Goodbyes and Gambling

Hi Everyone!

Another week is over - time is flying by. I can't believe it's almost July already.

This Friday Mr. and Mrs. Lyu (the directors/owners of my school) took all the staff out for dinner from both of their ECC schools in Uijeongbu. They are two of the richest people in Korea but it still must have cost them a fortune because there was about 40 people there. We went to a galbi restaurant and Mr. Lyu even got me some vegetarian kimchi deegai (I think - it's basically like a kimchi soup) and rice, which was surprisingly good. In Korea it's really disrespectful to decline something offered to you by your elder so we had to accept all the food and drink Mr. Lyu presented us with. It was a really fun dinner with so much to eat and drink and then he paid for us all to get a VIP room at the nearby noraebong (private kareoke place). It was really fun with people singing songs and everyone clapping and singing along.

Analie, Me, Jamie, and Kately singing Brown Eyed Girl.

The reason for the big dinner was because a couple of foreign teachers, Jamie and Sarah, are finishing their contract this week and it was a goodbye dinner for them and a thank-you for all our hard work with the open classes.
After the noraebong, Jesse and the other foreign teachers we're friends with, met us and we all went to the downtown part of Uijeongbu where there are beautiful fountains and park areas and we hung out and played in the fountain for a few hours.

The girls relaxing by the fountain

Saturday night was Korea's big World Cup game against Uruguay. Lots of people were heading in to Seoul to watch the game with the huge crowds at City Hall but, while it would be cool to watch with a huge mass of people, we opted to sit down at a bar and get some fries and chicken wings and watch the game indoors since it was also pouring rain. It was a disappointing loss for Korea but it was fun to watch it with all the fans and they put up a good fight.
Sunday we got up fairly early and headed in to Seoul. We wanted to check out the Coex Mall, which is said to be Asia's biggest mall - I don't know if that's true or not but it was pretty big. We didn't buy a lot but we had lunch at an Italian place, went to this really awesome aquarium, and went to a casino where Jesse broke even on the slots and I won $70... pretty good deal.

Jesse with some sardines at the aquarium


Me with little fishies nibbling my fingers


Shark attack


A woman feeding the penguins at the aquarium. Penguins are too cute for words.

Anyway, we had a really fun day exploring the mall and now we're back home, ready to start another week.

Jesse has his open class this Wednesday that he's busy preparing for. I am training our new teacher, Jonathon, because he's Sarah's replacement, so we both should have pretty busy weeks.

Anyway, that's all for this week.
Miss you all!
Ali

Seafood and Sand

Hello everyone.

So to start with where we left off from the last blog, on Thursday, Ali and I decided we would go see the Korea-Argentina soccer game. As you may recall, we watched the first game against Greece in the logical choice of a Mexican themed restaurant. This time, however, we had no definite plans and headed out to find a bar-like place. We've been lucky here that the games have been at 8:30pm; the other times for the games are at 11pm and 3:30 in the morning. Ali and I took awhile to find a place. Everyone in town it seems goes out to watch the game at a restaurant or bar. It's funny walking down the street and just seeing every single building with the game on. It's an intense atmosphere. We finally ended up at a table outside of a restaurant on the sidewalk. They had set up TV's outside so it was a good location. Thinking I could order chicken, we were told that our table actually belonged to the seafood restaurant next door. We had to order something, and unable to get anywhere with our limited Korean and the waiter's limited English, I ended up pointing at another table just to say we'll have what they're having. Well, I guess I should have known better than to point to what a family of 4 was eating because we got a massive tray of seafood. Correction: Ali is a vegetarian so I got a massive tray of seafood and I've never been much of a fan. Well, it had clams, mussels, oysters and every other aquatic creature. We had to cook it at our table, but our waiter showed us mercy and cooked it for awhile to show us how to do it. In between eating half of the Yellow Sea's population, it was an okay game. Korea lost 4-1 but the fans were still cheering up until Argentina's 4th goal. Korea's not out yet, as they still have a good shot to advance. The next (and possibly last) game is a 3:30am one though and I doubt we'll end up at any restaurants for that one.

Ali showing her Korea spirit.


Me with my massive tray of shells

This weekend we went to an island off of Incheon call Muui-Do. It was a friend of Ali's idea since she's been in Korea for almost a year and knows the spots. I haven't been to a beach here yet so I was looking forward to it. It was quite a trek to get there, but very affordable. We took a bus to Incheon airport, which was where we landed, so it was a bit of a trip down memory lane. Then a bus to the port. Then a ferry to the island. And finally, another bus to the beach.

The beach was nice. We rented these tiny beach huts that could fit 4 people comfortably... so we decided to fit 5. Our group was of about 15 and three huts seemed do-able at the time. The huts were literally one empty room about 8x8. They provided blankets and pillows but you slept on the floor from wall-to-wall. I don't mind small spaces so I had no problem with it. We spent Saturday just relaxing on the beach, kicking a ball around and just exploring. I couldn't believe how low the tide was. During the day, it was a 20 minute walk to reach even ankle-deep water, but later at night it was right near the huts. It was easy to forget we were in Korea because there were lots of foreigners there. We ended up joining one of the groups that night and having a bonfire on the beach. Then we finished the night by being cramped together with 5 other people while we slept.

Our friends at low tide


All of us on the ferry over to Muuido

Dave waking up inside the beach hut.

We left Sunday afternoon after some more lazing around on the beach. Ali needed some new shoes so we checked out a section of Uijeongbu we'd never been to before and were surprised to find a large shopping area with Nike, Puma, and Adidas outlets. There was even a Pizza Hut and Burger king, which is good to know about whenever I may be missing bad habits. It was quite a quest to find Ali shoes, as Korean women have tiny feet that are usually a maximum of size seven. Even my shoe size is a little difficult to find.

Anyway, it was a good weekend overall. I was glad to finally see another area of Korea. School seems like it's beginning to wind down for this semester as there's only a month to go. Not sure what we're doing next weekend, but I'm sure we'll find something interesting.

Miss you all,
Ali and Jesse

Corea and Culture Shocks

Hi everyone!

How are you?? Sorry our blog is coming a little late this week. Jesse and I had a little mishap in which we took out the internet in our entire building by mis-installing a wireless router. To be fair, the instructions were in Korean so we can’t be blamed for not knowing what we were doing. Anyway, our internet is back up and running (hopefully for good) and, consequently, so is our blog.

So last week was pretty stressful for me. My class had an ‘open class’ where all the parents get to come and observe a ‘typical class’. This class, unbeknownst to the parents, has had a script written and edited by all the managers at ECC and has been practiced with the students for at least an hour a day for the past month. There was a lot of pressure on my open class because Mrs. Lyu (the vice-principal) is a bit insane and the open class is the most important day of the year, she says. If any parents complain, we all get in huge trouble. Anyway, my students did a really good job and no parents complained and even Mrs. Lyu (affectionately referred to as ‘Dragon Lady’ among ECC staff) said “200 percent! Perfect!” – so I was happy.

This is my class in their new summer uniforms after Open Class.


Picture of when of the many practice sessions we had for the open class.

It was pouring rain all weekend. July is monsoon season here in Korea and we’re starting to see a lot more humidity and rain as we gear up for that. Saturday night all my friends I met on my weekend in Busan decided to make the trek up to Seoul to see the big city. Jesse and I met them at their hotel and then went out for some delicious Mexican food and to watch the first Korea game of the World Cup against Greece. It was lots of fun to watch the game and hear everyone going nuts. In case you missed it, Korea beat Greece 2-0 and there were insane parties in the streets all night long to celebrate. Soccer is the most popular sport here and everyone is loving it. On many of the World Cup t-shirts, Korea is spelt ‘Corea’ so that, when the world cup teams are listed alphabetically, Korea won’t be after Japan -there is still some ill-will towards Japan after the Japanese occupation here.

The girls from Busan and I out celebrating Corea's win.

Nothing eventful has happened so far this week, other than blowing out the internet and trying to get it fixed. This weekend we are going to an island called Muiido, off the coast of Incheon, trying to get some beach time before monsoon season. All the teachers we’re friends with in Uijeongbu are going and staying in beach huts on Saturday night. It should be a nice mini-vacation.

No further news happening with the whole North Korea situation but, again, it doesn’t even seem to be on anyone’s mind. Tomorrow night is the Korea-Argentina game so we’ll be watching that hopefully. It would be so exciting to see Korea get into the next round.

Anyway, that’s all for now!

Love,
Ali and Jesse




Ten Biggest Culture Shocks

So, we’re almost a quarter of the way through and we thought we’d write about the ten biggest differences we’ve noticed between Canada and Korea so far. These may be totally inaccurate – they’re just the behaviour we’ve seen and the assumptions we’ve made based on them. Here we go – the ten biggest culture shocks to date:

1) Spitting – Men spit SO much here. Everywhere you go you can hear giant horking noises and huge wads of spit fly through the air. You have to be careful – I’ve almost been hit with spit a few times. I still haven’t adjusted to this little aspect of culture shock and I’m not sure I ever will. I still find it totally disgusting.
2) Smoking – We’ve already talked about smoking a lot in our blog but it’s everywhere. All restaurants and bars are full of smoke and nearly everyone is a smoker. It’s a really big difference when you come from Canada and smoking is banned everywhere.
3) Kids – Kids here have very very different lives than kids in Canada. We’ve already talked about school. They go to school all day like they do in Canada and then from three until about nine they go to hogwans (private schools) to study English, ballet, Tae kwon do, golf, piano, cello, etc. Then, at around 9 or 10 they’re free and you see kids roaming the streets by themselves really late at night. It’s very weird to be out at 11 or 12 and see little kids out with no parents. Korea is really safe, though, so I guess parents aren’t worried. The other big difference with kids is computer games. I know they are popular in Canada too but there are serious computer game addiction problems here. All weekend, kids go to PC Bongs, which are like internet cafes but where kids can all play computer games against each other. There have recently been trials of parents who have been so addicted to computer games that children have died of neglect so I guess the computer addictions aren’t only with the children.
4) Singing - Koreans sing all the time. Noraebongs (private karaoke rooms) are incredibly popular among kids and adults and most Koreans seem to go to them almost weekly. On top of that, it’s not at all uncommon to see Koreans walking down the street singing loudly to themselves. People are not self-conscious at all about singing in public and you hear it a lot.
5) T-shirts - This isn’t a big difference, obviously, since people wear t-shirts in Canada too. It’s the content of the t-shirts that is pretty hilarious. So far, we’ve yet to see any t-shirts with Hangul (Korean writing) on them. But there are millions of shirts with very poor English on them. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve had to stop myself from laughing at ridiculous English slogans on shirts. I keep wanting to take pictures of some of them for the blog but that’s not very polite. The other hilarious shirt trend is couples shirts. Many couples buy the same outfits and wear them in public together, I guess to show the world they are together. The sell girl and boy versions of a lot of shirts, solely for this purpose. And they even have some shirts that have half a picture on one shirt and half on the other so it makes a full picture when the couple walks together. Reading t-shirts is one of my favourite pass-times.

This isn't a t-shirt but is an example of the hilarious use of English. Guess what this store sells from the sign. If you guessed 'tennis equipment' you're right.


6) TV shows – TV here is hilarious. There are very few dramas. There are a couple soap operas but those are basically the only shows with any production value at all. There are lots of game shows, singing shows, hidden camera shows, and comedy shows. We obviously can’t understand the talking on any of these shows but I’m not sure we’d know what the heck was going on, even if we did. The comedy here is very different than in America. It’s very slapstick and every two seconds huge words flash up on the screen with a million exclamation marks. I wish we could show you some of these shows because they are seriously ridiculous.
7) Manners – One of the biggest culture shocks for me has definitely been social etiquette. First of all, line-ups. From what I’ve seen, the concept of line-ups isn’t one that’s taken on in Korea. All the time people just butt in line, without even a second thought and, in many places, they’ve adopted the ‘take a number’ system because line-ups are just not well-adhered to. Also, bumping into people is really common here, just because there is a much bigger population density and there isn’t really a word in Korean for ‘sorry’ when you bump into people. It can be very disconcerting to have people smash into you and not say anything. I wouldn’t want to say Koreans are rude because it’s just the culture here but, by Canadian standards, it sometimes feels that way. People just shoo you out of their way, or out of their stores. We’ve been on an elevator where there were too many people and all the Koreans in the back were trying to push other people out. People leave shopping carts spralled through crowded aisles in grocery stores all the time so no one can get by, and just generally don’t seem very considerate of others the way they are in Canada. One of my colleagues spent 6 months in Toronto and she said one of her biggest culture shocks was that everyone held the door open for her – she couldn’t get over it. Anyway, I’ve been trying to work on not getting angry when people shove me out of the way in lines or shoo me away from their shops but it’s been an adjustment.
8) Hygiene – I don’t think Koreans are more or less hygienic than in Canada but it’s different, for sure. First of all, they all brush their teeth many times a day. All my students have toothbrushes at school and toothpaste, as do all the teachers. Almost no one has a bathtub but many Koreans make weekly trips to the jimjilbong (public bathhouse) to scrub down every inch of their body and soak in massive public tubs. I don’t know if I’ll adjust to bathing with a bunch of other people in a giant tub while I’m here – I sort of doubt it.
9) Food – The food here is totally different. Much spicier, kimchi (Korea’s national dish – fermented cabbage with spicy sauce) with every meal, and rice and soup with almost every meal too. From what I’ve seen, Koreans eat a lot more than Americans and eat a lot faster. Obesity is basically a non-issue here and I don’t know if that’s just because of a different body type or whether they eat healthier or whether they exercise more but they all definitely seem to eat much more than Canadians, on average. My students eat huge amounts of junk food too – whole packs of cookies, huge bags of chips, tons of candy… much more than I did when I was a kid. And fruits and vegetables are pretty expensive and I rarely see people eat them, with the exception of kimchi. I don’t know how the Koreans stay so skinny.
10) Fan death – This isn’t really a culture shock thing but it is interesting. All the fans in Korea have timers so that no fan can be on for longer than an hour. This is apparently because Koreans believe that if you fall asleep with the fan pointed on you, you can die. Fan death (as this phenomenon is called) has only ever been said to occur in Korea and no one can really say what about fans cause death. Personally, I’m a bit skeptical of this, but most Koreans just accept it as a fact. Very weird.

Anyway, those have been the most difficult/interesting things about Korea so far. Maybe we’ll do another one of these when we’re further along in our trip.

Climbing and Cookin'

Hey everyone,

Another week done and we can now say we're past the first quarter. Three months have gone by much faster than expected as it only seems like we landed three weeks ago.

The work week was great because we had a day off on Wednesday due to elections - a custom we hope Canada will embrace. I've now had 5 days off in 5 weeks, which has made time fly, but alas, the holidays are coming to an end. It's good that the elections are done with, just so that we can now walk around the city without getting bombarded with cheers and cards from the people campaigning. There's no recent news in terms of the North Korean situation but the election results might shed some light on what Korean people think of the situation. My understanding - which could be very wrong - is that many South Koreans thought that the the ship sinking and threats being thrown from both sides were being blown out of proportion on purpose by the President. Lee Myung-Bak is the most conservative, anti-North President that the South has had in quite a long time, so people's thoughts were that he was trying to drum up support for his party by exemplifying how bad the North is. Well, the election results had Lee's party losing a lot of seats so maybe many people think the new tough stance against the North - the stance that was taken long before the ship sinking - has been unnecessary and lead to more problems. This is just conjecture on my part, but many Koreans have told us they thought the Government has been trying to make the tensions seem worse.

With everyone out voting, Ali and I decided to spend the day by the river. By river, I mean the 10 feet wide stream that I walk over every day on my way to work. We always saw families hanging out on the little strip of greenery (there isn't a lot of green space so people get it where they can), putting up tents, playing badminton, throwing a ball, so we decided to give Uijeongbu's version of a beach a try. We set up shop under an umbrella but it was way too hot to stay for long. The temperature is pushing close to 30 degrees now. So we ended up making a big salad dinner and seeing a movie.

Our little make-shift set up at the river.

Thursday night, Ali and I headed to what the foreigners call "Ajima aerobics". "Ajima" is the name for old Korean women and every week by the river here, a woman leads an aerobics class and at least a hundred people gather and join in. Since we've been starting to get some exercise, we joined in on the fun. It was pretty hilarious because the 'work-out' was a lot more like choreographed dances (which we obviously didn't know and couldn't follow from really far back) and arm-waving and hip shaking. It was lots of fun and pretty cool to see so many old ladies shaking their rumps out there. That seems to be a cultural difference here; everywhere you look, there's usually someone doing some kind of work out, whether it's stretching or mountain climbing or using one of the machines scattered across this city.

On Saturday, a group of public school elementary Foreign teachers were getting with some of the Korean co-teachers to climb a mountain. It was organized by the Uijeongbu Office of Education so it felt like I was supposed to go. Ali could've gone but she wasn't in the mountain climbing mood that day because it was really hot out. I've never really been one to climb or hike or even walk up any type of slope, but it seemed to make little sense to be surrounded by mountains and never climb one. It ended up being a great experience, though. Not only did I get some exercise, but I met a lot of Foreign teachers who are in the same boat as me. Now, granted, very little climbing was involved - although there was one part where I had to hold a rope and walk up some rocks - but I still feel I can say I successfully climbed my first Korean mountain. It turned out to be an "amateur mountain" as one of the Koreans said, and several people in their 60's passed me, but nevertheless, I was impressed with my success. I plan to go back with Ali one day and we might have a picnic up on the peak. The group also went out for dinner which was all paid for, so that was nice.

Me at the peak of our 'beginner mountain'


The group of English teachers at the top.

After, not doing too much Friday and Saturday, Ali and I decided we needed to something on Sunday, so we decided to go see Nanta, a Korean somewhat non-verbal performance that is about a group of cooks trying to get several meals ready for a 6:00 wedding all the while using the various kitchen utensils to drum rhythmic beats. Think Stomp meets Korean cooking. The show is actually well known internationally; although, I'd never heard of it, it's played in over 30 countries, including a run on Broadway. The show ended up being a lot of fun. There was little actual dialogue, and what was spoken was sometimes in Korean, the humour was of the slapstick variety and the actual drumming and tricks the cast performed was very impressive. The show did drag a bit in a couple of spots but overall it very enjoyable.


These weren't our photos - we weren't allowed to take any - but this is what it was like.


We also spent our day doing some shopping. We discovered a big shopping district that has a lot of the American clothes stores like H&M, The Gap and, many others.

Well, the holidays are over so it's looks like we're back to the 5-day work week. Hopefully, we'll manage.

Love,
Ali and Jesse