A week or so ago Ji and I began Sorting our things. Sell, Pack, Ship, or trash/ curb. Officially the curb is illegal but it is where I found a perfectly good, working Sewing machine, and several pieces of our furniture. Dont tell, but we put a rice cooker out there yesterday. it was gone within an hour. I put an old scrapped laptop out there too; also in an hour or two. Elderly and poor people here make a living off of collecting those types of things. We also took a huge suitcase worth of clothes to some second hand shop associated with a charity organization. The women couldn’t figure out how to even open my suitcase; maybe It has an extra Hidden Security Feature i never thought about.
On the way home we picked up two boxes from the post office and stuffed them to the gills. Mine was up to 18 kilos (40lbs). Ji’s was slightly less. All stuff that we want to keep but wont need until we get to the USA. I borrowed a little “ajjuma cart” (mini hand truck) and piled the boxes on. Our nearest post office is a few blocks away. In the process of sweating my *** off, dragging them through the streets, dodging droves of people heading home from work i manages to only run one persons foot over. We opted for the slow boat shipping option nearly 40 kilos worth of our stuff should get to the USA by the time we get there; There estimate was 2-3 months. All in all we shelled out around 80,000 Won or ~$70.
With the important things out of the way I got to business photographing all of the things we want to sell. This included a side task of washing my bike to make it a little more presentable. Photographing all of these things was a great excuse to practice using my new light stand, umbrella and flash setup.
My bike was the first to go. I think I under-priced it but having it gone is worth more than fighting over 10 or 15 dollars. Most things have just been listed so I will be waiting for messages and hopefully it is all gone in a few days. A few items have to wait, mainly our clothes hanging racks, washing machine and fridge.
I have finished my summer camps, which were actually pretty fun this go round. all of my 5th graders were higher level and seemed to actually want to be there. and the third and fourth grade group were really funny and well behaved. Now I am on vacation. Instead of taking two straight weeks of vacation i set it up where I have work only on Wednesday and Thursday for the next three weeks; LONG WEEKENDS! I will still have to go back for the first two days of the semester but i don’t think I will have any English classes. Total there are only 18 days left on my contract. and about 45 days left until we leave.
I finally found out who will be taking my place as the new native English teacher; he is a Canadian guy who has already been living in Korea for about 5 years. When I contacted him he was really shocked to learn that he was changing schools. he never requested a transfer and his school hadn’t either. After calling around to try to rectify the situation it sounds like he has just conceded to the facts.
Other than that we have been just trying to enjoy the rest of our time here. It’s hard to do though, our apartment has no A/C and its been between 30c and 35c (low to mid 90s). Our apartment is the top floor and there is seemingly no insulation making our apartment a literal oven, that radiates heat well into the night, as I mentioned in the last post. Because of this we haven’t cooked at home much. The only relief we have found is walking down to Yoido park, where they have a big water feature, setting up the tent and putting our feet in the icy water. Even the attempts to find refuge in restaurants and cafes seems futile. I’m not sure if they are just trying to conserve energy or if the A/C cant keep up. I’m at a cafe now literally sweating as I write this; at least its better than our apartment.
Gil 2 Go 