As Ordinary as Apple Pie

Another weekend in Cheong-song. Helped Matt with English camp. We broke from the ordinary Cheong-song weekend to visit the neighboring town of Jinbo and celebrate its fireworks festival. We spent the evening wandering around tables filled with hamsters, goldfish, and light-up wands or bow headbands. Then we lounged at one of the many food stalls set up among the jungle gyms and swing sets while enjoying the taste of beer, the sounds of local karaoke talent, the sights of the fireworks,  and the smells of roasting corn, deep-fried corn dogs, kimchi, and steaming silkworm larvae. The rest of the weekend was spent hiding from the first monsoon rains pouring down upon Cheong-song and the giant spiders that were washed out of their hiding places.

Seoul, meanwhile, has spent an entire week steaming in preparation for the monsoon (which will come this weekend). Crops outside of Seoul are suffering from the drought while children inside of Seoul seem to gain power from the drought. It was a long week as the children literally ran around the classroom screaming, using their books as bludgeoning devices and megaphones, throwing spit balls at each other and much more. There are quite a few black and blue faces, swollen lips, and ace bandages. Students took the standardized tests on Tuesday, making it the perfect day for us subject teachers. But by Wednesday the stress of studying left the children in a frenzy. 

By the end of the week, I had had it with students' tantrums, whining, screaming, and just all things related to students. I was also irritated by the fact that among other annoying news, my cat died and I found out I have to move out of my apartment the day my contract ends and I have to be at school. And suddenly, everyone notifies me of all the things that have to be done now.  But this is ordinary. Just as it is ordinary to go to the bathroom and hear several girls in the stall next to you. I honestly don't know how they all fit in there, as the stalls aren't that big. But the lack of a western toilet probably gives some extra space.

The nice toilets in the school.

Finally, the after school classes are finished!  And to celebrate the coming monsoon (Koreans hate rain, so I don't know why they are celebrating this), my co-teachers bought their first apple pie. I showed up to their classroom to find them staring at the Costco pie (quite large) with puzzled expressions.

"Do you know how to cut this?" They asked. I repressed a giggle and told them to cut it like a pizza.

"Oh. Oops." Worried looks.

"How did you cut it?" I asked.

"Like the top." (checker pattern crust) "We can't take it out of the plate." This time I giggled, especially as they were trying to dislodge a piece from the middle of the pie with a paring knife. I carefully dished the square pie pieces onto foil squares and we enjoyed the teachers' first taste of apple pie. I then answered questions about how many people the pie would feed in America and how many apples are needed for the pie and if I knew how to make apple pies and what other kinds of pies there are in America. And I discovered that one teacher had wanted to taste an apple pie ever since watching "American Pie." I am still confused about this reasoning...

Tempers and Temperatures on the Rise

Rice paddies

English camp is next month and I am scrambling to get things done in time. I am putting way more effort into this than the previous camp. Mainly because this year's students  have a short attention span--so every minute must be planned for, or I will lose them. Also I must have an activity every few minutes otherwise, they're gone. I am also losing valuable planning time messing with Hangul Word Processor. It is worse than Word, if that is possible. And of course the two programs are not compatible, so formatting gets altered between copying and pasting. I must use this HWP because none of the other teachers know how to use Word (which is in Konglish, not English or Korean).

Also taking up much of my time are long teacher's meetings dealing with the growing problem of bullying. My co-teachers feel I must attend these entirely Korean meetings. Oddly enough, I am the only one paying attention to these meetings as the other teachers  are playing games on their smart phones, texting, answering their phones, or sleeping. I'm beginning to see where the children get their short attention spans.

The vice principal finally got involved with discipline when a sixth grader punched a third grader and measures are being taken to limit interaction between sixth and third grades. Though, no one seems to care to grasp the root of the problem. Nor do teachers seem to care when students shove, kick, and ostracize a student because they think they will catch her down syndrome.

There is a new student in second grade. She does not look 100% Korean and I hope the students don't single her out because of it.  This student's English is better than most of my sixth grade students and she is always happy to speak with me.

More and more students frequent my classroom to practice their English. Most days, I spend a couple of hours helping students with their homework or playing games with them. The older girls show me the latest K-Pop male bands, and the young students bring me gifts of  Angry Bird erasers, wilted flowers, strange insects, green apricots, grape-flavored candy,  and cough drops (which I give to the older students).

Last week, an acquaintance from Pullman camped out on my floor. The doormen in my building were not too impressed with this new guy. I presume they thought  I was cheating on Matt. I honestly don't know who they think Matt is. So for my reputation's sake and my possible fake marriage's sake, I had better not have any more males in my apartment.

This weekend I went to Cheong-Song to visit Matt. It was a much needed weekend in the country with blue (yes blue!!!) skies and somewhat fresh air (minus the smells of the open sewage in town). I ended up helping Matt with his English camp on Saturday. It reminded me of our certification days. And it was kind of fun interacting with middle school and high school kids.

We spent the rest of the weekend hanging out at the river watching the fish jump and the old people do this odd kimchi squat walk in the water with their heads in glass-bottomed dishes (third-world goggles?) picking up snails along the river bottom.

       This weekend I went to Cheong-Song to visit Matt. It was a much needed weekend in the country with blue (yes blue!!!) skies and somewhat fresh air (minus the smells of the open sewage in town). I ended up helping Matt with his English camp on Saturday. It reminded me of our certification days. And it was kind of fun interacting with middle school and high school kids.

       We spent the rest of the weekend hanging out at the river watching the fish jump and the old people do this odd kimchi squat walk in the water with their heads in glass-bottomed dishes (third-world goggles?) picking up water snails along the river bottom. I am guessing they were dinner.

      Temperatures are up to the 90s with high humidity as the monsoon pushes it's way through the country heading towards Seoul. It is making places like Cheong-Song and Seoul feel like a kettle on a stove.

(I am sorry for the retarded highlighting. It seems that Blogger is once again stupid and refusing to take away the highlighting that I did not select in the first place). 

Having a Ball

Matt was lucky enough to have a five day weekend because of a school birthday in the same week as Korean Memorial day. So, I enjoyed having a roommate for five days during the first weekend in June. We started off Matt's five-day weekend at his first baseball game. We watched the LG Twins. The fans seemed to be sporadic in cheering, mostly checking their smart phones until something major happened, such as a hit, or more likely, a "base on balls" (a walk). In fact, they seemed to consume so much energy cheering at the walks that when the Twins won, fans let out a small cheer and quickly vacated the stadium leaving Matt and I to take our victory photos in peace.

The next day, Matt finally convinced me to go to the amusement park, Lotte World. It is a rip off of Disney Land in miniature (even the sign has the Disney castle on it). You will find that the Adventures of Sinbad ride resembles a much shorter version of Pirates of the Caribbean and that The Pharaoh's Revenge is a minute version of Indiana Jones, to name a couple of examples. However, unlike Disney Land, Lotte World sits on the third floor of a Lotte shopping mall, with most of the rides inside (including a roller coaster). The rest of the rides are located outside on a small island. The theme is supposedly a "medieval European village," and there are a couple of timber-framed buildings, a couple of fairy-tale castles, and a random mural of Spanish dancers in the bathroom, but mainly the theme is Ottoman or Persian with some 18th Century pirates thrown in along with the park mascot, which is some kind of raccoon. But like a good theme park, it feels as if you stepped off of the escalator into some fairy-tale book and it isn't hard to have fun. I really did enjoy myself, despite getting sick. And the fact that I just cannot do the high/fast rides, which puts quite a limit on my entertainment. Also the lines were about half an hour to fifty minutes long for such short rides. But like I said, it was fun! I also introduced Matt to the temporary healing wonders of Taco Bell.

Lotte World--photo by Matt

I went to work on Monday and Tuesday, while Matt ran errands around Seoul. He also found time to straighten the apartment, do the dishes,  and do some chores I had been procrastinating. It was so lovely to come home to a friend and a clean  place (thanks, Matt!). We spent the evenings wandering the city and playing Yahtzee.

By Thursday I was so sick that I finally went to the doctor. The Dr, convinced of a burst appendix, rushed me to X-rays and an intensive ultrasound,  only to discover that "Korea is stressful" for me and that I cannot eat the food here (duh on the food part).  So now I am on a strict diet of fruits and vegetables--so basically, bananas, tiny yellow melons, pineapple, green peppers. and cabbage. These are the only Carmen-friendly foods I am willing to pay for as cherries are over $10 for less than half a pound,  package of ten kiwis are $20,   watermelon is over $18, and green beans are $1 per bean, asparagus (very large and woody) is about $2 per stalk, and cauliflower and broccoli always seem to be mushy.

Matt came back on Friday, and we spent the weekend wandering around streets we had never explored and re-discovering the traditional market near my apartment. While wandering around the market, we discovered an adorably friendly, blue-eyed kitten. And because we spent so much time playing with the kitten in front of the nut-stall, we had to purchase some sunflower hearts from the stall-owner. We finally moved away from the cat to explore the Chinese medicine stalls, buckets of live turtles next to jumping eels, and Styrofoam coolers brimming with chicken feet lying next to hundreds of fly buzzing, skinned chickens lying under sun-beaten tarps. Luckily the smell of salted fish and steaming chickens was partially covered by hunch-backed ajumas peeling garlic amongst a mountain range of the reeking bulbs (impossible to capture on camera because of the sheer size of these piles in the tiny area and the fact that whole office spaces are buried in garlic).

We finished off the weekend with our first 4D movie. 4D, for those of you who do not know, is a 3D movie with moving seats, air bursts, water sprays, and light effects. Light effects were good and the moving seats, but the water was quite annoying as was the air bursts. However, when the alien jumped out at the movie star at the same time as the air hose whipped my leg quite painfully, I thought for sure an alien had bit me. I kicked my shoes, threw my 3D glasses, screeched, flew over the armrest, and landed in Matt's lap trying to save myself. It was quite embarrassing.

Not Such a Normal Week...

View from one summit.

Wednesday I went on a hike up Achasan, a mountain near my neighborhood. I went with my school. While it was nice to get out, it was quite terrifying to go on those trails with that many people. It was slick rock and loose sand the entire way with some extreme drop offs. Not a great place to be when you are in a pack of people who cannot decide if they want to be the tortoise or the hare and none of them can make that decision at the same time.

Only in Korea will you have a steep trail, filled with old people dressed in their nylon hiking gear, bright visor, two walking sticks, and a well-equipped back pack talking on their cell phones very loudly. And what is more embarrassing is that they make it up the mountain faster than me. In my defense, I stop to take pictures and to avoid getting killed by these crazy old people. At two points on the mountain, after a steep climb, there are outdoor gyms set up. So I guess, the hike is to get the heart rate going so you can do sit ups,  lift weights, and do the twist. Only in Korea. And it seems that only in Korea can I  awe the school by showing off my amazing fence climbing and razor-wire jumping skills when a group of teachers decided to off-trail it.

But the view was beautiful despite the cloud cover. We had  to take pictures for the Office of Education proving that we did go on a hike and that we weren't skirting our team-building duties. Then suddenly, the kind man who taught me how to use Korean chopsticks when I first arrived in Korea was taking my camera and taking pictures (which was nice because I never have pictures of me on my camera), but then I also had to take pictures together with him. He then helped all of us young teachers down the mountain and left the older teachers to struggle behind (but they actually beat us down the mountain).  We then waited as the "professional" hikers of the group airbrushed off their hiking boots at an air-brushing station, before heading to dinner of duck and bony pork comprised of fat and small bones. After I had spit out my eighth bone in two minutes, a  teacher thankfully mistook my answer to her question of "Do you get meat cuts like this in America?" to mean that the butcher would be sold out so fast he couldn't stay in business, rather than my literal meaning of a butcher wouldn't stay in business with cuts like this.

Almost to the top!

Thursday, I was greeted by a visit from the Home Science teacher from last year. She came to fill my co-teacher's place for a day. She has just landed a job on "Cable TV" (pronounced Kae buh luh tee wvee) (apparently that is the name of the news network), where she will be giving the stock reports.  Also, a blast from the past, I had my coffee date with another old co-teacher, where she showed me around more undiscovered parts of the city. We had a wonderful pasta dinner near Changdeokgung Palace. It was a dirty, run down cottage, but still quaint with it's bright yellow and red walls, mismatched tables and chairs, mismatched plates, and menus made from scrap books.

And today the whole busy week came crashing down into a bad mood for me. I was hit by a man on a bicycle, I had to deal with obnoxious students trying to take advantage of a substitute teacher. I got so angry that I went Hulk on a kid and the teachers could hear me down the hall. I was still fuming over terrible and unfinished homework when HyunSu brought in a kitten she had rescued from the road. He was such a darling black and white thing, covered in dirt and smelling of kimchi. Thankfully her mother said she could keep the cat, and she had just brought the cat in to show me. I held the cat and played with it while HyunSu finished a class and it was amazing how a short time with the cat made me feel much better.

Now I will prepare for five days of Matt, who has three days off of school plus the weekend! 

I'm so excited! I just can't hide it! You know, You know, Gyeongju!

Bongeunsa's Buddha

So that is what I decided this post would be named after returning from Gyeongju. However, like most of the trips I plan to do in Korea, it failed miserably.  Every thing actually worked out, except for the fact that all available transportation to get to Gyeongju was sold out for the entire weekend. Then trying to inform the hostel that I was not coming was a pain. Koreans must have the latest cell phones and so their cell phones change rapidly, and as I found out when my co-teacher changed her phone, the cell numbers change rapidly too and people cannot be bothered to change the information on emails and websites.

But in the end the three day weekend was great. Matt came to Seoul. We journeyed to Coex, a large underground mall which is the closest thing to Western shopping I've had since leaving the States. We walked around enjoying the various stores (which are still distinctly Korean) and killed nearly three hours in the very expensive aquarium. After emerging to grab a coffee we discovered Bongeunsa, apparently the richest temple in Seoul. It was quite beautiful decked out to welcome Buddha into the world.

Lanterns at Bongeunsa.

We journeyed to Myeongdong where Matt found a pair of jeans. We watched Men in Black 3 in 3D (might as well watch it in 2D). We wandered through Cheonggyecheon Museum (a museum on the demolishing of  Cheonggyecheon stream in the late 1970s by draining and turning it into a super highway, and then in late 1990s, making it back into a stream). By the way, this stream runs about a block and a half behind my apartment and is the stream running by Dongdaemun all the way to Jongno. It is the stream that has the winter lantern festival and the same stream that Matt fell into.

I had known Korea was poor, but I had no idea how poor the country was until seeing the pictures at the museum. It explains why there is still a third-world mind set to the older generations.