I didn't get to Busan this weekend--not right away, anyway.
A friend from Goeje asked me about training for the upcoming half-marathon together. To him I replied that I was not ready to do the five-mile run that he proposed to do on the weekend, then suggested that we go to Sareyando instead and do a three hour hike.
Long story short, I ended up going to the island of Yeonhwado with He Jae and Lizzy instead.
Yeonhwado just might be the most beautiful place on Earth. Imagine: rolling hills, lush trees and greenery, and sliding rock faces, terminating into crashing waves. There is a temple there, and at the highest point there is a pagoda, and a large statue of the Buddha. I have no pictures. Sometimes you have to just enjoy the scenery for yourself.
Unfortunately, we arrived rather late and the last boat back was scheduled for four thirty or so. I suggested staying the night at a min-bak but my company wasn't receptive. While we waited for the ferry, which was half an hour late, my friends milled around the little village and enquired about scuba diving, while I played with one of the doberman-colored dachshunds that littered the island.
When Sunday rolled around, I figured I might as well go to Busan. So, I took a us out of Tongyeong in the afternoon. Once arrived I headed for the downtown area, to continue my quest for a decent burger. What I ended up with was an odd piece of food that had all of the requisite parts of a burger, yet wasn't quite the same thing. It was a stack of burger innards on top of a soft bagel, kept erect by a long toothpick. In ascending order, a handful of sauteed onion was followed by a super-thick slice of tomato, a bulgogi patty, processed cheese, lettuce, and finally a large, undercooked slab of bacon. The sauce was a mixture between BBQ sauce and something like mayonnaise. It tasted pretty good, but a burger it was not. The search continues.
I wandered some more, and ended up at the mother of all Lotte marts--massive shopping complex that looks like the Vancouver library's older, dumber, more narcissistic brother. I bought Krispy Cream donuts, underwear, socks and (hallelujah) English books.
I decided to book a bed at a hostel at the last minute instead of wandering around for a jimjil bang. I am there now. Check out time is in half an hour, so I am going to have a shower and check out Hundae beach.
Sunday, August 29, 2010
Sunday, August 22, 2010
Wow! It's Been Four Months
I can hardly believe it, but my contract is already a third of the way through. It has made me want to re-asses my lifestyle. There are a lot of things I wanted to do, that I haven't done.
The problem is that I had hoped that by now, I would have a few solid people that would be up for doing different things on the weekends. Unfortunately, my peers are either caught up in their own routines, busy doing the couples thing, or just doing whatever everyone else happens to be doing.
This weekend, nearly everyone went to Bijin island. I thought about going, but there are about a dozen other islands that I can take day trips to, which I have never been to before...and I 've been to Bijindo twice.
One of my friends who will be leaving shorty gave me some advice Friday night: you have to get out of town on the weekends. Take a bus and just go. Don't go with anybody--don't even tell anyone you are going.
I think Maggie had the right idea. That's exactly what I need to start doing. I started by going to Hansando today. It is the biggest island, and it has cultural significance as the staging ground for one of the most important sea battles in the history of Korea. A lot of work went into developing a sea-side promenade, and the old camp of Admiral Ye Sun Shin. I went alone, and I felt like it was a much more gratifying way of spending my day than getting drunk on Bijindo.
Unless something really significant comes up, I'm going to take a bus to Busan (Korea's second largest city) next weekend. I think I'll book a hostel and stay over Saturday night. I feel really embarrassed that I've been here for four months and I haven't been there yet. It was this attitude that I needed to go with someone to make my trip worthwhile. But, if Seoul taught me anything, it was that I can have a great time going on trips be myself--and it's really easy to meet people if you travel that way.
The problem is that I had hoped that by now, I would have a few solid people that would be up for doing different things on the weekends. Unfortunately, my peers are either caught up in their own routines, busy doing the couples thing, or just doing whatever everyone else happens to be doing.
This weekend, nearly everyone went to Bijin island. I thought about going, but there are about a dozen other islands that I can take day trips to, which I have never been to before...and I 've been to Bijindo twice.
One of my friends who will be leaving shorty gave me some advice Friday night: you have to get out of town on the weekends. Take a bus and just go. Don't go with anybody--don't even tell anyone you are going.
I think Maggie had the right idea. That's exactly what I need to start doing. I started by going to Hansando today. It is the biggest island, and it has cultural significance as the staging ground for one of the most important sea battles in the history of Korea. A lot of work went into developing a sea-side promenade, and the old camp of Admiral Ye Sun Shin. I went alone, and I felt like it was a much more gratifying way of spending my day than getting drunk on Bijindo.
Unless something really significant comes up, I'm going to take a bus to Busan (Korea's second largest city) next weekend. I think I'll book a hostel and stay over Saturday night. I feel really embarrassed that I've been here for four months and I haven't been there yet. It was this attitude that I needed to go with someone to make my trip worthwhile. But, if Seoul taught me anything, it was that I can have a great time going on trips be myself--and it's really easy to meet people if you travel that way.
Friday, August 20, 2010
Big Trouble in Little Tongyeong
It's Sunday afternoon, and I 'm hung-over, so it must be time to write in the blog.
Usually, I have a hard time deciding to write about. Today I am encumbered by no such burden.
As anxious as I am to get on with it, I should stretch out the preamble a little further as precaution against exposing potentially damning content to the web surfer who has typed in a very specifically worded Google-search. You see, although this blog is invite-only and password-protected, for some reason, the geniuses at Google (who own blogger) make the first couple of lines of a given blog entry readable from the results of a browser query, regardless of privacy settings.*
Man, I'm getting to be such a good writer it's giving me chills. I don't know if it's the Graham Greene, the Strunk and White, or the "buffallow effect." In any case, I gotta start doing this stuff for money.
Okay, that seems like enough filler.
The ***** drama (my director) against my hopes and expectations, has continued.
It turns out that I really like teaching kids. I'm not going to do it for more than a year, but children lack so many of the pretensions that most adults carry around, they harbour less resentment, and they forgive and forget more easily. Kids, and even middle-schoolers, angry and confused by the world as they be, aren't as jaded by life. Kids, as a rule, don't cling to petty reasons to hate, as some adults do;
adults like the passive aggressive, over-worked women that are my Korean co-teachers.
Let me come clean about something. A couple of months ago, we finished the epic debacle that was the Beyond Advanced open class series. To celebrate, we were going to go to a fancy sushi restaurant. At the last minute, our benefactor decided to take us to a sea-side dive.
I had the silly idea in my head, as I often do, that I wasn't going to drink. Well, when I was handed a glass of soju, and prompted to make a toast, I couldn't refuse. My glass kept getting refilled--admittedly, I did do my share of refilling, although that job did not not fall exclusively on me.
Eventually, after too many sojus, I thought it would be funny if I took some pictures with my colleague's camera, and when my subjects posed cutely with their peace-sign, and fake camera smiles, I would take pictures of them from the neck down. In retrospect, this was a huge failure in judgment. In my defense I have only to say that I had too much to drink, and that this was meant as a private lark between my and the colleague who owned the camera, whom I had decided would surely see the humor in it, and not immediately show everyone.
Although this had happened months before, ***** brought the photo incident up while scolding Morgan and I after school last Thursday. Morgan blew up at one of his classes. He got angry at his students and got in a fight about which was better--Korea or the USA. ***** thought that while she was giving Morgan hell and informing him that they were pulling him out of that class, that she would scold me while she was at it--to save time, I guess.
She told me that some student's parents were accusing me of teaching their kids curse-words. I have no idea where this idea came from, because I did not. Also, she claimed, one student claimed that I made a "comment about her body". This is a very serious claim, and most certainly NOT something that I did, either suggestively or otherwise.
However, ***** decided to scold me as if I were a delinquent student. Her rational--if it were Greg or Ben who had received such complaints she would not have given them any credence, but since it was myself that was in question, she was unable to dismiss the complaints. I never did find out who the children were who were making the claims, and I doubt very much if they were reprimanded in any way.
*This was at one point true, before my contract ended and I made this blog public.
Usually, I have a hard time deciding to write about. Today I am encumbered by no such burden.
As anxious as I am to get on with it, I should stretch out the preamble a little further as precaution against exposing potentially damning content to the web surfer who has typed in a very specifically worded Google-search. You see, although this blog is invite-only and password-protected, for some reason, the geniuses at Google (who own blogger) make the first couple of lines of a given blog entry readable from the results of a browser query, regardless of privacy settings.*
Man, I'm getting to be such a good writer it's giving me chills. I don't know if it's the Graham Greene, the Strunk and White, or the "buffallow effect." In any case, I gotta start doing this stuff for money.
Okay, that seems like enough filler.
The ***** drama (my director) against my hopes and expectations, has continued.
It turns out that I really like teaching kids. I'm not going to do it for more than a year, but children lack so many of the pretensions that most adults carry around, they harbour less resentment, and they forgive and forget more easily. Kids, and even middle-schoolers, angry and confused by the world as they be, aren't as jaded by life. Kids, as a rule, don't cling to petty reasons to hate, as some adults do;
adults like the passive aggressive, over-worked women that are my Korean co-teachers.
Let me come clean about something. A couple of months ago, we finished the epic debacle that was the Beyond Advanced open class series. To celebrate, we were going to go to a fancy sushi restaurant. At the last minute, our benefactor decided to take us to a sea-side dive.
I had the silly idea in my head, as I often do, that I wasn't going to drink. Well, when I was handed a glass of soju, and prompted to make a toast, I couldn't refuse. My glass kept getting refilled--admittedly, I did do my share of refilling, although that job did not not fall exclusively on me.
Eventually, after too many sojus, I thought it would be funny if I took some pictures with my colleague's camera, and when my subjects posed cutely with their peace-sign, and fake camera smiles, I would take pictures of them from the neck down. In retrospect, this was a huge failure in judgment. In my defense I have only to say that I had too much to drink, and that this was meant as a private lark between my and the colleague who owned the camera, whom I had decided would surely see the humor in it, and not immediately show everyone.
Although this had happened months before, ***** brought the photo incident up while scolding Morgan and I after school last Thursday. Morgan blew up at one of his classes. He got angry at his students and got in a fight about which was better--Korea or the USA. ***** thought that while she was giving Morgan hell and informing him that they were pulling him out of that class, that she would scold me while she was at it--to save time, I guess.
She told me that some student's parents were accusing me of teaching their kids curse-words. I have no idea where this idea came from, because I did not. Also, she claimed, one student claimed that I made a "comment about her body". This is a very serious claim, and most certainly NOT something that I did, either suggestively or otherwise.
However, ***** decided to scold me as if I were a delinquent student. Her rational--if it were Greg or Ben who had received such complaints she would not have given them any credence, but since it was myself that was in question, she was unable to dismiss the complaints. I never did find out who the children were who were making the claims, and I doubt very much if they were reprimanded in any way.
*This was at one point true, before my contract ended and I made this blog public.
Saturday, August 14, 2010
Shennanigans
It's been a long week.
I have been doing an intensive class at eleven-fifteen, and working on evaluations after work until ten or eleven for the past week. I haven't been to the gym in over a week. This weekend marks the culmination of the "Battle of Hansan" Festival. How naive of me to think I wasn't going to drink.
Last night, around 2 AM. Here's the scene:
Some friends and I are sitting around near the turtle ship. We are drinking and smoking and passing around the guitar under the soft blue light leaking from the massive stage erected for Sunday. The light technicians are tooling around, making sure everything works.
We set out for a nori-bang about an hour ago, and never quite made it. There are a couple Vancouverites that we met earlier in the crowd. I didn't notice it happen, but the crowd of three or four hundred has dissolved almost entirely.
There are some high school student milling about us, practicing their four-hundred English words, and having a good time. We offer them beer, and they decline. There are a couple of ajossis too (old men), drunk to the gills, and making a nuisance of themselves. The older the ajossi, the more he feels he must drink, and usually the more obnoxious he becomes. Last month, I had an ajossi sit down next to me, rambling in incomprehensible Korean, with one eye caked in blood. He repeatedly made grabs for my penis.
The ajossis around us this evening, helped themselves to our beer and drank deeply. The wife of one of them bought us food and apologized for her husband's rude behaviour. He responded by yelling at his wife and ignoring her. The same guy began harassing one of the male high school students. We diffused the interaction before it became a problem. He responded by throwing a chair at one of the two high school girls. After that, we decided it was time to leave.
Imagine my dread when coming upon a road block (despite taking the back way to avoid this kind of encounter.) Well, I figured the worst that would happen is that I would have to pay a fine to get my bike back, to I took a breath and went through the block.
To my utter shock, I didn't blow over. The officer posed to Luke (who I took along for the ride),
"helmet?" To which he replied,
"Meh."
And off we went.
I have been doing an intensive class at eleven-fifteen, and working on evaluations after work until ten or eleven for the past week. I haven't been to the gym in over a week. This weekend marks the culmination of the "Battle of Hansan" Festival. How naive of me to think I wasn't going to drink.
Last night, around 2 AM. Here's the scene:
Some friends and I are sitting around near the turtle ship. We are drinking and smoking and passing around the guitar under the soft blue light leaking from the massive stage erected for Sunday. The light technicians are tooling around, making sure everything works.
We set out for a nori-bang about an hour ago, and never quite made it. There are a couple Vancouverites that we met earlier in the crowd. I didn't notice it happen, but the crowd of three or four hundred has dissolved almost entirely.
There are some high school student milling about us, practicing their four-hundred English words, and having a good time. We offer them beer, and they decline. There are a couple of ajossis too (old men), drunk to the gills, and making a nuisance of themselves. The older the ajossi, the more he feels he must drink, and usually the more obnoxious he becomes. Last month, I had an ajossi sit down next to me, rambling in incomprehensible Korean, with one eye caked in blood. He repeatedly made grabs for my penis.
The ajossis around us this evening, helped themselves to our beer and drank deeply. The wife of one of them bought us food and apologized for her husband's rude behaviour. He responded by yelling at his wife and ignoring her. The same guy began harassing one of the male high school students. We diffused the interaction before it became a problem. He responded by throwing a chair at one of the two high school girls. After that, we decided it was time to leave.
Imagine my dread when coming upon a road block (despite taking the back way to avoid this kind of encounter.) Well, I figured the worst that would happen is that I would have to pay a fine to get my bike back, to I took a breath and went through the block.
To my utter shock, I didn't blow over. The officer posed to Luke (who I took along for the ride),
"helmet?" To which he replied,
"Meh."
And off we went.
Saturday, August 7, 2010
Changing of the Gaurd
It's been more than three months since arriving in Korea. When I think about it I think either, "holy crap, it's been three months already? or "my God, it's only been three months?"
It seems like things change here so quickly. People are always trickling in and out, but in two weeks, three very significant people in my social group are leaving: my colleagues Greg Zibby and Tim Zasly. When these three leave there will be a totally different group dynamic.
Greg is the glue. I don't want to say he organizes events, because, usually there isn't much organizing to it. Greg just suggests something and people start talking. Next thing you know there are twenty people having a cookout on the pier. Everyone loves Greg and the more he drinks the more jolly and extroverted he gets, so the partying tends to last well into the night, even if it starts in the afternoon.
My initial thoughts on Zibby were that she was stuck up and arrogant. But I gave her a chance and I'm glad I did because I've grown to like her a lot. She has a hell of a sense of humor. Sometimes when bantering around the office, I will have think I took a joke too far (maybe I make a joke about getting a mouthful of cum) and Zibby will take the heat off me by taking it even farther (maybe now there is gargling involved). She also sits next to me at work. Who is going to sit there in two weeks?
In earlier posts, I have wrote about wanting to punch Tim Zasly in the face. I don't know how exactly it happened, but we're cool now. Maybe even friends. Dare I say it? Yeah, I think I'm going to miss Tim.
I have often listened with fascination to my peers tell stories of people who have come and gone. I will here five or six people give me their unique perspectives of someone I have never met. Now I imagine myself in three months telling new people about Greg and Zibby and Tim and I have a feeling I'll be using the phrase "those were good times" a lot.
It seems like things change here so quickly. People are always trickling in and out, but in two weeks, three very significant people in my social group are leaving: my colleagues Greg Zibby and Tim Zasly. When these three leave there will be a totally different group dynamic.
Greg is the glue. I don't want to say he organizes events, because, usually there isn't much organizing to it. Greg just suggests something and people start talking. Next thing you know there are twenty people having a cookout on the pier. Everyone loves Greg and the more he drinks the more jolly and extroverted he gets, so the partying tends to last well into the night, even if it starts in the afternoon.
My initial thoughts on Zibby were that she was stuck up and arrogant. But I gave her a chance and I'm glad I did because I've grown to like her a lot. She has a hell of a sense of humor. Sometimes when bantering around the office, I will have think I took a joke too far (maybe I make a joke about getting a mouthful of cum) and Zibby will take the heat off me by taking it even farther (maybe now there is gargling involved). She also sits next to me at work. Who is going to sit there in two weeks?
In earlier posts, I have wrote about wanting to punch Tim Zasly in the face. I don't know how exactly it happened, but we're cool now. Maybe even friends. Dare I say it? Yeah, I think I'm going to miss Tim.
I have often listened with fascination to my peers tell stories of people who have come and gone. I will here five or six people give me their unique perspectives of someone I have never met. Now I imagine myself in three months telling new people about Greg and Zibby and Tim and I have a feeling I'll be using the phrase "those were good times" a lot.
Thursday, August 5, 2010
Yet More Photos (Now With Preamble)
Okay, I know I have not been writing in this blog lately, and for those of you who have taken a real interest, I am sorry. I haven't fallen into depression or anything like that, so you need not worry. I just found that I was starting to repeat myself, which made me realize that I wasn't as interested in writing as I should be. If you want elaboration you should read this: www.http://oldpoetry.com/opoem/show/43542-Charles-Bukowski-So-You-Want-To-Be-A-Writer
That's why I've been posting pictures instead. I've been enjoying taking pictures, and they can relate a part of my experience here that words cannot. I have just gotten back from Seoul and although I feel like I am once again full of things worth writing about, I have taken a bunch of pictures, so I will do this last entry with an emphasis on the visual before going back to writing. Nevertheless, I will say that my vacation in Seoul was excellent. I had a great time, and amazingly only spent about 480,000 won (about $410) for a four and a half day trip. That included bus fair across the country (both ways), accommodation fees, and a pair of 120,000 won sandals. I felt obliged to treat myself to a Thai massage after I got back.
...unfortunately, I've been having trouble loading pictures, so here are a handful now. Expect more later, littered throughout other posts.
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Stately Gyeonbokgung Manor |
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It's muthafuckin' king Sejon. Recognize. Much to my delight, I discovered there was a museum underneath the statue. |
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This friendly Korean man from the 15th century is giving an Indian fellow a free lesson in looking stoic. It seems the pupil has surpassed the master. |
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While exploring Gyeonbokgung, I was lucky enough to stumble across the rare pygmy Korean (shown here next to regular Koreans for scale). |
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In Korea, instead of endless wheat fields and pasture for cows, there are rice paddys galore.  |
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