Feeling Better

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.

Got a Phone

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.

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.