East Coast, Day 2: Seoraksan

Finally--the much-awaited, much-belated second post on our Thanksgiving trip to the East Coast. We've been caught up in the last big push towards Christmas lately, plus our internet was down for a few days while we switched to a new provider. (Yes, our old, awful ISP has gotten the boot. Woohoo!)

Anyway. Our second day at Yangyang, we woke up to overcast skies that looked like they could blow off by noon. Our plan was to take a cable-car ride up one of the nearby peaks of the famously-beautiful Seoraksan National Park, and while many of our group (Dr. Kim especially) were a bit bummed that the weather actually worsened as we drove to the park, I had high hopes for some dramatic photos, and Seoraksan did not disappoint.First, the cable-car up the mountain, which probably would have brought back some Austria flashbacks, if it weren't for the excruciating K-pop ballads they pumped into the car. Though the rainbow across the valley, which sadly didn't photograph, was a very nice touch.

At the top, then, after donning a few hastily-purchased ponchos to ward off the sleet and the rain, we climbed up to an exposed cliff-top with some spectacular views of the adjoining valleys.

Below, we have our fearless leader, one of the valley views, and then us (aw!), with my hair thankfully covered this time.







































After a very cold thirty minutes at the top of the world, we rode back down into the valley and paid a visit to the park's landmark ginormous seated buddha (at right). This turns out to have been an excellent idea, because it was right around then that the rain really hit in earnest. I can only imagine what it must have been like at the top, what with the sleet/snow and freezing wind.




In any case, the weather, while inclement, did provide some extremely photogenic vistas, which I humbly hope I have captured adequately (below).


















And a final treat on the day (no, I'm not talking about the sundubu, or "uncurdled bean curd," which is both much tastier than it looks and much less oxymoronic than it sounds): When we got back to the resort, what else did we find to welcome us, but our second rainbow of the day! It was a good one, too. Take a look:

East Coast, Day 1: Naksansa

As promised, here's the first of three photo-posts on our Thanksgiving trip to the East Sea / Sea of Japan (don't get me started). This one covers our visit to Naksansa (Naksan Temple). Details about Seoraksan, Sol Beach, and our impromptu seaside cavorting, along with some sweet, delicious photos, will go up sometime later this week.

Now, without further ado . . .


Our intrepid band (see below) left Seoul around midmorning on Thanksgiving Day and, after a few hours spent winding our way through some startlingly underpopulated mountains (plus a generous lunch break for some back-country Korean barbecue), the East Sea suddenly materialized before us, doing its darnedest to look like California. The weather was cool and clear, too--gone was the snow and haze we'd had the previous week in Seoul.

After settling us in at the hotel (more on that later), our fearless leader marshalled us off to Naksansa, a nearby Buddhist temple complex that, while devastated by a wildfire a couple years ago, still offers some interesting sights and spectacular views.

You can see our group below: from left, it's Dr. Kim, Ms. Linklater (music teacher), Ms. Ko (aka Mrs. Dr. Kim), Lia Kim, "Ms. Massie," "Mr. Goff," Gia Kim, and Ms. Anno (Japanese teacher).


(Note: Yes, I ran out and got my hair cut within sixty minutes of seeing how awful it looked in this shot.)

Word on the street is that Naksansa is one of only a few temples in Korea that overlooks the sea, and the effect overall is quite stunning. The view from the peak of the main hill, where a 16m statue of Gwaneum, the goddess of mercy, resides, offers 360 degrees of eye candy, from the nearby mountains (see the photo at the very top of the post), to the deep blue water, to the picturesque and relatively desolate coast.

























But the views aren't the only thing worth seeing at Naksansa--the temple is also home to an antique set of larger-than-life temple guardians. The figures pictured below can be a bit hard to find--they're tucked away in a dimly-lit gateway next to the big bell outside the main shrine, and I saw several people walk right past them without a second look--but once noticed, they're mesmerizing. The details are just incredible: so many colors, and so many precise cuts in the wood. I especially love the expression on the face on the left, and how that fellow on the right there feels surprisingly animate.



Near the gateway with the guardians was another unexpected treat: piles of roof tiles signed by visitors, apparently as a fundraising program for the temple complex's ongoing reconstruction. Surprising number of Germans among the expected Koreans, Chinese, and Japanese.





































Finally--and I promise you we're nearing the end, because this was also the point that my camera was running out of batteries--we strolled down to the bottom of the hill for a peek at the tiny prayer pavilion perched at the side of a cliff over the water. The pavilion was an unforgettable location, secluded among the roaring surf, but alas my Energizers did not, in fact, keep going and going long enough for me to get a shot of the place. I did, however, manage to get a very topical shot of the barbed wire and the guard post beyond the pavilion (they're there to keep out purely hypothetical North Korean spies) shortly after snapping Nana, possessed by whimsy, playing with a fish mobile like a cat.



Well, that's about it it for Day 1 of the trip. Stay tuned for more East Sea / Seoraksan goodness in the days to come. Though probably not tomorrow: Nana and I have a date with the Royal Asiatic Society. Free lecture on Korean folk music? Hells yeah!

PS: Using blogger to format photo posts still sucks. Ugh!

Korean Technology Update: Part 3 (I think)

Can you guess what appliance this control panel belongs to?

If you guessed "toilet," you've probably lived in Asia--or you've been reading our blog! Yes, these were the ludicrously complicated controls for the toilet at our hotel near Sokcho, where we spent the weekend (more pics forthcoming). As you can tell from the above photographic illustration, the DobiDos toilet includes all the latest options in butt-cleansing technology, from "funnel" and "manly funnel" to "skirt squirt," "gushing river," and, on the far left, "please stop, you're hurting me, let me go." Of course, we were reluctant to give any of these a go (see: fear of apartment toilet), but we did take the power seat for a spin.




Oh yeah, that seat? It's heated. Now, if only we could have figured out how to flush the darn thing . . .

In other news, this is SchoolofROK's 100th post! And you can expect more well-documented shenanigans in the near future.

PS: Mike, did I fool you on this one? I was trying pretty hard!

Who needs cranberry sauce when you can have sea cucumber?

For Thanksgiving break, our principal figured out a way to get a group of us to China for only $500, plus visa fees. Sounded great! Justin and I were in.

Unfortunately, the school needed fifteen people to be interested to get the rate. Well, it didn't turn out that enough people wanted to go all the way to China, so that plan went away.

So, for Thanksgiving break, our principal decided to host a Thanksgiving potluck. The school would provide the turkey (these are very expensive over here – the one at Costco clocked in at $70) and everybody would bring a side dish. Sounded great! Justin and I were in.

Unfortunately, the school needed enough lucky potters to pull off the potluck, and not enough people wanted to get together for dinner. So that plan went away.

Finally, for Thanksgiving break, the chairman of the board of the school offered to take us to Sol Beach, a resort on the Pacific coast of Korea. The school would pay transportation and lodging. All we had to do was go. Sounded great! Justin and I were in.

We were, it turned out, almost the only people in. The music teacher came along, as did the Japanese teacher, and that was it.

Okay. I can understand not wanting to go all the way to China, and I guess theoretically I can understand not wanting to cook something. And I know that some people had other plans in advance. But seriously, I have never met a group of people it was this difficult to give away a resort weekend to.

In any case, the trip was on. We bundled into the little yellow school van and headed for the coast, which I will continue to refer to as "the coast" to avoid taking sides on the "East Sea" / "Sea of Japan" debate. They take that rather seriously over here. Forty years of colonial rule will do that to you.

Justin will do another post with temple pictures so I'll leave it to him to write about that and skip straight to the dinner. I feel we have to do something to compete with Leslie's descriptions of the Taganrog meat district, so I offer to you the Yangyang fish district, featuring aquariums full of everything from a two-foot long tuna to live eel, sea cucumbers and squid, and a king crab that was about six inches away from escaping its tub and heading for glory.

So there, at the Yangyang fish district, Justin and I rang in Thanksgiving with a hearty round of Korean sushi (which, I have to tell you, does not live up to Aunt Alice's turkey and ham). The difference between Korean sushi and Japanese sushi is that with Korean sushi, the fish is fresh. I don't mean to say that Japanese sushi serves bad fish. I just mean to say that with Japanese sushi, the fish has been dead for more than ten minutes. Fresh here means FRESH. When the squid arrived on a platter, there were still some perceptible involuntary muscle spasms going on in the tentacles. Barely perceptible, mind you, but perceptible.

And here we join the scene.

Justin, man among men, takes the first bite, claps his hand over his mouth, and starts giggling. (A man among men, yes, but he does, in fact, giggle like a girl).

"What?" I ask.

"The suckers," he said. "They're sticking to my mouth and it tickles."

"They're doing WHAT?" I say, partially as a Concerned Wife but mostly as Concerned Person Sitting Next To Him If He Barfs. He reassures me that it actually tastes good. It's just tickly.

That's not possible, says Dr. Kim. It's not that fresh. He picks up one and repeats the hand clap. He has changed his opinion. The tentacles are, in fact, sticking.

Naomi, the Japanese teacher, picks one up and dips it in her soy sauce. The suckers stick to the ceramic dish and she has to pry it off with the other chopstick.

I pick one up from the dish. I'm just trying to get a tentacle, but the suckers are sticking to the adjacent meat and so that comes up with it.

I am assuming that at this point, all of you are adequately grossed out and rooting for me to put that thing down. And half of my brain told me the same thing. But the other half of my brain, which proves to me more than anything else that I really have spent the last four months in Korea, told me to go for it.

So there I am. Brain Half #1 is making some argument about only being in Korea once and seizing opportunities and Brain Half #2 is wondering abstractly what would happen if I threw up on the host. And somewhere along the line husband-related peer pressure takes over, and I pick up the chopsticks.

And I ate it.

And it suckered to my teeth. And once I got it off my teeth, it suckered to the roof of my mouth. I even ended up with a sucker stuck on my tooth after I ate the rest of the tentacle, and I had to go in and get that one off with my fingernail.

But Justin was right. It tasted pretty good. Almost exactly like Ika Geso, but fresher. And suckier.

So that was the culinary highlight of the evening. Also in contention was the sea cucumber, which looked kind of like gelatinous salsa but tasted basically exactly like regular cucumber, with a bit of red pepper. It also edged out the $250 Russian Red King Crab. Koreans, much like the Chinese when I was there, do not consider discussing prices to be impolite. Dr. Kim mentioned quite casually that he'd bought it and what it cost, and the last time we all went out back in August he said the same thing about the bottle of wine. I think it's said with the sense of, "It's just a fact, so why not say it?"

It was excellent crab. I don't know that I ever had better. And it was very large – the leg was probably two feet long, if you straightened the joint. But in my book, for $250, the damn thing had better crack itself open and dance its way into my mouth.

On second thought, no. I've had enough of that for tonight.

Thanksgiving

At the risk of sounding sappy: This will be my first Thanksgiving ever away from home. Thanksgiving has always been my favorite holiday--all the food, family, and football of Christmas, but without the presents, which means without half the stress--so it's particularly hard to be away. My family is an exceptionally close bunch, and family holidays are always a lot of fun. So, to those of you family members reading today: I miss you a lot, and Nana and I can't wait for Christmas!

As a consolation prize, though, the school founder has offered to take us to a mountain resort near Seorak National Park, one of the most beautiful spots in Korea. Hiking, spa-ing, and an opportunity to get out and see something other than Seoul--all at someone else's expense? You can bet we're there! The only downside is that a (possible) lack of internet could keep us from calling home for the holiday. We'll do our best.

On another note, it turns out that Thanksgiving is literally a foreign concept in these parts, so yesterday I delivered to each class a throwaway enrichment lesson on the origins of the holiday. (With my 6th graders, though, it tied into their reading and their upcoming project pretty closely, so that's good.) The kids who had lived in the States understood the basics--Pilgrims, turkey--but no one had the whole story. They were particularly intrigued by the idea of eating turkey--those who had pronounced it much tastier than chicken, those who hadn't were wondering what, exactly, a turkey was--and deer, which almost no one but me had eaten. I also had the kids compare it to Chuseok, the Korean harvest festival, which replaces the "giving thanks" with "giving thanks and respect to your ancestors." Total cross-cultural moment. But hey, that's what they pay us for, right?

Bringing the Heat; and, Internet Update

So as the weather has chilled over the last couple of weeks, we've realized that our apartment heating system has been, shall we say, under-performing. (It doesn't help that Celsius makes everything feel colder. It got down to 15 C in our bedroom one night! That feels so much colder than 59 F.) Initially, we chalked this up to the inefficiencies of "ondol," Korea's quirky under-floor heating system that involves pumping near-boiling water through a lattice of pipes under the floorboards, and the fact that our corner apartment, while very well-lit, also catches a whole lot of wind. When we heard stories of people using ondol to turn rooms into de-facto saunas, however, we realized that something was amiss. As it turns out (thank you Paul!) there's an extra button you have to press on the boiler to actually put water into the floor, at which point you can literally trace the course of the pipes with your foot they're so warm (and so much warmer than the un-piped spots on the floor). Amazing how much a heated apartment can lift your spirits, eh?

In other news: internet. After months of frustration, the school has finally forced our crappy ISP into action, and discovered that the reason we have such unreliable service is that the provider has almost no bandwidth for connections to servers outside Korea. This explains why Yahoo (which maintains servers in Korea) and its affiliated sites almost always work, and why Google (which has been largely muscled out of Korea by Yahoo and local-competitor Naver) almost never does. The ISP has asked for one more chance to fix the problem (good luck) before we give them the axe. Which means there's hope that we could have ACTUAL, RELIABLE internet access within a few weeks! Though I wouldn't get your hopes up too high--there's still time for plenty of foot-dragging and bungling. But at least we're a lot closer than we were at the start of the week.

ThunderSnow!

Expect a flurry of posts today (pun most definitely intended!): we've had a few updates to write about, but a combo of no time and no intarweb kept us from updating the blog.

So! The snow. Seoul weather is notoriously wacky--hot as hell with drenching rain until September, then hot as hell and dry for a month, then cold as hell and damp (but with nary a drop of rain) for two . . . all the while, the daily weather report being about as reliable as a . . . uh . . . an unreliable thing. You come to expect the unexpected. But still, our first snowfall Monday night still threw me for a loop.

Now, I began the day Monday, as my lovely wife can corroborate, by commenting on how much colder it had gotten overnight, and by whimsically proclaiming that "it smelled like snow." (I have been convinced for a long time that a well-trained nostril can detect the  combination of cold and damp in the air that precedes a snowstorm, though I can't really describe what impending snow smells like . . . all I know is that I take a deep whiff and fell a sudden urge to ski.) Sure enough, that night, we opened our curtains (we had them closed to keep in the heat--more on that later) to a snowy downpour. Nothing unusual, right? Until a deep, rolling boom echoed down the streets. Salt truck overturning? North Korean invasion? No, this was a rare (to me) instance of what I have right now very authoritatively dubbed a thundersnowstorm. In any event, we woke up the next morning to a dusting, which had mostly melted by midday, and this morning to a much more substantial dusting that, by all indications, could last well into the afternoon.

Which leads me to two questions: 1) Frequent light nighttime snowstorms--is that what winter's like here? Not that I'd mind, of course, but 2) If so, why in the hell does no one own a windshield scraper? As if the drivers here weren't bad enough when they could actually SEE the road!

Fate Does NOT Poke Us in the Eyeball, Part - Wait, fate didn't poke us in the eyeball?

In a shocking turn of events, something we thought had gone catastrophically wrong turned out to be completely fine. Yes, believe it or not. This is a stunning exclusive and you heard it here first!

This morning, we could only find one of our passports in the drawer where we've been keeping them since we last used them to apply for our Korean Alien Registration cards (We walk among you! Take us to your leader!) We turned the drawer inside out, checked all the other places we store paperwork, tore our desks at school apart, checked the school office, and finally came back home to halfheartedly confront the inevitable. And yet, wonder of wonders, we found it on the bookshelf! Huzzah!

On the plus side, we are now experts in embassy passport policy. Or at least the web links.

And in reference to Justin's post earlier - anybody want some Pepero? We're freaking drowning in the stuff. I got five more boxes yesterday.

Snakes on an Afterlife

From the homework assignment "If I were a pharaoh, what would I put in my tomb to take to the afterlife?," by Grade Six:

- pencil ("My pencil is my friends because, it always working me.")

- "I will bring my lego box because if there is someone with children, I can give a lego box to them and they can play with that legos."

- "a watch to see the time after time."

- a television, "because I love TV"

- "bodyguard, to guard my self from saints afterlife"

- "APIS teachers, to learn more even after having death."

And of course, the titular comment:

- "I will bring snakes."

I did follow up on this one with the student - would she bring them as pets? Did she remember that they were the symbols of the pharaoh? Were they there to guard the tomb?

In fact, none of the above: I don't think Korean has a flat "a" sound (like "hat") - I've only heard "ah," "eh, and "ay" as in "say". So "snakes," it turns out, was a Konglish mistranscription of the word "snacks."

Everything tastes better after death!

Old and Busted / New Hotness

Ask and ye shall receive.

Old and busted (with expert electrical-tape repair job by Nana):


NEW HOTNESS!!!!
Nana aptly describes this shot as "emo book jacket."

Bonus: Nana acts fierce as I test the camera. Thus illustrating the perils of watching too much America's Next Top Model.


(Nana asks: Why are my eyes the size of peanuts?)

Peppered with Pepero!

Today, Nov. 11, is Pepero Day in Korea, a day when young people shower their friends and favorite teachers with Pepero Sticks, the Lotte-megaconglomerate's answer to Pocky--a delicious, chocolate-dipped sesame-cookie stick. The holiday is a stroke of marketing genius: Started in 1994 by a bunch of schoolgirls in Busan (read: Lotte marketing execs in Seoul) who thought 11/11 looked like Pepero sticks, the holiday now rakes in millions of dollars in Pepero sales for Lotte every year.

Not that I'm complaining, of course. While I spent much of my life trying desperately NOT to like Pocky and its derivatives (the Pocky-lovers I knew where all creepy and irritating Japanophile anime fans--except for Hudson, who was not irritating! I kid, I kid!), I have since developed a fondness for the little things in this country where every third thing I eat makes righteous war on my gut. And any holiday that results in piles free, unreciprocated candy is fine by me!

Spectacular!

I can't remember if we've mentioned it already, and I'm too lazy to go check for myself, but this past weekend, my dear departed eyeglasses of five years finally gave up the ghost. The scene was actually downright cartoonish, as I picked my glasses up off counter and, pop!, metal rent from metal, leaving the left lens to drop suddenly out of the frame. While my industrious and clever better half did manage a temporary fix with the aid of some electrical tape and ten fingers infinitely more graceful than my own, I was nonetheless forced to court disaster (see, I don't know, any recent post at all about us attempting to do just about anything) by going to the optometrist in our building and buying a new pair of glasses.

The good news: Though I'm not ready to write off the possibility of my new glasses spontaneously combusting or something like that, I was at least successful in getting a new prescription, new lenses, and new frames.

Now, the whole glasses-getting-experience here in Korea is pretty different from how it is in the States, which is to say it's not excruciating and expensive. First, there are optometrists everywhere. We have at least one in our building. There's one in the Homever. We pass two on our way to work every day. Second, everything is walk-in, the frames and lenses cost about half what they cost at home. Third, they're open late. Fourth, they keep tons of lenses in-stock and cut them for you in 30 minutes or less! Honestly, I was expected to be de-spectacled for at least a week, and these folks fill my order in as much time as it takes to deliver a pizza. Of course, the downside is that you don't get all the doctor stuff. But, still, that kind of service can't be beat.

On a related note, Nana is now extremely disoriented by my appearance. I hadn't quite realized that I'd been wearing the same glasses since before we met. The new ones aren't a huge departure, though--basically the same shape, but a half-frame--so I'm pretty sure this doesn't mean the deal is off.

By the way . . .

. . . after reading Leslie's infinitely more entertaining, infinitely
more informative, and infinitely more frequent blog (see the link at
right), I have unilaterally resolved to post more often, come heck or
high water (or unreliable broadband . . . or web filters . . .).

[Edit by Nana: Speak for yourself! My posts are entertaining, informative, and frequent! That's it, Leslie. It's on.]

Hopefully, though, figuring out this whole posting-by-e-mail thing
should help, so I can fire off brief missives from the classroom in
some of those rare free moments I steal during the day.

Daylight Savings

Just FYI, all you folks on the East Coast are now 14 hours behind us. Which fact I remembered in just enough time NOT to wake my folks up with a 5 AM phone call!

As for us, I'm pretty sure lack of daylight savings will actually make zero difference, since we're up and out of the house shortly after dawn anyway. Not so bad, though, compared to the kids, some of whom are busing in from two hours away.

Everyday is a holiday at Everland

Everland is a Korean amusement park - think more Disney than Cedar Point - whose slogan in "Everyday (sic) is a holiday at Everland!" In my limited experience - one day at Everland, which also happened to be a holiday, Halloween - this statement is one hundred percent true.

Instead of having a regular school day on Wednesday, APIS had a field trip to Everland. I think it had something to do with reconciling Christianity and Halloween, which apparently is difficult for some people, by avoiding the issue entirely. Personally, I think anti-Halloween parents are overreacting a bit, but then again, I have seen some pop star costumes on little girls that offend me, much less God. So to Everland we went.

I was quite concerned about the safety of the rides, but it was actually a high-quality amusement park. And I've never been to one in the fall, and I have to say that the cool day was much nicer than some of the scorchers I've been to at Cedar Point (although the water rides aren't quite so much fun). My seventh graders behaved impeccably. We did lose a couple of sixth graders for a while, and I had a crisis where the cafeteria lady said my lunch voucher was only valid for the acorn noodles, but all came together in the end. The kids got a kick out of seeing Justin in jeans.

What really amused me was the fact that on Thursday, back at school, all the kids seemed like they'd been steamrollered. I was pretty pooped, but I had to bounce back to teach, so I did. Aren't kids supposed to have faster recovery times? The difference probably came from Justin and my 8:30 bedtime. Amazing what eleven hours can do for you.

And on a last note- thanks so much for all the wonderful birthday wishes! We had a party last night at a fellow teacher's apartment and I baked cupcakes from care-package cupcake mix. No Korean birthday soup for me! Two students actually gave me small presents - a lavender aromatherapy pillow and a picture frame - which I thought was very sweet. And tonight, Justin took me into town for a birthday hamburger at TGI Friday's. Hooray birthdays!

The Land of Murphy's Law

I'm not really feeling "Land of the Morning Calm" for Korea these days, and I'm really leaning towards Murphy's Law as the defining characteristic of life here. For instance, our really anticipated outing today? Toast, due to slow breakfast service at McDonald's, constant transit problems, and directions to go to "Yongsan Post Office" when there are at least three post offices and the only one that shows up on the map is very evidently not the one where we were supposed to be. So we got up at 6:30 on a Sunday for absolutely nothing.

Really, it's been frustrating. I know you've seen our posts about how the Internet refuses to work (both at home and in our classrooms), about the fact that the recycling pickup is on Saturday mornings before 10 AM, about how I can't eat the food without getting sick, about the month-long delay in our shipment... it just seems like nothing will go right here, even the stuff that honestly shouldn't be that hard. And I know that once you get in a funk, you always pay attention to the negative and forget the stuff that's going right - for instance, my care packages from my mom have gotten here great, and the slingbox is working right now and has provided us with football and an amusing new show called Pushing Daisies on top of our beloved House. But even typing that, I want to point out how I can't use some of the stuff in the care package because we're the only school apartment without an oven and how the slingbox still cuts out for no reason, sometimes in the middle of shows.

Anyway, we were pretty bummed to miss that trip today for yet another stupid reason. I'm going to send an e-mail and see if we can get some refund or at least apply the money to a future trip.

Now, back to Slingboxed college football...

The Royal Dorkiatic Society

Last night, Nana and I went to our first-ever meeting of the Royal Asiatic Society, an old and respected club of shameless dorks who want to learn more about Korea. We've had our eye on joining the Society for a while now, but not until yesterday could we muster up the time and the energy to trek all the way downtown for a lecture.

Thankfully, it looks like the RAS could be well worth the effort (and the 80,000-won membership fee--discounts for married couples! finally, my motives become clear!). While last night's lecture certainly didn't earn any style points--the speaker could barely speak English and was completely shackled to his hideous Powerpoint notes--the content was very interesting: a history of Korea's representation in Western cartography. (Apparently, we white folk took a good three centuries to notice that Korea is, in fact, a peninsula, not an island. But, hey! At least we knew by then that it existed!)

What's more, we signed up for a day trip to Ganghwa Island with the RAS this Sunday--Ganghwa-do being one of Korea's UNESCO World Heritage Sites, on the strength of its fortresses, its temples, and its prehistoric dolmen tombs. We've been wanting to visit Ganghwa since we learned about it, and sweet serendipity caused the RAS to reschedule the trip for precisely the weekend we're able to go. Plus, apparently we'll get to visit a certain RAS member's swanky Ganghwa-do pad. (Nana says: "Bonus for networking, eh?")

But the real news, I suppose, is that Nana and I are finally finding/making the time to get out and do something, other than sit around and work all the time. Slowly--very slowly--we're getting this school thing under control and carving out little pockets of dorky leisure. If only we could wrangle some Korean lessons somehow. Though that may have to wait for the summer.

Ah! It's too bad that we live so far out of town--the RAS adjourns for a round of ale after every meeting, but our long train ride back to Nowon gets us home pretty late. Though maybe we'll just have to suffer through some sleepy Wednesdays here and there.

In other news, Nana and I got to share our bus home with an utter lunatic tonight. Tourettes or schizophrenia or something. Shouting, flailing. Totally weird.

OMGHOLYCRAP Part II, or the continuing adventures of my name in romance novels

You may remember that about six weeks ago, I posted about Carla Kelly, one of my favorite romance novelists, deciding she liked my name and using it in a book. Well, today, I got an e-mail from her asking for formal permission to use my full name (duh!). In the event that I declined to give permission, she was willing to change the character's name to Nana Marlowe. Horrors!

She also gave me a bit of information on the character as well as the first chapter of the book. According to Ms. Kelly, "Nana is a delightful character" - how could she be anything but? - "and she gets an excellent man, a post captain in the royal navy named Oliver Worthy." In fact, she says, she had so much fun with the whole thing that she's hoping to do a trilogy around the Worthy family, so I may even reappear in the future! This has to be the first time ever that I've hoped for a gratuitous cameo by the protagonists of previous novels.

I did enjoy the first chapter, although I won't distribute it because that's probably not appropriate. You'll all appreciate the fact that Nana spends most of the first chapter looking for food. The neatest thing by far, though, is that Nana is her character's nickname, too, and her real name just happens to be Eleanor. Eleanor, for those of you who don't know, was the name of my maternal grandmother, a wonderful, brilliant woman who died just a couple of years ago. I did not tell Ms. Kelly this, although I did write back to let her know. It is just a lovely coincidence.

Now I need everybody to send positive vibes to Carla Kelly's editors: Buy this book! Love this book! Pay Carla Kelly all the money in the world for this book! Don't change the names of any characters in this book!

Gruesse aus... Seoul?

Yesterday we found ourselves downtown around dinnertime, so we decided to coddle my poor belly and take it out for some foreign food in Itaewon.

Itaewon is the foreign district in Seoul, historically, I believe, sprung up because it's right by the US Army base. It's not just American, though - all the expat communities hub around Itaewon (except, of course, the expats affiliated with APIS, because we live over an hour away). It's where you go for African hair stylists, Pakistani restaurants, international grocers and the like.

As we left the subway, Justin spotted sort of a shabby-looking ad for a restaurant called Chef Meili, which promised authentic Austrian food. (Amusingly, the picture on the review is of the dish Justin actually ordered - the beef roulade). I wasn't completely confident but I didn't have a better idea so I went along with it.

Nobody was in the restaurant when we got there, which added to me being nervous, but it turned out to be a huge success. The prices were a little high for Korea, which seems to be standard for foreign food, but I would say it was worth it. I had smoked salmon on a potato pancake, and we got a vanilla ice cream/berry sauce dessert that was really amazing.

None of that, though, was as awesome as talking in German to the Austrian chef. I think he got a kick out of it - he says he's only been here four months, and there are about 150 Austrians living in Seoul, so it was probably nice to talk to somebody new in his own language. But for me? It just felt good not to feel so stupid.

Being surrounded by these kids who speak Korean whenever our backs are turned and then coming home on a Korean bus with Korean speakers everywhere - well, it's not like I didn't expect that, coming to Korea, but it really does make me feel like an idiot not to have a clue what's going on. The school did promise us Korean lessons, but that hasn't started yet, and it'll take a long time to get anywhere with them. So we can certainly look forward to months of more cluelessness.

Anyway, I just felt a lot better about myself after a nice reminder that no, I'm not a language-deaf moron American - I just don't happen to speak this one.

PS. Put a hold on the optimism regarding having only one class with student failures. I forgot the one sixth grader getting a 42%. Which I suppose is fair, since by all indications he's forgotten about my class.

Short and mediocre post

Just pointing out that we're alive.

Highlights/lowlights:
1. The slingbox is down again, inexplicably.
2. The weather has been spectacular lately--very clear, very cool.
3. Visited a big info fair for foreigners down at City Hall and finally got in touch with the Royal Asiatic Society. Hopefully, we can rescue a weekend or two here or there from the clutches of schoolwork and actually get out and see some of this country!
4. There's a possibility we may finally be able to ditch our awful internet service provider.
5. I (Nana) now have only two students failing my class in all grades! Two students have reached the magical 60%! Grades are due a week from Monday and I will do everything in my power to keep that D- alive.
6. We miss our dog.

Observations

Hi all,

In the event that anybody has noticed that we haven't been posting as recently, I apologize. To the rest of you who didn't realize we were missing, carry on. There's nothing to see here.

It's been pretty hectic lately. We went into the school yesterday (Saturday) for four hours and Justin's entering hour six or seven of work today. The depressing cause of all of this is that our kids just don't seem to be able to write.

It's very odd. Yes, there's the whole ESL barrier problem, but it's more than that. Some kids whose English is just fine are totally incoherent on paper. The concept of "paragraph" does not seem to exist. After a heavily plagiarized assignment on Alexander the Great, I made all the seventh graders keep a research notebook as they worked on a project about Rome, but some of them have submitted a typed version of their notes in place of an essay. We can't figure out if they're honestly confused or if they don't actually think they need to bother.

On that note, I read a disheartening quote from a Korean mother in one of the English-language papers, where she essentially said that she condoned her high-school child buying papers online because homework wasn't as important to getting into college as his exam grades, so she wanted him to buy the papers and focus on studying for the tests. Of course, given some of the test scores we see, they're not doing that either. But can you believe it? I sincerely hope no parent at our school feels that way.

I hesitate to say TOO much about the Korean school system, seeing as everything I know about it is hearsay from our students who have been in it, fellow teachers who went through it, or from deductions based on experiences (students are constantly surprised when I ask them to stay awake in class.). But I guess I will say that American newspapers rhapsodize so much about the glories of the "Asian educational system" and stereotype the kids so heavily that I couldn't have helped but come here and be surprised.

Culture Quiz!

Culture quiz!

A Korean movie contains the following scene:
A man goes to the store and buys a container of seaweed soup. He then sits in his apartment alone eating the soup.

The reaction of Koreans in the audience: sobbing.

Why?

Ready for the answer?
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In the United States, we celebrate birthdays with cake. In Korea (and Japan, too) the birthday treat is a bowl of soup (this in and of itself might be enough to make me cry.) The Koreans in the audience were crying because they knew that it was the man's birthday, but he was all alone and had to buy himself the soup and eat it by himself in his apartment. In an American movie, the comparable scene would have the man perhaps lighting a candle on a cupcake, wearing a limp and crooked party hat, and singing a particularly tragic rendition of "Happy Birthday to Me." Oh, man, now I'm going to cry.

Tuna Surprise!

The other day, Nana and I had a hankering for sushi, and while we've had some pretty good stuff at the U9 (a chain Japanese-ish restaurant), they always insist on bringing weird stuff with the platter, too. So we thought we would check out what appeared to be another Japanese place in our building (the pictures of raw tuna on the sign were pretty promising)--especially since our lunchtime success at a little sandwich shop downstairs had left us emboldened to try something else new. (I swear, the cole slaw and sketchy beef patty made it taste VERY vaguely like Primanti's. Oh, how I would kill for Primanti's!)

Anyway, the restaurant. No picture menu, it turned out--in fact, not much of a menu at all. Our dinner choices consisted of tuna, tuna, or tuna, sliced and raw, in various portions (the cheapest of which was 18,000 won per person). But, hey! We chalked it up to cross-cultural experience, sat down, and opened our collective wallet wide.

Now, the good news is that the food was excellent. After an utterly inexplicable aperitif consisting of one shot of cold whole milk, we had several different cuts of several different kinds of tuna (ahi, yellowfin, albacore), all very high quality, and thanks to some gesture-laden instruction from the server, figured out that we were supposed to dunk the tuna in either salt oil or soy sauce before we laid it on a sheet of dried seaweed (with a dab of wasabi, of course). She did not, however, show us that we were supposed to eat the resulting contraption with our hands, and no doubt got a good laugh out of whitey fumbling needlessly with chopsticks. Bonus: the tuna came with a creamy roasted corn casserole of some sort and a really tasty salad.

When the corn casserole was scraped clean, then, and the last bit of tuna devoured, Nana and I, very satisfied (but very much $36 poorer), stood to pay the tab, at which point the waitress all but shoved us back into our seats. To our utter and lasting horror, she returned with another heaping plate of raw fish! Which means that the 1-person, 18,000-won portion would have been plenty for us, in fact not much more than dinner for two at the KBBQ! Curse you, Korea, and your ban on two people sharing one plate!

Video Links

If a picture is worth a thousand words, then a video clip of sequential images must be the equivalent of War and Peace. Okay, maybe just One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovitch. It's more than this blog, at any rate.

These are Korean news clips on the opening of APIS. They're a little old (that's my fault for not getting them up here) but now you can finally check out what our school looks like on the inside! And even more excitement, continuing his Korean megastar trend, Justin shows up on camera in the second one. I have yet to have a star turn here, but I remain confident that great things are in store.

Clip #1

The APIS segment here goes from 3:00-5:35 and doesn't show either of us, although you will see Shelby the math teacher and Colleen the science teacher. For the record, our principal is much more articulate in person.

Clip #2

The second one is a little bit harder to find but it's totally worth it because that's the one where you can see Justin gettin' his English instruction on.

Basically, ignore all the Korean and go to the BOTTOM link - the last NBS orange box that says 8/21 and then some Korean.

You can see Justin in the frozen frame when the APIS segment starts, at about 4:24, and then there's clips of our opening ceremony and some other teachers until you see Justin again at 6:25 and, less flatteringly, his butt (he's facing the other way helping a student!) at 7:10. And once again, I promise you, our principal is actually a really articulate guy. Not sure why the camera did that to him.

So that's what our classrooms look like! That's what SMART boards are! That's who are students are! Exclamation point!

BONUS KONGLISH NOTE (from Justin): In that second video, right after you see me (Justin), but before you see my butt, you can totally hear the voice-over say "miguk ibee leeguh," which, of course, means "American Ivy League."

Konglish quiz!

Just so you can see what we're up against.
(link)

Note: Unlike Spanglish or Germisch, Konglish doesn't refer to English-speakers mangling Korean, but to Koreans . . . not mangling, but . . . appropriating English words into their native tongue. And many of these appropriations are complete fabrications, or at least a total stretch. Example: "skinship," which, as far as I can tell, is the middle-school equivalent of "friends-with-benefits." Let me tell you, I had students who were appalled to learn that I had no idea what that word meant.

Reasons Why Being Married to the Social Studies Teacher is Awesome

1) Collaborative projects.

Seriously, we're having the eighth grade start a current-events/research-skills/media-literacy mini-unit on the (sadly waning) uprising in Burma-Myanmar (has that been getting as much coverage in the States as it has here?), and we're setting the seventh grade out on a research-skills/proper-citiation mini-unit on the Roman Empire. Not only is this going to be really cool for the kids, it will make meeting some of my standards SO much easier! Plus, we'll get to synergize a lot with our work.

2) The social studies teacher totally cute.

Korean Style Watch: My Korean Haircut

Intrepid co-worker Colleen and I went to get our hair cut at Song Hair Salon on the first floor of my building (salon slogan, in English: Your Beauty and Dream).

Korean shampooing is where beauty salon products meet professional wrestler hands. And believe it or not, I mean this in a good way. We sit down to get shampooed, and these innocuous looking middle aged women proceed to tenderize our scalps like our heads are made out of modeling clay. These women have fingers like you wouldn't believe. Keyboards and push-button phones tremble at their approach, and pianos lie shattered in their wake.

Then, feeling pretty darn mellow, we sit down to get it cut, giving directions as best we can entirely by pantomiming snip-scissor fingers (although I did bring down the dictionary so Colleen could point to the word "trim"). This was hampered by the fact that whenever I brought my arms out from under that little cape you put on, some well-meaning salon employee would come extract the cape from behind my elbows and tuck me back under again.

Colleen has naturally curly hair, and by naturally curly, I mean corkscrew kind of curly, which proceeded to overwhelm her Korean stylist by bushing out like a puffer fish upon the application of a blow dryer. He then made matters worse by trying to brush out the poof, and finally, on the verge of serious emotional distress, settled for massive application of styling products. Let's face it, this is not the sort of hair they teach you about in Korean beauty school. I have, however, seen her since, when she hasn't blow-dried or brushed it, and it looks fantastic. So all due credit to the cutter.

And how did my haircut turn out? Well, you tell me!

Front view:



















Back view:



















Side view:





















I'm pretty pleased, actually, although I would have been fine with it even shorter in the back. And it only cost about ten dollars, which for a shampoo, scalp massage, and haircut is a ridiculous bargain. I'm getting my hair cut every week!

Justin Drinks Weird Stuff For Your Entertainment, Part 4

In today's episode: "Pine Bud Drink!"



Wow. That was definitely one of the weirder things I've had in a while . . . and I live in Korea! It was like drinking a delicate solution of Vick's Vaporub and Pine Sol. Not an experience I plan to repeat.

Also: I won't go into much detail, because it's gross, but if you were thinking of drinking bunch of Aloe juice because I said it was really tasty . . . don't!

Hiking, Take 2

As you may have heard (from us, probably), this week is Chusok in Korea--it's a combination harvest-festival Confucian-ancestor-worship shindig, a time when everyone heads back to their hometown and daughters-in-law freak out preparing meals for their families. Of course, since precisely no one is from Seoul, this means the city pretty much empties out for the week. Perfect time to go hiking! Especially if your last attempt at a hike was crushed under the feet of the North-Face-clad multitudes (get the full story here).

Anyway. This attempt started at about 10:00 AM with Nana's decision to stay home to rest, nurse a stomach ache, and prepare to host some friends for an afternoon of football, fried chicken, and beer. (Our giant new $420 flatscreen monitor helped make this totally sweet, by the way.) Then, a few minutes later, my hiking party showed up--minus one more, a colleague who mysteriously disappeared in the course of several Skype calls yesterday morning. However, undeterred by this appallingly high rate of attrition, we two remaining hikers set off through the streets of Nowon, navigating by sight to the foot of a small mountain nearby.




Now, you need to understand that we chose this hike because it was supposed to be relatively easy--the guidebook talks about a wide, sandy trail meandering its way up from street level, with some nice views and some rocks at the top. Well, apparently we took a wrong turn somewhere, because the trail we took was steep, narrow, deserted, and barely-marked at all! But after about an hour of hard climbing, we were finally rewarded with a nice view across Nowon, a short rest--and, of course, a glimpse of the aforementioned wide, sandy trail. A tiny helipad--yes, helipad--signaled that we were at the summit. We continued on, deciding to press forward to the Danggogae Metro stop rather than retrace our steps to the foot of the hill.



But at the summit we were not! After about 15 minutes on the sandy, windy footpath, we reached a rocky clearing and found ourselves looking straight up. (We also found the well-marked trail down to Danggogae, but seriously, how could you pass views like these up?) The last 20 minutes to the real summit were pretty wild--much more climbing than hiking, with long lines of ropes to help you up the rock face and some harrowing drops at the side of the trail.














But, hey! The views were well worth it. I could see my house from here!


And just to add a little more thigh-burning goodness to the day, the descent up at the top here was even tricker than the climb: we eventually figured out it was best to go down backwards, belay-style, but on more than one occasion we had to rely on the tried-and-true buttslide, plus a little help from our Korean guardian angel (some guy who adopted us for the day and made it his business to make sure we got to the bottom of the hill in one piece).

We did, of course, make it to the bottom in one piece, downed a few bottles of Pocari Sweat, and then geared up for an afternoon of sloth and gluttony--fried chicken and two NFL games. Sweet!

Pakistani, Pancakes, and Persimmon

Yesterday, Nana and I spent the first day of our Chusok break bumming around downtown--by which I mean blowing a whole afternoon at the War Memorial Museum, about which Nana will have much more to say. But bookending our gluttonous dorkiness was gluttony of an altogether different sort, and it's of that kind of gluttony I'd now like to tell.

Now, let me preface these remarks with the fact that Nana and I have been craving Indian food for weeks, after hearing tell of a decent, if pricey, lunch buffet at a place called Mughal in Itaewon. As it turns out, we would be disappointed by neither the decency nor the price. The restaurant is set back on the little hill behind the Hamilton Hotel, and the narrow alley you've got to climb seems to deter crowds, though that may just be a function of the Chusok holiday, which pretty nearly vacates Seoul. A pretty place, with a terrace we opted against (kind of cool yesterday, and drizzly), cloth napkins (rare here, as far as I can tell), and, most importantly, non-spicy food options that weren't as bland as bland can be, which was a big deal for Nana. Of course, there was plenty of spicy food, too--great lamb korma--to supplement the samosas and tandoori chicken, and piles of naan and basmati rice. (Bleached short-grain white rice gets pretty bland when it's the only starch in your diet for weeks!) At 18,000 won (about 19-20$), it wasn't cheap, but I think it was worth it. And coupled with the quirky basement Italian restaurant we found near Yonsei University earlier this week, Mughal means we're 2 for 2 on finding good, non-bank-busting foreign food in Seoul.

Yesterday's second food adventure, then, was a pancake dinner (hey, it would have been a pancake breakfast EST!) with some work friends here in Nowon. (Yet another attempt to gorge ourselves on something we've desperately craved.) Despite the outrageously expensive maple syrup--seriously, we're talking whiskey prices--and the stray whole kernels of corn lurking in the batter, the meal was a rousing success. And, of course, totally unnecessary, given how much we ate at lunch a scant 6 hours before.

But the highlight of the evening--with the exception of Nana playing "azimuths" on a triple-word-score (yes, even in Seoul, we're still incurable dorks)--was definitely the persimmon, which, despite all appearances, is not in fact an orange-ish tomato. (Nana's description: "Like a peach, but grapier.") My new goal: find persimmons in a small enough quantity that I can eat them before they go bad. Curse you bulk fruit stands! [shaking fist]

(Edit by Nana: It was a double-word score. But it was still a sweet word.)

All my t'ings about me

THE SHIPMENT CAME!!!

I feel like Maureen O'Hara, in The Quiet Man. I don't remember the exact scene, or if it's before or after the items in her dowry finally arrive at her new home. But in any case, she says something to the effect of how all a bride wants is to have "her own t'ings about her," with a hard "h" from her Irish accent.

I was so happy to see all our wedding presents and books and cooler-weather clothes and realize that nobody was fencing them on a street corner someplace. Having some of the nonperishable food we sent (Kraft Mac'n'cheese, Quaker Oats S'mores-flavor granola bars) has already made a huge morale difference and, I hope, may help my stomach out. Wedding dishes. Linens. Comfy chairs. Bookshelves. Dog hair that stuck to things while we were packing. It's all here.

I'll be honest and admit that when I opened some pillows and they smelled so much like home that I lost it and cried for a bit (although not as much, I suspect, as Thoreau would have cried over the fact that things could make me cry at all). I am enjoying teaching and I do like Korea, but yes, I get homesick. And for some reason, when nothing here was familiar, it didn't make quite so much of a difference, but when I was opening box after box of home things, I wanted to know where the rest of it was. Where's the box with comfy sofas from Justin's house in Pittsburgh? Where's the box that puts our friends on this continent and lets us go grab a beer with them? Where's the box with my mom in it? (Yeah, that image is unintentionally hilarious... but the sentiment is there).

Anyway, I'm glad it's here, even if it did make me homesick.

Off to revel in my squishy comforter and firm pillow!

Apple for the teacher

There is supposedly a way to post on Blogger when you're firewalled out of logging in to Blogger, which is to send an e-mail to a particular address. I have never tried it before but am trying it now, since the school has blocked it. And when you think about it, this whole paragraph is a waste of your time, because if I got it right, you don't care, and if I got it wrong, then you'll never know. But who said this blog wasn't about wasting your time?

Next week is Chusok, more or less the Korean Thanksgiving, except they get a whole week off of school instead of five days. Woo! And it is apprently a time of much gift-giving, and teachers are often recipients. Which brings me to what really is a nice thought, but leaving us in a bit of a quandary: a parent has given us a box of some 40-odd apples the size of softballs. Each. So between the two of us, Justin and I have eighty apples and, short of acquiring a potato gun, no idea what to do with them.

So I'm trolling for recipes now. I don't have an oven, but some teachers are thinking of getting together this weekend and doing a big apple bake. I can also do anything on a stovetop or in a microwave.

Apple pie. Apple bread. Apple cake. Apple butter. Apple dumplings. Apple anything. If you got it, hit me up with it! It's harvest time. Let the traditional panicked preservation of produce commence!

PS. The shipment people SWEAR it comes tonight at 6. Be braced for overwhelming joy or catastrophic depression by 6:30.

(Note: This post is actually from Nana, but it was sent from my address.)

Typhoon Lagoon

First of all, let's get something straight. I'm from the Midwest. I have a check-down list for tornado shelters that's eighteen qualifications long, but my options for severe ocean-borne weather boils down to about two: stay in town, or leave town. I don't know about the details, and I never bothered. If any hurricane made it all the way to Columbus, I would be much more concerned with the Four Horsemen accompanying it than I would be about a storm surge.

Hence my complete inability to understand how I should react to the news that Typhoon Wipha is headed for Shanghai and may knock us around after it goes by. I mean, I don't even know what a typhoon IS. I know it's a lot of fun to say, and was the name of the wave pool at Wyandot Lake when I was a kid, where Angelique Zeune got a three inch splinter through her foot on a sixth-grade back-to-school trip. But that's probably not the fault of a typhoon.

After some research (i.e., the textbook I teach geography from), I learned that we refuse to call the exact same weather the same word if it happens in different parts of the world. A typhoon would be a hurricane in the Atlantic, and the one that might get near us would be labeled Category 4.

In any case, for those of you (i.e., moms) who are panicking right now, calm down. Yes, Typhoon Wipha is a bad one. But it's aimed very far south of us, and even if it does loop back around to dump on Seoul, it will have shed a lot of strength going over land. We will probably get soaked, and we'll probably get some heavy wind, but Seoul's not about to turn into Katrina-land. Which is a shame, because I've been looking forward to looting the stores downstairs. (Oh, I went there. Yes, I did.)
In any case, do send good vibes to the Shanghainese. But don't panic for us. Not about typhoons, anyway. As far as lesson planning goes, panic all you like. I certainly do!

Nevermind. (Argh.) (Notice how half-hearted.)

The SlingBox is not, in fact, working. At least not anymore. (Though Nana did get an Ohio State game out of it this afternoon.)

I suppose I should get in the habit of never announcing any remotely tentative good news on this site, as it seems good news, too soon made public, can only lead to reversal and frustration. (See previous post on shipping.)

And on another note, I guess I should take down those silly School of ROK Quick Guides, since none of the advice contained therein has done us a single shred of good.

Beginning Korean and Victory over the Slingbox

I amazed myself by totally understanding a security guard last night, without actually understanding almost anything he said.

Nana and I were hanging out in the rooftop garden of a coworker's apartment building last night, indulging in some, ahem, beverages and burning some proverbial midnight oil. (We were there so late that the giant neon 2001 Outlet sign shut off!) When out strolls one of the ubiquitous upper-middle-aged security guards of whom every building seems to have at least one (and no more than two).

Now, you have to understand the utter terror that can come over you when you see a fifty-to-sixty-something Korean approaching with a set frown on his or her face. Apparently, such folks have made it the national mission of their generation to shoo disrespectful Americans from places where they're not supposed to sit. (Hint: if it's a level surface, and people aren't sitting there already, you're not supposed to sit there.) And we, troublemakers all, were alone on the roof, sitting on a structure that might or might not have been a bench. So I, for one, prepared for the inevitable apologetic smiles and confused shrugs.

But then, when the guard started talking, some ghost of comprehension welled up from the depths of my soul. Inspired, I told Josh, our host, to tell the man his room number. Success! And then, when the guard pointed disapprovingly to our beverages and then vaguely towards the stairway, I didn't panic. No, somehow I decided that the man wasn't wagging his finger at our preferred choice of thirst-quenchers (nobody drinks like the Koreans, especially in public, or in the morning, or in public in the morning for that matter), he just wanted to make sure we threw our things away before we left the roof! (And no one is quite as fanatical as Koreans about proper waste disposal.)

Of course, as luck would have it, I hadn't actually bought us too much time, since our reserves of both energy and drink were rapidly dwindling. But, hey! When you're dealing with Korean, any shred of comprehension is something to celebrate, no matter how inexplicable. (And no matter how completely independent of anything the speaker actually said.)

In other news: Thanks to some help from my intrepid father, we appear to have the SlingBox working (finally)! Just in time to watch Ohio State's 33-14 victory over Washington! And maybe even today's/tomorrow's Steelers game. (Am I a bad fan? I won't watch if they don't win.)

To the anonymous student who let one in my class on Friday . . .

. . . I am duly impressed.

And also worried that, come Monday, it'll still be there.

Happy Problems -1

Turns out our shipment isn't coming until next Friday. (Miscommunication.) What a tease!

Happy Problem the Seventh

Apparently, kids make you dumber: I've forgotten how to count. (link)

2 Happy Problems!(?)!!

Happy Problem the First: Even this far into September, we keep getting new students at APIS. This is a good thing because new students mean more funds for the school, and also because new students are usually a reflection of the good buzz we've generated so far. APIS has really taken off this year, moreso than a first-year school really ought to, and that's pretty cool. Although now some of the classes are running out of desks and books and stuff (the kindergarten is simply running out of space!), and as the year goes on, it's really tough to catch the new kids up (especially when they're ESL cases, whom we were supposed to stop admitting weeks ago). But, hey! At least this means our prospects look good for next year! And we've got more than enough empty classroom space to expand into.

Happy Problem the Second: Pretty much everything we've been waiting for at school has arrived . . . and it all arrived within about 40 minutes yesterday morning. Seriously. Grading software, admin software, website software, library books, core literature--everything. And when the truck driver with the books arrived, he decided that he wasn't staying any longer than five minutes, at which time he'd leave with whichever of our fifty boxes of books weren't off the truck. So, naturally, my 8th grade English class was suddenly transformed into PE, as our principal enlisted us to schlep all the books up to the library on the third floor. But at least we were rewarded with popsicles. And, of course, our core lit books are finally here!

And speaking of (possible) arrivals . . .

Happy Problem the Third: We think (hope!) that our shipment is arriving on Friday! (Notice: we hope. But we refuse to believe it's actually coming. Every single step of this shipping process has been so opaque and so sketchy--I mean, our stuff was here in Korea for two weeks without anyone on either side of the pacific contacting us!--that we dare not expect our stuff to show up.) But we haven't been able to figure out if we're getting the move-in service (which we paid for), or if a truck will just be showing up with our pallet and telling us to unload it ourselves in ten minutes, or the loot's gone. (See Happy Problem the, er, Previous.) So just in case, we're going to invite a bunch of people over for KBBQ and pick up the tab if they end up having to schlep our stuff for us. (Yes, we will warn them ahead of time. That is, if our shipment is actually coming. You see! I said "if"!)

GRUMP.

I had to play Mean Mr. Goff with one of my classes today. I hate that.

Take a Hike!

Nana and I had our first Korean hiking experience last weekend. Shorter than expected--due to a late start and my better half's burgeoning cold--but enough for a brief glimpse into the Korean hiking culture, at least at one of the most popular day-trip destinations on one of the most beautiful days of the year.

So! We arrived at the subway station about five stops north of where we live. The station is actually named for the mountain, Dobongsan, which probably should have been our first tip off that this was going to be a strange day. Our second tipoff should have been the huge clusters of pristinely-equipped Koreans flowing uphill from the station . . . but before any of that, we found this completely inexplicable field full of flowers across from the station exit. So, naturally, we frolicked.



Then and only then did we turn our feet downstream . . . which is to say uphill . . . with the tide of well-dressed trekkers. (Mixed metaphors are an early sign of encroaching bedtime.) At which point we discovered that the trailhead was still a 10-minute walk away, through a not-so-small village of gear shops, knockoff gear shops, and open-air eateries serving grilled stinkfish (that's what I call them, anyway) that you could watch in their aquariums, floating upside down, blissfully dead, near the top of the tank. Needless to say, we pressed on, and quickly--I didn't even get a picture!--figuring that pretty soon the shops and restaurants and stuff would give way to wilderness, and at least a few meters of open trail.

Well . . . in short, we were wrong. Even given the large number of Koreans who seem to get all dressed up (we're talking backpacks, walking sticks, even helmets) to hike all the long way to the restaurant furthest from the bus stop at the head of the trail (to consume stinkfish and soju, of course), the trails were utterly packed.

And we're talking packed, here. Not hippy-whining about seeing eight other people on a seven-mile trail packed. Amusement-park packed. I mean, the real challenge wasn't the hiking itself (we didn't get all the way up to the hard stuff), it was hiking at speed, in time with everyone else. You couldn't take time to find a new foothold before you stepped, because then the person behind you would bump into you. And you had to find a foothold while your foot was in the air, because you couldn't go back--the person behind you already had a foot in the foothold you just left. No wonder they need all that gear! The poles are clearly for whacking slowpokes, and the helmets for withstanding whacks.

And if you think the handful of hikers out there in high-heels (carrying parasols) made anything better . . . well, you'd be wrong.

Now, don't you fear--the day wasn't a total loss. We did see a chipmunk, over which everybody completely freaked out, and we did learn a valuable lesson, which is never to hike on a nice Sunday in September (absolute most crowded it gets, except for maybe a nice Sunday in late October), unless you like to hike like you drive. But on the whole, it was an experience I don't hope to repeat. So next time, it'll be a weekday or a Saturday (most Korean kids are in school on Saturdays), and not an incredibly nice one. Though the stinkfish (ah, the stinkfish!) I don't think we'll have a way to avoid.

What's cooking?

You would think that when eating in restaurants is cheaper than eating at home, life would be one big going-out-to-dinner party. Well, you'd think wrong. Korean food is good, but if you don't eat spicy food, there's very little variety in your non-spicy options. Also, Korean food is very short on fiber (processed flour noodles and plain rice are the carb staples) and if I've gotten any calcium in a restaurant, it's been accidental.

To clarify, eating in restaurants is SOMETIMES cheaper than eating at home. I'd say that depending on what we get, Justin and I feed ourselves on about 9,000 to 12,000 won, on average. The dumpling shop is a little less, barbecue is more (about 9,000 each). 9,000 won is about $10, so about $5 per person. It might be cheaper to live on sandwiches, but a) we wouldn't eat as well, b) we would have to schlepp groceries, cook, and clean, and c) stuff in the grocery store isn't as cheap as the restaurant prices seem to indicate they should be. Justin wrote about this before; our newest potential explanation for retail food being pricier than prepared food is a tax that hits retail but not wholesale. Could be.

To illustrate, tonight, we decided to spoil ourselves by eating pasta. Yes. Pasta in tomato sauce is now a pampering kind of meal. I had to go to two stores, because the first one only had Korean-style noodles and no pasta. (No pasta?! I twitch at the thought!) At the second store, in the "Foreign Foods" section, I got rotini and Ragu. I don't think I've ever eaten Ragu in the USA, but somehow it felt like a comfort food. All I needed, I thought, was some cheese, and we'd be good to go!

Well.

Cheese is exotic in Korea. How exotic, you ask? Well, let's put it this way: I have never before seen anybody shelve Velveeta in the wine section. For real. That, Borden, and an 11,000 won block of parmesan. I've never heard of anybody eating parmesan straight, let alone eating straight parmesan with WINE. What on earth goes with that?

In their defense, there was also some Brie and Camembert, but come on. Velveeta???

We ended up mixing some pretty good Feta into the sauce and accompanying it with monterey jack melted onto French bread slices. Pasta, garlic and tomato Ragu, bread, and two kinds of cheese, and it was the most expensive dinner we've had since we got here! Fortunately, there was tons, so we'll eat it tomorrow and halve the cost.

I apologize if this was completely incoherent. Korean schools are just as much of germ factories as American schools, and I'm coming down with a cold. My new discipline threat to the children will be to breathe on them.