Korean Laundry Machines

Anyang again there friends and family,

Korea is still amazing, I'm falling more and more in love with it! I've started to become more familiar with the way things operate around here and I've been exposed to a few more things... Number one is my "apartment." i moved into it last Friday, which took all of an hour to do. Right now it is a glorious place, with my pink, flowerty floral sleeping mat, huge pink floral fluffy blanket, a huge pink floral quilt and a huge pink floral pillow. Oh, and there's a wardrobe, with no hangers. ummmm....there's also a pile of books in one corner and my luggage/backpack in another corner. It is lovely, and will be furnished some time with rice cooker and everything!!

My bathroom is my favorite part. it is about four by four feet and the shower and sink are one unit. As we have been fondly saying here, we can shower, shit and shave all at the same time!! So, I just got back from trying to do my first load of laundry (I have a samsung washing machine on the "porch" too, one of my friends has his in his bathroom, so he can shower, shit, shave and do laundry at the same time!). The whole machine is in Korean and my little conversation book apparently doesn't think that we need to do laundry while abroad, so all I could translate on the damn thing is the word 'water' (mul-믈 ), I think it said water temperature?? I dunno. So I pressed some buttons and different times kept popping up, ranging from 15 minutes to an hour and a half. I think it's supposed to be a washer/dryer combo thingy cause other english teachers have told me that there's are combo machines, so I chose one of the hourish times, hoping that it would dry my clothes too.

Well, at first it made some funky noises, and i figured out that i have to turn the water taps on to allow water to enter the thing. It started to do a super loud swishing thing for about five minutes (it sounds kind of like waves hitting a breakwater wall over and over) and then it would drain, spin around and do it all over again. it did this for more than an hour, and then it played a little happy song, which was long, like a minute and half). and my clothes were clean. and wet. so i haphazardly placed my clothes around my apartment and they are at this minute hopefully drying, although it is incredibly humid here today...i'll see how the situation is when I get home and i will write all of the words down for my co-teacher to translate for me tomorrow.

The end of last week was awesome. I have two classes that I teach everyday, one to the teachers and one to a group of students. I taught the teachers weather conversation words, so they talk to me about weather in the office now. Their favorite words are galoshes and muggy. Yes, the weather is hot, muggy and sunny out today! but we don't need to wear galoshes! On Friday with the student class, i had the students sing The Yellow Submarine after filling in a lyric sheet with a lot of the words missing. They had so much fun! I asked them what other songs they would like to do and one of them requested Surfin' u.s.a., which made me think of beaner and his old obsession with the beach boys.

I've met some good people in Yeoju from all over the world. there are a lot of folks from South Africa, some Canadians and a Brit. we had a blast this weekend singing karaoke, and hanging out in my new apartment (with no chairs or couches it was easy to fit nine people in there sitting on the floor!) we taught the brit and south africans irish poker, i think they liked it very much. One of the new english teachers is a 6 foot 8 football player who stands out like a sore thumb everywhere we go, they needed to buy him two beds to sleep on! I have a feeling the korean ladies are gonna be all over him (hint hint piddy, you should come to korea).

We did our actual temple stay at the buddhist temple on saturday, which was about as hilarious as our intro to temple stays that we had last week. Yoga was the best, it consisted of a super flexible lady doing the poses in the front of the room (but nobody could see her except the first couple of rows) and one of the other english teachers reading the translations of the poses over a microphone. Korean to English translations here are a freaking hoot, so she read things like "lie on your face" "relaxing position. Breathing while butt in air" and "Putting hand tops behind butt leaning forward." I participated for a while and then sat back and enjoyed watching the students flail their arms around and put their faces on the floor.

We also had to teach the children about different "treasures" around the temple grounds. I had the Daeggangikbiki, which was a plaque composed by dude #1, written by dude#2, which said that dude #3 constructed some hall over there with help of dude #4, in memory of dude #5 and dude#6's dead parents. It was built during the reign of dude #7. it was great fun telling the children who could not understand me at all about it and then asking them questions. After a while the questions turned into "what is that color?" (pointing to the painted structure around the plaque) "what is this material?" "how many stairs are there?" "how is the weather today?" I forgot to mention that the program for these kids is called "Yeoju English Stars" and it is a city funded program for low income students in the yeoju area, so it is pretty awesome to see the kids getting to participate in something they normally wouldn't be able to, and they are such good sports! We had to particpate in the traditional Buddhist bowing ceremony which consists of 108 bows. each bow starts standing with hands together in a praying position, then you drop to your knees, lay prostrate on the ground and get back up with hands together. there is a buddhist with a very soothing voice saying something and banging a little drum thing. it is pretty intense, especially with the heat outside, but the kids participated with little complaint, and just sat down quietly if they were too hot or tired. i for one thought it was pretty awesome, at first it was a little tiring, but the words of the monk (whatever he was saying) and the intense heat (and resulting sweat) were oddly meditative and I got into a cult like mindset. I think I'm supposed to be a Korean buddhist.

Ohhh my god, i forgot about the head monk guy, he was the cutest person ever, with a perfect, stereotypical smiling monk smile--one that actually curls upwards and stretches from ear to ear with sparkling eyes. I hope i can find a picture of him!!

well, i should go, here are some funny english translations from signs that i have seen around:
-Sound of Vitality, Provides Ultimate Refreshment with Fizzy & Crisp Taste (slogan on the popular beer:Cass)
-Comfort of Funny American Diner (on a pizza place)
-Thank You & Tall Skin (sign in a clothing store)
-and the gist of a paragraph i read at a restaurant today: kimchi of us store from local presentation to us store......it is good for mind, health for vitamin, and provide and.

i love it here and i love all of you!! hope all is well in the good ol' states (or wherever you happen to be) peace out and rock on! Alex

p.s. what is bryant's e-mail address??

p.p.s. i bought some einstein's cream cheese, it was moldy and i was sad.