a card-carrying member

i had always imagined my vocal cords to look like guitar strings, five or six slender strands waiting glamorously to be vibrated whenever i so pleased. i was under the assumption that my sound-emitting organs reminiscent of an elegant musical instrument. so you can only imagine my surprise today when i was confronted, for the first time, by two moldy strips of uncooked bacon fat and told that these, in fact, were the source of every word i had ever uttered. let me tell you, they were far more "jaws" than bon jovi and, in my case, covered in mold. in my opinion, it was a more lichen-esque colony than the more common furry variety (see this post if you doubt my authority on such growths), but the doctor disagreed.

"teachers' nodules" he declared. common among those who strain their voices due to prolonged use, they would not kill me. they also, however, could not be cured. alas, it seems that the only way to rid myself of them is to quit speaking. i looked that doctor square in the face and laughed at him. me deigning to speak is about as likely as me giving up chocolate. dont my gills know that this is WEEK 1 OF A NEW TERM!? dont they know that i have to speak for the better part of ALL three hours of each class this week? how could my body betray me like this? and then i thought about it and realized that yes, my vocal cords probably did realize this, and now they are getting together to giggle with my esophagus, windpipe, and little dangly thing. but silently. bastards.

in all honesty, my trip to daejeon's dunsan-dong emergency medical center was more of a last-ditch attempt to prevent my voice from abandoning me for the second time in as many months. it was saturday when i began to feel the fist of doom closing around my throat and my typically melodic (sic) tone took on a froggy quality.

while i expected the trip to be an exercise in futility, i must say that i was quite impressed with the care that i received. i have heard from many that it can sometimes be a large hassle here, complete with long waits and frustrating communication. i only spent an hour and a half at the hospital, which is impressive in the states even when you have an appointment. furthermore, i had an english interpreter within 20 minutes of my arrival who assessed me and passed me off to an rn from the international travel division. this rn escorted me through the rest of my process, which included a trip to an ent specialist, the one who inserted the camera into my throat and revealed to me the horrific reality of my vocal cords. they even gave me my own identification card. now, whenever i go to the hospital, i have a file with information which is directly tied to my card. i also got and paid for a follow-up appointment in two weeks to check my nodules (its such a disgusting word, no? especially now that you know that they look like lichen-mold growing on uncooked bacon fat. you're welcome.)

i think that is pretty impressive for an hour and a half. the best part? even though i dont yet have my insurance card (another story) the whole thing--special nurse attention, ent doctor, id card, and 2 appointments--cost me $35.

a fried rice thanksgiving

in my former life, my 747 packard college-house life, there were days when i would look around the stinking cesspool fruit-fly haven that some considered our kitchen and i would want to scream in frustration. i have never been a neat or clean person by normal standards, but there are limits to what any health-loving person should be expected to endure. a never-ending stack of dirty dishes that were not my own and a floor sticky with beer from an evening two weeks prior jumped to the top of my list of pet peeves. but we were eight busy and motivated college women. housework was not necessarily high on our set of priorities. i understood, but there would be those moments, those i-cant-take-this-anymore moments, when i would feel like kevin in home alone. you know the scene, the one where he finds out that he has to sleep with a bed-wetter and he is also getting shoved around physically and emotionally by every member of his extended family. "when i grow up, im living alone. do you hear me? im living alone, im living alone."

i live alone now. my apartment is not perfect, but it is mine. the mess is mine. the clean is mine. the one piece of furniture is mine. no one fights me for the bathroom or tells me to take out the trash. no one borrows my clothes or eats my peanut butter. and for the most part i like it.

but everything is a little bit different here. it is korea after all. a trip to the store is so much more, as is a drive in a cab. i expected difficulty although i suppose i never really spent time thinking about what that would be like. maybe was better that way.

korea is definitely different. regardless, living alone anywhere means really being alone, and being so often. there is no one else making coffee in the morning, no one else brushing their teeth next to me at night. but the differences extend further than the day to day. my first holiday alone went fine, but everything was skewed. where was the cranberry sauce? the pumpkin pie? the biscuts?

where was my family?

im not kevin. i love living alone and the independence it provides me, but i would really love it if my thanksgiving had less fried rice and more olsen/rebos.

sniffleupagus

day three at work with no heat.

such stuff as colds are made on

dreams? forget dreams. we semi-insomniacs do not have the luxury of talking about dreams, let alone making them from deep in our drug-induced REM cycles. no, dreams do not emerge from tylenol pm slumber. colds, on the other hand, would be content to snuggle up against the bosom that is today's series of events, would get right under the covers, would sigh deeply and would make themselves at home.

lets preface the rest of this entry by saying that i am not sick. i know that many of you find that hard to believe given my track record and the ominous preamble, but, and ill say it again, i am not sick.

currently.

if i were to get sick, however, today would be the day.

it began as one of those deceptive fall days that trick you into thinking they are much more innocent than they are. from my 5th floor window the sun danced happily on the pavement as the descending palette of autumn's trees played hide-and-seek with the workers trying to collect them into neat piles.

but somehow, as if overnight, the dr jekyll of autumn transformed into the rash mr hyde of fall. the sun i thought to be dancing held little more warmth than a lightening bug. the leaves gently swirling rather whipped about upon a wind that weaseled its way into the cracks of my coat. but it was still a pretty day, at least for the time being, and my walk to work was a short one.

i arrived at work on the second floor of the sky building to find that, of the two floors that cdi inhabits in the building, one of them was having trouble with the heat. and by trouble, i mean that there was none. of course, the floor with the malfunction was my own. while it was quite comical to see teachers running about in parkas and ski hats, i must say that in those six hours i became thoroughly chilled.

a trip to the gym will save me! i thought as i trekked the ten minutes towards the waiting facility. and it did. by the time i left i not only had regained full use of my fingers, but i was pretty close to losing the use of my legs. alas, retention of this miraculous recovery was not in the cards, for as i walked out the doors i discovered that korea, as the us, suffers from brutal fall rains.

have no fear, as i write these words i am safely snuggled up in my nice cozy bed. i do not describe this story for you because i am feeling pitiful or because i require sympathy. contrary to the aforementioned conditions, today was pretty good day. i merely am trying to relate a turning point in a season that i hoped would be different from that in the northern united states. it is not different. but for the time being i am not sick and for that i am grateful. i am not sick. i am not sick. i am not sick. i am not sick. i am not sick. i am not sick. i am not sick. i am not sick. i am not sick. i am not sick. i am not sick. i am not sick. i am not sick.

business

for a country that pays disappointingly little attention to a holiday as intriguing as halloween, there are an awful lot of random mask attacks here in korea. frequently i have just been minding my own business when BAM! theres someone in a mask that you have never expected to see in your entire life.

take this blatant advertising move, for instance:


who knew that an umbro-head was even possible? that isnt even remotely like a normal head. furthermore, who, aside from racho, knew that umbro was still popular? didnt it fall from grace, even in the soccer world, sometime in the early 90s? regardless, there we were minding our own shopping business and surprise! umbro head.

next, we have the not so clever "unrelated marketing" ploy:

this guy was loitering close to a popular nighttime hangout. me, wandering down the street, minding my own business, had to do a double take. pig! but person! all at the same time. koreans are tricky. im not quite sure how a pig head is related to his sale of street meat, but if he was trying to get me to purchase something that included pork(which im pretty sure he didnt even sell), this mask definitely did not work.

and then we have this phenomenon:

lego people! im not quite sure what they were promoting, but i guarantee it wasnt legos. wait, didnt quite catch that one? here it is again:

this second one is a terrible shot, but i wanted to be sure to include my personal favorite, the unhappy camouflage lego person (proof that even lego people are anti-war). it is amazing what one bumps into while wandering the streets of seoul. you know, minding your own business and all. i never quite imagined, however, that these sights would include nine lego people walking down the street.

the best part of this experience was when, as my four american friends and i were taking photos, all of the koreans also taking shots of the lego people stopped and began to take pictures of us. have i mentioned before that we were MINDING OUR OWN BUSINESS? because we were. we werent even looking for lego people or anything like that. (in my experience, lego people prefer to come to you, they dont really like to be hunted) the fact that every korean in a 20 foot radius was taking pictures of us really threw me for a bigger loop than the lego people themselves. im sure that if the lego people actually had opposable thumbs, they would have taken some also. strange that we were such a novelty. i mean, this was seoul, foreigners are everywhere. must have been that my unshowered-sunday-looking-for-breakfast-and-needing-coffee-at-2(3?) pm face was so incredibly breathtaking that they had to preserve the moment for all time. im sure i will turn up in a "trendwatch" section of some korean magazine or another within a month or so. keep your eyes peeled.

on a side note, i was asked if the lego people were korean or foreign. i must say, its pretty hard to tell given THE HUGE YELLOW LEGO HEADS. arent they all made in china anyway?

happy pepero day

wait, there's a holiday thats sole purpose is to facilitate the exchange of chocolate covered cookies between loved ones? i knew that i loved korea for a reason.

self indulgence

every day i exit my apartment building and am met smack in the face with a woosh of air coming from the dunkin doughnuts doughnut-making factory across the street. the rich, fatty, greasy, sugary friedness assaults my will-power with the force of a freight train and i spend the next 2 hours fighting (giving in to?) sugar cravings. they do not actually sell doughnuts at this secret location, they just produce the pillowy doughballs atop clouds of deciptively persuasive odor.

i have a sweet tooth, i admit. actually, all of my teeth are sweet teeth. i have no escape from these cravings.

i had been considering the shiny pointy heels i purchased (impulsively!) last week to be a special gift to myself. on closer inspection of my love handles, today i got myself a gym membership. it was my first trip to the gym, and, consequently, my first run in korea that wasnt stopped every 30 seconds to wait at some of the longest traffic lights in the world. it was a great workout and i left feeling refreshed and healthy.

i exited the building, and could have tripped over the dunkin doughnuts conveniently placed right across the street.

6000 of my closest friends (that look at me funny. and dont understand me. and laugh)

Saturday I went for a hike at Gyeryong-san National Park. I went alone in hopes of gaining the perspective that being alone in the woods (decidedly not the city) during the height of autumn might lend a person. And it was beautiful, and perspective lending, and, i might add, quite a rigorous hike. It was almost everything I had hoped for in a Saturday away (deliciously, blissfully away) from the city. To be sure, the one thing I wasnt on that trip was alone.

When I got off the bus, I thought I had misread the guidebook and the careful instructions of my friend. I must be at the circus. There are balloons here. And lines. It smells like elephant ears. But no, I was at the park. For the first mile or so of the "hike" (quotations used at this point to emphasize the fact that there were women in stilettos and men in suits so it can most definitely not be a quotation-less hike), there were stalls peddling sweet cakes and assorted chachkes lining either side of the path.

Videographic proof that it was, in fact, crowded:


Gyeryong-san Mob Scene from ali on Vimeo.


However, after that first mile or so the path did diverge and I selected the one with lighter traffic (very Robert Frost of me, I know). It was absolutely beautiful as the fall colors were at their prime. I dont think I could have picked a better time to go.

sorry about the lens flare on that one.

In other news, given my recent inability to sleep, I have been able to do some surprising things. My marble floors are smelling deliciously of pine-sol. I have read the New York Times, the Korea Herald, and the less boring parts of the Wall Street Journal. I have caught up on celebrity gossip (which I dont even like) and what is going on in the blogging world (fascinating). I have seen what the 8 am sun looks like reflecting off the Rodeo Town (pronounced ro-day-oh like the snobby californians would) windows opposite mine. I have taken pictures of my feet:

This may be what your foot would look like, say, if it got stomped on by a high heel at a dance club (except maybe not as fat as mine).

In my inability to sleep, I have not, however, been able to do the following:
the dishes
send the mail I have been meaning to for two weeks
sleep, obviously
prep for my classes
stop thinking about the two boxes of presents hidden under my bed (I know theyre there. they are taunting me)

youve come a long way baby

"Wouldn't the two Koreas reach a step closer to unification if we have similar eating habits?" Choi said. "I'm just hoping this will pave the way for inter-Korean peace."

profound.

check it. (that means click here)

Lucky you

My my, are you lucky. No posts for a week and then three in one day. I realized I didnt post any pictures the entire month of October. So, happy November!

floats at the lantern festival, but it was pouring

bondagee, or cooked bugs. they are sold to be eaten but smell terrible.


the waterside where I run

fountain outside the art gallery

flawed like me

As I have mentioned before, the parents in this country are crazy for education. The school where I teach is of the afternoon variety, which means that students go to their normal schools all day before getting their 3-hour dose of English from me. They are typically here twice a week, but go to a variety of other hogwons, or extra-curricular academies such as mine. English, math, science, orchestra--their structured learning does not cease when they exit their primary school.

Its insane the pressure these kids are under to succeed! I have students burst into tears if they get a B+ on their review test. "My mom will kill me," they whimper. They are constantly being pushed, to do better, to study harder, to work more.

Their mothers extend that pressure onto us, the teachers. I was not two weeks into school before a few mothers complained that I wasnt giving enough homework. A week after that, the complaint was that I didnt call on their student enough. Now, in my defense, they have the same complaints for every teacher, and the complaints come in the same order during the same weeks of the semester. It is as though there is some secret parent meeting where they decide what they are going to do next. (and for the record, I assign the same homework as everyone else and I call on every student).

Anyway, the most recent complaint is one that, I must say, took me by surprise. A parent called saying that her child is coming home from school and using the word like too much. As I am an American, they had to have learned this from me.

I admit that I do inadvertently insert this word into inappropriate locations in my everyday speech. However, I try very hard not to use casual language in my classroom. Furthermore, I have these students one day a week. I scarcely think that is enough time to pick up on my bad habits. Nevertheless, my boss mentioned that I may want to pay attention to such "trash language" in the future. I agree, and Im trying.

At the same time, though, I kind of like knowing that theres actually someone paying attention.

get fired up

So, I have recently discovered a website that will allow me to embed any video that I take onto this website. As a result, you may now be able to see in real time some of the things only offered to you photographically. Obviously, Im still partial to photos, both because the quality is better and then I dont have to hear my own voice (that always is awkward, no?). Its not like Ive been doing a stellar job uploading photos for you anyway, but that isnt quite the point. At any rate, I will start taking more blog-friendly videos. Here is your first installment...its a video of my beloved Daejeon Citizens scoring a goal off a header. They lost in the second round of the playoffs, but I love them anyway. Careful, because it gets a bit loud.

Header goal from ali on Vimeo.