Korea!

So, Dan and I have been in Seoul since last Friday, mainly to get our visas changed, but also to see the city and visit some friends. Seoul is an enormous sprawling city of 14 million people, almost a quarter of the Korean population, and it's incredibly Westernized and huge. It also makes Qingdao look like a one-horse town. When Dan and I first arrived, we were like peasants, gawking at the huge sky-scrapers and shops and malls etc. Also, it's amazing how wealthy and clean (and expensive) Seoul seems after China, and also how conformist all the people. Besides shopping and coffee shops, we've also been trying to see traditional Korean culture, including some Korean palaces, the really great National Museum, a hike in a park, some shamanist shrines and temple, and a traditional village. Like most places, the little details are the truly interesting part. It's been a long day, so we'll write about some of those details later.

so our updates have been a little scarce, in part because we are so busy, between threatening to sue our school, arranging a trip to Korea to change our visa, substitute teaching, studying, etc. (Luckily we don't as of now have to actually sue our school, but there is still the remote possibility). Recently, I have been subbing for a friend of mine at a kindergarten. In China, kindergarten includes preschool and day care, the youngest kids at the school couldn't be more than 1 or 2, and the oldest are about 6 or 7. I teach four classes, none lasting longer than 20 minutes. My "older" kids are maybe 4, and the younger ones are 2 or 3. When I teach them, I am not allowed to speak any Chinese, and it's amazing how good their English is, considering how young they are. Of course, they still have a long way to go. Every day I am supposed to ask them what day is it, and everyday it seems, is Monday. Likeways, the weather is always "sunny day." However, the children are incredibly cute. In one class, where the children are younger and a bit less uh, mature than the others, there is a little girl who can't weigh more than about 18 pounds, but she has as much energy as all the other children combined (which is saying something.) One day she pulled my shirt up practically over my head and yelled "white tummy!" in Chinese. In that class, when I get up to leave, about 5 children run up and cling to my legs, saying "teacher, don't leave!" in Chinese it's a nice ego boost, however it's tempered by the fact that they can't seem to tell me apart from their regular teacher. Every time I walk into the class they shout "Emma lao shi!" and it takes a lot of convincement to get them to think otherwise. I guess to them, all blonde foreign women look the same.
Besides teaching at the kindergarten, I also am studying two hours a day. My teacher is really interesting and I really like her a lot. We spend most of our time discussing current events, our lives, and differences between Chinese and American culture. For example, she was shocked by the fact that Americans would put their parents in nursing homes. Besides being negligent and disrespectful, she also pointed out that American adults have no one at home to clean house, raise their children, or cook meals everyday. I guess in China, living with one's parents means having a built in housekeeper, albeit one whoe is somewhat bossy and demanding. She also

our house

I don't have much time to write, but I thought I'd just do a quick update. We have almost fully moved in, after several taxi trips with loads of stuff. Our new roommates were shocked by the amount of stuff we had, and the size of our suitcases. Luckily, they let us put one behind the couch in the living room, because otherwise space would be a little tight in our room. Our room is a decent size, though most of it is taken up by an enormous bed. We had to turn our comforter sideways to fit across the width of the bed. Besides the bed, we also have a tv and tv table, a nightstand, a small table and stool, a walk-in closet (a major plus for all of our stuff) and a private bathroom. Our roommates are a 40 something year old woman, who I call "auntie," and a 32 year old man, or "elder brother," with a somewhat ambiguous relationship to each other (lovers? friends? business partners?). They are actually quite friendly, I had dinner with one evening when I was there unpacking my things, and then my elder brother drove me back home in his Ford, or "fo te" They are both in business, and it turns out my auntie is a stock broker, or something like that. They spend much of their time at home watching news, especially financial news, and sometimes I watch it with them and they explain the most interesting things to me. Our apartment is, as I said very nice, and it's on the 17th floor, so there's a really amazing view from the balcony. It's also nice to walk out the door and be near everything, instead of having to walk for 15 minutes to get to a bus stop. Other than that, life is continuing as usual. We may have to go to Hong Kong after we quit to change our visas, but we figure there are worse things than that, because we can take advantage of the time to visit southern china and maybe go to Macau.

random stuff

I noticed something about personal space the other day. In the bank, like all banks, they have a yellow line painted on the floor with a sign, "please stand behind the yellow line." However, this yellow line is less that two feet from the window, and basically if I were to stand on the yellow line, I would be almost touching the person in front of me who is doing transactions at the counter. To stand this close to anyone in any line would make me feel uncomfortably close, especially at a bank.

women bu shi nuli, er shi laoshi

So, our lives are getting very exciting, though not exactly in the ways we wanted. Basically our school is starting to turn into "Mutiny on the Bounty," with our boss as the slave-driving captain (hmm...employees unhappy? Maybe I'll just not pay them and threaten to sue them and all their relatives to the nth degree. That'll show them.) However, it is turning into be a good lesson on the differences between America and China when it comes to workers rights, and who knows? Maybe we'll be the first school to form a union in China, or start an investigation that leads to a citywide crackdown in corruption in foreign language schools. (Don't worry mother, I'm not going to do anything too crazy).
Other news, we found a new apartment, which is very centrally located, and really really nice (maybe one of the nicest apartments I've seen). We are renting a room from a hard-driving Chinese business woman. On the surface she seems a bit lihai (formidable), but she is starting to get friendlier, so I am not quite as scared of her as I used to be. The first time we met she didn't crack a smile once, but I think part of that was putting up a front. We will be moving today or tomorrow, so it will be a big change, from living in a 3 bedroom apartment by ourselves, kind of on the outskirts of town (well, not really the outskirts, but on the side of this mountain kind of in the east, so it feels like the outskirts). Between our school and moving and our visa, life has been busy.