Finding the Rhythm

(citizens of tomorrow, be forewarned)

Seven days have been crossed off the calendar since last we met, and I'm a deeper into the rabbit hole of Korea. Nothing particularly out of the ordinary happened this week, but that's a relative concept when you live in a country where selling smoked tentacles and cooked silkworm larvae as a street-side snack counts as ordinary.

Cahill came to Seoul again this weekend, after a post-new-year hiatus. Instead of heading to Hongdae, we stayed in Sillim once again, and headed for the Zeppelin bar. By the time we got there, things were quite subdued, but we enjoyed the stiff drinks and free oranges and the best classic vinyl this little corner of Seoul has to offer.

From there, we headed to Box 86, where the owner memorized my name after a single visit. We actually ran into her on the sidewalk on New Year's Eve, and she screamed "Hello, Peter, Happy New Year!" surprising and confusing me. She granted me the same enthusiasm on Saturday. Cahill approached the dusty, out of tune, but functional guitar hidden in the corner with the same enthusiasm. He picked it up, tuned it, and played around a bit. They even turned down the music in the bar, to better hear the guitar.

As we left the bar in the late-eve-slash-early-morning the street food carts were closed, so we headed to an all-night Kimbap place and enjoyed delicious Korean foods and soups. Really, it was a great idea, that I'm likely to repeat in future. You'd be surprised how well spicy Korean soup and tuna-seaweed-rice rolls replace greasy pizza as a post-booze meal.

It's funny how comfortable this all gets after a while. How natural it is to use the scant bit of Korean I know to communicate. How sights and sounds and smells that gave me a chronic case of crane-neck in my first few months now fade into the familiar.

That's part of why it helps so much to stop and make myself look around and take pictures to remind myself that this is neither Kansas nor the home I've known for most of my life. It just feels eerily like home now. Shibal, I even swear in Korean a lot of the time now, even when I'm alone and there's no one to hear it and be offended.

Another part of Korea with which I'm increasingly comfortable is teaching. With my Kindergarten class, I've finally got some semblance of order. For my first week of teaching that class, I'd go through most 40-minute classes without more than half of the kids opening their books.

A little over a month ago, I started letting every student draw themselves a star on the board if they finished all their work. These days, I'll get 10 minutes into class and kids start screaming "Peter Teacher, I'm done! One star!" Some of the worst-behaved students from when I started are now some of my favourites. It's all very cute and very satisfying, and if I did this again, I'd gladly teach kindergarten.

I wish I taught them art. Those snowmen they made are awesome, and whenever I've got a bit of time to kill in class, I let them draw on the whiteboard. William draws the best Monster House ever. Also, I forgot how kids have a biological predisposition to love dinosaurs at this age. Truly a universal phenomenon, it crosses cultures and half the globe to reach Korea with full force.

Coming up in February, I've got a little shy of a week's holiday for Lunar (aka Chinese) New Year. I think I may fly to Japan, but if I have any hope of making those arrangements, I should really get on that this week.

To close up this week, I've got three generally unrelated images, united in their general sense of Koreanosity. On the left, you see an elaborate Neon-tube Popeye being used to lure people into a Hof (aka bar; a pub moreso than a club). While not innately funny, it is worth noting that this particular image of Popeye was taken during his later years, after he'd switched catchphrases to the decidedly less-catchy "Fuck the spinach, let's get drunk!" While this was a controversial move for the once borderline-wholesome sailor-prone-to-violent-outbreaks, the move made sense to most who gave it a chance. I mean, he is a sailor, man! Swearing and drinking are kind of his thing.

Speaking of swearing and drinking and outbreaks of violent behaviour, those familiar with Newfoundland should look to the right and see a semi-familiar place name. While most people probably think of an island off the coast of California when they read this (cat-a-lean-ah), people from my dot on the globe are probably more apt to think of a small east-coast town of a few thousand (cat-a-line-a). It's not funny in and of itself, but I can't help but imagine the convolouted story you could tell wearing this kind of shirt on the Granite Planet (aka Newfoundland).

"Sure it says Catalina, I got it in South Korea, though."

Speaking of things that would look quite at home in Newfoundland, but quite strange in Korea, observe the large red ATV parked on the sidewalk there in the middle. If there's any way to stick out in Seoul (other than being a foreigner) it's to drive an off-road vehicle. I mean, I'm not sure there any places in Seoul that lack roads. At least they took the effort to dress it up with a superfluous dome with strange churchesque stained-glass flower stickers on it. Now it fits-in a little more...

Fun and Games

(it's so unexpectedly predictable)

This week I learned an obvious lesson: that an awful way to get to know far too much about people really quickly is to play drinking games with them. By 'awful' I mean messy, not ineffective. On the contrary, it's downright messily effective.

But I use words like 'messy' and 'awful' in a completely positive way - Saturday evening was actually quite fucking fun from start to finish. I went to Hongdae with Bora, Saebom (Bora's old schoolmate), Trevor and Jason. After a tasty steak dinner (with an exceptional salad bar and a failed record attempt from Jason to create the world's tallest self-serve custard cone), we headed to a bar, bought a bottle of Tequila and introduced this naive young narrator to his first round of the Korean "Image Game".

This is a game ideally based on visual impressions, in which you sit around a table pointing and judging who is the person most likely to... (insert potentially embarrassing characteristic here). Really, it's more like the crush-one's-image game, as observations include things like who's been with the most / least people, who's most / least attractive, and so on. The person pointed to by the most people has to drink, but I guess that's a given, seeing as it's called a drinking game. After the tequila evaporated at an alarming rate, we went to a new bar, and played the more tried-and-true "I Never" game, which is a diplomatic and revealing game in and of itself, of course. Copious quantities of Megju (beer) and Soju (if you don't know by now, you don't want to - trust me) were consumed, and almost-copious good times were had by all.

Then I left the weekend behind. Or waited in bed until the the clock told me to go to work, at least. Work has been good. It certainly doesn't seem like I've been teaching for seven months now, and that's not just because I'm really about a week shy of the seven-month mark. The kids are still wonderful, and my schedule keeps changing, and I keep losing some of my favourite students but getting new ones and fuck it, as Hello Kitty says, "You can never have too many friends." Ms. Kitty never said this to me personally, but a lesson I taught the kids about her history and financial success informed me that it's her motto.

I seem to have run into an unusually fortunate barrage of hilarious Korean English misuse and general insanity this week. More accurately, I probably ran into about the status quo amount of said madness, I just happened to be carrying my camera for more of the strange photo ops.

I'm a particular fan of the tiny pink garbage can that purifies you and recycles life. In defense of the "Water passed by the manager" subway ad, I think this may be for an English school, and actually explains why this might not be a great sign to put up in a restaurant. I'll give no such defense to the Peter Fan notebook. The gibberish English on the front of this is miles worse than the English journal of an 11-year old Korean girl that's kept inside. Surely the company who made this could have at least run the grammar and spelling past a small child before sending it to presses.

Incidentally, Peter Pan is hot shit in Korea now. Makes my name a big hit with students young and old. I don't even mind the jokes, in fact, I've suggested to some kids that they can just call me Peter Pan Rabbit Teacher. Past the initial laugh they give, that's just too long, so they give up and just call me Petuh or Teachuh.

And speaking of students and English and questionable printed materials, I close this week with the following...


The page on the left is probably the result of the fact that some of our course materials are written by native English speakers who may or may not have senses of humour borrowed from adolescent children. In the same book series, there's a lesson titled "Those are My Balls!" And no, Korea is not that progressive in sexual education. Quite the opposite, I'd venture to guess. They do, however, have at least one copy of "Everyone Poops" at our school, though.

On the right I've just got a simple and completely honest grammatical error gone hilariously wrong. When correcting I crossed out the words "and hard" and I'm glad I didn't have to explain why to the student, 'cause I simply couldn't have done it with a straight face.

Jedi Nights

(how many weigookins does it take to drink in public?)

For the first new weekend of oh-seven, I did something a little different and actually got out of Seoul for a night. That was great because I had a great weekend and it's been far too long since I've been out of the city middle.

Where I went however, was a little place called Suji, about an hour south of Seoul by subway. Cahill lives there, 'next to the smokestacks' which is an indicative landmark, really. Suji isn't like Seoul - it's not quite the neon splash of madness and insomnia that gives Seoul its charm. Mind you, it's still Korea, so it's still neon, and it's still mad, just not quite the same as Seoul.

The night was mad in a way I don't always get to see in Seoul, though. The dynamics of the foreign teacher subculture is different outside of Seoul. We went to a house party (at a quite nice apartment, no less) and it was quite surreal to be around 20 or so people with hardly a Korean in sight. There's even a certain discomfort being in a room where you know you're no different for being white and speaking English.

From the crowded cube we spilled out into the street and caught cabs to I-don't-quite-know-where and went to this real Irish bar called Dublin, owned by a real Irish guy called... I dunno, I'd say Paddy, if I had to guess.

It was a pretty cool place, and all the accomplices but me and Cahill left after a drink, headed for some dreadful dance joint. Me and Cahill made some fine lemonade of the situation, and introduced ourselves to a table of random foreigners from I-forget-where in the 'States. We talked about Devo and Talking Heads and the delicate science of swearing until daylight.

The bar had this nifty banner with scads of Irish family names written on a map of Ireland. In effect, this looked almost like a banner of Newfoundland names, and I'm sure if anyone from there looks they're sure to find a couple (pun cough) familiar ones, if not their own last name, hanging on some wall in Korea.

Come Sunday, me and Cahill ran face-first into a couple of odd happenings at Subway (the sandwich place, not the train place). First, a guy we met at the party the night before strolled-in and told us that his school just called him, telling him he didn't have to work on Monday. Or ever. Since the school was out of business, and he was now out of a job, and probably soon to be without an apartment. That's the kind of scare teachers sometimes get hit with in Korea. Luckily, I work at a big franchise school, so if they ever shut down, I'd probably at least get a ticket home out of the deal.

The next thing that happened was far funnier, if potentially more damning. When we left Subway, me and Cahill were approached by two Koreans, and I avoided them, smelling what was coming. While we stood waiting for the walk light to change, they came up to Cahill and asked "Do you have rerijun?"

Thinking they were asking for something like money or a cigarette, Cahill asked them to repeat themselves a few times before I signed and said "They're missionaries, Cahill, they're asking if you have religion."

Ice broken, they continued to talk to us in awful, blunt, broken english. On being asked our religious beliefs, Cahill told the ham-handed zealots that we were Jedi. The answer - possibly the best quotation I've heard from any Korean ever - was:

"Jedi? What mean is Jedi?"

Then, with timing that borders on divine intervention, the light changed, and we quickly dodged across the road, holding our too-loud-snickers until we were about three steps away. While it surely guaranteed us our own table at the VIP room in hell, this was easily worth it. For years to come, I'll remember "What mean is Jedi?" and all the world's problems will disappear.

But enough delicious blasphemy back to how Suji sucks. One of the most disappointing things about this dreary, industrial, outlet-shopping chunk of the peninsula was the lack of pojang-makjas, the little street food stands that are bastions of late night booze-snacking.

Booze or not, I've become a big fan of these here in Seoul. I eat dokboki (thick-as-your-thumb spicy rice noodles) from these stands quite often. In fact, at this one place near my house they actually got me to sign their stand this week. I put both my signature and the Hangul spelling of my name there, and now when I show up they say "Anyonghaseyo Mista Petah!" I get quite a kick out of the random stranger Koreans here who have learned my name. On New Year's eve, we were walking down the road, and a woman who owns a bar here (that I've been to about twice) shouted "Hello Petah!" It's strange to get recognized and remembered like that in a city of over 10 million people.

Speaking of that city, I've just got a pretty standard handful of signs and labels here this week. These were, in fact all taken about a minute apart from each other. I just kind of wanted to capture how badly animated Korean animals want you to eat them.


I mean, look at the eagerness on those faces. They want you to know that they're delicious. Somehow, even the squid is giving a thumbs-up to assure you that he tastes excellent. It's a lie on his part, though. The bastard deserves to be turned into a noddle topping for misrepresenting his species as palatable. As Cahill learned from our hastily-purchased convenience store noodles this weekend: squid flavoured anything tastes like shit.

Countdown

(hard time gettin' past black)

If you've checked a calendar lately, you might've noticed that you need a new one. New Year's Eve and its closely-related but far more hungover cousin New Year's Day came this week. That's not quite the start of the story though - some things happened last year too.

Friday night I stayed around the Gwangmyeong area after work and after a few drinks I did something that was a long time coming: I went to a Noraebang. That's pronounced no-ray-bong, and literally translated it means 'singing room'. I'm sure I've mentioned it before, but to the uninitiated, this is Korea's take on Kareoke. The main difference (read: advantage) is the bang (bong) part. You get your own private room to get drunk with friends in relative private and pick out songs and sing poorly to your favourite generically-recreated tunes.

The fact that it took me over six months in Korea before I did this is a crime against humanity. The fact that I was still recovering from an awful cold made my singing a crime against humanity too, though. I'm definitely heading to these far more often in the future. I've got to hand it to Korea on this one, it's a great idea; if there's one thing drunk people like to do it's sing. And drink more.

In honour of tried / true holiday tradition, drinking more is what happened for the second consecutive 'holiday' weekend. Ringing-in the new year was a worthy night. Me and Cahill started here with a few drinks and a plan to get to Tapgol Park by midnight.

Note that I say 'plan' and use the past tense though. See, on midnight on said eve, that place explodes with fireworks. Not in the typical state-sanctioned professional manner, though. Apparently, the street just fills with thousands of people, and everyone has bottle rockets. They fire them at the sky, at buildings, signs, people, and so on. I've seen videos, and it certainly looks like a madness to experience. However, given that we're celebratedly poor planners, by the time we left my apartment it was far too late to make it there on time. So instead, we set off a handful of Roman Candles in my neighbourhood.

It was a reasonable substitute, and given that I'm literally half a world (and 12 time zones) away from where I'm used to spending that evening, celebrating the passing of time seemed significantly less significant. After the explosive goodness, me Cahill and Bora headed off enjoy the surroundings of Sillim. We ended up at the Woodstock bar (hardly a dramatic departure from our typical Zeppelin haunt just down the road, but we know what we like).

We enjoyed our share of imported drink and music and request sheets with scattered chances of ever being played and magnetic darts that just couldn't stop being played. We stayed there until customers were no longer welcome, then we slinked over to Led Zepplin and stayed until pretty much daylight.

While the whole night sounds relatively unspectacular, and largely devoid of 'official' celebrations, I probably couldn't have asked for a nicer evening. I spent the night with two good friends and I can't imagine that a hectic trip across town to a mess of strangers firing rockets would have been more fulfilling.

But enough being sincere. Here are a couple of pictures that are Korean, if nothing else. Up first, there's an old rusty bucket whose original contents I could never care to guess. The side reads "He has lovely round face! Hello Big Boy". It was sitting outside of a tiny store that sells only cigarettes. Now you know as much as I do about the whole mystery.


Past that, I've got a banner with a picture of Soju Man. I'm sure I've mentioned this before too, but Soju is basically a cheap rice vodka sold relatively exclusively in Korea. By cheap, I mean it costs less than a dollar for a bottle. Which, of course, means that it packs the worst hangover-per-volume in all of history.

Sojuman is a bottle of the cursed cheap booze armed with a cape and a knack for extolling the virtues of Korea's official national beverage. The jury is still out on whether his ability to fly is an actual superpower or just a soju-induced hallucination.

Happy I-chun-chil.