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

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