I think I just bought toothpaste.

Sure,  I know the word MASTICATE.  And those appear to be minty leaves on the box.  But I'm going to test it on a loose tile in my bathroom before I put it in my mouth.  

Not having some of the things that we consider basics back home has been a little bit of an adventure.  For instance,  I didn't pack sheets.  One might assume that some simulacrum of sheets would exist in one of the most modern countries in the world.


 One would be wrong.

Here's my bedding situation.


Magenta fleece bottom "sheet".
Blue stripy comforter
Yellow polyester comforter.
Golden floral print polyester comforter.

And yes those are my "pillow" cases.


I say "pillow" because although they're softish,  they're about 12" thick in the smallest dimension.


I know I sound like I'm complaining.  I'm really not.  Because I'm warm and comfortable.  (the summer may be a different situation however)  But I've been to 20 different bedding stores, and if I could have photographed the insides of them you wouldn't be able to tell the difference in selection.  But I will say that sheets as westerners know them don't exist.  I'm 95% sure of that.


I also went shopping for a washcloth and a big fluffy bath towel.  I ended up with a  2 moderately sized towels that can't be washed with anything else because they leave little chartreuse pills on everything in the washing machine.  And due to the communication barrier I ended up buying 20 lufa-esque  (also in the chartreuse colorway) hand pouches instead of a 5 pack of wash clothes.  I have since cut a hand towel in quarters to make wash clothes.   I have yet to see a wash cloth.  But I'm still looking.

Lufa-esques drying on top of 40s

I've also been looking for slippers.  I was warned about this one.  Big sizes don't really exist.  But I wandered around the Dongdaemun shoe bazar.  Miles of cheap knock offs,   and definitely nothing in a size that I could squeeze into.  Besides, anything that even resembled a slipper also resembled my bedding.

Dongdaemun shoe bazar. 

Imagine this going on for a mile or more.

While I was looking for slippers, towels and washcloths I continued my search for sheets.  I wandered around Dongdaemun for the better part of a day because just about anything cloth related was reported to be located in this area.  I found myself in the raw textile area.  I'm definitely heading back here for halloween.  I found just about any kind of fabric in large quantity.  And much to my delight I also saw three stores dedicated exclusively to zippers.  (  I love zippers )

Raw textiles.  Note the sling for carrying large batons of fabric on the back of the motorcycle.

I under packed in the warm clothes department so I also looked for an inexpensive sweater and an insulated vest.  I found both.  The vest was $12 or so, and the sweater was 6.  But if I could get my money back on the sweater I would.  It sheds worse than Stuart.  It's like having 8 cats in my dormroom.  I've have to swiffer the floor every other day since I bought this sweater.  I'm not breaking out in hives or anything.  It's just that my sweater sheds.  A LOT.  

Hairier than Stuart, and it doesn't even catch a frisbee in it's mouth.

As for dorm stylin' it.   Guess what occupies a  good amount of my kitchen cabinet space.....

This one has 60 ingredients.  Normally that's not something that you'd brag about.  But what do I know.  I haven't opened the one on the right yet.  I'm still betting that it's food and not individual sachets of laundry detergent.

That's right.   Ramen.    MMMMMMMM.   It's way better if you just add seaweed, cabbage, onions, carrots and tofu.


I've also been on the hunt for a few western staples for my breakfasts.  I'm not really into the Korean style breakfast which I can't tell apart from the Korean style lunch and supper.

What's that you're asking?








You probably know the answer.

That's right.  IT'S SQUID!
Squid is easier to get here than a decent loaf of bread.

The last known photo of Molly Z. before she was grabbed and pulled under.  If anyone knows how to get ahold of her parents I'd like to send this to them.

Once again.  I may sound like I'm not adapting.  That's far from true.  I'm just observing here.


Along the same lines.....

What here doest thou spy?

That's right.  ITS OCTOPI!


I've got to go to bed.  But I want to leave you with a couple things.

The full moon viewed Through the yellow dust from China.


That's what it's called.


I'm not a racist.


I am however an alien.

Feel free to congratulate me on this.  I've been working on this for years.

And finally, while I was on my shopping spree I found this......  

wait for it......

BOO YAH!

In another life I might have considered this to be racist or offensive.  

But NAH.   

It's just too damned funny.   

First two weeks part 2...

When I'm not at the office (9:30 till 7:00  ug....)

My first weekend I went to Mitch's place with Molly Z from Madison WI.  (If you remember,  I met her at the visa office, and she lives about 7 miles by bike or 7 stops by train away, and works about a 15 minute walk from where I live.  )  Had some beer.  Met Mitch's squeeze Ken.  She's a multilingual wonder.  Her father is some fairly well know artist,  she promised me a tour of his studio sometime, and as it turns out she used to be addicted to the original StarCraft.  So we have that to talk about.

The next day Mitch and Ken showed me around Itaewon and Insadong.  Itaewon is about as diverse an area as Seoul has.  Many custom tailors in the street asking if you'd like any custom suits made.  I decided to go with Steve Tailor.  Two custom shirts in a week for 38 bucks each plus a free burberry  scarf.  He wants me to buy a new suit and a custom peacoat.  I'm not there yet, but the shirts are quite nice,  plus my wrists aren't exposed all the time.    Very commercial and caters to all the needs of the soldiers stationed at the base nearby, and all that implies.

It implies that you can buy Korean gongs and old diving gear

Kissin' chickens

A view of the end of Itaewon's main drag

A view the other way, of Seoul tower.

Then they took me to Insadong, which is right downtown,  a few blocks from the main palace. At least that's where I thought it was.  It's a long pedestrian street with little shops of all sorts of stuff,  seems to be a bit of a tourist attraction.  But not entirely.  I got a top from a street vender that is weighted really well and spins for a long time.  I forgot to take pictures of it, but there's a crazy indoor musical instrument market there,  booth after booth of every type of musical equipment for sale.  Repair shops etc.  Then we went to a great tea house.  I had Jujube tea, Ken had some flower tea,  I forget which,  and Mitch had Mike n Ike tea.

Ken and Mitch at the tea house

Tube an knob wiring at the tea house

First two weeks part 1....

My second day here, I was required to head to the clinic to have my physical so that I could apply for my alien registration card.  What that meant was that I had to avoid food for 12 hours before I took it.  No big deal.  Yet.  After the physical in the morning, the director of the school, Jackie, took me out to lunch along with one of the other late arrivals, Paul.  We each had soup.  It was a baby chicken stuffed with sticky rice, one ju ju be, and three ginko nuts.  The soup was good but pulling apart a baby chicken with stainless chopsticks and trying to have a polite conversation at the same time is difficult.  I did my best.  But I had to keep pulling little rubbery bones from my mouth while talking.

As it turns out Paul had done some work at the Vancouver Art Gallery, where I installed "Some Assembly Required"  He is good friends with the temp installer that I stayed with for a week after installation named Chris.  Small world.  The NYC synchronicity continues.   

After lunch, Jackie takes me into a conference room and we start to go over basic thing like how each class should go, and where to find text books, etc.  We do this for several hours, and at this point I've been up since 4 in the morning (jet lag) and needless to say my energy was flagging.  This would account for my absolute confusion, stupid questions, and blank stares I was giving Jackie throughout the entire discussion.

Jackie was getting tired of this and frankly I wasn't gleaning any valuable information at this point for the reasons previously stated.  So we bagged it, and the the next day they tossed some students at me.

In my first class I had a 8 yo kid named Henry who was running around the room and refused to stay in his seat.  I set a chair in the corner and he proceded to knock a cork board that was leaning in the corner over on himself to the delight of the other students.  Then he tied his sweatshirt hood strings together in a knot around the back of the chair and started dragging it around the room like a ball and chain.  So I called a manager and had him removed from the class.  Each class has a Korean faculty who's responsible for curriculum.  She's called a manager.  When Henry came back he was much quieter.  I've since figured out that in fact he is quite a bit better at english than the rest of the class and gets bored in class easily.  I've got two classes that are hard to handle.  The first is that class.  7 kids about 8 years old.

The other is a gang of 6  ten yo boys.  The rest of my classes are advanced english speakers of varying ages, which require mostly reading books and discussing them along with vocabulary from the books.  I'll be doing 4 per month plus writing some of the quizzes and comprehension questions for the chapters.   I only teach from 3 til 7 every day.  In the mornings I have no kinder kids like I was told on the phone, so I can do prep work, and special projects.  I've already made worksheets for a grade one science book,  I'm assuming that there will be more of these in the pipeline.  

Enough of the boring school stuff.  Lets see what I've been doing in my spare time.  

Settling in.

I was lucky enough to have a day off when I got here.  Just barely enough to sleep in, unpack and figure out where to get groceries..

Here's the apt...

the bathroom....

Because there's no shower stall,  the toilet paper gets its own little stainless spray shield.

The bike made it almost completely unscathed.  Only cosmetic damage.

LCI house.  Kangnam.  (my apt building)

It's good to have comfort food readily accessible.  

My new favorite hangout.  It's a Green Day themed bar.  But they have Leffe Blonde and Brune for $5! and it's only a half a block from my apt.  

"Bee bim bippity bop".   That's what I call it.  Jonathan can correct me here.  Fried egg on rice and veggies.

I like that sidewalks are also parking lots.  

You'll notice my school just behind the Harley boutique.

Big church near my school

I not sure whether Campbells soupe and Halls lozenges count as fancy food or not.  But what do I know.

Space is at a premium, just like you'd expect it to be.  No SUVs to be parked in this garage.

A good prank would be to put this box truck into the back of the minivan when nobody's looking.

WWJK?  who would jebus kick?

Pierce Brosnan,  the David Hasselhoff of S. Korea.  And I approve.

If that don't get you to the gym,  Nothing will.

Into the Subway.

I case of a chemical attack.... maybe 100 people on each subway platform will survive.  At least that's something.  

  

Apparently jumping in front of the subway trains was as popular in Korea as school shootings are in the U.S.   so they had to put glass walls between the passengers and the tracks.  

Full train...

Empty train.

I've seen several of these old guys wearing their USS ENTERPRISE COMMANDING OFFICER hats.  

I think they hand them out when you hit a certain age.

Subway bathroom soap.