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