The Newest Olympic Sport: Puddle Hopping

**I am still catching up on my posts, so neither this blog nor the previous are dated correctly.**


셋 주 (set-joo) (week 3)


          This weekend was football time in Tennessee. I woke up early on my birthday to listen to the first UT game of the season on internet radio. We won 50-0 and my birthday was off to a good start. Later that Sunday, Allie and I took our first trip into Seoul, Itaweon specifically. Suwon has a subway stop, but we hear it's much quicker to take bus 5100 to Gangnam Station, a bus and subway station on the south side of Seoul. From Gangnam, we hopped on the subway to Itaewon, which is one of two foreigner neighborhoods that I know of. It is a tourist trap with lots of shopping and non-Korean restaurants. Yes, they have many American restaurants, but there are Turkish, Afghan, Indian, and many other types of food available. It does not feel like Korea because of all the English signs and diversity among visitors. Many Middle Easterners, South Asians, and Africans wander the streets of Itaewon.
          The shops all seem to be the same: souvenir shops with old Korean ladies wanting to sell their mother-of-pearl mirrors and jewelry boxes for 50,000 won~ 300,000 won. (1000 won~ 1 dollar). The little ladies also highly promote their amethyst necklaces, rings, earrings, cell phone ornaments, and barrettes for the same amount of money. They claim the amethyst comes straight from the mountains of Korea and even have a huge block of raw amethyst (is that the right word?) to prove it. These ladies hassle you to no end offering you "cheap price" or "discount for my special customer". You can bargain your way through Korea, or so I hear. I have yet to be successful.
          Allie and I got lost in Gangnam Station because we took the wrong exit out of the subway station on the way back. The result was frustration, but it was soon made better because, while lost, we ran across a street vendor selling shoes for 5,000 won. JACKPOT. It's a bummer those shoes only lasted a week, but I guess that's how far a 5 dollar pair of shoes will get you. My day was soon ruined because as soon as we stepped off the bus in Yeongtong, my umbrella broke and it was pouring. This was the second or third of many more nights I would be soaked walking home.
           It rains so much here that puddle hopping should be a sport. Umbrellas are all fashionable, as well. Men don't really go all out, but women's umbrellas are frilly, lacey, sequiny, and they all have the curvy handle that you see in the stores in America but never actually see anyone carrying.  They are used during rain and shine because Koreans simply don't wear sunglasses.  Every store has an umbrella stand at the door, rain or shine, because it's bound to start pouring at any moment. However, as much as I hate the rain sometimes, those are the moments where I really feel like I'm in Asia. :-)

My current umbrella isn't frilly, but I got it at the local gas station, it was cheap, and it does the job.  This is me recently in Gyeongju, Korea, which I will tell you about later. :-)

The first 2 weeks...

SO, since I've been here a month and haven't posted but once, I feel obligated to fill you on what has happened since my first weekend in South Korea.  It'll take a few posts (which I've made to appear like I was actually posting a long time ago), but I'll get caught up for ya. :-)

하나 주 (ha-nah-joo) (week One)

          As you know already, I spent my first week in Seoul training at the Chungdahm headquarters. It was easily the most stressful week of my life, but I survived :-) I enjoyed riding the subway everywhere and window shopping. I didn't get to experience much of Seoul because I was so busy during training, but I've been back a few times and will continue to go back to make up for what I missed out on.
          At the end of training, my fellow trainee, Allie from Chicago, and I were shipped off to Suwon. Suwon is about a 35-45 minute car ride south of Seoul. As soon as we arrived in Yeongtong, our little district of Suwon, we were dropped off at our school. We met some of the other instructors and about an hour later, we were taken to our apartments. That was the first time I had been alone since I left the States and, well, I had a moment in my hospital room of an apartment. The apartment was like a box with the following items: bed, desk, small refrigerator, and drawers. For the first minute, I thought: "Wow I'm finally HERE. This is MY place." That quickly changed because all I wanted to do was sleep, so I cried. I hadn't slept in three days and I was somehow supposed to stay awake for 2.5 more hours and go to the Yeongtong Branch's company dinner. Normally, I would've set my phone alarm on vibrate and crashed, but my cell phone was dead and I had no converter. Another option would've been listening to music, but my ipod was dead and I had no converter. My third and final option would be to call people on Skype or check my e-mail, but my laptop had a mere hour left on it and what do you know? I had no converter. I also could not steal a decent wireless signal, but I promptly fixed that problem. I wanted so badly to have contact with the other side of the world that I hung my laptop outside my laundry room window and BAM! Three bars of stolen wireless :-) I kept my laptop in my window sill for the next two weeks and enjoyed a few bars of wireless, some streaming radio, some football games. Internet is a life saver and I will never take advantage again!
          Now that I'm off my internet soapbox, I'll continue with the story. :-) The company dinner that friday evening was an over-the-top welcome to Yeongtong celebration. I was thrown into the Korean lifestyle of barbeque and drinks. There I met most of the other instructors and heard all of their stories. It's interesting to meet people from all over the place. I have found that most Americans I meet are from New York or California, but every now and then there's someone from my beloved South. One teacher, Philip Cho, and I had a fun first conversation. He's from Miami, he loves the gators. I'm from Tennessee, I love the Vols. You know what comes next: I got gator chomped over Korean bbq. Not many people here are from the South, therefore not many people are into college football. For this reason, anytime I meet someone who is remotely interested in it, I get a warm fuzzy feeling and my heart smiles. It is smiling even while getting chomped. :-)
          The next day was really busy. Each term at Chungdahm is 13 weeks and everyone was preparing for their new classes. Allie and I were introduced to the culture of our Yeongtong Branch. There are numerous little details that are different from the other Chungdahm branches. Everything was overwhelming at first but it has gotten much better.

둘 주 (dhool-joo) (week two)

          My first day of teaching was terrible! I had planned as well as I could have, but all that was ruined when another teacher got in a car wreck and I had to take both his class and my class. I was informed of the matter 20 minutes before class started. A first day at any new job is nervewracking, but this absolutely drove me up the wall. I was a full hour behind in my elementary class! My first few days were a little rough because I had underestimated how much English the students would know, therefore I had overprepared. It's kind of hit and miss with these students because some things you think they would never understand need no explanation whatsoever, yet the simplest of things require patience and in depth explanations.
          There is something about "firsts" here, or anywhere new for that matter: My first time being by myself in my apartment, the first time I woke up and no one was there, the first time I walked to school alone, the first time I braved the public transportation system alone. The most prominent "first" was my first trip to Home Plus (Korean version of Walmart, except not as good...) by myself.
          At 9 pm, HomePlus is buzzing with people. There are 50 million people living in Korea and it seems like they are all in HomePlus. For a foreigner, or atleast for me, the scenario is shocking: flat escalators connect the floors so you can push your buggy around. Someone greets you at the entrance to each level and there is someone in almost every aisle ready to offer assistance or to persuade you to buy the more expensive product. Most of the products are in Korean, which makes sense, so you revert back to a child learning out of a picture book. One example is that the chili pepper on the package means it's spiced with chili peppers. Duh. In America, I thought packaging with illustrations and pictures was redundant: just read the label. However, I take full advantage of pictoral learning here. :-) \
          The aisles in the HomePlus are like roads. They are constantly moving and if you don't know exactly what you want, you get run over. In my quest to find peanut butter to cure my homesickness, I got runover alot. At home, I would've been a good Southerner and said "Excuse me. I'm sorry" with a sweet smile. Koreans don't know what any of that means, so it's useless to try. I became increasingly homesick and I left HomePlus with no peanut butter, only a can of pineapple, some good old fashioned orange juice, and some flavorless ramen (flavorless because I couldn't read the package). I walked outside and it was pouring down rain. My 15 minute walk home in flip flops with no umbrella was absolutely wonderful [sarcasm intended]. That was the worst I have felt in my time here and well, the sky was crying, so why couldn't I? Two phone calls and one gut check later, I was all better and have been wonderful since.
          The next morning, I woke up to another "first": My first typhoon. Typhoon Kompasu was rolling through Korea. Seoul got most of the damage, but Suwon got some also. There's nothing like being woken up at 6 am to wind howling through your apartment. All the clothes in my laundry room had been blown off their drying lines and the trees outside were bent half over. Outside my apartment, people were walking to work and were struggling just to stand in the wind. At this point, I had not found a radio station I could understand so I had no idea what was happening. The Weather Channel doesn't exactly cover what's going on in East Asia. On the other hand, I can now say I've been through a hurricane...errr typhoon. ;-)