Oh Korea

So Yea. Korea is interesting. I supposed i can stand my job. It is getting easier and easier by the day. the more you do something the better you get at it. So i'm on my way to mastering the art of creating four lessons in under 45 min.

As i type this I am eating probably the weirdest, not the worst, food ive tried in korea. It is a sausage. Being mostly german ive come to love all things sausage but this is pretty weird. It is a sausage casing with translucent rice noodles, spices and blood. Yes. Blood. There isn't any meat besides the side of pig heart that it came with. The real question is does the sausage qualify as being vegetarian?

1st day at school

Monday afternoon. I have been in korea less than 48 hrs. I roll out of my pretty pink bed and shuffle to work for my first day. the previous night a feww of the teachers and I got sauced up and I told them all i brought a suit for my first day. No one believed me so I felt there was no better time than the first day of the new semester to wear my suit. I was wrong. It was 95 degrees outside and felt like i was walking in a steam room. Not even close to the ideal suit wearing weather.

I was walked around the office and shown where supplies are kept and got the typical first day at the office tour. Then I was given my books and told to prepare for my 4 classes that day. I had a little over and hour and a half to prepare lesson plans for 4 different 80 minute classes with kids of different abilities with 12 different books and ZERO teaching experience.

It was the first day i realized what was expected of me. Avalon wants nothing more from me than to stand there and be white. Honestly thats pretty much it. I am seriously getting paid to speak my midwestern version of english in front of these kids while we navigate through our text books. Thats all. If I prepare a worksheet or 2 i look ambitious. That said I choose to strictly follow the book I will go insane. "Repeat after me kids; Trina was scared because her Mother took her to the dentist."

So the first day i decided i wanted to learn students names, Thank god they all have english names. I told them they could either call me Kyle or Zander. They immediately called me Panda because it sounds like Zander and the Black and White Suit.

Of course on the first day students try to puch their luck by testing the teacher. So i had to find a balance between singing, dancing and laughing and desk kicking and stern finger pointing.

Gosh this will be a fun year.

1st 72

As Lewis Black aid, “ I have no idea if new Zealand is beautiful because anything after a 12 hr airplane ride looks beautiful.” That’s kinda how I felt getting off the plane into the smog laden muggy Korean air. Korea is geographically beautiful. It looks like a developed version of western Wisconsin. Korea and wisco are about the latitude, so I guess it makes sense. Korea is roughly half the size of wisco with about 6x the population. Every bit of land that can be exploited for Koreans use is or will be developed. I live in a brand new part of CheongJu. Greg, a coworker has been at Avalon, my school, for 28 months. He was one of the first teachers at the school. He said that in the 18 months he’s been here Cheong Ju has grossly expanded. Interestingly enough, all the entrepreneurs who decided to take a gamble on setting up shop in a brand new dong on the out skirts of town (my neighborhood) pretty much had their shit pushed in when the recession hit. Business owners cant afford to leave because real estate is so precious over here that their leases are worth too much money for them to abandon ship. The way I understand it a person interested in using land cannot purchase it because it is far to expensive. The must lease it. When they lease the property they pay a ridiculous amount up front. 50 million won ( 40,000 dollars) for an apartment or store front. Then the person pays 200,000 won / month rent. Then after their lease is up they get a portion of the 50 million they put up originally. ANYWAYS, my apartment is ina brand new part of town, and is in fact brand new. While this sounds nice, it makes it difficult for me to take a taxi home because the cab driver has no idea where anything is in the new part of the city…

So I arrived at 9pm Saturday (Korean time) after being in an airport or on a plane for 24 hrs. I took a bus from Seoul to Cheong ju. Saying Seoul is big doesn’t do it justice. Seoul metropolitan area is the 2nd largest metropolitan area in the world. On the bus it never seemed to end. Quite the contrast from Cross Plains. Neon lights everywhere advertising for businesses which could be anything ( I don’t read Korean…)

Sunday I was wide awake at 6am so I decided to go and try to get lost. I did not succeed but I did find wifi. I live near one of the 3000 convenience stores in Cheongju. I sent emails to mama and papa telling them I made it. My boss found me at the coffee shop and bought me a huge sushi lunch for 6 dollars then we made it over to the school where I met my lead teacher Philip. Philip immediately made me regret cutting my hair. Then fella has hair all the way to his ass and a thin scraggly beard. I liked him immediately. He took 2 other teachers and I to a shopping district where we bought some house hold items.

Then the night got started, He took us to dinner where we barbequed our own Korean steak (not dog) and drank soju. 4 other teachers at Avalon showed up. We then proceeded to drink 3 half liters of soju and a bunch of beer. Then someone had the great Idea of going to a Noreabong.

Now a noreabong is a room u rent and sing karaoke and get drunk. Koreans love it so do drunk americans. At the noraebong we proceeded to drink copious amounts of soju and Cass a not soo bad Korean “beer”. After Kevin, one of the existing teachers, started necking with Fey, a new teacher whose boyfriend Ken was standing 10 feet away, I decided I we were all pretty drunk and it would be good for me to try and get some rest before my first day of classes… there was no need to really leave because no amount of sleep could have prepared me for my first day.