Party Time.

It's July 23rd and approaching is my three-month anniversary, and with it my first considerable break from working-- one whole beautiful week capped by two lovely weekends. Koreans don't get a whole lot of time off. The kids go to school all year... I haven't had the guts to tell my students about the three months American kids get off every year.

I won't see another break until Christmas, so for now it's--

Below are some images of my first baseball game here. We paid a few bucks to go root for the Doosan Bears as they took on.. the.. I don't know I'm lazy and can't read Korean yet. The Bears won anyway.
This couple came and stood next to us outside before the game and as soon as the staring became obvious the guy came up to me to ask if his girlfriend could take a picture with me. I said I would do it if they took a picture with me, so here is that one. I told him I was from Pittsburgh and liked his hat (it's eerie how many Buccos hats I see here). As they walked away he turned around and thrust his fist in the air and said, "handsome!" And I about lost my mind right then.

This is the Olympic Stadium. They built it when Seoul hosted the Olympics in 1988 and I hope they still use it.






The stadium wasn't as empty as it looks.. The cheap section, where we were, was absolutely packed full of screaming maniacs. Check out the video below-- that never stopped.

Here are some more pictures of little kids.

Jack is in 2nd grade. He doesn't have much of an attention span but he is one of the funniest people I have ever met. He always meets me before class and carries my stuff and asks me how I am doing on a scale from 1 to 100. When I give them their graded tests back he usually tries to haggle a better grade. He asks about my apartment alot and once drew me a picture of a house for my birthday, which is in April. Then, he asked me when my Mom's birthday was and drew her a house too.


Ryan. Ryan hates Thomas. I don't have any pictures of Thomas because he wasn't there that day and I'm not too crazy about him myself.

Jack got a hold of my camera.

Annie and Buzz kind of like each other.

Brian, Kate, Jessica.

Kevin.

Panda class: Julie, Jack, Elly, Daniel, Philip, Peter, Ryan, Alex. Missing is Dean. These guys are ROUGH but I love them because of it.

Julie fell asleep on my lap during video time.

Jack, Ryan, Tony falling for the old "pose for a video" trick.

I have a lot more to tell you, but-- next time. Those of you who are waiting for letters and postcards and... birthday presents (Mom) all I can say is be patient. Let this blog be enough for now and I will try to do some handwriting on my break. And by the way if you want a postcard, I don't care if you are a stranger reading this, send me an address and you shall have one. Simple as that. Just be patient with me.

Everybody okay?

Okay bye.

I'm watching Tango & Cash right now

Just a quick one here with some pictures... I'm doing fine. Kind of fighting a cold and going to bed early for the last couple of days. I have decided to put all of my energy into finding a way to convince myself that I like my job. Really, it's not even that bad. A lot of complaining goes on in the office and, I admit, I do my share of it sometimes but it truly could be worse. I mean, of course it could be worse. I also know that as soon as I hit the halfway point here I am going to start back up with the nostalgia again, only backwards, and I am going to start missing this place. I do complain a lot about the hours-- I don't get a whole lot of time to see the city and I end up spending a lot of evenings in my apartment either writing or doing whatever and then going to bed early. I have been running more and more, too, which is a great way to explore the surrounding neighborhoods. So, the only worthwhile purpose that I can really come up with is to learn to love my job and do it well. I am working with kids and all.

Ann of Koala class.

Tina Teacher in the lobby of English Friends.

Becky and Tina starting with the Soju at Sue's going-away party. Soju, look it up.

Portrait of Becky and Me en route to Sunny's wedding.

Sunny Teacher. I'm glad I got to see a Korean wedding while I was here. It happened it what they told me was a church but it looked like a lecture hall. No gifts, just envelopes with cash in them. There were cameras everywhere, including right in Sunny's face during the ceremony. Guests were sleeping, talking, getting up to get something to eat and coming back.. and there was this whole "come meet Santa Claus" part as seen in the picture where you could come have your picture taken right before the ceremony. And, sadly, no kiss at the end.

We took the kindergarteners on a field-trip to a... water. filtration. plant.

I think Mom would have written me a sick note for the day.

Julie.

Sophia.

Esther.

Daniel. Daniel wants to be a jump-rope teacher when he grows up. I admit he is pretty good.

Julie again. Philip in the stripes.

Amanda, Kate, Jessica.

Peter with his best Eeyore face on. Oh, Peter.

Water... Filtration... Plant...

Me and the Boss.

And, finally, here's me with my hot new girlfriend on holiday at the beach!

Bon Voyage!

What My Mouth Eats.

Traditional Korean Dinner.
Fish-- I ate his body.

I put it here.

Some more food.

Just a Few Thoughts.

First, I took a little heat for my comment at the end of the video in my last post, the one with the two girls trying to recite the dialogue. At least one of you seemed to think that that was irresponsible of me. Let me assure you, I've said much worse things under my breath and nobody picked up on it. You can say whatever you want in class as long as you say it fast enough and its not completely quiet in the room. Of course my camera picked it up--I was holding it. Anyway, these particular kids are some of the cool kids. They know they're terrible and its okay.

I've had some jerk teachers in my life. Most notably my swimming teacher when I was in kindergarten who made fun of me and splashed water in my face because I couldn't swim. I cried and never went back. I still can't really swim. I would NEVER make a child feel like he wasn't learning, or worse yet couldn't learn, what it is I'm teaching.

That said, here is the transcript of the video as some of you requested:

-Hey, what a cool kite!
-Thanks, I made it myself.
-You're kidding!
-No, it's true. I made it.
-Was it hard?
-No, it was easy. I'll show you.
-Great! What do we need?
-Paper and string. Let's get some.
-That was terrible.

Watch it again-- it IS terrible.

Here are some quirky things that Koreans do.. One, whenever one has to take a call at the dinner table, or sometimes on the subway, they cover their mouths with their free hands while they talk. Like nobody can tell I'm talking if I cover up my mouth? I love it.

I noticed the second one while on break and having some coffee at the Dunkin' Donuts down the street from work. People here treat DD like it's a coffee shop.. I looked around and noticed tables of hip, young college kids on a break from classes and sharing a tray of donuts. Can you picture this in the States? "Hey, Kayla, lets go down to the Dunkin' Donuts and split some chocolate glazed DONUTS and talk about boy bands."

Have you ever heard of Fan-Death? I hadn't before last night. Apparently you can ask any Korean about whether or not you should sleep with your fan on and they will say, "No! You'll die!" They are convinced that somewhere along the line it has been scientifically proven that if you do sleep with your fan on and your windows shut you could have the breath sucked right out of you as you sleep and you could die. I know.

Last Sunday I went to check out the frisbee club on Yeouinaru, which is on the island of Yeouido in the Han River, which cuts right through the middle of the city. It was beautiful but unfortunately I got the time wrong on the website and showed up shortly before they finished playing. So, I plan on going back this weekend or next if I'm feeling in shape.

This Saturday is SunnyTeacher's wedding and I'm invited-- excited to get to see a Korean wedding while I'm here.

I hope I haven't made it out to seem like I'm not enjoying myself here. I certainly am. It's just that I've only been here for 2 months and I guess I'm still a bit homesick . I love this city a lot but with how many hours I work I feel I don't get to see it all that easily or all that often. I have been enjoying my time off-- on the weekends, of course, it's partytime. I have to cram as much into them as I can while getting enough rest so Monday isn't too painful. I'm still not used to working full time. I love my kids, my apartment, being mostly alone, doing whatever I want, etcetera. And I love that I meet people here constantly. It feels like I doing nothing but talk all day long, which is new for me. Chrissy's new co-worker/friend Dianne is from, yep, Pittsburgh and she's been a nice addition to the crew. It was on the way to dinner last night with them, Nari, and Ross that Becky and I walked to the subway in the rain. I chose flip-flops for my feet, a wise choice to be sure.. On the way down the wet granite steps of the Haengdang station I totally lost it and went down hard. Hard. It felt like I shook the whole neighborhood and on the way back Becky wanted to check to see if I dented the steps.. My point is I am very lucky I didn't break an elbow or something. I'm a little bruised but it could have been a lot worse. And this just days after I decided not to spring for health-care while I'm here... Yikes!

On the weekdays I work out a good amount and play my guitar. Tammy (drop), a girl I met at Rocky Mountain Tavern during the Penguins run, gave me a guitar that one of her friends left behind. Sometimes when people leave here abruptly, be it because of personal reasons or bad conditions at their school or whatever, rather than feel the wrath that could come from not finishing your contract (not being paid for the last month of work) most people will pull what is called a 'Midnight Run' where you wait for last month's check to clear and when it does you are on a plane home without giving any notice. Your director comes to your apartment to see why you aren't at work and it's empty. Simple as that. They have no right to legal action or even to try to contact you. It's over. Anyway, that's what her friend did and I got a guitar out of the whole business that's amazingly similar to the one I never played back home. If that isn't an omen i don't know what is.. so I'm playing it a lot. Second chances for everyone.

Becky just put about 40 albums worth of music on my iPod. I was hurting for new music and now I've got plenty to tide me over. I'm not going to talk about it because I'm not pretentious but I will say that its amazing what new music can do for you when you didn't even realize you needed it.

Other than that I am growing my hair long and when my razors run out I am going to stop shaving, too. What are they going to do, fire me? Please.

Here are a couple of my new friends.
The Singeumho Station-- this is one of two gigantic escalators (plus like 2 big flights of steps) that it takes to get down there.Some buildings that I found inspirational and weird.

Shoes in Yeouinaru,

Chrissy and Ross,

Nari,

Dianne and Yours Truly.















Thanks. Bye.
John.