Hanoi

Paul and I are hanging out in the Hanoi airport, waiting for our flight to Hue in about an hour. Paul is concerned about Canada's loss to Sweden, and I'm wondering when naptime is.

Yesterday, we visited the tomb of Ho Chi Minh - you can actually see his body guarded by soldiers. We had to walk quickly through the room (no cameras allowed); there were large red strips in the marble walls behind with the golden sickle on one red strip, and a star on the other. We visited his houses, which are right beside the mausoleum. Apparently, he lived rather luxuriously, but for the last ten years of his life, he lived in a more traditional Vietnamese house in order to not be 'above' the people. Both houses were beautiful in their own way.

Last night, we went to a Water Puppet performance. Though the pictures make it look hokey, it's actually a really entertaining art form. Musicians play traditional music while puppets dance and sing. Even my description makes it sound hokey. But it's not. We bought a turtle water puppet for our own water puppet show when we return to North America. The turtle is important in Hanoi because it caught the sword of a king coming back from battle. Now, there's a golden turtle in Hanoi who swallowed a sword - like Excalibur.

Today, we walked around the city. I really wanted to see the Opera House - one of the most important buildings in the city under French rule, and the place where they declared the August Revolution in... well, I can't remember. However, since it's New Year's Eve, they were getting ready to have some sort of event in front of the building.

Of course, I didn't even know it was New Year's Eve until we got to the Opera House.

Paul took lots of pictures of everything - I'm sure you're all shocked. We'll post when we get back to Korea.

Happy New Year. Make sure the ball still drops.

And We're Off...

On Saturday we head off on the first leg of our trip around Southeast Asia. We start by flying into the capital of Vietnam, Hanoi. I didn't know much about Hanoi prior to about a month ago, but I'm looking forward to seeing the sites there. We're only there for a couple of days before we head down the coast to Hue and Hoi An, but I think it will be a good starting point.

Hue and Hoi An are the places I think both Meg and I are looking forward to the most in Vietnam. They are around the middle of the country (Hue is fairly close to the where the Vietnamese DMZ was) and known for being beautiful and relaxing. Hue was the briefly the capital and they brought in Chinese architects to build an imitation of Beijing's Forbidden City for their government offices (on a smaller scale). Unfortunately, parts of it were heavily damaged by American bombs during the war. Though from the photos I've seen I think it will be a pretty impressive site to see still. I actually think the damage adds a bit of character that would be lacking if it was simply a small scale replica of the Forbidden City.

Hoi An was an important trading port for a number of centuries and today the ancient city has been named a UNESCO World Heritage Site. I think we'll spend our days there just wandering around trying to take in the atmosphere. From Ho An we'll likely make a day trip (on my 30th birthday) to My Son. My Son is an ancient Hindu Temple complex constructed by the Champas likely around the 4th to 6th century. Like Hue, it came under heavy bombing by the Americans and apparently you can see numerous bullet holes in the walls of the ruins. It's been compared to a smaller scale Angkor Wat (which seems a little generous to me - we'll see what I think we I get there). It is also a UNESCO World Heritage Site.

We're only in Ho Chi Minh (Saigon) for a day. I'm a little sad we don't have more time to spend there. Though after looking at all the options we had and the places we wanted to visit, Ho Chi Minh just didn't stack up. We probably would have cut it off our itinerary entirely if it wasn't the best (and cheapest) place to fly to Siem Reap (Angkor Wat) from. I'm not sure if we'll spend the day in the city centre or try and visit the popular tunnels left over from the Vietnam war in the surrounding country. While the tunnels look fascinating, I think I'd be tempted to crawl through them and from what I've read this is not a pleasant experience (they are incredibly tiny and dark). I also suspect we might have had our fill of war sites by this time. We'll see.

On the 5th of January we'll arrive in Siem Reap and after a good night's sleep we'll spend 4 full days touring the Angkor Wat complex. As you might be able to tell from the length of time we've devoted to seeing it, Angkor is what this trip has been built around. It is easily the place I'm most interested in seeing in all of Asia (and probably the world). I've been trying to read as much about it as I can in preparation, but it is simply too massive to get my head around. I'm not even sure 4 days will be enough to see it all. I won't say much more about it here since I'll probably post about it in length (with photos) when we get back. Meg's excited that we'll be staying in the hotel that runs the Red Piano Restaurant and our stay comes with free breakfasts there every day. The Red Piano is the restaurant that Angelina Jolie frequented while filming Tomb Raider 2 (which was filmed in parts of Angkor Wat). Apparently there's even an Angelina Jolie cocktail on the menu.

From Angkor we'll make our way (on the ground) to Thailand and into Bangkok. I suspect we'll be pretty tired after the 8-10 hour bus/taxi trip, but having only a couple of days before we fly back to Korea will likely inspire us to rush in as many of the sites of Bangkok as we can. Luckily, I've spent a number of days there already and remember a decent amount of the city. I also remember that most of the places (the Grand Palace, the Temple of the Dawn & the world's largest reclining Buddha) are all within walking distance of one another.

And so that's our trip (in not much of a nutshell). If we have time we'll try and post some photos and thoughts as we progress. We hope you all have a Happy New Year.

Merry Christmas from Korea!

We spent the day feasting with our Canadian and American friends. We had 7 people over for dinner and all had a great time. Unfortunately, we're back at work tomorrow. Though we do leave for Vietnam/Cambodia on Saturday. We thought you might enjoy a glimpse of our enormous Christmas tree.

Merry Christmas!

Love,
Paul & Meg

Kings and Rulers

Happy (slightly belated) Birthday, Queen Elizabeth. On Friday, Queen Elizabeth became Britain’s oldest-ever ruling monarch. And, while there’s still a year left before the American Presidential campaign ends, here in Korea, they’ve just elected a new President.

If you read Paul’s last blog, you might have watched the YouTube video of the Korean Parliament, where fist fights broke out last week. The current President (from the liberal party) has accused the President-elect (from the conservative party) of embezzlement, fraud, and stock manipulation. Though they’ve been campaigning for months, President Roh felt that these charges should be brought out less than a week before the election.

I brought this up with my coworker on our way to the end-of-the-year-dinner last night. “Lee has been accused of stealing money and bad business practices,” I said. “Yes,” she replied rather nonchalantly. “Americans are very concerned with morality. Koreans… not.”

I didn’t really know what to say, but before I was able to speak, she went on, explaining that since most Koreans favored the conservative party for this election, President Roh’s accusations were shameful. She explained that Lee Myung-bak had been elected on his economic platform, that he was in favor of English education, and that he was pro-American rather than pro-North Korea. She said that Koreans were upset with the aid that the liberals had given to the North Koreans.

Sometimes, you reach your destination a little too soon. Our conversation ended abruptly, and I didn’t want to resume it again over dinner. So, the rest of what I’ve learned I got from the Toronto Star and New York Times.

Lee was elected on a “747” economic promise. The first 7 is the promise of a 7% economic growth a year. The 4 stands for $40,000. The average Korean makes about $20,000 a year; Lee has promised to double the average income. The second 7 is the promise that Korea will become part of the world’s top seven economies.

Those are some pretty big promises to fulfill. Especially since Korean Presidents are limited to one five-year term in office. I don’t know much about economics, but I have a hunch that pledging to give all Koreans a unicorn might be more realistic….

As for his business practices, Lee has admitted to using fake addresses in order to enroll his children in better schools and registering his children as employees of his company in order to evade taxes. It seems like even though the Koreans will recognize these things as wrong, they’re willing to overlook them in the name of economic growth. From the Star:

Many Koreans, inured to a history of corruption among their business and political leaders, seemed ready to overlook Lee's problems.

"Politicians are all thieves," said Chung Jun-muk, 64, a retiree who supported Lee. "At least Lee Myung-bak is smart. He may have gone into the den of thieves, but he won, both in business and politics."

After Yu Mi’s dismissal of Lee’s corruption, I was a bit shocked. She is, after all, a Christian. How on earth could a Christian be willing to turn her head in the face of such apparent immorality? But, of course, that question can only lead to wondering about all of the evils in our countries that we ignore because of pragmatism. After all, one of Yu Mi’s questions at the beginning of our conversation was, “Is your President moral?”

This Week in Korea

So we’ve had an easy week this week. On Tuesday all foreign teacher’s were sent to Everland (a theme park) for a day long training session. We were lucky because it’s only about 15 minutes from where we live. Many of the teachers had to travel from a couple of hours away. It was an interesting day. After starting about 30 minutes late we had the same lecture that had been given at the training I attended in September given again for about an hour. I’d estimate that at least 60% of the 1,000 teachers there had head the lecture before. Since Meg hadn’t been to training she enjoyed it more than most people. We then had an hour and a half for lunch. So we ate our lunch, took a few photos with Santa Claus and the Korean version of Minnie Mouse and shopped in the little stores before heading back in for hour two of “training”.

Hour two wasn’t bad. It was given by a woman who runs an English academy and her theme was culture differences. She gave us wonderful tips like “if you’re going to drink alcohol make sure to take a Korean with you so that they can sense if a fight is going to break out and warn you ahead of time.” She also mixed in remarks from her life, such as: “Once I open a bottle of wine I just have to finish it. My husband calls me an alcoholic!”

I think my favourite story that she us told took place about twenty years ago. A high ranking woman U.S. army official was giving a debriefing for some Korean reporters. After she finished she asked if there were any questions. The first one was “Are you a virgin?” The woman just stood there in shock for a couple of minutes and then walked off the stage. The Korean reporters couldn’t figure out what had gone wrong. Apparently they were curious as to how a woman could get so high in power (remember this was 20 years ago in Korea) and were wondering if she had sacrificed her personal life in order to accomplish this. Unfortunately, the Korean word for being unmarried at can also be translated as “virgin”. So what they probably mean to ask was if she was married (which probably would still be a strange question to ask a Westerner at a press conference).

Once this lecture ended we had a 30 minute Tae Kwon Do performance which was pretty cool and then a Q & A time. Our Q & A time opened with some opening remarks and then they took the first question. After they answered it they decided that it wasn’t going to work well and so they told people with questions to come up to the stage to ask them one on one and everyone else was allowed to have free time. So we went out and rode some roller coasters for about an hour and then went home. It was a pretty good day. Though it makes me a little sad about how much money the province spent for us all to come in for 2 lectures (one most of us had already heard) and a 10 minute Q & A session.

In other news, it’s been an interesting week in Korea politics. We had the day off yesterday because it was the Korean election. If you haven’t heard about what transpired in the Korean Parliament last week (less than a week before the election) here’s a link to a Youtube video of it. It’s definitely worth watching:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OOWtQR13FtY

The election was held on Wednesday December 19^th. The parties have been campaigning for about a month and there were originally 12 candidates in the race. Out of these only 4 had more than 1% of the vote (two dropped out about a week into the campaign). With about a week left polling showed that the current party in power only had about 19% of the vote, while their main opposition had nearly 50% . It seemed quite certain that they were going to lose and by a lot. So they did the only honourable thing they could think of...they launched a criminal investigation into the leader of the opposition (Lee Myung-bak). 2 days before the election.

From the Korean Herald:

Under a bill passed by the National Assembly, an independent counsel will launch a second investigation into Lee Myung-bak's alleged financial wrongdoings, which range from conspiring to manipulate stock prices to lying about his wealth.

While interpretations vary, legal experts say it is possible under the current law for Lee to be indicted and stand trial. To be tried, however, he would have to be convicted before taking office. They also said Lee's election could be declared invalid if he receives a court sentence.

The end result of this fiasco is we now have a President-elect who has to wait to see if he’s going to be President in a few months or whether he’s going to jail. Of course judging from the video above, he might be safer in jail than in the parliament.

Rule & Regulations

As we wind down our first term here we’ve been mapping out our options for the next year or so. It’s hard to know exactly what we should do at the end of our contract since neither of us is entirely sure of what we’d like to do upon our return to the Western hemisphere.

When we decided to work in Korea we were both pretty sure it’d be a two year adventure. After our first month, I think both of us were just hoping to make it through the first year without going crazy. Recently, we’ve been leaning more towards the idea of a year and a half. In a way it’s almost a waste of time to think that far ahead in regards to our plans here as our thoughts can change so much from week to week. I think that comes with living in a completely foreign culture. I remember having similar feelings while living in Japan and I really loved my time there. There are days where the culture just drives you crazy to the point where you’re ready to take the first plane back home. And then there are other days where you think how nice everything is now that you’ve settled into things.

Those of you reading our posts on a regular basis will know that we (Meg in particular) had some troubles verifying our documentation after we’d been working here for awhile. Unfortunately, it seems like the Korean government has decided to put together some more strict rules regarding visa requirements. One would think that we’d be exempt from most of these new regulations as we’ve already got our visas and have been teaching for 4 months. While this is true to a certain extent, it seems quite possible that these new rules might make our decision for us on how long we actually stay.

According to these new rules, if we choose to renew our visas in September we’ll have to travel to the Korean consulates in our home countries to get our new visas. Which might not sound so bad, but for us it’ll cost us about $3,000 in plane tickets, use up a good chunk of our summer vacation time (though we will get to see our families which would be nice) and it’ll mean us going to separate countries. Luckily I can get mine done in Toronto. Meg will have to visit either Boston, Atlanta, or Washington to get hers.

While we’re back home we’ll have to get our criminal records checked again. This time Meg will need to get an FBI check done rather than the routine police station check. I’m not sure what I’ll have to do since apparently Canada hasn’t joined some verification agency on international criminal checks meaning that technically as of March it will be impossible for Canadians to work as English Teachers in Korea (currently Canadians make up about 30% of all Foreign teachers in Korea).

Finally, we’ll both have to have an HIV test and a standard drug test. While I’m not worried in the slightest about the results of either of these tests, it does irritate me that I might need to have them done, especially after I will have already been teaching here for a year.

From the Korean Herald:

As to the items listed in the medical report, there has been some confusion because most hospitals here do not conduct any drug-related tests.

The ministry says they are aware of the problem.

"We contacted several hospitals to see if they conduct such tests. They said they don't without a sufficient demand for such tests. We found, after some research, that the Health Ministry-affiliated Seoul Medical Science Institute does the tests," said a ministry official.

There are 17,000 Foreign English teachers in Korea. . .and possibly only one hospital that will do the test needed to renew our visas. It’s quite brilliant. I’m glad they’re making new regulations prior to checking whether things are actually possible.

Cop-py

The first day I had lunch at my school, I was handed a tray with five round indents, two chopsticks, and a spoon. The indents held: rice, soup, kimchi, and two side dishes. I thought it strange that there were no drinks served, and wondered if I should have brought my own. None of the Koreans had drinks with them. It made eating difficult – not only is Korean food rather spicy, but I am also not used to eating without drinking.

After two weeks of dreading lunchtime (not simply because of the no-drink policy), I decided that I should bring my lunch to work. I still had never seen anyone with a drink at lunch yet, and neither had Paul. I pulled out my peanut butter sandwich and fruit, and my coworker looked at my lunch, frowning. “You don’t have a drink,” she said.

“But, you never have a drink,” I answered.

“Koreans always drink their soup,” was the reply. As I puzzled over this idea, my coworker spoke again.

“In Korea, we always peel the apples.”

I decided not to worry about the apples. If they thought I was eating dirty or inedible things, I wasn’t going to care. They eat dried squid, cow kneecaps, and dog.

A few days later, I decided to have some Korean coffee at work. Korean coffee is instant coffee. It comes in individual, marker-sized pouches; each pouch contains a mixture of coffee, cream, and sugar. Usually, Korean coffee is made in Dixie cups; they shake the dry mixture in, then pour boiling water to the 3-quarter mark – it makes drinking coffee feel like doing shots. On this particular day, however, I wanted a warm mug of coffee, so I used two packets and filled my glass mug. My coworkers began commenting immediately, pointing at my mug and talking. I could see some of their eyes widen. Drinking a full cup of coffee is apparently as strange as eating an unpeeled apple.

Just a Little Bit Bigger Than St. James

On Sunday morning I got up and headed into Seoul with our friends Kevin and Brenda (Meg wasn’t feeling well so she stayed at home) to attend Yoido Full Gospel Church, the largest church in the world. The church claims over 830,000 members. The services are held in a monstrous building and the church seems to own a couple of city blocks around it. (I’m pretty sure the Sunday school classes had an office tower to themselves).

We arrived a little late for the eleven o’clock service. I think we got there around 11:20 – so right on time for me (though we did leave at 9:30 from Yongin). Since we look lost and the church excels at welcoming newcomers, we were greeted and taken inside within about a minute of our arrival. The usher spoke English pretty well and asked us many questions as he guided us up the walkway. Instead of stairs the church has ramps than reminded me a lot of Skydome (though not as wide). We were taken to the foreigner area. Which sounds funny, but is actually practical since in this area they give foreigners headsets that translate the service into numerous languages (English, Japanese, Spanish, etc..). Here we were handed over to the Foreigner Guide who recommended that we wait for the one o’clock service since the worship had already started. We told him we couldn’t stay that long and so we were taken in given our headsets and seated on a back staircase. I couldn’t see the altar area ( I think Brenda could see a flatscreen TV showing the service) and so the service for me basically entailed listening to the translated sermon and looking around at the crowd and ushers. It was impressive to see so many people gather in one place for a service. On our way out I asked how many people were there for the service and I was told the building held 10,000 to 12,000 people and the majority of people these days participate in the service at satellite locations (where the sermon is shown on TV).

After the service we went to a “Foreigner Briefing” which we were told would be about 10 to 15 minutes. It took about that long to get to the building where it was held. Then once inside we were met by a man who told us that the story he was going to tell us about the founding of the church would normally take 3 hours, but he’d squish it into one for us. I don’t think any of us were overly impressed. The story was interesting however, and it made me happy that we had attended a service where the founder of the church, David Yonggi Cho, delivered the sermon. It sounds like he only does a couple of the services each week.

While the church founder definitely is a remarkable man (growing a church from 0 to 800,000 in fifty years) his theology isn’t exactly in line with mine. He spoke of his trip to Hell a couple of times through the sermon, which I assumed to be some kind of metaphor even though he didn’t really use it in that way. At our briefing, our leader spoke about the founder’s trips to Heaven and Hell quite openly. He also talked about a woman he’d met who’d been to Heaven 17 times and Hell 3 times (He made sure to mention that on one of her visits to Hell she met her mother who was a devout Buddhist and lived a very good life). It made me feel a little uncomfortable.
Perhaps the most interesting part of the briefing was a 10 minute video that quoted some of the astounding numbers of the church. The video was a little outdated (and looked like it had been made in the ‘70s, though it probably was actually made about 5-10 years ago). It bragged about their congregation size of 700,000 people and the over 500 full-time pastors that the church employs. They also have around 85,000 deacons (62,000 women/23,000 men) and 1,319 elders (all men). It’s all pretty unreal. I couldn’t imagine belonging to a “congregation” of that size.

While it was an interesting briefing in most regards, we couldn’t help but feeling a little bit suckered by the length. So we told them we had to leave in a couple of minutes (I was glad Kevin was there – he’s pretty forceful). Before we could fully get out, we were given (well the entire room – there were about 8 of us) a quick speech on a book that had changed the elder’s life. It was written by the woman who had been to Heaven 17 times and was conveniently on sale there. I actually suspect if we had stayed longer there would have been more of a push to buy something. There was also a table of books written by the church’s founder with price tags on them.

Overall it was quite the experience. Enough so that I think it’s worth a trip back so Meg can experience it. Of course this time I won’t let them sucker me into the foreigner briefing...and I’ll make sure to get there early enough to get a seat where I can see something.
The church’s story is pretty amazing and definitely worth checking out if you’re interested:
http://english.fgtv.com/