A new medium

Watercolors are not my usual pick when I'm feeling artsy, but my mom was sweet enough to send me a set with some brushes so I'm experimenting! I was a doofus and sketched a few ideas out on regular drawing paper instead of heavy watercolor paper, so I had some trouble with absorption.

Fifth grade student at my school

This is really small- like 5 x 7". I've been challenged to do a small one every week, and so here's number one!

Guess who's back for Round 2?

I've gotta say, I'm thrilled to be back to Korea. Everything seems new again: I'm stuffing my face with kimchi and rice. I feel exhilarated after simple two-sentence conversations with new Korean coworkers. I'm snapping phone-camera pics of signs like this:

A lot of this is because coming to Korea the second time around is not scary like coming the first time is. I know how to use the subway and buses now. I've got enough Korean to get by and I knew what questions to ask when I moved into my new apartment (ie What day is compost recycling day? Koreans are excellent recyclers!) All of the hard stuff is already done, like bank accounts and phone contracts. The only thing left to worry about is the new job and it turns out, that it's a lot less stressful than last time as well! Hell, I've nothing to complain about!


So this year in Korea, it's a new job! Last year I was teaching in one of the private "cram schools," also known as, "hagwons," where students go to study in the afternoon after normal school hours. (Korean students are hard-core; many of them study from 8:30am to 7 or 8 or 9 at night!)  This year I'm employed by the government to work in the public schools assisting the Korean teachers.

There are many differences between the public and private school systems but one thing that stood out to me was the way they hire native teachers like myself. For instance, this year I actually got trained! For all the incoming teachers, the Korean government sponsors a 9-day orientation to Korean culture and teaching Korean students. And this was no week-long vacation! We were put through a rigorous schedule of lectures and lesson planning projects as well as cultural excursions and survival Korean classes!

We were issued matching grey sweatshirts for the duration of the training.

Much of the information was old news to me and the few others who had already lived here, but I think it was vital for the other 200 odd teachers just starting out. I was impressed with the organisation and money that went into preparing everything, but I was most excited to find out where I would be teaching. In public schools, we are not allowed to specify a location beyond a city name, so I was impatient to know where my new apartment was located and what age level I'd be working with. The organizers of orientation cruelly let everyone speculate until the very last day when we are each given envelopes with our new school name and contracts.

So where did I end up? At Choup Elementary School! I'm very pleased with my location this year: it's centrally located, close to my swing dancing venue and right next to an olympic sized swimming pool. I've got 3 fabulous new co-teachers and I'm teaching grades 3 through 6. It's been 3 weeks so far and I'm starting to settle in. Here's a little tour:

Haphazard shot of the front of my school. It's actually comprised of two 4-story buildings and one 2-story building which form a horseshoe around the playground. The whole lot is up a steep hill, about a 10 minute bus-ride from my apartment.  

Shot from my office. Before class starts in the morning, all the students walk in a big circle on the playground and they blast opera music from the loudspeakers. 

Some 4th graders outside their classroom. In Korea, everyone wears slippers in the house and the same goes for the schools. Their shoes go in little cubbies outside the homeroom. 

My classes this year are between 25 and 30 students. (They wear coats inside because the heating is not the greatest)

Typical school lunch: Bean sprouts, salty bean paste, kimchi, thinly sliced pork in chili sauce, rice and seaweed and soybean paste soup. This day we also had some lettuce which we ate filled with pork, rice and beanpaste. Delish!

Some of my new students! 

 Monday is the anniversary of the day our school was opened so we get the day off! It'll be a 3-day weekend for me so Sandra and I are planning a trip up to Seoul to sightsee a bit. I'll let you all know how it goes!

Back to our regularly scheduled programing

I've got some catching up to do, eh?

Well here's what you all missed while I've been away:

Home for the holidays!
Yes, after I finished my teaching contract in Korea, I spent a glorious 2 months back home in sunny Florida visiting my family. It was the first time I've been home and not been scrambling to find summer employment and can I just say: how relaxing! In celebration of this, I've decided to never seek seasonal work again, ever. It's so much better to seek seasonal relaxation, don't you think? We celebrated my favorite food holiday, Thanksgiving, and exchanged Christmas gifts a month later. I drank delicious American beer and ate popcorn with my mother daily. Heaven. Here are some highlights:

Me and the Sibs at the beach! I love Florida in the winter!

"Gemblo" the family game of strategically placed glittering bacteria 

No explanation needed?

Dad made everyone new tie-dye for Christmas!

Fáilte go hÉireann
In January I left the homeland to visit my girlfriend in Ireland. There we did important Irish things like visiting the Guinness Factory in Dublin and walking in muddy rain boots through green fields of sheep. Also this other important thing known as Meeting the Girlfriend's Parents. Of course, her family was so warm and welcoming and we drank a lot of tea while discussing the weather!

The Guinness factory was a little pricey but totally worth it for the panoramic view of the city at the end of the tour. (Of course, I'm showing you the beer, not the view. The beer is still important! 

We drove around the Ring of Kerry one day and stopped frequently in tiny towns for refreshments and leg-stretching.

Cobh [pronounced "cove"], a small southern coastal town near Cork. Historically it has been visited by many great ships, including the Titanic!

More of the Ring of Kerry. It was winter when I was there but still so green!

And of course, we took advantage of some traditional Irish pizza. This one had full strips of bacon, none of that bacon bits crap.

Famille Francaise et al
In February I traveled to France to visit a few friends and my French host-family from '04-05! It felt strange and familiar to be back in the land of cheese and wine. I loved catching up with friends from college and gorging myself on Parisian pastries and chocolate. I spent a week visiting my host parents and, as luck would have it, two of my host-brothers had just come back from living abroad. Barni has been living in South Africa and is dating an Italian girl, and Coco was back from Mexico and skyping his Mexican sweetheart every night! Foreign girlfriends are clearly a trend! My host dad has finally retired an my host sister had a baby soon after I left! What a lot of big adventures, eh?  We did a lot of sightseeing while I was in Paris, as my host-mom says I'm her "excuse" to be a tourist.

Astou was a glorious hostess while I was in Rouen. Highlights included stealing sand from a construction site through a fence with a spoon taped to a pole, and befriending French cats. 

Chantal and me at La Piscine, an old pool turned into a museum near Lille.

View from the top of the Musée d'Orsay, which I finally visited this time! I loved it. We arrived early one Sunday morning only to discover that the first Sunday of every month is free! What luck!

Chantal and Coco in a Brasserie in Lille. We treated ourselves after a morning spent hauling Coco's furniture down 6 flights of stairs and over to his new apartment. 

Visiting with a very pregnant Célestine, who recently gave birth to a beautiful baby boy, Ulysse. It was freezing and we weren't allowed into the park of the Château de Versailles (they were afraid of people falling into the pond) but we snapped a pic outside.

Another great thing that happened was a little mini-reunion of my old friends from my French high school when I lived there. They have barely kept in touch with each other but one of them came in 3 hours from out of town to have coffee with us. The more people I meet the more difficult it is to keep in touch with everyone, but then there are moments like this, where we come together after 7 years and It's as if nothing's changed. We spent the afternoon laughing and chatting about nothing and everything and what started as an early afternoon coffee morphed into a whole evening together. And the most amazing part? We hardly talked about high school at all! Contrary to my fears, our friendship has grown and matured as we have and it is no longer confined to a specific year in a specific milieu. How cool!

Can you guess where I am now?

Irish Football in Korea: never better

We went to Suwon last weekend, a city just south of Seoul, for the Asian Gaelic Games. During the summer, a group of Irish came together to form a team of Gaelic Footballers. They accumulated more members (of various nationalities) over the next few months, training every Saturday. We had a mini-tournament in August with the other teams in Korea, but on October 15th, we participated in the largest Gaelic football tournament in Asia, with teams from 14 different countries like Qatar, Singapore, Mongolia, Taiwan and Japan.  Busan team didn't have high expectations, as we were newly formed and most of us were still learning the basic skills... and rules of the game. But we made it to the QUARTER FINALS! And the men's team went to the semi's! It was a great weekend, but after 5 games we were exhausted.

We owe our 3/5 wins to Jackie, the only one among us who has any idea what she's doing - but more than that, she played in the senior county league back in Ireland. She's good (see above, the blond amazon annihilating everyone in her path). She has coached and encouraged us the whole way and we can only hope she comes back next year to do it again!

For those who are curious: In a nutshell, Gaelic football is rugby and soccer with a bit of basketball and volleyball thrown in. We score points in and over a goal and between rugby posts and the ball is moved around with our fists or feet. Here's a good clip to see it in action. We've had so much fun training and I've met the best group of women. I can't wait to start again next spring!

*First two photos taken by Kyle Schmitz, our faithful football photographer.

and to the left, our most exciting exhibit: the Gift Shop!

Guess what I did last weekend?

I went to the aquarium! We're into the summer rainy season now and Busan has a lovely aquarium, right on the beach. Can't go swimming? You can watch other things enjoy the water!

 

 Sandra and I made sure to arrive early to see the shark feeding show. A brave diver sinks down to the bottom of the tank with fish tucked under his armpits and another diver stands at a distance with a long stick to fend off the man-eating sharks! All the fish swarm him, and the sting rays flap past, back and forth, nosing in on the scraps. 

Everyone braces themselves for the sharks' arrival. Finally one approaches.... she's closing in... the diver holds out the fish...  and the shark sniffs it and swims away.

I have to say, as hyped up and terrifying as sharks are supposed to be, these lethargic nurse sharks seemed pretty content to glide slowly around the tank half asleep. I guess I would too if I were getting fed dead fish every day at regularly scheduled intervals.

The Giant Grouper and the sting rays were the most fun to watch... and I also enjoyed the deadly Lionfish, because I'd recently read a funny article on Slate about how we should be eating them.

It's supposed to be raining again this weekend. I'm going to have to make a list of rainy day activities. This was the best so far!

A Walk Across the Water

Two weekends ago the city of Busan held a "bridge walk" which invited everyone to take a morning stroll across Korea's second longest bridge. It was just over 7 kilometers of marching on a blustery, foggy morning, but the views were lovely and it was the most productive I've ever felt at noon on a Sunday.

There were a lot of families out for a day trip, and when we got to the center of the bridge we saw that many of them had stopped to have lunch and listen to the opera entertainment. They had a small orchestra set up and big speakers projecting across the bridge. I can't think of a better way to celebrate making the halfway point of a 7k walk!

Afterward we settled on the beach and had some brunch and beer. It was a wonderful way to spend a lazy Sunday. Sandra and I took a few more photos and you can see them here.

Traditional Mid-Year Hospital Stay

So a lot's happened in the last month! Most notably, I was hospitalized for 12 days after I went in to see about this "cold that just wouldn't go away."

 Turns out it was acute tonsillitis! And while I was less than thrilled about the mandatory 3 days of IV antibiotics, you can imagine my reaction when I was informed I also had acute hepatitis (though luckily not viral). The doctor hypothesized that my long-term fever and few weeks popping pills to relieve symptoms had aggravated my liver and spleen. Every other day we did more blood tests and every other day I was told I'd need to stay longer!

The first few days were beyond miserable, but after a week I was feeling so much better that I  started to enjoy the meditation time. The 6 month mark is good timing for a little break and bedrest. I made friends with some of the patients and their families who were immediately concerned I wasn't eating enough. They would bring me oranges and chocopies and mime eating whenever we passed in the hallway, while expertly maneuvering our IV bags to avoid collision. The nurses would slip me cookies and juice. One nurse made me a sandwich! Another little girl started visiting my room when she came to see her grandmother down the hall and we drew pictures and played cards.



By the end I was almost sad to go. I had gotten used to the visitors, the pill regimen, the meals delivered to my bed every 5 hours (like magic!). Even the 6am wake-up to take blood samples no longer phased me! 12 days in a hospital and it's like the outside world no longer exists!









Of course, it also helped to have such a fantastic girlfriend to bring me food and bottle after bottle of 100% juice from organic grapes etc... 

Or take over entertaining my guests when I got too tired.






I made my nurses a card when I left illustrating all the their contributions to my wellbeing: shots, IVs, pills, juice and sandwiches. They were so friendly despite their extremely limited English and constantly tried to cheer me up. "Fighting!" they would say with a fist in the air as they came to administer a shot in my butt. Another nurse told me I could smell her rosemary plant if I felt stressed because it always makes her feel calm. They were the sweetest. They laminated my card and put it on the wall.



And magically, what began as a nightmare, became something really great: a time to reflect on my time in Korea, meet fantastic people, and give my body a little break. I hope I never forget the experience. It also made me appreciate walking around unattached to an IV bag a lot more! The first thing I did on my first weekend out of the hospital was go to the beach. The weather's starting to be really nice!