"That is something that I will never do. I will never puke on a chic." -AJ

It was a crazy night. AJ said this and then within a few hours puked on me. Seriously. I got puked on. I don't know whether to blame flip cup or Carnie Station. So here is the story:

There was a going away party for one of our co-workers last weekend. The festivities started with beer pong, which later turned into flip cup. Some people consumed a little too much thanks to generous pouring on AJ's part. AJ had woken up drunk that afternoon and proceeded to drink more thoughout the day. Later, Paco and I ended up in a cab with Greg and AJ on our way to Carnie Station, an all-you-can-eat/drink place. Somehow I instigated the boys to hug random Koreans in the street when they got out of the taxi. They were pretty wasted at that point. Using the help of a Korean translator, Greg then convinced a guy on a forklift to let him drive it on a busy street in Seoul. I don't know how/why that happened, but it did. We made it to Carnie Station and drank more beer, and AJ started looking pretty woozy. I told him not to puke on me and that's when he made the statement about not puking on a chic. Then I tried to help AJ home so that he didn't pass out and die in the middle of the street. On the way to the taxi, he fell and hit his head on a car, leaving a dent in it. On the way out of the taxi, he fell in the middle of the street. I helped him into his apartment and got him to lie down, but he promptly fell out of bed and puked on himself and me. So there you go. I was trying to be a good citizen, and I got vomit on my jeans as a reward.

Is That for real???
Sometimes in Asia you find a pot with seven orchids in the garbage closet. I am not really sure who thinks it is Ok to throw away beautiful blooming orchids, (I would value them at over $200 in the States) but there they were in the garbage closet. Is that for real??? Even though I don’t have the best track record with plants (I definitely killed the Bonsai plant my sister gave me and multiple others) I decided to take them to my apartment. There was no way I was going to watch them get thrown away, first I’ll torture them with my bad plant care skills. No I am really going to try and not murder them and keep them out of the garbage closet…I’ll keep you posted on how that goes. Meanwhile I am really hoping that there is no cultural misunderstanding occurring, such as Korean people sometimes store their orchids in the garbage closet, and I just stole them. I am betting that stealing someone’s orchids sends really bad karma your way…which is the last thing I need right now. So next time you see orchids in the plant nursery think to yourself: “In Korea people think it is OK to throw 7 of those away, is that for real?”

"It must be karma. What did we do wrong?"

We have been saying this for at least the past week. Does anyone have any ideas what we did? At the moment, I am not only being killed slowly by Yellow Dust but also from whatever chemicals they are using in the renovation of our office (our teacher's office area has now been reduced to a fraction of its normal size so that they can put in a glass wall- yipee! I always wanted to work in a fishbowl). So my runny nose is not getting any better...

Does anyone have any suggestions of things to do to get GOOD karma? Let us know.

I was thinking that I had profound things to say today, but in actuality, I do not. Instead I will leave you with a few quotes to describe how my life is going.

"We're going to like Korea dammit!!!"
-This was said after we heard numerous horror stories about Korea from everyone we encountered. We are determined to like it here, and so far it is working out for us reasonably well.

"I wrote it in pen, so I couldn't change my mind."
-Paco said this when she was telling me about her essay written at the Andy Prep interview. It turned out to be foreshadowing. Andy Prep told us they only had enough hours for one teacher so we took a job at another school. Four days later, Andy Prep offered us two positions due to increased enrollment, but we had already signed a contract with our school so we couldn't change our minds.

"Don't tell the school, they might not hire me."
-I felt a little like I was playing a part in a school play when I went on job interviews. I had on a costume and makeup and delivered the same lines about why I had come to Korea over and over.

"Who invented that?" -AJ "Invented what?" -me "Drinking..." -AJ
-This was what one of our co-workers said about the first night that we went out to the Owl (local bar) and stayed out until 5 a.m.

The "Is that for real?" column is born

So oftentimes in Asia I notice random things happening and think to myself "Is that for real?" So I have decided begin contributing to our blog and start a column entitled "Is that for real " to share these moments of confusion, bewilderment and/or awe with you.

"Is that fore real" by Paco
Article 1: Korean men carry purses
For some reason men in Korea carry around purses. When I say purses I don't mean the cool looking sachels you see in other parts of Asia and Latin America, but regular women's purses. It is quite commom to see a full grown man with a stylish black leather purse with silver buckles slung around his arm. For awhile I just thought Korean men were real gentlemen, carrying their girlfriends purses. After awhile I began to notice that many of these purse carrying men are not accompanied by a woman and the ones that are, have a lady friend that is carrying her own purse. I guess a bag is a bag and we all have stuff to carry around the city, but seeeing so many men sporting stylish purses made me say "Is this for real?"

Rachel reporting... I just wanted to add a little something. You may be wondering what a guy is carrying in that purse of his. Personally, I thought it was just all of that crap that guys carry around in their pockets and then empty onto the table every time they sit down, but it is a little more than that. Today at lunch, I watched a guy take out make-up and touch up his face. So he might be carrying the exact same thing in the purse as his girlfriend. You certainly can't have your boyfriend looking better than you, which is probably why women here are so obbsessed with their appearance and subsequently look so nice. Sometimes I feel like a slob since (1) I have no purse and (2) I never carry make-up with me.

Ok, so I was teaching a class on various health ailments today. I was explaining runny nose, stuffy nose and then nosebleeds. Literally within two minutes of explaining this, my nose started bleeding out of the blue. I don't normally get nosebleeds (even though I am a huge dork) so this was very unexpected and awkward for me. I pointed to the blood that had dripped on the floor and said "See. That is a nosebleed." And then I ran out of the room. How is that for a teachable moment? Good thing I wasn't explaining diarrhea...

So I think that the bloody nose may be from Yellow Dust, which is dust that is blown over from Mongolia or something like that. It can kill you, at least that is what they say. I don't know who they are, but if they claim that you will die, maybe we should all listen to them. They also say that fans may kill you. For all of you uniformed folk (that being any person not from South Korea), fan death is something we should all think about before going to bed each night. Simply ask yourself these two questions: Are the windows and doors closed? Is there a fan on in the room? If you answered yes to both questions then you will not wake up in the morning. In Korea, there is a widespread belief that if you sleep in a room with the windows and doors closed and a fan on, then you will DIE!!! Don't ask people to explain the physics of this to you because they won't have an answer, but they surely believe it.

There are things that are killing me slowly, that I think they should look into. First off, there are the parasites that I am 97% positive have been inhabiting my intesstines since New Year's. Then there is the lack of soap in the bathroom at work (which is really bad when you have snot-nosed kids hanging off of you all day long) and the lack of variety of vegetables and nutirents in my diet (you mean that eating cabbage, rice and eggs everyday is not good for you?!?!?!!?). Let's see, that was the Yellow Dust, worms, non-existent soap and nutirents. Yup, that about covers my health right now. Oh yeah, and my washing machine has also been sitting in the middle of my kitchen (not hooked up) since I moved in so I haven't had clean clothes in two weeks.

Korea is great. I can't blame any of my ailments on the country. Or can I?

Home Sweet Home

Yes, I now live in the third largest city in the world (by population), following Tokyo and Mexico City. This city is ginormous but it is nearly impossible to get totally lost in it. If you are confused, hold up a map and look around quizically. Within a few minutes a nice Korean person will stop and offer you help. If you don't want to bother the nice people, all you have to do is look for a subway station, and the place is littered with them like China was with garbage and shit. From the subway, you can always find your way home.

My new home is in a place called Daechong Tower, which has 26 floors, a subway station in the basement, two convenience stores, a cafe that only has one table, a gym that has a golf area, a quilting store, a dentist, a dermatologist, a bar, a bakery and a floor of restaurants that smells unappetizingly like fish. My apartment is a studio with a murphy bed (that means that it can fold up into the wall if I want more space) and a bathroom the size of a very small closet. I also have a small gas range with a little drawer of an oven. Ovens are almost non-existent in Asia. We made cookies in our guesthouse and the owner looked at the oven with shock, like she hadn't known that you could cook things in it. Since we like to make cookies, we tried to do this in my oven the other night, but something went wrong. I am not sure how, but the cookies caught on fire. I went to check on them and found them in flames. It literally took about 15 minutes to get them to go out. So there you go, flaming cookies in a mini-oven. Lesson learned: don't try to cook in the "oven" because that is not what it is meant for. I don't know what it is meant for, but obviously it's not for making cookies.

Down by the River

So unlike the rest of Asia, people in Korea are active. This activity can be best viewed on a weekend (read Sunday as most people work on Saturdays) down by the river. People are biking and roller blading, and maybe even doing a little urban camping. There is a fabulous path and along the path there are exercise machines. That's right, public exercise machines. A nice man named Mr. Kim (coincidentally 23% of people in Korea are Mr./Mrs. Kim) showed us how they all work one day. I think that I wrote about Mr. Kim before. Anyway, there are also places along the river to play games, like bocce ball or baseball or kicking volleyball. I don't really know what kicking volleyball is actually called, but it is played like volleyball except that you can't use your hands like soccer (or football if you are from any country other than the US). This game is played all over Asia. I don't think that I would be very good at it...

It's funny to me the silly things that trigger homesickness for me. Today I was hit with that feeling of distance and separation on the subway. I saw a woman talking on her mobile phone, and she suddenly grinned and then burst into laughter. That was enough to send a pang of homesickness through my body. When I was in Thailand, seeing a movie in a theater did the same thing to me. In contrast, there are times when I have to remind myself that I am in a foreign country. When I first arrived here, I was snoozing on a bus and I thought to myself I should really look out the window and see what Korea looks like. Oh yeah, I am in Korea!! I don't know how it's possible to forget that I am a strange land at one moment and in the next moment be struck by the realization that I am not, in fact, at home. I don't particularly understand the things that bring on the homesickness, and I think the surprise of the onslaught of emotion makes it feel more intense than it should be. However, the year in Korea is just starting so I had better suck it up and get used to it.

I had my first day of work teaching English today. I think that it went well.... well, sort of. I ended up teaching a class, but prepped the wrong lesson, which meant that I got to lead a discussion on a reading passage that I had no idea what was about. One thing I will say about these Korean kids is that they are damn smart, and cute also. I keep forgetting that English is the second language. They are probably on par with kids in the US speaking in English (or maybe even better), but English is not their native language. I guess that is what happens when kids go to school all day long- literally until about 10 p.m.

Destination Korea

After numerous hours of traveling overland (it's over a hundred), we made it to Korea. I was so excited that I took a picture of the first sign telling me that I was in Korea. Since being in Korea, I have been trying to get a job, which involves me sitting at a computer, swimming through a sea of emails of employment opportunities. It's insanity. So far we have had one interview with a school in a posh part of Seoul. You know it's posh because you pass two Starbucks (yes, that's right, two) and then turn at Hooters to get there. We put on our new suits and heels for the first time and went to an office with hardwood floors and leather chairs. In a conference room, we had an interview and then we were led to a room full of binders with titles like Yale, Harvard, Brown, etc. on them and asked to write an essays on how to improve English and what it means to be a good teacher. I left like a kid playing dress-up and make-believe. I think that we may have convinced them that we are not dirtbag travelers.

Today we escaped the computers by going for a run by the river, which somehow ended in drinking beer. Korean people are really active. They like to hike, walk, run, bike, and rollerblade. There are also public workout machines everywhere. We were exploring these workout machines and probably looking like idiots when Mr. Kim approached to show us the ropes. He showed us how to use every machine in several ways. He was so friendly and sweet that he let us ride his bike and then took us down to a stand and bought us drinks. Who doesn't like a beer after exercise? I must say that I LOVE Korea so far. To all of those wankers out there who said negative things to us, I can only shake my head in bewilderment. Every single time that we have been lost/confused some Korean person has walked up and offered to help us. People have been wonderful and inviting. Paco lost her to-go tea mug at a restaurant and we went back there two days later and they recognized us and brought it out to giddy Paco. Yeah, Seoul is a huge city, but it is clean with well-planned transportation and the people I have met have been wonderful. I heart Korea.

Saying Goodbye to China

We found ourselves on a 40 hour train ride from Kunming to Beijing. What do you do on a 40 hour train ride? Lots of things like wander up and down the train looking for a food cart (wait no, you aren't supposed to do that. I got yelled at in Chinese for doing that, at least I think that is what I was being yelled at for). I slept and read an entire book. I slept and played Scrabble. I slept and watched China go by the window- China is crowded, really crowded. There really are hordes of people everywhere. There were a lot of people on our train. We had a hard sleeper, which means that there are three bunk bed levels, and you can't actually sit upright unless you are on the bottom. Unfortunately, we were not. There were Chinese businessmen on the bottom. On the top were teenage boys who proceeded to get drunk and smoke on a train with windows that don't open. Other highlights were buying a bowl of rice and veggies in a ceramic bowl at a train stop and realizing that the ceramic bowl was disposable and to be thrown away after single use, and well, sleeping. We did that a lot.

What's the one thing that you have to do when you go to China? And no, the answer is not eat dog. The correct answer is visit the Great Wall. So in Beijing, we went to see the wall. We had met a woman from LA at our hostel who was going there in the morning, and she provided us with a free ride (and entrance tickets and a guide too) because a friend of a friend of a friend was showing her around. We had been hoping to go to one of the less touristy sites, but we went wherever we were taken, and it turned out to be a very interesting experience (as everything in China is). From Badalang, you can either go north or south on the wall. Our guide took us up the north side, where all of the Chinese people were going. There were lots of ginormous tour groups. The throngs of people were going up to the Hero Stone, which is this rock at the highest point with a Mao quote about not really being a man until you have climbed the Great Wall. It's pretty obvious that this means something we don't understand to the Chinese people. At the top we were surrounded with enthusiastic Chinese people yelling as usual (they yell A LOT in China). People were posing for all sorts of pictures so then I started taking pictures of them too. I justify it by thinking about all of the random people that were taking pictures of me because I have blue eyes (which happens a lot). Then we walked to the south side of the wall and we were met considerably smaller crowds but of western people not Chinese. Since this apparently is where all the westerners go, so do the Looky-looky-people trying to sell you things. It was an interesting contrast to see. Chinese tourists and then western tourists.

After that, we left China. We said goodbye to the constant lugies, the pollution, the yelling, the masses of people. Goodbye China. I am glad that I went there, but I was glad to leave.