I Keep Wondering If We've Fully Adjusted Yet.

When I started my first day of school over at Old School, California said something that I had, at the time, found very reassuring. It was after the yelling phone call, but before the last scolding I got that day.

"They treat all the new teachers like this. I think it's just their way of breaking you in. They did this to the teachers before us, too, and they really loved all of them. It will get better, but, yeah, there's a definite hump you have to get over."

I just kept thinking if we could only get over that hump it'll all be smooth sailing. Even now, I'm not sure if we're over it or not. Once you're over it, do you stop walking around on eggshells? Can you start expressing real opinions? Does the hump end when they hand you the keys to the school? Or is that just another test?

Will there be a definitive end to this hump thing? At first, I figured I could just judge how long it would last by how long they treated California this way. The dude does have 4 weeks on us, but he seems to just encounter more test periods. Maybe it never ends. Maybe they just love you at the end of it all...

Ruby was at school just long enough to make sure that both Jenn and I had arrived and then headed out, leaving us with Narky all day. It had the potential to be a bad day, but I'm a big fan of flattery.

"Oh, Erin! You lose a lot weight!"

Thanks for noticing, Nark, yes I have. Korean food and stairs are truly awesome. That, and your sister didn't feed us for the first two weeks. That was just the kick in the pants that my metabolism needed.

Yay, Korea.

Teacher You Have Glasses?

Kid1 has the memory of a goldfish; I hear this every time I come to class with my specs.

"They make you look like a teacher." Mission accomplished. Here's some extra homework.

The yellow dust has arrived here in Korea and I've been told it burns the eyes and gets in your mouth and nose. It comes around the same time every year blowing in from the Gobi Desert out in China and it covers everything. It sticks around for approximately 20 days and everyone buys these scary hospital face masks to protect their air holes. We are totally buying these this week. Yellow dust in the air holes sounds really awful.

So to prepare my eyes for the impending onslaught, I have removed the contacts and popped on the glasses. I even feel more teacherly. I think Ruby thinks so, too; the people of Korea love glasses. Miss Honey should've worn glasses...

I opened and closed the school today and realized my fear of being fired right before any given payday is completely irrational. How can they possibly fire us? We are the school. We're safe until Juvie shows up. Just like Miss Honey was safe til her replacement arrived. I can't wait until this new guy gets here. It'll be great to have someone else to take the spotlight off us.

I spent another evening rolling kimbap and ended up with about 8. That should be just enough to get me through the next 2 or 3 days. They're still not right, but I've decided it must be the rolly board. It certainly couldn't be anything I'm doing wrong.

No worries, I'm buying a Korean cookbook (in english, of course) this weekend and maybe it'll have some kimbap secret I'm missing. How hard can it be to make this stuff? I've seen it made a hundred times and I've probably eaten as many as that just since I've been here.

Those Kimbap Ladies have a gift. Now I just need to figure out how I can have it, too.

What is Tony Doing on a Box That Is Obviously NOT Frosted Flakes?

Just one piece of today's shenanigans.





I caught my first train this morning out to Daejeon to hang out with my new travel buddies and got on it just in the nick of time. I wasted a lot of time in the station trying to figure out how to buy a ticket. Yet again, my Korean debit card was rejected when I attempted to buy a ticket for public transportation. My KEB card doesn't work at the Seoul bus station, but I kind of thought that maybe it was because it wasn't a popular bank in that city.

I can no longer make excuses for KEB. I got an error message when I tried to buy my train ticket from the machine in Gwangju. Of course I hadn't taken out any cash for this adventure. I figured there'd be plenty of time once I arrived to find an ATM that wouldn't charge me a service fee. I was wrong. I should've been safe.

Instead I was sorry. I had to wait for this man to take out what must have been 5 different withdrawals using the same card. I'd be more understanding except that this was the same guy who nearly knocked me over in his attempt to reach the cash machine before me. It was early. I didn't feel like fighting.

I sure felt like it by the time he was done. Even more so when the ticket machine refused the first 2 ten thou. won bills I tried to put in. They were crisp. I don't know what the problem was. I got a few stares while trying to convince the machine to accept perfectly good money. What's the matter people? Never heard a waygook talking to a ticket machine before? It had all those expletives coming to it. Eventually, it listened to my pleas and spit out a ticket.

A ticket that at first I couldn't figure out. It said 4 symbol 16 symbol. I walked outside and saw that the train cars were numbered and assumed that 4 must be my car. It didn't look like the numbers went up that high.

The number four door was blocked. I didn't panic, of course. Just stood there for a second. There had to be a way in. The ticket machine wouldn't play me like that, would it? Wait. It totally might...

I tried to keep calm as I walked back up to the 5 car door and walked in. There had to be a way to get in through there. The number five car was blocked. It had a door to the number four car, but it was behind a giant stack of cup ramen. I get back off. The train was leaving in 2 minutes and I was stuck there on the platform trying to figure out if there was a possibility that this was the wrong train all together. I hear the final call and run ahead to the number 3 door. At least there were seats in that car, and I figured if I was at least on the train I'd get there.

Number Three was the answer. If I could be more coherent at 10am I might've tried to ask somebody for some help. As the train was pulling away from the station, I noticed all the uniformed employees whose purpose in life must be helping us train ignorant folk to find our place on that train.

I had passed the first few hurdles. Now the weekend could begin. Aside from the fact that KTX conductors do not give you a warning before your stop, I figured if I could just keep my eyes open, everything would be cool. Luckily, the ticket adventure and platform confusion had woken me up enough to keep me conscious for the entire 2 hour trip.

That and the crying. I was sitting in a row of babies that happened to be right in front of a row of babies. There must have been nearly a dozen women in that car holding a baby. I guess I was sitting in the super fertile section or something. Most of the babies were alright, but there was this one baby that just kept starting sh**. There'd be quiet in the car and all the babies would be lulled to sleep by the motion of the train, and then this one baby in the back would cry and set off this chain reaction. You could actually hear the noise moving towards the front of the car. It was like an audio version of the wave. That Instigator Baby is gonna be a force to be reckoned with when he grows up.


He finally stops crying as we pull into the Daejeon station and I get off the train to meet the girls. Our first stop is the Costco next door to pick up supplies for a most excellent mexican party tomorrow. Yes. Daejeon has a Costco. There was a ton of stuff I could've used, but since I had no desire to carry a ten lb bag of laundry detergent home on the train, I held back. Buying in bulk; homesickness kicks in at the weirdest times...


Anyways we head on over to Teresa's for a quick stop to trade Korean pop music and trip photos before heading out to HomePlus for the rest of our weekend supplies. We still needed some food for dinner and we enjoyed a nice, though windy walk to the store. These girls get a much more scenic walk to the store than we do. They actually get nature.

Since it was raining on our way home from the train station, I borrowed Teresa's super huge umbrella. The rain must've been intimidated by this umbrella, cause there wasn't a single drop that fell on the way there. It only rains when I go umbrella-less. I thought it was just the Milk Lady's umbrella that was cursed; guess I was wrong. I still enjoyed the walk, though.



We pass a leisurely afternoon before getting ready for the night's festivities. There were a few bars and a club on the agenda so we headed out to begin the party with the Elvis Bar.




Which has apparently disappeared recently. There was no sign of it anywhere and after wandering up and down a few streets, we threw in the towel and hit up their favorite hang out, Sponge. It kind of reminded me of a SpeakEasy meets German Bar. We met some germans who managed to offend with their opening line.

"You're military?"

Why? Do I look like I could shoot you in the face right now? Cause I'm kind of ready to take you out. Why would anyone go straight to that? Not like there's a base in Daejeon or anything. Personally, I would've started with teacher, but, hey, there were a lot of empty glasses in front of them. We let them buy us a beer as apology and then moved on out to the club.

The girls' friend had reserved a VIP room for us at this club where the waiters will just keep bringing you boys. At first I thought the boys worked there, but turns out the waiters just go down to the dance floor and find boys, ask them if they want to meet a few girls and bring them up to the room. Unexpected. Do we have places like that in the US...?

We hung out in the club for hours. Karaoke, dancing, drinks and a room where we never had to worry about fighting for seats. What a great night. We went through several sets of boys, but the last set stuck around until the club closed around 7 or 8. We get home ready to fall into bed, but as soon as I get out of the bathroom, Teresa calls out "Put your shoes back on, the boys want to take us for breakfast." Hey, I eat breakfast!

So we head out to find these boys again. They meet us somewhere close by, though I'm still hazy on the exact directions. It's not my neighborhood, so I can't really be expected to remember where I've been...

It was definitely not a Denny's, that's for sure. To be fair, i had been pretty emphatic with my Dwedgy gogi BEH ju-say-oh's. ("minus pig meat please") The pig might've been safer. Prawns. Whole. Breakfast had little faces all over the place.

And tentacles?! Oh man, I ate a ton of tentacles. It was the weirdest texture. And they had little suckers all over them. I have got to try live octopus soon. Breakfast has only piqued my curiosity.

What's breakfast without a little soju and drinking games? 9am soju is great fun, I can tell you, but Teresa and her wendy boy must have been cheating, cause my team was losing hardcore. Those drinking games were rigged.

We staggered back from breakfast around noon. That was probably the most comfortable floor I have ever met. An excellent night. For sure.

Mexican should be only a few hours away. Yum.

We Named Him Howard. Like the Duck.

We bought a plant on the way to work today even though we were borderline late. It was a quick decision, but I think we made a good choice; he looks pretty sturdy and he doesn't smell half bad. There's just something about plants, like they somehow make the air better.

The evaluations continued today and filled up our schedules quite nicely. Apparently, a whole bunch of new classes are going to be opening. We're not real sure who it's going to be teaching them, but I think you can guess who I hope it'll be. COUGHjuvieCOUGH.

We were able to leave at 9pm again, which felt really great. I had a really hard time focusing today- I had pizza on the brain, for sure. Jenn and I have been thinking about it since Wednesday, but today it was going to happen. Mmmm... Pizza with real cheese. The pizza thoughts were almost enough to banish the ever-lingering tension that this school gives me.

The pizza thoughts were strong enough to block out any mothering instincts I have, though, since I left Howard in the office. Oops. I had to run back and pick him up. Right after I ordered my pizza, of course. Thank God I have a key.

So our Week 11 Friday was just us girls, our pizza and juice. Good thing, too, gave me time to break Jenn into some Korean Dramas. You can't very well live in Korea without a few good dramas under your belt. We started on page 1: Boys Before Flowers.

She protested, but who requested the second episode? That's what I thought.

So Maybe It's Not Beautiful, But At Least It Finally Tastes Like Kimbap.

What I should do is turn off all the lights and eat it. I think it tastes even better than what the kimbap ladies make 'cause there's no mayonnaise in my chumchi kimbap. I also put more veggies in it than they do. So their knife is sharper, so what? Mine is perfect.

Or it would be, if I could freakin get it to stop cutting weird. It ain't beautiful, but it's the knife's fault. And I'm missing a crucial piece in the rolling technique. Some of them weren't all that bad, I just couldn't roll them as tight as I think is possible. It's as tight as I can do, I think, but it urks me that someone else can do it better. Competitive much? Maybe.

I made enough to get me through tomorrow, and I have enough extra veggies to make another 2 weeks of kimbap. And my ramen is going to be sick. Ah veggies... at least I know how to cook those alright.

The only downside to packing your dinner is that now I can eat dinner at school. I feel like that's just going to land me more work. Maybe it would be better if I didn't pack my lunch...

When the weather's warmer I can eat in the park I found a few blocks from school. There are little tables there, so I suspect it has seen its fair share of picnickers. It'll be really cute come spring.

Speaking of more work, she hasn't brought up the lesson plans again, but I kind of wish that she would. I certainly don't want to have wasted all that time on something she's never going to bother looking at again. I don't really know why I'm surprised. It's really no different than when she hands us a book and makes us write questions for the first 5 chapters only to change her mind after it's done and pick a new book.

Ahh work...

I Should've Gotten a Picture of the Buses Coming to Retrieve Us In the DMZ.

It's okay, I didn't get left behind in the DMZ. There were four of us, so I'm sure they couldn't have possibly left us behind... The man did say 1:30 and boy were we surprised to see those two blue buses roaring up the hill to find us at quarter of.


Of course, we'll start at the beginning of my DMZ adventure.

First, our tour took us to the freedom bridge and this train right here. Looks pretty beat up, right? Yeah, it was even more impressive up close.





This is me on the bridge. That is supposed to be a soldier guard guy, I guess. On the other side is the female guard. I picked this one, because I liked the sunglasses. Yes. I do think that that's a good enough reason.




Right around the bridge and train was a set of binocular things where you can actually look through and see the DMZ. Yes, ladies and gentlemen, that's the only thing separating me from North Korea right there. Looking back, what I should've done was take a picture with that right over my shoulder. Next time.


After the bridge and train we drove out to find lunch. It was a fairly typical Korean lunch which looked like 15 different kinds of side dishes and a dish of rice each. Renee and I sat with a girl we befriended from the bus and the same british guy who sat in front of us on last weekend's bus adventure. At the end of it our guide said,"You have until 1:30 to walk around and see this DMZ village. Okay? So walk around, take pictures and be back here by 1:30." So we did just that. We were so eager to check out this border town that we were some of the first people out of that place. We didn't question the reason we were being given 90 minutes to check out what was obviously a tiny tiny town, but, looking back, it does seem rather odd...

Well. We take a break at the top of a particularly high hill to exchange facebook info, look back and see our two buses slowly climbing the hill. Everyone wearing a watch (that does not include me) quickly looked down to check the time and we decide they must have decided to leave early. The doors open and our guide jumps out.

"The information was bad! It was supposed to be 12:30!"

The "information was bad"? Uh huh. Bill Clinton is only going to fly over here so many times, people, let's try to get our time tables right. We climb on the buses and they only emotion I was feeling was guilt. We were the last four people on the bus and apparently the buses had driven for a little trying to find us.

What I should probably have been feeling was fear. At least I wasn't stupid enough to believe I could wander around that town on my own, though. The people I was with seemed to know where they were going. Although, a great sense of direction can only do so much when you have the wrong departure time.

Our next destination was the 3rd Tunnel. It is a tunnel that was discovered back in the 70's showing that North Korea was trying to tunnel into the South. No pictures allowed here, so I can't show how much this tunnel blew. It was such a steep incline that on the way down I was sure that I was going to just trip and roll down to the bottom. After trying to climb back up, though, I'm convinced I should've. I could've used the extra energy on the climb; energy wasted on a downward slope.

The ceiling was so low in places that they make you wear these super fashionable schoolbus yellow helmets. They may have looked unfortunate, but it only takes one time hitting the ceiling to realize how beautiful they truly are. I felt bad for the british guy. His monster height over 6 ft really made me wish I could bring the bros over here and make them do this tunnel. They'd probably do better crawling. It's good to be short sometimes.


After the tunnel we went up to this observatory thing to look down at some North Korean soldiers training. There's a photo line that you can't pass with a camera. Thats this yellow line right here. Just try and cross it with a camera pointed at anything and the guard will come running, grab the camera, and delete that guy for you. There sure were a lot of places where you can't take pictures. Something you'll just have to check out for yourself.

Our last stop was this train station that will hopefully one day be able to run a train through North Korea on it's way to China and Europe. We had to buy tickets to get down on the platform, but it was worth it to stand on the steps of this train. Who knows where this train will be in 10 years...

This guy was sent here to stop foreigners from riding a train that they don't actually want to ride. We foreigners are just dumb enough to accidentally do this, because we don't understand the announcement that the train is departing. I appreciate this guy hardcore. I am just unfortunate enough to have this be a serious risk. I mean, come on, I almost got left behind once already.

You can't visit this freedom train station without checking out the freedom park. It was like a set straight out of an apocalypse film. It was empty and eerie. There were no people in it, nor any sign that people ever venture in there. Add in the barbed wire fence and there you have it.

A place for zombie children to haunt.


The tour ended fairly early and I managed to catch a bus home at a decent hour. I'm practically a pro at this intercity travel. Just as long as the departure city is either Gwangju or Seoul.

And the arrival city is either Gwangju or Seoul.

This Hostel Is Mad Awesome.

Even though the party ran late last night, I actually got to the bus station ready to catch the bus I needed to get to Seoul on time. But it was full. I called Renee to push our time back while I waited a half hour for the next bus. It's nice that they run so often between Gwangju and Seoul and I was able to make it to town in time for the lunch special at the Greek restaurant that Renee and Teresa had been talking about. Mmmm. I have missed french fries with lemon juice on them. And tzatziki sauce. Ahh chicken gyros...

After our super filling lunch I got to see 3 separate bookstores with foreign sections where I got another jpop magazine. After convincing myself I wouldn't buy any more idol stuffs, we headed outside and I bought a calendar of my current favorite Korean idol: Gong Yoo. This swanky calendar even came with a pack of stickers. Who doesn't love stickers? And I really needed a calendar. Ok, ok, maybe not needed, but super wanted.



We headed back to the hostel early since our DMZ adventure starts bright and early tomorrow morning. This time we ended up in the dorms which remind me a little of Madeline with the beds lined up along either wall. A smaller version, of course, there weren't 12 beds in that room.


Didn't really matter past the second bed, though, we are the only people in the dorms tonight. Sweet. And the bathroom is right across the hall. This is one swanky hostel, alright. I always envisioned staying in a hostel to being something like sleeping in the airport. You have to hold onto your belongings at all times and practically sleep on top of it if you can, making sure your hands are always covering the zippers. Talk about being prejudice, they provide little lockers for your stuff right there in the room. All you really have to sleep on is the key; much more comfortable.

Since this is one tour we absolutely do not want to miss, we headed to bed at the very reasonable hour of 11pm. Even if it didn't start so early, I suspect I would've been all for turning in early anyway. Friday celebrations are starting to be too much fun before weekend travel. I don't know if it's necessary to cut back just yet, but ...

Just another great day in Seoul.

Tomorrow? The DMZ.