Miss H's weaselly hagwon

I sure picked the wrong time to try and revamp my vlog. 

It seemed safe to expect things to calm down now that it's the end of the semester. They always do. Once the frenetic rush of grading and inputting is finished, events taper off. There's half a week where students are allowed to complain about their grades and plead on bended knee for clemency, and then the grades are finalized and printed and handed in. (I just did that today, as a matter of fact.) Then, after that...nothing. If you don't have summer classes, you're a free man for two whole months. From July 2 (the end of the finalization period) until the first Monday in September, it's vacation time. 

Customarily, things calm the heck down during that period. 

But not for us. Oh no. We lead a charmed life, Miss H and I. Just a scant two weeks before I leave for Vietnam, my fiancée's school decided to pull the rug out from under us. They asked us to move out of our apartment.

I know, right? 

We were shocked, of course. We've been here a scant four months. Moreover the whole reason Miss H signed a contract with this school is so we could have this huge apartment all to ourselves. That was the agreement. Now all of a sudden the school says "You have one month to move out"? Oh no they didn't!

So we went in and talked to Miss H's immediate supervisors in person last week. They backpedaled and clarified, assuring us that they wouldn't revoke our housing completely; this was simply an expensive apartment, too expensive to have just one teacher and her pseudo-spouse living in it. They'd provide key money and rent for any other apartment, as long as said rent was ₩400,000 per month or less. According to the contract they'd signed with Miss H, they were legally obligated to do at least that much. 

There wasn't much more we could do but agree to that. I'm the moocher here. I don't work for Miss H's school, and was allowed to stay with her in this apartment for no extra money down. But it just wasn't fair of the school to kick our stilts out from under us out of the blue like this. 

Miss H and I quickly decided that there was no way we could find a new apartment, rent it, pack up this apartment, and move everything we owned in the scant ten days remaining before I departed for Vietnam. It just wasn't happening. So we went into meet her supervisors again just a couple of days later and asked them if we could stay in this apartment if I forked over my share of the rent. The supervisors told us that our place costs ₩800,000 per month for the school to rent, and I'd need to stump up half. After a little hemming and hawing and a halfhearted attempt at bargaining, I acquiesced.

But now I'm rethinking even that. If I shell out ₩400,000 per month (roughly $400), that's almost three thousand dollars I'll lose by March 2015—for no reason at all. It's money which should be used to make a security deposit on a stateside apartment, buy a car, and acquire miscellaneous housewares. Miss H and I got it in writing that no one else would be billeted with us in this place, but unfortunately we never secured the school's assurance that we'd never be charged extra rent or made to move out. The school's got us over a barrel. 

I wasn't finished yet, though. On Thursday I marched to the Itaewon Global Village Center, which is on the same floor in the same building as the international clinic where I got my travel vaccinations two weeks ago. The Global Village Center, according to its own website, "offers a variety of services to support foreigners living in the area, and we have classes and programs that help to facilitate cultural exchange and understanding between foreigners and Koreans residents." Among those services is free legal consultation. I made an appointment at 10:00 AM on Tuesday the 8th to see a lawyer. 

Here's what he said: there's nothing in the contract to prevent the school from charging us extra for this apartment. They only agreed to let this apartment to the two of us exclusively. As the lawyer put it, "It was a favor, not a promise." However, there was one spot of hope: if we had a witness to corroborate the school's agreement to let us live here at no extra charge, then we'd have a case. He advised us to get in touch with Miss H's recruiter and obtain her testimony, which I thought was a good idea. I'll keep you posted on what comes next, but...

All this would be hard enough to deal with if I wasn't leaving for Southeast Asia on July 12. That sure complicates things. It's really put the pressure on both of us. But Miss H and I really don't want to move. It's costly, it's a lot of effort, and frankly, we feel that we were promised this apartment and shouldn't have to abandon it because Miss H's school is worried about the bottom line. Moreover, after what we went through in Gwangnaru (living side-by-side in a studio apartment and sharing a twin bed and all that nonsense) we feel that we're owed a nice big apartment for our final year here in Korea. 

And now you've heard the whole story. The fight's not over yet. I'm not going to pay those crooks a single won if I can avoid it. Stay tuned. 

Korean appendectomy, part III: the end

The previous post's title was a little misleading. The "beginning" and "middle" parts of this tale covered only the first day—Sunday, May 18—and the hospital visits and surgical operations that were performed on that day. In this post I shall tell you about the three days that followed. "End" is something of a misnomer here, too: I'm still recovering. My abdomen aches a tad yet and I still have metal staples in my belly button. (Those get removed on Monday.) 

So: let's begin. Monday, May 19. The morning following my appendectomy.

A recovery ward room in a Korean hospital, similar to the one I stayed in (only way too big). Photo courtesy of Ask a Korean!, who has a rather interesting post on Korean healthcare.

I awoke at dawn. To my relief, I didn't have constant pain in my stomach anymore. The aches, however, were infernal. Sitting up took a good 30 seconds. I wasn't exaggerating in the last post when I said I felt like I'd done a million ab crunches, run a marathon and sung an opera without a drop of water in between. I didn't notice my hunger too much; I guess I'd reached that stage of starvation where the bellyache settles down to a dull, ignoble drone. I was, however, burning with thirst. Jeremy (my Korean roommate, remember?) ominously hinted that I might not even get a sip of water until the following day. Fortunately that proved untrue. At high noon, after a long dull morning of Jeremy watching bad daytime TV and me trying to plan the Thailand-Malaysia-Singapore leg of my Southeast Asia trip, lunch arrived: a bottle of ice-cold water. 

Splendid. Hospital dining at its finest. To be fair, it was a haute bottle of water: crystal-clear beads of sacred moisture gleaned from volcanic rock springs on the distant tropical island of Jeju, bottled by the purest maidens and spirited away to Seoul on the gossamer wings of azure dragons or some shit. 

Jeremy, on the other hand, was chowing down on a full tray. So I unfolded myself from my bed like a rusty pocketknife and hobbled to the door to call the nurse. 

"Shiksa?" I asked. "Lunch...?"

She explained to me on no uncertain terms that "Lunch water. Dinner food." 

Wow, she cleared that up for me in a hurry. Who needs verbs?  

At 5:00 a heaven-sent tray clunked down upon my rickety folding table: juk, sludgy plain rice porridge, accompanied by a bowl of spicy white radish soup and smaller bowls of soy sauce and crunchy vegetables in brine. I was to eat this exact same meal—the only variation of which was the type of soup—a further four times during my stay at Songpa Chung. It was bland, but substantiating, and it tasted like a king's feast after my 33-hour fast. 

Miss H finished work at 6:00 daily, but she'd obtained special permission to leave after her last class finished at 5:20. She arrived just after 6 p.m. and bore with her a load of mercy: orange juice, a huge jug of water, yogurt, and my laptop computer. I was past ready to see her. It had been a long, hot, sticky, muggy, sweaty day, and I must've looked and smelled as crusty as I felt. But she was her typical angelic self and made no mention of this fact. She and I spent several happy hours together, playing Monopoly on her iPad and casting the occasional glance at the utterly incomprehensible Vin Diesel film Babylon AD on the idiot box. 

I had contacted the assistant director of the General English Program at Sejong University by this time to inform them of my circumstances, and he had kindly canceled both my Monday classes for me. Tuesday, May 20, was a school holiday, and I never had any classes on Wednesdays. But Thursday I would have a full load, and my usual two on Friday. I still felt beat to hell. Time would tell if I would be okay to return to work. 

I wrote down some questions in Korean for the nurses and Miss H delivered them. It seemed that I would be released when my fever disappeared: a brace of nurses appeared at our ward room door every hour to check my, Jeremy's and Sang-ook's temperature and blood pressure. That could be Tuesday or Wednesday. I was informed that the surgeon himself would speak to me on Tuesday, the next day, and let me know either way. 

It was right about the time that Miss H had to leave (at 9:30 p.m.) that Jeremy and I got a new roommate, whom we would later find out was named Sang-ook. He was accompanied by a skinny, shriveled old bat with a hectoring voice and a face like thunder, whom I took to be his mother. She hardly spent any time by his bedside except to kvetch at him. "Poor sap," I noted in my journal. 

Just as Miss H was about to head out that Jeremy came back. He and his girlfriend had stepped out for a while. That is correct: Jeremy, in his hospital-issue PJs and with his clattering IV stand, had taken to the public streets. This is something done in Korea. No one looks askance at it. Countless times I have seen hospital patients, still in their whites, wandering zombie-like along sidewalks and storefronts. The first time was back in 2008, not long after I'd arrived on Geoje Island. Some bony middle-aged dude with a sour look was standing in his pajamas on a busy street corner, in the ridiculous plastic bath sandals they use here, IV stand by his side, smoking a listless cigarette. 

Anyway, Jeremy and his lady had been to a nearby juk restaurant. My faithful roommate promptly informed me that the hospital's official breakfast had been canceled on Tuesday morning for reasons unknown. He brought me and himself a huge heaping takeout portion of beef-and-vegetable rice porridge, plus sides. I nearly wept. What a guy. I had had Miss H bring him and his girlfriend a bottle of soju and a chocolate bar (respectively) to repay them for their kindness on Monday, when Jeremy had unhesitatingly given me some of his snacks and orange juice. Now they'd doubled down on me, the ungrateful bastards. I immediately fell to scheming about how to get even with them, generosity-wise. 

After a long, humid, stagnant Tuesday morning spent trying to call my mother on a phone card that Miss H had generously brought me, and finally getting through, I was ready to go home. I was fed up with lying still, trying to get comfortable on a rock-hard hospital bed and watching bad daytime TV with Jeremy and Sang-ook, who had the most arcane taste in comedy/variety shows. Not only was changing the bandages a painful thing, but the tube—

Oh, right. Didn't I tell you that I had a tube in my stomach? 

I did. I had three keyhole incisions, one on the bottom rim of my navel and two below it, right about on my waistline. The tube led into one of these waistline incisions. More embarrassingly yet, it emptied into a little plastic squeeze-bottle that was clipped to the stupid belly-band I and all the other recovering appendectomy patients had to wear. Looked exactly like the Velcro straps you'd wear to keep yourself from getting a hernia while lifting heavy objects. Anyway, this little squeeze bottle, the nurse explained to me, was to collect...er...seepage. Yes, seepage. Sure enough, there was a minute amount of blood and intestinal juices in it, which sloshed hideously whenever I moved. I tried to avoid looking at it. It reminded me so much of Bailey's and grenadine that I thought I might be put off bartending forever if I stared at the bottle for too long. 

Anyway, about 1 or 2 in the afternoon I went downstairs to have my bandages changed. The tube was taken out. It felt like they were pulling a tapeworm out of me. It was slitheringly uncomfortable and painful in areas that I'm too polite to mention. "Felt like my wang was being turned inside-out," I noted impolitely in my journal. 

The surgeon was present, however, and he answered my most immediate questions: I would be released upon the morrow, Wednesday. I could go back to work on Thursday if I felt up to it, and I had a follow-up appointment on Friday—at which time, I hoped, the metal staples that had been used to seal up my incisions in place of stitches would be removed. 

On Wednesday I was up early, ready to be liberated. The nurses handed me a note which they'd obviously gone to great lengths to translate properly, and which told me to avoid foods with flour, fizzy drinks, and alcohol for one week. Working, showering and "normal activities" were okay. 

Jeremy was out all morning. At about 10:00 a.m. Sang-ook looked over at me and said "When you go home?" 

I said, "I wish I knew," turned around, marched out of the ward room and down to the nurse's station. I asked them when I could be let go. They asked me when I wanted to be let go. I said, "Right now." They told me to go downstairs and settle up. I did. Then I hurried back upstairs, changed out of my PJs, put on my normal clothes, shook Sang-ook's hand, wrote Jeremy a note and wished him well, and fled the building. I took a jouncing, sickening cab ride back to the apartment, where I changed back into my (proper) PJs and collapsed. 

I didn't feel up to working on Thursday, so I sent out a mass e-mail asking my coworkers to cover for me. The response was overwhelming and heartwarming. I was able to take Thursday to recover, and went back to work on Friday. 

It's Sunday now, and I feel right as rain. I still have staples in my stomach. My Friday appointment was intended merely to change my bandages again. I get the staples out tomorrow, and not soon enough. The dietary restrictions shall lift on Wednesday, and I shall celebrate by having one of those hazelnut-vanilla ales that the boys and I brewed a few weeks back, which matured on Monday but which I was in no shape to drink. 

And that, ladies and gentlemen, was my Korean appendectomy. 

Whoof. 

30 Days to a Better Man, Day 7: reconnect with an old friend

Time to say hello to my little friend.

No, not that one. Let's just call this friend Dirk. He's been a great pal of mine since high school. Unlike a lot of my other friends, he was quite a cerebral fellow, soft-spoken, erudite, calm, moderate and easy to get along with. His very presence was a soothing tonic on some days. You know the type. Anyway, he had a most diverse knowledge of international relations and diplomacy (which he later went on to specialize in at college) and we would speak at length about it together.

So it goes. The years marched on, and the two of us went our separate ways. He attended the University of California at San Diego and I hopped that plane to the Great White North (North Dakota State University, that is). He got steady work in Southern California, and I went overseas to Korea to find my fortune.

Ah-ha. You'll notice I said "steady work." That's because I have no idea what Dirk did during the intervening years, or even precisely what he's doing now, Facebook or no Facebook. I know he's in a relationship, but I can't recall his girlfriend's face. (Before you ask, I've never met her.)

The Art of Manliness has a rather touching story about Abraham Lincoln's Secretary of State, William H. Seward, and a friendship he had in his youth with a man called David Berdan. Read it. It makes the rest of this make sense.  Needless to say, after reading AoM's article, it didn't take me long to figure out who I was going to reconnect with. I sent out some lines of communication this morning. As per the article's instructions, I did not use Twitter. I don't have Twitter, and never shall, so it was easy. I e-mailed the dude. I asked him about his girlfriend, his life, his work, and so on (not in that order). I'll let you know when I hear back.

Hang in there for Day 8. 

30 Days to a Better Man, Day 6: update your résumé

Years ago I went to see a professional résumé-polisher in Boulder, Colorado. He lived in a spacious bungalow with an attached greenhouse, which my mother and I had to navigate to reach his desk, tucked away in a corner beside two huge windows looking out at the pine- and rock-strewn hillsides. He was a scholarly sort of man, tall, thin, white-haired, with spectacles and nimble fingers. He reminded me of one of my old English professors, but wasn't brain-burnt by decades of hallucinogens. He checked my puny résumé over, asked a few questions, cleaned up the formatting, added some strategic lines and font changes, eliminated the weak links, and handed it back to me. It was like alchemy. A few ingredients here, a few waves of the ol' wand there, a scatter of signs and symbols, and whammo — solid gold.

It's a bit of a jolt when you figure out that your résumé is two years out of date. I've switched jobs and done some volunteer work since 2012, all of which would be juicy additions to the old CV. There's my stint at Sejong University and the volunteer work I did up in Paju sending weather balloons laden with socks to North Korea. (I'd love to see what future prospective employers make of that.) 

But there's a problem. My résumé is too full.

Now, I know what you're going to say. "Oh, if there's not enough room, then you need to get rid of the old, weak stuff and add in the fresh stuff at the top." Fine and dandy. I'd do that if I was interested in being a teacher for the rest of my life. But I ain't. I'm a journalist, dang it. I want to work in radio. And the oldest thing on my résumé happens to be the year that I worked for Thunder Radio at North Dakota State University (2005, if you're curious). I don't want to ditch that. It's all I've got going for me if I want to get a journalism job.

I can't ditch any of the other stuff either: my job as an unpaid intern at the Victorville Daily Press in 2006; writing for the NDSU Spectrum as an opinion columnist between 2006-2007;  or working as a technical writer for the university's IT Help Desk in 2007. And I can't leave out the two hagwon jobs I've had in Korea: Reading Town in 2008-2009 or Avalon English in 2012-2013. Otherwise there'll be big, ugly gaps in my work history and my CV will look like a mouthful of rotten teeth.

And before you ask, I can't make the font any smaller. It's already sitting at 10 points. Any tinier and the interviewer will need a magnifying glass to read it.

Oh well. I'll figure it out. I have two hours and 13 minutes before midnight hits and it's on to Day 7. 

Wish me luck...

30 Days to a Better Man, Day 3: find a mentor

Easy day today! I think I've already found one. This is a recent thing, so don't accuse me of dredging up some mentor from the dim and distant past. He's a fellow I work with at Sejong University. Let's call him Mr. G. 

It's convenient that I elected him my mentor, because I disapprove of the list of steps that AoM put on their website. A mentor is not something you ask for. You don't obtain a mentor via verbal contract. It just happens. You start a relationship with someone older and more experienced than you: a coworker, or a neighbor, or a grizzled veteran at the corner bar, and bam. There you go. You're being mentored. Nobody has to come out and ask "Hey, will you be my mentor?" That kind of thing only happens in martial arts movies. 

Before I go into Mr. G's qualifications, let's see if I can think of all the mentors I've had in my life (besides the obvious, of course: my parents).

I didn't really have a mentor in the Boy Scouts, I'm afraid. That was one of the reasons I quit. It was like a big frat party all the time, with just as much hazing, peer pressure and ostracism.

I can't really think of any professors or older students in high school or college who mentored me, either. Most of my teachers (even the ones I liked) were just too darn liberal for me. And most of the students were either immature or not worth listening to, or both.

I've had several shooting instructors and athletic coaches throughout my life who came close to mentoring me, but never made the cut because I didn't know them well enough or see them often enough.

Fortunately for me, the world of aviation is the perfect place to find a mentor. And that's probably where I picked up my first one: Joe, or J-1 as he's been called on this blog. If you follow the link I posted, you'll see his qualifications laid out, chapter and verse. He looked out for me when I worked as a drone-chaser. He made me a better flier. He paid for lunches, pitched for me when my job or wages were in peril, and protected me from dangers both literal and figurative.

Mr. G is a different sort of mentor. I'm still a young man, but I'm an older young man. I'll be 28 this year. I don't need the same kind of mentoring I did when I was a kid. I've been around the block a bit. I'm not the scared, shy, inexperienced saphead I once was. Confidence and skill are not what I crave as a mentee. I crave maturity. Grace. Serenity. Wisdom. The restoration of my faith in my fellow man.

That's exactly what Mr. G is good for. He and I eat lunch together every Tuesday and Thursday. He is a serene and gentle fellow, a man of peace and wisdom. Speaking with him is immensely calming. I always feel like my day is brighter after having a discussion with him. I don't share everything with him, but if there's some work- or lifestyle-related problem on my mind, I'll get his opinion. He never fails to put me at ease. Why, you ask? Because he's not negative. He's a positive influence. He doesn't apologize for people, nor justify the unjust; he merely has good reasons why I shouldn't let the hard knocks get me down. He's never insistent with his advice or belligerent with his counsel. He offers the simple truth. He puts a refreshing, upbeat perspective on things which I, in my blue funk, hadn't considered before.

It's no surprise that Mr. G is good at this sort of thing. Before he was a professor, he was a pastor. He's a very devout man, a loving father and devoted husband. He moved his family from their homeland to Korea due to rampant crime and economic hardship. That takes a fair bit of courage and determination, that. Mr. G is a hard worker, striving daily to support his family and keep them comfortable. I have had the privilege of observing Mr. G in both fair weather and foul, and at all times he has remained true to his faith, steadfast in his determination, and dedicated to the safety and happiness of his loved ones. Moreover he treats his students with respect and fatherly attention, making sure they each get a fair shake. He's willing to go to great lengths to ensure that they get the best education possible, and has done so on several occasions.

That alone would make Mr. G an admirable fellow and worthy of approbation. But it's that serenity of his, his reluctance to condemn or harangue his fellow man, his tact and his humility which really won me over. A good man makes you think, "Neat-o. He's a cool dude." A great man makes you think, "Wow, I want to be like him." That's Mr. G for you. His patience and composure are inspiring. I can be a pretty temperamental guy, and the gallantry and graciousness of my elders is something to which I aspire. So Mr. G, I believe, is the perfect mentor for me.

I had the privilege of spending part of Christmas Day at Mr. G's pad. He had graciously invited Miss H and me to Christmas dinner with his extended family, so I was able to see his bright, well-kept home and meet all his lovely relatives (including his young daughter, who just recovered from a nasty bout of appendicitis). We spent a wonderful time there, chatting and drinking wine and nibbling on his wife's delicious trifle. I was ever so glad to have had the chance to spend a little time outside the hustle and bustle of work with Mr. G and his clan and share a cup of good cheer and some friendly banter. And I'm looking forward to this next year of working (and commiserating) alongside the good fellow.

Keep an eye out for Day 4... 

sci-fi art, entry #2

It's 12:35 a.m. on a Friday night (or a Saturday morning, if you want to think about it that way). I've had a hard week and a glass of bourbon. I don't feel like posting anything particularly profound, and you know what that means—time for some more sci-fi art.

This one's called "Ancestors." I don't know what the title means, and I have no clue what the contents were meant to portray. And that's the beauty of it, really. Just stare at that half-ruined structure and the stunning panorama in the skies above it, and wonder.

NMOC

So, you want to hear about my first week as a professor, eh? Well, you've come to the right corner of the Internet.

(The title, if you'd like to know, is an acronym for "New Man On Campus.")

I was somewhat inured to surprise by the time I actually started working at Sejong University. I'd visited the place three or four times already—for interviews, orientation, and the spring staff meeting. I'd familiarized myself with my textbooks. My students resembled taller, more courteous versions of the middle-school students I'd been teaching previously. (They wore nicer clothes, too.) The thing that's been hardest to adjust to, I think, has been how many foreign coworkers I have. At my first academy job down in Geoje Island, I had two. In Bucheon, I had six, plus the folks from the hagwon a couple floors up who sometimes wandered in. Here in eastern Seoul I have forty-plus, and that's just the English department.

The scale is greater at a university. Everything is larger: the buildings, the classrooms, the offices, the dining establishments. The cafeteria on the sixth floor of my building is like a gymnasium. The student union has a Popeye's Chicken, a Steffdog, and a Paris Baguette. The Gwanggaeto Building, where I teach a third of my classes, is 15 stories tall and boasts hotel rooms, dormitories, conference halls, a full-service restaurant and six elevators. (This is most apropos; Gwanggaeto was a revered king who expanded Korea's territory across Manchuria and into Mongolia and Russia.) The campus museum houses millennia-old relics from Korea's storied past. Even the big tower in the center of campus is not what it seems: thanks to a circular elevator system, it doubles as a car park.

It's been a challenge to adjust to university instruction. This is not because university teaching is impossibly difficult—it isn't. So far it's been straightforward: icebreakers, assessments, and introductory lessons. But I'm trying to get the hang of a new borough of Seoul at the same time—and unpack my material possessions from their cardboard sarcophagi. Every night, it seems, Miss H and I have had to go to E-Mart (Korea's Wal-Mart) for extra supplies. We ride Line 5 across the river to Cheonho, the next station down, and pick up snacks or shelves or clothes hangers. Navigating Gwangjang-dong, sussing out likely restaurants near our apartment, and finding enough space for our mountain of stuff (while adjusting to new work environments) has been a challenge. But a welcome one. I would much rather be here, stuffed into a tiny brick villa on a narrow street in eastern Seoul (and working as a professor) than in our big old officetel in sunny Bucheon, butting heads with recalcitrant eighth-graders.

I have two freshman-level speaking classes and many sophomore-level composition classes. The textbooks are marvelous: clear-cut and useful, and have boatloads of online supplements and ancillaries to go along with them. Like I said, we haven't really hit the books hard yet. This week was the first regular week after the add/drop period, so we've just done housekeeping: reviewing the syllabi and discussing classroom rules and grading policies. I'm still nervous, but I'm focused on the task at hand: finding my feet as a professor. I'm feeling my way as I go, and it's worked pretty well so far. There've been no major disasters yet, anyway. I haven't been late to any classes, and I can operate a projector like nobody's business.

At the end of this week there are standardized assessments, so we'll have to put a momentary hold on the work we've just started. Despite my newness and nerves, I'm looking forward to burrowing into the material with my students, taking away their uncertainties and doubts, conditioning them to speak and speak well, watching the comprehension steal over their faces like the morning sun on a field of sleepy flowers. I can see the blossoms beginning to turn toward the light.

In addition to my regular courses, I have several free-talking periods with four or five students per class. The purpose of these sessions is to prepare the students, verbally and otherwise, for job searching and hiring. We practice interviews, review tough questions, research industries, and discuss networking, cover letters, résumés, and so forth. It's quite a kick, though there are some challenges. Some of my underclassmen lack confidence and are quite shy about speaking, particularly in such a personal setting. It's difficult to get these shy birds to even speak, let alone hype their experience and qualifications. But little by little we're laying the groundwork for success, and that's the best feeling in the world. I'm glad the university has given us the opportunity to do something like this.

I guess that's the heart of the matter, right there...the main difference between university teaching and after-school academies. Here at Sejong I can feel that I'm helping students. The importance, the significance, the value of what we professors are doing for our students is plain to see. I felt frustrated and undervalued at my hagwon jobs, and I grew disillusioned. My energy and enthusiasm fell away from me like sweat from a tired athlete's brow. This university position was a bottle of Gatorade. I take my job more seriously than ever before. I want to do right by my students. I want to put the tools for success in their hands. I want them to understand what I'm telling them—and remember it. I want to give them the best education I can, and grow as an educator along the way.

That feeling is, to say the least, downright spiffy.

Working here in eastern Seoul is, to put it mildly, splendiferous.

I can't help but think back to the place I was, mentally and physically, just a month or so ago. Those were some dark times. I thought I was at a dead end. I was up the creek without a paddle. No job, no prospects, no hope. And now look...just look. Jules came to me with a scrap of newspaper in his hand, and everything changed. I owe him more than I can express in words. How the wheel turns! A few weeks ago I figured I was washed up. Time was running out. Miss H and I were down to the wire. It was either go home to a devastated, barren America, or stay in Korea and continue to numb our minds and hands with thankless drudgery. (Miss H is still numbing her mind and hands with thankless drudgery, but with any luck, she won't have to keep up her heroic efforts much longer.)

So here we are. A new horizon. A new leaf turned over. A new chapter in the book of our lives. More capital to add to the bank of experience.

Maybe they're right, the proverb-makers. They say the road never ends. Paths never disappear. Maybe the road narrows, and maybe the path is winding, but there's always a way forward.

I can't wait to see what's around the next bend.




Now, click the play button on this song and go stare at the picture at the top of this post. It's worth your while. I guarantee it.

movers, tailors, professors, and dust

Well, wherever should I begin?

                                                                                from Wikipedia

Saturday was in the sixty-degree range, the warmest of the year, and our lingering winter blues were demolished in a wave of warm breezes and sunny skies.

The yellow dust from China (a cloud of sand, heavy metal particles and chemicals that blows off the Gobi Desert every spring) has blanketed Seoul. The air is a sickly yellow color, and Miss H and I have been coughing and sneezing like nobody's business.

Yesterday I went to a tailor in Itaewon to do something I've never done in my life: get measured for a suit. Not a full suit, mind you. Just a blazer. I'm a professor now, after all. I need to look the part. So I located a tailor whom all my expat friends recommended. His nickname is "the Jokeman." He always has a new zinger to tell you whenever you go see him. He has a joke for every U.S. state (and probably a few for Canada and England, too). He's a short man, but wiry, with a hard-lined face, well-defined cheekbones, and short gray hair. He looks something like Daniel Craig, if Daniel Craig had been born in Korea and was 20 years older. If photographs are to be believed, Roger Clinton once visited the Jokeman, got fitted, and bought a suit. A slew of other minor luminaries have been in and out of the shop, too, according to the gilt-framed pictures adorning the walls of the Jokeman's basement shop. Anyway, I was fitted, I heard the spiel, I paid my money ($313 U.S.) and got a California joke.

"So," the Jokeman said. "Judge Judy was speaking to a criminal. She asked, 'Why did you break into the same shop three times in a row?' The man said, 'I stole a dress for my wife.' Judge Judy asked, 'So why did you go back again?' The man answered, 'I had to get it taken in twice.'"

Those are the blurbs and tidbits from our life thus far in Gwangjang-dong, eastern Seoul. As you may have already gleaned by now, Miss H and I moved from our comfortable bailiwick in Bucheon (west of Seoul, abutting Incheon) and came here, seeking better jobs and opportunities. I have accepted a job as an assistant professor of English at Sejong University, and Heather is now a kindergarten teacher at the NOAM, just down the street from our new apartment.

This is how it came about:

I had handed in my notice at my old hagwon in Bucheon. My last day would be Thursday, February 28. Meanwhile, Miss H received some disastrous news. Her kindergarten was downsizing. Henceforth it would focus on after-school elementary-age kids. The kindergarten levels would be dissolved. This meant Miss H would lose her job on February 15. Things were looking desperate. We would both soon be out of work (and therefore out on the streets, too, since our apartment was commensurate with my job).

We considered various solutions. We even (briefly) entertained the idea of going home and trying our luck there. But the hand of fate intervened, in the form of a generous benefactor (one of my coworkers, whom I'll nickname Jules). Jules appointed himself my unofficial agent, and assiduously combed the classifieds in the Korea Herald on my behalf. Lo and behold, he found something: an assistant professorship (one-year contract, non-tenure track) at Sejong University, in the Gwangjin borough of eastern Seoul. What the heck, I thought. I'll go for it. So I applied.

I was contacted a short time later and asked to come in for an interview. Sejong University sits across the street from Children's Grand Park, an enormous amusement park-cum-zoo where urban kids frolic on the weekends. The park is on the same subway line as Bucheon (Line 7), but it's 29 stops away. This takes 60-70 minutes. To get to Gwangjin on time for my interview, I had to abandon my usual languorous paradigm and get up at 7:30 a.m. to shower and shave. I rode in and had the interview. It was disastrous, or so I thought. I had zero experience teaching at the university level. My career as an educator extended to two nonconsecutive years of elementary and middle-school students in two after-school academies, and no further. I felt I had nothing to bring to the table, and began to wonder at how stupid I'd been to apply. When the interview was over, I slunk from the room and crawled off the campus.

You may imagine my surprise when, two weeks later, I received a phone call during my lunch break. I was hired. I was to be an assistant professor (조교수) of English for the 2013 academic year, which would begin on March 4. In the meantime, there was an orientation for new teachers on Thursday, February 21, and a general staff meeting the following Monday. Both of these required hour-long rides into eastern Seoul, and a lot of scrambling to return to Bucheon in time for my first class at my soon-to-be-former hagwon. It was stressful and not a little intimidating, but it was exciting as well. I would be exchanging a thankless, drudge-filled academy job for a genuine, honest-to-God teaching position with full benefits, six weeks' summer and winter vacation, 15 hours a week (plus four mandatory office hours).

The only hard part was leaving Bucheon. I'd come to love the community: the broad avenues, the green trees, the plentiful parks, the abundant public transportation and the wealth of shopping and eating venues. Not to mention that our apartment there was spacious, bright and airy. We'd be moving to a three-story brick villa that had to be twice as old as Estima Officetel, and whose rooms were tiny and dark, if considerably more airtight.

Fortunately Miss H and I had a three-day weekend to finish packing and physically move. March 1-3 was a commemoration of the Samil Movement, or Three-Day Movement (the first organized and voluble protest against Japanese colonial rule), which took place in 1919. It was violently put down by the Japanese military, and many Korean protesters were killed or sent to the infamous Seodaemun Prison. A dozen Korean flags fluttered in the windows of the apartment complex behind Estima as Heather and I sweated to pack all our things. In all, our worldly possessions amounted to new fewer than 45 small- and medium-size cardboard boxes. Where had it all come from?

Then the mover arrived. Miss H had arranged for him. He was actually the business partner of the man who was supposed to move us, but since the man himself was tied up in prior engagements,  his partner came in his stead. He proved to be a wiry old Korean man with crooked teeth who shifted boxes like they were feather pillows. In less than 40 minutes our things had been transferred from Room 908 to the basement level, where the moving truck (a humble Kia Bongo III) awaited. Little by little our precious boxes, lamps, shelves and folding chairs were stacked aboard and secured with a cargo net. Miss H took our cat, Charlie, and a backpack full of valuables with her on the subway to endure the hour-long ride to our new apartment. Our new home was a block or two away from Gwangnaru Station on Line 5 (only three subway stops and one transfer from Children's Grand Park on Line 7). I rode in the Bongo with the old Korean man. An awkward silence persisted as we chugged along the Gangbyeonbuk Road (which straddles the northern shore of the Han River). I hunched forward in my seat, cradling my schoolbag in my lap and my backpack on my shins, watching the glowing skyscrapers of downtown Seoul on the left and the darkly glittering waters of the Han River on the right.

After half an hour, we reached the Gwangjin area. Thanks to an oversight on my part, I had written down the wrong address, and therefore our mover's dash-mounted GPS proved useless. Fortunately I had a rough idea of where the apartment was in relation to Gwangnaru Station, and I managed to direct the mover there after a delay of only 20 minutes. Our new apartment was separated from the street by a meager six-step staircase. In less than half an hour the mover and I shifted all of the boxes and bulky items to the apartment floor. I made a quick dash to a nearby ATM and paid the man 100,000 Korean won for his troubles. Then he drove off. Miss H arrived some 15 minutes later, and the three of us (Charlie, Miss H and I) bunked down as best we could amid the detritus of our material lifestyle.

And that was the move. Sometime in the next few days I'll tell you about my first week as a professor.

Stay tuned...

long story short...

Item One: The final week at my old hagwon was bittersweet, but not as bittersweet as the last time I departed a hagwon. There were some tears, some notes, some presents, but on the whole it was a painless separation. Just the way I like it.

Item Two: Miss H and I successfully moved ourselves, our cat, and a bazillion cardboard boxes (seriously, where did it all come from?) between our old apartment in Bucheon and our new apartment in eastern Seoul. This was accomplished with a few phone calls by Miss H, a Kia Bongo, and an old Korean man who spoke nary a word of English.

Item Three: I am now an assistant professor of English (contract position, non-tenure track) at Sejong University, Gwangjin-gu, Seoul. My first day was Monday, March 4.

I'd love to give you all the gory details of the last two weeks, and bring you up to speed on the myriad intervening developments, but I have no time. The Internet router has just been installed in this new apartment and I have to send an e-mail to the folks and grandparents and give them the skinny first. Then I'll jump off the bed, turn off the lamp (no more comfy armchair for me), put on my shoes, grab my keys (no more keypad door locks, either) and walk ten minutes down Gwangjang Street to Miss H's kindergarten, where I'll meet her at 6:40 p.m. and take her out for Chinese at a charming little place one street behind our villa.

But I'll get back to you, I promise. Details are coming. This weekend I hope to render at least three posts: departing Bucheon, becoming a professor, and moving in a foreign country, plus anything else that's relevant. I crave your indulgence for these interminable delays.

Bolaven blues

While the United States was distracted (and is still distracted, most likely) with Hurricane Isaac, we had a bit of meteorological excitement ourselves out here in Korea.

Typhoon Bolaven, to be exact.

                                                                                                                                                                                    courtesy of NASA

Now, I've never been in a hurricane. Nowhere close to it. I've never lived far enough south for hurricanes to be a factor in my life, any more so than a few gusts of wind and some giant raindrops. Floods and blizzards were the disasters of choice in North Dakota and Wyoming, and in California, you rarely have to worry about anything more serious than an earthquake. (I've slept through more earthquakes than I've actually witnessed.)

So when I turned on the weather reports and found out that the Korean peninsula was expecting a freakin' typhoon, I was rather excited. Late summer is the rainy season for this region, and we'd been deluged for the past couple of weeks. But I hadn't bargained for this.

All sorts of wild rumors were flying around at school. I was told that I should cover my plate-glass windows with newspaper and duct tape; this would strengthen them against the wind and prevent those of us inside the apartment from being diced up if they broke. This sounded bogus to me, but I did take some precautions. Miss H picked up some tape at the store. I sealed all the windows and the cabinet under the counter where the A/C unit is (don't ask). Being a veteran of desert windstorms, I felt that this at least would prevent moisture and debris from blowing in.

Alice (the head teacher on the second-floor building) informed us on Monday that we would have Tuesday off. Bolaven was expected to make landfall somewhere on the Chinese border sometime in the afternoon. We had little cause to celebrate; we would make up our Tuesday classes on Saturday. This was particularly grating as Miss H and I had planned to be on a southbound train to Busan right about then. Oh well, you can't struggle against nature. To be on the safe side, Miss H and I also laid in some supplies: extra liters of water, canned goods, and granola bars. We had no idea how bad Bolaven was expected to be.

As it turns out, it wasn't. Miss H and I spent Tuesday laying around and watching the storm, which, except for some rolling clouds, high winds and spitting rain, didn't amount to much. The wind was strong enough to rattle the windows and shake the lintel, but that was it. I even went out and took a walk and got some shots of the city. There were downed tree branches in the park, the black clouds boiled overhead, and the wind roared and yammered. But there was no rain, and there was still a respectable number of cars and even pedestrians out and about.

That evening Miss H and I went to Hyundai Department Store for some shopping and dinner. Inside the building it was as though nothing out of the ordinary was going on. I had some delicious sushi at my favorite (and only) sushi bar in the basement, and we went back home and went to bed.

Apparently it was bad everywhere but here in Bucheon. I saw news stories like this and this, which told me that central Seoul had gotten far worse winds, and that down on Jeju Island there were even some deaths (mostly Chinese fishermen, poor souls). Up north, though, was where Bolaven made landfall. I can only imagine how bad things must've been. Crops blown away, flimsy houses knocked over, and no infrastructure or Red Cross or state aid to help the poor people in trouble. Deplorable.

And to make matters worse, now I gotta work Saturday.

Shazbot.

Dostoevsky revisited

As none of you are currently aware, I just finished rereading Fyodor Dostoevsky's Notes from Underground. It is and shall remain one of my favorite books of any genre. For the longest time I was never able to say exactly why. It resonated with me, certainly; I could relate to the corrosive, self-deprecating tailspin of insecurity and the crippling, isolating lack of self-confidence. (It was the hallmark of my school years—where, like Dostoevsky's unnamed protagonist, I looked upon my ant-brained classmates and their crude ambitions with disgust.) But thanks to Dostoevsky's evocative style, and the quality translation which preserved it, Notes from Underground interested me—compelled me—far more than any other work I read in school. The exact reason eluded me.

Then, on this third reading, more than six years after I first laid eyes on the novel, it hit me.

Dostoevsky hit the nail on the head.

He exposed a universal but uncomfortable truth.

With the jolting truthfulness which no other work has achieved so bluntly and plainly, Notes from Underground lays bare a portion of the human psyche which absolutely rules human interaction and individual ego. And yet, it is the most secretive, skulking, shameful part of us. It imparts a need unto our consciousness which we staunchly deny in public, but furtively—even subconsciously—seek to assuage.

And that need is, simply, the need to be recognized as a worthwhile human being. No, not even recognized—simply acknowledged. 

This is not the weirdest thing I want to tell you about tonight, though. It does have something to do with acknowledgement, rest assured. Listen to this:

I have not yet met the director of the academy where I work.

Weird, right? I've been there four months and I've only seen the guy in the corridors, or ensconced in his office. Mr. Rah is his name. At my first hagwon, the director, Mr. Hwang, met me at the airport, introduced himself, and did everything in his power to make my stay more comfortable. In the present day, Mr. Rah can't even be bothered to introduce himself or ask me how I'm doing. It makes a person feel mighty insignificant, let me tell you. I mean, I realize I'm not much more than chattel as far as he's concerned. I'm a warm body. A brain that know English. A mouth that can teach Korean children. A foreign name Mr. Rah can slap on a newsletter and send to potential customers.

Still, being reminded of that fact is unpleasant. Nay, cankerous.

Two weeks ago at work, Mr. Rah and I had...an encounter. You can't really label it as anything else. It was not a conversation, or even an exchange. The bell had rung for third period. I got up from my desk, grabbed my teaching materials, and sauntered into the hallway. Approaching me down this hallway was Mr. Rah himself, strolling along as though he owned the place. His mouth was set in a firm line. His thick body dominated the narrow space. His idle gaze swept the corridor. Our eyes met. There was no one behind me. We were alone in that passageway. The squeals of bleating children, the thunderous beat of their sneakers and sandals as they charged in through the main entrance, submerged into a pool of silence. The moment stretched into infinity.

With an internal monologue that would've made Notes from Underground's protagonist proud, I wondered what to do. I had been told that it was respectful to bow to Mr. Rah (in the Korean fashion, with a swift jerk of the head) upon seeing him. He was the Great and Beneficent Director and all. My mind and spirit rebelled against the idea. Why should I pay him his due as my employer, when he had done nothing to formally accept me as his employee? What did I owe him? "One good turn deserves another," they'd readily cry at me, but what if the inception of that goodwill is lacking altogether?

And, of course, I decided to comply. I lowered my head to him. I gave an almost spastic yank of my neck. My reluctance must have been painfully obvious. But I did it. Why not? After all, it couldn't hurt. It would force him to acknowledge me. He'd see my show of respect, the extension of goodwill, a selfless act of international cooperation. He'd be compelled—no, forced—to reciprocate. I knew the Koreans by now. They were bound by such laws as these. A cockroach living in Mr. Rah's pantry, eating his rice, could've jerked its head at him, and he would have been forced to bow back, just to calcify the relationship between benefactor and beneficiary. To have left such a gesture unanswered would have been unthinkable, anathema, contrary to millennia of cultural norms.

He didn't bow back.

Far from it. When my head came back up, his eyes had slid away from me, and were pointing purposefully down the hall, already forgetful of my presence. I might have been a dust mote wafting through the air. I was reminded, jarringly, of Aesop's story of the gnat and the bull. But then came the crowning humiliation. Without once looking over at me, Mr. Rah lifted his index finger and made a sort of twirling, hurry-up motion with it, indicating that I was loitering in the hallways and needed to get to class. The bell had rung mere seconds before. I was in the hallway, in the very act of stepping toward Room 203, materials in hand. And yet I received the "get to class, thou sluggard" treatment.  

I stood there for perhaps 5-10 seconds, stunned beyond belief. My mind had caved in. I could not conceive of it. The nerve! The impoliteness! The callousness! How rude! How crass! How impolitic!

And here is where I really channeled Dostoevsky's underground man again. Outwardly, I remained calm. Inwardly, I gnashed my teeth, foaming at the mouth in fury. I squirmed like a worm stuck with a pin. It was too much to bear. I hadn't been insulted; I had been ignored, which was a million times worse. If he'd stuck out his tongue at me as he'd passed, I'd have branded him a loony and contentedly passed the remainder of the day. But being ignored was indigestible, insoluble. I felt like hurling my books at him. Mentally, I stuck out my foot and tripped him as he walked past. I spat on him, hurled invectives at him, plotted the sweetest and vilest of revenges. I even went so far as to ask my coworkers in the staffroom whether intensive courses were voluntary or not. (Intensives, which will take place in August, mean an extra round of morning classes for us, as we metamorphose for a time into a full-blown cram school.) Upon learning that they were, I thought "Hang them! And hang Mr. Rah! I'll take a vacation that week!"

Later, over beers with my friends that night (again channeling the underground man) I calmed down. I mellowed out. In fact, I felt as though I had overreacted (and later regretted feeling this way, and gnashed my teeth again). I was persuaded to believe that Mr. Rah was an odd duck, who took funny turns, and liked to twirl his hands and snap his fingers when the mood took him. Perhaps he was strolling the halls with a sort of restrained but barely-containable jollity about him. I must have tweaked his sensibilities, triggered a reaction, loosened a brick in the emotive dike, and coaxed some strange gesture of gaiety from him. Later, when the beer had worn off, I saw that this was hogwash. One doesn't twirl his fingers with a deadpan expression on his face. Innocuous his gesture may have been, but it made me mad. It wasn't just a personal slight. I sensed some monstrous injustice in his actions, a base incorrectness, a gross discrepancy between zeitgeist and reality. With a wave of his hand, the director had epitomized the callous Korean (nay, Asian) corporate mindset, which holds that people on the lowest rung are mere bugs compared with the executives. They can be bullied, coerced, taken advantage of, and ignored in equal measure.

Miss H and I took a night cruise along the Han River last evening. As the ferryboat slid under bridges and past the twinkling lights of Seoul (one of the most intentional cities on Earth, as Dostoevsky might have written), we had occasion to meet an American couple. I'll call them Betty and George. They lived in Daegu, and taught at the U.S. military base. Betty had run a half-marathon in Seoul that morning, and George was part of a jazz ensemble, and played concerts and gigs around Korea. Still stung from my encounter with Mr. Rah, I asked George for his opinion of his employers and managers. Did they treat him like a commodity, or like a person? His answer gave me food for thought. He said that the greatest obstacle to proper business relations was the language barrier. The more English the Korean speaks—or the more Korean the foreigner speaks—the more human the relationship. Frostiness becomes friendliness, impersonality fades away, familiarity breeds cooperation and harmony and companionship. Learning the languages, he said, did wonders to improve the interrelation between employer and employee.

To that end, I have resolved to learn Korean to the very best of my ability. I'll lay in wait. I'll let Mr. Rah cruise along, master of his domain, comfortable in his position and his superiority. Then I'll rattle his cage. I'll knock the foundations out from under his castle. I'll be Dostoevsky's underground man, dressed in his finest clothing, going to slap Zverkov and challenge him to a duel. I'll invite myself into Mr. Rah's office, plonk myself down in a chair (maybe even his chair) and say, in flawless Korean, "Howdy boss-man, what's the good word today? You don't know me, because you've never bothered to meet me, but I'm one of your employees. Don't you think it's about time we had a confab and got to know each other?"

And, just like the underground man, I will probably never do it.

That's why I like Notes from Underground.

quiet down for a week or two

Recently it was announced that there's something called a naeshin week coming up at my hagwon. I haven't the slightest clue what "naeshin" means, but it has something to do with tests. The middle schoolers have big tests coming up. I don't mean SATs or ACTs or anything. This is a long, brutal week in May when the little rotters take a sort of assessment/achievement test to determine how well they've absorbed the endless miasma of knowledge siphoned into their heads by their teachers. These tests assess their chances of getting into a good university, acquiring high-paying jobs and supporting their parents in their leathery old age.

Anyway, during this upcoming week, the middle school students will be having cram sessions every night with the Korean teachers. That means we foreign teachers will have no middle schoolers to teach. However, we shall have to take up the slack with the elementary kids, whom the Korean teachers will be too busy to handle. So, we will have an increased course load during the early afternoons. Our own elementary classes will continue as normal, with lessons and such. But the classes we're subbing for will do things a bit differently. There will be a sort of "presentation class" where the students will be given a topic at the beginning of the week, distill it into a presentation, and deliver it at the end of the week. That should be intriguing. The topic will be "time travel"—if you had a time machine, where would you go? What would you change? How would this affect the future?

Following the increased afternoon course load, our evenings are largely vacant. From 6:15 p.m. onwards (7:45 on Tuesdays and Thursdays) I'm pretty much just lounging around.

Things get really interesting the week after this. This is called the "holding period." During this time the middle school students are off actually taking those big exams. They don't come to the academy at all. The Korean teachers go back to teaching elementary classes, and everything resumes as normal, sans the middle schoolers. This means that we'll have even fewer classes and be done even earlier. Think of how much novel-editing I'll get done during that span!

And now, because every good blog post needs a picture (so it'll look all fresh and appealing when it's down there in the "You might also like" zone), please take a moment to consider this:

Sunday basketball

There was a moment just now—a moment when I glanced out of my apartment window, into the wet night, and saw hundreds of likewise-lit windows swimming eerily at me through the rain and mist. It was though the air outside was really murky seawater, and this city sat at the bottom of the ocean, and miniature submarines scurried back and forth between airlocks, and at any moment a shark or a whale might swim by my window. In that moment, I stepped back and wondered "Am I really doing this?"

I don't know which has surprised me more: the fact that I'm back in Korea or the fact that I've slipped into the routine so smoothly and easily.

It was a rocky start, as you well know. There were delays. Hang-ups. Mess-ups. Hiccups. But they evened themselves out. No matter what this job has thrown at me, I've rallied and risen. In fact, I've gotten so comfortable lately that I'd dare to say it's a routine. It's not just the weekdays, either. Even my weekends have acquired a regimen. On Saturdays I usually go into Seoul, or shop or something. I venture forth from my cave, my manhole, and obtain the requisite supplies for the upcoming week. Revel in the freedom a weekend affords. Strike out independently. Explore a new corner of the city. Do something fun, you know.

Sundays are a bit more laid-back. Generally, around noon, I wander 300 yards down Gilju Road to a little park hidden among some stubby evergreens. There, my fellow expatriates and I test each other's skills on the basketball court. I'm grateful to report that I've gone from "Grade-A Suckage" to "Certifiable Acolyte" in the span of three weeks. I'm not making baskets reliably yet, and I can get hold of rebounds but not sink them; still, I'm steadily improving. There's four or five of us who usually come: Peter, Jon, Andy, Martin, and most recently Stephanie. We warm up for half an hour shooting hoops or playing horse. Then we shoot for teams. This last Sunday we had enough people for three-on-three. Team captains picked their players (I will brag a bit here and say that I was one of those captains, by virtue of making the first basket). Then the game began in earnest. Half-court. Take-backs (if the ball hit the rim). Play to eleven. It was a fierce contest. We ducked, dove, dodged, hollered, sweated and slid, passing and dribbling and shooting. Goals were scored, desperate, jubilant, soul-affirming jump shots and layups. Everybody got a piece of the action. The humid air glowed with hot-blooded exultation, burning spirit and competitive fire—and a goodly dose of old-fashioned camaraderie.

Following basketball, the rest of my Sunday usually consists of reading, writing, laundry, cleaning, and other domestic pursuits, both leisurely and productive. Oh, and of course, a big dinner. I look forward to my Sunday dinners. I usually pull all the stops out and have multiple courses. And by that, I mean that I actually have side dishes with whatever entrée I've prepared. A couple of weeks ago it was bulgogi with fried garlic, kimchi and marinated spring onions; the next week it was mushroom soup; and last Sunday, it was supposed to have been chicken fettucine alfredo, but it wound up being just chicken fried in oil with garlic, kimchi and spring onions (noticing a theme here?).

On Friday night I'm hosting a cooking class of sorts. The octopus I routinely buy at E-Mart has sparked several wild hypotheses among my coworkers. People have asked me what exactly I do with the octopus to prepare it. Dissatisfied with my own answer ("Take it home, boil it and eat it whole") I decided to paint myself in a more civilized light and prepare some proper octopi. And while I was at it, I thought I'd invite some of my coworkers to my apartment so they could watch, and sample the results. The recipe I've picked is called nakji bokkeum: stir-fried octopus with vegetables. It's a common dish, available in any halfway decent restaurant. There's even a TV-dinner version. The dish is spicy (a liberal amount of gochujang—pepper paste—goes into it) but full of vegetable and seafood flavors. With some artful preparation, I hope my coworkers and I will cook quickly, eat slowly, and have a lovely sip of something afterward. I'll let you know how it goes.

Apart from that, what more is there to tell? That I'm slowly carving my way through Joseph Conrad's Heart of Darkness? That I'm opening a second bank account on Thursday to wire money home more inexpensively? That Martin, Andy, Jon, Peter, Stephanie and I gathered at the pub late Sunday night to watch Manchester United trump Queen's Park on the telly? That Miss H is still anxiously awaiting her paperwork, and I am still anxiously awaiting her?

All those things would be true. Years from now I shall write a little book about Korea. Its joys, its sorrows, its gifts, its privations. Only my comrades-in-arms shall understand it.

the Postman, as seen on TV

Well, after an amazingly fast week at work, Saturday (March 30) rolled around. It was time for another balloon launch with North Korea Peace. I arose at the customary 6:45 a.m., met up with everybody at the bus station, and took a quick detour to roust Jon out of bed. Then we rode a succession of rattling buses, shaking subway trains and ludicrous taxicabs to the Hamilton Hotel in Itaewon. The whole affair went down largely as before, only with a great deal more people. Far more expatriates turned up this time than last time, which was quite gratifying to see. There were a lot of cameras around too. The Associated Press attended as usual, but this time a documentary filmmaker came along, as did a Reuters reporter and her cameraman. And guess who volunteered to get some face time?

That's right. Your humble correspondent.

Sunny asked us if anybody wanted to get in front of the camera. She was met with a dull silence. Not a single hand went up. Continuing my campaign to get myself un-shy and commence living dangerously, I raised my hand and said "Sure." I took off my sunglasses, pushed my hat off my forehead, and gave Reuters the straight dope.

Then I went back to my apartment for a quick nap before I met A. Remember A? My old buddy from Geoje Island? Did I fail to mention he's back in Korea now? Teaching in Busan? Yeah, he is. He'd come up to Seoul on the KTX the day before, and was now partying hearty in Hongdae. So I met up with him and we had a high old time. I was in such a state the next morning I couldn't even drag myself to the park for expatriate basketball.

I'm knee-deep in another workweek now (complete with level tests to grade and student evaluations to write). Plans for the ensuing weekend are still nascent, but I shall be penetrating Seoul again ("Penetrating Soul" would be a good name for a rock band) to go to Costco. Yes, they have a Costco in Korea. Several, in fact. I've heard they're excellent places to get foreign food and miscellaneous supplies. There are shadowy rumors going 'round that they have egg-crate mattress pads, and my poor back would like one of those as soon as possible.

Now, I don't know if I mentioned this earlier...

...but I have had a massive, repeat, MASSIVE epiphany about my novel. Suddenly it's all become clear to me: how to improve it, how to rewrite it, how to make it sizzle and pop. And I'm in the process of doing so right now. You thought the last overhaul was major? No way. This one's humongous. This sucker's going to be triple its former size by the time I'm through. I'm pretty much taking the plots of the four sequels I had planned and sticking them into the first book, largely intact. I'm introducing new characters (main and secondary) and a whole host of new adventures and dangers and plot developments. Thought you might like to know. I'll probably do a more detailed post about this later.

Well, I have a to-do list to get through this morning, so I'll let you go. I have to open a second bank account (at a different bank) so I can send money home on the cheap, and I've heard there's a liquor store a couple of blocks west of my apartment building. Speaking of shadowy rumors...I think I'll head over for a look and see if it's really there.

This is the (now televised!) Postman, signing off.

P.S. I'm getting the hang of cooking for myself, too. This is my typical Sunday meal. Boiled octopus and oysters. Seafood is so cheap in Korea. I made this for less than $10. This could get to be a habit...

a rocky start

That's something of an understatement. I'm sure there've been whitewater rafters who've had a less rocky than I have.

First of all, I got hit with a double-whammy when I arrived. My predecessor left her position one month before the semester ended, so I was dumped into the middle of her courses with only her notes to go on. Then, a scant month later, the new semester began: and with it, shorter (and more numerous) class periods and an entirely new set of textbooks. These materials took a while to learn (in fact, we're still receiving training on them, six weeks after my arrival). Add in two weeks' worth of jet lag, an apartment that was filthy when I moved in, a month-long wait for my first paycheck, technical difficulties with my Internet and bank account, and the absolute hell of being without my other half, and you'll begin to understand what I've been going through.

Honestly, it seems as if some new catastrophe rips across the landscape every week. First my passbook didn't work (a sort of checkbook which is inserted bodily into the ATM machine to withdraw cash; automatically balances itself!). Then my check card, when it came, was also inoperable. Both these crises necessitated trips to the bank to explain my problems in pidgin English, and fill out more forms. My Internet was installed successfully. But then I left the router unplugged overnight to prevent the other tenants from siphoning the unsecured network. The router reset itself. I had to call the service provider, KT (which fortunately has an English help line) and sort that mess out. I also got a cell phone this time around. I procured one in decent shape from a coworker, but I had to drag one of my Korean colleagues along to the shop so he could translate for me. I felt rather embarrassed, but at least there were no miscommunications or screw-ups.

Things at work have been hectic as well. I've forgotten how easy it is to accidentally breach cross-cultural etiquette in Korea. My original schedule for this new semester gave me eight classes on Thursdays. This is a full load, which management would rather avoid. So I spoke to my supervisor about it. I was informed that the class had been changed, and amended my schedule properly. However, because I failed to double-check the new master schedule I had been given, I didn't realize that another of my classes had been changed as well (from Thursday to Tuesday). As a result, I wound up missing it. The students just sat around for 45 minutes. This created quite a stir. I was ranked out publicly in the staff room. The remedial class was slated for Thursday, which meant that, for one day only, I really did have to teach eight classes in a day (exhausting). Compounding the matter, the Korean supervisor chose to call me on the carpet at the very moment when I was collecting my things for my next class, which would begin in less than 90 seconds. I could hardly give him my full attention while I was scrambling around gathering pens, markers, an eraser and textbooks. He interpreted my behavior as flippancy and disrespect, and reported me. I was not disciplined, but the incident has remained a black stain on my time here nonetheless.

Things were not this complicated the last time around.

Last time I just moved into my apartment, bought some food, went to work, learned how to teach, got a router installed, and spent one glorious year whooping it up in K-Land.

I'd like to say something inspirational and hopeful here, but I can't think of a blessed thing. It's a glorious, cool, breezy, sunny spring day (with scattered clouds), and a wonderful moist smell in the air from the day-long drizzle we had yesterday. I need to tidy up this apartment before the KT repairman arrives. He's installing a new router (one with an actual password on it). Then I think I'll take a nice stroll over to the other side of Jungang Park and try to find this street market everyone's been talking about. And flirt with Miss H online a little bit. I'll let you know how it all works out.

The Postman signs off.