My Neighborhood

It occurs to me that I showed you pictures of the inside of my apartment, but not the outside. Not that it's very interesting. In case you're interested, here are some pictures of my neighborhood:

This is the front of my building. I'm in the back left corner on the first floor, so you can't see my apartment, unfortunately.






This is the view from my back window. Just a dumpy street. Because my building is evidently built into a slope, the back of my apartment has a balcony, even though I'm on the first floor, and I could climb out my side window onto the ground, if I wanted. I think I've mentioned in another entry that the balcony isn't supposed to be for hanging out, though. It's only a couple feet wide, and there isn't a door to get onto it. I had to climb through a small, knee-high window to get onto it and take this shot. Cats hang out on it a lot, though.



This is the view of my block from in front of my building. My apartment building is to the right, outside the frame. You can see the tip of the Nambu Library on the left. To the left of the library is what seems to be a piano school. Next door to my building are a seamstress and a little jewelry store. A little past them are a boutique for kids and a clothing boutique, both of which are probably very expensive. Down past the library are two food stands, one at which I buy soup to take home a lot. There are also a couple little restaurants I've been meaning to visit. At the end of the block on the left is a bar called Orange Western Liquor. Even if I cared for bars, I probably wouldn't go there. I've only seen middle aged men going in there--no young people or foreigners, even though it's foreign alcohol. It's probably not the place for me.



This is the Nambu Library. I haven't been in there yet, but some of my students tell me it has some English books. I'll probably check it out once I run out of the books I brought with me. It's funny having a library right across the street, and on a little side street at that. Korea doesn't have residential areas and business areas. It's all one big smorgasbord.

Shoes and Shoe Abuse

I've been looking at people's shoes a lot here. They seem to wear the same kinds of shoes that we do, for the most part. They just do different things with them.

For example, Korean women wear high heels everywhere, and with everything. To work, walking in the park, shopping, even to (but not during) yoga.

Everyone else wears sneakers, it seems. I see a lot of Chuck Taylors, which is cool. And a lot of Chuck Taylor knockoffs. Also Adidas, Nikes, and all the other popular brands we know and love.

What they don't like to do here is tie and untie shoes. You have to take them off so often, that it has become not worth it to wear shoes properly. You can't go into your home or anyone else's without removing your shoes, as we tend to realize about Asian cultures. Even service people, like the cable guy, have to take off their shoes before going into anyone's home. The internet guy did that at my apartment when I got it installed, and I thought it was kind of funny.

You also have to take off your shoes at many restaurants, which I didn't expect. If the resturant has tables and chairs, you don't have to take off your shoes, but most Korean restaurants still use tables that require you to sit on the floor, on cushions. Or, they trick you, and the table looks like it's a floor, but it's really just a recessed table, with benches built into the floor. Those tricky trickies. When you get to the restaurant, the lobby has a bunch of cubbies that you can leave your shoes in, but most people just leave them on the floor, in front of the little step up to the main restaurant floor. Then they get moved off to the side by employees and you have to search for them when you leave. You have to put your shoes back on to go to the bathroom, which is located by the lobby for shoe purposes (at least partially, I assume).

I don't have to take off my shoes at work, but I talked to a teacher in Seoul who says at his school, which is public, they have to take off their shoes and wear slippers inside. I wonder if other workplaces are like that.

With all this shoe removal, shoes become kind of a hassle. Thus, the shoe abuse comes in. They just slip on their shoes and walk on the backs, crushing the heel of the shoe. It kind of kills me. But they don't seem to mind it. I haven't noticed a lot of backless shoes around here, which I think need to be introduced en masse.

I feel like an asshole when I go out with my boss and she has to wait for me to put my entire shoe over my foot and bend down to tie it. Those thirty seconds are really long.

Pencil Cases

I'm not sure if this is a Korean thing, or if pencil cases have become all the rage all over the world for kids, but man, I hate pencil cases.

When I was a kid, I brought one pencil and one pen to school, or maybe two pens when I was older. And I don't think I ever needed any more than that, and I didn't lose my writing utensils, either, that I can recall. I've never been very losey.

But these kids haul around boxes and bags full of twenty pencils and eight pens and five erasers and four markers and three mechanical pencils (which they call "sharps," which I also hate--both the word and the item). And they play, play, play with them. It's a ridiculous rule to have that involves kids putting away that which holds their learning tools, but there you have it.

Pencil cases here look more like tackle boxes. They have multiple levels and compartments, braces to hold the pencils in place, combination locks on the outside to keep those nasty pencil thieves away, and many of them have a dry erase board on the inside of the top (WITH eraser) so the kids can draw on it during class. My Avenues Level C class' previous incarnation used to write "Alian Piglet," which is what they like to call me, on their little white boards.

Additionally, a lot of the pencil cases have wheels on them, so they can drive them around their desks. Some of them have the kind of wheels that you can wind up by pulling the case backwards and release like a race car. Awesome.

Rosetta Stone

Well, tonight I bit the bullet and bought a year's subscription to Rosetta Stone, the language learning program. I wanted to purchase the CD, since I'm not sure if I'll be able to put in time every day, and I'd feel like I was getting my money's worth if I had the software to use whenever I want. Apparently they don't deliver to South Korea, though, so I had to go with the online program. I'm going to have to try to make time to use it every day. I just did the first lesson, and it took about 45 minutes, so I think I can fit that into my schedule.

It's a fun little program. The first lesson involved showing me pictures of things and saying the words and then testing me in a couple different ways. First, it would show me four pictures, saying each word once, then one word would be spoken, and I'd have to choose the right picture. Then the pictures would change to those things plus something else, and I'd have to learn the combination in the same way. As I progressed, the program would also show me a picture, then take it away before giving me my word choices. And conversely, it would say a word once and take the written word away before showing me the pictures.

The program goes really fast. You have to pay attention. I was looking at the margin of the window a couple times to try and figure out how the scoring works, and what other info is there, and consequently I missed what the program was telling me. That also happened whenever my mind wandered for half a second. I guess that's good, though. It both makes sure that you understand words as they're naturally spoken and that you focus on the task.

Just now I learned nouns such as man, woman, boy, girl, elephant, dog, cat, horse, ball, table, airplane, car, and boat. I learned prepositions under, over, and in, as well as and.

Tomorrow maybe I'll do two lessons. I'd like to keep going tonight, but it's after 1am.