Epic Weekend Act 1: Sangnam-dong

This weekend was amazing! I finally had my first real exciting weekend of excursions in Korea, and it really was all thanks to the great friends I've managed to make here. It honestly didn't even start with the weekend. Thanks to Katie and Casey being on vacation while I still had work, we went out Thursday night in downtown Changwon (Sangnam-dong) to get an early start on the weekend.

Now I know why Koreans are obsessed with chicken.

As I'm coming to learn, Korean nights out typically involve 3+ venues of varying grades. Most involve food and booze and they almost always end at a noraebang (karaoke bar). Our first restaurant was a chicken and beer kind of place where we met up with Casey and Katie's Korean co-workers, Jessie and Sophie. They surprised us by pulling out a big bottle of pomegranate juice and immediately ordering some chicken and a bottle of soju.

They had an established set of soju drinking games that I had never played before, so obviously by the time I picked up on the rules and such, I was already a solid five or so shots in. Lucky I was really good at some cap flicking game and spared myself some unnecessary drinking through that, but Casey should have warned me sooner that Katie has a sneaky way of constantly refilling your glass without you noticing. I was getting a good buzz going after being there for only about 20 minutes. The chicken was also the most phenomenal chicken I have ever had in my life.

I call top bunk!

Next, we headed to a restaurant that served different food and makgali in big wooden bowls. Makgali is kind of like sake, but sweeter and smoother. I imagine makgali's only reason for existing is the same reason Smirnoff Ice exists: to get girls wildly inebriated with minimum discomfort. But by no means is it a girly drink. It's just absolutely delicious. The restaurant we were in was also really really cool. It had a sort of treehouse-y, Swiss Family Robinson vibe. You sat on padded mats on the ground at a low table and it was multi-leveled like bunkbeds. We obviously chose to sit on the top bunk.

Caitlin always steals the spotlight.

This is what you drink makgali out of.
Like a soup...that gets you hammered.

I don't remember what the thing we ate was called...Casey/Katie will have to remind me and I'll edit this later. It was really, really delicious. It kind of reminded me of a better, more family style version of a latke? I was so full from the chicken. but I just kept eating anyway. We were downing makgali, and I felt pretty good so I started looking around and noticed the hostess at the door. Casey and I started making guesses as to her age. I said 19, I think he guessed slightly older. I asked the hostess if she spoke any English when she walked by and she said no, so we got Jessie to ask her how old she was in Korean. Turns out she was THIRTY-FOUR. I wish I took a picture of this girl. I mean...she was a Korean 34 which means she was 32-33 in America, but still...unbelievable. We started realizing that Korean's hit a temporal break when they hit 16 and they just stop aging until they get to their 40s. Anyone in that range is nearly impossible for us to guess their age correctly.

Casey demonstrating how to get soup-hammered

The delicious thing we ate called
kimchi jeon (thank you Caitlin).

I think I promised to sing Big Bang's "Monster" with Jessie
...but I only could sing the one English line in the chorus.

We got pretty solidly drunk off that makgali, even though no one realized it at the time. After food, we soon decided to head off to our final destination: the noraebang of course! Katie took some rather embarrassing videos of Casey and I drunkenly singing and hoarse and...it's just awful. She's taking them to her grave. But I think Jessie and Sophie were extremely tired, drunk, and feeling a little left out since we were all drunk and speaking English very rapidly. They ordered some pork or chicken or something (it was really good) and a bunch of beer, but Sophie soon began falling asleep and they left shortly after leaving three drunken Americans alone in a noraebong. What did we do? We got drunker. And then we started singing the anthems of our homeland, like Queen's "Bohemian Rhapsody" and Tenacious D's "Tribute". It was hella fun.

Out like a light!

Casey and I singing Tribute

We fuckin' love Tribute.

No no no no...actually...fuck YOU!

 After the noraebang, we decided "Hey...JD has work tomorrow...we've been drinking soju and makgali all night..but let's go for the trifecta." So we hit up some beer place I was just way to drunk to even bother remembering, but it's kind of like World of Beer, I guess...if the world was only full of overpriced Hoegaarden and Stella. But it was still nice to have familiar beers again. Casey and I ended up in our usual drunken conversations about things we both only have a very limited knowledge on. This topic of conversation was the eventual fallout that would result from North Korea attacking South Korea/China telling America it wanted all its debts repaid/Communism vs Democracy in general. Pretty sure I won like always.

Oh hey! LEt's drunkenly play some sports I suck at!

Of course, we had to eventually leave...so we wandered back through Sangnam-dong and found some familiar batting cages we passed on a previous night. We were inebriated enough to wander right on in, pick up a bat and let fly a few balls. Except Casey was the only one who did that. Turns out, I'm just as bad at baseball when I'm drunk as when I'm sober. I probably hit like 2 out of 18 balls? Whatevz. I beat Casey at the punching bag, which is all that really matters. But then I almost missed the bag entirely the second time, so I would get a solid first hit in and then totally get my ass kicked in whatever drunken brawl I managed to get myself into. Going through this pictures, I learned Katie is a phenomenal paparazzo, because as I got drunker and drunker, I took less and less pictures. She, however, was goddamn dedicated to documenting this shit..and I am glad of that. Because I literally have zero pictures after the makgali restaurant. They are all hers.

Obviously venting my
frustration over the batting cages.

So after that we all grab a cab home and Casey checks out a public bike for me. I really can't wait to get my ARC (Alien Registration Card) so I can get my own bike pass. They're way more convenient than I ever considered. I go home, pass out, and SURPRISE! Wake up the next day with the worst hangover in recorded history from slamming soju, makgali, and beer all night. Luckily it was only 10am and I had 3 hours to recover before class. I still felt like Jack Black from School of Rock...

Omg, this food is so good, even the onions want in!

Friday was supposed to be our rager day, but we went so hard on Thursday, the club we had intended on going to had a $15 cover and we were like "fuck that, we're foreign" and just ended up grabbing some Korean BBQ which was fine by me. Casey did all the cooking while Caitlin and I solely participated in the eating, but it was some of the most tender meat I've ever had. I also learned that I love onions raw, I do NOT love cloves of garlic raw. New things learned every day. Also, I should mention it's rude to wait for your waiter at a Korean restaurant and whenever you need anything you push this little button on your table. However, here, it's sort of like a buffet of side dishes that you go and help yourself to to cook with your meat. Caitlin even grilled some kimchi, but I'm still learning to love it. It's a hit or miss flavor with me because it really actually varies a lot. I'm sure with time I'll master it..just like the general spicy-ness of Korean food.

This is really anyone's guess...

After BBQ we hit up O'Brien's for some beers and darts. Oh wow! Look! Another recreational game that involves hand-eye coordination that I suck at! Fun! -_-; But it really was fun. I didn't think we got that drunk, but we obviously were buzzed enough to try this...

I was going to do this whole weekend as one post, but it's super late and I have so much more to talk about and post pictures of, it'll just have to wait until tomorrow I guess! 

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...

Looking Toward The Future

Before I left for Korea, some summer evenings, Alexis and I would grab a random recipe from Publix and prepare a delicious meal for my family simply following the recipe step by step and making more missteps than anything.

But, one time in particular, I remember a recipe called for us to blanch some broccoli, which neither of us had ever heard of, even less knew how to do. After some brief googling, we figured it out and the broccoli turned out delicious.

Blanching is a cooking process wherein the food substance, usually a vegetable or fruit, is plunged into boiling water, removed after a brief, timed interval, and finally plunged into iced water or placed under cold running water (shocked) to halt the cooking process.

This memory comes to mind, because I sort of feel like that broccoli right now. It sounds weird, but its the best way to describe moving to Korea. In America, I would have simmered and probably come out limp and soggy broccoli, but moving to Korea was a blanching process. I was plunged into an ice bath and was cooked immediately, brightening my color and solidifying my flavor.

I now have some sort of perspective on the world and know what I have to do. I don't know exactly what I want to do, but I need to start moving forward. Korea was that sudden moment of "Hey! You aren't a kid any more!"

I'm going to start studying for my GRE's and reapply to the JET Program. I want to be in Japan next year while Alexis is going to school at TUJ. Hopefully, after experiencing teaching a year in Korea I'll be more prepared for my interview (although I'm not sure how I'll get to it if I'm in Korea...).

Will I want to come back to Korea after that? I don't know. Maybe. It's certainly far too early to tell. I'm learning Korean anyway, because I really love the language. I really love the people too, but there's plenty of things I think I'll always miss about America. I already miss bath tubs, steaks, fast food, America pizza, and hot tubs.

Korea has plenty of things that beat out America, to be sure, but I'm starting to realize that it doesn't really matter where I go in the world. There's no magical place that can make you happy. It's the people that you surround yourself with that make you happy. I feel like a baby for being so homesick already, but family life was never the most stable...and now that it's sort of solidifying, it's hard to finally leave. I miss golfing with my family and going on boat trips or just hanging out in the back yard and talking. I never got to go deep sea fishing in America, and I definitely miss those stupid little things I forgot to take advantage of. I'm going to make sure to take advantage of every opportunity in Korea so I don't feel the same regret when I leave here.

I definitely needed to leave, but I don't really want to drift anymore. The guy I took over for has been moving from foreign school to foreign school for 8 years and has yet to call anywhere home. I find that kind of sad. I thought I was that kind of person for the longest time, but now I'm realizing I was just scared of finality. I still am. Moving into my apartment was the slowest process ever. I'm still honestly not 100% done with unpacking. Every time I get more settled in, it just feels that much more definitive. But at the same time, not being able to call anything or anyone home is more terrifying. Especially right now, I feel like a leaf in the middle of a pond.

I'm not trying to brood, but I'm definitely understanding that I want to put down roots at some point. Everyone says Korea is a great place to save up money, and that's true, but that's also because you don't put money into anything. I thought I hated Cocoa Beach, but now that I'm here....the grass is always greener right?

Definitely at an emotional low today, but it's positive as well because I'm setting goals. I'm getting a taste of a little bit of everything here, lifestyle-wise. In the end, this will be a great experience for me and I can walk away knowing a lot more about who I am and what I really want out of life.

First Trip to LotteMart for Groceries

The most difficult thing about working in a private academy (and there aren't many difficult things...) is that I get out of work after 8, wait potentially 40 minutes for the bus (the 751 intentionally avoids me), and don't get home and put all my stuff away until around 9-9:30pm. Either I just want to relax or everything is closing, but regardless of the situation I often find myself living off of 7-11's ramen stash every night. Probably not the best solution.

So since today was Saturday, I decided to try grocery shopping for the first time. I already knew there was a LotteMart underneath City 7, about a 20 minute walk from my apartment. Easy. I head to LotteMart with my umbrella in hand since it's raining pretty steadily, but the trip wasn't too bad. This LotteMart iss not as big as the one between Dogye and Shinchon, but it's still pretty big. It's Korea's WalMart, essentially.

I head to the toy section first because one of the things I definitely needed was some easy adaptable game for my kids to play so I could get them to lighten up about speaking English in the classroom. I tried it with Uno the other day on some of my older kids and it works really well. Unfortunately Uno was like 15 bucks? And every other game was very specific or had rules in Korean that I couldn't possibly comprehend. Board games didn't see to be the answer. There was Jenga, which gave me pause when I thought about all the potential in terms of sentence construction games and such (can only remove the type of word needed to finish a sentence), but I really need to develop that game more first in my head before I drop the money of something I really may not use. I settled on a deck of cards in plastic case (always gotta think about the rain during monsoon season in Korea) that were only about $2. Kind of simple, but that's good. It means a malleable product for a multitude of games like blackjack, go fish, indian poker...whatever. I grabbed that and moved on.


I meditated briefly on a rice cooker, which would probably be good in the long run, but I decided it was probably a little early for that. Now, I'm glad I decided against it (more on that later). I head over to the groceries and almost want to burst into tears once I see the price of fruit. Fruit in Korea is astronomically expensive. A bunch of grapes cost anywhere from $7-$10. Vegetables were a little confusing too, because I didn't know if that was the price per pound or what, but fruit was what really killed me because that was like 90% of my diet back in America. Needless to say, I freaked out when I saw the canned fruit aisle and canned fruit only cost about $1.50 (a can of peaches) to $3 (a can of mangos). I bought like 6 big cans of fruit.

Korea has Nutella, I think we'll be okay.

I also found peanut butter and jelly, which are a little more expensive than in America, but not by much. Bread was a killer because it only comes in tiny little half-loafs at about $3 a pop, but it was a necessity. I have to stick to what I know for now, until I can learn to cook something or get more acquainted with Korean products. It seemed dumb to buy a bunch of stuff I had no idea what it was or if I would like it. Sticking to the basics for now.

Anyone who knows me also knows Orange Juice is just about the only thing I drink besides beer. The OJ I bought at the big LotteMart last time was kind of gross, but better than nothing. This time, I found OJ 50% a half-gallon. I decided, what the hell, and bought two. Luckily for me, this turned out to be some DAMN good orange juice. Like Sunny D with out that nasty sugary taste. Also grabbed some milk and a giant box of Frosted Flakes. Some girl had a booth set up with little samples of Frosted Flakes to try and wanted me to try some but I was like "please girl, I know what Frosted Flakes taste like" (But I didn't actually say that). She was super excited when I bought a box of her Frosted Flakes. I did try a sample of the milk however, because I wasn't sure if it was milk or yogurt. Koreans are huge fans of the drinkable yogurt concept and a bunch of milk cartons were actually filled with yogurt. Yogurt is relatively cheap in Korea, or the same price as America. I grabbed some of that (to keep getting my fruit fix).

Those cartons are yogurt, not milk.

Now, to explain what makes this shopping trip obviously more complicated than it needed to be, you should know that, to get a shopping cart, you must deposit 100 Won in a little slot. I did not have 100 Won. I thought about taking an unattended cart, but I already stand out enough here without being labeled a cart bandit. Instead, I opted for one of those little green Publix-style "I only need milk, bread, and eggs" arm baskets. By this time in my shopping adventure, I have fully loaded down this little green basket to the point at which the whole thing is bowing in from the weight of all my canned fruit, jelly, peanut butter, yogurt, milk, and juices and I have to carry it with both hands. I decide that's as much as I'm getting today and head to the register.

After checking out and purchasing a few plastic bags (which are not free in Korea), I realize I am required to bag my own groceries -_-; I probably should have gotten a summer job at Publix, becaue it would have been really useful now. I had only purchased two bags (fairly deep though) and the next person had begun ringing up their items so I had to keep reshuffling my items to get them to fit properly. The damn giant box of frosted flakes had really screwed me over.

Heading out with an extremely heavy bag in each arm, I realized there was no way I could make that walk back home, and I definitely needed a bus. Problem was, I couldn't find a bus stop. I walked maybe 4 blocks in the pouring rain (arms full, so no umbrella) until I got to a bus stop. I only had two goals at this point: 1) Make it home safely and 2) Don't let my bread get squished. If my bread had gotten squished, that would have ruined my whole damn day. I was a little impatient waiting for the 213 bus (which was the one I was comfortable with writing) and jumped on the 501 (which I knew went in the same general direction). Lucky for me, the 501 is my boy! It stops maybe a 2 blocks from my apartment, which is way better than the 213.

I am soon learning that, in Korea, you don't build up a shopping list and wait for shit to run out before you go shopping. You make little micro-trips. At least, if you don't have a car. There is also the problem of plastic bags that I always run into: do I save them to reuse for shopping? Or do I use them for trash? It's always a choice I'm so torn between and Korea makes me hoard plastic bags like a packrat. I'll probably have to make another trip out today for basic household supplies like dish soap and something akin to Oxyclean, but for that I'll just go to the KSMart near my apt (more like Publix - slightly more expensive but built for convenience).

Now that daily life is starting to get under control, I'm think I'm finally ready to see the kinds of things Changwon has to offer me! I know there's a gun range near my house and a golf academy as well. I'll keep you posted on what I find out about those...

Hope you're enjoying sleeping, America!

The First Weekend - Changwonderlust (Part 2 - Sunday)

Sunday wasn't such a big deal. Just taking it easy after zero sleep and endless walking through Seoul. It took me so long to write this, because Sunday easily became Monday and I started working again.
Sunday evening, however, was fairly interesting. An American friend I have made (he works at a nearby campus) agreed that we should hoof it around Changwon and learn the city, not just the bus routes.

We make it our goal to find the large central shopping hub of Changwon - City 7.
City 7 is a mall of sorts but it's entirely made out of slightly overlapping circles and the ones that don't overlap, you walk across a short boardwalk to. It's kind of confusing to explain, but it's a pretty cool layout. Basically, imagine how most mall food courts are set up (in a giant circle) and imagine all the stores and every floor being laid out like that.

I was a little dismayed at how pricey everything was there. Lots of high end Korean clothing retailers selling suits at 40%...but they were originally 350,000 Won so...not a great bargain. I either need to find a cheaper outlet, or come to terms with the fact that I'll never get to own a korean summer wardrobe =[. I seriously wanted one too. Whatever Koreans make their clothes out of is awesome. Super light material that allows them to wear three piece suits without breaking a swear. It's like linen, but it doesn't wrinkle as easily. Clark Kent doesn't even own a suit that light and durable.

I was also a little saddened that sushi in the mall is relatively the same price as American sushi. Guess for cheap sushi I'll need to keep shopping at LotteMart. Patrick and I found a place for dinner in the mall that looked pretty good. I honestly have no idea what we ordered. We picked what was recommended "Best." The easiest way to describe it is like spicy chicken frid rice but served on a giant hotplate. We ordered some 소주 to help wash down the heat, but the food was actually really good. Only cost us about 5,000 Won apiece.

Speaking of "apiece" the only thing about Korea that legitimately bothers me is this "Korean style" of payment I keep running into. Especially when it's two post-college kids running around and one of has to pay for both of us. We haven't even gotten our first paychecks yet! Especially if you want a big night out on the town with your friends, one of you has to pay for everyone to go out to the club or dinner or whatever! That makes having friends in Korea a very expensive prospect. I mean, theoretically I think it's a cute idea, but in practice it makes things financially painful if you're Mr. Life-Of-The-Party.

So after dinner, I decide to show Patrick the bars where the Westerners hang out. Only problem is, I don't know exactly where the bars are. But I'm confident we'll find them, because I remember the general area. We take off and head down the road, passing the Changwon Sports Complex, which is an awesome area where they put all the sports stadiums in one massive area and also have a kids playground. I can't imagine why no one skateboards in Korea. Especially with stairs like this:

Or maybe these stairs are the reason there are no more skaters in Korea...

We make our way to the bars but I cannot remember where the bar was. I just remember going into a gray tunnel with a wooden door at the end. But I do remember a giant night club we find our way to called New Castle (like the beer) with a giant light up marquee that's impossible to miss. We decide to head inside and learn it is out-fucking-ragously expensive. 40,000 Won for 2 people which apparently bought us like 3 beers and a giant basket of fruit (which was delicious, but I would have preferred more alcohol). And hostesses kept bringing us snacks and pestering us for tips which was really annoying after we just dropped 40 bucks on three beers. Stop bringing me popcorn and bring me a flask. Then you get a tip. It was kind of lame though. We soon realized that Sunday doesn't seem to be the night people go out. There were maybe 9 other people there beside us.

Despite that, I have to hand it to the club...the place ran a show like we were in Vegas. We first noticed the DJ was shirtless, then two dudes in man-thongs come on stage and we look at each other like "fuck...this is the wrong kind of night club" especially since we look around and notice like 95% of the hosts were dudes. But then an extremely attractive Korean girl comes on stage in the same non-existent attire and we relaxed a little. After that act ended, a giant light-up DJ station rose out of the ground and a new DJ came out and played a set. Then, the whole stage flipped up to reveal new wall to wall lighting and a six man K-pop band rose out of the ground. It was just ridiculous. With all the hosts around, I was scared to take pictures, but I was definitely expecting white tigers and acrobats to come out next. Koreans really go all out on their aesthetics. I would have appreciated more with a bit more alcohol...but it definitely made us interested to come back on a prime night. So we took a cab home after a bit and promised to come back this weekend on a prime night.

The First Weekend - Seoulsearching (Part 1: Friday-Saturday)

Peeking in on classwork.

Finished my first week of teaching at a Hagwon on Friday. These kids are so damn cute. I actually had to kick one kid out for being insanely uncooperative, but everything after that was smooth sailing. They are generally eager learners and I'm loving my job more every day. My co-teachers invited me out for drinks after work to celebrate my first full week in Korea. I told them I would go, but I would have to meet up with them later. I had promised a random Korean man dinner and I wasn't about to bail on that drunken promise. We had agreed to meet at 9:00pm in front of 7-11. I even emailed him earlier to remind him (I don't know how much he was able to read since it was all in English). So, I show up at 7-11 a few minutes early and I wait...and I wait...and I wait..until past 9:30pm. It was beginning to look like I was the only one of us who had remembered this drunken conversation. I wait another 10 minutes before giving up and heading to meet up with my co-teachers.

We grabbed drinks and dinner at a local bar/restaurant? It's kind of hard to tell the difference sometimes in Korea because you can buy alcohol at most restaurants, and eating is a big deal in Korea so food is always a given. Whenever you buy alcohol, they typically bring out a tray full of snacks to eat with it at minimum. Honestly, the main thing that unnerves me about Korea is how everything is paid "Korean style." Splitting checks is not only unheard of, it's probably impossible for Korean cash registers. It simply just isn't done, so I felt bad that I was basically riding around on someone else's dime all night, but I suppose one weekend will be my turn and my wallet will be the one crying then.

So we had dinner and drinks at this bar/restaurant for a few hours. Many chicken dishes came and went (Koreans LOVE chicken, if I haven't mentioned that yet.) and it was all 맛있어요 (delicious). We also had what I would consider the Korean version of a sake bomb...ish. It's 맥주 (beer) mixed with 소주 (soju [a bit like sake]) and my co-teacher called it 폭탄주(pok-tan-ju), which is pretty much just the Korean word for a boilermaker. It's really delicious because of how sweet and floral the soju is (not to mention the added alcohol content).

After dinner, we headed off to a karaoke bar. I learned very quickly that Koreans have NO idea what the word karaoke means, despite the fact that it's practically their cultural pastime. They call it 노래방 (no-rae-bang) which roughly translates to the same thing. It was pretty cool. I still was floating on my co-teachers dime, but I didn't really know what else to do, so I kept drinking. We then went to a second karaoke bar (why, I cannot remember...I was pretty drunk.) and I sang a few songs, all of which my co-teachers were quick to praise and claim I had a wonderful voice. I'm pretty sure they just don't know what American songs are supposed to sound like... lol. I took some pictures at dinner, but I feel like it would be rude to post pictures of people without their permission? So I'll leave them off.

We are practically dragged out of the "song bar" at 6am and I felt terrible for keeping the staff up all night so I bowed quickly with an apologetic "미안합니다" (mi-an-ham-ni-da), to which my co-teachers drunkenly yelled "no!" at me, so I don't know if I said it wrong, or I'm not supposed to apologize to waitstaff, or I'm just not supposed to apologize for partying hard? lol. Not sure.

I had promised my friend Lais that I would meet her in Seoul tomorrow and I quickly realized tomorrow had already come. The train system is still alien to me and I was too uncomfortable to try that journey while intoxicated, so I asked my co-teachers when the first bus left for Seoul and they said seven. Realizing that was only an hour away, I called a cab, took it to the bus terminal, and purchased a ticket for the 7:30am bus to Seoul. I was hoping I could just sleep on the ~4hr (people say 5-5:30 but both ways to Seoul were 4 hours each so...lucky bus?) bus ride there, but I still needed to stay awake for the next hour in the terminal. I couldn't even ask someone to wake me up if I fell asleep, because no one spoke English -_-; So I powered though and crashed as soon as I boarded the bus.

Some points of Seoul are just sheer cliffs.

Waking up in Seoul, I let Lais know I had arrived and she told me she would be there in an hour (I had estimated my bus arriving at 1 and it arrived at 11:30) so I tried sleeping some more in the terminal, but with little success. Still, by the time Lais called me again, I was pretty alert and we started trying to locate each other using Korean signs, directions, and landmarks we couldn't understand. The problem was, we soon discovered, that the train station was not even remotely in the same area as the express bus station. I attempted to take a taxi to "Seoul Station" and was promptly told "no" by the cab driver and forced out of the cab. I will apparently learn that Seoul is nothing like Changwon and some Koreans there aren't all too fond of foreigners.

Don't let this picture fool you,
it gets ridiculously steep on the hike up to Seoul Tower.

Lais took the subway to me, but we still probably wasted a good hour just trying to find each other. Apparently she had walked into the wrong building and it took forever to realize we weren't even in the same building. Luckily, we found each other and didn't waste any time grabbing a subway train to a tourist section of Seoul with plans to go to Seoul Tower. We walked around a bit to grab lunch, and I soon got this vibe that I didn't like Seoul as much as Changwon. There was certainly much more to do, but there was also this strong foreigner presence that kind of trampled the cultural ambiance of Korea. Everyone was military, military families, or teachers from America and the U.K., and no one really had any intention of trying to fit into Korea. Quite the contrary, they all seemed to be forcing Korea to fit them. Walking down the street, I felt more like I was in a New York City street market than in a foreign country.

Benches at Seoul Tower force you to like the people you sit with.

We ate at a Subway (because nearly every restaurant was American), and this English lady had the most complicated order for a 6-inch sub ever. I swear the employee was looking for his protractor to get some of her specifications right. I made the comment to Lais about how expensive subway is here (6 bucks for a 6-inch sub that's mostly bread) and the lady turns and tells me "I know, isn't everything?" My jaw dropped and I swear I thought about hitting her. Everything is expensive because you demand culinary consistency in a foreign country. I've been eating for maybe a 3-8 dollars A DAY in Korea just by eating Korean food. So we sit down and then I have to listen to her daughter (or whatever) drone on about how cultured she is because she taught in China for awhile before teaching here, even though she's eating at Subway with a bunch of Americans right now in Korea and I suddenly start understanding why that cab driver wanted me the hell out of his cab. I don't like these people either. "Cultured" apparently now means taking your culture wherever you go and remaining wholly ignorant of the beautiful culture permeating the air around you.

Trees covered in "Locks of Love"

Luckily, we soon leave and grab a bus to Seoul Tower which....I can barely find the words to explain. I want to just leave it at "Awesome." Basically, the bus stops 3/4ths of the way up the mountain at a 7-11 type convenience store (where we ran in to get some drinks and ice cream) and you have to walk the rest of the way on foot. This doesn't seem to be a big deal except for the fact that the road slopes up at at least a 40 degree incline (That's a low estimate because I don't want to be hyperbolic....it felt like walking up a wall) and girls were walking up in 4 inch heels! Korean girls are really committed to looking good always. We get to the top and (ironically) there is a mariachi band playing in the square -_-; We take some pictures with the tower and the surrounding area, but what really catches our eyes are trees and fences 100% covered in what seem to be gym locker locks.

People lock everything from phone cases to toys
covered in messages to loved ones

We get closer and find out that is exactly what they are. Seoul Tower has a superstition associated with is that if you write a message to your loved ones and lock it to the area around the tower, you'll have eternal love and happiness (I guess because it's at such a high point...like a beacon? Not really sure how it got started). Lais and I cannot resist taking part in this cultural phenomenon, so we get our own lock and write secret messages to our loved ones. We thought about locking it to a tree, but the trees were so covered in locks, we would never find ours again. Then we tried the fence, but our lock chain wasn't big enough. We finally decided to lock our "Locks of Love"to a giant heart statue erected on the terrace that was impossible to miss. The whole terrace area was cute, with benches built so you slide toward the middle and have to sit extremely close to whoever you are sitting with =3

We picked the perfect spot to put our notes.

We then rode to the top of the tower and committed more acts of cultural love graffiti wherever possible (like everyone else at Seoul Tower), and the view from the top was breathe-taking. It's not even something worth describing, you just have to go. I was not a fan, however, of the digital floor panels that pretended to fall away when you stepped them. Children were obsessed with them, however.

Realizing I didn't bring anything with me to stay overnight anywhere, Lais took me to the bus station and I boarded the last train to Changwon going out the same way I came in - sleeping.

View from the top.

Working In Changwon - The First Few Days

So, my second day on the job ended up being me teaching entirely by myself at Dogye GnB, which I was extremely nervous and unprepared for, but it ended up going phenomenally. The first class was learning nature vocabulary and the second class was learning professions and where each profession worked in the city, so I taught both classes how to play Four Corners, but made it revolve around their vocabulary. The first group was in a garden (the classroom) and each corner was where a certain kind of flower grew in the garden. The second group was in a city and each corner was a building and they would choose a profession and run to that "building". One person stood in the middle with their eyes closed, counted down, and then guessed a corner. The kids went absolutely bananas over this game.

I'm well aware that some of the sentences on the left are fragments. I had to erase some of the board to draw the "city".

The other classes were a little more straightforward. Some were quieter, some had better English, some had worse. Overall, it was really fun. After school, one of the teachers I was replacing (Kimyn) showed up and took me down the main drag of Dogye to show me where all the important things were: dry cleaners, FamilyMart, bus stop, etc. In FamilyMart, an older man came up to me very enthusiastically and just began talking to me and asking me where I was from. He gave me his business card and I told him I'd contact him for help with my Korean and any other advice I needed on Changwon. I'm quickly learning EVERYONE in Korea has business cards. I probably should have brought my IFC ones even though they're outdated.

After we loaded some cash onto my MyB bus device (coolest thing ever), we left FamilyMart and headed over to Red Fox, a bar/restaurant (everywhere in Korea sells food), to get a few drinks and so she could help me figure out a map and bus routes and such for the two other campuses I'll be working at. After that, we parted ways and I headed home only to bump into a semi-drunk Korean who says "maek-ju?"(beer) and tips back his hand to mime drinking. I said "ne" (yes) thinking he was asking me if I had been drinking. He asks where I'm from and where I'm walking to and we walk and we talk for a minute as best we can with his very limited English and my nonexistent Korean before he ushers me into the 7-11 we are in front of. We walk back to the beer section and he asks me what beer I like. I don't know any of the brands in the case except for Heineken, so I grab it and he promptly takes it from me and pays for both our beers. I bow and saw "kansamnida" and he seems pretty pleased by my attempts at Korean, although it's clear he wants to practice his English.

We sit at a table outside 7-11 and try to communicate as best we can while knocking back our beers in the dead of night. I learned he is a soldier in the South Korean army and all that he wants is peace between North and South Korea. We bond a bit over this obviously mutual goal (who doesn't want North Korea to chill it's hostility?) and then we go back into 7-11 for more beer. I try to pay, but he won't let me. So beer and pringles in hand, we march off to my apartment two blocks away. I show him my apartment and we sit down in front of the TV and go back to our agonizingly poor attempts at communication, but it was still very cool. We finish our beers, talk a bit longer, but it's late and soon I walk him out. We agree to meet up again and settle on meeting at 7-11 on Friday at 9:00pm for dinner. After I shut the door, I reflected on how that's probably the single coolest thing that has ever happened to me. Really difficult to describe.

So obviously, after that I crash and wake up with a splitting headache. Luckily I have plenty of time before work to let it wear off, or so I thought. I had forgotten my director was picking me up at 11 to go to the doctors, until I hear a knock on my door. I quickly throw some close on and TA-DAH! She came with a internet technician to install wifi in my apartment. Happiest day ever, because now I can use Viber to call my parents over WiFi in my apartment. She then whisks me off to the hospital (pyongwon) which the most efficient system for a check-up in the world. I may as well have been on a conveyor belt. They drew blood, took x-rays, gave me an eye exam, did a urine text, checked my heart rate and blood pressure, etc. all in under probably 15 minutes if I'm overestimating. And this hospital is super cool to boot. It's a giant labyrinth that, among other things, also holds a dentists office and a gift shop...

Everything checked out and I was driven to the Dogye campus to meet up with Kimyn again so she could show me how to ride the bus to the Daewon campus. Buses are super efficient here, and cheap as well. You pay a dollar to get on the bus (normal by swiping your MyB or a phone app) and can rid eit anywhere down the line. You can even get off and swipe your MyB again on your way out to get an hour reprieve, meaning I can get off, go shopping, and as long as get on another bus within the hour, I don't have to pay again. Pretty nifty.

Daewon campus was alright. I really like the kids there, but I only go one day a week and instead of having a whole 50 minute class to myself, I have to do 15 minute segments in each of the three teachers classes sometimes. It's kind of exhausting and makes it hard to get any real content, in my opinion, but I don't call the shots. I'm not sure how I'm supposed to remember so many students at so many campuses. I hope they don't get offended when I surely forget.

The director of Daewon campus also happened to be the director the Shinchon campus where I work on Thursdays, so he offered to drive me there my first day so I didn't have to try the bus. It was the 4th of July in Korea, so expats were all raging at a bar called BK's in the part of Changwon where all the foreign bars were. Kimyn took me there and I was super excited to meet the other Americans in Changwon. I was not impressed. I showed up around 11 and some people were already drunk like college freshman making total idiots out of themselves. Some girl was redefining sloppy drunk and was pissing me off because she kept hanging on me and falling all oer the place, and I realized I much prefer Koreans in Korea to Americans or Korea. don't get me wrong, some of them were super cool and I exchanged information with a few, but like 80% of the people at that bar made me never want to go there again.

The next day I rode out to Daewon and Director Kim drove me to Shinchon and showed me around. He's such a nice man, but has this very anxious nature about him that makes me nervous because he can't seem to relax or slow down. Shinchon was a very laidback atmosphere since it was my first day. I just had conversations with all the classes, but learned that one class doesn't have a book for speaking so I have to create a curriculum for just this one class -_-; I'll work on that at some point I suppose. Then my last class was a bunch of 16 year old guys who offered me some of a pizza they ordered in class and we just talked about travelling and sports and stuff. It was cool. They asked me which was better, Korean pizza or American pizza. Hands down, nothing beats American pizza. When I get back to Florida, I'm eating pizza hut for a straight month.

This weekend I'm *hopefully* going to Seoul with my friend Lais who is going to show me around. Should be a lot of fun. I look forward to posting about that.