Hotness

Here it is hot again, and the koreans continue to demonstrate their imperviability. Its been well into the thirties, but many are sticking to jeans and other long hot outfits. Quite astonishing for us who are sweltering to death in shorts. Fortunately the school does have efficient air conditioning. Most places keep their air-conditioners much warmer than in Canada, which I do think is a good idea, since in Canada you go from HOT to freezing your ass off. Here it just makes it bearably cooler inside.

Seoul Again

Seoul this time around was better than last time, chiefly because it was warmer, without being too hot. Here in Daegu it has recently been starting to earn its reputation as Korea’s number one hotspot, much to my dismay. We’ve cleaned out the airconditioner as an acknowledgement. Our apartment seems to defy all physical laws and refuses to cool out naturally, no matter how long or late we leave all doors and windows open, which is quite surpising considering it is a small box with no insulation.

Anyway, back to Seoul. We travelled with Jason from work and his girlfriend Eunji, as well as Mark and Jen and Candace, and her visiting boyfriend from Canada, Ryan. We again had problems locating a suitable hotel, something above crack-den, but below the level of the “Grand”. Eventually after many subway trips and taxis stuck in dense traffic we found the Primero, which was good and relatively cheap, though uninspiring when compared to Busan’s offerings. I guess that’s the sacrifice we make for visiting a world capital.




We spent most of the weekend searching for ethnic foods of one description or another, though we failed somewhat on our second night, and wound up eating at “Johnson’s Pork and Beef” which basically served weiner soup. We were very tired that night and could not be bothered to travel miles in search of goodness. Other nights we did have good Mexican (we almost got the waitress fired when we complained about a screwed up order!), Lebanese, and Indian, in addition to some scattered Korean. Itaewon is the area with the most ethnic since the American base is right next door, and they are very much catering to them. It has also become an attraction for various other westerners such as ourselves, and we actually heard non-English speaking foreigners. They are quite rare elsewhere. Its a very strange area though since it is full of Marines who look exactly like they just left Los Angeles.

The American military presence is very much in evidence in Seoul. I imagine it must have some effect on the local culture. All of the men women and their families live there, so they just go about their business throughout the town as if it wasn’t Korea. The funny thing is that there’s only 38,000 in the whole country. I can’t imagine the impact of the 2 million or more troops in southern England in 1943-44.



Other than that we did some usual touristy things, saw the palace, Insa-dong, an artistic shopping district which was interesting, I briefly visited the Seoul olympic park which happened to be quite near our hotel. It was funny to see Seoul’s river-side bicycle paths, which looked exactly like Ottawa’s only a lot busier. We also wound up watching Star Wars at Asia’s largest underound shopping centre (which truly was large). Eunji fell asleep but all others were well entertained. Star Wars is not a very big phenomenon, although this movie seems to be getting fairly wide play. Very few people have seen any of the original movies, and most of the kids have no idea what Star Wars is. A real difference from their Canadian counterparts.

Management Training

we wound up going to "management training" weekend in the mountains this past weekend. What it had to do with managment I'm not really sure. I guess they were trying to build teamwork and spirit and all those things that employers usually like. Basically it just boiled down to a lot of drinking and staying up all night on Friday.

Typical of general Korean planning initiatives, the theory was to go hiking on Saturday morning, AFTER the evening festivities. As you may imagine, enthusiasm was somewhat tepid by ten o'clock on Saturday. Friday also happens to be all of the foreign teachers' hardest day, with teaching straight through from 2.30 to 8.00, which I can't emphasize enough, is enough to incinerate the hardiest minds. Then straight out for and an hour and half trip in the van, up the windy twisty roads, and then for mountains of galbi, kimchi, and constantly offered soju, from the director, which is rude to turn down.

They also had watermelon, mountains of watermelon, so it seemed a bit like a canadian BBQ. Koreans tend not to under-do the food though, so we were rather over stuffed, since it usually falls on the male foreigners to finish off the piles.

At that point we were conscripted into some sort of Korean gambling game, whose rules remain a complete mystery to me still. SOmething about throwing sticks in the air, and the way the exes turn...

We were staying in a sort of mountain chalet, and there was literally no way to sleep for anyone, since the gambling game continued in a raucous way, and the supposed sleeping room had the lights and TV on. Neither do Koreans seem to believe in lowering their voices for potential sleepers. I think it all has to do with the increased communality of their society, which has much more togetherness than Canadian. In the end the foreigners all just went to sleep around 6, when the less hardy koreans were fading off to bed.

A few hours later I, woke up and joined in with the noodle and kimchi breakfast, although they had helpfully brought some eggs for us as well. The director still wanted to hike, but large numbers of people weren't really into it, so we stayed around splashed in a river. When he and the couple of people who did go, finally came back, we bundled off to the city for another meal. After a couple of people were sick (I'm looking at you Jason), we cut out one planned stop at the giant refrigerator, and cut straight for the meal. After that it was getting on for 5:00 in the afternoon, and we were all dead tired, and ready for bed. All very educational though. Even the Irish girl was tired!

Korean People

Korean people have definetely got some differences worth mentioning. I may have mentioned that older Koreans, say 40-50+ are a tough bunch. They fight a lot. And drink a lot. The women and the men fight, like cats and dogs. They look weathered.

Its also interesting to see the much less cushy bringing up of children. Mothers don't think anything of smacking their kids in the street, sometimes quite hard.

Men sit crosslegged on the sidewalk.

Today the new gimbap place got their dancing girls... these ones much more scantily clad than usual, causing some embarassment for the potato seller... Well I guess its a bit of excitement for him. Still a very strange custom, as they don't seem to be instructed to look excited or anything, so it just looks sort of sad, with these two girls standing around out front trying to pull in business on a quiet street by doing a quasi-exotic dance.

Mountain Men

Koreans love their mountains. That's a fairly well established fact. They single handedly keep the crampon companies in business. Fortunately this means that there is an extensive network of men taking care of the mountains and those that climb them.

At the peak of our local hill there's a little hut which is manned (on week days) by one of these. What his actual job is I'm not sure, but I guess just to pick up the pieces if someone dies of exhaustion. Today he hailed me down to offer me some coffee. So, I couldn't really turn him down, he seemed so happy to do it, and it seemed very nice. Unfortunately, I didn't quite realise that he was going to brew it all up, at some length, and my time to return to school was getting closer and closer. Another group of hikers approached and they joined in, so we had little coffee fest up on top of the hill. The coffee was bit bizarre, but I felt pretty happy to have it, and he was a really jovial guy, so my very near to lateness and out of breathedness for class was fine.

These guys almost always give you something if you go up the hill, either candy, coffee, or just words of encouragement, and the usual "nice to meet you." So in combination with the generous ajumas you barely need to eat lunch if you go hiking.

The fightin'est bar in all Beommul

Its practically summer like now. More than 30 degrees for the first time. I've started squash. I'm no natural but I am slowly improving I think. Eunji is taking classes with me, but she missed the last two classes, so I had a couple of classes entirely to myself, One of the classes she missed because of drinking for John's birthday on Monday night.

Again we had gone to Dong dong ju, and again there was a bit of a run in. Marcus, from NZ, apparently took excpetion to some comments from a neighbouring table, to do with the mixed dating, and promptly whipped out his own Dong. This caused quite a stir, and much angst from the Koreans. It looked pretty rough for a minute, but soon both sides cleared out their combatants and the evening pretty much came to an end. God, they always think that we're Japanese nationalists or something, and that we want to fight about Dokdo, even though no one gives a rat's ass. Marcus did run with it a bit, just to piss them off. He knows a bit of Korean, and how to annoy them. Anyway, it was far more intense than usual. We might have to steer clear of dong dong ju for a while. (The guy from last time also made a brief appearance, much to our dismay.)

Arbour Day

Arbour Day went over really well. They said it was 21 degrees, but it felt like more. It truly was summer. We went for a barbeque at Kate’s which was nice and relaxed. I really like the flat roofs here that are excellent for relaxing on.

Last night we went to dong dong ju, even though I felt pretty sick. (I didn’t drink much). The Koreans were very sociable though, and we dealt with a number of old soju men who were serioused doused. Fun to begin with, but they get a bit old after a while. Especially when they get aggressive. After much contemplation, I think it was a mistake for the group to bring up Japan-Korea! Its rife for a possible misunderstanding. Fortunately another, moderately English speaking man, along with their embarassed wives, eventually evacuated them to a taxi. They came back several times, gave us their business cards and seemed intent on forming a norabong party! It was good to have a break today to give my never ending Korean cold a bit of a rest.