First Impressions, Part II

**In the absence of internet on my personal computer, I composed a blog entry in Word to cut and paste. It ended up being 2 pages long, so I'm splitting it into 2 entries for easier reading. Since the most recent will show up on top, I'm manipulating things a bit and posting part 2 first. So here's the rest: **

We’re in program for 3 hours in the morning and 3 hours in the afternoon, then there’s a 2 hour class at night which is optional, but the topics are essential. The instructors aren’t all yummy, but they’ve so far been very good—knowledgeable and engaging. All the Koreans who have addressed us have been very halting and bashful, which gives me hope for how my delivery style will be received in the classroom. Around 2pm, aka 10pm in my last known time zone, my body’s been going into a major winding down cycle, so our 10:00 curfew has been a total non-issue. Butterflies kept me awake this afternoon; I’m hoping I’ll start to simply adjust soon. Folk wisdom is to allow one day of adjustment per hour difference—that’s over 2 weeks!

They’ve been good about accommodating vegetarians in the cafeteria, too. I wasn’t expecting this, although maybe I shouldn’t get too excited because I’m not really certain I’m not eating fish and chicken stock. While here, and especially this week, I’m adopting a don’t ask, don’t tell policy…not that I could ask or tell anyone anyway. It’s early yet, way too early to make definitive pronouncements, but I’m not sure I’ll be turning into a Korean food fan. I’m usually highly in favor of eating ethnic, but I’m really understanding the allure of home cookin’. Mac & cheese, mashed potatoes, hell, I’d even go for an enchilada and some hummus. We had french fries for lunch today. They only gave me 5, but man, did they taste good! Meals generally consist of rice and kimchi (which looks like flayed skin, another teacher aptly observed), soup (or silky tofu and garnish vegetables floating in water), some vegetables, possibly more cabbage, sometimes pale eggs, and, for my carnivorous colleagues, a salisbury steak patty or the like. A guy from Toronto nailed it: “there’s no flavor, only spice.” It’s not that satisfying and doesn’t taste that good, especially for breakfast. I haven’t seen a piece of fruit since somewhere over Russia.

Tomorrow, I’m not allowed to eat breakfast at all, since I have my medical exam (involving 3 vials of blood, according to the group who had it today). Breakfast is the only time they put out any western food, with a cereal station that’s been my saving grace! While people are getting x-rayed and grilled about H1N1 exposure (this is in addition to signing in each day with our temperature, taken with provided thermometers), the rest of the group is making Korean fans. The ones I’ve seen are really really beautiful. I wonder how coordinated I’ll be after having no breakfast.

I’ve been thinking a lot of the countless hours I’ve spent grilling kindergarteners on letters and sounds. Watching kids scrunch up their face or chew on a finger while they struggle to identify these symbols that are so obvious to me. Now that’s me. The “ah” and “aw” sounds in Hangeul (the Korean alphabet) are like b and d in that they’re mirror images of one another, and I’m having a dreadful time remembering which is which. I know most of the consonants, but not the “double” letters, and I’m still struggling with vowels. So I’m back to sounding things out for the first time in 30 years. For that matter, I don’t know how much sounding out I did when I was learning to read English—I’m kinda thinking I was more of a whole word learner. At any rate, once I’ve figured out what a Korean word says, I still have no idea what it means.