And Kate Finally Makes an Appearance

Nathan has informed me that it is about time that I got my act together and contributed to this blog. Trouble is, he's already told just about everything there is to know about our first week. At least, all the stuff I would want to write in this blog about. Generously, however, he is allowing me to make a redundant post. So here it is, email #1 to my folks from Korea (edited for length):

Dear Mom and Dad,

Flying Korean Air was lovely, roomy, and involved an unexpected seat upgrade. We moved from last row, middle seats apart, to front of the cabin window seats together. and it was a full plane. I have no idea why the generous gate attendant singled us out for this, but it made the flight, which might have been awful, quite easy and comfortable.

Things began to go downhill when we got off the airplane. mistake number one: we did not change money at the airport. There wasn't time. A man, waving and smiling, met us at the arrivals gate and hustled us, unspeaking, out to the curb. He, smiling, unspeaking, then handed us over to another man with a van. this new guy didn't speak English, so he just smiled and drove off across the mud flats and into the Seoul suburbs. Then on through the bleakest of highrise lands and into the even dingier and more remote suburbs. Twilight came on, the highway kept going and when we pulled off of it onto a access road, everything looked alot like a rest stop on the turnpike: empty and ugly.

We went down that road for a bit, he made a phone call to... someone. Pulled over for a while, and we had more time to sit and take in the full impact of our choice. Yoeju, from what we could tell, seemed to be the smallest county seat in Korea, the poorest, and the least developed. (as we learned later, this is mostly accurate. it only got Internet about 2 years ago, and still lacks many necessities. who said teaching in Korea wouldn't provide some developing world experience!?)

Now in total darkness, the driver took us around the city, over a broad, silted river, and into another wasteland of new highrises surrounded by construction sites. These were new, swank places with gatekeepers, underground parking, and the unlived-in, unloved atmosphere of new developments. It was almost entirely dark. We cautiously followed our still-silent driver into the dark concrete bowels of this complex, down a dark hallway, and began to prey we hadn't fallen victim to some illicit international organ-harvesting scheme. Codes were punched in at the door, disembodied voices squawked over intercoms, and then we were shuffled into a dark, cardboard coated and-- strangely-- graffiti-covered-- elevator. the guy stood back politely to let us on first, pushed all of the luggage in around us, and, as the door began to close, his arm snaked through the breach, and punched a floor number. Then the door closed. He was gone, and we were rattling up to floor 13 in a rickety, shaky, graffiti-ed elevator with no idea who we would meet or whether this half-world of concrete would be our new home or just some way-point on our way... where? At the time, i was pretty sure that when the door opened it would to a chloroform bath and a quick scalpel aimed at my kidneys.

Of course this did not happen, though a number of strange and awkward situations did ensue.

It's a cliff hanger you see. The questions: will Kate and Nathan like their new home? Who are these people they will be working with and for? Is Yoeju a terrible place, or just one not best seen by twilight?

For myself, it's a good thing I don't have more time to write this morning, because I'm still too much inside these cliffhanger questions to provide much narrative direction to events. I swing wildly from thinking this was a huge mistake to thinking it can't be so bad. Moment to moment. Things have gotten slightly better-- we are no longer entirely in crisis mode. As Nathan's more succinct emails mentioned, we have met some folks and have moved into better digs. Things are looking more palatable.

Ok, this too

Yeoju:

Nathan: "Remember that time when our domestic lives were totally cute and deliberate?"

Kate:

...more coming on wallpaper prints.

Whoa

Korea is happening! It is happening all the time. In fact at this point, it basically cannot be stopped. We arrived about a week ago and have spent all of our energies since moving into our apartment, figuring out how to teach, getting over jet lag, writing the requisite emails to family and friends and trying to figure out what we're going to do with our lives for the next year. So for a summary of the last week, let us refer to excerpts from emails sent home over that period of time. Enjoy:

Mom & Dad-

We finally have an apartment! It took a couple of days, but we finally moved out of our school director's house and into our new digs. We're on the other side of the Han river from town (un-ideal) but it's a pretty short walk into town (ok). Also, we have a car (we haven't driven yet), so we should manage. The apartment isn't the small, modern pod that we had envisioned. It's pretty huge--two bedrooms, full kitchen, big pantry area--and slightly shabby--linoleum 'wood floors' and faded yellow flower print wallpaper. It needs work, but we'll make it work.

A couple of teachers had been staying here for the month before we arrived. One left last night and the other will be around until Friday. We observed their classes yesterday. The school is in downtown Yeoju. Teaching is pretty fast paced (45 minute classes all day) but is pretty straightforward and I think we'll get the hang of it pretty quickly. The classes are small (5 to 10 kids mostly) so they're manageable. The kids are a trip, but they defer to authority so managing the chaos doesn't look like it'll be too much of a problem.

Yeoju is....we're still trying to figure that out. It's more rural than we expected. The town center has places to go and things to do at night (restaurants, bars, BATTING CAGES!) but it's smaller than we hoped. We're going to need to get into the countryside (the car will help and there are fun things around--observatory, hot springs, hiking...) and get into Seoul (70 minutes on a bus and dirt cheap) in order to stay interested, but we think it's doable. 


.......................


Hi Mom and Dad-

I have to be pretty quick because Kate is (just a little bit) sick in bed and I promised her that I'd get into bed with her to watch a movie tonight. But a lot has happened in the last week and you haven't heard anything from me. To be honest, we've been super busy. And when we weren't busy, we were busy being exhausted, so processing everything that's happened and turning it into an email has been hard to do.

But, briefly, here's what the past week has been like:

We taught our first classes this week. The curriculum is about to change, but this week we each taught seven 45 minute classes of students from the lower elementary to middle school levels. We worked with a temporary American teacher at the school to develop our lesson plans. They are conversation classes, so it's mostly a whole lot of saying, repeating and then using the words and phrases we learn in a game or fun activity so that the students have to think on their toes and interact with each other in English. Our classes range in size from just four to twelve, but most are just about in the middle. 

Starting next week our classroom time will be a lot different. We've been asked to develop a brand new Kindergarten curriculum which we'll spend about half the day teaching....But the teaching itself is bizarre, fun and unexpectedly exhilarating. It's totally exhausting and I'll have to save a description of the experience for another time. But I like it. 

Yeoju is still pretty small. There are about 25 foreign teachers here. Most of them are still out of town on public school vacation, but we've met a few folks....

In the meantime, we're slowly making our apartment home...The teachers who lived here before us left a lot of stuff behind, so it took some work to turn the apartment into a clean slate, but the kitchen makes more sense (and is clean!) and our second bedroom is an office/recreation space. 

It's all coming together slowly. I think that we're learning that we are a lot more resilient than we gave ourselves credit for, especially when we lived in DC. The first few days were tough, but we did finally get over that hump that we couldn't deal with a few years ago when San Francisco was hard. We're a lot more growed up :-) And we have jobs!

.....................

And Kate is feeling better today. 

Bon Voyage

We visited the Korean consulate in DC exactly one week ago. They did their interview on the spot and told us to pick up our passports on Tuesday. So we've been in overdrive ever since. The result: we're leaving for Korea tomorrow (Saturday) at noon. Should arrive in Seoul at around 4pm Korean time--2am eastern.

The ballast is trimmed in our luggage and we're transferring files from Kate's old laptop to her new netbook. I'm basically too toasted to write a real update, so suffice it to say that moving out was a bitch, but we finished (thanks John, Julia and Elizabeth), we had a great time with friends this week and we're exhausted.

See you in Yeoju

-N&K

A Few Steps Closer

We've spent the past week snowed in in Takoma Park--held in the clutches of Snowmageddon, or Snowverkill, or whatever the internets are calling it these days. We've spent plenty of time sledding, having fun and doing nothing like the rest of our friends (who have jobs) but we've also been doing a lot of packing. We took a big load of furniture and other big apartment items to Harrisburg last week and we've spent this week preparing to bring a lot more (most of the rest) back to Ridgely.

Amid this slow, plodding progress, we got an email this morning that really kicked up our pace. The Korean Embassy has processed our first round of visa paperwork and they're ready for the next step. So we're going into the city tomorrow to submit another set of paperwork and set up a time to be interviewed. The E2 visa is issued pretty quickly, so we're told by our recruiter that we can expect to be on a plane by Friday or Saturday (the 19th or 20th). Just to emphasize the sense of urgency, the travel agent arranging our flights called today to confirm our passport information. This is real now, and it's happening fast.

Logistically, we're in pretty good shape. But there's a lot that I/we still need to do. I *think we can pull it off:

• Move totally out of the apartment (getting there)
• Pack for Korea (likewise)
• Weekend at home with DC friends (arranging now)
• Finish the boat shed (with Dad's help--not much left to get done)
• Take Kate on a rowing picnic in the sharpie on the Tuckahoe River (time and ice permitting--a little bit of a long shot)
• Date night with Kate in DC (Tues)
• Last night out with friends in DC (Weds)
• Don't freak out (working on it)

I hope the embassy is open tomorrow....

Beijing and the Canal Town

More photos from China are up--our final (short) day in Beijing:
http://nandkinkorea.shutterfly.com/765

And a day trip to a canal town west of Shanghai:
http://nandkinkorea.shutterfly.com/780

Beijing and the Forbidden City

I've been really into color saturation. It started in China when I was using Kate's mother's netbook to edit photos from China. I had to deal with the smoggy, faded effect of photos from Shanghai, so I figured out a good formula for making them less flat by tweaking gamma, increasing saturation and increasing contrast (which i'm apt to do anyway). The photos I edited in China looked great on the netbook, but with my lower quality screen, the color saturation looks a little over the top. Granted, my screen is super low quality, so I'll have to order some prints for a final verdict.

In the meanwhile, I've finished editing Beijing. Extra credit if you can spot the transition between the netbook and  my computer here at home:

http://nandkinkorea.shutterfly.com/680

Next up, canal town.

China, btw

Yes, were were indeed there! Here's the evidence: http://NandKinKorea.Shutterfly.com

I haven't posted photos from Beijing or our trip to the canal town yet, but I'm catching up with photo edits and they'll be up soon. We'll also post our Korea photos to this account, when they happen.

Yeoju; Oh ju

China, in their paternal wisdom, blocks Blogger, so we were unable to update from China. Three weeks later, our Korea status has changed little, but a lot has happened since then. Recap!

The morning after we arrived in Shanghai, we got an email from our recruiter telling us that the Eastern Language School in Yeoju had decided to back out of our agreement and instead hire teachers who were already in the country. We asked around and folks who know say this kind of thing just happens--hogwans look for the most expedient way to get teachers in the door and we found ourselves on the other side of expediency. This happened to our friend Ashley a couple of years ago. So we were back to square one--find a job in Korea. We had already sent our visa documentation to our recruiter's representative in Korea, so that process, at least, was ahead of schedule, but it was little consolation. We had just gotten to China for vacation and we were going to have to schedule and do phone interviews. No fun.

We did two interviews. We did the first just before leaving the apartment to go to the airport to fly to Harbin. The school is in a small town south of Seoul called Eumseong. Our interviewer was Australian--he was very helpful--but the picture he painted of Eumseong didn't make it sound like the place where we wanted to live for a year. A delightful country town, but not the kind of experience we're looking for. There isn't really much of a city/town center ("a market comes twice a week," is about exciting as it gets) and, according to our interviewer, there wasn't much of a teacher community in Eumseong--most folks just went to Seoul on the weekend.

Eumseong was out. When we got back from Beijing we had a second interview with a school in "Dongtan New Town," a planned city near Suwon (near Seoul) that was recently built for Samsung employees (factory nearby). High rises and mixed use retail seem to be the best things that Dongtan has going for it, so we declined this offer too.

So, we boarded our return flight from Shanghai on Thursday having made no more progress. On Friday morning though, we had an email from our recruiter. Turns out that the teachers that ELS wanted in Yeoju hare having documentation problems and they want us back. Hrmmm. Sounds like bad news, right? Maybe, maybe not. Consulting again with our Korean spirit guides were advised not to read too much into it--good schools, bad schools--this kind of thing just happens. Hm. Ok. So we decided to take them back up on their offer. I'll believe that it's final when we land in Korea (or when we show up for our first day), but for now we're doing the best we can.

The positive byproduct of this fiasco is that we'll probably have an extra week (or more) before we leave. We were orgininally scheduled to leave on or around Valentine's Day, but since our documents have only just begun to be processed for our visas it looks like we'll leave around February 20 or later. So, more time to move out and see folks. Very nice.