Goodbye, Part 1

One of the hardest parts about teaching in Korea is how transient the expat community is. Contracts are only for a year and once their year is up, a lot of teachers go home. I was lucky my first year and none of my close friends left, but this year Omega left in May, Tony and Christine left in November and Riah left a few weeks ago.

On what was suppose to be Riah's last evening in Korea, we (Audrey, Caroline, Riah, Siobhain and I - the ladies I spent Christmas with) were sitting in Cold Stone in Gangnam, feeling morose, when Caroline suggested we make a scrapbook as a going away present. She had a Polaroid camera. I had many different colors of pens. We had a notebook and stickers. And scissors. And tape. Look, I'm friends with a very crafty group of people, okay!


I love that I'm friends with a group of people who, when someone suggests making an impromptu goodbye scrapbook, ACTUALLY have all the necessary supplies on hand.


Caroline and Siobhain examining a Polaroid.
And so we made a scrapbook. It was a rush job; Cold Stone kicked us out at 11:00, the Coffee Bean we relocated to kicked us out half an hour later and Audrey and I needed to catch the last train home at midnight. The first half of the scrapbook was detailed (or at least had interesting asides) and had introductions and dinosaurs and fun lessons learned in Korea (even in Korea, don't assume people don't understand English is an important one) while the second half consisted of unannotated Polaroid pictures hastily taped onto blank pages while the Coffee Bean employees gave us the side eye for still being in their shop ten minutes after closing.


Riah's introduction page. When pronounced with a Korean accent, Riah sounds an awful lot like the word liar, so Riah specified that her pants were not on fire. And, underneath No Pants On Fire, I added 불 바지 없어요, which says, in what I'm sure is truly atrocious Korean, No Fire Pants. It was hilarious at the time.
We adjourned to the street outside to say our final goodbyes, which were awful. Saying goodbye is never fun, but it's especially hard in such a ephemeral community because Korea, our common ground, isn't a permanent location for any of us. My group of friends from university still meets up in Chapel Hill periodically, but the odds of seeing this group of girls again in the US are slim. Also, for me, saying goodbye to Riah was the first on a long list of goodbyes I have to say this month.


Riah gave us matching bracelets from Cambodia as a going away present.
So, we were standing on the street of Gangnam crying and promising to write and it's awful and cold and then Audrey and I realized that if we want to get home, we have to leave RIGHT NOW, only we didn't realize the time quite soon enough and just missed our last transfer. I've just barely caught a lot of last trains home, but in two years of living here, this was the first time I actually missed it.

Luckily, we were both able to find taxis willing to drive out to where we live with minimal fuss.

I woke up the next day, Wednesday morning, to an email from Riah. The snowstorm that ate Chicago (are we calling this one Snowpocalypse?) meant that O'Hare was closed and Riah was stuck in Korea until Friday night. Suck it, Chicago. On Thursday, Riah, Audrey and I went to COEX, and during our shopping breaks, we finished the scrapbook. We captioned the photos and wrote lists based on our experience here: crazy English names Korean children give themselves, Things We <3 About Korea, Places we <3 in Korea, How to Anger a Korean, Important Konglish Words, Important Korean Words.

Our list of Important Korean Words is possible the most worthless list of Korean ever and contains such gems as kimchi dumplings, old woman, fleece lined pants and fish (the animal, not the kind you eat). Others - Samsung, Hyundai, soju (Korean rice liquour, like drinking rocket fuel) and bulgogi (Korean barbecued beef) - don't even have an English translation. We had more, actually useful, words, but it turns out we don't know how to spell the Korean we use the most. We spent five minutes trying to figure out how to write thank you, a word I say ALL THE TIME.

After several failed attempts, I said, "You know, we are surrounded by people who know how to write 감사합니다."

We looked around at the cafe, full of Koreans. "Yeah," Riah and Audrey said.

"We could, you know, ask any one of them."

"Yeah," they said again. We stayed seated and left thank you off our list.

Audrey and I said goodbye to Riah again Friday afternoon, after spending the morning at the jimjabang. It still sucked, and I still cried, but it was easier the second time. It was easier when we weren't rushed. It was also easier because, during her extra days, Riah and I made plans to take a road trip once we're both back in the States. Wisconsin and North Carolina aren't that far apart.


Me and Riah

죽을래, Blog?

Long time, no blog. Since I last wrote I have:

• Turned 26, which was anticlimactic since I had already turned 27 Korean age a few weeks before.*


• Pru came for a week and we went to many palaces and markets and ate lots of food. Some of it was in a tent and some of it was deep fried and on a stick.


• Pru also got me started on K-dramas. We mainlined Secret Garden in four days and now I'm watching a bunch of K-dramas, three of which are about cross dressers (I swear that was an accident) and something called Joseon X-files (oh yeah, aliens in 16th century Korea). *faceplam*


• Said good-bye to Riah, who left for the US. On Tuesday, we made an impromptu scrapbook in Cold Stone and cried on the streets of Gangnam and Audrey and I missed our train home. On Wednesday, I woke up to an email from Riah telling me that the snowstorm that ate America meant that O'Hare was closed until Friday and I got two and a half more days with Riah! Suck it, Midwest! [More here]


• Celebrated 설날 (Seolnal, lunar New Year) by making a spectacle of myself with Riah and Audrey at the aquarium, one of the few places that was open. Welcome to the Year of the Rabbit!


• Adhearing to the rule that you should be as clean as possible before getting on a trans-Pacific flight, the morning before Riah's flight, Audrey, Riah and I went to the bathhouse for a few hours. It was my first time at Dragon Hill Spa, which I liked, especially the outdoor tubs, but my favorite is still the green tea themed spa I went to in Boseong.


• Break is over and students are back for eight whole days before the end of the school year. Yesterday, the 3-1 boys filed in a few minutes ahead of the girls. "Where are the girls?" I asked.
  
  I was solemnly told, "In Seolnal, they is DIE!"
  
  죽을래, which means do you want to die?, is a common expression in Korea and I've heard countless variations of it in English in the past two years, but it still kills** me every time.

All of these bullet points deserve their own entry, but it's unlike I will actually get around to them.

* Sokay, in Korea ages are counted differently than in the West. You're one when you're born (none of this X month business for the first year) AND you age on New Years instead of your actual birthday, which means your Korean age can be up to two years older than your Western age. On December 31st, I was 25 US age, 26 Korean age. The next day was New Years, which meant I turned 27 Korean age while I was still 25 US age. Since my birthday is in January, my Korean age is normally only one year ahead of my western age, but my little sister, who just turned sixteen in December is already eighteen in Korea. Somewhere my mother just blanched at the thought.
**Zing!

The reoccurring theme here is "cold"

Why are my Five Things Friday posts never on Friday?

• Last weekend, I went to COEX for a haircut and dinner with Audrey and Caroline. There was a thirty minute wait for dinner, so we settled down to knit in a coffee shop until our buzzer rang. I shrugged off my coat, a novel experience during a Korean winter,* and in the rush to gather our bags and get to the restaurant when the buzzer went off, I left my coat (which, incidentally, had my T-money card and iPod in the pocket) at our table. I didn't realize my mistake until an hour later, when I was sitting in the salon after dinner, waiting for my appointment to start. I rushed back to the coffee shop in a panic, only to find my coat still hanging off the back of my chair where I left it, everything still in the pocket. Some days, I really love Korea.


• Speaking of the new hair cut, I like it. It's short, although not as short as the last time I cut it (and man, the stinkeye I got from the stylist when I admitted that I had last had a haircut in July), but short enough that styling it mostly becomes an attempt to corral the curls. It does mean I need to blowdry it in the morning, which is usually not a problem, but I've spent the last week deskwarming and decided I couldn't be bothered to wake up in time to fix my hair when all I'm going to do is sit alone in my office, which has led to some epically bad hair days.


• Actually, I haven't been bothered to wake up in time to do anything, not even get to school on time. I keep leaving my apartment after I'm already suppose to be at school. I would feel guilty, except a) deskwarming is stupid and b) on Friday I ran into one of the second grade teachers who was also walking to school half an hour late.
  
  "I'm late," she told me as she ran past.
  
  "Me too!" I said.
  
  "But my students are waiting for me," she explained.
  
  Lady, you win at being late. At least I was on time when I had kids.


• So, deskwarming. People who have to do it hate it and people who don't have to do it tell us to stop whining. And I guess it's better than having to actually work, but it's punitive and a waste of time. I'm not suppose to be doing anything while I'm here, but I have to be here for eight hours (well, more like seven) a day. I know all jobs have their annoyances, but in this case, I'm the only teacher who has to deskwarm. The Korean teachers only have to come to school during the breaks when they're teaching. I don't complain when I have to come in and sit during exams or other days when I don't teach because the Korean teachers also have to come it. It's only during the school breaks that it feels like a punishment. Also, my office is really really cold. At least at home I have some control over the temperature or, in worse case scenarios, blankets.


• Tomorrow is my last day of deskwarming! One more day and then I have nineteen days of vacation. I thought of fleeing somewhere warm over my break, but I've (probably) opted to stay in Korea and save money (fiscal responsibility for the win). Pru is coming to visit (two days until she arrives!) for a week and I'm going to spend the rest of my break savoring my remaining 42 days in Korea.

*The public schools aren't well heated. On the good days, my classroom/office are tolerable so long as I'm wearing a heavy coat and leggings under my pants and boots and maybe a hat. On the bad days, well, I have a reoccurring problem of liquids freezing in my office. Suffice to say, I've not taken my coat off much for the past few months.

Christmas in the Land of the Morning Calm

Merry Christmas! Christmas can be hard when you spend it away from family and all the traditions that make holidays special. All last week, students and teachers asked me if I was going home for Christmas and when I told them no (even if I could afford a flight to the US right now, there is literally not enough time in a weekend to fly to the US and back, and I had class on Friday and Monday), they asked if I was sad about spending the holidays alone, which, way to bring up that thing I was really pointedly not thinking about guys. I kept busy though, and had a good holiday.

My celebrations started last Saturday when SnB held a curry party & yarn/book white elephant gift exchange. Riah and Caroline made curry, Audrey made cookies, Siobhain made naan using a wine bottle for a rolling pin, and Jen and Robin helped to empty said wine bottle. I wrapped presents since we wanted dinner to be edible. Everyone brought nice things for the swap, so it wasn't very white elephant-esque, but we had fun and I have a quite a few new books to add to the pile of books I need to read before I go home.



Top: Siobhain making naan with a wine bottle; Left: Caroline showing us her new apron and festive Christmas nose; Right: Riah sampling the curry.
Then, on Christmas Eve Eve, I went to Ansan after work for pho, spring rolls and Vietnamese coffee with Marie and Greg. Traffic was horrible, but I made friends with the six year old sitting next to me. I was the first foreigner he had ever seen, and at first he just stared, but he grew more confident as the bus pulled away from the station and he started making faces at me. I started copying his faces, which he thought was hi-larious. After a few minutes of crossing his eyes and rapidly shifting his jaw around, he decided to stick his finger up his nose, watching me with bright eyes to see what I would do. I briefly though about copying him (standards, what are those?), but we were being watched by the ajeosshis sitting across from us and I was going straight to dinner, so I settled with sticking my finger beside my nose, which luckily was sufficiently funny enough for my friend.

Friday was Christmas Eve and I wished my 6th grade classes a Merry Christmas, but I was corrected. "No, Teacher. Merry Christmas Eve." After school, I went to a candlelight service at the Seoul International Baptist Church near Itaewon. It's next to the base and a lot of parishioners were soldiers and their families. Most of the foreigners I see are teachers in their twenties or thirties, and this was the first time I had seen a non-Korean family in almost a year. American children are giant compared to my wee, slight students. After the service, we took a cab to Itaewon, hung out in What The Book until they closed, then went to the Thai restaurant upstairs. Mmmm, Christmas curry. I've never been a fan of traditional Christmas food and I was thrilled for the excuse to spend my holiday eating SE Asian food instead.

Then on Christmas Day, Caroline, Siobhain, Audrey, Riah and I went for Indian and Doctor Fish in Gangnam. We bought ourselves a Christmas ice cream cake, sang Christmas carols (different ones, at the same time), and then used our cake to reenact the current political situation of the Korean peninsula. The cake was divided into five sections. Riah was South Korea, Audrey was North Korea, Caroline was China, Siobhain was the US and I was somehow Sino-American relations, which meant that I spent a lot of time supplying North Korea with rice and cow (decorative cranberries) which North Korea turned into bombs to throw at South Korea. The chocolate decorations served as the DMZ. Tunnels were dug beneath it. I started making "Phew Phew" noises to simulate bombs, which is when the Koreans sitting next to us started taking our picture. My parents called me while I was waiting for the bus home and I pulled a Waegukin Smash to talk to them while they opened presents.


Failboats in public. From (left → right) Siobhain, me, Audrey, Caroline and Riah


Mid-conflict on a delicious peninsula
Merry Christmas, one and all.

The Amazing Race: Seoul

So, yesterday morning Amber IM'd me to tell me that the latest episode of The Amazing Race was set in Seoul and they went rafting in the DMZ. My response can best be summed up as "..." since I'm pretty sure I would remember an American reality TV show causing an international incident by crossing into the DMZ, an area that is best known for the fact that people CAN'T go there. Even though I don't watch the Amazing Race, I figured this episode would be worth watching.

The teams arrived in Korea and it was raining, which, of course it was raining. The rainy season was abnormally long this year, and by abnormally long, I mean it rained for five straight months. We went weeks without seeing the sun. I thought my shoes would never dry. That weather was what I saw practically ever day from June to October.

On the drive to Seung-il Bridge, Nat or Kat complained that "most of the signs are completely devoid of any sort of English characters." An interesting observation since, in fact, ALL OF THE SIGNS are in English and Korean.

So, I understand why Amber told me the teams were rafting in the DMZ. The teams constantly referenced the DMZ and claimed to be in the DMZ or the DMZ area. I wonder how much of that was added for rating due to the recent tensions because, really, no. They weren't at the DMZ. They were rafting at a popular tourist destination. If the teams were in the DMZ, then so is Seoul. So am I.

Can we talk for a moment about how RIDICULOUS the third challenge (getting from Camp Casey to the World Cup Stadium) was. Like, seriously, they took the subway. The subway where every station is labeled in English. There was ONE transfer. The name of the station they were going to was WORLD CUP STADIUM STATION. How is that a challenge? If I only have to transfer once, I count it a win. Also, Jill and Thomas (the couple) kept sitting the seats reserved for the elderly or the handicapped. Seats that are clearly labeled as such in English and with pictures. I kept cringing because way to Waegukin Smash and give the rest of us a bad name, guys.

The Mokdong Ice Rink (home to the fourth challenge) is one of the two evacuation spots for Americans in Seoul should the Norks invade. The more you know....

I'm sad none of the groups opted for the Namdaemun challenge because Namdaemun is pretty awesome. It's also a lot more authentically Korean than an ice rink. Plus, I've had the ginseng tonic (the nurse at my school gives it to me whenever I'm sick) and it's not half bad.

I LOVED the shots of the teams trying to hail a taxi and failing. It's next to impossible to hail a taxi on the side of the road in Seoul You have to go to a taxi stop and wait in line.

The Pit Stop - the Temple of Heaven - is a super obscure location. I had never heard of it and according to Google, in 1968 the Westin Hotel was built on the site and the temple is now part of the hotel complex. It's essentially a knock-off of a Chinese temple build by the dying throes of Imperial Korea. There are so many better places that could have been chosen.

I enjoyed this episode, but I don't think I could watch the show on a regular basis. Too many of the contestants act like arrogant, entitled assholes and embodied every negative sterotype people have about Americans. When they were searching for the statue of the airplane at Hangang Park, Thomas gripped, "How does nobody know what an airplane is?" and I had to pause the show so I could shout, "I don't know, maybe because airplane is ENGLISH and you're in KOREA, jackass. Try asking for the 비행기, but wait, you don't speak in Korean. You just expect everyone to speak English." I might be overly sensative because I do live in Korea and know enough about the culture to notice when the contestants are overtly rude, but it was still a constant sorce of annoyance for the entire episode.

A Korean Thanksgiving

My first Thanksgiving away from home, I spent the day blinking back tears and taught my classes through a tight throat before treking into Seoul for a turkey dinner with friends. This year, I figured the holiday would be easier if I just ignored it, and so I went to the dentist. I did call home the next morning (Korea is 14 hours ahead of the East Coast, so 8:00 my Friday morning was 6:00 Thursday evening back home), but I didn't even get dinner on Thanksgiving since my mouth was too numb from the dentist to chew.

I did, however, celebrated Thanksgiving yesterday with my Stitch n' Bitch group. We ordered a traditional dinner from Dragon Hill Lodge on the base and people brought additional dishes. We had turkey and potatoes and green bean casserole and walnut pie, which isn't quite pecan pie, but was closer that I expecting to get here. We opted not to go around in a circle and list what we were thankful for, but I am thankful. I'm thankful to have a job I enjoy. I'm thankful that I get to live in another country and I'm thankful that that country is Korea. I'm thankful I have friends to spend Thanksgiving with. I'm thankful that I'm here and healthy and happy.


Our hostess Caroline carving her first turkey. She did an excellent job.




Our Thanksgiving feast.

Weekend Round-Up

So, glancing over this month's blog posts, it pretty quickly becomes apparent that I'm phoning it in on the weekends. Either the entries are just straight up written during the week, they're super short or consist mostly of pictures of the hilarious things one can buy here. And guess what? This weekend is no different!

I spent Saturday hanging out with Riah in Itaewon, the foreigner district. There are really only two things worth doing in Itaewon: eat foreign food and go to the English language bookstore, and we did both with great abandon. Lunch was Bulgarian food, followed by two hours perusing What the Book with our Kindles out, checking first to see if we could buy the books as e-books, followed by ice cream at Cold Stone. Mmmm, foreign things are delicious.

Today was Sunday, which means Stitch n' Bitch. We normally meet at cafes around the city, but today Caroline hosted a belated Thanksgiving dinner at her apartment, which was full of turkey and green bean casserole and walnut pie, which isn't quite pecan pie, but it's as close as we're going to get here.

All in all, a good weekend.

Open Wide

Happy Thanksgiving, everyone! I spent mine at the dentist's office because I FORGOT this Thursday was Thanksgiving when I made my appointment. *facepalm* I went to the dentist for the first time last Thursday for a cleaning/check-up/X-rays/other things I can't afford in the US and while I was there, she found two cavities. My follow-up appointment to have them filled was made for this Thursday and, several days later, when I realized that meant it was on Thanksgiving, I decided I didn't actually care and didn't reschedule the appointment.

Going to the dentist was something I put off my first year here because of language barrier and the added difficulty of doing things in another country and well, I'll be home in six months, might as well wait and do it then. Turns out, that was poor reasoning since not only is going to the dentist just as easy here, it's SO MUCH CHEAPER. (One of these days I'm going to make a post about my giant love for the Korean national health care system and how, seriously America, you NEED TO GET ON THAT.)

The first appointment, the check-up, was almost identical to the check ups I've had in the US, except that there was Kpop, not country, on the radio and during the cleaning, the hygienist draped a cloth over my face so I couldn't see anything. There was a hole in the cloth for my mouth and nose, but my eyes and the rest of my face were covered.

The second appointment was also similar to the US, in as much as I can remember the one time I had a cavity filled back home. It might have actually been better, since this time, the dentist didn't try to discuss Carolina basketball with me while there was a drill in my mouth. I mean, yes, I'm also hopeful for another title, but could you spend more time concentrating on the drill IN MY MOUTH and less time waxing about Hansbrough's average number of assists per game.

I showed up for my appointment after work and as I sat down in the chair, the dentist asked me what I thought about pain.

"Well," I told her, "I'm not a big fan of it."

"Okay," she responded, and whipped out a syringe bigger THAN MY FACE and stuck it in my mouth.

I might have groaned a little when she picked up a second syringe for the other side of my mouth. "It's just a little cavity," she told me. "Are you sure you want this?"

Which, lady, when it comes to choosing between giant needles in my mouth or a drill in my unnumbed mouth, I will go with the giant needles any day of the week.

The real fun came after the appointment. I took the subway home and stopped at the convenient store across the street from my apartment with my mouth still completely numb. When I attempted to thank the owner, my kamsamnida (thank you) came out some unintelligible mumble. The owner looked at me askance, and I attempted the smile (also difficult with a numbed mouth) reassuringly before hurrying home where I didn't have to inflect my terrible terrible Korean on anyone. Turns out, I really can't speak Korean when my mouth is numb from the dentist.

Korean dentists: I went to Tuft's Dental Clinic in Gangnam. I highly recommend her. She's trained at Tufts University in Boston, is licensed in three US states and she (and her staff) speaks excellent English.

G20 Seoul Summit 2010

The G20 summit was held in Seoul on Thursday and Friday. It was impossible to miss; people were already talking about the G20 summit when I moved here TWO years ago. This was the first G20 summit held in an Asian country, and Koreans were proud to be the hosting country. The past few weeks have practically been an onslaught of information about the G20. Every bus had an advertisement about the summit, every time I turned on the TV (which, admittedly wasn't often) the news was running a feature about the G20 and major Western news publications were talking about Korea, a rarity. My students were even interested, and amidst Thursday's chatter about Pepero, I heard more than one mention of Obama and the G20.

Despite large-scale protests before the summit and the US State Department issuing a traveling warning for Seoul, the G20 Seoul Summit was relatively peaceful. On Thursday night, I went to Iteawon, the major foreign district in Seoul, and while there were special G20 police in the subways and troops of police wearing riot armor patrolling the streets and guarding the subway exits, I had no problems and didn't see any protesters. I'm glad the G20 summit is over, that it went off smoothly and that Korea got some positive attention from the rest of the world.

GEPIK Training: Korean Culture Tour

I had GEPIK training last Wednesday. GEPIK is the program in charge of native English teachers in the Gyeonggi public schools. Periodically they hold training sessions and I make faces and complain because I'm a bitter cynic, but last week's training was a Korean Culture Tour, so I was marginally interested. It was suppose to be for new GEPIK teachers - most of the other teachers had only been in Korea for a month or two, and one girl had only been here for five days - and I'm not quite sure why I was included, since I'm new to neither Korea nor GEPIK. There had been a cold snap the day before and I got to play the part of grizzled veteran as the newer teachers asked about the weather.  No, your school isn't going to start heating the hallways, and yes, the windows will stay open all winter. Just wait until January when you have students wearing six layers asking you to open the window because they're so hot.  On the plus side, it only took me a year to start eating kimchi and K-pop is actually quite catchy.  WELCOME TO KOREA!

We went to Gyeongbokgung, the Palace Greatly Blessed by Heaven, the largest and most important of the Five Grand Palaces of Seoul. I visited last year, but I hadn't been back since the restorations of the main gate were completed and I had wanted to visit at least one of the palaces this fall when the leaves were changing, just to take pictures. We arrived just as the changing of the guard ceremony started and once we started the tour, we immediately ran into a royal procession near Gyeonghoeru Pavilion. The royal procession included Korean and English narration and my favorite part of the day was the poor man, dressed in the traditional jeonbok, draped with speakers for the guide's PA system. I laughed and laughed, although I waited until after I look the photo to do it because, dude, embarrassing historical costumes and the long suffering faces of those wearing them, I know thee well.




We were taken on a guided tour of the palace, which was actually pretty great because it meant I could ask question - my geekiness, let me show it to you - and I finally, after two years here, learned the named of the traditional eaves painting that I've seen at every temple, palace and gate I've visited in this country. (Dancheong (단청), by the way, and since I didn't write it down, I still had to spend a solid half hour Googling to find it again once I was home.) The last stop was the National Folk Museum of Korea, which we didn't actually visit. Instead we huddled by a group of twelve statues, each one representing one of the animals of the Chinese zodiac. It also listed the dates of each animal, which is how I learned that the placemats at every Chinese buffet I've ever been to were LYING TO ME and thanks to discrepancies between the solar and lunar new years, I was actually born in the year of the rat, not the year of the ox. Quite a blow for a girl to find out she's forthright, tenacious and intense instead of dependable, ambitious, calm as this point in her life.


Dancheong painting on the upturned eaves of the Gyotaejeon.


Bridge to Hyangwonjeong Pavilion
The rest of the photos are here.

Buying Glasses in Korea

So, I bought new glasses this weekend. Actually, I bought two new pair of glasses, bringing the total number of glasses I've bought in Korea to SIX!

I started wearing glasses junior year of high school (fall 2001) and prior to arriving in Korea in the fall of 2008, I had only owned two pairs of glasses because well, glasses are bloody expensive in the States. My eyesight isn't particularly bad and I never bought designer frames, but I'm still looking at upwards of $250 for a pair of glasses and a new pair seemed like a waste of money since I had a perfectly good pair of glasses, even if I had been wearing them for five years.

Then I moved to Korea and one night after dinner, Tina and I wandered into one of the several optical stores in our neighborhood and inquired as to how much a new pair of glasses would cost. We were told to pick a set of frames and, on a whim, I grabbed a pair of purple frames with kelly green ear pieces. The store clerk examined my preexisting glasses briefly and told me the total cost for frames and lenses would be ₩20,000 or, at the current exchange rate, about $18. Also, it will only take twenty minutes and we'd love to ply you with juice or ice cream while you wait. My eyes got very wide and well, it's a miracle that I ONLY bought three pairs of glasses that night. (To be fair, I had happened upon the sale rack and have yet to find classes quite *that* cheap again, but I've also yet to pay more than $40 for a pair. Also, I did buy the green and purple glasses. They're now referred to as the toilet glasses, after Sarah flipped them off the bathroom counter and into the toilet when she was visiting last summer. Luckily I have zero standards and am bothered none at all at the thought of wearing toilet glasses.)

Guys, I think I might have a problem. I JUST bought two new pairs of glasses and before I had even left the store, I was telling Audrey how I was planning on buying at least another three pairs of glasses before I leave Korea. And then today, I realized I could match my new glasses with my knee socks. So I did.

To buy glasses: walk any any optical store (they're on every corner, I can see three from my apartment), pick out the frames you want and give them to the attendant. If you're happy with the prescriptions in your existing glasses, also give those to the attendant. They'll take your existing prescription from your current glasses and duplicate it for your new lenses. The whole process shouldn't take more than half an hour, and I've done the entire exchange in my terrible Korean. If you don't have glasses, you can get a free eye exam. It only takes five or ten minutes and there are numbers on the eye charts, so no Hangul knowledge is required. A caveat: I buy cheep frames and have relatively good eyes. If you buy designer frames or have bad eyesight, glasses will be more expensive, although not nearly as expensive as in America.

Useful words:
안경 (an-gyeong) = glasses
색안경 (saek an-gyeong) = sun glasses

[everybody scream // it's almost Halloween // do the trick-or-treat]

Halloween isn't a Korean holiday. (October 31st is, however, Ace Day, a day dedicated to eating, giving and generally spending money on Ace brand crackers, a Ritz knock-off.) A bunch of hogwons had Halloween parties on Friday and some public schools had Halloween celebrations during English class, but the thought of buying enough candy, even the cheap stuff, for all 650 of my student was daunting and I'm not organized or creative enough to come up with an actual costume to wear to school, so Friday was classes as normal.

Most of the Halloween celebrations were on Saturday, but I went out to an expat bar in Bundang showing Rocky Horror Picture Show on Friday night. It was my first time watching Rocky Horror, and I spent the evening with a lipstick V on my forehead and was drug up on stage to learn the Time Warp. Lots of people were dressed up, including two drag queens and while I didn't dress up per se, I did don red and black stripped knee socks and my red Chucks with the skull shoe laces in honor of the occasion. It was fun, although I couldn't actually hear any of the movie over the shouting and I kept having to ask what was going on. I eventually gave up; no one watches Rocky Horror for the plot.

I spent Halloween Day itself in Hongdae. Seoul SnB has recently found a new cafe that sells yarn and has cats and boys in leather jackets working a knitting machine and bark tea, so obviously it's a great place to meet. It's also conveniently located just down the street from the Habanero taco truck, which has some of the best Mexican food I've had in Korea and also, the chef finishes off the burritos with a blow torch. He also filmed our ringing endorsement of his tacos with his iPhone and put it on Twitter. After knitting, a group of us went for kimchi jjigae, which is delicious, and then Caroline, Audrey and I went for a desert party involving chocolate cake and a detour through an optometry store for an improntu glasses purchase.

즐거운 할로윈!

Pictures from Halloween:


♪It's just a jump to the left / And then a step to the right / Put your hands on your hips / You bring your knees in tight / But it's the pelvic thrust / That really drives you insane. / Let's do the time warp again.♪


Habanero Taco Truck


kimchi jjim: a delicious stew of kimchi, tofu and pork.


Say Kimchi!: Caroline and Audrey taking a picture of themselves with Audrey's phone during our desert party. They've gone native.

Hi Cake Teacher!

I was sitting on the subway this morning, nose in a book as per usual, when all of a sudden I heard a voice say, "HI CAKE TEACHER!" I looked up and standing in front of me was one of my third grade girls, sporting a huge grin. Lurking behind her were three of my 5th grade boys, her brother and two of his friends. Guys, I was north of the river, nearly an hour away from home and on neither of the two subway lines that serve my town. The Seoul National Capital Area has 25 million people, and I run into four of my students on a sparely populated subway car. What are the odds?

I waved to the boys and shook hands with the girl, only she doesn't quite grasp the concept of shaking hands, so we repeatedly laced our fingers together and then rapidly let go, a bit like quickly holding hands ten times in a row. We chatted for a bit - they were on their way to Seoul for the day, something in Korean I didn't catch, lots of fun, Teacher, on Monday class, game? Then they returned to their seats and I returned to my book, but every time I looked up for the rest of the ride, at least one of my students would have an eye on me.

ROK On

Sunset at the Pagoda Garden the National Museum of Korea
I've been in Korea for six months today! (Well, a year and six months. Six months this time around.)

I live in Seongnam, one of the northern most southern suburbs, this year. I'm much closer to Seoul this year (twenty minutes vs. an hour) which is nice, but the proximity to Seoul means I haven't really developed a social life in the area where I live in. The handful of foreign teachers living in my building introduced themselves when I first arrived, and they're nice and we chat in the elevator or the bus stop, but I already had a social network set up and I quickly fell back into my old routines. I rarely want to socialize after work, but I miss the spontaneity of getting dinner with friends after work without first having to spend forty minutes on the subway.


Marie and me at a clam bake in Kongdae.
I've been back to Ansan (the city I use to live in) a few times to see friends. Nostalgia is a funny thing. I'm glad I don't live in Ansan anymore, but that didn't stop me from getting emotional over old sights. That was my bus stop, the kimbap shop I went to that once, the store where I bought my chopsticks and extension cord, and I go all ♫ memory // all alone in the moonlight // I can smile at the old days // I was beautiful then ♫ The quickest way from Seongnam to Ansan is by bus, and the route happens to pass directly by my old school. I usually spend the trip with my nose in a book, but the first time I happened to look out the window at a stoplight and spotted a teenage boy that looked suspiciously like one of my 6th graders last year. Huh, I thought, he looks just like Jinho. And then the light turned green and the bus drove past my old school, and I realized the kid probably *was* Jinho.


Your average Saturday afternoon: riding your motorcyle to the park to practice traditional Korean dance with your friends. AS YOU DO.
School life is different this year. A new national curriculum was introduced this year and the 3rd and 4th graders now have English twice a week instead of once a week. This means there are 42 English classes taught at my school each week, more than I can personally teach. Instead, my co-teacher and I teach each grade together once a week and the co-teacher teaches each grade solo once a week. It works okay, but it means that I'm never the primary teacher and I'm always playing by someone else's rules and cues. There's also a lot less communication between me and my co-teachers. Last year, my co-teacher and I would plan lessons together and then prepare our respective parts. This year, I plan my lessons alone, without discussing the lessons plans with my co-teachers, and half the time I feel like we're teaching two different lessons that just happen to share a vocabulary set or grammatical concept. There's no cohesion between my lesson and my co-teacher's lesson.


4-4 Class playing a board game in English class.
I think my current students are lagging behind my last school. Both of my schools have been in poor areas, but I think this area is more impoverished. A significant number of my students are on welfare and we did so poorly on the national tests in July that the principal has decided that all the homeroom teachers have to teach three extra classes a week and extra teachers have been hired to offer remedial classes for struggling students. Right around the six month mark last year, I saw an explosion of English from my students. Almost over night, they went from only using sentence fragments to full fledged sentences arguing the merits of different Kpop bands. Teacher, I don't like Top. He is ugly and has big face. I LOVE G-Dragon! HEARTBREAKER! I just can't see a similar widespread surge of English use among my current students. It's not all bleak - a group of 6th grade girls and I recently got into a discussion about our favorite member of 소녀시대 and a 5th grader brought me his essay on the wonderful cockroach to edit - but for every bright student, there are another dozen who, when asked what their name is, can only answer, "Teacher, WUT?!"


WUT?
I really wanted to make the effort to travel around Korea more this year, but I haven't done a very good job of it. In April Siobhain, Caroline and I went to the Nonsan Strawberry Festival in Chungcheongnam-do. It was your typical country fruit festival, full of giant strawberry balloons suspended over the fair ground and strawberry infused foods, many of which were not improved by tasting like strawberry. (Strawberry flavored hot pepper paste is not delicious. Nor is strawberry flavored seaweed.) There were also copious amounts of fried food and I finally tried a french-fries-covered-corn-dog-onna-stick, which was exactly as delicious as it sounds. I'm just a little ashamed that Korea beat the South to inventing it. The weekend was lots of fun and navigating Korea outside of Seoul was too difficult and and I remember thinking on the train back to Seoul that I need to take more weekend trips. That was five months ago and I haven't left the Seoul area since. Hopefully I manage to see a bit more of the country before my contract is up.


(l → r) Siobhain, Caroline, Strawberry Chick who grabbed my ass, me
It's been a good six months, and I'm glad I came back for a second year.

Hello Kitty Cafe in Sinchon

Siobhain's birthday was Saturday, and we celebrated with shopping at Dongdaemun, dinner at Mr. Pizza and an evening at the Hello Kitty Cafe in Sinchon. Look, I never had even the slightest interest in Hello Kitty before I moved to Asia. I was never into Hello Kitty as a kid,* and despite the Hello Kitty cellphone charm I bought last night,** I'm still not. However, if you get a high enough concentration of any sort of paraphernalia in one place, it stops being weird and starts being hilarious. The Hello Kitty Cafe, which is pink and cutesy and other adjectives that would normally make me roll my eyes, is the perfect example. It stops being about the anthropomorphic kitty and starts being about the lolz.***

We bought Siobhain a Hello Kitty birthday cake and sat around and knit for a few hours. Caroline and I explored the cafe, taking pictures and boggling at the breadth of the Hello Kitty paraphernalia. We all laughed at the long-suffering boyfriends who had been drug to the cafe by their girlfriends and emasculated by being forced to drink a latte decorated with Kitty's face in cinnamon on the foam. We also laughed at the WiFi password kiten - a misspelling of kitten.

Dear Asia, please never change.


For all your Hello Kitty teapot needs.


And who doesn't need a Hello Kitty wicker basket set?

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Even the stairs are decorated with Hello Kitty!
More photos are here.

* Baby!Cait was not a girly child. Baby!Cait was really into books and playing make-believe and, before she knew how to read, playing make-believe that she already knew how to read books.
** Which is fitting, since cell phone charms are another thing I wasn't even remotely interested in before I moved to Asia.
*** My motto: Doing it for the lolz since 1985.

Directions: Go to Sinchon Station (신촌역) on Line Two and take Exit 3. Walk straight for about a block until you reach a major intersection; Nature Republic will be on your right. Turn right (without crossing the street) and walk straight for two blocks. Just past Macos (the building with the faux-stain glass storefront) there is a small side street. On one side of the alley is 몬된고양이 (Naughty Cat - a store selling cat related charms and trinkets) and on the other side is a Happy Table and a Baskin-Robbins. Turn right up the side street. The Hello Kitty Cafe is just a few yards in on the right. A quick Google search turns up a location in Hongdae as well.

Buddha's Birthday

In Korea, Buddha's birthday is celebrated on the 8th day of the 4th lunar month. This year, it fell on May 21st. (Yes, I know that's over a month ago. This is catch-up blogging from the great blogging void of April and May 2010. ) Buddhism was introduced to Korea in 372 AD, and was the dominate religion on the peninsula until the rise of the Joseon Dynasty in 1392. Despite persecution during the early Joseon period, Buddhism remains one of the major religions in Korea today. (According to a survey by the South Korean National Statistical Office, 22.8% of Koreans are Buddhist, 29.2% are some form of Christian and 46.4% of Koreans are atheist which, as someone who comes from a country where religion is such a pervasive part of the culture, is something I have trouble wrapping my head around.)


Lotus lanterns lining the path up to Gwanchoksa Temple in Nonsan, South Korea in early April. They made a colorful addition to an otherwise gloomy and winter shrouded woods.
In Korea, 석가탄신일, literally the day of Buddha's birthday, is celebrated by lighting lotus lanterns. There is a Buddhist proverb that says, "Please attain Buddhism in your next lifetime by lighting a lantern in this life," and the entire peninsula is decorated with lanterns in the month leading up to the holiday. I visited Gwanchoksa Temple in early April and there were already lanterns lining the path up to the temple. By early May, I was walking home from school under strings of lotus lanterns hanging between the street lamps and electric poles. Then, on Buddha's Birthday, the lanterns are lit during an evening ceremony.


I watched the lighting ceremony at Jogyesa Temple in Seoul, the chief temple of the Jogye Order in Korean Buddhism.  I met up with some friends outside of Jogyesa at 5:30, an hour and a half before the ceremony was suppose to start, and were given plastic bags for our shoes before shuffling into the temple. It's a small temple, with three golden Buddha statues sitting in the lotus position and a ceiling absolutely covered in red lotus lanterns. The decorations and painting were very similar to every other Korean temple I've visited. I'm always unsure how to behave in temples. To the people praying around me, the temple was a place of worship and this was a holy day, but all I was doing was sight-seeing and enjoying the scene. I never know the protocol on taking pictures - at least when sight-seeing at churches or cathedrals, it's my own religion that I'm disrespecting - but the temple was full of Koreans taking photos on their cell phones, so I pulled out my camera and no one rushed in to reprimand me. We stood in front of the Buddhas for a bit, and then left the temple. The temple is built on top of a stone platform a couple of feet high, and the stairs off the platform were flanked by stone ramps. Someone at the temple had attached a metal slide to one of the ramps, and a group of children were entertaining themselves by sliding down and shrieking with joy. I tried to stealthily take pictures of the cute, but taking pictures of other peoples' children is even trickier than figuring out if you're allowed to take pictures inside a temple.




In front of temple is a large open courtyard which was covered with a canopy of lanterns. Even though we showed up early, the courtyard was packed with people. We eventually found a free spot amongst some bushes, and we sat down to wait. Marie, Omega and I are all knitters, so we pulled out knitting to entertain ourselves. This immediately made us a spectacle to the Koreans surrounding us, and one man started taking photos of the crazy 외국인, but considering I had just attempted to take pictures of young Korean children playing, I don't feel like I have the right to be annoyed. The ceremony itself started at seven and lasted for about forty five minutes. It mostly involved chanting and droning and throat-singing, all in Korean. It was dull, since I couldn't understand what was being said and I don't know enough about Buddhism to understand the significance of the ceremony. I did catch the occasional word in the mantra - teacher! student! fifty seven! - but other than that, I feel into a bit of a trance. My favorite part was at the very beginning, when the acolytes (or as I called them Tiny Baby Monklets!) scampered across the stage to take their place kneeling behind the monks.


The ceremony ended around 7:45 and we had a fifteen minute wait until it was dark enough for the lantern lighting ceremony. Everyone stood up and chanted the four elements. (I only understood water and fire, but I assume the other two words were wind and earth.) The first few rows of lanterns were lit. We chanted the elements again and the second tier of lanterns were lit. We chanted a third time and the rest of the lanterns were lit. It only took twenty or thirty seconds, but it was absolutely amazing. Standing in the dark, watching the lanterns light up overhead, being surrounded by a huge crowd of devout people and actually being able to participate in someway, even if it was only four words, was extremely cool and it's something I'll remember for a long time. I'm so glad I went!


My favorite part of this picture is the bottom right corner, where you can see people taking pictures with their camera phones. It's such a very very typical Korean response and it makes me grin.


Full set of pictures are here.

The Shouts of the Reds!

(From left to right: Riah, me and Siobhain at Thursday game.)
It is World Cup season! I realize that no one really cares back home, but South Korea cares passionately and in the weeks leading up to the opening ceremony, I couldn't avoid the bombardment of Red Devil paraphernalia or the overwhelming surge of patriotic pride. (I count at least five different Kpop groups who have recorded World Cup songs in the past few months.) Say what you like about Korea, there are few countries that are better at INTENSE NATIONALISTIC PRIDE! The Shouts of the Red, Be the Devils, KOREA FIGHTING, etc, etc!! Then I caught the opening match at the skewered food house across the street (they will wrap asparagus in bacon and serve it onna stick) and remember, right, I both truly enjoy watching soccer AND, thanks to years of watching my brother's soccer matches, it's the one sport where I actually understand what is going on. And thus I very quickly found myself DEEPLY INVESTED in the World Cup and the Red Devils of Korea.

I watched the first game at a bar up in Sinchon with some friends. It was truly miserable weather - it poured rain all day long - but tons of people still turned out to watch the glorious, glorious game. The bar had been reserved for a friend's birthday, so we were able to actually have seats for the game and room to dance about and bang clappers. Our bar was showing the game was on a fifteen second delay for some reason, which meant we heard the roar of the crowd upstairs when Korea scored their first goal and had a very confused fifteen seconds until our feed caught up. After that we opted to make as much noise as possible to drown out the sounds of any potentially spoiling celebrations from upstairs. Korea won 2-0 and it was wonderful and the rain let up long enough for people to dance in the streets afterwards.

I watched Thursday's game against Argentina at COEX mall. (One of my fourth graders ran up to me in class on Thursday, wearing a Korean soccer jersey and covered in temporary tattoos, and shouted, "BE THE DEVILS, TEACHER! FIGHTING KOREA!" If I hadn't already been excited, their enthusiasm would have been contagious.) The Korea National Football Team Supporters Club erected several huge screens outside COEX and despite the terrible yellow dust and smog and heat, thousands and thousands of people turned up to fill the streets outside of COEX and cheer. Being in that enthusiastic of a crowd for a game I actually cared about was loads of fun, at least until the match turned into a bloody rout in the last fifteen minutes. Halftime, though, was especially fun, since Korea scored a goal just seconds before the buzzer sounded and the entire break turned into one prolonged celebration of the goal.


A boy and his vuvuzela. In the background, people are waving clappers, inflatable plastic tubes handed out at any Korean sporting match and are banged together to make a WHOLE LOT OF NOISE.

(You guys, that game. It was a heartbreaker. Like, I knew Korea wasn't going to beat Argentina. No one really thought Korea was going to beat Argentina, not even my die-hard soccer fan co-teacher. But for the middle thirty-five or forty minutes the Korean team played SO WELL and I really thought it might end in a tie.  They were holding their own against Argentina, especially for the first half of the second quarter, and then the Korean defense completely fell apart in the last twenty minutes and it ended in a bloody 4-1 rout and seriously, BREAK MY DAMN HEART, why don't you. I don't think I've ever seen a more depressed subway packed full of people. BUT, Greece beat Nigeria, and we trounced Greece, which means there's STILL HOPE for advancing. Unfortunately, the South Korea vs. Nigeria game is at 3:30 Wednesday morning, which means I can't watch the game and be ~functional~ the next day, but I'm still VERY EXCITED!)

(And don't even get me started on the US-Slovenia match. I didn't even watch it since the US games have so far had the bad fortune of starting very late at night in Korea, but seriously, WHAT WAS THAT! We were robbed and I'm very possible going to have to stay up to cheer during the US-Algeria game on Wednesday.)

(God, I LOVE soccer!)


Light-up devil horns are a popular accessory for any Red Devil fan! On the left: fans heading home after the Korea-Greece game. On the right: fans lining the streets outside of COEX before the Korea-Argentina game.


The clappers are especially useful when chanting. Throughout the game, someone would shout Daehanminguk, the official Korean name for the Republic of Korea, and the crowd for respond, "Daemanminguk! CLAPCLAP - CLAPCLAP - CLAP" This went on for approximately the ENTIRE GAME.


THE SHOUTS OF THE REDS! FIGHTING KOREA!
More photos and videos are here.

석가탄신일 (Buddha's Birthday)

Lanterns decorating Jogyesa Temple in Seoul on Buddha's Birthday, May 21st.
Happy Birthday, Buddha! Glad to see you made it another year. Thank you for the day off and I had a great time at the party. It was the sort of day that left me with a pleasant buzz of happiness in the pit of my stomach and good will towards mankind, which is probably a fitting way to celebrate the birth of The Enlightened One. Granted my dinner of sausage/mashed potatoes/beer wasn't typical Buddhist fare, but it was delicious.

PS. Loved the decorations!