More adventures

Hey all! No pictures today I'm affraid, the wireless cafe is apparently closed on Sundays!)

The past coupple of weeks have been really interesting here. I've been mostly working on getting my new life set up, and finding some sort of a routine. The longer I've been here the more clearly I'm realizing just how freeking far out of the downtown core I actually live!!!!!!! It might explain why I haven't been as out and about as many of the other teachers. I have to really prepare for any journew to the centre of Seoul. It takes me 1- 1 1/2 hours to get there! And then I have to get back. I've been trying to think of it as a money saving device. It means that it's way harder for me to just wander around buying things and going to touristy locations. But there are good things about my location. First, my appartment is 2 to 3 times as big as all of the other appartments I've seen that my friends live in. Seccond, just because it's far away doesn't mean that it's not covnenient. I have like every grocery store, restaurant, convenience store, cafe, PC bang and even print shop and clinic within an easy walk from my home. I also have some of the largest shopping complexes in all of Seoul within an easy bus ride. But what's missing is a social network that doesn't involve special planning to get in touch with. The third good thing about where I live is the green. Ok so it's the flip side. I'm NOT downtown, but I'm also not living in a concrete jungle. I have mountains around me and even a running/ walking path 1 block away. The air is cleaner and the buildings are more spacious and further appart. There are also just much fewer buildings period. And most lovely of all is the rooftop garder outside of my front door that my landloard has made. Very nice (except when she puts manure on it, then it stinks...) OK so good and bad.

Work has been mostly good to be honest. I'm realising that my work load is much lighter than I expected. I usually have 4-5 40 minute classes per day. Then I have lunch, then I have to stay at school and just chill out till 5PM every day. This has provided me with tons and tons of time to get my lesson plans done, have coffee with the other teachers, check my hotmail, check my facebook, read the news, check out online magazines, search for cool tourist locations and galleries that I would like to visite and generally fuck around for 3 hours every afternoon. I don't feel bad though, because all of the teachers are doing whatever. One of the older ladies usually cracks out a facemasks and a neck pillow and sleeps for a coupple of hours. I'm thinking she might be onto something good. Ear plugs and a face mask might be just the way to pass the afternoon. In all seriousness though, I'm a little pissed that there is noooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo extra work for me at my school so nooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo chance to make any overtime or any extra courses. It's frustrating because I'm here to make money and I want to work, but I can't. I'm seriously considering beginning to look for extra work outside of the school. I have a service to offer here as a native english speaker that people are willing to pay for and well....... I'd really like to get paid some more. Of course it's highly illegal, and I'm a total chicken, so I probably wont, but you never know. My co-teachers have been super great. They are actually very accomplised in English (THANK GOD!!!!!!!!) because otherwise I'd be completely screwed!!!!! I'm actually becoming pretty good friends with my first teacher Hey In. She's a really lovely girl and bright too. She wants to go to grad school, so she's putting a lot of effort into learning english and I'm glad that I can help her out with that task. I think that school is actually the easiest part about being here. I'll be honest, some of the teachers are going wayyyyyyyyyyy overboard I think. I think as long as you present the curriculum in a clear and concise manner it's all good. Plus my school blocks all youtube and video sites so there's only soo much I can do. Anyway, no complaints so far. The kids are ok. The grade 4s are great! I wish I taught 22 grade 4 classes a week. They listen, they're bright and enthusiastic. The grade 5s are slightly less enthusiastic and slightly more withdrawn. The grade 6s for the most part and snooty little pre-teens who think that they are sooooooo cooool and that school is really lame, so needless to say, I like them the least. I think it's hilarious, they seem to become less fluent the older they get! Not quite sure why, but I think it's about exposure, aptitude and sheer will to learn English. A coupple of the grade 6s are really amazing! They obviously go to english school outside of public school. Anyway, the teaching is easy and the lessons are pretty much already planned out, not it's a question of making them fun and interesting.

Adventure wise, I've been putting most of my spare time and energy into finding out about and checking out the local arts scene here. Last weekend I went to the Seoul Arts Centre to see the Seoul International print and photo art fair. I wasn't sure what to expect, but it ended up being really excellent! It was also the best possible way for me to find out who the major galleries were in the city. There were 3 floors of booths set up by different galleries all featuring 3-4 different artists. The work was largly home based and really innovative. The design quality of the prints was really sick! I haven't seen a lot of eastern art, but I know enough about traditional Chinese and Japonese art to tell that the graphic quality of Korean art also picks up on these traditional grains. Really beautiful lines and subtle colour pallets. There were some interesting new ways of presenting the photographs. There were a coupple of artists who had C-prints digitally printed onto glass and then lit from behind. There were also a coupple of artists who had used stretchers to great effect. They had printed their digitally remastered photos onto this glossy canvas and then stretched them onto frames like large scale paintings. It looked cool. There were also artists who had the same idea out with really heavy duty paper. I also saw a lot of floating frames. I think they're such a classy way to present prints. A coupple of my faves were the lithographer Ji Dachun; who did these really awsome graphite drawings that were coloured with tempera on this really big, think watercolour paper. Very anthropomorphic and also used the white space of the page very well. The Korean artist Lee Hyeyoung was one of the only intallation artists there. She created these small, medium and large window boxes casting with handmade paper to look like sculptures of folded clothes. She commented on Koreas obsession with label clothing by casting all the momogrammed labels of clothes. She also did this cast of stacked approns which was really beautiful. I saw my first Damien Hirsts!!!!! He had 2 prints of his crystal sculls. They were cool but somehow I was let down/ he is sooooooo famous! Shouldn't his art be mindblowing? There were prints and photos by Robert Indiana (the iconic LOVE prints) Ruth Smoking 1,2,3 by Julian Opie and some beautiful shacks photographed by Gotz Diergarten. I think my favorite artist was Jihye Im and her piece Nervous Venues. She had these plexi glass boxes with photos drymounted to the front of them. In the centre of each box was a hole which invited the viewer to come and have a look inside the box. When you looked inside you saw another view, interpretation of that photograph. A different side of the same coin. It was really well done and faily simple. I must have looked the part, because I had all of the curators coming up to me and wanting to talk about the art in each gallery space. I managed to get a personjal invitation to come by the gallery at a future time to talk shop. Coooooool! I also picked up a ton of cards and maps to the best places. Wooooooo! Hoooooooo! All in all a very good way to spend the day and 15,000Won http://sippa.org/kor/introduction.html

This week, I went out to dinner a coupple of times with my co-teacher and I also made the trip downtown to go and eat pizza and have some beer with the other female teachers of my agency Canadian Connections. It was fun. I also made it to a vernissage for the Seoul Art Collective. http://seoulartcollective.tkI spoke to their president Zack Eichelberger and her said that they really mostly worked independently as artists, but they tried to give everyone the chance to exhibit their work with frequent group exhibitions. So this could be a really good way for me to get motivated to make some art. So that next time they put out a call for submissions, I have something to send to them. They exhibit mostly I think at the Myungdong gallery: www.mygallerykorea.com
So now I'm properly jazzed about getting back into my art. No more school, no more deadlines, no more critiques asking me to prove why it's art and why it's valid. I am just going to try and create to create and for the pure enjoyment and sattisfaction of creating art.

I'm also going to try and force myself not to become a total recluse! Korea, let's go, fuel up the tanks, tourist mania here we come! Till next time, take care!
Love ya lots!
Alex