6 Months Down, 6 To Go

Well these may have been the fastest 6 months of my life. I guess it's hard to be a judge of that when you include being a baby and toddler, so I'll say it's been the fastest 6 months post age 3. It's seems like just yesterday that I missed a flight scheduled to take me across a dateline, an ocean, and plop me in a land that can alter minds and senses like a certain fungus has been known to do. Fortunently, I caught a flight the next day, landed in Incheon aiport via Tokyo, and stepped into a reality that to this day I find very difficult to understand, grasp, and occasionally, live. Korea is a great country. The people may stare at you constantly and I've unnessarily wiped my nose many times just to be safe, the food may be monatonous, the roads, slopes and supermarkets lawless. They don't watch football, they teach their kids to hate the Japanese, they're technically at war and they don't wear deodorant. Yet there's a kindness to the country. Sure it smells, there's trash outside all the time, and on Saturday and Sunday the sidewalks are littered with vomit still potent from the previous night's/early morning's Soju fest. But you know what? These people are warm. If they ask you to hang out, they'll pay for your activities all night and constantly make sure you're enjoying yourself. If you look cold they'll make you coffee. If you're good to their kids they'll surprise you with a cake on your birthday. Shit, other than the U.S., I'd like to know another country that has both a professional basketball and baseball league. Yeah, they're about as nationalistic as they come(ie the Canadians) but who wouldn't be if they had been invaded by various neighbors constantly throughout their history. Sure they're whole confucist society thing is pretty geeked but it instills manners, and I know a few of you out there could use an installment. They can't make a sandwich worth a shit, but they make faboulous soups. It's the most wired country on Earth, post-Katrina it donated an exurbinate amount of money to the Gulf Coast, it wants to reconcile with the North(to the dismay of the US), it has some of the best doctors, scientists and gadget-inventors in the world. Grandmothers can buy cheap prescription drugs, eyeglasses and cigarettes. There's an eccletic variety of fruits and vegetables, pork is cheap, fish is a plenty(unfortunently mackeral is a staple in many dishes, so that goes to show something about there palets).
I've made some great Korean friends. I don't even like inserting the Korean in there. They're just great friends. They weather's horrible in the summer and bad in the winter but the scenery is beautiful and fall was nice, to my dismay it only lasted a month. Anyway I can't be a spoiled brat when it comes to weather. Not everyone is born and raised in SB...quit you're sneeveling girly man. Yeosu is mixed with country side and high rise apartments. Leather faced old men hasten cows pulling straw filled wooden carts with the cracking of a whip, as cars fly by playing the lastest Kanye West single.
They value family. They push their kids to the limits, not because they're narratic, but because the want them to have a better life than themselves. Although I disagree with their methodology(study, study, eat rice, study) who am I to say how one can raise their children. Grandparents are treated as living dieties, thosed passed are revered and buried beneath intricate headstones large enough to be mistaken as replicas of Stonehenge, Ok that was an exaggeration, but they're big.
The girls are beautiful. My students are adorable and smart. The cost of living is low. I'm reading Korean and able to get by speaking. I'M LIVING IN FREAKIN' ASIA! It took some adjusting and I'm still adapting but I have zero regrets coming out here. So far it's been a faboulous experience. I'm completely, 100% certain that I made a great decicion. Hold on...just had to give myself a pat on the back:)
Peace and Love To All,
Tyler James
ps. Happy Lunar New Year.