Hiking and Eating

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.

Happy Harvest Day

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/.

Just another Tuesday in Korea

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). 

Fun history weekend

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).

Melanie checking out places that are older than the both of us combined (by about 500 years). 

On Saturday Mel and I walked along the 5km of wall around Suwon fortress. 

Gyeongbokgung palace has incredibly intricate woodwork and painting on it's many temples.

An old door in Gyeongbokgung palace. 

Man with birds painting in Insadong. 

Weekend Plans

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).

School Life

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).

I befriended a Korean businessman last night at a local bar called Mr. Beer. Later in the evening we moved on to singing karaoke. I simply could not do Britney Spears' "Im a Slave 4 U." - Photo by Melanie

Co-worker Marc is looking bright-eyed-and-bushy-tailed compared to the Korean businessman we successfully drank under the table. 

Armin

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.....

Paper shop in Insadong. The variety of papers here is truly amazing! 

Teaching Korean kids how to make (and eat) sandwiches is really fun! Check out the apron! 

Japan

Me, in the real Japanese garden.

A real Japanese garden in Japan!

Me, being a chode on the beach in Fukuoka.

Mel hanging out by the lake in Fukuoka, Japan. 

빼빼로 Day!

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).

Japan Tomorrow

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).

breaking news....

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.

The Weekend

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).

Mel found this guy on a bathroom stall down the street from our house. 

My Hero

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

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).

First Grey Hair

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).