First Time in Tokyo (Part 2)

Cafes are great places to chill and be sleepy after getting out of the airport. Currently, I'm at Cafe Oven around Hongdae with a finished plate of tiramisu and an empty cup of kiwi juice before me. Life is getting better all the time. I just got back to South Korea from Tokyo, Japan.

The last post spoke of the first four days I spent getting lost in Tokyo. And so, now we continue...

Fifth day. A friend and I finished some snacks and went to a cat cafe. It was one room with about ten plus cats, so the smell was pretty strong, even though I acclimated after about five minutes. Apparently, cats in Japan can have bent or curly tails, and long hairs are considered more luxurious. The cat cafe was really also a cat shelter and adoption center, because people can catch and bring in stray cats from the street, and the owner will take care of it until someone gives it another home.

Then we went to a sushi place. I think rice in Japan is sweeter, somehow - and the fish is always perfect. The tv was on, so we commented on how Japanese culture is very brightly colored, and not very dance based. When we went back to the hostel to sit down and watch The Grudge, I met another person. Within ten minutes, he proposed to me because he said it would be great to live in the USA. When I said that I wouldn't be tied down, he said that I can see other men, but then revoked that later when I asked how soon I could ask for a divorce. Does that make me a wicked woman?

For some reason, we all decided to go out for drinks. It was a big group of about ten people, and we couldn't decide on a bar, so we went to a grocery store for them to buy alcohol, and for me to buy two packets of fruit jelly and a red bean bun. Then we headed to the river, and there were three or four conversations, but I met another person, and she is the most well read American I've met while traveling. The only other person who can match up may be one of my best friends from college.

Day six. For some reason, I had agreed to a cross city bike ride to see the part of Tokyo that is next to the ocean - Odaiba. Biking is easy, right? So I thought, but the whole day took roughly 11 hrs - there were maybe 5 or 6 hrs of biking, and I had many scrapes and bruises the next day.

It was a group of about six people, and we got brunch at this famous mall place with different dishes from all parts of Japan. I had rice with beef and some onions. The view was beautiful, the food was good, and we all have this sense of achievement for our athleticism. Then we went to see the giant Gundam statue and the mall associated with it.  Then we went to the beach, where there were pet groundhogs and watched a sandy kids' soccer game. On the way back, there was a building with a ship's mast, and a giant Ghibli clock.

Probably I should have gone to sleep right after that. Instead, I went with three friends to walk around the streets and river again, watching one skateboard around. There was this odd cup shaped statue past the boardwalk with four holes, so we stuck our heads in it, and there was a mini garden inside. There were a spider and a slug near the hole where I stuck my head in.

Seventh day. Since it was the last day, I was determined to relax. A friend and I walked to the Tsukuba Express Line, where we rode 2 stops to Akihabara - anime fans' and collectors' heaven - again. On the way, we saw a man in a traditional monster outfit dancing on stilts. We went shopping in Akihabara in a store named Don Quijote - not sure if it's misspelled intentionally. This store has everything, but I only bought a dress. I'm good with time and money. Then on the upper floor, we played some Dance Dance Revolution and some drumming game. I thought, this trip was a lot more athletically intensive than I thought, from walking to biking to drumming until my forearms hurt.

When I came back, I met up with another group of people, and we walked in a circle to a ramen store after we found that Mos Burger was closed. It was delicious, even though I got a plain ramen. It was noodles with a slab of pork, a slice of seaweed and very thick soup with chopped onions.

Ending day. I woke up at 6am after sleeping for about 5 hrs with torrential dreams. I had packed everything the previous night, but then finalized it after eating and showering, then signed out - giving back the sheets and card key. Navigation from hostel to the airport was easy, with only one transfer. I ate Subways for breakfast. The lady I sat next to on the flight was a Korean lady who can speak her language, Japanese, English and Chinese.

Almost everyone I've met on this trip is at least bilingual; I've really got to learn more to get around this rapidly globalizing world. I'm delighted to find that no one is really all that racist - at least at first glance. I think it becomes a separate comfort level intrusion for the native citizens when a foreigner lives among them, and much more when one dates among them.

First Time in Tokyo

It's only been 3 days, but it feels like longer in a very good way. The flight from Incheon to Narita Airport in Tokyo only took 2 hrs, and I stayed awake the whole time. Despite misgivings, baggage claim and navigation to the hostel went without much of a hitch. I had a moment of doubt when transferring from the express airport railway to the local train to get to the hostel's stop, but an older lady helped me out, and I just took a taxi from the subway, because it was already dark.

I had expected to just chill the first night, but as I was settling down to be on the computer, I met a bunch of college students who are going to play Tekken on the common room tv. Conversations started, introductions went on, and I met people, just like that. One of them led me to Senso-ji, the local Buddhist temple. It was very nice. Then when we came back from our evening walk, I somehow got challenged to a game of Magic the Gathering. It was mainly due to my teammate's hard work, but we won.

Second day. The same friend who led me around the Senso-ji temple leads me there again so I can buy some gifts for family. Then, we explored a bit and went inside the Amuse Museum. It's a small display of Japanese paintings, some old weaving machines, hemp cloth, and a milieu of objects. Then we went to Akihabara. We hit up some collectors' shops, arcades, and then just because I requested it, a porn shop. We stopped at a maid cafe, then there was a doll shop.

Third day. I picked a direction and wandered in a direction that led me to a bridge over a river. It was very pretty. Then there was a small park. I bought a subway pass and took myself to Shinjuku. The skyline was very impressive, and there were many slot machine parlors. I got myself a feather tattoo. I took myself then to Harajaku, which reminded me a little bit of Harvard Square. A friend from the hostel wanted to go for a walk that evening, so we did. We got a bit lost, but I got us unlost.

Fourth day. I got off at Yoracho Station. There seems to be financial buildings all around. I found the Hibiya Garden, but didn't go in because there was rain. Instead, I went to the Inpensu (?) Museum which had a lot of ceramics and wall dividers which had a lot of very detailed paintings on them. There were masks and statues too, but I wasn't allowed to take pictures. Then I took a walk around the Imperial Palace, but didn't actually go to the touristy stuff inside. Then I walked for a long time, and ate noodles inside Otemachi Station, and took myself to Ikkeburo. There was a whole street of old fashioned food, lots of new art galleries and whatnot in the new portion, but also lots of adult entertainment in the older portion of town. I took another hour or two in Akihabara on my way back, and when I came to the hostel, I joined two women for drinks and snacks and we talked a lot about our future plans.

Footing Around Unseo, Incheon

Previously, on Lily Internationally, I was in Incheon wandering around preparing to go to Japan. The part of Incheon that I was in is another island, cut off from the rest of Incheon, but connected through this very long bridge - the longest that I have ever seen. It was Unseo. I had taken the express bus from Cheongju to Incheon International Airport, and then took the airport railway to Unseo, and taken a taxi to the hostel.

The hostel was someone's house with extra rooms, and I bought a bunk for about 28,000won. It was the Lazy Bird Hostel. After paying and settling in, I checked messages then decided it was time to go out and wander around. The owner told me to walk a straight line towards the west, and I did, and so hit downtown. There aren't a lot of people out, mainly because it was early Sunday and most people would still be resting in bed. I got myself some food, and walked down kind of a back alleyway.

There was a massage place, and I decided to go inside. There was only one person there, and she was a Chinese lady. The only way I could tell was because the music she was listening to contained Mandarin. I ordered a foot massage, and for forty minutes, she shiatsu'ed my feet, calves and thighs and it was heavenly. The walls had purple wallpaper and giant pink sakura flowers. The pad I was lying on was pretty comfortable.

When I walked back out into the sunlight, I was much more comfortable, but also 40,000won poorer. I wandered for several more blocks, went in and out of the LotteMart, took in the urban landscape. After I came out of Paris Baguette from buying some food I was going to eat back at the hostel, a conversation started between myself and an American man who was teaching in China, but came over to Incheon to take some time off and wait for his visa to be renewed. He said his name is Dennis. We sat in a coffee shop and talked for a good while.

Because he had always just come to Incheon but never to other parts of the country, I decided that I would quickly show him Seoul Station through the airport railway. We bought him a ticket and rode to Seoul Station, sharing various life stories and whatnot. He told me about his former wife, his three sons, and the girlfriend of one of his sons. I shared specifically how lost I am in life, but how content it is to be this lost.

When we arrived at Seoul Station, we looked around briefly. I bought a new pair of pants - mainly because I was cold. He didn't have more time to explore, so we went back onto the airport railway and went home. But we got off at the airport instead of at Unseo, so we had to cab it back to Unseo. The taxi driver was an old man with a bad attitude who ripped us off of 800won. It's nothing, but I didn't see why he had to do that. I took another taxi back to the hostel I was staying at.

Before going to bed, my roommate and I started talking. He is also a teacher, but he's teaching English in Indonesia, and he may have been from the Philippines. His name is Mariano. He has a real passion for teaching, and over time has started to learn the dialect that his students speak. He's staying in this hostel because he's on vacation and is going to visit a handful of friends who are all in Korea, in different cities around the peninsula.

The day ended, and I fell asleep almost immediately to prepare for the next day.

Starting Last Calls

As mentioned briefly in the last post, I no longer have a job. This means that once again, it's decision making time. I am electing to go home to the United States to bet on a job there... But not before taking advantage of being on this side of the globe to plan a trip and check some other to-do's off the bucket list. Not that I actually have a bucket list.

How did I lose my job? Nothing extraordinary. A couple of kids quit the academy - kids quit all the time - so that's what the vice owner and owner told the head teacher, to save face. What is actually happening is that the academy is rapidly losing money, because the youngest kids' school days got extended to make up for the new lack of school on Saturdays. Many of these academies are not managed all that well, so when it's time to cut corners, the foreigners come first, and I hit the jackpot. The only other foreigner at that academy is a Canadian man married to a Korean woman, so he is bound to be staying for a long time.

So what are the first things that I did after getting laid off? I modeled for a photoshoot (this isn't new, I've been modeling for about several months now) and ran a 10k. It was a swimsuit shoot near Osan, my first swimsuit shoot. Then I would have a Chinese cheongsam shoot at Seoul Grand Park, and a spontaneous shoot at Woo Am.

Modeling is something I picked up in Korea, though I had thought about it before coming here. I wasn't interested in it before, but the emphasis on fashion is real and everywhere here, so I eventually decided to learn. It involves listening to the photographer's ideas about what he wants to shoot, then picking my outfits and makeup carefully. If I don't have some items, it's time to go shopping, but I tried to buy versatile products so I wouldn't have to spend so much money. Even though all photographers are different, all logistics are agreed upon before a shoot: paid or unpaid, date and time, and location.

From this, I learned to put together different types of outfits and how to better apply makeup. However, on a daily basis, I still prefer to be bare faced with tshirt and jeans or shorts.

The next day, my friends and I ran a 10k. One woman ran a 21k. Some others went for the 5k. In high school, I had run cross country for a short period of time. I was no good at it. Even so, I still got hooked onto the idea of making my body stronger and the feeling of adrenaline.

Because of these same urges, yesterday two friends and I went paragliding. This means going to a place where there are mountains, wearing air suits over our own clothes, becoming attached to a parachute (and my paid guide) to run off the mountain and be carried around in the air for about fifteen to twenty minutes.

Aside from the Cheongju trip, I had never really planned anything before, so the build up to the actual paragliding itself was a lot of getting organized. My friends asked just the right questions for me to go do my research. I stayed at my friend's house the night before, and we woke up at 5:15 to catch the 6:43 KTX to Seoul Station, taking the Metro from there to Hoegi and transferring to the Junggang line, and then getting off at Asin Station. There, I called my contact JJ and he assigned someone to pick us up.

The man arrived in a black Mustang convertible, which played Lady Gaga as we drove past their offices and then to the landing site. There, we paid the organization's leader 100,000won each since I deposited 60k for myself and one friend while the other deposited the money herself. Then we went to their offices for a short rest while they took pictures of a man who had finished the whole paragliding training course and gave him a certificate. Then we all piled onto a pickup truck and rode to the top of the mountain, where the takeoff pads are.

Our ears were popping on the way. We made conversation, and the ride itself took about maybe half an hour. When we got to the top, they took out all the gear, and strapped us into the suits, the padding behind, the plastic knee and shin pads, the helmet and the gloves. We each got paired off with a guide, and then waited. They decided to move to a different mountain top, because the wind wasn't picking up where we were. So we did that, then my guide, Mr. Yeong, strapped himself to the parachute, then himself to me, and told me to run. I felt like a harness dog from Call of the Wild for a few minutes.

Then we lifted off! It was amazing. I know pollution is pretty bad worldwide, but you wouldn't know it from looking at all the trees over there 700m below, and feel how much oxygen there is while floating in the sky. My guide took photos and a video, which I will send to my friends when I get them through email. Then he pointed out landmarks in his accented English, and sent us spinning like it's a roller coaster ride. I got a tiny bit nauseous, but was okay for the most part. The view was still beautiful, and in a few minutes, we landed.

The ride back was mostly sleeping. When I got home, I planned some more, and then fell asleep. Right now I'm in Incheon, ready for lunch, and tomorrow will get on a flight to Tokyo, Japan.

Korea Somewhat Interrupted

Hi, guys. I am UNBELIEVABLY tired, because it's been a very hectic day despite my no longer having a job. Let's go over what happened, also because I am a bit too rattled to go to sleep at the moment.

This morning, a friend took me to Choongdae, the local university, so that we could book our individual flights. I had a samgeokkimbap for breakfast. I booked my flight to Japan for a very good price of around $350. Then he and I went to get omerice for brunch.

Then, I went back to the animal hospital to get the rabies certification for my cat Eugene. Even though I wanted to take him on the flight with me, there are two layovers for the cheapest flight, so I don't want him to suffer much. I buckled and emailed the Pet Airlines guy to pick him up on the 27th. While I am in Japan, my yoga teacher will be taking care of him for a week.

After that, I decided to ship a suitcase at the post office, but of course, found out once again that they won't ship suitcases (especially not by sea) if it's over 20kg. So I ended up having to take everything out of my suitcase and put it into 2 boxes they supplied, and the sum came to about $73.

Being very pleased with having booked the flight for Japan, I booked the hostel too, all 7 nights, and wrote down the directions from the airport to the hostel. As I was trying to book my flight home to Boston, I got distracted because there's a woman who wants to take some of the furniture off my hands.

So I attempt to go meet her at 5, but then her schedule intervened, and I wandered around Shinae instead, putting together this Greek/classical outfit for no reason other than vanity. It all cost about $130. But first, I had a blueberry cream cheese waffle and Earl Gray tea for lunch. Then I went home for a while and was facebooking. Then I went to go meet the woman who wants furniture. I remember thinking, I spent a lot of time at Choongdae's front gate today, while drinking a small size aloe juice.

She came by, she's very friendly and talkative. We went back to my apartment, and she wanted all the things she said she would, so I helped her take the bookshelf, bookcase and water kettle to her apartment. We had to dismantle the bookshelf a bit first. I also gave her quick dried food I knew I wasn't going to finish. And a 3-meter ethernet wire. We got to talking, and she's also from Boston. I miss Boston. We got a cab back to her place, which is very far on the other side of town. She gave me $10 for the taxi home, and I was grateful.

Then I went outside and took the bus. But the bus was the last bus and stopped only at the bus rest stop where they all go at the end of the night. I got off, but I had no idea where I was. I remember the lady talking about it, and I am very much at the east end of town. I walked for about 15-20 min. before I could find a taxi. I was so relieved when I did, because I was getting hungry again. Most of the food I had had all day were snacks. I bumped into the head teacher who helped fire me when I got home, and I told him life is awesome without TOPIA.

When I got home, one of my photographers asked me to register with Forever 21 the Korean site, so I did that fumblingly, while trying to finish booking my flight home. In the few hours I was gone, the price had gone up $200! @.@ So then I finished booking my flight home - because it was still cheaper than the other prices, even the price at Choongdae. Then I registered for a familiar clothing store - in a foreign language.

After that, I realized there were huge holes in my plans to paraglide with my friends on the 16th, so I called the company again to fix those holes, and now there is much more information. But I still faltered and kind of freaked out in front of my friends. I emailed my mother and sister about the cat. I plotted out the rest of my schedule with my Australian Korean BFF, and we're going to some herb gardens tomorrow, with something as yet unknown for Wednesday. Because I'm meeting her tomorrow about 9ish around her apartment, I should go to sleep now.

It will be a deep sleep. Zzzzz....

Fighting Over Kimchi (Part 2)

In the last post, friends and I were having a rocking good time in Cheongju because I persuaded them to visit just to wander around and see this small city. Then I went back to Daejeon with my friend, and guess what we did the next day?! That's right - we went ziplining.

We had to get up early, because that seems par for the course for every big trip that we do. I stayed over with my friend, then we got up early - 6am? - to head to Daejeon Station, where we caught the KTX to Daegu. Then, we took a bus for 40 min. from Daegu Station to an amusement park named Herb Hillz.

This park has everything. There were little wooden cabins for quieter children who want to create art, a pool with giant inflatable hamster balls for children to get in, the pirate ship ride in most amusement parks, a merry-go-round, a garden with pictures on wood for families to hide and behind to take pictures in with their faces sticking out. Some of us took pictures, but others bypassed all of that for the food. I finished my cream cheese bagel from Dunkin Donuts and ate BHC with the Reeds.

Then it was time for the ziplining tutorial. We all put on harnesses, and there were so many buckles and places to tighten and tuck everything in. The man spoke in relaxed Korean, explaining the two hooks that catch us if we fall, and that's why we're supposed to hook them to everything at every step. Then of course, there's the zipline hook itself, which has small wheels for safe and fast gliding on the cable wire for some fear-of-height thrills. We each had a helmet - blue for women and yellow for men. We also all had rubber gloves to protect our hands as we will be using them a lot. I was glad to find a pair that fit me - normal gloves never fit me.

It was hot. We were all impatient for it to begin. We practiced on the low sample course, where a friend didn't know whether she wants to do it. Then we all headed to the Gorilla course anyway, but the same friend says there is an easier course, so we should do that one instead. We headed towards that one, but she decided to stop and sit it out for the day. So my one partner left and I climbed the Chimpanzee course. These courses - there are about five or six - are rated by a star system, and ranked by how much upper body strength it would take to balance and climb, because the hardest one is the longest.

I don't remember how many stages it came in, but the most memorable ones are these. There were two wires, one to each side of you, and two wires lower than that for you to step on. Occasionally, there are circular wood platforms for you to stand upon and rest for a minute or two. Then there's the one where you step on one wire, the other one you lean on at the middle of your waist, and the way to get across is to hold on tightly to individual ropes that hang roughly 2.5 feet apart. Walking on a net, that was the easiest one for me. Jumping across two platforms, with only one rope in the middle to help me swing, that may have been the hardest. I also had to crawl through barrels uphill, with spaces between the barrels.

And then, finally, the final stage was always the zipline itself. There were two ziplines to this course, and it's not just zipping. You have to crash against a thick green mat and catch the ropes around it to stop and pull yourself up to the next platform. My partner found that the most challenging.

It's the combination of height - we were maybe 10 meters up? - and using your hands and arms to grasp at objects and climb the obstacle course that was a lot of cardiovascular work. I remember my fingers feeling the blood pumping through them, and the blood flowing throughout my whole body - making my skin almost wine red and giving me an adrenaline rush that lasted the next two days.

It doesn't stop there. So, we leave Herb Hillz to catch the bus back to Daegu and then take the KTX, right? So we're all chilling out, expecting to have an easy ride home et all, and what happens? We were either sleeping, recovering, or talking about how great it was when - Flash! Flashflashflash flash! As we all looked out the bus windows to admire the dangerously close by lightning, thunder hits - BOOM!! First, it was farther away, and then it got closer and closer, until it was only 4 mi. away. And it started pouring. The streets were almost completely flooded. Only that one friend had an umbrella, and we were a party of 6 or 7. Not only that, the bus overshot Daegu station by a good 5 minutes.

So we get off the next time the bus stops. We know which general direction the station is in, and also assume that it's just a straight line. Then we... that's right - we run for it. 7 foreigners, running as fast as adrenaline will fuel us, through the rain in a straight line, splashing puddles everywhere and being joyfully dramatic. It was totally a sight for the Koreans to see! It was roughly maybe 8 to 10 blocks, we were all soaked. It was nostalgic, like autumn cross country running back in Massachusetts again.

Under a bridge, we asked for directions. This would be the perfect set for a noir photography shoot, I thought. It turns out that it's more straight line, then to the left. After we left the bridge, the rain had significantly lightened, so we were able to walk, sopping wet, the rest of the way amidst lots of stares from Koreans. I got hot chocolate at the Daegu station. All of us only had standing room on the train, because it was packed for Buddha's birthday weekend, still. I was with two girlfriends, and we spoke of many things standing there and making the Koreans uncomfortable. One old lady stood right in the middle of our conversational space.

We were all very relieved when we finally got to Daejeon Station. While we kind of went our separate ways, I picked up clothes from my friend's apartment, then went to have dinner with 3 friends, 1 of whom didn't go with us to ziplining. She preferred to sit and read all day, her mind in glorious fiction, instead. We were ravenous. We asked for so many refills of kimchi, hot spicy sauce, lettuce leaves and water, that the waitresses must have thought we were fairly high maintenance. We devoured all of the dalkgalbi and wanted rice afterwards, but they explained that rice only comes with the galbi at the same time, not afterwards with the leftover sauce.

We paid and went home, but the title stuck because one friend said it's rare that all the foreigners at the table like kimchi, and I envisioned a couple of monkeys sitting at a table fighting over - you guessed it - kimchi. It as amazeballs.

Fighting Over Kimchi (Part 1)

Aah. I had just showered, and am brimming with happiness. It was an awesome weekend, and I wish it weren't ending. Buddha's Birthday weekend was a rare three-day weekend, and I spent it in Seoul, Cheongju and Daejeon.

In Cheongju, four friends came to visit, and I showed them around a city that I had only lived in for roughly 8 months. The only specific request was a visit to Subway, so I led everyone to the basement of the DreamPlus mall, where there is one Subway outlet. There are 3 Subways in total in Cheongju, I later found out, though I only knew of 2. My friend really enjoyed a pizza sub, which she didn't get to have when she went back to America. So we all savored subs - except for me, because I was silly and ate a peanut butter jelly sandwich right before setting out. I'm happy they all enjoyed the sandwiches so much.

We wandered around the rest of DreamPlus, where we checked out little private fashion stores that are all in rented space. They liked the not-crowded and relaxed atmosphere of the place, and amidst all the shiny, I bought myself a classier watch. It has an oval face, with a leather band and circular metal studs. 40,000 won. A while of wandering around in the mall later, we decided to go outside. Conversations about everything make us very slow walkers, and it was a relaxing day, so we go with the flow.

Five people pack into a taxi, and then it looks like a clown car. I sat on my friend's lap, and we went to Sajik-dong. We got off a block from the bus stop, because we were going to find the small lake or pond, but the bus that I rode to get there last time wasn't running that day.

We noticed the stadium, where I explained that the steps and the extra huge television screen are for people who didn't get tickets in time - they can sit on the stairs to snack while watching the game on the tv outside of the stadium. There was also a statue to the side, almost Greek looking, explaining some part of Korean history. Near it are the mascots for Cheongju, little cartoon characters, because all cities in Korea must have mascots. My friends stopped to smell the bright flowers in front of them. We noted the big bonsai tree behind the flowers.

A block later, we head to the golden temple. It was the first time that I had seen it open, perhaps because of the holiday. We wandered and pointed at the buildings, saying hi to the old lady keepers and commenting on things. There were two: one was Chinese styled and painted brightly, a dormitory where the religious family lives; and the other was the temple itself, painted gold and usually locked. The old lady was nice enough to unlock it for us as a random treat. Inside, she explained the turtle dragon, which accompanies the most powerful god places. It reminded me of the robots from Power Rangers.

On the second floor, there were five gods, the biggest one in the center dwarfing all the rest. They were sorted by size and position: nearer to the center and taller means more important. Their Chinese names were framed in front of them. We bowed. They had different styled hats, were all painted gold, and their faces looked both stern and concerned at the same time. We went upstairs to see the biggest god, who had his palm out in the stop position and the other hand holds a giant pearl of sorts. He was also painted gold, with a topknot in a crown on his head. The space above his head was painted with 4 mantras. When we asked about the pearl in the king's hand, the language barrier got in the way, so the lady led us back down to their offices and showed everyone a short history book, in English, about everything that is this temple. I'm waiting on a friend to finish reading it so I can learn too.

Then we wandered around pet street, looking at dogs and cats and pet food. I bought my Eugene another bag of food. All the animals were so cute. We stopped for drinks at a 7-11 before deciding to hop on a bus after all. We rode to Shinae, the downtown area, before deciding we will sit on a pretty bridge. We stopped by for ice cream at Baskin Robbins on the way, and my friend got a bapbingsu, an ice cream mix with lots of ice. I got the Blueberry Volcano, blueberry ice cream with butter cookies and mint candy. After we went and sat on the dragon-ribs shaped bridge for a good long while, we went for dinner.

I took them to haejonggook, which means hangover soup. We all got the sugolgi one, which means beef with vegetables, soup and purple rice plus the usual appetizers. We had good conversations about our mothers and random subjects, and the meal was very fulfilling. Then I had to pack and go back to Daejeon with them for our ziplining trip the next day. They met my cat, while I hung up underwear and packed for the next day. I still had to go back once for some things I had missed.

Then, like clowns, we all hopped into a taxi once again. The driver, seeing that we were all foreigners, was trying to say to us that Daejeon was just a short distance, so we don't need to go to a bus terminal and he can just take us there instead. I told him, no, that costs too much, and he faced the road again sheepishly. We had a good ol' time making fun of ourselves and of him, and he informed us that he has a Canadian cousin and that he would visit soon. He was smiling when we all exited his taxi. You just know that we made his night.

Company Trip

My brain is tripped out on leftover adrenaline and endorphins right now. Ahh, exercise. Wait, I came here to narrate. Hi! Since the last post, dear coworkers and I had gone on a very surreal company trip to a small handful of places - all of which were beautiful. On Sunday, I hung out with my best friend and we bought hiking boots for me and he gave me a Domo hat. Then one of the easier work week happened for five days, and this past weekend... What did I do on Saturday? I hung out with three girl friends for a Children's Day festival and then enjoyed Avengers with a few new friends on Sunday.

It's amazing that I was able to remember all that. It took a tiny bit of work and looking at random pieces of paper that I had written down on over these past two weeks, mind you. Anyhow, on to the stories. =)

We all stood around awkwardly after arriving at about 8:30am in front of the office building, then we got piled onto a rented tour bus outfitted with flashing lights and a karaoke system. Almost every hour, we stopped for bathroom breaks. The first place we went to was a beach-side seafood restaurant. My, do I Love raw fish. While other people started drinking, I was consuming the essences of the ocean. The conversation around the table was about what exactly is healthy, and giant ginseng roots, and then a Canadian coworker had to awkwardly insult all the Korean men at the table by asking them why there are so many herbs and products that are supposed to help sexual stamina. "Do Korean men really need it, or something?" I told this coworker he was a bad egg in the silence that had fallen over the table. Soon after, the boss told us that we should go walk around the beach - so we did.

The sand was so soft, and the sun was just high enough in the sky. The weather was absolutely gorgeous. All the other women had went ahead to walk by themselves, so that Canadian coworker, a Korean man and I took off our shoes and strolled along the oceanic foam. We made fun of each other, as people do, talking about Diablo 3 which had come out recently, all the different kinds of beer around the world, and the way a towel is the most necessary thing for a traveler - one of the things that he learned from the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, which I'm ashamed to say I haven't read yet. Then we wiped off our feet to pile back onto the bus and head to our next stop - a Buddhist temple.

Most Buddhist temples look the same. They're all in high places, but this one is especially commercialized with restaurants and a woodsy walkway leading up to it. I had started taking pictures. My two traveling companions and I started talking about religion and those kinds of beliefs, and why a person should focus on either the here and now, or the afterlife. When we came back down to find the bus, the rest of the crew were somewhere enjoying the rice wine near the temple. The Korean man was sad that he had missed it, but neither the Canadian nor I want to drink. We sat in the shade of the bus until everyone came back.

After everyone got on the bus, we're now going to the last stop on this trip, which is a barley field. When we got there, the sun was fairly low in the sky, so it cast a warm glow over everything it touched. The grass and the barley moved with the wind like waves, and tourists like ourselves populated the little dirt paths in between the vegetation. There were horses, very tired horses pulling horses, and in a fenced in area somewhere to the left middle, there were sheep. I liked the smell of barley - I eat so much wheat and bread based products that it's practically all I'm made of. My Korean and Canadian coworkers fed bits of plants to the sheep, because apparently, they made my Korean coworker uncomfortable so the Canadian suggested that he should go feed them to overcome his fear. There were little tents of products, but everyone was very drunk still and we didn't stay long.

On one part of the trip where we were all on the bus, a bunch of drunk men decided to blast the karaoke system on the bus with its flashing lights and sing and dance awkwardly. None of them looked particularly good dancing, and half of the bus was trying to sleep so they were all very irritated. Apparently, it gave one woman a headache, and she said that all this is distracting to the driver, so technically it's illegal. I was amused at the whole lack of intelligence in the situation, especially when one of the Korean American men demanded that the bus be stopped so he can pee. So then a couple of men peed together by the side of the highway.

We all got back to Cheongju about roughly 9pm or so. The sky was dark. The director asked me if I enjoyed it, and I said yes, I had fun. It's hard not to have fun when given a free tour of places I've never been before, along with free food, and then being perpetually amused the whole way at all the social awkwardnesses my Korean and one Canadian coworkers can impose on each other because we were the people who didn't have a valid reason that the management could accept to get out of this trip. It was a situational comedy. So yes, I had fun.

A Scented Relaxing 26th

It was an amazing weekend, thanks to two girl friends. Happy Birthday to me! It was the first and probably only birthday I'm going to spend in South Korea.

I spent Saturday helping a friend shop in Yongsan for some 18mm photography lenses. I don't know enough about photography to know the difference, but it was pleasant walking around in a brightly lit mall making fun of soldiers and types of people. We ate Korean hotpot at a restaurant, and then had some coffee at Dunkin Donuts. I love hotpot. I love noodles. I love sweet things, and even though I can't cook, I love food in general.

Then we three girls had a sleepover. We spoke about all sorts of things, as women do when we get together. All of us have pets, and even though they have dogs and I have a cat, it feels similar to come home to and love a creature. Even if my creature is passed out on the wood floor (so cute!) after giving me an ultimatum about being away for Two Whole Days and leaving him alone to the silence. He hid one cap of one of my contacts lens cases as suitable punishment. My friend's two dogs are adorable, very full of personality, creating an enjoyable background while we talked about work, life and ourselves, and love.

We woke up the next day around noon. Sundays are made for waking up at noon. Because her windows took up the wall, the light streamed in to tell us that it's daylight. We dressed, deciding to go to the massage place to delay the appointment for an hour so we can eat. There hung a sign that said that they'll be back at 4, so we went to brunch anyway at this nice place named the Moru. I had strawberry pancakes, which was delicious, paired with refreshing peppermint tea. My friends had banana pancake and a dish that had fries and a salad.

When we walked outside, a lady in a businesslike navy blue dress was waiting for us. She introduced herself as I-Sohn, and led us to the Mannam volunteer organization's cafe in Dunsan-dong, very near where my friend from Saturday lives. I hissed at one of my friends about the way this lady was just waiting for us outside of Moru. We made small talk as we walked, threading underground through the stairs and hallways of Daejeon Station and coming out onto a too-familiar street. When we got to the offices, we said hello to some of the other organization's members who were just leaving.

After that randomness, we went back to the massage place, and they were ready for us. We each changed into pajamas after drinking some tea, and they gave us oiled foot baths. Then we laid down on these thick mats, and they covered our eyes and went to work on our muscles. I was tense in my hips, pelvis, buttocks, shoulders and neck, much more so than my backbone itself, which was surprising. The masseuse was a Korean lady smaller than even me, but she used her body weight to apply deep pressure to all of my joints. Soft new age music was playing the entire time, in a nice softly lit room with wood relief carvings and pillows. One of my friends had a male masseuse, so that resulted in silent hilarity worthy of an episode of Sex and the City.

None of us wanted to leave when it was over. All of our necks were rubbed with peppermint oil, and we were so relaxed and sleepy. We laid there, speaking of happy nothings until a woman came in to gently tell us to leave, so we changed back, sat in the lobby with our well being tea, and then left. She was in long mid bow when the elevator doors closed. The weather was still perfect when we walked outside - just windy enough, the sun still just high enough, and beautifully airily warm.

We went to a coffee shop to have tea and cake to close our relaxing time. I couldn't have asked for a better birthday weekend. The company was great, the food was delicious, the massages were relaxing. Thank you, girls, for an awesome 26th birthday!

Promise to Give 'Em Ecstatic Hell

Substituting for the coworker who had to go to the dentist from last time went very smoothly, because my one year of experience teaching ESL on Daebudo really did make me comfortable with South Korean children and having authority over them. Naively, I thought that first mild test was the only one, and that I'd have started to officially teach by now.

Nope. TOPIA had me back at observation of coworkers' classes, which relaxed me a bit because it was easy and I didn't know for how long I was going to be doing that. I told them I was ready to teach, but then they had me Microteach, which means I pretended that a panel of coworkers are students, have half the duration of actual class time, with material from their highest English middle school class. It was a reading comprehension class, so I had my coworkers read passages and discuss the main points of the story. When evaluation time came, they really kicked me down a notch - as was their job to do so.

It felt like a Maoist style criticism, and I was so tense that I started hyperventilating. I only got better when half of them left and I sat down, only to know that my skin had gone chalk white and there was a half subconscious part of me willing myself to breathe. The administrator Yvonne seemed really disappointed and hadn't spoken to me, but the academy owner patted my shoulder in sympathy and almost all my coworkers gave me pep talks because they all had to go through this trial by fire. In hindsight, it was true that I was under prepared, but to be fair, it wasn't that I didn't teach - it was simply not anything similar to what they were looking for. That was Wednesday.

Because this is a private academy, what they are looking for is what matters the most. It's similar to the way that one has to fit in with the corporate culture of whatever big company a person is working at in America - like EMC, the data storage company, practices Lean Six Sigma which emphasizes customer service and "project focus on the key business gaps and strategies critical to the business success". TOPIA's principles are Credibility, Competence and Compassion. The Microteaching aspect probably focuses on credibility and competence - in the way that they want me to teach.

They wanted me to go by the syllabus, which means that I will not have any students read anything in class - they will only go over the workbook exercises with my half guidance with the assumption that they all did the homework. So then my real role - as was true for my time at the public school in Daebudo as well - was to discipline them, sporadically add in new ideas and personality to the textbooks (read: be a particularly authoritative performance artist), and engage them in conversation while adding in new ideas

And I did do that, partially, but I hadn't used the workbook and wasn't informed of how to read the syllabus, or the very structured and ordered way they had wanted me to use class time. I only had maybe twenty minutes because I spent ten photocopying reading pages from the student book last minute - while they did tell me that I was going to Microteach, they didn't tell me the specific chapter or structure they wanted - and so I thought teaching the way I taught before was going to be fine.

So now that I've been fully woken up to what they actually want from me, I've spent the last two days preparing. The next Microteaching is tomorrow, Friday. To make up for my lack of satisfactory performance in their eyes, they're actually having me demonstrate two times back-to-back, so I have to go in half an hour early. I'm well prepared now, having planned everything that I think they want down to the half minute. This also means I should go to bed almost right after I log off here. Wish me luck, and goodnight.

Combo Finisher - Korea, Year One End

Saying goodbye to the munchkins was a heartrending process. The kids themselves made the work very difficult for someone without experience, but also make it so worth it. Even though the fifth and sixth graders were fairly jaded because they knew two other English teachers before myself, they still expressed sadness at my leaving.

For me, it was the beginning of the end when I translated all those kiddie speeches from Korean - with a lot of help from Google Translate - where I gained a better understanding of what each kid from grades third to sixth cared about from their essays. While coteacher assigned different topics for each grade, every speech was still unique and there was even one about how being wheelchair bound inspires him to become a social worker to help other people like himself. However, my coteacher didn't announce that I was leaving until exactly one week before I had to leave - Thursday.

Since he's probably going to have to take over teaching English for the half a year that Daenam Elementary School will not have a native English teacher, he told me to sit out the Thursdays, whereas before I would lesson plan by either expanding on a topic from the book or feeding the students vocabulary based on my interests. It doesn't make much of a difference time-wise, but it felt like I was less of a teacher. When I'm alone with the kids Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays were taken up by reading story books that I found , including Go, Dog, Go! for the younger kids and Peter Pan (the skeletally diluted version that comes with both a cd and Korean text in the back from EMart) for the older ones. Afterschool was games - who doesn't love games? Especially when I reward the winners with candy or stickers.

After the school day was over though, I cleaned and packed. Cleaning out my dormitory was a conscious process of deciding what's important, so the least important but worth keeping things were packed first. I had four luggages and my backpack and a handful of other bags plus the cat and his things. I did not travel lightly. Every other weekend, I would drag one of these luggages over to a friend's apartment who lives closer to Cheongju. It was the only way that I was able to take everything I wanted on moving day and not fill my coteacher's caravan to the brim. Those decisions weren't the hardest part. The hardest part was scrubbing out all the patches of cat hair mixed with my own hair that were ejected from under the washing machine and had accumulated on the bathroom floor. Grossed out yet?

Between cleaning my dormitory and the English classroom, my students gave me gifts. There were some handwritten letters that I enjoyed, expressing their heartfelt goodbyes. I received a plastic bouquet, a fan, a highlighter, a plastic rose, a mirror, some soap, and a few other things I hadn't had time to open yet. My teachers insisted on a goodbye dinner, though it was the most awkward affair ever, because I can't drink well and had no idea what to say when I'm supposed to make my rounds and toast people. So my coteacher urged me on and I had to stand up and give short speeches. They gave me a bag of Skinfood products. I felt special and popular, all the while knowing that they're just doing this out of courtesy and tradition. That was on Friday.

I even had a final disagreement with my coteacher. He and the administrator were checking my dormitory before the staff goodbye dinner. I had cleaned everything, but because I was still packing, there was clutter in places and my coteacher took one look and said, "No clean?" This was because when Koreans say clean, they mean organized and dust free. I was disappointed that he didn't even look at the areas I did clean, considering I worked so hard. It was part of the reason the staff dinner was so awkward - I wasn't in the mood for it, because I was irritated at him. Skip past Saturday and Sunday where I'm hanging out with English speaking friends - though there was a mildly interesting Korean American Friendship Festival on Sunday in Songtan.

On Monday, I had less clutter, but there were still a few bags on the small kitchen table, and some clothes strewn about the sofa because I was either still using them or planning to use them. Coteacher and administrator checked all the items off the list that they had to make sure everything is still there, but my coteacher still said, "You think this is clean?" gesturing at the kitchen table and the couch. Even the administrator paused and said, "Ooh... Smile again."

Coteacher waited til he was outside then went on to try to say that he wanted me to clear things so that it was like when I arrived, and I explained that everything still out are objects that I'm keeping. I have no sense of timing, because I asked that moment whether I'd still be in a car on my way to Cheongju or a bus since my recruiter had new information on where he wanted to meet. He said if I didn't clean the dormitory AND the English classroom to his satisfaction within the next few hours, then he's no longer driving me - good luck , I'm taking the bus and going alone, which would add roughly three or four hours to my commute.

I listen to him because I was going to do it all anyway, but he was just impatient and wanted it done by a very specific moment on Monday. Still, it didn't feel good, and I walked past them without saying much on my way to the English classroom to clean. It was much easier to deal with than the dormitory - I just put all the waste paper in the can, wiped down the desk and all the tables, swept the floor, then proceeded the mop it with all purpose cleaner. He wanted it to be like before I arrived, so I moved several pieces of furniture, pulled up the blinds and opened all the curtains. - All while singing to songs my friends suggested and dancing with the mop. The adrenaline made my bad mood go away, though it didn't erase this memory.

Tuesday. I get up early to finish packing all the little odds and ends, clothes, toiletries, and others. It takes me two hours to do that and finish with all the cat objects as well as urge him into the carrier. I visit my librarian friend, who also made me something. I sadly bade my goodbyes - she was the only person I can relate to in some form at that school, though the kids are great and the other teachers were all well meaning. Coteacher led me around to say goodbye to every teacher who was around individually, as well as the principal. So there we have it - no more Daenam, unless I actually take up their offer to visit.

Anticipation, Streamlining All I Have

Breakfast was a slice of bread with water, and that's enough to last me for a few hours. This means that I'm okay with a mostly Spartan lifestyle - cue: heavy guitar riffs, voice from the movie 300, "This is Sparta!!!" while I kick someone I dislike down into a metaphorical 6-foot hole. Don't worry people, lunch and dinner are always far more substantial (to back up the assertion that I do eat from the last post). Anyway, the process of moving to another city and another apartment is far under way.

Let's recalibrate. A few weeks ago, my school had told me that it's impossible for my contract to be renewed. I found another job at a private academy, since the timing of my contract's ending closed off most public school positions for me, and what scraps are left mean that I would be in a similar situation to where I am now: out in the suburbs - read, middle of nowhere - and having to travel fairly far to shop for food or see friends. So despite the bad reputation private academies have in terms of employing foreigners in this country, I really had no choice but to give it a shot. I spoke to a few recruiters, and these were my terms.

I wanted to be nearer to a city, while retaining the rest of the benefits I had before. They include health insurance, vacation time, weekends off, and having a (preferably free) apartment that's near both public transportation and the school. I also decided to move further south in favor of a less harsh winter, some people I already know there, and having it easier as a tourist to travel in any direction within the country. These are somewhat strict requirements, especially for someone without a teaching certificate with only one year of experience who was very much short on time (since I didn't want to spend the extra money to go home before coming back again to work). I was found by John Yoon of JICC Recruiting, and he sold me to the Cheongju branch of TOPIA. (I encourage everyone to blog about their recruiters - this way, we find out which ones are the liars who exaggerate to get you to take the job so they get paid.)

While I didn't get away with having nearly as much vacation time and there's more work, the pay is higher and I would not have to lesson plan. There will be a lot of student work to grade and forums to respond to online, and maybe I would have to bow to some extra parental demands. As with most academies, hours are afternoons through evenings. I will be working with more people because it is a large franchise and it can even afford having a handful of foreigners in one institution. However, the classes may remain small.

Even after I signed the contract, I continued to do my research - if this was a blacklisted private academy, for example, I wouldn't show up regardless of what paper I put my name on. When I called them and asked to speak to an English teacher, they gave me a Korean American or gyobo to speak to - whose word I still took for granted, despite the grain of salt that she would not have the guts to say she hated the place even if she did feel that way. But when she said, "Oh, you'll love it here!" there was enough enthusiasm that I think she would be telling the truth. I also reasoned that no matter how bad it is, it can't be as bad as my 11 months at Target, where my hours shifted on a weekly basis and I had no health insurance.

So John Yoon will pick me up from Cheongju train station on September 27th at 4pm. I still haven't figured out exactly how I'm going to meet him with two big luggages and a cat kennel, when I will have no cell phone and only two arms since I will be traveling alone. Later today or Saturday, I will go to Ansan Station to find a pay phone, so that I can at least call the local taxi van service to take me and my luggage + cat from my apartment near the mud flats to Oido Station, on Line 4. It might be a good idea to somehow get one more luggage to that area this weekend, so that when I meet with John Yoon I'll only have one big luggage and my cat.

In terms of packing, I've put away all my sweaters and jackets, and most of the small things are in this blue luggage next to me, and I know how I'm going to organize my shoes, my cat things, wires and small electronics. I also have another bag of toiletries, and a backpack of the stuff I'll need to stay comfortable for the next handful of days when everything else is packed away. I also need to go to the bank today to cash in all my coins so that I can travel roughly 3 kgs less.

Cleaning wise, I've cleaned the washing machine and porch area, most of the bathroom, and cleared out most of the drawers of everything that I'm keeping. I need to finish up the bathroom, work on the living/bedroom floor, the kitchen floor, sink and gas range, and perhaps the inside of the fridge. Now my goals for the next few hours are set.

I'm finished mentally recalibrating and organizing. And now, cue Juno's voice, "Thundercats are Goooo!!!"

An Intersection of Culture in Everyone

DISCLAIMER: If I stereotype people or sound racist at any time during this post, I'm sorry and I don't mean any harm. It's just to get a point across.

Taking a taxi cab ride back from Shihwa Emart, I had yet another conversation with another driver - probably because driving a taxi is not the most exciting job on the planet, so they enjoy talking to their clients when there's something interesting about them, and when their language skills are up to par. This time it was because I had in arm a box of cleaning supplies half my size, so taking the bus to downtown Daebudo would not be enough to get me home even though I have a bike parked there at the moment. This driver, like a handful of other drivers, asked me where I was from, and then whether I was Korean American.

Conversations like these happen to me a lot. I hypothesize that, aside from a few key areas in Seoul, there aren't that many foreigners in Korean daily life - especially not out here, in the countryside, and they're curious. So after I tell them, no, I'm Chinese American, I get a range of reactions. Usually, it would be disinterest, and then the conversation would be over. I never knew why until today. This driver told me that he felt Koreans judged the Chinese based on the few handful of them who have immigrated here to South Korea for a better quality of life. The Korean Chinese people he's met, he told me, didn't seem very intelligent.

You can imagine why this was a very odd thing for me to hear. I didn't debate with him because I lacked the communication skills and didn't want to offend him, but I really didn't understand how the Chinese in mainland China would be all that different from Korean Chinese people if all they did was immigrate here. Let me take a moment here to clarify what I think are the key differences in Chinese culture and Korean culture today. (All Asians look the same! It's such an old joke, really.)

The old Confucian beliefs in ancestor worship, bowing and the idea that elders know better are rapidly dying in China now, whereas they seem to be very much alive in South Korea. While the Chinese government has been carefully monitoring the internet for fear of dissension, internet freedom is so free here that there are almost no copyright laws, which means that most international media creators won't allow a lot of their work here for fear that it'd be stolen. The feminist movement is far more under way in China than it is here in South Korea. The Chinese trade industry focuses on whatever it can get its hands on, whereas the South Korean trade focuses on computers, cars, televisions and small electronics. Chinese cooking is very varied, and there aren't nearly as many side dishes. So these are a few differences. (I can't tell the difference between Irish, Scottish and Swedish either, honestly. Sorry, Europeans.)

Swinging back to what the taxi driver was saying, hearing that he thought Korean Chinese aren't very bright is a huge contrast to back home where Asian people - the majority of which are Chinese Americans - are the model minority. The stereotype probably came from wealthy Chinese families who kept the academic culture of severely pushing their children to achieve high grades because they believe in the value of education. This still exists to some extent today (further extrapolated on in Amy Chua's Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother). However, most Chinese American parents I've met are more like mine - there's a lot of nagging to do well in school, but rarely are there beatings, and the parenting style is moreso an overwhelming - overbearing? haha - concern rather than a domineering strictness where failure is met with punishment.

My parents, unlike most Chinese American parents, however, are still starkly Maoist-Communist. It's an odd ideology to come home to, when the chapter in World History from eighth grade was mainly about how (before China was invaded by Japan and millions of both Korean and Chinese women were made into comfort women) Mao Zedong was rapidly destroying China through his Five Year Plans because he didn't actually know anything about mining or that kind of technology, and millions of people were starving because they were trying to keep up with his quotas. Or the way he grew old and senile and paranoid, so he killed a lot of people who he thought was trying to wrestle power from him.

What my mother grew up in, however, was a beautifully engineered propaganda program where people's lives were great and prosperous because of Mao's ideas, and furthermore, most importantly, they were united with strong family values. Family is family, and a bunch of families together form a community, and these are the things that people relied on, in a fast-paced world of industrialization, Westernization, communism-to-capitalism ideology and globalization. This is similar to the way I grew up being told that I can be whatever I want to be, life is going to be easy because I'm an American, and that all I really need to do is be curious, learn, and do a lot of soul searching. (How's that economy holding up, America? If the rich still refuse to pay taxes and help, and there are still no jobs being created, some Robin Hoods are going to start popping up everywhere.)

This cab driver wasn't interested in America, like most of the other drivers were. He told me he really respected the Chinese, because they are a strong and humble people. (I thanked him, but is that really true? I'm not mainland Chinese enough to actually know?) He thought that my parents must have had a strict upbringing, therefore I must have had one too. (I said I did, but not really - I was never beaten, and my mother's main concern was that I don't starve. I eat! Why doesn't anyone believe me?)

My mother probably had a strict childhood, though. She was the only girl among three brothers, so while she can take rough and tumble like any tomboy, she was the designated secondary caretaker in the family when my grandmother was ill or otherwise absent. The oldest son was allowed to go to London with my grandfather to get a European education and get interested in computers. So my mother did all the yelling and screaming and disciplining, which means that she must have had to have been the model child. The humility part might have been true of my mother - she accepted everything life threw at her, wrapping her mind around everything she couldn't understand or change; the only place she would have things absolutely her way was the kitchen.

This is as opposed to the American international policy, where we must have our way everywhere because we must know better. In my country's defense, Americans have really good intentions to the point of almost being naive. Or opposed to the South Korean policy towards all foreigners: our country, our rules, and we don't really care if it doesn't make sense to you, as long as it makes sense to us. But your army still needs to stay here to protect us from the North Koreans, because we can't talk to them when that crazy man is running things over there. Or even the Chinese international policy: did you want to buy something from us? If yes, fabulous, if no, well what did you want? We have a hard enough time dealing with our factories, pollution and overpopulation as is, we don't care about your country's take on how we're doing things, screw off. Shut up about human rights, worry about your own like Walmart and Microsoft and McDonalds first. We don't want to hear it.

I'm Chinese American. When most people look at me, they see an Asian woman. When they talk to me, I find that they tend to emphasize one of my cultures over the other. When I look at myself, I see an American heavily influenced by Chinese ideas in a small, moderately active Southeast Asian body. When I talk to myself, I think I should learn Mandarin - I speak Cantonese - and write the language so that I can either become an interpreter, a teacher or a cutthroat businesswoman.

(Said in an old lady's voice with mock Chinese accent - One More Thing: We might have talked before, I can't remember ...)

Sudden Changes

A few months ago, the South Korean Board of Education had decided - and related through GEPIK (Gyeonggi English Program of Korea) - that due to budget cuts, they will cease to hire any new people before March 2012. This means that everyone who already has a contract can finish, but renewing with public schools will be a problem Korea-wide until they say otherwise. No one seems to know when they're going to have enough money to hire again; the March 2012 date is tentative and mainly there to stem any further questions.

What does this mean for me personally? Well, my contract is over this coming September 26. My E-2 visa expires October 27, and my corresponding Alien Registration Card expires on the same date. This means that either I find a job here before that time, so a new school will help me acquire a new visa or I'm going back to either the U.S.A. or preparing to go to another country. I decided that I want to stay here for another year, because I have more to learn about teaching, there is more to see in this country and I don't want to immediately leave some of the new friends I've met here.

So the past two weeks have been a mildly feverish rush of contacting recruiters and applying for jobs that way. Two days ago, I had made a list, and realized that I had actually contacted and applied with up to twelve recruiters. They all initially responded to receive my resume and photo, but many of them stopped after that, and around four stayed. I ended up half applying with EPIK, and then talking to a few other people about private academies. Because I am not Korean American, some places were off limits to me - this is because some parents really want a teacher at their academy that they can talk to, and my lack of Korean would be a barrier to that. Other places only want men or white people, sometimes their criteria can be very specific. I even heard that there are sometimes age requirements.

As with choosing between countries when teaching abroad, transitioning between jobs means choosing the ideal setting for me to live in. By now I had tired of the country life and want actual cities with convenience stores nearby, so I looked at my options for large cities. I've already explore a good part of Ansan and Siheung, even though the move to those two places would be easy, so I wanted something new. Seoul is too prestigious, and not being Korean American or having more experience teaching, this city is mainly closed off to me anyway. Incheon might have sounded interesting, but I know more people down south now, so that's where I opted to go. I applied in Suwon, Daejeon, Busan and Daegu. Next is the realization that because my contract ends September 26 - terrible timing! - just after most public schools are done hiring, I would have to take the place of someone who changed their minds, or just go for a private academy.

Private academies are completely different from public schools. The hours are from afternoon to night instead of morning, there are fewer vacation days and shorter breaks, and your supervisors get much more control over your teaching methods and style. I'm hoping the last one won't get me into trouble, because I had to change many things as is even when I was teaching in public school. There's a lot more paperwork to be done, in terms of others' evaluations of you and then your evaluations of the students and having to comment on students' posts on internet sites. I expect to have seven more teaching hours each week. While in public schools, they expect you to create your own curriculum, academies give you a curriculum and you follow that. I also heard that the academy sometimes either doesn't follow the contract or interprets it in such a way that they make it hard for an employee to leave or fine them so much that they ended up with only 20% of their total income.

As a result, whenever I was offered a place to work, I have to research it across a few sites for a good while before concluding whether that place has a bad reputation and whether the posters' complaints have any grounding to them. In fact, I'm still doing that, and one of the methods that people often says works is to call the school directly and ask to speak with one of their English teachers to see whether they are happy there. Either way, I'm expected to move out of my apartment by September 26, so I've begun packing. And the beat goes on.

South Korean Fashion

This time, I distinguished between North and South Korea because I haven't had a chance to visit North Korea, and also I hear that the Kim Jong Il personality cult doesn't allow for much freedom of expression, so I assume this would be true in terms of fashion, as well. The two countries are getting farther apart culturally the longer they remain separated, so despite all attempts at conversation, they will now have to deal with a new invisible barrier between them.

Nevertheless, Seoul is one of the fashion capitals of the world, not far after Paris and New York City. Of course, the leaders of the fashion industry are the pop stars and actors who dominate the small screen, and sometimes even the big screen. My personal favorites among them are 4minute, 2PM, Big Bang, Girls' Generation, and Taeyang. While there are individual artists, they generally start out performing with other people until their names are better known. G-Dragon and Hyuna are two good examples.

Starting with the hair, almost everyone here has bangs. They just don't like to show their foreheads and like to try to emphasize their eyes. With the face, large eyes with the crease in the eyelids are favored, paired with a small to medium sized nose, and everyone loves a pair of luscious lips. Skin wise, Koreans like their complexions very pale, so they avoid the sun unless they are farmers, fishermen, or other types of laborers. Like with other countries, this is more of a class issue. However, Korean women have a kind of cream that they put on their faces, with other makeup, daily to make sure their skin is light enough to be fashionable. They aim for a healthy looking complexion that ideally glows.

In terms of body types, most Koreans are very skinny, especially compared to Americans. Women are generally just skinny unless they were born with a bigger body type, which they would be continuously ridiculed for throughout their childhoods. Men have skinny, slim - which really muscular - or business, which is kind of a Buddha body type lite. Unless they are athletes or labor workers, no one generally exercises. They drive wherever they go, there are taxis around, and when they're not working twelve hours a day or having fun singing, drinking or at some event, they just kind of sit. There's the television and lots of video games to occupy them. Video games seem to be an activity that people of all ages partake in here.

A few days ago, a few of my teachers were poking at my shins and asking me why they are so hard. I didn't understand the question, so I poked them back and sure enough, their shins are really soft. Like there's bone, and then soft flesh. I told them that I have dry skin, yes, but also that my legs are made of muscle from walking everywhere and so often. And biking, as well. They oohed and aahed. This was particularly funny to me, because I am not fit. I am very skinny, yes, but I can develop more strength in my core and glutes. The fact that they literally have no muscle unless they are labor workers puzzle me, because they still do the things normal people do, like carry groceries, wash dishes, clean the floors, etc. How can a person not develop muscle from managing a house daily?

And even their houses are very fashionable. Things are put away, clutter is always discouraged - because they believe that a cluttered desk or room is evidence of the owner's cluttered mind. Interesting connection, right? So you would never find clothes strewn all over a Korean floor.

Since I'm Chinese American, I can fit into most of this clothing, and have been earning enough money, that I can afford to experiment a little bit here and there with everything. For the women, their tops are very loose - nothing like the tight tank tops that Americans sometimes wear. While tight tank tops are sold here, they are considered undershirts or kind of street trashy wear. Revealing cleavage is very much frowned upon. Because Asian women have a different body build, almost all the bras here fit breast sizes AA to B, maybe rarely a C. Oh, and I love Korean panties. I'm not sure what kind of fabric they use, but it's very smooth and deal with sweat and wetness exceedingly well. Part of this must have to do with the great technology and temperate climate they have here. Skinny jeans and short shorts are very common here. The women here have no problem revealing their legs. In the winter, long black panty hose is also favored. There are many styles of socks, including these fuzzy socks that are comfortable and good for winter. There's almost an infinite number of styles for shoes, more than half of them high heels taller than two and a half inches.

Young Korean men sport tight pants as well, though this is no longer true once he enters either the army - military draft is mandatory here - or goes into the work force. Men, as usual, don't have as many fashion choices as women do, but here they seem to have more comfortable athletic pants options, as well as many more styles of sneakers. I've been told that the men's underwear are also very smooth, absorbent and comfortable. There's this booklet at every mall for tips on how to pair the right colors and patterns between collared shirts and ties. They generally pair vests and sweaters with white collared shirts for business wear, and there's the general tshirt and jeans or athletic wear for other days. There are more styles of tshirts or long sleeve shirts than I've seen in America.

Now, Nobody I've seen from other countries can accessorize like a Korean, and I mean that in the most magazine girlish voice possible. For women, there are a good number of hair ornaments, from elastics to head bands, to clips. There's also earrings for those with holes in their earlobes, though holes elsewhere like noses and the tips of one's ears are generally reserved for performers or rebellious youth. There's of course a good number of necklaces and pendants to go with the plainer shirts or dresses. Men sometimes wear earrings and necklaces too. Both genders can wear rings on their fingers, ranging from plastic to karat gold. Styles of belts are many, but if people wear anklets, I have not seen them. There's also color contacts, glasses, the whole routine of makeup, tattoos (rarely) and nail polish. And that's just on their bodies.

Off their bodies, some of the clothing come with accessories, like suspenders, or pockets in various places where even the insides are decorated. Jackets keep them warm in colder weather, and can be worn around the waist, around the shoulders or draped over some furniture showing off. Sometimes there are arm coolers in the summer, made of some fabric that supposedly really does cool you off. There's a really impressive array of styles for purses and bags, which seem to be unisex generally. Everyone from someone who's six years old to the oldest person you see on the subway has a cell phone. On these cell phones and their purses are various charms that you can buy at almost any store in Korea. There are anime or cartoon icons, random fluffy animals, other symbols - almost anything can be found. Koreans match the colors of these charms to their phones and bags. Some phone charms have uses, like my Hello Kitty that has a memory chip inside of it for taking the subway, or a USB, or a stylus/antennae that makes using the phone itself easier.

Everything comes in fairly bright colors for the young, which seem to either go into the extremes of neon or just fade into gray and black as the people wearing them get older. The people here care a lot about their personal sense of style because they're status symbols, and also because they don't really get to express their personalities much in other areas of life.

On Fear of the Unknown or Misunderstood

This afternoon, because the internet was down and I could no longer in all practicality do any work, I visited my librarian. This was not the same librarian from previous entries, because that helpful woman was moved to another post - nursemaid. This new librarian is four years younger than me, and will continue her study of English when she has enough money to continue her college career. Her English name is Catherine. She confessed that she was afraid of Americans from a somewhat negative prior experience.

When she was at university, one of her professors was this middle aged Korean American woman. However, she didn't really speak any Korean and was actually Americanized enough to have a white husband. Catherine noted that the professor actually doesn't identify herself with being Korean at all, and differentiated herself from native Koreans. She additionally thought that the professor didn't like her because, one time she had requested to turn in an assignment late, but the professor had refused, saying that the deadline was over. Apparently, sometimes Catherine talked to her friends during class, so the professor would pick her to ask her a question; when Catherine didn't understand, the professor would get angry and sometimes lecture her in English. My librarian said that she was scared.

I asked how old the professor was, and she had answered, around forty. Then I told her about culture shock, and how when I first came here, it was hard for me to accept most situations, so it must be even harder for this relatively older woman. Then I reasoned that perhaps some of my students thought that way about me as well, when I yelled at them for not paying attention. Then I told her about the story of how my coteacher and I had come to many misunderstandings. (One of my earlier posts on this blog, actually.) Then I told her about how my principal said that Asians should stick together. I mentioned that since I grew up in the U.S., that white people black people and people of other nationalities are pretty much the same to me once I've actually spoken to them, but that misunderstandings are fairly common because everyone is much more likely to judge the foreign person - especially if that person seems unfriendly for whatever reason.

Then I amended myself, regaling how about maybe two hundred years ago, the U.S. was made of mostly or only white people - and at the time, they were afraid of black people. Once those black people got Americanized, the next people to be feared were the Asians - specifically the Japanese, but sometimes now the Chinese. When they too have been Americanized, currently it is more so the Mexicans and the gay people. She seemed surprised by that, but also felt that gay people were to be feared. (She's a devout Christian, and I get the feeling that it's fairly conservative, not to mention GLBTs have not been able to come out in this country much yet.) The last things I said to her about this topic was that I don't think gay people are all that different either, they just tend to prefer their own gender. And that these feelings and politics are issues that Americans, and probably all countries of the world, will continue struggling with.

I don't hope to change her mind. However, by being friends with her, I hope she realizes that Americans aren't in any sense of the word uniform, and that specific situations and positions of authority can blur things a bit. As for the rest of the ideas about fear and racism, even if she doesn't agree with me, I'm happy that she listened patiently enough. Maybe knowing that these ideas are out there would help her see foreigners and the rest of the world in a different light when next she meets them. I know that for certain that by coming here, I am certainly going through a whole reality of changes that I would otherwise never even have considered.

Being An Alien

Some time ago, as per immigration office procedures, my coteacher drove me to the nearest hospital - which turns out to be like two towns over. Long drives like that accentuate the awkward relationship between my coteacher Mr. Jeong and myself, because on the one hand, he doesn't want to get too friendly (it's fairly conservative here) - being a husband with a young wife and two kids - but on the other hand, it gets really awkward in silence if no one says anything for more than ten minutes.

So we arrive at some place called Siheung, and that's apparently where the hospital is. I follow Mr. Jeong around, because I can't read any of the signs or understand any of the people, so I can't sign in and listen to instructions on my own. So he asks at the info desk, and then we go up an escalator to the second floor, where he looks for the occupational health department. He fills out the form for me, asking for my blood type and other vital information.

We make small talk over food and whatever else comes to mind. It occurs to me that this guy is closer to me than my father ever will be. It makes me sad and a little wistful.

I feel displaced, somewhat lost, but not bad. First they take my blood pressure and temperature. They take an X-ray of my lungs and spine. I had to pee in a cup, awkwardly carrying it back out until I put it in a tray, where they tell me to make a fist. I watch them draw blood through a syringe, wondering why blood bubbles when you take it out like that. It's more crimson than cranberry juice, almost maroon.

Because they can't make me understand in their language, they have to show me, but pointing, poking, prodding, guiding me in the right directions. Next time, my coteacher still has to hand in my alien registration papers.

Festivities in Seoul

Besides December - when the big event of the month is Christmas - there seems to be an outing for the school within the first or second week of each month for the fall. In October, this was the Seoul Festival.

A small handful of parents came to help. The teachers made sure all the kids and themselves went to the bathrooms before everyone piled into a presumably rented bus for a three hour long ride. During this time, I was speaking to the person who I thought of an amusing fellow teacher who speaks broken English and Mandarin, Mr. Se, and the librarian. The librarian Mrs. Lee needed his help to translate what she was trying to say to me. They reassure me that they are on my side, said they wanted to be friends, and that they are rooting for me. I am grateful. It occurs to me once again that these are the barriers that language can present when everyone is not versed in the same one.

This is what it is like to in essence be born again in another country. This is what my parents went through when they immigrated to America - until a reliable relative introduced them to Chinatown, where they can ask around about everything in the native tongue.

When everyone was let out of the bus, we went through a small labyrinth of a park where many men in dark suits stood. "They're the president's guard," Mrs. Lee explained. We never saw the president. Instead, the kids went with their respective homeroom teachers to the portion of the festival named Safe Seoul, where policeman, firemen and other public service agents presented the benefits of safety in a fun and cutesy manner. There were maybe up to fifty tents spread out sporadically over a large flat baseball stadium sized area. Mascots included The Mask, two man sized pink and blue inflatable pigs, a guy in a robot suit with stilts inside, among others. After taking pictures with their classmates and teachers, the kids were led around to the booths.

The medical booth consisted of CPR dummies with an explanation of what someone should do if another person is unconscious. The firemen had a truck instead of a booth, wherein the kids climbed the ladder onto a type of water slide, and slid down. The street safety had a drawing of the crosswalk, where a traffic cop talked about the walk and stop signs. There was also an alarm booth, where kids distinguised between fire alarms, carbon monoxide alarms, and the emergency evacuation alarms. A guy in a wetsuit pretended to be drowning in a tub while the kids were supposed to toss him a lifesaver. This was a lot to organize, and it was very impressive.
Lunch was a picnic with many korean styled sushis, with spiced vegetables as a side dish, and chopped up fruit.

Next were the schools' presentation booths, sectioned off in another area. As my school is an elementary school, the kids mainly looked at middle schools as their next step, though we saw many middle schoolers looking at high schools as well. Most of the middle and high schoolers were taller than me, so I felt a bit stunted. Here were the activities that elementary school prepared for kids from all the schools. Our school had a soap making table, whereas some of the other schools had projects with plaster models of the islands around the area, lip balm making, handbag decorating, and a ball made of plastic packing strips.

After this moderately tiring activity - you try running after students when they're excited about something - there was either free time, or we could follow the first grade teacher, who led us around in the museum part of the Korean Broadcasting Station. The exhibits separated by different genres and age group, so the basement was about how technology for cameras, tv, and microphones advanced over time. Then the next floor was about cartoons, the next was about live action kiddy shows, up until the final floor, which was about dramas set in the traditional ages and classics.

This was the last event of the day, after which time, we were all packed onto the bus and driven back to the school. A teacher made a small fuss over the kids putting their snack trash in the backyard/gym area, but since they told me not to worry about cleaning up, I went back to my dorm/apartment and disappeared for the rest of the day.

Moments

No matter what language they're speaking, or which country they're in, kids are still kids.

The ground was wet from rain yesterday, so I didn't take the third graders out for gym. However, there is a room sized porch attached to my classroom, so I took them out there. Lining them up, I gave them a random work out involving punches, kicks, elbows, and touching their toes. Now they know what left and right hooks are, and also what uppercuts are. The ironic thing is that I can't realistically fight for shit, but I like to think of them as my pokemon - while they're not pocket sized, I reserve the right to breed little monsters.

A few of my sixth graders came to visit me after class for the heck of it. They started playing with sharp things on my desk like scissors and box cutters. And then they revealed that they REALLY like anime. We went through a good portion of the list: Dragon Ball Z, Sailormoon, Naruto, Bleach, Haruhi Suzumiya, Doraemon, and others. It dawned on me that cartoons are intercultural.

So I designed a word search for afterschool one day for them, and had a list of words for them to look for. It was getting really loud. Then they started forming teams, and used umbrellas to keep out others not on their teams. I confiscated the umbrellas, but admired their competitive spirits anyway.

Soccer is a really big thing here. Now those who know me know that I'm far from athletic. But their enthusiasm bleeds, so I try things out anyway. On the one hand, I'm not good at all. On the other hand, I'm twice the size of an average kid, so when I block, I pretty much knock them down. I also tried playing catch, and while this is with a tennis ball and not an actual baseball, I felt good for not completely throwing like a girl anyway. The vice principal was happy when I said I'm a Boston Red Sox fan, and that my favorite player is Big Papi. I guess the nickname doesn't stick much here, cuz it took him a minute to think of who that is.

I'm starting to learn more about their pop culture purely through the references that Mr. Jeong uses in his classes. There's a lot of comedy, they like Borat, and Michael Jackson, and there's a lot of food references as well. One of the most famous male comedians here apparently has a signature big bowl haircut and specializes in cross dressing. I think I've seen some of their skits on tv

Curriculum

So my schedule goes something like this.

I teach "morning English" every day of the week, twenty minutes before actual classes when I think of a simple game for kids of all ages involving English. So far, I've only come up with a song to sing, Hangman, Simon Says, and because Friday I was feeling lazy, I just let them watch Looney Tunes instead.

Then on Mondays and Wednesdays, I teach gym classes. So far, I've had them play tag and soccer, and haven't thought of anything much else yet. Mr. Jeong says that I should go by the textbooks and use English to teach them stretches and strengthen them through obstacle courses, except that I'm not sure how to go about that, so I will need to think of something soon. Monday's three periods are for grades one through three, whereas Wednesdays are for grades four through six.

There's also the afterschool activities, but these are kind of casual, no one really cares what I do with them, so sometimes they convince me to let them go outside, or just hang out, or something or other. But I also try to have them review the things they learned throughout the day through word games and such.

The goal is to have conversational English, so there are a lot of skits and role playing. The more talented ones can memorize the lines and act them out immediately, whereas most of them read them out loud from the "script". To make things fun, multimedia is almost always used - from sing alongs to memory games with prizes to whatever else we can think of. The main classes are through Mr. Jeong, so I don't actually assign homework - and this is perfectly fine with me.