For those on the other side of the pacific

taken at what I believe is "Dangdae Harbor" near Tamna Castle. Pretty wild day, my fingers went numb taking this picture.

New Name for Everything

(View from my window, New Year's Day.)

Our first session has ended here in Jeju, it was only four days but I was sad to see some of the kids go, but we got 24 more new ones today. I finally got to sleep in this morning, the first time I have slept past 7 in Korea! Which was felt really good. Then we took the campers staying between sessions down to the movie theatre in the superstore Lotte Mart the catch phrase for Lotte Mart is "More Than Life" which is pretty sweet. We saw a very weird film called "The Last Godfather" starring Korean star YoungGu a weird Charlie Chaplin, Mr Bean, Ernest blend who is wildly popular here in Korea. Even though the movie was made for Koreans, it was all in English, really horrible english with minimal plot, but English nonetheless.

The sun has still yet to make an appearance here in Jeju, but tonight I am going to make the trek down past the Korean megachurch to see the ocean. Even though I have been going out in Jeju and seeing various things, I dont have much of a sense of how close or far away things are. I know also that I am very close to Mt. Hallasan, the highest point in Korea but because of cloud cover there has only been one day I was able to see the foothills covered in tangerine farms. Tangerines are very big here, they are not like the Floridian variety I grew up with, these have thicker skins and are much sweeter, none of the citrus tang Americans are used to. Speaking of Americans, since food was scarce after the Korean war Americans imported lots of food which has infused itself into staples that the locals consider their own, including Spam which is popularly used in a soup which translates to "Army Base Soup" a meal that any time I am in a restaurant is recommended to me since I am American. Culinarily speaking, this country is astounding, I knew about kimchi and korean bbq, but the soups and breads have been a wonderful surprise. At every meal in the cafeteria there is the option of a spicy salty soup, which if anyone knows me, what more could I ask for? Hope all is well back in the states.

from coffee tree, Jeju Island

This is how my 2011 began (14 hours before yours!) digging in the snow for a very excited Korean man's cross (we found it grandma). If you had told me last year when I was driving down MacDill Ave singing "Party in the USA" at the top of my lungs with Emily Grim I would be here in exactly a year I would have been speechless, here's to 2011 and more surprises.

Jeju island is rapidly turning into one of the coolest experiences of my life, I am astounded by just how purely different it is here. I had pretty much given up on travelling, since I wasnt seeing much of a difference between LA, Boston, DC or Tampa except a few local eccentricities it seemed corporations and the internet had effectively homogenized the entire world. Right now I am sitting in a cafe, a true mom and pop cafe where the owner is trying to give me lessons in Korean from the counter, and making her daughter sit across from me and practice her english. "Espresso make me sad, to learn to english to be flier" was her last sentence, which I roughly translate to, I dont like working in this cafe, I want to learn english to be a flight attendant. I am getting really good at understanding broken english, especially when the subject of the verb is 'cute boy'. My female students seem almost exclusively interested in the cute older boys in the other camp. The girls bring them water at meals, and carry mirrors to constantly adjust their hair, which most American girls would make a tertiary priority when the wind is howling at 30 miles and hour and the slush is flying up off the ground. These girls are driven, at the tender age of 14.



These are my students on new year's day (forgive the quality, it was shot on my phone) playing a game pretty much like a dice throwing game.

I have to go now and write a 45 question test that my boss didnt tell me about until 30 minutes ago.

annyong

Well after a long journey involving four flights, including the final flight where we had to circle Jeju due to headwinds, a very slow limo ride through snowy west Seoul, and a lucky happenstance into my boss once on the campus of Cheju Halla College, I am finally here. Actually, I am not on campus right now since there is no internet there, which is pretty silly for a junior college in one of the most heavy internet using countries in the world to not have wifi, but whatever. I got in yesterday afternoon and quickly got to orientation, which was more of disorientation, my boss has a pretty weak grasp of English, which deteriorates even more when he is not reading verbatim from a powerpoint slide. It isnt really clear how many hours of english I will be teaching per day or where exactly I am required to be. I am relying heavily on my assistant "Dorian" (Choo-Sun) who is a really amazing guy, he is in his second year studying communications at University of Seoul, and is from Jeju, but lived in Las Cruces(cities my Korean counterparts have lived in in America: Las Cruces, Eugene, Apop for two years and honed his English really well to the point where he read portrait of Dorian Gray, hence his english name being Dorian.

I am really enjoying Korea so far, the food is wonderful, although I think I might eventually tire of the combinations of red pepper, cabbage and mushrooms that are the side dish of any meal (and thats not even including the kimchi!). Jeju is a really interesting city, because as an American flying over the city, I was worried it would be a sprawling suburb. While it does have sprawl, there is no real distinction between city and town and suburb, it is just a never ending network of mixed use buildings. You never walk more than 500 feet without seeing a FamilyMart of GS25, the equivalents of seven-elevens, cafes (like the one I am sitting in now), or restaurants. The city is really teeming with life all over.

The most surprising thing so far I have seen is the 'superstores' that dominate the city. Imagine a super walmart or super target where everyone goes for everything. Last night one of my fellow teachers, Graham and I went there to get some adapters for the outlets in our dorm, and we just browsed around the store for an hour. The cost of living here is very low, so we were marveling at all the things we could buy, like washing machines, that we couldnt back home in the states. Unfortunately a single can of Budweiser would be W3500 ($3.50) at the store we settled on some Hite to enjoy after dinner, a six pack of which cost W2000 or $2.

It is also really cold. And koreans dont turn on heat, so while it is 45 degrees outside, the door is open and my fingers slowly freeze as I tap this out on my keyboard.

I'll leave you with the haiku in english on the wall behind me,
Admiration of coffee
It's blacker demon
like the hell its' hot
like the angel being pure and like love it's sweet.

Its almost like Im bad at this.

My productivity certainly took a dip during Rosencrantz & Guildenstern are Dead and never really rebounded. The play went well, The Alive Theatre got named one the top ten LA companies of the decade in the LA Weekly, congratulations to them. I absolutely loved working with them and just wish driving all the way to LB was not such a chore, but I will definitely be seeing more of them in the future.

There has been much decorating at my apartment in Los Feliz, and we are closing in on our goal of a joke behind every corner and making it more like "A Beautiful Mind" for the verbally neurotic.

I am leaving for Korea this weekend to teach in Jeju for a few weeks. Afterwards I will be touring around Seoul, Tokyo and Beijing, if anyone knows of any hot spots of the beaten path be sure to let me know.

Some pictures since the last post:

The Opposite

Here is my new reel scene "The Opposite" by Dan Moyer, with myself and fellow USC BFA grad Lizzie Fabie.
http://vimeo.com/16713278

opera is playing very loudly on los feliz blvd

I'm sure somebody else will cover the election results better than I can. I am only concerned with my favorite part of elections in this blog post, election day photography. There are a few categories of these, photos so there are a few number 1s from yesterday's election.



The Signs Picture: This is a classic signs picture for election day, all the signs are the generic campaign posters, no personal message, some clues to where the election is (you can tell because it is cold, and alaska is cold.), and early morning light. very election day. (Runner Up: Boxer)


The Cheesy Online Banner: From the usually classy LA Times, a very ">Tampa Tribune ish move.



The Concession Call Picture. This picture of Boxer is the real quintessential concession call, the low angle, the out of focus stars, the absurdly large phone...




The Ballot Picture: I took this today at my polling place on Finley Ave in Los Feliz. I like how cold the ballot itself is as compared with the hype and bluster of a political election.

today, I accidentally messed up my ballot when I first filled it out, then I figured out what I had done wrong and promptly voted for meg whitman on accident and had to request a new ballot and then hear a full explanation on Los Angeles County Vote Voiding Procedure. very intense. but I finally rose above my floridian roots and abstained to vote on prop 21.



The I Voted Sticker: I remember when I was a kid how I Voted stickers were this random thing that would randomly appear on my dad's jackets or my teacher's dresses in elementary school. I remember vaguely associating it with public radio and the musky smell of my dad's car seat.

Today I went to a bunch of public places like Haskell Elementary, the grocery store, the Long Beach Pier, a cafe in Long Beach, a rehearsal for a play opening this weekend, and only saw about 15 I voted stickers.

It was kind of disappointing.