FIrst opening and beyond...

How did I get so far behind? We’re busy, between the classes, the pre-openings, and all of the extracurricular groups that are sprouting up. Plus socializing in general, and exploring. Egad!

Sunday 3/12: The second opening day…SO COLD! The tour guides were moving their groups inside whenever possible, so we had captive groups w/whom to do all our edutational schtick. Wanda wore her black windbreaker over her outfit, and some nice thermal layers underneath. We learned more about what does and doesn’t work (do the same songs for each group in the morning so that when the same kids are brought to you in the afternoon, you know what they’ve already heard, since the groups all change). Any time I get a group, I do edutainery, interactive songs (what’s your/his/her name; foods we like to eat, things we like to do, etc.), and when the groups are mostly taken care of I float around and chat the kidlets up at whatever level of ability/comfort they have. Again, LOTS of photos. Say “kimchi”!

Monday 3/13: Slept in, cleaned, got some stupid stuff done, then went into Seoul with Elana for a late lunch and shopping in Namdaemun Market—notorious for cheap stuff. We found the market but couldn’t find meal-food (vs. street snacks) that didn’t involve the proprietor scrubbing grills in muddy pools in the street, so we turned out of the market and found a little bulgogi spot, where we chowed down for about $5 each. Of course, the second we were fortified and back in the market, we found the alley with all the places we should have eaten…and where we’ll go next time! We were a little disappointed in that we didn’t find much in the way of serious bargains; it’s cheap, but all the stuff is pretty chintzy, so you don’t find too much that you’re interested in. And when we did find something cool, they wouldn’t haggle with us! The nerve! I was also surprised at how non-aggressive the vendors were; I think I was expecting a more Latin-American approach… We got some little things (like scarves to drape under our heinous fluorescent lights, had a snack later (doughnuts, essentially), and just enjoyed the scene. Back at Seoul Station, we figured we were pretty late and decided to have ice cream at Baskin Robbins instead of bothering with dinner. We finally communicated what we wanted, and while they were scooping, I started sounding out the Hangul lettering for the names of the flavors—and they’re all the English names with an Asian accent. Completely hilarious. Same deal at a coffee shop later in the week. I’m thinking I could get pretty far pronouncing English words with an accent when I don’t know the Korean one. Hah! We stood on the train, completely forgetting that we’re in the real world and that we might want to get on the commuter train early instead of sitting in Baskin’ Robbins… I got caught mouthing out in slo-mo the Hangul headlines on the newspaper of the guy sitting next to where I was standing, which was a fun laugh for us both. On the way home, we stopped at EMart for groceries—a full day.

Tuesday 3/14: Oy. Spent a good part of the day dealing with the frustrations of EV. Our Head Teachers / liaisons to the Korean government staff in Suwon are doing an excellent job of buffering the hassles, but we were getting zero communication last week while half the camp was at Ansan, so the tension here escalated exponentially and many people are really annoyed, to say the least. I emailed back and forth with our main contact here, ultimately to our satisfaction, in that we’re completely on the same page but had different perspectives on the group’s angst, having been in different places and working with different programs for the past week. I invited her over for a glass of wine that night, to talk about the stuff or anything but the stuff…we killed the bottle talking more about the latter than the former. In between, I went for a long run on some dirt roads/trails/through cemeteries and had a fun pseudo-chat with a woman who came out of her house to greet me. There were lots of ceramic pots outside her home (not an unusual sight); I’ll be curious to learn what the deal is there.

Wednesday 3/15: Back to work, which is a lot about the parade and a little cross-training right now. It’s a bit futile to be cross-training when we still don’t have a lot of supplies or when the rooms aren’t really ready for the projects at hand, but there we are. Go with the flow… Anne had a party for NY-ers (and my reputation is one of a no-nonsense, suffer-no-BS NY-er, which I find humorous, little CT girl that I am…teeheeeheeeesqueak), which was an event for black attire and witty banter at a NY pace. Good fun.

Thursday 3/16: More parade and training…ran in the evening and found some crazy trails that were clearly designed for military training. Very D&D; I’ll be psyched to introduce people to them. The guys will go nuts! Another edutainer is starting a choral group, and we met in the evening. I don’t think we’ll be doing anything too sophisticated, but it should be a hoot.

Friday 3/17: more of the same, and we had mentor/mentee (manatee) meetings at lunch. As a senior teacher, I have 4 people for whom I am part of a support system. We basically had a getting-to-know-you session, and most of them have teaching experience, so it’ll probably be more of a sharing-the-experience group than a major mentoring endeavor. My mentor is the aforementioned Anne, and our group had a good discussion after meeting with our manatees.

Of course, we had a big St. Patty’s Day party with lots of beer and loud Irish music…

Saturday 3/18: another opening day. Had a good run in morning. Gorgeous weather, although it REALLY cooled off in the afternoon. The kids continue to be adorable. I had a chat with the woman who was representing the International Herald Tribune and the Suwon Daily; she grew up outside of Chicago and went to Grinnell in Iowa (and recognized the name of a HS classmate of mine) before returning to Korea. Tiny world! Post-show we had a brief meeting about press that would be around on our days off and the possibility of some people being around in costume for a few hours. I ended up going to dinner across the street at Heyri Art Village (see link) with Head Teachers Anne and Mel(anie) and Mel’s husband (also my recruiter), Stanton. Much wine, good food and smutty conversation later, we hung out in their room for a while, drunkenly debating how we could successfully bring Shakespeare to EV.

Sunday 3/19: Woke up and had a quick run (made pals with some gravediggers) before another day of witchy edutaining. Post-parade went to Stanton and Mel’s for a party for people who’d be in the opening ceremony performance, then we crashed the party that Anne was throwing for the residents of Jupiter (“I live on ‘planet’” is always funny…), which was particularly funny because they’re a mostly younger crowd who think that they are the hard-core partiers and that we’ve all been picking our old noses in our apartments. I think they see us a little differently, now…

Monday 3/20: No running. Yoga and formal apologies to liver (there's no way I'll continue at this pace. I'm hoping that's true of everyone and that I won't have to have willpower of my own accord). Went to Seoul for lunch with a friend, and Stanton joined us—yummy Indian food in Itaewon. I went to Dongdaemun Market afterwards and pretty much spent the entire afternoon walking around the markets. I got some good buys—a daypack for W18,000, a sporty, fleece-lined jacket for W10,000, and a Korean-English Dictionary I’d been trying to find. I came home via the subway to Ilsan, a city between Paju and Seoul, and found a new market I’d heard about. I did some grocery shopping there, took the bus home and was in my apartment by 11pm. Whew!

Some more fun Koreanisms:

Don’t write anyone’s name in red ink—that’s reserved for the dead.

Don’t leave your chopsticks sticking up in your rice—reserved for ceremonies for the dead.

#4 is unlucky and that floor # will be missing from some buildings.

They spit EVERYWHERE.

Koreans are 1 year old on the day they are born and turn 2 with the new calendar year, so some are 2 years older than by our system. It gets tricky when you’re trying to guess the age of little kids…

Give and receive with the right hand, or, better yet, both hands. The left hand is unclean. They’re forgiving of foreigners not knowing this…I’m having a particularly hard time remembering to do this.

After meals you’ll commonly be given a little bottle of yogurt (I think, maybe passion-fruity?)—about a shot’s worth—and it really cleanses the palate. Yummy!

I’m working on figuring out the best way to make photos accessible without bogging down the blog…soon…