So since I have nothing of real importance to report on right now (school went well last week, saw Transformers 2, ate food, cleaned my bathroom because my bathroom and everyone else's on my floor flooded, blah, blah lol), I thought I'd dedicate a post to the infamous Ajumma.

Primarily because I experienced two types of Ajumma this week.

What is an Ajumma you ask? You can easily spot one in Korea. Here is what you look for:

- A married older Korean woman, mainly 50+
- She will be wearing a HUGE sun visor hat on her head
- Colorful clothes (purple, pink, light blue, etc) that don't match
- The "Ajumma perm"
- She will literally run you down if you are in her way

Now this past week I experienced the most common type of Ajumma. I was getting ready to hop on the bus after coming from dinner, and right when I was about to get on, an Ajumma comes out of nowhere and basically elbows me in the side and pushes me out of the way.

Awesome.

Now, I have now problem letting just women in general go before me, but the problem was, I didn't see her. It's like she just materialized out of nowhere.

So the other day (Friday), I'm waiting on the bus to go to Suwon Station to buy some new gym shoes. An Ajumma comes on sits next to me while we are waiting on the bus and she begins to just casually have a conversation. She actually spoke some English, so she was able to ask me where I was from, where I lived, and what my job was here in Korea.

We got on the same bus and continued to talk until she got off before me. What was also funny is that while we were talking, some Korean kids were being loud in the back and right in the middle of our conversation, she turned back with this MEAN face on and they shut right up. She then proceeded to turn around back at me, smile, and begin talking again lol.

So I have just returned today from a 4 day GEPIK conference where all the waygooks who teach middle and high school Englishee, come and meet each other and learn tips for the classroom.

I actually learned quite a lot and I am going to use a lot of stuff in the classroom.

I was not looking forward to it at first, because I hate lectures. And my goodness one lecture was absolutely brutal. I'm sorry but I put my headphones on and even then it was a struggle. But my battery died lol. I just think the guy was too prepared for his lecture because it was good info, just presented in a way that didn't get everyone's attention.

I also met quite a few people from all over. And when I mean all over, I don't mean all over Korea, I mean everywhere in the world. South Africa, New Zealand, England, Ireland, Canada, and of course the USA.

I made some connections and got some numbers so yeah.

I didn't bring my camera for this, because...well I don't know why. Whatever lol.

Of course the pinnacle of every night was everyone getting beer and getting hammered. I didn't take part for obvious reasons which I have already explained on this blog, but I still decided to go down and talk with people. Of course not everyone was getting smashed but there were a few interesting characters.

One guy I started talking to would not let me leave. He went from talking about how he shows Al Bundy to his kids, to talking about starfish and South Carolina lol. OK buddy.

I also got a lot of questions, "Why don't you drink" many times. Again, I am not against drinking, I just don't do it very often. Christ says drunkeness is bad...just like with anything, overindulgence is bad for you. But surprisingly when I told them the reasons, why, they were like "cool".

I say surprisingly because usually this creates an avenue for christian bashing. I think one of the many reasons Christians get ridiculed is because we don't even pay attention to what Jesus said in this regard about judging outside of the church(in Matthew)..ANYWAYS, that's for another time and for my other blog lol.

So yeah I'm chillin right now before getting to sleep for the trip to Busan tomorrow. Enjoy a few pics from my trip to Seoul Tower and Banpo Bridge below. Cheers.

So what's up readers. Been a little bit since my last post, but I will try to post more and with more pics...promise ;)

So what has been up since the last time I've written. Well let's see, the two month mark of me being in Korea came on went on Tuesday. I tell ya, time flies. Lately I can actually picture myself being here a little longer than a year, but we will cross that bridge when we get to it. I'll never say I'll know what will happen because a year ago I wasn't planning on being here.

But I look at the whole situation, especially in Detroit, and I pose a question to myself as in "what is back there?" Don't get me wrong, I love my city and I love living there despite what some people ma think about the place, but there is really nothing going on there for me right now.

I really am not fond of graphic design as I have gravitated more towards my new passion, photography. I still love art and can admire good design, but it is too technical. You are always at the whim of whoever is your client. You can design something that you think is awesome, and the client will hate it. You can make changes to a design that you think suck, and the client will go bananas over it. Ugh.

Photography is my next goal.

So yeah, I figure if I stay here for a couple of years, I will have a job that I love, which gives me a lot of free time, allows me to save money, meet new people, and experience a new culture (learning a new language as well)

I do eventually plan on going back to the states, but maybe until my web business (which is actually picking up after building and catering to the foundation the past 2 years) and I have a plan for my business in photography.

But surprisingly I love my job. Some ex pats here hate it and are just passing through for the money, beer, free time, etc, but I enjoy teaching more than I thought I would've. Are there hard days? Of course. Some days my kids act like total monkeys (specifically 3 classes), but with teaching, it's something new everyday.

In the end I know God will lead me wherever I'm supposed to be.

And ah yeah...as for learning Korean, it's coming along well. Here are YOUR lessons for the day. You will learn Korean right with me.

안녕하세요 = ann-yeong-ha-se-yo = Hello/Goodbye

And that's it for today because I'm tired of trying to type in Korean on this keyboard. I will give you more lessons when I get some Korean key covers...or when I feel like copy and pasting lol.

So it's been awhile since my last post so just a brief summary of things going on with me in Korea since then:

- I'm getting settled in and into a nice routine now. I go to school, teach, then either come home or go out to dinner. Weekends are up for grabs as what I do changes from weekend to weekend.

- I've made a few more friends although in classic ISFP pattern, I still am reserved.

- Teaching is going well...in a sense. I seem to get frustrated at times because I have mixed level students and many times, the students do not understand what I'm saying, or they are just plain unmotivated (unless I play a game). But I do not want to be a lazy bum and just play games every class. I played one game last week for all the classes and they really enjoyed it and got them speaking. But when it comes to an actual lesson, they are reluctant to speak

- I have to prepare a demo lesson for next week

- I'm kind of still church searching. Somebody told me about another English church in Suwon I may check out. Me being reformed makes it difficult at times.

-One random thing I notice in my school is that Korean kids get injured a lot...or is it just me? It seems every week, a new kid has his hand or foot in a cast and when I ask them what happened, they say "fight" or "hit with baseball" or "or punched a wall"...wth

I'm like you guys need to be a little more careful.

- We had sports day at our school and it was pretty fun

Also a special hello to my grandma!! She doesn't have access to a computer, so my aunt prints off my blogs for her. So again, hello grandma and happy birthday to you!!!

I will try to keep more up to date like I was before.

ttyl

So I just realized this week that is has been one month since I've been in Korea. Time really flies. It doesn't even feel like I've been here that long. This means I should really enjoy my time here and try not to complain about minor things.

So this past week was pretty good. My Korean lessons with one of my co teachers is going great. I'm learning phrases like how to say "please pass the water" and "nice to meet you". I'm using a children's book...and don't laugh!! Children's books are one of the best ways to learn a language. Think about how you learned English.

On Friday it was Teacher's Day and I will post some pics of that later. The kids had a nice little ceremony for the teachers and then after school was done, the teachers played kickball. It really brought back memories of being younger lol. After the game, the teachers went out to dinner and we had duck. At first when one of the teachers told me what we were going to eat, I thought she said dog, but her pronounciation of duck was just funny haha.

It was my first time eating duck and it was pretty good. It was on the grill along with some other foods I can't pronounce. I also got paid for the first time on Friday woohoo!!

Saturday it rained alllllllllllllllllllllllll day long...and even all day long is an understatement.

I wanted to head up to Yongsan and get a new lens and tripod for my camera. I went Friday after the dinner but by the time I got there, it was closed. I needed to get a new tripod because the one I bought for about 10,000 won was so cheap and it broke this week. Like 4 pieces just fell off.

So this time I headed to Yongsan and bought a better tripod that cost 65,000 won and also bought a new lens and bag. Altogether it cost 250,000 won.

After I bought my new toys, I called up my friend Leonard who was in Itaewon getting a haricut there. I went up to meet him and we walked around there after his haricut for awhile and then met up with some other friends at On the Border Mexican restaurant. One of the people there was actually from Dearborn. So we talked for a bit more and then we both headed our separate ways back home.

Today, I went to the Multicultural Festival in my town. My church was there selling hot dogs. There were raffles, talent shows, and plenty of food to go around. I tried some kind of Vietnamese Noodle Soup with beef which was pretty good. I stayed for about two hours and then left and took a nap. The day started off rainy and cloudy but then the sun came out.

So now I'm sitting here watching Spiderman 3. I finished my lesson planning, and it's time to get ready for the new week. Until next time readers...

So another interesting week and weekend. Teaching was very good for the short 3 day week. The kids really seem to be less shy, and they are talking a bit more. It is interesting to see how each class differentiates from each other. One class is very upbeat and excited to talk (along with your class clowns..not too bad though lol), then another class is just sooooo quiet and it's more difficult to get them to speak. I don't want to talk for 45 minutes because first of all, it will bore them, and second, I know they can't understand a lot of what I say if I speak too long. The second graders (which would be the 8th grade in America) are more energetic but the 3rd graders (9th grade in America) are overall almost into that teenage stage where they just don't care. I don't teach the first graders.

I also on Wednesday started my after school conversational class. This one follows a book, so really no lesson planning for this one.

So Thursday was cool opened my bank account, and then Friday, I made plans with the friends I made last weekend to go to the movies. Now this is a long story of my weekend.

So they live in a town called Pocheon and one of them also lives in a town called Uijeongbu (where we were all meeting). Now these places are about 2 hours away from me on the subway. So after I got off from school on Friday, I came back to my apartment to change real fast and then I proceeded to take a cab to Suwon Station. I then got on the subway and got on the line 1 train. What was good about the trip was that I didn't have to make any transfers. The line goes straight to Uijeongbu.

So the two hours pass and I finally make it to meet everybody. Since I was a little late, we were gonna have to see the X-Men movie at around 10. This presented a problem for me because the subways stop running at midnight and seeing as how I just took two hours to get there, I was dreading the fact that I may have to turn right back around to get back before 12. Fortunately, my friend Joe said I could crash at his place until the buses and subways started running again at 5:30 AM.

So before the movie started, we all played some games at this place called Amusing World. This place has literally everything. Food, shops, arcade, DVD Rooms, PC Rooms, and Noribongs (karaoke). I didn't get to do karaoke this time but I know that time will come soon lol.

So after the games, one group of us split off to see the movie, while the other three went to the DVD Room to watch some Korean movie which they said was crazy. I think they kind of just randomly picked it, but it turned out to be some serial killer movie where a pimp kept losing his "workers", or something to a serial killer....ummm yeah lol. Craziness.

The Wolverine movie was good and it was better than expected. The next movie I want to see is the Star Trek movie and TRANSFORMERS...can't wait until that comes out. One thing about watching American movies in Korea is that the Koreans will not understand the jokes sometimes, so when we foreigners laugh at the jokes, they look at us like what is so funny LOL.

So anyways after the movie, we all meet back up to go home. One of the guys, Leonard, invited me and Joe to play some video games on the 360m so after playing that for awhile, it was about 330 in the morning....hunger has set in and we set out on a mission to find chicken...mission fails, so we find a Chinese food place which in my opinion was delicious. Definitely different than "Chinese food" back in the states.

So after we eat, it's about 430. Leonard doesn't eat pork, so he was still on a mission to find the chicken (the Chinese place had no chicken surprisingly) So me and Joe went to his place so I could get a quick nap. I really didn't sleep and I was headed out at around 515 am.

So...I take the bus back to Uijeongbu from Pocheon, get on the subway. Thinking it's a nice two hour ride, I'm tired, and promptly fall asleep on the subway. I wake up, and realized I've severely passed my stop lol. I get off, go to the other side to catch the train back, fall asleep and miss my stop again....GRSSHH.

I finally get it right and after 3 hours, I arrive back in Suwon. Oh but the day is not over. I made a commitment to go to the Ceramics Festival with my church (and I had paid already). So I headed to the church running a low sleep. I decided to try coffee for the first time ever in my life...I think it's nasty and never again.

So I get on the bus and wait for everybody to arrive and I am just completely out of it and I just fell asleep once we started rolling to Ichon for the festival. Before we got to the festival, we stopped for Korean food and I was still out of it and all I wanted to eat was some but the Koreans kept trying to give me Korean food that I had tried and already did not like, so I said I was tired and they assumed that's why I didn't want to eat, which was true. Also I'm pretty sure that people thought I was some kind of rude anti social prick, because I wasn't saying much. But I literally felt like I was going to tip over. I really thought I was going to start hallucinating at any moment lol. So everybody was just trying to start conversations and I just was not feeling it. Any other time I would've been fine.

So after they eat, we head to the festival, I'm still struggling, so I had planned to leave early. We all went to see a 10 minute presentation about the festival, but I can't even remember what was said. I felt like I was in the twilight zone. Next we head out to see some of the art work, and it really was beautiful and I love art, but my tiredness just killed all that and I didn't take as many pictures as I wanted and I was ready to be out. I said my goodbyes and headed to the bus terminal...so I thought.

The shuttle bus took me nowhere near the bus terminal and I was walking around for about 45 minutes trying to hail cabs and looking for the bus terminal to no avail. The tiredness just made things even worse. So I finally found a police station and managed to say enough Korean (I know how to say bus and station in Korean and I think terminal is the same) So the police officer told me and luckily a cab driver was right at the station so he said he would take me. So I finally arrived at the terminal, bought my ticket to Suwon, waited for the bus, got on and headed to Suwon.

I made it to Suwon, now with a severe headache from no sleep (couldn't sleep on the bus) took a cab back to my place even though it was more expensive than the city bus. I just wanted to get home.

I FINALLY get home, take some aspirin and just jump in the bed and sleep.

Surprisingly I only slept 3 hours. I got up and got some Papa John's pizza and then went back to bed again.

I didn't go to church today because I was still tired, but later on I met up with someone I had talked with on mylanguageexchange who was a very nice person. She is Korean and was in the states for awhile but is back in Korea studying at university. We talked for about 3 hours, I showed her pictures of Detroit on my camera, we talked about differences in American food, culture, etc. It was fun. So we're gonna hang out again because her weeks are usually free and I still have yet to find good friends that are not into drinking every night here in Suwon. I've met a lot of people here in Suwon, but they either live too far, we don't have the same interests, or they don't seem to want to do anything on the weekdays.

All the people I seem to click with live in Uijeongbu and Pocheon which are two hours away and what's ironic is that I was supposed to be placed in Uijeongbu at a school, but my papers took too long so I came to Suwon. Life is funny.

So it's Sunday and another week begins. I talked with my mom on Skype for the first time and it's Mother's Day! We had a good talk and she was so happy to talk and see me (via webcam)

So Happy Mother's Day to all the eo-meo-nis out there (Mother in Korean 어머니) Until next time readers, see ya.

So this past weekend was actually a four day weekend. I was happy to get some extra days of. I realize that I'm going to have to cultivate my own teaching style. Hopefully by the month mark I will have something I'm confident in. The other teachers have been saying I'm doing a good job but I feel like I'm not. The biggest thing for me is lesson planning. I'm not an organized person so I usually just "go out there" in many things I do and either wait until the last minute or freestyle. It works a lot of times (and worked in college many time), but it's not good practice and it's something I'm trying to get out of. So I've been lesson planning ahead of time and putting them in Word documents in order with time blocks. My co-teacher actually made me do this which is a good thing.

So anyways back to this past weekend.

Friday: I didn't do too much except for catch up on some tv shows. Particularly the final 2 episodes of Heroes for this season and the last four "The Office" episodes. I just download them from sites and watch them back to back.

Saturday: I was supposed to get up and go to Costco at 9am with some people from the church but clearly I watched my tv shows until about 2 am and knew I wouldn't feel like getting up so I had to cancel. I also had taken 3 Benadryls (is that safe lol) on Friday night because my allergies are HORRIBLE. I'm allergic to some type of plant here.

So the rest of my Saturday was spent chilling and getting ready for the dinner that teacheslkorea.com was having for the teachers that they helped get to Korea. It was at 6 and I had to take the subway and despite getting lost a few times I managed to make it to the place where they were meeting.

On my way there I met a guy named Jered whose blog I have been following for some time about how teaching in Korea was like and also met his friends Khiana and Leonard. Finally some black people to talk to in Korea!! lol.

So we get there and I meet some more friends of theirs, also black, who went with the same recruiting company. We talked for awhile getting to know each other and when everybody had met up at the place, we then walked over (about 40 people or so) to a Galbi place.

Galbi is a type of Korean cuisine in which types of meat such as beef and ribs are grilled and you can put the meat in sauce. It was an indian style restaurant with the food cooked right in front of you (you and your friends are the ones who have to flip and cook the meat) It was fun and it was delicious. I took some pictures which are below and it was good to sit and eat and get to know new people.

Afterwards many people were headed to a fruit soju bar, but of course I wasn't interested and I had to get back on the subway before they stopped running unless I wanted to stay in Seoul until 7am.

So I headed back and got off on the last subway and had to take a cab back home because the buses stopped running. And boy on my way out of the subway there were quite a few drunk Koreans wandering around lol.

Also the people I met on the way to the dinner I told you about invited me to come with them to Everland Amusement Park on Sunday.

Sunday: Went to Church at one. I'm glad the service starts at one because it means I get two days of good rest and not having to get up at 7:30 AM.

Afterwards, I proceeded to catch the bus to Everland. They were already there but I made it there at around 4. I didn't plan on riding any rides because I wasn't in the mood for rollercoasters. Everybody else was geeked to ride them but in the end a lot of people didn't because of the ridiculous long lines...we're talking 3 hours for one ride. Me, the guy Leonard, and another friend of theirs I met Joe, ended up playing some arcade games and we headed through this animal zoo thingamajig...I can't remember the exact name lol. Anyways, only in Korea would you find hyennas, lion cubs, and CHEETAHS in glass boxes. The funny thing about the cheetahs is that they had National Geographic playing in the background of their nice little box, as if they were being educated. At best they were seeing what real Cheetahs got to do when they weren't captured by humans.

All in all it was a fun day being there and hanging around and meeting more great people. Unfortunately everybody lives north of me (about 45 minutes or so) so everybody was on one bus back, and I was the only one that had to take another bus lol. It was cool though...give me my ipod and I'm cool.

So I got back and relaxed and got a nice rest.

Monday: Now me being the introvert I am, I enjoy hanging around people, but I had to use most of this day to "Recharge" so to speak. People think introverts don't like hanging around people when it's really we get our energy from being alone. Once we're alone for a period of time to "recharge" hanging out with people is no problem. But once we hangout again, we get drained again and may kind of "check out" and people may wonder what's wrong with us lol.

Anyways I slept in and then took a five minute bus ride to get my Alien Registration Card. It didn't take long and I was back home within a half hour.

Later on at 6:30pm, I met up with a friend from church who is Korean. He's in University and it was just a hey I'm bored let's get something to eat type of thing. He also said he'd call and let me know when his friends were playing pool.

Tuesday: I didn't plan on doing anything, but decided to head to Coex Mall in Seoul for a few hours to see if I could find any CDs by Toko Furuuchi who is a japanese artist. I've been looking for them so I won't have to order from Amazon, but it looks like I will have to. I didn't find any so I took some pictures and then headed back on home.

So that was my 4 day weekend. I forgot to mention I also washed clothes for the first time and not having a drier is really annoying. I have to hang my clothes to dry and it takes at least a day and a half to dry.

I get to open my bank account tomorrow and I get paid on the 15th yeehaw.

Also I'm expecting a deposit from my website that I've been working on for awhile. It looks like things may be starting to "snowball". It's coming up on the two year mark for the site and I need to figure out how to get my MAC configured so I can keep updating it because traffic to it is really starting to jump.

So pictures are below and click here for my flickr account for the more "artsy" pictures that I don't want to upload to facebook because they say they own all pictures on there.

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