Season's Change

It's the proper beginning of fall here in South Korea. I saw my first fully color changed tree in the school yard. Most of the trees here are still green, even up on the hills and mountains.
Other fall signs are here though. The weather has cooled somewhat, and the humidity is down. By cooled, I mean I need a jacket or sweater in the mornings and evenings, but the afternoons are still close to 80, if not higher.

Fall means bugs are giving their last hurrah before the dead of winter. The dragonfly population was out doing its best to prolong the species (which, around here, does not need much helping or increasing).

I've decided one thing though.. The spiders have gotten huge and fat over the summer. They must eat very well.

I did not want to put my hand in the picture for perspective because then I'd have to be near this lady. So I will just say she's about the size of half of my thumb - a little more than an inch long in body and as big around as my thumb. Sadly, I've seen bigger than her.
The golden orb weavers (aka yellow garden spiders) here are gigantic. *shudder* You don't see them in May. You might see a few in June. A couple more in July and August, but September is when they really showed up en masse. Perhaps they were always there, just now you can't miss them because they're big enough to eat small toads. *shudder* They have this penchant for building their webs over walkways (in between trees or light posts) and sometimes they build them too low.

It's scary walking on the sidewalk. I am going to be walking in the street until a few good frosts end their reign of terror for the season.

Panggu

I recently learned the most important word - banggu (the b is actually an unaspirated p, so it sounds like a half-way p/b to  us English speakers) - 방구.

I also recently learned that there's a way around some site blocking. Should I teach you? Hmm. Admittedly it doesn't work for everything. Last week the school's computers all updated (windows, i assume) and this ruined the flash player - which our textbook's computer program runs from. This not only stopped us teachers from using the interactive software, but then the students couldn't do their homework. Conveniently - the flash was ok for 3rd and 4th grade. I think those youngsters would have cried if it had happened to them. The real problem though is that the province of education has blocked adobe.com and blocks attempts to update existing adobe products. I couldn't fix it. So we had to call in the computer person for our school and she couldn't fix it and they called in an expert. And he couldn't fix it. My co-teacher got them to "wipe the harddrive" claiming that the computer was too slow. It wasn't. So pretty much there's nothing on that computer now except flash - which I'm not sure how she did it, but our school's computer lady fixed the problem (for us... it was later on in the week that the students' computers went down). But that still didn't fix my co-teacher's problem with IE not working with his little fox website (english learning site with cute flash animations). I downloaded chrome and showed him how to use it - and that it would make little fox play. At first he seemed pleased. Later he decided this was "too much work" (to open a browser he is less used to) and says "it should work in IE." There goes my google chrome convert. *sigh*

So I guess we'll see in a bit if the problem is resolved for the students who couldn't do their homework - since today is a co-teacher day.

Oh yeah, the trick is... use https instead of http. Yup. Simple. :D

Busy Days

Since school has been back in full swing, I've been keeping pretty busy. On the weekends, J and I typically stay in town and wander around finding new things. About 2 weekends ago we found that our town has a shrine to the legendary founder of all Korea (back from the year like 2333 BC).

And that day we also bought a 3D crystal puzzle. And I bought cute shoes. :D J bought me an adorable bunny shaped white out strip dispenser and hello kitty eraser.

In the meantime I eat chips with cute actors on the bags (i mean, it's not enough for sunny 10 soda to have pop stars.. LOL). And watch clouds, sunsets and such things.... 

This is of course when I'm not cleaning my house. 

Like last weekend, when I went to Everland in Seoul with J. (and didn't clean my house.... the centipedes thought this meant they were welcome to move in. ha.)

Everland was decorated for Halloween, and we were even lucky enough to come the 2nd night of the horror nights. :D I must add -- one nice thing about Korea is that they do not understand the scariness of clowns. I've asked my kids, different ages, if they thought clowns were scary, and they said no. They were puzzled. The Western concept of a clown is new to them, and luckily the scary part didn't carry over yet. So there were no scary clowns at all! ^_^ The only actor that got me was the Korean grim reaper. I didn't realize he was a costumed guy at first, and all of a sudden he whipped out a fan and spread it open, fanned himself and walked briskly past, scowling. I scream a little. (which was his goal anyway)

Everland has a really pretty rose garden with all kinds of roses, and naked Greek goddess statues. lol.

This vampire was willing to pose for a picture. He got really close. 

 Right after the rose garden is the "four seasons garden" which changes depending on the season and holiday. It was a graveyard when we went through. It felt like fall - with orange and burnt red colored flowers, lots of pumpkins, and even a bush or two shaped like a jack-o-lantern.

In the horror village, you could pose with plastic bones and body parts. 

The owl is my new stuftie - Whoobert. J got him for me. 

The day after Everland, J and I went to see the Studio Ghibli and Miyazaki exhibit at the Seoul Arts Center. They had at least a few hundred of the layouts and storyboards all on display. There were some for every single Ghibli movie, even the obscure TV only ones. It was really cool. I realized I've only seen a small fraction of all their works. 

Other than that... my school went on a field trip the week before last. I went with the kindergartners through 3rd graders to the Cheongju zoo. That was fun. The kids would ask me what different things were called in English. That was exciting for me, because usually they don't care. And the kindergartners, who I don't teach, looked at me curiously. One little boy asked his sister (my student) is she the English teacher? So I told him yes I was. (all in Korean...) 

I still am not very good at Korean. But I understand a lot more. 

Tokyo & Home

The next day I spent in Tokyo, Natalie and I went to Monzen-Nakacho, Akihabara, Ueno and I honestly forget where else. What I do remember were my feet hurting a lot, and that I was hungry but I had a hard time agreeing on foods with my travel buddy.

Monzen-Nakacho was a cute place. It gave off more of an older charm to me. We went there in search of a festival, but found we'd missed it by a day or two. But there were still a few booths left. We went in the temple anyway. I heard a priest or somesuch giving a talk about Obon and history.

Interestingly enough, you're not supposed to take pictures inside the temple. (in korea, it's okay to. very different.)

I did kind of sneak one though. It's people about to pray after lighting incense at the altar. You buy a stick of incense for a few dollars and light it "in the hopes that blahblahblah" listens to you. Oh, I remember thinking the statue in this shrine was different from ones I've seen. This one was holding a sword and something else... I forget. Man. I should have written it down. 

This was another shrine. It was right nextdoor to the other. They tend to come in pairs? This one was the kind where you go up, clap 3 times and ring a bell.

View leaving the temples. These were leftover booths.

A variety of plastic masks you could buy.

They had these things on display. I don't know the word for them - but they're those things you see them carrying in the middle of a parade during a festival.

From Monzen-Nakacho we got back on the metro and rode to... I guess it was Akihabara. I saw a river and wanted to look for kappa. Natalie didn't know what a kappa was, so I had to tell her the gory bits. Baha. But she didn't really fancy staying in one spot for long, so I didn't see one.

Kappa-less river.

This one was also kappa-less.

Walking.

 Fashionable guys.

They just looked cool. I wish I was the direct kind of person and had just asked them for a photo. But I'm not. 

There are a lot of maid cafes in Akihabara. Sadly these places have a cover charge, as well as a spending minimum if you're going to go in one. I didn't really have the money to spend on something like that. Japan is expensive. 

After Akihabara, we went to Ueno Park. Ueno has been around since there were emperors in Japan, in fact the park was part of the imperial estate. I was a bit disappointed to find out I'm the only person I know who associates pandas with Ueno (zoo). 

This is the lotus pond in Ueno Park. It's full of these huge lotuses! I think the buds were as big as my fist, the leaves broader than both my hands opened wide.

 big old fish

The path in the lotus pond leads to a temple. 

From there we went back up the hill and found these performers.

There were lots of big, old trees and these huge fearless crows. 

 He was trying to hand feed the pidgeons, and she was trying to snap a picture of it.

A lot of the streets we went down looked like this - narrow, filled with shops' stuff and packed with people. Natalie likes it best this way. She ended up liking Ueno a lot - because it had a lot of the small packed streets. I liked Ueno for the park, its peace, and the history that I knew about it. 

I was beat beyond words that day. The next day it was a relief to be going home. The shinkansen has air con, the trains' insides have air con, the airport has air con, and all of these places have seats. :D My feet needed it. I took my time going back to Nagoya, and spent about 2 or 3 hours in the airport. It was nice to sit and read, and just be surrounded by a language I understood. 

I must say, I did miss speaking Korean. It is very strange to go from one place where you've been hearing and speaking one thing, and going to another where you already understand what's being said around you. The one you've been accustomed to using comes out, or blocks some of what you knew before. For me, having those Korean roommates was sweet - because I could go back to using something my brain had created a set for. Perhaps it's because the newness and "most used"ness of the neural pathways, but to me as a person it just felt... familiar. It was such a strange disconnect. Two alien homes.

Sitting in the airport to leave was bittersweet. It was good to go "home" and odd that I thought of it as home. I understand enough Korean to get by, but I understand enough Japanese to understand and create meaningful conversations. Therein lies the difference. 

Oh yeah. I got back to Seoul and stayed the night at Jongsoo's aunts' house. The next day we got delicious salad at this cool cafe and J and I went to a huge Kyobo where I bought Japanese import cds for 1/3 of what I paid in Japan. Sadness! Oh well. Lesson learned! 

Speedy Wanderings (in Japan)

It was noon, August 12, and Natalie and I were in Ikebukuro. We were hungry.

Apparently in Japan - your karaoke place serves full on meals. There's a lot you can get in a karaoke place, it seems. We didn't go inside one though. 

We got food from a famous chain, which I've forgotten the name of, because we were in a hurry. I got curry rice. 

From there we got on the metro and went to Shinjuku, Harajuku and that area. 

I can't really remember the order we did things in. It's all a blur of walking in searing heat and humidity, with breaks inside little shops or buying a cold drink at a convenience store. I remember seeing on the TV in Osaka that they were saying some places were 40 C, so I imagine the days in Tokyo were near that temperature too. 

Harajuku was fun. I found a lot of very cute clothing stores there. If I had a lot of money to waste - it would probably be wasted there. I bought a cute apple print dress there for 1,500 yen (a little over $15 usd). It was so hot and crowded I didn't much feel like taking pictures. Natalie really likes crowds, and so we went toward the most crowded places (and also down any alley that struck her fancy). 

This is a night scene outside of Ikebukuro station, west exit. After a long day, we were finally on our way back to the hostel. 

Now I have to relate to you the awkward story of dormitory hostel stays. 

We had chosen the dormitory style accommodation because it was cheaper. Something like $27 a night. Hotel Sakura's set up is 6 people on 3 bunk beds in one little room (with public style toilets, and 3 shower rooms per floor).
 After walking around all day and feeling dead tired, we went to the desk to get our keys and go up for the night. Right in front of us, at the elevator were 2 or 3 Asian guys, also going up. We all got on the elevator. What button? 6. Oh they are already going there. Fancy that. We all get off, and head to the same door. The boys were just a little ahead of us and had their key in the lock before us. I made the room number (on the key) obvious so they could see... we too were staying in that room! *facepalm*

I was so spent, I could hardly do anything at that moment except go in and collect my things for a shower. 

When I returned, I found Natalie chatting up the boys. They were all 3 from South Korea. They were friendly enough, and the one guy was most definitely pleased to have females as roommates. The other two were less pleased, but not mean or weird about it. They found it funny I could speak to them in Korean (with my terribly limited vocabulary). But you know, it was nice to speak Korean. It's such a strange thing, to go from being immersed for 6 months in one language, and suddenly find yourself in a place where you know what people are saying, and you can respond if you want to, but it's not English either. When you throw in English attempts on their part, while my brain is turning off Korean mode and engaging Japanese mode, it really messes things up! (i think the airline people appreciated my linguistic quandary, since most of them spoke all 3 languages interchangeably as a force of habit)

Koreans tend to live with their parents until they get married. Couple co-habitation is frowned upon in society. (it's also like Geneva on steroids, except you don't have to walk to Sheetz with a guy more than once for people assume you're going out. one view, one time - and a Korean thinks "that man and woman are dating or engaged or married") So I can imagine the whole situation was odd to the Korean guys too. I mean, I kept thinking it was some mistake. I told them, in Korean, the situation was a bit weird, and they said it was weird for them too. I was going to ask the desk in the morning, but around 11pm, a Japanese girl came in and took the remaining bed. That's when I knew - they just put people in wherever. (Japanese people are pretty similar with this kind of thing... Way to adopt Western weirdness for the sake of the almighty dollar, Hotel Sakura)

That was the end of day 1 in Tokyo. 

Vacation in Japan

It's been a busy last couple of weeks, with the end of the school semester and summer camp (which is like day camp 4 solid hours of back to back teaching). Then I had two days of desk warming - which I was not obliged to serve but rather to spend 'working at home' - and finally vacation!

I've been asked why go to Japan. Koreans seem very concerned about the radiation there. I was told not to eat sushi or really any ocean things. I had a good laugh inside. Radiation really effects everything, so it's not just the ocean stuff. But I was only going for 5 days, and only spending 2 days in Tokyo area. This answer seemed to satisfy the worried Koreans. (actually someone asked me the other day and Ryan reached his hand over my shoulder and said "See? I grew a third arm!" LOL!)

I flew to Nagoya and caught the shinkansen there to Osaka. Word to the wise - just fly to Kansai airport or Narita - they get overly suspicious of people going to smaller airports. They went through my bag and questioned me. Annoying. The best answer I could give for using that airport was that it was in the middle between Osaka and Tokyo and I was going to both places (starting in one and ending in the other).

They were a bit concerned for how I would get to Osaka from there too. Shinkansen seemed to relieve their fears. Riding the shinkansen is actually pretty nice. Not only is it fast, but it's spacious and generally not crowded. Train riding is pretty convenient there (except in smaller places where the train only comes once every 30 minutes. don't miss your train!) except they don't have the line maps in the train cars - and only in Tokyo did I see a digital map display of the loop you're on. The trains work best if you understand Japanese and can listen for what the stop is.

The plan was to meet up with another English teacher I know from Korea (Natalie) and spend 2.5 days in Osaka, and then 2.5 days in Tokyo. Well, 1.5 in Osaka since I spent 1 day in Nagahama.

I arrived in the evening so it was too dark to take pictures. (did i mention i got lost leaving the station and ended up near Shin Sekai and met a random man who helped me find my hostel? yeah. a little scary, but God is good, and the man was not a creep. It was nice having random conversations in Japanese.) The next day I immediately got back on the shinkansen and headed out to Nagahama to visit my friend Barbi. We decided we never meet in our own country, it's always abroad. She and I rode around Nagahama on bikes, went to the castle there to rent a bike, and they were having a festival. So we browsed little stands and later stood to listen to live music and found they had had more there than we thought.

           

It was too dark to get a decent picture of Lake Biwa. We had no idea the festival would have 2 stages (only saw one) and lots of demonstrations, and a candle design contest! Barbi and I went shopping in this cute little area of Nagahama and I bought a bunch of souvenirs, and also a second-hand yukata.
We ate dinner at one of Barbi's favorite places. It was good, but I got bitten by some kind of mukade nakama.... In Japan they have these poisonous centipedes called mukade. Anything "nakama" means it's related. What stung/bit me is unknown. I mean - we found it under the table - but we've never really seen anything like it. It looked like a gray ant, but it had very large pincers on the front. The mark on my toe where it got me is two little holes (just like a mukade sting). The sting itself hurt really badly. It felt like I was being stabbed by multiple electric swords. It hurt into the joint of the big toe. And it hurt for many hours. Actually it hurt the next day, touching would bring back the stabbing. 

The next day I had to dash out for the next train. I was supposed to meet Natalie in Ikeda around 12:30-1pm. But we missed the train and had to wait 30 minutes. So I was about 40 minutes late meeting Natalie. So I missed going to the Instant Ramen museum. I got to the station in Ikeda, looked around, went to the museum, looked around, didn't find her. Asked the information desk if they had seen an American girl. They were kind of confused. Once they got over trying to speak English, they seemed to grasp I was looking for my friend who I was supposed to meet there. So they helped me look, and made an announcement. They were so very nice and helpful. But she wasn't there, so I thanked them and went on my way. 

I got back to the hostel in the late afternoon. I showered and decided to go out to find some food. 

I forgot to mention the entirety of this trip was always over 30 C (above 90 F) and the humidity was easily 60-70%. Every effort outside of air con was a sweat bath. 

I wandered toward Tennoji in hopes of getting to go in the park, but it was closed for the evening. Then I found this mall (abeno something) and got some curry udon with a ham cutlet. Pretty good for food court food. On the way back from there, I came across a man who spoke to me in English. He wanted to know if I was Australian (natalie is) and if I'd found my friend yet. I said not yet, but I was going to find her. Not sure how or why he knew. I asked Natalie later too and she didn't really know either. 

The next day Natalie and I boarded shinkansen for Tokyo. This was my breakfast. It's coffee jelly (aka jello), almond crush pocky and the Choco Pick Up was actually my nighttime snack.. Lol. 

We got to Ikebukuro by noon and dropped off our luggage there.
And then began our speedy wanderings.

Little Things

Hello.
I've finished the first quarter of summer camp today. Been busy making things for the classes. I see a lot of people making fun crafts with their kids, and get a little jealous. But I bet those kids are the best in their class. Where I work - I have the same kids, the same mix of ok and not so ok at English. The new kid seems to be pretty good with English (for 2nd grade). He can read a bit.

But I digress. I am posting because I wanted to show you all something that makes me happy.

Yeah. Heinz Ketchup, and yes the red ribbon has Korean on it.

There are days when Korean food is very very unappealing. The high acidity of spicy foods takes a toll on you.

And that's why I bought this. I never thought I'd miss ketchup. I miss ketchup.
Try eating your fries with no salt and no ketchup. Yup. That's how they come here - unless you get the flavored ones (dry powdered flavorings added to greasy fries... very messy). Small things like ketchup mean a lot to me. I guess that is how I am American.
(oh yeah, there's also hershey's chocolate here! expensive import goods!! hahaha!)