New Blog

I have a new blog up and running on a new domain, www.justinloutsch.com Please update your bookmarks and RSS feeds as I will be taking this one down shortly. Thanks!

Automating My Life

Over the last 5 or 6 years I’ve been reading Ramit Sethi’s blog I Will Teach You to Be Rich, and from here I’ve gained a lot of useful information. I bought his book of the same title in June and am halfway through it.

I am excited now to finally have a job and be earning money. I won’t be getting a full paycheck in November since I’ve only worked for half a month, but my first full check comes just a month after that on my birthday, December 10th.

I plan on transferring over about $1000 a month from my Korean bank to my bank account back home, at which point I will have automatic transfers set up to move the money around with no effort on my part once the money has been transferred. After this I will set up several sub-savings accounts for perhaps such things as a car, a new computer, maybe a trip home, and also a an IRA retirement account. I am very excited to finally have the chance to save my money after such a long time of having no income at all.

Tonight I rediscovered Alice, an automation site that allows you to list the groceries you need, and how often you need to buy them, and will then deliver them to you (free of charge) as often as you like. This not only saves you from making multiple trips to the grocery store, but also gets you the lowest prices possible for your items. I would love to try out this service when I back to the US, as it would make life without a car so much easier if I choose not to have one (and I very well may). I only have to make sure that I live in an apartment building with an office where my packages can go if I’m not around they are delivered.

If any of my readers in the US try out the service, please let me know what you think.

A slow first month but a busy 2nd week

My first month began with a week filled with review, followed by 2 days of testing in which no material was taught. The material that I didn’t not teach last week will have to be crammed into 2 days this week instead of 3 (MWF normally) because Friday we are having an all day Halloween party.

Thankfully, tomorrow I have 2 hours to prepare and finaggle my schedule to see just how I can make all this material fit into 2 days when normally there are 3 or 4 days to cover it. I expect it won’t be as difficult as I think it may be now. I will have the other teachers there as well to help me figure out how to handle all this stuff. I’m so glad to have them around.

Last weekend I brought home the monthly calendar, which is divided into weeks, and entered each class period into google calendar. There are 6 total periods per day, so I set up a recurring event for each period to last until next year, and then I will edit them as needed with each new calendar I receive. In hindsight…I should have done it by semester. Oh well, I will cross that bridge when I come to it. Having the material that I need to cover each day clearly planned out in front of me before I get to school not only frees up time for other things before class, but means I will know exactly what I have to do just by logging into google calendar.

It amazes the other teachers when they see this stuff. It works better for me than writing down what to do every day in the book, and we all have our own systems.

A flood of posts

I’ve been using a desktop blog editor which apparently didn’t successfully submit my blog entries, and never told me that it did so. That’s why there are so many tonight.

An extension of college

I was told by one of my coworkers while at the bar last night that there is a huge community of English teachers in Seoul, and that it mostly revolves around the bar scene. She said that teaching English in Seoul is, for most people, an extension of college.

That’s not really quite what I’m looking for though. I’m happy to have left college and enjoy having a job now and making money. I enjoyed the bar scene over the summer, but that was mostly because I was spending time with my friends before I had to leave them all behind. Most nights when I come home now I look forward to curling up with a good book or watching a tv show, maybe having some dinner, and getting to bed between 11 and midnight. Last night I was awake until 6 am, definitely not my norm. I always end up feeling out of place when I visit the bar scene, and much prefer to spend time with friends drinking in an apartment instead of in a loud expensive bar.

I mentioned to a coworker that I would like to say that I’m “in the real world” now but it doesn’t really feel like that. She agreed, saying it feels like we are in a bubble here because we’re working but don’t really have as many responsibilities as we would have in the US. For example, we don’t have to pay rent, don’t have cars, and are living in a completely foreign world every day. I find it all terribly fascinating but not conducive to the feeling of having a career, though I don’t really consider that to be of much importance at this point in my life.

Teaching English in Seoul

I started my first day of teaching last Friday (October the 16th) and it was very overwhelming. The kids are constantly yelling out “teacher! teacher!” whenever they have a question. I got over this quickly and ignore most of them and tell them to ask one at a time. The last teacher instituted a dollar system of rewards, and I think I may bring it back and make them pay me every time they don’t raise their hand, and I pay them one when they do. I most likely won’t though, as it’s just one more thing to keep track of.

Yesterday I completed my first full week, and I have to say I enjoyed it immensely. The kids are a lot of fun and (mostly) eager, but they’re not always into the class material. I feel bad for my last class of the day, a group of 3rd grade students at the level of first graders, because by the time they start class at 6 pm they are already dead tired and falling asleep. They are kept up so late doing homework not only for my class, but also for public school. Its unimaginable to me that at this age they could already be worked so hard by school.

My first month seems like it will be pretty easy so far though. The first week I had 4 days of teaching and 2 days of testing and speech contests, so instead of introducing new material I led review each class period. The testing days were very easy and the speeches were hilarious. One girl talked about maintaining the health of your teeth, but it sounded like she was saying tits. We all got a kick out of a sentence like “You don’t want your tits to decay.”

I’m the only guy in the school of 6 teachers, the director, and the 2 secretaries. The girls were all excited that I’m a computer geek and can help them with their problems, and that I can lift heavy things. One teacher jokingly mentioned to me that I must be in heaven having a computer in every classroom and being surrounded by women. I replied “Ya I have my pick of the school!” I enjoy working with these folks a lot, they’re all fun and have been a great help to me so far.

Living in South Korea

So I’ve been in Seoul for a full 2 weeks now.

It has been very fascinating so far! Going to the grocery store was a neat experience. There were so many people standing around every aisle giving out free samples and yelling loudly to get your attention. I couldn’t hep but smile at it all.

I got lost on the way home because I got on the wrong train, but I turned myself around and made it back just fine.

Last night I went out with the other teachers to Hongdae, the area surrounding Hongik University. We left around 10 pm and arrived at the restaurant The Yeti (an Indian/Nepali/Tibetan fusion restaurant) around 10:30 for dinner. We left around midnight and headed to a bardown the road. After that the group broke up, and I went to another and had met some more friends of my friends until I lost my group and retraced my steps with no luck. I finally ended up getting a cab to go home but he didn’t want to go where I needed so I got out and hailed another and got home in about half an hour I guess.

The annoying thing about Seoul is that on teh weekends the subways shut down at midnight, which makes it very difficult to stay out late, at least for cheap people like me who hate paying for cabs. Luckily I was able to use my transit card stored value to pay for the cab ride and cover the balance with cash, as I didn’t have enough of either but just between the 2.

Overall I guess I’m still trying to work out the kinks but I really like it here. I have my own place again which is fantastic, and I can walk all over and take public transit anywhere I need to go.

Seoul

I haven’t been here long enough to really give a good opinion yet, and I was only outside in the city one day before I got too sick to enjoy it.

So far I think the subway is awesome, and I love having my own place again. I love even more that I can walk to most stores I need within 10 minutes of my apartment.

There’s lots of cool technology here too, though it can be annoying. I see so many people watching TV on their cellphones as I walk by them. I just want to hit them all. I just know they’ll end up falling in a manhole like that girl in NYC.

I withdrew 300,000 Korean Won ($257) and it came out in a stack of 10,000 bills about a centimeter thick. Kind of annoying. Because I’m sick my start date has to be pushed to next week which means I’ll be getting paid for less than half a month (still about $900) and won’t get my first full paycheck til December 10 (a nice birthday gift I must say) and then I can transfer money home and begin paying my bills and student loans.

Today I get internet, which is very exciting. The school called the company to come yesterday but the guy said I couldn’t get it since I didn’t have an alien registration card. He called the school and they gave him my info which I can then switch once I get the card. Will be nice to have my own dedicated connection again.

Feel free to check out my pictures of Seoul. Here’s a a local palace.

Cory,

You were best friend to so many of us, and you will be missed deeply. I love you, as do we all. RIP Cory Carrier, 10/1/09.

Working at Concordia language villages

Working at the Concordia language village was an amazing experience for me. I am still shocked by this because of the short time in which I worked there, just 2 weekends a month for four short months. These weekends changed me tremendously.

A brief explanation: these villages are language immersion camps for middle school and high school students. Mine was Waldsee, the German village. I made so many good friends at the village, which is still a marvel to me. I was thrown in with these people the very first weekend, and from the first moment I arrived everything was “go go go.” Never a moment to rest until lights out. I spent every hour of every day in a very structured environment doing group activities with roughly 10 kids per activity and one other counselor.

Spending every hour of every day with the same group of counselors brings you very close with people faster than anything else I have ever before experienced. I loved it. I made so many new friends over these weekends, and I know that I will continue to be friends with them for a very long time. Often I felt as if I had known some of them forever, when in some cases I had only met them that weekend.

Besides activities, I also lead table talk: discussions and small talk around the table before and during dinner designed to accustom the students to hearing German and to make them speak it back to the counselors and teachers. I enjoyed the food so much I sometimes found it challenging to fully participate in conversation, however we always managed to find something to discuss or games to play. Often I would ask about what they had done before the meal, what they enjoyed the most, and how they liked the food. Very simple things, but enough to fill up the time between ten people.

One of my favorite activities to lead was “baken” or baking. We always made cookies for this activity, with many different ingredients. I began by explaining what each of the ingredients were and asking the kids to name each one, and try to figure out what it was if they didn’t know. At a time like this one must be very creative in explaining answers so as not to switch to English, which is very much frowned upon. The children are there to learn German, after all, no matter how much difficulty they may have. I often resorted to breaking the words into their separate parts, and then asking what those parts mean. For example Mandelauszug is “almond extract”. Mandel means “almond,” and auszug means “extract.” Breaking down auszug to it’s own parts yields the meanings “out” and “pull” which I would mime by pulling a rope out of the middle of the table. I always enjoyed this part because so many of the kids would get excited that they figured out what it meant before I even had to mime any action at all.

The most amazing part of this whole experience for me was to see the looks on the faces of all of these kids as they realized that they understand German. It was very rewarding for me, and I loved knowing that I was able to give them my knowledge and help them learn from my experiences.