Actually, his left eye does hurt a bit, but he's nowhere near death, he admits that shirking the blog for FOUR MONTHS is a bit long, and vows to try never again to maybe wait quite so long. The above picture is stolen from the Hyundai Heavy Industries website. This morning I learned that in Ulsan, we have the world's largest shipyard. This afternoon, I sent in a tour application, so I hope my next blog entry is a report on what an amazing experience the tour was. I distinctly remember trying in vain for a full day to be allowed into the harbor in Chennai, so I sent my application in Korean, using the kiss-ass verb tense all the way through.
I got married since the last time I typed anything here! The beautiful Noelle Elizabeth Myers accepted her fate, and my last name, about two months ago. Life is better now, a little more confusing, (and I can't seem to sleep for seven hours without waking up, now) and a lot more interesting. We got all set up in this great apartment, got just the right furniture, put up some great decorations, and learned last week that we have to move to an apartment WITH NO HOT WATER IN THE WINTERTIME. Which is not so important right now, the weather being relatively warm, but in two short months it will be the difference between a happy wife and a mad (or possibly dirty) one. Hm. The two of us also took a very nice 5-day ferry-and-motorcycle trip to the island of Jeju, which cleared up its weather expressly for our arrival. We got extremely sunburned climbing up Hallasan, South Korea's highest mountain.
If you're waiting for your thank you note from our wedding I swear we're writing them! Actually, Nols is done with hers and I keep putting it off like an idiot. That's the whole story.
I have a new job now, at the English Town, a sort of boring, white-collar version of Mr. Rogers' land of make believe. Students recite dialogs in mock-ups of movie theaters, airports, stores, etc. I pull teeth to get them excited while they change money at the bank. I also give a presentation every morning in which I try to cover why learning English is important. In the beginning of this presentation, I ask the students why they think we learn English. This morning, one bright (and sometimes annoying) girl answered in Korean, "To make us look good to other countries". It's funny 'cause it's true!
Sometimes I'm really surprised at Korean students' inability to make abstract inferences, or more specifically, to think independently of each other. (I admit, for the record, that I might not be priming them especially well, although I do try.) For the most part, in any group of students, there's one creative thinker and one kid who's good at English, and they team up to answer questions; the rest of the group is happy to hang on to their shirttails. One of the first frames of the presentation is a map of the world; the Korean peninsula is red, as well as a few isolated dots in China, Japan, Los Angeles, Toronto, Australia, etc. I ask the class what connects the colored areas. It's the rare group that can reason their way to "places in the world where I can speak Korean" without major help from the teachers. Every so often, though, some kid figures it out halfway, and shouts "Kimchi!"
In other news, Noelle and I have learned the Korean equivalent (in gambling ferocity) of Texas Hold 'Em, called Go-Stop. It arrived with the Japanese occupation in the early 1900s, and is played with Hwat'u, lovely cards grouped four to a month, with a different flower for each month (no numbers, no words; really attractive). We have been playing quite a bit this last week and a half, and at the end of our games usually one of us feels bad. The game seems to have uniquely long losing streaks; our friend Seon-kyeong played with us for two and a half hours, and didn't win a single hand. We went at it again the following evening, adding Chi-won to the mix, and this time Seon-kyeong killed everybody for almost an hour straight.
In other other news, I have made a lot of new songs, some little, some dumb; I have been uploading them only to facebook, which is lame. Now, I've also put them on my homepage. When I returned from the States, I brought with me an Mbox2, a nifty hardcover book-sized I/O interface for recording music into our laptop. It's great!
Best wishes for October. I'll see if I can get to the Hyundai Shipyard; if I can, I'll let you know about it.
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