I haven’t had a large surplus of extra time since I’ve been in Korea. My time has been portioned out in the following mundane tasks in order from greatest time spent to least: Working and getting organized at work (8-11 hours per weekday), cleaning my new apartment (3-7 hours per week day and 8-12 hours per weekend day), sleeping and resting with a sinus infection (all that remains). This was only briefly sprinkled with eating with my new co-workers and shopping trips for various foods or cleaning supplies. However, now I’m almost completely organized at work. I left after only 6 hours today! I’m almost all done cleaning my new place, which was a minor nightmare due to being sick and the extreme dirtiness of the place. Also, my voice is coming back stronger and I’m not feeling nearly as sick this week! So if I don’t post anything new on my blog from here on out it’s probably because I don’t consider myself very interesting. ;-D He he! Now that my time has finally opened up a little here’s some basics about my life here in Korea.
This is a shot of the dinner we had when we went out with everyone from work.
Everyone keeps asking me, “How’s Korea?” Well, generally it’s just like any other highly populated area I’ve been in before. Good public transportation, people that are open minded to outsiders, and modern architecture. Somehow in Korea even though public trashcans are very rare there isn’t much litter at all. Pyeongtaek is considered a smaller city by Korean standards since it is only a million people. Huh!? The denser the population the more dirt seems to be on the streets and sidewalks. I’m thinking that the winters are usually the dirtiest because the snow doesn’t wash away any of the dirt when it melts slowly over a few days. I haven’t seen all of Pyeongtaek. We are luckily close to the major station that takes us from town to town with public transportation. The transit system in Korea is pretty easy to navigate and inexpensive. As soon as I know some basic Korean language I’ll be exploring on my own! For now I’ve only ventured out with Jen. She speaks and reads a lot of Korean so I’m learning by following. So far we have gone to Seoul a few times, Songtan three times and Suwon twice.
Here’s a big screen in the train station.
There were TVs on the train.
This picture has poor quality, but there was a TV in our cab.
The bus stops have interactive touch screens.
So many things in Korea seems at least 1/4 smaller. I expected clothes and shoes to come in smaller sizes, but the following things were a surprise to me: streets, cars, busses, mini-mini vans, door ways, plates, forks, towels (way smaller), paper towel height, toilet paper roll width, brooms (you have to bend way over since the broom stick is only two feet long?), refrigerators (mine is actually considered giant), counter tops, cupboard depth, drinking cups (they hold less than 6 oz.), and many other things I’m sure I’m forgetting. I feel like a giantess even when I don’t wear high heel shoes!
Tiny cars-and I thought my mini cooper was small. This is almost as small as a smart.
Small bus- this bus isn’t much bigger then the American sized SUV.
This is a typical sized truck, but it’s about half the size of our American big rigs.
Small flatware next to mine from the states-no this isn’t considered child size, either.
This mini sized mini van was only as long as the regular sized car behind it!
Right around Christmas on one of my favorite outings was to Seoul. Jen took me to this traditional market district after we had lunch with her sweet cousin. There were a wide variety of ceramics there. Many were the famous inlay type that Korea is known for. I took tons of pictures! I won’t bore everyone with all of them, but I’ll post some of the more interesting ones today. I realized in Korea they have no regard for the American trademark or copyright. They had bootleg copies of movies and music, Starbucks logo socks, major American sports team logo clothing and angry birds stuff all mixed in between booths of cheep souvenirs and traditional Korean art.
I suppose this is the Korean version of ROTC? This is at the University accross from the bus station in Pyeongtaek.
This was the mall above the train station where we met Jen’s cousin at a little cafe before lunch.
Cute robot cup at the cafe.
Pager rack at the little cafe
Not your typical pager-this played vidios and entertained you while you waited.
Lunch is served!
The market where we saw all the cool pottery.
Each of these cranes and all the details in between were done by hand using the inlay technique. Amazing!
Now that’s fancy! I was trying to figure out how they make it…
Itty bitty pottery-each one is about an inch tall.
They have no regard for copy write law I guess…
Here’s some random dudes dressed up as candy bars walking down the mall.
Some shots of a park and a random 5 story Burger King
Good bye Seoul. Here we are back at the bus station.
It’s been below zero almost the entire time since I got here. One of the rare days where it was above zero it rained a bit. Friday it’s supposed to get up to 6 degrees C! I won’t have to wear quite as many layers. Today, I looked at the temperature and saw that it was -9C. So I put on a tank top, a t-shirt, a long sleeved shirt, a turtleneck sweater, a corduroy jacket, a hoody, a coat and a wind proof shell in addition to my two pairs of pants and two pairs of socks! Ha ha! I kind of felt like the dude in the Weezer video, but it was so worth it. I was nice and toasty all the way on my 10 minute walk to the school.
The children at the school where I teach are very well behaved. Although a few of them have this fascination with their pencil boxes that borders on mania and keeps some of them from concentrating on their lessons. I’ve tried to combat this with telling them not to have anything in their hands during the lesson unless it’s time to write, and also I make them follow along with the text using their pointer finger. It does seem to help, but of all the different places and different subjects I’ve taught this is a new funny and annoying thing to deal with in my new job. The only other challenge is to keep the classes fun. Some of the material can be dry and repetitive. I’ve already found a few games the kids can play that review their lessons as they play. I love challenges like this! I’m a problem solver at heart.
When I started my first week of classes some of the kids were in more than one class of mine. I don’t think they all look alike, but still there’s about 200 of them so I don’t remember all their names, yet. Just a few days after I started I was asking each child their names and writing them on the board so I didn’t have to say, “Hey You, it’s your turn.” At this point there was a mini revolt. Alex said, “Teacher why are you asking our names? We already told you yesterday!” At which point the whole class chimed in. The little 5-6 year olds sounded seriously offended that I hadn’t already memorized everyone perfectly. I’ve taught a lot of different types of classes in the last 15 years, but I’ve never had a student much less a whole room full of students be upset that I didn’t remember their names on the second day of classes. The poor little tykes <3. They were much more understanding once I explained to them that of course they remember my name since they only had to meet one new person, but that I had to meet 200 new kids. My youngest students are only 3-4 international years, but 5-6 Korean years old. They often interrupt the lesson to tell me, “Teacher I love you!” It is so stinking cute I can hardly stand it!!
After only being in Korea for only ten days I went up to the Jongno district of Seoul to hear the bell ring on New Year’s Eve with some of my fellow teachers. The streets were super crowed right near the bell. At midnight a bunch of people started shooting off bottle rocket type fireworks. It was a crazy scene and we all had a great time. However, the Koreans really go all out on the Lunar New Year which took place earlier this week. This is the year of the Black Dragon! On the Lunar New Year they have a few customs that I’m not sure I completely understand, but here’s my limited knowledge on the subject. Many Koreans go to visit their families at this time of year. They all get together and eat this special dumpling soup that is only eaten once a year. When you eat the dumpling you become one year older. So if you are already considered one year old when you are born then a few weeks later is the Lunar New Year you can be two years old just a matter of days after you are born. Huh? Well, that’s how they do it here. Some of my “5 year old kids” are really more like 3 and that explains sooooo much! Also, Koreans honor their elders by bowing to them at New Year’s celebrations. The elders reward them with gifts, which in this day and age is usually money. Some of the kids at my school got a million Won for bowing to their various elders. That figures out to be around $881. This is the major gift giving holiday. Christmas is not a major holiday here. We got gift sets from our boss and some of the student’s parents. The ones I got had cooking oil and toiletries. I traded out part of my gift, spam and soy oil, or just gave it away. The best part of the gifts for me were the low flat boxes that they came in that fit perfectly on my shelves effectively converting them to drawers, and the slotted plastic inserts that I cut up to organize my silverware and jewelry.
What foreign country blog post would be complete without poking a little fun at the poor translation of English? Koreans often put an English description on the packaging of their products. Often times it can be puzzling, but more often than not it’s comical! For instance I can understand when they call a cute package of sponges “Happy Sponge”, but right next to that they had “Funny Dish Towel”. I looked and looked, but I couldn’t find anything funny about it except the obvious misuse of the word funny on the package. We were walking through the super market the other day and found a package of “Chok Sand Cracker flavor”. Wha What?! We finally figured out that they were trying to say “chocolate sandwich cookies”. Often on the cleaning products they are labeled “pink” scented or some other wacky nonsensical description. On the re-usable grocery bag it says, “Tesco|Every little helps”. What kills me most is these chain stores that name themselves with American words that seem randomly assembled, like the clothing boutique that’s called “st.very”. I saw a shop in Seoul called “She’s”, but I’m sure they meant to say “Hers”, but nobody apparently bothered to ask an English speaker. In my building there’s a business called “Live Piano Bar”, but you walk by and there isn’t any live music and the music that is playing is not piano, it’s more like bad 70’s easy listening music. One of the teachers at my school was wearing a cute pink sweatshirt with a sheep on it that said, “I am happy day”. I’ll have to be better about taking pictures of this stuff, but today I found one of the funniest brands on coats at the mall. In our country we have “The North Face” which means the side of the mountain that accumulates the most snow fall. The Korean equivalent misses the point entirely and implies something completely different. They call it “The Red Face”. I guess it’s more for getting home from the bar then snow sport survival???
I love my new apartment! It’s big enough that I don’t feel stir crazy and it’s on the newer side. It came with, a table, a chair, two wardrobes (Koreans don’t have closets generally), a single bed, a small night stand drawer, a refrigerator, a small cabinet, and a clothes washing machine. I mentioned I’ve been cleaning day and night. That’s because the teacher who I replaced at the school and also got her apartment was a smoker. To add to that she freely admitted that she doesn’t clean. Thick gummy, smoky dust and grime covered every square inch of the apartment. I’m allergic to both dust and smoke, so just walking into the place gave me a minor asthma attack. I was delayed in moving into my new place for three and a half weeks while I was cleaning. Finally, I had to have my boss get me new wall paper, because the smoke smell was still strong even after I scrubbed ever surface. But more to the point I’ve been doing the type of cleaning that wears you out as much as up all night marathon crazy sex! ;-0 Though, not nearly as satisfying and not fun at all!!
entrance
entry hall way
bathroom
shower?
view from front door as you walk in
wardrobes just inside the room to the right
temporary dining/desk area-I need a desk
this is where I’ll put the round table once I get a desk…
Kitchen-yep that’s the whole thing.
enclosed deck where the washing machine is located
this is how I dry my clothes
one of these is clean and the other- ewwww
I thougth this was brown-nope…
Don’t be fooled I had to scrub scrub scrub to get the right side white!
eeewwww-gross
now this is clean…
This is not…
Why would anyone live like this?
Adi if you see this-think about how much worse your lungs are? This is just the AC filter.
Ok, Here’s a cute picture of Sam to help cleans your brain of all that filth.
I’ll end here with a list of some extremely random things I’ve learned since I’ve arrived in Korea that have almost nothing to do with Korea itself.
- Backing out of shoes is much easier then backing into shoes. So if you go from one room to another which requires a shoe change like going from outside to inside or going from the living room to the wet bathroom floor then it pays off to back out of the room leaving your shoes facing the way you will need them when you put them back on your feet.
- When a child coughs right in your face there’s a 90% chance that in the next few days you will come down with the same illness that they have! So far I’ve had 2 children cough directly in my face and I’ve been sick twice. Go figure!?! The first one was such a nasty bug that I had to go to the doctor and get some antibiotics. So far the second on is healing slowly, but surely with lots of oranges, hot tea, sleep and of course my beloved netty pot.
- When it’s negative 9 C outside nothing keeps your feet from freezing like platform shoes! They elevate your feet from the freezing cement below enough to keep them toasty in your two layers of socks.
- When a person who chain smokes inside and doesn’t clean at all lives in a place for over a year and a half it takes many, many days and nights to clean away the layer of gummy, smoky, dusty tar that covers every square inch, but I can attest that it can be done. (See pictures…if you have a strong stomach.) After three and a half weeks I’m finally almost done cleaning. Man! Are my arms and back tired from all the scrubbing!! (I really could use a massage.)
- Just because you have a gift card for a company that exists in two different countries doesn’t mean that it will work in both countries. I have several Starbucks gift cards that I’ll be sending home with my sister in April because it’s a whole different system. Oh well, I still had cash and I got our hot cocoa on New Year’s anyhow!
- Puppies have a special smell to their breath that fades away as they get older. It’s not gross like dog breath. It kind of smells a little like frosted mini wheat cereal. I don’t even mind it when little Sam licks my hand! What?!?! Who am I turning into?
- The less crap you have the easier it is to keep everything organized. I hope I never amass the amount of things I had before I moved to a foreign country. It’s so great that I gave all that useful stuff to someone else! I hadn’t used most of it in years anyhow.
- I had forgotten how much of a different person I become when I don’t have something like Bikram yoga or pottery making or figure drawing to relieve my stress. I get so frazzled and frantic over the most innocuous things. My next order of business now that I’ve finally settled into my new place is to find a way to make pottery! I don’t care if I have to go all the way to Seoul a few times a month. It would be worth it to me… and my poor co-workers. ;-D
- If you already own it it’s much cheaper to mail it or take it with you then it is to buy it new when you get where you are going. I’m soooooo glad I took all the things I did with me. For only a few hundred dollars I saved myself hundreds of dollars. Not to mention the pain of tracking down things you want in a foreign country.
