Monsoon

The advertised monsoon, is so far pretty grandiosly named. Its more of a period when it actually does rain from time to time. I'd practically forgotten rain. The plus side is that its moderately depressing the temperature, the down side is that its far too humid and its impossible to dry our clothes. this is also the moment that John is occupying our spare room, which could be used for drying. Oh well. Usually if we're quick enough the interludes are more than long enough to get a batch up on the roof.

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.

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.