Time Is On My Side, sort of..

Wow, my life pretty much since I arrived a little more than more than a month ago has not slowed down in the least! In fact my work schedule only seems to be getting more engrossing (next week I teach the after school program- an additional eight hours a week). I'm at my main school (Dogo Middle School- just learned the Korean word for middle school today incidentally) that I teach at Monday-Thursday from 8 am- 4:50 pm and with a few exceptions I'm able to get off a little earlier. Leave it to me to leave the States to essentially get a full time job! Oh and teaching even four days a week is a full time job for all you skeptics out there- when I'm not at school and I'm in/around my apartment I'm usually doing one of these things: Making lesson plans which I'm still learning how to do; cooking one of four dishes that I make that doesn't taste all that great but more importantly are healthy (I make real easy stuff like brown rice with eggs/tuna/chicken and the classic bread and peanut butter aka a peanut butter sandwich; cleaning my apartment because I think cockroaches are attracted to dirt or food or water or all of the above. (Btw, I really hate cockroaches of all the various kinds of insects I find in my apartment- maybe it's because they're the most plentiful and not the plentiful in a good way like, 'Thanksgiving dinner was plentiful'. I'm not all that scared of them like spiders or clowns but I really fuckin hate them because I seem to find at least one every damn day. Sometimes I'm like, "come on, really? How'd you get inside the draw and why were you chillin in there dude!? There's no food/water in there! You little friend have to look in the fridge where I keep all the food that I open now. Now I have to kill you not because I don't like you but because if I don't there maybe more of your annoying buddies hanging around my place". When I'm not cleaning/killing cockroaches/eating/lesson planning/exercising (I go to the nearby university to do this which is by far the worst gym I've ever been, save my eight grade middle school gym that I worked out in p.e. as I went through puberty), I'm writing emails/facebook/news for the five minutes that I have before I go to bed. Friday thankfully, is my mercy day which I teach two 40 minute classes at Sinchang Elementary school. My first day teaching elementary was last week btw, and it was awesome! Some of my middle schoolers have that adorableness still in them but it's really funny seeing a class full of munchkins. The main teacher is in the room with me when I 'teach' (more like sing songs and get to make a complete fool out of myself for 40 minutes) in case they have too much chocolate or something. My experience here is that the students in general (both middle and elementary) are incredibly more well behaved than in the States. Could it be because this is my first time teaching or maybe it's because they hit the students with long sticks (it really is not as bad as it sounds- most deserve it though) or make them squat on top of their desk/stand in some awkward position for a couple minutes when they misbehave? Either way, compared to insolent Americans, Koreans are pretty good. The first day was an introduction about myself which I'm sure very few understood. Then I had them make name tags which proved to be the most difficult tasks on the face of the earth (for my second class)! For the first thirty minutes they wrote their Korean name translated in English which I try to have the students break away from just because I simply can't pronounce their names correctly. For instance, saying Kim Hye Rye sounds a good deal different in Korean. I first realized that I should not pronounce names when talking or trying to have a common interest conversation with fellow teachers about the Major League Baseball pitcher Chan ho Park. His last name in particular sounds more like Pak (say it real fast) than Park. Anyway, I ended up finding a list of English names that the students could choose from and G-d willing, this Friday they will have their new English name tags provided they didn't lose them/eat them. 

      Instead of starting a new blog page I've decided to just start a new paragraph. So it's been nearly a week since I wrote what you've just read above. My insect of the week: gnats (small flies for my esl international readers, welcome). Yep, I'm pretty stoked about the new company as you probably are. Despite all my food (including fruit!) being in the fridge I now have gnats. Back to important human activities. This week I've started teaching the after-school program four days a week at Dogo Middle School. I teach 7th and 8th periods which start at 3:30 and end at 5:10. Afterwards I'm thoroughly tired as I'm sure the student's brains simply cannot retain any more information. At my school they have 9 periods by the way. You're probably like, they have nine fuckin classes (hopefully my swearing doesn't become a habit because I think loose swearing like in Joe Pesci movies kind of degrades the conversation/discourse; kind of like seeing Cindy Crawford in Playboy you know, it takes away from what's left to the imagination or what hasn't been said/seen)!!? Anyway, that was a a long digression (my ADD/lack of sleep kicking in) but yes, my school has 9 classes and that's not even that much from what I hear. From my understandings or more likely misunderstandings of Korea is that students go to school like a normal school day and then afterwards they go to 'hogwon' or private learning academies and repeat every class during their normal school day. The Korean educational system you might say is like the British health care system with both governmental and private components. Point being here is that Korean students go to school as much as any students in the world. A high school student for instance, starts his class-day around 7 or 8 and gets done around 12 pm (I kid you not). My co-teacher even told me that Saint Obama said in a news conference/sermon that he wishes Americans should go to school as much as Koreans did. I'm not sure if I agree- there's only so much information the brain can take until it goes on screen saver mode. The Koreans whom I've met that are around the same age seem educated, probably a little more than me (in hindsight, I may have smoked too much pot over the years), but aside from speaking another language which they're forced to learn since grade school, they don't appear other worldly like the Chinese I've met do. I should mention however, that Korea ranks number two and three respectively (why do we put that word? I'm going to start replacing it with, 'irrespectively' or 'not undeservedly' or something because it sounds artificially academic like using the word 'normative'- another bombastic word to prove that you went to school) in science and math which I guess is an achievement despite the fact that all of the best brains in the world still go to American universities (see list of top world universities or walk around UCLA south campus (where science/engineering/math departments are located) and just listen to how much English you hear if you beg to differ). Thank goodness America still attracts the best and brightest by the way, because when this stops America will be like a one legged man trying to run a mile; it might be fun to watch but after a while you'll get bored and watch the 5' 2'' Chinese runner with two good legs. 

     One last story I thought of mentioning while doing laundry- By doing laundry I mean pressing many buttons simultaneously until my clothes get clean. The clothes get way cleaner, I should point out, when you're not using fabric softener as detergent. So last Friday I went to the bank because it was payday last week and I wanted to reap what I had sowed, not in harvest but in Won! Yeepee! I went to the bank with my bank book- I literally have a small book that I use as my debit card (they have debit cards too but my employment organization did not provide me with one for some odd reason?) and just like a debit card they have machines (it's usually the same machine as the debit card one) in which you can put the small book in to withdraw money. So I did and saw they had an English button you can press and I pressed and did everything the machine commanded me to do. As you might guess the machine spit out my bank book repeatedly like a baby spitting out food. I then proceeded inside to ask one of the tellers for help. With a polite yet befuddled smile I asked the teller if she spoke English. Of course she didn't and I went through the body language of not being able to get money from the machine. Naturally she understood immediately and walked over to the ATM to help show me how to use it. As things would have it, with all her help my dreaded bank book still was getting rejected like a crumbled one dollar bill (I'm big into the similes right now as you can tell). This didn't perturb me because I had come with my travelers cheques that are good in over 191 countries around the world as a backup. I walk back over the counter and pull out the cheques and sure enough, that bank didn't exchange travelers cheques. I then walked outside and just stood outside staring into empty space- I saw an old lady examine me as she passed by. I must have stood there for about a good five minutes before I walked back into the bank to try the ATM one more time (no luck). I ended up being able to exchange my travelers cheques at another bank later that day but this story is a perfect illustration of how my day(s) sometimes goes around here. You might think I get depressed but I don't, I just smile and breath and everything seems to work its way out, eventually. I still can't withdraw money out of the ATM but who knows, maybe next week I will! :)

Thank you for reading and taking an interesting in my awkwardly pedestrian life. Annyonghi jumushipsiyo (Good night). 

Teach Your Children Well

My life has been fairly hectic still as I'm learning how to teach, trying to learn some Korean, and most importantly make new friends. I will do my best to try and regularly update the blog (at least once a week) but I've discovered the power of Skype and lately want to do that more than sit down and write this blog. Nonetheless, let me get started on this typically chilly Sunday morning. 

Teaching and my new school: Since I spend eight-nine hours a day Monday-Thursday and a couple hours on Friday teaching it is only natural that I tell everyone about my new teaching experiences. First off, teaching is extremely challenging! Anyone who says otherwise is either a) a liar b) a fool c) a bad teacher or d) all of the above. My week days start early. I wake up a 7 am in order to not miss my ride at 8. So far another teacher, Mr. Lee, has been picking me up on the way to school which sure beats taking the bus. The one day I took the bus as practice in the event Mr. Lee cannot pick me up I ended up getting lost or the bus just ended up going in the opposite direction of my school. That day my co-teacher had to pick me up and from then it was officially decided that I should get rides to school (for at least the first month or so). Of course, when I say co-teacher most of you probably have no idea what I'm talking about? Okay, in public schools all native English teachers (me) are in theory, supposed to be paired with a Korean English teacher, my co-teacher. Among their teaching tasks co-teachers are the main people responsible for my well being. In effect, they are like the the mommy's and daddies of native English teachers. Often times I feel sorry when I have to ask my co-teacher for a favor because a) co-teachers don't get paid for helping native English teachers (NET) out and b) she has her family, child to take care of and worry about. Despite all this my co-teacher, May (her English name- have no clue why she picked this one in particular?), is amazingly helpful and a blessing in this utterly confusing land. Within five minutes of meeting May (I feel kind of bad because I already forgot/can't even pronounce her Korean name), one of the first things she pointed out was that her English was not that good and she wasn't lying or being humble, it isn't. She knows enough English to get a rudimentary point across and have a basic conversation i.e. her favorite list of questions e.g. What did you do last night, weekend or what did you eat for breakfast/dinner? She loves to ask the last one because I'm pretty sure she thinks I'm starving and cannot go to the store for some reason because I don't know Korean. When I first moved into my apartment she came by to make sure I had all the basic necessities (again, she's like a parental figure) and she looked into my fridge only to shockingly discover that I only had a couple items. I explained to her that I am fully capable of going to the store, am not short on money, and just moved into my place. I still don't know if any of those reasons sunk in and she understood my situation but ever since then she has been preoccupied with me not eating. Another funny thing related to all this; She gives me food from the cafeteria to take home usually at the end of the week. I don't want to be impolite and be like, 'I eat the school lunch every day, why the fuck would I want to do so at home too lady'? So I acquiesce and because of it I have 3 pounds of rice, 1 pound of ultra spicy sauce (love this btw), half-a-pound of lettuce, and half-a-pound of Kimchi sitting in my fridge right now. Another thing I've learned not do while eating the school lunch. Do not comment if I like the food because each time I do that, they (the other teachers) either bring me more food as soon as I'm finished or they give me some to take home with me. While I'm on the food topic- school lunches invariably have white rice, soup, and of course, some sort of Kimchi with every meal. A frequent food served in the school lunches is octopus which I'm getting used to eating. During lunch time most of the teachers eat before the rush of students get to the dinning hall; all 7 or 8 of us gather around and here I am usually sitting right next to my broken English translator (Bless her heart). I usually listen in on the teachers conversations and try and pretend like I know what they're talking about (makes me feel better when I do this actually). After about ten minutes however, I'm back staring at my octopus or trying to guess what food I'm eating that day. Some of the teachers have some empathy for me so usually once or twice during the meal they explain what I'm eating in Korean or they compliment me on using chopsticks so well (this is a very common occurrence I've noticed- happens during every meal in which I eat with new people). Every time I get chopstick compliments I'm always amused- I wonder if they do not know how many Asian cuisines we have in the States, are their perceptions of Americans that out of touch with reality, can they think of nothing better to say, or am I really that good at using chopsticks (I admit, I am)? 

Lunch time is pretty indicative of another place, the teachers office. Our school, Dogo Middle School, only has 107 students. We have about 9 teachers I believe including me; as such, when I'm not in class teaching Engrish or trying to teach English, I'm in the teachers office. With so few students there are always a couple teachers in the office with me. Each teacher has their own desktop computer which is pretty cool. Like lunchtime I sit there while other teachers converse- not knowing what's going on but at least I have a computer in front of me so I can check the latest developments of Kim Jong-small's saber rattling and facebook for hours on end. May's desk is right next to mine but I try and not bother her asking trivial questions because she always seems tired and overworked (probably because she is). Sometimes I share some of interesting differences in our cultures. For example, last week I pulled out a 'normal' 8 x 11 sheet of paper that I happened to have in my folder from home. I elicited quite a reaction because they don't use our size paper in Korea (it's longer by a couple inches). She even showed another teacher our strange American style paper. It's little stuff like that I love to  show every now and then to the other teachers- it totally blows their mind and makes me a little closer to sanity knowing that I'm not completely losing my mind. 

I'm a rat in a cage: The teachers office has sliding glass doors surrounded by windows making the office a veritable human aquarium. This happens at least a couple times every day; While I'm facebooking or looking at some asinine youtube video at my desk I often look around only to see a couple students (girls more often then not) staring at me like I'm a visitor from the planet X. I smile back and give them a wave- they usually start giggling and run away in excitement or fear or maybe both. At my school I'm part rock-star, part alien, part ambassador, and all entertainment (kind of like home). When walking in the hall I usually get, hello, or hi (the two ubiquitous greetings every student regardless of how much English they know uses). I could go on and on about just my school but I'll save some more for a later time. 'Knowledge is the greatest good and ignorance is the greatest evil' -Socrates. 

Veni- I Came

EPIK (English Program in Korea) orientation overall was a blast. For all of those that don't know I work for a public teaching program funded by the Korean government. Technically, I guess you could classify me as a Korean civil servant (which sounds a lot better than- so what do you do? O, I teach English in Korea). Koreans, at least at the governmental level are obsessed with teaching their youth English. The reason behind this is totally beyond me given that Mandarin (which is also taught in schools) and Indian (or more accurately Hindi if India actually has an official language- not taught in school as far as I'm aware) should be far more useful over the next century than English will be. It goes without saying but the sheer numbers speak volumes about which continent will follow the American Empire (and yes we are an empire militarily, economically, and culturally speaking). Nonetheless, I'm stoked that Koreans love English so much because it has given me a job that allows me to travel and work overseas. Horray English! Back to my main point of telling you about our program orientation. Our eight day orientation was held at Dankook University in the city of Cheonan (located in the Chungnam province). We (EPIK teachers) lived in the dorms which I'm pretty sure were brand new and very nice. The bus ride to Dankook University from Incheon International Airport (the main airport if you're flying to Seoul btw) was two hours but it seemed like an eternity given how tired I felt after the 13 hour flight! The EPIK staff coordinated our flights to arrive at the airport around the same time; as such, we rode in a massive convey of buses to Dankook University. Getting outside the airport I quickly realized that one sweater does not keep you warm unless you live in Southern California pretty much your whole life. The first day of orientation was fairly laid back- the staff obviously realized that most of us were completely jet lagged so all we had to do was go for our medical checkups (you need a medical checkup to obtain your alien registration card 'green card'). Some people bitched about getting their blood and urine taken but I mostly lamented about how cold I was and worried about what kind of things they were testing for (thankfully, cannabis wasn't one of them or I'd be back at home:). Afterwards, close to dinner time, we gathered in the auditorium for our opening day ceremony. As with any opening ceremony it was a lot of 'welcome to ----' blah, blah blah, followed by some traditional dances- kind of boring but it was cool seeing how many of us were there in the auditorium. There were 500 teachers from literally every native English speaking country. Surprisingly I met loads (you can tell I've been hanging out with Brits, Kiwis, Aussies, and South Africans when I start using words like this) of South Africans; 30-35% of the teachers there had to be from South Africa (don't know why so many?). Americans made up the biggest contingent which to tell the truth I was a little disappointed to find even though I made good friends with a couple. The wake-up call (each room had an intercom) every was at 7:30 which was a little rough because of the time difference and my general sleep pattern of getting up around 10 everyday. Breakfast was from 7:30-8:30 (don't know anyone who actually made it to breakfast before 8?) and classes started at 9. Most of the classes naturally dealt with how to teach English and life in Korea i.e. the vast culture differences, how to cope with culture shock, and what to expect throughout our year here. The latter lectures were by far the most helpful because in my first week of teaching I've learned teaching is really trial and error (emphasis on error- more on that in a later blog). Most days classes were done by 5:30 and and we were free to do whatever we wanted. Like many Anglo-saxons often do, we ventured into nearby downtown Cheonan to check out the towns nightlife. The first thing I noticed is that many places in Korea do not have bars in the sense Westerns know them as. Most Koreans instead get together at restaurants and

drink there- if you're with a group of friends it can actually be quite fun. That being said, Cheonan and most other big cities do have true bars even though I didn't find many Koreans go there except to find Westerners maybe. I'm too tired to continue this blog and I think it's getting stale so I'll end here abruptly.. Until next time, Cheers! 

The Flight

I'll try and recollect my thought/emotions that I went through when I started this journey. Up until the day I left I was quite excited to be going to Korea- I mean this was the country that gave the world Korean BBQ, Kimchi, the most Great Leader Kim Jong-il, Kia cars, and of course, who could forget the influential pop music icon, Rain (inside joke if you know something about Korean culture or the Colbert Show)! Anyway, here I was full of jubilation (haven't used that word in a while- cool) essentially getting paid to travel (who in there right mind would pass that up?- btw, does that expression mean right mind i.e. compared to your left mind or right meaning morality/ethics?..anyway) but as I left I was actually pretty depressed from all the goodbyes. As with many farewells you have to figure that you're probably never going to see certain people ever again. My sadness however, quickly changed once we took off from SFO and I made friends with the girl in back of me (another EPIK teacher) and a Korean dude sitting next to her and discovered you could get free drinks on the flights (nice run-on sentence Zeke)! Best of all or at least the most humorous part of the flight was they, Singapore Airlines, served what some affectionately call, The Beast (Milwaukee's Best). It was kind of nostalgic leaving the States having drunk the Beast on so many epic nights playing beer pong haha. Now I don't usually like to push commercialism but Singapore Airlines is one of the most amazing airlines I've ever flown on (flown with them twice). Besides the ultra attractive flight attendants who wear exotic South East Asian garb they have a ton of cool shit for you to do for the short 13 hour flight. You can look at a Zagat guide of restaurants and hotels of the place you're going to, learn survival phrases of a language, play video games either by yourself or against other passengers, watch the forty odd movies/TV shows, or just sit back and watch the plane inch across the screen on the live flight map. After about nine hours I usually resort to the last- I find it to be an excellent test of patience. 

Foreword

         Where do I begin? I have had so many thoughts, wonders, questions, frustrations, and even a few worries over the past couple of weeks since my arrival. I suppose I should have started this earlier but as with everything else in life, 'better late then never'. Before I begin I must admit that I am extremely self-conscience and the ultimate form of one's own cognizance is best translated through writing (that is, if words can adequately describe the world at all). That being said, this blog (is blog plural by the way or what?) will probably range from my profound musings to the asinine debauchery that makes up my life. I think I suffer from a mild case of attention deficit disorder (a made up disorder I believe) and because of that I may digress often so be prepared. Oh, and when I put stuff into parenthesis that means I'm thinking of something and don't know how to insert my thoughts into the sentence; I have an unhealthy habit of doing this but what the hell, it's not like I'm writing a dissertation or something. I hope my writings are somewhat coherent and enjoyable but email, facebook, (why hasn't Microsoft word/Apple made this an official word yet- it has become such a frighteningly integral part of my life it ought to be!!) or call me if you have no clue what I am talking about in a particular blog or would like to know more. And one more thing before I get started on telling you or myself about my adventures here; you will probably notice my lexicon, grammar, punctuation, and the like getting progressively worse (or retrogressively worse?) over the course of each blog. Don't worry Mom and Dad, I'm not stoned, on psychedelics, or drunk (okay, I may blog a couple times while inebriated- love that word, probably one of the best euphemism ever). My English or Engrish as many Koreans pronounce the word gets worse by the day because I have to explain sentences while teaching and in life in very simple terms; I'm talking no more than seven words per sentence per sentence and forget about SAT vocabulary words or words of the day. Sadly I've noticed that in some of my emails and facebook (fb for short- this is when you know that facebook consumes your life and you are a slave to the 'social networking site') I write sentences like, I feeling exhausted from teaching or I mix up tenses or forget to pluralize words. Okay, I'm glad we've got all that taken care of- I think we can and we must start. Namaste.