For ever and for ever when I move

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.

That’s right, you heard me. I, one of the world’s ex-pickiest eaters, ate octopus. I took off my shoes at the door, sat on the floor at this little table with my gracious host Mr. Kim, his wife and his daughter, and another school teacher and his wife, and waited in nervous anticipation for the spicy octopus to be served. It was red, it was spicy, it was covered in tentacles that fell off in your mouth when you chewed, it was stubborn and squishy and some pieces had little bulbous heads with little glazed black eyes on them… and I bravely picked up my chopsticks, grabbed that curly tentacle-y leg and popped it right on in my mouth. Again, and again, and again.

I wish I had a picture to share with you folks, but I felt awkward enough being the only white person in the restaurant, I couldn’t bring myself to take along my tourist camera to Sunday lunch. You’ll have to trust me that my face turned bright red enough to issue concerned comments from all those seated with me to drink, “Water! Water!” and to eat the bowl of eggs which would make it, “Much less spice,” or to drink the cold soupy vinegar-y kimchi to relive my burning mouth. Nevertheless, I am quite proud of my ability to stomach something I never would have previously believed I’d eat. If you told me six months ago that I’d be sitting on the floor at a local restaurant in rural Yeoju, South Korea, popping spicy octopi pieces in my mouth like a pro, with Korean conversation bubbling all around me as I ate piece after piece… I don’t even know. I guess I’m pretty excited to see what the next six months will hold.

Anyways, what an adventure it’s been so far. I had orientation on Wednesday evening in Chicago with a crew of other TTGs (Teachers to Gyeonggi-do) before we all hopped on the plane at the Chicago O’Hare Airport in anticipation of a 13.5 hour flight. It was long but there were many good movies, and the service was impeccable; not to mention the

Chicago O'Hare International Airport

My very first rice paddy! Countryside outside Yeoju.

adorable flight attendants who walked around saying, “Some drink for you, please?” We arrived, bedraggled, smelly and jetlagged, as a large group at the Incheon Intl. Airport in Seoul, gathered up our luggage and walked to the exit where a huge group of smiling, jumping and waving Koreans held up signs with each of our names on them. Mine read, “Welcome! Amanda Wingren,” and an adorable Korean lady claimed me and helped me struggle with all my heavy baggage to her car. After a long adventure of driving, awkward conversation, a lovely restaurant spaghetti meal (?) and much dehydration on my end, I discovered that my apartment is not available until Wednesday and am consequently spending the weekend with Mr. Kim and his family at his country house outside of Yeoju. It has been unlike anything else I have ever experienced in my life, and it’s only the second day! However, it must be said that Koreans are some of the kindest people I’ve met: they are extremely concerned for my comfort and satisfaction with everything I have experienced. It is very sweet. For example: yesterday morning Mrs. Kim made me an egg, toast and cherry tomatoes for breakfast and I ate them all up. This morning, my breakfast was two eggs, two pieces of toast, twice the amount of cherry tomatoes and five meatballs. Absolutely insane. I had heard that if you finish everything on your plate, they interpret it that you were not served enough food: and now I know its true!

Well, currently I’m missing out on watching some quality Asian variety show with the Kim family, so, until the next update….

Hello dear friends! I am leaving the country, it is true! I am going twice times the distance and for three times as long as last time I left. Though you may miss me, it’s very likely that I will miss you more. In the meantime, I shall try to post clever anecdotes and humorous tales enough to tie you over until I find myself back in the midst of all you beautiful people in this wonderful place I call home.

ah! details!

I will be teaching English in an all- girls high school in Yeoju, South Korea for one year.

Oh, was that town confusing? No worries. Perhaps this will be clearer: 여주, 남한.

And that is pretty much the extent of my knowledge. Get ready! Here we go! Less than two days before departure!

Oh yes, I too am wondering what I’m getting myself into. How terribly exciting! How awfully nervewracking! How beautiful! How grand!

And one more thing, I shall be supplying pictures with the beautiful baby pictured to the left. She is my brandy new best friend, next to my Gregory pack and my carry- on duffel which will carry all my books. (I have limited the pile to seven books, and then another pile farther away of five, for if I put them together it’s plainly obvious that there are too many books I want to bring. But how could I possibly divide my soul for a period so long as one year!?)

Wish me luck!

All my love to you.