The Only Country in the World

Springtime!

2009-06-08T16:21:00.000-07:00

They say that springtime is when a young man's fancy turns to love. They also say that it's the time when the majestic grizzly bear comes out of hibernation and starts chowing down on roots and grubs (they is David Attenborough). I say it's the time to put Ron's classroom up onto the roof of the school.

Couldn't really give you a reason why; it was just time. Totally worth getting up at 6 am. Ron took it well, though the principal allegedly said some naughty words when he saw, and then made Max and I move the whole thing back downstairs.

Spring is also the perfect time for Korea's Own America's Favorite Pastime: baseball! The Kia Tigers may not be the best club in the 8-team league, but they're from the 'Ju, and by gum, they've got heart. They also have a mascot who drinks our beer (photo recycled from an earlier post).
A few differences in Korean baseball:
1. Everyone is so polite! Never is a nasty thing said about the opposing team, and only twice have I heard anyone offer a mild constructive criticism to the umpires. There go my plans to flip a few cars and set them on fire: I don't think I'd be able to handle the disapproving looks.

2. The mascot drinks our beer. Did I mention that yet?

3. The seats are each about the size of one buttcheek the day after Yom Kippur. And it's not that Korean folk are that much smaller than Americans; I guess they just don't mind a little snuggle.
4. Those inflatable thunder sticks say "Fighting!" which is what you yell instead of "Good luck!" or "Break a Leg!" (Konglish hasn't quite mastered the imperative verb tense yet). I like it because there's no letter "F" in Korean, so you're actually yelling "P'whaiteeng!" which gets me really all amped up.

5. The fans' cheers may have been taken from the tee-ball handbook. First of all, everyone's name is three syllables long, which makes every cheer a nice one-size-fits-all (just like Korean T-shirts - no, I'm not kidding; they're all the same size). The most popular is "An-ta!" which means "base hit!" Hey, at least it's a realistic goal. Then, if someone bobbles a pass or gets struck out, it's "kwenchana!" which means "It's okay," but in a really enthusiastic sort of way. I swear I heard someone yell "Good stop!" when the second baseman dropped an easy grounder last week.

6. There are lots of kids. Which means that I took pictures of lots of kids.
There is one important even missing: This little guy spent a good chunk of the game with his pants down, peeing into a 1.6-liter beer bottle held in place by his mom. It happened 4 or 5 times. I felt that a photograph would be inappropriate at best, felonious at worst. I'll just let you imagine the expression on his face.

Haze of the North, Fog of the South: Ice Cold

2009-05-14T00:56:00.000-07:00

When I told people that I'd be teaching in Korea for a year, I would invariably receive one of two different responses. The first was "Why?" The other was "Which one?" (And then, after specifying South Korea, people often asked if that was "the good one or the bad one"). Well, last weekend I broke the bonds of capitalist oppression and went to the North. That's the bad one.
That little strip of concrete in the middle there is the official Military Demarcation Line. This whole area is called the Joint Security Area, and there's a nice symmetry to the place. Or, there would be, if the North Koreans didn't insist on making all the buildings on their side of the MDL just a little bit bigger. Perhaps they think that if their side of the border is heavier it'll make the whole peninsula tip toward them and we'll all just fall into North Korea. Huttah! Over on the other side, if you squint, you can see a North Korean guard watching us. Sometimes they walk around the JSA and swear at the tourists, but we had no such luck.

The blue building on the left is neutral territory where negotiations between the two countries take place. Here's an inside shot:
Those guys in there, for all that they look a bit like bad guys, are the good guys. They're South Korea's very best; seventh-degree black belts who will punch you if you touch them and look great in aviators. They don't talk and they don't move, they just stand there. Cool.
This guy's job is the best. He gets to stand right at the border. The left side is South Korea; the right side is the North. The other guy in the room guards the door to North Korea proper, and as long as you stay out of roundhouse-kick-range, you can get someone to take your picture with him!
Max was down with the photo taking too. I'm not sure why they let him wear that bandana - it's a map of North Korea.
We drove by the Bridge of No Return, which is pretty much what it sounds like. I chose to stay on the south side. Note the haze of Yellow Dust, which wafts over in great clouds from the Gobi Desert in China every spring and makes my all my outdoor photos blurry.
We also visited a tunnel that the North Koreans dug under the DMZ in the early 70's. The South discovered it by accident, and in a wonderful twist of capitalist irony, they now charge people to go into it themselves. It's about 6 feet high and 6 feet wide, and very long. We weren't allowed to take pictures in the tunnel itself, but it's worth mentioning because Max got saddled with a 9-year-old ADHD poster child named Eric. His mom is claustrophobic, and when she said "I don't think I can go down there" to her son at the informational meeting, Eric simply pointed at Max and replied, "That's okay. I'll just go with him!" And he did. Max did good, though - after we came back from the tunnel, Eric made him mom buy a blue bandana so he could wear one just like Max. Awwww.

*commercial break*

Max teaches chemistry, and wanted to procure a little dry ice for a lab activity. The school's secretary may have misplaced a decimal point when she made the order, because a 50 pound box was delivered to the school this morning. Yes, that's 50 pounds of frozen CO2. Science!
Everyone learned a lot. For example, the 11th graders learned that you can pour dry ice fog on each other. You can also stab it with a knife.

The 8th graders learned that if you wear lab coats while playing with dry ice, you might get yourself into the school's advertising pamphlet.

And Gabriel the 3rd grader learned that he can look cute and a little goofy while holding dry ice soap bubbles.

Anyway, despite my best efforts, we still had about 30 pounds of the stuff left at the end of the day. It doesn't keep in the freezer very long, so it had to be used immediately. Good thing Max and I have a bathtub. I said science! Science again!

Here's the preparation.

The execution:

The effects:

What we learned: dry ice is cool. Science!

Cheese is why you're fat

2009-05-05T01:38:00.001-07:00

And lack of it is why Koreans are skinny. But you know what? It might just be worth it. I'm going to go make a sandwich.

Yuletide Miraculous

2009-05-04T20:25:00.000-07:00

Team Awesome reunited this past weekend for a triumphant return to Wando. Wando is an island off Korea's south coast, and it is appropriate to say its name in a loud call-and-response:

"Waaanndoooo?"
"Waannnnndooooooo!"

Do that a few times with a Louis Armstrong-style rasp and you get the idea.

Here's a brief run-down on what happened last time we visited Wando in September:

1. I swam with my wallet. My wallet, as far as I know, is still swimming.

2. Max and I got pulled onstage at an outdoor 300-person schoolkids' talent performance and handed a microphone. We were given no instructions (other than a vague suggestion to play "Taxman" by the Beatles) and so we opened and closed our performance in a hurry: "We love Wando!"

3. We ended up hanging out with a national celebrity comedian and his entourage. Here he is in the middle:
One thing led to another, and soon we were invited to a private karaoke room courtesy of his brother, Wando's gundal (Korean mafia) boss. All in all, a nice bunch of guys, and everything was free! That's respect, baby.4. The karaoke session ended with an epic rendition of "Creep" and Mr. Comedian Man giving Max a squid-suction-cup-style kiss on the mouth. I'm not going to go into the details. You can ask him.

So Wando (Waaannndooo? Waaaaannnnndooooooo!) had a lot to live up to. We were dedicated to re-experiencing Wando in all its Grand Wandosity. And because we'd never leave something as important as Wando-ridiculousness to chance, we made sure to bring the right equipment for the weekend: tents, meat, six airsoft pellet guns, and a 4.5-liter bottle of scotch, which was presently dubbed Robot Juice.

Waaaannnndooooooooooo!
Right. We set up camp at a campsite by the beach that was probably closed but otherwise quite nice. Tents went up, bananas were eaten, and soon we were a bunch of robots hanging out on the beach. One of the other robots malfunctioned and ran into the ocean, getting sand in all its joints and seawater on all the other robots that went to go retrieve it. It required a rather long system reboot.

Note to parents, grandparents, and potential employers: the above section in no way endorses guns, alchohol, or any ill-conceived combinations of the two. The Wando Robots were in fact model campers; practicing excellent fire safety, keeping noise to a minimum, and fastidiously cleaning up after themselves. The above passage is intended to illustrate the absurdity of The Robots' mission and the impracticality of their stated objectives. We, the Wando Robots, would like to thank you for your understanding. Or, we say in Robot: "Bleep! Bloopity-beep-beep-shaBloop!"

Naturally, as with all plans laid out as meticulously as ours, everything soon went horribly wrong. We got to Wando in Kory's trusted 1993 Hyundai Santomo, nicknamed "The Dongchim" after we had to use the dog's poop-tongs to break into it from the outside. Long Story. Anyway, the Chim has about 150,000 miles on her, but she's got a good heart and room for seven. So: we woke up early on Sunday morning and took a ferry trip from Wando city to a nearby island and back. When we hopped back into the car to get back to the campsite, it wouldn't go.

Bleep.

Well, it would go, but not faster than 10 mph or so. Which isn't really fast enough. While the Dongchim may have spirit, her lungs weren't working too well, and she'd backfire herself to a stall every time we took her past 1500 rpms. Here's a picture of Kory driving in circles in a futile attempt to cure the Chim of her sniffles.
We couldn't get the Chim repaired, because naturally none of Wando's mechanics work on Sundays. So we held our breath, gritted our teeth, and began driving back to the campsite at a pace just slower than a tortise that's eaten way too many burritos.

But hark! 30 minutes (and 4 miles) into our journey, we were visited by a Christmas Miracle! The Chim managed to crest a hill a few miles from camp, and once she got rolling past 25 mph, something inside clunked into place and she began running smooth as a Swiss dream. Her sickness may still be there, but the Chimmer not only made it to camp, she brought us all the way home to Gwangju the next day! Huzzah!

Our good luck held for the rest of the expedition: the weather was good, the burgers were great, and we made friends with some other robots who were camping down the beach. On Monday morning, victory was declared and Team Wando Robot Awesome headed home.
Waaaaaannnnndooooooooo!

And away!

2009-04-28T01:31:00.000-07:00

We flew a plane. It was sweet.

There's a dude named Matt Walker who runs a flying club outside Taejon, and for 120 bucks, he'll let you fly his plane. No, really: you sit next to him in the 2-man cockpit, and while he handles the takeoff and landing, you're the person who actually does and hour's worth of flying. In the air.
And let me tell you, this plane ain't your uncle's Cessna. In the next two photos, Max shows us how fast the plane can go using creative poses.

By the end of the day, I could turn left and I could turn right and I could fly in a relatively straight line. We even did what Matt calls a "steep turn," which is a turn that is steep. But actually steep: the G-force pushes your cheeks back, and if you're not careful, the whole plane will start slicing sideways and you'll fall out of the sky. Which I didn't do. Take that, Lindbergh.

Moral of the story: flying planes is cool. It's a little scary at first, but once you start feeling that Borg-like man/machine symbiosis, it rocks. We all left feeling like this:
Yeah.

Unnecessary, in Two Acts

2009-04-16T01:32:00.000-07:00

An interesting feature of having disposable income in a relatively guilty-free foreign setting: the ability, perhaps even the desire, to spend money in ways befitting nothing but the internet. Korea's a great place for it. There are a multitude of diversions strewn about the country, and as long as one has a few bucks and a well-developed sense of irony, there's plenty of blog material to be discovered.

Example one: Korean New Year was in late January. It's one of the few vacation days that teachers at hogwans (private English academies) actually receive, so Max and I decided to do something with our friend Kara. Someone stabbed a finger at a map and it landed on Yeosu, a small city on the south coast. So the next day, bright and early, we all hopped a bus out there.

This photo sums up our first impressions of Yeosu.
It was cold, gray, and except for Max's impish enthusiasm, lifeless. All the shops and restaurants was closed - we had forgotten that national holidays apply to other people, too - and while our map put Yeosu on the south coast of the country, the ocean was nowhere to be seen. The Port Authority building was landlocked and empty. The fun we found at a nearby church (see below) was fleeting at best.
We were rescued by a taxi driver who partially understood our desire for a bata yaepawwa (pretty beach) and proceeded to drive us to a cliff 45 minutes and $26 dollars away. We spent most of the cab ride alternatively fearing for our lives and admiring the miniature porno calendar the man had dangling from the inside of the windshield. Fortunately, the island he took us was actually pretty cool.

There were trucks,

rocks,

and a great big beautiful Buddhist temple. On a mountain.

It was a nice place to sit and ponder.
Here's my fave shot of the temple. Last one, I promise.

So we hiked to the summit, chatted with a precocious 6-year-old, and made it back to the 'Ju with little further incident. Altogether, the experience was fun, not too expensive, and wholly superfluous. At least we get points for whimsy - but nowhere near as many as this next place.

Example two: Puppy Palace

Imagine a typical Saturday night with friends in downtown Gwangju. If you've never been to Gwangju (and of course you haven't) imagine that you're in the social hub of some other city of 1.5 million residents. After a dinner and a few drinks, someone says, "Hey what do you guys want to do next?" You don't feel like barhopping, or catching a late movie, or dancing, so you say, "Hey, I know! Let's go to a room upstairs where we can drink bad coffee out of travel mugs while fully dressed, perfumed dogs climb all over our bodies!"

Now, see, if you weren't in Gwangju, your friends would assume you've had too much to drink and would send you home. But if you are in Gwangju, they'll assume that you've had too much to drink and so it's time to go to Puppy Palace!

It's a coffee shop, it's a pet shop; it's so much more. It's got a sweet mirrored front hallway:
And a number of very special friends that you may snuggle with/purchase. Here's one that I named "Nana."

And here's Meatball. He has a skin condition so he's not allowed to play with the others.

Other special friends include Pebbles, Grim, Pinkerton, Ed, 360, and the ringleader, the "Wizard" called Icepop (credit: Toni Martello).
After visiting twice, I can safely say that it's really not as cool as it should be. Don't get me wrong, I like being mobbed by pets as much as the next guy, but I guess I just prefer them naked. Shirts on dogs are just so redundant. Besides, I want to play with them, not look at them - I want action figures, not dolls.

And the whole place smells like dog pee.

So, moral of the story: when you're teaching English in Korea and you don't speak Korean, your options for fun quickly devolve to the goofy. Whether that's good or bad I leave to you - but it's definitely not necessary.

Visiting

2009-01-20T01:19:00.000-08:00

The best part about working at KFS is the amount of time I'm not required to be there. I got a good three weeks off for Christmas; the typical hagwon teacher gets one solitary day. So, to celebrate the birth of Jesus Christ, my girlfriend Toni and I took a shlep through the only nearby countries virtually guaranteed to be Christian-free: Malaysia and Thailand. Let me tell you: it was a good call.

Malaysia is a strange place. It's a cultural melting pot but also fiercely Islamic; it's got a fantastic influx of oil wealth and foreign investment, and yet it's still in relatively early stages of economic development; and while nearly everyone speaks English, the taxi drivers still pretend not to understand when you ask them to just use the meter.

Kuala Lumpur is cool. It's famous for these,
The Petronas Towers. Toni and I went up to the Skybridge, but before they let us on the elevator we had to sit through a 12-minute video telling us about how great the Petronas Corporation is for us. Pictures of smiling children, new houses, etc. Look what having an offshore oilfield can do for you! Though to be fair, the Towers were really cool.

Here's a shot from the Skybridge. It's a little fuzzy because we were in a cloud.

Nearby KL are the Batu Caves, a series of big 'ol limestone caverns that have been converted into a Hindu holy site/capitalist tourism bonanza. This statue is Lord Murugan, to whom the temple is dedicated. He is tall.

The caves are the perfect place for a spiritual experience: dimly-lit, stalactite-filled, and ethereal. So naturally I went straight to hanging out with the monkeys, who populate the caves in great abundance, due almost certainly to the huge amount of people-food that gets thrown to them daily.

I guess I should include a photo of the caves, too.
From KL we headed to a little island called Pulau Pangkor off the west coast, where we stayed at a nice little place run by some nice little people. Lowlights were confined to the both of us sick and confined to the bed/bathroom on Christmas. On the other hand, highlights ranged from renting a scooter and circumnavigating the island to drinking fresh fruit juice all the time, floating in the ocean, and making friends with the Jungle Puppies, a litter of pups we found living in a pile of trash in the jungle.

Awwwww.

Next: Thailand. This part was going to be easy: bus to Butterworth, Malaysia; overnight bus to the Similan Islands, Thailand. Ha!

We arrived at the Butterworth bus station on the 26th to discover that there wasn't a bus station. Butterworth, just so you know, is a city of over 100,000 people. Yet the bus station is a parking lot - an unpaved one, for that matter. After being herded off the bus and wandering around the parking lot for a while, we discovered the ticket booth, which is in fact an unlabeled shack by the road. The lady in said shack said that the overnight buses weren't running since it was the day after Christmas. The next bus left at 5:30 am. Toni and I, undeterred, found the least sketchy hotel we could find (all the places in the area charge by the hour) and hit the hay. The next day, which happened to be my birthday, went as follows:

5:30 am - arrive at bus terminal to discover that our bus is actually a minibus with no room for us or our luggage. We squeeze in anyway.

7:30 am - we arrive at the Thai border where we are instucted to hand our passports to the driver, who promptly disappears.

8:00 am to 11:30 am - wait in line to get through the border.

11:31 am - a family of 30 unnecessarily sweaty folk attempt to cut me. Elbows get involved, but no eye contact. I am larger and I win.

11:35 am - back on the bus. Passport has reappeared.

1:30 pm - Bus driver drops Toni and I off on the side of the road somewhere in Hat Yai. Another minibus picks us up. Onward.

3:00 pm - bus arrives at a parking lot with a small building on it. Toni and I are sent into the building to wait for a different bus. I am still not sure where exactly this place was.

4:00 pm - our other minibus arrives, the impatient driver sends us aboard.

4:01 pm to 4:35 pm - the impatient bus driver idles the bus' engine and stands outside smoking cigarettes. I contemplate hijacking the bus and driving to the Similans my own damn self, but I refrain, in large part because I don't know where I am.

6:00 pm - Impatient bus driver turns left where I know he's supposed to turn right. My free tourist map says so. I say something to him, but he ignores me/doesn't speak English.

6:10 pm - we definitely should have turned right back there. I show him the map, he swears in Thai, and points to his head while making that wide-eyed "Aw shucks, I forgot!" face. He does not, however, turn around.

6:40 pm - impatient driver drops Toni and me off at a convenience store by the side of the road outside Phuket. He explains the situation to the owner, who relays to Toni and I that a bus to the Similans will be coming by soon, and we need to buy a ticket. Impatient bus driver skedaddles off before I can get my money back.

6:45 pm - in a flash of insight, I ask the convenience store owner to call the Similan Islands' bungalow office and double-check on my reservations. After about 20 minutes I get on the phone with an English-speaking employee, and start getting a bad feeling.

7:15 pm - the bus to the Similans arrives. Our "bus tickets" apparently didn't guarantee us seats, or even walls, for that matter; fortunately, it is at this very moment that the Similan employee finally gives up the truth: our reservations have vanished. The bus goes on without us.

9:30 pm - we follow the convenience store owner's hot tip and make it to a bungalow place not too far away from the beach. I am tired, sick, and have not eaten in 36 hours. Still - all in all, not a bad birthday.

Yikes, this post is too long. To be continued.

Waeg'in'

2009-01-07T04:28:00.000-08:00

Remember the county fair you went to as a kid? With the petting zoo and the fried dough and the horrible rides that were all just spinning things with different axes of rotation? Well, Gwangju is like that, except there are no llamas or Tilt-a-Whirls: the attraction is you.

By "you" I mean probably you; that is to say, someone who isn't from Korea and looks that way. The Korean word for "foreigner" is waegukin or waeguksaram, or literally translated, "person from not here." And it's a word that gets thrown around a lot, not like in America, where really almost everyone is a foreigner if you go back four or five generations. Children in particular are fond of pointing me out to their friends, parents, or people on the street and proclaiming "waegukin!" as if I need to be viewed immediately before I melt into the ground or vanish in a puff of pink butterflies or something. They might as well, I guess, since it's not considered particularly rude, and everyone knows that waegukin can't speak Korean, so really, what's the harm?
My favorites are probably the children that are still too young to fully articulate a sentence but old enough to know that I look different, perhaps fundamentally so, than they do. They've been the source of the best double-takes I've ever seen. I almost accidentally killed one kid in the food court when I stood up to put away my tray; he was so shocked to see me that he began choking on his kimchi. Another time involved a kid at the bakery who spun around for a second look so fast that the torque from his head pulled his whole body into a spin. He clearly hadn't been walking for too long and hadn't expected this contingency, so he fell on his face and started crying. His mom rushed over to gather him up, glaring at me while doing it, as if the whole thing had been my fault. I need to learn how to say "What, lady??" in Korean.
Of course, the attention is not limited to children. They're just the most obvious about it. Adults are also very interested in waegukin, but they know that they're not really supposed to be, so I find myself playing a bizarre game of Red Light Green Light whenever I'm in a public setting. They look at me, I look at them, they look away, I look away, we repeat. This happens most often at the grocery store, where my choice of food generates a surprising amount of interest. I haven't yet had anyone stick their head into my shopping cart yet, which happened to a co-worker, but I've seen many a neck craning over to catch a glimpse of my cereal or orange juice when I get to check out. Occasionally people forget what they're doing, too; I'm just waiting for the day when the person in front of me gets so out of sorts that they walk out of the store without their food. It'll happen.

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
A month ago I was downtown with some friends. One of them looked over my shoulder and said in an excited whisper, "Look! A midget!" I'll be honest - I snuck a glance. Of course, I immediately felt guilty, and still do, but I'll still probably do it again. I am sorry.

There are over 200 conditions that cause dwarfism, which is defined as simply being less than 4 feet 10 inches tall when fully grown. Dwarfism affects around 1 person in 19,000. Here in Gwangju, waegukin-ism affects 1 person in about 2,000, so we're more common than little people (the word "midget" is most decidedly not PC), but we're still an oddity, to be sure. Add to that the hillariously ironic inability of Koreans to tell white people apart - people have told me that I look like everyone from David Beckham to "Spiderman" - and all the staring ceases to be much of a surprise. I mean, if Tobey McGuire was in line behind you at the Safeway, you'd notice, right?

And you know what else? Waegukin are kinda goofy. We're too tall, we have big feet and wide eyes, and let's face it, sometimes we do silly things in public. No, this doesn't really excuse all the staring and whispering and pointing, but come on. From time to time, we deserve it.

Mini-post: Noon wassayo!

2008-11-20T04:00:00.000-08:00

Noon wassayo! It snowed!

In an unprecedented display of meterological cheekiness, Gwangju got dumped on two nights ago.

Check it out.

I suppose this photo could have come from anywhere. But it was taken in Korea. So there.

General good will resulted among the student body, some of whom chose to celebrate by enacting an anime-style fight scene involving summoning energy from the ground and blasting it at each other.

In Korea, the first snow of the year is a time for love and romance. Max and I celebrated by going to our favorite jimjilbang (boy, are you guys in for something when I finally get around to describing jimjilbangs) and discovering that it has been completely gutted. Not cool.

Anyway. Today the snow is mostly gone. It didn't stack up very high against the snow we get in Vermont, but you know, you've got to take what you can get. Especially when it's November.

Hikes and Beauty

2008-11-12T00:19:00.000-08:00

South Korea is a small place - about the size of Florida. Fortunately, it lacks the crocodiles, the confederate flag T-shirts (though they are a hoot), the city of St. Petersburg, and the annoying incessant mosquitoes. Instead Korea has huge, annoying, incessant mosquitoes that don't die off, they just hibernate from the middle of December until early February, then return to feast.

Korea is also blessed with a beautiful, varied mountainous landscape. Mountains are highly regarded in Korean society; monks build temples on them, many carry the respectful suffix "san" on their names like Japanese mountains, and one friend reports that on full moons people ascend the mountain behind her apartment and howl from the peak. Most cities have their own mountain, kind of like a patron saint. Gwangju's is called Mudeungsan, and its silouette appears on a bunch of the road signs with lines of light or inspiration or something emenating from it. When Ben first saw it he thought it was a poop with stink lines coming out.

This would be the appropriate place for a photograph. I'll get one soon.

Anyway, Max and I have hiked a few mountains since arriving. They're cool.
At Nakan Castle near Bolgyeo, with a guy named Sangho I met at a baseball game. He bought Max and I one of those sweet hats each. Max wore his. I did not wear mine.

Wolchulsan. Max is standing on the big rock on the left.

More Wolchulsan. That's the valley down there.

This is near the summit of Hallasan, the tallest mountain in Korea. It's in Jeju, which gets its own post.

A couple of weeks ago, the school was invited to spend a night at a Buddhist temple in Geumsansa, which is of course located on a mountainside.
So it was quite foggy and nice. There was no meat in the food, no beds in the bedroom, and we all had to wake up at 4 and wear silly blue vests, but it was cool.

I liked the style.

Helen and Hobbs liked their vests.

The kids liked their manual labor. Mostly.

Max loved playing on the handcart.

Righto. Here's where we slept:
(Like I said, no beds. We had floor pads, though.)

And here is where we swept:

Sweeping here was nice. Korea can be pretty.

Moral of the story: If you ever have the opportunity to spend some time at a temple, do it. Even if you have to go with a bunch of high schoolers, it's still a nice place for some reflection.

Friends

2008-10-19T04:23:00.000-07:00

Korea is a good place for friendship. People are naturally kind and generous, public transportation is easy and cheap, and when you go out to dinner, most meals have to be ordered in pairs anyway.

The Korean word for "friend" is "chingu." My new chingu Kara (that's her in the hat), who teaches at a hogwan (private academy) across town did a guest talk in my speech class, and taught us that the way to say"friend" in American Sign Language is to make two little fishhooks with your index fingers, link them together, and shake them around a bit.

The other teachers at the school also make good friends. Here's us doing some friend things:

This place is called "The Brewhouse" or simply "The Brew." It's where Mr. Ray, who is not pictured here, goes about 4 nights a week to hang out and drink the smelly, bitter fluid in the cylinder. The Brew has given him his own table, his own throne, and a special silver ornamented chalice from which he, and only he, drinks. I'm really quite jealous. The Brew's main selling point seems to be its sizeable population of drunk middle-aged businesspeople and their spouses, who, to be honest, are a pretty lively and fun bunch. No complaints here. Except about the beer.

I was also fortunate enough to enjoy a two-month-long visit from Ben Crane, a friend from Wesleyan.

Ben is a writer, and quite a good one, by all accounts. He lived on my couch for two months and during the day he wrote, ate ramen noodles, played video games (just a bit), read David McCullough's biography of John Adams, and wore pants maybe 30% of the time. Living the dream, baby. I miss him. If any of y'all want to spend two months on the couch, well, you should know you've got big shoes to fill.

I have a blurry picture of two more special friends:

Their respective names are "Max Elliot Winston" and "Friend 3," also known as "Little Friend." Max is the brunette. Friend 3 is the puppy.

Max is a graduate of Princeton University, where he did his thesis on the patterns of leaf fungus farms laid by leafcutter ants in Panama. More importantly, he is a native of Montpelier, Vermont, which is a mere 30 minutes from my hometown of Essex. By some twist of fate we have both ended up teaching at KFS and living together in a sweet 3-bedroomer on the third floor. More on the apartment later.

Everyone thinks Max and I look alike. I don't really see it. How about some more pictures:

Please note that while I may have helmet hair, I do know how to frame a photograph. Anyway, I guess it's okay. I think it might be the Vermont thing - maybe we talk the same or something. All I really know is that it would be great if the students stopped calling me "Mr. Winston" and asking me if Max and I are twins. I suppose we might as well be. In the third week of school, we both left class, met in the bathroom, switched clothes, and taught each other's class. Max's students called me out after about 15 seconds. My students didn't know what was going on until I walked back into the classroom 10 minutes later.

White people all look the same, anyway.

Little Friend is the landlord's dog. Her predecessors, Friend 1 and Friend 2, both lived chained outside the apartments. Friend 1 was a friendly cocker spaniel belonged to the school's owner, but he was confined to the outdoors because he was "too smelly." The boss has never attempted to give him a bath. Friend 2 was a grown-up version of Little Friend, and she lived outside because...well, just because. They have both been deported to the bosintang farm down the road, which means that they are now soup. Circle of life, I guess.

Little Friend is living a slightly better life. After she sustained a prolonged and meaningless beating from the landlord for having pooped in the wrong place 3 days prior, the teachers had a sit-down with the boss and we worked out some ethical guidelines. Little Friend is now fed and watered daily, is not beaten, and will not become soup anytime soon. She's very happy and adorable. She's growing up fast, and has entered a rather bitey phase, but she's a great little friend to visit on the way to work. Let's close with another blurry photo.

Awwww.

Job.

2008-09-26T06:39:00.000-07:00

Job. That's what I'm doing here for about eight tenths of my time. This is the first time in my life I've actually had a full-time real-deal job, so it's unclear which parts of my impressions are Korea-specific and which parts are just plain ignorance.

My job is to teach English to high schoolers in the mornings, then teach psychology and speech to high schoolers in the afternoon. I am not qualified for this work. Doesn't matter.

My teaching environment is Gwangju Foreign School. For a school that costs about $12,000 a year, it ain't much to look at.Please note the vending machines by the front door. There you can buy coffee made with melanine-tainted creamer from China. It's the only way to start your day.

Across the street is a fish processing plant, down the road is a pig slaughterhouse, and next door is a GM service center with a surly attendant. Down the street there's a Coca-Cola bottling facility (no tours available) and a middle school.

Turns out, teaching is hard. Probably even harder than actually being in high school, which, as I recall, was a stupid waste of time and testosterone. Only 2 in 5 kids actually care ("But aren't Koreans so hard working?" you may ask. No. High schoolers are high schoolers.), and having a couple of smart students means that I actually need to know my stuff. Alas. The upside is that I'm on American work hours - many Korean public schools go from 7:30 am till 10:30 pm.

Co-workers are good. Boss forgot to pay us last week. It's a mixed bag.

I live here.It may not look like much, and it's only being held together by the wallpaper, but to be fair, it's got a lot of wallpaper (because that way, you don't have to paint). I live on the third floor with Max Winston, another Princeton in Asia-er. We don't have cable or a toilet seat, but we've got a great view of the guy who showers in his laundry room with a hose and a bucket. We also have three airsoft guns and enough open space to do some target shooting. There are plastic bbs all over the floor. Good times.

There's a dog who lives outside. She's a Jindo, and her name is Friend 3. She ostensibly belongs to the handyman and brother of the boss, Mr. Myung, who really deserves his own post. So I'll tell you about Friends 1 and 2 at a later date.

I'm currently supervising the high schoolers who aren't taking the PSAT today. Two of them just walked out of the room. Guess it's time to go do the extra-contractual part of the job: crowd control.

High school rules!

This is Not a Blog

2008-09-26T06:34:00.000-07:00

This is my abandonment of TravelJournal.com. They have failed me. Please pardon our appearance while we relocate. Here's what is supposed to be my first post, circa three weeks ago:

First of all: Hello again. Thanks for visiting.

Second of all: I feel weird about writing a travel journal. (Let me call it a travel journal and not a blog; blogs are places where e-hip bloggeurs rant about things like web comics, cosines, and IKEA furniture. I don't want any part of that.) I feel weird about the travel journal because I don't keep a journal when I'm not traveling. I only do it when I'm out of my comfort zone, which means that it must inevitably devolve into how one place is different from what I'm used to, and how one group of people is different from what I'm used to. I feel weird about the travel journal because it raises my risk of only seeing myself as a tourist; a person who is somehow outside and perhaps above his surroundings. So tell me if that starts happening, Okay?

Okay. Thanks.

Third of all: I've been here for a month and this is my first post. I'm sorry. I'll explain.

Where am I? Why, South Korea, of course! For the next year I'll be teaching high school at Gwangju Foreign School in sunny Gwangju, Republic of Korea. Let's have a quick summary of events.

I arrived in late July after a plane ride that isn't worth mentioning outside of the amazing toilet seats at Tokyo's Narita Airport (I've never felt so clean - or is it cleansed?) and the abrupt change in airplane food from peanuts to ramen noodles as soon as we crossed the International Date Line. I got to Incheon Airport really tired . Imagine that. The hostel was closed for the night, so I staggered over to a Best Western and talked the receptionist down from $250 a night to $90. I'm still not sure if he was messing with me or taking pity on me.

A few early impressions:

- Korea is hot and humid, at least in the winter. On my first full day in the country, I began sweating at precisely 7:42 am upon exiting the hotel. Awesome.

- People are not as short as I had imagined (or perhaps secretly hoped). I'm tall here at 6 feet, but not monstrous. My feet, on the other hand, are far too large for Korean shoes.

- There is less spoken English but far more written English than I had expected. Nearly every store that isn't a restaurant has an English sign out front, even here in Gwangju, which is 4 hours away from the cosmopolitan Seoul. Of course, very few people could actually tell you what that English sign says. I've just got to learn Korean.

- The countryside is gorgeous and surprisingly empty. Korea is about the size of Florida but has way more people, at least 48 million, but nearly everyone lives in high-rise apartments in the cities. The bus ride from Incheon to Gwangju was beautiful; craggy mountains, green rolling hills with farms built into them, and evergreen forests, punctuated by the occasional urban oasis.

Okay. My psychology class is about to start. Here's a sneak peak of some upcoming episodes: Utilities and Bureaucracy, in which I explain why I still don't have Internet; Waeguk! Waeguk! in which we explore how fascinating white skin and big eyes are to some Korean children; Old People, where we'll begin to understand why Korean streets are so clean; and Where's Wando, where I'll regale you with tales of my time with a national celebrity and his brother the mob boss. Seriously.