Week 3

Hi again and Happy New Year!


It feels like I've finally fallen into a rhythm here with the job. It's definitely been easier this week, which has let me enjoy things a bit more. And on an even better note - this weekend was a 3 day break! Offices are closed on Monday for Lunar New Year. This is apparently a pretty big holiday here, as most Koreans go home to visit family, and everyone has been exchanging gifts. I got a very nice Korean wine set from the boss, Mr. Yoon, and another 2 very good gifts from students. It was much more common for us teachers to get gifts from the younger students (you were kinda SOL if you only teach the older kids!). The 2 I got were from my younger class - 9 year olds. Here's a picture of the gifts (set of ginseng tea and candies, the wine set, and a couple of really good cake loaves):

















A group of teachers hold a weekly discussion meeting where we get together to talk about all kinds of interesting topics (culture, politics, business, etc). We had our last meeting on Wed night. It meets at 9:30, so to kill some time after work and before the meeting, a coworker, Stephanie, and I went to grab some food. Stephanie is quite good with Korean - can read it well and talks a good bit with Koreans. Well, we found the 'chicken' section on the menu and found a picture that looked good. It looked spicy, like maybe buffalo wings, and was topped with cheese. Sounds good, right? So the dish comes and my reaction was that it looked pretty good, but the meat didn't look like chicken. I said to Stephanie, 'looks like squid'. So we go about eating, and the flavor was very good, but the meat was a little crunchy. So several minutes go by, and we've eaten about half of the dish, when Stephanie remembers that Koreans eat some parts of chicken that we may consider unappetizing - such as appendages, like feet. Quite suddenly, we were full. After we paid and were leaving, Stephanie rereads the menu to check on our dinner. Sure enough, there was the Korean word for 'foot'. Well, at least now I can cross 'eat chicken feet' from my bucket list.


Here's several pictures of my neighborhood and apartment, which isn't huge, but is very adequate for my needs:
























































When home, I usually keep the thermostat at 24C (approx 75F), which is very cozy. The heating is done through a process called ondol floors - which is heating the floor, and thereby warming the air in the entire room. Very efficient, and very nice to have warm toes too.







And here's the bathroom. It's a common Korean design that the shower is not separated from the sink and toilet, so as you can guess, everything gets soaked when the shower head is turned on!











If you were wondering, it's still frigid cold most days here. It did warm up for a day or two, but was snowing several days later in the week, and into the weekend. The heat in my apartment is very good though. I turn it down during the days when I'm gone, but usually the temperature only falls 2 or 3 degrees. The heat systems here are very nice - they heat the floors, and the warm air fills the room. We also take off shoes inside, so the floors are extra nice. The insulation isn't great, but doesn't need to be since the floors are very good at retaining their heat.



I've discovered a new reason to love the E-Mart. They have a food court outside of the lower floor, and the food is very good and inexpensive. There are 6 vendors in the court, and it did take a little effort to figure out how to order. You place your order at a register near the entrance of the court, and of course none of the writing is English. But luckily, several meals on the menu have numbers beside them (and they all have pictures), so I was able to find something and type the number in my phone and show that to the cashier. Then you get a ticket with a number on it, and wait for a place to cook the food, and your number flashes up on a screen. Kind of like a huge deli.


As for nightlife: I ventured outside of our town, Dongbaek, for my first 'long-distance' night on the town. Friday night went to a nearby town, Bundang, with 2 coworkers. Bundang is about a 50 minute trip from Dongbaek - you take a bus, then transfer to a subway. But since there were 3 of us, we just shared a taxi, and got there in about 15 minutes! They have a big shopping plaza there, and tons of restaurants and bars. We went to an English pub that had some great nachos, and was definitely the first time I've been the whitest person in a place like that.. We later ended up at a dance club advertised as a 'clubby bar', and was exactly how I had imagined an Asian dance club. Wall to wall people, bone-jarring rythmic music, and lights and lasers galore. Oh, and was of course filled with smoke, like most places here. It was really cool. I was also hoping to make a second visit to the local norebang room, but it was closed this weekend. Norebang is awesome - karaoke in private rooms. This one has very nice rooms, like your own personal luxury box seats. There was a fun place in Atlanta like this on, appropriately, Buford Highway.



Also this weekend, I did some exploring and picture-taking around Yongin, but I'll save those pictures for the next post. I'll also try to take in my camera one day to school this week to take pictures of some of my students.


Until later - take care..


Matt