Korea, Kevin and Kimchee

Long Overdue update

2007-05-23T16:23:00.000+09:00

Yep I'm still here. Its been a while since my last post and I realized that I am have been negligent in my promise to update on signifigant happenenings. Probably because they aren't really all that significant but its all relative right? I'll go through stuff in chronological point form style because thats the easiest way for me to cobble this together and gives the blog all the wonder and mystery of a grocery list (what comes next? I hope its 'bananas'!)

In a UN conference room a S. Korean soldier literally stands on the border of North and South Korea. The aviators make him look tough. The gun helps too.

Last month I went on the DMZ tour, the De-militarized Zone of course had more armed military than I have seen anywhere else in Korea, perhaps they are using the French 'De'. It is interesting to see a heavily armed border and know that there are severe consequences for walking ten feet in the wrong direction (over the border), but I couldn't quite feel like I was in a Tom Clancy novel as it was fairly touristy. There was an element of tension though, which is quite an interesting thing to experience. South Korea's only neighbour by land is a country very similar to thier own that they have been at war with for over fifty years. You get the idea of how Superman feels when he visits bizarro world.

here the kids are improvising a slide out of a wheelchair ramp, previously they used me as a jungle gym. resourceful bunch.

Took the kids to the park for a field trip, which is relatively lame as far as field trips go, but they did make a visit to a science center as well. In Canada the science center is run by the government, this one was run by an electronics company called LG. The exhibits were comprable but the corporate product placement did make it seem like LG invented pretty much evrything they were demonstrating (like electricity, DNA and a robot that could draw your picture very sowly). Its never too young to teach these kids about the birds and bees so one of the exhibits was a very detailed crash course on reproduction and heredity. I'm sure our three year old students fully absorbed everything they need to know about XY chromosomes. they followed that presentatoin uyp with a cool machine that will take a male and female and predict what thier baby would look like. Yet another activity that kids ages 3-6 obviously need to experience. One of the pairs was Wendy (age 5) and Denny (age 6), the resulting picture looked older than either of them and exactly like another student in thier class named Valentine next one of the teachers (egged on by the rest) took me into the machine to see what our baby would look like. If that kids face isn't an advertisement for keeping the Korean bloodline pure I don't know what is (its okay to call the kids ugly because it doesn't actually exist).

I don't have a picture but the biggest actual development is that the school I work for was bought out by another school and my job has changed drastically. I have been moved to a different building while they remodel my old one and starting ext month they will fully integrate the two schools together. For now I mostly just teach kindergarten at my Hagwon, with only two elementary classes there a week (I still teach at an elementary school two afternoons a week). The upshot is that at least for now my hours are drastically cut down (at the same pay) with two days a week where I only have 3.5 hours of class time (down from 6!). the downside is that there are a lot of changes that have been stressing me out and our new boss is very critical. In the end I'm sure it will work out but in the short term its actually a lot tougher. But some changes should be interesting, such as the fact that I now have three classes a week where I will be teaching Musical English, and have been given pretty free rein as to what that entails. This fits perfectly with my plan to get all the kids signing 'the song that doesn't end'

Climbed a mountain, it was fun. Its the same one Ken climbed with the land mines and stuff. I know its silly but it was kind of scary to even take this pic (wish my camera had better zoom).

Recent Pics

2007-04-22T11:35:00.000+09:00

A few things I’ve been up to since the last entry.

Firstly Ken and I went to visit the Busan Aquarium three weeks ago, it was a pretty cool place however I didn’t enjoy it as much as I should have since my body started running a fever soon after I got there. Perhaps it was some sort of primal defence mechanism against all the scary sharks? I have no idea so I’ll just assume that is true.

More recently I went on a field trip with the kindergarten kids at my school. We went strawberry picking outside of town. Well kind of. Back when I was a kid strawberry picking was an industrious methodical task. This was more of a ‘lets see how strawberries are grown’ trip where the management dissuaded you from picking too many berries. It was a fun trip though and I got a few pics of some of the kids I teach.

There was a another school there that was tossing rocks at a sad looking dog on the resort. Our kids took a different approach and led by Nick they pet the dog, which turned out to be really friendly. Really really friendly as Mary Ann here discovered.

The Korean guy rushed to her aid I rushed for my camera ad the doggie tried to become special friends with her.

It wasn’t a great shot but luckily she went back to the dog a few minutes later and I managed to snap this one. The reaction on the other kids’ faces is priceless.

These are the kids using hammers to mash wet rice into a paste that I soon had to beg off of eating.

This is a shot of the kids enjoying the fruits of their labors.

These are some members of my youngest class: April, Kari and Sidney. I think Kari wins this round of the "cute off".

This is Luke and Wendy from my smart class. They’re holding hands, but I don’t know if that means anything. I think Luke maybe likes Wendy and she likes him but I think Wendy like likes Valentine (not pictured) more.

And here are all the kids together.

Yesterday Ken and I went to a Baseball game, only $2 admission and you can bring in your own beer and food. Our team was the Lotte Giants, who won 8-2. Fun time and met a bunch of Ken's friends.

Went to the game and next thing I know they draft me.

Then Ken and I hit a Casino downtown. First time in a casino for me. Yeah, yeah I know by this age I should have been to one before but it turns out my intial instincts were right and I’m just not a good gambler. Fun time and when the dust settled I was only down $30. Luckily before we went to the casino I won a Winnie the Pooh doll in a crane game so I consider myself even for the night.

Next week going on a tour of the border’s Demilitarized Zone (DMZ) with Ken. Should be a fun time.

less updates from now on

2007-03-31T11:41:00.000+09:00

I'm deciding on whether or not to continue this blog in a regular fashion. Will probably just update with any major events a few times a month. theres various reasons and you can email me if you want to hear them. But basically I just have other things I need to do.

Me talk pretty one day

2007-03-25T20:09:00.000+09:00

The title from this blog comes from a David Sedaris book I read recently that chronicles some of his mishaps in trying to learn French while living in Paris. Even correcting for his self deprecatory humor I know that I have got him beat for linguistic ineptitude.

Learning Korean can be tough. Especially when you don’t put any sort of planned effort into it. It occurred to me that I am now 5 months into my stay in South Korea, almost halfway into my contract and I speak the local language like a very young very slow child. And that is being very generous.

Now anyone will tell you that the best way to learn a language is immersion. It’s a lot like swimming that way. You go to a country where no one speaks English and you have two options:
a) Get everyone to speak your language
b) Figure out the local language

Now I have obviously been failing miserably at the first one, if you look at my students as an example, so I’ve really got to start putting more into the second option. There are some easy things about Korean, especially their alphabet.

The English alphabet is a bit of a mess. Each letter has multiple sounds and there are so many silent ‘e’s and messed up sounds like ‘ph’ and the word ‘colonel’. Hangul is completely phonetic and fairly easy to pick up. Here it is in its entirety:
Of course reading and understanding are two very different things. This has been evident when I’ve ordered things off the menu at restaurants with a decent pronunciation, but was still just spinning the wheel of fate when it came to getting something I would like. When you think you have ordered spicy chicken and you get deep fried chicken patties drowning in a black sauce it sucks to have only yourself to blame.

Now I’ve tried a few different methods for learning this language; video lessons, audio lessons and interactive computer lessons. Nick invited me to take actual lessons with him with an instructor but I turned him down. I have all these modalities already available, I should master them first. Sure there are failings to some of these ‘teach yourself’ methods, but as a language teacher myself I can see that there are problems with any form of instruction.

Of course what I seem to be lacking is some real motivation. This sounds pretty bad but if I’ve been getting by on so little Korean this long there is no reason why I shouldn’t be able to finish up my stay here without acquiring any more. I also wonder how useful Korean will be to me in the rest of my life, since I don’t currently plan to return here for a second year. Spending my time watching American television online and listening to English podcasts makes it very easy to avoid soaking up even nominal amounts of Korean.

But then it occurs to me that a darn good reason to learn Korean is that I am here, and so is the language. And there is probably a whole heck of a lot I’m missing out on by not being able to converse with 99% of the people I meet.

So I will resume my efforts to get my Korean to a less embarrassing level. I may even take classes. I suppose I could start turning my television on again from time to time and see if anything starts to click. I remember in my first few months here being very disappointing that I could watch an entire episode of television aimed at two year olds and not pick up a word.

Ahn Chakhee and Ji Seungyeon, the two ladies that have been trying so hard via pirated video to teach me their language. God bless them.

Kinda funny

2007-03-22T21:39:00.000+09:00

While walking out of the elementary school today one of my 1st grade students, Maria, caught up with me and walked for a block.

She curiously asked, in a mix of Korean and English, if I was going home to Canada now.

Apparently she thought that's where I went home to every night.

Kids are adorable at any point that I'm not teaching them.

Enough about me...

2007-03-19T22:07:00.000+09:00

There have been a lack of updates. For this I apologize. i have plenty of ideas and the same amount of time as ever but just haven't been in the right headspace.
Breakups will do that to you.
this isn't the type of blog where I publicly muse on completely personal issues (although it does unintentionally veer in that direction sometimes) so suffice to say I'll get back to blogging and away from brooding soon enough.
until then, how about you tell me how your day was?

White Day

2007-03-14T20:22:00.000+09:00

White Day

It shouldn’t surprise me that there was yet another Korean holiday to celebrate that involves candy. After Pepero Day (chocolate stick day)nothing should surprise me

It would be too much to call this a bonafide holiday, although I’m sure the women of Korea would disagree with me. But they would probably do so in Korean, which is just water off a duck’s back to me lately (you just assume everyone is yelling ‘nice hat’ after a while). The only other country that celebrates this holiday is Japan, and in this place its basically the female equivalent of Valentine’s Day.

On Valentine ’s Day girls give chocolate to boys. One month later on White Day boys give those same girls candies and chocolates (originally marshmallows, hence the name). Moreso than even Valentine ’s Day this day was created and promoted by commercial businesses.

The general rule is that a White Day gift to a girl is supposed to be three times the value of the gift that a man received from a girl on Valentine ’s Day. Which is a pretty solid candy investment for a girl if you think about it. It’s actually a better system than back home for the guys, since we usually have so much trouble on valentines day. This way we already know what to buy, how much to spend and who to give it to- rather than the crapshoot that was 24 He-Man Valentine cards hastily addressed that I remember not getting me any action as a youngster.

Now much like Valentine’s Day there are also smaller candies that are given out to every girl just for the sake of the day. So I picked up a few bags of Hershey kisses to pass out to my female students and fellow teachers, figuring that it might be a good occasion to buy some goodwill. Nick had forgotten all about White Day so I let him have one of my bags of chocolates, since it wouldn’t be fair to have kids in the school feel left out. So with my chocolate supply at half five minutes into the day I didn’t give any to the other teachers, figuring they would take it better than six year olds (who knows a grown woman to keep a grudge?). Now obviously its not a huge deal but both Nick and Patrick gave them treats (wonder where Nick got the chocolate?) so I might be seen as a bit out of touch. Only time will tell.

Now its hard for me to give out chocolate to kids, since I believe that most of them have had plenty enough candy as it is. But I don’t want my personal beliefs on nutrition to one day turn me into some weirdo that gives out toothbrushes on Halloween so I could justify this day. Some of the boys in my classes were a little miffed that they didn’t get any candy- amazing how quickly they forgot about just one month ago when they got candy and the girls didn’t. The school handed out lollipops to everyone so there was some eveness, but the three boys in my youngest class started crying despite my gentle consolations of : ‘tough luck fatty”. So I gave them chocolates too, they seemed more than willing to accept the gender confusion in exchange for some sugar.

I also served to alienate myself a little further from the staff near the end of the day when a bunch of them were sitting around the various cakes, cookies and chocolates brought in by parents and invited me to partake. They all already know me as a ‘picky eater’(which I guess is a step sideways from the ‘health nut’ moniker I had back home) which is a bit of a big deal since food is such a social event here in Korea. Many restaurants only serve one dish with plenty of sides that everyone at the table shares in. The communal sharing of food is essential to the culture and I’m the weirdo foreigner that doesn’t participate. But there doesn’t seem to be any animosity stemming from it, just curiosity at my quirkiness.

Now if White Day was somehow centralized around the exchange of pizza (Dominos take note!) I’m positive that I would have seen nothing wrong with packing away a slice or so ('so' meaning the number 14 here).

I scream, you scream, we all scream for…

2007-03-12T21:30:00.000+09:00

It’s sometimes tough to be teacher of the year every single day. Part of the troubles that I have may stem from the fact that I am not actually a teacher, not in the literal ‘trained to do the job’ sense of the word. Now nothing bad happened today, aside from being unexpectedly exhausted all day (and I had a class of kids call me fat-but that’s not the story I’m telling today). It was one of those mornings that I just never completely woke up and my body just decided to hang at the halfway point until the next round of sleep came rather than getting the lead out.

Luckily though it was a Monday and that meant that I could take things slow with my classes. Due to the unfortunate fact that the weekend involves two consequetive days where the kids are not at English school it is unavoidable that by the time Monday rolls around they have just plain forgot the language. It is a well documented phenomena (by me, peer review by my friend Ken pending) but seems to stress the kids out only about as much as losing a penny down a sewer grate. So everything was back to basics and the day was passing in that odd way that time is wont to do.

It was only during my last class that my kids developed any animosity towards me. Although neither of us is really to blame. I don’t have textbooks for most of my classes this term, which is alright since most of my kids haven’t been given textbooks either. It really allows me to just freestyle things in that way that all highly trained teachers like myself excel in. For this class I had picked out one of the most challenging books the school had and photocopied the pages for my students, seeing as how these are pretty much the most advanced kids at the school. Now they thought that The Case of the Missing Pie was too hard and wanted to switch to a four sentence book called Dinosaur Bones but I tried to convince them that they needed a harder book to expand their vocabulary rather than stick to stuff they knew. It would also tie into their grammar studies with their other teacher on past tense verbs and comparative adjectives.

Well obviously that last statement was going to be a show stopper, and I’m sure you can think of nothing that could eclipse such a shining sentiment in a bored child’s mind.

Of course moments after I said this they saw Nick’s class walking through the hall back into class, each of the students waving an ice-cream cone at us through the window. Nick had taken them on a ‘field trip’ down the street to the convenience store and bought them all a treat. My class understandably began petitioning me for equal treatment. I soon discovered that there are tougher things to explain to Korean kids than the English language, such as your views on positive reinforcement techniques in the classroom and the educational value of a trip to the 7-11. In the end they listened to me politely and I oringinally thought they understood that I was saying I’d be happy to give them a similar prize for good work in the classroom as they all stopped their frantic pleas. Truth is I heard them say to eachother in Korean that it was apparent that I just didn’t have any money. I sighed and let it slide, if I were in their shoes I would have wanted some ice-cream too. So in truth we both learned valuable life lessons. They learned that Nick is a way more fun teacher to have than me. And I learned how to say no to kids begging for ice-cream, which is a skill that every adult should have. I guess this is growing up.

PS just in case I never remember to update you the missing blueberry pie was in fact eaten by scraps the dog, not Tubby as the gang originally thought. You’re welcome for the closure.

Waygook Special

2007-03-10T17:52:00.000+09:00

There is a phenomenon here in Korea that I have termed the ‘Waygook Special’, although I’m sure someone else has come up with the same clever title. Waygook is the Korean word for foreigner, and in a very homogenous culture foreigners are a bit of an oddity.

Now what is a waygook special? When a taxi takes it upon themselves to give you a scenic tour of the city and stops at all traffic lights, heads in the wrong direction then finally doubles back after hearing your incomprehensible pleas. Its when you go to a produce market and get the same feeling as walking down the midway at a carnival when carnies call you over to their games o’ skill. Its when basically things that are supposed to be inexpensive turn out to be more expensive than they should be.

I’m not implying anything about racism here, I’ve not really experienced any of that here myself. Aside from that one old man on the subway on Christmas. But its hard to take someone seriously when they look like someone used too much felt on a muppet.

I also don’t want to give you the impression that Busan is full of a dedicated ring of shysters that actively takes advantage of foreigners. That is entirely possible but I frankly haven’t done any research to that end, the makeup required for the undercover work is cost-prohibitive. I’ve come to realize that the feeling that you are being ripped off a bit comes from two possible sources:

What you thought was cheap really wasn’t. Korea is the second most expensive country in Asia (Japan wins!) and is not the land of 25 cent meals like my obviously born- in-the-1930s friend Ken originally thought. Alcohol is pretty cheap for instance, even in restaurants. However if you go to an Ice Bar, like my fellow teacher Nick did, and have a half dozen bottles of beer delivered to your table in a bucket of… you guessed it… ice, expect to pay about $100 cdn for that privilege. Well you pay in Won, but I’m converting to help comparison. You can get a hilarious amount of tangerines for $3, yet apples even in bulk usually average to about $1 a piece.

What you thought you asked for you didn’t get. The best example of this for me came last night. Ken and I frequent a certain grill house every Friday and order a dish that is basically ribs without the bones. Now last week I had been very confident, not even looking at the menu when I ordered and feeling pretty proud until we paid and found out we had ordered a different dish than we thought. Bill came to $30 instead of $24 (with drinks), not a big deal but I was a little embarrassed. Last night when we ordered I kept my pride in check and pointed at the menu to order and made absolutely sure to order the thing we wanted this time, figuring it was better to be thorough than look cool. We were very satisfied with this slightly cheaper cut of meat, not really being able to tell the difference. Which made sense when we paid because it turns out they still served us the more expensive dish. I tried to explain that was not what we ordered, not out of anger, just confusion. I didn’t know all the words to explain myself so I treated the owner to a recreation. I picked up a nearby menu and repeated the motion of pointing at the thing we asked for, first thing listed. The owner smiled, shook his head and pointed at the more expensive thing down the list. I paid with confused exasperation.

Now I don’t think the man diabolically supersized us, I think he just brought us the other dish as a favor. He just made an assumption on what we wanted and went with that. Possibly based on the fact that the dish he brought us was the one we inadvertently ordered three times before at his place. Possibly because what we had pointed at was like when you order chicken at Red Lobster and the waitress winces and says : “Tell you what, I’ll bring you something nice.” I think to the time that Ken and I ordered chicken that was so spicy the cook came out from the kitchen to personally plead with us to change our minds. We laughed him off and then went through a very painful eating experience, which eventually ended in us hiding pieces of chicken around the table so we could save face with a clean platter.

I originally viewed the Waygook Special as a bit more malevolent than it seems to me now. Now I just figure that people see me as a blind man in a bowling alley facing the wrong direction. They gently turn me around to face the pins, never even occurring to them that I wanted to aim for the Coke machine.

Lousy Immigrants

2007-03-07T19:51:00.000+09:00

Got a visit from an immigration officer today. He came to our school and was checking the work visas of our foreign teachers. I’d really like to make it sound scary but it wasn’t. Maybe if he had been wearing dark glasses and a suit and was chewing peppermint gum he would have fit my mental image of an imigrattion officer. Hard to take a guy in a tan windbreaker all that seriously.

I was happy to answer his questions, mainly because the assistant director had to pull me out of a class to talk to him. He asked to see Nick and I’s work card (Patrick wasn’t there) he jotted some stuff on a notepad and gave Nick back his card. He told me there was a problem with mine and he’d have to speak with me alone. So he took me into one of the empty classrooms and sat me down. Once again I really wish there was some tension here to relate but between the windbreaker and me getting out of precious minutes of work made me pretty upbeat.

Turns out he didn’t have me registered to teach at the school on the paper he had, he had nick and Patrick and someone named Joshua. Who wasn’t the guy that I replaced, he was the guy before him. So it was obviously just a matter of some files that weren’t updated, and after a series of phone calls the guy made he said that it was all cleared up. He explained that they had gotten some complaints about Oxford English School and wanted to know if I had ever been asked to work illegally. I told him no, which is truthful as far as I know. I did mention that there used to be something fishy going on with the elementary schools we teach at but that I hadn’t experienced anything personally. Now he seemed pretty interested in the elementary school stuff, and asked me quite a few questions about that. I take this to mean that a) we aren’t legally allowed to work at the elementary schools in addition to our private schools or b) he just plain did not understand my English and kept trying to get me to rephrase my answers. They are both quite possible, and frankly they both concern me about as much as eachother (which is very little). I was just happy to keep talking and get out of class. I didn’t really think too much about whether I would be screwing my school over with what I was saying. I think the chances are pretty low personally, as I really didn’t add much of anything to whatever investigation they were doing. For all I know talking to me was the extent of the investigation. I have no idea who would have submitted these complaints to Oxford, probably some former employee from a while back. Once again I wish I could work up some tension over this, but it occurs to me that I don’t really care if my school gets in trouble. In any case I’m not doing anything illegal so I know that I won’t be deported.

So after 15 minutes of intense interrogation (trying to build that dramatic tension) I headed back to my class, which had just started when I left. I would have figured since the Assistant Director pulled me out of the class she would have put someone in there (herself for instance) to look after the class until I got back. But that was not to be. Twelve 7 year old kids had been left on their own for fifteen minutes with nothing to do. It was like seeing a room full of care bears on speed. They were pretty much useless for any sort of teaching after that point, it took all my wiles to convince them to sit down long enough to play a game. I also found out today that if you distractedly tell a class with decent English they can use as much as they want when referring to the increasingly popular scented handsanitizer I carry around they will take it to extremes. Its kind of fun to watch kids just slather their hands with tons of the stuff and derive unending joy from it.

Painless Monday. I'm suspicious.

2007-03-05T20:56:00.001+09:00

First full day of classes with my new allotment of students and theres not much worth blogging about. Which is a good thing. The classes went really well and there doesn’t seem to be any big troublemakers in my new bunch yet. Although I can’t really remember if my old classes were easy when I first started them or not. Maybe they all start off easy and then slowly turn against me. Probably part of some diabolical plot that Kim Jong Il is behind. That’s the most obvious answer.

Most of the kids don’t have textbooks yet so I have really just been killing time with them. Which is actually much tougher than teaching. Killing time and not having the classes go completely bonkers on you is a fine art (studies show its finer than Dadaism). I try not to play too many games with them because I live in shaking fear of the day when they get bored of all my games.

Tomorrow is a kiss on the cheek/kick in the pants day. The kiss on the cheek is that my elementary school is still on vacation so I’m done work by noon. The kick in the pants is that before kindergarten class I have to trek across town to the elementary school to participate in a ten minute advertisement for the English program to some parents. I was told today that it will involve a three minute speech made by yours truly. The stress for these speeches is always very low since the only two people in the rooms that can understand English are my co teachers in the program. Any parents that can understand me are probably better off teaching their own kids English anyway. So its another show up in a suit, smile, and try to sound as American as possible day. A very easy task that would be no issue if it didn’t interfere with my usual morning ritual of slowly sipping my way through a gallon of coffee. Maybe I’ll just rail the grounds tomorrow if I’m in a rush.

2007-03-03T23:34:00.000+09:00

I've come to realize something about my body, it knows when I'm bullshitting it. I am fairly health conscious when it comes to diet and I'm not the type of person that eats processed or nutritionally void stuff. Never happens. Despite the fact that it never happens I drank me a fair bit of beer last night and ate some very very fried chicken. Luckily the universe seems to have survived such a logic bending paradox, and somehow so have I.

Now I'm not saying theres anything wrong with beer and fried chicken. this is more about drawing personal lines and sticking to them. Like when you promise yourself you'll not watch television but sure enough come 9:10 you're robbing a liquor store. I just get fascinated that 'things I don't eat' somehow end up in my belly. I hired a well known strength coach to write me a workout program starting next week and told myself that step one was to start eating well again.

Now after a stressful 'almost had to leave the country' debate with my workplace and some first hand experience on why long distance relationships are tough (not just an urban legend like body odor) some comfort food and some beer with my friend seemed in order.
And today I paid a little price. I was a little sore and sickly feeling and totally bombed my workout today. I'm sure that last sentiment really strikes a tender chord with all of you- or maybe it fits in the 'why should I give a shit' portion of your fact filter. I don't know. But right now I'm just looking at how my habits affect my goals.

A big thing for me is that I know that I've got eight more months in a foreign country to try to 'get my act together' (metaphorically speaking, unless I write a one act play. which knowing me is quite likely) to some small degree. I am not feeling too stressed with life at all right now (an oddity for me) but I know that the toughest thing about baseball isn't stepping up to the plate or swinging the bat- its making sure you've got enough follow through. Okay fine I don't know anything about baseball. Its the one with the fake grass, right?

Anyway the only other significant thing to happen today was that I joined Facebook, on Ken's advise. I'm heard its an evil fact gathering diabolical machine, but as long as I enter into the relationship with that knowledge I can make sure I'm the pitcher and not the catcher.

TGINM

2007-03-02T18:22:00.000+09:00

Thank Goodness Its Not Monday

Today was the last day of my light work week and tumultuous contract negotiations and the dust seems to have settled in my favor. My new classes of students seemed pretty well behaved today and there doesn't seem to be any huge troublemakers in the bunch. Of course this means that Nick is probably stuck with all my old monster students. and when I say monsters I don't necessarily mean 'child of satan', but they're definitely in the bloodline.

There is one class I won't be teaching anymore that I will actually miss. This is one that would actually play English games together before class because they enjoyed them so much. And some of the students were coming a long way with their speaking since I was able to keep everyone in line with no trouble. they saw me in the hall today and when they found out I wasn't going to be teaching them anymore they were actually a little bummed. Which is a little surprising since most kids seem to have the memory spans of gnats and this is the first class to ever hold on to the memory of a teacher for longer than when one leaves the room.

But its probably for the best that Nick got that class, because when I think about two of my other classes that he got he will need the relief. He looked pretty frazzled today, but then he has long hair and horn rimmed glasses so its tough to look anything but frazzled or on the verge of a scientific breakthrough. He still hasn't finished negotiating his contract and I think that he was a little stressed over how the new workweek was shaping up. I felt kind of bad for him as he was walking into a class of kids I know to be 50% evil and I was heading home. But I didn't feel like... super-bad, since I was getting out an hour and a half earlier than him. Its like watching a World Vision commercial while eating pizza.

Tomorrow (Saturday) I go into to school for the entrance ceremony for the new Kindergarten classes. It shouldn't take more than 2 hours tops and once again my duties will be to just stand there and look white. I'm not actually teaching any of the new kids so my interest level for the proceedings (which is a base of zero for school events) will probably go well into the negatives.

Day off

2007-03-02T10:39:00.000+09:00

due to me pressing the wrong button this didn't go up yesterday as planned, my bad

Koreans are adept at brokering uneasy alliances, and such a one was reached with my contract dispute yesterday. All is resolved and the new schedule is no better and no worse than the one I was working before. I come in twenty minutes earlier and leave twenty minutes earlier. It unfortunately took almost two hours to strike that deal but most of that time for me was just spent twiddling my thumbs and waiting for the new assistant director to talk on the phone to the director. Nick had substantially more trouble with his contract, as ours have different clauses and they were trying to load at least an extra hour a day onto his back. In the end I think they reached an agreement as well, but I'll find out tomorrow.

I found out what my new kindergarten classes would be and aside from one of them being a little large I think I made out alright. I get to keep my class of favorite students, as well as the two other classes that have been at our school for a while. Nick gets three classes of all new students, some of them very very young. It seems that the school noticed how much the really young ones would stress me out and have stuck me with the older kids. Which is absolutely fine with me.
Today is a national holiday so I've had the day off work. I haven't felt especially motivated to do much (combination of factors) so its just been an easy day in with a short blog. Happy Marching Day everyone.

Breakfast. Its what's in you.

2007-02-27T22:21:00.000+09:00

What you are looking at here is some of the last containers of Oatmeal I could find at the foreign market today. I’ve been to the foreign market about 4 times now and have probably bought a dozen canisters in that time. I noticed each time I went back that there was less and less available. I’m not saying that there are none left there but chances are when I need more I won’t be going there. I do take a little pride in cleaning the vendors out tough.

There are a few bodybuilding websites that I can order it off of, if I can get a native Korean speaker to help me out (sites are entirely in gobbledegook). Now I suppose another approach would be to just not eat oatmeal anymore. And I suppose that is a possibility that I may have to face. But it is a grim and fibreless one.

Korean breakfasts here mostly consist of rice. Processed breakfast cereals are proliferating however. Now as some of you may be aware processed breakfast cereals are not the healthiest things for everyone to have in the morning (I only eat them after workouts) and even the healthy looking ones your grandpa eats are loaded with sugar.

The Almond Flakes and Chex translate phonetically, the middle box says "Kon-Poo-Roast"

I also see that McDonalds is aggressively marketing breakfast as well. A popular ad I see shows a guy running into the subway with a McMuffin in hand, basically just introducing the concept of eating breakfast to busy professionals here that tend to skip it b/c it was never really classically that big a deal. It just seems to make sense however, that there is such a big push. Since Nescafe and Taster’s Choice instant coffee is so popular here it would suddenly require that you eat something substantial in the morning to get rid of the taste of your morning brew.

Now for those of you that just can’t get worked up over a bowl of rice and kimchi in the morning, and think that hitting Micky Dee’s every morning might not be in the best interests of the continued pumping of your heart there are other options. There are many little Toasta Bahngs (Toast rooms) shops that will serve little sandwiches of toast, pork and onions in various tempting combinations. Of course I’ve yet to see one that is actually open in the morning, but it does present the reality that a lot of those ingredients are readily available at home. Personally I like oatmeal beside my morning eggs, which is the impetus for this rant, but I don’t want to scare people off that there are no options. Bread, jam, peanut butter(no natural stuff), pancake mix, eggs, bran flakes… sure there are options. But there doesn’t seem to be any local cropland dedicated to oats. It is by no means Korea’s fault that I can’t find any at the grocery store- and frankly I’m happy that I do have options at all.

I’ve heard some people, I’m not sure if they were dieticians or nutritionists so I’ll just call them kooks, propose that you can eat anything for breakfast. I’ll admit the North American idea of there being certain meals for breakfast that you don’t eat at the rest of the day is a little subjective. You should be able to eat prime rib for breakfast they say, following the kooks line of thinking that would mean I could eat a BLT for dinner and have pancakes in the middle of the night. Sure there’s no real reason for having breakfast be so specific, but there’s no reason behind toy poodles, brushing your teeth and earrings but they are still institutions.

Now this whole quest for a meal to start my day with may seem a little obsessive. But I do think that the way we start our days says a lot about how the rest of the day is going to feel. I wake up three hours before I have to go to work so I can have a lazy start to my day, and during that time I could have a mosquito sting me in the eyeball and I think I would still smile on my way out the door provided that I got my solid breakfast and pot of coffee into me. Plus wouldn’t it be cool to wear an eye patch for a day?

Gradutation Day

2007-02-26T19:07:00.000+09:00

There are a few days where I am asked to wear a suit to school. Normally my dress code is entirely self regulated (only horizontal wrinkles allowed in my ripped jeans) so its usually an indication that parents will be around the school. So I have to show up in a suit, the other extreme. The benefit is that usually my only task for a good part of those days is to just stand around and look white. This morning was one of those days.

The kindergarten school was having graduation ceremonies, which means that my beloved Schweitzer class (you know they’re evil b/c its German!) was graduating. Schweitzer was one of my tougher classes, one that I was warned about from the get-go. Much like the townsfolk warning the Scooby gang about spending a night in the haunted slipper factory other teachers would get a faraway look when talking about this class. It stunned me when I heard that they were one of the graduating classes as their English level is sub-par and seems to only consist of the ability to ask to play games and color. Not sure how far that will get them on the streets of New York. But I suppose the school decided that was enough to earn their freedom (that and the fact that they are now entering elementary school). So I watched the graduation ceremony, and caught maybe one word in every ten minutes. Which is about par for grad ceremonies in general, even when they are in English they are too boring to really absorb. When I was in the high school band I played at three grad ceremonies before attending mine- making it even more anti-climatic. This one was also a blatant ploy to try to convince the parents to send their kids to our after school program in the future.

Now this means that next week there will be some big changes in who I teach in the morning. It could turn out that all my kindergarten classes will change. I could end up with some of Nick’s classes he could end up with mine and then there is the crop of new kids as well. There is also the possibility I will have to try to teach a room of stuffed animals English. I understand that is only a small possibility but it seems to me about the only thing that could be more futile than their current approach.

The real upside is that the remainder of my workweek looks like it will be blissfully light. With both my kindergarten classes and my elementary school classes on break – along with Thursday being a national holiday I have a fair bit of free time coming my way. Now its not super cool like a long weekend or anything but the light workweek will give me a chance to get a lot of things accomplished. Free will of course being what it is it also gives me the option to reject that opportunity and watch a bunch of American television (due to the wonders of the internet and spotty copyright laws in this country) and nap a lot.

But I will take a moment here to remember each of my graduating kids, you will be missed (assuming you are replaced with stuffed animals- and that those animals are bigger brats than you were)

Rod and Todd- I thought their names were funny and I couldn’t them you apart for the first few weeks of class. Now I can. Rod is the one that hides under the table and cries whenever he doesn’t get what he wants. Todd is the one that throws stuff.

Hunter- Again, funny name. I will always remember my shocked reaction when the lesson called for me to ask ‘what do you do after school’ and he said that he had a private English tutor. At least I know that I was not the only one failing you dear boy.

Miya- the only girl in the class, who was above most of the fooling around that went on. I never had to admonish her for being loud, she was too busy drawing pictures and ignoring me and everyone else to be noisy. I liked to convince myself that at least she was drawing in English.

David- His English level was not that bad, but his attitude was just about the worst. This presented a fun challenge for me as I could technically negotiate with him but he was a little bit of a brat so it was still tough.

Dallas and Kevin- Another set of twins, these ones almost indistinguishable (one looked a bit more well fed). Nothing bad to say about them actually, really good kids.

Bruce- I thought he dropped out a month ago. But he was there today graduating. I’d like to think that his parents recognized his talent and pulled him out of class before we could corrupt him any more.

In the end Schweitzer’s almost complete lack of interest in learning English was very beneficial to my Korean language skills.

Update-

I wrote most of this blog during the afternoon, this update comes right after finishing. So the good news is that because of the school schedule changing over I actually get tomorrow off completely. The downside is that they told Nick and I after class today that the schedule was changing as of March 1^st. They want to go from a 10-6 day like we have now to a 9:40-7:10 day. They promised us a longer lunch. Well you can imagine that I wasn’t having any of that. So we broke out the contract and I showed them that it clearly stated that I only work 30 class hours per week and only between 10 and 6. They said they were sorry. I sighed and reminded them that there were problems in the past and I was not willing to change my contract, and I was willing to leave. So they threw out some alternatives, and there’s a possibility that they might only have me there for 9:40 to 5:40, which I wasn’t going to be so much of a bitch to refuse as its basically the same shift. But that one is still iffy and I’ll find out tomorrow what the word from above is. It might be that I’m sleeping on Ken’s floor looking for a new job pretty soon. I should mention that the person I was negotiating with today is not the same assistant as before who I believe has quit. In fact a whole heck of a lot of our Korean staff is quitting, in a few days there may be almost completely new faces there. Now this of course means that they are pretty much desperate to hold onto Nick and I.

It does of course put me in a pickle. I’m willing to quit but I’m not ready to sign another 1 year contract at another school. I also don’t think that I’m ready to go back to Canada, not having saved enough money to cover my losses when buying a ticket home. I’m not stressed, or even frustrated. I’m pretty sure I can deal with whatever happens. When it comes to this matter I’d have to say that I’m just downright curious what will happen next.

Seoul Man part 2

2007-02-21T22:01:00.000+09:00

On Sunday morning we tried to get an early start. We didn’t. But we tried. The first order of business was to find something to eat and after exhausting any other possibility we ended up at another McDonalds. We really were dying for a western style breakfast but we couldn’t find anything in our area, and then we were just dying for anything open that wasn’t KFC.

So after fueling our bodies with thee nutritional equivalent of battery acid we set off to see the Olympic Park. It was a long subway ride away but a pretty little park. Five or so stadiums now converted to college and public use surrounded by some nice paths and sculptures. There was a forty foot red metal banana looking thing and some sculpture that looked like a playground built from an auto wrecking yard. The second one had a plaque explaining how it depicted the negation of history by time or some such stuff. I think Ken summed it up well after reading it by saying: “I wish I was smart enough to care to understand that.”

We were some of the only foreigners there and Ken was quickly accosted by a Korean teenager trying to give him directions. She was a strange mix of shyness and enthusiasm and had perhaps a few too many jokers in the deck. I watched the bizarre exchange like a tv show which of course means that I dissociated myself entirely and let Ken deal with it. It was quite amusing and afterwards the girl gave me an apple to commemorate the new year.

We then set out to get a boat tour of the Han River, taking a long subway ride to the other side of the ciy- only to discover that we could have actually caught the boat near Olympic park and rode it back. Live and learn. The boat tour was a good view, but after about half an hour it was like the museum we had been to the other day; just a lot of the same stuff. What I found curious was that many Koreans never left the picnic table set up in the cabin or even seemed to look out a window. I guess I’m just enough of a skeptic that it isn’t enough to ride in a boat I have to actually go on deck and see the boat moving to derive enjoyment.

you'll have to take my word that there is a boat beneath me

We got off and checked out a big skyscraper which was another tourist hotspot. I had no interest in paying $12 to visit another skydeck (like a high floor bt only more expensive), and the buffet there looked ridiculously pricey. Apparently in some countries all the food you can eat is something reserved for the rich instead of the poor and frugal.

We searched in vain for a grillhouse but ended up at a TGIFridays as only chain restaurants were open. The meal was decent if a little pricey, although it would soon become apparent that filling my stomach to the brim with ribs wasn’t the best course of action.

We took the bridge back over the river to the main city by Ken’s insistence, I thought it looked way too long. By about halfway across I realized that I was going to have to visit a restroom with plenty of toilet paper quite soon. By 3/4s of the way across I realized that I might not make it. Its tough to get so close to making a mess you haven’t made since senior kindergarten in your pants and have almost no alternatives. The only one here being trying to discreetly do mybusiness on a conrete bridge with heavy traffic. By a stroke of pure luck there was a portapotty on the other side of the bridge down some stairs.

I almost didn’t make it, shedding my coat and bag early and getting everything lined up just in time. Two days with hardly any fruits or vegetables has an interesting effect on my body I don’t care to repeat.

like a horror movie, especially what went on inside

The upside was that for the rest of the night I was euphoric at my good fortune and the five pounds I had just lost. We happened upon a park with a bunch of exercise equipment in and I was like a kid in a candy store. I have never seen a barbell bench set out for public use and had to give it a try.

take that gravity!

We then went bowling, which turned out to be relatively pricey but not a bad time. Aside from the fact that I bowled horribly and the owner decided to hover around us like an unamused specter. We decided to head back to the same area of town as the night before as the rest of the town looked dead.

We got lost along the way. Korean streets aren’t set up in grid patterns so its easy to get turned around, but I for one just went completely bonkers trying to figure out where we were. I hate losing direction but what I hate even more is feeling like your brain is doing laps in a velodrome. We ended u where we were heading, but could have been dropped there by aliens for all the sense our route made to me.

We finished off our night again at WaBar. Mainly because the beer was cheap but also because it was one of the few places in that area that we were sure weren’t whorehouses. We were pretty dog tired and it was no surprise that we both decided that cutting our Seoul stay a little short by catching an earlier train the next day would be good.

We did finally get our western breakfast the next morning. Unfortunately it was again McDonalds. And they were out of hotcakes. But the coffee wasn’t bad and after serving the tourists in front of me the cashier was suitably stunned with my command of the Korean language (despite the fact that all the menu items are pronounced the English way).

But I did enjoy my Seoul trip and if I come back one day I know what places to hit when the city is a little more happening. But I think the best thing to come out of it is that I did it. I have a tendency to talk about stuff more than act on it and I managed to follow through on this trip with little planning and even less over thinking.

Seoul Part 1

2007-02-20T21:23:00.000+09:00

Taking a cue from Ken I think I'm going to do this blog in two parts. I'm feeling a little sick today (after a weekend of eating crappy food- no connection I'm sure) so I'll give you friday and saturday today and sunday/ monday soon.

Seoul Trip

So an unexpected long weekend came and I thought it would be a good time to check out the place called Seoul. For those of you not aware Seoul is the mecca of south Korea, a giant metropolis where a quarter of the population calls home. It’s the city that most people think of when I tell them where I am teaching (unless their knee jerk is rice paddies and nukes). Having been in Korea for four months I thought it was time to finally venture outside of Busan and see a little more of the world. So my buddy Ken and I packed some bags booked a hostel and a train and jetted off Friday night.

Time being our most valuable resource we took the bullet train up. A marvel of modern impatience that travels upwards of 300km/h. When it feels like it. Ken and I were both disappointed that the lights of Korea weren’t convalescing into a warp speed blur as we sat in the train. In retrospect it occurred to me that the train probably wasn’t going to go 300 km/h the entire 3 hour trip unless Seoul was 900km away. It isn’t.

We got into town and found our hostel without too much trouble. I had some difficulties explaining our destination to the cab driver but we somehow got dropped off pretty much on its front door. The hostel we were at, although having a quaint love of small rooms, was actually fairly nice. For about a quarter of the price of the cheap hotel that was recommended to us by Ken’s coworker we had a tidy little room with private bath, cable tv and all the novelty of bunk beds. Couple that with the free breakfasts (coffee toast and jam) and the internet room and I am now convinced that Beewon Hostel is Korean for bargain.

BeeWon Hostel is known for its great view

Our first night in was a late arrival so the plan for the night was to wander around for a place to eat, a task which we completed both amiably and aimlessly. The blocks of dark windows were our first hint that maybe we didn’t catch the city on its absolute most happening weekend. It was the Lunar New Year and we were told that most people in Seoul would be out of town visiting family. I figured in a city of 20 million it would still be pretty darn busy. I was so wrong. Even from the first night we noticed that most businesses were closed and the streets were empty. We eventually settled down for a very spicy bowl of bibimbap ( a fun name to say that means ‘throw rice and veggies in a bowl with too much hot sauce and see if the foreigners will eat it’) and headed back home for an early night (2am or so).

The next day we met some Australians in the hostel over the breakfast -I was making breakfast tacos with some tuna, bread and a whole lot of imagination. Everyone was really friendly (exemplified by the fact that no one made fun of my sandwiches) but we soon parted ways as Ken and I went out for some real food. We walked by some ancient palaces, but were not there in time for the English tours. We were however right in time for the changing of the guards at GyeongBokGung Palace. There was a ceremonial parade in which a group of sharply dressed men with fake beards plastered to their faces marched around the front of the ancient palace. Korean males nowadays don’t sport much in the way of whiskers, but as the popular historic dramas on television show me they once had full thick black beards. The guards at the palace met halfway with large thin beards hanging from their cheeks.

even without words or eye contact annoyance can be conveyed

We wandered around for food. Now we were in an unfamiliar city but we are pretty comfortable around Korean cuisine nowadays. If only any Korean restaurants were open. Nine out of ten shops we passed were closed, the remainders were usually double fried chicken places. This is where you take a whole chicken and dip it in a deep fryer. Proud of this accomplishment you throw it under a heat lamp in a window display for passersbys to admire. When a customer comes and picks out a chicken they like they do them the dishonor of throwing this fried chicken back into the deep fryer so they can be sure that it had soaked up as much oil as possible.

It took us the better part of an hour and a half to find a small pocket of open shops where we descended into a McDonalds. I don’t make a habit of eating at a McDonalds, but even with my boy scout supply of jerky on me I was ravenous at this point. The meal wasn’t precisely filling but acted as a good form of negative reinforcement for my stomach. That chunk of indigestible flour oil and sugar will teach you to get hungry when not fed!

Seoul on lunar new year is a little like going to an amusement park on a slow day. Sure its great that you get to see all the attractions but the hustle and bustle is half the fun. By late into our first day the lack of excitement in the general populace was palpable.

We headed towards Seoul Tower, which was a nice little taste of home. A large building that’s basically a radio tower tricked out to be a tourist spot. The only real difference between this one and the CN tower is that this one was smaller. They tried to cover that up by putting it on top of a mountain they didn’t build but my keen eye wasn’t fooled. The Seoul tower was overpriced (don’t take the cable car, its not a long climb) and kind of boring but much like the CN Tower you’d feel a little denied if you hadn’t climbed it.

which side of the window am I on? the answer will not surprise you

After that we went to check out one of the highly recommended areas called “Itaewon”. We took a long walk there and saw a bunch more palaces and memorials that were all closed up for the weekend. Itaewon to Canadians must be what Chinatown is to the Koreans back home. It is a long stretch of street lined with bars clubs and shops all catering to Americans. Seoul has a lot of US soldiers there, and a fair number of ESL teachers. Also unlike Busan it has a lot of foreign tourists as well. Itaewon would be a horrible place for an American tourist to visit (or as it turned out two Canadian ESL teachers) since it really has little Korean influence at all.

Much more than Busan Seoul in general could be managed with only a few words of Korean in your mental pocket. Itaewon requires none at all. Understandably some of the troops stationed in Korea have neither the time or resources to learn to speak Korean (on of those resources being an inclination). We ordered dinner at a sports bar where the bartender and waitress seemed completely fluent in English and everyone else seemed like a rowdy soldier or a rowdy ESL teacher. Even ordering in my broken Konglish seemed to impress the staff with my effort. I do notice that the Seoul dialect of Korean is far easier to understand than Busan, which is what I was told long ago. Probably like the difference between Scottish and American. In any case Itaewon isn’t a bad place, just not our scene and we left shortly.

We took a long long walk back to the area of Beewon Hostel, eventually falling into a small pocket of liveliness. We were approached by two men on separate occasions, who we initially thought were club promoters but turned out to be pimps with bad marketing skills. We settled in at a place called WaBar, which is a western chain bar in Korea. We were served by a shy waiter with a name tag that said ‘Mulder’ on it. When I actually called him by this nickname he giggled like a little girl and scurried away.

Part 2 Soonish...

seoul update soon

2007-02-19T22:15:00.000+09:00

I'm working on a blog to recount my Seoul adventures, but the three day adventure is taking little time to document and I've got to get some sleep to be ready for work. So y'all just sit tight and wait until tomorrow.

Or you could just check out Ken's blog, I'm sure he'll be updating his right away.

Valentine's day.

2007-02-14T22:42:00.000+09:00

Today was valentine's day here, not that big of a deal really. in Korea this is the day that girls give chocolate to guys. theres another dya in about a month when guys give chocolates to girls. i think that one will be more popular.
I got a few nice pieces from some students, which was sweet. I just ended up using the chocolates as prizes in games for later classes- which I felt a little guilty about. Only a little.
I'm of course missing my girlfriend on V-day, but the fact that the one here doesn't resemble the one back home at all makes it much easier.

Everything is on schedule for Ken and I hitting Seoul this weekend. We have the bullet train tickets (300000 km and hour!) and a hostel booked (Bunk Beds! I get to be on top!) and we're trying to get a tour of the DMZ arranged. The DMZ is the no-man's land between north and south korea and it has a lot of history around it. and a lot of tension still there. the only other border I've ever been to is the 'longest undefended border', so the most heavily guarded border' could be cool.

Well thats it, a bare bones update. Like to go longer but I've got a few things to prep before my trip. Happy V-day everyone.

ps. the irony of it being valentine's day and one of my students being named valentine was not completely lost on him, but pretty near close.

Field Trip for the Kiddies!

2007-02-12T22:42:00.000+09:00

I may have been out of Canada for a little while but you can’t show me a large metal hill with inner tubes and tell me it’s a sleigh ride. Potato sack slide at best.
Anyway this morning the kids were taken on their field trip to the Bexco Sleigh ride. The artificial snow I was promised there failed to materialize, or more aptly had previously materialized and gone the way of Frosty in the green house days ago. With no real points of reference for what a sledding actually entails the kids were still thrilled. There was a bit more friction going down the slopes so the inner tubes didn’t reach breakneck speed. But that also had the benefit that not one of the kids experienced the Canadian tradition of completing the second half of the downhill trip on your face after your tire flips. They had about two hours to go up and down the various slopes on the hill (maybe four stories at the top with gentle slopes- you’ll have to use the mental paintbox god gave you until I get new batteries for my camera). Now these kids were bundled up for a snowy ride, which was in sharp contrast to the bright kinda warm day that we had.

Now kids being kids and the tubes they had to drag up the hill being equal in mass and willpower to them they very soon got tired. I spent a good deal of time dragging sleds up the hill. As in the second hour and a half. Korean kids need to spend more time outside and less time in school, even without the bittersweet kiss of frostbite they were all tobogganed out fairly quickly. Unless I dragged their sleds, and sometime the kids themselves, up to the top. Then they had energy and enthusiasm. To be fair I was more than happy when break time was called, running up and down the hill dragging kids and sleds is fun but tiring.

They had a snack break, during which I noticed that not a single kid had a single piece of fruit or bottle of water. Cookies, chips, candies and juice (I don’t hate juice for active kids, but I’m on a nutrition tirade so it gets swept in there too) and plenty of those. Now in retrospect it was a field trip and the parents don’t normally pack snacks for the kids, so it may have been a treat mentality. But in my mindset if you’ve got a kid that can’t run up and down a toboggan hill for two hours you might not want to give him a box of cookies for a snack.

By round two I was getting tired, but the kids were exhausted. They were all really thankful for my help, some of our school’s bus drivers were helping them up the hills too. I can’t remember the last time I sweated through a t shirt and jeans in February.

I did have a lot of fun, and it took up half a day of work- but the downside is that it has rendered me too tired to doll this blog up like the high class call girl it deserves to be, you’ll have to settle for ‘homely friend with a good heart’. I’m going to to to sleep and pretend I’m not going to be sore tomorrow.

Friday Night

2007-02-10T22:08:00.000+09:00

Last night I went to a ‘foreigner party’ with Ken, and had a surprisingly good time. It had the vague theme of being a valentine’s day party (we have a long weekend next weekend so they had it early so people would be around for it) and like most theme parties most people ignored the theme. With the exception of Halloween parties I find that most parties are just an excuse to get together and drink with decorations in the room. At Halloween you do the same but wear cat ears and growl at people.

Having limited exposure to the foreigner bar scene here this was a unique opportunity to meet 50 or so English speakers. In my average day there are only a few people I talk with face to face in normal English, and you really start to miss all the small talk. You really do. You start to look at random Koreans around you and just wish you knew what their thoughts on the weather were.

Most of the people there looked like they were fresh out of school and I had the feeling I was in a college party at times. But seeing as how I never felt compelled to funnel any of my drinks I can be sure that I had not in fact stepped into my past. Everyone was really friendly and approachable, almost all of them were teachers too so they all had outgoing natures. If you can be friendly to spoiled kids all day, being friendly to real humans at night is easy.

We were each given a nametag with a number on it when we came in and there was a wall of envelopes where people could leave you valentines. Its one of those sweet little concepts that always goes awry, like robot teddy bears that go on gambling sprees. I was flattered that I received three notes by the end of the night. I’m off the market but it’s always nice to find out you’re not as ugly as the pictures your kids draw of you.

My flattered state did dissipate when I actually read the notes. They were all fairly funny and very tongue in cheek. One was from Ken, and I can’t get into the details here (my parents read this) but he apparently thought I had a robust rooster for sale. Another could easily be interpreted as first person instructions on how to eat a tootsie pop, which I think was from one of Ken’s friends going for a little off color humor. The final one I can’t even allude to its contents without getting my mouth washed out with soap. It ended with the line ‘I want your Kimchi!’ which makes me believe that it too was written by Ken.

Now the downside is that I drank a little too much and stayed out a little too late. Not way too much or far too late, but my tolerance for both of those vices has diminished in my old age. I consequently was a little hung over this morning. Enough to make me postpone my workout until tomorrow, and I do so hate working out on Sundays.

Now after my workout I was to meet one of the trainers who had invited me out to eat, and have an informal language exchange. I still went to the gym at 2 to meet him, despite just feeling tired and headachy. I didn’t see him there, although I only waited for ten minutes and didn’t look too hard. I just sat in the gym lobby flipping through a Korean bodybuilding mag assuming he would find me. Now I felt bad about leaving but to be fair we may have just had a miscommunication on the time/day. Hopefully I’ll see him tomorrow and be able to clear it up.

As I mentioned earlier it turns out that I have a long weekend next week and tomorrow I will start scrambling to make good on my promise to get out of town. I hear that any good trips will be booked solid by this point so Ken and I are planning to head down to Seoul for the weekend. I’ll keep you posted.

10 good things about teaching (VIDEO)

2007-02-05T20:59:00.000+09:00

Well much to my shock and disbelief I feel that I may have been presenting an up to now one sided perspective on teaching. I have focused much more on my trials than my tribulations and without actually knowing for a face what a tribulate is I will now list a few. ESL teaching in Korea does have its upsides, which I will now list in order of how I write them down:

1. I don’t really have to do any prep. Some of the biggest downsides of teaching at a ‘fer real’ place that I hear about is how much work you take home with you. Tests, reports, homework grading, lesson plan prep. I don’t have to do any of that. Its one of those jobs you don’t take home with you.

2. The little kids generally love you. Although the under 7 category can be the most trying at times and you get more used to seeing tears than a wedding photographer a lot of them generally love you.

3. You can easily save, without really trying too hard, half your paycheck. In this respect your actual bankable income can be much higher than the modest paycheck indicates. Often higher paid individuals have trouble saving a tenth of their paychecks. You could pay off debts or save up cash pretty easy here.

4. You can sometimes kill entire classes with the most seemingly pointless fun activities, and yet still get congratulated for your great lessons.

5. Little kids will always want to rub your shaved head. Like always.

6. I’m not familiar with Korean holidays and new ones are always cropping up unexpected. I’m pretty sure I get time off for the Chinese new year this month and I had no idea.

7. You can just get your T.A. to cover class for you while you go take a nap; here’s mine.

Yes this list was originally planned to be 10 things, but I think that last one counts for three.

its like the sound of childrens laughter...

2007-01-31T21:34:00.000+09:00

... children's crying that is. You hear it just about as often in a job like mine. Now it used to bother me that I was often the cause of this crying. It is beginning to lose its impact on me.
I think that anyone who is planning on having kids should teach kindergarten for a year. I firmly believe that if you follow that advice you are very susceptible to influence and shouldn't have kids in the first place. Now kids will cry for darn near any legitimate reason: You wont lend them your board marker so they can draw a cat on your cheek, Sally hit them after only repeated physical provocation or you wont let them have five squirts of strawberry scented hand sanitizer (after already talking you up from one). Sometimes you have to resort to a baser form of language to communicate. Crying fits the bill. I have the second worst grasp of Korean in history (Ken wins) but even I know what a kid wants when he starts bawling his eyes out. A sticker.

Even I have my little crying escape, where i just need to do something to express that I am beginning to lose it. i have started to sing in class when the class gets out of control. Its my little way of counting to ten and not letting the antics and shenanigans get the best of me. I figure its still an English lesson to them. Its really hard to get frustrated when you're singing 'if I only had a brain' or 'I am slowly going crazy' to a room of oblivious kids. its tough to take anything seriously in that circumstance. I am toying with the idea of teaching the kids 'The song that never ends', which will cause me headaches in the short term but could be a legacy I will leave here for all teachers of the future to deal with.

5 days without an update???

2007-01-29T22:22:00.000+09:00

Where has he been? Well I just haven’t been up to too much lately and trying to rewrite the same activities into a blog in a new way seemed daunting. Worry not, updates will continue when interesting stuff I do continues. Perhaps it was becoming an uncle for the first time this week that made me put my little blogs into perspective and wonder if I can’t crank out something more meaningful. This isn’t comparing my blogs to having a baby (what an ugly retard baby that would be) but more about reporting even marginally more meaningful things.

I’ve been working on trying to get good food into me lately. I’m about as finicky an eater as a three year old that was just introduced to ice cream; but has not been given any compelling reasons not to eat it exclusively. I will say that grocery shopping is an interesting experience here, I split my shopping between a weekly trip to Emart and more frequent trips to street vendors. Emart (kind of like Walmart, but with an E) has a wide selection, mostly of stuff I have no interest in, but the selection is wide nonetheless. The street vendors have fruits and vegeatables for sale for usually insanely low prices (except apples which are priced by volume at the current price of gold), and from what I hear its the exact same food that is sold at the Emart so I’ve no reason to get picky about my source. There is an untapped third option, which are fruit and fish trucks that drive around with public address systems advertising bushels of apples and bumfish and the like. I have no interest in buying from them however. Sure it may be the best prices but its the same reason you don’t buy from a salesman that sneaks into your bedroom and yells in your face first thing in the morning. You don’t want to encourage them.

Koreans are a very shy people, while still possessing a movable head and eyelids thy will do their best to avoid direct eye contact. With anything. This is my explanation for why even in the grocery stores there are people paid to yell at you as you walk by a display. They sometimes have microphones. They always yell. At first it made me feel uncomfortable because I didn’t know what they were saying or how to respond. Nowadays I still rarely know what they are saying but I know exactly how to respond. Quickly divert eye contact.

Now I imagine you are all wondering what kind of diverse foods I buy over here, truth of the matter I don’t see much of the different stuff that is all that appealing. I avoid products made from rice which eliminates most of the oddities here, and I now know from experience that the only purpose buying kimchi has is to make me feel guilty for not eating it. One section that does look promising is the fish section. There are things here to make aquaman go: ‘huh?” and being so close to the sea pretty much ensures freshness. Now I am fine with eating fish, but making it is a different story. Perhaps its just years of living with my dad who makes fish in the microwave or my old roommate Drew who has an interesting way of preparing fish (throw fillet on an ungreased pan, cook until pan and fish become the same entity and leave for someone else to clean up. Serves 2) that worries me about the smells that I will invite into my kitchen. I have no fan in there so I think I will hold off on fish cooking until the summer when I can open my windows.

So that’s the end of the blog for today, I only hope that one day my nephew Jonah will read this entry and say to himself: “I guess crazy uncle Kevin did go to Korea.”

No Such Thing as a Free Lunch

2007-01-24T21:37:00.000+09:00

I have officially given up on the hagwon lunches. Well not officially but after a half week without them I can’t see myself going back. It isn’t all ticker tape and streamers. We had some good times me and them. That nice little stainless steel bowl of rice that I never opened, despite the lunchlady’s repeated pleas to eat. The cold fishsticks served with ketchup. The kimchi, which oddly I don’t mind unless its made from radish, which is funny b/c of my hatred for cabbage. The soup that I have I nothing clever to say about because I generally liked it. All of this I have decided to forgo. The unreliability of the lunches has convinced me to just go home and make my own.

Nick recently bought a motorcycle, I think its just to prove that he has more balls than me (four and counting), and he has been jetting home for lunch and I started to think about it myself. I tried it on Monday and I think it’ll become a routine. Most days I have a silly hour and twenty minute break for lunch, now seeing as how I don’t do any prep work for class (I would if there were any materials to prep) I just usually end up doing very little and generally wasting that time. Monday contained in it an exasperating enough morning that when I thought about all the good food i had in my fridge and the awesome Ethiopian coffee my girlfriend sent me I just had to get out of the school. I figure the walk helps too. Airs my brain out a bit, and probably burns like a billion calories.

I sometimes rate the difficulty of a job by how many cups of coffee I need in a day to face it. Now I get plenty of sleep so its not a tiredness thing, its more about little rewards I give myself throughout the day for making it so far without a fatality. One day I’m sure I will have an office job and a bowl of Rolos on the desk for everytime I answer an email successfully. Now I guess today I had six cups of the ole black magic, but that’s only because my coffee maker creates three at a time and I have trouble convincing myself not to make a full batch. Its like a firefighter only saving one puppy from a burning building instead of grabbing the lot. I know that seems a little overblown, but I really likey my coffee.

In my past job I got used to coming home on breaks, and it has its ups and downs. Number one is that I do find I can relax so much better when in my own place (and yes that means I’m naked). I can also eat what I want (peanut butter and mayonnaise!) without having to scavenge. Some down sides are that its tough to get into and out of relaxation mode in an hour. Many times I only get into it. Like today for instance, I was able to loosen up a bit during my break but didn’t have time to shadow box, let out some grunts and get my game back on before I went back to school. Which left me a little sedated for the rest of the work day. Which was probably good cause its really not a great job to get worked up over.

I looked into some package tour things here. Taking a look at a little island resort or maybe just a quickie to Seoul. I know I’m in a foreign country and should be doing more to take in the sights and unless I do darn soon I’m not going to see any of them. I have a whole list of reasons why its tough for me to go (busy, tired and scared basically but articulated in a much more stable defense) but there is one darn good reason to go: b/c I want to.

At one point by the end of Feburary I will have left this city at least once. This is vow. If I don’t I will banish this blog to nothingness.

Arnie had it right

2007-01-22T22:11:00.000+09:00

I remember when I saw the movie ‘Kindergarten Cop’ back when I was 10 years old. That triumph of cinematic storytelling impacted everyone so very heavily at the time but even still it was hard for me to think that it would be so true to life for me. For those of you not familiar with it (or for some reason whose brains did not find it needed to commit the movie to enduring memory) I will give you a brief rundown;

Arnold Schwarzenegger was a tough cop, he was so adept at keeping the criminal world in line that they decided to give him a tougher mission. Put him in a room with a bunch of 5 and 6 year olds and make him promise not to kill any of them (not even just one as an example to the rest like they do in Harvard). We quickly see that big brawny Arnie is reduced to relying on his wits and acting chops to keep these adorable little munchkins that are still too young to have learned the concept of sanity in line. So he yells at them and then treats them like army cadets which magically keeps them from eating glue. Then he decides to go back to crime fighting and ends up getting the school burned down. And there was a ferret in the movie too.

The parallels here are almost too many to count. I look at my experience as a scale model of that. Sure I don’t teach as many kids as him or for as long, but my classrooms are a lot smaller and so am I. I too, having no actual training in teaching, must rely on my acting training and my wits to keep them in line. Much like Arnold those don’t get me too far in life (I should marry a Kennedy) so I sometimes feel myself overwhelmed. I even half considered making the kids run around and jump and do calisthenics or something but the main trouble class is way too overcrowded for that, and there’s no use in making the class army style anyway. For all the males at least they’ll get quite enough of that when they turn 18. So although I know there is a lesson that I can glean from Kindergarten Cop, I’m not sure what it is. The sad/ funny thing is that movie is probably the most relevant training material I’ve seen.

My littlest class just got a new student today. Another one. That brings the class total up to ten students. Three of which now speak no English whatsoever. Two others I cannot keep in their seats, and if I stop paying attention to either of them for even a second they will either start taking off their clothes or eating the books. There are four average students, which get no attention due to the constant need to keep the aforementioned five in check and get no challenging work because there is no chance to teach them something new so it is constant review- but they are at least content to be relatively quiet most of the time and rub their cheeks against my arm hair now and again. Then there is one bright kid, very well behaved, who enjoys English to the point that he is now constantly fighting for my attention (so nice to be needed) so he can practice talking to me more. Now there is obviously a simple way to deal with this. Perhaps not an easy way but a simple one. There has to be. I just have no idea what it is. It probably has something to do with teaching experience. I hope not, I hope it’s a pill.

This was the class that was getting stickers at the end of every class in which they did not misbehave, which I’ve been experimenting not doing now and then. Its not a perfect system, and often I felt I was rewarding kids for doing nothing. Honestly if one of the ten kids just didn’t make a ruckus during the class they got a sticker for being good, despite the fact that they did nothing English related. I’m going to try only rewarding good behavior and use of English skills, but its tough as it isn’t a level playing field. In any case this is only a temporary thing, until the end of the month. The school is aware the class is mismatched and it seems they just want me to do damage control. We have three kindergarten classes graduating at the end of the month and that’s when this one will be split up with some of them moving on and some of them staying at the base level. The only reason they accepted the kids into the class before the graduation was to get the extra tuition from the parents. Its not a horrible system really, and it’s the only way the class could really run but some days it is very very tough. So I guess the lesson is to keep the stickers in until I can figure out a better discipline system and try to buy a ferret somewhere (and no they don’t farm them for food here).

Well tomorrow’s another day last time I checked, and its bound to be a good one. Happy Trials!

food, pool and beer (VIDEO-but not a good one)

2007-01-21T00:38:00.000+09:00

Well Ken and I didn’t get up to too much mischief today, which he clearly had panned in his datebook written in glitter pen and underlined with highliters. I was so sorry to disappoint him, it’s like every time you have to kick a cute like squirrel. The common misconception is that every weekend here is like a mini-vacation in a foreign country. Well that doesn’t really work out when you’re a lazy tool. So we didn’t go to a buddist temple or make rice with ninjas or any cool shit like that. We did went to an all you can eat grill house near my place that turned out to be one of the most satisfying meals we’ve ever had here. It didn’t have as many side dishes as the other places we’ve been to and the meat was of lower quality by Korean standards (which meant that it was leaner, although we still trimmed it before throwing it on the grill, to the confused glances of the hosts) but we were both more than satisfied and will probably go back often enough to cancel out the relative healthiness of the spread with the pure quantity we will eat. Everything in moderation; especially moderation.

Afterwards we walked downtown and hit a pool hall. But not before we witnessed the tail end of a performance by three singers in the subway as we were crossing through it (something you always have to do to cross busy intersections here, they don’t even have cross walks at intersections with subway entrances). It seemed to be three girls that were local performers just doing karaoke style renditions of pop favorites to the mildy not disninterested adoration of onlookers. The singing was alright I guess but I don’t think much of the stage presence of performers here. That may b unwarranted and judgmental but I see the only useful thing to come out my degree is to be able to critique performances technically as a professional ( with all sorts of professional envy and unfulfilled dreams to boot!). The performers didn’t really entrance me quite as much as this old gentleman dancing along to the music. Tough to see on the sup-bar vantage point and the ‘cool that I have it but not really useful’ video feature on my digicam. But it was just funny to see everyone standing like statues and one old man just dancing away quite poorly but everyone seeming quite proud of him to do it. If my vantage point was better I would have gotten the singers in the shot too but alas it was not to be. I think I’ll have to be here a little longer before I can really decode what a cultural statement the whole dancing thing makes about the people here.

Anyway I tried to capture the moment forever in video but some guy got in my way and my digicam ain’t the best tool for the job in any case (kinda like using a toothpick as a flyswatter- it can get the job done… sort of... in theory)

I won two games of pool in a row against Ken and finally on the third game I thought it would be nice to let him win a game. I did this by letting him not scratch on sinking the eight ball like he had for the last two games. I’m such a big man sometimes.

Afterwards I insisted that he come down to Ol’55, the foreigner bar I’ve been to a few times. I figured it was a good place for him to check out already, as it is a staple in so many ESL teachers lives here. And I also figured I could introduce him to the few people I knew that frequent that place and help him feel a little more at home. Well it turns out that nobody I knew was there while we were (not that I know a lot, but every other time I’ve been there I’ve met at least one person who was familiar) so Ken assumes that I made all those people up. I just wish that I was sure he was wrong.

The foreign bar is a cool little experience if you are getting at all homesick because it can give you a reminder of how much you didn’t really like bars back home. Well that’s a mean statement if viewed across the board, but Ken and I are both guys that are trying to leave behind their pint mugs and do other stuff with our time so we got bored fairly quickly and like usual we were both home by midnight. I have the tragic vision of some teenager who hero-worships me reading this blog and finding out that my nights out are so short and throwing his hat down and screaming “you’ve changed man! I don’t believe in you anymore!” Luckily for me no one actually read this blog so that won’t happen.

We’ve mentioned how we want to make more solid plans for our weekends, like a temple retreat or a trip to Soeul, but that takes planning and effort and we’re neither of us good at that. But that last thing we want is to spend all night out at a bar just so we can convince ourselves that we’ve done something exciting with our night, and if that makes us losers than so be it.

Oh my god. We’re losers.

And you know who the real winners are?

Nope me neither. Well I’m getting a little too dopey to keep writing so I’ll see you all next week.

A good Friday

2007-01-19T22:09:00.000+09:00

Only three things of any note today and I will try to present them in bullet style to eliminate any taking of valuable reading time from your day with uneeded or unnecessary descriptions or explanations or anecdotal stories that in fact turn into run on sentences that don’t accomplish much except causing my readership to drop after the first paragraph. I can only imagine you are all as busy as I and would appreciate some brevity and ‘to-the-pointedness’ instead of endless tirades on minutae. To that end this blog will be a stripped down “just the facts ma’am” version of my day. No filler. I’ve proofread it several times to get rid of even the minorest uneeded or unwanted word.

I crack myself up sometimes.

• You can convince yourself that just about anything is educational if it involves English. I have griped before about how my kindergarten classes are saddled with sub-standard textbooks that don’t actually have any imformation in them, they’re basically picture books. And I am only allowed to go through about 6 pages a month with them. So I sometimes have to make up new ways to insert vocabulary words into their brains. Enter the thingy:

I don’t really know what these things are called but I figured it would at least get the kids recognizing the spelling of English numbers and foods (their current unit). To get an idea lets give it a whirl. Pick a number. 4? Okay. 1-2-3-4

Now pick a food. Pear? Okay P-E-A-R.

Now pick another food. Strawberries?

Okay and the survey says:

Yeah it all kinda falls apart with the last bit but the kids were enthralled, and treated it like a game they got points on so they would all pick the same food so they could all get “yummy”. I had the class twice today and for the second one they all got to make their own thingies, mainly so they would stop badgering me to play it with them. The director saw me doing this with one of her little walkbys and I have no idea if she approved or not, but compared to the other teachers that just let the kids color half the time I think I can justify the exercise.

• Sometimes even my best class has a bad day. My Galileo class, the kindergarten class full of all the smart nice kids was very somber when I entered the room. No one was playing around they all just had their heads hung and one girl was crying while the rest looked pretty close. Sometimes little arguments happen when teachers aren’t in the room but it is usually forgotten about a minute into class, not this time. It took me a little while to figure out what had happened, they are only 5 and 6 year olds so it almost became a weird combination of a cop drama and esl as I tried to write on the board (in bullet form of course) what they were explaining to me. It took just about everyone in the class contiributing some English to set out the story so I could understand it. Basically the three girls were drawing on the board during playtime with some dryerase markers some teacher had left there. Now at the end of playtime one of the boys erased the board and they all got really mad at him. I tried to talk to the boy and find out why he did it, which I could have already guessed. He always goes nuts when I let him erase the board when I’m done and he always puts away all the toys and books at the end of class. He was really just trying to be a good student, he told me that he just wanted to help ‘clean up’, and that he liked the pictures the girls drew. I tried to explain to the class that Edward was just trying to be good and he didn’t want to make anyone sad. This seemed to mollify the rest of the class but then Edward broke down into horrible sobs. Everyone then gathered around him and patted him and apologized and brought tissues until he had at least fifteen of them. He calmed down after a minute or two, but I gave him (and everyone else) some stickers (which I rarely ever ever do with that particular class- since they are never happy unless everyone gets stickers and I’ve had to ration them for the troubled classes) and a double dose of peach scented hand sanitizer just to make sure everyone was happy. And also because they are one of the classes that makes me really like my job sometimes and it was just my little way of thanking them for being such a good group. If all my classes were like them I would be in heaven here. And when you consider that Ken’s students are roundhouse kicking eachother and getting in bloody fistfights altercations like this really are but in perspective.
• In my last class of the day they were graduated off of their Pop-Up textbooks and onto a storybook. I only mention the name of the textbooks we use for elementary schools b/c it only occurred to me to today that “Pop-up” sounds a little like “Baapo” (the Korean word for silly-head or fool) and I finally understood why kids liked repeating the title when I said it. I was told the students would be on this textbook for one month, I’m not sure if they just mean until the end of this month (the January break time) because the book is very short. I see this class three times a week and in a month that would mean that we could only cover less than half a page of this book each time if we paced it properly. As it was we finished a quarter of it (including all associated activities in their books) in one class, and this was with me trying to hold them back. One of the students who has never cared about anything in class was so thrilled to be reading it she got almost angry when I told her we couldn’t do it all in one day. So I had the kids all read for all the different characters, and to basically eat up time but also to give them some proper practice on how to say things I drama coached them through it. If the little girl said ‘I’m so hungry mom!” I told the kid reading it to be almost in tears when saying it. Then for the other kid to be super angry. It took them a little while to get out of the robotic recitals they were used to but once they did they loved it. They cast me in one of the parts and my performance had them laughing so hard one of them fell out of their chairs. It was nice to see such a usually unmotivated class having fun with English class. I’m starting to learn how to toe the line of being entertaining to them. Go too far and they will lose respect for you and call you Baapo, but a little once in a while goes a long way.

Well that’s enough blogging for one day, hopefully Ken and I will have some weekend adventures to relate soon.

An overpriced meal

2007-01-18T22:27:00.000+09:00

Work was average and brief today. One of my youngest students is becoming very comfortable with nakedness. Ah well that’s a story for another day.

After work I went to go meet up with Ken and check out one of the spas near his area. While I was waiting for him outside his building my school called me. The assistant director was telling me that the director wants to start a new program where Nick and I call our students once every two weeks for a quick 3 minute call to check up and make sure that they are up to speed on the lessons. And in return I would be paid 1,000 won per call. Now I saw a few flaws in this right away. First off there is only a handful of students that I teach that have the English proficiency to benefit from such a call, the rest of them would all just talk to me in Korean, and the ones that would understand the call really don’t need the extra help. I’ve heard of this type of thing going on with other teachers and its all just to give more perceived value to the parents, it also just sounded like a headache. There’s no way a ‘3 minute call’ only lasts three minutes. When you take into account scheduling, getting a hold of the kid and the odd parent that will want to talk to me while I’m on the line I’d figure that 5 minutes per call would be a safe estimate.

I told her that it didn’t sound that appealing. She sounded surprised and asked why. I told her that 1,000 won really didn’t seem like much. Keep in mind that 1,000 won is only about a dollar. She said that was a very good amount for only three minutes on the phone . I explained that being on my cell phone cost me 500 won a minute, to which she replied I could use the phones at the school after my shift- totally missing the hint that the call we were having right then was costing me more than it was worth. Also half my kids wouldn’t even be home at 6 oclock, and there was no way I was calling my kindergarten kids (the futility of it boggles me). So theres really no way it could amount to more than 20-30 dollars a month for an extra 1 (ideal) to 5 (more likely) or more hours a month. She was still pushing it, so I did what I always do with her when she asks me to do something I don’t want to : write it down so I could take a look at it later. She said that Mrs. Kim needed an answer right away. ‘Ok, then no I don’t think so,’ I replied. She was surprised saying that Nick had already agreed. I told her that I was just too busy and didn’t want any more hours at work, but I thanked her very much for the opportunity.

Ken had caught the last part of the exchange and when I filled him in he was amused. Thinking back now I hope that Nick still gets to do it if he wants, I’d hate to have cost him a chance he wanted. Heck I hope they let him call my students too. But if it wasn’t for me Nick and I would both be working an extra three hours on Tuesdays and Thursdays so I think he’ll trust me on this one. I do like the fact that I am getting some good practice in business confrontations. I used to be such a people pleaser.

So Ken and I headed to Haeundae to check out some spas. The last one we went to was great, but it was a little out of the way for us so I thought we’d check out his area (mine doesn’t have many). The one we ended up at wasn’t bad, but not really anything special. It was almost empty (I figured weekdays would be better) so we did have the run of it. It had a hot tub, a cold tub, a more hot tub, three saunas and various rest areas. We kept going from hot to cold for a while to get the blood flowing. Ken has started working out again so we were both nursing sore muscles going into it. There was also a small room called an ‘Oxygen Room’ that had a floor covered with smooth pebbles and slightly different airflow. I was hoping it would have been a high oxygen room, but neither of us got a buzz from it. Overall the spa was relaxing, but I can’t see us going back. It just wasn’t anything special compared to the other one. We’ll likely check out a few more in Ken’s area over time though (there are a lot of them).

Afterwards we went to grab something to eat. I wasn’t really planning on eating out after all the lackluster experiences we had of late so I had eaten a little before heading out, but was still starving after the spa. I had forgotten my meals today so while I was at school I had subsisted off of beef jerky (always be prepared) instead of my usual 2 huge mealshakes (its not fair to call what I make in a blender a protein drink) so I was just underfed for the day. This time we decided to just cut the crap and go to one of the western restaurants in his area, even though we had been burned by pizza hut I figured I couldn’t go wrong with a steak. Well I did.

I got a Texas rib eye steak at Bennigans, which cost about $30. Everything on the menu was a little pricey so I figured I was best to pay a few extra bucks for something decent (although it was still one of the cheapest steaks they had). It was a decent size, although they seemed to take my medium-rare order as a half and half request. The side dishes were pitiful, and the steak was slathered in sauce. It also came with some orange marmalade that I couldn’t figure out. Ken also ordered us some beers, which I was on the fence about but wasn’t going to object to. Luckily for my waistline they at least tasted like mostly water.

So you could say that I wasn’t entirely happy with my meal, but at least it was filling. I couldn’t say the same for the fajita that Ken ordered. I had heard that there is only one place in Busan to get good Mexican food, and I realized quickly why Bennigans was not that place. I won’t even try to steal his thunder, I’m sure he will be more detailed in his blog.

So the meal was overpriced and not very good, which was what I was kinda fearing from going in but there was part of me that was hoping that against odds I would find a reasonably priced place to get hearty western fare from time to time.

C’est la vie. I think I’m just going to have to start packing lunches wherever I go and hope I don’t get sick of chicken breasts, mealshakes(the name will catch on) and tuna. Otherwise I’m just going to get poor, fat, skinny or some undgodly combination of the three.

Oh and heres a pic of me posing outside some random restaurant in Busan where the food is like a free aquariam view until you eat it.

In praise of napping

2007-01-16T21:53:00.000+09:00

Tuesday is my easiest day of the week during the January vacation period. When you take out breaks I only work for four hours this day. I have and hour and a half lunch and get off at three. Its very nice and I wish it would last more than one more week. Ah well I'll enjoy it while I can. I didn't even have a workout scheduled today so I came home and did something I used to do a lot but haven't done in a while; took a good long nap.

Now in my former job as a trainer where 4 hour work days were the norm I used to ensure my eight hours of sleep with some good midday naps Now lately I've been a little shy of the eight hours and I was feeling it. For any of you that don't sleep for eight hours a night because you're too busy, try it for a month. You are so much more productive. the problem with a good nap though is that sometimes you wake up feeling refreshed and able and sometimes you wake up feeling refreshed and sluggish. today was a sluggish one. I've heard it all has to do with your REM cycle and not napping more than 4o minutes or longer than 2.5 hours. I clocked in at about 2 so I've been a little drowsy since then. I also still have a bunch of stuff to do so this blog will be a brief one. Hold back your tears.

My sticker supply is running dangerously low. There is only one class that I still need to use stickers as a reinforcement tool to keep them in line, but I have to make sure I have a good variety for them. Its the little guys; Edison. They're not a bad group of kids but there is just too many of them and they are restless. Now there are only nine of them, ranging from 3-4 years old, so I give mad props to any teachers that can handle more. I took the kindergarten job because I liked the hours, I knew from the get go that it would be tough. The benefit to these little kids is that they haven't really met that many people in their life and you become like a superhero to them. Anyway I picked up some stickers at the dollar store here but they are kinda crap. I have enough to hold out until I can find more at a real store (or steal from Ken). I'd hate to have to resort to proper teaching methods to keep them in line for the same reason Batman hates to resort to flying, because he can't.

A good day

2007-01-15T22:10:00.000+09:00

Well with Ken's complaint on my last post I think I should mention that if you're ever just jonsin' for a blog update you can click on the link to the left for my Myspace blog, where I do my non-korea related thoughts. I usually update each one every other day, taking the sabbath off. But be warned whereas this blog is PG, the other one is distinctly PG13.

Today was another day where I came off smelling like roses despite being full of shit. Well that isn't the best description of the day actually but that sentence just flowed so well I couldn't resist. First off since all my clothes were either dirty or hopelessly wrinkled (no dryers and me being too stupid to use fabric softener makes a puzzle that requires 2o minutes with an iron to fix) so I ended up wearing dress pants with a collared shirt and a sweater vest to cover up the fact that the shirt was wrinkled. Did I look still pretty biz-cas-fri? Yep. Was it still better than they're used to any foreign teacher dressing? heck yeah.
Now this dress was helpful since this turned out to be one of the days that the director was hovering around all day. It also happened to be the day that Nick had to call in sick with food poisoning , on a day when one of the Korean teachers was on vacation. The director mentioned them both to me and commended me for always showing up. Yeah damn Nick for getting food poisoning, what a bastard he was (not like the honor-system health code here could have had much to do with that). And Julie? Taking time off for her honeymoon? What. A. Bitch.

This was also the day I figured out a new game for my kids that went over really well. There's these vocabulary flashcards I'm suppose to use- I have to stretch the same 8 words for one month. So I decided to just improvise a bit with my one kindergarten class and set up a mock store where they could buy the food items on the flashcards with play money I doled out. I just figured that learning how to navigate buying things in a store might be more useful to them than asking them for the 5oth time how to plant a seed. Well they did great with it, granted there are only a few phrases to know but they tackled it with more enthusiasm than I've seen in them before. I do think that more roleplaying exercises would benefit these kids as it takes the pressure of school off them (they have way too much) and as a theatre grad i could really help them with their motivation and characterization:

ME: Okay Valentine, you're buying the yogurt but I want you to use some sense memory and think about your dead grandma when she tells you they don't have any.
VALENTINE: Moo Laa? [huh?]

Anyway this is the first roleplaying exercise I've managed to pull off successfully. Very successfully in fact. I had that class twice today and the second class they begged me to play again. I upped the vocabulary they needed to use and just corrected their syntax when needed. I even let some of the kids run the shop and got to mostly sit back and watch. And the director got to see a very engaged class doing a complicated exercise she couldn't figure out. But the kids were happy and speaking english so she was fine with it.

The other few classes she peeked in on were all pretty well behaved, I think I'm just getting a feel for what approaches work with which classes. Which will serve me for two more weeks until the new semester starts and the classes all change (hope I don't lose my favourites).

On my way to my last class bogged down with important looking books she told me that she was 'happy that you always working hard.' Its tough to believe she runs an english school sometimes. Truth be told the important looking books were the 'teachers books' that no one else uses that lay out the daily lesson plan for you, and I am putting as little effort into my job as possible. I will never be a kindergarten teacher, but I am proving myself not incompetent at my work and apparently that is enough for praise around here. there must be some horrible teachers in this country. And this is not me fishing for compliments or downplaying my natural abilities, I'm seriously not suited to this job long term- but its nice to know there can be good days now and then

Just another night (PICS)

2007-01-13T23:28:00.000+09:00

Korea can be weird sometimes.

Today Ken and I met up and headed into Seomyeon, the downtown core of Busan. Imagine Las Vegas without all the gambling. Now get back on track and think about Seomyeon. We didn't really have a plan when going here, which is pretty much par for us. I wanted to hit a bookstore to pick up a dictionary as I've been meaning to get one for ages here and have been getting by with the small one in the back of my phrase book. There is a pretty good book store in the area with a small foreigner section, which coincidentally had a few books by Dale Carnegie there which was a coincidence since Ken and I had been talking about his books on the subway ride up. Its those kind of trippy things that make you wonder if you’re on ‘The Truman Show’ sometime. I also took a look at the Korean learning books there but couldn’t make up my mind, none of them looked all that much better than the free stuff online. Nick has started taking Korean lessons and I’m on the fence about whether or not to join him. I’ve been making progress but I’m also a quarter done my stay here and will probably not be that proficient by the time I leave at this rate. I think I may just have to decide if that’s a big deal to me or not.

Anyway after the bookstore we embarked on another epic quest for food. During which Ken got sidetracked by one of the giant soju bottles that roams the street. He made such good friend with this large plushy denizen that we were invited to play a game that was basically a cross between wheel of fortune, darts, and alcoholism. Ken won a ball point pen. I won a mini bottle of soju. I felt bad for Ken and let him keep the bottle. He was happy then.

We passed by the typical pork grill houses and fried chicken places, a few sushi places and a bunch of soup places. But everything had the meal focus being fatty meat or empty carbs. And after Ken’s food poisoning earlier this month we weren’t going near the street vendors. So we ended up in a pizza hut. The devil you know is better than the devil you don’t after all. Well honestly the thin crust pizza we got there was less detrimental to us than the alternatives and at least we knew we would enjoy it. I will have to start just carrying around food with me though, as I am really starting to realize that 90% of the options out here just don’t jive with the way I want to eat.

Then we decided to find a place to grab a drink, Ken asked a kindly pig for directions, incurring only the jealousy of Minnie Mouse. We ended up at a western bar. Now this is usually just a term for a place foreigners hang out, but it turned out this was an actual wild west themed bar, complete with some tables made up to look like covered wagons. So we shared a few pints, and for a little while it was just like being back at home. Sitting over beers we both adamantly claim we hardly ever drink complaining about stuff we insist that we would never complain about.

It just kind of reinforced in us that this experience is whatever we make of it, and so far I think we’re both doing alright. Or at least Ken was until this cowboy decided to hold him for ransom. Maybe one day I’ll be able to pony up the release money.

We had ran into another foreigner at the bookstore, a nice guy from Georgia named Michael that reinforced that i was not doing the typical ESL teacher experience. He had traveled the country a bit more but admitted to just drinking most of the time with other westerners. And although that is what I've been doing with Ken lately I do realize that how I spend my time on average is way different than most other ESL teachers here. And even with Ken and I having a few drinks you have to keep in mind that we always finish up by 11pm so we can get home before the subway closes. Maybe we're just getting a little older but I'd rather get in early, sleep well and enjoy some sunshine hours than stay out till 5am (when the bars close) and spend all Sunday with a hangover. And the only reason I can of course know that for a fact is the number of times I've done that exact thing in my past. I'm not claiming that fear of the unknown isn't hampering my activities somewhat, but a lot of it is just not wanting to waste my time either. Anyway as usual; me tired go sleep now.

I hate Birthday cake

2007-01-13T00:17:00.000+09:00

If I go back in a time machine and tell an eight year old version of myself that I now hate birthday cake it will lead to all sorts of disbelief and strife. One more reason not to build a time machine. But in any case birthday cakes turn children into monsters.

Today we had a 'birthday party' for the kindergarten kids at school. They basically just take all the kids that have birthdays in a given season and celebrate them all at once. Coming in on a Friday with less than adequate sleep it sounded like a great idea at first. Basically one of my classes would be me just watching a mass of kids eat cake and chips. But I remember I had been warned about these days by Matt, one of the former teachers at my school. No birthdays don't turn these kids into greedy little monsters, and there genuinely isn't jealously for the kids getting all the presents. The problem involves a lot of cake and something called blood sugar, and an ever more scientific term called bouncing off the f*in walls. My second period of the day I had to try to teach a class of hyped up 3-4 year olds English. Well if repetition is a good method I'm sure the phrases 'please be quiet', ' sit down' , 'I swear to god i will kill you in cold blood' and 'the big,big pig' are all firmly ingrained in their vocabulary now. Only one of those was part of the lesson but I did say all of those more than once today. They only understood the first two in any case, and would do it for about a second then forget and start doing backflips off the table again.

I'll admit it was my own lack of sleep that compounded my frustration but the rest of the day was just a little sour. No other classes were really bad, but none were especially good either. Found it funny and creepy that following the lesson plan I caught myself asking a nine year old about three times in a row :"What are you wearing Michelle?" felt a little dirty after that.

It didn't help that the lunch served today was basically two tiny pieces of kimchee a bowl of gravy and a bowl of rice. It was kind of like being at Legoland, where you know there must be something cool you're supposed combine those pieces to make, but in the end you end up with a brick. So I just ditched my bowl now full of gravy and rice and looking like a bad bowel movement. I broke into the emergency rations in my backpack of beef jerky and fruit. The apple tasted a little weird as it appeared to have creatine all over it. I keep my bag clean but figured I probably spilled a little bit somewhere along the way. Seemed odd but no big deal. turns out it was a ruptured pack of silica gel from the beef jerky package that had gotten all over it. You know those little packets you find in clothes and pills and nuts that clearly say 'DO NOT EAT', well fyi they are very salty.

After work Ken and I went out for dinner and searched for a long while to try to find something that wasn't fatty bacon or rice. We finally set upon a grillhouse that served beef, in what turned out to be very thin and fatty slices. It was also more expensive than I'm used to here, probably about the same as a decent dinner with several drinks would run back home but still surprising. I am fairly useless when it comes to restaurants here, I can't figure out the words on the menu and I never know any good places. Until Ken got here I never really bothered with them much. I think I'm going to just start inviting him over for dinner instead. I'm no great cook but at least there's some meat on my dishes.

Anyway I'm tired, I pushed through my first crash six hours ago and its time to pay the piper.
But I will relate at least one good note to end off on. I've stocked up on hand sanitizer after my last bout with sickness (doesn't lower immune system like antibacterial soap) and have gotten my kindergartners hooked on the stuff. I think they just like the tactile sense of rubbing their hands together, and they seem to get equal but different enjoyment out of the alcohol scented and peach scented versions I have. But after seeing the way they wash their hands (running water in the vicinity but not always touching their hands) i thought it best to protect myself. Its just little nice that i might be nipping some of my potential viruses in the bud. Plus they see it as a reward and it kills two minutes of classtime.

Korean Teeth

2007-01-10T19:02:00.000+09:00

Korean Children have really bad teeth. I can't really understand it. I mean I know why they have bad teeth, they have more sugar in their diets than a hummingbird. I think it would take a concentrated effort to get more sugar into their systems. Maybe if they put coca-cola in their humidifiers and breathed it in all day they could get a little more in.

Before you decry me as a hypocrite keep in mind that I have long since reformed my candy-giving discipline system for my classes. As in I don’t do it anymore, now their prize is notapunch. I can't tell you what that is, but I'm glad to show you what it isn't. Now to be fair I can't really compare to back home as I haven't spent much time around Canadian kids recently either, not because I'm afraid of being accused of being a pedophile - I just never get much out of the conversations. But at least back home people seem more aware of the cause and effect of high candy intake, fat and bad teeth. Here I have to listen to the director explaining that diabetes is on the rise because people eat too much meat (which may be a factor for all I know, but I bet the sugar has more to do with it). Maybe its just that the public water here isn't fluoridated. Or maybe it is , no one drinks it anyway so it really doesn't matter. The toothpaste isn't fluoridated either. I think there’s fluoride in the green tea, but that drink is falling out of popularity.

I bought some instant decaf coffee and some ginger tea the other day only to find that both of them are loaded with sugar. I specifically grabbed them so I would have something to drink when I was writing blogs that wouldn't keep me up. That only applies a little to the topic at hand but it pissed me off so I wanted to mention it.

In any case the reason it surprises me that kids have such bad teeth is that the adults don't really seem to. Usually crooked and stuff but not as bad as the kids. Now I don't know how aggressively the candy companies (liquid and otherwise) have been marketing here in the last 10 years or so but it's probably a lot. There are almost all the candy bars you know from home, and then some local flavors. The kids never seem to get any dental work done, almost all have visible plaque and tons of gaping cavities. Keep in mind that the kids I see are not poor kids, if anything the kids I teach at the elementary school (usually lower middle class) have better teeth and the best were the ones at the orphanage.

Well the catalyst fr this entry was one of my kids who was chewing some kind of gum and lost a metal crown. Or i guess it was a crown, what remained in her mouth was little more than a root and exposed central tissue. It was far from pretty, but at least it showed that there is some dental work that does go on here, and shoddy work at that. My original guess was that these parents figure that there’s no point in patching a few leaks when the boat is sinking so they don't bother with baby teeth. But then you get your adult front teeth at the age of 9 at the latest and there are kids older than that with cavities.

Anyway it may seem like a weird topic for a blog, but it really struck me as odd. I've always been paranoid about my teeth. I used to get those recurring dreams where my teeth would fall out and I know that psychologist say that’s a fear of maturing. For me it was just a real fear of losing all my gorram teeth. To think that a country like Korea where they are so wrapped up in plastic surgery, and dressing well and presenting a well polished exterior that they don't fix teeth in kids is odd. But then the parents could just be saving up for some huge reconstruction later in life. Although completely unexpected this is the type of cultural differences I am experiencing.

I'll post more developments on this story as time goes on, whether anyone wants to hear about it or not. Right now I think I'm going to go try to buy some real instant decaf.

Mostly Painless

2007-01-08T21:42:00.000+09:00

Well I got my voice back enough to teach today, which was almost a shame. It would have been bad for me to use one of my (only three) sickdays for the year- but then again if I am going to be sick legitimately laryngitis is a great one to be out with. Usually when I take a sick day I’m just too darn sick to enjoy it.

Work was painless today, there is no extraordinary sense of accomplishement I get from there but it does not stress me out anymore either. Now obviously everyday and in every way I’m getting better and better, but the kids just aren’t keeping up. This isn’t some lame attempt at compliment fishing- trust me if you saw the way this place was run you’d have to agree. The textbook lessons could eventually teach them English, but on a long enough time frame so could re-runs of Friends.

But I must reinforce that I am not complaining, I would be if I wanted to make this job into a career- then the futility of it all would lead me to some dark inner turmoil. The kind that is manifested by bleak rhyming poetry. But as someone who has gotten far too invested in a lot of the jobs I’ve had in the past this is quite liberating. I do my work and leave, knowing that it is the time outside of the school that is my most productive. I have been very productive and proactive on a lot of little projects in my free time that I have long been putting off. Heck you gotta wonder how I manage to update both my blogs on a regular basis and still get anything else in life done. Too much caffeine and too little sleep is the short answer.

The only real thing that happened today of any real note was when the director popped in on one of my classes, well part of her, she literally sticks her head in the door and looks around for a second before yelling at the students. I think she was a little disappointed because when she stuck her head in one of my kindergarten classes earlier that day she didn’t see anyone misbehaving. This isn’t due to me, that class were angels when I got ‘em. So this time around she yelled at the students a bit (these ones were actually not acting up too much at all) and then watched me write some questions on the board. She then asked that I not write my “y”s from bottom to top, but top to bottom. She thought it might confuse the children as that was not the proper way. Now I hold my pencil funny and I write all my ‘o’s counterclockwise and all my letters from bottom to top and all of it sloppier than a pig covered in maple syrup. I had someone tell me once that was an indication that I was actually left handed or ambidextrous. Its my personal conclusion (and that of anyone familiar with my penmanship) that I am just equally useless with both hands when it comes to good handwriting. In any case my director is really not good at picking her battles, as I just mumbled something back about me being ambidextrous and unwilling to change. It had the intended effect of not imparting any comprehension on her sub-par English skills. I really don’t know what more she expected from me when I was ten minutes from being done for the day.

Anyway me tired go sleep now.

Trade english for muscles!

2007-01-06T22:24:00.000+09:00

Today at the gym I met the director of the fitness center, a nice guy around my age who is getting his masters in physiology from one of the local universities. I found it kind of funny that he already knew a little bit about me. He knew where I worked and what time I worked out and stuff like that, I guess being the only white person at my gym gives me a bit of notoriety. There might actually be another white person or two that goes there occasionally but none that I’ve ever seen. In any case he spoke a little English, not much but enough so that we could understand each other. He could even understand the feeble croaking that is passing for my voice today. He was very surprised to learn that we were both the same age, as he commented my beard made me look older. Maybe its time to shave.

In any case he is interested in learning more English and I mentioned that I would like to learn more Korean so he proposed that we could perhaps work out together and teach each other language. Either that or he was offering to personal train me in exchange for English lessons. Now the biggest roadblock is the time that he works, which means that I would have to come in the mornings and I’m not a big fan of morning workouts. Its proven that people with gimpy backs like mine should avoid certain exercises in the morning . Another thing would be the fact that I’ve already got a training plan laid out for the rest of my stay here and I’m not sure if he would be down with following it.
But the chance to do something a little different, learn more of the language, could be fun. In the end I explained that January was going to be a little busy for me but I’d be open to trying something out in February. I figure one or two early workouts a week wouldn’t kill me.

I was supposed to hang out with Ken today but my worsening larengytis made it obvious that staying in would be the better route. I’m interested to see how much of a voice I have left on Monday and thought it would be best not to load the dice by talking all day. I find that when I’m around people, especially friends, I find it really tough to shut up. I’m sure that has gone unnoticed by those around me up to this point so I thought it important to note that.

I bought some American money off Ken (he can’t exchange his funds without a passport) and think that I might try my first hand at investing by waiting until the US dollar rises before exchanging it myself. Then Ken helped me pick out a humidifier at Emart. It gets drier than Colbert here and I usually wake up hacking even when I’m not under the weather. By the amount that the store sold I can guess pretty much every home has one. So far it does seem to be helping with the air in my place although I can bet it will make my clothes dry a lot slower.

So I am just going to be hanging out at home today, and quite possibly tomorrow. Trying to rest up as much as possible. Now I’m not usually the master of excitement when it comes to how I spend my free time but I do get a little stir crazy when I’m confined indoors rather than choosing to be there.

When all else fails (VIDEO)

2007-01-04T22:38:00.000+09:00

How you do you teach an ESL class when you're losing your voice? Keep in mind the only reason you're on the payroll is your english accent. Sure theres a lot of time wasters, but there is a magic show I do when all else fails.

Well I'm going to pull back the curtian and reveal the showstopping act that keeps my kids entertained. It also convinces them that I have powers. Fantastical powers!

I'd love to reveal the secrets here, but I wouldn't want to get blacklisted. But feel free to comment on your theories. I'll give you a hint, it doesn't involve necromancy.

this short week feels long

2007-01-04T21:27:00.000+09:00

“If you want to act like a child then go ahead!”
-Kevin Manley circa 2007, poorly admonishing a three year old.

Maybe it was the short lunch. I bartered mine away in exchange for getting out of work early, figuring I’d still have time to wolf down a packed meal. That didn’t happen. I had to settle for a handful of beef jerky and some fruit.

Maybe it was my sore throat, I think I’m coming down with a bit of laryngitis. My throat is hoarse but aside from that I feel fine. But that may have just been my vocal folds lying down in the face of futility.

Maybe its just that my kids still aren’t used to being back in school. That’s probably it. Truthfully most of my classes went remarkably well. One of my classes that is famous for being rowdy (ask anyone!) I managed to keep in line easily today. One of my classes was pretty much taken up by them each writing a sentence on the board about food. That was the class I ate my lunch in. They’re like zombies, once they get an idea in their head they go for it.

But in my last class of the day there were difficulties. This is my super young class, who has just been moved into one of the bigger classrooms because it is constantly growing. I think a combination of the new digs coupled with the vacation has rolled back some of their focus and dedication to the diligent study of English. Three year olds, when will they ever learn.

It was hot when I got into the class so I opened the window, which is childproofed for safety reasons. Instantly four of the students flocked to the window like they had magnets for eyeballs. Any stimuli usually has that effect but two of them wouldn’t sit down when asked. One of them was just moody (I think three year old Korean boys have ‘time of the months’) the other one was transfixed to the sunlight and city view like he had just gotten out of solitary confinement. Now I sympathize with kids being stuck inside all day, and their old class didn’t even have a window so this was a novelty. But after a good 60 seconds I really had to get this kid back in his seat.

I teach his older brother in another class and he has similar problems with authority figures. They both respect and like me (at least outside of class) but moreso than other children haven’t learned that their whims aren’t the focus of the lesson. I tried asking, telling and then a one way ticket back to Seatsville via the Kevin Manley express. I had to close the shutters again in the end to get him from going all Icarus on me.

The class spurred on by the sun worshipper and the moody chubby kid had trouble being quiet for longer than four seconds at a stretch. Yes I think its relevant that the other kid is chubby, mainly because he is the one I witnessed being placated by his mother and her endless bag of cupcakes lo those many months ago (shameful plug for the archives). He is also the one that will come back for seconds and thirds for snack time (available because I don’t eat the double serving given to me) and then will throw a fit when he finds out that helping number four of choco-pie doesn’t exist. So there’s a room full of kids that won’t keep quiet and are being rowdier than ever.

I can’t raise my voice at them because I’ve pretty much lost it (my voice that is- I wasn’t angry just exasperated). I can’t even fall back on my ace in the hole threat of sending the loud kids out of the room- there would be some professional drawbacks to being the only one left in the room. Then I remember something. Just like in an 80s martial arts flick where the hero remembers a lesson from his master halfway through his final fight I remember what Jarod (the teacher I replaced) told me on my first day. I let the kids color. Two minutes later it was like there was a gas leak these kids were so pacified. Jarod you are my Yoda.

Now the director of my school doesn’t like it when we let the kids color, since they aren’t really learning any English. Yet at the same time the kids all have coloring pencils at the school and their textbooks are about 40% coloring activites. With temptations like that who needs a serpent. I don’t break it out often, but when I do the effects are magical. I coached them through the coloring, telling them to color the banana yellow and the apple red and so on. And god bless them for deciding to follow their own creative instincts instead Good job Vince you managed to coat the entire page in a layer of green. So I eventually settled for just walking around the class and whispering (all I was capable of at that point) little bits of English to each kid individually.

It was just an odd day with the kids in an odd mood and myself a little hungry. I thought that I’d be floored after that point, but I hit the gym after school and had a surprisingly good workout. Just read a new fitness book Muscle Revolution by Chad Waterbury and have started following the programs in there. I sometimes get asked why I follow books for workouts even though I was a trainer for three years. Well silly, its because their workouts are good. Nah, honestly its because if I write my own program I will tweak it endlessly and never have any consistent style of training. If its someone elses program (and a good one) I’ll tweak it a little at first then just ride it out. I only even mention the book because I think anyone who wants some good workouts should check it out. We’ll use me as a guide, if I’m not impossibly fit in nine months then don’t buy the book.

Anyway that’s all the news that’s fit to print, and arguably 70% more.

First day back

2007-01-03T19:58:00.000+09:00

One role model for ideal class discipline.

One of the biggest problems I face in class is getting my kids to be quiet. And sit down. Getting them to speak english is I'm sure somewhere on my list of priorities but i'm trying to stick to realistic goals.

Its tough when the kids genuinely annoy you. For the most part they are just bored or restless, when you have students that do 60 hour study weeks its understandable. But when its a kid deliberately just trying to see how far they can push you its tough. Today I had two girls call me some korean insult that basically means that I'm old and unmarried. Now this does not hit very close to home for me as neither of these things are really touchy subjects. In Korean culture however to be older than your mid twenties and not be married is a taboo best to be avoided, you instantly become crazy cat lady if 26 years pass without a wedding ring. So its not really what they said thats important, whats important is that thier heart was in the right place (captain planet villian level of wrongdoing). Bear in mind these kids weren't bad kids and they don't really dislike me, they were just the only kids to show up to class (vacation time for most) and thought they'd just push the envelope to alleviate the mind numbing boredness I choose to inflict.

So you've got loud kids not paying attention to the lesson and using thier loudness to insult you. Now resisting the urge for the mother of all sucker punches I typically just steamroll them with my superior vocal cords by reading loudly from the textbook. I had enough of trading insults with 12 year olds when I was 12. No one ever wins an argument with a kid, the best you can do is scare them into holding thier tongue.

Now of course this is a problem every teacher and scout leader and crossing guard faces- not being paid enough to discipline children trying to avoid wanting to push them ito traffic too. Crossing guards walk that razors edge oh so many times. Now there are a million techniques out there to discipline kids, but most of them rely on said children understanding the words you speak. My current approach of just staring at them and trying to use some as-of-yet untapped physic manipulation on them has only yielded mixed results.

The real problem today was probably just that both the students and I got used to not coming to school for 5 days and it will just take a while to get back in the routine. They just have to remember that I am the supreme overlord of thier destiny for an average 40 minutes a day. except for the kindergarteners which I sometimes have twice in a day, but with them I consider myself more like a sheepdog. If sheep picked thier noses.

Last day of vacation (VIDEO)

2007-01-02T22:19:00.000+09:00

Didn't get up to much today, slept in and just did some chores. I'm trying to keep my place cleaner nowadays, which has nothing to do with my envy of Ken's wicked apartment. This green eyed monster eats sour grapes- and therefore I'm sure he'll find out he has a roomate or something moving in next week.

So I thought I'd try something a little different and relate an incident I forgot to talk about before. And in a different way, just for a little snazz.

Hope y'all had a good new years.

Happy New Year!

2007-01-01T12:29:00.000+09:00

Well another year is over, I met up with Ken yesterday and we had a good little new years. We decided to check out the festival on Haeundae Beach, which I guess is a little like hitting Nathan Philips Square for New Year's in Toronto. Sure its something you do when you don't really have any plans, but its better than just hitting a bar and getting stupid drunk.

In typical new years eve fashion we entertained some vices before midnight, with a small bottle of Scotch we bought from the grocery store, a really good pizza and a couple of cans of beer we brought to the beach. Drinking in public seems to be one of those things where as long as you try to be a little discreet its considered okay.

Ken led us to the beach from his place in typical Blair Witch fashion, with various reappearing landmarks. Its a little tough to navigate in Busan as right angled streets are considered bad luck, as it is to defy the gods to strive for a simple path in life. I just imagineered that little bit of colourful culture history, and I hope that one day Korea thanks me for adding to their mosaic.

I commented to him that the Emart we passed looked like the same one we were at before, to which he replied that yeah everything looked the same around there. I drove my point home a little further by noting that the subway station by the Emart had the same name as the one before too.

"Yeah those, krazy Koreans!" Ken said with a smile.

Well we got to the beach soon enough and there were already a fair number of people there. it was my first time seeing the famous haeundae beach, but I'll really have to check it out in the summer to get the full effect. It was a nice enough place though.

One of the first things that happened was a couple of korean teenage girls giggled and walked up to us. Most of the time they just want to say a hello, but this time they also wanted to sell us firecrackers. They proffered a tube to me and said that it was 30. To which I shook my head, thirty bucks is a lot to pay for one firework. Turns out she meant 3 bucks, which I found more reasonable. So I bought one, to which they thanked ken profusely and told him how beautiful and handsome he was.

We found someone with a lighter and then took turns holding the stick and firing colorful balls of sparks into the sea. This was what everyone else was doing and it looked for the life of me that they were trying to fight off the approaching new year with magic. Either that or they were just trying to light the Japan Sea on fire (they don't like the Japanese too much here).

We sat for a bit and drank a can of beer as a couple was setting off bottle rockets nearby. We noted that koreans don't seem to have the same fear of fireworks that most beings human and otherwise do. Perhaps its since they've been around in this part of the world for so long is why they are so comfortable in handing a roman candle to a three year old and trusting that they'll discover the proper way to handle it through trial and error.

We didn't see anyone get hit, but there were a few close calls, Ken also noted that the couple kept on moving their bottle rockets closer and closer to us. i proposed that was probably to cleanse the area of our evil influence. A short time later the guy timidly gave us four bottle rockets to fire off ourselves, which is a sign that they were just trying to be friendly and were a little too shy.

We walked around the neighbourhood a bit but came back to the beach for midnight where there were many more fireworks, both big ones the city did and volleys of fireworks fired into the sea by the public. There was also a cruise boat a few hundred feet out that was firing out fireworks in reply. I couldn't figure out what that was symbolic of in Korean culture so I'll have to assume that people just like cool fireworks.

Now we had heard that the big cultural thing was to stay up and greet the sunrise, but honestly the idea of staying up another 6 hours wasn't too appealing. We had the big midnight countdown already in any case. So we headed back to Ken's place (after I made him try to win me a hello kitty doll at a nearby dart game- all he won was an astroboy so I let him keep it). We split a small bottle of champagne we had bought earlier at ken's place and i crashed there for the night.

Its kind of strange that last new year's I could never have really seen myself in South Korea a year from then. New year's resolutions have never been a big thing for me, as I think its silly to wait until a specific day to try to make good changes. but as silly as it is the symbolism of it does seem to help and i am aware that I am on the path to making some good changes in my life. No idea where it'll lead, but so far its a fun ride.

Vacation Day 2

2006-12-31T00:53:00.000+09:00

Second day of vacation went good, met up with Ken fairly early in the day, after of course sleeping in to 11 again. We pulled out a tourist map of the city and basically just took a look at what seemed the most exciting place to spend the day. The weather was nice so we planned a trip to Geumgang mountain, and/or the Daegu spa. They were both at the same subway stop so we figured we’d be able to hit at least one or the other.

The sun sets early in the land of the rising sun (which we are next to) so by the time we found the mountain it was about 5pm and we didn’t have much daylight left to explore the place. We decided to head up anyway as the view of the sunset wold probably e a good one. We took a cable car up the mountain and didn’t get around trip ticket. There was only an hour until the last cable car came down so we told the guy at the base that we were going to walk down the mountain after. As we were entering the park we saw a lot of older people with walking sticks coming down from their own hikes so we knew it was a fairly common thing to do. The man smiled and made a vague hand motion as to where to take the path down, telling us it was a 40 minute walk.

Now I suppose I could be giving the wrong idea with saying that we were going up a mountain, since its really not all that steep and probably not higher than many of the other little mountains around the city. We got up to the top of the cable car and chased the sunlight to some rocks on one side so Ken could take some pictures of the sunset. I had quite uncharacteristically forgotten my camera. We had a map for the mountain that pointed out a cool restored temple and guard towers down some path, which we started towards but we got sidetracked almost everywhere along the way and ended up climbing a path to a bit of a rocky peak to check out the view. It was being up on that mostly deserted mountain that made me realize how noisy Korea can be sometimes. The honking horns, the vocal salespeople, the pop music being pumped everywhere. Up at the top of the mountain it was just quiet. Well except for Ken’s incessant nattering but I’ve learned to tune him out over the years.

The light was fading fast and after catching a few more pics of the city (which looks really nice at night from very far away, finally found an angle where those garish ads are pretty) we decided to head down. We took a look at the simple map I had but it really didn’t give us a clue as to where the walking path was. We basically set out on the idea that any path that led down would get us to the bottom of the mountain eventually. Ken spotted one such downward path and we headed off.
It only took a few minutes to realize that we were probably not on the same path all the older people take down the mountain. The path was very small and uneven and even we were losing our footing a bit. Tourist spots here aren’t like ones in Canada, where they have all sorts of rangers and lights and stuff to make sure you don’t get lost. And I guess you could say we got a little lost. But we were still confident as long as we were headed down we were fine. The pic you see above was my little joke that we should just give up and go feral, “if you want to survive in the jungle, you have to think like a jungle!” Well about ten minutes after that pic we were we no longer on any semblance of a path and were just blazing our way down the mountain with little light. We kept in high spirits but were both getting a little concerned as to exactly where we were going to end up, since we had been veering a little away from the park entrance. I rebuffed Ken’s offers of water, saying that we had to conserve it, and advised him to find a weapon of sorts in case bears attacked.

Well after going down for a while we hit a fence, with barbed wire on it. This was a problem. It was blocking us from going any further down and we were both worried we had unwillingly stepped into some secret military base. We followed the fence for a bit and found a spot where it ad been peeled away enough to walk through and continued down. We found another path soon and rushed along it until we came out in parking lot to some building. Not sure if we were on private property or not we were happy to find some streets nearby and we soon found our way back to outside the park entrance.
We were both pretty tired from the trek so decided that finding the huge local spa would be a good thing. We searched around for a bit, but having had enough of trying to find our own way I just called Patrick and asked directions.

The only spa I’ve been to here is the small one attached to my old gym, so this one was a surprise. It was fairly busy but big enough that it was not crowded. I’m running out of literary steam so I’ll just give a rundown of all the cool things it had: hot tubs, cold tubs, aromatherapy tubs (we hit up peppermint, jasmint and ‘medicinal’), footbaths, high pressure shower things (like a massage), saunas, steam rooms and even an open air sauna area. The open air one was very interesting as it was cold outside and the tubs were very hot. I had trouble decided if it was worse to be cold out of the water or way too hot in the water.

The sauna helped relax us a bit, we headed back to my area and grabbed some dinner. We went for barbeque again, but the best dish it looked like they had was pork. Which is basically just big ol strips of bacon they bring to you. We had two servings of it, the first was relatively lean, the second was almost all fat. Here they are not really into lean cuts of meat so we tried to be discreet as we cut away the fat and stashed it in a bowl on our table that the hovering propetier couldn’t see.

If you want to see pics of the day just check out Ken’s blog, he’ll probably have a different perspective on the events as well.

Vacation Day 1

2006-12-30T02:19:00.001+09:00

It was my first official day of vacation and basically didn't do too much noteworthy, but I had a good time. I started it off by sleeping in until 11 which is always a good first sign that it might not be the most productive day. I'm not usually home at that time on a weekday so I took advantage of the time zones being decently aligned to call my family, skype of course. Skype is a really cool way to keep in touch back home for cheap but i still have an odd distrust for it. Sure it has been good so far with either free or cheap (about $0.02/minute) calls back home, and the sound quality has almost always been excellent but I keep on thinking there is some sort of catch that I am unaware of. It's all fun and games until it demands a human sacrifice, then it gets serious.

I eventually hopped on a subway, with the simple plan of getting a case for my ipod. I've had quite a few mp3 players in my day and i can say without a doubt this one is the best, so I figured getting a case to keep it protected and shiny would be a good thing. i checked online and found on some forum directions to the only apple store in Busan. I've had troubles with internet directions before but I figured after being here a few months I'd be a little less turned around and find it easily. I was wrong. The directions told me which subway exit to get off in Seomyun (downtown) and said to walk for two blocks then cross the street. It didn't say which direction to walk in so I figured it would just be the same direction I was going in when I came up the stairs from the subway. This led me way off target.

After three blocks I knew i was headed in the wrong direction and was about to turn around when some middle aged guy in a business suit stopped me. I didn't hear what he was saying at first because of the aforementioned ipod (podcasts rule, but I'll rant about that later) but after I managed to hit pause I caught the tail end of his introductions. he pointed at a nearby building and asked if I was an english teacher there, as he had a friend that worked there. I told him that I wasn't but I was an english teacher. He asked me for quick favor to help him with a little english. Now not being in any sort of a rush and always out for new experiences I was happy to help him out. He asked if I had eaten, I told him I had. Its always tough to tell if someone is offering to buy you lunch (fairly common) or is just asking how you are. There is a Korean expression that translates literally into "have you eaten rice?", which is like asking "are you well today?", since during a certain part of this countries' history getting a belly full of rice was a real challenge. Of course I hardly ever eat rice so by Korea's standards I've been having a rough time of it lately.
In any case we popped into a bank, which had me wondering at first exactly what kind of job he wanted me to do. If it was some kind of translation job he was going to be sorely disappointed. It turns out we just went in there to sit on their nice chairs while he had me edit a letter he wanted to send to a business associate he had met in Bankok. This man's English was already very good, especially his writing and the points I corrected were partially just simple grammar errors, but the main thing I did was just adjust his composition. It was a lot like helping friends re-word essays in university. The man was very appreciative and very impressed with the changes I made to his letter. I guess all of these blog posts have sharpened my wordsmithing skills to a razor-like edge. When you use a word like wordsmith I hope the sarcasm is understood.
He asked for my email address because he said he wanted a chance to show me around town sometime, but I think it is really just so he can email me letter proofs in the future. Either one is fine by me, proofreading like that takes little time or effort on my part but seems to make a world of difference to him. He also asked if i had any interest in teaching in a university, which could either be a random Korean question (they're always inquiring after my blood type to the point I wonder if foreigners are some sort of hospital resource) or a possible lead on a future job offer. In any case I told him I really didn't know much about university jobs so I couldn't say. Which is kind of a lie, I know that university jobs require a stronger background in grammar than I have. Canadians are kind of famous among esl teachers for having bad grammar, as it is not something we were taught in school to any great degree. i only have a loose grasp on what an article or preposition is, I just construct sentences by intuition. But I didn't think that telling the man I had just done some editing for that I have horrible grammar skills would make his day.

Before we parted ways I asked him if he knew the way to the store I was looking for, which he didn't but he flagged down someone and got directions and sure enough I had been walking in the wrong direction. He insisted on walking with me, but after a block or so he asked two ladies who were walking down the street if they would take me the rest of the way, which I found a little odd. In any case the ladies were friendly and I soon found my store.

Not much else in the way of excitement took place this day, although I did go to meet Ken after he finished work. We hung out with some of his collegues for a bit but I headed home early because I was tired and the subway closes early here.

It may not seem like a great vacation day (partially because I left a whole bunch of stuff out) but it was the type of nice lowkey day I wanted today.

Yep got me a long weekend

2006-12-28T22:55:00.000+09:00

And don't really have more than a vague idea what to do with it.
I've got five days off, and its the most significant chunk of vacation I'm going to be seeing for a while. However I don't really know what to do with it. I haven't planned enough to want to leave the country. I suppose I could go to Souel, or maybe just explore Busan more.
Truth of the matter is that Busan is still so much of a mystery to me that going to another Korean city with no plan seems silly. But maybe doing something silly is just what the doc ordered.
i think I'll just sleep on it and decide tomorrow. If I really want to go and do something I'll do it, if I just feel obligated because I have the time off I probably won't.
I can't imagine Kenny would want to do anything too crazy, I don't know if he has as long of a break and he probably isn't ready to move past Busan yet.

Long weekend possible...

2006-12-27T21:45:00.000+09:00

As much as I love working with kids, I love my own sanity a tiny bit more - as in way more not like the favorite one of twins you can't tell apart preference.

Some days it can be infuriating that they don't speak my language, despite my constant yells in their inquisitive faces of : "I'm an American, this is America, speak English!". Not true in three ways but still a handy phrase to them to know how to respond to. But by the chary of that same sentence I can see that it is in fact beneficial to me that they don't speak English. It was sorta the last day of classes for some of the kids before their winter vacation today I think, so they were extra special rambunctious.

Now I really don’t have any idea what is going on with my schedule in the next month. Nick told me that we have a five day weekend coming up, which to me is really really cool. I’m not sure if its true yet, I’m going to wait until tomorrow to find out. That way if its not true then at least I have until then to keep the hope alive. But I do know that the elementary schools are not doing regular classes for a month and my schedule will change slightly.

I was told yesterday that I had to show up at the elementary school at 9 am, so but my contract says I never have to start work until 10am so I had a little talk with the assistant director. It went well. She sat Nick and I down and tried to explain how the two days a week we teach part time at the elementary school were going to change. Now the schedule they had drawn up didn’t strike me as immediately great. It basically looked like I would show up an hour earlier and only get a basically lose an hour off my lunch break, the remainder of which lunch time I would have to get from the elementary school to the hagwon. Basically it was an extra hour or two of work two days a week. Now luckily I had good chunks of my contract memorized and patiently explained to them that they couldn’t actually make me show up for that extra time. They offered me overtime hours, but since my overtime pay works out to less than my regular hourly wage I said no. In the end I stayed firm and got them to take two classes out of those days and wrangled myself a nice 1pm-3:15pm break in the middle of the day where there was originally a 1-1:30pm break. I asked them to kindly put that agreement in writing for me. Nick thanked me for it later as he was just going to go with their original offer.

Now split shifts suck, but at least I can go to the gym during this time and therefore free up some time in the evening.

If you ever wondered if its tough to live in a country without speaking the language I propose a little experiment. Just when you go out be really disinterested in what other people say to you. Its about the same effect. Not that I am disinterested but sometimes my conversations with locals remind me of when you’re really drunk and not really catching what the other person is saying you’re just thinking about how fluorescent lights remind you of star wars. Its just kind of a feeling that overtakes me sometimes when I realize that I’m not going to spontaneously understand what they are saying and will have to just wait for them to stop talking.

Now at the same time I can understand that having people speak English in your country might be a little bothersome. The other day when Patrick and I were on the subway an old man came up and motioned to me that he wanted to sit down. I nodded and pointed at the empty seat next to me, wondering why he didn’t just sit down. Patrick and I were having a conversation, and half a stop later the old man turned to us waved his hand in a commanding way and motioned for us to be quiet. Now we were not talking loud and we were not the only ones on the subway talking by far. Patrick tried to reason with the man in Korean, but he had no interest in talking to him. It was about this time we realized he just didn’t want us talking in English, and that he really didn’t seem to like white people. I also thought about how he probably wasn’t asking to sit down before, just asking me to go away so he could sit down in peace.

Now I can respect that we are in his country and speaking a foreign language could be rude, but we were both paid to do that exact thing and we were once again not talking loudly. Now in Korean culture you are always supposed to defer to the wishes of an elder, which I usually do my best to respect. But in this case I just figured well heck, racism is racism and I’m not going to go out of my way to please him. So not only did we go back to our quiet conversation but I decided to not keep pulling in my shoulders like I always have to do in the narrow subway seats. This casual motion took a little of the old man’s shoulder room away and had the added benefit of letting my elbow jut somewhat lightly into his lower back. Somewhere near the kidneys. Surprisingly he got up and moved seats shortly afterwards, with an angry goodbye gesticulation to us. Well at least I finally answered that age old question : “when is it ok to bully an old man on the subway?” answer: “well never really, but its less unacceptable when he’s a rude racist.”
Anyway slightly earlier day at work tomorrow so goodnight all.

Mulcahy's Christmas

2006-12-25T23:48:00.000+09:00

I do tend to forget to bring my camera with me to just about everywhere I go. Even when I know in advance its going to be somewhere fairly interesting. Ken was out of commission today, you can check his blog for all the details. I ended up meeting up with Nick and Patrick and a bunch of Patrick’s friends at an orphanage to play games with the kids and hand out presents. I got in on this idea a little late in the game, and really hadn’t helped do all of the hard work like organizing and preparation, I just donated some money to the gift drive the other day and that was about it. Now I know that handing out gifts to Korean orphans sounds very altruistic of me so I just want you to know that other people did all the really hard work.

That being said I was really glad I went, and I was able to lend a hand in the festivities. When we got there we brought lunch for the kids, some traditional Korean food like gimbap (kinda like California rolls) and bulkogi (like rigatoni, but not really at all) and a whole bunch of pizza. Pizza places are common here but it is considered a bit more of a treat than back home, and they put things like corn and potato wedges on them. Then we went out into the yard and hid a whole bunch of candies for the kids. Now ‘hid’ might be too strong a word, we were basically given the choice of either making it really obvious or near impossible (basically burying them). We opted for the former.
Now as far as I know we don’t really have orphanages in Canada, so I was a little curious to see what the orphans were going to be like. Nick was telling me that here a lot of these kids are just left in the Subway and eventually the authorities pick them up and bring them to orphanages. When they came they looked pretty much the same as the kids at the hagwon, even the way they dressed. This is slightly surprising, since those kids are the rich kids (or at least well off enough for their parents to send them to private school) and these ones are not.

They enjoyed their food but you could tell they were fairly shy around the foreigners at first. There was something interesting I noticed about the way they ate too, they actually had leftovers. Now this strikes me as odd because the kids I teach never fail to finish any food that is put down in front of them, in blind defiance of the cries of their sated appestat. These kids ate until they weren’t hungry anymore and then stopped. Weird.

I helped clean up while the kids hunted for candy, but got outside in time to help some kids get some hard to reach candies. It seems that someone had used a penknife to thread some candies into the branches of a tree that they couldn’t reach. That someone was of course me.

I saw one of the other foreigners with a handful of candy a bunch of the kids had given him. I just shook my head at him and admonished :”Geez man, stealing candy from orphans on Chirstmas day. You’re a real class act.” He laughed and just gave the only response you can. He shrugged and said: “Yeah well..”

Then we had our first game which was a dancing one. The premise being simply you dance when the music is playing and stop when it stops. We were pumping a NKOTB ‘Funky Christmas’ album, but at first not many of the kids actually wanted to dance. Understandable. When I was eight years old and my teachers ran ill concieved holiday dance parties in my elementary class I remember not wanting to look like a fool either. Nick and I broke the ice a bit by getting up in front of everyone and dancing in a way that was wilder and more embarrassing than anything they could think of so they just starting getting into it. I pulled out every fancy move that I could remember from four years of dance, movement and clown class from university and they seemed to really enjoy it. And yes I split my jeans but no one noticed.
We followed that up with a few other group games outside before heading inside for some Christmas carols. We sang a few for the kids, I even soloed a bit with Frosty the snowman when everyone else forgot the words. Either that or I was off tempo and the loudest. Who cares, I got my closeup.

Then some of the girls showed us some choreographed dance moves they had put together to some korean Christmas songs. Oh sure they weren’t actually all that good, but we all loved it anyway. I think I’m starting to understand how parents can watch kids do horrible plays and recitals and still like it. Its cheesy but the kids were just so adorable.

Then the big moment came when Santa showed up. Santa was in fact Patrick who had been waiting down the street for the last few hours so as not to ruin the surprise. Which kinda sucks for him since he missed the rest of the day but then it was a good surprise for the kids who had a new foreigner to look at. Santa was a little tall and thin to fit the regular image and his beard wasn’t white but honestly I don’t think the kids minded one bit.

They had been given ‘Dear Santa’ notes before so the gifts given out to the orphans (there were maybe 30 of them) were somewhat personalized. Renee, one of the girls who was the main organizers confided that they were worried since they sometimes had to guess and they weren’t always sure from the letters whether the kid was a boy or a girl. But for the most part there weren’t any big problems.

It was the first kid to go up, a pretty little girl, that had me all full of Christmas cheer. She got a teddy bear and you could see that from the moment she opened it she suddenly had a new favorite thing in the world.

The next kid was a boy who was given a knitting kit. I turned to Renee to see if we had to rush in with a replacement gift (they had a few in the back just in case) but she just shrugged and assured me he asked for it.

Overall the kids looked thrilled with their toys, and it was nice to see the older kids jut take the younger kids into their laps and explain their new gifts to them. Such a family relationship there.

Anyway the time at the orphanage I just consider a cool gift that I got, since it was the other people there that did all the really hard work. Now don’t tell me that dancing in front of kids is hard work, cause its not. Buying and wrapping gifts and making food and planning events is tough. I’m not saying I didn’t contribute, I’m just very lucky to have had a job that day that was the least amount of effort with the highest returns.
And just before I was leaving I went behind the mess hall to the chicken coop and chased around some chickens for a bit. Its not something Christmassy but its something I’ve long wanted to do and I figure in a Korean orphanage was a good place.

After that Nick, Patrick and I headed down to the Seaman’s Club for Christmas dinner. It’s a club run for merchant marines that specializes in western fare. They had a buffet set up with all sorts of traditional Christmas food. Turkey, ham, beef, potatoes, corn, pie- basically just like back home. So I got to end the day with a nice comfort food meal with some good friends. It would have been better if Ken had been able to come along for the day- but hopefully I’ll be able to show him a good time on new years.

Anyway this was a really cool Christmas for me, probably in some ways the most Christmassy Christmas I’ve ever spent.

I hope that all my friends and family and even the people I don’t-much-like-but-don’t-totally-hate are having great Christmasi too. The rest of you? Well I hope you get diarrhea.

Twas the night before Christmas

2006-12-24T22:49:00.000+09:00

Its always kind of hard to realize that christmas is only about an hour away for me. I know that many have worried how lonely I'd be at christmas, but I do intend to spend it with friends and so far haven't felt all that lonely. I miss everyone a whole bunch but that in itself luckily isn't making me lonely.

I met up with Ken again today and I think I may have given him the gift of whatever stomach bug I have. And it really does seem to be the gift that keeps on giving. We walked aroung the area that he's in for a bit and saw quite the bit of christmas themes. It actually looked alot like the decorations and festivities you would see in Toronto on Christmas eve, but for some reason it still didn't seem real to me. There was something missing, and not just a sea of palefaces. And it wasn't the company of my family which even back home I wouldn't usually see until christmas day itself. Then I looked down and noticed something, my jacket wasn't zipped up. Then like a sexy version of Ebeneezer Scrooge I discovered what I had been missing from home. Soul-numbing, spleen-chilling cold. Christmas just isn't the same without it. its warmer.

Anyonghasay-Ken

2006-12-23T22:30:00.000+09:00

Well its been a few days since my last update and that was partially due to the horrible stomach craps I was having on Friday and Ken coming into town. I'm fairly certain something I ate on Wednesday just did not sit well, but in any case all of that unpleasantness has passed.

First off Friday at the school was pretty fun for the most part. The entire time with the kindergarten kids was just taken up by Christmas festivities. First off they had Nick and I dress up as Santa Claus and hand out presents to the kids, which was kind of neat. Its the first time I've ever dressed up as Santa and the reactions of the kids was largely favorable. Some of the younger kids seemed confused at first but once they realized we were giving shiny presents away they warmed up to our act considerably. Some of the older kids tried to point out that I wasn't Santa but in fact Kevin, which I denied vehemently. It was tougher to keep up the ruse when Nick pulled off his beard cause he got some hairs stuck in his throat. Then Nick and I played some songs for the kids. I'm not the best guitar player but the songs were simple enough, although I thought we would have more time and only got to do Rudolph and the 12 days of Christmas. Frosty the Snowman was our showstopper but we never did get a chance to break it out. We had managed to put in some 'Oooga Chuckas' (a la Hasselhof's 'Hooked on a Feeling') in the song in place of the 'thumpity thump thumps'. Patrick had taught the kids Ooga Chucka about six months ago and he says its the one thing that stuck with them.

After that point we all went on a bus ride to a theatre across town and watched a musical production of 'The Nutcracker'. Now this is the first time I had ever seen the Nutcracker, it was one of those Christmas stories that I was always aware of growing up but never really heard it. Well now I have heard it. In Korean. Its still largely a mystery. Muscials are very visual so I did get the general plot but for a lot of it I was just entranced by the spectacle. It was just about what you would expect from a Canadian kids musical with a decent budget except that it looked like everyone was dressed by the costume designer of Final Fantasy 9. i realize that comparison will be lost on most everyone who reads this, but rest assured its a very good comparison. Overall the musical was relatively enjoyable and the kids seemed to like when something on the stage involved blinking lights or confetti.
The rest of the day after that was business as usual but you would think with so much cool stuff going on in the morning I would have some good pics but all I managed to snap were some pics of our kids getting ready to go into the muscial. They're the kids in the back, I don't know who those kids in the front are.

The other teachers were taking lots of pics of us when we were dressed as Santa and hopefully I'll get some of those up soon.

After school I got a call from Ken and went down to his neck of the woods to meet up with him. It was about a 40 minute subway ride, which is unfortunate b/c it means we probably won't be able to meet up all that often most regular work days. In any case i found that Ken's area of town is fairly upscale and more westernized than my area. The corner I met him on had both a Starbucks and a Dunkin Donuts among a few other western restaurants. I also saw a lot more westerners walking the streets than I do around my area. Ken seemed to be doing alright, besides being in complete denial about having jetlag. I saw the place that he's staying in for a few weeks till his apartment is ready and it looks like he will have things a little easier overall than I did when I started out. Bastard.

He was still a little anxious about some things so we went out for dinner so I could show him how easy it was to order food in Korea. Now the problem is that I don't really go out for food much and really don't speak much useful korean. I've been keeping up with studying it but sometimes learning how to say 'the young boys jump' just isn't immediately useful. We went to a grill house and I knew I was in a little trouble right away when I saw that the menu was written in a calligraphy, so I stumbled a bit with ordering since I couldn't 100% figure out what letters were there. Then the waitress asked me something and I had no idea what she meant. I knew she was just asking for further details of the order but I couldn't recognize the words she was using. After apologizing for not understanding a lady at the table next to us helped me out. Turns out the waitress was asking if we wanted our pork ribs with or without bones. Well now I know the word for bone. We had a good meal and a few drinks. My stomach was feeling better and I was very hungry from not really eating all day (aside from a dozen maalox) and I even enjoyed the beer and soju. We hit a bar after the restaurant mainly just to keep talking and so I could impart what little tips and hints I had. Most of these tips seemed to be sliding off Ken's half asleep face. The jet lag was obviously catching up with him so we made plans to meet the next day. I showed him how to use the subway and I was off.
Today he showed up and i let him use my internet phone to call home and he updated his blogs and stuff. Then we just did a little bit of exploring, I tried to help him order some food throughout the day and although it never really went smoothly he started to understand that it didn't usually go smoothly for me either. Invariably a waitress or clerk will say some random thing you don't understand, but by the time we had dinner tonight Ken managed to handle the ordering all pretty well. For a good part of the day we just hung out at my place and talked, but we did head down to the docks so I could pick up tickets for the Christmas dinner we're going to. Nick was supposed to come along for that too but after calling him and finding that he was in that borderline dead state of being hungover we just did it ourselves.
It was kind of odd for me to be kind of the tour guide here since although I've been here two months I really don't consider myself that knowledgeable yet. I haven't been confident enough to go outside my comfort zone too often.

But it is great to have Ken here, I've met a lot of friendly people here but its nice to have someone here I feel really comfortable with. Its also nice to have a friend who is similar to me in not always wanting to go out drinking. I don;t mean to offend or judge those ESL teachers here that do that I just choose not to myself for my own reasons and its nice to have someone here to hang out with in other situations.

Plus I figure it should make learning the language so much easier if we just split it up. I'll learn the nouns if he'll handle the verbs and adjectives. Should cut my study time in half at least.

And his heart grew three sizes in his chest...

2006-12-21T22:10:00.000+09:00

Major medical complicatoins of said condition aside I had a good pre-christmas day at work today. The party at oxford isn't until tomorrow (did I mention thats the name of the school I teach at? Gonna look pretty good on a resume) but the elementary school I teach at had some festivities today.

One of the classes I teach I basically just ran an english themed christmas party for, my only task given to me was to teach them a christmas carol: "I saw three ships!". You probably don;t know it by name b/c it is not terribly popular or good but if you heard it you woul know it. I was provided with a tape to teach the song with, which I managed to mess up. We heard the carol once and then I could not find it on the tape again. i must have fast forwarded and rewinded twenty times and just heard some bratty kid singing 'they'll be coming around the mountain.' But the kids seemed to find my inablility to find the track more entertaining than anything else.

I've got a wicked stomachache right now from something I ate yesterday and will have to cut this blog short as the naseua is getting the better of me. It hasn;t decided which end its comingout yet but it won't be pretty either way. some highlights of the day though were when one girl showed up ten minutes early for on eof the classes (all of her classmates were still playing soccer) and looked so bored and sad. SO I took one of the left over ballooons from the first class, put a penny inside, blew it up and drew a picture of santa on it. We batted it back and forth for ten minutes (the penny adds a randomness to its fall that makes the game more fun) without a single word being said in communication. Now when her male classmates showed up they of course wanted to play too and the first kid spiked the ball into a desk so hard the penny popped the balloon. I was afraid it would be a sad moment but I let the girl keep the penny and she was thrilled (foreign coins are huge here).

Also the following pic is of the gift that this group of classes made for me, a korean flag signed by each one of them. I only see these classes for 50 minutes a week so its cute to see that I make such an impact for them. I know thier teacher made them make it but its still sweet some of the messages they left. I'm not sure how much they know what thier messages mean, judging by the number of 'I love you"s I got. I even got one proposal on there. From a guy named Ben. But his english is good enough that I know it is a joke. Anyway I'm really thinking bed would be a good thing right baout now, but reast assured this gift somehow managed to bypass the 'no stuff nailed into the wall' agreement I made with my landlord. Not that she knows it yet.

Haven't talked to ken yet today, got an amil that he had no idea where to find a phone and was experiencing some culture shock. His director is taking care of him though and its unlikely I'll hear from him today at this point. i'll repost this tomorrow all spell checked.

Christmas is coming early this year

2006-12-20T23:59:00.000+09:00

Well I suppose it is in the strictest sense, since I am 14 hours ahead of normal time (which i also call real time.) And i suppose it will be triply true when I take into account i got me a package from a hot little thing in Canada that looks like a Christmas gift. Heather has been all secretive about what the gift would be and I won't open it until Christmas but the customs declaration form on the box has an easily decipherable code. Roasted coffee could mean a million things though. I've gotten so used to the instant crap that I wonder what kind of sensation it will be when i finally get a real cup in me. It will make that subway ad I saw the other day ring true: "Don't Worry be Coffee."

But the original reason I was referring to Christmas coming early is that tomorrow I get me a jetlagged bushy tailed Ken of my very own. He should be getting into town sometime in the afternoon, and if he's up for it I'll go over to his neck of town and hang out. Part of me was hoping to be very fluent in Korean and be able to introduce him to everyone in the city by first name by this point. Partially b/c I know how much he's gonna pickup in his first 6 weeks here and how it will easily top anything I've done.

In any case I hope I get to see him tomorrow, I don't know if his school or coworkers have plans for him. Also i really should find time to practice for Friday. Nick and I were informed were would be dressing up as Santa for the Christmas day on Friday. I'm fairly certain that they mean two different costumes and not having to split up into head/tail sections. Both of us being in the holiday spirit we decided to throw together a few carols on Nick's guitar and surprise everyone with them on Friday. Of course I haven't played in ages and I could use a little practice. My fingertips are sore just typing now. In any case the next few days will be busy, but busy with fun stuff I want to do. And isn't that the real meaning of Christmas? Or does it have something to do with Jesus?

I'll Merry your Christmas!

2006-12-19T22:08:00.000+09:00

Christmas is almost upon me, a point that I sometimes forget up here. I already took care of all my gifts for my family and before I left. I decided to buy a gift for my girlfriend off eBay and got screwed out of a couple hundred dollars; yep i was hoodwinked by a shishter, duped by a fiend, taken in by a taken-inner. Didn't mention it along with my other woes these past weeks because it wasn't strictly Korea-related, and thats where the blog related hilarity lies. I've bought on eBay before without troubles, this here was an A1 scam.

Anyway the yuletide is almost upon me, and this is my first Christmas ever when I'm not in the country of the cold. They deal with Christmas a little different here, its not as commercial. Not for a lack of trying from the advertisers, more a lack of obsession by the consumers. Sure you see ads at the stores but it all comes across as a half-hearted labor day sale. You will be happy to hear however that the Koreans do pay allegiance to a white Santa (not sure what their Jesus looks like, but at least they're on the right track). The kids in my classes all seem to be looking forward to it a fair bit but even they will admit that it is only their second favorite holiday. The first is typically something called Children's Day that is happening in May I think. I don't know much about it, any attempts to interrogate the kids on it are met with language barriers and the expression "Moo-ah-la?" which I think is Korean for "What you talking about, Willis?". Somebody really should teach those kids some english. In any case I'll assume its a planned uprising of sorts and plan correctly.

Now with Christmas I only get one day off, so I don;t have a heck of a lot of plans. I think I get two off for New Years and might try to get out of town for that. Ken is coming into town in a couple of days and i really should keep my schedule clear in case I have to spend the weekend cradling him in my arms, feeding him kimchi and whispering: "just close your eyes and pretend its poutine".

Now I am not grinchin out on anyone but its actually kind of nice to have a break from Christmas. Now its one thing to be in Canada and not get wrapped up in the commercialism of it all but its another thing to be really separated from the whole holiday. I have no doubt I'll spend most of my life in Christmas dominated countries so this is more of just a nice little breather. I hope that everyone back home is having a stressfree Christmas, and will enjoy their time with friends and family.

Will I miss my family on Christmas? Most definitely, but none of those feelings will sink in until the day itself when I get incurably wistful and make some homemade eggnog out of milk and soju and sing Christmas carols.

The carols I do get a lot of here though. Nick and I discovered we had both taught our classes how to sing "Jingle Bells, Batman Smells..." (although I did not try to belabor the double entendre of Robin laying an egg) and the music they play at the gym is full of pop star covers of Jingle Bell Rock in Konglish. They are also really big on that old Wham! song 'Last Christmas', to the point where they will have a playlist of two different covers of the song playing two minutes apart. They seem to be singin by phonics only, which probably explains why they are so heartfelt. Tough to make that song deep when you actually know what the words mean.

And yes Schwindt, the title of this blog is a tribute to you.
Why don't you shut up for old time's sake?

Kimchi and Me

2006-12-17T22:44:00.000+09:00

Well I went to the temple today to make Kimchi, it was an interesting experience. I arrived late after not finding the shuttle bus at the station. I was told to catch the shuttle bus at the bus station and didn't for some reason make a beeline for the small green van that was in fact the shuttle bus. i would have taken the time to explain what a 'bus' is but it was my day off so no english teaching.

The temple grounds looked nice enough, although I didn't really get a chance to explore too much. There wasn't that big of a group there and only one other westerner, a guy called Joey who is a high school exchange student from Wisconsin. There was also a television crew filming a segment for the news. And they angle they seemed to be going for was to focus on the two westerners making kimchi. We pretty much had the cameras following us around the entire afternoon. I don't mind being the center of attention so it was kinda neat I guess, and the other dozen attendees seemed happy to et us have the limelight. They even had us stage our entrance to the temple, coming in together down the long path and looking around in awe at everything.

I spoke a little korean for the cameras just basic phrases like: "Korean Kimchi is delicious! (as if I was aware there were even other types of kimchi) which they were all far too impressed with. But for the most part i just answered their questions in english, which means I'm now curious to watch the segment when it airs to find out what they are going to put for subtitles. We went out to the fields and dug up some cabbage and then did the cooking show version of making kimchi. Which basically means that we would soak the cabbage in saltwater,but not for the twelve recommended hours. We then chopped up some pears, radishes and leeks and rubbed down some pre-fermented cabbage with them and voila: kimchi!. Okay there were a few more steps but thats the basics. Sometimes Joey and I were at a bit of a loss as to how to answer some of the reporter's questions. Alot of questions like why we were in shortsleeves when everyone else was wearing winterjackets (a combination of it not being that cold at first and not wanting to get kimchi on my jacket) and how did it feel to throw foil wrapped yams into a firepit (liberating?). Most of it went like this:

reporter: Was it tough to get the cabbage out of the ground?

My kneejerk response: Nope. They gave me a real sharp knife to do it with.

My Actual Response: I wanted to be very sure to do it right and not damage the plant. It was a very new experience for me.

Likely subtitles: U S A! U S A!

They were all really friendly at the temple and invited me back for traditional japanese kite making next month. It was a bit of a cultural experience, just maybe not the one I expected. I'm not going to find a pristine old temple with monks and people carting rickshaws. The truth is the television culture and the warm response they have to north americans is more about what Korean culture is like now. If I want something a bit more esoteric I should hit up a museum (which I of course plan to do). This is probably the equivalent of going ot a maple syrup festival in Quebec. And they sent me home with an ass load of kimchi (one batch of which I mostly made myself), which will make an interesting addition to my breakfast.

Oh and this new wallpaper rips when you use velcro tape or glue on it. Things you learn. I'm going to have to make a few minor repairs. If only somebody had warned me not to try to put stuff up on the walls.

"Thank god for velcro..."

2006-12-16T22:29:00.000+09:00

...that's something I invariably find myself saying every day but today I really wanted to give Arthur Velcro a double high five. I was told not to put things on my wall with glue nails or tacks. So I took a look at my local dollar store (cause that's about my spending limit for interior decorating) and found some velcro tape. Now the picture on the package showed this stuff holding a remote control to the wall. Now I figured, well if its strong enough to hold a remote control on the wall it must be strong enough to hold a big mirror and a bunch of pictures onto poorly mounted wallpaper.

I was not told to avoid taping things to the wall. It was implied. Oh boy was it implied. But never said.

So I've managed to put my stuff back on the walls with a clean conscience. And does my stuff fall down? Sure yeah a bit, but it doesn't get too broken. And don't we all need a little crash now and again to remind us what a cruel and powerful mistress Gravity is? That could just be me.

Tomorrow I am planning to go to a Buddhist temple and make kimchi. As per the title of this blog I think my relationship with kimchi is allegorical of all my struggles in life. Cabbage is an evil food that represents the evil cabbage that is within all of us. I eat it almost daily now, all pickled and spiced. I realize now that kimchi isn't cabbage its dead cabbage that has been stripped of all its evil flavor and nutrients (well actually it can be other stuff like radishes and stuff, kimchi is more of a process than a food, and actually is very nutritous). So in reality tomorrow I will kill some cabbage, which represents me subjugating the malicious mushroom inside of me. Its a complicated allegory.

Its about time I started taking in the culture, and this seems like a good way to start. I read about the event on a korea forum and signed up (b.y.o.apron was the only requirement), as the kimchi making festival is a popular cultural thing here. Sure there's a part of me that feels like it might just be a bunch of Buddhist monks Tom Sawyering me into making their lunches for the winter. But then there's the other part that says that these monks probably know all sorts of kungfu and I'd better do what they want. Luckily for me that same dollar store sells nunchucks.

No news is good news

2006-12-14T21:39:00.000+09:00

Well I heard a few grumblings that I did not update my blog recently, but that's probably indicative of how smoothly things have been going for me this last week. Now I haven't been getting up to anything particularly exciting, one of the things that surprises most people is that most of the time here its just a work, gym, eat, sleep routine like back home. And that there is not newsworthy.

But now that a little shit has hit the fan again I feel I have something to gripe about, which is really my best fuel for posting. While I was at work today apparently my landlord sent some people to redo the wallpaper in my apartment and clean the place. News to me, I only found out after the fact when I was on my way home from the elementary school and received a call from my school's secretary telling me that the landlord was mad at me for putting stuff up on my walls. Which I think is unfair because there were things up on the walls when I moved in. I was told not to glue or nail anything to the wall. Now I had hot glued some pictures to the walls, however it was thick, coated sturdy wallpaper and honestly I had caused no damage. I know because I had moved the pictures many times and there was absolutely no trace of them. I think its silly to put someone in a small apartment with white wallpaper and tell them that they are not allowed to put anything up. They put crazy people in white rooms. White rooms sedate ambition and higher brain functions by forcing you to face the futility of infinite absence of color and life. I think along with junk food and alcohol they help a lot with pacifying the working class. So I was a little miffed at being told off second hand, and finding out that someone had been in my apartment while I was out. The place didn't need new wallpaper and a cleaning (I had spent six hours on Sunday cleaning the place to the bone). Well 'luckily' for me it turns out that the secretary was only half right. They did not clean the place. And in truth they did a half assed job on the wallpaper so really its more like a quarter right. I now have two different kinds of wallpaper up in my apartment. One is a shiny offwhite the other is a shiny grey floral pattern. My guess is that the landlord hired the cheapest labor she could find and they just used the ends of two rolls of wallpaper they had lying around, and maybe about half the amount of wallpaper paste they should have. There are tons of places where the wallpaper is bubbling out, sometimes half an inch in places. Some of my outlets no longer have covers on them because with the way the wallpaper is put on they no longer fit. And the floor was filthy, it looks like they were standing on my computer table from the mess that was left there, there is dried wallpaper paste on all the formerly clean wooden surfaces in my house (thats where it all went), and bits of wallpaper all over my bed and room. I couldn't even put up my pictures again (which I fully planned to do) since the wallpaper was done so poorly.

I called the school and bitched them out. Firstly bout not telling me someone was coming into my apartment (they said they forgot) and secondly for letting a half assed job take place. They asked what they could do to help, which seems to be a common thing here. Everyone is very upfront about offering help, but as I 've discovered it is really ineffectual. I told them that I would have to stop talking to them about it because I was too angry and didn't want to say anything out of line and that they had unfortunately made it obvious that they are not capable of helping me.

I'm really starting to wonder if this whole damn thing was a mistake. I'm not thinking of bailing, but I'm really really just getting sick of being treated like rube.
Anyway after cleaning last weekend I did take some pics so here is what my apartment looked like when I was happy with it's appearance, now it looks like a very cheap motel room.

Post away

2006-12-10T21:08:00.000+09:00

Well now that I finally can view this site in english everyone can feel free to post without having to sign up or anything. I found the button to that.

Pictures

2006-12-10T09:59:00.000+09:00

Now that I finally have internet I can post some pics. i haven't taken very many, but heres some from my Japan trip.
I'll post pics of the old apartment vs. new apartment later,

A weird Japanese arcade, we were lured in by the pretty lights.

A game in said arcade. If you'll look closely you'll see that the prize is indeed onion crackers.

street curling, just like in Canada!

the pony in the middle of the street. WTF?

the nice little japanese noodle restaurant with the porno mags under the counter.

Ben and Julian, midway between smooth enlgishmen and sloppy drunk (unless those are synonyms)

Yep the bar was called "Happy Cock"

This was the robe the hotel had for me. I though it was so cool it came with an offical Mr Miyagi headband. Settle down Blake, I know Miyagi was in fact Okinawan- but thats okay b/c I realized after the pic that the headband was in fact a belt.

Japan is wierd.

But then so is Korea.

I should be sleeping

2006-12-06T23:05:00.000+09:00

...or getting ready to at least, but I know my loyal readers are dying for an update. Heather 'cause she's fond of me and Ken because he's looking for clues. Its been a busy couple of days but good.

I moved into my new place on Monday and so far I like it. Its not big but its got a nice little look to it, with sliding glass doors and tons of closet space. Its tough to explain why but even my first night there I felt so much more comfortable. My first morning was not quite as good. I was woken up by a strange beeping noise. I couldn't figure out where it was coming from. It seemed like it was either the intercom or the floor heating unit (thats how they heat apartments here). It woke me up at about 7am, and I wasn't planning to get up until 8. I fiddled with every wierd looking dial I could find but the piercing noise just continued every minute or so for about half and hour. Even with earplugs in I couldn't sleep. Then it just stopped. I figured it was something about me turning the the floor heater on the night before.

Anyway it went away and I made a mental note to ask someone about it but completely forgot. School is starting to hit a good level of coasting, I can just go in and do my thing and the day passes pretty quickly. Even quicker on Tuesday because it was parent/teacher day at the Elementary school and I didn't have to do my exercise class for the teachers at the end of the day. Technically I was good to go for the class and a bunch of teachers showed up I was told. But the main teacher I work with on Tuesdays told them with the parents in my classes it was a long exhausting day for me. Truth is I think she just didn't want to work out and figured the easiest way to get out of it was to cancel the class for everyone. Fine by me!
So I had some experience with the parents of students and the principal even sat in on one of my classes. Me, I love an audience so I did some of my better classes, and got some good reviews. At the time I didn't even know I was being reviewed.

After school on Tuesday I met up with Rocky to get some help hooking up my cellphone. When I met up with him he told me that the school had fired him. Which really sucks, he was definitely my favourite Korean teacher there. The school has been losing a lot of students lately, and I guess they just needed a scapegoat. The only 'problem' with Rocky was that he was very strict with the students and didn't let them play around. This made the students unhappy and they complained to their parents they didn't like school and their parents complained to the school. Of course if you aren't strict with the students they can't learn any english b/c they're playing around all the time- hence the speech contests & festivals. Staged shows to convince the parents their kids can speak english. Anyway its a bit of a shitty buzz, but Rocky wasn't happy there and we're gonna keep in touch. He still helped me set up my phone though (email me for the number if you want it, I'm still figuring the international dialing codes) and we grabbed some dinner.
Its wierd at the school because the director has told me what a good job teaching she thinks I'm doing and has told Nick that she is not pleased with his lack of control over the class. Now some of my discipline things have been working fine (although the students are getting a little too sticker-happy for my liking) but the truth is Nick and I are probably about equal in managing classes. Mrs. Kim evaluates our teaching by walking by the class at a random point maybe twice a week and peeking in. She saw me today with one of my elementary class very well behaved as I taught a lesson. Although if she had walked by five minutes ealier she would have seen me letting the kids punch me in the stomach as hard as they could while proclaiming myself "Ultimate K-1 Fighter!". Partially to let the kids blow off some energy before making them sit for half an hour and partially just to affirm my position as Alpha Male. So its really just luck of the draw there.

I joined a new gym yesterday, the old one was too much of a hike from my new place and this one is on the way home from work. Its about the same as the other one as far as price and equipment but this one seems a bit friendlier. The staff knows a little more english, although they had to pull a member off the floor to help with me signing up. His name is Joon and he's a Korean that lived in San-deigo for Eight years, real nice guy. His English seems darn near perfect and he's just back in Korea completing his civic duty. He's opting for two years of public service rather than a tour in the army. Wow sometimes its great to be Canadian, I can't imagine what mandatory military service must be like. Jsut about every male here over the age of twenty has been in the army.

The next morning I was woken up at 5 am by that beeping. I hit things. I muttered. I took my intercom apart with a screwdriver but couldn't get it to stop. Half an hour later I was fiddling with every button and knob on my floor heating panel (messing with gas powered appliances. yay!) before I thought to check the pocket of my coat which was hanging right beside the intercom and floor unit. the beeping was the cell phone in my pocket's battery warning. I had forgotten and left it on two nights in a row, and i had replaced the battery inbetween without making the connection. Silly me. I would haved laughed. But there was one problem. It was 5:30 in the gorram morning and nothing is ever funny then.

Today after work I went for my first workout at the new gym and really liked it. When I came in I had to fill out a health questionnare and undergo some BF% tests. It was funny b/c the consultant didn't speak english and had conscripted Joon into translating the entire thing for me. He didn't seem to mind, and it was nice to see a familliar face. Anyway the tests say I'm 18% bodyfat and need to lose 5 pounds. I'm not surprised that I'm carrying a few more pounds, too many simple carbs, fried chicken and beer (its been tough to turn down social invites here) and Schwietzer's melted prize candy (I had left a bag of chocolate on the floor, forgeting thats where the heat comes from in my place) but theres no way I'm focussing on losing weight.. And its Korea, everyone has a beer belly! (Note to Heather: don;t worry I won't get fat). But now that I'm settled I've started eating a lot better, just took me a while to get a kitchen good enough to cook in.

It was surprising that the consultant at the gym was impressed by the Korean I did speak. i literally just said hello. Joon was syaing that some of the foriegeners that have joined in the past didn't speak a single word of Korean. I didn't see any other foreigners, bu tI did notice on the day pass sign in sheet on my way out that someone had written "Stargazer" and "I don't need a name!" in the columns that I assume were "name" and "signature". they rightly assumed that the desk clerk woul dhave absolutely no idea what they wrote if they wrote it in english.
Anyway I really do have to go but we're having a work gathering tomorrow and it'll be while befor eI can update again.

And it looks like on saturday I will finally be getting my own internet!

"What characters? It was just a bunch of little kids dressed up in animal costumes."

2006-12-03T13:04:00.000+09:00

That quote from the Royal Tennenbaums sums up the musical the kindergarten kids put on last night. Maybe its my four years of theatre school and just being very desenitized to seeing things on stage but it really wasn't all that good. It was another day that I had to show up on a Saturday, although this one (christmas musical) was mentioned in my contract. I think I've got this and one picnic in the summer as my required saturday 'work'. Which really wasn't work. I had to show up in a suit and greet the parents as they come in. I got a lot of compliments on my suit, the pinstripe one i bought for $2 at a thrift store years ago that was apparently customed taliored for someone my exact build. Weird thing about Korean culture is that even guys would come up to me and just randomly say 'you're handsome' and walk on. And no they weren't gay. Gay people don't exist in Korea, thats the story and they're sticking to it. So basically the kids have been working on this musical since before I came to the school, which has been great for me b/c it has led to two spare periods in the week. Which will now sadly dissapear next week.

So after greeting the parents Nick sat in the audience and I snuck into the sound booth and hung out there for the 2.5 hour show where I could hang out with Rocky and apparently look really bored as I dozed on the lighting board. The show was basically the kids memorizing bunch of little skits and signing and dancing. Alot of the words were far beyond thier level of vocabulary or comprehension, it was more of just a show for the parents. To show them that thier money hadn't been wasted at the school. On that note one of my elementary students was there to see her little brother and when she was talking to Patrick before the show her mother kept on telling her to 'talk to him in English', little did she know that hello and goodbye was about all the functional English this kid has. I've been drilling the 'how are you today' => 'fine thank you' with this kid for three weeks and when I asked her it she just started blankly at me. Good to know I'm making a difference.

They told Patrick Nick and I that they would like it if we could do a little presentation for the parents too. Foreign teachers are usually there to impress parents, so they wanted to show us off as much as possible. Of course we had no time to prepare so we decided to sing theme song to Fresh Prince of Belair, do some freestyle breakdancing (or in my case jazz dancing) and finish off with individual raps (My choice was 'Turtle Power!', the only rap I know). In any case we got bumped when the director made an impromtu speech. Which was fine with me cause after almost three hours of childrens stories in a language that they don't understand the parents were not looking interested in anything performing that didn't come from thier own loins, and even then you'd better be damned inmpressive.

So it finished and all the kids were really excited, which was cool. I do like the kids and there was some joy in seeing them all in sparkly kimonos doing a rendition of Peter Pan that included a sound clip of "I will always Love you" by Whitney Houston. Everyone thanked me for all my hard work afterwards, which I made sure to tell them consisted of absolutely no contribution whatsoever.

Anyway I better get going I have to pack a bit for my possible move tomorrow, which will be tough considering I have no boxes or any idea where to get some.

A quickie

2006-11-30T20:24:00.000+09:00

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

2006-11-25T21:51:00.000+09:00

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.

2006-11-22T20:59:00.000+09:00

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

2006-11-21T18:23:00.000+09:00

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?"

2006-11-20T20:13:00.000+09:00

...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

2006-11-17T19:47:00.000+09:00

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

2006-11-13T20:54:00.000+09:00

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

2006-11-12T12:17:00.001+09:00

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

2006-11-09T18:58:00.000+09:00

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

2006-11-07T16:48:00.000+09:00

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...

2006-11-05T12:37:00.000+09:00

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

2006-11-02T20:25:00.000+09:00

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.

Speak like an American

2006-10-31T19:11:00.000+09:00

Second day of class went really well. My littlest class 'Galileo' has already started to take a shine to me. Even the really really new kid that only knows one word in english ('purple', he's loads of fun to ask philosophical questions to) and can't remember his english name yet seems to ignore me slightly less with each passing day. This was my first afternoon teaching at the elementary school and that went pretty well too. Especially considering I was given the wrong schedule by the teacher I'm replacing. Understandable oversight on his part, but it meant that the prep work I had done was actually for my thursday classes. So I had to wing it. I've surfed around on line for some games to do with classes and broke some of those out (as well as one game of my trusty 'hangman', man the kids are gonna get so sick of that one. Maybe next month we'll play 'gallows gentleman'). The regular classrom teacher sat in on my lessons and was gushing in her cure broken english way (and she's thier regular english teacher) abot how good I was doing.
During one of my periods I had to record some words for the teachers to use with thier classes while I'm not there and we ran into a little bit of a snag. Namely with the words apple, brown, about and the letter Z. The teachers were used to the american pronunciations and had no idea what I was saying when I spoke those words. Thats ridiculous, I don't have an accent! No doubt about it! Anyway I delivered those words in an exagerrated southern drawl which seemed to please them. but when I'm alone with the students don't you worry they aren't going to get any of that mush mouthed verbal diarrhea from south of the 49th. There are going to be a class full of korean kids that sound like drunken newfies and know how to make snowmen by the time I'm done with them.
I think the new teacher (matt's replacement) started today- I was busy with classes but I think I spied another waygook (foreigner) in the halls today. Its too bad that matt has already given me all of his teaching tools and promised me all of his old furniture already. Well not too bad for me obviously. For him. the other guy. If you want me to break that down anymore just email me. I don't know his name yet but patrick has exchanged some emails with him and says that he sounds like a surfer. In emails. Thats pretty sweet. This is his first time taching inKorea too so it looks like by the end of this week when Matt is gone I'll be the senior foreign teacher at the Hagwon, which is a little scary. But honestly I'll have only been here a week longer that New Guy, so we'll pretty much be in the same boat.
I still don't know how to work the washing machines and don't know when to put garbage out. I'm either going to figure at least one of those things out or learn to redefine my hygeine levels.

First day of teaching

2006-10-30T20:27:00.000+09:00

today was my official first day of teaching. It actually wasn't so bad. I mean it was horribly uncomfortable at times and I drew total blanks on what to say for minutes on end but it could have been worse. Now I'm a talktative guy, the proper term might be 'never shuts up' but when these kids are only going to understand the most basic things I say it becomes tough to fill the dead air in class. Its really all about the games. The instructional books here aren't very good and the kids will quickly get bored of them, add to that the fact that we are only supposed to do two pages out of each book each class and you've got a recipie for alot of dead time. "Look at the ball. Spell the ball. Do you like balls?" and then you have 35 minutes left to kill. So most of the teachers here create some educational games for the kids, of course the educational value can be very limited. The kids all love 'Memory' but have long since added the names of every card to thier vocabulary so they really aren't getting any english out of it. Anyway I'll figure it all out in time. I know that I killed the Hangman game today, did it in a bunch of classes because I had absolutely nothing else prepared. Theres a bunch of websites with other games that I'm gonna check out soon. Shoudl be able to squeak through another day or so by the skin of my teeth until I get a chance to organize stuff, and tha twill also give me a good idea of what I need to do.
Right now I'm just concentrating on learning everyone's name. I teach a bunch of different classes at different age groups and they've all been given English names while at the school to get them used to how english names sound (koreans dont use the letter v for instance). But they are named by the teachers and sometimes they are given strange ones, either unintentionally by thier Korean English teachers or intentionally by thier foriegn English teachers. I have guys named Valentine, Joy and a pair of twins named Rod and Todd. Its actually funnier when the kids get to name themselves, which is what happens at the elementary school I teach at on Tuesdays and Thursdays. I have a class full of girls named Cinderella, Sleeping Beauty, Snow White and every other disney character you could think of. Its very tough to chastise Cinderella without smirking.
I did my first workout at my new gym today. I suppose its passable, I'll be able to get in decent workouts as long as the weight area doesn't get crowded. Cardio is much more popular here and they have a tonne of machines for that. However they have only one squat rack, which is never a good sign, and yes some guy was doing curls in there. It felt good to work out a bit but I was too tired to do anything extravagant, I was wearing my dress shoes all day today and my dogs are beat. They're good shoes but just not meant for a whole day of walking and standing. I dressed up a bit today because I met my boss for the first time and wanted to make a good impression. And now I will just let my appearance slip until I show up to work in some dirty boxers. honestly though there is no dress code and I'll dress somewhat professionally for my own sake of mind. Paint stained t-shirts and flip flops seem to be staples for the other teachers.
I didn't get a chance to talk to the director about my apartment, but the other foreign teacher there Matt (patrick work fors the school but doesn't teach in the building) asked about it on my behalf and it really seems like nothing is going to happen. Which is fine, I like the area I'm in and the apartment can be fixed up to liveable standards. And honestly I hope to be going out and exploring the city every chance I get so maybe not having a kicking pad will make me less of a homebody. Matt is giving me a bunch of his old stuff since he's moving, a table, desk, nightstand, drying rack etc.. its super nice of him. Probably save me at least a hundred bucks if not more. Money I will likely put to buying a combo range/toaster oven I saw at E-mart yesterday.
Anyway you can probably tell by the lacky of jokey-jokey in this entry that I'm dog tired, so I should probably sign off and get my food ready for tomorrow. The school provides me with a lunch that isn't that bad, as long as I supplement some protein and eat some fruit instead of the rice (Atkins forever!)
You stay classy San Diego.

Happy Halloween

2006-10-29T12:12:00.000+09:00

Yep last night there were halloween celebrations at some bars and clubs in the city.

I spent the day getting aclimatized to my area abit, went to a local dollar store and bought some essentials for my place. I went to a street market and had an old lady fleece me on some veggies. I paid almost ten bucks for some apples, yams and brocolli. I was convinced that produce must be super-expensive here. Walking back to my place I bought some bananas from a guy on the street, seeing that they were only a buck and thought that at least I could get a not too horrible deal on that. I gave the dude the money and he filled a bag with a bunch of bananas. I mean a freaking tonne. There must have been well over a dozen on the bunch and then he threw like 5 more loose ones in the bag. Holy Schnikies!
So if anyone is in the busan area anytime soon swing by my place andI'll hook you up with a frozen banana, I've got a few to spare.
I had picked up some dish soap and some scrub pads so I could do dishes and ended up using those two things to clean my entire apartment. Started with just wiping down the counter and it snowballed. So now my place is actaully clean (ish) and smelling faintly of pomegranate. The place actually doesn't look too bad now, I'm considering staying there.
I joined a gym in a building that is about one minute from my front door, which was an adventure in communications. My Korean needs a lot of work, but in the end I got a membership. Or agreed to marry the owner's daughter. I'm not sure which. Gym looks decent enough for my uses, and there's a sauna included in membership that takes up the entire top floor of the building that is supposed to be sweet. fountains and stuff.
I ran into Patrick on the street, easy enough bloke to find. Long haired, white and six foot something. We caught a cultural festival in the city hall park. Not sure what it was about, maybe halloween, there were some people dressed like spiderman and batman entertaining the kids. but there was also traditional dance and music. Patrick bought me a local drink. Some kind of sweet beverage sweetened with rice, it was very sweet, and had sugary rice floating in it. Koreans seem to like any non-alcholic beverage to be instantly cavity inducing. Right now in the internet cafe I'm having the first black coffee I've had here in busan. With crap like this I understand why they fill it with milk and sugar. Of course at ten cents a cup I'm getting ready for my third.
I had very vague plans to meet up with Julian at a western bar called Ol' 55, for halloween. But of course neither of us having phones made it very easy for me to miss him; which I did. The bar was in a different part of town, Patrick had given me directions. I got lost. His directions were great, but much like exceptioinally dull children I sometimes confuse my left and rights. Luckily by making two lefts instead of two rights i still ended up in the proper place. Somebody up there likes me. Not enough to give me basic navigatoinal skills, but enough.
My costume consisted of a pair of groucho glasses I picked up that afternoon. I usually break out all the stops with halloween but I didn't have my f/x makeup kit on me from university- and in any case only pockets of the population celebrate the night and I didn't want to ride the subway looking too odd. The bar was filled with mostly white people, it was my first real western bar experience here. Well mostly western, the Konglish version of a kinda divey music bar. There was a Korean band playing nirvana and sublime covers, with only a loose phonetic grasp on the lyrics. The costumes there were decent enough, but much like haloween nights back home in bars that aren't absolutely wild it wasn't all that exciting. I stayed for a bit, shared a few pints with a finnish engineer named Tom and headed home. the subways stop running early so I took a cab home but couldn't get the driver to understand whereI wanted to go, despite knowing the word in korean and pointing at it on a map. i settled for getting dropped off at my hagwon (english school) and hoofing it back.
Today is my first sunday here and my last day before starting teaching. I'm gonna prep some stuff for class, try to buy a foreman grill and a toaster oven but just lie low for the most part tonight. I think a quiet night in might be good before my first week of work.

So anyway until next time; keep your stick on the ice.

Trip to Japan

2006-10-28T09:33:00.000+09:00

Hey all, got back from my trip to japan to get my visa yesterday and had a great time. I took lots of pictures but have no way of getting them online until I get my laptop hooked up to the net. So I'll describe the trip as best I can and post the pics later.
I took a cab for the first time ever here on Thursday to the port, and grabbed a ferry to Japan. I met a few other foreigners going on thier visa trips too: Ben; a young british guy, Julian; an older Brit and Andrew a young American. Ben warned me off of the shitty coffee they were selling at the little restaurant there. He told me it tasted horrible and cost a fortune. It was almost like he read my mind b/c I was jonsing for a coffee bad. I hadn't slept too soundly the night before because of the jet lag and hadn't had a good coffee since I left canada. So I settled on a can of Nescafe from a vending machine cause (yep a can of coffee) it was cheap and black. It turns out it is also served ice cold and sweeter than hell. Well ont o the ferry I went.
I've seen my share of wacky japanese television back in North America and was wondering how odd the country would be. The movie they were playing on the ferry however was Tim Burton's Charlie and the Chocolate factory- a psychedelic mess that proves when push comes to shove no one can out-crazy americans. The trip was fairly uneventful, the ocean view gets fairly boring ater a few minutes.
We got into Fukuoka Japan and decided to split a cab to the Korean consulate so we could drop our passports off for the visa and enjoy the rest of the day. Cabs are ultra expensive in Japan but split four ways it turned out to be cheaper than the bus ride and a lot less confusing. The consulate was on luch by the time we got there so we had an hour and a half to kill at the mall next door. We stopped into a 'Family Mart' which I would like to call Asia's version of 7-11s, but they have those as well. It was here that I spied one of the 'englishisms' that I have enjoyed so much here; translations that don't work out so great. This time it was a can of chocolates that said : "TRY MY LOVE, ITS WORTH IT!". I've also seen a cartoon sun on a girl's pencil case that said "I PREY FOR YOU!".
We then went to a coffee shop called the "HERO CAFE" and I had a coffee that lived up to the "GOOD TASTE COFFEE" slogan on its side. We saw some pretty OC looking americans wandering the mall and tried to make nice but they weren't especially friendly. We all stifled a 'fucking americans' exclamation for the ake of Andrew. The consulate soon opened and we were among about a dozen other visa seekers. Some friendly like the guys I was with, some not so much. they were from all over Korea but mostly Busan and Souel. After the application process and dropping our visa off to be picked up the next day we headed back to the hotel. Andrew was staying at a different one but we met another american named ally at the bus stop.
We got off in the downtown and had a surprisingly eventful walk to the hotel. Fukuoka looks like Yorkville only bigger. The guys and I played a quick game of curling that was set up in front of an office building on some astroturf, there was a camera crew there so we think it was for some news show or something. We also met a small pony some guy had on the street. Wow those last two things could really use some pictures. After dropping our stuff off at the hotel the two brits led us in a search for a bar. we settled for food first and hit a small noodle bar with some sweet old ladies behind the counter, and lots of pornographic magazines under the counter. Japan is weird. I hear that men read those thing while riding on the subway in japan.
Afterwards we continued the bar hunt. I wasn't really dying for a pint but the fact that no one knew where we were going turned it into a nice walking tour of the city. In korea a bar at 4pm is easy, in japan we kept on getting told to come back at 8. We accidentally walked in to a gay bar called g-hard, but honestly if they were serving yet we would have stayed. We made reservations at a bar called "The Happy Cock", and killed time at some after work bar for buisnessmen until that opened. Ally got drunk after one pint there and went back to hotel while we went to the 'cock.
The happy cock had an 'all you can eat/ all you can drink all nite' deal for the early birds for 1000 yen (roughly $10). Unfortunately when I got my wristband they forgot to take my money. Now knowing how much the Japanese pride themselves on efficency I thought it best just to quietly accept it rather than point out the oversight. The bar was nice, the food wasn't the best though. Pizza, fries, donuts and cookies for the most part. The bar got fairly busy, we ran into some other visa runners, and listened to bad american music from a long time ago (kriss kross will make you jump jump). Julian and Ben took turns trying to hit on the smoking hot japanese bartender, while I fed free beers to some guy from PEI I met there who didn't have a wristband. I probably only hadfour or five beers total, but the bartender must have I thoughtI had at least twice that. There was a black guy at the bar selling his rap CDs, he called himself Black Eyez. I told him I'd buy one if I had any cash left after my drinking, which he seemed to buy even though I had a visible wristband. At about 130am we decided to get going, Ben made a last ditch effort for the bartender's digits which he got. Although he was not looking too smooth at that point and i wonder if that was actually her number. Ben Julian and the PEI guy headed down to another bar called FUBAR while I went home. I was tired and frankly had had enough exictement for one day. Most other people on thier visa run had been in korea for weeks at least, so I was the only jet lagged one.
It was about 2:30 am when I got to sleep and woke up promptly at 4:30 am like I had been for the past few nights. Which is strange because 330 in the afternoon has no special meaning for me back home. Normally I would get back to sleep eventually but that night I couldn't. By about 6am I was getting hungry and new that I had a free breakfast buffet included with my trip that opened at 7am. So I took a shower and had a really nice breakfast. Many cups of coffee, some really lean sausage and bacon, some japanese seaweed food, some good fish, some pancakes (just so I could eat them with chopsticks) and tons of pineapple and fruit. I ate and drank coffee for over an hour, and was the only visa guy in the hotel up at all.
I went for a little walk around town and met up with Julian and Ally and waited until it was time to go pick up our visas. We also waited for Ben who didn't get into the lobby until about ten minutes after checkout. He and Julian had went to about three bars after Happy Cock and finaly got kicked out at five am. We went back to the consualte, picked up our visas and explored the tourist area near the basbal staium for a bit. they had hundreds of bronze cast hands on display of famous people that had visited the stadium for concerts etc. Once again damn pictures would be handy.
Well I'm getting damn tired of writing so suffice to say I got back to Busan safe, had a great ime in Japan (wish it wasn;t se expensive though) and might meet up with Julian at a bar in Busan tonight for Halloween. Didn;t think to bring a costume so I might try to cobble something together today. But this is my first weekend before worka nd I have a lot of stuff to buy/do. I'll check inwhen I can and hopefully put some pics up soon.
Oh yeah can;t figure out how to run spellcheck with this korean OS and don't have time to proofread so deal with it.

Day 2 I suppose

2006-10-25T21:40:00.000+09:00

Its really tough to tell how long I've been here with the time zone changes and everything, but I think this is my second day. In any case I've had a good day, got to see a lot more of the city and figured out how to get to my work and home by foot.
Last night when I got home one of my fellow teachers that happens to live in the apartment next to me took me out downtown for some barbequed pork, squid pizza and couple of drinks. He took me downtown on his motorcycle which was a bit of a trip in itself. Whatever few traffic laws the average Korean driver follows a motorcyclist does his best to break. So after quite a few red lights and sharp turns we ended up downtown. Downtown Busan is quite a sight, on a tuesday night it was as busy as a toronto friday night and much better lit. Patrick took me to a korean barbeque house for dinner as I had mentioned that generally what I like to eat is meat veggies and fruit. This place did satisfy two of those menu items although I suppose I'm giong to have to get used to fatty cuts of pork when people say 'meat'. Not the broiled chicken breast or extra lena beef I'm used to. i had some kimchee and can say that I wil probably get used to it but as of now it doesn't agree with me too much. I also had a shot of the infamous korean liqour soju. I don't do the straight liquor so much anymore but it tasted to me like a really light whiskey. It would be fairly easy to get completely wasted on it. We grabbed some squid pizza on the street afterwards, and then after walking around found a bar (there are lots) and stopped in for a pint each. It was a slightly 'western bar' which basically means that it looks alot like a bar back home. I had hoegarden while the bartenders asked patrick and I all sorts of questoins. Patrick has been in Korea about six months but has already picked up a lot of the language so he was acting as translator/ guide for the night. the most common questions the bartenders were asking were my age, my name, where I'm from and whether i have a girlfriend. Funny thing about ages here, since they start counting it at conception and with the different new year everyone basically adds a year to thier age. So I introduce myself as 27, and doing so makes me feel ever so old. I'm really going to have to pick up a lot more of the language to even have any semblance of getting by here. in any case Patrick went a long way to making me feel settled here. Getting to know some people here has helped me
Oh and before anyone rags on my spelling in this thing just keep in mind that these computers present everywebpage in korean so spellchecks are impossible buttons to find. Add to this that these computers also have extra keys on them in the strangest places and you've got a recipe for typos.
Well I had another day shadowing Jarod at the school, which will be my last day of training before tkaingover his classes on Monday. I'll be spending the next two days making a trip to Japan to get my work visa and coming back. It should be a long boring boatride followed by getting lost in a small japanese city. I do get a free night in a hotel and free breakfast though. I might get a few hours to look around but from what I've heard there isn't really much chance to enjoy yourself too much. Not being at the school on friday means that I'll miss thier halloween party, whcih is too bad. Korea doesn't really celebrate halloween but places like the english school I'm at try to push western culture on the kids. There should be some halloween stuff going on downtown at the western bars, which I might check out.
Its a little strange with my apartment right now, I could do a bit to make it more liveable but I sdon;t want to bother too much if I'll be moving next week. I won;t find anything definite out until monday when I meet the school director, but I've seen Jarod's apartment now and I know that it would be a step up.
I want to start making my own food and start up at a gym real soon. Things like that will just help normalize things a lot for me. I've located two gyms that I'll check out after I get back from Japan andI'll probably try to do some real shopping over the weekend to get all the little things I know I'll need.

Well I have to get up really early for my visa run so I think I'll sign off. Internet cafes are super cheap here but I would still like my own computer going.

First day

2006-10-24T18:10:00.000+09:00

Well I think I've officially been in Korea 24 hours now and I have gone through quite the rollercoaster of emotions since getting here. And we're talking a scary rollercoaster here, not like the ghoster-coaster or anything. Fine I did cry my first time on the Ghoster Coaster, but I was eight and a pussy to boot.
When I got here last night and saw my apartment I almost had a relapse to crying eight year old Kevin. Its small, on the ground floot and only has a kitchenette. the stress of the flight, coupled with the lack of sleep had put me in a fragile emotional state and when I did get to sleep all I wanted was to wake up in canada. Funnily enough when I woke up in the morning the placement of the window and shape of the room made me think that I was there for half a second. It was kinda like when you think you see a dollar lying in the street but upon closer inpection it turns out to be a rock.
I woke up this morning not knowing when I was being picked up to go to the school so I wandered a very little around my new neighbourhood. I bought a bottle of water at the corner store. to me this was a great accomplishment, because my korean is still in its fetal stages and not many people here speak that great of english. So I scurried home and drank my water. I was afraid to tread too far away from my place in fear that I wouldn't be able to find my way back.
I shadowed the teacher I'm replacing today and got a feel for the classes. It seems to be pretty simple, the actaul lesson plan takes no time at all to do. the real challenge is keeping them behaved and entertained for the whole class. but out of everything here so far the teaching itself seems like the easiest part.
there are some things stressing the hell out of me, like trying to figure out how to get to the schools I teach at. I'm not within walking distance and bus routes are not intuitive.
The biggest source of stress right now is my apartment which I've let them know I am not happy with. I won't be talking to the boss until monday, the only one that can switch me to another place, but so far it looks hopeful that I'll be able to switch into one of the places that a leaving teacher is vacating.
so right now the general mood is less being attacked by a shark and more being attacked by a badger. Still scary but maybe a bit more of a fair fight.
I've got to go to japan later this week to get my working visa, which should be an adventure. A long boat ride and a lot of complicated directions is what it looks like. I'll probably get a few hours for sightseeing but theres really too much to do.
So I'll update when I can with more about the actaul classes and kids and stuff. And any anecdotes I can think of. Such as the secretary of this school told me this mornign that I look like Tom Cruise. I don't think news of his craziness has really hit here so that was actually meant as a bit of a compliment. Now aside from my height I don;t think I could look less like tom cruise than any other white guy (heck there are black guys that pull it off more than me) but its a funny little bit of culture shock.
Its about 7pm here and I feel ready to go to sleep, I guess the jet lag is catching up me.

almost there...

2006-10-23T01:24:00.000+09:00

well, not geographically. I'm actually in chicago right now with another half hour until i board for the fourteen hour flight over the ocean. Its been a crazy day so far with me waking up late having to rush to airport and undergo my first plane ride ever on three hours of sleep.
I had a really good last day in canada. talked to a couple of really good friends on the phone, met up with my friend les for a few hours, and got to hang out with my girlfriend heather for a few hours and go to dinner with her.
I'm gonna miss lots of stuff in canada but she is definitely topping the list right now. its been the greatest relationship ive ever been in, we've been togethe a year and we're going strong. my job my friends, toronto I'll miss but she's special. anyway not to get weepy but it will be very different not seeing her for a whole year. but the time apart could be great for us. I need time to grow and become a better person, and thats so tought to do when I'm around her. cause when we're together things already seem really great and the motivatoin to better myself is small.
anyway yeah I'm scared shitless right now. don;t know what korea will be like. don't know if I'm gonna have a hlaf assed night's sleep and then start work the next day. but its an adventure. as my brother says, it'll rattle my cage a bit. and that is what I need. something on my resume besides a theatre degree and three years as a personal trainer might be good too.

anyway goodbye heather, I'll see you real soon.

The Stress begins..... Now!

2006-10-20T13:00:00.000+09:00

Okay I just got the info on my flight, I have two days left in Canada then I'm gone. I think I'm pretty much just about ready. I still have to finish packing and pick up some gifts. Its customary to bring a gift for my new boss, not really sure what to get. Apparently a nice jar of Maple Syrup is a popular choice, although I think years of Canadians coming to Korea has dulled the shine of that gift. Maybe a bottle of Crown Royale, Koreans do likey to drink. Any other suggestions?
The pic here is kinda my good bye to Canada, and this is just about the purdiest pic I had of our country. And this isn't some stock photo stuff , my girlfriend took this pic when we were up at her step-dad's island on Lake Temagami. Yep he owns the island. He's wealthy. As Chris rock puts it: "Shaquille O'Neal is rich, the guy that signs his paycheck is wealthy." Canada is a beatiful country and I love it to death, but much like a lot of things in my life I have to leave it behind for a little bit. But don't worry I'll be back.
Anyhoo I'll try to update again before I go but right now i gotta get busy procrastinating packing.

No I haven't left yet...

2006-10-18T13:21:00.000+09:00

To the best of my knowledge I will be leaving for Busan sometime this weekend, although I haven't heard any specific flight info yet. This is torture, I'm no good without deadlines. If I knew my flight left on Friday no probs, I'd pack, do my banking stuff tie up all my loose ends and presto: productive Kevin. Since I have no deadlines I find myself hesitating on doing any of that stuff just yet. Well I'll find out when I find out, and I can;t use not knowing as an excuse not to be productive I guess. One of the reasons I'm taking this job is to get myself on a regular work schedule again. I've had way too much free time over the past few years and I'm hoping my upcoming lack of such will actually motivate me to do something productive with what little I end up with.
Oh and a note to those who are wondering about the 'kimchi' thing in the title: Kimchi is a very popular dish in Korea and is made out of pickled cabbage. I cannot eat cabbage. I'd rather sit down to a fear factor buffet of road apples and smegma than eat cabbage rolls. I have found myself unable to kiss my extremely kissable girlfriend after she eats cabbage. When I was a young boy I was once hit in the head with a cabbage patch kid (they had very hard heads). So really this trip is gonna be a knock down, drag out battle between me and the cabbage. Which is of course allegorical to the titanic struggle betwix good and evil. You can all vote on which one I represent.

Insert Blog Here

2006-10-13T12:29:00.000+09:00

Well I'm gonna keep this blog to keep everyone interested updated on every cool thing that happens to me in Korea. I'll start posting for real when I have anything actually interesting to write. Okay? Okay.