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.