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!
Tuesday, April 22, 2008
Wednesday, April 16, 2008
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.
Tuesday, April 15, 2008
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 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.
Tuesday, April 08, 2008
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.
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.
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