It's been a little while since I've posted on my blog, so I hope this is a good one. In fact, I've decided that my vocabulary is a bit lacking, so I'm going to make use of my favorite dinosaur, the Thesaurus. I stole this idea from an episode of Friends where Joey uses a thesaurus to beef up a recommendation he is writing, just to give credit where it is due. So, as my Christmas Eve special, here is my version of 'Twas the Night Before Christmas.
Twas the hours of darkness before Yuletide, when all through the abode
Not a varmint was stirring, not even a mouse.
The pantyhose were suspended by the flue with care,
In expectation that St Nicholas would be at that location in a jiffy.
The offspring were burrowed all skintight in their futons,
While hallucinations of sugar-plums moshed in their noggins.
And the female parent in her hanky, and I in my turban,
Had just settled our cerebrums for a seemingly endless winter’s siesta.
When out on the front yard there arose such a rattle,
I vaulted from the futon to observe what was the matter.
Away to the window I traveled through the air like a flash,
Tore open the shutters and chucked up the sash.
Earth's natural satellite on the breast of the new-fallen white stuff
Gave the lustre of mid-day to objects below.
When, what to my wondering peepers should become visible,
But a wee sleigh, and eight diminutive reindeer.
"Now Runner! now, Prima Ballarina! now, Skipper and Ill-tempered Woman!
On, Ball of Dust and Gas! On, God of Love! on, on Thunder and Lightening!
To the top of the porch! to the top of the wall!
Now dash away! Dash away! Dash away all!"
And then, in a twinkling, I perceived with my ears on the roof
The prancing and pawing of each little hoof.
As I drew in my head, and was turning around,
Down the smokestack St Nicholas came with a bound.
He was dressed all in pelage, from his head to his foot,
And his threads were all tarnished with ashes and soot.
A bundle of Toys he had flung on his vertebral column,
And he looked like a door-to-door salesman, just opening his pack.
He was big-boned and full-figured, a right jolly old elf,
And I laughed when I saw him, in spite of myself!
A wink of his eye and a twist of his head,
Soon gave me to know I had nothing to dread.
He spoke not an utterance, but went straight to his work,
And filled all the hosiery, then turned with a jerk.
And laying his digit aside of his proboscis,
And giving a nod, up the chimney he rose!
He sprang to his sleigh, to his team gave a whistle,
And away they all traveled through the air like the down of a thistle.
But I heard him exclaim, ‘ere he drove out of sight,
"Happy Yuletide to all, and to all y'all a good-night!"
First, I'd like to apologize for not writing for so long. I've been busy. How this happened, I'm not sure. I started getting involved in things because I was bored, and I may have overdone it. Or maybe its just the Christmas season. Anyway, to the interesting stuff.
I participated in my first triathlon today. Well, not really. Well, it did fit the definition of triathlon, and it was my first. So that is a true statement. But it wasn't exactly official. A few weeks ago a few of us got a family pass to a rec center nearby to use their machines and pool. The employees were a little skeptical at first about 5 young adults (of various races, I might add) claiming to be a family, but they said if we had the same address, it was ok.
Anyway, my friend Jay decided we needed a little competition and organized a triathlon for us. We biked 5 miles on the stationary bikes, ran a mile on the treadmill, and then swam 200 yds. in the pool. I think I got third place. Out of three. But that's ok. We didn't really have accurate results because between the biking and the running a couple of us had to wait for a free treadmill.
All in all, it was pretty fantastic. We even got sports drinks at the end. And I'm pretty sure that's what makes a race official.
Since today (or yesterday, because this won’t get posted until tomorrow) is World AIDS Day, I’d like to take advantage of my blog to raise some awareness. I don’t know how much you know about the AIDS pandemic in Africa, or how you feel about it, but I’ve recently realized that it’s a pretty big deal. Like a lot of Americans, I guess I always thought it was a terrible thing, but it seemed pretty far away, and there wasn’t really much I could do about it anyway. And then I learned about stuff like this:
• The population of South Africa is about 50,000,000. More than 5 million of those people have AIDS. 1.2 million children there have been orphaned by AIDS.
• A total of 3 million people die every year from AIDS. That is approximately the same as 20 fully loaded Boeing 747 airplanes crashing every day for a year.
• In South Africa, environmentalists fear a disaster caused by the predicted 3 million bodies that will have to be buried there in the next 10 years.
• In Zambia, almost half the population is under the age of 15.
• In Rwanda, 42,000 households are headed by children. *
But numbers and statistics don’t really mean a whole lot to me, and I’m guessing they don’t to you either. The thing is, each one of those children has a story. They’re actual people. Some of them watched their parents die. Some of them live on the streets. Many of them can’t get an education. If we saw children living in these conditions in our own community, there is no way we would let it keep happening. So why does it matter so much that a kid is in Uganda instead of Indiana? Just a thought to ponder. And I’m sure most of you have heard this before. And the question of what we do about it is still a hard one. But there really are starving kids in Africa that would give anything to eat that spinach you just threw away.
I don’t really even know what my goal with this spiel is, but I just really hope we take it a little more seriously. So what can we do? There are organizations like Compassion and World Help and probably hundreds of others that are providing food and education to some of these kids, and we can share a little of our wealth with them. We can learn more about it.
*All of my stats I got from a book called Children of Hope, and it also includes the real-life stories of several children who are dealing with the AIDS crisis every day. You can get this book for free.
I will now step down from my soap box.
So this past weekend I went on my first-ever overnight backpacking trip. It turned out to be one of the most in-tents (haha) things I've ever experienced. I went with a group of people from the church I've been going to here, which consisted of about 8 middle-aged men, two younger men, a dog, and four of us young ladies. Saturday morning we drove a couple of hours to Amicalola State Park, where our trek began. The weather was awesome all day and it was a pretty nice hike. I saw a lot of this:
When we reached the top of Springer mountain, there was a pretty incredible vista, which looked like this:
We had the really cool experience of meeting a man there who had just finished his 5-month-long hike of the entire trail, starting in Maine. His family was there celebrating with him. He ate an entire half gallon of ice cream.
Anyway, we made it to our campsite, set up tents, and had dinner around the fire. As you know, it gets dark around 6, and there wasn't a whole lot to do out there in the dark, so a lot of people went to bed early. Turns out, it's really cold and windy on top of mountains at night, even in Georgia. I had a little trouble sleeping, what with the cold and loud wind and being afraid that I was going to be attacked by a bear at any moment and all.
In the morning the cold and wind turned into rain, not too long after we woke up. We had a very wet day of hiking, but we took a slightly different trail on the way down that was really pretty and went past an inn where we stopped and warmed up.
So, overall a great trip. One of my favorite parts was the hot shower at the end.
This past week turned out to be a very eventful one. I've been working with the youth group at the church I've been going to, and it turns out that this has some unexpected perks. Wednesday was the annual Douglasville Veteran's Day parade, and I got to ride in the parade with the youth group in what they called a "deuce-and-a-half" (big green army truck), and afterward we had a bonfire. Douglasville doesn't do parades quite as well as Macy's (most of the people I talked to who live here didn't even know about it), but I did get to meet the mayor before the parade, so I felt pretty important.
It may not be Korea, but I’ve been really fortunate to have some cool cultural experiences here in the South.
I’m a big fan of grits. We have them for breakfast here about 3 times a week in the cafeteria. But that just wasn’t enough, so I bought some quick grits to eat on the weekends, and some syrup to go with it. I also got to eat some delicious boiled peanuts for the first time that one of the girls bought from a stand down the road. Oh, and black-eyed peas.
I’ve also been studying the local dialects of the native (or not-so-native) people. Interestingly, the degree of people’s “southern drawl” varies a lot from person to person, even among people who grew up in the same town. I will keep researching the various factors that go into this phenomena.
My greatest cultural accomplishment has been being able to determine the correct use of the terms “y’all” versus “all y’all”. At first glance, both seem to mean the same thing, and at first I didn’t understand why an extra “all” had to be added to a word that was already plural. But I can now pick out the subtle differences in connotation and, in an effort to immerse myself in the culture and language, use these phrases whenever applicable.
If you didn't already know this, every Friday is a service day for our Americorps team. This means that we leave campus and basically do a day of community service at a location picked by our team leaders. On Friday, we went to a nature preserve just outside Atlanta, where we spent the day waging war on the evil Wisteria vines that are taking over the other plants at the park.
Today was a pretty cool day at Youth Villages - Inner Harbour Campus. This morning we had the end of our tutor training, where we learned about how to manage young people's behavior in the classroom. I thought that our speaker had a lot of good things to say and she was very knowledgeable, but she might have wanted to add one more thing to her list of classroom management techniques. As she demonstrated her positive reinforcement methods to us as if we were a classroom of kids (giving us candy when we were paying attention, praising those who asked her questoins), our behavior basically turned into that of junior high kids. Several of us started doodling, some people were making comments to each other from across the room, and we had a really hard time organizing ourselves into two groups.
So what did I really learn today? Well, first of all, that if I write my name on my paper like I'm told, I will get a KitKat. But more importantly, I learned that people often behave in accordance with how you treat them and expect them to behave. And that's something worth knowing.
As many of you know, I spent this weekend making a drum. A djembe, to be exact. I have yet to name her, so if anyone has any suggestions, please let me know. Anyway, here's a quick summary of the drum-making process:
1. Obtain a hand-carved drum shell (the wood part) and a goat skin from Africa.
2. Give the shell a couple layers of wood stain.
3. Cover the three metal rings (two for the top and one for the bottom) with colorful fabric strips.
4. Tie loops of rope around one top and one bottom ring.
5. Put the wet goat skin on top of the drum between the top two rings.
6. Run rope back and forth between the loops on the top and bottom.
7. Using some clever lever action, pull this rope really tight so the skin has a lot of tension on it.
8. Cut off the excess goat skin and make the edge look pretty.
9. Repeat step 7 again the next day when the skin has dried.
The most challenging part for me was trying to pull the ropes to make the drum head tight. Apparently my entire body weight pushing down on the lever is not enough force to do it well, so I kept having to get help. And at one point the rope actually snapped and we had to tie it back together. But other than that I am very pleased with my drum and excited to use it. It was by far the best drum-making workshop I have ever been to.
"What is this thing called 'Americorps'?" you might ask. Well, let me tell you. It's all summed up by our motto, "We get things done." Pretty vague, I know.
To clarify things, I've come up with a new name that is a little more descriptive. I actually can't take credit for this new term, because it was actually introduced to me by the one and only Alayna Pietsch. And probably used by hundreds of people before that. If I were in charge, I would call it (drumrole please):
Ameri(hard)corps.
Why? you ask. We live in the woods. We hike to work. We gut houses. We scoop poop. We work with kids. We share a bathroom with 10 other people. We eat cafeteria food. Every day. We have a 12 inch TV screen. If that's not hard core, I don't know what is.
Now, if only I could start that Ameri(par)corps group.
All Creatures Great and Small
Monday, October 12, 2009Well, another rainy day in Douglasville. Surprise, surprise. Which means that instead of using our day off to go explore Atlanta, we are watching movies in the library. It also means that I have loads of time to express my random thoughts to the world via blog.
Today was one of those days that I look back on and ask, “Am I really getting paid for this?” Granted, we don’t get paid much, but I definitely would have done today for free. It basically went like this: play in the dirt and rain, lunch, play games, supper, play more games.
It was raining again this morning, as usual. However, since we are so Ameri(hard)corps, we were not deterred from our plans of cleaning out an old cabin in the woods and recreating the path to it. The cabin is going to be used by the recreation therapy interns for their cool Halloween shindig they are planning for the kids. Let’s just say that what we did definitely could have made it onto Discovery Channel’s Dirty Jobs.
The afternoon was spent playing several fun icebreaker games so that we will have lots of ideas of things to do with the kids when we have time to fill. Here’s some of the things we did: drew pictures on other people’s backs, played a game of Mafia, wrapped an entire roll of tape around us, and navigated an obstacle course as a “cell” (I had the role of protoplasm).
Also, I found out about a local running club that I am almost definitely going to get involved in. It seems like a really friendly group who like to run trails when possible. I've been doing a decent amount of running on my own and with a few of the other Corps members who like to work out, but it will be great to have some people to do long runs with and to be in the know about local races.
And to top of the day, we played two intense games of ultimate Frisbee. So all in all, a great day.
I know some of you are just dying to know what kinds of amazing things I did for my birthday, so I'll give you a summary.
We spent most of the day gutting a house that had been damaged by flooding. The house we went to had had water about 4 feet deep in it, judging by the water line. We had to wear face masks to prevent mold spores from infecting our lungs, although the amount of my exhaled carbon dioxide that I inhaled again might be just as bad.
The most awesome part of this was getting to meet and work alongside the family and the other volunteers that were there. The family was really nice, and the wife's sister and aunt had come down to help them clean up. We were also working alongside some Samaritan's Purse volunteers and it was cool to hear their stories about how they got involved here. One of the guys was a mailman from Florida who just felt that God had called him to come and help out, so he took a week off work and came.
In the evening, several of us went out for ice cream at Cold Stone (which, in my opinion, should be one of the seven wonders of the world). When I returned to camp, I found, to my surprise, a little surprise party for me. It was fantastic and I really appreciate all my new friends here. We ended the evening by playing Rock Band for several hours. Oh, and did I mention that my rooommate told me happy birthday at about 10 minute intervals throughout the entire day? So, all in all, a wonderful birthday.
Here's some highlights from this week:
- Had a physical, drug test, and "human performance evaluation" done.
- Went on a scavenger hunt around campus. My team won.
- Had drumming class.
- Went bowling.
- Wednesday we spent the day working for Trees Atlanta. We dug some holes for future tree plantings and helped clean up some stuff for the garage sale fundraiser they were having.
- Today (Thursday) we helped out the Red Cross with some flood relief stuff. My group went to a distribution center for flood victims and did lots of random jobs there. I also leaned some southern phrases from one of the other volunteers there, for example: "M R not hogs!" "O-S-A-R!" (read it out loud if you don't get it).
Gardening, Scrabble, and More Rain
Sunday, September 27, 2009Friday
We spent the morning doing some cleanup work to help out maintenance. A bunch of stuff (two-by-fours, tires, and smaller objects) had gotten swept away in the flooding and carried out into the woods, so we carried it back to the dumpsters. We also saved some awesome stuff that they were going to throw away that we claimed for ourselves, like a table and chairs for our community cabin. I am now the proud owner of a "Smoke-Free Facility" sign, which I plan to post in my future residence.
In the afternoon we got to do some work in the community gardens alongside some of the kids, so that was really cool. It was really the first time we have gotten to interact with them, and it went very well.
That evening the drumming instructor's drumming group was performing at a restaurant/bar, so we all went to watch that. They were really good and it was really cool.
Here's some pictures of our campsite/views along the trail that I have walked approximately 18 times so far. 
Saturday
I got up and went for an exploratory run around the campus. I found a disc golf course and two abandoned camp sites. I think that in the earlier years of the program more of the kids lived in cabins, but they now have a dorm-like building that most of them live in, so there are little groups of cabins out on the trails that are no longer in use.
In the afternoon a few of us came out to the office to use the internet, and then got stranded here by the pouring rain. The campsite is about a quarter mile hike from the office, so none of us were really excited to do this in the rain. We finally went back around 5:30 when the rain let up a little.
We spent last night playing board games and card games. Most importantly, I dominated a game of Scrabble, using the word "azul" (apparently you can use foreign words) on a double word score.
Sunday
This morning a few of us went to a church that we found in the area. Afterward we went on a quest to Target (we've tried to go before, but the road to get there was flooded) and Walmart. And that's about it. I know I wrote a whole bunch, but I guess maybe this gives a good idea of what things are like here.
Well, most of the flooding has gone down by now. Most of the roads are open and the trails around here are no longer mud pits. So far we've mostly been doing normal orientation and training stuff, slowly feeling less lost and confused. We did some ice breaker and team building games, wrote letters to ourselves, got TB tests, went over our handbooks, and did a whole bunch of paperwork.
Today, however was awesome. Let's just say that I fell in love with drumming this morning, and I plan to be a professional by the end of my stay here. There is a therapeutic drumming program here, and we spent 3 hours in the yurt playing West African drums this morning. I enjoyed it immensely, and I can definitely see how it can be therapeutic. We get to do drumming once a week with our Americorps team, and also with our kids when we start working with them. The drumming instructor is also teaching a workshop to get certified to facilitate therapeutic drumming, which is offered to us for free.
Immediately after our drumming session, we got to watch a graduation ceremony, which was also one of the most incredible things to experience here. I can't really say much about things that go on here for privacy reasons, but this individual seemed to have come a very long way during his time here, and it was good to hear such encouraging stories.
That is the best word I can use to describe my first 24 hours in Georgia. It was expected to rain a lot this week here, but I had no idea just how much. Last night about 8 it started raining, and continued to rain until, well, actually I think it might still be raining now. We had a pretty intense first night in our cabins with an intense thunderstorm going all night, the thunder kept us up a lot and we are pretty sure that lightening struck our cabin at one point. A couple of the other cabins said they had sparks shooting out of their outlets.
Everything was flooded today. Trees near the lake had fallen down because the ground around them had washed out. Our path to our cabins now has a nice little stream running through it. We ended up not doing much of anything today because our leader people couldn't make it here with all the flooding.
So since we had a free day, a bunch of people decided to head into town to get stuff and just look around. I wasn't going to go, but for fear of being left at the campsite alone, I ended up going with the three guys on a trip to get one of the guys' breaks fixed and tour Douglasville. We didn't have any trouble getting there, and it didn't really rain while we were there. However, as soon as we left to come back to camp, it started pouring. And thus began the real adventure. Following our GPS guide, we kept running into roads that had been closed due to flooding. The way we came was closed, and after about 45 minutes of driving in the downpour we ended up at a gas station that I'm fairly certain was now an island. We started contemplating our options of waiting it out at the gas station (it had benches we could sleep on, and food) or driving a long way around to get back, which we weren't sure would even work. We ended up finding a way back that took us a good half hour, and actually had to drive down a road a little ways that was supposed to be closed, but we made it.
Oh, and did I mention that we didn't have any water in our bath house today? Because of this, and the electrical problems in the cabins, we are all spending the night tonight at the school's library. So, I guess you could say that its been an exciting first day. But more importantly, its been really cool to meet the other people I'll be living and working with. It seems like a great group of people and I think it will be great. This place is beautiful (probably more so when it isn't flooded and raining, but I haven't seen that yet) and I am feeling very blessed to be here.
I forgot to put it on my last list of highlights, but one of the coolest things I've done in the past few weeks was spending the day with Taylor. For anyone who doesn't know, Taylor is my niece. She 2 years and 3 months old. I love her a lot. I had no idea I could get so attached to someone who still struggles with making full sentences. She is the cutest little girl that has ever existed. I know there are a lot of parents, grandparents, aunts, and uncles reading this who probably think their children and grandchildren are the cutest kids, but I am sorry to tell you that you are wrong.
I'm going to take this opportunity to shamelessly brag about Taylor. Her parents are both super smart, very athletic, and just overall awesome people (and good-looking, I might add). So naturally, Taylor is a cute little genius who will probably be the next Mia Hamm. Or astrophysicist. She loves to "play soccer outside" with "Aunt Dawnie", as she calls me. "Soccer" really means bouncing a rubber basketball back and forth, but I'm sure the skills will carry over. And did I mention that I taught her to catch? I also tried to teach her to juggle, but her parents were less than thrilled about her throwing objects over her head.
Probably her favorite thing to do is "read a book". She'll find anyone who's willing (although she prefers her Aunt Dawnie, of course) and bring them over to sit on the couch and read some of her many books with her. And when Taylor reads books, she is not satisfied with just reading a single book one time through. Oh no. She will read as many books as she can as many times as she can until you cut her off. I was hoping to teach Taylor how to read before I left for Georgia, and I think I've succeeded. Well, maybe not, but she does know all the words to most of her books, so she can fake it really well. Which is also a good life skill.
My AmeriCorps service officially starts one week from today! I put that exclamation point there so you just how excited I am about this. I have been thinking about what I need/want to pack, and I'm pretty sure its not all going to fit in my car. I found out today that I need to be there by 4pm next Sunday, and since its about a 12 hour drive, I will be getting up very early that morning. I'm hoping to find out who my roommate is sometime in the next couple days so I can start facebook stalking them, er, I mean, talking to them about stuff we're bringing.
The past few weeks at home with my family has been really nice. I don't have much to do during the week, which gets a little boring, but its been really good overall. Some highlights:
- In the last 3 weeks, I have played at least 20 games of euchre
- I went to the zoo with my niece (and the rest of my family)
- My cousin caught 3 huge bass in my grandpa's pond
- I won Phase 10 Dice playing bingo at a family reunion
- I saw a whole bunch of my cousins at said reunion, which was great, and I hope they are reading this (ahem, Erik)
- My dad and I remodeled a table that my grandparents gave me
- I went to Bethel and Chicago, saw a lot of awesome people there, ate banana pancakes, and won a game of Settlers.
Since returning home, I've been really surprised at how many people have been reading my blog. Which kind of scares me. I guess I really need to watch what I say. But really, I would like to thank everyone who has been reading my blog. Now that I'm not off in foreign lands having adventures, I'm guessing that most people have lost interest and won't ever get this message. Oh well. And for everyone who didn't read my blog at all . . . well, thanks for being a terrible friend (don't have to watch what I say about you, you're not reading it!). Just kidding (just in case you happened to read it today).
I'm getting very excited about my new job in Georgia which starts in about three weeks. From what I know of it, its going to be the hardest but most awesome job in the world. Don't believe me? This is where I'll be living:
It has heat and air conditioning (whoa, fancy), beds, and a desk. That's about it. I'm really excited.
Greetings from outer space. I have been safely home for about 40 hours or something like that. I'm not really sure, I slept for a long time, and then I didn't sleep for a long time, and now I'm tired. The long flight actually went really well; we got to sit together and I watched the new Star Trek movie which was awesome. I also read letters that Tommy and Cherry had sent with me to read on the plane and those made me real happy.
In true academic form, I feel I should exercise my summarizing skills in regards to this trip. So here is the list I made on the plane of my favorite things about Korea (or at least my experience in Korea).
1) The people. We met a lot of really friendly people and they were really cool (except that one guy on the bus that yelled at us).
2) Korean Barbecue - the food and the sitting on the floor aspect
3) Mountains
4) Lotte Mart on Saturday when they give free samples of everything
5) Public transportation
6) Ice cream - they have it everywhere for cheap
7) Their Eco-friendliness. They have a lot of motion-sensing lights and good public transportation, among other things . . .
8) Like really nice parks dotted throughout the city.
9) Going shoeless. I really like taking my shoes off the moment I walk in the door.
10) Hanging out in mountain streams, aka "kego"
11) T-shirts with "English" on them. Sometimes they make sense, sometimes they don't.
12) Smoothies made to order from fresh fruit
13)Eating with chopsticks - I've actually gotten pretty good at it.
Yesterday (Saturday) we had our final presentations for the English camp. We invited all the parents to come and watch the kids do a little speech about the book each class had read. My class did a great job, despite our poster boards constantly falling. One of the boys had a little trouble standing still, and it turned out to be pretty hilarious. I think this video might be one of my favorite things from this trip. Its kind of long, but definitely worth it. (sorry, I'm having technical difficulties putting the video up) I love these kids a lot and it was a lot of fun to work with them.
After the presentations, we went to the LotteMart to get groceries. If HomePlus = Walmart, then LotteMart=Meijer, only way better. They had free food samples at the end of pretty much every isle, and it was some pretty good food. If I ever go to Korea again and need a free meal, I know where to go.
In the evening I went for a bike ride with the kids and then we watched Spiderman III. So, overall, a great day. I'm going to miss it.
I am by no means an expert on cultural issues, nor the study of them. But I have learned a lot about Korean culture since I've been here, and I think I've found an underlying attitude behind some of their customs.
Koreans are very health-conscious. A lot of their food is really healthy, they like to buy organic food, and they really promote exercise. I can't say for sure that most of them actually do exercise, but they have lots of parks with exercise machines in them. I do see quite a few older people walking and using the machines in the morning.
Koreans are not safety-conscious. At least with their driving. Running red lights is totally acceptable, as long as you slow down first. Changing lanes erratically is ok too. Wearing seatbelts is definitely not cool here. I think one of my favorite things is their U-turn lanes. Maybe we have these in the US and I just never seen any, I don't know. Its kinda like a turn lane, only the arrow painted on the ground does a 180 instead of a 90 degree turn.
So what can we learn from these findings? Basically, I think Koreans would rather die in a quick blaze than die slowly from sickness and disease. And I can't really argue with that.
Tuesday
Tuesday was pretty fantastic. The kids in my class were wonderfully behaved, and when we went ice skating there were a bunch of other kids there that we got to meet, and laughed at us when we talked. After work we tried to go to the JikJi museum, but it was closed. I'd explain what that is, but my host family is taking me there Sunday, so I'll probably talk about it then. So we went to the big shopping plaza and had smoothies and bratwursts (not quite the German kind, but they were good). They have these great little smoothie stands where they make the smoothies out of the actual fresh fruit. We shopped around and then went to Home Plus (their version of Walmart). On my way home I had yet another interesting experience with the buses, I had to get off and wait 20 minutes while they refueled and cleaned the bus.
Wednesday
Here's some quick highlights:
I ate dried sardines for lunch today. I ate a big bite before I realized they weren't noodles. But it was good.
Some of the other foreign teachers made dinner for us all tonight, and it was fantastic.
One of the boys in my class is obsessed with the word "kill", and thought it was hilarious to cover up the "s" in "skill".
I'm really enjoying it here, and I feel like I'm finally getting used to things here. I really like the kids here, even if they are out of control most of the time. I like a lot of the food, now that most of my tastebuds have been burned off.
So I completely forgot to write about what happened yesterday. I went with the other foreign teachers and the school director to a place called the Folk Village. It is a very touristy place that has a lot of displays of historic, traditional Korean things, as well as a museum of stuff from around the world. The coolest part, however was the shows. They had a horse show, with guys doing cool stuff like standing on the horses and doing all kinds of tricks on them. They also had one with guys on drums who did some really cool stuff that's hard to describe. Finally, there was a guy who did tricks on a tightrope that were pretty incredible. I will hopefully have pictures and videos of all that in the next couple days.
For anyone who didn't know, today is my dad's birthday.
Today was a fantastic day of experiencing Korea. My host family and I loaded up and headed out to what they called the "valley". I didn't really know what we were doing, only that the kids had their swimsuits and they packed stuff like we were going to the beach. It turns out it was a little bit like going to the beach, only ten times better. After driving around for a while, and stopping to look at a few different places, we climbed down across this mountain stream and found a spot under a bridge in the shade. It was gorgeous, with the stream in front of us and mountains on either side of us. We did some exploring up the stream and had a picnic lunch there.
Our lunch consisted of something called kimbop and ramen noodles. I think the American equivalent to kimbop would a peanut butter and jelly sandwich. It's something they pack for picnics or when they're hiking and its something pretty much everyone likes. It has rice and vegetables and I'm not really sure what else wrapped up in seaweed.
For dinner we went to another barbecue, which is one of my favorite things about Korea.
In other news, I would like to thank Kevin once again for my Kindle. I've been using it a lot. Right now I am reading Anna Karenina and I'm pretty hooked on it. I have a lot of down time when I'm at the apartment, so that's what I've been doing.
Yesterday after work we went to "The Fortress", or more specifically, the "Sang Dang Fortress." I like to call it the Great Wall of Korea. Much smaller than the one in China. Its basically a really old wall built around the top of a mountain. We took a bus up to it and then hiked all the way around the wall, which took about an hour and a half. Some places had some incredible views of the city and valley below.
I have become a big fan of public transportation while I've been here, but last night almost changed my mind. After waiting a good 20 minutes at the bus stop, I hopped on the same bus I took the other night. I thought I might get closer to my apartment by getting off one bus stop later. Turns out it was impossible to get a cab from that street, though. I walked a few blocks looking for a cab, but only saw a few drive by without their light on. When I finally got one about 15 minutes later, I handed him my paper with my address on it, and he somehow lost it. This paper is pretty important to me because its the only copy of my address I have and it has my host family's phone number. It took the cab driver and I a good 5 minutes of frantic searching before we found the paper under his seat. I finally made it home an hour after I had gotten to the bus stop.
Other than that little incident, things are going great. The kids at school get a little crazy on Fridays so that makes things a little rough. If I ever go to Asia to teach english again, I think I would prefer an older age group. My host family is really nice and I'm glad I've had the opportunity to experience living with them.
Rain, public transportation, and barbecue
Filed Under :
Korea
by DawnHeckman
Wednesday, August 12, 2009I don't really have much to say about the last few days. It's been raining here for two days, which means that I woke up early this morning for nothing. I was going to go out for a run, but it was pouring and I didn't think it'd be nice to come back to the apartment with my clothes dripping everywhere. Hopefully tomorrow morning will be better.
Last night I rode the bus by myself for the first time to save money on taking a taxi across town. The bus took me closer to the apartment but I still had to get a taxi the rest of the way. It was a little scary since I didn't have any idea what I was doing and I can't really read any of the street signs or names of the bus stops. But I made it. And it was cheaper.
Funny tidbit of the day: One of the other teachers had told her students that my last name was Heckman, and one student thought she said "hangman" (which the kids love to play, by the way), so that's what he calls me every time he sees me.
Cool Korean cultural experience: Yesterday we went to dinner at a Korean barbecue, which actually doesn't taste like what we consider barbecue. But it was fantastic. We sat on the floor on mats and ate lots of really good meat. And then some ice cream.
Anyway, I just finished playing a Sudoku game with Tommy, and now I'm headed to bed.
Yesterday we went to the SongNi San national park to do some hiking in the mountains. Well, I thought we were hiking in the mountains. Turns out what we did probably fit the definition of climbing better than hiking. But it was the most amazing hike I have ever been on. It took us about three hours of almost constant uphill climbing and stairs to get to the top, and we had to stop several times to catch our breath and take water breaks. At the top of the mountain, there was basically a huge rock that you could climb up even higher to get on top of and this is what it looked like:
Sadly, we were pretty much inside a cloud so it was hard to see much of the landscape. But it was really high and had a really steep dropoff.
There was also a Buddhist temple at the park that we walked around and took some pictures of, as well as a really big Buddha statue.
In other news, I ate some boiled squid last night. Apparently this is a good snack food while you're watching a movie. It was ok, but kind of tough to chew on.
Korean food. I haven't decided yet what to answer when people ask me if I like Korean food. A lot of it is spicy, which hurts my poor innocent taste buds. They really like rice. Koreans, I mean, not my taste buds. REALLY. They eat it literally every single meal, including breakfast, and they eat a lot of it. They also eat strange things like bean sprout soup and they eat seaweed in every form imaginable.
The first few days I was here, I was super excited to try the food and experience the culture. Maybe a little too excited. I didn't get sick, but I felt real icky after every Korean meal I ate. Which meant that when the next meal came around, I really didn't feel like eating the same food again. I started wishing I had brought some vitamins. There is no way I was getting my recommended daily dose of Vitamin A and Magnesium. And that's where cereal came in. Although Koreans traditionally eat their rice and bean sprout soup and whatever else for breakfast, I've had the option of cereal for every breakfast since I've been here. Hurrah for the Calcium and Folic acid that milk and cereal provide.
Luckily, I did not develop a taste aversion like I had feared. After 6 days in Korea, I can now say that I can eat just about anything without feeling icky.
I think I like the food. At least some of it. I've had at least 5 different things that I can honestly say I would love to eat again. You just have to avoid the things you don't like. And eat some Korean cereal every now and then.
This is a long one, so I've divided it up for your convenience.
Host Family
So I moved in with my Korean host family last night. Thus far it's been an interesting experience. Its a mom, dad, son Tommy and daughter Cherry. Cherry is in first grade and she's real cute. Tommy is about 11 and speaks fairly good English, which is really good. They have a really big apartment on the tenth floor that has a fantastic view of Cheongju. I'm basically sharing Cherry's room with her, which is fantastic because its all pink.
Shopping
This afternoon we went shopping at the market and HomePlus (which is a lot like Target). I bought some inside shoes (because of course you have to take off your shoes when you come inside), a new watch (btw, cheap watches apparently don't exist in Korea) , and a sweet water bottle (which was cheap). We also stopped at a smoothie place that was fantastic. I got an orange smoothie that they made right in front of us by throwing a whole orange into a blender with some sugar and orange juice. (I like to use parentheses)
Taxi
After our shopping trip, I had to take a taxi back to the apartment by myself. It was slightly unnerving because I'm pretty sure it was the first time I've ever taken a taxi and the driver kept asking me questions in Korean that I obviously couldn't answer. Taxis aren't cheap either.
Teaching
Oh ya, and I've had two days of teaching already. It has gone pretty well. I only have four students in my class, three boys and one girl. They're a lot of fun. We basically go through workbooks most of the time, but I try to make it fun. Yesterday afternoon we did a fantastic relay race with them in the afternoon that all the kids loved. I kinda liked it too.
Ice Skating
So I've been ice skating many many times in my life, but never in the summer. I was thinking, ya, ice skating will be kinda chilly, I should probably wear long pants and a long sleeve shirt. But its ridiculous to get all bundled up in the summer. WRONG. It was cold. We took all the kids ice skating today and they had lessons. Besides being cold, it was really cool, and I will definitely put some pictures up soon.
I'm not too ambitious with the blogging right now, so this will simply be a list of highlights from the day.
We made it to Korea!! Our luggage, however, did not. It should get here this evening.
The first two (and shortest) legs of my journey are complete. Had a nice little ride with mom and dad over to Markle, then met up with Toni and her dad drove us up to Mishawaka.
I thoroughly enjoyed the trip up to Bethel. Oh, such a familiar path. I did forget about the detour on 331 and we had to go around. When we got here we were greeted by the Wertz family with some lovely dessert, and then I got to visit some Bethel friends that are still on campus for the summer. Oh, how I miss Bethel.
Anyway, we are leaving to drive to the airport in 5 hours, so i should probably get some sleep. I'm pretty stoked about flying, not so excited about doing it for 16 hours. Oh well, it will be worth it.
Hey everybody, look at my blog!
Never thought I'd be a blogger, but here it is. My first blog. Big day. I'm pretty excited.
I started this blog to document, in electronic form, my life and travels, and to share them with my family and friends. In a couple days I will be going to South Korea to teach English for a few weeks, and in a couple months I will be moving to the Atlanta area to work for Americorps. I just got back from a little family vacation, which was fantastic.
Anyway, I would like to apologize that my blog probably won't be very funny. I'll try to keep it interesting, maybe even amusing. If you're reading this, you must be interested in my life, so hopefully you won't be bored.
Also, please feel free to criticize any spelling or grammar mistakes I make. Really. I'll try to keep them to a minimum.
I think that's all I have for now, hopefully things will get more interesting than this.
