My food-life and the Imsil Cultural Festival

Today’s a lazy Sunday and I don’t know where the day has gone. It’s already 4:00pm here and I’m still in my bathrobe. I wound up staying up a little too late doing nothing when I got home from the city last night and wound up waking up somewhere close to 11am this morning. A new record for me! Usually I wake up between 6 and 9 no matter what, which is a shame. (before I forget. The photo above is my name written in Hangul by a pro calligrapher!)

Currently I am sitting here eating a persimmon that I blended up with ice and brown sugar to make a sort of puree-sorbet thingamajig. It’s really a great and healthy snack:

My friend Ikju who runs the cafe (Amicus) near me with her husband, Kim, showed me how to make this. I feel like when I have a persimmon done right, I really like it. Persimmon makes me think of a tomato that made up its mind and became a fruit that hangs on trees like most other sensible fruits out there (unlike tomatoes which are debated to be one or the other. The confusion is so real that I’ve literally seen cherry tomatoes on cake here). It’s also great because of the many ways you can prepare it! If it is hard you can eat it just like a fruit, but if it gets soft and gelatinous you can do what I did here or skip blending and get a spoon to eat it with like a custard or something.

It is currently persimmon and tangerine season here in Imsil (and perhaps Korea in general). Getting seasonal fruit is the best. In the US where I lived I think we got seasonal apples and pumpkins. The only time I could really tell when a fruit was in season was either when it was cheaper than usual or overly advertised. No matter what, fruit just stayed the same flavor, which was kind of dull. Here it is better! you can get any fruit any time of year but it will be like in the US; dull tasting and expensive. Here it’s great because you will get tons of fruit that burst with flavor at an affordable price. I get happy and sad buying fruit here because it goes bad before I can eat it all and I am always so busy that I forget to take extras with me to give as gifts. I’ll get better I swear!

I mention this first because it is so cool to see these little cultural nuances and also because I’m trying to make my diet healthier. Currently I sort of drink beer and eat kimbap for dinner unless I run into a friend somewhere and go out to eat. For example, I had this “cheese kimbap” last night!

I feel like I am living an in-between state of healthy and not-so-healthy but my portion control has gotten so much better! I don’t drink as much beer as I did back home because it’s expensive and crappy and my busy lifestyle gets in the way (cry). Although I do like Soju, I only really like drinking it with other people. When I drink it alone I don’t feel right. For breakfast I tend to drink a yogurt cup, eat a bowl of cereal, or do something with eggs, toast, and marmalade (or a combo of all that!). Depends on how much time it takes me to look like I am alive in the morning. My dinner is usually kimbap or rice unless I go out with friends. Despite my questionable diet my skin is looking much healthier (somehow) and I’ve lost a little weight! Last night I tried on a belt that previously took some heavy effort to wear. Instead of the usual affair of wishing I was dead, the belt fit on just right and snugly. I WAS SO HAPPY! I think I gained a few lubs (lbs) in the summer because of all my partying and drinking in preparation to depart to Korea, so seeing a drop has me relieved.

Speaking of eating things: I got to go to the Imsil Cultural Festival last week! It wasn’t a huge event, mostly just a small thing at the community center for the students and some teachers to go to. While I was there, I got to meet and have a traditional style Korean lunch with the director of the Imsil English Center. She is a very nice woman and I am happy I got to spend time with her! Here is a picture of that lunch: The hot stoneware made everything so delicious and cozy! From heated floors to heated stone bowls, Korea really knows how to utilize heat in the most comfy of ways.

It was soooo good! Maybe tonight instead of kimbap I will do a bibimbap because that is a delicious rice-dish that cooks itself within a heated stone or clay bowl too. After lunch I walked around the festival some more and saw a guy doing cotton candy (fairy floss?) but it was done in all these crazy designs and made to be super huge! I probably got diabetes from eating it. I asked if he could make me a Mario-mushroom shape and he did.

The festival itself was on a Thursday, which is a day I should have been teaching. My teacher at Jisa Middle, Mr.Han, showed me the students rehearsing on their traditional drums for the festival. I thought it would have been cool to go see them perform and so he started calling everyone up. Before I knew it, I was free to enjoy the day. My co-teachers have been so kind to me here!

The day proceeded with an opening violin and cello performance done by the Imsil Students. It was very well done and beautiful. You could tell they had been practicing for a long time to sound that good. Many students I talk to tell me they play the violin, cello, or piano (even in 3rd grade!). They are very popular instruments here and so refined! Also, Although I didn’t see any at the festival, the ocarina is a very popular instrument here too. I tend to hear my upstairs neighbor playing it, or the kids around school, and even older people hanging around the gazebo. This lead me to believe that perhaps the ocarina was a traditional Korean instrument. This is true and untrue. There is an instrument called the Hun that is a traditional clay Korean take on the ocarina. However, the ones I always see around are the sweet-potato shaped ocarinas. Sweet potatoes are also very popular here too so I thought it made sense. Turns out, according to some people I’ve talked to, the ocarina became popular primarily because of The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time. Yep… That’s the reason. I’m all for it to be honest, I mean everyone in the US wanted to play this instrument when I was a kid but music teachers told us (me actually) to not be an idiot and choose a real instrument like the clarinet. I think I still got clarinet splinters in my face from 3rd grade. Oh but meanwhile it was totally cool for us to play the recorder which is possibly the ugliest sounding instrument thing known to human kind.

After the wonderful opening ceremony which was marked with an explosion of confetti, we were prompted to go outside and look around. They gave me a little stamp book and if I did the cultural excursions at each booth, I’d get some kimbap as a reward. I did a lot of them without getting stamps but they gave me 2 rolls of kimbap anyway (people here always give me too much food, but I appreciate the thought). I was so full after eating one but thankfully I found my friend Autumn and passed it off to her. My hands were so full of things too! I was literally just about to become that guy who keeps a roll of kimbap in his pocket like some sort of pleeb. Granted, all the kids around her started passing her tons of stuff they didn’t want but took a lot of her newly gifted kimbap anyway. I think one of them gave me a tofu soup of some kind.

The excursions were hosted by the different colleges and trade schools around, presenting ideas for the student’s potential future plans (something kids in Korea have to decide very young). There were robotic and mechanical displays from the colleges of science, cheese from the Imsil college of cheese science (cheese is a big deal here in Imsil), video game colleges, the millitary, fire-fighters, beauty schools, culinary schools, cultural preservation clubs, and so on. There were activities like calligraphy, flower arranging, making cute cakes, playing with robots, and testing video games. I got to play with an Occulus Rift for a student-made first person shooter and it was very cool. Below are photos from some of the cultural booths, starting with Autumn making a clay pot:

I had more photos but when I switched phones from my non-working American phone to my new Korean phone I lost a ton of them (Galaxy 6 Edge+ Emerald edition. I’ll have to do a post about Korean “servisu” or service because that is an interesting cultural point that makes life here great. When I signed up for my phone, with help of a Korean friend, they gave me $100 in cash for some reason lol). But these were just some of the things to see here!

After that I sat in and watched the performances. I thought I was only going to see my Jisa middle school students there, but I also met with students from the elementary school, and even Samghye! I got pictures with most of them too!

The performances were very amazing. Some did traditional Korean fan-dances, others did dances to kpop, and some did traditional drum music (like my Jisa middle school). It was very cool to see the ways that students identify with their culture past and present. I also saw some dances done to Taylor Swift and Ke$ha. Very funny and surprising. All of which done very well!

Some of my Jisa Elementary Students before their performance

The Jisa Middle School students doing their traditional 4-drum performance.

And then they did the dance. It was fun to watch 🙂

This fan-dance was done by a different school. It was very well done. I’ve seen professionals do this same traditional dance and these girls did a great job even in comparison.

It was such a fun time!

Well, That’s all I’m gonna write for now. I still have to go out for dinner and finish writing all my lesson plans. So much work but if I finish before it is too late I will hopefully get a good sleep. Night all!

Teaching in Korea Episode 3? : Imsil

This is the second third episode of Teaching in Korea. Episode two got sort of put on the back burner because I am yet to edit it, it is long, it took place a month ago in Boston. It has some good info on it though about getting over here so it will be released after this episode sometime in the future when I have more time to dedicate to editing. Also before I go on; Yes that is a building shaped like a wheel of cheese (I took this photo lol). Also, I said something about learning Chinese characters too close to the word “easy” and also something about the reading of them that wasn’t 100% correct but I didn’t have time to edit it out. Thought I would just mention that here so that those of you who are more savvy in Chinese don’t rip me a new one (though you probably will anyway. By the by, go you for learning Chinese! You might have been born learning it but you still get my huzzah).

Content
This episode is mostly me going super ADD and getting lost on a lot of tangents. I do talk about where I live, some tips on not starving here, a peek into my teacher life, and also some culture.

My Korean Apartment

It’s been a little while since my last post! Seems that I’ve managed to both skip my second podcast for last month and completely get absorbed in life to the point where I haven’t been too nurturing to my blog. Ah well, At least the reasons I’ve been neglectful are valid! This is the start of week 3 in Korea for me (still 4 more weeks to go until I get paid TT_TT) and adjusting has been both fun and interesting! I’m met with both good and bad luck wherever I go it seems. Today I’m going to write about my apartment because:

1.  Many people want to know what kind of living situations they are gonna have if they come to teach here
2. My family, friends, and viewers probably want some assurance that I’m actually living in a house in Korea and not some dude named Joe’s car on the outskirts of Telsa Oklahoma trying to get by on favors, fortune telling, and the color turquoise.
3.  Because if I hit my head, it will be good to have a cheat-sheet so that I know what half the things in here do (which is a learning process).

So to start out, here is an outside view of my apartment:

If you took a day or two to learn Hangul (seriously, only a few days. I learned it in 3) you could read that this says “Sinu” in big ol’ block letters. It’s great for someone like me who gets lost all the time. This apartment-mega-structure is located in the mid-sized rural town of Imsil which is famous for its bibimbap (a veggie-rice dish) and cheese( Imsil has a cheese amusement park on the outskirts! It’s no joke; CHEESE.THEME. PARK. There’s a giant metal cheese-wheel on a mountaintop and it looks absolutely ridiculous amazing. Good history behind it too but I’ll get into that another time). The striking features of the town of Imsil are its nice small-towny vibes and it’s random massive sized apartment complexes that all exist in one section around where I live. Another is being built nearby too. The photo above doesn’t do too much justice for how common, huge, and aesthetically boisterous these complexes are. I took this off the internet because it’s dark outside and I’m too lazy to go out and try to photograph it. After all, it’s what’s on this inside that counts right?

Getting into that, a Korean Apartment is, like everything in this country, a learning curve. Once you master it your life becomes incredibly convenient in comparison to the US but until you do, it can seem like more of a hassle. I should mention before I continue that my apartment is a double. The standard layout of a single apartment in Korea tends to be either a basic studio with appliances or a 1-bedroom kind of thing. My friends who live in the singles here have a twin-sized bed, desk, and tv in a small-ish bedroom, a kitchen/dining area combo, and a bathroom. Their apartments are also $100 cheaper than mine ($350/mo), so when they get their housing allowance ($400), they end up making an extra $50 in their paycheck whereas I end up spending an extra $50 out of pocket (my rent is $450). I didn’t really have a choice in the matter but I’m not complaining. It’s nice to have an actual office so my work and sleep are separate. Makes my sleep 100% better. These photos below should show you how amazing my office is. The following photos are a little dated by about a week and I have more things here now but the idea is the same:

This is where my cable TV and where my little router that couldn’t give me a good signal in any other part of the house but that’s ok because it was free lives. I tend to live in this room most of the time because Korean TV is downright amazing, my internet works in here, and I get all my lessons and such accomplished in here. It’s a very productive zone. I sort of want to move my tv into the living room but I also don’t. I’ll probably end up chromecasting a flat-screen TV in there eventually when I’m not so poor.

Speaking of wanting to not be poor, here is my bathroom:

I say that because although it is sizable, there are two things I want that are missing from it. First is a hardcore shower head so I can get all the great massage settings that will help my apparently shitty back feel better and also so girls will want to stay over more. I had my first back problem happen to me the other day where some muscle went ape and I was stuck writhing on my floor for 20 minutes in terrible pain trying to move. Got to a hospital the next day (it’s behind my house!) and without insurance or proof of being a living human being (I forgot my passport and couldn’t go back home to get it) I got an X-ray, 2 checks by a doctor, and a shot of muscle relaxant in my bum; costing about $25. I know I’m going off on a bit of a tangent but let that sink in: no insurance. no ID. $25. Back home I had a super shitty 1/2 hour check-up at Tufts medical center in Boston, “the best hospital in the USA,” and it was 1/4 as thorough and the insurance bounced so I got a bill for $700. Got everything fixed up money-wise but that’s $700 for a doctor to tell me to pee in a cup, ignore everything I tried to say about my health, and waste time talking how much he loved the company I worked for. He legitimately refused to hear me when I was trying to be like “My eyes don’t line up anymore and I started getting migraines; is this normal?” The machine that sorted my pee out in a matter of 12 seconds did more work than he did. $700! Okay, I promise to keep the rest of this post on-task, but goddamn!

Most bathrooms around here are a shower/bathroom combo. In my photo above you will notice that my toilet paper has a little cover on it. This is to shield it from water because people don’t really use shower curtains here too often (my water doesn’t shoot that far though). If you want a sit-in tub you either have to be very lucky, find your own housing, or just go to a jimjilbang (shower-room) which is literally a cheap but cozy spa where you can get washed, massaged, treated, fed, and even stay the night if you want to for relatively cheap! I haven’t done it yet but I plan on it!

The other thing I want for my bathroom is this cool toilet seat thingy they sell here that’s easy to install and has heater/bidet built into it. It can cost between $200-$300 but might be worth it because you generally can’t flush toilet paper in Korea and a bidet would help my little paper bin smell less nasty (it’s not too bad, I spray it with stuff that kills the odor). When I got extra dough kicking around I may just go for it 🙂 This brings me to my next point: hot water and my house’s heating system. This is one of those learning curve things that seem like a pain but actually become very convenient (especially for your wallet) once you learn it. Here is my thermostat:

Learning how to use a house in Korea is a lot like playing Dwarf fortress with a friendlier UI. That round button on the top-right turns on/off my heating. I like this. It’s not like in the US where your thermostat is always on or set to random things in hopes of keeping your bill down. The black box to the left of it tells you it’s working. When it is not broken a little green light shines on the far-left LED. There are other little LED’s around too that show the progress of the heating. I think if any more of the lights in the black-box go on I have a problem. The little switch below the on/off button has two settings. One is hot water only and the other is floor heating and hot water. Currently I have it set to only heat water, which takes seconds to begin working. I’ll share my heating apparatus directly after so you know the magic behind this. I only ever turn on my heating when I need it. Oh also, most Korean homes don’t have your standard heating units like vents or what have you. Here, your floor gets all heated up so that way the floor is toasty, and heat is rising from the floor-up specifically. Keeping floor heating on can get very expensive though (relative to my other bills here). I only ever tried it once on a very cold day. When I have it on for 2-3 hours, I just shut it off and the house stays nice and warm for a long long time after. Seriously nothing is better than heated floors and a nice cushion. My futon-thing in the office is directly above the part that heats up first so I get hyper cozy when I watch tv.

The round dial lets me control the temperature, and that slider to the right of it has something to do with automatic on/off heating. I’m sure life would get easier if I figured it out but none of the other foreign teachers have fiddled with it and we all just chalk it up to being some sort of Korean witch-craft and best left untouched lest we defile the ancient order to which the very first owner, who knew what he/she was doing, lay forth as the law of the land. It’s like a little piece of the first resident is alive and well here in their heat-preferences which I may not agree with, but happily adapt to.

Not too much to say about this, but this is the little box that makes my house warm. The front panel comes off in case maintenance is needed. Most other foreign teachers here told me about a thing I can do to it if my hot water automagically stops working, but I guess mine has never been messed with so I’m probably ok. Anyway, this little box heats a small reservoir of water inside of it super fast, then heats water as I use it. It is crazy efficient. It is on my balcony, where my laundry-room lives:

People don’t really use dryers here like they do in the US. Instead there is an efficient washing machine, and clothing air-drys. I can see how this is effective in the summer time when warm air helps dry clothing. When I lived in Cambodia I did it the same way, but it was always hot there even in the winter. Here, the winters get pretty cold but are still mild compared to Boston. I asked how people dry their clothes in this season. Most either take the drying rack inside or put their clothes on the heated flooring. This is a perfectly clean way to dry clothing too, especially since shoes never (usually) make it past the front door:

Don’t mind all the bags hanging up around in this picture (you will get a better glance at them in my other photos). Korea recycles in a very different way than we do in the US. Recycling will have it’s own post (because it is a process. If you read it here later, you might avoid carefully sneaking your garbage out at 3:30am in hopes of no one seeing you as you shamefully just toss it on the curb). For now, know that while in the US we have “trash” and “recycling bins” (sometimes a paper bin), Korea has a bin for EVERYTHING. I have a better system down now but these photos are my proto-sorting-system. As for the door-way. The area in front of the door is lower than the floor so that you may take your shoes off before entering. This is very ingrained into Korean culture as I’ve witnessed it. Whenever my co-teachers come to my house, they take off their shoes. If they go out, come back in for a second and need to go past the doorway, they frantically take off their shoes and scramble to get them back on. If they don’t feel like taking their shoes off to deliver a message or something, they will literally cram themselves in that little doorway space (one time it was three of them!) to avoid having to take off their shoes. When I go to school, I take off my shoes, put on some slippers, then run around the school even if I am going to the sports area outside, and only put them back on when I am leaving. The light above the shoe-space is motion-activated on a timer so while my co-teachers are going nuts over their shoes, the thing starts blinking all over the place and it’s pretty funny (don’t tell them I said that though).

Here are two pictures of my bedroom: It’s pretty standard except that I get a queen-sized bed because I live in a double and it’s awesome! Some of you who are cultured to Korea might see this photo below and think I am begging to be an unfortunate victim of fan-death. What can I say? I like to sleep on the edge!

Well, that sums up all the details. I need to go get food and write my lesson plan before I pass out. For now, enjoy the rest of these photos taken of my house!

Week one thus far

Hello everyone! Sorry for the delay, its been a hectic couple days since I’ve arrived in Seoul and in finally getting a chance to write about everything while getting bitten by mosquitoes in the dorm room lobby. The time is 5:45am here.

When I landed, I was shacked up with another new Epik teacher in a very… cozy (and cute) guesthouse. I couldn’t tell you if it was made for couples or if it was just lovey by accident of chosen english. Very romantic haha

I think I haven’t experienced culture shock yet, but I’ve definitely experienced the novelty of things. I find that everything I run into in Korea in terms of objects and procedures  are either practical or cute. An example of cute would be the highly stylized coffee products of Paris Baguette

And who could forget the no-smokemon?!

But the but the practical side of things can take you by surprise too. I don’t have pictures of it, but my medical exam was very surprising to me. The machinery for testing everything was so fast and advanced it left me in wonder. It reduced my 45 minute doctor visits in the US to a 10 minute (maybe 7) proceedure.

An example I do have pictures of is the way in which you would escape from a high story building in an emergency.

Anyway, there is a lot more to be said, but im still stuck on my cell phone trying to post online. Its also super early and there is still so much more to write about. Being with EPIK at this orientation is very beautiful. I’ve been able to meet people from all across the world who have come here to teach English and it’s a true cultural melting pot. The fact we all get along and are very interested in one another makes it really great here. It’s not something I’m used to in the US. I want to write more about it but I’ve got a long day ahead of me.

Until next time, take care! The podcast might be delayed a bit because of my current circumstances but I promise it will be up soon!

Take-off to Turkey

Turkish coffee

Turkish Delight

Hello all! First post from overseas! I did it! I’m currently in a small ish cafe in the deceptively large Turkish airport. When I landed here, 9 hours after my midnight departure from Boston, I was greeted with a small room with some gates, it was hot and muggy and strangely small considering the magazine I read on the way over was boasting of how grand it was. It looked like something that might have sufficed in the 70s but was far from grand… until I found an escalator hidden somewhere that took me up to an airport so large, I got lost looking for wifi.

Turkish airlines was very pleasant too, good food and the stewardesses were great. Made the take-off easier considering the moment I left the ground, the weight of the situation hit me like a ton of bricks. I’m going to be gone for years, doing a career in the most cultured and technologically advanced nations in the world (starting in korea). I feel like a time traveler, like I left the countryside (if you can call Boston that) and wound up 10 years ahead. I am 13 hours ahead though, so I suppose I do live in the future now.

Anyhoo, Turkish coffee, Turkish delight, and a lack of actual turkey are pretty amazing. I’m crunching pennies but things here aren’t too pricy and I think I’m taking a box of Turkish delight to my new home with me!

Sorry if this post is a bit short; I’m low on battery (using my cellphone) and I’ve been hogging this table up for a little while now.

My next flight to Seoul leaves here at midnight!  I’m gonna be so dead by the time I arrive!

Teaching in Korea Episode 1: Boston

This is the first episode of Teaching in Korea, my podcast documenting my life starting in Boston, then chronicling my adventures teaching in South Korea. This episode is the first ever podcast-like recording I’ve ever made (and it sounds a little amateur compared to some of my other podcast projects now that I’ve got better equipment and some experience). I recorded it around September 20th when I was rushing around to get my visa and my document together for a September 28th flight. Unfortunately this attempt didn’t go through and I wound up waiting until this week (October 5th) to get my visa and soon my plane ticket. Thankfully it seems that I’ll be departing around October 18th or so.

Content

This podcast’s main focus is on me trying to get my life together for a speedy departure. I talk about the infinite stack of papers being sent to-and-fro, I cover a bit about budgeting, and I share a brief experience of what is required to be an English teacher in Korea. It’s a commentary on the process that will include more highlights with the October 25th Episode where I discuss more about the teaching certificates available; namely the CELTA.

Teaching in Korea: Introduction

Welcome to my introduction podcast for Teaching in Korea. I began recording the first two episodes while still in the United States as I ran into issues involving my employment and obtaining my visa. This, and my life as it progresses over there, will be documented twice a month. I look forward to both sharing my adventure with you, and answering your questions.