Between classes at work, I created this Google Map so everyone can see all the places I hang out. It also helps me find my way around town. Enjoy!
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Tuesday, July 29, 2008
Friday, July 25, 2008
Live, from the floor of my apartment...
I guess this is what it's like when you "know how to party"?
I mean, I thought I was filled with party living in Colorado, but nothing like this ever happened:
The body count is three, here. That's my friend Myrna in the foreground, John on the floor, and Jasmine in the far bed. I happen to have two beds in my apartment for the time being because my school director brought over a bigger one and hasn't come back to take away the original small one yet. And a good thing, too, because Friday night hammered these jokers pretty good. See that spot between the chairs on the right? That's where I spent the night. Being the only non-drunk left gives you few options, really.
Our story begins at International Pub about 11 p.m. I went over there to meet up with Sun-A, Greg, John and Aaron, after finding an ATM that actually accepted my card. Also at the pub was Sun's friend Myrna, who I'd met the night before at the badminton court, and Myrna's friend Jasmine. Both of them are English teachers: Myrna here in Changwon, and Jasmine a little ways down the road in Jinhae. They're both from the Philippines originally.
We ran into Aaron on the way over, and he was headed to a different bar with his wife, so I just got a chance to say hi. The rest of us hung out at IP until about 1 a.m., telling the stories of how we came to Korea and how it's treating us. Jasmine's dream is to go back to the Philippines and teach there. I'm not sure what Myrna's after in life; come to think of it, she was playing darts with John most of the time we were there.
Anyway, about 1 I asked Jasmine if she ever went to noraebang (karaoke rooms). She said yes, and I replied that we'd have to take our whole group sometime, "but not tonight." Well, the idea caught on and we actually decided to go. So we wandered around briefly before finding the same noraebang that I went to last Saturday after arriving here.
It was fun, again; Sun-A was in her usual great voice and Jasmine has a lovely voice as well (and probably the best English of any non-Westerner I've met here). I even got to sing my first "request" when Myrna asked me to do "Hotel California" (a song I hate, but who am I to disappoint a fan?). John introduced us all to soju, which is the Korean alcohol of choice; my Army friends back in the Springs had warned me about the stuff. Apparently, they were right. I tried a shot of it, but Myrna, Greg, Jasmine and John hit it pretty hard. However, they were also articulate and upright when we left there about 3.
My apartment's close by, so someone suggested "house party" and we all took cabs over here. (It's about a six block walk, and we took taxis. Maybe they were more smashed than I thought.) We picked up some supplies (water, snacks, some more beer for John, Greg, Jasmine and Myrna) and set up at my place, just hanging out, listening to my crappy MP3 collection, and talking. This part pretty much rocked, because I got to know everyone better than before. Sun-A has a kidney condition that prevents her drinking alcohol, and I was done with that for the night, but between the four others, they took care of two pitcher-sized bottles of Hite beer.
Then Myrna decided it was time to go, but she was fully incapacitated. She made it about halfway down the hall out of my apartment before Greg, Sun-A and I carried her back into my room. We put her in my old, small bed to rest for a bit, and of course, she's still there six hours later. Greg lives just a couple of blocks away, so he headed home; Jasmine hadn't been drinking much since the noraebang, but she was pretty tired so she crashed in my new bed. John passed out on the floor between the beds. Sun-A and I started watching "Enchanted," but we were only about half an hour in before she decided to head home. So I took the laptop onto the floor and finished the movie, dozing off for about half an hour between the Central Park scene and the shopping bit. And now, here we are. In three hours, I'm meeting Sun-A to do some volunteer teaching at Changwon National University, and then after that we're supposed to help John clean up a building he's working on, and then it's on to Yongji for badminton with Aaron later. Hopefully I can at least take a shower in there somewhere...
I'm pretty sure this is worth a whole bunch of party-awesome points, and that's why I'm posting (even as the other three start to stir from their soju-comas). Rest assured, my Colorado and Kansas brethren. I'm making friends; I'm having fun. I like to rock the party.
I mean, I thought I was filled with party living in Colorado, but nothing like this ever happened:
The body count is three, here. That's my friend Myrna in the foreground, John on the floor, and Jasmine in the far bed. I happen to have two beds in my apartment for the time being because my school director brought over a bigger one and hasn't come back to take away the original small one yet. And a good thing, too, because Friday night hammered these jokers pretty good. See that spot between the chairs on the right? That's where I spent the night. Being the only non-drunk left gives you few options, really.
Our story begins at International Pub about 11 p.m. I went over there to meet up with Sun-A, Greg, John and Aaron, after finding an ATM that actually accepted my card. Also at the pub was Sun's friend Myrna, who I'd met the night before at the badminton court, and Myrna's friend Jasmine. Both of them are English teachers: Myrna here in Changwon, and Jasmine a little ways down the road in Jinhae. They're both from the Philippines originally.
We ran into Aaron on the way over, and he was headed to a different bar with his wife, so I just got a chance to say hi. The rest of us hung out at IP until about 1 a.m., telling the stories of how we came to Korea and how it's treating us. Jasmine's dream is to go back to the Philippines and teach there. I'm not sure what Myrna's after in life; come to think of it, she was playing darts with John most of the time we were there.
Anyway, about 1 I asked Jasmine if she ever went to noraebang (karaoke rooms). She said yes, and I replied that we'd have to take our whole group sometime, "but not tonight." Well, the idea caught on and we actually decided to go. So we wandered around briefly before finding the same noraebang that I went to last Saturday after arriving here.
It was fun, again; Sun-A was in her usual great voice and Jasmine has a lovely voice as well (and probably the best English of any non-Westerner I've met here). I even got to sing my first "request" when Myrna asked me to do "Hotel California" (a song I hate, but who am I to disappoint a fan?). John introduced us all to soju, which is the Korean alcohol of choice; my Army friends back in the Springs had warned me about the stuff. Apparently, they were right. I tried a shot of it, but Myrna, Greg, Jasmine and John hit it pretty hard. However, they were also articulate and upright when we left there about 3.
My apartment's close by, so someone suggested "house party" and we all took cabs over here. (It's about a six block walk, and we took taxis. Maybe they were more smashed than I thought.) We picked up some supplies (water, snacks, some more beer for John, Greg, Jasmine and Myrna) and set up at my place, just hanging out, listening to my crappy MP3 collection, and talking. This part pretty much rocked, because I got to know everyone better than before. Sun-A has a kidney condition that prevents her drinking alcohol, and I was done with that for the night, but between the four others, they took care of two pitcher-sized bottles of Hite beer.
Then Myrna decided it was time to go, but she was fully incapacitated. She made it about halfway down the hall out of my apartment before Greg, Sun-A and I carried her back into my room. We put her in my old, small bed to rest for a bit, and of course, she's still there six hours later. Greg lives just a couple of blocks away, so he headed home; Jasmine hadn't been drinking much since the noraebang, but she was pretty tired so she crashed in my new bed. John passed out on the floor between the beds. Sun-A and I started watching "Enchanted," but we were only about half an hour in before she decided to head home. So I took the laptop onto the floor and finished the movie, dozing off for about half an hour between the Central Park scene and the shopping bit. And now, here we are. In three hours, I'm meeting Sun-A to do some volunteer teaching at Changwon National University, and then after that we're supposed to help John clean up a building he's working on, and then it's on to Yongji for badminton with Aaron later. Hopefully I can at least take a shower in there somewhere...
I'm pretty sure this is worth a whole bunch of party-awesome points, and that's why I'm posting (even as the other three start to stir from their soju-comas). Rest assured, my Colorado and Kansas brethren. I'm making friends; I'm having fun. I like to rock the party.
Wednesday, July 23, 2008
배드민턴 FTW
In class, I get to ask kids about their favorites of a lot of things. Favorite food, favorite TV show (which will come up in another post later), favorite music, favorite sport. They all love badminton (배드민턴 over here, which is just the Koreanized English word "baeduminton").
"I can play badminton," I said to myself. "We play that every year at Christian's July 4 party." And since there's no frisbee golf here, I needed a sport to take its place as a simple, free-once-you-buy-the-equipment activity. So I e-mailed Sun-A and Greg, and we all went to Yongji Park.
Now from what I understand, badminton here is like basketball in the U.S. Everyone knows it, has seen it, maybe played it once or twice, but not EVERYONE plays. So Sun-A isn't a hardcore player. And when we got to the badminton court, there were people there, but it wasn't packed. And there's only one court.
The actual court was occupied by about 10 Korean kids who looked to be about 14 years old. While they played, Greg and I swatted the shuttlecock back and forth in an open space next to the court. The activity gave us a chance to practice Korean numbers while we kept score.
Then Sun-A asked if we'd like to play with the kids. "Sure," we decided. It could be pretty hilarious. Greg and I took the court against two of them expecting to get killed. But we destroyed them pretty easily. Then to even things out, we let their other friends play, too. We switched off among the three of us -- two playing, one sitting out -- against four Korean kids. It was a riot. We didn't keep score, just kept hitting it back and forth until the KIDS begged US to take a break. That's right. I wore out Korean teenagers.
I love 배드민턴.
"I can play badminton," I said to myself. "We play that every year at Christian's July 4 party." And since there's no frisbee golf here, I needed a sport to take its place as a simple, free-once-you-buy-the-equipment activity. So I e-mailed Sun-A and Greg, and we all went to Yongji Park.
Now from what I understand, badminton here is like basketball in the U.S. Everyone knows it, has seen it, maybe played it once or twice, but not EVERYONE plays. So Sun-A isn't a hardcore player. And when we got to the badminton court, there were people there, but it wasn't packed. And there's only one court.
The actual court was occupied by about 10 Korean kids who looked to be about 14 years old. While they played, Greg and I swatted the shuttlecock back and forth in an open space next to the court. The activity gave us a chance to practice Korean numbers while we kept score.
Then Sun-A asked if we'd like to play with the kids. "Sure," we decided. It could be pretty hilarious. Greg and I took the court against two of them expecting to get killed. But we destroyed them pretty easily. Then to even things out, we let their other friends play, too. We switched off among the three of us -- two playing, one sitting out -- against four Korean kids. It was a riot. We didn't keep score, just kept hitting it back and forth until the KIDS begged US to take a break. That's right. I wore out Korean teenagers.I love 배드민턴.
Sunday, July 20, 2008
Korea is orange!
This was my first thought as the plane descended into Busan: "Korea is orange!" The sunset blazed brilliantly as lightning sparked through the clouds below. The city lights, draped in the Korean mountains, glowed amber against the same clouds, casting them in a subtle array of orange, purple, green and gray. It was beautiful. After 20 hours of traveling, I knew then that I was in the right place. I fell in love with Korea through the window of a DC-9.
That was last night. After arriving at the airport, I was picked up by my recruiter, Sun-A, and her supervisor, Aaron Seo. They took me from Busan to Changwon, about a 40-minute drive to the northwest. We saw the school I'm teaching at, dropped off my luggage at my apartment, and then went out to dinner downtown.
I researched Changwon before I decided to come here, and I had an image of it as a quiet but large suburb of Busan. I underestimated the city. As we walked around downtown late Saturday night, the streets were continually packed with people. Not for just a block or two like the Old Market in Omaha or downtown Colorado Springs, but throughout the downtown district. The towers that pack this city glowed and vibrated with clubs and parties. The energy, the life flowing through the streets surprised me. I could hardly eat, I was so busy just taking it in.
(Yes, that was me, doing the full-on tourist thing -- my jaw slack, my head tilted back and swiveling from one side of the street to the other. "Gawly, they got sum big bildins here.")
Oh, and there are mountains, too. If you took away Pikes Peak, it'd be about like Colorado Springs -- the mountains surround the city, but there's nothing near a fourteener around here. I can't see a treeline on anything within sight of the town. But still, it's pretty.
After dinner last night came my first Korean karaoke experience. Another teacher, Greg from Minnesota, and another coworker of Sun-A and Aaron came with us. I expected the karaoke to be subpar here, since you just take up a room with only people you know, and my favorite thing about karaoke is meeting people. But this rocked in eight dimensions. Maybe it was because I had just met all these people, and so it was kind of like performing in front of strangers. But I had an absolute ball, and everyone else got into it too. Let me tell you, watching Sun-A sing Christina Aguilera and Mariah Carey just about made my face explode. What a night.
I finally got home a bit before 3 a.m., and even though I had slept about three hours in the previous 48, I still didn't feel like I wanted to go to bed. I did, though, mostly because there's nothing else to do (the TV and Internet don't get here till tomorrow and I didn't get a power converter for my laptop). It's going to take some getting used to, sleeping on the eighth floor right next to the window that takes up the east wall of my apartment. I haven't lived this high up since Omaha, and even though that apartment had big windows too, I never got the feeling I was snoozing on the brink of the precipice.
My apartment, by the way, is about what I imagined. It's a bit larger, with an actual room for the bathroom, and there's more kitchen than I expected (I have a four-burner gas range, but no oven). The building has a PC bang (cyber cafe) on the third floor and even though I speak next-to-no Korean, I've about figured out the system for renting a machine and checking my e-mail. It's only a buck an hour, and I've yet to use more than an hour at a time, so it's a fine substitute for having a computer of my own.
The only problem is, I can't seem to find the cord that plugs my digital camera into my computer, so this blog will be text-only for a while. Once I get an SD card reader, I'll be able to post some photos. Until then, use your imaginations, guys!
That was last night. After arriving at the airport, I was picked up by my recruiter, Sun-A, and her supervisor, Aaron Seo. They took me from Busan to Changwon, about a 40-minute drive to the northwest. We saw the school I'm teaching at, dropped off my luggage at my apartment, and then went out to dinner downtown.
I researched Changwon before I decided to come here, and I had an image of it as a quiet but large suburb of Busan. I underestimated the city. As we walked around downtown late Saturday night, the streets were continually packed with people. Not for just a block or two like the Old Market in Omaha or downtown Colorado Springs, but throughout the downtown district. The towers that pack this city glowed and vibrated with clubs and parties. The energy, the life flowing through the streets surprised me. I could hardly eat, I was so busy just taking it in.
(Yes, that was me, doing the full-on tourist thing -- my jaw slack, my head tilted back and swiveling from one side of the street to the other. "Gawly, they got sum big bildins here.")
Oh, and there are mountains, too. If you took away Pikes Peak, it'd be about like Colorado Springs -- the mountains surround the city, but there's nothing near a fourteener around here. I can't see a treeline on anything within sight of the town. But still, it's pretty.
After dinner last night came my first Korean karaoke experience. Another teacher, Greg from Minnesota, and another coworker of Sun-A and Aaron came with us. I expected the karaoke to be subpar here, since you just take up a room with only people you know, and my favorite thing about karaoke is meeting people. But this rocked in eight dimensions. Maybe it was because I had just met all these people, and so it was kind of like performing in front of strangers. But I had an absolute ball, and everyone else got into it too. Let me tell you, watching Sun-A sing Christina Aguilera and Mariah Carey just about made my face explode. What a night.
I finally got home a bit before 3 a.m., and even though I had slept about three hours in the previous 48, I still didn't feel like I wanted to go to bed. I did, though, mostly because there's nothing else to do (the TV and Internet don't get here till tomorrow and I didn't get a power converter for my laptop). It's going to take some getting used to, sleeping on the eighth floor right next to the window that takes up the east wall of my apartment. I haven't lived this high up since Omaha, and even though that apartment had big windows too, I never got the feeling I was snoozing on the brink of the precipice.
My apartment, by the way, is about what I imagined. It's a bit larger, with an actual room for the bathroom, and there's more kitchen than I expected (I have a four-burner gas range, but no oven). The building has a PC bang (cyber cafe) on the third floor and even though I speak next-to-no Korean, I've about figured out the system for renting a machine and checking my e-mail. It's only a buck an hour, and I've yet to use more than an hour at a time, so it's a fine substitute for having a computer of my own.
The only problem is, I can't seem to find the cord that plugs my digital camera into my computer, so this blog will be text-only for a while. Once I get an SD card reader, I'll be able to post some photos. Until then, use your imaginations, guys!
Thursday, July 17, 2008
Annnnnnd.... resume!
OK, I took a little hiatus from blogging there because things were somewhat up in the air. There was a small chance I might've called off this whole Korea thing to go to Colorado Springs and teach at the little Christian school close to my heart. But that didn't work out, and now I'm headed out tomorrow morning. Back on track!
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