Rock My Socks

Because K-Socks are AWESOME.

The cat says woof? Seoul Milk? The North Korea?

Close-up

The Motherland and all its socks will be mine - bwahaha!
(It's a total rip-off of The North Face)

Okay, no socks here: This one's for Melissa.
Melissa, click here to see it large-size.
They're taking over the world!!

Pets, Shopping and a Cheesecake Update

One of the most disappointing things about my time in Russia was that my host family didn't have a pet. I'm quite an animal lover, and had really hoped to have a pet to play with in my home. Luckily for me, the American Home cat, Gosha, was ever present and able to fill my lack of pet void. (And considering that I was at the AH more than I was at home, it was kind of like having a pet...) Here in Korea, I'm living on my own, and therefore have neither pets nor people to keep me company while home, and I'm considering getting a pet. While I was looking into how one goes about adopting a pet in Korea, I came across the Korean Animal Protection Society (located in Daegu!), which seems to be the closest thing in Korea to what we'd consider an animal shelter. Read the information provided - it's so incredibly heart wrenching. If any of you out there are looking for a worthy cause to donate to, please, donate to KAPS. They're trying to raise money to build a large shelter, as the current location is way too small. I've decided that unless I find a stray animal between now and my first payday (I'm on a tight budget until then, and therefore shouldn't be adding a pet to my expenses), I'm going to adopt an animal from KAPS (which of course will come home with me when I eventually leave Korea). Now the question is, do I want a dog or a cat? What? Jane, the self-professed-cat-lady-in-the-making, might get a dog? Well, after Elphie/Sally I've found myself wanting to have a happy little dog companion. On the other hand, I do love and miss cats... According to the KAPS website, there are 3 times as many cats as there are dogs at the KAPS shelter. Cat products in Korea are scarce and low quality. The first sentence there makes me think I should definitely get a cat, although the second sentence makes me wonder. Apparently KAPS imports its catfood and kitty litter! And if you read this, you'll just want to cry.

Last night, after the sun went down and the temperature dropped to a bearable level, I went out in search of a market near enough to my house to be practical and big enough to be more useful than the mini-mart (named K-Mart, of all things) that's about two minutes from my front door. Before John left he (in addition to telling random dudes with cheesecake how to find me) said to me, "There's a nice mart just up the street." I remember making some sort of noncommittal reply while wondering whether or not he was losing his grasp of the English language. A nice mart? Well, whaddyaknow. Last night I found a large store, kind of like a mini E-mart called NAIS MART. Nice mart. It's only a few blocks away and very well-stocked and affordable. Hooray!

I simply couldn't help myself.

I returned home to discover an email from Gwen, regarding the aforementioned random cheesecake bearing dude:

I read about your visit from Hee Soo... a word to the wise... he'd been asking John how he could get an American girlfriend. I have no idea what kind of a person Hee Soo is, so I can't say if that information is good, bad or neutral. I thought you'd might as well know since he seems to be able to get in your yard without you buzzing him in.... I think we should get you a chain lock. I'm sure Mr. Yu wouldn't abuse his spare key, but still... extra security when you're actually in the house.

Hmmmmm....

Weather Reports and Book Reviews

I’ve spent a lot of time in Daegu prior to this trip, so I don’t feel that pressing need to go out and explore that I have whenever I’m somewhere new for the first time. Plus it’s so unbearably hot out, and as I don’t have a car, going places means going by foot. As a result, I’ve been doing a lot of reading recently (reading being something which can be done in my air-conditioned living room and all). This may change soon: check out what wonderful news I received on Google Weather this morning:

I hope it's accurate!

But until that happens, I’m going to be enjoying quality time indoors. Today (Wednesday) is my last day off - I go back to work tomorrow. (Although only for two days, and then it’s the weekend!) I feel a little guilty about wasting my vacation time lounging around my apartment like a bum, but I’m enjoying myself, so it shouldn’t matter. Anyway, I’ve done a lot of reading in the week and a half I’ve been here.

The most recent book I’ve read is The Alchemist by Paulo Coelho. This book was recommended to me by my conversation class at the American Home. Nearly all of my students (all adults) had read it, and they all said it was wonderful. I checked out the plot - the quest of a Spanish shepherd to discover a treasure located near the Egyptian Pyramids - and it definitely seemed like something I might be interested in. I looked at the various reviews on Amazon, and they were overwhelmingly positive. Sadly, I have to admit that I feel like I wasted my money on this book. The plot is fine, although it seems more like a plot outline than an actual story. If the plot and the characters had actually been developed, it could have made an amazing novel. As it was, the book was less of a novel and more of a pseudo-religious parable. The message of the parable, follow your dreams, is a great message, but I felt as though I were being preached to for 167 pages. I simply cannot recommend this book.

On a more positive note, four of the books which accompanied me on this journey to Korea have turned out to be excellent. All four books are mysteries, from two different series. The first two, The Moor and A Monstrous Regiment of Women by Laurie King are part of an excellent series starring Mary Russell and her husband Sherlock Holmes. Okay, so Doyle’s Holmes was certainly not married to a woman more than half his age, but if he had been, he would have most certainly been wed to King’s Mary Russell. They make an excellent partnership, and the mysteries are fantastic reads. These aren’t the first books of this series that I’ve read; in fact, as of I only have two more books to go in the series! (The first book in the series is The Beekeeper's Apprentice, if you're interested.) The other two books, Fire and Fog and The Bohemian Murders were written by Dianne Day. They star a young woman named Fremont Jones who lives in California in the early 1900s. She’s a spunky, independent nonconformist, who inevitably embroils herself in fascinating mysteries. I found the first book of this series, The Strange Files of Fremont Jones, when I was home last Christmas, and fell in love with the characters. I simply couldn’t wait to read more! Now I have to get my hands on the next book in the series...

I plan to spend today reading The Foreign Student by Susan Choi. Gwen lent me this book, and I was quite surprised that I hadn’t heard of it before. Read this review excerpt:

The year is 1955 and a young Korean man has just arrived at the University of the South in Sewanee, Tennessee. Chang Ahn has been dropped off at night in the middle of nowhere and left to make his way to the campus on his own: "This was the petrified figure that Mrs. Reston, the vice vice chancellor's housekeeper, found at the door to the vice vice chancellor's house.... You would not have known that the motionless person had just walked two miles straight uphill with a steady and terrified step." It soon becomes apparent that Chang, called Chuck, suffers from more than just fear of the dark. During the Korean War, he was first a translator for the United States and later a prisoner in a Communist internment camp. Even in the U.S. "he could not accept the lack of precaution as a sign that he was safe." On his first day in Sewanee, Chuck meets Katherine, a young woman who lives in town and is the secret lover of a professor who was once a classmate of her father's--and the man who first seduced her when she was 14.

Who knew there was a novel set in Sewanee? You'd think every former Sewanee student would be aware of such a thing. I’ll let you know what I think of it!

Panties and Cheesecake

As I've mentioned, it's really unbelievably hot here. Okay, perhaps it is equal in heat to South Georgia, where I spent my previous month, but while there is an AC in my apartment (thank god!) it's not the best. I've taken to wearing as little as possible while inside my house, and to be honest, I spend a lot of time lounging around in a tshirt and panties, simply because that's the coolest getup available. So last night around 10:30, I was sitting in front of my computer (no surprise there!) in a tshirt and panties... and suddenly there comes a knock on the door. Now, in order to get into my family compund, one needs a key, or to be buzzed in. I kind of figured it would be Mr. Yu, the owner. To be honest, my first reaction was that if I just sat really still, whoever was knocking would go away. Then it occurred to me that if Mr. Yu needed to get into the apartment for some reason, he has a key, and it probably wouldn't be a good idea for him to find me in such a state of undress! So I called out "Just a minute!" (he speaks English, although in hindsight, I actually know that phrase in Korean) and grabbed the first article of clothing I saw: my sarong. It's not exactly the most respectable of garments, but it's not the least either. (And as I'd worn it as a skirt on the way to and from the beach yesterday, it's not exactly like I hadn't been seen in it by Koreans before!) Anyway, I open up the door and there's a fellow standing there who is obviously not Mr. Yu. My first thought was that perhaps it was someone coming to visit the person who used to live in this apartment (but who now lives in the other upstairs apartment of this foursquare), but no, he was there to see me. (Mrs. Yu was in the background - it seems she let him in.) He intoduced himself as Hee Soo, and said that he had been friends with John (the fellow I replaced at Gwen's school). John had told him where I was living, and he decided to come over and welcome me to the neighborhood by bringing me three pieces of cheesecake! (Well, he called it cheesecake, but it wasn't anything like what we Americans consider cheesecake. Nonetheless, it was delicious!) He aparently lives just down the road from me, and he works as a merchandiser for Philip Morris Korea. He also wants to be my friend. Kind of odd, but okay. Now, I am completely convinced of the evilness of Philip Morris, but I can't hold that against a dude who brings me cheesecake.

Moral of the story, keep your pants on or you might not get cheesecake.

(PS - I've posted all of my Golden Ring City photos (minus Vladimir) here on flickr, if you're interested in some more Russia pics!)

Ra, WD40 and some jellyfish

[Note: This post has a LOT of photographs. If you have a slow connection, your server may time out. If not all of the pictures load, simply refresh the page or try right clicking on the spot where the image should be, then click show picture.]

Yesterday morning, Gwen and I set off for the Jasujeong Cave, a former amethyst mine turned kitchy tourist attraction a la Rock City, Korean style. We'd heard about the cave via this blog entry, which described it as the weirdest place in Korea. I think that the weirdness factor was lowered for us somewhat by having been forewarned to the sheer oddness of the cave, especially since the cave's website mentions nothing about aliens or Egyptians, but it was still pretty bizarre. Yes, I said aliens and Egyptians. In this case, I think pictures speak louder than words. (I should mention that even though there are very few pictures of people below, the cave was packed - it's apparently quite a popular tourist attraction in the Ulsan area. We'd expected it to be nearly empty!)

The first big hall of the cave was quite pretty.


I took several shots.


Then we moved on the the weird Egyptian hall.


And posed in front of Egyptian Boob Woman


There were even two weird (and one assumes, fake)
mummy replicas.


Gwen posed with some cavemen.


I like this shot of people approaching the Alien Exhibit.


The Alien Exhibit was definitely the strangest part of the cave.


There were a couple of small Buddhist shrines in the cave.


And several statues of naked women.


The halls were neat, although obviously manmade.
(Of course, it's a former mine, not a natural cave)


There was a diarama of primitive miners


And modern miners too.


And some paintings of funny looking dinosaurs

After leaving the deliciously cool cave and re-emerging in the over 95F heat and dripping humidity, we climbed into Gwen's car and set off in search of a nearby waterfall. According to signs, it was only a few kilometers from the cave. Unfortunately, we didn't find the waterfall. Instead, we found ourselves in a terrible traffic jam up on the side of what should have been a lonely old mountain. Instead, it seemed that nearly everyone from the nearby town of Ulsan had come to said mountain for the purpose of picnicking alongside a very shallow and rocky river (possibly connected in some way to the waterfall we never found). Eventually, we got quite fed up with the absurd traffic, and decided to get the hell out of the Ulsan area. We got back on the IC (the Korean freeway system) and headed north towards Gyeong Ju (Kyong Ju). Along the way, I was finally able to take a picture of the monstrous WD40 billboard that I first noticed on my last trip here back in 2004.

Traffic on the mountain

The masses in the river

WD40 billboard

We stopped briefly in Gyeong Ju (where I took a pretty shot of a gorgeous green rice field) and chatted with Samson. (He was involved with an English Language Camp there for the weekend; Gwen and I were quite glad that we were not!) Anyhow, we decided to head off in the direction of Pohang, in quest of some decent beaches. The main road from Gyeong Ju to Pohang is the 7. We were on the 7, headed north out of Gyeong Ju, when we began to notice odd red X marks on the "north to Pohang" signs. We found this quite confusing, especially since Gwen has gone north to Pohang on the 7 numerous times. So, we continued to ignore the signs... until we came to a spot where the 7 was blocked with barricades. There weren't any signs or anything explaining the closure, so who the hell knows. Anyhow, we ended up having to take a much longer (although quite scenic) route to Pohang. We didn't find any decent beaches on the way too Pohang, so we ended up simply stopping in the city, dining on Galbi and crashing in the first motel we found. We ended up staying up pretty late, drinking beers and chatting, and as such didn't really get an early start the next morning.

Rice fields outside of Gyeong Ju

You can tell from this shot that the red X
was made by red tape...

This smoking cherub was outside of our hotel

We went to Chilpo Beach, just a little north of Pohang. The weather was beautiful, even if miserably hot and humid, and the beach was sandy and pretty, with a beautiful rock outcropping on one end, and it was packed with people. Everyone (including us) set up tents, in order to stay out of the sun. After setting up our tent, we headed for the water. The water was a little colder than I would have liked (not as warm and wonderful as Jekyll Island!), but it would have been tolerable had it not been teeming with jellyfish! This didn't seem to stop the Koreans from swimming, but Gwen and I were really freaked out by the things. One of them was at least two and a half feet in diameter! I kid you not. Many of the jellyfish had washed up on shore, although plenty more were still floating in the water. We swam a very little (during the course of which something stung me, mildly, on my ankle), and then decided that we'd beached enough, and headed back home to Daegu.

Our view from the tent

Me, on the beach

Everyone else on the beach

Rock outcropping, north end of the beach

This man had an adorable little dog.
It made me miss Elphie (or Sally, as they're calling her)

Jellyfish!

Many of the jellyfish looked like large lumps of silicon.

Even more jellyfish!!

The road home through the hilly Korean countryside

A lazy day and some Russia photos

Yes, I said Russia photos. No, that wasn't a typo. I didn't do too much today, although I did take the subway down to E-Mart to buy various things I needed for my apartment, like paper towels and a surge protector and such. Honestly, that trip just about did me in due to the oppressive heat. I shouldn't be complaining; I really should be used to such things after the month I just spent in Waycross. (I even chatted with a fellow on the subway about how it's just as hot here as it is in GA!) Anyhow, after returning from E-Mart I did some work cleaning/organizing my kitchen (not finished yet, though), took a nap in front of the AC, and then took advantage of my high speed internet and began uploading many of my Russia photos to flickr. I'm working on (yet another) new version of janekeeler.com (it's not online yet; I'll let you know), and I'm going to try and link as many of the photos as I can to flickr, that way they can be viewed in their original sizes by people with both high speed internet and an interest in doing such a thing. So far, I have uploaded my St. Petersburg and my Moscow pictures to flickr. Click the links to check out the sets! Anyhow, Gwen and I are setting off on our cross-country adventure tomorrow, so I'll see you all when I get back!

Travel and Teaching

Wow - I left the country just in time, apparently. I don't have any English language TV channels here (I don't even get AFN on my cable service), and I've been pretty lax about reading the news online. It was only this morning that I learned from Gwen about this latest attempted terrorist attack and the subsequent bans on various carry-ons and numerous travel delays. I'm glad I left when I did. It boggles the mind, seriously. I simply cannot fathom what drives people to such acts. Perhaps the fact that I don't have any sort of religious faith is the reason for my inability to comprehend such fanaticism. I also don't understand how one is supposed to fly without water. I am incredibly obsessive with regards to carrying water with me everywhere I go - especially on long dehydrating flights to places like Korea.

But, since I'm in Korea and not likely to be flying anywhere for at least a year, I suppose I don't really have to concern myself with airborne terrorists or airborne water-shortages. So instead, I'll tell you about my first week in Daegu working at the Ansim Oedae Language Institute. My schedule and class-types are quite different from the American Home, but even though it's different, it's very easy to adapt to, and I'm quite enjoying myself. I teach Monday through Friday (woohoo - free weekends!), and I teach from 2:30 to 9:05 (with breaks, no worries!) on MWF and from 2:30 to 7:30 on TT. I've got one class with some little ones (not kindergarten, but definitely younger elementary), and right now pretty much everyone else is in middle school. Eventually I'll have high schoolers too. I've been asked if the kids are anything like the ones Melissa and I "taught" at Wonderland (ie, unholy terrors) - and the anser is no, they aren't. Most of them are quite well behaved. There are some who are rowdy (one class in particular - 13 middle-school boys), but they are all rowdy in the fun-well-meaning-but-noisy kind of way, not in the evil-lets-terrorize-teacher kind of way. Classes are divided into reading, grammar and speaking sections. Students have a different teacher for each section... and I teach speaking! This means that for the time being I do very little in the way of grammar explanations. Hooray :-) Of course, occasionally I do have to explain bits of grammar - but after three semesters at the American Home teaching ONLY the lower levels, I can teach basic English grammar with my eyes closed. (Well, except for the parts that I used to explain in Russian... the fact that my spoken Korean amounts to little more than where is the bathroom limits me a lot in this field!)

The school has two short vacation periods during the course of the year... and oddly enough, the first one is next week. Yes, ladies and gentlemen, after my first week at work I am embarking on a fabulous five-day weekend! (On the one hand this is awesome, as it means I'll get to do some sight-seeing early on; on the other hand, it's going to be a long time before my next vacation. Sigh.) I don't really have any plans for tomorrow, other than cleaning my kitchen and doing some shopping, but Gwen and I are planning on heading off to a cave full of aliens and the beach on Sunday. I'll keep you posted!

Metchnikoff Life and scenes from my apartment

Every day, midafternoon, the teachers at Oedae receive a dairy delivery. Now, I hate milk, but I'm perfectly willing to consume other dairy products, such as yogurt. I seem to have inherited John's (John is the fellow I replaced) order of one bottle of grape-flavored, yogurt-type drink per afternoon. This stuff is actually pretty good, and it's nice to come out of class and find it waiting for me on my desk. But for the past few days, I've been wondering about its name. See, it's called Metchnikoff Life - with Metchnikoff being quite a Russian sounding name - and it's got a black and white picture of a very non-Korean fellow on the bottle. Well, wikipedia seems to have the answer. There's a fellow named Ilya Ilyich Mechnikov, also known as Eli Metchnikoff, who (among other things) "worked with Émile Roux on an ointment that would prevent people from contracting syphilis, an STD. He also developed a theory that lactic acid could prolong life, and drank sour milk every day to prove it." (read the entire entry).

I'm drinking it every day - Metchnikoff would be proud!

As per request, here are some more photographs of the inside of my apartment.

Living room as seen from the couch



Bedroom



I still need to clean/organize my kitchen.



The living room is wholly unremarkable (and unfurnished!)
but it has an incredible wooden ceiling.

random photos

I walk along this street every day to get to work.
It's lined with trees and full of little shops and restaurants.

This is the building where my school is located.
The school's on the second floor where all the green stuff is on the windows.

Speaking of green...
Gwen owns my dream car, the bright green Matiz!

Gwen and I both think this sign is hilarious.
It says oh my chicken in Korean too.
No, they didn't translate it; they transliterated it!
(Sadly, the place seems to have gone out of business.)
UPDATE: Oh My Chicken is still open!
It was closed every day.... until the day I posted this :-)

I can easily climb onto the rooftop of my building.

It's nice up there at dusk.

Not to mention that's the only time of day the rooftop isn't boiling hot...

white girl stay here

Yay! I now have high speed internet in my apartment! This means that I can now tell you about every absurd thing in my life... although that might not amount to much, considering that I'll probably be online during every second of my free time :-) Anyway, now that you're all once again privy to the minutiae of my life, I'm going to start this post by sharing something that has not a damn thing to do with South Korea. The following is the text of an email I received from my mom the other day:

When I brought in your garbage can this afternoon I saw that someone had written in the dust on the lid, "White girl stay here." Don't know if that was just information, or a request.

Well, if it's information, it's no longer accurate, as I'm now just about as far from Waycross, GA as a girl can get and still be on this planet. Although it wouldn't surprise me in the least if someone were to label the front door of my apartment building here in Daegu as such. While there are a lot of Americans and other native English speakers here in the city teaching English, there are very few in the part of the city where I live and work. I stand out just as much here as I did back home in the hood. At least as yet no one has pulled a gun on my neighbors!

First let me tell you about where I’m living. Both the school and my apartment are on the eastern edge of the city of Daegu. Even though this is my third trip to Daegu, I spent almost no time whatsoever in this part of town during my previous stays, so in that sense everything is new. Of course, as this is my third trip to the country and city, I’m neither suffering culture shock, nor being weirded out by how different everything is. My apartment building is a little unusual. While it seems that most Koreans these days reside in identical, towering, sky-scraper-like apartments, I’m living in an older and much shorter building. It’s only two stories tall, and as far as I can tell, it only has four separate apartment units. My apartment itself has two bedrooms, a kitchen, a bathroom, a balcony and what would normally (if I had a family, per say) be a very small living room. I’ve decided to leave the “living room” space empty, kind of like a large foyer, and I’m using the larger of the two bedrooms as my living room. There’s a wall unit AC in my living room – which is awesome, given that it feels like Florida outside, although sadly it doesn’t cool the whole house. It’s a really nice apartment – definitely nicer than the place where Melissa and I lived back in 2001, although not quite as nice as the Seoul Ritz (where I stayed the last time around). Okay, bad joke. Moving on…

I’m teaching at the Ansim Oedae Language Institute (http://www.oedae.co.kr/), which is actually owned by an American friend of mine and her Korean husband. Today was my first day of class, and it went quite smoothly. Granted, I expect the students to behave better than normal until the get accustomed to me, but I must say that they were all very well behaved and studious and respectful – yay! I’m teaching Monday through Friday (woohoo, free weekends!) and (currently) I teach roughly from 2:30 to 9:00. While I have more hours of class than I had at the American Home, the classes here are much, much shorter (the shortest is 25 minutes, and the longest is 50 minutes – no two and a half hour monster sessions here!).

I’m feeling kind of pooped after my first day of work, so I think I’ll just post some photos and crawl off to bed…

My apartment building.
I'm upstairs on the left.


This picture is half for Melissa H and half for my AH peeps.
They'll know why. (Yes, this was my lunch today!)


The front door of the school...
(It's actually located on the second floor of a bank building.)


Look at the front desk glow!!