Japan

(post under construction, pictures to come...)

I had the opportunity to go to Osaka, Japan for a few days, July 17-20. I ended up going alone. All of my friends still had class for another week or so. My class ended that week and I had a long weekend before my summer English camp started. My main reason for wanting to go was The Great Japan Beer Festival. The Festival is held in three different cities throughout the year. I had an adventure just trying to buy my plane ticket to get to Japan. I had some major problems trying to pay for my ticket online, so I had to trek to the far side of Busan and buy my ticket at a ticket office (mind you this is all the day before I was panning on leaving).

With ticket in hand I came home and realized I didn't have any clean clothes. I washed a bunch of clothes (not having a dryer is a problem sometimes, like this time). My clothes were mostly dry when it came time for me to throw them in a bag for the weekend. I arrived in Japan no problem (Korean Air is great). Going through customs in Japan was mostly ok, until they opened my bag and my clothes were a bit damp. They became a bit suspicious of this, but luckily we were able to communicate enough for me to convey that I don't have a dryer so it was just a bit of water. After we cleared that up, the customs agent proceeded to open a binder and show me a picture of various drugs (this was his way of asking me if I was bringing any of these with me).

I made it through security... the easy part. Now I had to try and figure out the public transit system. I still don't really understand the Osaka public transit system very, but much better now than when I arrived. There is just enough English to make you feel like you might be able to figure it out, but then you are really just left helpless and confused. I stared at the two maps for a few minutes (like 10) and then put some money in the machine and got a ticket. I am usually pretty good at figuring out public transit, but this was crazy. I somehow made it to the stop that would be home for the weekend. Upon arrival, I showed the station attendant a picture on my iPhone of the hostel I was staying at. He knew the name and it was about a 2 minute walk.

I hadn't really planned anything in Osaka, except the beer fest, so I grabbed some tourist stuff at the airport and also at my Hostel. I took an hour to relax and figure some stuff out for the weekend. Friday night I went to the Osaka Aquarium. I didn't know at the time, but I guess it's one of the only aquariums in the world that has a whale shark. There was a giant Ferris wheel near the Aquarium, so I ventured over there and got a decent view of the city (none of the pictures turned out that great, it was a pretty drab day). I went to a large mall/eating area for dinner. Lots of good restaurants, but pretty overwhelming. Finally, my attention was grabbed by a delicious looking picture (I used my Korean know-how and took a picture just in case the wait-staff didn't speak English). I was able to use my personal translator, better know as my index finger, to order from the menu. When I got back to my hostel I grabbed a few Japanese beers from the local convenience store and watched some of the British Open (the time change worked out well, I was able to watch it every night before bed).

Saturday was the day I had been looking forward to since I arrived in Korea, the beer fest. That morning I went to Osaka Castle. It was quite the sight. It's all rebuilt and in the middle of what is now a park. Back in the day the park was the ground of the castle filled with houses for servants, soldiers, and whatever else you need to run a castle. It was destroyed by fire, I believe, and they only rebuilt the main castle. At this point my only companion for 36 hours had been my iPhone. While leave the castle I made my first new friend of the weekend, Chris (he had just finished his one year teaching in Korea and was beginning his 3 month adventure home to South Africa). We talked for a few minutes and I asked if he was interested in going to the Beer Fest, so he tagged along. We had a great time at the beer fest. It was great to have so many great beers. There were about 80 different beers, most (65ish) we from Japanese microbreweries and even a few American brews from Ancor Brewing Co., a great brewery in San Fran. At the beer fest, I met a lot of cool people and heard stories of drinking PBR while peering at Everest. Ended up making friends with three Japanese people. They took us around Osaka for the night after the beer fest, including to some great Sushi.

Sunday, Chris and I make the trek out to Himeji Castle, possibly the most famous castle in Japan. This castle is all original. In all it's glory it has never been involved in a battle. We made out way back to Osaka by late afternoon and met up with, Tomoko, our Japanese friend, for dinner and drinks. She took us out to Oko-no-mi-aki (99% chance that is misspelled) and sake. I went back "early" that night. I was pretty much out of the money I was willing to spend and I had to get up early the next morning to make my flight.

The only thing I did Monday was go to the airport and fly home. I packed a lot into the two and a half days that I was actually on the ground in Japan. I had a great time and go to meet some great people and drink some great beer. It was a nice weekend vacation to celebrate finishing my first semester in Korea.

Sorry for the time lapse

Sorry for the massive amount of time I have let go by without a post.  I have done a lot since the last post, obviously.  I will try hard to get the blog up to date as much as possible this week.  For now I will at least give a small overview of what I have been up to.  

I will be bottling my first batch of homebrew this week and it will be ready for drinking in about two weeks.

I have explored much of Busan, but still lots left to explore.

I went to Seoul, the capital city, for a crazy weekend.

School has been good, it's starting to get pretty warm and humid here.  I had an evaluation class where all the other English teachers, the vice-principal and principal watched me teach and evaluated me.  (That was last week, I haven't gotten any official feedback)

This week I am helping conduct an English conversation test for the district.

I think a student is taking me to a PC bang (Internet cafe) after school today and teaching me how to play Starcraft.

Thanks to BIG I have been watching many of the awesome Wings' games!

I have been busy and have done a lot.  It's hard to remember everything I have done in the past two months since I have last posted.  Like I said I will try hard this week to catch the blog up full scale.  I have added some more pics to the link even though I have not posted an update, so check those out for now.

I am going to start micro-blogging more as well via Twitter, user name kparus or just search Kyle Paruszkiewicz.  I'm not sure if I am totally sold on this or not, but it might be interesting.  One of my main reasons for wanting to start Twittering is to use for K&B Brewing.

Mailing Address

This is my mailing address, just in case anyone wants to send me care packages, love letters etc...

Median Offistel Room # 1005

380-15, DeokCheon-Dong

Buk-Gu, Busan South Korea

I'm still alive...

Sorry for the lack of posts lately.  Still no internet at my apartment and no sign of that happening anytime soon.  Short version is I need paperwork from my school so I can get my alien registration card.  My school doesn't have the paperwork yet.

Enough of that, things are going pretty well here.  I just finished my first full week of teaching.  The kids are pretty good, for the most part they pay attention and listen to me.  I have a Korean teacher in the room with me, so they do most of the disciplining, which is nice, I just have to focus on teaching.  Corporal punishment was made illegal a few years ago in Korea, but it still happens, so that may be part of the good behavior.  I witnessed it first hand the other day.  One of the other male teachers had three students lined up in the hall after class, in the push-up position.  He then proceeded to give them each three whacks on the butt with a wood stick, roughly the size of a ruler (a little longer and a little thicker).  The students just took their lashings and went on their merry way.  I was told that the students respect the teachers more, and understand that they are being hit for their own good...

I hear lots of broken English from students and staff.  The female students' favorite saying is "Hello, I love you!"  I hear that multiple times a day.  I am getting settle-in a bit.  I have obtained many essentials for my apartment, a 22" LCD monitor and computer speakers.  I am lacking many other things that some may call essential, but as far as I am concerned my place is livable now.  I have been exploring the city after school lately, partly because I have been meeting people to buy things from and partly just to explore.

I posted more pics.  They are a pub crawl hosted by the EPIK class that arrived in Busan last September, photos of exploring and some other random stuff.

Two of my friends got some pretty bad food poisoning and I guess a lot of foreigners have been getting sick lately.  So far I have been able to miss it, but I am not looking forward to when it does catch up with me, and I'm assuming it will...

I promise posts will become more regular once I get internet at my apartment!  Until then I hope everything is going well for everyone!  Feel free to shoot me emails or messages of facebook.  I also have AIM kparatumich

My apartment

I like my new place.  It's pretty large, considering it is a studio.  It's about 3x the size of Cliff's an Laura's apartments (more on that later).  Like I said, it is a studio, the main room is pretty large, maybe 10x20, just a guess.  I also have a small kitchen and a bathroom.  The bathroom is pretty interesting.  There is not a separate shower, the shower head just hangs on the wall and there is a drain on the ground.  It's a great space saving design and it works just fine, you just have to be careful because your bathroom floor stays wet for awhile.

I live on the 10th floor so I have a pretty cool view.  Cliff and Laura live about three blocks away.  I can see their building from my window.

Blogger is not being very user friendly right now and I don't feel like fixing the problems with the pics right now.  So from top to bottom...

Top: My camera zoomed in on Cliff and Laura's building, the one with the red rail around the roof.

The view from my apartment.

Bad pic of the bathroom.  You can see the shower head on the wall on the right side.

My kitchen/brew house.  I have a two burner gas range, under it is my washer (no dryer), the metal thing above the sink is my fridge or freezer (it can only be one at a time).

Half of my main room (my bed, desk, TV)  There was a leak in my room before I moved in so there is still a hole in the ceiling, which they are allegedly fixing.  Once they fix that I will be able to move some furniture so my bed won't be in the middle of the floor.

Hooray for School!

Yes, hooray for school!  School gives me the power of the internet, in English!!  It's quite amazing how much my quality of life is affected without the internet.  Not that things were bad, but once I got the internet back on my own computer things were just so much better.  Not going to lie, you can call me a big nerd or whatever you please and I will gladly accept it, I miss my iPhone already and not having internet at my apartment yet doesn't help.  

Enough of my griping, things are going great so far.  I'm having fun, no major problems yet.  School is pretty hectic for the Korean teachers.  This is the first week of class this year, so they are all trying to figure out their schedules and whatnot.  As a result, I don't have any classes to teach this week.  It's allowed me plenty of time to do some reading on teaching ESL and get my first few lessons planned.  They don't have my schedule done yet, so I can't do too much specific planning, but I have been developing some fun activities for the kids.  I am teaching at a middle school (equivalent of 7th, 8th and 9th grade in the US).  I will be working with the 3rd grade middle schooler for sure, and then it sounds like I will be working with either the 1st or 2nd grade students this semester and the other next semester.  

The bus to school is nice.  The stop is right across the street from my apartment building and is only about 8 minutes to school.  There is also a stop right in front of my school, quite convenient.  Some of my friends have to walk 20-30 minutes from the closest bus or subway stop, including one up to the top of a mountain (probably a great view though).  

I made the decision last night that I am going to be brewing over here.  There is absolutely no good beer in this country.  There are 4 or 5 generic varieties and then the imports consist of Heineken and Guinness, I settled for the Guinness last night.  I will be on the prowl this weekend to find some fermenting vessels.  I am going to be doing small batches, about 1.5 gallons and once I get rolling will be brewing once a week (should keep the stock of beer pretty nice).  Sorry, it's a pretty scattered post, but it's been awhile since I posted.  More to come momentarily...

New country - the internet = not super awesome

So I finally just got the internet to work on my computer at school.  Things have been a bit crazy in Busan so far.  My apartment is nice, it's pretty large, I have a good view and great access to a subway and bus stop.  I made the great mistake of leaving my power cord to my computer at home today, so my computer is about to die.  I don't have internet at my apartment yet, so I will have to wait until tomorrow at school to publish a decent post.  I promise I will get pics and more info up tomorrow, but like I said my computer is about to die.