Korean Drumming with a bit of Soju

Hope all is well in the good ol USA: the land where grocery stores make sense!

Korea continues to treat us very well. We have found ourselves upon the threshold of yet another promising weekend. Although instead of travelling I think we'll do a lot of resting - its been a fun 3 weeks, but we're a bit tired from all the activity and adjusting. Sometime soon, I will tell you all the tales of our travels from the last couple of weeks. But for right now, I have very limited time on the Internet since I need to work on lesson plans before the school day ends.

In addition to teaching, we have taken up traditional Korean drumming lessons after school with about 10 other adults. Jordan and I decided it's basically a 2 hour high-level memory game. It's extremely therapeutic but can be very difficult to remember the sequence of rhythms and motions. Don't worry, I've taken pictures and next week I'll get some video. No descriptions of mine can illustrate the hilarious scene we find ourselves a part of every Thursday night. This past week of lessons we were quite tickled  because the instructor asked Jordan and I to play the whole song along with him at a much faster tempo. We finished to applause---or at least everyone clicking their drumsticks together murmuring what I can only guess to be sounds of praise and perhaps surprise. We were rather pleased.

This afternoon and evening Jordan is going hiking with his coworkers (which supposedly they do once a month) and then he and the male teachers will go to the billiard hall for some friendly competition. It seems very common for teachers to spend designated time together because last week my school hired a lady to give us baking lessons (monkey bread!!!) and a few days before that all the teachers went out for a welcome dinner to honor new additions to the staff - myself included. On this occasion we ate raw fish, shrimp, "tan-oh-baa"- which is this delicious baked pumpkin with honey, mackerel, clams, salad, several other side dishes, and....Soju. Soju is a very common kind of alcohol which, as it turned out, plays a large roll in Korean welcome traditions. It was explained to me that in Korea it is a tradition to take new employees out and get them...well, drunk. Aware of this, I strategically avoided the ill-effects of this tradition without any offense whatsoever. I found their 7-up-like cider and coca-cola to be very useful. The custom goes that a co-worker brings the new employee an empty shot glass. If the new employee is younger, they show respect by using two hands to pour their co-worker a drink in the empty shot glass. The co-worker drinks it, and then they fill the same glass (with one hand) with the same drink and the new employee must drink it. Knowing this, it is not difficult to imagine how the Korean tradition comes to fruition. Soju, by the way, is 14% alcohol. Yes, it is not difficult to imagine at all, is it? Especially when you consider how many teachers want to "welcome" the newbie.

In other news, Jordan and I successfully obtained our alien registration numbers, which means we'll be able to get Internet, TV, and cell phones any day now---or so they say. The most important thing is that it means we can actually get our salary and reimbursement for our flights. Thank goodness.

Sorry this isn't much after such a long lull, but having internet in our apartment means brighter days ahead.