And now the fun begins...

First day of school

Cue scene
School, in the middle of nowhere
No AC
About 200 screaming Korean children
1 foreigner (me)
1 other English speaker
1 self-proclaimed alcoholic principal

Recipe for success.

I walked to my school (which I found by pure dumb luck because I had no directions there) and walked in to be greeted by Danny, and the other teachers and students. They had a morning meeting in the auditorium, where I was pushed on stage to greet them and introduce myself. Then I was shown to my classroom

My class was scheduled to begin at 10:50. Naturally at 930 the bell chimed with my students all in their seats. With no books, no curriculum at hand, and no instruction from the co-teachers, I just had to wing it.

I introduced myself, told them about where I am from, asked them their names, and what they knew about America and what they could tell me about Korea.

Then I opened up the floor for questions.

Students- "teacher how old are you?"
Me-"How old do you think I am?"
S- "100!"
M-"I am 24"
S- "Our teacher is 25!"
M- "cool"
S- "Teacher do you have boyfriend?"
M-"No students, I do not have a boyfriend"
S-"do you like our teacher? He can be your boyfriend!"

Awkwardness ensued.

Of course, I thought it was hilarious and the kids are so adorable. They kept looking at me and miming big eyes with their hands! They also called me lord of the rings because of my abundance of jewelry.

Danny came in and whisked me away to a meeting that apparently was going on at the department of education that I was supposed to attend.

This was where I met all my new Miryang friends!
Most of the other foreigners in this town are from South Africa, and are a blast! We all met up, discussed curriculum, went to dinner, and planned to meet up the next evening with a few other americans and British in the town.

After Pregaming in my apartment with my new south African friends, we pounded 4 bottles of soju, and met up with the others at a chicken restaurant.

Like in turkey, one of the fun things about meetups here are the old school tactics of communication. For example, I got home to my door with a note from my South African neighbor Greg that said "meet outside at 815 for beers with Rich." Its like every day is a secret mission.

We pounded another 6 or 7 bottles of soju at the chicken restaurant and then decided that since it has been a week since my arrival in Korea, we needed to go to a "no ray bang" which is a singing room. Basically, you get a bunch of people together, preferably drunk people, and go to a little room with microphones, a karaoke list, and a tv screen, and a bunch of beers that you smuggle in.

It then deteriorates into a crazy scene of drunken debauchery where people are simultaneously passing out, dancing on seats, and singing bad karaoke songs.

I knew I would like it here.......

A weekend in Busan

OK, before I explain the weekend at the Sand Festival, I must explain a facet of my personality known only as "The G."

Many of you have met The G in the past, or seen The G's antics whether it be online or on stage at a Parliament Funkadelic show. But for those of you who are not familiar with The G, she is my party persona, and when The G is out to party...she goes hard. Not only that, but The G seems to somehow get herself into the craziest of situations.
The G was on hiatus for a little while this past year, but since January she has been back in full force, and lets just say that international boundaries do not hold The G back.
So this weekend was the Sand Festival in Busan...

I went to meet up with a lovely girl who I had connected with through the recruiter I am working with. We met up in Busan and walked around, meeting up with some of her other Teacher friends, and looking at the sand sculptures.

First post-pregaming stop was at "Thursdays Party" which is an acceptable bar to go to on any day of the week. We sat next to a group of Koreans who had just gone to the Busan Giants baseball game. Also, let me rephrase, we sat next to some Koreans and a Japanese girl. We knew she was Japanese because one of the Korean boys kept saying "She is Japanese!!!"

Also, let me interject- gin and tonics here are NOT what I am used to.

But nay, twas not the gin that did me in, for here in Korea they are famous for their Soju, a substance that smells like rubbing alcohol and causes a drunk that is unlike anything else. If there is one thing I am already sure about in Korea, Soju will be my eventual demise.

After Thursdays party we went to "Blue Monkey" a club CRAWLING with foreigners doing crazy things. Naturally I made a b-line to the stage where I spent the majority of the night (when I wasnt on the tables)

Finally it was time to leave, and the scene outside Blue Monkey was just as insane as what was inside. Foreigners crowding the streets, dancing on cars, standing in front of traffic, sleeping outside of stores. I looked around and knew then that coming to Korea was the best idea of my life.

The next morning I decided to travel back to beautiful haeundae beach for a lovely day of self reflection and realization.

"where are you from!" asked the young girl and her mother walking next to me on the sidewalk.

"I am from America" I replied.

"Ahhh I love Engrish!!"

Thus began my day with my new little Korean friends.

They were lovely people, and I introduced myself. They introduced themselves too, but upon hearing their names and struggling for pronunciation, the young girl said I could just call her "Betty."

Betty and her mom were so nice, we walked up the beach and explored the sand festival. At one point they shuttled me into a tent filled with children, I was told to sit down with the children to paint a windchime.

We then went to an observatory on the beach where the second APEC summit was held. It was a breathtaking view of the beach and of Busan. Betty and her mom would point to things and tell me the Korean word, and I would tell them the English equivalent. After a few hours of this, I found I needed to get back to Miryang, and we went to lunch, where Betty's mother told me I was her new sister, followed by a tearful goodbye at the train station.

I recently received an email from Betty inviting me back for dinner with her family. I can't wait!

Off to the next adventure

May 29th, 2012

So some of you may now know that I am currently jetsetting off to South Korea. After the strangest 6 months of my life culminated into the most bizarre May on the record, I have accepted a position as a public school ESL teacher in Miryang, or "secret sunshine."

Similar to my position in Turkey, I will be spending my days living ethnically ambiguous in a country with a homogenous facebook-obsessed population and a tumultuos past history.

Also, I may not have completely thought this one through.

The good news is that I have not (yet) been kidnapped and sold into the sex slave industry, surviving on the only hope that Liam Neison will come save me...

I arrived in Busan and was met by my petite British recruiter Alistair, who is fabulously English. He took me to my hotel where I was to meet him the following day at 9am sharp. I fell asleep after a 26 hour journey to the Korean home shopping network.

In the morning, Alistair, myself, and 2 other teachers rallied together to go to the education office where we were to meet our Korean co-teachers, or rather, my new built in best friend. His name is "Danny", he barely speaks english, and he wears a vest. Needless to say, the odds were in my favor in this one.

Danny took my paperwork and instructed me that we will be going to get my health check. We rolled out of the education office bumpin to flo-ridas "low" and discussed our mutual liking of drinking, dancing and shopping. The health check was....interesting, as I had to pee in a Dixie cup and then get weight, height, eyes, ears, etc checked in front of an audience of people who were also waiting for their check. To clear things up, I didn't pee in the dixie cup in front of everyone....

My historically small veins were massacred during my "blood correction" which involved 5 minutes of being multiply stabbed by a syringe (wait until you see my Bruise!).

After assuring the doctor I had no diseases, Danny and I left on route to Busan where I would get my alien registration card. We talked in the car of many things: hometowns, music, dating life, sports. I even explained to him the meaning of "piece of me" by Brittany Spears.

Finally it was time to bring me to my new home, which is situated in Miryang, a small city completely surrounded by mountains and cut in half by a large river. We stopped at the side of the road to pick up a seemingly random Korean girl, who i then found out was "Lizzy", another English teacher at one of the 3 schools I will be teaching at. They were both very kind, helping me move in and promising we would all party soon, but I had to get some sleep first.
I woke up at 3:30 am Korean time and unpacked all of my stuff in my new bachelorette pad. After getting ready, I began what I like to call "the Korean hunger games."

In many of the larger cities, English signage is quite prevalent. In Miryang,the only sign I have found thus far is for a restaurant called "chicken for my family" and because my family is halfway around the world, I decided to skip this one.

Many of the restaurants seemed closed and/or guaranteed to give me food poisoning. I wandered my way into an open door with clean tables and immediately realized that I had absolutely no command over even the basic of Korean phrases. So instead, I smiled, motioned that I wanted food, sat down and hoped for the best.

The nice korean man prepared some sort of cold noodle dish, even showing me how to eat it, and laughed at the stupid American as she fumbled with the chopsticks until he brought me a fork. I "kamsahamnida"ed him as I continued on my journey of city exploration.

Solid first 48 hours.

I am the 99%

OK so I know it has been ages since I have posted, and there is a perfectly good reason for that! You see, I had to grow up, I had to find a job, and I had to do other super time consuming things that took priority over writing blog posts that next to no one reads....

But I have felt compelled to begin writing again, why you may ask? Because I am part of the 99%.

I am sure many of you are familiar with the "Occupy Wall Street/ Boston" movement. When it first began, I know myself, like many others, walked past groups of protesters on our way to our daily 9 to 5 grind, thinking "Oh wow, it seems as though hempfest has come early this year..."

But here is the thing, I cannot participate in the Occupy movement. I cannot sit and hold signs. I cannot give up my day's wage to try and get my voice heard. I have to get on a train in to the city at 7 AM to work until I can get home at 7 PM and there is nothing I can do about it. But I want to be heard too.

This past summer I started a new job. This was after being semi- unemployed for 3 months, and before that, being under-employed at a failing organization that I needed to leave to preserve my sanity. So I started my new job, and while it was not ideal, and did not pay nearly enough for the amount of work I was doing, I didn't complain, because I saw so many of my peers either waiting tables to pay off their college loans, or not even lucky enough to have a job at all.

Well, last week, I was told I am essentially getting laid off.

So here I stand again, on the brink of unemployment, a year out of college, and part of the 99% that is getting royally screwed over by everyone else.

A year ago, I had just came back from working abroad for 8 months, preceded by an immersion course in Armenia, a stint on Capitol Hill, and a string of other positions that have consistently kept me employed since I was 15. I am a cum laude a top 100 ranked university (#69- giggle), adept at language acquisition (both French and some Turkish), and hell, I can argue the turkish-armenian negotiation, the arab-israeli conflict, and the irrelevance of "Keeping up with the Kardashians" with the best of them. When I came home from Turkey, I applied to every restaurants and retail shop in the area, just to get some interim work. Not one of them even called me back. Not one.

Meanwhile, I pay over $600 dollars a month for student loans, loans with interest rates that should be considered criminal. Interest rates that will keep me in debt for an additional 10 years or more longer than I should have to be in debt. Rates that I, a 23 year old-about to be unemployed- recent college grad have to pay to big businesses who bought my loans and now control my ability to get any credit financing, future loans or general well being.

I got great grades in high school, I got into a great college, I did everything I was supposed to do, and now myself and so many others are under employed, un-employed, or living paycheck to paycheck with our daily motivation exponentially decreasing. It sucks, I am pissed, and there is NOTHING I can do about it.

Capitalism and democracy has backfired on us. The mistakes of the preceding generation's big business have caused mile high unemployment rates, a depressing recession, and a daily fear that today will be your last day at work. So now, people like me across the country, have had to go to our last resort. We have to literally stand outside buildings hoping to be seen.

There are easy criticisms to make about this movement. Call them radical bleeding heart liberals. Call them lazy unemployed losers. Sure, there are some of them tucked in the corners of the sidewalks, but if you can't step back and see the current inequality in today's society between the corporations and individuals, the growing gap between the classes, than you are probably a 1 percenter.Talk to protesters and they all have a different story, they all focus on a different issue, and they all feel slighted by what's been going on in this country. Don't get me wrong, I love living in the US. I wouldn't trade my passport for anything. I have been in countries where people wouldn't even dream of demonstrating like this, or be able to achieve success without bribing the right officials. There is beauty in America. It just looks like a skanky whore right now.

Tuesday I have to go to work. Who knows, maybe it will be my last week there. Maybe they will have a change of heart, find additional funding, and decide they won't lay me off after all. This isn't about jumping on some hippie bandwagon protest, this is about all of us getting what we worked so hard for...justice and equality. And if you disagree with me, thats fine, because we live in a country of rights, freedoms, and hell... I probably don't like you anyways.

The Holiday Spirit....aka- school vacation

Alot of my friends, and myself, have been feeling a bit disconnected to the holidays this year. I don't have the typical jingle in my step, the obsession with all things christmas. Hell, I haven't even really been listening to christmas music all that much (albeit for the continuous playing of that damn mariah carey song which I can't seem to escape).

So this morning, as I took the train into work, I wondered why I didn't feel as connected to the jollyness of the season. Yes, I have had a stressful past few months transitioning home and dealing with unexpected life issues, but I don't think thats what it is....

I don't get christmas vacation anymore.

Now that I am a real person with a job, I don't get the typical 2 weeks off that I have grown so used to in my life. Since elementary school, we have grown up knowing that this time of year provided at least a week and a half of carefree time to spend with your family and friends. This is when we usually all gather in one spot and drink copious amounts of rum-infused eggnog. This is the time that we enjoy every moment of the day...because we usually sleep until 3 in the afternoon each day and need to make up for lost time.

But no, this year, I am a real person, and christmas falls on a saturday. I have to work all week, and celebrate this year as a weekend holiday.

Granted, I shouldn't complain. I mean Santa works 364 days a year just for this one moment of glory...

Happy Holidays all!

-G

The Liberal Clause

http://blogtown.portlandmercury.com/BlogtownPDX/archives/2010/11/03/read-the-tea-party-childrens-book-about-how-obama-stole-christmas-no-really



literally....I am speechless

Sorry Deer!

So this weekend...major traumatic events ensued.

I went to go meet up with some of my lovely Armenian chicks (note the fact that one girl is actually Indian) at Karoun, a lovely middle-eastern restaurant in Newton. We laughed, we reminisced, we danced....it was a wonderful night, one of those nights that you didn't think anything would go wrong...

So then I left Karoun, on my way to go meet up with one of my dearest friends, Steph, who was back for the weekend from New York City. Excited to hear all about her adventures, the hometown crew decided we would all meet at Bar Louie to catch up...and by catch up we really mean binge drink.

I was driving back from Newton down 95 south, thinking of which cocktail I would have first...when I saw it.

A big Man-Deer....which I later found out is called a Buck....was climbing over the guardrail. Now, I was driving down 95 south, probably going at least 70 miles an hour, and I knew things were not going to end well for one of us.

I saw Bambi climb the rail, and then boom...he charged. He was running right towards me! Now I have had close calls with deer before, mostly on back roads, but I have always been able to stop in time, but not this time.

I was in the fast lane, and there were other cars behind me so I couldn't swerve. And I couldn't tell whether it would be better to brake harder or gun-it faster to avoid the thing and BOOM.......I killed Bambi.

I pulled over to the side of the highway, where a man in a Tow-truck stopped to make sure I was OK. I saw the deer back on the highway, kicking it's final kick, and that was when I broke down.

I have always been an animal lover, and while animals have not always loved me back, I always get sad when one dies....especially because of my doing. This, all on the heels of my darling hamster Muffin untimely passing last week, has obviously thrown me into a severe depression.

While my brothers were concerned with whether or not I brought the deer back home in my truck, I was concerned whether or not the deers family would be waiting for him to come back home (My dad later told me that it's mating season and the Dad deer don't take care of the Baby Deer, thank god).

It was after all this, and a barrage of questions from my concerned relatives, that I realized I was also happy that I wasn't killed. Mostly because, I plan on ending my life in a blaze of glory, fighting the good fight, standing up for the injustices in the world! ...not to be squished by a horny deer.

That's all folks!

Annie G.