"No toilet paper into the toilet"

Bonus-tangerines
One thing that I have come to love about Korea, especially during this season, is the abundance of tangerines. In actuality they're clementines. This is a rare instance in which my parents are responsible for leading me astray on the distinction and subtle differences of the clementine and the tangerine. In my household any and all round fruits looking like an orange only smaller, were dubbed 'tangerines'. Well thanks to the helpful and informative resources at www.wikipedia.com I was able to once and for all educate myself on the subtleties of the two. In case you too have the misfortune of being ignorant to this fascinating yet often overlooked subject tangerines and clementines then read on. Clementines are the smaller, seedless version with a thin and distinctly orange peel, whereas tangerines frequently have seeds and a thicker more reddish-orange peel.
Anyway regardless of the distinction I will continue to call them tangerines and Korea has a plethora of them. Jeju island, located off the Southern tip of Korea, is a volcano and hence has extremely fertile soil perfect for growing all sorts of fruit. Tangerines have always been my most favorite fruit ever since my mom bought them by the crateful for our family every year. The entire family loves them and even our old dog Mishka would come running as soon as he caught a whiff of the citrus oils spraying into the air. They taste delicious, smell divine and even make for an appealing decoration when piled in a bowl in the middle of an empty table. Street vendors sell them in bowls on the sidewalk or from the bed of trucks. I always opt for the big bowl of about 20-25 tangerines for a totally reasonable 5,000 won, about five bucks.

Drawback-"No paper into the toilet"
For some reason Koreans have it engrained in their very being that the sewage system is incapable of handling one's personal waste in addition to the devices they use to remove said waste from their nether regions. They believe this so whole-heartedly that there are signs in almost every bathroom forbidding the disposal of toilet paper. The one on the door of the staff bathroom at Wonderland, the school where I teach, the ENGLISH school where I teach, reads "No paper into the toilet". In case the heavily loaded signage wasn't enough of clue there is also a persistent absence of toilet paper in public restrooms to further disable people from potentially clogging the toilets. This lack of one of the most important instruments of the bathroom experience is common in all lavatories ranging from high-end restaurants and subway stations to doctors offices and movie theaters.
Another observation of Korean toilet behavior is that not washing one's hands after using the facilities isn't such the taboo that it is in Western cultures. I am by no means accusing the Korean people of being unsanitary and my observations are certainly not based on any statistical fact, especially since my encounters with Koreans in public restrooms are limited to women. It can be assumed that the reason Korean people or women don't wash their hands is because they have no real need to. I mean if one doesn't wipe oneself or come anywhere close to touching anything unsanitary, (except for the doorknob) then is it really considered unsanitary to not wash one's hands? What is unsanitary however is that when there is toilet paper in the restrooms and people don't flush it down the toilet it has to go somewhere. Where does it go you ask? Oh well that's easy. It goes in a tiny lidless garbage can next to the toilet in full view of anyone wishing to use the stall. Not wanting to discuss the unsavory topics of the contents of the garbage cans I will leave it up to the reader's imagination. Just know that it's disgusting and makes me privy to entirely too much personal information about my co-workers.

"Sick" Day

On Friday I called in sick...cough, cough, cough. I decided that it was the perfect day seeing as it was about halfway between our last holiday, (way back in September) and our next holiday, Christmas. So early on Friday morning I called in complaining that I had been up all night vomiting and having diarrhea, probably due some uncooked "sam-gyup-sal" that I had the night before. This was, unbeknownst to me, the exact excuse that had been used by the other foreigners at my school in the last six months. Well Colleen apparently bought my story because right after speaking to her I fell back asleep without a shred of guilt on my conscience. I awoke at a decadent and delicious hour of 12:30 in the afternoon. I opened my Lonely Planet guide to Seoul to see what my day off would bring. I decided on Deoksugung palace despite warnings from the book and by word of mouth that it was the most inferior of the Seoul palaces. I chose it anyway because of its proximity to the National Museum of Korea. I figured at the time that I would kill two birds of culture with one stone.
I took the subway to City Hall and paid my 1,000 won, roughly $1 entrance to the palace. I grabbed the brochure and proceeded on my self-guided tour of the many small buildings that had once been inhabited by king Gojang of the Joseon dynasty. Although the majority of the buildings had been destroyed by the Great Fire of 1904, they have since been reconstructed but the buildings are empty, cavernous and cold. The ornately painted eves of the traditional upturned rooves were the sole sign that these were in fact royal dwellings rather than ordinary log cabins.
Included in the bargain price was admission to the Royal Museum in which I was able to behold an assortment of "two-tiered chest", "eyeglass case" and "traditional clothings" belonging to the royal family and members of the royal military.
Not included in the initial fee was entry to the National Museum of Contemporary Art (annexe). This is not to be mistaken with the actual National Museum of Contemporary Art in Seoul Grand Park which I have also visited and will be further discussed in a reflections part of this blog. The annexe was playing host to a traveling exhibit on "Cubism in Asia". The exhibit showcased pieces from a variety of artists from India, Malaysia, South Korea, Japan, China, Indonesia, Singapore, the Philippines and Sri Lanka from the 1920's to the 1960's.
With Pablo Picasso leading my knowledge of Cubism I paid my $3 and entered the musueum. After a while I ascended to the second story with a pretty well-established idea of which pieces I would and would not steal off the walls in order to decorate my dream home, but I continued on anyway. My time spent in Korea has given me an extrasensory perception of any foreigner (read: white person) within my surroundings and hence was quick to notice the potentially attractive foreigner enjoying a cup of coffee at a nearby table. I plotted my route through the exhibition halls with the idea that I would enter one way and leave another so as to pass by his table to say 'hello'. Soon after following said route I found myself cursing my entire race/generation for being so unfriendly and conservative seeing as the foreigner neither took an active interest in returning my greeting nor did he offer me a bite of his delicious looking coffee cake.
After deciding I had just about had my day's fill of Asian cubism, history and culture altogether, I went downstairs to recap my favorite pieces. I was crossing the main entryway when I saw the aforementioned foreigner coming towards me and heading in the opposite direction. He must have realized what a mistake he made earlier because this time he was much more personable and offered me a smile AND a "hello".
I left the museum and parked myself on a bench half hoping and half expecting him to pass by and stop to talk to me. I sat absorbing the surreality of being in the grounds of a 16th century palace in the heart of metropolitan Seoul for a couple of minutes. I sat facing a fountain with the sun warming my face and the sound of a 'plunky' traditional Korean stringed instrument coming from the speakers and filling my ears. Just when I started to think that maybe I should look around to see if there were movie cameras watching me I saw the mystery foreigner walking towards me while fumbling with a laughably oversized map. He asked me if I knew my way around "Sool". I could tell instantly, by his mispronunciation of 'Seoul', that he was a true foreigner even by the standards of an American in Korea. He sat down next to me and we exchanged the requisite niceties and basic information. It was enough for me to learn that he was from Switzerland, he is an employed engineer exploring Seoul after spending two weeks doing business with Hyundai in the Southern city of Ulsan. Anyway, after some casual conversation we found a nearby church and were married. You may send best wishes, (since gifts aren't necessary due to his financial status) to:
Mr. and Mrs. Ivan
613 St. Bernard Way
Geneva, Switzerland 12345

I will never see him again. He left the following day for his homeland but not after getting a cup of tea, dinner and drinks and a couple of hours of good conversation out of him. He was just another chapter in my not-in-progress book called "My Life is a Movie". Realistically though, who meets a tall, dirty-blonde-haired, blue-eyed and handsome Swiss man at an art museum in Korea?
Well, I suppose it's time to come back from never Neverland because today is just another day in Wonderland.

Another "My Life is a Movie" Moment

So I've recently decided on a good idea for a book that I will never write. The title would be something like "My Life is a Movie" only more whitty and original and the book would contain a series of short non-fiction stories of my life's experiences. My most recent addition happened Saturday afternoon.

I was in Outback Steakhouse with some girlfriends (please ignore the comment from a previous entry that I never go to Outback), we stopped for some early evening refreshments of a pitcher of "Wallabe-darned", and some cheese fries. It seemed like the perfect health snack after our hike up to Seoul tower. Anyway as I stood up to visit the ladies room I was told by Nikki to check out the bidet. An image of an old-fashioned French style bidet that is separate from the toilet was in my mind but was very different from what I encountered in the stall. The toilet looked very much like an ordinary toilet except there was a small box with a number of buttons attached to the right hand side of the bowl. There were pictures with some English translations written on stickers below. I examined each sticker carefully. The top two said "clean" and "dry" and the bottom two "stop" and something else. Having been in one of these fancy dan restrooms before I knew that the "clean" button meant that the toilet seat would rotate on the bowl and be cleaned and squeegied by a little mechanical arm so that it was nice and fresh to receive my goods. I leaned over the toilet to push the appropriate button and stood back to watch the magic take place. Well much to my surprise and disgust instead of a rotating toilet seat I got a squirt of water from somewhere within the toilet bowl directly in my face. I quickly flattened myself against the side of the stall as the stream of water continued to shoot out of the toilet and soak the picture of the "bloomin' onion" on the stall door. Evidently this was the bidet that I had been warned about. I thought that the stream would stop after a couple of seconds, but as the puddle on the floor continued to grow I realized that this was not the case and that I would have to duck beneath the stream to press the "stop" button.

Jennifer went in later and overheard some women surmising that some kids must have been fooling around with the buttons. Close ladies...very close.

Happy Pepero Day Everyone!!!

Bonus-Pepero day
Yes, Friday was Pepero day and a major perk for us teachers. A Pepero is a chocolate-covered cookie stick that was created by Lotte (one of the handful of Korean conglomerates). Lotte introduced the holiday as an answer to the American consumerist holiday of St. Valentine's day. According to my students Pepero day is on November 11th because the date 11/11 looks like four Pepero sticks held side by side.

I hadn't received any wind of the holiday prior to my first class this past Friday. I walk in and was inundated with children thrusting abnormally large wrapped Pepero in my face. The average Pepero seemed to be about a foot long where as the original ones are much thinner and only about six inches long. The biggest one I saw all day was a "meter Pepero", a whole 100 cm of chocolate covered cookie stick. (Note: I apologize for the fluctuation between the American and the Metric system but it's a product of my raising and I can't help it.)

Anyway after having a "Pepero party" in my first class, which was really an excuse to not have to teach, it seemed only logical that this Pepero day would spawn a fun inter-teacher competition. Who could collect the most Pepero from their students. Right away I saw the true nature of my colleagues come forth. Rob immediately started bursting into classrooms on our ten minute break asking the students "who likes teacher Robert?" A flood of girls came into the teacher's office with armfulls of Pepero to give to their teachers but they were only obligated to give one to teachers who actually taught them. One of my students slipped in between Jennifer and I to give me a Pepero and Jennifer said "what I don't get one?" The girl was so shocked and confused that she hesitantly handed one to Jennifer to. I walked into one of my afternoon classes where NONE of my six students had a Pepero for me despite that they all had some in their bags. I sat down at the front of class and said "no Pepero, no teach".

So by days end we did the tally and Rob and I were definitely at the low end of the race. Although in my defense my numbers were slightly skewed because of the large number of Pepero that I consumed throughout the day without first adding them to my tally. Jennifer scored pretty highly but the Korean teacher Jay won by a landslide. She had Pepero of every different shape and size, not to mention the coveted peanut covered variety.

Drawback-staff dinners
One would think that a staff dinner would never fall under the "drawback" category, especially when it's an all expenses paid by your boss kind of staff dinner, but this one does. We were informed about a week and a half ago that CJ, (the owner of our particular Wonderland franchise and unabashed sleeze ball), would be taking us out to dinner at none other than the Hwajeong Outback Steakhouse. It seems as though whenever the foreign teachers are involved the Koreans automatically assume that we are incapable of accepting or adapting to anything unfamiliar to us especially when it comes to food. Upon arrival in Korea the new foreign teacher is greeted with a meal at Pizza Hut and now Outback! I don't eat at either establishment in the States where there might be some shred of hope that they would do it right let alone here where they will try to "Koreanize" everything.

Anyway it should be no surprise that I really don't like a single one of the Korean teachers I work with. I hate we are held to a higher standard than them. I hate that they can get away with so much more. I hate that they rudely only speak Korean with the other teachers even in front of a foreign teacher. I have repeatedly heard them mention my name in my presence without giving any concern to filling me about what exactly they are saying. I hate that they always ask me to do things for them and I hate that they criticize my teaching. I also hate their personnalities, the way they dress and how they speak. I just totally and completely despise them for every reason no matter how unjustified or out of line it may seem. So needless to say I was not looking forward to socializing with them outside of school. I mean seriously, we're not friends and we don't even pretend to be so while at work what makes anyone think that it will be any different outside of work?! We weren't exactly given a choice in the matter so I planned to go to the dinner, order the most espensive food and drink on the menu, be amicable and then leave after an appropriate amount of niceties were exchanged.

I arrived ten minutes late to the dinner and sat next to Rob. Everyone gave me a big resounding and transparent "hello!" and thrust a menu in my hands. I promptly turned to the steak page and ordered a massive piece of beef that I had very little appetite for and a long island ice tea. When asked if I wanted to make that a premium L.I. I replied "why of course".

CJ asked me almost right away how I felt about Korea now that I had been here for three. I gave him a smirk and said that I thought it was ok...so-so. I thought in my head that I would like it a lot more if I didn't have to work at your crappy, sorry excuse for a school every day and if I didn't have to put up with the bullshit that you and Colleen dish out on a regular basis, but I thought it would make for a very awkward remainder of the evening.

So the foreign teachers and I sat eating in silence as the Korean teachers spoke over, around and through us in Korean to one another without any attempt to translate, or include us in the conversation. Finally the plates were cleared and we thanked CJ and got up to leave when Kim, my co-teacher, made a big scene about us going out for drinks together. I politely tried to bow out by mentioning that I had other plans. "Oh you have appointment? But is just first time. Come with us. Ohhh you should come. Will be fun! We go for some drink. Just for short time you should coming with us." Is she serious? I hate you and you're like 55 years old!!!! What in our history together makes you think that that would even be remotely agreeable to me?! She wouldn't let up! The truth is that I would totally have gone with them to some old folks bar and ordered some ungodly expensive drink but they were so unorganized they didn't even know where they were going. I was already standing and had my coat on as this whole exchange was taking place and I was ready to go. They sent Joann out as a scout to "check out" a bar before they decided they wanted to go there and that's what they were waiting for. Well none of them actually live in this god forsaken slum town where my company apartment happens to be so they're not nearly as familiar with its total lameness as I am. Hwajeong sucks and there aren't ANY bars worth going to and that is why I pay the money to go downtown every weekend. Anyway we left them there with the promise that we'd call to find out where they were and we'd meet up for one drink before heading out for the night. We didn't call and I don't care. Probably better off that I didn't go because I would have ended up getting drunk and doing or saying something I would regret come Monday.

The "I Hate My Teacher Song"

Mmmmm yum we went to the Korean restaurant (which we call the Chinese place for reasons unbeknownst to me). It's right across the street from school and I had Dongas, (three slabs of pork cutlet with some rice and two tater tots). It was totally delicious and filling and perfect. We can't order anything off the menu so we stole one and everyday we try something new and write a description next to the Korean name. It's always a gamble and I'm dreading the day that I unwittingly order the chicken foot soup.
In my first class today my favorite student Nathan, told me that he overheard the girls talking about how they "don't like Ms. Megan". The three girls instantly and vehemently denied that the conversation ever took place. All of my students are tattle tales and despite my efforts to break them of the annoying habit it's a practice that continues day in and day out. "Teacher, Joseph spoka Korea" is the one I hear most often since our school employs a strict policy of suppressing anything distinctly Korean, especially the language. Anyway Nathan's bit of information wasn't surprising to me since I've heard two of the three girls asking each other before, somewhat foolishly in English, whether they liked me or not. At the time I didn't get a chance to hear the answer but it's obvious that the question wouldn't have been asked if the answer wasn't decidedly in the negative. I'm not hurt by this news but I still had to muster all of my maturity not to shout back at them "well that's fine cause I can't stand you either!" Somehow I don't think this would have been a good solution but in truth I totally despise two of the girls in that class and consequently I pick on them more often than most. Their problem is that they're both stupid. The one, Gena, continuously gets the lowest scores in the class and struggles to answer a question when called upon to do so. This fact however, does not stop her from raising her hand anyway and then acting all coy and forgetful when I call on her. Both girls cheat off of their peers because they're too stupid to come up with the answers by themselves and this drives me crazy. Anyway so I'm not getting any teacher of the year awards from that class. Oh well. The point of this entry is that it reminded me of a similar childhood experience that I had.
In the first grade my teacher's name was Mrs. Evanoff. I didn't like her very much and I obviously thought it was necessary to share my sentiments with my desk partner Erica. Erica was a hateful little fat girl that I thought I could trust because she was a good little Catholic just like me. Well I probably should have taken my confession to a priest instead because Erica, soon after hearing that I didn't like Mrs. Evanoff, saw cookies rather than dollar signs and got a keen idea. Erica told me that if I didn't give her my snack every day for a week (or was it a year?), that she would tell Mrs. Evanoff the truth about my feelings. Being the bright little girl that I was, I knew full well that Mrs. Evanoff finding out that I said that I wasn't fond of her would result in my certain death. Not wanting to suffer such a fate I, unlike the U.S. government negotiated with the first grade terrorist and succumbed to her blackmail.
It had only been a couple of days when the lack of a daily snack began to show in my sunken, hollowed out face. My mom asked me why I was so hungry after school and why I wasn't eating my snack. I crumbled under the penetrating eyes of my mother and told her the whole story with all of the sordid details. I made her swear that she would never tell Mrs. Evanoff, but my mother being a fellow educator and a cold-hearted woman promptly went to my teacher, not in an attempt to protect me from Erica, but to encourage Mrs. Evanoff to use this information to her benefit and to milk the situation for all it was worth. My mom thought for sure Mrs. Evanoff would have a good laugh at the whole thing and then move on. Although that may have been my mother's approach, it certainly was not Mrs. Evanoff's and I knew instantly the day she called both of us forward to her desk that I was in for it. Well to make a long story a little less long, Erica and I both received a worm each on our apples, the laminated symbol of your safety in the first grade, three worms in one's apple warranted a letter home and the impending end of the world to a six year old. My relationship with my mother suffered as a consequence and things wouldn't be the same again for at least another day or two.

Go-Go Dancers vs. Cow Costumes

Bonus
Go-go dancers. Koreans love go-go dancers and they will find any excuse to hire a couple. Generally they are used as a means of advertisement. They have microphones, loud music, flashy signs, and even flashier costumes. New businesses seem to find that go-go dancers really bring in the customers. The dance, they sing, they shout some stuff in Korean that I don't understand and they are totally captivating. Yes I will admit I have stopped dead in my tracks on a busy shopping street to watch the go-go dancers, but usually it's out of sheer confusion that I stare at them rather than admiration. Mostly I find myself asking, "why?" A butcher shop opened up on the corner of the building that my school is in. I think it's grand opening was Friday and all weekend and into this week they have been promoting their hearts out. First there was the big, inflatable, dancing puppet. Next it was the overly loud rhythmic mucic. Finally it was the go-go dancers. Why they would opt for go-go dancers instead of a man in a cow costume is beyond me.

Drawback
Not participating in daylight savings time. I guess I've never really thought about how cool daylight savings time is. It always just came and went with very little fanfare and I was usually nonethewiser. I mean occassionally there would be a year where your mom would forget to tell you and you'd wake up late for school or be totally psyched when you woke up early and realized you still had an hour to sleep. I bet people in the Western hemisphere really take the whole thing for granted. I have lived in Korea long enough to have surpassed one daylight savings time/day without actually experiencing it at all. The day came and went like it does every year only in Korea we didn't change our watches back an hour. This doesn't seem like such a big thing but truly it is. For example the mornings are brutal. The sun rises at 7 in the morning when I am still sleeping. It pours in the windows and floods my dreams with its stark brightness and I hate it for that. I had to steal one of those ridiculous eyemask things from work just to survive the mornings. On a side note, why we have eyemask things at a Korean kindergarden is beyond me but I'm grateful for it.

By the time the sun has gone clear across the sky and is ready to set it's only like 4pm. Do you know how confused my kids get when I ask them what the weather is like after the sun has already gone down? The answer is supposed to include something about the sky conditions and the temperature but when there's no sun they don't know what to do. They end up just saying cloudy because they know for certain that it isn't sunny and then they get upset when I beat them for being wrong. The correct answer is "this evening it is dark and cold" but they are pre-programmed to say that "today it is sunny/cloudy and warm/cold". Poor little bastards suffer so, because for some reason Korea is too good for daylight savings time.

The other downfall about it being dark at 5:00pm is that I assume that it's much later than it really is. It looks like it's 10 o'clock at night so I should probably go home because it's getting late. I couldn't possibly go into town/watch a movie/go to a restaurant at this hour!!!! Sometimes I have to smack myself around a bit to remind myself that it's only 6pm and going home now would result in at least six hours of continuous bad t.v.

Thrills and Spills

This weekend was a crazy good time. Rob, Jen, Yoon-Soo and I went to Sinchon this weekend for some "live Jazz music, dinner and maybe a couple drinks". Well as is commonplace with this crowd of usual suspects, jazz and dinner turned into classic rock and long island's. We danced, we sang, we met some people. Jen and I started talking to a group of Canadian boys. The cutest introduced himself as Seamus. I thought I was playing along with what must surely be a joke when I told him my pseudonym Colleen. This doesn't seem particularly funny to those who know me since my middle name is in fact Colleen but to Jennifer it was hilarious seeing as our most loathed enemy, (our boss) is named Colleen. The guys looked perplexed at Jennifer's laughing and spitting and asked what the deal was. I immediately said well it's my fake name, ya know since you gave me a fake name too. After calling him a blatant liar he eventually pulled out his driver's license to prove that his given name definitely was Seamus. I felt like an ass but they didn't seem to be too offended since they let us tag along to Hongdae.

Hongdae and Sinchon are both college towns. On the weekends the wary students of Ewha Women's University and Yonsei University take over the nightlife. It's a good place to go as a lonely foreigner because you have a good chance of meeting people your own age (as opposed to the crones I work with at school), and a lot of them generally have a decent grasp of English.

Anyway the bad news about that night is that Jennifer and I got separated from Rob and Yoon-Soo and then Jennifer and I got separated from each other. Consequently we took three separate cabs home which is way more expensive than if we had been able to split it. I accidetally left my jacket in the bar so I didn't have a key to my apartment. I crashed on Rob and Yoon-Soo's couch, woke up with a stiff neck and asked Yoon-Soo to call a lock smith. Twas a good night.

I was in a pretty good mood when I started this entry earlier today but I've since gotten all gloomy and depursed. I came home and watched "Crazy Beautiful" and fell totally madly and deeply in love with Jay Hernandez. Check out his picture if you're unfamiliar. http://membres.lycos.fr/celebritespourtoi/jay hernandez.htm
Anyway watching it just made me feel lonely.

I cut my hand this morning on a broken piece of mirror glued to my wall. I use the wall to propel myself into a chair in my laundry/get ready room. I overshot the door jam and caught the glass. It took a dime-sized chunk of meat off. I realized almost right away that the skin was no longer attached to my hand so I started to look for it on the floor and on the wall. I found it clinging by a colorless string of flesh to the corner of a particularly big piece of mirror. I was squishing the chunk of skin in my hand trying to figure out how I felt about the whole thing when I noticed the blood. It started off as three totally perfect and beautiful circles on the floor. Then the deluge ensued. The blood drowned what I thought was a chunk of flesh in the sink. I was only slightly disappointed and more grossed out to discover this evening that it was a discarded piece of a ramen noodle instead.

Bonus
Counting games. I suppose these aren't exactly games that are unique to Seoul but they're a favorite pastime of mine. The counting games vary depending on location and who is accompanying me wherever I'm going. With Rob the game is "count the foreigners". This one is best played in Sinchon or Hongdae because there is a pretty good sprinkling of foreigners. It is totally lame in Hwajeong because you could go for hours without seeing one and in Itaewon it's just not fair. We should really be playing "count the Koreans" in Itaewon. If I'm with Jennifer and we're on the subway it's usually "count the man purses", "count the number of visible cell phones", or "count the number of items with a Louis Vuitton logo". If we're feeling adventurous we might do a combination of all four.

Anyway as I said these games don't have to solely be played in Seoul, so if you want to try to play here are a couple of rules. 1)When in Korea a foreigner is usually only counted if it is perceived that they are English speaking. Unfortunately black people are often excluded from the tally because they're most likely Nigerian unless they are clearly dressed in a military uniform. 2)Man purses count as any bag carried by a man that are too small to contain a laptap or books. 3)Knock off Louis Vuitton logos are also counted including but not limited to Louis' close cousin with the initials JM. 4)It counts for two points if you see a man carrying a Louis Vuitton man purse and ten points if it's a man carrying a Louis Vuitton dog carrier with a hideous little mongrel inside.

Anyway so give it a whirl in your town and see how much fun it is. Feel free to post a comment if you've discovered a variation in the game.

Drawback
The "shink". It's a cross breed creation of a sink and a shower doing the nasty and it's how I get clean. There is no separation between the shower and the rest of the bathroom. There isn't even a slight slant in the floor to direct the water towards the drain and my toilet seat is always wet. The toilet paper holder is thankfully installed high enough to avoid the stream but the shower rack isn't. The shower head comes out of the top of the sink faucet and attaches high on the wall. It's so high that by the time the water reaches my skin it has had time to cool significantly so I have to keep the temperature up pretty high to stay warm. It is also so high that it shoots water out of the tiny window. The window has to stay open to allow the bathroom to dry out during the day while I'm at work so my place gets pretty cold while I'm away. Another drawback of "the shink" is that it's positioned right in front of the mirror and you HAVE to face it while you shower which just seems weird.

First Post

I walked to work today. It seems as though the the weather can't quite commit itself to Autumn. The leaves have changed, which I haven't seen for quite some time thanks to Florida's lack of seasonal change, but the temperature continues to fluctuate. It was warm enough today that my scarf and wrist warmers seemed superfluous, although that is generally the case with any type of individual body part "warmer" be it the wrist or the leg variety. According to my students "Today is sunny and mild."

I took the route to school that bypasses a butcher shop that a golden retriever inhabits. It's rare to see big dogs in Korea and this one is always really friendly. I normally stop and pet him and exchange some words with him as he wags his tail and sniffs my crotch but he wasn't there today. I peeked in the window and saw him asleep on his bed. I was sad to be deprived of the perk. I went to Starbucks and got my usual and a paper. I feel so damn grownup it makes me sick.

My morning passed with very little excitement. It's getting harder and harder to find a suitable place to eat lunch though. I've completely given up on the lunches at school seeing as they're always cold and occassionally questionable. I think the final straw for me was the day that I stuck my chopsticks into one of the various communal bowls and deposited what I thought was some sort of mysterious vegetable into my own bowl of rice. I stuck a bite in my mouth only to realize that the crunchy saltiness was in no way any legume I was familiar with. Anchovies. Korean freeze dried anchovies that are small, blue and see-through. I've been told that the lunch ladies take offense to the absence of foreign teachers at lunch but I don't really care anymore.

Due to a lack of blogable material I've decided to include in each entry one bonus and one drawback about life in Korea.

Bonus
Street food. Street food in the States is limited to the occassional hot dog or pretzel stand and even that is really only commonplace in big cities. The best street food I can think of outside of Korea would have to be the food carts that provide the hungry staff and students of UPENN with a delicious variety of snacks and delectable Greek and Mexican dishes, to name a few. Yeah mmm yum those food carts are something else but I'm not sure if they truly qualify as 'street' food. They're more like movable restaurant food.

Anyway Korean street food is some of the highest quality I have come to encounter. There is NOTHING in the World that seems like a better idea at about 3:00 or 4:00 AM than a delicious selection of fried nibblets or some spicy 'tukbogee'. You generally get a cup of hot mystery soup with it and the spiciness, the heat of the food and the coldness of the morning air makes your nose run but you don't even care. The delicious chewy rice-cake (whatever that is) is the perfect remedy. The prices are cheap, as is usual for most Korean cuisine, probably between $2 and $5. In addition if you have decided that maybe you haven't had quite enough to drink you can always purchase a bottle of Soju, the flavorless, extremely potent and EXTREMELY cheap Korean rice vodka. When I say extremely cheap I am truly not exaggerating. A bottle of roughly 16oz is less than $1, and only about 40cents more expensive than a bottle of water.

Another Korean street food highlight are the fried fish-shaped pastries filled with red bean paste. Most foreigners don't take to the bean paste which seems to be the Korean answer to chocolate filling, but I rather like its semi-sweetness and the gooey texture. I can't remember the name of this little snack but it comes out in the Fall and brings a smile to anyone's face. It is freshly made and warms one's hands, belly and heart on a brisk day.

(I will hopefully be able to add pictures for your viewing pleasure so that you can truly appreciate what I'm talking about, until then please use your imagination).


Drawback
The lack of cultural diversity. I know this is a big one for a lot of foreigners. In all of the countries I've lived and visited I have never before felt like such an outsider. The closest contender would be Turkey but even that with the Muslims in conservative attire didn't seem as bad. There are few more daunting feelings in the world than being in a overly-crowded place ie. the subway, marketplace or Myeong-dong, and being the only person of the thousands who does NOT have dark hair and dark slanted eyes. It makes you very aware of your appearance and self-conscious for a whole slew of different reasons other than the traditional ones of weight, height and nose size. It has been said that this lack of diversity causes racism, intollerance and has even incited the use of the heavily loaded political science word 'xenophobia'.

Aside from unabashed and continuous stares of curiosity I thankfully haven't consciously been on the receiving end of any sort of hatred from the Korean people and I hope it stays that way. It seems ridiculous but this isolation from anything or anyone familiar or similar to me makes it that much more exciting when I do see a foreigner or hear a familiar song. My heart gets all aflutter with excitement. It's the strangest feeling.

Well that's all for now. I have five more classes to make it through before I'm in the home stretch towards the weekend.

Description of the Title

Miguk might not mean anything where you come from but it means 'American' in Korea and that's exactly what I am...an American in Korea, for the timebeing that is. I teach English as a second language to children at a Wonderland franchise school in Hwajeong a small and totally useless town? city? suburb? outside of Seoul.

Although it sometimes feels like it consumes me entirely and sucks the soul from my being, my work isn't everything and the purpose of keeping this blog is to remind myself of that. I will attempt to avoid showcasing the monotony of my job and try instead to capture in words what I cannot capture in pictures, (for lack of a digital camera and a computer with a USB port), which is the experience of living in such a different culture from my own or any I have experienced thus far. I find myself constantly having to find my balance after being shaken by the impact and surreality of living here. It is horrible and wonderful and comfortable and scary all at the same time. I have "good Korea days" where it just seems like everything is going right. Sometimes they happen when I truly feel like I am making an impact on my student's lives and that I am kicking ass at my job. Other times they happen when I have ridiculously fun times with fabulous new friends and feel like I'm living a truly cosmopolitan lifestyle. They also happen when I experience or witness things that could so totally only happen in Korea and I am awed by them. I also have "bad Korea days" where I count the seconds until the end of my year long contract and long for the familiar and the comfortable. These days often involve upsetting encounters with my incompetent boss Colleen or stints of deep-seeded loneliness and depression.

I hope soon be able to add pictures so as to help illustrate all of my encounters. The good thing about working here is that the money is pretty decent so it shouldn't be too much longer before I am able to do so. The majority of the November posts are transplants from my blog on myspace.com so don't be alarmed if you see something you've read before. Please enjoy reading my blog and feel free to post comments at will.