Greetings from Korea,

Sorry it’s been a while since I sent out a SeoulMail. 

I’m really starting to think that January and February

are to a calendar year what Monday is to a week.  But

now it feels like Tuesday evening and I’m cruising

into Wednesday. Good times are ahead.

I guess I should start with the shocking news for some

of you that this will be my last SeoulMail.  I’m going

back to California in 2 weeks (March 19) to start a

new job teaching (full time with benefits!) at the

Intensive English Program at UC Riverside, 1 hour east

of Los Angeles. 

I feel good about my decision to come to Korea. 

Korea and Samsung are wonderful places; I’m glad I’ve gotten 

to see here everything I have and meet all of the wonderful students

and colleagues I’ve met.  I have grown a lot in this soul-searching

process, and grown closer to my friends and family

even through the geographical distance.  But I believe

that going home now, although it might seem early or

premature to some, is the right thing to do.

Okay, back to some other SeoulMail business:

HOLIDAYS

March is a big time for holidays. In Moldova, the

beginning of March is Martishors, a holiday when

people wear pins with red and white decorations to

celebrate the coming of spring. Here in Korea I wore

my Martishors pins the first few days and explained

the tradition to my students.  I also explained to my

students the difference between Moldova and the

Maldives (a series of islands that were hit by the

Tsunami in December).

In Korea, March 1 is a holiday to remember the start

of an independence movement against Japan.  However,

the students and teachers at the Hoam Center (the

Samsung center where I work) did not have the day off.

 We had to give up that day in order to get a

“sandwich day” off in February.  What is a sandwich

day, you ask? It’s a day between a holiday and a

weekend day.  

Lunar New Year (aka Chinese New Year in the States)

was on a Tuesday-Wednesday-Thursday this year.  It

seemed ridiculous to me that we should have to work on

Monday, have three days off, work on Friday, and then

have the weekend again.  You can’t do anything with

the students after a weekend; it takes them a whole

day to get back into the English-speaking routine. 

The schedule seemed even more ridiculous considering

that some students live 3-4 hours away from the

center.  I said as much at a department meeting in

November, and my cries were heard. We got the Friday

after Lunar New Year off, giving us a 6-day weekend. I

took advantage of it, of course: I spent one day at

home doing nothing, one day eating moussaka and

drinking South African wine with two colleagues, and 4

days in Taiwan. The pics of Taiwan are online:

photos.yahoo.com/reisefrau in the “Taipei” folder.

March 8, as you may remember, is International Women’s

Day in Ukraine, Moldova, and many other countries of

the former Soviet Union.  I still wish every woman

happiness and peace on this day, and hope every man

does something to honor the women in his life on this

day.  

IWD is not a holiday in Korea.  There is, however,

“White Day” on March 14. See, on February 14 women

give the gifts to men.  Men give gifts to women on

March 14.  For men and women who don’t get or give

gifts in February or March, they get to eat black

noodles together on April 14—“Black Day”. I don’t know

why this is so, but some cynical Westerners here

theorize that it’s a way for stores to make holiday

money three times.

I guess the next holiday after White Day will be an

American one—St. Patrick’s Day.  That evening is the

last night my students will spend at the Hoam Center.

The teachers and students will have a “one-beer” party

that evening in the cafeteria.  I’m also hoping to

work up the intestinal fortitude to eat green tea

scones that day—it just seems appropriate some how.

Okay, I don’t want this email to go on forever, so

I’ll just include here a link to the message I should

have sent out last month about banking in Korea:  

http://www.geocities.com/reisefrau/banking.html

Also, if you are interested, I have pics online from a

field trip with my students to the Korean Traditional

Food Institute:

photos.yahoo.com/bridgetelf folder and click on the

“Food Institute” album.

There are pictures of me and my students and I making

“ddok”, a traditional Korean rice cake (not the

crackery stuff you get in the States, but a kind of

chewy rice concoction).

That’s all for now.  I’ll send a short message again

when I’m on the other side of “the pond” with my

address and phone numbers etc. My email address will

not change—Yahoo is too convenient to give up!

Take care.

Bridget