The End!

Well the end has come and gone. I made it back from Korea, dragging 100 pounds of luggage from airport to airport, from NYC to upstate New York and finally back home to New Hampshire.

A lot of people asked me if I was sad to leave, and the answer is certainly "yes". I quite enjoyed my life in Korea; it's a good life and an easy life. I made good friends and saw most of them at the surprise party Miju threw for me two days before I left. It was especially hard leaving after such a large turnout of such charming people that was so unexpected. I'm not afraid to admit that I didn't have the emotional composure to get through "Take Me Home Country Roads" at the noraebang, or the rest of the evening for that matter, without breaking down a bit.

But despite the good friends, good life, and beautiful girlfriend, the thrill of Korea just wasn't really there anymore. After two years I spoke enough Korean to manage my life on my own. I learned enough of the culture to not be surprised every day. I traveled enough to feel comfortable with the land. I ate enough of the food to get a good taste for the cuisine, and I saw enough students to not really want to teach for awhile. There just wasn't something new around each corner anymore.

I'm sad to leave and sad to know that, as way leads on to way, I may not see my friends again, as nice as it would be. But the time to leave has definitely arrived, otherwise I would soon find myself stuck in a routine that has become mundane and, without the spark of excitement and newness, come to regret my life there. I certainly wouldn't want that. It seems that, occasionally, time is the only difference between being glad to leave something loathsome and being sad to leave something wonderful.

The Beginning of the End

My last days in Korea were absolutely hectic. I had to return to school for the three days since the new semester began before my contract expired. I had to try and say goodbye to two years worth of co-workers and friends. I had to try and figure out how to deal with a recently discovered hernia. I had to pack up my life in to two large bags and clean my apartment. I had to pay bills, and on and on and on.

After having so much free time for most of my two years in Korea, it was all gone and I found there weren't enough hours in the day to do the things I needed to do. Something had to be compromised, and usually it was sleep. I still managed to teach two days of classes at school and get my apartment relatively clean for the new teacher moving. I made it to the airport and made it across the rest of the world to NYC. My mind is finally starting to wind back down.

Summer Doldrums

I'm done teaching in Korea for good. I finished out the rest of the semester's classes, did a three-day camp at my school, did a three-day camp at another school, and taught two classes a day at my school again for the past week and a half.

I'm on vacation, and I don't know what to do with myself. Even when I was teaching the two classes a day at my school, I would come home around 11am and have absolutely nothing to do. Daegu is hot and humid and has been rainy on and off for the summer so far. Where's the motivation?

I sold my motorcycle, that was real sad. I celebrated my girlfriend's birthday which was fun and not exceedingly expensive. I had a dinner party and two poker nights at my house. My friends are off in North Korea or Malaysia or Thailand. I have my visas for China and Russia. I bought a suit for the upcoming weddings I'll be attending. It's gotten so desperate that I watched Step Up 3D and Salt in the theaters. And the sad part about that is that Step Up 3D was about a thousand times better than Salt. Seriously, don't see that movie.

I have two weeks to the day left until I head back to the States for a quick visit. I should be living it up my last days here, but I'm bored and unmotivated. I find it much easier to to play poker or the Settlers of Catan online than do research for my upcoming travels, or practice the guitar, or write entries in this blog, which has been sporadic at best.

Here's what I'm gonna do. I'm going to hike to the top of Palgonsan tomorrow morning, as early as I can. I've been to the mountain plenty of times, but not once have I gone to hike it. I'm gonna do that, and then maybe I'll take the cable car down if it's up and running again. The last time I was at Palgongsan, to visit the Safety Theme Park (seriously), the cable car was down for maintenance, or renovations or whatever. After that, I'm going to come back into the city, shower, meet Miju and pick up my new suit fresh from its alterations, and then meet Moe and probably Paul and eat some BBQ meat and maybe get a little drunk. I'd like to go the beach this weekend, but all the good train times might be booked up. We'll see.

I think all these doldrums come from me not having to work. And I'm not just talking about working at school, although that would help. I mean that life here in Korea doesn't have that feeling of a little adventure anymore. I know how to get around. I know how to do the things I need to do, and where to do them. I (sorta) know how to talk to people. I'm not complaining, and I don't think that Korea is boring. I guess the curiosity in me is just satisfied at this point, and I don't need to work at my daily life anymore. I think I'm really gonna enjoy traveling and feeling like I'm doing something new.

The Verdict on EBS!

It's the end of the day on Friday.

The Educational Broadcasting System of Korea has shown their true colors. EBS failed to follow up on their own request for the second time in a row, and again didn't even have the decency to let my school know.

My co-teacher had to call them to find out that they had canceled their own plans of shooting this show. They were the ones who contacted us and asked us to come, and yet they didn't even have the decency to keep us informed. For the second time.

Moral of the story? EBS lacks fundamental professionalism. I wonder if they even realize they should be embarrassed. If they happen to be dumb enough to call my school about this show again, I'll personally tell them to go fuck themselves.

Anyway, I'm still going to Seoul. It's been awhile since I've been up there. I'm gonna fleece Eddie and his friends out of their money when we play poker tomorrow night, and I'm gonna eat 열탄불고기, which is the best Korean meal that no one knows about, not even Koreans.

The EBS Broadcast Fiasco

A few weeks ago, I was called into the teachers' office. The vice principal got a call from EBS, a TV station in Seoul. They were doing a show on native teachers who do morning broadcasts at their schools. They wanted my co-teacher and me to come up to Seoul to record a show on Saturday.

They also said that afterward, they would send a crew down to Daegu to film me doing one of my broadcasts.

My co-teacher and I had a little picture and write-up in a local newspaper when we first started the broadcasts, which must have been how they found me. I was surprised about the newspaper article, and surprised about the call from EBS, too. It's not like English broadcasts are a novelty among schools with native teachers.

Anyway, this call was on a Tuesday I think. I was told they would send some official documents with more details the next day. I was pretty excited about it, it seemed like a cool experience, plus I could brag that I'd been on TV. Oh, the possibilities.

The documents didn't come the next day, or the next. Nothing came, not even a phone call to cancel. The weekend came and went, and that was that. It just goes to show what sort of professionalism you can expect in Korea sometimes.

I wasn't really that upset. I had no idea what I would have to say about doing weekly morning broadcasts. Until recently, all my broadcasts were super boring anyway.

On Tuesday of this week, my co-teacher told me that EBS had called her the night before, asking us to come up to Seoul again. I wasn't really surprised that they would simply let things go completely cold, and then call us again and expect us to jump at the happy opportunity. Maybe I've been here too long.

I asked if she'd yelled at them for their shenanigans, and my co-teacher said she had, which is pretty surprising considering she's one of the sweetest people I've ever met. I agreed to go again and was told we'd get the documents and info the next day.

The next day was yesterday. Today was Thursday. Still no information, no calls, no documents. Will EBS really make an ass of themselves and leave us hanging again? We'll see tomorrow.

I'll just say that I won't be surprised if they drop the ball again.

Minor Updates!

I've added a couple little bells and whistles to this blog, mostly because I'm avoiding some work I need to finish up by tomorrow morning.

If you would kindly look to the right side of the page, you will see there is a poll. Mom and Dad, I'm pretty sure you two are the only people who read this on a semi-regular basis. Andy, you're probably in there as well.

Does anyone else read this? Maybe I'll find out. Some random visitor posted a comment on my post about the food waste. I was quite honored to know that a random stranger may occasionally pay me a visit and read this blog.

Also on the right side, I added a feed of my Twitter updates. Not that they are anything interesting, or that I even enjoy or fully understand Twitter, but I'm doing it anyway. Now you don't even have to click on my link to see what mundane thoughts or actions are occupying me.

Oh, and a couple weeks ago I added a search bar at the top of my blog. Now you can easily search this blog.

I hope everyone is as excited about these new additions as I am.

School Safety

Summer vacation was fast approaching and my school was doing a few minor renovations here and there. They moved the IT office upstairs across from my office, and they were sprucing up a couple old offices and the lower hallway with some new design touches.It was all very nice, considering my school is pretty old and could use a new look here and there.

One morning I was walking past the office renovations on the first floor towards the stairs when I noticed a pneumatic nail gun just lying unattended on the ground right in front of a first grade classroom. As much as I knew leaving a tool like this laying around in an elementary school was a bad idea, I can't say I'm surprised.

It seems to my American mind that renovation and construction might be better done when the students were actually not in the school. And if you can't avoid that, at least tell the workers not to leave deadly tools on the ground for 5 year-olds to trip over.

It also seems to my American mind that encouraging students to carry around X-acto knives and box-cutters in their pencil cases might be a bad idea too. Regardless, have any student show you what they have among the pencils and pens and Big Bang stickers and there you'll inevitably find something that is illegal to bring onto a plane.

While I'm thinking of it, students haven't seemed to get a grasp on how to properly handle scissors. I remember learning to hold and pass scissors with my hand around the blade, finger grips out so as not to accidentally cut someone if the blades open. I don't think Korea's gotten that concept yet.

There's a lot that seems obviously dangerous to my American mind over here in the land of the morning calm. And maybe I'm really over-thinking the nature of school safety here. That would be yet another distinctly American trait. After all, I've never heard of a kid getting cut by the knives they sharpen their pencils with, or falling off the roof when they have to crawl out the windows to clean up the trash. Hell, even when one middle school student was getting a little wild with her knife and I told her to relax and she made stabbing motions at me (apparently something funny here in Korea, rather than criminal over in America), I never got cut. Maybe I am being a little overly critical here. After all, despite a pneumatic nail gun lying around on the ground, how many elementary school students could actually lift it and figure out how to use it, right?