Halloween Approaches...

This Halloween I will not be shlepping makeup on every girl and her mother that wants to be a "sexy kitten" or a "sexy police woman" or a "sexy piece of shit"...you get the picture. I will put on my finest and most comfortable soccer clothes and be ONLY female soccer player in all of South Korea. It will be quite a scene for my little ones.
Sara and I will be hosting our Halloween gathering in our empty apartment so our after school costumes have to be superb...we are working on the details as we speak.

Last weekend was one for the record books. I don't think I have ever been so hung over for such a long, consecutive period of time. Here, in Korea, it is just one event after the other. Starting out your weekend of debauchery on a Thursday at Open Mic night doesn't help the cause...but when followed by a manditory school branch dinner/bar night, you weekend is basically thrashed from the get go. After laying around attempting to recover ALL Saturday, we headed to the local watering hole, Guri Bar for a birthday party which was only the climax of our weekend, ending in bumpy, Sunday family dinner, consisting of excellent vegan dishes and lots and lots of red wine.

We hope to make this week a little more productive than the weekend. We have been planning to take a hike all this week, we will see if it actually happens. We have acquired more furniture from a friend that is leaving the country on Saturday. We will be moving in into our place tomorrow morning before work. Then, we have the task of rearranging our apartment perfectly for our get together and coming up with the best costumes ever...any ideas?

Other than that, teaching is getting a lot easier. I have control over my classes, as the end of the session approaches. I now know what I have to do from the get go to get those little helions to behave. From what I have been told, our 1st week of vacation is coming up at the end of January...so any one is welcome to come. We are thinking about going to Thailand. We found a really cheap travel site where it will cost us about as much as it would to fly from LA to Denver. Amazing.

It is finally starting to get cold here which I welcome with open arms. A year in the OC with all the sun and heat has made me really welcome the seasons. From what I have been told, it doesn't snow here. We have winter weather about as cold as Monterey, just not as foggy. I can't wait to go snowboarding in other parts of the county. Korea is so small that it would seriously only take a 6 hour car ride to drive from tip to tip...and its only that long because its very mountainous.

That's all for now!
see ya next week

love love love
erika :)

Free beer and food at company functions = good times

Well, we have just ended week 5 of our Korean journey!  The week was uneventful for me.  Got a nice little day flu thingy on Friday so I layed around all weekend with a box of Kleenex and some Tylenol (thank you Bob and Hillary!).  

Fortunately, I recovered quickly from my brush with death (my cold) and was able to attend our company picnic/sports day.  Sara and I dressed in our finest...soccer shorts rolled as high as they would go, sweatshirts, soccer socks and some glare...we wanted them to know we meant business!  We partook in the most intense and competitive game of dodge ball that I have ever encountered, tug-of-war (my team had all the fat kids, myself included), Korean see-saw (taking the smallest Korean woman on your team and flinging her down a line of 30 people, 4 feet off the ground on a thin piece of fabric), balloon blowing up contest, and giant ball bouncing contest.  We also indulged in a battle of the branches karaoke competition where Sara and I manhandled the challengers while accompanied by the vocal stylings of the Backstreet Boys.

Along with plenty of athletically testing and strength challenging games, we were provided 2 whole pigs, a fried food box, all the beer we could drink and a stage, complete with a bubble blower, flame thrower and foam shooter.  These Koreans don't fuck around.

I also took part in a little bit of soccer with some of the Korean kids and one of my co-workers.  It made me miss soccer so bad, until of course the universal machismo kicked in when the Korean men joined the game and not only refused to pass me the ball, but acknowledge that I was anywhere near the field.  Took me back to my Monterey Bay indoor games, fighting with the Mexican dudes that would come crash our games.

Monday was Canadian Thanksgiving.  Some of our fellow coworkers that we hadn't met until the picnic happen to live in our building and were hosting a nice like pot-luck and were nice enough to invite the new kids.  I brought some wasabi mashed potatoes (courtesy of Dad's amazing recipe).  It was a nice little gathering with our friendly neighbors from the north eh...even though most of them don't know what their celebration is aboot.  Happy Thanksgiving Canada!  

So before I part, I have compiled my list of the top 10 things I have learned so far in Korea...

10.  Lines are not a suggestion...

These people are nuts when it comes to getting in lines.  Whether it be for the bus, the subway, the elevator, waiting in line for a cheeseburger, if you are not breathing down the person's neck in front of you, you are not in line.  I have been cut by many an old lady for not being properly placed in these so called lines.

9.  If there is an open door you must run through it, no matter who you trample on your way in...

So, say you get into one of these mandatory lines that I previously mentioned...once in said line, you are obligated to stampede into whatever the desired destination of the line may be.  You are not allowed to kindly let the person in the subway car or the elevator exit before making you grand and much anticipated entrance.  You MUST, without haste, enter, taking down the elderly, pregnant and handicapped upon access.

8.  No talking on public transportation...

It is an absolutely heinous notion to think that making idle chit chat while riding on any form of public transportation is acceptable...and the Koreans will let you know that...in their loudest and most offending voice.  Nevermind a subtle whisper, a light chuckle or giggle.  These forms of sound are prohibited, along with coughing too loudly or talking on a cellular device.  And, not only will they scream at you to stop, they will then proceed to talk to other Korean people about how rude you were for talking, in a voice louder that the original sound that was made.

7.  SQUAT, SQUAT, SQUAT

Squatting is the position of choice for most Koreans, from what I have gathered. Instead of real sit down toilets in public restrooms there are holes in the ground which you...you guessed it, squat over.  Men and women can frequently be found resting their legs on a long day by squatting...ANYWHERE.  in the subway, on the street.  Chair??? What's a chair?  

6.  English is cool...

Even if it makes absolutely no sense.  If your advertisement, song, clothing, etc. has English on it, no matter how misspelled, grammatically incorrect, or incompetently translated it is, it is cool.  I saw a sweatshirt on a lady that said "Sea World.  Shiny silver bacon leaves" or something to that effect...she was o, so posh!

5.  BLEND IN

Rarely will you find a Korean with any colored hair besides black or brown.  No highlights, no fun and funk colors, no tiny nose studs or tattoos of any sort.  Blend, blend, blend...or stick out like a sore thumb and get stared at like me.  Either way...your choice.

4.  The bigger the better...

I have tried to find fashion trends here in Korea.  There is no fall color or true staple or method to the madness of the dress code here.  The only thing that really stood out is this...oversized clothing.  Pre-arrival I worried that it would be quite a task to find clothing here.  I was pleasantly mistaken and found that these women wear their clothes far, far larger than they rightfully should.  They sport shirts to their knees and pants that are ridiculously gargantuan for their petite frames.  Maybe I will do some shopping after all, and show what a size large SHOULD look like when worn correctly.

3.  Touching vs TOUCHING...

In this country, personal space is a thing of fairy tales and mythical lands far, far away.  You will often find, despite the rampant homophobia, men holding the hands of men and women interlocking fingers with one another as a sign of friendship.  Sara and I tried it and it just wasn't our thing.  Maybe the stigma of what it means in the states drove us away from the embrace, or maybe our person space bubble is far to encompassing for this country.  Either way, touching in a friendly, non-sexual manner is good and encouraged.  Sexual touching though...bad, bad, bad.  Korean girls believe that Korean boys have koodies until they are out of high school.  If you ever want to punish a Korean kid, make them partner up with a member of the opposite sex.  There is no kissing, petting, talk of kissing or petting, thinking about either of the two, allowed in Korea...guess the American space bubble doesn't encompass that kind of "touching", where we seem to be pretty liberal a society.

2.  Superstitions...

My favorite so far is that if you sleep with the fan/air conditioning/any kind of cooling device on, it will lower your core temperature so much that you WILL die.  They hate the sun...will do anything to stay out of it.  Rain will burn your skin, ergo they carry an umbrella everywhere.  If you drink anything, even water while you are eating you will eat too much and get fat.  Just a mindless stream of crazy do's and don't consume the daily lives of this country.

and lastly...

1.  Kimchi...

It is the signature Korean dish.  It is served as a side with everything.  It is the equivalent to bread and butter, french fries, veggies on the side.  It is the one thing that is agreed upon to be acceptable with every meal, mixable with every animal by product, and still ok to be consumed on its own.  Whether it is fresh or packaged, if there is kimchi on the table, it will be eaten.

thats all for now!  come back next week!

love love love

erika :)

Small Face...Lovely Breast (advertisement for korean plastic surgery...we think)

THE PUSAN INTERNATIONAL FILM FESTIVAL IS HERE!!!

Monday, we planned to go see the movie "Religulous" with Bill Maurer that I guess just came out in the states!  Of course, due to obstacles and unforeseen distractions, we were too late and tickets ran out. :(

But...basically this film festival is the BIGGEST of its kind in all of Asia.  They have turned Haeundae beach into the "festival village" and have tents and such on the sand.  Sara and I missed the film festival part of the venue since it runs during the day and we are either working or sleeping, but got to witness countless numbers of people sitting on the beach, lighting off fireworks and drinking after hours.  Quite a sight.

Friday (10/4) was a national holiday here in South Korea.  It was independence day...that's right, the anniversary of South Korea breaking off from North Korea and becoming its own separate nation.  No one worked...except for us kids at CDI of course!  Only half of my students showed up to school, since all public schools were closed for the day anyways.  Only the little shits that misbehave attended..just my luck!

I have these 2 kids in my last class, lowest level, Troy and Josh.  These kids are twins, smart as ever, but always misbehaving and competing with one another, sometimes physically.  Honestly, I don't really care what they do, because they are pretty sharp when it comes to the lessons, but they are such a distraction to my other kids...who aren't the brightest crayons in the box already.  I was warned about them by my head instructor and how the staff has tried to put them in different classes or on different schedules, but their mother refuses.  They have always been quite problematic.  So my HI told me that I needed to make an example out of one of them...either one, whoever pissed me off more that day, and just kick them out of class.  Even though I'm not very fond of belittling children in my day to day life, I just about had it on Friday...so i picked Troy and kicked him out.  To my absolute disappointment, none of the Korean teachers would come to my aid and the branch manager took him out of class for 5 minutes and brought him back, candy in hand!

Since then, I have tried using other tactics to make them behave.  Monday was amazing!  They sat the whole time in class and participated and only disrupted anyone once!  Yay for the evil genius that can manipulate young Korean children's minds!

Other than the film festival (or being the vicinity of the film festival while not actually viewing movies) it hasn't been very eventful here.  We have discovered a couple of really cool foreigner bars.  

Which reminds me...Sara and I requested songs at a bar called Thursday Party and were dancing around to them like cool kids...and the people that had been here for 8 months had never heard them before!  Super overplayed songs like "Go Girl" and "When I Grow Up" and my FAVORITE, "Swing"!  Please friends...do not let me be that person that is so musically out of the loop!  Let me know what's in!  Save me from Korean musical damnation!  

Ok, sorry for the side note...

But ya, foreigner bars!  Its nice to hear English being spoken fluently!  What else have we done?  O, ya...lots of casino-ing...to my wallets dismay.  I don't lose too much, but I really hate gambling so it upsets me.

Sara ate chicken ass hole...and surprise, surprise, it tasted like shit!

OOOOO  I acquired a couch for our humble abode!  FRIGGIN FINALLY there is something in our living room.  We are getting a TV from a friend this week and hopefully (fingers crossed) will have a beer pong table set up within the month!

and...drum roll please....the long awaited premier of our apartment video!

http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=YfA-DeoUgF0

I'm going to keep putting pics up on facebook so check them out!

love you all

keep sending the emails!  i thoroughly enjoy them!

love love love

erika :)

3 weeks...in the bag

Well, we have conquered week 3 of our Korean journey.  We are finally out of the Coatel Hotel in Seoul (thank god!).  

Like I said in my last post, our arrival in Pusan was postponed due to Chusok which is the Korean Thanksgiving celebration.  So, we got an extra 3 days in Seoul.  In those days we did some karaoke (way different in Asian countries), visited the Korean War Memorial, and explored.

Now we are in our amazing new apartment in the Seomyeon district of Pusan, South Korea.

We have a great 2 bedroom apartment on the 14th floor in the middle of the city.  We have a beautiful view, a big living room (with nothing in it), a bathroom with a bedet and hard wood floors.  Of course, we don't have any furniture except for our beds, but we will eventually work it out.

And of course, bad luck follows me wherever I go!  Here's a recap of my first meal in my apartment...

I go down to the family mart store (its like a 7-11) which is conveniently located on the 1st floor of our building.  I purchase a pack of 4 slices of bread, a thing of ramen, a pack of american cheese, a box of butter, a bottle of water and some cheetos.

I get upstairs to make myself an amazing grilled cheese sandwich and some soup...so excited.  All I have wanted to do for the last week and a half was eat this and be able to make it on my own...

So I break into my supplies...

the bread is not a loaf of bread at all.  It's a chocolate sandwich (white bread with some chocolate frosting crap in the middle)

my butter is not in a cube...its a box of tiny butter packets that you would find at a restaurant

So after finding this out and making due with what I have, I come to find that we don't have gas or hot water...meaning no soup or grilled cheese or a hot shower that I was looking forward to.

Then I start to thank god that I bought that extra bag of cheetos.  I open them...THERE IS NO CHEESE ON MY CHEETOS!  They're like ranch flavor or something horribly unappetizing!  Needless to say I was a little upset!

After the grilled cheese incident, Sara and I proceeded to live without gas for the next 3 days.  Thank god it was hot and humid as all hell so we didn't mind taking cold showers!  We didn't have to work our first week in either, so we spent a lot of our time sleeping and exploring.  We went to Haeundae beach and layed out one day.  The beach is gorgeous and we were lucky to have some superb weather!

We also explored the Pusan National University district with the bars and restaurants, the night life in Seomyeon, by our apartment, saw a movie in Nampo-dong and the casino/5 star hotel/giant department store that we have a block away from us!

We actually have gotten to meet some really cool people that also work in Pusan for CDI.  Funny story how we met...we were given a temporary cell phone that used to belong to another CDI employee, and one of her friends called us looking for her.  We had an awkward convo and he invited us to a party by the beach...which we went to of course!  We ended up getting stuck in a monsoon on the beach and staying out until 8 in the morning...indulging in free breakfast in the casino before retiring to bed.

I started work last Tuesday (09/23/08).  I screwed up pretty badly my first set of classes, but i think that I have everything pretty much figured out now. 

Monday:        April English 240-630

Tuesday:        CDI English Chip  720-1015

Wednesday:   April English 240-630

Thursday:     CDI English Chip  720-1015

Friday:          April English 240-630

April English is the younger kids that don't know much English at all.  We work a lot on phonics and basic vocabulary.  These kids are freakin nuts!  Actually, most of my April English kids know more English than my upper level kids in CDI do!

CDI English Chip is a higher level of English with kids that are like around 13-15 years old.  I am working at the Saha branch with Sara, but she is working different classes.

Now, I'm beginning week 2 of teaching!  My little ones are brats and I want to hit them every chance I get (which is totally an acceptable punishment here btw) but I just can't bring myself to do it!  So I yell until I'm horse, which obviously doesn't make them stop.  I will eventually figure out how to bribe them into behaving well!  My older class on the other hand doesn't speak at all.  I guess Sara and I are splitting this guy, Paul's schedule.  He was brought in and failed training but they tried to give him a second chance by allowing him to teach while closely monitoring him.  Well, he obviously didn't do too well cause Sara and I took over for him!  More proof of his "job well done" is the withdrawl rate of the kids in my class...the class started with 10 kids.  When I started (only 4 weeks into the session) we were down to 3.  Pretty pathetic.  So, these guys know nothing and probably aren't too comfortable considering I'm like the 4th teacher they have seen in the past month!

All in all, Korea is great and I love it here thus far...

O and here's all my info...

Cell:                 010) 2993-9408

Address:         Erika Ulfelder

Busan, South Korea

Saha Gu, Sang ri Dong 321-27

Seung hak Building, 3rd Floor

(this is to our school branch because we don't know how reliable mail is in our building yet...)

But everything is great here!  Miss you all!  

O, and all of my pictures are posted on facebook.  Here's the link...

http://www.new.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2014022&l=7903b&id=83900407

love love love

erika

ocsoccerchick@aol.com

ps...I'm definitely going to be on top of this thing and updating it WAY more often...come back in a week :)

"Annyong haseyo"...How are you...in korean

korean adventure...week 1

seoul, south korea

09/11/08

hello family and friends!

obviously you got my email and that is why you are on my blog!  thanks for visiting!  

as you can see, i am in korea, alive and well!  there were a couple of bumps along the way...well actually i hit the bumps in the airport before we even left...but that is all done with and united will be kissing my butt soon enough!

this week sara and i are in seoul at the Coatel Hotel.  We arrived on Friday night and started training on monday morning, bright and early.  the room is nice...two twin beds, kitchen with a stove, sink and fridge, bathroom fully equipped with a bedet, washing machine, smoking room (no idea why), etc...

training went well.  i was a little worried at first since i have absolutely no idea how to teach, but everything is very structured and planned out with little room for improvisation or creativity.  Basically it is all on a computer program, we just facilitate what the program is providing.  They are using us for our accents most of all.

What else is going on...hmmm...i'm the tallest person here!  i catch people staring at me everywhere i go!  not only am i the giant white girl, but tattoos are illegal so i dont really fit in too well.  I looked around a department store and all the clothes are tiny...i barely even fit into the fitting rooms or the bathroom stalls!

Sara and I took a bus tour of the city on sunday and we saw a lot of neat things.  we went in the biggest shopping mall in all of asia and a district that they proudly refer to as "the mecca of electronics"...literally 2 floors just of digital cameras.  absolutely INSANE!   there is also a very touristy district called Itaewon that has western food and brands and things.  

Other than that we have just been doing training.  a group of us that are staying in the hotel went out for my birthday to hooters.  The girls made me do an embarrassing stupid dance and song...i wanted to die!  sara has the video of it which i will upload soon.  we got to play drinking games in there like flip cup... and we even got one of the girls to play with us!  after hooters we went to a soju bar (soju is a korean rice wine that is almost the equivalent to sake).  one of the girls that is in our training class has been living here since may and is actually korean so she taught us all the traditional ways to serve and drink soju...we ended up stumbling back to the hotel just like any good american girl should on her birthday!

Plans have changed as to our departure.  Originally we thought we were only staying in seoul until friday and then heading down to pusan to get into our apartments but, because of a huge korean holiday this weekend we were unable to get tickets and will be staying in seoul until sunday night...then off to pusan!  i'm very excited to stop living out of a suitcase and to get settled in.

i should be posting blogs once a week, so please keep checking back!

otherwise, i'm on skype and aim all the time...my screen name is ocsoccerchick

i cant wait to hear from all of you!  thank you for all of the bday wishes!

love love love

erika