Friday night fever?

Nothing is constant but change. Sometimes that shits sucks

corrupting the youth

We didn't have flashcards like this when I was in kindergarten:




I've run out of reading material, oh dear. Any suggestions for what I tackle next?

A little slice of serenity...

I am not a city person. After graduate school, I'm pretty much refusing to live in a city ever again. I'll commute, if need be, but I require a yard. I'm kind of like a puppy, I need to roll around in the grass and eat dirt, I will refrain from publicly marking my territory though :P

I like my green space and quietness, so on the weekends when the weather is nice, I like to explore the parks. I have yet to go to the Hangang River Park, but I think that'll be on the next weekend. Or the beach, whose plans get thwarted by "predictions" of rain every weekend. Lamecakes.

Bongeunsa Temple

It's kind of near my apartment- within walking distance at least. My concept of walking distance is a bit skewed because I tend to walk eveywhere, but it's not worth taking public transportation, unless the weather's bad.
But it's kind of an oddity because it's juxtaposed against a very expensive area of Gangnam. Well, all of Gangnam is expensive, but it's right across the street from the COEX Mall and Convention Center. It was quite surprising how the sounds of the traffic horns and scooters were so easily drowned out.



Jongroo-- The Bell Pavilion



From the other side



The detail on the buildings is amazing, I can't believe all that is hand painted. I wonder if they paint them first, then put them on the buildings, or do it Michaelangelo style





Mireukdaebul Statue-- the largest Buddha statue in Korea. It symbolizes hope for Maitreya to arrive and save man kind





Please remove your shoes, don't take better ones on your way out...







Stone Monuments of Merit

They offer miniature versions of temple stays for foreigners, but they're only on Thursday afternoons. Maybe I'll get another Thursday off sometime in the next 9 months, but we'll see. I think an actual temple stay would be an awesome experience before I leave. I can sacrifice that hour of sleep at 3 am for a little meditation :)

mosh pit?

At the end of each Kindy day, they go to the Playroom on the 6th floor to do a little wrap-up activity. We squish as many children as possible into the elevator, and then it's up, up and away! And it makes me feel like I'm in a kindergarten mosh pit:

plunk

Olympic Park



And, if while waiting for your train, you happen to fall, hopefully a bystander will unfold the ladder to help you escape from the path of the oncoming train :)

That's all I have for today. Maybe more later.

Image du jour

Pizza in a cone, near Gangnam-gu Office Station

It was okay. There was corn in it, per usual, and there was sweet potato in the very tip. But the crust/cone was crispy.





Not much new here.
First bout of homesickness hit, but I'm going to mostly attribute that to a crap week.
And the terrible realization of how much grad school is going to put me back unless this year here really earns me some brownie points in the assitantship/scholarship/grant/TA departments.
Then again, I also should remember what my last internship adviser told me:
"The best advice I was ever given was by my thesis professor: always consider your resume a work of fiction" ~A. Smith, Phd, Binghamton '07

I'll drown my sorrows in a pb&j sammich, with american wheat bread(!) compliments of a dear friend, heh :o)

Dooo wop

Every time I re-read my entries, my writing makes me cringe.
This coming from the girl who is planning to furthering her education in the publishing field.
Tisky tisky smalls, you'd better get on top of this.


Updates to come, I'm enjoying a nice relaxing 3 day weekend. Next month, I'm definitely packing the backpack with the Lonely Planet, camera, and few changes of clothes, and hitting up Japan.

Hope everyone is well.

Hugs, kisses, and all that jazz.

Things that sucketh:
The exchange rate. OW OW OW OW =(
-Lack of OTC cold meds here/being sick
-Hagwon teaching practices- laaaaame. as long as the parents are happy and the kids are being mildly educated, it's all way
-Constant laptop overheating. plz don't die! :(
-The new Indiana Jones movie. Whhhhhyyyyyy? I was impressed with how spry Harrison Ford was. And the Korean movie theatre was a trip.
-Yellow dust:


Things that don't sucketh:
-Super cheap and convenient public transportation-- in and out of Seoul
-Unlike the States, Mass Transportation here is AWESOME POSSUM! The Subway: There are 8(I think?) lines, and they're in the process of adding another. The New York Subway can be confusing; it changes numbers, lines, skips some stops, etc etc. The Subway here doesn't do that, unless you're out in the sticks (Suwon) and catch an express instead of a regular, but in Seoul those don't exist. They stop at every . stop, never change, and it's pretty simple. If you get lost, you're an idiot. As long as you know where you're headed, it's easy. And all there are English maps EVERYWHERE.
-Buses, inner-city: pretty convenient, and I'm getting a hang on those. They don't have English maps, so it takes me a while to read the map, but I've gotten it down pretty well. It's also awesome that if you take a bus, then hop on the subway, they don't charge the transfer off your metro (T-money) card, and vice versa subway -> bus.
-Buses, elsewhere: One smart idea the Koreans had: Bus lanes on the highway. It's fun to be zipping on by all the regular cars stuck in traffic while the buses just kind of whiz on by. It's also cheap, and you can get to the other side of the country for less than $20 and in under 3 hours. The drivers are also pretty ballsy.
-Yonsei offering the GRE on Oct 27, 2008. woot! mild heart attack and ulcer avoided!
-Garbled Korean conversations, including mad taxi driver directing skills when i'm at the point where all i want to do is go home and go to sleep (which is what i do. no mom, i wasn't in Itaewon, just Apgujeong...i'm lazy when im drunk)
-LITERACY (does it count if you don't understand what you're reading but you can read it?)
-The kids
Michael comes in, he's maybe 6, says "THIS IS SPARTA!"
Judy, 7 years old, pretty much fluent. She has issues with tenses and little things, but we have full conversations. I ask her how her weekend was, her response: Spectacular! My weekend was spectacular! I went to a sauna, and it was sooooo relaxing"
Normally, I'd think a 7 year old going to a sauna is a bit ridiculous, but the sauna's here are nice, and the poor kid doesn't go to bed until midnight, then wakes up between 6:30-7 for school (I think she goes to a legitimate immersion school), then spends the rest of the day at school, in privates and extracurriculars, and doing homework. She's 7! And seriously lacking parental affection.
And wonderfully enough, some of those soaked, half snotty hugs are pretty good. At least they're always happy and if they're not, there moods will change in 30 seconds =)
-3 day weekend next weekend-- Deokjeokdo Beach, here I come!
-5 day vacation in July. Conveniently, the last week. I'm considering spending the big 22 in Osaka with my aunt, eating soba, sushi and drinking sake. Think they do sake bombs there? It'll spare me the birthday song & cake they do for everyone at school. I HATE THE ATTENTION. Let's just skip the song and eat the cake, mmmmkay? Cake, nomnomnomnomnom


Things that amuseth:
-Seeing a drunk ajooshi asleep on the steps of Giorgio Armani- still wearing his suit and clutching his briefcase-- at 7 am
-Konglish signs (Koreanized English words, if you may) examples to come!


So regarding sucky things, well, the hagwon part at least. Hagwon= Korean word for private school. We're here to make the parents happy, and in this area of Seoul, they're very, uh, hands-off parenting types. Don't punish the kids! If the kids are failing, pass them! Who cares if they don't know the language!
I guess the thing that just boggles my mind is how much time these kids spend around English and how much time they spend "studying" the language and they still don't have a great grasp of it. I mean, my grasp of French, albeit mediocre, is better than a lot of them who have been studying since they were wee tots. But maybe it was because I was exposed to so many languages before the age of 5.
And maybe because even though the (Korean) teachers and the kids speak Korean all the time even when they're supposed to be speaking English.
Woopsies, where's the fun in that? That would be as logical as it would've been for Shinzy to speak Korean to me all the time when I was little, instead of just swearing at us. Although, now I do know when the kids are swearing at me. Thanks ma!

Speaking of Mama Murph, I completely understand why she can't drive! And why I will never drive in Korea! Although I am tempted to get a moped, but I think I'd rather get a cat.

So why did I decide to move to Korea?
Reason #1: I didn't want to live at home post-Binghamton. There's no way in hell I would've been able to afford to live on my own without working more than 1 unreasonable job. Free airfare! (at least, come September). Free housing! (not the nicest place, but it could be worse...)
Reason #2: You know that saying, you can't run from yourself? Hey it's true! I kid. Korea is drama and, aside from work, stress free!
Reason #3: I'd like to be able to speak Korean beyond being able to swear and order food. So now I've got numbers down, and how to get home. w00t! go me!
Reason #4: If I had gone straight to grad school, I would've probably lost it. I barely made it through undergrad, but that was less academically related than various shitty people and situation related.
Reason #5: CHEAP ALCOHOL! Kidding. Soju is worse than Barton's Vodka. Ick ick ick, no thanks :X
Reason #6: That whole "1 year of experience" requirement attached to most non-menial jobs. How are you supposed to get that year if no one will hire you?! And no, 3 semesters of signing your soul away to Binghamton University ResLife doesn't count.
Reason#7: I'm a stubborn asshole and I kind of want to prove that I can do it. Shinzy was convinced I can't survive on my salary without doing a load of privates on the side. As long as I drink and eat domestic, I'll survive. I've done pretty well thus far :)
Reason #8: I'd really like to get a teaching position/fellowship/scholarship/anything to lessen the financial burden of Grad School, and this little bit of resume filler, along with working with Brundage Publishing and for Crossings, will hopefully do it. I'm probably the only idiot who refuses their parents offers to pay for it. I'm also applying for a Publishing Conference at the University of Denver in July 09. I've toyed with the idea of finding editing jobs in Korea, because the textbooks are atrocious, but I don't know...I'll wait until the October paycheck comes and I get my airfare back to Shinzy.


But yes, I'm enjoying Korea. It's fun here, I've met some pretty cool people. I'm not counting down necessarily, but the time does fly. And since we go on a monthly basis, I guess I can't help but think, hey 2 months down, only 10 to go!


So this is long and I'll wrap it up. I can't believe I actually wrote this much. Other than the crap I pulled out of my ass for the few papers I wrote last semester, I haven't written anything in over a year. It's sad.


Nutshell: All is well here, I'm enjoying it. I'm learning a lot about patience, and I'm better than I've been in a while, I suppose. And now because of cold meds, I'm in fuzzy wuzzy land but I made it this far! And it only took 2 weeks of random writing this!

Enough blabbity blabbity blabbity, time for visual entertainment!



This weekend: SUWON!

Hwasong Fortress, it looked kind of like a Little Wall of Korea, hehe





Inside that thingy



Another thingy. This one was a gate (mun)



creek thingy



Pond!





You can see where it just keeps going and going and going and going







I have a feeling this is one of those places like they have at the palace, where they would have the troops line up by rank when they gathered.





Pretty much all of the palaces, temples, and other important buildings have these intricate hand-painted details. Crazy.







And then there was this dude:



The poor dog! It had its ears and tail dyed pink. It looked so sad a few minutes later too, the poor thing.


We didn't walk all the way to the top of the fortress, because it was really high up, and well, we're lazy. I was also not wearing proper foot attire (go figure, flip flops), although I was doing a hell of a lot better than my Korean female counterparts who were sporting heels.

I know the pictures are little and hard to see the detail. I put most of the pictures on Flickr as well, but since I have a free account, it only shows the 200 most recent photos. I either need to pay for a year's subscription, which is tempting, or try to find another free image hosting company with more space...If anyone knows of any, I'd appreciate some input!

Next weekend: Deokjeokdo!