Half-way

It’s been far too long since I blogged.  Sorry, wish I even had a great excuse other than laziness.

I’m about half-way through my time  in Korea.  So I thought I’d reboot my blog by writing a short high-level look back.

The big surprise is how much I like little kids. I actually really, really enjoy little kids.  There’s something about kids, a bubbling energy, that can really be a thrill.  When I was coming here I was really dreading having to see little kids every day and I wanted high school kids.  Now that I’m here though I realize that teenagers are kind of joyless little jerks.  There’s something special about a nine year old girl jumping up and down because she did well on a test that older people just don’t have.

The worst part has been the moments of feeling really dumb.  I’ve lost my phone twice here.  Gotten it back both times but I feel incredibly awkward calling it and not being able to speak but a scant amount of Korean and trying to set up a way to get my phone back.  Or sometimes I’m talking to a cabbie and I know I’m saying where i want to go correctly and he just can’t understand me because I have an American accent.  Or even worse if I don’t know for sure how something is pronounced it’s kind of frightening hoping he heard me correctly.  Especially in a city where some of the places sound frighteningly similar.

Possibly the worst experience of this kind was when all the teachers at my school had a meeting with the then owner of the school and him yelling at all of us in Korean for nearly an hour without a translator.  I felt so totally lost, and nervous, especially for one of my co-workers whose name kept being weaved in and out of the Korean.

The best part is just how many cool people I’ve been able to meet.  I made a list the other day of everyone I’ve met in Korea the other day that I have some interaction with either in real space or online.  Excluding students it was already at nearly 100 names.

So many of them have really been awesome.  Co-workers, D&D buddies, girls I went out with,  it’s a pretty long list.  They really have been what has made the first six months living in Korea worthwhile.