happy new years!

it was a pretty lowkey one. just stayed home and watched 'cliffhanger' with my neighbor. then we both headed to bed, or at least i am now and she left awhile ago saying she was. so i guess we really didn't.

here's to a lovely 2010. i hope everyone back in the states has a great start to their own.

it will be new years here 14 hours before new hampshire, weird. by the time my friends back home start celebrating i will already have been in bed, and awake doing stuff the next day.

did you know

in korea, they don't use snow shovels, they use snow brooms. discuss.

they're actually not snow brooms, they're just normal brooms.

andrew and the one month failure

gah. if anyone still reads this, that i don't speak too regularly and complains that i don't update this, i'm sorry! things get momentum here like everywhere else in life, and sometimes you get so caught up you forget the smaller things, even if you still consider them important.

so, what's happened in the last month? biggest thing? i moved. all of the foreign teachers in my building moved closer to our campus, so now we live up a big hill, and not 5 bus stops away. not nearly as easy of a ride home, but it's cheaper, and quicker. the new place is fantastic, i'm getting pictures as soon as i clean up the moving mess.

other big news? at our campus, three foreign teachers, and two koreans are leaving this friday. so it's almost an all new set of foreign teachers. the new guy is form concord, nh. that's super weird. life is going well. lately i've really been missing the many options crew. my new job is nice, but it just doesn't compare to the amount of fun back home. korea is still pretty awesome though.

again, i'm sorry for not updating more! as always, i'll try my best to keep at it.

back to my zombie movie with the other new teacher from california.

weird statue

birds
Originally uploaded by laflame

i'm not sure i can describe it much more than that.

park 1

treegaz
Originally uploaded by laflame

there's a bunch of these gazebos and trees lining this man-made stone river. a lot of people have picnics and bring their families to these sorts of things to hang out. they're quite quaint.

ghost family

ghostfam
Originally uploaded by laflame

was out shooting with my friend roger tonight, who is infinitely better at this camera stuff than i am. he's slowly trying to teach me things but i'm a terrible student.

this one is in a great little park near the village. it was raining all day so everything was shiny. there was apparently a ghost family walking around.

dmz adventure 10

Korea 1 003
Originally uploaded by laflame

the bullet holes in our bus. i swear they're real. look how shiny they are.

dmz adventure 9

Korea 1 005
Originally uploaded by laflame

our tour guide on the adventure.

dmz adventure 8

Korea 1 010
Originally uploaded by laflame

me trying to look terrified.

dmz adventure 7

Korea 1 015
Originally uploaded by laflame

taylor, same deal.

dmz adventure 6

Korea 1 013
Originally uploaded by laflame

larry with a guard. slightly further away. these guys are in a fighting stance all day, every day. they will drop you if you do ANYTHING you're not supposed to. they wear those sunglasses to be intimidating. they don't need them.

dmz adventure 5

Korea 1 012
Originally uploaded by laflame

clinton with a guard. technically in north korea.

dmz adventure 4

Korea 1 018
Originally uploaded by laflame

this is the room where you can actually step into north korea. i can't remember why people were making faces, it might have been the woman we were scared was going to touch the guard. you don't want to touch the guard.

dmz adventure 3

Korea 1 026
Originally uploaded by laflame

that's north korea in the background. where the trees stop, that's where NK begins. even with the big binoculars in the picture, i could barely see one person in a field. you couldn't get any closer than where i was to take pictures. they freaked out on a guy who tried, took his camera, made sure all the pictures were deleted. hardcore.

dmz adventure 2

Korea 1 032
Originally uploaded by laflame

same with alex.

dmz adventure 1

Korea 1 034
Originally uploaded by laflame

my friend clinton standing next to two random statues near the third invasion tunnel.

random bank museum

Korea 1 046
Originally uploaded by laflame

i'm not sure why a bank museum needs to be this elaborate. but there's probably a reason. this is in seoul, taken from a bus on my way home.

emart

Korea 1 068
Originally uploaded by laflame

the omega store. this place has a bowling alley, a super-walmart, a movie theater, tons of restraunts, a fancy clothing store, and that's only like a few of the floors. it has pretty much anything you could want, a lot of foreigner money is spent there. you can also get soft serve ice cream cones for a dollar!

fancy bricks

Korea 1 067
Originally uploaded by laflame

lots of brick buildings i've seen have little pictures drawn into them with different colored bricks. usually it's trees or animals.

village garden

Korea 1 066
Originally uploaded by laflame

there are a few empty building lots throughout the village. sometimes they just stay vacant, sometimes people store stuff there, sometimes people make gardens. you can often find things left out to dry along sidewalks, especially peppers.

outdoor gym

Korea 1 063
Originally uploaded by laflame

these public exercise machines are in parks throughout the country. i usually only see old people using them though.

village playground

Korea 1 062
Originally uploaded by laflame

one of a couple playgrounds scattered throughout the village. this one has a skate park, a playground, chess/go tables, and some workout equipment.

random street in the village

Korea 1 059
Originally uploaded by laflame

this is just one of the many small streets in the village. all of the buildings in this area are about three stories tall. surrounding the village are the 20+ story apartment buildings that are a little more korea-iconic.

path

Korea 1 058
Originally uploaded by laflame

a walkway that goes along our 'village' and one of the main roads. it's the path i walk to the bus every morning. it's much prettier when everything isn't on the way out for winter.

golf place

Korea 1 056
Originally uploaded by laflame

indoor is screen golf. outdoor is kind of an enclosed driving range. these are all over the place. i had no idea what these giant green towers were when i first got here.

andrew makes a discovery

Orange soda is apparently a very American flavor to me. There a lot of things here that are similar to home, and some that share a name but absolutely no resemblance. But orange soda just flat out reminds me of home. That's pretty weird.

andrew goes crazy, andrew breaks into his own apartment

so. today was semi-halloween day at work. i decided to go as a ninja from naruto since so many of my students seem to like the show. this entailed me going to work in shorts, a t-shirt, flipflops with socks, and a big, black, wooden sword. i got many strange, strange looks on the bus and on the street, haha. but it received generally good reception, so i suppose it was worth it.

i finish up the day and come home. i forgot my keys, all the way back at work, which is probably closed by now. lame. but i have a third-floor apartment on a 3-floor building. our roof has a little patio area. so i go up there, walk along the roof a little bit, and work my way down to my balcony. success. good thing i left my porch door unlocked this morning. or i might still be trapped out there. because i'm not sure if i could get back up the same way i got down. as i write this, i am hoping no korean neighbors saw this, and called the police, that might get a little awkward.

my hair is a mess from wearing a hat all day.

andrew the... model?

alright. so there's a burger place right near where i work. the girl who runs it is amazing, and worked for the chef on 'hell's kitchen'. gordon ramsey. she makes really good hand-made burgers and the best egg-sandwich that i have ever, or will ever eat. it's a popular place with the foreigners in the area.

yesterday she asked me and two co-teachers if we wanted to pose for a giant advertisement that will go up on one of the store windows. hopefully sometime this week we'll go in before work and have a photographer take pictures of us eating food and having a good time, then in the not too distant future, be on the wall.

the best part of this plan? we're not telling any of the other foreign teachers, especially the ones who frequent it more than we do. we're hoping that one day they go in, and just see a GIANT picture of us. i really hope i'm there when it goes up. i'll try to get some pictures of the place/ad if and when this happens. i get a lot of complaints about the lack of pictures, so someone yell at me if i don't follow through.

screen golf!

i went screen golfing this morning with irish joe. he's irish. screen golfing is just like normal golfing, except you do it in a room on the third floor of a building. basically there's a tee set up and a machine to put balls on it, then you wail the balls against the projection screen. and it displays what would have happened were you playing actual golf.

i am very bad at golf.

we played a quick 9 holes for 12,000 won (about 10-11 dollars), they brought us free water and hot cocoa, which was delicious. i was 30 over par. so that means what should have taken me 36 shots, took me 66. whoops. joe beat me by about 15 strokes. we're having a rematch soon. we're going to go in the evening and order dinner while we're there. so we can just eat food and play golf, in a toasty room, in the middle of winter. korea is awesome. anyways, since we got there before 2pm, it was also 30% off. so we can play 9 holes before work for 9,000 won (7-8 dollars). hooray.

weird, kinda lame

so, you actually see the stars tonight, weird in itself. curse you air, polution.

but i could see orion, one of the very few constellations i can easily identify. it reminded me of home, which is weird, because it's terribly far away. but i'm so used to looking up and seeing it in the states that looking up and seeing it here made me feel pretty nostalgic.

so. this weekend i'm going to the dmz. that's the area between north korea and south korea. it is pretty crazy. basically it's one of the most militarized area in the world with an insane number of soldiers, land mines, weapons... yeah. you're not allowed to wear inappropriate clothing, anything that looks militarish, shorts, jeans with holes, etc. once you get near the north korea side you aren't even allowed to point.

american citizens aren't currently allowed into the country without special circumstances, they won't stamp your visa or anything like that. other countries still are like canada, germany, etc. so during the tour you get to take a couple steps into north korea, but that's it, that's as far as you can go.

this week north korea also was test firing missiles which means tensions are a little bit higher. i think this might be kinda scary, but still pretty awesome. i'm not sure how much you're allowed to take pictures, but i'll do my best.

pictures woes

flickr isn't letting me upload any pictures. troublesome. so i'm trying to find an alternate way of doing that for the time being. here's one from a cool local park, after playing with my new camera toys last night.

also. people in korea are crazy! well, probably no less than any other country, but yesterday was hilarious. i went to seoul before work to grab my new lens/tripod. i head to the bus stop to come back, and there are two cars blocking it off (a fairly big 'dont ever do that' in korea). apparently there was some sort of accident. a woman rear-ended the guy in front of her, from what i understood.

she. freaked. out.

once the police got there she was yelling and screaming at the dude, at the police, at all the strangers who were giggling at her for freaking out so much. the police make them both move their cars so the buses can stop. the guy moves his car and.... there is absolutely no damage to the girls car. not a scratch, not a dent. but she keeps screaming even more! and all the random people were laughing at how ridiculous it was. which again, prompted more screaming. so i had to walk a mile or so to seoul station to get on another bus. barely made it to work in time, haha.

update fail #2

anyways! it's been a month already, crazy.

i have today off (friday) because of chuseok, kind of korean thanksgiving. so the plan is to venture into seoul and pick up a few things with my shiny new paycheck. goals are: new camera lens, camera tripod, remote shutter for camera. and in the 'maybe if i feel impulsive' category are: xbox360 and some games.

i am definitely going to spend around 25% of my paycheck today, haha. but i'm okay with it. because both are investments in keeping me entertained for the next year and beyond, and not short-term rewards. some of my coworkers went over to hong kong for the long weekend, some went south to the beach city of Busan. i'll just be hanging out here with some of the other stragglers.

one of my students gave me this crazy facial care kit yesterday for chuseok, i didn't know FILA made facial stuff. weird.

two weird things

lesson 1) just because you see white people on a movie poster, does not mean that the movie will be english. apparently i forgot about a place called europe. french horror movie, korean subtitles, though i think i still got the gist of 90% of what was said.

lesson 2) if you leave your tiny bathroom window open, the cat will escape through it, and find her way down to the balcony below, and be too terrified to assist in rescue attempts. it is 2am and i do not want to wake my neighbor up for my mistake. i lowered the cat carrier with tuna treats in it, hoping she'll be lured to it before i go to sleep. darn you, fizzgig.

Fizzgig 1

Fizzgig 2

The fabled milksoda: Milkis

View from the hotel I was staying in my first week

over due, sorry!

when things get rolling it's hard to remember to do this, lame.

anyways, lots of changes.

i'm now in my apartment. it's pretty amazing. it's a little bigger than college dorm-sized, but i have a decently sized balcony as well. pictures here: http://www.flickr.com/photos/39476819@N08/sets/72157622124139777/

i got a kitty! her name is fizzgig (she's too old for me to rename her, so her middle name is 'mo'). she's an abyssinian breed. they are supposed to be super friendly and that seems to be the case. she's just staring at the wall right now, but usually she's much more active. the quest to get her was surprisingly difficult. there's a website (animalrescuekorea.org) that helps organize pet adoptions/rescues/foster homes/etc. a girl from songtan, a city a fair ways south of here, was moving to taiwan and needed a home for fizz.

so i took an hour-long bus ride west, where i met an english professor at a local university. really nice guy, just chatted about the same questions every foreigner gets (where are you from, are you teaching, how long have you been here...) he taught me a little about the upcoming holiday and gave me his card with the instructions to call him if i wanted to know anything about korean culture, nice. then after parting ways with him, 30 minute subway ride south. where i got very lost in the subway system, but enlisted the help of one security guard and three cool american soldiers stationed in songtan (lucky). so i followed those dudes, chatted about random military, american, korean things, and finally met up with amanda, fizz's owner. hung around with her for a bit, then three other girls came over, also teachers, and we ordered a crazy amount of korean food. so good. the three girls all live in seoul, so now i have some people to hang out with/rely on when i head up that way.

so after all that, i lugged the 40lb bag of cat supplies in one hand, and the cat carrier in another, all the way back to yongin, fun stuff. so glad fizz didn't pee in the carrier. so glad.

anyways, today is my first full day of teaching solo. no help from the teacher i'm replacing, so i gotta go in early and set up some stuff to make my life easier. homework check sheets from many options are making a come back.

i also got a pencil case, which are all the rage here. every kid has one. some simple boxes, some elaborate contraptions with drawers and compartments, fold out things, it's weird. i got this little furry cow one. it's pretty awesome.

teaching is good so far. though there's a couple classes that are providing some challenge. there's 9 levels of classes at my school. 3 basic, 3 medium, 3 hard. each one has three smaller difficulties. so there's easy-basic, medium-basic, and hard-basic, easy-medium, etc. i teach medium-basic, easy-medium and medium-medium. but i'll talk about school stuff later.

also, hamburgers are terrible here.

how things roll

so, in a little bit i'll be heading to day 2 of work. work this week pretty much entails me hanging out and watching other teachers teach, reviewing materials, etc. the hours are nice, only 7-10p. and if my schedule stays the same i'll only have 3 classes each day, for about 5 hours of teaching, two of prep. not a bad schedule.

out of the three classes i've met so far, two are pretty decent. the third one is a bit younger, so i think i'll struggle some at first as i figure out how to best get information across. but nothing feels like it'll be completely out of my hands so far.

every day follows the same rough schedule, which i haven't exactly figured out yet, but i don't think it'll be too troublesome. the other staff i've hung out with so far seems like a cool bunch, there seems to be a decent foreigner community where they house us all. so that'll be reassuring. the weird thing though is at my school, all of the teacher except for me and one other will be moving on within the next three or so months. that should be an interesting transition.

today i should ideally be heading to the hospital to get my checkup for my alien registration card (lets me get internet, phone, bank account). gotta get some passport photos before that. so i should probably head out soon, haha. tried to go yesterday but someone was blocking in like three cars in the building's garage, including the one we needed.

looks like i'll be moving into my permanent place on saturday, as the previous teacher is leaving early then. living in a hotel has benefits, don't need to clean, free juice, good tv, but i want to actually settle in somewhere. apparently it's decent because at least one other teacher was jealous that he wasn't able to take it, haha.

so yeah, things are finally getting going now that i've met some other teachers. i was getting a little bored all by myself, so hopefully this is a good precedent for what's to come.

milkis pt2

okay. so maybe i should have TRIED the milkis before posting about it. that was... very difficult to describe. at first it almost tastes like milk flavored candy that sparkles a bit in your mouth. then it fades away and leaves this chalky/medicine flavor, and a filmy type stuff on your lips. i will finish the bottle, but this might be it for me and milk soda.

milk soda? weird. i'm scared to try it. but it was only two bucks!





unfortunately i can't post pictures til i get to my apartment! but trust me, it's weird. here's one i found on google for the time being.

"New feeling of soda beverage." Fair enough, Milkis.

power adapter, get

so, after a few days of deciding i'd like to use my laptop, i finally decided to track down EMART. EMART is like a Korean WalMart, I suppose, but much fancier, and apparently the only reliable place to find adapters outside of Seoul. Step 1 involved being positive of where I was starting, which seems simple, but was surprisingly challenging. It involved no less than three or four websites, and satellite pictures from google maps. There was probably an easier way to find out, but that's not how I roll.

Part two was finding out where EMART was, much easier, just typed in "Yongin EMART" and there were 5 within not-unreasonable distance from me. One was a straight shot south then few streets over for about 3-4 miles, so I opted for that one. The only reason I think this was easy to find walking, without a map, was that it was right past a bridge, probably would have not been as lucky without that sort of landmark.

So, not bothering to check the weather or bringing a drink, hat, or sunglasses with me, I set out.

It was very hot, all of those decisions were terrible choices, haha. Good exercise though, which was one of my goals, so I can't complain. It probably would have been easier to get a bus or taxi, but taxis feel like cheating, and I haven't gotten a bus card yet, that's today's (Saturday's) goal. I think I can buy them at 7-11, we'll see.

Anyways, after awhile, I eventually found my bridge, which also had this cool little park thing running along it, awesome. I wish I knew how long it took but without a cellphone, which has doubled as my watch for years, no clue.

After the bridged I just took a random left hoping it would lead me there, and it did, hooray. It was broken into different floors, and you need to checkout with everything you get on each, which was different. So while exploring for adapters, I also found some amazingly cheap razors which I forgot to pack, bought those and headed up to the next floor. Walked up to the electronics counter, motioned to a American plug that I had brought with me for reference, hoping it would be enough to get my point across, nope. After me speaking in English and her speaking in Korean for a minute or two, I give up and just break out my English-Korean dictionary and point at 'adapter'. This still was not successful, she understood the adapter part but I'm not positive she got what I was adapting to, so she called over someone else who also unfortunately spoke no English. But this lady was on the ball, took me right to the outlet/plug section.

She spoke to me non-stop for about 3 minutes in Korean, combined with long gazes at the shelves, haha. There was only one thing there that could potentially work for me, but when I grabbed it, she made an X sign with her arms. I think she was trying to communicate a voltage difference to me, and that my electronics would explode if they didn't support the Korean 220v system. I'm not sure. But the alternative is a converter which they didn't carry, and I believe she thought I needed. So I waited her out and eventually she wandered off, I grabbed my prize and checked out. The only remaining challenge was a bag, but luckily an employee who spoke English walked by checkout as I was beginning to have difficulty communicating this with the cashier.

After all that I had some extra 500 won coins to buy some refreshing Gatorade from a machine. 500 Won = ~42 cents. Not bad for a serving size drink. Normally I drink a lot in one setting, but I'm already getting in the habit of smaller servings, which I hope is a good thing. The minicans of juice/tea/soda are everywhere and very cheap. So I'm going to try to further get into this habit.

Things are very unventful still, I spend more time in my hotel room than I probably should. If it weren't sweat-through-my-clothes hot most days I'd explore more. But once I start work next week I'll be spending more time with the other foreign teachers and hopefully this will lead to more active things.

switcheroo

so, they did what often avalon does, and switched my position from anyang to yongin. it's not a huge difference, only about 20 minutes from seoul, but it means i won't be nearly as close to my friend heather, and it's a slightly less affluent city.

but on the upside, the people i work with seem pretty cool. i hung out at the campus for a little over an hour today. two of them took me out to lunch and i had an amazing pork cutlet (mayo on pork, crazy delicious). my attempt to find a power adapter is still unsuccessful. stopped by a samsung and an LG store today with no luck. i've been told e-mart is the best chance, but i have not the slightest idea on how to find one. this weekend's goal i guess.

it looks like i'll be living in the hotel through at least monday, probably longer. stocked up on some supplies that will keep me alive through tomorrow. unfortunately without a cellphone or any sort of address, it will be quite difficult for me to make any plans with people. so this might be a solo-adventure weekend.

language barriers are proving to be challenging, but not impossible.

so

i'm in korea. ahh. despite me supposed to be teaching in anyang, i find myself in suwon, further south, or it might be yongsin, i don't even know. so i'm hoping they didn't pull a switcheroo on me, and i still get to go to pyeongchon/anyang.

also, anyang is pronounced very similar to 'anyeong' which is how you say hello. this proved quite troublesome for the staff checking travel documents, as he thought i was just responding to his question over and over again with 'hello!' eventually a guy behind me helped translate, gotta be careful for that one in the future.

randomly ended up on the same plane as abby, who i met at the korean consulate last week, pretty cool. also had a seat next to another american girl who was returning for another year, so i had someone to chat with at least. slowly building up my korean facebook friends, haha.

anyways, more updates soon hopefully. someone from the school is supposed to be meeting me today between 2 and 3 pm. not sure if this will be to move to my apartment, get work-related things in order, or just say hi. so i'll have another update soon.

This message was sent using the Picture and Video Messaging service from Verizon Wireless!

To learn how you can snap pictures and capture videos with your wireless phone visit www.verizonwireless.com/picture.

Note: To play video messages sent to email, QuickTime® 6.5 or higher is required.

heading out. wee.

This plane is ginormous.

10 min til boarding

two hours early and theres already a ton of people here. the other teacher i met at security disappeared. sad. i am the only nonasian here.

waiting in line at korean air check-in. wonder how long thisll take. apparently they havent opened yet.

This message was sent using the Picture and Video Messaging service from Verizon Wireless!

To learn how you can snap pictures and capture videos with your wireless phone visit www.verizonwireless.com/picture.

Note: To play video messages sent to email, QuickTime® 6.5 or higher is required.

shutting down in the us. update in chicago or leaving manch-vegas, maybe?

hm. i head to the airport in 7 hours.

i'm positive i forgot to pass something, but i have no idea what.

final consulate trip (hopefully!)

so in about 90 minutes i'll be making my final trip down to boston to the korean consulate to pick up my completed visa. after that i'm getting some last minute paperwork done, then more packing. all my clothes and toiletries are set, but gotta pack my carry-on bag and whatever else i realize i need last minute.

i'm not sure i can entertain myself for 25 hours straight, if i can't sleep on the plane, things may get tricky. i did just get the new professor layton game for my DS, so hopefully that sucks up a few hours at chicago while i wait for my second flight (4 hour wait, bah).

i think i'm excited.

ticket!

my flight leaves on tuesday at 6:50am. i get there wednesday at 4pm, timezones are weird.

visa update 2

so. not the best outcome, but not the worst.

visa won't be ready til 2pm on monday. which means my departure will be delayed til late monday evening or early tuesday. other than that, pretty standard interview. more like a general 'you know what you're getting into, right?' checked to make sure no one was taking advantage of me, that i knew that i was going to a place that is not america. only one question really relating to teaching.

so yeah, countdown resets, and starts over. hopefully i hear from my recruiter tonight or tomorrow about a finalized departure date.

speed consulate update

went to consulate yesterday

no time for an interview

they said monday was earlier.

that's bad, because i'm supposed to leave sunday.

i convince them to do it today at 10 (2 hours from now)

i leave shorty

hopefully i get final document by friday afternoon

maybe monday morning

trip delayed one day? two days?

shouldn't be longer than that

i am surprisingly nervous about an interview most say is not worth worrying about.

do a barrel roll

okay, so the last couple days have been super nuts, and today and tomorrow are going to be keeping that pace.

i leave sunday, hooray. but i still need to do my korean consulate interview first. very early tuesday morning i got my email with my visa issuance number, but through a slight error, it omitted my actual number! that is not good. so i spent the rest of the day trying to track down the guy to get it sent to me, at 5am this morning (wednesday), i finally got it. i felt bad for pestering so much, but sometimes you have to look out for your own best interests above some politeness. it was to the point where i had my email setup to text message me as soon as the number came in.

so the number is now in my hands, as are all the other pertinent documents and here comes gambit #2. i'm going to be running down to the korean consulate with my mom (i'm cool), and hoping i can convince them to let me interview today, then if all goes according to plan and i get a little lucky, i can get my visa at the end of today or pick it up tomorrow. once that's in my hand, finally finished with the red tape, paperworky, stuff.

it still hasn't completely hit me yet that i'm leaving in.... 4 days. but i expect that it will soon. even though i'm not freaking out yet, i am pretty excited at this point. i can actually start packing my bags now, that's a weird feeling.

hopefully i'll have another post by the end of the day talking about how successful everything went, or maybe not, haha.

alright, more info

so yeah. accepted a position, starting the 26th, hooray. everything is out of my hands now as my visa gets processed. if i start the 26th, which is a wednesday, i'll probably be getting there a day or two before that. which means i could be leaving in as little as 10-14 days. that is insane.

i think for the most part i'm pretty prepared. i got myself a whole new wardrobe, that was weird. i'd been wearing the clothes i'd had for years without many changes, so i figured why not switch that up as well with the other big changes. now i literally have fancy pants. i'm not planning on bringing that much with me. clothes, a towel (the towels over there are weird, i hear), some fitted sheets (they just tuck them in, crazy! i am way too lazy to do that all the time), my laptop, my camera, some gifts for my boss and teachers (it's customary to give gifts when you arrive), various toiletries, mr. moose, some mementos from various places and people, and i'm not exactly sure what else, hopefully not much. packing light is my goal. i still need to get some good bags though, ones that will carry everything, but still be easily transportable, just in case i need to book it between planes at airports.

other than saying my farewells to a few people, and spending time with my parents before i go, i don't really have a lot to do. in a way i wish i could just leave now and get all this waiting over with.

on the upside, i think i found another blog that has a teacher who's working at the school where i'm supposed to be stationed. he had a few pictures posted, posted some information about the teachers and school, so that was interesting. they play frisbee behind the school, i hope they're still doing that when i get there.

i've also been trying to find some hobbies to take up once i'm there. at the moment i'm leaning towards Hapkido, a korean martial art that does throws and locks and some striking. or Kumdo, which is korean sword techniques. i want to be a black belt (or equivilant) in something. it would be really cool to say i genuinely know how to use a sword, haha.

there probably won't be a real update until after i visit the korean embassy in boston to get my visa settled, so stay tuned til then. hopefully that happens late this week or next week!

OMG.

so. i may be going to korea. i was offered, and accepted a position at a school this evening. it's located in an area called 'pyeongchon' it's south/southwest of seoul. it's not originally where i was planning to be, but from my research it might even be a bit better. it looks like i'll be teaching middle school and advanced classes, but that might change, who knows! i'm honestly too excited right now to really get into depth with this, so i'll update tomorrow.

andrew invades korea. late august. 2009. hooray.

Safe

Hooray. All my documents have safely arrived in Korea. I think I may have cried if it got lost in the mail, it would take over a month to get another diploma, probably. Though I'm saying that not knowing really how long it would take, but assume it would take equally as long as it did the first time. Anyways, this brings the number of steps down to two!

1) Be offered a position at a specific campus, and accept it

2) Go to Boston for my interview at the Korean Embassy.

After that, fly!

But we're not there yet, now I wait, again. hopefully less this time. Woo.

Overdue Update

So, my diploma came and went, I cherished it for three days then stuffed it in an envelope to Taiwan. Why Taiwan? That's where my recruiter is based! So hopefully within the next couple days I'll get an update about it arriving, along with my other documents, and I can start the NEXT waiting stage. I believe the next stage is waiting for the visa application process to get processed over in the Land of the Morning Calm (Korea). Anyways, I'm late for a meeting, so I'll try to post something else later this week!

DIPLOMA DIPLOMA DIPLOMA

HOORAY. DIPLOMA IS HERE. SENDING THINGS OUT THIS WEEKEND! This means that in a perfect world I should be in Korea in about 6 weeks, give or take. Later than I originally planned but I'm glad it's coming together. I freaked out a little bit when the diploma came and I realized my final piece of the puzzle was in place, not gonna lie. Updates once I hear from the recruiter again.

(Should Andrew get a moped? Sources say yes.)

late night calls

Got a random call last night at like 11pm, Unavailable number, weird. Turns out it was my recruiter calling from Taiwan, haha. Just chatting about various visa process stuff, what paperwork I need, my upcoming interview with the school, etc. A lot of it was review but there was some new information. I don't like the part in applying for a job where everyone uses the overly formal, business language, I prefer it when things are more natural.

So it looks like depending when my diploma gets in I might not be able to leave until September. SUPER LAME. I am doing everything in my power to get it before then, must beat Heather there. So yeah, I may be running around like crazy after I finally get that in. Which might be difficult if I get it in the middle of camp. Since I can't exaclty take a day off.

Hopefully another update soon, stay classy.

first offer has arrived.

So, got my first official job offer when I woke this morning. It was for the largest ESL (English as a Second Language) chain. Reviews are mixed. People say it's pretty unimpressive. It's not amazing but it isn't terrible. So I'll probably keep it as a safety. They require a very straightforward teaching style based on prepared things so I wouldn't get to run as much stuff myself, which I would really prefer to do. How can I learn how to teach if they're just making me read from a script! It may not be the case for all the locations, but I have to assume the average, not the outlier.

So I emailed my recruiter back asking about other schools, hopefully I get a response soon.

One cool thing from the offer was a location that piqued my interested. Bundang, it's a suburb-type deal of Seoul. It's pretty affluent, nice air quality, and quieter than Seoul. That seems a bit more in sync with my lifestyle than the big city, but still retaining the city part. You can read about Bundang here! So I may start looking for jobs in that area.

So yeah, will update next when I hear back from the recruiter. Hooray.

Departure Update

Late July? Very possible!

Even more

IMG_1775
Originally uploaded by laflame

Taken at the same time as the other one, no editing done. Just trying the light meter into giving me silhouettes. I am in love with this camera.

More pictures

IMG_1770
Originally uploaded by laflame

Trying techniques and advice I found online.

New Camera~!

IMG_1759
Originally uploaded by laflame

Random late night picture #1

Good luck, Bad Luck

Alright, so bad news first, I guess?

Getting my diploma in early/mid July is going to mess with my departure big time. It looks like until I get the actual diploma in hand and ready to send, they are going to let me accept any offers just because too many people in the past have committed and fell through. At least Heather is in the same boat so we'll still end up there at about the same time. Oh, Heather, I should mention her.

Apparently I talked so much about going to Korea over the past year that my friend Heather, who also just graduated from Keene, decided to sign up as well. Parter in crime, woo. So we're aiming to get placed in roughly the same area so we can go on many adventures. I think I'd definitely do a lot of fun/amazing things by myself, but having a friend to do it with will totally make me do even MORE fun/amazing things. So yeah, she'll probably come up again, but there's her introduction.

Anyways, yeah. I'm doing what I can to hurry things along but there doesn't look like there's a lot I can do on the diploma front but wait. When I called to see what could be done they were willing to write my number down as soon as I came in so I can just drop by the campus and pick it up, which will save a few days of shipping at least.

The good luck was over my background check. I was expecting it to take weeks, or a letter saying I filled it out wrong, or the notarized seal wasn't valid, or something. But I got a call from my mom today saying that she had already received it! Mailed the request on Monday, received the finished check on Friday, awesome. So now the next step is to go to Concord and get it internationally notarized. I still need to fill out the forms that Reach to Teach, the recruiter I'm going through, sent me. Those'll get done tonight or tomorrow night.

Well, while I'm waiting I will have one thing to fill my time with. New Camera! Canon Rebel XT, and a bunch of other acronyms that I don't fully understand. It is awesome.

So yeah. Just playing the waiting game for now. The next update might be a little while away, depending on things play out. Shouldn't be more than a week or two though. So stay tuned.

Formally accepted

So I wake up this morning to three new e-mails in my box. Cool. Apparently now I am officially accepted and they're getting me ready with the forms and checklists and such to make sure visa stuff gets done asap. 

To travel to other countries you need a visa, it's like a pass, I guess. Depending on why you're going and for how long you need different types. If you're just going on vacation, you barely need to do anything, you can pretty much just show up and say 'I'd like to take a vacation here' and then you're allowed to stay for a month or so. But since I am planning on living there, I need a special kind of visa called an E2 visa. E2's are specifically for foreign language teachers. There is a lot of work to getting an E2. Among other things I need to: Get a background check notarized and apostilled by the Secretary of State of New Hampshire. A medical check. Double-sealed transcripts from college. At least two trips down to Boston to visit the Korean embassy to get things signed. And a few other things that I can't remember cause I just woke up and am super excited.

I've already submitted my background check request so I should get that back in a couple of weeks, but then I still need to do the Secretary of State stuff. I've requested the transcripts which will be available on Monday. It seems like the biggest wait will be the background check. Lame. THIS IS ESCALATING QUICKLY, AHHHH.

The one sad part is that I thought I would be getting to see different positions this week but apparently that will still be in a week or two after I get a few more things done with RtT. I don't think it will affect my departure time by much (Early August) but I was still looking forward to it.

To balance out that disappointment though, I've decided to invest in a nice camera so I can take amazing pictures for this blog. So I'll be driving down to Mass tonight to pick it up. I think it was like an 800 dollar camera originally and I'm getting it for 300, aweeeeesome. Camera Link!

So yeah. Hopefully I'll have another update soon.

success?

It's a good thing if you're surprised that the interview lasted 45 minutes, right? Julianne (I think that was your name, sorry!) was lovely to talk to. She was in Taiwan and was just waking up, first interview I've had that broke the dateline.

I think I did pretty well. The conversation slipped into a casual tone surprisingly quick. It felt like we were just chatting more than an interview for a lot of it. I kept slipping back into some 'this is how you talk in an interview' mode now and then for my answers which probably seemed a bit contrived, but m'eh. 

The questions were pretty much exactly what they gave me a heads up for. One I think I could have done better was on bringing an inattentive classroom back to you. I think I went a little too discipline-y, bah. But the rest were ones I had somewhat prepared for, it was more of an issue trying to not sound cookie-cutter.

Overall, the interview increased my belief that this is the right decision for me. I will miss the kids from Many Options to death, but this is definitely the kind of experience that I need to be aiming for right now. It is probably going to be much more challenging than I am imagining now, I hope so, but I'm pretty sure it'll all work out.

Hooray.

first entry!

alright. just to be clear: the name of this blog is 'seoul is on fire' BECAUSE MY LAST NAME HAS THE WORD 'FLAME' IN IT. WANTED TO MAKE SURE EVERYONE IS ON BOARD.

Anyways!

This is becoming slightly more real than me just talking a lot about it. I have my first interview tonight at 8:30p with Reach to Teach Recruiting. Apparently they are one of the more well known recruiters for this stuff, which is somewhat reassuring. I'm pretty confident in my interview skills but this is my first phone one, so that'll be interesting.

It seems like I missed the boat for SMOE, public school, jobs. Sad. But I've still talked and read stories from enough people on hagwons (private academy meets after-school program), where I think it'll still be a really fun time. More money too, which is nice. Hopefully this week I'll be able to start and finish the 'Name Andrew's Cat in Korea' contest. Woo.

Anyways, I'll again after the interview, yeah.