trash and treasure

This post is mainly to show you the layout of my apartment. It's basically a box with a kitchen, a bedroom, and a living room all wrapped up in one, with a bathroom/laundry room on the side. But Check it out...So I've been here in this apartment, this room, for about three weeks now, and its finally come to a point where I'm comfortable. When I moved in, it felt like the smallest place ever, and it was incredibly dirty. The first few nights I woke up with a sore throat, probably from dust inhalation. But anyways, I've added a few things and cleaned it up a little bit.

-one man's trash is another man's treasure-

So when I first entered the apartment, it was fairly empty. There was the table, the bed and the tv. Now, I'm not saying that I need stuff to live comfortably, but if there was a choice in having a furnished apartment, and not having one, I would definitely choose the former. In this next picture you'll see some of the highlighted items I got to make my apartment feel a bit more homey.

The desk, the little table, and the couches were picked up, not at a store (I don't make that much here!!), but on the side of the street. These pieces of furniture were garbage, probably being replaced by newer items.
Sprite's slogan "Image is nothing, thirst is everything... Obey your thirst"; I don't think that they showed that commercial over here, because image is definitely not nothing. I don't want to generalize the population and suggest that all Koreans are obsessed with their image, but in my experience it seems that the culture is geared towards the importance of people looking their best. For instance, there are mirrors scattered throughout the city, both little and big. I have seen maybe one in five people continue to walk past the mirror without checking themselves out and ensuring that they still look good. It's funny to see the amount of people looking into the back of their cell phones, trying to see if their hair is still good. Also, there's plastic surgery advertisements everywhere. It's not just the ad that's worth commenting about, but beneath these advertisements is a mirror. So people are to look into the mirror, judge themselves, and then look a little higher towards the model in the plastic surgery poster... disgusting.
Anyways, so as I took my newly acquired pieces of furniture home and washed them off outside (they were garbage after all), it was amazing the amount of dirty looks I got by people walking by. Maybe they were more confused looks rather than dirty ones... but it seemed that no one understood why I wouldn't just buy something new. I can understand how people who live here and have some extra money would rather buy new pieces for their home. But as for me, these stray pieces of furniture work out great. If I needed a new chair, and I didn't mind that someone sat in it before me, I'd have no problem finding it.
Although I understand the need to upgrade to newer stuff, it feels like such a waste to have so many perfectly good items sitting on the curbs. What can be done about this? While the Korean people turn the other way while walking past a dusty coffee table, the foreign English teachers visiting the country are thinking "Sweet! A new coffee table for my place!" Perhaps we just need more people who are unfamiliar with this culture of image.

Geez.... Time for an update!

Alright! So I officially have the internet in my apartment now. And, I officially have an apartment (goes well with my internet). I also have a job, and a salary, and a toaster oven; hopefully this blog will address all the newness that follows with moving to a place of my own in Korea.
It was on September 12th when I finally settled into my apartment (pictures to come). In most English academies when a new teacher comes to fill the older teacher's position, he literally does that; replaces the old teacher in almost every aspect. Even my teaching schedule still has 'Jeremy' on it where 'Chris' should be written. I moved in on a Wednesday morning to an apartment that was not much to look at. The wallpaper was 'off white' a little bit more than it should have been, and the place smelled like moth balls (apparently there was a problem with mold..). The apartment, when first stepping through the door, had its kitchen on the right, its bedroom on the left, and its bathroom and shower straight in front. Yet, there were no walls dividing the different rooms (the bathroom has a glass sliding door); it was all in one room. This is what is called a studio, and it is the most common type of apartment that is offered to a foreign teacher.
So, after getting my place, I went to my new job. Now, I don't know how most schools work, but I think that mine is unique. There are four other Korean teachers who work at my school, and their job is to teach the kids English grammar. They speak a little bit of English, enough to understand if I have any issues in the classroom. These teachers each have their own class that they teach during the 2:10pm to 8:30pm day. My job is to teach each of their classes once a week. So, without going into anymore details, I teach 29 classes per week, and I only see one class more than once. Almost every class that I teach, I only see them once a week. That equates to about 200 students (learning their names is difficult).
Unfortunately, with this many students and seeing them so rarely, it's difficult to develop any type of personal 'student-teacher' dynamic. It makes it challenging to chart their individual progress, because they seem to all blend together with the once a week that I see them. But my job really isn't very difficult. I'm hired because I know English and have a good western accent, and lets face it, because I'm white. The parents want to know that their kid is being taught by an actual foreigner. So whenever there is a parent who comes to the school I must be present, just so long as they can see me and know that their child is learning from a white kid.
My neighborhood is... Korean. By this I mean that there are no foreigners in this area, at least none that I have seen. Usually, when you walk past another white guy you kind of look at each other and say "hey, what's up?", just for the fact that you'll be understood. It's pretty funny. But anyways, in my area there are no Outback Steakhouse's, or TGIF's, or any of those western food places. There are however Korean barbecue places and traditional Korean markets all over the place. All I have to do now is learn the language...
So there's a bit of info about where I am, and what I'm doing. It seems that I daily come across some issue, or some contrast to the culture that I'm used to that makes me want to blog about it. But I'm done for now.
Here are some pictures of the Busan Aquarium - it was awesome.
http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=54147&l=ab75f&id=517865133