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.