A little of Everything

I'm about half done with my time here. Clearly I'm not very good at keeping to a blogging schedule. I've got some legitimate reasons why, but for now I'll just dispense with that and try to write something interesting.

I came here to see a foreign country not as a tourist, but as something closer to a citizen. As a means to do that, I am teaching English to children. I'm not the kind of person to lie to myself (or others for that matter) so I can honestly say that this job was purely a means to a end. I don't have any great love for the English language, or teaching, or even kids. These are not revelations, I knew all this before leaving.

I like kids quite a bit more then I expected I would. Being the youngest of my family and living far away from my cousins, I haven't really ever spent much time around anyone younger than myself. Kids are fun. They are honest in a way that no adult ever is, which is something I really enjoy.

I like English quite a bit less then I used to, although I didn't exactly have a strong opinion before. Language is one area Korea has got the world beat in. Their alphabet was designed to be simple and easy to learn, and much of the language follows pretty strict rules. There are still hundreds of irregularities, but compared to English, it's very organized.

As for teaching, I don't really know what to say. There's a sort of stereotype here that all the western English teachers here aren't really teachers, that they can't teach and don't care about the kids, and are just here for vacation or partying or whatever. After experiencing the environment, it's nearly impossible to imagine anyone who considered teaching to be their profession to even survive over here. The way things happen is just so random and haphazard, there's no way the concept of teaching as a career could be connected to it. If they want serious teachers they are definitely not creating an inviting environment for them.

I read before coming here that that Koreans don't plan ahead and everything is done last minute. This is certainly no exaggeration. It's hard to even explain how last minute things are. The odd thing is that most things do seem to be planned fairly far ahead of time, it's just that no one ever tells anyone. Nearly everything that happens is "here, these 20 progress reports need to be finished by tomorrow," or "We're having a staff meeting.... Oh Ok, what day, what time, what should I have prepared?..... It's right now!" I don't feel like bitching and moaning too much on here, so I'll just say this: If you are an actual, real English teacher, or are considering becoming one, do not take this job.

I'll bitch and moan just a little...
A huge problem with the way things work here is that I work in a private school. I never really appreciated the concept of public schools before, but they are really a great idea. When schools are paid for directly by the parents, the parents wield ALL the power. A private school is a business. It has to do what is best for business. That (apparently) means that when a parent complains that their child's homework is too hard, a meeting is called the next day to tell all teachers to assign easier homework. When THE SAME PARENT complains during THE SAME WEEK that the homework is now too easy, we have another meeting and the previous decision is reversed. Parents have complained about teachers eating food that smells good and distracts their children, about their children eating too much food at lunch and not being hungry for dinner, about their kids not eating enough at lunch and being too hungry when they get home, and about the plays and songs chosen for the graduation ceremony. One parent pulled out her child and switched her to another school because she decided that she should skip a grade for absolutely no reason and our school refused. Her child had been learning English for less than 2 months and she wanted to have the child switched to a class that had been there over a year.

Ok ok ok.... So the only way to get through all this is to pretty much just ignore it all. As I said before, I didn't come here because I love teaching. I didn't expect the work part to be good. What I wanted was for all the other parts to be interesting. I think I've got quite a bit of that. I came here to see a foreign country. Here are some interesting little foreign things:

-The stereotypes about bad Asian drivers aren't exactly true. The thing is the a "good driver" over here means something very different from what it does in America. Good driving in America involves a certain amount of obeying the law, like staying on the right side of the double yellow lines and not running red lights. Being a good driver in Korea means being INCREDIBLY alert and aware of all your surroundings. They have the same laws as us, but no one really follows them. Green means: You've got the right of way, speed up! Yellow means: It's turning red soon, better speed up! Red means: You'll get hit if you are in this intersection very long, so you better speed up! And blare your horn the whole way through!

-Your car horn is not something to be used to notify someone else that they are doing something wrong. It is used to allow others to always hear you coming, much like lights allow others to always see you coming. I've been in several taxis that beeped EVERY time they passed another car.

-Parking is INSANE. Korea is a small country. Something like half the population lives in what I'd call the greater Seoul Metropolitan area, ie. everywhere that the Seoul subways reach. This means that parking is at a huge premium. Inside parking garages, there is a system in place where people routinely park in front and perpendicular to rows of cars and leave their car in neutral, and a man (this is his job) pushes the cars around so that people can get in and out.

Koreans are all about kimchi (their signature native side dish, made from fermented radish or cabbage.) I recently went to Thailand with a Korean tour group, and even though EVERY SINGLE MEAL was eaten at a Korean restaurant (something I'll bitch about some other time), a women in the group still felt the need to bring her own kimchi. They Korean Aerospace agency even developed space kimchi before sending their first astronaut to Soyuz. Some Koreans claim that kimchi can prevent cancer and AIDS, and even cure them. It is served as a side dish with every meal, breakfast lunch and dinner. The "deli" section of the market contains no sliced meat or cheese, only about 40 different kinds of kimchi. I could go on...

Public drunkenness (at least among middle aged men) is very socially acceptable. You don't drink with dinner, you eat with drinking. Let me clarify: Alcohol is the main course, food is the accompaniment. People don't just try to drink as much they can before passing out, they try to drink as much as they can once they come to.

I feel I should point out how beneficial it is to be an American. The entire world is learning English just to make things easy for us. There are many places you can visit as an American and not even bother learning a word of their languages. The phrase "learn enough to get by" is common among travelers, but to be honest, you don't need a single word. You can "get by" pretty easily just by speaking English and the occasional gesture. I'm still learning Korean, but not out of any necessity. It's just a curiosity at this point.

Next post should be about Thailand. There's lot's of elephants there, and some of them play soccer:


But not on an empty stomach:

Epic Blog post

Sorry for the complete lack of updates. You will will now be treated to the next best thing, a single horribly long blog post!

There are a few things I should mention first. I'm not sure what I told people, or what they were told, but this isn't a diary. I'm never going to post every day and tell you every little thing I do. My aim is to gather a bit of information about a given topic and then give you a bit of an overview of the interesting parts. For example - NO: I went to a bar and had some Korean beer. YES: I've been to a half dozen Korean bars and these are the interesting differences.

In that sense I think it's kind of good that I haven't been updating. Now I have some experience to draw from and I can write updates that encompass a bit more then a single days events.

Also, I should say now that I don't like being photographed all that much. Since I'm the one handling the camera anyway, dont wouldn't expect to see me in many pictures.

So, first, the school. This is the lobby/reception area.

People are requesting ridiculous amounts of detail regarding my job. Here is the painfully accurate version.
I work from about 10 to 6 each day. The first class starts at 10:15, and the last ends at 6:20 on MWF, and 4:50 on TTh. First up each day is 6 kindergarten classes, 35 minutes each. The school has about 40 kindy students, split up into 7 different classrooms. The students have their own rooms, and the teachers move about the rooms throughout the day. In theory this makes things a lot simpler, as only 7 people need to be in the halls between classes, but most of the time the bell rings the kids rush out of the room anyway for a few minutes of freedom. Oh well.

Anyway, the day begins with 4 kindergarten classes. Then we have lunch and 2 more classes. Lunch is interesting. It is served by the teachers, something never mentioned to me before I got here. This also means we get free lunch, so I'm not complaining. I have to serve lunch three days a week, and the other two I am free to go out or to eat lunch with the rest of the staff. The conversation is generally lacking a bit, but the food is usually quite good. This picture is of hallway with all the classrooms off to the right. The gym is off to the left and the lobby is through the glass door.

Here are some pictures of the kids:








After the kindy classes, I teach elementary kids. The kindy kids are aged 4-8, elementary 9-12. Elementary level classes are a little more in depth as the kids have been learning English for longer. There is a half hour break after the kindy classes end, and on MWF, another half hour break before the last classes. Tuesdays and Thursdays have two elementary classes, MWF have three.

A few weeks ago our school took the kindy kids on a field trip to a Korean Folk Village. This is supposed to represent how life was in Korea in the distant past. There were small exhibits of pottery and things like that. Most of the grounds had a very artificial feel to them. If you are looking for the authentic 4000 year old village feel, perhaps the destination of a kindergarten field trip is not the best place to get it.

This is one of the larger temples in the Folk Village, most of our kindy kids, and several of the teachers.


The highlight of the trip (apparently) was a performance by these guys.

I wish I could tell you a bit more about the meaning behind the hats and costumes and such, unfortunately all such descriptions were in Korean. Here's the abridged version: These guys have funny hats, and they know some taekwondo.

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One of the reasons I haven't been posting anything is that I have actually been really busy. I've seen a good share of touristy stuff, some concerts, and been to more bars, restaurants, and karaoke rooms then I can count. Every weekend I go to a different city (or part of Seoul.) I won't be able to keep this feat up much longer, but I've had a good run.

Here are some pictures from an old fortress wall built around Suwon to protect it. Korea is a tight spot between China and Japan and has been invaded several times over the years. This particular fortress was completed in 1796 as a response to invasion from Japan.



It's a little known fact that Korea has been fighting off hordes of giant flying spiders for thousands of years.


I tried to get this whole thing centered and in frame, but a bus was coming.


And finally, the rare picture of me. Yes, I am really here, and I'm not making this whole thing up.


And some final words - - I really will try to update this more often. I don't think I'm going keep a solid schedule because I really don't have a single time slot that's always free. For the most part it's going to happen whenever I feel like it. I'll be aiming for about once a week, but I'll probably miss one here and there.

Some things change, some things stay the same

Most of the people here are Korean, they speak Korean, and they write using Hangul (the Korean alphabet.) You probably could have guessed those things, but I can now verify them based on personal experience. You might also be able to guess that those would be the biggest differences between living in America and Korea.

I'm aware that this isn't exactly a groundbreaking revelation. My point is that life in Korea isn't really all that different from life in any other "civilized" area. The biggest differences for me actually have nothing to do with being in a foreign country on the opposite side of the planet, but are instead due to the fact that I moved from a suburb to a city. I walk a few miles a day now, which isn't much, but is far more then I or most Americans are accustomed to. Public transportation is ubiquitous and cheap. The Seoul subway system is a bit of a snafu, but it works.

Many of the things people traditionally think of as exotic or foreign or weird turn out to not be. Example: Those restaurants where you sit on the floor. Yes, there are a lot of them here. They are quite commonplace. As it turns out, where you park your ass while you eat doesn't really have a whole lot of cultural significance. Same thing with chopsticks. People here use little utensils to shove food in their mouths, just like we do. These are the kinds of things that seem special when you do them once, but quickly become unremarkable. The point I'm getting at here is pretty simple. People are people. They sleep, they eat, they work, they have families. Even if you look at some tribal culture that has been untouched by civilization for 5000 years, you will see all the same things. I haven't experienced any culture shock yet, and I don't expect to.

So, on to the random details. I'm not sure of the population of Suji, but it seems to be at least 300,000 and growing very quickly. The area I live in is pretty densely populated. There's a grid of at least 6x6 blocks that is full of buildings like these. Notice the Subway nestled right on the front corner: (NOTE - These pictures, as well as any future pictures you see on this blog, can be clicked for larger versions)
Most are between 5-10 stories, which are full of restaurants, bars, PC rooms, English schools, and some other assorted offices. This is the building I work in:

There are at least 3 seperate English schools in this building alone.

There seems to be more apartment buildings than anything else. I live in a complex of about 50 4-story buildings. The buildings in the background of the following picture are 20 story apartment buildings, and these are all over the place. There's several dozen within a 5 minute walk from my place, and there are many more a few miles away.
So, that's it for now. For future updates: I do intend to post on a regular schedule, but I haven't yet decided when I'm going to have the time. It will likely be once a week. I also intend to get some pictures of more interesting things than buildings. For those of you that have asked me questions not answered here, rest assured, there will be plenty of time. My next two posts will probably consist mainly of details and pictures of my apartment and the school/kids.

It's all about the Won

I went to the bank yesterday to exchange some money. I foolishly assumed that they would provide me with any relevant information pertaining to the currency exchange process, and also that their bank policies would be in keeping with basic mathematical principles, like multiplication. Wrong on both counts.

The exchange rate is roughly .001, which means that one US Dollar equals approximately one thousand Korean Won. I was a bit surprised to see the exchange rate on my receipt, exactly .001. This isn't impossible, of course, but rather unlikely. Especially when the 2 Million Korean Won I asked for was costing me $2,195.14. Turns out their "policy" is to only write the first four digits of the exchange rate on currency exchange slips. This is my favorite kind of corporate policy, the kind that saves about 1 second of work, and guarantees customer confusion. As I'm on the phone later that day, I decide to look up the actual exchange rate, .000987167, which means I should be paying $1974.33.

Several phone calls later, I find out that the official exchange rates posted everywhere only apply to very large transfers, and that the bank pretty much makes up their own rate for small exchanges. I also find out that using my credit card overseas will only result in a 3% charge on top of the transfer, using the official exchange rate. The bank exchange was costing me about 10%.

I canceled the order, after several minutes spent explaining to the bank that simply exchanging back after the fact was not going to make me happy, as that would screw me out of twice as much money.

Moral of the story: Don't exchange currency unless it's absolutely necessary. I was planning to buy some fancy electronic toys when I got there (I don't get paid until after a month of work) but now I'm just going to bring enough money to eat and get around for a month. Also, upon further research, it turns out the exchanging money in banks in foreign countries generally gets you better rates anyway.

Because

Assuming everything goes according to plan, I should be in South Korea in less then a month. I'll be there for a year, teaching English to elementary school students, and living in Yongin, a satellite city near Seoul. The main question people have is "Why?" and the truth is I don't have a particularly good reason. It's a lot of little reasons, which in my mind sum up to the simple answer, "Because."

I decided I wanted to go somewhere else. Not just as a vacation, to take pictures of all the famous buildings and then leave, but to actually live there. I want to be alone in a foreign country, forced to learn a new language and make new friends, to live there, work there, and play there. That sounds interesting and fun to me.

People often seem to intimate that I'll be "missing out" on everything I'm leaving behind. I can't argue with that, but it does seem rather narrow minded. Wherever you are, whatever you're doing, you are missing out on everything else. It's up to you to decide what you're going to miss, and whatever you do with your life, you'll end up missing a whole lot.

The purpose of this blog will be to give as honest an account as possible of my experience in Korea. I'll gloat about the good things, whine about the bad things, and take pictures of the funny things.