It's a good day when...

So like I said yesterday was a good day. I do have to admit that it was as funny as heck after work when Rita and I got together. Let's just say that yesterday was the most culturally irreverent day that I have had so far.

First we went to dinner I was tired of bi bim bop (bowl o rice with stuff in it) but I couldn't read the menu so I found something with rice in the name and just picked it. Rita went the safe route and got kim bop (CA rolls) steamed mon du (steamed dumpling). Since we are Chinese we wanted a little soy sauce to dip the kim bop in. At first we joked that maybe if we just said it loud enough maybe they would understand. :) By then Rita said, "Why don't you just go back to the counter and point at sauces until they give you one?" I figured it was worth a shot. So I strolled back to the back and took a look around and pointed at something that looked less spicy than chili paste. By now the 3 kitchen staff and the 3 waiter were staring at me trying to figure out why I had gotten up. When I pointed at the sauce they began to dish some up, all be it very confused and hoping that I didn't turn funny colors, and before then can hand it to me and I can run the sushi lady sees them and starts to question what is going on. They try to explain that, "This crazy Asian girl who can't speak a lick of Korean is up here randomly pointing at sauces and we just want her to leave." So the woman in English asks, "What do you have?" and walk with me over to the table where she sees that we have kim bop and tries to give us chili paste! Rita motions that that isn't it and it's too hot. While she is doing this I decide to dip my kim bop in my soup. She sees this and goes into a frantic display of hand motions to let me know that what I had just done could potentially destroy the fabric of this universe and I should NEVER do it again. Alas still no soy sauce. By now the other waiters are wary of our presence and when they bring out the food it's like leaving an offering to an angry god. The man timidly leaves the food on the table and runs. Then I get a good look at what my point and order method got me. In fron of me was a plate half full of rice and on the other half was veggies in CHILI PASTE with and this is the best squid. YEAH! So Rita laughed I picked at what I could eat and then we left.

The whole way home we are making jokes about being Asian and just wanting some good old fashioned pasta. Along with any other thing we could think of that was making us crazy. Once we got to my place we did a little MST3000 routine with some movie and found whatever we could that was in English.

When we headed back to school I had changed and was wearing a pair of shorts and t-shirt. As we left my apt complex and Ahjimah (older woman) saw the two of us walking and started pointing to me and yelling at me in Korean. As she walked past she pinched my butt no doubt to make the point that I was dressed like a harlot and should go home and put more clothes on! Oh goodness let me tell you the laugh that insighted. So yes another complete day here in Korea, maybe blending in is the wrong word for what I do. It seems more like all I do is make everyone appalled at what happens when you let a nice Asian girl out of the country. :)

Day 1 Week 2 The first time...

Yeah! I made it!! I kow that you all REALLY want to hear about my weekend exploits with my coworkers but that will simply have to wait until tomorrow morning. For now I can gladly report that today I ended with a bang.

It's finally happening, I am beginning to connect with the students! They laugh at my jokes, aren't giving me blank stares and are doing well. From my end I am teaching well, feeling organized, prepared and patient. Well for now, it is only the second week. I am SO glad. While I was working with one student I had a, "This is why I moved to Korea moment!" I am finding that I have more support that I know what to do with from my coworkers and co-teachers. This is a great day. :)

Day 2

Yeah so I keep thinkin about the pics and I'm feelin kinda bad but I'm pretty sure at this point I'm just putting off the whole project until I have a computer at home. Sorry, lets just give it another week!

So today I have officially had all my kids and I have to say that when I don't have 4 of 5 classes it's a good day. Today it was 2 of 5, yeah! My life science H is a fun group, the only one where the girls outnumber the boys 4 to 1. My Sheltered class is having a hard time mingling and pretty much keep themselves divided along party lines. :) All in all today has been one quiet day. I do have to get myself together for the staff retreat this weekend, the kittys are home alone and I'm getting nak, nak in the saunas! Yeah, this should be a story and a half. ;)

Day 1 down, 179 to go!

All righty I made it!!! First day is over! Yeah, but wait that means that the school year has started and there's no turning back now. So yesterday was pretty crazy I tried to come to school early to get prepared and so I showed up around 6:45, no this could have worked out if I had security clearance and keys to all the places that I wanted to be, sadly I didn't so I ended up working in Mr. Evans room for most of that time and then frantically running around making copies and trying to get into locked down rooms. At one point there were three of us standing next to my room with three security keys and a paperclip trying to decide who was going to invalidate their card and then have to spend the day dealing with the security co, SECOM, luckily we went and checked to see if an administrator was available and used their key. All of this to find out that there was an assembly right off the bad and I didn't get back to my room until 8:30-8:45! YEAH >:( .

From there it was all fun and games as usual and I do mean usual! Really middle schoolers are all the same no matter where you are! Hate to disappoint! But I made it and for that I am thankful. Now I think it's going to be a matter of throwing myself into my work. Good thing I'm isolated in a country where I don't speak the language that should be easy! All for now, L8R.

8.17.04 Meeting Anyone?!

Well here it is 8:15 and I have been at school ALL DAY LONG!! Not that this is a new trend for me or anything it's just that now to do any personal business on a computer requires me to stay here since I haven't gotten my home computer yet, yeah I ordered one but you'll find out more about that once I type up the 10th of Aug.

Anywho, now that the whole staff is here it just feels like work, the on a guided tour of Korea feeling is gone, until of course I step off school grounds and must navigate my way home. After breakfast I headed off to a middle school (MS) meeting to talk about the nuts and bolts of teaching MS and why they had started the MS program here. I was also able to meet my fellow MS teachers, not much to report on that front, lots of experience and people who are rarin to go! I seem to be the exception to every standing mandate that they place on who, what, where and when the MS teachers operate. The MS is in container classes by the soccer field=I am in the HS sci dept, you should have A key to your classroom and the workroom=I am in 4 classrooms and use the HS workroom, teachers take supplies from the MS office in RP 5=Ninah sign out your supplies from the HS office and we'll let the MS know, mailboxes are in the MS workroom=Ninah yours is in the HS workroom and the list goes on. Really I'm not complaining I just find it funny that nothing seems to apply to me. Anyway after that I have about an hour off or so I think but when I sit down to chat I find out that I am in fact late to a sci dept meeting (MTG) that I haven't even heard about! So I get up there go through introductions and we chat a little before lunch. Then were done and it's off to lunch, crazy!

After lunch you think I have a break? Nope I have a "Co-teachers" MTG about how to co-teach for ESL students, very informative, it seems that though are student are high in content many of them lack the English background to thoroughly utilize classroom instruction. So hat's off to you Team 81 I am now in your shoes! Around 3:45 I sneak out of this meeting only to head to a Physical Sci MTG so that we can start planning our units for the coming school year. Oh and did I mention that I have to turn in a class syllabus to the Dept. head before school starts, SUPER! Yeah, so after that I feel all wound up and have no clue what to do with all that info.

Now I know that there is only so much I can focus on, but when I let myself the worry cup runneth over! I suppose it's good that I didn't worry about bringing along a lot of deco stuff since I don't have one room to teach in per se, but it would be really nice right now to have that one little piece of the puzzle to focus on and complete so that I can feel like something is under control and ready to go. I may just have to steal a random bulletin board and put stuff on it to feel like I have a place to be. I know, I know, in time....

So here I sit typing away and I think, ready to go home, or at least veg a little. Ah tomorrow another day of meeting and prep, only 5 more days until it begins....................

MIGHT I INTERGECT

Now I don't know how all of you are doing reading these really long backlogged posts, but writing them is wearing on me. In the mean time "today" is just getting added to the pile so I think I might try doing one backlong and then "today" so if you get confused just keep checkin the dates and it should all make sense sooner than later.

SUN 8.8.04 Racing through Homeplus

Well it seems that there are no ill effects on my system due to jetlag. FINALLY being a night person has paid off!! Wonder how long this will last? Anyway, after I got home Sat night I did some minor unpacking and by that I mean I pulled out some clean clothes to sleep in, the rest of my toiletries and clothes for church in the morning. At which point I needed another shower and felt no motivational desire whatsoever so I went to bed. When I woke up I really was surprised that I didn’t feel super tired or out of sorts, the only thing I noticed was how stinkin’ hard my bed was! Holy Cow!! Apparently Korean’s are new to this whole sleeping in beds thing so they still like “firm” beds and boy you ain’t kiddin’ me. But yeah, got ready for church, called up Crystal, we grabbed a cab and made it to church with plenty of time to spare. Church, well, it was church. Maybe another posting will go into that dynamic, but for now let’s leave it at that.

After church we went to Manna House, this great Korean Restaurant in the city. Not exactly sure where, but hey you wouldn’t know even if I told you where it was! Check the pics, the seating layout is similar to what I have seen at Japanese steakhouses where there is dugout seating with 4 people at a table. The waitress, who are super attentive, leave a pot of boiling broth at the center of the table and bring you thin slices of meat that you put into the broth, cook and then eat with some rice and lettuce after it is cooked, super good and fun to do. While your meat is cooking though so is everyone else’s so you pretty much just fish out a piece of meat whenever you are ready and just pretend it is yours. After this the second dish was a squash and noodle dish, but I had stuffed myself on the first that I wasn’t very hungry so I just tried the noodles and a little of the squash, not bad I must say. Once again I thought we were done but low and behold here comes course three which is a porridge like dish made from the broth that everything up to this point has been cooked in. I know it sounds pretty scary, but really it isn’t. Yeah, so the porridge was rice, some seasonings, the squash and then it just cooked down to a slurry. Now understand, I was full when the second course came by now I can eat no more and what do I get but a HUGE bowlful of this dish! Good grief, I try a couple of bites and pretty much reach my threshold. Thankfully this is the last dish and dinner is simply a small cup of a grapefruit drink. AAAHHH! Refreshing. So as they rolled us all back on the bus I was ready to go home and nap, but instead decided to go to Homeplus, a Walmart like store, to go shopping.

Once we got there Dr. Penland gave us an hour, some store directions and told us to have a good time. Let me tell you it’s pretty funny seeing all of us “white folk” running around this store trying to figure out how much something is, what the product label reminds us off and that toilet plunger ou can get for $0.84 at Wally world in the states is worth the ₩2,400 won ($2.04) that you would pay in Korea. Some things I figured heck no! (₩19,000 or 16.10 for a basic fan) On others I just threw in the towel, found the one I liked and happily paid WAAAAAAY TOO MUCH! (₩39,000 or 33.05 for what amounts to a 15.00-20.00 hairdryer in the states.) So you guys know me, I wanted to wander around the store for hours checking prices and seeing what they had where, but being as we had only an hour and I spent 20 minutes analyzing EVERY hairdryer they carried I didn’t really have the chance to do that. All in all I got out of there and only spent about 80.00-90.00 bucks. Not bad for setting up home And check out all the stuff I got, see pic. So I went home to my sauna, put stuff away, showered of course, decided at this point that the cost of an AC didn’t matter I was going to buy one or else somebody was gonna get hurt and headed off to school for dinner at Pizza Hut.

Now I know your thinking, “Pizza Hut, Wow, you’re stylin’ now!” But the funny thing is that here in Korea Pizza Hut is like going to The Cheesecake Factory or something pricey like that. A pizza with “the works” cost somewhere in the neighborhood of 30 bucks! Pretty crazy. Especially considering it tastes just like Pizza Hut at home, or maybe that’s WHY it cost so much. Yeah, just thought I’d share that with yaJ.

I’ve officially rambled so let me put this post to bed by saying that dinner was great, I made it home safely, my apt was still a sauna and my bed was still hard. On a side note the cats have decided to go on a hunger strike in protest of being drug half way around the world, left on the patio for 24 hours, having to take a bath, being left alone in a HOT apartment and just generally being ignored. Hmmmm, wonder how long this will last?

SAT 8.7.04 After Noon

So once making it to campus it was simply a matter of staying with the pack. The tour of the school was pretty neat, I had no idea that the campus was so compact, in the pictures it seems like there are so many green expanses, I just expected it to be like MNU, but expectations are not always reality! Anyway, off to lunch, so first meal in Korea I expect rice, kimchee, fish, I get a bacon cheeseburger! Figure that one out!! It seems that the general thought is that there is so much change all around you might as well have some familiar food. Nice!

And after this light meal over enlightening conversation it’s off to 3 or 4 hours worth of meetings on any topic imaginable (banking, cable TV, Inet, fitness club, annuity passports, alien registration, medical, and every other topic that relates to relocation.) interspersed with some lovely giveaways and get to know you games, thank you Jill J, all in all a full day. No harm no foul, no trouble, so far everyone thinks I’m normal! From here we are fed yet again and then it’s off to my personal sauna for a good nights rest.

Science Geek

Yeah yeah I know that this has nothing to do with me living IN Korea but it does have to do with my teaching and my gearhead side. So check out this site to see a great Rube-Goldberg that Honda spent way too much money making and I can enjoy without pinching my wallet!

http://www.dwulet.com/honda/

SAT 8.7.04 Driving to Taejon & my new home

After a minor communication/luggage issue with Asiana Helen and Mrs. Jung took me out to the taxi that they had hired for our return trip to Taejon. The very first thing I notices was the sea smell of the air and the wall of humidity that I walked into and it was only 6:30 in the morning!! Yep, I was seriously wondering if during the night someone had rerouted our flight back to KC. Once the shock of being out of the AC had passed and I had been put back into an air-conditioned vehicle I was fine. Helen and Mrs. Jung left me to my own devices for about a half hour while they sorted out the luggage stuff. It seems that many people had gotten here without the same number of suitcases they had left home with. At some point in all of this the traffic police told the taxi driver that he had to leave so without a word to me he just turns the car on and began to drive off. Now being as I have been in crazier situations I did not fear that he was driving me to some deserted alley where he would steal all my possessions and leave me to fend for myself, but I must admit that the thought did reside in a small corner of my brain. And holding true to my first belief he merely circled the airport and went back to pick up Helen and Mrs. Jung.

So we were off and I was tired! Korea looks so much like anyplace else I was shocked. I recognize the plants I see, the highway is a plain old highway and the cars, well that takes me back to So. Cal. Close to the border, but still America all the same. The differences are subtle at best. All the cars are either Hyundai or Kia’s, no “domestics” here J, the building are mostly high rises that are numbered in English and Hangeul as well as the signs on the highway. This is about all I take in before I get sleepy and opt to let the car lull me to sleep. Sadly I am not the only one that the car is speaking too and Mrs. Jung is in dire need of carsickness bag or a stop along the highway as the case may be.

When we do stop again at a “convenience store” the only thing I can liken it to is the “Ozarkland” stops along Highway 70. It’s this big shopping area with all these food stalls out front. After taking a bathroom break we got some grilled potatoes and were back on the road. The potatoes are sm. bite-sized, golden potatoes that are whole and grilled so that the outside is a little crisp and the inside is soft. YUMMY! Try it at home you’ll love it!

Once we got off the highway and were in Taejon I could see that this was no small city, it’s like any big city I have been to in the states and FULL of cars and people. Driving here is a little different and maybe I’ll go into that in detail later but basically what you need to know is that U-Turns are the main way to get anywhere on the roads. It wasn’t far to my apt. I right off the Expressway that runs through the city to the right on an overpass. I know sounds pretty lame but easy to find and that’s the important part right now.

First impressions of my apartment complex were, “Wow this place is tight.” And I don’t mean that in the slang way! The drive way to get into the complex is about 3.5 cars wide and there are ALWAYS cars parked on both side of the road so really you have about enough room for a car and a walker or a car and a bike at the same time. In the evenings I think that there is “valet” parking so they wedge cars into the driveways that are dead ends. I’ll take a pic and show you. I really can’t explain it. Anyway, my apt is up 11 floors and was at the end of a hallway. I really was surprised at the size of my apt. I was preparing for something much smaller so I was happy to see that I had separate rooms for everything and a balcony. Once again photos will help make it all clear. Once I began talking with people I realized that the variety of apartment sizes varies from closets to two bedrooms “mansions”! But I had prayed for a bath tub and so I received one. True it only holds about half my body and to sit down it would require me to kiss my knees, but hey God provides! Ah but the true horror was the temp of the apartment. You see AC is still a luxury here and one that I had not bought yet so my apt was about 90 when I walked in with a hot desert breeze blowing through. Yeah Steph think our upstairs ALL THE TIME! I suppose God was once again prepping my for what I would face here, amazing how he does that.

Once Helen and Mrs. Jung left I dropped all my luggage in the kitchen, sorry no pics of that but I’m sure you can imagine, and hopped into a COLD shower. This would become a regular pattern for the next few days. I could only stand about 3-5 hours between showers depending on how much AC was present. So I end up taking about 3 showers a day. Anyway I took a cold shower and was ready to leave the sauna I call an apt, so I called and joined the group before lunch for their tour of campus

LAX to Inchon, the never ending battle

Alright folks I know that there is much more info that happened before this that I want to share I just don't have it transcribed yet. But this has to be the most mindboggling part of the trip anyway so here you go.

PS- I'm probably going to post pics in about a week so that I don't have to install my camera software on every computer I run in to. Definitely worth waiting for!

And now on with the show!

So much to tell and I have been so long in the telling. Well I suppose that the best way to start is to jump in after I arrived in LA after Denver. When I got off the plane I figured that I should follow the card that I got and head over to the international terminal. I walked in the door and the place was a zoo, rush hour traffic at every counter and in the isles. Despite it being a HUGE terminal there was pretty much a one way walking path between the counters. When I got there (1.5 hr to take off) I got in line for Asiana Airlines and get things together, when I talked to the ticketing agent he pretty much shut me down and said that I didn’t have a ticket and I needed to go back to United to get one from them. I told him the ticket was attached to the pass but he said that was my ticket to DENVER!

So I took a 15 min. bus ride to the United counter at which point I was shut down yet again by the ticketing agent for United who was all about the line. Well by now I have an hour until take off and I realize that I have NO idea where Stella, my cat, is and more than likely I was going to miss my second flight for the day. So I go out into the general area for United and look for anybody who could help. Thank God I found another ticketing person that was willing to help. She tried really hard to get things cleared up and said I should just run over to Asiana with the boarding pass and get on the plane. So I made the 10 min. bus ride to the International terminal and tried to catch the flight, to no avail. Upon walking in to the terminal this time the place was a ghost town. The only people now were the ones that worked there. A marked contrast to an hour and a half ago! The ticket was still so messed up that Asiana wanted to charge me another $350 to take the cats and my extra luggage, which I might add I had no idea where it was but I knew it wasn’t in LA, to Inchon. It seems that they had the misguided belief that I should pay them for luggage even though my tickets and flights originated with United. Yeah I can not explain on paper how truly confusing this part of the journey was. Well the ticketing agent pretty much said that with 20 min. until take off there was no way I was making the flight. But they would try to get me on the midnight flight.

Well little old me in my ever so I’m helpless way began to talk with the only other person in the line and found out that he had missed the same flight and was on his way to Osan Army Base. He was pretty much in the same boat as I was so we paled around for the rest of the afternoon which was ever so helpful since I now had two cats and a large carry on.

During the 12 hour interim of missing the first flight and taking the second I was able to deal with the ticketing situation. When I went to ticketing the informed me that I had such a nasty little mess they were just going to send me directly to a supervisor and let them deal with it vs. having a representative from every department imaginable in the ticketing office. I agreed that this was a much better solution and headed of to terminal 7 to find May and Ron Kaplan, two if the most helpful people I met that day.

As they looked over my ticket and began to understand the complexity of the screw up that had occurred they simply offered me a lunch and dinner vouchers to go grab something to eat and rest up. (Mind you this simple maneuver also took 45 minutes.) So it was off to the boarding area with the cats, but the guy doing security wouldn’t let me through despite my possession of a security pass that said I WAS NOT boarding a plane merely eating. So once again a slightly ticked Ron Kaplan had to come to my rescue. Nice huh? Once there was food and caffeine in my system and a good hour or two had passed. I went back down to see Ron.

Ron had managed to find my luggage, it had stopped in San Francisco, was attempting to reroute it to Los Angeles, gotten the ticket reissued so I now in fact had a ticket from LAX to Inchon, and had given me the information on the “Star Alliance Agreement” which basically states that since I was booked though United the only rules I have to follow are United’s HA, HA! But of course we must keep things lively and there was the issue of the payment of my fees. Now it seems that Mr. Bahn in KC only charged me for domestic rates on 3 extra bags and 2 cats, thus totaling 420.00 smackers. But really what he should have charged me total was 650.00 dollars. Now just to make things a little dicer Asiana wanted to charge me 770.00 for all of this, no chance I’m going to be paying them that! But I did settle for paying the difference between the domestic United price and the international United price. I was just tired of dealing with all of this and figured it was what I should have paid anyway. So that pretty much cleared things up with the nightmare that was my ticket. Mr. Kaplan told me that I SOOOOO need to contact United and give them a piece of my mind and ask for some extra compensation, which I still need to do a week later, and told me not to worry about anything else.

Since all of this was done Gaston and I headed into LA after a stop at the USO, never been to one of them before nice set up, and just hung out. It was odd having so much time and really nothing to do or worry about. So we shot the breeze over a smoothie and then took a taxi back to the airport in time to get a free dinner, gotta love those vouchers, and check in to our flight. By now I was simply work out and was doing everything I could to stay awake until the flight took off.

It got even harder once we boarded the plane and I got all comfy. I did manage to stay awake until take off and then I was O-U-T! I do remember hearing people at dinner and them passing out all sorts of papers. Nothing was coming in the way of my sleep though. I woke up around 3AM airplane time, by now I have NO clue what time it is in LA or the rest of the world for that matter, ready to face a new day. Can I just tell you I am so very glad, and highly recommend, sleeping through long flights. Without that option I swear I would have gone crazy. Crystal was not happy after being crammed in a bag the size of a large shoe box for 24 hours and was finally letting me know by meowing at regular intervals.

Once of the place customs seemed pretty low key, or maybe that was because I had no clue what they were saying to me. But I picked up my bags, note the funny pic of Gaston and the bag that is not ours when you see my photosJ, and they took me through “quarantine” with the cats. At first the women there took the cat’s rabies verification and told me to just sign a paper for quarantine and that was it. I assumed that this meant that the cats had not passed and were now being detained so I freaked out and asked her why I had to sign it and how long she was going to keep the cats. To which her reply was 10 minutes. Oh okay so about then I figure out that she hasn’t inspected them yet and that’s pretty much all they have to do. So I pull out Crystal and she gives her a once over and says she is fine. Next I begin to pull out Stella and about half way into the process of getting her out the woman goes, “Ohhh, yes, she’s healthy!” HA, HA so the fat cat had no problems either.

From here it was simply a matter of dragging 2 FULL luggage carts through the exit and I was in Korea! Just like that. From here I said goodbye to Gaston, he was taking a bus to Osan, and met up with some new friends Helen and Mrs. Jung. I’m interested to see if Gaston tries to keep in touch I pretty much left it up to him. Boys will be boys.

2004-05-01 10:01:00 Saturday Workin'

So pretty much just having a boring day. Trying to get things organized for August and I've suddnely realized that there isn't going to be enough time or money to get ready the way I want to. I'm downd to three unplanned weeks this summer, which yes I know all you corporate types think is more than any human deserves, but to a TEACHER this seems life a short amount of time. Right now the big toss-up in life is whether I should teach summer school or not. Comments? Suggestions? You jsut let me know.

2004-05-10 20:07:00 Today's the Day

Well it happened, I have crossed another Teacher threshold and can never go back. Today I hung up on an irate parent! I could hardly believe it myself, but iit seems that I have reached my verbal abuse limit for the year, maybe even forever and will no longer tolerate a parent that can't keep their cool while talking to me. I deserve to be treated better. So it seems that the hundreds of dollars spent on counseling for ex-boyfriends can pay off in other aspects of my life as well. Thank You Dr. Eberhard! Yeah, your right I have to talk to the parent again, as a matter of fact Friday at 7AM, better not be late to that one, but hopefully she will realize that her behavior will not be tolerated. So the question is can SHE keep her cool?