One year down, infinite to go

Many moons have passed since my last entry. Contrary to what you might have thought, I did not take the blog out behind the wood shed and put it down. I wish I could write a nice long list of all that I've been doing, but that would require a good deal of liberal penmanship. Mostly, I have been embroiled in the full throes of my hakwon's busy summer season, during which time, it seems, the school makes 90% of its profits for the entire year. Every classroom was completely packed for about three months, and my life was just one SAT or TOEFL test after another. At the end of August, as busy season ended, I got out of the country and went over to Beijing for a much needed rest, and to see the Olympics.

To the right is a chicken. I saw it wandering around the streets when I went down to the Olympic Park for the first time. This was my first impression of Beijing. The impression being that Beijing has chickens in the streets like New York has pigeons. But after not seeing any other chickens in the vicinity I allowed myself to assume that it had simply escaped from a screaming, butcher knife wielding, old Chinese woman at a restaurant. In any case, I discovered that Beijing was much more modern than this initial impression indicated.

The city was beautiful, and China did an outstanding job with the Games. They cleaned up the pollution by turning off the factories and preventing half the cars from driving on any given day. They Anglicized their signage. They successfully renovated their skyline and completed their 10-year architecture projects on time, which turned out amazing (this building was especially awesome). And they cleaned out all of the *ahem* "unsavory" people from the city. Very communist of you, China. Over the past 10 years, many residents of bad areas were simply forced out and their homes taken, as I hear. Dirty-looking street vendors and their stands were likewise "re-located". I can't even imagine what happened to all the beggars. I heard from a Chinese friend in Beijing that they were just driven outside of the city and "set free". By the time the Olympics rolled around, if their was still a shoddy looking neighborhood (and there were many--a stark contrast with Seoul), they simply put up cheap "One World One Dream" (their Olympics motto) plastic walls around it so it could not be seen from the street or sidewalk. I know this, because I lived in one of these neighborhoods my first night there. After that, I grabbed my things and crashed with some people I know living downtown. It was much better on the other side of the wall.

While in Beijing, I got to see Matt Lachman and Rachel Jeffers, both of whom were in the midst of intense Olympic competition. Rachel, in the US women's crew team competition; Lachman, in the US men's drink-yourself-silly competitions. I unfortunately could not make it to Beijing early enough to see the last of the women's crew races (sorry Rachel!), but I did sneak in a few late-night events with Lachman's team. We didn't win any medals, but there were plenty of Blue Ribbons (if you didn't get that pun, then you need to drink more cheap beer). I also got to hang out with Bill Hatch for a day (surprise!), just before he left from his year of learning Chinese on a Light fellowship, and saw Grace Hsieh, looking every inch a future CEO with a pimped-out penthouse apartment!

I never did get a picture with Rachel and her boyfriend (why did I not carry my camera with me everywhere?), but here's me and Matt at the gold medal baseball game between Korea and Cuba. I went to both the Korea v. Japan semi finals match as well as the gold medal match. The tickets cost about $20 each, in comparison to the price of a ticket to the finals of one of the major events like track and field, soccer, or basketball, which were going for hundreds of dollars by the time I got there. And obviously I was excited to go see the baseball games because my team (Korea) was competing. And it's very fun to sit with Korean fans. Korean fans are the most energetic and fun-loving people I've ever seen. They're not rough and rowdy fans, they're just all extremely loud and patriotic (and they were exactly the same at the regular season baseball games and the soccer game I've seen in Seoul). They all are decked out in player uniforms, and they all somehow knew theme songs for each individual player as they came up to bat. And I don't think there was more than 30 consecutive seconds of silence in between any two cheers. Not surprisingly, it can become grating to sit for three hours in front of Korean girls screaming like they're seeing the Beatles in the 60's. It's like the Korean government requires all of its citizens to attend a cheering seminar before any sporting match. The funny looking brightly colored mascots in this picture are supposed to represent the five rings of the Olympics. They came out during the 7th inning stretch of the Korea-Cuba game (and yes, they do sing "Take me out to the Ball Game" in English), and the video is the 9th inning when Korea wins it with a Cuban double play (you just have to click the Play button, grandpa and grandma). This was right after the Korean catcher and coach almost got tossed for jawing with the ref. It was especially funny because the Korean translator had to run out to translate what the catcher and coach were spitting at the ref, and vice versa. After they win, notice the coach-tossing that they do, and the Cuban player seemingly passed out in the outfield afterward (he was the one that hit into the double play).


I also did all the traditional stuff in Beijing, like go see Tienanmen Square and the Forbidden City and the Great Wall. Did you know Mao's body is actually on display there? Like, in a glass case for viewing? You can't take pictures of it, so I didn't bother to go (does that make me weird?). Apparently when they first needed to preserve him, they filled his body up with some fluid that accidentally turned him blue. They had to hire some woman (and by "hire" I mean "pay her a ton of money") to thoroughly massage Mao's corpse for a number of days in order to get the fluid out. There was obviously tons of tourists in Beijing at the time, and when I was wandering around the major attractions in the center of the city, people would occasionally ask to take pictures with me. Whenever I saw a really blond woman, she was always swarmed by people wanting to take pictures of her with their babies. I didn't get any baby pictures (hint of jealousy), but this is a pic of me with some random Chinese dude who didn't really understand that I just wanted him to take a picture of me by myself. And here's a pic and a video of me at the Great Wall. That wall, by the way, is a BRUTAL hike! I have no idea how soldiers could walk along that thing, much less defend it. If it were to rain, that thing would basically be one big Slip 'n Slide.


After I came back from Beijing on September 5th, my first year was finished. I decided to stay another 2.5 months to take one more Korean class to solidify some of my Korean speaking skills. The class has been fine, but not nearly as helpful as I had imagined. In fact, I was learning more on my own and with my language partner, with whom I practice my Korean by describing my favorite movies to her and listening to her describe her favorite movies to me. The difference in our tastes could not be more definite. I spent 30 minutes describing "Army of Darkness" and "Armageddon" while she described very depressing Korean movies in which someone always ends up committing suicide. I have fun with it by guessing at the beginning of her stories which of the characters will kill themselves. So far I'm 2 for 4. Korean movies are very predictable. Not like Armageddon.

Ironically, I promised myself, when I first came to Korea, that I would know what I would be doing with my life by the time I left. Well, I'm leaving in a month, and I have no idea what I'll be doing, or even what I WANT to do. I have a good amount of cash stored up from this past year, so my current "plan" is to go home for Thanksgiving (maybe Christmas too, if the 'rents will let me crash for awhile), and talk it out with some family. They are a good sounding board for me. I've been somewhat using the excuse of the "bad American economy" not to get outta Korea and get on with a career. On the other hand, I'm saving significant money at this job in Seoul, and it really isn't a hiring market in the US. Regardless, I still feel the need to go back home for a spell, just to see people I haven't seen in a long time. Heck, maybe I'll just go home and get a job as an investment banker. Haha! Isn't it great that that's a joke now? And isn't it ironic that I took this job in Korea because I couldn't get the job I wanted at an investment bank? Ah, delicious, delicious irony.

Anyways, maybe this means I'll start writing more. It's fun to occassionally throw something up on this blog. Leave a comment if you feel so inclined...