미국에서

I'm in America.

Long story short, I needed to see my grandmother before the cancer takes her, I needed to mourn my friend who suddenly died on March 17th, I needed to meet my brand new niece, and I needed to get away from a job that turned out to be far less honest than I had originally thought.

Resigning was traumatic; leaving was stressful. This wasn't how I wanted to come back.

But I'm comforted by the idea that this doesn't have to be the end. That someday I'll return and live in wonderful Korea again. That next time, I'll come home on my own terms, satisfied with my experience in Korea and the outlook of my life.

But for now, I'm still reeling, and I'll always miss some of the best friends I ever made.

FYI

Just so you know, I've been trying for some time now to get Bloggeroid (the app I use to post from my mobile phone) to publish a blog post I made with pictures from an adventure I had Thursday.  For some reason it always fails.  It may be time for me to find another app to try...sadly, all my pictures are on my phone, so posting from my computer is a pain.  (I as of yet haven't found any efficient way to transfer photos from my phone to my computer, because it insists on scanning all of them each time I connect my phone to my computer, and I have almost 3000 pictures on my phone.)  Once I figure something out, though, I hope to get more posts up here again.

The Follow-Up (Salad)

Remember the extras I had while making this dinner?

Here's the salad that I made, along with the ham sandwich and the apple I ate with it for breakfast yesterday:



I think I need to do all this more often.

(Side note: I still haven't seen any Ranch here, but they do have Thousand Island, which works out for me, since it's my favorite salad dressing.)

Socks My Students Gave Me

Cute, don't you think? And soft. They're super soft.

Another Solid, Satisfying Meal from Scratch

I decided to whip up something new tonight. Unfortunately, the “one carrot to one potato” ratio turned out to be quite lopsided.



It's alright, though. I decided to save some of the carrot to put in a fresh salad in the morning. To that end, behold my ever-improving multi-tasking skills (boiling an egg for said breakfast while cooking chicken for said dinner)!



Meanwhile, the veggies wait their turn:



First the potatoes...



...then the carrots.



Like everything that I've concocted here, it tastes much better than it looks.



I overcooked the meat and undercooked the carrots and potatoes, but that's certainly the preferable imbalance out of the possibilities. Eating the chunks of carrot between bites of blander things even made the carrots taste all sweet inside my mouth. So nice.

Apparenty All Women Find This Irresistable

I succumbed to gender stereotyping and got the salad bar tonight.

The Airbase

I went to the U.S. Airbase for the first time yesterday. It was totally surreal.

The last time I'd seen so many Americans or heard so much English must have been back in America, over a year ago.

I was struck by how familiar it felt, too, though. So many of the buildings reminded me of the base I frequented in Germany when I was a kid.

The BX here had a stand with comic books, even Sonic the Hedgehog, which I used to buy in the mid-90's at Rhein Main. It had shoes just like Walmart and NFL apparel.

The food court even had Anthony's Pizza, which we ate at a few times in Germany, too. There was no Frank's Franks, but there was a Taco Bell!

And the money...the money was all green. The prices were in U.S. dollars and for the first time in over a year I saw all kinds of U.S. bills.

I ate at a buffet and immediately remembered upon entering that many restaurants in America have carpeting. I hadn't even known that I'd forgotten that until I went there yesterday. Korean restaurants just have tile or wooden floors.

The restroom on base had hot water and no trash can by the toilet - because you can flush toilet paper! In Korea the toilets are high-tech - some even have heated seats - but most restrooms aren't equipped to handle flushing paper down the toilet. Also, for some reason, most bathrooms in Korea aren't heated. That includes the water. Let me tell you, washing your hands in a public restroom in the winter here is anything but fun! And the base restroom had both paper towels and a hot air dryer. Many bathrooms in Korea have no way to dry your hands.

I was super fascinated by everything I saw yesterday and hope I can go back again. I would love to eat at Taco Bell next time!

New Address

So, by now I've been at my new job for a week. I watched for three days and taught for two. I'm still getting the hang of things.

But I did find out the address of my new school, and I did successfully receive a package there just yesterday, so I can vouch that it's a valid address.

I'll give it to my parents, and any of you who know me in real life may feel free either to ask them or to e-mail me directly. I love getting mail, so please feel free to write!

Making “Toasts”

This is what I made for breakfast today.

I want to say I'll quote my dad on this, although he hasn't actually said it yet. But I'll take the liberty of quoting him anyway (or is that artistic/literary license?), because I'm pretty sure he would say something just like this.

“What a bunch of cute, wee little French toasts!”



But now the question is...would he capitalize that F or not?

What Sweet Hearts!

Remember the girl who gave me this?

Well! On Sunday she gave me these:



And oh my...you wouldn't believe how good they were even if I got it notarized and apostilled. Wow!

Needless to say, none of them are left.

All Things New

So on Friday I moved into my new apartment. Friday night and all day today (Saturday) I cleaned and ran errands to get the stuff I needed.

I count today as a success, because last night I slept with the sheets I'd brought from America, my flannel shirt as a pillow, and no blankets. But tonight I get to sleep in this:



This morning I took a shower with no shower curtain, but tomorrow I'll have this:



And today I had no way of heating up my leftovers, but tomorrow I'll have this:



I still need to sweep and mop some more, and then I need to finish unpacking all my stuff, but I think I got a lot done today and I feel good.

I've Been Here a Year

Wow. This year has just flown by.

Tonight I stayed up too late packing. Tomorrow is my last day at my current job. Monday I start work at my new academy. Everything's changing so fast.

This is my last night in this apartment, and already I feel homesick for it. I never realized how much I thought of it as home until I finally tried to sleep at 2 a.m. after packing far too long. Suddenly my bed's so comfortable, this apartment so familiar.

I knew I'd miss the kids, the other teachers...but I don't think that I ever realized how much I've come to feel at home right here.

As strange as it may sound, I almost feel like moving across the street this week is somehow harder than moving across the world last year.

Maybe I've finally found a place to settle down and stay a while.

A Doldrum-Themed Park

Did I mention the zoo in Jeonju has an amusement park attached?

Okay, so maybe there aren't even a dozen rides, and maybe it looks a little like a run-down carnival no one remembered to pack up, but my friend and I still managed to have fun.



We tried the Sky Cycle, where you pedal around an elevated track around the park, the carousel (which was by far my favorite), the swan boat ride, and the ferris wheel.

I wondered how the swan boat ride would work, since the water underneath was clearly frozen.

Well, as it turns out, the boats don't even touch the water, so its status was of no consequence:



I enjoyed the views from the ferris wheel, though. We had some great sights of the park...







...and beyond.

The Wild Side of Jeonbuk Province

The Tuesday after Seollal, my good friend and I went to the zoo in Jeonju.



Upon entering, we were greeted by this lovely peacock,



which was actually quite aesthetically impressive compared to some of the decorative constructions we saw later:



We also saw some real live angry birds (and others who might have just been numb from the icy cold):











There was a camel and a zebra,





and a tiger who seemed to roar a lot when we weren't near enough to see it:



No one ever recommends seeing this zoo. Why?

My Korean coworker told me that the huge theme park in Korea, Everland, has an attraction with wild animals. When the animals get sick or old, she said, they send them to the zoo in Jeonju.

My Canadian coworker went himself one day. When I asked if he'd go with me, he totally refused: “That place is just depressing!”

So when my friend and I saw this elephant, seeming to smile and dance for us, I resolved to tell my Canadian coworker about it:



“We saw at least one happy animal!” I said.

“It's not happy!” he replied. “It's just doing what it was trained to do, perform while people watch.”

Maybe he's right. But I still had a good time. It's a far cry from the zoo in Washington, DC, but I saw six tigers in Jeonju, and the tigers are never out when I go to DC. That's got to count for something!

Panda Cream: A Parting Gift

It's my last week at SLP, and today I came in to find a wonderful surprise on my desk:



Inside was a truly touching letter and a cute and fitting gift:



This adorable box contained an even more adorable panda, which contained soft-smelling hand cream.



Not too strong, not too greasy. Exactly what I need in sub-zero high-winds winter.

I'm gonna miss some of these kids!

A Most Satisfying Gift

This week a nice girl at my church gave me an extraordinary present.

She'd sewn it both with a machine and by hand, and stuffed it full of rice. She even offered it to me with an adorable little bow.



It functions much the same as my mother's rice-filled sock back home, which makes me wonder why on earth I didn't think to try it on my own, seeing as there's certainly no shortages of either socks or rice out here.

Just pop it in the microwave and bingo! Your own personal source of reusable heat.

I slept with it last night, and I have to say that it's the warmest sleep I've gotten here this winter. The weather's been at more than ten below freezing lately - and that's not counting windchill - so this is a really timely gift.

"I Go To, Too!"

It's a good thing my boss didn't ask me to sign a renewal contract before Christmas, because I would have said yes.  The stress of preparing for the Winter Festival, which made me not even want Christmas to come at all except that it would signify that all that work would end, and the realization that my life at work would always become busier still and never less, brought me to the recognition that I needed to find a different job.  I still love Gunsan, so I wanted to stay here, but I needed a healthier place to work.

As it happens, my church has an English school as well, and they were hoping I would work there.  For a couple weeks leading up to Christmas I'd begun to realize that that was the right decision to make, and my wonderful excursion with my pastor, his wife, and others on Christmas Sunday brought exactly the confirmation I needed to know it was the right decision.

So I'll be in Korea for at least another year (I hope for more), but I'll be starting work at a new school and soon I'll be moving to a new apartment.  I'm both nervous and excited, but I know it will work out, because I know this choice is right.

Today I broke the news to my kindergarten class, because my last day with them is the 10th.  And one of my favorite students, who used to be so bad but has become so good, looked up at me with his eyes all wide and serious, the way they get when he wants me to know (or think, in cases when he's done something wrong) that he means business.  His voice was shakier than usual and had that little waver in it like when I'm about to send him out of the classroom and he's suddenly remorseful for not listening.  And he asked me, "Suzanne teacher, where to going?"

I told him where, and said that I will stay in Gunsan, that maybe I will see him again in Lotte Mart (I have run into his mother there before, in fact).

And he said, his voice about to break from all his earnesty, "I go to, too.  I go to, too!"

And I was both sad and touched.  I'm grateful to have a student--even one who had been quite a terror at the start--who is so attached to me that he wants to follow me wherever I may go.  I'm sad that he's so sad that I will leave.  I knew it would be hard for some of them, because they are small and have become very affectionate, so I wanted them to have some time to get used to the idea that I will leave and someone else will come.  But then I felt a little bad, because now some of them are very sad.  I still think this is better, though, rather than telling them so suddenly when they have no chance to say goodbye.  I hope I do see some of them again.  I certainly will miss them.  They are wonderful children, even the troublemakers, and I love all of them.

I hope whatever impact I have made on them has been a good one, whether large or small.

In Rare Form (or: Thundersnow!)

It's very bright tonight, mostly because the air is thick with vapor.  The clouds have been dumping rain, sleet, and snow on us all afternoon and evening.  At some point I heard a massive crack outside, which apparently was thunder.  I wondered if it were possible to have thunder in a snowstorm (I did look out the window just after the sound occurred, and it was pretty clearly snowing), and my Google search offered this Wikipedia result.

Apparently we're experiencing something known as "thundersnow," a fairly rare weather phenomenon.  How exciting to be able to witness something that's allegedly so (okay, relatively) rare!  It's clearly something to write home about (as I'm writing this post now), and maybe it'll be one of those boring stories I can spice up for my grandkids later.

Christmas in Korea

This post is way overdue (over a month late? I just have no excuse), so I apologize.

I was fully expecting Christmas to be just another day for me. I had no plans, no tree, no family in the country. I wasn't really bummed about it (in fact, I'd even opted not get a tree or decorate, although I could have), but I didn't anticipate it being something special. I even opened my Christmas presents early (thanks for shipping me stuff, guys!) because I figured it wouldn't matter if I did it on the day or not.

But I went to my church's Christmas Eve service and had a blast. A few of the other single folks and I hung out afterwards and didn't get back till 3 a.m. The snow was falling thick and we had snowball fights and ate ice cream (surprisingly popular in the winter here) and played pool.







The next day was a white Christmas. After the service and delicious meal, most people went home to be with their families, but the pastor said, “But the church is our family,” and took a bunch of us to Jeonju in the van.

The pastor and his wife, a couple and their middle-school-aged daughter, an older English teacher, my good Korean friend, and I were the participants in this adventure. Jeonju is about an hour away by bus or car, and is the capital of our province, Jeollabuk-do. It's known for bibimbap (a Korean food) and its traditional Hanok Village, now a major tourist attraction.

We went to this traditional village and explored and browsed the stands of handmade jewelry and wares. We went to a traditional Korean teahouse and took our shoes off on the outside step (right by the snow!) and settled into a warm room with heated floors and a low table.



There we enjoyed a nice array of snacks and tea, and I ordered the Flower Tea, at my pastor's wife's recommendation. It was so good, and both the sight of it and its aroma were so pleasantly delicious.







I have to say that this Christmas was far from boring - in fact, I'd rank it among the most exciting Christmases I've had. While I certainly would have loved to spend the holidays with family, this Christmas was definitely memorable.

Time to Read the Writing on the Wall

Just when you start to feel all proud of yourself for recognizing 남자 (man) and 여자 (woman) on restroom doors, a sign like this pops up and shows you that you really ought to learn 한글 (hangeul, the Korean writing system):



Fortunately, I learned before I came, so I know that it says Romeo and Juliet.

Lunar New Year's

Yesterday was 설날 (Seollal), or Lunar New Year's. I have a luxurious four-day weekend to celebrate, which I mostly spent cleaning, eating, and playing hidden object games.

On Sunday we ate 떡국 (ddeokguk), a special soup with sliced rice noodle in it, at my church to celebrate. According to Korean tradition, everyone turns one year older on Seollal - but only after you've eaten your ddeokguk.



It's 2012 and the year of the dark dragon. I won't endorse anything astrological, but I've gotta say this year sure does have a lot of hype already built for it. I wonder what these next months hold.

Sushi Buffet

On Saturday my coworker took me to a sushi buffet. For twenty bucks a head, you can eat all you want.

Colorful little dishes of sushi roll up to you on conveyor belts, and if you think one looks appealing, you just snatch it down.



There are cute little pots of wasabi and cups and teabags available for green tea.



Every couple chairs (the seats are diner bar-style) there's a hot water dispenser built into the counter.

I'll admit I was quite nervous, because I hadn't really had sushi before, and there was no way for me to tell what I was putting in my mouth. But I just shoveled them in without looking, and they were actually quite good.

I know I consumed fish eggs (bright orange and bright yellow) and tried eel (not at all as slimy as I'd thought that it would be, and actually something I might like to try again). I also had a couple with what looked like birdseed on them:



All in all, a great experience, and very filling. I'm so glad I went, and glad, too, that I wasn't scared to try new things.