birthday! and notes on a dead camera

So this past weekend was my birthday! On Saturday I lazed around the apartment all morning, then went out with my host family. We took a walk to the tomb of General Kim Yu-Shin, who unified the Korean peninsula under the Silla dynasty. Then we drove out to do some sight seeing and play a little badminton a few minutes outside of town, before going back downtown to the stationary store so they could buy me some presents. Then we went to dinner, which was....mmmm....not great. Usually I'm fine with seafood but for some reason, I was not in the mood. Also it was an outdoors restaurant and very cold, so I kind of sat there shivering and ate about 4 clams (which were cooked in their shells on a grill on the table...pretty cool). My family was SO WORRIED about how little I ate. They insisted that we either go out for another dinner or go home and eat more. I said I had to practice violin, so we went home and they immediately set about making ramen and snacks to make sure I was properly nourished. It was cute. 

Then the next day I woke up to a feast. I knew what to expect since Jeonghee (my host brother)'s birthday was about a week ago, but I was still pleasantly surprised to find vast amounts of bulgogi, chapchae, myeokgook and of course, birthday cake on the table on Sunday morning. It was delicious! By the way, in case you don't know, bulgogi is Korean marinated beef, chapchae is a dish made with clear noodles (long noodles=long life) and myeokgook is a seaweed soup that is traditionally eaten on one's birthday. All in all, a delicious birthday breakfast.

There was a birthday hat and crackers in the cake box (by crackers I mean those loud popper things full of streamers, not the things you eat) and some of the streamers from the first cracker ended up in my myeokgook....I had fun picking those out.

Here is me and my host siblings. I still haven't gotten over how cute they are. Really.

Anyway, I'm currently sitting in my classroom, supervising studying second graders. Poor girls- they have their exams next week. I felt really bad in my last class because they were so hungry and just wanted to snack, but I was told that students couldn't have snacks in my classroom...so I sort of turned a blind eye to their (literal) under-the-table snacking. These kids are worked so hard that I don't feel too bad allowing them to break rules like that once in a while, especially out of classtime. If it was a real class, no way.

Now for the update in the saga of my search for a replacement camera battery!

This will be a new story to you but for me it's been a continuing part of my life in the teachers' room for the past few weeks. I mentioned to one of the teachers that my camera's rechargeable battery appeared to be out of juice and she immediately seized it and said she would look for a way to get me a new one. I thought it would be an easy and inexpensive process. But no, I found out a week later that the two teachers who were helping me had in fact enlisted some smuggler to get the battery from Japan. I was a little skeptical, but there is an important part of Korean culture that must be understood here: losing face. Having (however unwillingly) asked the teachers to help me, I could not suddenly say I did not want to accept the help that they were offering without their losing face with me. So I went along for a 3 week (or so) ride, back and forth between "Oh, the battery is in Busan...but it is the wrong number" to "Oh, the smuggler is back in Japan, but he says he will find the battery, no problem!" to today's message: "The smuggler is in Gyeongju, he has the battery, but it will cost you 43,000 won."

My reaction: what?! What have I gotten myself into? I could have bought that battery for $10 from Overstock.com. I explained this to the teacher, who speaks English very well and seems to understand my situation, and she said she would talk to the smuggler and see what she could do. We laughed about it for a bit too, the whole thing's become a little absurd...

In the end, I don't have to buy the thing, the smuggler's taking it back to Japan, no problem, but I am still left, a month later, without a working camera (it works, but for a short time only).

Sigh.

So much of the time here in Korea, I feel like I'm just along for the ride. I can't do much by myself, no matter how much I try. Things here get done in a very different way than they do at home, so even if I knew the language, navigating the system would be difficult. Very often, I find myself going "just to lunch" with someone, only to find that in fact, my entire day's been planned out for me already. It's a change from home. I just find myself having to be flexible....my schedule usually gets sacrificed and I have to learn not to worry about it.

Anyway, that's all for now. Things are good, overall! Midterm break is next week and I plan to go to Seoul...but I don't know the details yet.