life. isn't it worth a bottle of great water?

that's what the label on my gaya mineral water says. i would like to think my life is worth more than a bottle of water, even if it is "great" water. but maybe they're right and 2liters of hydration is all i amount to.

my head hurts. my brain is telling me not to drink any more cheap beer, but my wallet says i should go for it! i think i'll listen to the brain pain for a couple of days. i know i write too much about drinking, no need to remind me...
despite my aching brain today, yesterday was another good day of discovery. me, jules and rory's intention was to find some elusive pagoda monument thingy or something. i obviously don't know what we were looking for, but rory had the map and i saw some sort of landmark on it, so that's what in theory we were setting out to find. instead we found dakgalbi alley in myung dong (huge shopping area). apparently each province in south korea has a dish for which they're famous. we're in dakgalbi province. it's this spicy chicken dish that they cook at the table for you(i guess most restaraunts here do that if they're authentic and bbq). so we find dakgalbi alley after getting sort of sidetracked and it was unreal. you walk down this street lined on both sides with restaraunts selling the exact same thing. because of the competition, the women who work at these places spy you walking down the street and hang out the doors of the restaraunts yelling crap at you in korean to try to convince you to come in. you'll have to see rory and jules' video blog when it's up and running. it's insane. all these middle aged women wildly gesticulating and saying stuff that none of us understand, and all about chicken. we finally decided on a place and it was great. the amount of food they cooked before our eyes was unlike anything i've ever seen. it was just bbq chicken, little rice finger looking things, cabbage, some onions and garlic. then they give you lettuce and the chili paste that makes korean food taste korean. you wrap the cooked stuff in the lettuce and eat it like a taco. a korean taco.

after lunch we decided to go to the newly-opened converse store. i happened to have money and figured i'd blow some of it on a new pair of shoes i don't really need. en route to converse, there was another soju giveaway--the same girls that were at the last one dressed like flight attendants. so we each got a bottle of soju and a free shot out of the deal. at the converse store i bought some sweet black leather high tops that have a blue x-ray image of the bones in your feet on them. plus i got a free converse hat--i'm sure that will come in handy when i go back to work at shakespeare's. ha ha ha. we wandered around for a while after that and never did find the cultural monument we were sposed to, but it was still cool to be in a new, albeit decrepit, part of town. we ended up over by the old u.s. military base that closed down last year, camp page. it was this sprawling ghost town that looked like some sort of prison. it actually reminded me a lot of the prison in jefferson city that is now a dnr parking lot. you could tell that the district we were in was hit pretty hard when camp page closed. all these restaraunts and store fronts that looked like hell with broken windows and trash everywhere. that was also a very real reminder of the political climate and how close we are to freaking north korea. it's easy to feel safe, but i forget how small korea is, and just how close the north is. weird.

post nap, met up with jules and rory again for my second night in a row of pho bay vietnamese food. when i went on friday night, i'm convinced i ate the hottest food i've ever had in my life. my insides felt like they were on fire all night. but it was good. the second night i didn't just dump every sauce they gave me into my food and it was a lot better.

after dinner went out drinking with jules and rory. here's where all the cheap beer comes into the picture. i guess i'd been drinking pretty much all day too, but it continued on into the night. we went to the kang de hu moon area (university area) and went on our own sort of pub crawl. first stop was johnny's bar. they seem to always have hip hop or pop music videos on the tvs there. despite the soundtrack, it's got a relatively classy feel and you get to lounge on nice chairs. the table next to us could not stop staring at rory and julie. most people stare, no big deal, but this guy took it past the acceptable point. after johnny's bar we went to a bar called lucifer. there wasn't really anything hellish about the place, besides me getting hiccups, i guess that sucked a little bit. had some more beers there, then we went to this place that had a giant dinosaur on it's sign. drank more beer there and the bar staff did not seem amused by us. called shakes for the fun of it, and out of all the people working who could possibly answer the phone, we got leonard. go figure. last stop was lava. jules and rory only stayed for a little bit and i left shortly after they did. last call or not, 4 am is still a really really late night.

today, i would have done absolutely nothing, but i had an appointment to go meet more friends of the korean guy i tutored in como. so i went back to the same area that we partied last night to meet the guy and his two kids. hu moon looks a lot different during the day. seems a little dirtier, like they didn't have time to clean up the filth of the night before. the father i met wants to take me and julie and rory out to dinner sometime together with his whole family. which is fantastic. it's weird but good to be held in such high regard by people who hadn't even met me yet. so i hope i didn't let the family down.

the daughter of the bunch is perhaps the tallest korean female i've seen. i think she was even taller than me. she's in high school and her little brother is in middle school. we went back to their apartment just to chat and drink coffee and eat apples. it was weird to be in an apartment that 4 people live in. it was a decent-sized apartment, but i just don't think that would be enough separation. everything here is so compact--the housing, the people, everything. anyhoo, i now have 2 groups of people looking out for me while i'm here, and that's comforting. they made a list of all the korean foods i like so the mother knows what to cook for me when they have me over. hopefully i'll learn some korean while i'm at it.

riding in the car with the korean father and his korean daughter, i was again struck by how little culture shock i've had. it really only hits me when i'm a little intoxicated and sentimental, or when i eat food that i don't know what the hell it is (i accidentally ordered octopus last week. whoops.). even on the radio they played tom waits, norah jones, then barbara streisand. and i was struck by how normal that seemed (despite the fact that in como you probably would only hear tom waits on kcou). the daughter, eun hye, asked me if i liked any pop music in korea, so i started singing the one song i always get stuck in my head ("boy boy you makey me move"). to my surprise, the very pretty lead singer of the group that sings that was one of korea's first transgender peeps. to my surprise, eun hye also knew how to say "transgender" in english. when i got home, i looked up "korean transgender" on google, and sure enough, there's this she-man's mug everywhere. apparently there's a she-man group. all these trannies auditioned to be in this girl group, and only 3 made it, including my favorite chick. and one of the other chicks is going to be the spokesperson for a new line of maxipads. so there you go.

cereal bowls make good cups

i still don't have any cups in my apartment. i just haven't had the motivation to go buy any yet. i guess i also didn't have the money. i've been drinking big cereal sized bowls of soju and orange juice--orange juice for my cold, soju just for the hell of it. i'd like to think i'm starting a new trend in cocktail drinking.

tonight i ate dinner at a restaraunt in the mountains overlooking the city. it was really comforting somehow to see this sort of compressed and bustling city reduced to nothing more than blinking lights in the mountain valley. my meal seemed decidedly unkorean--fried pork cutlet with cheese and some sort of marinara on it. i get to go out to another fancy meal on tuesday with my friend of a friend whose job is to look out for me while i'm here. cool beans.

drank beer with some random strangers at a family mart last night. one of those chance encounters that makes me grateful i ever thought a gasless gas station was a good place to kick back and imbibe.

These are some random pictures from Chuncheon (mostly food)...

www.flickr.com More of mcjulie78's photos tagged with random

Rory and Julie's Video Blog Volume 1

In this additon we do a corn dog intro, go to myung dong, and eat corn dogs.

Old Korean women crack me up...

So today we went to the market area that we had enjoyed so much last sunday. Rory was geared up with the camcorder and everything, but for the most part, there was really no one around. We have been on a sort of quest to find decorations for our apartment, so it can feel more like home, so we approached this really friendly-looking old Korean woman about these huge bamboo mats, that I'm sure were meant for the floor or something, but could look really cool on a wall, too. So we don't really know what she said, but I think she was talking about how big it was and how for 30,000 won (approximately $30) it was a real bargain. So she got our her tape measurer to measure it, while I'm making these big sweeping gestures with my arms, saying "big. big". She shows me how tall it is according to her tape measurer, and then she moves closer to me to measure my height. It was a really funny exchange, all of us sort of understanding what was going on and why it was funny. I was about a foot taller than her, too. It made me wonder if there would ever be that sort of exchange in the United States--if a Korean was in this spot surrounded by nothing but really old Americans. I can't help but think it would be a different situation. But then we were walking around a little more in the empty spot where all the fish had been last weekend, and another old woman came up to me and put her arm on me and started to point at my dress and my tights (they are giant brown fishnetty ones. i like them alright...). I have no idea what she was saying, but I knew it was nice and that something about us made her feel comfortable enough to try to engage in conversation. I patted her on the shoulder, too, and made sure to say "thank you" a lot in Korean. I really love everyone here, but I constantly change my mind as to who my favorites are--the little little kids who are just adorable and don't really know english at the school, but who love to shout "hi, hello...what's your name?...nice to meet you!" at the grocery store, on the street or even at the museum; or the really old people who stare and smile and play really primitive-looking games at the market involving sticks and rocks, and who don't assume that I love US politics, or even if they assume that I do, don't care. Like I have mentioned before, it's nice to feel loved for no good reason by complete strangers. I love this place.

I love it here...

Today we met up with Australian Ricky to walk to the Chuncheon National Museum. It was a hell of a walk, but it didn't seem like it took forever because there's just so much to look at at. Every building has at least three stories--lots of pc places where you can go play games, little markets and restaurants restaurants restaurants. We walked past another university, too, with pictures of female basketball players on these big banners. We walked to this mart to meet Ricky's friend Wendy, another ESL lady from Atlanta. She had been to the museum before, but she met us anyway and read a book while we walked around. She was a sweetheart! The museum was cool enough, it was hard to get really good descriptions of things, but looking at this old, old jewelry was pretty interesting--how vintage would that be--some freaking kickass necklaces from paleolithic times... Afterwards we went to the gift shop area, where we bought a lot of postcards (don't worry--you all still get postcards, too) and we got to do these "rubbings" (for lack of a better word) with ink and engraving thingies. We put this paper on a stone thing with traditional carvings in it (imagine the underside of a stamper, except much bigger), wet the paper with a spray bottle, put a towel over it, beat it with a brush to make the wet paper conform to the shapes and outlines and then went over it with ink and let it dry. We were taking these little nubby brush things covered in ink and beating the holy hell out of this paper. We had just been lamenting the fact that we don't have anything to put on our walls, and now we do. It'll look pretty sweet. And authentic.

We just got back from going to yet another BBQ restaurant--this was our first experience with chicken, though. We wandered around for 45 minutes-ish, just exploring this area that is maybe fifteen minutes from our apt. We found an Olive Garden, but it looked a little too swank for our budget. But this freaking BBQ place was great. Great flavor and just a ton of food for so cheap! They brought us this plate of carrots and cucumbers, quail eggs (which turned out to be great--hardboiled and just delicious!), these little crab cake thingies, and then (what we've come to know as) obligatory BBQ fare, with lettuce and sauce and garlic and peppers and MEAT!!!!! Damn, it was good. We ate pretty much everything, so our waitress asked us if we wanted more food. We said no, but she brought us this fried egg-covered spam anyway--I guess spam is like gold over here. Fair enough. We put it on the grill and ate it up. Delicious. Seems like we get the royal treatment (the dude at the family mart today gave us some free chocolates, too. Rory is convinced it's because I have boobs, but hey, whatever works. I like chocolate...).

It's cool, too, because now when we go out, if we go out anywhere alone around our neighborhood, people who recognize us ask where the other one is. It's really funny. It's weird to think that our sheer presence makes someone's day. And I'm not trying to sound like a jerk or we think we're so cool, but it's nice to go somewhere and have people like us immediately just because. It makes it very easy to exist here.

We all start our new schedules on March 2nd. Jamie and I will be teaching 5 hours a day (i get the little little preschoolers and the other dudes who can't read at all really. I'm excited about that...). It's going to be so great. We are all so excited. The students are my favorite people here so far. Damn, they have some energy. I'll take it!

Our first (and second) bad food experience(s)...

So tonight we decided to go eat somewhere close to our apt. that would be cheap and that we hadn't experienced before. We decided on this little nook of a spot (lots of the restaurants are little nooks, really, with only a few tables, or in this case, booths) and the picture menu looked promising. Lots of stuff on skewers. We ordered two beers (no problem!) and these bbq thingies that looked like chicken. So I put on my dumb American face and said "Uh...chicken?" and pointed at the menu. The waitress said "yes..." so we ordered them. Fifteen minutes later--after a plate of barbecued something with tentacles was put in front of us--I remembered back to my experience with the Chos, a Korean family in Columbia. Even though the mom never really understood what we were saying, she would always smile, nod and say "uh huh" or "yes" or even just something affirmative as if to say "I don't know what you're saying, but I'll just be polite..." I guess our waitress was doing the same. Maybe she thought I was pointing to the sign and telling her that it looked like my favorite food--maybe she was excited by the idea... Who knows? All I know is that we paid and went somewhere else, leaving a big, untouched plate of things that wiggled behind. So then we went to another joint by the house that looked like the standard Korean BBQ we've seen everywhere. We went in, sat down and pointed to the 8,000 on the menu and ordered that, thinking we'd just scored some actual meat or something. But then we looked around and saw that everyone had fish. Turns out all they had was fish. Strike two. We don't really trust the fish around here--everything tastes like fish. So we headed to the Korean BBQ place directly across the street from our house. The same guy who is always outside was there--we looked at him and said "chicken?" He smiled and nodded. We went in and decided we wanted pork instead, so we had to put our fingers on our noses and oink. This time our waitress understood. And it was awesome. Some of the best Korean BBQ we've had thus far, though I'm convinced I think that every time.

I really thought I was going to be excited about the seafood over here, not like I have much experience with it, but still...I like crab, lobster and shrimp. But everywhere we go we see squid and octopus, and if there is crab or something, it looks really gross. Flat out gross. Koreans don't necessarily take any time to make their food look appetizing, something I guess I take for granted. Or maybe there's nothing glamorous-looking about squid and/or octopus.

That's all for now. Tomorrow we are meeting our Australian friend Ricky (we met him at an ESL party, and he has been here for about as long as we have...) to go to "Chuncheon Museum." I don't know what they have there, but I'm sure their toilet paper in the bathroom has more history than most of the United States. Not to knock the US or anything, it's just weird to be in a place that has been around for forever.

I'm going hi-tech.

yello.
i just figured out how to take movies from the camera and host them on this google site. that said, from here on out i am going to try to blog in a/v form. it takes about a day for google to verify the movies...and the quality isn't super.. but why read when you could watch? much easier.
roar

korean tv

drumroll please......

guess who is no longer living in a seedy motel...yours truly. tonight will be my 3rd night sleeping in my own apartment. and tonight is the first night that i have had the internet. hooray!!!!!

i had an interesting couple of hours after work today. as i was walking out the door of work with my really heavy computer, i got a phone call from a friend of a friend in missouri that i had tutored. mr. kim (missouri friend) had given mr. baik (korean dude) my number, so he called me and wanted me to meet him to just talk because mr. kim said i was a cool chick. so i carry the computer to the sidewalk and try to hail a cab. any other time i've ever needed a cab, they seem to magically materialize, but it took me forever to hail one today. i dunno. maybe they all just knew i had something heavy and was on a time frame. in the cab, the driver asked me if i was married. i've been asked if i'm married more times by cab drivers here than ever before in my life. it's funny. and they have no problems asking how old you are either. so i get to my apartment and lug the computer up three flights of stairs (no elevator). as soon as i set it down, mr. baik calls me back so i can direct him to my apartment. i don't even know my address, i barely know what to tell the cab drivers. so i tell him to park at the apartment complex down the street and i'll come find him.

when i get to the apartment's parking lot, mr. baik is there with his own driver. apparently he's important. so we went and drank beers and just talked. he said mr. kim had asked him to watch out for me and if i ever needed anything to call him. so that's pretty cool. and very nice on mr. kim's part.

after i got home from meeting with him, my landlady knocks on my door so her son can come set up the computer. and while her son does that, she proceeds to separate my laundry into seasons and start my first load of dirty stuff. she even gave me her detergent. she also folded all my bras and underwear. and she didn't speak a lick of english. now my apartment is basically set up, but i'll need to do some rearranging and home decor stuff when i can afford it. i'm very excited about getting to go explore my own neck of the woods this weekend. hopefully i'll have some mandu and some kimbop nearby...

our neighborhood

all of this stuff takes less than a minute to get to from our front door.

www.flickr.com

More of mcjulie78's photos tagged with thehoood

some pictures from our first day

these are some korean goodies we got while we were walking around for the first time. note the gigantic mountains.

www.flickr.com

duvel beer, the gay bar, and an open air market

well, lots to report as i've had a pretty eventful weekend.

2 nights in a row i stayed out until 4:30 am. it's bizarre because there is no last call here. bars stay open until people leave, like a really really long and annoying party. even on friday night/saturday morning when i was leaving my favorite bar (lava) there were people who were just then coming to the bar from their houses. i can't imagine waking up or staying up until 4:30 in the morning and then deciding it was a good time to go out. but that's just me. so friday night, i had fun just sitting at the bar with abby while the bartenders entertained us.

anyhoo, about this bar i've discovered....i didn't really discover it so much as i went there with the other teacher at my school who discovered it. the whole aesthetic is very reminiscent of the old, dirty shattered in como. you go downstairs and there's this tiny tiny dancefloor where all the hip hop hits are blaring at you, and i think it's pretty much hip hop dance night every night. again, i'm not a great dancer, but whatever, i'm there so i might as well. the bathroom is filthy, they don't have any beer on tap, and the cheapest bottle of beer you can get is 4,000 won ($4). but at least you don't have to tip (not at restaurants either). i drank one of said cheap beers last night and it was disgusting. if you ever encounter cafri beer, turn around and run away. even if it was free. seriously. i know rory's a fan of interesting and/or gross experimental beverages, so maybe he'll like this crap.

last night was interesting. i'd decided i wasn't going to go out because i was feeling pretty irritable (still in the motel, that could have something to do with it. eventually i'll stop dwelling on this, i promise). but i had already made myself all purty just to sit and watch korean tv and mess around on the computer. but at 1 am i got a text message from the chick i had been tentatively planning to meet up with. last week when i went to lava, i saw that they had a duvel sign but no duvel beer, so i casually said to jupio (the owner, and now one of my favorite people in this city) that they should get that beer. so last night abby's text message said i had to come to lava because jupio had indeed gotten the beer. i don't know why, but that made my whole week. it could have something to do with the fact that since i've been here, he's been the only accomodating person i've encountered. so the beer was just a really nice gesture. i hailed a cab and decided to start my night at 1:30 am. when i got to lava, jupio was examining this bottle of duvel (with matching snifter) like it was a piece of mars or a lock of jesus' hair or something. so i paid $8 for this bottle of good beer ($10 for anyone else, jupio said). and it was weird to have a whole bar of people staring at me, not because i was this tall american chick in their korean bar, but because i was drinking duvel out of a glass in this dirty, but charming, piece of cra p little bar. i still can't believe he ordered it just for me. i felt very cool.

after lava, abby and i migrated to a gay bar called marlboro. i've been to a gay bar before in como, and it was no big deal. but in south korea, homosexuality is still not an open thing. it's still viewed as a blight on society or whatever and is very very much in the closet. so i knew i was in for a good time at the "cross gender" show. on the walk to the bar, abby and i passed a food stand, and this group of korean men saw me debating whether or not to buy anything, so they bought us some "banana bread" and some "egg bread." the banana bread was basically just a pancake in the shape of a banana. the egg bread was, surprisingly, just a poached egg on top of a piece of bread. so we ate the food they bought us, said thank you and told them we were lesbians so they would leave us alone. 10 minutes after we get to marlboro, these dudes show up. i don't think they knew it was a gay bar, but they danced and made fools of themselves anyway. so onto the actual show...the owner of this place was among the most flamboyant gay men i've ever encountered. he was wearing a bra and a mini skirt. at the start of the show, there was one dude who had a long ponytail attached to his baseball cap who came out and danced to a song. then the owner joined him and there was all this syncronized dancing. and then a third guy came out and they were all dancing at once. the choreography for their routine was incredible. i honestly have never seen anything like it. it was like seeing three justin timberlakes or ushers dancing a foot away from you (albeit korean and gay and dressed in miniskirts...). i've never actually seen anyone dance as well as these three did. there was this mirrored pillar thingy in the middle of the dance floor that they were all dancing around. i wish i could describe it better. anyhoo, a couple of girls joined them and then they all did this cool line dance that made the electric slide seem even more retarded than it already is. crazy crazy crazy! and totally worth the $7 to get in. i probably can't even comprehend how significant it was to be there too, considering the hostile homosexual climate i've heard about. after the show was over, we literally had to run out to escape the creepy banana bread guy. it was funny because we were trying to be cool and casual about fleeing, but i get up the stairs only to realize i had left my coat on the back of the chair right next to the dude. so i had to sprint out twice. yep, i'm smooth. went home after that.

woke up this morning at 11--not by choice, but because the cleaning room for the motel is right next to my room and i can hear any movement by persons and furniture. pretty annoying, but better than pleasure moans. met up with jules and rory to go to the outdoor market. i keep exclaiming "i've never seen anything like this." but it's true. i'm from columbia, missouri and this place is nothing like columbia, missouri. i took a whole lot o' pictures on my phone, still haven't even gotten them all uploaded to flickr. but yeah, lots of outdoor market pictures. i like the idea of pig hooves, shoes, intestines, and perfume all being sold in the same outdoor area. that's what freedom is all about.

tomorrow i finally get to meet the elusive owner of the school i'm teaching at. it will be nice to see the man behind the curtain. eager to start a new week of work, beginning with fajitas tomorrow.

pictures from the open air market!

http://www.flickr.com/photos/jamieleighmcgeorge

too many to post here, so just follow the link. easier this way. pretty decent photos considering they're from my cell phone...

more pictures!!!

www.flickr.com More of mcgwart's photos

These are some pictures from our school!

www.flickr.com

I just wanted everyone to see this.

c01
Originally uploaded by mcjulie78.

each day i discover more idiosyncracies. today's latest: the number 4 is an extremely unlucky number. my room at the sin den is on the 4th floor, so on the elevator all the other floor's are numbered, but for 4 there are the letters fl. i don't know why there's this superstition, i just know it exists. fair enough.

today i complete my first "full" week of work, and i'm pleased to say that i have all my students' names memorized. i also think the kids realize that i'm not there just to watch them crawl all over the furniture while i talk to them in english, i actually want to impart knowledge. we'll see how long that lasts...in the first class there are only two students--sam and aaron. the're probably 4 or 5 (oh yeah, sposed to be 6-11 year olds, but apparently the owner will accept anyone as long as they pay, including a two year old who, up until yesterday, would just sit in the lobby and cry. but she was crying in english, i could tell). aaron is my favorite. it's hard to discipline him when he's sitting in your lap mumbling in korean with one or two english words thrown in the mix. he's probably the worst-behaved student there. but he's also got these dimples and tiny teeth. and he likes to say "what" in korean over and over and over. it sounds something like "boooryo."

in my second class, i have steve, greg, and bob. there are a bunch of other kids too, but these are the three that stand out to me right now. steve is constantly picking his nose. i would never want to touch his arm or anything remotely close to his hands, which reminds me that he touched my phone a lot yesterday, so i've probably got booger bits in my ears at this point. but cooking with him on monday will be a real treat. he's constantly digging, sometimes to the point of bleeding. and i dunno if he just hasn't been taught that it's sort of gross to pick your nose all the time in public, but maybe i'll try to get him to understand that in english. i guess he's still too young to be self-conscious about anything. greg looks like an old man in a little boy's body. he also has this perma-smirk on his face so that he constantly looks like he's really annoyed by everything. i think he's annoyed by the fact that he sort of finds me and julie entertaining, but he would never want to admit it. and then there's bob. bob cries a lot and is missing his two front teeth. he's very cute but he likes to pick fights, mostly with steve the booger eater. yesterday we all gathered around to read, and bob started hitting steve and crying because steve was sitting the closest to me and helping me turn the pages with his gross fingers. the girls in all my classes are really good and well-behaved and like to look at/touch my eyelashes when i wear blue mascara.

in the next class i've got a kid named crocodile. he's the one who likes to pick fights in that class (seems like there's one for each group). no one in this class wants to call me jamie, so instead there are constantly competing little voices screaming "teacher!" it doesn't matter if i'm two inches from their faces, they still scream teacher at me. there's one kid named jim who always says teacher and then folds his hands as if he praying or something. he's begging me to acknowledge him and acts like everything--for example, the fact that he didn't get to choose his own writing utensil--is literally breaking his heart. he's also one of those kids that you know exactly what they'll look like when they're 30. he's the oldest in the class and the worst at english.

next class is my babysitting class. they're all just too young to do anything besides color and run laps around the tables. i'm lucky if i can hold their attention for 5 minutes. they've very cute, but they also enjoy screaming really loudly.

my last class has the most well-behaved and best english-speaking kids in it. we get through the lesson plans really quickly and then they play a couple games of go fish, which is fine with me as long as they say "go fish" in english. next week i'll probably deviate a little more from the lesson plans with which we've been provided, this week was just to get a feel for everyone's level of proficiency.

today is supposed to be the day we act at school. i have no idea how this is going to work. i'm a little scared...i think it would be funny to print off a transcript of svu and have them act that out. i should start thinking about who's my mariska hargitay....

yesterday in the crane game there was an mp3 player. i was tempted but i didn't have time to play. when they put an actual ipod in there, i'm all over it. i'll drop 20 bucks fer sure.

did anyone else watch the ultimate fighting championship and think that the guy who won didn't deserve to? i think his name was forrest. anyhoo, it's sort of weird to see these two guys beating the crap out of each other to the point that they're both covered in blood, well, mostly just the one guy's blood. even when they weren't fighting and were standing, there's just blood steadily streaming down both of their faces. i remember in basketball we had to leave the game if we even scratched ourselves--there was such an aids/hiv paranoia. but this was one of the only channels i found in english. i know it sounds like i watch a lot of tv over here already--i don't--but the noveltly of everything i watch is much more pronounced and noteworthy given the circumstances. anyhoo, i was taking a shower, but i left the door open so i could watch the 4th round of this thing in the bathroom mirror. i'm funny....

still snow on the ground here, and it's kick ass...it will be interesting to see everything turn green in the spring, especially the mountains. i'l become an outdoorsman yet!

for those wanting pictures, i have taken a ton, but i have to wait until i get to my apartment on a better computer before i get them on the blog. fear not, you'll get some images.

more fun with garbage!

dig this. so.... we had a hard time finding trash bags. what we hadn't thought of was where you put them when you actually throw them out. i just set ours next to some garbage by this restaurant next door. i guess that was wrong. while i was doing the dishes yesterday this woman, who i think may be our landlord, knocked on the door. she pointed to the area in the hall where i had temporarily set some of it, and then kind of gestured that "there's a different place to put your trash." i said "ok" and she left. she came back like ten minutes later. this time she gestured for me to come with her. she took me outside and grabbed some of the trash, told me to grab some, and then we headed up a hill. at the top of the hill is where you put the garbage. problem solved. she was very nice, and on the walk down the hill she held onto my arm for dear life (it's freakin slippery with all this ice on the ground). the whole time this was going on, the woman was talking to me in korean. i think it was pretty clear i couldn't understand her, but she kept on keeping on. pretty funny stuff. we're going to get some iced coffee at Paris Baguette (korean panera). happy trails.
roar

cranes and trash bags and little kids, oh my...

So every time Roar and I go to wal-mart or wherever (yes, we shopped at wal-mart. don't judge me. it's convenient and cheap...) I always play the crane/treasure game, where you put in 50 cents and get to use that claw to win things that huey can destroy... well, they have those here, too, but instead of stuffed animals or the jimmy eat world cd that I won once (first try, even...) these feature wine sets or pipe sets. So, for roughly ten cents, you can try to use this industrial claw to win a pack that is surrounded by chicken wire. But seriously, the wine set is a bottle of wine, a corkscrew and two freaking wine glasses. Or a pipe set. Who knows what they give you with that.

Yesterday Roar and I went to EMart, which looks like it ate wal-mart. Very very huge, two stories, and you can take your whole damn shopping cart on the escalator/ramp thing. There are grooves on the ramp that fit the grooves on the wheels. Craziness. We went there for random sundries (hahaha sundries) like hangers and shampoo and...trash bags. We had gone through most of our list and had one more thing on it. Trash bags. They were the first thing we looked for in the store, and they were the last, too. There were Korean chicks in mini skirt/leg warmer uniforms standing at the end of every aisle to help people, so we took turns asking and pointing. We would point to our trash can that we were purchasing from E Mart and then to a bag in the cart and then back to the trash bag, pretend to tie it up and then pretend to throw it away with a disgusted face. I thought it seemed simple enough. I thought I was pretty good at charades. But no one got it. Customer service, especially for Americans in Chuncheon, is pretty impressive, though. We had the king of the grocery store trying to help us--he even went to produce and grabbed Joe Korea, the one dude working who knew some English, but he didn't know "trash bag." At this point we were by the register, where I saw the cashiers loading groceries into bags. I guess they do that at grocery stores... Anyway, so I pointed to the trash can, then these bags and then back to the trash can, then we called the girls at the school. NO LUCK. So we gave up on the trash bag thing. We came home and Rory went out looking at the different little marts/convenience stores around our apartment and came back with bags that looked just like the ones they had at the emart to bag groceries in. Maybe they're recycling bags. But we've seen trash bags everywhere, and they don't look anything like the ones we have in our apartment. And they were expensive. And he's pretty sure the ladies were making fun of him. But I'm convinced that--in this town, anyway--i could walk around after crapping my pants and the Koreans wouldn't make fun of me because I'm an American. I am not joking when I say it's like we're celebrities. Who knew I could be famous for just being born in jeff city...

The kids. The kids are freaking amazing. Everyday when the walk in we have to say "hello Alex, nice to meet you." I think it's lame that they all have English names, but apparently that's part of the deal. I just want the kids to feel like they can be themselves at the school while they're learning English. Or maybe that if I called them their actual names they would respond instead of just looking down at their sticker/stamp books. I mean, somehow I'm good at remembering Korean names. But anyway, today we made cheesy chicken burritos, and the first group spent the whole class preparing them and then didn't want to eat them, so they fed them to their parents. Good thing, too, because our special delivery Velveeta that was supposed to be here on Monday cost the school $15. I guess I should explain the format of the school and teaching.
Monday is cooking, Tuesday is presentation, Wednesday is Art, Thursday is Storytelling and Friday is acting. So every day is different, but the age groups for each hour of the day differ. It's really cool and has the potential to be really rewarding. Korean kids love to learn, and they also love to play--it works out well because I'm good at getting their attention by being a buffoon. You just wave your arms around a bunch, use packing peanuts as a prop and they're hooked. I will get my own class next week. For now I'm migrating between Jamie and Abby's classes. I have to work less because I have more responsibility outside of the class room (i.e. Rory). It's cool that they're looking out for us and that married folk get privileges like that, but it sort of sucks that Jamie has to work more. But who can complain about working 25 hours a week? Or in my case, 12.5...?

Everything is great. These kids are amazing, and I am so thankful to be here.

mandu seems to be the topic of the day...with good reason

the wonderful world of mandu and my screwed up back.

i bought a whole meal of mandu (steamed pork dumplings) for $2.00. yesterday i wrote about eating the best meal i've eaten here so far, which was bbq chicken. the dumplings kick the bbq chicken's ass. they're cheap as hell and you get a whole lot of food. good gad. edibles here seem so simple, as there are relatively few side dishes, but the meat has so many spices in it, it's crazy. and i'm sure there were a ton of different spices in the sauce alone for these dumplings. but they're packaged just like some chicken nuggets or something. crazy amounts of food for so cheap. no matter what neighborhood i end up living in, i'l have at least 20 different eateries at my disposal. that's pretty cool.

today i taught for the first time. it was pretty cool. i learned that the syllabus for each class doesn't mean anything, particularly when you're teaching the same material to every age group. 5-6 yr. old koreans could care less about the cpu of a computer and what url stands for, but if you give them a picture of all that crap to color, they go nuts. i think i'm going to forgo the rules outlined in the syllabus and try to teach them the alphabet, since not one of them today could write it past the letter h. but why the letter h? what's so special about it? i dunno. but they sure like to throw crayons.

the kids in all the classes have been assigned american names by the teacher i replaced. so they're all named after his family members. my last class consisted of 11-yr olds named kevin, jay, gene, jena, terry and andy. this is the arrangement we were in when we played go fish today. they were all too smart to learn the parts of a computer...but they weren't too smart to play go fish for 45 minutes. fine by me...

prior to moving to korea, i had never ridden in a cab by myself before, let alone hailed one, ridden in it, said hello goodbye and thank you in a foreign language, and actually made it to my destination with no mess ups. i'm pretty proud of myself for this seemingly miniscule task. as long as i keep racking up the small victories like this, i think i'll be happy with my progress. i've also got some lofty goals for teaching at this school. there's a fine line between babysitting and teaching, and i want to make sure i ride the right side of it. i keep telling myself that kindergarten teachers don't refer to themselves as babysittters, but as educators. and i need to remember that.

tonight i again sleep in this sex dungeon-y hotel; this one's even worse than the first one. besides being woken up by abrupt pleasure moans through these too thin walls, i encountered a used prophylactic in the elevator (i'm trying to tone it down here...). there's also a pretty freaky vending machine that sells all sorts of aids to help one perform better, if you know what i mean. and the entrance to the parking lot/garage is half covered with all these ropes, a la a car wash, so people can't see in to the license plates to see if their husbands or colleages are cheating on their wifes. so obviously i can't wait to move to my actual apartment. moving all my luggage around has officially hurt my already janky back. i can't stand up straight right now--my left hip is raised about two inches higher than my left and it hurts like hell to attempt to balance myself. sleeping in a bed that feels like a brick with a paper towel on it doesn't alleviate any of this pain. but at least i found my earplugs today so maybe i'll actually be able to sleep through the gutteral noises.

MANDU!

i guess that's how you spell it. it's been snowing all morning, which is fine by me seeing as i got these sweet boots by way of travis by way of the big l. i'm ready for the snow,"bring 'em on" as GW says. we're in our apartment finally. it's basically one room that has a bed, couch, desk with a computer already provided and a closet. there are seperate kitchen, bath, and small sunroom areas though. it's quaint i guess. julie and jamie are at the school right now, so i ventured out a short distance to get some grub by my lonesome. the dude who used to have this apartment told us there's some good mandu around the corner, so i checked it out. i paid two bucks and got 6 mandus, a bag of sauce and some slivers of this yellow veggie that i threw away. from what i gather mandu is a steamed dumpling filled with cabbage and pork. they rule. i think i could survive solely on those alone. i'm excited to know that i can get way more food than i can eat at one time for that cheap. there is also a bar that literally takes less than 30 seconds to get to from our front door. i reckon we'll do just fine in our new hood. that's it fer now.
roar

there's actual snow on the ground!

i knew i didn't bring these giant snow boots halfway across the world for nothing. missouri had sort of a dud of a winter, so i am quite pleased by the precipitation.

today's my first actual day of teaching. jules and i will do it together. yesterday i just observed, and the kids all cooked omelettes and climbed on the furniture. they pretty much have free reign to do whatever they want, as long as they repeat when the teacher says the days, months, and numbers up to 10. and as long as they eat the omelette. in one of the classes there were 10 kids so it was a 10 egg omelette, and them cracking the eggs and screaming at the top of their lungs was pretty funny. when the teacher wasn't looking, a bunch of kids spit in the mixture and seemed pretty delighted by that. which is fine, they ended up eating their own spit later, as well as their own boogers. but i just thought it was interesting that 5-year-old instinct told them to spit into their uncooked food. when the eggs were done, they each got a little portion, and then they all descended on the leftovers in the middle of the table. there was a frenzy around this bowl as they all got up onto the table and tore it up with their little chopsticks. so that was my introduction to teaching at my school. today i'm not exactly sure what we're doing, but i guess i'll find out when i get there. trial and error, right?

ate the best food i've had since i've been here last night. super spicy sesame bbq chicken. just meat on a plate and beers. i could get used to this.

photos!!!

www.flickr.com More of mcgwart's photos

the undergound...

yello.
today has been the most intersting day of our stay so far. we got up at around 7ish thanks to our new friend jet lag. watched some crazy tv, and then we got some lunch. korean bbq that jamie's detailed already. getting used to the water and food here is pretty rough on the stomach, rougher on some than others... julie was out of commision for a couple of hours today, but we got her plenty of fluids and meds and she was back on her feet in no time. while julie was down jamie and i went walking around in a part of the city that we haven't seen before. after passing an elementary school, complete with soccer field and chicken/pheasant/rabbit cage, we found these stairs that looked like they'd go to a subway station. we were apprehensive to head down at first, but we pressed on. what we found was unlike anything i've seen in the states. it was an effing yuuuuuuuuuuuuge undergound shopping mall. tons of cheap ass clothes, jewelry, food, and glamour photo shops. like woah. after walking around for a bit we went back up to the streets... only to find an effing gigantic outdoor shopping area. sorta the same deal as the undergound thing, only much colder. we also saw a fish market where old ladies sit around piles of flounder and squid and a ton of other stuff which i'm not sure what the hell it is.
we headed back to the hotel and made julie come check it out with us. this time we stopped at a place called mr. pizza to get some grub. figgered pizza might be easy on the stomach. korean pizza ain't half bad by the by. i believe that's it for now. i'm sipping a cool pint of Hite beer, and hitting the sheets. tomorrow is burrito day at school.
roar

i suppose it's my turn...

it's 8:54 in the morning and desperate housewives is on (in english, hooray!). jet lag is very real as we've all woken up at about 6:30 am for the past two days and then pass out in the afternoon. i honestly can't recall the last time i was awake before 9 am.

i guess first impressions are still here, but the most shocking thing to me so far is how unfazed i was, and remain, about the new surroundings. i feel like i should feel uneasy or anxious or something like that being in this foreign place, but i don't. it just feels really natural somehow.

thursday seems like it was such a long time ago, but here's my recap:
woke up at 5:00 am in stl, mo, usa to get to the airport by 6:15 am. our flight left at 8:04, so we had plenty of time to be condescended to by disgruntled airline employees. i've had this problem pretty much every time i've flown, the people working act like you should already know all the answers to any possible questions you might have. sorry i made you have to do your job...while you're at your job.

so we leave our parents in tears and then fly to chicago in a cool 45 minutes where we then board korean air all the way to incheon/seoul. we ended up travelling roughly 24 hours, but despite the length everything went pretty smoothly. what i learned from korean air is that you get lots of snacks and lots of drinks. two meals, chicken nuggets, bananas, little sandwiches. and juice. as soon as you finished one juice, another tray was coming by. just a constant beverage flow. the row of kids next to me had to have drank at least a gallon of sprite each. seriously, these kids can put away their clear sodas.

the flight path to get here was sort of bizarre. we flew out of stl into chicago, then from chicago all the way to seoul/inchon, via northern canada, over alaska and part of siberia...again SIBERIA!! that's fucking crazy. which made me wonder (and i know this is stupid), but when you label an area, such as siberia, does air space figure into that domain too? if i'm 34,000 feet above siberia, am i also technically in siberia? does the label on the map only refer to actual land? just curious, because i would like to say i've been to siberia...anyhoo, like i said, i keep expecting to be overwhelmed by the "culture shock", but i'm not at all. there have been a couple moments of actual "holy shit, i'm in korea" but nothing sustained like i was expecting. everything looks pretty cool, but ultimately it feels like a vacation. i'm staying in a hotel until monday, so maybe when i actually get to unpack some of my shit it will feel different. i'm not just visiting here, i'm living here. well, typing it doesn't make it seem any more real. or maybe it is real, but i'm just relatively unaffected. similarly, when i left columbia, i also had these expectations that i should be heartbroken and needed to manufacture some tears, but they just didn't come, trying to muster up some sentiment that wasn't there. i guess i was just so ready to leave (not that i hate columbia or anything, just that having this totally attainable goal postponed for so long makes one rather antsy) that it feels somewhat close to natural for me to be here now. blah blah blah ramble ramble ramble

so anyhoo, after we get off the plane, it was just like you see in movies where some foreigner is standing behind a rope with our names on a sign. oh yeah, this was after a totally painless customs/immigration "procedure". so we meet up with cindy and transport all our luggage to a minivan and ride the two hours from seoul to chuncheon. i tried to stay awake the whole time, but i fell asleep. but it was basically this extended dreamstate anyway waking up to the images of seoul and all these high rise apartment buildings, ski slopes, kias and hyundais, and these anime characters marketing all imaginable products, which is an odd sort of cultural dynamic--there are so many of these customs and traditions engraved in the most mundane daily events (how you exchange money, how you pour beer into a glass), yet there are also these inherently hip/young images plastered all over the place marketing products for pretty much every demographic. and when you pass restaurants they will have a winking caricature of whatever meat they serve on their sign. it's just interesting to see the harmony of old and new all around me. also, the city is huge, but a lot of the houses still have this pagoda-ish aesthetic to them (lots of churches with big red neon crosses on them too). just a study in contrasts. i guess i can be included in that now...

the hotel i'm staying at looks like some sort of sex dungeon. there are porn channels readily available, tons of lights that you control with the tv remote, the floor is heated (a bitch when you're the one sleeping on the floor. had to sleep with julie and rory 2 nights ago...), a whole bathroom that i can see into (including a hot tub/bath tub and a sauna in the shower). it's very modern. but after 24 hours travelling, it sort of sucked to check into a one bedroom hotel when there are three of us. we shall see. but i did get a free sweatshirt!

i have eaten a lot of swine so far. the place we ate 2 nights ago was f-ing awesome--you sit on the floor and cook meat on a grill, but each little grill on the table had it's own individual hood, which was also cool because people smoke while they eat.

yesterday we went exploring without the aid of anyone from our "institute" (a word i will use loosely when referring to where we're teaching. seriously, this place is tiny). for snacks at convenient marts they have tuna jerkey and a whole dehydrated squid. seems like pretty much all the snacks have some sort of fish part in them, unless it's chocolate--my crunky chocolate bar tasted like a crackel. there's a market right down the street with fish in containers outside and tons of bizarre drinks, i drank an aloe drink with little chunks of stuff in it. pretty tasty. seems like actual water is hard to come by. i drank some in the hotel this morning and felt like i needed to yack.

okay, last bit of recap, went to an esl teacher party last night and felt pretty awkward and inferior, so i drank until i didn't really care so much. it's a lot easier to go into a group of foreign-looking foreigners (read: not white) than it is to mingle with people who look like you. it's interesting to see how the whole "cooler than thou" attitude translates to different social groups. whether it's hipsters, hippies, or esl teachers in south korea, the self-importance is universal. but who am i to talk about that, i'm about as judgemental as it gets. but i'm also always right.

post party, went to a dance club called lava (actually, went to lava I and lava II), replete with chingy and nelly and 50 and all other music that makes people want to grind on each other. and i did. if anyone has seen me dance, you know how funny this image is. i'm a terrible dancer. but the best part was that i wasn't as terrible or socially awkward as the majority of people there. i guess the chances of me blending in are pretty much shot, so i might as well just draw as much attention to myself as possible.

this just in: "i love the bidet." quoth the julie, nevermore. i haven't used it yet, but i'm sure i will sing its praises.

a wise man once said "enuff z nuff", so more later when i have an actual computer in my actual apartment where i will actually have my own space. fucking shit.

It's like they have a different word for everything...

We are here! It is awesome! So much to just take in. This place is so technologically advanced, yet the neighborhoods look just like they do in the movies--quaint and village-y. And believe it or not, I like the way Koreans drive. There is no road rage here, and you really only hear horns honking if a cab driver is trying to pick you up (or you're the mom with an infant trying to run across the street with your toddler in the middle of traffic, which we saw today...). People are constantly cutting each other off, there isn't really a "right of way" and I haven't felt threatened riding in a cab yet. This all comes from the chick who doesn't drive...go figure... Our hotel really does look like a sin den, like if I was having an affair with my boss or something-dvds of porn are in the lobby right next to Hitch and the freaking muppets. Funny stuff. There is an animal hospital right next to our hotel and we have seen several pet stores--an infant held up a dog sweater to us when we went into one, trying to convince us to buy it. This is all comforting to me in my quest to try to get Huey over here.

Also, Koreans love their variety shows. And beer.
If anyone wants to make an international phone call, here's Jamie's number--we get phones on Monday when we move into our apartments:

010-9680-3250

the eagle has landed

we made it.
yesterday we landed at Incheon, which is like 20 miles away from Seoul. cindy picked us up from the airport, and we hopped into a van that took us to our place. during the course of the 2 hour trip we went under a dozen or so tunnels and over a dozen or so yuuuuge bridges. they drive on the same side of the street, mom. we got to see the school briefly, then it was straight to the hotel...which looks like it was designed for couples if you catch my drift. we were there for about ten minutes and then we left to meet everyone at this really cool restaurant. you cooked your own meat at the table and they had this bizarre hood vent system to suck up the smoke. no chairs at this place either. indian style all the way. we drank some korean beer and liqour and went to the hotel. this morning we got up and walked around the city. everything is totally crazy here. lots of neon and blinking things. our city is surrounded by this gigantic mountain range and there's a lot of water around as well. we got some fried chicken at chan and chan's and bought some drinks at a grocer. so far so good. we party with some esl teachers tonight.
peath,
roar