holidays are here again

today is chuseok. it's a national holiday for koreans, which means it's also a one-day (or for some two) work week. it's tuesday now and i've been off from skool since friday, duh. since then i've been busy for parts of the day and not so busy for other parts.

here's a breakdown of what's been going on:

friday: at skool we were to have a meeting with one of the heads of the english language program. she was a couple hours late and this is not of character here. for us though, it's just not done. you don't leave someone hanging when it comes to business back home. but here, it's commonplace because work is looked upon way different. work is life here and everything else is secondary while i'm figuring out that's the opposite, for most anyway myself included, back home. it's a cultural thing for them but more of a respect thing for us. our skool seems pretty disorganized when it comes to this new english language experiment and they're throwing out money like it's falling off trees. for example, the seven english language teachers are getting laptops. however, it hasn't been planned very well and it's making a lot of us upset. there is also constant miscommunication between the english speakers and the korean admin. this is obviously due to language barriers. we found out on friday that they want us to work an extra hour every day and that's not what is in our contract. in exchange they want to give us a two hour lunch break, which is not cool with me and a few others. that's basically a split-shift. on top of that, they messed up my pay on friday so i've no money in my korean account and i won't be able to get it fixed until i get back on friday so i'm forced to dip into the account back home and pay exorbitant bank feeds.

it's tough but we're working through the glitches.

oh, and at night we got quite ridiculous, because it was after all, pay day (for most of us). started by bbq, then soju, then a couple bars and then it got blurry. by the end of the night (ie. 4:30am) we were taking pictures with everyone that would talk to us. i even got a picture of a cop and i but that's not him waving, he just didn't want his picture taken. silly foreigners.

saturday: went to the doosan bears game with nine other english teachers. it may have been the last game of the season. it dragged on and on. it lasted from 5:10 until 10:26pm and it was only eleven innings. each at bat lasted ten minutes. brutal to sit through and i stayed totally sober. possibly the first time in who knows how long that i haven't had a beer. embarrassing.
i also met derek's friend ryan who is also here teaching. he's a good boy from toronto so it was nice to meet him too. after that we walked to the seven luck casino. i didn't gamble but was able to eat quesadillas and drink gin and tonic for free. unbelievable. my boy jason won 120,000 won playing 5,000 won minimum black jack. so he's da man.

sunday: ended up going to itaewon and ate turkish food at the top of hooker hill. lovely name. as well, there's a nice little mosque up there and a whole other community of muslim people as well as nigerians. go figure, smack dab in the middle of seoul. i don't get it but why ask questions. after that we ended up at "what the book" which apparently has the largest selection of english language books in the country. it's a small store and owned by a canuck who's a local celebrity. after that we had a couple at the wolf hound and cabbed it home.

monday: slept in, didn't do a whole lot. went to dinner with bob and jason at fresco's. i had the salad bar. one stop salad bar for 7,900 so i piled it up high. at that point everything ends up tasting the same. i won't be getting that again. after that jason and i headed to bjorn's place, another teacher at my skool and played poker. i lost twice. first buy-in was 5,000, the second was double. i was not happy. i usually don't lose that bad but these things happen. i'll get it back next time. jason and i walked home through outdoor markets where they sold everything from crappy adidas t-shirts to street food.

tuesday (today): today is chuesok so i celebrated by doing some laundry, and then met up with ryan and walked around our area for a whole lot of hours. took some awesome pictures of random "engrish" t-shirts that made no sense and just came back from a bar in our area. there's got to be some type of uzbekistani convention going on behind our residence. they're everywhere but i don't ask questions. it's best that way. now i'm home and that's that.

typhoon-tastic

when it rains, it pours here. no joke. days on end. fortunately, we've been lucky this week until the first night of the weekend of course. it kept coming down straight for probably twelve hours. we were supposed to hit up the doosan bears baseball game last night but there was no way they were playing ball in those conditions. typhoons kind of put a damper on things when you're trying to unwind from that looooong stressful week of not doing a whole lot at skool. a few friends and i did eat a decent indian restaurant not too far from here so that was definitely a place i'll return to in the near future.

it was a good week though so no complaints. played some games, taught some lessons, hung out with the kwanghee english teacher posse and ate some good food. i'm getting more comfortable when ordering food in a proper korean restaurant (pizza school not included) but still i've a long way to go. found a grocery store not too far from here and it's kind of in a random spot but it's got everything you need. sure, it's no loblaws superstore but it does have your essentials: bean paste, mushrooms you've probably never eaten, banana milk, and microwave rice. what more do you need? am i right? RIGHT?!

anyway, the weekend is pretty wide open right now so i'll probably do some more exploring of the city today. tomorrow morning is our annual yahoo hockey fantasy pool online draft so i'm pretty excited about that. can't take hockey out of the boy and, well, you know the rest.
good day to you.

oh wait, here are two other blogs from friends in the co-op. alison's and will's. they're from north carolina and tennessee respectively. a different point of view, only similar. i'm sure they appreciate the hits.

first week (revised ed.)

howdy. it's been a couple days. the two pictures above are seoul's version of american street meat. on both hot dog and hamburger they already have on them pre-squeezed mustard and ketchup. they don't give you a choice but they sure do put it on in perfect zig-zags. the fried concoction to the right is basically a pogo with embedded french fries. yes, i bought one out of desperating and ate most of it. i obviously threw out the hot dog (and wooden stick). just awful.
did i mention it's next to impossible to eat vegetarian in korea? i'll either slowly wither away on bananas and vitamin pills or gain thirty pounds because i end up gorging myself on awful pizza (with sweet corn) and beer. i won't say which of the two is more probable.
the other picture is a bar in sinchon. it's either the judas or sabbath bar. they can't decide. there are a few foreign hangouts around there and that night a buddy i teach with named adam played host. another english teacher named alison and i tagged along and drank outside a 7-11 with about ten other friends of adam's. more pictures can be found here.

the last couple of days involved hanging around our new skool: kwanghee elementary school, going to take care of various tasks, eating lunch out at really decent restaurants for dirt cheap, etc.
the two other veggies and i from our skool found a really decent rare vegetarian restaurant yesterday. it's in insadong so i can't forget that.
last night i also went to jamsil sports complex, where the 1988 olympic games were held, and saw a baseball game between the doosan bears and the kia tigers with four other dudes from my co-op residence. baseball definitely ain't the same as back home. it's quite bizarre actually. on the third base line is one supporting section and on the first base line are the fans from the other team. they have all sorts of crazy cheers that they all do in unison using these blow-up balloon sticks. they've also each got a little stage where an enthusiastic dude with a whistle leads the cheers. of course they had four cheerleaders too. oh yeah, the bears whipped the tigers 10-3. none of these guys will make the majors back home let alone be a bat boy. ouch.
tata.