Doublecross in Beijing

Wangfujing Street - near our hotel in Beijing (Wikipedia)

One of the great advantages to teaching in Korea is the opportunity to travel to some incredible places...parts of the world that I never thought I would be able to see.  The first week in October in Korea is Chuseok or "The Autumn Festival", a Harvest festival celebration for the Korean people.  We have the week off so it is a perfect chance to take our initial trip outside the country and we decided that China would be our first destination.  We arrived in Beijing on Sunday, September 30 for a five-day mini vacation.       Like a sinusoidal function, the trip had it's ups and downs...ha, ha, ha...a little math humor for you.  There are some amazing iconic sites that we experienced while we were there and at the same time there were gigantic frustrations that were also a big part of the trip.  Let's talk about those first...

We arrived at the airport and after clearing customs we took a shuttle to our hotel...except it didn't go to our hotel, it arrived at a large train station in the central part of the city.  No problem, we'll just grab a cab from there to the hotel.  In fact, a cab grabbed us.  As soon as we got off of the shuttle a very nice gentleman helped us with our suitcases and immediately escorted us to his vehicle.  Not a good move on our part.  He was friendly and very helpful and took us on a 5 minute ride to the Novotel Hotel...and proceeded to charge us $200 US!!  How do you say WTF in Mandarin?  We told him there was no way we were paying that...we didn't even have that much cash.  After a lot of back and forth on the price I think we ended up paying around $50 for the ride...pretty horrible way to start our trip.  Some regrouping was definitely in order.  To accomplish that we decided that the next day we would visit the Great Wall.  That's the subject of the next post...

Another Top 5 List

As promised, here's the Top 5 Things I do NOT miss about the US.

1.  I-95 - Almost every day for the past 7 years I would have to drive this nightmare of a road.  Sometimes just to Viera and back (35 miles or so) and sometimes to Palm Bay  and back (50+ miles) when I was a Tech Integrator working in the south area.  It was NO FUN...constant construction, tourists, idiots texting and driving...SUCKED!.  Here is Daegu, I have a 2 minute commute...walk out our dorm room and into the classroom building.  If I forget something...who cares?  It's a TWO MINUTE WALK...sweet!

2. Political Advertisements - I am pretty caught up in politics...especially in this election year. I read political blogs, and keep up with the election news every day.  But it is so incredibly wonderful to not have to see the constant barrage of political ads on TV.  They are hypocritical, self serving, truth avoiding pieces of crap that add nothing to the issues debate that should be front and center in this election.  And with the SCOTUS decision on Citizen's United, the spending on these by outside groups is sickening.  But here there's no hint of any of that...and it is AWESOME!

3.  PGP's, CCSS, IPPAS, ELL, etc. - We are really fortunate to be working in a private school with a Headmaster and Principal who's educational philosophy can be summed up this way; "We hire great teachers and let them teach".  There is ZERO (0) micromanaging in our classrooms.  We do not have to write the lesson objective on the board every day, no word walls, no lesson plan templates...we can focus on our subjects and really teach.  It is so refreshing.  There is a curriculum that we follow, and in AP courses we have to follow the College Board guidelines but that's about it.  It's a wonderful thing.

4. Student Attitude - The students here are far from perfect.  They act very immature sometimes and their work in not always great quality...in fact sometimes what they turn in looks disturbingly like what a lot of my students at Cocoa High used to do.  Pretty horrible.  But the one big difference between the students in Korea and the students back in the US is the attitude.  If you ask students to do something...or to stop doing something, they will do it.  No questions asked, no "Why are you picking on me?"...none of that stuff.  And they know how to do fractions...

5. Cubicle Madness - I was the Secondary Math Resource Teacher for Brevard County last year.  It was not a great experience for me.  I really liked and respected all the people I worked with at ESF but the job itself was not really a good fit.  I never really felt like I did anything that made a difference for the students and teachers in Brevard.  The job was more about meetings, curriculum  questions (what if a student took Liberal Arts Math, Informal Geometry, Applied Math 2 and Analysis of Functions...does he/she have the correct math credits for Bright Futures...WTF?), State mandates (if a student gets a 17 on the ACT what College Readiness course does he/she take?).  It was not much fun.  Teaching math here is Daegu is a LOT of work, but unbelievably rewarding.  This feels like a good fit!

Top 5 List

Top 5 Things I Miss About the US

1.  Family and Friends - I miss everyone a lot more than I thought.  It's hard to believe but even though Jean-Paul and I were never really close, and there were many things about him living with us that made me crazy, I really do miss him...and Carla too.  Not to mention Chris and Tammy, Donna and Will, Christy and Loran, Kat, Alberto and Beevee, Cindy, Pam, Tam, Rebecca and Karen...the great people we worked with at MIHS and ESF...I can keep going here. What about my sisters in STL...Jennifer, and Shelly and their boyfriends/husbands...and Alec Ates...he is awesome!!
It's great to be able to Skype and to see what's happening on FB but not the same as being with the people you love.  We have made some driends with the teachers who are here at DIS but it's not quite the same...Love all of you guys...Sappy, I know.

2.  Our Favorite Restaurants - El Tucan, Cedar's Cafe, Chili's (I would kill for one of their Black Bean Burgers), Buca de Beppo, California Pizza Kitchen...we are absolutely dying to have one of those amazing meals.

3.  Bright House Cable- OK I'm a TV addict I admit it and Korean television is pretty awful.  Weird game shows, horrible K Pop Karaoke, endless commercials and soap operas that make the novellas on Univision look like Masterpiece Theatre.  I was able to download a program called Graboid on my Mac that allows me to download movies and TV shows so Nancy and I were able to watch Breaking Bad, Louie, and Here Comes Honey Boo Boo...thank God!  No CNN or MSNBC so that is a bummer.

4.  My House - We are living in a really small dorm room here at the school.  Advantages - it's at the school.  Walk 2 minutes and you're in your classroom.  The cafeteria is right here at it's right down the street from an awesome park with incredible running and hiking trail...and best of all, NO RENT!.  Disadvantages - it's 2 minutes away from your classroom, there are students who are everywhere, it's very sparsly furnished.  I think about how incredible our house is since we remodeled and it makes the dorm living tough...but once again, NO RENT!!

5.  The English Language - I really thought that more people would speak at least a little bit of English here...but that's not the case.  We really struggle to communicate (we carry around a little laminated card that explains in Korean that we do not eat meat) and all of the signs on the businesses are in Korean script which bears no resemblance to our alphabet.  You are walking down the street and passing shops with absolutely no idea of what they are selling or what is going on inside.  Many times there is a bit of English thrown in so you can get the gist...for example a small restaurant that sells beer, and coffe...or last night we saw an Italian Restaurant that specialized in speghetty.  I don't mean to sound like the typical Ugly American...almost without exception the people here are very very nice and make a real effort to speak a little bit of our language.  And the little bit that they know is FAR more than the 3 - 4 Korean words that I have mastered...

Next time...Top 5 Things I Don't Miss About the US

Let's Talk About the Food

When people first heard that we were going to Korea, the comment we heard most frequently was, "Oh you two should have no problems eating.  The Asian peoples hardly eat ANY meat".  Well that may be true in SOME countries, but certainly not in Korea.  They probably consume more meat (pork and chicken mostly) than almost any country in the Far East.  And they seem to enjoy fish in virtually every dish...needless to say it's very weird to taste shrimp flavored Cheetos.

Nancy and I are struggling to find food that we like (or can eat) when we are out.  And even if you think you are purchasing something like a delicious homemade candy, looks can be deceiving.  Example - we were out in the local street a couple of blocks from school and we saw some candy-like items for sale that we thought were bon-bons.  The lady who sold them to us them assured  us that they had no meat (you never know here) so Nancy bought a package.  We opened the it up and she took a bite...surprise...tofu coated dried peas!  Yummy!!

The do have pretty decent pizza here.  There's a place not too far from DIS called Pizza School (?) and one Sunday evening all of the teachers and staff had pizzas delivered to the school.  The pizza was really good even though the cheese pizza had CORN AND POTATOES!  Seriously, potatoes on a pizza is very strange...but better than shrimp Cheetos or dried pea candy.

Where is a Veggie Burger when you need one?

Thoughts after Three Weeks

It's been just over three weeks that we've been in Daegu.  School has started and we've pretty much become accustomed to life at DIS.  Nancy and I both have had emotional highs and lows since our arrival but we've settled into a groove/routine.  Here some random observations on our experiences so far...

School has been awesome.  The kids are (for the most part) great.  They are respectful - particularly the girls - and they are very good in math.   It's pretty cool to teach kids who work hard, understand and appreciate the math and have zero attitude.  My AP Calculus class is really amazing.  The students are so smart, motivated, personable...pretty much every positive attribute you can think of.  And they have no trace of arrogance...it's very,very cool.

In Daegu there is not much English spoken when you are out and about.  It's not a very diverse city especially for a city of 2.5 million people.  Maybe we all expect to hear "American" spoken everywhere but that's not the case here.  We manage to communicate but there have been some interesting occurrences.  For example, do NOT separate a bunch of bananas at the grocery store.  We were at the store and decided we didn't really need to buy 22 bananas (the smallest bunch we could find) and I broke off a group of 6...BIG MISTAKE.  We brought them to the checkout and you would have thought that we had committed a major crime.  Needless to say we were NOT allowed to buy any bananas!

The Korean people are very fashion conscious and apparently absolutely LOVE coffee...or coffee shops.  They are literally everywhere.  Think we have a lot of Starbucks in the States?  Think again.  The sheer number of coffee shops in Korea is staggering. As for fashion..we're walking around the grocery store in our typical Florida outfit - shorts, t-shirt, flip flops the Korean women look like they are going out to a club.  Black dress, high heels, perfect hair and makeup...not that I'm complaining but it's a little disconcerting. The men (especially the young men) are very metrosexual...almost androgynistic.  it's not unusual to see them looking like Justin Bieber with a man purse...except Asian.  Is that racist?

There's a typhoon coming (am I still in Florida?) so that's all.  More to come and I will try to post more often.

Homeless in Paradise - Part 2

So what do you do when you are stuck in the most beautiful place in the world?  Here's the basic itinerary of our 8 days:

Day 1 - arriving in the evening after a long day of travel we ate and slept...woohoo!

Day 2 - hung out at the Hilton Resort.  This place is pretty amazing. They have trams and boats that transport people to the various parts of the resort.  We stayed there 8 days and spent a lot of time exploring the grounds but there were still areas of the resort that we really didn't see. Here's some picts.

Homeless in Paradise

We've been on the road since leaving Florida on July 6...23 days and counting.  It's starting to feel like we don't have a home anymore.  But now that we're on the Big Island of Hawaii, we're making the best of it.
This place is unbelievable.  Nancy and I have been lucky enough to have been able to travel to some pretty incredible places - Costa Rica, Bermuda, Puerto Rico, Prattville AL - and we've never  seen such incredible diversity and staggering beauty.  The Hilton Resort that we're staying in is on the western part of the island which is pretty much all lava fields.  But when you travel to the north and east the scenery changes pretty dramatically.  The surreal, moonscape features around the Kona area start to change and pretty soon you see more high grassy areas and increasing numbers of trees and tropical plants.  I don't have any words that adequately describe how gorgeous this place is...but here are some pictures that might do the trick.  Enjoy!

Lava fields outside of Kona

Akaka Falls

Lost??