thespecter.net epistemic deobfuscation and assorted flotsam

We’ve moved in and started classes

We’ve moved into our apartment. It’s a small efficiency, but it works for two people. It’s fairly new and contemporary. We’ve chosen to maintain the traditional Asian approach to shoes and take them off in the entry(plus, the apartment makes it hard not to).

The kitchen area is small, with a two-burner stove, no oven, and only the basics. We bought stuff from the previous teachers(which was probably a rip-off, since they would have left it anyway), so we have some extra things like a microwave, cleaning supplies, and extra dishes. The washer is on the small outdoor porch area of the apartment (note: no dryer). It’s not always pleasant going out there because the neighbors give off some odd odors. This isn’t to say that they’re disgusting, only that Korean cooking scents are unfamiliar – well, and sewers run under the sidewalk so you can sometimes catch a wif.

Trash and recycling here are intense. They separate recycling into plastic, thin plastic, paper, and metal, and you’re expected to recycle everything. They separate trash into general waste and food waste. Recycling is free, but a pain to sort. For trash, you have to buy specially government-commissioned trash bags for your district for general waste, and you have to put your food waste in this tiny blue bin and then buy a sticker and place it on the bin so that they will actually pick it up.

Every morning at about 6:30, a lady shouts into the building. We’ve been told that she does dry cleaning, and that she can get it back to you by 9am. While to some this may be convenient, to us it simply means that we get woken up for a little while every morning. Also, about once a week it seems, there’s a truck that goes through all of the neighborhoods with loudspeakers. Sometimes it sounds like a salesman, probably selling fruit (there are a lot of corner fruit sellers around town). Other times, though, it’s a very calm male voice giving long proclamations, leading me to believe that it is a propaganda truck.

On a more positive note, the Internet here is ridiculously fast: 50mbps download rate. We’re in Gaegeum, which is 4 subway stops from Seomyeon, the major business and commercial center of the city. We’ve found a great vegetarian restaurant in Seomyeon called “Loving Hut.” While the cult surrounding Loving Hut is a little creepy, the all-vegan food is great. We’ve already gone to Haeundae beach and Songjeon beach; the water is cold at both, but still relaxing. We can do most of our grocery shopping at a local open-air market, where we can get great fresh produce. For everything else, we go to HomePlus, which is a Tesco-associated multi-layer department/grocery/mall type store. We can find a lot of American/Western-type products, but Koreans have this idea that Western food needs to be sweet(and not particularly flavorful otherwise), so most of what we end up finding is kind of bland and generically sweet; it’s not that we don’t like Korean food, though there’s only 1 or 2 vegetarian dishes, it’s that Korean food is either strong and cold or hot and spicy, and items of either combination always tend to taste the same.

Oh, and did I mention how cheap everything is here? A subway ride to the beach and back costs us about $4 each. A meal at a local restaurant costs the equivalent of $3 per person. Everything, absolutely everything, is cheap.

About the school:

It’s about a third of a mile away from our apartment.  We have classes from 9:45-Noon, and then from 2:30 to 7. The kids are very eager and generally well-behaved. I teach kindergarten kids in the morning, and then elementary through preteen/early-teen kids in the afternoon. These kids are worked so hard that I always feel bad giving them any homework, but sometimes I have to. The school itself is somewhat disorganized, and there seems to be a large gap between what the school wants to teach and the capabilities of the students; some classes have material way over their heads, or simply too much for them to handle, and others have us making up a lot of extra assignments to fill class time. The environment is very positive, though that’s partly due to Korean ideals regarding passivity and authority, and I can usually get through a day without wanting to throw a kid out the window.

For pictures, videos, etc. – look at my or Brandi’s Facebook

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