seoul is on fire!

Deja Vu

2011-10-04T02:04:00.000-07:00

So I'm sitting in another airport, BOS. Waiting for my flight to San Francisco, then back to Korea. I thought I was done with Korea, but apparently not! Pretty sure most of my audience has left by this point. But no harm in continuing on anyways. I have been awake for 24 hours now, and should be arriving in Seoul in another 24.

My goal is to stay awake throughout it all so I don't feel jetlagged. I do not feel confident in my success. Time will tell!

If anyone DOES still read this, let me know!

random korea picture that i found

2010-12-30T20:14:00.001-08:00

Thailand Boat!

2010-12-20T19:00:00.000-08:00

The boat is almost finished! Here is a video describing our project and what's happened so far. See if you can spot me in the video (look for orange), or a blurry tall person when the tent is going up.

http://www.facebook.com/video/video.php?v=10150345220305214

Home Life

2010-12-11T18:50:00.000-08:00

Home is nice.

No posts lately, not nice.

Catching up with people, traveling around a bit, Christmas #1 today. It feels like my little cousins got a lot older than year while I was gone. One is going to be a freshman in high school next year. Weiiiiiiird.

Trying to figure out what's next. I'm still working with Thailand on getting more volunteers into rural schools. But I really want to get a Masters degree as well. So I'm looking both for jobs overseas and for jobs at universities in the states. If you work at a college, you can take classes for free! So I want to work at one so I can get more pieces of paper that explain that I'm amazing.

So I'm tracking down colleges that are hiring for jobs I want, but also have degrees in education that I want. It's hard. There's a big thing in Wisconsin early in March that I think I'm going to go to. It's where a lot of hiring gets done for this sort of thing.

I'm going to try and update with pictures from Thailand still, maybe adventures back home. But for the time being, this blog will probably bit a lot more boring. Please check in every now and again and hope that I am doing something more interesting, haha. I promise not to forget about this blog, so I hope whatever readers I have left don't as well.

Safe and sound

2010-11-19T11:53:00.000-08:00

AMERICAN FOOD IS AWESOME. Hopefully I end up in NH soon enough where I can check out a few of my favorite nature sites. I want to hit up Dort Road before it starts snowing.

Fail whale

2010-11-15T19:15:00.000-08:00

Sorry for the.... more than two weeks without posting.

Somewhat big news? I'm heading home! In about 5 hours I'll be heading towards the first airport of my 4 airport journey. I leave Bangkok at 5:40am and arrive in NYC at 2:30pm the same day. Time travel!

Moooooooooooooooooooooooooooore

2010-10-31T00:42:00.000-07:00

Moooooooooooore

2010-10-29T05:14:00.001-07:00

Halloween Party Pictures!

2010-10-29T02:32:00.000-07:00

Photo Update

2010-10-29T02:20:00.000-07:00

2 weeks. Fail Andrew. Here's some pictures. More to come.

All pictures are us prepping for our Halloween party, or preparing the area where we'll be building a boat:

Korea Flashback

2010-10-13T08:12:00.001-07:00

Status are generally boring to me. "It's a dude, he's in a suit. Must have been important." in one of the areas I frequented in Seoul, there was one such statue.

Passed it a hundred times, but never read the sign beneath it. On my last day in Seoul, I took a few moments to. It was worth it:

If you can't read that, it says:
Na Sok-Chu (1892-1926) is beloved by the people of Korea for his heroic struggle to regain the sovereignty and economic independence of Korea, forcibly taken by the Japanese colonialists. On December 28, 1926, Na Sok-Chu, THROWING GRENADES AND FIRING A PISTOL, staged a single-handed attack on the office of the Oriental Development Company, a notorious Japanese agency of instrumental in the economic aggression against Korea.

That's a statue.

Don't Drink Red Ants

2010-10-09T23:02:00.000-07:00

One of our volunteers woke up in the middle of the night last night to get some water. To get to our water fountain you need to go downstairs, and outside to our porch. Tap water isn't safe to drink.

So she goes down, gets the cup we use for the water, fills it up and swigs it down. She goes to get another and turns on the porch light. As she's filling her cup the second time, she looks down, and the cup is COVERED in red ants. Inside, outside, everywhere.

She sprints upstairs to get to the bathroom, throws up. She did indeed drink a cup full of red ants. Not her best night, haha. I am only drinking bottled water at night from now on, haha.

TV and Why It's Weird

2010-10-08T06:55:00.001-07:00

Watching TV in the US and Korea is very different from watching in Thailand.

In Thailand, life seems so disconnected from TV life. In America/Korea I feel like what's being depicted on TV is vaguely similar to real life. The homes people are in, the places they visit, etc. I can imagine where those homes are near me, maybe it's even similar to mine.

But in Thailand, the world on the TV seems like a magical place completely unlike where I am. Everyone is dressed up, in nice houses or businesses, etc. Maybe closer to Bangkok or more developed areas, that's what people do live like. But where I am, it's definitely not.

I'm curious if very poor areas in the U.S. experience something similar. I find myself constantly asking "Do people really live like that?" here. And not in the "Look at all the beautiful white people doing amazing things and speaking so intelligently" way.

Hm.

In Laos

2010-09-30T03:34:00.000-07:00

So I'm currently in Laos (it's right north of where I live in Thailand), getting my visa updated so I can stay in Thailand longer. It was four hours waiting at the embassy, but finally got it processed. I go back tomorrow at 1pm to pick up my passport with the visa (which let's you get into and stay in the country).

There are a crazy amount of foreigners around because this is one of the most popular spots around Thailand to do this. I've seen people from at least 20 different countries in the last 6 hours.

In front of me at the cafe at the hotel are two German guys about my age.

One of them has a tiny laptop with Skype (video chat) that he's waving around the street to show his friend back in Germany what it's like here. Weird. And at the Thai/Laos border I met a guy from France and a guy from Ireland, we went through all the stuff together and now we're staying the same hotel. Alex and Jason, respectively. Tomorrow we're gonna head back to the embassy, get our passports/visas, then head back to the Thai border. Things are much cheaper if you go with a group.

It's hard to not meet new people when you're traveling around, even if you're anti-social.

AIDS Orphanage Pictures

2010-09-27T07:05:00.000-07:00

These kids were ridiculous! Climbing around everywhere, just running up, latching onto you and trying to pull you off to play. They were probably some of the happiest kids I've met in my life. Which when you consider they they're all HIV/AIDS positive, and orphans, is pretty impressive! The program that cares for them is a Christian group that gets a tremendous amount of donations, so the kids are all really well cared for. Good food, good resources, lots of staff.

In Other News

2010-09-23T21:53:00.000-07:00

One of the other volunteers has gone missing. We last saw him very early Thursday morning at 3am. He said he was going off to visit some friends. It's now noon Friday and no one has seen/heard from him since.

We've been showing his pictures all around the neighborhood, checked with the hospitals, and the police are also looking, but still no luck. We found the bike he was using, but no sign of him.

We're all hoping he's okay and doing our best to track him down. In any country it's dangerous to be alone that late. But when traveling you have to be extra careful to not put yourself in potentially dangerous situations.

He doesn't have his wallet, his passport or his phone with him. We think he has his laptop, but he hasn't logged onto Facebook or any other websites we know he uses.

Here's hoping we find him soon.

EDIT: Volunteer has been found. He's okay.

Andrew meets a slave

2010-09-20T00:43:00.001-07:00

So today I was teaching my special class for three business women who are moving to Cambodia, or Malaysia or somewhere. Been teaching for the last week, not a bad group. I prefer teaching kids, but they might sponsor the school, so heck yes I'll teach them.

But today they brought in a young girl with them as well. She sat directly next to one of the women, chairs touching, and didn't say a word. When one of the Thai teachers asked if she was studying also, we were told no, she can't understand. I didn't put it together immediately what the deal was.

So after another teacher takes over for a bit, I go to see our director who spoke with them. Apparently she's a young girl from Laos (a country next to Thailand), and she gets paid 2000baht each month. That's about $65, $2 a day. So the entire lesson, she just sat there, smiling briefly once or twice at jokes in Thai, but not participating.

At the end of class the director wants to get more information to see if there's a way we can help her, or help educate her some. Whenever he asked her a question, she didn't answer and just looked at the woman she was with to answer for her.

Her name was Noy, she said she was 19 years old but we're pretty sure that was a lie. We're hoping that they bring her again tomorrow so we can get her away from the women while they're in class, and maybe help her practice reading/writing Thai and English. Small steps, but it's better than nothing. This isn't uncommon, it's not illegal, and it is another culture so I can't say that they're wrong. But we can do what we can to help her grow, maybe someday she'll pick up enough where she can find a better job.

Kinda sad.

More pictures!

2010-09-19T22:07:00.000-07:00

Student Comics

2010-09-18T01:29:00.000-07:00

Here some comics my younger students made in class on Thursdays:

Two More Pictures

2010-09-18T01:19:00.000-07:00

Delicious Crickets

A Street Next to Our School

Crickets for Dinner

2010-09-12T06:29:00.000-07:00

End of story.

Classes in Thailand

2010-09-08T02:52:00.000-07:00

Every MWF morning, the teachers from Isara travel to a local school and teach an hour of English lessons to three classes. I was mostly observing today, but here are some pictures I took. (At least, the not terrible ones.) It is very different from America and Thailand. Though this school does feel a lot like MO.

in Thailand

2010-09-05T06:46:00.000-07:00

Weird.

on the way to the airport

2010-09-04T14:54:00.001-07:00

ahhhhhhh. my life into three small bags. (that are killing my back) by tonight, i will have visited kuala lum pur, and be in thailand. will try to update as i go.

Cleaning Cleaning Cleaning

2010-08-31T20:52:00.000-07:00

I'm out of my apartment in three days (early Saturdayish), and have begun my final "OMG CLEAN EVERYTHING" stage. Bed area, bathroom area are clear. Kitchen, computer, couch area, not so much.

I came with two giant bags of things. I think I'm going to be leaving with half a bag. Lots of stuff is getting thrown out for various reasons. Don't need it anymore, useless, or in the case of clothes: stained with dry erase marker. No other teacher seemed to have this issue as much as I did. Though getting in dry erase swordfights probably didn't help.

My best friend here, Ashley, leaves the same day I do, Sunday. BUT, her school kicked her out of her apartment today to move the new teacher in, how kind of them. So she has to crash on my awkward couch instead of her nice, usual bed. We finished moving her out of her apartment early this morning. She's the planner in our friendship, but she went way overboard with her luggage. In the end, she had one giant suitcase, one giant dufflebag, a backpack and her purse. Both the suitcase and dufflebag took two hands for me to lift. She wants to travel to four different countries in the next two months with them? ...no. So now we have to repack everything of hers again to send more stuff home in boxes. Should be interesting.

Here is the state of my apartment, haha:

last week

2010-08-29T19:41:00.001-07:00

ahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh

farewells again

2010-08-26T08:05:00.000-07:00

not mine.

larry, the teacher who's been here since i've been here (he arrived one month previous to me) is leaving this saturday. we were good friends, and i'm sad to see him go. he's moving to austria next to teach, and he loves the german language, so i'm happy for him. but it's still strange. for that one week between when he leaves, and i leave, i'll be the senior person.

i know i've already been the senior person since december when i was promoted, but it's different. it's very strange to see the next era of teachers taking over, they've already coined new words and terms for work that me and larry don't use. it's weird to see the office shift so quickly.

what can be learned from stories

2010-08-16T06:47:00.000-07:00

this is the question i gave my students today. name a story and four lessons you can learn from it. by far the winner was Cristin. a tiny little student that squeaks when she talks and giggles more than she breathes.

Story: Cinderella
Lessons Learned: Be Pretty, Don't Kill Your Parents

technically, those are both the lessons the stories teaches. a dirty, servant girl can't find love unless she wears beautiful clothes and has a makeover. and well, i think the second one is pretty self explanatory.

3 weeks. Crazy.

2010-08-14T20:22:00.000-07:00

So in exactly 3 weeks I will be on my way to, or in Thailand. Weeeeeeeeeeeeird.

I'm still doing terribly at packing, and I haven't bought souvenirs for everyone yet, or anything else. I need to stop slacking. Did find out how to ship all my stuff home to America since I won't be heading there directly, that's good. Now I just need to go buy the boxes, pack the boxes, bring the boxes back to the post office, then I'm golden!

Kimchi has found a new home with a new teacher, I'm very happy about that. Was not excited about maybe giving her to a stranger. Wish I could bring her with me to Thailand or back to the states, but it would just be too expensive/difficult. Sorry Kimchi, I still love you! Even though you bite me and scratch me ALL the time...

Things are good to go in Thailand, and soon I figure out if my friend going into the PeaceCorps will be stationed there as well. If she is, that will be incredible.

3 weeks...

the cutest day in Korea

2010-08-07T18:52:00.000-07:00

on saturday, ashley and our friend holly decided to go on a tour of all the cafes we'd wanted to visit. this included: Giocat, Hello Kitty Cafe and Charlie Brown. Giocat was a cafe where they just have about 30 cats, and you play with them while you drink tea/coffee. Hello Kitty and Charlie Brown were just themed places.

giocat was definitely my favorite. the drinks were super expensive, but so is taking care of that many cats. they were everywhere in the place, all over the floor, on the ceiling, on the walls, tables, chairs, benches. everywhere. cats aren't terribly popular in korea, so it was strange to see so many koreans adoring them so much here. some of the people were really struggling to keep cats on their laps, even when it was clear they didn't want to be there. but still a good time, i feel bad for the cats they shaved to have super poofy tails. they looked like cat poodles.

hello kitty and charlie brown were nice, but other than the themes there wasn't a whole lot special about them. HK was more stylish, but Charlie Brown was just a much nicer place to hang out in.

Jeju Part 2

2010-08-02T08:32:00.000-07:00

More pictures!

All from the mountain "Hallasan" Mt. Halla:

Try to see how far that trail goes. Far. In the heat.

The long trail DOWN the hill. All stairs, my poor knees.

A nice view from the trail above:

The marker near the top of the climbable parts. 1700m high. Almost died. For serious.

Jeju Island Part 1

2010-08-01T05:45:00.001-07:00

I'm way too tired to type any of the adventures yet. So here are some pictures.

Pool on our hotel's roof:

View from our hotel's roof (ocean in the background):

Took this on a bridge near the shore:

The ocean again:

gah

2010-07-26T15:38:00.001-07:00

packing for my 5 day trip is making me freak out. when i have to pack to move from korea, that's going to make me have a heart attack, i think.

so i'll probably be out of touch until next sunday/monday. hopefully when i get back i have really amazing pictures and stories. if not, sorry. haha.

weird seoul things

2010-07-24T16:22:00.001-07:00

have i mentioned these before? there's these big tv screens along one street in seoul. they have touch screens and cameras built in. so you can play games on them, take pictures, etc. it's quite cool. my friend ashley and i were walking by and took one, and it gave us the option of e-mailing it to someone. after we took some and had them sent to us, it opened up a gallery. there were like 32,000 pictures people had taken at these things. it was awesome.

all times of the day, people alone, people in groups, people fake punching each other in the face, i hope they put it online at some point.

rain, shabu shabu, and long hours

2010-07-22T16:50:00.000-07:00

so, it's summer vacation. WHICH MEANS THE OPPOSITE OF VACATION FOR KOREAN STUDENTS.

i think i've covered this again, but to recap: no school means more time to go to the 'academies' during the day. so all academies offer extra classes and extended hours. you can guess how excited the kids are about this, since the workload at our academies is much higher than school. so it's more work than not-vacation.

luckily, the summer vacation is shorter than the winter vacation (weird, american students, right?) so this will only last about 3 weeks, give or take a few days. maybe 3 and a half. my schedule is pretty decent, probably the best i've had all year. but i've been really unlucky, and established myself as someone who could handle a lot of classes, so they kept giving me more. even when i'm head teacher and supposed to have the easiest schedule, haha. on wednesday's, i teach for less time than i'm not teaching. 70% of my day is breaks/preparation time. other days i'm not as lucky, but they're still only a little more work than normal. doable.

so before i went in at 2p and worked til 9:30p, now i'll go in at 9:15a and leave at around 5-7p. depending on my breaks. and we get extra money for teaching more classes, hooray.

today is a work lunch. where we all go out together to bond and be happy. it's nice to talk to the korean teachers in a more casual environment. and the school pays for the food, which is double-ly awesome. today we're going for shabu shabu.

you basically have a plate of meat, a plate of vegetables, and a boiling pot of water. then you make soup. it's delicious. and fun to say.

the only downside is that we already have long classes today, and lunch is 2 hours before work starts. so work is almost 10-11 hours long today. ouch.

but one day this week, two days next week, and then vacation!

traveling down to jeju island with my friend ashley and her friend diana. my first real vacation in 11 months, hooray.

screen golf

2010-07-18T19:51:00.000-07:00

8 days? geez

2010-07-15T08:46:00.000-07:00

bad andrew, 8 days without a post.

anyways, things are... steady. and boring. mostly boring.

but boring for a good reason, i guess? i'm in antisocial-annie mode to save money. it's very difficult to do things with other teachers WITHOUT spending lots of cash. screen golfing, going to the city, having dinner, etc. so i just come home after work and catch up on things. tv, books, podcasts, whatever is available.

still practicing my thai. working on the alphabet and general survival terms: hello, how are you, thank you, i'm sorry, goodbye, etc. it's going slowly, but going.

i'm overly excited for thailand, so it's putting a damper on things here i think. in thailand i'll be teaching purely to teach. there's no profit involved, no business, just teaching. here, i'm teaching for money. the school is a business and the business comes first. that's not nearly as fun or rewarding.

even when i'm in thailand i'm not planning on traveling. i just want to spend as much time teaching as i can, when i have an opportunity to teach in a situation like that, why would i WANT to travel? this is going to be 10x better.

no pictures this time either, sorry! this weekend is a picture trip, so i promise i'll try to get some up then. and 28th onward is my vacation, which should be some beautiful tropical photos. please be patient!

poor, poor student

2010-07-08T21:32:00.000-07:00

one of my students: link (named after the zelda character, awesome) came to school today in what i thought was a costume. it was very bright blue, a tiny bit see-through and looked home-made... it was.

his mom made it for him.

and he had to wear it all day, to school and his afterschool stuff.

if you imagine Aladdin's outfit from the disney movie but with Jasmine's colors. that's what he looked like. and it was class picture day.

he was in surprisingly good spirits, i'm a little bit surprised (but happy) the other students didn't pick on him for it.

will try to get copy of the class picture later to post.

thai

2010-07-07T08:47:00.000-07:00

learning this language is very difficult. learning the korean alphabet was relatively easy. every character has one sound, no special way to say it. ka is almost always ka.

in thai, there's three tiers of letters, low mid high. and each of those tiers you have to say in a certain way depending on where it is in a word. so every letter has a beginning sound and an ending sound, one of three classes, and 5 potential tones.

this may take me awhile to learn.

i think it's pretty similar to learning chinese. (LEARNING CHINESE IS VERY, VERY HARD. AHHHHHHHHHHHHH)

uh oh

2010-07-02T06:47:00.000-07:00

andrew's going to thailand?

was accepted by the school i applied for. so it looks like that's the next stop in andrew's world tour. the blog lives.

it's still a couple months off, but i'm excited. for map:

CLICK HERE

why does this exist

2010-06-29T07:45:00.000-07:00

whyyyyyyyyyyyy

post korea

2010-06-25T16:43:00.000-07:00

now that we're under two months, i actually have to start thinking about life after korea. or korea again. or something.

yesterday i found a really interesting school in thailand that i applied for. basically it's a free school for kids and adults in the local community. teaching computers, english, and whatever else you can teach. vaguely similar to MO, i guess?

unknown if i'll get the spot, even if i don't. but it's good to be getting stuff setup. even if this one doesn't pan out. woo.

i hate summer. not meant for this heat, haha.

seoul zoo!

2010-06-20T09:04:00.000-07:00

ahhhhhhhh!

seals!

something with horns!

monkeys!

dolphin surfing!

suspicious ostrich!

curse you, argentina.

2010-06-17T20:58:00.000-07:00

4-1 against korea. faces were very sad afterwards, haha.

this song is so popular

2010-06-13T20:48:00.000-07:00

i hear it at least 5 times a day, gah.

i guess it's maybe also the korean world cup theme? hm.

omg

2010-06-13T10:04:00.001-07:00

watching korean world cup matches with koreans is crazy. omg.

(pictures later)

Not dead

2010-06-04T20:37:00.000-07:00

We're having an overnight 'camping' thing tonight with my company. And by camping, I mean we're going to a mini-resort and just eating a lot of food, hooray.

The sad part is that I'm losing like all of my weekend, lame.

Here's a random picture of my friend Jo. She left last weekend, sad. With under 3 months remaining, most of the people I've known for awhile are gone. Out of an original like 15-20. I'd say we're down to 5. There's people who arrived after me that I like, but it's different with them. There's fewer "Hey, remember that time?" moments.

Also, MO ends soon back home, weird! I can't believe it's been a year already.

weird museum

2010-05-29T06:42:00.000-07:00

was wandering around today and found this museum. it was very strangely shaped. it's apparently for a famous korean video-artist. didn't go inside yet, an adventure for another day.

there was a nice little park behind it, lots of families were there playing. i'm glad they don't make that an area you need to pay to get into.

classroom, big window

2010-05-26T21:13:00.000-07:00

i'm awesome at titling things.

here's my student jenny, i'm not sure what she's doing. she hated this picture, hahaha.

omg it's a dragon

2010-05-22T07:10:00.000-07:00

ahhhhh. lantern festival for buddha's birthday. here's some of the highlights. sadly i couldn't get any pictures of the GIANT PARADE. hundreds of kids, hundreds of people in full traditional korean garb. even a group of kids in wheelchairs, pushed by nurses who were dressed up, with giant kid-in-wheel-chair-with-dressed-up-nurses balloon floats! lots of big lit-up statues too.

sunglasses

2010-05-20T19:33:00.001-07:00

almost no one wears sunglasses here, but i often see people with umbrellas to block the sun. i think it's more for skin, but c'mon. it's difficult to even find cheap ones unless you find little 'side of the road' shops.

will upload some pictures later, feeling very sleepy this morning. gotta go to the store and get some breakfast, hooray. kimbap maybe?

good shoes

2010-05-15T09:17:00.000-07:00

glad i got water-resistant shoes before i left. went with my friend roger to do some shooting tonight. we decided to go to a local bridge/semi-dried up river. here's one of the picture i didn't hate:

life is good lately, pretty calm. two new teachers coming in next week, that should be interesting. will have to get them oriented and trained. being the boss has its downsides, haha.

have to wake up early tomorrow to take a bus to seoul. trying to take some pictures of my friends as they finish their half marathon. after that is the lantern festival. (http://www.llf.or.kr/eng/index.asp) Where there's a bunch of pretty lanterns! Hopefully will get some very nice pictures. We'll see.

I wonder if New Hampshire is as warm/hot as it is getting here.

why does this exist

2010-05-10T07:00:00.000-07:00

and why is it so delicious:

honey and aloe, strangely amazing.

top of the hill

2010-05-07T07:14:00.000-07:00

earlier i posted pictures from the temple on the hill i live on. here are a few pictures from local areas. one from a buddhist graveyard on top of the hill i live on, another view from the same hill, a view from the top of the only walmartish place near me and a bonus:

apparently i've built up a reputation for drawing really cute things on white boards. to the point of where i've run out of things to draw. so here are some of my sketches to copy in class when i need new material:

mystery solved

2010-05-02T09:03:00.001-07:00

shayla wins it:

hot days

2010-05-02T02:58:00.000-07:00

so the days when i sweat while walking around have started. i feel like koreans don't sweat, the deodorant they have here is terrible, but they never smell. i'm glad i brought a two year supply from home of the heavy-duty stuff.

pretty uneventful sunday, just cleaned up around the apartment, watched some movies, walked into town for lunch at burger saloon. i'm a more-healthy-eating kick at the moment, i wish salad fixings were cheaper. and available without a bus ride.

here are some pictures from my short trip down the hill:

this is the first person i've seen on a skateboard in Korea:

a view down one of my streets near my work. you can see the horizon of apartment buildings that are EVERYWHERE here.

and bonus points to whoever can tell me what this says, the bottle kind of gives it away:

Distrustfulness

2010-04-30T05:38:00.001-07:00

I'm not sure if that's a word. But Korea has made me suspicious of well-dressed Koreans, who are very polite, and speak English well. This is very rude of me, but I'll explain why. Out of the 15 or so times random Korean people have approached me on the street, 13 have been Jehova's Witnesses or Mormons.

Neither of those two things are bad, but they can be very pushy. "I'm sorry, I'm busy now. Thank you though." does not work. It is wonderful that you care enough about something that you want other people to feel that same sense of joy and happiness, but please be polite if it's quite clear someone isn't interested.

Some are much more polite about it than others. The one outside the store tonight, not so much. Sigh.

8 months

2010-04-25T20:41:00.000-07:00

i've been in korea for 8 months as of today, weird!

the story authors

2010-04-21T06:41:00.000-07:00

The two authors of the previously posted stories. Hannah on the left, Diana on the right. You can see one of their new works in the background.

Update: The third story, and the third author.

i hate orange juice

2010-04-19T20:03:00.001-07:00

So yesterday morning I was bringing my recycling to the basement. One of which was a bottle of orange juice. It had a tiny bit left in it. Well apparently it was older than I thought because the bottle had filled with gas and heavily pressurized itself. So when I took the cap off, it shot off like a bullet and hit me in the face.

I have a decent bruise on my eyelid and a scratch on my lip. If it had gone 1mm closer to my face I'd probably be blind in my left eye now, haha.

Obviously I should not recycle.

Fireworks!

2010-04-19T17:52:00.000-07:00

Larry's birthday was on Friday, one of his gifts was some fireworks. So obviously we gathered a bunch of people and went to the park at midnight to shoot them off. Quality on the second one is lame because I had to brighten it to see everyone.

a crazy god

2010-04-14T06:12:00.000-07:00

one more story, same students. same rules.

Ashley: Once upon a time, there was a god.

Hannah: The god was crazy.

He was going to make something.

It was a sheep.

He also made oranges because he was hungry.

But the sheep ate the oranges.

The god was mad and yelled at the sheep.

And the god killed the sheep.

He drank the sheep’s blood.

And he ate the sheep’s body.

Suddenly he became bigger.

Then the god killed himself.

He killed himself because the sheep’s body was made of cheese, and the god hated cheese. He didn’t know the sheep was made of cheese.

But he rose from his graveyard and started to kill people.

The world was full of people’s blood, and it tasted like grape juice.

And the bodies tasted like cheese.

He took the bodies to space, and drank the blood.

And he was dead because he hated grape juice.

Who Let the Dog Big

2010-04-14T06:09:00.000-07:00

So the same two students wrote a story today in class. It didn't intend to end up where it did, but it still ended up there... They alternated writing every line.

Who Let the Dog Out

Hannah: There was a hamster.

Ashley: The hamster was huge like an elephant.

So the hamster was famous for being so huge.

The hamster was sad because he became bigger and bigger every day.

The one day the hamster saw a dog.

And he fell in love with the dog.

The dog was getting smaller every day.

Unfortunately, the dog was scared of the hamster.

But the hamster loved the dog anyways.

The hamster shared his nuts with the dog every day.

Unfortunately, the dog hated nuts.

The hamster didn’t know that.

One day, the dog went to the hamster’s house and said that the hamster’s nuts were disgusting.

When he heard that from the dog he was so sad, but suddenly this body was becoming smaller.

Then the dog became bigger than the hamster.

The hamster was so surprised, and shout the song “Who Let the Dogs Big!?”

And so the dog said, “Woof! Woof! Woof! Woof! Woof!

They sang all day long together, and they fell in love.”

The End

who let the dogs out

2010-04-12T21:35:00.000-07:00

that's what two of my smartest students were singing all class. 12 year old song, one i wish i never remembered, and they somehow manage to find it, haha. curse you ashley and hannah.

kitty pics

2010-04-08T05:57:00.000-07:00

i empathize

2010-04-08T05:44:00.000-07:00

my cat (kimchi) just went in to be spayed today. just got her home, she is very confused. she keeps falling over and wandering slowly around, then falling over so more. pictures incoming soon.

women taxi drivers

2010-04-01T06:56:00.000-07:00

it took me over 7 months, but i finally saw my first woman taxi driver today. crazy.

more pictures. crazy temple.

2010-03-29T21:08:00.000-07:00

why is there a temple hidden behind the giant apartment buildings??

apparently it's very toxic orange dust that makes the sky this color. my korean teachers say i shouldn't go outside when it gets really bad. yikes.

temple #1

smaller temple

little statues placed on a bigger statue

they are pretty intricate.

i think these lead to a graveyard area.

blue skies

2010-03-28T02:34:00.000-07:00

hooray! i was getting sick of grey.

korean tv

2010-03-21T03:55:00.000-07:00

I love Korean television, which is a bit strange because I never watch Korean TV shows. There's always US TV shows or old action movies on, amazing. But lately I've noticed a new pattern. You can ALWAYS find an episode of 'America's Funny Home Videos' on. It's also the only English show they don't subtitle (translating what people are saying into Korean on the bottom of the screen).

Most of my students watch it.

So basically, AFHV is a show where Koreans get to watch a bunch of Americans make fools of themselves with no context, awesome. Granted, there isn't a whole lot of dialogue to explain, but it's still interesting they don't even try.

If it's a normal TV show there's always Korean subtitles, and if it's a cartoon they redo all the voices in Korean. I'm surprised how many American cartoons are popular here, I would have thought it'd be more Japanese and Korean ones. But Spongebob, Ben 10, Timmy Turner, etc. all pretty popular with many of my students.

I've gotten pretty awesome at drawing Spongebob with whiteboard markers. Though drawing him terribly is much more entertaining. "TEACHER NOOOOOOOOO. THAT IS BAD!!!" Haha, I know.

Efficiency

2010-03-18T07:41:00.000-07:00

I live on top of a big hill. It's about a 10 minute walk, all at a decent angle. I'm walking home tonight, and I see a kid on a bike ahead of me. I get halfway up the hill, I am ahead of the kid on the bike. If riding a bike up a steep hill is more work, and slower, why wouldn't he just walk it up? I don't understand.

Teeth

2010-03-17T09:30:00.000-07:00

So I'm in my final class of the day. It's a class of four of our best students. The highest level students at our school. One of them, let's call her Anna, says her tooth is 'vibrating.' This confuses me, but okay.

Halfway through the class she starts putting her hand in her mouth. When she said vibrating, she meant 'wiggly,' her tooth was loose. And she plays around with it some, and it pops out.

"Teacher (Korean students always refer to you as 'Teacher') , can I go to the bathroom?" "Yes, please go to the bathroom and clean up the blood." And she does.

She comes back with some gauze and is pretty entertained. We go back to reading our newspaper and everything is good. A little later, she's just playing with her tooth on the desk. I find this hilarious, but I don't want to comment, in case she gets embarrassed. But I like that I have a class with these super hardworking students, and they can still be entertained by a tooth. I have a feeling it would be similar with American students. So you play with your tooth, Anna, I hope you get money from the tooth fairy.

Andrew makes a Good Bad Decision

2010-03-10T19:41:00.000-08:00

So my two friends have convinced me to run a 10K. That's a 10-kilometer/6-mile race in April. Now, most people would probably say "Good decision! Running is healthy!" I would agree with that statement. The 'Bad' part of the decision is that I hate exercise, like, really hate. I run when something is chasing me. So going from nothing to 6-miles in a little over a month is going to be pretty challenging.

Captions by random Korean students

The time limit is 90 minutes, and I know I can beat that. But at the current time, I'd have to walk half of it. My goal is to MAYBE be able to complete it without walking. I think that may be aiming too high, but I'd rather aim high than low. If I can do it under 50-60 minutes, I'll consider myself satisfied.

But if I can keep this up and not absolutely hate the exercise it should only have good results (obviously.). Get a little slimmer, get the happy-exercise-brain-chemicals flowing, have more eneregy, hooray.

So for the next month: No soda, minimum of 30 minutes run time 6 days a week, healthier food.

I'll miss you Pepsi.

the city

2010-03-07T06:08:00.001-08:00

One of the busier streets in Seoul. It's in a neighborhood called Gangnam. It has a fair number of foreigners and is a really big commercial stop. It's home of one of my favorite bookstores here, Kyobo. Not many stores carry English books but they do and have a decent enough selection. You can actually barely tell this is Korea in this picture, strange.

waking up early

2010-03-04T18:26:00.000-08:00

if you consider 8am early, for me it is. i go to sleep at 2! construction workers throwing very large pipes from the fourth story window of a building. lots of pipes, upwards of an hour.

which has led me to believe that the building is somehow alive, and trying to cause me inconvenience. it's really the only reasonable answer. here's what i imagine it looks like when my back is turned or am asleep.

random pictures!

2010-03-01T07:08:00.000-08:00

picture from our school's rooftop during the biggest storm in many, many years. most of my students had never heard of a "snow day."

one of the biggest shopping centers in seoul (i think), it was pretty around christmas.

crazy statues outside an art museum. smooshed people.

my friend larry being contemplative at our favorite restaurant near work.

a quaint view from near my apartment on my walking route to work. it's surprisingly pretty during the right time of day.

english names and goodbyes

2010-03-01T06:18:00.000-08:00

i got asked about english names a couple days ago (hey shayla). 98% of students at english academies usually take on an english name as well. this is to get more involved in the learning process, and because a lot of foreigners have difficulties pronouncing korean names properly. it took me a few months to get a good hang of it and even now i get some that are curveballs sometimes. yeong eon for example.

so when a student comes along without an english name, sometimes you get to give them one! depending on the teacher this can be a great, or terrible thing. some stranger names of students at the moment: lysol, milk, spongebob, jet, santa. i promised a number of my old students that i'd try to name some korean students after them. so this is an update on that.

i think it's a bit rude to just give names, so i usually write about 5 choices on the board and let them choose. usually i do 4 MO names and one crazy name that i don't really let them choose (like "mr. dangerous" or "sparky") anyways, so far i've had the following names chosen: jacob, brittany, dylan, gabriel and abby. there were also two special cases: su-bin and ye-rim. on the first day of class, they refused to tell me either their korean names OR english names. so they became shayla and shannon. next class they relented and told me their real names, but it was too late.

i'm just glad when a student isn't named 'david' or 'sally.' for some reason a very large percentage of my students have those names. they're not bad names, but i need more variety! i had 5 davids out of 50 students one semester. there's a lot of other really good names too, students!

and on the goodbyes note:
my good friend alex left last evening. other teachers have left since i've arrived, but i've known him almost the longest and i lost my video game buddy. quite sad. he should be back in florida in a few hours, i'm a little bit jealous. i've finally hit my six month mark (that's crazy), so there's more goodbyes coming in not too long. but it also means a lot of my friends are pushing to do more things. i think we're organizing a trip to japan in may. hooray.

Random Culture!

2010-02-28T17:30:00.001-08:00

Random Culture!
Originally uploaded by laflame

I have surprisingly few "Korean-y" experiences here with the old culture. Mostly through fault of my own. But this one was a happy accident. Aiming to go to a folk village soon which I guess is the K-equivalent of a old western town you can visit. Yay culture.

animal whisperers

2010-02-24T18:28:00.000-08:00

today we were reading about an american woman who has a TV show in korea where she talks with animals. two of my classes thought she was real, one did not. one of my cynics had the best line of the day: "teacher, if she can talk to animals, then i can talk to paper." then he talked to some paper for a few minutes.

imagine a walmart parking lot

2010-02-20T06:08:00.000-08:00

you've just done something my students cannot do. i showed them a picture of a normal sized parking lot for a chain store in new hampshire, they were amazed.

in my neighborhood at home, every building has parking underneath in the basement, or on the first floor with apartments starting on the second. it's not something i'm aware of a lot of the time, but for areas i've been in the breakdown seems to be: no space; all space. cities or small towns. i'm sure there's some more grey area there, but it doesn't feel as common as back home.

andrew has a conundrum

2010-02-02T06:35:00.001-08:00

so it's about t-minus 30 minutes til i'm 24 (in korea i am 26, weird!). i'm not doing anything special really, just sitting at home reading. a few things have happened lately that i'm not especially happy about, but that comes with adulthood, i guess. but still, unfortuante and i certainly hold some responsibility, so i can't complain that much.

earlier, i was trying to figure out what i should do for my birthday. should i do something special, nothing at all, something with friends, something alone. i actually forgot that it was my birthday tomorrow until somewhat late in the evening.

i ultimately decided that a quiet night at home was probably for the best. it's about 11:40 now. in a few minutes i think i'll head down to the nearby park and take some pictures. i think new years and birthdays let you set a good example for how you want to spend the next year. so i'm reading my favorite author, haruki murakami, then am going to go take some pictures. while i'm out i'll try to think about where i want to be one year from now. as much as i love teaching, teaching korean kids english holds absolutely no value over my last job. the differences in what i teach and the connections that i make is worlds apart. next year i at this time i want to be doing something that i love as much as i was doing in 2009 on this day.

making that happen relies on me, and how far i'm willing to go to make it a reality. and at the moment, i think that i'm willing to go pretty far. so here's to a new year, good decisions, and working towards being what i want to be. i'm sure there will be challenging moments, and i will have to make decisions i don't want to make, but that's part of growing up. i need to learn to take those decisions, and even if i'm not happy with them, accept that i have to do what i know is best for me, and the people that i care about.

cheers everyone, i know i certainly haven't done anything to encourage the continued reading of this blog with infrequent and often terse updates. but i think the only people who probably regularly do check it are people that i consider friends. so thank you for sticking with me on my exciting korean adventure's boring blog.

really, thank you.

oh students

2010-01-27T05:31:00.001-08:00

today's top quotes:

"so who was it that killed medusa?"
"mother theresa"
followed by a 5-minute argument about the validity of that statement.

and

"that's suitable stealing!"

sad

2010-01-13T06:06:00.000-08:00

my "love is not abuse" purple bracelet i got from many options broke today. i wonder if i can repair it...

life is busy busy busy at the moment. during winter and summer vacations, korean students do not actually get vacation. they have to go to their study schools, for longer-than-usual classes. so for the month of january classes start at 9 (i hate getting up early!), go for 4 hours straight with 3 5-minute breaks. then they go home, or to another study school to do it all again.

i got promoted to head foreign teacher, that's cool. though it obviously has downsides as well.

it will be very nice to get back to the normal schedule. next month is my birthday, and to celebrate i'm buying very nice tickets to see an orchestra play video game music. yay korea. i'm trying to buy the super special seats that let you meet with the composer who has made the music to my favorite games for the last 15 years. yikes. anyone have thoughts on what i should try to get him sign?

happy new years!

2009-12-31T07:28:00.001-08:00

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.

2009-12-30T15:04:00.000-08:00

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

2009-12-28T07:12:00.001-08:00

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

2009-12-09T06:57:00.001-08:00

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

2009-11-08T07:38:00.003-08:00

birds
Originally uploaded by laflame

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

park 1

2009-11-08T07:38:00.001-08:00

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

2009-11-08T07:36:00.001-08:00

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

2009-11-07T00:08:00.001-08:00

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

2009-11-07T00:07:00.001-08:00

Korea 1 005
Originally uploaded by laflame

our tour guide on the adventure.

dmz adventure 8

2009-11-07T00:06:00.001-08:00

Korea 1 010
Originally uploaded by laflame

me trying to look terrified.

dmz adventure 7

2009-11-07T00:05:00.003-08:00

Korea 1 015
Originally uploaded by laflame

taylor, same deal.

dmz adventure 6

2009-11-07T00:05:00.001-08:00

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

2009-11-07T00:04:00.001-08:00

Korea 1 012
Originally uploaded by laflame

clinton with a guard. technically in north korea.

dmz adventure 4

2009-11-07T00:03:00.001-08:00

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

2009-11-07T00:01:00.001-08:00

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

2009-11-06T23:59:00.003-08:00

Korea 1 032
Originally uploaded by laflame

same with alex.

dmz adventure 1

2009-11-06T23:59:00.001-08:00

Korea 1 034
Originally uploaded by laflame

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