My body is a little achy these days, accumulating a collection of small nagging injuries that Korea seems bent on preventing me from properly healing. My trips to the doctor have provided me with strange sorts of remedies, some of which you already know if you've read my entry on the herb-doctor. Since that time, I've developed a possible case of sciatica, bruised/sprained my knee playing hockey, and my shoulder has begun to act up with some sort of weird usage pain. The shoulder is the most annoying one, as it seems to be a result of not being able to sleep on my side properly (from the sciatica and the ol' case of bursitis) plus my school computer has been set up to be used in the most awkward manner possible, straining my arm everyday when I work.
Now, things aren't all bad. I told my doctor here and a friend at home about the sciatica, and that doesn't seems to be going away, and my knee and shoulder are sloooowwwly mending, but I tell you, being overseas and being injured (even slightly) is a giant, giant pain in the neck (or wherever you're hurting). The unfamiliarity of the medical offices and procedures, the language barrier when explaining problems, and the uncertainty as to what's being done to you makes getting treatment a very onerous and daunting experience.
I took the day off school on Wednesday, which is something Koreans don't really ever do. I've missed two days due to "sickness" all year, and that's 2 days more than the rest of the teachers combined (I think, I'm not always sure who's here and who's not). Anyway, the point is, I decided to take the day off for a number of reasons, the main one being - there's now a dog in the house.
You'll notice I didn't say "Shannon and I have a dog now," because we shouldn't quite call him ours yet. He was a stray puppy, who followed a friend of ours home one day, and we've decided to take care of him until we can find him a good home. This means holding onto him until we come to Canada in August, and sending him off with a new family. So, while I don't want to distance myself from the cute little guy, I do need to be wary that he's not "mine".
So, if you know someone who's interested in giving a cute little dog a home, here's what he's like: His name is either "Crunky" or "Miso", we haven't decided which yet. He's a Chipin, a cross between a miniature pincer and a chihuahua - he looks like a miniature pincer except for larger eyes and ears. He's extremely loving, wants nothing more than to curl up in someone's lap, though we're training him to play fetch and to sleep in his own bed, as he likes crawling under the covers when we sleep.
So that's that. He'll be 9 months old in August, so he's still pretty young and impressionable right now. If you know anyone who's interested, send me an email or write a line or two in the comments here.
I'm learning more and more about the priorities at schools here in Korea, and while giving the kids a good environment to work and learn in is a desirable outcome, other things seem to be more important. Paperwork for example, and maybe volleyball. Just now, while photocopying materials for class, I was stopped to make sure my personal attendance forms were filled in correctly. The process took 25 minutes to resolve, because I put things from April and March on one sheet, and I missed 15 minutes of my class. I've had whole classes canceled so I can "train" for volleyball. My extra class that runs three times a week is never questioned, checked up on, and the students are never examined to see if they're learning anything. I must, however, be sure to keep up the work log. Attendance also has to be taken rigourously, though the kids are allowed to be absent with no consequences whatsoever.
Anyway, it's time to get back to work. I've got a class to teach in a few minutes, and while it doesn't matter what I teach them (perhaps today I'll teach them some French), I do need to write down what it is I'm teaching them in the book. Till next week!
Friday, April 27, 2007
Friday, April 20, 2007
What Doing Nothing Can Do To You
I've worked a total of 6 hours this week. That's it, just six total hours of class. Take away the 10 minutes of prep before and clean up after each class, and really I've only worked 4 1/2 hours this week.
And wow, am I bored. I thought it would be cool to have nothing to do, but my body's stiff from sitting still so long - I've spent nearly 30 hours in front of my computer this week, doing nothing! Well, 5 minutes and I'm out of here to go home and this week's over. Ooough, I need stimulus so badly! Why didn't I bring a book to school!
And wow, am I bored. I thought it would be cool to have nothing to do, but my body's stiff from sitting still so long - I've spent nearly 30 hours in front of my computer this week, doing nothing! Well, 5 minutes and I'm out of here to go home and this week's over. Ooough, I need stimulus so badly! Why didn't I bring a book to school!
Thursday, April 19, 2007
All Whacky on the Eastern Front
One of my more noble (More noble? Nobler? Do I really teach this language?) goals here in Korea was to learn the Korean language. After 8 months, which it will be in just a few days, I think I could now comfortably say I can speak beginner Korean. I can communicate how I feel, give terrible directions, muddle through dates and times, and basically explain what I want in the most basic of possible terms to someone who doesn't speak English. I've learned also that I'm not a natural when it comes to learning a language, and that most times common sense and a little insight will get you much farther in a conversation than knowing the right words. I can't count the times that Shannon and I have been in a cab and she's able to answer questions the cab driver has much faster than I am based solely on how he asks them, the look he gives and by remembering that no one ever really asks anything original anymore (where are you from, what do you do here, etc.).
Still, I'm trying to get better, and sometimes having no teacher can be incredibly frustrating. For example, I'm trying to learn how to say "just", as in "I just want cheese on my pizza." No big deal right? Well, here's how it's gone so far...
The first book I went to had two definitions, "o-chik" and "kyeo-oo". Well that makes sense, "just" can have variations to it's meaning. So, I look up "only", which is maybe a more accurate word for what I want. "o-chik" it says, problem solved, right? You'd think so, only (did you catch that there?) even the word "only" can be used different ways, just like "just". So, onto the next book.
I look up "just" first - "kuh-nyang" it says, adding a third word to my list of possible definitions. This obviously doesn't help me,so I look up "only" again in the second book It gives me a fourth word, "mal", adding even more confusion to my definition search. In an attempt to eliminate something, I look up "right" (as in "it's right (just) beside me"), and I get "ba-ro". This is not going well.
My next stop is to use online translators, which of course gives me three more definitions, "da-man", "dan-chi" and "kwon-ri". At this point, I'm completely lost, and practically give up all hope, which is the exact reason why I started writing on the blog here, to vent a little frustration at not being able to sort out the language problems I'm having. However, since starting my entry here, I was able to remember seeing the word "just" used in the context I wanted, and have found that "mal" was the word I wanted, but this kind of situation happens with apoplectic regularity.
A brief lesson in the Korean language: At home, it's pretty easy to slip in and out of formal speaking when necessary. You ease up on the abbreviations, watch the slang, maybe even stiffen your shoulders a bit to look more proper. In Korea, all that holds true, but the language - the words used to form sentences - actually changes. An example was given to me regarding going out for a meal. There are at least three different words for "meal", one that's casually used among close friends, one with people older than you, and one that's highly formal and very respectful. Each word is completely different, it's conjugated differently when used as a verb, yet they all have identical meanings. And it's like this for just about everything; even just asking someone's name can become two completely different sentences without changing the meaning or sentence order, it just depends who you're talking to.
I've finally finished my first Korean language book, so I can occasionally sound as though I know what I'm talking about when speaking. This however has turned into as much of a drawback as a good thing. Korean people who don't know you will talk your head off if they think you know Korean, and they quickly become frustrated when they learn you aren't able to say more than a few basic commands. One taxi driver was so incensed he spent most of the cab ride complaining about English teachers moving to Korea and not learning any of the Korean language before arriving.
Well, that's my language rant for today. I've had to teach a total of 6 hours this week, so I've felt a little bored and restless, and it doesn't feel as though anything has really happened since last time I blogged. With the hockey playoffs on right now, I'm spending more time watching TV on the computer than I am working with the students at school, which seems like a bit of a waste of time and energy, but I really don't have a whole lot else to do. Till next week!
Still, I'm trying to get better, and sometimes having no teacher can be incredibly frustrating. For example, I'm trying to learn how to say "just", as in "I just want cheese on my pizza." No big deal right? Well, here's how it's gone so far...
The first book I went to had two definitions, "o-chik" and "kyeo-oo". Well that makes sense, "just" can have variations to it's meaning. So, I look up "only", which is maybe a more accurate word for what I want. "o-chik" it says, problem solved, right? You'd think so, only (did you catch that there?) even the word "only" can be used different ways, just like "just". So, onto the next book.
I look up "just" first - "kuh-nyang" it says, adding a third word to my list of possible definitions. This obviously doesn't help me,so I look up "only" again in the second book It gives me a fourth word, "mal", adding even more confusion to my definition search. In an attempt to eliminate something, I look up "right" (as in "it's right (just) beside me"), and I get "ba-ro". This is not going well.
My next stop is to use online translators, which of course gives me three more definitions, "da-man", "dan-chi" and "kwon-ri". At this point, I'm completely lost, and practically give up all hope, which is the exact reason why I started writing on the blog here, to vent a little frustration at not being able to sort out the language problems I'm having. However, since starting my entry here, I was able to remember seeing the word "just" used in the context I wanted, and have found that "mal" was the word I wanted, but this kind of situation happens with apoplectic regularity.
A brief lesson in the Korean language: At home, it's pretty easy to slip in and out of formal speaking when necessary. You ease up on the abbreviations, watch the slang, maybe even stiffen your shoulders a bit to look more proper. In Korea, all that holds true, but the language - the words used to form sentences - actually changes. An example was given to me regarding going out for a meal. There are at least three different words for "meal", one that's casually used among close friends, one with people older than you, and one that's highly formal and very respectful. Each word is completely different, it's conjugated differently when used as a verb, yet they all have identical meanings. And it's like this for just about everything; even just asking someone's name can become two completely different sentences without changing the meaning or sentence order, it just depends who you're talking to.
I've finally finished my first Korean language book, so I can occasionally sound as though I know what I'm talking about when speaking. This however has turned into as much of a drawback as a good thing. Korean people who don't know you will talk your head off if they think you know Korean, and they quickly become frustrated when they learn you aren't able to say more than a few basic commands. One taxi driver was so incensed he spent most of the cab ride complaining about English teachers moving to Korea and not learning any of the Korean language before arriving.
Well, that's my language rant for today. I've had to teach a total of 6 hours this week, so I've felt a little bored and restless, and it doesn't feel as though anything has really happened since last time I blogged. With the hockey playoffs on right now, I'm spending more time watching TV on the computer than I am working with the students at school, which seems like a bit of a waste of time and energy, but I really don't have a whole lot else to do. Till next week!
Friday, April 13, 2007
Busan, Seoul, Itaewon and Paju
My school is like a ghost town right now - it's so quiet in here, I had to peek in a classroom just to make sure the kids were at school today. Indeed they are, but I guess it's a big test day or something. I wonder if I'll have any classes today?
So what's been happening in Korea lately? Well, a little bit of traveling around the country, that's what. Korea is only about 100,000 km²(compared to 10,000,000 km² for Canada), so getting around to places generally doesn't take too much effort. In the past few weeks, Shannon and I have been to Seoul and Busan, the two largest cities in Korea, as well as a few other minor stops in between.
The first stop was Seoul, which was really just a necessary detour on the way to Paju. Paju is home to the largest "English Village" in Korea. "What's an English Village?" you say? Glad you asked! It's a few things:
1) It's a giant replica of what an western-style town looks like with a slightly Asian feel to it.
2) It's a small western-style town turned into a mini-Disneyland and called an educational experience.
3) It's a giant drain on the local governments tax funds, as there's no way educating children on how to speak English requires a giant concert hall, two swimming pools and a fully operational (yet destination limited) trolley car.
Shannon and I are thinking of working at this English Village, as it pays fairly well and most of the teachers working there seem to like it (it has one of the highest resigning rates we've heard of in the country). However, it's rather isolated, and sits a stone's-throw away from the DMZ, so barbed wire and military posts would be a regular part of our lives living there.
*Quick Interlude: One class has come so far today, my grade 1's. The kids tricked me into saying the crayons were "poo-colour", which was pretty funny.*
After visiting Paju, we made the two-hour trek (along with a friend of ours who's moved to Paju) back into Seoul. Technically we were in Seoul, but the area of town we went to, named Itaewon, is so far removed from what anything else in Korea is like, it's hard to imagine it as being a legitimate part of the country. Most restaurants, stores and bars here all cater to different people and cultures from around the world, and English is spoken more commonly than Korean. We actually found it a bit overwhelming, and ducked out to a small Korean restaurant for a while. I know I've put down Korean food a lot in the past, but this place turned out to be unexpectedly delicious, so much so that we ordered double of everything we had (the beer included). And, after eating enough food to fill up 7 people, it only cost us $9 each.
Last weekend Shannon and I went to Busan, the second largest city in Korea. There was an ultimate hat tournament taking place there, right on the main beach in town, so the two of us hopped on a bus and had a monsterously good time meeting new people and playing sports for the weekend.
Of course, even an amazing experience doesn't come without it's own little tidbits of weirdness, challenges and unexpected oddities. Take the beach for example. The whole thing (well, the sand anyway) was shipped in from somewhere else so that Busan could have a nice, authentic beach feel to it. It's the flattest beach you'll find anywhere, as the tides never rise above up more than a quarter way up the beach. They have to clean the sand regularly just to keep all the crud from building up, though I still managed to gouge myself nicely on a hunk of mystery material while diving for the disc.
The tournament itself was great, with my team being given a serious advantage on experienced players. It wasn't until the final game that anyone managed to score more than 7 or 8 points on us (games go to 13), and though we lost in the final, it will be remembered (by me anyway) as a questionable matter,
as the other team lost one of their weakest players and replaced him with the hottest guy (in terms of skill, not aesthetics) in the tournament. In the end we lost 13-8, but it was a nice and intense affair for everyone involved. Running on sand for 4 hours a day, two days in a row, is a tiring affair, and after getting back to Mokpo, my body nearly shut down completely. My first day back, I hardly had enough energy to give the kids word search puzzles, much less actually teach them anything. 
If you want to check out the rest of the photos from the weekend, go to http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=1811&l=e8f88&id=515456629 I put most of the epic shots I have here, but there are a few goodies still to see. Be warned - there are shots of partying and mildly lewd behaviour in there, nothing to get your heart racing, but enough that you might question the actual maturity level we professional English teachers actually hold. Enjoy!
So what's been happening in Korea lately? Well, a little bit of traveling around the country, that's what. Korea is only about 100,000 km²(compared to 10,000,000 km² for Canada), so getting around to places generally doesn't take too much effort. In the past few weeks, Shannon and I have been to Seoul and Busan, the two largest cities in Korea, as well as a few other minor stops in between.
The first stop was Seoul, which was really just a necessary detour on the way to Paju. Paju is home to the largest "English Village" in Korea. "What's an English Village?" you say? Glad you asked! It's a few things:
1) It's a giant replica of what an western-style town looks like with a slightly Asian feel to it.
2) It's a small western-style town turned into a mini-Disneyland and called an educational experience.
3) It's a giant drain on the local governments tax funds, as there's no way educating children on how to speak English requires a giant concert hall, two swimming pools and a fully operational (yet destination limited) trolley car.
Shannon and I are thinking of working at this English Village, as it pays fairly well and most of the teachers working there seem to like it (it has one of the highest resigning rates we've heard of in the country). However, it's rather isolated, and sits a stone's-throw away from the DMZ, so barbed wire and military posts would be a regular part of our lives living there.
*Quick Interlude: One class has come so far today, my grade 1's. The kids tricked me into saying the crayons were "poo-colour", which was pretty funny.*
After visiting Paju, we made the two-hour trek (along with a friend of ours who's moved to Paju) back into Seoul. Technically we were in Seoul, but the area of town we went to, named Itaewon, is so far removed from what anything else in Korea is like, it's hard to imagine it as being a legitimate part of the country. Most restaurants, stores and bars here all cater to different people and cultures from around the world, and English is spoken more commonly than Korean. We actually found it a bit overwhelming, and ducked out to a small Korean restaurant for a while. I know I've put down Korean food a lot in the past, but this place turned out to be unexpectedly delicious, so much so that we ordered double of everything we had (the beer included). And, after eating enough food to fill up 7 people, it only cost us $9 each.
Last weekend Shannon and I went to Busan, the second largest city in Korea. There was an ultimate hat tournament taking place there, right on the main beach in town, so the two of us hopped on a bus and had a monsterously good time meeting new people and playing sports for the weekend.
Of course, even an amazing experience doesn't come without it's own little tidbits of weirdness, challenges and unexpected oddities. Take the beach for example. The whole thing (well, the sand anyway) was shipped in from somewhere else so that Busan could have a nice, authentic beach feel to it. It's the flattest beach you'll find anywhere, as the tides never rise above up more than a quarter way up the beach. They have to clean the sand regularly just to keep all the crud from building up, though I still managed to gouge myself nicely on a hunk of mystery material while diving for the disc.
The tournament itself was great, with my team being given a serious advantage on experienced players. It wasn't until the final game that anyone managed to score more than 7 or 8 points on us (games go to 13), and though we lost in the final, it will be remembered (by me anyway) as a questionable matter,
as the other team lost one of their weakest players and replaced him with the hottest guy (in terms of skill, not aesthetics) in the tournament. In the end we lost 13-8, but it was a nice and intense affair for everyone involved. Running on sand for 4 hours a day, two days in a row, is a tiring affair, and after getting back to Mokpo, my body nearly shut down completely. My first day back, I hardly had enough energy to give the kids word search puzzles, much less actually teach them anything. 
If you want to check out the rest of the photos from the weekend, go to http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=1811&l=e8f88&id=515456629 I put most of the epic shots I have here, but there are a few goodies still to see. Be warned - there are shots of partying and mildly lewd behaviour in there, nothing to get your heart racing, but enough that you might question the actual maturity level we professional English teachers actually hold. Enjoy!
Thursday, April 05, 2007
Did Somebody Call For an Herb Doctor?
In January 2006 (perhaps less than an hour into the new year), I hurt my hip in an unfortunate tobogganing accident. I was the only person injured during the event, made more bizarre by the fact I wasn't even in a toboggan at the time, and I've had some slight discomfort ever since. Multiple trips to the doctor with X-rays and many furrowed brows determined I was most likely suffering from bursitis, a swelling of the bursae sacs around my hip. Since the only problem was a little discomfort while sleeping, everyone said "let's see what happens." Here's what happened:
A few days ago, at Taekwondo (a whole blog unto itself), I was doing some stretching and ratcheted my hip awkwardly. It was bad enough that I told my school the next day I was going to Gwangju (nearby large city) to see an English speaking doctor. Instead, they directed me to the nearby "herb doctor", or practitioner or Chinese medicine. Well, Western medicine just told me to wait around the last time I was checked out, so why not give it a try I figured.
From what I can gather, the herb doctor's is a place you go for general body aches and pains, injuries, and anything that looks like it doesn't need surgery. I met with Jo Joon Boem's father (see my blog "My Dinner with Jo Joon Boem"), who checked my mobility, then I was off to the treatment room.
No one here could speak much English (the doctor knew some words), so the process of getting me prepped for deeper observation was a challenge. They had to get at my hip, so I was told to undo my pants. Makes sense, but in my mind, that meant take them right off. So that's what I did, right there in front of the nurse, who gave a good loud scream and ran into the back room. I had underwear on, but it didn't seem to be enough to calm her down, so I wrapped a towel around myself, shouted some "I'm sorry"s over the curtain, and got back down on the table.
A few pin pricks later, it was determined I had some "bad blood" in the area, and that it was best to have it removed. They stuck some acupuncture pins into my hip and buttocks and after a few minutes at rest, attached some electrodes to the pins. So began my "shock therapy", as minor jolts were sent through my lower body. After this, I had electric massage paddles placed on me, and was given a lengthy electric massage. Finally, they came back to draw out my bad blood.
A suction cup was placed over the area to draw out the blood. The pressure pulls much of the blood to the surface for the later sucking process. After the cup is removed, a big hand "wacker" that looks something between a ear-piercing gun and a stapler that lost its base is used to plunk some holes in your skin. Then the suction cup is thrown back on again (it's like a tall, skinny tea cup) and it sucks all the blood out of these holes in your body. They then finish it off with an ultrasound, and send you on your way.
Did it work? Well, I'm not sure yet. I've got some slight bruising and soreness from the blood sucking/suction cupping, and I went back a second time to get it redone because they missed the right spot the first time (even the second was still slightly off target). However, I'm less swollen now than I've been since the injury, and the new pain I had from Taekwondo is all gone. I'll have to get back to everyone in a week or two and see how it goes; for now I'm not sold on the idea of TCM (traditional Chinese medicine), but if I get even a little better, maybe it's worth it.
A few days ago, at Taekwondo (a whole blog unto itself), I was doing some stretching and ratcheted my hip awkwardly. It was bad enough that I told my school the next day I was going to Gwangju (nearby large city) to see an English speaking doctor. Instead, they directed me to the nearby "herb doctor", or practitioner or Chinese medicine. Well, Western medicine just told me to wait around the last time I was checked out, so why not give it a try I figured.
From what I can gather, the herb doctor's is a place you go for general body aches and pains, injuries, and anything that looks like it doesn't need surgery. I met with Jo Joon Boem's father (see my blog "My Dinner with Jo Joon Boem"), who checked my mobility, then I was off to the treatment room.
No one here could speak much English (the doctor knew some words), so the process of getting me prepped for deeper observation was a challenge. They had to get at my hip, so I was told to undo my pants. Makes sense, but in my mind, that meant take them right off. So that's what I did, right there in front of the nurse, who gave a good loud scream and ran into the back room. I had underwear on, but it didn't seem to be enough to calm her down, so I wrapped a towel around myself, shouted some "I'm sorry"s over the curtain, and got back down on the table.
A few pin pricks later, it was determined I had some "bad blood" in the area, and that it was best to have it removed. They stuck some acupuncture pins into my hip and buttocks and after a few minutes at rest, attached some electrodes to the pins. So began my "shock therapy", as minor jolts were sent through my lower body. After this, I had electric massage paddles placed on me, and was given a lengthy electric massage. Finally, they came back to draw out my bad blood.
A suction cup was placed over the area to draw out the blood. The pressure pulls much of the blood to the surface for the later sucking process. After the cup is removed, a big hand "wacker" that looks something between a ear-piercing gun and a stapler that lost its base is used to plunk some holes in your skin. Then the suction cup is thrown back on again (it's like a tall, skinny tea cup) and it sucks all the blood out of these holes in your body. They then finish it off with an ultrasound, and send you on your way.
Did it work? Well, I'm not sure yet. I've got some slight bruising and soreness from the blood sucking/suction cupping, and I went back a second time to get it redone because they missed the right spot the first time (even the second was still slightly off target). However, I'm less swollen now than I've been since the injury, and the new pain I had from Taekwondo is all gone. I'll have to get back to everyone in a week or two and see how it goes; for now I'm not sold on the idea of TCM (traditional Chinese medicine), but if I get even a little better, maybe it's worth it.
Friday, March 30, 2007
Racism?
A funny thing happened the other day. It wasn't funny in the way that makes you laugh, but funny in the way that makes you think about things you didn't really before. A group of ten guys had gotten together to play poker, mostly English teachers, with our friend Jeff/Hyun Joon who's Korean, there as well. (His name is Hyun Joon, but he will often go by Jeff, as English speakers have trouble with his Korean name). During the course of the game, everyone was having some drinks, talking about the latest happenings at their school (most of which involved something unusual or challenging for them), "shooting the breeze" would be a good expression for it. One of the guys, during a rather animated tirade finished his comments with "I hate all Koreans". And suddenly he and everyone else remembered that Hyun Joon was sitting in the room playing with us.
Hyun Joon and I left pretty soon after (we were both out of the game quite early), and on our walk to meet the other friends who were out that night, he was noticeably upset by the comment. During our walk, I didn't know whether to try and justify it or condemn it, but I realized that little things like that happen all the time with English teachers here, though usually they're a little more subtle and not mentioned in front of any Koreans. Of course, no one hates all Koreans, at least not any of the people I would consider friends of mine. Occasionally there will be someone who will arouse enough ire within you to be able to honestly say you dislike them (maybe even hate them), but it's no more common here than it is with people you meet at home. Yet every time something unexpected and/or unpleasant happens, it so much easier to generalize the whole country as being that way. "They washed the floor with kerosene today - silly Koreans." "My school doesn't want me leaving the country for my days off - what are the Koreans thinking?" "I heard a girl got attacked by a Korean a few nights ago..." Well, this stuff happens at home too, but you never say to anyone, "Geez, Canadians are complete idiots, I can't stand them."
For most people here, I think it comes down to their inability to relate to anyone local. Language barriers are huge, and even when someone is fluent in English, it's still a challenge to really understand what kind of person they are and see the softer, underlying differences that make them an individual rather than another piece of the mass Korean collective. I've only met one person so far from Korea who has the fluency to communicate clearly and accurately everything she wants to say, and I'm amazed at how differently I see her compared to the rest of the people I meet here.
So does this make us all racists? For some English teachers here, their only interactions with Korean people are at their school, and maybe a little with the store workers they see and do business with. That's a very limited array of people to judge a culture on, but if that's all you have, and none of them are very nice to you, what do you do? If for 12 months your school treats you terribly, and you never really meet any other Koreans outside your job, it's tough to keep a positive attitude towards the rest of the country. On the other hand, it's way to common to see teachers here label the entire country as ignorant and incompetent when a single person lets them down (and probably only due to some error in communication).
Living at home in Canada, I remember seeing all social events for every possible ethnic group you could imagine - parties, study groups, political advocacy groups, even just drinking buddies. I didn't think much of it then, but I understand a lot more now why there was that tighter bond between all these people from another country living in a foreign land, and I can almost guarantee they suffer the same weirdness with Canadian culture and rant about "stupid" or "silly" Canadian people. So does that make them racists? When the incident at poker first happened, I wanted Hyun Joon to understand and feel better about what had just gone on, but I think now that I shouldn't have tried at all to play down the situation. To say "I hate Koreans" in any context or environment is poor way to express what you're feeling, and is not the way anyone should treat a person, a country or the people in it, and I hope to set a better example than that the next time I'm out with Canadians or Koreans.
Hyun Joon and I left pretty soon after (we were both out of the game quite early), and on our walk to meet the other friends who were out that night, he was noticeably upset by the comment. During our walk, I didn't know whether to try and justify it or condemn it, but I realized that little things like that happen all the time with English teachers here, though usually they're a little more subtle and not mentioned in front of any Koreans. Of course, no one hates all Koreans, at least not any of the people I would consider friends of mine. Occasionally there will be someone who will arouse enough ire within you to be able to honestly say you dislike them (maybe even hate them), but it's no more common here than it is with people you meet at home. Yet every time something unexpected and/or unpleasant happens, it so much easier to generalize the whole country as being that way. "They washed the floor with kerosene today - silly Koreans." "My school doesn't want me leaving the country for my days off - what are the Koreans thinking?" "I heard a girl got attacked by a Korean a few nights ago..." Well, this stuff happens at home too, but you never say to anyone, "Geez, Canadians are complete idiots, I can't stand them."
For most people here, I think it comes down to their inability to relate to anyone local. Language barriers are huge, and even when someone is fluent in English, it's still a challenge to really understand what kind of person they are and see the softer, underlying differences that make them an individual rather than another piece of the mass Korean collective. I've only met one person so far from Korea who has the fluency to communicate clearly and accurately everything she wants to say, and I'm amazed at how differently I see her compared to the rest of the people I meet here.
So does this make us all racists? For some English teachers here, their only interactions with Korean people are at their school, and maybe a little with the store workers they see and do business with. That's a very limited array of people to judge a culture on, but if that's all you have, and none of them are very nice to you, what do you do? If for 12 months your school treats you terribly, and you never really meet any other Koreans outside your job, it's tough to keep a positive attitude towards the rest of the country. On the other hand, it's way to common to see teachers here label the entire country as ignorant and incompetent when a single person lets them down (and probably only due to some error in communication).
Living at home in Canada, I remember seeing all social events for every possible ethnic group you could imagine - parties, study groups, political advocacy groups, even just drinking buddies. I didn't think much of it then, but I understand a lot more now why there was that tighter bond between all these people from another country living in a foreign land, and I can almost guarantee they suffer the same weirdness with Canadian culture and rant about "stupid" or "silly" Canadian people. So does that make them racists? When the incident at poker first happened, I wanted Hyun Joon to understand and feel better about what had just gone on, but I think now that I shouldn't have tried at all to play down the situation. To say "I hate Koreans" in any context or environment is poor way to express what you're feeling, and is not the way anyone should treat a person, a country or the people in it, and I hope to set a better example than that the next time I'm out with Canadians or Koreans.
Wednesday, March 28, 2007
Wednesday Pre-Blog
I'm splitting this week's entry up into two parts, as there's lots of random tidbits I want to get down here. Today should be relatively short, the next entry may be a little long though.
My school has undertaken new steps towards keeping the building clean - they've now started cleaning the floors with kerosene. As far as I know, this is a practice not done in any country outside of Korea, and possibly not anywhere outside of my school, and at first I thought it had to have been a janitorial screw up. But no, three times now they've broken out the kerosene, slopped it on the mops, and scrubbed down the school floors. Not only does this make our school a tinder-box-lawsuit waiting to happen, but it makes the floors slick as could be. When freshly cleaned, I can "skate" to my classroom. Kids are running and bailing all through the hallways, getting flammable liquid all over the clothes, turning them into tiny, mobile combustibles just waiting for a spark. And if that wasn't enough, it leaves the whole school smelling like a leaky gas station; the floors, however, do look nice and shiny.
Just today I was helping two of my favourite teachers judge students' English skills to attend an out-of-town English camp. Despite how much I like these teachers, I still end up at a loss sometimes for how they perceive the world compared to me. Students were judged as much for their class behaviour and personality as they were their English skills. The only student who was able to answer questions in full sentences was not considered to be a good choice to attend the camp (he's a nice kid, just a little reclusive). And the one kid they did choose was given big bonus points for being shy, since he was Rh+0.
What? Rh+O? The teacher wrote it out for me, and explained to me his "blood type" didn't let him speak as well in public as others, so he should get a second chance. He's a nice kid who I'd love to see do well, but wow, if blood type can double your English score, I wonder how it helps with your university entrance exams...
Anyway, it's time to jet now. I'm teaching the teachers English this afternoon, which is not without its own hiccups. 2 minutes before class started, my principal told me that the English textbooks he ordered did not arrive, and I would need to make up lesson materials for today. Of course, this wasn't a problem, since he never told me there was an English book coming anyway, so I lucked out and just happened to be ready. Sheesh, if I'm not able to understand most of what's going on with my Korean teachers, I wonder what they think is going on in my brain?
My school has undertaken new steps towards keeping the building clean - they've now started cleaning the floors with kerosene. As far as I know, this is a practice not done in any country outside of Korea, and possibly not anywhere outside of my school, and at first I thought it had to have been a janitorial screw up. But no, three times now they've broken out the kerosene, slopped it on the mops, and scrubbed down the school floors. Not only does this make our school a tinder-box-lawsuit waiting to happen, but it makes the floors slick as could be. When freshly cleaned, I can "skate" to my classroom. Kids are running and bailing all through the hallways, getting flammable liquid all over the clothes, turning them into tiny, mobile combustibles just waiting for a spark. And if that wasn't enough, it leaves the whole school smelling like a leaky gas station; the floors, however, do look nice and shiny.
Just today I was helping two of my favourite teachers judge students' English skills to attend an out-of-town English camp. Despite how much I like these teachers, I still end up at a loss sometimes for how they perceive the world compared to me. Students were judged as much for their class behaviour and personality as they were their English skills. The only student who was able to answer questions in full sentences was not considered to be a good choice to attend the camp (he's a nice kid, just a little reclusive). And the one kid they did choose was given big bonus points for being shy, since he was Rh+0.
What? Rh+O? The teacher wrote it out for me, and explained to me his "blood type" didn't let him speak as well in public as others, so he should get a second chance. He's a nice kid who I'd love to see do well, but wow, if blood type can double your English score, I wonder how it helps with your university entrance exams...
Anyway, it's time to jet now. I'm teaching the teachers English this afternoon, which is not without its own hiccups. 2 minutes before class started, my principal told me that the English textbooks he ordered did not arrive, and I would need to make up lesson materials for today. Of course, this wasn't a problem, since he never told me there was an English book coming anyway, so I lucked out and just happened to be ready. Sheesh, if I'm not able to understand most of what's going on with my Korean teachers, I wonder what they think is going on in my brain?
Wednesday, March 21, 2007
Fan Death
Fan Death, a freakish urban legend living solely here in Korea, is the subject of today's blog. If you've never heard of fan death, you may have trouble believing that Korean's say this exists, and if you've already heard of fan death, at least this will give you another chance for a good laugh. Either way, there's no arguing that fan death is one of the best and stupidest ideas that's ever come out of any country.
The idea behind fan death is that a regular household fan is not only capable of killing a person (generally while they're sleeping), but that serious precautions should be taken when operating a fan in your house. The concern over fan death has grown so large that many fans now come with warning labels to prevent accidental death-by-fan, timer switches have been installed to prevent injury, and many Korean experts have weighed in with their opinions on how fan death occurs and can be prevented. When talking with my Korean friends and acquaintances, they've all said to me "yes, fan death is possible" though they will say not very likely. So how in blue blazes can one of these rogue fans going about killing a person? Here's the list I got from wikipedia (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fan_death)
The Vortex - allowing a fan to run can create a vortex within your room, causing a vacuum effect on all the oxygen in the room.
Oxygen Consumption - a fan left running will burn oxygen, leaving carbon dioxide levels dangerously high.
Suffocation - the high speed air coming from the fan can prevent a sleeping person from being able to breathe properly.
Oxygen Chopping - the fan blades "chop" up the oxygen in the room, making it no longer breathable.
Hypothermia - sleeping under a fan will cause your body to get hypothermia.
At first glance and without any rational thought, it may seem that "hey, maybe some of these are possible, like the hypothermia one". If you're thinking this, please, take a moment and reconsider it. A fan doesn't have any part of it that burns oxygen, we've all stuck our faces out a car window and could breathe (skydivers seem to always survive too), the idea that fan's can "chop" up oxygen is hilarious, and if you get hypothermia while sleeping, the minimal amount of body heat being blown away by the fan probably wasn't what finally did you in.
http://www.fandeath.net
All this happened back in the late 90's, and I don't know if there's been any recent articles on it, I'll have to do some more digging. In the meantime, be sure to leave your doors open if you're running a fan at night!
As a quick addendum to this blog, my wallet just got stolen by one of the kids at school. I only found out this morning, though I've already got it back through some intense school wide guilt tripping and putting pressure on the right sources, though all the money in it is long gone ($40-$50). It sucks though, cause it was one of those cute little kids who always wants to be picked up and hang out with me that took it. He comes from a crappy family though, and I think the temptation of money was just too much for him to pass up. I feel bad for the kid, but I think the days of me giving him airplane rides are all over.
The idea behind fan death is that a regular household fan is not only capable of killing a person (generally while they're sleeping), but that serious precautions should be taken when operating a fan in your house. The concern over fan death has grown so large that many fans now come with warning labels to prevent accidental death-by-fan, timer switches have been installed to prevent injury, and many Korean experts have weighed in with their opinions on how fan death occurs and can be prevented. When talking with my Korean friends and acquaintances, they've all said to me "yes, fan death is possible" though they will say not very likely. So how in blue blazes can one of these rogue fans going about killing a person? Here's the list I got from wikipedia (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fan_death)
The Vortex - allowing a fan to run can create a vortex within your room, causing a vacuum effect on all the oxygen in the room.
Oxygen Consumption - a fan left running will burn oxygen, leaving carbon dioxide levels dangerously high.
Suffocation - the high speed air coming from the fan can prevent a sleeping person from being able to breathe properly.
Oxygen Chopping - the fan blades "chop" up the oxygen in the room, making it no longer breathable.
Hypothermia - sleeping under a fan will cause your body to get hypothermia.
At first glance and without any rational thought, it may seem that "hey, maybe some of these are possible, like the hypothermia one". If you're thinking this, please, take a moment and reconsider it. A fan doesn't have any part of it that burns oxygen, we've all stuck our faces out a car window and could breathe (skydivers seem to always survive too), the idea that fan's can "chop" up oxygen is hilarious, and if you get hypothermia while sleeping, the minimal amount of body heat being blown away by the fan probably wasn't what finally did you in.
http://www.fandeath.net
All this happened back in the late 90's, and I don't know if there's been any recent articles on it, I'll have to do some more digging. In the meantime, be sure to leave your doors open if you're running a fan at night!
As a quick addendum to this blog, my wallet just got stolen by one of the kids at school. I only found out this morning, though I've already got it back through some intense school wide guilt tripping and putting pressure on the right sources, though all the money in it is long gone ($40-$50). It sucks though, cause it was one of those cute little kids who always wants to be picked up and hang out with me that took it. He comes from a crappy family though, and I think the temptation of money was just too much for him to pass up. I feel bad for the kid, but I think the days of me giving him airplane rides are all over.
Thursday, March 15, 2007
Priorities
When an emergency arises, perhaps one that requires medical attention, an ambulance is generally going to be the first vehicle you'd like to be transported in. Now, maybe a few people would rather be rushed to the hospital in an F1 race car, or something of that sort, but the point is, an ambulance, or any emergency vehicle, should probably have full rights when it comes to using the road. In Korea, that's not quite the case.
The first time I witnessed a car accident here in Korea (the first few times actually), it was as it happened, and I was usually driving away and couldn't stay and watch. When I finally saw one happen while I was walking, I had enough time to witness the order of things unfolding. Within 30 seconds of the accident taking place, a tow-truck was on the scene. With its siren wailing, lights flashing, it took up position in the middle of the intersection and started sorting the mess out. The next vehicle on the scene: another tow-truck. Soon a third whizzed by, only to find no work left for it, and it moseyed off. In the end, three tow-trucks came, and no ambulances or police cars at all. If there were any injuries on the scene, the persons needing medical attention would certainly have been better off going with the tow-trucks anyway. These trucks are larger, have brighter lights, louder horns, and as far as I can tell show total disregard for traffic laws, pedestrians and other vehicles. They're kings of the road here in Korea, and no puny police vehicle or ambulance seems to wish to show them otherwise.
I'm not sure the logic for the tow-truck issue, and perhaps I've over estimated their traffic dominance, but there is definitely a different set of rules for what's important here in Korea, and language barriers, cultural differences and my lacking a Korean Priorities Rulebook has caused lots of confusion and laughter.
School pictures have been especially bizarre. My picture, taken for our teacher board at the front door, didn't come out right at all, with my whole body being squished and flattened just enough so that I resemble a chunky pancake. Now, this may have been an accident, but out of the 4 pictures that were taken of me, why choose that one?
Shannon had her photo taken a while back, and while nothing too discernible showed up, she just looked "wrong" in it, like someone had tried to make her look nicer in it, but failed. Then another friend had his face "Korean-ised" as he put it. Somehow he looked just a little more Asian in the picture than he should have. I was still a little skeptical, until finally one of our friends with a beard had his school photo taken. When he got the pictures back, his beard was gone (and possibly some other alterations were made, we weren't sure). Now, whenever I walk by photo shops, I notice their advertisements at fixing pictures, making people look nicer, and even changing the clothes people are wearing. They go to all this effort to have these great, beautiful looking photos, and yet, no one ever, ever smiles in them.
The list of things that amuse and puzzle me here seems to go on forever, and I'm sure I'll find some great, interesting and ludicrous things to write about in future blogs. I do, however, feel it's time I brought up some of the more positive things about my Korean co-teachers and the other Koreans I've met. It's easy to mock and ridicule people here, and doing so would give an unfair impression of the time I'm having here. I really am enjoying Korea, and I've met some great people, but it's the quirky, funky stuff that always sticks out in my mind. I could have a week of nothing but great noodle and vegetable dishes for lunch, but the only thing I fine worth mentioning is the time I was served fermented manta ray and deep fried fish heads.
Oh, and I almost forgot - I had my first trip to the dentist. I walked in, waited for 20 minutes, got an X-ray and had a quick checkup, and all it cost me was $4. Wild. They had TV's at every dentist chair (so strange, but still nice) and the dentist even spoke good English. Her main concern though - whether my teeth look nice enough for me or not.
The first time I witnessed a car accident here in Korea (the first few times actually), it was as it happened, and I was usually driving away and couldn't stay and watch. When I finally saw one happen while I was walking, I had enough time to witness the order of things unfolding. Within 30 seconds of the accident taking place, a tow-truck was on the scene. With its siren wailing, lights flashing, it took up position in the middle of the intersection and started sorting the mess out. The next vehicle on the scene: another tow-truck. Soon a third whizzed by, only to find no work left for it, and it moseyed off. In the end, three tow-trucks came, and no ambulances or police cars at all. If there were any injuries on the scene, the persons needing medical attention would certainly have been better off going with the tow-trucks anyway. These trucks are larger, have brighter lights, louder horns, and as far as I can tell show total disregard for traffic laws, pedestrians and other vehicles. They're kings of the road here in Korea, and no puny police vehicle or ambulance seems to wish to show them otherwise.
I'm not sure the logic for the tow-truck issue, and perhaps I've over estimated their traffic dominance, but there is definitely a different set of rules for what's important here in Korea, and language barriers, cultural differences and my lacking a Korean Priorities Rulebook has caused lots of confusion and laughter.
School pictures have been especially bizarre. My picture, taken for our teacher board at the front door, didn't come out right at all, with my whole body being squished and flattened just enough so that I resemble a chunky pancake. Now, this may have been an accident, but out of the 4 pictures that were taken of me, why choose that one?
Shannon had her photo taken a while back, and while nothing too discernible showed up, she just looked "wrong" in it, like someone had tried to make her look nicer in it, but failed. Then another friend had his face "Korean-ised" as he put it. Somehow he looked just a little more Asian in the picture than he should have. I was still a little skeptical, until finally one of our friends with a beard had his school photo taken. When he got the pictures back, his beard was gone (and possibly some other alterations were made, we weren't sure). Now, whenever I walk by photo shops, I notice their advertisements at fixing pictures, making people look nicer, and even changing the clothes people are wearing. They go to all this effort to have these great, beautiful looking photos, and yet, no one ever, ever smiles in them.
The list of things that amuse and puzzle me here seems to go on forever, and I'm sure I'll find some great, interesting and ludicrous things to write about in future blogs. I do, however, feel it's time I brought up some of the more positive things about my Korean co-teachers and the other Koreans I've met. It's easy to mock and ridicule people here, and doing so would give an unfair impression of the time I'm having here. I really am enjoying Korea, and I've met some great people, but it's the quirky, funky stuff that always sticks out in my mind. I could have a week of nothing but great noodle and vegetable dishes for lunch, but the only thing I fine worth mentioning is the time I was served fermented manta ray and deep fried fish heads.
Oh, and I almost forgot - I had my first trip to the dentist. I walked in, waited for 20 minutes, got an X-ray and had a quick checkup, and all it cost me was $4. Wild. They had TV's at every dentist chair (so strange, but still nice) and the dentist even spoke good English. Her main concern though - whether my teeth look nice enough for me or not.
Thursday, March 08, 2007
High Fives, Bobble-Heads, and The Janitor
Earlier in my blogging, I mentioned something about how Korea is a country just catching up with the Western, or at least more developed, world. It couldn't have felt more true today. As I rolled into class, I spent the first 25 minutes this morning sorting out the ol' kerosene heater, pumping oil into it with the little hand pump, finding a new bucket of oil to keep my classroom warm when the one I have runs out, and basically working in a classroom one step removed from a one-room school house with a wood stove to keep things warm.
It's suddenly cold here again this week, which is nothing compared to what it's like in Canada, but after a week of +15, it was a little shocking to find snow and ice on the ground the last few days. And before that, we had a long, intense rain storm. It rained so much, our roof overflowed into the stairwell, and a small river of water was pouring down 5 flights of stairs to the bottom floor. It was kinda cool, but the Koreans seemed a little nervous, and went on full attack with their mops and buckets. Us Canadians of course, well that seemed like a great day to play hockey, and so we did. We just finished building a new net out of PVC piping and the mesh from a discarded mattress box-spring, so nothing was going to stop us from trying it out.
Speaking of sports, the new volleyball season is underway at school again. It's tough calling it a season, cause nothing really happens to advance the state of our game or standings, etc. But, you can't miss a game, and so twice this week we've played. It's not really that bad, I don't despise volleyball like I did in high school, but there is this new teacher in the school who makes me want to put socks in my ears, or maybe his mouth. Every single point, no matter what happens, he's giving someone tips on what to do, and since I'm in the "hitting position" (someone please correct me and tell me what that spot is called) he's always, ALWAYS, telling me to do something different. It's too bad, that A) the guy is a terrible volleyball player, and B) doesn't speak a lick of English. The one way he can communicate, is by giving high-fives. Which, oh my, is more of a challenge than playing volleyball will ever be.
Giving my co-teachers a high-five is like something between french-kissing an oyster, and crawling through a prickle patch. Usually, high-fives are down around chest height, so it's awkward to begin with. Then, instead of using your hand to try and make contact, creating that "Right on!" kinda feeling, everyone just kind of walks into it, usually doing a bit of a bend at the hips. If you're scratching your head asking yourself how the hell that works, don't worry about it, cause it doesn't work. But it gets worse. Some teachers, usually the short men, will try and go down low, but they never hold their hands out. Instead they keep their elbows in, and hands only half-supinated so that any attempt to give a low-five is more of a hand smacking. And every single time you try to give a gentle, not hard but making contact kind of -five, they grab your hands, interlock fingers, and just shake your hands weirdly for a second. Oh my, it is bizarre.
Quick interlude - Shannon, who was just in China got some good photos while she was there. I missed out on it all, but I really like this shot of the great wall. Here's the section of it that she walked.
On another brief subject, I've found that one of my teachers looks incredibly like a bobble-head. Korean's generally have, well, larger than average heads. Or at least, larger-than-a-aNorth-American-head heads. This one teacher, I Uen Chin, is a rather petite lady, and so her behemoth cranium becomes almost comical on her. At times it looks like it's weighing her down into a bit of a slouch, and I'm afraid that if someone were to ever pick her up and shake her even gently, her head would wobble around uncontrollably. It seems most schools in Korea have a teacher who gives off a bobble-head vibe, as I've had this conversation now with a number of North Americans here, and we all seem to notice it.
My school had a "welcome back" dinner the other night, and like all dinners with my school, it was a generally good time, filled with food I refused to eat, soju they wanted me to drink, and noraebong (Korean karaoke). The night got a little out of hand though, when one of the new teachers got a little to drunk and began to tell me how much he loved me. This was the same teacher who, earlier in the day, I had nearly kicked out of my class - he dropped his class off for English, then left the room to change into his sports wear. He came back wearing a track suit, and swinging a mop and bucket around, and proceeded to mop my classroom and tell the kids what to do while I taught. I thought he was the janitor, he looked so different. Anyway, I figured it all out, and everything was fine. So, back to the dinner.
At noraebong, the janitor teacher had me get up and sing a song. He chose "You Are My Sunshine" for me, which was actually a pretty good choice I think. He loved it, and he loved me, and he told me this a few more times. Finally, it's time to go home, and loving-me-janitor tells everyone I'm going to get a ride with him. No one tells me this of course, so I'm a little nervous when my bag is tossed out of the other teachers car and given to me. And so, we start to walk. No idea where, it sounds like he's driving me home, which he's in no condition to do, so I'm a little more nervous. We head left down an alley, it's a little scary, and I ask him where we're going (my Korean's coming along okay by now), and he says "this way". Another left. Then another left. And another. We've traveled in a full circle before he figures out which way to go. I tell him in Korean "Now I go home". He says in English, "Ah, yes, Chicken". Uhhhh, "Wait a minute, where is this? Where am I going?" I say. "Hmmm, Chicken" We go on like this for a few minutes, we backtrack a bit, then suddenly he gets a big grin and takes us to this little chicken shack so we can sit down, drink beer and eat chicken.
I spent the next hour sitting with him and other random Korean's we met, drinking beer, eating chicken (not much, I really want to keep up my vegetarian self, but peer pressure takes on a new meaning in this country), and trying to speak Korean since no one spoke English. By the time I got home, I was a little exhausted, a little drunk, and smelled like all the bizarre ethnic foods you could find in the country. My co-teacher was at the point where it was easier for me to tell the cab driver how to get home than it was for him. Anyway, I think that's the last time I'm going out with him, but it was kind of fun to get really local at least once.
Thanks for reading, I'll have another entry in here next week.
Rich
It's suddenly cold here again this week, which is nothing compared to what it's like in Canada, but after a week of +15, it was a little shocking to find snow and ice on the ground the last few days. And before that, we had a long, intense rain storm. It rained so much, our roof overflowed into the stairwell, and a small river of water was pouring down 5 flights of stairs to the bottom floor. It was kinda cool, but the Koreans seemed a little nervous, and went on full attack with their mops and buckets. Us Canadians of course, well that seemed like a great day to play hockey, and so we did. We just finished building a new net out of PVC piping and the mesh from a discarded mattress box-spring, so nothing was going to stop us from trying it out.
Speaking of sports, the new volleyball season is underway at school again. It's tough calling it a season, cause nothing really happens to advance the state of our game or standings, etc. But, you can't miss a game, and so twice this week we've played. It's not really that bad, I don't despise volleyball like I did in high school, but there is this new teacher in the school who makes me want to put socks in my ears, or maybe his mouth. Every single point, no matter what happens, he's giving someone tips on what to do, and since I'm in the "hitting position" (someone please correct me and tell me what that spot is called) he's always, ALWAYS, telling me to do something different. It's too bad, that A) the guy is a terrible volleyball player, and B) doesn't speak a lick of English. The one way he can communicate, is by giving high-fives. Which, oh my, is more of a challenge than playing volleyball will ever be.
Giving my co-teachers a high-five is like something between french-kissing an oyster, and crawling through a prickle patch. Usually, high-fives are down around chest height, so it's awkward to begin with. Then, instead of using your hand to try and make contact, creating that "Right on!" kinda feeling, everyone just kind of walks into it, usually doing a bit of a bend at the hips. If you're scratching your head asking yourself how the hell that works, don't worry about it, cause it doesn't work. But it gets worse. Some teachers, usually the short men, will try and go down low, but they never hold their hands out. Instead they keep their elbows in, and hands only half-supinated so that any attempt to give a low-five is more of a hand smacking. And every single time you try to give a gentle, not hard but making contact kind of -five, they grab your hands, interlock fingers, and just shake your hands weirdly for a second. Oh my, it is bizarre.
Quick interlude - Shannon, who was just in China got some good photos while she was there. I missed out on it all, but I really like this shot of the great wall. Here's the section of it that she walked.
On another brief subject, I've found that one of my teachers looks incredibly like a bobble-head. Korean's generally have, well, larger than average heads. Or at least, larger-than-a-aNorth-American-head heads. This one teacher, I Uen Chin, is a rather petite lady, and so her behemoth cranium becomes almost comical on her. At times it looks like it's weighing her down into a bit of a slouch, and I'm afraid that if someone were to ever pick her up and shake her even gently, her head would wobble around uncontrollably. It seems most schools in Korea have a teacher who gives off a bobble-head vibe, as I've had this conversation now with a number of North Americans here, and we all seem to notice it.
My school had a "welcome back" dinner the other night, and like all dinners with my school, it was a generally good time, filled with food I refused to eat, soju they wanted me to drink, and noraebong (Korean karaoke). The night got a little out of hand though, when one of the new teachers got a little to drunk and began to tell me how much he loved me. This was the same teacher who, earlier in the day, I had nearly kicked out of my class - he dropped his class off for English, then left the room to change into his sports wear. He came back wearing a track suit, and swinging a mop and bucket around, and proceeded to mop my classroom and tell the kids what to do while I taught. I thought he was the janitor, he looked so different. Anyway, I figured it all out, and everything was fine. So, back to the dinner.
At noraebong, the janitor teacher had me get up and sing a song. He chose "You Are My Sunshine" for me, which was actually a pretty good choice I think. He loved it, and he loved me, and he told me this a few more times. Finally, it's time to go home, and loving-me-janitor tells everyone I'm going to get a ride with him. No one tells me this of course, so I'm a little nervous when my bag is tossed out of the other teachers car and given to me. And so, we start to walk. No idea where, it sounds like he's driving me home, which he's in no condition to do, so I'm a little more nervous. We head left down an alley, it's a little scary, and I ask him where we're going (my Korean's coming along okay by now), and he says "this way". Another left. Then another left. And another. We've traveled in a full circle before he figures out which way to go. I tell him in Korean "Now I go home". He says in English, "Ah, yes, Chicken". Uhhhh, "Wait a minute, where is this? Where am I going?" I say. "Hmmm, Chicken" We go on like this for a few minutes, we backtrack a bit, then suddenly he gets a big grin and takes us to this little chicken shack so we can sit down, drink beer and eat chicken.
I spent the next hour sitting with him and other random Korean's we met, drinking beer, eating chicken (not much, I really want to keep up my vegetarian self, but peer pressure takes on a new meaning in this country), and trying to speak Korean since no one spoke English. By the time I got home, I was a little exhausted, a little drunk, and smelled like all the bizarre ethnic foods you could find in the country. My co-teacher was at the point where it was easier for me to tell the cab driver how to get home than it was for him. Anyway, I think that's the last time I'm going out with him, but it was kind of fun to get really local at least once.
Thanks for reading, I'll have another entry in here next week.
Rich
Friday, March 02, 2007
Traditional Traditions
I suppose the word "customs" might be more appropriate, but either way, 6 months into living in Korea, there are still many things happening here that are a little beyond my comprehension. I'm getting used to the everyday things - people driving on sidewalks, red lights being more of a suggestion than a rule, drinking soju while still at school, and eating rice and cold cabbage for breakfast. However graduation week has been pretty funny, and a little surprising.
For my school, grades 1-6, graduation wasn't really that big a deal. Well, I guess it was to the kids, as the grade 6's had their own special ceremony, they did all their "get ready for middle school" stuff, and basically got to avoid learning anything for the last week of school. For the middle school kids going to high school, it was like a hazing ritual put on by the schools. After the big good-bye assembly, all the kids walk outside, and everyone throws raw eggs and flour on them. And they do this at every school. Walking around town that afternoon, there were dozens of kids covered in flour and eggs, splatterings of the stuff all over the road, and everyone but us foreigners seemed to hardly notice it (though some of the kids covered in gunk looked a little unhumoured).
Today we had our beginning of the year ceremony, which was nice and short, and another chance for me to get in front of all the kids and their parents and have them all laugh at my funny voice. All the new teachers (and of course, me, the English teacher) got to get up in front of everyone and say a quick hello and nice-to-meet-you, then the principal said a few more words, and the year was ready to begin. To celebrate and signify the start of the new year, all the new grade 6 students put a necklace on all the new grade 1 students, then put them (the grade 1's) on their backs, and ran around the gym a few times. Oh, I nearly fell out of my chair it was so funny! Korean's aren't very tall, and so some of these grade 6's were hardly bigger than the grade 1's, and the struggles they had were incredible. A few gave up, others toughed it out. The one mentally handicap kid, who's rather big, hardly seemed to notice the kid dangling from the back of his shirt as he trudged around the gym mumbling to himself. I guess I laughed a little hard, cause the teacher next to me started asking me what we do at our schools to bring in the new year.
Going back a few steps, I should mention again my speech to the school. As I've mentioned before, being a foreigner in Korea is a big deal - for many people, seeing me is the first time they've seen any one who's not Korean. For the kids, the novelty is still pretty huge (I'm the second foreign teacher here), and they really seem to love an adult who will play with them and interact with them as much as possible (with Korean adults, respect is very important, so goofing around is pretty uncommon). Anyway, I'm dragging this out here. What happened was, I went up to say hello to everyone, the whole "Hi my name is Richard and I like being here, thank you" routine. One of the kids in the front waved to me, so I waved back, so a few waved to me, so again I waved back. Then the whole front section waved to me, one girl even jumped out to the front and was grabbed by a teacher, as she tried to wave to me. Silly me, I wave back to them. Then the whole school starts waving to me, some now shouting "Hello!" and jumping up and down. I'm sure there's a really bad joke about how to get a one armed Korean down from a tree in here. Anyway, I finally managed to stop all this waving by saying "Hello" in Korean into the micropohone, which got every student and parent giggling, but no longer waving.
Much of the behaviour seen in Korea (as in every country I'm sure) can be attributed to the country's history and the people they look up to from the past. This is on a bit of a tangent here, and has nothing to do with graduations and hand waving, but since I was recently viewing a great deal of Korean historical sights, I thought this one story might help explain a lot of the unusual things encountered here.
1400 years ago, Kim Yu-Shin was on his way to becoming General of the Shilla realm of Korea, and was on his way to reuniting the three separate parts of the country. On his way to becoming this great and honoured general, he had a few black eyes in his personal life that have become legends among the people in Korea. For instance, he was having an affair at one time with a dancer, who's name I forget. His mother, however, banned him from seeing this dancer any longer, and Kim Yu-Shin, like a good Korea, obeyed his mother with the strictest regiment. His horse, unfortunately, was not told of the change in Kim Yu-Shin's personal life, and a short while later, Kim Yu-Shin, as a good Korean at the time, got a little too drunk, and entrusted his horse to get him home. The horse, of course, took him to where it always did when Kim Yu-Shin got drunk, which was to the dancer's house. When Kim Yu-Shin realized where the horse had taken him (as he was oblivious to everything on the way, I guess), he immediately killed his horse.
The Korean's see this as a noble tale of a man who respected his mom, knew (or learned) right from wrong and showed an iron will. The painting made depicting it showed a fearsome Kim Yu-Shin standing proud over his dying horse, his mother beaming in the background. But me, I just see it as a guy who, drunk, got himself into a bit of trouble and his horse was the one who paid the price. Poor thing.
Anyway, that's all for this week. If I can ever find a picture of the horse thing, I'll have to put it up here, it's pretty intense. Thanks for the comments everyone! Steph, I'm glad I could remind you of your times in Japan - Korea seems to me a million light years from life in Japan, but the little things like naked sauna's, the random touching and staring, it definitely makes for some familiar feelings, eh.
For my school, grades 1-6, graduation wasn't really that big a deal. Well, I guess it was to the kids, as the grade 6's had their own special ceremony, they did all their "get ready for middle school" stuff, and basically got to avoid learning anything for the last week of school. For the middle school kids going to high school, it was like a hazing ritual put on by the schools. After the big good-bye assembly, all the kids walk outside, and everyone throws raw eggs and flour on them. And they do this at every school. Walking around town that afternoon, there were dozens of kids covered in flour and eggs, splatterings of the stuff all over the road, and everyone but us foreigners seemed to hardly notice it (though some of the kids covered in gunk looked a little unhumoured).
Today we had our beginning of the year ceremony, which was nice and short, and another chance for me to get in front of all the kids and their parents and have them all laugh at my funny voice. All the new teachers (and of course, me, the English teacher) got to get up in front of everyone and say a quick hello and nice-to-meet-you, then the principal said a few more words, and the year was ready to begin. To celebrate and signify the start of the new year, all the new grade 6 students put a necklace on all the new grade 1 students, then put them (the grade 1's) on their backs, and ran around the gym a few times. Oh, I nearly fell out of my chair it was so funny! Korean's aren't very tall, and so some of these grade 6's were hardly bigger than the grade 1's, and the struggles they had were incredible. A few gave up, others toughed it out. The one mentally handicap kid, who's rather big, hardly seemed to notice the kid dangling from the back of his shirt as he trudged around the gym mumbling to himself. I guess I laughed a little hard, cause the teacher next to me started asking me what we do at our schools to bring in the new year.
Going back a few steps, I should mention again my speech to the school. As I've mentioned before, being a foreigner in Korea is a big deal - for many people, seeing me is the first time they've seen any one who's not Korean. For the kids, the novelty is still pretty huge (I'm the second foreign teacher here), and they really seem to love an adult who will play with them and interact with them as much as possible (with Korean adults, respect is very important, so goofing around is pretty uncommon). Anyway, I'm dragging this out here. What happened was, I went up to say hello to everyone, the whole "Hi my name is Richard and I like being here, thank you" routine. One of the kids in the front waved to me, so I waved back, so a few waved to me, so again I waved back. Then the whole front section waved to me, one girl even jumped out to the front and was grabbed by a teacher, as she tried to wave to me. Silly me, I wave back to them. Then the whole school starts waving to me, some now shouting "Hello!" and jumping up and down. I'm sure there's a really bad joke about how to get a one armed Korean down from a tree in here. Anyway, I finally managed to stop all this waving by saying "Hello" in Korean into the micropohone, which got every student and parent giggling, but no longer waving.
Much of the behaviour seen in Korea (as in every country I'm sure) can be attributed to the country's history and the people they look up to from the past. This is on a bit of a tangent here, and has nothing to do with graduations and hand waving, but since I was recently viewing a great deal of Korean historical sights, I thought this one story might help explain a lot of the unusual things encountered here.
1400 years ago, Kim Yu-Shin was on his way to becoming General of the Shilla realm of Korea, and was on his way to reuniting the three separate parts of the country. On his way to becoming this great and honoured general, he had a few black eyes in his personal life that have become legends among the people in Korea. For instance, he was having an affair at one time with a dancer, who's name I forget. His mother, however, banned him from seeing this dancer any longer, and Kim Yu-Shin, like a good Korea, obeyed his mother with the strictest regiment. His horse, unfortunately, was not told of the change in Kim Yu-Shin's personal life, and a short while later, Kim Yu-Shin, as a good Korean at the time, got a little too drunk, and entrusted his horse to get him home. The horse, of course, took him to where it always did when Kim Yu-Shin got drunk, which was to the dancer's house. When Kim Yu-Shin realized where the horse had taken him (as he was oblivious to everything on the way, I guess), he immediately killed his horse.
The Korean's see this as a noble tale of a man who respected his mom, knew (or learned) right from wrong and showed an iron will. The painting made depicting it showed a fearsome Kim Yu-Shin standing proud over his dying horse, his mother beaming in the background. But me, I just see it as a guy who, drunk, got himself into a bit of trouble and his horse was the one who paid the price. Poor thing.
Anyway, that's all for this week. If I can ever find a picture of the horse thing, I'll have to put it up here, it's pretty intense. Thanks for the comments everyone! Steph, I'm glad I could remind you of your times in Japan - Korea seems to me a million light years from life in Japan, but the little things like naked sauna's, the random touching and staring, it definitely makes for some familiar feelings, eh.
Saturday, February 24, 2007
A Return to Abnormality
Ah yes, back in Korea. It almost feels like home, except for the fairly constant reminder that I'm in a foreign country. It has been very nice though to have a place of my own rather than moving around from hostel to hotel to camper, etc.
"Collectable Korean Quotes and Curious Quips"
There have been some pretty unusual situations Shannon and I have found ourselves in over the past few days. A lot of mine have had to do with an overnight camp I just got back from (which I'll get to shortly), and while generally all of this is a result of the language barrier between everyone, it's made for some rather interesting remarks.
"Don't use those toothpicks, they're from China." I don't know whether we shouldn't be using them because Chinese goods are bad, or if there was concern that the distance travelled to get here may have ruined them. Either way, Chinese toothpicks seem to be bad.
"I need to take a leak... I need to take a dump." This was my principal practicing English phrases for the grade 5 overnight camp. I managed to convince him (after I burst out laughing, which was extremely embarrassing) to instead go with "I need to use the toilet", though we also ended up teaching the kids "Nature calls me" which was kinda cute but not so crude. The next however, he just kinda sprung on everyone while we were practicing.
"No, no, no, listen and repeat me: I have diarrhea . Repeat! Di-a-rrhea!" To make sure the kids were properly equipped to explain to us in English when they got sick, we taught them how to say (among other illnesses) "I have diarrhea." I guess it's not that bad, but I still started laughing and turned bright red every time my principal had the kids sound it out slowly.
"I love you! I looooooovvvvvee you! WWWWWWWHHHHHHHHAAAAAAaaaaaaaaagggghghgh!" This came from a drunk Korean who decided to watch us play hockey one afternoon. At first he was a little scary, as he spoke just enough English for us to know he was yelling at us. Then he started up with the most maniacal laugh I've ever heard, and when he calmed down, he would tell us he loved us, say something in Korean, apologize to us, and finally start singing 'Country Roads".
It's the Lunar New Year right now (or Chinese New Year, if that's a little more familiar to you), and all the kids are on graduation week which means no school. My school however, did an overnight English camp for 15 of the grade 5 students. It wasn't quite the intense 3 days of English my principal wanted it to be, but it was pretty good for them. We travelled to the old capital of Korea visiting everything that remotely resembled a temple or shrine along the way. I actually got to learn quite a bit about Korean history and culture (some of it, such as the stories about General Kim Yu-Shin are rather shocking), but it was tough to find enough English to get a complete handle on what was going on. This problem was amplified when my principal would, before and after every stop, get me to introduce and follow-up on where we were going or had just been. Whoo, I tell you, I was a fish out of water for three days here, I felt like I hardly ever knew what was going on. My principal's English is good, but not great, so I was always telling the kids we were in one place when it was really another, that we'd be there for 30 minutes when it was only 5, or that lunch would be our next stop, and then 3 stops later we still wouldn't have eaten. It helps that they didn't really understand me though, so really I'm the only one who knows how much I was screwing up.
My principal, who is a very nice and wonderful man, has begun to consider me a part of his family. I think I'm very glad for this, but it does bring up certain cultural and communication differences between us that I don't know if I'll (or he) will ever be able to overcome. He likes taking me out for lunch these days, but I think he likes doing it because he feels I would like it, or that I would be lonely otherwise (he does it mostly on days Shannon's not around). He wants to teach me Korean, which is great, but when I ask how to say words in Korean, he just gives me the English definition. On our camp, he and I shared a room together, which wasn't as bad as I thought it was going to be - when I first got in the room, there was only a tiny single mattress on the floor, and while I sucked it up and told myself this was something I could do and feel comfortable with, I had a really tough time swallowing such a big lie to myself. We did end up with another mattress, so things weren't too bad. And to pass the time we had each night, we went to the sauna.
The Korean sauna is in fact just like any sauna, only there's has multiple saunas and hot pools, and showers to clean before and after, and everyone goes naked. I think most are divided by gender, as this one was, so it was actually rather comfortable. The first night was really quiet, and I had a nice relaxing time just sitting around, sweating or soaking. The second night, not only did we bring all the kids, but there were tonnes of other Koreans too. Now, I'm fine with sitting around without any clothes on, my body's not great but I have no problem with people seeing me when I'm fully disrobed, but it's a little strange when everyone is giving you constant looks as you're sitting there. The kids were fine, but for all these other Koreans, I was probably the first naked white guy they'd ever seen. How could they not take a long glance over at me?
Anyway, I'm back now, and blogging away as you can tell. Apologies for the long blog, this is two weeks in a row now where I've oozed as much info out of my brain as possible. Since there's no school right now, I've got very little to do so typing on the computer for hours on end is no problem. I should go to the dentist soon perhaps, as I think the old crown on my tooth is starting to come off. It's become very sensitive to hot and cold these days, and playing the didgeridoo makes it feel like it's trying to peel itself out of my mouth and off to somewhere that doesn't shake it around so badly. Whatever happens in the end, I'll be sure to post it up here. Thanks for taking the time to read!
Rich
"Collectable Korean Quotes and Curious Quips"
There have been some pretty unusual situations Shannon and I have found ourselves in over the past few days. A lot of mine have had to do with an overnight camp I just got back from (which I'll get to shortly), and while generally all of this is a result of the language barrier between everyone, it's made for some rather interesting remarks.
"Don't use those toothpicks, they're from China." I don't know whether we shouldn't be using them because Chinese goods are bad, or if there was concern that the distance travelled to get here may have ruined them. Either way, Chinese toothpicks seem to be bad.
"I need to take a leak... I need to take a dump." This was my principal practicing English phrases for the grade 5 overnight camp. I managed to convince him (after I burst out laughing, which was extremely embarrassing) to instead go with "I need to use the toilet", though we also ended up teaching the kids "Nature calls me" which was kinda cute but not so crude. The next however, he just kinda sprung on everyone while we were practicing.
"No, no, no, listen and repeat me: I have diarrhea . Repeat! Di-a-rrhea!" To make sure the kids were properly equipped to explain to us in English when they got sick, we taught them how to say (among other illnesses) "I have diarrhea." I guess it's not that bad, but I still started laughing and turned bright red every time my principal had the kids sound it out slowly.
"I love you! I looooooovvvvvee you! WWWWWWWHHHHHHHHAAAAAAaaaaaaaaagggghghgh!" This came from a drunk Korean who decided to watch us play hockey one afternoon. At first he was a little scary, as he spoke just enough English for us to know he was yelling at us. Then he started up with the most maniacal laugh I've ever heard, and when he calmed down, he would tell us he loved us, say something in Korean, apologize to us, and finally start singing 'Country Roads".
It's the Lunar New Year right now (or Chinese New Year, if that's a little more familiar to you), and all the kids are on graduation week which means no school. My school however, did an overnight English camp for 15 of the grade 5 students. It wasn't quite the intense 3 days of English my principal wanted it to be, but it was pretty good for them. We travelled to the old capital of Korea visiting everything that remotely resembled a temple or shrine along the way. I actually got to learn quite a bit about Korean history and culture (some of it, such as the stories about General Kim Yu-Shin are rather shocking), but it was tough to find enough English to get a complete handle on what was going on. This problem was amplified when my principal would, before and after every stop, get me to introduce and follow-up on where we were going or had just been. Whoo, I tell you, I was a fish out of water for three days here, I felt like I hardly ever knew what was going on. My principal's English is good, but not great, so I was always telling the kids we were in one place when it was really another, that we'd be there for 30 minutes when it was only 5, or that lunch would be our next stop, and then 3 stops later we still wouldn't have eaten. It helps that they didn't really understand me though, so really I'm the only one who knows how much I was screwing up.
My principal, who is a very nice and wonderful man, has begun to consider me a part of his family. I think I'm very glad for this, but it does bring up certain cultural and communication differences between us that I don't know if I'll (or he) will ever be able to overcome. He likes taking me out for lunch these days, but I think he likes doing it because he feels I would like it, or that I would be lonely otherwise (he does it mostly on days Shannon's not around). He wants to teach me Korean, which is great, but when I ask how to say words in Korean, he just gives me the English definition. On our camp, he and I shared a room together, which wasn't as bad as I thought it was going to be - when I first got in the room, there was only a tiny single mattress on the floor, and while I sucked it up and told myself this was something I could do and feel comfortable with, I had a really tough time swallowing such a big lie to myself. We did end up with another mattress, so things weren't too bad. And to pass the time we had each night, we went to the sauna.
The Korean sauna is in fact just like any sauna, only there's has multiple saunas and hot pools, and showers to clean before and after, and everyone goes naked. I think most are divided by gender, as this one was, so it was actually rather comfortable. The first night was really quiet, and I had a nice relaxing time just sitting around, sweating or soaking. The second night, not only did we bring all the kids, but there were tonnes of other Koreans too. Now, I'm fine with sitting around without any clothes on, my body's not great but I have no problem with people seeing me when I'm fully disrobed, but it's a little strange when everyone is giving you constant looks as you're sitting there. The kids were fine, but for all these other Koreans, I was probably the first naked white guy they'd ever seen. How could they not take a long glance over at me?
Anyway, I'm back now, and blogging away as you can tell. Apologies for the long blog, this is two weeks in a row now where I've oozed as much info out of my brain as possible. Since there's no school right now, I've got very little to do so typing on the computer for hours on end is no problem. I should go to the dentist soon perhaps, as I think the old crown on my tooth is starting to come off. It's become very sensitive to hot and cold these days, and playing the didgeridoo makes it feel like it's trying to peel itself out of my mouth and off to somewhere that doesn't shake it around so badly. Whatever happens in the end, I'll be sure to post it up here. Thanks for taking the time to read!
Rich
Friday, February 16, 2007
The End Of it All, and Global Thoughts
The final leg of the Down Under journey had us catching a 6am flight from NZ to Brisbane Australia. Taking a 3 1/2 hour flight and arriving only 1 hour later is pretty sweet (time changes, daylight savings differences, etc.), and by 8:30, Shannon and I had already gotten a rental car and were on the road. Our first stop was Byron Bay, a once quiet ocean town that has experienced the full brunt of the backpacker tourism industry, with thousands of people swarming the city daily.
When I came to Byron Bay 6 years ago, it was a relatively busy place with some crazy pubs to go to and an awesome, not too crowded beach to relax at. Now, it was full-bore wall-to-wall people with hotels charging $200 a night and 3 night minimum stays, hostels charging regular hotel rates, and people clamouring over each other just to get down the street. I've read it's the first district in Australia to elect members of government from the Green party, as they're trying to prevent the town from becoming known only as a tourist Mecca, but even while limiting the amount of development in the area, it's still hard to find a more crowded, bustling place. A lot of attitude too, which was unfortunate, but it still had a very lively vibe.
We did a little big of everything while in Byron - surfing, scuba diving, sightseeing and just relaxing on the beach. Our scuba diving trip was a little crappy, as the visibility was rather poor, and since it was Shannon's and my first time in ages, we were through our oxygen 10-15 minutes early and had to head up pretty quick. We did get to see lots of cool stuff like sharks, manta rags, and other weird things that you only get to see on the Discovery Channel, but it could have been better. Anyway, after 3 nights in Byron, we took off, feeling that maybe 2 nights would have been better.
However, our second in Byron did give us a chance to check out the coolest street performers I've ever seen. It was a guy on drums and a guy on the didgeridoo playing some fast-tempo dance music. These guys were so good, they had nearly 100 people crowded around, and when it was done they sold all the CD's they had plus must've made plenty more money from people dropping some cash for the show. Anyway, we bought a CD, and if you're bored, check out "Wild Marmalade", it's a lame name, but a great band.
Our next stop was unknown to us until we actually got there. The plan was to head to Rainbow Beach, a small, rarely visited beach town 4 hours north. But, along the way we stopped at a tourist info spot, and met perhaps the sweetest little lady the whole country had to offer. We must have talked to this elderly woman for an hour, though she did a good portion of the talking while we were there. She was largely deaf, so her accent, her age, and her subtle inability to pronounce words properly gave her the cutest speech I've ever heard. She managed to convince us to go to a place called Tin Can Bay, a sort of English rip-off of the aboriginal name of Tuncanbar. Once there, we stayed in probably the only accommodation in town - it was the motel, the backpacker hostel, the town pub and a drive through liquor store - and it was only $45 a night for the two of us, which was awesome.
Tin Can Bay was a really quiet, slow moving town. There really wasn't a lot happening at all, but the main attraction was pretty cool. Every morning at 8, a couple of dolphins cruise into the bay and wait around for people to feed them. The harbour staff have started to do some minor management of it, mostly just stopping people from swimming out with them and getting too close, but basically, you can show up, go out up to your thighs, let the dolphins swim around and feed them once the staff give out food for everyone to toss (only so much though, they don't want them getting dependent on people).
There was also a rather obnoxious pelican down by the water. I'd never seen a pelican before, so standing within a few feet of one was rather unsettling. They've got these bizarre, buggy eyes, and everything about it reminded me of an annoying neighbour, one who hangs on the edge of the fence just waiting to be invited over so he can steal all your food.
When the thing opened it's mouth to take a jab at the harbour staff holding fish, I seriously began to wonder if he might try and get the whole staff member down his throat.
Our next stop was at Airlie Beach, another once quiet town that now exists entirely to service the Whitsunday Islands and the tourism that comes with it. And wow, is there a lot of tourism. Back in the day when Cap'n Cook came through and mapped out the area, he named the islands the Cumberland Islands (or something similar to that), but when people saw the potential to make some money touring the islands here, they changed the name to the Whitsunday's, and now the whole town is just swamped with people coming through to sail around for 3 or 4 days, then take off somewhere else, as there's not a lot else to do. Well, maybe there is, but it certainly kept hidden to all but those who are really looking.
We shipped out with 30 or so others on a boat called The Clipper. It was a nice boat, Shan and I had our own tiny room, and we met some really great people along the way. Our crew was a little unusual though - I think they were paid to be as much entertainers as they were crew members, and the constant "yeah! Let's Party!" attitude they exuded was a little tiring. We got to do lots of great snorkeling, and some questionable scuba diving. Shannon wasn't given enough weights to stay under, which meant I had to hold her down with one hand to keep her from surfacing every 2 minutes (which usually happened anyways).
After Airlie, we made the 14 hour drive back to Brisbane, stopping just outside it in a nice town called Noosa. Actually, the area was called Noosa, and we spent plenty of time trying to find our way between Noosa Heads, Noosaville, Noosa town centre, and every other patch of land with Noosa in the name. Shannon, who used to competitively race small sailboats, finally got a chance to take me out on the water, though the wind was pretty light and our boat was terribly rigged. Of course, I wouldn't have known either of these things to be true, I'm just telling you what she told me. And yes, she can indeed curse like a sailor when out on the water, though I think a foul-mouth makes a sailor better, cause the more angry she got, the faster the little boat seemed to go.
We spent our last night in Brisbane and decided that the only way to truly get everything out of our adventure was to blow as much money as we could before leaving town. We got a somewhat nicer hotel than we usually allowed ourselves, spent a whole day power shopping (we actually had to split up to cover more ground), then went out for a somewhat fancy lobster dinner. Oh, and I bought a didgeridoo, which is freakin' awesome.
I could write a whole blog entry on the search put in for this and the possible flaws it may have in authenticity, but I think I'll just keep it simple here. It looks good, it sounds cool, and I'm getting to be an okay player. I'm probably the best didgeridoo player in Korea, though that's more because there's no one who plays here I'm sure than a reflection of my skill.
But yes, that was the end of our trip. After Brisbane, it was off to the airport for a 14 hour plane ride back to Seoul, where we were able to catch a train right to home that same day. And that's when we found our gas turned off, meaning it was a cold, cold night of no heat that first evening back. Brrrr....
I'm going to take a moment here from some quick social commentary, which you're welcome to skip over if you feel you've read enough. This blog has been rather lengthy, but there's always lots to say, and I'm hoping at least one or two people out there enjoy taking a few minutes to skim through it all.
While the list of countries I've travelled to over the past 6 months is by no means lengthy, I have started to feel a slightly better understanding for how life and people go by in places around the world beyond just Canada. I by no means want to come across as a worldly, experience traveller who has "seen it all" and "knows the ways of the world", but I have seen some, and I've learned a bit, and I've been having a tough time lately feeling comfortable with the challenges and difficulties countries are having as a result of both their own actions and those of other countries. I think the main thoughts I'm having are "global warming is terrible" and "love your environment", but I think those conclusions are a little to simplistic for what I'm feeling right now.
In Korea, there is a constant fog in the air. When I first got here, I thought that the country just never really had sunny days. Then I realized that heavy exercise outside was leaving me with a minor cough each time. A few days ago, at around 5 o'clock, I was able to stare directly at the sun as it was setting. Of course, it didn't set for nearly an hour, but the pollution in the air was so thick you could look right at the sun, and the whole town, rather than being brightly illuminated, had more of a redish glow to it.
If you take a few moments to google newspaper headlines in Australia, specifically the province of Queensland, you'll probably find every news site has something regarding water levels. While we were there, every, EVERY, newspaper had on the front page an article regarding the current water crisis the area is going through. Water levels are so low that the government is currently building water recycling systems. These aren't sewage treatment plants like at home, but systems designed to allow water that goes straight from the gutter, the toilet, wherever, right back into the drinking system. If they are successful at installing this, and the population continues to grow at the rate it has, their dam levels will reach 40% capacity in 3 years.
We met an Australian girl working at a bar who nearly started crying while talking about this to us. Apparently there's been a 5 year drought of sorts - there's definitely rain, just not much, and the population is growing. Everyone knows it's bad because they're told it's bad. There's signs everywhere - "Conserve water", "Do less laundry", "Only use what you need". This girl however had just come back from a trip to the outback, and had seen what was happening to the farming communities. Animals were lying dead on the ground, starving to death and dying of thirst. Sheep were eating dirt in hopes of something being in it to keep them alive. She mentioned that pretty soon they may have to start charging for water instead of just giving jugs of it to people when they sit down at the bar.
I've been reading lots of headlines at home about unusually strong and frequent winter storms that have been coming across Vancouver Island this winter, and I hope people are thinking about why the weather can be so extreme and bizarre these days. I don't know if global warming is necessarily the end of it all or a planet killer, as it's often made out to be, but it certainly seems capable of completely shifting the way people live. I mean, if ice caps melt and water levels rise, that doesn't mean everybody drowns, but it certainly does make for a long, painful and sad population change inland.
Well, I certainly don't know enough about it to speak with anymore authority than I have, and hopefully I haven't overstepped my boundaries too much. I've heard, though, that Britain is making everyone in the school systems watch "An Inconvenient Truth", which I think is a great idea. If you're tired of reading my blogs, or if you're bored until the next one comes out, I suggest you go and watch it to. Till next week...
When I came to Byron Bay 6 years ago, it was a relatively busy place with some crazy pubs to go to and an awesome, not too crowded beach to relax at. Now, it was full-bore wall-to-wall people with hotels charging $200 a night and 3 night minimum stays, hostels charging regular hotel rates, and people clamouring over each other just to get down the street. I've read it's the first district in Australia to elect members of government from the Green party, as they're trying to prevent the town from becoming known only as a tourist Mecca, but even while limiting the amount of development in the area, it's still hard to find a more crowded, bustling place. A lot of attitude too, which was unfortunate, but it still had a very lively vibe.
We did a little big of everything while in Byron - surfing, scuba diving, sightseeing and just relaxing on the beach. Our scuba diving trip was a little crappy, as the visibility was rather poor, and since it was Shannon's and my first time in ages, we were through our oxygen 10-15 minutes early and had to head up pretty quick. We did get to see lots of cool stuff like sharks, manta rags, and other weird things that you only get to see on the Discovery Channel, but it could have been better. Anyway, after 3 nights in Byron, we took off, feeling that maybe 2 nights would have been better.
However, our second in Byron did give us a chance to check out the coolest street performers I've ever seen. It was a guy on drums and a guy on the didgeridoo playing some fast-tempo dance music. These guys were so good, they had nearly 100 people crowded around, and when it was done they sold all the CD's they had plus must've made plenty more money from people dropping some cash for the show. Anyway, we bought a CD, and if you're bored, check out "Wild Marmalade", it's a lame name, but a great band.Our next stop was unknown to us until we actually got there. The plan was to head to Rainbow Beach, a small, rarely visited beach town 4 hours north. But, along the way we stopped at a tourist info spot, and met perhaps the sweetest little lady the whole country had to offer. We must have talked to this elderly woman for an hour, though she did a good portion of the talking while we were there. She was largely deaf, so her accent, her age, and her subtle inability to pronounce words properly gave her the cutest speech I've ever heard. She managed to convince us to go to a place called Tin Can Bay, a sort of English rip-off of the aboriginal name of Tuncanbar. Once there, we stayed in probably the only accommodation in town - it was the motel, the backpacker hostel, the town pub and a drive through liquor store - and it was only $45 a night for the two of us, which was awesome.
Tin Can Bay was a really quiet, slow moving town. There really wasn't a lot happening at all, but the main attraction was pretty cool. Every morning at 8, a couple of dolphins cruise into the bay and wait around for people to feed them. The harbour staff have started to do some minor management of it, mostly just stopping people from swimming out with them and getting too close, but basically, you can show up, go out up to your thighs, let the dolphins swim around and feed them once the staff give out food for everyone to toss (only so much though, they don't want them getting dependent on people).
There was also a rather obnoxious pelican down by the water. I'd never seen a pelican before, so standing within a few feet of one was rather unsettling. They've got these bizarre, buggy eyes, and everything about it reminded me of an annoying neighbour, one who hangs on the edge of the fence just waiting to be invited over so he can steal all your food.
When the thing opened it's mouth to take a jab at the harbour staff holding fish, I seriously began to wonder if he might try and get the whole staff member down his throat.Our next stop was at Airlie Beach, another once quiet town that now exists entirely to service the Whitsunday Islands and the tourism that comes with it. And wow, is there a lot of tourism. Back in the day when Cap'n Cook came through and mapped out the area, he named the islands the Cumberland Islands (or something similar to that), but when people saw the potential to make some money touring the islands here, they changed the name to the Whitsunday's, and now the whole town is just swamped with people coming through to sail around for 3 or 4 days, then take off somewhere else, as there's not a lot else to do. Well, maybe there is, but it certainly kept hidden to all but those who are really looking.
We shipped out with 30 or so others on a boat called The Clipper. It was a nice boat, Shan and I had our own tiny room, and we met some really great people along the way. Our crew was a little unusual though - I think they were paid to be as much entertainers as they were crew members, and the constant "yeah! Let's Party!" attitude they exuded was a little tiring. We got to do lots of great snorkeling, and some questionable scuba diving. Shannon wasn't given enough weights to stay under, which meant I had to hold her down with one hand to keep her from surfacing every 2 minutes (which usually happened anyways).
After Airlie, we made the 14 hour drive back to Brisbane, stopping just outside it in a nice town called Noosa. Actually, the area was called Noosa, and we spent plenty of time trying to find our way between Noosa Heads, Noosaville, Noosa town centre, and every other patch of land with Noosa in the name. Shannon, who used to competitively race small sailboats, finally got a chance to take me out on the water, though the wind was pretty light and our boat was terribly rigged. Of course, I wouldn't have known either of these things to be true, I'm just telling you what she told me. And yes, she can indeed curse like a sailor when out on the water, though I think a foul-mouth makes a sailor better, cause the more angry she got, the faster the little boat seemed to go.
We spent our last night in Brisbane and decided that the only way to truly get everything out of our adventure was to blow as much money as we could before leaving town. We got a somewhat nicer hotel than we usually allowed ourselves, spent a whole day power shopping (we actually had to split up to cover more ground), then went out for a somewhat fancy lobster dinner. Oh, and I bought a didgeridoo, which is freakin' awesome.
I could write a whole blog entry on the search put in for this and the possible flaws it may have in authenticity, but I think I'll just keep it simple here. It looks good, it sounds cool, and I'm getting to be an okay player. I'm probably the best didgeridoo player in Korea, though that's more because there's no one who plays here I'm sure than a reflection of my skill.But yes, that was the end of our trip. After Brisbane, it was off to the airport for a 14 hour plane ride back to Seoul, where we were able to catch a train right to home that same day. And that's when we found our gas turned off, meaning it was a cold, cold night of no heat that first evening back. Brrrr....
I'm going to take a moment here from some quick social commentary, which you're welcome to skip over if you feel you've read enough. This blog has been rather lengthy, but there's always lots to say, and I'm hoping at least one or two people out there enjoy taking a few minutes to skim through it all.
While the list of countries I've travelled to over the past 6 months is by no means lengthy, I have started to feel a slightly better understanding for how life and people go by in places around the world beyond just Canada. I by no means want to come across as a worldly, experience traveller who has "seen it all" and "knows the ways of the world", but I have seen some, and I've learned a bit, and I've been having a tough time lately feeling comfortable with the challenges and difficulties countries are having as a result of both their own actions and those of other countries. I think the main thoughts I'm having are "global warming is terrible" and "love your environment", but I think those conclusions are a little to simplistic for what I'm feeling right now.
In Korea, there is a constant fog in the air. When I first got here, I thought that the country just never really had sunny days. Then I realized that heavy exercise outside was leaving me with a minor cough each time. A few days ago, at around 5 o'clock, I was able to stare directly at the sun as it was setting. Of course, it didn't set for nearly an hour, but the pollution in the air was so thick you could look right at the sun, and the whole town, rather than being brightly illuminated, had more of a redish glow to it.
If you take a few moments to google newspaper headlines in Australia, specifically the province of Queensland, you'll probably find every news site has something regarding water levels. While we were there, every, EVERY, newspaper had on the front page an article regarding the current water crisis the area is going through. Water levels are so low that the government is currently building water recycling systems. These aren't sewage treatment plants like at home, but systems designed to allow water that goes straight from the gutter, the toilet, wherever, right back into the drinking system. If they are successful at installing this, and the population continues to grow at the rate it has, their dam levels will reach 40% capacity in 3 years.
We met an Australian girl working at a bar who nearly started crying while talking about this to us. Apparently there's been a 5 year drought of sorts - there's definitely rain, just not much, and the population is growing. Everyone knows it's bad because they're told it's bad. There's signs everywhere - "Conserve water", "Do less laundry", "Only use what you need". This girl however had just come back from a trip to the outback, and had seen what was happening to the farming communities. Animals were lying dead on the ground, starving to death and dying of thirst. Sheep were eating dirt in hopes of something being in it to keep them alive. She mentioned that pretty soon they may have to start charging for water instead of just giving jugs of it to people when they sit down at the bar.
I've been reading lots of headlines at home about unusually strong and frequent winter storms that have been coming across Vancouver Island this winter, and I hope people are thinking about why the weather can be so extreme and bizarre these days. I don't know if global warming is necessarily the end of it all or a planet killer, as it's often made out to be, but it certainly seems capable of completely shifting the way people live. I mean, if ice caps melt and water levels rise, that doesn't mean everybody drowns, but it certainly does make for a long, painful and sad population change inland.
Well, I certainly don't know enough about it to speak with anymore authority than I have, and hopefully I haven't overstepped my boundaries too much. I've heard, though, that Britain is making everyone in the school systems watch "An Inconvenient Truth", which I think is a great idea. If you're tired of reading my blogs, or if you're bored until the next one comes out, I suggest you go and watch it to. Till next week...
Tuesday, February 06, 2007
All Things Kiwi
My last blog left Shannon and I cruising down the west coast of New Zealand. It rained most of the time, and our only outdoor activity was a short glacier hike at Franz Joseph,
after which we boogied back across the country to Christchurch (on the east coast) and picked up Shannon's friend Lindsay. A quick rental car later, and the three of us we were off to see my ol' buddy Bert, a friend from High School whom I traveled with to Australia back in the summer of 2000.
Queenstown is a great little place on the southern part of New Zealand's South Island, that is economically fueled by adventure tourism. In the winter, it's skiing and snowboarding, and in the summer, bungie jumping, sky diving and everything else you could imagine. If there's a high-up scary place around, people in Queenstown will find someway to throw you off of it.
Our four days and nights in Queenstown were pretty intense. Shannon and Lindsay went skydiving,
every day Bert took us to a different lake for rope swinging or cliff jumping, we went camping on another lake an hour outside of town, and I don't think there was 
a single evening where we made it to bed before 4am. One night we were out so late, Bert ended up being 3 hours late for work (though you can imagine lack of sleep wasn't the only thing that caused him to be so tired the next day).
While every part of staying Queenstown was pretty memorable, I've got a few photos here that will make one bit extra interesting to tell. We went cliff jumping one afternoon in a place they called "Little Tailand", a 14m rock face that dropped you into a frigidly cold lake. You can see Bert and I standing on the edge here of where you jump off.
Yes, we are definitely both some fine, dashing young men, wouldn't you say? Anyway, the jump down is long enough that you have time to yell, catch your breath, and start another little squeak before hitting the water. I did it once then stuck to the smaller cliffs, but Shannon's friend Lindsay, well... she had the boys building her up to make the jump, and after 20 or so minutes of "C'mon, you can totally do it", she finally took the plunge.
Here's how she looked the next day.
So let that be a warning to all of you looking to hurl yourselves off large cliffs - either keep your legs nice and straight, or just ignore all the silly boys whispering in your ear to "go for it."
After Queenstown, Shannon and I quite literally took off out of the country, catching a 6am flight to Brisbane, Australia the next day. Getting such an early flight proved kind of nice, as by 8am we had a rental car, and by midday we were in Byron Bay, the backpacker Mecca of Australia. Okay, maybe it isn't "the" Mecca, but the demand to stay here was so high, even a cheap hostel room (two person) cost us a minimum of $90, with many places requiring you to stay at least 3 nights. We unfortunately stayed a little two long in Byron, and by our last night, as we watched young 20-somethings wander into the ocean at 3am, drunk, stoned and delirious, we were ready to leave.
And that, my friends, will be where I pick up the adventure in the next blog. Stay tuned next week for tales of sharks, dolphins, tiny Australian hamlets and the noble quest to find the perfect didgeridoo. Till then, thanks for reading!
Rich
after which we boogied back across the country to Christchurch (on the east coast) and picked up Shannon's friend Lindsay. A quick rental car later, and the three of us we were off to see my ol' buddy Bert, a friend from High School whom I traveled with to Australia back in the summer of 2000.Queenstown is a great little place on the southern part of New Zealand's South Island, that is economically fueled by adventure tourism. In the winter, it's skiing and snowboarding, and in the summer, bungie jumping, sky diving and everything else you could imagine. If there's a high-up scary place around, people in Queenstown will find someway to throw you off of it.
Our four days and nights in Queenstown were pretty intense. Shannon and Lindsay went skydiving,
every day Bert took us to a different lake for rope swinging or cliff jumping, we went camping on another lake an hour outside of town, and I don't think there was 
a single evening where we made it to bed before 4am. One night we were out so late, Bert ended up being 3 hours late for work (though you can imagine lack of sleep wasn't the only thing that caused him to be so tired the next day).While every part of staying Queenstown was pretty memorable, I've got a few photos here that will make one bit extra interesting to tell. We went cliff jumping one afternoon in a place they called "Little Tailand", a 14m rock face that dropped you into a frigidly cold lake. You can see Bert and I standing on the edge here of where you jump off.
Yes, we are definitely both some fine, dashing young men, wouldn't you say? Anyway, the jump down is long enough that you have time to yell, catch your breath, and start another little squeak before hitting the water. I did it once then stuck to the smaller cliffs, but Shannon's friend Lindsay, well... she had the boys building her up to make the jump, and after 20 or so minutes of "C'mon, you can totally do it", she finally took the plunge.Here's how she looked the next day.
So let that be a warning to all of you looking to hurl yourselves off large cliffs - either keep your legs nice and straight, or just ignore all the silly boys whispering in your ear to "go for it."
After Queenstown, Shannon and I quite literally took off out of the country, catching a 6am flight to Brisbane, Australia the next day. Getting such an early flight proved kind of nice, as by 8am we had a rental car, and by midday we were in Byron Bay, the backpacker Mecca of Australia. Okay, maybe it isn't "the" Mecca, but the demand to stay here was so high, even a cheap hostel room (two person) cost us a minimum of $90, with many places requiring you to stay at least 3 nights. We unfortunately stayed a little two long in Byron, and by our last night, as we watched young 20-somethings wander into the ocean at 3am, drunk, stoned and delirious, we were ready to leave.
And that, my friends, will be where I pick up the adventure in the next blog. Stay tuned next week for tales of sharks, dolphins, tiny Australian hamlets and the noble quest to find the perfect didgeridoo. Till then, thanks for reading!
Rich
Thursday, February 01, 2007
I Come From the Land Down Under
Hello everyone out there!
I'm back on the blogging band-wagon once again, and it's nice to finally have time and energy to sit down and detail the adventures from the past month online. Over the past month, Shannon and I have been out of Korea and been travelling throughout New Zealand and Australia, seeing the countryside, catching up with old friends and meeting a few new people along the way.
I suppose I'll start at the beginning, but I make no promises regarding the chronological continuity of the following story. I will however try to litter it as best as possible with exciting quips and adventures, and hope I can inspire a few restless, stagnant souls to venture out into a part of the world they haven't been (or at least haven't been in a while).
I'll start by mentioning that Shannon and I are generally unable to agree on anything we're doing until the last possible second. So, when we finally arrived in Christchurch, New Zealand at 11pm on New Years day, we were still trying to sort out currencies, travel methods, where to go, and of course, where we were going to sleep that night. We managed to find an amaaing little hostel that was the former town jail (sleeping in a jail cell is an unusual and exciting experience), and the next day, we sat down to sort out our plans for the next while.
We decided to travel around with a camper van, which was a pretty cool way to get around (we got a little sick of it by the end). They don't really ask for much when letting you operate a vehicle on the other side of the road, as I've had more trouble renting a car in Canada than we did with this thing. But it didn't take much doing to get used to, and pretty soon we were cruising down the highway, gripping the wheel and breaking into a sweat every time a big vehicle came barrelling towards us on what seeemed like the wrong side of the road.
Our first stop was Kaikoura, a tiny town that started up as a whale-watching community. We took some surfing lessons, toured through a cave and around a waterfall, basically just seeing whatever we could around town. What we really wanted to do was go on a dolphin swim, where they take you out on a boat, give you some snorkelling gear, and let you swim with anywhere from 20-300 dolphins, depending on how many are in the area. But, it was about the most popular thing in the whole country, and was booked up for weeks. We did manage to find some dolphins later though, but I'll get to that.
Our next stop was Abel Tasman park, probably the most sceninc and generally enjoyable time we had on our trip. We rented a two-man kayak for two days, and did an overnight kayak and camping trip into the most amazing national park I've ever seen. Massive cliffs draped with trees and ferns dropped down into the ocean all along the coastline, with huge white sandy beaches spattered between them running along the coast for 40 or more kilometers. We kayaked into caves, saw penguins
and seals, spent the days swimming in private lagoons and spent the night right on the beach. It was a little exhausting in the end, as we wanted to get in as much as possible, and so on our second day we plowed through what's normally a 4-hour kayak in 1 1/2 hours. I'm still kicking myself in the pants for only spending one night here, but at the time we thought "hey, there's still lots of country to go see, we should probably get going." Well, yeah there was other good stuff, but it was never quite so amazing as Abel Tasman.
Our next stop was around a little town called Charleston. Charleston was at one time a massive population centre of New Zealand, with 100 hotels lined up down it's main drag. Now, there's hardly more than 100 people in the whole town, most of whom are employed in the caving or white water rafting business. We were there for the caving, though we were told it was more "cave rafting" when we first signed up. The caving itself was pretty exciting, as we got to walk (mostly upright) through a massive limestone cave system that the river had cut into the mountain some X million years ago. It was a little awkward due to the inner tubes we were carrying around, but worth the trouble in the end. What we really came for were the glow worms, 5-15 cm worms that excrete a green glowing substance out there bums. This may sound rather gross, and to see one up close in the light is pretty nasty, but lying on your back, floating through a river in a cave, lit up green by hundreds of thousands of these glow worms is amazing. When you first turn off your light, it looks like a night time sky lit with green stars instead of white. As your eyes adjust, you can see the water around you reflect them and ripple green when you move. Eventually, everything around you has a slight green glow to it, and you can almost make out the shape of the cave and your body just by the light these worms give off.
Coming out of the cave was, without a doubt, the most picturesque scene I have ever witnessed. The opening of the cave had suffered a collapse long ago, and now, forest ferns and moss were trailing down the rocks through the opening, the river could be soon snaking through, and sunbeams (just like those picture-perfect ones you see out of a movie) sliced down into the cave just enough to light up your way out. We mentioned to our young guide that this would be a great place to take a girl on a first date, and he did his best to laugh as though it were something he's never thought of or done.
Our next few days were rather dull, at least relative to those we had just come through. It rained most of the time, and the camper was getting a little cramped and uneventful. We did find ourselves staying in some strange places though, including this one tiny European run campground in the middle of nowhere. They only charged us $10 to stay there, and there wasn't anywhere within 50 km that had a population more than 200, yet this campground had it's own little nightclub, a live outdoor music stage, and semi-functional sauna complete with middle-age European skinny dippers in the river next to it. We spent the evening there with 9 retired German-American tourists who, together mostly, had travelled to such an amazing amout of places in the world, they actually gave each other a hard time for not seeing such "regular" tourist spots like Venice ("How could you not go to Venice?" they would say, "Everybody has been to Venice, why I was there 2 times just last year").
I'll bring this entry to an end for now, and save the second and third parts of the trip for later. Our next stop (sort of) was Queenstown, which was probably the most adrenaline-pumping, nocturnally charged part of our trip. Thanks everyone for stopping by, and my apologies for the long break in blogging, I'll try to keep 'em coming and interesting.
Rich
Oh, and in case I forget - a month away from Korea doesn't happen without a few house-hold hazards. They turned our gas off while we were away and while we have it back on again now, it has been a cold, cold day and night with no heating here! Brrrrr!
I'm back on the blogging band-wagon once again, and it's nice to finally have time and energy to sit down and detail the adventures from the past month online. Over the past month, Shannon and I have been out of Korea and been travelling throughout New Zealand and Australia, seeing the countryside, catching up with old friends and meeting a few new people along the way.
I suppose I'll start at the beginning, but I make no promises regarding the chronological continuity of the following story. I will however try to litter it as best as possible with exciting quips and adventures, and hope I can inspire a few restless, stagnant souls to venture out into a part of the world they haven't been (or at least haven't been in a while).
I'll start by mentioning that Shannon and I are generally unable to agree on anything we're doing until the last possible second. So, when we finally arrived in Christchurch, New Zealand at 11pm on New Years day, we were still trying to sort out currencies, travel methods, where to go, and of course, where we were going to sleep that night. We managed to find an amaaing little hostel that was the former town jail (sleeping in a jail cell is an unusual and exciting experience), and the next day, we sat down to sort out our plans for the next while.
We decided to travel around with a camper van, which was a pretty cool way to get around (we got a little sick of it by the end). They don't really ask for much when letting you operate a vehicle on the other side of the road, as I've had more trouble renting a car in Canada than we did with this thing. But it didn't take much doing to get used to, and pretty soon we were cruising down the highway, gripping the wheel and breaking into a sweat every time a big vehicle came barrelling towards us on what seeemed like the wrong side of the road.
Our first stop was Kaikoura, a tiny town that started up as a whale-watching community. We took some surfing lessons, toured through a cave and around a waterfall, basically just seeing whatever we could around town. What we really wanted to do was go on a dolphin swim, where they take you out on a boat, give you some snorkelling gear, and let you swim with anywhere from 20-300 dolphins, depending on how many are in the area. But, it was about the most popular thing in the whole country, and was booked up for weeks. We did manage to find some dolphins later though, but I'll get to that.
Our next stop was Abel Tasman park, probably the most sceninc and generally enjoyable time we had on our trip. We rented a two-man kayak for two days, and did an overnight kayak and camping trip into the most amazing national park I've ever seen. Massive cliffs draped with trees and ferns dropped down into the ocean all along the coastline, with huge white sandy beaches spattered between them running along the coast for 40 or more kilometers. We kayaked into caves, saw penguins
and seals, spent the days swimming in private lagoons and spent the night right on the beach. It was a little exhausting in the end, as we wanted to get in as much as possible, and so on our second day we plowed through what's normally a 4-hour kayak in 1 1/2 hours. I'm still kicking myself in the pants for only spending one night here, but at the time we thought "hey, there's still lots of country to go see, we should probably get going." Well, yeah there was other good stuff, but it was never quite so amazing as Abel Tasman.
Our next stop was around a little town called Charleston. Charleston was at one time a massive population centre of New Zealand, with 100 hotels lined up down it's main drag. Now, there's hardly more than 100 people in the whole town, most of whom are employed in the caving or white water rafting business. We were there for the caving, though we were told it was more "cave rafting" when we first signed up. The caving itself was pretty exciting, as we got to walk (mostly upright) through a massive limestone cave system that the river had cut into the mountain some X million years ago. It was a little awkward due to the inner tubes we were carrying around, but worth the trouble in the end. What we really came for were the glow worms, 5-15 cm worms that excrete a green glowing substance out there bums. This may sound rather gross, and to see one up close in the light is pretty nasty, but lying on your back, floating through a river in a cave, lit up green by hundreds of thousands of these glow worms is amazing. When you first turn off your light, it looks like a night time sky lit with green stars instead of white. As your eyes adjust, you can see the water around you reflect them and ripple green when you move. Eventually, everything around you has a slight green glow to it, and you can almost make out the shape of the cave and your body just by the light these worms give off.
Coming out of the cave was, without a doubt, the most picturesque scene I have ever witnessed. The opening of the cave had suffered a collapse long ago, and now, forest ferns and moss were trailing down the rocks through the opening, the river could be soon snaking through, and sunbeams (just like those picture-perfect ones you see out of a movie) sliced down into the cave just enough to light up your way out. We mentioned to our young guide that this would be a great place to take a girl on a first date, and he did his best to laugh as though it were something he's never thought of or done.
Our next few days were rather dull, at least relative to those we had just come through. It rained most of the time, and the camper was getting a little cramped and uneventful. We did find ourselves staying in some strange places though, including this one tiny European run campground in the middle of nowhere. They only charged us $10 to stay there, and there wasn't anywhere within 50 km that had a population more than 200, yet this campground had it's own little nightclub, a live outdoor music stage, and semi-functional sauna complete with middle-age European skinny dippers in the river next to it. We spent the evening there with 9 retired German-American tourists who, together mostly, had travelled to such an amazing amout of places in the world, they actually gave each other a hard time for not seeing such "regular" tourist spots like Venice ("How could you not go to Venice?" they would say, "Everybody has been to Venice, why I was there 2 times just last year").
I'll bring this entry to an end for now, and save the second and third parts of the trip for later. Our next stop (sort of) was Queenstown, which was probably the most adrenaline-pumping, nocturnally charged part of our trip. Thanks everyone for stopping by, and my apologies for the long break in blogging, I'll try to keep 'em coming and interesting.
Rich
Oh, and in case I forget - a month away from Korea doesn't happen without a few house-hold hazards. They turned our gas off while we were away and while we have it back on again now, it has been a cold, cold day and night with no heating here! Brrrrr!
Tuesday, January 02, 2007
Haitus
So Shannon and I are down under at the moment, meandering about in New Zealand and Australia for the next month. Seeing as internet will be a little less frequent for me, and since it's costing me money each time I get on, blogs are probably going to be sparse if not all together left out for the next month.
My apologies for my regular readers, but come the first week of February, I'll be back on the blogging bandwagon, with maybe a line or two along the way if I find a free internet spot.
We've got a camper van right now for the New Zealand leg of things - first stop so far is Kaikoura, which means "eat crayfish". I may not Kaikoura, but the plan is surfing, caving, and maybe a dolphin swim, though it's $130 a person to do that. We'll see. Anyway, till the next time there's a blog...
My apologies for my regular readers, but come the first week of February, I'll be back on the blogging bandwagon, with maybe a line or two along the way if I find a free internet spot.
We've got a camper van right now for the New Zealand leg of things - first stop so far is Kaikoura, which means "eat crayfish". I may not Kaikoura, but the plan is surfing, caving, and maybe a dolphin swim, though it's $130 a person to do that. We'll see. Anyway, till the next time there's a blog...
Haitus
So Shannon and I are down under at the moment, meandering about in New Zealand and Australia for the next month. Seeing as internet will be a little less frequent for me, and since it's costing me money each time I get on, blogs are probably going to be sparse if not all together left out for the next month.
My apologies for my regular readers, but come the first week of February, I'll be back on the blogging bandwagon, with maybe a line or two along the way if I find a free internet spot.
We've got a camper van right now for the New Zealand leg of things - first stop so far is Kaikoura, which means "eat crayfish". I may not Kaikoura, but the plan is surfing, caving, and maybe a dolphin swim, though it's $130 a person to do that. We'll see. Anyway, till the next time there's a blog..
My apologies for my regular readers, but come the first week of February, I'll be back on the blogging bandwagon, with maybe a line or two along the way if I find a free internet spot.
We've got a camper van right now for the New Zealand leg of things - first stop so far is Kaikoura, which means "eat crayfish". I may not Kaikoura, but the plan is surfing, caving, and maybe a dolphin swim, though it's $130 a person to do that. We'll see. Anyway, till the next time there's a blog..
Friday, December 22, 2006
"Hey Bae-by!
Four months into my stay here in Korea, one of the things that hasn't changed and never will is the way people react to seeing me. No matter how accustomed to Korea and fluent my language skills become, people are always going to stare as I walk down the street. High school girls will yell "hi" and giggle as I walk by, people selling things will offer up some broken English to convince me to buy their product, and occasionally someone will chase me down the street even while I'm on my bicycle to try and talk with me. I run into the same drunk Korean once a month on my way to school, and he'll ask me questions and give me random pieces of paper. He's harmless, just really weird.
The other day I had another of these kinds of run-ins. I had stopped to get my hair cut while coming home from school, and I'd gone a few blocks from the hairdresser's towards home. I was walking my bike this time, cause I had a flat tire, so I was able to hear this lady yelling behind me about something, like she wanted someone to wait for her. I turned to realize it was me she was yelling at, and she charged her way across the road towards me, kind of looking for cars on the way, but I don't think she would have waited for them to stop. I figured I had left something at the hairdresser's, but when she got closer to me I realized this lady wasn't from there at all.
She was probably late 30's, wearing a somewhat nice black dress of sorts (big and flowing and very Asian). But there was something quite off about her - she had a really bad dye job on her hair and an intense worried look on her face. As she stormed up to me, she starts rambling on about "Where are you from," and "What's going on?"
"Ummm, I'm from Canada"
"Oh really? Oh that's great" She's shuffling back and forth on her feet, and speaking in a really strange accent. "I'm from the USA too, you know, that's great. So yeah bae-by, where are you going?" She says baby really strangely too me, like some kind of Korean 50's jazz singer, and I'm instantly squirming to keep my bike between the two of us.
"Oh, yeah, um, I'm just heading home you know, it's the end of the day," I tell her.
"Oh really bae-by? Yeah, you, where are you from? I'm from Chicago, and *unintelligible* so you should, like, hey, where are you going, bae-by?"
"I'm just going home, and - " "Oh you live 'round here!" she cuts me off, "that's great bae-by, where do you live? I'm from America and I dunno about *unintelligible* Korea and *unintelligible* so you think I could come to your place bae-by?" She's looking a little frantic almost now, and seems to be as uncomfortable as I am, shifting her weight back and forth and getting wide-eyed on me every few seconds.
"Uhhh, that's probably not a good idea," I stutter.
"Ahh, bae-by, whatchoo doin' now, huh? You wanna *unintelligible - may have been "go someplace" * and, yeah bae-by..."
"I gotta go home, my girlfriend is waiting for me..."
"Where do you live, bae-by?"
"Just around here," I say, and point the opposite way of my house.
"Bae-by!!" She yells, and double hand-slaps my chest. It's definitely time to go, I decide.
"It's been nice," I say, "but it's definitely time for me to get going home."
"Maybe you could wanna stay here with me," she says. I decline and start walking away, zig-zagging my way home. She says something else to me on my way, and wanders off slowly.
My guess is, she was/is a prostitute, but then again maybe she was a single mother looking for her way out of poverty. Either way, I don't think she was that far from home, and I'm sure I'll see her again before I end up leaving the country. Oh bae-by...
The other day I had another of these kinds of run-ins. I had stopped to get my hair cut while coming home from school, and I'd gone a few blocks from the hairdresser's towards home. I was walking my bike this time, cause I had a flat tire, so I was able to hear this lady yelling behind me about something, like she wanted someone to wait for her. I turned to realize it was me she was yelling at, and she charged her way across the road towards me, kind of looking for cars on the way, but I don't think she would have waited for them to stop. I figured I had left something at the hairdresser's, but when she got closer to me I realized this lady wasn't from there at all.
She was probably late 30's, wearing a somewhat nice black dress of sorts (big and flowing and very Asian). But there was something quite off about her - she had a really bad dye job on her hair and an intense worried look on her face. As she stormed up to me, she starts rambling on about "Where are you from," and "What's going on?"
"Ummm, I'm from Canada"
"Oh really? Oh that's great" She's shuffling back and forth on her feet, and speaking in a really strange accent. "I'm from the USA too, you know, that's great. So yeah bae-by, where are you going?" She says baby really strangely too me, like some kind of Korean 50's jazz singer, and I'm instantly squirming to keep my bike between the two of us.
"Oh, yeah, um, I'm just heading home you know, it's the end of the day," I tell her.
"Oh really bae-by? Yeah, you, where are you from? I'm from Chicago, and *unintelligible* so you should, like, hey, where are you going, bae-by?"
"I'm just going home, and - " "Oh you live 'round here!" she cuts me off, "that's great bae-by, where do you live? I'm from America and I dunno about *unintelligible* Korea and *unintelligible* so you think I could come to your place bae-by?" She's looking a little frantic almost now, and seems to be as uncomfortable as I am, shifting her weight back and forth and getting wide-eyed on me every few seconds.
"Uhhh, that's probably not a good idea," I stutter.
"Ahh, bae-by, whatchoo doin' now, huh? You wanna *unintelligible - may have been "go someplace" * and, yeah bae-by..."
"I gotta go home, my girlfriend is waiting for me..."
"Where do you live, bae-by?"
"Just around here," I say, and point the opposite way of my house.
"Bae-by!!" She yells, and double hand-slaps my chest. It's definitely time to go, I decide.
"It's been nice," I say, "but it's definitely time for me to get going home."
"Maybe you could wanna stay here with me," she says. I decline and start walking away, zig-zagging my way home. She says something else to me on my way, and wanders off slowly.
My guess is, she was/is a prostitute, but then again maybe she was a single mother looking for her way out of poverty. Either way, I don't think she was that far from home, and I'm sure I'll see her again before I end up leaving the country. Oh bae-by...
Tuesday, December 19, 2006
The Little Things
It's been busy this last week, as Christmas is getting close and Shannon and I have been doing a smattering of Christmas-related task, mostly involving present-buying and mailing home. As such, this weeks blog will feature mostly a mish-mash of stories and happenings, a collection I guess of little tidbits of information that wouldn't get put into their own entry, but are still worth remembering and sharing.
To this point in time, my efforts to buy clothing have been entirely fruitless. This country seems to have a one-size-fits-Korea thing going, which is about 4 sizes too small for me, and unless I take a 5 hour trip to Seoul, I don't know where I'll ever find clothes. So, when taking a shower the other day I finally realized how odd the settings in the shower are - aiming slightly over my head, or aiming way over my head. How a 5'5" Korean would manage is beyond me.
I think I'm finally starting to become climatized to the moderately cold weather here, and I'm finding myself feeling nastily cold on days that barely reach 0 degrees. I've got my heater cranked at school, which has spawned two types of whiny kids - the early morning kids, who are cold because the heater isn't hot enough yet; and the afternoon kids, who are hot because they refuse to take off their coats.
"Teacher! My hot!" they cry.
"Take off your coat," I tell them. The only answer they've given me so far is "Teacher, no!"
Shannon's school has an even stranger heating situation. In fact, her school is just riddled with weirdness. They bring a dentist into school twice a week, which I guess it great for the kids (though it makes for a creepy Principal's Office, what with the dentist chair sitting in it), but they were finding that the dentist needs a lot of power, so on Tuesday and Thursday no one gets to use the heaters in the classroom. I suppose cold rooms is better than losing power halfway through a root canal, but it's still a funny and unfortunate situation.
Shannon was also had her cell phone stolen by a student recently. It was a pretty crappy situation, as getting a cell phone in this country is hard for us foreigners, and replacing one can be even worse. She managed to get it back, but now there's the uncomforableness of having to work with the student who stole it. They caught the girl who did it, but she's shown no remorse at all, and still asks Shannon for candy everyday.
My school has just finished construction of a new "English Village", making us the provincial hub for English instruction now. There's only three of these villages in the country, and every week 120 new kids will come into our school to learn English in "real life" situations. I don't have anything to do with it, and the only reason I'm even excited about it is the 6 new foreigners who are coming to work here. A few have arrived already, and while one of them seems he's living the world-travelling-dream he had during a 1970's acid-inspired moment of clarity, the others seem pretty cool. Hmmm, I hope the hippie dude doesn't go googling my blog anytime soon...
While I'm on the subject of it, this town (and I guess the lifestyle here) oozes with transition, as teachers are coming and going all the time. With only 50-100 people in town that you can share a language with, it means a pretty steady stream of fresh faces to get together with. Every week is a going-away and welcome-aboard party for someone, and there always seems to be another person who's been in town for a few months and will suddenly just show up out of nowhere. Some of these "hidden" people can go days, weeks, or even months before they finally find another English speaker in town, so they're first run-in with another "waygook" can be quite comical, and Shannon and I have had a few conversations with people where they seem reluctant to let us go for fear of not seeing another foreigner for quite some time.
I've almost reached the point now of being able to recite "How the Grinch Stole Christmas" from start to finish. It's the last week of school before the holidays, so I've been showing the video to all my kids, and I've watched it 8 times already this week. You know that guy wrote in anapestic tetrameter? Maybe I'll teach my kids to speak that way -
"My good Teacher, how are you it's such a nice day
to perhaps go outside for a fun soccer game.
We would like not to study our English today,
We would rather be outside so we could go play."
"Well of course my dear children, I think I'll come too,
and then I'll play on your team and maybe hers too.
But then please little children, don't gang up on me
and pull out my arm hair and bite with your teeth."
Kay, that's as poetic as I'm going to get for today. Thanks for reading, I'll be back again next week!
To this point in time, my efforts to buy clothing have been entirely fruitless. This country seems to have a one-size-fits-Korea thing going, which is about 4 sizes too small for me, and unless I take a 5 hour trip to Seoul, I don't know where I'll ever find clothes. So, when taking a shower the other day I finally realized how odd the settings in the shower are - aiming slightly over my head, or aiming way over my head. How a 5'5" Korean would manage is beyond me.
I think I'm finally starting to become climatized to the moderately cold weather here, and I'm finding myself feeling nastily cold on days that barely reach 0 degrees. I've got my heater cranked at school, which has spawned two types of whiny kids - the early morning kids, who are cold because the heater isn't hot enough yet; and the afternoon kids, who are hot because they refuse to take off their coats.
"Teacher! My hot!" they cry.
"Take off your coat," I tell them. The only answer they've given me so far is "Teacher, no!"
Shannon's school has an even stranger heating situation. In fact, her school is just riddled with weirdness. They bring a dentist into school twice a week, which I guess it great for the kids (though it makes for a creepy Principal's Office, what with the dentist chair sitting in it), but they were finding that the dentist needs a lot of power, so on Tuesday and Thursday no one gets to use the heaters in the classroom. I suppose cold rooms is better than losing power halfway through a root canal, but it's still a funny and unfortunate situation.
Shannon was also had her cell phone stolen by a student recently. It was a pretty crappy situation, as getting a cell phone in this country is hard for us foreigners, and replacing one can be even worse. She managed to get it back, but now there's the uncomforableness of having to work with the student who stole it. They caught the girl who did it, but she's shown no remorse at all, and still asks Shannon for candy everyday.
My school has just finished construction of a new "English Village", making us the provincial hub for English instruction now. There's only three of these villages in the country, and every week 120 new kids will come into our school to learn English in "real life" situations. I don't have anything to do with it, and the only reason I'm even excited about it is the 6 new foreigners who are coming to work here. A few have arrived already, and while one of them seems he's living the world-travelling-dream he had during a 1970's acid-inspired moment of clarity, the others seem pretty cool. Hmmm, I hope the hippie dude doesn't go googling my blog anytime soon...
While I'm on the subject of it, this town (and I guess the lifestyle here) oozes with transition, as teachers are coming and going all the time. With only 50-100 people in town that you can share a language with, it means a pretty steady stream of fresh faces to get together with. Every week is a going-away and welcome-aboard party for someone, and there always seems to be another person who's been in town for a few months and will suddenly just show up out of nowhere. Some of these "hidden" people can go days, weeks, or even months before they finally find another English speaker in town, so they're first run-in with another "waygook" can be quite comical, and Shannon and I have had a few conversations with people where they seem reluctant to let us go for fear of not seeing another foreigner for quite some time.
I've almost reached the point now of being able to recite "How the Grinch Stole Christmas" from start to finish. It's the last week of school before the holidays, so I've been showing the video to all my kids, and I've watched it 8 times already this week. You know that guy wrote in anapestic tetrameter? Maybe I'll teach my kids to speak that way -
"My good Teacher, how are you it's such a nice day
to perhaps go outside for a fun soccer game.
We would like not to study our English today,
We would rather be outside so we could go play."
"Well of course my dear children, I think I'll come too,
and then I'll play on your team and maybe hers too.
But then please little children, don't gang up on me
and pull out my arm hair and bite with your teeth."
Kay, that's as poetic as I'm going to get for today. Thanks for reading, I'll be back again next week!
Tuesday, December 12, 2006
My Dinner With Joe Joon Boem
Kudos to Duane for reading my entire blog here from start to finish. I hope you got a good laugh reading it.
It's been busy here the last few days, with plenty of stories to write about, and I think I may get in two entries this week. Today's entry though is in regards only to a single episode from last week, a dinner party at a student's house with his family.
Dinner at the Joe's
On Thursday last week, my Prinipal arranged a dinner for himself, our school's 3rd grade teacher and me at Joe Joon Boem's house. From the beginning, it was a little hokey. To begin with, the 3rd grade teacher, Mr. Hwang Gab Soon, was showing some obvious displeasure about going. I may not be able to understand Korean, but I can certainly recognize when someone is pouting, and Mr. Hwang was throwing an awfully big fit about something. However, after a few minutes of sitting in a parking lot debating about whatever was upsetting Mr. Hwang, we finally started driving - aimlessly in circles around the block at first, trying to figure how to get to the Joe's house.
It turns out Joe Joon Boem's family is just up the street from my place, which quickly led to the decision I should visit more often. They have a very nice house, quite large for a Korean home, with the parents, three children and grandmother living together. The evening started off nicely, with a brief living room discussion before moving to the kitchen for dinner.
The Vegetarian I Used To Be
As usual, nothing worked as simply as it should have. It turns out that Joon Boem's mother, Mrs. Joe, is an English teacher, and quite fluent speaking English. However with the way seniority works, my principal was given the role of interpreting for me that night, and I was left out of the loop for the great majority of the conversation, despite having such a strong English speaker available.
Dinner that evening was meat, and lots of it. There was some raw fish, two stacked plates of octopus wrapped around popsicle sticks, the usual array of pickled cabbage and other vegetables, and 5 platters of beef. As the foreigner at the table, conversation was hard, and limited to a few key phrases, either involving feeding me more meat, feeding me more scotch, or asking me if I thought Joe Juun Boem's grandmother looked like Miss Korea. I dutifully said yes every time, took a heaping hunk of beef and grimaced as I sipped my newly filled glass of scotch.
The scotch was a bit of a problem, and I found myself chasing it with beef, as I wasn't offered water or any other drink besides Korean wine and scotch. A nibble of cabbage, a sip of wine, a drink of scotch, then chase it with beef. When most of the food was done, I found I still had a lot of scotch to drink, and for a moment I was relieved when Mrs. Joe pulled out two more large platters of beef that had been stashed away. So, I continued to eat beef, agree that "Mrs. Joe, she is very much Miss Korea", drink some scotch, chase it with beef.
Two hours later, I was starting to feel a little queasy. 10 years of eating mostly as a vegetarian meant my tolerance for eating meat quite was low, and as the 6th and 7th platters of beef arrived, I began feeling a little nauseous. I continued on with dinner, sipped some wine, ate some beef, drank some scotch, and despaired as another platter of beef was brought out. After two glasses of scotch, someone asked me if I wanted more. Now drunk enough to comfortably say "no", someone then poured me wine, fed me some beef, I chased it with the last of my scotch, and mentioned how much grandma looks like Miss Korea. Bleary-eyed, I completely ignored the final platter of beef put on the table, and sipped my wine till we finally could leave the dinner table.
Grandma's Room
Korean's are excellent at getting the most out of what they have. They recycle like crazy, serve any leftovers from one meal at the next, and they'll use Grandma's tiny bedroom to entertain the guests as well. Five adults and three kids made for some cramped quarters, but we packed ourselves in and continued eating beef and drinking wine. I was really trying to keep my cool with how drunk I had gotten, but I realized most everyone wasn't any more sober than I was. My principal and Mr. Hwang were now drinking from a bottle of orange juice, which I was pretty certain wasn't just OJ. My principal at one point lept up to give more "OJ" to Mr. Hwang, who did his best to refuse, but finally relented - an incredibly bizarre scene given the tiny size of the room and that we were guests in someone's house.
By now, entering the 3rd hour of dinner, Grandma too was getting a little tipsy. She'd been sizing me up all night, and now her questioning stares were becoming more frequent. Even when I stared right back at her (if only for a moment), I still couldn't break that "What's your story?" stare.
As we moved into the 4th hour, it was almost time to go. The adults were making the kids do magic tricks, we had moved onto our 3rd or 4th bottle of "Maeshe" (a rather delicious Korean wine), and Grandma was crawling back and forth on her bed on all fours. Still suffering from a cold, I was struggling hard to keep my head up and my eyes open, and it was a relief to finally do the 20 minute goodbye-and-who's-taking-who-home dance. No one was sober enough to drive, but I'm certain that was never mentioned to anyone as we left.
Well, a long night has turned into a long blog-entry. Time to jet, there's kids to teach and only me it seems to do it. I'll be back later this week with another entry I think. Thanks for reading!
It's been busy here the last few days, with plenty of stories to write about, and I think I may get in two entries this week. Today's entry though is in regards only to a single episode from last week, a dinner party at a student's house with his family.
Dinner at the Joe's
On Thursday last week, my Prinipal arranged a dinner for himself, our school's 3rd grade teacher and me at Joe Joon Boem's house. From the beginning, it was a little hokey. To begin with, the 3rd grade teacher, Mr. Hwang Gab Soon, was showing some obvious displeasure about going. I may not be able to understand Korean, but I can certainly recognize when someone is pouting, and Mr. Hwang was throwing an awfully big fit about something. However, after a few minutes of sitting in a parking lot debating about whatever was upsetting Mr. Hwang, we finally started driving - aimlessly in circles around the block at first, trying to figure how to get to the Joe's house.
It turns out Joe Joon Boem's family is just up the street from my place, which quickly led to the decision I should visit more often. They have a very nice house, quite large for a Korean home, with the parents, three children and grandmother living together. The evening started off nicely, with a brief living room discussion before moving to the kitchen for dinner.
The Vegetarian I Used To Be
As usual, nothing worked as simply as it should have. It turns out that Joon Boem's mother, Mrs. Joe, is an English teacher, and quite fluent speaking English. However with the way seniority works, my principal was given the role of interpreting for me that night, and I was left out of the loop for the great majority of the conversation, despite having such a strong English speaker available.
Dinner that evening was meat, and lots of it. There was some raw fish, two stacked plates of octopus wrapped around popsicle sticks, the usual array of pickled cabbage and other vegetables, and 5 platters of beef. As the foreigner at the table, conversation was hard, and limited to a few key phrases, either involving feeding me more meat, feeding me more scotch, or asking me if I thought Joe Juun Boem's grandmother looked like Miss Korea. I dutifully said yes every time, took a heaping hunk of beef and grimaced as I sipped my newly filled glass of scotch.
The scotch was a bit of a problem, and I found myself chasing it with beef, as I wasn't offered water or any other drink besides Korean wine and scotch. A nibble of cabbage, a sip of wine, a drink of scotch, then chase it with beef. When most of the food was done, I found I still had a lot of scotch to drink, and for a moment I was relieved when Mrs. Joe pulled out two more large platters of beef that had been stashed away. So, I continued to eat beef, agree that "Mrs. Joe, she is very much Miss Korea", drink some scotch, chase it with beef.
Two hours later, I was starting to feel a little queasy. 10 years of eating mostly as a vegetarian meant my tolerance for eating meat quite was low, and as the 6th and 7th platters of beef arrived, I began feeling a little nauseous. I continued on with dinner, sipped some wine, ate some beef, drank some scotch, and despaired as another platter of beef was brought out. After two glasses of scotch, someone asked me if I wanted more. Now drunk enough to comfortably say "no", someone then poured me wine, fed me some beef, I chased it with the last of my scotch, and mentioned how much grandma looks like Miss Korea. Bleary-eyed, I completely ignored the final platter of beef put on the table, and sipped my wine till we finally could leave the dinner table.
Grandma's Room
Korean's are excellent at getting the most out of what they have. They recycle like crazy, serve any leftovers from one meal at the next, and they'll use Grandma's tiny bedroom to entertain the guests as well. Five adults and three kids made for some cramped quarters, but we packed ourselves in and continued eating beef and drinking wine. I was really trying to keep my cool with how drunk I had gotten, but I realized most everyone wasn't any more sober than I was. My principal and Mr. Hwang were now drinking from a bottle of orange juice, which I was pretty certain wasn't just OJ. My principal at one point lept up to give more "OJ" to Mr. Hwang, who did his best to refuse, but finally relented - an incredibly bizarre scene given the tiny size of the room and that we were guests in someone's house.
By now, entering the 3rd hour of dinner, Grandma too was getting a little tipsy. She'd been sizing me up all night, and now her questioning stares were becoming more frequent. Even when I stared right back at her (if only for a moment), I still couldn't break that "What's your story?" stare.
As we moved into the 4th hour, it was almost time to go. The adults were making the kids do magic tricks, we had moved onto our 3rd or 4th bottle of "Maeshe" (a rather delicious Korean wine), and Grandma was crawling back and forth on her bed on all fours. Still suffering from a cold, I was struggling hard to keep my head up and my eyes open, and it was a relief to finally do the 20 minute goodbye-and-who's-taking-who-home dance. No one was sober enough to drive, but I'm certain that was never mentioned to anyone as we left.
Well, a long night has turned into a long blog-entry. Time to jet, there's kids to teach and only me it seems to do it. I'll be back later this week with another entry I think. Thanks for reading!
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