the Soul of Seoul.
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.