Blearg

It turns out that my immune system of steel is no match for some combination of the following: cold weather, an entire new set of germs to be exposed to, contact with many many children, and new foods (including raw crab). You don't want to know the details, but here's a taste:

Symptoms of bird flu are very similar to normal human influenza and the disease cannot be diagnosed from bird flu symptoms alone, an oral or throat swab will be required to check for signs of the avian influenza virus. Human flu symptoms include fever, cough, sore throat, muscle aches, headache, conjunctivitis. Bird flu ultimately causes breathing difficulties, pneumonia and is potentially fatal.

Ok, my symptoms are not (quite) the same as those, and I'm not really worried at all. However, dating a hypochondriac is probably what allowed me to get my appendix out before it burst rather than afterwards, so I will pay attention.

Actually, I've been feeling a lot better since last night (4am to 8am were pretty damn miserable). I actually went to work today and (amusingly) to a health check (where they found me perfectly healthy because they are looking at long term stuff, though the nurse in radiology really didn't know what to make of my nipple piercing).

Update: I'm pretty much fine now (Jan 2nd).

Hiking

Today I had a few hours between observing classes and an end of the year dinner for the teachers, so I decided to explore Daejeon the Eurasian Hobo way: by walking. Part of why I chose Daejeon as the city to teach in was that it is surrounded by large hills (Mt. Tabor sized hills, which some of you non-Coloradans would probably call 'mountains'). It is nice that it only takes a few minutes to get from my school to a path through forested hills, that passes by what are either burial mounds and markers or boundry markers of some sort (I'll have to ask about them). I also walked through the main strip of the Noeun neighborhood (where both my school and hotel are) down to the World Cup Stadium. As they say in Pulp Fiction, it's the little differences that make life strange in other countries. I have plenty to say on that subject but I'll save it for when I have experienced more and when I have pictures for demonstration.

I took a plane, I took a train

I just heard an ad (I'm already guiltily addicted to video game TV because I'm fascinated by the way they treat video games the way Americans treat sports, with color commentary and hundreds of adoring, cheering fans) that used The New Pornographers' Myriad Harbor. I'm always shocked when I hear indie music in unexpected places. I was along for the ride at target for some of my mother's christmas shopping and heard them play a Sigur Ros song (again, at Target, in Colorado Springs!). I guess I really am a music snob if I assume that other people won't know and won't play the music I like.

Update: Add Rilo Kiley's Portions for Foxes to the songs I've heard on TV ads in Korea.

You Must Construct Additional Pylons

I'm pretty sure that there is a channel in Korea that shows Starcraft tournaments 24 hours a day. At any rate, that was what it was showing this morning and now, eight hours later.

Ok, the Ongamenet channel is probably video games all day, not just SC, though Koreans are (in)famously obsessed with that particular game.

Update: Actually, there are (at least) two such channels, both of which were showing Starcraft games last night.

Age in Korea, and other oddities.

I visited my school today and learned some about Korean culture in the process. One of the stranger things was that in Korea they count age differently. You turn one on the first January first of your life (I have no idea if what happens if your birthday is on January first), two on January first of the next year, etc. (On a related yet improbable note, two of my fellow teachers have birthdays on January 19th, and another shares my birthday of January 20th.)

I also found out that Koreans learning English to have an English name in addition to their Korean name. This explains the Koreans in my high school who tried to go by Andrew and Daniel, etc. We eventually convinced them that we were perfectly happy to learn their real names, but I didn't realize at the time that that was standard practice for any Korean learning English, not just something they did because they were living in an English speaking country. I feel like this says something about the laziness of Americans that no one even expects us to be able to learn names that are strange to us, but maybe people just think the name will help with the immersion in the language, or the practice started for reasons that I haven't yet considered.

[I am entirely too exhausted to try to use transition sentences to link the paragraphs. Sorry.] I had Korean food in Korea for the first time today as well, and liked it. I rather enjoyed kimchi (or at least, the types of kimchi that I had), which is good since it is something of a staple here. I have had people complain that they couldn't stand kimchi and hence hated Korean meals; I've also heard people say that the whole country smells like drying fish. I took these complaints (the latter of which is totally rediculous, which I thought when I first heard it) with a grain of salt since they came from some rather close minded and culturally insensitive people who were stationed here.

[I'm too tired to wrap this up properly either. The information overload is overwhelming my brain. I had to learn where I am staying, how to use the subway, the school's curriculum, Korean customs, the names of my co-teachers, how to read Korean letters faster, etc, etc, etc. Plus I'm probably jet lagged. Whatever the cause, my head is kind of fuzzy right now, so I'll sign off.]

Update: It seems (from the comments) that being assigned a name stereotypical of/common to the people of the language being learned is a common practice for learning any language. I only ever learned Latin, which is different from learning most languages because we didn't really speak it. We mostly translated existing texts rather than trying to learn how to interact with each other in Latin, so we never had Latin names. My incorrect assumption about English names is probably due to my ignorance of normal language classes and because of my guilt for feeling releaved when I learned that I would only be learning the kids' (and fellow teachers') English names, not their Korean names.

My hotel in Korea

So far, all I've seen of the country is the airport, the view from the bus, and the hotel I just woke up in. The airport is like any airport. The view from the bus window (during the times I remained conscious) alternated between landscape that could have been anywhere (it was night) and cityscapes that look like they come straight out of Blade Runner. The hotel is different from any I've been in, since it assumes that you have brought literally nothing with you (there is no space for baggage, they include all toiletries including a toothbrush, toothpaste, a condom vending machinge, etc), whereas most hotels assume that you packed enough for an expedition to the South Pole. Also, there is an entryway so that you can take off your shoes before entering a domestic area. This is going to be an adventure...

Update: The reason this hotel is so strange is that it is a 'love hotel', hence the condoms and porn and the assumption that you won't have any luggage. It's not for travelers, it's for couples in town.

Korea

I am safely in Daejeon. I will be in a motel until the teacher that I am replacing moves out on January 1st. I'm going to keep this short because I have no idea how much--if at all--using the computer in the hotel room costs per unit of time, since I can't read Korean. I'll update you more when I have slept some.