journal entry

This is a journal entry that speaks loudly of what these students' academic lives are like here. An academy is any private school they go to after their regular public school.

"I don't know how I spend time. I am very busy going to academy. Every day I must go to violin academy, math academy, English academy, Korean academy, science academy, Toeic academy, and history academy. Every day I am tired, but my mother says 'You must go to a good university and you must be successful.' I don't want to destroy her dream. I want to succeed."

toting water

One of my favorite things to do here is get my water. We can't drink it out of the tap, so most people buy it. From the start, I wasn't willing to buy all the water I would drink for a year -- not so much for the money, but think of all those bottles! I knew there had to be a way around it: surely everybody doesn't buy their water here. I had noticed people bringing little carts of water bottles to this fountain in a park near my apartment and since they were mostly older people, I knew they had to know something I didn't. (Actually, most people around here know a lot of things that I don't.)

Anyway, it turns out the water in these fountains is spring water -- safe to drink. The six bottles I had accumulated fit perfectly into my nifty New Seasons bag, so I just tote them to and from the fountain when I run out. I usually go at night when I get home from work; I see lots of kids running around, playing badminton, families, people generally. It's become warm out, so the walk to the park is nice. But I think the main reason I like it is because it makes me feel a little less foreign, somehow makes up for my limited vocabulary and inability to talk to anyone here.

Happy Birthday, Buddha!

Buddha's birthday is on Thursday (no school!), so there were some festivities in Seoul this weekend. I took some pictures of the lantern parade, but they aren't very good because it was getting dark. Anyway, you can get an idea of the lanterns and some of the traditional clothing.










Before the parade I got to make a lotus lantern. By far one of the most tedious things I have ever done, and it took two solid hours. As you can see from the picture at the top, some of the lanterns were awesome. Mine looks ok here, but it really was sort of ugly. Wait a second, that's not even my lantern. I just realized that. That's pretty funny, though, so I'm going to leave the picture.


One last picture, which I think speaks for itself. Except for that man in the corner -- I tried to crop him out, but the picture didn't look good that small.

...and a picture

Well even if I don't always have time or energy travel, I can still explore Noeun. I found some good hiking trails literally a five-minute walk from my apartment. When Koreans hike, they don't mess around with switchbacks. They just go straight up the mountain. And there are so many old people hiking these trails -- it's amazing! I even saw a man running up one of the trails the other day.

Anyway, this is a picture of one of the trails, but they're not all this jagged. I just liked this one -- maybe because I saw an old man, shoes in hand, walking barefoot up it.


(I like how the ads at the top of my blog normally relate to travelling or teaching, but almost instantly after I posted the yellow dust information, they began to advertise things like environmental awareness programs and toxic waste searches.)

location

I added the location of my school to wikimapia. Go to wikimapia.org and type "ecc noeun" into the search bar. I am pretty sure only one result will appear (ECC-Noeun Taejon), and that's the one you want. The map is old, so all you will see is construction, but it's all developed now. I teach right on that corner, 5th and 6th floors. My apartment is southeast of where I work, but I didn't think it would be prudent to identify it on an internet map. As you can see, we are not actually in Daejeon -- which is why we were all very happy when the subway opened up a few weeks ago.

By the way -- for any you wondering why I talk so much about work and so little about my travels: please respect the reality of a full-time job in Korea.

"the yellow dust from China"

This time of year, dust from the deserts in Kazakstan, China, and Mongolia get caught up in windstorms and are carried east to places like Korea. On these days, the Korean teachers tell us that we shouldn't walk to school or spend a lot of time outside, because on the way over the dust storms pick up the following:

Sulphur, soot, ash, carbon monoxide, toxic pollutants, mercury, cadmium, chromium, arsenic, lead, zinc, copper and other carcinogens, viruses, bacteria, fungi, pesticides, antibiotics, asbestos, herbicides, plastic ingredients, combustion products and hormone-mimicking phthalates. (according to wikipedia)

In an effort to help decrase the amount of dust stirred up, China said it would plant trees in the desert. But this didn't work for two reasons: in some places the wind was too strong for the trees to survive, and in other places no trees were planted at all -- the hills were just painted green.

swimming lessons

I posted a video of one of my kindergarteners -- it's soooooo funny, you must watch it. It's really short, but I might have to make a full-length movie with this kid.

If that didn't work, click here to watch it.

journal quote

A quote from one of my students' journals:

"This evening my friend came to my house. Friend name is Kim Che Inn. She is my antiquity bestfriend."