More Pictures

This is one of my 7 year old classes.



This is one of the 4 year olds in a bunny costume. I don't ever have to use their names in class, so I don't know hers.



This is Julie. She's Sean's sister. She had two swans painted on her face, because that's what one of the teachers was doing since Halloween is this week.



On another note, I had fried squid at work the other day. It was pretty good, although it was kind of chewy. Today we had some sort of sausage baked into a sweet bread roll. It wasn't that great, but it was edible.

Pictures

Here are some pictures from school:


Sean


Mike


Me and Mel


JaeHyun


From left: Chris, Andy, JaeHyun

Birthday Weekend

Today is my birthday. In case you didn't know.


On Friday I went out with Dan. We went to the same place as last week. We ended up hanging out with the owner and her friend. I had ice cream at the bar, because some Korean guy went out and bought a grocery bag full of different ice cream bars. Nothing else was too exciting except for the fact that we ate some food at 5 in the morning at some tent on the side of the road. I ended up taking a cab back to my place. It was a long night.

Other than that, it has been a rather uneventful weekend. I did find a shirt I want to buy on a website. Here's the link

If any of you ever plan on sending me something bigger than an envelope, you should send it to my school address. I was talking with Chris, the Korean teacher who speaks English, and she said that if I wasn't at home when something is delivered I would risk having it sent back. The school's address is:

Kevin O'Connor
c/o KRABEL
2/F JaeJung Building
2-5 Garak-dong, Songpa-Gu
Seoul, Korea
138-160
Telephone 82-2-424-4243

My new phone

Here's a picture:


It has two cameras, one for stills and one for video. I can use the video one to make video calls. I can also get a few channels of TV for free.

Hilarious cartoon

This is a satire cartoon about guys teaching in Korea.

Cell Phone

The Korean teacher that speaks English went with me today to sign up for a cell phone. I got a slider phone that I can watch tv on. I got the minimum contract for around $12 a month. I don't plan on making a lot of calls, but even if I go over it's not too expensive. I got a year contract, because it averages out to less than a pre-paid phone. I couldn't take it home today because I have to have a bank account set up for the payments. I will be going tomorrow morning to get my bank account established.

I also paid to get a phone number set up for Skype. If you want, you can call me at 941-312-7379. I can only answer if I am at my computer, but I have voicemail set up so you can leave me a message.

Today I found out that we are having a teacher's dinner on Thursday. I get to go out with a large group of women, most of whom I will not be able to speak with. Apparently the owner is going to bring the bottle of wine I brought for us to drink. Woo-hoo.

Namdaemun Market

I found someone else's video on youtube of the Namdaemun Market.

Folex

I'd like to apologize for not writing much lately, but I have been trying to get out more. This week at school I had to teach my first cooking class. I made grilled ham and cheese sandwiches for the kids. I think they were kind of hesitant to eat them because I don't think they eat many sandwiches over here, let alone ones with ham and cheese. A lot of the kids would say "ham no" when I was putting the sandwiches together. Once they tried them they wanted more.

At work on Friday we had the monthly birthday party. The school throws a party for all the kids who had a birthday during the month. For lunch we had some sort of chicken nuggets, sushi, apples, bananas, cake, and pizza. The pizza was weird. I think it was from Papa Johns. Koreans put some weird stuff on pizza. This one had bacon, onions, olives, some sort of mystery meat, and potato wedges. If you want to see some weird pizza go to this website: Pizza Etang

On Friday I went out with Dan in his neighborhood. He says his area is known as the "ghetto of Seoul". Unlike my neighborhood, his is very busy. The subway ride there was insane. If you have ever seen packed Asian subways on tv, double the amount of people and that's what I had to deal with. We went to some place and met up with some Korean guys he knows. They were pretty cool guys. One of the Korean bartender girls kept telling me I was cute. Afterwards we went to a Korean barbecue and had some pork. I ate more kimchi this time around. I also had some weird dried minnows. You pull off the head and then dip them in some sort of sauce.

On Saturday I went with Dan to the casino. We played blackjack and I was up 100,000 won before losing my winnings. I left when I was at the amount I started with, so I didn't lose any money. If I knew how to play I would probably have actually won a decent amount of money. I left at like 11:45 and was able to make it halfway to my place before the subways shut down. I took my first cab and the guy dropped me off way too far from my place. I had to walk for like half an hour before I made it home.

Today I went to Namdaemun Market to look for a watch and a wallet. One of the teachers gave me a nice watch, but it is a ladies watch and it is kind of tight on me. I bought a nice fake Rolex at the market. It's a Submariner and it looks very real. The movement of the hands is right, and the markings are all correct. I couldn't find a wallet, mainly because I can't tell the difference between the men's and women's styles of designer wallets.

I am going to try and go to a festival next weekend, or maybe one of the nights this week. October is apparently the month for festivals. I was going to go to a food festival today, but upon reading the website, it was actually more of an expo for food companies and buyers. There is a small business expo some time this month, and an environmental expo this week.

Flea Market

So I went to the flea market at the World Cup Stadium. From what I saw on the website I thought it was going to be inside the stadium. I held strong in this belief even when I made this video:


Unfortunately, the event was held outside. There were a lot of booths from companies promoting things. Some water company handed out some free bottles of water, which was nice because even though it was cool outside, everyone was standing in the bright sun. There were a bunch of charity and non-profit organizations spreading their propaganda, like the Free Trade Black Tea group and some "help kids in some country you never heard of" people. I am not trying to be mean about their causes, but the only reason people were stopping at their tables was to pick up free stuff. I did find one group that was of use to me. It's a group that has volunteers who you can call to help translate for you. They are the ones who wrote down my name in Korean. They also gave me a big black fabric bag to carry stuff in. Some magazine publisher was there giving away back issues of magazines, like Newsweek and Forbes. I grabbed some, even though they were in Korean. The Newsweek one has John McCain and Sarah Palin on the cover. Another group was one of the gas/diesel/lpg companies that was advertising some mp3 player. I don't know why they were advertising it, but I didn't ask questions because 1. I don't know Korean, and 2. They had cute girls passing out little packages with bandaids. Here is a video of their booth:


Anyways, I walked around and the place was so crowded that you had to puch people out of the way to actually see the things that people were selling. I didn't buy anything because I didn't see anything interesting, plus I didn't want to go through the hassle of pushing and shoving everyone in my path. On the plus side, I did get close enough to get a video of someone in a Spongebob costume. I have no idea why they had Spongebob at the flea market. Here's the video:


And that was my day.

케 빈

케 빈 is apparently how you would spell my name in Korean. At least that is what some guy told me at the giant flea market today. There was a booth for some free translation service and they gave me a card that had my name spelled out in Korean. The translation would be something like k'e-bin. The e is a combination vowel (ŏi) to make the e sound. That is why all my coworkers call me Kebeen.

I'll post more about the flea market later.

My goal for tomorrow

I want to go to this

It's the WeAJa charity flea market, and it is held in the World Cup Stadium. It's a good way to get to see the stadium and maybe find something cool to buy.

Mother's Day

Today was Mother's Day at my school. This basically meant that I had to show up on a Saturday to go hang out with the mothers of the children at the school. We were bussed out to some park outside of Seoul at 9 AM. It was actually more of a garden. The place was located on the Han River, and it was in the mountains. Being the strapping young man I am, it was my job to carry the heavy stuff to our reserved area. It was also my job to sit there and look like an idiot all day long. I watched the kids make tie dye hankerchiefs using some type of local clay as a dye. Then we went and played with bubbles in a field. After that we went into a building that had bugs and fish. Exciting.

After these fun events, we went back to our site and had lunch. Apparently the other teachers were under the impression I would not eat Korean food, yet they still ordered me a box lunch from wherever they got the lunch. Just in case, they also bought me some sandwich from Paris Baguette (a bakery that has chains all over Korea). The Korean food was some type of beef cooked with garlic and onions, with some kimchi (pickled cabbage that is flavored with chili powder), some type of chili flavored onions, and rice. The sandwich was loaded up with all sorts of vegetables and mustard. I went with the Korean food. The beef was tasty, and I only ate a little of the kimchi. I ate all of the rice. To eat I had to use chopsticks. The good thing was that they weren't the slippery metal ones. The bad thing was is that I am still not that great with them. For dessert we had sliced up pears. We also had tons of weird cookies that the kids gave to us.

After lunch we went on a tour of the garden. They had some spots set up along the river with benches and other stuff that where moms (and some dads that came along) kept taking pictures of their kids. We then went into the greenhouses. This was pretty cool because they had some herb garden where we picked the leaves and crushed them in our hands to smell them. I found one that smelled like lemons. One of the greenhouses had palm trees and citrus trees. I told some of the parents about how I lived on a palm tree farm before I moved over. I'm not sure that they understood what I meant. There was another room with all sorts of cactii (plural of cactus for those wondering).

When we were done with our tour, we went back to our site. I guess some DJ guy set up his stuff there and he played some music while he was telling the kids to play some games with their parents. It was funny watching the parents play, because when I see adults with their children on the street they are all serious and stern. A lot of the moms aren't much older than I am, and there were definitely some hotties.

I had the opportunity to talk to some of the parents during the day. Most of them just asked where I was from and how long I had been in Korea. One set of parents apparently lived in New York and Michigan for a while and their son was born in the states. The dad works for CitiGroup in Korea and he speaks very fluent English. Another one of the moms was always chatting me up and it seemed like she was following me around. Her son is one of my favorite students. She was very pretty, so I didn't mind.

In between everything, the kids kept grabbing my arms because they all think it is cool to have me lift them up like I am doing a bicep curl. One of the girls swings up her legs and hangs upside down. Some of the parents took pictures of this, so if I can get one sent to me I will post it here.

It's been a long day and I still haven't eaten dinner yet. I might go check if the rotisserie chicken guy is on the corner tonight.

Videos

This is where I live



This is my school

Rotisserie Chicken

There is a little old man who parks his truck on one of the street corners near my place and opens up the back to reveal a chicken rotisserie. At least I think it is chicken. It smells delicious whenever I walk by. However, the only times I see him there are when I am either carrying something, or when I have already eaten dinner. It is my goal to catch him on a night where I can actually purchase and enjoy a chicken cooked in the back of a truck.

All's quiet on the Eastern Front

It's been fairly slow lately. This past weekend was a three day weekend because of some Korean holiday. I didn't do much other than shop for groceries. I did find a place by me that has chicken, which is good because none of the normal markets in my neighborhood ever have chicken. I joined a new website for foreigners in Korea. I got some info about gyms in my area, as well as some places to go to hang out. Apparently there are two gyms at the intersection where my school is located. One is like $1200/year to join, but is absolutely amazing. The other one is supposedly kind of dumpy, but a lot cheaper. I'll probably end up joining the cheaper one, but maybe I'll switch to the other one once I get some money saved up.

The owner of my school has asked if I would sign on for another semester. Apparently I was hired in the second semester (of two semesters), and they would like for me to be there for a full school year. The owner has offered to fly me home in between two of the semesters. I would probably go home after this semester, mainly because I would like to go to Thailand in the summer next year. If I signed on for another semester, I wouldn't be back in the states until 2010. That might not be such a bad thing. I've read that most economists are predicting that is when the economy will actually start to turn around at a decent rate. The weird thing is that now that I am over here I have been keeping up with the news in the US more often.

I guess my health check came back ok, so I should be getting my Alien Registration Card soon (think green card in the US). That will allow me to open up a bank account. I think it also makes registers me for the health insurance.

I went rock climbing last week at a giant rock wall. It's located near the Ttukseom Resort stop on Line 7. The wall is in a public park located on the Han River, a river that splits Seoul from East to West. The park was beautiful and the wall was awesome. One thing that wasn't awesome was my climbing ability. I haven't climbed a rock wall successfully since high school. It mainly has to do with the fact that I have a hard time pulling up my body weight on the little nubs you grab to climb up the wall. Hopefully that will change in the coming months.

I'm going to try and make some videos this week. Here are some of the ideas I have, and some that have been recommended:

-The walk from my apartment to my school
-A tour of my school
-Random shots of the teachers and kids
-Some shots of the main road by my apartment
-Random girls on the street that I can get to marry my brother
-A cool looking park I found near my place
-Olympic Park
-A subway ride

If you have any ideas for any additional videos, or have a request of something specific you want to see then let me know.

My Apartment