The Week

Today was the Principals birthday. I was sitting at the computer when my co-teacher asked if I wanted to do something with them later in the afternoon and I said "sure" because I'm literally dying to do some things with the co-workers. So she said pizza, I was fine with that, sounds fun. So Koreans are big into puzzle and games and we do this thing with a maze and numbers and at the bottom exposed to you are numbers. An amount you will pay. 10000, 5000, 2000. A couple of "free" spaces and maybe even a 1000 spot or 2. I picked number 7 cause it only went to 9 and at my other school my number is 7 as in Teacher: "I to 7"; Students: "Bernard!"

So I think "finally" cause my school is so big that 1.) Too many teachers to get together, 2.) Many of the teachers live in Daejeon which is about a 20 minute ride to the east and closest side of the city and it's a pretty big city. 3.) Many of the teachers are older, married and may have kids. Like there are probably 55-80 staff and teachers I would say 90 percent of them have families. I can really only positively identify one person other than myself. I only know about her cause a week after I paid my gas bill for the first time, she had to pay her gas bill for the first time and asked my co-teacher for help. My coteacher turned to me and said "Bernard how long did it take you to pay your bill?" "5 minutes" Then she looked back at her and was just like walk to the bank it's easy. (edit: everything with banking is easy here, you know how I pay rent, I take my bank book or ATM card put it in the machine and there is a "transfer" option. Hit that select the bank put in the persons account number and the amount confirm and take a receipt. Unbelievable)

Anyway I find out that this is actually for cake and pizza for the Principal. I like the guy don't get me wrong but you know tell me what we are doing. 1) I can keep a secret, 2) I don't speak Korean and he doesn't really speak a lot of English so I couldn't tell him if I tried. Anyway, I only taught 6 classes this week at Samyang because it was big time test week. The kids took test in Math, Korean, English, Music and some other thing that my favorite student counldn't remember the English name for. She said she did good in everything except the one she couldn't remember otherwise she said it was good. I think I'm going to leave it at that because it ends with a student who gave me a thumbs up and a smile before she left.

Settled in

I really do not know what to say right now. It may seem dumd but I really don't know what to talk about. School has been fun, but so has everything else. It's interesting to be here since I was writing so much before but now I'm just into it now. But alas my birthday and halloween are on the way. There are always things to complain about and I promise you that I will find them

Return of the Countdown Clock!!!!!

Or the debut of the countup clock. I'm not counting down to anyhting just trying to keep in mind how many days I've been away from home as I said in the last post, blah, blah, blah read it yourself.

Make your own Countdown Clocks

Also as this is posted I'm sleeping now. Just wanted to see if those of you on the East coast are paying attention.

Sill kickin in the Honeymoon

I think that it's safe to say that I'm still sitting in the "Honeymoon Phase" of my stay in Korea. They say that it is off different length for everyone and I've been here about 7 weeks and working for a month and 4 days. I think that keeping things in perspective helps to extend this period. I Hope that this extends and is such a soft time for me that I never hit the anger stage.

I would like to point out that I do miss home everyday that I'm away. I miss my family and friends, a bunch and each for different reasons. I miss that I can't go home and have my mom ask me how it was and then tell her it was ok or just "meh" when it probably really sucked. I miss my nieces and nephews even though they fight me tooth and nail on everything. My sisters, brother and brothers-in-law because they are the people who I know will always act in support from the beginning, not that mom won't just it takes her time to warm up to an idea this big.

My friends, oh how I miss thee. Jackie, I miss showing up to Jacks, sitting down and watching you and all those other weirdos sing while I keep saying "I can't find a song" or whatever lie I can think of. Phil, I miss talking about what films suck, what we should see and how we would change the movie industry. Joe, I miss you buying hot dogs from the vendors at 2:10am on Sunday mornings, you are also excellent conversation. Bob, Adam, Grant, Zach, Kaitlin, Anner anyone and everyone else I miss you. Even if I hate you I miss you, I wish I could hate you here but I have other stuff to do. So eat it jerk.

Anyway, as I may have mentioned earlier, I'm still having a good time and the job is still fun a month into it and I can cope.

Seoul, now with photos

So I'm not saying that this is some sort of message or how the weekend went. This was in the I'Park Mall at Yongsan Station in Seoul. It's a fantastical place and this was a fantastical piece of "Fake Art". When I saw the sign which I didn't take a picture of I laughed. Now that I see it I think "Hmmm if you make it, how can it be fake." Then I look at this picture that I took



Good clean fun. I think not. T-rex attacks on the Metro lines in Seoul kill 350 people a month. Won't you give me money so I can stop this prehistoric menace.

So we walked around and got to take these pictures with the camera I bought this last weekend and I think they are pretty sweet. But lets look at some more amazing technology that we saw for sale. OMG!!! Pikachu N64, I'll take 5. I don't know how much it was because I knew that no matter how little they were asking I wouldn't buy it unless they or someone nearby had GoldenEye... Luckily no one did.



This is the sunset we saw as we were walking out of the electronics market we were there for a long long time. Anyway it looks nice and so here it is.


We went to N. Seoul Tower which really isn't in north Seoul. So it's very confusing. It's on top of one of the big hills in Seoul of which there are like 5-8 I guess. For the most part these hills are totally pristine. They don't build into or up them so the City has a lot of green space which is nice and I'd like to explore more. Anyway that's a wire man next to the tower. They have 5 of them there but this is the only one who is standing up the others are lying down.


This is just what all the exit signs on Korea look like. I don't know why but I imagine that this little green man is moving faster then the man in Americas exit signs.(when there is one)


This is just a section of Seoul. Those of you who have been to Seoul tower know that it's just to damn big. Like any modern city, it would have been cool if this was built a was away but it's still very neat. Also very high.


This is the Cheonggyecheon. It's a 6k(3+mile) long stream that runs through downtown Seoul. It was just rebuilt 4-5 years ago after having been destroyed and covered for transit space.


I didn't know it but they have rapids in Seoul, that's pretty extreme. It's a very peaceful place not that Seoul has the loudness and hustle and bustle of an American city but this was extra relaxing setting.


What stream would be complete without fountains. They really do add something to the environment without taking away from the natural setting that we were in. I think I'll go back and walk it all myself if I have to but one way or another I'll cover the full 6k.

OK that was Seoul this weekend. Maybe I'll have some more mountain pictures from Okcheon by next weekend's end.

Seoul Saturday-Sunday

Seoul was fun as I will count this weekend trip as my first time since it was the first time I 1.Drank and 2. passed out in the nations capital. Also this trip was enlightining. I'm not gonna pull any punches we were at a place called Hooker Hill when we started the drinking as one of us is formerly a member of the Army who was stationed in Seoul for 6 years I believe. This was the place for them to go. It was quite crowded at the top at less hookery places but the middle section of the hill(note: this really is a hill and it sucks to go up or down) there was a proposterous number of prostitutes standing infront of their "Bars" where I wonder aloud now at work, "could you even get a drink at one of those places?"

It akso made me question English education in this country as one girl approached the oldest gentleman in our group took his arm and tried to coax him into some shady room in this dark ally of a street. I didn't hear her but I assume she could speak enough English to get her point across which probably puts her in the top 30% if only because she is willing to even speak it. It seems hard to get Koreans to fess up to knowing English cause they are afraid of making a mistake and looking dumb. Little do they realize that people like me come from across the planet in an attempt to teach them and in the process we look tremendously foolish for basically the whole time. I think I've seen 4 non prostitute, non English teacher Koreans speaking or at least trying to speak English. My main Pizza guy, probably mid to late 30's, the head teacher at my school, a very very nice woman in her late 50's had a very nice conversation with her even though she swears her English is terrible, it's not. My Vice Principal, he also speaks very well but we haven't spoken a lot since my first week. And the last one is the funniest but this man in Seoul we met while standing outside of a hotel trying to find a room he came up asked us where we were from was making jokes and singing songs all in English then he tried to help us find a room by talking to a couple of hotels we called he was probably also mid to late 50's like the VP. I guess the point of this is that many Koreans know functional English or at least the polite words but are like frozen solid against usuing them. Which is differnt from me cause I only know polite words, hello, goodby, here and there. So yeah

Anyway I don't have any pictures of anything of my own from Seoul cause we got cameras at the end of the trip instead of the beginning because we are idiots. So far I've just taken some pictures from here in Okcheon and I will post them soon so that everyone can see how awesome of a place this is.

Edit: I think that I'm gonig to buy pizzas for my schools because I should probably do something for them before they start to think I'm an inconsiderate jerk. Oh Kay off to teach the first class of the day!

Week's over.

Oh hello there and thanks for stopping by. Please have a seat as I have amazing news.

Ready??




I GOT MY FIRST PAYCHECK TODAY!!!!!!!!!!!!! It was on time and delivered as promised. TOnight I don't celebrate because tomorrow morning bright and early I get onto a train to Seoul to meet some friends from Orientation and we gonna party!!!! I think. This trip has no mission statement unlike the trip that produced the photo of my on the side of the blog. Although I guess the first order of busisness is to find and buy the greatest digital camera of all time because I need pictures. For this and for myself. I went to my second school and the kids were a absolute dream just the way to end the week. Their level is probably a step or so behind Samyang but the kids are absolute angels. I love 'em. Next week is Chuseok, Korean Thanksgiving. The actual day is Saturday but they give us Friday off as well, which is nice because I don't have to work Thursday either cause it's Founders day at Jukhyang. What better way to celebrate the founding of school then by not showing up to the wretched place at all. I love Korea!!!!!