From 30,000 Feet

As I write this I am sitting on an airplane bound for Portland, Oregon, for the weekend, so that I can attend the impending nuptials of my dear friend Jimmy Smith. I have already spent the last 15 hours travelling and I have another 9 to go. I will be spending as much time travelling as I will at my actual destination. I am currently hungry and exhausted, but the beverage cart is on the way and with any luck a beer and a glass of water will help me solve at least one of those issues. So, what brought me to this current endeavor…
It all started last February or January or whenever it was that I visited the States. I’d just re-contracted in South Korea and as such was given two weeks off. I took the first week to go to Vietnam, and used the second week to go to the US. While I was there visiting Jimmy asked me to be the best man in his wedding. After everything Jimmy and I have been through together there was no way I could or would say no to such a request. Unfortunately the wedding was going to occur in October, a month devoid of anything even closely resembling a holiday in South Korea.
When I got back to Korea and got ready to start my second year teaching English I went to my new Co-teacher and asked if I could have the days off. She said yes, which surprised me since I was expecting to have to put up a fight. Alas, luck appeared to be on my side. So I went about business as usual and started looking for tickets. Until a week later when the same co-teacher informed me that, as it turned out, I could not, in fact, have those days off. Upon learning this information I reacted by carefully applying some very choice expletives and getting pissed off at Korea in general. (Side note: my beer has arrived and with it… peanuts. Life has taken an unexpected turn for the better.)
I was not faced with a difficult series of decisions. My options were as follows: 1. Tell Jimmy I couldn’t get the time off work and thereby skip out on my best friend’s wedding and the honor of being his best man. 2. Buy tickets anyway and then try to use sick days. 3. By tickets and threaten to quit if they didn’t let me have the days off. 4. Throw my pride out the window, get down on my knees and beg.
After much careful consideration I concluded that skipping the wedding wasn’t even an option. I would rather quit my job than miss the wedding. Calling in sick seemed like a last resort. I was talked out of threatening to quit by cooler heads than mine. And so, with Jimmy Smith on my mind, I went back to my co-teacher, and begged.
This time I explained things better. First of all, Korean weddings are weird as shit. In a Korean wedding there is no wedding party. The ceremony is relatively unimportant. People come and go as they please, children wrestle in the aisle and occasionally there are strobe lights and fog machines. So culturally speaking there’s a huge difference between a Korean asking to go to a Korean wedding, and a Westerner asking to go to a wedding to be the best man for his friend. I explained these differences and I explained that being someone’s best man was a huge honor in our culture and blah blah blah. Then I pulled out the big gun. By this point I had been working at the same school for well over a year. I knew the English Center inside and out. And I had never missed a day of work. In my contract I have 11 sick days per year. And I had, and still never have, used a single one. I’ve been a very good, very diligent teacher for them. I was asking for this as a favor.
Two days later my co came back to me and informed that our principle, having heard my plight, granted me the days off. So I bought my tickets and here I am, cruising between Tokyo and Portland while sipping on a Heineken and typing out this story to put on my blog. We’ll see how the trip goes. My hunger is now slightly abated, and upon finishing this beer I imagine I will be sleepy enough to pass out for a while… Or not, the food cart just passed, which means dinner/lunch is coming. So I’ll wait for that, THEN go to sleep.

What else can I say to bring you up to speed on things in Korea…? Let’s see, I was asked to re-contract for a 3rd year the other day. I’ve been given until October 31st to decide. I was pretty on the fence about it. I really didn’t know what I should do. I find myself terrified of being unemployed given the current economic climate in the US and the rest of the world. I also KNOW that I don’t want to go back to America. Not yet at least. Korea offers security and comfort. Buuuuuuuuut, I have to ask myself, when I left for Korea, was it comfort and security I was after? The answer is very much no. I went in search of new experience and adventure. Korea was supposed to be the first step in what would be the grand adventure of my life. I fear that perhaps I had/have lost sight of that. And I am very afraid that if I stay another year I’ll lose sight of that forever. So, given that, I think I have to move on. As Matt Smith through Kerouac so kindly reminded me, ‘The road is life’. I have to keep moving forward. I can’t let myself get bogged down in a comfortable situation because it is secure. Life’s too short.

On a lighter note, I joined an Ultimate Frisbee team and have been playing that a lot. It’s been really good for me. It’s really helping me get back in shape and has given me the motivation to kick certain bad habits. Our team is awesome… not skill wise, but it’s overall level of awesomeness is through the roof. As far as skill goes we are terrible. 0-9 so far. But we have a lot of fun.

In September I finally completed a long time goal of mine. I live near the place where the sun first rises in South Korea. So I can regularly go and see the earliest sunrises in the country. Well, I decided some time ago that I wanted to watch the sunrise on my side of the country, then travel to the other side of the country to watch the sunset all in the same day. So when I had a three day weekend and some motivation I went. The Sunrise was phenomenal, but the sunset left something to be desired, might try to do it again before I leave if the weather looks like it’ll be better. Time’ll tell.

Well, food just got here, so I’m going to leave this post at that. I’ll try to write again soon to let you all know how everything ends up working out. Hope everyone reading this is well.

Better Late than Never

Well, it’s been well over a year since the last time I wrote anything. So obviously way too much has happened since then to write down here. So I guess I’ll try to remember the highlights and go from there.
1. My first trip to Cambodia. In August of 2010 I went on my first vacation during my time in Korea. For my first trip I went to Cambodia to visit Meghan. I flew in to Siem Reap and spent ten days hanging out and sightseeing. I went to Angkor Wat, and a number of places around Battambang. I also had the opportunity to visit Meg at her site and see where she’s been living. All in all it was a pretty great trip. Cambodia was a great country to visit. I really enjoyed my time in outside of Siem Reap the most though. It was just too touristy there. Before I went I bought a new camera, and so I took a ton of pictures while I was there. Here are the links to see them.

http://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=a.674853416440.2261790.25903479&l=4023b31e20&type=1

http://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=a.675184048850.2262083.25903479&l=17056d7692&type=1

http://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=a.675191783350.2262092.25903479&l=2308dedea4&type=1

2. Travelling around Korea. During September 2010 I went on a trip around Korea by myself. I had a week off for Chuseok, the Korean Thanksgiving. So I used the time to go for an adventure. I’d originally wanted to go to the Islands that litter the South West of the country. Unfortunately, when I got there I discovered that the Ferry system was a major pain in the ass. So instead I opted to climb a small mountain in the city of Mokpo to watch the sunset. The next day I took a bus to Wolchulsan National Park. Wolchulsan (Wolchul Mountain) is a big chunk of rock coming out of nowhere. It’s surrounded by flat rice paddies in all directions. So it’s a pretty spectacular sight. I camped (if you can call it that) there a couple of nights and climbed the mountain before heading back to Ulsan.

http://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=a.680053515400.2278629.25903479&l=796104cd92&type=1

3. Christmas in Cambodia. For Christmas that same year I went back to Cambodia to visit Meg, but this time Olivia had come from the States to celebrate Christmas with us. I was only able to get there late in the evening on Christmas Day because of work. I could only stay a week this time around, but it was great. This time we went to Phnom Penh and Sihanookville. I didn’t much care of Phnom Penh. The beach was fun though. Exactly what I needed during the Korean winter.

A brief note on weather in South Korea. Summer in Korea is pretty terrible for someone from the Pacific Northwest. First of all, it’s hot, really hot. Second, it’s humid, really humid. Lastly it rains almost every day. Now, rain isn’t exactly something that is troubling for me. Growing up in Western Oregon and Washington acclimatized me to precipitation. However, this is not like Pacific Northwest rain. When it rains in Washington it usually cools things down quite a bit. Here it does no such thing. It stays just as hot outside, but it gets more humid, muggier and grosser. The air feels heavy and wearing a rain jacket is impossible. The only option is an umbrella. So that’s the summer. Winter is the exact opposite in every way. It’s bitterly cold and dry. During summer I constantly sweat, during winter my skin dries out and cracks. Almost every day is sunny, but it’s too cold outside to enjoy. During the previous winter, the water in the river in Namchang was frozen solid for two months. The only reason it didn’t stay frozen was that all the water eventually just dried up and disappeared until spring. I didn’t even know ice COULD dry up.

4. Vietnam and America. I decided to stay in Korea for a second year. So as part of my re-signing bonus I was given two weeks of paid vacation to visit home. Knowing that I would go stir crazy if I tried to go back to America for two weeks I decided to spend a week of that in Vietnam. So, I went to Ho Chi Minh City and Vung Tau with my friend Hannah. It was a really good time. It differed from most of my travel experiences in that it was cheap enough to stay in a nice hotel/resort for a few days. There we lived the good life of fancy dinners while watching the sun set at night, and sitting by the pool drinking cocktails and wine during the day. Not a bad change of pace.
From Vietnam I flew back to Seoul, spent 6 hours in the airport, and then caught a flight to Seattle to visit the States for the first time in a year. This was great also. I’d missed my family and my friends a lot. I was lucky enough to have the opportunity to see my parent, some of my extended family and my friends down in Portland. And I got to eat and drink. There are things that you miss when living in another country. Things that someone who has never lived abroad can’t really appreciate missing. Things like cheese, Mexican food, pizza pockets, frozen burritos, pizza rolls, Gatorade that isn’t yellow, Swiss rolls, butterfingers, and most importantly good beer. And so I feasted and did everything I could to try and regain the pounds I’d lost while subsisting on a diet of healthy Korean food.
While I was there my best friend Jimmy asked me to be his best man in his wedding in October. I was honored and very happy. But also worried because I knew it would be difficult to get the time off of work. Fortunately, after much gravelling and begging I was given the days off, so I’ll be back for a weekend in October.

http://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=a.727961592230.2308909.25903479&l=ddef25fecb&type=1

5. Mongolia. This past August I decided to go to Mongolia for my vacation. This proved to be one of the best decision I’ve made during my time here. Mongolia was in incredible. I went with my buddy Jeremy. We had one goal when we got there, get to the Gobi desert. We arrived early on a Sunday morning, three hours later than planned thanks to a storm that kept us stuck on the runway in Beijing. We got to the guesthouse/tour agency that we had decided to go through around 7am, and by 9am we had a trip to the Gobi booked for the next day and a trip to Terelj National Park booked for that day. The next eight days were spent in a rapid, whirlwind tour of Central and Southern Mongolia. The National Park was gorgeous. The trip to the Gobi found us spending 6 to 8 hours a day in a van that would have been perfect suited to taking the family to soccer practice, but was in no condition to handle the “roads” of Mongolia. When I say road I of course mean dirt paths so bumpy and full of potholes and washboard that I’m amazed I didn’t lose a filling. Needless to say, the van broke down four times. First we punctured the oil drum and had to jerry rig a patch to keep enough oil in to get us to a town two days away. Then the wheels went out of alignment. Then the breaks went out while go down the other side of a mountain range. Then, just to top it all off, the front bumper fell off. It was an adventure. Every night we slept in Ger camps (Yurts) and ate a variety of Mongolian foods. Most notably we ate camel and drank fermented horse milk. While not as bad as one might think, and maybe even kind of tasty, it did wreak havoc on my intestines… for about two weeks after I got back. During the time I suffered an ear infection, food poisoning, and the aforementioned horse milk inspired bowel issues. Despite the countless hours in the bumpy van, the break downs and the various maladies, it was probably the best trip I’ve ever been on. Mongolia can best be described as vast and empty. We spent time in places where the population density was one person per three kilometers. It’s a country where horses outnumber people. Where you can drive all day and never pass another vehicle and the only sign of human beings is a Ger off in the distance. A place where distance itself is impossible to judge because there’s just nothing to put it into perspective. To say the least it redefined a lot of my previous views on the world. I truly hope I can go back there again someday.

http://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=a.849394534640.2338216.25903479&l=a50132f654&type=1

6. Saying goodbye. This is something that you do a lot while living here. Every six months or so someone is either coming or going. Sometimes more frequently that. Since most people only come here for a year there is a constant flux of incoming and outgoing. My friend Patrick put it this way, the worse thing about living in Korea is that you meet so many amazing people and then they leave. Since I’ve been here for over a year and a half now I have made some great friends, and I have seen some great friends leave. You share amazing experiences with people here, and then you watch them go, or if you’re leaving, you watch them stay. It can be very difficult sometimes. I just said goodbye to two of my best friends a couple of weeks ago. Only time will tell if I’ll get to see either again someday. Being here is like being in College, but on a much larger scale. People come are thrust together in a new situation from all over the place, and when they finish the move on. It’s one of the defining characteristics of being an expat.

I think that just about brings the big things up to date. So, what comes next? I honestly have no idea. I know that I’m not ready to move back to America. Not even close. It’s nothing against my home country (which I love) or my friends and family there (whom I love). It’s just that I like this. I like this lifestyle. I like being surrounded by people who look different than I do and speak a different language. I feel like this lifestyle fits me. It’s an adventure. And I’m not ready for it to end. Also, chances are if I moved back to America I wouldn’t be able to find a job anyway.
So, my immediate plans are as follows. Visit the states for a weekend in October for Jimmy’s wedding. In December I’ll have another vacation, I’m thinking Malaysia. My contract finishes at the end of February. As tempting as it is to stay in Namchang, where it’s comfortable and I know how to do everything, I feel like I have to move on. I left America looking for adventure and new things. If I stay where I am much longer it will defeat that purpose. So, where to next. I don’t know yet. Somewhere else in Korea? Somewhere else in East Asia? The Middle East? Some time off to travel in South America? I don’t know yet. I’ll start looking at new jobs options soon. I know I want to keep teaching English and I know I want to do it abroad. Other than that, I guess we’ll see.

Some Videos

So, once again it's been a long time since my last post. Things have been insanely busy for me lately. I've been going on lots of adventures all around the are. Doing a lot of exploring. I'm having a great time so far and I'll try to get you all caught up on the goings on sometime in the very near future. Anyhow, over the course of the last couple months I've taken a few videos with the specific intention of posting them on this blog. So here are the first few.

Sorry for the Delay (The last month or so in Korea)

Well it has officially been way too long since my last blog. Things have been ridiculously busy for me over the last month, but that’s not an excuse so I apologize to everyone who thinks I’ve dropped off the face of the earth. It’s difficult to know where to start since it’s been so long, but I will try to fill in as much of the details as I can.

Let’s start with school. Last time I wrote I had just finished my first day of teaching. Now I have been teaching for over a month. A lot has happened in that, but I can still safely say that I love being in the classroom. There are days when I want to end the lives of some of my students, but there are also days when I leave feeling so satisfied that I am completely reassured that I made the right choice to do this with my life.
My typical day starts at noon. I usually arrive at school at about 12:05 and drop my things off in one of the classrooms at the English Center. Then I go to the teacher’s office and we all go to the cafeteria together for lunch. Eating school lunches is always an adventure. I never know exactly what I’ll be having, but I tend to be pretty open to anything. Lunch usually consists of rice, some sort of soup, maybe a meat side-dish and kimchi. Always kimchi. I have had some pretty decent lunches, and some others that left something to be desired. But considering it costs me less than two dollars a day to eat lunch at school I won’t complain about a thing. After lunch I go back to the English center to do my lesson planning for the day.
Classes start at three. My first two classes of the day are intermediate level. One of them is made up of all third graders and the other class is made up of 4th through 6th graders. The third grade class is probably both the most frustrating class I have and the most rewarding. First off, they are ridiculously cute. I have seven girls and three boys in the class. Surprisingly, the boys are the better behaved, maybe because they are the minority. Among the girls I have three that consistently cause problems. One of which is amazingly smart. Probably too smart for her own good. On the other hand, two of my favorite students are also girls in that class. One of them is the smartest, sweetest little girl I teach. She’s great. The other is also very smart, and very cute. She can cause problems from time to time, but with her I just don’t care. She usually comes to the English center an hour and half before class starts and hangs out with me. Conversations with her usually consist of ‘Hi, how are you today?’ to which she replies, very matter of factly, ‘I am fine, thank you. How are you?’ This is then followed by her trying to distract me from working while by asking me to play hangman with her. The other class I teach in the afternoon is all older students. They are usually very well behaved. It also helps that there are only eight of them.
I finish teaching those classes at five. Then it’s time for dinner. I usually have one of the Korean teachers order dinner for me from a restaurant that delivers to the school. I usually have DonKass, a kind of pork cutlet, or spicy pork with rice, or bulgogi (marinated beef) with rice, or some kind of rib soup. Fridays I usually get food from a Chinese place because it’s a big meal, spicy chicken, black bean noodles, fried rice and mandu (dumplings). Twice a week Matt teaches the evening classes too, and on those days we usually order a couple pizzas.
The evening classes start at six. For the first month I taught the most advanced classes. Class three, Class four, and Class five. Of these classes, class four has been my favorite. All the students are really smart, well behaved and actually seem to want to learn English. I taught them for the first month, but recently switched classes and am now teaching the lower level evening classes. This is a pity not because the classes are more difficult, I actually like the challenge. No, the problem is that I was starting to build a good relationship with the students, and now I’m not teaching them anymore. Oh well, that’s Korea for you. Class five was a mixed bag of different levels of older students. I bring them up now because two of the girls from the class live close to me. So every night after school ends at eight, I walk them home. Their level isn’t terribly high, but it’s still pretty fun to try and talk with them. One of my favorite moments with that class came when I was interviewing students during a test. It went something like this, ‘What’s your favorite food?’ ‘Mmmmm, doggy.’ Awesome. While I have yet to try dog, I hear it’s quite good. And there are at least two dog restaurant in Namchang, so it’s only a matter of time before I get adventurous enough to go to one.

Alright, that maybe wasn’t the most thorough account of my daily school routine, but for now it will have to do. Moving on we come to my social life outside of school. Let’s start with the most important development. Soccer. About a month ago I started playing soccer on Saturday mornings with Gerard and a group of Korean men. We usually meet up at around 8:30AM Saturday morning, which means I sleep in more on the weekdays than on Saturday. This is sometimes problematic as I usually meet up with people for beers on Friday night, but I fight through and it always pays off. About five miles from Namchang is Jinha. Jinha has a very nice soccer facility. So we usually load up in to vans and go there to play. I have never played on a full sized pitch with them, not yet at least. Usually what we do is make a bunch of teams of five players and play on a smaller pitch. It’s a lot of fun. The first time I played I left barely able to walk. As it turns out, if you don’t do any real physical activity for seven months, then try to play soccer with a bunch of Koreans, you get your ass kicked. The real killer is that while I am sitting on the sidelines, sucking air, life flashing in front of my eyes, they are sitting on the sidelines, barely winded, smoking cigarettes and drinking Makeoli, a type of rice wine. Talk about a blow to the old self esteem. Soccer usually goes from around 9AM until 1 in the afternoon. Then we head back to Namchang and get some lunch. The last two Saturdays I have skipped out on soccer with guys in favor of going to the local soccer pitch, maybe thirty minutes walk from my apartment, to play kick the ball around with Hannah, who came down from Ulsan, Clare, Gerard, Cat and Melvin (the newest member of the Namchang crew). During two of the weeks, when I got back from soccer I took a quick shower, then hopped on the bus with Gerard, Clare and Cat and went to Ulsan to watch the Ulsan Hyundai Horang-I (Tigers) play soccer. That is the Ulsan team in the Korean soccer league. They won both games I went to, so that was pretty awesome. Those were good days, wake up, play soccer, go home, go to a soccer match, and then hang out around Ulsan and have dinner and drinks.
During one of the soccer days the Korean guys had a family picnic at the pitch. And they didn’t mess around with it. What started as us playing soccer, ended with a three table spread, including a giant barbecue. Delicious. It was during this that one of the player’s wives approached Gerard and let him know that she knew a couple of girls that wanted to get English lessons from him. For contractual reasons he couldn’t do it. So she asked me if I would be willing. I said, sure, why not. She asked me how much I would charge, and I said it would be free. This was because my contract says that I can’t have any other employment outside of the school, and I do, it’s grounds for termination. Not wanting to get fired, but excited about the prospect of spending time talking to more Koreans, I was perfectly happy to do it for free. So she called them and told them to come to the pitch to meet me. When they got there I discovered that it was two girls. I had no idea what their ages were, which would later make for an embarrassing moment, but they both spoke English very well. They asked me how much I wanted, and I told them it would be free. They insisted on payment, so I explained that I couldn’t accept any money because of my contract. In the end it was agreed that we would meet at their house, where they would treat me to dinner in exchange for talking with them in English. Seemed like a fair deal to me so I was happy about it.
The first night we chose a location that I knew and they came to pick me up with their father. Now, before this I was under the impression that they were college age. This was because they told me that they had just come back from going to an international school in India. My mind just made the jump to International University on its own. So I was fairly surprised and embarrassed when I asked them about the University and they started laughing at me. Turns out I can tell Korean ages for shit. No, they were not in their late teens or early twenties; they were 17 and 14… Korean age. Which means about 15 and 13. Oh, how dumb I felt at that point. But it all worked itself out and I have now been treated to several delicious home-cooked Korean meals. And all I have to do is show up and speak English. Good deal. We meet three times a week; Monday, Wednesday, and Friday, from 8:30 till 10:00. So with that my days became much busier. Now I don’t get home until 10PM three days a week, but I’m not complaining, not at all. Also, they told me that they are moving back to India in June, and if I want some of their furniture I can have it. Awesome.

Living here for the last almost two months has allowed me to make a pretty good group of friends. I usually hang out with Matt, who lives down stairs, Clare and Gerard, who live a few blocks away, Cat, who lives on the other side of town, and now Melvin, who lives just a couple blocks away but I didn’t meet until two weeks ago. Melvin is from South Africa, he’s been living in Namchang a bit longer than me, but he didn’t know anyone here until we randomly met one night in Ulsan. I’d gone up there to hang out with Hannah, and we were joined by Jaimy, a fellow Western Washington University Alum, and Melvin. Somehow during the course of the evenings conversation it was mentioned that he lived in Namchang. To this I replied, ‘What?! I live in Namchang! How do I not know you?!’ An instant friendship was born… and then solidified when we shared a taxi back to Namchang that night, and he discovered he’s lost his apartment key and was subsequently forced to sleep on my floor for the night. So my group of friend consists of five really cool people in Namchang, and my very good friend Hannah up in Ulsan. Not too bad for being here only a couple months.
There isn’t a whole lot to do in Namchang. It’s a small city… very small, and the extent of the nightlife consists of a few bars and some restaurants. Not to be deterred by anything like that, we usually meet up on Thursday nights at what we affectionately call ‘the chicken place.’ The chicken place is a restaurant/bar specializing in various chicken and beer and soju. It has become very dear to me for three reasons. One, the people there are really nice and always happy to see us foreigners come in. Two, the beer is really cheap. And three, service. In Korea the term ‘service’ applies to the free food they bring you after you have been at a place long enough. The equivalent term in the States would be ‘on the house.’ Well, since we go there a lot… at least once a week, and when we go we usually order quite a bit of beer, we tend to get hooked up with the ‘service’.

So Monday, Wednesday, and Friday are busy with school and tutoring. My Thursday is usually busy with school and meeting with friends. Saturday is busy with soccer and hanging out with people and doing stuff (hanging out in Ulsan usually, but last weekend a big group of us went down to Busan). Sunday is usually my chill day. Which means I clean my apartment, and grade tests, and maybe hang out with people for a bit. Tuesday evening are really the only time I don’t have something regular going on, but of course I have been pretty capable of finding things to occupy myself with on those nights as well.

Well, that was a very brief (compared to real life) account of the last month or so. I’m sure I’ll remember more as time goes and I’ll try to write it down. I’d now like to leave you with a couple of ‘drinking with random Koreans’ stories.
Story one: A few weeks back I met Cat and Brittany at a the chicken place for some drinks. It was another teachers birthday, a guy named Micha from Australia. So we met up, had some drinks, then he left to catch the bus down to Busan leaving us to sit and finish our drinks. Through various events it came to pass that two Korean guys joined us at our table. One was my age and the other was a couple years older. We spent the next hour or so talking and drinking and having a good time. Finally the time came for us to go home. I believe this was a Friday night, so I had soccer the next day. Cat and Brittany live on the other side of town, so they went their way and I went mine. It turned out the Koreans lived on my side of town. We continued talking while we walked and next thing I knew we were at my apartment. Tired, but not wanting to be rude, I invited them up to my place for a couple more drinks. We ended up finishing all of my beer before I finally mentioned that I was tired and needed to sleep. I got their numbers, and while we haven’t hung out since, we do keep texting each other trying to make plans to meet up for beers. They also told me that they would help me with Korean. So if I ever have the time I am going to take them up on it. Just another random event in Namchang.
Story two, the more random story: Last Friday I met Gerard and Melvin at another Namchang locale which we refer to as the corner bar. Gerard and I were going to play soccer the next day, so we wanted to take it easy, just have a couple beers and chat before calling it an early night. Well, that was not in the cards. We had just finished our pitcher when a random, fifty something year old Korean man came and sat in out booth with us. He didn’t speak any English, but with the power of makeshift sign language we were able to determine that he wanted to drink with us. So another pitcher was ordered. We tried to communicate and have some drinks and it was pretty fun. Then another Korean joined us. He was thirty five and spoke some English. So more beer was ordered. Then it was determined that the older guy wanted to arm wrestle us. I must say, I put up a pathetic show and was crushed every time. The younger guy was then kind enough to inform me that ‘Ah, his power very big, but your power very small.’ Yeah, thanks for pointing that out. Since we had four countries represented at the table, The US, Ireland, South Africa and Korea, we were each referred to by out nationality. Names were too difficult for them, so I was America, Melvin was South Africa, and Gerard was Ireland. The phrase ‘we are the world’ was said frequently and with gusto, usually while cheersing. This proceeded well into the night, as it would have been really bad manners for us to leave before them, and in the end they paid for everything, in keeping with the Korean custom that the oldest person pays, and Koreans always pay for foreigners. Great country.

Alright, it’s now past two AM and I’m tired. I hope you’ve enjoyed this much belated blog. I will try very hard to not go this long without posting another. Next week I plan on posting my first video blog. So you can look forward to such things as; a tour of my apartment, a glimpse of a night at the chicken place, and some of my classes. Take care everyone. Chao.

P.S. Here's a link to my facebook photo album of Korea so far. It should let you see the pictures even if you don't use facebook.

http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2220436&id=25903479&l=1583889e48

Noraebangin' and Teachin'

It’s been over a week since my last blog, so there is quite a bit to catch up on. It’s hard to know exactly where to start, so I’ll go back to the beginning of last week.

The school week once again found me with nothing to do. Since classes didn’t start until just yesterday, I was faced with another week of having nothing to do. We did have some crazy weather though, two days of snow, two days of sun, one day of warm wind, and one day that a sickeningly humid… crazy. My typical day would look something like this. Show up to work around 8:45am. Check in with my co-teacher, and then go to my classroom in the English Center. At this point I would basically sit around and stare at the computer, check my Facebook continuously, chat with people and just generally wait around until it was time for lunch. At 12:05 I would go back to the teachers’ office, and then go to lunch. Lunch differs daily, but you can always count on having rice, some kind of soup and of course, Kimchi. Always Kimchi. Some lunches are more exciting than others. Some have fish mixed in, others have unknown ingredients, some have tentacles… all are pretty damn good. After lunch I would go back to my office, and wait around until 5 when it was time to go home. There were a couple of days where the after lunch activities varied. On Thursday and Friday for example I had to come help make up new level tests.

Wednesday was the most eventful day of last week. Wednesday found me getting through lunch, and then, at 3 going and playing volleyball with the staff. This is always a fun event. Sadly I will no longer be able to participate as I will be working from 1 to 9, but it was fun while it lasted. After we finished volleyball everyone went to their respective offices and packed up for the day. At 5, when the day was over we all got together and went and had a full staff dinner. The Wednesday before we had had a male staff dinner, this dinner was for the entire staff. It started all 60 or so members of the staff piling into a number of cars and driving to the other side of Namchang, where there was a nice pork BBQ restaurant. We started the event off with introductions of the entire staff. Starting with the first grade teachers, then second, third, fourth, fifth, and sixth. Then they introduced the administrative staff, and last, but certainly not least, the foreigners. While everyone else was able to just stand up and bow, we had to go to the front of the restaurant (which was completely filled by us), be introduced, bow and then we could go back to our seats. While we were up there Matt was kind enough to remark to me under his breath, ‘this kind of feels like the end scene of Star Wars,’ at which point I had to do everything I could not to start laughing my ass off. Once we were sitting back down it was time to eat.

A note on Korean BBQ: For anyone who has never had the pleasure of having this kind of food let me paint a lovely picture of the surroundings and goings on. The Restaurant will usually contain a number of tables, all low to the ground, with cushions to sit on. In the center of the table will be either a small BBQ type thing in which hot coals are placed, or a burner of some kind. Someone will come and light the burner, or add coals and then bring you a plate of raw meat. In this case pork, but there is a number of varieties. Once you have your meat someone at the table, usually the oldest, will start cooking it on the BBQ. Side dishes are also brought out and things like onions, mushrooms, garlic and kimchi can then be added to the grill along with the meat. Once it has cooked to an appropriate degree, the person doing the cooking will pick up a slab of meat with tongs, and then, using a pair of sheers/scissors, will cut the meat into smaller, more manageable pieces. You then let it cook a bit longer, to your own taste, and then pick it off the grill with your chopsticks. Reaching over people is perfectly normal and acceptable. Once you have your meat there is a number of ways to eat it. Either simply dipping it in sauce, or more commonly, placing it on a leaf of lettuce or some such thing, adding some additional ingredients like sauce, kimchi, onions, garlic or whatever, wrapping it all up together in the lettuce and then eating it. Once the plate of meat has been consumed you finish the meal with rice and soup. It’s amazing. Oh, and did I mention the beer and soju. Those flow freely… very freely.

After around 2 hours the meal was complete and most of the Koreans were intoxicated to some degree. I myself, having partaken in the drinking as well, was feeling pretty content. This could only mean one thing, it was time to go to a Noraebang. A noraebang is a place with rooms you can rent out with your group, in which you sing karaoke style. Copious amounts of alcohol are of course available and everyone is expected to join in with the singing. So here is the situation I found myself in: I am in this small room with 20+ Koreans. Matt and I are the only foreigners. I am having flashbacks of my experience the week before and am not wanting to repeat it. There’s a crazy light show going on, involving lots of colors and a strobe light. The principle and the vice principle are singing a duet. There is a rack of beer on the table. People are pushing me up to the front telling me to dance and sing. This is, by far, one of the weirdest, craziest, most fun experiences I have had. I don’t know how I managed to make it out of there while maintaining some level of sobriety… but I found a way. I also ended up singing a number of songs with Matt, most notably ‘All you need is Love’. This ended with Matt and me holding the microphones, while swaying back and forth with all of the Koreans, arms around each other, at once.

Finally it was time to leave the noraebang after a couple hours. However, Koreans being the hardcore drinkers they are, were not ready to call it a night. At this point I was reasonably buzzed, to slightly drunk. I really didn’t want to get any further than that, but, if you want to be respected by your peers in this country you can’t back down. So, I had to get tricky. We went to restaurant where we ordered eel, beer and soju. The eel was damn tasty, the beer was about what you’d expect, and the soju was as awful as ever. I can handle drinking beer, that’s not a problem. It’s the soju that kills me. It’s nasty stuff, totally sneaks up on you. It’s nowhere near as bad as pisco, mind you, but it’s still pretty rough. Matt kept reassuring me that as long as I could keep with them, keep my cool, and control myself, I’d be in. So I did the best I could to avoid the shots, took only half shots when the time came, and resorted to some other trickery, and in the end I was able to maintain and still feel pretty good by the time it was time to go home. We left at 11, which was imperative because the pizza place closed at 11:30, and if there’s one thing we really needed it was pizza. So we grabbed some pizzas, went back to my place, ate them, and then turned in. Song Ho, my co-teacher, was pretty drunk, so he stayed at my place and slept on a mat on my floor. It was quite the evening, and the next morning came far too soon, but I felt pretty alright all things considered.

Friday was another exciting day. For one thing, I got my alien registration card. This allowed me to set up a bank account… though I still have no money to put in it… oh well, soon enough. It also happened to be Matt’s birthday. So after school I went home, took a shower, changed the clothes, and headed into Ulsan. The night started appropriately enough at a pizza place. From there we moved on to a local bar. We stayed here for some time. There was around 30 people there that night. We got there and had some beers starting at around 8:30. By 11 or so I was really hungry, so I talked Gerard into walking to McDonalds with me. Nothing is better when your drinking than fries and a couple of cheeseburgers. While we were there we talked to a couple of Korean men who were kind enough to inform me that I was handsome. Strange this country. We made our way back to the bar and hung out there until around 12:30 at which point is was, once again, time for a noraebang. This Noraebang experience was a bit different in that it was mostly foreigners there. This didn’t detract from the experience; it just meant I knew more of the songs. Unfortunately this also meant that I sang a lot more. Which was really a pity for everyone else I’m sure. But regardless, I had a really good time. I think we made our way back to Namchang at around 4AM. We were somehow able to cram five people in the taxi, which was great because it meant we barely had to pay anything.

I woke up the next afternoon, around 1:30, feeling really good. I wasn’t expecting to feel good, but I was actually pretty well rested. It was nice. Everyone else was waking up around the same time too. I got on facebook and talked to Cat who asked if I wanted to go grab lunch with her, Clare and Gerard. I was really hungry, and they were getting a seafood soup at a place next to my house, so I was all over that. I met up with them around 2:30 and went into the restaurant where we were treated to a heaping bowl of soup which consisted of homemade rice noodles, clams and shrimp. SOOOO GOOD! And only 5000 won per person. What a fantastic country. After that we went and hung out on the roof of my apartment for an hour or so. It was really fun. There was a St. Patrick’s Day party that night at one of the foreigner bars in Ulsan, so we decided to meet up and go check it out later. I went home and did some laundry, and then met up with Gerard at 9. We grabbed a quick cup of coffee and then went to Ulsan. This was my first foreigner bar experience, and I have to say, I really wasn’t impressed. It all goes back to my theory about hanging out with other Americans when I was in Chile; if I’d wanted to do that, I wouldn’t have gone to another country. So, while it was pretty fun, I was happy to leave at the end of the night. I can easily imagine avoiding places like that in the future. Just really not my scene. It was like looking around the bar and being back in the States, then looking out the window and being in Korea… I found myself looking out the window a lot.

This more or less brings us to the beginning of the week, and therefore the beginning of my real teaching experience. Monday I started on my actual schedule, which means that I got to school at noon, had lunch and then started working. The first day was level testing. Basically all of the students come in at different levels, so we have to give them tests to find out how much they know. My first group was all third graders, and mostly third grade girls. The good thing about third graders is that they don’t have an attitude… the bad thing is that they have waaaaaaay to much energy. Now, evidently I was not supposed to be giving this test alone, as I didn’t speak Korean and they didn’t understand much English. But this is Korea, and what’s supposed to happen is frequently lost in translation. So I found myself in a room with a bunch of Korean third graders who didn’t seem to understand me, and who kept asking me questions in Korean, which I couldn’t answer. This was two hour test also. A two hour test which no one informed how to give them. So I had to make it up as I went. It worked out well enough though. It was pretty crazy, but it was also fun. The test was in two parts, and the second part was an individual interview. There is something somewhat disconcerting when you sit down with a Korean child, ask them what food they like, and they just stare at you, without any comprehension. It’s at that point you realize you may have a problem.
The second group I tested was from 4th, 5th and 6th grade. This time I was fortunate enough to have a Korean teacher with me. So things went way, way smoother. Though I did have some problems with the interview questions. Some students were able to answer me in almost fluent English, on the other hand, one girl couldn’t stop laughing every time I asked her a question. Uncontrollable laughter, which I was informed, stemmed from the fact that she liked me so much. Silly children. By the time we finished it was 8pm, and it was time to go home. I was pretty worn out by this point, but not nearly as worn out as I would be the following day.

Which brings us to the following day, AKA today. Today was the first day I actually taught. Of course, I didn’t know I was actually teaching until I got to school. Yes, Korea operates on a need to know basis, but evidently you don’t need to know until an hour before you are supposed to do something. Awesome. So, since we had just received out books, hadn’t had a chance to look at them at all or anything, I decided it was time for some introduction and Icebreakers. So I put together a quick slide show about myself, made up some questions for the kids and hoped to God that this would take me through a full 50 minutes of class. It didn’t… but thank God for hangman. My first group was intermediate, older students, all in 5th and 6th grade. The lesson went pretty well, but I was left with more free time than I had wanted. I had one girl in the class who I can already tell will be a major pain in the ass. She is in 6th grade and she is anti authority. You say do something and she looks at you and says no. I had to get angry at her once to make her stop doing whatever it was she was up to. The second class was all intermediate 3rd graders… in other words, the most advanced 3rd graders. They were a lot more fun. They were all hyper, and loud and crazy, but fun. This class was almost all little girls. So far I have found out that little Korean girls love me. The bad side of that is that they all want my attention constantly. Which means a lot of screaming and shrieking. I’ve decided to go by Tim in my classes because it is easier than Ryan, so I constantly hear, ‘Tim, Tim, Tim, TIM, TIM, TIM!!!’ in piercing little 3rd grade Korean girl voices. Either that or ‘Teacha’, teacha’, teacha’ TEACHA’, TEACHA’!!!’. They are fun, and very cute, but I am sure that they will slowly drain the life out of me. The third class I taught was all the advanced students. This class was really easy because they all understood me perfectly and answered me perfectly. It was almost too easy. So I will have to up the difficulty in that class. My last class of the night was slightly less advanced, and also very loud. There were also some potential trouble makers in this group too. One boy sitting in the back of the room, with his super cool, long, side sweeping hair, decided he wanted to roll up his question sheet like a cigarette and pretend to smoke. Don’t even know what to do about that. Don’t even know where to start. Oh well.

So, what have I learned in the last couple weeks? Noraebangs are really fun. When the weather is nice Namchang is really cool. Korean food is still awesome. You can never be sure what weather you’ll have. And from my students; I have a beard, I have blue eyes, and I have a small head. Hmmm… Alright then. Well, that’s about it for now. Chao.

One Week Down

Sometimes you don’t realize the small things in everyday life that you take totally for granted until you don’t have them anymore. Simple things like being able to read the labels on boxes that will inform you whether or not you are buying laundry detergent, dish washer detergent or fabric softener. I ran into this problem just the other day. I finally got my first 300000 won (around $300 US) as a part of my settling money from my school. So I decide that it was time to take care of some essential. First on the list was laundry detergent. So I went to the store that is next to my apartment and found the appropriate aisle… and then realized I can’t read Korean. So I sat and stared for awhile before eventually giving up with the hopes of coming back the next day after consulting the dictionary. Today I went back and was able to figure it out. That’s when I was faced with my second hurtle, trying to decipher the washing machine. Again, not being able to read Korean made for an interesting experience. Thankfully, with the help of the convenient little pictures, and pressing a lot of random buttons, I was able to figure that out too. It’s always the little things that you don’t think about in your normal routine that cause the problems.

So I started school this past week. And by started school I mean I went to school, and then spent the entire time sitting around with nothing to do. As it turns out, the classes I’ll be teaching don’t start until the 15th of March. So for now I have a loooooot of free time. Not that that’s too bad. It has allowed me to take care of some things, like getting a physical, and staring at the wall for hours on end. My first day of school started off interestingly enough. The day started by introducing all the new teachers to the staff. In Korea public school teachers change schools every two years or so. So there were a lot of new teachers at Onyang elementary, myself included. The introduction took the form of all of us walking to the front of the room and then having our names read out loud individually. After each persons’ name was read they would step to the center, bow to the room and then go back and take their seat. Guess whose name was read last… that’s right, me. It was all good though. After that we were introduced to the school via the video broadcast system that we have. So again, each teacher stood in front of the camera individually, had their name read out loud, and then bowed. When that was all done we went back to our respective offices. At this point I didn’t have an office, so I went to the teacher’s office and sat around for awhile. Then the entire staff went to lunch at a local restaurant. I have decided to eat anything and everything that is put in front of me in this country, at least once. So I have been able to eat some pretty cool/delicious food so far. I don’t know what half of it is, but it’s a good time. When we got done with lunch I went over to the Onyang English Center, where I’ll be teaching, and got oriented. It’s a really nice building. I’ve been told it’s only three or so years old. So every room has a 50 inch TV and some other nice technology. The day ended at 5pm and when I was done I went into the city to grab a cup of coffee with Hannah. It was a pretty good first day, though a bit uneventful.

Wednesday came around and found me again staring at the wall for the first half of the day. We had lunch in the cafeteria that day and I was happy to discover more delicious Korean food. After lunch my co-teacher took me to the hospital in Ulsan to get a physical. I had to take care of that before I could get my Alien Registration Card, which I need to be able to get a phone, internet, a bank account and basically everything. It was a pretty quick affair. We went in, filled out some paperwork, they checked my vision, my hearing, took some chest X-rays, checked my teeth, weighed me measured me, took some blood and I was on my way. When we got back to school I was pleasantly surprised to find out that it was volleyball day. Every Wednesday all the staff gets together and plays volleyball. I didn’t know this beforehand so I was stuck playing in dress shoes and slacks, but it was still really fun. It was pretty hilarious too. The Koreans take their activities seriously. So each person had on a nice track suit. I hear they get all decked out for day hikes too, so I’m excited for the weather to get better. That night the male staff members had dinner with the new principal. This turned out to be a hell of a good time. We went to this nice restaurant just out of the city. The food was spectacular. Duck with vegetables grilled up right there at the table, and what I was told was ‘mountain pig.’ I don’t really know what make it ‘mountain’ pig, but it was sooooooo good. Where there is food in Korea there is also alcohol, and lots of it. Drinking is a national past time of the Koreans. So we drank, a lot. And in Korea it is impolite to refuse a drink when it is offered to you. So more drinking occurred. After about two hours of this I was feeling pretty damn good. We finished dinner and my co-teacher decided that what we needed to do was drink more. At this point it was Matt, me, my co-teacher, and another Korean teacher. It was only 7pm, and I was feeling only a little drunk, and he was the oldest, which in Korea makes him the boss, so we obliged. This took the form of going to the store and buying two bottles of Soju, two bottles of some horrifically sweet Korean wine, and five bottles of makkeolli. Needless to say we didn’t finish all of this. But that didn’t stop us from drinking a ton of it, all in about 45 minutes. So I was pretty hammered by 8 or 8:30pm. Not good. Song Ho, my co-teacher, was passed out in the bathroom by this point. I made my way upstairs to my apartment after an unfortunate incident involving Matt’s sink, and a revisiting of everything I had eaten in the past four hours. I think this turned out to be a blessing in disguise though, because if I had gone to sleep with all of that in my system I would have been in even worse shape the next day.

7:30am came very quickly that Thursday. I have had a lot of hangovers in my life, but that was one of the worst as far as having to be at work. It was good that I continued to have nothing to do, because I was utterly useless all day long. School passed by long and slow that day. I didn’t quite feel right until about 3pm. And even then I wasn’t 100%. I did however get to have pizza that night, so I was pretty happy about that. I also went down to the local ‘coffee’ shop with Matt, Cat, Clare and Gerard that evening which was really nice. Friday was another fun filled day of doing nothing at school. I did however find out that my classes won’t be starting until the 15th, that I will be teaching 3rd, 4th, 5th and 6th graders, and that I will have no more than 16 kids per class, but probably closer to 11 or 12. After I was done with my nothing I went into the city to have dinner with some people. It was a pleasant sort of evening. Again with the damn good food. Had a couple beers, but nothing crazy, not even enough for a proper buzz really. But it was still a good time. Today was spent hanging out around the apartment, figuring out my laundry situation, and being generally lazy, which is always nice. Also I had more pizza.

I have been here for just over a week now. That really isn’t enough time to judge everything, but so far I feel like I am adjusting to Korea faster than I adjusted to Chile. I think that this is for two reasons. First off, before coming here to Korea I hadn’t spent more than a few months in a single place for awhile. I was already used to moving around, and think that has helped. Second, I think finding and fitting in with the community of foreigners here has helped a lot. It is really nice to have some people around who know what’s going on and who can show you the ropes. Yeah, it’s only been a week, but so far I love it here. I know that that will probably change. Things like this tend to come in waves. One week you’re happy, the next week you’re miserable. But let’s face it, that’s just life in general. That idea doesn’t just apply to living in another country. We all go through different phases like that, even in if you’ve been living in the same town your whole life. So I’m not worried about it. I’m just going to keep on doing what I do, try to keep an open mind, and get the most out of this experience. Chao

First Blog From South Korea

Well, I have now been in South Korea for four days, I can tell you right now that I love it. Damn fine country. Nice, friendly people. Delicious food. But, I will get to that in a bit. First things first, the story of how I got here.

I left Olympia on Feb. 23rd. Like when I went to Chile I caught a shuttle up to the airport. My flight was at 5:30PM so I got picked up at 1:30PM. The ride up was relatively uneventful. I had a chance to talk to a lady from Minnesota about travel and such, so that was nice, helped pass the time. I got up to Seatac around 2:30PM, and checked in. Then I went to my gate and passed through the fastest security line ever. No one was in line, it was nice. I got to my gate and hung out, made some calls and got onto my computer. As it turned out, one of the other teachers, a girl named Avery, was passing through Seatac and taking the same flight as me to LAX. So we met up and started talking. The flight to LA wasn’t terribly eventful. When we got to LA we had a hell of a time finding our next terminal, what with it being in a separate building. But we got there. I made the mistake of forgetting to empty my water bottle before I went through security, and so had to go through the line twice. But we had a long layover so it wasn’t a problem. I knew that another teacher going to Ulsan was one the same flight as Avery and me. A guy named Jeremy. I got the gate but there was no sign of him. So I made some last phone calls, cancelled my cell phone service and waited. Eventually Jeremy showed up. His flight had been late from St. Louis, so he didn’t get there until around 11PM. We talked and hung out until our next flight was ready to leave. This would be a 13 hour flight over the Pacific to Seoul. I had the good fortune to get a window seat so I was able to spend the majority of the flight sleeping. Which was lucky because 13 hours is a long time to just sit and watch the same movies over and over again. I was sitting next to a very strange woman though. When I woke up she started telling me all about her acting days. She was either the most ditzy woman in the world, or she was completely drunk. I couldn’t tell which… maybe a bit of both.

We landed at Incheon airport in Seoul at around 7AM local time. We got our bags and went through customs. Then we exchanged some money, and went and found a nice quiet patch of floor to sit on so we could use the free wifi at the airport. Our next flight left at 1PM from a different airport entirely. So we had time to kill. After using the internet for an hour or so we went and caught a train to Gimpo airport. This was an adventure because we had to haul all of our bags the whole way, no carts. I was pouring sweat by the end. After a thirty minute train ride, and some wandering around, we finally got to Gimpo airport. From there we would take an hour flight to Ulsan. We had some time so we went and got some food. Then we went through security and went to our gate. We had a two hour wait until our flight so we talked and waited. Finally we got on the plane… which got to the runway… which then stopped because of mechanical problems… which allowed enough time to pass for the weather to deteriorate… which cancelled our flight… and all other flights to Ulsan that day. So we were suddenly stuck in Seoul. All the things we had been worried about had gone off without a hitch. This was supposed to be the easy part. A short, one hour flight to Ulsan, then up to others to tell us what to do and where to go. But alas, it was not meant to be.

We got back to the terminal and tried to decide what to do. Fortunately we had been given a number to call in case of a problem like this. So we called Scott Kim, who told us we should try to exchange the tickets for a flight the next day and then get a hotel room. So we exchanged our tickets for the first flight to Ulsan the next day, leaving at 6:50AM. Then one of Scott Kim’s associates came to the airport and helped us find a hotel to stay at. He called the hotel who told him they would be sending a shuttle to pick us up along with all our many bags. Well, that shuttle turned out to be a sedan. We had to cram all of our bags into the car, and then fold ourselves into it as well. It was not the best car ride I have ever experienced. But we got to a hotel and the driver said he would take us back at 5:30AM the next day. We rented two rooms for the night, one for Avery and one for myself and Jeremy. And so it came to pass that my first night in South Korea was spent sharing a bed with another man. Hell of a story though.

We got up the next day went to the airport. And SUCCESS! We made it to Ulsan with almost no difficulty. From there our various co-teachers came and picked us up to take us to our apartments and schools. We made plans to meet up at 10am with the rest of the group of new teachers and then took off. My co-teacher picked me up last. His name was Myeong Song Ho, or just Song Ho. He helped me take my bags to his car, then we left so he could show me my school and apartment before bringing me to where I was supposed to meet everyone for lunch. As we started off I couldn’t help but notice that we were leaving Ulsan behind us… and we just kept going. Next thing I know we are pulling into a small city called Namchang, fifteen minutes south of Ulsan. Didn’t see that one coming. He took me to my school, which is called Onyang Elementary School. He showed me around and introduced me to some people. Then we went to find my apartment. This proved to be rather difficult, and it took us around thirty minutes of driving around to find it. We went up and I dropped by bags off. Then he took me back to the school for a moment before driving back up to Ulsan so I could meet with everyone.

I met up with the group in front of the Hyundai Department Store. This was the second moment I felt discomforted by where I was going to be living. Everyone else was talking about how they lived just a few blocks away, or just on the other side of the city. I, on the other hand, lived completely out of the city, in a different city. A much smaller city, that took 15 minutes to get to by car or taxi, and 40 minutes to get to by bus. “Well,” I thought to myself, “That blows.” But oh well, such is life. When the whole group was there we went to a restaurant and had some amazing Korean food. Korean food is incredible and I am sooooo happy I get to eat so much of it over the next year or two. While we ate, a teacher who had already been here for six months named Kasham gave a presentation on what we could expect about living in Korea. She gave us a great rundown of proper manners and the like. It was very nice. Our group won’t get an orientation until the end of March, which makes no sense, but welcome to Korea. So this was the closest we would get to an orientation. After we ate everyone made plans to meet up that evening… except me, because I had no idea how to get to Ulsan from Namchang. I wasn’t terribly happy about that, but I decided to look at it in the best possible light. Yes, I would be very removed from everyone I knew up to this point, but it would give me the opportunity to delve much deeper into the culture of this country. So I felt a little better about it.

My co-teacher came and picked me up and took me back to my place. Then he took me to the store and helped me by some essentials. Water, garbage basket, chop sticks, cups, ramen and of course, soju. Soju is the drink of Korea. It is basically some kind of rice liquor that tastes like terrible vodka. But who am I to turn down a free drink, especially from an elder in Korea. We went back to my place and had a couple shots of soju, then he walked me around so I would be sure to know where the school was and how to get there. Only a ten to fifteen minute walk from my front door to my school, not too bad at all. He walked me back up to my place, and then I was on my own. I fortunately found out I could steal internet from someone and was able to get online and talk with some people and check in the family for the first time since Incheon the morning before. On a brief side note, my apartment is amazing. I have a kitchen/dining room, a living room, a bedroom and a bathroom. It is definitely not a small studio apartment. I watched some TV on my computer, and I was getting ready to head to bed, even though it was only 8PM when there was a knock on my door. And who should be there but a fellow foreigner.

As it turns out, there is another foreigner living in my building with me. His name is Matt Smith. He also teaches at my school, but he works during the day and I work the after school hours. Anyhow, Matt was kind enough to come up to my apartment, introduce himself, offer to show me around Namchang, and then invite me out for drinks up in Ulsan that night. So I said, hell yes, and we were off. First there was a forty minute bus ride to Ulsan, during which I met another foreigner living in Namchang, a Scottish girl named Cat. We made it into new downtown and then met up with another foreigner named George. Downtown Ulsan is divided into two parts. Old downtown, or Shanae, and new downtown, or Samsan. We spent that first night in Samsan. It was a fun evening, full of beer and soju drinking. We took a taxi back at the end of the night and I got home around 3:30AM, exhausted.

I slept until 12:30 the next afternoon. Then I took a shower and got ready. Around 2 I went down to Matt’s apartment. From there he walked me around Namchang and showed me where everything was. The best thing about Matt so far is that he may love Pizza even more than I do. So I now know all the best places to get pizza in Namchang, thank God. Not that I don’t like Korean food, because I love Korean food, but there is no greater food in the world than pizza. We walked around Namchang for about two hours, then we caught a bus to Shanae so I could see that. We walked around for a bit then walked over to Samsan before catching a bus back to Namchang for dinner with the Namchang crew.

There are currently nine foreigners living in Namchang. I got to hang out with six of them that night. Brian from Tennessee, Andy from New Zealand, Gerard from Ireland, Clare from Maryland, Cat from Scotland, and Matt from Arizona. We all met up at a Korean BBQ place. Korean BBQ is amazing. The bring you a tray full of raw, marinated pork, then you cook it yourself on a small BBQ built into the table you are sitting at. Combine that with about fifteen Korean side dishes and you have one hell of a fine meal. This paired with beer and the occasional shot of Soju made for a great dinner, which led to us going to a local bar, which led to us going to Ulsan and staying out until almost 4AM.

By the time the next morning rolled around I was pretty beat. This was Sunday, and since there was no school Monday because it was a holiday, we had another day to just hang out. It also happened to be the 28th, which means the Namchang Market was up and going. So Matt, Clare, Gerard and I went to the market. Then we went to the store and bought some beer and went and sat on our roof for a couple of hours and just hung out. My very good friend Hannah had gotten back to Ulsan late the night before, so I had plans to meet up with her and some other people for dinner that night at 7PM. So around six Matt and I went and caught a bus into the city. When we got there Matt took off to go and meet some other friends, and I went with everyone to dinner. It was pretty bizarre for one interesting reason, that reason being that of the six people who went out to dinner, four had gone to school at Western. So it was pretty strange to have four people from Bellingham all sitting together for dinner… in Ulsan, South Korea. After dinner we went back to Hannah’s place, had some wine, played some Korean games, hung out and talked for awhile. At some point during the night I was suddenly hit by what had happened down in Chile. It was a very sobering moment. I had been aware of it since the night before… but it didn’t sink in until then. That’s when I really started worrying about my Chilean friends. I went to bed fairly early that night.The next day, being today, was Monday, a holiday, so no work. Hannah came down to Namchang to visit and see my place. So we hung out for a few hours, read some Nietzsche, talked about stuff. It was a good time. After she left I went to the store, then came back and ironed my clothes for work tomorrow and cleaned up a bit around the apartment, and ate some food.

Tomorrow is my first day of school. I don’t really know what to expect. I’m pretty sure that I won’t be teaching tomorrow. I think I am just going in early to introduce myself to the staff and the students. I think there will be a welcoming/beginning of the new year ceremony, and then lunch. I’m not sure when I’ll start teaching yet, but I am very excited to begin. My first days in Korea have gone very well. I started off being somewhat apprehensive about my living situation, what with being so far away from everything, but now I am very happy about it. There is a very nice, very cool community of other foreigners out here. It’s a small city so I won’t be overwhelmed. I can make it into the city in less than an hour, and then retreat to a more quiet area when I’ve had my fill. It’s really a perfect situation for me. I think that it is going to be a great year. Well, that’s all I have for now. I hope everyone is doing well, and I’ll try to keep everyone updated from here on out. Chao.