I have Skype!

So I finally got set with Skype, meaning that any of y'all with an account, or who get an account (go to Skype.com to check it out - it's free to download, but you'll need to make sure you have a microphone on your computer), can talk to me for free, and that I can call all the rest of you for a couple cents a minute. I've still got to work out some sound quality issues, but it works! My Skype ID is kristinkmarsh - if you have an account, look me up or e-mail me your ID and we'll be in touch. Now if only this fantastic service could do something about that pesky time difference to the States ...

I also have a cell phone number, but I'm not going to post that here - just e-mail me if you want it. It doesn't cost me to receive calls on that phone, but I won't be calling internationally from there short of some emergency.

One more thing down ... on a list of about 100. But life here is finally settling into something of a routine, and it's nice to finally be able to focus on changes in smaller portions, rather than feeling like every moment brings something unexpected. During the week we have long days of classes, meetings, lesson planning and shuttling around to various errands ... at the end of the day there's just time to scratch out an e-mail or two while watching whatever cheesy English-language program might happen to be on TV or scrub a few clothes in the tub if the one washing machine in the basement is taken (it usually is, and apparently there aren't laundromats here like in the States ... some people are checking into a laundry send-out service, but I'll let them be the guinea pigs). During the weekends, we inflict ourselves upon the largely amused and partly annoyed neighborhood, taking over the tiny diner and getting impromptu Korean lessons at the 7-Eleven across the street, and we venture downtown and to various city attractions - which really means wandering around on the hot streets for hours like a herd of lost cattle, following a series of misunderstood or misgiven directions. Evenings - weekends, anyway - may mean a beer in the bar down the street, or a trip downtown to the expat hangouts or clubs.

Even meals don't seem so exotic anymore. It doesn't seem so out of the ordinary to eat french fries with ketchup or salad for breakfast (I think that first dish is some enterprising soul's idea of creating a Western spread at the hotel for us Americans) amid the more traditional hard-boiled eggs, Spam (or something like it), toast and cereal. Lunch and dinner are typically at the college cafeteria, where the staples of rice and kimchi (spicy, pickled cabbage) are accompanied by at least five other dishes, a bowl of soup and a piece of fruit. There are generally no drinks and never any desserts, and everything's eaten with chopsticks and spoons. Lotus roots are a big thing, pickled vegetables are all the rage, and I've quite gotten used to tentacles on my plate or in my bowl. It's hard to generalize the cooking, though, other than to say there's a notable variety of veggies and meats/seafood used in each meal. When I get a camera in a month or two, I'll do a more thorough post on some of the dishes. In the classic "weird stuff I've eaten" list of those traveling abroad, though, I've added tiny octopus, tiny fried crabs (both in entirety) and kelp - "You know, that stuff we feed our fish" as a co-worker put it. There may have been other items of note considering the amount of unknown dishes crossing my plate in recent days. Some of the other teachers were somewhere grubs were served, and another ate dog. Doubt I'll be seeking out either one of those anytime soon.

Friday we had a formal ceremony with the college president to receive our letters of appointment, starting with a half-hour dress rehearsal of how to meet a person of such high status (don't drink until he tells you to!), how to accept the letter (with two hands!) and how to bow (left hand on your stomach or elbow!) and shake hands (the ceremony was somewhat Westernized in an overture by the president, who proved to be a warm, gracious gentleman ... I wouldn't have been surprised by a pompous ogre after all the fuss, but that's the culture). The only people in the room, however, were our group, a handful of Korean academics and staff, and the president, which made me realize that in the States we generally reserve our ceremony for mass gatherings - here there's no need for an audience to make something a sacred event.

Then we spent the evening with the dean (son of the president) at a Western-style restaurant in the mountains - good food but not quite spot-on: The baked potatoes were loaded with whip cream instead of sour cream, for example. The dean was also quite anxious to see our Texans (in suits and boots) two-step, apparently, but the music selection was more of a techno club sort, so there were a couple awkward hours of people standing around, bobbing their heads in a "trying to go with the flow but not bust a move in front of an important boss" sort of way. A good time was had by all, though, a staggering bill tallied and an auspicious start made to a cross-cultural project of mammoth proportions ... which was the point, I think.

technical difficulties

Fabulous. I managed to delete my "About me" box and just seem to be messing things up more screwing around with the Korean buttons to put it back ... I may just run anonymously a couple months until I'm back on an English-language network here ...

Week 1 of teaching is going pretty smoothly, which really isn't saying much considering the situation. I'm co-teaching with a new master's grad in linguistics, and there are two teachers' aides AND a Korean translator in the classroom - yes, five adults for 12 students. The Village will be more like one or two adults for 15 students, but this summer camp is a way for the college to use all of us milling about, waiting for the Village to open.

Still, it's something of an accomplishment to have created lesson plans, adapted things on the spur of the moment and kept a dozen youngsters fairly engaged for three hours when you've never done that before. I now feel at least a little more legitimate using that title of "teacher" that I've co-opted for a few weeks now.

One of the boys - "Harry" (Sidenote: it's amazing what a bestselling series can do for a name's popularity. Apparently there are downright scuffles to get dibs on that moniker in each class - there's always one - and the kids all chant "Haahh-reee Poh-teh!" anytime the little guy gets a turn at the board or a game) ... anyway, our Harry brought us new teachers candy this morning, which may be quite perfunctory but still totally made my day.

I'm in a class of kids who are theoretically 10 to 13, but the way Koreans count age makes things a little hinky. As I understand it, Korean children are born being 1 year old, and they all have their "birthdays" Jan. 1, so a child born Dec. 28 could be "two" just four days later. Hence we've got tiny little "June," with the quiet stare and barely audible whisper, and tall, gangly "Ann," with all the markings of teen awkwardness and angst. And I thought I had it tough being the youngest in my class, desperately waiting for my driver's license a mere few months after my classmates ...

On a final note of the day, check out the animated "tour" of the Village by clicking here. Of course it still looks pretty much nothing like that, but the bones are there, and it'll get fleshed out eventually.

Later, gators.

party in 516

I have Internet!!! Finally connected to the world again ... Twenty teachers have been sharing two old-school computers with the rest of the hotel for e-mailing and lesson planning, so you can imagine how fantastic it is to finally get my own connection.

So ... where to start?

The flight from L.A. to Seoul was fairly uneventful - unlike my last trip abroad, my neighbor was a quiet, considerate person fond of sleeping. She knew about 50 more words of English than the handful I knew of Korean, and at the end of the 12 hours I pulled out a pack of gum in an attempt attack some of the travel grime before starting the next leg of the journey. I brandished the half-eaten package of spearmint Orbitz at my schoolteacher neighbor in polite American style to offer her a piece, and she appeared shocked with gratitude, asking/pantomiming "For me?" twice. I nodded, slightly perplexed. She promptly took the whole package and put it in her purse, then with great regret indicated that she had nothing for me. I assured her it was OK. As I tell you this story, she's probably telling her friends about the quacky American on the plane who pushed a half-devoured package of gum on her.

But that was really only the beginning of that day's adventure. The five of us program teachers who had been on that flight (sitting separately) hustled out of the plane to start the waiting processes - first at immigration, then on the luggage, then on the lost-luggage paperwork (my two arrived just fine - thankfully!), then on customs ... and with a mere 20 minutes to catch our connecting flight to Daegu, our fully loaded posse set out to find where to check in. Our pulse rates spiked when an airport official said we needed to take a shuttle to the domestic-flights area, but a cabdriver promised us he had space for five giants and their mammoth luggage, so we were off. And let me tell you, the Army could not have done a drill so smoothly as our impromptu operation headed by the champion efforts of the slight-yet-surprisingly-strong driver, Mr. Kim, and we crammed into that yellow van tighter than circus clowns. Which is pretty much what we felt like about 10 minutes down the road when it became clear that we weren't simply shuttling to another area of the airport, but to an different airport altogether - and most definitely the wrong one. Apparently we didn't even need to leave the building for our transfer.

Chaos ensued, but it was tempered by a surprising amount of laughter, hurtling down those metropolitan highways, trying to figure out our next move. People were called, schedules were checked, plans rearranged - thanks largely to the animated negotiations on our behalf and solid cell phone service of Mr. Kim, and eventually we settled on a plan to catch an express train - all this set to an eclectic soundtrack of Western throwbacks. I think Louie Armstrong's "Wonderful World" will be forevermore tied in my mind to that ride, two Texans (boots and all), a sassy junior high teacher, a bubbly new education grad, Mr. Kim and me squashed together, all singing along in total abandon.

There was another flurry of activity at the train station, where Mr. Kim actually booked our tickets for us, a seemingly endless but quite comfortable train ride down, another shuffle involving multiple runs in tiny cars at the other end, and here we were, a few hundred dollars later, finally in Daegu.

Fast-forward a week. We're living in a hotel a couple subway stops from downtown, and of course, things here have also not gone quite as planned, but this time they mostly worked out in my favor. We were originally booked for double-occupancy Western rooms, but somewhere along the way a handful of those changed into single Korean-style rooms (with bed mats on the floor), and I had a shockingly hard time convincing people it REALLY wasn't a noble gesture to volunteer for one of the latter. I could sleep on the floor all year, no problem, especially for the perk of having my own space away from the people I live, work and socialize with, no matter how great they are - but apparently I'm the odd one out.

Word is we'll be here in town for a month, but after seeing the village today the general consensus is that it could realistically be Thanksgiving before we actually get up there (we've actually got a pool going on the date). On the bright side, it's obvious it'll be one heck of a place when it's finished, and at least for this first month we have classes to teach at Yeungjin College, half the partnership that founded the village program - and we'll be getting paid no matter what the situation. Plus we get to get more acquainted with the city before moving to the rather remote spot 20 minutes from a suburb of Daegu.

On the downside, the hotel is not really up to traditional Western standards in terms of facilities and cleanliness - I'm not sure whether it's up to Korean standards - so that's been wearing on the group, but things seem to be getting slowly worked out one way or another. And it doesn't seem horrible, just expectations change when you plan to be in a place for months rather than a night.

As for the rest, in the words of the heralded Indigo Montoya, "Let me explain ... No, there is too much - let me sum up."

We've had packed schedules of orientations, paperwork, introductions and easing into taking over summer classes at Yeungjin College. It's been long, hot days (I'll get to the heat later) but it's really awesome just to be this excited about a job again - it's probably the honeymoon phase, despite everything, but I just can't believe I'm getting paid to hang out with kids and teach them things in a fun way. And such well-behaved, sweet kids! (Kids are kids, but the culture here - which has its downsides, more on that later, too - really supports successful classes, and Yeungjin also funds English classes really well, so the teacher-to-student ratio here is something American teachers could only dream about).

The food is a major departure from American cuisine, but cheap and quite healthy (yes, Linda, if you read this, I'm totally flouting traditional grammar ;) and I'm still finding it fun to not know what's on my plate half the time. At the Korean version of fast-food, which is more what we think of as diners - definitely no drive-throughs here, you can get a roll of "Korean sushi" (not fish - cooked ham and veggies), a bowl of broth soup, kimchi and another pickled vegetable for about a dollar. Yes, you read that right. A nice meal can be had for about four or five bucks. But that's only food - consumer items here seem to be comparable to, if not more expensive than American counterparts.

My Korean is coming along painfully slowly, but I seem to get around OK anyway, and the people here (like heroic Mr. Kim) are ridiculously nice and go out of their way to help idiot tourists. I'd heard about how welcomed Americans are here and I guess I really didn't believe it until now, but it's awesome.

Anyway, I guess that's the semi-rambling version of recent days' events, so you're mostly caught up. We officially take over classes Monday - wahoo!

i'm here

Hi all - I've still got really limited computer access, but just wanted to post something to say I've made it and have much to tell ... I hope to spend some time in an Internet cafe this weekend, so a more detailed report to come. For now, suffice to say that I arrived (with a few detours on the way) and the group is overall pretty cool but we're dealing with some major changes of plan (on top of jet lag and culture shock and logistics problems) because construction on the village is so delayed, so tensions are running high. Definitely quite the adventure, but that's what I signed up for, and after getting into classes, I'm pretty sure teaching is my dream job ... for now anyway.

Catch ya later!

a melancholy road

The past few weeks have been a whirlwind, first a frenzy to leave Colorado, then a head-spinning tour of the Midwest, and now a jaunt through the American-image factory of California. From the time I left Colorado a week and a half ago, I've seen close to 20 sets of people in Missouri, Kansas, Iowa and now sunny - or smoggy, rather - California: about 100 folks in all ... and a handful more yet to go before I cross the ocean. Whew.

Then it's a small feat just hauling this much crap across the country ... I rode a shuttle from the airport with a family of eight - count them, EIGHT, and traveling cross-country no less - who had a mere four tidy bags among them. I probably could have packed most of those kids AND their luggage away in my four. I cast longing looks at the business travelers' sleek little carry-ons as I trudge through hotel hallways and parking lots with my unwieldy lot. In the elevators, people make quips about how I sure have a lot of stuff. I sure do. Thank goodness for carts and shuttle drivers.

Touring the country has also been a survey of my past. I've been away from the central part of the country long enough now that the West feels like home, and the domesticity and tufted hills of the Midwest seem almost exotic as the eccentrics and ocean view in California. And I already miss those Colorado staples I once found unusual: pine trees and scrub oak, the crazy peak baggers and other adrenaline junkies, green chili and avocados everywhere.

As one of my friends observed, travel can make a person melancholy because it acquaints you with wonders of the world - people, places, sights, tastes, experiences - that you can never possess at the same time, meaning you give up a bit more each time you switch spots. Another friend gave me a card with a quote attributed to Confucius: something like "Wherever you go, go with all your heart." The thought was quite apt for my move East, but I can't say I agree with old Fuschy on this one. It seems that if you've fully lived and you've moved around, you can't help but leave pieces of your heart scattered about. Each place I've been still tugs on me, and it does make me somewhat melancholy to tour that and evoke all those visions of other paths I could have taken ... could still take.

But you only get to do it once, and a melancholy heart is a full one, I suppose, for each of those places that I left a piece of myself, I also gained memories and - more important - friendships. People who give me words for this melancholy and Eastern proverbs to mull, as well as ongoing windows into all those places in the world I love.

my ode to journalism

I couldn't leave journalism without one last Big Story. Okay, so it didn't end up being much of a story, but when the newsroom was hopping and no one knew where the next funnel cloud would whip up, it was at least the possibility of a Big Story and a reminder of one of the things I'll miss the most.

There's nothing I've found in my quarter-century of life quite like the feeling of a buzzing newsroom - the excitement of being at the center of information during a moment when lives are being changed, and the charm of experiencing that amid a collection of intensely curious people.

These are folks who pursue challenges as a trade ... no wonder so many are reluctant to give up on the cantankerous industry. And as much as newsrooms can resemble some caricature sketch, loaded with exaggerated personalities and eccentric quirks, they've also been full of people I'm thankful to know. People who have challenged me and taught me. People who have inspired me.

When I leave journalism next week, it will be with no small amount of nostalgia. But it will be with a headful of lessons and a heartful of gratitude. Not to mention more than a few inspirations for that novel I may write one of these decades ...

But it's time to move on. Vaya con Dios, journalism.

Korean culture 101

Some do's and don'ts I've learned over the past week from a Korean friend, a Korean waitress and program organizers:

1. Generally, instead of a handshake, give out a business card - using two hands, thumbs on top and fingers together underneath, with elbows bent. Receive cards the same way.
2. When handing someone a cup of tea, however, use one hand and touch the other hand to the inside of your elbow. (Things other than business cards or teacups are still a little murky.)
3. When entering a room with a group of people, walk in most senior to least senior (rank or age), and walk out in reverse. Never turn your back when leaving a room; instead, back out.
4. The most senior person eats first, decides when phone conversations are over and shakes hands first (if there are handshakes).
5. When dining with seniors, turn away from the table to drink (any drink), and cover your mouth as you sip.
6. Women should always cover their mouths when they laugh.
7. Bow in greeting; the more senior the person in rank (and possibly age), the deeper the bow.
8. Never curl a finger to call a person to you; instead, turn your hand palm down and sweep at the air.

And that's definitely only the beginning of the culture list.

Now, few of these things are expected of tourists, but as someone living in the the country and working in a prestigious position (yes, teaching - can you imagine?) with Koreans, these are mannerisms I will need to adopt. I'll keep you posted on how that goes ... but you can imagine that it won't be smoothly. :)

Also had a full Korean meal for the first time in my life this week - much to the amusement of my friend who dined with me, the waitress and the other patrons in the place (all Koreans). My tentative "thank you" in Korean - the only phrase I eventually mastered that evening - brought huge guffaws ... not quite sure what I said - and it's probably better that way. As far as the food, I guess I'd envisioned something more similar to the other Asian styles I've tried ... but it was totally unlike any other genre and quite tasty. Plenty more about that in the months to come, I'd imagine.

under construction

UCCS just posted a bunch of photos of construction at the Daegu English Village site - click here for more. I think they were taken during a trip this winter, but it's still exciting to see something a little more concrete than architects' drawings with a mysteriously transparent clock tower ...

The enormity of being part of the founding of such a program freaks me out no little bit sometimes, but the opportunities should be equal to the challenges. 20 American teachers have been hired now, they tell us, and I think most of the village staff is also in place. Although it still doesn't feel quite real, it's becoming more apparent every day that it's actually going to happen.

Meanwhile, construction continues on this blog, as well - I've added a whole bunch of stuff on the sidebar at right. Let me know if you're having more trouble loading this site than others or if things are displaying correctly ... still working out the kinks.

And a packing question: Does anyone have suggestions of American trinkets to take for thank-you gifts or rewards for students?

Colorado hail, Korean heat

Dime-sized hail today in Colorado - it's bouncing like popcorn on the green grass behind my house and slipping down the chimney to sizzle on the fire. Almost got caught out in it with nothing but my iPod (and my clothes, thank you very much!) - ouch. I started wondering about precipitation in Korea (I'd heard about temperatures - hot, swampy summers, in Daegu at least, and anyone who's ever watched M*A*S*H knows about the bitter winters), did a little looking and stumbled across some a couple interesting pages about Daegu. Thought I'd share for any of y'all thinking about visiting, or who are just curious:

• www.sri2006.org/useful/daegu.php
• en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Daegu (Generic Wikipedia disclaimer: This is a publicly edited page, so take any facts found here with some degree of skepticism)
• www.dalseo.daegu.kr/eng/html/sub01_04.html

explain fully

I love bureaucracy ... when I don't hate it. It's just endless fodder for amusement.

Exhibit A) American Family Insurance has just informed me that I will have to pay a deductible if a volcano or earthquake levels my Colorado condo. They sent me a whole letter just to tell me that.

Exhibit B) Korean visa application Question No. 19.

This picture is tiny, I know, but hopefully you can just make out Question No. 19, right above the penny - the one with the box stretching to the bottom right of the frame: "[Hangul script] Purpose of entry (explain fully)." And then not even a thimbleful of white space. Heck, they took up most the explanation possibilities just by telling you to do it.

Of course I won't explain fully, I'll just squish "teach English" in my neatest, 3-point handwriting and be done with it, but it still cracks me up.