The more things change...

,,,the more they, well, change.

After five years living in the same neighborhood and teaching at the same school, I'm now in a (radically) different neighborhood and a (mostly) different school.

The last school year was an utter nightmare. Through a combination of horrible business decisions and, somewhere along the line by somebody, malfeasance and probable embezzlement, the school was constantly in danger of closing mid-year, a bunch of teachers and a lot of students quit, and we the teachers got cheated out of our legally mandated pension money and other benefits and lost three months of pay. Overall, we were shorted somewhere near ten thousand bucks apiece. At times I dreamed about going into a less stressful business, such as bomb defusing.

The school staggered on, somehow, to the end of the spring semester and then quietly expired. (This is gonna get complicated, so take notes, kids: there will be a quiz.) The owners of two hagwons (evening academies), called Proud 7 and British Columbia Collegiate, formed a partnership and contacted Saint Paul's parent organization in (duh) Saint Paul, Minnesota. They bought the name and insignia and opened a new school, in a new neighborhood, with 30-some of our former students. This is where I, along with a few of last year's teachers, work now.

The old school started as Saint Paul Preparatory Academy and changed to Saint Paul Preparatory School when we got accredited in the US. (However, according to Korean law, we were still an academy--a hagwon--because our kids aren't foreign and haven't lived for years abroad. They didn't care that we had an American curriculum and credentialed teachers, were fully accredited in America and had kids admitted to Notre Dame, NYU, Boston College, and USC. The inflexibility of Korean bureaucracy is a nightmare.

A local TV station ran a sensationalistic, biased report on us... it was so slanted that it made Fox News look, well, fair and balanced. This certainly didn't help the cash-flow problem.) This was the same station that ran a "news" report saying that Americans' purpose in coming here is to despoil virgins and spread AIDS.

The new school is called Saint Paul Preparatory Seoul. My friend Bob Ellison, the math teacher, is the principal. It's a teeny-tiny place, more or less an elongated log cabin with six classrooms, most of them rather claustrophobic. We have just seven teachers, and of that only three (Bob, Billy Stewart, and I, the remnants of the old SPPS) are full-time.

This is not it.

After six whole days of classes, I can say I like the school. I like that every student in school is in one or another of my classes, and we have really good kids. It's a very homey, friendly atmosphere. The back wall of the school is all glass and we're at the base of a hountain, so I can always see trees and birds. Also mud, but what the hell, it's organic.

The glass-walled offices on the first floor are decorated with four-foot-high photos of Ivy League colleges. Also an NFL photo labeled "rugby"; go figure. Anyway, all the college photos are simple shots of boring old buildings, except Cornell's, which is this one:

It's really nice to walk past this every day and remember what a beautiful place I come from.

I guess it's not as unique being a Cornellian here as I thought; our college counselor at the old school was a Cornell alum, and so is our new math teacher, Min. She and I were practically classmates; only missed her by 30 years. (No, I'm not implying that she graduated in 1950.) And now I hear we've hired a part-time science teacher, who also has a Cornell degree. Apparently they're giving the damn things away in Cracker Jack boxes now.

As to my new digs, sometimes I feel I've made a terrible mistake. My apartment in Daegu was in a quiet, residential area, and for my five years in Seoul I lived in a very (literally) green neighborhood a few blocks south of the city. There was an institute across the street with a big empty soccer field, there were two big, beautiful parks with, no exaggeration, thousands of trees, and I was 200 yards from my beloved Yangjae Cheon, the landscaped stream that runs from Gwacheon City to the Han River in  the middle of Seoul: ten miles with no cars, lots of wildfowl and trees, and mostly soft, rubbery surface for running. I could see hountains from my windows.

My new apartment is bright, modern, and airy, but all I see around me is concrete and bricks. I'm a couple of blocks from one of Gangnam's busiest avenues, an eight-lane, traffic-choked street lined with hundreds of stores and businesses. Cars drive across, and sometimes down, the wide sidewalks to park in front of storefronts, and I might get clipped by a bike, because only idiots with death wishes would ride a bike in that street.

Straight down the end of the street, a couple of miles to the east, is the half-built Lotte World Tower, which will top out at one hundred twenty-three floors, a good deal taller than the Empire State. Right now, it's a mere stripling of 70-some stories.

Note the giant-gorilla-proof tip.

It's just like living in midtown Manhattan, which for a small-town boy like me is a shock; every time I've visited New York City, I've loved it for three days and then couldn't wait to escape back to Ithaca, where it's green and quiet and the buildings are on a human scale.

It's also eight-tenths of a mile of running on cement and brick, with heavy traffic, to reach the Cheon. My legs are taking much more of a pounding, my left knee stiffens up faster, and I may not make it to my marathon this fall.

On the other foot, sometimes it's good to walk out the door in the evening and find a myriad of restaurants, grocery stores, miscellaneous shops, and people, mostly teens, because there's a hagwon every few feet. Compared to my old digs, there's a lot less nature and a lot more life.

It may not help my marathon prep that there's a Baskin-Robbins, a Krispy Kreme, a churro stand, two Dunkin' Donuts outlets, and a soft ice cream shop within five minutes of my place. I wish I hadn't typed that; it's 10 p.m. and suddenly I feel an urge to take a little stroll...

It's also centrally isolated, farther away from everywhere I want to go than I'd thought when I was being driven around to scout apartments. It's right in the midst of Korea's ritziest area, but the subway stations and bus lines don't line up to go anywhere quickly. It's a 30-minute walk to school, barely closer than my old place would have been, or 20 minutes combining walking and the subway, which in itself is a treat during rush hour.

Great honk, I miss greenery.

But hey, Krispy Kreme...

Be it ever so (grumble)

 

My balcony view. The park's noisy in the video because there's a kindergarten class over there; 13 seconds in, you can just make out the Pac-Man Music From Hell. At the end you can see the new apartment buildings. (The music's a lot louder and the buildings a lot more obtrusive in person.)

This little apartment has been my home for a year and a half. I got placed here totally at random; the school assigned apartments to the new teachers, and for whatever reason, this is the one they gave me. I have ten other faculty members (out of fifteen or so colleagues in total) literally within a one-minute walk of me, but no colleagues in my building.

I've been over and over the pros and cons of my apartment, since the day I moved in. It's too small, but I have an alcove for the washer and catbox, and a little balcony. The rooms are tiny, but most of my friends have just one bigger room. Kids play basketball late at night, but it's nice to not feel separated from the community. In nice weather, if I keep my window open everyone in the park can see me clear as day, but Tug has something to look at besides the wall and the inside of his eyelids.

Last summer, I had dibs on the apartment vacated by my colleague Zach, who was moving back to the States. That apartment is easily five times the size of mine and has access to a rooftop terrace; it's also 100 feet from the school. But Nikki, our art teacher, was pregnant and she and Dex and the baby clearly needed the space a lot more than I did, and I wasn't sure I wanted to move anyway.

All through the nice weather, I'm assaulted, hour after hour, by the same four lines of inane Pac-Man music (sometimes at 3 a.m.)  from the park's stationary bikes. Also, I've accumulated just enough stuff that I don't really have space for silly, extraneous belongings such as a broom or a fan.

One thing I've always loved about this apartment is that I'm the only teacher who has a view out of the city and to the mountains to the north and west. I face toward Gwacheon City, four miles to the west along the Yangjae Cheon, and I've taken a lot of comfort from gazing out my window from the seat I'm sitting in right now at the peaceful mountains. I like to watch the sun go down and see the planes moving in their stately way toward Incheon International. It's been wonderful to be in the city but feel almost pastoral.

But before long my mountain view (the only view I have, from the only seat in the apartment) will be completely gone; they're erecting countless high-rise apartments on the other side of the stream. The buildings in progress sit there like the gray stumps of teeth, and the fence they've put up between the building site and the cheon goes on for a solid mile, meaning that there will be dozens of these buildings before they're through, housing thousands of families. Even my long runs to Gwacheon, which I love for the stream and the herons and ducks, will be in the shade of the buildings.

I hate moving, really hate it, and, assuming I keep teaching at Saint Paul, Mr. Park (our boss) only has a finite number of apartments available; all of them have drawbacks of their own. This still feels like home, mostly.

I don't know what I want to do.

A trivial triumph

...and for once I don't mean winning a trivia game.

As I have been posting, I had no closet in my apartment and then I was delivered a fine wardrobe, which had only one drawback: the bar that they delivered with it is a foot too long to actually fit inside. Although Mr. Jang, the school's Guy Friday, was quick to get a new stovetop delivered when only one burner on the extant one worked, my hanging up my clothes seemed to be 27th in his alphabet. (Hey, I just made up a new metaphor... what do you think?)

Well, it's Saturday morning, I just got back from a lovely cool damp run along the stream, guest-starring magpies, egrets, mourning doves, pigeons, and one very disgruntled-looking great blue heron. I walked in the door, glanced in the corner with  my umbrella, broom, and such, and said "Eureka!" (Actually, somebody might have said it to me; I was pretty sweaty.)

...I grabbed my Grab-It/Swiffer Sweeper device, unscrewed the sweepy part, unscrewed the shaft, shortened it, tightened it again, and... my shirts are hanging up, with no help from anybody.

If you don't know me really well, you're thinking, "Big whoop", or whatever words you, who are hipper than I, choose to express that same thought. But for me, someone who has always defined himself as totally incompetent with all kinds of three-dimensional/mechanical/practical/hands-on matters, it's a real breakthrough. I feel an odd and probably totally unjustified sense of satisfaction, even pleasure.

Of course, I defined myself as terrified of flying, but I got here, and shy, but I talk in front of dozens of people every day, so... maybe my walls really are self-imposed, insubstantial, and finally illusory.

Maybe yours are, too.

Life without hangups

It took ten days living out of bags in my new apartment before Mr. Jang, the school's 잭-of-all-trades, brought me a wardrobe. This is what he brought me.

Now, I never was any good in geometry, but perhaps my friend Pete, the science and math wunderkind, can explain to me how this bar is supposed to fit into the brackets on the inner walls.

So I'm still living out of bags. I suppose the bright side is that my clothes make my forehead seem smooth in comparison.

Oh, they ripped a bit of a gash in my floor when they moved it in, too.

(Do you think "Out of a closet" would have been a funnier title for this post?)

Boys in the 'hood

(above: my classroom; below: a restroom door at school; think you'd see this logo at a high school in the States?)

Tug and I have been on the edge of Seoul (the school's in the city but the apartment's not) for six days now, and it's a best of times, not-so-best of times situation. The neighborhood is great, but it's a major, major endeavor to go anywhere to say, buy a book, see a movie, or see any sights.

I'll talk about the drawbacks in my next post; for now, here's the good stuff, which on a day-to-day basis far outweighs the bad. Though my apartment's quite small, now that things are tucked away, if they get me that wardrobe they've been promising (I'm still living out of suitcases) it will be pretty homey. Tug's starting to settle in: he's beginning to sleep somewhere other than under the bed; in fact, I woke up this morning with him curled up next to me, for the first time ever.

I have a window over my bed and a sliding door to a tiny balcony, both of them facing west, over a nice little park with basketball and tennis courts, a flower walk, and a lot of lively little kids on bikes and skates. It gets quiet by 10 p.m. or so, though.

Past the park? Mountains at 10 o'clock and 2 o'clock. (No, they're there all the time; I mean that as geographical orientation.)

A few blocks to my left is LG's research-and-development campus, with a 30-story building that faces my street, so it's easy to orient myself from anywhere in the area. Costco, E-Mart, and an upscale collection of shops in two ten-story buildings are near there, about six blocks from home.

On this misty, moisty Sunday morning I just discovered something wonderful: a few blocks to my right is a path that runs for miles along a stream, with banks of wild vegetation on either side topped in many spots by rows of greenhouses. I saw a great blue heron and two egrets this morning. (So much for the old song lyric, "But when it's raining, have no egrets.") Most of the path is rubberized material, so it's one of the best places for running (which I did, in a cool gentle rain) I've seen. It leads into Citizen's Forest Park, which is full of trees, grass, and winding trails, near my school.

Speaking of the school, it's a three-minute walk from my apartment to the main street, and another three minutes to school. I get an hour for lunch each day and will be able to come home to eat if I want.

The school itself practically looks like something from Star Trek: Next Gen. The faculty signs in and out with security cards, the students with a thumb scanner, and all the facilities are spanking-new, which may be unfortunate, as we are one of the few schools in the country that doesn't use corporal punishment.

I got the room I wanted, at the end of the hallway, a kind of trapezoid with windows on the south and east-northeast. (I'm not sure, though; it could be somewhere between east-northeast and east-east-northeast; it's hard to say.)

Orientation for the kids is tomorrow; then come the regular school days, which on the face of it will be enjoyable and have a very easy schedule. I've never done a block schedule before, so I may have to work at filling 90 minutes, but get this: On "A" days I have English 7, English 9, 90 minutes of planning time (150 minutes, really, as it segues with lunch), and American lit honors. On "B" days, I have 90 minutes' planning, Creative Writing, 90 (150) minutes' planning, and an alternating schedule of clubs (in my case, newspaper), study hall, and an informal speech class, which I'm syllabizing (syllabusizing?) for the whole school.

Best of all, we're taking a three-day school trip to Jeju Island, which is known as Korea's Hawaii, at the end of September, as long as fears over H1N1, which have already caused some schools to close for a few days, don't make the administration cancel it. I like my coworkers, too, which is a big thing, of course. So all in all, it's a pretty darn good situation.

(below: the view from my balcony; not what you anticipate when you hear the phrase "second-most populous metro area in the world")

(The management of SJCintheROK is Seoully responsible for its content.)

Here be photos

I've been in Seoul for three days, and very interesting days at that. I know I should be blogging, but it's 10 p.m. and one thing I haven't been doing enough of is sleeping, so, in the words of the bard, "Screw it." Here are some photos, though. First is the faculty work room at St. Paul Preparatory Academy, my new employer; everybody's prepping for classes next week, except me; I'm annoying everybody who's prepping.
This is in the reception area.

This is the front desk.

My apartment is on the second floor, right; the balcony overlooks a park and it's great, though it's so narrow I can only face my kitchen chair parallel to the front of the building.

I have Internet and cable now, the stove works, and the hot water; this morning I had the best hot shower in 14 years. (I don't count the health club, as I disqualify any showers involving the presence of naked men other than myself.)

...aaaaaand, I'm tired. Good night. I'll write a lot more soon; for now, just know that I feel as if I've hit the jackpot. Two blocks from my apartment is LG's research and development campus, and as the big sign on the 30-story building reminds me, Life's Good.

미국 사람 이예요.

미국 사람 이예요 (Meeguk saram eeyayyo) means "I am an American." (Or, literally, "United States person I am," which gives you some idea of the language barrier.)

I find myself getting Americaner and Americaner. I've made my apartment a little island built up on English language books and an iPod packed with Western pop songs and NPR podcasts, and a few tchotchkes from home, and above all, the Web. Facebook and CNN and tv shows and movies and email and Skype keep me anchored to my friends and my country. I eat American food at home and most of the time when I eat out. (At least that way I know there aren't any animals in my food.) Even the cats have forgotten their Korean vocabulary by now.

It's just possible that the change in presidents has contributed a smidge to my revived patriotism, as well.

I guess it was inevitable; I like many Korean people, but the culture is, in many ways, totally alien, and I can no more immerse myself in Korean life than Kirk would go native if he were living on the Klingon planet. So I cling on (Get it? Har!) to what I know.

In some ways, I feel more 미국 사람 than I ever did back home. But I'm still glad to be here.

My house is a very, very, very fine house

...George just told me they've extended the lease on my apartment! I won't have to move to the dorm, or anywhere else. Ray has pointed out that it will be a lot more expensive to live there than in a snug little hole in the warren... I mean dorm. But I think I can wear layers and not burn the oil too much, and cooking for myself I can use the microwave the vast majority of the time.

I have neither two cats nor a yard, but I'm really happy.

Then again, maybe I won't

(Photos: Curtis with Heeduk [top] and George.

Last night, there was a little going-away party for Curt with his top-level students and three cakes. You do not want to get between three cakes and a dozen Korean students with chopsticks. After that, I did my usual Saturday-night thing: went downtown, walked around Kyobo Books, and wandered the streets, people-watching. Aside from bus fare, it’s free, and so far always interesting. I was, no joke, the biggest (by 30 pounds) and the oldest (by 25 years) of the thousands there.

Now it’s Sunday, and the first real fall day of the year. It’s mostly overcast, with a fairly steady breeze, and between that and the rain we had overnight, the air is clearer than it’s been since I’ve been here. The hills and mountains not far to my east are actually green; I can even see trees. Every other day, the hills have been gray mounds. Today I can even see clouds at their tops.

Gail, a very nice teacher from Oklahoma who’s returning home in a few weeks, took me to Costco today. From my apartment, it takes two bus rides to get there, and the trip takes 45 minutes each way. I could take a cab, but that’s twelve bucks round trip. I wanted to see if I should pony up the $40 after my first paycheck.

I was terribly disappointed in the clothing selection; the largest men’s shirt size E-Mart carries is 105, whatever that is, and between my wide shoulders and my generous midsection, that’s just a little too small. Costco’s sizes are the same, and I have no idea how I should get clothes. (I’m especially concerned about a winter jacket.)

They did have a clock-radio, though; that’s a concept the salespeople at E-Mart had never heard of, so I bought that. There’s a US Army radio station and town where they play a good mix of music and, and this is no little thing, speak English. It barely, barely comes in at the apartment. But at least it when I wake, I’ll know what time it is. (Does anyone really know what time it is?) Gail, who is very generous, also bequeathed me her spare flat sheet. (They don’t seem to have them here, and I’m always waking up before dawn sweating under the comforter) So I’m relatively rich in the sleeping department now.

The food prices are not what we would consider discount club prices, but they had a whole lot of stuff that E-Mart doesn’t, things such as instant oatmeal and Eggo waffles and Pepperidge Farm cookies(!) I bought some hash brown patties, a 55-gallon drum of Prego, and a six-pack of vermicelli. It’s amazing how much a few familiar foods can make a place seem much more like home. At the apartment I’ve been living all too much on bread and cereal anyway; I didn’t have propane for the first ten days, and most of what’s at E-Mart isn’t labeled in English. That’s a problem for a vegetarian. Everything at Costco is labeled, to some degree, in English, though. I think, if only for the variety of food, I’ll probably join, but I won’t go more than once a month or so.

My little piggies on the left side are squealing; the one that stayed home is bruised, and the one that had none has a mean blister. I’ve been wearing my Adidas running shoes, and day after day of pounding the pavement has proven that the toe box is a little short and narrow. I’ve switched to my New Balances, which are a trifle more generous in the piggie department than the Adidi, and done a little maintenance on the blister, and I think it’s going to be okay. But with the toes, the left knee, and my calf muscles, I’ve been walking like Walter Brennan’s grandfather.

At work, I’m picking up most of Curtis’s schedule, which means a lot more classes for me and, I hope, more upper-level material. Heeduk’s already set aside my Thursdays to do nothing but consult with high school kids about their writing. He’s also going to want me to make some videos on writing the TOEFL (Test of English as a Foreign Language) essay. I know I hate teaching the little littluns: hat-cat-mat. The worst is Chicken Little, as rewritten by Dr. Kim: Foxy kills Chicken Little and his friends and serves them to his family!

So far, Heeduk seems to value my experience. He asks me for advice and took me to lunch twice in the last week, after inviting me as the only teacher at his family Chosuk ceremony. I’m going to tell him that I won’t renew my contract in 49 weeks if I have to move to the dorm in February. I think it’s shameful that Dr. Kim, who has become a millionaire through this business, has most of his teachers living in what’s basically a tenement. My current apartment, although modest, is a palace in comparison.

I also would need a raise; as many of you know, twelve hours after I sent my documents and signed contract here, I got a phenomenal offer from an elite private academy for international students, in Seoul, that would have let me set up the English department, be an actual English teacher (rather than a foreign-language teacher) , and probably eventually begin a cross-country program. The academy would have paid me 600 bucks a month more than I’m getting here. And a few days after that, I got another offer from a hagwon chain that also would have paid me the higher amount. I can match that next year, here or elsewhere, maybe even at the academy.
Not to pat myself on the back (I’m not that limber anymore anyway), but my documents say I’m way overqualified for my current job. All of our teachers have a bachelor’s in something, (but most aren’t in English or education), most have no prior teaching experience, and nobody else has a master’s, let alone in education. If they want me past next August 30, they’ll have to make it worth my while.

I’ve made Sundays my exploration day, but I was awake from 3 to 5 a.m., and I think I’m going to explore the inside of my eyelids. Then, if I’m feeling ambitious, I may carry my laptop over to PapaRotti’s coffee shop, which is a hot spot, and have one of their incredible buns (war, amd wheaty and just a little sweet) and some coffee and send this to you.

Maybe after a nap I’ll think of a snappy ending.

(Later: then again, maybe I won’t.)

Keeping up with the Jonahs

Curtis is a young guy from Ontario, very friendly and laid-back, who’s been teaching at our school and whose email address was given to me by the school’s recruiter. He gave me useful information before and after I signed my contract, and I told him I’d buy him a beer if I ended up in Daegu.

This is his last week here—he’s going to be traveling in Thailand next—and it was time for me to pony up with the beer. On Wednesday night, he finished teaching at midnight, I finished the thirty-seventh rewrite of Heeduk’s cousins college application essay, and we took a cab downtown and went to the dorm. The “dorm”, which the Kims own, is what the teachers call the building where most of our staff lives.

Now here’s an important digression, so pay attention; there may be a test.

A week ago, Mrs. Kim told me that the school was going to lose the lease on my apartment in February, but they had another recently-vacated apartment available, and she wanted to give me the first crack at it, since I’m older than the other teachers. So George took me there. Although it has a nice second floor patio with a clothesline and it’s bigger than my current digs, I didn’t much like it. It’s rather old and grungy, all of the windows are covered in clear plastic sheeting (I realize that this no doubt contributed to my negative feelings, and the plastic can be removed), the washing machine is on the patio, and so would be fun to use when the wind chill is ten degrees Fahrenheit, it’s a long and winding road—so to speak—to the school and the shopping areas, and it just didn’t feel right.
I figured that staying in my apartment until February and then moving to the dorm, which was very likely to be my next habitation, would be fine. I have privacy and solitude now, and then I’d have camaraderie and the bustle of being in the middle of downtown. So I reluctantly turned the offer down.

We now return you to Wednesday, already in progress.

…then I saw the dorm. It reminds me of Ann Arbor, Michigan, circa 1970: small, old, dark, claustrophobic. Curtis shares a two-room, and his roommate, whose room is separated from Curtis’s only by a curtain (at the moment an open curtain), was cuddled up in bed with his girlfriend. They were clothed and just relaxing, but it was still disconcerting to have a young couple sit up in bed to shake my hand.Curt and I stepped down the hall to see Alex, the new guy, who’s been in Korea for a few days. Alex’s room is more typical: a single, small, dark room, with a bed, desk, dresser, and tv jammed in like the Brady Bunch in a phone booth. It’s smaller and older than my dorm room at UM was, it has no windows, and it’s as cheerful as the inside of a whale. I guess he’s keeping up with the Jonahs.

I don‘t want to live in the dorm! If I end up having to go there, I hope they give me two weeks’ notice so I have time to arrange my own murder.

I also realize that at this point I’m more cut out to come home at night, watch a little tv, and go to bed than I am to be asked almost every night to go out drinking. There’s no place in the dorm to just sit and talk with the other teachers, so they tend to go out. It’s also easier on the wallet to watch tv or surf the net—which I will do as soon as I can get hooked up! Alex got connected his second day here because he’s in a building with multitudinous net connections already; I have to wait till the gummint gives me my alien card and returns my passport, which is supposed to be September 30. By then, I’ll have been here a month with no Internet, no cell phone, no bank account. Not a single luxury.

Anyway, on Wednesday night, Curt, Alex and I walked to a bar, had a beer and some friendly small talk, and I took my leave. After paying for the beers, I didn’t have cab fare, and the buses and subways shut down at 11. (It was 1:30.) So I walked.

I didn’t mind walking home—it’s about three miles, I’m intentionally walking a lot anyway, and it was a nice evening—but by the time I got within a half-mile of home, I was staggering like a drunk with exhaustion. I haven’t been up and active at 2:30 a.m. in a long time. I just wanted to lie down on the sidewalk and rest. Getting up my steep stairs was a challenge, but if I’d had to go down them in such a state, I probably would have tumbled down them and caused further dain bramage.

Filled with revulsion at the idea of living like a penniless college student (I have my dignity, after all—I’m a penniless middle-aged man), on Thursday I asked George if the apartment he’d shown me was still available. I figured it would be; I didn’t know of any new arrivals besides Alex, and it had only been a week. But he said a new teacher would be moving in that same night.

So now I may be screwed. I can’t stand the thought of living in the dorm. In retrospect, it was stupid to make my decision without seeing the dorm first, and Mrs. Kim was really nice to give me the option, but that’s not much consolation. I talked to Heeduk on Thursday, and he said he’d see if they could talk my current landlord into extending the lease. I don’t have high hopes, however. We’ll see.

There's a bathroom on the right

photos: To quote Creedence, there's a bathroom on the right: toilet, shower, washing machine, clothes-drying rack (sorry about the underwear). Also my kitchen and living room.

I’ve grown to really like my apartment. Sadly, I won’t have it too much longer. Mrs. Kim told me that the landlord isn’t renewing the school’s lease in February, so I’ll have to move then. She also said she’ll have George show me a nicer apartment this week, and that I can move there right away if I like and she’ll give this apartment to a newly arriving teacher. She may be offering me the option because I’m such a great teacher, or because I’ll have seniority. My speculation may be moot, however, since she told me she’s doing it because I’m older.

To digress, I’m in the living room as I write this, and Shrek 2 is playing over my shoulder. Shows in English are broadcast with Korean subtitles, except kids’ shows, which are dubbed. I can’t tell if Shrek has a Scottish accent, but they found somebody who sounds exactly like Eddie Murphy to be Donkey. Come to think of it, his delivery in English has a certain Korean quality to it…

It’s Sunday morning, it’s my one day off, and I’ll be going in to the school in a bit. (Yes, I’m precisely that pathetic.) I want to pick up the books for the classes I’ll be teaching tomorrow, check my email, post a couple of entries to the blog (if you’re not reading this, I didn’t, so please disregard this posting), and have some lunch with a few of the teachers. If Hee-duk wants me to fill in for one of the few Sunday classes, I’ll know to never ever ever stop in on my day off again.

After that, I’m going to do something. I don’t know what yet; Curtis, the young teacher who’s leaving soon, gave me a Daegu guidebook in English, and the maps are useless, but it’s giving me ideas. If I can find my way there, I may go to one of the mountain parks just outside town for a hike; or back to the Gukchae-bosang Memorial Park (the place in the picture with the elaborate pavilion, which is the National Debt Repayment Monument), where on weekends at 3:00 they have the Ringing Ceremony of the Dalgubeol Grand Bell; or Woobang Tower Land, a theme park with a 650-foot-high tower from which, if I so choose, I can perform a feet-first bungee jump. (I suspect that I might not so choose.)

Maybe I’ll go back and stroll around downtown, and maybe even go see Mamma Mia. I hear it’s roughly as exhilarating as a 650-foot bungee jump.

At some point soon, I’m going to hop on the subway in Samduk, a block from the LIKE school there, and get off at the Manchon stop (which is somewhere within a long walk of my apartment, but nobody seems able to tell me exactly where), and get hopelessly lost trying to find my way home. I want to check out the subway and find out if it will ever be of any use to me. If I can get a handheld GPS, or a cell phone that has that function, the whole city will open up to me. It's amazing how freeing it is to know you won't get lost in a country where you're illiterate and can't talk to much of anyone.

Next weekend is Korean Thanksgiving, so I’ll have three days off rather than the usual one. I don’t know exactly what Koreans do on Thanksgiving, beyond traveling to see family and giving gifts. (E-Mart has a whole Hickory Farms kind of section for Thanksgiving, which is why many of the women attendants are wearing traditional costumes.) I know that the Samsung Lions, the local baseball team, are playing at home all weekend and I plan to go with Ray to a game. Not many Americans watch baseball on Thanksgiving, after all.

I’m really happy in Korea. The Kims expect complete cooperation from their teachers, such as filling in at a moment’s notice (in Manchon or Samduk) if they’re missing a teacher, and the day can be long, but they’re generous. The worst part is the endless proofreading of kids’ papers, which is incredibly tedious. But I like all the teachers, there’s a kind of family atmosphere at work, I love walking to and from school, and I discover something new every five minutes. And I don’t have lung cancer (see earlier post), so that’s cool too.

Shilleh hamnidah (excuse me), my friends, I have to go.

Hey, send me email, huh? Peace to my peeps.

Arrival

Annyeounghaseyo. As I write this, it’s 5 a.m. on Tuesday, 4 p.m. on Labor Day at home, and quarter past squelge on my body clock. I fell asleep at 10 p.m., sitting up in front of some incomprehensible Korean soap opera, stumbled to bed, and woke up at 3:30.

There’s so much to say, about my arrival, the city, the culture, the school… fortunately, nobody else is nearly as interested in all this as I am, so whatever I leave out will be okay.

The flight to Seoul was interminable, but there were compensations: we skimmed along the uttermost north coast of Alaska, over curiously unsnowy brown mountains, and a little later over the endless snowclad mountains of Siberia. (You know, I’ve been writing for many decades, and I’ve never written “snowclad” before. I don’t think I’ll do it again.) But it was coming in over Korea that I loved: peaks just carpeted with lush, thick greenery, most with one little road winding and switching back over them, and clusters of buildings running along the valleys.
Seoul is big.

After a layover at Incheon airport, I boarded one more plane. The flight to Daegu seemed very short and peaceful, and when I got in, I was greeted by a Korean couple and their ten-year-old son. George, as he said to call him, has limited English proficiency. He looks rather like an Indian scout in an old movie: high cheekbones, long lank black hair. His wife, Glory, speaks much better English, and his boy tried gamely to make English conversation in the back seat of the van.
First they checked me into my apartment. I live up a very narrow, very steep flight of stairs (in the picture-- I love multimedia!) I have a little entry hall that is part of the kitchen, which has a nice fridge, an old microwave, an ancient two-burner gas stove (to which the gas hasn’t yet been turned on), and a sink I could bathe a lab/chow mix in. (Those are my windows in the other picture; I'm over some shop that's defunct and hasn't been funct in a long time.)

I’m sitting now in the living room, where I spend most of my time because the tv is company, and because it has the only comfortable chairs in the apartment. I get 40 channels of mostly Korean shows, which run to overacted soap opera, massively overacted comedy, ludicrously overacted commercials (which I can’t always decipher enough to know what they’re advertising) and shows in which people are alternately kicking each other and falling into bed. (Thus far I haven’t seen the two activities combined.) There are three or so stations that carry nonstop American shows and movies with Korean subtitles, but they run almost entirely to CSI, Law and Order, martial arts, and horror. Oh! And Oprah, if that isn't redundant.

I have a kind of platform bed, a single, which is firm and fairly comfortable, a wardrobe, and best of all, a launshowrestroom. It’s tiled like a locker room shower, about seven by seven feet. It has a toilet, a sink, a Samsung washing machine that I can use but don’t dare adjust, because all the settings are Korean and I don’t want to accidentally hit “puree”, and a handheld shower attachment. There’s no bracket to fix the attachment to, so you have to lather with one hand, manipulate the shower head with the other, and try to not soak the washing machine, the toilet, the toilet paper, the mirror…

Anyway, after I dropped my stuff in my apartment, George and Glory took me to E-Mart, the Korean version of, say, Super Target. However, unlike Target, E-Mart has attendants dressed as… well, the illegitimate daughters of cheerleaders and go-go dancers (all miniskirts and legwarmers), and others dressed in centuries-old Korean dress, and greeters who bow from the waist. It has two-foot wide live crabs in tanks, and long inclined moving walkways linking its three floors, and about a bazillion shoppers. At 11 p.m. on Sunday night.

I wasn’t quite with the program, and before I knew it, we were checking out with my supplies: bread but no spread; vegetable milk (like soy milk but thin, purple-grayish, and nasty) that came with two attached little bottles of liquid yogurt, but no cereal; mandarin orange juice, and Harry Chapin’s proverbial 30,000 pounds of bananas.

Michael O’Donoghue once wrote an article in the National Lampoon on how to write good fiction. He said that, if you ever didn’t know how to end something, you could always write,“Suddenly, everyone was run over by a truck.” Or if you wanted to be classy, you could write it in French.

So...

Soudainement, tout le monde a ete’ ecrase’ par un camion.