Another week down...50 to go.

So as my 2nd week is quickly coming to a close i have started to notice a few things about my surroundings and my co-workers.

For starters, i never get to talk at lunchtime with the other teachers until the vice principal asks me the same question that he has asked me every single day since i got here which is "what you eat breakfast?" and since i have had the same thing every day i give him the same answer...eggs, toast, and an apple, yet for some reason he asks this every day like clockwork. then after that it is open forum for the other staff to ask me really random questions, most of which are in korean. They know i do not speak korean, yet they ask anyway like im going to suddenly understand what in the hell it is that they are aking. Like today one of them asked if i play volleyball....its already a pretty random question, let alone the fact that it was in korean.

I really like my co-workers, dont get me wrong, they are kind, helpful, and overall pleasant people to be around, its just that sometimes they make me feel like i am on display at a zoo, or a western culture museum. This probably has something to do with the fact that I am only the third westerner that they have had working for them in the history of the school and from what i have been told about my predicessors is that they were not exactly cut out for the job, nor did they maintain any professionalism within the their working or social lives.

Another thing that i have noticed is that their diet is almost entirely carbs. I wonder how everyone both male and female are so skinny because they eat nothing but carbs and veggies, (very little meat in any given meal...except seafood...way too much weird seafood). Take todays meal for example there was rice ("pop" in korean), a potato dish similar to hash browns with a little bit of pork in it, a side of noodles with a spaghetti"ish" sauce to it, soup with tofu and cabbage, and turnip kimchi (not as gross as normal kimchi, but not far). so thats rice, potato, noodles, and tofu....or carbs, carbs, carbs, and protien and carbs mixed.
Its a good thing i have been running everyday.

Finally one of the things that has bothered me the most since i have been here is the ammount of pollution everywhere. By comparison Korea is much cleaner than all its neighbors (with the exception of Japan) yet i was on my run yesterday and saw a man burning a pile of old truck tires...not only was it one of the worst smells i have ever encountered, the air is very stagnant sometimes in the valley that i live in and the smoke was so thick i couldnt finish my run, due to the fact that i couldnt breathe. Another aspect of the life here that you have to get used to is the Yellow Fog. Due to the wind patterns here, there is (most of the time) a breeze that blows from west to east, it starts over russia somewhere and then when it crosses northern china and mongolia, specifically the Gobi Desert, it picks up tons of fine particulates of sand and carries them...along with the massive ammount of pollution from northern chinas industrial districts directly into Korea. Thus every day you can look out to the west and see a yellow haze in the distance, making visability less than a few miles, on a good day. Yet on a bad day...it is tough to see the apartment buildings on the other side of the highway near our school (about 300 yards away).

While this country is beautiful in a way that is totally different than the US, it seems that we both have the same problem with placing "progress" before anything else.

Ok, im going to get off my soapbox and go do a few lesson plans, so that i can go home, go on a run, and then possibly enjoy an adult beverage before i fall asleep.

Peace out!