Water, Water Everywhere

I forgot to mention Sunday night.  My homestay and I watched the movie Precious together, with subtitles in Korean.  They were in shock by much of what they saw.  They didn't think the actress was real.  They thought they used a suit to make her look heavy.  They have never seen people of size like that.  It is true, there are minutely few obese people here in Korea even overweight ones for that matter.  I don't even think I've seen a handful in my 15 days here.  The clothing here and the shoes are mini size.  xxs, xs, s and maybe a couple M or a L, but mostly small.  The shoes also run small, which is a challenge for my 8.5 sized foot.  Na Ha was so confused why in the world Precious would want to keep her children?  Where was the father?  He should take them away!  Why would she want to keep kids born from those circumstances?  They should have been given up because they were shameful.  It was really eye opening to hear her reaction.  Guided by the family honor, traditional values and ideals of Korea and the society's opinion about children of unwed mothers that was her natural response.  So many adoptees I know were given up because of decision made by extended family members, not the choice of the parents themselves.  Too many children, too many girls, disabled, unwed, too young, father wasn't good enough, poor...

Monday, Monday was a productive day yet the process behind it took forever...  K, L and I were to meet Mrs. Seol and our volunteer at 12:30 to go to the Mapo-gu office to erase our Korean citizenship and then to the immigration office to apply for our F4 visa.  The volunteer was running on Korean time and arrived late around 1:30.  I was concerned because I was teaching at 3:30 and thought I might be late to my class.  Mrs. Seol assured me we would be fine.  "It's really easy.  It doesn't take a long time".  We hit the subway to Mapo-gu and experienced some delay in getting the citizenship erased with our family registries.  I really don't understand why we still had Korean citizenship to be erased since we all had our naturalization in the US, but we ended up getting that squared away and went off to the immigration office.  The immigration office was packed.  It looked like the DMV.  We took our number in line: 140, 141, 142.  The current number serving was like 90 or something.  We sat and sat.  Our volunteer was kind to leave and grab some food for us.  After awhile of being gone, she returned with kimbap!  It was delicious!  We were all so hungry and it really hit the spot.  Finally after 2 hours of waiting, our numbers were called and the time at the desk took about 15 minutes.  The visas are being processed and we can pick them up in a week.  Tricky part is that we have to go on our own and the way to get there was really unconventional and confusing.  F-4 visas last for 2 years with unlimited options to renew and grants you all the rights of a Korean citizen, such as working, insurance, and pension.

When we returned, T met up with us for dinner.  T had left his phone at the public computers in the lobby of the Mapo gu office.  He had left his phone behind before and had always recovered it.  A good deal of time had passed since he was there and he called the office to tell them his phone was there.  Sure enough, it was still there.  No one stole it.  It is truly amazing how honest and respectful Koreans are with belongings being left unattended.  At the bar the other night, there were wallets laying on empty tables and no one paid any attention to them.  Seoul has CCTV everywhere.  Big brother is always watching I guess.  We went for dinner (galbi and bibimbap) near the HOLT guesthouse.  K was meeting her birth mother for the first time the next day, so we decided to have a beer to celebrate.  We went to a beer bar close by.  The place was empty.  There was a cool wooden table loaded with various beers on ice.  We played a few games and had a good chat.

Tuesday is the day I teach at two schools with an hour and a half break in between.  I read the three little pigs and had them identify and name the objects within the story.  We talked about trains and things associated with trains.  In one class, they were watching The Very Hungry Caterpillar and did some crafts creating caterpillars and butterflies.  I told them the story in English and the identified all the items the caterpillar ate.  I played magnaforms in one class and we identified shapes.  We played in the play kitchen area preparing dinner and identifying cooking tools.

In the evening, we had a Welcome/Farewell Dinner for the HOLT program.  A batch of us just arrived, some are finishing their teaching, some have been teaching for a month or so.  Most who have finished the program are staying in Korea for an extended time.  It was nice to have all the participants together since we hadn't all met before.  Dinner was samgyupsal.  Soju and beer was required by our superiors.  The drinking culture is really crazy.  I think there were definitely a few "Asian red" faces in the room.

After dinner, we went to a bar called BM.  Interesting name, eh?  Birth Mother, Bowel Movement...  Anywhoo, it was a loungy place with a pool table.  I was happy to play a game of pool.  Night was good, headed home for a good rest.

Today, Wednesday, I met my former home stay mom, E for lunch.  It was so wonderful to see her.  She noticed a soup place and asked if I liked soup.  Sure I like soup.  We sit down to order and I ask what meat is in the soup and she tells me cow tongue.  I kindly decline.  We ended up ordering a plate of meat (still don't know what it was).  It was ok.  Had bits of hard fatty edges on it.  The meat itself tasted like roast beef.  The other item on the plate was bone marrow.  Hmmmm.  I tasted one piece, just to try and I can say I will not partake in eating that again.  It was tough and rubbery but yet was like gelatin.  Not a fan.  After lunch we went to Tous Le Jour for a dark chocolate almond donut and a latte.  That made up for the bone marrow I had last eaten.  It was great to catch up with E.  She is such a kind hearted person.  She wants me to give private English courses to her and her friends.  A class of 5 people, 8 times per month.  Definitely interested in doing it.  It is just a matter of figuring out when.  The other drawback is that she lives fairly far from where I live, but she said her friend would offer her place to hold the classes.

After meeting E, I went to Gana-an school to teach my two classes.  We had fun today doing the Leap frog "every letter makes a sound" song with the alphabet.

Came home this afternoon and for the first time in a long time, didn't have evening commitments.  I am dead tired.  It has been non stop activity since I arrived.  I think I just need to vegetate for the evening.  I had tofu chigae, rice and those thin seaweed papers for dinner (can't remember what they're called).  After dinner, I did a load of laundry and hung it in the living room to dry on its drying rack.  I think I mentioned before that most do not have dryers here.  My homestay has a Samsung washer as I have at home, so it makes all the same chiming sounds that make me a little more interested in doing laundry.  Now the drying process begins and it takes a really long time, like a few days.  Our place is on the cold side and the drying racks are by a wall of windows which aren't very insulated.  I decided to give my bangs a trim and did so with a tiny pair of cosmetic scissors.  I feel better to have the shag out of my eyes now.

Around 9pm, we found out we didn't have water.  The whole block was out of water actually.  As I am writing this, the water just came back on!  Thank goodness.  I had already planned my outfit with a baseball cap for tomorrow, but now I can be clean after all.  Nice!  Going to finally rinse my toothbrush from two hours ago.  JW got home earlier than usual tonight.  He had dinner and sat down with his acoustic guitar.  He is a great guitarist.  He likes rock music and loves a Radiohead too.  Na Ha went to drum lessons tonight.  JW and Jai Ik moved to the office room and I can hear JW playing his electric guitar.  Sounds very Swervedriver.  I like it.  He has recording equipment in there as he used to be a guitarist for an indie band playing in the Hongdae area.

Jai Ik sleeps with his parents and will until he is 4-5 years old.  It is common for parents to co-sleep for many years.  He also goes to bed when they go to bed, which is like 11pm or later.  He takes one nap a day for 2-3 hours.

The weather has been really random.  I hear it is like that a lot of places right now.  The past few days have been very cold, raining and windy.  I do not think I have used an umbrella so much in my life.  The water on the streets puddles a lot, so you have to navigate your way around the mess.  Today was incredibly windy, like windy city windy.  Tomorrow will be sunny and windy, in the high 50s and 40s.  Temps are taking a climb Friday through the weekend, so that will be nice.  Maybe we can go hiking at a mountain on Sunday.  The gem show is here this Fri, Sat and Sun at Co-ex and I really want to go.  I brought my jewelry raw material supplies and tools and hope to make some jewelry while I'm here.  I do not have any beads with me, so I will need to get some.  Hoping I can possibly sell some jewelry while I'm here.  I wonder how I can become one of those street vendors or subway vendors, LOL. 

I had intended on going to sleep earlier, but thought I'd take the time to update the latest happenings here.  I wanted to add photos to this entry, but Blogger seemed to have changed overnight requiring me to use Picasaweb for the photo upload, however it is not working. You can look at the pics with the attached link to picasaweb, i suppose.  Not able to get them within the text area.  If anyone reading this can help me, please message me to let me know how to do it.  Click here for Photo Album

Random fact for today.  Paying for kissing is legal here.  Na Ha pointed out signs for places called Kiss.  These are kissing rooms where guys pay to kiss women.  Ew!  But I guess it could be a lot worse.  Maybe there is, maybe there isn't more going on in those rooms...who knows?