A good day

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)

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

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

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

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!

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)

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

“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

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)

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!

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

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

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

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...

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

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

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

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...

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

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?