Kyunghee University's cherry blossom road.

So, it's the first week of April, cherry blossom season in Seoul. It lasts about one week. There are certain areas in Seoul where you can go to see an abundance of blossoms. Everyday this week, I have planned to venture to a new area. First, was Hoegi. Kyunghee University campus is there. It took about an hour by subway to get there from where I live. The campus itself is already beautiful with winding roads, hills and old style buildings. All the blossoms just enhance it even more. There were so many students just laying around campus enjoying the spring weather and flowers.

Cattle intestines.

My Korean friend, Jinok, is always taking me out to eat and introducing me to new foods. Tonight was sauteed cattle intestines, glass noodles, carrots, cabbage, rice cakes and these noodle things that resemble sausage. You take all the pieces and wrap it in sesame leaves with a little hot sauce. It's similar in style to Korean barbecue. It wasn't bad and you couldn't taste the intestines. If you ate the intestine by itself it had an inky flavor. The Korean waitress got a kick out of me eating it. Jinok is always impressed that I am willing to try things. She calls me a good eater because I can use chopsticks and try whatever. The waitress did bring me wooden chopsticks because they are easier to use then the metal ones.

A Korean meal consists of many little dishes. Some type of pickled vegetables, soup and cabbage is always involved.

Les Test Ecoles.

This was my first excursion out of Seoul. I have been in Korea for just over two months (time flys). I wish I could say it was to tour the country side and take beautiful photos, but it wasn't. I was going to a pub crawl for some girls birthday I was yet to meet.  The buses in Korea are amazing; a lot of leg room, double arm rest, so you aren't sharing with the stranger next to you and plush, comfortable seats. The first thing I thought when I sat down was Mike, my boyfriend, would be very comfortable. He is very tall. Because of that, whenever I am planning vacations for us, I have to be mindful about getting us aisle seats, so he can stretch his legs. It's kind of ironic that their is so much personal space compared to buses in the USA. Americans are larger and Koreans are significantly smaller then us. Beyond the comfort of the ride, there was a lot to focus on out the window. Unfortunately, I couldn't take any pictures.

I finally saw cemeteries. They are concentrated on hillsides (unusable land) and they were mound shape. I also so this one river lined with colorful wooden shacks. In the shacks were very comfortable leather seats for fisherman to sit in all day. It was very rural from Seoul to Chuncheon, my final destination. Chuncheon is on the east coast and the ride is the equivalent of taking the bus fro Philly to New York City. It was very cheap, too. It cost just over 9,000 won.

I was invited to this gathering by my friends from Philly that live very close to this area. For 30,000 won you got a lovely pink T-shirt, entrance to five bars, unlimited beer and food. All in all not a bad deal. It started at the birthday girl's apartment and I saw a few other people their that I have meant previously. Their was a mix of people from Canada, UK, New Zealand and the US. I was surprised by the number of people that came to teach in Korea with numerous friends, significant others or both. People had their little cliques and then their were the obvious loners, heavy girls and Korean girls, searching for an American man all present. I also meant a lot of people from "Philadelphia". I understand why people living in Korea say they are from Philadelphia to other people. Most people are more likely to recognize that then some small town outside the city. 

This one loser though started up a conversation with me about how he is from Philly and he hates it and he can't understand why I like it there. I explained to him I am never bored there. I have great friends that are involved in a lot of different things from restaurants to art, there's always something to do for the most part. As the conversation proceeds I discovered he never lived in Philadelphia, he is from Abbington (which I meant a lot of people in Korea from there). There is nothing wrong with living there, but that is going to be a total different experience then actually living in any city for long length of time like I have in Philadelphia (going on over seven years). This guy I couldn't tell if he was trying to impress me by trying really hard to be cool or just had no personal skills. Later he came up to me and pointed to the tattoo on my foot. He said, "Oh, how do your parents feel about that." I replied to him you are talking to the wrong girl about parents getting upset about a tattoo. Then he picked on my black rimmed glasses. I understand that hipsters have taken over the whole black rimmed glasses thing, but honestly I have been wearing this style glasses for almost six years.  I replied to him, "They are Gucci, I am not a hipster."

This was the start of my evening meeting some of the worst people ever and having horrible forced, fake conversations. However though, I did meet some really great people. And my whole team was amazing. When we got to Christine's apartment, the birthday girl, we got a shirt, a bottle of soju and assigned a team. My team below was comprised of Keith and Pete from the UK, Kathleen, Justin and Simon. All of them were so much fun. Their was one Korean girl on our team named Go On (amazing name) that I barely talk to. She seemed to be one of those typical girls tracking down an American man. Our team name was the Les Test Ecoles, which just became Testicles. After we drank our bottles of soju and had some whiskey jello shots we went to the first bar. It was a German style bar and they brewed their own beer. Oh and yes we were those loud Americans that you hate seeing outside of the US. Embarrassing and disgracing our countries. Our first task was trivia and I will now always know Stephanie Meyer writes those dumb Twilight books.

Next bar was T-shirt decorating.

Aaron draws penguins quite well.

Kay and me.

Everyone busy decorating. There was about sixty of us in total.

On the way to the next bar, I saw this male underwear in a store window. WILD STAR DUST.

Third bar was beer pong. And yes this brought out the competitor in me and with playing with some many different people from all over the world it was a bitch to agree on rules. I don't think we ever did agree on anything. Its like playing asshole in high school. Everyone plays differently. I think that's why I stopped playing drinking games a long time ago.

Me, Justin & Pete.

My shirt decorated by Aaron.

Simon & Justin.

Simon and someone from the Rim Jobs. They beat us the second round of beer bong. It was an intense game. We were winning and then we got stuck with each team having the one cup left scenario. It went back and forth forever. I also made some arch enemies. Some fat, gross annoying girl that kept changing the rules and flashed me her disgusting nasty tits to distract me, but I got both balls in. Then some other moron who made fun of my glasses. I think I shot him the look of death and told him I would fucken kill him. He quickly came over to kiss my ass and apologize profusely.

At the next bar we were fed again. This is the birthday girl eating fried chicken and holding a deadly bottle of insanely strong Chinese alcohol.

After that bar things got bad. We were suppose to go on a scavenger hunt. My team fell apart. The other two girls were gone. Simon was throwing up and Keith and Pete were ridiculously drunk.

Simon trying to make a comeback. We needed a picture with a Korean and a sparkler for one of the items on the list (they did provide the sparkler).

During the scavenger hunt that was suppose to conclude at the last bar our team got separated. I ended up lost in Chuncheon for a very long time. We ended up in this clothing store, that was closed and no one there. They apparently don't lock the stores. They just put up a red tape to stop you and throw some tarps. I can't believe people are trusted like this.

We did eventually make it to the bar. Someone had to come pick us up in their car. Then I started thinking how badly I want to drive and I can't believe I won't drive for the next year. I miss the freedom. Anyways though I went straight to the bathroom once I got there and was confronted with this toilet. I don't even know what I was suppose to do with all those buttons.

Finally, like any noght of too much drinkiing it ended up with horrible food very late at night. Their McDonald's are open twenty-four hours. The only difference is, they are actually really clean and the people working are really nice. Look at their uniforms!

The next day back to Seoul on the bus was hell. A two hour journey took four because of traffic and a girl infront of me was puking in a bag.

Words of wisdom from good friends.

Sometimes things suck about being here, other times it's good. My friends say some really smart things though, whenever I do get the chance to talk to them. 

"I truly believe that nothing is permanent unless you choose for it to be."

"Just do whatever you want and remember that there is another life waiting for you whenever Korea stops doing it for you."

English market day hell.

It kind of looks like I am in a cartoon, doesn't it? I am trying to sale this guy a potato.

This is my market where I sat for five hours completely unprepared.

This is Kelly's clothing store. 

My kid's monologue consisted of them buying two potatoes and a tomato. I would have gladly bought the real vegetables if I knew what was going on. Instead, I was supplied with half a plastic tomato and two plastic sweet potatoes that have seen better days.

Actually, all the plastic fruit on hand was quite expired. 

Oh, market day. Market day that I knew nothing about. As I believe I mentioned previously, I teach about seven regular classes a day and two after school classes. This market day was for my regular classes (my seventy, six years old and about twenty, five year old students). The market day is based on vegetable/fruit work books we do in class. However, I was never informed till the day before that I was suppose to be teaching them a monologue between a produce seller (me) and a customer (them). We went over the script several weeks ago, when we reached that page in the book. I had no idea that for the past month we were suppose to be role playing and learning the script from memory. The Korean teacher I work with wasn't informed either. However, Kelly who teaches the seven years old had been working on it with her students. Also, I don't even teach my five years old students with any notebooks. I see them twice a week and just work on speech with them. 

That is Yedea for you. Complete and total lack of organization. I didn't get in trouble or anything. I mean I couldn't. How was I suppose to know. Kelly didn't know any better to tell me. She didn't know we were preforming this on video tape with the children. However, I was very pleased with my kids being able to pull this out of the air with me. We practiced a few times before the camera was rolling. Other classes were able to pull it off a little bit more smoothly then others and of course the seven year old kids blew us out of the water. It was just completely frustrating because I don't want to appear as though I am not doing my job and I don't like my kids looking dumb. The Korean teachers that were also left out of the loop and were irritated as well.

I had one Korean teacher upset because she did not realize Kelly and I were sitting in a certain room waiting for the kids to come in and out. She asked us why we didn't tell her where we were. I was like I didn't even know what we were doing till 10:00 am this morning. We just assumed all the Korean teachers knew the deal. 

This wouldn't be such a big deal, but this stuff is pretty common at school. Next week is cooking week and I am still waiting on the details for that. I am sure I'll have some type of story to report.

Yedea or Yedai?

My school uses both spellings for various documents and signs. It bothers me and I really want to say something, but graphically Korea just isn't evolved that way. In graphic design courses in school, we just learned about constancy, but I am sure anyone who majored in advertising, some form a business or just people with commonsense would tell you the same, "The spelling of your business should always be the same." Although my school lacks in constancy in its brand identity, on a constant basis my school never fails to provide stories day in and day out.

February 18, 2009

I have a twenty minute four year old class and its hell. The understand no English or at least they pretend they don't. They laugh every time I speak and the only English I can get them to repeat is the 10 Little Indian song. I  have this one little girl though who is the devil. She just won't do anything and is completely disruptive. This particular day she comes up to me and tugs at my shirt. I know she needed to use the restroom, but I wanted her to try to say the word bathroom. As I asked her she opened her mouth to reveal this green, mucusy lugy. It was gross and another little girl followed her lead and did the same thing.

March 2, 2009

It is the start of their new school year. There are no regular classes, just the new students and parents were invited to the school as a type of meet and greet. They had a singing magician that provided entertainment. He was very impressive by puling pigeons out of no where and creating balloon animals. He even preformed a puppet show. After the entertainment our principle, Mrs. Shin, introduced all of us teachers. When she got to me, she called me Kelly, the other American teacher who was not even there. I didn't bother her to correct her. Apparently, Koreans think Kelly and I look the same, even though she is blond and I am brunette. And as she introduced me to the audience I was expected to ramble off an introduction. Although I couldn't stop coughing or blowing my nose, the audience seemed to like my little speech. I just have already realized just to compliment them on their amazing country and that I am so excited to be here. 

Later that night, my boss took my whole work out to dinner to an authentic Japanese restaurant. Plates of sushi, vegetables, soups and duck were constantly being put down in huge platters in front of us. One of the platters was completely still moving; sea squirt, octopus and something else unidentifiable all chopped up, but alive. I did eat some still squirming octopus, but that's as far as I ventured. The other Korean girls didn't touch the other things, so I stayed away from it. Just the older man I worked with was eating it. i don't really know his whole job description, but I see him at the front desk, driving the bus and other random things.

March 17, 2009

During a typical class. The first ten to fifteen minutes is dedicated to talking and answering questions. After that we usually work in a workbook. At which time we go over each section and I walk around the class making sure everything is done correctly. Constantly, though I walk into walls of horrible, Korean gas. Which if you have any vegetarian friends I equate it with a smell like that. There Korean diet constants of a lot of leafy vegetables and these kids just let it go. I adopted this method with my own personal gas during, class. I don't do anything I would normally do; hold it, leave the room, etc. This is going to be the one thing I miss when I leave the country the ability to pass gas freely. 

March 20, 2009

Boogies. It is not uncommon to look around any of my classes at any given time and half the class having one or even two of their fingers half way up their nose. On this particular day this boy got a huge, moist green boogie and he wanted to show me. I gagged.

March 22, 2009

I was teaching my five year old after school class. You have to understand these children, who are either four or five, have been here since 10:00 am at the latest. There are no nap times and there are no half days like Americans experience with pre-school and kindergarten. These Kids are irritable, barely comprehend English and rather come up and poke me to see if I am real then repeat the words,"Good morning Mommy! Good Morning Daddy! Dog. Cat. Sister. Brother. Doll. Robot. etc." So in between getting them to speak we sing songs and watch animated stories about the topic we are going over. It is a rather small class, only four students and it is fifty minutes long. There attention span at 3:00 pm is about four minutes. Usually, two of the boys run around throwing there books  that go with the lesson that they can't even read. I don't mind, as long as when they are moving I here them repeat the words. This day however, thy were paying attention to a certain degree more so then usual. They had there tiny little chairs in front of me and were actually sitting. They were fidgety and hitting each other, but at least they were sitting. I looked down though and notice this one boy's penis was out and he was laughing. I was a little shocked, I haven't quite prepared for this moment and now they started video taping are classes. The feed streams live on a rotating basis through the classrooms on a screen in the lobby. That was the last thing I needed to get in trouble for some little boy flashing me. I immediately threw my forearms in an "x" and said, "Ani!" (which translates to no and crossing our arms enforces that). He pulled his pants up and laughed. Unfortunately, this was not my last little Asian penis encounter. 

Before the class had started, I was having a conversation with one of the Korean teachers, who teach the five years old. I was telling her how this class is my most difficult and was asking her if she liked teaching kids this young. She said in her accent, "They make me purer." She explained it as, they are uncorrupted and innocent. It makes her feel that way about life, while she teaches them. She is reminded of the innocence in the world. I guess it helps her not become so cynical. However, when the little boy flashed me, he knew it was wrong and funny. It's like they are knowingly abusing their innocence for their comedic advantage. 

Oh and in addition to seeing a kid's penis, I also got bit shortly after that. One of the boys was trying to make a run for the door and I put my arm out to stop him and then he bit it. He did not break the skin, but again I was shocked. A very fun filled fifty minutes.

The teacher and I were also discussing the difference between American schools and Korean schools. And all the hours Koreans spend going to school and studying. They literally have no life and no one in high school works. She said there is no other choice, but to study. In America I explained there are always choices. You can be lazy and get pushed right through the system and the amount of money your parents spend on your education can lead to even more choices. In Korea everyone goes to the same schools. No charter, religious or private choices are available. She said you are starting to see some choices, but not a lot. 

April 2, 2009

I have a ten minute break between my classes in the morning. I usually sit a bench outside the classrooms and near the bathrooms with a coffee. On this particular day a little boy runs to the bathroom door with his pants around his ankles and his shirt lifted up to his neck, his little wang hanging out screaming and crying. I couldn't understand anything he was saying an didn't know how to help. I went and got a Korean teacher. He was constipated and needed help wiping his ass. Yea, I definitely was not about to help with that one.

My week with no computer.

Traditional neighborhood market. Smiling dead pig.

Lots of seafood in the sun.

Dried fish.

Turtles and eels.

You could smell these strawberries over all the raw fish.

Octopus.

The Royal Tombs. In one of the three tombs in the park was the ninth king and his wife at another. The last tomb was for the eleventh king, his son. The tenth king you may be wandering was horrible. He was the other son. I have no idea where his tomb was, but I don't think his ended well.

The first signs of springs.

The tomb is inside the mound and all the statues are placed around it. Your not allowed on to the area. There is a fence keeping you back. I learned though that in the country side where there cementaries, normal Koreans also were buried with this dumb like mound above there grave.

This girl actually works with my aunt. She was visiting a friend of her's in the army in Seoul. I met up with them for a few beers in Itaewon. This bar was packed with Americans. There was no Koreans there, besides for the three people that worked there. The upstairs bar had a Led Zepplin cover band with bad wigs and all to look like Jimmy Page and Robert Plant. They weren't bad. But there was a ton of nasty older military couples rocking out.

And now for my computer:

My logic board broke. I don't know anything about it, but it just sounds expensive. Luckily, my warranty came through and covered it. However, I wish that the whole process was simple. I went to the underground Coex Mall's "a" store and they referred me to a the authorized Apple repair store. They handed me a map and broken English verbal directions. So after getting lost finding the escallator, I finally after a few minutes made my way to the ground level outside. Looking up there was a dizzing amount of skyscrapers. Beautifuly lit and designed buildings. I was looking for a building that said Ubase, which the korean sales associate said and the map had highlighted. Walking towards the six lane street I stopped to read the tops of all the builings; Hyundai Mall, City Air Termainal, City Tower, Citibank, Oakwood Hotel, etc. I saw a Fedex Kinkos as listed on the map and assumed I was heading in the right direction. 

The sales associate said it should no take more the five minutes to get to my destination. After five minutes, I stopped a woman for help armed with my map. She pointed, spoke 3 words of English, I and headed the way she pointed. Then I filed in the blanks of here directions with my own interpretation and wound up even more lost. I walked into a nice restaurant and asked the host for help. She came outside and walked me to a corner, then another older man crossed the street and they both read over the map. They told m straight and to the left. Again, I was still lost. I then went to two paring lot attendants and another older man ran over, who then lead me to the building. We crossed back over the street and back towards the mall. Passed another and correct Fedex Kinkos and turned down a street, where the building was suppose to be. As he ran into the restaurant on the corner, I spotted the tiny Ubase sign off the side of the building. On top of the building in huge letters was the word KIM, but no where on the map did it say that. Just as I discovered it, the man ran out to tell me. I thank him for his kindness, no one in the US would do that. I went in to the building just a couple 100 feet away. Ran up to the third floor and got to the door, but it closed.

The next day I went back and found it a lot quicker. When i dropped it off they asked if they could delete everything and I said no! I was fearing the worse up until I got it home and turned it on and everything was still there. Then I plugged in the ethernet cord and it worked! 

Now my next issue: The light bulb burned out in my bathroom. I can't figure out how to get the limp off. I have perfected showering in the dark, which is no easy task. The shower head is not fixed to the wall. It's hand held. However, I have not had the balls to try shaving in the dark, yet. As of right now there is no need, too.