Quarterly update

I have now lived here for 9 months, so it is time for another quarterly update.

First of all here's my job situation. Since I mentioned about a month ago the lack of funding their position flip-flopped a couple times, but now it is back to saying that they cannot give me another contract. It is all bullshit beauracracy. They say they have enough money to hire me for 4 months (to finish the year) but not for a full 12 month contract. But they can only write up a 12 month contract. I suggest they give me a normal contract with the agreement that I will quit at the beginning of 2010, but it is no dice.

One option now is to resign early here to get a good job that starts at the beginning of Sept. but if I do that I will be giving up a lot of vacation time and a last month which is more than double salary (due to a bonus and free plane ticket). So things are still a little up in the air for what I shall do come October, but I'll at least be visiting America, and maybe staying there although I don't have any prospects lined up yet, and the economy may still suck for over educated under experienced folk like myself. By all means drop me a line if you hear of an opportunity that might interest me.

Language skills. They are coming along smoothly. My book vocabulary is growing at a slower rate these days, probably still between 1500-2000 words, but my recall speed of these words is increasing, as is my ability to more quickly select (or identify when listening) different sentence structures, plus my accent is improving - I think my tongue can finally distinguish between the j and jj sounds. The main thing is confidence. The more of that I have, the more I will let myself practice, and thus I'll just improve at a faster rate. The best thing to give me lots of confidence is to have in the group other Americans who have much worse (or zero) Korean ability (and none who are much better). This is another reason it was nice to have Jarod visit earlier this week.

Job satisfaction. Really, my opinion hasn't much changed in this realm. Some of the kids are getting restless because the weather is now hot and humid and its been a long time since their last vacation. This week is exam week, but there are three weeks of school yet to come before a 5 week summer vacation. Then I just have three more weeks in September before my contract expires.

A visitor!

I knew it would be a rare circumstance that would give someone the chance to come halfway around the world to visit my little town in Korea, but it finally happened last week. For readers who don't know Jarod Alper, he has been a friend of mine for almost 20 years now going back to the days we grew up about 1 mile apart in rural Long Valley. By some coincidence he also got his math PhD last year (like me, transitioning from a non-math bachelors degree), not a bad output for a highschool class of less than 300. Unlike me, he stayed in academia, and the details of his government funded post-doc afforded him the opportunity to take June off and travel Asia. Here's what we got up to in the korea portion of that trip:

be forewarned, I am bored at work because they didn't schedule me to proctor exams today, but won't let me leave yet either. So this may have too many details.

Jarod was set to arrive Friday night at Seoul's airport, so I gave him some subway instructions and arranged to meet up with some friends at Hongdae, a happening nightlife area of Seoul. The timing worked out perfectly, as I was able to collect J and bring him to meet Hightower, who had come up from Daegu for the weekend, along with frisbee Seoulites Jacob and Jeff, who were all sitting at a restaurant bbq table that was just sizzling with pork.

After eating, and securing a room for the night, we hit up the town. First stop was a cool pub styled like a European castle. The architecture was almost over the top, but they made up for it with some delicious beer. It was already late, so Jacob left at this point, but those that remained decided to check out a more dance oriented club. Now, there is some element of prejudice against foreigners in the Korean culture, but for every negative experience I seem to be more than paid back in benefits. The club we went to was a pretty decent place: nice layout, $8 cover (which I didn't have to pay) came with a free drink (which I got anyway), Ok music that was not blasted so loud you couldn't have a conversation. Anyway, there was an energetic Korean guy there who seemed to like us just because we speak English, so he was always introducing us and inviting girls to dance with us. We partied the rest of the night there, then stumbled back into the daylight. Jeff fell asleep at the table drinking his 'hangover soup', I realized its been over 24 hours since I've slept as well.

The next day it was pouring with rain. Jarod, Sean, and I decided to check out the "East Gate" that is supposedly surrounded by huge and varied markets. I wasn't so impressed, but the whole area is so sprawling you really need an agenda and some local knowledge I guess. We ate some stone bowl bibimbap, then searched for shirts with hilariously bad English to little avail.

The rain had stopped by evening so we were ready for another night on the town. Our first stop was Gangnam, a supposedly more upscale area. We had another great meal, then, walking around with no particular plan, saw a place that just had tons of gorgeous women walking in and out of it, so we had to see what it was like inside. It was a traditional style Korean watering hole. A place where small to medium groups have private tables to get their drinking on. We ordered some dongdong-ju, a traditional cloudy rice drink with a reputation for hangovers. It is obligatory to order a side dish, so I ordered the only one that I didn't know what it was (menu was Korean only). Turned out to be a kind of gelatonous acorn paste that is one of the hardest things ever to eat by chopstick. But the sauce was peanutty and spicy so the taste, coupled with the thrill of successfully getting a piece into your mouth, made it a good dish.

After leaving that place, a young Korean guy started talking to us on the streets. He said he was just killing time until the subway started again in the early morning because he didn't want to pay for a taxi back home. We went to a German style brew-pub that he knew of in the neighborhood because anytime you can drink non-Korean beer you've got to jump at the chance. One funny piece of conversation there was when we asked him, "What's the best university in America?" "Probably UCLA." Alright! "So, what's the 2nd best?" "I don't know, maybe Carnegie Mellon." He was making a good first impression on me. Actually he was pretty annoying, and evidently just trying to leach some drinks and taxi rides off us without really having his professed knowledge of good places to go. So back in Hongdae we ditched him at a club and moved on. We partied the rest of the night away in similar fashion to the day before. My goal for the night was to try to flirt with Korean girls in their language. One girl I asked, "What's your name?" in Korean, she replied "I don't speak English." Another was fussing with her hair in the mirror. I said, "Don't worry, you look lovely." she looked at me and said, "You look like Jesus." In guess this was an improvment. Anyway, we eventually crawled home in the early morning daylight again.

On Sunday HTower left to meet his cousin, so Jarod and I had a half day left in Seoul before catching the bus back to my town. We decided to do something cultural and take a tour of one of the old Joseon dynasty palaces. In what was a remarkable coincidence Jarod saw someone he knew in a subway station. Not just someone he knew but, "If I had to name my top three mathematical rivals this guys name would come up. We're working on exactly the same problem with exactly opposite points of view on the correct way to tackle it." But in social terms they were friendly. This guy, and his friend, were also going to view a palace (although a different one) so we joined forces. The palace itself was pretty cool, but far from awe inspiring. In fact, the "secret garden," a place hyped as being in perfect harmony with nature, was quite disappointing. The highlight of the tour was the guide. She had a dry wit that had a way of maximizing her lack of native speaking ability, it really came to the fore when she had to tell off a classless clown in the group. I practiced my Korean on her a little bit. First she made fun of my country accent (because I've been learning Korean from Southern rednecks), at the end when I thanked her, and told her it was an interesting tour, her response was to correct the 'politeness level' of my verb conjugation. But don't get the wrong idea, this was done in a charming, not caustic manner.

On Monday, Jarod got to sleep till noon waiting out the torrential rain while I taught my freshmen girls. The rain had stopped by the time school was out, so it was a good time to introduce some of my Korean friends. Jeongmi and Jinseong went out to sushi dinner with us. It is really funny how fast Koreans make judgements. After an hour Jeongmi said to Jarod, "You are very pure." Jarod said, "What about Colin, is he pure too?" "We thought so at first ..."

After dinner we visited Jeongmi's friends, married couple with a cute toddler. The whole night had a lot of laughs, but maybe the funniest sequence centered around their new cell phone with video chat capabilities. Our host decided to call his niece, who is one of my students. He points the camera at me, and she and her friend gasp in surprise. Then I point the camera at Jarod and its total pandemonium on the other end. After the short call we let him know it was the first time we had seen this technology. The guy, who has barely any English, bursts out laughing, "Country boys!!" The final stop is my apartment where Sooyeon and Jaysik join us for a little more drinking and conversation before we call it a night.

Again I get up to teach while Jarod sleeps in on Tuesday, but he comes to have lunch at the girl's high school cafeteria, and helps guest lecture my last class on the day. Unfortunately of all my classes, he came to the one with the least enthusiasm and English ability. Jarod said some of the students he tried to talk would just hide their faces. Oh well, he had a more entertaining time introducing himself to a 3rd grade class, and was probably complimented on his good looks more in those two hours than in the rest of the year combined. Tuesdays are my shortest day, I am free after 2:00. We borrowed a racquet and played some tennis. It was a lot of fun, but really tiring in the 85F high humidity. I had never gone to a bar in Hadong without a Korean in the group before, but that is what we did after dinner. It was pretty late for a Tuesday, and the place we went only had one other occupied table

Weds the final exams started at the high school. I only had to proctor some tests in the morning, and was free by lunch time. Afterwards we played tennis again, then only had time for a quick meal before packing Jarod off on bus to Busan so he could catch his flight early the next morning.

We packed about as much as possible into his short time here. The next day, after another half-day of exams, the rest of the teachers and I went for a mountain hike in the afternoon. In need of catching up I slept almost 12 hours that night (from 8 to 8 with just a short break in the middle watching some Wimbledon).