I don't pretend to know a thing worth knowing

It’s been about six months (or is it seven, I cannot be sure?) on the small Korean peninsula now. I’m writing this blog on Word right now because my Internet for the first time does not work. One of the immediate things that come to mind while reflecting on my travels and time here is one of most neglected virtues in Western culture, patience. I’m not going to start lamenting the degradation of our society but I’m just going to say that it would’ve be nice if the teachers throughout my life stressed the forgotten value of having patience when things don’t go your way. Frustratingly, my Internet does not work for no apparent reason but through all my trials and tribulations here I’ve developed a sense of ‘let it be’ to borrow lyrics from the terrifically profound Beatles song. Now don’t get me wrong, I’m not arguing for a form of carefree passivity like ‘The Dude’ from ‘The Big Lebowski’. In my twenty-four years I’ve finally figured out that to overcome obstacles be they, not having hot water in your apartment, not being able to withdraw money from the ATM, having cockroaches and other insects in your apartment, etc, one needs to recognize that they will not be solved all at once but IN TIME. I probably sound nauseatingly dry and obtuse when I make such a pedestrian insight yet I’m not sure many people truly understand even the most basic maxims in life. Perhaps I don’t understand things like this either? At least I’m aware of the only undeniable truth in life pointed out by Socrates; that the only thing I truly know is that I know nothing and everybody walks around thinking they know so much. I think knowledge has to start from this point and then move forward if you are to go anywhere.

I vividly remember arriving to where I’m currently living six months ago. One of the most frustrating things I can recall was that I did not even know where exactly I was on the map. If I got lost and took a bus to the wrong city or something I really could not tell anyone where I was living. Fortunately or not that never happened and as time went on I deciphered the bus routes, train schedules, and the myriad cultural rubix’s cubes. Perhaps a fitting and rather trite metaphor for my time here and perhaps life in general would be putting together a puzzle (I wonder if they have puzzles here incidentally?). In the beginning all I had were the pieces; maybe a couple by sheer luck happened to be right beside one another but the vast majority of them were scattered every which way on the table. The puzzle (life) I suppose cannot be seen at times. Maybe all you have is one section done and all you can put together are a couple pieces at a time. Being in Korea however, has taught me that it’s okay not to always see the big picture. In time, if you keep plugging away, the picture will slowly emerge and one day you will have forgotten all about how far you’ve come, and there, out of nowhere, there will be this beautiful mosaic. Change happens when no ones watching.

From 한국

For the first time in nearly five months (wow, can't believe I've been here five months!) I can't think of what to write in my blog...hmmm.. Maybe another sip of my orange colored fiber drink will help me with my writers block. They sell fiber drink at just about every convenience store e.g. 7-Eleven (they have that here and Japan), Buy The Way, Family Mart, or Mini-stop (the ones listed I've found to be the most popular if not all the ones they have here). In addition to finding the much beloved laxative that I enjoy after a healthy yet conspicuously vegetable/brown rice forsaken meal, you can also buy ginseng (which I often get), and aloe juice (another good one). Btw, the aloe juice is actual juice with sugar and the like; if you get a sunburn it's probably not the best thing to pour on yourself should you happen to come to Korea and think it can be used for duel purposes. If you're hungry you can buy these triangle shaped rice things wrapped in seaweed; inside the center is kinda like a jelly donut except instead of jelly they have different 'fillings' like tuna (I'd name the other 'fillings' but I got these maybe 3 times and didn't get the tuna 'filling' so I stopped buying these pretty much after my first week here). In case you're wondering (like me) if I spelled filling correctly, I found that 'fillings' has two Ls while filing, like filing papers in an office only has one L. Weird, wild, stuff! The irony is that I'm teaching English and losing it at the same time. I've actually misspelled a word and had my co-teacher correct me one time which was slightly humiliating (before you pass judgment I've heard from other teachers that they've made similar faux pas like mine before- you'd really be shocked at what an environment like this does to your English, kid you not). Oh, I almost forgot; two more slightly odd things they sell at these convenience stores: The first being dried squid/shrimp which hardly should come as a surprise to you if you are familiar with just about any East Asian culture (they love love eating squid and shrimp!!) They even have shrimp burgers at McDonald's (along with the pride of Korea, the bulgogi burger) and potato chips that are shrimp flavored. I accidentally bought the shrimp flavored chips one night while under the influence of alcohol and immediately noticed my purchasing mistake upon my first chip. The other thing that might be a little strange to you that they sell at these convenience stores are what I call, 'meat on a stick'. They usually have these in hot dog warmer upper things located right next to the cash register sitting next to their buddies, the fried chicken. For some reason every time I see these I always think of one of my favorite movies, 'There's Something About Marry'. In the movie, Ben Stiller, asks while eating a corn dog (something to the effect of), 'how come they don't have more sticks with meat on them?' Apparently, the writers of the movie never traveled to Asia because they indeed have 'meat a stick' sold at nearly every convenience store sold in Korea. Lastly, many if not all these convenience stores serve as fast food restaurants of sort. Most convenience stores have tables either inside or outside (or both) so you can eat you're food or have a beer should the need fancy you. Aside from those things mentioned above however, the convenience stores sell pretty much everything else you'd normally find in the States.

Other seemingly trivial news: I've finally figured out the train schedule which makes life a little easier. Unfortunately, I still haven't figured out the bus system around where I live; Every time I get on the bus I still have mild anxiety attacks if I don't recognize a place or surrounding. Can't think of anything interesting to write about for now and about getting tired so that's it for now. Ciao! Thanks for reading.

Englishee

It's been a couple months since my last posting and I've probably lost maybe half of my readers, all three of them. Nonetheless, I will begin anew with my tales from the orient. What a journey this has been so far! As with about every posting in my blog- I usually don't know where to start? Anyways, if you've been reading my blog I'm sure you've gotten used to the nonsensical inanity of it all. So here it goes:

I'm nearing the end of our school's first semester and I've been in the 'Land of the Morning Calm' now for about four and a half months. A predictability of sorts has finally set in: I have become used to the mangled English that might drive an otherwise sane literate person mad; the ad nauseam English phrases that are taught in English textbooks for example, 'how are you? I'm fine thank you, and you? (most students will answer 'I'm fine thank you, and you' in almost robotic fashion when asked how they are doing- some answer, it's sunny or it's cloudy (these are some of the ahem, lower level students) have all become normal yet still irritating at times.

If I can critique the absolutely awful textbooks for a moment- the reason many people are ghastly terrible at speaking English is most likely, in large part due to the way English is taught here. The textbooks are not situational or theme oriented like movies, shopping, etc. Instead they're kind of all over the place. Instead of having people build sentences on there own; the way you should do when learning a new language, especially English which demands creativity and originality; they have these already constructed sentences in there textbooks. As a result, many people, even after learning English since Elementary school can only splutter out a few sentences if any. Another ubiquitous phrase or word found here is the word 'delicious'. I speak for my fellow English speakers when I say, never in my life have I used the word 'delicious' so much until I arrived in Korea. Often when eating with fellow teachers I am asked, 'is it delicious?' (with a quizzical expression)? and the standard response from which I have become accustomed to giving if I like a dish, 'yes, it is delicious'. Sometimes at lunchtime now I often comment about how delicious the food is- I think it makes everyone happy because that's one phrase they can actually understand and it makes them feel good about their cultural identity (which unlike America food is part of their distinct identity). On a side note: Koreans love to hear complements about their food and country. It's probably because unlike America, which is a superpower, Korea is rarely ever talked about on the international stage except for of course, their brethren to the north. Americans in general, don't care all that much what new comers think of their country or at least they don't make a point of asking every person traveling to America what they think of American food (what is American food? Trying to think of something but nothing really comes to mind because we have so many cultures and types of food). Plus Americans and perhaps other western countries have a healthy dose of self-criticism (some may argue too much) i.e. we often are quite critical of our leaders, policies, society, and culture. Maybe it's because I don't speak the language but some of the Koreans that I have encountered usually don't take cultural, societal, political, etc. criticism all that well (it could very well because it's coming from a round eye but I'm not sure).

I only find it half-comical now when I see the police cars always driving around with their police lights (on the top of their car) flashing. They're never pulling anyway over for speeding or arresting them btw, they just drive around or are sometimes stopped with their lights flashing. Why they do this? In the words of the Kid Rock song (probably taken from someone a bit more wise them him), 'Only G-d knows why'? Or the juxtaposition between Korean society and language and driving rules. The former seems to have a million rules yet when it comes to driving they only have one basic rule here, try and not to get into an accident. Other than that you can do pretty much whatever you want on the road or parking- you can park on any side of the road or even on the sidewalk, you can even park in front of other cars in your apartment building (they solve this by putting the car in neutral and when the other person blocked in wants to get out they simply just push the car out of the way). Wheww, I'm tired of writing and am going to go work out and go to the hot springs (sauna and spa with 45 other Korean nude males). A couple things that I wanted to talk about which I failed to mention: couple t-shirts, the eating of dog and why they do, and teacher's day.

Almost forgot: Today (Sunday morning) I got up and for some reason couldn't think of the spelling difference between message and massage. When you're surrounded by people that don't speak English well it drags your own ability down- case in point if you haven't noticed from my recent blog. Until next time, stay well. Be the change you want to see in the world! :)

I'm Lovin it!

I woke up feeling fatigued and ill but strangely I feel alright again. I told everyone that I was suffering from the Swine Flu which elicited a few laughs. Last night we (some of the foreign teachers that live in my apartment complex- there are six or seven 13-15 story buildings around me called Kyung Hee Hak Sung (I think Hak Sung means apartment?) ventured into what we call downtown Asan also called Onyang for some drinks. There are about 50-60 foreign teachers scattered throughout the apartment complex but I only usually see and know about 20 of them. We live in, Sinchang- a small town of about...maybe 15,000-20,000 which lives and dies when the university is in session. Sun Chun Hyang university is the definition of a commuter school. During the week, students are out and about the streets, usually stumbling around drunk at night. The weekends turn the town into a veritable ghost town- when I arrived here, I came on a Friday and thought my life was going to end because a) I didn't know there were that many foreigners living next to me and b) I wasn't told about that the student's flock in masse to their homes on weekends. My experience is that Koreans tend to drink a lot and students are no exception. Alcoholism is a wholly concept/disease? /issue/problem in the West or U.S.- Koreans work very had and play equally hard. It's actually quite hilarious even now, seeing students and old men sozzled after they get done eating. When you go out to dinner, soju (the Korean hard alcohol similar to Japanese sake which gives you incredibly bad hangovers; it's half the alcohol percentage of vodka; has a smell reminiscent of paint thinner or nail polish remover and costs next to nothing, about 1300 Won for a bottle which is about a dollar U.S.) is just as much as part of the meal as rice. Unless you're going to Itaewon (an enclave in Seoul exclusively for two types of people: 1) moronic G.I.s who tarnish America's already soiled reputation one bar fight at a time, and 2) foreigners who wish they never set foot in Korea and desperately want to cling to all the amenities of home), western style bars are not uncommon but perhaps hard to come by. Koreans usually go to restaurants to drink with a group of friends where they spend hours eating, drinking, and probably denigrating foreigners (English teachers are just as much cultural ambassadors as teachers of English; Korea after all, didn't earn the name, 'The Hermit Kingdom' for nothing; Korea only started opening up to the West very recently and this still is a completely homogeneous, insular, and, isolated society vis-a-vis the U.S. or most western countries). 

       Today (Wednesday, April 29) we have off from school because of school board elections in which they elect the head school superintendent. I for one and probably many other teachers as well have absolutely no clue why we need a day off for this but like with many things in Korea, the answer to why things are done differently here are not important. I've found that you have to accept things for what they are; the more you try to look for answers about for example, why you don't shake hands (generally you don't but sometimes close friends do and it's not totally absent incidentally) but instead you share food when you eat at traditional and even many contemporary restaurants is beyond me? Or why the intercom in my apartment- there's a guy who starts speaking in the morning sometimes? I could go on but for some reason I'm blanking on the myriad occurrences of confusing seemingly inane things that go daily here.

          Let me explain how going to a restaurant works for those of you who don't know. Let's say you go to a traditional restaurant. Here you have at least a couple of side dishes (love the side dishes!) of different types of kimchi, and maybe eggs, seaweed, squid, and other stuff that I can't think of right now. A big misnomer to the uninformed is that there is only one vegetable type of kimchi. You'll soon find out there are many many different types of kimchi e.g. my favorite, the spinach kimchi (which I have in my fridge at the moment), the most common I think, lettuce kimchi, radish kimchi, and probably dozens of other types that I don't know of. Everyone then, helps them self with whatever side dish seems appealing at the moment. Bone appetite! 

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!