Hongdae from Above

Hongdae (홍대) is the biggest nightlife area in Seoul, I believe. I used to live near there, in Yonhui-Dong (Yonhee-Dong, 연희동). It is filled with bars, clubs, restaurants, live music, and if you venture there on a saturday night, a lot of white people. I used to think it was the greatest place on earth, but nowadays it doesn't hold the same magic for me as it once did.

But we've been trying new places there, and it has been a lot of fun. These pictures are from a bar on the 9th floor overlooking the main walking street. Seoul is different from Boston and it's surroundings in many, many ways, but one of the most striking, in my opinion, is quantity of restaurants and bars. In my small neighborhood, Shillim-Dong, I imagine there are as many bars and restaurants as there are in all of Cambridge, if not many more.

The New School

So I started at the new public middle school last week. I spent the week making lesson plans that I am not sure I will use. I am the first foreign teacher there, so nobody seems very sure what to do with me. There is an English-only Zone in the school, which is a fancy room with all sorts of new-fangled technology that I don't even know about. It is supposed to be a place where students study English, and can only speak in English. In most (well, not most, all) schools the foreign teacher works there, but I was told by one of the senior English teachers that that was "her room" and I will not be going in there. So I will go from class to class with one of five co-teachers. Theoretically I should be co-planning classes with them, or at least showing them the plan so we can work together, but none seemed to interested in that, so we will see what happens tomorrow when I actually start teaching.
To be honest, the first week has been a disaster. I was never told that I was to show up last saturday to meet all the teachers, so they were left waiting for me all morning, wondering where I was.
Finally, I talked to them, and was told to come in on Monday. That was when I was told that they had an apartment waiting for me, despite the fact that I already have one, which both the recruiter and the Office of Education that shall remain nameless were well aware of. I spent the first two days being told it was my fault and being badgered into moving out of my current place, which I would have to pay a lot of money to do. As the days went on the school relaxed and began to understand that it wasn't my fault, so that part of the problem is ok for now.
But the recruiter and the S----l Metropolitan Office of Education are both blaming each other for the problem, and will not admit fault, though I believe it to be due to mistakes on both parts. However, I have been told that I will be the one footing the bill (despite complete and total innocence on my part), so I will have to lose my first two months housing allowance (about a thousand dollars) to cover the payment to the landlord of the apartment the school provided.
All in all it has been an awful week. I am not sure whether to continue pestering the people for the money that is rightfully mine, or if I should just give up. Honestly, there isn't much I can do. I have pleaded my case clearly and thoughtfully, but they just don't care. I could write bad things about them on the internet, on the popular ESL message boards, but in Korea even if you write something negative (but true) about someone, you can still be sued, or fired.
I guess I have to accept it, but it has really put me off on the whole experience right from the first week.
But the school seems ok. The kids are nice when I meet them in the office or hallway, though we will see how it goes in the classroom. The other teachers are nice too, and the lunch is good. I'll stop complaining, but I am still angry.

This is one of the hallways at the school. Long, right?


Here is the view from the second floor. The place really couldn't be more centrally located in the city. That is Seoul Tower (or Namsan Tower) on the hill. Great location.

That's the school name. Means "good neighbor" in Korean.


That is one of the three buildings. It is very close to Sookmyung Women's University.


Oh well, that's it for now. Don't want to seem to negative right off the bad, but this has been a rough week. It can only get better, right? Right?

The New Place!!!

So here is my new 옥탑방 (rooftop apartment) in 신림동, 서울 (Shillim, or Sillim-dong, Seoul). As you can see there aren't really any pictures of the actual inside- once I get a bed and it looks a little nicer, I will have some, but the real special thing about this place is the roof and the view all around. The apartment itself is quite small, smaller than my old place, but that doesn't bother me. One room is all I need. We looked at many places, and for the same amount of money I could have lived in a much larger two bedroom place with windows that looked out at brick walls. We also a lot of terrible one room places that were more expensive than this one. I can't imagine who would choose those places.
I decided a while ago that this is probably what I wanted, as soon as Hye told me what an 옥탑방 was. I had seen the word in many of the apartment ads I had been reading religiously for months, but didn't know what it meant. 옥 sounds like "oak" so I thought it meant an oak-paneled room. Hye was not thrilled about my sudden obsession with the idea. Rooftop aparments are seen as places for poor people. Many are very cheap, maybe 250,000 won (220 dollars or so) a month plus deposit. We saw a couple that I liked, but Hye convinced me not to take them. They are known for being too hot in summer and too cold in winter, and the other ones we looked at might have been pretty uncomforable. The other one I liked had a bathroom that had no heating and the walls were just clouded windows. It would have been an unpleasnt chore to wake up in January and go take a shower in a room that was 20 degrees!
But this one is more like regular one room apartment that happens to be on a roof. It is well made and should be comfortable all year. It is the nicest building I have lived in in Korea and landlord lives below me and she is a very nice older lady. Walking up the hill to the place and then up 5 flights of stairs is a bit of a pain, but it is worth it.

Picture 1- The view to the left out my front window
Picture 2- More or less straight out my front window
Picture 3- Out my door onto the roof, which is in the back of the building
Picture 4- In my door from the roof
Picture 5- The roof

I really love the view. It is great at night too, but I can't seem to get any good pics of that. I will keep trying.

The View from my Roof

Yeah, so this is the view from my roof in a few directions. Pretty nice, huh?

The mountains in the distance are Bukhansan National Park, where I often go hiking. Only about 15 minutes away by scooter. I will be sorry not to live close to there when I move. It is an incredible place. You could spend days and days hiking there. I've only gone about 3 hours in, but it goes on forever.

President Roh's Funeral

These pictures are from City Hall, where people gathered to watch Roh's funeral, which was held down the street at Gyeongbokgung. Very sad.

Seoul Zoo 2

More pictures from the Zoo. This chairlift brings you from the entrance. It must take 20 or 30 minutes! The whole area is huge, and even though it is just a few minutes outside of the city, you feel like you are in a Valley in the middle of nowhere.



Hye on the scooter. Much better than taking the subway!

Seoul Zoo 1

Here are some pics from the Zoo at Seoul Grand Park. The place is huge!




The peacocks are very popular. No wonder they seem so stuck up.

Wish I'd Gotten a Bike Sooner!

I just got a bike. I wish I had bought one a long time ago. This is a bike path by my house that goes along a stream. Above is the Nambu Beltway, a highway that goes around the city. It's actually really nice, and they have been re-doing the path lately. I never realized it before, but it goes directly to the Han river, which is the big river that goes through the middle of Seoul. There are paths along the Han that must be 30 miles long. You can bike to anywhere in Seoul so easily from my house, and I never thought to do it....Oh well, better late than never.


Another picture of the stream along the bikepath.



I rode to Sunyudo Park, which is an island in the middle of the Han. It's really nice, and only took maybe 25 minutes to get there.



A lone exerciser on the path across the stream.

Muuido

This is Hye standing in front of our hut on the beach on Muuido Island. It is part of Incheon, and is only a couple bus rides away from Seoul. But this time we drove. The amout of white people here is ridiculous. Maybe 70 percent foreigners staying in these huts.


We made a big fire (which I apparently did not take any pictures of). We spent all day collecting the wood, and then a bunch of deadbeats came over and sat by our fire and complained about the way we were doing it.

Fun place, but next time, no big fire.


This is the ferry to the island. It is fun but only takes about 45 seconds.


Cars on the ferry.

Observing North Korea by Scooter

Here are the scooters we rode up to the North Korea Observatory. It took maybe two hours to get there, though a car on the highway would only take about one. Its pretty close to Seoul- Maybe about the same as the distance from Boston to Worcester. You always forget that it is right there- South Korea is a small country, and we are right on top!


North Korean 전화번호 책- phone book. The museum at the observatory had tons of cool stuff, like these books, NK snacks (though I am sure most people don't have access to that kind of stuff) and a replica classroom. I bought some North Korean soju. I was hoping they would have cigarettes too, like the ones I bought on the NK tour, but only alcohol and mushrooms were available.



The view across the river to the North. Can't see much, but with the binoculars they had there you could make out people working the fields. A lot of people, like 50 times as many that would be doing the same job in the South. Food is hard to come by up there.



These are the characters from JSA, the movie about North and South guards becoming friends. Great movie.

Sorry its short dad, but Happy Father's Day! I promise there will be a new one every day this week. I have a lot of pictures to write about!

Bucheon

Hmm.....these pictures looked better on the little screen on my camera. Guess I still need to work on the night settings. Anyways, this is Bucheon, a city a little outside of Seoul. We stopped on the way back from Incheon Chinatown, which is not a place I would suggest going out of your way to see. Anyways, pretty typical night view in a nightlife area. After all this time here, the lights and signs are still one of my favorite things in Korea.


This is where we ate. It had really good meat. Some of it was cooked in a little grill under the regular grill on revolving skewers. It was good.

Learning Korean

I spend a lot of my free time attempting to learn Korean. Learning another language is a difficult thing. At least, learning Korean is- I bet I could be fluent in Spanish in about two months if I felt like it, but Korean is much more difficult.

Anyways, this is my Korean academy, 가나다 한국어학원, or Ganada (ABC in Korean) Korean Language Academy. I have been studying there for about two months. Classes meet Monday, Tuesday, Thursday, and Friday for 3 hours each day in the morning. I took the placement test when I first went there, so I was able to skip the beginning classes, and started at "Elementary 2, Part One," which basically means that I started in month 3 of a 12 month program.

I wish I had started studying there earlier. I had learned a lot by myself before I started studying at the school, but without being forced to spend 3 hours a day studying, there is no way I could improve quickly like this on my own.

This picture below is not from a bookstore, but rather from my own bookshelf. And this isn't everything- I have had many other Korean books over the years. Whenever I got bored of studying, which was pretty often, I would go out and buy a new book. Throwing money at the problem....



Below is a random page from my new book, Intermediate 1 (No more elementary books for me, haha!). 요즘 밤에 아르바이트를 하거든요. It means something kinda like "because I have a part time job these days." There are far too many ways to say "because" or "so," and too many difficult to remember rules about when to use each one, says me.

Oh Yeah, I Went to Hong Kong

I almost forgot, on the way back from Vietnam, we stopped in Hong Kong for one night, New Year's eve. We had very little money due to poor financial planning and a lack of international bank cards. We had just enough money to take the bus into the city (and back to the airport) and buy a couple of cheap meals. It was cool, but to be in the land of Chinese food with no money to buy a ton of it was a bit unpleasant.

Hong Kong was kind of like going to Chinatown in San Francisco. After spending a week in Saigon, it seemed extremely quiet and calm. We didn't have enough money to do any of the good tourist stuff, so we pretty much just walked around. I wouldn't go there for a trip again- but I wouldn't mind stopping there for a couple of days to do the tourist stuff and load up on some more food on the way to someplace more exciting.