Cory And Katy

Mrs. Park is head of the english department at Katy’s school. At work she is pretty serious, but after work she is a ton of fun. In this video she is dancing with me while Katy and Star are enjoying the show.

After only a month into this adventure, I have been exposed to what may be my favorite cultural difference between South Koreans and U.S. Americans.  In SK, workplaces take out their employees on a somewhat frequent basis and actually ENCOURAGE the employees to drink too much.  We got to experience this cultural difference firsthand when Katy’s elementary school took us out to a seafood restaurant last week.

While you may be thinking, “Wow! A country where you get brownie points at work for drinking with your co-workers on someone else’s dime?!?! What could be better?!”  Well, stop thinking that.  When I say seafood restaurant, I mean a raw fish restaurant… and not good raw fish.  And when I say drink, I mean soju.  Soju is the Korean go-to alcohol, and it basically tastes like a weak vodka.  Raw fish + soju = fake swallowing.  Don’t get me wrong; we definitely tasted a few new things and did some obligatory shots of soju with the principal and vice-principal, but we were not to the point we couldn’t stand up straight, like many of our fellow teachers.

Mmmm, doesn't it make your mouth water?

How's that snail, Katy?

That good, eh?

What about that red-pointy thing, Cory?

Are you ready for seconds?

So after raw fish and soju, all of the teachers headed next door to noraebang.  We have some great videos of the event, but we’re still working on formatting them so we can embed them on our blog.

In other news, we now have internet at our apartment, so fear not, readers.  You will be getting more Cory and Katy action in the future.  Prepare yourselves accordingly.

We are now settled and getting cozy in our town of Gijang. Cozy is a nice way of putting it, because our studio apartment Katy’s school set us up in is very, very… cozy. Actually, we just learned that the Korean name for such apartments is wonrum. Get it? Get it? No worries though… this type of apartment is generally what English teachers get. Ours is at least clean, somewhat modernized, and within walking distance to everything we need. The only con is that we basically have to do a backbend over our bathroom sink to wash our hair.

In one shot you can see our kitchen, laundry room, bathroom, dining room, living room, and bedroom.

Over the weekend, we decided to explore some neat things our town has to offer. We hiked up a nearby mountain and got a great view of Gijang. We could even see how close the sea is to our house! Lots of other people were hiking that day and when we reached the peak, a couple of different families offered us some of their food after seeing we only brought a couple of oranges with us. Apparently, the big thing is to bring a huge spread up to the top of the mountain and eat there for lunch. We heard some families even bring grills with them! Anyway, one family in particular made us sit down and eat their meal with them. Delicious!

This is the view of our town from the top of the mountain.

The happy hikers.

This is the nice family who shared their kimchee with us.

We took a different way down and came across a small Buddhist temple. Some of the women in the kitchen made us come in and they gave us fruit and coffee. One of the monks even sat down with us and tried out some of his English. After we ate, we were full and we hadn’t even paid for any food all day! So far in our journey, we’ve encountered nothing but hospitality and generosity. After a short tour the facilities, the monk pointed us up towards a fresh spring, and we followed a path up to find some of the most delicious water we’ve ever had.

Buddha-belly luck!

It's like you can see the inner peace in my eyes.

Best. Water. Ever.

Sorry it’s been so long between posts. We’ll try to be better! Don’t forget about us! We’re still alive!  And if you want to see more pictures, you can check out our gallery in the sidebar or my (Katy’s) facebook page.

The gods smiled upon us when EPIK chose to have our orientation in Cheonan.  While the fabulous EPIK staff is busting their bums teaching us the language, pedagogy, and how to negotiate our way around Korea, we enlisted some fabulous people of our own to show us the ropes of Korean karaoke, called noraebang.   My (Katy) dear, dear friend Tracy and her wonderful husband D have been living in Cheonan for the last year teaching English at a private school, and we were lucky enough to have our first week here during their last week.

Tracy and D met us at the Dankook University, where we are staying, and poured their year’s worth of acquired knowledge into our brains as they took us to their apartment and then out for some Korean barbeque with some of their other teacher friends.  After the delicious lesson in grilling pork right at the table and wrapping it in a lettuce leaf (so good!), we headed off to a bar to consume countless kettles of rice wine and then left to go sing the night away!

The noraebang was AMAZING.  Each group gets their own little room to sing to their hearts content, so the group of us piled in to do our thing.  I’m not even sure how long we all stayed out, but our university dorms are locked between 1 and 5, so instead of getting in before 1, we decided our time with D and Tracy was so precious that we’d just stay out until the doors opened back up.  So that’s what we did!

It didn’t prepare us too well for the tour of the Korean folk village we took a field trip to this morning though.  I was pretty miserable between the pounding headache, crappy cold weather, and awful Korean food, but there we saw some great traditional performances while were were there and…

MORE NORAEBANG!  I swear, Korea and I were meant to be.  We had a badass charter bus to get back to the University and it was decked out with neon cosmic decor on the ceiling, flashing colored LEDs, a television screen, tambourines, and a microphone.  Yes, we karaoked the whole trip back.  BRILLIANT.  I of course wooed the passengers with a rendition of Bohemian Rhapsody, which actually was really bad because I still have a hoarse throat from the night before when I lost my voice.

If I get to noraebang this much the rest of the year, I may never leave this wonderful land.  Sorry, folks, but I have priorities.

Katy and I finally made it to Dankook University in South Korea tonight. We got situated in our room about an hour and half ago, and just now got on the web. We made some fancy VOIP phone calls back home from my lappy since getting on a payphone is just about impossible right now.

Cory and Katy at the Incheon Airport

They have 4 phone booths and a hundred times more people. It took us roughly 34 hours of travel time to get here from good old Elkhart, Indiana. All of our flights went well, and we were very much taken care of. Especially on the Singapore Air flight we had from San Francisco to Seoul. Well, it’s off to bed and time to get used to the 14 hour time change. We have orientation tomorrow, so it will be a busy day. We will write more later!

Yes that’s right, I think we are all done with our required paperwork to live/work in Korea. Katy got an E-2 visa, and I got a F-3 visa. It was pretty easy and straight forward to get them, we were just waiting on Katy’s contract from Epik so she could get her E-2 visa. We were really stressing out because Epik made it real clear to not show up to orientation on the 19th without a visa. The Korean Consulate in Chicago is pretty speedy about things, especially since we walked the paperwork in and picked it up in person. We really didn’t have any time for hiccups. Once we get to Korea, I will have to change my visa to an F-2 status, or a Dependents visa so that I can work. I think Katy has to register with the Vaccination office and then I can get my visa status changed. I have also been looking into getting a Korean Ham Radio License, I just have to remember to bring my US Amateur Radio License with me. Anyway, time to hang out with some friends…..only 4 days left! Cheers!

Well, we got our contract Sunday evening and made a trip out to Chicago to visit the Korean Consulate on Monday. It turned out that the contract was waiting at our old address since the middle of last week. We were extremely stressed about it, and called our Epik Coordinator and he looked up the tracking and we figured out what had happened. We are expected to pick up our visas on Thursday. Today we got a phone call from a lady that is processing the visas and she mentioned that we had in fact not given her the right papers. She needed the sealed noticed of appointment and not the actual contract. It was their screw up so she said as long as we brought it on Thursday they could still process the visas. We are still leaving at our scheduled time next Wednesday, so all is good. Today, we went shopping for things we will be needing. We are getting more excited about leaving. Things are good

Cory and I wanted to make one last trip out to Pittsburgh to see my sister and brother-in-law before leaving, and as we were planning it out, Emily and I decided we wanted to go to the Inauguration.  We knew it would be a huge pain the rear, but we couldn’t let such a historic moment pass us by without being a part of it.  Late Friday night, mom decided she wanted to be part of the magic too, which worked out well because it was just Emily and I going and our husbands would have our cars, leaving us with no way to get to D.C.  Trains were books solid, so there was no chance we could have used public transport.

Cory went home on Sunday afternoon because he had to work on Monday.  Mom showed up in Pittsburgh that evening with bags full of hand warmers, trail mix, luna bars, matching hats, etc.– everything we would need for surviving the cold weather and long wait.  Emily had arranged for us to stay at a friend’s place in downtown Arlington, but we didn’t know how far away we’d have to park our car, so we each packed 1 small bag with everything we’d need for the next couple of days to make our journey a little easier.  This involved wearing some of the same clothes for 3 days straight.  I felt so stinky when it was all over.

After driving through heavy snow to get to Arlington, we got lost at the tail end of our trip.  On a side note, we had to turn the car around in the parking lot of the Freddie Mac building and it’s still standing!  We eventually made it to the apartment and it was about 4 in the morning before we could lay our pretty heads down on a pillow and go to sleep.

On Monday, we headed down to the mall check out the scene.  Because crowds at been projected at around 2 million for the inauguration, we didn’t even bother with public transportation, but the 3 1/2 mile walk only took about an hour.  On our way we walked past the Marines memorial and through the Arlington cemetary, where we took a side trek to see JFK’s tomb.  There were people crowded around it, but for the number of people there, it was eerily quiet and respectful.
After we had our fill of dead people, we crossed the Arlington Memorial Bridge and head toward the Lincoln Memorial.  Security was tight and even though it was the day before the Inauguration, the place was packed.  The scaffolding from Sunday night’s concert was still up around the Lincoln Memorial, so the only access to it was from the side and there was a line to go see it.  We spent the rest of our time just checking out the area and buying some swag and hot dogs on Constitution Ave. before getting back to the apartment for a good night’s rest.

We woke up at 5 a.m. Tuesday morning and layered on the warm clothes.  We had bought a reusable bag with a picture of Obama on it the day before, so we shoved all our stuff down into it and were out the door by 6.  Walking to the mall was interesting because the city was dead except for other people bundled up in warm clothes walking in the same direction as us.  Mom kept comparing us to the zombies in “Night of the Living Dead”.  On our way there, we walked across the the Arlington Memorial Bridge again, but this time the three of us were interviewed by the NPR reporter Allison Aubry.  A co-worker of mine said she heard us on Morning Edition, but it was live so the clip wasn’t archived.

After crossing the bridge, we walked over to the reflecting pool and noticed people sitting on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial, so we went up and joined them.  In retrospect, we probably would have seen how far into the mall we could have gotten so we could have at least seen the Capitol building during Obama’s inauguration, but we thought being on the Lincoln Memorial was a symbolic place to spend the day, despite the Washington Memorial blocking our view.  Plus, we got to sit.  The mood on the steps was so jubilant and the loudspeakers were playing Sunday night’s concert, so everybody was singing and dancing.  One guy in particular got in front of everybody and tried to lead us all and did goofy dances to entertain us.

Unfortunately, we couldn’t see a jumbotron from where we were sitting, so once the official festivities began, we moved to where we could see what was going on.

Watching Obama take the Oath of Office and Aretha sing was so emotional and joyous for everybody around us.  Tears welled in my eyes several times.  As soon as President Barack Obama’s speech was over, we got the heck out of dodge.  We speedwalked back to our car, which we had already packed up that morning, and we drove away.

Well, technically less than 2 weeks left until we leave.  This past month has been pretty busy.  We had what seems like a ton of issues with our paperwork.  Apparently getting something Apostilled means sending it down to state and getting the secretary of Indiana to put a special stamp on it and look up the validity of the notary that signed it.  Anyway, we BARELY made it into the list to be placed in Pusan.  We bought our plane tickets just before prices shot up sky high.  I had been watching plane tickets prices for a few weeks through www.farecompare.com to see if they would start increasing.  They day I bought the tickets I saw that they were beginning to increase.  It was a little risky buying the tickets when we did, about 1 month prior to us leaving.  The only crappy part of our trip is that we have 2 stops before we leave the country.  Well, I quit my job helping Katy’s dad last Saturday.  Just before leaving I updated the website and made it easy to manage the inventory.  This is mine and Katy’s last week at work.  Only two more days of work and I’m going to miss it.  I have been working for a year and a half at two jobs.   It’s wierd to leave one job and just come straight home.  It’s going to be even stranger in South Korea and not having a job as soon as we get there.  Katy will be working, but I’m going to try and find a job doing something with computers.  I have contacted a guy in Seoul and I’m waiting to hear back from him.  I’m also trying to work something out with Tire Rack, but it’s not looking very promising.  Katy and I will be spending the week and a half that we have off getting things tied up here.  We still have to take a trip to Chicago, take stuff to our storage unit, and pack, plus much more.  I have a grocery list of things that we have to get done.  Well, I’m looking forward to spending time with family and friends with our time off.  I haven’t done much of that lately.  It will be nice.