3 weeks removed from DJ fest

That last one was quite an entry, I find I become tangental if I sit down to long writing about something, and now I find myself 3 weeks away from my last post having thought about it probably too much. So in light of that I'm going to try and give you a short summary of the past few weeks.

After DJ Fest I did nothing, I got home at 530 in the morning and slept all day. That week I had my open classes to prepare for, so it was probably better that Sunday became an easy day. Open classes are ECC's attempt at showcasing our students' abilities for their parents as well as giving them an idea what their children do on a day to day basis. We set up a classroom in the auditorium in which we hold a class that the parents watch. It's pretty simple but the bosses were very stressed out about it, this feeling kind of spread to some of my coworkers.

Natalie and I had the luxury of having done one already back in August when we first arrived after having had no training whatsoever, so for us this was old hat. There wasn't really anyway it could go any worse than it did the last time, not because it went all that bad but rather because I had had ten months to prepare my class for this one. They are now much smarter than they were in August and have a really good idea how I handle my classes structure and discipline wise, so for me it was only a matter of warning my kids that if they messed around I was going to bring the hammer down on them. Other teacher's had a little more to worry about. Matthew, Allie and I have the upper level classes while Holly, Ben, Natalie and Pete have the lower level classes. Allie and I are the only teachers who have been teaching our students the entire time we've been here, everyone else has only had the current batch for 3 months, so when open classes rolled around their preparation was a little bit more hectic and stressful than ours. They had to whip their kids into shape and showcase what three months of English study has taught their young charges. Some were definitely more worried about it than others.

To our credit though the open classes were a resounding success. The parents left happy and assured of their children's progress with minimal complaints. Of course there were some but no one parent was angry or displeased with what they saw in every class. I went second and third with Neptune class then Eros and my kids were excellent. I was so proud of them they gave their parents the best show they could and I couldn't be happier with the work they put in. The whole thing was a lot of fun, the parents were laughing along with the class and I. They got to see their children speaking in complete sentences perfectly I might add, even the kids I was worried about spoke beautifully, and that's what it's all about. We all had fun and that I think was the most important part. All the other teacher's had similar experiences, the kids were great, the parents were fun and even complementary at times, all the guys were told how handsome we are, and our boss was ecstatic having spent the better part of a month pulling her hair out over these 40 minute sessions of what turned out to be, well, fun.

I was lucky, my open classes were the two days before teacher's day, which I now think of as second christmas. In Korea it's NATIONAL HOLIDAY where students thank their teachers with notes, songs and gifts. I made out really well. My nicest gift by far was a cross pen that had my name engraved on the side, whaaaaaaaaaaat? I guess we live in one of the richest areas in Seoul but WHAAAAAAAAAAAAT? I also got some clothes, a coffee mug and some shower products SCORE!!! I was amazed at how nice my kids were, I got something from all but two of my 21 kindergartners and all were awesome gifts. I wrote them all thank you notes, mom you'd be proud of me.

The bad thing about the open classes was that the first one fell on my birthday, on May tenth and eleventh, I was sleeping soundly when I should have been out tearing it up getting my celebration on, but it was ok we all went out to eat that tuesday to my favorite restaurant, the barbeque duck place. It was as delicious as I had hoped it was was going to be and Ben and Pete got me a really nice Korea jersey for my birthday, it was a really great day. Started with soccer then the unparalleled success of my open class (I think mine was one of the best) and ended with my favorite korean meal with good friends and a really thoughtful birthday present, what more can I guy ask for when he turns 23? Not too much.

That weekend we went out to Gangnam and Itaewon, met up with a few friends of our and had some pretty low key nights Friday and Saturday. I've decided that Itaewon doesn't really agree with me. I have ok times when I go but I have a lot more fun when I go to Hongdae or Gangnam. Luckily Itaewon was not the highlight of that weekend, Sunday was. Sunday Pete and I had a soccer game. We were playing from 3-7 and at first this was kind of an annoyance. I again was missing a chance to hang out with that girl, the same one who hadn't made it to Dj fest. She was going to the Lotus Lantern parade, an event held every year in celebration of the Buddha's birthday. I had read about that and wanted to go even if I wasn't going to see her, but the four hour soccer games on sundays are always a lot of fun so Pete and I ended up staying home while our coworkers and a pretty intriguing girl from California were all going to this parade. I had to text this girl sorry and have since decided to abandon that, she lives outside of the city a good bit so I'm not trying to establish anything that will be a lot of work only to have to cut it off when July rolls around. Holly, Matthew, Natalie and Allie all said they had an excellent time at this parade, but at the end of the day that sunday I was glad I didn't go, soccer was awesome.

We got to the field early as always after being told that we were playing a pretty good team. Sung Nam and a few others had said to Pete and I that this game was going to be difficult, that the team we were playing would be a tough nut to crack, so we arrived ready to play and play we did. 3 o'clock rolled around to find us in white facing off against a red team from I know not where, I was excited, I was well rested, ready to play and I'm sure my team was also. We started out the game and immediately took control. Our midfield is a very solid unit composed of some pretty skilled players each of whom has impeccable ball control. They usually set the tone for the game and that sunday it was no different, we played a possession game for most of the first period (if you don't know my team doesn't play straight 90 minute games we play 30 minute periods over the course of either 2 or 4 hour sessions each separated by five minutes) and came out on top, this set the tone for the game.

The other team had some good players but our team has been put together pretty well. Our defense is solid in the middle with two 6'4" guys, one is Chung Gyu and the other's name I haven't memorized yet, who are composed and tackle quickly and fairly. We are fast and direct at outside defender with my friends Sung Nam, Jong Min and Sung Jin rotating through the left and right wing defender positions. They play in front of our new goalie Ryu who's really good, I've seen him stop two penalties in the 4 games he's played for us, doesn't get much better than that. Our midfield is pretty good too. We start with one defensive midfielder, usually Pete, one metronome passing mid, Coach, Ho Jin, Yong Un or another really skilled passer, and two outside midfielders who end up playing more winger roles. The wingers are usually the older guys, Chief (we thought his name was Chip for a while and still call him that) the man in charge plays out there. Some of the guys who play wing are better than others but they can usually do some pretty good damage when they need too. Then up front it's me and a mix of other guys, Mr. Cool or the other young Korean guy, sometimes Pete and sometimes Ho Jin. I do well up there. I think I'm the leading scorer on our team right now, I don't know how I can't be I have anywhere from 20-31 goals I'm not sure exactly. I do so well because of our midfield though. Coach and the other guys who play the attacking midfield role are all excellent passers. Ho Jin who is one of our closest friends on the team does really well with the ball at his feet and almost always know exactly when to pass it. Pete too does a really good job wherever he plays. He is a tenacious tackler and wins the ball all the time. He feeds me assists along with the rest of the midfield. I'm lucky I've come to enjoy playing in the final third, I get to run at defenders all the time and I love it. I'm doing really well and teams are really starting to focus on me up front, more often than not I have two defenders following me, it's great.

Back to the game. After a scoreless first period we went in to the break pretty well assured of ourselves. The other team was good but we were controlling the middle and moving the ball well it was only a matter of time. The next period saw the other team come out with a heightened level of intensity. During the first I had run at them with the ball at will. Our midfield had given me ample opportunity but the keeper had pulled some pretty good saves when I shot and when I provided balls in for teammates to shoot. On top of that their defense closed pretty quickly on the ball so actual shooting opportunities were limited. The other team was getting frustrated with the way we dominated possession, the amount of time we were spending in front of their goal and our pass based attack. When we bring the ball up the field we pass almost exclusively, there is hardly any dribbling so teams have less of an opportunity to attack the man with the ball. It works well but it gets under the skin of our opponents. This approach was immensely successful during this game. In addition to that I had started encouraging our forward players to attack the ball and man mark when the other team picked it up on defense, this was also working well as the other team was having to resort to long balls which were dealt with easily by our tall defenders. So in short everything we were doing was working, the other team was under a lot of pressure and we were comfortably in the driver seat, begin period two.

We matched the other team's intensity with our own and this saw the dynamic of the game change a lot. While we were still in control the other team had begun to play increasingly hard nosed soccer. Tackles began to become wild and reckless, to the point where it was becoming ridiculous. I was the focal point of much of this as the main attacker. I was being stiff armed, shoulder checked, pushed, shoved you name it and I was getting angry. You know in Star Wars when Darth Vader, the Emperor or someone encourages the Luke to embrace his anger, to let it flow through him and give him power, when I play soccer I follow the dark side, I let my anger fuel my play, and to tell you the truth it really does make me better. It focuses me, gives me a drive to win balls, to score and it awakens in me my true competitive spirit. I hate to lose and when I have a reason to be angry that hatred turns into steely determination that really lights a fire under my ass. My anger paid off as my first goal was one of my best ever, I'm proud of it so I'm going to brag. I had just been fouled pretty hard on the sidelined, I was angry and I made it known how I felt. Pete calmed me down and we quickly won the ball back. I had been playing on the right so I allowed myself to drift over to the left a little bit as Pete brought the ball up the middle. He cut to the outside right and quickly lobbed a ball up to me. Ten yards ahead of him and maybe twenty yards out from the goal with my back to it I trapped the ball with my chest. I had three men on my back so I let the ball bounce once to my left while I turned and one timed a right foot volley into the far-post corner of the net. Perfect. I was so happy, I usually don't celebrate too much but I let out a yell and gave a fist pump. The other team deflated.

Possession wise we had more and more of the ball. I nearly had a second when running down a long ball. The keeper came out to block grab it and i managed to poke it away from him at the last second by just outrunning a defender and slipping my leg in between the two but my shot went a sliver wide. The other team's one bright spot came when we gave up a penalty in the box but Ryu saved and cleared the ball well. The tackling got even harder and we went to the second break with the lead and a pretty unruly opponent sitting on the benches across from us.

The third period proved to be the worst. The game was entirely too physical and the referee was doing nothing about it. I was being jostled and shoved every which way and my teammates were starting to catch abuse as well. Despite the the other team's thuggish antics we were doing well, I was constantly threatening. I got on the scoresheet again about 20 minutes in. Another long ball was played up and I flicked it past one defender only to see the goalie closing in again. I don't remember what happened here but I know I flicked it around or over the goalie. I don't remember because a defender and the goalie came together and leveled me a second after I flicked the ball. I hit the back of my head on the ground pretty hard and had to stay down for a minute before I got up with a pretty bad headache. I kept on playing but only for a little longer.

Not to long after that we were up two to nothing and the other team started to get really angry. One of the defenders teed off on me with a kick that was clearly meant to hit me. He turned right into me and shot it at my body. Luckily it hit my legs but I chuckled a little, turned around and walked away shaking my head. The game was out of control, "what the hell is going on?" I said and then we almost had a fight. One of the other players yelled "You want to fight me?" at which my teammates ran over and there was a lot of angry yelling. No fighting but they called the game right then anyway.

It was such a waste we had another hour and a half to play but it would certainly have come to blows if we had continued so whatever. My team played together a little after that but I was exhausted and shortly after the fight we went to the sauna to get ready for dinner.

Dinner was at a chain restaurant called WaraWara . One of the members of our team had recently opened a new location very close to where I live and where the team plays so we all went there to celebrate our victory. First of all the food at WaraWara is excellent. It's asian fusion but it really is good, some of my favorite chain restaurant food I've had ever I think. We ordered quite a few dishes and eventually my team surprised me. They all wished me happy birthday and had gotten me a cake. Sung Nam knew it had been my birthday that Tuesday so he put together the whole thing and it was a lot of fun. I was really surprised too, I had no idea this was going to happen so it made me really happy. This ended up being my real birthday party, the team was a lot of fun to hang out with. Of course I got obliterated. The guys kept on getting me different drinks, first it was the big birthday beer, then a few soju's then the really expensive soju was taken out, then more of it, and I drank all of it. Normally I don't drink like that but I was so happy that I wasn't about to turn down anything.

I'm not sure when we left WaraWara but when we did I exited with a splitting headache. My teammates insisted on taking me to the Nore-bong, or singing room. I acquiesced despite blurry vision and the pain in my head and ended up having a great time. I learned that Dr. Dre can speak soooooooooo much faster than I can, Forgot About Dre was a big flop but we sang some other pretty good ones, drank some more beer and got to listen to Yong Un one of the older guys on the team belt out some Korean ballads. He had a pretty good voice I was impressed. I can't really remember what else we sang but it may or may not have included cold play and maroon 5, not my selections, blame the Koreans.

After we left I thought I'd finally be able to go home and sleep off what I imagined to be a mild concussion. I was wrong. We went to another restaurant, seafood this time, Yong Un's treat. I was surprised the spicy octopus-squid dish we had was good. The two invertebrates weren't as rubbery as I recalled and I ate quite a bit of it. After I finished though I knew I needed to go home. My headache was only getting worse and work was starting to loom closer and closer. I convinced Pete that we should go and away we went, back to ChungKwangJooTaek.

I love my soccer team and to tell you the truth as much as I love Seoul, they are one of the only reasons I've considered coming back for another year. The guys are just great, no question about it. Sung Nam and I are really good friends and it's been great becoming friends with the rest of the men on the team. I'm really going to miss them when I go. I've had two families here in Seoul, my coworkers and my soccer team. I'll miss both of them and I seriously doubt I'll ever be a part of a team like this ever again, or for that matter a part of a group of great coworkers like I have here at ECC.

Dj Fest

So here I am looking at my quickly diminishing time in Korea trying to figure out where to go from here. I have 8 weekends left as Natalie so kindly informed me today and that seems to me like it really won't be enough time. I still have to go to Busan for one thing, and Jeju-do for that matter. To kiss a Korean girl would be nice too but I'm not holding my breath, maybe I should. Point being there's still a lot to do here and I feel the need to do it. We've been talking a lot recently here about the future the recurring question being "what are you going to do when you get home?" I have a few ideas but no set plans, Natalie has been accepted to a teacher's college in Australia, Allie will go home and study for the GREs with the hope of getting into graduate school for psychology somewhere in Chicago, Ben's also applying to graduate schools and Pete has no real idea. The return from this escape is looming pretty large for all of us I think but as I was walking around outside of COEX the other day I realized that I am very much going to miss it here and since that's the case I had better get my fill of Korea within the next few weeks because I have no idea when I'm going to be coming back. This is good because I've kept pretty busy the past few weeks. I'll get into the first thing in this entry then explore the rest next time.

Directly following the baseball game described in the last post I hopped a cab and went to DJ Fest, a gathering of local and international DJs Seoul hosts every year. Last year over 100,000 people attended so I jumped at the chance to go see this show. I wasn't wrong to do so, I had a blast. Natalie and Matthew had gone earlier, it started at 2 in the afternoon but I didn't get there until around 10 because of the game. I arrived relatively disappointed because the girl I had planned to meet up with there had gotten sick and wasn't coming but that quickly faded and even disappeared from my mind when I got there. Another friend Scotty had asked me to come originally. I gave him a call upon arriving and was pleasantly surprised when he informed me that he was sneaking me in. Perfect, tickets at the door were 55,000 won, no thank you I'll pay ten. That might make me a little bit of a jerk, and yes having worked at concerts I know sneaking in is kind of a dick move but I'm poor give me a break. There were no complications with that, we got in quick and easy and headed right to the main stage. There we met Zach and Maddie, other friends who had helped finance sneaking me in, we evened up with the expenses and then got to enjoying the show.

It was incredible, 3 stages, the main one playing electronic and house music with a variety of different DJs tearing it up, the 2nd stage was more hiphop and the third was local artists. We began with the Main stage because it was by far the best. Natalie and Matthew joined us, we bought a few beers and dove into the crowd. Loud music is really one of my favorite experiences at nighttime, when it comes in tandem with a light show I always enjoy it that much more. Neon lasers combed the crowd, people were first green, then red, then blue, then orange under the thin but erratic beams of light. These all came from the tops of giant TVs doing there best to imitate the itunes visualizer and doing a pretty good job of it. In short the colors were blinding, but in a good way.

The night was so dark, the park the show was held at sat at the foot of the mountain so it had no immediate contact with the light from the city and the three light shows were the only things illuminating us. It's kind of otherworldly to be bathed in florescent colors so entirely different from what you're used to for hours on end. I always find myself admiring it whether I'm at a club or under some black-light and at DJ fest I did the same. The moon paints everything with a very silvery light as it is which blurs lines and renders some things unrecognizable. It generally complicates the act of seeing so much so that a lot of what you see may appear first as illusory followed quickly by undefined. This uncertainty, the moon's propensity for tricks and deception when coupled with the glaring but fleeting brilliance of a light show is really something else, very different from any club atmosphere and whenever I'm at a show where I see this I love it. The light first made me want to dance, which I did despite how silly I looked, then it proceeded to pull me toward it. The four of us, Natalie, Zac, Maddie and I made it to the front of all the stages and when we got there we danced. It was excellent, but it made me feel a little like a fly being drawn to one of those blue zappers which is an unnerving feeling to say the least.

Some examples of the changing light are at the top.

The unnerving nature of the light there just made DJ fest all the more exciting. Like I said I enjoy the difference. You see much differently through green than you do through red or blue and it really is something to appreciate I think. It's not everyday you get to take a step back from the way you see everything and try something different, in fact that is very nearly impossible so I think it's important to take the opportunities to do so seriously, even if they are just changes in the lighting. I will never see everybody as giant millipedes walking through this city but for a night I can see thousands of them painted by the sky in neon and it really becomes a new lens through which the world can be seen.

I think that's what travel is, an attempt to see things through a different lens. I've denied most this ability in the last paragraph but the fact of the matter is that the way we see the world is an ever changing one simply because the lens through which we look on things is constantly changing, whether you sit on your sofa watching TV all day or you spend your life globetrotting, everything our minds take in and process has an effect on how we approach the rest of our life. I think that travel is a more effective way to change this lens but with everything you learn your perception is irreparably altered whether you learn it from the boob tube or from falling out of an airplane at 15,000 meters with nothing but a glorified bed sheet strapped to your back. That's the beauty of existence. I must give Ben credit for some of this, we had a pretty in depth discussion on perception and human relationships last night and I've been thinking about it a lot. At DJ Fest I saw the world through a more diverse ocular lens than normal because of the light-show mixed with the night sky. This is a lens I've looked through before but never really thought to much about, but the more I think about it the more it resonates with me.

Here I am living in a different country, experiencing a new and different way of life that is very similar to the American way of life in some aspects and very different in others. Just for contact with this culture my whole conception of life has changed in ways that I may never understand just as seeing the world bathed in red and green at Dj Fest changed the way I experience the everyday. Now walking to work in the morning can be defined by it's lack of neon, by the fact that I see everything as I "normally" do, but I don't because now what I see as "normal" has the caveat that it isn't being dissected, transformed and illuminated by concentrated beams of color that originate from something other than the sun. Rather my normalcy has taken on an entirely different shade, or in this situation lack of shade, that it never had before.

DJ fest has at this point become just an example of how the world evolves before your eyes if you allow it to. By allowing yourself to be open to a different way of seeing the world you can't do anything but absorb that way into your own way, even if only a little bit, even if you only absorb a sliver, it will then effect the rest of your life. Travel does this to people, travel performs light shows if you care to watch. They aren't light shows for your eyes but rather for your approach to life, your plans and most importantly your future.

When Ben and I talked the other night he mentioned how fascinating it is that in interacting with others a person becomes inextricably linked with everyone they meet. People take infinitely diverse paths to reach certain points in their lives, but when they meet people that moment is something that they share with the other exactly how it is, no matter what. Example, the conversation snooze and I had the other day about this is something that we will both have as a part of our life for the rest of our lives and the experience of it is, on the outside, identical. On the inside however I can't imagine that to be true. Both of us took something completely different away from that conversation but the memory of it will have effects on both of us, no matter how different they are, that will last us a lifetime.

That vein of thought got me to thinking about DJ Fest, the same is true for that experience. All concert goers experienced the same light show, heard the same music, drank the same cheap beer and liquor and hopefully had the same great time I did. We all experienced another lens through which to look and we all marveled at it in our own way, but the effect the show has on every one who went will by no means be the same. For some it will be simply another concert, for others a hazy night marked by loss of inhibition and lack of recollection, still others will see it as one of the "time's of their lives" while I'm now looking at it as a glimpse at the world through a different pair of spectacles. Our time here in Korea is much the same. I don't know what my coworkers will take from this. I don't know whether this will have a profound impact on their lives or not, maybe it will be just another year for them, maybe it will be life changing, as for me I'm seeing it as something that has taught me a lot, an experience that has put interesting ideas in my life, a learning experience that has definitely changed the course of my life and I feel so lucky to have been able to experience it.

To think that until fairly recently this shade (laser light shows) of being had never before been experienced by man is astounding in and of itself, I mean when did man first make the laser? 100 years ago no one knew this light and the fact that I know it now and am applying my pretending toward philosophy to it is . . . . well amazing.

I'm getting away from myself, that's cool but beside the point. Korea is the light-show. It has been really something to see and absorb. I will never forget it. Here now with 2 months to go I'm preparing myself for the culmination of the light-show, the grand finale, the one that leaves you walking away from the concert shaking your head, knowing it to be a night t remember. I have no doubt in my mind now that I will remember this trip, no illusions as to it's effects on me, it's importance in my life I'm just looking forward to the flurry of activity that will be the next eight weeks and frankly, I'm excited.

Korea is the light-show.

Staring Down the Home Stretch

Ok so it's May now, my 23rd birthday has passed, I've got two and a half more months left and I find myself somewhat disappointed with this whole blog thing. I haven't been as good as I would have liked about this but at least I have something. It's been a busy few weeks so I'm going to cut this post in half because it will undoubtedly turn into boring rambling more often than not and I would not like to put my readers to sleep. I'll start out with my social life.

Last month was a little skimpy as I believe I mentioned in previous post because of my trip to Thailand. That turned out to be all right and I still managed to have a lot of fun, but it also meant that last weekend I kinda let loose a little bit when it came to time to go out. Saturday was a doozy let's just say that. Here is the beginning.

As most Saturdays do I began May 8th with a soccer game. I woke up bright and early at 5:05 to go to the field at 6:15. Our game didn't actually start until 7 probably but we our coach has always insisted that we arrive early, maybe so we can be awake for a little longer before the game, I dunno. The game went well. I assisted the only goal in the first game, sat for two half hour games then scored two in the final game, can't do much better than that for the amount of time I played. More and more people have been coming to the games because the weather is steadily improving so playing time is becoming a hot commodity, no one plays for more than two games, but Pete and I usually get decent enough time. Following the game we went to the Sauna and to lunch with the team as we do all Saturday mornings when we play. Pete, Sung Nam and I offered to pay for the meal because each time we go out to eat a different team member pays. We felt that 5 months of not paying was a little long so we did. They of course insisted on us drinking as a reward for being so gracious as to pay for everything. Someone brought Chinese Soju Kor-I-An-Ju is what it sounded like that was very sweet and very strong. That on top of the Makali led me immediately back to bed when I got home from soccer. I slept for 3 hours and the next thing I new it was 330.

Pete had asked if I would go to a baseball game on Saturday with some of our friends. Stupidly I agreed forgetting about the DJ Fest some of my friends had told me about that began at 2 on Saturday. I wasn't going to miss that though so I decided to skip the party that was going to happen after Baseball and cab straight to DJ Fest from the game. It was a good plan. The game rolled around and the four of us went out, Pete, Allie, Kevin and I. Kevin is a friend of the Canadians who I've hung out with a few times. We were meeting two Korean girls who we've gone to Baseball games with before, they love the sport and every time I go to a game I can see why. It is so much more upbeat than an American sporting event. Think of Duke vs. Maryland ACC basketball on speed. There are cheers for each of the players which are chanted every time they bat, a variety of cheers for defense and of course two distinct cheering sections (one for each team) which invariably despise each other. The cheers are all sung in unison with hand motions and dances usually accentuated by the blow up noise makers which you beat together. The sound can be deafening at times but it just adds to the atmosphere of the game. Everyone has these beaters and well everyone uses them, I never had the best hearing but after Saturday it probably will never improve.

At baseball games there are also cheerleaders led by one guy who walks around on a stage in the middle of one side of the stadium conducting all the cheers. He's flanked by four stunning Korean girls, all of whom I will admit to having stared at a little. They're beautiful, it's not fair it really isn't. Regardless the four cheerleaders are basically glorified back up dancers who support the masters of ceremonies himself, a man decked out in a uniform for whichever team he's supporting dancing around like a lunatic on the stage. At least that's how it should be. The man is there, he does conduct and direct the cheering, he is wearing a uniform, but he doesn't dance around to much. I would be much better at his job I really would, I mean I can dance like a lunatic, so I got something on him.

Despite his complete lack of lunacy, the man does control a pretty ridiculous show and the whole time he's up there strutting his team's stuff he's competing with his doppelganger on the other side of the stadium. I swear it's like dueling banjos between the two orchestrators of the cheer, one goes the other tries to one up him and it gets interesting but I always thought that one would be more enthusiastic than the other and that maybe would push him over the top. That's just not how it is here though. The name of the game is efficiency. I think the winner of the dueling cheerleaders is the man who can goad his cheering section into chanting in complete and total unison. There isn't really much emotion to it. When I went to the wedding one of my coworkers told me that at the wedding the couple isn't supposed to show their emotion in respect for the sanctity of the ceremony, in thinking back now the baseball game is similar to this. There is no cheering beside the preplanned and orchestrated cheering delivered by the master of the cheer. No boos and no shouts of "FIGHTING", the signature cheer of Korean games, are heard except from the foreigners used to leering at other players and screaming lewd comments or racial slur at whoever is unlucky enough to be on the other team. You never call anybody on your team anything bad, but the other team, well it would have been better off for them if they had just not been born . . well in America, but not here.

That seemed strange to me at first. Hey battabattabattasaaaaWING batta was something I always expected to hear from some drunk asshole at a baseball game, but it just didn't happen here. I think that this just shows a little more respect for the game and the athletes. These people are the cream of the crop at what they do and whether we love or hate them they deserve some respect for being much better than we are at what they do. It's then fitting that opposing fans restrict the competition between them to the uniformity and subsequent strength of their cheers rather than who can be more insulting, malicious and hurtful with what they yell. It was nice getting buzzed around people who were focused more on the collective good time than the competition. Obviously the competition was important but it didn't go past that into negativity and I really liked that.

Well the other good thing about Baseball games is the beer at them DOESN'T cost 10 dollars for six ounces, in fact you can get a tall boy for lest than 3 which is a pretty good deal, so I had a few beers, to you know celebrate pay day. The six of us had a good time, I learned the cheers from Jamie, one of the Koreans and impressed both of the Koreans with my ability to read the Korean alphabet. I mean it is impressive after only 9 and a half months of studying, I'm the man, no, but they acted as if I had done something remarkable. The game went on longer than I thought it would. LG lost but I don't care I'm a Doosan fan because that's the first game I went to and I left immediately afterwards.

Next entry: DJ Fest and probably this weekend depending on how tomorrow night goes.

PEACE

The Weight

Hello everyone this would have been my third entry in April but it got pushed to the back burner, thought I'd throw it up. I'm writing this entry currently on the mend as I had my first real bout with illness in as long as I can remember. Yep that's right, I was sick. I spent the entire weekend watching my conception of myself as invincible crumble into nothingness, well almost. I'm getting better now so I must have some spark of immortality left in me right? Maybe but the weekend was miserable nonetheless. I found myself wanting nothing more than to stay inside on the nicest two days we've had this year. I forced myself out both Saturday and Sunday but was to feverish to really enjoy any of it.

That's not true, the short time I spent reading on Saturday out behind the apartments was really nice. I had camped out with a chair, a cup of water for my throat which had become raw from coughing for the last week, some strawberries and a book. It was warm enough to wear shorts the strawberries were excellent. I got about 30 pages back into some Vonnegut that's been gathering dust on top of my microwave for a while before Natalie and Holly came and joined me on our green linoleum back porch type thing for some conversation. It was nice and despite my cough we had fun talking, before long Ben came up too and the four of us spent some time in the sun talking about school and other things. Natalie was running a race the next morning and Holly had planned to hike a nearby mountain so there was a lot to talk about.

Talking to my coworkers is a lot of fun regardless of how much some of them annoy me sometimes. We have similar things to complain about and it's always fun to talk about the slower kids or how well a class had done on the most recent video presentations. We've all been pretty stressed lately so comiserating only needed nice weather to be really enjoyable and luckily Saturday at 3 the conditions were perfect. Work is good I guess but I think it's perfectly normal for people to find things to complain about when it comes to their jobs, because really no one does want to work. Complaining becomes joking about it, becomes making the problems into laughs, becomes making light of it and the stress dissipating a little bit, so the more you can joke about it the better off you are. When the weight of it all becomes to much to even joke about then maybe it's time to find a new line of work. Fortunately for me there is so much more to laugh about at this job than there is to complain about. We talked for a while and then it got a little chilly so I went inside. Natalie and I went for burgers later and then I went with one of the guys on my soccer team to watch an EPL game Tottenham vs. Manchester.

To be perfectly honest I was so zonked at this point. The medicine I had taken, just headache medicine, combined with whatever I had, really had left me more like a zombie than myself, but I still had a lot of fun out watching the game. I got to see how some of the people around here really live, I remember that much. I went with my teammate Sung Jin to the house of a friend of his and I'm not lying but this guy had one of the nicest TV systems I have ever seen. A projector screen filled an entire wall with crystal clear magnificence and the surround sound could have been deafening, I spotted seven speakers strategically positioned around a room the size of my bedroom, but his 3 year old daughter was asleep. We watched the game then played PS3 for a bit, all the while eating krispy kreme donuts, pringles and drinking cass. Not bad for a Seoul Saturday night, well not really, I should've been out tearing up Hongdae, but I was way to sick. For a Saturday night when you are ill, not to bad.

Unfortunately for me, I was even sicker on Sunday, but I managed to drag myself out of bed and get out in the nice weather again. Ben and I visited the Seoullung tombs park which is always a nice escape from the city. I may or may not have talked about it before but the tombs park is a nice little oasis of forest right up the road from our apartments. The weather was perfect and we took books and camped out on the grass beneath a hill where the tomb of the ninth King of the Joseon Dynasty has sat for the last 700 years. There was quite a lot of people there. Many people were out with their young families, others were strolling with their spouses of significant others through the flowering woods and many more were just relaxing on the lawn. The park is really well maintained and it was a much needed escape from the drab monotony of the city. I had trouble focusing on my book and instead alternated between people watching and forcing myself into daydreams as I stretched out in the sun.

Trying to clear my mind proved pretty difficult for me, I have a lot going on right now, so instead I tried detaching the patch of grass I was laying in from the Earth, in my head of course. I tried to make it act as a single roller coaster car broken free of its track suddenly gifted with unbridled acceleration to take anywhere it wanted. We went. First I followed a pigeon through the park. I stuck to the pathways at the start because my grassy carpet was about 8' by 6' and unable to weave through the trees without either dumping me off or hitting a branch but when the pigeon veered right into a copse of pine trees I found I had lost control of my imaginary ride and was careening around, in between, under, over and finally through the sap covered branches. Apparently I had left my physical limitations on the path and was now able to go anywhere. My mind headed me out to sea immediately after this realization.

This seems like nonsense I know but I really enjoyed my fever driven daydream. The carpet and I dove through watery canyons hundreds of miles long, crested waves both big and small and went to the depths of the ocean. It was an interesting experience that I think I'll experiment a little more with. Sounds silly but try it, you might be surprised what you can make yourself do with your imagination.

My reverie continue out over the ocean. I dove down into the depths of canyons hundreds of feet below the surface. I zoomed around volcanic obelisks raised millenia ago and skimmed the sea floor like a dragonfly skims the surface of a river. It was remarkable, I was as far outside of myself as I have ever been and I really liked it. I continued, pointing the patch of grass back to sunlight and exploded out of the water only to turn back down and in again. I made like a dolphin jumping in the cresting waves, in and out and in and out until finally I contented my imaginary flying self to just dodging the rolling ocean as I swept myself back to land and the trees and the park and my book, enough of this for now, I thought, but I will have to return and lie in this spot and fly a little more.

Anyway I got better the next day, it seems it was just a 48 flu or something and that was maybe a month ago. I've been healthy since, hope you enjoyed reading where my mind takes me when I get deliriously ill.

The times they are a changing

It's true, ECC is becoming much different than it was when I first started. It's been nearly 9 months now and the sudden rash of tweaks to the system is frustrating everyone involved I think. Our new head teacher for the afternoon elementary classes Kate, has instituted a number of reforms to the way we do things that are challenging everyone, teachers and students alike to step up their game. The first major change was class times. Instead of having two hour long classes to round off Monday, Wednesday and Friday we now have three 40 minute classes. This is something that I like. Hour long classes are hard to deal with, it's a lot of time to fill and in the case of some of the books we work with a teacher may find themselves stuck with 20-25 minutes at the end of a class period in which to either play games or force more work down the throats of the already absurdly overworked students. Neither of these options are good for the classroom dynamic. If games are played everyday the students come to expect them and they lose their novelty. In this case games become a form of work that the kids despise just as much as the lessons. On the other hand after 30-40 minutes of English lessons to attempt more seems to me to be a sure way to lose any and all momentum, trust and enthusiasm for learning your students may have. The fact of the matter is the kids give up. They do nearly 12 hours of school a day in some cases and hour straight sessions seem to exacerbate this problem more than anything else. 40 minutes is really the perfect time, the kids don't get to tired and after a five minute break they come back ready to work.

So good riddance to hour long classes, they hurt more than they helped, but they weren't the last changes to be made. There are some relatively minor changes that have been made, class names for instance were streamlined. There is now a system for naming rather than having the classes be called whatever animal the first teacher liked the most on that day. GELE and PICO now dominate my afternoon schedule rather than cow, elephant and tiger. Some of the books are also being dropped in order to modernize the FIFTEEN year old material some of us have had to use. These are both good things and will do more to help than anything else, so these are more changes I am happy about. Besides these it starts to get a little more complicated.

The first major change of course was the new students who sauntered into school in March and cheekily demanded a quality education, for the low low price of about $1,000 a month, how dare they! For the most part the kids are great but in some cases the parents have been a real handful. Most of the new afternoon students have come out of the classes who graduated kindergarten at the end of February. The jump from kindergarten to elementary school has been difficult for the parents though because ECC's afternoon section is handled much differently than the kindergarten is. For instance all the children in kindergarten are given daily reports written by the Korean teachers to take home to their parents. These let parents know all of the little issues that pop up and the progress their children make every day, which is very good I think, for kindergarten. Elementary students do not get anything like this because at this point it is starting to be up to them to know what they are expected to do. Makes sense right? Not to everybody.

As I think I've told you before we've gotten a lot of complaints and most are centered around the differences between kindergarten and elementary. Kindergarten is very heavy on vocabulary interwoven with basic grammar rules. Elementary is more based on comprehension and expansion of speaking abilities. The children are expected to pick up the vocabulary much quicker and begin using it almost immediately which, assuming they've been learning English for a year or two, they should be able to do. This change has proved problematic for parents to understand. Many expect that their children will have the same answers as the other students in their classes but when it comes to comprehension and opinion questions this isn't always the case. The questions that accompany the Storytown text and others are meant to encourage different answers, of course there are some general questions the answers of which should be pretty uniform but there is much more room for interpretation in these afternoon books. Parents don't understand this, some have insisted that their children have the same answers as the rest of the class whether it be a factual question or opinion based. Ben in particular has suffered as a result of this. While his students nearly always write grammatically correct answers they do differ and in one class the parents have demanded answer sheets to every homework populated with stock answers which they force their children to write in despite their own ideas.

Example:

Question: Do you think the toad was angry or sad when he lost his ice cream cone?

There are two possible answers, three if you count both, and all are equally correct. I've been angry and alternately sad after having lost an ice cream cone, sometimes I've been angry and sad.

Stock answer: Toad was angry because the ice cream fell off of his cone.

TOAD CAN BE EITHER OR BOTH!!!!!

Fortunately for me I haven't had to deal with this.

I have had to deal the new video presentation class we are tasked with preparing all of our afternoon classes for. The idea was to film the children using their English and post it on the school's website where parents could track the progress they were making. The kids would talk for up to two minutes about a topic decided in advance. NO MEMORIZATION allowed. Kate wanted the kids to be able to utilize vocabulary without having committed a script to memory. That's fine I was and still am behind this idea. I think that speaking is one of the best ways to practice English, if not the most rewarding one. The problem with this is that there is almost no room in our schedule to prepare for it. I lucked out this month as I finished a book and the school didn't order the next book in time for the new month. I've been using the class period left vacant by this missing book to prepare my kids for the presentation. We've discussed the question "What kind of game show do you want to go on, would you win and why?" for two weeks now and the presentation was today. My kids passed with flying colors, they didn't talk for long but I think it was because this was the first time for them in front of the camera and they were nervous. Kate really liked the presentation though and I was really proud of my kids for the effort they put into it.

First one down, I still have two more classes to do, topics being "What are you going to do in May?" and "This is my monster." I think both will do well enough, but the main issue again is time. This is where we could've used those hour long classes, but they're a thing of the past. In their absence I've taken to bumping the schedule back to in order to make time for a preparation day in both of my other classes. It is working nicely but some of the other teachers just can't find the time. This comes back to the parents again as any deviation from the original schedule tends to cause immediate uproar and unwanted consternation. So some people have had to try to rush through an already tight class period and force quick conversation at the end of the class. This is a much more difficult way to prepare, but there's nothing that teachers can do about it for fear of the wrath of the parents. Needless to say this has caused a lot more stress than anything else but I do think it is a good idea just wanting in the planning department. Things like these do take time to prepare, the kids will need a little time to get used to it and we need to figure out what the best way to teach this is. That being said I have faith and I think that this can be a great marketing tool for our company if it is perfected.

One major change down, three to go. Science experiments ugh. Possibly the worst part of teaching kindergarten is now being prepared as a mandatory part of all afternoon classes. I'm not excited about this. It's hard enough to get these kids through a science lesson as it is with the time frame we're given and all, now we have to cram an experiment in also? Luckily this will probably only happen once a month as opposed to once a week in kindergarten but it will still be another addition to an already topped off work load. Some of the experiments should be fun but some will probably be a real pain in the ass. Oh well such is life.

The next change is that our school will be getting a 10,500 book library in May, AWESOME!! I am excited about this, I'm going to make my kids read the Illustrated Classics and do book reports, yea. I requested Dinotopia books too and Goosebumps, along with the Hardy boys. I didn't say anything about space brat but I should have those books are awesome. This should be pretty cool we've been asked to incorporate this into our lessons and I know exactly how I'm going to do this for the afternoon, cool beans, no problem there.

The final change is that we will finally be having school dinners again. I have never once eaten with my Korean coworkers and I'm excited to do so. I very nearly demanded them at a planning meeting for the video presentations and I was surprised when the answer was an immediate "oh yeah, we can do that." Cool, free dinner at a nicer restaurant, it's about time. The first one of these is next week at a place called Jessica's Kitchen. We joked that it was actually going to be at our boss Jessica's house and that she would be cooking for us but no, the poor woman has enough on her plate. The restaurant is free beer on fridays too so our school might be biting of more than it can chew because lord knows we certainly enjoy a good beer. On a similar note we will also be having teacher's outings the first of which will be tomorrow barring any weather related issues. They are also bringing beer to this get together, which should certainly make it interesting.

That's enough for today I think, I'll fill in my social life a bit later but I'm spent now, sorry for the long entry, this period of upheaval has really been something.

Love

Pat

the Beginning of April

The weather is finally getting BETTER!!! This week it's been in the . . . . wait for it . . . . . wait for it . . . . . . . . FIFTIES!!!!! Hoooorrraaaaayyyy . . . ugh. Get warmer already. This is torture because I hear from Mom and Dad that they're wearing shorts and t-shirts all week and the temperatures are in the eighties. Nice everyone thanks for reminding me how much I'd like the weather to improve.

That being said it is improving, just not as quickly as I'd hoped. Throughout this long cold winter I've imagined this magical day smiling from beyond the horizon. A day the sun steps out from behind a cloud drops its lawn chair down and stays for a while. A day when these chilling Siberian winds finally exhaust themselves and slink back to Russia to be miserable and drink vodka flavored antifreeze. A day where I can step outside of my house in shorts and confidently slip on my rainbows for a stroll down to vegetation clad Yangjae stream. Every now and then I've caught a glimpse of it. There was a week in early March where we thought that day had dawned, it was in the sixties and the forecasts were promising for the coming week, but the next day it snowed. Then again later in March, high fifties with expectations of climbing temperatures got our hopes up, I wore shorts! But the next day it was thirty four, sleeting and in my shorts I furiously shivered, marvelous.

I've just about given up hope that I will every be truly warm again. I remember the Gambia, 85-95 every day no matter what, to wear anything but sandals was a ridiculous idea. I remember Ocean City, to hot to stand in the sand on the beach so we had to sprint from the dunes, drop our stuff in a large enough spot and race down to the water front to cool our toes, often times we wouldn't stop there. I remember Florida and the Keys, getting the sunburn of my life while relaxing under palm trees surrounded by sapphire water and good friends. Well wait, now I remember that there are places in the world that don't taste this bitter winter I've known for the last five months. Maybe I should go there.

Okay.

Natalie and I have begun planning a trip to Thailand. South East Asia seems like the perfect place to go to me. The process of shaking off the grip of these last few months is an ongoing one which will probably take until I'm sweating everyday at work, but until then I intend to dream about swimming in water that is the only cool thing besides my drink in sight.

I’m excited.

Traveling around the area is something I had thought to do while I was here but had forgotten when I realized how limited our vacation days are. Of course now we’ve breathed new life into that idea and we’ve just booked a flight to Thailand. We will stay for about three weeks. We have several destinations planned out which I think will culminate with a trip to Angkor Wat in neighboring Cambodia. Since I’ve known about this sprawling temple complex in the jungles of Siem Reap I’ve wanted to go and I’m so happy that I finally pulled the trigger on going. We have a few other places we’re going but that’s the big one. I’ll update you when the plans solidify but I’m definitely going and like I said I’M EXCITED.

Until then though I am stuck imagining myself somewhere warm as it seems the weather here will never breach sixty. This winter has been a tough one as I’ve mentioned before but it has been a good one. I’ve decided that it is much easier to get to know yourself if you take a truly objective look at yourself when you are at a low point. I’m not saying that I’ve been struggling my way through a deep and murky depression for the past several months but it has certainly not been the happiest of times. This has given me a lot of food for though about what I need in my life, and what I don’t need in my life. It has changed my perspective on quite a few things and I believe that I’ve come through it of clearer mind than when say, I dislocated my elbow in November.

I’ve known for a long time that perhaps the most important thing in my life are the people around me. Despite this I was still surprised to find how pivotal a role we’ve each played in our lives here. All of us have had a tough winter and I’ve had to help almost every person around me in some way or another, and they too have had to help me. It’s odd how much of a family we’ve grown into despite our numerous differences and the issues we have with one another. I guess this is the expat community that everyone talks so much about. I think that people strike out on these trips thinking “This is my time” or “I’m ready to take on the world” but in reality there isn’t much I about it. Everyone needs someone, something, and when you recognize that it’s always good. This is always our time no matter who you are or how you perceive yourself. You find the others like you and you all prop each other up.

The odd thing is when you find the people unlike you. Here I have a pretty insular family of about 12-15 teachers I’m close with. That isn’t much. I’m of the opinion that it isn’t enough. At home I have hundreds of people I call friends, thousands I recognize as acquaintances, and the possibility to meet thousands more. Here I am as much an island as I’ve ever been. The group is small and I’ve found myself in an archipelago of similar islands floating on an inland sea of the surrounding land mass. Our group is one small island in the sea, and yes we congregate with the other islands, they are all very similar to us. We can talk about the same things, the fast food we miss, the bands we’re listening too. The shore however is different, too different sometimes. Much of the time it seems as if there is no common ground, which carries the metaphor, but the metaphor is wrong. The sea can appear insurmountable, but as a foreigner you can easily swim to shore and meet our hosts, interact with them closely, and when you do the differences melt away. The sea is an illusion we place between us and the people who live in work in this city everyday, an illusion based in differences. In the last eight months I’ve been realizing how exaggerated these disparities actually are. Of course there are some pretty basic things in which we are most certainly dissimilar, but the more time I spend with my Korean coworkers and the soccer team the more I realize how alike Koreans and Waeguks actually are.

I still can’t understand any Korean and I’ve just about given up hope on ever picking out a word in a Korean sentence, but I know enough about people to follow the general direction of a conversation. My Korean friends talk about the same things we talk about. This is no great revelation I know but if they’re talking about the same things we talk about then they must be thinking along the same lines. My experience of the break room at school rests heavily on this. Parallel conversations occur in two different languages throughout the time I spend there. The same can be said of soccer matches we discuss the same things there that any soccer player would at a game in the states; the latest European soccer news, who’s the better player, Messi or Rooney, why my team is better than your team etc. etc. It’s interesting to recognize this and to be able to understand without understanding at all what’s going on in the conversation next to me between two 37 year old Korean men.

When they don’t talk about soccer they’re talking about their families, their jobs or the meal we’re having after the game, and while I don’t know what they’re saying I can usually piece together what they’re talking about. The break room is the same. It seems so simple now because we have a very similarly structured society economically and so the things governing the people’s lives here run pretty parallel to the things that govern our lives. I won’t go into specifics because I feel like I’ve gone on forever, but perhaps I’ll continue my ruminations in my next entry, see ya later.

New Semester!

Happy March everyone! This month I started my second semester at ECC. For me it has been business as usual as my two main kindergarten classes did not graduate but for my coworkers it has been quite a wild ride. ECC graduated either 10 classes in February and brought in 6 brand new classes to replace them. The new classes are all pretty low level so many of my coworkers have had to drastically change the way that they conduct their lessons. The classes that graduated were the best in the school of course, they were headed to elementary school and were mostly at a conversational level in their english ability. The new classes on the other hand don't know the alphabet. Needless to say this has caused some stressful days for the other teachers, I do believe that they are all enjoying it though. Despite the drastic level change each has told me that they think they are making progress with their students. You wouldn't believe how many complaints we are getting though, and over the simplest things too. Our head teacher Jessica told Natalie and someone else that this month they were getting more complaints than they had gotten in any month before. BUT NOT ME!

I did get one . . .

Two children's parents from Neptune class were unhappy about the small parts their kids were assigned in Drama. I had to explain, through my co-teacher Eunice, that there are small parts in every play and that someone's kid's had to play the small part no matter what. I ended up writing new lines for one kid and shuffling the other into another part, but it was funny hearing the nature of the complaints. Both parents were concerned that their children had done something wrong and were being punished. The simple truth is that I didn't know if they'd be good in drama or not, not that they were bad kids, but I was amazed at the horror I caused in giving them these parts. The way that Eunice, who told me about the complaint, made it seem is that the parents were genuinely concerned about the kid's status in the class. Have they been poorly behaved? Are they not doing their work in class? Are they being disruptive? NO, NO, NO your children are wonderful, they are two of my best students, somebody has to do those parts though.

Oh well I fixed those problems and have been pretty successful making the jump from Wake Up to Playground, the lower level book to the upper one. I have probably the two smartest classes in the school and I think the difference between these and the other 7 year old students is simply parenting. There is only so much we can do and the kids that make the most progress are the kids that go home everyday and practice. Of course the teacher makes a difference too but if the parents are working with their kids then the lessons are reinforced at home and the kid remembers them better. A lot also depends on the Korean teacher, who reinforce the lessons we present in class with the workbook, the stricter Korean teachers usually end up being the better ones I've found.

The one problem I have had involves the children adjusting to the new class format. Last semester there were 4 first year 6 year old classes. They have taken these and put them into three classes with the students from Pennsylvania, Columbia, Mars and Venus classes having been shuffled around into high(Neptune), medium(Eros) and low(Gauss) level classes. I teach Neptune and Eros the higher level classes but the kids have been shuffled around enough to throw the dynamic between them out of line. Mars class stayed together for the most part in Neptune class but absorbed two students from the old Pennsylvania class and one form Columbia. Venus class however was stripped into pieces. Michael, Yuna and Julie are now in Eros class with four Columbia kids and two Pennsylvania kids. They are a little bit below Neptune in terms of English ability but thats not where the problems have come from, they've come rather from the kids having to make new friends.

The girls from Venus have adjusted really well; Yuna and Julie are now very close friends with Anna, the girl from Columbia. Michael however has had some issues. The background of these problems is that Michael was very good friends with another boy, Peter, in Venus class. Peter was placed in Gauss class though and Michael has found himself as the only boy from Venus in the new Eros class. The other boys all have friends from their former classes to hang out with but Michael doesn't and he has had a rough time making new friends. He is getting better now but at the beginning of March he was very sulky all the time and acted out quite a bit. He still sits with Peter at lunch while the rest of the boys in Eros sit with each other, this is a bit of a problem. I think he's getting better but I'm still a little worried about him, because his attitude has really started to effect his progress.

That however has been the only real issue, classes are easy and even a bit more fun. All of the students are at more comparable levels so it is much more infrequent that I find myself back tracking to instruct the slower kids. I'm happy about this and it has really helped classes move along smoothly and constructively at all times.

In other events soccer is going well, two goals last weekend and then of course a huge drinking party afterwards. There really is nothing I can do about this but I get very drunk with my team. When we get there Pete and I are immediately handed bowls of Makali if it's a morning game or shots of soju if it's an evening dinner and commanded to take them in one shot. Deferring to your elders here is a huge deal as I think I've discussed before so when the 57 year old captain of the team demands us to drink, we drink, simple as that. I'm not complaining I love it but when we have Sunday matches they're almost always in the afternoon so it makes for an interesting Monday morning.

I'm beginning to really enjoy hanging out with the old men. I still have hardly any idea what they are saying most of the time but I've developed a good rapport with almost all of them. We have a few guys who speak English so when we eat I either talk to them or just watch them interact. It has been very interesting just to see how they treat each other, the older men especially. The inquiries of the old guys are answered almost immediately every time no matter what, if they shout from across the room or whisper across the table, they are immediately the focus of the rest of the conversation. It's nice to see, the room quiets when they want it too, speeches are common, and returns to the dull roar after they've finished. The tone is always jovial no matter what though but you can almost see the overlying web of respect hanging in from the ceilings of the restaurants.

We have our Seasonal Party coming up this Sunday so that of course will be an absurd night of drinking and mayhem. We will eat Sashimi, the Korean version of Sushi which I haven't been lucky enough to try yet, and I'm very excited about it. Four hour game and then Sashimi, should be fun.

Sorry it's been so long with these I've had a hectic few weeks, but I'm getting back on the horse with this and I hope to finish the year strong.

Pat

the winter doldrums

It's finally February and I have to say I'm happy about that. The city is pretty miserable in the winter. January had its fun times and everything but this last month of the cold season is something that everyone has been looking forward to. It has snowed here a few times and usually that's something to celebrate but here it only makes things a little more bleak. Earlier in this blog I talked about how dingy and confining this city seems at times. At that time I was writing in the early summer and early fall. Now it is cold and wet so we no longer hike because the mountain tops are covered in ice and snow, I've already hurt myself once this trip and I don't want to again, so you can only imagine how restricted I feel without that release.

It's an odd winter around here though. As I believe I mentioned, Seoul has gotten more snow this winter than it has in the last 100 years. This is strange because Seoul usually has pretty dry winters because of very cold North Asian winds which make their way down the land mass to our little peninsula. These winds are cold enough to keep the air very dry almost all the time, but for some reason this winter has been filled with precipitation. Snow falls once a week or so and when it doesn't snow it rains on the warmer days and then freezes the very next day as the temperature drops below zero again. This really isn't very fun at all. I'm not a huge fan of cold weather as it is, and I've experienced a deeper chill here than I ever have before, so the snow and ice makes the winter all the more uncomfortable. I bought my first scarf here, an article of clothing I don't believe I had worn before coming to Korea, and a cheap pair of fake leather gloves because the thin cloth ones I usually go for just don't cut it. On the whole I found myself pretty unprepared for the cold here and have repeatedly regretted not bringing warmer clothes. I wish I had some long johns or something, in fact I think that I've even had wonderful dreams about the joy and warmth that would come with a nice pair of long underwear, mmmm, they would be so nice. It occurs to me now that I should have just asked my mom and dad to send me some in the beginning of the winter but I never did and now it's too late. I wouldn't even get them until the temperature began it's slow climb back to ninety. Oh well, live and learn.

So I've found myself constantly chilled to the core for the last two months and it's interesting how fast the cold came. We were told that the weather would surprise us with it's swift changes but even still I thought mother nature would give me a little more warning. Early December went from decently cold to well below freezing in the span of maybe 3 days. I remember a week playing soccer where I wore shorts to practice, then sweats the next day and then needing an additional pair of sweats the next day to stand the biting cold. The next thing I knew it was the heart of winter, I only have one pair of (thin) sweatpants, one coat which upon winter's descent I immediately spilled soup all over. Luckily a coworker had an extra winter jacket so I borrowed his but you get the point, I'm ill-equipped for the cold, both physically and raimentally, made up a new word.
Walking to work is something of a trial, after it snows, or rains, we inevitably have ice and then I have to pick where I walk wisely. I do not want to fall on my bum arm again so I've been extra careful. I venture into the cold wearing my shamu jacket, a hat, my new scarf and gloves and then the thin pants I own. While stepping gingerly over the numerous ice patches the wind cuts through my clothes like a hot knife through butter and the only consolation is the music in my ears, and of course my job.
Oddly enough one of the few things that makes this winter bearable is my work. So many of my friends are working their first jobs right out of school, and they hate it. I guess I'm lucky in that the walk to work, while very cold, is not a soul-sucking effort. Of course there are days where I have to convince myself to get out of bed, I think that comes with any job, but I think that I'm one of the few people that genuinely loves what they're doing. That's been a nice realization for me in this miserable season. My job is the exact opposite of the weather, it's exciting, heartening, full of successes and generally warm, if it's not I now have the power to turn on the heater if I want so that's really nice. We're nearing the end of the term for our students and most of the classes are graduating. Korean children start attending daily school when they turn eight (I think) so the older kids will start in their new schools come March, that's about half of our kindergarten students right there. Fortunately none of the classes I teach are graduating. I will have Venus and Mars class until I leave in July and both classes are improving rapidly. I gave both classes their second test last week and the week before, both classes did great. I had two perfects, one in either class, and I think 4 or 5 kids who only got 1-4 wrong which is really good considering it's a 50 question test. I was so proud of them and it's made me really happy to see them making progress like this. I've found my groove and it's been really nice for me and I think for the students too.
Success like this at work has really helped sustain me. People talk about the winter doldrums a lot and I've become a believer in the phenomenon, people really are more inclined to depression in the winter months but I've found that trying to be positive about things is really the way to go in the face of all this. That of course is easier said then done, but if you look it's easy to see the good things around you. For me they're everywhere; I'm in a foreign country for one, I have a great job, great friends, a family that cares about me back home, a soccer team that cares about me here, and a blog that helps me realize how lucky I am. Just writing all of this down is a great reminder for me too. Yes winter sucks, but I'm incredibly lucky to be doing what I'm doing, to be in the situation I'm in, to be alive and just today to have a blog entry that started out as a complaint about winter turn into a reflection on how unfounded that complaint is, what a great life.
The other main thing making the weather easy to deal with (sort of) is my soccer team. I wake up every morning to play for an hour with the guys on a dirt field at Taeguk Elementary School. It is bitter cold in the morning, but that only really bothers me for the first five minutes, after that my blood is pumping, I'm running all over the place and loving it. I still can't talk to most of the guys but have struck up what I think are genuine friendships with quite a few of them. Ho Jin, one of the best players on the team, has become a good friend in addition to Sung Nam. My strike partner has also become a friend along with the man who took me to get my arm looked at, Kim Dae Nam. The Coach (I'm not sure if anyone knows his name, at least Sung Nam doesn't) and I also have an understanding, he's something of a soccer mentor for almost everyone on the team and has taken me under his wing. He doesn't speak very much English but we manage to communicate quite well despite that. He recently taught me the proper way to bow to him which I'm always sure to remember when I see him at practice and the games. Under the tutelage of the Coach and Ho Jin I'm becoming a lot better at playing within the team's system. My passing is improvement and I'm working well with the other strikers, I'm learning how to be a better, more efficient player and I'm really loving it.
My coworker Pete just started playing also so I've got one more person to talk to at the practices and games. He's enjoying and I think it's been good for him to get out of his apartment. He lives with his girlfriend of two years and they are very happy but it was apparent to all of us that they needed to get out more, everybody needs their space. He plays a more defensive role than I do so he hasn't taken any of my playing time thankfully and has done real well in the first few games we've played.

One of the many reasons I love the team is because it's been pretty interesting to play with them. I've learned quite a bit about the cultural dynamics between men of different ages. The age range of players on our team is pretty wide. Pete and I are the youngest at 22 and I think the oldest man may be in his sixties. The deferential treatment that the older players get is almost immediately apparent. They play whenever they want and do whatever they want just about. Respect for elders is an integral part of the culture here and in an earlier entry I detailed how that has it's negative aspects. I thought in playing on a team with such a wide age range I'd see more of the bad things that entails, in fact it's been quite the opposite. Though everyone defers to the older men they are fair and helpful. They are very aware of the limitations that age has brought and have proved to be equally deferential to the advantages of youth. While the older players do get their time the majority of the players on the field in any match are the younger ones. The older men assume the role of teacher with ease and aplomb and have helped me at least quite a bit. They are not afraid to speak their mind to anyone on the field but it has never been in a derogatory way as far as I can tell through their body language and their tone of voice. Everyone takes the time to listen when they have something to say. I can gather some of it but it's easy to see that the other men learn from it a good bit. All this is usually done in a really light-hearted manner culminating in a small joke, sometimes I think at my expense but I don't really mind, and I think the guys on the team respect that. They know I can tell when they talk about me a lot of the time and I think that the understanding that they can talk about me if they want without bothering me has led to me being accepted pretty easily, because of course everyone is going to make fun of the foreign guy, that's just normal. They have all been only helpful, I've never felt like I wasn't a part of the team or scorned at all, even when I perform poorly.

I'm getting distracted, the point is the older men don't take advantage of the respect they're accorded, they give it back to us by letting us play and helping us become better players, they joke around with us and laugh with us, and it's really nice to know that I'm 22 years old and I have the respect of a 63 year old. I've found that the general idea is that you give respect to them and they will return it to you which I think is what makes this team work. I have to respect the fact that the older men can't run as fast on the field and tailor my passes for them, they in turn will cater to my style of play as it can fit into the system of passing and control of the ball. I enjoy running on the field and at first I had to quell my nearly uncontrollable urge to sprint for ever because if I'm doing that the rest of the team can't keep up with me. I'm the fastest person on the team and while that is good I have to remember that the other players need the build up of passes to move as a unit up the field otherwise I'm stranded in the final third with the ball and six defenders around me. This has really helped me be more aware of the players on my team, my position on the field and I think has made me a better player. By respecting the talents and limitations of my teammates I'm becoming a more involved distributor and a more prolific scorer as well. Today I scored 2 goals, had five assists, that's obscene but shelving my preconceptions of the game and adopting a more well rounded approach is obviously paying off.

That's soccer for the most part, any new developments? Ben's girlfriend Kelsey just got into town tonight and Ellie will be here next weekend so we're pretty excited to have the company. We've had a few birthday's (Holly, Natalie) go by without to much drama, some but not to much, and have found a really good Italian restaurant right near our work. I'm starting to think more and more about next year but have nothing concrete in mind yet, we'll see when July rolls around what I have figured out.

That's all for today folks. It may be a while 'til my next entry, probably after Ellie leaves, but I'll be sure to stick to this afterwards. Hope your enjoying it!

Pat