Christmas in Korea

One year ago on Christmas day I stood on the streets of Costa Rica with my mom, dad and Savanna and watched a parade of several hundred horses take to the street in what was possibly the most bizarre Christmas parade I have ever seen. This year as Rachel and I approached the Christmas holiday we were quite uncertain about what we would be experiencing. We began our Christmas Holiday on Friday the 23^rd at lunch time. After trying to give myself a haircut (I might include pictures)

 Rachel and I rushed out the door and headed to the bus stop. Like pros we navigated the bus system from school to Munbaek to Cheongju to Gagyeong-dong and finally found ourselves on a bus to Seoul. If this sounds like a lot of travel time…it is. From the time we walked out the door at school until we got off the bus in Seoul took us 4 ½ hours.

Having never been to Seoul before, Rachel and I were slightly overwhelmed at the thought of finding our way around such a massive city. Luckily we had two wonderful tour guides. In January of 2008 I went to Buenos Aires, Argentina to get a TEFL (teaching English as a foreign language) certificate. During my time in Argentina I studied with, traveled alongside and got to know a great guy. Shortly after getting certified, Jesse Lucas moved to Seoul to start teaching. After nearly 3 years he is still here teaching. It was great to catch up with him. Jesse has been intensively studying Korean and in doing so has met a wonderful lady, Dawun Hong, whom he is now dating. Without the slightest hesitation or frustration they whisked us around Seoul all weekend. (I will attach pictures below to show the things we did and saw.)

It’s Rachel now.  We DID have a great weekend.  It was colder than I have ever experienced, and that holds a lot of weight coming from a native Minnesotan.  I wore leggings under my pants and still had cold legs all weekend.  Even more incredible was the fact that I wore five, yes FIVE layers on my top, three of which were fleece and I was by no means warm. 

From here, I’ll pick up where Luke left off.  Jesse and Dawun picked us up from the bus station and we had Korean barbeque.  On a side note, we are headed to our third “staff dinner” again tonight and yet again having Korean barbeque.  Each time we go, they tell us we’re having a true Korean meal.  They act as if we didn’t just go the week before.  One of the teachers has told me every day for the past week about the death of Kim Jong Il so maybe Koreans are just forgetful! Anyways, we had Korean barbeque in Seoul and then took the subway to Ilsan where Jesse’s apartment is.

On Saturday morning, Christmas Eve, we woke up and had some honey nut cheerios, a fun ‘homey’ breakfast and then bundled up.  We hit the ground running and visited Gyeongbokgung palace first. Here’s a little info thanks to Wikipedia J

First constructed in 1394 and reconstructed in 1867, it was the main and largest palace of the Five Grand Palaces built by the Joseon Dynasty. The name of the palace, Gyeongbokgung, translates in English as "Palace of Shining Happiness."

We took pictures with the non-smiling guards at the entrance and toured around there as long as we could before completely freezing and then at lunch at Korea’s version of Chipotle: Tomatillo. After a tasty meal of chicken burritos, we layered back up and toured around Insadong, a traditional Korean street.  Lots of trinkets and Korean wares for sale; I think we bought a few little things.  It was strange that it was Christmas Eve; it didn’t even feel like it. Christmas is more like a couples’ holiday so the Koreans don’t go all out like we do in the States.  We headed back to Jesse’s apartment early and had a bowl of ‘sam gay tang’ or ginseng chicken soup.  It included an entire chicken stuffed with rice and ginseng, all in a bowl of boiling liquid.  Somewhere in there was also an elk antler??  We chose to pass on that delicacy.  We played games until it was officially Christmas and headed to bed completely exhausted.

Christmas morning: Jesse made us a feast: breakfast burritos complete with eggs, cheese and beans!!! What a treat! And then it was back to Seoul we went.  Walking around another market for a while, we found ourselves in the busiest street in all of downtown.  It’s apparently a great shopping place, but I’m not sure how much shopping was accomplished with the sheer number of people we were sharing the alley-wide street with.  No joke, it was the warmest we were all weekend.  Like cattle, we were herded along the street with hundreds of Koreans.  Luckily claustrophobia did not set in, but I imagine I would have been in some serious trouble if it had!

After another street market, we walked up ¾ of a mile to get to the base of Seoul Tower.  It’s a type of observatory where one can see all of Seoul from a very high place.  It actually looks very similar to the Space Needle in Seattle.  We trudged back down after some pictures and met up with Dawun for dinner in Itaewon.  Itaewon is like a foreigner’s haven in Korea.  It’s near the army base in Seoul, so there are tons of restaurants.  We ate fish and chips at an English pub, but there were American, African, Italian and many other types of places to eat.  We even found a Nashville bar!!  I’m looking forward to possible eating some Italian on New Year’s Eve??

On Monday, we took a quick trip into Costco in Ilsan and bought 4 pounds of cheese.  We grabbed one at first, but Luke knows me wells, so we went back for a second block J It was very similar to Costco back home, but more expensive.  Also, I’m not sure if stateside Costcos have quite the same extensive selection of octopi in their meat department.  It was tasting day so we sampled some velveeta cheese and fruit by the foot.  Eighty dollars later, we boarded the subway and then a bus that took us back to Jincheon.  We’ll be headed to Seoul again for the New Year’s weekend so we’ll have more stories to share soon!

Know that we missed you all terribly this Christmas!! We love you; have a great end of the year celebration…think of us at 9:00am on the 31^st as we’ll already be ringing in the New Year in Korea!!!

Retired Ninjas and diarrhea

Cheonan

HUGE thanks to Robin Waugh, Larry Musick, and Stac Mahuna for helping me discover the correct way to insert pictures into a blog. I am hopeful that the pictures will also be viewable in the email updates.

Rachel and I had our first big adventure this weekend. I use the term “first big adventure” loosely because let’s be honest, simply going to lunch every day seems to be an adventure in itself. Living in a rice field has its fair share of ups and downs. One of the biggest downs we have found is that there are exactly 3 buses that pass in front of our school every day. Given that we are nearly an hour outside of anything that resembles a town, Rachel and I chose to get up very early on Saturday morning to stand out and wait for the bus. On the map below you can see our bus route from CBFLIS to Cheongju. If you look closely you will notice the two places that we have to stand and wait for a bus. These locations have renewed my belief in Korean ninjas. Being the under-confident people that we are Rachel and I found ourselves standing on the correct side of the road waiting for the bus which means that we were braving the elements and unable to take shelter at the “bus stop” area. While Rachel and I stood there shivering and convinced hypothermia was only minutes away, two old women- not wearing any form of coats- sat protected from the wind in the bus stop.

Without any form of watch or scheduling the old lady got up and ran across the street without even looking. No cars slowed down. She just gracefully glided across the highway and immediately entered the bus.

We arrived at the main bus terminal in Gagyeong-dong with little issue. Using VERY broken Korean we purchased 2 tickets on the next bus to Cheonan. We, being the ignorant people we are, assumed that standing in a line would be a sensical way to board the bus. Apparently the old ladies (remember they are ninjas) had a very different idea. The moment the bus doors swung open the crowd of nearly dead, tracksuit-wearing, old ladies dropped their shoulders and plowed forward with a force stronger than that of most of the Tennessee Titans defensive line, which I am aware is not necessarily something to brag about.

Starbucks

We went to Starbucks this weekend for the first time since being in Korea. It is a strange phenomenon to enter any U.S. Based retails type store in another country but Starbucks seems to be the most perplexing. As we walked around it was as if we had just passed through a door and entered US soil, with the exception of the fact that we were the only non-Koreans in the building. One by one each and every person in the coffee shop turned to look at us. It was as if they were looking to us as a form of validation that where they were and what they were doing was American.

Lotteria

The burgers wrappers at “Lotteria” are stamped with the phrase “In*Joy”. I have eaten bad hamburgers from many restaurants, in many states and various countries. I am fairly confident to say that I have never “in*joy”ed a hamburger any less than this one. Without spending a large amount of time talking about Lotteria I will leave it to this…I do not think that my in*testines in*joyed that meal very much. I have now come to the conclusion that it is by no random circumstance that lotteria and diarrhea are rhyming words. 

Broken Escalators and Toilet Water

It is hard to believe that I have allowed a week to pass without a single update. I know you have all been clinging to the hope that tales of my stupidity and cultural misfortunes would soon be broadcast across the world wide web. Wait no further my friends, the time is now and the place is here. Before I continue I should add that I have done a fair amount of reflection over the past week. I am concerned that some of my posts might come across as culturally insensitive or that I am belittling a custom. I want to clarify that this blog is my way of documenting my own mistakes and having an outline through which to laugh long down the road. That being said I will highlight to ups and downs and everything in between.

Rachel ended our last post on Friday night in Cheongju. She did not however mention all of the events of the evening.

We started our journey into Cheongju by hopping buses in Munbaek. It was on the bus from Munbaek to Cheongju that Andrew found a phone on the floor. Being the helpful people we are we decided to figure out whose it was. Here is Jeffrey speaking loudly and clearly to communicate where we would meet this person to return her phone. We took several pictures on her phone so that she could laugh at and remember us for a long time.

After returning  the cell phone we took a break from the cold and allowed the ladies to do some shopping. WARNING: In Korea escalators come to a complete stop and need to be reset if you attempt to do the “ELF” stretch. I am proud/embarrassed to say that I can speak from personal experience on this one.

We ran from the mall after my misfortune with the escalator and headed to dinner. We had a really nice meal and were able to get to know some of our coworkers a lot better which has really helped with homesickness.

As Rachel stated we also did some grocery shopping. I will not linger on every detail but the workers in the grocery store and mall stop when a certain song comes on the overhead speakers and do a dance. I have a personal goal of learning to dance before our time in Korea is up.

We have found comfort in strange things since being in Korea. While shopping or searching the internet it brings a sense of relief to find even a single word in English. One thing that I am convinced in a global comfort are chocolate chip cookies. Andrew and Daphne (across the hall) have been so great to welcome us in for cookie night at their place. We have found ourselves joking, talking about work, going into deep conversations but usually it is laughing at the goofy things we have seen or done. One of my favorite things we were taught was the puffy cheek. Apparently many Koreans will stare at someone and when they are caught will make a puffy cheek face. We attempted to recreate as many puffy cheeks as we could. I will let the pictures speak for themselves.

Since last weekend we have spent a majority of our time preparing for the sessions that will start in January. It is an exciting time of year and we are looking forward to the many different things that will continue to surprise and stretch us. It is fun to get our feet wet in a whole new world. Speaking of getting wet. We have a toilet that has more functions than the new Iphone4S. Being that we are in Korea all of the words are in Korean. Our neighbors, being the kind people they are, shared with me that the toilet seat is heated. I decided late one night to put my great Korean to the test and start pushing buttons while kneeling by the toilet. There is a saying, “curiosity killed the cat”. Well in this situation the cat was not killed but he nearly got a mouth full of toilet water. You can see in this picture that one of the very helpful images is of a butt that looks quite toasty. It is not toasty because the seat was gingerly warmed. This butt is toasty because an alien like probe emerged from the depths of the toilet seat and sprayed warm water all over it. You can imagine my surprise I pushed the “butt warmer” and a pink probe shot out. I managed to close the toilet lid before too much of the bathroom was soaked. At this point I decided just to let the machine run its course before pushing another button. Apparently in Korea the bidet does not stop until you push the button again. At this point the bathroom floor, my feet, and a multitude of other things we covered in toilet water. A great way to spend the evening.

We are blessed beyond anything we deserve. I hope we can bring a smile to your face. It is always great to hear from you. I will try to update in the next few days but until that I will keep wearing my slippers, choking down kimchi and laughing at the incredibly cool life I have.

Moving Camps & Cheongju

What a busy first week we had! On Wednesday, we observed our first moving camp in Jincheon.   Moving camp is one of the many programs our school has and it involves us going to small schools that don’t have English teachers, and we do one-day camps with their students.  I followed a group of 5^th graders and their English was pretty impressive.  George is one of the teachers and he is really good.  He was up on a chair, expressive, loud and the kids were riveted during the entire class.  I hope I can teach like that! I really enjoyed being in the classroom- it makes me excited to start teaching.

After moving camp, a bunch of the teachers went out to Pizza Hut in Cheongju.  It was fun to get to know the teachers a little better, and a few from the Korean staff that came along too.   We had ice cream at Baskin Robbins for dessert.  Just a regular old American night. 

We had an early morning on Thursday, another moving camp.   We left at 8:20 for Dae-gu elementary in a city that sounded like Tanya.  It was a 2 and a half hour drive from CBFLIS.  Even out there, the school looked exactly like the one in Jincheon.  We met the teachers, had a few words from the director and ate some mandarin oranges.  I began the day by observing Jeffrey’s class.  While he was setting up, a Korean teacher stepped into the class.  She proceeded to explain something in Korean.  She talked and pointed to her food.  We smiled politely.  She spoke louder.  We smiled more.  Louder still, with more pointing at her foot.  Smiling while we shake our heads.  Finally she waved her hands in front of her body and I imagine she said something like, “Wow, so you didn’t understand a thing I just said, did you?” And she left.  Jeffrey looked at me and said, “Isn’t it strange how we think if we repeat what we say over and over, and speak louder, eventually the other person will understand?” It’s so true! We later found out that she was warning us about a boy in her class with a twisted ankle.  Oh boy.  This is only the first of many communication barriers we are bound to experience while in Korea. 

There is a rather large animal cage outside and below our building.  It houses about 10 chipmunks.  One morning this week, we awoke to find a small deer in the cage.  Jeffrey told us it was a water deer, a small deer with fangs and beefy hind legs.  We went to visit him today, but found he was no longer there.  I guess we’ll never know.  Maybe we ate him already…

On Friday morning, we had a meeting with the director of our school.  He handed over our signed contracts, 2 books about Korea and a set of 3 korean CDs.  Lots of bowing and smiling.  Brenda, one of the Korean teachers said something funny during the meeting.  “When I saw your marriage certificate with your application, I was surprised.  It looked like a prize, and I was jealous because I don’t have one.”  What do you say to that??  Brenda just turned 30 and she’s not married yet and apparently it may have something to do with her name.  She went to a sort of palm reader who told her that her name was not marriage material.  Clare became Brenda and her Korean name changed as well a few weeks before we arrived. 

Fridays are short work days, so a group of us took the bus into Cheongju after lunch.  I nearly got run over by the bus as it rounded the corner.  I need to be a little more careful.  Pedestrians do NOT have the right of way in Korea and street signs/lights are more of a suggestion I hear.  Once in town, a couple of the guys went to the dentist to get a ‘scraping’ or teeth cleaning.  Daphne, Luke and I explored an underground mall.  The walls were lined with tiny clothing, shoe, purse and jewelry shops, and there was even a large saltwater aquarium with sharks in the center!

Luke and I had our first experience of Korean barbeque.  We took our shoes off at the door.  (On a side not, all this taking on and off of shoes may get expensive.  The teachers' lounge, the Nature Room, the Game Room and the dorms all require you to take off shoes and I’ve already walked through 1 of the 2 pairs of black socks I brought!)  We sat on mats on a heated floor, and we were served plate after plate of thinly sliced beef or galbi that we cooked in front of us on a big burner in the center of the table.  Most of the side dishes were really spicy, but the meat was tasty. 

After paying for the meal, we headed over to HomePlus for some groceries.  It was a whole new experience shopping on a Friday.  What luck we had landing on a food tasting day!  Workers stood at their stations clapping and yelling, all vying for our attention.  It seemed to make no difference whether we understood them or not, they would talk on and on about their product.  Oh HomePlus.  I’ll let Luke tell you about the dancing workers in our next post.  Until then.

Not Better, Not Worse, But SOOOO Different

It is still hard for me to believe that it was only one week ago that Rachel and I were sitting in Tennessee with my parents laughing, playing games and drinking coffee. Now a week later we find ourselves sitting in a small apartment, albeit much nicer than we ever anticipated, drinking green tea that is served 1 degree cooler than boiling, and eating food that looks like it was recently removed from a compost bin. Initially it has been rather challenging to not compare these two scenarios and wish for the former to once again be our reality but we are motivated by the challenge and continue to learn and explore.

To truly get an understanding of the situations we have found ourselves in so far I will start from the beginning.
Customs: In the USA customs is a tedious process that I am convinced in responsible for a vast majority of my premature balding. When we landed in Korea customs consisted of a quick smile and bow and we were released into the fast paced city. (I will have to disagree with the title of this post here. Korean customs is BETTER. I have no doubt in my mind about this.

Korean architecture: Before arriving in South Korea Rachel and I spent many hours on google looking at images of Korean cities and read as much information as we could find. What the internet and books fail to mention is that, yes there are some very nice modern buildings but there are also several hundred identical housing high rises and houses in shambles all with-in a 1 mile area. I was expecting over the top visual stimulation in the form of neon strobe lights and shiny objects. So far, this has not been the Korea we have seen.

Ceremonies: Koreans seem to be very proud of appearance. I do not mean this is in a negative way at all. Our first day of work we were escorted to the director’s office at 9:00 am on the dot for a meet and greet ceremony. Rachel and I were offered more boiling green tea and we had a small welcoming ceremony with the director and his “bouncers” for lack of a better term. I am really not sure the other people’s positions but they seem to be important. We also are working at a very non-traditional school so every “camp” we host has an official opening and closing ceremony.

Medical check-up: To date this has proven to be the most unique of all my experiences in Korea. In order to register as an alien in Korea we are required to have a full medical check performed. In the US HIPAA prevents outside sources from receiving medical information about patients. We found that HIPAA is not really an issue here in Korea. Our first stop at the hospital was in the neuro department. Rosa, our trusty guide and incredibly sweet woman, told us they would need to check our brains. I am not confident with the neuro department because the check went as follows: I walked up to desk and introduced myself.  The nurse asked me if I was mentally insane. I said “no” so she stamped my form as good to go. At this point in the day I was feeling rather confident with my ability to pass any medical check thrown my way. From the brain section we were escorted to blood and urine and this is where the fun began. First our blood was taken…in the lobby, 3 FULL vials and I didn’t even get a sucker! After surrendering half of my blood to the Korean doctors I was told to go to the restroom for a urine sample. In my 25 years of living I have given my fair share of urine samples but none have been as eventful as this. First of all the restroom had no doors or stall walls meaning anyone and everyone walking by got a front row seat to the urine sample show. I chose to strategically place myself in the back corner to provide a small amount of privacy. This privacy was completely blown out of the water however when a woman entered the restroom and proceed to begin helping her husband use the urinal RIGHT NEXT TO ME! I am getting wordy so I will speed up. Chest x-ray, eyes, ears, weight and height. Koreans by nature are shorter people so when I stood on the line to be measured the woman had to use a mechanical measuring device. I was not warned that while cluelessly standing against this contraption that I would soon by assaulted from above by a lever designed to stop when it hit my head. I guess the shocked of being hit on the head made me flinch and I screwed up the measurements so we had to go for round two.

Food: Enough said. This deserves and will soon receive a posting of its own.

Grudges: Yesterday at lunch Rachel and I were eating with our incredibly talented co-worker George. He told us that in Korea you have to watch your back. He compared it to the 3^rd grade playground in the US. As young kids in America we might get in a fight on the playground and vow to never speak again and within 5 minutes we are planning our next sleep over. According to George, in Korea when you fight on the playground in 3^rd grade that is it. Game over. This is a little intimidating because apparently this is how sick days, non-paid holidays and other things are viewed.

Everyday we are learning to love where we are more and more. It is still a struggle at times to be really excited about eating kimchi and other strange vegetables at all hours of the day but we are growing and learning. I have to be on a bus in 30 minutes to drive 3 hours to a different school so I should probably get out of my pajamas and start getting ready. I am sure that 3 hours in a bus through rice fields will give me plenty of time to sit and reflect on the topic of our next posting. Until then I will be the guy teaching in slippers, drinking boiling tea and loving the life I have been so blessed with.

We're here!

We have arrived!

Let me tell you a little about our trip over here…

We left Nashville on Thursday evening with 4 50lb suitcases and some heavy carry-ons.  We landed in LA at 11:30pm central time and waited until 2:30am to board our Asiana flight headed to South Korea.  (On a side note, we’re trying to figure out the water here.  We took cold showers yesterday because there was no hot water.  We have since heard from a fellow American teacher that we need to let it run for as long as 10 minutes so I am listening to water as I write this J) Anywho, it was interesting because we were already feeling some culture shock just waiting for our flight in LA.  I’d say 95% of the passengers were South Korean so the chatter around us was unrecognizable.  We have both traveled a decent amount, but this is the first time we are not able to understand a single word anyone is saying.  We’ve learned a couple words: Come-sa-knee-da (phonetic spelling) means thank you and juseo means please.  That’s about all we have so far! (The water is finally hot for Luke’s shower, thank the Lord!)

The flight from LA was uneventful. We slept a lot, watched a few movies and ate meals at the oddest hours.  We had 3 seats between the two of us so we were kind of able to lie down.  We landed at 7:30am Korean time on Saturday morning; a 14 hour flight with a 15 hour time difference.  Customs was super quick.  We grabbed our luggage from baggage claim and met Brenda and Spike outside.  Koreans working with Westerners pick new names so we have met thus far: Brenda, Spike, William, Henry, Rosa and Michael.  Maybe we’ll come home with Korean names! 

Driving through Seoul on our way from the airport was different from what we had expected.  The sheer number of apartment buildings was unreal.  They’d have about 100 of the same tall buildings, no exaggeration, lined up next to one another with maybe 300 units in each.  Now we know where the millions of people in Seoul reside!  Then across the highway, there would be a similar grouping.  The city was less modern than we had pictured, and a little dirtier than we had expected.  Nice cars though-the desired colors seem to be black, white and silver.  The old and new buildings side by side present an interesting twist and I’m excited to see more of that as we explore the country. 

We took a quick grocery shopping trip at Emart for some essentials, ate lunch with the English teachers at a museum and we were off to Jincheon.  We live on the 4^th floor of the school so we looked in the classroom windows yesterday and it seems like it will be a fun teaching experience.  It’s an intensive English camp, so we will have hundreds of students coming through our school.  It’s a little different than we had expected, but we’re told we get to play a lot of games and sing songs with the kids so maybe it’ll be nice to be a little more flexible with our lessons.  Our apartment is bigger than we had thought.  We have two bathrooms, a queen size bed (which is more like a queen size piece of plywood), a small kitchen, 2 porches, 2 huge desks and heating that comes out of the ceiling.  We are quickly learning that Koreans like everything at one temperature, HOT. All the sweaters we packed may have been a mistake!  Something fun is we get to wear “slippers” to class, slip-on shoes like TOMS or flats.  We walked around the grounds yesterday.  The mountains are beautiful.  It’s so quiet out here, and we’re excited to try out some hiking.  The nearest city is a 35-minute walk so we are quite isolated.  A nice change from the heavily trafficked Seoul we saw on Saturday!

It’s Monday morning at 7:00am here and Sunday afternoon at 4:00pm in the States.  We have orientation today and a medical check-up tomorrow.  I should go see if I can get a warm shower too!  Miss you already.