Blue Christmas

Merry Christmas!

Boy was it tough finding a title for this entry; there just aren't enough songs out there which mention the word "Christmas." In the end I decided to go with the one which blends the complicated and mixed range of emotions I find myself feeling today. It's a song that simultaneously makes me want to sink into a deep, dark depression, but also get up and dance around the room. It finds fun in its own sad resignation, which is a pretty great thing, and captures a lot of what today is for me.

I've been thinking about how I would feel waking up on Christmas day, knowing that my family is over 10,000km away from here. I knew before I moved here what my holidays were likely to be like, and I knew I wasn't going to be home, but it's not the sort of thing you really prepare for until the day finally arrives. This is, after all, the first Christmas of my life I've spent away from home.

So how did I feel waking up today? Well, hungover for one. Also a little hungry. And I kinda needed to use the bathroom.

In a lot of ways this is just another day here. I'm still in the middle of my work week and I don't have any holidays coming up. Although we have been playing some games and having parties with our students all week, which has been a lot of fun. Someone decided that one of the games would be arm wrestling, with the students pitted against - you guessed it - me. I mean...I'm definitely stronger than them, but...god damn my arm hurts a lot today. My point here is that this feels a lot like an ordinary week; I'll be off Friday night, returning to work on Monday, same old same old. Right?

My students have really locked on to the whole "I have a really red face" motif.

To be honest I'm trying to underplay the emotions involved. I've been on edge all week and have found myself getting annoyed at things my students have said that otherwise wouldn't phase me. My students complain frequently about having to attend our academy after school, which is normally the sort of comment that just rolls off me. But this week it was a little more grating than it should have been. Comments like, "I hate that we have to come in during the week of Christmas!" usually prompted me to say, "Yeah well I have to come in on Christmas Day, and I have to teach a class on dystopian fiction, so shut up you little shits!"

I of course said none of that, but it's been rough. It certainly didn't help that the section of Pictures of Hollis Woods that I'm teaching this week is prominently about a teacher who is sad she can't be home with her family on Christmas Day. I found out who was responsible for the organization of the winter term and they have since been rolled up in a carpet and thrown off a bridge that Pyeongtaek doesn't even have. This town makes casual murder extremely difficult.

I'm not sad to be here. Melancholy, yes. It's unavoidable. It's the price you pay for living in a foreign country and working somewhere with limited holidays. It's the emotional rent for a year filled with amazing new experiences, new friends, and a life more full of meaning than any job I have ever had. And I'll pay it gladly, because when I go in to work today I'm going to sit in a room with a bunch of incredibly bright, creative and hilarious kids and I'm going to try to make them give a damn about a Ray Bradbury novel that I haven't even read yet. And it's going to be awesome.

If you're lucky enough to be with your family - or just your good friends or people you love - this holiday season, tell them they're awesome and buy them a drink or two. Or three. Or ten. Make it count, because you miss it when it doesn't come around. And if you, like me, find yourself far away from home this holiday season, just reach out a bit: the love is still there, diminished in no way by the distance between you.

Merry Christmas, friends and family! I love you all.


Today's title (come on, you knew this one)

Waltzing matilda

My third week was much less stressful than the first two. The students I was having trouble with originally seem to have settled down a bit, and the ones who didn't have all vanished under mysterious circumstances. I should definitely specify that the previous sentence was a joke. So this is me making that clear. Thanks for reading, NIS!

This will probably be a short update as not a monumental amount has changed since the last post. I was thinking recently about how strange it seems that I'm a teacher now. It feels like such a short time ago that I was sitting behind the same desks as these kids (not literally), and now I'm actually leading classes. I don't think a single day has gone by where I haven't wondered if I'm not massively unqualified to be teaching English. I mean, for example: there are four god damn negatives in the sentence before this one and I didn't even intend to do that.

It's more than that though. When I was in elementary school, I always tried to picture the life my teachers had outside of the school. I always just pictured them going home, watching TV or reading a book, grading papers and going to sleep. That was about it. And certainly they probably had many days like that but I never imagined any kind of variety. I don't know if I ever wondered about what they did on their weekends, or for fun.

A few weeks ago some other teachers and I had a potluck around American Thanksgiving, and we (read: I) drank a ton. The next day a few of us woke up and went to a hockey game in Chuncheon, and the whole day was a riot. We started drinking again around lunchtime and just generally tore it up all day, went to a few awesome restaurants and chatted about stuff. We told jokes, talked about dating, made inappropriate puns. The whole day was fantastic. And it was at some point on the bus ride home, heading into hour 20 or so of being drunk, that I remember thinking, "Wait a second, don't I educate kids for a living?" 

The whole day felt like the sorts of weekends I had in University, just booze and good times and way too few bathrooms available when you need them. And it makes sense to me; this is the sort of stuff I wanted to do when I came to Korea. But I don't think 12 year old me had any sort of a clue that teachers also have lives that separate from school. So now I find myself retroactively wondering if any of them ever partied their assess off on the weekend the way I have. I remember some of my teachers telling me they had headaches; now I think I understand why.

So if there are any elementary school-aged kids reading this, I have some words of wisdom: You definitely shouldn't be reading this and your parents have dropped the ball.

Today's title:

Start all over again

The third week of my second term begins tomorrow. I was going to post something closer to the start of the term but it's been an insanely busy rollercoaster of non-stop action. Well not really, I've just been out drinking with people a lot and keep forgetting to write something. But we're here now and I'm sober because I have a massive headache for...some reason.

This term has been a little rough so far. Gone are my incredibly well-behaved and respectful students and in their place I've been asked to teach kids who make a college frat party look like church. For the most part they're not that bad, but the strategic placement of two kids who are friends and also don't give a crap can lead to some pretty frustrating results. As a result I've had to crack down pretty hard in order to maintain order, which I really hate doing. Again, they have so much school already and being here is not mandatory for them, so I try to make it as easy as I can. Even as it is my students get way more allowances than necessary, but on the other hand I do have material to cover and I truly hate rudeness.

I also hate yelling, that's something I've learned the last two weeks. I don't like having to shout at anybody, least of all a bunch of kids. The worst part is the ones who are behaving fine have to sit there and listen to it, and the last time I had to raise my voice they just looked so freaked out. By this point last term I was already bonding really well with my students and now there's basically no chance of that happening, and we're gonna be stuck with each other for the next 11 weeks. I'm hoping they get the picture soon so we can move past it but man oh man, it's been a stressful couple weeks.

"BUT JUSTIN IT'S NOT ALL BAD IS IT?" Well fuck you, Incredibly Loud Voice in my Head, but yeah you're actually right. For example, my Tuesday / Thursday evening class is actually made up entirely of some really great kids that I taught last semester. They've always been a delight to teach so I was happy they all moved up to the next level, and our classes go really well. The class I teach Monday nights is also pretty great, and on Friday? Oh man, let me tell you about Friday.

On Friday I teach the Master level, which I believe is the highest level at our Academy. Or one of them. Or something. But basically it's a novel study class, and the book I'm teaching for the first part of the semester: Slaughterhouse Five. One of my favourite novels of all time. I mean it's clear they barely grasp what's happening in the book, even when I strip it down as much as possible (if you're not familiar, Slaughterhouse Five is a book in which the protagonist travels randomly through time, except it's really all in his head, except he insists that it's true, and also he was kidnapped by aliens at one point, except only maybe, and it takes place in World War II, it's fucked). It's kind of surreal to find myself teaching a book I myself studied in school and so far it has been amazingly fun.

So that's about it for now, hopefully I get around to updating this a bit more. I can't believe I only posted one time throughout November. I need to remember to post the story about how we traveled to Chuncheon for a hockey game last weekend as well as a few other things. And of course Christmas is later this month so that's gonna be...well, rough. But we'll get to that eventually.


Today's title:

We can only remember

My first semester as a teacher ends tomorrow. Today I actually re-read the post I made right before I started teaching thirteen weeks ago. "Ha! What a fool this person was," I said out loud to a group of strangers standing in line at the bank. "뭐?" they said to me. It was a fun chat.

It's been a pretty great 13 weeks. I'm really gonna miss most of the kids I taught. Actually I think I'm gonna miss all of them, even the trouble-makers. My students all have such wit and personality, and I understand why they feel exhausted and frustrated a lot of the time. We are an after-school academy and no 12 year old wants to go from school to three hours of more school. For the most part everyone was great, and I wish I had updated this more with things they did throughout the year so I could remember it all. I think that's what this post will be about, just some random hilarious things that my students have done.

A student in my MW4:00pm class named Alice always resopnded with a confused, "Yes?" when she didn't understand what I was saying. "Alice, are you taking notes?" "Yes!" "Can I see them?" "...Yes?" "...Ok this page is completely blank." "Yes!" She is actually incredibly smart and funny but I always found this adorable. Earlier this week she showed up about a half hour late and burst through the door completely out of breath. She started talking to some of her friends in Korean, and when I tried to get her attention she rounded on me and yelled, "YES?! YES?! WHAT?! ...yes." And then just sat down. It took me about five minutes to stop laughing.

My one student Justin has the most rambunctious personality. I probably shouldn't have favourites for some reason, but he was definitely my favourite. Once instead of handing me a test he was writing when I came to pick it up, he jumped up and yelled, "No teacher! Fight me for it!" and then started punching the air in front of me. He also drew a comic as part of a project which featured me, as a character, defeating Superman in a fight because I was jealous about his relationship with Lois Lane. Not entirely sure how he got ahold of my dream journal but...ahem, nevermind.

A running joke with my student Emma was that I would tell her to stop killing other students. The kids always seemed to tease her about one thing or another and her response usually was to jump up and attack them. I kinda loved her for that, but naturally had to maintain some semblance of order, so I'd always yell, "Emma! No killing in my class!" This actually caught on pretty quickly and eventually the other students started saying it. And then different students would yell, "Yes, Emma! Killing!" So I'm a horrible person.

One student named Noah compared me to Kim Jong-Un because I wouldn't plug his tablet charger in for him.

A girl named Isabelle told me I was evil because I bought pizza for the class instead of chicken.

I've been told I look like a bear multiple times because I'm tall, have a beard and my face is red. Bears have red faces I suppose. 

And then there's this, from a student named Honnie:

Way too handsome to be realistic.

It was a good semester.

Today's title:

Two faces

This week is level-up testing for my students. Which basically means no prep work and all I have to do is wander around my class for three hours making sure my students are doing the work and not cheating. It's dull, but it's kind of a nice break. The thing is we still have three weeks of class after this week so I'm not exactly sure why they're doing the testing now instead of at the end of the term. I'm also not sure how I'm going to get my students to focus once the tests are done. Quite the pickle Nope, didn't just write that.

So one thing I've found kinda funny but also depressing is how Korea handles waste management. I think ages ago someone probably wrote down garbage disposal procedures into a massive document, but then a few pages blew away and no one was ever able to find them because the instructions for doing so were written on those pages. Kind of a catch-22 if you pretend for even one second that it actually happened. I honestly don't know what the hell I'm talking about right now, I've been having trouble sleeping this week.

Basically, my point here is that everything seems to create unnecessary waste yet there's a few pretty basic steps missing in how to handle it. Steps like: garbage bags. And selling them. I have checked every grocery store, department store and convenience store (of which there are literally a billion) and not a single place actually sells garbage bags. So far I've been using the oversized plastic bags I get my groceries in, which I also have to purchase at 50 cents each. The only thing I was able to find that came close was a sealed plastic thing that had 15 bags in it for $5, and it was under the heaviest security of anything I've ever seen. The small plastic box (that contained BAGS, by the way) had a digital security alarm, was hanging on a peg that also had a lock on it, and was sealed behind a glass door that ALSO HAD A LOCK. There were three levels of security for PLASTIC BAGS. If you went up one floor you would have found about a dozen laptops on display that weren't even bolted down but god damn you if you try to make off with those bags.

So they don't want you to get the bags, but the problem is everything creates trash. Way more trash than it needs to create. There are multiple layers of redundant wrapping on just about everything you buy. I bought a box of biscuits (which is my way of getting around saying I ate a box of cookies once), and inside the box was the plastic sleeve and inside the plastic sleeve were the biscuits, each of them individually wrapped in a plastic wrapper. Why? Don't know. Maybe just to make me feel like a pig as the wrappers started to accumulate around me. Success.

If you buy an iced coffee they still put a cardboard sleeve on it. You know, to keep your hand from burning on your ice cold cup of coffee. The nearest garbage can in which to throw the empty cup of iced coffee, presuming you escaped burn-related injury and are not now being rushed to the emergency room, will be approximately ten kilometers away from any given place you are standing. Surprisingly enough the streets are all relatively clean compared to cities in North America, so my only explanation is magic.

One thing I found hilarious is that while looking for garbage bags I found an aisle specifically dedicated to disposable utensils. You know, plates, cups, cutlery, stuff like that. Stuff that is disposable. Which means you throw it out. How are the garbage bags not located directly next to this aisle? That would follow a pretty basic line of reasoning, wouldn't it? "Here's what you eat off of and here's where you put it when you're done."

Although after you buy it I guess they do put it in a grocery bag...hmmm...

Nevermind.


Today's title:

The world is outside

Things are going well! At least, that's what I'd like to be saying...

Nah that dramatic twist was just a joke. Really everything is going great - at least for the most part. To be serious for just a minute, I have been a little stressed out over the past couple weeks. When I got here it was kind of like wandering around in vacation mode ("Oooh, look at that! Look at this! Everything is new and exciting and wheeeeee!"), and there is still a lot of that from time to time, but now that I'm approaching the two-month mark the majority just feels like everyday life. And everyday life is stressful! I'm getting BILLS and stuff now! Who the hell has to pay bills while travelling in a different country? It was a good reminder that this isn't just a trip; it's basically relocation for work.

It hasn't really been anything major. Although - I'm embarrassed to admit this but it happened - I did temporarily start smoking again. Yes I know, I can hear the boo's already. I was off them for about 18 months, but a combination of anxiety and alcohol and a few other things...I'm just making excuses now. I fucked up, that's basically it. All I can really do now is try not to smoke again. So I've reset the counter and I've gone without them for six days. Not as awesome a number as 544 admittedly but there you go.

Anyway, moving along. I'm trying to remember some things I've done since my last post but it's tough to follow "I wandered around the Red Light District" with "I'm starting to take the bus a lot HUR HUR HUR." I've noticed that my social circle is starting to grow a little bit. When I first got here I was so worried about making sure I had a place to live and knew where to buy groceries and could remember how to tie my shoes or put on pants without falling over, stuff like that. Organizing day trips and meeting new people in Seoul was wayyyy down on my list of priorities. But now it's much easier to branch out a little bit. I have to get out of my little town every once in a while and see this country! I've gone up to Seoul the past two weekends to meet people and explore a bit. Today there was some sort of event in Itaewan; pretty huge crowds of people and seemed like there was live music happening but I didn't stick around long. Because when I say "music" I mean rapping and it was, ah...I didn't stick around long.

I think my next two priorities are Busan and the DMZ. Hopefully by typing them down here I'll make more of an effort to actually travel to those places. My weekends feel kinda short because I'm trying to pack so much stuff into two days. Might have to fake my death so I can take some extra time off. Maybe blame it on one of my students. That'll show them for talking in class.


Today's title:

Nightcall

So I have a bit of a story. The story about how, less than an hour ago, I accidentally (no) wandered into Pyeongtaek's red light district. Last week I broke my computer because it and the floor had a bit of a disagreement that I, drunk as I was, failed to mediate. So over Chuseok weekend 

[Hey! Chuseok was a lot of fun too! I went to a Gyeongbokgung Palace with my co-workers and travelled around Seoul a bit, and also got to visit Hongdae for the first time. If you're from a University town and you sometimes say, "Yeah we throw crazy parties, sometimes whole streets shut down HUEH HUEH HUEH!" well, my extremely irritating friend I just made up, you haven't seen shit. Hongdae is basically a small city within Seoul that does nothing but party non-stop]

I went out looking for a new laptop. Of the many places I checked in downtown Pyeongtaek that afternoon, one happened to be the worst Samsung dealership on planet Earth. There were piles of junk everywhere and for whatever baffling reason they primarily sold old, previously owned models of laptops. So I nope'd out of there pretty quickly and took a turn around the corner to see if the shops continued. They didn't. Instead what I found was a really odd-looking street.

I'm not even sure why it struck me as odd, it just didn't look like a normal street. The road was narrow and there were no sidewalks. Instead there were rows and rows of single-level buildings entirely fronted by large glass windows. I couldn't see through the windows because at the time every store had a metal security door pulled closed behind the glass. I didn't really think much of it until about two hours ago, when the following thoughts struck me:

It's late. I have to be up early. I should get some rest.

Hey! Remember that weird street?

Do you think maybe that's where the red light district-

So the next thing that happened was I was walking downtown at about one in the morning, headphones on and heading into probably the sketchiest area of town because I guess I'm stupid. I found the Samsung dealership and took the same turn. And hey look! There it was. All the security doors were up and what I could now see were rows of what appeared to be really small dressing rooms. You know, counter, mirror, make-up on the counter and so on. The girls were just hanging out in the dressing rooms behind the giant window. That's pretty much it really, just standing around doing their make-up and looking bored. Actually they had the same expression I used to have when I'd be sitting around waiting for a customer to wander in at the mall. I'm not trying to draw a parallel between prostitution and working in retail but if you really think about it for a second that's absolutely what I'm doing. 

The street is located really close to the train station, kind of off to the side and behind a few other buildings. There's actually a 7/11 right in front of it which struck me as, I don't know, too convenient. I felt like I'd wandered backstage at a...a...I don't even know what sort of venue adequately completes this simile, but yeah. The girls kept waving at me as I walked by which was flattering for maybe two seconds before I figured it out.

Mom, the answer to your next question is, "No, I just looked around a bit." 

Anyway, around the time I thought, Does South Korea have gangs? They almost absolutely certainly do, I suddenly decided I was tired and started to head home at an unreasonably high pace. Exploring is fun!

Today's title (this is actually what was playing randomly on my mp3 player when I stumbled onto the street, which I found hilariously appropriate) 

Drove me wild

Wanted to update with some stories about people's driving here. It's, uh...bad. Bad in a terrifying sort of way. I've been here a month now and I've already seen about...

Holy crap I've been here a month?! I genuinely did not realize that until I typed out that sentence. Thirty days ago I landed in Incheon, and three hours later passed out in a hotel in Gangnam after writing this incredibly stupid thing. I can't honestly say that it doesn't feel like a month has passed. If anything it almost feels like more time than that. My exhausting and terrifying training week feels so weird and foreign when I think about it that it might as well have happened on a different planet. An incredibly shitty planet. We should blow it up.

Okay, back to stories about driving. Like I was saying, I've been here a month (gasp!) and I've seen about a dozen accidents. In fact a few of my friends and co-workers were recently involved in one just this past weekend. For the most part everyone was fine, but there were a few injuries and enough concern to go around. Hopefully this is the only time I'll have to talk about that.

I went to Suwon today to pick up my Alien Registration Card (Yipee! I'm a real boy now!). The cab driver there did something that I've heard about from a few different people: he deliberately drove a further route in order to hike up the rate. I wasn't sure this was happening at first, but then I remembered someone saying it happens to foreigners from time to time. Oh, also, he set the dashboard GPS before we left the train station and I saw him drive off the route about fifteen times. Every time he did the GPS would beep at him a lot and try to correct the route but he would ignore it. It's kind of irritating since there's nothing I can really do about it; as of today I have yet to learn how to shout, "I know what you're doing you son of a bitch!" in Korean.

Oh, then the cab driver on the way back to the train station fell asleep in traffic. Yeah. Basically he was old. Old enough that I'm pretty sure he presided over the unified Korean peninsula back in the 7th century. We stopped at a red light - incidentally, red lights here take about seven or eight years to switch back to green - and he shifted the car into park and, just...promptly fell asleep. Fortunately I do know enough Korean to get someone's attention. The proper phrase is 잠시만요, which is pronounced jam-shi-man-yo and translates literally as "little time stop." It's the Korean way of saying "excuse me." To be clear though, I knew this when I got in the car and said exactly none of it, because when you're in a car with a driver who has fallen asleep and the traffic starts moving around you, basically you just yell, "HEY, UM, CAN...UH..." which translates universally.

YES, that all absolutely happened.


Today's title

The working life

I'd like to open this up by saying, "Oh man, the past two weeks have been so crazy I just haven't had time to write an update LOL!" but in reality it's actually been the opposite. I'm settling into a routine now so not a whole lot new is happening on a day to day basis. You know how in "The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe" the kids wander into Narnia and they're like, "Oh cool! Neat! Wow! That dude's like a half goat man, the fuck is with that?" [not an actual quote]. That's kind of what the first week or so was like here. Now I'm settling into that time where everything just seems normal and nothing surprises me.

Forgive the Narnia comparison by the way; I've been teaching children in a foreign country for three weeks and there's only a handful of things that we both know. Incidentally, it might be time to re-read Harry Potter. They're nuts about that here.

A lot of what I'm trying and failing to deal with now is ordinary domestic stuff. Today I had to buy a broom, only they don't make brooms for people who like to, you know, stand upright. The broom is half the length of a normal broom which forces anyone over four feet tall to hunch while sweeping. And I know the average height in Korea is lower than that of North America but it's not like everyone here is Tyrion goddamn Lannister. That's about as much as I want to say about household chores. This is definitely not going to be one of those blogs.

I hang out with my fellow teachers a lot, which is fun. They're an awesome crowd, and I'm not just saying that because I have a lot of them on Facebook and need to cover my ass. They're genuinely great to be around. I joined a gym but due to a slight cold the past week or two I haven't been able to go as often as I want. The nights are getting cooler so I'm jogging more frequently. I can't imagine I look super endearing, lumbering around a quarter-mile track in an empty stadium at 1:00a.m., but it's keeping me healthy. Fortunately the only other people I run into that late look just as weird as I do.

It's strange, I haven't been here very long but I feel like I'm changing a little. Things I do and say, how I react to certain situations, stuff like that. I can't tell if I'm imagining it or remembering wrong but I do feel different. In a good way though, don't get me wrong. I think it might have to do from switching from a no-stress but unbelievably tedious and unfulfilling job to a stressful albeit highly rewarding and enjoyable job. For those of you who don't know: I used to work in a warehouse, a job with a skill requirement so low that people driving past the building were technically employees for a few seconds. I do miss the lack of stress, but not as much as I used to miss being proud of what I do.

This weekend I'm going on a retreat with my co-workers which I'm excited about. New locations! Woo! Hopefully I'll have more interesting things to say next time.



Today's title

A little help from my friends

My first week teaching went much better than expected, mostly because I expected a train wreck and fortunately the train tracks are several minutes away from school. Also:

Bam!

I'm getting to know my students a little better, figuring out who the troublemakers and the reliable kids are. I have some very bright students whose only real failing is being overly talkative, but as the point of me being there is to get them speaking English it doesn't really bother me so much. I have one whole class of exceptionally shy and quiet students and trying to get them to speak is like pulling teeth right now, but hopefully they'll come around soon. From what I've been told my students seem to like me; they do so much school here and our academy is optional for them, so I try to at least make it enjoyable to be there. My HR manager says I'm doing well but at the back of my head I keep expecting the hammer to fall any second now. That's just a thing I do: worry that everything is about to go wrong just any second now. It's a lot of fun, give it a shot.

The past week was a lot of fun, mostly spent trying out different restaurants and bars in Pyeongtaek. For a suburb that most people have never heard of this town actually has a surprising amount of stuff to do. I'm still getting to know my way around but have only really been lost once. That was my fault too, I thought for some reason that the stadium I use as a landmark had been replaced by a different stadium in only roughly the same location. Which doesn't make any sort of sense. There are still some places to check out and my co-workers are all a lot of fun. I went out to get soup with one of them at 3:30a.m. a few days ago. That's not a sentence I ever thought I'd say but it was awesome.

I went to Seoul twice this past weekend. The first time to visit Nakwon Arcade (which, holy crap, it's amazing, if you play an instrument and are ever in Seoul you need to go there) and bought a new guitar. Incidentally I've already been told to keep it down by my neighbors so I'll have to try to limit the noise I make with this thing. At least I think that's what she was saying; she certainly looked the way people sometimes look when I play guitar. Nakwon is basically a massive market where dozens of different vendors show up and sell every type of instrument that exists on planet Earth. If you play and instrument that they don't sell, you have only been hallucinating playing that instrument because it doesn't actually exist. I had to leave the city early though because I realized I left my bag with my passport and tablet at a bar the previous night. But no one wants to hear about that ha ha ha ha moving on.

Sunday I went back to visit my friend Darlene and her friend Jessa. We visited Namsan Tower first, which is on top of a mountain overlooking most of the city. I say "most," but I honestly don't think Seoul ends. The city is HUGE, and I don't think there is a single one-story building anywhere in it. The day was fairly hazy which is unfortunate but it was still a really amazing view. I took pictures but will probably upload those elsewhere just to be, you know, annoying. After Namsan we went to a nearby park that showcased traditional Korean houses and buildings from before the time when everything was a hundred stories tall. The park was gorgeous. I want to return in the fall, when it won't be 45 degrees out and I can walk around more. Plus I want to hike the mountain that Namsan Tower is located on, a plan which has been described to me as, "Ha! No." It was really great spending time with Darlene here; I think I'm adjusting well enough but it gets a little lonely thinking about everyone I know being so far away. Having contact with familiar people is immensely comforting.

It's funny, I've only been here a little over two weeks and it feels way longer. I've already established a fairly regular routine of work and exercise, running errands on certain days when I don't have to teach in the afternoons. I have already opened up a bank account and will be getting my first paycheque on Friday, which includes my plane ticket reimbursement. I applied for my Alien Registration Card last week, and given the speed and efficiency with which I was corralled through the Korean Immigration Office I should expect to receive that in about twenty or thirty years. Man if you like waiting around for hours in the only building in Korea that doesn't have free WiFi, I highly recommend it as a tourist destination.

That's all for now, but if you have any questions about life in Korea that I haven't covered yet, feel free to write me at justinsfakeemail@notarealdomain.com. Or just post a comment if that doesn't work for some reason.



Today's title:

Further from the towns you know

The past few days have been a little crazy so it's hard to know where to start. I wrote this out last night but deleted it because I ran out of adjectives for "Awesome."

Friday was insane. I took the training evaluation at noon and passed (yay!) but had to load all my stuff into a shuttle to travel from Seoul to Pyeongtaek at 3:00p.m., which didn't give me any time to hang out with the people in my group (boo!). It also didn't give me any time to eat and you'd be surprised how inadequate two cups of coffee and an anxiety-related heart attack are as a breakfast. I got to my school around 5:00p.m. and met me HR manager who, after a full week of studying 12 hours a day while also preparing with my group and reviewing my notes, told me the following: 

"Yeah, just forget everything you learned in training." I think she said more but I couldn't hear it over the sound of my own screaming.

It's actually good though because the methodology at my school is much less rigid and strict than what I was taught, meaning I can take a more relaxed approach to teaching than I originally expected. As a result I'm much less stressed about starting classes on Monday, which is good because as my doctor optomistically informed me, "There's no way you should still be alive right now."

I sat in on a class but as it was the end of term and the outgoing teacher's last day it was pretty casual. The kids seem a little wary of me right now, which is unsurprising given my height and terrifying face (probably). It was fun watching the class though. The teacher showed a picture of Jacques Cousteau and all the kids started howling with laughter, and one of them yelled out, "Teacher! His face looks like a triangle!" I don't know why exactly but it was one of the funniest things I've ever heard.

The staff at my school is fantastic. The first night I was here they took me out for dinner and drinks at some local bars. They wouldn't let me pay for a thing so my Canadian politeness reflex was geared into overdrive all night. I don't know if I've ever felt so welcome at a new place before, it was unbelievable. Needless to say we got...a little drunk. Ever hear of soju? Probably not but if I told you it was 20% alcohol and mixed flavourlessly into beer you'd probably get a rough idea of how my night went. It was incredibly fun. We met some other teachers from the public schools and hung out with them as well as some Korean locals who were very friendly and hilarious. When we asked them what they liked about America one guy pumped his fists in the air and yelled, "Obama!" There was much high-fiving.

I spent my Saturday prepping for my first class with my HR manager who explained how my first day was likely to go and helped me prepare some material. I also went to a department store with another co-teacher to get some supplies. She showed me around and helped me carry some essentials back to my apartment. I don't think I can say this often enough: EVERYONE HERE IS BEING WAY TOO NICE TO ME AND I DON'T KNOW HOW TO HANDLE IT.

I spent the majority of Sunday preparing for my lesson tomorrow and I'm actually really excited to start teaching. The first week is probably going to be rough, but the good news is that the kids have no idea that I have no idea what I'm doing. So that's...yeah. This is gonna be fun.

Everybody's got a hungry heart

I'm two days into my training right now, but I don't really want to talk about it. It's not horrible, but it's a ton of new information and very little time to learn it all. I'm not gonna go on about that too much though. I mean, it's just kinda rough, like I feel as though I'm not going to retain much of this stuff, you know? But yeah, I'm not gonna go on about it. Seriously though it's like trying to memorize a whole book in about four days, and the book is made of charts, and then you have to act out the book. But I don't wanna talk about that.

You know what's great? FOOD! Oh my god the food here though. It's amazing. Amazing and cheap. I've only been here three days and even with the cost of the plane ticket I think i've already broke even. I'm trying to sample as many different things as possible, although it's hard to tell what I have and haven't eaten based purely on the Korean menu. Lots of times I find myself pointing at just a block of Korean alphabet and hoping for the best. Sometimes I end up ordering the same thing as the previous meal but I honestly don't even care. Neither would you if you've ever had bibimbap, a word that looks like I just banged on the keyboard with my fist a couple times, but is actually a seriously amazing dish.

What does help is having some people around who either speak / read the language or have at least been here long enough to know where to go and what to order. Two of the people in my study group (which we're not gonna talk about but seriously why is it so much god damn information) brought us to a small Korean restaurant near the facility today which they had already visited a few times. At one point I was told, "Oh, you could order the squid here, but it's really spicy," and since there is basically no part of that sentence I don't love, this happened:

I'm not gonna become one of those people who photographs all their food but seriously.
Seriously look at that.

So yeah, everything I've eaten so far has been fantastic. Even random junk I've purchased from convenience stores. You ever heard of ramen? Correct answer: no you haven't.

I'm gonna wrap this up because I need to wander around a bit and clear my head. Gonna wake up super early tomorrow because of that thing I refuse to talk about that, for fuck's sake, what were they thinking? Also I have to get out of here because apparently every young couple in Seoul decided to pop into this cafe at 10:45pm on a weeknight and sit right next to me holding each other's faces. I swear I'm not making that up. They're just holding their faces. How is that a thing? It's sweet in a baffling sort of way.

I think I like it here.

Everything is awesome

That last post was just as embarrassing as I figured it would be. I promise you this blog is going to at least try to be about something other than barely coherent rambling about semi-insane things that didn't even happen. Although perhaps that's the only thing that keeps you coming back...oh well.

Today was my only full free day in Seoul this week. We start training tomorrow and then, if all goes well, I'll be shipping out to Pyeongtaek on Friday. Initially I was nervous about wandering too far into the city for fear I would get lost, but after discovering an offline map and subway guide for my phone I found myself filled with an ill-advised level of confidence and decided to take an adventure. On a friend's recommendation (thanks Cynthia!) I decided to visit Insadong, a large market street north of the river. Shops and pavilions sell a variety of things, from traditional Korean clothing to some really gorgeous antiques (not that I know the first thing about antiques but they did look really cool). Insadong was fantastic; I stopped at any street food cart that had the word "Spicy" on it somewhere and everything I ate was amazing.

I checked my map from here and found there seemed to be a small stream running through the middle of the city. I ventured towards it on a whim and discovered that, basically, there is a small stream running through the middle of the city.

See?

Don't worry, I looked into it - it's called the Cheonggyecheon (I'm glad I'm typing this so none of you will ever discover I have no idea how to pronounce that word). There was a natural stream flowing on this site before the Korean war, but a highway was placed over it during post-war development. The government restored the site in 2005 and now it is one of the most pleasant and calming walks I have ever taken.

I also briefly visited an a museum dedicated to the life of King Sejong but had to leave because the amount I was sweating was starting to become seriously embarrassing. It was once again incredibly hot and humid today, culminating in a vicious lightning storm that was polite enough to start just at the very moment I left the hotel for dinner. So my adventure into Seoul was fun and almost entirely without incident. Except of course for the fact that I accidentally left the subway at my first transfer point and had to pay to get back on. And the fact that I got lost about a block from my hotel due to being dumb.

Oh right, have to quickly write about dinner as well. I ran into the nearest restaurant to get out of the rain, and it turned out they didn't have English menus. Or anyone employed who spoke English. So I actually have no idea what the dish I ate was even called. The incredibly nice lady just pointed at a thing and I kinda nodded, and about ten minutes later she brought me out a bowl of unbelievably delicious Something. She then showed me how to mix and eat it properly because she could tell I was just exactly that guy. It didn't occur to me until just before I left that I had an offline translator on my phone as well that I could have been using, but to be honest I'm glad I forgot. I did at least get to tell her how much I loved the food, which seemed to make her very happy.

Training starts tomorrow; should be an easy day but I'm nervous nonetheless because of course I am. Calming down is just not a thing I'm gonna do. I hope I get a bit more free time this week, but if not it's a short train ride from where I'll be living. I'll definitely be back!

(At this point I normally insert a quote, but they're hard to think of sometimes and I'm sleepy, so I'm gonna break that trend early, please don't judge me)

The night of the sun

I'm going to be writing this very quickly and without really editing it because at this point I've been awake for approximately thirty hours and almost all of that was in daylight, which has caused me to suffer from what the giant talking polar bears on my flight referred to as "Midnight Sun Madness." When I asked them if they just stole that from the Avatar series they just said, "Fuck you, we're bears." It wasn't a productive conversation.

So to get to the point as quickly as possible, I made it to Korea! Currently at a hotel in Seoul. I met my roommate for the week on the bus out of the airport and we grabbed some food about ten minutes ago. First meal in Korea is already down, literally and figuratively. The food here is awesome. Upvote this blog somehow and I will send you a box full of the soup I had.

Not a whole lot else to say right now. The flight from San Francisco was unbearably long. By the time I had been on it for as long as I'd been on any other flight I've ever taken, there were still five hours to go. I can only loudly explain all of Tomorrowland's screenwriting issues to the two people sitting next to me so many times, especially when all they had to say was, "We're sorry, we don't speak English," in whatever language they spoke. 

I think the theme of this blog is, "Conversations I didn't actually have and am lying about." I have to sleep now. This post is going to be embarrassingly dumb when I wake up. Uh, quotes right?

"It's a small world but I wouldn't want to paint it." - Steven Wright

I left my heart in San Francisco

You know what? I'm not sorry about the title. Not at all. This is just gonna be a thing now.

Made it to San Francisco, so I am currently just under 1/3rd of the way there (in terms of travel time at least). I'm having lunch at a cafe at the airport and sampling some of the local microbrews. You know that stereotype we have about American beer being terrible? Well, anyway.

This will be a short update as there are only so many things I can say about the flight. Slight error with my bag weight at Pearson led to some last-minute rearranging. I would say it ruined all my "careful packing" but there are only so many ways you can ruin a pile.

Actually though, as luck would have it I was seated next to a fellow Queen's grad! She graduated from Commerce in '91 and laughed audibly when I told her I was in Bands. Very nice woman; she let me ramble on about my various travel and future job insecurities for a few minutes while we waited for the plane to start doing plane stuff. I rewatched Avengers 2 on the flight (yay!) as well as most of Tomorrow land which was just stupefyingly bad. But this isn't a film review blog. This isn't really an anything review blog. No one should really be reading it.

That's all for now, I leave you with the sarcastic words of Brian Regan:

"IT'S FUN TO FLY!"

I packed my bags last night. Preflight.

I'm sorry about the title. I really am.

I've been shouting about writing a blog to journal my upcoming adventures in Korea, so I thought, "Why not get it started before I even leave?" And then I thought, "Because you probably don't have anything interesting to say yet." I'm probably right.

At this point I'm all packed up, with the only exception being my laptop on which I am currently typing. According to my bathroom scale, my luggage weighs approximately 82 pounds, and that doesn't include my two carry-on bags. I found this out by weighing myself, then weighing myself holding the bag and subtracting. It's been a weird afternoon. Fun fact: My scale hasn't had that amount of weight on it in a year and a half. Seeing a reading in the mid-300s on that thing again is one of my most persistent nightmares.

 I've had my guitar out all day since I won't be bringing it with me and am currently deciding what the last song I'll play on it will be. I'm thinking "Born to Run" by Bruce Springsteen (friends reading this, did you know I just recently started listening to Bruce Springsteen? He's alright). I'll have to pick up a new guitar when I get there, because people have always told me I'm not loud or irritating enough.

At this point I feel pretty well prepared for the upcoming journey. I've had a lot of conversations with friends who have spent time in Korea as well as with my recruiter and the staff at my workplace. Travelling and spending time there doesn't scare me so much. That's not to say I'm not anxious, however; it's simply not what's making me anxious. Actually what freaks me out the most is getting over there and failing. Not passing my training, or somehow messing things up and losing my job and getting sent home before the end of my contract. If it came down to that, really I would just have to buy a plane ticket and come home. I won't be stranded or anything. But it would be embarrassing; everyone has been incredibly supportive and encouraging about this and I don't want to disappoint them. And I especially don't want to disappoint myself.

BLEH so that's some heavy emoting out of the way. I'm trying to record everything as honestly as possible in the moment as it'll make for better reflection. But now that's out of the way, so I have to try to be funny. Did you know that have a phrase for people who look like me in Korea? It's "AHHHH!"[citation needed]

Guess I'll post more when I arrive. I say that now so that I can feel embarrassed when the next post is seven months later or something. Also gonna try to end all of these with a relevant quote (because pretentious), and this is the most appropriate thing I can think of:

"Don't panic." - Douglas Adams