Chuseok presents

Well it's almost that time of year- time for Chuseok, of course. What's Chuseok, you ask? It's basically the Korean version of Thanksgiving, apparently. I don't really know much else about it. I know we're having a party for the kindergarteners on Tuesday and they're all going to be wearing traditional hanbok, so I will definitely have pictures to show, but that's about it.

I have gotten Chuseok presents though. One of my student's mom sent in a box of pears for each of his teachers, so I had a huge couple poound box of pears last week. I shared half of them with coteachers and students and took the rest home. Korean pears are about 4 times the size of pears at home, so I only had 4 pears at home but it was still a stretch to eat them all. They were very yummy though, and it was very nice of the mother to give them to me. I wish I had taken a picture, but I didn't really think about it until they were gone.

Also on Friday the head office sent presents for all of the teachers. A few weeks ago we had a sign up sheet where we got to pick one of two gift boxes that we wanted. One was full of spam and oil, the other was toiletries. Needless to say, I got about a year's supply of toothpaste and shampoo, as well as some soap. Just to share the scope of this with you, I took a picture:
So yeah, happy Chuseok everybody! I'll update again after the party to show you my kids in their traditional costumes.

Countdown to China: T-minus 4 days

Going to China!

I bought a plane ticket last night to go visit Charlie at Chuseok, Korean Thanksgiving, at the beginning of next month. It's been a constant struggle the past couple of days- going means taking a mandatory week of quarantine from school when I get back in case I caught swine flu on the plane, and therefore pissing off the coworkers who have to cover my classes for a week- not going most likely means coming to hate Korea even more than I already do because I'm stuck here.

In the end, I decided that sanity wins out over being liked at work...and I found a really cheap ticket to Shanghai. Its about 2 hours or so to Hangzhou where Charlie lives, but he has the time off too so he can come pick me up. I also doubt that a 2 hour bus or train trip in his company will be the worst thing I've ever experienced.

Now what I have to do is go to the Chinese Embassy in Seoul with a bunch of paperwork, apply for a tourist visa, and pay $120. Not the most exciting thing, since I will have to go before work early one morning in order to make it during open hours, but I guess it could be a lot worse. I am getting to see Charlie, after all :)

Pitas

The weather is getting cooler and today I was in the mood to experiment and cook something new and filling, so I decided to try my hand at making pita bread. I found a recipe to cook them on the stovetop, since I don't have an oven, bought some yeast, and got to it. I filled them with some carrots, onions and tomatoes that I cooked, and a little Parmesan cheese.

Here's the dough this afternoon, starting to rise:

One just cooked, and another on the way:

The filling:

And the final product, with some cucumbers on the side:

All in all, they didn't turn out too bad. The dough wasn't as light as I would have liked, and I don't have a serrated knife, so I kind of butchered the bread trying to cut them open, but they tasted good and the filling stayed in. The rest of the dough is in the fridge, so I'll probably cook a couple more tomorrow at dinner.

Any other ideas for stuff I can make, sans oven or microwave?

1.8 million

Won, that is. That's about $1,500 and is equal to my first paycheck! As of today I am no longer broke. :) I still have to pay my utilities bill and pay my school back for my cellphone and medical bills from the pink eye (utilities are about $55 and I owe the school $45 or so). My first 3 paychecks are also smaller since I have to pay a 600,000 won deposit on my apartment, so 200,000 each paycheck. But on the bright side, I've made it perfectly well so far on less that $100 a week, sometimes way less, so cost of living won't be an issue.

In other news, I might be fostering a dog. I saw an ad on craigslist for a girl in Seoul who needs someone to foster her dog long term, since she just got a new job and new apartment, and the building owner doesn't like dogs. I want a dog but can't really jump into owning one right now, given the fact that taking them to new countries is so expensive, so this might be a good plan. I get to take care of the dog day to day, but don't have to worry about what's going to happen to it when I leave the country. And I don't have to pay for anything, she will do all of that. Basically, I will just be this dog's babysitter for a really long time. He's a three year old Boston Terrier named Coby, and I'm meeting him on Wednesday after work, so we'll see what happens.

That's about it for tonight, just a quick update.

La douleur passe, la beauté reste

This was written on the wall in the Seoul Museum of Art, along with the translation into Korean, and attributed to Renoir. It means something like "the pain goes away, beauty stays."

I finally made it to the Renoir exhibit today. Unlike last time, there was no line at all when I got there (although there was one later in the day when I left). I didn't take my camera because photography wasn't allowed in the museum, so unfortunately there aren't any pretty pictures to show. The paintings, however, were really beautiful. It was a big exhibit with lots of paintings on loan from museums and private collections all over the world. It was pretty neat to be able to see all of that together at once, knowing that in a couple weeks everything is going to be returned to it's original home. Unfortunately I couldn't read any of the literature or the descriptions since it was only in Korean, as were the audio sets. The names of all of the paintings were only displayed in the original French and in Korean, so I got to pull my couple years of French from the closet and dust it off to read the labels. :)

Some of my favorite paintings that I saw were ones I had never heard of before, I guess they're a little more obscure, but they were absolutely breathtaking. I love impressionism because of the way the artists painted light, and there were some outdoor paintings that look like they're just bathed in sunlight. Since I took an hour subway ride there and paid $10 to get in, I decided to wander through twice- once to see everything, and a second time to go back and look at my favorite ones again.

Afterwards I walked to the Paris Baguette (chain bakery here in Korea) on the corner and bought some food for a late lunch, which I took back to the museum and ate on a bench in the outdoor courtyard. I ended up getting a pastry that was filled with chicken curry. Sounds kind of weird, but it was really yummy- wonderful soft bread, crispy crust, and shredded chicken in curry sauce.

Today was a great day to unwind after this week from hell and kind of regain my bearings before I have to go back to work. I'm feeling better physically, and have a slightly sunnier outlook again. I think all of those beautiful paintings worked like Prozac at curing my bad mood.

Tomorrow I'm meeting up with some foreigners at Starbucks for a Korean study session. I'm not sure how successful it will be, but maybe it will be some motivation for me to get back to studying at home.

Month 2, Day 1

I've made it a month at my job. Every month our schedule changes, so it was a rush this morning to find new books, figure out new times for a lot of my classes, and meet a new kindergarten class that I will be teaching 40 minutes a day, plus meet random new students in a couple classes. And we had a field trip in the morning, so I experienced my first kindergarten field trip. It was a neat idea: "we're taking the kids to the farm to plant cabbage." In practice, it was the better part of 2 hours spent keeping kids corralled and entertained, and then about 5 minutes per class actually with the farmer planting the baby cabbage plants. I did enjoy the break from "No speaking Korean!" to see my kids actually interacting on their age level with their peers- you forget how well 4 year olds actually speak their native language when you only interact with them in a language they've been learning for 6 months.

The job is hard. The kids try my patience. Mostly what's been bugging me, though, has been my supervisor, because she somehow expects me to remember 1. what I'm supposed to do and 2. how to do it, when last month she did 90% of it (and the other 10% I did once, a month ago). But it was kind of funny when she got mad at me for asking her to help me find a teacher's edition for one of our books...she got all huffy and asked the desklady, who promptly informed her that she never ordered it. Hah!

So that's my life. I've been sick and culture shock is setting in, so I haven't been in the best mood lately, but hopefully that will change soon.

In other more exciting news, Charlie's in China! (Hopefully. He should have got to Hangzhou an hour or so ago if all went well.) If I get lucky I can maybe go visit at the beginning of October, when I have time off for Chuseok (Korean Thanskgiving).