Chuseok

Annyeoung Haseyo! Yep, I’ve mastered hello in Korean. We just got through the Chuseok holiday here (like Thanksgiving), and having had four days off work to explore Korea, I have mucho stories to tell.



Friday at school was a blast. All the kids came dressed in their hanboks (traditional Korean dress). Scratch that--the kids BROUGHT their hanboks with them and changed at school (read: a bunch of six-year-old girls running around my classroom in their underwear giggling uncontrollably and squealing the word “PANTIES!” in pitches I thought only dogs could hear, while my sole male student tried desperately to sneak a peek through the cracks in the door from outside the room). The school even rented hanboks for the teachers to wear, so I, too, got to look like a giant rainbow cupcake for a day. We spent all morning and afternoon making yummy Korean deserts and playing Chuseok games. The only bummer was the hot, nasty smell of sweaty bodies in hanboks. We don’t air condition the communal areas in our school, and it’s still like 85 degrees here every day. You can imagine the stink. Think hockey locker room.

All the teachers headed out to Dublin--a cute little Irish pub in downtown Bundang--after work Friday night. It’s an Irish pub, but with the strangest mix of American music. The Koreans are always trying to replicate western style, but usually end up with some odd twist that just makes you say, “what??” I’ll never complain about Bon Jovi though, even if it’s in an Irish pub. Anyway...darts, pool...good times.

Saturday morning, Liz and I packed up the gigantic backpack we borrowed from another teacher (Dad, bringing the roller suitcase instead of the backpack was the wrong choice--you were right!) and headed to the bus station with no set plan...just a few cool-sounding places circled in the guide book and the hope that there would still be some tickets to places outside of the city available. We decided to hit up Deacheon first--a small beach town on the west coast of Korea and a two and a half hour ride from Seoul.

We got to Deacheon without a hitch. As we were walking around town trying to find a place to ditch our backpack, a woman ran up to us eagerly asking, “Hotel? Hotel??” and proceeded to practically drag us to what would be our accommodations for the night. Did

we have a choice? We started to realize at this point....the point where hotel owners were standing in the streets hunting down backpackers...that we had landed upon a sleepy (not to mention creepy) little town. Deacheon holds a huge mud festival in the summer that is apparently just a way-big party and draws masses of people. I guess when we read about this in the guide book we just assumed the town would always be a happening place. Wrong.

We failed to really think about the fact that we were traveling during a major holiday weekend and that most shops/businesses would be closed. The DAY was great; we rented four-wheelers and rode around in the sand, sprawled out on the beach, and enjoyed the awesome views. The EVENING, however, was a different story. Once night-fall hit, it felt like we’d been thrown onto some creepy, deserted carnival movie set with eerily cheery music echoing in empty streets and the odd two or three people playing one of those ball-toss games randomly set up on the side of the road. Trying to find a place to eat was nearly impossible; the only restaurants open were the many seafood places along the beach that had massive tanks across their facades packed with fish--both dead and alive. Not exactly appetizing. Even those restaurants, whose neon signs claimed they were open, had no patrons. Maybe someone just forgot to unplug the signs ten years ago...? So, it was us and the poor thousands of fish teetering on the brink of death. The handful of people who WERE left in town were all down on the beach lighting off fireworks...AT each other. The only thing left to do was buy some coolers at the 7-11 on the corner, sit on the boardwalk watching these revellers, and laugh until we peed about the random, bizarre, and surreal nature of our little ghost town.

On Sunday morning, we woke up early and headed to the beach for a morning dip. Even though Deacheon didn’t exactly have the night life we would have liked, it definitely had that super peaceful, serene thing going on. We were the only ones on the whole beach at 8:00 am, and it was perfect. Not a bad way to start a day. After a swim, we decided to try to catch another bus to Chungju Lake in central Korea. Eight hours later, we were

hotel-shopping on the streets of Chungju, looking for the cheapest and least “love-motel”-ish hotel we could find. Korea is known for its love-motels. Just to give you a visual, a standard love-motel room usually boasts things like neon-lighting from the ceiling, a round bed, and always plenty-o-condoms on the vanity. High class! Some of the fancier ones even adorned with paintings of voluptuous female silhouettes lining the walls of the stairwells. We did end up finding a very simple, cheap, non-love-motel place to stay. The only problem was that when we got to our room there was no bed; we’d been given an “ondol” room where you’re supposed to sleep on thin mats on the linoleum floor. Back to the front desk to swap our room for one with a bed. I have now memorized the Korean expression for “western style room”: Chimdae bang juseyo...aka, “Gimmi my American bed, yo!” Another teacher told me the “ondol” sleeping actually isn’t that bad, especially in the winter time since the heating here is under the floors. I’ll have to try that one another time.

Sunday night was again spent trying to find something to eat in a town all but shut down for Chuseok. Note to selves: when planning a spontaneous trip, avoid Chuseok! We were feeling pretty crappy about our luck until Monday morning when things took a turn for the strange and wonderful. We decided to get up early and catch a bus to the ferry terminal to take a boat tour of the lake. As we were coming out of our hotel, a taxi driver pulled up and told us he’d take us there instead. Why not? Taxis are dirt cheap in Korea. And it’s a good thing we took this taxi driver up on his offer because he strangely ended up being the highlight of our weekend.


Our ripped-jean-shorts-and-backwards-baseball-cap-wearing cabby cranked some Korean club music and half-danced, half-drove all the way to the terminal. He was seriously raising the roof at one point. His Enlish was pretty much limited to "OK!" (accompanied bya big smile and thumbs up) and “Big Sale!” (referring to his bargain fares), but he still joked around with us and tried to teach us Korean words using non-verbals (e.g. he taught us the word for lingerie by pointing to the lingerie store then motioning across his chest, raising his eyebrows, and making an “ohlala” sound).

When we got to the ferry terminal at 8:00 am, our driver and new friend informed us that the ferries didn’t start running until 11:00 am, but insisted that he buy us coffee while we waited. He also wanted to show us on the great big map posted outside the terminal where all the best site-seeing spots in the area were. He then offered us “Big Sale!”, motioned to his taxi and to various places on the map, and said “One hour, Ten man-won ($10)” How could we say no? Back into the taxi with our buddy. For the next hour he drove us around and stopped to let us walk around and take pictures where ever we wanted. Mid-way through the trip he asked, “Gim-Bap?” and then proceeded to stop and buy us five roles of the yummy Californian-roll type stuff. He even got us each a melon ice cream bar while we waited because the gim-bap order was taking so long!

If I heard this story from someone else, I would definitely say that the taxi driver was a huge creeper, but he totally wasn’t. He was just a genuinely nice dude who was probably really happy to break up the mundane cab-driving routine by hanging out with a couple of

foreigners for the morning. Unless you’ve experienced it, you can’t really understand how cool it is to get to know people who don’t speak English just by pointing, acting things out, laughing at yourself, and giving the other language your best shot. Even though we hardly understood a word coming out of this guy’s mouth and vice-versa, we still probably learned more about Koreans and their culture from him in one hour than we had since we got here. This--getting to talk with local people--has been by far my favorite thing about living overseas so far...for sure the most rewarding and interesting anyway. Ice cream waffles and Christmas-oranges (available every day of the year here) are a close second and third :P.

When we got back to the terminal, Liz and I ended up two-stepping in an empty parking lot to the music playing over the loudspeaker while we killed the rest of the time until our ferry ride on Chungju Lake. We figure that we get stared at no matter what we do simply because we’re foreign, so we might as well have a good time while being started at--embrace our foreignness! The lake area was gorgeous and had some beautiful mountainous scenery, so the ferry ride was worth every penny. In the afternoon we took a bus to a town called Danyang and went to an awesome cave--nothing like I’d ever been to in North America. By 10:oo pm, and after a long haul of a bus ride back to Seoul due to the stop-and-go post-Chuseok traffic on the expressways, we were back home. And that was our weekend. Whew.

I can’t believe I’ve been here a month already. The time is flying. Work’s still going great and the apartment isn’t so bad anymore. Everything finally feels comfortable :). The weather has been fantastic and is supposed to get even better with the fall--lots of blue skies and warm, comfortable temps. I’ve been doing something new almost every day and can’t believe how glad I am that I made the decision to come here--it really is just what I needed. Life will be waiting for me back in North America in eleven months, but for now I’m loving meeting great new people, doing whatever, whenever, and packing every day with things I’d never be doing back home. Liz, Katy, and I are booking tickets to Thailand for Christmas next Monday (pay-day). Life is good!

Getting Settled In

I’ve been putting off writing this post just because so much has happened in the past two weeks that it's hard to get it all down. I’ll try to sum it up the best I can.
Work is going really well so far. It's not at all what I expected. I am teaching at a private Kindergarten/Elementary English school. Because we're living in probably the wealthiest suburb of Seoul, all the families that send their kids to us have beaucoup bucks...not to mention super high expectations for their kids and for the schools. They're paying $1000 per month to send their children to us, so I guess they have a right to expect a considerable amount.

The reception area at my school

I start teaching at 9:40 every morning, Mon-Fri, but we have to be at the school by 8:40 am. I teach math, science, social studies, art...even cooking!...to two different groups of kindergartners (7 per class). It's pretty intense. I'm with the kids from 9:40 am to 2:20 pm without even a one minute break. I got lucky and was assigned to kindergarten classes made up of kids who are in their second year at the school, so they are pretty self-sufficient and smart. Actually, they're brilliant! They understand pretty much every word I say and speak non-stop in English (albeit broken, hilarious English--so cute!). I'm actually feeling kind of guilty because many of the other teachers have the brand new 4-year-olds who poop their pants, spill their food all over themselves and each other, and eat their papers and pencils. One of my friends already had a parent call the school irate that her son had come home with poopy pants and that my friend hadn't noticed it during the day. Another one of my friends sent a letter home to her kids' parents with two spelling mistakes in it. By the next day, three mothers had called the school to complain about it. Talk about pressure... Needless to say I'm now checking, rechecking, and TRIPLE checking all my notes going home with my kids. The parents also get super upset if we don't make their kids eat their rice during lunch. Rice is sacred here. Don’t mess with the rice.

Staff room- full, busy, messy...

Most of the kids have chosen English names (or rather their parents have chosen English names for them) to use just at school. I actually don't even know most of their real names. I do have a couple, though, who choose to go by their Korean names. I also have three students who I would take home with me right now if their parents would let me: Kitty (wears a Hello Kitty ribbon in her hair every day and is decked in pink from head to toe), Clara (predictably and without fail says, 'Teacher, teacher...this is so very, very, very, very, very hard' about 15 times while doing ANY coloring activity...but in a really quiet, accented voice that just makes me want to crack up and give her a big hug), and Na-yeon (does gymnastics stunts off my body and insists on performing her ballet moves for us every day during talk-time). Sooooo adorable and sweet.

My classroom (called "Sydney"--all the rooms have different English-speaking city names) and my kids eating lunch

So most of my day is spent with these 2two groups of kindergartners, but I also teach English classes in the afternoons and evenings to older elementary kids who come to our school after their regular Korean school. On Tues/Thurs, I teach a class from 2:40-3:40 and another from 3:40-4:40 and then I'm done for the day. On M/W/F I have a two hour break after my kindergarten, and then I teach a class from 4:50-5:50 and another from 5:50-6:50. Not being done until 7:00 on a Friday night kind of stinks, but other than that, the hours aren't so bad. We have the Korean version of Thanksgiving (called Chu-Suk) coming up really soon, so next Friday all the kids are coming to school dressed in hanboks (the traditional Korean garb that no one actually wears on a daily basis anymore) and then we'll be playing traditional games, eating traditional food, etc. Should be fun! We have a four-day weekend for the holiday, so my roommate and I are going to leave the city and try to go camping (TRY being the operative word here--we'll see if our super-minimal knowledge of Korean will get us there) in a national park south of Seoul.

My city, Bundang, is very cool. I’m so glad I decided to live in a suburb instead of right in Seoul. There are all sorts of parks, walking paths, hiking trails, etc. There are tons of trees, lots of grass, and small mountains--very unlike the concrete and grey of the big city. There’s a huge park right by my apartment that has a walking path around the outskirts, a lake in the middle, and even bungee-jumping on site. Like I said earlier, Bundang is considered quite a ritzy suburb--like the Beverly Hills of the Seoul area. Everyone drives ridiculously nice cars (equipped with GPS of course) and sends their kids to private schools. You can tell by the presents that the parents give the teachers at our school that the money flows. My roommate got a Dior perfume set from one of her kid’s parents today as a Chu-Suk gift. So jealous.

At The Rainbow Room--a hooka bar in Seoul

The shopping and fashion are super upscale in Bundang too; sadly, I definitely cannot afford the shops in the downtown area. Mom, Gina, Karla, Troy--you gave me crap for packing all of my cute, impractical high heels, but if Seoul isn’t the place to wear super-high, impractical foot-killers, I don’t know what city is. I don’t think women here know what flats or running shoes are. One of my friends went on a rafting trip a few weeks ago and said the women were even wearing their high heels in the rafts. Now that’s commitment. My point: I’m glad I brought my cute shoes. At least I can attempt to fit in.
So, given that I’m living in such a fancy-schmancy area, one would assume I’d also probably be living pretty comfortably. Think again. Apparently my school didn’t get the memo. I think the people in charge of housing at my school must search out Bundang’s most dingy apartments and rent ‘em all for their suckers of teachers. Liz and I moved into our apartment last Saturday, and that was the second time since I got here that I wanted to pack up and go home. The apartment is small...and pretty nasty. To say the least. The wallpaper is all yellowed and perma-dirty, and the whole place is musty and smells like kim-chi (one Korean food you’ll want to pass on if you ever come here to visit!). Oh, and our laundry room has mould. It’s awesome. I think the thing that bothers me the most is the lack of natural light. We only have a few small windows, and they’re frosted. Even better, they’re barred. The one window I do have in my bedroom doesn’t even open to the outside; it opens into our moulding laundry room...so basically it just stays shut. Tight. We’re starting to feel better about the whole situation though. I mean, it IS free housing, and apparently our apartment is a heck of a lot nicer (and bigger) than most of the other teachers’ accomodations. I can’t imagine. We’re also going to go out this weekend and buy some rugs/lamps/plants/ANYTHING to cover the walls. It’ll feel a lot cosier and homier after that. Besides, we aren’t at the apartment that much anyway, so it doesn’t really matter what it’s like when it comes down to it. I need to just suck it up and stop complaining. We’re just spoiled in North America.

Our kitchen. Looks surprisingly nice here...don't be fooled.

Other than teaching and scrubbing my apartment from floor to ceiling, I’ve just been exploring the area and trying to figure things out. The teachers go out to eat quite a bit. I LOVE the barbecue-your-own-food-at-your-table deal. Really fun. And yummy! I’ve also experienced my first check-your-shoes-at-the-door-and-sit-on-the-floor restaurant AND my first squat toilet...the first of the two, very cool, and the latter, not so much. I’ve mastered about three Korean phrases so far and am still trying to get the chop-sticks handling down. It’s an art. As far as the language goes, it’s a LOT harder to get by with just English than I thought it would be; VERY few people here on the streets speak more than a few basic words of it, if that. So in order to make my life a lot easier, I better pick up a little more Korean in a hurry. My students are trying to be my tutors :P.

Eating a french-fry-coated hotdog from a street vendor in Seoul. Delicious.

Grocery shopping here should be strongly considered for Olympic-sport status. No joke. We spent THREE hours just trying to get some basic stuff. This massive supermarket was jam-packed, and everyone just fends for themself. When you spot an opening in the crowd, you better shove your cart in there STAT. From what I’ve read, it’s part of the Korean culture; Koreans don’t feel any obligation to be overly kind or considerate to complete strangers. They treat their acquaintances and friends marvellously, but strangers--not so much. Hence the chaotic madness of shoving and pushing at the supermarket and on the subway. People will even blatantly try to cut you in line at the grocery store if you leave an opening. Hard to wrap your head around as a friendly Canadian :P.

This is in the grocery store, believe it or not. I shudder every time I look at this pic.

All in all, things are going really well. Work is a lot more WORK (and exhausting) than I thought it would be, but it’s also much more fun and rewarding than I expected it to be too...so I guess it’s all good :). I’m loving learning a million new things every day, but miss home like crazy too. I can’t believe I’ve already been here two weeks; the time’s going to fly. There are so many other quirky things about Korea and different experiences I’ve had that I wish I could share with you. I am finally up and running with reliable Internet at my apartment, so I’m going to try to start writing shorter posts more often. That way I won’t get so overwhelmed by the daunting task of summing up two weeks in one post.