had a lot of time to play. (i was with 2 coworkers). we spent monday evening on the beach meeting japanese people and hanging out. it was a really good time. these are some of our new japanese friends. please note that it is not just the peace sign that is popular, but also the spiderman webslinger.
tuesday we did some random exploring, finding a park with a huge lake in it and koi fish the size of my leg. against the warnings of a friend who had just been to the same city, i forgot sunscreen and got a bit red. oh well.
anyway, that should bring you about up to speed. in theory i will be getting a real apt this weekend and starting teaching some classes (i dont know which) on monday. ill keep you posted.
the longer that i am here, the more things i come to understand about the culture in which i have immersed myself. im not on cultural overload, but rather something just before that point. each day brings a smattering of new phrases, customs, and experiences. i am trying really hard to learn the alphabet. i have about half of it down, but it is really difficult to remember. while i remain utterly amazed that i am living in a country where i have little to no language skills and yet somehow have managed to survive, i know that my ability to navigate life will be greatly improved once i have some korean down.
other things that i am realizing:
- most koreans are markedly more feminine than their american counterparts. for this reason, i often feel strangely bumbling and masculine. although i would not claim to be overly girly, it is really strange to see so many men who are "prettier" than half the women i know, including myself.
- koreans are insane about education. they go to school all day and then spend all afternoon and evening in academies, like mine, honing their talents (english, music, etc.) many of them rarely see the light of day and "fun" is relative. it is currently summer break, and the kids spend this time attending intensive academic camps, like those given by my school. parents, especially mothers, complain if teachers don't give enough homework of if they dont think their students are working hard enough in class.
- i have never seen so many wearers of glasses in my life.
in other news, my one-night trip to japan is officially scheduled for monday. its going to be an early trip (the bus to the airport leaves at 3:50am) and some legs of the trip are very closely timed, but i think it will be really fun. its sort of a rite of passage for english teachers in korea, and everyone seems to have a story about their experiences there. im also pretty fired up for what the trip means for me: not being an illegal. well, technically im not illegal because im not teaching yet, but having my visa will allow me to register and registering means i can get finally get a cellphone, a bank account, and therefore MONEY!
anyway, not much else going on here. just loving my korean life (and the food!).
i am still a nomad. i moved to daejeon on monday and began staying at a hotel/motel. after two days i was moved here, to the former apartment of my boss. it is a large 3 bedroom that i will inhabit for the next 2 weeks or so, until another, closer apt is open. so i still cant unpack but no huge deal. the view is great and i have a ton of space, 5 rooms and 2 bathrooms to chill in (plus a semi balcony). only thing is that ... well the only furniture in the place is my bed. no fridge, micro, oven, etc. i have a washer, but otherwise i am alone in this empty space. and i am still stealing internet from the neighbors. for this reason, i will still hold off on posting photos. (my camera works again!).
i have been sitting in on some classes at my work, which has been really helpful. its been great to see what i have been trained on applied (or not used at all) in a real setting. i am getting really excited to start.
the people from my work are really cool. today a bunch of us met up at about 11 pm (classes end at 1030) for an intense 2.5 hour game of soccer, korean style. this was followed by some very korean beer drinking outside the nearest convenience store. i had a really good time and surprised myself by not being as bad at soccer as i expected to be after such a long hiatus.
i think that my japan visa run date is now set for next thurs, although that, i have discovered, is really up in the air. i have to go soon, so i am really excited.
anyway, there is so much going on that i would love to get in to. i would also love to respond to your emails, but for the next bit while i am stealing internet, please know that i love you all and i will get back with you when i know i will be able to have uninterrupted internet.
in about two hours i will be making the trip from seoul to my new hometown, daejeon. im pretty fired up about seeing my new city, apartment, job, etc. im also so ready to stop living out of a suitcase. so, the move will happen today, but i dont know the next time that i will have continuous access to the internet. i am assuming that my apartment will not have it to begin with, so it might be a bit before we are back in contact.
things here are really great, especially now that training is over. everyone has begun to disperse to their respective locations, although most of them will be in and around seoul. we signed our contracts on saturday afternoon, which was extremely exciting.
anyway, ill let you know how the move goes asap. also, my camera stopped working randomly last night, but im going to try and get some more photos up here soon.
we are deep into the week of training, a week that has been extremely informative yet also brutally boring. within each session we are working to prepare a single lesson that we will teach the first week of class. it is really helpful to see how other people would approach the same material, but if i have to watch one more mock class on the five distinct regional divisions of the united states i might stab myself in the eye with a pen.
i have also concluded that there is nothing worse than mock teaching in front of your peers. when trying to throw "childlike" situations at you, it really just winds up being annoying. i can not wait to get in front of a real class of real people. although with this material they might mutiny.
otherwise things are going really well. i have not yet drowned. (new york city can stop whining and try seoul out) and training ends with tomorrow's evaluations.
today dawned grayer and gloomier than those we have had so far. although i have yet to see the seoul sun, today was exceptionally moody. the sky opened up with a muggy hot rain which drove me directly into the closest convenience store to purchase an umbrella. i shall not part from it again. somehow, seoul still manages to be pretty cool.
we started training for my new job yesterday, rather, we had orientation, which was markedly easier than the beginning of official training today. i had two training sessions today, and i found out that i will be teaching (and therefore training on) the "listening and speaking" and "reading and writing" portions of the curriculum. this mean that while my students can be either elementary or middle schoolers, they will all be at the intermediate level or slightly higher. they threw a lot of info at us today, and tomorrow we will have to teach mock classes to the rest of the class. its going to be interesting because we are all going to be teaching the same lesson...
today we also had several tests. there was the code of conduct test, which was pretty basic, and the grammar test, which is said to have a pass/fail ratio of 50/50. considering that we have to successfully pass everything during training to maintain our positions, some people were pretty freaked out about the test. while i wasnt overly stressed about it, i must admit that i did my fair share of gerunding and adverb clausing last night. i think it went fine. if 50% fail, then 50% have to pass, right?
after class we had to get a physical. i guess some guy in the past turned out to have TB. despite the multitude of tests, it took the four of us who went at the same time about a half an hour. had that been the us or chile, i guarantee you we would still be there. quite efficient.
below are some photos of the hotel room that alicia and i currently share. sorry, not that much exciting going on. ive been unemployed for a bit, so im trying to get back in to the swing of real life.
the first 24 hours in seoul have gone pretty much according to what i had anticipated when deciding to move to asia; i expected to be pretty clueless and it turns out that i am. i dont know an appropriate way for a person to prepare oneself for a move to the other side of the world, so i have been making it up as i go along. and i daresay im doing ok.
the place where i am staying is comfortable, and i was assigned a roommate, alicia, by my future employer. she is not only an enjoyable person, but she also has been living in asia for 2 years now, an experience that included several trips to korea. this makes her a valuable asset.
apparently my western appearance makes me a small object of fascination here. it is not chilean style lust or machismo but rather my presence attracts not-so-covert glances whenever someone thinks i am not looking. at dinner last night a friend and i were minor celebrities with the waitstaff, eliciting both said looks and copious amounts of giggling. this evening, while trying out my very first korean dish "beep and bop" (spelling accurate to my own pronunciation), the waiter made sure to point out that "this one is for the american" (thank you alicia for the translation).
and so i am working on the story of my fame and trying to think up my "fame name", in case anyone asks. i was considering using my porn star name (ask any 5th grader if you dont know what this is), but lyn aberdeen takes about .5 seconds longer to write than my current moniker. the unacceptability of this fact is insurmountable. ill keep working at it.
in other news, my body really has no idea what is going on. a 13 hour time difference really did a number on my sleep schedule, and so training that begins tomorrow will be interesting. the session will begin in the afternoon so as to coincide with the time of day i feel the most like im back in a college all-night essay writing marathon. excellent.
--> the photo at the top is seoul from the bathroom window of a department store. many more photos to follow. major fashion trends noticed: vests, ruffles, and (cristina miller get excited!) suspenders. bonus points for combining all three.
