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Tuesday Oct 11th, Tonight at funk band rehearsal, we got our new drummer. His name is Vernon, and he's from South
Africa. There aren't very many South Africans here. There's kind of a stigma about being from Africa (Canadians and Americans are definitly the preferred nationality as far as teaching English goes), and the accents are so thick that it's hard to imagine trying to teach a bunch of Korean kids how to speak English when I can't even understand him! In any case, Vernon is going to work well with the band, and while I will miss Colin, it's nice that we're not losing any time finding a new drummer.
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Thursday Oct 13th, Tonight I actually had Indian food. It certainly wasn't the best Indian food I've ever had, but eating something other than Korean or Western food was like a minor miracle! Apparently there's a neighbourhood that a lot of non-Western foreigners live in. There are a lot of Vietnamese, Thai, Filipino and Pakistani people living about halfway between downtown and Chilgok. I was thinking about how strange it is that they would end up in Daegu, Korea. I guess maybe in their minds Korea is kind of a half-step between their
countries of origin and the Western world. As far as Korean food goes, I find it really hard to eat Western food now. It makes me feel really ill, and it's hard to digest, and I can't eat very big portions of it. Korean food is just so much healthier and easier on your body. That being said, I really, really miss West Indian food, and I would kill for some real jerk chicken right now!
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Saturday Oct 15th, Since this was my first weekend without set plans for a very long time, I made plans to meet with Jae Chung, my future employer, up in Seoul. I've been kind of tired of Daegu lately, so I decided to go on my own, and have a full weekend to myself. So I took the KTX (the bullet train) to Seoul, and got myself a motel room in Itaewon, which is the foreigner district. I
spent a really nice, peaceful afternoon shopping and browsing through one of the markets. I bought some clothes, and a bunch of crafts, like papier mache dishes, and wooden masks, and jingling massage balls. Most of this stuff I will send home to my family. Then I got myself ready to meet Jae. The Seoul subway system is insanely huge, so I had to transfer subwaylines three times, and the trip ended up taking me an hour. I was pretty proud of myself for not getting lost! My meeting with Jae went extremely well. The job is
going to be everything that I thought it would. I will be teaching private singing lessons for about 15 hours a week, and I will receive 2.5 million won every month to do so (right now I make 1.9). This is about $2500 each month. I will teach for four months, have
two months off, then teach four, and have another two off. On top of having an ideal schedule, I still get paid, even through my four months off. The only real complications: the visa process. When Ben and Kenji, the other two U of T grads on staff,came over, immigration was putting up a hassle because they thought that Ben and Kenji were too young to be professors. They were both around 28 years old. Jae is a little worried that they will see a 24 year old applying for the job, and say that there's no way that I'm old enough to teach music at a college. So Jae is concerned that there's a chance my visa application will get turned down. But we're going to try our hardest, and hope for the best! After the meeting, I braved the subway and headed back to Itaewon to eat at a Jamaican place. The curry certainly didn't taste the way it's supposed to, but it was a welcome change. I was fully intending to eat a quiet dinner, and then maybe go check out some jazz. But I ended up meeting a bunch of American soldiers, who I ended up hanging out with for the night. It was interesting hanging out with them-- their experience of Korea is so different from that of an English teacher. Some of the guys I met have been here for a lot longer than I have, and they don't know anything about Korea at all, and they have no desire to learn
about the country that they are living in. They just want to keep all of their American ideals and prejudices and customs. In fact, they were shocked when they learned that I am a teacher here. Even though there's Western English teachers EVERYWHERE in
Korea, they had no idea that it's such a huge thing. Anyway, it was fun to hang out with some different people; that's what I had been hoping for this weekend. And I certainly wouldn't have met any of those guys if I had gone to Seoul with anyone.
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