Update time! Things have been super busy for the past few weeks and they're not likely to settle down for couple more. ( Reasons #1 why I've been looking a bit crazy about the eyes: )

There are truths universally acknowledged: a single man in possession of a good fortune must be in want of a wife and fourth graders are adorable. I teach third through sixth grade, but fourth and sixth grade are my favorite. I have a rotating group of fourth grade girls assigned to clean my classroom (no janitors in Korea, they use the children instead). Half of them hate it because my classroom is always a mess (although hopefully my new policy of if-I-see-you-throwing-things-in-my-class-you're-staying-late-to-clean will help with that), but the other half love it because it means fun times with the English teacher. Also, sometimes I give them candy. ( Cut for pictures of my students. My adorable adorable students. )

I went to the Seoul Racecourse with Tony, Christine and Charles this Sunday. They've been a couple of times and I've passed the Seoul Racecourse Station hundreds of times, but this was my first trip.( Cut for pictures )

World Wide Knit in Public Day was this weekend and last weekend! In Seoul, we celebrated last Saturday. ( The Seoul KIP was held at the Seoul Arts Center in Seocho. Cut for lots of photos. )

My credit card balance:


For the first time in nearly two years, I'm out of debt! (Okay, credit card debt. I still owe my parents a bit, but as they're not charging me an arm and a leg in interest and demanding monthly payments, I'm still counting this a major victory.) It's going to be real damn nice to not have to worry about making a payment this month.

A few weeks ago, I told a friend that I love taking photos because it means I had a blog post without having to write anything. Of course, I always end up writing something anyways (I'm not good about shutting up), but it is easier, especially when I'm swamped at work because of two %$&@#* open classes in two weeks.




Roses, incongruously juxtaposed against the urban sprawl of modern Seoul. (The bee says, "Bzzzt!")


One of my tiny precious 4th graders (the one who always wants hugs) gave me a bracelet made of random Latin letters. It happens to spell out SSK. Any knitters reading this will know why that's funny. It also spells out ZOG, which is such a coincidence since ZOG! the Maleficent is the villain in the B-movie of my heart.


Sixth graders! I needed a photo of students for my open class lesson (Q: What do they do? A: They are students!), so this afternoon I stuck my head into the music room and snapped a quick picture in between songs. A few weeks ago my dad asked me why I kept throwing the peace sign in the photos I sent home. I told him, "Well, when in Asia, do as the Asians." (I started out doing it ironically, but now I think it's just that thing I do when I see a camera.) He asked if it was true that Asians, or at least Koreans, have a Pavlovian reflex to make the peace sign when they see a camera. Since I quite literally stuck my head in the classroom, shouted, "Guys!" to get the kids attention and snapped the photo, I think it's safe to say that yes, yes they do.

Telling my students, "한굴말 몰라요!" (translation=I don't know Korean) and watching their brains slowly implode. "But Teacher," they wail as they try to process me telling them I can't speak Korean IN Korean, which means that I can - in fact - speak Korean, at least a little. "You Korean speaking now!" I just smile, repeat myself and watch steam slowly pour from my kids' ears. They like the sneak up behind me and shout, "Teacher! Hello Korean speaking!" in an attempt to trick me into using Korean, therefore admitting that I DO speak Korean and allowing us to drop this ridiculous English speaking façade. This, plus my habit of answering question asked in Korean*, has my students CONVINCED that I actually can speak Korean and won't, just to be mean.

*This actually isn't that hard. There's a very finite number of questions I am regularly asked in class and it's not that hard to learn the necessary vocabulary to be able to understand them. Blah blah blah something in Korean 아니오 책 means, "Teacher, I have forgotten my textbook." I don't have to be able to understand what is undoubtedly a sob story about how the dog ate the textbook to be able to understand that sentence. No (아니오) and book (책) are sufficient. Plus, it's really not that difficult to guess a lot of what they're saying. While speaking the same language is nice, it's not actually that necessary for basic communication, and little kids are ridiculously expressive. Blah blah blah something in Korean 아니오 책, plus pointing down the hallways means, "Teacher, I have left my textbook in my classroom. Many apologize and, with your permission, I shall go fetch it. Be back, prepared for class, in a jiff." I nod, wave towards their classroom and tell them, "Okay, but next time, remember your book before you get to class." The student runs off, the entire exchange was conducted without either of us having the slightest clue what the other person was saying, the other students stare at me and exclaim, "Teacher! He Korean speaking! You understand! WHAT?!" All I'm saying is, kid, if you're doing a little jig and pointing down the hallway, I don't need to know the word 화장실 to know you need to take a leak.

Fishy says,"Om nom nom nom. Dead skin is delicious!"
I went to Gangnam on Thursday night for SnB. The Thursday night meetings are currently being held at Namu Keuneul, a coffee shop that has a Dr. Fish spa for 2,000 won ($1.60). The doctor fish (also called reddish log sucker and doctorfishen) is a type of tropical fish that eats dead skin. They were originally used to treat skin diseases, but in Korea and Japan, they're used in spas. Full body spas exist (and seriously creep me out), but the Dr. Fish at Namu Keuneul was just a foot spa. ( Cut for pictures )

Then on Sunday I went to Sinchon for the new Sunday meeting. It's very new - this is only the second meeting - and I was the only person for the first two hours. It's in a nice coffee shop, though, and I used the opportunity to make myself study Korean. Since I'm going to be staying in Korea for a second year*, I figure it's time to get off my butt and start learning the language. 나는 한굴말를 공부해요. In Roman letters, that's Nanun Hangulmallul gongbuhaeyo, which means (I think) I study Korean. I can't form the past tense yet, but that's okay because this is more of an on-going (never ending?) project.

*Did you see what I just did there? Do you like how I just slipped that one in? With absolutely no follow up? Yeah?

A few weeks ago, when the Swine Flu hysteria was at its zenith in the US, I mentioned to my dad how relived I was that the first confirmed case of H1N1 virus in Korea was a Korean and not a foreigner. This was back when there only was one case of the Swine Flu in Korea, before the outbreak in Japan and before the H1N1 virus was any sort of threat to Asia. It was just a passing thought.

The reason I mention this is last week, a batch of 30+ native English speakers arrived in Korea and spent a week in training. One of them had Swine Flu. On Saturday, the Korean government started rounding up all the foreigners from the training and sent them to quarantine. Indefinitely. No one can get a straight answer, which could be a sign of something shady, but is most likely the result of the Korean medical system and the Korean government's way of dealing with foreigner (personal rights? telling people things? what's that?).

You'll note that I said that the government began to round up the foreigners. Not the Korean instructors who spent the week in the same close quarters with Patient Zero as the quarantined foreigners. Just the foreigners. Korea is a xenophobic society. Not on an individual level - I have personally faced very little discrimination - but as a society, Korea's not sure what they think about us, but it's not good. I've stop reading what's written about foreign teachers in the English language newspapers because I get so angry about how blatantly racist it is. What I'm worried about is that this will escalate from quarantining people who have legitimately been exposed to an all-out witch hunt.

When I showed up to work this morning, before I'd seen the buzz on the Korean blogosphere (there's been no mention of the 50+ quarantined teachers in the news, but several of the quarantined teachers have blogs and it's all the English Korean blogs are talking about), my vice principal hurried up to me and asked how I felt. I told him I felt fine. He asked again, wanting to know if I was coughing and if I knew what the symptoms of the Pig Flu were. I told him no, but that I felt fine. He let it drop and I went about my business. (Keep in mind, I haven't been in the US for eight months and I haven't left Korea since before the Swine Flu outbreak. I have absolutely no greater chance of being infected that any other teacher at the school.)

This evening I read that the Ministry of Education is checking up on foreign teachers. Another source is saying that all public school teachers who arrived in May will be quarantined at home for a week. Another person said the Ministry of Education called his employer and asked if there were any Americans working there. There are several reports of hogwons (private academies that are super popular here), including some in my area, closing and their teachers being told not to leave their apartments. Quoting the Hub of Sparkle: So is this the latest xenophobic witch hunt? Last year, it was diseased American cows. This year it’s diseased American teachers?

I'm not really worried. I'm certainly not worried that I might catch the Swine Flu and from what I've read, the worst that could happen to me is that I get an enforced vacation and spend the week obsessively watching K-dramas and sleeping in. (When I put it that way, *cough, cough* I think I might have the piggy flu. Quarantine, yes please, make mine a double.) It's just annoying. It's annoying to be singled out for no valid reason. It's annoying that more fuel is being added to the already present xenophobic fire. And it's sure as hell is annoying for the teachers who are stuck in quarantine, all of whom where fresh off the plane and some of which weren't even at the training conference and where just tossed into quarantine because they were a foreigner and, don't you know, we all have the Pig Flu.

This is my computer at work. I'm teaching the 5th graders how to tell time in English (Lesson 6: I Get Up at Seven Every Day) and I made a PowerPoint with a bunch of pictures of clocks and the time written out with various bits missing. The yellow bits of paper are the sticky part of a Post-It note, which I stuck to my screen so I could align the pictures in the EXACT same spot on each slide. Because the very slight difference was harshing my PowerPoint mellow.


This is a close up of my Flickr map. I've been geotagging my photostream and, um, maybe went a little overboard. This is my neighborhood. (I live in #8.)  It's a small area; no more than three blocks.

1. #1 is this picture of the neighborhood, taken from the subway station and looking towards my apartment.  If you'll notice, the blue dot is located on stairs which are the bane of my existence, which is where I was standing when I took the picture.
   
2. #2 is Phil India Camp, the crappy Indian restaurnt located on the third floor of that building. I was even sitting in that corner.  (Previously blogged about here.)
   
3. #3 is this picture of the some of the many neon lights in my neighborhood. The sign, obviously, is located on the corner of that building.
   
4. #4 is Tina's apartment, which is where we made Thai food. (Previously blogged about here.)
   
5. #5 is this picture, taken in the park next to my apartment after a brief snowstorm.
   
6. #6 is these flowers, taken in the same park as #5, just in a different corner. And for the record, this is a small park.
   
7. #7 is the love motel across the street from my apartment, also known as the reason why I've forgotten what dark looks like.
   
8. #8 is this picture of a plant on my balcony. The same balcony where I took #7. In fact, you can see the sign in the background, but I felt that the thirty feet between the two buildings warranted two separate geotags BECAUSE I'M CRAZY!.

Happy 스승의 날! (There's all sorts of celebrations going on in these parts.) Today is Teacher's Day in Korea. I personally felt like that should result in me NOT having to be a teacher for the day, but that's not how it works in Korea. Instead, I was inundated with gifts (many many fake carnations, two heart-wrenchingly cute and grammatically suspect letters and several boxes of Vitamin C powder; either my kids think I'm looking a bit peaky or they just think that since I don't like kimchi, I must be on verge of death) and after class, all the teachers went on a hike and had dinner. A three hour long hike up a mountain in the rain. I've been cranky and NO NOT WANT about the hike all week. I don't like climbing mountains under the best of circumstances and hikes that don't end in the Great Wall of China are dead to me. Plus, school outings are always really awkward because no one will talk to me. (And yes I know that it's because I'm the foreigner and there's a language barrier and insert anthropological thoughts on insider/outsider culture here and I'm not really offended by it, but the end result is still the same and you never feel as lonely as when you're all by yourself in a big group of people.) Suffice to say, I wasn't exactly a happy camper when I showed up at the base of the mountain this afternoon. Shows you what I know; I ended up having a great time.

Instead of climbing the mountain, I "hiked" to a coffee shop with two of the kindergarten teachers. And by hiked, I mean we walked down the street to the taxi stand, caught a cab to Beomgye and spent the afternoon sitting in a cafe drinking mocha lattes, which is much more my scene. What happened was all the teachers were loitering in the parking lot at the base of the mountain, waiting for the stragglers to arrive. I was standing a bit apart, feeling lonely and bitchy and about five seconds away from decided to go eat some worms (it's been a low self esteem week in general), when one of the kindergarten teachers sidled up to me and asked if I wanted to hike. (Her name is Hyun Ji, she's twenty seven, from Busan and until today, I didn't realize she spoke English.) I told her no, and we tried to avoid being seen. At one point we ducked behind a car. We were caught and shooed down the trail, but Hyun Ji told me to walk very slowly and when the others teachers had industriously trekked out of sight, we abruptly about-faced and "hiked" to the main road, where we hailed a taxi and ten minutes later we were ordering our coffees. Hyun Ji and Joo Mi both teach kindergarten and speak some English and, combined with my Korean, the help of a cell phone dictionary and a LOT of hand motions, we were able to have a nice little conversation while we waited for the others to finish their hike. We were even able to have a basic English/Korean lesson, and I know have two napkins of scribbled notes that I need to study. (We also weren't the only teachers to skip out on the hike. On our way to catch a taxi to the restaurant, we ran into one of the 6th grade teachers, who had gone shopping and was waiting for another teacher to come pick her up. And two of the 4th grade teachers were half an hour late to dinner. *g*)

Not only did I score enough Vitamin C to keep me healthy through the summer and manage to avoid getting soaked (I ended up merely damp), now I have some friends my age to talk to at school!

(Fun aside: on the dive to the mountain I was listening to the teachers talk and in a two minutes span, I heard Harry Potter, monkey and fried rice. My first thought was I'd read that fic.)

¡Very Belated Feliz Cinco de Mayo! Or, as it's known in Korea, 어린이 날. No, that doesn't mean May 5th. It means Children's Day, which was Tuesday. On Monday, I asked my students what they were doing for Children's Day. I got the expected roars of "CANDY!", "PRESENTS!" and "NO SCHOOL!", but one little boy told me, "I will receive the presents from my parents." I hope he made off like a bandit. <3 Children's Day is a national holiday in Korea, which meant I was free to spend it celebrating Cinco de Mayo.


Tomitillo, a new Mexican grill in Seoul, held a Cinco de Mayo festival. There was Mexican beer (something beside Hite and Cass, yes please), half price margaritas and ₩2,000 tacos!  Plus, live music. Decent Mexican food is expensive here, so I was excited. I wasn't the only one. The celebrations lasted from noon to eight. I showed up at three and wound up in a long, slow line. It was almost all expats, which caused the Koreans passing by to stare at us with open bafflement. Luckily I met up with Marie, Greg and robininseoul, so I wasn't too bored while I waited in line for an hour and a half.


The food was, well, the food was okay.  By the time I reached the front of the line, most of the food was gone.  They ran out completely by five.  I think the organizers were surprised by the turn out and the quantity of food people bought.  I spoke to a manager who told me they had prepared 700 tacos that morning, which would have been enough if each person had only ordered one or two, but after months of very shelling out ₩30,000 for On the Border, I know everyone in my group was planning on ordering 16 tacos a piece.  (Actually, Marie wanted 17 margaritas.  Alas, they ran out of tequila before we got any.)  I will definitely be going back when they're not swamped, especially since it's just down the street from Kyobo, one of the better English bookstores.

6-4 class girls running (well, jumping) during a Sports Day race. (Can I just blather on for a minute about how much I love this picture. I can't really take any of the credit for it; the camera was the one who decided to focus on the students [since Lord knows I have little control over what it actually focuses on] and it was pure luck that I took the photo just as 현 아 was midair. But seriously, I love love love this photo and how it captures the motion and the energy of the race.)

Friday was Sports Day at my school. It was a big deal; the kids practiced their performances for weeks. Every Monday morning all the students would gather in front of the school to practice the calisthenics routine and my 4-4 class was canceled for all of April because their teacher scheduled Sports Day dance practice during class. *disgruntled look* On Thursday, I asked my fifth graders what day was it tomorrow. They chorused, "It's Friday!" Then I asked them what classes they had on Friday. They stared at me, perplexed, trying to figure out how to explain Sports Day. Finally, they settled on this: "Teacher, class one, PE. Class two, PE. Class three, PE. All class, PE!" I love making them explain things they don't know the words for and seeing what they come up with! ( Sports Day, complete with lots of pictures )

I went to Ansan Asia Town twice this week. (When Tina first called it Ansan Asia Town, I laughed and said, "We in Korea. It's all Asia town," but according to the internet, she was right and the area is called Ansan Asia Town. My bad, Tina.) The city I live in, Ansan (a suburb of south of Seoul), has the largest foreign population in Korea, mostly laborers from SE Asia or Southern Asia. At Ansan Station, they formed Ansan Asia Town, a several block district full of ethnic restaurants, supermarkets and 3923590 places to buy an international calling card. (For the Korea people on my flist, it's like Itaewon without the jacked up prices, American military presence or the Quiznos.)

On Wednesday, Tina and I went to the Thai market in Ansan Asia Town. Tina is Thai and wanted to make curry. I like Thai food and am incapable of cooking for myself. It was a good match. We bought several heavy bags worth of Thai food and carted them back to Tina's apartment. I chopped the vegetables (see above: peas, mushrooms and eggplant) while Tina did the cooking. We made Thai stirfry and oh my Lord, was it ever spicy!


Tina forgot that Thai peppers were spicier than Korean peppers, and consequently almost killed me. It was one of those meals where I couldn't stop crying and drank an entire litre of water, but it was too tasty to stop eating. I went back to Asia Town yesterday night with Marie and Greg. We ended up eating at an Indonesian restaurant because none of us had every tried Indonesian food before. We're pretty sure the place was a front for a brothel and as the only two women in the dinning area, Marie and I got a lot of interested looks. The food was tasty, even if we only got what the waiter could translate. (Rice. And chicken. And some fried rice called nasi goreng.) We were able to also order some fried fritter type thing (the internet tells me they are called gorengan) by pointing to another diner's table. We ate the fritters with a sweet viscous soy sauce we called Soylasses. (It's thicker than soy sauce, thinner than molasses. It's sweet, it's soy, its soylasses!) After dinner we wandered around for a while and salivated at all the other restaurant choices: Indian, Thai, Vietnamese, Chinese, Bangladeshi, Sri Lankan, Nepalese, Filipino. I might even be able to find some Middle Eastern restaurants there. I want to do my own version of Man Bites World.

I have a Dreamwidth account! misscake gave me a code and my profile is here. I decided to change my name; I'm now tea_for_two. It's a reference to "Scarlet Begonias" - the live Jimmy Buffett cover of a Grateful Dead song referencing a song from the 1924 musical No No Nanette. I've never heard of No No Nanette and I'm not much of a Grateful Dead fan, but I really love that Jimmy Buffett version.

The wind in the willows played Tea for Two
The sky was yellow and the sun was blue
I'm not really sure how I'm going to use my Dreamwidth account yet. I imported my LJ last night, but that was just so I would have back up. For now, I'm going to crosspost my entries. Like someone on my flist said, it's not about the blogging platform, it's about the people. I have no real loyalty to LJ, but I do have a loyalty to my flist and I'm going to go wherever you guys go.

I would like to add any of you who have a Dreamwidth account. I've tried to add anyone that I know has started a Dreamwidth account, but I'm sure I've missed people. Feel free to let me know your account name, add me, or explain who to get my profile to work properly because it looks all wonky.

[long road to ruin there in your eyes // under the cold streetlights]

I spent Wednesday updating my Flickr page. (I also played computer games with my students and taught no classes. Basically, I don't have to work this week.) I've been spending more and more time on Flickr (randomly trolling group pools, obsessively checking my stats, etc.) and decided it was time to separate my knitting photos and my non-knitting photos. I originally started using Flickr so I could post pictures of my stash on Ravelry. Then I started getting interested about photography. Then I moved to Korea and bought a new camera and really started taking pictures. Now my Flickr stream shows up on search engines and I have totally strangers watching it and, while that's awesome, it means I'm so uncomfortable of pictures of my sock-clad feet and balls of yarn being on my Flickr page. So on Wednesday, I moved all my knitting photos to a new Flickr account and (hopefully) updated all the links in my eLJay and on Ravelry.

cnotta: knitting photos (cnotta is Old English for knot; it's related to cynttan, which is Old English for knit)
just_a_cheeseburger: Korea and everything else images (I post a lot, but not all, of these images here)

(And speaking of Flickr groups, this is one of my favorites: School Lunch in Korea. This is what I eat every day.)

Hey, remember back in February when I went to China. And then said nothing about if for month and month and months and waited like three weeks to even take the pictures off my camera. Yeah, here's my extremely belated China recap, complete with pictures. (Just a warning, but this comes in at 2,500 words, which is ridiculously tl;dr. If you just want pictures, they're here.)

( now he's somewhere over China // looking down on all the trails // on the mountains looking back at him // it's a real live fairy tale )

I've wanted to do a photo journal entry about Korean food for a while, but I haven't really had the opportunity to take the photos. The main place I eat Korean food is my school and I would be uncomfortable taking pictures there. Because I don't have a homeroom, I eat in the teachers' lounge with the vice principal and the principal and all the administration staff, and they already think I'm a queer bird, what with the whole not being Korean thing. I try not to add to that impression. Also, I rarely know what exactly I'm eating. When I go out for dinner, I tend to eat western or Indian food. I've been trying to eat more Korean food outside of school since a) cafeteria food isn't the best introduction to a cuisine and b) when in Korea, do as the Koreans and c) Western food is expensive, but half my meals are already Korean and sometimes I just want a meal that doesn't revolve around fermented cabbage.

HOWEVER, I went out for 삼겹살 last night and I remembered to bring my camera with me, so. ( An Introduction To Korean Barbecue )