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!!

A few photos

Hi everybody! Wow - I've been in Korea for roughly three and a half days and I start teaching tomorrow! Hard to believe. I still don't have internet in my apartment yet, although supposedly it'll be hooked up tomorrow. As I'm currently using the computer at the school's front desk, I think I'll keep this short and simply post a handful of pictures. I'll give you guys a proper entry as soon as I can do this from the comfort of my own home. Enjoy the photos!

San Francisco Bay as seen from Burlingame (where my hotel was)

The only plant in Gwen's apartment is a potato.

I moved into my apartment yesterday.
This is my living room.

This is the view from my apartment.

Gwen and I saw this bedspread in E-Mart (kind of a
Korean version of Wal-Mart) yesterday.
Are you thinking what I'm thinking?

I'm in South Korea!

Hi everyone! I'm here in Daegu, South Korea yet again! I don't have too much to post as I haven't done much other than get off the plane, collect both my bags (yay!) and collapse in a sweaty heap. It is freakin' HOT here, and I swear I'm melting. Anyhow, I just wanted to let everyone know that I'm here, safe and sound. I'll get blogging for real once I'm in my apartment with my internet hooked up :-)

San Francisco

I should be on a plane to Seoul right now. Instead I'm in a swanky hotel room in San Francisco, blogging and thinking about taking a nap. I caught my flight from Jacksonville to Chicago this morning with no problems, although after I was in the air, I did notice something weird: I was looking over my baggage claim checks, and discovered that they'd only been checked through to Seoul, not Daegu. I figured I'd just ask about it in Chicago or SF, depending on when I got the chance. It also occurred to me that on my previous blog I'd mentioned that I'd be arriving in Korea on Thursday, August 2nd. Silly me, August 2nd is a Wednesday. It seems that I may have inadvertantly cursed myself! Anyway, in Chicago, I ran across the airport and reached the gate just in time for boarding to begin... had it begun on time. But instead boarding was delayed by almost an hour. I suppose I could've asked about my luggage then, but the gate area was packed with several different outbound flights preparing to board, and I just decided to wait until SF. I knew I would have little more than an hour for my layover in SF, so I was getting pretty antsy the longer we waited around to board. Finally they said they'd fixed the problem - whatever it was - and we could go ahead and board. We were encouraged to board and take our seats as quickly as possible, in order to facilitate a rapid takeoff. Everyone complied... only to then sit on the tarmac in an unairconditioned plane for another hour! By the time we took off, I knew there was no way I'd catch my flight from SF to Seoul. In SF, the group of about 7 or so of us who had been booked on the 1:33pm flight to Seoul learned that we'd have to wait until tomorrow. Apparently, United only has the 1:33pm flight from SF to Seoul, so none of us could get anything earlier. We've all been put up in the Crowne Plaza hotel (for free, of course!), which is far nicer than the Days Inn where I slept last night! Anyway, when I was getting my ticket straightened out, I asked why my luggage had only been checked as far as Seoul. Turns out that was a mistake on somebody's part. I was told that the best thing to do was to go ahead and claim my bags and re-check them tomorrow when I check in, making sure that they're checked all the way to Daegu. So perhaps this delay is good after all; at least I'll arrive with all my things. I hope. It's 4:00pm local time right now, and I should really go out and see the sights - or at least see the part of the bay which is near my hotel - but to be honest, I'm about to pass out. We'll see how I feel after a nap.

UPDATE: Elphie

Well, it's almost 4:00pm and I still haven't left yet.... So much for hoping to beat the Jacksonville rush hour. At least my plane isn't until the morning. Anyhow, I just wanted to let everyone know that we've found a home for little Elphie! The other day we took Isis to the vet, and ran into a woman with a 9 month old chihuahua who looked like she could be Elphie's baby - same colors and markings. We got to talking with this woman, and she took our phone number and said she'd call if she found any of her chihuahua-owning friends who might be interested. Anyhow, as of this afternoon, Elphie is living with an elderly woman. She used to have two chihuahuas and a husband, but one of the dogs and the husband both died of old age. So now Elphie has a chihuahua playmate! Mom and I were both a bit teary-eyed when we drove off, but I think she will be in good hands. Mom is going to go over there tomorrow to visit, to make sure everything is going well. Alright, I really should get going. See you in Korea!

Off to South Korea!

Well, it seems that my vacation's over, and once again I'm off to South Korea. This afternoon I'll be off to Jacksonville, and tomorrow morning I'll start my marathon journey of 24+ hours through five airports. I'll be arriving in Daegu at 8:15pm, Thursday, August 2nd (South Korea time). I'm not sure when I'll have internet access, but I will blog again as soon as I'm able - no worries! And yes, I will be blogging here at Jane's Daily Blah, so stay tuned!