And now for something completely different....

I just realized that my first few posts haven't really told you much about where I live and what my life is like in Korea. Instead I've mused and told silly stories. Here goes...

I live in Anyang, South Korea. It is basically a sleepy little suburb of Seoul. A sleepy little suburb with about a million people and non-stop motion. In Anyang, I live in Byeomgye (pronounced bum-gay. It's ok, you can laugh. Hell, at least chuckle a little) which is great! Just around the corner from my apartment is a large plaza with tons of restaurants, bars, neon lights and lord knows what else. I think there are hookers and horse meat restaurants as well, but I haven't sought those out. I can find pretty much everything I need within a few hundred yards. Lots of people come from the surrounding area to Byeomgye to shop, eat, drink and party the night away, so I feel very blessed to live right here.

My apartment is nice. It's a decent sized studio, modern and well appointed to my taste. My favorite part is the high ceilings, about 13 feet by my calculations. Please see the pictures. I live in an office-tel, which is an apartment building with offices in it. For example, there's a pho (pronounced fu, like fudge. It's a Vietnamese soup) restaurant in my building, along with administrative offices for gyms and bookstores and such.

I work at Chyongge Elementary School in Gwachon, a town about 15 minutes by subway from Byeomgye. Apparently Gwachon is one of the two wealthiest areas of Korea, the other being Gangham in Seoul, and when I tell Koreans I work there they're very impressed. I'm kind of a big deal. A lot of the kids in my classes come from wealthy families and many have lived in America and other countries. I even have kids whose parents are ambassadors. As a result of this, my kids are a bit better behaved and have a higher level of English than kids in most other schools. Which makes me feel sorry for all the other teachers here; they're still terrors! But I still love them so.

I teach 3rd, 4th and 5th grade English. I teach 24, 40 minute classes plus two, two hour advanced classes each week. I like it. The kids are fun, the teaching usually pretty easy, and the school lunches delicious! The most difficult part is that in each class I have 35-40 kids with English proficiencies ranging from near fluent to can't say hello. I have to get the lower level students up to par while at the same time challenging and keeping the attention of the high level students. It's challenging and always amusing. Some classes go great, some not so much. All I know is that I give each class my all and let the chips fall where they may.

I work M-F 8:30 to 4:30. While most days I'm finished with class by noon or one, all public school teachers are required to stay till 4:30. It's fine by me though. I always have lesson plans and organizing to do. Typically I get home by five, have a snack and either stay home and read or go exploring and taking pics.

On the weekends I'll go for a hike, go out with friends, go grocery shopping and do some cooking for the week, and head into Seoul to go exploring. It's a pretty mellow and good life. I feel very blessed to be here, especially with what's going on with the economy, to have this country take me in, and sight unseen give me a place to live, pay me well, let me try a new career I have no experience in, and even give me great health care, it's just amazing. They pay for your flight over, give you an apartment rent-free, and pay you enough that you can eat, drink and explore to your heart's content and still be able to put $1000+ in the bank every month. Again, I just feel very blessed.

I am starting to take bunches of pictures, and soon I will be able to post them all here and on my Flickr site, but for the time being I'm just teasing ya and holding back the good stuff until I feel more comfortable with my photo editing software.

So that's my life here so far. Nothing to crazy so far, just a normal life, only it's crazy because I'm in Asia.

Pictures

Here are some pics I wanted to post earlier with the posts they concerned but my computer wasn't co-operating.








There's me in front of one of Jeju's many waterfalls.

Sitting down to dinner with more side dishes than people, it's how they roll and I love it! Just glad I don't have to cook it.

A magical beach on Jeju.

And me with Jang Sun-Woo, or the David Lynch of Korea as I like to call him.

Please check out www.flickr.com/photos/ejcallanan/ for more pictures. More are coming, I'm just having problems learning my photo editing software. Please check again at a later date.

Jeju and the David Lynch of Korea

A couple of weeks ago was Chuseok, Korean Thanksgiving. I had 5 days off and headed to Jeju, a large island south of Korea known as 'the Hawaii of Korea'. My co-teacher and her husband are from there and I was invited to stay at her mothers house. She showed amazing hospitality and I had a great time. Jeju was beautiful, filled with volcanic rock, white sand beaches, palm trees and some very colorful characters.

One of the days I decided to take a walk from the beach I was at to a place with a stone Buddha high in a cave. It was a 5 or 6 mile walk but hey, I didn't have anything better to do and it was along the sea on a clear and gorgeous day. About 3/4 of the way there I started getting very tired and hungry and began thinking this wasn't such a hot idea.

Right then I spotted a sign for the 'Mokgoli Cafe'. Interesting. It was the absolute middle of nowhere, but there appeared to be a small village about 100 yards inland to my right and I started walking. I approach the cafe with no one in sight. "Anyang ha seyo? (Hello?)" I called out. A very friendly and smiling man came around the corner, apparently the cafe's proprietor. I asked him what he was serving for lunch to which he replied, "Spaghetti". I wanted Korean food and asked him if there was a place in town that served traditional food. He happily directed me in to town to another restaurant, which, this being the day before Chuseok, was closed. There was a bus however, which from what I could tell would take me to my Buddha in the cave destination, and so I sat down next to a weathered old woman and waited. And waited. And waited. When she got up and walked away, I decided I might need to just start walking again, but in the meantime I was still hungry and to heck with it, I was getting some spaghetti.

So I walked back to the cafe and entered. Wow. Really nice little place, very hiply styled in a modern Asian sort of way. I ordered the spaghetti and after the man placed the order with the chef, also his wife. We started talking. Now, we're in the middle of nowhere, I'm the only customer in this tiny cafe, and so I ask the man if he is also a farmer or what else he does besides run this little cafe. He chuckles. No, I'm not a farmer he says. Turns out he was a film director who had gotten tired of show business and moved to Jeju to run a cafe and study Buddhism. He pulls a book off the shelf, written in English, about his life and career. As I flip through it, I realize this guy must be some kind of a big deal in the independent film scene in Korea. I have a Korean friend who is a film student and he has confirmed to me that yes, this man, Jang Sun-woo, is kind of a big deal.

At this point my mind is blown. Here I am, middle of nowhere on a subtropical island in Korea, stupidly trying to walk way further than I should have, and I stumble into having lunch with the David Lynch or Quentin Tarantino of Korea. Then the pasta comes out. Now here in modern Korea they've grown to love pasta, pizza and all sorts of food from all over the world. It usually however, is Korean-ized, that is to say the pizza has sweet potatoes for a topping and some strange mustard sauce instead of tomato. So I'm not expecting much from my middle of nowhere spaghetti, probably some overcooked noodles covered in ketchup for God's sake.

Please keep in mind that I am a cook. I lived in Italy. I know good food and I know good pasta. And against all odds this was one of the top 3 pasta dishes I've had in my entire life. Perfectly al dente noodles in a delicious creamy tomato and garlic sauce. After one bite my jaw hit the floor. Again, here is the scene: middle of nowhere subtropical island Korea shouldn't even be taking this walk stumble upon this tiny cafe owned and operated by the Korean David Lynch who retired from stardom to move to an island to study Buddhism eating the best spaghetti of my life. Just crazy. Oh and it turns out he has a friend who lives in my hometown of Santa Fe, New Mexico and is a painter.

I milk my time with this incredible man by ordering another beer. Finally it's time to move on and they call me a cab which whisks me to my waiting Buddha in perfect time to pray, reflect, and then watch the sunset over the ocean.

It's amazing how taking the path unknown and less traveled can result in extraordinary things, and how our perceptions often distort the reality of a thing.

Being clever is difficult...

I'd like this blog to be clever. I'd like it to a place where, if anyone actually reads it, they are amused, entertained and against all odds, informed. Let's be realistic however. I'm no genius. I'm not as amusing and clever as I would like to think I am. So if you're reading this, gosh, I kind of feel bad for you. But thanks for coming out anyway!

Korea. Hmmmmm..........how do you describe this place? You don't. I'm enjoying myself, just know that. I like teaching. It's one of the funnest and easiest jobs I've ever had. It's kind of like Korea itself: difficult and easy at the same time. I have 40 minutes in each class to teach 40 prepubescent children how to say, "Is this your cap?" or some other such basic phrase. Not as easy as it sounds. Not when some of the kids speak English very well and some of them can't even say hello. Not when they are more preoccupied with hitting each other and screaming. It's all about the games you play with them as teaching tools, and each lesson planning session I undertake basically revolves around the question, "how do I trick them into learning English this time?" Regardless however, I am getting better as a teacher, and for this I am very grateful.

A dear friend of mine suggested that I blog at least once a week with the strangest thing I've seen. I am disappointed to say that I haven't seen that many strange things. Maybe it was the sea slugs that I ate. Or the old legless man who wheels himself around my neighborhood on a dolly with a radio playing and collecting alms. It could be when some kids were fighting this week at school and the vice-principal got some boxing gloves and make them duke it out in front of their homeroom class. It could be the English names kids in my classes give themselves: Optimus Prime, Bart Simpson, Mr. Hot Dog, and Hitler. Yes, Hitler. We had a little chat about that one. He's Brian now.

Here's a good school story: As I mention above, the kids give themselves English names because their Korean names are just ridiculous to try to pronounce. Quite courteous of them I say. Some of them just shorten their Korean names, for example, Kim Chung ham becomes Chung. Now, Korean pronunciation is very subtle. I have two kids whose English names were Jung and Chung. Seems simple right? Let's see how that unfolded;

"Jung, please sit down."
"Teacha, my name Jung, not Jung."
"Isn't that what I said?"
"No teacha, you say Jung! My name Jung!"
"OK, very sorry, Jung please sit down and be quiet."
"Teacha, name not Jung. Name is Jung!"
"Yeah, that's what I said. Jung sit down and be quiet."
"No! Name is Jung, not Jung!"

Oi. This is difficult. And of course he sits next to Chung, with whom I had the same name trouble. So I say to them;

"Alright fellas. I'm very sorry I can't get the pronunciation of your names right. I feel terrible. However we need to learn English, not argue about this, so you have until the end of class to come up with new English names or I'm going to give them to you myself."
"Teacha give name! Teacha give name!"

I give each a long, studious look, deciding...

"OK, Jung you're Tito and Chung you're Jermaine."

Yep.

They love the names. I told them the next day that they were the names of Michael Jackson's brothers and now they love them even more (Koreans love Michael Jackson). So now I have Tito and Jermaine in my class. The sit next to each other. I get to see them 5 times a week. I love this. Especially when exchanges like this happen;

I'm sitting there lesson planning, frustrated. Jermaine walks in,

"Teacha, Tito sick. Tito won't be in class today."
"Thanks Jermaine. I really appreciate you telling me. I would have worried about Tito."
"It's OK teacha. Teacha?"
"Yes?"
"I like being Jermaine!"

A large smile finds it way back to my face.
Ahhhh, teaching in Korea.

Well now that my first two posts are novels, ensuring most won't return for more, let's post a link to some pictures! These are just a small sample of my work here in Korea so far. Most of them are my best images, some of them are in there simply to give you a diverse cross section of what this country feels like. That is what I long to master: how to photograph not what a place looks like, but what it feels like.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/ejcallanan/show/

Basically, I come from a family of photographers. My mom is an amazing wedding and portrait photographer. My dad runs one of the top photography schools in the world.

Please check out their websites:

www.cmcphoto.com
www.santafeworkshops.com

I grew up around photographers. As a child I spent time with the best and most renown photographers alive, their images subconsciously soaking into my brain. As a result I'm very blessed to have a decent eye for making a good picture. I probably should have just gone into the family business after high school instead of going to college. Oh well. Now, at the age of 30 I find myself very drawn to the medium and have begun pushing myself to make good pictures. I'm just a baby in the long process of mastering the craft and I hope you enjoy seeing me progress as a photographer.