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.

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.

Life in Korea, a study in 7 words

My goal for NaBlo was to avoid posting for the sake of posting. I wanted to make each post substantive, or at least amusing, and I think I've done a pretty good job, but some days I get home for SnB at 9:00 and just want to curl up in bed with a book and preserve the last lingering moments of my weekend before going to bed, so I leave you with my deep, philosophical ramblings about life in Korea.


Things are cheaper, and have more pandas.

[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.

[less than forget // but more than begun // these adventures in solitude never done]

Guys, last week was not a good week. I was sick all week. Just a cold, but the sort of sick where I had to pause in the middle of longer sentences because talking hurt too much to finish, and even though I was so tired my eyeballs hurt, I couldn't sleep. Two of the 4th graders who clean my classroom during lunch, including one of the most annoying kids I've ever had the misfortune of dealing with, were terrible all week and by Friday, they were outright disrespectful. One of the first grade teachers decided that since I'm not a "real" teacher, I clearly have nothing better to do in the afternoons than serve as her personal English tutor/editor. I begrudgingly agreed to edit her application for an English academy and she came back the next day to argue about my corrections. Which, woman, in the epic battle of native speaker vs. beginning learner, my English grammar will always trump your English grammar.

The co-teacher drama, which started the week with a bang, also ground on. On Monday, Sue caught the shingles and quit. By Thursday, my school had found a replacement 5th and 6th teacher, who promptly quit two hours into her first day. I never even met her; I teach 4th grade on Thursdays and she was gone long before lunch. I never did get a good explanation for why she quit. Something about the school wanting her to do things besides teach class, like writing student assessments, making tests, dealing with the endless paperwork that fuels the bureaucracy that is a Korean school and just generally being a productive member of the faculty. Which... yes? I'm just the assistant foreign English teacher and even I'm responsible for things beyond my regular classes. It's probably for the best, since she sounds like she would have been a horrible co-teacher, but it did waste three days that could have spent looking for a teacher who isn't either afraid of work or 5th graders.

All in all, by the time I drug myself home Friday afternoon, I was ready to curl up under my blankets and not come out until Monday. Instead, I woke up on Saturday and took a bus to Siheung to help Marie make wedding invitation. I hung out with awesome people all day and was fed excellent Indian food and shameful cocktails and then crashed on Marie and Greg's floor. Marie made me pancakes Sunday morning and Stitch n' Bitch wandered Hongdae in search of a new meeting place. We found an adorable little knitting café with excellent lighting, knitting boys in leather jackets and a conveniently located taco stand down the street. Continuing the theme of excellent food, we ate dinner at Jenny's Cafe and had some of the best western food I've had in Korea. On the walk back to the subway, I looked at Riah and said, "I needed this weekend so, so much." And Lord, I did need this weekend.

I have always been an introvert, but one of the things living in Korea has taught me is that I'm not nearly as introverted as I thought I was. I didn't have any friends when I lived in Rocky Mount. I had friends in Chapel Hill, an hour and a half to the west, and Greenville, an hour to the south, and I visited them often, but I didn't know anyone in Rocky Mount and I was okay with that. I talked to my co-workers and people at the gym and the library. I was working as a tour guide and half my job was talking to people. I was just fine with only being social a couple of weekends a month, so the almost crippling loneliness of my first few weeks in Korea surprised me. I had never realized how much I relied on casual conversations and phone calls to fulfill my need for human interaction, and by the end of my first month in Korea, I was ready to fall upon the first friendly face I saw and beg them to please talk to me, just for a minute. (And that's how I met Tony, who was suck on a bus and couldn't get away from me. Hi Tony!) I'm the only foreigner at my school and I don't know many people in Seongnam and it's still so easy, two years later, to go a week or two without sitting down and having a real conversation with someone. I'm still an introvert, but I need to occasionally seek out weekends where I surround myself with people and revel in their company.

I feel so much better today. My voice was still failing by the end of the day and I still don't have a co-teacher for 5th and 6th grade, but the 5th grade classes went fine today and my school has found yet another substitute co-teacher, although I firmly expect her to catch consumption or find out she's a leper before the end of the week.

Things will going to work out. They're gonna be great.

Konglish Signs in Gangnam

One of the unexpected pluses to living in Korea is the Konglish. From the completely nonsensical to the funny to the just plain unfortunate, it's always fun to walk around around a corner or read someone's shirt and go, "... what?" (My favorite sign *ever* will always be this one in Itaewon, but I don't have my own picture of it. But no seriously, follow that link. IT IS WORTH IT!)


Look closely at the name of the waffle set. I would not eat that waffle set.
This is the terrible unfortunate sign advertising Espresso Public, the cafe where the Sunday Gangnam SnB meets. I'm pretty sure this one isn't actually a Konglish mistake since, if you look closely, you can see there's a space for an 'l' between the 'b' and the 'i'. Most likely some (drunk) foreigner stumbled upon the sign and couldn't help himself. It's been like this for weeks and all anyone has done about it is take a bunch of photos and laugh a lot.


Butterfinger Pancakes is not the TARDIS. This door only travels through space and NOT time.
We tried to go to Butterfinger Pancakes after SnB, but the powers of 소녀시대 (a super popular Kpop girl group; the link goes to a YouTube video of their latest single, which I can not stop listening to. Don't judge me, I use to have both taste in music and a sense of shame, I swear) who was possible waiting in a van outside the restaurant next door caused a rift in the space-time continuum and Butterfingers was temporally closed. Instead we ate at California Pizza Kitchen.


On the walk back to the subway, we passed the Joo Bar. The general consensus was that this is pronounced Jew Bar, which reminds me of my students last year. There is no 'z' sound in Korean, so my students when confronted with the word zoo, told me they wanted to go to the Jew to see the lions.

WWKIP Day 2009

World Wide Knit in Public Day was this weekend and last weekend! In Seoul, we celebrated last Saturday.


The Seoul KIP was held at the Seoul Arts Center in Seocho. The Art Center is very nice; all open and green with dance performances and sculptures and lots of families enjoying the nice weather. We met at the Mozart Cafe next to the World Music Fountain. The World Music Fountain mainly played things like "My Heart Will Go On" by Celine Dion and the theme of Chariots of Fire, but the kids seemed to like it.




I would like it to be known that I am wearing the exact same glasses as that six year old boy.
There were about fifteen knitters, including a couple of people I'd never met. There are five or six Stitch N' Bitches in Seoul and I can only make it to three of them, so it was nice to have a chance to meet some new knitters. We took up two tables, and even eventually managed to get two tables next to each other.


Starting with the redhead and going clockwise: Siobhain, Jennifer, Sha, Jinny, Angie. Please notice the looks we're getting from the passing ajumma.


Starting in the bottom right corner and going clockwise: Denise, Carson, Bethany, Kathie, Nikki's mom, Nikki and Michele's hat.


From left to right: Bethany, Caron's seriously adorable sock monkey cup cozy and Kathie.
Nikki organized a yarn swap (I got nine skeins of yarn even though I didn't actually bring anything to swap) and a knitting quiz. The quiz was a combination of your knitting experience and knitting knowledge. I did quite poorly on the last part. One of the questions was Odd One Out: Nupp, Noil, Thrum, Slub. I thought they all sounded like things parents threatened their naughty children with. As in, boy, you're asking for a nuppin' when we get home.


From left to right: Nikki and Carson
Angie was selling raffle tickets for an ugly blanket and a bunch of people were working on squares. Siobhain was making a square from Chenille and eyelash yarn held together and the yarns became horrible tangled, as yarn is wont to do. Marie and I were helping her untangle the knots, and we decided that this wasn't a mere tangle. This was performance art and should be displayed as such. There was a grass field next to the fountains, and we stood in the middle of it and worked though the knots while the Koreans watched with bemusement. One of the ideas behind WWKIP Day is to draw attention to knitters and show the public what exactly the knitting demographic is. In Korea, I think we proved that it's crazy waegooks.

Stitching and Bitching (and Some Studying)

Fishy says,"Om nom nom nom. Dead skin is delicious!"
I went to Gangnam on Thursday night for SnB. The Thursday night meetings are currently being held at Namu Keuneul, a coffee shop that has a Dr. Fish spa for 2,000 won ($1.60). The doctor fish (also called reddish log sucker and doctorfishen) is a type of tropical fish that eats dead skin. They were originally used to treat skin diseases, but in Korea and Japan, they're used in spas. Full body spas exist (and seriously creep me out), but the Dr. Fish at Namu Keuneul was just a foot spa.




First you wash your feet to prevent contaminating the pool. Then you soak your feet in the tubs for twenty minutes while the fish nibble on your toes. The dark clouds surround our feet are actually fish, which flocked to us as soon as we stuck our feet in.   It doesn't hurt at all, but it does tickle. A lot! Turns out, my feet are really ticklish. I believe the phrase "Pillsbury Doughboy" was used to describe my reaction. (Sarah, on my reaction: was not even remotely surprised.) I couldn't stop laughing! Marie, Siobhain and I took our knitting with us and knit while the fish nibbled.

Then on Sunday I went to Sinchon for the new Sunday meeting. It's very new - this is only the second meeting - and I was the only person for the first two hours. It's in a nice coffee shop, though, and I used the opportunity to make myself study Korean. Since I'm going to be staying in Korea for a second year, I figure it's time to get off my butt and start learning the language. 나는 한굴말를 공부해요. In Roman letters, that's Nanun Hangulmallul gongbuhaeyo, which means (I think) I study Korean. I can't form the past tense yet, but that's okay because this is more of an on-going (never ending?) project.

[I got soul, but I'm not a soldier]

My second weekend in Korea! It's a long weekend; Friday was Foundation Day and therefore a national holiday. Friday was depressing. I didn't know anyone and without work to keep me busy, I had nothing to do but sit at home and contemplate how lonely I was. Luckily I pulled myself together and the rest of the weekend was fun.

On Saturday I made myself get up and clean my apartment. It's a tiny little thing - about the size of my living room in Rocky Mount - but it's not like I have much stuff with me. I finished unpacking, cleaned my kitchen and figured out the trash situation. In Korea, you have to use official government issued trash bags. There are different bags for food trash and other trash, plus recycling is mandatory (whee!). I had a huge pile of trash that had accumulated over the week that I needed to throw out, but I wasn't sure what bag to put it in. Saturday evening I met up with Ji-Won, my co-teacher, to go over lesson plans. Last week all I officially did was observe English camp, but this week I'm responsible for preparing material. We went to a truly terrible cafe and spent a few hours going over the textbooks and our ideas for class next week. Then we went out for ice cream. Koreans keep insisting that we eat western food. I know they're being kind and doing it to make me feel at home, but western food in Korean is often very bad and I would much rather eat good Korean food than mediocre overpriced western food. The ice cream, however, was excellent.

On Sunday, I went to an expat Stitch n' Bitch in Seoul. I found the group on Ravelry, the facebook of knitting. When I found out I was moving to Korea, I typed Korea in Ravelry's search function and it spit out a group called Knitters and Crocheters in Korea, and in addition to finding out where I can buy precious precious yarn in Korea, it mentioned that there was a SnB every first and third Sunday of the month. I had a fantastic time! I was worried about getting into Seoul, but it was super easy. Ansan is a suburb south of Seoul, but it's part of the Seoul National Capital Area and I live just down the street from one of the twelve subway lines in the city. It took an hour to make it to Seoul, but it was a straight shot. There were about fifteen knitters, including Cheryl, who lives in Ansan. Cheryl and I exchanged info and are trying to make plans to meet up sometime this week. After the SnB, Siobhain (another knitter my age) and I went to Itaewon for food. Itaewon is the foreigner district in Seoul and it has a huge American presence, both from tourists and from the nearby Yongsan Garrison, the primary American military base in Korea. After a week in Korea, it was a treat to see other people who looked like me and to understand people's conversations as I walked past. We ate at a truly excellent Indian place and scoped out a supermarket specializing in foreign food. A block of mild (!) cheddar cheese cost $16 which is a depressing depressing fact. After dinner we went out for ice cream, exchanged contact info and I headed home. It was a great day and a fun weekend.