Silly Generalizations

Koreans love tea made out things like black beans and corn. They're both really good. When I move away I will miss some ice cold black bean tea for sure.

Koreans love to exercise in strange ways, like walking up mountains backwards. I live by a man-made river which has a bunch of weird exercise machines. At 2 in the morn old ladies will be rockin these machines. Men in suits will stop, do some pull ups and walk away. I was told that I would see some old men kicking trees. I haven't seen this yet but I have seen a few kicking polls or the air. Koreans exercise. I see thousands of Koreans a day and maybe 1-4 of them are fat . I don't think this is a coincidence.

They also love spicy food. I talked to another teacher about it and asked if little kids ate spicy food too--she gave me an awkward glance and replied, "of course they do." I said that it was odd because kids have very sensitive taste buds, to which she replied, "well we force them to eat it, it's good for their health."
As much as I hate parents who force their kids to do thing they don't want to do, eating spicy food probably builds character. eh?

Often when I ask why they do something or don't do something I'm told it's because "this is good for health" or "this is bad for health." For example they never drink water when eating. They swear that it's bad for your digestion. I asked a very intelligent, educated Korean about this and she said it's been scientifically proven. Really? Maybe, but it's water.

They tell me that drinking ginseng drinks is "good for your stamina."

They eat dog here, but they love tiny lap dogs as pets. Women hold them like babies on the subway.

When I bump into another native English speakers that I know they often start the conversation like this-- "man I'm so tired. My co-teacher forced me to go out to drink soju and sing karaoke until 3am. I kept telling him I had to teach the next day and he kept saying 'so do I fool'. They drank me under the table and they're all like 50 years old."

I like my co teachers but none of them have offered to take me out on a drinking binge. I'm told this is a Christian school thing.
Probably better for me in the long run.

My dad keeps telling me about this thing called "Dr. Fish" where you drink a beer while fish eat the dead skin off your feet. I don't know if I like this idea.
He loves it.

I bought a bike and am very happy about this.
A science teacher who only knows a handful of English words took me out to buy it. He bikes to school and I asked him why he didn't drive a car. He said "I love the planet." It was nice, in a Disney movie sort of way.
Koreans love bikes, they bike around the Han river and then take breaks to smoke cigarettes, drink soju and eat noodles.

I taught the moms for the first time. They are all nice and many have kids that are my age. Only two of the nine have students that go to the school so I'm not really sure why I'm being paid to teach them. One asked me if I was single. Then she asked me if I wanted her to "match make." I didn't know what to say. I told her "maybe, give me some time"
Also, we found their coffee maker, another teacher stole it for his room. Now they don't hate me.

Students keep asking me if they can take my picture on their cell phones. I always say yes and give a big smile and cheesy, two-handed thumbs up. I'm not sure why they want to do this. The girls think I'm James Dean and the boys think I'm a cartoon character named wed-DING. I'm happy to play along. While I would not be happy about being a joke as a teacher if I were in the states, it seems to be OK for my role here. At least they're speaking English to this silly cartoon wed-DING guy, right. I might be on a lot of Korean myspace pages.

The drivers here are crazy. The cabbies are the worst, they never stop at red lights and regularly honk at other cars trying to get them to do illegal things.
Motorcyclist are crazy as well. They drive on the sidewalk or street, whichever suits them at the moment, and expect you to move out of the way regardless of the fact that you have the crosswalk signal or that you're on the sidewalk.
Despite the crazy drives, close lanes and massive amounts pedestrians, no one seems to get hit or into accidents.
The police drive around with their cherries on but never do anything. The cherries are always on, which seems to defeat their purpose.

There are two maintenance guys who work at my building. They are there 24/7, and there's only two of them. I'm not quit sure how they work such long hours without going insane. Actually I think on of them is insane. He was always yelling at me in Korean. Then my friend Daron's girlfriend's sister came by to give me some plates. Ever since then he's been very nice to me. I think the old man might have a crush on her.
The other guy is great. If I don't say "hello" he runs after me to say hi.

When I get the nets I'll post some pics of some of the above.

Cheers.