Alarm clocks and Frogger

As far as I can tell, one of the major distinguishing characteristics of this country is it's lack of alarm clocks. Today, as on every day until this one, I woke up at four in the morning with the uneasy knowledge that I didn't have an alarm clock. An alarm clock is a comforting thing, sitting like a good friend by the side of the bed, making sure that you sleep as long as possible, but no longer.
Of course, the sound of an alarm clock going off is enough to annoy the %$#@! out of someone who didn't even know they had %$#@! in them, but aren't most good friend that way? In any case, that's not the point.
I tried to find an alarm clock today. I walked half a kilometer down the street, stopping and checking every shop I passed. I found fake Rolex watches, jeans that would never fit me, leather stripper boots galore, and even some Fender guitars selling for the dubious price of $250. No alarm clocks.
I take that back. I did find one alarm clock. There was an alarm clock that also had a temperature display. It's digital screen was huge, something like 5" x 7". There were two problems however. One was that it cost just under $30 (T30,000) and the other was that it was powered by two AA batteries. There's no way I'm going to buy an alarm clock for thirty bucks just to have it go through batteries like a baby goes through diapers.

Crossing the street here is like playing frogger, or so I've been told. I know what crossing the street is like, but I'm a little scetchy on what exactly frogger is. If it's anything like crossing the street, it involves attempting to cross multiple lanes of speeding deadly objects which may randomly swerve in any direction at any time. Because of this I try not to cross the street much, but at times it can't be avoided. Coming to this internet cafe, for instance, involves crossing four lanes of traffic. That's without counting the sidewalk, which is often used as a lane.

My students are really shy. I don't know if it's a first day thing, or a first week thing, or if I have suddenly turned into an intimidating hulk and don't know it, but they just don't want to talk. Actually I'm fairly certain I haven't turned into a hulk, so forget that last one. Their shyness is a definite problem though, because the less they talk the faster class goes. I spend my time trying to figure out how to get them to say more, and how to say more myself. I'm constantly looking at the clock and stretching each segment of class as much as I can. They say I still talk fast, but I'm afraid if I talk any slower I'll fall on the floor and start convulsing with seizures.

I just taught my first children's class. They were absolute demons for the other teacher when I observed him, but they were very well behaved for me. I don't know, maybe they're just setting me up for something. I try to be entertaining and patient while sticking to the lesson plan, maybe that approach is working. I messed up on their class though. They were supposed to do grammar worksheets, and I assumed I wouldn't have to do much as they were working. Because of this I didn't pay much attention to what was on the sheets. Unfortunately I printed off the wrong sheets. It was ok though, I had them do the one relevant page then played hangman for the last five minutes of class. No harm done, except for the fact that they now think I haven't the foggiest idea what's going on. I suppose that I really don't have the foggiest idea, but you never want kids to know the truth, right?

Forget you guys, I'm going to watch Red vs Blue for the rest of this time.

A series of unrelated thoughts

Twenty-five cents, that's how long I'll be on this computer. I know it's odd to measure time by money, but that's the way it works at an internet cafe.

I take back what I said about America chasing me here. There's still plenty of the wild, messy, chaotic Mongolia, I just wasn't looking looking in the right places. Today (Sunday) I went to several markets to stock up on food. I got bread, milk, mayo, cheese, cabbage, hot peppers etc. I got some of the local staples (for vegetarians) on Friday: potatoes, onions, carrots and a 20 pound sack of flour are under the kitchen sink. I even have a batch of gluten made! :)

....I just had to pay more, I guess I couldn't do everything I had to do in half an hour. Oh well.

Anyway, picking up where I left off, prices for local things (like potatoes and cabbage) aren't bad. Potatoes, for instance, are 30 cents per pound. Prices for imported things, like German corn flakes and Russian cheese, are jaw dropping.

Last night the teacher who's on his way out threw a party of sorts and invited the students and church members. They stayed up all night eating and watching movies (Forest Gump is good, dang). The point of all this was to make him tired enough so that he could sleep on the plane.
I went to bed around 2 a.m. When I woke up and left the building around 10 there they all were, packed in a van. His flight had been cancelled, so now he needed to crash and sleep all day. He also needed my keys.

I surrendered the keys.

Tomorrow I will teach all of my classes. These will be my first classes, but it isn't really a big deal. The classes are really small, so it's more of a group atmosphere than a 'get up there and be a talkbox' atmosphere like the Korean school. I think I'll wear my suit just to keep it a little more formal.
The main problem here is the lack of students. Please pray for the school, and for me, so that I will be a good enough teacher to encourage enrollment through word of mouth. Also, pray that I'll be able to witness tactfully, as direct evangelism is against the school's charter.

Stories will be coming soon, I just need to settle in enough to write more than a series of unrelated factoids. Brandon (the other teacher) and I are headed out to Terelje (a national park about an hour from the city) next weekend. I'll take the camera and post pictures.

-by the way, a guy tried to pickpocket me today. I need to look less like a tourist.

Inbound

I sat in the airport and munched on my subway sandwich, the last subway sandwich upon which I would munch for some time. A man in a suit sat on a seat facing mine. He was tall and blond, and looked like he wasn't paying attention to much. His suit looked too nice for the flight, a disheveled bunch of returning Mongolians, tired international travelers and hyperactive Korean tourists.
I decided to chance it.
"Hi" I said. "Are you going to U.B.?"
He stared at me. "Hmmm?" he said. The sound seemed to come not from him, but from around him. His accent was vaguely British, but not quite. It is the kind of accent that you get when someone learns to speak British english, starting from some other European language. I decided to think of him as Danish.
"Are you going to Ulaanbaatar?" I asked.
"yes" he said.
"I'm curious" I said. "Why would someone going to Ulaanbaatar be wearing a nice suit? What are your plans there?"
"Oh, I'm coming straight from the office" he said. "I'll look like you after I get to the hotel and change. I'm just checking out the country for a few days."
"Oh" I said.
He got up and left. He seemed perturbed by the whole exchange. I found this odd, since it seemed perfectly natural for two English speaking people headed for Mongolia to... speak English. Perhaps that norm had changed.

"Excuse me, you are going to Ulaanbaatar?" asked a Mongolian woman across from me.
"Yes" I said, cautiously.
She proved to be much more friendly, asking me questions and telling me about her travels. She had been a student in France, and was now working there. She too had a vaguely European accent.

Dang.

The flight took off at 8:30, soaring into the darkness and taking a wide arc to avoid North Korean airspace. Tensions had been relatively high over the past week, and planes were being cautious.
The Danish / English guy sat in front of me, oddly enough. Over the course of the next hour he proceeded to consume large quantities of every liquid imaginable. I watched as he downed two glasses of orange juice, three glasses of water, two beers and a large glass of wine.
Holy cow, I thought. How big is this guy's bladder?
The flight attendants came by with meals. "Seafood or pork?" they asked. "Seafood" I said, hoping that "seafood" didn't mean shrimp. It did. She then turned and asked the same question to the lady next to me in Mongolian, and I understood it! Well, sort of. All I really understood was "Elder sister (garbled) -unidentified possessive noun-'s meat (garbled) pig's meat -question tag-? But hey, it's better than Korea.
Around ten, as the interwoven harmonies of Supertramp's "Goodbye Stranger" played on my CD player, we crossed into Mongolia. Looking out the window I saw a solitary light in the darkness below.
'What in the name of ramen noodles is that?' I thought. How much has this country changed? We're over the eastern gobi.... there shouldn't be lights out there.
At that moment Danish guy's bladder finally got to him, ruining the moment.

As we descended over U.B. an unfamiliar scene met my eyes. Neon lights blinked from amid a tangled web of streets. A vast sea of smaller lights coated the valley. The lights seemed to be one clearly defined thing, as if someone had taken glow in the dark paint and splattered it along the length of the valley. It's edges were crisp and bright.
As the plane landed I realized that what people had told me was true after all. This really wasn't the country of my youth any more. Riding to the school that would be my home for the next several months we passed forests of billboards, supermarkets with signs in english, and brightly flashing neon lights. The city had grown beyond it's original bounds to an absolutely astounding degree, swallowing up the places where my family had once picnicked on Sabbath afternoons.

Gone were the solitary old men in traditional dress, walking with their hands clasped behind their backs. Gone were the small roadside shops. Gone were the dilapidated Russian cars. Gone were the smells.

That's the saddest part. What has a place become when it has lost it's smell? I came here to escape America... and it has followed me.

Oh well. I suppose if there's no where for me to hide from my fears, I'll just have to face them.

-writing from an internet cafe, I'll post later, but I'm going to return to the 'write first in notebook' system to save time-

Pictures!

Ok, let's play a game. This game is called WHERE'S CHRIS!? It's kind of like Where's Waldo, except that I won't help you out by wearing a red and white turtleneck. Apperantly I like hiding in pictures, but trust me, I'm there.



Ok, maybe I'm not actually in this picture, but hey! There's a cute girl, so what do you want? We learned that we were both 21 year old seniors, and she said that means we're 'friends'. I learned that in Korea classmates are referred to as friends automatically. Odd thought.



Where's Chris? Chris is hiding behind some random Korean people on top of the wall of a 17th century fort!



Actually I don't think I'm in this one either. This is the top of the mountain we were climbing. It was sooooooo hard to get some of the people in the group up to the top. They were ridiculously scared of... rocks.



Where's Chris? Chris is hiding behind random cute girl.



Now Chris is checking the elevation with his GPS (a little over 500 meters... not much)

AAAAAnd picture at the top (random note: the woman with her arm out was having panic attacks up there, she was soooooo afraid of heights).

This is a picture of us doing spiderman poses. Try to find the American! (hint: Americans need lots of personal space, this tends to push them out of the picture). They called me spiderman because I supposedly look like the guy who played spiderman... and because I climb rocks. Personally I think the whole thing is kinda dumb

Answer to prayer

Hey! no more kimchee stains on my notebook! Apparently kimchee stains only soak through two pages. Take note.
Yesterday something happened to me which has never happened before.

Ever.

I learned that I was stuck in Korea till at least Thursday. I then learned that the ONLY other teacher at the school (who got there two weeks before I will and is a college student) is my boss, and gets paid more than I do. Of course they didn't tell me the second part, but I read it in the policy manual. Last, I learned that I have to negotiate the subway and find the Mongolian embassy on my own instead of having someone take me there.

All this was enough to trigger a neurochemical crash that was completely disproportional to the trigger: trouble focusing my thoughts, anxiety so strong I could feel my skin tingling, a weight of depression like a grizzly bear parked on my shoulders.

That part has happened before. Actually, it happens enough so that I'm annoyed by it more than anything else, because it makes it hard to function normally. I responded by praying for God to help me, and show me something I needed to know. I then opened my Bible to a random place. It opened to the crucifixion, an odd place perhaps, but odder things have proven to be exactly what I needed to read. I read about the crucifixion and resurrection, and the importance of the whole plan of salvation helped put my life in perspective and remind me of my goals.

That part has happened before too. Though I may not always turn to God when I have a crash, I certainly do it more often than not. Usually it encourages me and reminds me of how much God cares for me, but the underlying problem remains. A neurochemical crash is a lack of energy, a lack of the ability to feel some way other than depressed and scared. It usually takes me two or three days to get back to normal.

This time, as soon as I finished reading I felt dead tired. I didn't bother going to bed, I just took my glasses off my face, put my head down and fell asleep with my glasses still in my hand.

That's weird enough. Usually I find it very hard to sleep when I'm anxious. However, it does happen occasionally. Usually I wake up feeling groggy and numb, with a faceless anxiety staring in my face as my thoughts reorganize.

This time, however, it was different. I woke up, started making supper, and slowly realized I was fine! I had energy; there was no throbbing pain of anxiety in the back of my mind. My problems were still there, but they weren't problems any more. I was excited about the idea of finding my way through Seoul! I didn't care that the other teacher was my boss. I stink at organizing things anyway, and if he was scheduling classes and planning events it would give me more free time.

THAT has never happened before, ever. It's especially odd considering the fact that the problems were still there. It was like shooting myself in the leg with a nail gun, falling asleep with the nail still in my leg, and waking up to find the nail gone, with unbroken skin where it had gone in. It simply doesn't work that way.

I've been praying lately, asking God to help me with my anxiety and depression. Now I know He has, and will. Now more than ever I know God will be with me through this year of missions.

And forgive us our blog posts, as we forgive spammers... oh wait

My notebook is still covered in kimchee, but now I'm writing on dried stains instead of trying to read through wet ones.
I'm getting tired of English, or at least of thinking about English. I hate having to run through everything I say before I say it to make sure the words are on a preschool level. I like to swing English around like a girl in a nightclub, leaving it feeling sweaty, breathless and perhaps slightly violated. You just can't do that with a preschool level vocabulary.
Perhaps I shouldn't say that anyway. I've never been to a nightclub, and I'm sure the list of girls I've left feeling sweaty, breathless and slightly violated is very short indeed.
Last night I/we (you don't know the 'we') went to Myeong-dong, which can be thought of as downtown Seoul. I followed a bunch of girls around as they shopped for clothes. There were sooooo many lingerie shops! I thought Koreans were conservative! On top of that, half of the stuff in there was for guys! O.o? Bleh! I don't care HOW much my future someone likes that stuff, I am NOT wearing it. Well, maybe, if she really likes it.... depends on what she's wearing...right, TMI.
Oh, I had a point in all this. I've been dragged into Victoria's Secret before, and noticed that the average girl in there is BUTT UGLY. I'd say about a three out of ten. the girls in the stores here seem to average about a six or seven. What does that say about the culture of youth? Nobody over here is a hundred pounds overweight, years on the wrong side of 40 and shopping for overpriced lacy butt-floss!

I would like to thank Kate for adding the term butt-floss to my vocabulary.

After shopping we got Krispy Kreme donuts. Right, that kind. We could have gotten Dunkin Donuts, but Krispy Kreme is better in my opinion.
To all my coffee addicted friends: you would love it here.

You know, I'm going to have some weird adds once google's bots scan this post for key terms.

Pictures soon, though probably not from Myeong-dong. Laterz!

-wilt-

My pants are covered in kimchee. The notebook on which I write these blog posts is covered in kimchee. The only really surprising thing is that all this kimchee managed to cover my pants and notebook without any involvement from my unsteady chopsticks. I'm covered in kimchee simply because Korean food has a strong, innate urge to fly off of my plate and onto my clothing... or the floor... or my notebook. The only thing that really bugs me is the notebook.

I think God is making a point of humiliating me. I hope He knows what He's doing. I have never had a performance up front go worse than the one I just had. Seriously.
I was asked to play a song for special music. I have a policy of saying yes whether I feel like it or not, at least until there are a few things I regularly say yes to.

Oy.

I picked a song (As The Deer) and practiced it until I felt quite comfortable. Unfortunately I had to use an unfamiliar guitar during the church service. It's an odd guitar. Though it's an electric it has an open frame body, so that it's basically a board with strings on it, and detachable metal sides that form the outline of a body. The result is that it weighs about as much as a chickadee.
The strings felt like telephone poles, and didn't respond to my pick. My voice trembled, and though at first the mic was off fate was not in my favor, because someone turned it on.
I need a tail, so that I can tuck it between my legs.
The final blow came when I handed the guitar back. "I take it back" I said, referring to my statement that I thought the guitar was totally awesome. "No, no! You did fine!" he said.
Did I ask? You know things went poorly when everyone goes out of their way to say you did fine.
Anyway. I'm going to go change my pants and drag my emotionally exhausted self back into this building for Sabbath afternoon clubs. My friend from before (and the girl who I take to be his girlfriend, i.e. the girl from Connecticut) asked me to come, since I won't be here next weekend.

Long post. Really long.

As I sat down to write this post I realized something. You, the reader, are my enemy. You are reading this blog in the hope that something interesting has happened to me. I, on the other hand, would greatly prefer it if such "interesting" occurrences were kept at a minimum. This difference in opinion makes us enemies. I say we settle it with a fistfight.

Unfortunately I'm making a blog post, so I guess you win. Perhaps I shouldn't complain. After all, I'm the one who volunteered to go to a foreign country and do a job I've never done before.

At this church they have Friday night vespers every week. After vespers there's a thing called "clubs". During clubs people get together to discuss the thing that the speaker talked about, or perhaps some other topic. The general idea is that people discuss things in groups. It's an opportunity to practice English and socialize.
Last Friday I led a group. It wend poorly. There really isn't much to write about. It just went poorly. The topic was the state of the dead, and the people in my group spoke English at a very basic level. Th result was that it went poorly, something like this.

"So if you died, what would you see next?"
"I'm sorry, I no can understand"
-awkward silence-
"Death is bad"
"yea"

It's helpful to note that the discussion is guided by a series of questions. I just tried to follow them.

This Friday I ventured into "clubs" again. A student I had met during the week saw me and asked me "where you go?"
I responded with a blizzard of multi syllabic words that left him with a blank expression on his face. I tried again. "I'm looking" I said. He nodded.
Just then one of the teachers grabbed me and pulled me into a room. "Come help us here!" he said.
The were going around giving people orange juice and disturbingly green bananas. Seeing the juice I suddenly realized that I was extraordinarily thirsty: parched, and on the whole dying for a cup of orange juice. I watched intently as two teachers came around the circle, one handing out bananas, the other handing out cups of orange juice. When the teacher with the bananas reached me he said jokingly to the teacher with the orange juice "Don't give him any!" I smiled politely at his dry humor. My smile faded however, ans she obediently passed right by me. The life giving orange juice moved further and further down the line.
Seeing the look of despair on my face, my friend from before offered me his cup. I declined it. No, I was going to get my own orange juice.
I got up and pursued the person with the orange juice, feeling quite desperate. Catching her, I demanded my rightful cup. I received said cup, but as I turned to go back to my seat I bumped into the person serving bananas, causing some of my orange juice to spill on the floor.

Crud.

Desperately I scanned the room for napkins, paper towels, frolicking two-year-olds, anything that I could grab to clean up the spill. Seeing nothing, and knowing that discussion was starting, I decided to leave it there. The floors were mopped regularly anyway.

As I sat down my friend leaned over. "Why you leave it there?" he asked. A rapid explanation sprang to my lips. About three seconds into it I realized the futility of the whole thing and got up to get some paper towels. It's easier to clean than to explain.
I returned to find people had divided into groups already. A teacher grabbed me and plopped me down in one of the groups, then handed me a sheet of discussion questions.

The orange juice sat there, watching me as only a glaringly obvious mess can.

I tried to push the orange juice out of my mind and start the discussion. It quickly became apparent that there wasn't much discussing to be done. My friend from the hallway was in the group, and by sheer force of will he managed to give answers, though the answers sometimes had little to do with the question. There were two other women who resolutely refused to speak more than one sentence at a time, and a Korean girl from Connecticut.

This last person chatted happily. I occasionally corrected her grammar, until she happened to mention that she had been born in Connecticut.

Crud.

The others, with the exception of my valiant friend from the hallway, were mostly silent. I tried to prod them with questions, but it never did much Good. The would answer the question in as simple a manner as possible, then stare at me as if I were a shade of silvery green.
In this manner we blazed through the questions with alarming speed, finishing about halfway through the allotted time. Awkward silences interspersed with free conversation followed.

I might have preferred removing my teeth with a belt sander.

The girl from Connecticut then pointed out that I had gone about the process all wrong. Instead of discussing things as a group, I was supposed to ask every question to each person in turn.

Well that explains a lot.

I contemplated going over the questions again, but it was too late. Instead I adapted a sermon idea I had to fit the topicand talked for the remaining time. The girl from Connecticut said it was wonderful.

Let's hope.

I'll admit it. One of the reasons why I came here is that I wanted to develop the quiet confidence that girls find so sexy. Right now I'm just hoping that my frustration and embarrassment don't show through too much and ruin people's vespers time.

Let's hope.

Still, for a time there I did feel as though God were speaking through me. I hope He was able to do something with that time. I really hope I didn't ruin it all afterwards.

Let's hope.
I never did clean up the orange juice.

Eurythropoietin

Eurythropoietin is a hormone produced by the kidneys which stimulates the production of red blood cells in response to injury or stress. I'm going to need more of it at 3000 ft (elevation of Ulaanbaatar). However, eurythropoietin really has nothing to do with this post. Lucky you.

There are many things that I would like to ask God. Right now I would like to know why He gave us a 24 hour day and a 25 hour body clock.
I've officially used up all my jetlag time. Instead of bouncing out of bed at five in the morning ready for a three mile run, I slowly dragged my sluggish body downstairs for a bowl of sugar cereal and (oddly tasty) soy milk. I need to find a job that allows me to go one time zone west every day. Any ideas?

Korean chickens must be really healthy. The shells of their eggs are ridiculously hard to crack, but the yolks firm and orangish yellow. Healthy chickens, efficient water heating systems, recycling everything... COME ON PEOPLE! Korea is beating us in the race to... I don't know what they're beating us to, but when they get there they will have healthy chickens. And us? We'll have a Dickens-esqe factory society where eggs are fragile white things filled with goop.

We certainly beat them when it comes to city planning though. There's a wall on campus. That in itself does not pose a problem. The problem comes from the fact that this wall runs the length of campus, and there are only two gates through it. On one side of the wall stand the language institute, church offices, book store etc. On the other side of the wall there is the sidewalk and road: the main access routes for these buildings. I'm really rather confused by this arrangement. I have been brought up to think of walls as devices that keep people out of places where they shouldn't be, and separate unrelated buildings. The idea of building giant wall between two related places, like a walmart and it's parking lot, seems rather odd to me. Since I came here I've walked at least a mile going to one end or another of this wall, and I haven't even been here more than a week.

Yea... there's really nothing to say. I'm just posting because I'm bored. I have nothing to do while I wait for my visa documents. I'm supposed to be doing special music this Sabbath (when did everyone decide that's my job?) but other than that I've no plans.

TTFN - which wouldn't sound cool even if that announcer guy from the movie trailers said it.

In which I demonstrate what it means to be a gadad hoon

In the unlikely event that someone other than my mother reads this, I shall start by defining gadad hoon. Gadad hoon is the Mongolian word for foreigner. It literally means "outside person". I have been a gadad hoon for most of my life, starting when I was four, when my family moved to live with the Navajo indians. From that time, through our years in Mongolia and Hong Kong, and into the first two or three years of our re-adjustment to the US, I was a gadad hoon.

This is not a complaint. I'm not trying to paint my childhood in a bad light or explain away odd behavior. Gadad hoon is a state of being. It's a way of being seen, but also a way of seeing. Specifically, it's the point of view from which one can see how much of a dumbass one truly is.

Conveniently, the same view shows clearly how much of a dumbass everyone else is.

unfortunately this story deals more with the former observation: I am such a dumbass.

I haven't had a hot shower since I arrived here in Korea a week ago. I have had plenty of cold showers, to be sure, but no hot ones. This is because there has been no hot water in my apartment. I found it odd that I should be placed in a lovely (two story) apartment in South Korea, one of the most technologically advanced nations on the planet, and not have hot water. In fact, I found it more than odd, I found it implausible.

As I said in an earlier post, I found the hot water heater several days ago. However, everything on it was in Korean, so I decided not to fiddle with it. In any case, there were no controls, so there was nothing to fiddle with had I gotten an urge to fiddle.

Today, after a 45 minute workout in the heat and humidity, I got an urge to fiddle. I descended the narrow, twisted stairs into the cramped and musty basement with as much determination and dignity as one can show while descending a set of narrow, twisted stairs into a cramped and musty basement. I pulled up a rusty folding chair and sat in front of the water heater, contemplating the images and characters on it's cover.

Many people do not understand that warning images are not an international language. Not everyone who sees a cartoon of a man who has lightning bolts flying from his head thinks "Ah! a man in pain! He should take an aspirin." Some people look at the same image and think "Ah! a man with lightning bolts flying from his head. He must be Zeus!".

This was the case as I tried to decipher the images on the water heater. The pictures themselves were uniquely Korean. No amount of staring would change that.

I started staring at the characters, almost without thinking. Years of studying algebra, trigonometry, chemistry, and my fathers atrocious handwriting had taught me that if you stare at a bunch of indecipherable symbols long enough, order and reason will emerge.

The characters politely informed me that they were a foreign language, and that no amount of staring was going to change that.

I continued staring.

The characters remained obstinately Korean.

I stared pleadingly.

The characters declared their intention to remain Korean for the foreseeable future, and suggested that I might wish to screw off.

I left, but not in defeat. I had one more weapon to use against the water heater and it's arrogant Korean writing.

When he had dropped me off at the apartment, pastor Hong had said "if you have an emergency, go to apartment D. The woman there is Korean-american, and she speaks english, so she can help you." I had met the woman since then, so I ventured out the front door, and to apartment D. My finger hovered hesitatingly over the doorbell. Was this an emergency? Yes. Yes it was. I had been without hot water for an entire week.

I hesitated a moment longer, then pushed the doorbell with determination. Somewhere inside a small dog started yapping. The inside door unlocked, and the woman warmly invited me in.

"I'm very sorry to bother you," I said "but I can't figure out how to turn on my hot water heater."

"Oh, no problem" she said. "Here, let me show you mine."

I expected to be led down into the dark and dreary basement. Instead she directed my attention to a small control panel on the wall.

"See, you just push the green button" she said, indicating a button conveniently labeled 'water'. "Just make sure you push it again when you finish, otherwise the hot water heater keeps running and burns energy."

Of course. Obviously. What else? A neat, convenient, energy saving device at the top of the stairs. How silly of me.

I thanked her, returned to my apartment, pushed the green button, and had a lovely hot shower.

I am such a gadad hoon.

-cough GAG!- ahem.

You know, I probably shouldn't say this, but Seoul is a uniquely unattractive city. I know I've only seen the area within a mile or two of the apartment... and everything between here and the airport, but seriously. The sky is brown with a thick layer of smog, but the smog doesn't say 'oh yea baby, you know you like it' like L.A. smog. It just says "I'm smog, deal with it" like a fat, middle aged diner waitress blowing smoke in your face.
Everything is covered in soot, but it isn't the grand, bellicose TOIL OF THE WORKERS soot like Beijing soot. It's more like the kind of soot you get from licking the inside of a tailpipe. The buildings and electrical lines appear to be scattered haphazardly, and garbage lurks in unexpected places... like the middle of the sidewalk. Ok, ok, so I made that last part up. Still, garbage is often found in random piles beside the sidewalk.
Stores jostle for attention everywhere you look. There appear to be three main kinds of stores: stores that sell electronics, stores that sell junkfood, and stores that sell apples. The stores that sell electronics are grand buildings set next to the main streets. They look shiny and... electronic. The stores that sell junkfood are spaced randomly, often in illogical places as if a junkfood spaceship blew up and chunks of it crashed into the middle of intersections. The stores that sell apples are the most numerous... oddly enough. Granted, they sell more than apples. Some of them are so bold as to sell things like tomatoes and melons. A few even sell chili peppers and olive oil. Still, the main impression that one gets is of a wall of apples in assorted shapes and sizes. This is especially odd, because I have yet to see a Korean person EATING an apple. Apples have been served in the teachers' cafeteria (along with macaroni, burritos and burgers) but a defining feature of the Korean food I have seen thus far has been the absence of apples.
On that note, I should probably say that Korean food takes very little getting used to. Chinese food has "gag greens" and will clean out your innards like a steel wool scrubber. Indian food is good for the first few times, but then you start wondering if Hindus are forbidden to eat anything fattier than a brick. Korean food, in contrast, has the same general idea as American food. It has similar textures and flavor combinations. The spicy pickled vegetables aren't overwhelming, though perhaps they could be to someone from the east coast. The rice is rice, but I am now convinced that all rice should be eaten with seaweed... except for Spanish rice. That would be odd.

Enough about food.

Korean mosquitoes are different that other mosquitoes. Mongolian mosquitoes are numerous but dumb. They land in one spot and are reluctant to leave it, kind of like heavy bombers. American mosquitoes are more cautious. If you smack them and miss they'll fly off. They buzz annoyingly around your ears before landing just to see if you're awake. They're like infantry. Korean mosquitoes are like 007. You never know they're there. They won't hold still. When they land they sit there, waiting for any movement. If they land on your shoulder and you twitch your toe, they'll take off. It's insane. Last night I finally gave up and sprayed my room. Dozens of mosquito secret agents dropped from every imaginable hiding place. It was almost discusting. The odd thing is that there are screens in the windows!

You know, the downside of staying next to a hospital is that the sirens NEVER SHUT UP!

-laterz

Chusok

Chusok. It's funny how terms can take on meaning so quickly. Chusok is a Korean holiday, one of two major holidays in Korea. They say it's very similar to thanksgiving: people go to visit their relatives and consume large quantities of food. One major difference is that ancestor worship is involved in the Korean version. Americans aren't that into ancestor worship, there's too much football to watch.
That's what Chusok means to everyone else. To me, Chusok means that I'm stuck alone in a bare apartment. The school is shut down and everything is locked. The stores are closed and though a teacher invited me to go somewhere with her I forgot to ask where I should meet her.

And there's no hot water.

I found the hot water heater today, but like everything else in this country all the instructions are in Korean. On top of that, there are no visible controls, so even if I WANTED to risk blowing up the school's guest apartment, I couldn't. I've been taking cold showers since I got here three days ago. Actually, scratch that. This morning I took a cold bath to mix things up. Still, water= freezing.

So, obviously I'm feeling
absolutely boundless joy.

Seriously. I took a bright pink sort-of-a-toy guitar which I had borrowed outside the apartment and played it for at least an hour. An old lady was picking up acorns, and she smiled and said hello (in Korean). I gave her a handful of acorns, and she said what I thought was the exact same phrase, but maybe I misheard. In either case she was really nice.
I met two of my neighbors. One introduced himself to me as the conference president, which means little to me. The other introduced herself as a lady who works at the academic office. She's American. That means a lot to me. lol.
However, that's not why I'm happy. I can hear God as I've never been able to hear Him before. It's as if I've been trying to listen to a whispering voice in a crowded cafeteria, but now all the people have gone and the place is dead quiet. God has had a bit of yelling to do. I wonder, what can I teach these people? I came here partly to strengthen my own relationship with God, do I know Him well enough to lead others to Him? I can't leap cleverly from verse to verse drawing now and astounding conclusions to dazzle my audience. However, yesterday I was reading my Bible (not having a computer will do that) and I ran across 1 Corinthians 1:17
"For Christ did not send me to baptize, but to preach the gospel, not with clever words, so that that the cross of Christ will not be emptied of it's effect."
I hope that if I make this simple message my goal, God will do all the fancy work. Isn't it supposed to work that way anyway? Another thing I've run into repeatedly is the message 'ask for wisdom, believe, and God will give it to you'. I don't know how many times the Bible states that general idea, but I've run into it three times in the last two days. How's that for a clear message?

-This post was written two days ago, I typed it up when I had access to a computer.

The rules of life

Culture shock comes from the most unexpected places.

One would expect to find culture shock in places like crowded markets, public bathrooms, church etc. I failed to find culture shock in those places, and it was rather dissapointing. I did, however, find more than I had ever wanted when I read through the teachers's policy manual.
I suppose a basic assumption of my life has been that as one grows older jobs take more and more time. This assumption goes unchanged. However, I had thought that the limits placed on one's personal time would become something one simply assumed. The policy manual doesn't let you assume anything. In the first few pages it struts about like a Nazi general, smacking people with a riding crop and telling them to be happy Christians on pain of death. The next few pages are spent explaining how all teachers must go to every church and school event, period. I had expected both of these rules, but I hadn't expected them to be layed out with such venemous clarity.

On the upside, if I stay here for more than a year I am, in fact, allowed to date the locals. Oh boy.

My appartment has no hot water. Thus far this has not proved to be much of a problem, since the heat is so oppressive. The stove has no gas. This would be a problem if it wasn't for the fact that there are no pots or pans anyway. Fortunately I have free meals at the cafe, but that luck will run out over the weekend because of a national holiday. I'll figure something out though.

Something that I noticed about Seoul the first time I came here was that the trafic was constant and noisy pretty much 24/7. It's gotten worse since then. It's still about as thick all through the day, but now it's noisier around five in the morning. Apperantly this is the time when all the yahoo's like to go out for a ride, pealing out on their motorcycles as they weave back and forth between the lumbering busses. It also became apperant that 5:00 am is the officially designated time for all jackhammering to be done. Honestly, I never heard it during the day.

The t-shirts around here give one a feeling of home. That is, of course, assuming that one's home is an asian country full of odd t-shirts. Yesterday I saw a guy wearing a shirt that said

He has a feeling of great roughness
Full of many close allys
Musicallness unlike any other
David Beckham

No doubt Mr. Beckham would have been pleased to learn about his great musicallness. Oddly enough, no mention was made of his soccer skills. Maybe there are two Beckhams, one playing for L.A. Galaxy and one composing beautiful "musicallness" as a creative outlet for his "great roughness". This still doesn't answer the question of how one can be crammed full of a bunch of side streets.

Sounds painful. I for one would like to avoid it.

Email me people, I'm bored.

more blog!

Really, really, I promise. Eventually the posts on this blog will become thoughtful, funny, detailed stories that people will actually want to read. However, I have about 10 minutes before I leave to get groceries for this weekend. The school in Korea is a really nice place, I sat in for two classes this morning and got to meet a few of the teachers. There's something odd about this place though, it's almost as if all the buildings and people in Hong Kong were ripped out of the ground and placed in Massachusetts. All of the plants are the same, they even have pokeweed and pine trees! Apperantly I'm not supposed to be paying for my own food. Score! I changed $40, but from what they say that will probably be about all I'll need for the week. I really shouldn't have watched all that anime right before I left. For some reason my brain isn't used to the idea of not being able to communicate with people any more, so it keeps on trying to figure out which language to use. Smatterings of Mongolian and Spanish have tried to come out of my mouth, but at the moment the main one is Japanese. This poses a problem, since the Koreans and the Japanese aren't the best of buddies. Wouldn't that be great? I thank someone and end up insulting them instead. Anywho, it's almost time for me to go. More later, apperantly I can use this computer (again, SCORE!)

Finally!

For a long time I wondered if I should post this blog under a pseudonym and be vague about where I was teaching. Then, I realized that the group of people most likely to read this blog are the ones that already know me. Unfortunately they're also the group that is most likely to get hopping mad if I start trash talking my boss, engaging in un-Christian activities, or forgetting to put the toilet seat down.
So, knowing that I'll get pwned 1ik3 @ n00b if too many people start reading this blog, I shall none the less venture out under my own name, because everyone knows it anyway.

Let the indiscreet use of thick sarcasm begin.

sort of

One of the major problems faced by modern society is that there are simply too many people. This causes a problem. Actually it causes several problems, like starvation, fuel shortages, pandemics, wars and the birth of millions of people willing to listen to talk radio. However, in addition to these major problems there is a small annoyance. The annoyance is that no one really knows what is going on any more; there are simply too many people for anyone to have the foggiest notion. Many people pretend to understand, and a few of them fool everyone quite well, but unfortunately no one will ever know what Bob did with the progress reports, or even who Bob is.

I have encountered this problem over and over this summer. After an entire year of taking classes, networking, and planning my life I was casually notified that I was no longer qualified to teach in Mongolia due to a change in policy.

Two months later, after a hectic period of registering at school I hadn't planned to attend, taking out loans I didn't think I'd need, and falling for a girl I didn't think I'd have time for, the same person emailed me again, apologizing and explaining that the whole thing was a big mistake. Many of the people around me expressed varying degrees of indignation (not including the girl, which was a mixed blessing), but I honestly didn't feel slighted. Really, no one has the foggiest idea what's going on any more. There is no such thing as a competent organization.

There have been many more examples of this phenomenon since then, but I won't bore you with them. Let me say, however, that the confusion increases exponentially when multiple organizations in several countries are involved.

I'll be leaving on Wednesday from Portland Maine, at the lovely hour of 6:18 AM