Korea: March 2012

It's been a while since my last post, because things have settled down for the most part, and we're into a routine. We work, we go home, we go to to the gym, we eat dinner. It's a bit boring, and usually not post-worthy. But I'll update you on what I can.

The new year of kindergarten started a few weeks ago. At the kindergarten level, there are five, six, and seven-year-olds. Brady's classes are all 6 and 7-year-olds, and I have all 5 and 6-year-olds. Starting kindergarten is scary for anyone, and for a lot of these kids it's the first time they've ever seen a foreigner up close, and there are a lot of tears. We think that they gave me the younger kids because the kids are already scared, and seeing a hairy white man would just be too much. All together, I visit six 5-year-old classes, and four six-year-old classes each week. And at the beginning of the year all the 5-year-olds needed English names. I ended up naming about 140 kids within three days. Chances are, if you're reading this, you have a Korean child named after you. I had to avoid duplicate names, names that had too many Ls and Rs, and long names. At first it was easy and fun, but I quickly ran out of ideas. Some of my best names were Rio, Tofer, Patch, Alpha, and Delta.

A couple weekends ago we went to Hwaseong Fortress so Brady could shoot some arrows. They do this thing where you can pay 2,000 won (about $2) to shoot ten arrows. Brady did really well. He got a lot of shots on the target, which very few other people seemed to be able to do. The crowd was oohing and ahhing (seriously) at him. But Koreans are funny like that; they have really vocal reactions to things.

Last weekend was St. Patrick's Day, and we had thought about going to Seoul. It would have been really fun, and we have two real live Irish friends, so that would have been good, but I was really sick all last week. I had a sore throat, then it turned into a cold, then a fever. We've both been sick a few times since we've been here. I think it's being in a different climate, having different pollen in the air, and probably also living in a somewhat polluted city. It's taking a bit of a toll on our bodies. So last week I just felt terrible, and didn't feel like being at school, and it's impossible to give your voice a break when you're teaching all day. Plus, I don't know how I could take a sick day, because it would be such a burden on the other teachers. I never thought that teaching was easy, but I have a new perspective on it, and what it takes to be in front of a class talking all the time now. So, we didn't go to Seoul last weekend, we stayed here and took it easy, and I feel much better now.

We did go to Songtan on Sunday, which is near a military base. We had heard it was good for all things Western, and I needed to buy jeans. As it was, the only ones that fit me were men's. All the jeans in this country are skinny jeans, men's and women's, but the women's were all too tight in the legs, or too short, or just weird. But the men's jeans fit perfectly, so now I know the secret. There were also a bunch of international restaurants in Songtan. We wanted to get cheeseburgers, but the only places with burgers were McDonald's and Popeye's. So we went to a Turkish restaurant to get brick oven pizza and lamb kebab. It was really good.

We had thought about going camping and hiking this weekend, but it's still pretty cold here. It gets below freezing at night, and the place we wanted to go doesn't allow fires, and none of our friends want to go, so I don't think we will. We're excited for the weather to start warming up a bit, because there are a lot of weekend trips that will be really fun once it gets warmer. And we've heard that there's a window of opportunity, around May and June, when it's warm, but before the rainy season starts. I've heard that in July and August it rains all the time, and is really hot.

Here are some pictures: