Nowhereman83

New Year! (according to the moon)

noreply@blogger.com (Mike) — Mon, 26 Jan 2009 12:10:00 +0000

Last night at 12 was the start of Chun Jie, aka Spring Festival, aka Chinese New Year, aka Lunar New Year. Lots of food and fireworks. Here are the pictures:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/34632245@N08/sets/72157612962528597/

And yes, I made some of those dumplings (the uglier ones).

Harbin there, done that

noreply@blogger.com (Mike) — Thu, 22 Jan 2009 02:17:00 +0000

Went to Harbin last weekend for the snow and ice festival. It was amazing- I'd definitely recommend it. Also, it was, in the words of my guidebook, the cold was "villainous". Seriously, I wore 4 pairs of socks.
The city itself was cool, too- there is a lot of Russian influence, from the Church of St. Sophia and other old Russian Orthdox churches to Russian restaurants, shops, etc. Not many Russian people, though.
Here are the pictures:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/34632245@N08/sets/72157612812869562/with/3214832608/

P.S. The ghostly-looking guy in the back of this picture is me.

California here I came

noreply@blogger.com (Mike) — Wed, 25 Jun 2008 03:50:00 +0000

Update time! Yeah!

In April I moved to southern California, the first time I've been on the West Coast (not counting inside airports) in 24 years. Time to see if the state is all its residents make it out to be.

I'm living only about a mile and a half from the beach, and I have a bike, a bed, and a surfboard, thanks to this guy I didn't even know named Elijah, who gave me all of it for free. Also I think I've found a church here- it's a place where there not so focused on ceremony and timeframes, but really connecting to God, hearing from him, and showing love to others instead of just talking about it. I've really liked it the two times I've been there, and I think it's where I'm going to start attending.

I'm also getting over my deep-seated East Coast bias against the West Coast. The weather definitely is awesome here, and just about every ethnic group is represented here too- I look around sometimes at all these different-looking people getting along in such a beautiful place, and that American pride starts swelling up. Then some guy carrying a surfboard yells out some vulgarities at me while I'm sitting on some steps and eating some ice cream, and some kid flicks me off from his mom's SUV a few minutes later. And so my love-hate relationship with my country continues.

Anyway, here are some recent pictures:

Irvine, aka the middle class suburban American Dream

Santa Monica

Hiking in some National Park near Pasadena

In and Out- A fast-food chain here that Californians LOVE. It was pretty good.

Me in Santa Monica

Update- in points format!

noreply@blogger.com (Mike) — Sat, 22 Mar 2008 16:43:00 +0000

Feb. 6, 2008- Watched the most extensive, longest fireworks/firecrackers display I've ever seen as the Chinese New Year started in Beijing. Unfortunately, I didn't have a camera with me, but take my word for it, it was amazing.

Feb. 7, 2008- Returned to the US after a year of teaching in China.

Feb/early March 2008- East Coast of the US, from Virginia to Maine. Mostly in DC. Unsuccessfully tried to introduce Chinese hackysack into local population.

March 19, 2008- Flew to Costa Rica to see my parents/ live the good life (for a little while).

Still alive

noreply@blogger.com (Mike) — Thu, 10 Jan 2008 07:46:00 +0000

If there's any confusion regarding the title of this post, let me explain. I'm not about to recount some harrowing near-death experience, but rather it's a reference to the prolonged lack of posts which has been brought to my attention by my many readers. And by "many", I mean "between one and two". So here's a summary of the past 3 months:

Most things have been the same- Lorraine is still here, teaching with Michelle and me, and I still have mostly the same amount of students and classes, although a few have changed. The cold has cut down on bike riding/jianzi playing, but I still ride my bike to and from school, and play jianzi when we can find some semi-warm place to play. Also my camera's still broken.

Tom (my Kiwi classmate) had a Christmas party, in which we had some boxing matches to celebrate Boxing Day (a few days early). Since the only other guy in my weightclass (see: middle schoolers) dropped out, Tom said that he'd box me, but to make it fair, he'd only use one hand. We also all had costumes. Then Tom left China, which was lame, because we still hadn't made The Ping Pong Kid movie or done a lot of other things we were planning. Now he's back in The Shire, eating sheep, having barbecues for Christmas, and living free from fear of the abundant, non-poisonous animals that inhabit their little islands.

Christmas was nice. I did a lot of Christmas activities and talked about the Christmas story in my classes, and taught our kids Jingle Bells and We Wish You a Merry Christmas. We had a Secret Santa gift exchange at our school in which my name was misread as "Michelle", and thus I received a nice pair of sparkly butterfly earrings. I think they'll go well with the rainbow-colored glass dragon necklace I got from one of my students. Also, I received socks, which were surprisingly un-feminine. On Christmas day, we went snow tubing.

For New Year's we didn't set off any fireworks (couldn't find any, as hard to believe as that sounds), but we did eat some delicious Stroop Waffles with some Dutch friends. They were a blast- and they taught us some useful Dutch phrases, like "pipidipip! Yahoo!" and "muda cook".

That's about all that's happened of note that I can think of. Just one more month left, and then back to the motherland!

P.S. I decided to turn No-shave November into No-shave winter. Having a thin beard, it's not as out of control as it might sound. It's kind of like what my brother Steve looks like if he doesn't shave for a week or two.

noreply@blogger.com (Mike) — Fri, 19 Oct 2007 05:11:00 +0000

Two weeks ago was National Day, which is sort of a Chinese Fourth of July. And in China, like in the US, there are fireworks (as there are pretty much every week), and some people also ate barbacued meat. However, instead of just one day to have a picnic and wave flags, here many people had a whole week off school or work. Being some of those people, my sister and I decided to do a little in-country traveling, seeing some sights and going through some bigger cities. I felt a little like a small-town boy, amazed at how big the cities were, how many western commodities they had, the traffic, pollution, and the prices. For instance, a taxi in our town is usually about 7-8 yuan ( 1 USD), but we took some taxis in other cities that cost 3 and 4 times that much! I know that being shocked at the expense of a $4 taxi ride is laughable in the States, but on a Chinese salary that's a lot!

Although it was nice to see a little more of the country, I was glad to head back to the blue skies, low prices, and familiar faces of our small city. And also the jianzi. One night after playing I ran into a friend (we'll call him Jim) eating at little street barbacue place with some of his friends, and he invited me to join them. He then proceeded to order a good amount of some unidentifiable meat for me to eat, despite my protests that I was full. I couldn't make out exactly what the pieces were in the dark, but I was under the impression that they were some sort of squid pieces or maybe animal fat. I managed to get them (and keep them) down, aided largely by frequent swigs of banana soda.

This month a new English teacher from Canada, Lorraine, started working at our school. She's adjusted really quickly, has had a really good attitude, and has taken over some of our classes, which has been great for Michelle and me. Now instead of finishing at almost 8:00 six days a week, I have a night or two off, which has been great. I now have the time to prepare things for dinner other than ramen noodles, and also have gotten back into language study.

Here are some pictures we took on our trip in the city of Xi An, the ancient capital of China. We rode around the top of the city walls, visited historic sites, and saw the famous Terra-cotta Warriors- built to guard the tomb of the Qin Emperor over 2000 years ago.
They're pretty awes.

The sky was always this gray color. These pictures were taken around mid-day. Sometimes a small, sickly orange orb would be visible in the sky, which we realized was the sun.

I have come not to praise Chinese classes, but to end them

noreply@blogger.com (Mike) — Sat, 14 Jul 2007 02:31:00 +0000

"Pengyoumen, Zhongguoren, tongxuemen, jie wo nimen de erdou." (Friends, Chinese, Classmates, lend me your ears). Those were the first words of my speech, and already I was getting a little laughter and a lot of confused looks. I guess some things don't translate so well. Two weeks ago was the end-of-semester ceremony at the university where I study Chinese, so all the Chinese language students, teachers and staff (around 40 people) met together in our classroom for speeches, awards, pictures, etc. I was chosen as the representative for our class, and thus was one of the two students asked to give a speech (in Chinese, of course). With only about a day and a half to prepare, I managed to come up with a short speech in Chinese, which I got a Chinese-speaking friend to proofread. I didn't have time to commit it to memory first, so I read it off a paper, but I think it went over pretty well. It was the first time I've really had to speak in Chinese in front of a crowd like that, but not the last- the next week I was up in front again, although this time it was a smaller crowd (just the teachers and our class), and I wasn't speaking, but singing.

Yes, you read that right. For our final oral exam, our teacher told us that we had to stand up in front of the class one by one and speak in Chinese for around 5 minutes. My classmate Tom and I found out we could sing instead of talking, so the night before the exam we wrote up some Chinese songs, and the morning of the exam we got there a little early and made something up on Tom's little keyboard to go along with it.

Was it rough? Yes. Did they still love it? Absolutely.

I managed to put up some of the less-rough part for your viewing pleasure.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2mZWHb7dqOk
For those having trouble reading the subtitles, it says:

Wang Teacher- you are not in our dormitory- Wang Teacher- you are not in my house either- Wang Teacher- but in my dreams I meet you - Wang Teacher- next to your donkey

I wake up (wake up), and I miss you (miss you) (repeat)

I should explain that I had a dream a few weeks ago where our speaking class teacher, Ms. Wang (in Chinese "Wang Teacher") was in the crowd, with a donkey, which she gave me so I could escape from people who were trying to kill me for stealing a giant gold coin.

P.S. Sorry I forgot to post this last month after writing it.

Pictures

noreply@blogger.com (Mike) — Mon, 25 Jun 2007 08:09:00 +0000

You know, people aren't the only ones who need to be careful. Do you think getting accidentally stepped on feels good? How about trying to stick your fangs into steel-toed boots?

This is the son of friends of my sister's friends, who I played with a lot on our May vacation. His name is Hao Dong- it sounds like it means "Good Winter", but I think the characters are different.

Me with the sun in my eyes, on a walking street.

My classmate Tom and I decided that this statue was too cool to not imitate.

Jianzi. Chinese for "awesome".

China, the Confederacy, etc.

noreply@blogger.com (Mike) — Thu, 21 Jun 2007 06:29:00 +0000

Left or right? Slow down or speed up?

These are the questions I keep asking myself as I make my way to school on my bike. Today when a bicycle-cart pulls out in front of me from a side street, I think that I can quickly pass it on the left- that is, until in my peripheral vision I notice a giant blue mass closing in on me from the left, fast. I slow down and the bus misses both me and the bicycle-cart by maybe a foot as it comes across from the left lane to the sidewalk and makes a stop. After braking and cutting a sharp turn left and around the back of it, I'm looking up for the next vehicle or person that may come at me from any direction (including straight ahead, even though I'm on the right side of the street).
This game of weaving through buses, bicycles, motorbikes, carts and pedestrians is one of many things now made possible by the warm weather. Though it took longer in coming than I'm used to, spring has come and already pretty much turned into summer, and this place almost seems like a different city. Bicycles are out in force, food tents, tables and stools have sprung up on streets and sidewalks, men's t-shirts are often rolled up (or not employed at all), and jianzis are flying on every other street corner.
Speaking of my new favorite sport, playing jianzi's been a great way to make Chinese friends. Many times I've been asked to join people who are playing, or have had strangers come up and join us who were playing, and by the end of the night we're laughing and talking (or trying to talk) like we're old buddies. Just last Thursday night an American friend and I played with some people who invited us to join them, and as we were leaving they kept trying to get us to promise that we'd be back the next night, saying, "We're friends now! You need to come play with us every day!" Unfortunately, I don't have the kind of time to make those commitments. Speaking of not having time, I have two more classes to teach soon, so I'd better get back to preparing.

P.S. I haven't shaved for a little over a month, and generally, the reaction to a beard has just been mild surprise or a few extra stares. But Nick, my Korean-American classmate who is in his 60s, was talking to me after class a few days ago, and said,
"Mike, I don't know if you'll like to hear this, but I've been thinking it for a few days."
"Sure, go ahead." I reply.
"You know, you really look a lot like General Lee."
"Robert E. Lee?"
"Yes."

Sorry there's no photo, my camera recently passed on. It will be missed.

Summer days

noreply@blogger.com (Mike) — Sat, 26 May 2007 08:55:00 +0000

This was going to be titled Spring days, but the two weeks of spring are over.
Also, this is less of a coherent story and more of a selection of random experiences from the past few weeks.

Last week my classmate Tom brought in a bilingual Dr. Seuss book (The Sneeches?) that he had picked up at a local bookstore. We managed to get our reading class teacher to read the entire story to us in Chinese, while holding it up and showing the pictures, even though it had nothing to do with what we were learning. But our hearts were definitely warmed. And we hate the textbook for that class anyway.

I have learned the following phrases in Chinese: "A great master of caligraphy" "Pour out a stream of invective upon someone's head" "The curve of her eyebrow is attractive" "Bully the weak and fear the strong" "Suffer from insomnia" "Lure the tiger out of the mountains" the words for different ping pong strokes (i.e. slice, slam, hit it in a way that puts topspin on it) and many other gems. However, we have not yet learned in class how to say "It's nice to meet you."

I love Chinese hacky-sack, aka jianzi/jianr. It's made of little disks of metal/plastic with some feathers coming out of the top. I'd show a picture but my camera died a few weeks ago for no apparent reason.
Anyway, jianzi is easier than regular hacky-sack, and Chinese people play it all the time in the spring/summer. You can just start somewhere outside and people will come up and join you. There are some old ladies on the sidewalks who are jianzi masters- and the whole time, they're so chill. They do these amazing kicks behind their backs or jumping in the air behind their leg, and they've usually got this bored look on their face. Right now we're trying to form a foreigner jianzi team to challenge other groups of people to jianzi-offs. I don't know if there even is such a thing as jianzi-offs, but there's going to be. And they're going to be awesome.

There's a rock wall in this sort of mall-place here. The guys there asked me if I wanted to do it, said it was 10 yuan (about $1.30), but then told me I could do it for free, and they really wouldn't take my money when I tried to pay them. They were really good at it- one of them had a hurt foot, so he just went up hopping with the one foot and using his hands, and he went faster and higher than I could.

Chinese people love America! I never expected it, but so many people have said to me (in Chinese) "You're an American? America is so good! Why did you come to China? America is much better!" My Chinese knowledge limits me to saying, "America is good. But China is also good. I like China and America." But it does the trick. Unfortunately, most Chinese don't have such a good impression of American food, our most prevalent culinary ambassadors being Maidanlao (Mcdonalds) and Kenduji (KFC). I just want to convince one person someday that our diet does not solely consist of deep-fried and over-processed food in brightly-colored wrappers.

A few days ago my listening teacher used our new phrase "I did not expect" in an example sentence. She said, "I did not expect Zhou Ming (that's my chinese name) to be from America. Because Americans are all very big."
Also two weeks ago someone told me (in English) that I was not dynamic. But I think she meant it as sort of a compliment.

The Park

noreply@blogger.com (Mike) — Sat, 19 May 2007 07:22:00 +0000

Last weekend I went to the park a few blocks from my house for the first time. It was nice- it had a mountain, a zoo, and your typical carnival entertainment, minus the funnel cakes. I was impressed by the characters spelled out with flowers, and the doves to be assembled on-command to take a picture with one of the numerous wedding parties. Also, I discovered that that there is something that transcends language, age, and culture, and that thing is the bopping-gophers game.

My Awesome Textbooks

noreply@blogger.com (Mike) — Fri, 27 Apr 2007 08:20:00 +0000

For my Chinese classes, we use several different textbooks- one for our reading class, one for writing, one for listening, and our main course book. Of these four, the reading book hands-down has the best pictures. The Chinese people don't usually look that bad (except for the creepy old guy, which I included), but the foreigners are pretty incredible. Almost every week we have a new story about "Mike" and "Mary"'s latest escapades in China, where they meet with varying degrees of success. It gives a lot of insight on the illustrator's (and perhaps some of his compatriots') perspective of foreigners. Also, they think this was an appropriate word list for a beginning Chinese class to learn:

-so we still don't know how to say some basic words like "more" and "far", but now we do know how to describe what's going on in this picture:

(It took us a while to figure this one out, but "Mike" is going shopping for eggs, but doesn't know how to say eggs in Chinese, so he mimes a chicken laying an egg.)

Note- if you are wondering about the noses, westerners are often referred to as "big noses" by the Chinese- I don't know why it was never so obvious to us- Mary seems to notice right away.

A day in the life - in China

noreply@blogger.com (Mike) — Thu, 22 Mar 2007 06:15:00 +0000

"Danyo ogesumnida!"
I bow as I say the Korean phrase for "I will come back" (the proper term to use when one's leaving home in the morning) to my host mom as I leave my Korean host family's apartment. It's 7:30, and I've got to hurry if I want to make it to class in time. I walk down a few flights of steps, through our alley, and down the street several blocks towards the bus stop, carefully avoiding bikes and cars that don't worry about details like staying in one lane or driving only on their side of the street. I turn the last corner and see that the bus is right ahead of me, and I run to catch it as it pulls to a stop ahead. I pay the one yuan fare (about 13 cents), and find a handhold among the crowd of passengers. Soon we're making our way outside of the city center, and the road gets noticeably rougher as shacks of wood and brick take the place of the high rise apartments and stores of downtown. Now the bus has emptied a bit, and I manage to find a seat and take off my backpack...

"Zhou Ming!"
I look up from my notebook to my teacher as she calls my Chinese name.
"Zhou Ming, jintian xingqi ji?" (what day is it today?)
I think for a second, and then slowly reply, "Jintian xingqi san," (today is Wednesday) trying to remember which of the four tones to use for each syllable- if they're not all right, my words could mean something very different. The teacher nods and goes to the next student- I'm safe for now. But Charlie, the 15 year-old Korean boy who sits next to me, doesn't understand her next question. And while the two other westerners in the class understand the explanations our teacher gives in English, as our class's unofficial translator, it's up to me to translate for the two Korean students. As Charlie looks to me for help, I whisper the word in Korean, and he gives her an answer in Chinese. One 45-minute class (almost) down, three more to go...

The loudspeaker on the bus is probably announcing the stop in Chinese right now, but I can't understand the words. I just remember the steps: get on the bus in front of school and stay on it through the city center, past the waterfront, back into the city a little, out by the water a second time, get off at the third stop after that, walk down the street to the light, go right, down two blocks, left, and then straight until the end of the road. The first two days it was a little hard to remember, but now I know the route from the university where I take Chinese classes to our little English school. Today there's no laundry up on the line I walk under, but there are always people who take a second (or third or fourth) look at the foreigner walking through their neighborhood. I arrive at the school, and go up to the teacher's lounge/office for lunch. Lunch is generally variations on a theme- usually dumplings or fish with some side dishes. My favorite side dish is tomatoes and eggs fried together (almost like a watery tomato omelet)- which tastes better than it sounds. And although they don't have it today, I can't complain- lunch is free for us teachers. I hurry through lunch and make sure I have everything ready for today's first English class, which begins in half an hour.

After an hour and a half of explaining recipes, ingredients, and why Americans use measurements like "cups" and "pounds" instead of liters and kilos (and strange words like "heads" to count lettuce and "loaves" for bread), I have a break. Now it's time to prepare for my next classes, grade papers, study some Chinese, and check my e-mail. One of the staff brought in some treats for us- sort of like tart, small, candied apples on a stick. The fruit is evidently called Hawthorne in English, which until now I only knew as an early American author. The taste is new, but I think it'll grow on me- maybe I could say the same about China. There's a lot of things to get used to and to learn, some easier than others- but it's definitely been a good experience so far. Well, this day isn't over- I've got another class to teach soon, and then it's home for dinner and the vocabulary quizzes my host sister and I give each other every night- English for her, Chinese for me. And then I've got to sleep, because another busy day in China is waiting for me!
Zai jian!
-Michael Jeter

P.S. The pictures are 1) of the university campus 2 weeks ago, and 2) of me and a Brazilian guy on the Great Wall.

I say hello, you say goodbye

noreply@blogger.com (Mike) — Sun, 25 Feb 2007 05:58:00 +0000

Summary of February (I wrote this but forgot to post it until now):
Feb. 1: Decided to go to China to teach with my sister, changed my ticket to leave Costa Rica earlier (not an easy country to leave)
Feb. 10: Arrived in DC from Costa Rica
Feb. 11-21 Spent getting stuff ready for China, traveling to Virginia Beach, and meeting up with friends in DC
Feb. 22: Left for the airport at 6:45 DC time. Arrived in Beijing, China almost 24 hours later.
Feb. 23: Went on a tour of the Great Wall and then a bunch of tourist traps. The only good part about the tour besides the Great Wall were the fun Brasilian guys (friends of a friend of my sister's) who went with me. Spent the day speaking Spanish, English, Chinese and Portugese (well, more like hearing Portugese)
Feb. 24: Leaving for my sister's city, killing time writing this post in an internet cafe

Costa Rican Winter

noreply@blogger.com (Mike) — Fri, 02 Feb 2007 15:18:00 +0000

Winter continues here in Costa Rica, with bitter temperatures in the 70s and 80s. Somehow we're managing to survive. Here are some pictures of a volcano we visited, along with another crater that's now become a lake, as well as pictures from an area called Montezuma, where my brother and our friend Yoji and I camped out at the beach and jumped off waterfalls.

Country-hopping

noreply@blogger.com (Mike) — Sat, 23 Dec 2006 20:31:00 +0000

Well, after 10 days in Japan and 2 months in Washington, DC, I arrived Dec. 17 in sunny Costa Rica to spend the holidays with my family. Now before you get too jealous, it might help to inform you that San Jose (where my parents live) is pretty much like other central american capital cities. Here in the capital there are no rainforests, beaches, stunning beauty, etc. However, since San Jose is in the middle of the country, we're only a few hours or less from all of the awesome things to do and see in Costa Rica. Christmas and New Years with the fam were good, and we've taken a couple trips out to the jungles and beaches.
Animals seen so far:
Birds (including a lot of hummingbirds), butterflies, lizards, frogs, fish, howler monkeys, a sloth, and various bugs. I realized after watching the sloth in the tree for a few minutes that if you've seen a picture of a sloth, you've pretty much seen a sloth- it's in the same category as watching grass grow, paint dry, etc.
Anyway, if that one picture of my family in an oxcart whets your appetite for more odd family photos (and general pictures of Costa Rica), you're in luck! (see below)

Japantastic!

noreply@blogger.com (Mike) — Wed, 11 Oct 2006 18:56:00 +0000

Two weeks ago I taught my last classes of Korean kids, said my goodbyes to my students, coworkers and friends, and headed for Japan, where I had arranged a 10-day layover on my way back to the US. After a 7-hour delay in the Incheon (Seoul) airport, in which I made use of their bathhouse facilities and did a lot of walking around, I flew into Osaka, Japan. I was at a loss at first, not being familiar with the language or the transportation system (which is confusing and not as expensive as I had thought), but I managed to get on a train and then the subway to downtown Osaka. I stayed in a capsule hotel there, which was a good time- you get a little robe to wear, and you sleep in this tube that's about 7 feet long, 3 feet wide, and 3 feet high. It's got a little TV, radio, light and shelf in there, and they have bathrooms, showers, and lockers for you to use. After a day in Osaka, I spent 3 days in Kyoto with my friend Daniel (we were friends during my Korea exchange student days at Yonsei University), a day in Hiroshima and Miyajima, a day near Nagoya with my friend Aiko (also from Yonsei, 3rd picture, center), and two days keeping it street in Tokyo with Joy (WM buddy) before heading back to Osaka to get my flight out. Kyoto has tons of stuff to see, Osaka had a nice waterside area and lots of big buildings, and Tokyo was as modern and packed and awesome as I had hoped. It's hard to summarize Hiroshima in a word, it was really good in a shocking and depressing sort of way, it definitely left an impression of the instant carnage that an atomic bomb creates, and its aftereffects.
On a lighter note, my day with Aiko was great, we went to see this series of small waterfalls up in some mountain forest- it was beautiful, and amazingly we were the only ones around (in Korea a place like that would have mobs of people). We also ate conveyor-belt sushi and went to a Brazilian Pentecostal church service that night. Yes, you read that right- there's a sizeable population of Brazilians in Japan, who either have some Japanese blood in them or who married Japanese people or just Japanese people who grew up in Brazil, and they have a church in Aiko's town. I was still working on getting used to Japanese culture and language, and then in this building I ran into a polar-opposite culture and language, and it was a little overwhelming, but the service was energetic and really good. No one there spoke both Portugese and English, but they found someone who could translate into Spanish for me. Afterwards, when we were talking with people, it was in a crazy mix of English, Spanish, Portugese, and Japanese- but somehow we managed to have conversations ranging from American hip-hop to whether Rio de Janiero or Sao Paulo is a more beautiful city. Good times.

I already miss these kids

noreply@blogger.com (Mike) — Wed, 11 Oct 2006 18:20:00 +0000

Here are some pictures from my kindergarten classes. The first one is from the 6-year old (that's Korean age, really they're five) class aka Orange Class, and the rest are from the 7-year old (really they're six) class, aka Apple Class (the classrooms had fruit and animal names). The first one is Roy and Matthew having a conversation "on the phone", and the group shots were from my last day with Apple Class (they were my favorites)- it was during break time, and I tried to get them to line up neatly for a picture, but they preferred climbing all over me. In the first picture, from left they're Anna, Sam, Chris, Liz, Jeffrey, Alex, and Jamie. In the second picture you can see Austin, too. You might notice in these three pictures that Jamie was the best behaved student in the class- she's the only one who would stand and look at the camera like I was telling them. But I had so much fun with them- they especially loved it when Mike Teacher would leave the classroom and the Robot would stop by while he was out. All in the name of "teaching English".

Last Trip Around Korea

noreply@blogger.com (Mike) — Mon, 25 Sep 2006 14:07:00 +0000

A few weekends ago I took an awesome two-day trip with two of my coworkers, Rob (of Cheju-do fame) and Ashley. We went to the North-Central part of Korea, first to a town called Inje, and later through several small towns on our way to Gangchon and then back to Seoul. Inje was our main destination, because it's known as an adventure sports center in Korea, which means that it has a bungee jump, among other things. We got to the platform where you board the little car that goes up a bright orange crane-like machine to the 60-meter (180 feet, approx.) high spot where you jump. After paying our $40 and being given instructions in Korean (which I, as best Korean speaker of the group, only partially understood), I went up with one of the operators in the mechanized car that takes you up over the (very shallow looking) river. I get to the top, my legs strapped in with only VELCRO (yes, only velcro) and a loose waist harness, and the guy tells me to step out and put my arms straight out to the sides. I start to do it and then rush back in, making sure that my harness isn't supposed to be tighter, there isn't more to hold my legs, that I'm supposed to just jump out like a swan dive and OH PLEASE I DON'T WANT TO DIE. After his assurances that it's all ready and a bunch of Korean that I don't really understand, I step out on the 2 foot-by-2 foot metal platform sticking out from the car, and slowly release my arms from the handrails. I look down from the sickening height (instead of looking at the mountain like I was told) and make my peace with God, stretching my arms out and listening to the count of 1, 2, 3... and then make the gut-wrenching swan-dive into nothingness, against all of my instincts and better judgement. Miraculously, the bungee cord holds and I bounce up, still trying to figure out which way is up and laughing in my ecstatic joy that I'm still alive. Definitely the most frightening thing I've done in my life, and definitely one of the most awesome.
We also took a variety of buses, a boat, and a standing-room-only train, and ate sea snails, conch, and bondegi (steamed silkworm pupae). The sea snails were pretty good, and the bondegi, as you might have guessed, was disgusting.
The last two highlights of the trip were in Gangchon, where we 1) rented 4-wheelers and drove around the town and some of the countryside, and 2) went to a nearby waterfall, which is probably a lot more impressive when it's been raining.
Here are the pictures:

Korean Hawaii!

noreply@blogger.com (Mike) — Wed, 16 Aug 2006 14:34:00 +0000

Three weeks ago I went to Cheju-do, an island of the southern coast of Korea that has been called, among other things, Korean Hawaii. It's a semitropical island with a big extinct volcano in the middle, plenty of beaches, and Korean tourists and honeymooners galore. My new coworker Rob and I took a 5 hour train from Seoul down to a town called Mokpo on the southwestern coast, where we got a 4.5 hour ferry the next day to Cheju. Actually, we almost didn't get the ferry because we were at the end of a long waiting list, but one of the guys working there had pity on us foreigners and let us on in front of all the Korean people who had their names on the list before us. This was amazing because 1) it was blatant racial discrimination, 2) none of the Koreans seemed to protest the act, and 3) we rather enjoyed it, as wrong as it was (if we hadn't gotten on the boat we would have had to wait another day in Mokpo, where there was absolutely nothing of interest except a Korean midget we saw at some street performance the day before).
In Cheju we hiked the extinct volcano (Halla-san), but not to the top because the last bit of the trail was closed off for "environmental protection". We also explored caves created by lava flows, ate a gigantic raw fish feast, went to a beach or two, and went windsurfing, which was cool. It was actually not as hard to get up on the board and pull the sail up as I thought, but it was a little tough to do more than just go in a straight line. People in Cheju were friendly to us (as almost all Koreans are), and although it's the peak season, it wasn't as crowded as I had expected. It wasn't the most amazing place I've been to in my life, but I'd go back if I had the chance, and do the things on our list that we didn't have time (or money, really) for, like hangliding, horseback riding, scuba diving, etc.
I didn't take many pictures, Rob took some good ones, like these:

Mud Festival!!!

noreply@blogger.com (Mike) — Wed, 19 Jul 2006 13:23:00 +0000

This last weekend I went to the much-anticipated Mud Festival in Boryeong, which is about 2.5 hours south of Seoul. Unfortunately, we couldn't get early train tickets, so we didn't get there until about 4pm. When we walked onto the beach, we saw a lot of mud-covered people, but to our surprise, THERE WAS NO MUD LEFT! Ok, not exactly NO mud, but pretty much- we were scraping it out of the bottom of buckets and off the street to put on ourselves. Despite that fact, we still had a pretty good time, although I didn't take many pictures because I had my camera stored in a safe, mud-free place most of the time. The two biggest redeeming factors were that it was a nice beach for swimming and that there was a bathhouse (i.e. jjimjilbang- motto: no clothes, just right) right there that only cost $3 to use- it included showers, baths, saunas, mud to cover yourself with (which was where I ended up finding the most mud to get on me), etc. So mud festival = definitely worth it, but get there early.

Cure for Korean World Cup Fever = Switzerland

noreply@blogger.com (Mike) — Mon, 10 Jul 2006 13:23:00 +0000

The month of June was overshadowed, no, make that eclipsed by World Cup Fever here in Korea. Starting around two months before the world cup started, the chants, songs, team colors etc. began to become more and more noticeable, finally reaching a fever pitch the week that the World Cup started.

Ironically, this time was by far the most I've ever paid attention to and cared about a World Cup, and also the most disappointing. While both the US and Korea did very well last World Cup, in this one they fizzled out in the first stage, the US not even scoring a goal itself in any of its games (its one goal of the cup was an autogoal scored by Italy). But Korea- I've never witnessed as enthusiastic and wildly patriotic fans as Koreans, and I'm pretty sure that a lot of them had convinced themselves that all their cheering and support would ensure a stellar performance by their team. However, with a 1-1-1 record, they didn't make it out of the 1st (group) stage, and then all of a sudden World Cup viewership went from about 99.9% to about 5-10%. We went to watch Korea's game against Switzerland in front of City Hall (where I took these pictures), which is the most popular place to cheer and watch the games on big screens. The game didn't start until 4am, but we arrived at 10pm and waited out there on the streets with the tens of thousands of other fans for 6 hours cheering, singing, and waiting for the game to start. Despite all our cheering and hoping, Switzerland beat (and thus eliminated) Korea, and now we've got 4 more years to wait and to come up with more patriotic fight songs.

Another day, another 955.5 won

noreply@blogger.com (Mike) — Sun, 18 Jun 2006 13:56:00 +0000

I went to my first Korean wedding last month, of my friend Ebi (sp?) a Japanese girl who's marrying a Korean guy. It was fun, especially since I went with my old host mom and host sister, and they managed to get the ajuma (middle-aged lady) who worked there to let me try on the traditional wedding clothes and pose for pictures at the traditional wedding table. My host mom is awesome.

Click here for more pictures of Ebi's Wedding

Korean elections and my brother Steve also came last month. The weeks leading up to the election saw pairs of election volunteers wearing matching outfits, complete with hats and sashes, promoting their candidate mainly by seeing who could bow to you the most as you walked down the street or into the subway. Also, candidates really utilized little trucks in their campaigns. I've noticed that Koreans love doing stuff out of little trucks, such as:
-selling fruit, clothing, instant coffee value packs, giant crabs, etc.
-roasting and selling chickens
-playing drums to promote some store opening
-showing an ad for something on giant TVs
-cheering for the national soccer team
-chanting slogans to support a political candidate
-and (my favorite) the candidates themselves setting up a podium in the back of one of these trucks and giving an impassioned speech out of the truck.

Unfortunately, I forgot to take pictures of one of these campaign trucks, so I had to shamelessly steal a photo from Ben's blog of one of the trucks right before a speech.

Steve and I had a good time, we saw Nanta which is kind of like the Korean cooking version of Stomp, and the usual tourist stuff. We also ate sannakji (live octupus), which Steve was set on eating before he left. Luckily they cut it up before we ate it, so we didn't have to swallow a whole writhing octopus, only writhing pieces of little octopi. Also, I introduced Steve to the jjimjilbang (bathhouse), Korean food, and Korean FASHION!!!!!!!!!!*
Steve had his huge camera with him all the time, so I let him take all the pictures, but he hasn't sent me any of them yet. When I do, this post will be much more visually stimulating.

*by "introduced him to Korean fashion, I mean we laughed at it.

Michelle comes to Korea

noreply@blogger.com (Mike) — Fri, 19 May 2006 14:33:00 +0000

My sister Michelle visited me during the first week of May, and although I didn't get to spend that much time with her due to me having to work for 2 of the 4 days she was here. We still managed to see some of the sights, including Lotte World (Korean Disneyland) and of course the main old palace downtown.

Guitar Wolf+Rock Tigers= Incredible

noreply@blogger.com (Mike) — Fri, 19 May 2006 13:58:00 +0000

Also on the weekend of the Lotus Lantern Festival, I saw a concert of the Rock Tigers with the band Guitar Wolf from Japan headlining. It was awesome to have such powerful forces of East Asian rock together at last.

The last picture was from when the lead singer/guitarist from Guitar Wolf, Seiji, grabbed a random guy from the crowd, brought him on stage, put his guitar on him, and had the guy try to play even though he had no idea what he was doing. This bit lasted for about 10 minutes- when the guy tried to take the guitar off after a few minutes, Seiji wouldn't let him, and instead began to instruct him how to jump and hit the chord when you land.