Eating Korean

Tell anyone you're planning on moving to Korea and kimchi is bound to come up. Probably the most well-known food of the country, and possibly one of its most distinguishing icons after Ban Ki-moon and the DMZ, the pickled cabbage dish is served in almost every eating establishment I've visited.

It's a daunting bit of food. Chili paste and pickled, sometimes fermented cabbage don't necessarily emit a "come hither" aroma for most Western noses. I was cowardly in the States, and the jar my father solicited from an elderly Korean lady went uneaten until mom got fed up with the smell leaking through the lid and threw it out. More than once I took the jar out, peered inside, swished the contents, prodded them with a fork, but never got any further.

Here on the peninsula, my courage was bolstered. At the orientation meals, I dutifully chowed down on any and every "ban-chan" (the many small side-dishes presented at most meals) in sight, most of them involving some combination of cabbage, chili paste, sprouts, radish, spinach, something that seemed like long stems of broccoli without the frilly bits, and all manner of indeterminate edibles. It was hit-or-miss, with the occasional big win; cold sauteed spinach with just a little vinegar and spice to it, or shaved radish slivers glazed, almost candied in a salty, sweet coating.

But I never anticipated my feelings for kimchi would grow as they have. My first good experience with it was at a sam-gyap-sal restaurant, where it's laid strategically on a tilted griddle, downhill from sizzling pork slices so that it absorbs the trickling grease as the cabbage becomes tender and sweet and the chili paste mellows. Awakened to its potential, my respect for the nation's staple and my willingness to endure it cold grew. I'll often add it to a bowl of soup or combine it with a chopstick full of some rice dish with usually favorable results.

Kimchi aside, the cuisine here is reliably spellbinding, and I find myself spending days devoting myself to a single dish. One particularly unhealthy span included three suppers of sam-gyap-sal in as many nights. Another week was dedicated to sundubu (lit: "soft tofu"), a spicy tofu and clam soup which I tried at three different restaurants and successfully made at home.

Other remarkable meals include:

Dduk mandu guk: a chicken broth soup with dduk (rice compressed into little dumplings) and mandu (dumplings stuffed with pork, vegetables or kimchi and seasoned with that distinctive spice I associate with Thai pot stickers- ginger?). Served piping hot in a huge bowl for a little under four dollars.

Bibimbap: a rice and vegetable dish served with a fried egg on top. The yolk, when broken and mixed with the ingredients, gives the rice a cohesiveness and helps the flavor of the sesame oil linger on the tongue.

Omer rice: fried rice with vegetables and a fried egg, served with sugary ketchup.

Street toast: many food vendors will ladle a spoonful of whipped egg and slivered cabbage, onion and carrot onto a liberally buttered griddle, add Spam and American cheese on request, and spatula the fried result into a toast sandwich that I've never paid more than a dollar for. Once, the vendor added ketchup and sugar from a large shaker. Stunning.

Subway waffles: a food stand in the subway station on the way to work sells waffles already made, reheated in the iron, then folded in half with buttercream and apple syrup in the middle, for eighty cents. One of these in the morning usually ensures that I'll have a good day at work.

I'm sure I haven't scratched the surface of the heartbreakingly good meals this country will offer me during my employment. It is an exciting chapter.

THE SUNDUBU ESCAPADE:

Ingredients: small clams, green onion, enoki mushrooms, uncurdled tofu, chili powder, an egg, garlic, salt, sesame oil, soy sauce, soybean oil

Enoki mushrooms clump together at the base. They get tender in the broth, but stay a little resistant, and give a little crunch to the soup

The uncurdled tofu- half of this 400 gram tube worked for one serving for me.

The packet of clams- rinsed and soaked before going in, full-shell. They give the broth a good, oily foundation.

Moving Forward, Moving On

Things are getting to be normal. I took a shower and had two hot dogs for dinner. Work was fine, a student gave me soap as a belated Chuseok present. Chuseok is Korean thanksgiving; it was last weekend. The developments are getting less and less exciting as I settle more and more into life:

-Someone put a sign up in my apartment building foyer, "Please close the door gently," which may be directed at me.

-I drew portraits of Alton Brown, Paula Deen, Anthony Bourdain and Cat Cora for my kitchen. I didn't draw Cat Cora's face because she's too pretty.

-I got an electric bill for about $20.00. I don't think my fridge is very efficient.

-I get a paycheck tomorrow. I was going to buy a Lonely Planet guide to the TransSiberian railroad, but I think I'll wing it and buy a plant instead.

-I got a library card at the National Assembly library. I read an article in Time about what bad shape Detroit is in and how fair-trade coffee doesn't pay growers enough, and got depressed and went home and ate ice cream.

This past weekend (Chuseok, remember?) I went to a fancy buffet dinner with some of the teachers, and went hiking on Mt. Bukhansan. At the buffet, a Korean grandpa singled me out (only white guy there) to tell about his son and granddaughter who lived in Madison. He introduced me to them, and I told the son my mother was from Oostburg, and he knew where it was. The granddaughter bowed and said hello very quietly. On the mountain the next day, I walked past a white guy in a UW shirt and said "badgers!" and we high-fived.

Pictures:

The Crew from R: Zoe, her husband Mark, their friend Kate

Foliage

A really big caterpillar I named "Squirmsley"

The black dots are mountain climbers

It's lonely at the top

Seoul (taken by Lou from Detroit who I traded pictures with)

Yours truly, by Lou

I think I'm going to go to an English book exchange this Sunday in Itaewon, the "foreigner neighborhood" where the U.S. army base is located.

Settling

I get groceries at a store three minutes from my house. The apples have been on sale. Zucchini is cheap, so are cherry tomatoes. Oranges from Chile. There are misty coolers full of leafy greens, long, slender radishes, things I don't recognize. I have to buy garlic either 20 bulbs at a time in a mesh orange sleeve, or peeled in a small tub of what looks like soy sauce. Tuna comes tinned with vegetables, and sharing the space turns it into a little tasty stew. Cardboard briefcases of Spam line the entry, gifts bosses give employees (hopefully) for Chusok. An employee mills around the store broadcasting the sale items on the P.A. through a Britney Spears headset microphone.

Down the road is a Crown bakery, a chain, I'm sure, where baguettes are cheap and good. Bread is inexpensive, and here is one of the few places where I've seen wheat. Bleached white flour goods abound.

Across from my apartment building is a mini-mart owned by a husband and wife whose English is endearing and guilt-inflicting. She referred me to a tiny bottle of something sugary and menthol flavored when I asked for antacids, which worked well. I buy drinking water in six-liter packs, and it pleases me to have them to patronize.

Gangnam is one of the more affluent commercial neighborhoods in Seoul. Twenty independent and chain convenience stores compete for a quarter of a square mile of business, and all seem to succeed. I can jump from the stoop of one coffee shop to the next and make it for blocks without having to touch sidewalk. Inexpensive sam gyap sal is everywhere, as are seafood restaurants with big, bubbling aquariums of clams and fish. Construction is omnipresent, crews working long into the night setting up new telecom outlets, clothing stores, offices. If anyone knows about the recession, they aren't letting on.

Kyobo tower, at the corner, reaches almost double the height of the surrounding buildings, its red brick facade a warm answer to the grimy white around it. In the lobby, thermal cameras hooked up to LCDs try to weed out the infirm as H1N1 infections climb: above-normal temperatures elicit a long, loud beep. This can be achieved by having a fever, or by vigorously rubbing your shirt cloth together. The displays read from cold to hot backward through the color spectrum (think Roy G. Biv, reversed). My face is a bright yellow-green. In the basement is a large bookstore with a decent English section, and an entire small shelf dedicated to Lonely Planet guides.

Home life is far from luxury but neither is it spartan. The shower is excellent and the mirror next to the head adds ten minutes of shampoo-mohawk modeling time to my washup. I shave and cut my hair in this mirror. The water heater is a tankless with a digital thermostat which I forget to turn off. The toilet seat is a plastic cushion. The washing machine spits suds out onto the tile floor, into the central drain it shares with the shower. To dry, articles are put on hangers on a knotted nylon rope stretched, sloping down across the bedroom.

In the kitchen, a mini fridge holds the last of a pint of cherry tomatoes, a tub of spicy bean paste, soy sauce, six brown eggs, butter, water, and milk. The cupboards hold a supply gradually reaching comprehensiveness: noodles, flour, oil, sugar, salt, baking powder, coffee, a packet of anchovy sauce mix powder and an onion. I have a gas double-burner range with a valve on the wall which I forget to turn off, and there is a VHS cassette-sized baking drawer I haven't tested yet. The last resident left a toaster which smells like melting plastic when turned on. I'm very pleased with my grocery-store knife and cutting board, but I need more prep space. If I had a workshop I'd build a small table to fit the bill, but I don't, so I'll have to improvise something.

The window screens are holy and don't fit right which lets the mosquitoes in which keeps me up at night. Otherwise, I watch TV online, eat breakfast, dinner and snacks, Skype and read sitting up in bed. The breeze flows through and it's usually cool enough. I'm happy here.

Hui-sik

Korean custom dictates that employers take their staff out for food and drink every so often- it's called "hui-sik" (pronounced wheh-shick), and it may make this the best job I've ever had.

After school last Thursday, the teachers and administrators walked down the road to a restaurant for sam-gyap-sal and bulgogi and beer and soju (sweet, sake-like Korean liquor). Principal Susie was there, and everybody got along like kings. We poured drinks for each other, another custom, and cheered, "kon-bae!," sitting on the floor around sizzling platters of beef and pork (and garlic and onions, and rice, and dish after dish of different kimchis). Almost everybody got a little tight. We ended up playing Korean drinking games too nonsensical to elaborate on, but which culminate in two "losers," one of either sex, having to take a "love-shot," a glass of soju drunk with arms hooked alá a newlywed couple's champaign toast.

After an hour or two, when all the food was gone, we filed out and down the road to a norebang, a private karaoke room where everybody, Principal Susie included, did a song or two. The Koreans stuck with the ubiquitos uber-pop songs played repeatedly in every club, restaurant, and store in the country. Kim and Jane belted "Lady Marmalade," Inwoo and Robert gave a powerful rendition of Oasis's "Don't Look Back in Anger," and I took the pleasure of Rickrolling my co-workers (Mackie was not on the menu).

It was a pretty early night, and everyone got home before twelve. A great success in team-building and coworker-bonding, and I won Inwoo's and my gentlemen's bet that I could eat more than him. As usual, I had to carry the group through the home stretch, polishing off two tables' leftover sam-gyap-sal.

I almost feel bad for making them pay me for this.

Teachers' Table

Admins' Table

Pork, Kimchi, Garlic

Grilling

Making Friends

Botched Timer-Shot (not pictured: Becky, to L)

Norebang

Belting

YBM Gaepo IA Hui-sik, September 2009

Learning the Youngsters and Sometimes Yelling

Teaching, I am starting to think, is not easy or difficult; students are.

M/W/F

1

Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays I start my seven-period day with a class of about ten second-graders. We just finished "The Day Jimmy's Boa Ate the Wash" and are elbows-deep in "How I Spent my Summer Vacation." We discuss vocabulary and making complete sentences. Ricky's bottom shares a similar magnetic charge with his chair and as a result spends most of the 40 minute class running around the room. He tripped and banged his knee the other day, and the five minutes he spent crying quietly at his desk were the most productive the class has ever had.

2

Second period is a class of seven third-graders. Jack and Ben can work well if supervised closely. Hannah knows all the answers. One student refuses to work, disrupts class with fart noises, and cries when reprimanded. This is the slowest period of the day. We work on sentences and narrative style.

3

Third period is another ten-large group of second-graders. I discovered yesterday that they can be bribed with stickers to follow four rules: 1) Stay seated, 2) Don't interrupt, 3) Wait to be called on before speaking, and 4) Don't yell. An entire period of peace cost me only 400 stickers.

4-5

At this point, the first- and second-graders go home and the third-, fourth- and fifth-graders arrive. Fourth and fifth period I have three fourth-grade girls who move swiftly through the reading and writing lesson plans for the back-to-back classes. We often have about 30 minutes to play Scrabble.

6-7

Sixth and seventh period I have about seven third-graders. One of them is bright enough to complete all of the class work in his head as he reads the questions. On a good day, he buries himself in a Lemony Snicket book. Otherwise, he will write his answers backward on the board when called on, and generally be as disruptive as he can. He may need to be placed up. We work on grammar.

T/TH

1

Tuesdays and Thursdays I start with a four-student class of excelled second-graders. They barely speak even if you do call on them, and there are time and resources enough for them all to have as much attention as they could possibly need. We work on sentences and vocab.

2-3

Then, two periods with a class of nine first graders, most of whom are productive if chatty. One is disruptive and will only work when constantly and repetitively prompted, and even then only reluctantly. This is the slowest part of the day. More sentences, vocab.

4-5

Fourth and fifth period I have seven fifth-graders who are extremely bright and eager. The text is generally insightful and pragmatic, but still too remedial for them, and we frequently go off-book. I offer them extra credit for tasks I think will build useful skills. Today, Jinny got 15 "stamps" for finding a reference book and using it to explain how to write "1978" in roman numerals. Between periods, Alex inspects the wiring in the fire alarm and Anders asks geography questions. The other day, Sally played Vivaldi on a portable Mp3 player.

6

Sixth period I have five remedial fourth-graders. They work, albeit reluctantly, and we generally have a good time crawling through the syllabus. Tuesdays are writing, but Thursdays are debate & discussion, which we all respond to more enthusiastically.

7

Final period I have excelled third-graders. Tuesdays we work on writing, but Thursdays are discussion. Last time, we tallied what kinds of school supplies we had in pairs, groups of three, and as a class in order to understand the benefits of different sizes of teams. We then did the same activity using countries we'd visited instead of school supplies, and between the class had over 20.

Pre-established semester-long lesson plans take most of the work out of the job. The only preparations I make before class begins at 2:15 p.m. are to run off copies of any worksheets or tests for the day and grade everything I collect. I might spend the remainder of my 2-hour prep time eating delivery with other teachers, drinking instant coffee or reading Huck Finn from the YBM library.

The troublesome students stick with me. I'm not sure yet how to address the administration on moving students to higher placement levels, or to what degree I should rely on them for discipline. By the next month, I hope to understand the system well enough to take appropriate steps. I worry that there won't be any.

For now, I'm happy that I have at least one double-period of great students each day of the week, and excited that I'm slowly honing my less-focused classes.

Timeline

Five years ago today I was in a dorm room in Montana, pining for a long-distance girlfriend and clueless about the direction of my life. I'd put very close to absolutely no effort into school and had a poor relationship with my family. After four months, I packed my belongings and a Dutch rabbit named Oscar and fled back to Illinois in my cousin's Chevy Lumina.

Four years ago today I was living with my parents and attending community college, arguing with a long-distance girlfriend and no wiser as to my future. I worked at a hotel and played a lot of video games. On a whim after the new year, I'd move to Florida to work and live on a state park.

Three years ago today I was back with my parents, moping over a drawn-out break up, back at community college, wondering about another try at a university. The Florida job had deteriorated from web-surfing and infrequent menial tasks to mindless data entry sandwiched between ruthless redneck office gossip. I would quit in August, too demoralized to fight for my final paycheck.

Two years ago today I was living in a cookie-cutter townhouse on an Illinois university campus with Mike and Steve, bowlers with mild attitudes. I was in my second semester of an English degree, working at Subway and the school paper. Beyond graduating, I had no goals.

One year ago today I was living in Santiago with a sweet Chilean family, learning Spanish and eating too much. I was within sight of my bachelor's, making friends with people from around the country and the world and drinking lots of cheap beer. In a month I'd have seen Argentina and Machu Picchu in Peru. By the end of the year I'd see the Straits of Magellan in Patagonia.

Tonight, I'm sitting up in bed listening to Korean motorists putter down the street. There's 11,000 won in my wallet ($8.87) and I'm still uncertain if my ATM card works here. In twelve hours I'll go to a school to teach children how to read, write, speak and understand English with no more than a few classes on 17th century lit and a ramshackle lesson plan. When it's bad it's tiresome, and when it's good it's indescribable.

A year from today I'll be gone. I've got a good mind to ride the trans-Siberian railway and hitchhike West through Europe. After that, if the money isn't gone, maybe a motorcycle tour of the continental 48. Nothing's set in stone.

In 2006, I was riding in a golf cart with a silicon-valley ground-floor millionaire. We were cleaning up after a garden party at his Key Largo home.

"If you could do anything, what would you do? What do you want to be?" he asked.

"Indiana Jones," I said. I wonder what he would have said if I'd thought to ask him the same question.

Aquarium Day

Here's a link to a facebook photo album of my day at the aquarium with new friend Ami:

http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=309176&id=616030159&l=d0c68701d1

Virtual Tours

The Korea International School in Gaepo-dong

YBM IA reception

Hallowed halls ("no running")

Teachers' room

The YBM English library (yes they have Gary Paulson)

A modest home

The pastoral heritage of Seoul

Shower/toilet/laundry

Kitchen

Rex, grilling sam gyup sal

Jenny and Inwoo

Yours truly

Jane and I move in on the pork

Orientations in Seoul

Belated orientation photos follow. Behold them! Hosannas!

(Note: these photos, when clicked, can be enlarged for detail.)

The Yellow Sea through new eyes

Amanda and Michelle (from L), enjoying green tea cookies

Gyeongbokgung Palace main gate

The throne room

Sujeongjeon, the scholars' room, where a moveable-type printing press predating Gutenberg's was invented

Making new friends, winning dumpling contests (the usual)

"Acting the fool"

Cont.

Seoul Tower from Korea House

Seoul Tower from Seoul Tower base

Looking homeward from the top of Seoul Tower

"Getting the Ball Rolling"

YBM International Academy in Gaepo occupies the third floor of a five story building with trees on two sides and a dusty football pitch along the road leading to the front door. In her office, Principal Susie suggested that I might do my best to promote YBM: enrollment is down, and parents talk when their children return home excited about their education. In the teachers' room, Christine introduced me as "Benteacher" to the rest of the staff, whose reception was warm. Inwoo from San Diego sits at the desk across from me and likes to discuss Michael Jordan. Verity from Canada, on my right, is the head teacher with some ten years of seniority, who greeted me with a list of tips on classroom discipline.

I observed Becky, Jane and Rex teach classes of two to six students. At the end of the session, they tell me, the students leave in favor of other English-study avenues and because of "intensives," their public school exams. School was out of session last week after a student contracted H1N1, which I suspect may also have affected the roster.

Exact responsibilities and procedures remain only vaguely clear yet, but orientation continues through the week.

After school Kim, Jenny, Jane, Inwoo and Rex invited me out to dinner at one of the many Korean restaurants where your food is cooked on a grill in the center of the table. The food was phenomenal to the point of prohibiting conversation. The group all live in YBM housing within walking distance of my hotel, and Jenny's is the home I'll be occupying when she returns to Houston for the first time in four years next week. "There's a new president now," I told her, "and Conan does the Tonight Show."

Quarantine Correspondence: The Swine Flu Follies

Korea is mystifying. Every street bustles like Michigan Avenue. The place goes on forever. Apartments outnumber and tower above the high-rises, which themselves are omnipresent. There are, at last count, four billion subway lines, with more added every day. Everyone is required to use at least one cell phone at all times. No streets are named. Cabbies watch TVs planted next to GPS screens on the dash. Red lights are ignored at best. Sidewalks are informal motorcycle lanes. And everything, everything, is neon.

I have a day to myself with which to take it all in. I'm sitting on the stoop of a the Coffee Bean (the one across the street from the other the Coffee Bean) piggybacking a wireless signal and eliciting looks from passers-by ranging from mild curiosity to apparent distaste.

It'd make more sense to start a few days back:

THURSDAY MORNING I bid my parents a "later dudes" and checked into Korea Air KE038. I sat in the nosebleeds next to a Bona-Fide Korean coming from Columbia, MO who helped me perform the necessary preparations on my bimbibap, in-flight meal one of two. Fourteen hours, two chapters of Bruce Chatwin's biography and five movies later I debarked on

FRIDAY AFTERNOON, took the Gangnam COEX bus into the heart of Seoul to meet Brian, the representative from the Korean school and publishing company YBM, my employers. Brian checked me in to a hotel for a four-day "quarantine," long enough, presumably, for any swine flu symptoms to surface before placing me in proximity to students.

SATURDAY MORNING, after a fruitlessly questioning the sweet old couple at the front desk, I hailed a cab and made my only instructional offering; the name of the building where I'd meet for orientation, "Kyobo tower, Gangnam." For the meager sum of four thousand won, he took me one city block down the street, where I met Amanda Fuji, one of YBM's other teachers solicited by CIEE (the U.S. company that hired us for YBM). With her cell phone we reached Michelle Kim, CIEE's in-country liason, and her assistant Claire, in the coffee shop inside. After a short history lesson on Korea and a sandwich, we set off down the subway entrance to cut our teeth on public transport. On CIEE's dollar, Amanda and I were given T-Money cards, refillable proximity-passes usable on subways, busses, taxis and water-taxis. For lunch we were served about twenty small courses ranging from a mildly sweet, thick soup to noodles to salads to fish to beef, with cool barley tea to drink. I carried the team, but we still couldn't finish everything. On full stomachs, we practiced deciphering Hangul, the Korean alphabet.

After lunch we took a water taxi up the Han river to the national assembly where we paid our respects to the recently departed former president Kim Dae-jung. Then a regular taxi up to the university district north of the river to visit Ewha Women's University, perhaps the most attractive campus I've ever seen. Following that, dinner at a small college-food joint: dduk bokki (chewy rice cakes under a puddle of hot sauce and melted cheese) with assorted finger sandwiches on toasted white bread. For about eighty cents US, the subway got me to Gangnam station, a fourteen second walk from my hotel. I showered and crashed.

SUNDAY MORNING I was up at six, my Western circadian rhythm lagging behind me. I killed a few hours and headed down to the subway at eight to meet Amanda. We train'd up across the river to the Kyobo Tower in Gangbook, met Michelle, grabbed coffees and teas and marched down the road, past the US embassy (the first I've ever even seen in my travels to 10+ countries), down to Gyeongbook Palace for an hour of sightseeing. Then a lunch, like Saturday's, about half again more than I could manage to eat.

After lunch we rushed to see NANTA!, a Blue Man Group-esque performance which bills itself as "a combination of Jackie Chan, Iron Chef and the Marx Brothers" and delivers on the promise. Then Korea House, a replica ancient Korean neighborhood, where you can paint fans and make traditional Korean paper, and after that a trip to Seoul Tower, an observatory on a hill. At the topmost viewing deck, one can see the outermost edges of the mega city, offering a reaffirming sense of place among the metropolitan rush below.

For dinner, a Korean BBQ expertly tended to by Michelle and Claire, and glasses of Soju which I mistakenly assumed were to be drunk as a shot. Michelle's baby boy, who joined us at Korea House, had all but slipped into a coma long past his bedtime, so Claire, Amanda and I set off to tie one on before heading home. One beer later we filed down into the Subway and I, dogs barking, got back to the hotel at around 1:00 a.m. I showered off the day's grime and collapsed, nudged to sleep by a stomach full of beef and drinks and two days' worth of Seoul.

Today, MONDAY AFTERNOON, is my fourth and final day of quarantine. Unaided by Michelle's street smarts, un-tethered by Amanda's cell phone, and completely incapable of communication beyond "hello," "thank you," and "may I please have some water," I set off to tackle Seoul by myself. Having achieved the first phase of my plan, code-named "find a wireless connection and email mom and dad," I have no choice but to summon the cojones to embark on phase two, "buy some pants."

Work tomorrow. Inshallah.

Fortnight in Shining Armor

My passport has a work visa in it, my sock drawer has a flight itinerary in it. My bag has a Frommer's guide in it, my computer has the "Oldboy" DVD in it. My TV has Korean drama on it, my brain has Fred Jones's "Tools for Teaching" running through it. Preparations continue.

"When I step up in the place, yo I step correct."

-Busta Rhymes

Annyeong Wednesday

Danny never called.  

Instead, Hannah Nam, another HR coordinator, put me in touch with Susie, the principal of YBM "Pine" division's Gaepo International Academy.  After a static-y cell phone conversation during which I had to say, "I'm sorry?" a few dozen times, particularly when she asked how tall I was, we hung up on somewhat uncertain terms.  The connection had dilapidated at the end, and I was so nervous I didn't realize until after it was over that I had no idea what she'd said.  The only words I could remember were, "It's very late there?" and, "hour."

I convinced myself that she had meant, "I'll call back in an hour," which, of course, she hadn't, and she didn't.

So I may never find out exactly what Principal Susie said at the end of our interview.  But when I tactfully emailed Hannah to try to feel out the situation, she responded with an official job offer and a multi-million won salary.  I accepted.

I'll need another pair of slacks.

Oatmeal Graduation

"Having A Diploma" means you need to get a job. It is the latest thing for the young people to do, growing in popularity all the time.

I'm sitting on the couch eating store-brand quick oats with raisins and cinnamon (and a splash of half and half, I'm no savage), and in a few days I'll know for certain if I have a job or not.

The Council for International Educational Exchange (CIEE) says I'm their man: they want me to go to Seoul, South Korea to teach the English language. Before I can start, though, the man-with-his-finger-on-the-button has to give his okay. He wants to talk to me first. He's going to call, they tell me, in the next three days.

The man is Daniel "Danny" Kim, HR manager for YBM Education Korea. The guy at CIEE tells me his phone interviews can be awkward. The Korea guidebooks say nationals like to ask pointed, personal questions upon introduction (marital status, religious views, boxers/briefs). And I am nervous.

If it goes well, I'll get a visa and a plane ticket. If it goes poorly, I'll valet-park cars.

I'm just a humble man, eating store-brand quick oats, trying to live life right.