Monday, October 25, 2010

Thank you... I love you...

Yes, the two words that most old Korean men know.  I spent 90 minutes on a train where I had to listen to an ajoshi (old Korean man) tell me those two phrases.  Not once or twice, but repeatedly, and he had to hit me to tell me.

Ok, lets go back...
I went to Busan for their Fireworks Festival- an expected 2.5 million people were supposed to be there on Gwangali beach.

We got there on the Friday for the World Fireworks display (from China, Portugal and Italy).  Koreans live in a very Confucius society, where they believe in respecting their elders, so much so, that if an older person pushed you out of the way you shouldn't do anything back.  Caitlin and I are standing in this already packed area waiting for the fireworks.  It wasn't too horrible until some people decided to leave which caused some older women to believe that they could push and trample and elbow their way to the front, and while they decide to do this, some more people are leaving and I ended up right in the middle of this stampede.  Words cannot even describe this event, and while you hear many Korean girls whining in pain, nobody can do anything and against my impulses to push these people back (which I would have done if I was back home) I just tried to laugh at the craziness!
Either way, the fireworks were pretty amazing!


Then Saturday came along.  Now, I'm not one that eats at Indian restaurants because I'm too spoiled by my family's cooking, but I've been missing some curry and lassi.  Namaste in Haeundae is AMAZING!! Nothing like some garlic naan (not naan bread) and mango lassi and paneer! It was good for the soul... makes me miss mom's cooking, so now I have to get on the cooking train!

Then we headed off to Gwangali beach, at 3pm, the city was incredibly busy and we had to go all the other way around the city, through the bridge, which was totally long-winded but with a nice view!  The cab driver thought I was crazy, and there was talks of my monkey circus and all the nonsense that comes along with it.  I guess this is what happens when you hang out with your friend that is still drunk from the night before!

We then spent 4 hours on the beach waiting for the fireworks.  It is very interesting being in Korea. I used to get stared at because I'm the "alien" living in Korea, but its slowly changing.  I was walking along the sidewalk and this Korean with this humongous SLR Canon stops me and starts taking my picture, then a mob of Canon-ized Koreans start taking my picture.  Now, I'm not posing, but these people are all up in my face and I'm dying of Shelley laughter until I finally run away.  Then we're sitting on the beach and this Korean family sits in front of us that we made some kind of friends with.  The little girl would always listen to us- and hopefully she didn't pick up too much of the bad language, the mother gave us mandarins and would laugh with us at times.  Then these ajuma's (old Korean women) managed to take up the back of our mats and sit there, but they ended up being supernice letting Andre and myself lie down on their jackets!

The fireworks were amazing.  Like the whole sky against the backdrop of the bridge and water was lit with fire and colour and lights.  It unfortunate that I have the world's worst camera, so I can't bother taking pictures, just a lot of videos.



We partied... drank quite a bit of soju and beer... and then when time came down to leave, it took about 45 minutes to catch a cab.  I don't know if it was because the event caused so much traffic, but there were virtually no cabs in the Gwangan area, and with everybody trying to find a cab home, it was near impossible.  One of my friends tried to pay off Koreans that were driving their own car to take us back home (which really wasn't that far off), but yes, absolutely ridiculous!

And now back to my story I started at the beginning.  To take the train from Busan to Seoul (which is the one I get on) is crazy and so the only tickets we could get for the next 2 hours were standing tickets.  We went to the Cafeteria train- pretty much where everybody goes if they're standing and we sat on the floor.  An ajuma was proud of the fact that I was sitting on the floor, and then these ajoshi's (old Korean men) started talking to us.  Now I'm no stranger to local people talking to or my whomever I'm with when I'm the foreigner, but this was nothing short of ridiculous!  This man must have been drunk, but he gave me his phone number and wanted mine.  He somewhat stole my Korean phrasebook saying I didn't need one.  He wanted me to write Thank You in Hangeul (the Korean language).  Then an ajoshi sitting behind me started yelling.  I don't know why and who at, but it got people's attention and it made the drunk man shut up for a while.  Now anybody who knows me, and what I'm like when I'm frustrated, would be amazed at the new level of frustration that I was at.  Like no matter what I could say to this man he would not leave me alone, and he would perpetually hit me to get my attention, even when I was talking to Caitlin, or trying to "sleep".  And finally about 10 minutes before we get off we found out a Korean girl sitting next to us could speak English and we asked her to tell him to stop, and he did.... FINALLY!

Nonetheless, despite the craziness of the weekend, we made a new friend! Huzzah!  Nothing like making a new friend!!

Today's lesson: the next time you're drunk and decide to talk to a younger person that doesn't speak your language one bit whatsoever, learn another phrase other than "thank you" and "I love you" so you don't aggravate these people.


Tuesday, October 19, 2010

How you know you're Canadian

- People sneeze and you want to say "Bless you" but you realize they don't do that here AND it drives you nuts
- You apologize when you bump into someone only to realize they have no idea what you're saying, and they don't really even care- EVERY TIME!
- You play King's Cup and a rule of the game is to only ask questions, and the only logical thing is to end everything you say with "eh?" and it works!
- And apparently, when all your friends are everything but Canadian, they can tell you everything that's different to you...

Monday, October 18, 2010

A Waegook in Korea

To get you up to date, its now been a month officially since I've been in Korea.
Many people claim that I should have had a rough patch somewhere along the line, but luckily I haven't encountered such bad luck.  In this month:
- I officially am HIV/TBTE free! (says my mandated health check)
- I am an alien living in Korea (as my Alien Residency Card states)
- I have internet and a cell phone (the final furnishings of my card)
- I have money in my bank account (wahoooooooot)
- I have discovered that another Waegook lives in my building (where I believed none existed around me!)
- I have started Korean classes (I can somewhat read the Hangeul alphabet, I just need to memorize it), and I know the basics
annyoung haseyo- hello/how are you
kamsamnida- thank you
annyounghi kayseyo- good bye
waegook- foreigner
yuk- subway station
sonsangnim- teacher
bop- rice
mul- water
jusayo- please give me
yogioh- to call a waiter/right here

Its good enough to get by now!

I hopped off to Busan the week after Andong, my friend from back home has been in Busan for a couple of years now, so my new life in Korea wasn't complete without going to visit her.  A Philippino movie "Here Comes the Bride" was playing at PIFF (Pusan International Film Festival).
A sidenote: Korea has just changed the way its alphabet is being viewed worldwide.  The old way viewed the letter "b" as "p", and "d" as "t" (or for those that know, they took the voiceless and viewed it as its voiced equivalent), only now are they changing the names, so Daegu may come up as Taegu, and Busan as Pusan (hence the name of the film festival; they're not changing it)
The movie was hilarious!  Nothing like some good foreign movies to cleanse the soul of North American garbage! Sadly, I didn't get to experience the beach or do any real sightseeing, HOWEVER, if it wasn't for Jaimi and her wonderful friends, I never would have experienced Canadian Thanksgiving here! I never realized how much a Costco saves a foreigner's life, and YES there is Costco in Korea!  We had whole chickens, cranberrry sauce, stuffing, potatoes, salad, macaroni and cheese, nachos (WITH CHEESE!!!), pizza, pumpkin pie (!!) and wine.  It was wonderful, beautiful and amazing all at once.  (and for the record, this is Thanksgiving #2 I've experienced thus far!)

In the middle of the week, I needed to get out, so with Corinne, we ventured to Suseong (in Daegu), ate some dukgalbi (duck), and discovered a random waterfall (now Suseong must be the richer part of town) and we watched a water show!




Last but not least, this past weekend (October 18) I spent in Daejeon with some of my favourite people (as it turned out to be a mini reunion of EPIK Orientation) and rocked out to some not so good and really awesome bands!  They had international food pavilions as well.  It was funny (to me at least) how the Indian food tent had the longest line up all night!  I ate some good ole fashioned chicken shwarma at the Turkey tent, but I was craving some mango lassi!
The music was about a 50/50 split of Korean and Waegook bands.  I heard some hardcore (reminded me a lot of Alexisonfire but only coming from one guy), some Green Day-esque bands, ska, reggae, and this one band, had this chick that was hardcore (Stephanie, if you're reading this, she's like the Korean Priya Panda!).
Daejeon's downtown is just as nice as the city, but my goodness, there were soooo many foreigners!  I like the mixture of Koreans to Waegook's but, this was just too much. Call me a snob, but somehow I believe I have transcended past the first level of foreigner to a second level...? (Don't ask me what that second level is) but maybe its because I have some Korean friends, maybe its because a lot of my friends here have been in Korea for more than a month and appreciate Korean culture where you don't have to go to the foreign restaurants/bars all the time- whatever it is, I feel a little more attached to Korea and I can't wait to experience more!

Tandoori!!


During performances there were random firework displays, and Chinese lanterns being lit in the sky, and this hot air balloon would go off every now and then

Andong

I get back from Seoul on Thursday- very, very tired.  I haven't really cooked yet.  With a lack of funds in my Korean bank account (and by lack of funds, I mean NO money yet) I haven't had the chance to go shopping so my spices are still untouched!
My kitchen consists of Special K, bread, milk, ramen noodles and water- somehow I survive.  However, I have discovered the wonder that is Kimbap.  The Korean sushi which comes in very many flavours.  Its pretty much a maki roll but covered in seaweed and comes in about 10 pieces, and is roughly $1!  It is my food saviour here!

I went to Andong village where the Mask Festival resided.  There's a beautiful traditional village called Hahoe village that we walked around for a bit,
My lovely friends- Mr. Sok, Chloe, Lucy and me






Jjimdak!  Steamed chicken with vegetables and sweet potato noodles. I love it!!

*Credit to these pictures go to Corinne and Lucy*
We then ventured away from the traditional village to the area where the festival was going on.  There was some Korean style belly dancing, and then we saw some traditional dance.  Unfortunately there was no mask dancing the day we could go there, but we had a good time nonetheless!

Week 1- The first of my thanksgivings

I'm a little behind on blogging, so to recap my life thus far.

I arrived in Korea, September 17th, and spent the day unpacking and getting familiarized with my new environment. Saturday afternoon my co-teachers took me out to lunch downtown.  I don't really know how to describe downtown, the best I can do is Oxford/Regent/Carnaby (my favourite amongst all!) streets, but add in a few thousand stores more!  I also met up with the Korean girl that I had been Facebook introduced to a few weeks before I left.  So, it was incredibly nice to hang out and meet a bunch of English speaking people in the city where hardly anybody speaks English.  As well, this little rendezvous got me over jet lag pretty quickly- I didn't get home until 5am! I am not used to living in a city where restaurants and bars are open to all odd hours of the night. 

A few things about nightlife here:
- everybody drinks- its a Korean past time (no joke), these people drink any time of day, whenever they can.  They drink beer (Cass and Hite are the draft beers here and go for about the equivalent of $3 a glass), soju (their distilled alcohol which rivals vodka.  Its about 20%ABV and about $4/bottle) and makgeolli (cold rice wine, white in colour and about 6.5-7%ABV.  You can buy them in bottles or get them in a kettle or a big soup bowl and traditionally drink out of mid-sized soup bowls- I prefer drinking this).  Oh, and you can buy all these plus whiskey and wine at the local grocery store.
- there is no cover for bars and you can almost likely bring in other drinks from other places, which brings me to my next point:
- you can drink on the streets, anywhere you like!  In fact, if you go hiking (another pasttime of Koreans), at the top of the mountain it is quite common to see old men (ajoshhi's) drinking makgeolli and will pour some for you!


Alright, besides drinking and the nightlife, Daegu is the third largest city in Korea.  It is located:
So yes, I'm away from Seoul and North Korea.  However, because I'm more centralized, it is quite easy to travel to pretty much any city in Korea.  Daegu is home to a US military base and also has quite a small expatriate community (waegook as the Koreans call us), the Western bars are located in one area in the downtown area, the drinks are more expensive, but its nice to spend some time with people that speak the same language (for the most part- sometimes not the same intellect!) as you.  However, in the month that I've been here, I've run into same people almost every weekend I've been here.

Okay, I digress, what's been going on with me:
Monday, September 20 was my first day of school.  It consisted of four classes, which was just me introducing myself and being bombarded with their questions- the most frequent being if I had a boyfriend/married, if I knew Yuna Kim, and what was famous about Canada, and because I didn't know Korean they made me say "annyoung haseyo" (hello).
September 21-24: Chuseok- Korean Thanksgiving.  I had these days off.  I tried to explore the downtown area because it's such a huge maze.  I wish I knew about this holiday before so I could have done something more productive with my time! No holidays really give you this much time off.
September 25-30: Trekked up to Seoul for my EPIK orientation.  There are two types of English teachers that come to Korea- Public school and Hagwon (Private school) teachers.  As a public school teacher we have to go for a 5 day orientation.  Full of lectures and other boring stuff, we did get to meet a whole bunch of people that were living in the same area as you and all over Korea, excluding Seoul.



Needless to say, I met quite a few people here.

Highlights of Orientation
- 3 Bears- Korean Song
      - I can sing this in its entirety PLUS do the dance!
- The couple of hours after class was done to midnight curfew (yes! We had curfew, which we broke on our last day!)
- Kings Cup!

Dazed and Confused

Is pretty much all I can say about my landings and getting my surroundings when I arrived here in Korea.  No amount of reading and researching about this place can actually get you ready for this place!
I arrived in Seoul at 4am, and had to wait for my transfer flight to Daegu at 8am.  By the time I had arrived in Daegu, I was incredibly tired and out of it.  Riding in the taxi to my Daegu Metropolitan Office of Education (who would then tell me what school I was teaching at and where it was and all that seemingly non-important information they cannot provide earlier but the same information that everyone asks you about before you're leaving which I had no information for which makes everybody believe your lying to them!) all you see are just signs in Korean- a gazillion signs, there are stores everywhere here!

I get to my school, its a pretty big school.  Janggi (징 기) Elementary School.  I teach grades 4-6, each grade with a different co-teacher.  Ga Young is my official co-teacher (almost like my superior), Ju Young is my grade 4 co-teacher, Sun Young- grade 5 and Ju Hyeon for grade 6.  I meet them, then head off to my apartment.  Pretty much, its a bachelorette pad even equipped with a queen-sized bed!  I got myself ready for the bathroom though- as if indoor shoes aren't enough here, there's also a pair of bathroom slippers because there are no shower stalls in the bathrooms!  The open space consists of my shower stall! The kitchen is small.  I'm also going to have to clean this place up- the guy who was here before wasn't too much of a clean freak...

My bed!!

My closet space



No dryer= old school way of drying my clothes


My beautiful view!

Like there's not enough convenience stores (Family Mart, Korea Mart, 7/11, and GS25) and small grocery stores, the biggest grocery store near me is Home Plus which is owned by Tesco.

I live about a 10 minute subway ride from downtown, and amazingly enough, a subway ride costs me the equivalent of $0.95 a ride- I ride this thing like its nobody's business!

Thank goodness for my TV!  Having no internet and no phone, the television is the only thing keeping me sane!  Although, most of the stations are in Korean, and about 1/3 of those are Korean infomercials (which makes me believe I really did sell my soul to the Devil by working at the Shopping Channel because I'm subjected to this damned consumerist culture forever!) there are about 5 channels that play English speaking shows most of the time.  PLUS I get CNN... not the greatest news outlet, but at least I hear stuff outside Korea!

Korean Infomercial