My name is Alex

This is part 5 and the final entry about my 2008 two month stay in Korea.

I said this before but, I think if there is anything I have learned from this trip its this:

A lot of problems that seemed to be a huge deal to me, turned out to not be that big of a deal. At all times there is a world revolving that is completely independent of your own. This realization has made me feel much better about things in general in recent months.

I've been back home [ in the states ] for about 3 days now. I was picked up at the airport by 3 of my closest friends, which was nice to see them all at once. It was a kind gesture. My mom was in Korea, she went 1 week before I left so there wasn't really anyone else to pick me up. Seeing their faces...all I could really think was how I would rather they had just come to Korea and we could spend time together until the school semester started up.

You see, it hadn't hit me until I saw all 3 of them. Landing on american ground, not seeing majority korean people, and eating western food, none of that seemed to make me realize that....I just plain missed being in Korea already. I don't think I was ready to leave yet. And to think, in entry one all I could think about was how boring this trip was going to be compared to my previous plans to go with my white friend who has a huge interest in everything korean.

Going through my camera, I guess I didn't take that many pictures. I'm the kind of person who puts importance in the people I hang out with, more than the places that we are at. So yeah, that kind of personality is apt at *not* taking pictures.

I never expected it...but I met two people whom I now consider dear life friends even if I spent less than 2 months with them.

Here's one:

Yes that's me on the right. That was the first time we met outside of school, you see she's the school nurse at the elementary school I worked at. She had a huge interest in English and wants to eventually move to the states. I guess the rest of the story is mostly personal memories but meeting this woman completely changed my dull daily schedule of just going to school to teach English.


This is in front of the bus before going on a tour of Hwaseong [ wiki it ] and this baby is the daughter of the special ed teacher at the elementary school I worked at. Apparently everyone thinks she looks like a boy but I guessed she was a girl and ever since that time her mother was always fond of me lol.

Here's some pictures that I think are pretty cool. The one with the bird was my wallpaper for a day or two. I didn't even expect it to come out like that.





















This next set is of the MBC drama shooting locations. Lots of Korean historical dramas were shot here:







Some wax people:



This is a pulley machine that moved rocks up and down a mountain:


Me and some employee dude:


First time I ever shot a bow and arrow, was much harder than expected:


Me and another student around my age who happened to go on the tour that day. He was excited since I spoke korean and english so well -____-:


Me in front of a church:


Near same church:






Visited a huge lake:


This shit was orgasmic since I'm a huge shellfood lover:




God I wish they had that kind of restaurant where I live.
Basically you grill raw shellfish over the fire.

Here's a recent phenomenon called Dr.Fish. It was pretty strange. You put your feet in the water and these fish bite/suck at your skin and ' clean it ' Yeah...I only put in my hand for about 5 mins then it got too weird. Didn't really see any difference:



Me and some of the kids I taught on our last day. I bought some cake and other refreshments for them:










Me receiving a ' thank you ' commemorative plate [ I guess that's the best way to describe it lol ] for my work at the elementary school:


Me and my dear friend^^:


Ice skating later that day:


Buddhist temple on Suk-Mo-Do island:



If you push that three times slowly you will have good health apparently.

The obligatory cheers picture. Some kind of ginger drink, was the only thing that was similar in alcohol proof to what my friends and I usually drink in the states. So it was pretty welcome lol:


On the subway crossing the Han river:


Me giving an impromptu speech to a English class of adults. The teacher invited me to say a few words after he found out what I was doing in Korea:


Oh here's one with Susie, didn't come out too well for me... she's got the other ones <_<:
actually edited here getting a better one.

This one is with me her and a friend of mine who I've known through vent for 6 years but met up for the first time during this trip:



Anyway.... there's more pics but those are the ones that I thought were interesting. Also some are more or less personal memories I'd like to keep to myself hope you guys don't mind.

Here's to you, busy bustling Korea:


tbh this was rushed and not as thorough as I originally planned so I apologize to people who expected more.
I'm planning to go back next year. I can't wait!

Hi, I read your thread called "Headed to Korea" and I couldn't see the pictures, they were x boxes. If you can, could you please send some of those photos to me?


Thank You.
-Unbelievable237

lawl.

I figured that before I went on this trip, that I initially didn't even want to go on, that I would have way too much free time and I'd spend most of it in front of a computer.

Fortunately, it's not like that. I met some great new friends and I go out nearly every day.

Last night I got checked into a hotel by my noona because for the 2nd time ever I drank so much I threw up. The only other time that has happened was on my 18th birthday. I'm not saying that to brag about my drinking ability, I'm saying it to give you some idea how crazy, yet fun my visit is. Also, its not like drinking is everything it's definitely not. I'm touring places and eating things that I could never eat back home, and getting some incredible pictures.

Anyway, I wanted to post this because if anyone was following this and [ probably expecting updates more often ] waiting for the next entry with pictures I just wanted to let those people know that I probably won't update again until I'm back home in the states. I go home july 28th so I guess sometime around then. I think it'll be fun to reflect on my time here by going through the pictures in my camera and posting them in the entry here.

Thanks for reading, hopefully some of this was interesting. I promise I'll definitely put effort into the 5th entry.
As for now I have to drink something because I'm pretty dehydrated from last night.

Later TL

It's a rainy day and I had a spare hour so I decided to make a quick post. I would write what has happened so far, but I've typed it at least twice so I'll just repost an email that I sent to my friend with parts edited out:

Hey
That weekend was pretty crazy. I met up with Joon first [ who is tall as shit irl ] and even though I saw his picture before it was a debacle finding him. He gave me directions to meet him at probably the biggest 4-way intersection I've seen in my life and we circled each other for an hour till he finally found me. He said I was ' dressed like an American ' so that's how he spotted me, not because of pictures he's seen LOL.

Anyway, I was gonna just hang out with him for that night but he said he was going with his gf and another friend [ all of them are models lmao ] to a lake and I should come too. I was just gonna meet up with my cousin so I decided to go with them. But yeah, the night I met up with Joon I met his g/f and then we went to go eat dinner. Then at dinner we met up with his other friend.

Then we went drinking afterwards, and I offered to pay and holy shit was it steep. It was basically $9 a shot. We each had a beer, then a shot of something [ excluding his gf ] and the tab ended up being $60 somehow. I was like what the fuck in my head when I paid it lol.

Anyway, that night instead of falling asleep like his gf kept telling us too since we were gonna leave early in the morning the three of us went to a pc baang and played dota until 6:00 am. We lost every game lmao. Anyway, we stopped by Joon's house for a sec and changed clothes, then we hauled ass to his gf's workplace since we were taking the company van. She was like why were you guys running LOL

So the lake was pretty cool we wakeboarded and stuff, first time doing any of that but apparently joon's gf family goes to that lake often so she was pretty good at it.

That night we had a pretty good dinner we bought sam gyup sal and bbq'd it ourselves outside and I had soju for the first time here in Korea. It's definitely weaker than what I'm used to drinking with you guys but it's like a different taste I guess. The next day I just went to my cousin's and that was pretty awesome too because my cousin is so nice. She bought me all this good stuff to eat since she lives in the city and we talked a lot since she doesn't have tv at her house or anything haha.

This week I've pretty much been struggling to come up with some material because the school never gave me a syllabus so I pretty much have to make up lesson plans on a daily basis. That part kinda sucks, but it's okay it lets me get creative I guess. The other day I played fucking vocab pong with the kids cuz I was so bored LOL. They had no idea ofc and they were all into it and shit.

On Thurs/Fri though I have class with 5/6th graders and like one of the kids there is smart as shit. He knows as much English vocab as any 5/6th grader in the US. So yeah he kinda ruins my plans sometimes since he fucking knows the answer to everything. It's 10:33PM here and I still haven't made my lesson plan yet for tomorrow rofl.

Anyway, my other cousin [ the one I was talking about's brother ] is moving to another house, so I helped him move shit yesterday and he's hanging out here at my grandma's house with me till his new house is open. We basically slept and watched Euro2008 games. He brought his ps2 and we played Winning 11 which is like FIFA but better/harder and I only won like one game outta 50 LOL. He had never played before either but gg I suck at sports games. Oh yeah we washed his car and since we had to dry it we drove out to like a man-made dam they have here that's pretty big but I didn't bring my camera....

That's the one thing that I keep forgetting is to bring my camera to places, but most of the time anywhere I go that's worth taking pictures I go pretty much spontaneously and I'd rather not have my camera all the time. I have some decent pictures but yeah I'm still trying to get a lot more.

I might actually stay up until August 8th or something like right before school starts since my cousin who lives in the city, she works for a hakwon which is like a tutoring place and she told her boss about me and her boss wants to meet me and stuff. If I did that I would probably get more reference + actually get paid so I might do that. Plus I kinda want to spend some time in the city since I'm have been/will be here at my grandma's house the entire time.

So yeah that's about everything that's gone on since I met Joon. Nobody writes to me but you =( so I have no idea what those other faggots are up to. Anyway, say sup to everyone and write back!


K...I decided not to edit anything out. Joon is a friend I've known through vent for 5+ years and I met for the first time.

Anyway I'll post some pics...I would have a lot more but if you read the email you'd see I don't always have my camera with me. My friend Joon and his friends took a lot of pictures with their cameras and phones which I'm going to ask them to email to me. So I'll post those in the next blog entry. I'll post it in text so it will load easier.

To start, here's a funny section I found in one of the books they gave me as kind of a reference point to what the kids were used to studying. I thought it was hilarious so I tore it out:

Page 1:
http://img518.imageshack.us/img518/6874/sa500433vn7.jpg

Page 2 and 3:
http://img108.imageshack.us/img108/3756/sa500434ys5.jpg

Page 4:
http://img501.imageshack.us/img501/1213/sa500435zm7.jpg

Cheap bastard of a father LOL

Here's some SC on TV @ 7 AM or some shit that I took when jet lag was still effecting me...May not be that interesting but I'm sure some people here have always imagined this but never actually seen it:

http://img299.imageshack.us/img299/1264/sa500416at4.jpg

http://img299.imageshack.us/img299/700/sa500418br3.jpg

and

http://img522.imageshack.us/img522/7075/sa500418qr5.jpg

Also there's a lot of American/Western programming on Korean television, such as:
http://img58.imageshack.us/img58/6430/sa500419it7.jpg

Here's the elementary school I work at:
http://img58.imageshack.us/img58/4226/sa500420nd0.jpg

and
http://img58.imageshack.us/img58/5166/sa500421ml5.jpg

Here's where I walk to get to the gym I go each morning which is really shitty/basic....I took this picture when it was raining.

http://img504.imageshack.us/img504/4562/sa500422cz2.jpg

some more things on the way to the gym...a plot with garlic and other vegetables:
http://img164.imageshack.us/img164/9503/sa500424ui2.jpg

A couple funny signs in front of the gym that are posted in the flower patches:
http://img164.imageshack.us/img164/7383/sa500425tv5.jpg

That one roughly translates to: Flower lovers like you are angels.

This one:
http://img207.imageshack.us/img207/633/sa500426ui6.jpg
translates to : These flowers are your face.
A closer one: http://img374.imageshack.us/img374/3006/sa500427aw5.jpg

Subway:
http://img207.imageshack.us/img207/5423/sa500428ii3.jpg
It's changed a lot. Before this trip, the subways were always very open and not AS crowded. The biggest difference I noticed this visit is that there were times where the subway cars were so packed that people couldn't even get on at stops... Never had that happen to me while I used the subway in Korea.

Shitty toilets:
http://img207.imageshack.us/img207/1289/sa500429lr4.jpg

I have a funny story regarding the first time I ever saw one of these...maybe another time lol

A picture taken from the window of my cousin's house at night:
http://img296.imageshack.us/img296/8584/sa500431ne6.jpg

She lives in the city.

Here's another one during the day:
http://img296.imageshack.us/img296/5763/sa500432ee2.jpg

My cousin!:
http://img508.imageshack.us/img508/9164/sa500436pd0.jpg

Typical korean/girl response to pictures (--v)

Anyway I realized there's no pictures here of me but like I said a lot of pictures were taken by my friend Joon and his gf and other friend. I'll include more + [ more interesting ] pictures next time.

Before I begin!!: I have a bunch of pictures I wanna share but I don't have my camera here at the lan center, I just stopped by for a few minutes. I'll definitely have em in my next entry.

Anyway, about 2 hours ago I started the first day/class of my job. It was pretty intense. The kids were really fun and amicable so that was easy but the teacher who oversees me pretty much decided to sit in on my class and I was nervous as fuck. Not to mention my conversational korean with people my age was not so sharp since I hardly practice it back in the states.


Sigh... hopefully the teacher who was with me today understands. She is really nice and generous to me, but I felt like she was a bit underwhelmed by my performance. I was sweating and shit by the time the hour had passed.

It was my 2nd uncle's birthday yesterday [ my oldest uncle and aunt own a restaurant ] so we ate at my aunt's place. My cousin from Seoul came by and I was so happy to see her. She's 29 but since I don't have anyone around my age to hang with it was awesome seeing her. I'm actually going to her place this weekend because Friday is like a school holiday or something. I'm gonna stay there until Sunday, possibly Monday. I'm planning to meet up with a friend and see my other cousin. [ Maybe Susie too if you aren't busy?^^]

About starcraft: [ it is TL after all, lol ] It's fun to see live games again, and still ridiculous having 2 channels stream almost exclusively starcraft matches all the time. At 7 am in the morning [ I wake up usually around that time cuz of jet lag ] I can turn on the tv and starcraft will be on. Last week's proleague games or some shit. I've watched some bnet attack and live battle shows because POV's are fun to watch. Still, it is a bit daunting, there are so many new faces in progaming compared to when I really followed it closely. I will probably go to a game or two this weekend when I'm in the city.

Anyway, thanks for reading guys I'll try to keep you posted. I'm in walking distance of 4 lan centers so I actually can get on more than I thought I would....Actually I kinda wanted to avoid computers a bit during my trip since back in the states I spend most of my day in front of one...

Heen, where abouts are you at? I guess I could fit in a dota game or two haha.

Edit:Here's the link to the first entry
http://teamliquid.net/blogs/viewblog.php?id=71871

So the last time I went was in 2004. It doesn't seem about 4 years ago, feels much shorter than that. I'm 19 now and I'm actually going for 2 months because of a job.

Here's the thread from 2004 when I was still very much into progaming, it was a great experience:
http://teamliquid.net/forum/viewmessage.php?currentpage=1&topic_id=14090

Originally I was going for 3 months with a friend that I've never actually met irl but have known through vent for, oh...I don't know say around 4 years. He's a white guy and older than me but very interested in Korean culture. I have a really close relationship with a lot of people in my vent server because we've stuck together for years and anytime I've met someone irl it's been a great experience.

We were basically going to go to chill and have a fun time going to tourist attractions that even I hadn't been to in a while. I wanted to go with him to re-live my heritage through visits to historical places. Anyway, this plan fell through because of real life things he had to take care of.

At that point I wasn't really going to go to Korea anymore simply because I had so many built up expectations that had been crumbled. Going alone would have been boring, I thought because my family in Korea are all extremely busy and few are well-off so I would just have been a bother. There were some other things that ruined my summer plans before they even began but I won't go into that here.

Anyway, my oldest uncle lives across from an elementary school and I got a job for 2 months there teaching English to the children. I'm probably gonna get a lot of rekrul-inspired comments in the replies but tbh I don't really care. If you really wanna know how I feel, I think Rekrul has a really skewed view of Korean life even if he's lived there longer than I ever have. Just an opinion, if you wanna give me the English teacher jokes I'm all for it.

I wasn't going to do it simply because my heart was really into going to Korea to meet up with my friend but after consideration it actually provides valuable experience for me in what I want to hopefully do as a career. You see, originally I wanted to go into the field of law, maybe something like corporate law where I would be able to travel or work for a Korean company. The undertone was that I was a Korean-American who could translate. But the more I thought about it, I really enjoyed being able to translate.

I'm not gonna lie, I'm not the most proficient in Korean. I'd say I speak at a highschool level and read/write at around a middle school level [if we were to compare it to schooling system in the States ] This is why I didn't do translations for TL as much as I would have liked to in the past. I also only just completed my freshman year at college so it's not like I'm really accredited either. I'm doing this because I have the opportunity.

You know people say that you should try to find what you really enjoy doing in life, and try to make that your job/career? For the longest time I always thought it would be something like games or computers but recently enough I realized my choice would probably be translating. Even when I was a little kid and I translated between fob children and my teachers I loved that feeling of being able to connect two people who previously couldn't understand each other without me. I also feel like I'm above-average at bodily/emotional perception and because of this I can deliver nuances better while translating.

To answer the question of why I'm posting this in blogs....well I guess that can be traced back to a few weeks ago when I ordered the TL shirt [ which is awesome btw ]
I thought to myself, I never really connected with any of the ' known ' people in TLnet or really got along with a lot of members. I'd say I've been around for a while and I have a lot of posts compared to most but I never felt like I really belonged at TL. But I guess when I bought the shirt I questioned myself as to whether I would ever really wear it. The answer was yes because 1 the design was awesome and 2 because....well TL has always been the only forum I've visited and also allows me to look back at myself through old posts and replies. It's pretty awesome.

I would be lying if I said I wasn't nervous. I don't really know what to expect of this job. I have no idea what English curriculum is like for Korean elementary school students...my best guess is ABC's and stuff like that. The thing is though, korean schooling is really rigorous so I should probably overpredict. Either way I see it as hit or miss. I don't know if I will be provided with textbooks or if I will have to come up with my own lessons for the kids. I mean granted, some of these questions will be answered when I get there and meet the teachers/principal but I still feel nervous.

At the moment I'm thinking that I don't have enough 'dress/nice' clothes to come to school every day as a teacher LOL. Also korean school is 6 days a week, although I hear saturday's are now becoming bi-weekly.

I'm also going to try and get in better shape and just basically reset my life a bit while in Korea. Because of things I'd rather not get into I have been depressed the past 6 months more than I have ever been in my life. I think getting away from my daily schedule of getting online to play games and not really doing any hard labor will do me some good. I don't really see visiting starcraft matches as a priority anymore like I did back in 2004 simply because I've not followed the scene much at all and it just seems way too daunting nowadays. There isn't really a personal connection that I felt with players before like Yellow, Nal_rA, Nada, Boxer, Oov, Reach etc... I mean more than likely I'll probably end up going to some live matches...but not if it's really out of my way. I'll be depending on you guys to help me with the schedules!

Anyway, if you actually read all of this you're probably bored, but I appreciate it.

If you read my other post, a long time ago you can see that I attended a lan hosted by a nearby college[GATech] and I was the overall winner of the lan and got to choose a monitor as my grand prize. [ It was really fucking nice btw ]

If you want to read about the experience:
+ Show Spoiler +

So I was named ' overall ' winner of the lan held at Georgia Tech last semester and basically I got 3 choices of grand prizes.

8800gt
22inch wide screen lcd
xbox360

Originally, at the lan they told me it was a 8800GTS and a xbox360. I was going to take the video card because I didn't have my new computer yet [ I do now ] and it would've saved me a bunch of money. I would've only had to pay like 100 more for the 8800GT I have now [ paid fully - _-v ]

Anyway, that's all the specs they gave me. I have no use for the video card now and I figure even from a financial standpoint the LCD would sell for the most. I have no interest in the xbox360 nor it's games, I was going to pick that simply to give to my teammates/friends irl since we won cs 1.6/cs:source/dota together.

I asked for the specs of the 22inch lcd and I'm waiting for the response email. Still though, I can't help but think even the shittiest 22inch widescreen costs more than a xbox.

I also don't like widescreens so in the end I might just sell whichever I pick. I think xbox's go for $350 nowadays?

Lastly, those with widescreen LCD's do you really enjoy them? I have a 20.1 LCD non-widescreen because I just always didn't like how a widescreen felt playing games.

Well in about 5 days I have to go to court for 2 driving tickets.
Some background info: I have been driving since I was 15 with my permit 2 days after my birthday. I got my license the day I turned 16 and since then I have never gotten in an accident or received any kind of ticket or verbal warnings by cops.

In fact, I hardly ever see cops when I drive.

Anyway, the two tickets I got in November pulling out of my friend's house, we were going to go eat somewhere I think. About 2 minutes after I pull out his neighborhood there's a stop sign at a nearby intersection. All ways must stop. Now, I'm usually very good about stopping since my mom always got tickets for those and generally I'm a pretty safe driver. But this intersection is really really secluded so I may have done a rolling stop but to the best of my memory I stopped completely because I remember braking and then changing the song on my cd player.

So after I pass that intersection a cop pulls me over. He asks for license and registration. Now, I only drive my car during weekends since after high school I left my car at home [ college parking too costly ] I always leave my insurance registration in the same place but when I'm not home my mom just drives my car since it's better mileage.

So when I look for my registration I can't find it because my mom put it somewhere else. I explain this to the cop and ask for a few moments. I look everywhere and just can't find it, so then I find an expired card [ 1 year ] and call my mom to ask her where she put my insurance registration. She can't recall either but she says it should definitely be okay since the cop can pull my info from the expired card and see that the car is covered.

So 30 minutes later the cop comes from his car and gives me 2 tickets, one for the stop sign violation, and second for no proof of insurance. The thing is, while he was in his car I actually found the paper that said my car was insured and registered validly for this year. So I showed it to him and was trying to hand it to him but instead he replied with ' You can dispute this in court '

Naturally I'm going to court in 5 days. I was wondering what I should do since I guess I'm representing myself and I don't really have experience in this kind of situation. All I know is that I will refer to my perfect driving record to state that I didn't pass the stop sign without stopping. I was also thinking about bringing my friend who was in the car the entire time as a witness but that might seem shady since he's my friend he will stick up for me [ judge's perspective ]

As for the insurance ticket my mom says that should definitely not be a problem since A) You can look it up and he simply didn't, even with the expired card. and B) He decided to not even look at the registration which I found after he wrote up the tickets.

Any help would be great, thanks for reading.

Today is my birthday, and I'm 19. I was just thinking to myself for a bit before things get hectic around here and I realized I've been visiting this site since ' Friday, 9th of January 2004 '

Today is October 27, 2007. So a bit over 3 years eh? Can't believe I logged on when I was just 16 haha. I just wanted to say it's been a blast coming to this site and reading and posting all the stuff I have in the past. The staff is great for the most part and as a Korean-American who fell in love with starcraft this site was really a miracle to find. I just felt like saying thank you to everyone who keeps this site alive, posters, mods, admins, those behind the scenes etc.

Here's to another year of procrastination/learning/laughing via TLnet!