Reasons Why Coffee Time is a Bad Idea (part 2)

As I've mentioned before, coffee time in Korea can be very dangerous, because it might not actually just be coffee, it might be a lifetime commitment you're getting into. In Korea, it is almost impossible for two people of the opposite gender to be friends. Because even you you say "We're just friends" or "No, this isn't a date" someone will inevitably say "But you had coffee..." as though that disproves everything. 

After lunch, me and a couple of other (female) teachers usually sit and have coffee together, because this seems safe and harmless enough. It's great that some of the other teachers want to chat with me to practice their English and I usually teach a couple new idioms or fun phrases. 

However, my main co-teacher has recently taken to inviting the technology teacher to join us for what used to be ladies' coffee time. In very not subtle way, she then calls the science teacher away to supposedly discuss something important, leaving me and the technology teacher to have coffee together and cause massive amounts of office gossip because it's the foreign teacher and the technology teacher having coffee!

While my co-teacher does her best to set me up with the regrettable non-English speaking and very short technology teacher (whose name I still don't even know), the Science teacher has taken a different strategy towards securing my future happiness. She has decided that since I am a tall, beautiful foreigner, I must find a tall, handsome foreigner to date. She therefore asks many leading questions about the other foreign teachers in Donghae. Sadly, for the science teacher, there are not many male foreigner English teachers in Donghae, and even fewer of them are single. After questioning me extensively about the male foreign teachers in Donghae, she chose one (keeping in mind she's never even met any of these people) who she thinks I should date. This is based almost totally on the fact that the students spotted the two of us eating dinner together a few days ago, and the fact that this man is taller than the technology teacher (the technology teacher's height is a major point of contention between my co-teacher and the science teacher; my co-teacher thinks height is unimportant, and the science teacher appears to be of the opinion that anyone shorter than me is clearly not deserving of me.) When I explained that this fellow teacher isn't even single, she replied 'It's ok, in Korea we say, "Even though there is a goalkeeper, you can still score a goal!"'

Happy Thanksgiving!

For Thanksgiving, I cooked three chickens and I made stuffing for the first time.

Awkward Duck won.

The Pizza

            One night, I finished work a bit late and headed out to catch the bus. Once on the bus, I realized I needed to go to Emart to buy a few things. I had recently decided I need to take better care of myself, and so I was determined to go to Emart and buy vegetables. I had no vegetables at all in my fridge, and my new, more healthy self was not going to be satisfied with the little tiny bit of Kimchi that I ate at school with lunch. I therefore stayed on the bus a couple stops longer than usual and got off near Emart. I walked the last couple blocks and then wandered inside.

Once there, I forgot the vegetables and wandered upstairs to look at the turtles. I'm really tempted to buy a turtle from Emart, because they're absolutely adorable, and they swim along in their little tank and try to follow my finger along the glass, which I think is super cute. After playing with the turtles and admiring the parakeets and all the brightly colored fish, I wandered back downstairs and collected a zucchini, a green pumpkin, and a few potatoes. Then I remembered that I needed coffee.

By then I was super hungry, and I was tempted to forgo the coffee, but I knew that I would really regret that decision in a short time, as in, the following morning when I woke up and remembered that there was no coffee. I went to the coffee aisle. The coffee is mostly instant, which is pretty disgusting, but I drink it at work anyway. At home though, I drink real coffee. I grind it myself every morning in my blender and hand drip it. Mmmm. I prefer Starbucks coffee, but at Emart, that's not an option, so I had begun purchasing a brand called "Jardin" which tastes pretty good to me. A 1 pound bag is about $12, which seems a decent price to me, considering Starbucks is $18. However, this time, they were all out of the kind I usually buy, having only the light roast, and the hazelnut available. Hazelnut is not an option for me because I'm allergic, and I didn't really want the light roast. I like medium and dark roast much more. While I debated my options, my stomach growled and I actually began to consider leaving without the coffee and drinking instant until I bothered to make another trip to Emart when they would hopefully have "my kind" of coffee. It was at that moment, that I caught sight of the most glorious thing: a whole kilo of "my kind" of coffee. Whole-bean espresso roast. Yay! A kilo was a lot more than I was planning on buying, but I pulled it from the shelf and when I saw that it was only $20 I was delighted ( a kilo is 2.2 pounds, so that’s more than twice the amount in the $18 Starbucks bag or coffee, or the $12 bag of Jardin coffee.). I headed to the check-out stand without further ado, my stomach growling again as I waited in line with my giant bag of happiness and the aforementioned vegetables (but alas, no turtle, I still haven't committed to a pet, and probably won't ever do so as long as I'm living in Korea).

Upon exiting Emart, and retrieving my belongings (including two textbooks) from the lockers in the entry way, I began to second guess my decision. Sure, it was my favorite kind of coffee. Sure, it would be really, really tasty tomorrow morning, and it was a lot cheaper than I had expected. But it was HEAVY. And I was SO hungry. I began to imagine how nice it would be to stop and take a little nap on the sidewalk; anything to set down that enormous bag for a while. Then I imagined that if I fell asleep on the sidewalk, I would just die of starvation in my sleep and never wake up. I would become that skeleton awkward duck that everyone just had to step around.

The Awkward Duck skeleton

Just as I was becoming extremely melodramatic and imagining my death by kilo-of-coffee-carrying and starvation, I walked past the door to Pizza Hut and came to an abrupt stop. It was at this point I realized that even if I managed to keep going and not lay down and become an awkward duck skeleton on the sidewalk, I would not only have to climb the humongous hill up to my apartment and get inside, but once inside, I would have to cook dinner. And how could I possibly think about cooking a healthy dinner with all those vegetables I bought when there was the heavenly smell of gourmet pizzas wafting out of the entry to this pizza heaven? I went inside.

Climbing the stairs up to the second floor restaurant took all the energy I had left. The silly waitress asked me how many people would be dining. I defiantly told her one, because there is totally nothing wrong with going out for pizza all by your lonesome. I considered the salad bar, but since it’s mostly comprised of kimchi and pasta salads, I decided it wouldn’t be worth it. I chose the cheesiest pizza on the menu and decided to add on the sweet potato mozzarella crust, because it’s my favorite. I ding-donged* the bell and the waitress hurried over. I pointed with the pizza with the golden-cheesy-goodness crust and she smiled. “Small?” she asked. I frowned. I hadn’t thought about size. “Large.” I said, decisively, ignoring her look of surprise. I told myself I would cook some zucchini when I got home, but in truth, I just ate four slices of glorious cheesy goodness for dinner, enjoyed myself thoroughly, and then stumbled home with my veggies and kilo of coffee, and put the coffee in the cupboard and the veggies in the fridge, where they would remain waiting for the day when the leftover cheesy goodness was gone and I would once again decide to cook healthy food.

Happy Awkward Duck after pizza

*tables in Korea have what appears to be a doorbell fixed to them, which you push when you’re ready to order, or need anything else from the server. It’s the smartest thing ever, and I don’t know why we don’t have them in the US.

Monday Sickness

Lately, when I ask my students how they are, and they respond not good, I always ask them why. Usually they can't think of an answer, so today I taught my classes to say respond "It's Monday." No other explanation needed.

“Why don’t you?” Meets “The Seattle No”

In nearly every ESL textbook, you will find the phrase “Why don’t you _______?” Sometimes I find this irritating, because when giving advice, my students will never use the more simple wording of “You should _______.”

Sometimes the textbooks use the phrase well and the lesson isn’t terrible, and sometimes, the students just repeat inane sentences like “Why don’t you make a pencil case out of your old jeans?” Seriously, that was the sentence my students had to learn last year.

This year, it’s not so bad, but I still hate this phrase, mainly because of how my coworkers use it. I hate this phrase because there is no easy, non-committal way to answer a question that starts with “Why don’t you?”

I don’t like to commit. I definitely don’t like to say “no.” “No” is rude. So I like to answer without saying no, but still give myself the option of not taking the suggestion offered. But if someone starts a sentence with “Why don’t you _____?” I have to think of an excuse because the “no” version is “I don’t want to.” And that would be incredibly rude. Some excuses aren’t so hard, like “Why don’t you come hiking with us on Saturday?”

There are a multitude of excuses for that one, like “I already have plans to meet my friends.”

But other ones are much hard to escape, like “Why don’t have coffee with us now?” I want to answer “no” because having coffee together is a very dangerous thing, but at the same time, I'm clearly not busy and I don’t want to be rude, so I just end up having coffee. “Why don’t you?” results in all sorts of trouble and complications just because I can’t think of a good excuse to answer with. If I can’t think of an excuse, I usually answer with “Ummmm I… don’t… know?” which most people seem to take as a “Sure, I’d be happy to do that!” Which is not what I meant at all.

And this is how I ended up accidentally joining the Wednesday afternoon ping-pong club.

Reasons Why Coffeetime is a Bad Idea (part 1)

First off, I'm a huge fan of coffee, what I'm referring to are the dangers of having coffee time with someone. More on that once Nanowrimo starts, because it needs an awkward duck painting to go with it. In the meantime, here is a recent coffee time experience.
Today the ladies of my office invited me for coffee and sat whispering conspiratorially and darting looks at me. I'm not sure why they whisper, because I don't understand Korean anyway.
Finally one of them asked. "Jackie teacher, what do you think of Korean men?"
"All of them?" I asked.
"What style of man do you like?"
I was unable to answer this question, because I'm not entirely sure I know the correct vocabulary to describe different styles of men. It's a confusing subject for me.
"I don't know... umm..." I said.
"Do you like tall man?" the science teacher asked, helping me out.
"Sure." I said.
"Taller than you?"
"I guess, yeah, I would prefer that."
"Ohhhhh." They all said together, sounding disappointed. The regarded me in silence, and I drank my coffee uncomfortably.
"Jackie teacher," said the science teacher, "do you know technology teacher?"
I didn't know there even was a technology class at my school. "No, I don't think so."
"He is very kind" she said.
"Oh?"
"He is thirty years old."
"Oh."
"He is not married."
"Oh! I see."
"But there is BIG problem."
"What is that?"
"He is shorter than you!"

She introduced me to the technology teacher later anyway, just in case, but I must say, I think his height is a less of an obstacle to our relationship than the fact that we don't speak the same language.

A Flurry of Sudden Blogging is Hopefully Coming Your Way

As many of you know, November is the month when I suddenly start updating my Facebook status excitedly with numbers starting around a thousand and going upward to the golden goal of 50,000. Or in the case of last year, sadly falling short and ending up with just 24,000.
If you don't know the significance of the numbers I will tell you. They're the number of words I've written so far for the fabulous writing event known as NaNoWriMo or National Novel Writing Month. This will be my sixth year participating and I've written some of the most hilariously bad or just terrible yawn-inducing fiction in the world. But it's fun, and practice makes perfect, as they say. Writing so many words does help me improve my writing, and when I was in college those 5-10 page term papers seemed pretty tame considering I was churning out 50,000 words of fiction every November.
Last year, however, there was a bit of surprise when I simply lost interest. It wasn't just that my novel was mind-numbingly boring, because that had happened before and I still managed to get 50,000 words out. Rather, I just lost interest in writing fiction, and have pretty much not written any since. But then last Spring I had an idea for my blog. I decided to paint awkward ducks. And I decided my real life is actually a lot more interesting than most of the stories I ever came up with.
So this year, I'm still doing Nanowrimo, but I'm part of the group called the Nano Rebels, because I'm not writing a novel, I'm working on my blog. Which means that, hopefully, in the month of November, there will be a whole bunch of new blog posts featuring the Awkward Duck. With the premise that a picture is worth a thousand words, I'm hoping to do about 25,000 words and 25 paintings, but it could end up being any combination of the two.
I'm super excited about this prospect because I'm hoping that when I excitedly post about having 5,000 words done, instead of rolling your eyes because I wasted my time posting a random number instead of something cute a student said, you will also be excited because there will soon be more awkward duck. And so far as I can tell, everyone loves the awkward duck.
I'll even give you a spoiler- the first post I'm currently planning to begin on November 1st is a great adventure with pizza. Or something like that anyway.

No awkward duck this time, though I do have photos of my new apartment. While I really, really miss my adorable students Shincheorwon, and I miss being "Jecky-love teacher" I think I will really enjoy living in Donghae. The apartment is so much bigger and feels much more like a home instead of depressing and damp little box. I have room on the enclosed balcony to grow some little plants, and the washer is a in a separate room and actually connected to the drain so everything isn't always damp. There's a lot of kitchen cupboards, although they are so high I will need to buy a step stool soon. There is a sitting room with two couches and a bedroom with a queen size bed and a huge, huge closet for all my many clothes. I even have a bathroom with a real bathtub! I also have a spare room which, once it is cleaned up, will make a nice guest room/studio for my watercolors.
The job is nice. I miss the balance of teaching at a co-ed school, and I really miss my high school students, but so far the students are fun and my co-teachers are super nice and really helpful. I will also start teaching a class for the other teachers this week, and I think that's a good thing, even though it is more work, because it will really help me get to know some of the other teachers at my school.

 I haven't taken a shower since I arrived in Donghae. Just nice hot baths.

 So happy to have a living space with a couch. Comfy. Nice view too, and I'm on the 9th floor, which gives me a lovely breeze.

 Huge closet all for me!!

 Spare room

Kitchen, complete with more than one cupboard, yay! Not much counter space, but I'm thinking of getting a little table to help out with that.

Packing

Sorry if you've been missing the Awkward Duck. She's been crazily packing for her move to Donghae tomorrow!

Adventure!

Off to Jeju in the morning!

On the run

Camp was busy.

And I'm sure I'm going to be in need of a good long one after this week- I have to teach English camp for seven days straight 3 days at my school from 9am-1pm followed by four days at a different camp with some friends from 8am-6pm. Blegh! Luckily this will be followed by a couple days of desk-warming and then VACATION! Still haven't decided where I'm going though.

Note that I painted Awkward duck standing on one leg awkwardly, and yes, family, I did do that on purpose. It is a self-portrait of sorts, so of course Awkward duck me likes to stand on one leg just like real me (although I have never napped whilst standing on one foot).

A Little Homesick

I love Korea. They have great barbecue, they invented kimchi (though they do go overboard sometimes), they have lovely beaches, the people are super friendly, and they're paying me to work a job that I really love. But there are some things in Korea that don't make sense. Like their school schedule. Now, I'll admit right now that it probably makes sense for the school year to follow the actual year. However, what I'm talking about is the finals. In America, we take finals the last week of the semester. Then we're done. Yay! Finished! Hooray! We take the test, collapse in relief and we don't have to think anymore.
Not so in Korea.
In Korea, the students finish their tests, receive their grades, and then must continue to attend school for 2-3 more weeks.
A kid doesn't have to be a genius to realize that teachers have basically no power to punish them during these few weeks, because they aren't being graded. And thus the students take control, the teachers give in and the kids get to watch movies for two weeks. What an utter waste.
I don't want to show my students movies all the time, particularly if all they've done all day in their other classes is watch movies. So begins the battle. And it's a huge battle, especially since the 1st and 2nd graders were eager to learn and enjoyed the lesson about Independence Day, but when the 3rd graders turn came... They were bored, they couldn't understand, it was too hard, they were too tired, it's too hot out... Blegh. I tried to shame them by showing them that 1st graders managed the lesson, so if it was too hard than the 1st graders must be smarter, but to no avail. After ten minutes or so of shouting to be heard, my co-teacher informed me that the students said they were bored and wanted to do the activity. I hate this because it's totally giving in to bad behavior, and it messes up the whole class plan because the activity isn't supposed to take more than 15 minutes.
However, I can't do much without the co-teacher's support, so I wrapped up the lesson (I wasn't going to give in immediately) and started the activity. Which half of the kids refused to do anyway. I do remember in my TESOL course, learning all kinds of reasons for why students act up in class, but no one ever prepared me to teach students who have no interest in anything. At all. I ask "What's your favorite subject?" and all they'll say is that they don't like school. I ask "What are you good at?" and they give a non-committal shrug. I ask what they do in their free time and they say "I don't know" in Korean.
My TESOL classes prepared me for a lot. They didn't prepare me for students who are absolutely determined not to learn. They didn't even acknowledge that students who don't want to learn anything exist. But they do, and probably most of them are middleschoolers. I certainly hope that is the case and it's just a phase, because I can't imagine going through life refusing to enjoy anything. How miserable!
All that to say, things get pretty crazy after finals, so I have to wrack my brains for fun things to do and then just try not to be disappointed when the ungrateful little punks take one look at my carefully planned activity and whine, "TEACHER, very difficult.... So Boring.... I'm tired!"
Not giving up.

 

A side-by-side comparison. Jecky-love's stern teacher look and Awkward duck's stern teacher look.

Every morning I drink coffee. Real coffee. Black coffee. Not Mocha Gold sugar and cream with a few specks of powdered coffee, but real coffee that I grind and hand drip and then enjoy. Don't mess with my coffee.

Good friends, good food, good times

On Friday I made the somewhat difficult journey out to spend the weekend in what is probably my favorite place in Korea- Yangyang/Sokcho. Normally the bus ride from Cheorwon to Chuncheon is quite brutal- near impossible to sleep because of the speed with which the driver navigates the winding roads. Luckily my first grade co-teacher, Rachel, was taking the same bus, so we could have a nice chat on the ride. The lovely Hannah and Trevor hosted me yet again for the weekend and Saturday, after checking out bus times for a mysterious valley/waterfalls we were interested in visiting, we decided to leave it for another time and head straight for the beach. Where we stayed pretty much all day excepting a short trip to a coffee shop when it decided to pour down rain for a bit. I got a fabulous sunburn, swam in the ocean, covered myself with sand and generally had a fantastic time. After that I was brought to a paradise of all-you-can-eat American food that included all-you-can-drink wine and espresso. Needless to say, I left the place feeling full, happy, and really wired after five espressos. Coffee coffee coffee!

From there we proceeded to a bar in order to take in the Brazil vs Chile game. 

The game started at 1 am, and I am proud to say we stayed awake until it the second half finished a draw, at which point we headed back to Yangyang and arrived just in time to watch Brazil win on penalty kicks. 

The next day was back to the beach before embarking on the long journey home.

I'm a little too excited about soccer. 

Home

How to activate the Stern English Teacher Face:

Seriously I could rant for hours. Considering the excessively enormous pencil cases they all have, it is beyond me why it is so difficult to actually have pencils in them.

Pictures from the Team Cal weekend of awesome

 Team Cal FC (not to be confused with California's Cal FC, the amateur team famous for knocking the Portland Timbers out of the 2012 USOC) getting ready to do battle against Keumhaksan FC.

Looking all cool on our ATVs. Unfortunately, they put all the girls into one group and tried to force us to drive at the speed of a lawnmower the whole time. "Tried" because several of us ditched the girls' group and ran away to join other groups as they passed us by.

"Have you ever fired your gun up in the air and gone "ahhrgh"?"

Getting ready for the rafting

Shrieking in terror.

Awkward duck's bungee jumping experience:

Thoughts on PLUMMETING TO MY DEATH

This weekend was the wonderful, much-anticipated Team Cal weekend put on by that master of planning Cal Hudson. More than thirty waygook teachers showed up in Dongsong this weekend to participate in virtually every extreme activity that Cherowon boasts. Sadly, I didn't really get any good pictures, as most of the activities were too perilous for my camera, but I did hand my camera off to a friend for a final activity, and our wonderful guide/mafia boss/Cal's soccer coach took lots of pictures of everything which he promised to pass on to Cal, and which will hopefully find their way onto facebook eventually. Friday night kicked off with drinks at Cal's place (ok, I'm lying, some people had dinner, but I was at home napping in preparation for this exhausting weekend.) Followed by a trip to Dongsong's famous B Turn bar where you can actually order alcohol that is not called Cass or Soju. From there car loads full of people began to arrive and led by our guide/mafia boss/Cal's soccer coach we migrated over to what turned out to be a pretty questionable noraebang to wait for the rest of the Friday night arrivals. At last, we piled into a bus and made our way out the pension Cal had arranged for us. At 6am the next morning Cal woke us to ask if we wanted to go on a sunrise walk to Jiktang falls to which most people (myself included) responded "Ngh? No!"

At around eight I got up and fortified myself with copious amounts of black coffee and then got directions from Cal to nearest bus stop. It was about a forty minute walk, but I was determined to fetch my camera, which I had accidentally left behind in my apartment. After spending all morning walking to Goeseokjung, busing to Shincheorwon and then repeating the process in reverse, I arrived back at the pension, camera in hand in time to greet the rest of the new arrivals and pile back in the bus for the first event of the day: Survival. Ok, so this seemed like it would be the least exciting event, but it was way more fun than I anticipated. A few minutes after I arrived, and we were being coached on the things we weren't allowed to do with the paintball guns, I heard a quiet voice behind me say "Hello, teacher" and turned to see one of my students grinning at me. He introduced his dad who also worked at the paintball place. And this is where it pays to support your local businesses, because this student had so much fun watching teacher Jecky get hit by paintballs that every time I was out, he or his dad would say "Die? Die? No, it's ok!" and wipe the paint off, give me more paintballs and send me back out there. It was glorious. Except the part where I got shot in the head twice. Although even that didn't really hurt too much at the time. Once we finished the survival games (Team EXO won!), we headed across the street for a friendly soccer match against Cal's team.Once we were thoroughly worn out from soccer and survival, we headed back across the street and strapped on life jackets and helmets and went river rafting. This probably would have been more fun if out boat hadn't been crammed full with 12 people and gotten caught on every single rock. My favorite part was when we stopped for a short break and spent it leaping off the rocks into the river.

Finally, exhausted, cold and sopping wet, we arrived back at the pension for the best tasting samgyeopsal I've ever had. After that I wandered around trying not yawn and waited until 11 pm which seemed like an acceptable hour to crash into a heap on the floor and sleep. At 8 am we were rousted from our blankets (except for those who simply didn't sleep at all). Everyone thought I was hungover because I kept clutching my head, but in reality I have an enormous goose egg on my forehead where I got hit with a paintball just above my mask. I cheered up considerably when the bus arrived and off we went to ride ATVs. After that we went back to the pension and said goodbyes to people who had to catch earlier buses or were too terrified to participate in the final Team Cal event of the weekend: Bungee Jumping. 

I was SO excited. And here's where I've finally got a few pictures. First, I've been looking forward to this for ages, so there was never any question: I was going to do it.

 Here's the thing though, I always felt that the first moment would be the worst. Stepping off the platform. I thought the rest would be more fun, and somehow I thought it would be more of a feeling flying. No. It wasn't like flying. It felt exactly like I was PLUMMETING to my DEATH.

 And then- then came the lovely feeling of flying as I bounced back up, and that's when the worst moment came, because just as I was thinking "Whoo-hoo! I'm flying!!!" I stopped and began PLUMMETING to my DEATH again.

 I think it was on the second bounce I did an awkward flip which I wasn't expecting at all.

 I was terrified that I'd try to grab the harness so I kept my arms out with my fingers all spread out stiffly. About the fourth bounce I remember thinking it probably looked pretty stupid, but I was still too terrified to move.

Finally they lowered me into a boat where I collapsed into a heap and was unable to stand for several seconds while I processed the fact that I was somehow still alive and the boatman kept asking me to stand up so he could get the harness off me. 

Conclusion: Bungee jumping was approximately one million times more terrifying than I expected it to be. 

And I can't WAIT to try it again. 

For those who aren't aware, makguksu is an evil combination of slimy noodles, hot sauce, vinegar, mustard and sugar. It is served so cold that if you can get past the disgusting taste and slimy texture, you will get a brain freeze. 

Haeundae beach, Busan. Looking a little more peaceful and quiet than it did when Dani and I were there for the sand festival.

Another reason to paint more: I update my blog much more often when I have a hobby to show off. Although, I think I'm much more talented at the jewelry making than watercolors.

After mentioning I don't want to fill my scrapbook with landscapes, what do I do but paint some landscapes. I feel very peaceful when I'm painting landscapes, so I guess my subject just depends on my mood.

 This is yet another version of my memories of Oaxaca. I feel like each one I paint has parts of how it really was, but none of them will really capture it all.

 This is one I've actually worked on for a while. It's a view from the war memorial in Sincheorwon last fall when all the leaves were so bright. The view from the top of that his is gorgeous in all seasons,but especially in the fall when the leaves are turning and the spring when the cherry blossoms are blooming.

 I get a lot of inspiration from the top of that hill. This the view facing the other direction in winter. My current favorite painting.

 This is what happens when you hurry a self-portrait. It's not TOO terrible, but it looks like I had plastic surgery to make my nose smaller, and what happened to the corner of my mouth? I'll have to try again sometime when I'm feeling more patient.

I bought a teapot when I was in Busan. I'm already putting it to good use. Peppermint tea, green tea, rooibos, black tea! I'm consuming a lot of tea out of this little pot.

The Awkward Duck

 Hey, so the update is happening quickly! I could have promised after all! So here's the project I've been having fun with lately. Someone suggested I keep a scrapbook of my experiences here and I was trying to decide what form I wanted that to take, since I am not the type remember to get pictures printed and that sort of thing. The obvious answer was my water color paintings, but I didn't want to fill my scrapbook with landscapes, and so The Awkward Duck was born. I've decided to paint some of my experiences- odd cultural moments and such- in the character of The Awkward Duck. Here are the first few results:

 My friend Dani and I actually saw a dog with painted on eyebrows when we were in Busan, and it's quite common to see cats and small dogs wearing blush. I definitely find it disturbing!

Koreans pull out their umbrella when it's sprinkling, or even when it's just a bit misty. I don't understand this at all. I've even had people tell me quite seriously that if I go out in the rain too much my hair will fall out. The concern for me when it's sprinkling and I'm not carrying an umbrella is so strong that I cave and carry an umbrella. I use it in a downpour, but still don't like to take it out when it's just sprinkling. Having grown up in Western Washington, I feel like light rain is my natural habitat.

My life in Korea is pretty great, but I think we all have days like this.