The Curse of Kevin Teacher

So, I haven't been very good about updating this. You know this. I know this. Despite how long it's been since I updated this, I have been sick since before the last time I wrote. The last time I went a full day without blowing my nose at least fifteen times was about January 20th. That's right, I've sick as long as Barack Obama has been president. And, including the other times I've been sick, I have been sick almost half of the seven months i've been in Korea. I've been to the doctor more in the last three months than I've been the rest of my life combined, and ingested, at best guess, over 400 pills. As well as I can tell, this stretch has included two, possible three, colds, strep throat, and a sinus infection, all tied together by allergies. The good news is I'm hoping the nasonex I was perscribed last week is starting to kick in. I only had to blow my nose about 15 times today (down from the 40-50 at the end of last week). Believe me, there will be celebration and rejoicing the day that this thing goes away (if it ever goes away).

So the only thing worse than being my for the last couple of months is being one of my students. I have had five students that have had to go to the hospital in the last five months. It all started when one of my students, Leah (the girl on the right), was hit by a car. She was hit by the bus (really a van) from another English school. She hurt her arm and scratched her head, and spent a couple of days in the hospital. This apparently isn't as uncommon as I at first thought, because I heard from another English teacher in the area that one of their students was hit by a car as well. But still, very scary, and reaffirms my belief that drivers in Korea are out of control.

A month or so later, one of my students, Angie, was spending some time between classes in one of the classrooms. She was running around the classroom, as elementary school students are prone to do, and she slipped and banged her head rather hard against a table. There was lots of blood, a trip to the hospital and a set of stitches. And, I found out today from the Korean teacher who also teaches her that she has developed a tick where she has trouble focusing during class (and at home) and she sometimes starts blinking uncontrollably. It doesn't seem too serious, but it doesn't sound like much fun either.

The third one happened only a week or two ago. I have a group of students who are brand new to studying English; they started studying at the beginning of March. For some reason this class has real trouble with chairs. One girl, Amy, falls out of her chair at least once a day. And we're not talking goofing around or leaning back, we're talking sitting in her chair, doing a worksheet and the chair slides backwards and she's on the floor. Well, another student in this class, Steven doesn't have much better luck. This particular day he was walking back to his chair and put his hand on the chair to support himself as he went to sit down, well the chair slid backwards, and his hand went with it and HE banged his head against the table. He sat down and nestled his head in his arms, and, having seen the whole thing, asked him if he was okay. He didn't respond the first couple of times I asked him, and then he lifted his head up and there was a line of blood running down from his forehead. So I got him to the front desk and they got him to the hospital. He came back later that day and I asked him how he was doing, he only knows about six words of English, but he wasn't using even that, and he seemed pretty spaced out. I'm thinking he may have had a concussion. Well, Steven has a bit of a rivalry going with one of the girls in the class named Kate. And he quickly became convinced, and convinced his mother that Kate had pushed him, and that's why he hit is head. Luckily we have cameras in all the classrooms, so the manager showed him the videotape of him hitting his head, and was able to convince him that Kate had not actually pushed him.

Then the poo really started to hit the fan. Last Friday, I had two students who both had to go to the hospital. One, in the same class as Angie (see above), was playing at the playground and was pushed and fell and smacked her face. The Korean teacher, Sarah, told me that she lost her four front teeth, but when she came to class today, she still had the front two, but there were some massive wires, and I'm not sure if they're fake or real. Other than the dental work, her cheeks were somewhat bruised, and the middle of her face was swollen enough that her mouth looked significantly smaller than normal. (Angie is the one on the left, and Christina is next to Angie)

The other one on Friday, I'm not exactly sure what happened. I tried to ask him about it today, and all I could get out of him was that he and at least one other person had tried to play a practical joke and somehow he had smashed his head into a table (what is it with my students and tables?). He ended up with a bit of a black eye and a very bloodshot eyeball, and he was apparently unable to wear his glasses during class today.

So the rate at which these accidents occur seems to be increasing exponentially. So, don't be surprised if I'm back in the states early because I was deported as a threat to the wellbeing of the country. Or maybe the months of sickness and all the injuries are from some kind of cosmic battle that I have gotten stuck in the middle of. Whatever it is, I hope that both the sickness and the accidents stop, or my last five months are really not going to be much fun at all.

Three Days in the Biggest City in the World

Monday was Chinese New Year (or as it's know in Korea, Lunar New Year), and seeing as it's the one of only two holidays between Christmas and the end of my contract, I thought I should probably make good use of the time. Before I came over I said I wanted to see Japan and China, so I took this opportunity to make my way over to the Land of the Rising Sun.

I have a friend from Olaf who is currently teaching English near Tokyo, and she agreed to show me around on the weekend. And since she had to work on Monday, her boyfriend Stuart (who was visiting from Sacramento) agreed to show me around on Monday.

For those of you who haven't been to Tokyo, it's a bit like Manhattan but bigger, with less English and more people. It seems to be trying to be a western city. It feels a lot like New York because pretty much everything was built in the last sixty years, and there are huge neon signs everywhere. Whereas both Seoul and Busan feel like a whole bunch of people who happen to live in the same area, Tokyo feels like a city with its own identity; it embraces its identity, and its role as a hub and an international city.

After an hour delay in Busan (all the flights were delayed because of snow in Seoul) I finally got into Narita where I took the Narita Express to Shibuya Station. I was supposed to meet Lisa and Stuart there, but I had been unable to get ahold of Lisa on her cellphone, so I left Shibuya Station in search of an Internet café and, completely unknowingly, made my way to Shibuya Crossing. After standing at the Crossing for a few moments, the light turned green. A mass of humanity surged forward from my side of the street, as I watched the a tidal wave of black hair coming across the street towards me. I had never experienced anything like it, and was completely unprepared for the experience.

I eventually made it back to the Hachiko exit, which was where I was supposed to meet them, and found them in the massive throng of people. That evening we went to Lisa's friend Mario's birthday party. We went to a nice restaurant and where the just kept bringing us food and I got something of a crash course in Japanese food. It was very expensive, but it was also very good food. After dinner I found my way to my hostel. It was called the Sakura Hotel. The room was hardly wider than the four sets of bunkbeds in the room, all the beds squeeked awfully, and the room was only about 55 degrees, but it was clean, with warm blankets and interesting people. What more can you really ask from a hostel? So I was getting set up in the room and a Japanese man in his late thirties (who was also staying in the room) came in and decided he wanted to have a conversation with me. He only spoke about three words of English, so the poor Taiwanese kid in the bed across from me was forced to translate the entire pointless conversation, most of which consisted of him asking if he could smoke in the room and saying everything he knew about the United States.

The next day, after walking around Ginza for a while (a very trendy area with a lot of high end shops), I met Lisa and Stuart at the Kabuki-za Theater near Ginza. They have a deal where you can stand in the back row of the theater for one act for 1000 yen (about $10). For those of you who don't know, Kabuki is a form of Japanese theater that involves actors (all male) in rather elaborate costumes with white makeup, using very stylized movements and strange, almost yowling voices. It was an interesting experience, but not as enjoyable I had hoped. It was probably in large part because we had to stand for the whole hour and a half, I had a pretty terrible cold, and I couldn't understand anything that was going on. Other than that, it was a very interesting show, and nice to see in person something I learned so much about in Theater History.

After the show, Lisa had to go back to her apartment because her gas had broken the night before, and this was the only time the guy could come fix it. So Stuart and I hung out, got a burger (since it's been a long time since I've had a good burger). met up with his brother for a while (who is living and working in Tokyo) and finally called it a night. When I got back to the hostel I started hanging out with these really cool Australian guys who were on their last night in the country after a two week vacation. We drank and talked and as Sunday night turned into Monday morning, I found out that Monday was Australia Day. Seeing as I had been hanging out with them all evening, they made me an honorary Australian for Australia Day. The restrictions were 1) I was supposed to drink all day (didn't succeed on that count), 2) eat sausage or meat pie sometime during the day (managed to have some sausage at dinner that night), and 3) hate New Zealanders all day (I did as well as I could on that one).

On Monday, as I was waiting in the lobby of the hostel for Stuart, and I glanced at one of the computer screens and noticed the St. Olaf logo on the screen. So I went over and tapped the girl on the computer on the shoulder. It turns out she just finished Global Semester and was spending a few days in Tokyo before going home. Then as Stuart and I left Ikebukuro Station (the station near the hostel, which is the second busiest train station in the world) we saw two more guys wearing St. Olaf sweatshirts. So I went to the biggest city in the world, and still managed to run into three people from a school of three thousand people. There are Oles EVERYWHERE.

That afternoon, Stuart and I went up Tokyo tower, and then found a really nice little temple to explore right outside of the Tower. After that, we made our way (slowly, and rather precariously) to Odaiba. It's a very touristy area with a lot of shops (with mostly English signs) as well as Tokyo's model of the Statue of Liberty. After some wandering and picture taking we made our way back to Ikebukuro, where we met up with Lisa who was now done with work. We went out for Okonomiyaki (pancakes with vegetables, meats and seafood inside that you cook at your table) as well as the sausage I had promised the Aussies I would eat. After dinner, we wandered around Ikebukuro a little and then they went home since Lisa had to work again the next day. After talking to the girl from Olaf at the hostel, as well as another Aussie and a New Zealander (despite my Australia Day duties), I was pretty exhausted and pretty much called it a night. The next day, I didn't have much time to do anything but take the train to the airport and get on a plane and go home.

It was nice to get out and travel a little again. I haven't done a short trip like that really since Paris a year ago. So while I didn't get to see everything I would have liked (the city is enormous , and I was only there for three days), it was still a great experience, and got me excited about traveling more this summer and at the end of my contract in August.

I hope everything is going well wherever you are, and I hope to hear from all of you soon.

Fun Korean Myths

First off, let me apologize. I realize I haven't been very good about updating this. There are a few reasons for that. First, as most of you know, I'm a bit of a procrastinator. I sometimes need something to kick me in the rear a little bit, and since most of my rear-kickers are across the ocean, I haven't been very good at keeping this up to date.

The second reason is that everything seems pretty normal to me now. I have been living and working here for four and a half months, so a lot of the things that seemed strange to me four months ago now seem pretty normal, and no longer seem worth commenting on.
As many of you know, I went home for Christmas. I apologize if I didn't see you when I was home, but it was a pretty whirlwind tour. I was only home for seven days (three of which I was pretty jetlagged). But being home made me remember just how absurd some Korean myths are. So this episode of Kevin's Korean Adventure will be devoted to my favorite Korean myths.

1.Most restaurants here involve a grill or a burner right at your table and you cook your own food. This is great if you are with a Korean who knows how to cook the food you'll be eating, or if you have been to the restaurant before, otherwise you usually end up with an older waitress cooking your food and just generally invading your bubble. One thing we've learned in cooking our food at the table is that Koreans won't eat burnt meat. I have a feeling it's mostly because Koreans don't like the taste of burnt meat, but my foreign friends and I have been told on multiple occasions (while we were in the process of eating said pieces of meat) that eating burnt meat actually causes cancer. For whatever reason, many Koreans believe that eating burnt meat causes cancer. I'm not sure whether burnt vegetables have the same effect, but I guess I should be careful cooking in the future.

2. Fan death. This myth is so common that it has a name, and has been very well embedded into Korean culture. Koreans believe that sleeping in a completely closed room with a fan on in the room can kill you. I've never really asked for specifics on how a fan will kill you, but having spent most of the last 6 years sleeping with a fan on in a closed room, I'm pretty sure it won't kill you. This being the case, when I arrived in Korea I tried to find a fan because it helps me sleep. It was nearly impossible and I didn't end up finding one, and I can't help but think that this myth might be a large part of why fans are unavailable in this country: it's the Korean equivalent of selling someone a gun, or everclear in a supermarket. Stores (understandably) don't want to be indirectly responsible for the deaths of their customers.

3. The funniest myth I've heard in Korea was posed directly to a coworker and myself. We were sitting at our desks which face the Korean teachers across from us. On this particular day we heard the Korean teachers across from us speaking to each other in Korean like they usually do, and then one of them asked if they could ask us a question. “Is it true,” she asked “that white people need to get sunlight or you will grow fungus in your skin?” She asked this completely seriously. This one is not as widely accepted as the other two, but it's much more entertaining. Apparently the other Korean teacher she had been talking to had told her that this was untrue, but she wanted to find out for herself. I have no idea where this particular myth started, but I would love to find out. I'm sure it's a great story.

So there's the best myths I've heard at this point. If I think of any more or hear any new ones I'll put them on here. I'll try to be better about updating this in the future. If you want me to write more, bug me about it a little bit. If people let me know they're still reading it I'm much more likely to force myself to write.

Korean Fun Facts pt. 1

OK, so for those of you who haven't heard, I'm writing a novel this month. The website nanowrimo.org basically sets forth a challenge to anyone to write 50,000 words in a month. I'm currently at 28,000 words (about 86 pages). So my desire to blog is a little low right now, so I apologize to anyone who's reading this (if anyone is still bothering to read this) but that's why I haven't done anything in a while, and probably won't do anything big until at least the first part of December. To hold you over until then, I thought I'd offer a few quick fun facts I've learned about Korean culture.

1. 11/11 is Pepero day. I'm not exactly sure why, but on November 11th, Koreans go around giving each other boxes of Peperos. Peperos are basically cracker sticks, covered in chocolate. Some of the students basically told us that Pepero day is a big scheme by a candy company to get people to buy more candy. They come in all different sizes, and despite the fact that I'm sick of them, I still have four boxes in my desk at work.

2.They put weird things on pizza here. I've seen corn, pototoes, sweet potatoes, carrots and God knows what else. There are a few places that have good pizza, but you have to be careful.

3. Some Koreans walk deathly slow. I realize that sometimes I walk fast, but these people get as close to standing still as you can possibly get. I asked one of my Korean friends why this was. Her first suggestion was that Koreans have shorter legs, and thus walk slower. Her second suggestion was that, at least a long time ago, only poor people walked quickly, because they had to work. Rich people walked more slowly because they didn't have to work. So maybe it's polite or better for other people's opinion if you walk slowly here, I don't know. I just know it's really annoying when you're trying to get somewhere on a narrow sidewalk and there's a young Korean couple who is basically just blocking the sidewalk.

4. If you want real frosted flakes here, don't trust Tony. Tony the Tiger's face gets plastered on corn flakes, and slightly sweetened corn flakes masquerading as frosted flakes. If you want real frosted flakes, look for Flion the Lion. Not even joking.

5. You'd be amazed how many B movies have been made in the last twenty years, and how many bad movies well known actors have made. I have one channel that shows english speaking movies and tv shows, and the movies are almost always just above unwatchable. They usually have some big name american star doing... not their best work. Oh, and I've seen multiple films containing either Nicholas Cage or Keanu Reeves, if this gives you any idea of the quality of the movies. Even a couple with Hillary Duff, the Olson twins and Katie Holmes. But, beggars can't be choosers I guess.

Hope that holds you all over until I get the time and the energy to write more. Hope you're all doing well, and I hope to hear from you all soon.

Traditional Korean Drumming (with commentary)

TreX-Games, or My Three Minutes of Korean Fame

Busan has been working very hard over the last decade to become a player in international events. Every year they host the Pusan International Film Festival (PIFF), which displays new films from all over the world, especially Asia. The helped host the 2002 World Cup held in Korea, they hosted the fourteenth Asian Games in 2002 and the APEC summit held in 2005, and they have officially made a bid for the Olympic Games in 2020. The latest in this line of international events was the World Sport for All Games, or TreX-Games held here last weekend (the last weekend in September. Sorry I’m a little behind on the updating).

The TreX-Games is a combination of an X-Games-type sporting event and a huge international cultural festival. It’s sponsored by the International Olympic Committee as well as a ton of other organizations, and it’s only taken place three times before: twice in germany and once in Thailand. My friends and I had nothing better to do on Saturday, so we decided to make our way down to BEXCO (the convention center) and check it out.

They had a really nice exhibition room, where you could try out all kinds of fun things. They let me ride a Segway, which was a really good time, although the Korean guy demonstrating them didn’t really trust me. They had a couple of weird, fun roller vehicles. One of these vehicles was called “Xliders,” and I took it as my personal mission to succeed in at least being able to move without falling over. While it may not have been pretty, I did succeed in moving across the area they had set up. I must have looked like I was trying really hard, or the guys running it just felt sorry for me, because after I’d been at it for a while they gave me a free Korean soft drink. The other highlights in this room included weight machines that only went up to like thirty pounds (the women running the booth were a little embarrassed that I could lift it on the heaviest setting without exerting any effort), tons of hiking equipment, and a bunch of sweaty, greasy teenagers playing computer games (which was part of the Games).

We eventually bought tickets to go watch the X-Games portion of the festival. We got to see the tail end of the rollerblade park qualifiers and the entire BMX park qualifiers. It was very entertaining. You don’t realize how high those guys on their bikes are getting until you’re sitting three rows away. My friends and I have noticed that the larger the event, the higher our celebrity status at said event (for being white, obviously). The TreX-Games were no exception. They did the “fan cam” on the big screen twice while we were there, both times it was us: the only group of more than three non-Asians anywhere in the stands.

Outside the Convention Center, there were booths with traditional arts and cultural materials from every continent, especially Asia. There were traditional Taiwanese rug weavers, all kind of Korean crafts, and other cultural items from all over the world. ‘What did they have from the United States?’ you ask: Mickey and Minney Mouse plates, and cowboy boots. It made me sad.

They also had cultural demonstrations going on outside the convention center. There were a group of Bolivians who were experts at horse-whipping. They had long whips that were solid most of the way up with just a little tail on them. And they could get them to crack really loudly. They were letting other people try them too. It was pretty hilarious to watch a bunch of fifty year old Korean men trying to make these whips crack. So, being in a foreign country, surrounded by people I didn't know, I decided to make a fool of myself too. I stepped up and took the whip, and flung it around wildly for a while (I managed to only leave one mark on my neck). But eventually I was able to get it to crack. I was the only non-Bolivian (while we were there) who got it to crack, eliciting a round of applause from the surrounding Koreans. That's right. Round of applause.

The most exciting point of the day was when my friend David and I decided to try the neoltwiggi boards they had set up. Neoltwiggi is a Korean traditional seesaw which is only about a foot and a half off the ground. One person starts on the end of the board and the other person jumps on to their end. As that person hits the board, the person on the other side jumps. If you do it right, it will launch that person into the air. You then continue back and forth until someone loses their balance or someone gets launched off the seesaw and onto the pavement. As far as I can tell, it’s usually played by children, so as you can imagine it’s a little more dramatic when played by two 6’, 170 lb men. We were done making idiots of ourselves and were about to leave when a news team from KNN (Korean News Network) asked us if we would do it a little longer so that they could film us. So there is a fairly good chance that we were on Korean National Television, and may even be filed away under their stock “foreigner” clips.

It was, overall, one of the best days I’ve had in Korea so far, and definitely a day I will remember for a long time.

Squid, Scooters, and Suicidal Cabbies

Having been in Korea for almost a month, one thing I can definitely say is that—at least at this point—nothing is boring. Even tasks and events that would be mundane in the States can become full-blown adventures in the “Land of the Morning Calm”

Grocery shopping here is way more fun than back home. It’s kind of like a treasure hunt where the map is in a different language. I’ve been to two different grocery stores since I’ve been here, and what we take for granted in the US is that groceries are kind of the same anywhere. It’s a little bit of a shock to walk into the grocery store and find octopi, vegetables you’ve never heard of, and a million packages you can’t even read. The first couple of times I went in I had to walk through the entire store to find what I was looking for (since all the signs are in Korean) and just praying that it was actually here. There are some signs in English, but they’re not always right. Guess what I found under the sign labeled “Sports.”

That’s right, you guessed it, dog food. Of course. If you do manage to find what you’re looking for, who knows whether it’s really what you think it is. I got a bag of Cheetos in a convenience store the first day I was here, and was rather surprised when I opened it up. They were the shape of Cheetos, but instead of being cheese-flavored, they were part barbeque, part kimchi-flavored and not at all appetizing. Though when I did first manage to find what I was looking for, the sense of accomplishment was greater than I could possibly have imagined after grocery shopping in the States.

Though grocery shopping is exciting and fun, it’s not as necessary as in the US. Most of the time here it’s cheaper to eat out than to make your own food, especially if you’re trying to eat healthily. Meat and vegetables are not cheap raw. However, I’ve been to at least ten different restaurants since I’ve been here, and have seen at least forty more, all within three blocks of my apartment. There are places called Kimbop Shops where you can get a very substantial Korean meal for 3-4 dollars. Although eating out is not without its excitement either. Some places have picture menus, and a few even have English menus, but most have only Korean menus, if they have menus at all. And ordering unknown items here is not quite as safe as in the US. When Derek and Claire were here last week we went to a Shabu Shabu restaurant (Shabu Shabu involves putting meat, lettuce and other vegetables into a pot of boiling water or broth that is cooking on your table, and pulling them back out with your chopsticks and eating them). I was looking at the menu (because I had been there before) and had narrowed down what we wanted to one of two options. Having no idea which one was what we wanted, I decided to choose the one that had a green ribbon printed next to the name. When the woman brought us our food, we were slightly surprised to see a plate of raw seafood. And this was not your average seafood: there were octopi, squid, shrimp (completely unpeeled, including heads), crabs that had been cut in half that were about the size of a sand dollar, about 4 different types of mussels, and two or three things we couldn’t identify and didn’t resemble anything I’d ever seen before. So we managed to convince the waitress to bring us an order of beef to go with our seafood. We ate all the seafood (which we were pretty proud of) as well as the beef. The whole thing only cost us $21.

Even crossing the street here can be a bit of an adventure. One of the first things you learn when crossing the street is that red lights are more of a suggestion than a rule. Anyone here that’s been in a cab after midnight has noticed that the only reason the cab drivers slow down is if there is a 75% chance of death or better. Anything less isn’t worth their time. The cab drivers here are kind of crazy. I’m actually really surprised that I haven’t seen or been in any accidents since I’ve been here. I’m pretty sure no one here has heard of “blindspots” or “rear view mirrors.” Hell, some of the people here don’t even turn their lights on at night.

The other roadway hazard is motorized scooters. They’re everywhere, and I don’t know that I’ve ever seen one stop at a stoplight. They weave in and out of traffic and rarely travel below 50 miles an hour. The most exciting part about the scooters is that they drive on the sidewalk (at about the same speed as when they’re on the road). I’ve only been actually bumped once, but they’ve definitely gotten my adrenaline going more than a couple of times.

You can’t even go into a bar here without the possibility for adventure arising. I went out with my friend Dave and some of his friends for his birthday last week. We went to Sumyeon, which is kind of a big downtown area. We went to a couple of different bars and eventually ended up at this bar called the Fuzzy Navel. Now when we got there, a couple of Korean women started pulling Dave and me towards the dance floor. We politely declined if for no other reason than we hadn’t even gotten drinks yet. Then two Korean men started being really friendly with us and inquiring about our female friends. We politely tried to skirt any questions about our current relationships with said girls (since if we said they weren’t our girlfriends there was a good chance they would hit on them, and if we said they were, they would want us to kiss them). So later, when we ran into these fellows again, it came out that these guys had been married to the women who had tried to get us to dance earlier. For EIGHT years. It sounded like a very healthy relationship on both sides. Well, it either didn’t bother them that their wives seemed interested in us, or they didn’t notice, because they kept pouring us drinks for most of the night.

So while a lot of things here are still pretty foreign to me, there are a lot of things that are just a lot more fun, if for no other reason than that it takes considerably more brainpower to complete most tasks here. I’m sure some of the shine will wear off in a month or two, but for now, I’m just going to keep enjoying my exciting life.