Some Overdue Pics

This is Seoul out the window of my train heading to my new job in Jochiwon.

This is my main class, left to right: quiet Cindy, chatty Sunny, myself, brilliant John, Ramona being a little punk, wacky Jason, and of course James.

A pretty typical street in Korea, except normally there is way more people than this.

I brought Dinosaur Eggs from America, they are these little capsules that dissolve and little sponge dinosaurs grow and pop out of them. I gave them to my kids, because we whipped everybody's ass in the big camp speech contest, whoop, and the dino eggs blew their minds apart. They just huddled together like this and watched them hatch for like 20 sweet beautiful minutes of peace and quiet.

Teacher Teacher

I am a Teacher, that’s right, the fate of the Korean youth’s tomorrow lay squarely in my hands. Not really fate, but I am now officially teaching. I am an official Speaking Expert English Language Teacher, pretty important sounding title, at Camp Korea, which happens to be the #1 English camp in Korea. I teach six 11-12 year olds for roughly 12 hours a day, a pretty long time. I have three girls and three boys, and a rotation class.

I am a bit of an oddity. My students are blown away by my “yellow” hair, green eyes, and, well, my hairiness in general. I guess in Korea men don’t have facial hair and for that matter any body hair at all. I’m gonna scar these kids for life when we have our swimming pool day and they see me with my shirt off. Anyways, all the kids keep coming up and wanting to feel my hairy arms, which is funny. One kid actually likes to hug my arm like a teddy bear and not let go for like 5 minutes, which is interesting. A fun fact about Korean kids is that they are very openly affectionate. The boys hold hands, the girls hang all over each other, and when I take them to lunch I hold hands with everyone and lead them along like a mother duck.

Sometimes when I’m working 1 on 1 with them and correcting grammar in their notebooks they will get distracted and start rubbing the “fur” on my face.
They don’t call me Mr. Bischoff or Mr. Stephen, they call me Teacher Teacher. All kids do this. For the most part they are pretty good… for the most part. I have three girls, Ramona, Sunny, and Cindy, and they are all in love with me, have crushes on me, and follow me around like little puppy dogs. I also have three boys, James, who is a tough nut to crack, he’s smart, but definitely has some some social and learning disabilities, Jason, who is about average, and John, who is a brilliant little fellow and the other two will probably be working in his factory one day.

I teach a rotation class, which is a class in which I teach one subject to all the other teachers’ students in my level. Guess what? I’m teaching an art class, and it is awesome. I’m teaching printmaking, which as some of you may know, I kick a little ass at, so my kids are actually learning something. My original lesson plan I was provided for the class sucked ass, so I wrote a new and better one (just high-fived myself). It is pretty great, I love teaching, I almost forgot how much.

So, basically, I teach from 8:40am – 8:50pm most days, it’s exhausting, but I’m sleeping great and my co-teachers are from everywhere. They are mostly Canadian, which I forgive them for, just kidding if any of them are reading this, but there are also some Irish, Aussies, English, and Jamaicans. I must say the Aussies are my favorite. We may speak in different accents, but there is a definite kindred spirit they share with Americans. I have a co-teacher from Queens, New York, and he is about as NY as they come. Whenever I need a fresh breath of America again I go talk to him or Steve and forget all about Korea for awhile. Well, as always, this has gone on and on, so until next time, see you around the world…

Fresh means eating it while it’s fighting back.

So, I made it. Here I am, in Korea, I landed in Seoul after a lonnnnnnnggg flight. I flew over Canada, Alaska, and oddly enough Russia, pretty cool. And at the end of that flight we dipped in over the almost black mountains of South Korea, which are everywhere. *Because the mountains are covered by such dense dark green forest they look black.

South Korea is nuts, there are people on top of people and buildings on top of buildings. Imagine taking everyone in Texas and California and smashing them all into Indiana, that is what South Korea is like. Today in my orientation day for teaching they told me to talk about the open spaces of America and my families house to my students, because it will blow my kids minds since mostly all of them live in high rises and barely understand the concept of farmland.

I took the train from Seoul to Jochiwon, (where I’m teaching), and it was about an hour and a half train ride. On that ride the city almost never stopped, there were skyscrapers 80 stories tall for miles and miles, it’s so crazy. They should just call South Korea the city that never ends. Seoul is said to be the second biggest city in the world, it makes New York seem like a little bitch, which if you’ve ever been to New York you understand how preposterous that seems.

In Seoul I stayed with Steve and his girlfriend, and in the little 5 block area around their apartment there was about 40 bars, no joke, just bars and restaurants everywhere, and apparently the whole city is like that. It’s cheap eats and drinks too, as far as the eye can see. We went out the night before we left for camp and celebrated Steve’s 30th birthday over Soju, beer, octopus, kimchi, chicken ass, and fish head soup, no bullshit. This is one wacky place. But in the spirit of adventure I’m trying everything, and there is no food I won’t give a go, including eating live octopus, which was probably made a little easier by the consumption of liquid courage. Octopus is like the chicken of the sea, that is if that chicken was as chewy as rubber, had suction cups, and fought like a badger to keep you from eating it with tentacles all over your mouth and face.

Well, before I ramble on anymore, and it’s almost time to go sing at a karaoke bar with my co-teachers, so far, so crazy. Asia is wild, it is a world and place all it’s own, I feel like a little worm on a big freaking hook, but I think I like it. I don’t have many pictures just yet, but they will be coming soon. To everybody at home, I love ya, miss ya, and am thinking about you constantly. Until next time…..

This is how we say goodbye.

Today is my last day in the states and I’m gonna miss all of them, but after the awesome series of goodbyes I received from all my family and friends over the last week I’m ready to roll rejuvenated, recharged, and with no regrets.

I arrived in Portland, Oregon for my final farewell and my buddy Fed had a party and a pie in the face waiting for me. So after wiping off the lemon meringue we had some delicious Portland brews, shot off some fireworks, and said goodbye to America in style. It was also a happy coincidence my friends Shane and Maria in Portland were also moving away to Germany to work at the Adidas headquarters, because they had a going away bash the next night and a lot of my old Cincinnati college friends made it in and we showed all the Portland people how Cincinnati takes care of business.

So after a pretty stellar weekend and seeing some pretty great people, tomorrow I get on a plane and head one day into the future where Korea and my buddy Steve are waiting for me. No matter where I go though America will be with me and it’s in my DNA, which reminds me of this little story:

“ General Stilwell noted about the GIs in WWII that they were obedient but idiosyncratic, willing but not too enthusiastic. That attitude could be observed most closely in their marching. It was not that the men walked out of step, or that they could not move about in bodies with ease and dispatch. It was that each man stepped out or swung his arms in his own way, giving European observers an impression of incipient discordance in any body of marching GIs. No amount of close order drill could completely erase that impression, for the GI never made that ultimate, intimate surrender of the individual to the mass... A Czech villager remarked to an American officer as they both watched American soldiers swing by, 'They walk like free men.'"

See ya later America, stay beautiful baby.

*Nate, Pat, and I wearing our clearly superior Nike gear at Shane's Adidas going away party.