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

So I know it's been a little while but there is a reason. I dislocated my left elbow a little over 2 months ago and was in a cast for a month. While I had the cast on it was very difficult to type so I didn't post anything. I am out of the cast now and ready to start blogging again, woohoo.

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

ulleungdo part 1

I'm going to jump ahead real fast to last weekend because I'm afraid if I wait to long on this one I might not be able to do it the justice a fresh memory would. So here goes.

10/2-10/5

This past weekend was the South Korean holiday of Chuseok which is comparable to the American holiday of Thanksgiving. Families return to their points of origins, have a family meal and generally express their thanks for the past year and their lives. We had Thursday and Friday of last week off as well as this past Monday. A lot of the students went to their grandparents' houses, one kid went to Guam, but for the most part everyone returned to their families and celebrated quietly. Having no family in Korea, their teachers took this opportunity to take short vacations around Asia. A lot of our coworkers had made plans a while ago to get out of the country. Ben and Liz went to Tokyo, Jeremy was going to go to the Philippines but wasn't able to because of the Tsunami that recently struck, Ben Yannuzzi, Natalie and I being relatively new had to fashion our own plans and decided to stay in the country rather than leave. We were lucky and found that Adventure Korea, the same company through which we did the Bungee jumping, had set up a trip to an island of the Eastern coast of Korea which was relatively cheap, so we jumped all over it.

We would be staying on Ulleung Island or Ulleungdo (do meaning island) and would have the opportunity to travel to Dokdo, another island farther our into the pacific that has an interesting story I will get into later. We booked in advance with no problems and by the time last Thursday rolled around we were packed and ready to go . . . for our 11:30 pm departure time, woohoo. We took a cab to the express bus terminal and arrived along with 132 other foreigners who had decided to go on the trip. Four buses filled up quickly in front of the terminal and we soon were just about ready to go. Our guide, the same one who we had ridden with to the rafting trip took roll, made some jokes in broken english, we all laughed, he explained to us our schedule and then we got to know our bus mates a little bit. We didn't end up leaving till about 12:30 in the morning which wasn't that big of a deal, most people were much more excited than tired, so we all talked and laughed until the guide told us we were leaving, shut off the lights and the bus lurched to life.

The plan was to leave and catch the sunrise on the eastern coast of the country before taking a ferry out to Ulleungdo. Our guide encouraged us to sleep on the bus because we had a long day ahead of us what with traveling and exploring the island, the problem with this was that the bus wasn't comfortable enough for me to sleep, not nearly enough. Most of our companions had the same problem, so instead of sleeping I listened to my Ipod for 5 hours. The ride was broken up by two 15 minute rest stops, and oddly enough seemed to fly by. I did try to sleep but the only time I got close to passing out we pulled into the first rest stop. After that I gave up, luckily though we reached the beach parking lot after not to long. We still had a little over an hour until sunrise so I got out of the bus, ate my breakfast and Natalie and I began the walk down to the beach.

The walk wasn't too long, about 200 meters and I was excited to see the ocean for the first time since the plane ride but before I could we had to pass through a fish market where a variety of smells were waiting for us. First sewage wafted into our nostrils followed quickly by the smell of rotting fish, yummy. We turned a corner and saw what our noses had picked up, rows and rows of squid impaled by bamboo reeds hung out to dry by the local fishermen. There were at least 400 of them and they smelled to high heaven. Ben had been complaining about how he doesn't like killing sea animals for the whole of our stay in Korea so far so I turned to Natalie and said, "Ooo, Ben isn't gonna like this." It was squidocide. That was the biggest collection of dead animals I had seen ever in my life. We hurried by after taking a few quick pictures and made our way down to the beach. In the early morning the beach was a welcome site. The sand was cool between my toes and the wind coming off of the ocean felt like a cool caress on my bare skin, it was everything I had hoped for.

We walked down to the water and drank in it's grandeur. Far out you could see the fishing boat's lights dotting the horizon, 10 or more shone like beacons, and soon we saw the rock sentinels that dotted the water close to the beach. Years of wind, rain and ocean waves had carved watchmen out of the stoney shore. The rocks rose from the water in stalwart fashion all weather beaten but stoic against the omnipresent forces of nature. They were a sight to see. I scrambled across the bridge leading up to a rocky outcropping on the right side of the pristine water line and encountered only more impressive examples of the artistic prowess of water. Where I was standing had at one point been a massive boulder of granite that had jutted out into the sea, millennia ago probably, but now there were 15 or so immense rocks across the water. These were accompanied by spits of grey stone extending from the shore which created small channels that the ocean ran up between, like fingers almost, reaching out to touch the sea. I continued along the path and found the entire coast to be a surreal mix of stone, small patches of vegetation and ocean. It was remarkable.

To think that such as this had come without anything but time, people look on the world and revel in the marvels we create, the Eiffel Tower, the Great Wall of China, and the Pyramids at Giza stun and fascinate people the world over. Our cities are monuments to humanities ingenuity and dominance, but at that beach I couldn't help but delight in the fragility and mortality of it all. This had taken millions of years to create. Millions of years of constant wear and tear, millions of years of destruction, degradation. There was no planning, there was no prototype for what I was looking at. We the builders rejoice in our successes, name the planners and the architects geniuses, but could any of them have done this? I think not. Shelley had it right, "look on my works ye mighty and despair." The nerve. Who are we to have named the eight wonders of the world? I could've picked eight from that beach.

I rejoiced in my exploration. As it the night faded I ran around the area snapping pictures of the landscape, which without water would have been pretty frightening, the rocks rose out of the ground like spikes in places, I felt like I could have been traversing a granite wasteland except that it was broken by the bluest cleanest ocean water I have ever seen. The rocks looked menacing, frozen as they were climbing up and out of the ground. I started to climb on them and took as many pictures as I could. It was still very dark so I had a hard time getting shots that weren't blurry but I did manage to get some good ones as the lighting improved. There were fences set up everywhere and signs written in Korean which undoubtedly said "Do NOT Climb!" luckily I don't speak Korean and despite the fact that I will try and learn I will forever use that excuse as a way to circumvent the silly boundaries preventing me from venturing into places I must see.

This was certainly one of those must see places. The sunrise came and went with nothing as a large cloud bank was sitting over the pacific in front of us so I took the time to fence jump and play on the rocks that had been screaming for me to scramble across them. The climbing was excellent. Nature had carved natural foot and handholds into the stones which I took advantage of. It was lucky to that it had because my rainbows probably wouldn't have done so well on sheer rock face. I made my way out onto the largest extension of the shore, it was as if I was tenderly picking my way across the spine of a once mighty sea creature, now long deceased with only its bones remaining, rising twenty some feet out of the water as proof of it's monstrosity. I went up and down the solid backbone of the smooth stone, testing its limits finding new places to go. Paths along the rock opened up to me freely and were I a little braver I could have certainly made it to the furthest edge. I had my camera with my so I climbed to the tallest point took a few pictures and left.

No less exciting was the climb back, I tried new avenues, different from the ones I'd taken before, they proved more challenging but all the more rewarding. Halfway through I had to catch myself. A spider bit me as I reached for the next hand hold and I wrenched my hand away leaving myself supported by only one foot with a 15 foot drop onto the sharp teeth of the earth below me. Reminded again of my mortality and now carrying some kind of stinger in my left pointer finger I took less risks and made it back safely to return to the bus. My finger swelled up a bit but did nothing more, I'm fine now, but I do think I killed the the spider.

We left the beach not soon after I returned. People were disappointed we had not seen the sun but the anxiousness was building, we were almost there! We got to the boat terminal grabbed out things and boarded the ferry. I had the misfortune to be sat next to a very large man who smelled rather funny and seemed to want to talk the whole boat ride there. He was nice enough but I was not in the mood. Luckily I hadn't slept in over 24 hours at this point so I quickly passed out and slept for the entirety of the ferry ride. My oversized seat buddy shook me awake when we reached the harbor at Ulleungdo. We were leaving and I had missed the approaching view of the island, no matter though, I'm on vacation. Slightly groggy Ben, Natalie and I climbed off the ferry and took our first look of a simple little fishing town wedged between the ocean and the towering mountains that make up the island. It was exactly where I wanted to be.

We carried our stuff up to the hotel and got put in our rooms. Ben, Natalie and I were in one room with an Irishman who was also named Patrick. I took my name and he took Paddy but we hardly saw him for most of the trip anyway. We got situated and after exploring a little bit with a new friend Matt, discovering a few goat and an incredible view of a beach we had not seen, we were corralled by the tour guides into four buses on which we would circumnavigate the Island. I was excited, though very tired. From what I had seen the Island was a paradise. The place was clearly dominated by the landscape, mountains rising unhindered from the depths of the ocean, but the people had managed to carve out small niches in the small valleys between the looming volcanic rock. The rock itself was ages old and now much of the surface had degraded into perfect soil for the multitude of plant life flourishing on the slopes. Trees, shrubs, flowers and much more covered the entirety of the Island and we would gt some good views of all of this on our bus tour.

The first stop we made was at turtle rock, a huge extension from the main body of the island that rose hundreds of feet over the water. It's called turtle rock because it looks a lot like a turtle when you look at it right, it took me looking at my pictures a few times to actually get it, but I did. We walked around and climbed a little bit, the tide was going out and had left pools on the edges of the rock which I took some pictures of, but the most impressive part of this entire stop I think was the ocean. I hadn't taken time to stop and look at the water yet as we had been rushed off of the ferry, into our apartment and onto the bus almost immediately, but now I had the chance to. There wasn't anything but flat blue water with the sun reflecting off of it as far as the eye could see.

Now I've been going to the beach all my life, I love it there, but it was not the same as this. The water was different, the air was different, everything, even my sense of place was not at all similar to what I remember it being at Ocean City (MD or NJ) or even Key West. The water was comparable to Florida, crystal clear yes, as it was on the eastern shore of Korea, but even clearer than that. It was almost as if I was looking through blue tinted glasses at the bottom of the sea. I had never seen water so translucent in my entire life, not even in water bottles. I remarked to Yannuzzi that I think I could probably live in that water and never have to come up for air, never, that's how clear it was. It stretched forever too, the water did, and it wasn't that dirty greenish brown water we know and love on the east coast of the US it was all blue, inexplicably blue, it molded itself with the sky so much so that the horizon looked like the joining of two parallel universes, embracing despite their significant differences.

There I was, in the middle of all of this rock, air and water finding it hard to decide to which of these worlds I belonged. I knew which one was right, but I wanted to live in the others so much. I felt like my place could just as easily have been flying around the sky or walking on the bottom of this pristine ocean in stead of standing on the edge of my solid grounded world looking into the two realms of this planet characterized by motion and ever present change. On solid land we live in the same conditions as everyone else; we have gravity, we stand, we walk, we sit. We jump and we come back down, we fall and we get back up, but no matter where we are or what we do we still inhabit the ground. We have engineered planes and boats that carry us through these other realms of sky and water, but they are not made for us anymore than we are for them. Our place is rooted to the earth and forever will be. On Ulleungdo for the first time I though I could live in these two other worlds, I thought that they could be for me, I hoped they could, but they can't, I'm still rooted here in Seoul. I still walk to work everyday, I don't fly, I still teach classes standing near a white board, not angling my way through reefs. I know that this is where I belong, but if for a day I could belong to the sky or the sea, just for one day, I would never complain again.

We were called back to the buses, but I stayed and stared out for a little while longer. It was beautiful, the varied world we live in is truly amazing and there are some places in it that force you to realize this, Ulleungdo's turtle rock proved to be one of them for me. Snooze and I walked back. I was mournfully dry except for my toes, but that was enough for me, for now. We loaded into the buses and passed several more rocks rising out of the sea, each as impressive as the last. There were several tunnels, lion rock, bear rock, each of which I feel are pretty self explanatory and then we reached our second stop. There would be five stops and this on was just a deck from which you could see this entire side of the island. From here you could see part of Elephant rock, the ocean and a really nice view of topography of the island. The ocean fed into the small harbor which sustained the village that climbed up the looming mountain that outstripped the village and soared in its majesty. The mountains really did dominate the island but they were so nice about it I felt. They were ever present and triumphant but people lived at their feet and in the crevasses between their toes and thrived. It was perfect symbiosis and it was a nice departure from Seoul where people have become the dominant ones.

We stayed for twenty minutes there, took a group picture and departed for the next stop. We passed more rocks in the water. The first of these was the rock that nobody cares about, HAHAHAHAHAHAHA, very funny. The next few were a trio, the three sisters. Legend has it that these rocks were actually angels who had decided to stay near Ulleungdo because they had found it to be an earthly paradise. All right, at this point I was halfway to declaring the same thing. Next was the sitting man, crocodile rock and a few others. One was actually another miniature island where there was only one farm and a man and his son who lived there, lonely life. We continued on, reached a harbor and then started climbing. The roads were very steep and frankly I was amazed that the bus could actually drive up. The drivers were maniacs, they could probably have driven those buses through hell if they wanted to but luckily it was just a mountain road and we made it to the temple we were headed for soon.

The temple was framed on three sides by mountains one of which had a few holes poked through the top. Our guide told us that these are for the apocalypse. When the world ends God is going to pluck Ulleungdo out of the ocean by hooking his fingers through the four holes. I love the legends this place had. I took some pictures of the relatively new temple and them we continued on to the final stop, the crater.

Ulleungdo had been formed by a now dead volcano and we were headed for the center of it. When we got there we were stunned it looked like the midwest. The island, being dominated by mountains, had no flatland except for the few plots some industrious fisherman had carved out for their homes. Here in the center of the crater was flatland though, enough for rolling farmland surrounded by the rim of what used to be a volcano. We stayed here for a little bit. We got to see an example of old an old Korean farming village which had been built for tourists, drank some pumpkin makali, a rice wine flavored in this case with pumpkin which is very good in my opinion then left. The whole ride took about 5 hours and I was pretty excited still. I surprised myself in that I wasn't tired. I had been awake for almost 40 hours straight at this point but I was still going strong. Ben had passed out on the bus a few times but I was just so excited by this amazing place my energy was feeding off of it.

I'm gonna post this now and stop. There's a lot more to this trip I know it's a lot but this was the best experience I've had in Korea so I think it deserves the time and volume I'm giving it, enjoy.