Recent Adventures

It’s been a long time since we’ve written. We’re sort of settling into life here – getting our teaching and planning routines. Two weekends ago, we both had a cold, so we stayed near the house. I read my book, went to the store, cleaned the house. Paul took a bus to see where it went (to a beautiful temple up in the mountains).

This past week, however, has been rather full. My school had “Athlete Day” on Thursday, which began with a Halloween-like costume parade. After the parade, all of the students changed into their gym clothes; they played soccer, dodgeball, hackey-sac, and a variety of silly games. At one point, the mothers of classes 1-3 played kickball against the mothers of classes 4-6. I had to jump rope with the other teachers (which, by the way, is more difficult than I remember), and play tug-of-war. The next day, we had a school field trip – half the school went to the Korean folk village, and the other half went to a nearby palace. I went to the folk village. The students were let loose the whole day to ‘learn’ on their own (I believe they did most of their learning in the amusement park section), while the teachers enjoyed a nice day without classes to teach. I had a few students who led me around all day and explained things to me, which I really enjoyed.

This weekend, we went shopping in downtown Seoul, at Namdaemun Market. Namdaemun (south gate) Market is over 600 years old, and it feels just as old, not because it’s slow or the goods are old-fashioned, but because there’s such a distinct mercantile feel to the place. A million people have set up shops and tables all through the market, selling all kinds of different things. There were stores selling international foods, scarves, wrapping paper, souvenirs, toys, and, of course, (fake) Gucci and Louis Vuitton everything. There were so many people and so many things and so many people selling so many things. It felt like a movie. While Paul took pictures, I bought a wrap and haggled for a scarf, and looked at teen idol coffee mugs and fish forks and jewelry boxes. Paul, of course, bought a bag of little oranges and ate them.

We decided to walk from there to Myeongdong shopping district. While Namdaemun is a traditional market, Myeongdong is anything but. Tiffany, Ralph Lauren, Levis, and many Korean-brand flagship stores line the streets. It’s more like an outside mall than a market. While Namdaemun was filled with people of all ages, this area was packed with 20-somethings; it had a distinct, club-like feel. Again, I browsed a few stores while Paul took pictures.

We went for dinner at a little Korean restaurant in Myeondong. Unfortunately, the waitress was rather rude, the food wasn’t so good, and the bill was twice what we had expected. ‘Tis the joy of traveling.

By the way, Paul went hiking with his coworkers last week and rode on a karaoke bus and ate dog….

Which is the Most Favorite Place?

As a Canadian, my visa only came with a single entry permit (Meg's came with multiple entries since she's an American) so I decided to register myself at the Government of Korea's immigration website and apply for multiple entry status. After filling out a couple of pages with personal data I was taken to a page that is probably familiar to most people. I needed to create my username, password and choose a password hint. Nothing special. Or at least I expected it to be nothing more than selecting from the typical "What city were you born in?, What's your mother's maiden name?", etc... I could help but laugh when I saw the translations on some of these timeless identity questions. And then I captured screenshots to prove that you can't make this stuff up. Click on the screen capture below. It's worth it. Trust me.



For those who are too lazy, some of my personal favourites include:

• Which is the most favorite place?
• What is the first priceless treasure?
• What date do you want to remember for a long time?
• What is the most impressive book's title?
• Which movie did you see impressively?
• Who is your respectful person?

And my personal favourite (which was really tough to choose from this list of winners): "What is the most favorite paragraph you have read?" At least I know now that if I ever need to call the Korean Immigration office it is unlikely I'll talk to someone who speaks a form of English I'll be able to understand.

To the Word through English

For the past month, Paul’s primary co-teacher has been very busy planning his school’s annual English festival. Since the middle school students were buried in exams last week, my school allowed me to attend the festival.

The school looked really impressive. The (second) big balloon was flying above the school (tied down, of course), and there were banners and smaller balloons everywhere. The walkway to the front door was lined with posterboard English presentations by each of the fifth and sixth grade classes.

Paul spent the festival emceeing the English performances in a large room inside the school while I wandered around, talking to students and taking pictures. A number of students had entered contests for speeches, storytelling, and singing. I watched a six year old give a speech introducing herself, a boy (dressed up as a turnip) tell a story about a turnip, and another boy sing that Paul Anka favourite, ‘Diana.’ Outside, the students played games like Simon Says, Whispering (like ‘telephone’), and Making Groups. The instructions were all in English. There were some mothers doing face painting (beautiful face painting), and, of course, ice cream for the kids to eat.

I was impressed by how many guests were there – teachers and principals and vice principals and officials from all sorts of places who were interested in the festival. Of course, it made Paul’s principal and vice-principal very happy – their school looked fantastic.

Even though it was a three-hour festival, it had both opening and closing ceremonies. All of the students gathered outside on the playground, facing a stage. Each of the classes stood in a line – boys in front, lined up from shortest to tallest – and girls in the back. The opening ceremony had speeches from the principal, vice principal, the head of the parent-teacher association, along with a few others – all in English. The closing ceremony included a mass-dance; all of the students wore red and blue gloves and waved their hands in the air. (This was performed to a remake of “Hey, Mickey.”) When the vice principal declared the beginning, ribbons shot out of the stage; when he declared the closing, a group of sixth-graders let balloons fly over the students. Paul, of course, was the emcee, and he read his script very slowly and very loudly.

The day before the festival, all of the school staff received shirts to wear that said, “Yukbuk Elementary School” on the front; on the back, they had the slogan for the festival, “To the World through English.” The shirts arrived at 2:30. At 4:00, they realized that the shirts actually said, “To the Word through English.” After a long deliberation, they decided to print pictures of a globe and tape them to each of the shirts to cover up the misprint. Of course, by the end of the festival, the globes had fallen from most shirts.


(If you want to see some pictures of the English festival, click on “Korean Photo Gallery” on the right side of the page.)

Countryside

My students had midterms this week. I remember seventh-grade midterms as being a kind of joke, but in Korea, the students must apply to get in to high schools; all of them will go to high school, it's just a matter of which one. And, of course, in order to get into a good university, you have to get into a good high school. For three days the students come to school, take three tests, and leave at lunchtime to study at home or at the library before they go to their private lessons. A stressful week for them, but far more relaxed for the teachers.

I told my co-teacher that I had never seen a rice field before; so, on Monday, after we had finished proctoring exams, she took me for a drive in the country. We drove on a number of back roads through little patches of rice fields and small family farms. Once outside of the cities and towns, Korea is a very green country.

She drove me to a fishing lake surrounded by large, soft, green hills. We could have been in Algonquin or somewhere in Vermont. There was a ‘café’ at the top of the pond; the sign was mostly in Korean, but it had a guitar, a cowboy, and ‘70s’ and ‘80s’ on it. Those things, at least, looked familiar. It was a beautiful fall day and a perfect day for a picnic. Since I have come to associate Korea with garbage on the streets and smoky fumes in the air, I was surprised at how pleasant the countryside seemed.

“In Canada, do you have fishing ponds like this?” I assured Yu Mi that in Canada -and in the US, many people fished on lakes and ponds. And then, I looked around. The pond was surrounded on all sides by a dock-like thing. On the dock – all around the lake -- sat chairs that resembled lazy-boys: comfortable-looking, reclinable chairs. Most of the chairs sat underneath a tent-like thing, others sat in small concrete buildings. Yu Mi pointed out that the buildings on the dock had satellite dishes. Apparently, those are the box-seats for the fishing pond.

On our drive back, we stopped for ice cream. Yu Mi explained that there are many large houses in the area and a very nice golf course. And then, “In this place, there are many dog restaurants. Do you eat dog in Canada?” “No, we keep them as pets,” I replied.

“I think dog meat is much leaner than pork.”

Not much you can say to that.


post script.
The Lonely Planet dares Korean travellers to eat the following foods:
seasoned raw minced meat
fried grasshoppers
silkworm larvae
cow kneecaps soup
live baby octopus
and, of course, dog-meat soup

Balloon. Cut. Fly! GONE!

While most of my family celebrated Thanksgiving today I was half the world away practicing for Yukbuk’s 2nd English Festival. The practice took place outside and since today its 10 degrees (or 50 for you Americans) everybody was bundled up like winter had begun to descend. I of course was still wearing just a collared t-shirt. This seemed to stun everybody. I was asked repeatedly if I was cold and was met with astonishment when I told them not really. To be fair, it has been between 20 and 25 degrees each day since we arrived so today was a pretty big departure for the normal. I’m personally hoping the weather will stay like this for awhile. It finally feels like fall.

The big news at the school today when I arrived was…well let’s see if you can figure it out. Often times to for an event or opening, Koreans will have a big balloon float outside or over the place announcing it. Yesterday when I arrived at school there was a large balloon floating outside my window with a large pink banner hanging from it reading “2nd Yukbuk English Festival”. Today when I arrived I was greeted by many of the teachers with the words: “Balloon”, “cut”, “FLY!”, “Gone”. The order they said the words seemed to be pretty random. Slowly they asked the teachers and school workers who spoke English to help translate (even though I understood pretty quickly what had happened). With the aid of his coworkers, the Vice Principal finally came up to me and told me that the “edible balloon line was cut and the balloon go away”. Now, I’m going to go out on a limb and assume he meant “inflatable” balloon and that Koreans typically don’t eat the balloons after they are finished using them. The new crisis today is where to put the balloon so vandals can’t cut the line again. It sounds like it’ll be attached to the roof. This should put it high enough up in the air that nobody can read what it says. We’ll see.

One of the nicer things about working in Korea might be the way nobody really seems to take you seriously or believe you when you try and explain things to them that they don’t want to hear. Piracy is pretty rampant over here and apparently getting a fake degree, driver’s licence or passport is only slightly more difficult than renting a movie. In the past month it has come out that a couple of prominent Koreans in high places have gotten their jobs through forged documents. The response of our provincial board of education has been to require that all foreigners prove their degrees are authentic. The way it has been decided that we should prove our degrees are authentic is to take one of our co-teachers to our school’s website and to the area that lists all graduates for any given year. Then we are to print off the page (with the web address) and have it sent to head office. A glaring problem with this idea of course is that while it might be common in Korea to post graduate lists for all to see on the website, this isn’t so standard in North America. It’s great when they make policies for foreign teachers without actually talking to a single one of them. Anyways, Meg’s having trouble with her teacher about it. Today’s the deadline and I suspect she’s having a rough day. I tried to explain to my teacher that it was impossible to do what he asked. I did almost tell my co-teacher however that if he wanted I could have the Wycliffe site show me as a graduate with whatever grade point average he wanted. I’m kind of glad I didn’t. I probably would have made things more difficult for me in the end. Though it would have been fun to log-on to the Wycliffe site and create some bogus article just to prove I really graduated.

Luckily for me, as I could start to see my co-teacher’s eyes glazing over with disinterest I remembered that Wycliffe publishes a magazine that lists the graduates and that we post a copy to the website. So he was happy. Though he does want another transcript. This will be the 3rd one I’ll give to them in the past month. I’m glad Wycliffe doesn’t make me pay for them.

Unfortunately, my proving my degree’s authenticity through the website has only made things more difficult for Meg. Her school can’t figure out why she can’t do the same thing as me. I think she’s explained it to them every day for the past week. They don’t seem to be getting it. Meg told me earlier that she emailed the alumni association to ask for an email verification. It hasn’t arrived as of yet. Her teacher keeps asking her to check her e-mail even though Meg’s explained to her countless times that it is after 10pm in Philadelphia. This doesn’t appear to have had any affect on her. But who knows, maybe the offices at Eastern University are 24 hours.

The First Global Haircut

My hair has been bothering me for weeks. The last time I had it cut was in early August, and recently, it’s been really long, dry, and annoying. It’s been in a ponytail way more than usual.
Thursday was the final straw. My hair was so scraggly and gross that I made up my mind to get it cut. I had asked my friends here where to go, and had Paul print out some pictures. I was set.

I hate getting my hair cut to begin with. I don’t like making small talk with someone working on my head. I don’t like worrying about what I’ll look like after it’s over. But going under the scissors in Korea, I was worried because I couldn’t communicate with the person cutting my hair, and I was way more worried about how I would look in the end. After I gave the stylist the picture and sat down in a chair, I knew that there was nothing else I could do. So I waited.

I couldn’t really tell what was going on as the one lady cut and the other stylists looked on and laughed (whether at me or at the television, I’m not sure). I could kind of feel where the scissors were hitting in the back, and it seemed about right, but I wasn’t quite sure – I knew that that wasn’t a very good indication. After the one woman finished cutting, two women dried my hair simultaneously. That’s when I noticed all the hair on the floor – big, long chunks of hair. The second woman then took a straightener and spent what felt like hours painstakingly styling it. The heat from the striaghtener, combined with my growing suspicion of what had happened made me feel rather hot and sick.

It was over. Shaking, I ran my hand through my hair. And again. Two hands felt what was on the back of my head. My heart, which had been slowly sinking, anchored itself in my stomach.

I paid (they charged double for the fifteen minutes with the straightener, which annoyed me) and left. I walked home quickly, forgetting the other errands on my list for the night. At home, I went directly to the washroom and Paul quickly followed. We both looked in the mirror.

I’ve never had such a bad haircut. In addition to being three (three!!!) inches shorter than what I had requested, the shape was a sort of 80’s rock star combined with a bad version of ‘the Rachel.’ Most of my hair is chin length or just longer, while a thin layer sticks out underneath. It’s a big balloon of hair nestled in a messy array of spikiness. In the back, the thin underlayer is shaped into an extra long tip, reminiscent of a ‘rat tail’. The rat tail is the only piece that is at the just-below-shoulder-length that I had asked for. And before you tell me that short hair isn’t that bad, I should mention that because of mandatory hair lengths for middle school students, I now had the same hair as my students. In a really, really weird shape.

As I stood there in shock, expressing my frustration and disbelief, I remembered that I own a pair of hair scissors. I began chopping the weird long pieces in the hope that I could fix some of what had gone wrong. Paul stood by and held my hand mirror, and when I couldn’t reach the rat tail, he cut it. It was one of those special moments when you know you really trust someone. Or that your hair is just that bad.

In the end, I can get it into a ponytail, and that’s where it’ll probably stay for a while – at least if Paul has his camera out. He says it’s not that bad and that I’m still pretty. And that’s why I keep him around.

The Tiger or the Bear?

Well Meg had her birthday yesterday. It was a little strange to celebrate it on October 3rd here since it was still October 2nd for most of the day back in North America. Her birthday was pretty much ending right around when it would have started if we were still back home. We were lucky that October 3rd is a national holiday in Korea. It celebrates Korea’s birthday (Foundation Day). It commemorates the mythical founding of the Korean nation in 2333 B.C. by the legendary god-king Tan-gun. It is an interesting myth which involves a bear and tiger striving to become human. If you are interested in finding out whether the Korean people are descendents of the Bear or the Tiger; you can read a short synopsis of the myth at: http://www.lifeinkorea.com/information/tangun.cfm

To celebrate Meg’s birthday we decided to head into an art gallery in Seoul. Meg had read good things about the Leeum Samsung gallery (that just opened a couple of years ago) and so we ventured off to spend the afternoon there. The gallery was quite beautiful and I really liked the design of the building, unfortunately only half the museum was open this week. Fortunately for us it was the Korean section that was open (we’ve probably seen enough ‘foreign’ art back home and on our honeymoon). One benefit of only half the museum being open was the price of admission was only $5 and it came with a free audio guide. The audio guides were very nice. There were little palm pilots with touch screens and a headset. When you walked up to an object it would automatically start playing what you were looking at (in theory). You could touch the screen to read the script or view different angles of the item. It was a very nice set-up. For some reason however, it only worked properly on two of the four floors. On the 2nd and 4th floors for some reason whenever you walked up to a ceramic or piece of art it wouldn’t register properly and it would talk about another piece of artwork. To make maters worse it would talk about something that wasn’t even on display. I suspect the gallery rotates some of its collections and doesn’t always update what is on display with the English audio guide. This is a shame because we really liked the gallery itself and would like to go back and see the other exhibits.

After a dinner of Dak Galbi (spicy chicken – currently Meg’s favourite Korean food) we went to the English bookstore and browsed around. We were hoping to get some textbooks or props for our classes, but nothing seemed quite right so we stopped by the local Dunkin’ Donuts, bought a small cake and headed back to Yongin. It was a pleasant day and the third country Meg has celebrated her birthday in.

Happy Chuseok

Happy Chuseok – a few days late. This past Tuesday was Chuseok, the Korean equivalent of Thanksgiving (American Thanksgiving, that is). It’s a harvest celebration with lots of food and a five-day weekend, without the sales. We were fortunate enough to be invited to celebrate Chuseok with Paul’s co-teacher and his family; so, on Tuesday morning, we were up and at the train station at 6:30 and arrived at Mr. Kim’s house an hour later. We were introduced to his family and ushered onto the couch, where we sat and watched the news (in Korean) with the men of the family (the women, of course, cook the meal, but there was no real way for me to ask to help. In fact, I think that might be considered rude here – I’m not sure.) By 8:30 the meal was ready and we sat down to large helpings of beef and onion stew, bulgogi (a beef dish), boiled chicken and fish. (The whole meal seemed rather full of meats.) For desert, we ate apples and pears and songpyeon, a sort of rice-cake that’s the ‘signature dish’ of the Chuseok meal.

After the meal, Mr. Kim and his brother took us to the nearby Korean Folk Village. The houses – except for the wealthy person’s house – all had thatched roofs and mud floors. Cooking was done in a fire-pit built into the kitchen floor. It was all the sort of thing that you might expect, until Mr. Kim said, “this is a traditional farmer’s house. This is the kind of house I grew up in.” Mr. Kim can’t be fifty, and yet, during his lifetime, Korea has made its way from a third-world, thatch-roof country, to a developed nation stuffed with sky-scraper apartment buildings.

There were some really neat shows at the Folk Village as well: a gymnastic see-saw performance, a tightrope walker (who had to be over fifty-five), and a traditional farmers dance which involved men with four different kind of drums and hats with long strings attached. The men who danced with the hats were really neat.

It seems as though going to the Folk Village on Chuseok is a rather popular thing to do. By the time we were leaving at 2:00, the park was getting quite full. Many of the children came dressed in hanbok, the traditional Korean costume.

The rest of our holiday was spent relaxing. We took two trips to Seoul: we were able to see Gyeongbokgung, one of the old royal palaces; we walked by the Blue House (the President’s residence), and wandered through Kyobo, one of the largest bookstores in Seoul. All in all, it was a good holiday, even if we couldn’t spend it traveling.