To Japan and Back... Again

The past few weeks have been really awesome including two trips to Japan, 8 days off work, Alex’s birthday, and a whole new unit at work on the “Lion King.” The trip to Japan was amazing, but had a very rocky start. We took a hydrofoil ferry from Busan (southern port city in Korea) to Hakata (a port in Japan). For anyone thinking of visit to Japan I strongly advise you to look into the ferry from Korea. It’s a lot cheaper than a flight and very interesting. Everything was going fine until we hit customs. At customs, they go through my bag and see I have these Pepto-Bismol tablets, and act like they crack or something. Then ask Alex and I to go into the back room. They go through my bag and don’t find anything of interest they actually barely searched 25% of my bag. Then they go through Alex’s purse and literally turn out the inside pockets and pick tobacco from the corners with a pair of tweezers. I’m just getting pissed off and Alex is going to have a panic attack. I’m getting pissed b/c they’re doing the cop routine of just saying politely it’s my job, which is bullshit because for some reason they singled us out of 300 people. As you can tell this still pisses me off today, but they are like going through Alex’s stuff and pulling out an old tampon, old tissues, and anything else they could get their slimy hands on. At one point they ask if her if she has ever smoked week. I can see her questioning to tell the truth, and I immediately jump in and say “No, we have never smoked marijuana.” For anyone who doesn’t know always lie to cops or people in positions of authority they never will go easy on you because they have a quota to fill. Then they pull out these vials and do a chemical test. It’s negative so were free to go, but not a pleasant welcome to Japan.

Once we were in Japan, the rest of the trip was amazing. We took the bullet train to Hiroshima the next morning. We went to the atomic bomb museum, the peace park, and even got down to Miyajima (a famous island south of Hiroshima).

That night we saw a whacked out karaoke show where people got dressed up and did a show. It’s weird but showing your belly got a big laugh every time. It was like if you couldn’t do anything original you just pulled up your shirt a little and they loved you. After a trip to an ancient garden we caught the train up to Kyoto. Kyoto is known for its famous temples and was spared any bombing in WWII, so a lot of it is intact. The first day we went to Kiyozomudero, the Temple with 1000 Buddhas, and the Heian Shrine. We got templed out pretty fast. The temples are all cool, huge, magnificent, and ancient, but how many can you see. The next day we went to the Golden Pavilion and another temple complex before going to Osaka. In Kyoto, we actually got a lot of Japanese only at the bars, and were told to leave. Alex almost got into a fight with an Irish girl because the Irish girl said she hated Alex’s American accent. It was pretty funny I could tell the guy she was with saw how big I was and told her to stop. The first night in Osaka, we found a great 280 yen place. Pretty much all the food and drinks are 3$, which is really cheap for Japan. But our hostel had a curfew, and we had to be inside by 12. For anyone traveling in Japan the hostels are the best way to go because you can meet other travelers, they really cheap, and they’re very clean, but make sure there is no curfew because you can get locked out, which is what happened to us on New Years. We went to a place called Sam and Dave’s, which is a huge club chain in Osaka and had a blast. We met a bunch of cool people at the hostel and about 20 of us went out, but we were out too late and didn’t know there was a random button to call the desk. Luckily, one of the people there had a hotel room and we slept on his floor. The next day caught the bullet train down to Hakata, the ferry back to Busan, and the KTX back to Seoul for Alex’s birthday.

As a recap my favorite city in Japan was Hiroshima. The weather was awesome, the people are very nice there, and there’s a lot to do. The best food was in fact not sushi, but Okiyomaki, which is fried noodle, cabbage, egg, meat, and some sauces made into a pancake. It was still nice to have some sushi because you can’t get any in Korea. My favorite museum was the A-Bomb museum, which did a great job of professing peace. The best temple was the Golden Pavilion. Basically, Japan was really awesome, but thank god my mom was there because that place is not cheap.

The night we got back was Alex’s birthday. We went out for some Korean BBQ and drinks. Eventually, we made it out to Hondae, the big party area in Seoul. We stayed out til like 4 until Alex fell down some stairs. Not a good way to end a birthday, and it did leave a crazy bruise. The next day was my mom’s last one in Korea and we made it out to the casino, where I could not hit a fricken double down and lost 100,000 won. Like 90 dollars. On Monday I woke up and it was snowing. They got about a foot of snow, which is the most they’ve gotten in 20 years, and they are not used to snow. I called the Korean English teacher and ask her if we have school. “Dave, why wouldn’t we have school?” was the response we got. I got in and they sent us home at 3 b/c no students could come in. Alex had to work all day. They tried driving her to school and they didn’t even brush the snow off the back window. They stopped about a half mile and made her walk. Also on the way they stalled out like three times. It’s that crazy Korean work ethic that makes them work 60 hour weeks. There turned out to be a bunch of deaths and they’re going to change some laws. Actually, my only full day of work was Wednesday because that Thursday they sent us back to Japan to get our visa. Our plan worked out by we got an extra two days off work, but Japan was kind of a mess because we had to check out at 10am and our flight didn’t leave till 8pm. So, we were hanging out with the homeless pretty much all day. But it was worth the two days off. The only bad news I have is one of my buddies, Dinkin just left without telling anyone because he didn’t want to be talked out of it. This is a pretty common event here because of the way these Hogwans, private schools are run. Right now in my school, there is minimal heat, no hot water, pipes commonly freeze, we can’t use the space heaters b/c they just unplug them, the third floor toilet has been out of service for a whole month now, they put students who speak no English into classes that have been together for a year or more, which they basically just lie to the parents and say their child can do well in that class, and I can’t really trust them with money. So, it’s pretty common for someone to just say I’ve had enough and go to the airport. I pretty much put up with this by just saying ok and then doing my own thing in class, so it’s not that bad. Still, if anyone wants to visit I’ll be here for a while.

2nd Post: 2 Months In

2^nd Post

Now I left the last blog post in mid paragraph, but I believe you can do that blogs. For everyone who asked I do have some really weird stories about foreigners here. I don’t really want to post them on this blog, but feel free to ask me. In addition, the first entry I mainly focused on the insane differences in the culture and lifestyle changes I had to make, but in this part I want to focus some of the funnier things that have happened to me and a few of the adventures I’ve had.

I somehow forgot to mention my arrival in the first entry. This is right out of a sitcom; in fact it would be the pilot episode. So I get to Seoul fine, get my bags, go through customs, get picked up quickly, arrive at the apartment, and start to settle in when I realize I have the wrong bag. I have this bright red Nautica bag that there must only be 2 in the world b/c they look ridiculous, which made spotting it in the carousel very easy. But I never checked the name tag at the gate. Luckily, I have my email and contact info on my bag, he didn’t. So he sends me an email and calls my mom in the states from Korea. The guy is in the army and I’m freaking out that he’s a psycho and is going to take half my stuff. He keeps trying to say he wants to send it to me, which would have cost over 300$. I demanded a meeting, and after a week of not having a bag I have to take the train an hour into Seoul and meet the guy. Luckily, everything was there, which was good because it got really cold the next week and I had been wearing the same socks for 4 days.

Another example of the Army guys here was the night Alex and I went into Itaewon (Foreigners Area). The first bar we went to was straight from a bad army movie like “The Gaurdian”. Wasted army guys dancing, kissing ugly Korean girls, and pretty much everything else stereotypical that comes to mind right at the bar. The only thing we missed was a bar clearing brawl, which my co-worker told me is a monthly occurrence there. The next bar was a complete change of scenery. It was very laid back, pool tables, dart boards, and cheap drinks. This was also the night of the World Cup selection, and because we were not in America they had it on TV. A few thoughts on that if any of you saw it: Charlize Theron was really out of place and is probably a bimbo, why in the world was it a two hour program (could you imagine the NBA draft order selection taking two hours, no it takes 10 minutes), and the US did get a good draw.

Pretty much every weekend my girlfriend and I try to do something touristy. So far we have managed to walk around down town Seoul (3 times and each time we forgot a camera or the battery was dead), climb Surisan Mountain, go to Seoul Tower, walk around Hwaeson Fortress, and check out the local ice hockey team. Downtown Seoul is surprisingly small and easy to get around. The highlights are old temples and parks surrounded by massive skyscrapers, Chechongye Stream, and all the street venders. Chechongye Stream runs through downtown Seoul, and was recently renovated by some famous architect and looks really cool. The first time we were there they had all of these floats lit up. We went up Seoul Tower, which was cool, but you get up there you look around for 10 minutes and then come back down. Hwaeson Fortress was very cool. It was built in the late 1700’s, the city has grown around the fortress, but a lot of the wall is still intact as well as a few gates and temples. But overall a very cool city and site. We also climbed Surisan Mountain, which is the local mountain in our town that I see every morning when I look out the window. It was really really steep, and took us forever to get up there. Then on the way down we found the popular path that had steps the entire way that I somehow managed to slip on and fall. Thankfully, I didn’t break my wrist or anything because the health care system here is quite shitty.

You hear about Korea being a very advanced country with lots of biotech research, but the health care is ridiculous. If I mention I don’t feel well at work. My bosses will insist that I go to the doctor. One time they gave me a ride home b/c they were taking a teacher to the doctor for a headache, but what is even more stupid is once you are they ask you what you have and then give you medicine for that. Joe, the other English teacher at my school was sick right in the middle of the swine flu scare and they took him the hospital. The doctor didn’t give him a check up, but just asked if he had the swine flu. He said no. They gave him medicine, and he went home. Another one of Alex’s friends Jen cut her knee and went to the hospital. They just looked at it said she didn’t need stitches and sent her away without cleaning it or anything. In addition, Alex’s boss told her if she really hurt herself like broke a leg they would just send her home to get it fixed. Kind of ridiculous, I hope I don’t break a leg here. Another fact showing they don’t know anything about health care is they all wear face masks. The face masks do not do anything especially when the kids throw them at each other and leave them on the floor. For their great fear of diseases I am surprised that they let their kids get taught by foreigners because the government definitely puts out propaganda that all foreigners have the flu and aids.

For as friendly has Koreans are to foreigners they definitely do not think highly of us. They believe that 80% of us have the swine flu and that all of us have AIDS. The swine flu was reported in the national paper, and the AIDS comment was taken out of context the article only mentioned that 3000 people have HIV test to get their visas. Since I’ve been here there also was a death threat to all foreigners in the Seoul area. The group threatened to throw acid on the leader of the foreigner political group here. By no means do I think this is a real threat, but it’s interesting to be a minority in a close minded society. It is also not illegal for them to do this in anyway. Discrimination in the work place is acceptable and legal.

So I feel that this entry wouldn’t be complete without a little bit of ranting about my job. After my last post, the director calls the English teachers into her office for a meeting and starts by saying if she was going to learn English she would want it to be fun and exciting. Then she says that the Kings Kids method of teaching is to smile a lot, stop doing a lot of book (something that they had stressed we do earlier, but now the kids aren’t having fun), and play more games. Basically she is losing students and the kids actually learning something is a far second to her making money. Then the next week her second in command came in to watch my class and talk about my class. So, I throw together a lesson and game that I know the kids love just to show them that the kids are having fun in my class. At lunch, I’m prepared for a you need to smile session, but to my surprise she actually gives me a really good critique that was very useful. It was very refreshing to know that there is someone who does care about the students. But another major issue Joe and I have with the school is last minute notices. We have a winter term coming up that is 2 months, and on Tuesday they said that I was going to teach the movie the “Lion King” and my lesson plan for the next two months was due on Thursday. Oh, they also said that they couldn’t get the movie until January 4^th. I told them no, which is something that a boss would never here in Korea. In Korea, the boss is always right. There was a story about an airline, which kept having a new design of plane crash and everyone was asking the president of the company “what’s wrong?” He kept saying nothing, and planes kept crashing. This didn’t stop until the government investigated. So, whenever a lower employee says no to a boss it’s a big deal. This is funny b/c Alex told me that her boss heard from our recruiter that my boss and I don’t have a good relationship, but I think that if she is a hesitant that she will respect me or at least be careful about asking me to do stuff, and two days to prepare for 2 months from scratch is insane. I gave them 3 weeks of lesson plans. They just seemed happy that I gave them something. But there have been some funny things at work.

For Christmas we set up a restaurant for the students, and I had to teach my class sayings like “What do you want to eat,” and so on. If you remember from my first post that restaurant is Korean is pronounce SHITDONG, then I had 20 students going “Restaurant-Shitdong” five times in each class with me trying to stop from bursting out laughing. I also learned another students name in Korean was “The Hairy One.” Another time I was sitting outside at my favorite dumpling shop, and this car stops out jumps a mom and kid they run over to me and the kid says, “Hello” then they run back to the car. Funny stuff like this is a weekly occurrence.

On another note, I have pretty much moved into my girlfriends apartment, but I still have mine. It is sort of a Hotel for anyone who wants to come visit (please come visit). The move has worked out real well. It’s nice to cook dinners at home and spend time together. Also, my mom is in town. She has been staying at Hotel Dave de Luxe. She walked around Seoul, did some shopping, when to a world heritage site, and has been having a good time. I think tonight I’m going to show her how to make a facebook photo album, so friend her and check it out. We are actually right now on the bullet train (KTX) to Busan then we are going to take a ferry to Japan. Our schedule is going to be stay in Fukouka for a night once we get off the ferry, bullet train to Hiroshima for one night two days, bullet train to Kyoto for two days two nights, then to Osaka for New Years, back to Fukouka to take the ferry back to Busan, then back to Seoul. Hopefully we’ll get back to Seoul around 7pm on January 2^nd, which is Alex’s birthday. Hopefully, I’ll have another post about Japan out quicker than this one. Cya.

P.S. I would like to make this blog more interactive. Does anyone know how to add a section that people can respond or ask questions. Let me know. Davemc1130@yahoo.com, thanks.

First look at Korea

I’ve been in South Korea for more than a month now, and have been able to absorb the culture, get into a routine, see a few sites, and make some new friends. I live about 15 miles south of Seoul in a township or “Gu” as they say. The town I live in is called Surisan, which is named after the local mountain. The city looks really weird and Sci-fi. Everyone lives in these big apartments around a train station. Even the suburbs where people move to because they think it’s a good place to raise a family, but they still live in huge high rise apartments. My place is a one room studio with a small fridge, bathroom, laundry closet, and TV on the 15^th floor. Even though Seoul is undergoing serious suburbanization it is definitely not the white picket fence American Dream. Everything is vertical, which makes finding restaurants or bars sometimes extremely difficult on the neck, and also the eyes because of all the neon lights. This brings me to the food.

The food here is great especially the Korean BBQ, although Kim Chi (the Korean national food) is disgusting. For those who don’t know Kim Chi is cabbage and this red chili pepper paste fermented for three months, and if you think that sounds enticing I can tell you first hand you are 100 % wrong. It is pretty foul, although after being served it twice a day you sort of develop a taste for it. On the plus side Korean BBQ is awesome. At your table is a grill, which they put hot coals into and they serve you beef or pork and a ton of side dishes. Everything else is pretty much above what you would get in the States, so it is nice to have a salary that allows me to eat out every night if I wanted to. A few interesting notes are they love hot dogs here (all varieties), everything has red chili peppers, and surprisingly the sushi here is awful even though its one hour from Japan.

There are some funny aspects of living in Korea that any westerner would think is weird and hilarious. Being from Philadelphia it was nice that Chan Ho Park is on the Phillies because he is the biggest celebrity in Korea. All the World Series games were on even though I had to work through most of them. I’m hoping next year he sticks with the Phillies because they show every inning he pitches on their equivalent of ABC/FOX. Not the whole game, but if he comes in for say the 8^th inning they stop all programming and switch to the Phils game. It is also ridiculous that the biggest video game here is “Starcraft.” It’s a game I played when I was 12 and there is even a channel that shows online teams playing 24 hours a day. The funniest thing for an English speaker is some of the Korean words. I’ll give you the top five so far:

5: Name of my student sounds like “ITCHY ONE”

4: The word for restaurant in Korean sounds like “SHIT-DONG”

3 and 2: Names of a friends students: SUCK-BUM and BUM-Suck

1: The town my girlfriend lives in “BUM-GAY”

The only real downsides to living here is the haze. I feel like a cloud as hovered in Seoul for the past 2 weeks. In that span I’ve seen the sun twice and the moon once. It’ll clear up for about a week and then come back. Pollution sucks, glad to see that the EPA is taking steps in America, so we won’t end up like this.

My day to day life is pretty much as follows: I get up at 8; it takes me about 30 minutes to shower, eat breakfast, and get dressed; leave for the subway and hopefully catch the 838 train, if not the 841 train; I get to work either a little before or after 9; I have 4 forty minute classes, then MWF I have three 50 minute classes starting at 150 or TTH I have two 50 minute classes starting at 250; I’m done teaching at 440 and leave at 5 to catch the subway. The subway is one of the best parts of Seoul. I would say it’s the size of NYC, but as clean and efficient as DC’s metro. It’s really easy, cheap, and fast to get into downtown or another suburb of Seoul.

Overall, this is one of the easiest pay checks I’ve ever seen. I teach students “How are you,” “I want a…..,” “Could I please have….,” and other basic phrases with a little bit of vocabulary. It requires no mental capacity, which is the only downside of it. The kids are awesome though. All Asian kids are really cute, and I do have a few favorites, but the best part is how well they are behaved. The most annoying and disruptive kid here would be a star pupil in America. The only real work here is monthly assessments and lesson plans, which I pretty much just copy and paste. But there are a few downsides to this job.

The school I work for is a private Christian school, and one of the old workers once said he went out drinking on the weekend. Every time after this he said he was tired or not feeling good they would ask, “Are you drunk?” So, I have to hide certain things from the school. Also, the language barrier is quite annoying between both student and administration. The students call me Dave Teacher, and I hear the word teacher a good 300 times a day, which drives me crazy. There’s also the obvious confusion trying to explain things. The problem with the administration is the head people don’t speak English, and in Korean culture you are supposed to follow what your elders say. This is one reason why the guy left before me, although; it has to be something more because he left over a little reason. I think a lot of little things built up and he snapped. But that’s not to say I haven’t seen our director do ridiculous things first hand 90% of director wouldn’t do.

The place she got is really nice and fully furnished, but this old lady who used to live there still uses a part of my place. I have all this kids stuff, part of her wardrobe, and a Kim Chi freezer in my spare room. I don’t really care, but the fact that she can come in when I’m not there (I rarely am there) kind of bothers me. She apparently pulls this stuff all the time. One guy quit after a month working there, and another got a visa run to Japan and stayed in Japan. But so far I haven’t had any real problems. The big problem for her is if her English teachers are unhappy and leave she loses a lot of money. When the teacher, whose position I took left she lost half of her afternoon students, which is about 10K a month.

The nightlife here is pretty awesome. The bars and dance clubs close when you leave. The latest my co-worker said he’s been out was 9am. I think I’ve made it to 5 am once, but if you go into Seoul the goal is to make it to 6am when the subway opens up again. Joe, my co-worker recently spent 6 hours riding around the green line, which is a loop of downtown Seoul because he could never wake up for his stop. Everyone stays up really late here. The locals all drink Soju, which is 20% vodka/wine that gives you horrible hangovers and the Koreans love it. We climbed this mountain (more on that later) and at the top they toast with Soju. But it is a very common site to see Korean men sit at a table for 5 hour just drinking this stuff till they can’t talk, walk, or even they might fall asleep (it’s ok to fall asleep at bars here). But you see these guys in the morning just blacked out trying to get to work. It’s pretty funny. Maybe when I make some Korean friends (not from work) I’ll partake in this past time.

For me I try to make it into Seoul for one night and the other stay local. The places in Seoul with fun nightlife are Handae and Itaewon. I’ve been to Handae, which is the big club area because it’s a University town. Itaewon is the big foreigner area. The US army base is there, and a lot of Americans live around there. I have yet to make it out there, but I hear it can get rowdy. There are two great bars around me. In Bumgay there’s Happidus, which has a quizzo trivia night that I’m convinced is rigged b/c the same two teams when every other week (the winner is responsible for making the questions the next week). The cool thing is 4 times there is a beer bonus, which if you get right you get a free pitcher of beer. I finally won this on the question “How many people in the world are drunk at any given moment?” The answer was 7%, but we were closest with 11%. The other great bar is called pirate bar. Here they serve you beers in ice glasses and when you are done you can throw it at this target and win free drinks or food. The one time I finally hit it after many many many tries I got the X and didn’t get anything. These two bars are two places a lot of foreigners go to in my area.

So far I’ve met some cool people here, but mostly everyone here from other countries is very weird. It almost like they are escaping from something in their home country. A lot of dudes here are really creepy, and the only girls I’ve met have been serious airheads.