The Life of Oggy
I’m just chilling out at my client’s office waiting for students to come, and I realized it’s been a while since I’ve posted. So here’s a post to let you know I’m still alive.
Also, I will be in Tulsa the second and third weeks of October. I’m looking forward to seeing everyone!!!
I have a lot more to say, but really no time to do so. I will post again soon with new news and pictures.
I’m just going to come right out and say it. Last month was crazy. Because of all the extra work, it was also the first time that I actually got sick since I’ve been here and actually had to take a sick day.
Just to give you an idea, by contract teachers are usually scheduled to have no more than 80 teaching hours in a month. Before, in some of my busiest months, I made it up to 75. In February, I taught 72 hours of classes. Well, March was a monster. Because two teachers moved, and we didn’t get any new teachers, we had only four teachers to do the work of six. On top of that a teacher at a different branch went on vacation, and someone needed to go to the other branch and teach his classes. Of course, the pay is good for weekend work, so I decided to do that for two weeks.
So, how much did I work last month?
The pay was good last month, but I’m not looking to do that every month. You might be looking at that math and notice that for a whole month, I only had 118 teaching hours, and think, “Well, that’s less than most people work. What on earth are you complaining about?”
Keep in mind that this only includes teaching hours. These numbers do not include any office, preparation, or travel time (which easily surpasses 10 hours a week).
All in all, it’s been good, but I’m thinking that I’ll have a little extra time this month to get in touch with everyone.
So this is going to be a long-ish post about Korea.
First of all, I have to say that my experiences in Seoul are completely different from anything I’ve experienced in Japan. Here’s bullet list of some of the differences:
In Japan, people wait calmly in strait lines to enter the train. In Seoul, people crowd and push and shove around the doors to the train and all rush in together when the they finally open.
Seoul has a greater variety of western shops and restaurants. This is probably due to the vast numbers of foreigners there.
As I stated before, there are so many foreigners in Seoul. Its crazy. It kinda takes away some of the mystique of the city, but at the same time, makes it much easier to get around and find familiar things.
In Japan, the people are patient, quiet, disciplined, and nice. In Seoul, they’re… well… not. They’re rude, impatient, pushy, and loud.
In Japan, the air is pretty clear, even in big cities like Tokyo. In Seoul, there’s a yellow haze much like that of LA.
Okay, I’m tired of the whole bullet list thing already. Seoul is amazing and terrible all at the same time. Its dirty, loud, and most of the people suck. That’s not to say it’s all bad though. It’s obviously a tourist hub. Because of this, nearly everyone can speak Korean (obviously), English, Japanese, and Chinese, or any combination of those languages. This made it much easier to get around than it was when I first came to Japan.
The food in Korea is amazing, especially for those who like spicy foods. While Japan is the home of wonderful things like sushi and yakitori (meat on a stick), most foods here tend to be rather bland with wasabi being the main exception. It was refreshing to add some spice to my diet.
There are some wonderful sights in Seoul, and there’s always something to do. The shopping is really good, and everything is very cheap. For example, I got a high quality cashmere wool pea coat in Seoul for about $100. A similar coat (lower quality) costs about four times that here. Not everything is decent quality though. There are countless knock offs all over the city, so you really have to look around to find the good stuff. I just lucked into finding this particular shop when I was walking to dinner.
All in all, I had a good time in Seoul. I don’t see it as a place that I could ever live, but it is a lot of fun to visit. Pics in the Gallery =)
Well, happy birthday to me. It’s been the 5th here for 2 hours, so I guess I’m officially 28. At least I have a couple years before I hit the scary 30 mark. Really though, it’s not about how old you are, but how old you feel… right? Wow, it’s really starting to sound like I’m in denial about this whole age thing. I’m really just writing anything that comes to mind, as this wasn’t intended to be a very long post, but I figured I might as well stretch it out a bit and see who actually makes it to the meat of the post…
Anyway, I couldn’t care less about the whole age thing, and I’m happy it’s my birthday, but the reason I am making this post is because I wanted to update everyone on a post I made a few months ago about the free flights to Japan. Looks like the Japanese Government decided not to fund the program. You can read for yourself here. Sorry for anyone who was hoping to score one of the 10,000 free tickets. Maybe they’ll do the program later after they clean up the whole power plant mess.
In other news, I posted pics of my trip to Korea here.
Okay, so have a good morning/day/night (depending on where you are). I’m going to sleep.
Happy New Year everyone. I can’t believe that it’s already 2012. The last year has been very eventful (especially starting around March 11).
I’ve returned to Koriyama from Seoul in one piece. Don’t worry, the transition in North Korea had no effect on my merrymaking in the south.
I’ll give more info about my travels later, and I’ll update my photo gallery (I have loads of pictures to sort through) soon.
As for now, I want to welcome everyone to the new year, and I hope that it will be better than the last… for everyone!!!
おやすみなさい
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