Pre-Korea ~ September ~ October ~ November  December ~ January ~ CHINA ~ February

October 29th, 2007 So Halloween is in two days, and while my students know what it is, they do not celebrate it. at all. Of course, I feel that it is my duty to make sure all of the students have at least some sort of Halloween experience while I'm here. I went to the store on the way home and bought some candy. I bought what I thought was 100 pieces, because I needed at least 120 for the two days of third grade classes, thinking I would buy some more tomorrow. I just counted 516 pieces of candy, so I went a little overboard. (The candy's pretty nasty, by the way. I just had a few.)                1st* This is in Incheon's China Town. I thought it was kind of strange. It was very touristy. You could buy lots of souveniers and such. 2nd* The view of the coastal part of Incheon. I think this place is cool, too, but the Incheon by my house is totally different. 3rd* Gracias to Photoshop, the bleak forest is now an enchanted, green wonderland. I'm really happy I have a good guard dog by the door of my building. It used to be really mean to me, but then I bought some snacks for it at the supermarket and I'm pretty much it's best friend now. It took about a week. When I was buying candy, I ran into some of my students. They helped me buy the biggest bag, then proceeded to follow me through the entire store. (I noticed that when I was walking with Korean children, the adults would ask the children who I was, and they all know how to say "English teacher." When I walk by myself or with an older Korean, I'm pretty much ignored.) I kept on asking the students where their parents were, or where they were supposed to be. They told me their mother was at home. I guess they were at the supermarket by themselves because they followed me home.              1st* This is how we punish the children in Korea. 2nd* One of the few pictures I have with some of the kids. I really need to get a better one... 3rd* Awww... but the real beauty here is my new camera lens! Again, it amazes me how Korean elementary school children wander around the city unsupervised and how they think it's okay to go home with me into my apartment. Honestly, once I got past the guard dog I ran, horror-movie-esque, to my door and scrambled for the keys to get in before they could know which apartment was mine. I don't think they got past the dog, but it got my adrenaline pumping. Some of you reading this may have taught kids of this age bracket before. Is this normal??? I can't imagine doing that with any of my teachers from elementary school.              1st* I was trying to take a motion shot and this one came out beautifully! Look at how in focus she is! She's crystal clear! 2nd* This was this "teeter-totter" thing that vaulted the women into the air about 12-15 feet high! It was pretty cool. The trees are nice, too. 3rd* His act was relatively uninteresting, but the leaves in the back are amazing! *A note on the kids that followed me home. I have no idea what grade they were in and for all I knew they could have gone to a different elementary school, but they still didn't know enough English to communicate with me. All our communication was in the little Korean I know, minus the word, "Halloween." This is frustrating, because my job is to teach them English. Although, I already used three or four of the words I learned last week when I was inspired to learn Korean. I just looked at it days ago and already I'm using it! I'm inspred again. I'll start tomorrow.                               1st* This is across the street from my house. The leaves are changing. 2nd* On the railing at the park, there was one fly for every post. really odd... 3rd* I like this shot. You should, too. You're probably wondering where these pictures came from. We went on a field trip to a traditional Korean village last Wednesday. I was sick and a little miserable, but it was cool. The fall foliage is beautiful, and I took my nice camera so I got some nice shots. Saturday I went to China town because there's a park right next to it on a hill. Pretty much all of the leaves are green still. I'm not sure why. I have to go to an "English conference" in the same area this weekend, so I can see if a week helps the leaves change a bit. Fall's amazing, though. I've really been missing out with the seasons the past three years.

October 25th, 2007 Pay Day! Those are always good. Again, I'm a multi-millionaire. I've been thinking a lot about my time here. I've almost been here two months. I really still like it here, which is nice. I'm always still discovering new things about the city, even in my neighborhood. I just found a bakery by the train station. There are two used furniture shops about a block from my house. Also, the car-kiosks are great. It seems that every time I walk home from school, there's different shops I see on the way home. They park on the side of the street and move someplace else the next day. They'll sell everything from nuts, bug repellent, socks, or plants. Everything's always changing, it's great. I think one of the reasons I like it so much here is because I have three interesting parts of my life happening at once: I'm living in a foreign country (obviously), I'm living by myself for the first time with my own apartment, and I'm living in a really big city. Then I guess you could throw in that I'm living with four seasons again, which is nice. Also I guess I have a yearly salary for the first time as well, which means I have money. I think that's why I generally am having a really good time out here. But that doesn't mean there aren't any drawbacks. Today I tried to buy a mini-keyboard at the supermarket today for $170. (I know, it's pretty expensive, but piano keyboards are expensive here for some reason and that's the cheapest I can find) When I tried to pay, it turned out the cashier spoke absolutely no English, which would have been fine, but she was trying to explain that it needed to be shipped in because they were out of stock. Naturally, I assumed that was the case, so I tried to show that I could give her my address so they could deliver it to my house. (Delivery is always free, be it food or department store. Plus there's no tip!) Of course, then she didn't understand that I understood what needed to be done, so she continued to speak Korean louder to me, as if I could understand. I ended up calling one of the teachers at my school and having him talk for me. I'm going to go pick the keyboard up tomorrow. I hate being so dependent, all the time. Needless to say, I've decided I'm going to start learning Korean again. I made flashcards in my prep time at school today. I figured that every small, small bit of Korean I use I have been using almost daily, so it couldn't hurt. You can manage with nothing, but it just makes things go faster if you say it in Korean first. This is my school picture I'm going to have in the yearbook. It's actually a picture of the picture. I want to try to get the original, but I'm not sure if I can. Anyway, I had just played an hour and a half of volleyball, was sweating, starting to get sick, hadn't showered, and I was breaking out. Fortunately, I guess it's normal for Korean photographers to Photoshop the pictures without asking the "model"  for permission, which was nice, but unexpected. In 30 seconds, my face went from haggard to beaming with perfect skin. I was really impressed. If I can't get a copy of this one, I think I'm going to go try to get another one taken. The real one looks nicer. I really was going to try to keep this one short, but something bizarre happened last night. I got sick again, which was irritating, so I had slept all day so I went to bed later at night. Before I went to sleep, I killed two mosquitoes. They were acting frantic, as if they were starved, lunging at my skin without any regard to my swinging hand. They died quickly. Anyway, I should have taken that as a sign. I went to bed and it wasn't long before I heard the "bzzzz" of a mosquito by my ear. I slapped my ear instinctively, knowing that all I was doing was hitting myself in the face. It kept on returning every 5 minutes until I finally flipped out and turned on the lights. I found it quickly and killed it, trying to go back to sleep. Again, another mosquito "bzzz-ed" by my head, the fourth one that night. I gave it about 20 minutes, then got up again, turned on the lights, then killed it. I tried to sleep again, but again I heard the fifth mosquito. I chose to ignore it for about 30 minutes. This was getting ridiculous. Five mosquitoes! I finally got fed up and turned on the lights in a rage. I killed the mosquito, then saw another one. I killed that, then saw another one. Then another one! After the 8th mosquito I had killed that night, I realized that something strange was happening. But nevertheless, I continued to find them every time I killed another one. It ended at thirteen. It was five in the morning and I needed to get up in two and a half hours. I checked all the windows and found them all to be shut tight. I have no idea where they came from. As I fell asleep, I swear I still heard buzzing, but decided I was just going crazy. The next morning, I woke up, unsure if it was a dream. Then I found all the paper towels with mosquito blood and dead carcasses on them still. As I got dressed I found two more mosquitoes and killed them promptly, totaling fifteen mosquitoes in a four hour period. I haven't seen any since, but I'm a little scared for tonight. Any thoughts? I honestly have no idea what to think at this point.

October 18th, 2007 I've got lots of pictures this round, so I'll post them randomly throughout this. So I was sick last weekend. I hear that after six weeks in a foreign country it's normal to get sick. I've also noticed that some Koreans I've been around are sick, too, so it might just be the season. Either way, it was awful. I look forward to the weekends so much now, and it was literally right after school on Friday that I started to feel nasty. Oh well... it didn't stop me from hiking up a mountain and such during the daytime. I went to Seoul to finally really use these rollerblades I bought. I was trying to find the "forest" that I saw on the maps of Seoul. It was a nice... walk? ride? glide? on the bike trail.                                   Above and Right* This is what the bike trail looked like for much of the trip, with the bridges and cars all around. I thought it was pretty cool. 1st* Seoul tower. You can see a bit of the bike trail on the bottom. 2nd* I really tried to get a nice one of Seoul tower. It's hard. The sky never really looks pretty because of the overcast all the time. In Miami it was so easy. After about two hours of rollerblading, I finally got to the "forest," which was very disappointing. All the trees were very small. I think they just planted it all recently. I was also expecting... I don't know... a forest? It was more like a park. Parts were like a zoo. They had deer and big birds. We've got plenty of deer in Elgin and plenty of big birds in Miami. None of the leaves had really started changing either, which I really wanted to see.                   1st* I like this picture. The buildings and roads look so steep. It seems so out of place in this big of a city. 2nd* I caught the sunset on one of the bridges. 3rd* On one of the turns, there was a random group of about 2 dozen photographers. There really wasn't anything very interesting they were taking a picture of. I have no idea why they were there. I felt really sick that night, but much better the next morning. Some of my friends were hiking up a mountain on the Airport island, so I went. (Again, I missed the group at the train and tried to catch up. I ended up catching up with them back at the train, ironically) I finally got to see some forest, though, which was nice. The leaves are all pretty much still green, but it was nice to get out of the city for a bit. I never realized how green Elgin is and how many trees there really are around that city. Maybe it's because my backyard back at home is a forest preserve. Anyway, the air just smelled familiar on the mountain. It's nice. Part of it's probably the weather getting colder and the vague, slight smell of death lingering in the air.                          1st* There are fields and open spaces in Incheon. You just have to find them. This was actually a rice field... so... it's not like you could walk on it, but it looks nice. 2nd* The view from the mountain top. I cut out most of the city. The visibility wasn't very high... again. I wonder when the air clears up. I almost forgot the most important thing. Well, maybe not for you. I gave my bunny away for a week! It's a pretty big deal. I finally got fed up with the peeing, pooping and chewing. I adjusted my whole room so I had no cords under two feet off the floor, and then it starts chewing on the floor itself! That's too much! That's where I set the line. The bunny goes... for now. I gave it to a girl who really likes bunnies and we said she could take it for a week. She really likes it, though. I miss it, but if she wants it for longer I don't think I'll object.                           1st* I got off the subway with my rollerblades and found a random, huge seafood market. Of course, in Korea "seafood" means mostly octopus and crabs... See how many different types of animals you can recognize in this picture. 2nd* So many crabs. This was a warehouse full of little shops with massive amounts of tanks just like this. Where do they all go? I don't understand how there's a demand for so many crabs. Tonight I bought an aloe vera plant. I haven't told my mom yet. If you don't know, we have an orchard of aloe vera at my house in Illinois. I tried counting the pots once and stopped counting after 12. Aloe vera is one of those things I never thought I'd buy. I figure it will help my bug bites and chapped lips. I'm kind of ashamed. All my life I've patronized my mother for being crazy, the aloe vera orchard being one of the concrete proofs. Now I own one, and I actually picked and chose the plant with mini-aloe vera buds so I can separate them as I was taught and grow three plants for the price of one. I'll have to ask mom how to do that soon. Quick note on school: I'm actually starting to like my classes. It's strange. I'm starting to feel more relaxed at work now. I'm not nearly as bored as I used to be. I'm finding things to do to keep me busy, and days that used to make me exhausted I barely notice anymore. I've also gotten better at teaching. I continually surprise myself with the stuff I'm able to make up on the spot to cater to problems my classes might have, be it extra time, problem students, bored students, loud students, or all of the above. And the students still treat me like a celebrity. I really do wish that would stop. I can't go anywhere without my presence being noticed and pointed and yelled at. That got old real quick. Quick Challenge: Try to define the term "so-called" (ex: the so-called "Windy City" is not actually the windiest city in America) using simple words and short sentences.

October 8th, 2007 It's freezing here! I'm trying to type, but my fingers are slow. No, it's not that bad, I'm just used to Miami weather. This is going to be a rough winter. I'm already going to bust out a coat tomorrow. There are so many little things that happen out here that are different. Unless I took a notebook around me everywhere there is no way I'd be able to document it all. For instance, it's perfectly normal for one of my co-teachers to put her head down during a staff meeting for another teacher to start picking out her gray hairs. It's also normal to crack open a beer in the middle of an Elementary School meeting, too. Different cultures... Today we had a staff meeting at 4:00. My co-teacher messaged me on the school instant messaging software (all the school computers here are connected so it's easy to message any teacher at any time and send any files instantly... very useful). She said, "Will you come to the meeting now?" I said, "Yes. It starts at 4, right?" (it was 3:45) She responded "Yes! Come now!" Everyone was in the staff meeting and had been there for awhile. I nudged the teacher next to me, pointed to the clock and put four fingers up with a questioning expression. I was 5 minutes early. She smiled and nodded. I hate not knowing what's going on ever. They gave me a cheesecake for my birthday. That was really nice. I really wasn't expecting it. It wasn't as good as in America, but still cheesecake.                                   1st* This is my teaching group. I share an office with them, sort of. We get together in the office every Thursday for food. I really have no idea what to expect every time. We've eaten some pretty strange stuff in that office. I look exhausted in this picture. I was expecting a quick snack and then to go home. 2nd* Random, I know. This was the "Memu" at one of the restaurants we went to for my birthday. I bought rollerblades yesterday. At the time I thought it was the dumbest purchase of my life. Maybe it was, but they're pretty cool. I have no idea how to use them, but I've been cruising around my neighborhood since. I skated all the way down to Bupyeong Station tonight. It's about a 50 minute walk. Of course, I really don't know how to use them and I pretty much stumbled the whole way there. Imagine a really tall white man on rollerblades flailing his arms around, nearly falling for 3 miles. It must have been funny for those Koreans. Anyway, I finally got some pictures of the Bupyeong Station club district.                                 1st* This is the main section, but it looks like this everywhere. All these lights are flashing and moving around, too, which is really cool. 2nd* This is from a friend of mine's apartment. She lives right by Bupyeong Station. It's a really nice apartment, too. I'm sort of jealous. I ran into one of my students on the way back. I see him all over the place. I was stumbling into my neighborhood on rollerblades when I hear "Teecha! Teecha!" behind me. I pretended to not hear him but he persisted so I said "Hi" and he followed me all the way back to my apartment. I think he's Special Ed, and spoke no English when I first met him while buying T'okki so many weeks ago. He still doesn't speak much, but he's not afraid to learn and try now, which is awesome. I wonder what he's doing, though, wandering around the neighborhood at night by himself. Behind him are some tanks of fish that are extremely common here outside the restaurants. They usually have eel, squid, flatfish, this other really big fish, shrimp, and giant crabs. You can see the crabs on the left. I usually stay away from these restaurants. I saw that guy in the background pick up one of the huge crabs earlier today with his bare hands. That was alarming. This is a picture from the soccer game: Incheon vs. Ulsan. Incheon won 1:0. There weren't a lot of people there, but the people that were went crazy. I saw the game with a bunch of English and Scottish people who also take soccer very seriously. They sang competitive chants the whole game. A note on garbage: I finally figured out how to do the garbage here. This has been a real problem. Basically, I have four boxes of wet, smelly garbage in my kitchen that I don't know what to do with. There are no garbage trucks that pass by my house. There is no "legal" garbage on the curb. There are no garbage bins that everyone owns. There are no dumpsters around the area. I tried talking to my landlord three times about it, the last time really desperate, but all I came out with was I am supposed to leave me garbage in front of their apartment and they'll sort it out. They will sort out my old food, used toilet paper, egg shells, boxes, receipts, everything. I really don't want that to happen. And sometimes they give me food that tastes really... bland that I throw out. That would be sort of offensive if they find it in the trash later, especially because their intentions are so good. I asked people all weekend what to do with it, and I finally probed my co-teacher for an hour today, and I learned this: There are six bags to throw trash out in: Compost, Plastic, Paper, Glass, Aluminum, and the rest. The first five can be in whatever. The last one needs to be in a special bag I can get at the supermarket. If I do this incorrectly, or get caught putting it on the curb, I will get fined. If I manage to get it on the curb with no one seeing me, someone will take it in a cart the next morning. If I separate everything properly, someone should stop by and knock on my door to pick up them up. No one has stopped by my door yet, so I guess I need to give it to my landlord. But now I know how to separate it, so I can at least do that myself. It feels good to be independent. That may or may not be sarcastic. I don't even know anymore.

October 6th, 2007 My Birthday's tomorrow. I'm turning 22, although I'm already 23 in Korea. In January I'll turn 24. During the flight over I guess you lose a day and a year. They start all their babies out at 1 year old, not 0 years like in the Western world. Also, while they do celebrate birthdays, you actually grow a year older with the start of the new year, not on the day of your birth. It's odd, but that's why it's more effective to tell Koreans what year I was born rather than an actual number. I think I have a love-hate relationship with both my kids and my bunny. On Monday I was ready to kill them all. And let me clear something up about Korean children: At least in elementary school, they are not little robots that do everything they are asked and excel in school and testing. Kids are kids everywhere in the world. There are dumb ones and smart ones, annoying ones and well, more annoying ones. They slack off, disobey, cuss, fight, and everything you find in the behavior of American elementary school students. I think in Highschool  they get that really smart reputation because Korean parents put their children in massive amounts of schooling, literally all day. But it's not because it's "in their blood" or something like that, it's in their culture. On a side note, I've seen three white people in my area since I wrote the last entry. The irony astounds me. I had just wrote that entry and I went to the supermarket and saw a white person on the other side of the counter. He was buying groceries! You don't buy groceries in an area you don't live. I really wonder why I haven't seen him before. The other two were lost at the subway station, so I'm not sure if they count. Last Wednesday we had another holiday so I went to Seoul to wander around the river. It wasn't that exciting because it was really dull weather, but I really liked the environment. I think I'm going to buy a bike or rollerblades so I can go further on the bike trail. Here's some pictures:                   1st* I stopped at one of the dozens of stands for some ramen. It took me awhile to notice the random Christmas tree on the side. It's October, by the way. 2nd* This was a little odd. I was walking to the river and saw this building with eight guards just standing there. There were several more pods of them by every entrance. I went closer to see what the building is and I think it's a library. There are some things that I must not understand correctly. 3rd* I like this picture. I took it along the bike trail. It's one of the few that look good because it was so dismal out. Sarah told me to take another picture of my bunny, who by the way is pooping on my bathroom floor as we speak, which I like because my bathroom gets cleaned ever time I shower. He likes to poke his head through the cage bars, even though now it pretty much wanders around my room by itself. This picture is old, but I saw these two birds by the "skypath" at the Everland amusement park. A little creepy? If you don't know, these two birds look just like the two birds we have back at home, only the albino one here isn't crippled, and the grey one isn't hissing. Okay, I have to get to a soccer game. One of my friends got me a ticket. I have no idea who's playing, but it will probably be cool. I have a list of things I need to put on this blog and I didn't check any of them off after writing this. I really need to start updating this thing more often.