Brendan's Apartment and Kelly's School Field Trip

So, this is a pretty picture heavy post but here we are...

BRENDAN'S APARTMENT:

Here is the view of Brendan's Apartment from the front door. It almost looks like amidget lives there!

Looking back at the front door at the shoe closet and trash sorting area..

Directly to your left when you enter is the "kitchen." Brendan is the only person I know with and oven. (It's the red thing.)

Looking back the the rest of the apartment from the kitchen. It's more like a glorified dorm room.

View of the closet and bathroom door. By the way, all of the purple bedding and wallpaper ame with the place.

The desk.

The bathroom.

His sweet shower with the rain shower head. You'll note that there is no seperate shower here, just a drain in the floor.

A look back at the book shelf.

KELLY'S FIELD TRIP

And now, my school field trip. The students took a break after exam week was over and took a field trip to the park. Their assignment? Paint a watercolor landscape. These are some of the winners during the judging process.

A temple at the park.

That bell is really old and used to hang in a monastery.

Korean museum that was next to the park. If you look in the distance you can see Seoul tower, which is their version of Seattle's space needle.

Two teachers "exercising" by swinging back and forth on these things.

One of these things is not like the others...

Some leaves are changing!

Students eating lunch. Skinny jeans are in here.

Students drawing in a pagoda.

This is what 500 asian high school girls look like.

Brendan's blog entry #3

A Korean, an Irishman, and a German walk into a kitchen, though none of them can cook. What do they make, you ask? My lunch today. A smorgasbord of heavenly delights, such as: rice (Korean), potatoes in a clear broth with seaweed (Irish, K), some sort of cross between Irish bacon & corned beef (I), and kimchi (spicy cabbage) that tasted of sauerkraut (German, K). Thank God I am sick, or I would have had no excuse not to eat it.

In my classes the students were allowed to pick an English name because there is no way I would remember their real name. Because of this I actually yell on a daily basis things like (names in bold):

l “Fire! Dog! Class is up front.

l “Superman and Human, please close your books!”

l “Wake up Dorito”

l “PC Room and Randy Johnson, please sit down”

l “Pain and Power Ranger, stop talking!”

l “Better Cruiser, give Sun Chip his eraser”

l “Musician, can you ask Yoshi ‘How are you doing?’”

l “Kareem (I named him), what’s #2?”

l “Yes, Cherry and Sickly, you can go to the bathroom.”

l “Terminator, turn around!”

l “Tank, stop!”

l “Mario, can you ask White Mario ‘How was your weekend?’”

DMZ

We're going to the DMZ on Saturday! (Demilitarized Zone) Hopefully we won't get sniped.

Finally took at trip to Costco on Saturday. Bought $300 worth of stuff. We were there for over 3 hours. It's cool because I finally have cheetos (enough to last for the rest of the year.) We also got some Australian steaks, mustard, sushi, Ritz, Dr Pepper, Gatorade, Budweiser, paper towels...the list goes on. We got up to the cash register and found out that they only accept Samsung cards. Who knew? I had never heard of Samsung cards in my life. It makes sense though, considering Samsung and LG make and own everything in this country. So, I got to hold up the line while Brendan made a mad dash for the ATM which, of course, was at the other end of the store. Good times. Then there was the dilemma of getting all of our purchases home without a car. I did not think about this. I finally flagged down a cab driver who was nice enough to block traffic while we loaded up his cab. He even drove us straight to our front door and helped unload the car. Classy.

Brendan is sick. Working with Elementary school children, "the gift that keeps on giving." Don't worry it's PROBABLY not the swine flu. He's taking alot of Vitamin C and the medicine that the pharmacist gave him. We have no idea what said medicine is, by the way.

I have pictures to load of our past weekend fun but, my camera cord is at my apartment and I haven't been there in over a week. Maybe tomorrow?

Kelly's haircut

So, after a long delay, I finally got up the nerve to walk into a hair salon and get my haircut! There were communication problems, Yes. But, there were also pictures. I knew I wanted bangs and to keeps it long. I ended up with a very Korean style haircut that I don't hate. What do you think? Brendan hates it, I think. The people I work with love it, but they're Korean. Anyway, I haven't had bangs since I was about 10 so I thought it was time for a change.

Before:

After:

Food and Brendan's Haircut

Last night we finally found a place where we can eat dinner for less than $5 a person. Neither of us can remember the name of the place. But we both got a dish to share and they gave us like 7 side dishes and the total meal came out to about 9 bucks. I continued my streak of ordering the worst thing on the menu while Brendan continued to order as much meat as possible. As long as we keep going to restaurants with pictures on the menu, this will probably happen. Brendan ordered this spicy pork stew. It was really great. Usually, when you order a hot dish, they will bring it to your table in the pan it was prepared in with a little cookstove style burner. Then your meal can happily boil away while you eat small portions of it. Last night was no exception. I, on the other hand, ordered this noodle dish with radish, cucumber and kimchi in it that came, I kid you not, floating in water and larger chunks of ice. Why does this always happen to me?

Today we went to Dos Tacos for lunch. It's cheap and tasty. Brendan says it's better than Chipotle. It's not easy on the stomach though.

Tonight, we are going to meet some friends at a place called Monkey Beach. It's a giant bar with fire dancers and drinks that come in buckets. Exciting.

And now, without further adieu... Brendan's Haircut.

BEFORE:

AFTER:

Cabin Fever and Commuting

Brendan has promised to update in the near future. I wouldn't get my hopes up if I were you. Perhaps if I fill this post with misinformation he will feel the need to post and correct what I write again.

My students are currently taking mid-term exams, so I don't have to teach this week or next. Unfortunately, I still have to show up to work. This results in me sitting in the office all day surfing the internet. There are other people in my office as well, 10 to be exact, but they mostly just speak Korean. So, I just surf all day and almost never speak. Therefore, when people do actually talk to me, I get very excited and end up sounding like a moron. Luckily, Koreans can't detect (Moronity?) I have however, conducted a very awkward conversation with one of my (American) neighbors and written all of my emails in pirate language today.

Tomorrow I am going to some useless 2-day training seminar on how to work with your co-teachers. It is useless for 2 reasons: 1. I already have awesome co-teachers. 2. The people running the seminar are the same boneheads that ran our orientation, and I will never get that week of my life back. Oh well, at least i'm not teaching. 

Well, Fate has proven me wrong. Brendan just emailed me a post.

The public is clamoring; so here it is folks, Brendan’s 2^nd post:

 

I take the bus to work everyday. Awesome, I know. I love the 10-20 high school students who get on the stop before I get off in the morning, and then proceed to block the doorway and do their best from letting me leave the vehicle. Oh so many elbows have been thrown into the arms, chests, and heads of little bastard kids and wicked adjumas (old Korean hags).

 

Also, apparently it’s extremely difficult to get a job driving a bus. You have to be able to scream obscenities while riding the tail of someone who cut you off, only to slam on the brakes and send everyone skyrocketing to the front of the bus. And everything is a race, so you have to be flooring it the entire time. Luke should apply. (Lol...This is kelly)

 

Additionally, bus drivers cannot be intimidated by something as inconsequential as a red light, or pedestrians crossing immediately in front of the bus. I cannot count the number of times a bus I’ve been traveling on has just cruised through a red at 30-40 mph. And I’m not talking about “not going to make it before yellow turns, but not braking, either” red light running. No, “it’s been red for a minute, some stupid crosswalk has the right of way, but I’m racing bus #2211, and I can’t give him the chance of catching up.”

 

Two busses run the same route, at least before splitting up right after my school stop. I get on at the last/first stop in that direction, and #3 & #2211 race out of the gates, refusing to wait for people at that pickup. Whoever is behind will tend to skip the 2^nd stop, where the leader is idling, instead deciding to cross over the double yellow for the chance to make their move, oncoming traffic and school children be damned. This defensive-style driving continues until I leap out of the bus, which doesn’t have enough time to completely stop while letting me off.

Saturday, in the park, I think it was the 10th of October

Click on pics for close-ups.

Here we have a weird Korean playground. Brendan was hoping to see children climb up into the arm and then fall to certain death.

Fear and loathing in Korea part I (look at the bridge.)

Fear and loathing in Korea part II.

If you look closely, you can see the deer wading through the stream.

Feed Me!

Obligatory tourist photo.

Buck

The bicycle built for two is quite popular here.

My favorite picture!

Wow, in retrospect, this was unnecessary. I am lame.

Car carousel! Want your car to have fun while you're away? Take it for a ride.

...and on the seventh day, God made pork. This painting is found in the entrance of a Korean BBQ (as in Korean grilled BBQ, not southern pulled pork BBQ).

This is Brendan now. To clarify, last week we had hot, creamy tofu with sesame DRESSING, not oil. Also, on the indian night, which was fantastic, we had chicken TANDOORI, not satay. Kelly despises me for adding this because I "am an asshole".

Chuseok

Yes, I know I haven't written in a long time. I'm a very important person and it's hard for me to find time to sit down and write things.

Right now Brendan is making dinner. We're having baked chicken with onions, kimchi, rice with seaweed wrappers and tofu in sesame oil. No, really, don't be so jealous. I know this all sounds wonderful to you. Actually it is all good.

My ankle is getting better. I still wear a brace every day, but today I actually ran to catch the subway. I think that's a good sign.

We just had a 4 day weekend. It was Chuseok, the Korean Thanksgiving. It's also a day when they honor their dead ancestors. I didn't honor any dead ancestors but I did celebrate by sleeping. A lot. We also went to a place in the city called Insadong. It's an older part of the city. They have a pretty awesome stream that I will post p0ictures of. We also saw a statue of a famous general in the Josan dynasty. He was a pretty formidable looking guy. Brendan is trying the tell me the exact name of the place we went. Apparently it sounds like qhuang-wong- whatever. It was nice to see another part of the city, and you can see the mountains very nicely there.

We also made some new friends last week when we went to a Thursday night Trivia. A couple named Kendall and Richard. They teach at a University here and have been working in Korea off and on for...9 years. He's from New Zealand and she is from Texas. They were happy to have us on their team because i'm full of useless knowledge and Brendan knows everything.

I'm having my after school class make a movie so that I don't have to teach them anything. They have decided to make High School Musical. Despite the fact that they are all girls, and that they are all Korean and they don't speak English very well, I think that they're doing a pretty good job. I was hoping to use my video camera to film them, but it refuses to work. It currently just asks me to eject the tape and when I attempt to retrieve said tape it refuses that give it to me. Make up your mind video camera! Brendan tried to fix it, but I think he broke it some more. Now it just makes this whiney beeepy noise when I turn it on. Anyway, thank God my camera has video recording on it.

Brendan wants me to tell you about some of the good food that we've been having. The other night we went out to an Indian Restaurant and got some wonderful vittles. In my opinion there wasn't enough of it, but it was really good. We had Chicken Satay, a salad with purple dressing, Lamb Curry, Samosas and Garlic Nan. It was great. The place only had like 10 tables and was rocking a decidedly Urban/Modern/Garbage can decor. For some reason our waiter laughed at us. That seems to happen quite a bit here.

We also had some tomatoes with mozzarella and olive oil. No basil, but still delicious. I have to say that their tomatoes might be better than our tomatoes, and their apples and pears are huge! The size of a baby's head. I'm not kidding.

Last night we were wandering around for a while looking for a restaurant with an English menu, or at least pictures, and we finally settled on a thai restaurant that didn't seem to have either. But it's Thai right? It has to be good. Much to my surprise, when the menu arrived it had English AND pictures. What a delight. I don't remember exactly what we had, but Kelly like.

That's the thing about Korea, one of the things I really miss is going to a restaurant, sitting down for a meal and thinking, "What am I craving today?" We can't do that here. Everything you order is a guess. Even if you know what it is you are ordering and aren't just blindly pointing at something on the menu (which we have done) you never know if it's going to be anything like you are assuming. Ordering is like a mine field. Will you end up with an entire cooked fish, head and all? Or perhaps sauteed spam? Maybe even chicken butt. At school the food is buffet style, that is where I try to strategize my portions. If i'm looking down the line and seeing a lot legs or tentacles, i'm just going to pile a bit more rice on my plate today thank you very much. Of course there are downfalls to this strategy. Sometimes I mistake one dish for another and end up eating a heaping pile of, let's say, pig fat and "mushy starchy thing" that I thought was beef stew. Then i'm missing out on the candied anchovies which are actually delicious. I have also thought I was putting a green olive in my mouth which turned out to be a hard-boiled quails egg soaked in soy sauce. I guess you live and learn.