I started this blog to share my travelling experiences and stay in touch with my friends, family, and general random acquaintances. I am much better at keeping my Facebook account up to date and my profile is public- and my pictures are always up to date!
At the beginning of the semester my students described themselves- 'I am quiet and smart', 'I am funny, smart, and talkative', 'I am friendly and kind'. What there families were like- 'My mother is funny', My brother is rude and mean', 'My father is strict'. I also had them describe what they wanted their boy or girl friend to be like- 'I want my boyfriend to be tall, smart, funny, sexy, etc'. I had 3 boys use my example description of myself- one even flat out said 'teacher'. When I told one he was too young of a boy for me , he said 'I no boy! I man!'
A couple of weeks ago we had student presentations 'About yourself' and one student, (who's presentation was late, messy, unpracticed, and did not follow directions) ended his presentation with 'One more thing teacher- here is my phone number, call me, I lonely!'. Lucky for him it cracked me up and I gave him an extra .5 points. Which brought his score up to 1.5/5
Today I'm grading mid-terms (spring semester is March thru mid-June). The student ended his description of an action movie with- 'This movie is very good. You should see it. I take you. Romance! Please?'
Korean students are shy my ass!
More funniness- when the student wrote his cell number on the board, and after I stopped laughing, I turned to the 15/20 girls in the class and said, Hey ladies, there's his number- you should copy it down!' and they all said 'Ewwwwww, nooooooo, he's no no no!' and he looked at me and said, 'They have my number'- which brought on another chorus of 'no no no!'.
In another class, engineering, 23 male students/2 female, I have 2 male students who are obviously the 'football team' types. Good looking, good clothes, great hair. They sit on the side and sorta lounge. If they weren't so polite and didn't always do their work they might get on nerves. But they are and they do. And they're funny. In group activities they don't move- the other students come to them. They're always partners. So I turn to them and say,'Gentlemen- it's your turn' and the class ERUPTS with 'Nonononono NO- NOT gentlemen! No teacher- they not gentlemen!'. 'Why?', I ask them, 'Why do they say you're not gentlemen?' 'We are gentlemen!', they say.
'Why?' I ask the rest of the class. 'Because they so lovely', shouts one boy (I've tried to explain to them we don't usually use lovely' when describing men but they still use it, I did get them to stop using 'wide' and 'long' when describing people- I said 'wide means fat, long, um, just don't ask men how long they are!'. They got THAT), 'Handsome!', shouts another, 'Tall!' and choruses of 'RUDE BOYS'(Jamaican description!) The 2 'gentlemen' in question shrug and one holds up his hands in a 'What can I do' gesture. As the students left at the end of class one of the 2 girls whispered to me, 'Too cute, much trouble!' and shook her head sadly.
First Kevo turns down doing an album cover for them. He debated a lot- it would have been a lot of exposure- but decided he'd just rather not have the association.
Then- he ends up working on their video at his place of employment.
Deep.
Finally, as if the real thing just isn't enough of an example of what happens when you don't finish high school, SNL manages to take it even further
After watching both several times, I still can't decide which one is funnier- the spoof or the real thing!
edit: Thanks to Jim for supplying more links so the fun just never stops!
Last weekend was a blast. Actually this whole week, except for the sinus infection, has been awesome.
Friday 3 of us, Lisa, Nicole, and I, have been going to yoga for about 3 weeks. It's awesome! I can't believe how quickly I'm getting into shape. Usually we go to the evening yoga classes because that is all our schedules allow, but Friday my morning class canceled and Lisa has Fridays off- so we went to the morning class. Wow doggie! Apparently the class we go to is beginners. I actually moaned OUCH! in the middle of class. Everyone laughed- and I was comforted to see other people grimacing in pain. Awesome. I'm going any morning I can.
Later we went out for dinner with the boys (after being invited, then uninvited, then re-invited) to say farewell to Sean, who is going to work in an even smaller town than Andong. Which is small. The boys were being extra boyish though, proving that men really are like fine wine and need to be kept in a dark quiet place until they mature into something you WANT to have at dinner, so Lisa and I went back to my place and watched more True Blood. We are into the second season now, downloaded from the internet at the LIGHTNING speed of S Korean internet. It takes me about 15 to 20 minutes to download a movie.
Saturday Lisa and I caught a bus to Daegu to go shopping around 1pm. Daegu is the fourth largest city in S Korea, with 2.5 million people, and is a fashion center. Shopping heaven! Oh my! I didn't have any money before last weekend so I had been avoiding trying on anything because I knew I would just want. Now I am going to have to be very very careful not to blow all of money on just clothes!
It takes about an hour and twenty minutes to get there and then we took the subway into the shopping district. And both of us bought shoes with in the first 20 minutes. Shoes, shoes, shoes- shoes deserve an entire post, or several, just devoted to them so I'll just leave it at this-
These shoes rule!
Then we followed the crowd to see what the excitement was about and watched break dancers for about 45 minutes.They were awesome. And, in a city of over 2 million people, we ran into our neighbor Nathan, along with Kate and Sheena- EPIK teachers from Andong. Small country I guess. Or, none of us westerners can resist a funky beat. I got interviewed by the guy with the camera. 'Where are you from?'- 'Detroit, rock city, USA', 'What do you think?'-'AWESOME!'
After that we went back to shopping. I knew I would love the shopping here, I loved it in Mexico too because people are more my size. But here! Not only are people my size, they are actually my shape too! Except, and I think this is hilarious, I'm actually a little too busty for some of the clothes. My lil' b-cups were close to bursting some buttons! I love the style here too. It's sort of a baby doll fashion that suits me to a T! Over the course of the day I bought 1 pair of shoes, a hoodie covered in skulls, pair of sweat pants for yoga, a frilly under dress type thing, another dress, and a cardigan. All black, of course, except the hoodie, which is grey. I probably would have bought more except in many stores they wouldn't let me try anything on. I don't know why. They all had dressing rooms, some of the stores would let Korean try stuff on- but not me! Because I'm a dirty foreigner? The clothes were on sale? I don't know. But it really bummed me out.
We had lunch at a Canadian owned restaurant called 'The Holy Grill' and I had a bacon cheese burger and Lisa had a chicken gyro. Mmmmm. Yummy. Sometimes you just don't realize that you miss something until you spend $10 to have it. Although I did feel like I had a huge lump in my belly for the rest of the day...
Lisa wanted to get her hair cut so we peered in the windows of salons until we saw one where both the stylist and the clientele looked hip and young and Lisa made a semi appointment. Then we shopped some more. When Lisa went to her appointment I went to go and try find the first store we went to to get the very first dress I had tried on. I couldn't find the store and I got lost on the way back. I stopped and asked a westerner (he was the only westerner who had smiled at me all day- in Andong all the westerners at least nod. Must be a big city thing) if he could tell me where Wa Bar was (The bar was next to the salon). He wasn't from Daegu either and he stopped some Korean girls and asked them. While they were thinking about it, I asked the guy directing traffic around the karaoke in the middle of the street , he thought about it for a second- and then looked up and pointed across the street. Right in front of us. After we stopped laughing we introduced ourselves and me and my new friend Jayce went and had a drink while I waited for Lisa's hair to finish getting did. I had a martini. A dirty martini. Hallelujah! You can't get a martini in Andong. At least that I know of.
When Lisa's hair was done we said goodbye to Jayce- after exchanging facebook contact of course, and ran to the store to see if we could get the dress. Which had already been sold dammit! And then ran to a taxi, and RAN the last block to the bus- the last bus- which we made in the nick of time. The Andong crew was also on the bus.
After returning we spiffed up in our new duds and went out drinking with the crew and ended up at the super disco noreabang with konglish lyrics and the evening culminated in a 5am light saber fight at family mart. Awesome. Sunday I made breakfast for the neighbors, which is hopefully going to be a regular thing. I like cooking for people the only food I miss on a regular basis is big ol American breakfasts. Even Doug made it. He's been living in the canary Islands for the best 10 years with a siesta type schedule. Waking up has been a struggle for him. Hence the 'Time to Wake Up' shirt that was a gift from Lisa and I.
After breakfast, around 4pm, Lisa and I took a walk to check out more of our neighborhood. We wanted to walk across this bridge and check out the park on the other side.
Unfortunately- it turned out that the bridge didn't actually reach the other side!
So we had to walk all the way around, back through where came from. So we stopped to play on the teeter totter
And take pictures of a structure I pray I will never ever NEVER have to use
Porta-potties with SQUAT TOILETS!
We went under the main street bridge. We do this often actually. To go west from our neighborhood- like toward downtown- you have to cross the big street at the crosswalk, checking carefully to make sure everyone is actually going to stop for the red light, or you can just take the path under the bridge. Which I like better anyways- it's prettier. I have been told there are spiders the size of your hand in the summer though. Finally- the other side of the river! Here's my neighborhood from across the river. That's the bridge that just doesn't quite cross... By this time we had to head back because Eric was taking us to E-Mart (like Walmart but way more expensive). I wanted to buy a swiffer wet jet but couldn't because even though they have an entire shelf filled with the wet jet liquid, they didn't actually carry the wet jet. You can get coffee that come with lotion or chapstick samples though. Or feminine supplies for, um, Mrs Kong?
You can see all the pics here. Tomorrow- we go to Seoul!
A few weeks ago I experienced my first run with Asian Dust- dust particles from the Gobi desert in Mongolia, that pick up pollution whilst drifting over China, and then dumps it on east Asia. I was pretty laid out for a couple of days. Like a bad allergy cycle. The dust has picked up again this week and this time I got a sinus infection.
Since I also needed to get a prescription to get my allergy inhaler filled, I went to the office and told them I wanted to cancel all my classes today, except for the business English (TOEIC) class, so I could go to the doctor. The TOEIC exam is through ETS, the same company that Americans have to take tests like the SAT and GRE through, and the class is pretty structured and rigid. Plus it only meets once a week. My other classes are pretty loose. Basically, I have a text but I can do whatever the hell I want and no one checks up on me. Lucky for them I'm super conscientious, I like to teach, and I'm actually trained to do this job. Unfortunately, the office employees don't speak very good English and my Korean is still at the level of 'hello', 'thank you', and 'please hold up your fingers so I know what the amount really is'. So they canceled my TOEIC class too. Now I have to make it up in June. Boo.
I took a bus from school to downtown to where I thought the hospital was. Since it wasn't there, I went to the tourist info center at the train station and asked them (they speak English). Then I took a cab to the hospital because my head was aching and it was about a 15 minute walk. I went to the info desk at the hospital- armed with my Korean/English dictionary that already had post its on the pages for 'need' ,doctor', 'sinusitis', and 'prescription'. The receptionist smiled, took my health and alien card and entered me into the system, and then led me by the hand, literally, to the waiting area for the eyes, ears, and throat doctor. I had to wait about 2 hours, which wasn't bad, mostly because I fell asleep, and then they called me into the doctors office.
The doctor asked my symptoms, in English, sorta, I told him and showed him my prescription from the states (tipped the bottle to show him it was almost empty), and then he put a scope up my nose and looked around. Crazy. I've had sinus problems since I broke my orbital in 2001 and I've never gotten a scope before. Then he said, 'Yes, sinusitis, 1 week medicine, take it all!' and showed me the Korean version of my allergy inhalor and showed me how to push the button. Hehehe. I wonder if I impressed him by being such a quick learner.
Then a nurse took me by the hand again, checked me out at that clinic, and then led me downstairs where I payed 14,900 won (about $13) for the visit. They also gave me the prescription and held up a sign for me to read that said,' There are 4 pharmacies around the hospital, please take this prescription to one of them immediately, show them your hospital receipt also, Korean law separates medicine and prescription'. I don't know what that last part means exactly. Maybe- the doctors can't give you the drugs? A way to keep pharmaceutical companies under control?
I walked out of the hospital and crossed the street to the first pharmacy I saw and went in and handed them my prescription, receipt, and alien card. It took about 5 minutes to fill and I was handed 2 strips of medicine. The pharmacist told me to take one pack from one strip in the mornings and a pack from the other strip at night, and to make sure I took dinner, and then he made eating motions. Plus he gave me my allergy inhaler and tapped his nose. I have no idea what is in these packs but I took the morning one 'with dinner' when I got home. I'm guessing at least one pill is an antibiotic. 2 of the pills are in both strips and the night time dose has an extra pill. I know the allergy inhalor is the same one I got at home. How do I know this? Well, because it says so in English- Total costs for the 4 prescriptions was 41,500 won ($37). I had to pay 12,400won ($13.25). The rest was covered by the national plan. In the US my copay was $5 per prescription. And- which would have cost me $20, and the allergy inhaler alone was $95 with out a prescription. I am pretty satisfied with the health care here so far.
I took a taxi home, got home around 1, slept all afternoon, and it's almost 6 now. I'm going to go get some fruit at the market and come home and eat leftover curry that Doug made for my birthday yesterday and blog about last weekend. Because I'm going to Seoul this weekend, sinus infection or not!
This past weekend was just great. Awesome from beginning to end. I will put up a big big blog about it later, but for right now I will just talk about one aspect.
Saturday, Lisa and I went to Daegu to go shopping. Shoes, oh glorious shoes.... Anyways, while Lisa was getting her haircut I met a guy from New York who has been teaching in Korea for 10 months. His girlfriend was supposed to meet him here but she died a month after he got to Korea. He was very genuine, open, and still raw. And this whole weekend since I have been very sentimental about those who have gone before. Which, as those I grew up with know, is way too many.
So- to all of you have past, and to all of you who are still here, remember- whatever you do, where ever you go
