Back in the swing of things...

It was wonderful to be back in America for a month, but it has also been good to get back to normal life and routines. I didn't take nearly as many pictures in Indiana as I do in Seoul, so here are a few random highlights, although this certainly isn't a comprehensive overview. 

I always forget how much I love American beef. In Korea, I usually eat Australian beef. It's good, but not quite the same.... 

It was great to get to catch up with all of my friends and family. I got to wine and dine my grandpa at Bob Evans one morning. 

Thanks to wonderful stores like Hobby Lobby, I was able to reconnect with my inner craftster. 

Isn't it amazing? There's lots of pepperoni, REAL cheese, and it didn't cost $35!!

I made some Korean food for my family, but I'm not sure if they enjoyed it as much as I enjoyed the American food. 

It was amazing to walk into a shoe store, and know that they would carry my size. I stocked up for the year. 

I also reconnected with my past self. I guess this is proof that I've never liked mornings, and probably never will. I look just about like that now when I wake up. 

I did go through quite a bit of culture shock when I was back. I guess it makes sense, going from scenes like this: 

and this: 

to this:

My flight back was a little round-about... My flight from Chicago to Tokyo was delayed by almost 24 hours. I got on the phone, and after an hour and a half figured out a different way to get home. This was the good news. The bad news is that I now had a layover in Munich, Germany. It was almost 9 hours to fly from Chicago to Munich, then another 10 1/2 hours from Munich to Seoul. I was so incredibly happy to make it back to my apartment after all of that. Unfortunately, my luggage didn't make it until a few days later. But it was nice to not have to try to pull large suitcases up the big hill outside of my apartment. 

Things have been plunging ahead at work as well. The new semester starts on Friday, so we've been doing lots of meeting and preparing. It's going to be quite a busy semester. I'm teaching at least five different courses, possibly six different ones. It should be an adventure. We had a welcoming ceremony for the incoming Freshmen last week. The foreign faculty had to sing a welcome song in Korean. It was pretty terrible... They also made us put on academic robes and hoods and mortarboard hats and process through the auditorium and sit on a stage. As we were all donning our regalia, there were lots of Harry Potter jokes flying around the room....

Finally, just to leave off with a little bit of the whimsical randomness of Korea, here is a karaoke room mascot and the American Santa from the Santa display at my school...

Chinese Lantern Festival

It's been really great to spend time with all of my friends and family while I've been back in America. I've had lots of great conversations, good food, and just time to hang out and not do much of anything. I've also experienced some culture shock being back in the US, but that is a subject for another time. All of this stuff has been wonderful, but it isn't very blog-worthy... So there hasn't been much posting. However, on Thursday and Friday, I got to participate in the Chinese Lantern Festival that my church does for the international  student community at Purdue. 

On Thursday, a group of us took over the church gym and set up tables and chairs, and as many decorations as we could find in Indiana. 

There was a stage and a white board for the games and entertainment that would occur throughout the evening. 

Chopsticks play a very vital role in our celebration. Not only are they used to eat all of the food, there is a chopsticks contest. It involves picking up dried beans and dropping them into a cup. This is timed, and the fastest person is usually quite fast. I think it was something like 30 dried beans in about 16 seconds? It's crazy. 

There were so many people there. We set up chairs for over 150 people, and there were barely any empty seats to be had. It was pretty cool!

One of my primary duties on the night of the actual Lantern Festival was to serve food for a few tables. There were the very interesting appetizer combinations of potato chips and kimchi on the tables when the guests sat down. We also served bows of rice, thin noodles with pork and cabbage, beef and broccoli, a spicy tofu dish, General Tso's Chicken, and homemade pork dumplings. At the end of the meal, we also served traditional Chinese sweet dumplings. It was delicious food, and there were good friends to share it with. I assure you, they are good friends, despite the face that John is making in this picture. 

Most of the students were Chinese, but there were people from a variety of ethnic backgrounds there as well. We played games based on American idioms for the students to earn points for their table. Each table also had a lucky red envelope with $5 taped to the bottom of one chair. 

I know how much I love being able to celebrate Western holidays with Western traditions while I'm in Korea, so it was really wonderful to be able to help provide a small taste of home to a lot of Chinese students who are studying in America. 

Google Zeitgeist

Google recently released it's 2011 Zeitgeist. It included the top ten most searched for things in 2011, and a really cool video. Here's the top ten most searched for things in 2011.

10. iPad 2

9. Steve Jobs

8. Fukoshima

7. Adele

6. iPhone 5

5. Battlefield 3

4. Casey Anthony

3. Ryan Dunn

2. Google+

I must admit, this list surprised me a little bit. A lot of stuff has happened in 2011. There have been major uprisings -- revolutions even -- in several parts of the world. There were entirely new countries that were peacefully created in areas that have been entirely characterized by war and genocide. There have been significant tragedies and natural disasters in multiple continents. One of those natural disasters prompted a major nuclear meltdown, or near meltdown. There are major, major world economies who have presidential (or equivalent) elections coming up next year. There have been several major plays who have had shifts of power this year, some more peaceful than others. Even within America, there have been several significant policies passed, debated or repealed. I was glad to see that Fukoshima made the list, but I was suprised (a little) at how much entertainment and gadgets dominated this list. 

However, that surprise was nothing compared to what I felt when I saw the number one fastest rising search in the entire world. 

1. Rebecca Black. 

How did this happen? I just don't know what to make of this. So I'm not going to think about it anymore. 

In happier news, check out this video that Google also released covering some of the more significant events of 2011. I will admit to feeling a little more connected with American culture after watching this movie. Yes, there were a TON of things in here that aren't related to American culture at all... but I sometimes feel like I live in a Korean bubble, and I instantly recognized all of these events and pictures. So that's something, right??

Happy almost-end-of-2011.

The Christmas Season

In America, Christmas comes in with a bang. There is a Thursday of gorging on turkey and cranberry sauce, then the Christmas Season arrives. Christmas decorations go up, radio stations change their playlists, and there is a little thing known as Black Friday.

Korea's harvest festival was back in September. It was certainly too early to kick off the Christmas Season then. However, we've had our first officially cold day. The stores have decorations up. And I've eaten what passes for a Thanksgiving dinner here. So, today I updated my Christmas playlist in iTunes and brought out my cinnamon spice candle. I'll hopefully pick up a proper Christmas tree tomorrow and bring some holiday cheer to my apartment.

As I was sorting through my music to make the Christmas 2011 playlist, I came across this song that was on the Christmas 2010 playlist.

Straight No Chaser is a great musical group to start with. I really enjoy both of their Christmas albums. But this song. It is all about someone who is in a big city, surrounded by thousands of people, missing Christmas in Indiana. ::sigh:: I admit, after I listened to this song for the first time, I checked out some ticket prices to see if I could arrange my own Indiana Christmas this year. Alas, it just won't work out. Also, I have a fairly short window of time for a trans-pacific journey before I have to start work again. So, it will be a Seoul Christmas for me again this year. But enjoy the song, and for those of you in Indiana, know that I'm thinking of you!

The story behind the haircut

So a lot of people have been asking about my recent haircut... When I left Korea, my hair was quite long. It was just an inch or two away from hitting my waist. I loved my long hair, and I was quite excited, because it was getting close to my goal length!! I usually wore it up, so I don't really have any pictures that show the length.

I am naturally a medium ash blonde color, but I've often dyed my hair various colors. In Korea, I dyed it a nice dark auburn color. I've dyed it this color several times before, and then gone back to the blonde color. It's a bit of a process to get from dark back to light, but it's quite possible.

When I was in America, I decided that I was going to go back to my blonde, and stay there this time since my hair was getting so long. I decided to spend the money to go to a nice salon in Indianapolis so that it would get done properly. Only that didn't exactly happen.

The lady who did my hair was really sweet and nice, but I don't think she quite knew what to do with my hair. It's super thick, and it was quite long. I spent over three hours in the salon, and by the time we finished, my entire scalp hurt like crazy, a good 5 inches of the ends of my hair had been ripped and torn, and my hair was barely any lighter than when I came in. It was also a lot more red than it was before, and the color wasn't very even. Needless to say, I wasn't very happy about it.

I gave my hair as much time as I could to recover from what it had been through, and the day before I came back to Korea, I drove three hours to where I grew up to see another stylist that I knew and trusted. I should have gone to her in the first place, but I was trying to avoid the drive down there. She'd never seen anything quite like my hair. We went through 7 individual color processes, each involving multiple types of dye, and none of it was able to remove the red and even out the color.

Neither of us could think of anything to do, so in the end, we had to cut all of my hair off. We were able to get that part a lighter color, and she sent me back to Korea with three different kinds of dye to continue to work to bring it back to its natural color... But my hair is quite short now. It's above my shoulders.

Thankfully, it grows quite fast, and in another three years or so, I should be back down to waist length hair. But still.... It's annoying, because short hair requires significantly more effort to care for than long hair does, and I still miss my long hair. ::sigh:: I guess I can't have too much of a pity party, because I did bring it on myself. The lesson we can learn from this is don't dye your hair about 9 shades darker than your natural color and expect to escape the consequences!!

Indiana Weather

Indiana is famous for it's unpredictable weather this time of year. Through most of spring and summer, the weather can do crazy, crazy things. Of course, it's tornado season right now, so you always have to keep that in mind too.

I was recently driving from Evansville to Lafayette. As I was driving, I noticed that the sky was starting to look a little bit strange up ahead. When it is good conditions for hail, the sky turns a slightly green color. I called my dad to have him look at the radar so I knew if I should pull over or not. I was in my mom's soft top convertible, so hail would have been bad news. There were reports of hail, so I pulled off to the side of a road, under an overpass to wait it out. While I was sitting there, I got a prime example of the vagaries of Indiana weather.

This is what the sky looked like on the right side of the car. It was fairly dark and a little menacing. 

At the same time, this is what the view was on the left side of the road. It was a perfectly lovely sunset. 

I'm happy to report that I didn't encounter any hail storms on my journey, and I made it safely to Lafayette. I was definitely glad to be done with the trip though!

This is what the weather was like the day before, as I was driving down to Evansville. 

I'd forgotten that skies could be so blue. I'm not sure if it is because the sky really doesn't usually get this blue in Seoul, or if I just don't really notice the sky because of all the buildings in the way. But it was a beautiful day for a drive!

It's only a small world if you're a disney character...

for the rest of us, it is quite large and it takes a rather long time to fly around it. However, I successfully made the trip, and I'm now in America.

Maybe the trip wasn't really as long as it felt this time. Maybe it was just because of the moving insanity and finishing up everything at KBU in the two days before I took off. All I know is this trip was significantly harder than the other times I've flown this route over the past year.

I was rather annoyed in the Incheon airport. I went through security and immigration, and they were both organized, efficient and fast. I love the Incheon airport in that regard. I had about an hour to kill, so I went to a Paris Baguette near my gate and ordered a black tea latte. I also picked up a bottle of water. I drank the tea, but I hadn't opened the water bottle yet. Boarding time came, and I handed the flight attendant my ticket, she scanned it, and I walked down the boarding hallway thing. Only it wasn't a normal boarding hallway thing. It was a set of stairs leading to another hallway, and we had to go through a second round of security. The security agents opened every carry on bag and looked inside of it. They also took away my bottle of water. My sealed bottle of water that I'd purchased from the airport, past security clearance. I don't understand what the purpose of this second security check was, but it was frustrating.

The flight itself was relatively uneventful. We flew from Seoul to Tokyo first.I sat next to a Korean man who was very interested in American politics. We had a rather lengthy discussion about the debt ceiling, the differences between Republics and Democrats, and what the general opinion was about President Obama. As we were landing, he asked for my email address. I gave him one, but it wasn't my personal email. I'm not entirely sure that I want to continue this particular friendship.

Even though the flight was only about two hours long, they actually gave us food and drinks. I was expecting a dixie cup full of ice with a few sips of juice and a tiny bag of pretzels. They actually gave us the full can of whatever we were drinking, and they gave us sandwiches. The tuna didn't excite me very much, but the ham and cheese was rather amazing! Especially after a year in the land with no good sandwiches.

I spent a few hours wandering around the Tokyo airport. I bought some Japanese snack food to bring back with me, but we haven't opened it yet. As a result, I now have some random Japanese currency floating around in my wallet. This is about as close as I got to Japan.

The flight from Tokyo to Chicago was very, very long. I had a pleasant seat companion for the trip. It was a girl who was a few years younger than me, who had spent the summer working with a news agency in Hong Kong. We spent some time talking, but she slept a lot. It is an unfortunate fact of my life that I can't sleep in a moving object. Bus, plane, car, roller coaster... It doesn't matter. I just can't sleep. Normally this isn't such a big deal. I use the time to catch up on all of the movies and music that I don't pay much attention to in normal life. 

Only this plane was really, really old. The screens in the seat backs were pretty tiny. They didn't have on demand movies or music. There were six channels, and each of them just looped a movie. This was fine for the first movie, but since the six movies aren't the same length, it gets a bit sketchy after that. There were only two movies that even remotely interested me. One of them was pretty good. I tried to watch the second one, but the sound cut out on every third word or so, so I quickly gave up.

I ended up watching the first movie two and a half times. I also spent a lot of time staring at the moving map. It was in English and Japanese, and it had both Fahrenheit and Celsius temperatures. I tried to improve my temperature conversion and see if I could figure out any Japanese. I walked up and down aisles when I could. There was a lot of really bad turbulence on this flight. At one point, it got so bad that the pilot made the flight attendants stop service and go buckle themselves in. All in all, I was glad to be on solid ground again when we hit Chicago. 

Of course, no blog post about a very long flight would be complete without some food pictures. So without further ado, I give you the airline food.  

This was some sort of pasta. It was overcooked, so every time I tried to take a bite, the noodles would almost disintegrate on my fork. Trying to eat that in a bumpy plane was quite interesting...

They gave us a mid-flight snack. The pastry had some sort of unidentified fruit filling in it. I'm still not sure if it was peach or orange or apple ;)

I also had some sort of beef in some sort of sauce. It was pretty unremarkable. 

I was glad for the food service though. It kept me from going absolutely crazy on the flight and broke things up into nice little segments. 

I landed in Chicago around 2:30 pm, and I decided that it would be a brilliant idea to force myself to stay up late so I could get over jet lag faster. I did actually manage to stay up until almost midnight, and I slept through the whole night. However, I felt like death warmed over on Sunday. I spent pretty much the whole day lounging on the couch, silently moaning and clutching a bottle of Advil. Things have gotten a bit better since then, but it seems like the slightly gentler approach would be better to return to in the future. 

I've been doing lots of shopping and eating lots of good food in the past few days. I'm starting a smallish road trip across Indiana tomorrow, so maybe there will be something blog-worthy to come out of that. If not, I'm sure there will be adventures when I get back to Korea and start my new job and unpack my apartment. 

The End is the Beginning

Way back in the day when I was studying music history, I remember this little song. It is from the Medieval period, and it's called "Ma fin est mon commencement" which translates into "my end is my beginning". What made this song so unique was that it was a perfect mirror image, so it was like you listened to the first half of the song, then you listened to it backwards. It's a pretty cool little song -- check it out!

I kinda feel like that song right now. Things are winding down at KBU. I'm done teaching. My office is basically cleaned out. I have to make one more trip to drop off the keys to my apartment and print my plane ticket. It's been a rough year there. Hopefully we were able to help make things a little better, and it won't be that bad for the next group of people. Despite it all though, I did love my students.

KBU is a small school. I've had just over 10% of the total student body flow in and out of my classroom in the past year. Whenever I walk anywhere on campus, I see students that I know. Even the students I've never taught know me, and they generally try to speak some English. When I go to the cafeteria, there are students who will bring their lunch over and eat with me. I sometimes get texts or emails from students that are really sweet. I've definitely had a good group of kids this past year, and I will miss them a lot.

I'm moving to my new apartment in the morning, so I'm in the middle of packing and cleaning. I never thought I'd say it, but I've grown rather fond of my little shoebox apartment. It will be strange to come back from America to a new place. These four walls have seen a lot in the past year.

At the same time, I'm already gearing up for my new job when I get back. I've been getting a flurry of emails from my director, TAs and colleagues. I've had to learn how to navigate the online portal system that is entirely in Korean. I'm looking over textbooks and beginning to think about how I want to run my classroom.

I'm packing everything up, which reminds me of doing the exact same thing just about a year ago when I was preparing to come to Korea for the first time. It's so strange, because Korea is familiar now, and it's home. But when I come back, it will be to a new neighborhood and new job. I'll have to learn the finer points of public transportation all over again. I'll have to navigate a new set of office politics. Only it won't be as overwhelming as it was last year, because there is an underlying sense of familiarity to it.

So. In a few days, I'll fly back to America, and I'll spend time with friends and family, do a bit of road tripping, eat lots of good food and generally make merry. Then I'll get on a plane for a very long flight and come back to the Incheon International Airport. It will be a little bit of an end, and in all the same ways, it will be a little bit of a beginning.

Maybe I'll have more time to process the entirety of this year when I'm on the plane, or in America. Or maybe I won't. Because even though there are lots of ends and lots of beginnings, I'm still in the middle of this Korean adventure. But for now, I need to go finish packing so I can move to Haebangcheon in the morning.

Packing and Assorted Pictures

When I went back to America, I didn't have too much time to pack stuff here in Korea. I pretty much threw in a few outfits, and went. I did have enough mental energy to think through the fact that I'd probably be doing some shopping while I was Stateside, so I brought two empty suitcases with me. When I came back to Korea, they were most certainly NOT empty.

What kinds of things might a Midwestern expat in Korea want to stock up on, you might ask? Well, here in full color is the answer. Yes, I did actually manage to fit all of that into suitcases. It was something of an ordeal. If you don't believe me, just ask my dad. He hates my packing adventures ;)

This is the grand overview is all of the non-clothes items I bought to take back with me. 

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Believe it or not, I haven't been able to find any gummy snacks or body spritz in Korea. So, I made sure I had plenty of both!

Yes, that is a red waffle iron. Yes, it does make heart shaped waffles. Yes, it was in the valentine's day clearance. Yes, I will have to transform the electricity before I can use it in Korea. Yes, it is TOTALLY worth it ;)

Thankfully, all of the boxes of mix fit into one of my carryons, and I didn't have to factor them into the weight restrictions at all. It would have been unfortunate if I did have to weigh all of them. 

That plastic thing with a handle is for transporting various baked goods around on the subway. I'm hoping that it will make it significantly easier.

Here is one reason why America is a great country. Do you see those Dr. Seuss books? Dr. Seuss is a WONDERFUL tool for teaching English. Each one of those books was only $5 each! It was pretty exciting!

Possibly the most ridiculous purchases I made, a pillow and a memory foam mattress pad. Bedding in Korea is quite different from Western bedding, and it has proven to be quite uncomfortable. It was a major major pain to get this stuff back to Seoul with me, but it has been totally worth it!

In other news, I got to spend a lovely valentine's day with my friends Sarah, Sarah and Wei Wei. It was quite interesting having three Sarahs in one house, but at least it was easy for Wei Wei to get our attention! Whenever she called for any of us, we were all paying attention to her!

Note the two lovely vases of roses. One of them came from Sarah K's parents in Indy, and one of them came from Wei Wei's boyfriend in Morocco. We were a very international household. 

Dinner is served!

Hello Wei Wei!

A little of this and that

After six weeks of radio silence, I'm back. It's been quite a full six weeks, complete with a whirlwind trip back to the States and the death of my grandmother. School started up last week, but we had level testing and sorting people into classes the first week, then a three day break this week, so tomorrow will be the first real day of classes. I'm excited to get to know a new set of students this semester. Our enrollment has grown by leaps and bounds since last semester, so I'll have nearly 50 students this semester. It's going to be pretty busy.

I spent the last day of my mini-vacation teaching one of my American guy friends how to make lasagna. This is something of a feat in Korea. We had to make our own ricotta cheese, pasta sauce and even noodles. It took almost 10 hours, all said and done. We also did some shopping in there (for things such as stock pots and LCD TVs for Foster's new apartment) and quite a bit of dish washing. It was a nice way to spend the day, complete with lots of laughter and good Italian food. The lasagna is safely tucked away in Foster's freezer for an important dinner party in two weekends.

I finished writing the syllabi for all of my classes tonight. It looks like it is going to be a busy semester, especially with 50 students. I changed the assignments around from the way I did it last semester, so hopefully that will help a little bit with the backlog of grading. It should be an adventure!

I have to teach a class in seven hours, and get to school early to get my syllabus printed for the first class. Hopefully I'll be able to connect well with my students, and tomorrow will go smoothly. I have pictures from the lasagna adventure today and some stuff from America that I'll hopefully get put up in the next day or so.

One other important announcement: Because of the recent time change in America, things have changed with the time zones. Here's the new key.

Eastern time: There is a 13 hour difference. Add 1 and swap the AM/PM.
Central time: There is a 14 hour difference. Add 2 and swap the AM/PM.
Mountain time: There is a 15 hour difference. Add 3 and swap the AM/PM.
Pacific time: There is a 16 hour difference. Add 4 and swap the AM/PM.

First days in America

Whew... It has certainly been a whirlwind in the past few days. Hopefully I'll get a post on the Lunar New Year finished up soon, but for now I want to give everyone a brief update.

I found out on Friday morning that my grandma was having some health problems that were fairly serious. After a day and a night of praying and thinking, my parents and I decided that it would be a good idea for me to cancel my planned trip to China and come back home. We made that decision around 11 am on Saturday morning, and my flight left Incheon International Airport at 6:45 pm on Saturday. It was a pretty crazy morning as I tried to get all of my China plans cancelled and get the ticket for America and pack and such.

I made it to the airport on time and caught a flight to Detroit. The flight was pretty uneventful, but it was really really long. Unfortunately, I'm one of those people who has a nearly impossible time sleeping on a plane and there weren't any good movies. Sad day. I landed in Detroit and it had started snowing. I was really really hoping that there wouldn't be any problems with my flight to Cincinnati. It ended up being a little bit delayed, but I landed in Cincinnati around 11:30pm on Saturday. With the time zones factored in, Saturday lasted for 38 hours. I think I can officially say it was the longest day of my life thus far ;)

My friends Kristen and Nate were waiting for me at the airport. We made a brief stop at Wal Mart to pick up essential things like cold medicine and a pre-paid cell phone. By the time I made it back to their house in Lawrenceburg, I'd been awake (minus a few dozing sorts of catnaps) for just under 55 hours, but my body was absolutely convinced that it was the middle of the afternoon and didn't want to sleep. It was most unfortunate.

I was talking with some friends on facebook during my layover in Detroit and discovered that one of my good friends was getting baptized in Lafayette on Sunday. I decided that I would be completely crazy and drive up to Lafayette for church. So, I woke up around 6:15 on Sunday morning and drove North. Thankfully, the roads were good and there wasn't much of a problem with snow. I made it up there and surprised pretty much everyone, since nobody really knew I was back.

All this time, I was starting to feel more and more miserable and sick. Monday morning I woke up and I was having trouble breathing, my chest hurt, I had a nasty cough and I was pretty dizzy. I called my dad and we decided that I should come back down to Indianapolis to see my parent's family doctor. Thankfully, I still have insurance in America. I went to the doctor and went through all of my symptoms and he checked me over. It turned out that I had a bad cold, a severe case of sleep deprivation, and an ear infection in my right ear. Out of all of the places that hurt, my right ear was definitely not one of them. So I don't know how that happened, but there we have it.

Last night I went to the hospital to see my grandma. She is still pretty weak and still looks pretty jaundiced. She was awake and able to talk a little bit when I was there. It seems that all of her bloodwork numbers are moving in the right direction, so I'm thankful for that!

Lastly, my dad and sister and I went to donatos for dinner. It was wonderful to have real pizza again! There was plenty of cheese, plenty of sauce, and no corn or mayo on the pizza! All in all, it is good to be back in America again. I'm still a little jet lagged. I'm able to stay up until around 11ish, but I still wake up around 4. I've been able to go back to sleep, but I haven't been able to sleep past 7 yet. Hopefully it will all be better in a few days!!