Mini-post: Noon wassayo!

Noon wassayo! It snowed!

In an unprecedented display of meterological cheekiness, Gwangju got dumped on two nights ago.








Check it out.
















I suppose this photo could have come from anywhere. But it was taken in Korea. So there.












General good will resulted among the student body, some of whom chose to celebrate by enacting an anime-style fight scene involving summoning energy from the ground and blasting it at each other.


In Korea, the first snow of the year is a time for love and romance. Max and I celebrated by going to our favorite jimjilbang (boy, are you guys in for something when I finally get around to describing jimjilbangs) and discovering that it has been completely gutted. Not cool.

Anyway. Today the snow is mostly gone. It didn't stack up very high against the snow we get in Vermont, but you know, you've got to take what you can get. Especially when it's November.

Hikes and Beauty

South Korea is a small place - about the size of Florida. Fortunately, it lacks the crocodiles, the confederate flag T-shirts (though they are a hoot), the city of St. Petersburg, and the annoying incessant mosquitoes. Instead Korea has huge, annoying, incessant mosquitoes that don't die off, they just hibernate from the middle of December until early February, then return to feast.

Korea is also blessed with a beautiful, varied mountainous landscape. Mountains are highly regarded in Korean society; monks build temples on them, many carry the respectful suffix "san" on their names like Japanese mountains, and one friend reports that on full moons people ascend the mountain behind her apartment and howl from the peak. Most cities have their own mountain, kind of like a patron saint. Gwangju's is called Mudeungsan, and its silouette appears on a bunch of the road signs with lines of light or inspiration or something emenating from it. When Ben first saw it he thought it was a poop with stink lines coming out.

This would be the appropriate place for a photograph. I'll get one soon.

Anyway, Max and I have hiked a few mountains since arriving. They're cool.
At Nakan Castle near Bolgyeo, with a guy named Sangho I met at a baseball game. He bought Max and I one of those sweet hats each. Max wore his. I did not wear mine.




Wolchulsan. Max is standing on the big rock on the left.
























More Wolchulsan. That's the valley down there.













This is near the summit of Hallasan, the tallest mountain in Korea. It's in Jeju, which gets its own post.

A couple of weeks ago, the school was invited to spend a night at a Buddhist temple in Geumsansa, which is of course located on a mountainside.
So it was quite foggy and nice. There was no meat in the food, no beds in the bedroom, and we all had to wake up at 4 and wear silly blue vests, but it was cool.







I liked the style.



















Helen and Hobbs liked their vests.

















The kids liked their manual labor. Mostly.










Max loved playing on the handcart.












Righto. Here's where we slept:
(Like I said, no beds. We had floor pads, though.)

And here is where we swept:

Sweeping here was nice. Korea can be pretty.

Moral of the story: If you ever have the opportunity to spend some time at a temple, do it. Even if you have to go with a bunch of high schoolers, it's still a nice place for some reflection.

Friends

Korea is a good place for friendship. People are naturally kind and generous, public transportation is easy and cheap, and when you go out to dinner, most meals have to be ordered in pairs anyway.

The Korean word for "friend" is "chingu." My new chingu Kara (that's her in the hat), who teaches at a hogwan (private academy) across town did a guest talk in my speech class, and taught us that the way to say"friend" in American Sign Language is to make two little fishhooks with your index fingers, link them together, and shake them around a bit.

The other teachers at the school also make good friends. Here's us doing some friend things:


This place is called "The Brewhouse" or simply "The Brew." It's where Mr. Ray, who is not pictured here, goes about 4 nights a week to hang out and drink the smelly, bitter fluid in the cylinder. The Brew has given him his own table, his own throne, and a special silver ornamented chalice from which he, and only he, drinks. I'm really quite jealous. The Brew's main selling point seems to be its sizeable population of drunk middle-aged businesspeople and their spouses, who, to be honest, are a pretty lively and fun bunch. No complaints here. Except about the beer.

I was also fortunate enough to enjoy a two-month-long visit from Ben Crane, a friend from Wesleyan.

Ben is a writer, and quite a good one, by all accounts. He lived on my couch for two months and during the day he wrote, ate ramen noodles, played video games (just a bit), read David McCullough's biography of John Adams, and wore pants maybe 30% of the time. Living the dream, baby. I miss him. If any of y'all want to spend two months on the couch, well, you should know you've got big shoes to fill.

I have a blurry picture of two more special friends:

Their respective names are "Max Elliot Winston" and "Friend 3," also known as "Little Friend." Max is the brunette. Friend 3 is the puppy.

Max is a graduate of Princeton University, where he did his thesis on the patterns of leaf fungus farms laid by leafcutter ants in Panama. More importantly, he is a native of Montpelier, Vermont, which is a mere 30 minutes from my hometown of Essex. By some twist of fate we have both ended up teaching at KFS and living together in a sweet 3-bedroomer on the third floor. More on the apartment later.

Everyone thinks Max and I look alike. I don't really see it. How about some more pictures:




















Please note that while I may have helmet hair, I do know how to frame a photograph. Anyway, I guess it's okay. I think it might be the Vermont thing - maybe we talk the same or something. All I really know is that it would be great if the students stopped calling me "Mr. Winston" and asking me if Max and I are twins. I suppose we might as well be. In the third week of school, we both left class, met in the bathroom, switched clothes, and taught each other's class. Max's students called me out after about 15 seconds. My students didn't know what was going on until I walked back into the classroom 10 minutes later.

White people all look the same, anyway.

Little Friend is the landlord's dog. Her predecessors, Friend 1 and Friend 2, both lived chained outside the apartments. Friend 1 was a friendly cocker spaniel belonged to the school's owner, but he was confined to the outdoors because he was "too smelly." The boss has never attempted to give him a bath. Friend 2 was a grown-up version of Little Friend, and she lived outside because...well, just because. They have both been deported to the bosintang farm down the road, which means that they are now soup. Circle of life, I guess.

Little Friend is living a slightly better life. After she sustained a prolonged and meaningless beating from the landlord for having pooped in the wrong place 3 days prior, the teachers had a sit-down with the boss and we worked out some ethical guidelines. Little Friend is now fed and watered daily, is not beaten, and will not become soup anytime soon. She's very happy and adorable. She's growing up fast, and has entered a rather bitey phase, but she's a great little friend to visit on the way to work. Let's close with another blurry photo.


Awwww.

Job.

Job. That's what I'm doing here for about eight tenths of my time. This is the first time in my life I've actually had a full-time real-deal job, so it's unclear which parts of my impressions are Korea-specific and which parts are just plain ignorance.

My job is to teach English to high schoolers in the mornings, then teach psychology and speech to high schoolers in the afternoon. I am not qualified for this work. Doesn't matter.

My teaching environment is Gwangju Foreign School. For a school that costs about $12,000 a year, it ain't much to look at.Please note the vending machines by the front door. There you can buy coffee made with melanine-tainted creamer from China. It's the only way to start your day.

Across the street is a fish processing plant, down the road is a pig slaughterhouse, and next door is a GM service center with a surly attendant. Down the street there's a Coca-Cola bottling facility (no tours available) and a middle school.

Turns out, teaching is hard. Probably even harder than actually being in high school, which, as I recall, was a stupid waste of time and testosterone. Only 2 in 5 kids actually care ("But aren't Koreans so hard working?" you may ask. No. High schoolers are high schoolers.), and having a couple of smart students means that I actually need to know my stuff. Alas. The upside is that I'm on American work hours - many Korean public schools go from 7:30 am till 10:30 pm.

Co-workers are good. Boss forgot to pay us last week. It's a mixed bag.

I live here.It may not look like much, and it's only being held together by the wallpaper, but to be fair, it's got a lot of wallpaper (because that way, you don't have to paint). I live on the third floor with Max Winston, another Princeton in Asia-er. We don't have cable or a toilet seat, but we've got a great view of the guy who showers in his laundry room with a hose and a bucket. We also have three airsoft guns and enough open space to do some target shooting. There are plastic bbs all over the floor. Good times.

There's a dog who lives outside. She's a Jindo, and her name is Friend 3. She ostensibly belongs to the handyman and brother of the boss, Mr. Myung, who really deserves his own post. So I'll tell you about Friends 1 and 2 at a later date.

I'm currently supervising the high schoolers who aren't taking the PSAT today. Two of them just walked out of the room. Guess it's time to go do the extra-contractual part of the job: crowd control.

High school rules!

This is Not a Blog

This is my abandonment of TravelJournal.com. They have failed me. Please pardon our appearance while we relocate. Here's what is supposed to be my first post, circa three weeks ago:

First of all: Hello again. Thanks for visiting.

Second of all: I feel weird about writing a travel journal. (Let me call it a travel journal and not a blog; blogs are places where e-hip bloggeurs rant about things like web comics, cosines, and IKEA furniture. I don't want any part of that.) I feel weird about the travel journal because I don't keep a journal when I'm not traveling. I only do it when I'm out of my comfort zone, which means that it must inevitably devolve into how one place is different from what I'm used to, and how one group of people is different from what I'm used to. I feel weird about the travel journal because it raises my risk of only seeing myself as a tourist; a person who is somehow outside and perhaps above his surroundings. So tell me if that starts happening, Okay?

Okay. Thanks.

Third of all: I've been here for a month and this is my first post. I'm sorry. I'll explain.

Where am I? Why, South Korea, of course! For the next year I'll be teaching high school at Gwangju Foreign School in sunny Gwangju, Republic of Korea. Let's have a quick summary of events.

I arrived in late July after a plane ride that isn't worth mentioning outside of the amazing toilet seats at Tokyo's Narita Airport (I've never felt so clean - or is it cleansed?) and the abrupt change in airplane food from peanuts to ramen noodles as soon as we crossed the International Date Line. I got to Incheon Airport really tired . Imagine that. The hostel was closed for the night, so I staggered over to a Best Western and talked the receptionist down from $250 a night to $90. I'm still not sure if he was messing with me or taking pity on me.

A few early impressions:

- Korea is hot and humid, at least in the winter. On my first full day in the country, I began sweating at precisely 7:42 am upon exiting the hotel. Awesome.

- People are not as short as I had imagined (or perhaps secretly hoped). I'm tall here at 6 feet, but not monstrous. My feet, on the other hand, are far too large for Korean shoes.

- There is less spoken English but far more written English than I had expected. Nearly every store that isn't a restaurant has an English sign out front, even here in Gwangju, which is 4 hours away from the cosmopolitan Seoul. Of course, very few people could actually tell you what that English sign says. I've just got to learn Korean.

- The countryside is gorgeous and surprisingly empty. Korea is about the size of Florida but has way more people, at least 48 million, but nearly everyone lives in high-rise apartments in the cities. The bus ride from Incheon to Gwangju was beautiful; craggy mountains, green rolling hills with farms built into them, and evergreen forests, punctuated by the occasional urban oasis.

Okay. My psychology class is about to start. Here's a sneak peak of some upcoming episodes: Utilities and Bureaucracy, in which I explain why I still don't have Internet; Waeguk! Waeguk! in which we explore how fascinating white skin and big eyes are to some Korean children; Old People, where we'll begin to understand why Korean streets are so clean; and Where's Wando, where I'll regale you with tales of my time with a national celebrity and his brother the mob boss. Seriously.