The New Blog

I've got a new blog going now, richaroundtheworld.blogspot.com, which I'll be writing on as I travel the next 8 or so months through some 30 odd countries. So, g'bye to "Korea", hello to "Rich Goes Pogonic". Not sure what "pogonic" means? Check out the new blog to find out.

All Good Things...

It's close now, the end of an era - well, for me anyway. In less than 20 days I'll be back in Canada, and things here in Korea are quickly winding to a close. It's funny how 20 days can be an incredibly long time under some circumstances, but after 2 years in Korea it feels like I'm watching the last few seconds of a clock being whittled away towards midnight. Hmmm, I like that last sentence, sounded quite deep and meaningful, didn't it.

I think this may be my last blog on Korea, or at least my last blog while I'm still in Korea. There could be more, but my schedule is moderately busy these days, and with no 4-hour stints of nothing to do at school, taking the time to blog is something I actually have to put effort into. Yes, I know the idea of effort isn't something that should scare me away from the task, but when Korea is almost finished, it just seems a little less necessary to write what's going on.

I'm ending again with another observation of the people and customs here, something I like writing about, and something I'm always surprised at by how many people read and remember. While I'm by no means a blogging all-star, I'm shocked at the number of people who mention my blog at times, and I really appreciate those who read it, especially since I never read anyone elses (except Dave Barsam's, cause he puts so much real and pertinent information in his, from bus schedules to movie show times).


When I first got to Korea, I certainly felt this was an other-worldly country, filled with the kind of social conventions and nuances that I could never really adjust to. Even after 2 years I'm still blown away by just how different this place is (I'm not sure if you're able to view it, but here's a really interesting story on Korea a friend wrote - http://www.facebook.com/note.php?note_id=20594473076&ref=mf). The second year here I've really enjoyed the country, and now I'm quite sad to leave. I'm definitely ready to leave, but I will miss it with definite certainty. The scary traffic habits, the mysterious seafood dinners that still move, the intensity over things like volleyball and the total disregard for other things any other country would call an integral part of life; I'll notice all of their absences.

I've typed about food a fair bit I think, but I've never really gotten into some of the cultural conventions of it I don't think. There's a powerful history in Korean society regarding food, much of it to do with the scarcity of food in the winter months. Kimchi, that pickled spicy cabbage (or other vegetable) that Koreans hold so dearly to them, was a staple in the diet and survival of Koreans hundreds of years ago, and now it's served with every single meal. What's more, sharing of food is an absolute necessity - you know how kids in Canada will get some candy from someone, then say they need one more for their "friend"? Well here they say the same thing, but they mean it. I've never seen a Korean child horde food, and I've never been in a situation where someone, even total strangers, didn't offer to share. Last week I caught a taxi, and while I wasn't eating in the taxi, he saw that I had some open cookies in my hand. I knew the whole ride that he wanted some, and felt I should give him some, and when I finally got out, he put out his hands and asked me to share my food.

Meals are eaten off shared plates, restaurant servers generally serve meals to everyone rather than the one person who ordered it, and the idea of withholding food from someone for any reason is quite unusual. A friend brought pizza into his class room to encourage kids to speak English, but he said the plan totally failed, since instead of working and trying to speak English for pizza, the kids just got upset that the mean teacher wouldn't share with them.

Anyway, it's time I finished here, I'm off to Busan for another ultimate tournament, then maybe some rock climbing before heading to Seoul and touring the DMZ. North Korea is closed now for South Koreans and foreigners, as someone was shot and killed on one of the tours last month. Seems things are still a little nuts up there, so Shannon and I will be missing the North Korean experience. Oh well, we've certainly covered most of the rest of the country. Maybe there will be one more blog to post up after our last little adventure, check back in a week or two to find out.

Rich

Animals

Writing about the treatment of animals in Korea can be a little tricky, since mistreatment of animals is not just specific to Korea, and it's hard to guage whether it's even worse here than anywhere else. However it certainly is more noticeable here, perhaps because there's less support networks for the animals, or because the denser population here makes poorly treated animals more visible. In any case, there's a high percentage of foreigners in Mokpo who have taken in a stray animal to get it healthy and away from a sad situation.

My dog Miso for example was a stray, abandoned at 3 months and found by our friend wandering the streets.
He was dirty, hungry, and terrified of everything. I'm pretty certain he had been bought at a pet store, since his breed is quite commonly found there. Shannon and I also think he had a great deal of trauma, mostly involving peeing or pooing. It took us months to get him properly used to excreting outside, and we often would wait for an hour somewhere, only to give up and have him pee in the house as soon as we opened the door. He would shake and urinate whenever a Korean person would come near him, and even now, a year later, he still doesn't deal well with Koreans.

A good friend in Mokpo lives near a market that she walks through often on her way home, and has now taken in about 6 cats she's found being sold in the market. They're kittens actually,
usually hardly a month old, are given a little rice each day, no milk, and no other kind of care. They're tied on short strings, and are often half-dead in their cages. Of the last 2 that were rescued, only one survived.

A few of us have mentioned that paying - yes, you have to pay for these poor starved kittens - will only encourage more kittens to be put through such an awful ordeal in order to make money from people (generally foreigners). It's probably true, but then some people, like my friend, just can't help but try and make a difference when they see these sad creatures.



Veterinarians unfortunately aren't always a lot of help. We've met a few Koreans who feel that being a vet is a good job and choosing it as a career should have little to do with love of animals. Our vet speaks great English, but Shannon and I have decided he really doesn't care for any animals' well-being. He often neglects to find proper treatment for Miso, and when Shannon and I find what's needed, he mentions how he knew that already, doesn't bother to look at our dog for any
illnesses, and carries on his way. That kitten I mentioned earlier that died, our vet looked at him - well he didn't actually look, he just glanced - and said the cat was fine. 3 days later a more accomplished vet said the cat should have been on an IV and had a heat pad the whole time, and it died shortly after.

Conversations with Koreans haven't yielded a lot of success at bringing out the emotions so many westerns associate with animals. Generally they say animals are just animals, and while it's a sad situation they often must endure, they're not concerned enough to do anything about it. The following was the worst I've heard about this yet.

A teacher in town was walking to school and noticed a pile of garbage bags had something scurrying through it, and decided it was probably rats. 2 days went by of this scuttling, yet she never actually saw a rat, just movement amongst the bags. Finally curiosity got the better of her, and after 5 days, she dug through the garbage and found a puppy tied to a pole at the bottom of it. It had been there at least the 5 days she had noticed it, but the rope it was on was so short it had been stuck under the garbage pile the whole time.

She took it to the vet who asked why she saved it, as obviously someone wanted to get rid of it. He was even more surprised when she wanted to clean it up, get it healthy and take care of it. There's a strong "why bother" mentality here, with very few opportunities for disadvantaged animals to survive. When the one shelter I had heard of for animals shut down (no funding), it was predominantly foreigners who intervened to save as many of the animals as possible. I've cut animals loose from short choking ropes because they were given no food; I've changed the routes I walk to and from work to avoid the distressed dogs or cats tied up on the sidewalks; and while I've never actually seen it, I've heard horror stories of the trucks of dogs being sent to slaughter.
I hesitate mentioning the dogs, since a truck of dogs here is no worse than an overflowing truck of pigs or cows at home, but it does strike a different chord in my emotions given the feelings I have toward canine creatures.

Regardless of how it is here, animal abuse does happen in other places, including Canada, so I don't want to sound too damning of Korean culture. It's much more in your face here though, and there's much less help for animals in need. Miso was the last thing Shannon and I really needed to add to our lives while here in Korea, but I am pretty happy we did. His ears are too big, he can't go 5 minutes without some form of attention or affection, but he's happy now and feels safe with us, and I'm glad we were able to do that for him.

Of University Students, Animals, and "The Rules"

It's a mixture of stories, happenings and personal feelings on things this week, some of it funny, some of it sad, and some of it just being how I feel.

Let's start off with the funnier stuff - University students.

I've talked with nearly a dozen university professors in Korea now, so without actually having taught a class, I'm still fairly confident my descriptions of what it's like are fairly accurate. There's plenty of interesting things to be said about university students in Korea, but I'm going to stick mainly on the subject of entitlement.

I think I wrote about this several months ago, but I had heard a story of a Korean family who moved to Canada, enrolled their son in some college classes, and when the son failed school, the family became incredibly upset. Not at the son mind you, but at the school. How could the school have failed their son when they paid so much money for him to get his degree? While I can't guarantee the truth to that story, I've heard plenty more first-hand experiences that would lead me to believe it's true. Every prof I know has failed a student, and every prof has had that student or their parents complain about how they should not be allowed to fail their student. Here are two of my favourite stories:

A student at a Seoul university fails a class. He didn't attend any classes after the first week, showed up to the final and failed badly. Upon receiving his failing grade, he went to my friend (his prof) and told him he needed a "C". "Without a C grade I will lose my job placement," he said. My friend refused, told him he should have come to class, studied, and basically worked for his grades. After a week of continual requests, my friends boss finally phoned him and told him to give the student the C he wanted. Apparently it's quite common for students to be able to requests certain grades assuming they have some kind of special (or even not so special) circumstance.

The same friend gave another student a D in a class. The student phoned my friend one day and said, this:

"I'm confused about my grade." What's the problem, said my friend.

"It's too low." Well if you'd studied harder and done better on the test, it would have been better. "Oh," says the studend, "hold on." The student's mother comes on the phone:

"I'm confused about my son's grade," she says. Why are you confused, says my friend. "It's too low," she says. Well if he'd studied harder, my friend tells her, he could have gotten a better grade.

"Oh," she says. "Just a moment."

The father comes on the phone.

"I'm confused about my sons grade..."

I know I said 2 stories, but I just thought of another friend who had three students fail a test. They pleaded for a week to be allowed to pass. Finally she relented - sort of. She let them re-do the test AND they had to clean all the windows in her house. I thought that was pretty funny.

I'm gonna skip my part on animals right now, it's pretty sad and will take a while, so I'll fill that in later this week. Instead, let's touch on "the rules".

I'm currently signed up to work for an English camp outside of town for two weeks this summer, and I had to ask special permission to attend this camp. Another English summer camp came up, one which paid a significantly higher amount of money, and so after finding a replacement for my first camp, I asked my school if I could switch. OK wait, that's not entirely true. I didn't ask them, I told them, thinking it wouldn't be a problem. Weeeellll, was it ever a problem. While I only deal with the one teacher in my school who speaks English, everyone has been harassing her over why I'm trying to switch camps. It hasn't been very easy on her since I've been phoning the first camp to explain to them that I'm not coming, they then phone my school, and my school gets upset again because I'm not letting it go.

It seems making a "first promise" is quite a big deal, and I committed to this first camp so I should do it. What's more, working in a school means I'm a public servant, and I'm not allowed to work outside my set boundaries (in my case it's within Mokpo only). Both these camps are out of town, so I need special permission to go. Since I'm the only one benefiting from my going to the camp, my school doesn't see it as appropriate that I go. There's no real difference in how the camps work, there's still the needed number of English teachers, everything would work out just fine, but since I'd already been given permission to work one camp, they won't change it to allow me to work a different one.

Anyway, I'm rather bothered by it, but there's really nothing I can do now. My school contacted the other camp I wanted to work and told them specifically that I would not be allowed to attend. It's not a fun way to finish my time in the country, being upset with my school for something like this, but at least it does give me some more free time to see Korea before I leave.

The Way It Is

I was sitting at my desk, modifying my after-school attendance sheet so that it equaled 20 classes, and I realized I should probably write this down in my blog. I'm sure I've already touched on how I need to fudge the numbers each month for my class's attendance, but I'll go over it again as I write about the way things need to be in Korea sometimes.

There are about 20-22 classes in my extra class each month, and regardless of holidays, sick days, absent students or even a city-wide natural disaster, I need to have 20 days marked down as having taught my extra class. One month I only taught 16, and so another teacher guided me through the process of erasing all the dates, adding imaginary classes into the attendance book, and being sure I was now logged as teaching 20 classes. I was only one short this month, but I still went and changed it anyway. That's just the way it is here.

I've taken quite a liking to the fruit juices they make at a lot of the snack shops and cafes here, but again, you have to get it the way it is. For example, mixing of the fruits in your juice is generally a big no-no. I love getting strawberry and banana mixed together, but 90% of the time, it's not allowed. I've offered extra money, pointed out that both fruits are RIGHT THERE and just need to be put in the blender, but regardless of how hard I try, the menu says it's like this and so that's the way it's gotta be.

Anyway, it's almost the end of an age, as there's less than 2 months left for me here in Korea. That's only about 6 more blogs! Geez, time is rolling by fast, but there'll be new stories and countries to write about soon after. I'm doing a Round The World trip with Shannon starting in October, which will last over 8 months and reach probably several dozen countries. I'll post a rough itinerary in the next week or two, once I have a better idea what it will be like. Thanks for reading!

Four Days In China

So depending on how you add up the land mass of the US, China is either the 3rd or 4th largest country in the world. When people ask me now if I've been to China, I suppose I can say yes, but 4 days in Shanghai hardly constitutes exploring the country.

Shanghai is exactly the opposite of what I had expected China to be, even after hearing from so many people how un-Chinese it is. In my mind I saw densely crowded streets, buildings and people jammed together so tight the city might explode, and every square inch of available space would be used for something - anything - given such a large city in such an over-populated country.


Instead, Shanghai came across as a strange mix of European architecture, western North American urban sprawl, and with lots of money to make everything look bright, lively and artistic. I obviously didn't even see all of Shanghai while I was there, but the parts I did see featured wide open boulevards, pre-planned green spaces tucked between gated communities and European-styled apartment complexes, and massive downtown skyscrapers reminding me of financial districts from Canada or New York city. I should have taken pictures of the city itself rather then the frisbee tournament.




But yes, it was the frisbee tournament I came for, and that's where most of my energy and time went into. I did spend Friday touring around the Shanghai Museum, it's downtown shopping districts and Yuyong plaza where all the tourists go to shop, but after that it was nothing but green grass and frisbees.


My team did pretty well the first day, going 2-2 despite a few setbacks and winning a really tough game at the end of the day. One of the major setbacks we had was that I got a minor bout of heatstroke. For a few hours all I could do was sit in the shade and drink water or gatorade. I took some tylenol and some unexplained Chinese herbal medicine, and while I was able to play later in the day, I wasn't quite "right" again until the next day around noon. I think I was the first person in bed that night out of all the 200+ people at the tourney.

I wasn't the only one who got ill though - on my team alone, 2 more people got heatstroke, another had food poisoning, and at least 2 or 3 put themselves into poor shape from partying too hard. By the time the second day rolled around, we were
certainly not at our best form, and the team we worked so hard to beat the other day walked all over us. Regardless though, it was an awesome weekend with tonnes of good food, frisbee and other activities, many involving alcohol. It was probably the only chance I'll have to see China, and though it may have only been about 10% of Shanghai I saw, I at least have the big ol' stamp in my passport proving that I made it.

100

I'm not sure why people have such a proclivity and fascination with round, precise numbers (especially big ones), but hitting my 100th blog seems to be a event worth noting. This means I've been putting out just over a blog per week for the past 21 months, and keeping up with it has made me pretty proud.

Things here are going pretty great, though I've nearly been hit by more cars than normal these past few weeks. I actually had one guy on a scooter deliberately swerve at me, I suppose since he felt I was walking in his driving space, so I was mildly surprised the other day to find a man sleeping in the middle of the road, one shoe flung to his side, his arms under his head for a pillow. No one seemed to take much notice of him though, and both cars and pedestrians maneuvered there way around his outstretched body with little concern for him.

I ended up taking two days off of work last week due to illness, and even now I'm still suffering from a nagging cough, though otherwise I feel quite good. My coteachers have shown a great amount of concern for me, and while their suggestions on why I might have gotten sick (cold mornings followed by hot afternoons) aren't too helpful, it's nice to know that they want me to get better rather than show up for work regardless of my state of health.

A Case of Spite

Shannon's school held an English competition today, and they had asked me to come and judge it. My school then requested an official document of sorts, something to excuse my absence from school, but by the time Shannon's school sent it to mine, they had decided to hold an English competition of their own on the same day. I suppose my principal didn't feel like being outdone by anyone else, but the thought that went into planning this competition was brutal. While I knew from Shannon that my school would hold a competition today, no one from my school informed me until yesterday at 5pm. Shannon has spent the past week helping students prepare speeches, practice pronounciation, etc. and I have done zilch. Until I was given the list of who was reading this morning, I had no idea which students were competeing or how many there would be. Things went about as well as you could have expected, though I was impressed with a few of the speeches that were written. One was done on the "Mad Cow" situation currently happening:

"The chances of getting mad cow are very small, but if we eat mad cow beef, the chances go up. Koreans have genetics that make them more likely to get mad cow. It could take 10 years for symptoms to show up. In 10 years I'll be 23. Do you really want me to lose all my hopes and dreams for cheap beef and risk getting mad cow?"

It wasn't quite that well written, but you get the idea. For those of you who are unaware, Koreans have been protesting the import of USA beef for stwo months now. Over 12,000 people are gathering almost nightly in Seoul to protest, hundreds of people have been arrested, and nightly the news shoes police beating and water-canoning protestors in the streets. It's quite a big deal, and as I check the Korean Herald, it seems as many as 80,000 people have been gathered to protest importing US beef. Even Mokpo has candlelight vigils these days slamming US beef and the Korean government for allowing it in.

My class just wandered in, so I best get off the computer and begin teaching. I'm going to China this weekend for ultimate, which I'm incredibly excited for. Hopefully I'll have some fun stories, great pictures and interesting things to say on Chinese culture to share next week.

Sick Days

I think after nearly 2 years, I've grown pretty accustomed to living in Korea. My blogs are less and less about what strange and unexpected things I find, and more about the adventures I'm having around the country. I think it's a good thing, though I hope it doesn't make for boring reading.

I'm sick today, which I think happened from far too much activity and stress on my body. Shannon and I went up to Seoul, and besides playing hard ultimate for two days, we also went out each night and were singing our heads off at a noraebong on Saturday night until 5am. I think it was my spirited and over-the-top rendition of "Don't Stop Believing" that did my vocal chords in, and I had some very difficult times speaking clearly to my students yesterday. Today I feel even worse, and I woke up a few times during the night in some wild fever sweats.

In the past 20 months, I think I've taken 4-5 sick days. I know 2 were legitimate, 1 was to take care of Miso when we first got him, and another I think I just didn't want to work that day (I needed a mental health day I suppose). Today is definitely a legitimate day to call in sick, or at least it would be in Canada. In Korea that's not really the case. I don't think I've ever seen a Korean take a sick day yet. I've only noticed people miss school when relatives die or there's some other educational function they need to attend. So tomorrow when I go back to school, it's going to be quite a big deal with lots of "Did you go to the doctor" and "What was wrong with you" from everyone.

Oh wait, my principal last year did miss half a day once. I thought he looked so sick he could die at any moment, but he made it until 2 o'clock or so.

Students are the same, sometimes coming to school when they can hardly stay on their feet. I've heard a rumour of a student who died from people ignoring just how sick he was, but my google searches on it came up empty. It might not be a true story, but the idea behind it, that Koreans generally feel you should not be slowed by colds and flus, is definitely true.

Well, it's back to the couch for me now. I'm not really sleepy, but I think a good day of eating fruit, lying down and taking it easy will help me feel better for tomorrow. I'll need all my energy to deal with the 300 "Teacher are you sick?" questions tomorrow.

Outside the Comfort Zone

There's never a dull weekend in Korea these days, and this weekend was certainly no exception, as Shannon and I joined another couple for a climbing trip on Geoje Island, 5 hours east of us on the south-east coast of Korea. Traveling around the peninsula is something I've become quite good at I feel, as my travel vocabulary is at a good level to make sure I always know where I'm going and when I'll get there. Of course, I don't always know what to do when I arrive, but I'm working on that part.

Our trip to Geoje Island took us to a tiny beach town called Gujora. From there we had to walk up to the climbing location (called a "crag"), which was above an even smaller town called Mangji. Not knowing exactly the way to get to the crag (we could see it, but not the path to it), we walked for an hour from Gujora to Mangji. We spent another hour puttering around Mangji looking for a place to stay. Then a restaurant we could eat at. Finding neither, we walked back halfway to Gujora only to find the restaurant along the way was out of all food till summer. Our two friends had finally arrived (and had brought food), but the 2 1/2 hours waiting for them were a very trying moment in the travels of Shannon and I.

We took a cab (thank goodness) to the crag several hundred metres above Mangji. Our cab driver was down-right batty, and even Matthew, the Frenchman who had been taking private Korean lessons for a year through his company, could hardly figure what he was ranting about most of the time. Still, he got us where we needed to go, and some food helped make everyone feel better.


The climbing was quite fun, though ultra-relaxed. There was a Korean group at the crag who said they came to climb all weekend, but spent all of 2 hours on the wall and the rest of the time camping and drinking soju. They gave us a ride into Gojura around 5:30, which by that time I had only spent 20 minutes on the wall. The second day was quite a different story however.

We got a good early start the next day, getting a ride from one of the ajosshi's in Gojura to the crag. We then decided (well, everyone else decided and I just stood there nodding) that we should do a multi-pitch. This is where you climb up, anchor into the wall, bring everyone else up, and continue on from the point you reached on the first climb. Sounds fun, until I got up there, just me and Matthew, and I nearly pooped myself.

I've added a picture I drew to help you understand what it was like, but here's my verbal description to go with it: There's a 60cm cable hanging 20-25 metres in the air. Matthew and I are dangling from this cable and nothing else, waiting for Shannon and our friend Heather to come and join us, at which point 4 of us are now hanging from this small cable and over 70 feet in the air. When I first got up, all I could
think was how badly I needed to get down "RIGHT NOW!", but I got through it with some nice coaching from the others, and soon the four of us were leaning there, bodies pressed against each other, Heather and Matthew sorting out the rope and belay for the next climb. Being the least experienced and most nervous, I was given the only chunk of rock to sit on, meaning everyone else was hanging from the wall anchor, pressing their feet against the rock to keep themselves upright and balanced.




The next stage of the climb was interesting, and quite challenging for me. To start with, if you fell, you would fall on the people below you. Once past the first bludge though, it was quite easy climbing, and the next anchor was one we could sit down at. After that, it was a simple climb to the top of the mountain, where we relaxed with some watermelon and pictures (on Matthew's camera, which is why I don't have any of them up yet).


The trip home took over 6 hours including the 30 minute cab ride to the bus stop. We get Friday off this weekend, and so it might seem like a nice time to recover from all this activity and traveling, but the next three weeks have me playing some long rigorous games of ultimate to get ready for the tournament in China. I'm really
packing every spare moment in with something exciting here in Korea, and I'm looking forward to July when I'll have a moment or two to breath, relax, and have a little down-time. Well, I'm not "looking forward" to it really, since I'm way happier doing these more exciting weekend trips, but I know I'll appreciate the break when it comes.

My blog last week was tinged with anger, so I should be quick to point out how wonderfully everything turned out in the end. Not perfect, but well enough that I'm more than happy with the result. We were able to cancel one of the food orders, and though we had to buy the more expensive meals, and I will probably have to pay some
money to the restaurant we canceled with, the ultimate tournament made enough money to cover all those costs plus everything else necessary for the weekend.

The weekend of frisbee in Mokpo was great, I really don't know what more I could have asked for. 45 people came to town for it, there was another 8 or so doing concession and volunteer work for the town orphanages, and we had a few random spectators come by on and off to watch the games in action. I did most of the placing of players on each team, and I did my best to keep all the teams perfectly even, and I came as close as I could have I think, with the majority of games ending with only 2 or 3 point differentials. My team however did go 5-0 for the weekend, winning it all in the end.


It felt great putting the whole weekend together, and it wasn't nearly as stressful as I had imagined it would be. I was fairly good at keeping track of things, and
there were only three major setbacks during planning, all of which were handled great I think. One of them included the bar owner where our
party would be getting in a car accident, so while I wasn't able to negotiate the beer prices I wanted, I made up for it by buying each team 2-3 jugs of beer.

It's Tuesday now, and I'm still pretty beat from the weekend, though not nearly as sore as I thought I'd be. I only got about 3 1/2 hours of sleep each night this
weekend, yet I felt great playing everyday, so I'm not sure where I'm hiding all the exhaustiong I thought I'd be suffering from. Perhaps I was enjoying myself so much, I just kind of forgot that my body was supposed to be in pain. Hope everyone reading this had a good weekend as well!

Don't Help Me, Listen To Me.

A situation has developed in the last few minutes that's got me quite angry. Actually, it's developed over the last few days, but it was only a few minutes ago that I became aware of it. The ultimate tournament is this weekend, and ordering food has been the crux of the planning, causing a mild headache as I try to sort out how many people, what kind of food, and how cheap I can get it.

I talked to my school on Wednesday, and they found a place that would do it for $4.50. Not bad, I said, let me talk to you by the end of the day Thursday to let you know numbers and if it will work for us. This was on Wednesday.

I then talked to one of Shannon's co-teachers, who was able to get it for $3.50 a meal. Great, I said, let's order it. This was Thursday.

Today is Friday. I come in first thing in the morning and tell me school not to worry about ordering the food. Which of course they already have ordered, back on Wednesday when I was trying to figure out the price. I spend the next 30-40 minutes trying to get them to cancel, but it seems the place they've ordered from is doing this especially for me - they don't even make the food I wanted to order, but my school got them to do so and at a $1.50 a meal discounted price. Needless to say, when they hear that I want to cancel, they are right upset.

So we call Shannon's co-teacher to try and cancel that. Same problem. Now I've got two sets of meals ordered, one of which I never wanted to begin with but only wanted to know the price, and everyone (other than me) seems to be in agreement that I have to pay for both of them.

I know there's a way around this situation, but I can't speak Korean so I can't explain or have explained to me the way things are. I don't even know how my school managed to order these meals, since they didn't know how many I wanted or what time I wanted them, and they seem to be putting meat in them as well which I also didn't want. What a disgusting waste or resources this is turning into.

Anyway, I'm still not going to lose any money due to this disaster, but I'm not going to be able to buy any of the extras I wanted for the weekend (beer, prizes, bananas and bread). Obviously my school wasn't trying to screw me over, but this minor misunderstanding is really putting me on edge right now. I know I should have gone to tell them Thursday that I didn't want the food, but why the %$*@ did they order it without knowing the exact details of it? They didn't even wait until Thursday, they ordered right there in front of me on Wednesday when I thought they were just finding out the cost!

Oh, and right in the middle of this ordeal, the fat administrator guy who is always making jokes about my not speaking good Korean walked in and gave me a goofy-smiled lecture about closing my windows in my classroom. It's proabably the closest I've come to punching anyone. I'm calm now, but I think this is going to be a long day.

5 Is The Magic Number

I'm feeling pretty good right now after a long day of playing ultimate in Seoul and hanging out with Miso. There's an ultimate tournament happening at the end of June in Shanghai, and it looks like I'll be able to get one a team going over there. It's quite competitive, so I've been busing or training up the past few weekends to play.

I took the dog this time, which meant he and I spent 8-9 hours on buses, subways and trains as we shuttled from Mokpo to Seoul to the fields and back. Quite a heavy trip for the both of us, but it was not without its nuggets of entertainment. My favourite was on the subway, when an ajosshi encouraged the two of us to sit down next to him. He spoke English, and it was a 30 minute ride, so I sat down and we started talking.

He was sober, which was wonderful, but still nuts as could be. Or at more likely, he had once been quite an intelligent guy, but things seemed to have been sliding on him the past decade or two. He spent the majority of our ride together discussing the significance of the number 5. I guess he saw something about the Olympics, and he thought of the rings, which lead to the many other universal links of the number 5.

"5 rings, 5 fingers."

'5 vital organs: heart, lungs, liver, stomach and kidneys."

"5 parts of the face." He never explained those.

"5 colours of hair." What?

"5 colours of skin. Yours is white. I am yellow. Africans are black. Russians are... uh, Russians are red. And Australians, Australians... uh... 5 colours of skin, you see!"

There were also 5 ways of speaking, 5 shapes of the mouth, etc. etc.. It was the deepest conversation I've had with a stranger in quite some time.

"My Dog The Racist"

Yep, Miso is a racist. He knows a Korean when he sees them, and he does not like them. Even our Korean friends who hang out with us get the same treatment from him: Barking, snarling and running away. Foreigners only need to s much as look at him and he's in love with them, and will cry 5 minutes after meeting them if they leave him. But Koreans, my goodness does he get his "hate" on when they come around. He still fears children, though I had we had a great encounter with a foreigner today that leads me to believe it may again be just Korean children. I think maybe I need to train him a little better with Koreans and children, or perhaps it's time to start trying to train the people he meets on how to make friends with him.

I Want To Eat Your Manager

We're putting on an ultimate frisbee tournament in Mokpo next weekend, and I've spent some time going around to businesses in town asking for sponsorship. The title of this blog is what I said to one of the staff at a store trying to speak with their manager. I may have actually asked to eat "with" the manager, but either way, the staff member gave me a wonderfully strange look before she managed to figure out what I was trying to accomplish.

So far no one has decided to help us with our tournament, which I think is more a result of us not being able to communicate properly with local businesses than their unwillingness to sponsor events. No one knows what ultimate frisbee is, and while I have managed to put together some request letters in Korean explaining our plight, they don't seem to have done the trick. The one time I did manage to have a Korean come with me to help translate became nearly as problematic as if I had gone on my own. Shannon's old co-teacher, a magnificently intelligent and nice woman, met me at city hall to help negotiate lowering the costs of renting the fields, but the from the moment I saw her until just before we were ready to leave, she was crying. She managed to keep her composure fairly well, but tears were pouring down her face, she went through piles of tissue wiping her nose and eyes, and no matter how much I protested that we should perhaps wait till she was feeling better, she was determined to trudge on and get things done. No one we met with said anything about her emotional state, and she was fairly quick to assure everyone that she just had a real big piece of dust in her eye, but wow, what a strange afternoon that turned out to be.

Some other friends had an incredibly difficult experience of their own recently , one that ended with the police coming to their apartment. My one friend was cleaning her apartment to get ready to leave the country, and another girl had come over to help her tidy up. The two of them were taking the garbage out, and they didn't sort it out into the proper recycling piles right away, as they had to bring more from the apartment. Well, the ajosshi (middle-aged man) patroling the parking lot went ballistic, running after them and slapping them across their bodies to get them back to fix the garbage. The girls got scared of course and ran back inside; the ajosshi followed them, now accompanied by an ajumma (middle-aged woman) and hauling all the garbage they had just taken out. At the apartment door, more shouting ensued, and the drunk next-door neighbour decided to get involved. The girls were now pushing the door closed to keep people out of the house, the gabage had been kicked down the stairs and had exploded everywhere, and not knowing what else to do the girls called our Korean friend who phoned the police. When they arrived, things calmed down a bit, as the drunk man was put back in his house, the lady cleaned up the garbage and the garbage ajosshi eventually went back outside.

I should take a moment to explain these two terms, "ajosshi" and "ajumma". Basically they mean a middle-aged man and woman, but they're used in many different ways. The online dictionary translates them as "auntie" and "uncle", Koreans have explained the words as describing someone who is married, and both can be used as a respectful description of a person or as an insult. Foreigners may say someone is being very "ajosshi" when they're coming across as arrogant and imperious, yet if you watch a Korean movie, you may read a subtitle that uses someone's name yet hear them being referred to as "ajosshi" instead. An "ajumma" can be anyone from a loving grandma to a poor street person who collects cardboard from the streets for recycling.

What it seems has happened is that Korea, being a culture that places great emphasis on respect for elders, has been caught in an almost paradoxical situation where older people (the men moreso) are given a natural respect by society, and have in turn taken for granted the respect they've been given and make themselves look like fools. The garbage ajosshi was certainly right that the girls didn't sort their trash, but smacking them and chasing them into their apartment doesn't really get the point across. Most ajosshi's take great care in dressing nicely and taking care of themselves, but at night it's those same old men in suits that you find peeing in the parking lot outside your front door. Foreigner discussion forums online are filled with strange stories about old men defacting in flower pots on the street, falling down drunk on the sidewalk and just sleeping there, or harrassing people around them if they feel they aren't being treated the way they deserve to be. Shannon pointed out that in North America it's often the women who want to get married because life seems so much simpler to them after that. In Korea, most men are looking to get married and women much more wary. From what I've seen and heard, once couples are married and move in together, the man becomes much more "I'm the man" and the woman takes care of the house and kids. The co-teacher who was crying during our trip to city hall - Shannon and I both suspect her husband may be cheating on her, and we know he spends a great deal of his time outside of work golfing and drinking. He's certainly not the kind of man to go passing out on the street or telling strangers how they should run their lives, but I think some of those "ajosshi" qualities are a little much sometimes.

Geez, I feel like I've done another one of my "Look how bad Korea is" rants, when the truth is I'm really enjoying my time here lately. My palate has warmed to Korean food to the point I'm going to miss it when I leave, I've made some wonderful Korean friends over the past few months, and school is, well, it's OK. I really am going to miss this country when I leave. Anyway, I've written lots for today and I think it's time to get ready for class. I've had heaps of holidays the past few weeks, so I'm a little slow on keeping up with the blogs, but thanks for keeping with me. Take care till next week.

The Weekend Warrior

I finally got my things together - and by things I mean photos - and now I've got a couple of fun weekends worth of adventure to blog about here.

Nearly two weeks ago, 16 of us from Mokpo took the 5 hour boat ride to Jeju Island, the "Hawaii of Korea", a nearly tropical Korean paradise with various degrees of actual "paradise" qualities to it. Actually, if you've read my old blog on the trip Shan and I took to Jeju, you'll see it is really quite nice.


This year's tournament wasn't quite as fantastic as the one last year - not as much free food or drinks, separate fields for different levels of teams, and far too many teams seemed to suffer from self-imposed curfews, making the party on Saturday and Sunday wind down by 1am. It was still loads of fun, though Saturday had us riddled with challenges on the fields.
The wind was bordering on hurricane strength, our team was placed in a much stronger competition level than we belonged in, and it wasn't until the final game of the day that we managed to score more than 2 points against another team. Still, good times regardless.

Sunday was much better, and the calmer weather meant for some enjoyable games
regardless of whether we won or lost. We won the first two games fortunately, but lost our final game, giving us 2nd place in the "C" division.

Last weekend had myself, Shannon and a few other Mokpo-ites traveling east of Seoul to a tiny town called Ganhyeon, where heaps of the local and foreigner climbing
community had descended upon for a weekend of climbing adventure. I also got to meet up with my old University buddy Les who's been living in Korea as long as I have but we hadn't met up yet.


The climbing was great, I learned plenty of new knowledge on climbing, pushing myself a little harder and further than I'd thought possible, and I managed to replace a little more of the nice tender skin on my hands with a callous layer or, well, callouses.

Kids vs Adults

I'm not sure who takes the cake for strangest behaviour, kids or adults. I've had a few more unusual run-ins with adults the past week, but one of my kids threw me for such a loop I'm not sure what to make of it.

While walking yesterday, I noticed a lady walking her granddaughter (I assume), and nearly get hit by several vehicles. She was crossing the street 30 meters away from the crosswalk, and looking the wrong way so as to not see any of the oncoming traffic. A bus came by blaring its horn, and while I jumped in the air having been so frightened from it, she didn't even look in its direction, but did at least take half a step back. Once the bus was gone, she again began crossing the road looking away from the coming traffic.

I also have started once again to run into a former Korean acquaintence, a possibly mentally handicapped man who throws out every English sentence he knows all at once -
"Hello nice to meet you my name is Ki Baum how are you I am fine where are you from nice to meet you what is your name I am from Korea how are you nice to meet you..." and on until I move out of earshot.

My student though, there's nothing really wrong with him, he's just a little eccentric. When I first got here he would hold my hand sometimes (many students do that), then he started humming "here' comes the bride" when we walked. Lately he's started hugging me and telling me how much he loves me. And finally, last week he wrapped himself around me while I was at my computer (he's quite a hefty fellow) and tried to kiss my face. I don't know where he was trying to kiss, cause I got my hands up awfully fast, but it was certainly not an appropriate or welcome gesture. He's a nice kid, seems to get along with everyone else, but he's the kind of kid you see wearing bow ties, sweater vests and sporting a crew-cut. Something's just not adding up.

I'm a little behind on this weeks blog, and I realized it's cause I wanted to talk about my last weekend in Jeju, but I don't have any pictures yet. Most of the photos were taken by our amateur photographer guy Dave, and I haven't snagged a copy of them, and I really want to put up some good shots of me and the team playing. My only good team photo had someone (I'm sure it couldn't have been me...) acting mildly inappropriate, so I think I'll wait till I get a more accurate photo-description of the weekend. I will however say that I had a great time, played really well at least one of the two days we played, and I'm going to be sad to miss next years tournament.

Finally, I'm hosting an ultimate tournament here in Mokpo. You can see our details at www.mokpoultimate.com, and yes I know there's heaps of type-o's, I'm sure I'll get to fixing them later (well, I'll have my helper fix them, I don't actually make the website). While I'm sure a trip to Korea is probably out of the question for most people, everyone I know is more than invited, and if you make the trip from overseas, I promise to waive the $20 registration fee. So long for now!

Ach! Germs!

There's plenty of cultural differences you hear about in Korea that never really seem real until you go through them. The difference in perception of germs and contagious diseases was something I've heard about, and I've seen people take minimal care to avoid coughing or sneezing on others, but last week was the first time I really had something unexpected happen to me.

My grade 3 class came in, and their teacher was looking rather ill. In fact, she looked extremely ill, and I was surprised she had even come to school. I asked if she was OK, and she gave a hoarse response that she was, and we talked for a moment longer at which point she began coughing all over me. I was so surprised, I did a big learing slide backward and gave her a wide-eyed "what the heck are you doing lady?" look. She hardly seemed to notice anything was wrong other than our conversation had ended, and turned away from me casually, still coughing.

So now I'm sick, and I'm convinced it's her fault. I'm going to have to ask a few Koreans to get their thoughts on communicable diseases and whether they feel something like my experience is not a good way for people to stay healthy.

In other news, I've taken on the position of person most likely to have their bike stolen in Korea, if not the world. I write this only because, after having three bicycles stolen from me in the past 12 months, all of them locked up, I see no reason why a 4th or 5th won't also take place - unless of course I stop buying new bicycles. Two were taken from my school when left over-night (both locked and slightly hidden from view) and one was taken from outside my apartment building, locked again but it a less than desireable spot due to a flat tire and a big hill in front of me. Add this to the very expensive bike I had stolen from me while in Calgary (that one was not locked up and was just me being careless), and I'm starting to think that bicycles and I were just not meant to be together.

This is a big "ranting" day it seems, cause my last topic of discussion is also to complain, though like everything it's all in good humour and never actually upsetting (well, stolen bikes and the loss of money is kind of upsetting). So last week I wrote about the disorganization of the voice recording Shannon and I were doing. Well, here we were, a week later, the day it needed to be sent in, and word finally trickled down that we needed to do the entire project over again. As far as I can tell it was a culmination of a lazy recording technician who couldn't be bothered to sort out what English was correctly recorded and what was incorrect, as well as no one telling Shannon or I what we should be reading and what we should be leaving out. And so, we read the whole book again from start to finish, recording it in a single shot. The guy played the necessary music in between chapters, we couldn't cough or talk between sections, it was ridiculous. There were a few mistakes we made which he seemed the tech guy seemed to think he could patch up, but otherwise it was the most ludicrous recording session you could have done.

To make things go more smoothly, we had to drop all the grammatical changes we made to the book. See, this textbook we were reading was full of errors and just strange sentence formations, which we had edited to sound more appropriate. But we didn't have the edited copy, and fixing it on the fly meant lots of mistakes. So instead, we just read silly paragraphs like:

"Shinan is a place of many bridges. The bridges connect the islands to the islands. Especially Jeungdo is the beautiful island. Photographers may like to come here and take nude photos."

I am a little embarrassed at having my name attached to the project. Oh, and I had this goofy cold that was given to me as well, so I sound sick for the text book too. Oh geez, it's too funny.

Anyway, thanks for sticking around through my fun complaining session. I'm off to Jeju, the hawaii of Korea, this weekend for some ultimate. Lots of pics and fun stories to tell I'm sure, so take care until then!

Bloomin' Blossoms

It's cherry blossom season in Korea, and I thought I'd put up some of my attempts to artistically capture the colours erupting from the trees. These shots are all from the hill behind our house where I've been walking Miso in the mornings before school.

Contrast and Strangers

I've started teaching at a gifted school every Monday from 5-8pm. It's a nice little job that pays $30 an hour, so it's worth the loss of my Monday nights, but it's proving to have some unexpected challenges to it. These kids are indeed quite ahead of the rest of their age group, and for the first three weeks, they've quickly devoured everything I've thrown at them. My 3-week lesson plan on phonics I had developed was handled in a single class, with hardly a single mistake made in both the grade 5 and 6 classes. The students at my school have trouble correctly determining the difference between right and left, while yesterday I did a lengthy "Deserted Island" lesson plan with the gifted students, where they had to come up with what they would bring with them to a deserted island and explain why they would bring it.

The other little money-maker Shannon and I have been doing, the text-book voice recording, has possibly wrapped up,
but no one really knows. See, we go into the recording booth, and are given instructions 4th hand by the sound booth technician. See, the people who decide what to do work on an island school out of town. The administrators tell Shannon's school what they want, Shannon's school tells Shannon's co-teacher, and Shannon's co-teacher tells us and the technician over the phone. Any questions we have take about 2 or 3 days to answer properly, and so after 3 or 4 weeks now, we've only gone into the studio three times, and we still don't know if we've recorded it satisfactorily.
Despite the strange manner of communication, it's a fun job to be working, and I hope I get to hear myself on the finished product one day.

Strangers

Being in a new environment can leave you a little more aware of the things and people around you, especially when those people are a little strange, demented or outright creepy. After my trip to Busan last week, I've also found that when you enter a new environment, those strange creepy people are also quite good at noticing you.

I arrived early to the beach on Sunday, and sat down alone to eat some breakfast. While fixing my bag, a guy leans over my shoulder, and says to me:

"Water hey? That's great." I think he's talking about the ocean, so I mutter yeah and go back to my bag. He points at my oranges and says:

"Tangerines too. That's really nice." Ahhh, so he's complimenting me on my bottle of water and my fruit for breakfast. Thanks I say, but still don't turn to face him.

"Are you Australian?" No, Canadian. "Oh good, I don't like Americans. You sound so different. You must be a good Canadian. Very friendly."

He goes on like this, talking to my back for another minute about accents, when 4 more ultimate players show up. He mentions something about my friends coming, then darts off.

Next comes a guy in a soccer jersey and filthy pants. He's shaking everyone's hands, asking names and forgetting them, dancing a little bit and trying to give out hugs. He also talks rather briskly to one of the Korean ultimate players, Ki Boum. "What did he just say?" I ask Ki Boum.

"He told me to keep my mouth shut."

Over the rest of the day, the soccer dude would continue to scurry around us talking to whomever he could, another man would walk on the field repeatedly then just watch the games while we tried to shoo him off, and a lady with nothing to sell tried to sing along to some English songs with us hoping we would buy some of the things she didn't have.

Mokpo, being a smaller city, doesn't seem to have as many prominent crazies, but there are definitely a few characters out there. How all these people though managed to learn English so well is a little beyond me, but you gotta hand it to them for finding a way to get their point across, no matter how pointless it really is.

The Love Motel

The idea of a "Love Motel" is by no means unique to Korea, but its ubiquitousness, usefulness and staggaring range of (or lack of) comfort offerings makes it very worthy of detailed mentioning.

While I have no facts on the rates for monogomy and infidelity in Korea and no idea on the prevalance of prostitution, the sheer number of motels and hotels marketed towards guest looking for brief and discreet stays makes me think both are quite common. What makes these motels so nice is that they are so cheap, and so long as you check that the room is OK, they can be quite pleasant. Any overnight stay away from Mokpo will usually take on the following routine:

1. FInd a busy part of town, and look for a not-too-shady side street.

2. Duck under the hanging-rope car entrance used to hide the identities of people walking from their cars to the motel.

3. At the front desk, bend over so your head is level with your hips - the front desk window is kept low and tiny so the clerk won't know who you are.

4. Avoid paying more than $30 a night, but be sure the room is clean from cigarettes, dirty laundry and previous guests (that hasn't happened yet, but I'm sure it will one day)

5. Avoid like the plague the terrible horrible X-rated movies playing on the TV. Even if you wanted to watch pornographic materials, you'd probably have a better time watching animals at the zoo than the painfully unflattering material offered on these TV's.

My previous stay at a love motel went quite well until I tried to actually sleep in it. Not only was the parking lot used as a drunken teenage sports field at night, but there was a noraebang (karaoke bar) right below me. By 3am I fell asleep, but I nearly lost my mind when at 6am the singing started again, now more drunken and off key. By 6:15 I had packed up all my bags and was asking the front desk for a new room upstairs, but they had none to give me. By 7 the singing stopped, but then a new game of baseball had started in the parking lot, and so rather than spend my morning sleeping, I spent it walking around looking for a new motel. The one I did find was amazingly better, putting me on the 5th floor and giving me free access to the public sauna/bath house in the building, which made me very happy once again.

This last motel adventure was during a trip to Busan to play ultimate. It turned into a great time despite my crazy-making first sleepless night. Here's some shots of me on the beach - the close-up is just after a dive for the disc, that left my face full of sand.


It's a quiet few weeks I think for now, then it's off to Jeju as a dozen of us go play in one of the bigger ultimate touraments around. There's even a team flying in from the US to play, which is pretty unexpected yet quite exciting.
In the meantime, it's busy times at school, as all my classes are coming these days and none of the teachers are showing up to help. Means of controling students are usually available to me, but it sure takes a lot of energy to get 30 kids who don't speak English under control, and I think I may have to have a talk with my administration staff about making all teachers accompany their students. Otherwise, it's going to lead to one unhappy mind-melted me.

Communication Through Song

This week I'm keeping the blog short and letting someone else do all the work. For a great musical and visual Korean experience, here's a video put together by some English teachers from the English in Paju (I wrote about it as the Disneyland-like English centre).

EV Boyz - Kickin' It In Geumchon

They do a great job of describing things in Korea without being too cruel or obnoxious. The chorus they're singing uses the Korean words "Kamsahamnida" (thank you) and "Annyong Haseyo" (a general greeting, or "peace be with you" roughly).

I may have to post another blog this week - we just had a murder mystery party over the weekend, and while it has very little to do with Korea, it was still a ripping god time with some great costumes. Anyway, thanks for reading!

Nice To Meet You!

There's a teacher at my school who says to me "Nice to meet you!" every day we meet. My students do the same thing to me, and no matter how many times I tell them it's wrong, they just don't quite get it.

Whether you're old friends catching up, or strangers walking past each other on the street, "Nice to meet you" has become the quintessential greeting Koreans use when speaking English. There is very little deviation from it (until people become quite fluent), which I can't quite understand. I think it stems from a bad translation of the Korean word 반갑다 (bangabda), meaning to be pleased, which is a general greeting used in all sorts of situations for Koreans. Since this verb can be used for both "Nice to meet you" and "Good to see you again" people here seem to have stuck with the first one they learned. And so I've begun taking pain-staking process in each of my classes to differentiate between "Nice to meet you" and "Good to see you".

The next miracle I perform on my students will be to stop the use of nouns to describe feelings. This, however, I find hilarious, and I'll be sad if I do ever teach them to stop answering questions like "How are you?" with "Teacher, I am smile." or "Teacher, I am pizza!" One of my favourite responses when I ask how students are comes from one of lower level students. Wang Jeong Uk (왕정욱) is in gr. 5 and has about zero English skills. Even 5 extra hours a week with me still didn't get him anywhere. But now, after two years with this goofy kid, this is how he answers me:

Me: Jeong Uk, how are you?

Wang: Teacher, my angry... (waves his hands) Kim Jin Geon punch-ie! (makes a punching sound.) My (korean ramblings)... My teacher (falls out of chair) yes? O-K? Yes!

Me: Good job, Jeong Uk.

So it goes.

I'm off to make some legitimate extra money after class today. You may or may not be aware of many teachers making extra cash teaching private lessons in Korea, which is quite illegal and can get you booted from the country. In the last week however, I've gotten myself some legitimate overtime with the city education office at $30 an hour, plus Shannon and I did the voice recording for a small island English text. The city job is pretty straight forward, but the recording was quite unreal. I don't think there was much emphasis put on getting it done "properly" when it came to this book. Besides the savage amounts of spelling mistakes, Shannon and I were put in a recording booth with no one who spoke English, given no direction besides "stop" and "go" and asked to read various paragraphs and dialogues. Some of the dialogues invovled as many as 5 separate characters, and while I tried to do some voice "alteration" to fool some of the more deaf children who might listen, all you get is me sounding like a horse and Shannon giggling in the background. And our Korean soundman?

"Good. Go." he says.

Anyway, they may call us in to re-record it, they may just give us $150 each for 2 hours work. I'm not expecting any further interest in my talents, but it sure would be fun to do again. If anything new happens, I'll write about it next week. Thanks for reading.

Expansion Of My Horizons

I just took my first sip of a cool, refreshing McCol. http://www.ilhwa.co.kr/english/english.asp?m=detail&v=biz&c=beverage&sid=00054&sp=00053&l=2&pid=300050
I didn't even know what it was when I took my first sip, but it smells like a
sterilized stainless steel barnyard, yet it tastes like, well, barley cola I guess.It's been a while since I've had my socks blown off by something so unexpected, so I had to write about it quickly. Anyway, I'm off to play volleyball now!

오늘 어떠요? How Are You Today?

I don't think that's a very "Korean" thing to say (안녕하세요, "peace be with you" is really the norm for greetings), but I wanted to write something Korean in my title today.

It's a quiet day today, and I'm spending my afternoon listening to Bob McDonald on the Quirks and Quarks CBC podcast. Today he's talking about the possibilities of finding life on other planets, which may be much more likely than people think - the downside is that anything found would probably look about as lively and animated as a bucket of mud. So, with the loss of all possibilities of my visiting life on other planets, I'm glad I've taken the time to see all the alien-worldly things here in Korea. Here's what's been happening lately.

I've taken a liking to going rock climbing these days, and just did my first Korean 암벽드유ㅏㄴ (ambyeokdungban), or rock climbing, trip. My fingers felt like I'd ran them through a cheese grater for 5 hours by the time I was done, but it was a great time.

Have I talked about my new co-teacher at school yet? Well, she doesn't really help me teach, but she does aid me in other matters, and being the young eager-to-please teacher that she is, she's super helpful for me. Everyday we sit down for an hour studying Korean (for me) and English (for her), and for the first time since I've been here, I'm actually spending a good deal of time speaking Korean. I was feeling so confident today, when I needed to head to the bank for a minute, rather than sneaking out of the school like I normally do, I actually went to the office and asked my vice principal for permission. Another teacher in the room burst out laughing, but I said everything pretty correct, and he didn't make me sign the multiple sheets of paper discussing why I need to go the bank, how long I'll be, then gather the 3 signatures needed before leaving. Pretty sweet.

Here's another shot I took of Shannon climbing while in Thailand. It's one of the best action shots I took all month, I just got my shoes delivered in the mail this morning, so pretty soon it'll be me ripping up the rock like that. In the meantime, I'm sticking to ultimate (frisbee). If anyone's interested, there's some tournaments happening in April here in Korea. I'll be sure to save a roster spot and even buy a beer for anyone who makes the big trip over. Till next week!

A Whole New Ball Game

A little change can go a long way, and my school just went through a massive change, making this semester completely unlike the last 17 months I've spent teaching at school. I'm not sure whether things are going to be better or worse, but they certainly are different now.

For starters, I'm now the 3rd longest tenured teacher at my school. Of course, I still have to get help when I need toilet paper for the bathroom, but all but two of the teachers who were here when I arrived have since rotated schools, something teachers do here on usually a 4-year basis, but I guess working at Jungang Elementary speeds that up a bit. Mostly I don't mind, some new faces are nice to see and meet at school, and no one gets tired of my strange English teacher antics this way. Unfortunately, my principal has left, and I'm now faced with a new, much more "by-the-traditional-book" kind of guy.


My New Principal

It took two days for my principal to speak to me (he has zilch for English skills). Before that, he asked others while right in front of me "Does the English teacher not have a cell phone?" and later on (while I wasn't around) make sure I was given proper instructions for saying hello and bowing in the morning. I now need to not only ensure I say "Please be peaceful honourable sir" each morning, but I was given a second round of instruction to remind me to enter the room fully, face my principal, and bow directly at him. I also need to do this for my vice-principal, and again for both when I leave school.

My vice-principal, who gets along much better with this new style of leader, now feels more comfortable guiding me towards becoming a better and honourable Korean. All ready he's begun informing me at lunch that I must eat everything given to me on my plate, something he would only mutter under his breath last semester. In reponse, I've changed times I eat lunch, and am much better at preventing the cafeteria workers from putting nasty foods on my tray.

Volleyball has also taken on new levels of importance, which is awesomely horrible since our teachers are even worse volleyball players than before. Last week we played 3 or 4 times, and most staff meetings revolved around how to improve our volleyball skills. When we do play, I'm trapped in this grey void of not knowing whether to impress the few male teachers and play hard, or have fun with the female teachers and not violently crush balls at them. It's degenerated for me into this silly dance where I spend 80% of the time with my hands in my pockets, then leap up to knock one or two balls down so I can get a high-five from my principal. Then, back to twiddling my thumbs and trying not to act too ridiculous on the court.

Well, I should wrap this up here. I didn't teach at all last week, setting a new personal record for internet surfing and time wasting. The British term for it is WILFing (What was I Looking For?) when you surf online without any real direction. I'm teacher a few extra classes per week now though, so perhaps I'll be moderately busy this semester.

Oh, while I don't mean to drag this out into another epicly long blog, but here's a funny tale from teaching. Last year my students were getting a little... over-excited... about certain body parts and human activites that start to get interesting once you're around 12 or so year old. During my teaching of parts of the body, they demanded very much to know the words for "penis", so they could use it in ways not ideal for speaking to me or other students. Well, I didn't feel good having them saying penis so rudely, but I didn't want them to be clueless or wrong about body parts, so I just gave them "groin" as a suitable and useable word. Now I've got kids yelling groin around the school left right and centre, making strange hand gestures and talking about "groin-groin-go", it gets so ridiculous I end up laughing with them and at them at the same time. That of course only encourages is, but hey, whatever gets them speaking English, right?

A Few More Pictures

Here's some more photos I wasn't able to add in my last blog. While most should be self-explanatory, the one with the crab is a little strange. During our beach camp-out, Shannon noticed this massive crab hiding in the corner beside the toilet while she was sitting down, causing her to let out a horribly loud scream and nearly break the bathroom door down as she flew out.

No Country For Tall Men

It's a short man's world out there, and I've got the divots in my head to prove it. 30 days in Thailand has only cemented the fact that people over 5'10" are not normally given the kind of consideration we deserve, and bathrooms, hostels, restaurants and nearly anywhere there's a doorway can be a treacherous place.

Yep, my month vacation in Thailand has come to an end, and it was a wonderful and exciting time that I'm sad to see go, yet it feels good to be back home in Korea where things are a little more stable.
Besides all the whacking of my head, I also contracted food poisoning twice, so it has been very refreshing to sit on my couch or bed after a long hot shower and not have to worry about doing activities or catching buses any time soon.

To recap the last month, Shannon and I spent 29 days in Thailand, 13 days in the south and 15 up north.
I know that only equals 28, but traveling ate up at least one day, perhaps even two. In the south, we went to Tonsai/Railay, where we rock-climbed and relaxed for 8 days solid. I had my first incident of food poisoning there, which kept us a day or two longer than we wanted, but it's about the most beautiful place in the world to be stuck at.

Our next stop was in Koh Pi Pi. This was another mega-beautiful tourist destination, where we went scuba diving and then spent a night camping on the beach where that late '90's movie, "The Beach" was filmed. Looking back, I realize that both Tonsai and Koh Pi Pi were incredibly tourist dominated remote locations, with no locals living there that weren't there to make money in tourism.
Foreigners, or "farangs" outnumbered Thais by as much as 5-1, and while we did get to experience the geography of Thailand, there really wasn't as much Thai culture to be found with so many foreigners muddling about.
Still, it was an amazing, magnificent time, and if nothing else, we got to see a 5 or 6 metre whale shark while scuba diving, which definitely had my eyes bugging out of my skull.


The north was much more varied, and I enjoyed it in an entirely different way than the south. Instead of beaches and rock climbing, we had mountains and hiking; most of our stops were only for 2 or 3 nights, and we covered an incredible amount of distance by bus, foot and bicycle.


In Tham Lod, our first major stop, we went caving. I never thought much for caving, but I certainly do enjoy it more now. Our first 7 hour hike took us through three caves, one lengthy deep one with vertebrate fossils in the back, one with 2000 year-old Thai coffins, and another that was a tiny stream cave. The stream cave was something I never imagined doing, and probably wouldn't have if I had stopped to think about it before crawling in.
For most of the 25 minutes going into this cave, you had to crawl on your hands and knees, sometimes even flat on your belly, through a small stream and it's muck to get along the cave. It was only wide enough for one person, and it terminated with a 20 meter waterfall where 5 years ago a Dutch person had fallen to his death. The cave was so small and awkward, it took two days to find a way to get the Dutchman's body out.

The second caving trip we did was a kayak tour through a massive cave filled with birds and bats. The bat poop was several centimeters thick on the ground, and gave off an incredible odour that wasn't terrible, but not at all pleasant either.

After Tham Lod, we went to Mae Hong Son to hike through the mountains. There's many different tours, packages and means to go hiking in Thailand's hills, and we wanted to do it in a way that exploited the people and animals of Thailand the least. One of the tribes living in Thailand are the "long-neck" tribes you may have heard of. Women generally in these tribes will put those metal rings around their necks, extending them over time as a beautification things. Well, at first we thought, "wow, how neat, a cultural event we should probably see." Well, that's not really what it is. See, these people are historically Burmese refugees who have fled Burma and now have started being exhibited in Thailand for the "neat" way they decorate themselves. The neck decorations they do probably would be gone by now, but the people are kept in small villages just off the main road so foreigners can pay $10 to go have a look at them. It's kind of like a human zoo, and while plenty of travel offices/writers seem to think it's okay, every local we talked to and newspaper we read said it was a sad example of exploitation of people in need of help and money.

So, our hike went through more traditional, less exploited villages from other people more closely linked to rebel soldiers than human zoo colonies. We hiked for 5 or 6 hours every day and would spend our nights sleeping in big bamboo huts, raised off the ground. Pigs, dogs, chickens and cows strolled around the huts, and the entire human population of these villages never was more than 10 or 12, and the fist night it was only 2. The second of our three days hiking, we crawled into another cave, which I know distinguish from the others by the animals lurking inside. Our guides, who knew what they were getting into, brought sticks with them to keep any trouble away, which at fist I may have thought was the bats. This cave, being much smaller than the previous caves with bats, had bats flying only a few feet from our heads (or into our guides head at one small point). But, it was the snakes that had everyone on edge by the end - poisonous cave snakes, which I was told will kill you, live in the caves around there, and we came across two of them. One stopped us from going any further, and the second was a good sign for us to get the heck out of the cave ASAP.

Our final event from the north was the self guided bike tour Shannon and I did. This probably would have been one of the highlights of the north if we didn't both get food poisoning again only 60 km into the trip. We spent the next two days and 100+ km struggling to make it to our next destination, ignoring all the beautiful scenery and side trips we could along the way. By the time we got back to the finish in Chiang Mai, I was ready to denounce any and all forms of physical activity for the next few years of my life. In the end, it took only a few more days to get my back on my feet feeling good, but by the time a few more days rolled around, I was in Korea again.

(I'll have a few more pics to add soon, I couldn't get them all of the camera in time for this week.)

And so, tomorrow is Monday, which means I'm back to work at school. I'm not dreading it as much as I thought I would be, but I'm not terribly excited either. I know I'll probably not teach any classes, and spend most of the day on the computer or studying Korea, then have a moderately fun dinner out with all my teachers, full of strange food that even after 18 months I still can't identify it's origins. It does feel very good being back in Korea though - after so much time being sick in Thailand, the familiar foods and feelings, sounds and smells, it all makes me feel quite strong and healthy again. I even ate two big chunks of kimchi (pickled spicy cabbage) at dinner last night and enjoyed it intensely. I may make a Korean out of myself yet.