Adventures in Korea

Aussie Blog

2009-02-22T00:37:00.001-08:00

I've started my Australia blog. It can be found at

http://itmandownunder.blogspot.com/

And so the laziness continues

2008-11-17T10:43:00.000-08:00

I fly home on December 8th. I've done a lot that I have failed to post about and for that I apologize. I very much doubt I will be able to create the effort to catch up before that time, so I will do it very briefly right now.

What I have missed talking about were a couple trips to Busan and Seoul. There were no huge adventure stories to recap there. I also went to Thailand for 6 days last week. It was fun, but I didn't do anything I wanted to do because it rained the whole time. Pretty dissappointing really. I also misplaced my camera and was unable to take any pictures while there.

Some Korean things to note is I have gone at least a few months without a cab driver being confused where I live. I am able tp pronounce it pretty good now I guess. In fact, one cab driver told me I had very good pronunciation. Further, I have noticed I am able to have some basic conversations with Koreans who speak little to no English. I kinda understand what they are asking me although I am unable to ask them the same questions. Usually they want to know where I am from and what my job is. I've also had some conversations with people I do hapkido with where we understand eachother but I have no idea looking back how.

Anyways, thats it for me...and perhaps the Korean blog. I'll probably attempt another for my adventure in Australia.

Busan War Memorial

2008-10-23T00:55:00.000-07:00

My birthday ended up on a Wednesday (I know, over a month ago) and a friends ended up on the following Wednesday...so we took a trip to Busan to celebrate.

We partied pretty hard as always on the Saturday night...mostly along the beach. Spent the next day on the beach and then at a United Nations war memorial. Here is a link to some pictures of that:

http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2085420&l=75377&id=119104630

Sorry about the brief posting, but in an attempt to catch up on the blogging some of my stories will be cut short. Less then 7 weeks until I am home and you can ask me some stories in person! Also, I made an album of the students I teach and have been updating it all week. You can find it here:

http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2085420&l=75377&id=119104630#/album.php?aid=2085267&id=119104630&ref=mf

It's been too long

2008-10-16T07:39:00.000-07:00

I'd like to apologize for the lack of posting my blog has progressively been garnering. It's been over a month since I last posted and it has been a pretty eventful month, so I don't have any good excuse as to why I haven't posted. I guess I have just been lazy.

My last post was about going to the doctors. It took me about 2 weeks to completely get over that. I mean after about 5 days it was pretty ok...but there would still be bowel surprises at random times.

It is becoming very apparent to me that my time in Korea is quickly dwindling. I will be here for less then 2 months now. My flight itinerary was handed to me earlier this week. I leave at 11 am Korean time on December 8th and arrive in Detroit at 12 noon Ontario time on....December the 8th. I only technically lose an hour of December the 8th, while I fly half way across the world.

There are a lot of things I want to do in Korea yet, and plan to. Hence my schedule is getting packed in my next Seven weekends here. Seven weekends left here. Seven. I'm in a bit of disbelief.

In fact, before this posting, I was already starting to do things I wanted to do before I left. One of those was visit a University friend in the small city of MokPo. This guy was the first person I met in University. Some of you know him as Steve. Others don't know him. He took philosophy, just like me so discussion always seems more complex then it has to be. Everything must be defined. Another thing about Steve is a quote completely taken out of context by our friend Katie:

"A little dangerous and perhaps stupid is not the equation for fun.....but the formula that makes up Steve's physical being
and soul"

So while in MokoPo we did one thing in particular that fits the mold of the Katie theory. We climbed a mountain. I know I know, I've made a couple of posts before about my mountain climbing escapades if you call them that (I wouldn't). But as my quote to Steve, taken a little out of context and made just after we climbed down the mountain,

"I forgot what climbing a mountain in Steve terms meant."

suggests, climbing a mountain with him was a little different. We climbed the mountain...we climbed it beside the path pretty much the whole way up. At times we would have been pretty screwed if our foot slipped or we lost the grip in the hand holes, or things we used as hand holes. I was pretty sore the next couple days, but I think that was the funnest mountain climbing experience I have had.

I was skeptical of many climbs so I usually just waited to make sure Steve could do it to start. My rationale was if Steve can do it I can do it. Often I seemed to do it quicker and make it look easiar...but to Steves credit he was overcoming his fear of heights at the same time.

We had a lot more fun in Mokpo, and since I have been to Seoul and am going to Busan for a fireworks festival this weekend. That means there is potential for many more blogs before I leave Korea. I just have to find the time and ignore the distractions from making a post.

One last blog note. I went to school to teach today in shorts and a T.

Visiting a Doctor

2008-09-15T21:11:00.000-07:00

Warning: Parts of the following may fall under the heading too much info.

I've been pretty lucky thus far having stayed away from being sick in Korea for 9 and a half months. Well, other then the alcohol induced sicknesses that is. But that streak unfortunately did not last my whole stay here. Saturday evening I had to sit on the toilet and it was not solid like normal.

I was fine afterward, spent the night watching a movie...no big deal. Got home from the movie and it all hit me. I was sitting on the toilet at least once every hour. Not very helpful for sleep. It continued on through Sunday. I had to leave my Sunday, holiday, drinking expedites in order to deal with the constant bowel movements.

Monday spelled the same such disaster and began to get me worried. When it was still happening Tuesday morning when I woke up I called my boss and told him what was up. He decided it would be best for him to take me to the doctor.

I met my boss at my school and I think he saw a little of the real English language. I forgot to bring my medical card, and frustrated mumbled "fuck I should have remembered that." I'm pretty sure he heard me and he kind of chuckled.

At the doctors, I was asked some questions, translated by my boss. He told me I shouldn't drink anything cold or eat anything fatty and then I seemed to be on my way...or so I thought. I walk past a curtain and my boss tells me I am supposed to go in there for a shot. I get a shot in the ass, and walk awkwardly down the stairs with him. We go to the drug store where the doctor prescribed some sort of jelly stuff for me to eat one hour before a meal and pills to take after each meal. Sounds a little excessive, no?

After that my boss takes me to a place that sells jook. He told me jook is like ground up rice and should give me energy while not upsetting my stomach. Along the way I saw a foreign friend of mine and he asked hows it going to which I inherently replied 'pretty good you.' My boss looks at me and says "You are not good." I explained that its pretty common to just answer like that regardless, especially when its as you pass.

At the jook place my boss orders a couple different orders for me and when I see them pour this stuff into the bowl it makes me gag. Really not looking forward to trying that, it is sitting in my fridge right now and I'm not so sure I will try it. It's not supposed to upset my stomach but I am not so sure due to my overly sensitive taste buds.

My final synopses on the whole situation is that I should have sucked it up and found myself a diaper.

Dog Cafe

2008-09-11T09:12:00.000-07:00

A couple weeks ago, I took another trip to Seoul. One of the attractions was a dog cafe.

What I initially thought was this was a cafe where you could order dog as a meal. Strange, perhaps but at this point I would not put it past Korea. Also, it is not unheard of to eat dogs.

This however, was not like your typical cafe at all. We got in there and there were dogs everywhere. Instead of buying coffee or treats for yourself, you would buy dog biscuits for the dogs. Quite the life these dogs had. All the attention they could ever want, and more...plus being constantly fed dog treats.

Perhaps not all that healthy though. Dog biscuits aren't the best thing for dogs and they all seemed so lazy. I'm sure they felt like kings too. Being white, people were more then willing to let us feed the dogs with the treats they had purchased.

Body Painting Festival

2008-09-01T20:31:00.000-07:00

Last Saturday I went to a body painting festival in my home city of Daegu.

The festival was an international event, models and artists from all over the world came to paint and show off their art work. There were a ton of amazing art designs that these models wore instead of clothing.

We never got to see the models getting painted as we showed up too late. We did however get to see them on display during the runway walk. It was kind of a neat experience but grew old pretty fast. It was held at World Cup Stadium, a stadium built specifically for the World Cup a few years ago. That in itself was pretty cool.

I also didn't get to take a whole lot of good pictures. We couldn't get close enough during the runway walk and my cameras zoom feature isn't very good. But thanks to facebook I found a picture that someone else took while the model was being painted and I have shared that with you.

I'll try to update the blog a little more frequently in the coming weeks. I have a couple experiences I can share coming up and a couple more trips planned that may inspire blog postings.

The Olympics

2008-08-25T08:21:00.000-07:00

As everyone is aware the Olympics just ended this past weekend. It was quite the experience here in Korea.

Back in Canada there really isn't a lot of hype for the Olympics and if you didn't care you could probably live through life without knowing how well the country was doing. That was not the case here. It seemed that everyone was full of national pride. The events Korea was in were on tv's all over the country. You couldn't eat in a restaurant without seeing the Olympics on T.V...and that was frequently the case for variety stores and just walking down regular streets in down town.

Further more, my students were always informing me of the new medals Korea won and rubbing it in anytime a Korean beat a Canadian. Especially in baseball because the students are well aware I am a big fan.

I took the bus home from Seoul one weekend in the middle of the games and watched the Olympics on the T.V. in the bus the whole time. I saw a bit of everything from the weight lifting monster to hand ball and boxing. Made the long bus ride easier to tolerate.

Another nice thing about the Olympics is they were actually live events that I was able to see, and not at weird hours of the night. The time zone isn't nearly as different from China as it is when I attempt to watch sports back home.

On Saturday night I met some friends at the Holy Grill to watch the baseball game. They showed up late so I watched the 1st inning in a busy pedestrian section in the heart of downtown. Korea got 2 runs on a home run during that time. The whole street erupted in applause and cheering. Quite the experience.

Korea ended up winning the game, but their pitching made it interesting in the final inning. With a one run lead and the bases loaded, only one out their pitcher managed to get the batter to hit into a double play. Anything less would have tied the game.

Games

2008-08-07T20:50:00.001-07:00

I thought I would give a mention to some of the games I have seen played or taken part in while I have been out here.

One is kie kie bo...or thats what I hear anyways. It is rock paper scissors. Rock paper scissors is used to make every decision. Who is going to speak first in class...rock paper scissors. Who is going to the corner to buy Popsicles or milk...and so on. It is so much more then just a decision maker though. It has many other variations, many involving some sort of torture. With one girl at hapkido I played a version where if you lose, the winner flicks you in the forehead or cheeks. I lost a lot and refused to flick her very hard so I ended up with some big red marks.

Another game they play at hapkido is very similar to connect 4. Its played on a flat board like a checker board that has a lot smaller squares, and thus a lot more. There are small beads that you take turns placing on the corners of the boxes. When someone gets 5 in a row, they win. Kind of cool, but they never let me play.

With those beads I was shown a couple other games as well. One is kind of like jacks, although I never played that game and don't really know the rules for it. You drop 4 or 5 beads on the ground and you pick them up while you toss one bead in the air then you catch the airborne bead. You also toss the beads from the palm of your hand and catch them on your knuckles, then you snap your hand back and then forward quickly to catch them. I was not very good at these games.

They also enjoy a mixed version of soccer and volleyball. Using a lower net then volleyball and only your feet, the ball is allowed to bounce once. These are all games played before or after hapkido.

Celebrity Status

2008-07-31T08:37:00.000-07:00

Last Friday at Hapkido the normal 11 am class showed up for our 9:40 session. When I showed up I was greeted with a series of Hello!'s and wows. I got changed and while I waited for the class to actually start I had about 10 kids following me around where ever I went.

They were all amazed that I did Hapkido and of course started grilling me with the little English they did know. Where are you from, how old are you, do you like Pizza and so on. I answered the questions I could in Korean and that impressed them. One kids English was half decent and he was helping the other kids ask what they wanted to ask. The kwan jang nim's (hapkido master or instructor) girl friend was there and her English is pretty good. She was able to tell me what some of the kids wanted to but couldn't.

The one's who English was ok wanted to tell me that he really liked Hapkido because he was very good at it. Then he proceeded to show me. He was not kidding. He did the number 2 flip (which is a round off) followed by a back flip that he did so high and seemingly effortlessly. Then the kids started grilling me about the types of moves I could do. Luckily they were asking me about the gymnastic type moves which I is my strength.

They asked me to show them number 1, which is a regular cartwheel. I did that, to a round of applause by all the kids...just for a cartwheel! Their friend did like 5 back flips like seconds before to no reaction! Then I did a round off followed by more applause of course and a number 3...I'm not sure what you would call it but its like a round off but you land facing the opposite direction. I can't do number 4 although it is my goal to be able to do before I leave Korea. It is a cartwheel without using your hands.

They also asked me how many bags I could dive roll over. I gave them the number 4, sounds decent but isn't so high that I wouldn't be able to deliver if I had to. I did eventually have to because sure enough at the end of the night we jumped over one bag, then kept adding more. I doubled the four I told them I could do and managed a cool 8. Impressed myself there. All the little kids were impressed as well because I only told them 4. After the 5th one the kid who's hapkido was exceptional and English was decent congratulated me.

I seriously lack in my hapkido abilities in every aspect except the gym parts. I am the lowest ranked person other then one guys younger sister, but she doesn't come very often. There are 4 or 5 brown belts and the rest are some degree of black. I am red, a step down from brown. I can however do a better cartwheel and other flips then all the browns and some of the blacks. I also out lasted all the browns and 4 or 5 black belts in the dive rolling.

All in all it was a fun night at hapkido and I was treated as though I was someone important even though my skills were inferior to everyone there.

Brothers and Sisters

2008-07-27T09:29:00.000-07:00

Recently at my school I have become aware of all the siblings that I teach. I had no idea. At the same time it seems to make sense. There is no give away as far as family names goes (not last names as they say their family names first) seeing as there are very few of them.

There were a few students that I was well aware were siblings. One was a set of twins both of which were in the same class. Another was 2 girls that were always waiting for the other.

The one that opened the flood gates of me realizing all the siblings was me making a mistake one class. It took me a long time to remember all my students names, and I still have a lot of trouble unless I have their attendance sheet in front of me. I can match the names to the faces. My really basic and young classes I have the names down pretty good. Mostly because I can ask them what their name is as review. As is, one day I called one girl JongBin. She said "My name is YoungJu, JongBin is my sister!" I'm just glad I remembered the name that fit the face. I have made the mistake many times since as well, and I also do it on purpose sometimes because its hilarious.

After that, especially with my younger kids, I have started to find out a lot of them are siblings. SeonMi and GiJu. I used to teach GiJu a lot and then I went close to 2 months without teaching his class. In that 2 months SeonMi started taking lessons. Recently I started teaching GiJu again. Somehow I found out they were sibblings and then just went ohhh. That makes sense. I saw them outside of school together one day. Walking home from school. But they were with other kids too because school was just let out and everyone was walking home. MinKyoung and HyunKyoung I saw with their mother one day. I also started asking students what their siblings names were and figured it out from there...like SeulBi and DanBi.

JongBin and YoungJu are really cute. I should try to take their picture and post it. JongBin and I get into insult wars where we call each other different English names. Usually starts out as animals and then eventually turns to different words on the alphabet sheet. A couple of my favorites are being called cake or umbrella.

Boryeong Mud Festival

2008-07-17T19:38:00.000-07:00

This past weekend I had 3 days off and decided to hit up the country famous mud festival, not really knowing what I was getting myself into, but excited none the less!

Boryeong is located on the yellow sea and the beach, Daecheon beach, has mud that apparently has cosmetic properties. I guess thats the point of the whole festival. It took about 4 hours or so by bus. I went by myself, not with a specific group of people, but knowing a lot of people who were going.

Basically, the first thing you do when you get there is get yourself covered in Mud. I mean literally covered, head to toe...including your face and for most people hair. I had my bag and camera when I first met some people I knew getting covered in mud and decided I better find somewhere for my camera and bag so they didn't get ruined. Good call.

After you are 'muddified,' you spend the rest of the day chilling on the beach, drinking beer, swimming and remuddifying yourself when the previous layer either drys or washes off in the water.

So, we had beer, sunshine, a beach and a socially acceptable norm of being dirty, what more could you ask for? There were also so many foreigners from all over the country there which was awesome. Teachers, soldiers and just tourists. First time in Korea I felt like I wasn't in a foreign country. If the foreigners didn't out number the Koreans it was close to 50/50. With all the foreigners around it meant that Korean children wouldn't point you out to their parents, stare at you with their mouths open or say hi to you every 5 seconds.

Not having a specific group I felt obligated to hang out with, I wandered between group to group of people I knew there. Usually I think I left a group of people when I needed another beer. I also found a group of people playing frisbee, so you can be pretty confident I spent a lot of time there. One of the guys actually plays travel frisbee in Korea and is having a tournament in Busan in a couple weeks that I plan on attending. It should be a good time.

The mud also worked as sun screen...which was good because I didn't put any sunscreen on. Unfortunately, I didn't get my neck very good, and as a result was suun burned pretty badly. You apply the mud with paint brushes, and if you look closely at my neck you can see the paint brush stroke sun burn. I've included the picture in this entry.

The Amazing Race

2008-07-09T08:34:00.000-07:00

Last Sunday, the foreign community put on an amazing race, open to all of Daegu but consisting mostly of foreigners. About 12 teams showed up promising the top 3 racing pairs a prize.

The race took place in the small area of downtown Daegu. They told us to find the 5 people in charge of stations somewhere down town. It started at 3 O clock and the first team came in around 10 after 5.

My partner and I ran around downtown a little before finally finding our first station. Our task was to go to the 7th floor of the building where we would find another guy who had our task for us. The dask was to play a round of DDR and not get an incomplete. That was the first time both of us played and we weren't sure we passed it but we were given a pass anyways.

The next event was singing on a stage and gathering 3 random people to sing and dance with us for at least 10 seconds. We made a deal with the group before us that if they sang with us we would sing with them.

The 3rd event was the inevitable event involving alcohol...in this case soju. I let my partner drink the multi shots of it saying I would do the next task. Afterwards he led me with a blindfold on down the street to another person. I was carrying a cup of soju and had to ensure I didn't spill too much of it, or we would have to drink the remaining and redo the task. Luckily we passed.

It was quite foolish of me to say I would do the next task. The next task involved eating 2 pieces of sushi. I convinced my partner, who also hates sushi, to eat the first piece and I decided to suck it up and eat the 2nd piece. Take one for the team. The rule was we had to chew for 20 bites. My taking one for the team lasted a whole 4 chews before I gagged hardcore and spit the chewed pieces back on the plate. We requested another piece and my partner did the deed. He also puked later, from a mixture of the sushi, heat and running.

The final event, or so we thought, was throwing 3 sticks into mini holes standing the same way basketball hoops do. We only managed one, which gave us a 30 minute penalty and we raced back to the finish line of the race. Here we were given our final task...go to woobang tower.

When we arrived at woobang tower we were told to go to the 77th floor, which meant only one thing. Sky Jump. I wanted to do the jump, but my partner wanted to as well and seeing as he did everything else I had to let him do this too. He was quite afraid, needing the guy to push him off the tower...but I think he enjoyed it. After that it was a race back to the starting line, for real this time.

Luckily my friend had his autobike and we didn't have to wait for a cab or for traffic. That helped us get to woobang and back pretty quickly. When we arrived back it was just about 20 after 5, and most importantly we were not the last team. We also found out that only 2 teams managed to avoid the 30 minute penalty from the stick throwing, and they both came in an hour after us.

Once the race was completed and the penalties were all accounted for we found that we weren't last. In fact we were the 3rd team in. We won 50 bucks, a family pass to an amusement part, a free jump off the tower, which I will get and a $30 gift certificate at a sushi restaurant, which we gave away.

All in all, a pretty good weekend run for me. A first place finish in the baseball league, celebrating the night before and then a 3rd place finish in the amazing race.

Hanamana

2008-07-06T09:18:00.000-07:00

Hanamana. If you say this to someone it means don't even try, you can't win against me.

Pretty cool, would make a fantastic name for a sports team. It's the name of my softball team in the foreign beer league I played in. My team pretty much proved the phrase to be accurate. We went 11 and 0 which includes the 2 games for the playoffs. We were untouchable.

Even further, when we were 8-0 and clinched home field advantage for the playoffs most of my team decided to drink a lot of beer and soju before the game and play intoxicated. The captains also started everyone on the team in a position they weren't used to playing.

We played like that for a while and getting into the late innings we were actually somehow winning. We then switched to our normal positions and did our best to shut them down.

I usually played right centre field. But I also played on the infield a bit and catcher. As the season progressed I was put in the outfield more and more because I guess I proved myself to be pretty valuable. So much so that for the championship game I spent the whole game playing the field.

Before the season started all the captains threw down 50 bucks as a bet on their own team to win it...so our captains won roughly 400 bucks. They put that towards a Samsung Lions baseball game and beers during the game for the entire team. After the game we had the baseball banquet.

Needless to say our whole team showed up for the banquet already inebriated. Part of the money we paid to get into the league also included 4 drinks while we were at the banquet. As you can assume it made for a pretty wild drunken night.

Just remember when ever you want to beat me in something, hanamana.

Classes

2008-06-19T07:25:00.000-07:00

There have not been any new classes added in recent weeks. My schedule also seems to be fairly consistent recently.

This is good and bad. Good for the good classes I still get to teach and bad for the bad classes I either now have to teach or continue to have to teach. Sometimes the light and day difference between classes is astonishing.

For example, I have one class of about 6 middle school aged girls that is simply amazing. They do everything I say and try to answer my questions. I have a boys class as well that is about the same age and quite similar characteristics. I shoot the shit with them a lot, it is a very enjoyable time. I am always happy when I have either of these classes on my schedule. A couple of the boys I will pick on outside of class. I body checked one of them pretty good into the wall one day.

In comparison, I have a girls class that just talks and talks and talks no matter what I do. I have a couple mixed classes that are very much the same case. These classes, while annoying and unproductive, do not stress me out a whole lot. Yes, I would like to have better control of the class and actually feel like a teacher, but the students don't like English. They have to be there. They aren't nearly as frustrating as...

One class, same book and everything as my class of all boys and roughly the same ages as well. It has 3 boys and one girl. They don't like English either, but thats not the problem. The 2 girls are so cold towards me. I have no idea why. If I ask them a question, they roll their eyes at me as if to say 'why are you talking to me' or 'go away.' Then their answers have a annoyed sound in their voice. I also can tell you what their answer will be before they answer. Frequently it's I don't know. They don't try to know which is the frustrating part.

Most days these classes seem to be my last classes as well. I will have a great day with 7 awesome classes and then the 8th just ruins everything and I go home from work all frustrated. Perhaps its better that they are last rather then first.

New Tattoo

2008-06-13T21:39:00.000-07:00

A friend of mine met a former taxi driver that is also a tattoo artist and has gotten the sleeve of his arm tattooed.
He introduced 'Che' to me and other friends. One of which also got a tattoo on his arm done. I have wanted a tattoo for a while so I decided to join the party. My new tattoo has had the Korean influence. The writing on the left says 'AN' and then the obvious Detroit Tigers English 'D.' Read together it says ANDY.

Oh, thats my name by the way.

The tattoo artist's English is decent. Talk slow and you can kind of have a conversation with him. He thought I was pretty funny and is happy with my tattoo as well.

More on Hapkido

2008-06-11T21:49:00.000-07:00

My form of exercise here has been a daily dose of Hapkido, for an hour each day pretty much right after work. The language barrier is tough, but I am managing to work through it and make friends along the way.

For the most part there are about 4 or 5 people you can rely on being there every time, and about 2 or 3 more that are reliable when its not exam time. Students study hard here, I know for me if I was in school I would be looking at Hapkido as a way to take a break from studying.

I am one of the regulars as well as a girl in elementary school and a boy who is probably about the same age and of course the instructor and the instructors assistants. There are a couple older students that are there everyday when they don't have to study for their school tests or exams. They are quite helpful in communicating with as they know a little English, but the 13 year old may know the most out of the three. I tend to ask her questions although she doesn't always know the answers.

As far as learning Korean goes, or just communicating with them, I basically have only learned insults or things to say when you are insulted. Not so much Korean insults, just English ones that they understand. Crazy is one. BaBo is Korean for foolish. Chul go Rae (i think) is do you want to die?

The 13 year old boys little sister started as well. She is the only belt lower then me, and she is adorable. A little malicious though. I got out my notebook one day at the end of class to right down 'jon da jol aww' or something like that which means very very very good. She took my books and started pointing at things and righting the Korean down for me. It helped, a little.

I have a lot of fun in Hapkido and just hanging out with these people. I am not expected to teach them anything unlike most of the Korean youngsters I am constantly around, which is nice.

Surviving

2008-06-05T23:12:00.000-07:00

So I have officially been here for 6 months, and have survived thus far. That means my contract is just over half way done now. Half time of a soccer game, middle of the 4th in a baseball game, 10 minute mark of the 2nd period in a hockey game and so on.

I don't really have a lot to report, just thought I would give an update. Unfortunately, to date I really have not saved a whole lot of money due to paying off student loans and consuming alcohol. I'm going to probably do some traveling during the summer, within Korea and perhaps beyond into the depths of South East Asia. No solid plans yet. Thailand and China are 2 places that have been thrown around.

The teaching I am still enjoying for the most part. I do have a couple classes however where I feel completely lost. I don't have control in the classes and that is one thing that is difficult to regain. Admittedly I am way too soft. It is something I will definitely need to work on.

Once the travelling is over and I have used up all my vacation time, I will focus on saving some cash. I am also going to attempt to pick up a little more Korean as well. My best bet there is to listen hard and write things down during Hapkido, which I am now a Blue Belt in. If I stick to that I should be a Black Belt by the time I leave Korea.

Trip to Seoul Part 4

2008-05-26T09:41:00.000-07:00

We tried to wake up on Monday morning on time for breakfast, but we didn't feel like getting out of bed. We did manage to get out of bed on time for check out however.

Monday was children's day so children did not have to go to school. We left the hostel not really knowing what we should do. We heard some drums playing and decided to check out what they were. We were excitedly greeted and encouraged to eat the free food they had provided. We stumbled upon a church festival for children's day. The people did not speak a whole lot of English but they tried to explain what was going on and ask us questions along the way.

We found out we were in the area where children's day first started. We also were at the site of the first ever missionary in Korea. They gave us books explaining this...in English. The food they fed us, while I am unsure what it was, was very tasty. They also made us little baggies of cherry tomatoes, mandu and something else that I do not recall. I ended up giving my baggies to the other 2 as I do not care for any of them.

After we said our good byes we decided to do a walk that we had read about in the daily planet guide book. We ended up walking for hours and eventually came to a mountain which we climbed. The mountain was a decent height, and we got some pretty good pictures of Seoul from a top it. It was also nice to just chill on it.

After spending time atop the mountain (I will post the name of it later, and perhaps try to steal some pictures from my buddy and post them as I did not take any pictures) we hopped on the subway to the bus station. We took the bus home in order to save a little money. It was an awesome and exhausting trip.

Trip to Seoul Part 3

2008-05-24T06:23:00.000-07:00

We decided to hit up a variety store and buy some more beers to drink while chilling at the outdoor concert we stumbled upon. We got to it and the crazy clown dancing portion was over and there was an actual concert taking place. We were content, listening to music, drinking our beers and standing around dancing a little. It was a gorgeous night luckily, so being in my shorts and t-shirt was not a big deal.

There were 3 stages set up and some guy on a mic soon came on the centre one, and babbled on a bit in Korean, obviously. Apparently he was pretty funny as many people were laughing. I laughed too just to fit in a little. Big projector screens were set up so you could see what was going on on stage. They were actually fountains shooting up water that the image was displayed on.

Soon some cute children were paraded onto the stage to do a dance with the funny talking mic guy. Random people were in the crowd were also brought up to do the dance as it was pretty simple. This included a foreigner as all foreigners are like celebrities here at times. We too recieved our time in the spotlight as some tv camera got us to say something about the lantern festival. This wasn't the first time and certainly will not be the last time this happens.

Soon another concert performance started up on another stage and we made our way over to it. My buddies were standing in front of me and while half dancing a Korean guy put his arm around me. I kinda laughed and yelled for my friends to have a look. They got the guy to pose for a picture. After that performance nature was yelling my name in a real bad way. We also decided we needed more beers.

We invited my new Korean friend, Taki, to get some beers with us as he spoke a decent amount of English. I could not wait to find the bathroom so I started peeing on some car in an alley. Taki joined me and when he finished waited for a bit but then decided I was taking too long and went into the variety store. We bought some beers and headed back to the concert. Taki had a beer and it was soon spiked with soju and his face turned beat red, the tell tail sign that a Korean is drunk.

After the concert finished Taki told us his friend was having a huge party and invited us to join him. We got to the sub way and needed to use the washrooms once again. We somehow lost Taki while he was on his phone so needed to make plans on what to do for the night. Just as we were deciding to go back to where we were the night before Taki comes running up to us out of breath and asked if we minded a bit of a travel...3 sub way transfers away and about a 10 minute walk.

We were fine with that and were going to wait in the long line for a subway ticket when Taki asked us if we wanted to go on an adventure. We were game and his adventure was jumping over the gate to get onto the sub way. We all followed his lead and took the long, free sub way ride. We were ok as we had some beers with us still.

His friends party ended up being a dj festival people we knew were already going to, or went to the night before. It was also more then a 10 minute walk. We bought some more beer at a variety stand on the way. I bought a couple more then the others not realizing we would not be able to bring the beers into the festival with us. That ended up being a good call as we went on another adventure by entering under the tarp of an empty tent. It saved us 18 bucks and because I had a bag of beers I didn't need to buy any more the rest of the night. Taki had to convince Koreans to buy the other two beer as it was unavailable without the enterence wristband.

The night was filled with music that I don't even really recall and a lot of dancing under the moon. Really cool. I also met some pretty cool people, one being a girl who I talked to for the majority of the night. She was the same age as me and went to a university in Seoul. Her English was ok, I just had to repeat myself a lot and talk very slowly, which was fine.

At the end of the night we had a $30 cab ride back to our hostel and I fell asleep on the way. When we got to the hostel I realized I had foolishly left my cellphone in the cab and I have not seen it since.

Trip to Seoul Part 2

2008-05-22T07:59:00.000-07:00

The 2nd part of my weekend in Seoul is probably a little past due, but here it goes.

Instead of sharing the bed in the hotel room, I just crashed on the floor. My friend went out for another round of drinking and came back to the room to me sprawled on the floor, without a pillow or blanket. He tossed me one of each and I was out until the wake up call the next morning, nice and refreshed. He seemed to be in a little rougher shape as his answer to the call was just a series of grunts.

We exited the hotel and before we hopped into a taxi for the next part of our Seoul trip I stopped off at the sports jersey store across the street. It had mass amounts of jerseys from many major sports teams. This included some leaf jerseys and tigers jerseys. These jerseys also had names and numbers embroided on them, and they only cost 20 bucks! You really can't beat that price. I bought myself a tigers jersey and when I took it out of the plastic bag back home I found out it was a Verlander jersey. Assa! (Korean word for Oh Yeah!...pretty fun to say and a part of my vocabulary now).

We then went to an area in Seoul close to the station and grabbed some lunch before hitting up the market. On our way to the market we wandered through the lantern festival. Many lanterns were hung all over the streets and their were many neat booths set up. The people we were with were kind of impatient so we were not able to spend much time at these booths.

After working our way through a maze of people in and out of the market many people tired, especially carrying our bags and stuff around. The consensus seemed pretty willing to call it a trip and head back to Daegu. I did not want that as I had only came late the night before and had the next 2 days off from work. Luckily I managed to convince 2 guys to stick around for atleast another night.

We decided to find a hotel in the area to ditch our crap and then check out more of the lantern festival. While looking for a hostel, we ran into a couple of other foreigners seemingly just as lost as we were so we decided to see if we could help each other out. They spoke pretty good English but had thick German accents. The man taught German at a University there, which we found kind of different. We helped each other find a hostel and got a room and dropped our stuff off in it. I thought we decided to sauna it up but misunderstood my friends and apparently we decided to go right into the site seeing tourist stuff. Because I thought we were doing a sauna first I left my camera in the hotel room.

After we left we decided to check out a former palace of the kings of Korea. It had separate quarters for the men and the women and children. There was also a court yard were celebrations for things like marriage and becoming a part of royalty occurred. While we were there it started to rain a little, but we trudged through.

We were finally able to give the lantern festival the attention it deserved. This included going into the temple and watching some of the praying rituals people did to worship the Buddha statues. We also came to a wish kite where you write a wish on a piece of paper and tie it to a kite. My wish actually partly came true, as did my friend who wished for a crazy adventure (to follow).

After exploring the festival for a few hours we grabbed some food and then a couple beers for our walk along the river. We saw a ton of different lights and interesting displays. We then wandered to find another bizarre market we had heard about. On our way there we came across the end of a pretty cool parade. As we neared city hall, we found this huge grassy area, which is a rarity to see in Korea. On this grassy area there were these crazy clown looking dancers, a bunch of music and a ton of spectators. We walked through to hit the market before it got too dark with intentions on returning when we were done there.

On our way to the market we passed the gate that had been burned down just days after my casino trip to Seoul. It is being restored and is covered by a giant wall so we were unable to see the damages.

The market was nothing special. It was a little bizarre but nothing really to report on. We headed back to the city hall concert area and that started us on the crazy adventure someone had wished for...which will be my next blog post, hopefully sometime sooner rather then later.

Trip to Seoul Part 1

2008-05-12T08:14:00.000-07:00

In Korea, May goes without a Mothers day and June goes without a Fathers day. Instead, May has a children's day. It fell (at least this year) on a Monday.

Children's day is ironically, for the children. It is a nation wide holiday and so there is no school on the day and parents usually treat there children to something nice, or at the very least the children get a break from studying. For some of my students the day was used to go and visit relatives.

This was part of my 3 day weekend. I had to work on the Saturday, but then I recieved Sunday, Monday and Tuesday off. After work on Saturday I caught the KTX train to Seoul to meet some friends who had either went down on the Friday night, or earliar in the day Saturday.

Walking around the streets of Seoul was pretty crazy. Many people speak English so it is so much easiar to get by in stores and such...or just in finding directions. It was also very weird to hear languages that were not English or Korean.

I met up with my friends in Inchon which is a very big foreigner area. I dropped my stuff off in a small hotel and then we headed to a section of the city we had been informed about. We found a bar called bar boom or something like that where they serve all you can drink for an hour for 1o bucks. It was a very sweet deal and we pounded as many drinks back so as to get our moneys worth. It wasn't limited to just beers either, they had hard liquor as well. In that hour I drank about 12 gin and tonics and needless to say was pretty inebriated. It was a good time and we ended up dancing a lot while we were there.

After the bar our group split into 2 and I went with our Korean friend and another to visit his friends he met when he went to school in Toronto. One was Korean and the other was from Japan. They were pretty cool. The Japanese guy gave us Japanese gum and cigarettes at the end of the night.

We then headed back to the hotel and I called the others to see where they were. At some point I took my contacts out of my eyes, but don't remember doing this. A short while after I started freaking out because I couldn't get the contacts out of my eyes. My friend looked in the contact solution and informed me that I had already taken them out. That probably sums up the night.

How's the Weather

2008-05-08T09:09:00.000-07:00

I thought I would dedicate a post to how the weather is and has been so far during my stay in Daegu.

When I first arrived in December, it was winter, the same season I left behind in Canada. The winter season, as far as temperature goes, was very similar to back home. There were some days with bitter cold. The difference is there rarely was any snow. The most snow I saw was a thin layer that painted the side walks but not the roads due to traffic, and even that only lasted for a few hours max.

The season of winter also did not seem to last as long. There were some days in January where while walking I needed to take my winter jacket off. The next day however would be back to bitter cold. I think February ended up having a very cold stretch, but by the end of it I officially retired my winter jacket...right around the time back home people were plowed with a butt load of snow.

After the weather warmed up it seemed to rain a little more frequently. Korea love's their umbrella's! You can be sure if it looks like there may be a sprinkle of rain everyone will bring their umbrella. It's a fashion trend along with keeping yourself 100% dry.

In fact, they also use their umbrellas on very sunny days to protect against the sun.

Right now we are in spring, and it is about as hot as I would like to see. I seem to drip sweat off my forehead just from walking to work, and I don't traditionally sweat that often. It is hot! Probably about the steady Ontario summer weather at this point, minus the week or so of unbearable heat. I am told it is going to be like that or worse all summer.

There is one more weather aspect that has gone unmentioned, and it is something I certainly was not used to in Canada. In late March and most of April Korea gets yellow dust. This is sand that blows into much of eastern Asia from deserts in China and Mongolia. If you leave your window open you will find a thin layer of it on your things, and naturally while out and about you inhale it. It makes my throat very dry and sore.

Many Koreans wear masks that resemble surgical masks to help minimize the dust intake. They look pretty silly in them in my opinion, but whatever helps. They too can be pretty fashion trendy. I have seen many students with the masks that have little cartoon pictures or faces on them. I make them take them off in class though, because it is hard enough to understand what they are saying without me being unable to see their lips while hearing their voice muffled by the fabric of the mask.

A Random Visitor

2008-05-06T20:59:00.000-07:00

One day a few weeks ago a lady knocked on my door. She was some sort of Buddhist from one of the mountains somewhere in the city. She asked me for a glass of water. Unfortunately I didn't have any water, but I was able to offer her some grape juice I had just purchased. I also did not have a clean glass so offered it to her in a bowl.

She was very grateful in spite of me not having water or that she had to drink out of a bowl instead. I apologized for the state of mess my apartment was in and we began to chat. She didn't speak a whole lot of English, but she knew enough and I was able to guess what she wanted to tell me by looking the word up in my dictionary and confirming if that was indeed what she was trying to say.

While we were chatting she mentioned another foreigner she had met named Richard. She showed me his card, and I had the same card. He actually had just replaced the other foreign teacher at my school. His school in Chilgok had closed down. It turns out she randomly knocked on his door as well, not once but twice...in the 2 different places that he lived! I found this very bizarre, but I imagine not nearly as bizarre as he did.

Eventually she told me she was collecting money for an orphanage so I gave her the change I had on my desk and apologized that thats all I had at the time.

*************************************************************************************

I realize I have been pretty lazy of late, having gone a little over 3 weeks without making an entry. It has not been because of a lack of adventure, especially pretty recently. Just laziness coupled with being busy with other things. I will try my best to make a few posts in the upcoming days, so if you check back soon you should have some more reading to do.

Cheongdo for Bullfighting

2008-04-15T07:36:00.000-07:00

Last Saturday we went to Cheongdo, a town just outside of Daegu to watch Bullfighting.

The setting was very similar to the county fair back home. We paid about 5 bucks to get in and there were a variety of things offered for entertainment. They had rides and things for kids along with different exhibitions to see.

There were also many tents around with different types of food offered.
The main event or attraction was the bullfighting of course. Thats what people came for.

When you think bullfight, you probably think, like me, of the Spanish dude with the red hanky and the ferocious bull. This was not the same thing. The bulls were not fighting a person, they were fighting each other. Another tidbit, slightly disappointing was these were not fights to the death. They were fights until one bull pussed out and ran away.

Basically to win you had to be able to make the other bull give up. The fights reminded me a lot of bambi. When Bambi is no longer a baby he meets of with felice (I think thats the girl deer) and then some other deer shoes up and rams Bambi with his horns, and Bambi rams back.

The bulls head butt each other so hard you can hear there heads hit from a distance. Then they push back and forth until one gives up and runs away. Some matches are very short while some go on for several minutes. The most disappointing match was the American bull. He was the biggest one there, but he was too scared to even start the fight.

After the bullfighting we pooled our money together and went to seomon market and bought a couple rabbits. I watched them kill and skin the rabbits and then we took them back to a buddys apartment, cooked them up and ate them. They were delicious.

Samsung Lions

2008-04-14T08:53:00.000-07:00

Korea has it's own professional baseball league and it is called the KBL (Korean Baseball League).

Daegu's team is the Samsung Lions. Every team goes by their corporate sponsor and not their city. This makes it hard for the casual fan to know what city the opponent is playing out of.

I went to opening day for the Samsung lions and there is quite a difference between not only the opening day atmosphere in Detroit and here, but also the game itself.

First, there is no hype around opening day. In fact, we bought our tickets when we arrived at the stadium. Further, the ticket was to get into the stadium, the seats were not assigned and you could sit where ever you wanted.

The game itself was decent. The Lions played against Kia Tigers. One of the Tigers star players is Choi Hee Seop...better known as Hee Seop Choi. He played briefly in the MLB for the Chicago Cubs and LA Dodgers.

The Lions pulled out a victory, and everyone was relieved it came in the 9 innings as briefly it looked like it would be a tie and the rain had started coming in the later innings. You could bring anything you wanted into the stadium, this included beer. But, you didn't need to worry about bringing beer in as their were 7/11 vendors selling a can of beer for the same price as at a 7/11.

During about the 5th inning they had what I assume to be the 7th inning stretch. It was different then what I am used to here. There was no take me out to the ball game sung. Music was played and players from both teams got on the field and...literally stretched. It was quite the site to see as generally the 7th inning stretch I am used to is for the fans and not the players.

I took some pictures around the stadium and of the players stretching in the middle of the game. They are posted on facebook and can be accessed by non facebook users with that link I posted earlier.

Board Game Cafe.

2008-04-06T22:35:00.000-07:00

One Saturday night after an already eventful day consisting of frisbee, a Samsung Lions baseball game (an entry for another date) and some dalk galbi, a few of us headed to a place called the frog. It is a board game cafe, they have a ton of board games and you can play them. Really cool actually.

So of course we snuck booze into the place and started to play a game which name escapes me at the moment. It was a pretty decent but we didn't get to finish it because the place closed before our game was over.

It's somewhere I'm sure I will visit again. While they we watched how Koreans played their games, and took them seriously. Below is a video I took on my camera of a girl who knocked over the Jenga tower and her subsequent punishment.

More Student Tales

2008-04-03T09:44:00.000-07:00

Every month or so they switch up the classes and I end up teaching students I had not taught before, teaching students on a different day then normal or end up not teaching students in general.

If you recall the class I have referred to as the pen pal class, I went from teaching them 3 times a week in January and February to only teaching them on Fridays during March and now into April. They usually make sure they say hi to me on Tuesdays and Thursdays which is nice, but I have since developed a couple other favorite classes.

I'll talk about the older class first, thus saving the best for last. This might be my favorite class, I just don't have any of the cute stories with them like the alphabet class. I especially feel bad for these kids...well I shouldn't even call them kids. They work so hard, it is unreal. They spend so much time in just their regular school that the only time they can fit the academy in is on Sunday mornings. They are all slightly younger then my brother Tom, and for the most part they can understand everything I say. I see them more as peers then students and often regular conversation invades the lesson I am teaching. They are also very helpful in answering any questions I might have about how things work in Korea and are always fascinated to hear the differences to Canada. I should not say they actually. A few of the girls in the class. Not everyone.

Another class I will mention I am not even sure their exact level. They work in the same book as some other students but they seemed more advanced then that. My best guess for them is middle school. I don't know how well they understand me, but they understand enough that I can joke around with them. There are about 9 students in the class and one of them is a guy. The rest girls. I can only imagine how much he must love it.

Finally is the alphabet class. I have taught them for probably a month now. Some of the students recently have really started to come out of their shells. This is a good and bad thing. It means they are eager to talk to me and speak up in class, which is good to a point. Sometimes they may speak up at the wrong times or be too willing and leave the students who aren't as willing behind. I Re is one such student. Very cute and at first very quiet. Now she loves answering questions correctly and will do so when I am trying to get a student who finds it difficult. That doesn't help them much.

Jeoung Yeoung and Seul Bi both have come out of their shells a bit. Jeung Yeoung is funny because she will just start speaking Korean to me before class or after. It's like she doesn't believe I have no idea whats she is saying or something.

Yu Jin and Seon Mi are probably neck and neck for my favorite students. Seon Mi may be a bit in the lead because of how hard she tries. While learning about animals I pointed in Yu Jins book one day at a monkey and said 'Yu Jin.' Not too sure if she would understand that I was joking, but being one who loves to tease kids I tried anyways. She looked at me and said "No Andy Monkey." That has developed into my nick name from the class. Seon Mi always writes me little notes and gives them to me at the end of class. They are cute. The last said Hello Andy at the top and My mane is Seon Mi in the middle, with good bye on the bottom. She is so cute. She is the only one that tries to say things to me in full sentences even outside of class and I am not demanding one. She also organizes the desks into perfect rows before class. I don't have a picture of her yet, but I will try perhaps tomorrow.

Pictures!

2008-04-01T09:48:00.000-07:00

Ok, so as promised I have added a collection of pictures via facebook album and have the available link for non facebook users:

HERE

If you have checked out any of my pictures before, you will notice a lot of the same ones. I tried to take the best ones and place them in that album. I have added some new ones to it. These include Billy Bowling, Screen Golf, the Samsung Lions baseball game (which is a future post) and my night out with Hapkido friends.

As time progresses I will probably add pictures to that album so feel free to check it again with time.

Hapkido

2008-03-30T15:06:00.000-07:00

A little over a Month ago I started taking Hapkido. It's a form of martial arts.

It's great for exercise and other then sporadic Frisbee gatherings and now the start of softball exercise was something I was seriously lacking. I go to Hapkido every night after I finish teaching, from 9:45 until 10:45.

I am only a white belt at this point, but I should be a yellow belt soon enough. I find hapkido extremely difficult as all my instructions come to me in Korean, and I don't understand any of them. I just watch what everyone else does and try to mimic them...albeit late. Also, when I am not mimicking right, they tell me what I am doing wrong, but once again I can't understand what they are trying to tell me.

I rely on trial and error. I think I have shown a little bit of improvement. Sometimes however, I am not sure if the comments they make to me are telling me I did it right, or not.

I get along with the others alright. We often kick the soccer ball around before and after hapkido starts and try to communicate with each other. At the end of hapkido the master drives us all home. On Wednesday's and Friday's I often get him to drop me off at the sub way for poker and drinking respectively. Every night they ask if I went for Mekju (beer) the night before, or if I'm going that night.

Last Thursday after Hapkido the older ones sat me down and it looked like a serious conversation. The one close to my age who calls me his best friend in the limited English he knows, said "Andy tomorrow" and then made a drinking motion. Figuring he wasn't asking if I was going drinking because he wouldn't sit me down to ask, he was asking if I would go drinking with him and the others old enough and sitting.

I was definitely up for that. He said Soju, and I was like err I like mekju. Then I decided if I am drinking with Koreans, I might as well stick to what they like. So I was destined for a night of Soju.

Friday after Hapkido about 8 of us headed to a local restaurant and polished off I don't know how many bottles of Soju. We drank it straight, right out of the shot glasses. Luckily, the masters girl friend went with and she speaks decent enough English. That gave me someone to talk to. I also attempted talking with the others as well, using the little Korean I know, the little English they knew, and the Masters girl friend translating the blanks.

After the Soju drinking we headed to a norabong for some singing, and then we walked home.

Dvd Bong

2008-03-26T07:40:00.000-07:00

Last Sunday I woke up about an hour before I intended to wake up because I was pretty cold and needed to shut my window.

Yes, my window was open and it opens and closes throughout the day now. The weather is warm enough for that. Unfortunately for Sunday however, it was pouring rain which led to the eventual canceling of the first softball games of the year.

As you are probably well aware this devastated me as I was really looking forward to playing some ball. Just as I finished up my Sunday morning classes, I received an invite to chow down on some Indian food at Ali-Baba's. I met up with the crew around 2 and we soon headed for Indian.

Not a huge fan of spicy food, and not really too sure about any Indian food I was skeptical on what to order. I ordered some chicken and broth type deal by the recommendation of someone who knew the type of picky eater I am. It was ok, but most of the chicken was all bone and it was a pain in the butt to eat around it. I filled up on bread that I soaked in the chicken broath, or whatever it was.

Afterwards we went to Chilgok which I am not sure if it is a part of Daegu or a city in itself that you don't have to leave Daegu to get to. Regardless the plan was to watch a movie. The movie would be my first on the big screen since Harry Potter, which was well before I came to Korea. We were not feeling the movie however and so we hit up a dvd bong instead.

If you remember from prior posts, bong means room in Korean. So just like the PC bong, a room for computers, the norabong, a room for singing, dvd bong is a room where dvd's are played. Pretty comfortable set up as well. Big couchesk bed set up in front of a huge projector screen. You pick your movie and they play it on the big screen for you.

We watched some movie with Kevin Spacey in it. Some gang killed his family and he went crazy and killed the gang members. I fell asleep briefly, thats how good of a movie it was.

Some Birthdays and Birthday Celebrations

2008-03-23T05:45:00.000-07:00

The past couple weeks a couple friends I have made in Korea have celebrated their birthdays.

One of these was a Korean, and she had a party at her house. Her Mom made a whole bunch of delicious food for her guests to enjoy. I especially loved the bulgogi, which is like beef. I ate that on nachos and salsa. I had to leave the party early due to working Sunday morning at 9am, but it was fun while I was there.

This weekend was a friend from Texas' birthday. For his birthday he wanted to shoot some guns. He found a shooting gallery in Gyeongju. Gyeongju is only about an hour bus ride from Daegu and it only cost us about 4 bucks. We departed early around 9:30 and arrived at the shooting gallery just after 11.

The shooting itself did not take very long. I never shot a gun before today, and I am not sure I ever will again. I'll admit it was kind of cool, but it was also very loud and to be perfectly honest the power of the guns scared me. If there was someone in the line of that fire, the shot could have killed or injured them...unless ofcourse if I was aiming at them. Then my bullet would have missed completely.

I think I shot a 9mm and a magnum. The first target I shot at was with the 9mm. It was the pretty standard circle target and it had a picture of a cougar within it. I didn't shoot half bad. Most of my shots landed within the circle while a couple were even in a relatively close proximity to the bulls eye area.

The second however was not quite as accurate. The target was funnier though. The target was a terrorist, very stereo-typical middle eastern terrorist. There was also a woman hostage. Obviously your goal was to hit the terrorist in spots like the head, are or chest...and NOT hit the hostage. I managed to shoot 4 or 5 inches to the left above the terrorist's head. I got 10 shots and that was the only shot that hit the target. After 5 shots they even moved it closer for me. Thats when I made the hit.

After the firing range we grabbed some food and then went ATV'ing. That was a lot of fun. Racing through gravel, through small streams and over bridges. Not my first time ATV'ing, but it was a lot of fun regardless.

Then we headed back to Daegu and people parted ways. I went with the birthday boy to play golf. Not at your typical golf course either. This was screen golf. Or screena golpa as the Koreans say it. Basically you hit the golf ball into a large screen and it triggers some sort of censor and the ball lands on the course that you see on a big projection screen. I don't know exactly how it works, but it was kind of cool and I will upload pictures at some point and share them with my avid blog readers (if there are still any).

A Rough Night

2008-03-20T08:25:00.000-07:00

Baseball season in Daegu is finally upon us!

The Samsung Lions (Daegu's professional team in the Korean Baseball League) started their season last weekend. I did not make it out to any games as of yet, but in the next few weeks I am sure I will.

I also joined a softball league here in Daegu, run by other foreigners. I'm excited to get out and play! Someone I know plays hard ball pretty competitively here and asked how experienced at baseball I was. I do not feel confident enough in my baseball to attempt to play hardball, but I jumped at the chance to join him at a practice this week, to get myself for Daegu softball which starts on Sunday.

Just as I was informed of the time the practice was starting at, 6:30 am, I made the decision, ok quiet Wednsday night in, no poker and no post poker bar hop. That had become the norm for me Wednsday nights. As soon as I made that decision my buddy called just as he arrived at the poker place. Hearing the guys playing made me quickly change my mind and go to poker and just cut out the post drinking session.

It didn't end up being a great idea. I got a run of cold cards that lasted all night, and any time I had something half decent the flop sucked for me. I finally went out on my second 20,000 won buy in flopping trip 9's, raising a guy on the flush draw who called and caught his flush. Worst part is I knew exactly what he had and figured he would call, because thats the way he plays, and catch because thats just how my luck was going.

I decided against donating 20,000 more won into the pot, leaving and grabbing a cab for home. On my way home, with my hands in my pockets it became apparent that I did not have my house key. I called back to the house and none of the guys could see the keys lieing around the place either.

Shit. What do I do? My boss may have an extra set...but its almost 3am, I don't really want to be a burden at this time in the morning. Before making any solid decision I decided to check my door. Maybe I forgot to lock it and the key was still inside. As the theme from the poker continued, no luck. So I sent out some text messages to some people in my area, hoping they would be awake.

No Replies. I hit up a PC bong and went online hoping I could figure something out. To no avail. I was hungry at this point, it was almost 4am and I wanted to wake up on time for baseball practice...instead it didn't look like I would get to bed before ball practice. I decided to go to McDonald's which is 24 hours. I ordered some food and ate slowly because it was at least warm in there. Then I curled up on the bench and attempted to sleep. I spent about 2 hours in McDonald's, attempting to sleep at the table. They must have forgot that I had come in.

I walked back towards home just before 6 and got a reply text from the guy I was meeting to go to ball practice with. I gave him a ring and asked for him to bring me an extra glove and then off to ball practice I went. I was one of 4 players there, but it was great to toss the ball around again.

After practice I went back to the ball guys house and tried to get a hold of my boss. I also slept on his couch in between my frugal attempts at contacting my boss. I finally managed to get a hold of him and he brought me the spare key. I have no idea where the other one is.

Drinking Establishments

2008-03-10T08:27:00.000-07:00

I spend a lot of free weekend time at these types of places, so I figured they may deserve a mention in my blog.

Firstly, there are a few foreigner bars I frequent. Much like bars back home...other then you can still smoke in the ones over here. Communes, T-birds, Old Skool and Crew to name a few. Some you will find more teachers at, some you will find more GI's at and some a good mix.

Other places I have been technically serve drinks but I don't always drink at them. They also are usually visited at the end of the night so my memory on them isn't always the greatest. I have dedicated a post already to the Norabong which is very popular and very fun. The other is just your regular club I suppose. The 2 I have been to here are Monkey and Frog. Monkey was just the once and Frog has been quite a few. Foreigners get into Frog with no cover charge. Dance dance dance til 5am...or later.

Finally, the interesting fun bars. I don't know if these are exclusive to Daegu or even Korea for that matter. They are nothing like anywhere I have visited in Canada however.

The first is BillyBowl. It is a combination of pool and bowling. You have a cue stick, and I cue ball and you shoot it down a mini alley with mini pins. Score is kept the same way as 10 pin bowling. Oh, and the pitchers of beer there are really cheap.

The 2nd is the ice bar. Here, you get your beer in a cup made out of ice! For the most part anyways. There is a plastic inside, and an aluminum holder so your hands don't get cold. It keeps the beer really cold, and who doesn't like cold beer. Think thats cool? Thats not the best part! After the give you a glove and you get to throw your ice cup at a target and watch it shatter. If you hit the target, you win a randomly selected prize. If your lucky, it's another ice beer!

My first toss nailed the target and I won a big glass of Orange Juice, which I got my buddy to spike with his SoJu. Once I downed that I ordered another beer. I noticed the thrill of breaking your glass makes you want to drink faster so you can do it again. The one visit I made there ended up being a messy night.

3 Months

2008-03-04T19:49:00.000-08:00

It's hard to believe I have already been in Korea for 3 months! I have already spent 1/4 of my total time here.

Looking back however, it is not that unbelievable. I have seen and experienced so many new and unexpected things. I think I have adjusted pretty fell.

I was forewarned that at exactly the 3 month mark people begin to have a rough time, with home sickness. I do feel a little empty at times, but it isn't as bad when I am around people I can talk to. It may be more of a loneliness thing, living on my own and not seeing much of the friends I have made here during the week at all.

I have made many little observations about the differences here, but I don't really know what they all are and can't explain them all. I have probably noted some in previous entries. They are difficult to recall mostly because they have seemingly become the norm.

I have made a few observations more recently on cultural things, and just random things I perceive as obscurities. One is when drinking, you never should pour your own drink. Always let someone else pour your drink and be sure to pour their drinks for them. Another is how down right rude it is to pass something with only one hand. You should always use 2 hands to pass an item.

I've also noticed that the urinals in the mens room seem to always flush when I approach them as opposed to when I leave. The censor triggers a flush, not the uncensor.

In the grand scheme of things those really make little difference. I am currently in no way feeling poorly, but when I get over the 4 month hump I should be feeling that much better.

Day Trip to Busan

2008-03-03T06:16:00.000-08:00

There was a holiday this weekend that ended up landing on March 1st. As a result that didn't have any effect as far as days off for most foreign teachers. In Korea, if a holiday falls on the weekend, they don't make up for during the week.

Fortunately, I don't fall under the category of most foreign teachers. In my contract I receive a 3 day weekend once a month. These weekends are scheduled with the holidays, so I had Saturday Sunday and Monday off. My work weeks are also 6 day work weeks.

It was nice having those extra couple days in spite of not having anything planned. Sunday morning however a buddy called and said he was headed to Busan to check out the fish market and beach so I decided to tag along. We grabbed the KTX to Busan, which is also known as Pusan (similar to how Daegu is also known as Taegu).

Busan is a port city, right on the ocean, so naturally fishing and shipping are major parts of its economy. Busan is a little bigger then Daegu and is the 2nd largest city in South Korea and one of the largest port city's in the world. It has a massive fish market, and you can view the pictures I took at the market here. There are also pictures of the beach and city in that album.

I don't think the pictures do the market justice. There were so many tanks of fish and various other sea creatures. In an attempt to escape many fish were jumping out of their fish tanks, either onto the ground or into the tank beside them. At one point an eel jumped out of its tank and instead of picking it up right away the guy thought it would be funny to fling the eel at the foreigners and let it flop around near us for a while.

It kinda looked cool flopping around, although i am not a big fan of eels. They are ugly and remind me of snakes...which creep me out! After we were finished checking the fish market out we decided to head to the beach. Along the way we saw houses which was a bit of a big deal. Other then a couple farm houses in the middle of no where, I had not seen any houses.

After exploring the beach for a while we decided to try a fish joint for food and of course Mekju (beer). To decide on the fish we would eat the owner took it out of the tank and let it flop on the side walk for a while. I should have taken a picture of the way the fish was served, but I dropped the ball on that one. Someone did take a picture of it, so if I manage to get a hold of the picture I will add it to the others.

After dinner we went to a street called Texas street. It is known to be a little shady. There is a lot of Russian influence and any Koreans there were likely to speak Russian over Korean. It lived uo to its reputation as the vibe I felt down that street was much different then other parts of Korea i was used to. People were almost too friendly and persistent as far as selling us their goods goes. We decided to stop for a drink at a pub called London bar, or London club depending on which sign you read.

Inside it looked quite mellow, as far as the seats and tables went. The rest of the place however didn't seem to match the look. They played club music and there were neon lights. It sounded like a night club, but there wasn't a dance floor for you to dance on. Before we entered the club/pub, some man I believe to be part Korean part Russian approached us. "Hello Friends, I have what you need" he said to us. I'd be interested in what exactly he thought we needed, but we did not inquire, just said no thanks and continued walking. At this point we can only guess. Hookers? Drugs? Cotton Candy? I have no idea.

After our drink at the London Club/pub we headed back to Busan station to catch the KTX back to Daegu. I bought some more Mekju for the train ride home and that sums up my trip to Busan.

Hanging Out With Koreans

2008-02-25T07:55:00.000-08:00

I have made quite a few friends here in Korea and seem I have found myself in a social circle of sorts. The friends I have made here are fantastic, not unlike the ones I have back in Ontario...perhaps thats because a lot of them are from Ontario themselves. There are a few from the states as well as some I know from England.

I'm in Korea yet everyone I know seems to be a foreigner as well. The Koreans I do know either hang out with the other foreigners I hang out with, or I work with them. To be fair, it is very difficult to make friends when there is a language barrier.

This weekend I took a step in getting over that hump. A few weeks ago on the sub way ride to a buddies for the weekly poker game I sat beside a Korean. Surprise surprise, there was a Korean on the subway! Being nosy I noticed that this person was studying English so I struck up a conversation.

The Korean could speak a little English, but it was an obvious struggle. I relayed the information about where I was from and found out we both identified ourselves as 22, although my Korean age was technically 23 (and since has been moved up to 24). We exchanged e mail addresses and attempted e mailing back and forth. The language barrier was in the way for that as well.

I had my Korean friend from the school I work at translate an email and I emailed back my cell. While in Seoul for new years I got a text in Korean. A friend I went with knows how to speak Korean half decently so I asked him what it said. He can't read it, just speak it. Well at this point, I have learned how to read it so I attempted reading it to him. He said my stumbling s sounded like I was saying Happy New Year...which actually made perfect sense.

So I replied on the weekend and tried to see if we could meet up at some point. That occurred this Sunday. I met up with the Subway Korean, her boy friend and another friend of hers. They treated me to dinner at a Korean restaurant where I had Dunkas (thats what it sounded like they were calling it) and rice.

I brought my Lap Top with me and while we waited for dinner I showed them pictures of my family and house back home. I got my brother Tom to take the pictures the day before, so the ground was covered in snow which to them was quite impressive. Unfortunately, I think it may have shocked them even more to see all the grass that was underneath the snow as grass here is so rare! If you find it in parks its roped off so you can't walk on it...let alone play Frisbee on it!

In showing the pictures I was able to pick up some Korean words that I have tried to note in my memory banks. Some comments I will share with you on my pictures were the big house and the big family. Also, how beautiful Paula and Shera are...and they commented on my no beard in the pictures I was in.

I am going to start studying Korean a little harder as i only have 9 more months to learn. I had a lot of fun Sunday despite the difficulty both parties had in trying to express to the other their thoughts. I am pretty sure they enjoyed themselves as well as I exchanged contact information with both the 2 new people I met. I imagine there will be future gatherings with more language and culture exchange.

Korea Drama TV

2008-02-22T20:45:00.000-08:00

So, I am kinda ashamed to admit that I got addicted to Korean drama's. At least one series anyways. When I went to the LIKE school's essay and debate competition a few weeks back, someone told me about a site that streams Korean TV and movies (with sub titles).

The site name was very easy to remember, mysoju.com. Soju is the alcoholic beverage of choice by many Koreans and foreigners alike. Its quite similar to vodka, except its so much cheaper. At a variety store you can buy it for about $1.50. Makes the site easy to remember.

So I decided to try it out. Maybe I would have something to talk about with some of my students. I started watching one series, and I could not stop watching until it was finished. It was like a good book that you can't put down.

I'll briefly describe it...it started out with 3 lady's who were unmarried and each had children. One of the father's was around and spent time with the 3 little girls. His family was well off and his father wanted nothing to do with the poor lady who mothered his son's child. The man gets into a car accident and completely losses his memory.

The guys father comes to the mother of his sons child (whom has some disease) and gives her enough money to live her life with her daughter, and tells her to never associate with him or his son again. This makes her very sick and the trauma of it all ends up killing her.

The other two lady's are in a lot of trouble owing money to loan sharks and end up stealing the money. They also abandon the little girl at a train station at the age of 4. The rest of the series takes place 15 and 20 years later when fate brings the girl they abandoned back into their lives while her father begins to regain his memory and look for her.

Great series and highly recommended. If you click here you can watch the first part of episode 1 and decide for yourself.

The Giant Buddha

2008-02-19T08:09:00.000-08:00

On the first day of my 3 day new year holiday I had planned on climbing Mount Palgongsan, another Mountain within the city, with some peeps. We also wanted to visit some of the sanctuaries and holy grounds of the Buddhist religion...but perhaps most importantly we wanted to see the biggest statue of Buddha in the world!

We had no idea the size of adventure this was, and had decided to meet around 11 at the main bus terminal. The bus ride to the mountain was quite a trip in itself and trying to find proper directions to get to the temple area was another difficulty altogether.

Pal-gong-san.
"Yongsan?"
Noooooo Paaaal-Goooong-Saaaaan!
"Yongsan?"

Errrrrr. Mountain (hand motions for something very tall).
"Yongsan?"
I finally resorted to looking up mountain in my handy pocket dictionary and showing it to him.
"ah Palgongsan?"
I swear to god that was exactly what we were saying, or a lot friggen closer then Yongsan. A lot of Koreans don't seem to throw us a bone when our pronunciation is a little off. A little frustrating. When Koreans randomly talk to me to practice their English, I can figure out what they want to say if its close. Perhaps that has something to do with me trying to teach English and them not trying to teach Hangul.
Anyways, I took a lot of pictures that you can find here, if you have me on facebook you have probably already checked them out. Not a whole lot more to post on the days activities. We visited some sanctuaries but didn't have enough time to actually do any mountain climbing. Hopefully some other time. There are a few other mountains in this area I want to tackle as well.

A couple interesting anecdotes from the climb were regarding the munks. There are pictures of a holy stone path that we had to hop over as only Munks were supposed to step on it. It was right near all the balloony lantern things. Also, someone was about to use their cell phone but thought it may be rude. They ended up using it hoping no harm would be done. A few minuetes later we found a Munk using a cell phone as well and didn't feel as bad.

Adding to Seoul

2008-02-14T05:26:00.000-08:00

I'd just like to add to my post on Seoul about Namdaemun. Thats a link to it on Wikepedia.

I'm not sure if anyone has heard, but early Monday morning it was burned to the ground. Its a historic site in Korea, known as the Sothern gates. It was built in 1398. It is near Seoul station and I actually drove past it in the taxi on my way to and from the casino...just days before it burned down.

I had no idea what it was at the time, I only knew that I drove past it when I wikedpedia'd pictures of it. Pretty nuts. I would not have seen it had I come a week later...or not fully standing anyways.

KTX To Seoul

2008-02-12T08:07:00.000-08:00

For Sonar (Chinese New Year) I hopped on a train with some poker buddies to hit up the casino in Seoul.

This was my first time leaving Daegu since I arrived on December 5th. We caught the 8:30 AM KTX train to Seoul station thursday morning. A KTX is much like a normal train, except its on higher ground and it reaches higher speeds. At times we were going 290 MPH. Nuts!

On the ride, while flying through the country side, I saw the non city version of Korea. Tons of mountains, and very good scenery. Korea really is a beautiful country. It was also cool how the KTX went through tunnels in the mountains.

Once we arrived in Seoul we immediately took a taxi from Seoul station to the Walker Hill Casino. During the cab ride I came to realize Seoul was no small city! Chit chat at the poker table reaffirmed that. There are 9 sub way lines there and they are working on a 10th! Blows Daegu's 2 line system out of the water.

Daegu is easily the biggest city I have ever lived in at roughly 3 million people. To compare, thats slightly bigger then Toronto's 2.5 million. Seoul on the other hand is the 2nd largest city in the world and sits at roughly 10 million. The GTA is only 5.5! Seoul National Capital Area, GTA's equivalent, sits around 23 million!

Needless to say, it was a long taxi ride to the casino...but an even longer ride back the next afternoon. Easiest way to put my casino experience was I got greedy. I was up quite a bit of money at one point...and then I lost it all and then some. Oh well such is life. One of my partners in crime was worse off. He left his wallet in the cab by accident so was down before he even started...and that was only a sign of what was to come.

Anyways, I took some pictures of the Korean country side and Seoul. I will make them available when I talk about the temples I visited next time.

Happy New Year!

2008-02-10T06:29:00.000-08:00

This past week was Sonar new year, or Chinese new year. It is a big holiday here in Korea and as I result I got 3 days off. Most people got 5 days off, but I wasn't quite as lucky.

All in all it was a pretty decent break...not that I felt I needed one as I do enjoy my job. I was mistaken before about how people in Korea age on July first...it is new years however not the new years I am used to recognizing. Now I would be officially considered 24...which is too old in my books. I don't really like being 22, but thats the age I still tell people.

I did a couple different things over the break beyond just sitting on my arse and relaxing. I went to Seoul for a day and also visited some Buddhist temples. Those stories deserve their own blog entries however and you can look forward to reading them in the upcoming week.

On the Tuesday night, after completing classes for the week, a much needed trip down town was needed for celebratory drinking. I thought down town would be hopping due to most teachers having the same mind set...but not so much.

Instead we ended up drinking near down town the remaining alcohol from a party and exploring the wonderful world of youtube. Bas Rutten was a favorite...and naturally it brought out the aggression in some of us (I'm sure the shot of 151 helped a little). We started horsing around a lot, me only partially involved. The other 2 were more of the same size, and well the end result ended with one of them looking like a Panda bear. Glad I don't have to explain that to my director.

We went for food afterwards and I ordered Bulgogi and rice and was able to continue my progression in the wonderful world of using chop sticks.

The Norabong

2008-02-03T05:04:00.000-08:00

Thursday morning I got up early to watch an essay writing and debate competition at Grand Hotel that was put on by my school and some of my students participated in. It wasn't too bad. The kids at Manchon (my directors brothers school, and where I work on the weekend) are far ahead of the kids I am used to teaching.

I helped judge some of the debate competition and by that I mean I sat there while other people judged them. It was well worth it as the director at Manchon took us all out to TGI Fridays. I had to leave before desert to ensure I caught the internet guy at my apartment for 3 o clock.

On Friday night I went to communes for the bi-weekly trivia and it was the start of a pretty solid night. The theme for trivia was the 80's and I am proud to say that I contributed this week unlike the other weeks. Some of the questions I was able to assist in were the full names of the gang from Saved by the Bell, the name Snake, Wheels and Joey's band on Degrassi high among others. Two surprises in the Trivia was a question I got, and a question I had a brain fart on. The question I got asked the first music video played on MTV. I'm not sure why, but I knew it was Video Killed the Radio star. My brain fart came moments after I told someone there weren't enough sports questions. Where was Sidney Crosby from? I knew I'd know it if I heard it but for the life of me couldn't think of Cole Harbor. Still mad at myself for that one.

After trivia and drinking we decided to hit up a norabong. It translates to singing room. It's karaoke but quite unlike what I was used to in Canada. This place had many private rooms, so the only people that you hear singing are the people you come with. You control the songs that get played and it is a good time. I had a ton of fun. I don't remember all the songs that were sung but I do remember singing Barbies part in Barbie Girl by Aqua. I also seem to recall spice girls.

After the Norabong the girls left for home and the guys headed to the frog which is a dance club. We did some dancing and then grabbed some food. I ordered some Bulgogi and we called it a night. I took a cab home even though I could have taken the sub way as it started running again.

Still without Internet

2008-01-30T04:11:00.000-08:00

I still have not been set up with the internet, but I rely on it for a lot of things so I find it impossible to stay completely away.

I've been hitting up PC Bongs twice a day or more. Checking my email and of course the latest in the world of hockey and baseball. I mean where would my life be if I couldn't tell you about the big trade that sent Johan Santana to the New York Mets (and perhaps more importantly out of the AL central division)? Or that the leafs once again lost and a rebuilding phase is seeming more and more likely evervday? I'll say thats about time too.

I need the internet to know all Mats Sundin's possible trade destinations. I really hope its not Ottawa. I have decided I am cheering for Sundin to win a cup this year...and if that means cheering on the hated sens so be it...at the same time my pick would be Calgary or Vancover.

Anyways, those are only a few of my internet obligations. These obligations have brought me into school early today, and have made me stay late while accessing the internet on my own lap top.

I have one comment to make on school so far this week. We had a complaint about the marking of a childs book in my alphabet class. My director/boss approached me with the issue and I told him I never even made the kids do the exercises let alone marked their book. Apparently I should have let them know if they were right or not.

That was not exactly the problem. Delaine, the other foreign teacher figured the issue out. In Korea, for whatever reason, they circle things the students do that are correct, and they check mark incorrect work! So any markings she made would have given the Korean parents the opposite impression!

I double checked to see if this was right by actually marking my next classes work. Normally when its correct I say 'good' and when its not correct I say...well I say good as well but point out their errors and have them fix it right away. The check marks definitely threw the kids off a bit so I had to explain how we mark in Canada.

Live from the PC Bong!

2008-01-26T03:16:00.000-08:00

So I said my next post would be about the new apartment, but I wanted to take pictures of it and post them. Because I am without internet for the time being, posting the pictures and a proper apartment post will have to wait.

Instead, I come at you live from the PC Bong pretty much across the street from my new apartment.

A PC bong is a room full of computers where people are able to use the internet. It is pretty popular in Korea. I am one of the very few actually looking at websites. Most of the people in here are playing online games. A lot of them are hardcore. I've heard from some of my Korean students how addicting these places can become. Some kids and even young adults spend all of their spare time in these places. I can believe it. I lived with someone who was the same way, you would almost love this place Ben. It just lacks one thing, and funny enough it's in the name! You can find at least 1 PC bong on pretty much every block.

They are pretty easy to use. You grab a card with a number when you enter, then you enter the number into the computer and it starts keeping track of the time you spent using the computer. The only troubles I am having is most of the websites automaticly give your options to you in Hangul (Korean characters) and while I can kind of read what it says, I don't know what it means.

After I got myself all moved into the apartment, I headed down town to meet some friends. This was the first event I semi-organized...and it was a pretty good success! We went to play some ultimate frisbee. Felt so good to play again. I'd like to say I wow'd people with my mad skills, but I'm not so sure.

It was a pretty cool day. I met a few new people, including someone I started emailing to organize the game. She left a notice on a bulletin board at the local bar about frisbee and I came a knocking...errr emailing rather. It was also the introduction of the wonderful world of frisbee to 2 Korean friends who had never even thrown one before. It's not a common activity in Korea. I tried finding a frisbee in a couple places with no success. I really regrett not bringing one with me. I'm hoping it becomes a regular event with the ones who do have a frisbee.

Moving Day

2008-01-25T07:03:00.000-08:00

Earlier this week I was informed that I would be moving Saturday Morning to an apartment just a 5 minute walk away from my school. It will be a lot more convenient that's for sure.

I'm not really sure what exactly is being moved. I mean I only have a limited amount of things, but there are pieces of furniture that were already in the apartment for my use. It may be a safe assumption that that is all coming with me.

On Wednesday before I went to work I had a very random door knocking. Some Korean lady showed up and when I answered she spoke non stop it seemed in Korean to me. I don't understand I said...after I blank stared at her like my kids do to me when I ask them a question. I didn't know how to say I didn't understand in Korean, but I thought she would get the point by the lack of my response in her language.

Eventually she got her cell phone out and called someone. As she spoke with this person I was thinking ok are you going to get out of the way so I can close the door? Clearly this isn't the right place. After she hung up she proceeded to talk to me a mile a minute in Korean.

Whoa. I thought we already established I don't understand you! Continued blank stare (from me).

Then she tries to walk by me into the house. I'm thinking uhhhh what are you doing? You can't come in. I have no clue who the hell you are and my house is a mess. So I stand there and give her the 'wtf' look and wait until she gets the picture. She finally does and allows me to close the door...and she knocks on the next suckers door. At least they will be able to understand her.

I assumed she needed to use the washroom after she couldn't find the person she was looking for...that is until today the director confirmed I was moving tomorrow and told me if someone comes to see the house I let them in to look around.

Ohhhhh that's what she wanted in for. My bad. My next blog post will likely be about the new apartment.

Random Koreans and Mockoli

2008-01-21T09:32:00.000-08:00

So, my weekend finally consisted of some new Koreanesk things that my blog has been lacking in recent posts. Not much mind you, but a bit.

One day while walking to work someone ran up from behind me and asked if he could walk with me. I didn't realize he was a secretary at the school I worked at at first because I assumed the guy at the school didn't speak English. I found out that he took the job so he would get a chance to practice English. His English name is Shane and I don't remember what he said his Korean name was. He's a nice enough guy and I've invited him to hang out with me next time I head down town.

On Friday, it was supposed to be trivia once again at communes, but after work I decided to make what seems to be my daily trip to McDonald's. I ordered spicy chicken strips and as if that wasn't hot enough for the Koreans it comes with spicy chili dip sauce. I didn't take a straw because I don't usually use them but the guy next to me in line thought I had forgot and brought me one and sat down beside me.

He then asked why I didn't get a burger and showed me the coupon book that came with them. He was talking in English, and it was not half bad, clearly he sat beside me to practice. I answered him and eventually he asked if he could ask me some questions. We talked for the whole meal, taking turns telling each other about work and what not. When he found out I was a teacher at a hog wan he made a comment that I didn't understand at first.

He said I must be very what I thought to make out as popular without exact 'p' sounds. I didn't understand how popular fit in the context so I got him to repeat. He repeated and wrote it down. He did mean popular...and then he said "you, very handsome" in which case it made sense. I don't think I have ever heard another man say I was handsome...and mean it. I thanked him regardless, got his contact information before I headed home to prepare for trivia.

On my way home I got a text message (not sure if I mentioned I got a cell phone yet...its hard to use cuz it's all in Korean!) that informed me that it didn't look like trivia was going down. Not with the usuals anyways. Instead I went to a restaurant to meet a friend and some new people. Here I tried mockoli. It's a Korean rice wine, it wasn't bad. I thought the taste resembled medicine. I'll have to try it again sometime...and more of it as i only had a couple cups. Two guys at the table beside us also made a comment on my good looks. They apparently really liked the shape of my nose.

The taxi ride home sucked. The drivers didn't understand me and thinking I was good enough to get home I didn't bring my sheet with directions. The first guy started driving me and eventually I got fed up with him asking where Sin Dang Post office was I got out of the cab because clearly he didn't know where he was going. The next cabbie took me to the wrong post office! I was steaming at that point and I may have yelled at him and he tried again. I was breathing heavy the whole way trying to contain my rage. His second try was on the money and the cost came to a little over 10000 won...but he gave me 1000 back from the 10000 I gave him because of his screw up...even if it was partly my fault because my pronunciation sucks.

Camp Songs!

2008-01-19T09:42:00.000-08:00

So, I mentioned the class before I was going to teach them a camp song next class, and that was me with a lot of grumblings...once they all understood me.

"Whatttt? Noooooo!"

I insisted it would be fun. So I didn't back down from my promise. Once the days lesson was completed I say stand up....and thats mixed with puzzlement. Why did I want all 6 of them to stand up?

I explained I was going to teach them a camp song. That made them want to stand up less. I insisted it would be fun and had one girl half way standing and then sitting when she realized no one else was. I finally gave up and was like ok, you can sing and do the actions sitting down...someone spoke Korean and they all slowly stood. It was cute.

So I start with the actions I kind of know...The princess Pat...and am repeated. They kind of laugh that I'm going full out on these actions and they are probably aware that at times I forgot the proper actions.

"Yay thats the princess pat"
"Yay thats the princess pat"

"The songs over now"
"The Songs over now"

"You can sit down"
"You can sit down"

"You can stop repeating me now"
"You can stop repeating me now (giggles)"

"No really, the songs over"
"No really the songs over"

"What did you think of it"
"what did you think of it"

"Did you like it"
"did you like it"

"was it fun"
"was it fun"

"Yes?"
"Yes?"

"no?"
"no"

"Supercalafragalisticexpealidotious...haha!"
"(look of puzzlement).....haha!"

And it went on like that for a good while before I decided I might as well sing another song. So I sang the other day I met a bear song...until I didn't know anymore lyrics. Then I tried to get them to stop repeating me again until the bell rang.

So as you can see I have a class full of comedians. All 6 of them were repeating me...it wasn't just one or two smart asses. Very cute too. I'm sure I could have got them to stop if I used my "Teacher" voice, but I didn't know what to do the rest of class anyways...and they were speaking English even if it was repeating everything I said.

Once the bell rang and they all said bye I asked a couple as they left if the song was fun and they both said yes....so the next class I had with them we sang Tarzan...and I think I'll teach them the great big moose song next.

Poker Night Again

2008-01-18T10:59:00.000-08:00

To continue on with the last posts theme that I'm not differing from Canada all that much, I'll talk about my most recent Poker Night.

Last Wednesday was my 3rd time taking part in Poker with the Poker in Daegu crew. I actually knew about the weekly poker game before I left Canada thanks too good ole reliable face book. I googled Poker in Daegu and thats exactly what I came up with, a weekly poker game.

The first week I lost 40 bucks, which wasn't a very good first impression to leave on my new poker comrades, but sometimes that ends up being a long term benefit. I don't think that was the case at all for the next 2 outings, but I definitely fared a lot better.

Week 2 I stayed pretty much even the whole night, jumping a bit back and forth. We announce last hand for the night and I look down at a pretty good hand with A J. I raise that shit! Unfortunately, Kevin goes over the top all in which I barely cover if I make the call.

My rationale for calling was probably pretty weak. I figured he was in the lead at this point, the only question I had was did I have 2 over cards, or just the one? I called because I counted the money I brought there as lost anyways...which as a rule of thumb is the way to go entering a game of poker as to stay away from losing money you can't afford to lose.

Haven't always stuck to it, but I try to as often as possible, especially being in a foreign land. Buddy ended up having KK, and I needed an A to win the hand.

First card on the flop was my beloved A, but the second card was the dreaded King. Another A would give him a boat, but because the Q was the 3rd it game me some tens as outs. With the turn another Q, it gave him the boat and made any straight I caught junk anways.

And on the river? Another A giving me a bigger boat. Ok, so as much as I like to say there is a skill to poker, it was not evident there and its impossible to deny the luck factor.

That put me up to about 45, a 25 profit for the night...and about a 15 loss on the year.

That brings us to last Wednesday. The cards were definately coming my way that night, but perhaps more importantly, I was doing the right things with them. I was folding at the appropriate times and I was calling down peoples bluffs when I had mediocre hands but there was a lot on the board that could beat me.

I was also making some good reads and putting some of my own bluffs out there as well.

When we announced 3 hands left, I was sitting at about 70 and someone made the comment that I was definately up on the night. My reply was assuming I don't lose 70 in the next 3 hands.

I did quite the opposite. First hand I flop a straight and get paid off as the same guy with cowboys the time before rivered 2 pair. The very next hand, or second last hand I flop 2 pair and turn a boat...beating the same guys straight. Tough luck for him.

I ended up leaving with 161 more then I arrived with. Twas a good night...and really no different from those Peterborough nights.

The Weekend

2008-01-17T07:14:00.000-08:00

Ok, I am slacking hardcore on the posts here. Once again, I feel I have adapted a bit to living here and I don't really have any stories that I feel are as exciting or as new of experiences as the first month.

But alas, people have started to complain about how infrequent I make posts these days. I know that I've been pretty lazy, but do we really need to hear about the things that I am doing here, that don't really differ from my University days?

I mean, last weekend I did some drinking. I got hung over. I recovered and drank some more. That's really not much different from my days at Trent.

To add to that, last night I played some poker, I won some money...how is that different from school?

I guess I will dedicate this post to my weekend and try to outline any key differences I find from weekends in Canada.

Alright, so the weekend started on Friday night...who'd have thought? I called Anne when I got home from work around 9:30 to see what the plan for the night was. I was told to meet in 45 minutes at communes, a favorite foreigner bar of the group of friends I hang out with. It took me about an hour to get there, but all was good. We had some drinks there while we waited for others to trickle in.

At first it was a small group of people which was nice for socializing. I told everyone I wasn't staying out too too late as I wanted to be up at 9am for a class my school offered for free. The class was Korean lessons which I was quite excited about taking. As more people came we decided to go to a restaurant close by as many people had not eaten yet.

At the restaurant we ordered Pork which we barbecued right at our tables...something more common in Korea then I recall back home. It was an opportunity to see if the practice with chop sticks had paid off. Success I was able to use them to feed myself pork! I also ate a bit of fried Kimchi, which I really have no idea what is. I don't really like it, but it doesn't make me gag so it is ok. I think it is better fried as well.

We forgot to order beer with our food, but luckily there is a little button at each table you can press to summon the waiter. Mike summoned him over and ordered some beer for the 4 of us at that table and we had beer with our BBQ'd pork! Mike also had a menu and I tried reading some of the things on it. Mek Ju and So Ju....Beer and well, So Ju. It's a really cheap Korean alcohol kind of like vodka and usually made from rice. I got props for being able to read so well for being here only a month.

After eating we headed back to communes for some pitchers of beer. At around 3am everyone decided it was time to head to Thunder Birds at which point I decided it was time to head home so I could wake up for my Korean class in the morning.

I didn't make it. My alarm either didn't go off, or I didn't hear it, or I unknowingly woke up and turned it off and went back to sleep. I woke up around 9:45 and it takes around 45 minutes to get there, so I probably wouldn't be able to make it until 11. I was not even sure how long it was, but I found out later it was a 3 hour class. 1 hour would probably not have been worth my effort. I just went back to sleep and woke up around 1pm.

Later that Saturday, I met a guy I play poker with and some of his friends at Hotel Ariana. They have a band that plays there Saturdays and they offer an all you can eat buffet along with all the beer you can drink from 5-9. We showed up at 5. Unfortunately I had to work at 9am Sunday and this was something I definitely couldn't miss so I vowed to take er easy. I did not indulge in all the beer I could drink but I did eat perhaps more food then I had in my stay in Korea so far. I also did drink a decent quantity of beer, I just paced myself and let food absorb it a little better then I normally do.

It too was a good night. Enjoyed the company of some new people...mostly Brits actually. The regular crew I hang out with are mostly Canadian....mostly from Ontario at that. There are a couple Americans and a couple Koreans as well. I spent a lot of time practicing the chop sticks and believe I am steadily improving.

Once 9 o'clock hit and they expected us to pay for our drinks we headed down town. I went for a drink with one of the Brits at communes before I caught the Sub Way and was home before mid night.

I made it to work half an hour early and they put me to work right away. I spent 8 hours editing and grading the papers and assignments that the kids had written. Fun. It wasn't that bad actually. Surprisingly I can actually sit and do work hours straight when I am getting paid to do it. I was also fed lunch. I once again used chop sticks and I pretty much ate the pork. And by that I mean I only ate pork and I ate most of it. I hope the others didn't want any.

My Pen Pal Class

2008-01-13T07:42:00.000-08:00

Once again it is time to talk about my Gss class, or YeNa and company.

I had arranged for 4 friends from back in Canada to write to my four adorable girls in my Gss class. I gave no idea what Gss stands for, thats just the name of the class. Alyssa, Paula, Keely and Angie all took on a pen pal for me (thanks ladies!), e mailed me a letter which I gave them a very specific lesson/level based format that wanted it in. It was this (replacing my information with their own of course):

Dear (Korean pen pals name),

Today is Monday January 14. My name is Andy, I am from Canada. I have 4 sisters and 1 brother. My birthday is September 3rd. I am 22 in Canada, how old am I in Korea?

My fathers job is a custodian, he cleans schools.

And then I asked for a sentence or 2 on how they knew me.

Unfortunately, things didn't run as smoothly as planned. The first day I had the letters ready 2 of the girls were absent and there was a new student. I had to find another pen pal before I could carry on with the lesson. Thats where my friend Khoi (thanks man) came into play. He was glad to have a chance to do this for me.

Once I had Khoi's letter for the next class, I yet again ran into a couple more obstacles. First, because the school had been changing things around so much, we received a new book without having to review the old one. I designed the letters to work as a review...but I was not going to let that stop me from doing the lesson. There was yet another new student however so I had to delay the lesson once again. Instead of finding someone to write the newest member of the Gss class, I just wrote a letter to her myself and filled in my brothers information.

Finally, last Thursday I was able to carry out the plan at last. It was a little more difficult then I had originally anticipated. They have all shown they can read most of those sentences in the past, but usually it was one or two at a time. I think this may have been a little overwhelming for them. Some of the words they were also not used to, like the names and place everyone was from...and the jobs and their descriptions.

I decided to split the writing and reading up into 2 lessons so that it was not too much work for them in one class. They already work 10 times harder then my other classes so I wanted to give them a bit of a break. It was a good call on my part as the next day it pretty much took the whole class to write back.

I also asked them if they wanted to receive a letter back and continue to be pen pals and they all said yes. At least I am pretty sure they knew what I was asking them. All in all it looked to be a pretty good success!

Hectic school days

2008-01-10T08:48:00.000-08:00

So, not a whole lot going on here. No new unique stories as I am feeling more settled and getting used to the Korean way of life.

The school has been hectic this week as many students have shifted classes and books. More appropriate for their levels I hope. Warnings have also been sent out and students have been split up from the trouble makers they feed off of.

That reduces the struggle of teaching. The classes haven't been as stressful as a result. I'm also getting in a routine and figuring out ways in which to make the lesson last the whole 45 mins. If there is ever time left I can always resort to hang man.

I'll end this entry off with a mention of my beard-esk face. I had it briefly while in Canada but shaved it off just before I came. The Korean students are transfixed by it. At first I didn't know what exactly they were getting at, but later I was informed that very few Koreans can actually grow facial hair like that. It's nuts because mine is very thin, yet its an added thing of envy for them, along with my blue eyes and my light colored hair!

Ice Skating and Stupidity

2008-01-05T22:33:00.000-08:00

On Friday there was a buzz about a group of people deciding to go ice skating, which naturally made me excited...until I realized the intended day was Saturday afternoon.

I've worked 7 plus hours the last 2 Saturdays so I assumed it was the norm. That was not the case however. I ended up having to start work at 10:30, at my normal school. That meant I'd be done before 1 which was when the skating was going down. I informed others of my new intentions on going skating at communes trivia night while having some beers.

Of course, I am smart enough to bring the sheet of paper that says where I live in Korean pretty much every where I go, but I don't want to have to rely on it for a year. With these intentions in mind, I practiced saying where I live and was corrected by a Korean at the bar. I managed to get home without having to resort to the directions. Sounds pretty petty, but I am damn proud!

Skating was awesome, 7 bucks each got us on the ice and gave us unlimited skating time. It also included renting skates. The skates sucked and I wish I had my skates from back home, but they did the trick. I met everyone there right after work so I locked my bag and glasses in the locker.

I wiped out huge once because I was going too fast and trying to do cross overs while trying to avoid people because it was crowded there.

When we finally had our fill of ice skating (and it felt awesome to be on the ice once again!) I went to my locker, unlocked it with a key and grabbed my stuff. We then headed down town for some Indian food. I was kind of disappointed that there were no chop sticks, I wanted to see if I have improved at all!

I had some spicy rice and chicken thing while everyone else had curry. It was ok, but I probably only ate half of it and I kinda wished I tried the curry. It looked half decent. On our way out of the restaurant I put my change in my pockets and felt something that made me stop in bewilderment. My key didn't feel like it usually did.

I pulled it out and it was not my house key. It was the key to locker 62 at the ice skating place. I definitely put a key in the locker at the ice skating place...which must mean it was my house key! Shebahl! I had to catch a cab back to the ice skating place and get my key out of locker 62.

Hilarious!....but stupid at the same time. Pretty embarrassing as well. I've felt stupid in Korea before, but it usually had something to do with the language barrier...not solely my ineptness.

Korea so far.

2008-01-02T01:59:00.000-08:00

I left for Korea exactly a month ago, even though it feels like I have been here a lot longer. I wouldn't even be able to list all the things I have learned and noticed while being here.

It is however becoming a bit of a routine. I don't even have to think twice at the direction I go when I am leaving the sub way station...in fact, on the way to work if I am in a hurry I know the exact train door to exit that will get me the closest to the stairs to the street level.

Public transit also runs without the annoyances it brought to me back in Canada. I used to always find myself listening to peoples stupid ass conversations. Never caring what they had to say but still being unable to block their words out. It annoyed me so much because I didn't care about their conversations and I felt bad just listening to them as well.

Here I don't have the problem of listening intently because I don't understand what anyone is saying. I don't need an MP3 player blasting in my ears blocking out random conversations because the conversations here are just noise to me.

On the rare time I do hear English, I am too excited to be annoyed. I'll open my eyes wide and roll up my sleeves in hopes they notice my skin is white, or that my eyes are light colored. People seem to love that here. I have had a student tell me he envies me for my light colored hair and blue eyes. What do you say to that? I think I just kind of laughed awkwardly.

I went to get a hair cut for the first time here in Korea today, and on my way someone asked me for directions. Well, at least I think thats what she wanted to know. She mentioned 'U che Guk' which is one of the few words I recognize. It means post office and I was able to point it out to her, it was just down the street.

The only reason I know U che Guk is because thats what I try to tell the cab drivers when they take me home after the sub way stops running. "Shin Dang U che Guk" I say and usually they don't understand so I hand them a piece of paper that says it in Korean.

I have managed to get home in a cab without that sheet of paper though. Not sure how as it was after a night of drinking, and the second try to boot. I think I ended up naming the University which is the area and the name of my sub way stop. Cabbie's also tend to drive even if they don't know where they are going. Drive first ask questions later. If they don't start driving you, they don't get any money. So I pointed to the road signs that said Kyemyeong University and eventually he figured out I wanted the U che Guk.

I wandered around a little bit yesterday too, traveling up and down side streets seeing what was interesting in my area. Right near the hair cutting place I went to, and pretty much right on my way to work I found a batting cage. That was pretty exciting and to top it off it only cost 500 won, or 50 cents! I tried it out after I got my hair cut...and I suck! But, at 50 cents a pop I can afford to practice, which I am quite sure I will.

Oh How we Age!

2007-12-31T21:59:00.000-08:00

Although I have been in Korea, I feel as though I have aged tremendously.

I went from a young fresh 22 year old dude, who could still get away with being considered young, to an older mid 20's guy. I am now considered to be 24 here.

Age works differently in Korea. Basically they count the 9 months you were in your mothers womb as a year, so you are born 1 year old. You also age a year, not on your birthday, but on January 1st.

So automatically, by stepping into Korea I was a year older. So, instead of 22, I was 23. With the new year coming in now I would be considered to be 24.

Yeah, seems a little strange. The Korean kids always have trouble giving me their age...because they are unsure if I want their Korean age or their North American age. So every child in my school is now a year older, and the age they tell me from now on is going to be 2 years ahead of the kids back home unless they were born early in the year. Its not too different from the way the schooling works as December 31st is the deadline for kids in the same grade, atleast in Ontario.

I also double checked my understanding with a native Korean who speaks English fluently. A child born on December 31st would be considered 2 years old, when they are also just one day old.

No one really expects me to consider myself 24 and I am certainly not going to go around boasting it. It is just the case had I been Korean, I'd be 24 now.

It's tradition to make a New Years Resolution...and I never do. Perhaps I will make a couple this year however. The first is the cliche of going to the gym. Not to lose weight of course as my already slim physique likely has if anything shrunk now that I have no money and am once again living on my own...without my normal fast food options readily available.

It will give me something to do during the day before work and help me stay active and not feel like a lazy pile. I'm also exploring finding some sort of recreational sport. I'm hoping to find someone willing to toss the baseball around or a Frisbee. Any sport works for me actually. The more competitive the better.

My second would be to learn some Korean. Before I leave this place next December, I want to be able to have a basic conversation with some random person on the street. People will be quite willing, I have found many people try to ask me questions, I assume about where I am from and things along that nature, but I am unable to respond.

At least, I assume thats what they are saying to me. For all i could know they could be telling me I need to bathe, I have something in my teeth or my face is messed up.

I can count to ten and thats about the extent of my Korean so far. I can only progress from here, and I am sure in 11 months I'll have picked up a bit more. I think a big step will be to learn how to read hangul, Korean characters or letters. Once I am able to read things hopefully I'll be able to figure out wht they are.

Mt Apsan

2007-12-27T06:14:00.000-08:00

Last Sunday, I met some friends down town to embark on an adventure to climb one of the smaller mountains in Daegu. A good introductory hike. What is a meeting without me getting lost first? I was smart enough to bring a cell number with me and found myself a pay phone and called others to inform them once again of my directional handicap.

We ended up needing to take 3 cabs to the bottom of the mountain. I was in the first cab to arrive with another relatively new guy and someone on their second contract. While we waited for the others he taught us how to count in Korean.

It was also his idea to climb the mountain and he organized it amongst the group going up. I also quickly realized that I was ill prepared. I mistakingly wore my winter jacket (my only jacket really) and a sweater underneath. I didn't have my bag to put either article in so I was stuck carrying them up the whole way.

I'm not going to lie, it was quite the hike. Very tiring, but it felt good to actually get out there and get some exercise. Travis brought his dog with him, Margo. Awesome, friendly dog. If I had a dog, I would want it to be similar to her. She was definitely not used to all the freedom and he even allowed her to go without a leash for a while.

This brought about an understanding on how rules in Korea work. If someone older then you tells you something, your expected to respect their wishes. One wish, relayed to Travis through Kate, a Korean within the group headed up the mountain, was to put the dog back on the leash. Now in spite of their being no rules that said his dog needed to be leashed, Travis complied at Kate's urging. Margo was certainly not going to hurt anyone.

When we finally arrived on top, I was in awe at the sites. We could see the whole city. Gorgeous and well worth the tiring trip. We spent a lot of time at the top, just chilling and wandering around the top where more sites were available to us. I believe you can view my pictures from the mountain sites by clicking here.

While at the top we dined at a restaurant. They served a bunch of Korean food. I stayed outside with a few people and Margo so that Travis could go in and eat. I wasn't really hungry but got urged to try a couple of things that I can not recall their names. One was kind of like Pancakes, but not really. The other was processed fish on a stick.

After the food, we took the cable car back down the mountain. We then returned Margo home and the 5 guys went to mogyoktang which is a sauna, but quite different then any sauna I have ever experienced. In this place, there was a giant room that had many showers, a couple different temperature hot tubs (hot and very hot) a cold waiting pool and some feet like pool. It had a sauna room and a steam sauna room along with a salt room. During this entire experience you are required to be naked, and from young boy to old man, everyone was such.

It was a little uncomfortable to say the least. You get used to it though. While in their there was also a part where people washed each other. Just being naked around a bunch of other naked guys was enough for me, I'm going to avoid contact with others at all costs. It was good though, I felt clean and on top of the world afterwards.

To finish off the day we went to a restaurant for some dalk galbi. I think it translates to spicey chicken barbeque. They weren't kidding about the spicy! I could hardly handle the spicy but it tasted good otherwise. It was chicken mixed with sauce, cheese, noodles and of course, rice. I probably drank a gallon of water with it. I also attempted to use chop sticks again. Again it met very little success...oh unless you measure success by the amount of laughter from the neighboring table of Koreans who have done it since they were in the womb. I can't seem to get a handle on them, and people around me seem to get frustrated watching me. "Just use the spoon Andy, it's ok."

I know its ok, but I still want to be able to do it!

Christmas Memories

2007-12-23T22:32:00.000-08:00

It's kind of surreal that tommorrow is Christmas, yet I will not be seeing any of my family. To ease the shock of it all I am reminded of something a little camper told some of the staff, "keep the memories."

Now to get away from my normal Korean life based posts I have decided to keep the memories. While I still have a few things I could talk about in upcoming blogs, and am sure to add more between now and posting about them, this one is strictly for some Christmas memories.

As kids, we used to get up before Mom and Dad to gawk at all the gifts Santa left under the tree. We would eventually all end up in Laura's room opening the gifts in our stockings, and having an early morning snack of the candy in them. Once we finished with the stockings we felt that was sufficient enough time to let mom and dad sleep and proceeded to wake them up.

Another memory that stands out involved me and my little sister, Paula, on Christmas day one year. Her wild antics got us into a bit of a pickle, where we ended up locked outside without our shoes.

It was a Christmas party for my Grandmas side of the family and it was in a high school. We were pretty young and I should add that it was my antics that caused the memory. Being so small, in such a big high school has a way of making you curious.

The party was like most others, big Turkey dinner was held in one room and the gym was available to play in. Naturally we spent our time going between the 2. In the gym, we weren't allowed to wear outdoor shoes so we had to go in our socks. In between there were a ton of lockers and things an elementry school kid isn't used to. The lockers without locks were perfect for hiding in and jumping out at people to scare them.

The school also had a second floor, which is quite exciting for the young adventurer. My cousin and I were daring enough to brave the upstairs at one point. It was so much cooler then the down stairs. For one, it was a whole floor higher! The lights were also off, and there was no supervision up there. Oh and we weren't supposed to be up there. The door locked behind us so we couldn't get back to the gym section until someone let us back in, but the door was right by the gym so someone could always hear our pleas to be let back in.

Towards the end of the day I decided to be a good big brother and show my sisters some of the up stairs discoveries. When we got back to the door, no one was in the gym because we were all getting ready to go.

No big deal, there were doors leading to the outside right in the hall way, and another door that led directly inside not too far away. It would be ok to go outside in our socks as it was only a short, shoveled distance away.

The problem ended up being that the door was locked. Ok, back to the doors we came out...locked.

Stuck outside in just our socks. I knew for a fact that the door we came in would be unlocked...it was on the other side of the school and the way wasn't shoveled. Having no other choice really, I led Paula through half a foot of snow, only in our socks to the main entrance. Mom and Dad weren't quite sure where we were and probably weren't overly impressed that we trudged through the snow in just our socks.

7 1/2 Hours of Editting!

2007-12-23T05:51:00.000-08:00

A lot has happened in the past few days, and I am going to try and squeeze it into a couple of posts.

As time goes on, I am really starting to feel more and more comfortable here in Daegu. It's starting to feel more and more like home everyday, and the people I have met have definitely helped out a great deal in this regard.

Friday at school we attempted to run a Christmas theme. Christmas here really isn't as big of a deal here as in the Western world...or maybe I should say North America because I really have no idea what it is like anywhere else. I get Monday off, Christmas Eve, which is pretty lucky because most teachers here have to work it.

Our school theme consisted of playing Christmas bingo for one 45 minute session, at least for me anyways. Then it was back to teaching as usual. I didn't have YeNa and company today, but they were at the school for other classes. They made a point of coming in and saying hi to me, so it seems I am doing something right when i teach them.

Saturday I was teaching at another branch of LIKE school and had to be down town for 10-11 am, where I would be transported to the school. They didn't give a specific time and I ended up rolling out of bed with a hang over close to 20 after 10. I'm not sure how I made it to down town in 50 minutes, but I did skip the morning shower and breakfast to do it.

The hang over was a result of Rye and Ginger from the night before. I met some people at Communes, a local foreigner bar and it was Trivia night. I spent over an hour wandering up and down streets in the down town sections trying to locate this bar. Thus I was late and didn't contribute much to the trivia the shorter period of time I was there. The people I was with won though and I joined most of them for more drinks at another foreigner bar; Thunder Birds. After that we went and ate some Korean food, but I don't remember what I ate or how it tasted.

So I show up about 10 minutes later then I should have and the manager at the school gives me 10,000 Won and waves down a taxi and tells the cab driver where to take me. I arrive, apologize to the director at this school who I had been forewarned that he was a bit of a dick, but this isn't apparent during this meeting. He said no problem, found me a stack of essay's that kids had written and asked me to edit them. I also had a few kids come into the room and have me edit their essays, and explain why they needed to make the changes.

I edited essays for roughly an hour and a half when a Korean teacher came in because she had a class in the room I was in. I ended up in the meeting room at the school and the Director gives me a giant text book and asks me to edit it for him.

I was sitting beside another foreign teacher while I was editing this monster and had some small talk with him while he wrote an example essay for one of his classes. The director was also having interviews in the same room with kids and their parents, I think they were new students and he was assessing what their speaking level was.

I spent most of the afternoon editing the textbook in the room while students came in and used the computer beside me or the director ran the class. I had a few breaks where the director would be explaining something to his class and ask me about different types of stereo types from North America. One of them was about the saying that 'White Man Can't Dance'. I also had a couple occasions where I would check someones home work and explain to him what he had done wrong.

The editing was boring to say the least. I couldn't tell you much of what was in it because it got to a point where I was just making sure the sentences made sense and were grammatically correct. Some of the text book was pretty error free, but other parts were simply awful. I only recall one passage from the book because it was a joke that I am not sure Korean kids reading it would get it. It went something like this:

I was driving down the road one night when I saw a farmer just standing in his field. I stopped my car and asked him what he was doing. He told me he was trying to win a Nobel prize. I asked how and he replied that he heard it was given to people out standing in their field.

I had to reread it to make sure I read it right, and then I literally laughed out loud, even though it is pretty lame. Thats what happens when you edit crap for 6 hours straight I guess.

Around 7 o clock the director asked how far I got and sent me on my way. The 7 and a 1/2 hours put me at 31 3/4 hours for the week. If I work more then 120 in the Month I get paid for Overtime, so here's hoping I reach that goal!

By that point, I was very hungry, as was the other foreign teacher who got off at the same time. We shared a cab back down town and hit up the McDonald's for a burger, then exhausted I took the sub way home and just relaxed the rest of the night.

My Classes Are Boring!

2007-12-20T18:22:00.000-08:00

I have been increasingly noticing that my classes are boring, especially for the kids.

I struggle with this because I want to have fun classes. My ideal teaching atmosphere would be one where I'm able to combine both fun and learning. So far I'm not so sure I have been successful with either aspect. A lot of the kids don't co-operate and couldn't care less about learning English. This not only makes my job with them difficult, but they are often bringing the rest of the class down with them.

Its getting to the point where it is borderline stressful. The kids that don't want to be there really get on my nerves. Most of my classes seem to have one or two of these kids as well. The books suck and I'm having difficulty being creative with them. I try to think back to those days in French class, but lets be honest, those classes were mostly in English!

There is still of course at least one exception. You'll notice I have added pictures a couple posts below of that one class I love going to school for. Ye Na, Yun Ji, Hyung Bin and Su Hyung. Feel free to comment which one you think is YeNa as that was a challenge I issued earlier in my blog.

On Thursday I went to school early as I had forgot my lap top cord there the day early and wanted to check my email. About 15 minutes before class started Ye Na and Su Hyung came in and began reading the book to each other. Soon they got out these Country flash cards that had the flags on one side and country information on the other.

They began using these and testing each other on which country was which. I started to join in. Anytime I just guessed an answer I would get the card, whether I was right or not (not was often the case). They were saying the names in Korean so often I didn't know. I was guessing in English so often they didn't know if that was eight either. It was a lot of fun, and got kind of competitive.

There seems to be a lot less complaining from that class as far as work goes. They all seem to want to try to improve their English. The next few classes will be review on the book we just finished. I think I will try to get them to write letters to Canada as a bit of a lesson. I need to recruit 4 people to email me.

I'll end this entry with one question, why can't all my classes be like this one?

Meeting at LIKE

2007-12-19T02:50:00.000-08:00

So, early Tuesday morning all teachers from the branch of LIKE school were required to attend a seminar. Ok, so 10am isn't really that early...but when you have to travel half way across town its early enough.

The meeting started with all the new teachers introducing themselves...which of course included me. One of the girls, Courtney looked eerily familiar. After the introductions took place and there were a couple presentations on ideas regarding how to teach English effectively, we took a five minute break where I decided to see why Courtney looked so familiar.

Turns out she went to Trent...and was in the same year as me! That was a little random and bizarre. Kind of crazy that of all schools she ends up at the same one as me. We chatted a little and found out we knew some of the same people...which isn't really a surprise as Trent is tiny.

Another pretty crazy occurrence, although I didn't realize it at the time, was someone from the small town of Port Dover. I didn't want to ask him if he knew the one person I knew from Port Dover, so I just waited and inquired to my buddy Andrew on MSN if he knew anyone from Dover over here.

Turns out its his cousin. That too I find to be kinda nuts.

After the break, there was another seminar on teaching and a seminar on lesson planning for a Christmas theme. Finally, they served us a turkey dinner. It was quite good, and while I was waiting in line for my turkey I overheard a conversation from a couple of other new teachers. It was about the books that the one, Richard Pennington, had written. The books happened to be sports books.

As you can imagine, that was all I needed to hear before I began to attempt to talk sports with this guy. He wrote triva books for the Yankees, Red Sox and Detroit Red Wings to name a few. We talked most of lunch, a little about our placements at the schools but predominantly about sports...mostly baseball. We talked about steroids in baseball as well and it felt good to be able to have a conversation on such a touchy topic with someone who comprehend it on the same level that I atleast think I can.

I quite enjoyed both the social and food aspect of the dinner. Richard gave me his business card and I checked out his website, www.richardpennington.com quite the interesting read. I'm sure that won't be the last I hear from him.

Who's YeNa?

2007-12-18T18:51:00.003-08:00

Ok, so somehow an empty post in the middle of my blog showed up. I decided to add the photos that these girls finally let me take. They didn't want to be in one pic because two are 10 and the other 2 are 9. Apparently they can't be friends with someone a different age.

I mentioned before that I would let you decide who YeNa was. Go ahead...I also figured out how to allow anyone to comment so feel free to comment regardless of having an account!

Poker Night

2007-12-18T18:51:00.001-08:00

Last Wednesday, I attended a weekly cash poker game hosted by a teacher from a different language school in Daegu, and as always there is more to the story then just that.

I left my house early in the morning trying to find a bank that I was told accepts foreign bank cards. The directions I got were the name of the sub way station and approximately how many blocks it was a way. No street names or anything like that because oh yeah, Daegu doesn't have those! I also got a map that said some of the things in the area that should have been adequete to give to a cab driver.

Having never used a cab at this point I decided to just try my luck. I got ready for work before I left so I could take the subway to work instead of home in case I was running short on time. Getting to the proper subway stop is no problem at this point. I recognized the CBS building as something on my map so I took that exit from the subway. I found a sign that said the building was to my left so naturally I turned left and walked towards the building. My understanding was it was on a main street behind the CBS building so I walked down side streets in that general direction.

Eventually the streets didn't seem to lead to anywhere useful so I started back to the street I had started on. I continued on away from the sub way hoping I would find it...keeping an eye on the time as I had given myself a time when I needed to give up the quest in order to get back to work on time. I did pass a bank, it wasn't HSBC but I thought if worse comes to worse, I'll give it a try anyways.

Finally I decided to head back to the sub way as my search was not yielding any results. I tried the bank I saw earlier, and just as I figured it didn't take foreign bank cards. As I continued to walk, I looked up along the stretch I didn't see due to being somewhere around the CBS building I saw a big HSBC sign. So I crossed the street and used my coveted bank machine.

I ended up going straight to work. I had my lap top though, so I was able to check the location of the poker game and go straight from work to the game. My directions for the game were the subway stop, find the pop eyes chicken and turn left to the top of the hill and then look for the deserted 'curse word' looking building. So I found a building that could pass as deserted looking, but did I just want to walk into a random building? Luckily soon enough I saw a white person so figured I must be close. I asked him and he showed me the place.

There were about 15 to 20 people inside the house playing, all of which spoke English which was a fresh change. I started to play and get to know some of the guys around my table. Eventually a guy, David...the one whom I had been in contact with, announces he is going soon as hes headed down town for some drinks and anyone who wanted to split a cab was more then welcome.

Cab? The subway goes right down town so I asked why he wasn't just taking that.

"Ah," he says "I probably should have told you that the sub way stops running at 11:30." Which leaves me with no idea how to get home. I had my house area written down in English, but that wasn't going to help a Cabby much. Luckily, someone knew some people and began making calls and put together a sentence for me to say, and a paper to give to the cab driver.

In my final hand, I flopped 2 pairs, but they were all hearts. I couldn't throw them away and ended up having all my chips in the pot before seeing any more cards. Someone who called had pocket Aces, one being a heart and another had a straight draw, with a heart as well but that didn't matter. The heart ended up coming and I ended up broke. I decided to head down town for a couple drinks as well.

When I arrived down town I noticed a couple familiar faces, people I had met on the Sunday prior at the Holy Grill. Further, they knew the people I was playing poker with. The foreign community is quite small, especially in comparison to the rest of the city. As I learned, there are a few pretty good bars that specialize in serving the foreign community. It is made up of English speaking people from all over the world most of which teach, while there are some from the US military base there as well.

Having not eaten much on the day, it only took a few drinks to start feeling pretty. People were also quite generous in buying the new comer a drink. Eventually it was time to take the shit show home and I handed the cab my home instructions and enjoyed the drunken ride. He tried small talk with me, inquiring where in Canada I was from and what not. The language barrier has a way of squashing that talk pretty quick though.

I arrived home around 4am where I used my state of mind to harass some North American Friends, who found it quite odd to talk to someone in that state at 2 in the afternoon.

What to Post?

2007-12-18T05:18:00.000-08:00

The title of this post probably sounds like a complete cop out of a post, saying I have absolutely nothing I want to talk about but am still trying to keep my readers informed by simply telling them "hey, theres no news."

That is certainly not the case. In fact I have so much that I could potentially say I am trying to decide which is best for right now. I really want to comment on the class I had today once again as their adorableness has warmed my heart. I am however a little torn as I feel it necessary to mention something that happened almost a week ago now and has always been on the back burner.

I could make multiple posts but I don't want to bombard the reader, especially because I am sure eventually I will run out of things to say and go days without making a post. That could all be avoided with a bit of procrastination on the part of one of these stories.

Now I have described my dilema and have almost made a sufficient blog post, but I do feel the need to continue. I'd just like to say screw you guys, this blog is going to talk about what I want to talk about...when I want to talk about. That means class today.

So I have mentioned this class previously in spite of naming the adorable one by the wrong name. That was confirmed today when I got the attendance sheet. I can however name all 4 at this time, although I still constantly pronounce their names wrong in class.

First and foremost, the cute one is Ye Na, not Ye Bin which I had previously posted. Don't worry, I wasn't completely off my rocker as I was just combining 2 names. Hyung Bin is the name I mixed her up with and thats not to be confused with Su Hyung or Yun Ja. All four are pretty cute and I think they actually enjoyed the lesson today! The lesson wasn't really that different, I just probably acted a little bit goofier which got them to laugh and attempt to answer my questions a little more readily.

One of my goofy actions occured after an answer Ye Na gave me. The books lines were:

What did you do Sunday?
I went to church.

What did you do Monday?
went to school.
etc.

And I usually follow that by asking the girls each what they personally did on different days in the week. It is often difficult to get answers that vary from what the book said as sometimes the kids don't fully comprehend what the question is, they just know how they can give a sufficient answer.

YeNa actually gave me an answer that varied from the book. Realizing I would make her answer in a full sentence, when I asked her what she did on Monday she responded with "On Monday I went to Dance" (insert cute accent). So I tried asking her what kind of dance it was and she didn't really understand. So I asked if she tap danced and I began tapping my foot. That wasn't the type. Do you do ballet. Blank stare. So I say Ballet again this time wirling around in a circle with my hands over my head. This produced a few giggles, and an understanding that ballet was indeed the type of dance she did.

Naturally, I twirled around a couple other times to elicit a similar response.

This is not the reason they reconfirmed to me that they are my favorite adorable class. In fact, this re occurrence came after they kind of frustrated me. Ah, frustrate is the wrong word...perhaps disappoint fits better.

Regardless, I promised to get a picture and see if anyone could guess who YeNa was. Thats where the disappointment sits in. Once the bell rang I said I needed a picture before they went and started rummaging through my back pack. Not fully understanding what I meant they all gathered around enthusiastically. As soon as I pulled out the camera and theyrealized I wanted to take a picture they headed for the door and said "no!, bye teacher."

I didn't say good bye. I just kinda looked at them as they left and said oh. Obviously disappointed I sat down in my chair and began to prepare for the next class. All 4 of them came back into the room and said sorry teacher...and even though that didn't mean they were going to pose for a picture, I still found it adorable how they cared enough to come back and apologize and make sure I said bye to them.

Plus, I'm sure if I try at the beginning of next class I will meet more success...they won't be able to run out of the class because it isn't over yet.

Costcos

2007-12-17T06:37:00.000-08:00

So Sunday, I made the big trip to Costcos.

Not having a card, I went with Delaine and her boyfriend Andrew as they both have one...oh and I had no idea where it was. I also fully intended on signing up for one myself.

To save some cash we decided to take the subway to the closest stop, and then cab it the rest of the way. The plan was to meet at the desired sub way stop around 1:30. Of course, I was late due to many blunders on my part.

First and foremost I left later then I should have. Further, I didn't realize that the sub way stop I wanted to go to was on the red line, which meant I would have to transfer and that would take longer. Finally, I got off 2 stops before the transfer stop because the names are very similar...at least to my untrained Korean eyes (and ears!). I had to wait for the next train and complete the transfer at the proper transfer location.

The cab driver drove us to excos, which is the Korean version of Costcos and tried to tell us it was the same thing. This infuriated Delaine and she grew impatient of trying to explain to him we wanted costcos and just paid him and we flagged down another cab. The cabbie tried to give me the change in spite of it being Delaine who paid for the cab. She said that they always try to give the guy the money there.

So finally we arrive at the right costcos and I go to sign up for my own costcos card. I didn't realize I'd need to know my passport number. I don't even know what it is at this moment as immigration has it while they process my immigration card. I won't be able to get a costcos card until January when I get my Pass Port back.

No big deal as I was with people who had a card. Just means I have to go with someone with a card every time I go until I have a card of my own...which I've been advised is well worth it and have concluded that is probably some sound advice. I can buy beef, pork, chicken and cheese! In big blocks and save some money in the process.

This trip I bought about $70 worth of stuff. I also smashed one of my purchases before I left...a massive jar of peanut butter. They replaced it for me though free of charge. Isn't that nice.

I then cabbed it from costcos to my house, which was kind of nice. I had only driven through the city a few times so far the bulk of that coming the first day I was here. It doesn't matter where you go, you can see mountains in the background.

Shopping in Korea

2007-12-16T08:27:00.000-08:00

So I could have written about shopping since day 1 as theres always something I could buy. I'm including food and what not in with this as thats pretty much all I buy. Today I went on a big shopping trip to Costcos...but I'll talk more on that later.

The first thing I bought on my own (if you recall the School manager bought me Bread juice and water the night I arrived) was milk and cheese and I made this purchase at the convenience store across the street from my house. I bought a brand named Seoul, a brand that I was later informed of by a co worker that was the only ones that taste resembled what you can buy in Canadian stores. Its also the only one with an expiry date apparently. I also wanted butter, but couldn't find it and had no idea how to ask.

So I exited the store after telling the man that was everything (at least I think thats what he asked, he could have been telling me my face looked like his dogs butt for all I know) and took my stuff back up to my apartment and found my trusty Korean/English dictionary. I looked up the word butter and went back to the store trying my best to pronounce it right.

I didn't. I ended up having to show him the dictionary and then he said "ahh butter."

Are you kidding me? I could have just said butter!?

It turns out, I didn't even want butter. I actually wanted margarine. How the hell do you butter bread with butter anyways? Furthermore, why the hell do we call it butter the bread if using butter to do so is counter productive? At least in my experience. So to make a grilled cheese sandwich I melted butter in the pan and then soaked one end of the bread in it. It burned the sandwich pretty good AND I forgot that I like ketchup so I had to choke it down plain.

So the first big store I went to was a HomePlus. Its a lot like Wal-Mart. The one in Yongsan, where my school is, has a couple levels. The upper level is a grocery store and the lower level is a department store. It also takes credit card so I don't have to worry about having cash on me.

I have never seen so many people employed at a store like that. They seem to have at least one person down every aisle and they are all quick to help out. They love to point out your shopping mistakes, and by that I mean show you what deals are better and if you don't have enough of something.

I was looking to buy laundry detergent with a co worker, Delaine and a girl came up to tell me which one to buy, so I picked it up and tried to go on my way. But she continued to talk. Delaine picked up a bit of what she was saying and told me this is a better deal, pointing to a bag on the shelf. So I went to switch because I am compliant like that and don't really give a...ended up being the one I already had.

You already had me sold! You didn't need the 5 minute long lecture that I wasn't going to understand anyways.

In the department store part, I was wandering around looking for an alarm clock and a song came on and everyone that worked there was doing a dance for it! It was one of those set dances, like for the macarena...and it sounded vaguely familiar as well. I don't remember what the song sounded like, but regardless I just found it odd that every employee in the department store was doing it.

I couldn't find the alarm clock before I had to get to work, but I wasn't in dire need for it. I don't need to be up before 2 on most days. I simply wanted it to wake me up by 9am on the days the Leafs play. 9am Daegu is 7pm the night before in Toronto...so I wake up and listen to the games online.

I'll end this blog entry off with a finishing touch to my butter rant. I refuse to use the word butter in the sense of spread. From now on, I margarine peanut butter on my bagels, I margerine cheese whiz onto my crackers. Eff butter and the use of the word to butter!

The People

2007-12-15T06:21:00.000-08:00

I'd like to take the opportunity to talk about the people within Korea and what its like being a minority there.

Its definitely not weird seeing orientals all the time as Canada seems to be packed with them. I'm even relatively used to hearing them speak a different language as it was not an abnormal thing to see or rather hear these people speak on the buses while I was at Trent.

The difference here quite obviously perhaps is that in Canada, they are blended in with many people...including Caucasians. Here, if I don't make the trek down town it is very likely that I won't see any at all.

I get a lot of looks as I walk down the street by kids and adults alike. People who do know English, and by know English I mean know how to say hi or something, love to make the effort to practice their English when they see you. I often get young kids say hello to me and when i respond they giggle and run away.

The drivers are crazy. They don't stop for pedestrians and they will park wherever they feel like. Its not uncommon to walk down the side walks and have to walk around a parked car. Sometimes half an intersection will be blocked because thats where they decided to park. I have never seen a no parking sign, or parking meters for that matter. Parking appears to be free. Sometimes I even see vehicles parked in spaces they have no business fitting in...or cars parking jobs that block other cars in.

The lights also run right to left as opposed to the up and down I'm used to from back at home. I've been told that jay walking is enforced here, although I am guilty of doing it a few times on the streets that aren't as busy. They have to catch you to charge you and I can probably get away with not understanding what they are saying.

Saying that, I'm not so sure I'm in danger. It is rare to see a cop, and they really aren't that necessary. I have never felt unsafe here, and the low crime rate reflects my secure feeling. Frequently you can walk down the streets and find racks of clothes or fruit stands. A lot of time the merchants are no where in site, or are busy doing something else. It is just a general assumption that everyone will be honest, and I imagine if that weren't the case they would pay more attention.

Everyone has a cell phone. By everyone, I mean EVERYONE. If a kid can read, he likely has a cell phone. I constantly have to tell kids in my class to put them away. When I get on the subway, everyone has their cell phones out and is text messaging someone. It's nuts....and I want one.

Wandering Around in Korea...still

2007-12-14T22:22:00.000-08:00

Ok, so this goes back a week to my first Saturday here, and my attempt to find pizza.

I left nice and early from the apartment...around 10:30 to find the Pizza shop I saw the night before on my first walk home from the Sub Way. On the Friday night, I had decided to go a less then direct route because there was a market that looked pretty interesting. It actually ended up being a pretty direct route in the end.

During my walk I observed the many food booths that are randomly lined on the side walks through the streets. I have always been interested in what food it is they actually sell at these booths, but to this day have no tried any. I don't like eating things that I don't know what are, and I am pretty sure they wouldn't be able to tell me in English.

For the most part I think it is meat on a stick, and if I had to guess I'd say chicken. But for all I know it could be crow...or cat. I think I will try it when I am with someone who speaks English...and has tried it themselves before. I always see people dipping the meat like substances into oils or seasonings or sauces as well. When I finally do try these random stations, I will probably be able to dedicate a whole entry to it.

As I continued on my trek through these markets, I came across a pizza shop. It was closed due to the time, but I thought I'd make note of it as i hadn't bought groceries and would need something to eat the next day before class.

That brings me to the Saturday excursion. 10:30, when I didn't work until 12:45...allotting plenty of time to get to the subway and wait for a slice of pizza. Unfortunately, that Pizza place was no where to be found. The streets don't seem to go in the squares or rectangles I am accustomed to. They go in loop de loops and shim de shams. Very confusing...at least to me.

I did manage to walk by a different pizza place however, the only problem was they didn't sell single slices and I didn't want to buy an entire pizza at that point. Of course they didn't understand what I meant when I asked if they sold single slices. I ended up drawing a picture, a very useful tactic that I use to explain things to my students as well...they love it because my pictures suck. As my friend Alyssa is always quick to point out, I print like a 5 year old...and my drawing isn't any different.

Not having what I wanted I continued on and saw a...Pizza hut! But they didn't sell them by the slice either. So I continued walking figuring I'd be at my subway stop soon, where there is a McDonald's and a Popeye's chicken.

Low and behold, not too far down the road there was a McDonald's, so I decided to experience what a McDonald's burger tasted like (with just ketchup of course). Luckily the girl spoke semi English, so she understood what I meant by just ketchup. Although she took it quite literally and thought I didn't want the meat or the cheese. She did clarify with me though, so there were no mistakes.

There are a few differences about the McDonald's here then in Canada. One, no Nugget meal which is disappointing because thats what I order every time I go to McDonald's. Second, some of the options are a little bizarre. They have a fried shrimp burger to name one...and instead of the fries you can get corn salad. The prices seem cheaper as well. A Sunday is only 1000 won, which is about 1 dollar over here and I am pretty sure my meal was under 4000 won.

So I ate my meal and left and the time was about 11:20, or according to my watch, 9:20. I walked for a while and started thinking that I didn't think the sub way station was that far from me. I look up at a sign and notice it is pointing in the direction of the next sub way stop from me.

I shrug it off, take it as a sign that I am walking in the right general direction at least and continue on my way. When I check my watch and it says 10:15, I start to get a little worried. I had no idea where i was and I needed to be at work in 15 minutes. I asked a man where Youngsan is and he talked for a while and eventually started pointing in the direction i was heading.

After crossing a pretty busy freeway, I decided it was 10:20 and I needed to find a cab right shortly. I asked a lady where Youngsan was and she kinda pointed to the ground and i took that to mean I was in Youngsan. So I walked through this park that led me to a dead end. Not wanting to turn around i hopped a fence and made my way over to a busy street.

At that point I saw a McDonalds and somehow I managed to walk in a circle! Actually, thats not true, it was a different one and i recognized it as the one right across the street from the school I worked at. I get in the elevator at the school and look at my watch, its 10:31...and on top of being 12 hours behind, my watch is also a few minutes fast, so I arrived exactly when I needed to.

What dumb luck eh?

In addition to the last post...

2007-12-14T07:35:00.000-08:00

I fully intended on explaining the situation at the school, and it really is not that different from any other language school in the country. Of course I'm sure there are private school exceptions or things along that nature but generally speaking its quite similar throughout.

In an attempt to keep up with the western world, the kids attend their regular Korean classes until 3, and then they attend an English school. Some schools (like mine) also do work on the Saturdays as well.

They find it very weird that North American kids only go to school during the day. Typically speaking, the kids go to school probably from 8 in the morning until as late as 9 at night. When they aren't in school they are either doing home work or sleeping. Makes you feel kinda bad for the kids...its clear a lot of them don't want to be there and don't really care about learning English. I am struggling making English fun at the same time as making sure they practicing the words.

Today I spent a lot of time just saying the word 'very.' I guess I could try to make things fun using other words that start with 'V' but that was the one that came up in the reading frequently today.

Ahhh The Kids

2007-12-13T07:01:00.000-08:00

ok, so apparently I have been lacking on the whole adding blog entries lately. I have a lot I could potentially say, but I'm also pretty lazy.

So I guess i will talk a little more on the whole school and me teaching and such seeing as thats why I'm here and I have successfully completed a week at the school.

So the way it works is I go to work around 3:30 everyday during the week and get my schedule. Typically I start at 3:45, but Thursdays and Fridays it appears to be 4:30 (although i am told it changes). If I know beforehand that I don't have class until 4:30, then i can come in around 4:15...but I usually forget to check the schedule when i leave.

My schedule today was nice and short. Started at 4:30 and only had 5 classes. One class runs 40 minutes. They were all consecutive, so that meant I was done work at 8:15. On Monday, I had a full schedule with 8 classes. I started at 3:45 and wasn't done until 9:45.

Some classes run a few times a week and I think some students are in multiple classes. There are about 6 different books I teach from, each breaking down one lesson I am required to teach. Some of the lessons are pretty short, so I need to have the kids repeat a lot of the readings over and over.

Over the week, I have developed a favorite class to teach. I am not exactly sure how this class has developed into a favorite, but there are a number of reasons I like it.

First, the book is probably my favorite to teach from. It has longer readings and no book work, which is good because the kids need to develop conversational skills. The material in the book has also been easiar for me to come up with creative ways to practice it. The lessons I have been working on the past two classes have been days of the week and months of the year.

Second, the age of the kids and the class size is very manageable. I have 4 girls all around the age of 9. I like the smaller classes because I can give everyone my full attention which means less goofing off. I also like the younger kids because they are a little more compliant. They still grumble when I ask them to repetitive questions, or make them respond in full sentences, but they still do it. Not always the case with the older kids.

And finally, one of the little girls in particular is adorable. She is probably the worst one in the class as far as complaining goes, but she is just so cute about it. This is probably the only class I have where I have remembered all the students names. Well mostly. I couldn't tell you their names now, but if I had an attendance sheet...I know which ones which as well.

That probably sounds bad. But seriously all the kids seem to have the same name, its just spelled differently. Or it may be pronounced a little different. It honestly sounds the same to me, although I will admit that over time I have started to hear a bit of a difference.

If I ever take a picture of this class, I will post the picture and let you decide which one is YeBin.

One of those days...

2007-12-10T08:14:00.000-08:00

Yep, they even happen in Korea!

Although, it didn't seem to start like that. I woke up today, in a panic because I thought my watch said 9 o clock...which because I haven't changed my watch from Canadian time yet (well yet implies I will, I likely won't) would mean it was 11. I had to be on the other end of town for 11.

So the panic is natural. I'm not smart enough to have bought an alarm clock yet, I just trust I'll get up when I need to. Which has been pretty accurate, including today. Once I put my glasses on I was reassured that it was only 6, or 8 in Korea...which was right around the time I wanted to get up.

So having 3 more hours then I initially thought definitely should have contributed to it not being one of those days. I was also full of confidence, feeling more comfortable moving around the streets ok Korea, with the sub way system, the whole nine yards. Plus I now know people!

I took the subway down to the desired stop, and exited the sub way, harm free with 15 minutes to spare! Thats right about where the smooth runnings ends. I couldn't find my final destination and ended up showing up 20 after 11. I thought someone was meeting me at the Gates of Daegu National Bank, but I was mistaken. That was just near where I needed to be.

Further more, I forgot my pass port, which is what I needed in order to help set me up as an employee for the school. We got my picture done, but thats about it. I have to return tomorrow WITH my pass port. Luckily it seems that most Koreans are pretty easy going people, so it wasn't that big of a deal.

Classes seemed to go alright today, other then the one where the kids looked so bored they wanted to gauge their eyeballs out with rusty screw drivers. I'm still getting used to the materials I am working with, hopefully after that I can try to spice the classes up a little bit.

Class today was a full schedule. I worked 6 hours. I went to the Home Plus after classes. Home Plus is a Wal-mart esk grocery store. I bought a few things, making a relitively heavy load and then hopped on the subway for home. Wasn't looking too forward to the walk with my grocerys, but hey what can you do?

I'll tell you what you can do. You can ensure that you DON'T walk in the wrong direction to the next sub way stop until you realize oh FUCK I just walked 15 mins in the wrong direction. I had confidence today that I was finally getting comfortable walking around...I knew exactly where home was. I don't generally swear, especially in public, but I figured what the hey, its raining and no ones around but cars...plus I'm not even sure it would be recognized as swearing.

So I hopped back on the subway...and paid to go the wrong way! Luckily it wasn't that busy and the guy recognized I had just paid and allowed me to go the right way without having to pay again.

So I got off and this time I actually checked to make sure I was going the right way. Then I double checked. Then I triple checked. When I finally decided that I was indeed heading in the right direction I made it home pretty smoothly. But my shoulder is in a great deal of pain due to carrying the groceries for so long.

One productive thing did come of the day. I asked for my mailing address. I was told because I am moving in 2 months its better to get things sent to the school. It is:

(3rd Floor) LIKE School
C/O Andrew Weiler
930-3 Yongsan-dong
Dalseo-gu, Daegu
Korea 704-130

The Holy Grill and Down Town

2007-12-09T04:54:00.000-08:00

Sunday afternoon I finally decided that I was through with the whole lonely aspects of Korea. I decided to meet up with a friend I met on facebook, Danielle.

The setting was a restaurant, Holy Grills. On the menu, well I had no idea but i didn't care they were showing a tape delay of Hockey Night in Canada, so that was right up my alley. It is run by a Canadian man and his Korean wife.

The problem was meeting up with someone that I had never 'actually' met. The resolution? Well actually there was no resolution. To this day I still have not met her. It ended up alright though, while I was looking around the bar, which I might add to my liking was full of white people, a group of people noticed and invited me to join them. I accepted the invitation and ended up watching the leaf game with people I could understand.

The leafs lost unfortunately, and what was worse, I knew going in that they were going to lose. I accidentally checked the score just before I left. It's a natural habit I have had for years now, when I'm online to make my rounds to NHL.com.

Just before the game was over, a couple of the guys were leaving and knowing I had just got in offered to show me around the down town area a bit. That was something I definitely wanted to see, and knowing the end result of the game anyways I accepted.

They showed me the bars where most of the foreigners hang out. They also showed me the book store where they sell books in English. They kinda taught me how to read Korean as well, but I still don't know anything.

Just to note, while in the book store it was ridiculously hot so I took off my winter coat. It remained in my back pack for our wanderings down the Daegu streets and on my 25 minute walk from the subway station. It was a gorgeous night.

All in all, The Holy Grill is an awesome place that should help me from going through hockey withdrawal. The tape delay is only 6 hours, so all I really have to do is not use my computer Sunday mornings, or at least avoid my favorite sites that will tell me the scores of the game.

Wandering Around in Korea

2007-12-08T18:05:00.000-08:00

When you don't understand the letters or figures used in a language, it doesn't matter what is written on a building, they all look the same.

I've found this to be very much the case in Korea. Its hard to landmark stores because they all have crazy (at least to me) wittings on their signs. Naturally, this does spell something I do understand, and have come to understand: disaster.

I've taken the liberty to walk around my area to try to familiarize myself with it. I found a pizza shop not too far from my house. Haven't tried it out yet as it doesn't sell single slices. Ofcourse when I asked if it did I just got that look that I have 4 eye balls. Instead I used my unartistic abilities to draw a slice of pizza and write 1 in the middle. That got the trick done. I'll likely wander back there to buy a full pizza someday when I have the time.

On my first day of work, as mentioned, I was picked up by the director of the school and shown the way to get to the sub way, both from my house and from the school. Its easy to find from the school, but as I soon realized not so easy from my house.

On the 2nd day of work, I was required to get there on my own. I figured I would just take a cab as that would take me right there. The problem with this idea however was I had no idea where to tell the cab driver to take me, let alone how to tell him this. I began to kind of freak out. I needed to be at the school for 3:45 (actually sooner because they want you there early to prep) and it was 2:30.

Luckily I had another foreign teacher from the school on my msn list and she came online just as I was flirting with the idea of packing my crap and getting back to Canada. She told me some landmarks I could tell the cab drivers, like a McDonald's, but there are plenty of those around I was afraid I would get to the wrong one. She at least knew the subway stop that I needed to get off at so finally I was set, or so I thought.

I wandered in what I realize now was the general direction of my subway stop. After walking for several minutes I came to a pretty big intersection and decided it was time to admit i had no idea where the subway was and to ask someone. I approached a lady waiting to cross the street and got my Korean in plain English book out. Tried to pronounce 'Chihachul' which means subway and she just shook her head no and walked away from me, still waiting to cross the street.

Ok, so I can't speak or understand Korean, but I can understand body language...and she wanted nothing to do with me. So I started walking for half a second in one direction then decided I didn't know if that direction was the right one so switched to another direction. After about a half second in that direction I changed my mind and switched directions once again.

The end result had me walking in a circle, with my closest counterpart waiting to cross the street and wanting nothing to do with me. I decided to try someone else, so I crossed the street and entered a cell phone store. Instead of attempting to say subway again, I just showed him my book and pointed to the word. He pointed me in the proper direction and I thought he told me it was 1 block away.

I walked for several blocks finally deciding that one of three things must have happened.

1) I walked right past the subway without realizing it.
2) I misunderstood what 1 block meant
3) He was back at the cell phone store laughing with his buddy at how he pointed Ethan Hawk* in the wrong direction.

So once again I was at the point of asking someone. I tried pronouncing it again to some older gentleman and he didn't understand me. So I pointed the word to him in the book. After looking slightly confused he came across a word below, the underpass and that seemed to make him understand. He tried to point it out, but then finally decided to just escort me there himself.

Along the way we attempted to have a conversation. He was wearing an Oakland Athletics hat which excites me because I love baseball. Not sure if he realized that. He asked me if I was a University student and I said no and looked up the word for teacher. "Kyosa" I said pointing at myself. Not sure he understood that, so I showed him in my trusty book.

Finally I arrived at the subway and bid farewell with a "Kamsahamnida" (thank you), the only word I can remeber other then beer without looking it up.

Down in the Subway I could not figure out how to buy a token. They have Kiosk machines and I put my money in and it would not give me a token. Then I started walking in circles once again. I saw a machine however that said complimentary tokens (yes things in the subway are english thank god!), so I hit the button on it and got a token.

To enter the subway you scan your token on the top, pretty much the same way a key card works. Then it beeps and if the gates are closed they open for you and if they are already open, well they won't close. The next part goes smoothly. I get on the subway and then off again at the appropriate spot.

As I exit to go back to street level, I try to scan my token and nothing happens. Odd, I think. so I just try to walk through a gate thats already open. As I approach it, it slams shut. So I attempt to scan the token again and as I walk back it opens. So again I try to walk through and it slams shut.

Some lady sees this happen and laughs and shows me the token slot to put the token in to get through the gates. Thats my first experience on the subway in Daegu Soth Korea, but it is only the beggining of my wanderings.

My Apartment

2007-12-07T23:45:00.000-08:00

I'm living in my own Apartment...I have no idea what the address is. I know I can see a big building with a KT on it, and thats how I landmark where I live.

My understanding of the address system in Korea is there are no street names, just areas. Post offices are apparently a big deal as well as far as finding these areas go. I live probably 30 steps from the Stin Dang Dong post office. The KT building is right beside Bang Tong University.

Living by yourself can be kinda cool. It can also be a little frustrating. I don't get to talk much, especially because buying things from the store across the street consists of me pointing. The apartment itself isn't much different from places in Canada. Theres a bedroom/living room, and a kitchen as well.

Perhaps the most interesting thing is the shower and toilet that happen to be in the same room. I couldn't get back far enough to get a good shot of both the toilet and shower head, but you can kind of make it out. I also took an overhead shot of the toilet and the drain, and the 'sink' tap on the right.

My first shower in Korea was a bit of a disaster. The toilet seat got soaked, the toilet paper got soaked, and the floor just outside of the bathroom flooded. The second shower was a success! I figured out I needed to point the shower head more in the corner so it didn't get the toilet paper or spray on the door. This avoided both soggy TP and a wading pool in my hallway. The toilet seat still got soaked, but I was smart enough to put it down to avoid wet ass in the future.

Washing my hands with out getting the bottom of my pants still needs work.

Teaching So Far

2007-12-07T15:35:00.000-08:00

Som teaching is no where near what I expected. Granted, I didn't know what to expect, but I did think my lessons were going to have to be thought out a little more.

That wasn't the case.

After being given something to read, my training was complete. I was given a schedule of when my five 45 minute classes would be and the books and lesson numbers from which the lessons would be. I had time to read over the lessons before the kids came in.

Once the kids came into the class, they were all very excited about a new teacher. Apparently this makes my job easiar as it gives us something to talk about when the lesson is over. The lessons don't last anywhere near the allotted 45 minuetes of class time.

The kids wanted to know a lot, but they were unable to ask a lot of questions due to the language barrier. Often if I asked them a question there would be long awkward pauses until I asked again, trying in a different way while using some sort of action. If one kid caught on he would tell the others what to say.

I'd have to work at switching the questions up because often once one child answered asequetly all the other kids just mimiced the answer. I found that some of them are pretty good at english but aren't comfortable speaking it and or quite shy.

Some were quite comfortable speaking even though their english was not very good. They'd try to speak to me in Korean, or mixture of both.

One child inparticular reminded me of a kid name Tommy I had in one of my cabins at camp this past summer. Tommy got the Random Weasly award because it was Harry Potter week and he had red hair, while being completely random. This child didn't have red hair, and I am not sure if he knew who Harry Potter was, nor do I know if the Korean comments were random. They could have been very relevant...but I doubt it. When he found out I was from Canada he tried to ask me why I wasn't fat. He was under the impression that all North Americans ate hamburgers, drank coke and were fat.

He ofcourse could not use all these words, but he said words like 'coca-cola' and 'hamburger' while pretending to eat a hamburger he was holding and then grabbing his skin from his stomache and pulling it out. Quite amussing really.

That was the extent of my first day teaching. I'd like to think the 2nd day went a little better, but I am not so sure. I had a few of the same classes day 2, including the Korean random Weasly so the whole how old are you, how old is your brother/sister wouldn't work 2 days in a row. My job is to try and get them speaking and practicing english as much as possible. Its harder then it sounds.

Welcome To Korea

2007-12-06T17:18:00.000-08:00

So a manager from the school came to pick me up at the air port. He drove me to the school branch I was teaching at and I was introduced to my boss, the director of the school. He gave the manager some money and told him to get me some food.

I was then driven to my apartment where I dropped my stuff off. We then went to the restaurant just below me to try whatever it was they were passing off as food.

Most people reading are probably well aware of how picky an eater I am, and how few things I eat. Imagine me given a whole bunch of food, none of which were meat products. Doesnt go over so well. But I was pretty hungry so I ate a little bit of everything. I found a lot of it really spicey and surprise surprise I didn't really find anything that tickled my fancy.

I have no clue what any of it was, the manager spoke very little english and the restaurant people spoke none. He ended up buying me a loaf of bread, some water and some juice at the variety store across the street. As the manager left my apartment he informed me that the director would be picking me up for an information session the next day at 11:30.

He showed up late the next morning but that was no big deal. I spent the time waiting unpacking and I took a short walk around my neighborhood. The information session consisted of him driving through the city and telling me about it. He showed me major stores like e-mart and told me the North American equivalents. He also showed me subway stops and told me how to go throughout the city using cabs and public transit (neither of which I have tried as of yet).

He then took me out to lunch. The same thing pretty much happened at this place as the first. There were a lot of foods that I had no idea what were, that I attempted to stomache. I found that washing it down with water just as you chewed enough to swallow makes it not as bad. The soup I had tasted like seaweed...and I think it may have been. I also had something called Chinese dumplings. They had a little pork and then some green thing in them. I didn't mind them too much. We then ordered Chinese dumplings with more pork then green. They were even better aha. I ate enough of the assortment of the food to satisfye any hunger pains from occuring.

Finally he took me to meet Mrs. Kim, his mother and the director at the main branch of Like Schools. She talked briefly about teaching and gave me some information sheets on teaching. One was about stressing on words in sentences in English. It was a study. According to the study English teachers got a worse score then native korean teachers and students on which words needed to be stressed in a written assesment.

In the Oral assesment however, the Korean Teachers and students scored pretty similar to their written scores while the English Teachers were nearly flawless.

That was the extent of my training. I was thrown into the class to teach students shortly after that.

Introduction

2007-12-06T15:57:00.000-08:00

Alright, so there are a lot of people interested in knowing what I am up to and what my experience is like here in Daegu, Korea. I figured the best way to keep people up to date was via blog. Gives people the chance to read about the types of things I have been up to.

I have to give props to my dear friend Angela, whom I love dearly inspite of her physical unattractiveness, for her 90's blog. Great blog, great idea to keep people updated.

So the first thing I'll talk about is the plane ride. It was long and quite boring. My body still aches from the awkward positions I attempted sleeping in. Just an FYI for starting a trip, joking about a bomb is really actually you can't say to customs! Meet Your Parents wasn't lieing.

The customs officer asked if I had anything to declare and I shrugged and said "just a bomb."

Not what they enjoy prior to entering an airplane. Luckily I was there ridiculously early. I spent a good 2 hours trying to convince them I was joking while they dug through all my stuff and threatened to charge me with death threats. Not a pretty picture.

Ok. I'm not naive enough to actually say bomb anywhere in the vicinity of an airplane. I just thought my first blog could use some pizzaze. I flew from Toronto to New York with no problems. Short flight...which was more then I can say about the trip to Seoul.

I was a little annoyed that the McDonalds at the Airport wouldn't take Canadian money. I had to go to the exchange just to buy some lunch. Then going through customs there I was randomly selected by the computer for an extensive search. Lucky me! So I had to step through an additional devise that blew puffs of air at me. Then they checked all my bags and used some sort of wipe over some of my things and put it through some machine.

It didn't take that long and I had a lot of time to kill after that regardless. During the flight to Seoul I ended up watching 3 movies...Knocked Up, HP 5 and Surfs Up. I also tried to sleep and watched out the window as well. There were some pretty good sites of Mountains...I think in Russia but I am not exactly sure. Also right around Seoul.

When I got to the airport in Seoul is where I began to experience some overwhelming confusion. I had no idea where to go, and there weren't a lot of people able to offer help. When I finally figured out where I needed to go I got my boarding pass and was informed that I needed my luggage. Way back when in Toronto I was told my luggage was good until I got to Daegu. Thats what it said on my baggage tickets as well. She told me I was misinformed so I had to go back down through the airport and try to retrieve my stuff.

This meant more screening. When i finally relocated my stuff it looked like it was on a cart headed for my next plane...so all that was unneccesary. The tags on my bags clearly already said Taegu. I took them up regardless just to make sure. At this point I was exhausted and just wanted to sleep. Sleep I did while waiting for my plane to board. Don't know what woke me up, but I woke up just as they started boarding. I also don't know much about the trip from Seoul to Daegu as it was dark and I was asleep on the plane before it even took off.

That was the beggining of my Korean adventure.