Friday Friday, Gotta get down on Friday

Another Friday in Gwangju, another night of feeling tired from school and not that energetic. School is nice because we don't have to do any work outside of our school hours but hour upon hour with little kids is verrrry draining. We went out for dinner tonight with our neighbours, the couple that lives beside us. We actually took over their classes as we arrived the day they left to go to Stephanie's sister's wedding in their home town of Philadelphia. They are pretty cool people, we seem to get along well and had a good time at dinner. We went to the ice bar for a beer to show max the situation there. Adam hit an OJ again, but we didn't wait around for it. One of the funniest parts of going out with foreigners is talking about the weird parts of the Korean culture. The restaurant we went to had a shared bathroom. There was a urinal, men's stall, women's stall, and a sink. Earlier, we went to a school "excursion" to a place with separate bathrooms but the doors were just straight glass. No frosting, no nothing, just straight glass. Very strange.

One of the other things that I find very very strange is the fact that everything will smell very good here while walking down the street, then there is 3 seconds of brutality followed by a minute of normal followed by 3 seconds of sewage smell. I know this happens at home, but this is constant and everywhere. It can be downtown, near the house, near a mountain. It doesn't matter, the stench can follow you anywhere.

Tomorrow is the day to celebrate halloween here and we will be going downtown as a tacky tourist/cleopatra. I know that my tacky tourist costume sucks, but there are no second hand stores around here. So much of the Korean culture is based upon materialism and appearance that second hand stores do not exist. Therefore, the existence of reasonably priced halloween options is so low that it is not worth the effort to try to do them. Regardless, there is such a small foreigner base here that any effort will be noticed and appreciated.

On that note we went to "the first alleyway" and the "underground grocer" last night. Both foreign establishments owned by the same group, they stock foreign items and provide a place to meet other people who speak english. They seem really laid back and have opposing hours (10-7 for the grocer, 5-10 for the restaurant) but there is a chance that I might find a group to play hockey with. regardless, they have kirkland coffee (all coffee is espresso or instant coffee here), A&W rootbeer and Dr. Pepper in stock along with a few smaller items. Not a lot but enough to give you a fix for home.

Off to bed for the night, need to get up in the morning for world series game 7! I love early morning Saturdays and Sundays because I get to watch the Friday/Saturday night games live. Sad I missed game 6 though, sounds like an unreal event.

Weekend Update (Daily life stuff)

We had a pretty interesting weekend for the first one here in Korea. Nothing too crazy, just a lot of exploring and a little bit of fun. Friday I went to the "Munich Ice Bar." The term "bar" is used rather lightly here in Korea. To most eyes, they appear like a normal restaurant with no actual bar area. This particular venue was a regular looking restaurant with both a beer glass target and karaoke room tucked into the corner. I did not visit the karaoke room, but I did try my hand at throwing ice glasses at the target. The beer was served in plastic liners that sat inside of ice moulds. These moulds were inserted into 3 pronged handle/holders which were taken off prior to throwing. If you hit the target the machine lit up and prizes ranging from $30 gift certificates to nothing randomly. Over the night our group one approximately 7 orange juices and one mug of beer. The novelty of the experience was enough of a prize, but 7 orange juices was a little excessive. We didn't want to get too crazy after all. It was a good night because I met about 10 foreigners that I am sure I will meet again in the months to come.

Saturday was spent exploring town and shopping. We got some stuff for the apartment and explored the area near the bus station which has a few malls and a movie theatre. Saturday night we went out for a traditional Korean dinner with a "veteran" co-worker. he gave us a bunch of advice on what to do, where to go, and how to do things in Korea. He took us downtown and showed us the best places to hang out.

Sunday we went to the Kim Chi festival and a modern art exhibit. We watched kids from our school yodel and play traditional Korean drums. The yodeling was surprisingly good, while the drumming was surprisingly bad. Max's stomach turned while we were there and we went home where I caught the Canucks game. I then went to do some shopping and wandered around for a few hours exploring. We watched the New Zealand vs. Australia rugby match with some co-workers, and then went home shortly after as I have/had a bad cold and really needed some sleep.

Monday was better at school as I am becoming much more comfortable teaching little kids. Tuesday and Wednesday the kids are at "Sewoon Camp" and we will be going on morning excursions each day. I am not really sure where we are going either day, but it means that we will have a much easier time both days, especially Tuesday when we have fewer afternoon classes. I am really looking forward to it.

Max is now on a cleaning rampage and I am feeling guilty so I better quit now before I bore anyone to death!

A few observations

1. Everything is sweet...EVERYTHING. Apple juice has sugar in it, spaghetti is sweet, sauces are sweet, sugary snacks are everywhere, even hot sauces are a combination of sweet and spicy. Sometimes this is very good, other times it gets frustrating.

2. Shirts with English on them are the cool things to wear. You see a lot of shirts that just have American college names on them and it is not alumni of the school, it is just a shirt that you can buy at any store. Other shirts don't really mean anything, it will just say Dog on it or (enter english phrase here).

3. There is a definite, yet failed attempt to be helpful with English. Almost anywhere you go, there will be signs with English on them but half the time, there will be one English word or phrase on a sign and then everything else is Korean on the sign. For example, I went into a building yesterday that had a sign that said "Information" on it. "Well great, it will at least have a little small english print to tell me where to go." No, it just said information in big letters then had Korean with no universal signs or symbols. I'm not saying that they should have English on signs because I am not in an english speaking country, I just find it funny that they go to the effort to make the sign, then don't actually give you any information.

4. Business ownership is the ultimate dream here. Almost every single building here is an apartment with a business underneath it. Most of which are barely ever visited and for which I have no idea how they stay in business. Restaurants are the most obvious culprits, but corner stores and all other businesses are so abundant and so rarely busy, that I have no idea how they stay open.

5. There seem to be no weekends here. We get weekends but for the most part, there is very little difference between a Friday and Saturday in our area at least. Construction was going on Sat. and Sunday and every business was open pretty much the same hours as on weekdays. Schools still run, just with fewer classes. I just found that odd.

Off to school for the day, I will post about the weekend and upcoming week later.

I might go crazy...

"YOU DON'T EVER YELL KOREAN LIKE THAT IN THIS CLASSROOM AGAIN!!!" I think that everyone knows that my fuse is extremely long and I can put up with a lot of crap before I get angry but today I lost my mind on a bunch of 8 year olds and looking back on it, I still think it was the right thing to do. All I did was randomly group them into partners for games and I get a Korean chant. They were nice and quiet after I finished. I haven't hit the kids yet even though it is acceptable here. I will make note if I actually resort to this.

Next week will be easy. Two excursion days where we really do just babysit and two short days in the afternoon should be good for getting things done and getting to know the town. Now I just need to learn enough Korean to survive and I will be all good. So far I can say "hello" and "thank you." I am aware that this is absolutely pathetic and make no excuses but also don't really care at this point. I am just looking to survive school at this point.

We are headed to a bar where they serve beer in Ice mugs and let you throw them against the wall for prizes. One of the other teachers is taking us there. Since I hate beer, novelty ideas, and socializing this will clearly be a terrible night. I just hope I can find my way home. Good thing is that we live near a highway that has signs for the World Cup Stadium all over it. We are about 15 minutes walking distance from the stadium so if we find the highway, we will find our way home. Cabs are also very cheap so we can just hop in and go almost anywhere.

Enough for tonight. I will update on beer tossing.

End of Day 1

We ended up teaching our elementary school students after lunch. With no information on what we were supposed to do and the student's textbooks (no teacher copy) we taught for 4 hours. It was pretty interesting. For the most part, the kids are nice and want to learn but there is an obvious disparity in abilities between and within classes. Some students can speak to you well and hold up a conversation while others can only listen to instructions and write information down. The school facilities in the afternoon school are just ok. We pretty much have a classroom with a white board and that is about it. The Kindergarten is unreal. They take cello and computer and cooking classes at the school and we get to teach some sports to the students as well. The Korean teachers set the schedule for us and tell us what we should teach so it is really just a matter of understanding how to speak English and paying attention to the kids.

We got our landing bonus today, 200,000 Won (1000 to 1 ratio). We haven't had much of a chance to spend it as we taught until 6. We will be done at 430 tomorrow and will head to "Lotusmart" which is apparently like a Walmart or Target. Our pillows are terrible and we need some small things for the apartment. We also need to buy some slippers because you do not wear your shoes inside office buildings or houses here. Therefore, at work we take our shoes off when we go inside the buildings and put a pair of thin crappy slippers on. We will go and get more comfortable pairs tomorrow, my feet are sore.

I am too tired to think so this is just rambling babble. I will post when I can think again.

First Day

It has been a real whirlwind over the first few hours over here. We got into our apartment last night at 1230 pm and were given a bit of food to get us by the first day, some bread, cereal (no idea what it is except that there are almonds in it and it is "Post" brand. We didn't eat and just went to sleep around 1am.

We woke up at 9 and went to the school expecting to meet a few people and head home. We ended up on an "excursion" to a temple outside of the city and met all of our colleagues who seem very nice and welcoming. We sat down and ate lunch at the school (I had my first experience with "Kim Chi" and am not sold on it though I will not give it up. It tastes a little bit like feet) but besides that, the lunch was very good overall. I overate my rice and black bean sauce but that is ok because it was my first real meal in 36 hours.

During lunch our boss asked if we could teach the afternoon. I had guessed that this would happen as two teachers recently left to go to a wedding and they are short for the day. He gave us the "option" but obviously we can not say no right away and start off on the wrong foot. We are just home for a 30 min break while the Pre-school classes are taught and now we head back to teach elementary classes already! looks like we teach 9-6 Mon, Wed, Friday, but fewer hours Tuesday/Thursday. We will figure that out when we see our schedule.

More to come....