For ever and for ever when I move

Well hello there.

It’s been awhile, and for this I apologize.

Athough time seems to have stopped on this blog, it has done anything but in the living world. Today is my one month anniversary in Korea, happy anniversary to me! I hope Korea is happy about it as well. Anniversaries are lonely things to celebrate alone.

Anyhow, boy have things been happening. This past week was a big Korean holiday: Chuseok, the celebration of the harvest, which means that all the Korean kiddos go to grandmother’s house for the weekend and the foreigner teachers bond together to try and battle the traffic and make something of their unexpected- and- rather- abrubt week off from teaching duties. Being that we are all without our official Alien Registration Cards, and consequently unable to leave the country, a small collection of Wisco grad kids and I gathered up our cameras, notebooks and odd- number of travel clothes and went to Seoul! Hooray!

It was great. My second time in Seoul, and I’m in love.

There are, however, a few notable accomplishments that must not be overlooked.

First big demon: the subway. When one is a newbie to big cities in general, subways are a formidable beast to face. There that newbie stands, a colorful bowl of spaghetti noodles mapped out and open in their hand, and for whatever confusing, awful reason, that map stubbornly refuses to let up its secrets. Meanwhile, all around is ordered chaos, a never- ending flow of people that know exactly what needs to be done to get past those beeping, blocking machines and don’t appreciate the awkwardly gawking around and blocking the perfectly synchronized flow of traffic.

Well friends, I have to admit that on my first trip to Seoul, I was that newbie. I meekly followed where my equally foreign friends led (which was, I’ll admit again, to a safe corner of the subway system as we poked the map and begged it to release its secrets), but now! Oh, now.

Let me just tell you, I am a newbie no more. I have conquered the Seoul subway system. When I take that bowl of colorful spaghetti noodles from its expertly folded home in my back pocket, those beautiful lines all crissing and crossing that enormous span of city, I hold a puzzle! An intricate puzzle that allows me to get from any point in Seoul to any other point in Seoul almost instantaneously. It’s amazing. Instead of confusion, it’s a code. Awesome. Plus, I now have a T-Money card that is good for use on the subway, for any taxi in Seoul, and for half the pay- phones in the city. Equally awesome. Goodbye, awkward gawking. Hello suave new white girl, welcome to your second home.

Second demon to face down: traveling alone in such a big city as Seoul. I have to admit, this also was intimidating for me. Something about the ultra- foreign feeling of the language, the absurd way I stick out in a crowd, and the still- not- completely- acclimated- to- the- culture in Korea has made me feel a bit like a turtle roaming out of its shell. I kind of miss that cozy turtley- shell feeling.

But, again, I’ve done it. My first subway ride on my own was a bit nerve- wracking. It didn’t help that as I sat alone in the corner of the train, a little old Korean man sitting across from me and staring at me, without a single blink, dusk slowly setting outside the windows, a blazingly bright traditional Korean mask rested on my head, (one that I had decorated earlier that day at the Seoul World Design Fair 2010). It wasn’t long before I cracked under the pressure and took it off.

Not only did I travel alone to meet an old friend from Madison that evening, but I spent the entirety of the next day kicking around Seoul on my own, and it felt great. I unexpectedly visited the Gyeongbokgung Palace in downtown Seoul, figured out the city map and made it to Insadong, (okay, it was only a few blocks away, but still….): the artsy hub of Seoul, known for art galleries, paint studios and a beautiful open- air market that stretches for several blocks. It was so peaceful to wander the city alone without the stressed- out feeling that has been camping in the back of my head for far too long.

The next few days in Seoul were relatively uneventful in terms of blogosphere ratings, but for this:

Picture us, three ragged companions with me on a train back to rural Yeoju after three nights of very little sleep. Matt plays with his iPad, I sit beside him reading a book, Brian sits beside me staring out the window, Ryan sits beside Brian napping with his headphones in.

We are tired. We are hungry. We have very little money and we haven’t eaten any food all day. The train unexpectedly unloads us and we have to transfer. Before this, we accidentally rode on the train for too long and had to backtrack twenty minutes. We want to go home and we each want to sleep in our own beds. Seoul is beautiful but exhausting. Korea is beautiful and exhausting. I want to be in my own bed in my big apartment and I want to sleep for a very, very long time.

Transfer in Yeong Peyong, get off the train and walk a half hour through the downtown towards the bus stop. It is Wednesday, Chuseok day, and aside from soldiers in the streets with their families and random scatterings of large groups of friends, there are few people out. We are a gangly, the odd ones out in the streets and we are hungry. Most of the restaurants are closed, but as we are passing Baskin Robbins we see a little hole- in- the- wall restaurant beside it that is pretty packed with people. We look at each other and decide to walk in.

Enter the hole in the wall restaurant. There is one open table in the middle and three filled, the restaurant is very small. The corner table to the left is brimming with a group of teenage friends, the back corner table has a couple of old men laughing and eating, their eyes beginning to have the drunken Soju glaze in them. The table to the right has a little old man, his wife and daughter and they have an abundance of food and alcohol on their table. The lady that owns the restaurant clears off the fourth table and wipes away the dead flies and mosquitos as we sit.

Little old man on the table to the right is extremely entertained that we have entered this restaurant. He grabs Ryan’s attention and speaks loudly in Korean, I am beginning to see that he is quite drunk, and he uses his chopsticks to feed Ryan food from his communal dish in the center of his table. Little old drunken Korean man then walks to the back table, grabs a bit of food from their communal center plate, and proceeds to walk back to our table feed it to Ryan. Ryan is doing well under all this attention. The rest of us are half- paying attention, half- figuring out how the hell we’re going to order any food when nothing is in English and we’re bone- weary with exhaustion.

Little drunk old Korean man then decides to feed me a bite of his food, via his hand with his chopsticks, and I am too tired to refuse so I let him. I don’t want to think about what it is, so I just chew. And chew and chew and chew. It’s unchewable, I can’t think about it so I just swallow. One huge gulp and it is down.

“Guys, whatever we order, we do not want that. I promise you. Don’t get what he has. Please. It’s not meat.”

The nice Korean woman is trying her best to take our order but the little drunk old Korean man behind us is telling her we want what he has, pointing at his dish with much enthusiasm, my eyes are begging Brian to change it but the woman is crossing her arms in the ‘no’ symbol and walks away.

At this point, little drunk old Korean man decides to feed us shots of Soju and mechu (beer) mixed together. In the Korean culture it is considered very rude to refuse drinks, especially from people that are on a higher tier of respect than you. Being unsure whether his age is enough to qualify him on a higher tier of respect, and knowing that refusing it will be a much greater battle than taking it, I regretfully accept the shot, and immediately afterwards find another bite of unchewable chunk and liver- paste noodles in my mouth and, desperate not to puke, gag before spitting out the unchewable into a napkin wad beneath my plate.

The rest of the meal consisted in teary disbelief at the enormous plate of pig intestine and, possibly testicle, that we had knowingly- but- powerlessly ordered as all the sounds, sights and smells swirled around me and smacked me hard in my empty gut.

As soon as possible we excavated that restaurant and learned the hard way that a hole- in- the- wall restaurant in Madison is incredibly different than a hole- in- the- wall restaurant in Korea. We trudged on to the bus station and hungrily, with the taste of intestine hoovering on our lips, split ways to our apartments.

Rarely before has a bed felt so wonderful. 😉

Hello, culture shock. Hello, new side of Korean food. Hello bright new world! Can’t wait to see what’s next, haha. Suffice it to say I’ve been taking it easy for the last few days, reading, eating rice, eating eggs, ordering safe things like kimbop and dragon noodle soup, both of which are incredibly delicious and wonderful.

Well! That should be enough of a post to make up for awhile. Take care, until we meet agaiiiiiinnnnnnnnnnnnnn!!! I promise in the next post I will use more pictures than I use words. That’ll be a change, eh? 😉

I have made a terrible mistake.

This morning I woke early, as per intention to write a lesson plan. Up until now, I have been eating an egg every morning. One egg. Plain. Very boring. No coffee.

This morning, however, I had no eggs. My one egg per morning routine slowly and steadily decreased the population of eggs in my fridge until, regretfully, there were none. Not even one: none. There was one yesterday but today is today, and today there are none.

Delightfully seizing the opportunity that the extra time of my early morning provided, I grabbed my wallet and retreated down the five flights of stairs to the convenience store located beneath my apartment. (Actually, that was a lie. I take the elevator, the stairs make me dizzy.)

First mission: buy some coffee. Second mission: find milk for breakfast. Though there are two boxes of cereal on the fridge in my apartment, (a gift from the former teacher living here before me, along with the eggs), there is no milk.

Mission one, coffee. I begin my search with a walk to the back corner, near the ice cream freezer, where I know I have seen little coffee- looking cups. Bingo: little cups filled with dried powder, just add hot water. A fine option, but all I’ve had is dried powdery coffee, so I decide to grab one and continue to peruse the store.

On to the back freezer: jackpot! Jardin coffee, which comes in little pouches, simply rip off the top and pour over ice! There are at least five different colored pouches, so there are plenty of flavors. Or, if you’re not feeling the pouch, there are little adorable bottles “a cafe la”, though they look expensive. Four flavors, one of which is black, I think it must be americano–so basically, the coffee I want, loosened up with water. Naturally, due to my combination of desperation for coffee and my need to know what I’m dealing with, I grab one purple bag of Jardin coffee and one red bottle of “a cafe la”. Set. Next mission: milk.

My arms are getting a little full, but I grab a blue carton that has pictured a splash of milk on the front. Next to it is a carton with pictures of plums on it, so I grab that too.

“Need help?” asks the guy at the counter, being that he speaks a little English and I am the only customer in the store, and that he is very nice. “Ummm…..” I artfully respond, arms full of coffee samples and two cartons of liquid. “Sure.” He walks back to me, and, as I try to explain that I am searching for coffee, he grabs me a small cup full of ice cubes for the Jardin coffee before telling me that he has an espresso machine at the counter. “Oh GREAT!” I respond, grabbing a little triangle thing of seaweed and rice before following him to the counter.

Ten thousand Won later and I have a shot of espresso, a pouch of coffee, a cup of powdery coffee stuff, a little red bottle of milky coffee- looking stuff, a triangle of seaweed rice cake, a carton of milk and a carton of plum juice. I tip back the espresso (much to the surprise of the kid at the counter) and… it’s not bad. Close to coffee but more like a strong cup of coffee than espresso. Satisfied, I thank the kid at the counter, ask for a bag and hop back on the elevator.

Now, things are not so hot. On the contrary, thing are extremely hot but not so good. Very bad, actually. I sit at my computer making a blog post instead of a lesson plan, my mouth burning terribly from the small triangle of seaweed kimchi rice thing I ate. I unwrapped it (very badly, I ripped the seaweed), unwittingly bit in and ate almost all of it before I realized what an awful idea it was.

As though in mockery of my burning pain, the cereal box showered me with moths upon opening it, the plum juice is the sweetest juice in the world, and this coffee does nothing for the burn.

My last resort: grapes. Pop it in, chew off the peel and spit it out, spit out the cluster of seeds in the middle, pretend like the burn is going away.

No more spicy food in the morning. Breakfasts are not for experimentation. They are for one egg, nice and simple, and time left for lesson plans. None of this breaking from the haven of normalcy:

I want a cinnamon roll and a piping hot, strong cup of coffee.

Brief but awesome tale of my last fifty minutes:

Picture this. Me, sitting at my cubicle desk in a sea of teacher cubicle desks. My desk faces the wall in a cluster of five desks. Two cute, younger teachers are at the desks facing mine, Mr. Choi sits at the desk beside me. We’re desk buddies. The art teacher sits at the desk that is added to our cluster of four. She always wears very bright clothing. One of her favorites is an electric blue tanktop covered in a lacy black sleeved shirt, with the tanktop extending almost into a skirt. Another especially eye- catching combination is her hot pink pants with some ruffly, artsy shirt. Her makeup, though not overdone, is definitely more colorful than the other women’s.

So, here I am, Thursday afternoon, finished teaching four of my classes. I’m currently making a word- search for my extra classes this evening, of “Words That Are Really Fun, like Booya” and searching my brain for cool equivalents of “awesome”, “neat”, “rad” and “super”. Suddenly I am broken from my tired, half- concentrated half- facebook chatting stupor to realize that everyone around me is standing. Not only are they standing, but the office has been flooded with thirty extra people. Commence bowing. Commence speeches. (Further my confusion.) Commence introductions. Commence the scattered placing of huge boxes of things on the center table. The boxes, from the looks of it, contain dozens of yellow bottles of some sort of unidentifyable drink, and they look lovely when placed next to the platters of food. (Wait, platters of food? Where did those come from?)

Continue bowing. All the teachers in the room are standing in greeting of these thirty intruders to our office space. Continue bowing and, just as suddenly as they entered, all the offending intruders exit.

Unsure, I continue to stand. After a few awkward moments, it feels safe to sit. I sit.

Ten minutes later, somebody walks around and puts a small brown bottle with a yellow label on my desk. Next to it they place a strange bar. They walk on.

It looks like a gooey rice bar with… beans? And maybe a dried fig? Or a cockroach. And… red beans too? I thought they were raisins but pretty sure they’re beans. Red and green beans. I smell it and my suspicions are confirmed. Beans! Rice! Nuts! Fruit? Not sure whether or not I’m allowed to eat it, and I have no clue what’s in this yellow bottle, but it’s almost time for dinner so I probably shouldn’t spoil my appetite.

I never have a clue what’s happening around me, but generally its pretty awesome.

Signing out, until the next random clueless encounter….

Hello friends and family, dear to me all:

It has now officially been over one week since I’ve come to Korea, how crazy is that? What a eventful week it has been. My first two days at Yeoju Girls’ High School, Monday and Tuesday of last week, I shadowed the former foreign English teacher, a very helpful Canadian named Stephanie. I’m so grateful that our time overlapped by two days, for things would have been much more confusing without her help.

This is the beautiful view from my apartment-- magical, isn't it? And at night all those building across the river light up in these neon lights that rim the edges. It's beautiful.

As it is, I’ve learned that I’ll never know exactly what is going on around me. Oftentimes, the same point will be explained to me several times while the details of the situation remain completely unclear. For example, I was told many times that I would be staying with Mr. Kim for the weekend, and that I would move into the dorm for the remainder of the week before my apartment was available. However, the exact moments at which the action occurs are (to me) always spontaneous and unexpected. For instance, immediately after breakfast Monday morning (and may I mention that it was a breakfast of garlic bread, meatballs and a banana? polite accommodation to Western taste creates extremely odd food combinations…. Plus, Mrs. Kim had left for school and was not there to cook me an egg, or three eggs, for that matter.) Mr. Kim rose from the table, peeked in my room to see if my luggage was ready, and one minute later was lugging it out to the car.

View of the apartment from the window! Tiny kitchen there in the back, bathroom by the kitchen, door with a code so I can never lose the key. 🙂

Other examples are my being told numerous times that I would need to have a medical appointment, and then Tuesday morning Mrs. Gang waiting at my desk to take me there; or how my school’s Principal was retiring, and Monday evening Mrs. Gang was waiting expectantly for me to walk with her to her car as we went to the teacher’s dinner, or how Mrs. Gang asked me if I needed anything more for my apartment, and then Friday afternoon at promptly 4pm she was telling me to hurry before we rushed to the E-Mart, and did I bring the list of things I need? ….I’ve learned to happily follow any teacher that calls my name and looks at me expectantly with a wave of the hand, and I’m actually quite happy to do so.

View of the new apartment from the kitchen-- its lovely, fairly large and feels spacious to me. One big room, one little bathroom and a very small kitchen add-on.

So many things have happened, it’s difficult to decide which to talk about and which to leave out! I moved into my apartment (see pics!), I’ve begun to teach classes (wonderful), I have had many extremely interesting conversations with other Korean teachers, I’ve been seriously struggling with the lack of black coffee in the morning (they only drink this very sweet coffee mix that comes in a stick: you rip off the top, pour it into a dixie cup that often has some cute saying on it, fill it half full with hot water and enjoy), and this weekend I met some other Wisco graduates that are teaching in Korea and we all traveled for the first time to Seoul!

Street in Seoul, not far from the first stop we got off on the subway (I forget which stop it was...?)

Seoul was just absolutely wonderful. We hopped on a bus with no plan, no idea where we would end up sleeping, very little money and a whole lot of optimistic excitement. Sounds like a recipe for a delicious experience, doesn’t it? It was absolutely amazing… we only just got back a couple hours ago, and I’ve barely begun to digest what all we did. We arrived to Seoul, hopped on the subway and picked both the line we got on and the station we departed at random. It was marvelous! We got off the subway and walked a few blocks before finding ourselves in a great little neighborhood (pictured, don’t you see how it’s hard to believe that this is real?), picked a restaurant at random and went in for some delicious Korean barbeque.

Seoul World Cup Stadium... I was so excited to walk into this, the first World Cup Stadium I have ever stepped foot in!

Brief explanation of barbeque: you walk in, sit on flat cushions on the ground around a very short table and try to get comfortable. The server will fire up a stove in the middle of the table, bring out some bowls of kimchi, veggies, lettuce, hot sauce, various other side dishes, and plop some raw meat strips on the hot marble- esque stove. As the meat cooks, you use those handy chopsticks to pick off the pieces that are finished, plop them on a lettuce leaf, top with hot sauce/ veggies/ garlic etc and enjoy! Delicious.

A little girl ran up to me while I was in line and yelled, "Free ticket, for you!" and gave me a ticket! Awesome. Apparently I retain my celeb status, even outside of my school.

Very excited kids at the FC Seoul home game in the Seoul World Cup Stadium... after I took this picture they all yelled, "Thaaaank youuuu!!!!" and ran away giggling. Awesome.

After the barbeque we wandered around a bit more, hopped back on the subway, accidentally got off at the wrong stop and wound up at the Seoul World Cup Stadium in the bubbling pre- game excitement… so we walked around and watched the cute little Korean kids in FC Seoul jerseys, some crazy K-Bop Korean dancers out front, a creepy clown dude who was entertaining the kids, etc etc and somehow ended up with : (1) free tickets from some excited Korean kids, (2) amazing seats at the FC Seoul v. ? game, and (3) a VUVUZUELA (sp), think buzzing sound at the World Cup games!!!!! It was amazing. It was by far one of the most high- energy games I have ever been to (and I went to school at UW-Madison, home of crazy Badger football games….) just amazing.

At the beginning of each half and at each goal fireworks would explode, confetti would fly and the entire stadium would erupt in cheering, chants and vuvuzuelas. Seoul scored 3 in the last half to win the game 3-0. F-C-SEEOOUULLL!!!!!!

So many kids, so many fathers there with there kids… kids kicking around soccer balls in the aisles, teenagers sitting together playing their vuvuzuelas, older kids all clumped in the major fan section with scarves, jerseys, snare drums, synchronized cheers and screaming excitement, and this is all aside from the fireworks, confetti and huge waving flags. Plus, the tickets were cheap! You can buy a seat for anywhere from 2000 Won to 20000 Won, which is basically 2 to 20 bucks. Isn’t that neat?

By the end of the game we had moved from our far- away family seats to center- stage with all the hard core Seoul fans. It was great! And, believe it or not, we were not the only whities there... we saw at least eight or nine other white guys from South Africa, Germany, Spain and Denmark! Oh so exciting.

The whole Seoul experience was really great (we found an artsy hubbub of Seoul, right at Hangik University, and there were so many college- age and older kids!), and the train ride back down to Yeoju today was beautiful, but I think the soccer game was by far my favorite part.

Anyways, I’m pretty exhausted now and this has been quite the post, so I’ll leave you all with this. I’m going to grab a book and curl up in front of my huge window, attempt to ignore the couple of killer mosquito bites I got while writing this post, watch the rain dance across the river and brainstorm about lesson plans. Have a beautiful Sunday morning, everybody! I hope that it is peaceful and full of lots of sunshine and love.