Doomed as Usual

I have a ridiculous history of having my New Years Eve plans completely and utterly train wrecked. I always seem to be recuperating from surgery and doped up on opiates, sick or otherwise incapacitated. The first major year I had plans to be in NYC in high school, my boarding school friends who were supposed to meet me got stranded in Vermont because of a major ice storm. One year I gave up even trying to make plans and just had dinner at home with my parents, sipped champagne at midnight and went to bed.

This year I was supposed to go dancing with Salsa Boy and friends in Hongdae but I woke up this morning utterly incapacitated by a vicious cold. I am going to have a drink locally, get my first midnight kiss and go to bed.

In order to make up for the major mope fest that is this blog post, look at another ridiculously cute photo of my nephew.Look at that cutie pie. ~coos~

War

Today I actually got my butt out of bed in a timely fashion and headed into Seoul to check out the National War Museum and monuments. Perhaps reading Sartre (Nausea, sadly I could only get a hold of a copy in English) on the way there was not the best move. It put me in a rather melancholy mood before I even got there. I have a thing about violence. My senior year I spent a good deal of time researching collective violence and genocide. It was traumatizing, I had nightmares galore and it got to the point where I wouldn't work on my research without someone else in my room. I felt like I couldn't talk about it because the atrocities were so awful that I didn't want to inflict the horror I felt on anyone else. The point is, when it comes to violence, I'm a masochist. It sickens me to no end, I have trouble comprehending it and yet I find it endlessly fascinating.

The first floor of the museum had a really awesome replica of a turtle ship, one of the first armored battle ships in history but the rest of the artifacts were forgettable compared to the collection at the national museum. Not to mention that the English in this section of the museum was also pretty awful on the signs. What really got to me was the second floor which was devoted to the Korean war. In the very beginning, before the US or the United Nations stepped in with troops and aid, South Korea was completely out numbered. Cadets were sent to the front lines before ever being made officers. A volunteer student corps was founded...and 100,000 students joined the war effort. Individuals and small groups helped via guerrilla warfare tactics. People were just slaughtered. Looking at the complete and utter devastation that took place in the country and it is no wonder that more old temples and relics don't exist. Everything was razed to the ground.

When I took history classes, everything past WWII was gone over so quickly. I'm sure we learned about the Korean War but I couldn't remember very much. It was fascinating to read about, especially the UN documents about decisions to get involved on the peninsula.It's a pretty impressive building. I pulled this photo off of a google image search. Imagine it like this but covered with a few inches of snow.

An Official Change of Status

I'm an AUNT!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! No longer just a sister but a real live Auntie. As I was walking down the street with Salsa Boy I got a phone call from my Mom that my sister in law had gone into labor. Salsa Boy looked a little distressed until he pieced together that the shrieking and jumping up and down was from good news and that in fact, no one had died or blown up the house. I told my mother that she was absolutely to call me the second SHE got the call that the baby had been born, regardless of the hour in Korea. 5:11am I got the call, Jakob had finally arrived in the world! The advent of crackberries (the Blackberry) is truly amazing. The family got frequent updates on the progress, since she was in labor for EONS or rather 14.5 hours.

I tried to fall back to sleep, I really did. However, I've never been an Aunt before (obviously) and every time I thought about drifting off the adrenaline would kick in and my brain would sort of do a mental happy dance and go 'You're an AUNT, Joshie is a fricken DAD, Mom and Dad are GRANDPARENTS.' Then I started thinking about how crazy it must feel to be a great-grandparent and well my brain goes on tangents. The only bittersweet thing is that Jakob will be nearly a year old before I get to hold him. I honestly laid in bed considering my finances but I really can't afford to jet off to the States last minute. At least babies don't form real memories at that stage.

Here is a picture of Mister Jakob, less than 10 minutes old.How cute is he???!!!!!!!!!!!! At this point he is less than 2 hours old and there are already demands from the grandparents for more pictures. What would people do without camera phones???

Dearest Jakob,
Welcome to the world. You are loved and cherished!
Love,
Auntie Alex

My Very First Christmas Party

Most people's reaction to the fact that I've never been to a Christmas party is disbelief. They think that maybe I'm exaggerating or joking around. I explain that I'm Jewish. No matter, they always have Jews at their parties. What can I say? Up until this year my Christmas' pretty much universally consisted of Chinese take out and movies. We used to go out to the movies but then the theater near us closed so it became Netflix and takeout.

The party started at 3. Since all of us expats have tiny, tiny kitchens it was a bit of a pot luck menagerie. At 2:21 I realized that Salsa Boy wasn't done chopping the GARLIC for our arroz con pollo dish. I decided to step in and help with some speed chopping of onions. I started getting really upset that I was going to be late to my first ever Christmas party. The whining set in. For those of you who are intimately acquainted with the Karpen clan picture this: a hungry, running late person. NEVER A GOOD COMBO FOR A KARPEN. Salsa Boy soothed my frazzled nerves by allowing me to pick at the olives and making me a cocktail. Normally, I'm not an afternoon cocktail sort of girl but it was Christmas and I was stressed! In any case, we were only 40 minutes late and were among the first people there. Somehow, I forgot that expats seem to be routinely late to any social engagement. The arroz con pollo was a hit, and aside from the cookies, definitely the most successful dish. Listening to Canadians try to pronounce the name of a Spanish dish is hilarious. Ahroze con PoLLoh. Oh Canadians, how I love you!

Salsa boy says he was obscenely proud of his dish. I was just happy to have something that I could eat. Most of the stuff had butter or milk (or both) so I spent a good deal of time tracking down who made what dish and asking about the ingredients. No matter, there was still plenty for me to eat.

Then there was the madness of the present exchange. Everyone brought one gender neutral gift valued around 15,000 won (about 13 bucks American). You picked a number out of the hat and that was the order you got to chose your present in. Here is where it got complicated: you could choose an unwrapped present OR steal a present that had already been opened by someone else. If you stole a present, that person in turn had to either open a new gift or steal another one though a present couldn't be stolen twice in one round. The most popular gifts were: a blender, fancy alcohol, a pet beetle, 20,000 won cash, a board game, a 6 pack of Canadian beer, a nerf gun and a remote control car. I originally opened a wine bottle that came with 2 glasses but had that stolen for me and in turn stole a half pound of organic coffee with 2 matching mugs which I ended up taking home. Anyone can attest to the perfection of this present. Unfortunately, my coffee pot is in Busan so I will have to wait another week before I get to sample the coffee. The card said:

Dear Coffee Lover,
If you are anything like me, there's nothing quite as wonderful as a cup of joe. :) Serving coffee to a friend in matching cups with chocolate? Perfection :) Merry Christmas!
-A

I forgot to mention that there was also some milk chocolate with almonds in it...basically death to both Salsa Boy and myself so I gave that away. She was the only one who wrote a card with the anonymous gift and was really embarrassed when someone read it out loud. I thought it was sweet.

I think I shall crawl back into bed with a movie or something. I love vacation!

You know you want it...

Pictures! Salsa Boy came and visited me last week and like a good little film obsessed person, he took lots of pictures. Obviously, all pictures should be credited to him.
My street runs into that road you can see down below. That road runs up against the base of the mountains (Ohsan...literally, 5 mountains). We decided to walk along until we hit a trail head, and sure enough we found one.I believe this tradition has Buddhist origins though I'm not positive. Basically, you make a wish by building a small stone pile or adding a stone to an existing pile. These piles were the largest I'd ever seen. I added my own little wish. I'm not Buddhist but on the off chance that I ever get a wish granted it seemed worthwhile. Also, they are just beautiful. It's hard to not want to contribute to the elegance of ever growing piles of wishes.You have to realize how very strange my hiking attire is to a Korean. You will never see a Korean hiker in anything less than head to toe outdoor adventure gear. They look like professional mountaineers rather than people enjoying a casual afternoon hike. I've said this many times before but it bares saying again: everything in Korea has a uniform. My ripped jeans and sweatshirt are acceptable to get a cup of coffee in...maybe.Maybe a quarter of the way up we ran into this graveyard. Very different from graveyards in the states and yet perhaps not as different as I expected. It had the same air of solemn quietness that seems to pervade burial places everywhere.The sun is setting over the mountains. It's hard to believe that I live somewhere so beautiful. It seems luxurious, like royalty, to have something so lovely to look at everyday.Afterward, we were craving Japanese food. I found a Japanese place in Yangsan but it wasn't a choose your own roll sort of place. There were 3 set options which came with a ridiculous amount of fish. We had no idea what pretty much anything was. The dish I'm trying to pick up above was some sort of weird sea slug which by the way, tastes as disgusting as you might imagine. At least it wasn't still moving. Observe my face upon being forced to taste them:Most of the other courses were quite tasty. Look at this one, completely normal!I thought there would be lots of pictures from this week since I'm with Salsa Boy in Anyang. He always has his face glued to his camera so I didn't even bother bringing mine. However, yesterday he had his wallet, phone and camera stolen. So much for pictures!

Pulling Teeth

Teaching the 6th grade is like pulling teeth. Half of my students didn't bother showing up until 10 minutes into class and I had no authority to do anything other than make them stand for the next 15 minutes instead of playing the game. My co-teacher was sick today, which was is fine...except that we have no real contingency plan for when she is not there. She told me to play a game with them for the entire period. Games are not as fun when they don't relieve from work. It's a class with 30+ students that is controllable when the two of us tag team discipline but much less so when she's not there. I am so glad this is the last day before winter vacation. ...It dawns on me that this is probably why trying to do anything with them seemed like an uphill battle.

Rant over.

Last night I took hooligan 1 to buy a cell phone. He doesn't have any co-workers who really speak English so having them help out wasn't really an option. Here's the thing: I don't speak Korean either. I have a limited amount of Konglish and as a fall back I use my superhero miming skills. To hooligan 1, my Korean skills are impressive. He had no idea that I was saying things like the following:
'Hand phone, no expensive. Foreigner. 1 year. I'm sorry. Wait...I don't understand. I'm sorry. One more time? Sorry! Okay! Got it! What?'

That is pretty much the extent of my phone buying vocabulary. BUT we managed to get the hooligan a phone and an English bill service. There was a celebratory pint and then I passed out early, thinking I had a long day of teaching ahead instead of just one class.

...I just found out that after lunch my desk is getting moved to the third floor. On the plus side, this means no more walking up and down 4 flights of stairs multiple times a day. Downside: super awesome office mate is not moving too. :( :( :(

The worst thing about not updating

The worst thing about not updating for awhile is how very much you have to catch up on. The longer I go without updating, the less I want to update.

Last week I was at an EPIK teacher training. 5 days, 200 foreigners, 1 hotel. From 9-9 we had seminars and classes. Most of it was actually quite good and I got a lot out of it. I even got a little special recognition for my never ending enthusiasm. Our class assistant, who was basically the cattle herder/Korean-English liaison, just seemed happy to have someone who wasn't obnoxious and liked to be involved.

Anyways, the most interesting bits were obviously not what happened between 9 and 9. What happens when you put 200 English teachers in a hotel together? Debauchery. To fair, a lot of it was good honest socializing, drinking pints while networking, sharing ideas and problems. Then again, a lot of it wasn't. This is my favorite example of it:

While walking back to my floor with 2 other people, let's call them hooligans 1 and 2, when we noticed that there was a very strange lump sticking out from behind the curtain next to the elevators. Being the bright, young and inquisitive teachers that we are, we decided to see what it was. Hooligan 1 and I walked over and flipped aside a bit of the curtain only to notice that there were two people behind the curtain engaging in NON TEACHERLY BEHAVIOR. At this point Hooligan 2 attempts not to fall over from laughing so hard. Meanwhile, we STILL HAVE TO WAIT TWO MINUTES FOR THE ELEVATOR TO ARRIVE. Hooligan 1 and I attempt to avoid eye contact. When the elevator finally arrived, we all fell in and collapsed on each other with deep belly aching laughs. You have perhaps never known a true guffaw until you run into coworkers engaging in nefarious acts.

Why are there no pictures you ask? BECAUSE I AM A MORON AND FORGOT MY CAMERA. Also, my pajamas. People are as slow at posting their pictures on facebook as I am about updating my blog I suppose.

And now, off to the immigration office which promises to be at least as frustrating as the DMV.

I love it all

Teaching is for me. There is something thrilling about helping students discover something new and finding ways to make them love it as much as you do. I've always been obsessed with learning and school. I used to get insulted if my Mom asked me if I'd done my homework. Of course I had! What earthly reason would there be for me not to do it?! On a bright sunny day in August, 2004 I sat in my dorm room practically bouncing with glee doing my very first piece of work for college; reading the opening chapters of Plato's Republic and preparing for the seminar. My color coding was a work of art. My roommate was convinced that I was more than a little insane. Scratch that, my whole dorm thought I was absolutely ridiculous.

Thursday and Friday I teach 5th grade and it's definitely my favorite. Fourth graders are a little harder to manage and sixth graders are a bit too jaded to really care about paying attention. They can be fun but it's a lot harder to have a lesson I can walk away with feeling satisfied. I always finish Thursday and Friday smiling and happy to be alive. It sounds over the top but what more in life could I ask for? I have a great job, a great apartment, I'm independent and I love my kids.

Right now, my students are greatly amused that I'm attempting to learn all of their names. Most of the teachers do not know all of the students names. Each class I teach has between 32 and 35 students. I have 11 different classes. The names are completely alien to me. I'm trying anyways. My co-teacher agreed to do an activity with me where we make name cards to put on the kid's tables so that we can learn their names better. Not to mention the fact that most of the students have no idea how to write their name using English characters. We'll see how it goes. I know about 5 students names so far. It's a start.

I just had 2 of my 4th graders visit my office to chat with me for 20 minutes before they have piano class. It sounds silly but sometimes it's nice to just talk about their life. One girl is working on a novel and the other is writing a comic book instead of running around during recess. I found that using an online translator gives us a lot more to talk about because if they get stuck on a word they want they can just quickly type it in and then continue on and tell me all about it.

English Speech Contest

Today I sat still for 1.5 hours and listened to kids recite the same stories over and over again. It actually wasn't that bad since they were sort of hard to understand and it took me a few times to actually figure out what was going on in the story. It was only the select few students from each grade presenting, not all billion of my students. The sad thing is that only kids who attend an English after school program really have a chance of competing since preparing for these things takes a lot more time and attention than a public school teacher has available. I was on the judge panel and got to fill out little sheets that I graded very leniently.

Next up: nothing. My biggest plan for the evening involves making myself some noodles and curling up with a book. I should be going out and trying to find the expat hot spots near me but I'd rather just wait until I meet all of the newbies next week at orientation. Hermit Alex is definitely dominant this week.

Not lost!

Yesterday was a momentous occasion: I found my office without getting lost. And if I thought the first time was a fluke, I managed to do it again later in the day! Obviously, I'm starting to settle in. This week marks the first time I have actual social engagements! Tomorrow, the teacher who I share an office with is taking me out to sam gip sal (Korean barbeque) with his wife! I'm very excited. When you go with Koreans, they always know the best places. I hope I'm not expected to drink too much soju because that stuff packs a punch and tends to leave me with a headache the next day. No surprise, considering it is made with ethanol ever since a rice shortage in the recent (ish?) past.

...Trying to write a blog post before finishing my first cup of coffee is a disaster. I'm all sleepy! I'll try for a longer post later. Possibly with pictures!

My neighborhood

Somehow, I have already managed to win the hearts of three 4th grade students. I have not taught the 4th grade yet, I have them on Monday. They like to come visit me in my office after classes are done for the day and chat for about 20 minutes (in English!) before I send them on their way home. Yesterday, we had the all important discussion about Sponge Bob.I admit, not the most flattering photo but that's what happens with a camera timer. Girl 3 was on classroom cleaning duty today and couldn't come. It's cute, everyday the students straighten, sweep, clean the boards and clap out the erasers in their classroom. I think a cleaning person comes through to mop and empty the trash cans but it gives the students a sense of importance to take care of their own classroom.

This is my classroom:
We have between 30 and 35 students in each class. This is actually under the national average which I believe is around 38 or 39. That being said, it's a lot easier to deal with when there are 2 teachers in the room.

Time for pictures from my walk home!
That's all for now folks! More writing soon. I have my medical exam today (required to get your residence card) and I'm not allowed to have anything but water this morning. I'm lucky my coteacher is such a sweetheart because having to deal with anyone else precoffee could be a disaster. I'm also hungry. Hungry, caffeine deprived Alex. Does anyone else realize what a terrible combination this is???

Official End of Blogging Hiatus AND....

Here marks the official end of my blogging hiatus. A quick catch up:
I took a job in Yangsan, a town right on the outskirts of Busan. I arrived in Korea Saturday night and came down south (55 min by plane, 3 hours by bullet train or 5 by slow train) on Monday. Today I met my co-teacher, did paperwork and got settled into my new apartment!

Remember the closet I used to live in? Here are some pictures of my new apartment. They are not fabulous but they are better than nothing!
Look I have a real bed! Of course the brand new bedding is pink but as a girl in Korea, what else could I expect? Those windows make the apartment full of light during the day. Also, notice that I have a TABLE with FOUR chairs! I'm a fan!
See the sort of glass paneling on the right hand side of the photo? Those are sliding glass doors that lead into my foyer/mud room type area. Very nice. Also keeps the cold, hallway draft to zilch. My kitchen is cute! It has a microwave but I think I will buy myself a toaster and water heater because those are AWESOME. The dishes that are out are brand new dishes that they got and washed for me. To the left is the nice big washing machine and a built in drying rack that hangs above it which is all sorts of AMAZING. It is also tiled underneath that section so that it can drip away and not damage the nice floors. The hard wood is fake but a very lovely and convincing fake.

Okay, blogging goals for this year:
1. Blog 2-3 times a week with no exceptions.
2. Have pictures in the entry at least once a week.
Any other suggestions?