My new lesson plan is "At a Hair Salon." I am teaching Korean kids about many hair styles including, but not limited to, the mullet. The picture on the left is my teaching aid.
On a more relevant note, my sister Becca is here. The Bean arrived Tuesday night with loads of Patagonia and Annie's Mac&Chz. We are enjoying our time together immensely. 
This is one of my favorite students, Ghost, singing a Christmas carol at our party on Friday.
We had a good time with the kids all day; singing and playing games. Later, we stayed at work and had an adult party until late. I attempted to make eggnog, but it was horrible. Too much whiskey. This worked out well however, since Koreans have an insatiable appetite for horrible alcohol. I thought it was like cracking a raw egg in a highball of whiskey and taking it like a shot. Yuck!
Christmas eve we met Jenny and Nicole in Haewha (Cool student area of Seoul) for a sushi dinner and a night of partying. Highlights included the really cool hat I got from the white elephant gift exchange, the dance club we got into for free, climbing a 30ft metal sculpture at 3am, and street vendor food at the same early hour.
Christmas was a bit of a flop compared to Christmas Eve. The highlight here was playing cards with the cool people from work and talking to family. I love and miss all my family and friends.
For the climbers that read my blog Timmy ONeill interviewing Steve House at the Banff Film Festival 2005 is not to be missed. Steve House spills and shows that he's got game. Funny. Having met both of these guys makes it even more amusing.
Check it out!
Ok, so we have all heard this nursery rhyme:
Georgie Porgie pudding and pie,
Kissed the girls and made them cry
When the boys came out to play,
Georgie Porgie ran away
Well, one of the less liked teachers at our school has been doing this with his students for a couple of weeks. It turns out that Georgie translates in Korean as penis and Porgie is basically female pubic hair! So our not so good rhyme gets quite a lot worse:
Cock, Bush, pudding and pie,
Kissed the girls and made them cry
When the boys came out to play,
Cock Bush ran away!
No wonder the kids think this guy is so strange! I don't know why the Korean teachers let him teach this rhyme for WEEKS before pointing this out?
There may have been some issues with this post previously. Sorry to freak you out with random gross poetry. It really is the funniest thing that happened since I have been here.
One of the particularly enjoyable parts of my job is trying to understand what kids are saying. These kids can't make many English sounds, are missing teeth and don't really know the proper pronunciation to begin with. My name for example is pronounced "Kiss" by many students (no th sound in Korean). I can understand this malady because as a kid I said my name "Teef" as in "Teef want a tookie." Bill used to tease me for hours much to my chagrin:
Bill: Is your name Teef?
Keith: No, It's Teef!!!
Repeat many many times....
Anyway, I have had a couple of very similar experiences:
Keith: What is your English name?
Student: Effa.
K: Effa?
S: No, Effa!
K: Ella?
S: No, EFFA!
K: Heffer?
S: EFFA!!!
Rest of class: Her name is EFFA!!!
10 minutes later....
Student points to apple shaped clock....
K: Apple?
S: Big smile giggles nods
K: APPLE!!!! Your name is Apple!
Monster was a real tough one too. The whole staff thought his name was Meusta for the longest time. He is in a class with Ghost and Pink.
Try dropping the zeros on the country and area code to call us.
011 to get out of US. then 82-31-930-8044
I am feeling way better. Work is good and we are going to the DMZ this weekend.
I have been sick. Quite sick actually. This was the third time I have been sick in two months and I am totally tired of feeling ill. This time I went to the doctor after five days of feeling like poo and she game me some antibiotics and snot-coagulants. It turns out that the snot-coagulants combined with the secondary infection already brewing in my sinuses had an adverse affect and created some serious sinus blockage. This culminated in a pounding headache and me passing out in the shower due to the sinus pressure. A trip to the ER and they gave me a CT scan and lots of head X-rays to make sure I didn't have a tumor or aneurysm. I didn't. The highlight was the IV (I was dehydrated) and the morphine. I was feeling much better after a couple of hours and went home. Yesterday the pain was back (morphine wore off) and I missed a third day of work. Today the sinus blockage has cleared and I am feeling much better.
We now have a phone, so feel free to call us. We are GMT+9 which is 17 hours ahead of Pacific Standard and 14 hours ahead of the East coast.
The number:
082-031-930-8044
You should be able to get an international phone card and call for around 9cent a minute, not too bad really and the connections are generally quite good.
On Saturday I went hiking in Bukhansan NP. I put in 12 miles or so and climbed 8 peaks. It was quite fun. Mel was not along because she had a bit of stomach sickness in the morning. Korean men do not like being passed by some whitey and pick up the pace when I come by. I happily accommodate them and increase my pace as well. This causes things to get a bit strenuous at times, but it is all in good fun. At one point I had a number of middle aged Korean men strung out behind me while we were all scrambling over difficult fourth class terrain. We gained 500m elevation in about 20min. They wanted me to yell and beat my chest on the summit, but that's not my style.
Tofu in Korean is dubu (두부) and we found a cool restaurant with dubu in the title. We have been walking past this place daily and I never realized that it's a tofu joint. We had a real nice sit on the floor 12 course Korean meal for 15,000 ($15) each. Pretty amazing. The courses included fresh warm tofu and sauces, fried tofu, pork salad rolls, cold salmon on tofu, a wild mushroom and tofu soup, sauteed wild mushrooms, and many salads. It was a wonderful meal and I could hardly walk afterward it was so much food.
Today is Thanks Giving in the States and I miss my Mother's wonderful cooking. Mel is missing her mac-n'-cheese. So, hello to all my friends and family at home. I am thinking about you all and wish you some great family time. Drive safe. Here there is no Thanksgiving celebration to be found. Some co-workers tried to find wild turkey last night for a celebration, but were unsuccessful in their mission.
My mother is fully responsible for getting me addicted to a new game "Sudoku." All of you that are in to mental masturbation will love this one. Puzzles are easy to get at http://www.websudoku.com/.
Yummy. Silk worm larvae for sale on the street. Kids love these things and I am not sure why.
I am having a great day. This morning Mel and I cleaned our apartment and I have been painting a sun in my classroom this afternoon.
Sponsored by the letter ㅅ (aspirated s).
The weekend got off to a bit of a bad start when we discovered that our new fish Armin died. He hadn't been eating since we got him and seemed quite sick. Maybe we will try again with Armin II. We then proceeded to stay up entirely too late watching "Finding Forrester" which was surprisingly good.
Saturday, We headed to Suwon fortress and circumambulated the wall. It was a nice leisurely way to spend a day. Sunday, we headed to a couple of palaces not far from our place. They were beautiful with intricate woodwork and painting. The highlight was watching a heron eat a fish about 10m away. I took pictures with my SLR and will post them when I get the film processed. We also headed back to Insadong for lunch and dinner. Two more excellent meals.
School continues to get a little more organized every day.
Today I have been tackling the letter ㄹ(a cross between r and l). If you are having trouble viewing my Korean letters try changing your character encoding in the view menu of your browser to unicode (UTF-8).
It's Friday night and time to start thinking about weekend plans. I think Mel and I are going to have a fun weekend of visiting palaces and historic places in the greater Seoul area. Maybe meet up with Jenny Mei and eat some nice dinners.
Teaching 16 classes in a day is extremely exhausting. I'm so glad that it is Friday.
Today's post is sponsored by the letter ㅈ (aspirated J sound).
There is a system to this madness and it could possibly work. There are still many glitches, but it is getting better. There are currently 202 student enrolled at ENCT with a maximum of 52 showing up for any given 100 minute period. There are four 100 minute periods in a day and each is subdivided into 4 units making a total of 16 individual teaching times. Today I am teaching only six of these times, but tomorrow and Friday I have students for all 16. We will see how that goes. I may not be so optimistic about the system by the end of the week.
The kids have all been assigned a level (1-24 with the highest kid being a 17), but we didn't do a very good job of this and there is very little standardization. They are organized into classes of eight or less based on their level and what days of the week they come in. 42 kids come all days, 86 kids come MWF, and the remaining 74 come T&Th. The classes are assigned to a different group of three teachers each time they come in. There may be as many as 3 classes assigned to a group of teachers for any given 100 minute period. The groups then pass the classes from teacher to teacher every 25 minutes.
It sounds complicated, but really isn't too bad. The problem is a lack of instruction and conflicting logistics.
Today's post is sponsored by the letter ㅊ (aspirated ch sound).
Mel and I got a fish. He is gold and his name is Armin. I really like him. He had a rough go of his new bowl for the first couple of days, but now he is a bit more lively and seems to be developing a bit of fondness for me. His bowl is a large wood fired ceramic pot. We are hoping to add some floating water plants and maybe a buddy named Reinaldo.
Now I am at school and I have been given the go-ahead to paint my classroom. This is going to be so much fun! Off to get paints.....
Today is 11-11 which is celebrated as 빼빼로 (Pae-pae-ro) Day in Korea. This holiday was created by some marketing genius at the 빼빼로 candy company that decided his candys (long rice sticks dipped in chocolate) look like the number one and the name looks like alot of ones. We are all eating 빼빼로 today in celebration.
On a different note, we took a field trip to Fukuoka, Japan yesterday. I have never had my passport stamped so many times in a single day. Two pages worth of stamps. The highlights of the trip were getting a visa, hanging out at a very tranquil Japanese garden and a wonderful dinner! Now that we are back in Korea, things are seeming quite alot more organized and everything will hopefully come together for the actual school opening on Monday!
Sponsored by the letter ㅗ (O).
Tomorrow I am going to Japan to get my E2 work visa. We are meeting the other teachers at 5:30am to head for the airport. Most of the teachers are used to getting up at noon, since we start work at 2 (Mel and I seem to be the exception to this rule). Their solution is simply to stay up all night and celebrate Tom's birthday. Normally I might consider this option, but since I am just getting over my sickness I think I will call it an early night.
School is slowly-but-surely becoming a more organized endeavor. Yesterday was the first time that no random kids showed up in any of my classes. Today all of the kids even had name tags. A different person did the romanization for the class list and the name tags with quite different results. I kind of go for something in between when trying to pronounce them. Next step - visa and lesson-plan. This will soon be a legit school.
Sponsored by the vowel ㅏ (a as in father).
I am feeling much better and we will be heading to Japan on Thursday for our visas. It is still uncertain whether we are going and coming back in the same day or if we will get the chance to spend the night in Japan. Mostly I am just excited to have everything on the up-n-up. Another positive is that things are becoming more organized around here. Definitely some needed changes in the works.
Mel and I had a great weekend. We pretty much stayed close to home and checked out two places in Seoul. We are also feeling more at home in our apartment.
Insadong is the first place we explored. It is a cool old neighborhood with tons of artsy shops, teahouses, ceramics, antiques (which are quite old here) and great restaurants. We ate some wonderful Italian and bought some beautiful tea cups. I also picked out two gorgeous pairs of earrings for Melanie:)
The second place we visited was Youngsan. The most overwhelmed I have ever been in my entire life. The place is absolutely crazy! What is it? The biggest electronics market in the world. 14 buildings with 4-6 floors each packed with thousands on independent vendors and tens of thousands of people. Whole floors of cell phones, laptops, screens, boards, memory, drives, etc... Totally amazing! We managed to get deals on an external DVD burner, DVD player and CD player. We were there for less than two hours and it felt like a day.
Other interesting news: I am sick, but feeling better. "Airborne" is great stuff and I am totally happy we brought it from the states. I took it for a day and it definitely helped. Mom-please send more. Also, a man was killed in a hit and run right outside of work on Friday. The drivers here are not so good.
Today's post is sponsored by the letter ㄴ (n).
K2climb.net - K2 and Karakorum by climbers, news
Steve House is my vote for the coolest person in the world. It will be interesting to see how his commentary after the Piolet d'Or ceremony last year will affect the proceedings this year. Especially because the 2004 Russian Jannu team will be on the jury.
I am constantly impressed by the modest and unassuming way in which Steve House promotes alpine style.
Truck explodes in tunnel
Some people were worried about the tunnel explosion in Korea. It was more than 300km from my house and was not in a subway tunnel as some suspected. Pretty scary to be riding around on the freeway with trucks carrying missles though. It probably happens (the trucks, not the explosions) in the states all the time and we never know.
Today is the first day of class for the "JUMP" and "Intensive" students. More chaos all over again. Somehow the teaching deity is smiling on me today and I have been paired with the head Korean teacher. This means I only have to teach two 100 minute sections instead of three or four.
I am planning to start posting pictures on the awesome Korean food to my blog, but I accidentally ordered a noodle dish covered with ice this morning and it did not look too appetizing. Thus, food pictures have to wait until tomorrow.
Todays blog is sponsored by the letter ㅂ;(between b as in been or the p in pen).
I just had my first grey hair and I mean it was really grey. I am 25 years old and not quite ready to start having grey hair. Melanie pulled it out for me and I said it was her fault, but I suppose it is just a natural part of getting older. Maybe being an illegal immigrant causes one's hair to grey prematurely. The visa trip to Japan can't come soon enough.
On a brighter note, I love all of the responses I have been getting to my blog posts! I feel maybe a bit responsible for the ever growing list of readers that have started their own blogs! Keep the Emails coming.
This post is sponsored by the letter ㅁ (think m as in meal).
OK, so today is the first day. Halloween. Introductions. Doesn't seem too hard, but it is exhausting. Things here are totally disorganized. Everyone is running all over like crazy. Maybe it is because it is a new school, maybe it is because it is the first day. Probably both, but I need some organization and some training would be nice too. I am currently learning on my feet and making up lesson plans as I go. It is fun and challenging, but definitely exhausting. The kids are like sponges and learn really fast. They are super cute, but I wish they weren't so shy. I'm ready for a 2% beer.
This post is sponsored by the letter ㅌ (t as in tag).
I am much faster at typing in English, so I think I will stick to that for the remainder of the post.
Friday was a good day. We got reimbursed for our airfare over here, which we paid for out of pocket. That was really nice. It was also nice just because it was Friday.
설 악 산 국 립 공 원 (cut and paste) was awesome. We left right after work (9pm) for Sokcho. Public transportation here is way nicer and cheaper than the states. The bus system is bitchin'. Think first class airplane seat that does not stop until it gets to your destination. We made an under the table deal with two nice ladies at the bus station at two in the morning. They lent us a room built on the back of their house for a nominal fee. In the morning we looked at the other side of the Pacific and headed for the park. There we met a few thousand Korean tourists and joined them for a hike. It was quite nice hiking with such a large group of friends.
We spent the night at a mountain hut with 12 dudes that snored really loud and another couple dozen that didn't. They all got a freakin' early alpine start and then they didn't start, they just hung around outside in the sub-freezing weather for a long time. We got up last and left first for the summit of Daecheong-bong. After climbing stairs (both granite and metal) for three hours we made it to the top. At another mountain hut near the summit we joined some Koreans for beer, snickers, popcorn and ..... dried shredded squid. I had to try the dried shredded squid and immediately realized it was a bad choice. At least I had the beer to chase it down.
Four hours of hiking through beautiful fall colors, granite box canyons, and gorgeous crags got us back to even bigger crowds. Form there it was a nice long bus, taxi and subway ride home to my bed.
Today's blog is sponsored by the letter ㅎ (h as in him).
This weekend Mel and I are planning to head to Seoraksan NP for some backpacking. They have granite, but we are just taking light packs to check it out and do some hiking. Supposedly the fall colors are absolutely the best in Korea. It is a four hour bus ride from here and we are leaving on a late bus after we get off work tonight. Heading back on Sunday. I am really looking forward to checking out the real Korean mountains.
The latter part of the week in Ilsan has been good. We are still eagerly awaiting our visa trip to Japan. Five more foreign teachers arrived. Tom is from Arizona, Mark is from Connecticut, Simon is from Sydney and the couple Rick and Sophia are from London. Work is good with more placement tests for the now 100+ students, preparations for opening day and figuring out all that we will be doing once the actual teaching starts on Monday. We repotted our dendrobium orchid, which Desiree kindly identified for us. I got this kick-ass pot for $5 including soil. Korean food continues to amaze me with its sheer quantity, incredible flavors and cheapness!
Yesterday was Tuesday. Most of you know that my Tuesday evenings traditionally involve Corvallis' best drink special, the $2 pint. It turns out that Ilsan has a similar drink special. The 2,000wan pint! At the current exchange rate that is $1.88902 for 500cc of makchu. The only problem is the quality of the beer (not as good as Oregon). It also turns out that when you get off work at 10pm it is really easy to stay out until 3. Mike joined us on our journey to three bars and we finished the night at the brewery. I vaguely remember descending the up escalator and deciding it would be better to be on the down escalator. I just vaulted and flailed my way on over there. I wish I had a video of that move. It would really make my mother proud!
This morning I remembered why I really don't drink that much (especially whiskey shots)! I woke up at 8 feeling great, but rapidly descended into the depths of total hungoverness. I nearly vomited all over one of my favorite restaurants when I walked in to the overwhelming aroma of fish sauce. Not the ideal morning scent. I am finally starting to function normally again.
We found some granite in Bukhansan NP Saturday morning. It is fairly easy to get there, but it took us awhile due to our inexperience with Korean mass transportation. The subway system here is huge and was not too hard to figure out. the bus system is nearly incomprehensible, but we will get the hang of that too. Anyway, we made it and the park is beautiful especially with all the wonderful fall colors. The downside is that people swarm the place like locusts, but once we made it onto the climber's trails there was nobody to be seen.
The granite of Insubong is coarse and relatively unweathered. Pretty similar to J-Tree. The climbing was fun and definitely worth the trip. We shall return. Mostly it was just nice to get out of the city and move around. later that evening we explored Seoul a bit with Jenny and Nicole (both friends from Corvallis) as our guides. Seoul is crazy and it was nice to see some familiar faces. More on Seoul when I get more familiar with the city. Right now it is totally overwhelming.
Sunday night we checked out Ilsan (the city we live in) with a Korean teacher at our school, Jennifer. She was a great guide and took us to a Bellagio-esque fountain. It played everything from ABBA to Korean 80s rock and sprayed water all over in time with the music. Then we hit a brewery! I was so stoked to drink real beer. Still not up to Oregon standards, but definitely better.
Mel and I got this orchid on the street and are wondering what type it is. Any assistance in this matter would be most appreciated.
