I just paid my bills for November – a whopping $99 for the whole shebang. Gas, electric, cell phone, internet, cable TV – everything. I like cheap.

The weather has been really pleasant here lately. Fall is fabulous. We are beset by  bright blue skies, day time temperatures in the 50s and 60s and deliciously cool nights.  I still haven’t cranked up the heat yet because I just haven’t felt the need to. I have a huge sheepskin blanket (thank you, Circe) that provides more than enough heat. I’ve also got a dog that loves to snuggle. In 2004-05, my gas bills alone ran close to $150, so I’m happy not to be there yet. In the meantime, that leaves me with plenty of cash for kalbi dinners – my favorite!

I wondered for a long while what OTL meant. Some of my Korean students use that term. I thought it was an acronym for something. Since Koreans have an entirely different alphabet, I figured it must be something that at least relates to English in some way.

Rather than display my old-fogginess and admit I don’t know what OTL means, I scoured the internet for meanings and consulted Korean/English dictionaries for the true meaning of OTL.

It turns out it has nothing to do any of the letters, other than their shape. Its an “emoticon,” that signifies meaning by the shape of the letters. In this case, its a person on their knees in defeat.  The kids were using it to talk about some upcoming tests they have in the public schools and some tests we gave in our school. We had many of them OTL.

I  gotta get out more.

The new bedroom is finished. I decided to offer to pay half the cost, even though my boss was prepared to pay in full. It was just the right thing to do. There was no need for him to build it unless I needed it and he stepped up to the plate. I figured dutch pay would be fair and he was most grateful. We’ll drink a few beers and soju on that agreement.

Once we get it decorated a bit and it isn’t just a bare room, I’ll take a few photos to share.

MyeongHee’s house was sold on the 14th of November.  She still doesn’t know how much she’ll get from the sale, but it likely won’t be the full $40K. She’ll move in sometime before the 15th of December, although we might not actually be married. The requirements of the US Embassy in Seoul don’t quite match what the Korean government is willing to produce. She has to have four copies of the official Korean Family Registry submitted to the Embassy – 3 in Korean and 1 in English. So far, we haven’t been able to get an English copy. We’ll see who bends first.

Happy Thanksgiving to all the Americans reading this. Today is Thanksgiving.

While all my family and friends gorge on turkey and stuffing, I’m in school administering tests. Today is “100 Word Test” day. The lower level classes get a single Korean word they have to translate to English. The mid and upper level classes will get complete sentences in Korean they must translate. So, I have my own holiday of sorts today. I’ll sit back with a book while the kids struggle over their tests. No teaching, no helping. Just pass out tests and wait for them to finish.

And speaking of finish, I’m still waiting for the carpenter to finish the new bedroom. He did the bulk of the work yesterday, but still has to put wall paper on and finish out the trim.

Above, he cuts away part of the metal support to make room for the door frame.

He should be finished today sometime. When I come back home from school, I expect there to be a finished bedroom with the rest of the veranda cleaned up and his trash gone.

Mr. Gong, my school director and landlord had his man come out today. He started building the bedroom for MyeongHee’s son. My apartment now is large, but only one bedroom. The veranda was very large; far larger than I really needed, so we decided to have the kid’s room put out there.

Above is only half the veranda. We’ll probably lose a lot of natural light that comes into the living room when they put the walls up over the glass. We’ll still have some glass door area going to the outside, but only about the size of a normal 3 foot door.

SaTang is having to stay indoors in the bedroom until the worker gets finished. Probably at most 3 days.

It’s a pretty hack job. There won’t be any connection to the central heating system. That would be too expensive to reroute. Koreans use a heating system called “ondol.” A beneath-the-floor set of pipes that distribute heat via the boiler.  It’s very efficient and doesn’t dry out the house like blowing warm air does in most western homes. Its just too much trouble to rip up the existing floor and tie into it. So, instead, he’ll have a portable heating unit along with an electric blanket – the same setup he has now at her house.  We don’t have central A/C anyway, so no big deal there.

We really don’t need a full integration with this room. Dong Hyun will be entering high school this February and he’ll be out of the house 12-18 hours a day for 6 days a week. Lots of studying, both at school and after-school prep classes. He’ll sleep there and, on weekends, late evenings and vacations,  hang out and play computer games like most Korean teenage boys. I already bought the network router and cabling to get his room wired and the workmen will install that cabling as well.

When we move out, Mr Gong will have a two-bedroom apartment should he ever decide to hire a 2nd foreign English teacher. The whole remodeling thing won’t cost me a thing, as it’s his house and he’ll have the benefit after I’m gone.

I’ll take more pictures as work progresses – unless they get it done while I’m at work, which is likely.

This week I was teaching some of my advanced students the use of indirect object pronouns. Sure, you remember those, right? Of course, you do! Well, in case you’ve forgotten, those are where you refer to one person with a pronoun (I, you, he, she, etc.) and in the same sentence relate them to another person with the indirect object pronoun (him, her, them, us, etc.) An easy example is “He hit him.”

So, now that you’ve had your English lesson for the day, let me get on with the story.

We were discussing gift-giving and the use of the indirect object pronoun. We made sentences like “What did they give her  for her birthday?” We talked about what appropriate gifts were and I asked a fairly easy question, the answer to which blew me away.

I asked the students what you would give to someone who likes to watch movies. I figured the answer would be something simple like a movie pass, a DVD or something similar. Nope. I got a resounding single answer from my Korean students: “you should buy them a computer.” I figured they misunderstood. A computer? Just to watch movies? Wouldn’t a DVD player be much cheaper? Nope. Then they proceeded to teach me.

Korea is one of the most wired countries on the planet. More than 70% of the population has very hi-speed internet at home. With all the infrastructure in place, the content companies have setup websites and players that you can browse through the available stuff easily. They watch movies and TV shows all the time on their computers. And I’m not talking about downloading a movie through some file sharing pirate site and watching it later. I’m talking about real video-on-demand. I was able to do a minimal amount of that on my Comcast set-up at home, but it’s nothing like what the Koreans have. They have gobs of stuff just waiting to be streamed down to their computer.  For a buck or two you can watch almost anything. There’s more subscribers to it than Microsoft’s  Windows Media Player.

I used to think I was technologically advanced. I was a fairly early adopter of the Tivo technology back home. Tivo ain’t got nothin’ on this stuff.  I felt a little like an old fogey, getting schooled on the new technology that I knew nothing about. But then, after checking out the sites, I forgave myself. It’s all in Korean. I can read it, but I’d rather not work that hard just to be entertained.  Check it out. I gotta learn the language better.

Ah, the things I do to entertain myself. Or the neighbors. It took a few weeks of offering snacks, but I finally got my dog to bow on greeting someone like they do here in Korea. The Koreans that have watched her do this think she’s very smart. I think she’s just motivated by food.

Have a look.

Nighttime here in Korea the road rules seem to change. When it gets late and traffic eases up, traffic lights are mere suggestions. It’s rare to see a car stop at a light late at night when there’s no cars at any of the other corners of the intersection. Especially when its a taxi. They have little disregard for rules anyway, even in daytime, but at night they are particularly unprincipled.

On many of the major roads, crosswalks have traffic lights. There’s no cross traffic except for pedestrians (Presbyterians if your name is Jessica.) Most cars just slow down long enough to see if there’s anyone there and then blow right through the light if they don’t see anyone.

And therein lies the problem. If they don’t SEE anyone.

Last night I was taking MyeongHee back home across town. Midway through town, traffic slowed to a crawl. It must have just happened, because the traffic jam was short – only 200m or so. When we got up  to the accident, it was apparent what had happened. Some poor schmuck was trying to cross the street at the crosswalk on the busy road that parallels the river. A taxi had plowed into him and knocked him 10m  up the street, shattering most of the lights on the taxi’s front end. I think he was dead. There were four or five people standing around him as he lay on the ground, but no one was comforting him, checking him out or otherwise even covering him up (it was pretty chilly and his shirt had been yanked up around his shoulders.)  If not for his t-shirt hanging out, he would have been hard for me to see on the ground as he had mostly dark clothes on. That’s not his fault, though.

He was simply trying to cross the street at a crosswalk and got nailed by a taxi who “looked” but apparently didn’t see anyone.

How do you know when it’s safe to run a red light in Korea? When you don’t see the police lights. Their red and blue lights are always on. Very easy to spot in the day and even more so at night. If you don’t see flashing lights, there’s no cops. I’ve never seen any unmarked cars in this country.  I’m not sure why they do that. It is what it is.

If it’s late at night, you don’t see police lights and you don’t see anyone walking the crosswalk, its safe to run the red light.

For you in the car, that is.

At some point over the past week or two, my blog has been visited by someone in Africa. That completes the roundup and indicates that my blog has been read by at least one person in all of the six inhabited continents of the world. We’re truly global! It’s become a small world since the internet was invented. When some scientist from Antarctica reads these pages I’ll mark another milestone, but I’m not holding my breath.

I had a conversation tonight with my middle school students. It was really eye-opening. I’ve probably mentioned in the past how much these kids go to school here. It’s hours and hours each day. And not just the public school; most also go to private schools after they finish the day of public school. English school, math school, art school, piano school – their days are filled with learning. They don’t seem to hate it, as I’m sure American kids would, only because they are raised with this model. American kids would rebel only because they’ve not experienced it all their lives.

But, I digress.

The real surprise this evening was a short discussion about middle school activities. There are none. I said it was a short discussion. And they don’t seem to miss not having the things American kids take for granted. Inter mural sports, for example, don’t happen. I dallied in track in field when I was in middle school and loved getting out and running with the boys. My own daughters were involved in Choir. Doesn’t happen here. My youngest was even a cheerleader. With no sports, there’s nothing to cheer. If there’s nothing to cheer, there’s no pep rallies. As far as I can tell, even high schools don’t compete with each other.

Sure, there’s sports and singing and things, but none of them are associated with the public schools. They all just go their separate little ways to piano class or taekwando class and have none of the class camaraderie I remember having. No school spirit. No school rivalries. No Friday morning loud speaker announcements to remind of us the game that evening.  And, without all of that – there are no fundraisers. No one tries to sell me a candy bar or some overpriced Christmas candy to support their school function. I haven’t even seen a girl scout cookie.

I guess I never realized just how different things are. Is it better? I don’t know. Just different. I think its interesting reflecting on the things I had as a boy and contrasting it to these kids, who are as happy as any others I’ve seen.

I watched yesterday as a team of people cleaned, groomed and pruned the bushes and trees in the park across the street. I watched for nearly a minute before I realized that this job wasn’t done by Mexicans as it so often is done back home in Texas. These were ordinary Koreans who perform ground maintenance as a living. It struck me as odd only because for the past 30 years the vast majority of people I saw doing this type of work were Mexicans. Obviously, I can’t say for sure whether all those Mexicans were illegal immigrants, but experience has shown me enough to know a good bet when I see one. I’d lay 5:1 odds that if you pointed to one on the street in Dallas now, he’d be in the US illegally.

I usually leave my political ramblings for my other blog, but since this relates to Korea, I thought I’d post my thoughts. Why is it that Korea can afford to pay its citizens a living wage to do the gardening that America will only pay Mexicans to do? Is it because Americans are “above” this type of work and won’t stoop to such menial tasks? Heavens, no! Americans work just as hard, if not harder, than many country’s citizens. No, it’s because Americans can’t afford to take a job that pays as little as these jobs typically do. Pay a decent wage and Americans will do the work. Pay a poor wage and you attract those that come because their home country has a worse economy than what they can obtain there.

So, is it the US Government’s fault there are so many illegal Mexicans in the US? No, of course not. It’s the American people’s fault. The chase for the almighty buck outstrips the desire to keep the borders from being porous. If there were no jobs available, there’d be no illegal immigrants.

You get what you pay for.

I got it. For the past couple of days I’ve felt like a dish of warmed-up meatloaf. Just not really up for much. There’s a slight bug running around town and I guess I caught it. Last night I hurled and today I could barely think about eating. I finally had some oatmeal (Thank you Costco Korea) this evening and I feel at least like I have some nutrition in me. I plan on  going to bed early tonight and hope that whatever funk I’ve got is short-lived.