Into the Blue Again

Three months down and I'm already skipping the country, if only for a week. I've decided to go to Thailand after all. I'll spend most of my time on the small island of Koh Phangan, famous worldwide for its full moon parties. I leave Sunday and come back early the next Monday morning (which means I'll be there for the full moon party on Saturday - fuck yeah).

Of course, this week and the trip that'll consume it marks another first in that Mike, one of the two close friends I've met here will be leaving Korea for international travel and then back to Canada. He'll likely come back next year, though. I had a long drunk talk with Adrian this weekend about the cruel nature that we're all so transient here, and that the friends you make here will inevitably leave and you'll leave them. But that's all far too emokid to bother bringing up here.

Speaking of talking shit and being drunk this weekend, there was a party on the roof of Mike and Ben's apartment building to commemorate Mike's departure. It was a fine time, not in spite of, but moreso due to the fact that there wasn't a huge crowd there.

There was a reasonable collection of strangers and seldom seems to start with, but a lot of them petered away and left just a handful of us on the roof to drink too much. Music for the soiree was supplied by my far too loud white tube boombox, and food was supplied by a clever little portable barbecue. Got got his earful of complaints and financial doo-dickary from the party fallout, which puts a pretty bittersweet tone to the whole thing in retrospect. Basically, his landlord is trying to dick him out of three grand because he says a barbeque on the (solid concrete) roof will cause leaks.

But that's all moot, and far too negative to bring up on the eve of adventure. And not everything about Mike's departure is terrible news, as he practically left me his whole apartment. I'm now the proud owner of his Xbox, coffee maker, toaster, rice cooker, and potentially cursed portable barbecue (at least until he comes back).

By the way, Ben and Mike are English teachers here too, so of course they've got blogs, too.

http://benfraser.blogspot.com/

http://www.mickileepaul.com/blog/

Mike's (non-blog) website is worth a visit too, his pictures are generally far better than mine.

Speaking of pictures, I went apeshit with the camera the other day as my Kindergarten kids were playing in the playroom. I'm so attached to this class now. I teach another bunch of smarter, better behaved kids twice a week, and I can't see ever forming the same attachment to them. They just don't have the same character. I was talking to Ally at work, and I was telling her how when I'm actually dealing with my class, they often frustrate me to no end, that I spend half the class doing that pinch-the-bridge-of-your-nose-and-close-your-eyes thing that people do on headache commercials. But then I proceeded to tell her how I miss them terribly overnight, that I'm overjoyed to see them in the morning.

Ally answered "Hmm, sounds like motherhood to me." She's got a really fucking good point. There's something interesting to note from the pictures here. Of the two most photographed kids, one is easily my favourite, and the other is the kid who is most often the cause of my melodramatically frustrated facial expressions.

That's largely it for this week, and possibly for next week, too. Given that I'll be on a relatively remote island, I won't be able to post my typical Thursday blog. However, I'll likely have some sort of 'I'm still alive, shit is crazy' post somewhere from the road, so keep an eye out.

In this week's edition of Unintentionally Hilarious T-shirts (UHT), see this clearly Korean guy I spotted on the subway, with a that shirt I really wanted to steal.

Coup de Grace

I'm quickly approaching the three month mark here in Seoul. Speaking of being in Seoul, I almost feel like I've spent too many consecutive weekends here without going to explore the peninsula (aka country). That (lack of non-Seoul exploration) will all change in time, but more on that in a moment.

I've certainly had no lack of exploring within the city, though. Last Friday we had the day off work, so I biked to Yeouido to start off a daylong biking adventure. Incidentally, I tried to bike my way to this place for a few hours back in July, to no avail. It took me less than half an hour this time, so I guess I'm learning to guess my way around this maze of a city. Mike met me there and rented a bike and we spun around for 3 hours of fun and frolic and traffic dodging. We stopped for a while on an island in the middle of the Han River called Seonyudo park.

The place used to be a sewage treament plant, but has been turned into a nature park. They actually left some of the structures and rusty mechanisms, and the place is considred this real bastion of contrasting mechanical and organic images. Accordingly, it's a real popular spot for photographers. Accordingly, I took a bunch of pictures - mostly playing with macro shots of pretty flowery things.

After Mike returned his bike and subbed home, I left to explore a little more and got shafted on taking an ill-advised scenic route. Or someone should have ill-advised it for me, since it got me stuck on a highway, wading through leg-slicing plants, and having to pull a leap of faith across a five-foot stream into a pile of soft mud. Frustrating as it was, it was an adventure in and of itself, and I've yet to develop any fatal disease from the uncharted foliage.

All in all, my bicycle odyssey lasted six time-flying hours, and I was a muddy lump of blood. Sunday I went on my own little skateboard adventure, checking out what parks I've found so far in my travels in the city.

I've been keeping the hedonism levels down the last few weekends in order to save my spirit and resources for that oft-mentioned Chuseok vacation. Speaking of which, there's been half a dozen or so developments in that story, some of which you might have even caught wind of on a little thing called 'the news'.

Tuesday I got the excited exciting news from Mike that not all hope was lost for my trip to Thailand. Seohee's magical travel agent actually managed to score me an 11th hour flight to and fro. It does, however, put me back in Seoul just shortly before I have to teach Monday morning (possibly too short to make it to class on time). I slept on the idea Tuesday night.

I wake up and there's a message from Mike about a 'coup' in Thailand. I figured he meant figuratively, like a major blow had been stuck for (or against) our cause. Hours later, I realize that he meant the literal kinda coup, where the military overthrows the government and there's martial law and tanks in the street and that kinda shit.

Much to the shagrin of some friends and relations back home, this is not the coup de grâce for this trip. The news is calling it 'The Bloodless Coup' and it is, after all, their 17th since WWII. By all accounts it's really not that big of a deal, as far as political upheaval goes. Still, a city where there are tanks in the streets sounds a little less than vactaion-y. The chance to party with Mike et al on the beaches of Koh Sumai would certainly be worth it, though, so the inner debate continues.

But even if Thailand doesn't happen, Japan will. There's also a tiny chance that China might happen. My vacation choices were never this varied before. It's hardly a thing about anyone which anyone could complain.

For the first two months here, I was in a movie-buying flurry. You can pick up pirated DVDs from a virutally endless number of street vendors. While they're actually rarer here than their hollywood counterparts, I always tried to purchase Korean movies. Sadly, my purchasing habits have fallen by the wayside lately, but I'd imagine that as time passes, this collection of Korean curiousities will grow into a fever pile of subtitled cinema.

Speaking of curious things from Korea, I egress with this little present from one of my students. Cute interpretations of 'dong' (conveniently, this Korean word for shit is pronounced more like 'dung') are not at all publically unacceptable (although I don't know where the culture stands on afwul double negatives like 'not publically unacceptable'). Now the real question is: is this some sort of coy comment on my teaching abilities?

Urbanality

(don't worry, be clicky)

My third month rounds the midpoint corner, heading towards closing time. This weekend I took things easily, since I wasn't feeling quite 100%. Still decent - like 70% at the worst. There's this infamous bout of sickness that strikes forigners here. It's not a disease or infection, as such; more of a system shock where our bodies try to adjust to the thick hazy pollution-y air here in Seoul. I've still never been completely Seoul Flu-ed, but now and then I fight a little hint of unhealth.

Back at the Hagwon (I dunno if I've mentioned before, but that's the Korean word for the kind of school at which I teach) the kids actually are alright... generally. I actually get a huge kick out of that cute messy backwards letters horrible writing style that kids write in, so I took some photos of how my Kindergarteners labelled their own books.

Speaking of kid's names, I've actually gotten to name two girls in my classes. See, the 'english' names that the kids use are given to them at the school, basically so us poor saps don't have to learn to pronounce and remember so many unfamilliar Korean names. The kids typically continue to use the names for the rest of their lives whenever they deal with anyone in english, though (for the very same reason, I guess). Unfourtunately, the two girls I named refused to take any cool pop-culture reference names like Leia or Nico. I managed to get one take Lisa as a Simpsons reference, and another Alice as an obvious Carrol reference. I teach a boy named Gaby in Kindergarten. I don't know what the hell was wrong with the guy who named him.

I left work today and took a nice long walk around the area. Not the immediate area - I left with the intention of getting lost, basically. I caught some nice views and pretty alleys and the typical fascinated stares of Koreans young and old. There's also an abnormal abundance of large and pretty fountains, both in that area, and in Seoul as a whole. Oh and the tail-less cat? Yeah, there's a bunch of them, too. I think it's how you tell the difference between a wandering housecat and an alleycat: the alleycats have had their tail removed or mangled by some sort of unimaginable trauma.

Another thing that's curiously overabundant here: statues. These normally aren't statues to commemorate or memorialize anything. Often, they're decorations outside of some sort of business. Big artsy stone phalluses to celebrate commerce. I like it, the end effect is just that it makes the city prettier, with little extraneous decorations outside of even the most mundane of buildings with the most benign of purposes.

I'm not sure if I've mentioned this before either, but the food here is pretty goddamned tasty. Korean food's a little different than I expected, mostly in that it's pretty different from Chinese. I mean legit Chinese food, by the way, not chickenballs and an eggroll floating in cherry sauce (although I guess it's different from that too). Kimbap and sam gup sal are two of my favourite Korean dishs, even though the former is basically a renamed sushi roll and the latter literally translated means 'three layers of fat'. There's also a pretty full compliment of Western restaurants here for those feeling particularly xenophobic or homesick.

Speaking of xenophobia, there's a surprising lot of Japanese food here, considering that Koreans as a whole aren't big fans of that country. Some petty feud about Japan burning down like half the country a few hundred years ago or something. Quit living in the past, princess! Actually, it's interesting to see how a rivarly that's literally centuries old plays out between neighbouring nations. A lot of the kids call it (Japan) 'monkey land'.

Speaking of that Nipponic island of insanity, it looks like my plans for Chuseok have changed. The chances of me getting a flight to Thailand have gone from slim to none. Instead, I'm most likely going to take the ferry to Japan and just explore. It'll be a lot different wandering around Japan completely alone as opposed to sitting on a beach in Thailand with friends, but it'll still be fun. The tentative plan involves zipping around on trains between Fukowaka, Osaka and Kyoto for the week, but I'll play it by ear and see if I've got the time and resources to check out Tokyo too.

In closing, here's one of yet another of the many fountains from this sprawly urbanality (it's a word if I say it is) that is Seoul. As is the case with virtually any panorama on the site, you can click it for a much bigger version. The one at the top is another panograph, some complicated fusion of collage and panorama that I'm all about lately.

Lotta Lotte

(click me and I'll get all big)

A week of fun and frollick in Seoul. I love doing new things every week. I love that I may never run out of new things to do during my year here.

This Friday me and Mike decided to cast off the shackles of the GS and explore the area a little. We decided to check out Boramae park. It's a large and wonderful place and all the stranger for being a mostly unspoiled park smackdab in the middle of the urban jungle. Kind of like Bowering Park: Seoul Edition, to put it in granite planet terms. A night of drinking in the park had some crazy charm, both nostalgic and on its own merit.

Saturday night a few of us had a little gathering on the roof of the apartment building where Mike and Ben live. We played roofpong and lost balls to the ground and probably risked doing the very same with ourselves. We graduated to tennis balls and the game got more random (both in concept and practice). Needless to say it was a pretty fun night, as random and impromptu as the stupid roof games played during it.

Sunday me and Mike and Seo Hee went to Lotte World. That was assloads of fun. See, Lottle World is kind of like the Korean Disneyworld. Well, maybe a bit more like Canada's Wonderland - but smaller (space comes at a pretty high premium in Seoul).

The place is a real smattering of indoor and outdoor attractions. Things that spin, things that drop, things that loop-the-loop. Typical theme park fair. The only odd difference is that most of the rollercoasters were indoors.

Actually, what the fuck am I talking about - this is Korea, of course there were other weird differences. There was an ice rink inside, basically the centrepeice of the whole inside area. You could drink anywhere and everywhere (this IS Korea, after all). The attendants were the most energetic people I've ever seen - possibly anywhere. They all waved with both hands. Some danced in synch with the rides they were attending. Not a regular dance, some sort of dancy-miming-traffic-cop kinda combo that's hard to explain.

When the lights turned low, the colours got prettier. At the end of the night, they had some strange laser lightshow and the globe in the centre of the park split open like the G.I. Joe Terrordrome and shot fireworks (indoors, no less).

There's a darker side, though. See, Lotte World's got a bit of a reputation problem here in Korea. Back a few months ago, a drunk passenger wasn't properly strapped into his seat and he kinda flew out of a coaster mid-ride. Before that,
(according to my students) a fire broke out and a bunch of people got caught on a coaster and kinda died, apperently. When I talked about going to Lotte World with my kids, all the older kids kind of gasped in awe at my bold disregard for my own life. It's all pretty blown out of proportion, though. You know what kids are like with stories and rumours of mortal danger.

Incidentally, the reputation issues haven't stopped the newer rides from having 2-hour lineups. We bypassed the two newest rides for that reason.

I'm currently getting things worked out for my trip to Thailand. Hopefully, I should be able to swing it. Looks like the most feasible route is going to be through Japan. That'll make the (simplified) itinerary look kinda like:
Train to Busan (Korea), ferry to Fukowaka (Japan), train to Osaka (Japan, duh), plane to Bangkok (Thailand), plane to Ko Sumai (also Thailand), bus to the shore, boat to the island.
Then play it backwards to get home. All the extra travel is more an adventure than an inconvenience. Even if it does mean almost as much time travelling as actually vacationing.

I was filmed for part of a Korean tourism video tonight. Three of us were interviewed about our opinions of a new tourism spot and our opinions are going to be shown to Korean government officials as evidence of how foriegners would react to the film. Admittedly, it was pretty damn well made, and at least as slick as a greased Pride Fighter.

I always try to go out on a joke, so here's a bit of Konglish (Korean bastardized english). This is everywhere, but it's kind of awkward to whip out a camera and take snaps of clothing and signs all the time, so I don't normally get a picture. Only one of these is real funny, the others are just full of bad grammar.


Oh, and just in case you can't read the shirt on the far left, it says:

"Whip it to me
Can I come?
HOLD BACK
I'm gonna come!"

You can be pretty sure that neither the girl wearing this nor most of the people around have any idea of what this shirt says. Hell, even if they can read it, they probably don't quite get what it means. Somewhere in Korea there's a collection of english silkscreeners with a sick sense of humour.

Then again, it's no better than the scads of Asian character tattoos people have everywhere in the english-speaking world. I wonder how many of those are terrible sexual refences?

The Beachcombers

This weekend I went to Ally's wedding in Busan (she's one of the Korean teachers at my school). The only disappointing part of the trip was the 300km/hr train there did not feel nearly as fast as I'd imagined. From there, though, it was all Korean faerie magic.

A Korean wedding is indeed different than one back home, but not neccesarily in ways that I expected. The garb was wild in about the ways I'd imagined. Standard bride and groom stuff, but the ushers had marching-band-esque uniforms, and the mothers of each wore traditional Korean dresses (pretty sure it's called a hanbok). This looked particularly surreal for the groom's mother, as she is from the Canadian prairies, and her first taste of Korea was just a week or so earlier.

The unexpected weird came in the ceremony, though. The entrance music for the bride and groom was... well his was the entry music for a soccer team - literally. The lights dimmed and dry ice steamed fog down the aisle and projectors shot lazer lightshows around the room. When they both got to the altar, a bubble machine blew bubbles around them and throughout the room.

The ceremony was a nice though - quick and effecient one of half english half korean and ultimately it's not all that different from any I've seen (save for the coninuous stream of bubbles and creative lighting). There were some performances at the end, one from a friend and another from one of Ally's kinderkids (I teach her too). She played violin - far too beautifully for a child of her age. I help her colour and put stickers in a book, and she's probably better at violin than I'd be if I started playing when she was born. Assuming I ever had more than a month's patience with musical instruments.

After the ceremony we had sushi and then set out for the beach. Busan is on the southwest coast of Korea, so it's got some nice beaches where warm salty moisture is the only thing seperating you from Japan. Overexcitedly, hastily, and haplessly I hopped into the water as soon as we hit the beach. This was hapless because I'd forgotten to take off my glasses, which fell off and disappeared into the blue again. Somewhere in the Sea of Japan there is a nearsighted crab thanking me.

I sat on the beach until dark, bleary-eyed, combing through sand for tiny shells talking to Ben, Mike, and a few of the girls from work who came along to enjoy the thing for which Busan is known. It was nice to hang out with some of the Korean coworkers outside of work; you don't really get to meet someone when you're in the office working with them.

Back in Seoul to round out the weekend, I killed a few hours on Sunday visiting the COEX mall. I dig this place. It's a lot more like the malls back home, than a lot of the shopping centres here, with more focus on individual stores as opposed to some mazelike conglomeration of independant minimarkets. They've got these little interactive projectors showing little minigames on the floor where you do things like kick pool balls into holes and play a little mini game of soccer. I never tried kicking at things myself though, as they were mostly monopolized by children playing-out Godzilla fantasies.

The rest of my weeklife in a nutshell: My hair is practically normal again and I've got some sporty new glasses. I start teaching on Saturdays this month. I'm trying to plan some sort of fun vacation for Chuseok (long early October holiday) - come hell or high water, I'm leaving this peninsula for somewhere. Thailand, Japan, Hong Kong, Vietnam, or even Jeju island. The only obstacle is the highly overbooked flight schedules, since that's the Korean travel equivalent of Christmas.

As a parting shot, check out these absofuckingloutely adorable pictures my kids have drawn of me. The one on the left is from one of my Kinderchildren and the other is from a handmade card that another very clever student gave me.