There hasn't been much noteworthy to report yet. I've slipped into a good routine that I need to shake up with a gym membership pretty soon. I feel at ease at work and things rarely surprise me there anymore (the kids excluded, of course). A couple of weeks ago I took a second trip to Busan for the International Film Festival. My friend Tim and I went and had a wonderful time. We caught the tail end of summer sunshine on the beach, saw some weird and one fantastic movies and hung out on the beach at night setting off fireworks and (once again) getting eaten to death by mosquitoes. Two of the films were not very good and rather creepy, so I won't write about those, but we saw a Korean movie called "Secret Reunion" and it was really great. It was about two spies, one from North Korea and one from South Korea that strike up an unlikely friendship. It was mildly cheesy, but mostly just entertaining: action-packed, heart-warming, and dramatic all at once. We both loved it! Especially after the two other weird ones.

Peter and Ryan will be here to visit me in less than two weeks! I'm so so so excited to see Peter! I know we'll have a lot of fun! And the week after they leave, the Flaming Lips will play a show in Seoul that Tim, Mallory, and I are planning on seeing. So I should have more stories to report soon.

For now, things are relatively peaceful and I am content. The kids are wonderful. We had a Halloween party this week so I got to actually play with them and have fun like I used to in Extended Day. It made me miss that kind of work so much, but it also seems to have changed the way the kids see me in the classroom, which I like. They look to me as more of a source of joy and someone to joke with. Some of the other teachers may worry about the students showing them a lack of respect, but I strive more for a balance of mutual respect. I want my students to like me and enjoy class with me so that they will want to do their work and have fun learning.

Anyway, book tally continues:
The Giver by Lois Lowry
One Day by David Nicholls

Still deciding what should come next. I was thinking something more difficult like Morrison or Faulkner or Woolf, but I might keep things easy and quick. And I want to begin research on a paper I'm going to write on the role of women in daily life in South Korea and how it is reflected in their public access pornography. It's provocative, but I really want to write something publishable so I can apply to grad school with something under my belt.

Hiking and ducking, plus Korean Costco trip

We went on a hike up one of the mountains near Daejeon on Saturday. It's a tradition at Avalon to bring all of the new teachers on a hike together. It was really lovely to be out in nature, but still odd to see no animals anywhere, and let me tell you, Koreans are very intense about their hiking trails. There are almost no switchbacks, large parts of the hike were straight up or straight down. By the time we got to the top, all of us foreigners were bright red and sweaty, while the Koreans were in their button-downs, barely glistening: ugh. The trip down was rather traecherous and terrifying. It was pretty much straight down a makeshift, stone staircase. I thought I was going to fall to my death.

After the hike, we all had lunch at a restaurant at the foot of the mountain. We had duck, which I'm not sure I've ever eaten before. It wasn't bad, but digging into a full carcass still feels more foreign to me than most things. The duck was filled with some really delicious rice that had some dried fruit and nuts and things in it. Then we also had a traditional Korean noodle soup. There was also makgeolli (pronounced mock-a-lee), which is a traditional Korean wine. It's a fermented rice wine and is kind of fizzy. I wasn't that big of a fan, it's palatable, but I didn't want to finish the bowl they poured me in the middle of the day. After the meal, the vice president of our company (because it's a company, not a school) asked us all to share a song we thought of during the hike. Apparently it's a Korean tradition to sing during or after a meal. No one sang their songs (especially me because I've lost my voice) but the experience was rather humorous none the less.

That night we all went out and celebrated Brenda's birthday which was so much fun! We had Chinese food (well, kind of) and went to Yellow Taxi (one of the Western bars in Time World with live music). It was also some sort of anniversary part at Yellow Taxi, so there were tons of people. After a while there we went dancing at Cocoon, our new favorite club. It was a fantastic night, and I love Brenda : )

On Sunday I went to Costco for the first time since being in Korea. It's probably the most American place here. I got oats, chocolate muffins, and sharp cheddar cheese (you know the bare essentials) then we got a pizza and a hot dog in the food court. Everything is identical to American Costco (except for the prices, it's actually kind of over-priced but understandable). Mmmm, that shopping trip satisfied so many of my US-based cravings!

I want to keep a running log of the books I'm reading (because I'm reading even more than I expected), so I'm going to begin and continue it here. Feel free to skip this part if you just don't care:

The Imperfectionists: A Novel by Tom Rachman
Everything is Illuminated by Jonathan Safron Foer
This Isn't What It Looks Like by Pseudonymous Bosch
Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close by Jonathan Safron Foer
Currently reading: Amsterdam: A Novel by Ian Mcewan