just keep going west, and you'll find the far east

There is no discernible reason that my video i recorded won't upload on to Le Blog, but let's just assume it's not my fault. More on that later.

So I couldn't get to sleep last night from feeling really hot in my room. I refused to turn down the heater for fear of waking up and it being freezing. My heat comes from water in pipes under the wooden floor. So heat just kind of saturates the room - and if you leave socks on the floor at night, they're warm by morning :D
Instead of waking up comfortable, i woke up this morning with some chills and i've got a tickle in my throat. Not sure if it's just the weather (COLD) or my inefficient sleep schedule. Today I woke up early (after having trouble getting to sleep) in order to go to Costco with Greg and Bobby (english teachers who live in my building). Bought peanut butter & jelly, oatmeal, and capri sun. Overpriced, but i'm saving myself money instead of buying it in the local convenience mart.

I'm in Holly's Coffee, less than 100 feet from my building, using their internet. Having a mobile computer for once has made my online activities much more frequent, albeit shorter. This also adds to the fact that i'm walking everywhere in Seoul. The walk to my school is about 20 minutes with a pretty large hill midway. Walks to the soccer field in Seoul Nat'l University of Education (which shares the same name as my most frequently visited subway stop) are less than 5 minutes, and walking anywhere to eat can take from 1 minute to 30, depending if we're going to the all-you-can-eat-all-you-can-drink-buffett, or just the dumpling place across the street. The latter is easily my favorite place to chow down.

My first paycheck is going to be greatly needed. I asked for a 300,000 won ($300) advance on Wednesday last week and wasn't able to get it out of my bank (they direct deposited it) until Monday. The backwards way this school expects you to understand the way things work around here and the language barrier that makes any interaction that, TO THEM, may seem very official, can come off as very ho-hum or unimportant to me and the other americans. We are still waiting on our immigrantion ID's, and therefore, several of the new teachers can't get phones. I was lucky and found a very helpful branch of the SHOW cell provider here. I had a really good guide around town too. He was very interested in shopping, so now i know where to find name brand stuff and also the MUCH cheaper look-alike stuff :D

I guess i'll fill in the rundown on what people have asked me:

what's it like? - CRAZY

how's teaching? - really fun and challenging. really wears me out

do you miss america? - not really! korea is different for sure, but the things i associate with AMERICA still seem like its not really the the-greatest-country-in-the-world

are you learning any korean? -
anyong - hi (informal)
juseyo - please
nayyyyy - yeahyeahyeah


But besides that I can't think of anything new to report. I'm going to miss everyone on new years and i genuinely miss wide open spaces and taco bell. Soon i'll miss ribs and magazines.
Hope everyone is having a good holiday season

howdy

hi everybody!

I'll be using this to "share" my adventures here in Seoul for the year I'll be over here.

I say "share" because there is no justice to the extremely exciting notion that -I- am the foreigner here. Everyone else is asian and i'm just another english teacher on the subway. We all dress alike, have places we need to be, get hungry and tired together, but i only know english. And they most likely only know Korean and a little english.

The weather is about average for late December, it snowed the other night and then melted immediately afterwards. I hold no assumptions for January and February. The city definitely takes getting used to. I live in a 15 story office-tel (office + hotel) on the 8th floor facing the main street that Solovill(the name of my building, lolz) and my school are on. The traffic on this giant street is intimidating: always cars, cabs and busses with mopeds, scooters, and motorcycles doing deliveries as fast as they can (and not always obeying the rules of the road). One must watch out when crossing at a crosswalk.

Christmas without family is hardly a Christmas at all. I've met a bunch of brand new immigrants (English teachers) to go out with tonight, so I won't be all by myself.

So, MELLY CLISTMAS!
and more to come soon