Small World in a Good Way

This will be a shorter post. I haven't taken any trips since my last post. That, of course, does not mean that my week was not filled with blog-worthy material . In fact, I just returned from a lovely dinner with a group of my colleagues (including Sarah, whom I've mentioned quite a bit in previous posts but will now mention by name, since she offered her permission). Yet tonight I want to write about last Saturday. And to set up last Saturday I really should return to early last decade in southwestern Illinois.

My family had recently completed the first move of my life, which consisted of heading about five miles south from my hometown (population around 6,000) to the adjacent town (population around 10,000). In our new neighborhood lived a Korean woman and her family. I didn't know them very well, but her son was a classmate of my younger brother. That summer her nephew was coming to spend the summer with her family just down the street.

We lived in what I considered a rather idyllic neighborhood for a kid, in that there was little traffic and lots of young families with kids in grade school and middle school, so you could roam the streets and backyards tracking down playmates for a daytime game of backyard baseball or touch football in a cul-de-sac, and subdivision-wide nighttime games of "jailbreak".

I spent a lot of time that summer riding my bike around and exploring the still-being-constructed parts of the subdivision with the older kids. My two younger brothers played a lot of baseball with the younger neighborhood kids, including the neighborhood boy and his Korean cousin. I joined them on occasion for a game of kickball or home run derby, which consisted of lobbing a tennis ball (from a semi-safe distance) to a kid with an aluminum bat and seeing how far he could launch it.

It was on one of these occasions from which I retain what may be my most vivid memory from that summer for sheer uniqueness and poignancy. The neighbor's Korean name was Hyun-ho, and while his English was a work in progress, I can still hear him consoling my youngest brother after something transpired in the game to bring my brother nearly to tears.

"No cry, Dylan."

My mind may have embellished this memory in the ensuing years, as I notice I've done with some others, but when I replay it I see Hyun-ho hugging my brother to make him feel better. I think the combination of sympathy for my brother, wonder at the sweetness of this boy to try to make him feel better, and the excitement at having someone different around in a town that is about 98% white combined to really burn that memory in my mind.

At the end of the summer Hyun-ho went back to Korea and I figured I'd probably never see him again, unless I happened to catch him if he returned to America sometime. The distance between home and Korea felt so insurmountable to me at the time, however, that I figured a trip between the two was a very rare and difficult event. It still sort of feels that way, though much less so. At the time I never dreamed of going to Korea. I hardly even imagined leaving the states, except for perhaps taking another road trip into Canada. All the travel I could remember doing up to that point in my life had been done on the roads, so I never even really thought of going to Europe.

Lo and behold, over a decade later here I am:

Cooling off in a Starbucks in Sangmu

And here's who came to see me in Gwangju last Saturday:

Hyun-ho showing his Cardinals pride
(whilst showing off his frappuccino so I could taunt Dylan with it via Twitter)

After I decided to come to Korea I contacted our Korean neighbor back home. She was excited to hear of my plans and met with me several times to give me ideas of how to prepare for the move. I'd planned on trying to find work in the southern part of the country, and the first time she talked with me about it she said that was a good idea and that she was from the southern part of the country. After I lined up the job in Gwangju and told her, she told me that was her hometown, and the town where Hyun-ho had lived when he was young.

So, at the age of 25 (Korean age 26), I moved from southwestern Illinois to Gwangju, Korea. When she was about the same age she moved from where I am now (same part of the city where I live, actually) to the states. Hyun-ho actually made the trip to the airport in Incheon to meet me when I first arrived (he lives somewhere around Seoul now, I believe) which was a real blessing for me. It turned what would have been a very nerve-wracking moment of entering a new country into a reunion of sorts, since I hadn't seen that sweet kid who befriended my brothers for a summer in over a decade. We had a smoothie at the airport while I waited for my bus to Gwangju, and he led me to the bus stop and everything.

Last Saturday he came down and we met up to go get lunch at a delicious restaurant a few subway stops west of my neighborhood, and then we came back near here and sat in a Starbucks for a couple of hours while he waited for the time to catch his bus at the terminal. We reminisced about roaming my old subdivision that summer, and about watching the Cardinals, exploring Forest Park, and the pure joy that is a Ted Drewes concrete.

On my last night at home I went with Dylan and my cousins Eric and David (also my best friend basically since the day he was born...so I was best-friendless for the first two months of my life) to Lion's Choice for a roast beef sandwich, and then to Ted Drewes on Chippewa for one more banana concrete.

And less than three weeks later I was in Korea hanging out and reminiscing about how wonderful it is with the kid who came from halfway around the world and played backyard baseball with my brothers (and sometimes me) for the summer so long ago.


P.S. I'll take more pictures this week for next week's post. I can't believe I didn't take any this week. Serious oversight on my part.

In order to add a sugary dose of faux-cynicism to this post I should admit that for a couple of days that summer David and I told Hyun-ho that we were former MLB players and "enrolled" him in our training camp in my backyard. We really thought he believed us and were pleased with ourselves for pulling one over on him. Eventually I realized he probably didn't know what we were talking about and was just happy to have a couple of older kids who would take turns throwing him batting practice. We weren't quite devious enough at the time to think of trying to convince him to pay us for our expertise.

P.P.S. Hyun-ho, if you read this, thanks for all your help buddy! I felt so much better coming over here knowing that, as your aunt says, I have family here to look after me.

Time Passes (Even More Quickly)

A week ago I left you with an idea of the first day of my vacation. If I don't cover the other five days of it relatively quickly I think I may fall hopelessly behind on this blog. During the soon-to-be briefly described trip to Yeosu, I mentioned to a coworker how being in a completely new environment like this prompts the senses to stay on alert and soak in as much as possible. "Sounds exhausting," she replied. It really is, but in a good way. At every moment there is some new experience or thought to occupy the mind, so these eighteen days have been filled to the brim and have also flown by as fast as the fighter jets west of the city. I expected the time at work this week to feel as though it had slowed down, but I've reached this Sunday seemingly even more suddenly than the last one. There were no other 5am nights during my vacation, so the rest of this description should go more quickly, especially as I intend to call upon the descriptive powers of a couple of talented bloggers and coworkers.

Last week we left me on the couch in my apartment with the windows open. After sleeping for a few hours I forced myself up to close the windows and turn on the air-con, because the noise coming up from the street below was too much. Then it was back to the couch, where I stayed for a few more hours, before waking up for the day. That Wednesday passed quickly and uneventfully. The only happening of note (other than the joy I felt after twenty minutes of semi-random button pushing when the washing machine finally started) was that evening, when I ventured out to order take-out for myself for the first time here. Baby steps.

Washing machine in my apartment

I had noticed a fried chicken joint  during one of my several trips to and from Sangmu Citizens' Park the previous day, so at twilight I left my apartment, armed with the word "pojang" and twenty thousand won. I went in and walked up to the counter and said "Take out" and pointed out the door. The woman working there nodded in understanding and asked me something while pointing at board of pictures above the counter. Everything I saw there looked good so I just agreed with her, and she pointed me to a chair and I sat down. I watched the Olympics on a TV in the corner and studied the subway map I'd brought along for about fifteen minutes when the woman called me over to the counter. I took the bag, paid about 14,000 won, thanked her, and walked briskly back to my apartment. Once there, I impatiently ripped into the bag to admire the results of my adventure. Behold:

AFC box of chicken w/dipping sauce, pickled radish, and a can of Coke

I was quite pleased with myself on this one. Granted, it was more chicken than I could eat, but the unexpected addition of Coke made up for that inaccuracy. I just refrigerated the extra and had it for dinner the next night. The chicken was very tasty, especially with the sauce. The radish I'll need some time with. I ate a few of the pieces, but it wasn't really given a fair shake since I thought it was some kind of fruit up to the point when I picked up the first piece and felt how firm it was. Definitely not fruit.

The rest of the night consisted of finishing reading Karen Russell's Swamplandia! before my borrowing license for it from my library back home expired.* Having an e-reader (a gift from my parents for my 24th birthday) turned out to be very convenient when this trip came up. I only brought two physical books along with me: the small leather-bound KJV Bible my parents gave me as a kindergarten graduation gift, and a book called The Aviator my dad recommended to me a couple days before I left. With my nook I can purchase e-books to read, but my library back home has a healthy selection of electronic titles available, and I have several dozen that I've pulled from their catalog and placed in my wish list. Between those, and the kind offer from my coworker Lily to borrow from her collection I should have plenty of reading materials to last me through the year, and probably much longer.**

On Thursday morning, I woke up and prepared for a trip to Yeosu to visit the World Expo. I met two coworkers downstairs and we caught a cab to the train station. We ended up taking the KTX north to Iksan, and then transferring to a different train for the leg down to Yeosu. I thoroughly enjoyed the trip, and the few hours it took passed incredibly quickly. I spent a large portion of the time just staring out the windows at the beautiful countryside scenes and impressive mountains.

view from the KTX

The train station in Yeosu was located directly across from the Expo site, so we went straight over and bought our tickets, which turned out to be only 10,000 won. I was expecting to pay around 30,000 won, but we were given some foreigner group discount, which was a nice surprise. This was less than two weeks from the closing of the Expo, and it seemed as though many people were trying to get in a visit before it ended. The lines for most of the attractions and pavilions were very long, with some having waiting times exceeding two hours. We went into nearly a dozen pavilions. The Netherlands and Norway had interesting displays, and Norway's was particularly theatrical, with an actor portraying the captain of a ship that used hyperspeed to take us from Korea to Norway via the Arctic Ocean in about 3 seconds.*** Outside of the Romania pavilion we watched a performance of some traditional Romanian music. Other than that we made our way through several pavilions with short-to-no waits, including Cambodia, Vietnam, Brunei, Uruguay, and Peru. It reminded me very much of a more modern and less permanent Epcot, which I guess is sort of what Epcot was going for. Most of the pavilions even had the gift shops at their exit.

We wanted to get a look at the ocean, so we headed out of the International Pavilion and headed out to a pier toward the edge of the Expo area. We wanted to walk to the lighthouse at the end of the pier, but it was blocked off because they were setting up for a concert on the K-Pop stage on the pier. That was a disappointment, but we made our way back to the International Pavilion and had some delicious smoked salmon, potato pancakes, and horseradish at the German pavilion for dinner.

Monster bird puppet performers at the Expo

Romanian traditional music performance

I didn't take many pictures at the Expo, and most of what I did take was with my Sony camera. Unfortunately, I don't have an adapter yet to get the photos from the Memory Stick onto my computer, since I didn't bring the cord for the Sony camera. However, if you are interested in seeing and reading more about the Expo, check out Lily's blog post about her trip to Yeosu here.

The Expo really was huge. Even if there had been no one else there it wouldn't be possible to take it all in in one day. As it was, though, I enjoyed browsing around and just experiencing an event so massive in scale. The St. Louis World's Fair is still considered one of the major historical moments back home even more than a century after the fact. While I realize the scope and nature of such events has changed since that time, it was still something I'm glad I did.**** I was able to visit another part of Korea and get to know a couple of my coworkers (who seem to be lovely people, by the way). All in all, a fruitful experience.

After dinner we left the Expo and caught a cab to the bus terminal. Our bus left Yeosu for Gwangju at 8pm, so it was already dark. The drive back was still impressive though, and once again I stared out the windows almost the entire time. Seeing the mountains at night was very captivating and piqued my interest in venturing outside of the city again soon.

After arriving back at my apartment, I heard music coming from the City Hall area, so I ventured over and saw that there was some sort of concert going on. I watched for a few minutes, then made my way over to the street that runs along the river. I wanted to scout out the riverside trail, but it was after dark and I couldn't see where the path from the road to the trail was, so I turned around and walked home.

Friday was another day of sleep and cleaning my apartment, which I've been doing in sporadic bits. I cleaned up the loft area and the bathroom on Friday, and ventured out again for more takeout for dinner, this time at a place where I could just point to some bibimbap on a menu, so it was much easier.

On Saturday I met up with Jolene, another coworker from a different branch of the school, to venture out to Mudeung Mountain and Jeungsimsa. The picture atop my previous post was taken at that temple. I'll let Jolene do the heavy lifting here. She wrote a post about our visit to the temple that you should read.

part of the Jeungsimsa complex

After visiting the temple we made our way back down to the bus stop to get back home. At the base of the mountain were a complex of restaurants and shops, many of which sold hiking and camping gear. It reminded me of a miniature version of a Rocky Mountain skiing village. My family spent a few days in Snowmass and Aspen last summer taking advantage of the offseason hotel prices and trekking around the mountains, so I liked how the wooden buildings and shopping area recalled the base of the slopes there. I think when the weather cools down I'll try to go back out and hike the rest of the mountain. Hiking is very popular in Korea, which I was glad to hear because I was just starting to really pursue back home before I left. It's something I predict will come up in this blog quite a bit in the future.

After resting on Sunday, everyone at the school hit the ground running Monday morning with intensives. Despite an incredibly busy workweek, I went out with my coworkers several nights, including a delicious dinner at a western-style restaurant to celebrate a birthday. Even with the hard work the teachers at my school do, they really seem to value spending time getting to know and bonding with each other, and I very much look forward to learning more of their stories and perspectives.

If you're interested in learning more, I recommend you check out Lily's and Jolene's blogs. We all work for the same company, and Lily works at my branch. Lily's been here almost a year and Jolene just a few weeks, so for those interested in learning more about our school or the general experience of teaching English in Korea it's worth a read. I also read their blogs and will try not to rehash too much of what they've said in places where content may overlap.

For now, I need to rest up for another week of intensives (minus a holiday on Wednesday), so it's off to bed and I'll try to check in next week. Thanks for reading!

*I enjoyed Swamplandia! It has an endearing whimsicality while also hitting its dark notes clearly and profoundly, though they sometimes are darker than what I expected. I was very struck by her story "The Hox River Window" (excerpt only) when I read it in Zoetrope: All Story last fall. I thoroughly enjoy that magazine, by the way. Mom and Dad, feel free to open up and check them out when they arrive at home.
**I'm sure Lily's mini-library is quite good...she grilled me on my tastes in literature shortly after we met on my first night here. Fortunately my fondness for Faulkner and Virginia Woolf were met with approval. I'm also relieved she didn't ask for my favorite movie because I'm not sure how my boss and other new coworkers would have felt when I responded "Jurassic Park".
***I suggested we visit Norway in hopes that they would show footage of Lofoten, and I was thrilled when they did. It was only a few seconds of video, but it somehow made me feel closer to home. The several days I spent in a fishing hut in Lofoten when I met my older brother in Europe six years ago were the highlight of that trip for me, and that trip included Venice at the beginning and Frankfort during the World Cup at the end, so that gives you some idea of what my favorite types of environments are. Italy and Germany were great, but hanging on a ledge between jagged peaks and the sea in the Arctic has a way of distinguishing itself even amongst such esteemed peers.
****I don't think this Expo will have introduced anything like the ice cream cone to the world as the St. Louis World's Fair claims to have done, but I also did not see any "savage villages" built along the shore. Times change, more for better than for worse.
*****I need to figure out how to use superscript so I can start numbering these if I'm going to keep this format. Perhaps I'll go back to using parentheses. Any more asterisks and I'll be too confused.

Ten Days In

Jeungsimsa (증심사)

This is the last evening of my summer vacation and thus the perfect opportunity to briefly review how I spent my six days off work. They were well earned, might I add, after having worked a total of three days at my new job, the majority of which I spent observing other classes. I did sort of luck out schedule-wise, since I came to Korea as quickly as I could after accepting the job. I sent my paperwork to Seoul the same day I received my referral number from the school, and I sent my other paperwork to the Consulate General in Chicago the same day I received my visa application number. The school booked my flight for Wednesday, July 25, and so I was becoming nervous as the planned departure day neared and I waited for my visa to arrive. Fortunately, the doorbell rang around noon on July 24 and within twenty-four hours I was boarding an Asiana plane to Seoul-Incheon at Chicago O'Hare.

Thus the welcome strangeness of my schedule here so far. My training was a bit expedited so that I can begin teaching a full slate of classes starting tomorrow. Our school has a summer intensive program for the next couple of weeks, during which extra classes are offered before students return to regular school at the end of the month or early in September. So I've been able to get a feel for the school with a few days of training, I've had about a week to explore the city and work out my jetlag, and I will have a couple weeks of serious immersion in teaching classes at the school. So hopefully by September I will have found a happy medium after bouncing around extremes during my first month here.

Don't let me give you the impression that I am displeased with my time here thus far. I am anxious to get in the classroom and dive into the material with the students. There seem to be many very intelligent students at our school and it will be rewarding to see how they respond to my teaching and to hopefully learn more effective teaching skills. I observed nearly twenty classes, and we have some very talented teachers at the school from what I've seen. I gained some useful ideas from them and will work to implement those ideas into my own classes.

Speaking of teachers, it seems I've really lucked out with my school. They've taken great care of me thus far. As I've said, we are a rather large school compared to others in the city and have a large number of foreign teachers. They've all been very friendly to me, and the first few nights I was in town a group of them took me to a few different places for dinner and introduced me to some wonderful new food. When vacation arrived, it seemed most of the foreign teachers planned to leave town for trips to other parts of Korea or abroad, so I prepared myself to do plenty of solo exploring of Gwangju, with a healthy dose of sleeping to straighten out my schedule in time for intensives.

On Tuesday, the first day of vacation, I headed out with my camera and a healthy layer of sunscreen to check out the area west of my apartment building. A coworker had told me about a park with a track out that way, so that was my original destination. I found the park a few blocks away, Sangmu Citizens' Park, and walked around the track before leaving the park and turning north, as it appeared the city becomes rather sparse west of the park. A few blocks north I came across Kim Dae Jung Convention Center and found a large map of the city, the first I'd really looked at. Until I saw that map I had no notion of where I live in the city or where anything else in the city is located. Now I have at least a vague notion of which side of the city I live in. It seems to be the west. In fact, the "Seo" in Seo-gu, the name of my district, or neighborhood, or municipality, or something along those lines, means "west" (according to my once-in-a-while reliable translator application).

After studying that map until I felt I might be drawing too much attention to myself from the various passers-by, I descended into the KDJCC subway station on the next block. I studied the subway maps for a bit and was able to procure a handy brochure map from a transit worker. However, lacking the adventurousness and exact change needed to board a train and see where it would lead me, I went back up the stairs and headed east along Highway 22, with a naive notion of perhaps reaching the bus terminal where I had arrived from Seoul five days earlier.

This ill-conceived endeavor was mercifully cut short a few blocks later as I lingered near a string of stores and restaurants. The sight of a Puma Golf shop had amused me and made me think of my younger brother, a golf fan who would love to browse through a store like that and would loathe the prominence of a Rickie Fowler cut-out carefully observing each potential customer.

The poor quality of this picture almost makes him look real.

As for me, I consider myself a fan of Rickie Fowler, in small part because of his willingness to resemble a highway cone, and largely because of his fascinating ability to irritate my younger brother. For that, I have much to learn from him, and perhaps following his lead and spending part of a paycheck on one of this store's more neon-y outfits could be a great place to start. Come to think of it, I have been wanting more attention, and that may be just the thing I need to stand out from the crowd here in Gwangju. I'll put it on my to-do list, right after getting my alien registration card and setting up a bank account so I can actually start receiving a paycheck.

With an amused smile on my face I continued eastward, deciding on the street since a string of parked cars had decided to claim the sidewalk of the side street I was following on my way back to Highway 22. I was listening carefully for oncoming traffic, so I turned quickly when I heard my name being called from across the street. Another foreign teacher from my school waved to me, and I crossed the street to greet her. We decided to grab lunch together (which was a great relief to me, as I was still dreading the first time I would have to order food for myself here). We had some delicious beef soup with kimchi that was boiled right in the center of our table. During our conversation I learned that after nearly two hours of trekking I had ended up a mere five minutes up the street from our school, about a fifteen minute walk from my own apartment. She also informed me just how far I was from the bus terminal and put to rest my thought of walking there in the middle of a hot mid-summer day. Most fortuitously, though, she liked my idea of venturing to Yeosu to see the World Expo during vacation, which would likely be the last feasible opportunity to see it before the closing on August 12.

After we ate what we could of the soup, (it was delicious, but there was so much of it...this will be a common refrain, I think. I should learn to say it in Korean) we parted ways, with me taking a slight detour to get some items from LotteMart. That was my first visit to LotteMart after two trips to the local E-Mart. Honestly, I'm not sure how people choose between these two stores. To me they seemed nearly identical, sort of like multi-story and classier Targets. Perhaps one of my coworkers will read far enough into this post to see this and can inform me of their distinctive qualities, other than the fact that I may live about 100 meters closer to one than to the other.

Here are links to the two store chains. If you open them in Google Chrome it does this cute thing where it asks if you want it to translate from Korean to English, and then fails miserably when you accept the offer.
http://www.lottemart.com/shop/worry.do?SITELOC=MI017
http://www.emart.com/index.do?method=getIndex&pid=direct&ckwhere=direct&sid=direct

Mr. Home Star. The Korean actually sounds like this too. This name suggests this character's potential to attempt to masculinize housework. Mr. Clean is a bit vague in my opinion. How much better could society be if we could envision people like Mr. Home Star sweeping floors and scrubbing dishes?

After a nap and shower I received a message from the coworker with whom I had lunch to meet up with her and a couple of other coworkers in Sangmu Citizens' Park, where we pedaled around a bike-buggy contraption for fifteen minutes or so, and then prepared to meet up with some of their other friends in the area for dinner.

For dinner I had samgipso for the first time. It was quite good, and grilling the food right at the table was entertaining as well. After dinner we met up with more of their friends at a bar, where I ordered a "Cola, chusayo" while enjoying lively conversation and trying to get some idea of how judo works as several Olympics matches played on the projection screen above the bar. I'm still not sure exactly how it works, but I am pretty sure I could beat any of my brothers at it, especially if I catch them when they don't realize we're competing.

The quality of this picture is so bad you may mistake one of these players for Rickie Fowler.

After that bar we headed to a more relaxed tavern-like spot with a wide variety of beverages from around the world, including good old American grape soda, which I enjoyed over a few games of darts with the men of the group. Though I lost both games (those guys were very, very good), I had no time to despair because I was lucky enough to catch the US women's soccer game against DPRK, aka North Korea.

I love soccer. I loved playing soccer in high school, and had it been co-ed I probably would have tried out for the team all four years. As it was, my school restarted the cross country program my second year of high school, and cross country was co-ed. Thus, to this day I run regularly, yet only manage to get in a pick-up game of soccer once in a great while. However, I watch the USWNT whenever I can. I made sure I was in front of the TV for the semis and final of last year's World Cup, and I was thrilled to be able to see them here in the Olympics, although I did end up seeming a bit rude when I kept glancing behind the head of one of my coworkers to catch glimpses of the action as she was trying to converse with me. Actually, I didn't just seem rude, I was rude. I apologize. Thank you for sitting on the TV side of me so I didn't have to be turned completely away from you to see the game. And from what I remember of the conversation it was very interesting and I hope to continue it sometime.

That conversation was cut short, however, by the closing of that spot at about 3:30 am and the relocation of our party (now grown by two more who had joined us at the tavern) to the streets of Gwangju, where we plotted our next move and I wondered in amazement how in the world I would be able to keep up with such a vibrant crowd. They quickly decided to find a norebang, or karaoke room, and so we made our way to my penultimate destination for the evening.

We entered a silent and clean building and took the elevator to the third floor. It was very well-kept, not quite what I anticipated. An attendant came to greet us and led us to a room down the hall with a large table surrounded on three sides by cushioned booths and facing a projector screen on the wall with two microphones hanging from the wall. A timer beneath the screen began counting down the time from sixty minutes, and others in the group began entering songs into a queue, and the singing began. The music was appropriately loud, as was the singing of my coworkers, and the video images playing on the screen were wonderfully random. At one point during Oasis's "Don't Look Back in Anger" I saw the iconic (in St. Louis, at least) footage of Mike Jones tackling Kevin Dyson to end Super Bowl XXXIV. I suppose for folks in Nashville that video may have actually seemed appropriate for the song.

My coworkers encouraged me to pick out a song, and I finally decided on "Proud Mary". I wanted something upbeat, and when I thought of that I couldn't pass up the opportunity to remind myself of home. It was nearly 5am by that time, so my sleep deprivation had erased much of my usual inhibition, and my coworkers joined in, helping me to sing out much more enthusiastically than I imagined I would. It felt great to sing that song, and it felt like a great way to end the night, especially since I could barely keep my eyes open any longer.

The timer beneath the projector ran to zero a few minutes later, and we filed out of the norebang into the pre-dawn light. The group considered where to go next, but I was done for the night, or morning. They were kind enough to consider my exhaustion and accept my farewell without much objection. Walking through the streets of a city at 5 in the morning was certainly an odd sensation for me, but I arrived home without incident and sprawled onto my couch as the sun's most slanted rays began to illuminate the shades over my windows.

And here I thought I needed to mentally prepare myself for long stretches of isolation and passing time alone in my apartment over the next year. It's a good thing I didn't load up a suitcase with my book collection.

That was the first day of my vacation, and the longest one. Seeing as it took me a few hours to hammer out that blog post and I have to prepare some materials for school in the morning, I will leave the rest for a future post, or at least whatever portion of the rest I decide is worth describing. I'm quite new to the blogosphere and welcome your feedback, dear (and committed, may I add, to have made it this far) reader. I think probably I should aim for shorter posts in the future. Leave me any suggestions you have, as I want this to be digestible for those who are interested in it, and thanks for reading!

Time flies...

First lunch in Korea, on first day of work.

Hey family, friends, and other readers or picture-skimmers! Thank you for visiting my blog. I hope you'll find something in my posts to interest you as I collect my thoughts and experiences into a place where they are much less likely to be forgotten than in my currently overwhelmed mind.

Above is a picture of the first lunch I had in Korea. My employer was kind enough to have bibimbap brought in for me on my first day of work. I had bibimbap for my first meal on the Asiana flight from Chicago to Seoul the day before, so I was relieved when it was offered as an option for lunch. Other than kimchi and kimbop, bibimbap is the about the only other Korean food I knew the name for at the time. The bibimbap is in the big bowl on the right. There are various vegetables atop a bed of rice, and this dish had a fried egg on top as well. The bowl in the middle is a brothy soup, there's some type of fruit in the dish at the top, and on the left is some kimchi, some sweet black beans, and potatoes. The meal was delicious, and was the first time I can remember being even slightly successful in my attempts to use chopsticks. That skill is still a work very much in progress for me, as anyone who saw me attempting to eat sushi last night could confirm.

After that sushi dinner last night I went to the apartment of one of my new (and incredibly welcoming and helpful) coworkers to hang out. While there I met some teachers at another school in a different part of the city, and one of my coworkers told them I had only been in Korea for a couple of days. It surprised me to hear it. It's been three days now, but that time has been so full of new sights and experiences, and trying delicious new foods and meeting wonderfully interesting and warm new people that it seemed like much longer. I also realized that I've gone three days here without starting the blog I told myself I would create to keep those back home updated on my life here. So, twenty-four hours later, here it is. I have to go get some dinner now, but soon I will summarize who I am, how I came to be in Korea, and how delicious this dinner was, as I'm sure it will be.