September 17

So.... I just got back from the COEX mall, which is one of the biggest malls in Korea. I've been there before, but it is nice to go to an actual mall for a change, you'd be surprised that there aren't many "real" malls here. But anyways, things are mostly the same. I'm coming up on 7 months now in a couple days. Doesn't seem like it's been that long, but it has been. Oh, yeah I also went to Costco last week, and it's always a marvel to go there and come back with stuff I can't find elsewhere here. Still no ranch dressing, but I suspect I may survive. Almost as big a travest as Pizza Hut not having Cheese Breadsticks here. Though Sbarrao is pretty much the same here as I found out today.

On the subject of food,I will enlightent you all to some of the wonderful things the Korean people eat and drink. First among my favorites (by favorites I mean food I can't stand) is Kimchi. Whenever you go to a Korean restaurant you get it as a side and I can't stand it. I guess you could liken it to sauerkraut (which by the way I don't touch either) in that it is fermented cabbage, but the taste is much different. Kimchi is most often bitter and spicy and usually not to firm. Bleck. Next is octopus. Now I don't consume much seafood outside crab, shrimp, lobster, tuna and whitefish, and I can respect people who do, but honestly, eating still wriggling tentacles with the suction cups still on? NO THANKS! By the way, chew it up well so the suckers don't get stuck to your throat. Really. I have also seen them cooked an put on sticks, but no, still not appetizing. That said, there are some good things like gulbi (pronounced gal-be) which is basically meat you cook your self in a frying pan or on a grill at your table. The meat isn't specific, mostly it will be beef, pork, or duck, but horse and dog can be found here too. Did I mention they eat dog? No? Well, they eat dog here, which I think is a travesty. The phrase "How much is that doggie in the window?" really takes on a new meaning.


For those of you who may be curious as to my next destination/job I am either going to go teach in Japan or come home and get my teaching license. At least that's where I stand now.

I'll try to do another post soon with some pictures from a palace/temple I went to that is from 1459. It was pretty cool, and I'll try to get one of myself with my new haircut.

Slacking

So I'm a slacker.... but you all knew that, right? With that out of the way here we go. So it's been almost a month since I made my last post (Really? I guess...) so I guess I'll give an update as to what's happening here. The last week of July was officially my summer vacation. I didn't really do anything terrifically exciting or do any extensive traveling thanks to a procedure I had to have done on the 31st. It wasn't exactly what you would call pleasant, but I survived.... more or less.... I also had to go to get new glasses and lenses ordered since I managed to break my other pair due to my glasses flying off of my face after I tripped in the hallway at school. The frames broke at the nose and I managed to get some nasty scratches on the lenses. Fortunately I have a spare pare to last me until the 16th when I will be able to pick up my new pair. They turned out to be pretty cheap, only about 90,000 won (about $90).

On that note I'll move into a comparison of prices for things her in Korea and the U.S.
Glases (frames and lenses) U.S. $220 Korea $90
Gas (per gallon) U.S. $3.50 Korea $8.00
Beef (1 lb, ground) Korea $4.40
Movie Ticket- $9.50 (Korea)
Cheeseburger- (Mc Donald's) $1.70 (Korea)
Sliced Cheese (12 slices) $4.40 (Korea)

These are just things that come to mind off the top of my head. As you can see glasses are much cheaper here, as is health care in general (LUCKY!) but gas and some food items (mostly beef an cheese) are more expensive. There is of course a reason for this, mainly being that Korea refuses to import U.S. beef. They haven't for about 3 years, not since before the single case of Mad Cow disease (my student's stubbornly refer to it as Crazy Cow disease...) and if you asked an average Korean about it, they would probably say they are worried about it. There were big protests about two months ago because Korea had agreed to start importing beef again and the media was able to use peoples fears to get the government here to go back on the deal. There were claims made by the media that it was a big problem in the States and such... and what happens? We pay more for beef here. Then Korea gets angry at the U.S. after going back on the trade deal after claiming the "islands" of Dokdo in the Pacific Ocean which both Korea and Japan claim are uninhabitable. These "islands" are little more than rocks poking out of the surface of the ocean, but what ever.

Well, I reckon it's about time to head off to bed for me. Hope every one is well. Don't be afraid to leave comments. I like reading them and if anybody has a question they want answered about anything (well maybe not anything *points at one Mr. Josh N. and Trevor D.*) I'd be happy to do my best to answer.

I'm out I guess,

Shad

July 14th

Sorry for the lack of posts. I really do mean to post more but I'm a slacker. Anyways so I spent a majority of my weekend at the Korean Kumdo Championships. It was pretty cool. On a related not I passed my Kumdo test and am officially 5th grade. That means I (finally) get to use armor. I already paid for it and will get to start using it on Monday. YAY. Things at school have been quite busy as we have been down a teacher since the start of the month. Our new teacher is supposed to be her on Thursday but we'll see. Otherwise things are typical.

Over the next few weeks I plan to blog about my classes and students so look forward to that.

I also received a request to post about cultural stuff so I guess I'll start doing that too. Nothing really comes to mind at the moment but I did go grocery shopping today so I guess I'll go into that experience. I went to Lottemart which is only a 5 minute walk away, and is pretty much where I do most of my shopping for food. It's a multi-level store, bigger than your run-of-the-mill Super Wal-Mart. At any rate, the when you enter and leave they have people who bow and say something like "thanks for shopping here". Weird, but also familiar as we have people greeters at Wal-Mart, just without the bowing. You might also be pleased to know people who stop right in the middle of an aisle or just stop right in front of you are prevalent here too, though here it's a cultural thing, people who don't know you are allowed to be pretty rude. You get people trying to get ahead of you in line and all that junk a lot. Why the other day I was standing at a taxi rank when a taxi stopped and I started to move toward it this lady just barged ahead an took it. While that's not common it was still annoying as you really aren't supposed to do anything (like you can anyways...). Whatev.

My vacation starts on the 29th and runs for until the 4th. Unfortunately I won't be able to go out of the country or anything due to my GI wanting to do a procedure to get some imaging since it's been a year from my last images. Lets just say it involves a flexible fiber optic camera. I'll let you fill in the blanks there.

Quick Post #3

I really am planning to post a nice meaty rundown here soon, I promise. For those of you who read and were concerned about my hand, good news! It was just a tumor and it was benign. My stitches came out a week ago and it looks pretty good, they might not even be a big scar.... so much for me trying to claim I got it in a knife fight. Now it just looks like I might've got jabbed with a letter opener..... lame.

Also, congrats to my incredibly hardcore father who ran a 4:04 marathon. I'm proud of you!!!

The Raging Storm

Ok I really like coming up with slightly corny titles for my posts. This one fits I feel. So I was on my way to my Kumdo test after I had finished work yesterday when I could feel it was going to storm, I just hoped it waited till after I got on the bus. By the time I reached the bus stop, the sky was black and it was starting to rain. I sought shelter in the entry way of a building having left my umbrella at home. Good thing I did because it started to absolutely pour. That wouldn't have really been so bad, but then it started to hail. In the twenty minutes it hailed, we got up to quarter-sized hail. Yuck....

By the time I got to the gym, I felt the same way, nervous and excited, a raging storm of feelings. Not good really as you are supposed to be relaxed, calm and smooth. I think my test went ok, but who knows, I'm sure I'll find out soon.

The Next Level

This is gonna be a short post. That said, I'll be posting tomorrow night. For those of you who don't know, I had surgery on my hand last week to remove a bump between my thumb and index finger. I still have no clue as to what it was (before the surgery the doctor had no clue to what it was, thus it's currently at the lab, results on that next Tuesday). Thus I have three stitches and was told not to go to Kumdo at all for the next two weeks, which I have chose to ignore as it is healing fine (the doctor said so, even though I went to practice). Which leads me to my posts title. I have a test tomorrow!!!!!! It's basically the test to see if I'm ready to wear the armor, the equivalent of just over half way to a black belt in other martial arts. So , even though my had has stiches and my foot is still covered in blisters, I am soooooo psyched.


More tomorrow.

Changes

I remember hearing a line from a movie that went something like this "Somethings change; somethings never change.", and as I have now reached the 1/4 mark of my stay hear in Korea I find that saying truer and truer. Sometimes the changes are easy to see, others aren't so easy to spot, some of the changes and again others not.
I suppose the first change is the most noticeable, and that would be my appearance. Sure, I cut my hair which is a big change for me but others aren't quite as spectacularly noticeable, at least for me. The biggest physical change I've noticed is my arms. Kumdo has been subtle changing my arms. My forearms are noticeably more muscled as are my biceps and triceps. I've also managed to put a dent into my weight. I had been down 15 pounds at one point but I gained back five of that, which I will attribute to added muscle mass (I hope, lol)
On the subject of Kumdo, the master thinks I'll be ready for the armor next month, which I'm looking forward too. I've noticed my strikes have become a lot faster and more accurate, and my footwork is improving. Still, it's nice to have outside confirmation. I'm looking forward to actually being able to spar. I feel like a paper tiger as I've only been learning offense, but now I'll actually be able to start learning defense. My hands and feet are starting to toughen up too. They still get blisters, but they are really starting to get resistant to the beatings they take each week.
As for school, it still a mix of bad and good days. I have a class where all the parents are coming in next week so Ive got to put on a show with my class, but that's not until Wednesday, and truth be told, I'm more than a little nervous. Last Friday the kids went on their Spring picnic field trip. It was originally scheduled to be at Seoul Grand Park (which has a zoo and all kinds of stuff), but due to some problems in Seoul which I won't go into it was changed to Lotte World, the world's largest indoor theme park. It's ranked 7th in the world in terms of attendance. Since I and the other teachers were with the kids we didn't get to do much, especially considering the limited time we had. But we all agreed that we're gonna go back next month.

W ell I suppose that's a good length for this post for now, but I'll keep the promise I made a few weeks ago (I'm sorry, I've been busy, well sort of....) and post the picture of myself, enjoy!

Children's Day

Let me first apologize for the gap between my posts, It's been busy, although there isn't much to post. I had originally meant to post earlier in the week with pictures of my classes, but that fell through when my camera refused to work. But enough of that. Today's post will go in reverse chronological order (sort of).... yay!

Today was a national holiday in Korea, namely Children's Day. Basically think Mother's or Fathers day, but for kids. Yeah.... At any rate what it meant for me was I had the day off. Mmmmm yeah 3 day weekend. I spent much of it loafing around as I'm waiting for payday on Wednesday. I did however take part in some gaming on Camp Casey (which meant I got to eat on base)

Friday, being as it was Children's Day weekend, we had a party for the kids at school, which meant I had to be at school for first period...... Thus I decided to go to Kumdo that night, but we'll come back to that. My assignment for the day was Arts and Crafts, which despite my lack of a artistic ability went fantastic. Basically what it entailed was from 9:40 to 2:45 (minus 45 minutes for lunch) I was making Parent's Day cards with origami carnations. The kids had fun at any rate...

After I was done for the day I went to the 8:30 pm Kumdo class, where it turns out I'm like a minor celebrity. Despite never having met any of the students there, they all new my name and a good deal about me. Apparently the master told them about me (which is weird because the asst. master teaches the morning class). Anyways class went well, save for the fact it was very hot and I was dripping with sweat at the end.

Monday, I went in for my 2nd Crohn's appt. I had to have blood work done. It came back normal. As I'm coming up on the one year anniversary of diagnosis and my graduation I realize this last year could have gone much worse and that I am truly blessed, especially when I consider a teacher I knew here in town who had Crohn's got careless and had to go in for emergency surgery and had to be set back to the U.S. It was a good object lesson for me, but I digress. The appointment went well, but since it's been nearly a year since my last procedure involving a flexible camera taking images of my insides, I get tho schedule one for my summer break. Yay! (please insert sarcasm here) Oh well, I realize it's necessary and all, and at least it is n't my favorite thing in the world, the barium follow through x-ray.

At any rate, I get another wonderful three day weekend this next week as it's Buddha's Birthday (which is also apparently another national holiday). I promise that I will make another post (more substantial than tis one as well) then. For now take care. Shad

April 13th

Well not much really to say here. This last week wasn't terribly interesting other than I had Wednesday off, started Kumdo and got my new roommate. Kumdo is going ok, but it's hard to get used to the way you need to stand and move. I'm sure I'll get used to it eventually, but it's hard. You need to keep your feet pretty close together (I'm looking at it from the P.O.V. of a former Tae Kwon Do student) and you move with a sort of sliding step. At any rate, I've learned two of the basic attacks and basic movement so I'm making progress, but compared to the other students in the class (there are two others who attend the 7 A.M. class), I have a loooong way to go.


By new roommate is named Paul, and he's from Scotland, and seems pretty nice. At least he hasn't blew everybody off like the other new teacher......

It's really a shame the weather wasn't good this weekend as I had been planning on going and partaking in some cherry blossom festivals, but it didn't go down so that went down the tube.

At any rate, before I go, I really would appreciate if people left more comments on my blog. Without a counter on it, I really have no idea of how many people come and visit, plus it's a nice way to keep in contact. Don't worry if you try to leave a comment and it doesn't show up right away wither, I have to ok any comments before they go up. Anyhow, I should hit the sack. Later.

Brave Fencer Shad!?!?!

First off, my apologies for posting late, I'll make up for it with a post again on Wednesday. On my way home from work, I pondered what topic I should cover first. It's been a bit wild here. And since I love suspense, I'll get to my posts title a little later....

Last week, one of the Korean teachers quit, which stinks as she did it on the last day of the month, which is when everything for the next month is prepared. Thus, all of her classes are be covered by someone temporary. Not good, really. Fortunately it has only affected one of my classes, which I've been kind of setting my own schedule on what to cover on a given day, not to hard really, just annoying. However, compound that with being down a foreign teacher as well and the schedule gets pretty convoluted. The good news is that they are already training a new Korean teacher, and the new foreign teacher (who will get the bonus prize of rooming with me as my old roommate moved as he had planed since before I moved in) should arrive Wednesday or Thursday. Speaking of Wednesday, I don't have to work. Yes that's right, I have Wednesday off. Why, you may ask? It's election day here, and apparently that means no school, quite nice really. That also got me thinking: If election day in the U.S. was a holiday, would more people turn out and vote? Something tells me no, but it would be interesting. At any rate, that also means I get to deal with campaign posters, people on in lines on the street saying what I would assume to be vote for candidate (insert number here, all the candidates are numbered). I actually met candidate #2 last week. He didn't make a good impression, I can say that much. I was on my way to school, and I hadn't got out of the neighborhood, when low and behold there he was. He must have caught a glimpse of my shoes as I was descending a hill and he had his down, because he started to approach me as if to shake my hand ir something, then he looked up and realized I was a weygook (Korean for foreigner) and quickly moved in a different direction. I'm certainly not voting for him.....


I also had my appointment with the GI doc last week. No real problems, I do however get to go in on the 28th for a blood test to make sure my kidneys and liver are still working, but that's routine. I was even able to get my prescriptions, with no hassle, and they were fairly cheap, only 50,000 won ($50 for those of you who don't know the exchange rate yet).

And know for the topic you've been waiting for, the reason behind my title: I start Kumdo tomorrow. What's Kumdo, you may ask? Kumdo (or Kendo in Japan) is the Korean (and Japanese) art of fencing. Don't really think of it as you would the Olympic sport fencing as the similarities end at wearing protective gear and using fake swords. Kumdo employs a unique style of footwork and strikes with a bamboo sword (unlike fencing which is limited to very linear movement and thrusts). I'm very excited as I've wanted to be able to do this since high school. My classes start at 7 AM and go untill 8 AM, which is really the only class time offered that would work. So I get to get up at 5:50 AM on weekdays so I can get ready and catch the bus, as the dojang (dojo/place of instruction) is a rec center on the other end of town near the city hall. It's pretty nice, the place has a swimming pool, driving range, Korean style bath, racquet's ball courts and of course the Kumdo area. I'll elaborate more on Wednesday, but for now, I'll just post some pictures.

Days 28-31 "A trip to the hospital and Easter"

Well, I had a eventful weekend, more or less. On Friday morning I woke up completely sick, I couldn't hear out of my left ear, had a headache, was nauseous, got very little sleep and generally felt like I had a huge sinuous infection. So I went to St. Mary's Hospital (the biggest in the city) where they have English speaking staff. Turns out I was wrong, I had a sinuous AND ear infection. Yeah... so they loaded me up with antibiotics and set me on my way. Thus I slept throughout a good part of Friday and Saturday. Sunday I was feeling well enough to attempt to find the only English speaking church I've heard about so far in the city. So I hopped a cab and went to the gates of Camp Red Cloud, one of the many U.S. bases and sure enough, the church was just across the street, and thus I was able to enjoy a lovely Easter service. Afterwards, the pastor, his family and a few others convinced me to go eat on base with them. We ended up eating at the Commanding General's mess, which was very much like a supper club (well, at least I think so, I've never really been to a supper club before). But the food was good and afterwards I caught the train back to my side of town and spent the rest of the day vegetating.

As for today (Monday) I have successfully made the call and faxed the info to get internet. DSL, here I come!!!! With any luck I'll have it hooked up by Friday, maybe even Thursday.... should also have a bank account tomorrow. I'm still deciding if I want to get a cell phone, the rates they charge foreigners are bad I here, but I'll decide on that after I get paid. I also heard some good news on the martial arts front, as a school willing to teach me Kumdo (the Korean version of Kendo) has been found. That also will be something I start after my first payday.

I'd also like to take a moment to say "hi" to my home church of Lewis Lake back in the States. Hope you all are well.

Anyhow, on to the pictures. The first few will be pictures of my apartment. The rest will be pictures and the video I promised from Seoul. Enjoy!
Note: it seems the video will take some time, maybe later

Day 23 or "What to do with crazed kindergartners"

Hypothetical situation: You have 11 kids who speak next to no English. Next, they have the attention span of a kid with ADHD and no Ritalin. Then for good measure, just pretend they don't want to listen. Yeah that's how my morning was....

On another note I'm officially a registered alien! That's right! I even have a card to prove it!! Now I am entitled to have a bank acct, medical insurance, a cell phone, the internet, and the list goes on. Hopefully sometime in the next week I'll actually set out to get all that mess taken care of.

In other news, two teachers are scheduled to leave at the end of the month, which in turn means we are scheduled to get two new teachers sometime around Saturday if my calculations are correct. That also means I and the other 3 three teachers who arrived at the same time will no longer be the low people on the ladder!

As for my weekend, I took another trip into Seoul, this time to the districts of Itaewon and Dongdaemon (pronounced Eat-a-won and Dong-day-moon). Itaewon is considered the area where all the foreigners go, consequently, many of the shops and restaurants have English all over the place. Among the restaurants I spotted were Subway, Outback Steakhouse, the Hard Rock Cafe, Quiznos, KFC, Burger King, and Mc Donalds to name a few. While Subway tempted me, I ended up going to Kraze Burger, which is really sort of a gourmet diner. I ended up getting a burger and it was soo big you had to eat it with a knife and fork, I give Kraze burger four and a half fries out of five (mainly because they had sweet pickles, what a travesty). I also visited and English book store with a slightly suggestive title, so I don't think I'll be posting that, but at an rate I couldn't find anything worth getting, which is unfortunate. As for Dongdaemon, it's reall attractions are the stadium (really 2 stadiums next to each other, one for baseball, one for soccer) and 5 malls devoted all to clothing. Clothing is a whole other issue, I'll take some picture of various styles of dress here in a bit, but a lot of it sometimes bewilders me.

On the subject of pictures, I will be uploading some more just as soon as I get the internet in my apartment. Cheers!

Day 16....

Well, it's Tuesday afternoon for me (for my readers in the Central Time Zone it's now 11 PM), or more precisely 1 PM. So I survived moving my stuff to my new apartment on Sunday and it is much nicer than my old apartment. My new bedroom is around the same size my last apartment was.... yeah. I'll post pics at a later date.

In other news, I went to Seoul on Saturday. I took the "subway" (it's really a cross between a subway and elevated train in that in actual Seoul proper it's a subway but on the outskirts and here in Uijeongbu it's just an elevated train). It was about a 40 min ride, but the real crazy part is how much it costs. One way it cost a total of 1300 won, or about $1.30. Furthermore, they have this thing called a T-money card. Think of it as a rechargeable gift card that lets you avoid buying tickets for the "subway" or paying cash/change to ride the bus. VERY HANDY. The trip to Seoul had no real set purpose or destination other than I wanted to get a watch to replace the one I brought, since it broke on me.... I managed to find a very nice replacement for 10000 won ($10) from a street vendor. However the most amazing thing I saw that day was a traffic conductor. He was dressed like a 1930's gangster or something. He wore a long gray trench coat with black fur lining the collar and a gray and black fedora. They way he directed traffic was more like a weird hand dance or something. We (I was with another teacher who arrived the same time as I did by the name of Mike) shot a video of it on Mike's camera, I'll try to upload that too.

Yesterday I decided to broaden my horizons and go to a Korean bathhouse, again with Mike. It was crazy, but in a good way. The actual bath area had 4 communal tubs (3 with varying temps of hot water and a near freezing plunge pool) , showers lining the wall, two rows of taps to wash yourself at (you don't do it in the pool) and 3 saunas (ranging from VERY HOT to surface of the Sun). Also in the bath house is a barber, a restaurant, a bar, a gym and a row of massage chairs and machine for you feet, where for a mere 100 won ($1) you may get 10 mins of massage. Entrance itself was only 6000 won ($6). Yeah, really awesome in my opinion, but sorry there won't be any pictures from the bathhouse. (I know some of you will be let down by that).

Day 9...... The day before kindergarten....

Today, I figured I would be a go getter and go in early and get some planning done and some materials together, but that was a real bad idea. First, It started snowing pretty hard, which meant I had to ride the bus to avoid ending up drenched. Next, I had to get materials and the like organized for my kindergarten class, then I had 4 elementary classes to teach, and not all of them had there books or materials either...... yeah.

On another note Saturday I had beef shabu-shabu style (which basically) means it's cooked in at your table by dipping it into boiling broth. Monday night I went out for Chinese and had what seemed to be some sort of sweet and sour chicken. I haven't ate much today except for a chocolate coronet....

Oh and the picture of the town was taken on foot as walked to school one day.

One week down.... AND PICTURES

Ok. So, as promised here are some pictures from my first week. Most should be pretty self explanatory. The first is a picture of the scenery on my way to work. Since I'm on the outskirts right now, my scenery changes quite a bit, but I wanted something to prove my description of Korea a post or two back. The next three pictures are from the kindergarten graduation on Friday. The kids in costumes weren't graduating so they did a little presentation. The last picture is a little hard to read, but I find amusing as it's a decent example of Konglish. Konglish is sort of like Spanglish, Engrish and the sort. You actually see all kinds of poorly phrased signs, this is just one example.

EDIT: For those who can't make out the picture, it reads: "Our slogan is 'Break the impossibility habit.'"

Day 5: The Schedule

Hey everyone, so I finally decided to make a proper post and let everyone know what 's going on with me.

It's been a very busy week getting semi-settled in to my temporary apartment (I'll be moving into my regular apartment once the teacher's who are leaving take off) and observing classes. Today (Thursday for me , Wednesday for you guys) was the kindergarten graduation. I'll be posting pictures tomorrow. At any rate so that means the new classes start next week. I've found out I'm to be assigned the "5-year olds". If my use of italics and quotation marks weren't enough to tell you something isn't quite right, I'll spell it out. They aren't really 5 years old. You see in Korea you tell your age differently. For example in any other country I'm 23, but here in Korea I'm 25. The reason is a newborn baby is considered one year old. You also don't add a year on your birthday you add it on Lunar New Year, which is usually in January or February. so, in actuality my class is comprised of 3-4 year olds. It should be interesting to say the least....

I've also decided that whenever I post from here on out I'll also give you an idea of what I've eaten at my meals. This morning I was quite rushed so I only had a banana. Lunch was a spicy pork and potato soup. It was made by boiling a pig's spine (with meat attached) with veggies and potatoes. It was actually quite good, although I tried my best to use chopsticks, I'm still sort of inept. There was also a self-serve ice cream station, so I had 2 ice-cream cones. Tonight we're heading out for Korean BBQ as a sort of Good-bye/Welcome party. Apparently there will be Soju, which is a rice-based beverage of the alcoholic persuasion that apparently tastes like vodka and has an aftertaste similar to toothpaste. I haven't had any to this point, but I'm sure I'll be made to have some.

Also for those interested in what Korea looks like in two words I shall do my best to describe it:
Utilitarian and Mountains. Pictures and more tomorrow.

I have arrived.

So, I made it to Korea, and the weather is much nicer than the the midwest (read: above freezing). More to come later.

Farewelll Simpletons!!!!

Well here I am on the departure, and I am actually really calm. Prior to departing to the Netherlands I was actually pretty nervous, now, not so much. I am not, however, looking forward to spending fifteen hours in the air, the time difference or my arrival time. Since none of those are actually up to me, I'll just have to make the best of it. For those who are curious about airline food I'll provide the links here to the menus for my in flight meals, which actually look pretty good.

The menu for my first leg from Minneapolis to Tokyo is:
http://www.nwa.com/services/onboard/special/menus/DTW,MSP-NRT,KIX,NGO_WBC_WB_1(1)08.pdf


And the menu for the flight from Tokyo to Seoul is:
http://www.nwa.com/services/onboard/special/menus/ICN-NRT_WBC_EB_1(1)08.pdf

I think I'll be avoiding the monk fish and spicy chicken curry...... oh, you can thank my less than brilliant best friend Josh for the title of my second installment of what I hope will be a weekly ordeals, I mean weekly installments. However, I will do my best to make a few extra posts over the next week or so to let everyone know how I'm settling in.

Shad

And so it begins....

(cue ominous music)
Gentleman! Behold! I have created... this thing!
(end ominous music)

Welcome everyone! I have created this blog with the intention of chronicling my year long trip to South Korea in which I will be teaching English on the outskirts of Seoul. Basically, I decided sending a mass-email out would be tedious and boring, and would realistically allow me to include any volume of pictures or media. I also figure this would allow the most people to see my exploits/mishaps/adventures in a convenient manner. Enjoy!

BTW, My flight leaves in 10 days!!!