Afternoon delight.

I sit here at work, eating my Pibim Goksu, and I think. Now'd be an ok time to give an update.

Again this won't be a wonderful full update like the days of old. So long as my computer is broke that won't be happening. My narrative and philosophical skills are much stronger late at night when the days practicality has washed away and the high tide of imagination takes its place.

But I'll do what I can.

Not too much to tell from this weekend. For a couple of different reasons I was hampered and couldn't do a whole lot. A dreadful cold not being the least of the reasons. On Sunday however I did feel up to going to Itaewon for the afternoon.(E-Tay-One). Itaewon is a nice compliment to Nowon(where I live). Nowon, and more specifically the district within Nowon where I live is very, VERY, Korean. Hardly anyone you meet on the street here over 30 or so will speak English. All the signs are in Korean. Etc.
Itaewon on the other hand is the Western world with a slight Korean feel. It's where all the GI's go to hang out, along with all the western tourist and teachers and so for. Alex had never had Burger King before so we got a couple of whoppers. Even ordering the whoppers was different. I said "Ill take a #1 with cheese, fries, and a coke." and my order was carried out no problem. In Nowon that order would have been. "I (point to myself) want a #1(hold up one finger and point at the picture of the #1) with fries and a coke(point at coke dispenser)"-and I'd still run about a 50/50 chance of getting chicken nuggets with onion rings and a sprite. Such is the case.
Anyway, Itaewon is a lot of fun. Very touristy feel, but a lot of cool shops. One specific shop was a place called What the Book. It was an English book store in the basement of a bar, next to an arabic food stand. So you know, the usual. Anyway, the little shop was filled with westerners-desperate for decent American books. It was nice to have everything all English. I found an entire row of Hunter S. Thompson books(a rare find even in the states), so I picked up Hells Angels, and also got a used Middle Eastern History book which looked interesting. Im still working on another book right now, but it's still nice to have a some waiting. I'm going to end up spending a fortune in shipping to get most of my books home I fear.

So bookstores and coffee shops in Itaewon was the highlight of my weekend. Next weekend were going to go back for the Itaewon nightlife, which Im told is a whole new experience. I'm looking forward to it. Hopefully there'll be some good stories for next week.

Other thoughts and tidbits:
First, I should explain to those that are confused. Itaewon and Nowon are both in Seoul. Both on the north side of the river infact, and about 45 minutes by subway apart. That's how big Seoul is. There's Seoul, then there are districts called 'gu's. Nowon is a gu. Itaewon is in a 'gu' called Yungsun.(Young Sun). Itaewon itself is in a smaller unit called a dong. Itaewon is a dong. Within Nowon I live in Sanggye dong. There's 25 Gu's. Nowon is actually the largest Gu with about 700,000 people. There's about 23 million people in metropolitan Seoul total. So basically unless I say otherwise, every place mentioned is in Seoul. It's just so big, saying that you went to Seoul isn't exactly helpfu

Food: The food is growing on me. At the elementary school lunch is always an adventure. Today we had rice with pepper paste and bean sprouts, squid soup, and kimchi. I find it odd that when I saw it I thought "oh phew, a tame lunch". It's always something interesting here. The running joke between Alex and I is that they eat a bunch of gross shit, (one day they served this translucent miniature whole fish that looked like noodles but were in fact fish) and then pass it off as "oh it's good for you". Which is true, but still no respite when Im crunching on tiny fish that taste like burnt leaves. Also, bean sprout soup-ugh cardboard and piss.
On the other side of that there's plenty that's great. Yesterday for lunch we essentially had the Korean version of sweet and sour chicken(Yumsyung). Very nice.
And always squid squid squid. Friday night at Oldies one of the other teachers had bought a bottle of Henesy. So we were drinking Henesy when they brought out the traditional snack food to go along with Congiac-Squid jerky. It really wasn't that bad once you got over the fact that it was a whole squid dried and laying on the plate. They aren't afraid to eat whole things at all. I guess I should just be thankful theyre dead.

Teaching: Teaching is easy. I enjoy it. It took me two days to get the hang of it. My childrens classes are fun for the most part, I manage to keep their attention, and I look just scary enough they stay in line. My adult classes are more about me learning than teaching I think. I learn so much from people who have a wholly different perspective on life than I do. It's just so damn interesting. I feel like I've learned in 2 weeks here what it'd take me years to learn in the states, just by getting out of my comfort zone.

Couple other random thoughts: Street vendors. At first I was leery of them, now I enjoy them. There's a couple with a fruit stand between my apartment and the subway station, they sell the most amazing, ripe fruits. I try to pick something up from them every other day or so. It's a great mutual benefit. I think their fruit is great and the 3 to 5 dollars I give them mean a ton to them. You have to remember, I live in a very poor area of the city. I'm making a concerted effort to pump my money into the poor families of the area instead of constantly going to the home-ever(think wal-mart) or the Krispy Kreme(though I have been going to Krispy Kreme a lot, it's just too easy to get coffee there)

Like I said in the beginning of this post, Im going to Itaewon with Alex next weekend. We're going to meet a friend of his and one of her friends as well. I'm looking forward to meeting more people. My coworkers, while all good people, seem to not really be my social circle. Alex is great, but if it's constantly just him and I people are going to start to wonder. More warm bodies please.

That's all I got for now. The "Better ideas than I could ever have" is how you leave comments if youre wondering. Id change it back to just comments if I could, but this whole damn webpage is in Korean and I can barely figure out how to post, changing settings is just too much to ask. I'm sorry.
I'd be nice if people asked questions. I really enjoy answering them. It means Im the center of attention. I like that.

I'll write again next week, and in 3 weeks or so my computer should be back and running so I can start writing poetic, imagination of the night, entries.

Until next time.