A Displaced Manifesto: and the beat goes on . . .

So now I've been a resident of Korea for 4 days. Today, I finally ate some good Korean food.One of my fellow teachers and I went to a restaurant and got traditional Korean food, kimchi included, and it was delicious. I could certainly eat that every day (sorry Popeye's).

All for 12,000 won (less than $12.00) !

Also, we went to an orphanage in town and volunteered. We taught some of the students English. Because they are in an orphanage, they don't get as much exposure to English as the other children. There were other americans volunteering. It was nice to be around some other people close to my age.

I went to HomePlus . . . again. A few things that are different here:

1. all of the buggies are locked together. To unlock them, you have to put 500 won (5 cents) in, and once you return the buggy and relock it, your money pops out.

2. at the checkout, if you use one of their plastic bags, they charge you 500 won also. So a lot of people are inclined to bring their own reusable bags from home. Luckily, I carry one with me all the time (thanks to Millie and Jeff).

3. They give tons of stuff away. A lot of the time, you'll see an item with another item taped to it. Today there was toilet paper with 2 rolls of paper towels taped to it. You buy the toilet paper, get the paper towels free! ha.

Yesterday was kind of a crazy day at work. The kids had to get health checks done. A team of nurses came in and checked their height and weight, and drew blood to test for disease. Naturally, some of the kids freaked out. Not any of mine though, they were very brave. Oh and the older students now think I am "very cool". They saw my iPhone. I'm not going to be the one to tell them it doesn't have service, and I only use it as a clock. . .

I'm still not quite moved in yet. My walls are bare, and everything doesn't have a place yet. I'll put pictures up soon though. And I'll try to post some pictures of the kids. They are pretty cute, I have to admit. I'm glad to have found some websites where I can (hmm . . . under the radar) watch American t.v. So, Mom, you can stop DVRing Lost. And Project Runway. And probably anything else.

They have some open air markets in Daejeon, like the french market and the flea market, that I'd really like to go to soon. And I'm just a mile or so from some small mountains. I'd like to go hiking maybe once it warms up. Supposedly the cherry blossoms will be blooming soon, and there are a lot of Cherry Blossom Festivals around town. That should be beautiful. And a girl was telling me about a Mud Festival in Boryeong in July. We'll have to see about that. Also, at the orphanage, we ate tteok. I was hesitant, based on the appearance, but I did eat it. If you want to look it up, google it, but it basically looked like a giant booger. (sorry, I know that's gross and insensitive, but it did!) It was okay tasting, not my favorite. and on that note, I bid you goodnight.