heavy metal thunder

Autumn and I went out last Friday, and were told by enthusiastic foreigners outside the Family Mart that the Best Drummer in the World was playing at a bar down the road. So we went, because you can't miss an opportunity to see the Best Drummer in the World.



He started with what I thought was going to be an enthusiastic sound check, but no. It was a song.

Here he is in action. It's only a fifteen-second video, but that's all you need. Note the enthusiasm of the crowd.


(It didn't sound any better than that in real life.)

So that was fun.

apartment in the sky

This is Jangyu.



It's where I live. It's still really hot here (actually this is the first afternoon I've been comfortably able to leave the windows open and the aircon off.) I like that it's all highrises and mountains. This is why it's a small town with 100,000 people.

It's difficult to see in the picture, but there's a big retaining wall on the right. That wall retains another big hill. This picture is part of my walk to/from my second school, where I teach Thursdays and Fridays.

mushroom mushroom

Sorry guys! It's not that stuff isn't happening that's worth blogging about; it's that it's all "I went to Busan this weekend and spent a whole day talking to Autumn about boys and clothes and traveling."

But I'm not lesson planning right now, so let's talk about how crap I am at basic human functions like feeding myself.

I partly went to Thailand as an exercise in being a grown-up. I had never lived by myself or relied on myself to feed myself. It's different when you live with someone, because you can share those burdens. Or something.

Anyway, Thailand proved to be the land of $1 Pad Thai and housekeeping cleaning my room once a week and taking my laundry all the way across the street to be done every week. It was a challenge, I tell you. It made me laugh, because I was far less capable than I had been in the States. At least there I cooked for myself. Sometimes.

Now in Korea I realize that I am rubbish at feeding myself. I keep running out of food. Like, usually I have breakfast cereal with fruit and yogurt for breakfast…and dinner. But this morning, I didn’t have any fruit or cereal. Instead, I had leftover corn on the cob and blueberry yogurt, and now have no food again! This keeps happening! On the bright side, there is a once-every-five-days market near my house. I discovered this while on the way to the grocery store (I had run out of breakfast cereal again.) The sidewalk surrounding the grocery store was full of produce stalls, and the funny usually-vacant area behind the grocery store was now a bustling market!



In a way I'm spoiled (this time of year) because when I run out of food I can walk two blocks and buy overpriced nectarines or tangerines. Or other fruit but why would I buy other fruit when I can buy nectarines and tangerines? And the mushrooms—there are so many different kinds of mushrooms! Cooking real food is difficult because it’s hard to buy small quantities of produce, so my stir-fry is usually limited to two vegetables, which are always broccoli and oyster mushrooms. This is because, when told to choose two vegetables among all the choices at market, why would anyone not choose broccoli and oyster mushrooms?

Unfortunately, the market only happens every five days, so the rest of the time I have to go to the actual grocery store, which isn’t so bad because they do sell those corn flakes with the cranberries and almonds.

(I should note that I eat a hearty Korean lunch at school every day. The teachers are regularly impressed with my tolerance for spicy food--dudes, I lived in Thailand.)

This is my exciting life in Korea!

shiny and new

Monday morning, I taught my first five classes. My main (Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday) school is co-ed, but the classes are gender segregated. I taught three classes of boys and two classes of girls. My first week of lessons is just an “about me” introduction, a brief speaking exercise, and a game. I opened the floor for questions after the introduction, and every class asked my age (which is totally normal in Korean culture) and my height. And every class gasped when I said 178 cm.

Halfway through the day, a couple of girls giggled into the office and I received a really sweet letter/request to be teacher's pet(?)



I'm not sure if she's questioning her spelling or my hair color. Anyway, I survived.

around like a merry-go-round

After testing the free fitness equipment, Autumn took me to a jimjilbang. A jimjilbang is a public bath. They're very popular in Korea. There were gender-segregated naked areas with pools of various temperatures, some with herbs in them. There were saunas, wet and dry, up to 80 Celsius. And in the jammy-wearing everybody area there were saunas with beautiful colored stones in the walls, a sleep area, and a karaoke room. Yes.

After getting all cleaned up, we came back to Gwangalli beach and walked up to the North end, where there is an amusement park. First, we rode the mechanical bull and each won a funny heart-shaped pillow.


Then we rode the Viking Ship!


And the ferris wheel, which is 103m high and takes fifteen minutes to go all the way around. Here's Autumn's look of terror at the top:


Then there was a shiny Merry-Go-Round ride.


Afterward, we went to restaurant and had awesome Gorgonzola and walnut pizza, with pink pickles and espresso salad and wine. We each took a bite of the pizza when it arrived and just looked at each other with expressions of “I am so lucky to be tasting this amazing food right now.” And we are.

let's get physical

A great thing about my apartment is that I can walk two blocks and then catch a 30-minute, 1800-won ($1.50?) bus to Busan. I did this on Friday night, and met up with Autumn (who is another 30 minutes on a subway, but still.) It had been, like, over a month since we'd seen each other.

A great thing about Autumn's apartment is that it's a short walk from this:


Autumn showed me around her corner of Busan. There were chrome grapes.


And down at the south end of Gwangalli beach, there is a fitness area with the usual fitness area things.




And last of all and best of all, there was a selection of the giantest, awesomest hula hoops ever. They HURT.

In my room

Wanna see where I live?

I live in Jangyu, which is a bedroom community of Gimhae, which is a suburb of Busan.

First, I don't have a key. Instead I have this. I don't want to think about the implications in case of disaster.


This is the take-off-your-shoes area. Please try to find an empty spot in those cupboards among my vast collection.


And this... this is my room!


There is plenty of room to hula hoop.


This is the kitchen, complete with a bag of moving-in waste. There is a microwave and a rice cooker under the table. I chose the pink rug myself. That door goes to the bathroom.


This is the bathroom. The shower head is behind the door.


This is my laundry room, which seems like a very inefficient use of space.

what good things mother makes

Gosh, I'm sorry about this lapse. I'm going to lectures and eating kimchi a lot. I also had some European Luxury Waffles, which were tasty.





Additionally, corn. There was a bag for the cobs, but it went away. In Korea, we recycle!

all my bags are packed and I'm ready to go

The computers at the airport weren't working, so the ticketing procedure involved the Asiana staff running back and forth with peoples' passports to a back room somewhere and hand writing boarding passes. Understandably, this delayed the flight since folks had to wait so long to check in.

Mistakes are bound to happen with handwritten boarding passes. I had the same seat number as another girl, but Asiana sorted it out. When we exited the plane she grabbed my TEFL International backpack for me, since I had stowed it a few rows back on account of the seating weirdness. She recognized the logo as she is also a TEFL alumni who has been working in Spain for the last two years. With a US passport, mmm hmm. Of *course* she's here for EPIK too, but she'll be teaching in Seoul.

The flight was painless. I watched some movies that I would not otherwise have watched, and some that I wanted to see (Date Night, with Steve Carell and Tina Fey, which was not as funny as it could have been; Valentine's Day, which I enjoyed but will later claim to have watched only because of the pitiful selection of movies available; Percy Jackson and the Olympians: The Lightning Thief, which varied from the book but I dug it, and The Back-Up Plan with... um... J-Lo playing a baby-crazy woman who um... God it was awful. I knew it would be awful and I watched it anyway and it just was.)

I took a bus to Jeonju University where I will stay for ten days of orientation, and on day nine I will learn where I will spend the next year. I've been living out of backpacks and suitcases for the last four months, so I'm excited to get a whole apartment to myself.

every weekend at the Renaissance Faire

I went to the Ren Faire.

The best fun to be had at Ren Faire isn't sweating in the hot, sunny faire in ridiculous garb or purchasing expensive silly things. It's lounging in Paisley Glen, complaining about the heat!



I'm not quite acclimated to Washington yet, so the heat didn't bother me much. Shortly after arriving at the Faire on Saturday afternoon, I got to ride in Tyler's fancy red convertible to buy water... and another thing.



There were cows and a mountain!


And when we got back to Paisley Glen it was time for fancy time, so everyone fancified and went for a promenade.

(Paisley Glen isn't quite Renaissance reenactment so much as it's Victorian Renaissance reenactor reenactment, and more than that just silliness.)

And then it was dark and the other thing I bought was an inexpensive LED hula hoop.


Hunger happened but was quickly slain by the fabulous ramen cart (and ramen) that Stuart made.


And that was Ren Faire. Today I'll cross the Pacific again, back to Korea.