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