Birthday Postmortem

Just so no one thinks everything is so peachy wonderful here all the time, I'll admit that certain times are ridiculously rough. My birthday was a prime example of this. I started off the day in a phenomenal mood because my fraternity brothers Skyped me and I got a video call from my parents as well, so getting to talk to them put an immediate spring in my step.

Bored and sad at work        

I got to school and started off by teasing my students about the date. Normally   I ask them how the weather is, what today's date is, etc. But today I stopped and asked "why is September 12th special?" and they would get all flustered and inevitably baffled until I told them that it was birthday and I received a round of "happy birthdays" from all the students. Then I would ask "what do people do to celebrate their birthdays in Korea?" and without fail every class said "have a party with friends and family" and the reality of that impossibility for me slow sank deeper into my mind as the day progressed. I started getting a little choked up toward the end of the day until one of my co-teachers asked "what's wrong?" I couldn't even get out the entire phrase and ended up saying "It's my birth-" before having to stop cuz I legitimately thought I was going to cry. 

I was just thinking of all the craziness that would be going on back home for my birthday. A nice dinner with my parents and maybe a day out fishing followed by a party at the fraternity house with all my brothers and a trip to a bar with some of the ones I'm closer to. Instead I'm sitting at a desk grading papers. I think my co-teachers felt bad, because they didn't call me into my later classes and let me just chill in the office, but that was even worse because it was like 6am in America so no one was on Facebook and I was just left alone with my depressing thoughts. 

Solidly Western meal

Luckily, I do have good friends here in Korea and they helped cheer me up a lot. After work we went to Masan (my first trip to Masan!) to get some Pizza da Gennero, which is the legit Italian pizza joint here. We got some phenomenal pizza (some kinds I've never even tried before) and beer before heading over to Baskin Robbins and grabbing an ice cream cake from a wall of masterfully sculpted cakes. They put it in cool insulated styrofoam box with dry ice and then we headed to Palyong to try and find some alleged pirate ship playground. After walking all over the damn place, we found it and it was a pretty awesome pirate ship, I won't lie. We sat in the pirate ship, lit some candles and had our own little party up there in our birthday-pirate-ship-fort. I couldn't help but feel like I was in that movie "16 Candles"...which I've never seen except for that birthday cake scene but it reminded me a lot of that. I'm really lucky to have met such thoughtful and cool people.

I don't think my birthday had anything to do with it, but ever since then (it's only been like 5 days, mind you) I've just been agreeing to the most ridiculous things that I would have never done in the states. So Friday, Casey, Caitlin, Naz and I meet up with a few people in Sangnam who were trying to start up a "bike party" in SoKo (Erin has coined this term and I love it, so I will now always refer to Korea as SoKo). Apparently this is a big think they do in California? And it gets up to 4000 people in attendance. Obviously we probably won't get 4000 bikers in SoKo, but Changwon has a bike rental system calle Nubija, so it actually makes it pretty easy to obtain a bike. So this group wanted to bike 15 miles through Korea....which normally I would NEVER do...but..what the hell, right?

Those are some
pretty cool cakes.

So we meet in Sangnam, unfortunately I don't have a Nubija because I don't yet have a Korean phone (I'm learning this is more akin to having a SSID in America than your actual SSID in SoKo. They use it to verify your ID for practically everything). The leader of the event, Coby, thankfully had a bike of his own that he lent me. It was one of those collapsable bicycles that look absolutely ridiculous but ride really well. And I'm about to ride it all the way to Jinhae.

                       Peak of my birthday                       

We set off, alcohol in hand, ringing bells and screaming "Bike Party!" like complete assholes, but it was a lot of fun. Not too far into our trip, we pass a Korean man and do the usual: ring bells, chug, scream "bikeparty!". But then, right after we pass him, we stop at a Nubija rental to renew our bike passes. While I'm waiting for everyone to rescan their bikes, he catches up to us and walks up to me saying "so beautiful!" I think it's safe to assume he was drunk. He begins to reach into his pocket and Casey thinks that he is taking out a camera/phone because Koreans are always asking to take pictures with me. Instead, he takes out his wallet and pulls out a 5,000 Won bill and tries to hand it to me. I think he is trying to tell me to rent a Nubija since I'm the only one without one so I say "Ken-cha-na-yo. No, thank you. I'm fine." because I already have a bike! 

He then pulls out a peach bill and holds it up to my face. I'm thinking "What? Is my skin the same color as the bill? Does my face look like the guy on the bill?" Casey is equally as puzzled and everyone else has rode ahead. Next thing I know, the Korean man sloppily kisses his bill and smacks it onto my forehead. I bow slightly and say "kam-sa-ham-ni-da! (thank you!)" and he starts to walk away, so we start peddling away as well. Caey turns to me and says "Did that guy just stick 50 bucks on your forehead?" I pull it off and, sure enough, it's a 50,000 Won note. Only 10 minutes into the night and I already made 50 bucks. Put me in a pretty good mood.

We're about to descend into the tunnel...

We then eventually reach this tunnel...which turns out to be the most magically awesome tunnel ever. It's like a mile long and on a slight downhill slope, so the we just speed down this tunnel-hill and it feels like a rollar coaster. It probably sounds stupid in a blog, but there really is no way to adequately explain how it felt. Probably one of the most fun things I've ever done. The rest of the trip down to the Dream Bay was downhill as well, so it was smooth sailing the whole way. We get to the bay and I spend the 50 on booze and fireworks and we shot Roman candles out into the bay. We then proceeded to drink heavily into the night and were either assholes who scared away all the Koreans, or we were just there until very late. Eventually, we started biking back and it started raining ever so slightly. I obviously couldn't go the night uninjured so, at a downhill portion, I squeezed the brakes on the collapsable bike really hard because I forgot how quickly it stopped. I flew over the handlebars and into the street. Bled quite a bit. The people at GS25 were super nice and helped clean me up, but I was not up for the bars at 330am when we got back like everyone else was. I was out for the night.

Yes, I realize I'm wearing the same thing Saturday
as I did Wednesday...I don't have a lot of fall clothes =P

The next day Casey and I went to Lotte Mart to buy taco fixings for a potluck that night. The potluck ended up being really cool and I met a lot of awesome people. One guy, Sunil, got me to agree to audition for a play he was directing and another group got me to agree to go to a cultural festival the next day. See? Literally just up for anything. It's not like I have a lot to do otherwise, so in that sense SoKo is really liberating. The food was outrageously delicious too. I probably overate.

The next day I met up with Brittany, Suzie, and bunch of other new acquaintances to check out the cultural Airang (I think I spelled that correctly?) It was raining all day, which sucked, but ponchos were free and there was a ton of food to try. SoKo has taught me I am a complete sucker for good curry. I don't think I'd ever had Indian food before coming here, but damn....I don't think I've tried a curry I didn't like. That may have to be a main staple of my diet in Korea. There were also a bunch of musical performances by international pop artists from many different countries. It was cool to see people go wild with such cultural enthusiasm. I feel like my American enthusiasm is so much more lackluster than other people's, but my enthusiasm for things in general is significantly less I think.

A Philippino artist performing at the Airang

Not sure what will come next, but maybe it's better that way! I'll keep you posted!

Birthday Prelude

I won't lie...that days leading up to my birthday have been kind of foreboding. It's just me being too much inside my head, but it sucks knowing I'll be celebrating my birthday without my fraternity brothers, or my girlfriend, or my family. But, that's really being a bit too negative. After the days/hours leading up to my birthday, and those that followed shortly thereafter, I felt the necessity to blog about this moment in time.

First, I should mention that I feel particularly lucky that I've gotten accustomed to Korea so quickly. I've probably said this before, but without people like Caitlin pulling me out into the world, or people like Casey willingly building me a social network (when it really doesn't benefit either of them at all), I would still probably be sitting at home feeling sorry for myself, or just calling it quits and hopping the next flight home and really never self-actualizing the way I am now. I honestly don't even know what self-actualizing means right now...it just feels right. I'm 알딸딸 (tipsy) on makgeoli right now, but whatever. Blog when the good mood strikes, right?

I'm really lucky as shit. I work at a great school. It can be frustrating at times but other times the kids are really awesome and we just connect and it feels really cool breaking down language barriers and sharing our cultures. My directors are nice and my co-teachers are even better. I can't praise them enough for how genuinely awesome they are. They're always so nice and helpful and welcoming.

Boram's going-away dinner =[

My director loved having me take shots of soju with him.

I got to have Korean BBQ TWO days in a row!! Once for Boram's going away party and once at school...for dinner at work! It was the best week ever =]. But I really will miss Boram...she always helped me so much with my Korean and was pretty much the coolest person. Plus her mom makes the best eel I have ever had. I hope we can hang out when her mom gets better. I wen to visit her mom in the hospital and it was super awkward because none of them really spoke English. When I feel pressured to speak Korean, I just freeze up and can't remember anything. I'm sure I'll get better with practice.

My Dogye coteachers always cook the most delicious food,
but Samgyeopsal? At work? The most amazing day ever.

I've been introduced to a cool group of people that's constantly expanding the more I put myself out there.  Naz, David, and Catherine are super cool and chilling with them feels kind of natural. I hate when people have expectations for an evening and then you have to spend all night trying to fulfill those expectations. It's exhausting. These are people who go with the flow and you kind of have to in Korea.

We went to a crazy Japanese photobooth...
my students later thought I was really in prison.

Friday night, we went out and met up with Andrew, Myeongwon, and Andrew's girlfriend (who I apologize for her name escaping me at the moment)....we also ran into a bunch of really cool people who I ALSO don't remember the names of, but I'm sure I'll see them again. One guy made tacos. He had a red beard. I definitely won't forget him.

The reason I'm blanking on everyone, is because Casey and I are sufficiently awesome at beer pong and couldn't stop winning. Which you think is good, except we didn't like DOMINATE win....we just kind of...won. So we drank a LOT. This was already after a ton of beer and makgeoli. I'm pretty sure at some point I took my shirt off, stole an American girls umbrella (to be fair...she did accost me in the elevator and then claim I was trying to kiss her = crazy), Casey made me give it back, we walked home half naked in the POURING rain, I got home, passed out, woke up in a pool of my own vomit like a college freshman. At some point David and I won at pool. And then we lost at pool to Naz...or no...we lost at beerpong to Naz and lost at pool to some Korean guy who looked like a member of the Japanese Yakuza.

This kid is like 10...and much better at saxaphone
than I will ever be at anything.

That was a decent Friday night. Saturday, we took it a bit easier and went to Sangnam for the laser light show at the lake. I don't know what I was expecting, but it was actually pretty freakin cool. There was even one part where the projected scenes from the Lion King? Idk how this is free every weekend when I have to pay 80 bucks to see it at Epcot. And some little 12 year old was solo rocking a saxaphone not giving a fuck...so good for you little saxaphonist...but maybe head across the street to the record store and pick up some American jazz. Oh...and I discovered for 3 bucks a street vender will give me a giant bag of THREE different kinds of hodugwaja (walnut-shaped cakes)...literal heaven right now. We also grabbed the most delicious Indian food and hit up a plethora of other little joints for food and makgeoli and all sorts of hedonistic pleasures (wait...that sounded wrong...).

Sunday was meh, because it was pouring rain all day so I just stayed inside and played video games like a dork. Should have studied Korean, but really had no motivation. I finally got my motivation about fifteen minutes after my birthday in the Eastern Hemisphere. Casey took me out to a coffee shop to meet some cool people who invited me to their potluck this weekend, and afterwards we headed back to his place so he could check me out a bike to ride home. What ACTUALLY happened, was that we went into Family Mart and got some alcohol and proceeded to sit outside and talk about future-type boring shit that you as a general audience don't care about, but there were two Korean guys sitting next to us (presumably doing the same thing) and all I kept thinking was...at some point we're going to start talking. I don't even remember what triggered it, but soon enough we had all scooted our chairs together and were introducing ourselves to one another. Can you believe for all the Korean I've bothered to learn, I still don't know how to introduce myself or ask someone their name? It's kind of stupid.

Some board game I don't even know...
But I'm pretty sure we did more talking than playing

So there we were...1:00 am...sitting around on some plastic patio furniture. Casey and I doing our best to fumble through some broken Korean that we knew and these two men doing their best to fumble through some basic English...and we happened to reach a middle ground that was enough for us both to understand one another. They asked us about our homes and jobs, we asked them about their families, we talked about booze. We boisterously shouted for people to take pictures of us together, and they did, then they told us to shut up because we were being very loud, so we said our good nights and scurried
off.

These guys made my night

Because..you know...Gangnam Style...

But that ride home was just like... "I want to do this forever. This is the coolest thing that has ever happened to me." I love communicating with people and sharing cultures and languages. There is no feeling like this anywhere. I'm really finding a hard time coming up with a reason to go back to America for grad school to have my head buried in a book forever. Experiential learning is just... irreplaceable. It's definitely making me want to study harder.

I think Caitlin has birthday plans for me tomorrow and they some cool stuff planned this weekend. We'll see what happens, stay tuned!!!

Fake It 'til You Make It

Finishing up my third week in Korea feels like a solid dent in my time here. It's kind of scary that I've already almost been here a month. It doesn't feel that way. I'm still just constantly bumbling around, but every now and then there is that day where I feel on top of the world and it propels me just a little bit further.

A present from Jack

There were a few days I went to work and was like "I have no idea what the fuck I am doing." I have no idea how to teach kids who know so little of our language that I have to use all kinds of circumlocution to explain rudimentary American concepts we take for granted. Example: I had to give a lesson on The Mayflower and the First Thanksgiving to a class one day. Now mind you, I work at four different campuses, which means I don't even get the luxury of creating a lesson plan. Sometimes thats a blessing (no work to do to prepare for classes) and sometimes thats a curse (walking into every class I teach with only about an hour of prep time for 6-7 classes a day...not an hour each...an hour for all classes). This was one of those accursed times.

Some of the vocabulary for the lesson were phrases like "religious freedom" and the topical content was obviously about Pilgrims and Indians and leaving England and such. Now, to put this in context, these kids come from a rather homogenous society. There is religious diversity to be sure, but it certainly isn't the huge issue it is in America. So to teach a unit on religious oppression and colonization to bunch of 10 year olds with a beginner grasp on the English language was an almost impossible task. I basically had to call in one of the Korean teachers to interpret for me. The closest the kids got to Thansgiving was "a big dinner" and I was over the moon in ecstasy that they at least got that.

Students actually learning! Yay!

So yeah. There are those "I have no right to be teaching these kids anything" days. But then there are also those "fuck yeah, I am so awesome at this!" days. I definitely had one of those days at my Shinchon campus this week when Jack, my favorite student ever ran into the teacher's office and gave me an ice cream cone and ran off and I was like "Awwhhhhh!" He is absolutely the most adorable kid ever. His class is a 1-on-1 class and so we do lots of random fun stuff to kill time because his English is already phenomenal even though he's only like 9 (7 in America) and we fly through the text book. He taught me the Korean version of rock, paper, scissors and I taught him how to make snowflakes and masks.

Then I was grading papers for random students and I stumbled upon a batch of papers about me and they were adorable to read. They were from an all girl class I teach at Shinchon and they didn't have a lesson plan so I decided just to get them interested by teaching them about what all teenage girls are interested - music. So I taught them about American music genres and they taught me about Korean genres (significantly fewer Korean genres), and then I read their papers and it was like "oh my god! They remember what I taught them!" It was a really good day.

Korea has mochi. I think I'll be okay.

But you never know with this job. It's so heavily based off how your students are feeling that day. Some days they come in eager to learn and laugh and want to have fun. Other days they don't want to do anything and it's like pulling teeth. This is good and bad because it means I never know what to expect and can't just expect "Oh no! I have to go to my least favorite campus to day!" Some days my least favorite campus becomes my favoirte and vice-versa. Some days I know what I'm doing, other days I panic and have no idea. This is definitely a job where you have to be extremely adaptable and can't take anything too personally.

This sort of "I have no idea, I want to go home"/"This life is amazing and I am king!" dichotomy ends up playing out the same when I'm off the clock as well. Last weekend I felt so lost and confused and alone, but this weekend I actually felt like I was living in Korea. Like this was my home now. I got up Saturday morning, cleaned my apartment, did my laundry, went and refilled my MyB tron-looking thing so I can ride the bus, went to KS mart and picked up some bread, eggs, jelly, and crab snacks, went to Daego and bought some bowls, plates, silverware and a bathmat, and even had time to stroll through Dogye market and properly ask for some mochi in Korean ("Dduk, ju se yo?).

This is what you get for sixty cents an hour.

I was planning on just relaxing at home and reading all night or something, but then Caitlin texts me and asks me if I want to go to a PC bang, which is...kind of the Korean equivalent of a LAN party place? Idk..never did LAN parties, but I'm assuming it's similar. We went and she showed me how to play Starcraft for the first time. Dude, I know Eric Elzy is going to be disappointed, but I suck at Starcraft. I may try and go on my own and play through the campaign when no one is busy so Caitlin doesn't have to be so ashamed of me anymore. lol. It's super cheap...like 700 Won an hour, which is like sixty cents. And they've got nice reclining chairs, good sound systems with headphones (if you want to use headphones...I didn't. you can still use the speakers without them.), fast gaming PCs, large monitors, and snacks! Caitlin got me a soda drink called Milkis which is like a milkshake soda and it is absolutely delicious.

Beer by the gallon  =3

After playing for two hours, we paid our buck-fifty and went to meet up with Casey (someone Caitlin works with) and grab dinner. We ended up going downtown to Sangnam and I immediately got this feeling like "okay...this is what Korea is supposed to feel like." Cute Korean girls walking everywhere, drunk guys stumbling through the streets attempting to speak English to us, lights and sounds and music everywhere. It was awesome. Someone was handing out flyers for DJ Shannel at Club Eden and I recognized her from being an act at Ultra or something this year? So I made a mental note to check her out. We went to this restaurant on the top floor where we bought a gallon of beer and a seafood stew of some sorts. Made me miss gumbo, but was pretty delicious in it's own right. Everything in Korea is just so damn spicy.

I do enjoy how centralized eating is in Korea.

After killing that, we went to the only American bar I had yet to go to: O'Briens. It was pretty cool. Bunch of guy playing pool and it felt authentically Irish-American, minus the asian bartenders. Casey ended up being really cool and we did a carbomb together (forcing Caitlin to try one as well) and I was feeling more at home by the minute. We talked about everything from lives back home to God and the Universe (or maybe the "universe"...I'll let Casey explain that one). I definitely finally had that feeling of fitting in. I know it'll probably be fleeting and next week is just as likely to be rough as it is to be easy, but these moments definitely make being here worth it.

We finally left the bar and rode a taxi back to Caitlin's apartment where Casey swiped me into a bike (Changwon has a thing where you can pay 20 bucks a year and borrow a bike from any location in the city to ride to any other location. It's pretty awesome) and I said my farewells and took off. Riding through Changwon at 3am on a bike definitely felt good and it was a pretty solid end to a feel-good weekend. We'll see what next weekend holds...