QUITTER

I think I quit smoking accidentally. Smoking was the last thing I wanted to do when I was sick, and I still kind of feel that way post-headache. I try smoking when I did before the sickness, like after meals or with my morning coffee, but I can only get through a few drags before I have to put it out.

This is good thing, I guess?

FRUSTRATED PILL POPPER

I've been battling with one of the worst headaches I've ever had in my life, and I've been fighting it since Sunday night. Teaching kids on Monday and Tuesday was an uphill battle, and it got to the point where I had to call in sick today.

I went to the doctor's office today to see what was up with this long lasting headache, and told the doctor my symptoms, that Tylenol had not been helping, and that I'm somewhat worried because it has been going on for days. The doctor's response was pretty infuriating; all he did was take my blood pressure and tell me something along the lines of, "there are many causes of headaches, like drinking, smoking, eating spicy foods, eating salty foods..." while smirking.

First of all, I'm not hungover. Secondly, a lot of Korean food isn't as spicy as Koreans like to claim--I can handle your (sometimes bland) food, you arrogant asshole. Why didn't the doctor take my temperature at least? Or examine my swollen, blood-shot eyes? Or show some concern as I've had this headache since Sunday. Instead he brushed me off with a prescription for 12 sets of four pills to be taken three times a day. I'm not sure what the pills are or what they'll do, because the pharmacy will never give me any information on what I'm taking, not even information in Korean. (After some google-fu, I found out one of the pills is acetaminophen...I told him Tylenol was not helping!) Korean doctors love to throw medication at health problems in hopes of making the problems go away, as shown by the many, many, many pills other foreigners have been prescribed. I've also seen Korean kids having to take five or six pills at a time when they're sick. I'm just surprised I didn't get a shot in the ass, as that is most common when going to the doctor's, no matter what the health issue might be.

ONE MONTH OF TEACHER LEFT

I have now been in Korea for 11 months. Imma coming home soon!

BUCK YOU, TEACHER

I teach a lot of young kids who have trouble grasping pronouns. This is troublesome because they love ratting each other out, and so when they're trying to tell me something, it will usually come out like this: Teacher! You [pointing to the perpetrator] buck you me! (It's weird hearing really young children yell, "buck you!") They will also say, "teacher! Bad talking!"

If they don't know how to verbally explain what the other kid had done, the offended will mime and moan what happened, like so: Teacher! You [pointing to the perpetrator and making weird moaning noises while miming the offending action] me!

This was cute at first, but this shit starts to wear you down after 11 months. I've taught them the meaning of "I don't care." It's gotten to the point where I'll high-five the perpetrator just so they'll stop trying to get one another in trouble.

Yeah, I'm a great teacher! (This was actually shown in gifts, as I got the most out of all the foreign teachers in my school on Teacher's Day.)

DRUNK TEXTS

http://www.textsfromlastnight.com/ is my new favourite site at the moment.


(919): so I was just driving high and I stopped to let a pinecone cross the road because I thought it was a hedgehog.

ENGRISH

If you're a Korean, the cool thing to do is to wear clothes with English splashed across the clothing. A lot of the the time the English doesn't make any sense, or it says something that if you knew what it meant you probably wouldn't wear it. My favourite to date was an old lady wearing a black t-shirt that had "I Heart Crap" written on it.

WHO HAVE I BECOME?

My last day of teaching is on June 23rd. I'm going to miss several things when I blow this Fudgesicle stand, but there is one thing I'll miss that surprises me the most: my favourite kids. They always brighten my day, even when I'm at my worst (read: hungover). They are so much fun, and we spend a lot of class time laughing at stupid shit. They've inflated my ego because they'll laugh at just about anything I do. (I made the mistake of teaching them the K-I-S-S-I-N-G rhyme, and now they'll always sing it about me and some other foreign teacher, ddong, or a toilet.) I also love how every dispute is solved by a round of rock-paper-scissors. I have gotten into the habit of playing RPS with them, with the stakes being if I win, they're crazy, and if they win, I'm crazy.

But I have to wonder if it's not the cultural and language barriers that are filtering out how these kids really are. Maybe these filters are allowing just the cuteness to shine on through. I hated kids and everything they stood for back home. If I were teaching kids back home, I think I'd get annoyed easily with them because I couldn't fall back on the, "oh, those crazy Korean kids." Also, the fact that my day with kids end as soon as the last bell rings really helps me avoid seeing how these kids really are.

I think I'm going to give my favourites my e-mail address and home address so I can receive stupid letters. Though I might not want to do that because one of my kids threatens jokingly that he's going to throw a nuclear bomb on my mother's house. (We usually spend part of the class describing how we're going to destroy one another's families.)

IT COULD BE FROM THE WIRE

One of my 9-year old students insisted his English name is Bubbles. I can't help but giggle whenever I have to call his name.

Also, Kings is probably the best drinking game in the world. Breaking out a deck of cards to start a relatively rowdy game of Kings while everyone is already in a semi-drunk state has become the norm. The last time we played, all but one of us African-American-ed out. That might have been because someone made a rule where whenever you used some one's name, you had to buy that person a shot. Four or five people said my name right after this rule came into play, and, well, it was the beginning of the end.

I can really see how easy it is to come back to Korea for another year. It's just so easy here. I think my biggest responsibility is trying to stay out of the casino. So many people have left Korea for, in their words, "good." But after a few months of living back home, they got sick of it and ended up coming back. I think a year in Korea is enough for me. I think if I were here for more than a year, my laziness would really shine. It just becomes monotonous. Plus I really miss home and the people who reside there.

TRAVELLING

1.5 months left in my contract. My travel plans so far:

Korea -> Thailand -> Laos -> Vancouver -> Toronto!

I'll be returning to Korea for a day or two to gather the stuff I left in Tory's apartment. (Tory, can I leave my shit at your place?) And with the round trip ticket to Thailand being only ~$350, this trip will be a lot cheaper than I originally planned for.

I think visiting two countries in six weeks will be more rewarding than seeing six countries in six weeks. From my experience, trying to see a country within a week makes for a rushed vacation.

So, yeah! Toronto soon!

FUCK THE CHILDREN

Tomorrow (May 5th) is Children's Day in Korea. It's one of their nine public holidays, and all the students get the day off (depending on the school it could be a few days) and apparently they're spoiled with butt-loads of presents. The parents who also get the day off will spend the day with their children, celebrating...how wonderful they are? I don't know.

At first I thought this was a little ridiculous, but I've come to realise it's one of the few days kids have an entire day to themselves. They're in school/hagwons for pretty much 80% of the day, six (though sometimes seven) days a week. And the kids who are not in school on the weekend are sometimes forced to watch their parents have fun, which is what Tory and I witnessed one Saturday while at the gym. The parents who were involved in a squash tournament brought their children with them, who were forced to watch their parents enjoying themselves while they just sat there, probably daydreaming about something fun.

I wasn't going to do much for my students, but someone kindly reminded me that Teacher's Day, where apparently students (are forced to) give many gifts to their kind teachers, is around the corner, and if I want to be showered with gifts, I should probably put some effort into a Children's Day-related activity. So today my present to all of them was an episode of the Simpson's, followed by People Getting Punched Just Before Eating.

GUILTY PLEASURE

Boy bands and girl bands are incredibly popular here. And a lot of the K-Pop that comes from them is pretty, well, annoying. They all sound exactly the same as if there was some algorithm they use to crank out their top hits, which, I guess, is what you could say about the music back home. It's just worse here because the selection isn't as vast, and so you'll hear the same song multiple times in the same store. But everyone in Southeast Asia is in love with k-pop, and friends have told me they've heard k-pop in Thailand, Cambodia, and I've heard it in Taiwan. My students love to sing random verses from whatever song is popular at the moment (and the songs are popular for months), and love it when I do the same.

I will admit that there are some songs (ie. two or three) that get me excited enough to dance. The following is one of them. They're a nine-member girl band called Girls' Generation, and...yeah. It's totally my guilty pleasure at the moment, and this is the song I sing in class to get my students excited.

KOREAN

I've decided I'm going to put forth a lot more effort into learning Korean for the remaining months I'm here. I found out I'm more fluent than I thought, as I just had a conversation in Korean with this lady at a restaurant. Well, she was speaking in Korean, and I was speaking in a garbled up version of Korean. So, yeah!

DDONG CHIM

The Korean children have this...thing they do to one another. They clasp their hands together and extend their index fingers and thumbs to resemble a gun. Then they'll scream, "ddong chim!" while trying to stab each other's assholes. I've had a few students attempt to ddong chim me.

Ddong chim literally means "poop needle." I don't know either, but it's pretty wide spread.

Koreans have only one word for poop: ddong. I spent part of a class teaching my favourite students all the words we have for poop in the English language. They were impressed.

HEAD SICK

Korean children have a very limited vocabulary, so when they want to lament to me about whatever is ailing them, they'll point and say, "..., sick!"

Anyways, my body is sick. I think I had too much tonic last night.

Jess is here! And she will be here for a full month, unlike Vanessa's paltry five day visit. (Sorry, V.) As usual, the Korean greeting tradition was observed, and much, if not too much, drinking took place. Jess held her own and didn't puke in two cabs in one night, unlike Vanessa. (Sorry, V.)

TOO MUCH PUBLIC IN BATHROOMS

My hagwon does not provide a private bathroom for the teachers. Instead, all of the students and the teachers share one, which is the norm for all hagwons. Because of this, whenever I'm in the bathroom, I'll lock the door, preventing the curious Korean students from seeing how a foreigner does their deed in the bathroom. This might sound extreme, but after hearing some horror stories, I feel this is the best recourse.

HORROR STORY ONE:

One day Kiran had to take a shit. Upon going into the stall and doing his thing, a bunch of students came tumbling into the washroom. One of them yelled, "Oh! Teacher is making chocolate smell!"

Kiran froze. A bunch of students started clamouring because of the partition that separated Kiran from the rest of them. Of course, the kids wanted to get a look-see. One of his students started crying, "Sorry teacher! so sorry teacher!" as he hoisted one of his classmates up to try to get leverage on the top of the stall. Kiran sat there with his fist held high above him so it could come smashing down onto any fingers that poked into his side of the stall.

HORROR STORY TWO:

Jamil was taking a leak at one of the urinals when one of his students wandered in to do the same. Before Jamil could finish, the student, while at the adjacent urinal, peaked over and said, "ooh, it is big!"

So, yeah, I want to have a peace of mind when I'm letting things pass through the different orifices.

SUMMER IS HERE

I still have a shit-ton of back dated entries to get to, and only TWO MORE MONTHS in which to do it.



Anyways, summer is here. The cherry blossoms came and went, and in their wake a string of sunny days and temperatures rising past the 20 degree mark have made themselves known. Busan is starting to show the warm colours that were once drowned out by the bleak winter scenery.

This Saturday a bunch of us went to Gyeongju, which is the historic city of Korea, to take part in the traditional alcoholic drinks and rice cakes festival. Some of the drinks were delicious, and others caused my stomach to churn and eyes to water.

A popular thing to do in Gyeongju is to rent bikes to make getting around easier. Jamil, Jordan and I opted for renting scooters, which was one of the best decisions I've ever made in my life. While the rest of our group biked around like sissies, we took off in search of some of the nicest scenery we could find. We weren't disappointed; we came across winding roads and lush greenery, lakes and rivers reflecting the summer sun, and farms with friendly farmers who allowed us to take photos of the baby goats, dogs, roosters, ducks, etc. I so want to get a scooter when I'm back in Toronto. They're too much fun.

Sunday consisted of beach bums (literally--some Korean man thought it'd be appropriate to strip out of his wet bathing suit and into his somewhat dry clothes four feet away from us) and beer. We were at the most popular beach in all of Korea, but you wouldn't know it with the disproportionate amount of foreigners to Koreans. The beach is officially open in August, and that's when you'll see the thousands of orange and white parasols littering the beach and the Koreans under them. Otherwise you'll only see a handful of Koreans venturing out into the sand, while the others stay on the boardwalk, looking curiously at the foreigners taking advantage of the warm weather.

In other news, I haven't done any planning for post-Korea. I should probably get on that, since my time here will expire before I know it.

WORK WORK WORK AND CONSTRUCTION

The construction work I've witnessed here is unlike anything back at home. The first thing I noticed was that it happens all the time. I've been walking home at 2:00am on a Sunday night and I've seen construction workers busy at work with their flashlights and headlamps. Another striking difference is the lack of boundaries they use to section off the construction zones. I've seen bulldozers and other construction vehicles doing their thing on the sidewalk while kids run in between the workers and machinery trying to get across. Back home I'm used to going out of my way for a few blocks to get by whatever construction is going on in the city.

South Korea has the longest work hours amongst the OECD countries. It wasn't long ago that workers in big corporations were required to work six days a week. There was legislation passed that put an end to that, but that's only helpful for those sets of workers (some of the Korean teachers in my hagwon work seven days a week). The average Korean worker works something like 2390 hours a week (Canadian workers, on average, work 1717 hours a week). The average work day for a Korean worker is from 8:00am to 7:30pm. Apparently longer work hours raise the risk of dementia

At first I felt bad, because the Korean teachers do so much more work than me, and I got vacation time only after six months of being there (the Korean teachers in my school have to be there for three years before they can see any vacation, which usually only lasts a week.) Our pay is even significantly greater than theirs. When I go to work, I spend maybe five to 10 minutes prepping for my lessons, and then spend the remaining 45 to 50 minutes reading. As I'm doing this, the Korean teachers are busy marking, preparing lesson plans, calling the parents if a kid was missing or misbehaved, etc.

This work work work mentality starts from a young age, with kids having hours upon hours of schooling. On top of their normal schooling, several of the kids have three, four, or more academies to attend. These academies are usually for English, science, math, Chinese and music. The kids spend hours and hours and hours working on their homework after they finally manage to get home. Some of my kids go to bed at, like, midnight because of all the homework they have to finish. (This is why I rarely assign homework because, shit, I feel bad.) A lot of these kids also attend academies on Saturday, and then on Sunday some of them have to go to church. I usually let a lot of things slide in class that would never go unpunished if a Korean teacher were there because I feel that it's the only time they get to act like, well, kids. It's no wonder when they respond with "played videogames/computer games" after I ask them what they did on the weekend, 'cause that's all I'd fucking want to do if I was subjected to that much work.

My mom's friend is doing a Korean exchange, where she's housing a 13-year old boy for I think six months so he can practice his English. She was all excited about showing him all kinds of stuff about Canada (and hopefully showing him the wonders of real maple syrup), but she quickly realised the kid had no time to do so. Not only does he have to go to elementary school, he as about four hours of Korean schooling afterwords, and then several hours of homework to finish after that.

For the one class that was really pissing me off, I asked them to write out a typical day in the life of, including when they wake up, go to school, academies, etc. When they were finished, I outlined a typical Canadian students day, which usually ends at 3:00pm. They were all extremely jealous of all the free time the Canadian kids had, and one of them quipped, "wow, they must play a lot of videogames!"

PUBIC HAIRS

There's an old Korean belief that says the longer your pubic hair is, the more fertile you are. This explains the amount of bush I've seen in the men's change rooms/bathhouses, and apparently it's not much better on the women's side. I've seen men blow dry their pubic hair with whatever blow dryer that is available, and then fro out the freshly dried hairs with a mini-comb. As soon as I witnessed that I immediately stopped using all the brushes/combs in the change rooms.

As an aside, everyone should watch Dead Snow. There are a lot of nice bloody splashes involving NAZI ZOMBIES.

REFLECTING POOL

WHITIES

The other night Tory and I went to a bar because we wanted to play darts. (Darts is extremely popular here, and they have all these fancy dart machines at various drinking establishments.) We sat at a table near the dart machine, waiting for a bunch of Koreans to finish their game. One of the bartenders came over and suggested that we sit at a table that's by the window. When I told him we were waiting for the dart machine, he smiled, walked over and wrote "u-you" on the white board that I had failed to see so that the Koreans in the bar knew we were next in line.

"U-you" is the Korean word for milk.

Caroline, Dave and I found a swing that swung out over a cliff-like hill on a hike. I don't think this sort of thing would fly back home. It was fun, but unfortunately the make-shift swing had nails sticking out of the seat making it a tad uncomfortable...though I should be used to getting nailed by now.

EPIC FAIL

I didn't get into the one and only grad school I applied for. Should I be surprised? Probably not. In retrospect I should have applied to more than one school. But I didn't.

Where do I go from here? I'm not entirely sure. The prospect of searching and applying for jobs in Toronto is not appealing to me, especially since this so called "bad economy" is, from what I hear, pretty bad. Teaching English in countries I've fallen in love with (Japan, Taiwan) for a short amount of time is slowly becoming more of realistic option.

I know what I want, I'm just not exactly sure how to go about getting it. Applying to a broader selection of grad schools is one option. I'm even tinkering with the idea of applying to some MFA programs, which means I'll have to put some serious effort into building my portfolio. Not being tied down to anything for the next year will make this easier.

The upside to not getting in will give me the opportunity to travel for a longer period of time than I had originally planned. We'll see. I don't know.

HALLWAYS AT SUNSET

SMOKING

Compared to how I was back home, I smoke a disgusting amount of cigarettes per day. I'm up to about five or six a day, and if I'm drinking, that number can be as much as doubled plus an extra two or three, depending on how late the night goes. I'm hoping I'll curb this habit when I'm back in the land of $11 packs of smokes and where no one is allowed to smoke indoors. (A pack of cigarettes will cost you $2.50 here.)

ONE PLASTIC COMPANY MUST HAVE MADE A FORTUNE

Restaurants here will very rarely have pictures placed next to the items listed in the menu, which makes it somewhat difficult for foreigners to order. (They’ll also only give the table one menu despite how many guests are seated. I think this is because when a group of Koreans go out for dinner, usually only one of them pays, and they all eat the same dish. This custom is not so prevalent with the younger generations, however.) In lieu of appetizing pictures, some restaurants will have a large display case holding what you could call plastic prototypes of the dishes the restaurant serves. Normally yellow light will splash over these plastic food dishes to entice potential patrons to come in and have a bite.

From experience, I’ve learned that restaurants that cater to this kind of display have less than mediocre food, and it’s usually the fusion restaurants that have them, as if Koreans could never imagine combining one style of cuisine with their style of cooking. However, I’ve been to one amazing fusion restaurant in Korea, which specialised in combining Korean cooking with Chinese- and Japanese-style cuisine. One of the dishes included a hollowed out pumpkin with cheese, chicken, peppers, onions and a variety of spices cooked inside. There was no plastic food anywhere near this place.

I thought this plastic food thing was localised in Korea, but I've found this practice in other Asian countries as well.

Take note of the floating chopsticks. Suspended utensils are the norm.

OOPS

I once had a class of children, whose ages ranged from 13 to 14, who claimed that nothing scared them. They told me they loved horror movies, and listed off a bunch of gory Korean films they'd seen. I asked them if they had seen 28 Days Later--my favourite zombie movie--to which they responded no, they hadn't.

I decided to show it to them on Halloween, and hoped to get a few screams out of my students. They did do a lot of screaming that class, but not before gasping and giggling. I totally forgot that there's a Cillian Murphy penis shown the beginning of the movie. Longest ten seconds of my life.

FIGHT LETTLE

It's hard not to play favourites in the classroom. Some kids are just the best things in the world, and other kids are a curse from Satan himself.

That said, I had to confiscate a phone from my favourite kid, named Buzby, and I told him that he wasn't going to get his phone back until the next day (a practice which has resulted in a lot of students' tears). He immediately gave me this look of anger and fear, because when a student has to face their parents sans phone, the parents will know what's up and will punish accordingly. I went on teaching, and he busied himself in what I thought was work. A while later he thrusts an envelope into my hand. Scribbled on the envelope is "Death Lettle." The 'lettle' inside is folded professionally, and says the following:

FIGHT LETTER

THE PLACE IS KJC 21 [the hagwan's name]
THE TIME IS 8:00PM

YOU WILL DIE

I couldn't help but laugh, and the letter is now on display by my desk in the teacher's lounge. That night I put the phone in a place I thought Buzby couldn't reach.

As I'm walking home from school, I get a phone call. The voice on the other end says, "hiiiiiii, teacher." The bugger took his phone back!

The next day in class, as the clock ticks closer to 8:00pm, he keeps telling me to prepare myself. He also threatens, augmented by the waving of his arms, that all his male friends "got his back."

It was hilairous, to say the least.

Now, if this happend with a kid who I couldn't stand, the outcome would have been different and less amusing for both parties involved.

THREE MONTHS LEFT

Teaching remedial English for six hours a day for the last nine months has taken a toll on my grammar skillz.

PRE-OBLIGATORY FINAL POST

We all know it's going to come, probably on one of my last nights here, a lengthy final word, so to speak. But I’ve been thinking about what I’d say for a couple of days, and this pre-obligatory-final post is inspired by what Vanessa said:

i'm so enviuos
you've been away for a year nad lived in another country
and travellde to so many other places*

This was said when I told her I had some crazy deju vu in Korea. “Korea twice? I don’t think so,” is what I said.

Korea brings about mixed feelings. I think most of the negativity towards the experience stems from the fact that I live in Busan. The sun, the beach and the ocean during the summer months all kind of washed aside the negative aspects about living in a smaller city. As soon as winter crept in, and after many visits to Seoul, I truly saw what this city was lacking: culture. It’s all Lego block apartments and concrete wastelands. It even says in the one of the travel books about Korea that Busan frowns upon the arts and focuses more on the business side of things. I think that if I lived in Seoul I’d be singing a more positive tune. Busan is to Seoul what Ottawa is to Toronto: a nice place to visit, but a place I would never want to live. Seoul is this amazing culture hotpot, brimming with a music and film scene and really attractive Koreans. (A lengthy post about Seoul is coming.) Even Kiran, who came to Busan mainly for the beaches, said he wished he lived in Seoul.

I have been away for a year and lived in another country, which in itself is pretty cool, but I’m really disappointed in myself because I really have nothing to show for it. My creativity has kind of been…stunted. I’m always inspired when I’m in Seoul, but as soon as I return to Busan a form of…I don’t know, disappointment? sets in. And I can’t place all the blame on this city; a big part has to do with myself and my prevalent laziness as well. I kind of found a rut in which to drink and debauch. I kind of found myself in a stagnant atmosphere.

It’s easy to forget you’re in another country when other foreigners and friends surround you constantly. And as much as I love my friends from home sharing this experience with me, and as awful as this sounds, a very small part of me kind of wishes I ventured out on my own. Don’t get me wrong, I love them being here to death. I’ve had some amazing and unforgettable times with them and I’ve met some of the coolest people in the world because of them, but having them around kind of cheapens the deal. Maybe cheapens is too hard a word…more like, makes the venturing out on your own experience seem kind of less authentic, since I had friends here before I came, and had friends come after I arrived, and never really was on my own.

The best part about this is how I’ve been afforded the opportunity to explore other amazing countries. My life plan is highly contingent on whether or not I get into grad school. If I don’t, I don’t know what I’ll do. There’s a nagging part of me that says I should venture out again, in a whole new country, and do this again. Taiwan is one country I’d love to live in; I fell in love with everything it has to offer. The jobs in Toronto because of this so-called “bad economy” are non-existent, or so I hear from third-party sources. I don’t know. Stuff blah blah.

If it weren't for my friends with me in Busan, I would be having a worse time. If it weren't for my friends with me in Busan, I'd probably be living in Seoul.

This post is stopping too far in the selfishly negative side of the spectrum, and that’s not what its intent was. I’ll fix that.



*(She claims her type thinger is broken or something.)

RETRACTION

I wrote something earlier about the chances of seeing Amanda again being slim. This was before I found out she was planning on visiting Canada. So I'll definitely see her again. And so will Claire. And when Amanda comes she'll probably bring a U-Haul, a toothbrush and a sheep, because that's what lesbians from New Zealand do. (There are like four million New Zealanders and 300 million sheep.) And who am I kidding, I love the stupid instances on Facebook.

This retraction is for Claire.

I WANT MY MONEY and EXTRME DRINKING

Every bank in Korea has these so-called "blackout hours," which essentially means you don't have access to the money in your bank account; your debit card (or ka-du) is essentially useless. It usually lasts for an hour every day, and this hour falls between 11pm and 1am depending on what bank you use.

Now that doesn't seem that bad 'cause you could plan around that. However, your debit card will fail to work at random times through out the night, which can last upwards to a day. There's no rhyme or reason to when your access is cut off (there probably is, but I can't read the Korean error messages at the ATM), and this can lead to embarrassing moments where you have to borrow money from anyone around you. The worst was when I was stranded far from home, and I couldn't take out any money for a cab ride home.

People here get unbelievably drunk. There are many foreigners (and Koreans, for that matter) passing out in bars, on subway cars, on benches (though the latter is usually reserved for the Korean business men). The cheap and immediate access to alcohol might have something to do with it, but, on top of that, there's no such thing as cutting someone off if they've had to much. The bar tenders will keep serving you and serving you until you come to somewhere in a forest with a bleeding leg (that wasn't me). Back home, if I was to order a pint and I dropped it as soon as it was in my hand--and not because someone knocked it out of my hand or I bumped into something, but because I just literally forgot I was holding it, causing gravity to snag the pint out of a loosened grip--that would be a signal for the bartenders and me that I shouldn't drink anymore. That doesn't happen here. Someone dropped their drink twice in a row before ordering a third, and they were still served with a smile.

WHITE WATER BIRTHDAYS

Charles had put together a white water rafting trip that just so happened to fall on my birthday weekend. It was a lot of fun, but there were times I was embarrassed to be a foreigner. The white people here take the whole motherfucking ten miles when given an inch. We get away with so much here, and the foreigners take full advantage of that fact. One of the few rules that you really, really shouldn't break is the 'never hit a Korean' rule. On one of the stops at a rice wine factory, after everyone was pretty drunk from drinking on the bus, a bunch of foreigners broke into the water park we weren’t allowed to go in, and someone ended up smacking a Korean. The police were called, and a long, uneventful wait took place as the police tried to get to the bottom of this debacle. I felt incredibly bad for Charles, who doesn’t deserve any of this bullshit. He didn’t want to get involved, but because he was the only one who spoke Korean, he was forced to mediate.

ANYways, that aside, the white water rafting trip was great. It had rained the day before we hit the waters, so the rapids were pretty intense, and a lot of us got thrown around. We were allowed to jump off the raft at certain points and be carried down the river by the current. A bunch of us attempted to do back flips off the raft, with only a few people succeeding. One guy’s attempt had his head bouncing off the raft before the rest of his body fell into the water. We were supposed to go bungee jumping as well, but the rain made the water rise too a point where it was unsafe to jump. I was really disappointed--I think I was more excited for the bungee jumping the the white water rapids.

The trip was an overnight excursion, and that night Charles gave Rich and me a bottle of traditional birthday whisky, along with two wooden hammers. The two wooden hammers were used to break the whisky bottle out of its ceramic casing. I was really excited to try this drink, and Charles poured two big shots into two rather large Dixie cups for the two birthday peeps. Oh, fuck, it was the worst tasting thing I ever let caress my tongue. After one shot, my stomach burned and did things I didn’t know it could do. I had to calmly excuse myself from the group to throw up quietly in the bushes. I wasn’t drunk at all when I had this shot, but every fiber of my being rejected that drink. I was kind of hoping that maybe it was just a strong drug and I would be coming up at some point...but all it did was make the pizza and galbi I chowed down on taste a little off.

PROPS AND STAGES

One rather large downfall about living temporarily in Korea is the high turnover rate of the really cool and incredibly interesting people. Each awesome friendship I've created with the people here comes with a sort of expiry date, and maybe that's why we're able to forge pretty deep relationships in the short amount of time that we have--live like it's your last day kind of thing. There are a few people that have left an impression on me in the short time I've spent with them. One example is a girl from New Zealand, Amanda. She's such a fucking treat, and every moment with her has been pretty memorable, but she leaves tomorrow and the chances of seeing her again, other than the random and banal instances on Facebook, are slim.

Conversely, the many douchebags I've met are a won a million and tend stay longer than the one-year contract.

Korea feels like a giant stage, with the Koreans being the props. Because it's hard to fully interact with the Koreans due to various barriers, they almost feel like inanimate objects and are viewed as such. I don't know. I have made a few--full disclosure, one--good Korean friend, but on a whole, with the thousands of Koreans constantly around me, they are on another level, one that I, as of right now, can not fully reach to fully interact with them. I can understand and say a few things in Korean for when I'm at the store or the like, but it's still such a foreign language to me that the interaction almost feels fake and unnatural, and, like with an inanimate object, one-sided. The only interactions that do feel two-sided are with other foreigners, and so there are just pockets of interactions taking place on this stage.

LOOKS AND SINGING AND BECAUSE AND MISSING FOODS

three posts in one week?! WHAT?!





Wherever there’s a reflective surface you’ll find at least one Korean – a guy or a girl – checking themselves out. It doesn’t matter how many people are around, they’ll all do it at least once. Did I just fail to notice this happening back home? Everyone here (the Koreans, at least) makes sure they look their absolute best. I’ve even seen girls on a full subway take a picture of themselves just to make sure they look okay upon review.

So I’m sure you all know about karaoke. It’s fun, ridiculous and generally all will have a good time. Here, it’s like their bread and butter. Noraebongs (literal translation: music room) are a dime a dozen here, and they really do karaoke right. They add some sort of echo/reverb on the mike so everyone sounds halfway decent, especially me, because I have a voice that’s like a combination between a cat getting raped by a baby. Work dinners are always followed by a trip to a Noraebong, where my bosses and Korean co-workers, who are extremely drunk, are hamming it up like no tomorrow on the mike (usually to Korean pop songs or classics). It’s a site to behold, really.

Did your elementary school ever forbid you to start a sentence with ‘because?’ I remember the teachers telling us (repeatedly) that starting a sentence with that conjunction is, like, the worst thing you could do, and they would always, always circle it with the reddest of red ink if it preceded a sentence. Well, we all know that that’s not necessarily true... BUT I NOW KNOW WHY THE TEACHERS WERE SO ADAMANT ABOUT IT. “Because I am full.” “Because Korea is the best.” “Because it is delicious.” Oh, man, it’s such a pain when correcting their journal entries. I now get so unbelievably frustrated when I see ‘because’ at the beginning of a sentence, and have since banned every single student from starting a sentence with ‘because.’ (As it turns out, the Korean teachers said that that was okay.)

So there are a few – actually, a lot – of foods I miss. One of my favourite snack foods back home were chips. The chips they have here are shit, and I wouldn’t feed them to my dogs. 85% of the chips here have a weird tinge of sweet about them, and the chips that aren’t sweet are bland as fuck. Who started replacing salt with sugar? I don’t understand. When I’m lamenting about my craving for ketchup chips to an American, they’ll stare at me blankly before saying, “…well, they have ketchup here.”

Another food I miss is pizza. It’s not like they don’t have pizza here - in fact, Koreans are bat-shit crazy about their pizza. It’s just that they’ve heavily Korean-ized their pizza. The most Western toppings you can get on your pizza are cheese, pepperoni and…corn. Aside from a really expensive pizza from Domino’s, you cannot get pizza with out corn. I love corn and all, but…I just don’t want it on my pizza. And the pizza chains here, including Pizza Hut, refuse to allow you to customize your pizza. It’s their way, or the going hungry highway. As it turns out, Koreans really have a thing for Koreanizing foreign food (because whatever Korea does is the best, and that’s that). At this sushi place I once ate at, they included kimchi and processed cheese in their maki rolls. WHAT THE FUCK.

The thing with Korean food is they love the red pepper paste, and they use it for just about anything (it’s what’s in kimchi). So after awhile a lot of the food starts tasting the same if you don't know what to order.

CALLIGRAPHY AND GOING TO HELL

On a whim, Cindy, a few new friends and I went to a temple to learn calligraphy. (There’s this organization that plans culture-rich activities for foreign teachers, and this was one of them.) Most temples have a large sculpture of Buddha somewhere within its walls – but not this one. Instead, it housed the largest painting (ever) of Buddha. There’s a strikingly similar painting in Thailand, apparently, and no one is quite sure how the two paintings that were created so far apart look so similar.

The calligraphy lesson proved to be difficult. I was the sort of child who had a really tough time staying within the lines when colouring anything, and this was painfully obvious when I started the painting. We had a copy of what the painting was supposed to look like, and where the colours were supposed to go. Right from the start I painted an area with the wrong colour. This brought about a few laughs from the teachers and the fellow calligraphy-learners around me. After a few trial and errors, and a few pointers from the professionals, I was able to complete it. (Actually, this was taking longer than the organisers intended it to take, and so when everyone was on the tour of the temple, they secretly helped out and painted a fair chunk of our piece.)

The character that was in the centre of the painting is called “ohm,” which means the universe or cosmos. It’s an Indian word, and a lot of the Buddhist chants start with “ohm,” because they are praying to the universe. “Ohm…something something.”

At this temple I finally learned why Koreans use metal chopsticks (this was a burning question of mine). Back in the day the metal chopsticks acted like a poison warning; they would change colour at the potential adulterant in the King’s or other high ranking official’s food. This is similar to the cheers custom; when one was clinking the glass of a friend, a bit of the liquid was supposed to move from one drink to the next, so if you were poisoning someone, you would get the poison as well. As an aside, metal chopsticks can be annoying to use, because they are more flat then the ones I am used to using.

On the way home from the temple on the subway, these two really cute Koreans sitting across from me started obviously talking about me. The one would take the other’s finger and point it at me while saying something in secret. Eventually one of them mustered up the courage to talk to me, and all he wanted to do is call me handsome. This is a very common occurrence – and not because of my wicked good looks. Koreans view white people as the pinnacle of beauty. Thus a lot of the white men in Korean will be called handsome at the drop of a hat by anyone – old ladies, young guys and girls, etc. Though this takes away a lot of the meaning from being called handsome, it’s still nice, because, hey, it’s better than being called a fag by some random douchebag back home.

I started having impure thoughts about the one cute Korean boy on the subway. He was wearing really tight clothing, and that kind of clothing helps for, y’know, fantasies. He looked a little young, but from my experience here, the boys who look young are usually 23 or so. When I asked him his age, he told me he was 17. Hell’s a fine place – or so I’m told.

Flash forward a month:

I made two Korean friends named Kay and Nicole on the beach. There was a bit of confusion with age, because he told me he was 25 (he looked no more than 20), but he was born in ’84. It turns out that as soon as you’re born in Korea, you’re one year old. So whatever age a Korean tells you, subtract one and you get the actual age. Whenever a Korean asks me how old I am, I usually bump my age up by a year, which kind of sucks because it seems like I got older with out doing anything. After Kay and Nicole explained this Korean age to me, my mind immediately thought of the ‘17’ year old on the bus. He’s actually 16. Oh, my god. I’m definitely going to hell, and those impure thoughts are really damming now.

Kay and Nicole also told me about their versions of anniversaries. Instead of, like, one-month and six-month and one-year and etc anniversaries, they celebrate 100-day and 300-day anniversaries. That must really get annoying, because there’s some calculation that goes into finding that special day. On the 100- and 300-day anniversary, couples usually dress in the same clothes, be it shirts, sweaters, whatever. It seems like this ridiculous tradition is localized in Busan, as the amount of couple outfits are almost zilch in Seoul. The ‘couples’ look is kind of silly, and I really want to meet the guy or girl who came up with this idea. I mean, the couples are wearing the same shirts and same pants. I would die if someone saw me with my significant other in public wearing the exact same clothes. Anyways, it’s become kind of a thing to punch one another if you notice a couple outfit, just like the punch-buggy back home.

On my birthday, Nicole and Kay surprised me with a birthday cake and a present. I was totally taken off guard, because I had just met them maybe a week before my birthday, and wasn’t expecting anything from them. They sang me the Korean version of Happy Birthday, and gave me a book to learn Korean, which is slowly collecting dust. :(

CAVE BAR

I'm so behind in backlogged entries. My FOUR MONTHS LEFT resolution is to actually update this bitch and to get to the half-finished posts that I started like months ago. Here is one about the cave bar:



Back in the day, during the Korean War, there was a giant cave in Busan – Busan being one of the few cities not to be overtaken by North Korea - used to store weapons, ammo, artillery, etc. Where once it stood as war symbol, it now stands as a place to get your drink on. Yes: a bar in a fucking cave. It’s damp, it’s dreary, it’s wet – but man is it awesome. There are low-wattage lights strung along the sides of the narrow cave (which coats the cave in a soft, yellow glow), a couple of wooden statues (one of which is a dragon, who, legend has it, appeared in the current cave owner's dream, telling him to turn the bar into a cave), and a somewhat winding pathway (riddled with puddles) running alongside the tables. If you really wanted to, you could even cross the barrier where the lights stop and the darkness begins to really see how deep this cave goes – but that would be silly, as something like the Descent might happen to you.

Their alcohol of choice in this cave is dongdongju, a sort of rice wine. It comes in a brown ceramic bowl, with ice chips and bark floating on top. This wine was sort of an acquired taste, but when it’s … acquired … it’s really easy to get drunk, because the drunk slowly creeps up on you, and by the time you stand up you’re pretty much done for (many people have blacked out at this bar). The cave bar also has the best kimchi I’ve ever tasted (you can become quite the connoisseur of kimchi when you have it all the friggin’ time).

Dave, Cindy and I visited this bar one Sunday night, after a heavy party weekend. We were all staring into our drinks, lost in our own thoughts, and almost ready to call it a night. Eventually the best game of “would you rather” broke out, and some of the questions would turn into 30-minute discussions, all thanks to several helpings of dongdongju. One of my favourite questions was, ‘would you rather fuck animals and everyone knows, or fuck children and no one knows.’ A close second was, ‘for the rest of your life, every time you take a step you make the noise “wacka-wacka” (the pacman noise), or, for the rest of your life, every five to 10 minutes you fart or burp noticeably, and you’re not sure if it’s going to be one or the other.’ Another gross would you rather: would you rather snort two lines of dick cheese or eat two cups of poo. I’ll leave that up to you to decide.

It took Dave, Cindy and me awhile to find this cave bar (it’s pretty hidden in the depths of Busan’s alleys), and the entire time Dave was complaining about his need to take a “major dump.” We got sort of lost, and he started walking in a way where he had his ass clenched for dear life. Once we found the place, Dave runs to the bathroom and Cindy and I order a round of dongdongju. A little while later, Dave comes back with the most disappointed look on his face, crossed with a look of worry…remember how squatters are popular here? That’s what they had at this fine establishment. His bowels must have worked in reverse when he saw the squatter, and that somehow made him able to hold it for a few hours before leaving the bar. I’m sure the dingy-atmosphere of the cave didn’t traverse well into the bathroom.

MAN'S BEST MEAL

I could finish writing about my travels through Taiwan and Hong Kong (and how amazing those places are and how much I've fallen in love with them), but instead I just want to let everyone know that I've FINALLY eaten dog...and it was delicious.

The taste is comparable to lamb, but it had its own distinct (doggy) flavour. The meat was served in a soup, and it was incredibly tender, and I'm guessing that's a sign of how well the dogs are beaten before they're skinned and cooked. The fatty pieces of meat just disintegrated onto your tongue, releasing all the delicious spices in which the dog meat was cooked. The broth sopped up the lingering dog-flavours that were released when it was cooking, which was nice for when the broth was all that was left.

This post is dedicated to Bernita.