Well here goes, it's been an interesting last few months so I'll give you a short overview, 1 paragraph for each exciting thing. If any have been on facebook then you may have seen my pictures but we've done quite a bit. The main thing is that there are now 3 new teachers at ECC, Matthew, Pete and Holly. They replaced Liz, Chris and Jeremy who were all good friends. That's the nature of the Hagwan system though, one year contracts make for a revolving door of employment that forces you to keep on readjusting. I'm now one of the longest tenured foreign teachers and in February when Ben Wages leaves, Natalie and I will have been here the longest. It's weird to think that I've been here for almost half of my contract, in about a week I will have been here six months. Just now typing that I actually wrote three months instead of six, that's closer to how it feels anyway. I'm getting sidetracked, the new people are a lot of fun. They are all Canadian so the Americans have become the minority at ECC, that being said they are very nice, true to the rumors. Pete is Allie's boyfriend and they spend a lot of time together but are still a lot of fun to hang out with. Matthew is something else, this kid is from western Canada who has been all over the world traveling. I couldn't remember how many countries he had said that he's visited but it's certainly more than I have. He's also worked on a deadliest catch type fishing boat out of Canada and done some other pretty interesting things so it's been cool to meet him and pick his brain about travelling and the like. Holly is the most recent addition to our school, she is also from Canada and has a wealth of experience teaching. She was a substitute teacher back in North America and she's shared a lot of good ideas with us.
These three aren't really new anymore but I do miss my old friends fortunately they have all come back so that's exciting too. Anyway I guess I'd better get started from November. It was an interesting month. Right when Matthew and Pete arrived we went out on the town and I dislocated my left elbow running in a foot race with Pete. That was horrible and I'm still dealing with the reprecussions now. Fortunately I was only in a sling for a month but in that time I lost full range of motion in my left arm. I can no longer extend my arm straight, it stops at about a 150 degree angle and I have to do physical therapy to get my arm back up to snuff. That wasn't the defining part of November though, two other important things happened.
The first of these was a visit to Seorak Mountain or Seoraksan a very famous mountain on the Eastern coast of Korea. Seven of us went out there on a bus and stayed in a very nice condo that sits right at the base of a really picturesque stretch of grantie spires jutting out from the spine of the mountain. We got there and took the cable car up to one of the peaks in the mountain chain. It was really cool you could look out over the city Suyok and see the Pacific ocean from the peak. It had recently snowed there and we were lucky to catch it before it melted. This was the first time we saw snow in Korea but it wouldn't be the last. We had a snowball fight went down the mountain and turned in for the night. The next day we picked up a park map and realized that we couldn't actually get to Seorak because it was a two day hike! Too bad but we decided to hike around the trails that crisscrossed around the park anyway. We hiked for a while and then soon came to a steep incline that ended in a cave at the top of a rock face. It took us an hour to get all the wayup there but we made it encountered a monk on the top looking out over the snow christened mountains. It was surreal, I sat behind him thinking about how peaceful it must be, I mean besides the constant flow of hikers coming in and out of the cave, then the monk whips out a cellphone and she starts talking to somebody in a really annoyed voice. That kind of killed it for me. We went down and tried to find a waterfall but were unable to before we went home that night exhausted. I did all of this with a full arm cast in a sling. I'm awesome.
The other important thing that happened is I joined a soccer team. I had started to go to a park near my apartment just to juggle and kick the ball around and one night a Korean guy approached me and asked me if I'd play on his team. At first I thought he was fifteen so I asked him how old he thought I was, he said thirty I laughed and told him that I'm twenty two. "UUUHHH??!" he said, "I thought you were 30" we had a good laugh. It turned out that he is 30 years old and that I'd be the youngest guy on the team which now consists of mostly 40 something year olds, me, and with a sprinkling of older guys. I said yes but told him that I'd have to wait until I was out of the cast to play. His name is Sung Nam, I've been playing with the team now since I got my cast off in December and Sung Nam has become a really good friend of mine.
That brings us to December then. As I said I had the cast taken off and am doing physical therapy for my arm. The day after I got my cast off I started to play with Eunma FC and am having a great time. Sung Nam is the only one who speaks English well, the rest of the guys can get by, but they keep on getting on me about learning Korean, which is understandable. We play every morning before I go to work at 7, it's early but it's worth it, on an elementary school dirt field. More often than not the ground is frozen but I still have a great time. I'm getting better all the time after starting out pretty rusty. I've scored a few goals in our games. We play on a turf field thats right up the road from me on the weekends. The league is six teams that we play over and over again, it's great. Eunma FC hasn't lost a game since I've been here. The team is really good and I fit in pretty well, at striker, which is awesome. The game format is strange though, usually we show up and there are three teams there, we play half hour games for 4 hours or so usually having every third game off. It's good fun and the jerseys that I got for the team are awesome too, one short sleeve, one long and a pair of shorts. We had a holiday party the second weekend we played at a private samgibsal place where I was forced to take bombshot after bombshot because I'm the new guy. Then we went to the Noribong under my school and they made me dance with their wives, it was ridiculous but a lot of fun. These guys are quickly becoming good friends of mine so I'm really happy that I got into this team.
Anyway December. I had Christmas away from home for the first time and I have to admit it wasn't very good. Don't get me wrong we had a lot of fun but I missed home a lot, who wouldn't. On Christmas we went to this bar that was hosting a Christmas dinner for foreigners though and that was awesome. Turkey with gravy, mashed potatoes, roast beef, green beans, pineapple glazed ham, and delicious microbrews meant that at least Christmas tasted good.
As is usually the case after Christmas, the new year came up pretty quickly and we celebrated by going out to the center of the city to enjoy the party. Jonngak was packed with people all waiting for the new year's bell to be rung, no ball, a bell, and it was a big one too. We were told that we could shoot off fireworks wherever we wanted and we did just that after watching the Korean Dick Clark ring in 2010. At midnight the square we were in exploded with color. Roman candles flew everywhere, bouncing off of buildings and just generally causing havoc. I had a great time afterwards we went to a few bars and I treated myself to some expensive imports with most of my coworkers, Andrew, Colby, Keeri and a few of Andrew's friends from Japan. A long night out turned into an early morning with a soccer game but New Year's in Korea was excellent I had a lot of fun getting wild in the city. The pictures are on facebook but maybe I'll post them to snapfish and post a link on here for everyone.
The New Year has been full of changes. My school's building was moved and it's a lot nicer. We had to spend the sunday after new year's moving our classrooms but that was ok, it was nice to see the building on the inside and it's really nice. The transition went really smoothly and apart from some excited, rambunctious kindergartners we had no problems at the new school. There is even a rooftop patio, sweet!
We've had to change the restaurants we frequent because we're far enough away from the old school to have had to find new ones. It's been a struggle, the restaurants around here just aren't as good as the one's close to the old ECC but it's ok it means I'm more inclined to eat the free lunch at school, which still hasn't happened, but maybe I might. I also stopped drinking coffee because there isn't a good place on the way to work. I'd been drinking coffee for breakfast accompanied by donuts and eggwiches from dunkin donuts, but no dunkin donuts on my commute so I stopped. Now I spend half off the money I used to every day, just lunch and it's helping a lot, plus coffee is disgusting and I'm happy I don't have as easy an opportunity to get it as I used to.
I've also begun taking a Korean language class every weekend with Ben and Matthew. It started out at a pretty remedial level, mostly just the alphabet, but when we graduated level one the difficulty really increased. It's ok though, it's been nice understanding every 13th word said around me. I have to put more effort into it but I am getting better slowly.
That's about it, of course this is only a short summary of events but I'm happy to be writing again. I'll probably post another one soon about this last weekend and then try to get back into doing this regularly, sorry for the wait, good to be back.
Pat
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