A Day in the Life of

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We find ourselves waist deep in one of those ‘tweener seasons. Almost everywhere has this phenomenon at one time or another; the time of year that is no longer the cool clear days of endless autumn color on the mountainsides, yet you cannot go out and enjoy the recreation that the winter provides you. It’s not one or the other- it’s ‘tween both seasons, hence my name for it.

Because of this, things have kind of slowed down for us over here. We aren’t braving the biting cold to explore the temples or parks of the area as much as we have been. We are, however, having a blast singing our heads off at the No Rae Bongs and spending more time getting to know our fellow native English speakers.

As far as news goes, My co-teacher, the famous Mr. Kim, is recovering well from a recent surgery that removed his gall bladder and we have. He was having stomach pain for some time and finally had it checked out. The ski resorts are starting to open up around here, mostly all man made snow, but skiing nonetheless. In fact, our first snow fell in Yeoju last night! Also, Cass and I have pretty much settled on visiting the Philippines at the end of January. Borocay Island is far too much to pass up, I’m looking at getting my scuba certification there, and there’s a mountain just north of Manila, Mt. Pinatubo, which erupted in 1991, that I want to summit and go for a swim in the crater lake- all just ideas right now, but we are looking forward to it.

This passed weekend we soaked up the Yeoju culture as much as possible. Friday night we attended a recorder concert a teacher at Cass' school invited us to. Recorders, in many American minds, evokes images of a musty, dank room in the far corner of an elementary school basement, being forced to blow through what looked like an elongated whistle. This, as with many other things, was hardly the case. Sarah, the musician, played the bass recorder (and we found out soprano, as well) in a four part harmony with over ten other people. It definitely gave me visions of a huskier Jon Wick huffing and puffing through a neon colored recorder in Ms. Glinki's third grade music class, but was quite beautiful and enjoyable. After a nice dinner after the concert, we met up with several other English teachers for a drink and, of course, the famous singing room (No Rae Bong) with Reagan and his fiance Leandra.

Saturday, we attended a concert of Mrs. Moon's at the local theater. We saw her sing at the outlet stores the first weekend we were here. This was the same vocal group, with a few of the same songs, but many new ones that made us clap our hands and shout, in Korean fashion, En-Kor (said as two words)! Good times, I awoke the next morning to listen to the UNI Quarterfinal FB game on the internet and then we headed into Seoul for some shopping, bumming, and a quality meal (by meal I mean margaritas...).

So I thought, without too many hilarious stories, I’d give you an example of our daily schedule… perhaps this will give you a few chuckles…

7:00 wake up
7:05 Cass grabs a shower in the showercurtainless, center of the room drained bathroom
7:10 I get up, open the computer and start downloading yesterday’s Today Show podcast. Get the water boiler cranked up, two bowls of dry cereal, and two- double sticked coffee mugs ready.
7:13 gander outside, watch people on their way to the neighboring Yeoju Institute of Technology and debate if the current weather is smog or just fog, as well as the customary daily comment of, “man, it’s getting darker everyday, huh?”
7:15 start eating while Cass finishes her shower and get itunes setting the tone for the day.
7:18 start the Today Show, Cass joins breakfast which consists of starting the water again, dipping the Tony the Tiger bowls (yeah, we have other, more normal bowls, but these came complementary with our first two bags of cereal, and for nostalgia’s sake, we continue using them) into our bagged cereal, and her ritualistic comment of, “what kind of uplifting news will America give us today?”
7:35 toast two pieces of toast, one light (Cass) and one dark (Jon), spread with strawberry jam and enjoy
7:45 get ready for my shower, tiptoe around the gross drain that will never, ever, ever get clean, and wondering, despite her constant vigilance, how Cass has any hair left on her head when it’s all on the floor- she and Denali must have the same shed schedule.
8:00 exit shower and listen to Meredith Viera conduct yet another awkward interview, Cass finished cleaning up the table
8:05 figure out how I can look runway ready, as with all the Korean teachers, with my ramshackle Montana wardrobe, Cass, giving up on wiping down the bathroom mirror to show only permanent waterspots, sits at the mirror by the door to apply makeup.
8:20 start layering clothes and jackets, eject the Ipod, hat gloves, scarves, etc. Since we only have ten fingers each, and donating any of those to frostbite is no one’s idea of fun. Get daily wet sock from brushing teeth in the bathroom (middle room drain).
8:30 elevator ride- examine our complexions in the cleanest mirrors of the day- if only for a short nine story elevator ride and step out into a brave new day.
8:33 take the path around our highrise, which skirts between the small shops that line the street. We pass the police officer directing traffic or something to that extent, the PC Bang- one of the zillions of public computer labs, and Family Mart- one of the zillions of that brand of 24 hour convenience stores, to the…
8:35 enter the intersection of doom. Three different roads converge together, throw in the Korean driving habits, a significant lack of comprehensible or carried out driving laws, what could be a stop light but possibly just a caution yellow light, a blind corner, a three block long traffic jam with crazy kindergarten mini-buses everywhere, some orange construction pylons in the midst, and you have yourself the (Don… Don… Don…) the “Intersection of Doom.” I’m happy to say I’ve had only one near-miss in which the bus would’ve been the victor. Oh, p.s., there's also a railing with a twenty foot drop to an urban cabbage field, if that ups the degree of difficulty at all.
8:37 Cass waits for her ride to school at the entrance to the Institute while I split off and walk the bottlenecked road to its intersection with the main street. Thus begins the daily inhalation of car exhaust.
8:40 Turn off the Counting Crows (or whatever other band is helping me pass the time), enter Mr. Kim’s minivan. Practice the words, “Good morning,” with his first grade daughter, Dabi.
8:50 arrive at school, begin to say the words hello or hi an infinite amount of times
8:51 take shoes off at the door and put on my crocks (slippers). Poke my head into the staff room and give them a practice using the words, ‘good morning.’
8:53 get to my room, turn on heat, computer, lights
8:54 check email
9:00 review lesson plans for today’s classes, wrack my brain for an idea of how to make the lesson or sample game from the text more fun.
9:10 first class begins and the beginning of my eternal repetition of phrases such as, ‘that’s too bad, would you like to come to my house, Is Peter there? Speaking, What’s this? It is a ______.”
9:50 finish first class, the 5th and 6th grade stay for a second class while 3rd and 4th grade change classes.
10:00 second class… see 9:10
10:40 finish second class, check email, search any UNI Panther football playoff news (I knew I could get in a plug for them… UNI Fight! National Semifinals this Saturday at 3p.m. Iowa time!)
10:50 third class… see 9:10… Monday’s and Friday’s are my 1st and 2nd graders!
11:30 finish third class
11:40 fourth class…see 9:10
12:20 finish fourth class
12:25 go to cafeteria with Mr. Kim and Boxer Kim (I have developed a system of differentiating between the staff, i.e. Science Kim, Boxer Kim, Superman Jong, Rockstar Kim, Farmer Lee, Tangerine Go, Samsung Hong…)
12:26 decipher what I’m eating and how to attack it. Actually I am getting real good at assessing how long it will take me to eat lunch the instant it is served depending on the quantity of dishes that require chopsticks or a spoon.
12:40 leave the lunchroom and stroll the school grounds, taking the long way back to class, sometime when the mood strikes me I try my skills at soccer with the students, usually to no avail, I think I was only built for one kind of football.
12:45 get to classroom to a crowd of students manning the vacuum cleaners, sweeping the floors, erasing the board, organizing any and everything.
1:05 play one, sometimes two games of Shoematra on cosmopolitan.com (yes, that’s correct)
1:30 today’s paperwork, check off the lessons I taught today
1:35 Prepare tomorrow’s lessons
2:15 prepare some kind of tangible material to make the lesson just a smidge more fun
2:45 check email, google news, etc. (general internet surfing)
3:00 think about future teacher classes, lesson plan
3:30 prepare materials for something, research ideas and themes
4:00 study Korean on my own
4:30 research cool places to travel
4:45 facebook, email, fantasy football, etc.
5:00 leave school, change into shoes- Mondays I play badminton with male staff
5:20 dropped off, over the pedestrian bridge, observe the afternoon shananigans at the Intersection of Doom, follow the same path through the buildings on the street, arrive home, change clothes, coffee or tea
5:30 decide whether it will be some variation of a rice dish or an exploratory outing to a restaurant- I’ve warmed up to white rice mixed with the super hot red pepper paste that you can find everywhere, 2nd coffee or tea
5:45 soak, wash, and start cooking rice in our awesome rice cooker- which most definitely find a home somewhere in America in the future
6:20 eat while watching an episode of ‘The Office’ we downloaded from the net.3rd coffee or tea
6:45 finish dinner, watch another episode of ‘The Office’, perhaps pick up our clean wash from the floor. Yes, that is correct- we can’t hang up our washed clothes on the permanent rack in the back hall because they will freeze so the conclusion we came up with is to wash the extra bedroom’s floor and lay them out, considering the infloor heating system, it works quite well.
7:30 Cass prepares a Powerpoint for tomorrow since every computer at school is in, well, the Korean language, it makes doing routine tasks much more frustrating- waiting until she gets home has kept most of her sanity… and mine, too.
7:45 I complete my first crossword puzzle, and get to anxious to begin another so I either read, or play sudoku
8:00 I can’t sit any more and play my borrowed guitar from Mr. Kim- making Cass’ progress slow down to a snail’s pace
8:30 Cass finishes her work, we chose between one more ‘Office’ or ‘Scrubs’ after checking out some places in the Philippines to check out
8:50 Tea
9:00 email, look for places in Korea to visit this coming weekend… blah, blah, blah…
9:15 fight the dirty bathroom mirror in order to see ourselves as we brush our teeth.
9:40 Take the crossword puzzle book to bed and try another one.

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Photos

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Look out world! I'm ready to No Rae Bong!!!