Looking for the Yellow Brick Road

Earth. Air. Fire. Water. Mold.

These are the five elements of life. The last being indestructable.

I am so sick and tired of fighting this shit. I found this mold on the back of my nightstand yesterday but that was just the latest in yet another bout against the black and green stuff. Last weekend, in a mad search for my mittens, I found tons of it in our closet. Now, we've known for a while that the closet has been the crossroads of mold expansion but it hasn't previously been found inside our plastic storage tubs. Now it has! 

In fact, we had a dry bag (an air-tight bag for water sports) inside a plastic storage tub and the mold STILL managed to penetrate through BOTH and find whatever leather goods we had in there! The casualties this time: Jeremy's nice satchel, a pair of leather gloves, some ski goggles, and his eel skin travel wallet (must say, I actually did a happy dance when that went in the garbage--I hated it!). There were quite a few other things with mold on them but we managed to save them through the washing machine. We weren't sure how things like the fur hat were going to turn out but it went well anyway and we were pleased with the results.

However, being winter and super cold at the moment, nothing is drying very quickly. We do have a dryer but it just dumps the moist air back into our apartment. Moist air = more mold. Moist clothes = more mold. I feel like we can't win.

So I'm looking for the Yellow Brick Road. I've got to get out of here. 

I got sick a few months ago and I still haven't gotten rid of the cough (neither has Jeremy) and now we're having allergy like symptoms (sneezing, runny nose, etc.). I feel pretty sure it's mold related. Thursday at CRG, I was talking with a coworker who's a microbiologist and he said I should be really concerned about it and gave me a box of their highest quality surgical masks for cleaning. It was a much appreciated gift but really got me thinking about how bad it is...

Our lease expires today so I sent photos of the mold damage to the agent yesterday. Don't worry, we've raised this with her before. Actually, a long, long time ago but the owner hasn't wanted to do anything about it and now that our lease has expired, we can't force her. But we can make sure that the next tenants know and that no one can say no evidence had been submitted! 

So what are we doing to get rid of it? Previously, we were using Exit Mould--a really powerful and kinda toxic household cleaner that does a great job of killing mold but because our place has pretty much no ventilation, using it means subjecting ourselves to some pretty noxious gases. On a few occasions we had to go to be still smelling it in the air and half-seriously joked that maybe we wouldn't make it through the night. Well, we did--thankfully!!--but most certainly not without sacrificing at least a few brain cells in the process.

We've since given up on the Exit Mould, fearing more exposure might actually hurt us for real, and now we're using vinegar. It won't kill us but our house smells very much like a bag of chips. It seems to doing okay but wasn't quite strong enough for the nightstand. I'll either have to go back at it a few more times or just give in and use the Exit Mould...

We also keep moisture crystals around the house to absorb moisture but it's just not enough. It you would believe it, we actually have two in our bedroom (both less than 4 feet from my nightstand) and one in the closet. I've seen the water they collect (cloudy brown water) so I know they work but I think they're just too weak for our kind of mold. As I said, it's indestructible.

Let me know if you find that Yellow Brick Road, okay?

Regarding the domestic life...

So, I quit my job on Friday and have since been doing little more than house chores, writing cover letters and canvassing every shop in the neighbourhood for jobs. But, with regard to the domestic life, I have discovered a few things.

First, Exit Mould (I know it's spelled wrong... it's the British way) is undoubtedly the best mold remover that I've ever seen in my life. We've had this weird problem the last week or so with mold growing on our bedroom wall and our housing agent recommended using it to remove it. Well, the stuff says "don't use on painted surfaces" so I'll probably just use soap and water, but in the meantime I figured I would try it on some other moldy surfaces around the house...

*Enter Bathroom*

Our bathroom is tiled floor to ceiling and the shower has been growing some pretty difficult mold deep within the tile grout for sometime now. No matter how much I scrub, I have never been able to get it out. But without any wiping or scrubbing, one spray of Exit Mould was able to get it all off. I am seriously amazed, people. Really. Our shower looks amazingly clean and I've never been happier.

But of course my happiness was short lived.

The second thing I discovered, Australian toilets are complete blocks of porcelain junk. Ours is one of those water saving toilets (like pretty much every toilet in the country) with two buttons on top--one for half flush and one for whole. It's been obvious that the thing has been on it's way out for a while now but yesterday when I pushed the button, I nearly pushed it over the edge. It just kept running water. Now, there's no way for me to explain this well without taking pictures but inside the back is a giant mechanical tube that must be fit just right into the drain at the bottom. However, you can't see what you're doing because the tube is attached to the lid and in order to put it in the hole, you must put the lid on. That means you can't see anything. And when I got it in the hole and the water kept running, there was no way for me to just look inside and find out why.

All this time the water was still running and I was worried about an ever heightening water bill so I turned it off. And I'm glad I did. It took me three hours to fix the stupid thing!! It was rough. And in the process I found a HUGE cache of mold that I'm pretty sure the previous tenants never bothered to clean up. In fact, there was so much mold in the back of the toilet, I'm pretty sure the ones before them never cleaned it either. Luckily I had my Exit Mould with me... :)

Third, I have found that getting internet hooked up in your house is a ridiculous and expensive endeavour. Australia STILL doesn't have DSL lines so you have to use clear wire but in order to do that, you need to rent a phone line. That means dealing with Telstra--an evil monopoly set up by the government some time ago that pretty much overcharges and complicated everything. They are legally required to cooperate and share their lines with other companies but the process is long. So long that it took us three weeks to get internet. But Tuesday the little green light on our modem turned on and now we have power. You can expect photos to come in the near future.

My fourth and final discovery this week has been the lint catcher on our dryer. I've always known there was one (somewhere) because there is a sticker telling you to empty it every time. However, I couldn't find it. It looked like it was on the front of the door but there was no way to get to it--the thing was screwed together. But no, that is the lint holder. We've since discovered that indeed, you do have to unscrew it to remove the lint. What kind of non-sense is this?!? Who wants to get out their toolkit just to empty the lint holder every time they do laundry? I'm rather perturbed by this fact. I miss my good ol' American dryer.

So, there you have it. The ins and outs of my domestic life. When you have no job and no kids, there is little else to be excited about than Exit Mould. Even Facebook gets boring after a couple hours. However, I do have an interview today with a temping agency. Let's hope that goes well and that I'll start bringing in some money soon.

More to come!!

The promised catch-up

Graduate School

So, I've been accepted to both of the universities I've applied to: The University of Queensland and The University of Technology, Sydney. Oh, what a pain though. UQ offers US federal student loans but UTS doesn't. UTS has a great Master's in Journalism program in a great city for media work and UQ's is just okay--UQ is in Brisbane and too far from the city center... The only way I can go to UTS is if I get a private student loan but alas! No bank lists UTS on their approved school list. The only two banks that do are not currently accepting applications (damn credit crunch!). So, I'm stuck. I just can't go to the school I want to and it really makes me mad. UQ is a good school and obviously affordable, but I just don't want to go there anymore... Since the ball dropped on student loans last week, I've discovered one more school that may fit: The University of Sydney--they give US federal aid and are actually in the same neighborhood as UTS. The only problem: their program is a Master's in Media Practice and not a Master's in Journalism. I'm not sure exactly what the difference is yet but so far it looks like 1/3 less classes... Will a Master's in Media Practice be a reputable degree for what I want to do? I'm not sure... At any rate, I've decided that I'm still moving to Australia. I'm going to get my work holiday visa and just work for a bit until I can figure this school stuff out. Instead of trying to start in February, I might just wait until July. Maybe the credit crisis will be over then and I can get a loan for the school I want to go to... Or maybe in that meantime/worktime I'll check out The University of Sydney and find it's a great school with great opportunities and I'll want to go there... Who knows.

Anyway, as long as I'm putting off school for a big, I might as well do a little more travelling before I buckle down with a job and stuff in AU. Here's my current thought: India-Pakistan-India-Sri Lanka-Thailand-Cambodia-Thailand-Malaysia-Singapore-Australia. I guess if I can't go back to school then I better spend my money elsewhere on something equally exciting! :)

Blog Business

I'm thinking about changing things up a bit... I realized the other day that my blog title and blog address are not the same (what was I thinking?) so I hurried up and snatched up the "twentyfirstcenturynomad" blog address and I'm thinking about moving things over there... I can't move everything as in old posts and photos, but I can make some links for past reading... I'm also thinking of switching from Picasa to Flickr as my photo sharing provider. Has anyone else made a similar move? What do you find to be Flickr's benefits and pitfalls? The big hassle and annoying part is that if I want to move my Picasa photos to Flickr, I will have to download each individual photo and re-upload them to Flickr. Bahh! That will take FOREVER!! Should I bother?

English Camp

Oi! Two weeks of 14 hour work days!! I can't believe I did three weeks of this stuff back in January! Camp went well. As always, I made some new friends with some really lovely foreigners though I won't lie and say that every day was happy. There were some cranky teachers that second week who really didn't want to participate! But I understand. We were all tired and just ready to go home. Looking back at my pictures though, I've realized we had some good times. The first week was a little challenging because my team was pretty quiet but they pulled off a first place win in EVERY competition and by the end of the week, I'd like to think they made friends with each other. The second week was MUCH better and the kids worked really well together. We didn't win a thing though. In fact, we were constantly placed last. Oh well. Lucky for me it never broke their spirits and they had fun anyway. I didn't take any photos from the second week because I got too tired to lug around my camera and it was too hot to work so hard, but I do have photos from week 1. Enjoy!!

Summer Classes

Now that camp is over, I get to teach two summer classes for one and a half weeks. The pros: provided curriculum and small classes (one with 10 students and one with 4). The cons: the curriculum isn't amazing and I think the classes are too short (one hour). I really wish I had more time to really teach them something worthwhile and give them an opportunity to apply it. This curriculum is okay (it's not amazing) but it needs something more. There needs to be more activities and students need an opportunity to learn from context via deduction. This just doesn't offer anything more than scripted conversations. I really wish that Korean understood deductive learning. Everything taught here is by memorization. Seriously, what happens when these kids graduate or move to another country and can't speak or learn because there's no script for them? They need to learn on their own. Teachers need to teach kids to learn independently, not co-dependently. This is ultimately why I'm leaving Korea. But until I do, I have 5 more classes to teach. *Sigh*. At least this week is almost over!

Saying Goodbye

Two weeks ago, I left Munchang for good. My last two days there were filled with movie time with my boys and cleaning my desk. Saying goodbye to the teachers was okay but I realized I was definitely going to miss some of them. Jun has shown me true Korean hospitality and I am so grateful for everything she has done. None of my Korean teachers have ever gone out to dinner with me as a friend--no one except her. Saying goodbye was difficult. I also had to say goodbye to Kim Hong Gi--a co-teacher who has had a crush on me for a while. lol. He is a really nice man with golden patience. I can count on one hand the number of times I've broken down at work pre-Korea but once I came here, it happened a lot more often and unfortunately he got more of those breakdowns than anyone else. I am so glad he never judged me for it and was always gracious and attentive when it happened. I'm lucky to have had such good co-teachers.

I also had to say goodbye to Mr. Bak and another Mr. Jeong (I think that's his name!!). It was especially difficult to say goodbye to Mr. Bak. In the year that I've known him, we've hardly exchanged much at all because neither of us speaks the other's language, but we've somehow solidified a silent friendship over one commonality: photography. He is so amazing at it. Way better than me. He's a professional and he uses professional equipment. I'll never forget the first day we met; he was intrigued by my camera and wanted to show me his and his photos. I was immediately humbled. I don't want to sound too conceited, but I'm pretty much accustomed to being the best photographer in the room but when I saw his work, I was almost humiliated by my own. He's that good. Over the next few months, I taught him random Korean words and he would give me the thumbs up or thumbs down on my photos. He would bring in his camera and let me play around with his 300mm lens; I would bring in my fish eye and he would fool around with it. Then we went hiking with his kids back in March and I'll never forget what happened: his son fell off the waterfall, he fell in and both almost drowned with hypothermia. Saving their lives is the single most impactful and incredible thing I've ever done. I still feel a little lost on the subject most days. Knowing that you are responsible for someone else's life is indescribable. Sometimes it feels like a big secret--no one could ever understand or fully know the chain of events that day. No one will ever feel the divine the way we do when we think about what happened. On my last day at Munchang, I learned that he didn't even know how to swim. Mr. Bak said to me at lunch: "That day, I don't know swim. It is miracle." How can I put that into words? My skin crawled in the moment and every hair said a prayer of thanks. It really was a miracle. I also learned that he wanted me to come over to his house for dinner but when he asked his sons they started to cry--they didn't want to remember so the dinner was cancelled. I understand but I hope that one day they will be able to talk about it.

Near the end of my last day, I went to say goodbye to Mr. Bak in the music room and he greeted me with all of his new camera equipment. His English had improved so much from being my friend that he was able to tell me that he was sorry I had an Olympus camera and he had a Cannon; he wanted to let me borrow his equipment but everything was incompatible. Then he played me a song on his saxophone. I cried and everyone laughed. Oh well. Then he took me outside and took some photos. I probably looked like crap because I was still a little shaken but oh well. Then him and Mr. Jeong rushed me to the bus station because I was about to miss my ride to Incheon. We made it just in time and while I waited for the bus to pull away, they sat outside the whole time, waving to me. And just before it left, they disappeared momentarily and then reappeared on the bus with an ice cream of me. I was so moved. I balled the whole way to Incheon. Saying goodbye is a lot easier when people don't do nice things for you! But I'm happy they did. I will always have sweet memories of the teacher's at Munchang. They were a hard bunch to leave.

Moving on now...

I'm so tired of packing and cleaning. Today I scrubbed down my bedroom pretty good but it pretty much exhausted me and I still have two more rooms to do--the bathroom and kitchen. The bathroom isn't too bad--just a little pink mold--but the kitchen is another story. I'm honestly shocked. So, before I left for camp two weeks ago, I really cleaned my kitchen good. However, upon my return home Monday, I found TONS of mold on the walls, on the counter, on the floor, and I even found a ton of weevils crawling around on my counter! I don't know how they got there! I haven't left out any bread or wheat products. In fact, I didn't leave out anything! I'm really confused... To top it off, my sink faucet is leaking and dripping all over the counter and my sink, adding to the mold problem and ruining my sponges. Sometimes it's really hard to believe that this place was brand new when I moved in... To give you an idea of how bad the mold problem is here, I once found mold growing in a bottle of BLEACH water!! Can you believe that?! I'm pretty sure that the sooner I move out, the longer I'll live. Something unnatural is happening in that place...