Dead Leaves on the Dirty Ground

Fall is here now, you can feel it in the air. Everything's crisper (relatively speaking, given that air that's blue with smog can only be so 'crisp') and most days require a sweater now. It's almost time for me to figure out how the mysterious contraption on my wall can be adjusted to generate heat.

The leaves are even falling off the trees here. Even though I know it sounds like whiny homesick bullshit, but it's just not the same. The leaves don't turn yellow then red then golden brown on the branch. You don't see the spattered mosaics between the trees. The trees here are too eager to get naked - the leaves just drop and rot with little warning or fanfare.

Curiously, at the same time, the once-inconspicuous tree across from my apartment now bears fruit - literally. I think they might be oranges. I might try and get up to grab one just to see.

The week has been nice. The weekend was videogames with Ben and bars and some Korean barkeep saying I 'look like Orando Broom'. Somehow on my way home I found a pair of boxing gloves on the sidewalk. I did what anyone would - stole them and took them home for no good reason.

Speaking of wandering the streets at night, I never grow tired of how the night-time looks here. The electro-luminance of signs and neon and streets and cars. It's never fully dark here - there's always the glow of artificiality. There's a charm to it, the colourblind nightmare of garish flash at night. I'm sure there will be times when I'll ache for the silence of empty streets and trees and stars, but for now the novelty is still pretty fresh.

I'm just about on the eve of losing another friend and coworker, in that Ben's contract expires in about a week, and he's leaving to do travel then go back to Canada then come back to Korea much like Mike. That's gonna change the dynamic of daily living here in Korea, but if change wasn't what I wanted I wouldn't have come to Korea.

However, in the same breath, my former neighbour Cahill is coming to teach in about a week as well. That'll likely change the dynamic - plus it'll be good to see someone from home for the first time in over four months.

Speaking of faces I haven't seen in a while, Dan, the guy I replaced at work has returned to replace Ben. Dan's been teaching at the school for about 5 years now, so he's pretty well established, both with the coworkers and the students. He was surely a tough act to follow, but I've done well in my short time there.

When Clara (from work) was making up cute little penguin nametags for my students' lockers, I jokingly requested one. She made one up, and it's all kinds of awesome. It even overshadows the makeshift one I made from tape and a strange sticker one of the kids gave me.

I managed to snap a picture today that pretty much sums up the state of young students in Korea. At the music school across the hall from work, I saw a boy of about 10, still wearing his TaeKwonDo uniform, practically passed out from exhaustion at the piano. The amount of extra curricular schooling in this country is intense. Between all the extra schools they go to after school, it's not uncommon for kids of 13 or younger to be at school from about 9 in the morning to 11 or 12 at night. It's all part of some the heaviest college entrance competition in the world. It's actually illegal to hire private home tutors here, as it's said to give an unfair advantage.

Speaking of unfair advantages, I picked which toothpaste to purchase this week based primarily on the hilarious English mistake on the label.



I'm not exactly Calculus' biggest fan or anything, but I wouldn't wage a campaign against it or anything.

Decompression Week

It's fall now, it's even starting to feel like it. I've been back in Korea for well over a week now, and I've spent most of the time mentally and physically recuperating from my great trip. Which is to say that I spent a lot the last week doing nothing huge. But it's Korea and I'm always doing something and there's always always something to say and see.

In fact, this week there are a lot of things to see. Well over a hundred of them, in fact, but they're not here. I've finally managed to put up a gallery of some of my favourite pictures from here, in larger, non-collaged format. You can check out the brand-spankin'-new gallery here:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/seoulpurpose/

I also cleaned up my Thailand journal posts into a single entry. It includes the last page, which wasn't online before.

As for what I did in the 'real' world this week, taught all day on Saturday for the first and last time, and anxious to counterbalance, I probably overdid things Saturday night. I told my cab to drop me off at where I thought was home, but on getting lost and catching another cab, I realized it was a good 6 or 7 kms off the mark. The camera never made it out with me that night, and it's probably for the best.

On Monday we had a Kindergarten feild trip to Seoul Land, an amusement park (that's not quite as cool as Lotte World). That was a nice time, and it was great to see the kids run wild and get scared and ride rides. Once again, I forgot my fucking camera, so I haven't got the assuredly cute pictures to prove it.

Speaking of pictures, I took a walk today, camera in hand, specifically trying to remedy the dearth of pictures I've got from this week. I never even went to anywhere interesting or pretty in the traditional sense. I just wanted to catch a glimpse of sincere daily life in Seoul. Just the kind of images that I walk by every day, and probably discount as routine. It's my attempt to try and relay the real look and feel of this place; through candid shots of people just doing their thing.

Speaking of daily life here, I'm often asked how the whole North Korea thing plays out here with the locals. I was talking about this with Rosa at work and she was saying that in the past when Kim Jong Il did crazy shit, South Koreans prepared for complete meltdown. They rushed to the supermarkets snatching up water and canned goods and other such supplies.

This time around, the big news is that no one's doing that. There have been so many cries of 'Wolf!' over this guy that people are getting jaded, I figure. The media here seems far less interested in sensationalizing the whole thing. There's no strategic advatage for the North to attack anyone, including South Korea. On top of that, they'd pretty much have no allies if they were ever apeshit enough to do such a silly thing. I'm not concerned, and this is the last you'll hear from me on it for now.

In slightly more hilarious news, rennovations are nearing completion at my school. While that's not terribly funny in and of itself, you've gotta read the writing on the wall, man. Literally. See, they've gone with this nice theme of international english education, with famous school crests on the classrooms and maps of major english countries on the walls. Wherein lies the problem. Not only did they fuck up the spelling of Canada, America, and New Zealand, but they fucked up the maps too. Canada lacks islands (ahem!), New Zealand lacks most of itself, and the U.S. is clearly a map of Australia. Most of the school crests are alright (Harvard, Yale, Columbia, etc.), but I don't think they chose an appropriate one for Cornell.

I really don't like ragging too much on Korea, but these are hilarious mistakes. Ironically, of the foreign teachers there, we've got me from NF, Ben from Vancouver Island, Scott from New Zealand, and two Chrises from the 'States. None of our homes appear on the maps of our own countries. There's also Shane from Ontario, but he doesn't count 'cause the story is funnier without him.

In closing this week, here's a sign from a store that I pass virually every day. It makes me do a double-take every time. I get the fat girl and the skinny girl, I guess it must me a weight loss thing. But the singing toilet? I think the two question marks say it all.



I like to call it 'NoraeJohn'.
Noraebang means Kareoke in Korean, but I had to explain it so now it's not funny.

Shirt and Thai Event

I made it back from Thailand alive, and I'm back in the SK groove. I kept a sporradic journal during the trip that I uploaded from little Internet Cafes along the way, so if you want a little more insight and some sloppy sketches, you can check those out below. The short version of the trip is that I had a really fucking great time. The long version is too long an incoherent to share. One of the medium versions follows, as I try to tell the tale; the tale of a fateful trip.

Me and Mike took off from Seoul on Sunday and touched down in Bangkok late that night, hopping a taxi to the infamous backpacker district known as Khao San Road (if you've seen the movie or read the book The Beach, Khao San is where it begins). It was a seedy place, but not completely unpleasant. Dirty, crawling with prostitutes, street merchants, and all manner of people looking to capitalize on the travellers there.

The short time we spent seeing stores and filth and Buddhas and temples and pictures of the beloved king in Bangkok was great, but my personal highlight was probably being sped around by a Tuk-Tuk. They're these little motorcycles that have been converted to have 3 wheels and take 2 passengers, kind of like motorized rickshaws. They're unsafe open boxes that are loud as fuck and stink of exhaust, and I can't imagine a better way to see the city blur by.

Thailand is so cheap to stay in. A meal in a reastaurant can easily cost under 2 dollars. Beer in a restaurant or bar is about a dollar. I bought about 5 or 6 t-shirts and they totaled less than 20 dollars. It's sad to know that this is kind of indicative of quality of life there, but dry your guilty tears - tourism is an important and helpful source of income for the country.

On Tuesday we flew to Koh Samui and took a ferry to Koh Phangan, where we remained until Sunday. That place is like a large Gilligan's Island filled with people wanting to party with college-movie gusto. At nighttime the beach turned into a museum of loud music and sin and fire shows.

Not to be outdone, our group (consisting of me, Mike, Seohee, Sophie, and Song Il) did our own share of sioree-ing. We had a great time there as we baked and swam on the beach, and I crashed two rented motorcycles (our group as a whole crashed four, as Mike and Seohee each had mishaps, too). The whole thing came to a head at the Full Moon party Saturday night, which is hard to explain, other than that it was basically like New Years Eve on a beach with thousands of other people. Very fucked up people. They had a part of the beach roped off so you could basically drag people who'd passed out so they wouldn't get trampled. I may or may not have seen a dead body float ashore. Mike argued that he was possibly just passed out.

The next morning, me and Mike pulled ourselves together and caught the boat and plane back to Bangkok. There, me and Mike said our somber goodbyes as I headed back to Seoul and he flew to Cambodia, bound for the world and eventually back to Canada. I had to catch the bus from the airport right to work, where a day of screaming children was not the best way to wash down two days of sleep deprivation. I was kinda glad to see them regardless.

All in all, the vacation was more amazing than I can really explain here. It wasn't a touristy, sight-seeing type thing. It was a vacation in greatest sense of the word - just a simple week of enjoying myself in an exciting new place. Now I miss the place I've seen but I'm recharged and excited to see the next place and surprised with the feeling of home that Korea has now.

When I was in Thailand, I was a little bewildered by the lack of Koreans. The few times I noticed some (by looks or speech) I looked to them with this expectation that they'd glance back and recognize me as one of their own. Sometimes it's hard to remember that I'm white without scads of strangers' stares reminding me that I'm a sore thumb.

I'll leave with an image of the sunset rising over the Full Moon beach on Koh Phanagn. It's easily my favourite panorama I've ever shot.

(as usual, click for a big pretty version)

Thailand Trip Journal (Complete)

During my trip to Thailand I kept up to date by posting pages from a handwritten sketch journal I kept on the road. Here's the collection. Please excuse the chicken-scratch handwriting and sketchy pictures.

(click them for a full-sized view)