Canada Day

We went up to Seoul for a Canada Day Party. It was put on by the Canadian chamber of commerce of Korea and the embassy at the UN "compound" here in Seoul. One of the people we know was doing a segment for Sounds Like Canada on Canada Day in Korea, so on July 1 you may hear a brief segment on that show. I can be heard as part of a crowd shouting "Happy Canada Day". It was a pretty fun Canada Day.

The vast majority of the crowd were ESL teachers, but also a fair number of businesspeople/professors/miscellaneous older people were there too. Molson Canadian sponsored the event and much of it was dispensed, complete with "imported" stickers on it.

They also had Salmon and Beef steaks (though they were Australian). It was very good anyway. Various games such as tug of war the interprovincial challenge were held. Saskatchewan eventually beat Nova Scotia. Other than that there was music, skipping, ballooon tosses and so on.

The ambassador spoke briefly to the astonishment of all involved. He was popular with the crowd, although that wasn't too hard considering the general mental level. So, all in all it was one of my better Canada Days. Being away from home certainly builds up people's togetherness feelings and solidarity with countrymen. It was strange to be surrounded by so many Canadians, all speaking English, and even some French. With the cheap plastic furniture, oversized shirts, and dirt everywhere it was the most Canadian experience I've had since being here.

We are also getting much more expert at Seoul and have now located the good but cheap hotel area which eluded us on our first two trips. You just have to go to the supposed "love motels" which are nice, clean, well equipped (TV, internet, bathtubs!!, aircon, free porn, etc...) They are cheap, 35-60 dollars, and as good as any hotel in Canada. They have special blinds so people can't see who comes in and out, I guess to avoid scandal! These ones were in a bit of a shifty area, but also close to the Subway and Insa-dong, which is a great area.

The day previous we had gone to "Everland" an enormous beast of a waterpark/themepark outside the city. We went with a Ian and Chelsea, who had heard it was fun. We were only really interested in the waterpark, and went later in the day to capitalize on reduced prices. However, we were unaware of Korean theme park practices, and didn't realize they had bizarre rules for entry, only on the half hour or something, so we wound up waiting around even later.

So we chucked off to get refreshements at the Family Mart, and the girls quite clearly told us they would meet us there, after they visited the can. However, there appears to have been some sort of miscommunication, and we were able to spend most of our waiting time, waiting in vain outside the mart. It was a matter of some honour, but I forget the details now if you want to know.

After much gnashing of teeth later, they eventually let us in, and we got to wait in line longer to get on a waterslide. The first while was unimpressive, and we were reminded why we don't usually go to these things, and why it is especially important to avoid them in Asia. After two hours we'd been on 3 rides. We tried the wave pool which also had requirements demanding life-jackets if we were actually going to go in beyond our waists. Fortunately the crowds thinned out in the early evening and we could slide to our hearts content for an hour or so at the end. It was all worth it for that.




Another unfortunate problem had been our idle small city purchase of a pile of galbi at a restaurant for lunch. Later it turned out that this set us back 102,000 won, which is well over one hundred dollars. In Daegu, for four people we have never payed more than 50,000 for the same. Welcome to the big city I guess. We all had a mortifying moment at the bill counter, thinking there must have been some mistake, or that they meant 10,000 (which would not be totally unheard of in Daegu). It was very good, probably the best we've ever had though, so we should have had our heads up a bit more. In the big scheme of things 25 dollars for a meal isn't outrageous anyway.


The other news is school, where stress is reaching peaking point, at least for the Koreans. One of them, Theresa, quit over disagreements with the head teacher. Interestingly, she had lived in Toronto for 12 years, and basically wasn't prepared to put up with the junk that they dish out to their employees. These teachers, with really no career prospects and pay (significantly lower than ours), work horrendous hours. On Friday I had forgotten my wallet there, and went back to work past 10 o'clock to find them all still working. Granted they were eating chicken and drinking beer, but they were only on break from the larger tasks at hand.

All the stress is resulting from "open class" which is meant to showcase our classes to the parents, but is basically just a huge charade. We practice "lessons" that bear no resemblance to a lesson, and most annoyingly for us, an intricate "game" involving as many props as possible for the kids to complete in teams for an hour or more. Its the same as the presentation, where there are layers within layers of complexity, and more and more "things" whatever they may be. Why do one book when you can do five? Why not wear constumes, and have songs thrown in too? Then with a day left change everything and add a craft projects and speeches. Then just to annoy us, they change report card policy in the middle of all this, adding school wide reports every two months, as opposed to the earlier stated three. By the way they want these in two days. So, I'll be very, very happy when that all blows over, especially since they become much more critical during these high stress periods. All of this is par for the course at hogwans though.