Sleeping with the fan on

This is a picture of King Sejong, a famous 16th century Korean king. He is most noted for inventing Hangul, which is the Korean alphabet. It's a relatively scientific and clever alphabet and can be learned in an afternoon by someone quick and motivated:


This was a building across the street from the statue of King Sejong. It is in a neighborhood called Yeouido. There are several TV stations located there, so there are often famous people tooling around Yeouido's parks (the Han River park being the most notable), restaurants and PC Bangs. One of my students told me about a time that he and his friends were in a PC Bang and played Starcraft with some boy band.


Here are two of my students ... Jihoon (left) and James (right). Jihoon is quiet and very bright. He's not afraid to make a mistake and he learns quickly. James is loud, frequently obnoxious, troublesome, and a constant disruption to the students around him ... and he's one of my favorite students. He used to wear inline skates to class. He's the one that was racing through the school and banged into a desk and said "Ahhh .... SICK!" (sick and hurt both map to the same Korean word ... ah-pu-da)


Here's a closeup of Jihoon's shirt:


Here's another student, HyeeJoong. She and I had class together and it was just the two of us. Her English is good enough that I could get an idea of what kind of person she was and we could tell each other simple stories. She said she wanted to take a picture of me, and I said okay but then I would take one of her. The first picture of her, she was sitting at her desk with a little plastic smile and her hands folded. Then, she leaned forward to get a better look at my digital camera and that's when I snapped this one. We had a good laugh at it, but it was definitely the better picture.

Right now, I'm in a PC Bang (internet cafe).  I will go back to class soon, but I spent my 90 minute break here.  It will cost me about a buck.

When I get back, I have a speaking class with Sarah, one of the most advanced students in the school.  She's also the director's daughter and spent 3 years in Arizona.  Her English is on par with native speakers her age (she's 13 or 14).  I'm going to teach her about good storytelling for the last week that I have her.  Using your voice, coming up with synonyms to make your story more interesting and using a book of quotations to get ideas from people before you.

The other day when I need to pick up Katrina's mom, Yun Jung not only agreed to come with me ... she brought her mom's car and DROVE us all down to Taegu.  Katrina was surprised, to say the least.  We made the 4 hour drive in only 6 hours and hung out for a little bit when we got there.

Katrina arranged to have us stay in the suite next to her.  The suite normally goes for 390,000 won (about $350) a night, but we got it for 45,000 Won.  Go Katrina! 

I hated the hotel room.  The way the lights and stuff worked was that you had to put your key in this special slot, and when it was in there all the lights went on.  When you took it out, none of the lights would work.  Including the bathroom light.  Also, you couldn't turn the lights on and off individually.  So there was no way to ... say, see where you were peeing in the bathroom without turning on all the lights in the place.  A retarded monkey with a case of beer could have designed a better electrical system.  "On" and "Off" is just not fine enough control for most people.

It dawned on me the other day when I was eating that some people might not be familar with eating Korean food in a Korean way.  Usually, everyone gets the same thing.  If you're eating "Sam gyap sal" and there are 3 of you, you get 2-4 orders (depending on how hungry everyone is).  The waitress brings out the "panjan" (side dishes of all kinds) and sometimes the main dish at the same time.  Then you light the grill (there is a grill in the middle of almost every table in every restaurant in Korea ... some are gas, some are woodburning, and some use charcoal), and put the meat on the grill.  You can also put on some peppers, garlic, and onions as you see fit.  You turn the meat (here in Korea, sometimes you cut it up with scissors yourself, sometimes they do it for you) and eat it when you're ready.

With most "sal" dishes, you dip the meat in a slightly salty, yet VERY tasty sauce.  Then you put the meat in lettuce, add some of these leafy things that are covered with another tasty sauce, add some rice and maybe a hot pepper, and then top it off with a bit of red pepper paste.  Then you wrap it all up in the lettuce into a little "treat" and pop the whole thing into your mouth.  You can add things from the panjan, too, if you want.  And sometimes the lettuce is tiny, so you eat the rice and panjan while the food is in your mouth.

Kalbi is kind of the same, but without the sauce.  In that case, the meat is marinated in a "yang-nyeom" sauce, which is AWESOME. 

With "chigae" (stew), you just alternate between shovelling stew and rice into your mouth. 

Eating in Korea is, by far, my favorite part.  The culture is interesting, the people are friendly, the sights are interesting ... but it all comes down to the food for me.  Even if I hated everything about Korea, I would still love the food.

So Katrina's mom's flight plans got messed up due to some delays, and she won't be able to get into Seoul in time to make her connecting flight to Taegu, so Katrina asked me to go to the airport, pick her up, and get her to the Seoul train station and help her buy a ticket to Taegu.  No problem.  Well, Yun Jung and her friends and I had plans for this evening, but Katrina NEEDS help.

So, I told Yun Jung and she, understandably, got mad.  But, Katrina's my friend, she's been my friend for a long time, and I've given up friends for girlfriends before (sorry Sabina), and it won't ever happen again.

So, I can't count on having Yun Jung's help tonight.  That's too bad, but she has to understand that I HAVE to do this.

I publish my blog to my own site.  Many people that use blogger to write their blogs get them hosted for free at blogspot.com.

I noticed that one person that commented on one of my posts had a blog on blogspot, and I tried to go check it out, but could never get to it.   I didn't think about it much, but then I tried to get to my roommate's old blog.  No luck.  I tried other blogspot blogs.  Nothing.  So I emailed blogspot to see what's up, and mentioned that I'm in South Korea.

It turns out that the South Korean government blocks blogspot pages from coming into their country.  That's very interesting.

Anyway, mystery solved.  I will check out the blogs when I get home.

Speaking of which, I bought a ticket very recently, but Yun Jung and I talked about maybe coming back a few days earlier because of some shadiness that went on at my hagwon today.

It will all be okay, one way or another.

The other day someone asked me why I came here to Korea.  I told them "Kun-yeong", which just means "No Reason."  Really, it is because life should be lived interestingly or not at all.

I went to a temple with Yun Jung.  It was downtown, and I think it was in the KangNam region (which literally means "South of the River" ... Kang = "river", Nam = "South").  It was interesting how this temple was tucked away downtown, and when you're downtown it was tough to see the temple and when you were in the temple you forgot that you were downtown.
 
Here is a picture of the temple from the street.  Only part of 1 building is at all visible, and at this point I had no idea how sprawling the temple complex was. 

 
Approaching the temple, I was a little surprised to see an inverted swastika, but then I remembered that the ACTUAL meaning of a swastika is basically good luck or good fortune and that its association with the Nazis was merely an unfortunate side effect of the Nazis attempt to wipe out pretty much the rest of the world.  I can understand how people might take offense at that.

 
Along one of the walking paths, I saw this tucked away.

 
Here is a HUGE statue of a Buddhist scholar.  You can see Yun Jung in the picture.

 
Here is an ajumma praying at the base of that same statue.  The statue was resting on a large stone slab, maybe about the size of a baseball diamond.

 
This is a little fountain in the same stone patio area as the statue.

 
Lastly, here are some paper lanterns.  When people really want something, they buy a paper lantern and write their names on it and hang it up.

I got an email from my old recruiter in Philly.  He has a gig open in NYC for someone like me.  If it's independant consulting again, I'm totally into that.
 
To be a consultant, you have to be 1 part programmer, 1 part politician, and 1 part sniper.  When there is that kind of money floating around, everyone wants a piece of it.  You're either the big shark, or the tiny fish that gets eaten.  The daily struggles to survive, the round after round of layoffs, the backbiting politics, the impossible projects, the pressure of it all ...
 
... I miss it.  I feel like Martin Sheen in "Apocalypse Now."  "I just couldn't wait to get back into the jungle."

So I get to my school today, and the director tells me pretty much not to talk to the kids any more. I'm just supposed to play the tapes and make sure that they have lots of chances to listen to the inane conversations repeatedly. I think to myself, "why hire a native speaker of English? Why not get a Korean to do that? Or a reasonably advanced monkey?" I look at her, not asking any questions, and she decides to explain further.

It's because the kids are only tested on listening, so that's all I'm supposed to teach.

Let me repeat that, because it's important.

The kids are only tested on listening, so that's all I'm supposed to teach.

Am I teaching English? Nope. I'm teaching "listening to canned English phrases." I might be better off taking a class to teach my kids how to play the tapes themselves, and then taking up a hobby such as hang gliding or smoking.

I am now a paid babysitter.

And yesterday, our schedules were completely changed ... about 45 minutes before we had to teach 7 or 8 classes in a row. Aaaaahhhhhwhat?

I have no stress anymore. I have entered the world of educational apathy. I love my kids ... they're my favorite people here in Korea, but I can't teach them any more. I can't really talk to them. I can't really care about them any more.

I now understand how Koreans can take English class for 10 years, go to English acadamies like mine, and still not be able to speak any more English than I learned of Korean in 9 months. You know who's to blame?

The mothers.

That's right. The mothers. They push these kids into English acadamies and then demand that the acadamies NOT teach them English. The mandate to not talk to the kids came from the mothers. Some of these kids spend about 80 hours a week in school, in acadamies, or studying. And during exam week the kids aren't allowed to sleep for more than two hours. Who says this? The mothers.

I've known this for a while, but now it affects my daily life. Just another reason to dislike the ajumma.

I saw the palace from which the last Korean kings ruled Korea. It was beautiful, but I forgot my camera. Since it cost less than a buck to go there, I will go back and take pictures.

In other news, I'm buying my plane ticket back to New York tomorrow. Yun Jung called a travel agent and we're faxing over my passport info tomorrow (along with credit card info in a more secure way). Since this is Korea, they will call back and say "oh yes, you also need *insert some irrelevant document that I don't have here* before we can take the absolutely absurd amount of money that we require for this ticket". Yun Jung refuses to talk to another travel agent, and I know that if I get my ticket on Expedia something will go wrong (because it's Korea, and something ALWAYS goes wrong).

How many people ever payed over 1.6 million ANYTHINGs for a plane ticket?

I was coming home from Kyobo Bookstore yesterday afternoon and I saw some ajoshi wearing a Cowboys hat! Damn him! Of all the things he could be wearing ... why the damn Cowboys?

Oh well. Kyobo books is cool because it's one of the few places that has a large English language book section. You take English bookstores for granted when you live in New York, because whenever you're in downtown Manhattan, you're never more than 10 blocks from a Barnes and Nobles. I can't order on Amazon, because I don't really have an address (I think I talked about addresses before).

I geeked out and picked up a couple of "Dragonlance" books that I had really enjoyed when I was in high school. Yun Jung picked up a book with Korean-English vocabulary organized into semi-logical groups for me. It was very thoughtful of her. She also got one for Katrina.

This is one of the most expensive Korean dishes (about $20-25 per portion) both here and in New York, but the recipe is both simple and cheap.

You need about 3 pounds of beef short ribs, 2 garlic cloves, 2 cups of soy sauce, 1 cup of sugar and about a tablespoon of seasame oil. Probably less.

You probably also want rice, black pepper and sesame seeds, and you can use half a kiwi for this, too.

STEP 1 -- THE MEAT

Cut the meat off of the bones, and then cut the fat off of the meat, leaving thin strips of beef. Make slices in the strips against the grain. This helps it marinade.

STEP 2 -- THE MARINADE

This is more of an art than a science. I actually never measure anything, but I've had kalbi maybe 40 times and I used to make it frequently when I lived in the Bronx.

Cut up the garlic into very thin slices and add to a mixing bowl. Add the soy sauce. Add the sugar, and then the sesame oil. I put in enough to make a thin layer of sesame oil across the top of the soy sauce. Mix it up and taste it. You'll know if you've got too much of something.

STEP 3 -- MARINADING

Marinade the beef for about 2 hours. Some places marinade overnight, but 2 hours aught to be sufficient for "ghetto fabulous galbi". I put the beef in a container, pour enough marinade to cover the meat, and them mix it up with my hands to let the marinade soak into the meat.

STEP 4 -- COOK

Put the meat onto the broiler for a few minutes, turning it from time to time. You can also use a grill.

You probably want rice. Get Japanese sticky rice, wash it about 7 times and put it in a rice cooker with a little more water than rice.

OPTIONS --

With the marinade, you can add some sesame seeds and black pepper. These are good ideas. You can also add a bit of kiwi, or alternately rub the meat with a kiwi to help tenderize it. I have heard of people adding some wine or Coke to the marinade. Experiment.

You can also use some leftover marinade and cook vegetables in it. I have done this with string beans and peas, although peas are tough to eat with chopsticks.

You ARE gonna eat this with chopsticks, RIGHT?!

I will experiment more with this recipe when I get back to New York.

I saw Cabaret in Seoul last night. Since my friend is the star of the show, Yun Jung and I got one of the 8 tables and we got the one front and center. There was a Korean pop star sitting next to us, but I don't remember her name. We saw a commercial featuring her right before we left for the show. She's about as popular here as Britney Spears or Madonna is in the US. Afterwards, we went to a bar with the cast of the show and hung out. Then we went to Itaewon, but I just wasn't feeling it, so Yun Jung and I bolted for Mokdong.

Yesterday, I saw two things I never saw before in Korea. The first was someone washing their hands after they went to the bathroom, and the second was someone holding a door open for someone else.

Okay, Spiderman 2 got surprisingly bad reviews from a lot of people. I'm not one to challenge peoples' opinions, but they are flat-out wrong. This movie builds on the strengths of the comics ... namely the Peter Parker character. The movie made me really happy.

I saw the movie with Yun Jung yesterday. We went there, we saw TopGal park, where the March 1st independence movement started. There was an old guy there passing out flyers, in English, about some of the different memorials and artifacts in the park. It was obvious that he was part of the independence movement when he was younger. He showed us some pictures of himself in Hokkaido. I tried to speak to him in Korean, but I think he was almost totally deaf.

Then we went to a pretty cool restaurant in Yun Jung's old stomping ground and then checked out her college. It looked like any American university, except with gates. The gates were always open and we could just walk right in. In China, there are gates on the universities, but they are to keep the students in. Then, when there is a student protest, they just lock the gates and that way the Chinese government has to shoot fewer students.

Oh, and I saw an anti-war, anti-Bush rally today, too. It's strange because I am not a supporter of George Bush, but when people ask me about him while I'm here I almost feel like I should support him as the President. So, I just don't talk about it because anything I say would be a lie.

Some of my posts have seemed somewhat negative towards Koreans and Korea. I in no way feel that way. There are things about Korea and Koreans that I find very strange and startling, and many times stressful, but I don't hate it here and I don't hate Koreans. I may never come to love all of the Korean customs, but I don't hate them, either.

Every time I've met a Korean and had a chance to speak with them, they've been wonderful, helpful, friendly people. And there are many Korean customs that I wish I could take back with me to New York.

I just wanted that on the record.

K-Rage is a term I heard today to describe the feeling that you get when you encounter the NUMEROUS things that are strange here in Korea and just the overall inability to get things done. It's a good term, and I was K-Ragin today. It was pretty bad. I tried to buy a subway ticket but they wouldn't give me one and then some older guy pushed me out of the way to get in line. I was about ready to twist his big 'ole head right off.

Then I wanted to have "sam-gyap-sal" for lunch, but Yun Jung laughed at me and told me that people don't eat that for lunch in Korea.

Well ... fuck them, then.

When I get back to New York, I'm going to eat WHATEVER I want. WHENEVER I want it. I'm going to walk into a restaurant at 8:15am and order a fried chicken patty sandwich with peanut butter and meringue between two slices of pepperoni pizza ... and they'll f**king give it to me. Goddamn it, if I want a freeze pop wrapped in fruit roll-ups with habanero sauce on it, I should be able to get it somewhere.

So, anyway, that's K-Rage.

I went up to Incheon airport last night to pick up Yun Jung. I got there way too early, but I always do that, especially when it takes me 5 minutes to ask someone for directions. So I bought a copy of "The DaVinci Code" from the bookstore (they had maybe 25 books in English). It was like $11 but I paid it and didn't care. So I met Yun Jung and we came back to Mokdong together for a few hours.

It was strange walking around town with her. The stares were OPEN now, not as hidden. Conversations would stop when we walked by. I could just feel peoples' eyes on us. It was strange.

In other news, I got an email from Joo Hee about when she first moved to New York from Korea and went through a lot of the same things that I'm going through here. She's so cool. I want to try to hang out with her, Gabriel, and Yun Jung one weekend ... maybe a long lunch somewhere.

All day today I alternated between cleaning up my apartment and napping. Yun Jung gets here tomorrow, so KiSook and I are going to go to Incheon airport to meet her and we'll come back here to Mokdong.

This apartment was spotless when I got here, and this morning it looked like a single guy lived here for a month with no restraining influences on him. I'm surprised at how much better it looks already. All that's left is to pick up some of my clothes and throw them in the washer and then sweep the floor.

So it seems that my survival strategy for this week has been to avoid random encounters with Koreans. I've either been in my apartment, out with American/Korean groups, or out with my Korean friends. I meant to go exploring the city, but I really don't want to. I'll do that on weekends with KiSook and Yun Jung.

I might go out with Patrick for some Yum Yum Chicken later. That's not what it's called, but it kind of sounds like that and so I call it that. It's boneless chicken on a stick covered in a spicy, tasty sauce.

Anyone out there on orkut?

Okay, this has nothing to do with life in Korea, or at least I am not plannig that it will. But I'm here in my apartment in Mokdong, looking out the window at a fairly impressive Seoul cityscape (it's not a Manhattan cityscape, but it's pretty cool).

One year ago, I was living in the Bronx at C's house, although she wasn't there. It was obnoxiously hot, and I was working a lot from home. Our room was effectively a greenhouse, letting in light and heat but not letting any of it out. The upstairs was unbearable unless I pointed the fan straight at myself all the time. The neighbors would turn on loud Indian techno music, but would turn it down or off after about 2 minutes. It was very strange. Johnson and I were in full swing with UMU, and I was starting to plan out the new 700Level.

Like I said, C wasn't there. She was away working at the summer camp. She would call about once a week and start a screaming fight with me over the phone. So, needless to say, my nights were very stressful because either I was expecting her to call and fight with me, or she would call and ruin my night. Seeing each other was better, because we would fight early and then she would collapse, exhausted, and pass out for a few hours.

What the hell was I thinking?

Right around this time, I found the apartment in the East Village. I put a deposit down on it and contacted Marisa. I moved in at the end of July and I have to say that my life significantly changed for the better with that apartment. It sounds dumb and only has a little to do with moving out of the Bronx, but that apartment changed a lot of things.

For one thing, it is right downtown. Right in the thick of things. I mean, one day I left my apartment and there was one of the guys from "Queer Eye For the Straight Guy" about 30 feet from my building (later, the whole cast was there). "Temple" has become part of my life to the point where I can just stop by to say hello and not eat. During the blackout, people just came to my place and hung out/crashed there.

Another thing is the back yard, which makes my apartment hands-down the best place in New York for parties. There have been a number of hardcore ragers there, and only one ended in disaster (C was involved, otherwise it would have been one of the better ones). Sure, there's been a few minor injuries, some people have passed out on the patio, but the bleeding has been minimal. And once we took the batteries out of the smoke detector (sorry, Marisa, that was me) we didn't have to worry about that anymore.

That's about it for what I was up to a year ago. I've come a LONG LONG way since then, and this post doesn't do justice to the things that have happened to and around me. People have left my life and I miss them. Some have left and it's for the best. Some have come back (here I am thinking specifically of Sabina ... I'm going to email her right after I finish this), and some interesting new people have come into my life.

In New York, unlike any other place I've been, things happen so fast. You know how you have a crazy week or month where things just change so fast? That's life in New York all the time.

Yesterday, KiSook called me and told me that she and SeokHyee were hanging out. Having been inside for 2 straight days, I went to go meet them. We had a few beers and some food (including chicken feet ... strange texture) and went to NoRaeBang and then split up. I went back home, nearly falling asleep on the subway.

I had been home for 5 minutes and hadn't even checked my email when Katrina called. She was going out dancing and inviting me along. I put my shoes back on and headed out again and 45 minutes later I was at the Seoul Plaza Hotel. We loaded up 2 taxis with Katrina, one of her friends from the show, the Korean guy that runs the lights, one of his friends, and James, the translator. I'm not sure where we went, but we had some food and soju at a little bar and then went to the nightclub at 1:30am.

It wasn't too full, so we pretty much took over the dancefloor for the rest of the night. There was us and then about 6 groups of Korean girls there for the rest of the night. They would come and dance with us for a while and then get embarrassed and then go off somewhere else. It was a good time, but it was too loud to talk to anyone, really. They played mostly hip hop, but we got about an hour and a half of some good club house music from the US.

They served tons of Budweiser, and several of our group went to the bathroom to throw up throughout the night (soju can do that to you).

The club shut down at 5am, so we went back to the Hotel and hung out for a while. I crashed with Katrina, but I was supposed to meet SeokHyee at 11am. There was no way that I was going to be in any kind of shape to study, so I figured that I would wake up at 9:30 (that was the plan, as that's when breakfast at the hotel is) and send her a text message.

Well, at 10:52am, my phone beeped when SeokHyee text messaged me saying she'd be 20 minutes late. I put my shoes on and staggered out into the daylight and caught a cab back to Mokdong. The guy spoke no English, so I had to give him all the directions in Korean. I don't know how to say "go straight" so I had to say, "go this direction some more".

All-in-all the best night so far in Korea.

Sometimes, Koreans like to remind people that Korea has 4 distinct seasons and 5000 years of history. The fact that human life thrives best in regions with 4 distinct seasons doesn't seem to diminish their pride in that fact. God bless their little hearts.

And they are also rightly proud of their 5000 years of history. Of course, it starts with God turning a bear into human and mating with her, producing Tan Gun, the legendary founder of Korea (the date for this is placed at around 2334-2333BC). That is their creation myth. We don't have one in the United States. We could use one. I mean, we've got that whole Theory of Evolution and stuff, which is cool in that monkeys are involved, but it doesn't have the same punch as the Korean creation myth (they call it a myth, by the way).

So yeah, 5000 distinct seasons and 4 years of history.

I went to Family Mart to pick up some food and something to drink because the typhoon should come through here tonight, and I asked the guy for a bag. He tacked on 20 Won to the price. Fortunately, I had heard about this before, that they charge you for a bag if you want one. Twenty Won is about 2 cents.

It's just one of those things that you take for granted elsewhere. In a small town or at a little family owned bodego, if I was surprised by this and brought the bag back next time, they'd probably throw in a coke or something that they think I'd like.

"service"

But yeah, typhoon on the way tonight. It's supposed to rain a couple of inches I guess, or something like that, so I think mostly only foreigners that can't understand Korean well enough to watch the weather will be out tonight.

I asked some people on a messageboard that I go to a lot how they deal with racism if they ever had to. I assume that 100% of them haven't, but one guy had the best answer ever:

"I laugh, laugh, laugh. Then I write erotic vampire fiction about them."

Last night I went out with KiSook and her friend (I can't remember her name off the top of my head). It was one of the worst "Bad Korea Days" that I'd had. I nearly left. So when I told KiSook that I was planning to leave, she said "come to the neighborhood where I work. We'll have dinner with one of my friends and have a good time before you leave." So I went.

We went to a restaurant and ate SamGae Tal, which is pork (I believe ... it's best not to ask), this mac daddy sauce, these vegetables with another mac daddy sauce and kimchi and lettuce. And we had soju. A LOT of soju. I had to make a stop to the bathroom to throw up at one point, which is pretty normal for Korea. You just go to the bathroom, puke up some kimchi, and then go back to the table and eat and drink more. Koreans, especially the men, learn how to walk drunk at an early age (Katrina made a Korean boyfriend, and he told her all about this).

Then we went to a noraebang where I was a shamefully enthusiastic participant. I think I did a couple of Guns N Roses songs, an Eminem song, maybe some REM, maybe some Simon and Garfunkle, and Paint It Black (twice, for some reason). The girls did mostly Korean songs. It was a lot of fun. I think that we were there for about an hour. Then we went to a Mexican restaurant and then I went home. I could only get halfway home on the subway before it close (yes, the f**king subway stops running around midnight), and then I had to try to get a taxi in the pouring rain.

The taxi drivers wouldn't pick me up because I wasn't Korean, and I almost got into a fight with one who refused to take me when he saw that I was "waygook" which means "foreigner." He was yelling at me in Korean and I called him "like a dog" which is the only korean insult I know. Eventually I got home, and Yun Jung talked me out of buying a plane ticket for 11am today.

Then tonight I went to see Katrina. She wound up with an extra ticket to the opening night of "Rent" here in Seoul. It was all in Korean, but it was still really good. We hung out, went to the show with the rest of the cast of "Cabaret" and then went back to the hotel. A few of us had a drink at the hotel bar, and I spent my time mostly talking to the bartender, who was Korean, in Korean. She said that she sees lots of waygooks, but none that could speak Korean.

Then it was time to get a taxi again. I got one, and the driver was pretty cool. We talked in Korean the whole time, and he even apologized for not knowing any English. I guess that he's 71 and a grandfather and has been driving a taxi for a while. We talked about food, and he was surprised when I told him that I love spicy food and kimchi chigae in particular. Koreans are always pleasantly surprised when you tell them that you like spicy food.

So tonight was pretty good. It was good to speak English and be understood.

I got this in an email:

"- Realize that when you're back home, even the bad times will be remembered with fondness. 'That which doesn't kill you will make you stronger.' In fact, the bad stories are more interesting to tell than the good ones!!"

I thought about it today, and I know that no matter how bad things get here, I will miss it when I get back to New York. There is really no place else like Korea (the same can be said about New York, too) and it's an interesting time to be here as the younger generation begins to leave college and start in the real world. There will be big changes in Korean culture over the next few years. With the gaping generation gap, and the younger generation entering society as participants and not observers, things will change here. I think these days are the first days of the epilogue of "Old Korea" and after some changes "New Korea" will emerge.

This is not a bad thing, though. I think about the World War 2 generation upon whose backs the United States as we know is was built. They might not have been ready to enact such sweeping changes as civil rights for minorties and women and many social reforms of the 60s and 90s, but they cleared the way for the generations that could do them. The same will be true here in Korea. The ajumma of today are not ready to change Korean culture, but the kids that I'm teaching are. I have about 30 students, and probably 10 of them spent time in other countries. I have kids that have lived in Australia, New Zealand, Pheonix, and Toronto, all for upwards of a year.

President Roh ran on a platform of increased seperation from the US, and the US is pulling 1/3 of its troops out of here and removing the rest from Seoul. For the first time, the DMZ will be guarded only by Koreans. Korea has been rapidly entering the rest of the world and is now trying to stand on its own feet. Korea is going to go through cultural convulsions of the magnitude of what we went through in the United States since September 11, 2001. They'll just do it a little slower, but it's starting.

And I'm here for it.