HAPPY BIRTHDAY, GRANT!

Dear Grant,

         Happy 5th birthday!  We miss you so much and we can't wait to see you.  Have the best birthday, buddy.  Tell Mom and Dad to take you to the Grilled Cheese Grill.  I have a feeling you'll like their menu.

We remember your first birthday when you smeared blue frosting all over your cute face.  I hope you have as much fun with your cake this year.  We wish we could be there with you, but we'll have to make up for it when we get back.  What do you want to do when we get home?  

Happy birthday, little man.  See you soon!!

Love,

Casey and Enon

Happy Birthday, Ian!

Now that I'm feeling sick from overindulging in pizza and cake, it's time to share Ian's birthday with you.

The day started off well (I surprised Ian with pastry and Lorina's Pink Lemonade for breakfast).  But Ian's laptop fell off the bed and the system crashed.  It is now, as Ian affectionately calls it, a very expensive paperweight.  We're going to look into buying a Netbook.

 

Ian refreshes with the lemonade after his run.

He took the camera to work today and took pictures of the Goam happenings.

Ian's desk for now.  The new space will have a teacher's lounge area, but we don't know if there will be computers in it.

 

A better view.

Other side of Ian's office.

 

Beginnings of the new front desk.

Construction.

 

Safe!  Keep in mind that this whole area is accessible to kids.

One of the classrooms.

 

Corner room with lots of windows.  Ian hopes this is his classroom.

Yoon's and GnB signs competing for attention.

I picked Ian's ice cream cake up from Baskin Robbins tonight after work.  We've learned our lesson and we'll never buy the pretty, tasteless cakes they have at Paris Baguette or Tous Les Jour again.  So, after stuffing our faces full of Pizza Hut pizza, we feasted on the sweet stuff.

Candles!

 

It's time for Ian's creepy birthday face.

Ian's slice.  There was actually no cake in it.  The whole thing was made of ice cream and frosted with whipped cream and cookie pieces.  From bottom to top: it's chocolate, cherry, vanilla with cherry swirl and strawberry.  Though we were expecting some cake to be involved, it was very delicious.

Happy birthday to Danielle and Aunt Sherrie, too!  Good night!

Interactions in a Nutshell, well Three

Ian's birthday is tomorrow.  Unfortunately, so is our weekly meeting.  It was originally scheduled for 11:30 (which gave me hopes of a run), but when I went in to ask Gene if it could possibly be moved to Thursday, he told me it had been moved to 11am because Julia was going to be there.  The (possible) good news is that we might be discussing time off for Mom's visit.  The bad news is that we have a meeting with Julia on Ian's birthday.  No matter the general outcome of those meetings, it's always stressful, long and disheartening.  Hopefully, she gives us time to eat lunch before classes begin.

*This just in (via text)- Our meeting has been moved to Friday.  Thank you, Gene!*

Julia was at Sinback all day today.  She didn't say much to me, but her proximity makes me nauseous.  David showed up later and paced around outside my classroom.  That seems to be his specialty.

On the last post, Mom wondered about our interactions with locals.  Honestly, we have very few personal encounters with them.  Our hours keep us from random meetings and on the weekends we're usually pretty self contained.  That said, our interactions usually fall into one of three categories:  1) parental 2) condescending/correctional, or 3) overzealous servitude. 

Type 1 is, by far, the easiest to deal with.  Chun wha and her family fall into this category.  While we love how amazing and kind they are to us, it gets a little tiring because we're not seen as adults.  Twenty-somethings are pretty immature here, so no one really expects us to have opinions or needs.  That makes being an employee pretty difficult. 

Strangely, type 2 usually comes from strangers.  A couple good examples of this are the gym owner warning us not to run and Ian's special neighborhood friend thinking we were packing the Halloween candy for our lunch.  These people mean us well, but they think we're completely mentally deficient and devoid of life skills.  Julia is somewhere between 1 and 2.

Type 3 most often happens to me at the local bakeries.  I cannot purchase something without getting something for free.  It doesn't matter when I come in or who is working.  They ooh and aah, ask me to wait while they package something random up, give it to me and refuse my money.  It's very sweet, but totally awkward.  I've observed Korean patrons and they don't seem to be served with the same fervor.  This is the type of behavior that makes many Western travelers say "Asian people are so friendly and willing to help."  That statement isn't wrong, we just see it a little differently now that we've lived here.

I hate to generalize an entire population but, as they are a very small, homogeneous society that craves conformity, it's easy to put people in boxes.  I hardly know any of the people we work with.  Even Chun wha's thoughts on life are a complete mystery to me.  The only real exception to this is Gene, and he's very atypical.  I know that the language barrier plays a part, but it's much bigger than that.

Tomorrow, Ian will take picture at Goam so that you can see the changes happening there.

Good night!

Forgotten Things and a Care Package

This morning Ian and I realized that there are a few amusing things we've (well, I've) forgotten to include in the blog.

Firstly, some of my kids' English names aren't exactly English.  I've had a couple Antony's.  Not Anthony, but Antony.  I recently got a new boy in class named Alejandro.  Almost everything I say to him I say with a Spanish accent.  It's my own private joke, since they don't hear the difference.

Secondly, Ian would like you to know that he has been teaching his kids TV theme songs line by line.  A couple of weeks ago, he taught some of his kids the Fresh Prince of Belair theme.  Today he taught a class the theme song for the Flinstones.

And thirdly, I forgot to report a totally awesome happening yesterday.  In my second Basic 3 class on Mondays, I have a boy named Caleb and a boy named Thomas.  They're both good students and they play off each other a lot in class.  Well, yesterday, when I got to Thomas in the roll call, Caleb burst into the Thomas and Friends theme in Korean.  I asked "Thomas and Friends?" and he was pretty stoked that I knew it.  I asked him if he liked Thomas and he said he was too old, though he seemed pretty into it to me.  Later I asked him if he'd been to the Sodor park in Japan and he regretfully reported that he hadn't.  Much to human Thomas' dismay, Caleb continued to sing bits of the song occasionally during class.  YouTube won't let me embed the song in the post, so here's a link.  It's worth a listen because the tune really doesn't work all that well in Korean.  It made me laugh, at least.   

We went to the post office this morning to pick up our package from Erin.  We've been anticipating it for a while now (the post office kept trying to deliver it while we were at work), so we were pretty stoked.

Yay!  Packages get pretty beat up on their way here.

What is it?  It's a baby pumpkin!

Ian may have been a little overzealous about appreciating the pumpkin.

I got awesome mustard colored vintage-y gloves as a belated birthday gift.  They will be great for the deep winter we have here.

Care package contents from top left: Hershey's Miniatures, Reese's Miniatures, baby pumpkin, People Magazine, Seattle Magazine, Glamour Magazine, card and letter, gloves, Uno Game, Travels with Charley by John Steinbeck and The Woman in White by Wilkie Collins.

Thank you, Erin!

We're so lucky to have folks like you all back home.  You rock.

Do your parents feed you?

I asked Ian if anything interesting happened to him today and this is what he had to say,"You know that kid who tore out a sheet of paper a while ago and ate it?  Today I only gave him one sticker because he was being a little shit.  Well, he ate that, too."

My day was uneventful, but generally terrible.  My classes went well and the kids behaved, but I felt half dead all day.  My voice would disappear on a whim and one or two times I found myself spacing out.  I did start to feel a little better with the momentum of the day, but as soon as classes were over it all came crashing back.  I'm exhausted.  I know that if I feel the same way tomorrow morning that I should call in sick, but I'm not sure it's worth the hassle.  Unless we want our pay docked, we have to have a doctor's note.  And even with a note, we're only allowed three sick days.  Being sick in a foreign country with a foreign job sucks.

Tomorrow we are going to the post office to pick up whatever Erin sent us and to buy stamps and envelopes.  I'm stoked.

As soon as we feel better, we really need to clean the apartment.  It's pretty gross, since both of us have been feeling so crummy.

Yesterday was Chun wha's birthday.  She told me this when she led me into a somewhat hidden back closet and fed me rice today.  The closet part was a bit odd, but it was nice because she told me not to worry about the time and let me start one of my classes almost ten minutes late.  She and her family went to Danyang and checked out the pampas grass fields near Namhan River to celebrate.  Their pictures were really cute.  She got a new phone (I don't know if it was for her birthday or not).  The cell phone technology here is pretty cool.  Even "basic" phones have nice cameras and they come with all sorts of extras like TV and games.  Chun wha's new phone has a motion sensor in it.  So, she can scroll through pictures and things just by rocking it back and forth.

Well, I hope everyone's work week starts out fabulously!  Good night!

HAPPY BIRTHDAY AUDREY!

Today (stateside 10.09) is our niece's 1st birthday.  We're pretty bummed out that we're missing it, so we made this little banner on our divider window for her out of origami paper.

Happy birthday to you, happy birthday to you,

Happy birthday, dear Audrey,

Haaappy Biiirrthday to you!!

This post is solely dedicated to sending birthday thoughts her way, so I'll write about our day and other things tomorrow.

Birthday!

Today was my 23rd birthday.  And, no, I don't feel any different.  :)

I got up around 8:30, talked to the family and then we started our day.

We started our day with pastries and coffee at Paris Baguette in the downtown shopping district.  Everything was pretty good, the coffee was a bit on the sweet side, though.  We were just happy for the taste of espresso.

Where we sat to eat breakfast had a view of this strange (read: slightly racist) little cafe called Africa.

As we walked through the center, we found this rather large collection of rubber flip flops...

It was a little warm out, so we had some Coke Zero (in honor of Rob).  As we walked around and explored more, we found some familiar things:

And some more unfamiliar things:

It says "BooBoo Dental Clinic."  I hope I never have a dental-related boo boo.

After walking around for a bit, we had lunch at the tiniest restaurant I've ever been in.  There was literally one table and some counter seats along the wall.  We ordered veggie Kimbop and the first set was served with ham.  We ordered another one and it was deliciously meat free.  Three full rolls (think of the full sized nori sheets) of kimbop, soup and a side of pickled radishes was only 3,000 won ($2.30).

After lunch, we headed into a park/school ground and played around for a little while.

Ian is too tall for the monkey bars.

Swings are fun!  But, they kind of hurt your butt.

Then we headed over to the Techno Town Cinema to watch "9."  When we first went in, the times weren't the same as we'd seen online, so we were worried, but it all worked out.

Some shots inside the theatre lobby:

There are many things attached to the movie theatre, like a restaurant, a hair salon and some sort of boutique.

Self explanatory.  :)

They don't have Diet Coke of Coke Zero, so I got "Cider" (it's pretty much Sprite) and Ian got Orange Soda.

We got some popcorn, too.

All together it was about $18.  Not bad, considering you'd only get in to see the movie for that in the states.

A close up of the popcorn box.  An interesting note:  at this theatre, the tickets have seat assignments.  We'd didn't follow them.  But, even thought the theatre was mostly empty, all the Korean patrons stared at their tickets and followed the rules.

After the movie we went to Mr. Pizza for dinner.  It seems to be the most popular pizza place in town.

We don't know why it's "made for women."  Their main slogan is "Love for women."  ???

We were given an English menu, which was very helpful.  The menu tries to explain why women love Mr. Pizza, but, like Ian at being in photos, it fails.

The cheese sticks were served with honey mustard.  May sound weird to you, but I was pleased, as that's how I order them stateside.

The pizza was... okay.  We ordered a cheese and potato pizza.  The cheese is a little rubbery and the sauce is closer to spaghetti than it is to pizza.  But, like the coffee, we're just happy for familiar flavors and textures.

(Sorry for the blurry photo, the camera started to die)  We wondered why we were served this yellow sauce with our pizza.  Ian tried it and it turned out to be butter.  Ick.  A group of Koreans (about our age) sat next to us.  I thought that maybe you just use it for the crust or something, but they were dipping their pizza in it with each bits. Granted, their pizza had seafood on it, but come on.  Also, it sucks to be a foreigner here.  People have no shame and will stare, and stare and stare.  Tough to eat dinner through that.  When we first got here, we thought we were being paranoid, but the quiet comments and staring are real. At least little kids just opening gape and say "Whoa!"

They had yogurt and stuff to put in it (mostly cereal) at the salad bar, so Ian and I tried a little.  It wasn't bad, but the yogurt wasn't so great without mixing in the jam and cereal.

We decided to walk home.  It was a nice night and it's a pretty nice walk.

Dickies Ingrish on the way home.  ("Dickies didn't invent fashion cothes/ We stronger-quality/ Cloth service for you")

We rounded a corner near the theatre and found a little arcade.  Later we discovered that it was actually attached to the theatre.  Mostly they had your typical arcade games, but they also had little karaoke booths.

We couldn't resist.  We did Barbara Ann and Gold Digger.  A good mix, I think.

Gold Digger was about twice the speed it should be.  This made it impossible, yet humorous, to sing.

It was fun, awkward and gross.  Those booths are not so clean.

When we were done at the arcade we finished our walk back to the apartment.

My present from Ian: maroon, low-top Chucks.  They don't give you the box when you buy them hear, they just put them in that cute pink bag.  I laced them so they'd be easy to slip on and off since we live in Asia and shoes are not a constant.

The cake!  Two big candles for "20" and three small ones to add "3."

Blowing out the candles in our tiny kitchen.

Success!

Unfortunately, the cake was pretty terrible.  It tasted like white bread, only less flavor.  It's like the baker ran out of sugar and vanilla.  Not so great, considering it was apparently a vanilla cake.

Oh well, it was pretty!

P.S. Family, have some Papa Murphy's for me tonight.  After all, it's still my birthday there. :)