One month down, eleven to go...

"One month down, eleven to go...". That's actually Melissa's title. The forthcoming blog was actually meant to be split into two parts. The first was to be Mel's and the second was to be mine. However, Mel got bored/distracted/writer's blocked/whatevered and now the full responsibility falls on me. It seems that she finds it harder to come up with good topics of blog discussion. So, you may see her spending more time in the editing/commenting department on this blog. I will try to encourage her to post as often as possible, but I can make no promises.

So, my official title would've been "Driving Ms. Baby". I decided to keep the title Mel had suggested, but I would've went with the aforementioned one had I made my separate posting. "Driving Ms. Baby?!" you might say. Yes, that would've been the title. "Why?!" you might say. Well, let me tell you.

In South Korea, there is a lot of strange habits surrounding the birthing function. For example, I'm told that Korean mums spend like the first month (post birth) in bed. Usually the baby's maternal grandmother comes to take care of the mum and baby for the 1st month. After that the mother spends another 2-3 months at home caring for the baby. The baby doesn't really leave the home (at all) for the first year. After that there is a huge celebration because the baby lived through a whole year.

Many times I see mothers walking small children down the street in strollers. The strollers have plastic enclosing them to presumably protect from outside germs. That's all well and good seeing the incredible significance placed on tiny youth in South Korea.

Today, I walked home from the bus stop. While waiting for the cross-walk light to change I noticed a luxury car directly in front of me. In the driver's seat was a women with a swaddled baby clutched to her breast. WTF?

So, in SK we treat our baby with the utmost care until it comes to driving around the town? In which case we will buckle ourselves (the mother) in and just hold the baby while we drive in the craziest traffic you can ever imagine?!?!?!?!

/rant

In many programming languages one starts by issuing a command. The command might be something like: "rant". To end the term of the command, one closes it by preceding the command with a slash. So to say "/rant" is funny if you have programming knowledge. For the rest of you.... just nod along, okay? ;)

You see that?!! It's a hamburger!!! And French Fries (kinda)! and corn! One night we picked up some ground beef and made some burgers. OMG! It was sooooooooo good. I haven't had a proper burger in forever. The fries were just potatoes, some oil, some spices, and a hot pan (but really good). The corn was just a can of corn heated with some heat. The meal.... was delicious. After weeks of rice and kimchi, a burger was divine.

Have I explained kimchi? Do you know what it is?I know I explained soju, but kimchi might be a blank spot for many of you... Well, they take some veggies and they put it in a pot. Then they let it ferment for a while. It makes this crazy tasting stuff called kimchi. I really can't describe it in terms you'd understand. The closest thing you've ever had to kimchi is sourkraut and that's still not quite right. I'd suggest just going to a Korean market and asking for some. You might like it. It has such a wonderful zing for the tongue (although Mel doesn't really like it).






So, that's a lot of pictures of Mel's classroom. She was supposed to type about them. Instead you've got me. This is my first time seeing them too. Wow! Look at all that wood! Crazy! Wood desks and chairs too! Oh, and there's an "English zone"! Neato! Oh, that 5th picture must be what passes for an industrial air conditioner in South Korea.... Awww, look the 6th picture has a cute little laptop that the school has given Mel to use....

Mel says that laptop sucks! Every time she tries to use her usb drive the laptop crashes.... It probably pops up an error message in Korean. I can't even ask the tech guys at home what it means because it's in freakin' Hangul. (Hangul is what Koreans call the written Korean alphabet).

Okay, let's move on....

Friday, Mel and I went to a teacher's workshop. It was for the entire province. (A province is probably the equivalent of a state). There was like 90+ foreign teachers. It was really weird to be in an environment where the predominant language was English. We're just not used to that any more :D The workshop just reviewed some contract stuff (for public school workers, like ourselves) and presented some neat cultural stuff.

Post workshop we set out for the return trip to Osan (the WS was in Byeongjeom). The train to Osan arrived, but some stern Korean lady kicked us off. We conferred with some other foreign teacher and found that that train had had its last stop. (That was a neat sentence, that that and had had!). It was fortuitous that we inquired about the train with said persons. Doing so allowed us to meet Jason (from Chicago), Tka (from Florida), and Kelly (from California). After some conversation we agreed to meet for dinner a few hours later.

We met in front of the local Lotte Mart (it's a supermarket). Jason and Tka were the only ones to come for dinner. We were told that there are many other English speaking teachers in Osan. Jason and Tka were a lot of fun and we really enjoyed dinner. They had been here since the fall so they had a bit more insight than we do. They invited us to go to the bar with all the other English teacher afterward.....

This is towards the end of the night. This is Phil! We had just met him. You can see in this picture the various types of glasses the bar serves. The single is the shortest one. The triple is that huge one right in front of Phil. Tka is on the right, protecting her face from you viewing it :D

I apparently snuck this photo of Mel. I had drank a few too many doubles (in between single and triple) and had gotten a hold of the camera. :D

Hmmm...... I think her name is Mya. Random picture from the bar this is.

OH! So, on April 8th they are electing new education officials for this province. This is the advertising van of one of the candidates. Hidden somewhere in that van are very loud speakers. A very patriotic tune played from them.

This is a very very bad picture of the supermarket. I apologize for the quality. I've been at this blogging type thing for way too long now. It's been like an hour. Now it's 10:30(pm) so I'm going to head out.

Please comment as to how hilarious this blog is and to how much you miss the post of Melissa. Without your love and support she may never post again....

*edit* I went back and fixed some of my grammatical mistakes before Mel could get to them. I'm sure there's a ton more that she'll want to fix :D

Aaron

Snot Cool

Argh, I have fallen under the influence of a nasty cold. It is snot cool. :D See what I did there? Okay, yes it was lame.

Anyway, the weekend was rather low-key. We went out Friday and I have a couple pictures to share. More on that in a bit. Saturday I woke up feeling quite shite. So, we stayed in most of the day. We ventured forth to find a pharmacy and medicine. Sunday we just stayed in. As such, I have very little of interest to share. However, I do have a bunch of pictures. I've saved up some random pictures over the past couple weeks and I also have some from our Friday night out. So, today's post will just be a pic post featuring a little Aaron babble after each. If the post is not to your liking, well, I guess that's just too bad ;)

**Melissa here. Aaron failed miserably at getting things correct in this post so I am fixing them. And doing so in a way that lets you know EXACTLY how much he screwed up. Because it is funny!**

Okay, that there is a Hite "Pitcher". A pitcher is 1600ml for anywhere from 2500w to 4000w depending on where you buy it. So just how much is 1600ml? It's a little over 54 ounces. So, all you 40 drinkers? I will now refer to you as light-weights :D Most of the koreans beers are available in this size. It's also cheapest to buy beer in this size rather than to buy like a one liter (1000ml) or such. There are bottles and cans that appear to be 12 ounces, like most American beer packaging. Through some oddity of fate, it is more expensive to buy beer in a can than to buy it in a glass bottle. That's okay though, I always feel scummy drinking beer in a can. I much prefer a bottle if at all possible.

So, here's a random shot of Ampersand being kind cute. He was probably pining for belly rubs.

Ah, I tried for a better shot. Looks like I got a worse one instead. The monkey pajamas is me. Mel's in the strippy ones.

Okay, here's an exausted Lola. This is probably due to being a holy terror all night long.
**Yes, the cats are SO bad at night. This has caused me to lock them up all night which makes me their prime target for the next morning in the form of "oh I haven't seen you in forever, Mom, let's cuddle!" when I'm trying to get ready for work. Of course I am the only one to be kept awake by their antics as Aaron sleeps like a dead rock. Yes, a dead one.**

Okay, please direct your eyes to that black machine in the upper middle of the picture. For quite some time we were under the impression that this was a toaster oven. Everything on the front is in korean, so we put learning to use it on our list of "things to do eventually". However, upon examining some fine script in the upper left corner, Mel discovered that this is actually a UV Dish Sanitizer. Or, as we like to call it: the box we put our bread in. We had some garlic in there too, but that just created a really bad garlic stench that seeped into our bread.
**It's actually the lower left corner, but I'll forgive this one.**

Another random shot of Song-ri. This is where I catch the bus. On the left is a little market I've never been in. In the background you can see a little green house. If you click the picture and make it nice and big you may just be able to make out the free range chickens :)
**I am pretty sure this picture or one similar to it has already been posted...**

This was dinner one night. There's yellow pepper, onion, egg, and Dok. Dok is a chewy rice thing-a-ma-bob. It's pretty good and takes on the flavor of whatever you cook it with. It's 10 zillion times better than tofu. The texture is actually pleasing instead of revulsive.
**I am still not convinced it is called "dok" because every time I say that word to a Korean they have no idea what I'm talking about. Also I think he meant "revolting" instead of the non-word "revulsive".**

Ah, this is the sign for the bar we went to on Friday. The bar is called Time After Time. I'm sure you've noticed the Bart Simpson with a beer mug logo. Well, here in Korea people care very little for copyrights, trademarks, and the like. So often they freely rip off the rest of the world. It's especially common in the (korean) music industry.
**This bar was actually named Time to Time, and NOT after some cheesy 80's song.**

This is Mel really enjoying her beer.

This is me more stoically enjoying mine. This shot also gives a look at the interior of Time After Time. The boothes were nice and comfy.
**Booths.**


My Black Beer Stout came with a little napkin klan hat. We did not produce said hat. This hat came with the beer. We found that to be hilarious. A "black" beer with a klan looking hat. Too much? Did I need to actually point out the funny? Okay, next time I'll let the picture speak for itself.

Mel sucks at taking pictures. I do not believe she intended to photograph her knees.
**These are actually Aaron's knees. And HE is the one that sucked at taking this picture.**

Again, Mel tries to use the camera only to amuse us all with failure.
**This was not entirely my fault; using the "night" feature on the camera causes a longer exposure time and I moved the camera before it finished taking the picture.**

In retrospect, this picture turned out to be not nearly as amusing as I expected. Maybe for you it is funny, but for me I just looked mentally disabled.
**The President had to apologize for his insult to disabled people; I think Aaron should as well.**

Mel wears the hat.

Mel's Soju wears the hat.
**The V is for Victory.**

Ah, the work of the sign ninja. Throughout the day and into the evening sign ninjas flit about apartment buildings leaving adverts on all the doors. I've never seen one of these sign ninjas, hence the ninja.

Lola tried to stay up too long and is actually falling off the arm of the sofa in her exhaustion.

Another dinner. Looks like some Dok, onion, and beef. This was served over rice. Oh and there was a chili sauce on everything.
**So sue me, I can't cook anything else but this hodge-podge of food. Aaron never makes dinner so he is stuck eating whatever I throw together.**

Hey, look! It's the chili sauce.

I don't know why, but Mel took a picture of our rice cooker. So, here it is. I'm just putting up every picture that you guys haven't seen. So, look at our rice cooker. Nice, ay?
**I took a picture of this because it's cute and I love it. This saves me from having to make rice in a pot which I simply cannot do. Really, I can't. Laurie can vouch for this fact.**

Hmm... this picture might have been intended to go along with a Mel rant about too little counter space. See that bit in front of the rice cooker? That's pretty much it.
**Actually, he was right on this one. Look at this lack of counter space!! Awful.**

Ah, Soju, Cider, and lime juice. Cider is akin to Sprite. I've previously mentioned the SoCo (Soju and Coke). It's also common to mix Soju and Cider. Lime juice is one of Mel's personal touches.

I was sick. This is pretty much how I spent Saturday and Sunday. I played some games and would pass out randomly when I got super tired. No alcohols was involved just a lot of snot.
**I'm sure he didn't mean to put the plural on the word alcohol. While we may speak like Lolcats, I would at least like to keep my writing free of such nonsense.**

Well, that's the lot of them. Hope you enjoyed the pics and we'll work on some more entertaining ones for future posts.
**No I won't.**

Aaron

Friday = Awesome

Ah, blessed Friday. It doesn't matter where you happen to be, the weekend just never comes fast enough. Yet, here it is! Friday is one of the best days of the week for me. Scratch that, it is the best. I have one class first thing (4th graders) and then I don't have anything else all day until the teachers' class. The teachers' class is two periods long (a period is 40 minutes), but I anticipate little difficulty. Last week for teachers' class we had a sort of orientation. Half of the teachers were gone on business or something else so I just explained about the book a little. An 80 minute class took 15. So, I really have no idea if that will be the norm or not. Regardless, Fridays are a very light day for my work load.

So, I have been yelled at to blog more. I guess that since I my 360 is back in action I have spent a lot less time on blogging. As such, those who have added this blog as an outlet for their workday boredom have been sorely disappointed. A duly apologize for such an egregious affront. :) That said, I have to further apologize because there won't be any interesting pictures on this post. ALL TEXT. Your eyes will ache and your burn will brain from all the usage. Mwa ha ha! :D

Actually, I do have a few pictures to post, but the camera is at home. Mel took it out of my bag. Furthermore, I couldn't post the pictures even if I wanted. We don't have a cable that goes from camera to pc. I have to use the card reader on my laptop. I looked at cables at Lottemart, but the whole not reading Korean thing seems to hold me back a bit in the computer cable buying skills. So pics when I get to it, okay?

I believe I mentioned before that my school is in a very rural area. I've explained to your eyes what a Korean rural area means due to my lack of ability to do so with wordage. Well, I recently was told that this area would be undergoing redevelopment. Basically the government is buying the land, plowing all the homes and such under, and then building nice new stuff. The school will be staying because it is fine. I'm sure it will get bundles of cash to upgrade once a thriving new community has been built around it. So, people are getting cash from the government and beginning to leave their homes. We've already had a couple students move. Il-kyu says that next year (provided I stay on) we may have very few students. The year after that though, there may be very many students. I'm unsure what this would do to the schools dynamic. Living in a rural area, the people here tend to be a bit more humble and down-to-earth. I wonder if the people that flood in with the newest of the new housing will be as amenable. Somehow, I think not.

Koreans are a very status oriented people. The new is king. Cars are actually released in half-years because people are so new obsessed. People actually drive SUVs around this town too. I have yet to show you what parking spaces look like. If you can imagine a parking garage where every space is smaller than those compact car ones you see in America you'd be on the right track. Oh, and people park SUVs in those. It's asinine. Cellphone image seems to be really important too. I don't think they keep them for long. A recent study dealt with what koreans expect from a potential marriage partner. Men expected women to have around 100 million won in the bank (around $69,000). Women expected men to have 300 million won (around $210,000). Do you know anyone with that kind of money? Me either. The average college graduate (with a bachelors) apparently only makes like $20,000 or so. Coupling that with the buying habits.... well unrealistic seems to be an understatement. Oh yes, for most women power, wealth, fame, ect... are tops. Looks don't mater. Men, it's mostly looks. So, when I say status, I mean that wealth and power are paramount. It's odd. Now, I'm sure not all people here are that way, but it does seem to be the majority. It's a strange thing to see.

Oh yeah, back on the redevelopment.... so our school had to come up with a plan to keep enrollment up. With people leaving in droves (as is expected) soon there would be no students. So our afterschool courses are free, we have golf, there's a bus for distant students, and some other stuff I can't remember. The important part is that the school has been working hard to be a shining star.

Yesterday a reporter from the largest newspaper in Korea came to check the school out. It was due to the shining star bit back there in that last paragraph. (Was that a proper paragraph break? I'm not really sure). I was not given proper warning so I was hamming it up in a t-shirt and jeans. Alas. The reporter, the head teacher, and the principal came and sat in on one of our classes! That was stressful. I kept worrying about what they thought of it and the like. They were here for quite some time. I've only been at this for three weeks, so I feel I've still got a lot of learning to do. Having them there was a bit scary. But, we made it through somehow. That wasn't really an exciting story was it? Let me follow-up after the story hits the paper. Then maybe it will be more exciting?

The principal told me that the local parents are impressed with the English teacher and that they say he is very good :D

The weather is warm! 64 degrees to day! 69 tomorrow! Enjoying your 46 Michigan? ;) However, even with this warm weather my classroom stays cold. It's like this damn room traps the cold of the night and holds on to it for dear life. I go outside to warm up! I have my jacket and the heat on! Brrrr!

Korean music is strange. It seems that all popular music is adapted from the boy band scene we had. They're boy bands or single artists that all seem derived from that portion of the 90's. As you must know, that music was horrible. So, that is all these kids know. Like I mentioned the Beach Boys to Il-kyu.... no clue. Really. He knows the Beatles, but I believe he's more widely versed than many others. I've showed the kids a few English songs and sometimes they'll just stand there with their jaws hanging open. Smells Like Teen Spirit was fun to observe the observing of. :D I've played a few Beatles tunes, the Ramones, Ben Folds, ect... just a nice cross sample. Each time, the kids seem just blown away.

In top class, Il-kyu and I decided that the book was way too damn boring for them. These are supposed to be the best our school has to offer. The curriculum in the book wasn't on the level. So we decided that we'd try to teach them a song in English. We could get them to learn to sing it and maybe have a few of the musically talent ones play it, on whatever instruments they can, in accompaniment. After much deliberation, I suggested All You Need Is Love by the Beatles. It's a simple song with a simple message. There's lots of room for instrumentation too. We're working on it. The chorus is easy enough for them, but they have a terrible time with the Lennon verses. They're pretty fastly sung. After they get a bit better I'll try to get some video. :D

So, I think that's about it. It's Friday so we're bound to be going out tonight. I'll try to take lots of pictures over the weekend. Then maybe by Monday I'll have a more (visually) interesting post. :)

Aaron

Last weekend, and a discourse on bad students

Aaron says its my turn to blog now, so here I am. I have a lot to write about or else he will be cross with me!

Let's see...last weekend, we did many things. Friday, we went to the Wa Bar downtown. I had heard from other teachers at my school that the Wa Bar is a popular hangout for foreigners (the handful or so that actually live in our town, I guess) so we decided to check it out. Il-kyu went with us. They had a lot of different kinds of foreign beer, so Aaron got the Becks Dark he's been craving, and we had the Korean version of American appetizers, namely, nachos and cheese, potato skins that were 100x less greasy than normal, and cheese sticks. It was pretty expensive; they didn't have any foreign beers under 7000 won (about 5-7 dollars, depending on the exchange rate) but it was nice for Aaron to have those dark beers he wanted. By the way, we only saw one other foreigner there, and we didn't talk to him. But it was a good bar; I think we'll go back about once or twice a month or so for Aaron to get his beer fix.

Saturday, we went to Songtan. It's a small city, 2 train stops away from Osan. The main reason we wanted to go there is that there is a US Air Force base in the town, and we had heard tales of a black market and stores with American stuff all around the outside of the base. We did find a fabulous Mexican restaurant called La Casa; the cooks are all actually from Mexico, and the food was really really good. As were the margharitas! But the rest of the area was kind of a disappointment. There were tons of stores that sold "Coach" purses and similar expensive-looking items, and I thought "hey, I like purses, I could get one of these" until I saw that they were still about 100 dollars (though much cheaper than a real, 800 dollar Coach purse) and way more than I care to spend on things like that. There was not much else there to interest us. We had heard rumors of American food to be found, but we didn't see any. Aaron is dying for some pretzels; they just don't eat them here and we're unable to buy them anywhere. Anyway, Songtan was interesting to see, and we'll probably go back for more Mexican food at some point, but not too often. There wasn't much else, although we did find a Hot Topic store for Kymberly!

No goth clothes here; this is all ghetto. The whole area was like that, actually...

Saturday night/Sunday morning, we had D&D with our group back home. In order to do this, Aaron and I had to stay up all night; they were to start at noon, Michigan time, and we would be broadcasting from Korea at 1am. Needless to say, we did not get started until about 2am, and we were up doing that until about 10:30am. There was a point when we were both so tired, we weren't tired anymore. Just weirdly giddy and probably obnoxious. So Sunday was pretty much shot because we were tired and had been up all night. I took a nap halfway through the day, but Aaron didn't, so he was passed out by 9pm, which was amusing. Oh! We did go to HanaMart, another store near our apartment. I thought it was going to be like LotteMart, a grocery and department store, but it was just grocery. It was really obnoxious though. It was crowded and loud; there was a guy with a microphone shouting at the crowd the entire time we were there. Since we don't speak Korean, I can only speculate that he was announcing the great deals, but I can't be sure. We did see a guy with a little dog in his shopping cart. The dog just sat there and kind of shivered (it was a little cold inside) and he didn't have a collar or anything. I am still convinced that man was buying the dog to eat it. Aaron does not agree. Poor dog. :(

So that started off our 3rd week in Korea. We're both getting into the swing of things at school; I finally have all of my classes showing up and ready to learn (ha!) and Aaron is learning the joys of having to teach by himself, with no help. He actually had a very bad day yesterday (Monday) and my day today (Tuesday) was just as bad. He had a hard time with the 6th graders; apparently they were being very noisy and uncooperative, and he had no help, discipline-wise. He has them again tomorrow so it will be interesting to see what happens. As for me, I had 5 classes today and all but 2 of them went pretty well. The first class to go bad was my only 1st grade class of the day. (1st grade high school = sophomores in the US, roughly) They just would not shut up. I tried yelling, talking over them, and eventually I just gave up. I kept track of how long they wasted my time, and then held them after class for that long. It was really upsetting; usually the co-teacher and I can get noisy classes to knock it off after a time, but today they just didn't care. I am no longer interested in being nice; now I will be the mean teacher and punish them! >:[

My second bad class was the last class of the day, 2nd graders. They were also being noisy, but not as bad. I had a different co-teacher for that class, however, and she does not take disobedience. She called out a few of them and then berated the whole class for almost 15 minutes straight. Needless to say, by the end of it, they were quiet as can be. Apparently I need to learn Korean just so I can yell at them like that! I did feel bad for some of the girls in the class; there are about 10 girls and 30 boys and most of the boys are the "tough" kids. The ones that are disruptive, don't listen, and act rough all the time. The girls are all pretty quiet and shy, and they at least make a show of wanting to learn, even if they are really just bored. Usually I don't even get that.

That is one of the things I am still a little sad about; the lack of motivation in 95% of my students. Granted, it is a technical high school; they are being guided toward career training (I guess they get that their last year of HS?) and few of them will go to college, or ever need to use English. I think that is why most of them don't seem to care. I wouldn't, if I knew I would never have to use something again. (That is how I felt about math!) So it is a little disappointing for me to see that I'm not really making the language stick. Of course, there are a few students who are very motivated; they volunteer answers and can actually speak to me in English and understand some of what I say. So at least I have that.

Aaron doesn't have corporal punishment at his school, but we do at mine. I guess Korean schools are working to get away from it now, but you can still see evidence of it from time to time. For example, the teachers all have some kind of thick wooden stick they use to bang on things to get kids to shut up, or smack other kids with. I've never seen a teacher really hit a student though; it's more of a smack as in "knock it off or you'll get more!". They actually gave me my own stick yesterday, but it's more of a noise-making stick than a beating one. It's designed so that when you smack it on something, it makes a louder noise than you'd expect. But it's slender and light-weight, so I think if I actually hit a student with it, it might snap. I don't know. Sometimes I really want to use it!!

So that's what's going on with us lately. I'm sure Aaron will update later, or more likely tomorrow, to add all the things I forgot to mention. :)

Melissa

Lazy Bloggers

Yay! It's officially picture time! I've been a bit lax with the blogging over the past couple days. To make up for it I took a handful of pictures and will share them now. I'm trying to encourage Melissa to write more as well. That way there's less gaps in our 'publishing schedule' :D

So, this item is Kimbap barbecue ham. Kimbap is the name for the style. It's a little like spam crossed with hot dogs, but much tastier. Meat tends to be rather expensive here. Chicken and beef are on the high end. Pork is cheaper, but I can't eat it. Due to an interaction with my acid reflux, I can have bacon and ham, but not porkier items like pork chops or pork roast. It's weird I know, but that's the way it is.
So, we sometimes use egg as our source of protein. We haven't started experimenting with Tofu yet. We decided that we'd try this ham item so that we wouldn't get sick of eggs. I thought it was rather good when cooked. We had it with peppers, onions, and egg and served it over rice. Oh, all with a nice chili sauce. Overall, a good cheap meal.

This is a picture of McCol soda. Due to the strong and displeasing taste of Soju it is common to mix Soju with Cola. This drink is know as a So Col. Last night we were enjoying a couple So Cols when we ran low on Soju and Cola. So Melissa ran to the little, nearby market to replenish our stocks. Easy cheesy, right? Wrong!
Apparently, there was Coke, Pepsi, and McCol in between. There were no prices, so Melissa grabbed the McCol. It appeared generic and would likely be the cheapest. After she returned, I went ahead with making our drinks. Raising the McCol to my mouth (for the taste test) I noticed a strange smell just as the liquid began to enter my mouth. I had time only to think "this is going to suck" before the flavor hit my tongue.
*Retch* This was horrible!!! I shouted in disgust and called for Melissa. After much deliberation, we were finally able to recognize what this "soda" smelled like. It had the exact same smell as Kimbap barbecue ham. Needless to say, we did not drink it.
I inquired with Il-kyu today and found that this is a very old, classic drink. It is made with barley and is no longer very popular. I guess it's still on the market for those few old times that can stomach ham soda. *UGH*

Just a view from the walk to my bus. That's a little market right in the center of the picture.
This is another nice random view. I guess it just lets one get a bit more of a sense of the architecture. Or you could just enjoy the nice mountain in the background. Maybe those blue roofs are pretty neat? Fine! It's a shit picture, I'll do better next time.

This is the "night duty" house at my school. I had no idea what that was. I guess this is a small (tiny) house where teachers can live if they don't have another home. Il-kyu lived there for four months before he got married and moved to Suwon with his wife.

This is a view of the door to my school. I'm down halfway down the step to the soccer field (you may recall having seen that in previous pictures). Those water spigots would be just out of the shot on the left. The far left windows are to my room.

These are the main doors. This time I'm all the way down by the field.

So, as I said previously, Top Class English had groups giving presentations. The leaders of the group are currently doing rock, paper, scissors to determine the order in which they present. In the center is the oft-mentioned Il-kyu.

This is group V.I.P. (they chose the name themselves) hard at work. The other groups were 5.6.G.C. (5th and 6th Grade Cheer), and Kitten I believe. The Kitten group was not a very harmonious unit. I think Kitten may have been the only English word they could all agree upon.

Il-kyu again. In the background, you can barely see a little girl. She is a first grader I think. She's the daughter of one of the teachers. I believe her mother probably had a class to teach so she was spending time in our room. Il-kyu is wearing her sun glasses. :D

The other night we made a trip to E-Mart. E-Mart is exactly like LotteMart except farther away. Mel found the bunny to be adorable, so here is a picture. Maybe it makes up for the boring blue roofs?

So, one day I was on the bus looking at photos I had taken. One of the fourth grade students was riding the same bus. Seeing the camera he wanted to take a photo of me. This is the result for your viewing pleasure.

I guess that's it for now. Perhaps if we get more ambitious (and as it gets warmer) I'll try to get more video up. Let me know how the video works for you (ie enjoyment-wise).

Yay! Almost Friday! Win!

Aaron

Giving it a Shot

Okay, let's try a video post. In our Top Class, we were having the kids group into teams and then give introductions in English. Il-kyu decided to fill randomly a bit while they were preparing.

Time for More Pictures!

Okay, since I haven't really been able to describe what rural is like here, I took a couple pictures of Song-ri (where my school is located). Further down the post are a couple more Osan pictures for comparison. And! All these pics are clickable. For those who don't know, click them to see them up close, nice and big, in all their detailed glory!

This is a lane I walk down every day on the way to school. This is a road that cars actually traverse. I don't know what happens if two cars going in opposite directions encounter one another. I imagine a lot of reversing. At the end of the lane you can see a home with a gate.

I believe this will soon become a garden. You can see a small green house on the left of the picture and houses in the background.

A typical view from my walk

A slightly different view of the same spot on the same said walk.

This is one of the entrances to my school. It is the one nearest to my classroom. I pop out of here quite frequently to fill my water bottle from the delightful fresh water available outside. You can see two of the spigots on the left. Those two are not for drinking. The principal explained that that water comes from the river. Two more spigots (not pictures and further to the left) have fresh, pure, clean water. People from the village often fill their water bottles here. People do not drink the tap water here. They buy or boil. I don't really know why. I usually bring a couple liter bottles everyday and fill them for home. Thus saving ourselves the cost of buying water and the nastiness of boiled water.

Our school has a soccer field. I'm told the kids really love it. From now on I'm calling it Football as is proper. That's what the rest of the world calls it and now I'm in the rest of the world. :D The green netting is for golf. I guess we have a driving range or something in the bank. I've been promised a tour of that (and I'm assuming an golf style ass whuppin') once the weather gets nice. It's almost nice. Getting warmer daily.

Just a view down the walk outside the school. Those doors at the end lead to the cafeteria where they serve me yummy foods with names I can't really pronounce. Sometimes I'm kind of scared at what I may actually be eating. While eating lunch one day the principal asked about dog. Yes, they do eat it. He said it is quite delicious and is something akin to a comfort food for him. It's good when you're sick because it's full of vitamins and minerals. This may have been a joke, but he said after an operation a few years ago, he got a dog and boiled the whole thing in a large pot. He made the this big motion with his arms to show that it was rather large. He then ate dog everyday for something like a month. I guess it worked because he recovered from the surgery just fine. I'm still not trying dog.
First class of the day, 6th graders! Il-kyu made them set all their phones aside. Mostly so they wouldn't fiddle with them all class. This is only one of the piles. I believe a cellphone is a "necessity" for elementary school children now. I've seen them even in the hands of the 2nd graders. I need to remeber to do as in the example above for my classes without Il-kyu. They loved their damned phones.

Oh yes, I promised a couple Osan pics for comparison. This is right behind my apartment building. At the back of the picture you can see the little market that is very near to my home. Actually I think there's two markets in there. I'm also told there is a fried chicken place, but that didn't appear open when Mel and I looked.

Oh! We had fried chicken on Saturday. We found a little place right around the corner from us (5 minute walk due to crosswalk lights). 21500w got us a large plate of half fried and half spicy chicken. The spicy was covered in a sweet sauce. We couldn't find boneless so we threw caution to the wind and just tore into boned chicken. I'm pretty sure one of my pieces had a spine. I do not like boned chicken. They served us some of those buggle things while we waited for the chicken. And we had beer! Beer and chicken mmmm. It was just Cass though. Cass is like Miller Lite or something. It's pretty tasteless, it's yellow, I suppose there's some alcohol in there.... There was also a couple sides. One was something like pickled squash. The other was like coleslaw with what appeared to be a mustard dressing. It was not mustard. It was some sickly sweet substance. It was pretty good.

More Osan! On the left is actually just another view of the market I showed in the last picture. In the background is the building across the street that contains said chicken place!

Okay, here's my last picture. Sunday night we decided to get another pizza. We wanted one with the "bites" on the outside. They're basically dough balls with a little cheese in them. The place had a mexican one or a deusche one. Unfortunately the mexican one was no longer available (much to our chagrin) so we ordered the deusche one. Those items on there that look like hot dogs? Pretty sure they were hot dogs. Really good hot dogs, but still hot dogs. This one had corn just like the last one and also came with a side of sweet pickles. However there was some really good garlic dipping sauce.

So, that's that. Oh yes, so I guess the "afterschool" classes are ones I teach all by myself. No Il-kyu to help! :O Having not known this, I had nothing prepared. Il-kyu gave me a game to play with the kids which seemed like a good idea. There were 4th grade, 6th grade, and then Top Class English (volunteers and best of kids from 5th and 6th grade).

So, we played the game. It took them like 5 minutes. The rest of the both classes were riviting games of hangman! However, once we arrived at Top Class English, there was a problem. Some of the Top Class students were also in the 6th grade class the period before. So, they were kind of hangmaned out. The 5th graders however were all gung-ho for hangman. So, we played a couple games of that. I dug up another game on the internet when I thought the 6th graders could take no more. It was an "alphabet soup" game. Basically a scrabbled word fill in the blank game full of bad puns. Then I showed them pictures of and about me and mine via the facebook. So that killed that class.

The afterschool classes shouldn't be too bad. Il-kyu has material for them, we just didn't have time to get it together. He had to go to the immigration office to take care of my alien registration card. The Top Class could be a bit harder though. With the 5th and 6th graders together, there seems to be a large age disparity. The 6th graders seems a lot older and more mature than the 5th, so finding activities that appeal to both could be difficult.

Anyway, hopefully you find yourself entertained. That's it for me.

Aaron