From Teacher to Student

It's funny to think about now, but less than a month ago I was substituting as an English teacher in Changwon city.
Now I'm a student again and I find it an interesting task to reinvent oneself. Not so long ago, I was teaching kids how to do exercises and encouraging them to do their homework, and now I'm following Hoon Cheong around everywhere in the lab and learning how stuff works.

Here's my desk and lab space. As my professor said, lab benches all around the world look pretty much the same. I would normally decorate my work space with photos and comic strips to make it a bit more jolly. But I don't want to do that too early this time, lest others conjure their first impression of me as a photo-staring, comic-strip reading procrastinator of sorts.

Maybe next week.

In this photo is galbijim, stewed pork and beef in a sweet marinade. The lunches continue to be decent and are fast becoming the highlight of the day.
However, it seems that I've completed one cycle of menu rotation already. On my first day, we had beef-rib soup for lunch, and then we just had it again yesterday. They tell me that it's all downhill from here.

Lunch itself is an interesting experience. You get to pick one of two menu items, which are shown in the cabinet above. Every lunch and dinner there are two different choices. This makes things easier, because I usually find that in restaurants I'll spend a long time trying to figure out what I want. Then after I order, I regret what I ordered and want to change to something new. With only 2 menu items to choose from, it's a very straighforward matter of deciding which one is better than the other.

Then you buy a meal token, line up with a tray and the ajummas will serve you the meal. I had always seen this kind of thing on TV, but I'd never eaten in this way until now. In Australian universities, cafeterias are more like a shop or a restaurant.
And it always used to take me a long time to decide what I wanted to eat.

Then you sit down with your chums and gobble away. Korean students eat quite fast and I've been trying to get up to speed. They'll finish eating in around 10-15 minutes, which means they either chew faster, or chew less and swallow quickly.

I believe it is the latter.

Seating is a rule-bound affair. You will always sit with your inner-circle and never by yourself, especially if you belong to a lab. Lone eaters are banished to the outskirts of group tables, occasionally looking somewhat miserable. Scanning the room with a trained eye, you can quickly see the various demographic divisions.

"Hey look over there, it's the virus lab!"

There are many cafeterias in the university, but we tend to go to the closest one. Occasionally I'll feel adventurous and suggest going to a different one, only to find it's pretty much the same food, but further away from where we need to be when we've finished.

There's an area of land that's owned by the science faculty out in Suwon. Suwon is a satelite city to the south of Seoul and is pretty similar to suburban Seoul, but with more open air. Hoon and I went down on Tuesday to have a look at our rice plants.

The greenhouses are divided up into sections for each field of study. Sharing our space with us is the tomato department, evidently.

Our plants are in a sealed plastic section with timed lights and temperature control. These plants are transgenic, meaning that they've had their DNA artificially altered for specific reasons. There's still a reasonably strong level of stigma against genetically modified crops around the world. My personal view is that caution is warranted, but so is scientific inquiry.

When you understand the science in more detail, you may be likely to view GMOs more as a necessary risk than reckless experimentation. 3% of the world's arable land is disappearing each year, but our population continues to skyrocket.

This soil may look fairly normal, but it was actually frozen rock solid. We went out to collect some in pots, only to find our shovels bouncing off it. Who knew soil could freeze?

Certainly not this mild-mannered Australian boy.

On the way back to the lab, Hoon suggested an afternoon snack. Street vendors will set up portable tents like this on the streets of Korea, usually selling o-deng (fish cake) soup , deep fried battered vegetables and ddeokbokki (spicy rice dough). My favourite is still the takgotchi (marinated chicken skewers). I don't know how they get the meat to be so tender.

A few nights ago we had Chinese food in the lab. A lot of Korean culture is focused on the sharing and enjoyment of food and beverage.
Right after I took this photo, Hong-sup said "Hey, Lee just took a photo of us!"

Did not.

This is the shuttle bus that takes me to school every morning. These buses are run by the university and are completely free. It only takes me about 2 minutes to get to the bus stop from my room. Because there are so many students traveling each day, these buses will arrive literally every single minute during rush hour, and continuously ferry students from the subway station. Luckily, I live very close by, so it doesn't cost me a penny to get to uni in the morning.

I like being a part of the university system again. One of the major advantages are all the benefits of belonging to a larger system. In the student centre building, you can get haircuts from this place for only KRW 4,200 (about AU$4).
I just had a haircut there yesterday and it was fairly good. But I have noticed that they do have a more extreme definition of 'just a little bit shorter, please.'

Oh well, at least it means I won't have to go back there anytime soon.

This rather insectoid-looking crane is pumping cement for the construction of the building next door to us, which is going to be another science department. I assume that pumping cement to such heights is not as straightforward as it seems.

It snowed quite a bit last week, which was a notable occasion for me, seeing as I've only seen it fall out of the sky about three times in my life. I like how you can leave a trail of footprints if it's only just fallen. Those zig-zag footprints are mine and they go for about a kilometre. I also wanted to make a snowman, but my hands were too cold and no one in the lab seemed interested.

For those Australian readers out there who haven't experienced a lot of snow, I must say that it is quite fun. The snow absorbs sound, making the traffic seem quieter and it falls from the sky like giant flakes of cold dandruff.

I also like how it makes everything look like christmas decorations. In Australia, we'd always have a lot of northern hemispheric influence on our christmas celebrations, resulting in snow globes and thick Santa suits right in the middle of summer. Such things can be confusing for young children. I propose the creation of a Hemispherically-Correct Santa (HCS) for Australians and other southern hemispheric provinces. He (or she) would be dressed in board shorts, a tank top and thongs.

We don't call thongs 'flip-flops' in Australia. If you're curious as to why, perhaps it's for the same reason that we don't call our doorbells ding-dongs, or our dogs woof-woofs.

Haha.

These kinds of trucks are common in Korea. Vendors will just park on the side of the road and sell for a while before moving on. I walked past this one every night on the way home last week and it seemed pretty tempting. It's only $6 per chicken, but I was trying to save money.

But I thought I'd treat myself on Saturday night, seeing as I worked in the lab all day and didn't go out. Once in a while is fine, right?
As I was opening it, I remembered some old parent-stories from 'when they were young'. My friend's mother told me that she used to eat half a packet of instant noodles for lunch at university, to save money. My father's weekly treat in university was one milkshake every Friday night.

I've since wondered if they were caramel, vanilla or chocolate? I myself like lime flavoured milkshakes.

But anyway, the chicken was good. I ate it while I watched Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind on my laptop. It's a strange movie at first, but pans out nicely in the second half.

Here are the communal laundry facilities in our building. It only costs you a fifty cent coin to wash your clothes, but it's too cold to wait around down there. I drop my clothes in, get the machine going and scurry back upstairs to the warmth of my heated floor.

In Korea, the number 4 is pronounced the same way as the word 'death'. So some people feel that it's unlucky to live on the fourth floor. Luckily some cunning architects worked out a way to build highrise apartments without a fourth floor, so no one needs to worry. I assume that if you did somehow manage to open the door on the fourth floor, all you would see is an endless void of non-existence.

That's all for me this week!

See you soon.