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.