Apparently it has been nearly two months since I have updated this blog. I apologize. Basically, I am really busy and I have been putting this off one day at a time. I guess I’ll start with a quick list of things that have happened. This isn’t all inclusive but it’s a few things that are coming to my mind right now.
· I joined a soccer team
· I went to a Korean church with a coworker that was 100% in Korean. I had to sit on a little pad on the floor for 2 hours and I didn’t understand a single word. They even sang me a welcome song in Korean after the service and then we all at Samgyeopsal – one of my favorite Korean foods.
· I’m beginning to learn Korean. I take a 90-minute class on Saturday mornings that is offered by my church. I also meet at a Language Exchange café twice a week on Tuesday and Thursday for two hours and both teach English and study Korean for free.
· I had an excellent Halloween that involved dressing up in chicken costume (marketed as a one-piece pajama outfit for Koreans) and going out in public with my friends who were dressed up in other various animal costumes.
· I ate spicy chicken feet.
I started playing on a soccer team on the weekends that is in the top recreational league in Korea. The league has eight teams and the bottom two will get relegated to the league below after the season. It’s as competitive as it gets for recreational soccer. Most of the players are ex-college players from the US or they played a lot in England. One of the players on my team used to play for Liverpool when he was a teenager. Anyways, I joined the team in the second half of the season and I scored two goals and had three assists while playing four games. We won all four games by a combined total of 18-4. At the end of the fourth game I hurt my leg though. Something felt wrong in my right calf and it swelled up pretty big right away. It happened on a Sunday and I put off going to the doctor until Friday because I wasn’t sure if it was serious or not. I finally went to the doctor when my ankle, which didn’t hurt at all, started turning purple and swelling up. The doctor told me that I had a partial separation of the two muscles in my calf and there was blood running between them. I was told to not run, not play sports, not ski, and try not to use stairs for four weeks. Week two is finishing up right now and it has not been fun at all. On a side note, I really like how cheap the hospital visits are here. I just walked in and asked to see the doctor and he gave me an ultrasound and two weeks of painkillers and the whole thing cost me about $75. I thought that was a good deal until my students told me that I went to the most expensive hospital in the area and the other ones would have been even cheaper. About 85% of the friends that I have made here so far all went on a skiing/snowboarding trip last weekend and I wasn’t able to go. Right now though, my leg is feeling a lot better. I’ve stopped taking the painkillers I was prescribed because they aren’t necessary anymore and nearly all of the color/swelling is gone from my foot. It really seems like things should be fully healed by the time Christmas, and the next snowboarding trip, comes around.
I’ve also been working pretty hard at attempting to learn Korean. I signed up for a free Korean class that meets on Saturday mornings for 90 minutes at my church. The teacher is excellent and I feel like I have been learning a lot. I can read and write the Korean characters and I’m starting to learn some expressions and vocabulary. I also signed up for a language exchange program that is twice a week during the week. A Korean guy I met started a chain of café’s that are basically a club for Korean people that want to learn English. The Koreans meet multiple times a week and study English papers together in an attempt to become fluent. He also looks for English speaking people who want to learn Korean to come and meet with a Korean partner twice a week to teach them English and to learn Korean. The foreigners, like me, don’t have to pay anything and we get free coffee, tea, waffles, and beer anytime we want to come to the café. Not just when we are learning. The Koreans get the free stuff as well but they pay a very hefty membership fee to signup for the club. I got partnered up with a very nice 34 year-old woman named 임혀운 (Im-hye-oon). She has two daughters that she drops off and school and then she comes to learn English for a few hours and then goes and picks them up. The rest of the people in the café are extremely friendly as well. During the two hours I’m there we usually study for about an hour and then spend the rest of the time chatting with everyone else. They all speak English really well so they always have a few challenging questions about expressions or grammar every time I come in. I found out yesterday that one of the girls there studied six months in Portland a couple years ago and another one studied in Vancouver, BC for six months earlier this year. It was pretty cool to chat with Koreans that were actually familiar with my part of the world.
I’m still enjoying teaching also. This week is the last week of my first term and the term has gone quite well. My classes have progressed from me just following the poorly constructed textbooks they give me, to me picking and choosing the good parts out of the book and then just coming up with other things for them to do. My students really love Jeopardy, so I can’t tell you how many times I’ve played various versions of it over the course of the term. I came to find out that the schedule I walked into when I arrived is the most hours out of anyone in the office and one of the tougher ones I could possibly get. Next term I teach a few less classes and I get off work an hour earlier a couple nights a week as well. That will make a huge difference because I am yet to meet anyone in Korea that works as late as I do every night. Right now I work until 11:25pm every night but next term I will get off work at 10:30pm twice a week. That will make a big difference because I will be able to at least meet up with some friends for a little while a couple times a week.
Right now, I’m beginning to experience a little bit of what winter is like in South Korea. For the past couple weeks the temperature really hasn’t risen about 40 degrees. Most of the time it has been hovering around 35 or so. We’ve gotten some snow here and there but nothing that has stuck yet. It is supposed to start getting even colder here in a week or two. Pretty soon it will start to go into the 20’s and the teens and not really come above freezing level again until February. I’m starting to build up a collection of winter clothes so I think I’m just about prepared. I’m going to buy a nice weatherproof winter coat this weekend though. My Korean friends from the Language Exchange program are going to take me to a market in Seoul where they have a lot of winter clothes at a heavily discounted price. I’m also planning on going to a German market in Seoul this weekend. They are supposed to have authentic German sausage, beer, holiday treats, and some other things as well.
Well, that’s about all I can think of for now. I’m sure I’m forgetting a lot of things since I haven’t updated this in nearly two months. I really do hope that I stop being lazy and I update this more often. Especially since I can’t go running now I should use my extra free time a little better!
