Alia in Korea

Concluding Thoughts

2011-02-01T04:47:00.001+09:00

It's been a while since I've had time to make an entry here, but I had meant to finish with some final thoughts and so forth back in September.

I've mentioned living in Korea to quite a few people by now, both here and back in the States. When they ask about what it was like, I always tell them it's a really nice place to live, which I still believe. The first thing that always comes to mind is that they have a really good public transportation system, possibly because I was so dependent on it, and it seems to be a good partial measure of how livable a place is. I didn't like living in Maine and LA, both of which one must usually depend on cars to get around, but loved Boulder, CO, where the bus system was very convenient, and am really enjoying Brighton, where I take the bus about five days a week, and have taken the train several times.

I also mention that Korea has a lot of great nature--amazing city, provincial, and national parks; pretty, sandy beaches; lots of mountains, rivers, and lakes. In retrospect, I probably should have taken more advantage of that, though I did go to several parks and beaches and did some hiking while there. The thing that I'm missing possibly most about Korea is the bathhouses. It was good to have a place to go for cheap to relax and get really clean and engage in a cultural event that I would never get at home. They have bathhouses here in Europe, but all I've seen advertised have prices that are several times what I'd pay in Korea, and with time limits that make the value in Korea 100 times greater than in Europe. It's ridiculous.

I also sometimes mention how nice and helpful Koreans are, and how safe it is there. I've never felt particularly unsafe anywhere I've lived or visited, but there have been places like Kenya and other third world countries, and even LA, where I needed to take precautions for my safety. In Korea you can still accept rides from strangers--which I did a couple times--and there may not even be any need to ask or stick your thumb out in the road. The two strangers who gave me rides both offered out of the blue, took me right to where I wanted to go, and in once case, helped me put in and take out my bags from his trunk. And people are just generally helpful and kind anyway, even if it's just giving directions, translating, or replacing the nose bits on your glasses for free.

When people ask about the food, I say I like the barbecue and the meats in general, as well as the soups and the veggie and rice dishes, like bibimbap. I hate kimchi, and I often don't like the red pepper they use in everything. I also find that dried squid that they tend to love eating in enclosed spaces with no ventilation to be absolutely disgusting. I'm not big on sashimi. I never tried whale or dog or shark.

When they ask about that job, I say that teaching in Korea is probably one of the best deals out there in terms of teaching English as a foreign language. Japan's package is comparable: they pay higher salaries generally (at least for the JET program), but most people's rent is at most only partially subsidized, so I think in terms of saving, it ends up being about the same amount of money going home. The Middle East seems like an excellent place to go to make tons of cash, but there seem to be more drawbacks--culture that might be stifling to some, longer contracts, and most of the time you have to either be certified to teach in your home country, or you need a TESOL certificate of some kind. Which is why I chose Korea to begin with. Although there were a few drawbacks to my job, like longer hours and more homework to correct (many teachers have none), my pay was quite a bit higher than average, and my bosses took really good care of the teachers for the most part. Some people go there and get easy jobs, but have constant problems with their bosses being sketchy, schedules changing constantly, miscommunications, and the like, and may even have to handle not being able to sit down during class and being under video surveillance in the classroom. I could never deal.

When people ask about the things I didn't like about Korea, the first thing I think of is the lack of personal space. I could never really get used to standing in the middle of a giant open space, and still getting brushed or jostled by people who didn't even consider going around me. Or having to spend lots of time in big crowds of people who don't even notice the crowd, or being followed by customer service vultures in the stores. Other than that, it's really just minor things like hardly any trashcans in public areas and things that you can't avoid anywhere.

My major bit of advice to people teaching in Korea or thinking of going there to teach is to be extremely cautious about teaching in any other situation beyond what your visa says. Private tutoring and teaching part time at other English schools is quite prevalent in most parts of Korea, and is really lucrative. But it's not without risk. I'm dealing with this personally right now. During my second contract in Korea, I worked a couple days a week for a few months at a preschool/kindergarten. On my last day of work there, an official showed up from the education office to do a random check of the school, to ensure accordance with the law. In Korea, preschools are not allowed to hire foreign English teachers, and of course any teacher at a kindergarten must be only employed by that one school. The manager of the kindergarten convinced the official that it was my last day there, and they would not be replacing me (though the other foreign teacher who worked the rest of the week wasn't mentioned, and perhaps was never discovered). My visa details were taken, but I did not get in trouble, and I'm sure there was some bribery involved to avoid any major trouble for me or the school. I was quite lucky, as this was a deportable offense. In any case, I never heard about the situation again, and was even able to leave Korea to go to Taipei, come back for two days, and leave again without any trouble. I thought I was okay.

However, in September, I got an email from my boss saying that two of the other teachers at my school had been accused of illegally doing private tutoring, which resulted in an investigation in the school, which turned my name up as having taught illegally, as well. This looks to the education office like my boss had allowed most of her teachers do work on the side and does not bode well for her business. I had of course never told her about this work, both because it violated my contract and because I wanted her to be able to deny knowledge of my extra work and save herself from trouble if I were caught. When she was told about this, she was extremely surprised and pissed off, since she trusted me and I was her favorite teacher and so on.

The investigation is ongoing, as far as I know. Six weeks after I first heard of it, almost three months ago, I emailed Heather to check in, because I thought something would have happened by then. I also hadn't gotten paid for my last month of work and my severance pay, so I was curious about that, because she had seemed to imply might have to pay a fine through her with my remaining salary, and I wanted to get a receipt or some sort of evidence of the fine and the payment if that were true. This pissed her off even more, and since she emailed me back to tell me off and say that nothing had happened, I haven't heard from her.

A violation like this would normally result in deportation of the teacher, as I said, if caught while in Korea. I've heard that it also might result in up to three years prison or a fine of up to around $20,000. But of course they're not going to put teachers in jail or fine them that much; they'd never get any more teachers coming to the country. There's also no way they'll come after me for money, although there still exists the possibility that my former employer will be responsible for paying some sort of fine on my behalf, as well as her own fine for "allowing" her teachers to work illegally. I can deal with losing about three thousand dollars to either the Korean government for breaking the law, or to Heather for breaching our contract, but what I'm more concerned about is how this will affect my teaching in other countries. Heather has mentioned that I might be put on a "blacklist" of teachers who have violated their visas and are no longer allowed to teach in Korea. This might not be so bad, since I may never wish to teach there again in favor of new places and/or a change in career later, but if I am applying to teach in other countries, particularly Asian countries, it's possible they will want to check into my activity in Korea, or at the least want a professional reference. I'm not sure how such a situation would turn out, as Heather may not be inclined to give me a positive reference anymore, and a background check might turn up my illegal activity.

Anyway, to reiterate, my advice to others going to Korea is to be very careful about such things. The Korean government is stepping up their enforcement of illegal teaching, and are doing checks of schools and I think I've even heard of sting operations in Seoul, at least. So teaching on the side at a proper school is the riskiest activity, since you can be caught any time. Private tutoring is less risky, since it would be done at the student's home usually, and the only way to be caught is if the family themselves rat you out. This is uncommon, I'm sure, but if you wrong someone, they may retaliate by informing the police. The student/family is not culpable in the case of private tutoring, as far as I know, so they have nothing to lose. I've also heard of holding this over the tutor's head to get the tutor to lower the rate or agree to unreasonable conditions, but I'm sure this is quite rare, too, considering the general culture. However, if doing private tutoring, taking clients from your regular school is probably unwise, since it may be hard for a student to keep quiet about it, and if the employer found out it would be big trouble for everyone involved. If a student at your school wants private tutoring, just go through the school. They'll take half the fee, but you still get paid extra money and it becomes legal that way. If you tutor others, try to only deal with people who you already know or who are connected to you by people you know. Koreans wanting a tutor will sometimes just stop random foreigners on the street, asking if they want to tutor or know anyone who does. This happened to me at least twice. Although it's unlikely to be a cop, you never know, and it seems like that might be more likely in coming years.

I'll update the blog if I ever find out what happens with the investigation, and if I get penalized officially, but it's possible I'll never hear about it again. If the situation gets resolved without any government penalties, Heather may just not want to deal with me anymore and consider the three and a halfish million won she owes me to cover her personal penalty for my violation of contract and be done with it. We'll see what happens.

Teach in Korea!

National Palace Museum, etc.

2010-12-06T06:28:00.000+09:00

For my last full day in Taipei, I tried to bite off quite a lot more than I could chew. Had I not woken up and left the hostel in my usual leisurely way, and had I not been hesitant to take a foreign bus, I might have gotten more done than I managed, but oh well. My plan was to go to the National Palace Museum, then to the Shung Ye Museum of Formosan Aborigines, which is on the same block, then to the science museum. Right. It took me about forever to walk to the first museum, and I think it was around lunchtime before I got there, at least. On the way, I saw this park. All these pictures are from the way back, but Blogger put my uploads on here backwards, so I'll start with that.

This isn't actually part of the park; I just thought it was a cute little building outside the park.

Entrance:

There was a river/pond (rivond, piver, pover, pondiver, etc.) all throughout the park. It was cool.

Hobbit door:

I love this kind of bridge.

This was totally suite. You go up these rock stairs and it's all cavey inside. I took a video, but ended up having to delete it for lack of card space. BOOOO-urns.

This thing reminds me of the kiddie pool mushroom waterfall at Aquaboggan.

I think this sign either means that you can't pray in the water, or that Excalibur cannot be found here.

Entrance at the other end:

Then I got to the National Palace Museum. There wasn't a lot of literature about the actual palace available, so I didn't learn anything about the history, just looked at a bunch of exhibits.

Here are the steps up to it:

And some other exterior shots. There were a couple buildings, once of which had some sort of archival library, as well as some other exhibits, but it was all kind of expensive to get into, and I couldn't afford to do both buildings, money- or time-wise.

The environs. How'd you like to live up there? I'd be especially interested in that little red-topped castle-like place.

I exchanged taking-photo services with a young Asian couple, so I got these of myself:

Some old guys:

Photography wasn't allowed in the museum, so I didn't take any pictures, but it was pretty standard museum stuff. I saw a furniture exhibit, a bunch of paintings and pottery, and this really awesome room with curio cabinets and boxes and stuff. They had all these secret buttons and catches and stuff to get compartments to open, and you had to put it all together just right, or it wouldn't close. I wanted to play with them. There was also this amazing animated video that showed an apartment that was set up in the same style to save space. It showed furniture like the bed being folded up into the wall, display shelves opening up in multiple layers from wall panels, counters and tables unfolding, drawers under raised floor levels, etc. It was the kind of stuff they probably do a lot in highly populated areas like Taipei and Tokyo. It was cool. I watched it two or three times.

By the end of my couple hours at the museum, I was getting starving, so I went up to the teahouse on the top floor for a snack. I got some cumquat "tea" that was really delicious, and some dumplings, which were kind of meh. They looked cool, though. I like really smooth, cartoony food.

I think it was after four when I left the National Palace Museum, but I walked over to the aboriginal museum just in case. It was closed, or about to close. I took a couple pictures of the outside:

This building that looks like a castle is a kindergarten. I would have killed to go to a kindergarten that looked like a castle, man. Wow.

Next I walked back to the Taipei Science Museum, but it wasn't open for much longer by the time I got there. I got to see this really cool IMAX movie about the Hubble Space Telescope, but other than that, only this balloon in the lobby, which was on a timer. I think it released into the air every twenty minutes or something, then was pulled back by its strings to get ready for the next time. I didn't see it release, so this is only conjecture.

I do recall having to wait like a half hour for my movie, and spending much of that time trying to wash myself in the public restroom with handsoap and paper towels... actually, there might not even have been paper towels. I think I was just using my hands to wash myself, and the hand dryer to dry myself. I figured it'd be wicked rude to walk for hours in that heat and sweat up a storm, then put myself in a confined space with dozens of other people, many sitting very close to me.

By The Way

2010-11-16T02:40:00.000+09:00

I'm not sure if people who subscribe to this get notified if I edit posts, but anyway, I finally got the pictures for my canyoning trip in the Philippines, and I added them to the post, and changed the content a bit in light of that. Czech it out if you're interested.

http://aliainkorea.blogspot.com/2010/09/canyoning.html

Sorry for the lack of posts lately, but I really only have time to do three or four a month now, and I'm trying to even it out between this one and Pughnited Kingdom. I have maybe two or three more posts here before I'm out of material, so I'm thinking I'll try to get it done sometime in December, and then focus solely on the new blog.

Taipei Night Tour

2010-11-01T07:37:00.000+09:00

After rushing home earlier than I wanted from the Taipei Zoo, I went on my scheduled Taipei Night Tour. I was the only tourist, so I had the driver and his regular car instead of a van. First we went to a Mongolian barbecue. Here, there was a big food and salad bar with lots of stuff that I don't remember, but which was good. The barbecue part is where you go to a different food bar, which has a bunch of thinly sliced raw meats, vegetables, and sauces. You take a bowl, put a bunch of stuff in it that seems like it would taste good together, and give it to one of the cooks. Then he barbecues it for you, like so, and you eat it with relish (the feeling, not the sauce).

A giant group of Koreans came to the restaurant, as they tend to do, and it was kind of like being at home again for a little while.

I think our first stop was a famous night market, but it was pretty small; seemed to just be one long block on one street:

The guide couldn't park right there, so he told me (after a few tries) to just go through, not taking too long, and meet him at the other side. On the way through, I saw what he had specifically told me about, which was a displaymonstration of a giant python, and some other big snakes, which was at a restaurant where you can eat them. No pictures were allowed. Having owned a snake previously, I think I might feel bad about eating one. I'm sure it was also very expensive.

I bought one souvenir, a wall scroll of a tiger, to add to my collection of wall scrolls across Asia.

Next was the major stop to the Taipei 101. It was extra to go up to the observation tower, and I was on a time budget because of the parking time limit. Normally for tours they let you stay as long as you want, but normally tours are quite a bit bigger than one person, so there would be no leniency for me. BOOOOO-urns.

This is the line I had to wait in for like 15-20 minutes.

On the way, they took your picture and you could take your ticket to get it superimposed onto a Taipei 101 background, either at night or in the day. They showed a bunch of examples on screens, but I don't think you could ever see yourself or anyone currently in line up there. Would that be unethical, or at least rude, in case someone wasn't down with it?

The DLI63 building in Seoul took about 30 seconds to get to the top, but in the Taipei 101, the elevator ride was longer. You actually only got to go up to the 89th floor, which disappointed me greatly.

Here are some views from the 89th floor:

I don't remember what the hell this is doing there.

On the 88th floor, you can see the tuned mass damper, which helps keep the building from becoming damaged from strong winds. It's suspended from a high floor, and is a huge pendulum that sways in reaction to the movement of the building. This one is the biggest damper sphere in the world, according to Wikipedia.

Finally, we saw the Lungshan Temple, which was very beautiful, but as always, temples are not my cup of tea. I have nothing further to say about this place, so here are some pictures:

The End.

Taipei Zoo

2010-10-18T08:29:00.000+09:00

In looking through the tourist brochure for Taipei, I saw there was a zoo, and that it was easily accessible via the subway. I decided I would go to the zoo during the day before I went on my Taipei Night Tour a couple days after I got to the city. When I read the brochure, it told me that the zoo was open from something like 9 to 5, and that they stopped taking visitors at 4:30. This led me to believe that the zoo was small. I was wrong.

The Taipei Zoo is the biggest zoo in Asia, as I read on a sign when I was there. I wish the brochure had mentioned this. I had taken to getting up not very early in the morning, and lazing about (it was a vacation, after all, and I'd just finished my teaching contract) for a couple hours before venturing out. So I didn't get to the zoo until maybe noontime, and I knew I had to leave around 4:00 to make sure and be back in time for my tour that evening. Luckily, the entrance fee was very cheap--about US$2. It took me a while to realize just how big the zoo was, because the signage wasn't that great at the entrance--it really seemed pretty small and hokey. So I wasted a lot of time looking at farm animals and bored monkeys in the beginning.

Sorry, the pictures are all out of order and screwed up because of transferring from my memory card to a computer that belonged to this lady from London I met at the hostel, and because this stupid website now only allows for one photo to be uploaded at a time, and it doesn't necessarily put them at the end each time. I've always had a problem with Blogger's photo uploading impotence, but this beats all now.

As you can imagine, a lot of these photos will be taken through glass. This one looks kind of like a painting.

Not a real cow.

The koalas were not very cooperative.

Once I got to the panda house, it started getting cool. Because the pandas are so popular, of course they had their own whole building, where you go up a ramp with a lot of panda info to get to the viewing area.

There were statues outside the building, and a lot of provisions for extremely long lines. Luckily I went on a weekday, so there was no line outside, just a short one inside that went fast.

Pandas. I think they are Tuan Tuan and Yuan Yuan:

I don't know which one this is, but he did not face the audience the whole time I was there.

Not real pandas.

Panda poop.

This is one of the gift shops, but it didn't have a lot of panda stuff in it. I just liked the big woolly mammoth. In one of the other gift shops I bought a bunch of panda stuff as gifts and for myself. Pandas are cute.

Find the owl:

Sloth.

All the videos get uploaded to the end of the blog, and it's getting late, so I'm not going to maneuver them around at this point. Anyway, I missed a ton of the Australian and African animals, though I did get to see some very cute kangaroos and wallabies. And lots of other animals. No lions. It was fun. If I go to Taipei again, which I plan to do because I plan to eventually teach in Taiwan, I'll go back and do the whole zoo.

Taipei

2010-10-07T07:51:00.000+09:00

My last trip in Asia was in Taipei. I went there for five nights and four days. This was longer than my original planned trip in May, which I had to cancel because I missed my flight because I couldn't get a bus in time, but not long enough for me to do everything I wanted to do, as I found out while I was there. Still, I was in a hurry to get back home and do UK student visa stuff and get ready to go to Brighton.

I stayed at a youth hostel called Taipei House, which was quite Christian and had all sorts of bible quotes all over the place, but I was willing to bear it for the price, which was only around $20 a night, and the location. I didn't bother taking any pictures of it, because I'd forgotten to dump my last batch of photos from Kate LA before I left, so I had limited disk space. I ended up meeting a nice lady from London a couple days into my trip who let me dump the contents of my card onto her laptop and email them to myself so I could erase the card and start anew. I really should get a new memory card (this one's only 128 mb), but I just don't take THAT many pictures, you know? Anyway, if you're planning a trip to Taipei on a budget, I recommend the place. They set up tours for you and everything. Here's the website:

http://www.taipeiyh.com/English/home_e.htm

It also has pictures. I stayed in one of the girls' dorms.

I got there at night, but was able to book a tour of the Beitou Hot Springs and Yangmingshan Park for the next day. The tour guide described it as "Taipei's most relaxing tour." It was just me and this other girl who was Filipino as I recall, and we were taken first to the park to walk around. There were a lot of old people there, since it was a weekday afternoon.

Then it was straight to the Beitou Hot Springs. I wasn't sure what this would entail exactly. The poster at the hostel showed people swimming, so I brought a bathing suit and a small towel. What it actually entailed was a visit to the bathhouse, similar to the Korean bathhouses of which I was so fond. I wish I had known--I would have brought the appropriate scrubby and soaps and such.

It was just me going to the baths, since the other girl was in a certain physical state that disallowed her from entering public baths. I was given an hour and a free bath towel (bigger than Korean towels, but smaller than Western bath towels), which I now have hanging as a hand towel in my Brighton bathroom. Luckily there were pump bottles of two kinds of soap. I guess that one was body soap and the other shampoo, and used them as such. Actually, there might have been a conditioner one, too, but I forget. I was worried since I didn't have anything but my hands to apply the soap that all the old ladies in the baths would get mad at me for not being clean enough, but no one raised a fuss. Phew. I was stopped from stepping into the cold bath from the hot bath so I could throw a ladle of water over my feet and calves first. It seems kind of redundant to me, to wash off skin that's just been cleaned and in another bath, especially since the rocky border surface that I stepped on would be the only source of dirt, and would only touch the soles of my feet, which I wasn't required to wash off. I've decided that every culture is ultimately retarded on the notion of what clean is.

After I cleaned, soaked, cleaned again, maybe soaked some more?, dried off, and moisturized with the free lotion, I joined the others, and we went back to our respective dwellings. It was a good tour. I recommend visiting the hot springs not on the tour, though, as you can spend more time in the baths and probably do some swimming and other stuff on your own schedule.

For supper I wandered around for a while and ended up stopping in some hole in the wall where there were a few other people eating. Ironically, I was looking for something more substantial than soup, which seemed to be quite common, so I pointed to a picture on the wall (no English on the wall or from the employees) and hoped for the best. It was soup.

I think my picture looks a bit different than theirs. But it was excellent soup. Those are shrimp dumplings, and the shrimp was extremely flavorful, probably due to freshness. That might have been the third best soup I've ever had. Well, maybe the tenth. But the shrimp could have been the best shrimp I've ever had. It was only like two dollars or something, too. US, not Taiwan.

Here are a couple pictures of my neighborhood:

One of the best things about Taipei was the crosswalk lights. A lot of them had countdowns on them, but I think they all had an animation of the little green man we all know and love. He would walk at the speed you should use if you were starting to cross then, so he would get faster and faster as time progressed, until he was running. It was great.

I took this video, and meant to take a better one later, since this one is out of focus and shaky, but I never got around to it. Sorry. You get the idea.

I took another tour a day or two later, and did a bunch of stuff on my own, so I'll get to that stuff shortly.

Final Days at Kate LA

2010-10-03T03:13:00.002+09:00

For my last two days at Kate LA, August 23-4, I had parties for my classes, as I mentioned in an earlier entry. Monday parties were for three classes that met MWF, and then all classes on Tuesday had parties. My first class to have a party was Psylocke, a class I taught pretty much the whole time I was at the school. Beforehand, as I was putting the food together and making whipped cream for a later class (which turned out kind of bad, since I didn't have a beater or even a whisk), Danny used my video camera to take some video, including what he called "X-files." ... Well, I tried a couple times to upload the video, but Blogger doesn't seem to like it, so you'll have to imagine Danny going around the school, videotaping Lucy's class, and people going about their business in various areas.

What I was pissed about in my earlier entry was that after Psylocke's party watching The Simpsons, my go-to activity, Heather disallowed me from showing the kids any programs in class. Luckily it wasn't too much of a problem for the kids, since many of my students are social beings, and we also had American made-from-scratch-by-me snacks, which I often had to explain to them for a while.

Some of the kids gave me gifts, which included quite a lot of pens and cell phone charms, but also some handmade clay things, lotion, etc. Some also wrote letters, which said things like, "Teacher, you are good because you are smart and nice and. Sometimes pretty" and "When you are angry, you are like a monster. But when you are happ, you are like an angle." Haha.

Here's me and my homemade chocolate chunk (pieces from candy bars, since chips were not readily available) cookies. Damn, they were good. And BIG.

This class had eight little girls in it. Oh. My. God. They were good girls, though, for which I was quite grateful.

Emily was kind enough to take some class pictures for me. I didn't bother to ask her for a picture of every class. I don't even think I took any pictures in some classes. Oops.

Nice face, Audrey (jeez, I think that's her name. I only had several of my classes for the last two weeks I was there. I had some trouble with their names).

I think this video of Sarah and Helen is really funny. It shows a tiny hint of what it's like to teach them, except usually there is a LOT more sequential "Teacher..." "What?" repetition in our interactions. Also, Helen laughs like the Pillsbury Doughboy.

The younger kids were happy to sit around and play and talk with each other and talk to me. The older kids were the ones I usually really depend on cartoons for. This is a typical posture for a Korean middle school student when given more then ten seconds of free time. He's not hiding from the camera--if you look at his knee, you can see his phone, which he's playing a game on. I'm not sure if this posture comes from illicit gaming in class and trying to hide it, or just making a shadow for better visibility, or maybe both.

And the other boys thought it would be good to play games on MY computer. I was slightly worried they'd get snoopy, so I had to keep an eye on them. Kids are only interested in games, though, so they played chess, I think.

The girls just wrote a bunch of crap, mostly in Korean, on the board. This worried me, because Heather was right next door, meeting with parents, for like three hours (much of it after classes ended, though), and I thought she might end any moment and pop in to make sure I was having a real "party," which I think I wasn't. Also, if any parents saw this, the shit would hit the fan.

Normally, Heather and Mingyu give an afterwork party for any teachers going away, in which all the teachers are invited out for a meal, often sashimi (which I started to hate very quickly), then to a bar or two, then to a noraebang for singing. However, because of my unique situation of finishing my contract, taking a trip to Taipei, then coming back for two days before going to the US, there was some confusion. Although I told Heather that I probably wouldn't come back to Ulsan after my trip, since both my flights left from Seoul and that would be way too much bus time in two days, not to mention flight time, I wasn't clear and definite about it.

I ended up deciding that yes, I would go to Suwon (outside Seoul) with all my shit the day I left for Taipei, and drop off my two big bags with a friend before taking a carryon bag to Seoul for my little trip to Taiwan. Then afterwards, I would stay in Suwon for two nights before leaving Korea to go home. But Heather thought I was coming back to Ulsan for those two days, so she had planned to figure out something substantial to do during that time. When I eventually made it clear to her that my last day of work was the last time she'd ever see me, she was kind enough to change her plans. She ended up having just the foreign teachers meet her and Mingyu at Wa Bar after work on my last day. This was kind of a hassle for me, since I had to get my apartment ready for me to leave, and clean it a little, and get my luggage squared away, etc. etc. I really didn't have time to meet with people, and ended up only getting about three hours of sleep that night, but I figured it would be the peak of rude to turn down the offer.

Anyway, it was sort of nice to say goodbye to everyone (except Mingyu, who mysteriously disappeared and a little while later texted Heather that he was sick...), and I also invited Leon, and Heather was glad to see him. Moriah had also just come back from her vacation to Hawaii, and gave me some nice Hawaiian going-away presents.

And that was the end of teaching at Kate LA.

New Blog

2010-09-14T00:18:00.003+09:00

It's getting to be the time in which I transition to a new leg of my life in Brighton, UK. Thus, I've begun a new blog. I have a few more entries to write about my adventures in Asia, so do keep following me here. I'm spread across three of my own computers and one of my dad's currently, so I'm finding it difficult to update the ol' blog. Not to mention it's time to hunker down on some things before I leave the States again. But once I get my ducks in a row and have some free time, I'll finish this up and let you know when you can stop visiting this blog.

The new blog is at www.pughnitedkingdon.blogspot.com. I'm pleased with the name. It gives me a chuckle.

Korean Beachavior

2010-09-07T21:56:00.002+09:00

Despite half the season being rainy or overcast, I was able to get to the beach a few times this summer, once it got blisteringly, oppressively hot in Ulsan.

I noticed two things this year:

1) That the vast majority of Koreans do not wear swimsuits, despite the young population having the types of bodies we Westerners would kill for, and would love to show off at the beach. As I was sitting on the sand, if I took a 180 look around, easily 80% of the people I saw were fully dressed, often wearing completely "unbeach" clothing like jeans, sneakers, sweatshirts, long sleeves, blouses, dresses, and of course high heels. IN the water, man. Can you imagine walking into the water with a hoodie on? Over your t-shirt? Which is worn over an undershirt? With pants? And shoes? And THEN, walking out of the water, into a sea of sand? Inconceivable.

2) That Koreans of all ages like to cover their bodies neck to toe (fully clothed, naturally) with sand, set up a hat or parasol over their heads, and have a lie down or take a nap in the sand. This is very common. You really have to watch yourself when walking around, so you don't trip over or step on a mound o' native. For me, I can understand the appeal to some degree, but doing it with all that clothing... blech.

How did I not notice this stuff the last summer I was there? It's so obvious. Maybe it was because I didn't go to the beach much my first summer in Korea. The only specific beach memory I have there is from the mud fest, when everyone was covered in mud...

I asked a couple of my classes about this, because I was kind of baffled, particularly by the first one. The kids pretty much all were confused by my asking and after thinking about it, concluded that regular clothes are just more comfortable to wear at the beach. Then I made a bunch of scoffing noises of disbelief and opposition and argued that not having a bunch of wet, sandy fabric hanging off you MUST be more comfortable. They brought to the table the idea of Speedo swimsuits for men, which I rebuffed as a ludicrous choice for swimwear, and that trunks are the obvious choice for men. But they just shrugged and sat resolved, which I guess I understand. Apparently Koreans bring one set of clothes to swim in, and another to change into after taking a shower at the facilities that are commonly set up at beaches. Seems like an awful hassle to me, but all our cultures have their own idiosyncrasies. Actually, according to this Filipino lady I met, it's really an idiosyncrasy of Europeans and Americans to have special swimwear. The rest of the world just wears clothes, if they swim at all.

The whole sand nap thing makes more sense to me, except for the clothes part. I'm told they do that to create a convenient and free sauna, like at the jjimjilbang. I'd rather do the jjimjilbang, though.

Canyoning

2010-09-07T08:13:00.003+09:00

So canyoning was my second and final action-adventure tour from the Philippines. It was cool. I went with a couple who were around my age, with more experience than I had, which was none.

We drove to the site and did some hiking towards the river. Whenever I go hiking, I always wish I hiked more, but I didn't fall too far behind. Partway there, we were given a demonstration on how to use the harnesses we'd put on (the kind that go around the waist and thighs) with the rope to rappel down the waterfalls. I was kind of nervous, especially since it kind of hurt my shoulder to feed the rope through the rings and step back. It ended up being okay.

Our first waterfall was wicked tall. I think it was like 20 meters high, at least. The guides set us up one at a time with the rope, and we went down individually, one guide first, then the three of us, and the second guide last (Mario and Eric were our guides this time). We weren't allowed to jump in the rappels, which was fine with me. We were supposed to walk down, with our feet wide apart. The rock face was curved, with a wide, somewhat weak sheet of water on one side, and a stronger, narrower fall on the other. I tried to keep to the left, where it was safer, but then I noticed my feet were too close together. Dumbly, I tried widening my stance, which made me step into the stronger stream, which made me fall.

But that's what the harness is for. I just lost my feet, and swung into the rock face in front of me. It took me a second to get my bearings again, but all I had to do was push the wall and I was able to right myself again, and slowly walk down the rest of the wall. I was scared.

I think this is from the top of the first one. It doesn't give much indication of the height, but trust me.

I think the second one was really quick and small, just basically a groove in the land that we kind of slid down, so the others didn't take any pictures of it.

Each waterfall (five total) had its own challenges and scariness, like not being able to see where I was going, awkward positions, height, etc.

I don't remember the details of these next photos so well. I think this must have been a reasonably straightforward waterfall, even though the rock face looks a little tricky near the bottom of the frames.

The best part was the highest waterfall, 30 meters, and the lower half was just a free-hang. I think this one the one in which we first had to climb down into like a little cave, and had to put each hand and each foot in turn in precisely the right spot or it wouldn't work. I messed up a little and ended up pretty much hanging upside down because I couldn't see the right place to put my foot or didn't understand how to move my body or something. It was very silly.

I took a moment to just kind of hang out and relax for a sec, then slowly fed the rope up and lowered myself down. Then of course I had some trouble when the falls met up with the bottom, and Mario was trying to help me out, and got my foot tangled in the rope, but didn't realize it at first. Heh. I got down safely eventually, though.

Here was the last one, I think, just a quick walk down a groove into a nice pool where we found some kids playing hooky. Not that it being a quick walk down a groove made it any less scary.

In conclusion, this was fun. I got some rope burn on my waist, and a few scrapes and bruises, but totally worth it.

By the way, my finger is still fucked up from the first trip, river climbing. It sucks.

Dude

2010-08-24T12:23:00.003+09:00

Okay, this is my last day in Ulsan... FOREVER. I'm pretty much insane with shit to do, but I've gotten most of it done. My major concern currently is all the stuff I've accumulated for my apartment, but can't take with me--housewares, etc. I'm going to try and see if I can just leave it all in a pile here and the Kate LA van can come over and move it to the apartment where the next two teachers (a couple) are going to live (which is where I used to live). I wonder how that'll go over...

So yesterday three of my classes finished and we had a "party." During the first class, we did what we always do for my parties, which is what the kids want to do: watch the Simpsons. For some reason either Heather never bothered to notice/register what my parties were like, or she's so desperate right now not to piss off parents that she's gone nuts. After the class, she gave me this spiel about how I can't watch cartoons in my classes, because they parents MIGHT get upset and think that's not a party. So I reminded her I've always done this, and as a Korean, she simply repeated herself and didn't acknowledge what I said. So I asked what a party is, because I guess I don't know. She said tell stories, sing songs, stuff like that. This of course is what we do every day, pretty much, along with other language-learning methods. Then she repeated herself again, I think, and said she knows it's a going away party and we want to watch a DVD, but parents might complain. So I said, we did the same thing last year when I went away. Did the parents complain then? But Koreans have this knack for evading questions they don't like the answers to, by yet again, repeating the main point. I didn't point out that when Kate LA has a party for Halloween, Christmas, or Children's Day, they show DVDs on a big screen.

Moving on, today I went to the national pension office to request a refund of my pension contributions for this year, as aliens from several nations are allowed to do. This process is a piece of piss, as my British friends would say. All I had to do was bring some ID, a voided check, and proof I'm leaving Korea, and fill out a form. I swear I almost spent more time in the elevator going to and from the 4th floor than I did in the office. I definitely spent more time on the bus. And I get the refund in like a month. Suite.

In conclusion, there are some things I really hate about Korea, but other things that are really awesome. The End.

(Not of the blog, just the post. I still have some backblogging to do over the next month.)

Moalboal

2010-08-18T00:25:00.006+09:00

Before we all got started on the river climbing tour, we had to stop at what I guess is downtown Moalboal to get food for lunch and wait for the group of businesspeople to meet us. Here are some pictures from the town, which is right at the shore.

This is the walkway that goes out into the sea a bit. Maybe boats dock here, too.

City hall:

Action Van:

I also took some pictures of the area around my resort. It's very villagey, labyrinthine, and cramped. One could easily get lost (I didn't much of a chance for that, as I spent most of my time on tours or at the beach a few miles away).

This used to be a nightclub, according to a sign. I guess they closed. There is a disco nearby that runs late into Saturday night, which disturbs some people's sleep, but only on Saturday.

This shop is right next door. I bought that purple sarong, and a green one, and some other stuff. The old chick who was there wouldn't bargain with me, but I still got everything for like five bucks apiece.

This is a woman shaving a coconut:

I am very busy. Taiwan in one week, Hawaii in two weeks, England in one month.

I frigging had to drop my water bottle on my stupid kitchen table a whole year after I moved into this place and break the stupid pane of glass on top, which is going to cost me eighty bucks to replace.

Philippines Day 2: River Climbing

2010-08-14T11:23:00.011+09:00

The day after I arrived in Moalboal (that's four syllables, by the way), I was able to jump onto a tour that had already been planned for eight businessmen from Manila, I think. This made me slightly nervous. Living in Korea has put a specific couple of images of "businessman" in my head. One is a quiet, middle-aged, straitlaced, besuited stiff. The other is that stiff, completely wasted, stumbling down the street at 9pm, hand-in-hand with another drunken stiff.

Luckily, these were not those businessmen. They were all in their 30's or so, and seemed pretty easygoing. They all spoke perfect English, which seems to be the norm in this country, so communication was no problem.

Another English teacher from Korea (you can't go anywhere in Asia in July/August without encountering us), joined up with us and we met the businessmen in downtown Moalboal (it took them forever to get there from Cebu City, where I assume they flew in from Manila), where the tour guides purchased food for our barbecue, and Sonya and I walked around (the subject of my next post).

We all piled into the Action Van and drove for a bit to the top of the river. Normally, river climbing means climbing up, but because of recent rains, the current was too strong for novices. Thus, we climbed down.

Here are Sonya and I in front of the Action Van:

This is us with Bubu, one of the businessmen (it was actually seven men and one woman):

I had it in my head all day to make a Yogi Bear joke, but in the end I never had a great opportunity and forgot to do it.

The first thing we did was climb down a path through the trees, which started off steep, but not too difficult. After a minute or two of climbing, it was so steep that it was impossible to climb it facing forward. We had to turn around and climb down it like a ladder. I'm actually afraid of stuff like this, as well as a lot of stuff this tour involves, but I do it anyway. It builds character. So I'm climbing down this thing, holding on for dear life to vines, roots, rocks, small tree trunks, and dirt, sweating bullets of exertion and fear. When I got down, my thighs were singing already, and I was almost soaked before getting into the water.

The first part was pretty nice, just some floating. These two pictures were taken as we were first getting in the water. That's one of the tour guides, Mario:

Pretty soon, though, we had our first obstacle, which was maybe a ten to fifteen foot jump off a rock. Some people took a few times of the guides shouting one, two, three, but eventually we all made it. That was pretty fun.

During the first half hour, one of the Filipinos was using a waterproof camera, but then (idiot) he put it in his open pocket while going over some rough water or making a jump, and it fell out. Miraculously, the tour guides were out at the river the next day, and they found it, still operative. I doubt I'll ever see any of those pictures, though.

I'm not sure when this picture was taken, and the rest are just in the order they were taken (by Sonya's camera), I assume by the photo numbers.

After another jump or two (I definitely remember a jump that must have been like thirty feet), we came to some harder stuff, in which we had to hold onto a rope to get down. One guide went ahead to hold the rope at the bottom and another held it on the top, then each person held onto the rope and swam to the other end. The first one was easy, and we did that because of the current. The second one was much harder, though. I don't remember the situation exactly, but I do know that it was very scrapey. There was a sheer wall to the left of where we started, and I don't think we had to jump with the rope in hand, but we probably had to climb down a little bit and and around the wall to a little cave to the left. I was hanging onto the rope, but getting totally scraped on the rock as I get down. Almost all my knuckles on one hand got scrapes, and there's a scruise on my shin that's only 80% healed that I think came from this maneuver, too.

The next few pictures are from when we had to go from one level of rock to a lower one, over water. The guides had previously put two bamboo trunks there as a makeshift bridge. One trunk we crawled/walked on, and the other was a rail. About five of use got through it first (I crawled about halfway and then stood up and walked the rest), and hung out on these rocks below:

Somewhere in the middle, it was Bubu's turn, and I was told later that she was scared, so Mario went along with her. I wasn't paying attention to the crossings for a while, just looked around at the scenery. Suddenly, I heard CRACKCRACKCRACK and as I turned quickly around, I could see the end of the complete splitting of the trunk, and Bubu and Mario falling into the water. They were both fine; the bridge wasn't even necessary, just put there to make it less scary, I guess. So the rest of the people jumped into the water and climbed onto the rock, and that whole bit went much faster.

I think this is the part of the river right after that incident, and the next several photos are from the same area:

I think after this part, or maybe before, I don't know, was the time when we had to sit on a rock and do a small jump, maybe only three feet or less, into the water. It was a really easy thing to do, but for some reason, when I landed in the water, I got assraped by what I swear must have been a wedge-shaped rock. That was probably the worst pain the whole day. My tailbone still hurts from that. To add insult to injury, the area of the river that one of the guides pointed me to (I was first to jump) was not quite right. It seemed like he was pointing me to the far right, where there was a little shore, so I swam across this current that seemed really strong, panting, until I could stand up and catch my breath. Then everyone else went to the left, and we swam that way instead (maybe the river forked, so it wasn't obvious which way we would take).

I don't know exactly when it happened, but sometime in the middle of the trip, I was climbing down some rocks amidst some minirapids, and had to step down into a little current surrounded on three sides by rocks a little bigger than a basketball. Most of the rocks in the river were slippery, of course, and this time I fell right in the area between the rocks. The rock I slipped on was what caught me, but my left hand went down first, and all my weight must have gone onto that hand. I felt my index finger separate laterally from the rest of my fingers, and it hurt quite a lot. My immediate thought was, "broken finger," so I yanked it out of the water and started feeling the bone. The bone seemed fine, but my finger was definitely sprained. It hurt kind of, but the water was cool enough to keep the pain at bay for the next couple hours. Later, I put some ice on it, and got it czeched out when I got back here. It's still bandaged, and I fell again today and pulled it again, probably setting myself back in the healing process another week or two, plus I added a brut to my list of wounds, courtesy of the bottom corner of the bathroom door, which my leg slid under.

Near the end of the trip, we reached little river cul-de-sac and transferred to a land trail, which we used to get to the site of the barbecue. There was a tiny store on the way and most of us had a soda. It was one of the best sodas I've ever had, and in a glass bottle, too.

The above are all just the river as we walked by it, I think.

Here's our barbecue, which was probably ready three hours prior to us getting to it. The guides told me it usually takes until about 2:30 to finish the trip (starting around 11 at the river), but since there were so many of us, and some of the others were kind of babies about it (I'm told--I was always in the front, so I didn't encounter anyone actually complaining or being really scared or slow), it took until about 5:30, I think. We were all extremely hungry.

This is the beach by where we were eating. Nobody swam. We'd all been in the water all day, and several people availed themselves of the shower facilities, even, instead of swimming.

The gossip I heard from the tour guides, the owner, and one or two of the Manilans was that about half of them had a great time and the other half did not enjoy it. None of them seemed to be aware of what they were getting into, although frankly, it wasn't THAT hard. Someone told me they'd watched youtube videos of it, and it all seemed very easy. The next day they texted the owner, Jochen, to say that they all woke up and couldn't move. There were also a lot of other messages, Jochen told me, like what a long drive it was from Cebu, how hard the trip was, etc. I actually had a similar problem with the soreness, but it's to be expected. It took me three days to recover from the soreness, which was lucky since three days later I went canyoning. Still waiting for those pictures to be emailed to me.

In conclusion, good trip.

Philippines

2010-08-12T23:36:00.008+09:00

I only went to the Philippines for five nights, because our school vacation was from Thursday to Wednesday, and flights were awkward on those days. Almost immediately after I booked the flight and room, my boss changed our vacation to Monday to Friday, but I couldn't get a new flight, so I had to leave two days early from the others' vacation and make up the two days before the other foreign teachers came back. I was pretty pissed about that whole situation. I do need to save money, though, so three fewer days of vacation is financially to my advantage.

It actually took me 22 hours to get from my door to the hotel, since I had to fly out of Incheon, and the airport buses were booked early. So I had to bus to Seoul overnight, take a taxi to get closer to the airport and wait for the subways were open at 5:30, then take a subway to the airport. I had two flights into Manila and Cebu, then a three hour drive to Moalboal, the little town were I stayed.

Here's me totally alone in the corridor under Gimpo Airport in Seoul, from which I could enter the express subway to Incheon Airport. I got there around 5am, and met a gate at the end, which wasn't opened until a few minutes after I got there.

Here's my room at the resort:

The bathroom was Korean-style, but better. The shower head actually had an area of its own, so I'm not showering in front of my sink and toilet and getting them all wet.

Here are some shots of the resort:

This is the restaurant I ate at the whole time. It was right next to my room.

This is the office for the adventure tour company I used (owned by the same guy who owned the resort and the restaurant). It was right next to the restaurant. Everything was so convenient.

On Saturday I went out to some recliners overlooking the ocean and hung for a bit.

Then I noticed a kitty nearby. Find the kitty:

Here it is. I don't know how long it was there before I noticed it, but it seemed to really enjoy that little hole. I tried to go over and pet it, but it ran away.

The only major problem with the resort is that while it is right on the ocean, there's no beach, and the water wasn't that great, either. It was filled with plant debris and the ground was all either grassy or mucky. I only swam in it once briefly.

These show what little sand there was on the shore, and its just rocky cliffs above, with a stone staircase going down from the resort area. The local children seemed not to mind this beach, though.

Albert's Solo

2010-08-10T14:27:00.002+09:00

The program we use at Kate LA for the lower levels includes songs here and there, and song CDs that the children can sing with. One of my students, Albert, recently took very strongly to a song about the seasons, and was asking to hear/sing it often during the last days that I taught that class (the schedule has since changed and they're with Emily now).

I'm not sure why he likes to sing this song, but I think he just likes to sing it in his gravel voice, mostly unintelligibly. I had my camera at school one time, so I had him sing it again (though he didn't want to sing ON camera, only FOR it).

Here are the two takes:

Mud Festival

2010-08-08T13:02:00.008+09:00

I've gotten the pictures from Emily now, so I've added them below. Yea.

The annual Mud Festival on the west coast in Boryeong was in July. The agency that I got my job through arranged about a million buses in various cities and booked motel rooms for us to make everything easier and to guarantee accommodation. The town gets pretty busy for the nine days of the festival. The organizers also decided to send out the buses on Friday night, because it's quite a long drive from a lot of areas in Korea, and they figured it would be nice to get there late Friday night/Saturday morning and sleep in a bit on Saturday instead of having to get up at o'dark-thirty on Saturday and spend half the day on a bus.

I think this picture represents me and Leon pretty well:

We arrived at about 5am on Saturday and I had a lot of trouble sleeping (I had to use my towel as a pillow, because they place was so booked they ran out of the extra bedding that is usually provided in a room), so I got up around 11 and went outside to get some breakfast and czech things out.

I was a bit worried when I got there. It was raining, and I saw the mudslide, mud pool, etc....

...but there was no mud. For a while I was afraid that the Mud Fest organizers were going to cancel the festival for the day because it was raining--as if mud and water didn't mix. Most of what was going on was people walking around with umbrellas, looking for food and/or something to do, and some people were entertaining themselves on the beach.

After I found some food, I went back to the motel room to rouse Leon, Miker, and Emily from bed, possibly hung over from drinking on the bus all night. (It actually took us nearly an hour longer to get to Boryeong than it should have, because practically everyone was drinking for most of the six hours on the bus, and people had to get off to piss every hour or so.)

After everyone was up and ready to go, we went out again to find them some food and see what was going on. By that time, there was actually some mud around, but for the first hourish, we weren't really into it because it was pretty chilly out. Some people were going through mud obstacle courses and pools and slides, but it was just muddy water. Didn't really seem worth it.

We walked down the beach a while, and the rain stopped at some point. The others got a bunch of beer and we parked on a sitting platform (they're popular outside shops in Korea) for a bit while they drank. At one point I went to the bathroom and accidentally sliced a piece of my finger off when I hit it on the metal panel that covers the toilet paper. Before I even realized it had happened, I'd bled all over myself and the floor (where the hell did all this blood come from? I thought at first), and that made me feel kind of sick for a while. It also meant I had to be really careful not to fill the wound with mud, and it stung like a sonofabitch whenever I went into the salt water.

Upon walking further down the beach to the other end of the festival area, we discovered a huge mud fight that was going on next to a bunch of sand sculptures. There were these columns of really good, thick mud that people were pulling off from and throwing chunks at each other with. Someone slammed me right in the eye. That sucked.

The canopy over the mud and the illogically closely parked cars were also getting covered. We were all wondering what kind of idiots would park, or designate a parking lot, so close to the action, but we later found out that those columns of mud had actually been sculptures that morning, and all us dirty, inconsiderate foreigners were desecrating the art. That kind of sucks, but it actually was the best mud in the whole place, therapeutic-like. I covered myself pretty completely two or three times, then washed it off in the ocean. Good times.

Everyone looks stronger covered in mud.

Later, after walking around for a while, getting some snacks or something, and generally hanging out, we went back to the fight, but the police were there at that time, breaking up the battle hours after it had begun, and cordoning off the area where the mud sculptures once stood. Inconceivably, they went fascist on the scene and wouldn't allow anyone into the square area with the mud, now covering the ground thickly, despite that there were only a few people around and there was pretty much no more damage to do. Most people seemed to just want to take pictures in there with the mud, or grab some to cover themselves with, although Leon and Miker and a few others would discretely lob stray handfuls of mud over the canopy onto unsuspecting passersby and observers. I saw one guy whose SUV was parked about a foot from the canopy, who was dumping buckets of water over his car to clean it off enough to drive it away. It probably took him a long time, since he only had once bucket and I guess he had to walk pretty far to refill it with fresh water. It was probably a pretty pricey car wash he had to get later. Poor guy.

As evening hit, a concert began, and there were some hoses spraying water at the dancing crowd for a few minutes. We did a bit more swimming and sitting, then the others wanted to drink more beer or something, and I was getting pretty exhausted, not having slept as soundly as they had. So I went back to the room to shower and rest for a bit, effectively ending my participation in the festival. Later we had Korean food and hung out drinking on the beach with some other teachers from Ulsan until it was bedtime. We left at noon the next day for the long trip back. It infuriated me that we woke up to beautiful sunny and hot weather on Sunday, and it was going to be a great day for the festival, which we didn't have time to partake in prior to leaving. I've been trying to get to the beach as often as I can to make up for all of June and half of July being rainy, although this weekend I was too busy with various things to get there. Next weekend for sure.

On Hold

2010-07-27T01:06:00.003+09:00

I'm on my second credit card call to notify my card companies that I'll be traveling a helluva lot soon, and man, it's inconceivable. How many times do I have to repeat a 16-digit number? Slash, how long can Citi keep me on the phone, processing each trip notification separately? I've talked to three people on this call alone. The first call was better: one guy, under ten minutes, no holding. Poor call quality, though.

Here's my schedule:

July 29-August 4: the Philippines
August 4-August 25: South Korea (every time I call, they all act surprised that I'm here, yet every time I call, I say I'm living here and they say they'll make a note of it)
August 25-29: Taiwan
August 30-31: South Korea (for major packing and gear-getting-together)
August 31 (traveling back in time over time zones): Hawaii
September 1: Maine (well, and the rest of New England, too, but I didn't bother to mention it)
September 20 (for one year): England

Jezum.

On this last call, this guy kept telling me he could set up notifications for up to 60 days in the system, yet that the system wouldn't let him set up notifications into September, and he wouldn't acknowledge the fact that these two bits of info were incongruous, despite the two or three times I pointed that out (I didn't use "incongruous," though. Yeah, right.).

After finishing all my calls, I noted a change from previous notifications. Customer service agents used to be very ooh la la about international travel and make all sorts of conversation about all the places I've gone. Now they're all pretty blase about it. Maybe too many people complained about getting talked up in the name of customer relations. I'm cool with it.

My Mind is Like a Laser

2010-07-26T13:28:00.002+09:00

Sorry, it's been a while, and it'll be a while more. Not tons of stuff has been going on here that's worth writing about. I've mostly been mired in visa and financial aid applications for school in England in September, as well as preparations for my upcoming trips and going home. I do have the Mud Festival and some beach stuff to blog about when I get some time and some pictures emailed to me. Also, I'm going to the Philippines on Thursday for five days, so that should be a lot of material.

I've been having stress dreams about not having time to get a haircut before I get some passport photos done, not having any money in my wallet, not being able to catch a train/bus/plane on time, losing packages in the mail, etc. What a nightmare--literally.

Where is the Pope?

2010-06-29T20:31:00.003+09:00

This commercial came on a few weeks ago in Korea, and it's driving me insane.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Oy0rCwJEH-Y&feature=PlayList&p=37DFADC300D24205&playnext_from=PL&playnext=1&index=32

It's obviously supposed to be "Where is the pulp?" but because of the slight Korean accent, the inconveniently layered sound effect, and the fact that the "l" gets kind of lost against the "p" anyway, it sounds like "Where is the pope?" I want to kill.

"With pulpy" also sounds like an English-as-a-foreign-language naming mechanism, but maybe not. The humor factor takes away from the incorrect use of adjective, I guess.

FIFA World Cup USA vs. England

2010-06-26T16:50:00.000+09:00

The game between the US and England was at 3:30am in Korea, so everyone had to do a lot of drinking and dart playing and such beforehand. The bar was as packed as I've seen it since then, there being so many Americans and Brits in Ulsan. The rivalry was strong, but there were no fights.

This is kind of a weird picture, but I took it to show how little space I had while watching the game. I was sitting on a windowsill with some other people, and the chairs in front of us kept getting inched closer and closer to let other drunken people stumble into the space and crouch down (or not, and get yelled at) to talk to the people in that area.

Here are a bunch of Americans. A couple of us found it amusing that the guy in red in the middle is holding crib notes for the USA chants they must have just made up for the game.

This guy on the left was hilarious. He's a friend of Emily's and came to meet Michael, on the right, but was so drunk, he held out his hand and fell flat forward into Michael, and almost flew out the window. Michael got kind of defensive and thought he was under unintentional attack, but then they worked it out and had a long inebriated conversation.

The game ended in a tie, which was disappointing to all. I think all the England supporters were surprised that we managed a point, but seemed to blame it on a moment of poor goalkeeping (considering the circumstance of our score) than on actual skill by the Americans. On the other hand, the Americans all seemed proud of keeping up and assumed all along we wouldn't lose outright, at the least.

Taehwa River Festival and World Cup South Korea

2010-06-21T22:30:00.002+09:00

This weekend was the Taehwa River Festival in Ulsan. Leon described it as the "shittest festival ever" and I have to agree. Admittedly, I didn't get there until 4:00 on Saturday, but it hardly stands to reason that there should be so little left to the event just because it's late afternoon. There were dozens of tents set up around the Taehwa Bridge area, on both sides, and they were mostly empty, except for people sitting in them, avoiding the occasional sprinkles or taking a break from whatever not-activity they were doing before.

After czeching out a tent with some children's prize-winning paintings and some taxidermied animals, I saw this guy making pottery for children for free.

Then there was this race, maybe a marathon, going on the whole afternoon, which made passage from different areas of the fair a little difficult, because you had to wait for runners to pass before you could cross the path. I saw some guy get heckled severely for absentmindedly wandering onto the track and getting in the way of some runners.

The most engaging thing around was this stage, on which belly dancers were performing.

And then this group came on, and they were pretty entertaining. They did the Macarena, among other dances, which made me wonder if they were referencing something from way back when, or if it just made it here. I'd like to think the former.

After the dancers I needed some food, but the food tent was so disappointing at the festival that I just walked down the street and got a sandwich at a convenience store. That's really sad. Had I had a group with me, I could have gotten barbecue stuff, but they don't serve that in single-servings.

As I got back, Leon had just arrived, so we waited for our friend Thulas to join us for the South Korea vs. Greece World Cup Game. It wasn't for like another three or four hours, but there was nothing else to do, so we secured our seats in front of the stage, near the back, as most of the seats were taken already.

Here are a couple pregame shows they put on the stage. Both very popular songs. I think it's kind of funny that the second song, which is about Korea, is sung by a white guy in the video. That seems very out of place for this culture.

Thulas went and bought some beer for the waiting and watching periods, and the area became totally packed come nightfall. South Koreans loves them some soccer, so it was quite exciting to watch with them in one of the many public viewing events in the city, especially since they won the game.

South Korea's team is the Red Devils, hence all the red and the devil horns. Korea's normal slogan is "Korea Sparkling" but lately all you can see is "Korea Fighting" (pronounced "hiting" or "hwiting"). They are very enthusiastic about this whole thing, despite their awareness that they won't win the cup. One of my classes wanted a party the other day, because another teacher was having her birthday party all day, I guess. I said that's because of her birthday, blah, blah. So then they tried to get me to agree to have a party if Korea won 16th place in the Cup. I said we could if they won, and the got wicked pissed at me. They did amend to 8th, and I said I'd think about it.

Here is some celebrating after the game, which they won 2-0:

The USA vs. England match took place five hours after the South Korea match ended, and I went to a pub with my friends to see that, but that's become a whole other entry in itself.

Postscript

2010-06-14T21:55:00.001+09:00

I forgot to mention that one of my classes, the one that used to pretend I was pregnant, has been pretending I'm a different teacher since I changed my hair. They maintain that Alia-teacher is on vacation and my name is Shelacongshasalasa. Or is it Shelacongsashalasa? It's kind of hard to keep straight; even the kids sometimes say it wrong.

I'm currently uploading all my pictures and videos from the Taehwa River Festival and the World Cup events I went to, but I have to go to bed early tonight. I'll have some stuff up later this week.

Finally, a Decent Haircut

2010-06-03T20:41:00.002+09:00

You saw the result of my last haircut, which was horrendous. This time I decided to take it up a notch and go to the posh hair salon by the movie theatre, where you get a free drink and can use the internet and stuff there. It costs 25k won, as opposed to the standard 10k, but even the higher price is about the lowest price I'd pay back home, so it was worth it.

I dyed my hair black the day before and brought in my pictures of Ashley Greene again as a guide. The guy cutting my hair got the length right this time, but again, the outward flipping of the hair threw the chick styling it for a loop. She also went at it with a barrel brush, but unlike the first girl, did not smarten up and use a flatiron. The result was even more horrendous than previously. I looked like the Mad Hatter without a hat. I wish I'd gotten a picture, but I had a ticket to see a movie shortly after the cut, and I spent the next three hours before I got home smoothing it down so I wouldn't be mortified to be in public. I was glad to be in the dark for a while.

Here's what it looks like when I style it myself. It takes about ten minutes, while the stylist took like 30-40 minutes doing it the hard way.

They dye was blue-black, but I've now realized that my hair is so resistant to dye now that even the black starts to fade after a short time, so it's more like brown-black now.

Anyway, I think I gave like 80 people half a heart attack when I went to work on Monday. Koreans don't seem to change their styles all that much. Pretty much the only thing they do to their haircolor is get it bleached to a reddish brown, and I don't think they often do drastic length changes. Also, Koreans overreact a lot, I think. So I heard pretty much everyone in the school gasp hugely, put a hand to a chest or face, and make some shocked remark about how my hair is black and short. The first student who walked into my class didn't even realize it was me in there. She walked in, saw black hair, then turned around and walked out. I had to get her and show her my face.

As always with kids, I got mixed reviews. I think all the adults who vocalized their judgment approved, but some of the kids shouted "Terrible!" and other similar things at me. One teacher and one student said I looked like a witch, which was true. I dressed goth that day. In conclusion, I am now pleased with my head. The End.

Children's Day/Teachers' Day

2010-05-27T21:52:00.006+09:00

There are a number of days celebrating groups of people in May, including Children's Day on May 5th and Teachers' Day on the 15th. Children's Day is a national holiday, so we get the day off. Not so with Teachers' Day. We had a party on the 4th for the kids. Last year I got them all little gifts to butter them up for Teachers' Day, and I got quite a few gifts then, and the year before, when I just had generous students (or rather, students with generous mothers).

This year I totally forgot about my own holiday, but luckily I was feeling nice and got them all little gifts anyway. I bought a huge supply of Simpsons mechanical pencils and pens, along with stickers and little notebooks and such. Not one kid, not a single kid, even the good ones, said thank you. Unbelievable. I even shouted "You're welcome" to one class as they left, but those little bastards just filed out as usual, ignoring me. I think it might be because I let them choose their gifts this year. Last year I gave each kid a different gift with a name tag on it (which of course made them all dislike their gifts and want to trade in for another one). I figured if I got more than I needed this year and let them choose, most kids would end up with something they liked. But instead of being grateful for the choice, they just concentrated on fighting over who chose first and who got what someone else wanted, as kids are wont to do. The whole experience was not worth my forty bucks.

Wendy, Louie, Flora

Normally I wouldn't include a picture in which two of the three kids were looking away, but Louie looks so comically haggard.

Becky, Sarah (asker of infinite questions), Sherry, Julie, Helen, Daniel

and John. John's really funny, but he can't speak English for shit, even compared to the low level English the others speak.

Major, Alex, Carlo, Julie, Amy

Olivia, Edwin

Chris (in the back, looks just like Asian Toby Maguire), Alex, Corey (back), Steven

Jane, Kelly

James, I think that's Leo back there, Chris, Alex

My gifts did not improve my gift-gettery for Teachers' Day. It was a pretty abysmal catch, actually. Even some of my students who have given me gifts at every occasion didn't get me anything. But I did get a few nice things.

One of the Alexes got me a skin care kit, Julie got me some chocolates, Andrew's mom brought in ice cream sandwiches for the class and gave me a carnation candle, Daniel's mom made me a carnation pen (carnations are the traditional gift for this holiday), and Danny's mom (always reliable for a good gift) sent over a box of three roll cakes. I'm actually cursing the roll cakes, though. I'm trying to lower my sugar intake, so cake is about the last thing I need. I brought one of them in to work to share with everyone, and I might bring another. I'm slowly working through the first one on my own.

Taiwan

2010-05-23T19:42:00.005+09:00

Well, I didn't make it to Taiwan, as I was supposed to do this long weekend. I was so busy planning for other things, like my student aid for school, student visa, and my next vacation, that finding transportation to the airport kind of got put on the back burner.

My initial plan was to get a bus right to the airport, but apparently only one bus goes from Ulsan in the morning, and it was already full, probably had been for a few days. My second option was to take a bus to the Seoul Express Bus Terminal, then take the subway, or if I really needed to hurry, a taxi to the airport. But with Buddha's birthday traffic, the trip took six hours, and I didn't get to Seoul until an hour before my flight. I had estimated the subway trip to be about 90 minutes, and a taxi ride probably close to an hour with traffic. So I had to go to a PC room to contact the hotel on Skype. I got charged for a full night for canceling the day of. I won't know what's going to happen with my flight payment until tomorrow when the travel agency opens. I'm hoping I can just reschedule the flight and go for a slightly longer trip in August, after my contract ends.

Anyway, a friend of mine was hanging out in Seoul, so I saw him for a while, and we had some Japanese pub food and chicken on a stick. Later I found a cheapish motel for the night, and went shopping the next day before heading home. I went to Insadong and saw a bunch of art exhibits and looked at/bought traditional Korean stuff. Then I hopped on the subway to get to the bus station and head home. A rain that has been forecast to last at least ten days started just as I got on the bus. Today I saw How to Train Your Dragon in 3D. So it was a pretty decent weekend, except for incurring fees.

Here are pictures from one of the exhibits. I felt weird taking pictures of people's paintings, but other people were taking pictures of these shoes, so I figured I'd share. Here's the website:

http://www.ibluedot.co.kr/1/index.asp

On my way out, a parade was beginning, as part of the Traditional Ceremonies Reenactment deal that was going on. There were some tea ceremony setups, too, but I didn't see those.

Le Weekend

2010-05-18T22:21:00.002+09:00

This weekend I went to Home Plus for some canned food and stopped at the park on the way back. I was watching some families by one of the ponds and realized I was sitting like twenty feet from a friend of mine. So I went over and we continued watching the pond together. This family was trying to get a baseball out of the water, which Sam told me had been purposely thrown in by the like ten-year-old daughter (what a bitch, we both said). The baseball was no more than three or four feet away from the shore, but the dad was trying to get it in the most retarded ways ever. He was using this kids' bat to try and reach it, but it was too far out, so he started trying to move the stagnant water in a way that created some minor current to push the ball toward him, but that wasn't very effective. The whole time I'm looking at one of his sons, who's wearing sandals with no socks--really, just one sandal--and I'm thinking, why the hell doesn't he just walk in and get it? I knew why, though. The water had some yellow dust in it that we get from China every spring, and Koreans are obsessive about anything being dirty, or getting dirty. Even though there is a footwashing station nearby (really? In a park?), they still wouldn't sully themselves for a ball.

The father finally got sort of savvy and changed his current method to bring the ball in from the side, and it eventually worked, except that he just kept moving the water, even when the ball got into reach with the bat itself. When they finally got the ball I saw him still doing the same batting of the water, and I found out why that kid only had one sandal on. I bet his sister had thrown that in the water, too.

We watched similar things happen three or four other times, too, with other baseballs and soccer balls. One guy was really smart and used the life preserver to get his ball when he lost it nearer the middle of the pond, and another one just waited on the little bridge for the water to push his soccer ball to within reach of him. That took several minutes. The life preserver method would have been faster, but he didn't think of it.

And then of course there were the perfunctory family photo ops. On any given day you can count hundreds of people at the park with huge professional cameras and tripods, taking all sorts of ridiculous photos. Today there was a really cute family with the mother wearing a dress that looked like it was made with a quilt, and a toddling daughter with a matching dress, and they both had these bright green shoes on. The walked back and forth across the bridge as the father took pictures. I joked that any father would take up photography just to be able to stay 50 feet away from his family for the whole day.

In Class

2010-05-13T21:48:00.003+09:00

This week one of my classes came back from six weeks off, during which time they were studying for a middle school midterm exams, which is a major deal. Even the elementary school midterm requires the kids to study for a few hours a day for several weeks. The middle school kids have to take time off from learning just to study full time for this thing.

I asked the kids how they did (only two of them at this point; not sure where the other two are), and the girl said she didn't want to tell me her score. I asked if she did badly, and she said well, her rank in the school was pretty good--third out of like 2-300 students--but she was disappointed with her score. I figured it was one of those tests where everyone does badly, and on the bell curve, the highest scores are still abysmal. So I said, was it below 70, and she laughed and figured that it would be okay to tell me. She got a 95. PerCENT? I asked incredulously. Yeah, she said. I told her to loosen up.

Yesterday a kid came into class and said, don't ask me for my homework. I asked why, and he said his mom got to it (this is Gyu-ho, a kid whose home life seems, from what he tells me, somewhat tragic, possibly bordering on what would qualify him to be removed from home in the States). I asked what happened and he said he got a test back with a bad grade and his mom ripped up a couple of his notebooks and his math books and told him, there, study like that. I asked why the hell she did that, and he elaborated that she screamed at him that she spends a bunch of money for him to get A's, so he can get into a good high school, and he doesn't do it. I asked him what his grade was and he said a B. I told him that his mom is psycho and to tell her I said to take a chill pill.

Finally, today one of my cute little first graders said, I eat ice cream, but I'm still hot! Then I laughed, and he milked it for a while. He said the same thing again, except with ten ice creams, then, When I'm hot at home, I put off my shirt. It's okay to do it at home, because no one sees. The tiny kids in this class speak better than the majority of the rest of my classes. It's kind of silly and sad.

Gajisan and Papermaking

2010-05-09T13:22:00.004+09:00

Mingyu had told us that if we wanted to climb Mt. Gaji and still have time to get back for our 1:30 paper workshop, we'd have to leave around 8am. So we foreigners diligently set our alarms for 7am, to have time to get up, wash, put our bedding away, etc. before departing. Breakfast was a concern. He had said something about having snacks tomorrow for breakfast and I was worried I was going to have to climb a mountain for several hours with only chips and cookies in my stomach.

As usual, the plan went to hell. The Koreans didn't even start waking up until around 8, and that was just one or two of the kids, and maybe the grandparents. The rest weren't really up until well after we should have left, and then they told us that breakfast at the lodge didn't open until 10. Everyone kind of just dinked around until after 9, eating what snacks we had and drinking the omnipresent instant coffee with cream and sugar. Those of us who were up early were kind of pissed that we were wasting all that time, since it wasn't a good night's sleep. I, not surprisingly, didn't get any sleep beyond maybe dozing here and there for a little while.

Finally we left and drove to some other restaurant and had mushroom and beef soup with rice for breakfast. It was around 10:30 when we left the restaurant, so we had to choose not the climb an actual trail on the mountain (which is over a km high), but a steep concrete road that leads up to a temple. I think the whole trip up and down only took a couple hours. I was the only one who thought to bring a water bottle, but the temple had a spring at the top, so I refilled and everyone else used the shared ladle.

Almost immediately upon starting to use my camera, the battery ran out, because I didn't have time to fully charge it the morning we left. Thus all these pictures are the ones I've gotten so far from Emily and Moriah. Maybe I'll get more later.

Next was the workshop, so after a short break and checking out at the lodge, we drove back to the paper museum and had to wait outside for a while.

Jiho, Heather's son, and Jiseok, her nephew:

The monk gathered us all around--about 20 in total, I'd say, and explained the papermaking process. Heather translated, though much of it was clear from what she was showing us anyway.

These are the branches they strip to get fibers:

The fibers get torn off and then soaked in water for weeks. They start off big, and those fibers get used as a skeleton for the paper, as below:

Next some of the fibers go into different basins to soak, and are broken down into smaller fibers. In the water, they look like oatmeal, but you can mash them together and it feels more like cotton. We played with it a bit and made big cottonlike snowballs that were very dense.

One of the basins had a brown mixture, and the other white. I'm not sure if she used dye and/or bleach to get them that way, or if whatever else she did during the process that was lost in translation caused the color changes.

To make the paper, you put down a screen first, then lay out a bunch of the big fibers, unclumped, like in the picture above. Then you get buckets of the smaller stuff and start dumping it all around to fill it in. Next, you take a little bamboo blind, like below, and scoop a bunch of the little fibers up in it evenly. You slap it down on the base and carefully peel the bamboo off, and there is a square of wet paper left (if you do it right, and the paper doesn't come off with the bamboo).

We all did that a couple times, and eventually the huge sheet of would-be paper got so thick that she then instructed us all to put our handprints into it, for design.

It doesn't look like much, and it really isn't much. This wasn't an exercise in making art, like she does; just an exercise in the process. The sheet we made would take several days in the sun to dry.

Because the monk was so excited to have foreigners around, she let us all do two extra activities. One was to make smaller sheets of paper on window screens, which is what the picture way up above with the thick fibers is showing. The other was to use the bamboo squares to make our own sheets to take home. The others were kind of disgruntled about the favoritism, especially since those who were not in our group paid twice as much and got nothing. They didn't know that, probably, but Heather's daughter Kate was remarking on the unfairness.

Anyway, I didn't have time or the colors to get anything good. I just made a white sheet with a splash of brown at first. Then I noticed the brown shape looked like a mountain, so I took the thick fibers and used them to make a swirly sun, some birds, and a little flag at the peak. Then as the monk was showing us how we could fold the bamboo on the way home, she messed up my careful design and I had to fix it. Annoying other people.

It took a day or two to dry, and came out not very interestingly. The brown dried quite light, and the designs got lost in the white, even though I dumped some brown on them, so the whole result was disappointing. I remember making paper similarly in middle school art class and being much more satisfied with the result. This was pretty fun, though, and a good way to spend a nice afternoon.

As an aside, Miker made a tic-tac-toe design on his paper, and actually played the game with Kate, putting X's and O's on there with the thick fibers. The game ended in stalemate. Miker joked he would use the other side to write a to-do list or something.

Gajisan Trip

2010-05-05T11:14:00.008+09:00

This weekend Heather took the teachers on a trip the nearby Mount Gaji, allegedly to include a work meeting, but mostly as kind of a pick-me-up and bonding weekend, blah blah. Originally all the teachers were supposed to go, but at the last minute we found out that only the foreign teachers would be going. Heather said all the other teachers had "appointments," as they call them here, and she brought her children, parents, and niece and nephew instead. I was pleased; I much prefer Heather's family to any of the Korean teachers.

We were supposed to meet at 10am, but plans changed as always, and we met for pizza at 1:30. I was okay with that. I hate getting up early.

We drove west to the outskirts of Ulsan and stopped first at a paper museum. This chick monk runs it and handmakes natural paper there. Apparently she's pretty renowned and has traveled around the world with her designs. I think her name is Young Dam.

I took a few shots inside, but strangely it wasn't until Miker started taking pictures that the guide told us no pictures.

We were very lucky to go there that day, as the next day would be a once-a-year papermaking workshop that we could attend. I think because there were so many of us and because four of us were foreigners, we got a deal and paid 10,000 won instead of 20. Some of us made an additional donation toward her work, though.

Next we went to our accommodations. I'm not sure what to call it. It's not really a hotel, just a few buildings with bedless rooms, with bathroom, kitchenette, tv, fridge, and an armoire full of bedding for the floor. The rooms were quite nice, though. I was impressed.

A balcony ran around the whole building. The back overlooked a little stream.

This epitomizes Emily and me.

According to our printed schedule, the first thing we were supposed to do was visit nearby Woonmoon Temple, then have a meeting about the school and teaching, then have a barbecue, but the schedule pretty much went out the window. I decided since this sort-of-spring-but-mostly-still-winter decided precisely on May 1 to become summer that I would go wade in the stream.

Mingyu's son Jiseok was being very funny and cute, as always. He wanted to get in the water, but was aware of the dangers, so he had this safety line that he was holding onto, which was just a long piece of velcro, I think, already attached to the ground among the rocks. He kept adding things to it, like sticks and rods, to make it longer. He also collected a plethora of trash along the bank to play with. Gross.

After we played in the water for a little while, we were called up for food, which Heather's parents had been preparing in the meantime. According to Korean outdoor barbecue tradition, it was small pieces of pork on the grill, with an assortment of leaves, cucumber, and peppers, plus the perfunctory red pepper sauce that I avoid. There were also butter rolls, which was nice. Not to mention a whole huge box full of salty snacks and snack cakes. Oh, and since Heather's father was there, we all had to drink soju. He loves drinking with the teachers.

Somehow the conversation was steered towards people fitting large amounts of food in their mouths, and I ended up showing Miker how I could fit two of the Moon Pie-like cakes in my mouth.

Next I played hide and seek with Jiseok, and I outwitted him every time. He was amazed. One time I had hidden for a while, then while he was away, went back to where everyone was drinking and talking, and sat at the picnic table. He came by with his sister and cousin, and didn't even see me, just kept looking for like five more minutes. Bwah ha ha. We also played chase and I swung him around and stuff. I needed the exercise after pizza and barbecue and snacks.

Drinking continued late into the night, until we were all abed--the four foreigners in one room, and the nine members of Heather's family in another room the same size. I don't know how they managed it, but I do know that families often all pile up in one bed here, so they probably had two or three similar piles on the floor.

The next day we were slated to go hiking in the morning, then on to the papermaking before going home.

Today in Class

2010-04-28T20:11:00.003+09:00

I might try to remember or record some funny snippets from school now that I have so little to write about. This is a class that is just starting a second grade book, but most of them really should be at least one book lower.

Sarah: Teacher, you is so fun.

Alia: Why?

Sarah: BeCAUSE, you hair is yellow. AND you THIS (rubs her cheeks) is WHITE.

Alia: Skin.

Sarah: Yes, skin. SO, you is fun.

Alia: Thank you.

Sarah: And you eyes is SOOOO big, so you is fun. But SOMEtimes, you--geu moaya?--skin is RED, when you laugh.

Daniel: You skin here is red (gets up and indicates my T-zone).

Alia: I know.

Sarah: TEACHER, I have a question.

Alia: I know.

Sarah: Why always you say is "I know"?

Alia: Because I know.

Sarah: OH. Teacher, I UNDERstand.

I can pretty often get away with saying no more than five words at a time in this class, because Sarah just keeps asking the same questions over and over, or gives me strings of ridiculous statements. Here's another classic comment she made recently, joined by her question sidekick:

Sarah: Teacher, why... you... today... fashion... GREAT?

Alia: Why not?

Helen: Teacher, Why not is what?

Alia: Don't say "Why not is what", say "What is why not"? (I say this to her 2-5 times a day.)

Helen: Oh, yes. Why not--geeuuuu--what is why not?

Alia: It's the opposite of why.

Helen: Teacher, opposite is what?

Alia: What is opposite.

Helen: Yes, what is opposite?

Alia: P'andae (I'm preeettty sure this is the Korean word for opposite. It seems to appease them.)

Sarah: HELEN, every day you say that! (It's true.)

Then everyone laughs. While all this has been going on every day, John is swinging some dangerous weapon around, Daniel has started a fight, Sherry is in giggle hysterics, Becky is drawing all over her notebook, and Joe has shot himself in the corner of the room.

Wonderful World of Animation

2010-04-18T20:36:00.003+09:00

I went to Seoul last weekend and saw an animation exhibition at the Seoul Arts Center. It was decent. I saw some previews in 3D for How to Train Your Dragon and the new Shrek Movie, and a bunch of artwork from various animated features and shows.

Apparently it's recently been Thomas the Tank Engine's 65th birthday, so the whole thing was pretty Thomas-centric. I would have preferred something a bit more exciting to be the theme of the exhibit. Oh, well.

Here is the wall where people put a bunch of birthday cards:

Most of them were in Korean, of course, but this one in English is hilarious:

Here's a suite model that was in the entry:

I took this video at first just for shits and giggles, but then I saw this little boy being mildly amusing, so I went to him. Then I saw his dad possibly suspecting me of videotaping his kid, so I stopped.

There was an animation workshop in which you got to choose two animation media. I could have spent all day there doing something good, but it was a pretty simple setup and I couldn't operate the controls, so I didn't really come up with anything major. I didn't want to make other people wait too long. They emailed me the files later that day.

Status

2010-04-12T00:51:00.001+09:00

It's kind of quiet on the eastern front, folks.

In non-Korean news, I finally got my fourth and final offer letter for graduate studies, the one I decided to accept. So I'll be studying Linguistics for a year at the University of Brighton next year. It's near London.

Shanghai City Tour Part 3

2010-04-03T17:26:00.006+09:00

Next we went to the People's Square, where there was a lot of celebration for the year of the tiger going on:

I didn't get a good shot, because there were so many people and umbrellas crashing into each other, but this is a tiger made entirely out of cans of Pepsi products:

I'm not sure how this is supposed to be a tiger. Maybe it's not a tiger.

Connected to the square are the Yuyan gardens:

This is just a lot of people:

After this we went to the French Concession shopping district, but it was deserted and we just walked through quickly, so no photos. Earlier in the day, on the way to lunch, we were supposed to visit some famous Jade Buddha, but the line was so inconceivably long that we struck it from the itinerary. I actually wanted to take a picture of the miles of people standing in line at each corner of the block, but the guide was walking really fast, there were umbrellas everywhere, and it was all cold and wet, so not the best time to bust out the camera.

I think I got home around 3 or 4, and I was so tired from not sleeping the night before and being out all day in the rain that I took a nap when I got back. I then tried to go out and find a restaurant for supper in the evening, but had no luck. The next day I found out that if I had gone to the block parallel to my street, I would have found plenty of stuff, but from the look of the area surrounding it, there was nothing there. I had walked in one direction for a while, found nothing, and saw nothing on either side of me while walking, so I figured I just wasn't close to much. I ended up eating a very nice duck soup in the hotel restaurant, though, so it was fine. The rest of the night I spent watching movies and resting.

The next day I thought I wasn't going to be able to leave China that day, because I had no yuan left, and the hotel wouldn't change Korean money. I was told the bank adjacent to the hotel would change it for me, but when I went, I found that to be wrong. Then I went back to the hotel, and asked about another bank, but had been getting different stories from a number of people as to whether that bank, or any other banks, would even be open, because of the holiday over the weekend. I asked the concierge to help me, and after hearing my situation, he actually told me he had no ideas. I was shocked and dismayed, since I had at least a couple myself. He ended up having someone call the nearby Bank of China, which was open, but I was told I would have to make an appointment and might not get my money for two days or something, but that if I went to the bank and begged or something, maybe they could help. This was stupid advice. I went to the bank, prepared to have to explain myself fully and plead for help, but they just treated me like anyone else, gave me the form, and exchanged my money, no problem. Jeez.

All this took so long that I thought I was going to be late to the airport, but it all worked out in the end, and I went home and rested for the remainder of the day after I got back to Ulsan.

Shanghai City Tour Part 2

2010-03-28T13:41:00.004+09:00

After the museum, we went to a pearl gallery, where I got to learn about the industry in Shanghai. I got a little lecture over this tank of oysters about the various pearl colors and how there isn't just one pearl in the oysters, but usually quite a number. The store guide had me guess how many were in one, and I guessed wrong, of course. I think there were like ten pearls in it, but none of them were good. She gave me two small ones to keep as a souvenir. I don't really know what to do with them now.

Next I had to guess which string of pearls out of three was fake, and I guessed right this time, but probably only out of luck. She showed me how to identify real pearls: if you rub them together, they will grind each other down a bit and produce dust, whereas plastic won't change. I did not get a free string of pearls for guessing right this time.

I looked around and ended up buying a couple nice looking pearl pendant necklaces for myself and my mother for not a lot of money. The saleslady was trying to get me to buy four and get one free, and in retrospect, I probably should have gone for it, given they were only $15 apiece, but I had already spent so much money getting to Shanghai that I felt buying a lot of souvenirs would be a bad idea.

After the pearls we went to a silk factory and gallery, where I saw the process of silk production.

Here are the little silkworm cocoons that they use for silk strands:

Ropes of silk strands:

More cocoons:

Silk work life cycle? Hard to see.

Machine:

You probably can't see the tiny strands, but the machine is unwinding them from the cocoons:

I got practical demonstrations on how the silk is stretched into thin layers for reasons I don't remember.

And another demonstration on a larger scale, for use in quilts and comforters. The silk comforters are only silk on the inside, apparently, with cotton covers. The silk is good for temperature control--warm in winter, cool in summer.

Finally, I got to look around the gallery. I considered getting silk sheets, since they were as low as $65, but I have so much stuff to bring home from Korea that I'm trying to reduce the amount of big things I buy. Plus I won't have my own bed for years to come, and I don't want to be traveling with a set of sheets all over the world.

Here are a couple bedding examples (much pricier than sheets):

The rest of the gallery was a lot of scarves, handkerchiefs, ties, and clothing. I was trying on some traditional dresses for a while, but had some trouble. The Large size was a bit too small, then the XL size fit on me, but I wouldn't be able to sit down in it. The saleslady found me a dress in XXL (here, my tour guide reminded me kindly that these are Chinese sizes, so it's really not that big), but there seemed to be a missing link between XL and XXL. The last dress was like a muumuu on me, and these are supposed to be form-fitting, so it was pretty unacceptable. I considered buying it anyway and taking it to the tailor, but only for about a half second. Considering it's silk and the amount of work that would have to be done on it to make it fit me, the tailor would probably cost more than the dress.

I ended up with a nice silk bag, which soon after I got it back to Korea, fell apart on the inside nylon lining and I've had to resew it twice. It was only $15, though, a good deal.

Shanghai City Tour Part 1

2010-03-27T13:19:00.007+09:00

I had booked a city tour online for February 14th, basically the only activity I did in Shanghai due to sickness, weather, and time constraints. Because it was the first day of the lunar new year, a major holiday, I was the only one on the tour. I felt kind of bad that they had to work on a holiday just for one person. It also made the day extremely difficult for me, since I had to converse with the tour guide. I'd rather have just listened to her drone on to a group, and not have had to open my mouth all day.

Our first stop was the Shanghai Museum, where we had to stand outside in the rain and wait in line for at least 30 minutes. It was grueling. Once inside, I was given an hour to wander around and see the exhibits.

First I looked at some furniture:

This is supposed to be a detail of the above, but the detail is kind of hard to see. Pretty much everything in this hall was intricately carved.

Same problem here:

I totally want this set:

I enjoyed the architecture of the museum. These are the stairs:

Next I saw some paintings. Many of them would look like something else, then I would realize I was looking at it wrong, and I'd see what it was supposed to be.

Like, I think I must have been seeing some grumpy, disfigured old man in this one, but then I saw the bird and realized I was looking at a rock:

Next was pottery:

Floor design in the lobby:

Ceiling:

The End.

Shanghai First Night

2010-03-14T21:13:00.005+09:00

For my Lunar New Year Holiday I went to Shanghai. I'm not going to say much about it, because it was a pretty lousy weekend, but I'll give you some pictures and videos over the next couple entries. I had been sick with some sort of flu since the Wednesday before, and even had to take my first sick day at Kate LA the day before I left, just so I could rest up enough to possibly be well enough to enjoy my weekend. Although I did get well enough to not alarm anyone at the airports (which I was EXTREMELY nervous about), I did not have a nice time in Shanghai, particularly since the first thing that happened to me was I got ripped off royally on the taxi fare home, since it was a major holiday, I assume.

I stayed at the Everbright Hotel, which has an exhibition hall and is popular with business travelers. It also has a pool, which I paid for a more expensive hotel for, then I found out charged a fee for use of the pool and athletic facilities, and I couldn't even use the stupid pool anyway, because I was too sick. What a waste. Otherwise, the hotel would have been totally nice, except it didn't have A SINGLE CLOCK ANYWHERE IN THE WHOLE PLACE. That really bothered me, as I had to use my cell phone to czech the time (my watch band broke recently), and my cell phone put me in the wrong stupid time zone. I also didn't have my charger, so I was afraid it'd run out of battery the whole time.

Because of the whole time issue, I was waiting an hour early in the lobby for my tour van to pick me up, and had tried to call them before the scheduled time to see why they were late. Luckily, n one picked up when I called.

Night exterior:

My room:

It was freezing in that damn room all night, as nice as it was. I wish they'd turned the heat on before I'd arrived.

It being the eve of one of the biggest holidays of the year, there were major celebrations going all night long. The fireworks started off like this:

But as midnight approached, began to look like this:

They continued strong until about 2am, and then kept going lightly until about 4am, then only sporadically throughout the morning and all the next day. I would know, as the medication I was taking for my sickness kept me up all night (I hadn't slept in days).

I stayed in the room all the first night to rest, so I would be strong enough to endure, or even enjoy, the city tour I had scheduled the next day.

Classroom Stuff

2010-03-14T00:00:00.003+09:00

On Friday two vaguely interesting things happened.

The first was that a student went into an almost catatonic sleep in my class. I got a new class earlier this month with four very young students in it. At least one of them is in kindergarten, which is the one who fell asleep. Lots of students fall asleep in class here and there. Actually, I'm surprised I don't get one or more in every class daily, considering how overworked they constantly are. Somehow they manage to stay awake most of the time.

I saw that Wendy was not really that energetic in class, and had her head down on the desk for most of the first half of class, so I figured she was tired. Then I noticed she had totally fallen asleep, so I went over to wake her up. She didn't wake up right away, so I let it go. Most of what we do in that class is talk, anyway, so she wasn't missing much. She's so young that I figured if her body needed to sleep, she should just do it.

Then class ended and I wrote down her homework for her and let the other kids get ready to go while I tried to wake her up. I've never had so much trouble waking a person up in my life. I was calling her name, rubbing her back, shaking her, trying to tickle her, patting her on the cheek. One of the other kids even ran over and screamed her name at the top of his lungs, but there was nothing in all that except one of those false wake ups that kids do, then go immediately back into their kids comas. In retrospect, I should have asked them what her Korean name is, as she might have responded better to that. I ended up letting the other kids go and then the Korean teacher that they had next came in (I guess they told her) and woke her up in Korean. She asked Wendy if she was sick, but I didn't find out for sure, and I saw her still in the school a little while later, so maybe not. Honestly, though, it's not much proof she wasn't sick--kids and adults alike in Korea have to practically on their deathbeds before they can miss school or work. Anyway, crazy wake up adventure.

The second was something I heard on the recorded dictations they play in the Korean teachers' classes. Next door the teacher was playing an informative lecture that stated that even occasional smacking can be permanently damaging to kids, both physically and emotionally, and the speaker stated all this evidence to that effect. I found it ironic that this material would be part of the curriculum, considering that most Korean kids get smacked around 24-7-365 by parents and teachers. I also was kind of surprised it was allowed, since it might give the kids ideas about fighting back against abuse. But then I realized it's Korea, and ideas are discouraged from a young age, so there probably wouldn't be any trouble.

Hairstrosity

2010-03-07T21:48:00.003+09:00

Yes, I got another haircut. I got tired of bringing in this specific picture, even to hairstylists in the US, and not being able to get what I want. So I found a new set of pictures to show what I wanted.

Here's a link to the pics. I printed this one and the next one in the series.

http://www.google.co.kr/imglanding?q=ashley%20greene%20twilight%20hair%20pictures&imgurl=http://www.collider.com/uploads/imageGallery/Twilight/jackson_rathbone_and_ashley_greene_twilight_movie_image.jpg&imgrefurl=http://www.collider.com/entertainment/article.asp/aid/9866/cid/13/tcid/1&h=400&w=600&sz=130&tbnid=IBP3ho9MLpd3TM:&tbnh=90&tbnw=135&prev=/images%3Fq%3Dashley%2Bgreene%2Btwilight%2Bhair%2Bpictures&hl=ko&usg=__SyzlXy1f1TkOmgTuyAX6ipCzw9w=&ei=FLiLS6vmIJ7GtAPNhZCGAw&sa=X&oi=image_result&resnum=1&ct=image&ved=0CBcQ9QEwAA&start=0#tbnid=IBP3ho9MLpd3TM&start=1

Wow. That's a really long URL. Suckaas.

I think the hairdressers were having a little chuckle about me bringing in a picture of Alice Cullen for my haircut, but I could be wrong. I'm almost positive it was me they were laughing at, though.

Anyway, it seemed pretty easy to pull off, just taking off a few inches from my length, adding some layering, and then going at it with a flatiron. But no, it's just not that simple.

I could tell almost right away that she was not going to get it right. I don't know why the reluctance to chop my hair off, but she really needed to cut about two more inches off to get this thing right. I should have said something, but really at this point, I'm more curious to see how they mangle my hair than in actually getting a good haircut (which is impossible anyway). It's only ten bucks, so it's kind of worth it to have the bad experience.

So she didn't cut off enough hair to begin with. I did actually intervene and tell her to cut more off the back, because I really can't stand all that scrag at the back of my head and neck. Then this other chick washed my hair and they both dried it. Why Koreans feel that a person needs two people to dry one head of short hair is beyond me, but it happens every time. Next, the washy lady styled my hair, according to the directions of the other chick, who indicated the pictures. To my shock and disbelief, this woman pulled out a barrel brush and the hairdryer and started trying to make this happen with those totally inappropriate tools. It took like five minutes to do only a couple small pieces. I thought I was really in for it, and was eying (are you kidding, is that really how you spell eyeing?) the flatiron in the station behind us, willing her to wise up.

She wised up. Out came the flatiron and away went the barrel brush. But I almost started laughing when I saw what she was doing. Instead of setting the iron in my hair and pulling it down diagonally like she should have, she brought it straight down, then rotated it completely around at the ends, like a curling iron, to make these ludicrous boingy-curls. I got really masochistically excited at this point. I thought either she's got a master plan to make these Farrah Fawcett curls relax into a more straight sticky-outy style, or she just has no idea what she's doing. From her hesitance and fussing and the looks on her face, I guessed the latter and figured I should just remain amused, put my hat on when I go outside, and take a picture as soon as I get home, which I did.

Keep in mind I had to buy groceries before I went home, so this is what my hair looked like after having a winter hat on for about half an hour after I left the salon. It was a bit sillier at first. Don't I look disappointed?

Basketball

2010-03-05T23:29:00.005+09:00

At the end of January I attended my first Korean basketball game. I remember thinking during the experience that it was totally surreal. I think because it was so colorful and everyone was so excited and loud and because it was like watching a video game. I was also confused about which team I was supposed to be rooting for, since everyone around me was cheering for the away team, and neither the fans nor the screens all over the walls were calling the teams by their team names, only by the sponsor name. That seems kind of screwy to me.

Here's the stadium in Ulsan:

The court seemed smaller than an American court, in keeping with my experience at the baseball game.

Cheerleaders:

Time out?

Resume game:

The house was seriously packed. I was quite disappointed to find that unlike at the baseball game, there were no traveling vendors, and no cheap beer. I hate beer, anyway. But I did get hungry and all they had for concessions were soft drinks and water, ramen bowls, and skewered hot dogs. Actually, I saw people with pizza, but I'd happened to have pizza for lunch, so I thought it would be a bad idea to repeat the meal.

Part of the surreality of this whole thing, yet which was so Korean, was the hype man who was out there riling up the audience practically the whole game:

I'm getting kind of lazy here, so I'm just going to give you all the videos at the end, instead of trying to fit them into appropriate places in the pseudo-narrative.

Here are some precious midget cheerleaders who performed after the first quarter or something:

There were a lot of events going between quarters, and even during time-outs and other game pauses that they stuck in there for fun. This was some sort of contest for audience members:

The cheerleaders for Ulsan's Mobus Phoebus team performed several times, often leading the audience in dances that they all know and love, which are of course totally foreign to me:

Stop. Bannertime:

These are the last few moments of the game. Ulsan won by some ridiculous amount, like 20-30 points. My friends, who actually follow the local sports, told me the opposing team was second in placings right now, and Ulsan was first. If the second place team gets their asses kicked this hard, I'd hate to see how the others play.

Second Korean Wedding

2010-03-03T21:27:00.003+09:00

In January I went to the wedding of another of my coworkers. Korean weddings kill me. The first one wasn't too bad, just a little different in terms of having an emcee commentate the whole ceremony and people not sitting down and shutting up for the whole thing and a couple other minor aspects. But it seems to me that a wedding should be special. This second wedding was about the least special event I could imagine.

The wedding was in the Munsu Wedding Hall, by the soccer stadium. I went into the place and found that there were dozens of weddings going on at the same time, with new ones starting every ten or twenty minutes. I had to visit an info desk (well, two actually) to find out which room to go to, and when I got there I still wasn't sure I was in the right place. I was a few minutes late because it took so long to get a taxi, and people were all crowded around in the area outside the wedding room. I couldn't see the face of the bride, and the professional photos outside the hall of the bride and groom looked totally unfamiliar. Also, I didn't see anyone I knew from work.

This is what that area looked like, except most of the crowd was behind me:

Here's what the wedding looked like from outside, which is where I had to stay for the rest of the ceremony, since the inside was full:

I think about as many people were inside sitting down as were outside, not really watching the ceremony. I ended up deciding I was in the right place, but wasn't enjoying myself too much, not being able to see and not being interested anyway. Luckily Korean weddings are short, and the ceremony ended about 20 minutes after I arrived. At this point, professional photographers and guests were able to take photos:

A large group of the guests, including all of us teachers who showed up from Kate LA, were in a photo with the bride and groom. I don't have a copy of that, of course.

After the pictures were done, the couple retired and the guests took their buffet tickets downstairs for lunch. This was also a very unspecial facet of the event, as guests from all the weddings that finished within the same time frame were mixed in the same room and the same buffets. Leon (who overslept and didn't get there until the wedding was over) and I had to stand and eat with spoons, as there were no chopsticks left when we got in line, and no seats available at first when we had gotten our food. After a few minutes, a couple people near the column where we were standing left, and we got to sit down.

I wasn't too pleased with the buffet, but it was free food, so I filled up as best I could. We also had to rush out of there, because we had to get to a movie that we had tickets to. I've noticed that moviegoing has become a more popular activity here in Ulsan over the past several months; almost every time I go to the cinema now, any movies I want to see is sold out for the next four hours, or the next two days or something. It's kind of ridiculous. So this time I had tried to get tickets for us the day before and had to settle for a showtime almost dangerously close to the wedding end time. We made it in time, though.

In sum, I hope I don't have to go to any more Korean weddings.

Thanksgiving

2010-02-28T23:04:00.001+09:00

I never got a chance to finish my Birth-Giving entry from November, so here's a quick rundown of the actual postbirthday Thanksgiving party. Because we had to do the meal on Saturday instead of Sunday this year (due to Heather working all day Sunday and only PART of Saturday), I had to spend I think three nights over the week, including my birthday, preparing food that could be refrigerated for a few days. I got to Heather's house early afternoon on Saturday to finish. My Estimated Time of Dinner was 7:00, but I knew I'd never make it.

Grace from work was supposed to come early and help me, but bailed at the last minute. It really pisses me off when someone offers to do something unbidden, then doesn't do it, with no warning. This happens a lot in Korea. Luckily Heather's daughter Kate enjoys helping me cook, and she had a friend with her, so I had a couple assistants for a little while.

I didn't make it such a production this year, because I didn't really have the money. It's expensive paying for pretty much the whole thing by yourself, even back home. Heather bought some of the ingredients and the chicken again this year, so that helped. It also took some weight off my shoulders that she bought the chicken preroasted. She said mine was good, but Costco's was better. Heather isn't known for her tact.

Anyway, here's a picture of the meal. We had chicken, mashed potatoes and gravy, stuffing, sweet potato casserole, rolls, squash, deviled eggs (as appetizers), eggnog, and apple cider. Lee, one of the teachers from work, also brought wine, and Heather bought beer. I had also made cranberry sauce earlier in the week, but I goddamn forgot about it until the day after the meal. I was really mad, because it cost me like fifteen bucks to make. The flowers on the table were also from Lee--a gift to Heather for hosting. For dessert we had one of my leftover birthday cakes (the one I bought), chocolate cream pie with whipped cream, and this really awesome pumpkin pie I made with a recipe that called for vanilla ice cream in the filling. It came out so well that I was extremely pissed to find that when I went back to Heather's for some of the rest of the leftovers a night or two later (I had to walk home on Saturday, so I couldn't bring everything that night) and found that her father had eaten the rest of the first pie and all of the second. I've learned from this and other events that I should never leave things at Heather's if I want them back: they always end up, in whole or in part, lost or eaten.

About the same amount of people showed up as last year. All of the other foreign teachers came, except Moriah, who was back in the States for a few weeks, but the only Korean teacher who came was Lee, despite my having invited all of them, and a couple having seemed quite excited for the event. Oh, Korea. Other than that it was Heather's nuclear family, Kate's friend, and Heather's niece and nephew. I really love her nephew, Jiseok, although he was being quite saucy that night, trying to take my shirt off and other such inappropriateness. We all (sort of) joked he learned that kind of behavior from his father.

Lee and Leon, not really arm wrestling:

Heather said it took her the whole day on Sunday to clean up, I assume beyond the time she spent at work. Normally when I cook at someone's house, I clean up after myself, but I spent something like 15 hours and nearly 100,000 won to cook food for her family and employees, and was cleaning up as best I could as I went along, so I don't feel guilty about leaving a room full of dishes and messes. She insisted I leave it, anyway. I left quite a bit of leftovers for them, there, too, not to mention those exquisite pumpkin pies.

Leaving

2010-02-22T21:51:00.002+09:00

I took another bus back to Phnom Penh on my last day in Cambodia. I was pleasantly surprised to find that the bus was a double-decker. I'd never been on one of those before.

I was even more pleasantly surprised to find out how incredibly spacious the inside was. I had room to stretch out my legs entirely.

Then reality set in when the bus pulled into the station in Sihanoukville and we all had to get out and get onto another double-decker bus.

The second bus had as little leg room as the buses I'd been on before, and I had trouble finding my seat because the seat number on my ticket was written so illegibly. Two people had to help me figure it out. The only advantage of this bus was that it had a bathroom, but I didn't have to use it, boooo-urns.

The bus broke down after about four hours and we stood around for a while. Then some of the passengers flagged down a taxi van and were going to make the last half hour of the trip in that. They had room for one more, so I hopped in. It only cost us a buck each.

I still had a couple hours before I needed to be at the airport, so I stopped at some random hole in the wall for a soda. It was not good. All the chairs were facing away from the street, too. I thought that was very strange, but then I saw that there was a tv at the back of the restaurant, but it wasn't on. The old lady of the place thought I was so precious.

At the airport they had one of those suite flatscreens in the check-in area, and I got to watch this movie in which Brittany Murphy learns to be a ramen chef in Japan. Then in Ho Chi Minh I got to watch No Country for Old Men. Then I went home. It was cold. I was pissed.

Occheuteal Beach

2010-02-19T21:19:00.008+09:00

After my day trip the Reap National Park, I still had a good portion of the day left, so I went over to the beach to spend the evening. I found a bar that looked fine and got a coffee shake and sat down on one of the chairs set out on the sand.

I was pretty much immediately bombarded by vendors--kids selling bracelets and women doing manicures and pedicures mostly. I ended up accepting a mani-pedi, since it was only five bucks, and I knew as soon as I said yes that the chick I'd been forced to pinky-swear to about those services would show up and get pissed. I mentioned her in my Quick Note entry in late December (or maybe the first of the year). Of course she did show up, and I figured I should make it up to her, so I let her thread my legs. All the ladies offering it claimed it would stop my hair from growing for three months, which of course is bullshit, but I thought the experience would be interesting, anyway. Here's a video of what she was doing:

Although my legs felt smooth when she was done, I noticed later that the hair was in fact not gone, and was the same length it had been before she started. My only theory is that the baby powder she rubbed all over my legs was thick enough that it ran flush with the ends of the hair, making it seem like it had been removed. Back at home, I searched the internets for the idea that threading is a scam, but didn't come up with anything. It seems to be a legitimate hair removal method in several places around the world. It must just be a scam by these chicks, as opposed to the entire practice.

The thing about these vendors is that instead of being deterred by someone else selling to a customer, they are actually drawn to the same person, trying to sell the same goods and services that they've clearly already bought. I guess it's more that they sense weakness and they assume it's easier to target an existing target than to try to start fresh with someone else. Thus, I had to turn away a number of chicks with beauty baskets, and several little boys trying to raise money "for school" (not sure if that's true) by selling bracelets. One method they have when you refuse is suggesting playing a game of Tic Tac Toe. If you win, you get a free bracelet, but if you lose, you have to buy one. I didn't play with the boy who tried that with me, and he got pissed and stalked off, trying to swear at me in English. He said some nonsensical string of words that sounded something like, "Damn dog stupid bitch ass." I laughed at him.

Later I went to another beachside place and got some supper. It wasn't very good.

The bar still had a Christmas tree out. I don't think you can really tell, but it's money hanging from the tree. That's how worthless their currency is. It could have been fake money, of course, but maybe not.

After supper I think I went back to the hotel to rest for a while. I assumed that there would be a major crowd and event on the beach, so I went back at like 11:30. It was pretty outrageous, actually. I wish I'd brought my camera, but I was so scared being alone in such a big crowd that I would get it snatched right out of my hands or something. There was no organized event, per se, but people had been selling roman candles all day on the beach, and the area was so packed with people setting them off that you could barely move around, or see the sky. I've never seen so many firecrackers go off at once. Occasionally, someone would set something off in the sand, but there would be no warning, so a bunch of people around me would suddenly scream and scatter to avoid getting shot with sparks.

It went on like this incessantly until well after midnight. Around 12:30 I decided it was getting too dangerous, since people kept setting off firecrackers on the ground, or accidentally dropping them on the ground, where they'd continue shooting little fireballs at our ankles.

This is from when I was eating, before the major fireforce started. Imagine this time a hundred once it got close to midnight:

My last full day in Cambodia I spent getting a two-hour Thai massage, having lunch and doing a little shopping on the beach, and generally relaxing. Here are some shots from that day:

The street behind the beach was filled with dirty lots:

When I went back to the beach to swim and eat in the evening, I happened to see my tour guide from the previous day. He was really glad to see me, and spent two or three hours with me, eating supper and having a couple beers. I think he was pretty sad when I went back to my hotel (alone). He gave me his card. But I had to get up early the next day to leave for Phnom Penh, so I couldn't stay out or up all night.

New Year's Eve Sihanoukville

2010-02-09T22:48:00.007+09:00

As I recall, the 31st was the day I went to Ream National Park on a day-long excursion. I booked it with a travel agency down the street instead of with my guesthouse, because usually the hotels charge more. In this case, I was wrong, though, and it ended up being a mistake to book elsewhere. Not only was it all the same three excursions everywhere, but they were all the same price everywhere, too.

I was supposed to be picked up at 8:00, I think, but after 9:00 the tour bus still hadn't come, so the hotel called for me. It turns out they had forgotten to pick me up, so I had to go down the street to the travel agent, who brought me across the street to where everyone else on the tour had just finished breakfast and were loaded in the van. Breakfast was included in the fee, so they gave me a baguette with little butter and jam packets, and I ate on the bus. It was kind of disappointing. I would have liked some coffee or something.

Here's the dock where we started:

There were several boats leaving at the same time, with several groups. Because everyone was already loaded on the van by the time I got there, and I was concentrating on eating my baguette for most of the trip to the park, I didn't get a good look at anyone on my tour. Consequently, I had a little trouble figuring out who to follow and which boat to get on. It all worked out in the end, though. Luckily our tour guide was wearing a bright yellow shirt with a little handkerchief tied around his neck. How very Fred.

Our boat:

I'd like to think my boat-boarding was a little more graceful, or at least balanced, than some of the other tourists'. Maybe not, though.

Leaving:

No one told us how incredibly long the boat ride to our destination would be. It was two hours, and we saw a lot of water, mangroves, and fishermen:

The boat took us to this really nice, almost deserted beach, with clean sand and clear blue water, where we only spent an hour. I could have stayed there all day.

After the beach, we took a half-hour walk through the woods to our lunch spot:

We passed by a home or two, where easily the best part of the trip happened:

These kids started doing that as soon as they saw the first few people in our group come, and they kept starting back up every time more people came. It was awesome. I actually didn't even notice that that one boy was banging the sticks together until I watched the video just now. It's funny how much you miss from behind the camera.

Our lunch was fried barracuda with salad and fruit, and sweet, sweet Coca Cola. I don't drink Coke much because of all the sugar, but sometimes it's just amazing, especially in Asia.

We lunched with some of the local wildlife:

This cat allowed people to pet her, so I got in my kitty fix. I tried to pick her up, but I noticed a bulge on her stomach when I put my hand under her, so I figured she was pregnant and I shouldn't do it.

After a little while, the guide told us we had to go quickly, since the tide was going out and we needed to ride out with it or be stuck there for the night.

We got stuck on sand dunes a couple times in the beginning, and one of the boatmen had to hop out in the back and another had to use a pole to guide the boat back to deeper waters.

More fishermen:

In fact, the water was so shallow, there was at least this guy walking around in the middle of it.

On the way back I listened to my iPod since I knew it'd be a while before we got back. All in all, I guess it was a worthwhile trip, since I had a nice swim and a nice lunch, and I saw those boys singing Hello. But if I'd had to pay more than the 20 bucks I spent (plus $4 in tips to the boatmen and tour guide), I'd have been kind of pissed.

Arriving in Sihanoukville

2010-02-07T18:47:00.008+09:00

I stayed in the Orchidee Guesthouse in Sihanoukville, in a little neighborhood a couple blocks from the beach. I was disappointed when I couldn't book myself a beachfront property, but when I got to the beach, I realized why it was so difficult: the beach is covered in bars, right up to the water. There are places to stay, even free places to stay, but anything with any amenities (like a real bed or a private bathroom, let alone a pool or a tv) was off a ways from the shore.

This is the neighborhood I was in. It looks really nice from these pictures:

This seems a little more accurate. There was a bunch of construction right next door going the whole time (never bothered me, though), and the rest of the street is significantly less polished than the couple hotels immediately surrounding the guesthouse.

Driveway:

Restaurant (free breakfast):

Upper deck:

Cycle port:

I didn't take any pictures of the lobby, come to think of it. It was small and nothing special, though. You walked through a hallway to get to the pool:

And then there was a lot of corridor action:

And a lot of barbed wire action:

I was on the second floor. The room was decent, especially for $22 a night, most especially considering it was New Year's Eve during my stay, when apparently a lot of places tripled their prices. Prebooking pays off.

This little tv got tons of English channels, a lot more than I get in Korea. I was kind of pissed, actually. I try not to watch too much tv, but it's nice to have the option. Anyway, I didn't watch much of this tv, but I did catch a bit of Close Encounters of the Third Kind and all of Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull, I think that's what it's called. Terrible movie.

This painting haunts me still. It's freaky, and ugly.

This bed had sheets. Almost a first for me in Asia.

First hot shower in Cambodia, and given my problems at home with hot water, first hot shower in like a month:

That was kind of boring, so I'll leave you with a nice sunset over Occheuteal Beach photo:

Isn't that special?