A quickie

Kinda in a rush today, but I thought I'd update a bit for the sake of my worry prone mom who reads this. Things are going fine, I will be moving to a new place next week. Its nothing special but its a step up from the place I'm in now. Today I had to go buy a plunger. Nuff said.

It will be kind of weird moving and getting used to a new neighbourhood, but I think its for the best.

yeah well, nothing else to say.

Things are looking up

The last two days have been going okay. First off, stop me if you've heard this one before, but they have promised to find me a new apartment. I wrote the school a powerful letter that gave them the ulimatum of either finding me a new apartment or pimping mine out to the nines. I called their bluff that getting a me out of my current apartment was going to cost them $3000. I asked them to get me better furniture, hook up my internet and pay for it and while they were at it pay for my gym membership and a bunch of other stuff. Sure some of my requests were unrealistic but they were cheaper than any of thier alternatives. They came back saying they were going to find me a new apartment with another landlord (the one Nick has). We'll see how it all turns out, I'm not exactly holding my breath. I'm still ready to leave this job if I have to but it seems that they are getting pretty desperate to hold on to me.
I also got my wallet back today, it was turned in at a fire station across town. Which is nice. It would be nicer if I hadn't cancelled my credit card and bank card already. Or if there was any money still in the wallet. But there were a few cards in there that were good to get back.
I also went back to find that western market and after much trouble I finally did. I was looking in the complete wrong place last week, although in my defense the directions I got off the internet could have been clearer. But I found a block of town where you can get some of the comforts of home. I picked up 10 pounds of whey protein from two little old korean ladies that ran a bodybuilding supplement booth. I also picked up a bunch of oatmeal. Oatmeal is one of those foods that you take so for granted back home but for me it was awesome to find. I also picked up some hair clippers and finally was able to shave down the head again and start looking like a normal person again. I started shaving me head about three years ago when I was convinced I was quickly going bald. I haven't lost any more hair since then but I still like the look. Well enough about the minutae of my day.
Anyway with any luck things are going to settle down for me real soon here. I'm still plugging away at learning the language and although its going slow I am able to get by in more and more situations. No crazy adventures in the nightlife lately though, I'm trying to hold off of spedning too much money till I get my credit card replaced (only essential items like 10 lbs of whey) and honestly most nights the idea of going out drinking till three in the morning isn't that appealing. But this week I'm also planning on getting a cell phone so soon enough I can start calling up some of the people I've met round here and get dragged out whether I want to or not.

There was no Joy in Nevada today.

Literally. One of my students named 'Joy' was not in my class called Nevada today. For the first week I was convinced his name was actaully 'Joey' and he was saying it wrong, but nope thats the English name some teacher gave him.

Anyway I did not get my wallet back so I cancelled my credit and bank card. I should be able to get the credit card replaced by next week. The bank card I will have to go to a Bank of Montreal branch, however I'm not sure how many locations they have in Busan, South Korea. Probably a lot.

Patrick and Nick heard about my loss and bought me a new wallet which was really sweet. And this morning at work was prettty easy so that was a nice break. It looks like they are prepping the kindergarten kids for thier own speech contest so the class structure was all over the place. Basically the Korean teachers were taking classes into the auditorium to practice thier speeches and whichever students they weren't working with Nick and I had to take care of. So today Nick and i went from glorified babysitters to just plain babysitters. We just read stories to the kids all morning. I had classes of his students he had classes of mine, it was kind of fun. He even got my younguns (Edison) for a period. He said that they were basically climbing on the table or crawling under it and he had trouble keeping control. I was glad to hear I wasn't the only one.

So at lunch Michelle (the kind of manager for the school but not really cause she doesn't want the job) told me that since I didn't like the other apartment I was shown I was unfortunately stuck with my current one until the lease is up in March. Buton the bright side the landlord agreed to provide me with furniture and clean the place. That was really sweet. I of course informed her that I had already been promised new furniture and cleaning and since none of that had materialized I had already spent lots of time and money taking care of those things myself (I didn't think it prudent to mention that Matt had given me the furniture- just not the right time). I also mentioned that I was told in my negotiations for my contract that i would be given an acceptable apartment (and later that a new apartment would be found for me if I wasn't happy with the one offered) so I would have to talk to my recruiter and see if it wasn't in my best interests to go elsewhere where I would be provided with one. Michelle tried to explain how the school can't get out of the current lease. I politely explained that it frankly wasn't my concern, that I was th eone that had to live in the shitty aparment. i told her tha tid they expected me to act liek a professional they should treat me like one. Michelle said she would talk to the director.
Personally i am really at the point that I could see myself quitting and finding a new job. I have been in this country for exactly one month and things have not improved too much for me, if I had the balls to come across the world hopefully I've got a half shot of machismo left to find something better.

I swear I'm not making this up

Sticom pitch: nd of like the story of Job, only less on the tragic and more on the comic.

Yep I've gone and done a silly thing. I lost my wallet. Looks like it fell out of my pocket as I was getting out of a cab on my way home from the elementary school. I know I should be angry or something but I'm really just more exasperated than anything else. Partially because it was my fault and I really can't get mad at a guy who's that good looking (which is also the reason I don't get on Orlando Bloom's case for Alexander). And in any case it just fell out of my pocket, its not like it was anything I did or didn't do. So the chances of me getting it back are very slim. Firstly I have no idea what company cab I was riding in, or if it even was a company cab. Independant cabs are all over the place here and they all look pretty much the same. I hung near City Hall where I got off of the cab on the slim chance the driver would have discovered the wallet made a couple of U turns (near impossible in Busan) and dropped the wallet off to me. It was a slim chance but really the best course of action I had. I just notified the receptionist at my school of what happened and she said she'll see what she can do, but admitted that there was little chance of me getting it back. None of the cards in there would mean anything to a korean, except for maybe my Alien Registration Card, which may or may not have been in there. Good nes if it was cause they could call imiigration and track me down. Bad news if it was because then I'll have to get that darn thing replaced. I had a little piece of paper in there with three phone numbers in there and that's really my best bet. If someone finds it and calls one of them (the school, my recruiter or Patrick) I might get it back.
In the meantime I have definitely lost: my canadian bank card (tough to use here but access to emergency funds in a pinch) , my Korean Bank card (with a whopping $0 in the account, no big deal), my credit card (the biggest loss, it was the easiset source of emergency money and my real safety net that I could run back to canada whenever I wanted), an expired driver's licenese (glad I didn't get the folks to send me the new one), my gym card (hopefully I'll only have to pay a card replacement fee, although my month membership was up soon) and about $40 in cash.
I guess I should cancel my mastercard, but I know it will be a pain in the ass to get replaced. But then it will be a bigger pain if someone racks up a bunch of crap on it.
Anyway I have about a thousand in cash that I had luckily not gotten around to depositing in my account and payday is real soon so I will have no problems financially. I can probably get my Korean bank card replaced quickly, and the gym card. As for the bank card/ credit card I figure they will send me new ones but it will probably take a while. Hopefully my ARC wasn;t in there too.
Anyway its just a piss off more than anything else but it does mean that I don;t have the midnight run option anymore. up until this point I knew that if stuff went bad I could buy a plane ticket and leave. For now that is temporarily not the case. It'll all work out eventually but I'm really starting to wonder what kind of misadventures this week has left. Even I'm getting a slight kick out of all of this. I mean its kinda funny when you think about it.
Anyway I better go and cancel that bank card, hang out near where the cab dropped me off and then stew in my own juices for the next few days.

"This is a joke, right?"

...that was my first thought when they showed me the new place they had picked out for me. The school talked to my landlord and I went down to check out a new place with my landlord (whom I've never met before) Mr. Bak (The head bus driver/ maitenence guy/ electrician/ anything else the school needs guy) and the landlord's mom (hey why not!). I'm just glad it didn;t take my whole lunch hour. So the school wants to keep with the same landlord because they have a contract with her for at least four more months, but after today I will have to make it clear to them that I really don't care if the school loses money on the arrangement.
So to make a short story short they drive me to a building near where Nick lives, my first warning was when they opened the door to a ground floor apartment, I pretty much knew from that point that it was going to be shit. I don;t like ground floor apartments, my current one is ground floor. You have no light and lots of noise and there are bars on your windows. I'm cool with some stairs. So I walk inside and see that this place is sbout 2/3 the size of my current place, which is already the smallest apartment I've seen here. This place was basically dorm room sized, and crappy Ryerson dorm at that. It had a tiny fridge, a small bed, and a small desk and a average sized wardrobe. It actually took me a second to figure out the size relations of those objects. This was partially due to teaching a morning of kindergarten and I always feel that in whatever small way I pull thier intellect up they pull mine down the same amount- law of the conservation of energy and all that. But it was also that at first you look at that room and say "Wow, all of this furniture is oversized! There's barely any room at all!" But then it hits you that the problem is that the room itself is jsut the crappy furniture's ugly friend- making them look better in relation. So it being small wasn;t the only problem, it was also very dirty. They assured me that they would clean it, and I assured them that I had heard that line before. I made mention of the fact that I had spent many hours cleaning my current place despite promises that it would be cleaned. This was of course when everyone in the room exhibiting a very selective comprehension of English. When I noted the water damage on the wallpaper they said that the wallpaper would be redone. Which is great cause nothing fixes a leaking structure like two more milimeters of paper. The kitchen was worse than the other one, a beat-up rice cooker replacing the beat-up hotplate. So anyway the three of them were all looking at me expectantly. They actually thought I was going to take it. The best part of the whole day was the surprise on thier faces when I just bluntly said 'No I don't like it" and proceeded to walk out. They were shocked and perhaps a little offended. What really got me was that a few years ago I probably would have tried to look for the best in things, probably agree to take the place and then kick myslef for it later. Luckily I've evolved beyond such niceities.
So I went back to the school with Mr. Bak and I figure sometime during the rest of the day he informed the school that I wouldn't take the place. Its unfortunate but there are only two higher ups that I could have talked to about it myself and I didn;t see either of them all afternoon. So tomorrow I'll go in and talk to someone, because in all fairness I should give them time to decide what to do next.
On a happy note I've kicked my cold and aside from a few nasty pieces of phlegm I'm still dislodging I feel fine. I opened a bank account today and now should be able to buy a phone this week. I didn't do much on the weekend except for rest up. I did go across the city to find a western market that sells protein powder but my directions were crap and I ended up in the world famous Jalachi Fish Market, which was a cool little cultural experience but I was frustrated that I never found the market I was looking for. I have better directions now and will probably go back one day soon.
I hoped for this blog top be more about cultural experiences and less about my personal bitching but I guess I've just been a little self centered lately. Sorry readers, you get what you pay for.

What we need is some discipline

Sorry if my last post came across as a little bitchy, I was more pissed about losing my finely crafted post than anything else.
I haven't been up to too much that has been fit to print this week, an dI'm going to keep it short cause I'm still nursing the last vestiges of a cold and I promised myself that tonight the nurse was going to pull the plug.
One thing that I guess is a little different this week is at the elementary school I teach at. One of the classes I have is to teach the teachers English. not the english teachers, its just a drop in class for any of the teachers from other subjects tath want to learn. In the past the class was not very popular, to the point where most days no one showed up and the previous teacher just got to go home early. As much of a fan of that concept that I was its also in my best interests to keep the elementary school happy. In some ways I like the elementary school a bit more cause its not run purely for profit like my hagwon. In any case the main teacher I work with on Tuesdays knew I used to be a personal trainer and suggested that I run the english lesson as an exercise class. I agreed, full well knowing that any english learned would be purely incidental. the fitness boom is just taking off here, everyone is super-concerned about thier appearance and gyms have started cropping up selling answers. Of course they are still very misinformed and few people at all work out with weights at all. Overall Koreans are no where near as fat as Americans but thier high carb diets do lead to some signifigant belly fat in a lot of the population. And they are more openly critical of eachother. It would be accepted here for someone to tell you to your face that you've been looking very fat lately and not pretty.
Anyhow i ended up with a dozen middleaged women in my fitness english class. I taught it purely in english and for the most part they seemed to pick up the general sense of what I was telling them. I drilled the nutrition angle since sweets and sodas are on the rise here. Coke is cheap as piss here, I've heard they will sell thier products at a loss to hook a country on them. I didn't push them too hard, just some squats crunches rows (I had some bands) etc. They all seemed to enjoy it alot. It felt kind of good to be doing it actaully. I am very much doing a lot of new things lately with the teaching of kids and whatnot and teaching exercise to people with poor english skills is something I have been doing for years. It went so well that the teache rtha I work with suggested I go into business for myself one day with the combination english lesson/ fitness training. She pointed out that the same rich parents that send thier kids to private english schools also are very concerned that thier kids don't end up fat. The fact of the matter is that the market here is probably very very ripe for some good money there. I'll give it some thought but theres not much I can do right now. I would need either a partner or vastly improved english skills to pull it off profitably. Although I might mention the idea to my school director in a few months if I just get bored and want to do it. Anyway things are going good at the elementary school, today they called my hagwon to tell them how great they thought I was doing with all thier classes. But to be fair I'm following a complete loser and a semi-burnout and those are easty acts to follow.
As for the title of this piece that just comes from my new techniques to discipline my kindergarten classes. I have three different ones that I teach at random blocks in the week. Theres the little one Edison, mostly three and four year olds. Schweitzer which is 5 and 6 year olds and Galileo class which is is 6 and 7 year olds. I think. Thats about the age range I guess anyway. Sometimes some of the classes get out of hand, the kids get antsy and just start ignoring me or hitting eachother (usually play fighting but it can get out of hand) or just don't ant to do what I say. Galileo is actually no problem, those kids are well behaved and as long as I don't bore them they're fine. Shouting has little effect since they are all so loud anyway they can barely hear you. I don't like sending young kids out of the class b/c they are unlikely to stay anywhere near the door and are just as like to see if they can turn the bathroom into a swimming pool.
The school has had some problems with how teachers have disciplined kids in the past. The old teacher Matt had lost a class because he shoved the kids a bit and the parents complained. Matt told me about another guy, some middle aged english guy, who used to poke the kids' hands with pins. Seriously. I've had a few of the Korean teachers take me aside and ask me not to hit or hurt the kids, not that they thought I would specifically, just because of the troubles they've had in the past.
Anyway I looked around online and found a few simple methods for getting kids in line. For the Edison class I just start class by putting a big smiling face on the board and a big frowning face. Everyone starts in the smiling side and when someone is bad they are put to the frowning side. At the end of class the smiling face kids get stickers (I brought a tonne with me from canada) the others get bumpkis. they're young enough to be thrilled with stickers, and its giving them the basics of there being consequences for thier actoins. The Schwietzer class is a little older and a little more rowdy (I was warned they were the most misbehaved class) and I knew stickers wouldn't cut it. For them I keep a scoreboard on the wall and every good thing they do (like answer a question right) gets them a smiley face and every bad one get them... yep you guessed it a frowning face. I'm really stretching my artistic skills to the limit here. At the end of class I hand out Canadian play money, $5 for each smiley face. Usually only one fiver each. Invariably one or two kids don't get one and start crying. Which tears me apart. It sucks to see a little kid cry and know that you're the reason. But after a few days they seem to be starting to realize that if they are good they get some money. Wow in writing this sounds so much like bribing. Anyway at the end of the week they can redeem thier money for prizes. They can either get cheap candy or for more money they can get toys. I know I'm a hypocrite for having candy but the moral is to skip the candy and save up for the cool toys. Also I can't blow too much money on this kind of stuff. Anyway the first week of prizes wen tout todya and it seemed relatively sucessful. there was one kid crying so much at the end of one class caus ehe didn't get anything that I almost cracked and gave him something. But then one of those cool things happened where another kid who had only gotten $5 that day gave it to him so he would feel better.
Anyway I realize these are just boring teacher stories and I promise I'm going to rest up this weekend so I can get better and have some more comic misadventures real soon.

this sucks

I had just written a entry about how I lost power in my apartment for a day and all the hillarity behind getting that fixed. But then that entry got deleted because everything on the internet here except what I type is written in Korean and I have no idea what buttons do what. It is really frustrating sometimes. This is why my blogs have no pictures, why only other bloggers can comment and why they get randomly deleted.

Some days it just doesn;t pay to get out of bed.

I bid you all a frustrated goodnight

Pepero Day and Nori Bahngs

Yes thats right everyone yesterday (saturday) was pepero day here in South Korea. What's pepero day you ask? I know I did. Several times before I could actually figure it out. 'Chocolate Stick' day might be a literal translation for all I know. On friday I was surprised when all of my kids had long sticks of cookie dipped in chocolate (friday wasn't Pepero day, but I guess that some people just got into the holiday spirit early) in brightly coloured packaging that they trades, ate and gave me. I really don't think that there is anything else to the holiday, just the exchange of chocolate sticks. I was told that it was quite blatantly started by a candy manufacturer, which is so refreshing versus the subterfuge of north american corporations.


Well yesterday was also the English Speech contest at the school I teach at. Which basically became a Saturday that I opted to go into work. I honestly didn't have all that much interest in watching my students recite english fairytales, the day was mainly for thier parents. The parents by and large don't speak english, its just a bit of a publicity stunt to make them think thier tutition is being well spent. I originally had no intention of going. I was informed Friday as I was leaving work that the school would like to see me there, to which my mental reply was 'well not enough to pay me for it'. But then Friday night i started feeling sick again, my sore throat and headache came back, ahich coincided with a return of the smell from the bathroom. Which I have now isolated to the water heater. Hot dripping water. No chance of fungus there! So when saturday rolled around I was feeling like crap again (nothign a couple of sudafed didn't help) and thinking that maybe making a really good showing at the Speech contest might help my case for getting a better apartment. Technically I've already been told I'll get one, so it was also more of a 'I'll scratch your back, you scratch mine thing." Plus I wasn't really feeling up to anything else.


The speech contest itself was fine, some of my students did really well, some not so much. But I really didn't work on the speeches much with them- that was thier other teachers- so I decided to take pride in thier sucesses and defer thier failures to other hands. After the contest the entire staff went out to dinner at a swanky korean barbeque house. I tend to like the bbq restaurants here, basically some form of meat is grilled in the center of the table and there are tons of side dishes of salads, kimchee, garlic, yams etc. to pick and choose from. Everyone just shares everything, and it allows picky eaters like myself to eat a fair bit of meat and veggies and avoid the rice and sauces. It was also nice to spend a little time with my co-workers outside of work, aside from Nick and Patrick I really didn't know many of them that well. There was probably 16 of them there, all with varying degrees of english at thier disposal. Rocky, the Korean English teacher that talks like a surfer, was really friendly- explaining how much he loved oatmeal and maple syrup when he was in England. I knew maple syrup was hard to come by here but I never imagined what a novelty oatmeal was. One of the other teachers heard me saying that I don't have a phone yet and said she'd give me her old cellphone, which is super nice of her. Everyone loosened up real quick, the large amopunts of beer and soju the director bought for us probably helped that a bit. I just stuck with a little beer, the sudafed was making me feel fine but drinking was not goign to help me recover form my sore throat.

I also took the dinner as the chance to Give the director a gift from Cananda. In Korea it is customary to bring your new boss a gift, so I finally got around to giving her the bottle of Crown Royale Special Reserve that I picked up in the duty free shop on my way over. It went over well, most likely because its an expensive looking bottle and they were all surprised I knew the custom. I don;t think old Mrs. Kim is a big whiskey drinker but imported whiskey is popular here. I figure after all that brown nosing I'll check in on monday about how my new apartment is coming along. So after dinner a big chunk of the staff wanted to continue drinking, so we found a bar and I found out that a bunch of school teachers can toss back the soju and beer. Thankfully this bar was smoke free so I actually found myslef feeling fine. I'm convinced that the more time I spend outside my apartment the better it is for my throat. So after a few rounds there it was decided we would all hit a nori-bahng.


A nori bahng is basically a karaoke room. If you remember the scene from Lost in Translation this was very much similar. A small room with a video monitor and disco lights where these normally reserved Koreans belt out songs, shake tambourines and dance along to the music. Its different than karaoke nights at bars back home. there its usually done tongue and cheek, here they have fun but take it fairly seriously. Yes I joined in on a few western tunes and aside from Nick and I butchering 'Hey Yeah' (you figure if you've heard a song 5 million times you can follow along, but that was sadly not the case) I didn't make a bad showing. It was neat to see everyone just break out like that, and everyone got so conversational and the guys got touchy. Its not a gay thing here at all but people of the same sex will openly hold hands, walk arm in arm and hug. Patrick mentioned how his first week in Korea he thought there was a lot of lesbians in Korea. Ironically even the slightest physical contact between opposite sexes is looked down upon in public.

It wasn't that late that we finished up in the noori bahng but everyone seemed beat and went home, which I decided would be good for me too. I would really like to kick this cold by monday. So it was nice getting to know my coworkers better, although I know in Korea that although everyone was really friendly and relaxed last night it will be normal reserved behaviour on Monday.

Just a quickie

I was sick yesterday and today and don't really have anything cool to report. I was jsut very happy I brought some sudafed and sucrets with me and was able to tough it out. I only get 3 sick days so I pushed through. It was also to see if I coul dget through the longest dya of my week (wednesday) when I felt like crap. And I could.
One benefit was that I wrote a letter to the director complaining about the smell in my bathroom that I thought was mold (probably in the cieling boards somewhere) and attributed my sickness to that. Which is probably pretty much what happened. Bathroom mold will rarely cause too much damage itself but can weaken your immune system. And it was getting pretty ridiculous that I was avoiding using my wn bathroom because of the smell (which was not a human excrement smell lik eyou would expect). So she agreed to find me a new place. Hopefully the new place is a big step up. Although I complained about the kitchen and the bathroom I did like being close to the gym and having Patrick next door. But I'm happy with my decision to move, its kind of a microsm of my reasons for moving to korea. I wasn't miserable in Toronto by any means but just though that by staying with what was safe and secure I was missing out on the possibility of something better. I'm not sure when the move will be, but I just hope that I'm gion gto be able to get all my pictures down without damging the walls too much. We'll find out if the hot glue gun was a good idea soon enough. I know the place they find will be near the school somewhat I just hope it has everything I need nearby.
I am feeling a lot better now and am gion to go buy some food and watch some dvds tonight, get some rest. Thee school is having a welcoming party for myself and Nick (the other new teacher) on Saturday and I want to make sure I'm feeling 100% for that. Nick was telling me about a little trouble he ran into yesterday when he went to a food vendor on the street and didn't have enough cash to pay the bill. he underestimated the price of two helpings of barbeque and some soju and only had $9 to pay a $20 bill. The lady was furious at him, some other partons calmed her down and she settled for all the cash he had and he had to walk home from downtown (he didn't evne have bus fare). Now in his defence eating out is really cheap here, food vendors on the street even more so. $6-10 is the average I've paid for some pretty huge meals, and soju is less than a buck a bottle in stores, maybe $1.50 at a restaurant. In any case I lent him $20 until he can find a global atm to get money out of his account back home. Its the exact type of situation I would be so afraid of running into myself, I'm glad I brought a fair amount of cash into Korea with me (that I am going through very slowly even with all the stuff I've bought for my apartment).

Think of the children

Its my second week of teaching (only 51 1/2 to go! start baking that 'welcome home' cake, no yams!) and I've started to notice that kids here are really strange. Or maybe they just don't speak english. but maybe its a bit of the both.
I didn't really come to Korea to work with kids, I mean that wasn't my prime reason for making the trek out here. As far as I know we've gots kids in Canada too, and ours are fatter so they're easier not to trip over (and softer to hug). But I took kindergarten/elementary classes because I liked the hours better than the adult classes. So I've been forced into close quarters with these little monsters and for the mosy part its going fine. But there are a few situations that are still a little offsettling.
Firstly I made the mistake of hitting the sauna on Sunday this week. Since I shower there rather than deal with my own bathroom its sometimes relaxing to just hit the hot tubs and saunas on a lazy afternoon. That lazy afternoon becomes less lazy when there are a dozen kids running around laughing and jumping. And they are all very much naked. The last time I saw a naked kid was years ago in a mirror and I was very happy to leave it that way. Its just a little uncomfortable. I mean culturally bathhouses are a Korean thing and its really me that needs to adjust but I would feel more comfortable if the gym ran background checks before admitting members. But all pedophila issues aside it is tough to relax in a hot tub when someone is doing a cannonball right beside you.
My first class on Monday also had my first kid wet themselves. It happened in between classes and when I walked in this girl April (about 3 years old) is pulling at her skirt and tights trying to tell me somethign in Korean. I was just trying to make sure she didn't take her clothes off in front of the class, thinking she just needed to go to the washroom. In the end I figured it out and send her to one of the korean teachers at the school. Even if it was a guy I probably still would have done the same. My classes are just english speaking, luckily they have others to take care of the icky stuff. So naked boys in the sauna and little girls disrobing in the class, but it really got topped by what happened today (tuesday).
this morning about two minutes after my alarm woke me up there was a buzz at my apartment, I answered the door to see two little kids, a boy and a girl, outside my front door. The girl was trying to tell me something as she pushed her way into my apartment. I had no idea who she was or what she wanted but I was convinced at this point that I was the victim of a police sting and bustled her outside, trying to explian that I couldn't speak any Korean and I didn't understand her at all. Perhaps I said those two phrases too well because she looked very confused as I shut the door on her, and kept on trying to talk to me. A few minutes later they rang again, I opened the door and this time she ran right into my apartment (after first taking off her shoes of course) and jsut stood there talking to me. Her little brother was still hanging out in the hall way. I was starting to think that these kids were homeless or something and begging. She definitely seemed to want something. She was underdressed for the cold weather and looked very cold (I had originally mistaken her dancing around for having to go pee) she started grabbing at my hooded sweatshirt that was hanging up and was saying something about Americans. I've been mistaken for american many times by people here and know what the Korean words sound like for it, but this girl seemed nonplussed by my explaination that I was in fact Canadian. In any case my wallet was in that hoodie and I was not yet convinced this wasn't some sort of scam so I bustled her out. I brought very few clothes with me and honestly didn't have anything to give her that would have kept her warm, and heck I don't even know if thats what she was asking. I was tempted to go next door and wake Patrick up just for some translation, but it was about five hours before he usually gets up so I decided against it. Whatever thier case they would be much better served by any of the other apartments in my building that actaully spoke Korean.
So yeah, little girls forcing thier way into your apartment at 8 o clock in the morning is a little disturbing.
But in all my classes have been going well, I seem to be getting a little better at this 'Edutainment" thing. I even got the little no english kid in my little class to behave by taking his toy car away and then giving it back shortly afterwards when he promised to be quiet. A lot of the teachers here reward thier students with candy, and I really can't bring myself to do that. Its the healthy eater in me but there is no way I'm going to give a kid some super hydrongenated, high fructose corn syrup treat for doing good. I see that as a bit of a punishment, really. The teacher at my elementary school is wild with the sugar treats, handing out candy just for showing up to class and cookies for doing your homework. But this country seems to be really big on sweets for kids, and alcohol for adults. Both are ridiculously cheap. Its somewhat typical for cultures with a large working class, they are both ways of pacifying the masses. One leads into the other. Heck I saw a picture of Buster Bunny holding a bottle of Soju today in a store window. I highly doubt Warner Brothers licensed that one (although it does explain what the Tiny Toons are up to nowadays).
I have a bunch of stickers I brought from Canada that I have been doling out very sparingly, and thats the extent of the physical rewards for my classes. There have been some slacking teachers in the past where I'm teaching and the kids want to play games and get candy after ten minutes of class work. And yes it would be easy to just give in and play games with them all the time, but theres no way they're going ot learn much english that way, much less any work ethic. I've had some sucess with classes by showing them that they only get to play games if they are good, which seems to be a new concept to them.
Now thats what I keep to most of the time, but even I am guilty of plaing some loosely educational games in the name of killing time. I played one with my elementary class called dog vs monkey. We've been studying enlgish names for animals and babay animals and so today I gave them all pieces of paper with differnt animals names on them, split them into two teams and had them pick another random person in the class and see what animal they had. And basically if your animal could beat up the other animal you won. Baby Bird vs. a Dinosaur was baout the most one sided battle today. Did they learn much english? A bit. Did they have fun? Oh yeah. The regular teacher saw them on their way out and said she's never seen them so interested in english class. Its a step I figure.
Anyway it looks like it will be about another week or so before I can get my internet set up in my apartment, and therefore get a better link to back home via internet phone, downloaded television and whatnot. I am still wondering what to do about my apartment, if I shoudl argue for a better one of not. I think Schwindt might be right that I could get stuck with something worse. But its more that I feel like I've been a bit of a pushover than wanting a new place. I think I'm just going to write a letter to them stating that I have not been happy with my apartment and I didn't like how they dealt with the situation. I want to let them know that I can only be pushed so far, because this is exactly the type of school that will squeeze you dry if you let them. If I convince them that I am on the edge already I figure they will be less likely to try to push me any farther.

Where everbody knows your name...

Well its sunday here in Korea and I've had a decent enough weekend. Friday night I went out with Matt for his last night here, we went to a chicken place with some friend of his and then to athe "Ol' 55" the western bar that I went to last weekend for halloween. Its a nice enough place, a big hangout for us teachers. Kind of odd if you think about it that everyone travels across the world and then hangs out in a mostly english speaking, english culture place. In any case I had a good time and met some cool people. It was one of matt's friend's birthdays and so the bartender brought over a birthday cake, a sweet potato cake. It looked and tasted mostly like a regular cake but the sugaryness had a slight yamlike aftertaste, it wasn't bad. Its kind of like when a vegan gives you a carob cookie and tries to convince you that it tastes the same as chocolate. It doesn't taste the same but in its own way it doesn't taste bad. I hung out at the bar for a bit and actually had a few drinks. I am a superlightweight nowadays and part of my brain was afraid that I was mortgating the rest of my weekend by having the shots of soju and beer but something tells me that the five pounds of chicken I ate at the restaurant beforehand helped stave off any hangover- not to mention any actual drunkeness the night of. Matt ducked out quietly at one point, he wasn't even planning to stay out late at all as he had to catch a cab to the airport at 8am (to coincide with his master plan to get back into the US in time to watch his first live football game in the daytime in a year) and kept on getting peer pressured to stay a little longer. I'm guessing he got up to go to the bathroom and then beelined it for the exit in a fleeting moment of self discipline. I hung out with some of the new people I had met for a little while longer then booked it myself. I think there is a built in failsafe here in Busan that will keep me from staying in bars long enough to do any real damge to my liver, and that would be the damage to my lungs. I've gotten very used to the smoking bans in Toronto and being reintroduced to smoky bars (and internet cafes) reminds me of the long forgotten feeling of leaving a bar just to get some fresh air.
A lot of Matt's friends were telling me what I've already kins of realized, which is that my school really isn;t treating me all that well. I really don't like how they promised me a new apartment and have not followed through on it at all. I've gone through my stages of trying to make the best out of what I have and have managed to look at the bright side of things. I like being close to a gym, itsnice having patrick next door and I have managed to make it look a lot nicer than before. But its seriously still a shithole. So after talking to my recruiter I'm going to give the school written notice that if they don't rectify my living situation (read: nicer apartment) I'm going to resign. My recruiter said that if it does come to resignation he'd help me get out of the contract and find a new job. But we're both fairly confident that the school will do its best to hold onto me. They've gone through quite a few teachers lately and if they lose any more they are likely to lose thier contracts with the elementary school I teach at and parents might take thier kids to a more stable Hagwon. I basically jsut want an apartment that is a little bigger, with a better equipped kitchen and not on the ground floor.
I did yet more cleaning yesterday and have eliminated one of the two mystery smells in my apartment. The fridge had what looked like potting soil under the crisper but i know was likely mold. I bleached the hell out of the fridge and now it is much improved. But since yesterday the bathroom has starting smelling bad, not in a septic way either. which makes me think that ther is more mold there somewhere. So today I will empty another bottle of bleach into there. I fixed up the main room of my place a little more too. I put up a tryptich of small art I bought at e-mart and a mirror from a bargain store. I bought two more plants and honestly the main room isn't looking too bad at all now. I still need at lest two more big pictures to hang on the wall to fill the white space but its tough to find a big picture thats light enough to be hot-glued onto wallpaper. Luckily I found out through trial and error that I can take the pictures down with no noticable damage to the walls, so I can move all of my stuff to my new place when I get one.
I found saturday afternoon that I got a little stir crazy, I walked the city a bit, worked out, checked my emails at the PC bahng and did the aforementioned housecleaning but still was feeling a little off. I think it was just a bit of homesickness. Coupled with the fact that I just don't like my place enought to spend too much time there.
Ben (from the visa run) had emailed me that he would be in town last night so I called him and met up with him at, yep you guessed it, ol'55. It is actually fine for me to meet people there because its one of the few places I can find in this city without getting lost. SO I got to meet a few new people, ran into some people I knew from the previous night and butchered a game of pool so bad you'd thinik I was angry at it. I left fairly early because the smake was getting me nauseous again but it was nice to know that although I feel pretty out of place here sometimes I do have a hangout I can hit and run into people I know. So really not the most exciting weekend, and the rest of it will basically be me ironing my laundry, shopping and cleaning. Yep thats right kids its the land of adventure her ein Korea.

Home [adjective slightly below sweet slightly about crap] Home

As the MadLib title indicates I'm slowly fixing up the old homestead. I picked up a bunch of furniture from Matt and little by little the place is looking less hovelish. I'm even thinking of getting a tiled roof but the local thatcher in my gundoeng would probably burn foul incense and disrupt my feng shui in retribution. I now have a bookstand which my tv rests on, I plugged the cable in and saw that I have about four channels. I also noticed that the color on my tv is all messed up- somethings never change. I got a knee-high traditional korean table for my laptop and meals (with a nifty little pillow from Emart to help complete the illusion that sitting on the floor is cool and posh). I also got a nightstand with some drawers (for my rapidly dissapearing socks and undies, laundry day is tomorrow by extreme necessity) and a reading lamp. Well okay its actually more of a hydroponic lamp, but I told Matt I'm gonna use it to grow my mind instead of growing weed. He high fived me and told me I was his hero. True story.

Matt still has a plant (a legal one) for me and I want to pick up a few more to add some colour to my place. Patrick let me know that the walls in our building are solid cement so putting any art up on the walls is going to be tough, methinks its time to buy a hot glue gun and thank Confucious that I didn't put down a security desposit.

I tried to buy the combo range/oven thing but ran into some troubles. I found one that looked perfect but had trouble telling the clerk that I wanted to buy it. She wanted my address for delivery and I tried to tell her I didn't have the address. But she thought I was saying that I didn't understand what she meant by address. So she called over another clerk, which I figured was to translate. But no, this other clerk spoke less english than the first but was slightly louder. By some stroke of luck a third employee was walking by, and although similiarly linguistically challenged he was skilled in the art of pantomime. I was rifling through my berlitz pocket book but couldn't find the phrase "I have not been told my actual address despite repeated requests to my employer, perhaps I could return at a later date with this information" because the editor had obviously omitted that since the only situation that would come in handy in would be far too humourus to cut short. So I pulled my conversational ripcord of "Sorry. Not now. I come back later.", which I spoke in good enough Korean that the fourth guy they called over (yes fourth!) seemed to understand. So at this point as I was crouched by the display surrounded by four friendly E-mart employees, I thought to ask if the appliance in question was gas or electric powered. It was gas, and I don't have a gas hookup at my place. Whoops. So after wastin all of thier time I ended up getting a medium sized toaster oven that I now balance my hot plate on and convince myself that it is neither ghetto nor a firehazard.
I am really doing my best to learn enough of the language here to get by but it is slow going. The 2 'learn korean' cds I have are either too limited in scope (four lessons to introduce yourself t rest to invite someone to a restaurant and tell time) or just memorization of very speciic phrases. I am picking up at least a few words/phrases each day and at this rate I should be able to get by decently in about three or fours months. Right now I am surviving on the patience of Koreans I talk to and little notes written for me by my co-workers. I had an interesting cab ride today where I was trying to get to the elementary school I teach at twice a week and told the cabbie the name of the school and handed him a sheet of directions written for me. He took me to the wrong school half a block away, I repeated myself and pointed at the directions again. He went around a few blocks and then proudly dropped me off at my hagwon (my regular school) seemingly oblivious to the fact that he had pickled me up there not ten minutes before. It was frustrating to say the least.
So tomorrow is friday and it should be an easy enough day for me, all my afternoon classes have tests which I suppose I'll have to write at some point during my lunch break. But that's not so bad, I have a long lunch and will honestly just print out the tests that Matt had done when his classes had gone through the same textbooks/units. right now I might hit the sauna at the gym, which is just a cool place to take a real shower and relax at the end of a day. Showers in korea seem to consist of a handheld showerhead tube attached to your bathroom sink and you just shower in the middle of your bathroom floor. That isn't just my place either all the other foriegn teachers have them. So a real shower, even a public one, is nice. Had some old guy quite pointedly checking out my package yesterday. Ken, you're gonna love it here.