September Survival

September's been a rather busy month for me, both in school and out of it.

At the beginning of the month I took a level test to see if I could join the free Korean classes offered by city hall. It was a difficult test (it was all written in Korean), and I was impressed that I was able to get any right at all, let alone the 6/30 score that I received. But because I missed some of the earlier questions (they got progressively more difficult as you went), my level was determined to be beginner. Which would have been fine, except that the beginner classes are only offered on Wednesday from 4pm-6pm (I get off work at 5:30 and the classes are a half hour subway ride from my school). So I asked if I could go into the level 1 class, which is offered from 7pm-9pm once a week. They said it would probably be too difficult for me, but put me in for the October class anyway. I've since decided that I (probably) won't go, as I really do need to start from the beginning. It is, after all, a very good place to start. I asked about the discounted language classes offered by my company, but you have to have been working with them for three months before you qualify. So I think I'm just going to wait it out and start classes in early November.

So on September 5th, the Seoul Drum Festival began. I wanted to see part of it, so I checked out the directions on the website, which were slightly confusing. I started by trying to find it at Children's Grand Park, but after wandering around for almost 2 hours, I got a little frustrated. I did get to see a rather large and diverse park that I'd never been to.

At the entrance to the park.

A large fountain of the type that's rather ubiquitous here. It lights up and plays music at night.

It says "Mushroom Village"

The rather depressing zoo located inside the park.

I'm guessing this was part of a "traditional Korean stories" section...

I called James, who checked the website and figured out that it was actually in Seoul Forest, which was several subway stops away. So I hopped back on the subway and headed to Seoul Forest, which is located in the middle of one of the smoggiest and most industrial areas I've been to in Seoul. Someone has since described Seoul Forest as more of a "twig-land" than a forest, as it's only a few years old.

I've been trying to get a picture of the completely dyed dogs, but the ability escapes me. Apparently you can't tell these two apart, so pink and green tails were in order.

I found the 'forest' to be more of a large park, and not even as large and tree covered as Children's Grand Park.

Part of the playground - kids could climb in and around a giant metal person.

After looking around for about 15 minutes, I decided to try the info booth. Through my broken Korean, I deduced that the festival was indeed in Seoul Forest, but I had missed the performance for the day, and the next one wasn't until the following weekend. So I headed to James' place, since we were meeting up with some friends of his for dinner and drinks.

We went pretty far north on the subway to get some Moroccan food, and then headed to a place called Ka Brew which had just opened. It was 5,000won for all you can drink beer at the pub, which had its own microbrewery.

The price was amazing, but the beer was only average (though certainly better than the bottled Korean beer).

The next weekend one of my closer friends Stephanie had her leaving party. She left to go on a short Euro trip before heading back home to DC, after which she's thinking about moving to Prague to study.

So James and I headed back to Uijeongbu, where we had dinner at an Indian restaurant, tried to go bowling but couldn't because the place was shut down, went to a bar that filled up immediately with all 27 of us, left and went to another bar, around 1am headed for a noraebang for three hours, and then headed to Stephanie's place to crash.

Me, Joey and Lauren at the Indian restaurant called Durga.

The biggest leaving party I've been to - 27 people showed up to say goodbye to Steph.

Steph and James getting up to some crazy stuff in the noraebang

I wasn't immune to the noraebang fever, either. It was 4am though...

So after crashing at Stephanie's, James and I headed back into Seoul because we had a picnic planned with Kathryn at 2pm at Children's Grand Park to celebrate her 30th birthday. Surprisingly, we were able to make it back into Seoul, get showered, changed, pick up food for the picnic, and make it out to the park on time with bright smiling faces.

Melissa, James, me, Fan, and Gary

Our amazing picnic, which lasted for about 9 hours!

Me, Fan, and Gary

There was a wild rabbit who kept hopping about and got rather close. The Koreans seemed to enjoy clapping and shouting at it to try and scare it.

We continued the picnic at Kathryn and Gary's house once it got dark at the park.

After a late night version of the picnic, we headed out to Itaewon for drinking and dancing. I had my first experience with the two hills in Itaewon - Hooker Hill and Homo Hill, both completely apropos names. The two hills are right next to each other, and while looking for the later to go dancing, we went down the former. I'm not naive, but I've never seen a place like this before. I won't go into details, of which there aren't many anyways, but suffice it to say that hill left a definite impression on me. We made it to the dancing street, where we (being James, Gary, Kathryn, Michelle and myself) danced for several hours before I decided to call it a night and head home around 3 or 4 am.


Stephanie had shown up to Kathryn's picnic for a few hours and left her sunglasses there, and I had left a necklace at her house over the weekend, so we decided to meet up for dinner. She wanted to go to Insadong one last time, as there's a vegetarian restaurant there she really enjoyed. Insadong is only about 15 minutes by subway from my house, so I headed there early to do a little bit of sightseeing and shopping (it's a big tourist area).

The face of a sculpture on Insadong street

Our vegetarian meal - yummy!

The railroad tea shop on Insadong street that I wanted to take my parents to. Everything has been taken from old railroad cars.

Steph had been wanting to go to a batting cage for a year. So when we heard the sound of metal bats ringing out, we just had to stop.

On Friday the 18th, my kids had a photo shoot for their yearbook. And yes, it was a photo shoot. We went to Dosan Park, and were there for about 2.5 hours, taking class, individual, and candid shots.

Sapphire class - me, Miss Alison and the kids. I was told my picture would be from the waist up, so since it was Friday I wore jeans. Oh well.

Playing the "cooperation game" so the photographer could get small group shots

The boys examining, and then later killing, the bugs on the ground.

The girls played telephony - an apparent favorite of the photographer.

This could have been a good shot. I think Anika made it a great one.

The next day, I met up with Kathryn, Gary and James for a French photography exhibit, and then an open-air jazz concert at the Seoul Arts Center.

An add for the photography exhibit.

Me, Kathryn and Gary at the Jazz concert

Gary and James

The jazz quartet, and the scenery behind them.

After the Jazz festival, the four of us headed to Habangcheon to a friend of James' house named Jess. Jess had recently moved to a new apartment and gotten her Masters, so she was celebrating by throwing a house party. The four of us waited for almost an hour for two girls I had met online who live in Apgujeong and had just arrived in Korea less than three weeks ago. The six of us went to Jess' house, where we stayed until around 3am, at which time things were beginning to slow down and I decided it was time to call it a night. I went to Uijeongbu the next morning for a doctor's check up, and met up with a former Korean co-worker of mine from EWAS for coffee, and then had dinner with another co-worker before heading back home to Seoul.

I'm also a member of the national council for ATEK. We've recently elected our first president, and we held our first meeting on Skype on Wednesday. It's a fledgling organization, and as hogwan representative for the country, I'm finding it a bit hard to know my role and what I can do to help. I'm doing what I can, though, and I hope over the next year the roles become a bit more defined and I'm able to help a little bit more.

This weekend I plan on going to the Seoul Mass Freeze, and then I'm throwing a housewarming party on Saturday on my rooftop. We'll see how that goes - I'm historically rather bad at throwing parties, but this will be byob so I don't go broke. The rooftop should keep the neighbors from getting annoyed, and I live close to a downtown area, so if people get bored we can always migrate.

And next Monday is International Costume day at school (I'm doing Ireland!), Thursday is a half day, and we have Friday off for Chuseok - the Korean Thanksgiving. I'll probably be going to the islands near Incheon for Chuseok with Gary, Kathryn, James, and Kobus (a friend of James').

Busy, busy!

School and such

As of today, I've been back for a month. In some ways it feels like I never left Korea, and in other ways it feels like I just got here.

I'm still kind of settling in to my new apartment. I had a few problems when I first moved in, but they've all been sorted out for the most part. The main issue I had was with a gate on the third floor landing - I live on the fourth and last floor.

view from my front door down the stairs

When I first moved in, I was told that the landlord locks the front door and the gate at 2:30 in the morning. The problem with this is that the gate has a bolt on it that can only be opened from the inside.

note the bolt on the bottom

So if I came home after 2:30am (which to be honest, isn't that often), I would have to call the landlord and ask him to come open the door. This was a problem for a few reasons.

1. He has a wife and daughter. I don't think it's fair to call anyone at 2:30 in the morning (or whatever time) to ask them to open someone elses' door. It's doubly unfair to wake someone up who will probably wake up others in the process.

2. He said that the bolt is there because all the tenants in the building are women, and it's safer to bolt the door. The problem with this logic is that all the tenants except me live below the gate. The only people past the gate are me, and the landlord.

3. Late at night, there are 4 locked doors you would have to get through to get into my apartment. The first one is bolted with a key-code alarm. The second one is the gate (which has a key lock as well as the bolt lock that remains constantly locked). The third one is my front door. The fourth one is the entry-way door that has a lock as well. If someone is that determined to get into my apartment, a bolted gate is not going to be a deterrent.

4. I've never had a curfew. Even when I was living with my parents, there was not a set time I had to be home. It was simply a matter of being responsible and making sure that they knew when I was going to be where, and an ETA for getting home. And I haven't lived with them for 10 years. I don't need a curfew now.

I tried to explain to him that I didn't want him to bolt the door. My Korean isn't that good, and his English isn't that good, so the communication was probably amusing from an outsider's perspective, and could probably make a good sitcom joke, but it was annoying and frustrating in actuality.

So, I wrote my landlord a very polite letter explaining my position and reasons for wanting him to not bolt the door. Then I politely asked my co-teacher to translate it into Korean for me. Then I taped it to his door, along with my payment (early) for the electric bill for the month.

He hasn't bolted the door (that I know of) since then. And I did get home at 4:30 once this weekend.


I've also been settling in at work. I've gotten my kids into a routine, which of course makes things in general much easier. I enjoy working with the kids that I have, and the small problems I was having with the curriculum (like getting a power point and worksheets for a lesson the day of, and being expected to add things to it and do extra research) have been resolved for the most part.

My boss seems to like me quite a bit. I've been told on numerous occasions that I'm one of the best teachers that they have. I was observed once for each of my lessons, and then they added more observations so the staff could see what I was teaching (things like learning centers) and learn from what I was doing. The principal sticks her head in my room just to look at my bulletin boards, and she's asked me to send her files for things that I've done so she can share them with other teachers. It's certainly a different atmosphere from what I'm used to in Korea, where if you don't hear any feedback you're doing fine, and any feedback you do get is usually what you're doing wrong.

I'm also a member of the national council for ATEK (Association for Teachers of English in Korea), an infant organization that's still in it's first year and in the process of electing its first president. I haven't had to do much so far, though I feel like I should be doing more. At this point, it's more a matter of keeping current and up-to-date with things happening in the ex=pat community, like the H1N1 virus that has a lot of teachers quarantined without pay, or the recent cancellation of foreign teachers' contracts in the Seoul public school system a week before school started.

And I've been traveling a bit as well. I went to the DMZ a few weeks ago, I went to Busan last weekend with a friend who's leaving in a few weeks, and I spent this weekend out in Seoul celebrating a friend's birthday (hence coming home at 4:30am on Sunday morning).


Don't ask an ajuma to take your picture in Busan. First she'll refuse, thinking that you want to take a picture of her. then she'll squint at your camera like she's trying to look through a viewfinder, when your camera only has a 3inch LCD display and no viewfinder. And then she'll cut your head off when she does take the picture.