The dust is coming!

So it's been over a month now and lately I've been reflecting on the sights, sounds, and other perceptions that somehow seem perfectly commonplace. Here's a few..

"Sketch Ally" - A narrow side street by school that teachers occasionally stroll through for smoke breaks. You're surrounded on either side by merchants peddling fresh raw meat and fish. We're talking whole pigs sliced open and dangling before you, live octopus wriggling around in massive trays, and buckets full of live eels waiting to gross me out. Warning: If approached with even the slightest of hangovers, the smells in sketch ally will induce vomiting. It is also the place where McGriff the Con-dog lives. He's a scrappy little mongrel that lurks in the shadows. He looks adorable and rabid at the same time and his package is somehow bigger than one of his legs. Warning: Petting McGriff may cause skin disease and/or parasites.

"Nationalist Squid" - There are tons of street vendors up and down naundong, the street our apartments and school are on. You can get anything from egg bread, to silk worm larvae (which I actually tasted the other day! - they taste like dirt), a new wardrobe, meat on a stick, crates of clementines or tomacco (actually they're persimmons and they're delicious, but they look exactly the way I'd expect a tomacco to look)...to squid. Raw squid, dried squid, fried squid - pick your poison kids, the Koreans love their squid. The kids reek of the stuff. So the squid is sold out of the back of this pick-up truck looking thing, which for some reason has loudspeakers blaring some sort of recorded information about the squid for sale. It's in a loud, deep, somewhat monotone, and kind of angry or at least urgent voice. Basically it sounds like some bizarro propaganda and every time I pass by it I imagine it's saying "Expel all foreigners! Americans go home! This squid, brought to you by the Korean Nationalist party."

"Yellow Dust Warning" - This is from the national weather service. I guess all of South Korea gets coated in a toxic yellow dust from time to time. It blows over from the Gobi desert in China, but has to pass through a bunch of smoggy, factory-filled areas to get here, picking up various toxins along the way. I've been told there's times when you can only see the shapes of buildings, but can't even tell what they are because they're completely covered in said dust. Anyway, there was a yellow dust warning today so Mrs. Choi told us not to go outside. We stay inside all day for work anyway, but still - good to know.

Well I've got a few others, but I have a million worksheets, spelling tests and diaries to correct right now. Wednesday is the monthly test day which is a big deal because everything has to be filed for every student and we have to do our reports, which is basically ranking and describing the kids' strong and weak points. I'm sure to go mad with power.

Oh 2 more things - I'm finally settled into my apartment - I've got a shower curtain, the internet, and a bunch of sweet plants. Also, I start learning Korean tomorrow! Life is good.

This post brought to you by the Korean Nationalist Party and Deb Durant