Scientists Want to Control Nature.

I'm currently at school awaiting my first class. I had to ditch the shoes at the door and put on some slippers. Everyone so far has been very welcoming and the vice principal loves talking to me. She seems very nice. I'll have to buy her a bottle of whiskey. I've got a lesson plan for the week, but I'm not sure how it'll work out. I've got two different games for different skill levels, so it'll be a toss up to what works. This whole month will be just a trial and error learning process. Instead of bells, the classes are announced with classical music.

I've only got 17 classes which is not the norm. Most people have 22. I may have to do English clubs on the weekends sometimes but I'm fine with that. Apparently, my winter break is going to be 9 weeks long. That's right, two months of vacation. While I'll have to come into work for some of it, it'll be a breeze. So during that time I should have some good opportunities to travel but the whole vacation day system is wonky. I have 7 days, right? Well, apparently If I go out of the country it eats into those 7 days, but if I stay in the country it doesn't. So I fool around on Jeju island for 8 weeks and it wouldn't count, but 4 days in Japan (which is 3 hours away) would eat into have my time. I've heard that if you scratch their back they'll scratch yours. So gifts abound, smiling, treating everyone nice, and coming in some saturdays and doing English camps should set me up.

Met Danny and Tane in Nampo-dong Saturday night. Danny was staying in the Phoenix hotel and the area was one of Busan's many downtowns because the city really isn't centralized. So there were hundreds of restraunts and shopping centers. Any namebrand store you can think of, they had. I've never even seen an Armani store, but they had one. They also have lots of Noreabang (kareoke) places which we went to. We had some dirt cheap sushi and the looked for a bar. The Batman House, that's right, was closed and when we walked into The Red the bartender made a face and shooed us out. We finally settled on a cowboy bar. The beer here tastes like piss. But, we drank three liters of it and a bottle of Soju. I was worried about taking the bus home because I don't know what any of the stops are called and have to rely on sight and familiarity. So I missed my stop by one, but the bus dropped me off at the bottom of the mountain. I had to walk up a bit which sucked. but I found a 7-11 along the way and got some raspberry wine and pringles, so it worked out.

The title of this post was a lesson I found in one of the books.

Visual References

Here's a video tour of my place. Enjoy.



Also, if you want to snoop me on google earth, my latitude is 35° 4'14.84"N and longitude 129° 3'48.31"E.

And as Jurassic Five says, "It's the verbal Herman Munster."

The New Apartment

I just moved into my new apartment and I'm a bit pissed at the moment (British for drunk). The school that I'm working for had a current teacher who was finishing out his time period and is finishing his last few days in the county. I'm listening to "Straight Outta Compton" and just drinking in the experience of living in the current room I'm occupying for another year. We rode in a bus from Seoul to the education office of Busan. There we met our co-teachers that picked us up and did what they will with us. Mine took me to my apartment to meet Kirk, the former teacher who was leaving, and then we went out to eat.

The meal was wondrous. It was a traditional Korean Bar-B-Que which means that it had approximately 20 dishes for the 3 of us. It was glorious. It was like our own personal buffet. There wasn't a dish that I didn't try and didn't like. I did bite into a clam shell in the bean curd soup which was unpleasant, but that was my fault. It was still a variety of heavens.

After that, I walked back from my middle school to my place to get a gist of the neighborhood. It's a nice area on the island/mountain with a wonderful view. At some point I'll post a tour of my apartment so that you can understand the glory that I have. It's a several room paradise. I have a kitchen, bathroom, living room/nook, balcony, bedroom, and fuck all room where I can do whatever I want with. Kirk has basically gotten all the amenities that I could ever want. He's moving back to Wales, so I get his water heater, water filter, cooking oven, microwave, coffee pot, television, and other leftovers. Some minor furniture is present, but it's more than I could have wanted. I've been thinking about buying a couch with my 300,000 won settling allowance just because I figure that I'm all settled. Maybe a dining table, but otherwise I could live in luxury without spending an auxiliary dime.

I have a strong desire to take up smoking again while here just because I have my own balcony that already has a giant easy chair resting out overlooking the ocean. It's gorgeous. The rest of the country smokes so it's very tempting. Especially since packs are $2.50. I hope I don't, but part of me feels that it's inevitable just because there is a very strong drinking culture in Korea and smoking is so prevalent. Definite danger, but it's not permanent. Maybe I'll just stick to cigars. Who knows. Mom, don't freak out.

Everyone else, love you and thinking of you. Drop me a line.

Food and Doors

It's me again,
here's the pictures of what I ate today. I won't do this regularly but I thought I'd present you with a small overview of what I've been noshing. I'll only post unusual things from here on out. So enjoy the ephemeral. The first one is Gimbap, which I mentioned before.

And here we have seafood noodles.


Lastly, to give you a taste of the nuances here, here is a video of how my dorm door operates. I have to press a button to open it every time.



Going out boozing with 40 or so people from orientation group A tonight.

Korean Quirks

Hello,
I'm still doing the orientation thing. That means, I wake up in the morning and decide if I want to go eat shitty cafeteria food or read the news before going to class. They're trying to make western accomodations to the menu. So usually they have two options, one is a western-Korean fushion and the other is straight Korean. This means that we get hamburgers and hotdogs for breakfastsome times. Then I go to lectures from 9:00 - 1:00 and learn about Korean society and educational theory. Then lunch, either at the bad cafeteria or walk around in Seoul until someone shouts at us in English from their food shop. For instance, today for lunch I had barbacue octopus with rice and it was glorious. I wish i had a picture because I'm sure that you'd squirm. I do have a picture of what I ate the other day, so have a look. It was a bean curd stew, kim chi, spicy pickles, bean sprouts, and rice. It's not bad at all. Often, it's a lot of different tastes that you wouldn't normally put together. For instance, I had a sort of quiche earlier that tasted like soggy rice crispies. It takes an open mind, but msot things are very good. I've been eating a lot of really spicy foods but I'm getting used to it. I've been disapointed that I've eaten no garlic yet because I heard it was a mainstay.

After finishing dinner, we only had 45 minutes before a group meeting and didn't really have time to go back to the dorms so we just wandered around. We ended up finding a band setting up across the street from us on campus: two guitars, one bass, keyboards, drums, and vocals. The singer couldn't speak English very well, but what followed was several cover songs by Muse, Radiohead, and Oasis. After that, it was a short open mic session for any Korean that wanted to try out their English in front of a lot of foreigners (about a hundred people from orientation had crowded around the street). Then, someone got up to the mic and announced that he was going to serenade his girlfriend. Cue, "Why do birds, suddenly appear," and then they started passing out roses to us whiteys and we all went an handed his girlfriend a dozen roses and then he bent down at the end of the song and handed her an elaborate flower. Also, this whole time a child of 3-4 years old sat in the middle of the street on top of a bike. Cars and motorcycles were zipping around him while he sat there covering his ears to blocking his ears, oblivious to all the traffic nearly missing him.

Trip to the Korean Folk Village

Here are some videos from our trip to the Korean folk village.

This was a traditional music dance. I hope the audio works.


Here's Danny and Tane Jumping


Here's some better people doing it.


And lastly, the most ridiculous item of the bunch...

Continuing Orientation

I'm still in the midst of orientation. The fact that EPIK (English Program in Korea) even has an orientation program puts it leaps and bounds above other organizations. It began in a similar fashion to the beginning Gustavus. The annoying greeters were not here but it was still a very structured camp like feel. Arranged meals, lessons, group meetings, being lead around, and all that other nonsense. We have been getting lessons and instruction from different professionals about a variety of teaching subjects and Korean culture. The most bizarre one was the lesson on traditional Korean music. The professor that presented the topic was rather funny but otherwise it was pretty boring. The seats are ridged and coarse so sitting in them for 6 hours a day gets bothersome and hurts.

More enjoyable aspects include the incredibly cheap sushi. While I'm not complaining about the style of the food that I've been given, the quality is cafetira mash. It's just substandard mass produced stuff. We had a giant buffet last night that was a delicous showcase of what the country has to offer however. I did just buy a roll of 12 slices of sushi for $2 so there's no complaint there.

We have to go see a movie soon about two brothers in the Korean war. It's supposed to be good but I'm not holding my breath. The last Korean movie to come to America was Dragon Wars. Bore fest.

Everything here is really cutesy as I mentioned before and I'll address that more in length later. I haven't heard from my co-teacher yet about my placement, but Danny and Tane have heard from their colleagues. They have mentioned that we might even be placed in the same house together. That would be great, but we'll just have to wait and see if that pans out. To rent a house or an apartment, your deposit is often the cost of the entire facility. You get it back in the end, but for a $300 a month palce you may have to pay $10,000 before you can move in. Danny did hear from his person about where I'll be teaching. Apparently, I'll be at the middle of a large island on the south-eastern most corner of the country. I've heard whispers that it's a more disadvantaged area and the children don't have a strong interest in learning. That's obviously something that I'll have to deal with.

Fuck

Now that the profanities are out of the way, I thought I would mention that these series of documents may be of a profane and frightening nature. Curt words may be used as well as adult situations and subject matter. This is a warning that if you find such material objectionable, you should discontinue reading or grin and bear it. What you should not do, is complain to my mom or me that what you read hear was inappropriate. If that's the case, then don't read it or I'll make a new one and simply not tell you about it. So there.

Digressions aside, I arrived in Seoul today and spent the majority of the day waiting in lines to receive minor documents and badges. The orientation process is a lot like summer camp with scheduled activities, lights out, and a rumored capture the flag, but involving Korean Soju. First impressions indicate that this is a very cutesy place. The door to my dorm sings a melodious chime every time I enter or exit. The air conditioner does as well. The door however seems to have a personality, as it grows impatient if I leave it ajar for too long and screeches at me with angry notes. It is time to sleep, as I have not for two days.