OK, sorry for the lack of posting. I fell out of the habit after that first weekend and kept putting it off. Anyways, I'm not going to be so detailed anymore, there's just not enough time. I'll just talk about some highlights as well as some general posts about Korea.
My second full day was a Friday, and I went out to a club that night that people had recommended on Dave's (eslcafe.com, it's the site that all ESL teachers go to). On the way back from work (I had a meeting with a student or something like that I think) I met an American who was coming back from a party who said we'd be in touch at some point, so that was good. I got a late start and of course got lost on the way there. Google maps is a huge pain. Since everything is in Korean, you can't use the directions feature, you just have to try and figure it out from the map. You wouldn't think this would be difficult, but I keep getting lost doing that. Not sure if it's my fault or not, but that night was the perfect example. According to google maps, the address was in between two subway stations (Gangam I think and some other one, it seemed to be closer to the other one). I went to the other subway station and tried to find my way from there, but later on, everyone told me it was right next to Gangam. Anyways, ended up having to ask some Koreans to explain where I was trying to go to a cab driver.
It was pretty expensive but the venue was really nice, as good as any I've seen. The sound system was great and there was pretty much a full blown laser show. The whole culture though is quite different from anything western, even young Koreans out drinking are pretty uptight for the most part. One Korean starting speaking to me in English and was really enthusiastic about having a foreign friend. His English wasn't too good though so communication was pretty difficult, and he got frustrated at times. He kind of showed me around and introduced me to some other Koreans. They were actually really friendly, and it seems that it takes a lot of drinking for them to open up and try and speak to westerners. When they do though they're quite friendly.
There were a few foreigners there, some Americans, a Canadian, a Spaniard, a Dutchman, and a few guys that looked like Brits. I didn't talk to anyone extensively other than the Spaniard (of course he insisted on speaking in English, just like the other Spaniards I'd meet the next day), but they were pretty nice. The problem with Seoul though is that there are so many foreigners that it's not really a community. If I were in any other city in Korea, there are so few foreigners that it's a very close-knit community, and you're pretty much friends with any westerners from the get-go. That's why I wanted to go to Busan: there'd be a large enough foreign population that there'd be a lot of people to choose from, but not so big that it'd be impersonal and unfriendly. In Seoul there are just so many foreigners that it's not a big deal at all to run into one, and there's not that immediate bond you'd get in any other Korean city. So I learned quickly that you can't really just go up to another white person and act like it's a big deal that you're both in Korea.
I was out until way late at the club and took a taxi back to my apartment. I woke up early and couldn't sleep, so I was a wreck the next day. I was planning on going to bed early, and all of the sudden I got an email from my friend Valerie (we worked on the CDA paint crew together, doing maintenance work for our school district during the summer after my freshman year) who I'd learned a month or two a ago was in Korea as well, in a small town called Jeomchon. She was going to be in Seoul that night with a group of couchsurfers! I don't know a lot about it but couchsurfing is some website you go to if you're traveling and people put you up on their couch if you want a place to stay. I think you're required to provide an hour of conversation or something like that, too.
Anyways, we went to Hongdae, which is apparently the best clubbing district in Seoul. It was packed with foreigners because it was Halloween eve, as I guess you'd call it, and a lot of the Koreans dressed up in costumes as well. Some got really into it. I saw these two Koreans who had really well-done zombie costumes and they were acting like zombies and had these westerners take a picture of them.
The best part though was when Valerie and I were looking for the group. She had separated from them to find me and we were trying to find them. The whole thing was confusing but apparently there was a couch surfer's party that a bunch of people were going to, and that's where the group was headed. We ran into another guy that was looking for it as well, and he brought his friend over, and we were going to try and find it together.
Valerie then got a call and I guess we were heading somewhere else, but we were talking to the guy and his friend asked us where we were from. "Idaho," I said. "No way," he said, "what town?" "Coeur d'Alene," I said. He was speechless but gave me a huge hug. He was from Coeur d'Alene too! Then he asks what high school we went to, and I said I went to Lake City my freshman year and transferred to Gonzaga Prep (not the best answer) and Valerie said she went to Coeur d'Alene. He gave Valerie a big hug and started talking shit about Lake City (he was a CdA high school guy through and through and so proud of it, you know the type). Then he goes, "Don't look at my balls!" and pulls his pants down to show a tattoo of Lake Coeur d'Alene on his thigh. We talked about Coeur d'Alene for a bit, and he was a bigtime Coeur d'Alene guy: absolutely loves it and thinks it's the best place on earth, and his friends told us how much he loves and talks about Coeur d'Alene and that they knew a lot about from the town from hearing him talk about it. So that was a pretty cool moment for my third night there. There were two Spaniards there (Catalans) that I had just been talking to, and they didn't get it. They thought we were crazy for making such a big deal about it. "I guess it's because the United States is very big," one of them said to the other. I don't know, what do you think? Isn't a coincidence that out of every English teacher from all the different countries we ran into, we happened to run into one from our hometown of 40,000 people? Valerie hadn't met anyone from Idaho up to that point.
Anyway, we went to a hookah bar, then for some food, and then to a really high-end Nori-bong (karaoke room). You go in, take off your shoes since that's what Koreans love to do (they put them in compartments), wait a little while, and then go to your room (the building had several stories). There are couches, a big TV, a karaoke machine, and microphones, and you buy a few hours of karaoke. The selection wasn't too good unfortunately but it was fun. When it was over everyone was tired and went home. Valerie and I thought about meeting up with some of the other couchsurfers (the group had split) but I was exhausted from the night before so I wanted to go home. Of course, the subway was going to start running in less than two hours, so we decided to wait it out rather than pay for a cab. We finally got to my apartment very late and crashed for a few hours. After she left I couldn't really go back to sleep and felt pretty dead so all of Sunday and some of Monday was devoted to recovering.
On Monday evening I went out exploring (I'm able to do all of this because October and November are the slowest months of the year for this type of hagwon, since all of the Korean exams are in October, so I have hardly any hours until December). I went to Donggogae, which was the last subway stop heading out to the northeast, as far away as I could possibly go from my apartment by using the subway. There wasn't much there. Not that it wasn't very urban and densely populated, but it was nothing but housing, a bunch of restaurants (there are tons of restaurants EVERYWHERE in Seoul, Seoulites must eat out constantly or something), and a few small shops. I had a beer at a restaurant (Korean beer is awful, I'm learning) and watched a recap of the Euro 2008 on TV. I was in Argentina at the time so it brought back memories. After that, I headed back into the downtown center. I saw a westerner on the first or second stop after that, which was quite odd considering how far out it was, and asked her for some help. She was happy to give me suggestions on where to go, and she had been living there for 7 years! She was getting back from a Korean lesson, and from what I gathered, she's almost fluent. Anyways, she told me to go to this district in the middle of Seoul (can't remember the name or what stop on the subway it was, which is unfortunate) which has a lot of cool shops and restaurants.
Funny side-story: at one point I asked some Koreans for directions, and we talked for a little bit (couldn't make much conversation though because of their English). One of them was a Taekwondo expert, and then wanted to show me something since he was proud of his skills. He gave his friends his wallet and phone, and then proceded to do a front-flip! He didn't quite come around though so when he landed, he stumbled a bit. Immediately afterwards he ran inside and didn't come back out. I guess he 'lost face,' which is the worst thing for a Korean.
Next, I had dinner and noticed some westerners at the table next to me. I asked them if they were living in Seoul (to get recommendations on where to go), and they said no but to pull up a chair. They were really cool people: professional musicians who were trying out for the Seoul Philharmonic! A Korean-American composer was there too who they were friends with in the states. He was from California but his English was pretty much unintelligible. I have a hard time understanding people with bad accents, especially Asian ones, which is a pain if you're in Asia.
After that, I started to walk around for a while. It was getting pretty late and I was going to call it a night, but there were a group of drunken Koreans that I thought were my age, so I thought if I asked them for a lighter I might be able to start some conversation with them. I was right and they were very, very friendly and wanted me to go out drinking with them. As it turns out, they were in their late 20s (I can't figure out the ages of Koreans, anyone from 12-40 looks the same to me). We went to this restaurant-in-a-tent and had some food (very good but very spicy, as is the case with almost all Korean food) and started drinking soju. Soju is the national drink of Korea. They sell it in these bottles (either 500 ML or 750 ML or something like that, I don't know metrics, point is, it's about the size of a coke or beer bottle), so you'd think you could just drink it out of the bottle and finish the bottle yourself. That's definitely not the case though. It's clear and sort of like vodka but much better tasting, so it's easy to drink a lot. The drunk sort of creeps up on you though, it's weird. You have a lot, you think you're fine, and then all of the sudden you're stumbling through the streets of Seoul without any idea of what you're doing.
Anyways, I learned a little bit about Korean drinking culture. They take the age thing very, very seriously. The social hierarchy is entirely based around how old you are. The oldest guy in the group was their boss as well (they worked at a World store; World is one of the two big phone companies in Korea) and you could easily tell he was on top of the hierarchy. In the case of drinking, the youngest person pours the shots for the people in the group, in order of their ages beginning with the oldest (I was the youngest). They hold their glass up to you and you pour in the soju (it's very bad manners to handle their glass I guess), and later I learned that you have to hold your glass with two hands. And the pourer has to put his other hand on his sleeve (back in the day, they wore baggy silk robes and would have to do this). Apparently, if you're drinking with someone who is much older, you cover your mouth and glass with your hand while you drink. They don't drink shots like we do in the west, at least not with soju it seems, they just slow sip from the shot glass and then you pour them more. It alternates though I guess, so different people will pour the soju, and I think the youngest go first the second time, I think. One of them spoke English fairly well, so he was pretty much the translator, and I learned a few Korean words (thank you, cheers, etc.). They were pretty hilarious but I can't really describe it to you, you'd have to see it for yourself. One funny thing was apparently it's not a big deal in Korea to compliment a guy for being handsome, they kept on telling me how handsome I was. "You very handsome! Very smart!" They kept saying.
Eventually, we went our own ways (they were all really drunk) but I went to a bar with the one who spoke good English as well as this other guy. He had big plastic glasses that kept falling down on his face and he wore a suit. His name was Mister Hundred or something like that (if you can imagine that being said with an extremely think Korean accent) and he kept repeating it to me over and over again and would quiz me on what his name was. After the bar they were pretty much stumbling and I took a cab home. They left me their email address on my subway map, which I lost the other day, but I think I remember it so we'll see if I see them again.
As I was going home I saw another group of young Koreans so I decided to use the same trick, I asked them for a lighter. Again they were extremely friendly, and since they all around 20 or 21, they spoke much better English so that made it more fun. We went to a restaurant, drank soju and had some food. Again, they complimented me on how handsome I was and then asked me which one in the group was the most handsome. They all look the same to me. Anyways, it was really late at that point so we parted ways and they left me their number (I texted it yesterday when I got my phone, but didn't hear back). I didn't really think I had that much to drink (the soju tastes good so you think it's not very strong) but when I got back to the apartment, I couldn't believe how much my head was spinning. I passed out and woke up the next morning to possibly the worst hangover of my life. Keep that in mind if you ever try soju, it gives you possibly the worst hangover of any common drink, and I've had this confirmed after talking to other people. So a lot of Tuesday was devoted to recovering.
I had had a class a few days before, on Saturday I believe, with the 7th, 8th, and 9th graders. It's a combined reading, writing, and grammar class, and I'm to teach the reading section. The kids are total zombies. They're exhausted and completely burned out, and are very, very quiet. When you do get them to speak, the speak so softly that you can't really hear them (I guess they're self-conscious about their English). So it was kind of a challenge teaching that class. On Wednesday, I had my first "real" class (a one on one class in US history, I'll be teaching a lot of these alongside SAT stuff and it's basically what I've been hired to do). It was a typical Korean thing in that I received two hours notice for it and wasn't told what I was going to be lecturing her on (they didn't know where she was in her class, it wouldn't be an AP prep class but simply to help her with her homework). I arrive to class and she says she's on John Adams, so then I am to lecture her on US history to that point for two hours off of the top of my head. My boss had asked me earlier if I was too tired to do it, but since I wasn't feeling tired, I stupidly said "No, I can teach it." Anyways, I need to be able to prep for these classes, it's really hard to give a lecture without notes or prep time.
I can't talk about my job since I idiotically put my first and last name in the domain name, but I will say that the Korean hagwon culture is absolutely insane. The kids sleep 3-4 hours a night, 6 if they're really sleeping in (this lifestyle starts in middle school). They spend their vacations cramming in year-long AP classes over the course of several weeks (mostly what I do), or they take one on one weekly tutoring sessions over the course of the year to do an AP class on the side (in 30-40 hours, an average AP class in the US is 150 hours). Another popular thing to do is to spend hours each day after school doing SAT prep classes. In the SAT prep classes and the open (group) AP classes, the kids take an AP test after every class, and their parents are texted the scores. One of the teachers at my school told me that one of her students wasn't allowed to eat past 7 o'clock, and another one had to do an hour of jump-rope at 1AM every night. By western standards, it's pretty much abusive, but I guess they're used to it and it's their culture so it's OK? Even the "slacker" Koreans who aren't as motivated go to the hagwon every day for English I think, unless they come from a very poor family who can't afford it. Apparently the hagwon industry is worth like 18 billion dollars in Korea, which is astounding considering how small it is. Now I understand why the Korean middle schoolers that come to Coeur d'Alene are so happy when they're in America. They're only in school until 3 o'clock, what a concept! And then they can do what they want for the rest of the day...it's paradise for them.
They spend lots and lots of money to take these classes (their mothers push them to do this and seem to be the motivation behind this whole culture, as one Korean student told me, Korean gender roles are that the fathers work and the mothers make them go to hagwon), so if one little thing is off, and it isn't completely perfect, they complain. The Korean parents (especially the mothers) are extremely pushy, so when they have a complaint, they will call the school several times a day and demand a refund. I can't complain about this since it gives me a well-paying job, but it puts an incredible amount of pressure on the students of course, but also the teachers. If I make one mistake (for example, Korean students will ask you obscure questions that they know the answer to, and if you can't answer correctly, they will tell their mom, who will complain to the hagwon and ask for a refund, though luckily I haven't had this happen yet), or have one bad lecture resulting in a student complaint, it's grounds for being fired.
So basically my job is on the line every class. Quite different from teaching in the states, and very few American teachers would last here. Anyways, I have hardly any hours right now (it starts picking up in December, since Koreans take exams in October, these schools are pretty much dead in October and November), but that puts a lot of stress on you, and there was about a three day period where I didn't even feel like leaving the apartment. Now I've decided that you just have ignore it and do the best that you can. If I get fired, oh well, I'll teach ESL somewhere and have a much more relaxed experience. Other than this though it's a good job, I'm not sure if I'll like teaching SAT prep stuff, but basically I get paid very good money to lecture motivated students (no babysitting). Not a bad gig. My co-workers are very cool as well (there are two other Americans working there, and apparently they'll hire one or two more, whom I think already have worked at the school previously).
Not much else to report, it has been uneventful other than this (the stress from the job kind of killed my motivation to explore for a couple of days). On Monday, I decided to go to Costco to buy oatmeal and whatever I might find there, as well as do some exploring. I got a real late start since I had some errands to do. I looked on google maps for directions to costco (looking at the map, since everything was in Korean). The directions seemed simple enough, head out exit 7 on this particular stop on the subway, straight for three blocks, and then take a right and go a little farther.
But of course it wasn't that simple, and I ended up being lost in downtown Seoul for over three hours (later, I learned that I just had to go a few blocks farther before the right turn and I would've found it). Not fun when it's about 20 degrees with the windchill and you're very hungry, and it turned into one of those 'I hate Korea' days. One problem was that there was no Exit 7 on this subway. Above ground there was a sign for it, but there was no exit. Perhaps there used to be one and they got rid of it, or they had yet to build it. At one point, I gave up and went to a PC cafe and showed the guy working their on google maps. He called a better English speaker to translate (Koreans often times do this rather than trying to figure it out themselves), his girlfriend, whose English wasn't so good. Eventually she just told me to take a taxi because it was complicated. They told me to tell the taxi driver the simple instructions: Yeongpyong Costco!
I tried three taxi drivers before one finally understood what I was saying. The signs on the taxis say that if you say 'free interprer,' they'll get you a translator for free, but that's not the case. Or maybe they just don't want to deal with it. One finally seems to get it, and after driving for a while, drops me off at an apartment building. Yeongpyong costco! He says. It says 'coop' on the apartment building, so I'm guessing it was the Yeongpyong coop. Anyways, I was completely lost at this point, but somehow made it back to the original area where I took the taxi (not far from the subway station where I got off). I asked one taxi driver, and he didn't want to deal with me, and the second one told me in broken English that it was very close. He told me to head to the left and then to the right. So I tried that, and still couldn't find it. So I went into a huge Homeplus (a big chain in Korea, I haven't heard of it in the states), but they don't really have food there, mostly just clothes and appliances. I had to eat something and just ate at the McDonald's there (I wanted to eat at the costco, one of my favorite places to eat, to see the difference between American and Korean costco, but I couldn't wait any longer), and decided to take a taxi afterwards. I figured I still had time (it closed at 10).
But when I finally got in a taxi, it was 9:49! I finally got to the costco, and luckily they let me through without a member's card. I ran into some guys from Jordan but they didn't know what oatmeal was. One was friendly but the others weren't. After looking all over the store, I couldn't find food, and one of the employees actually understood what oatmeal was (when I went to a large grocery store several days earlier looking for oatmeal, they had no idea what I was talking about) and told me exactly where it was in the downstairs food section! They're pretty lenient about closing, because it was probably 10:15 at this point. The food court had closed but I bought a huge box of oatmeal (the packets, to my pleasant surprise) as well as a huge jar of peanut butter (they only sell that type of thing in bulk). They were kind of expensive, and when I got to the cashier, I learned that it was like the states and that you did need a member's card to buy stuff (I was hoping you didn't need one).
No big deal I thought, I'll get a member's card since I'll probably want to shop there in the future, and they won't tell me it's too late, at least I hoped not. So I asked for how to get a member's card. They brought another employee who gave me some paperwork. Then they told me the bad news: it was 35,000 won for a members card. The oatmeal and peanut butter was a total of 37,000, and I only had 47,000 won. I was absolutely devastated. And then, the lady looked annoyed and said something along the lines that today she'd make an exception, but that in the future I'd need a member's card. It was one of the best moments I've had in Korea, and I guess if you've had a run of bad luck, you can count on something good happening in the end to even it out, or [insert BS line about karma here].
Anyways, yesterday (Tuesday) I finally got my ARC (alien registration card), which enabled me to get a phone! A big step for me, and it makes me an official resident of Korea, though I'd say that the phone is actually more important than the ARC. You have no idea what it's like to not have a phone until you don't have one, especially in a foreign country. It's pretty much your umbilical cord to life. This is especially the case with my job; since my schedule changes daily, I need to be constantly informed about it, so the only way they could do this before I had my phone was to talk to me on google chat, meaning I had to be logged on as much as possible. With my ARC I can finally open a bank account as well, which I'll probably do tomorrow. It's great though to finally have the ARC, since now I have my passport back and can exchange currency. Why Korea won't let you do this without a passport is beyond me, my driver's license, credit cards, and social security card wasn't enough for them; very typical of Korean culture and its attitude towards waegookin (foreigner in Korean).
Well, I guess that's about it. I promise none of my posts will ever be anywhere near this long, and in the future, there'll be lots of little posts here and there.
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