Korean Food Part Two

The last entry is not to say, of course, that I don't like Korean food. There's a lot of stuff I like.





Had I written this a couple days ago, I would have said that every Korean food item presented to me in pattie form was great. This was until yesterday, when one of the side dishes at work was some sort of deep fried oyster pattie. The first time I ever had oysters was on Thanksgiving, when they were added to the stuffing. That was okay. But the two times I've eaten oysters since I've been here... Eating oysters makes me feel deeply violated.





But oysters aside, so far I like everything that comes in a pattie around here. This includes meat patties, fish patties, egg patties with vegetables, deep fried potato patties, and a number of patties I couldn't identify or can't remember.





Another Korean food I like is called mando. It's kind of like Korean raviolo. Circular pasta is overstuffed with vegetables and/or meat and folded over. I got a huge bag of it when I first moved in a month ago, and I'm still working on it. I finally got myself a steaming tray, so I can cook them properly. I've been boiling them. I don't recommend it. Wet.





Bulgogi is also good. It's just seasoned (with sesame, soy sauce, garlic, etc.), shredded meat. It means "fire meat." Wikipedia says over a quarter of foreigners in 2007 claimed it as their favorite Korean food. I might agree.





I've been greatly confused about the vegetables here. They seem to use a lot of leafy greens, but not spinach, and sprouts, which I know nothing about anyway. A popular sprout is pictured below. I don't know what it's called, but the end looks like a corn kernal, and the sprouty part looks like a noodle. These are okay. Sprouts, whatever.





A popular Korean food is pibimbap (aka bibimbap), rice mixed with vegetables. "Bap" means "rice," and I don't know what "pibim" means, but it doesn't mean "vegetable." It wasn't in my dictionary. The vegetables include the sprouts above, carrots, some leafy greens that I can't identify, and variable others. Scrembled eggs are also usually included in strips. It's served on a plate all separated, with a container of that stupid stupid red pepper sauce, and you're supposed to mix it all together, adding as much sauce as you feel right about. I actually tend to like it without the sauce. The natural flavor of it all works well. I think it's the eggs that really bring it all together.

Korean barbecue is great, as we all know. A couple times I've gone with Heather and her family to this barbecue joint by her apartment complex. As with all barbecue joints, there is a large grill in the middle of the table, and you cook your own meat. The servers bring a bunch of slabs of pork (I'm not sure if this places specializes in pork, or if that's just what the fam prefers), along with the perfunctory side dishes. This includes kimchi, zuchini, and squash, which are also cooked on the grill, plus sauces, cucumbers in vinegar, shredded lettuce with some sort of strawberry yogurt topping, and these large translucent leaves in water. Koreans like to take leaves of various sorts and wrap them around things. It's cool.

It occurs to me that after I've actually learned all the names for these foods, I'll look back at my descriptions and think myself silly.

Korean Food Part One

Nothing can really prepare you for the amount of rice Koreans eat. It’s hard to imagine and practice eating the same thing three times a day, in large amounts. And a plain thing at that. Even in Kenya they had a small variety of staple food, and didn't eat the same thing for each meal. But in Korea, it's rice and kimchi, morning, noon, and night.

When I was staying with Heather the first two weeks I was here, I was eating breakfast and supper at her place, and lunch at work. They tried to accomodate me as much as possible, and not give me the same thing all the time, which was nice. But I was still overriced.

And they still love the stuff. If you ask Korean kids what their favorite foods are: "Rice!" "Kimchi!" Blech.

The Korean way of meals is to eat your own bowl of rice, and share kimchi and numerous other side dishes, which are placed in the center of the table. In restaurants, you typically get a bowl of soup, and often at home soup is part of the meal, too. Having just two or three parts of the meal like we do is kind of boring for them, I think. Maybe it's because they have to eat all that rice. It all balances out.

Speaking of balancing, I have no idea how the hell all these Koreans aren't wicked fat. If each meal consists of one bowl of rice, which measures about a cup, that's six servings of carbs per day, just with that one thing. They also eat potatoes, noodles, and baked goods. I've never had so much trouble keeping a decent diet. I guess everyone gets enough exercise in these parts.

Evidently the only spice in Korea besides salt is red pepper. If you look at this link, you'll notice the first four spices are hot or red pepper, and most of the others are just different versions of salt:

http://koreanfood.about.com/od/spices/a/CookingSpices.htm

I freaking hate red pepper right now. Even though I'm at my own apartment now and I mostly buy food that I would buy in the US, I still eat too much of that stupid stuff. At work, they have a service that sends a bowl of rice and six side dishes to work, and lately three or four of them have been laden with red pepper sauce. So I have a little trouble with work food. I've been lucky enough to have a light schedule at work so far, so I've been coming home and eating a meal between my first set of classes and when the food comes to work. Starting next week, though, I will be in class almost straight from 1:30 to 9, and won't have time to come home for a snack. I'll have to bring something with me, I guess, because I can't go from 1 to 6 without food. I'd die.

The funny thing about red pepper is that Koreans think their food is too spicy for Westerners. Countless times Heather or her family has warned me about the food I'm about to eat, and then I start in and have a hearty inside laugh about how not spicy it is.

There is some occurence of curry around here, though. Heather's mom made me rice (really?) with curried chicken and vegetables a couple times, which was wicked good. I also get bowls of ready-to-eat vegetable curry soup at the grocery store.

Open Court Reading Book 2 Class

This is my most advanced class right now. The kids are about eleven by our count, and just entered fifth grade (grades advance in the wintertime here). The class meets at 7pm the same days the other OCR class meets--Monday, Wednesday, and Friday. The class until today consisted of Kate, Sally, Jenny, Sue, Tana, and Chris, but Chris is being transferred to the other branch of Kate LA as of tomorrow.

Kate is Heather's (my boss') daughter. She's probably the best student in the class. She understands everything really well compared to the others, and usually does her homework. I'm not sure if this is the result of having her mother as a principal or if she would be this way anyway.

Jenny is a giggler. I ask her if she's sitting on a feather a lot of the time, and of course I had to explain what this meant the first time I used the expression. Jenny speaks very well and understands spoken English well, but her reading comprehension isn't as good. She has asked her mother to take a month or two off from classes at Kate LA, but Heather wants me to get her to stay because she is a good student who tries hard, despite how good a student she thinks she is.

Sally is a very quiet girl (in class). She seems to understand the majority of what I say in class, although, like the others, she doesn't always know the answers to my questions. Her homework is pretty good, but she's kind of a sloppy mcslop slop, a trait of which I am trying to cure her.

Kate, Jenny, and Sally are also in one of my storybook classes, which meets Tuesdays at 8pm. We're finishing Ella Enchanted next week, and I think they're all very glad to get on to a new book. I really enjoyed this book, but it is way too advanced for them. I think even native English speakers their age wouldn't quite get it, and would need a couple years.

On my first day of teaching, Sue asked me to give her an English name. Her real name is Chae Eun, but she said that was too long, and she wanted a short English name. Sue was the shortest name I cold think of for a girl. She is a hard worker. She sometimes has trouble with the homework, but she asks me questions about things she doesn't understand. I'm glad she's developed this habit.


From left to right, this is Kate, Sue, Sally, and Jenny. They were all running around the classroom instead of crowding together, so I just snapped this shot real quick. They're going to get pissed at me if they ever see this.




Tana was transferred to this class from the lower level OCR class about three weeks ago because she found it too easy and she tested at the same level as Kate. She's a wicked slacker, though. Of all the homework I've assigned since she joined the class, she's handed in about a third of it. Strangely, though, she was overdiligent in the essay I had them write over the past couple weeks. I wanted them to write and essay and make an oral presentation on a topic of their choice. I had them do a rough draft and a second draft of the essay, and she passed both of those in on time, I think. Because most of the second drafts were mostly free of mistakes, I didn't make them complete a final draft. Tana passed in a third draft, anyway, though. So I corrected it. Then today, the week following the actual oral report, she passed in a fourth draft. It strikes me peculiar given her lack of other homework, and that she didn't even prepare for her oral presentation and did kind of a lousy job at that.


This is Tana. She was hiding behind my desk for some reason while I was taking the picture of the other girls. What a weirdo.




Chris is an odd boy. Lissette, the teacher I replaced, warned me about his tendency to sleep during class. She said at first she tried to keep him awake, but gave up after a while. Stephen, our Canadian teacher, told me he's actually seen him fall asleep midsentence. Apparently he's been tested for narcolepsy, but does not have the condition. He's just a very tired boy. I asked him how much sleep he gets, and he says almost six hours. For a fifth grader, that's wicked shitty, as we all know. The other girls make fun of him a lot. They make loud noises to wake him up, and talk about how much he sleeps openly in class. They make fun of him a lot. I try to get them to stop, but you know kids. I hope he'll get better treatment in his new class. He's quite smart when he can keep his eyes open. The couple classes he stayed awake for me, he really dominated. He sucks at homework, though. He didn't even bother to take part in the whole essay/oral presentation project, and he forgets or doesn't do his homework about 60% of the time. Too bad.

This is Chris, of course. I tried to get the whole class together in one picture, but the girls were being assholes, and kept running away every time he got close. Poor guy. He said he wanted to kill them.

View of Ulsan

So from the highest point on the trail I walked, this is what Ulsan looks like to the north:

And this is some little pagoda that I zoomed into from the above picture (the clearing in the center).

When I finally got to the end of the trail, after wondering for half an hour if I was going to regret taking it, for fear of it getting me lost, I came out onto a street that runs into the huge Gongeoptap Rotary, which I've walked around several times. It's about a mile away from home, so not too far a walk to get back. Phew. I met a group of teenage boys on the way who were eager to practice their English. It's fun to talk to the kiddies.

More Hike Pics

This is the trail I was on, looking back from the first set of exercise equipment. After this, I was following a man and his two little daughters for a while. Kids are funny.



I took these next two pictures because I thought it was funny that even from what seemed like the middle of the woods, you can still see the urban jungle...



This one is a view of the south of Ulsan, from the highest point on my trail.

Long Hike

Beyond the monument was a road that I hadn't walked on yet, so I decided to go up there to see if there was anything interesting. I found some nice footroads and started up one. There were dozens of people walking around. It's kind of surprising to see so many people actually exercising and enjoying nature. Then after I was really awed by that whole experience, I happened upon one of the ridiculous aspects of Korean culture.

The trail I was on veered off into a little circle with a bunch of gym equipment. So halfway through your nice walk through the woods, you can hop on a stationary bicycle. Wow.






There was a guy using this thing while I was taking pictures of the other equipment. Haha. Later, I saw some weight lifting gear--benches and stuff, but my battery was running out, so no pics. You know what that stuff looks like.

Korean War Monument

Down the road from the clock is the Korean war monument. I didn't take any pictures of the museum inside, because I figured it wouldn't be allowed. You're not missing much, though--just typical war pictures, examples of uniforms and weapons, stuff like that. It's just a one-room deal.





In front of the little black rectangle is an altar, I guess. When I went on New Year's Day (Lunar), there was a pot with ashes in it, where a flame had been burning, but it was gone yesterday.


This is the back side of the monument.


This wall is behind the monument. The the left of the picture is some sort of flying chick playing a flute.

I took a lot of pictures.

This is the slightly smaller pond to the east of the first pond. It's cool because is has a series of big rock levels that you can walk across, which creates sort of a Greek theatre effect. I think it may be a structure for a manmade waterfall in the summer. We'll see. There are also a bunch of rock paths all around that side of the pond.





There are these little trams that take people around. I haven't tried to figure out if you have to pay for it yet. I imagine there's a nominal fee, since most of the park is free. I also haven't tried to figure out how to get on one. I'm not sure if there are stops, or if you just flag them down.


This is the big clock a bit down the road from the second pond. The symbol in the middle is a dragon with what I think is a Korean piece of fruit in its mouth. This is the symbol of Ulsan.


This plaque is across from the clock, but I don't know what it says. I just like that dragons.

More Grand Park

There are a number of ducks who hang out at the pond. Ori is the Korean word for duck.

They were looking for food.

Then they looked for more food.

Many people quacked at them. I like the one in the middle.

Ulsan Grand Park

Ulsan Grand Park is the coolest part of the city so far. I only live three blocks from the main entrance, too, so I can go whenever I want. Except after 11pm. It's a huge park with ponds, trails, bridges, playgrounds, basketball courts, bike tracks, a big enclosed butterfly garden, a Korean War monument, a petting zoo, a small waterpark, and lots of things to look at. I've spent a number of days there. I'll probably end up going there several times a month, since it's good exercise and a nice break from the big city.

I went there yesterday to finally take some pictures. These are of the big pond at the main entrance. The windmill on the other side of the pond is about thirty feet high and has lights on the blades that light up at night. I've seen pictures of them spinning fast enough to cause the lights for form a circle, but I haven't seen them spin very fast myself--just a little wind, and no help from electricity.








There is a monument on the windmill side of the pond, but I don't know what its purpose it.


I'm a big fan of this bridge, which takes you towards the monument and the windmill (to the left). It reminds me of a fairytale bridge.


I think there's a waterpark inside this building, which is next to the main entrance. The entrance is to the left, and the pond is to the right. Behind and to the right of the building is a big waterslide. I think the building has pools and the like inside. There might be a gym in there, too. I think I saw it through some of the windows.

Open Court Reading Book 1 Class

Open Court Reading is another of the American language books my school uses. This class is my last class of the night (8pm) on Monday, Wednesday, and Friday. There are six kids--Wesley, Denny, Gyu-ho, Emily, Losa, and Rose. For a week or so I though Rose was named Lose because of the whole Asian L/R phenomenon, and I thought her name might be a foreign name related to Losa, like Marie and Maria. But no, her name is just Rose. Haha.

These kids are about ten and eleven by our count and are my second most advanced class right now. They have a speaking ability at a similar level to native speakers not too far below their age. They just have trouble with complete sentences and minor, common errors like omitting articles. Articles are apparently one of the most difficult aspects of English, and I'm constantly correcting almost all my students over them.

Wesley is my favorite student out of all my classes. He's a good kid. I think he's going to be a little heartbreaker when he grows up. Wesley participates the most of all the kids in his class, and usually gives pretty good answers. A lot of his responses are totally irrelevant, though, and I'm glad that we have kind of a casual environment so I can make fun of him in a nonmalicious way. It's funny when he says something that he sort of knows is wrong, so he says it softly, and then covers his face and says, "No no no" when I ask him to repeat himself.

This is Wesley. He's the only kid to let me take a picture of him in this class. He started reading my blog, and wrote me an email about how much he enjoyed it. His favorite part was my remark that the picture that I sent with my application to teach was horrible.

Denny has the habit of saying something and then reneging, too. He participates often, also, but doesn't always get it as well as Wesley. He's pretty bright, though. He and Wesley fool around a lot, but at least they're not as out of control as my Avenues B class.

Gyu-ho is a funny guy. He's a great student in that even though he doesn't have the best idea of what's going on in the class, he still tries to answer as much as he can. I think he's improved a little in his ability to speak since I first got here. At the very least his participation has increased. I'm trying to get him to improve his writing, though. Every time we read a new story, I assign vocab sentences as homework once or twice, and I'm encouraging everyone to write sentences that show me they know what the word means. He hasn't gotten it perfect yet, but we're working on it.

Emily is the only girl in this class who participates. She's pretty smart. She seems to have a good comprehension of some of the more advanced ideas I present, even though she doesn't always fully understand. The best thing about Emily and the boys is that they ask questions when they don't understand, instead of allowing themselves to dig a deeper and deeper hole of confusion.

Losa and Rose don't say much. I have to call on them, and I usually find that they have very little to say. Losa I think just doesn't like speaking in front of others, because her homework is generally quite good. Rose I think may be in a little too deep for her level. She was tested into my class a couple weeks ago, but she rarely is able to finish her homework, so maybe she just had a good testing day.

2/27 Update: Rose is no longer in my class, as of the end of last week, I think. I find these things out from the students, as opposed to being told by my boss, so not only do I not know about it until after the fact, I also don't know the reason for it. Poor Heather--she's got so much to do running the place that she doesn't have time to get it all done.

I brought my camera to class today to take pictures of my OCR classes, but this class did not let me. They did ask for my blog address and my email addresses, though. I wonder if I'm going to get a bunch of emails from my kids now.

Avenues Level C Class

Avenues Level C is my second smallest class. It started off with four girls: Dorothy, Ruby, Melanie, and Michelle. They are in first and second grade. The first day of class, I told Dorothy that that is my grandmother's name, and the other girls started calling her "grandmother" after that. Dorothy stopped coming to my class in February, though, so I was down to three. I will lose Ruby in March, too, so that's another two-kid class for me.

Ruby is the dominant one in the class. I think she gets it from her mother. A couple times Ruby handed in her homework with a message from her mom that I should correct it immediately so she could take it home that day. I told her her mom could wait one day. Jeez.

Ruby is extremely smart, and has a really good grasp of English for her age. Apparently her mother paid our Canadian teacher about a thousand dollars (a million won) a month to tutor her privately for a few months. I wish some parent would do that for me. That's fifty percent of my income.

Ruby is really stubborn and overbearing frequently, though. She interrupts other students, tries to sit in my chair while I'm writing on the board, and often refuses to do things she doesn't like. A couple times she's told me she wasn't going to do the homework, but I think her mother

interfered when she looked at her assignment, and forced her to do it.

Michelle and Melanie are both smart, too, but get overpowered by Ruby a lot. Michelle likes to participate and Melanie doesn't as much. I think they'll both do much better without Ruby in the class. Update: I just found out that Melanie is also moving to another class next week. So it will be Michelle and a boy whose name I don't know yet, but who Heather says is a troublemaker. I hope it works out okay.

Michelle and Melanie

These girls do this funny thing where they number their turns in advance. If I say we're going to read a story out loud, Ruby will say "Me first!" and then Michelle and Melanie will both say "Me second!" and I give the second turn to whoever said it first. Or sometimes one of them will want to go third, so she'll say "Me third!" When there were four of them, they had to do a few rock, paper, scissors games to determine the order. When I took their pictures, they refused to get together, then argued over the order. Michelle got first, but the other two wanted to go last, and neither would back down. So I just snapped candids. Kids are jerks.

These are my best students in terms of entertaining writing assignments. I have them write stories a lot (which they recently got tired of), and they come up with some funny things. This week I had to give them a writing test, the prompt being "Write a story about something that chases you." Michelle wrote that a lion chased her, but she went to her family and then they went to the police and told everyone in the world, and they killed on lion, but the others just went to the father lion, but then he died, and the other lions cried for hundreds of years, and then they turned into sand, which we can play in now. But wait, there's a lion!

Avenues Level B Class #2

This is my smallest class. It's just Bunny and John, and they can barely speak any English. They seem about seven or eight years old, by our count. We only meet on Thursday and Friday afternoons. I'm glad it's not a daily class, because it's very difficult to teach them. It's kind of fun sometimes, though. I draw a lot of pictures and demonstrate a lot of the vocabulary to make them understand what I'm saying, and vice versa.

Bunny understands significantly more than John, so she often has to explain to John in Korean. I wish I understood more of their language so I could explain things to them better. But I guess the point of immersion is that you have to try all the harder to make them understand the new language.

Once my new schedule starts in March, I think this class is going to be absorbed into a bigger class, if my boss can work out the schedule right.

Avenues Level B Class

The first class I teach every day at 1:50 is the second level of a reading program called Avenues. Avenues is unfortunately largely geared towards Latin-American students who are either learning English as a second language, or who are bilingual, in addition to typical American students. This doesn't make it the easiest thing to teach, but I work with what I've got.

There are eight students in the class, who have taken on English language names, as is the custom for English speakers in Korea (and maybe more of Asia, I don't know). Two are boys--Joey and Major, and six are girls--Amy, Aimee, Lucy, Freedom, Jessica, and Kitty. These kids are becoming kind of a nightmare, but I'm trying not to take it personally.

I expected Korean kids to be much more studious than American kids, given the amount of pressure that's put on them to excel at their studies. In Korean culture, once you begin school, that is pretty much all you're expected to think about until you get to college. But I've found that these kids are just like our kids, or maybe even less geared towards school. In classes of no more than eight, there is almost always at least one students, sometimes up to three, who doesn't have the homework. It's kind of ridiculous. I write on their faces with dry erase markers when they don't have their homework, but for most this isn't much of a deterrent from the behavior.

They also don't pay attention very well, which I didn't expect. The amount of times I say "Listen!" in a day now is mind-boggling. I guess kids are kids, no matter where you go. Maybe once they get into middle or high school they get more studious, because University is more of a reality.

This class is a "below basic" level, so I have to work really hard with them. It's kind of funny to see the difference between when they get what I'm saying and when they don't. I was trying to explain to them that old people get tired more easily than young people today, because the topic came up in the storybook we just started, and boy, they just tuned right the hell out. Sometimes I just give up and move on because I know they'll never get it and I'm trying to challenge them too much. It's hard to get the level right, since I really don't know what they know before they come to me.

So, the nightmare. Amy is the root of it all. In another class, we're reading Junie B. Jones and the Stupid, Smelly Bus, and Junie B. Jones reminds me a lot of Amy. Except Amy is more of a jerk. She's the kid who wastes everyone's time by not paying attention and then asking what I'm talking about right after I've just explained it completely. We talked about what a paragraph is for two weeks, and I've got every other kid knowing exactly how to describe one, but she's still saying "Paragraph is what?" over and over again. I put her in the corner and give her extra homework sometimes.

Lucy is my second biggest problem. She has such a low level of understanding that she doesn't bother to pay attention, and ends up playing with Amy and interrupting the class. I hate discipline.

Freedom is really cute. She has not much more understanding than Lucy, but she tries really hard, and I often take time in class to explain things directly to her, in hopes that she'll get it, and that the others will get it better in the process. It's nice to see her light up when something finally clicks.

Aimee is the smartest one in the class. She's usually the only one who really knows what I'm talking about up there, and answers most of my questions. I feel bad for her sometimes when I keep asking different kids the same question, which she keeps answering for them, and I have to tell her I need them to answer, and I know she knows already.

Joey probably understands second best, but he gets confused a lot, too. I still have trouble keeping him and Major straight in my head, because Major really, really looks like his name should be Joey. He's got that fresh-faced innocent look about him. All the other kids look evil.

Kitty is new to the class. She's very outgoing and always talks to me before class. But she also seems to have a problem not speaking Korean in class, and the other kids tell on her a lot, because I don't notice. I was surprised at what wicked tattletales these kids are. It's really annoying.

Jessica is always late to class recently. I don't know why, and she can't express it to me. She always talks to me before class, too, which I'm glad of, since she needs the practice. Her understanding is better than Lucy and Freedom's, but not by much, I don't think.

All the kids have a problem saying "Me is" instead of "I am," which I'm trying to correct.

Teaching

So I've been teaching for a month now, and I feel like I'm getting the hang of it. The kids like me and my boss says she and the parents really like the homework I give, so I'm glad of that. The Canadian teacher here has seen my homework and my corrections and comments and says I seem like a natural. I said it's because I'm constantly teaching, even when there's no one around. He said I shouldn't tell people that.

Right now I have seven classes, meeting from once to five times a week, with two to eight kids, with ages ranging from about six to about twelve. At first, I was having trouble figuring out how to fill up the class time, which is 50 minutes for all but two advanced classes, which meet for an hour. Now I find I often don't have time to do everything I wanted, so I think that's a good sign.

My schedule was easy for January and February, but come March it's going to increase by about 50%. The teacher I replaced told me the school needs to make more money, so that's why they're adding classes. I will go from having three to five classes a day to having seven classes on Monday and six the other four days. I'm not starting from scratch, though; most of the classes I have now will continue, and I'll be getting several more lower level classes.

I generally enjoy teaching the upper level classes more, because the kids can converse and understand better and they're better behaved, but the homework is a real chore. I can correct a full class of Level B or C students in twenty minutes, but the assignments naturally get longer and more complicated at higher levels.

I kind of feel misled about the amount of time I'm supposed to spend working. I was told by my placement agency that teachers usually work a maximum of 30 hours a week in Korea, but I'm definitely putting in about 40 hours even with a light schedule. It'll probably go up to 45 when I get my extra classes. I will be getting a little bit of overtime for the long teaching days, but we don't get paid for correcting time. Lame.

Pizza

I'm going to make a longer entry about Korean food once I get internet access at home, but I do want to mention pizza, because it's a little different.

I decided to go out and get pizza this weekend, because I was tired of eating carrots and mashed potatoes for supper. There are about a million pizza places in my neighborhood, so it wasn't too hard to find one. Pizza is "pija" here, by the way, because even though there isn't actually a "z" sound in the word, they seem to always replace letters they don't have with the combo "j/ch" sound they have. They could easily call it peet-sa, but no, pija.

I've had pija three times since I've been here--the first two were at Heather's place, delivered. I think I can safely say by now that all pija in Korea has the crust with the cheese inside that was really popular in the States for two minutes in like the 90s.

Pija comes with a little container of sweet pickles that you eat with a tiny fork. Some people take that fork and fold the tip of the piece of pija over onto the crust and eat it like that. You also get a packet of parmesan cheese and some hot sauce. It's strange.

When you pick up pija, they wrap a ribbon around it like a present, so you can carry it... more easily? I find that questionable. It looks nice, though.

Pija is expensive. I got a 10" (or so) bulgogi pija, which has beef and vegetables on it, and a half liter of Pepsi for 13,300 won. That's about $14. I guess it could be worse, but when you compare it to the 65-cent bowl of soup I get from the food stand on my street, it seems bad.

Korean Showers

In Korea, they don't have the bathtub/shower combos that we have, typically, and they don't even have bathtubs. Or shower stalls. The whole bathroom is like a big (or small) wetroom. The shower tap is connected to the wall, and the shower head is removable, on a hose. No shower door, no curtain. It's pretty interesting. And the shower exchanges water with the sink instead of the tub faucet. There actually is a down-facing faucet on the shower control, but since there isn't a tub to fill, I think it's just for washing your feet, or maybe handwashing clothing in a tub. All the water goes down a drain in the middle of the floor.
The whole wet room thing means you have to watch out not to get the toilet paper and the towel wet. It also means that you have to wear plastic slippers in there if you want to use the toilet or brush your teeth after you've showered and dressed. I've taken to rolling up my pants a bit before going in because I kept getting the hem wet.

Going to the Clinic

I made my first clinic visit today. I seem to be getting this increasingly frequent problem where I get a cold that just doesn't end and makes my voice go awry. It started at the beginning of college and came only every two or three years, but now it's happening every year, or maybe even more often than that. It really doesn't seem like too many months ago I was seeing someone about this thing. They told me it was allergies last time.

So I've been coughing and producing massive amounts of phlegm for two weeks, and the last few days my voice has been all weird. Heather's mom took me to the clinic, which was right down the street, and luckily it was a wham, bam, thank you ma'am kind of deal. The doctor stuck some metal tubes in my nose and mouth to get samples after I told him my symptoms (or helped Heather's mom tell him). He told I needed fluids and rest. Duh. Then I had to hold this plastic facemask near, but not on, my face while it spat steam on me. Then I got a shot--the first time I've ever had to bare my ass to do so. Then the nurse swung the curtain open before I even got my pants back up, haha. Privacy doesn't seem to be an issue here.

We went to the pharmacy across the street for my medication, which consists of FIVE pills a day for the next six days. I have no idea what they are, or what the shot was, but it's not the practice here for doctors to tell patients what they're doing to them. It all felt kind of reminiscent of when I went to the hospital in Kenya for this same problem, and they gave me fifteen pills in an unmarked envelope and told me to take three a day for five days. Mystery medication. I hope it works.

By the way, the whole thing cost under twelve bucks, and I don't even have my medical insurance yet. What a country.

Yoga in Korea

I joined a yoga studio this week with my boss Heather. It's only a few blocks away from my apartment. We went early on Monday to apply and pay and talk to the teacher about joining the class. She teaches in Korean, which will be good for my language skills, but she says some stuff in English for me, too. I think she makes fun of me sometimes to the other people in the class, which is pretty funny.

Korean yoga is kind of different than American yoga. The first difference I noticed was that the mats are already set up on the floor in the studio, and they have quilts on top of them. I'm used to walking in and laying my mat down and then having to move once the class starts to get really full. Here classes aren't full, though, so I guess it's easier this way.

I also had to commit to specific days, instead of doing something like paying for a month of unlimited classes, or paying for a certain amount in advance and using them when I want. I said I'd come Monday through Thursday. Tuesday is mandatory for some reason. That's pilates day, with yoga relaxation at the end.

The practice alternates by day from doing primarily breathing and stretching to doing more active exercise. Monday and Wednesday we have to breathe through the nose using the abdomen, and Tuesday and Thursday we have to breathe in the nose and out the mouth using the chest. It's hard to concentrate on all that.

The teacher did like a check up on me on Monday to see what was wrong with me. She could see I hold my left shoulder lower than my right, which is due to my herniated cervical disc tensing up the muscles on my right side. She also checked my breathing, and was surprised that even though I've been practicing yoga for two years, my breathing isn't very deep. I do have a terrible debilitating cold, though, so I hope that's the culprit.

The actual practice is a little less organized and intense than I'm used to. In the studio I went to in LA, we would start with specific warm up stretches that would lead to more complicated postures. But here, there aren't any complicated postures so far. It's kind of like going to high school gym class. Monday we just did a bunch of stretches and breathing and the like, and Tuesday we did a bunch of pilates exercises involving twisting, stretching, backbending, and pressing on tension rings. It's still pretty brutal, though, I must say. I'm wicked sore. I didn't go today, though, because I can't breathe through my nose, and it's nose-breathing day. Too bad.

At the end of yoga, you get into a final relaxation pose, where you just like on the floor and relax and try to clear your mind. We do that in this class, but instead of being called back to the world by the teacher and then leaving together, everyone just gets up whenever they feel like it. Even the teacher leaves the room before we go.

Also, there's no Oming at the beginning or end, and there's no saying Namaste (that which is highest in me bows to that which is highest in you) at the end, either, which I think it a typical way to end a yoga class. I would have thought they'd be into that here, since they bow so much. Very strange.

Of course this could all just be the way this one lady runs her studio. Maybe other studios are different, who knows?

Payday

I STILL haven't been able to set up a bank account, but that's going to happen this week. It must. I'm going to see if I can go get my ID card today or tomorrow from the immigration office, then start the bank account the next day.

My pay for January came to me in cash, in a big fat envelope. It also included the money I brought with me that Ming Yu (the vice principal) exchanged for me. Evidently there is no bill in Korea bigger than 10,000 won, which is worth a little over $10. That makes no sense to me. Imagine getting $1500 in tens in an envelope. Wow.

My Apartment

I moved into my own apartment last Thursday evening. It's very small, even smaller than my first apartment. It's a studio, so I just have one main room with a kitchenette, plus a bathroom and a laundry room. The laundry room is like an enclosed patio that runs the width of the apartment, and has a sliding glass door. The outer wall of that room is just one huge window, so I get plenty of light during the day, even with the blinds closed.

I started off with almost no furniture--just a bed, a set of shelves, and a vanity, but my boss had a tv brought in with a cupboard to hold it up, and a table and two chairs came for me on Sunday. I don't get a dresser, so I have to put all my clothes on the shelves.

I'll post some pics when I get the chance.

Tomorrow begins the three-day lunar new year celebration here, so I have a five-day weekend. That also means I have no internet access, since I'll be away from work, but I'm hoping to set up internet service at home next week. Until then.