Let's call it a month

I've been quiet lately, and I know it. I had planned on posting our grand adventures from this past weekend, but they failed to materialize, at least as they were planned.

August had flown by, and I'm bushed. Bushed because August was long and full, but also, and more topically, because Maria and I stayed up till 3 playing 1v1 Hearthstone. On a school night. Nerds.

This is my demeanor in dog-form.

It's strange to think that I've been here a month now. In someways that feels right (you know, like the rational, general-knowledge-of-time ways), and in others it feels like I've been here three times that long.

I feel acclimated to my neighborhood, my job and the more mundane matters of getting along in Korea. This is a good thing, and it's freed me up to do more long term planning for sweet trips and city excursions.

The job is still good. It's been particularly crazy here for the past two weeks, as we've been short-handed. One of our foreign teacher's had a family emergency and was forced to leave the country, pretty much in the middle of the night. So that was a thing. That meant doubling classes up for the rest of us here, and picking up new classes until a new teacher could be found (which has happened now!).

On an unrelated note: Brian and my Asheville loving folks, THIRSTY MONK IN ITAEWAN! Even if it's not THE monk -- pretty cool. 

It wasn't terrible, and truthfully, I felt more at home in the larger classes, oftentimes they were held in the library so I had room to walk around while I taught. The regular rooms at our school, as well as the class sizes, are quite small here.

I go back and forth on which type of teaching I've enjoyed more so far, high school in the states or private academy teaching here. The hours are certainly something. 9-7:30 gives you time to sleep in a little, but, man, it can be a long day. Especially next to the 6:30-2 that I was working in Charlotte. No commute though. That's nice. And of course in Charlotte classroom management was a much bigger deal, especially as a rookie teacher working with freshmen. Here it's a non-issue.

As far as the actual teaching goes, it's wildly different. In Charlotte I taught one prep. class (That is to say that I taught one class, Earth Science, all day, everyday), which was a cakewalk compared to what some teachers do. It's very very different to make one lesson plan and run it all day (getting better as the day goes on), than to have to prepare two-three lessons. I had it good, no doubt.

Also good, I found these brass driver helmets in Itaewan for the low-low price of $400, and burdening yourself with the approximate weight of a meteorite. I think they throw in a free gong if you buy one. 

Here I teach 9-10 different groups of students, running about 7 different prepared lessons. Granted, the periods here are 40 min. as opposed to high school's 90, but it's still a very different experience. Thankfully, much of the curriculum/syllabus level planning is done for me and I have a pretty firm and full pacing guide to go off of -- it's almost plug and play.

I guess I could say that teaching high school in Charlotte was like power lifting: moving through a few high-weight, high saturation exercises. Wearing out the main muscles. Whereas teaching at this academy is more like low weight-high rep tone training. I go where I'm needed and I pretty much just drop in and teach, sometimes with little notice as the schedule changes. It definitely keeps you on your toes. It's anything but boring, and the long days melt under the constant motion of the work. It's good. Not what I think I'd want forever, but good.

It can be hard to feel like you have time to really work things out, to teach your lesson. There's a lot to do in those 40 min. Homework checking, for example, is and has always been important in any classroom, but here it's essential. Or rather, to the parents it's essential. You MUST make sure the kids ACTUALLY check the work and write in the correct answers if they were wrong. You must, because if you don't, you'll be hearing from momma tomorrow. I'm finding that in a private academy, the parents are the real bosses -- those in the administration are mostly just there to sell our language school and appease the folks paying our salaries (makes sense). I mean, they're paying a lot of money to send their kids here, so I can get behind them being anal about the experience and the results, and boy are they.

It's good work though, and the kids are sweet. They're kids - -lazy ones and productive ones and loud ones and quiet ones all, but they definitely all seem keenly aware of just who will be on their case if they goof -- theirs and mine too: Momma. And that woman is a hardcase.

Last weekend we laid low, and that was mostly true of this weekend too. 1. We were whipped after these past two weeks. Curve-balls all around. 2. We haven't been paid yet. (That's nothing new. Stateside teachers on a 10-month pay plan haven't either. It's just how it goes. You save and spend smart.)

This is the exterior of a building in DT Itaewan. Pretty slick. Wonder how many they've had to replace. 

I did, however, fix a fan. Prior to that, I also broke a fan, but that's beside the point. It always feels good to fix things. To work with your hands. My world can be very head-heavy what with trying to write and read as much as I'd like to, and teaching. I always relish a chance to be a little handy. Maybe that's why I broke that fan. Anyway, the metal socket prong snapped. It cost me a dollar to buy a new one at the dollar store and just a few minutes to cut the old socket off and thread the wires into the new one. Satisfying all the same.

I've made a few stump tables back home, and I think when I get back I'm going to look more in to woodworking. Just feels right.

speaking of which, I found these sweet metal warrior dudes that dad could totally make if he had a mind to. 

Maria and I took a long subway ride in to Seoul on Saturday and checked out Itaewan, which is a sort of foreigner hub. It was cool! Good views of the city. A lot of people. Some interesting junk shops. I more interesting door. A street cat. This the place you could probably call to mind pretty easily. Korean guys yelling about cheap tailored suits from the doorways of their shops. Tons of street vendors. That kind of place. I've heard it's pretty wild at night. It's very close to the military base. We'll be back.

View of Namsam Tower (not the radio tower from Pokemon?) from Itaewan. We'll be up there soon enough.

I'm really liking the subway here. It's very easy to get anywhere in the city from our neighborhood (takes me 5 min to walk to the subway), and it's quite cheap.

Next weekend I think we'll catch a bus to a beach on the east coast of the country. It's supposed to be very nice. Gangneng Beach, if you're interested.

I'm pretty interested.

That was supposed to be yesterday, but we slept in. I'm still sleeping a bit, truth be told. Today's a teacher workday at KCTY and we've been checking over this semester's syllabi, finding textbooks and the like. Filling out student report cards, which entail a 300ish word "comment" for each kid. A lot of click-clacking on the keyboard today.

Take care back home! I'll be in touch soon! 

Chicken and a Tragedy

I bet the last time you bought a bucket of fried chicken you didn't have to take it with you on a low-budget, knockoff version of The Amazing Race.

This post was supposed to cover yesterday, our third Saturday in South Korea, and our first trip into Seoul. It will, but for the moment yesterday's journey, and it was a journey, is too eclipsed by today's trip to the grocery store. Gone are the days when you can hop into your grandmother's corolla and drive 3 minutes to the 24/7 Harris Teeter. Come is the hour when you must navigate public transit, rely on kind strangers, get a workout, bear the smell of fried chicken that you can't eat for 2 hours. I guess I should start there.

Above is a picture of me leaving E-mart Traders grocery store, a place a bit like Sams back home. They deal in bulk, mostly. We got there via a bus (the stop is a ten minute walk from our apt). The ride is maybe 30 minutes. It's pretty wild in there (Emart). I guess we went on a Sunday afternoon, but still. Traffic jams of carts. 4 million people. There's also a pet shop, on the plus side. We picked up some essentials. All told, our bag was packed with 6 jars of sauce, a 10 lb bag of rice, pasta, a much cherished bottle of Tabasco sauce, and a few other things. The chicken we had to carry in hand. The shades are just for looks-- Korea's all about style.

We caught a little shade on the bus over. In Korea all the public transport is very accessible. Pretty cheap. Very easy. You just scan your transit card when you get on a bus, subway train, or taxi, and then scan it when you get off. The same card for any part of the transit system. It cost us roughly $4 USD yesterday to ride an hour on a subway into Seoul and an hour out, with maybe 4 connections in between. All that to say, we noticed that the funds on Maria's card were out on the bus. No sweat, she scanned mine twice and we were square with the powers that be (that be driving the bus, that is).

When we left Emart, laden with our 30 lbs of food, bucket o' chicken, and a big bag of bread (that in a moment of confusion, wandering through the basement level parking deck, we did upend and drop on to the ground. Thank God for the antibacterial qualities of olive oil.), we needed to make for the subway station to reload the cards and take a train home. No sweat. It's probably close by (not really). We learned from a dude who spoke a little English (and a fair number of dudes here do) that the station was a few miles down the road. We hiked it out, and found the station without too much guff, though we looked like an abbreviated version of the wise-men, carrying bread and fried chicken out before us as we hiked through the city.

Problem: The transit card reload stations don't take card, only cash (we're fresh out). No ATM's in the station. We're in a weird part of town, and anyway, with our foreign debit cards we need to find a Citi bank, specifically. Also, I'm still holding the 30 lbs of food and bucket o' chicken (fried and fragrant as a greasy field of meat flowers). And we're both pretty sweaty and tired. One guy actually laughed at me punching in commands on the subway console, my arm beading up with sweat and wrapped around the chicken bucket like a leviathan tentacle, Maria's girly backpack strapped up tight on my back. Sky's out thigh's out as usual with the short-shorts. The sweaty look of a man who's in a pickle on my face -- his laughter's forgivable, I guess.

Eyes on the prize

We hit the "Attendant" button and a woman spoke out from the machine in Korean. I said, "English?" A woman, the same I'm assuming, then hustled out from behind a secret door in the subway wall and spoke Korean to me in person. I pointed to my cards and tried to mime out the problem. I asked her where there was an ATM I could use. She walked me to the city map and spoke some more Korean -- I guess it sounded just as futile when I spoke English to her. Ultimately, and amazingly, she close-lined a passing girl, about my age, spoke Korean to her, and the girl WALKED ME TO AN ATM! I felt like a kid lost in the supermarket and being handled by the staff, but she pointed me to the Citi bank (maybe 400 yards away through the city), and left me to it. I could't pronounce her name, but she's a microbiology major at a local college. Great English. I snagged the cash, and jogged back to the station to find the chicken (and Maria), waiting, and we loaded up on a train and sped home.

I ate a lot of chicken and passed out.

Now, it's storming, and I'm writing, and I feel able to tell you about the trip I wanted to begin with before today's trials.

Saturday. And it was a good one.

We've been wanting to get in to Seoul for a while. We went out to Gangnam, like from the song, on Friday night.

Harder than it looks

.

It was pretty wild. Lights everywhere. Street food. In Milledgeville, where I went to school, you'd see a big group of folk (maybe 10) walking downtown all done up, and it was something. Gangnam is a ritzy nightclub area in a top-ten capital city. There were HERDS of people, dressed to the 9's.People everywhere. Club music booming from doors uncounted and glaring in their florescence.

We went to Ranbow, with looks, incongruously, like it belongs in either Asheville or a fraternity house basement, or some combination of the two. Rugs, hookahs, an awesome live band that played rock songs in English and Korean. The host at the door had a New England accent. There was only one guy dancing between the tables, but we joined him for a bit. He was glad for the company, and the audience was glad for the change (but who isn't glad to see my stanky leg?)

Saturday we were up at the crack of 10. I went to a department store and bought some short sleeved work shirts. I was told coming over that I'd need to be in dress-shirts and slacks pretty much everyday, and have found that it's a lot more laid back. So on the upside I can wear jeans everyday, but on the downside, my closet is full of unused, and super hot, dress shirts.8 shirts for $110 USD!

Later, maybe around 1, we began the long string of connecting subway lines that would take us into old Seoul, the nexus of the capital is a walled city. Gyeongbukgung Palace was our aim. It took us one hour and a few connections, but getting there was very easy. Having only used the subway in Athens, Greece, and briefly, I was a little worried about going full public transit in Seoul, but it's been awesome! There's an app for your phone (works without Wifi or data) that will tell you when and where to get on/off, but even after using the subway three times now, I barely need it.

The palace was beautiful and shocking in its scale. The walls are thick, the buildings were, well, palatial. There was an armed changing of the guard (the guards were in replica armor and carrying bows, spears, swords and banners), similar to what you'd see at an old civil war fort in the states. There was a museum on the grounds that was full, and I mean full, of Koreans trying to escape the heat (and there was a bloody lot of it to escape). I don't mean to sound underwhelmed. The palace was interesting and, as I said, shocking in its way, but I've never really taken a lot of pleasure in heavily restored historical sites. MUCH of the palace had been reconstructed entirely, probably in the past 30 years, and that takes some of the magic out of it for me.

History doesn't wait. The place was built in 1620, destroyed a few times and rebuilt, made in to a school during the Japanese invasion (one of them), blown up, used for a few other things, scavenged. You name it. It was the same, to a lesser extent, when I saw the Acropolis in Greece, and some sites back home. It was wonderful, if overcrowded, all the same. My favorite part was the mountainscape in the background. THAT was when I really got a feel for the site. It was cool to see tapestries showing the old palace grounds in the backdrop of mountains that I could see plainly today, unchanged and untouched, but now with skyscrapers crowding together in their valley. The juxtaposition of the old and new architecture was very striking to see.

Backup passport picture

Inspirational right

Maria and I were beat after the long subway ride and walking around the palace, but it was only 4. We had been told that Hamlet Globe to Globe was coming to town, and were playing in a park at 7:30. That was a good walk across town, but we had time. We kept wondering, as we crossed a 10 lane road through the Seoul amidst a crowd of a hundred or so, why it was so crowded. Are there always giant Korean flags hanging from the skyscrapers? Is there always a tent-city in the middle of this part of town? Why's that orchestra getting tuned up on a random Saturday? But it wasn't a random Saturday. It was the 70th anniversary of the end of Japan's most recently occupation of Korea. Korean Independence Day!

Favorite mountain in Korea

We walked through the tent-city, or trudged rather (very tired), past trees made of Korean flags, little kids with Korean flag hats, Korean flag umbrellas. At the head of a few hundred chairs was a stage with a small army of musicians. We sat somewhere in the middle and had a rest and an apple. It rained some, but we found it refreshing. And in the middle of the orchestra roaring out what might have been the Korean National Powerballad, we met one of the most direct and enthusiastically pro-American Korean's I've ever met.

"Hi, what's your name?" --Insert names
"Are you American?" --We are!
"Do you know who's on the American short-track team at the upcoming Olympic Games?" --Ugh.
"Do you know (some random MLB player)? --Um.
"Do you know Green Day?" --Yeah!
"I love Muse!" --Sweet! I saw them in concert once with Macklemore
"Oh, Macklemore! (sings Macklemore song at full volume) --Nervous laughter. We're becoming a spectacle.
"Do you know the American National Anthem?" --We do!
"(Sings 1/4th of our national anthem, over the wailing Korean Independence Day concert.)" --More nervous laughter. People are turning in their seats.
"Do you know what the American Flag looks like?" --We do!

At this point the guy, who was super nice if a little socially un-attuned, PULLS A FULL SIZE AMERICAN FLAG OUT OF HIS BACKPACK, STRETCHES IT OVER HIS HEAD AND YELLS OUT TO THE CROWD AT THE KOREAN INDEPENDENCE DAY FESTIVAL, "GOD BLESS AMERICA!!!" Damn.

Then, he carefully folded the flag up, put it in his backpack, bid us farewell and walked off through the crowd without another word. What?

We were too shocked to take a picture of the flag guy, but here's me eating an apple!

After being pretty well outed for Americans, as if we'd been undercover, and feeling revived after our rest and conversation, we made for the park. It was a good 3 miles through the city, but we only got turned around once and made it without much fuss. Along the way we passed a HUGE parade of people, though they seemed far from the Shriners. More megaphones and picket signs than candy throwers. Turns out it was some kind of demonstration, though for what we wouldn't find out until later (something surprisingly innocuous and having to do with government benefits).

An old man shouting and watching the demonstration pass walked up to me and asked if I was American, though in a different tone than our friend in the park. I told him I was, and he told me through a mouthful of twisted brown teeth to "Go home, Yankee." I nodded at him, smiled, said, "Yes, sir," and we moved on. I've never gotten an anti-American vibe here at all. A lot of folk speak English. MANY Korean people have helped me out a lot in the few weeks I've been here (as you've seen and will see). Everyone wears American pop references on their clothing, American flags on hats, American sports teams (especially NBA) -- you name it. I chalked this up to an old kermugin who might have had a bad run-in with some Americans (he was well old enough to be around during the war), or maybe he was just letting me in on his political opinions, or maybe he just wanted me to get home safety. Whatever it was, I wasn't bothered.

The park was small, but that turned out to be perfect. We had been told it was free, which was almost too good to be true as these are the players from The Globe, you know, as in Shakespeare's Globe Theater, where Bill himself held down his day-job. The group is nearing the end of their 2-year world tour in an attempt to, get this, play Hamlet in every country on the planet! Wow.

Turns out you need tickets. Damn. We asked a woman where we could get in line for seats, and she pointed us to the back of what turned out to be a line (I thought it might have just been 1,000 people hanging out). She told us, and I remember this very clearly, to "go to the line there. And stay there." We laughed and went to the end of the comically long line, we could see the actors warming up on the stage, so we didn't think the wait would be too bad. Then, out of the blue, the information girl comes back and says she has free tickets for us. OK.

We follow her to the desk made-up for people who made prior reservations to pick up their tickets, and there's an older Korean woman there in an extravagant hat who tells us she came with a group of 5, and a few didn't show, so we can have her tickets. WOW! We thank her gratuitously, feeling ridiculously lucky to have been picked out of the river of people waiting for their tickets (the venue was very small. I don't know if they all got seats), for no reason other than, maybe, the small joke we passed with the information woman. I can't imagine why else she would have came and gotten us.

The tickets turned out to be Blue Tab VIP seats, and they gave us an up close and personal view of the show. Right in the spitfly. I've never seen Hamlet on stage, and have only seen a few plays in production. Gosh. So good. The actors were incredible. They also played all their own instruments during the intermission, and for dramatic effect in the play. It really, really felt like we were in The Globe, watching Shakespeare as it was intended. An amazing experience, no matter the context, but especially sweet given ours.

After the play, we took the long train back, this time with some conversation provided from our co-worker, Hannah, who told us about the play originally. We were both starved, and worried there wouldn't be anywhere open in our neighborhood at midnight.

Lucky for us, there were a good many places open and we went to a beer and chicken joint not far from our place. Unlucky for us, we don't speak Korean and did not order chicken with much success. Our ordering tactics, when there aren't pictures, are as follows:

1. Walk in the door and smile with two fingers raised (for peace or for a two-top table, both if possible)
2. We're seated and brought menus.
3. Hangul, hangul everywhere and not a lick to read.
4. If there's a line of hangul that has a star by it, or sometimes the word "best," we get that.
5. If there's no special denotation for dope fare, I pick a middle priced item and order it.
6. There's only one beer in Korea, so far as I can tell, and it's analogous to Bud Light, which is fine because the beer is cold and it's hot as all get out here. That much is easy to order. "Cass, please."
7. Maria has a small panic attack while we wait on what we hope will be chicken. She's a bit picky about "meat textures".
8. Whatever the mystery hangul item was arrives!

It turns out we did not order chicken. We ordered what appeared to be a plate of interestingly sliced hotdogs, in a assortment of colors. They were pretty good! Each color hotdog was a different flavor. Spicy, regular, tangy, what-have-you. It was midnight, we had walked all day and were starving. I was content with the rainbow-dog platter. I think Maria was too.

We made the short walk home, and promptly passed out. A great day, and full of twists and surprises. I think I'm warming to the city, though I can't believe I've only been here 3 weeks. It feels like much, much longer, and there's still so much to see and do, and so much longer to be here. Wild.

Week 1, Done

This one's late coming, but it's been busy times out here, 13-hours in the future (for my East-coast folks). The future is good though. Last week was my first on the job, and it was an absolute blast. The days are long, for sure. My first alarm goes off at 5:30, and, depending on how motivated I'm feeling, I'll get up between then and around 6:30 (like today :/). I'm on the clock at work at 9. Those that have lived with me before may remark that three and a half hours is a little longer than it normally takes me to do my hair, but I'm really trying to maximize my mornings. Not only because it's my favorite time of day (it's quiet), but because it's really the only time I have to myself during the week. We finish at KCTY at 7:30 PM.

Maria and I finished up one day earlier last week (maybe Tuesday), went to the grocery store that's right by the school, walked straight home, cooked, ate, and by then it was 11 PM! So not only do I normally not have a lot of gas left in the tank after getting climbed like a jungle-gym by <1st graders for 10 hours, but there just really isn't a lot of time to work with. Hence the 5:30 alarm. I made a lot of personal goals for this year before coming over: studying for and taking the GRE, writing more (this blog and some fiction) and submitting to publishers, getting back on the horse with regular exercise, mastering some sweet Taekwondo moves to surprise my dudes at the airport with. Most of these I'm actively chipping away at, but after getting a hold of this 50+ hour work week (or after it's gotten a hold of me), a lot of that kind of thing has got to happen in the mornings and weekends -- if it's going to happen. And didn't I also plan to spend my weekends island hopping and contemplating Buddhist temples?

That said, I don't want to come off too melodramatic about the hours. The planning isn't that intense. It's a little crazy that I teach reading, writing, grammar, science, vocabulary, and a magazine class to 8ish different classes a day, but I'm pretty sure elementary teachers in the states do that kind of thing like everyday. The kids are AWESOME! Most of them speak great English. I'm in there alone with no co-teacher, and it's fine. Better than fine. It's often a lot of fun. The curriculum is pretty laid back, which is a little contrary to the super hard-nose MO that I've heard so often associated with Korean ed -- and that's totally a thing. I talk to some of my older kids, and their schedules are nuts. I'm talking public school from 7/8-3, then a few private academies until 7:30 (the government mandates that all private academies close then in an effort to spare the kids studies until 12), and then it's off to some extracurricular (musical, athletic or otherwise) until 10ish. So that's a long day.

I'm sure it's shorter for some kids and longer for others, but that's some of what I've heard. KCTY is, mostly, an English academy, so all the courses (even the science) is just geared towards reading and writing English more proficiently. For my little kids in the morning, we'll read the same short story for 2 weeks (doing vocab and crafts and such along with it), whereas my 5th graders are moving through grammar pretty swiftly (and it's all stuff I did in the 7th grade). The work ethic is great. The head teacher kept using the phrases "well trained" when I asked her about management or discipline issues, and I guess that's about the size of it.

On an unrelated note, I found corn bread, though it's not quite like I remember

My co-workers are cool! There are 8 English teachers at KCTY, and we all share resources (and a pretty small office/workroom). Many of them are Americans, but there's a British guy as well and a Canook. Those from the states are from all over. California, Wisconsin, South Carolina. Fun people. We went out for fried chicken pretty early in the week (courtesy of the school director!), and hit up a Korean BBQ Friday to celebrate the week. The BBQ probably deserves its own post, but I'll summarize.

Korean BBQ for Beginners:
1. Find an establishment called Dinomeat (yes, there is a dinosaur on the sign)
2. Take off your shoes (what do you mean you wore chocos and don't have socks? There are donor sandals. Or does that family over there just all wear the same shoes? . . . Go barefoot.)
3. Turn on the GAS GRILL that's AT YOUR TABLE! A foot in front of your face, like your own personal hibachi grill, except it looks like a regular grill.
4. Go up to the counter with your meat tray (that's a word I wish I could use more), open the slide glass door and use your tongs (not your hands, you animal) to dole as much meat as you want on to your meat tray (!) until you've amassed a formidable meat pile.
5. Take the meat pile back to your table (use both hands because the meat tray now weighs as much as one of those baby triceratops from Jurassic World)
6. Grill and devour the meat (there as scissors to clip the various cuts of meat in to more manageable pieces, but you're buzzing pretty hard so probably just go for it)
7. Fumble hopelessly with impossible Korean metal chopsticks
8. Rinse. Wash. Repeat.
9. Pay $18 USD. For all of it. It's all you can eat, my friend.

The first rule of Korean BBQ: Don't talk about Korean BBQ (in comparison to BBQ back home, because it's just different. Not so sauce/rub oriented).
The second rule of Korean BBQ: Don't talk about Korean BBQ (while you're chewing Korean BBQ, it's rude, dude).
The third rule of Korean BBQ: What ever you leave uneaten or uncooked YOU HAVE TO PAY FOR in addition to the 18 bucks (so eat it all, or full your pockets, lest they be emptied).

My stomach was bulging. I had been living off rice and seaweed for 11 days, and after that bombardment of heavy protein I was feeling a little worse for the wear. But when you weigh all of that against the Law of Friday your new British friend tells you he's a semi-professional darts player (how many leagues are there?!), and officially the best foreigner in the country (I haven't played any on the record games yet), there's only one place you can go -- and it's not to bed. Not yet.

So we went to a foreigner bar, pretty conspicuously named "Travelers." There were, as the name would imply, a lot of non-Koreans, including the barkeep. Turns out Mr. Semi-Pro was all hat and no cattle. Daniel (co-worker from Wisconsin) and I beat him straight up (and by straight up I mean that the wager was for the two of us to get HALF his score between us, and we squeaked it out by LITERALLY ONE point. The guy is a machine).

My coworker. Nice guy. 

We laid on the couch all day Saturday. No regrets or apologies there. Sunday I got some writing done, and we ate Japanese, which tasted a lot like home, truthfully. Fried rice is fried rice is fried rice, it seems. 

Big things on the horizon include planning our first big vacation (4 days or so) at the end of September, and trekking in to Seoul proper this weekend. Stay tuned.

Super dope, homemade pad thai! 

Holy Tim-Bob!

It's 4:53 PM on Saturday here, and Maria and I have been up for about 13 hours now. Because jet lagggggg. It's been quite possibly the longest Saturday of my life, but its also been a great one.

I'll begin this story with yesterday, partly because we went to our school for the first time and partly because we went to bed at like 6 PM (because jet lag), and it'll be a quick lead off in to today.

I've never been one to give blood. Most people who know me could tell you this, and a few could tell some unfortunate stories. It has to do with some medical issues I had when I was a kid, but I won't go in to all that. That said, as part of our medical exam, which we need to get our alien registration card, we're required to undergo a urine test, chest x-ray, thumb war tournament, and (you guessed it) a blood test. This was a matter of (and I'm not ashamed to say it) a little consternation, but lucky for American's everywhere, I gave up a vial of the stuff without a fuss. The highlight of the medical exam was listening to the clinic staff puzzle out pronouncing our last names as they wrote them on our paper urine cups. They seemed to particularly like Pollara, and sang it a good many times to each other.

After our exam we went with Molly (head teacher at KCTY) to our school for the first time. Because space is at such a premium in Seoul and the surrounding area, a lot of businesses are kind of stacked on top of each other. You can kind of see this in the window shot from my first post. Our school is on the 5th floor of a tall building (amongst other tall buildings) down the road for our apt. The facility is really nice. There's a really nice administrative/reception desk, a good many classrooms (most with big windows), a decently sized library, and a cozy (pretty small, but ok) teacher work room where Maria and I have desks to prep at. And the whole place has student work and pictures of kindergarten Korean kids (pretty adorable) all over the place.

Our desks! Lots of hand-me-down stuff from past teachers.

I immediately spotted a copy of Henry and Mudge. Sweeeet.

My classroom for the Doves

The classes all have names to distinguish them. The kindergarten classes are named after birds, and I'll be teaching the Doves and Swans in the morning (Maria has the Ducks). The older kids' classes are all named after celestial bodies, so I'll teach reading, writing and science (!!!) to Saturn, Jupiter and Neptune. I also have a private session with Mars, who I'm told is the school director's son, a kid who just finished his sophomore year of high school in the States (I'll probably help him to SAT prep).

If you've been adding those up. that's six different classes, and I teach a couple of them twice in a day for separate subjects, so ultimately I'll teach like 8-9 different classes (each of which require a different lesson plan, grading and data tracking) a day. And my schedule is different depending on the day. It's a little more than I was expecting, and it certainly seemed like more to juggle than when I was just teaching the same Earth Science class three times a day at Rocky River, but the planning required for these classes is much less than it was back home as is the paper work. Really, I think that it won't be much trouble after I get this crazy schedule down. But, man, it looks pretty crazy coming in cold.

I met a few of my coworkers, but I'll meet them all Monday, so I'll save discussing that for then. Molly walked Maria and I through basic procedures and our individual classes, and then checked over our Monday plans to make sure we weren't going to be running around with our hair on fire. By the time we got home (around 6), we were absolutely wiped. We thought about tracking down a BBQ joint, but when the time came, we passed out while the Sun was still good and up.

In the public restrooms in Korea, they sometimes have public toothbrushes! Keeps the community tight. 

10 hours later is was around 4 AM, and I was wide awake. I know it's probably not sustainable, and has everything to do with jet lag, but I really dig being up that early. I'm going to really try to wake up at 5 every morning so I can run/exercise or write or do whatever. I always feel like I'm getting one over on the day when I'm up that early. It feels good.

I sat downstairs and read for a few hours. I'm working through Stephen King's Darktower books, and they're really fantastic. This is my first time reading King, and man, the dude can write. Maria's reading the Game of Thrones books. We broke our fast on yesterday's breakfast (eggs and toast) that we had to wrap in foil and put in the fridge, as we were supposed to fast before our blood work (one more reason not to like it). It was pretty good for day old toast!

After that Maria went to the grocery store to look for bread, and I wrote. By the time she got back and I was finished, we had been awake for 5 hours, and thinking about lunch -- except it was 9 AM. Damn jet lag.

I ate a loaf of bread anyway. Just for spite.

King Kimbap. Maria says, "I don't think that's chicken."

We paced around and read until noonish finally rolled around and we felt ok getting lunch. We were both a little stir crazy. Our initial plan was to get kimbap (pronounced Kim-Bop [not Tim-Bob or Kim-Bob, I'm told]), and eat it in one of the parks near our apt., and while that's mostly what we did, you'd be missing the cream filling to stop there.

Foremost, kimbap is awesome. It's sort of like sushi (rice, meats, and veggies wrapped in seaweed), but I guess it's not... because it's Korean and called kimbap. We got two rolls from a cool mom and pop joint down the road, and man, is it cheap. I would say that, on average, restaurants are about 300% more numerous (than Charlotte) and 60% as expensive, such that you can't stretch a leg without kicking in the door to a place where you can get pretty great food for like 3,000 Korean Won (like $2.75) -- provided you can find a way to order.

Please, just take my money.

A lot of the menus have pictures of the food next to prices and names, though the food names are written in Hangul (the alphabet of the Korean language). So you can't just  walk up to the guy behind the kimpab counter and ask for a 맛있는 게 김밥, or at least Maria and I can't.  We circumvent this problem by taking pictures of the menu and pointing. It's not fancy, but it will get you a bag full of kimbap!

We walked to the park from the kimbap joint, which was a good hot walk. It wasn't long before we neared Bundang Central Park and began hearing the telltale kick-drums and snare rolls of a sound check. Free concert in the park! We threw out our blanket (a duvet cover that some previous tenet left in the apt.), and picnicked out in the park. Turns out there's a running series of shows going on in the park (and it was a nice park. Huge!), but they don't start until 7:30 each night, and let's not forget, folks, we've been up since 4, it's only 2ish now, and it's about 4,000 degrees Celsius out at 80% humidity (I'm not very good at the conversion yet, so that might be a little off). Needless to say, we enjoyed our kimbap in the park, and listening to the roadies warm up, but we decided not to hang out for 5.5 more hours.

The mom and daughter playing Frisbee was heartwarming, but really, this is the central image of the afternoon. 

After lunch (We had leftovers! Two people totally full for $5! I think we've found our regular lunch) we explored the park. Bundang Central Park is an awesome, wide ranging park that has bike paths, exercise equipment (public workout machines are a big thing here), a river that winds through the park, several big pagoda-type buildings overlooking koi ponds, and even some historical sites. We spent a good 2 hours just wandering around and checking it all out. The park was full of families, and kids on bikes. I saw several picnics like our own. We watched a mom teaching her daughter how to throw a Frisbee. Just a really nice vibe going around on a gorgeous Saturday in the city. I think we'll definitely be spending more time there in the future.

Hangul loves hangul

After the park, we made our way home. It probably took us an hour to get back, but we took a meandering path through the city (by choice. I think,). Every time we passed a cool looking place to eat we tried to commit it to memory. It seems like our first days hear have revolved around the central question "What can we eat today?" Although to be fair, we've had some trouble articulating ourselves to the local wait staff, and Maria hasn't always enjoyed what we've wound up with -- though we're getting better at it.

We're at home now, feeling the good kind of tired that comes after a long walk (or after you've been up for 14 hrs), and thinking about doing a garlic/mushroom pasta for dinner (I told you, 'what can we eat?'). Today was a great day for me, as I got to walk around in the city for a long while. I'm still getting used to the scale and density of it all, but I made some long strides today. And WOW kimbap! Come on!

I think this is the start of a beautiful year, and by that I mean that I'm going to be eating A LOT of kimbap.