Dispatches from Korea

2010-05-18T03:21:00.000-07:00

Right now I guess I'm averaging a post every three to four months, and it's not exactly that I'm lazy, but I can't really find enough substance in my life to write about regularly.

Anyway, an update of sorts:

I was accepted into the American Studies M.A. program at Eötvös Loránd University for the upcoming semester. My work contract in South Korea was scheduled to be over about a week and a half ago, but I signed on for an additional two months to save up a little more money, since work will be scarce in Hungary. If all goes as planned, I'll be leaving here on July 21st to stop off in Europe for a week, then return home in time for Joseph and Allison's wedding at the end of the month.

I spend most of my days reading (I've managed to read more in Korea than I have at any other point in my life), watching movies and preparing myself for graduate school. There are probably a dozen avenues I could take in my graduate studies and I probably won't narrow it down for another year, I do have some general direction. Of course, I've been without many academic resources for the past year, and didn't take advantage of them when they were right in front of me.

That's all for now--I have my reasons for not writing too often, if anyone cares to hear them (though I'd have to write to tell you).

2009-12-01T15:49:00.000-08:00

It's been a solid three-and-a-half months since I updated so I guess I'm due.

Here's just a smattering of what's going on in South Korea and an overview of my future plans:

I'm nigh on seven months through this contract (December 7th, to be exact) and in some ways I still feel fresh off the plane. In others, though, I feel as if I've been here for years--it's so easy to forget the minor things about home. Fortunately I haven't felt much culturual alienation, and any homesickness is usually cured by visiting Itaewon (South Korea's foreign neighborhood--an eclectic mix of American military, Middle Easterners, Indians, Africans and English teachers with the occasional European or South American) for the afternoon.

Everything (as far as South Korea is concerned) should be downhill from here--three weeks from Friday I'll be flying into Ho Chi Minh City with Andrea; we'll spend seven days in between Saigon and Phu Quoc Island with a side trip into the Mekong Delta. Once I come back to work I'll be teaching four weeks of English "camp," which means, in other words, that I only have a dozen or so students for half the day. From the beginning to the middle of February we have to finish this semester, then another two weeks of camp (where I'll be teaching first graders). March marks the start of the new school year, which means new students--and eight weeks after that I'm out of here.

In other news, Andrea and I have adopted a cat. We found him roughly four months ago, tied up by a garage attendants' booth down the street from our apartment. He was confined to a tiny area with no room for play and with (as far as I could tell) only food scraps from the building's restaurants for meals. Andrea insisted that we start feeding him canned cat food, and so since August up until about two weeks ago we'd been stopping by daily to play with and give him food. The guards eventually offered him to Andrea, though I think there was some miscommunication there (apparently they meant to have us bring him home for one night only--but we're not giving him back). She's named him "Mittens" and he's been terrorizing me for the last week. He becomes bolder with each passing day but hasn't managed to destroy anything just yet.

As far as taking him home...we're unsure if Andrea will take him back to Hungary in March or if I will go to Hungary when my contract is up, and then come home later in May. Too many factors to go into at the moment, but we'll see what happens. I'm also trying to decide what to do about attending some weddings while I'm home, or seeing if it's possible to hit both of them on a brief visit in late August/early September.

Right now I'm hoping to start the American Studies graduate program at Eötvös Loránd University in September. Originally I wanted to do a master's in literature, but this particular school doesn't offer an American literature program (and English literature just won't cut it for me, I'm afraid), and as I've really started to read into the aims of American Studies as an academic discipline I've decided it's probably much closer to what I want anyway. In brief, it's an interdisciplinary approach to the study of "American-ness," using texts from just about every scholarly field in the humanities (literature, history, philosophy, sociology, etc.) I have a handful of American novelists whose work I'd like to study, and beyond that there's an endless amount of culture studies and critical theory that I need to digest.

I'll write again soon.

2009-08-17T04:29:00.000-07:00

For the past three months I've been procrastinating on writing an article for my hometown newspaper, the Smyth County News & Messenger. Initially I wanted to write a brief piece in which I could discuss my experience (as well as the experiences of two other graduates of my high school who are teaching here) in South Korea, why we chose to come here, the difficulties in adapting to so vastly different a culture, etcetera--more or less the expected line of pap. Every time I've attempted to start this article I've come up with so many other things that are worth mentioning, the majority of which I don't think would be of much interest to my hometown readers--contrasting the lifestyles of Marion, VA and South Korea would be too easy, and I would almost need to do a series of articles to even scratch the surface of everything I have to say.

I won't pretend that the following sentiments are mine alone, and I haven't studied any of this sufficiently enough to give an educated account, so bear in mind my complete subjectivity.

Why? There are so many different reasons for why so many Americans (as well as other English speakers) are choosing to teach overseas, the most common being to pay off student debt, to travel very cheaply and see another culture up close, and to delay the full responsibilities of adulthood in their home countries. Another, and one that is partially behind my decision to come here, is that the job market in the United States can't accommodate us all. The generation of young Americans who have earned bachelor's degrees in the past, let's say, six years, have graduated from a university expecting a warm embrace and congratulatory applause from the job market only to be met with blank stares and cold shoulders, being told they lack the requisite experience to land a job in their field, a classic Catch-22 of "I don't have the experience because I can't get a job, and I can't get a job because I don't have experience." The bachelor's degree has become commonplace enough to equate it with the high school diploma of earlier generations, forcing many of us to take jobs we could have had before investing four years and thousands of dollars into an education that so far has only led us into an abyss of debt. To sidestep for a moment, I'm currently reading Looking Backward (published in 1888), an acclaimed utopian novel by the socialist Edward Bellamy. In short, the book is about a man who is put into a trance only to be revived in the year 2000--113 years after he went to sleep--a time in which a form of highly-developed socialism prevails as opposed to the industrialist capitalism of the late 19th century. I have yet to finish it but I feel confident in saying it's more or less a tract of basic Marxism transformed into a narrative (which is something I personally enjoy). But the one particular passage which I can relate to my current spiel can be paraphrased as such: those of us who enter college at the socially-expected ages of 18-19 are often unsure of what we're good at, what we want to do for the rest of our lives--we're just too young to make such a final declaration. I can personally attest to that statement, as I lost complete interest in my major shortly after graduation; at the same time, I feel like I've learned much more living in "the real world," studying on my own and reading freely than I did as an undergraduate. Our Western, middle-class mindset (and the cold reality) tells us that no, our parents can't afford to take care of us forever, we're not going to find a romantic partner if we're still living at home or waiting tables at 25, we're not going to be socially respected if we're college graduates working wage jobs at 30. I won't go into what I consider to be the anguish of the middle-class, as I'm already far off my original topic, and because I don't consider this the appropriate forum. So anyway, back to South Korea--what else can we do? The jobs are here, the money is better than what many of have ever earned in our own nations, we don't pay rent and we don't have to feel worthless. Many of us face the decision of blooming into respectable adults here, or we continue to spit in the face of adulthood and live our lives in this giant, peninsula-shaped amusement park (a theme to be elaborated upon later).

Ethical concerns: I have conflicted feelings about the ethical issues of my position here, whether it be the so-called and inevitable "march of progress" or not. To clarify, I think it could be argued that what we're doing--teaching the English language--is an advanced form of imperialism, and if it isn't now it could potentially become so. Once again, I don't have the formal education necessary to really qualify these extreme, grand statements, but from my limited (and once again, subjective) point-of-view, this is how I feel. I guess my argument would be rooted in some kind of language theory coupled with something else, I don't know what, and I won't try to reference any scholarly sources because I can't remember where I've read them, by whom they were written, and I think I can elucidate my thoughts well enough to make citing unnecessary. So here it is: as the world slowly congeals into one giant English-speaking mass, our global diversity is going to seep right through a hole in the bucket. Right now there is an obvious rift between the young and old generations in South Korea, and as generations continue to die and be born, the ties to tradition will eventually break. So much of the culture is built into the language, and vice-versa, and over time the culture will succumb to total Westernization, with the Western world eventually succumbing to Americanization. I think such an extreme end result is unlikely, but I can't help seeing it looming on the horizon. With the majority of the non-English speaking world struggling to learn our language to reap economic benefits, how are they expected to maintain their own sense of cultural heritage and pride? As English rises to the position of the global language, won't many people end up feeling that to learn any other language is a futile gesture? At what point will foreign children start to be raised in English-speaking households in order to avoid the difficulties their parents faced as second-language learners? You can't put a price on tradition, you can't put a price on culture. Does financial gain justify their possible eradication? This is the most negative light I can throw on the subject right now, and I've had many days where I feel like what I'm doing is a wonderful thing, but I can justify it for mostly personal reasons--it's going to be easier for me to live in a world where I can speak to everyone, I can make a lot of money teaching the English language, etc. I tell myself that it's okay to be here because if I wasn't, someone else would be, and I need the money and experience--but I don't want to live in a world that justifies itself as such.

I'm burnt out for now.

2009-08-13T15:52:00.000-07:00

As the type to always derive some kind of pleasure from the keeping of lists, I've decided to share with you what I've been reading and what I've purchased (book-wise) since arriving in South Korea.

Read:

Tim Poland - The Safety of Deeper Water
Sherwood Anderson - Winesburg, Ohio
Kim Young-Ha - I Have the Right to Destroy Myself
Alan Moore - The Watchmen
John Hersey - Hiroshima
Ray Bradbury - Zen in the Art of Writing
George Orwell - 1984
Edith Hamilton - Mythology
Kurt Vonnegut - Cat's Cradle
E.B. White - Charlotte's Web
Alexander Trocchi - Young Adam
Nikolai Gogol - Dead Souls (three-quarters through it--I hit a snag at one point, but will finish soon)
Strunk & White - The Elements of Style (read the majority of it)
George Orwell - Why I Write (read two of the three essays)
Deszo Kostalanyi - Skylark
Antoine de Saint-Exupery - The Little Prince (three quarters of the book, have read twice before)
Franz Kafka - selected short stories

Currently reading:

Emile Burns - What is Marxism?
Daniel Boorstin - The Creators
Sherwood Anderson - Winesburg, Ohio

Started but didn't finish/am not currently reading:

Franz Kafka - The Castle
Stephen Crane - Maggie, a Girl of the Streets
John Gardner - The Art of Fiction
E.M. Forster - Aspects of the Novel
Kobo Abe - The Box Man
Ray Bradbury - Dandelion Wine

Bought/brought with the intention to read soon (unlikely):

James Joyce - Ulysses
Homer - The Illiad
Virginia Woolf - Mrs. Dalloway
Gabriel Garcia Marquez - 100 Years of Solitude
Thomas McGuane - Gallatin Canyon
The Bible (King James Version)
Herman Melville - Billy Budd and Other Stories
Albert Camus - The Plague
Charles Dickens - Great Expectations
Umberto Eco - Foucault's Pendulum
Peter Hoeg - The Borderliners
Jonathan Swift - Gulliver's Travels

2009-08-13T15:49:00.000-07:00

I'll continue to blame my lack of updates on the fact that most of my down time is spent at school, and unfortunately Blogger isn't accessible from my school computer. In fact, I'm writing on a Xanga account at the moment (for some reason the system here allows Xanga and Twitter while excluding numerous other blogs) with the intention of transferring the post to Blogger later .
There are so many things to touch on and I can almost guarantee that I'll run out of steam before I'm able to say everything that's worth saying.

Personal life: Andrea arrived in South Korea on July 17th, and with my paid vacation time scheduled for the two following weeks, we made some vague plans to island-hop off the southwestern coast of the peninsula. Our first destination was the fishing village of Mokpo, which was only intended as a stop-over before getting to the island areas, as bus rides can only be tolerable for so long. As we pulled into Mokpo we realized it wasn't at all what we'd expected (though I'm not sure exactly what we were expecting--this wasn't it), and the clouds and rain only added to the gloom of the evening. Earlier in the day my eye had started to become irritated, reddening and watering throughout the bus ride. By the time we checked into a motel it had become difficult to keep it open, but after napping for an hour or so it seemed as though it was improving. It was dark by the time we left the motel to find some food and my eye was so sensitive to the street lights that I had to keep it closed until we were back indoors, and then I was only able to open it comfortably in complete darkness, and I had a difficult time sleeping because not only was it sensitive at this point, it was a continuous throbbing pain.

When we woke up the next day I decided there was no way I could continue with the trip, that I would only be torturing myself by stepping onto a beach in the sunlight. Andrea convinced me to look for a pharmacy for some eyedrops* and upon finding one we were re-directed to an eye clinic that was in the same building. The doctor there told me I had a corneal infection or something along those lines, and gave me a couple different eyedrop prescriptions, assuring me everything would be okay, but that I should see a doctor in Seoul as soon as possible. The total cost for the doctor and the medicine was roughly 11,000 won (the equivalent of about ten dollars). The next day Andrea and I headed up to Seoul to find an eye clinic that she'd found online, and fortunately for me it was within walking distance of three major bookstores, one being the largest in the country. On the second tier of fortune I'd include that the doctor spoke more or less perfect English, and though he never smiled he seemed genuinely concerned about the condition of my eye, which he said could possibly end up with major vision loss. He prescribed some additional medication and by the time I visited him the next day the eye had healed dramatically, though it was still light-sensitive and painful. I ended up going to the doctor six days in a row, in which I had multiple medications, a consultation with another doctor at the clinic, a day spent with an eyepatch, an ultra sonagram of my eye and so on, but at this point my vision is almost back to normal.

*South Korea requires a pharmacist to dole out any sort of medicine, even something as simple as Tylenol.

So now that story has been told...and I'll attempt to blog about what else I've been doing and thinking in an upcoming entry.

2009-06-27T18:46:00.000-07:00

Once again I'm back after a long period of not posting. I guess this is because Korea has become normal to me; my daily routine truly offers nothing worth posting about, or maybe I'm just looking at it from my personal perspective and am blinded to what is and isn't interesting.

Yesterday my Korean language and culture class went to see the tomb of King Sejong, who ruled Korea in the early 15th century. He is responsible for creating the Hangeul alphabet, which is the current alphabet system used here (and I'm slowly learning how to read it), and is generally thought to be, at least according to my little brochure, "the most enlightened king in Korean history." The trip was enjoyable but it was also hard to wake up at 7:30 on a Saturday morning and ride two and a half hours on a bus, so I didn't take as much from it as I might have under better conditions. After this we drove to a Buddhist temple, which was beautiful but once again, being in a large group of foreign teachers makes things difficult--everyone wants to talk and joke around because that's part of who we are, and it doesn't really fit with the atmosphere of a Buddhist temple with Koreans coming and going, offering prayers, and monks giving our group dirty looks for being (unintentionally) disruptive. After leaving the temple we headed to our final destination, a Buddhist museum, where we made decorative fans (mine is very ugly), saw a lot of artwork and had a traditional temple meal, which from what I was told is what the monks eat--Buddhist monks are vegetarian, so I didn't have to pay attention to what I was eating.

I managed to get a handful of pictures but my camera's battery was dying so I couldn't take full advantage of the day.

2009-06-18T05:32:00.000-07:00

These are some pictures of the park across from my apartment building. Every single night the park is full of people doing various things--walking, lounging on picnic blankets in the grass, doing aerobics, jogging, drinking, etc. And there are fountains everywhere as well, as I'm sure you can see for yourself.

2009-06-18T05:07:00.000-07:00

Well, it's been about two weeks since I last updated this thing. It's not solely because I'm lazy, though. Blogger is blocked on the school computers (it wasn't when I first started), so I can't make any updates while at work (which is when I have plenty of time to write the posts). My personal computer has something seriously wrong with it and freezes randomly whenever I'm using it. Right now doing anything on a computer is pretty frustrating.

I have plenty of pictures to post so maybe I'll do that later; right now I'll talk about what I've been doing lately.

I can't recall any particularly exciting events, so this post will be a rundown on the memorable/interesting occurrences since the beginning of June.

Two weekends ago, my weekend was more or less this: horse races in the afternoon in Gwacheon, a baseball game in Jamsil in the late afternoon, a casino at night, my friend getting into a fight in Hongdae, having to stay out the entire night because the subway stops running from Hongdae at 11 and a cab would be really expensive (the trains start again at 5:30 AM), etc.

That's honestly the only thing I can recall happening here in the past two weeks that would interest anyone. Right now my life has settled down into a normal pace. I'm working a lot (this week I started teaching two additional classes for students with advanced English skills), trying to keep my apartment clean, playing frisbee on Mondays and basketball on occasion, trying to read as much as I can, starting to enjoy Korean food (or at least what's vegetarian, which isn't much) and feeling pretty comfortable in what I'm doing.

I turned 25 yesterday and didn't do much to celebrate; my co-teacher brought a huge bag of instant coffee for me and also a birthday cake, and then I went out with about 13 friends for dinner at an Italian restaurant and had cake again (of course).

Currently the only thing I'm really looking forward to is this: Andrea (my girlfriend) is coming to stay with me in South Korea for a while, and she'll be here in mid-July. So far the days have been dragging on, and I expect this to continue until she's here. Expect more enthusiastic updates and lots of pictures once she's here, because I'll be a little more motivated to do things, I think.

That's all for now.

a few pictures of my students

2009-06-01T01:39:00.003-07:00

catching up

2009-05-28T20:46:00.000-07:00

It's been ten days since I last provided an update on life in Korea, and I'll have to sort through a bunch of mundane nonsense to find anything worth writing here. I'll do my best, though.

First I'll recount last Friday's events, because it set the course for the following week, and because it's funny in retrospect.

Friday Night Mishap

I spent Friday night in the college district of Hongdae (I think I mentioned it in a previous post) with my friend Jean--she's Korean-American and grew up in Virginia, but she's going to school in Korea to learn the language. This is her neighborhood and seems to be very popular for foreigners, as there's a lot to do and the young Korean adults tend to be more "Americanized," so it's generally a very comfortable and friendly place. We walked around a lot, went to a bookstore where I proceeded to buy Great Expectations and Foucault's Pendulum in English, had Mexican food for dinner, ate this waffle/ice cream desert that's everywhere around here, and is very cheap, etc. Now, I was under the impression that as long as I caught the last train in Hongdae I could make it back to my neighborhood, which is close to an hour away. This wasn't the case, of course, and I ended up missing my transfer and had to get off in an area nowhere close to my apartment. Normally this wouldn't be a huge problem as most people would just get a cab and (reluctantly) pay the 20 or so dollars to get back to my neighborhood. Unfortunately (and this is a general complaint about teaching in Korea), there are strict rules about you can and can't do when you arrive here. First you have to undergo a health examination to prove that you don't have HIV/AIDS and you have to pass a drug test. This is a requirement to get your alien registration card, which is essential to doing just about anything here, including obtaining a cellphone. My health exam results had come in on the previous Monday, so on Wednesday my co-teacher (who is more or less my caretaker here) took my documents to the immigration office in order to get my alien card. This process takes between a week and ten days, and like I said, you can't get a phone without the alien card. Anyway, I got out of the subway with the intention of finding an ATM so I could catch a taxi. After walking around for 20 minutes or so I managed to find an ATM--but my card wasn't accepted. I tried two additional ATMs and had the same results. Because my bank card was temporary (I had just opened a Bank of America account in April) I thought that maybe there was a 3o-day limit and that maybe it had just expired. At this point I decided to find a PC Bang (translated: PC Room), which is an all-night Internet cafe--these things are everywhere here, and are always occupied by younger Korean guys playing World of Warcraft--in hopes of catching my father online, asking him to call Bank of America and explain the situation so I could get home that night. He wasn't online but a couple hours before he'd sent me an email telling me that he'd activated my new (actual) debit card, because I'd asked him to do this before mailing it to me. I just hadn't realized that as soon as the new card was activated, the old one would be worthless. I logged into Facebook Chat in hopes of finding someone in Korea who could help, but rarely will you find an English teacher in Korea at home on the computer on a Friday night. After a few minutes someone logged on--this guy Brian from West Virginia, who happens to live about ten minutes from my apartment; it turns out he'd just gotten home from the birthday party that I'd missed because of being lost--and I started telling him my situation. He suggested I find a cab and take it to his building, where he'd be waiting with cash to pay my fare. I had no luck finding a cab and really didn't want to spend any more money at the PC Bang, so after being turned down by several taxis I found a payphone--which, of course, took me ten minutes to figure out--and gave Brian a call. He was kind enough to take a cab out to where I was to pick me up, even after being ready for bed and this being 2:30 AM. On top of that, we had never actually met each other--a mutual friend suggested we become Facebook friends because he is a vegan, and eating in Korea as a vegetarian (as I am) is a difficult and frustrating thing to do. So, I ended up getting home around 3 AM on Saturday morning without about ten dollars to my name. It wasn't as miserable as it sounds, and I actually was laughing at the situation in the midst of being lost.

Saturday

After Friday night's incident I ended up staying in my apartment for almost the entire day, playing on the computer, reading, cleaning and sleeping. I ended up meeting some friends later that night who offered to pay for my food, and so I met up with them later that evening. Now, outside my building there's a pretty huge plaza with a ridiculous amount of restaurants and little shops, and on a weekend night you can see groups of foreigners (mostly teachers from the US and Canada) walking around. Obviously the English teacher network has a lot of overlap--someone from this group knows someone who is in that group and this just continues--so at one point on Saturday night there were probably 25 or so of us sitting at tables at the end of the plaza. Of course most of us are loud, or at least we seem loud to the Koreans because they don't understand what we're saying, and the English teacher community already has a reputation for being perpetually drunk, obnoxious and obsessed with chasing Korean women (which is of course an unfair generalization, for the most part). At this point I hadn't encountered any hostility from the Koreans toward foreigners but there were a couple minor incidents this night. I was in a bar called Danke which is really just a three-minute walk from my apartment; I was there with some friends and as I was getting a little cold, I decided to go home for my sweatshirt. There were still a lot of foreigners at the corner of the plaza, and when I was coming back to the restaurant I noticed a couple of drunk Korean guys, probably around my age, staggering by the foreigner group. One was outraged about something (I think because there were some Korean girls sitting at the table) and was trying to provoke some of the male teachers, but I didn't really pay attention to it and went on back to Danke, which is on the fifth floor of its building. When I got into the elevator a younger Korean woman also stepped in with me. We didn't say anything to each other, didn't look at each other, and were standing as far from each other as we possibly could. But when we got to the fifth floor, a guy (her boyfriend, I assume) was waiting, and as soon as he saw me he stormed into the elevator and grabbed the girl by the shoulder and wouldn't let her come out. I don't know if he'd been drinking or not; part of the Korean dating culture includes extreme, irrational jealousy, and I think this situation was a shining example. I went on back and stayed with my friends for another hour or so, and as we were leaving, one of the guys we'd met that night (his name is Richard and he's actually from Abingdon, VA) wanted us to do this thing called Doctor Fish. I'd heard about it before, and as far as I know Danke is the only place in my immediate area to offer this service. It's very simple--in the restaurant there's a little fish pond surrounded by benches. You put your bare feet into the pond and the little fish in there eat away your calluses. My friend Steve and I both refused but our third friend (Gina) did it and said it just felt like someone tickling your feet. I find the idea to be pretty repulsive, but I also don't even like looking at fish.

Hiking on Sunday

I woke up early on Sunday with no plans and decided to go for a hike at nearby Kwanak Mountain (I think that's the name). My friend Holly offered to go with me so we spent most of the afternoon out there, and I managed to get a couple decent pictures. The sky was pretty foggy (smoggy?) so the pictures of my city didn't turn out so well, but the weather was beautiful and the trails were very alive. Let me also comment on this--hiking is extremely popular in Korea, as is consumerism, so when you see Koreans hiking chances are they're dressed from head to toe in top-of-the-line hiking gear. Hiking poles, visors, gloves and anything else that they deem necessary for an afternoon on the mountain is bought without the thought of necessity, and of course I was wearing khaki shorts and sandals, probably leaving a lot of the Korean hikers thinking that I'm just another dumb American. Regardless, it was a worthwhile day and I enjoyed it.

I'll post pictures later and discuss the rest of the week. Time to do some lesson planning.

Staying busy

2009-05-19T15:20:00.000-07:00

It has now been two weeks since I first arrived in South Korea, so that means only 50 more to go. The time really is flying by but I hope I don't end up in a rut where the days drag on and on--this isn't to say I'm not enjoying my time, but I have tentative plans for when I leave here that I'll announce later, when they're more worked out. Right now I've been doing my best to stay busy, to be doing something every night. For example, this is my schedule for after-work hours this week:

Monday - I played ultimate frisbee with a group of ten expat guys in the park across the street from my apartment, then played a game of basketball with my friend Steve and some Korean guys. Afterwards I met up with Chris and Abi for a bit, so by the time we finished that it was time to go to bed.

Tuesday - On Tuesdays I have my Korean language class with a bunch of other English teachers. I'm probably on a lower level than everyone else in there, but I have been in Korea for less time. After class last night I walked home with some classmates, bought a pizza, came home and went to bed.

Wednesday - Tonight I'm meeting up with this guy named Dom for basketball in Suwon. I'll probably spend most of the evening down there so by the time I get home I'll be wiped out.

Thursday - Mikey (from Texas) and I are going to Jamsil specifically for this Indian restaurant that he knows there. It's a long trek for Indian food but I don't have anything else to do, plus I've not been to that city. One of the Korean Baseball League stadiums is there, so if we're close to that maybe I'll be able to check that out.

Friday - I'm going to meet up with this girl Jean in the Hongddae area--she's a friend of friends and went to James Madison University. She should be able to show me some interesting things in her area, as it's an artsy, college district.

Saturday - No plans yet, but something is sure to come up.

2009-05-17T15:03:00.000-07:00

2009-05-17T04:57:00.000-07:00

This morning I headed into Seoul with my new friends Chris and Abi in hopes of doing some shopping. I didn't pack enough clothing, and the weather hasn't been quite as warm and sunny as I'd expected. The earlier part of the day was cloudy and a bit chilly, but we managed to walk around for a couple of hours doing nothing productive except for some sight-seeing.

To say that Koreans love consumerism would be a major understatement, and around the Dangdaemun area of Seoul there are hundreds (if not thousands) of different vendors selling everything from absolute junk to designer clothing. Obviously such a frenzied mess is a bit overwhelming for me, so I was happy to get out of the malls and walk around the city for a while.

Our trio managed to find what we were looking for after about 45 minutes of desperate searching--but I honestly don't know what it was. We were looking for more traditional Korean buildings, be it Buddhist temples or the little "palace" that we found. I think it was a palace, anyway, or maybe just a replica of a traditional home. We were honestly a bit too tired to get the details and were content in the visual experience.

After we left the palace area Chris and Abi decided to head back to Anyang for some grocery shopping. I set off on my own for the rest of the afternoon and actually had a lot of pleasant surprises, which I'll detail below.

Seoul Tower affords its visitors a view of pretty much the entire city, so I decided to make that my destination for the afternoon. I had asked someone earlier in the day how to get there so I started up a side road with signs for the Seoul International Youth Hostel and the Korean Literature Building. Of course I couldn't resist stopping by the Literature Building but it wasn't open, so I turned back to check out the youth hostel. I never found it and instead ended up on a path through the woods which eventually put me out on the road up to Seoul Tower. I don't know what the road there is called but this is the second time I've been on it--it's on a little mountain in the middle of Seoul, is completely paved with half the road covered in a cushion for runners/walkers, and for some reason had a highly disproportionate amount of blind people strolling there today. After about 20 minutes of not seeing any signs I decided to head back down into the city, and as I was walking off the trail a group of middle-aged Koreans greeted me in English as I passed by. This isn't uncommon, as most Koreans seem to know a few stock phrases. I walked on down the path and decided I had plenty of time to waste, so I turned around and headed back toward the top. As I was turning onto the main road again the group of Koreans were waiting at the top, and as they'd already addressed me I thought it would be appropriate to ask for directions. It turns out that the men who'd spoken to me only knew a few English phrases, but one of the women (the group was two couples) knew enough English to converse with me, and so I was invited to walk up the mountain as a member of their company. I chatted with them along the way, with the more fluent woman as my translator. It turns out that her husband was a businessman but I never found out anything more than that. The other man was very enthusiastic about speaking to me but of course I didn't understand the majority of what he said. At one point, as we were nearing a small overlook, this manic little man grabbed my shoulder and had me race him the rest of the way. At another point in the trip he made his friend's wife race too, but there never was any explanation for it. We ended up not reaching Seoul Tower, but at a very high peak on the mountain we were able to look out over the majority of the city. The Koreans decided to get some pictures with me, and I managed to get one of the pictures on my camera, which you can see below. At this time we were probably about 5/6 of the way up to where the tower stands, but I decided it wasn't worth the bother. I tried to say my goodbyes and walk back down the way we'd come, but the lady told me if I kept going up I could catch a bus down to the metro station, so I obliged and continued to walk. We finally reached the top of the mountain and for the second time I've been in Korea, I was invited (by Koreans, mind you) to rest and have some ice cream. There was a small convenience store by the bus stop and so we all sat down, had some small talk, showed each other every single picture that was saved on the other's camera and ate ice cream. I wasn't sure which bus to take to my metro stop, so my new friends put me on the right bus and even gave me fare for the bus and subway. I tried to refuse it but my refusal was refused--I don't know if it was clear that I was living and working here as opposed to visiting. I said my goodbyes and rode on down the mountain, a little unsure of when to get off the bus. I started to make my way off but a young Korean guy, maybe 17 or 18, told me in clear English that this wasn't my stop, that it would be two more stops up. I was surprised, of course, and assumed he'd heard my friends asking the driver if he'd be dropping off at Chungmuro Station, where I was going. I made small talk with him until we both got off at Chungmuro, thanked him and headed on down into the subway. At this point it was probably close to 5:30 and I thought I'd head into this area called Hongddae that I'd heard about--it's up by Hongik University, so it has a very college-y (and in this case, American) atmosphere about it. I had to make a couple of line transfers and as I'd not done this yet I was a little nervous about going to the wrong place--in fact, I didn't know for certain that Hongik University was the Hongddae area, because the latter isn't on the metro map at all. I asked the guy standing next to me if I was headed to the right place, and oddly enough he was completely fluent in English, and had what I thought was a British accent. He ended up telling me that he'd studied English in college and had been to Australia, so I guess that explains the accent. He also told me that he's a captain in the South Korean Army, and as we went our separate ways at the subway exit he forced me to take his phone number in case I "ever need anything."

So, encounters with six extremely nice and helpful Koreans today.

I walked around the university area for about an hour or so but as it was getting late and I was alone, I couldn't really take advantage of all the restaurants and little shops. I made a wrong turn down an alley and came across "London's Burning," a punk rock store with band shirts and "punk clothing," imported from the UK, according to the sign. I attempted conversation with the kids working there but they only smiled and made it clear that they didn't speak much English.

I ended up not being able to find the right metro line as I was leaving Hongddae but luckily an American girl happened to be walking by, so she pointed me in the right direction. Getting home took close to an hour, and I'm definitely exhausted.

2009-05-14T01:17:00.000-07:00

Shots from the top of my building, overlooking part of Anyang:

The putting green!
Someone else said it first, but this really does look like Lego Land.
I don't know what this is called but it feels good to walk on it with no shoes.
Tyler, the other English teacher at Cheonggae Elementary.
Playground area outside the school.

ups & downs

2009-05-12T06:58:00.000-07:00

I spent a good part of the day wondering "what am I doing here?" but I reasoned that this is to be expected, and I've had some other teachers tell me that the thought crosses their minds as well, every now and then, and that I shouldn't worry about it too much. Fortunately as soon as the sun started to come out the depression started to lift, and I've felt fine for the rest of the day.

Apparently badminton is a very popular activity in Korea and so on Tuesdays the teachers at my school meet to play. I didn't really partake, as I was wearing my glasses and didn't have a bandana to keep my hair out of my face, but this might be something to indulge in a couple times a month. I also had a Korean language and culture class tonight with 18 other ESL teachers in my area, so I managed to meet some other people who also have no idea how to speak Korean. Afterwards I went out to eat at a Vietnamese restaurant with a few of them, one of whom lives in my building--she informed me that our roof has weights and exercise equipment in addition to affording the tenants a beautiful view of the city. There's a putting green up there, too. I'll take some pictures tomorrow, when it's daylight.

Rainy day

2009-05-11T00:19:00.000-07:00

I'm feeling a little sad today, to be honest. I'm wearing blue socks, a blue shirt, and the sun hasn't made an appearance at all today. I've also been eating a lot of cereal to remind of being at home.

I've started to compile a list of "quirks" that South Koreans have--"quirks" because it's a cultural norm, just not our culture.

1 - Even if the rain has stopped, Koreans still have their umbrellas out and open.
2 - Koreans don't seem to use keychains, but have a number of single keys.

More to be added later.

Today I saw a club called The Rich & Black Hole. No idea what it means.

Seoul Grand Park Zoo

2009-05-09T22:38:00.000-07:00

So apparently Seoul Grand Park Zoo is supposed to be the largest zoo in Asia. I read that somewhere but the zoo's Wikipedia page doesn't confirm it. Anyway, it's pretty enormous and was packed today, so I walked around until my feet were too sore to deal with it any longer. There's a ski lift that pretty much goes all around the zoo, tons of food vendors in and outside the entrance, a botanical garden, etc. I found it interesting that the snacks aren't extremely overpriced in the zoo as they would be in the U.S.; I also realized that Koreans don't hesitate to bang on the glass or cage to wake up an animal or to get its attention, which is something that's mostly frowned upon at home.

2009-05-09T06:01:00.000-07:00

walking around anyang at 11 PM

2009-05-07T07:13:00.000-07:00

First day of school

2009-05-07T04:02:00.000-07:00

I just woke up from a nap after my first day of classes. Today was very simple and informal. I told the students basic information about myself and let them ask questions about me. Age, height, weight, favorite color/food/sport, family, etcetera were the most common things asked. For the sixth grade classes, we would do the Q&A session followed by an activity in which the students would write me a letter. I wish I'd kept some of these but we discarded them at the end of the day. Anyway, a large portion of the letters told me I was "handsome" and "I love you," or would have drawings and references to my "yellow hair." Most of the kids are very excited to say "hello" to me but won't venture much further into the language. I also noticed that the girls are, on the whole, more proficient English speakers, though many of them have been too shy to talk to me. A couple of the girls were very easy to understand and were able to translate questions from their classmates, thankfully. After school my co-teacher and I went to the Korean Exchange Bank where I traded in $54 US for 66,000 Korean won and some change. Now I have to figure out how to use it.

The pictures: my school, my classroom, the water fountain outside my classroom.

First impressions, apartment

2009-05-06T14:21:00.000-07:00

I landed at Incheon International Airport a little before 8PM (Korea time). A man from the school met me at the airport holding a sign that said "James David" and he continued to refer to me as such for the rest of our ride to my apartment. Unfortunately it was too dark to see much of anything as we drove from Incheon around Seoul and into Anyang, but I was too tired to really care at that point.

Right now I'm really too tired to write much more. Luckily the other English teacher at my school, Tyler, lives a couple floors down from me and he was nice enough to bring me some breakfast. Otherwise I'd really have nothing to eat right now.

Here are some pictures of my apartment: (let it also be known that this place has an unbelieveable amount of storage).

flight

2009-05-05T06:22:00.000-07:00

I just finished my first flight--ever. Charlotte to Chicago was easy, not even two hours. Lake Michigan was gorgeous at sunrise. I'm here for a few hours and then it's off to Tokyo, Japan for a layover. I'll be in South Korea in about 20 hours.

2009-05-03T11:35:00.000-07:00

If you click on the above image you can see where I'll be living and working in relation to Seoul. My subway stops are marked in red; Gwacheon is where I'll be working, and Beomgye is where I'll be living.

2009-05-01T05:04:00.000-07:00

Late last night I received an email from my recruiting agency informing me that my flight is on Tuesday morning. I'll be flying out of Charlotte, NC. I wasn't expecting to leave until Wednesday or Thursday of next week; needless to say, these upcoming days are going to be hectic.

Details

2009-04-30T06:03:00.000-07:00

I'm not yet in Korea but in order to update this regularly I'll have to work myself into a strict routine. So right now, nothing substantial and exciting but some basics about what I'll be doing.

I'll be living in Anyang, a small city with a relationship to Seoul akin to the one Fairfax has with Washington, D.C. The capital is accessible for about half an hour on the rail system. Here are a couple pictures of Anyang, courtesy of Google Images:

I'll be working in Gwacheon City, which is roughly 20 minutes east of Anyang. One more eastward stop and I'll be at Seoul Grand Park, which (I think) has Asia's largest zoo.

I'm nervous about it all.

why?

2009-04-29T06:45:00.000-07:00

I guess I can't go to Korea for a year without having a blog dedicated to my time there. Here's that blog. Updates to come.