summer is here!

It seems summer has arrived in Korea. it's been sunny pretty much all the time, and staying comfortably in the 70s and even low 80s some days. The weather is great. One of these weekends i'm going to finally put air in my bike tires and finally explore the area on wheels. Also as i was heading to Seoul last week I saw someone wakeboarding on the river which reminded me of my goal to go skiing on the Han at some point this summer. Keith told me it can be done. I fully intend to check that one off the list before too long.

So, i'm sorry i haven't posted much lately. There hasn't been much blog-worthy going on. My friend Damien, who was the one we can all thank for finally getting here, had a baby last Friday (well his wife did but you all know what i mean). So last weekend i bought a baby gift and went to the hospital to see them. He's so cute! Everyone I talk to agrees that the mixed babies are the cutest. I'm not sure why that is.

what do you think? This is Dean.


So I learned something about having a baby in Korea.

my understanding in America is that if you have decent insurance, 1-2 days in the hospital is usually covered at what, 80%? So that's approximately $2,000 for a day in the hospital after giving birth?

In Korea, healthcare is pretty much nationalized. But from what i've seen/heard it's much better than say Europe. That is, even those things you do pay out of pocket for are CHEAP (example...paying out of pocket for a dental cleaning, which everyone does because it's not under the national health plan, will cost you around $20).

So Seijin (Damien's wife) just had a C-section. She will be in the hospital for 2 weeks for recovery and monitoring and natal care. And then after that there is a week long 'baby camp' where she learns how to be a mom to a newborn baby.
So she'll be in the hospital for 3 weeks.
Know how much that is costing?

$1,200.

Oh, that includes first immunizations.

To be fair that may not include the cost of the actual surgery, I'm not sure. But still. Can you believe it? Amazing.
Prescription medications are also really affordable here. Paying out of pocket for a round of antibiotics cost my coworker $8.


Anyway, what else is new...

Last Friday we took the Kindergarten on a field trip to a park about a half hour away. There was a big kind of pit that sort of looked like a big wading pool drained of water. It had a slippery bottom and mossy stone sides that were basically hills. And water pumps for the kids to fill up their squirt guns.
As you can imagine this was extremely dangerous. The playground also was covered in a thin layer of gravel so it was no surprise when everyone had fallen down and cried within the first 20 minutes. Luckily there wasn't too much blood. But it was stressful for me trying to watch and protect and entertain 6 six year olds by myself while the other teachers were either talking amongst themselves at our picnic pavillion or off with the other 2 7 year olds.
Luckily before long we gathered everyone together to play in a big fountain and then we changed clothes and had lunch. I'll just post a bunch of pictures from that day and you can enjoy the cuteness.








This is Su-wan and Audrey. They like to pretend to be ghosts..or zombies? I'm not really sure. Anyway that's why they look like that.





the kids eating their lunch of Kimbap. It's the standard picnic fare. The unknowledgeable among you may call it sushi at first glance, but it's not. It's got pieces of sesame, radish, carrot, etc veggies wrapped inside rice inside seaweed. After this day I finally decided i don't like it.




I think Anna is saying, 'Thomas Oppa! Why are you doing that??'






Also, my student Tiffany (or as she would prefer to be called, 'Starflower') had a birthday last Tuesday. So we had a party for her. Here:











Not to leave you on a bad note, but I also had something scary happen to me the other night that i feel i need to share, because it was by far the biggest even to happen to me in a long time. And probably the worst.

Tuesday night I awoke around 4am. One of those things, you don't know why you woke up, if you heard a noise or had a bad dream or what. But I woke up. I yawned and rolled over to my other side to go back to sleep. Then i thought i felt a tickle on my leg. I assumed it was my blanket so ignored it. But then i felt it again, above my knee this time. So i absently brushed my hand over it and saw out of the corner of my eye something black scurry across the covers.

I immediately jumped up and threw the blankets down to the foot of the bed. It was dark in my room, but there is enough light from the street that I had definitley seen something. And although i was half asleep, it had appeared to be rather large.
So i got up and turned on the light and sat down again. Usually when i see a bug i go into denial and kind of assume a 'if you can't see it it's not there' viewpoint. But this had been on my leg and on my blanket. Not sure i wanted to see it i stood up and kicked the blankets onto the floor.
Out of the folds flew a rather large creature. It was stopped when it ran into the closed door and dropped to the floor. Then it started scurrying along the baseboard.

And to my sheer terror, i saw what it was.

A f&#*@& cockroach.

I screamed. I couldn't help it. I was petrified. I wanted to get rid of it but I have a completely irrational fear of bugs. Especially big ones. Especially killing them. Or maybe it's just getting near enough to kill them. I looked around for something big enough that could possibly smash it but those suckers are indestructible. And i tried to tell myself it had already been on my leg so getting my hand near it wouldn't be so bad but of course that just made it worse.

So i knew i had to do something but was, as i said, petrified. Meanwhile it was scurrying along the baseboard. I knew if i didn't act fast it would find somewhere to hide and I could never sleep in this room again knowing it was there. The 'out of sight out of mind' mantra simply does not apply to cockroaches.

All of these thoughts crossed my mind quickly, in the time it takes a cockroach to scurry 10 feet around the base of my bedroom. Frantically looking around the room my eyes rested on plastic container about the diameter of a pie tin and 4 inches deep, a friend had given me to use as a keepsake box. Quickly I grabbed it and took off the lid and nimbly approached the scurrying roach. with my toe i moved an article of clothing that was on the floor a few inches to its side, and the movement stopped it in it's tracks. It had seen me.

It changed direction heading towards my closet. Taking a deep breath I lunged forward and set the container upside down over the top of the cockroach, trapping it underneath.
Being fully aware of the cockroach's dexterity and sly wit, I found 5 of my heaviest books and quickly stacked them on top of the container to weigh it down, so as to ensure it could not escape.

Of course I still was somewhat wary that somehow it would find a way out and back into my bed...but it was 4am and I knew I had to try to get some sleep.
After a while I did, despite hearing the light thuds as the cockroach attempted to find an opening to escape from his prison.
I dreamed that the cockroach tried to fight me and even came back knocking at my window after we had finally gotten rid of him.

The next day I relayed my horror story to my friend Hannah (korean co-worker). I told her that I didn't know what I could possibly do. There was no way I was brave enough to lift up that plastic container and either kill the roach once and for all, try to trap it and throw it out the window, or lift it up only to find it had in fact escaped somehow. I was leaning towards the possibility of just NEVER moving that plastic container EVER AGAIN.

But she had a brilliant idea. She called her brother to explain the situation and asked if he would come over after work and take care of it for me. He said he would but he did not believe that it was a cockroach. He said it was probably just a big bug and i was overreacting. But regardless he agreed to come over at 6:30 and kill it for me.

When i got home i steered clear of the container as much as i could. Part of me wanted to rattle it a bit to see if it was still there but i didn't dare disturb it lest it find a way to escape. When Hannah and her brother came over I pointed from across the room to the makeshift prison i had created and climbed up on my bed to avoid whatever might come scurrying out. He shook it up a bit and i didn't hear anything so for a moment i was terrified that it had in fact escaped. But then he lifted the bin and it tried to run but he trapped it again. Hannah and i screamed. She had never seen a cockroach before. And her brother admitted that i was right, it was in fact a roach. So he made Hannah hand him some tissue and I closed my eyes and he captured it and with roach tissue in hand, they went home. I was so grateful. Kamsahamnida! I kept saying. And bowed twice. He laughed at me. He told me it probably did not fly in the open window as i thought, but crawled up through the drain on my veranda. So after they left I duct taped the shit out of it and closed the door.
I didn't sleep well last night partly out of fear and partly because all my sheets were being washed and i was just bundled up in many layers of pajamas, trying to protect myself from any other intruders.
But i think it was probably just a rogue cockroach and i'm going on the assumption that there aren't any more in here and it did NOT lay eggs.

I have to.

Anyway, that's my big news lately. Sorry i"m so bad at updating, i'll try to do better but i guess it depends on what happens that is noteworthy.

Please comment or email me! As summer rolls around I find I am missing my family and my home a bit more, because this is the season for family gatherings and lazy lake days! So it would mean a lot to hear from some of you (oh, friends too of course:)