Mind Garten

Korea, Day 12 Over the past couple days I've been hanging out more with Koreans instead of foreigners which has gained me a much more interesting insight into the culture. I've experienced the karaoke rooms, Korean restaurants and soju. Yesterday, the hogwan boss took the whole elementary school staff out for dinner as a going-away party for 2 teachers. One, a Korean, transferring to a different branch, and a foreigner, who coincidentally happened to have his contract end on Friday and is no longer going to work. The partiers included the very same foreigners who staged a strike the previous day, and the very same Korean teachers who secretly applauded our efforts because they got the day off too. Of course, a little background might put things into perspective. You see, even though the hogwan knew that the foreign teacher was leaving, they still hadn't found anybody to replace him. They even asked him to stay an extra 20 days. He rightfully demanded more mo...

Korea, Day 10 It was quite an interesting day in Korea yesterday. It was my fourth day of classes at the hogwan, and my seventh day staying at the yeogwan. For starters, I had a long conversation with my yeogwan landlady. What we talked about, I'm not quite sure. She did provide me with the means of getting rid of some of the mosquitoes in my room. She gave me this insect repellant device, and they were somehow supposed to be killed by it or make them run for the window. I'm not sure which, and I'm not sure if it was that effective. Probably because I used it wrong. Also, when I got home last night, I found all my piled laundry cleaned and folded on my bed. How lucky I am! I asked my landlady about the issue, and apparently her solution was to do it herself. Now, if I can only get her to do this on a regular basis. So, this morning, I went to the Megamart to find a small gift. A plant, and a thank you note that said literally "thank you" on it...

Korea, Day 9 Korea lost their game versus Germany last night. I found the whole matter very depressing since I invested so much time and energy in it's support. The Korean people actually took it fairly well. Sure they were a little dissappointed, but they also applauded Germany's accomplishment and were generally pleased that Korea had made it to the final four. After the game, everyone took to the streets and walked home. There was cheering, but noticeably deflated. I and the foreigners I was with all went to another bar and did a lot more drinking. We were there for quite some time. It was about 2am when everyone else left and I decided to take a taxi home. Fortunately, everything worked out okay. Even though the taxi drivers are quite insane here, it doesn't really bother me anymore since I'm quite used to it. Classes yesterday were a little overshadowed by the impending game. I, for one, was trying to figure out things to do the whole time. I r...

Korea, Day 8 Today is the day of the big game of Korea vs. Germany. I'm wondering how many students are going to show up to class. The game starts at 8:30 pm, but it may take the whole day for some people to prepare. At least a couple of my students went to the actual game itself on Saturday. Yesterday was my first day of classes too. I had 6 classes of 3 different skill levels. There was the little 4 and 5 year olds who are doing phonics, only sounding out words. They're pretty easy. All I have to do is sound out words and repeat them while they follow along. The elementary kids are more difficult. I have 2 classes in particular which have a few catalyst kids who really rile things up. So far I haven't had to punish anybody. The way they punish students in this country is they eject them from the class and make them stand outside the door with their hands in the air. I think the most difficult part is trying to get away from the mentality of appeasem...

Korea, Day 6 Sunday has been pretty low-key. This morning I had peanut butter and bread, and some frosted flakes. I was also faced with the conundrum of trying to figure out how to do laundry. There's no washing machine in the building and there isn't a drier in the country. Most people hang there clothes out to dry. I tried filling up the small plastic tub up with soap water and cleaning it in that. I think the tub is for washing ones self, but I haven't yet found out how it's useful. I'm not sure how well I washed the clothes. I rubbed some soap on them, wrung it several times, and rinsed it with tap water, then hung them on the clothes line in my bathroom. It may take some time for them to dry in there, but we'll see how it goes. Apparently yogwan's (motels) offer some degree of service if you ask for it. They will do your laundry for a fee and clean your room to some degree. They will also provide purified water. I have yet to discus...

Korea, Day 5, Apeshit! Yes, I know I missed a day. That was mostly because I went out to the bars with a bunch of other foreigners and got completely hammered. And I did the same thing tonight, only less so because my body was still saturated with alcohol. Anyway, KOREA BEAT SPAIN!! The whole country has gone completely apeshit over this. The streets are completely packed with people singing, screaming, jumping, and making noise. It's about 12am now and people are still milling about and getting completely hammered. I had to dodge an inebriated woman just to get to the computer room. So here's the situation. Spain scored 2 goals on Korea that were invalidated by offsides calls. Additionally, Spain made so many goal attempts on Korea that's its very amazing that they didn't win. Of course, Korea was sucking it up in the first half, but they began to hold their own in the second half and overtime. Overtime ended with still 0-0 and Korea miraculously be...

Korea, Day 3 Yesterday Terry took me to the mall and the grocery store. We hopped onto the subway which was a lot like the BART in SF. Fortunately, since the World Cup came to town, a lot of the signs were translated into English and Japanese, so it was considerably easier to get around if you didn't already know what you were doing. At our stop, we walked out into an underground shopping mall. Supposedly, this underground dwelling is supposed to go on for miles. Perhaps some day I'll explore it, but our main concern was to visit the mall. We were going to get lunch and see if we could find a Korean grammar book for non-native speakers. We stepped into the mall which was a 10-story building. The first thing that struck me was that it was a lot like the ground floor of Nordstrom's or Meier and Frank. There was lots of perfume and cosmetic stands and other frivolous items. The other thing that struck me was the salespeople: that they all wore the same black ...

My second day in Korea. Hear about hung-over Koreans from the Korea soccer victory celebration, crazy taxi drivers, and the nuances of Korean culture. I went and saw where I was going to work yesterday. The school, a hogwan, is place where students come to learn exclusively English. Hogwans are a very common place thing in Korea. There is a huge demand for English teachers and especially native-English speakers. I'm mostly going to be working with elementary school kids. I went and visited some of the classes that I'll be taking over from the person whose going to be leaving the country. Kids are a bit different here in Korea. For one, they give their teacher more respect, but you can really lose it if you try to be their friend. This was explained to me by Renee, the person who I'm taking over for. She has a real difficult time controlling the class, but she said things would probably be easier for me since I'm a male and they give more respect to mal...

First day in Korea I stepped off the plane from Tokyo to Busan jet-lagged as hell. It had been 16 hours since I got on the first plane to San Francisco. I met Stanley at the airport after having gone through customs and drove off in his car. First impressions: driving in Korea is crazy! The stoplights, signs, and lanes seem to be only a loose framework for a barely contained chaos. People are constantly running red lights and stopping short of an inch before hitting a pedestrian. Oddly, the pedestrians seem to be strangely unaware how close to death they are. I haven't seen any accidents yet though. The soccer game between S. Korea and Spain was on last night, so everywhere you went in town, you saw people crowded around a TV and people screaming "Korea"! When we first showed up, Korea was losing 0-1 and the game was about to end. Miraculously, Korea scored a goal to tie and the whole town came to live. You could hear cheering in all the neighboring bui...

Society for the Promotion of Minor Chords Joyfully, I completed my book report for my Chinese culture class. Strangely, I had to wait until the very last day, the very last night to actually hammer it out. I even got up early this morning to proofread it. The weekend was spent completely slacking off on Saturday, followed by frantic work on Sunday trying to catch up. The 5 page report was the hardest thing to do. The thing I have with writing is that its so difficult for me to put myself in front of a blank page in my word processor and hammer out a composition from beginning to end. Its so intimidating and so time-consuming. Contrast this with journal entries and email messages and I can do complete novels. I think the difference is that I feel that I am communicating to someone, so I know exactly what I need to say. In the case of a blank page, I am communicating to no one in particular but rather trying to fill the space up with somewhat meaningful words. After...

Well, in 2 weeks I will be graduated and will have my degree in Computer Engineering from Oregon State University . So what will I do next you ask? For one, I'm going back to school in the Fall to pursue a Master's in Mechanical Engineering. I know it starkly contrasts with my computing background, but I want to get into robotics and space engineering, so I think this is a good stepping-stone in broadening my education to pursue something like that. Second, I'm going to Korea this summer to teach English. I actually learned about the opportunities there at Acts of Gord . I talked to Gord about it, but the problem was that I wanted to do a Summer only position instead of a year contract which are the standard fare these days. Since summer positions were more rare, I had to find one on my own, so I'm going to be working just a few miles (er.. kilometers) at of Busan. Small classes, kids of all ages. Should be a great experience. Going to Korea was really a...