Second week down!  Thank god too, I was beginning to run a little short on patience today in the last few hours.  I know it's early to be thinking this but I truly believe that some of these kids are trying as hard as they can not to learn English and it's pretty frustrating to try and get through to them, but I'll keep on trucking.  It's really hard because these kids are really cute and it's almost impossible to keep for me them in line because I feel bad every time I yell at one of them.  They have the thinnest skin too, nearly all of them are criers and the ones that aren't are the ones that don't listen to you no matter what you say.  Fortunately I haven't made to many of the kids cry, just one that I know of, and I think that they like me because they always run up to me screaming my name when they see me in the halls.  They're good kids, whenever they frustrate me I try to imagine how much of a handful I was at 4 or 5 or 6.  I guess this is karma for being one of the most inattentive 1st graders ever, ha serves me right.

I've started eating at school too, every day they offer lunch for the employees but when I first got here I was told that the food's real hit or miss, they missed today.  It was a big giant whiff of a miss but I choked most of it down anyway thinking "I'm going to have to get used to this Korean food eventually might as well start now."  It wasn't the worst thing that ever happened to me, but it was definitely not the best.  I've gone out a few times and had Korean food and all of my experiences have been positive not including my lunch today at school.  It's a lot of soup and spices, almost everything they eat is burning hot, but it's still good.  Sometimes that's really unpleasant but here I haven't found that to be the case, even when my eyes have been streaming tears I always find myself going back for more, the stuff is delicious.  Pork, chicken, rice, Kimchi, and strangely enough radish are all a big part of most of the meals here.  Lots of fish too; squid is good I've found, mushrooms, onions and some kind of long stringy greens are usually appetizers and to my surprise I've found I can eat almost all of these things, except the radishes (shudder).  

I went to a ball game yesterday with a few of my coworkers it was 7 buck for seats in left field and we could've been right on the wall if we'd wanted to.  It was a lot of fun.  It was completely different from going to games in the states, everything was reasonably priced so we had a few beers without breaking the bank and had a great time.  Some of our other friends showed up so it ended up being like 7 of us watching the Doosan Bears kick the crap out of this other team, final score line was 11-1.  The night progressed from there and we had a lot of fun, work was rough this morning but hey thats the price you pay sometimes.  

That's it for tonight, skype and laziness got in the way of making this a more detailed post but I have to get up early tomorrow.  I'm going to go hike one of the mountains that frame the city in the morning and I need to get to sleep.  

Good night everyone!

I'll be back soon.

So I thought I'd have a hard time finding cool nature things here but then I stumbled upon this first guy. I was waiting for my friend so we could go for a run and I saw a dragonfly on the fence a few feet behind where I was standing.  I went and looked at him and he proved to be a brave little guy, not in the least bit worried about me. 

  I ran inside to grab my camera but by the time I got back he had flown away.  

Disappointed I took my camera back to my room and left to go get dinner, but since then I've kept my eye open and sure enough the other day I caught my dragonfly resting his wings on the barbed wire.  I ran inside again, determined to get a good shot of him and when I got back he was still there basking in the sun.  I snapped a few pictures before he flew behind my building.   I followed him and ran into another good looking dragonfly on the other fence, again resting on the barbed wire.  These are my two best shots of my new insect buddies.  I've found a quite few things that truly fascinate me here and these two are pretty close to the top of the list.  I couldn't help but be amazed by the intricacy of these little creatures and how alien they look compared to me.  Their bodies are so delicate yet so complicated, I've always thought so but this has been the first time I've been able to get a really good picture of a dragonfly, their usually pretty skittish.  I have about 60 of them and have been working on cropping them and finding the best ones for a little while, I wish I had photoshop but oh well iphoto isn't terrible.

I also have a few good pictures of the buildings here which I know I've talked about in other post  I addition to that I have a good one that Natalie took, then I returned to copy of the Han River framed by the city with the mountains in the background.  It gives you a pretty good idea of how integrated Seoul is with the land around it. 

So in short, the camera I got for graduation has been absolutely great.  Thanks Mom and Dad for making that happen.  Dad you did an amazing job picking it out and you too Uncle Mike, I know you helped a lot. I'm going to try and figure out how to get more pictures onto one of these posts but in the meantime you'll have to be happy with these two, which I think are pretty damn cool.

First week or so

Hey everybody.  So I know it's been long in coming but here's my second blog update after about a week here in Korea.  I love it, I really do but it is so much different than anyplace I have ever been before.  I've learned that Seoul has the second biggest metropolitan area in the world, second only to Tokyo, and it is certainly crazy to live in such a large city.  It takes 45 minutes on the subway for me to get halfway to the middle of the city, halfway to the middle of the city, and I am by no means on the outskirts.  I was dumbstruck when we drove home from the airport at the immensity of it all.  Seoul is built around the Han River which runs through a valley of mountains right by the coast, so the city turns with the bends in the river.  As we rounded the first of these mountains we saw Seoul for the first time, and I was nonplussed, it was large, but not as big as I had imagined it.  I thought it was comparable to any another city, but then we rounded the first bend in the river, and there was Seoul . . . still.   "Ok," I thought, "this isn't small."  I saw city hall, 14 bridges, maybe 15-20 thirty story apartment buildings, but still I wouldn't have said it was gigantic.  7 bends in the river later and my mouth was agape and had been for some time.  Fifteen apartment buildings had become hundreds, dwarfed by hundreds of looming office buildings, fifty to sixty story behemoths jutting up from the shoreline of the Han.  I had probably counted thirty large bridges all packed with traffic, some had subway trains racing across every 3 minutes, never longer than that, and you could see in the windows of the train-cars that they were choc full too.  Still we drove on, for two hours (in traffic) we drove through the city and by the time we got to my new apartment we hadn't even made it all the way across, two thirds of the way.  It was something else, but by the time we got to my apartment I was to tired to reflect on it all.

My boss had picked me up from the airport at 630, but I wasn't the only one he picked up.  My new coworker Natalie was also waiting for me at the airport.  I felt bad, my flight had been delayed and they had been waiting for more than two hours but they were both very nice. When we got to the apartment Mr. Shin insisted that we go out to dinner so we exhaustedly obliged him.  He took us to Bennigans, now defunct in the US, but the monte cristos are still served just as delicious as ever here in Seoul.  It was weird, I had just been thrown into an entirely new setting and the first place we went to eat was a place I had known my whole life.  Everything was just about the same, except that everyone working there was Asian.  Imagine a Bennigans bedecked in Irish nick knacks run by people who can't even speak English and despite their attempts at Irish dress, wouldn't fit in anywhere on St. Patrick's Day.  Though I tried to stifle my mirth for fear of being rude to my new boss, I laughed out loud when we got there, it was just ridiculous.  That laugh was about the last thing I had the energy to do.  I ordered my food and ate 2 bites of it before wanting to go to sleep.  Natalie felt the same way so after picking at our food for about a half an hour we very politely asked Mr. Shin to take us home, I took the monte cristo with me.

The next day was a whirlwind of activity.  Mr. Shin has Natalie and I wake up early in to try and get our medical checks done at the hospital which we were unable to do for some weird immigration reason.  We got to see where we would work, found it was surprisingly nice, opened Bank accounts and had lunch with Chris, the first of our coworkers that we were to meet that day.  He showed us around our area, told us where to buy food, go out to eat, gave us a bunch of helpful hints on living in Seoul and he did all of this with bronchitis, two ear infections, and laryngitis.  He's a nice guy to say the least, but he eventually had to leave to go the doctor.  While Chris was showing us around we met Ben, another coworker who was also paying a visit to a local physician.  We met up with Ben later after Chris left and he took us to one of the absurdly large malls in the city, Yongsak, and helped us get cellphones.  We hung out with him for the rest of the day and into the night.  He showed us his new house, he had just moved from our apartment building, my room actually, to Itaewon a district in Seoul which is a 40 minute subway ride into the city, where we got our first taste of Korean television which carries amazing commercials according to Ben.  Amazing meaning American commercials on crack-cocaine dancing beneath a disco ball wearing only christmas tree lights, yea.  We later went out to the bars in Hongdae for a while with Ben and a few other friends of his, all very nice people, but made it an "early" night and went home around 1:30 after seeing several of our new friend's favorite places in the city.  It was a good night and all but I was glad to be back in my bed.

So much has happened since then but it still seems like yesterday.  Natalie and I had another night on the town on Saturday with Andrew, who had just arrived, and his friend Ben, or Gu as Andrew insisted on calling him.  Yet again it was a good time.  Sunday I prepped for work and went out to eat with several of Andrew's friends that live here still, then came home and went to bed early.  I was hoping to get a good night's rest for my upcoming work day but I was not so lucky 10 hours, 6 of them sleepless, later I got up and went to work.  I had had very little in the way of orientation on Friday but was nonetheless thrust right into the thick of things with 5 different classes of kids.  Two of the classes consist of 4 year olds, one is 5 year olds and two are 6 year olds, but all surprisingly speak a fair amount of english.  Despite my charge's english experience it was a very long day.  

I taught eight 40 minute classes from 9:40 until 6:30 and was beat by the end of the day.  The kids have so much energy!  The classes don't have more than 8 kids in them but commanding all of the students attention and keeping them from speaking Korean is nearly impossible.  The main rule at the school is of course no Korean, "Hanguk NO" one of my kids always shouts when I have to remind them, emphasizing the no by crossing his arms in the shape of an X, but they talk in "hanguk" whenever they think they can get away with it.  You have to be very strict about it and punish them when they do it, but disciplining the kids is a little tricky.  The only thing that seems to work is giving the kids Yellow tickets or sending them to my boss.  Unfortunately I wasn't given tickets to hand out until this morning (Thu) so I had to make do with the threat of Yellow tickets, which works not at all.  I refused to take kids to Jessica teacher (they call us all by our first names followed by teacher) on the first day, I didn't want to look like I was unable to control my classes, but without yellow tickets it's almost as if I'm a scorpion without a stinger, the kids can mess with me all they want without any care in the world.  I did a lot of shouting, and tried to keep them active but for the most part the little demons had their way with me.  

Fortunately, my last three classes all had tests scheduled for monday so I was able to relax a little bit.  I had to read some of the questions but the tests for the most part are up to the students, easy right?  Well yea but it being my first day and all I managed to mess that up a little bit too.  My first test went off without a hitch, no problems at all, the children had questions, but I'm an English major, an English language test written for five year olds is like breathing, I didn't have to think at all.  The second class started well enough, I handed out the test and did the first oral part, but after I had read the first oral part another student came in.  I figured he was just late, so I gave Jason the test and had him get started.  After everyone had finished I asked them about themselves, had them tell me, their names again, their favorite animals, and asked how long they'd been going to ECC.  Well come to find out it's Jason's first day.  I felt like an idiot, but oh well, I apologized, but Jason is a good natured kid, he smiled and said it was fine.

In my last test the opposite happened, a girl told me she had been absent for a while, so I didn't give her the test.  I asked a round later and found she'd miss one day.  The test had covered four chapters . . . I AM an idiot, I had to laugh about it.  This girl though I'm watching her now, fool me once.  That was the end of my first day I had weathered the first storm and it turned out all right.  I'm working on day four now, tomorrow's friday and I think I can make it, we'll see though, maybe I'll crack . . . no.

My coworkers are great they've helped Natalie and I a lot and even though they come off pretty jaded about the whole thing they're good at what they do.  I wore one of my ties on the first day, and when I met one of the other guys who works there he commented on it; "You wearing a tie, huh?" Yep. "Good for you, now the only place you can go is down."  We laughed about it, but I think I'll continue to wear my ties, I mean, they look damn good on me.  There's Jade, Ben, John, Skylar, Liz, Chris, Angie, Jennifer, Joy, Eunice, and several others.  Tuesday night we went out with a few of them for an older teacher's going away party and had an absolute blast, I'll detail that in my next post though, this one is already far to long.  Miss everyone, but I'm having a great time, hope everything back home is good

So it's the day before I leave and I'm nervous.  I woke up at 4 in the morning realizing that in 26 hours I'd be stepping on an airplane headed for San Francisco and then Seoul.  Crazy.  Now I'm thinking about all of the things I need and how much I'm going to miss my house, my dog, my family, and just how daunting this whole trip is.  It's scary it really is, I'm worried I don't want to leave everything behind.  There was a day in Africa when I felt like I needed to go home immediately, I missed everything to much and that feeling was debilitating. As I sit here knowing how much I'll miss everything I can't help but wonder when a similar day will roll around in Korea.  That day was three months into a six month trip in the Gambia and here I am about to leave for a year, so I don't think it's going to be a matter of if so much as when and how many times I won't want to leave my apartment because I'd rather be in Laurel MD, hopefully not to many times.  I think that emotions like that are best kept at bay by the things that remind you of home.  In Africa when I had that day I had lost my wallet.  I keep a few important things in my wallet as does just about everyone I know.  My ID, my credit cards, etc. etc.  I wasn't so worried about those things though.  It was the things that reminded me of home that I knew I needed.  I had family pictures, my beat up old school ID, notes from friends, and the fortune cookie I'd kept; "God will give you everything you want."  All of those things were my pieces of home that made it ok to be somewhere else.  I kept them with me at all times and they reminded me of how lucky I am to have the home that I do.  I cried when I lost it and I think that I'd cry again, because I'd lost my home.  Luckily it was returned to me by a taxi driver.  I was so happy I gave him all of the money in the wallet, some 300 dalasi.  I hugged him twice and thanked him more times than I can remember.   He thought I was crazy, and maybe I am but that act of charity brought me out of one of the lowest lows I had ever had.  I went out to eat that night to celebrate.  When I realized I had lost my wallet my world had come crashing down around me, the keepsakes that had given me the courage to be there, the foundation of my house of cards had been taken away and it hadn't taken long for the wind to scatter the rest.  In regaining it I was able to rebuild and move on but I'll never forget that day. 

I'm still sitting here thinking about what I have to pack, toothpaste, floss, batteries, deoderant, shampoo maybe, soap, necessities all of them, but what I really need is my wallet and the memories that it holds.  I've changed wallets recently, but I'm not sure if that's smart, I might go back to the old one, it's closer to my heart.  I'll have to refill it though, repopulate it with my license, draft card, student id, credit cards, family picture.  The fortune cookie to, I still have it and two new ones to go with it; "You will be fortunate in everything" and "Before we find ourselves we must first loose ourselves."  Well so far God has given me everything I want, everything I need.  I have an amazing family, a beautiful home, great friends and much much more.  I've been very fortunate, I mean, look at what God's given me, how fortunate is that?  Now I'm off to loose myself, but while I do that I'm going to keep everything that makes me so fortunate, everything that I love, wrapped in a tattered trifold that has followed me closely around the world, left butt-cheek to be precise, never that far behind but always in my mind.