Cowboy Beblog

Okay so I finished my first full week of school and that was not too bad. I apparently had a few complaints from parents of some of the students. The parents here are uber involved in finding out about the studies of the kids and they push the kids to their extreme limits and they even help them with their homework. Nonetheless, the complaints were basically about me not knowing how to teach. I talked with my director and she gave me some tips and my classes improved. No big deal.
To answer many people's questions the knowing of any Korean is completely unnecessary for teaching here. Instead it is necessary for life here. The schools that us westerner teachers are at only want native English speakers because they want the students to be in extreme circumstances in the class so that they can learn English better. In my high school Spanish classes our teachers would only speak in Spanish and they would not answer you unless you talked in Spanish as well. It was just an extreme teaching tactic. That is what this is...I guess. There's is more extreme only due to it being a complete road block in advancing if they cannot understand the teacher. Oh well. There is at least one high point to my having started teaching now and that is that we started our summer courses just last week for the next few weeks and that means a lot more classes. In other words when the summer classes are over I will be very used to the flow of school and there will be fewer classes, thus making life a little easier for me to deal with.
So Paul and I were going to go on this hiking excursion this weekend...but that did not happen. We overestimated the Seoul subway system and got to our meeting destination late. We had stayed up all Friday night and we left Paul's place around 5:30 am to be in Seoul by 7. So since we missed everyone we just stayed around Seoul. We went to Changdeokgung palace and saw some amazing Korean history. The palace had some seriously intricate architecture that was incredibly to say the least. I have but a few pictures of it only because my camera batteries died right at the start of the English tour. This palace was just amazing. There really are no words for how cool this was. It was, and I can only imagine, like seeing a castle in England. So much history and background. There were some people on the tour that really should not have been there and it seemed like a forced activity but their sour moods didn't spoil it for us tourists from the West. There was an amazingly beautiful garden and an abalone (sp?) couch that the Queen had owned. We also saw the oldest tree in Seoul. Paul tried a sample and said it was delicious. It was a juniper tree and he was just being funny.
From the palace we had to sit down because we were soooo tired from staying up the previous night. Then we slowly hobbled into Insadong to see if we could find a music store that Paul was looking for and to see if we could find me an electronics store so I could buy a cheap dvd player for here. Neither of us found what we wanted but we did find a really cool toy museum that was also sort of a store. Some things in there were for sale but most was for show. There were even toys from as little as one year ago. They had the Hellboy toy my sis got me for last xmas there and that was a toy based on last years movie! Not much of a museum but it was really a display place. It was truly intriguing. Full of gigantors, mazingers, and assorted plastic goodies. After the toy extravaganza we went and tried waffles at a little store front cafe place. They were weird but good.
After the waffles we went back towards Jongno tower and took a pic or two there. We then headed back to Paul's with great difficulty due to the sleepiness that had overtaken us. Finally we managed to get to Paul's and catch a couple hours of Zs. We then got up and walked around Paul's area, Jeongja, and looked for food. We ended up at a teppan-yaki style restaurant called Iron Chef. I was hoping there would be a main ingredient and that it would be soylent green, but, alas it was not. We almost ordered this kimchi eggrol thingy when this man next to us convinced us to order this japanese pancake dohicky. The chef started to cook this in front of us. He pulled out a tea pot and poured green slime onto the grill which quickly flourished into our pancake. He then added veggies, cooked some beef and bacon and added that, then broke two eggs and made them into the same size and shape as the pancake and used that as the other side of this veggie pancake sandwich-esque thing. He plopped it all together into one cylindrical mass, coated the top with a brown sauce that was neither teriyaki or soy, added a frosting type sauce out of a squirt bottle in a fashion like on a toaster strudel commercial, and then added these odd fish flakes. He served it to us and we timidly went for it. This was amazing. We forgot what it was called but, man, was it good. Finally we finished our japanese mystery meal and got ice cream, yay. Then we went back to Paul's, watched some fun junk that I brought on dvd and passed out.
Today we got up and went a couple stops up on the subway to a mall called AK Plaza. This place is completely a western influence mall. It was chock full of designer stores like Gucci, LV, Coach, Prada, and so on. The upper levels of the mall were all strictly one whole department store. We thought it would be a good idea to go up into it to see if we could find me a dvd player...but no it was no where to be found. We also searched the surrounding stores for trinkets such as the player but no again. We did find out that finding shoes in my size in korea is impossible. My feet are ginormous by korean standards, not that they are small in the states either. We headed to a shop that Paul knew would have funny t-shirts and we went in. The only ones we found that had funny things were the ones that said "I heart(shape) crap" and "Hey Dude, Don't Smoke. Chew a gum." We roamed through that area of Bundang for a large portion of the rest of the day. We then went back to Paul's place, I gathered my things, and I left. I went towards home and stopped at Hi-mart to grab a dvd player. I found a sony dvd player and headed out of there. As I walked out I noticed two gorgeous and scantilly clad korean girls dancing their tushies off in front of the store. They were trying to draw customers in. Then I continued to walk and saw a WACKY WAVING INFLATIBLE ARM-FLAILING TUBEMAN! who was doing the same as the girls and bringin in the business. Funny thing is that I think he was doing a better job than the girls. I proceeded home and started to do laundry. I went outside and stole a couch from the parking lot around my place. People here when they no longer want furniture just put it outside so I took it. Then I went to a little mart and got some eats. I just a little while ago tried the dvd player and learned that I have to return it. It cannot play my dvds due to the country code. Don't ask me what that means besides it being some ridiculous security precaution set in motion by international movie companies just to piss off travelers. Oh well. The hunt for a dvd player here continues. Anyway we come to now which is me writing this so that means this is where I leave you hanging until I get another interesting story or two to share with you. I luvz you all and much love from Korea!!

Special blog shout out: to my sister for being a tough cookie and an amazing person. Keep up the good work lady!!

--The Cap'n

P.S. please leave more comments I love em. They are like delicious little friend treats.