Discipline Problem

Had my first discipline problem today. If this happened in America it would be called "Monday," or perhaps "Thursday," but in Korea this is more of a big deal b/c the kids are a little better behaved. Anyway, here's what happened.

The rule in Topia is no cell phones during class, or on the stairs while we're walking them down. Monday a student pulled out their cell phone in class, while I was teaching. I took it from her and then gave it back at the end of class. Then, today, the same student had her phone out while we were walking to the stairs to leave, and I told her to give it to me. She refused. I was shocked. I told her to give it to me again, and again she refused and started to walk away. I grabbed her by her backpack and pulled her back to me and again told her to give it to me. I ended up walking down all 6 flights of stairs with her in tow, and when we got to the front door of the building I let all the class leave except her. I tried to turn her around and take her to a head teacher but she tried to get away. I had to use both hands to turn her around and she ended up scratching my hand somehow.

That is quite unusual, at least at Topia, but I've heard from some other foreigners that their students aren't well-behaved. Perhaps I lucked out. Other than that, though, my students are good. She is usually a good student, but for some reason she wanted to be a problem this week.

Another fun thing happened today. I had to take a student's book away from them b/c he had drawn on his book. In the book was a picture of a girl looking up at her mom, and he drew arms on the girl giving the mom the middle finger. I mean, it was the funniest thing I'd seen all week, but of course I couldn't laugh at it. It's tough working with kids b/c I just wanna hang out with them and play, haha.

Electricity Bill Nearly Tripled!

My electricity bill nearly tripled this past month! I don't know if I can continue to afford living here. It's going to cost me almost $5 to keep my lights on...I just don't know anymore. And I still haven't received a water bill. I'm anticipating an astronomical amount, perhaps $10 or even $15. If anyone wants to help me, I'd really appreciate it. I can't sleep at night for thinking about how I'm going to pay my bills, it's getting bad. I'm considering prostitution...

Oh, and check out the American Stonehenge, intended to survive an apocalypse and help rebuild society: <http://www.wired.com/science/discoveries/magazine/17-05/ff_guidestones?currentPage=2>. Sorry, the link didn't come through on the original post.

Sci-Fi posting

Here's Nick Lomma's response to my ideas about cell phone technology. It's really long, but I think it's hilarious. If you like Nick's humor, you'll like this.

First off, I’m proud to have such friends with imagination, intellect, creativity, diction and syntax. Secondly, I think Jason should send an application and portfolio to Popular Science magazine as a writer, editor, contributor, or even researcher. You know, he could be the guy who gets his jewels hooked up to several joules in the name of science.

Jason -“So this is painless right?”
Taser Development Representative – “Uh...Yeah…, ok now everyone else put on your protective goggles!”

Having the type of technology that does one’s work for him is nothing new. Why do you think Eli Whitney invented the cotton gin? Well, ok, the cotton gin did someone else’s work for him, so that those other people could get back out into the fields to break their backs while Mr. Whitney sat inside and read. But hey, if you’re the only one on the farm who can read, why break your back?

But technology taking away our burdens… yeah, I think I see where you’re going with this. Imagine the world of Bob;

Bob wakes up at 6:54am every morning. He walks into his bathroom and sits down on the throne. No, not the porcelain throne, but the new electromagnetic pulse, inverse gravity formation throne, the bathroom of the future. You see when Bob walks into his bathroom, the room is completely empty. Bob yawns, stretches his arms above his head, turns and sits down. Into thin air. The Gravithrone activates and forms an invisible chair before his rump strikes the tile, seating him comfortably on electric magnet pulsations. Several tiles open in the wall, and out comes mechanical arms to do the bidding of human hygiene in the 21st century. You see the year is 2030 and ever since Emperor Obama quadrupled the taxation of white people in his 3rd term, advances in what’s known as “Lazy Science” traveled fathoms beyond the Welfare and Abortion initiatives of his 2nd term. You see there was more money to be shared among the populace, and what better way to spend it than on the Dr. Fry inventions?

But back to Bob’s morning; Bob’s shave and shower are completed seamlessly, so he walks into his closet to choose an outfit. He pauses briefly at the closet door for the biometric lock to allow him access. His fingerprint, retinal scan, voice recognition, microchip scan, signature sample and blood sample analysis sometimes get repetitive, as this same lock is on every door in his house, including the refrigerator, but the way Bob figures, he’s got plenty of blood and you can’t be too safe.

Bob’s wardrobe choices are somewhat limited this morning. You see his neighbor’s lawn sprinkler is on, and Bob’s perimeter weather scanner thinks it is raining outside, so his closet automatically limits his choices to shorts, a tank top, a rain jacket and rain boots. If Bob tries to open the clothes vault he could get impaled and electrocuted by one of many booby-traps, so he lets the closet do its thing. Bob wears a suit everyday to work, except when his neighbor’s sprinklers are on, then he usually has to buy a suit on his way to work. This isn’t too hard though, because the Gravithrone keeps good measurements of Bob’s dimensions and uploads them to his iphone daily. If the iphone is placed into his plastic raincoat pocket, it automatically senses the closet’s error and sends an order to Brooks Brothers for a new suit, which should be tailored and ready in 20 minutes. Bob makes a mental note to sue his neighbor for impairing his lifestyle but then realizes why he gets so many new suits every spring. This is his fourth this month.

Bob grabs some breakfast on the way to the garage, pausing for a few more needle pricks from the biometric locks on the fridge and garage door. He savors his breakfast tablet and the flavor of eggs, sausage and pancakes reminds him of cafeteria food from college, but without all the grease and carcinogenic compounds that later put Aramark out of business. Yes, I said breakfast tablet, Willy Wonka IV is the Director of the FDA in 2030.

Despite the fact that Bob is wearing a raincoat and shorts to work, his day is about to get a little interesting. And it all started with a little harmless flirting at a bar the night before.
“You think I could get your number?” Bob asked, extending his phone with an inviting grin.
“Sure,”she replied. He looked healthy enough, and she really liked the suit he was wearing, it looked brand new. The conversation was entertaining and he seemed nice. Bob set his iPhone down on the bar in front of her and leaned back, his heart racing. The young brunette reached into her purse and pulled out her new iPhone, throwing him a sultry look. She gently set her phone on top of his, letting her hand linger for an extra moment, until finally letting go. For a brief second the two just stared into each others eyes, until the silence was broken by the sound of both phones buzzing.
“Oh!”, she gasped after being startled. Her phone buzzed so abruptly that it slid right off the other phone and fell to the floor.
Bob was a little embarrassed. “Wow, I’m..terribly sorry!”, he stuttered as he scrambled to pick her phone
“No, no, it was my fault!”
She quickly gathered her things and stood.
“I’m sorry, I have to go, but it was great meeting you”, she said as she slipped away into the crowded bar.
Bob looked down at his iPhone. The buzzing had stopped. He picked it up and began scrolling through the menu to the contacts. There she was, listed as her screen name. ‘Foxyldy10’. He clicked on view and began to scroll through the statistics. 34 years old, c-cup, hates cats, likes sushi.
Wow, he thought to himself, my kinda woman..

Ever since Gapple (the Google-Apple conglomerate) released wireless charging and peer to peer contact sharing in 2015, the bar scene developed a new type of social interaction. Some call it ‘cell-swap’, others call it ‘iSex’, but regardless of its name, a new form of intimacy emerged among strangers. Bob hadn’t gotten quite used to the rules of etiquette regarding iSex, but at least he wasn’t throwing his iPhone into a large bowl at parties like his old frat brothers were doing. Some of them would even walk past co-workers’ desks and place their phones on top of those of attractive females with a little slight of hand, a modern phone rape, one might say.

It wasn’t just a phone number and personal description being exchanged. A cell-swap included facebook profile, blogspot links, credit rating and medical records. Potential mates could check one another’s propensity for genetic disorders like sickle cell anemia, or down syndrome, even color-blindness! (However there are huge tax breaks if you child is color blind, and he’s guaranteed a college scholarship and a government job of his or her choice. It has to do with ending racial disparity, but I say it leads to more car accidents at stoplights). Gapple is even working with Gravithrone to make the drag and drop option that you see on Googlemaps available for the human body. Just imagine, you want to show someone how you look naked, give them a cell-swap and tell them to drop the little blue guy on your penis. Zoom in if you want to.

The only thing about cell-swap is it still hasn’t been perfected and you can very easily transmit viruses to one another. Its like an iSTD. In fact, the main thing that Gapple is having problems with is interfacing the Gravithrone without the viruses. In the early testing phase, participants who contracted an iSTD through their phones actually got a real STD the next time they sat on the Gravithrone in the bathroom. Trojan is working with Norton anti-virus to make an Iphone condom.

Well, back to Bob’s morning. Bob was on his way to work in his Honda Utero, which runs on fetuses of aborted babies. Newsweek called it the greenest car ever built. The vehicle drives itself so Bob can catch up on the Times, printed in e-ink. The 20 minute commute to the Brooks Brothers store was over in no time, and Bob only had to reach out the window to pick up the suit, it had already been charged to his credit card, thanks again to his phone. He decided he’ll get dressed in the office, since there’s no time to spare. A strange electric-chemical reaction from the latex-free raincoat and the e-ink newspaper causes a small explosion in the vehicle, and Bob is very mildly burned. This morning seems to be taking a strange turn, Bob thinks to himself. Oh well, at least I have free global healthcare…

Since there are no vehicles allowed in the city, Bob’s car parks itself at the subway stop. Bob walks away from his car and it locks itself. However when Bob’s train passes by below, his proximity key unlocks the vehicle and thieves take all of his Honda’s possessions. Bob’s phone seems to be acting funny. He usually gets advertisements for coffee and sports tailored to his exact preferences, but as he walks out of the subway stop he keeps getting pop-ups for gay porn and penis enhancing pills. He walks past a newsstand and the phone automatically scans every e-book and e-print, causing a virtual memory overload in the phone. Bob will spend an extra hour cleaning up the 500GB of unwanted junk files that his phone just accumulated on its own.

Work was uneventful until Bob found out that his 5 credit cards had been maxed out and his social security number now belonged to someone named Pedro Gonzales. Mr. Gonzales was now filing a lawsuit against Bob for identity theft, and Bob’s boss asked him to take the rest of the day off so he could think about how to clean up his act.

Bob couldn’t understand why this was happening. As he closed the door to his Honda he felt his phone buzz in his pocket. More pop-ups. Suddenly the car seat slammed Bob into the steering wheel, and the heat turned on full blast. The car lurched forward and peeled out of the parking garage, racing home at nearly 200 mph while blaring rap music through the 3,000 watt stereo. These aren’t my user settings, Bob was thinking, and where’s all my stuff?

Bob arrived home frazzled, dazed and sweaty and decided he needed a shower. He sat down in the Gravithrone for a nice rinse, when suddenly the tiles opened on the walls and mechanical arms shot out, grabbing all four appendages. Apparently the same virus that attacked his phone and car now had control of the Gravithrone. The door slammed shut, all the lights went dark and the silence caught Bob off-guard. Suddenly a blinding spotlight appeared from above, shining directly into Bob’s color-blind eyes. A deep voice boomed from the Dolby digital surround sound speakers that Bob had installed for movies and said, “BOB. WELCOME TO GUANTANAMO BATHROOM!”

Bob spent the next few days enduring waterboarding and light depravation amongst other psychological torture that his bathroom implemented with sadistic pleasure until Gapple security updates were downloaded by his phone, and the virus was quarantined. Will Bob ever get his credit rating repaired, or retrieve his SSN? Tune in next week to find out.

Lantern Festival

I went to the Lantern Festival, which is a celebration of the Buddha's birthday, today. It was pretty neat, but nothing amazing. I got out of the subway station and there were a bunch of tents that lined the street for about a mile. There were tables under all the tents and different activities and information at each one. For instance, at one I made my own incense, at another there was information on staying in a Buddhist temple for a time, at another there was traditional food, at another was a tea-making ceremony. Many different branches of Buddhism (perhaps all, but since I'm no scholar I can't say for sure) were represented. The biggest attraction was making your own lantern to display in the parade at night. We got to go into the main Buddhist temple in Seoul. It wasn't all that big, but Buddhism only accounts for about 1/4 of the population, with another 1/4 being Christian and nearly 1/2 claiming no religion.

I should say who I went with, but I couldn't figure out where to write it in the previous paragraph, so I'm just sticking it here. When I had to go to Atlanta for my visa interview I met a few others who were there for the same thing. We exchanged emails, and as it turns out I live about 2km from one of them, Holly. Once we figured out we were really close we had been trying to meet up at some point, and we finally did for this Lantern Festival. She brought her co-worker Nicole. The whole reason I knew anything about the Lantern Festival was a MeetUp group I joined from meetup.com. We joined the group there which consisted of only a couple people, Sarah, Rob, and Dave. I didn't get to talk much to Dave, but Rob was in the military. He had been stationed in Japan previously for a few years, but has been in Seoul for a year or two. Sarah was born in Seoul, but her parents immigrated to Sydney, Australia when she was young. She decided to go back to Seoul about 7 years ago and teach, and has just stayed ever since.

Here're some picture of the event: <http://picasaweb.google.com/jmphry/LanternFestival#>.

My Ideas

I've been thinking a lot about cell phone technology recently, I'm not sure why, but here're some of my ideas.  

Everything you ever carry in your pockets/wallet will be added to your cell phone.  Japan and Korea are already experimenting with using your phone to replace your credit card, mainly on public transportation right now.  Your ID will be encoded to your cell phone so all you have to do is swipe it in front of an ID reader and it'll spit out your info.  My first two ideas for this application would be police and hospitals.  Certain info would be encoded with certain tags, so a hospital ID reader would only pull out info relevant to hospital needs, etc.  

Car keys?  No thanks, just use your cell phone.  Jeff Wass has a "key" that he keeps in his pocket, and when he gets close to his car it unlocks it.  This will be added to your cell phone.  Same thing with your house, no more reaching for keys when your arms are full of groceries.  You'll also be able to encode it to any door you have access to, like at work.

Phones are already accessing the internet, and playing music and videos, but the screens are small.  This past year, bendable displays hit the public sector and over the next few years will become ubiquitous.  Add a bendable and foldable display to your phone and suddenly your hand-held device has a 10" screen on it. 

For those of you who don't know what Electronic Ink is, it's a screen that isn't backlight like your normal monitor.  Backlit screens are bad for your eyes.  Instead, e-ink is used for reading, primarily, or displaying a single image for extended periods of time.  The technology doesn't need to maintain the display or image, it just flips the pixels from white to black and they'll stay.  Therefore, it consumes very little battery (look up e-ink if my description isn't good, or isn't enough for you).  

Touchscreen devices are all the rage now.  Electronic ink is becoming more and more popular, thanks largely to amazon.com's Kindle.  They have yet to figure out how to make one screen do both, but they will soon enough.  The screen will be bendable/foldable, multitouch, and e-ink capable.  You will also be able to write/draw on the screen, just like some computers and PDAs today.  A simple swipe of your phone will scan a document into it and allow you to edit it as you wish (very convenient for school teachers, hint hint).  You'll also store all your books in it and read it with e-ink, with highlighting and note-taking capabilities.  Need to exchange phone numbers?  No more bothering with typing in the wrong number, just place the phones on top of each other for a second or two and the data will be transferred.  Want information on an item with a barcode on it?  Scan the barcode and it's info will be found online and put on your screen.

These are a couple of kinda silly applications for phones, but they might happen, who knows?  Some cars have presets in case of different drivers.  For instance, the man is taller and bigger, he wants his seat in a different position so there's a button to push to get it back to that perfect position.  When the woman drives it, she has her button, too.  What if phones did this automatically?  Everytime you did something, drive a car, take a shower, enter a barber shop, use a toaster, etc, it would load your previous preference.  Phones may be linked to your closet so that only clothes that are appropriate for the weather will be displayed.   They could be linked to your house and know when you're approaching in order to turn on the a/c or heat and get it comfortable before you enter.  Using GPS, your phone could show you coffee shops close to you, you could choose one and its menu would pop up.  Choose your cup of mud and the phone will trasmit your order and payment to the shop, along with your ETA.  If you change your mind, you'll have until the store begins making your cup (which will be based upon your ETA) to cancel order and payment.  This  sounds like calling in an order, but it will be done through one giant, aggregate web-based mapping program (hint hing, Google) and you don't have to do anything other than touch the screen a couple of times.

With all these functions, the devices battery life will be about 20 seconds, right?  Wrong.  Batteries are always getting smaller, lasting longer, and charging quicker.  But, put these technologies together and see what you can come up with: wireless battery charger, charging batteries in seconds.  What if there were battery-charging towers placed throughout a city that transmitted wireless power to all your devices?  You could set them up to charge only when they hit a certain battery level, so they wouldn't all be charging all the time, taxing the system.  And, it would charge very quickly, perhaps in minutes.  (This could also apply to electronic cars, read this if that idea is interesting to you: <http://www.geek.com/articles/mobile/a-wireless-battery-charging-technology-or-much-more-20061116/>).  

So what about security?  What happens if you lose your cell phone?  You'd basically lose your life, but Apple is supposedly expirementing with adding an eye scanner to iPhones to increase security.  I think a good combination of ocular scanner, finger scanner, and voice recognition would get the job done, as these become more common, smaller, and cheaper.

Everything in this article, besides using your phone to replace your credit card, and the security, are my own ideas.  Sure, I've mentioned some existing technologies, but I've applied them in ways I haven't seen anyone else do.  Some of these ideas are far-fetched, but in 100 years or sooner, people will look back and ponder how we ever lived with our ancient, caveman devices we call cell phones.  Some of my ideas aren't going nearly far enough, I'm sure, but time will tell.  I think about things like this a lot, and I always complain when an idea I had 3 years ago finally hits market, but few believe I had that idea.  Well, now I have some sort of documented proof for the next 10-20 years of complaining.

Plantar fasciitis

Pronounced "Fa-she-eye-tis," is a painful inflammatory condition of the foot caused by excessive wear to the plantar fascia or plantar aponeurosis that supports the arches of the foot or by biomechanical faults that cause abnormal pronation. Basically, the tendon which runs from your heal to your toes gets messed up. This is commonly caused by long periods of weight bearing or sudden changes in weight bearing or activity. Jobs that require a lot of walking on hard surfaces, shoes with little or no arch support, a sudden increase in weight and over activity are also associated with the condition.

All this copied from wikipedia. So why am I telling you about this? Because I have developed it. It's a wonderful condition wherein your first steps in the morning cause sharp pain in your heel or arch. The first thing I have to do when I wake up is flex and stretch my foot, or I run the risk of falling over due to pain. Some people sleep with a brace that keeps their foot flexed so the plantar fascia doesn't get tight overnight (I rhymed).

How did I develop it? Good question. I haven't had "long periods of weight bearing, a sudden increase in weight, or over activity." I have had jobs in the past that required a lot of walking on hard surfaces, namely the hospital, but I was wearing my $250 MBTs so they probably prevented it (though they could've caused my feet to become dependent upon them since they do a lot of the walking for you). Funny thing is, I frequently went without shoes or was wearing my Vibrams back in the States, and never did I develop PF. Therefore, I don't believe "lack of arch support" caused it; I think evil shoes cause it. I'm wearing my $140 Clark's everyday and they're darn comfy, but I'm on them about 10 hours a day, and in that day I walk about a half mile or more, and down 6 flights of stairs, twice, taking the kids to the buses. I wish I had my MBTs so I could wear those for a week or two and see what happens.

I had an idea to go running tomorrow and start stretching regularly to increase my flexibility, but I read this: people with plantar fasciitis should be careful to wear supportive and stable shoes. They should avoid open-back shoes, sandals, and flip-flops. They should also try keeping off the foot as much as possible and lessen activities which place more pressure on the balls of the feet because these increase tension in the plantar fascia.

The only shoes I brought that I can run in are my Vibrams, which aren't "supportive," and I would be running on the balls of my feet. I wouldn't be lessening activity, but rather increasing it. But, since what they think cause PF doesn't actually cause it (more anti-barefeet proganda bullcrap), I don't believe their "cure" will cure it. If anything, it will only lessen the symptoms but never heal the problem. However, since I am lazy, I've decided I'm going to just do Yoga to see if a simple increase in flexibility will help. If after a couple of weeks nothing has gotten better, I'll start running...maybe.

2 Things

Two quick things.  I went to E-Mart to buy a few things today, including a MicroSD for my cell phone.  It can play mp3s so I hoped to put some music on it and wake up to it instead of continuing the haslte that is my ipod as an alarm.  I've now been messing with it for about 10 minutes trying to get it to work, and I've almost lost the MicroSD under the keys on my keyboard, and I think I almost swallowed it once; the thing is really small.  I imagine that these are going to become really prevalent, and by the time I'm old my grandkids will think I don't like them b/c I'm old and have bad vision and dexterity.  Let me go on the record today and say I don't like them now when my vision is ok and my dexterity is good.

Secondly, I finally photographed the elusive Heineken Girl.  Now I need to find the Guinness Girl and photograph her, and my safari will be complete.  At first she seemed reluctant for me to photograph her, she even asked why I would want to.  I told her I loved Heineken.  It is unfortunate, however, that she isn't all that attractive since most of the others have been.  Oh well.  Just around the corner from where she was displaying her Heineken goodness, there was an Absolut Vodka girl giving samples (aka shots), and a Cass girl (domestic beer) giving out tiny glasses.  Ain't Korea great?

These are pictures of my excursion into Seoul on Easter to buy some things. Mother wanted me to take a picture of the subway as she's never seen one. You should've seen the looks I got..."stupid foreigner." Oh well. Oh, and she also wanted a picture of me carrying all the stuff home. The best I could do was a picture of my reflection as the subway was passing. The fourth picture is something one of my phonics students drew. Apparently, my torso is 5cm and my legs are 100cm (2 inches and 4-5 feet, respectively)



















Sorry I haven't updated my blog in a while. I was busy and then I just got into the habit of not updating. Midterms were this past week so I had a lot of grading to do, and I had to do student comments. Basically, we have to write 4-6 sentences on each new student, each student who had been held back, and each student who had skipped a level. This is only our campus' second semester in existence so most of our students are new, which means I had over 70 comments to make. After I typed it all up it was just shy of being 10 pages long.

My Easter was nothing special, unfortunately, just went to church and then made a trip into Seoul to buy a few things from someone who's leaving the country soon. I got paid finally! Out payday is the 10th of every month. I had been living on about $450 since I moved here February 20th, and it was nice to not have to worry so much about money. My check was a little shorter than it'll usually be b/c they have to take out $400 over two months for a housing deposit.

I finally got homesick. About a week-and-a-half ago I was getting kinda depressed, and then I watched Benjamin Button, which is a sad movie and got me worse. I had a day or two of just feeling awful, missing everyone so much and wondering why I had left such great friends and family to teach little kids who can't even understand me. I don't remember exactly how I got out of that funk, but it only lasted a couple days and I love my job again, and my kids do understand me.

I've no segue for this story, so here it goes. Students in Korea respond to negative questions in the affirmative, which is very confusing. A negative question, in American English, is a question that assumes a negative answer. For example, I know the student doesn't have their book; I ask, "You don't have your book?" The assumed, known answer is that they don't have their book, and in America we would respond, "No, I don't." In Korea, they respond, "Yes," agreeing with the fact that they don't have their book. That little oddity has killed about 5 minutes of time in various classes of mine, and probably 5-10 brain cells of mine.

I was approached a few weeks ago by someone at church about teaching their youngest daughter private lessons in English. Doing so would be illegal because the government wouldn't get any taxes from it, and because Topia has an exclusivity clause in my contract stating that I am not allowed to receive monetary compensation from anyone for anything, other than Topia. I could get fired and deported for it. The thing is, most foreigners do it because it pays really well, and no one actually cares, not even your school. They just don't want it enterfering with the work you do for them. People may pay W50,000 ($40) an hour just to tutor a child, and usually "tutor" entails hanging out with the family and just speaking English. And, they usually want you for more than one hour at a time, making it very worth your time. However, it is illegal and I would have to hide it from everyone at work, so I declined. Instead, I suggested doing a language exchange, where they help me with Korean and I help them with English.

Yesterday, Saturday, was the first time we met. Peter, the father, picked me up from my apartment at 3.30 and drove me to his house, about 15 minutes away. We just hung out in his house with his youngest daughter until his wife got home and started cooking supper (that's right, I got Korean lessons and food, much better than $$). When she got everything cooking on the stove, we all went for a walk along the river, Peter, his wife and two daughters (8 and 11), and myself. His daughters were rollerblading and he brought an S-board <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AEJJBYcTfLU>. It was his daughters and he had never tried it, but he actually did as well or better than I did, and I surf. After 30 minutes or so we made our way back to his house and ate supper of boolgogi, kimchi, barley rice, noodles, a traditional Korean Thanksgiving dessert which is basically sesame seeds and sugar inside balls made from powdered rice (much tastier than it sounds), fruit, yogurt, etc etc.

After supper Peter's daughters wanted to show me around their rooms and stuff. The older one plays piano and the younger plays violin, and they both played a little bit for me. They brought out two versions of the same children's book, one in English and one in Korean. They read the English one to me and I read the Korean one to them, though I didn't understand what I was reading. After that, Peter took me back to my apartment; it was about 8.30. That was it, that was the "lesson." Basically, just my presence forces them to speak English and that's what they want. And to think, they offered to pay me! Craziness.

Side note, up until we went on the walk Peter's oldest daughter, Diane, had been in her room studying. I figured she was being studious, but Peter told me today at church that he was really suprised to see her warm up to me because she has a disease. I felt really bad like maybe she had cancer or something and was going to die soon, though she looked healthy to me. He described her disease as thus: she complains about everything and is disrespectful. It suddently dawned on me that her "disease" was being a teenager, hahahaha! I told him in America we just call it "being a teenager," and apparently he thought that was funny b/c he told his wife and a couple of his friends.

Hopefully I'll get back in the habit of updating this thing, and call some of you guys. I haven't called anyone in over a week, sorry :(

Finally, the CBF

Cherry Blossom Festival

Click on the photo to see my web album with some pictures from the CBF (Cherry Blossom Festival). There weren't that many cherry blossoms, but it was cool nonetheless. I mean, there weren't many cherry blossoms to me, but this is Seoul and real estate is quite expensive so they aren't going to "waste" it on plants and stuff. At the palace I saw, for the first time since I moved here, manicured grass. That's right, grass. I had seen a little bit of grass on the sides of the roads, but it was basically weeds. It was weird to see nice grass, haha.

The CBF all took place at the palace grounds in downtown Seoul. The palace was finished in the late 14th century, only to be burned by the Japanes in the 16th century. It was then repaired in the mid-19th century, only to be burned by the Japanese again in the late-19th/early-20th century. btw, Koreans usually hate Japanese, maybe you can see why. They are now in the middle of renovating it yet again, and by the end of this year it should be about 40% finished (if history really does repeat itself, I should be more worried about the Japs invading the the North Koreans, haha). I just can't get over how humongous the place was. We walked around for 3 hours and still didn't see everything.

Me and Grace took the subway and met her mom there. We got off the subway just in time to watch the traditional changing of the guards. I got a couple of videos of it and a couple of pics. Then, we walked into the palace grounds. We got there just in time to watch some traditional dancing and watch how the king and his men would've enjoyed a meal. There were traditional instruments there and it all seemed pretty authentic.

After seeing all that, we just started walking aimlessly and taking picturres. I made captions on all the pictures that needed them, so I won't need to write too much here. After all the pictures and walking, Grace's dad picked us up and we went out to dinner, then home. It was quite a lot of walking.

I need to be going, but I will update you on how my Easter went, and some funny things my kids have said recently. I also need to tell you how I'm doing now that I have money, and I need to update you on a language exchange I'm doing.

Oh Crappy Day

I didn't exactly have a bad day today, but it definitely wasn't good. First, I haven't been able to get on Facebook for the last two days and I've actually needed to. At work my computer wouldn't get online at all, even though I was plugged straight in to the network. I had planned on getting some internet work done before class but I couldn't. Then, in my first class, my favorite student, Juliet, was absent for the second day in a row. I asked the students if anyone knew where she was and someone said she quit. I began to cry on the inside, haha. She ended up walking in a few minutes later, she had been really sick, poor girl. My first two classes had midterms so I didn't do much teaching, which was nice. My third class was a pain. They weren't paying attention, at all. They weren't being disruptive, they were collectively staring off into space. I had to throw my book on the floor to get their attention. They single-handedly took it all out of me. My fourth class was much better and brightened my day somewhat, but by then I was already so tired. My feet and knees usually hurt by my last class and I have to sit on a desk for a few minutes during class. Today, I had to sit in my last two classes, and for more than just a few minutes. I think that was a good measure of how tired the other classes had made me. Now, I'm trying to do my online work and the website's down.

I said I didn't exactly have a bad day, and none of that is too bad, but I haven't really said anything negative on this blog and I wanted everyone to know I'm not a delusional freak, haha.

I'm going to help Grace finish up her taxes tomorrow. I've never had to file a multi-state return so it's kinda interesting to figure out how. I've started being more serious in learning Korean. Sogang University has an incredible website for learning Korean. They have great listening tests and they teach you to write really well. Then, all of a sudden, the lessons include full dialogue and you're asked to decipher what is being said. Problem is, they haven't given you any vocabulary lessons yet. I don't know what they were thinking but there's a step missing, I think. I found learnkorean.com and it is a pretty good website. There's a couple other sites that look promising, but I haven't exhausted learnkorean.com yet, so I'll stay there. It's got really good technical information, like how to form predicates with nouns, verbs, and adjectives, parsing verbs, etc.

The cherry blossoms are nearly in full bloom, just in time for the Festival. I'm very excited!

Gas bill

I received my gas bill yesterday (Sunday).  First off, it was weird to receive it on Sunday.  They just tape the bills to your door at my villa, I'm not sure if that's standard everywhere or what.  The bill had a piece of paper with some hand-written stuff on it and 3 amounts: one was W30,000, one was W2008, and one was W582,008 ($23, $1.50, and $446, respectively).  At first I freaked out, thinking W582,008 was my gas bill, but after playing with the Korean-English dictionay on my phone I realized that W30,000 was some sort of housing fee, W2008 was gas, and I had no idea what W582,008 was.  Everyone told me gas would be pretty expensive here, maybe as much as W100,000 or so in the winter, so I thought there's no way my gas bill was W2008 ($1.50).  After trying to decipher the actual bill itself, I was even more lost.  There was another amount for W88,390, and some hand-written stuff that seemed to indicate this bill was for both my apartment and the one next to me.  

Well, I took the bill in to work and after much confusion on their part, as well (I didn't feel so dumb when they had difficulty figuring it out, too), they realized that the landlord had included rent into my gas bill!  Rent here is apparently W550,000 (which Topia pays), the monthly maintenace fee is W30,000 (I pay that), and my gas is W2008.  That means with my electricity bill and my gas bill, I've spent nearly $3.75 on utilities for the month of March.  The water bill has yet to come in, but unless it's W100,000, I'm way under budget for utilities.  Am I convincing anyone to move to Korea yet?

After my accidental splurge on sushi this weekend, I was left with W30,000 until payday, or about $23.  I can eat three meals a day and snack in between for about W8,000, but that's eating kim bap every meal.  Today I was able to spend only W5,000 because I have a little food still at my apt, I had kim bap for lunch, the president of the school bought chicken for everyone around 7pm, and I had 2 kim chi ju mok bap (rice balls with something inside [kim chi for me] and coated in salty sesame seeds and seaweed) after work.  So I'm left with W25,000 for Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday.  That's very do-able. 

Come payday I'm going to feel like a king.  After my overtime has been added, and taxes, medical, housing deposit, etc is taken out, I'll be getting over 2.1 mil.  For the 7 weeks I've been here I've spent less than W600,000, so it'll be nice to have 3.5 times that amount in my account, at least until I wire most of it back to the States to pay bills, haha.  

Cherry Blossom Pics

The pictures I took this evening around sunset. I'm getting pretty excited about the Cherry Blossom Festival.

Sorry about the pictures, they look right when I'm writing the blog but when I view it they look all screwed up.  Anyway, last night I started coughing and feeling sick again. I slept about 11 hours and didn't even hear my alarm for church. I've felt better all day today, so hopefully it was something minor. Technically I'm still not over the previous bug I caught so I'd like to avoid having two at once.

I finally ate real sushi today.  I've realized that the first thing I thought was sushi was actually kim bap, and is seaweed, rice, and assorted stuff, depending on what you order, but usually carrot, egg, crab meat, lettuce, etc.  People eat it pretty frequently, and it's a pretty common food to take on a picnic or while camping or hiking.  Then, I thought I had sushi but turns out it was some fast food junk that I don't really plan on eating again.  So today, I finally ate real sushi.  It had the conveyor belts and everything.  I ended up spending W18,000, or $14, and I only ate the cheaper stuff. 

For those of you who don't know how these kind of sushi places work, you sit down at a bar and there are conveyoy belts in front of you.  There may be one, or two, or more, but usually not many more or you can't reach the ones in the back.  The sushi chefs make stuff and as something you want passes in front of you, you grab it.  The plates are color-coded so your bill is determined by how many blue plates you have, white plates, green plates, etc.  If you want something that they aren't making, you just ask, and then they hand it to you after they've made it.  There were a bunch of different kinds of sushi, and it's really cool to pick things based on what they look like, not on what they sound like in a menu.  I can see myself spending a lot of time (and money) in there if I'm not careful.

Cherry Blossoms

Cherry blossoms are the most popular tree in Korea and Japan.  There's a Cherry Blossom festival every Spring in downtown Seoul.  I'm going with Grace and her family next Saturday.  I'm pretty excited about it, and about getting lots of pictures.  I have no idea what all happens, but I imagine there are a lot of beautiful trees.  Anyway, the trees in Juk Jeon just blossomed today, and as I was walking tonight I got some photos.  Unfortunately, they aren't all that clear.  I tried to get the moon through the branches, but it didn't show  up.  Then, I tried to get a cross through the branches and again it didn't show up.  I'm going to try again tomorrow, before it gets totally dark, but for now this is all I have.  

For your reading pleasure, I here submit some haikus.

1:

Seen through branches your mercy

Glints off car windows

Among the growing moonlight

2:

Waxing moon speeds us towards

Your resurrection

The blooming of salvation

3:

Cherry blossoms dance off her

Strolling through orchards

Her back is all I will see

My Hobby:

Using my incredibly dry humor with my students who have no idea what I'm saying (that's an XKCD reference). Most of my classes have had at least one exam in the last week or two. I grade the papers and bring them to class the next time I see them, and I always say, "I have here in my hand a list of known Communists," ala McCarthy. When I walk out of my later classes, I tend to say, "Good night, and good luck," again, ala McCarthy (I never realized just how useful McCarthy is to dry-witted, obscure cultural references til just now). Some of my classes have been reading about 19th century America and the impact of the steam locomotive, so Utah is comes up a couple of times. Instead of Utah I like to call it Mormon Land.

I ate some peanuts in China that were incredibly delicious. They're kinda like American peanuts, but it's almost as though they have a hard outer shell, and then it's a little softer inside. I think John might know what I'm talking about. Well, I stumbled upon them at the grocery store a couple of days ago, and they're W900 for 100g, or for you Americans, that's about $3/lb for delicious peanuts. There's a couple of other nuts that are really cheap, too. I've started drinking what Asians call yogurt. They come it tiny 65mL (a double-shot, basically) containers and are liquified yogurt, I guess. The fat in yogurt is some of the best fat you can eat, so I always got the fatty kind in the States, but these are fat-free, unfortunately.

I'm nearly over my sickness, I just have an overactive nose and a slight cough. I've been feeling fine for about a week, though. At first I thought it was the yellow sand, then Grace's mother thought it was the dryness here, but then everyone started getting sick and I realized it was just a bug. I think the air quality and dryness didn't help, but I don't think they were the culprit.

I have yet to receive a gas or water bill. I don't use much gas or water, so I'm excited to see how cheap they might be. I'm a little worried, though, that I missed the bill or something and that I'm gonna wake up one day with no gas or water.

I have no chairs in my apartment, I just sit on my bed. Well, if anyone's ever sat on a bed for an extended period of time, it's not the most comfortable. I'd like to get a chair, but I think I'm just gonna get some floor cushions instead. It'd be more traditionally Korean, they'd be cheaper and smaller, and would encourage me to move about rather than lounge. I will have to wait until payday next Friday, however. I'm also seriously considering getting some clothes made. Someone said I could get two suits and a couple shirts for W500,000, or about $400. I don't really need the suits while here so I may wait until I'm ready to come back, but I am interested in getting some pants and shirts fitted. I only brought 5 dress shirts and 6 dress pants, and while I didn't think I'd care, I do. I want more variety in my wardrobe. That sounds kinda weird, but oh well, haha.

Duck Dodgers, and the 24th-and-a-half Century!

(Title is a Looney Tunes reference: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Duck_Dodgers )

Well, I've finally managed to waltz into Modernity by purchasing a cell phone and getting internet in my apartment. My boss (the president of the school) has been calling the people to come set up the internet but they kept failing. Monday she called them and told them it was their last chance, if they didn't come Tuesday morning we were going with someone else. Well, that's all find and good except I get a 10% discount on my bill if I go with them (KTF) b/c I have my cell phone with them. Also, there is no one else in my area because this is a new building, haha. Well, luckily the internet people came around 9.30 this morning. When they rang my buzzer my first thought was, "mmm, cookies are done." Perhaps I was dreaming about cookies, idk, but thems was my first thoughts. Anywho, they set up my internet in about 5 minutes, and of course I wasn't able to get back to sleep. Instead, I downloaded movies and junk with my new internet! It's amazingly fast. I downloaded The Curios Case of Benjamin Button in about 10 minutes. That's a 3 hour movie, for those who don't know. It's not always that fast, and it does depend on who I'm getting stuff from, but it's pretty fast here.

Grace's mom is a nurse. When I found that out of course I began talking to her about being a nurse aide in the States. We had a fun conversation about that when we went to Seoul. Anyway, the hospital she works in just so happened to be running a deal with KTF. I got her my bank info and everything and she set up my cell phone for me on Tuesday, and she gave it to me Tuesday night when she picked Grace up from work. It was the free phone, but it's still pretty swank. Grace changed the language to English, but there are still a couple things in Korean. For instance, when I try to connect to the network to download stuff it's Korean, so I just won't be doing that I guess. Anyway, it's got TV (free), radio, a SIM card so I can take it to the States and switch SIM cards and it'll work, etc. My two favorite things about the phone, though, is it's dictionary and subway map. That's right, it's got a map of every subway in Korea, and a Korean-English, English-Korean dictionary. It has games, too, but who needs them when I can find out how to say "helluva" in Korean!? So incredibly useful, that. It's got video calling, a 2MP camera, and an MP4 player. I'm not really sure why I'm giving so much detail about this phone, it's not all that fancy, but I guess it's the most fancy phone I've ever had, and it's basically the first thing I've gotten since I've been here that hasn't been a necessity.

My students are constantly doing and saying hilarious stuff, mostly b/c they mix up the language, but here's a story about a student who I don't teach. My friend Daero, previously mentioned in some blogs, teaches a lot of writing classes. In one class, the students were supposed to write about a fun event in their life. One child began their paper with, "I'm going to tell you about the time I slept with my friend. I really enjoyed it. Here's what I did..." Kids...