Temperature Tantrums

Emart sells bubble wrap with cute little designs on it. This is not so you can skip the wrapping paper. This is so when you put bubble wrap over you windows it looks less boring and bubble-wrappish.

Wait, you're saying you don't put bubble wrap on your windows? Then either you're freezing, or you don't know how blessed you are to have such wonderful windows. Or maybe you live somewhere warm.

Now, back home, don't get me wrong, the windows let in some cold air. But this is not what happens in Korea. The windows don't just let in "some cold air" they let in an icy blast. And this is just one of the problems at home. I haven't even gotten started on what things are like in other places. Despite the fact that it gets cold EVERY year, Korea has a lot to figure out about living comfortably in cold weather.

Here are some problems I have come across when the cold weather hits:

1.In most buildings the hallway is considered part of the outdoors. As in, all the windows and doors are left open to let in the COLD air. This apparently supposed to prevent people from getting sick or something (it doesn’t work.) So in winter, before class I can stand at the doors and demand all the students leave their snowballs outside, and then after class the students can collect their still-frozen snowballs and go terrorize some other poor teacher. 

Here is is a picture of awkward duck in the hallway at school. If you can't see me, it's because I am an awkward ducksicle from being in the outdoor-temperature hallway.

2. Nothing is insulated well (thus the bubble wrap). The lack of insulation makes #1 even more of a problem. The doors all have large cracks them and the frame. This probably makes leaving the windows open slightly less nonsensical, because the heat is all going to escape anyway. The insulation is so appallingly bad that in my last apartment, there was a freezing cold draft that blew from the drain in the bathroom floor. Ugh. This year, my apartment is much more snug, but the windows still do not fit tightly, and when the cold weather hits hard in a few weeks, I have little doubt that I will be at emart or Daiso, picking out some bubble wrap of my own to cover my windows. In preparation for this cold, I have carefully arranged my smallest room, which I call the studio (as that is where the awkward duck painting-station is set up) for maximum comfort when I wish to hibernate next to my space heater.

The lack of insulation is particularly strange because Koreans seem to think that they are very environmentally conscious and that they are very energy efficient. Yet despite this, they terrible about any efficiency whatsoever when it comes to heating and insulating buildings.

Every ESL book has some chapter about the environment like "Think Twice, Think Green" but despite their unparalleled composting habits, they still haven't figured out insulation.

3. The buses. Ohhhhhh the buses. Temperature on the buses is left to the discretion of the bus driver. Some bus drivers are reasonable. Others, apparently, live in an oven and wish to continue at that temperature when they go to work. I actually rode a bus once where there was a small thermometer next to the driver, which read 35 C. For those Americans among you, that's ninety-five degrees fahrenheit. NINETY-FIVE DEGREES!

Awkward Duck on the bus

The worst, for me, is when I get on the bus to school and it is an oven. The journey is too short to shed my layers of coats and sweaters and scarves, but just long enough that when I arrive at work, I'm covered in sweat and feel disgusting. 

Also, when you get off the oven-like horrible bus, it feels SO much colder than it would if the bus were just kept at a reasonable temperature.

This same problem exists in summer, when some bus drivers decide that, although the bus must be flaming hot in the winter, it is a good idea to set the temperature at about 16 degrees. That's about 61 F. I will never understand. Why??

4. The heating methods.

At school, each room has one big vent in the ceiling that the heat comes out of. Each room as it's own thermostat. I suppose this is necessary given the whole "hallways are part of the outdoors" thing. I sure miss central heating though. Whole building being one basically even temperature- it was so nice. That is never the case here.

In my apartment, I have floor heating. Floor heating is the best thing ever. Until you get the bill. So most of the time I huddle in front of the space heater or under my electric blanket.

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.