If you want to be e-mailed let me know

Hey everyone. Thanks to all who read my little take on life in Korea. I do not want to send out e-mails to ppl who do not want to be bothered by my updates all the time. I have had some requests to put together a mailing list. If you want to be on it let me know. Myers.864@gmail.com or leave a comment on the blog.
Deano

Today I officially accomplished one of my goals while living in Korea. I purchased food and coffee at two separate shops. I used complete sentences and even comprehended how much change I was receiving (they speak so fast the numbers normally blend together, that was until today). It is amazing how quickly you catch on when your stomach is rumbling. I am still no where near having conversational Korean skills, but I can speak enough to get around. I am going to do an advertisement for Rosetta Stone. If you have to travel somewhere and want to learn the language it is worth the money. Get it! If I can pick up freaking Korean anyone can learn any language they want. Grab a foreign language dictionary to fill in the gaps and get to studying. Rosetta Stone plug now over.

Back to my day. I have spent a majority of my time the last three days alone. Sungjoo, my roommate, has been away working on a huge project for Younsi University (Younsi is the Harvard of South Korea, PS Sungjoo is brilliant). It has been an amazing learning experience. Walking all over a city not knowing anyone, and not being capable of complete communication is a new experience for me. I highly recommend it. You have to think and do things completely out of your norm. Communicating is not just about words. You have to pay attention to tone of voice, gestures, eye contact, etc. You have to become perceptive to everything around you. Once you do you pick up a lot. Kids are constantly gesturing and saying yellow hair in Korean. You have to constantly be on your toes and watch out for those pesky ppl on mopeds also. They are getting more annoying as the days pass. I might just try a stiff arm/clothes line sometime in the next year. I would love to post it on You Tube in slow motion and try for a 100,000 hits. Honestly, they are just doing their job, but they do suck.

I start working on the 18th of Aug. That gives me more than enough time to go accustom to the way things work here in Korea. I am teaching grade school students and I am very excited about that. In Korea the students become slaves to education once the 7th grade starts. School from 8am-10pm. It sucks. The kids are over worked, drained of energy and not receptive to much of anything halfway through the day. I will be teaching 1st - 4th graders. They are still energetic and have not been drilled to death by teachers and exams yet. If anyone has any ideas on games to play with kids let me know.
Tomorrow I will start traveling with Sungjoo all around Korea. I am going to have some amazing pictures to post in the next week or so. Keep checking back. I hope you have a great Friday. Mine is almost over.

One more post for the day. I want to show everyone back home how the public transportation systems in America compare to those in Korea. Everything is so clean it is astounding. Think of the nicest public bus you have been on in America. Then compare it to the pictures below. This is one of the buses I was on yesterday and it was immaculate. I think this is a great comparison showing the differences between Korean's and American's respect for public property. Side note, there is hardly any graffiti over here and for being completely over populated the streets are kept clean and garbage is placed where it should be.

J.F. Dulles, Oak Hills High, The OSU reunion in Seoul, South Korea

Last night I met up with my good friend, Seth. He has been living in South Korea for the last year. He is going home on Friday the 30th. I was extremely happy we could meet up. It is amazing that someone you grew up with on the other side of the world is in the same area you are 7000 miles from home. His control of the Korean language is impressive. You can tell he worked his butt off studying. We met at subway station exit 2 off the green line in Seoul. From there we went to a local restaurant and had some delicious spicy food. They set your uncooked food on a grill in the center of the table and you watch it cook. You let it sit there simmering and stir it occasionally. You then pick at it with your chopsticks until it is gone. Sungjoo then left to meet the head professor of his department while Seth and I gallivanted around the area. We stopped in a little authentic Korean restaurant where I tried Dong Dong Ju, and Makalie. Dong Dong Ju and Makalie are rice wines that look like milk, with a much bigger kick. This stuff will sneak up on you, that is fore sure. Seth and I talked about college, high school, grade school basketball, friends, not so good friends, books and girls. It is the kind of conversation you can only have with someone you have known your whole life and while drinking. After drowning in Dong Dong Ju, Seth took me to one of the coolest, if not the coolest bar I have ever been to. It is called Gaya. It was dark inside with an awesome ambiance. The place was packed with drunken Korean college kids sitting around tables with their shoes off and slippers everywhere. Seth and I ordered Soju (more rice wine) and beer. With these two beverages Seth showed me a concoction that was delicious. For all of those who know what an Irish Car Bomb is, this drink is similar. You have one beer cup and two shot glasses. Do not forget you need Coke or Pepsi. You then place the first shot glass in the beer cup and fill the shot glass with Coke. Take the second shot glass, fill it up with Soju and place it on top of the first shot of Coke. After placing the shots in the glass fill it up with beer. Grab the handle and throw it back. All you can taste is the Coke with just a little kick. I am not sure how many of those we drank but I will say we had enough. They also brought us a tray of fruit. It is to this miraculous fruit tray I accredit my lack of a hangover this morning. The fruit, beer and Soju were a great combination. After we left Gaya Seth and I parted ways. It is a shame we did not have more time to hang out. I could learn a lot from him about life over here in Korea. I hope he returns for a visit (maybe with some more friends from back home).

Here are some more pics from my trip to Seoul yesterday. They are of the creek running through the city. There is one where I am in front of the biggest Dunkin Donuts building I have ever seen. There are Dunkin donuts everywhere around here. The others are of me in green tea restaurant. I had green tea ice cream, green tea cake, and what I can only compare in America to a green tea slushy. my E sO yO! (Delicious) .

Koreans Play Russian Ruoulette.

Today was my third day in South Korea. Only 12 months, 28 days left until my visa is up. During my time here I have certain goals I wish to achieve. First, become as fluent as possible in the Korean language (yes the same kid that hated Spanish is trying to learn one of the hardest languages in the world). Second, be able to go out alone, order food, and purchase/barter for goods without using any English. Third is to order food on the phone. Easier said than done. When going to the market or restaurant I can order my food simply by saying the name of the meal followed by "jew-say-oh" (bring me please)(ex: "Nuke-Cha-Jew-Say-Oh": Green Tea Please). However, when ordering on the phone there are tons of questions and options which I am not familiar with. It is a work in progress.
Today, Sungjoo, his friend Hagew, (she is awesome) and I went to Seoul. Let me start by saying driving in Korea is an art form. It is comparable to Russian roulette. People make lane changes and merge without knowing what is around them. They just know where they want to be. Room or no room I am coming over, all in the way be dammed. It is insanity. However, people do it all the time and hardly anyone gets upset. If people drove like this in America road rage would turn into the leading killer for all demographics.
Seoul as a whole was a beautiful modern city with nice shops. Other parts had open air markets with bikes and scooters blazing past you. Some are just obnoxious. They blast their horns if they are held up by anyone. I really had the urge to knock a few of them off their scooters. They are a foot shorter and 30lbs lighter so I restrained myself. The markets are exactly what you have seen on TV and movies. Think about when you have seen ppl on the Travel Channel. It is just like that. People here also have microphones and yell at you to come into their stores. You walk around with people screaming in Korean to come purchase their stuff. Annoying, yet really funny because some of them are dressed up as big animals dancing around or provocatively dressed women selling clothes to other women.
Something really neat about Seoul is the small creek running through the heart of the city. It is a little oasis surrounded by beautiful huge modern glass buildings. These people over here know how to build. The little tower going up in downtown Cincinnati has taken forever to get started and completed in comparison. Seoul has buildings 30 floors higher being finished in 3 years from design table to final ceiling tile.
There are tons and tons of stores and restaurants in Seoul. Everything you could ask for is here. I am going to purchase 2 custom tailored shirt's tomorrow with custom fabric for 40,000 won, $40 American (with my name embroidered on the cuff). The suits they make here are equally as impressive and cheap. Custom fabrics, embroidered names, detail oriented service all started and completed in a day. Deff going to get a few of those before I leave.
The city is so huge and so different every block has something new. It is really hard to describe as a whole. New York is the only thing I can compare it to. It dwarfs Chicago, and I am willing to bet it gives NYC a run for its money on population and size.
My favorite part is the food. It is delicious and cheap. You can not really go wrong if you get the locals to tell you where to go. I eat so much here I am happier than a pig in shi*t come lunch time.
Well, I am off to bed.  I hope to meet a friend from Cinci tomorrow. Thanks for reading.

First Day

Today was my first Day in South Korea. I worked out with Sungjoo and I now have a membership to one of the local gyms. It is call the Sports Villa Complex. It is really nice, and guess what they provide you with? Clothes. Yeah, with clothes. You wear what you want to the gym, suit and tie, jeans, whatever. You do not have to bring anything. Then they give you a towel, gym shorts, and t-shirt. The shorts are lined like a swim suit so no underwear needed. You then get dressed and hit the gym. They have some really cool equipment. The first piece of equipment I used was one of those shakers from the 80s. You wrap a band around your body and it shakes you. I love it. It gets your back really loose.
They have a ton of tread mills, weights, and even a room where Sungjoo and I are going to train. We both ran, bench pressed, did biceps, and abs. We then stretched out and got cleaned up. The funniest thing ever is what some Korean men do to dry off after a shower. After showers men in Korea blow dry their bushes. Yes, their pubic hair. Just imagine 6 individual 30-50 year old men standing in front of the mirror blow drying their pubes. It is a very funny sight. After we left the gym we walked around and I learned the neighborhood. We are very close to the city hall. We went shopping at E mart. It was very cool and different experience than anything in America. They have to build structures up because land is scarce. There are conveyor belts everywhere that lock your cart into place taking you to the next floor.
The place was crowded but the customer service was excellent. Another thing I have noticed about Korea is they are huge into recycling. There are no bags at the stores. If you want a plastic bag you have to purchase one. For bigger items you have to place them into a cardboard box. Imagine this 6 foot blond kid carrying a huge box over his head down the street so I do not hit anyone with it. All the kids were at perfect height to knock out with my elbows if I carried it normally. I stand out a little bit here. It is not as bad as you think. I have only seen two other Americans. I know there are tons because of all the English institutions around here. I am going to have to just find the best norde bang (Karaoke club) to hang out at to find them. After shopping Sungjoo and I went downstairs to the little coffee shop in our building.
They are really really good. I had a green tea latte and it was amazing. They have great air conditioning. Our place has AC but the shop is frigid. I will be doing everything in here from now on. They also have Internet as you can obviously tell. That has been my day so far. I have had no problem with jet lag. I feel great. I am a little tired but nothing like the horror stories I have heard ppl tell. Tonight I have to stop eating and drinking by 10pm for my drug and aids test tomorrow at the hospital. It is really stupid but necessary to get my social security number over here for my teaching permit. I am now off to print out a passport picture to give to the hospital.

First step is a big one, 7000 miles and 18 hours later

Well, I finally made it to South Korea. Only 9 months in the making and hours studying the language I am finally here. The flight was long and the seats were cramped. Thankfully there were no smelly ppl around my seat. The in flight food was ok but the proportions were too small. The flight attendants were very pretty and nice except for one I called the Grinch.
I made it off the plane and through customs to find my good friend Sungjoo and his friend Hawgu awaiting my arrival. It was great to see Sungjoo. It was even better that I am now his roommate. His first ever. He bought a new car yesterday and the new car smell is the same in South Korea.
Hawgu, Sungjoo and I went out to dinner after the airport to an all you can eat Korean food restaurant. It was delicious. After dinner I moved into the apartment on the 5th floor of a local high rise. It is very nice. It is small but perfect for two bachelors with no kids or ppl to worry about. I stayed up to make myself get on Korean time. I finally fell asleep around 10pm KST/9am EST.
I awoke and the question what am I doing here finally hit me. Thought about it for a few min and realized I was really going to like my adventure and life in South Korea.