This one is for Meg

Well, I'm not going to lie. This blog is mostly for Meg, a little for Grandma Weezie. I've been seeing some flowers out the last couple of days, and while the city here does not have an abundance of trees and flowers, if I look for them, I can find them.
Meg, we will have to check out some interesting florists when you get here.







This picture shows a small garden.
Gardens don't get much bigger than this one in Busan.
Once you get to the outskirts of the city, the land is more open.






This is in the garden.
This is close to school, but it is off the main road, and I stumbled upon the garden on my way to the post office. I was lucky to have my camera.








I thought this one was particularly interesting. To my knowledge, daffodils are a spring flower. They bloom after the ground thaws. The palms trees, however tend to be warmer creatures seeking warming ground. The juxtaposition between the palm trees and the daffodils just seems a little off to me.












You can't see these blossoms well in this picture: they look like little tulips. I haven't seen many of these trees, but this one is blooming across from the school. I have been able to see it every morning this week.










These are some beautiful roses.










Here are some more beautiful roses.



These next two pictures are of Busan Station. This is where people can catch trains to Seoul or other nearby cities.

















This building is really quite interesting.
I always come this way to go to the Seaman's Club.
The trip to the Seaman's Club is quite interesting: first you go through the Busan Station, walk through the parking lot, take the free standing elevator (picture Charlie's Glass Elevator), and then walk along the highway for half a block. No secret handshake is necessary, but a membership is required.









These next pictures are of the buffet some teachers and I went to at the Seaman's Club for Easter. What a great place. Pictured here: Julie teacher (pronounced, "Julie teacher" in Korea), and Walt the owner and operator of the Seaman's Club.

The McGerfur Clan grows!

The excitement this week seems to be the new additions. Congratulations to Laura and Corbett! Sue and Al are finally grandparents! And in one swoop, the Furlers are catching up with the McGrails for the second generation's propagation...
This week has been quite warm: I am out taking some pictures of the flowers and the trees in Busan this week. Now that I am getting pictures back onto the blog, more pictures to follow.

The Happy Squid is Gone

I feel like I am writing in code or some sort of Korean double meaning: the Happy Squid is gone. Well, my main landmark and the quirky little restaurant on the corner in Meyoung Jong Dong has been replaced by a cell phone shop. I find this quite sad for two reasons: the first is that this funny little cartoon character has come to stand for some sort of strange happiness in Korea. This joy is something I do not understand and I do not entirely appreciate, but I see it on the friendly faces of people who greet me on the street. I see it on the faces of the ladies who pat me on the back. I see it on the faces of the people who offer me candy on the street (hmm, this last one sounds very suspicious, but here it seems to be a gesture of good will, nothing to worry about when it comes in a wrapper from someone who is over eighty). I see this on the children's faces as they call out, "Hello, glad to meet you," on the street to me, and I've never met them before.
The second reason that the Happy Squid's disappearance makes me a little sad is more tangible. In many parts of the city, large apartment buildings stab at the sky, huge complexes like a Target or WalMart are popping up everywhere (they are called HomePlus and MegaMart here), and the small locally owned stores are disappearing. In my little neighborhood of Meyoung Jong Dong, the small stores are all locally owned, and the shops all have friendly faces. A new cell phone shop seems to show the encroaching development.
So, the Happy Squid is gone. If they had put in a Starbucks, I wouldn't be complaining at all.
For Easter today, I feel a little anti-climatic about holidays. I did however, go to a great church service this morning, and I had a fantastic brunch at the Seaman's Club: lamb, ham, clam chowder (I can't rhyme anymore), potatoes, vegetables, coffee, and chocolate covered strawberries. I love this place.

It's Saturday!

Well, the rough week is over, and I'm enjoying a quiet day at my apartment--I almost just called it home, but it is really a far cry. I enjoy cleaning and laundering and writing on Saturdays, but mostly, I enjoy closing the door and shutting out the craziness for a few hours. I play some music, I watch some TV, and I pretend that I can live in my head all the time. It's really great. I guess it's home for now. Thank God I have a place that I can shut out the world for awhile and just process everything.
A couple of things.
Yesterday, a few of the other teachers and I (Matt, Carla, Renee, and I) decided to go out for pizza for lunch. We still had half the day to go, but we were ready to start the weekend off with a pizza. We headed over near to Dongnae Station to a Mr. Pizza, which has some great pizzas from what I have heard. We ordered a "Sweetie Pizza," not my first choice, but it sounded interesting with potato and cheese--potato and corn are very common ingredients for pizza here.
When the "Sweetie Pizza" arrived, Carla's face showed interest first; then, we noticed the fuchsia cherries on top of the pizza, so Carla's face quickly showed awe; and after I took the first bite and pronounced, "This is not good," Carla looked fearful. We all ate one piece of the mashed potato, cheddar cheese, fruit cocktail, shredded almond mess, but Renee and Matt drowned theirs in Tabasco sauce claiming this disguised the fruit juices that had seeped into the cheese. I think this may have been a Korean joke of some kind.
Tomorrow is Easter. Happy Easter to everyone!
I plan to go to church tomorrow, and then I will go to brunch with a couple of other teachers to the Seaman's Club. They are having an elaborate buffet--lamb, mashed potatoes (this is very rare except on pizzas), something with rosemary, something with mint jelly, something with garlic, and some dessert. Good thing I'm not a chef. These dishes are wasted on me.

A few miscellaneous things

It's been a rough week, so I'm going to recall a few wonderful moments from the last week or so.
Last week, while meeting with my language exchange family, the mother made dinner as always. She made an elaborate meal, as always, but last Wednesday, she made a Western style meal: spaghetti and garlic bread. I saw the Prego can on the counter. Her son, Choi, speaks excellent English, explained to me that they like spaghetti, but his mother makes it a bit differently than in other places. She puts squid, clams, vegetables, and fish in the sauce. It was really quite good.
On Sundays, the church group usually goes out to eat after church. I have been craving this fantastic pasta place with a wonderful mushroom alfredo (I don't really know why, normally alfredo isn't particularly my favorite), but ended up following the crowd. Lo and behold, a few of us went to a Quizno's for sandwiches. I ate the best turkey and swiss sandwich I think I have ever had in my life.
Also on Sunday, I was trying to finish my taxes. I had pretty much finished them, but I needed to print out some forms. This is a little embarrassing when I can't always do so at work and I have struggled to find a PC room that will allow me to do so. After stopping into a couple of PC rooms with no luck, I finally found a good one. I printed about ten pages, even though I thought I might have to pay a thousand won (about $1) per page plus the fee for the time on the computer. He only charged me two thousand won (about $2) and told me it was a discount.
I got a couple of letters, too: one from Grandma Weezie and one from Mom. This is always so exciting.

The easiest, most annoying job ever

I have decided that my job is incredibly easy but terribly annoying at times. Mostly, I just do what I can to take care of the kids, teach them some English, and make a positive impression on the people around me. Mostly.
After a week like this, I remember how easy and difficult this is: today I finally got oil for my hot water (day five--I took the longest shower ever tonight), I'm still serving the kindergarten kids lunch, I'm having this incredible international experience, and I'm getting paid an incredible amount to show up and speak English. Well, this is great on some level, but I remember about ten years ago when I was waiting tables at Vescio's Italian Restaurant in Minneapolis, and I decided that I would never again let my outer appearance mean anything. I wanted to be more than a pretty face or whatever.
Ten years later, a Master's degree and a booth babe job later, and here I am, a nice foreign face, getting paid plenty of money to simply speak English. This is all well and good, I suppose, but I kind of wanted to be valued for who I am. I guess everybody does. I don't think my teaching experience, my education, my knowledge, or anything are of any value. This frustrates me a little, but mostly, I wish I could work for a school or a company that tries to use people's experiences and strengths.
I have moments when I am coloring with the kindergarteners, looking for colored yarn in a store, trying to get a room full of kids to sit down, trying to get a couple of teenagers to care, salivating over some of the grammar classes, or convincing my bosses that I'm trying to do my job, and I think back on the lovely days at Martin University or Winona State University. Oh, to talk about education in an environment that is not so strict and more creative...

Withered Roses and One-eyed Ladies

Happy Birthday to Katie!!
Well, I don't really have much to say, but I had a couple of strange moments this weekend that I thought I might jot down.
Strangely, I have finally run out of hot water. I paid for $200 worth of oil in October, and I thought that it would have run out so much faster than this, but it didn't. This isn't so bad at all because the weather this week should be in the fifties, and overtime will help to pay for it. This is great. I remember hearing about Meg and Mike's heating bill in Duluth; I think it was over three hundred dollars for one month. I can't believe that I have made it through the winter on only two hundred.
The second thing is a bit stranger: I have seen a couple of rats lately on the streets in my neighborhood. This doesn't seem to be a huge deal--sure, I don't like them, but they are running away from me as quickly as I realize that they are rodents. Well, I have become much more cautious of these strange, gaping holes in the sidewalks that lead to the nether regions of Busan. I have always been fairly cautious of them for fear that I would lose a toe or a shoe in them, but now I am becoming much more aware of the creatures that live in these holes in the ground.
Well, so I was out walking to the store on Saturday, walking carefully after having seen a rat. I was watching my feet and the road more than the stores and the landscape, like I usually do, otherwise I would have missed this withered rose on the steps of a closed shop on the way back to my apartment. The rose was red, it didn't have a tie or a wrapping, but it was thin, and the petals were curled up.
I love these quiet moments when I can imagine who left this single rose on the steps of a closed store.
This reminds me of a woman I used to greet every morning on the way to school. She seemed quite old, with wrinkly skin and only a couple of teeth. She had a piece of medical tape over one eye, so I began to think of her as the one-eyed lady--I realize this isn't very flattering, but I don't know her name. She did seem old, but she would hobble out and offer me her hand and sometimes a piece of candy--don't tell Mom and Dad that I have taken candy from a stranger.
I saw her every morning for a month. Then I didn't see her for a couple of weeks. I saw her once or twice the week after that. Her store is gone now, and some people are redoing it. It seems to be next to one of the new subway stops, so maybe she sold her store and moved to Hawaii. Maybe she is living somewhere on red cushions.

Glad it's Friday

Well, it's been quite a week, and as usual, I would like to detail a couple of things from this week. Hang on, it's been a crazy week.
Last week, because of the graduation and the time of year, we started new classes on Monday. Strangely, though, Monday morning, we woke up to a wonderfully warm morning with a bit of strange yellowish smog-like haze. I got to school and found out that this was the infamous "yellow dust" from China, and the morning classes were cancelled. Hooray.
Unfortunately, I also found out that I won't have a Korean teacher for my morning classes. The Korean teachers in the kindergarten are amazing: they are nurses, bus drivers, lunch ladies, counselors, teachers, sometimes interpreters, sometimes wet nurses, and anything else that is necessary.
I am very chagrined to be lacking a Korean teacher.
I am staying an hour late to serve the kindergarten kids lunch, make sure they brush their teeth, wash up, and get on the bus. This is not really all that bad, but boy, do I miss my Korean teacher.
Tuesday: I left for school, and it was snowing. From fifty degrees and spring-like pollution to snow in twenty-four hours. At least the snow blew away all of the yellow dust.
And Tuesday was the orientation for the kindergarten: speeches, meeting the parents (awkward, since most of them don't speak English), trying to get everybody to where they need to be, and meeting the new classes.
And Tuesday night was my second (and a half?) meeting with my language exchange family. The college student and his mother can easily learn English on their own, but I think they enjoy having a semi-friendly foreigner to spend time with them. The mother has cooked me some extravagant meals, and the son (Choi) assures me that she doesn't cook like this for the family. I enjoy them a lot. And yes, Sun Sung Duck (the fish lady) introduced me to them. This is so great, but I end up staying late. I was there until after ten o'clock.
Wednesday was the first day of the kindergarten. It went OK, but there were too many crying kids. I don't deal well with this. I find myself saying to them, "There's no crying in kindergarten or baseball," and then I start to laugh. This doesn't help.
Today seemed to go OK, but plenty more crying. I don't know what to do except try to make them laugh. Someone recently mentioned to me about the love languages, communicating love through touch--well, with kids it's just so weird. In Korea, it's alright to pat kids on the head or even hug them, but the Westerner in me says this shouldn't be OK. I'm starting to get a little better. But only when they're crying.

Chenju and the new schedule

It's funny how a couple of days will pass, and I will have a running commentary in my head about the events. A single hour might have two or three different blogs, but I never seem to have the time to keep up these entries. So when I finally do sit down to write something, I write the Reader's Digest versions.
So the Reader's Digest version.
Yesterday I went to a Korean wedding. Actually, I attempted to go to a Korean wedding. I was under the assumption that Jenju (or Chenju?) is approximately an hour outside of Busan. Not true. A co-teacher and I trekked out with over two hours to spare and missed the twenty minute long ceremony completely. That's right: twenty minutes long. We caught the tail end of the ten minute long photography session before the next wedding started.
I snapped a couple of pictures, and then everybody headed down for a buffet dinner. It was pretty cool.
Then, my co-teacher (Jon) and I wandered around Chenju for a bit, snapping a few pictures along the way--and yes, the pictures are on Facebook. A castle, a river, strange cartoons, great stone statues, and interesting boats to make the trip complete. And of course, the traffic in the comfortable inter-city bus, well, let's say that this topped the trip off, too.
The new schedule today was a bit chaotic. I can't begin to describe it: it's a little frustrating but mostly strange and unplanned and unprepared. It's like this new day of the new school year sprang up on everyone--without the summer break or a day's vacation to plan since the graduation last week--so no one really knows what to do. Half of the Korean staff are new, all the students are lost, and mostly, the western teachers just don't have a clue what is going on anyway. Our main office manager was supposed to leave last Friday, but she came in today because most of the students and teachers didn't have their schedules or their books.
Luckily, I still have my classroom, I have my books, I have my schedule, and I have my head on straight. I even made it through the first day without any real problems. Except I'm back up to 40 hours (39?) for another couple of weeks or so. This is not too bad, but it's a bit draining.
I knew the thirty hour schedule wouldn't last.