Apr 2008

The challenging thing about maintaining a travel blog while living abroad in a foreign country like Korea is that after awhile, everything that once seemed strange, surreal or all-around cracked; eventually just becomes a part of everyday life. As such, you may have noticed that I haven’t regaled you with my tales from Asia in quite some time. It’s not that life has become any more comfortable or less entertaining; it’s just that it has all become much more of a routine and the curveballs much easier to deal with.

For quite some time now, I’ve been meaning to put the old blog back together and let you know all about everything I’ve been up to over the past several months. I’ve envisioned an elaborate, well-told narrative with witty anecdotes and a seamless story-line. But the fact of the matter is that that seems like a lot of work, which doesn’t exactly jive with my current year-long paid vacation schedule. Thus, the blank canvas I’ve been staring at for the past several weeks.

On a Skype call this morning with my blogging spiritual advisor, the Reverend Jeremiah Wright of the Vail blogging community if you will, Tommy Boyd reminded me that people just want to know what my life is like over here. He reminded me that my now mundane life over here might still be of interest to some of you back home whose routine is still very far away from that of life in Daegu, South Korea.

So for the next couple of months, as I wind down my year in Korea, I’m going to put together a string of short snippets on my life here in Korea. Topics will include my experiences with the food and drink, my evolving take on Korean women, my participation in a foreigner softball league and the delights of teaching a bunch of Korean children who are not shy about telling me that I have a big nose, a wrinkly forehead, hairy arms and that I am either incredibly handsome or just a freakish-looking human being; depending on their point of view and their opinion of my class. I’ll also be open to your suggestions on any topics you might be mildly curious about concerning my life living abroad.

But for tonight, I’m just going to keep it incredibly simple and let some video do the talking for me.

This video shows my morning ritual of making coffee. Although Korea seems to be way ahead of us back in the States in terms of technology, for whatever reason, home coffee production has lagged behind the Samsung technology boom. I'm sure that somewhere they sell automatic coffee grinders and mechanical drip coffee machines, but for whatever reason I'm stuck making coffee John Dunbar-style over here.

Please ignore my Ed Grimley morning hairdo. . .

This second video does a lot more justice to the experience of being a foreign English teacher in Korea than I can muster with my own rapping skills. If you squint though, you can imagine that I'm the dude in the Ed McCaffrey jersey.

Though this video is loaded with inside jokes that come only with living in Korea as a foreigner, a few translations might help:

Komsamnida - thank you
Anyong Haseyo - hello

These are two of the four phrases I've actually learned to say over here.