A couple of the kids in my second class on Tuesday decided to buy the rest of the class dukkbogi on a stick. Duk is a substance made from rice, I think, it comes in lots of different forms. On a stick it is just covered in a red sauce and you eat it kind of like a popsicle or a corn dog, I guess. As much as I love dukkbogi, eating it from a stick (never mind that it was delivered in a plastic bag) does not look very appetizing. The duk is very chewy substance, a chewy pasty log-like substance. All was quiet in class, for a moment, quiet except for the sound of the chewing, kids chewing a chewy food. Kids with colds because it is winter and they don’t wash their hands very often. Kids with colds and stuffed noses. Kids with plugged noses chewing chewy foods. I was setting up a game for them to play. I was writing out random words on the board: eating, food, loud, chewing, gross, noise. I don’t think any of the kids caught on to my subtle hints about how totally and completely disgusted I was with the sounds they were making.
Normally, I don’t let the kids eat in class. I tell them to put their food away, but I couldn’t really have them put this one away. It’s a street food. It is covered in sauce. So I let them eat. They ate pretty quickly, which is good, because I soon would have gone crazy with the eating noises they were making. This kind of chaos and anarchy ruled my day on Tuesday.
I met my folks, along with Jamie and Toban at 9:00 AM at their hotel. Usually, I have met them at 9:30 and apparently, this half hour makes all the difference. The subways were packed. It was stupid. I have recently become a subway reader and today, I had almost no room to hold my book and I was literally back-to-back with a man in a business suit. We had to kind of lean against each other stay balanced for most of the trip. At Ssangmun, my subway stop, I had to let the first train go by because the first train was too full, there was actually no more room, none. People were squished against a window. This train was closely followed by another that was considerably less full, but as the trip progressed down the line towards the centre of the city it just got more and more full. Then I had to transfer on to the orange line, along with a million other people. At first I was worried that I would have trouble wading through to the crowd to get off the train, but it seems that everybody else was also transferring at the orange line. We streamed out of the train and down the stairs. I guess that everybody takes the orange line in the other direction because I got a seat on the next train; I almost never get to sit.
Instead of the usual Starbucks morning, Dad decided to take us for a “real” breakfast. He had the brunch at Crown Hotel. It sounds fancy, but it’s not really. The breakfast wasn’t bad at all and there was rice and kimchi along with cereal, eggs, Korean pancakes, some dried fish, French fries, and something that was supposed to be coffee. After breakfast we headed towards Starbucks for some real coffee, but on the way I realized I had to get back to Ssangmun. There was supposed to be a teachers meeting and lunch at one of the other Kang Tae Woo branches. I was supposed to meet Sally at 11:30, so we could get to the lunch for sure by 12:00 and then there would be a foreign teachers meeting at 1:00.
I finished No Country for Old Men on the subway and listened to my iPod for the rest of the trip and subsequently have had Mates of State songs running through my head for the rest of day.
I got home and got as pretty as possible, knowing that I would hanging out with Mr. Kang Tae Woo himself and seeing all the Kang Tae Woo foreign teachers. When I got to Sally’s place, 11:30 on the dot (look at me, Punctual Patty for once) I got a text from Julia saying the meeting was cancelled and that we shouldn’t come. So, we decided to go for a walk to the Hollys coffee in Nowan. After we changed out of our pretty clothes and into more appropriate walking attire and headed out towards Nowan. It was a good we picked Nowan, because at about 12:30, I got a call from Sunny saying that we needed to get to the restaurant right now. The meeting was not cancelled and we need to come now! Good grief. Could we tried to be organized for once? So, after some discussion and a moment of panic, Sally called Justin, the dude who is in charge of the foreign teachers and said we didn’t have to come if w didn’t want to. However, neither of us really wanted to pass up a free lunch. So, Sally hailed a cab, while I called Sunny back. When we got in the cab, I shoved my cell phone into the taxi driver’s hand and Sunny explained where to go. The restaurant was in Nowan so we weren’t far away. However, all the teachers were dressed to the nines and I looked like a total slob, not to mention that I haven’t showered in a couple of days (Saturday night) and Mr. Kang Tae Woo was the first person which whom I accidentally made I contact.
Sally and I still though we had the teachers meeting at 1:00, so we shoveled delicious sushi from a fantastic buffet into our mouths. Just as we stood up to go, definitely already late, in walk Justin and all the foreign teachers. Apparently, things got mixed up for everybody. So we ate some more, enjoying the rest of the delights this lunch buffet had to offer. It was really very delicious. Full of Korean, Japanese, and Chinese food. There were also ice cream, fruit, cereal, salad, and many other fantastic things. I didn’t even nearly sample everything. There was way too much, way too much deliciousness. When we were almost done eating Mr. Park showed up, I guess he had to come late, he works too hard. So Sally and I got to hang out with Park a little bit. He always seems so lonely and sad when we see him. We decided that we need to take him out next week sometime.
After we had all filled our faces, the foreign teachers walked to the elementary school to have our meeting. The meeting wasn’t super useful, but it was good to see all the foreign teachers at once. I guess most of them did show up to the party the other night, which I will discuss in a later blog. It was good to seem them again, most of them anyway. There are a few that I would be ok with never seeing again. Kidding...kind of...not really.
After the meeting, Sally and I quickly went to Carolyn and Ryan’s apartment with Carolyn to get my Secret Santa gift. My gift was from a girl named Lisa whom I have never met. Strange. She gave me chocolate (expensive chocolate) and some illegal DVDs. The copyright laws are either pretty lax or non-existent because you can buy pirated DVDs all over the place. None were movies that I would choose for myself, but I will probably end of up watching them at some point. I think the cold winter evenings well be better spent inside.
We left Carolyn’s apartment and had to jump into a cab to get back to school for my four o’clock class, for which I was almost late. We just played two games that seem to be fun for the kids. My first class on Tuesday’s is s for fun speaking class. We just play games that involve English. There is one that play were I give them two cards, one emotion and one action, like sad and swimming. They have to act out both things and the rest of the class guesses what is on the cards. Sometimes they don’t want to act and just say the words in Korean. Little bastards.
After this class, I ran home and changed my clothes a bit, my jeans and my sweater were dirty. I also took the opportunity to check out a YouTube link that Sarah Kim sent me about the feud between Rain and Stephen Colbert. I was only vaguely aware of this, I think I have heard people talking about it before. I have never seen anything about it. I spent the rest of my break, watching videos of Colbert and some fan videos of Rain. I love fan videos. I wonder about the people who take the time to assemble all the pictures and then put them to music and then post it on YouTube. It is so strange to me. But I watch them so I guess that’s why they do it.
I ran back to school, in better clothes and thinking of Rain. Then I had the class that ate the dukkbogi. After them I had the middle class that refuses to speak to me. Today on the of boys told he didn’t have a pencil and was shocked that he could actually speak. I have never heard a single word come from his mouth, not even a Korean word. He has a very nice voice. He kind of looks like a younger version of Rain. I should tell him that. He would be so embarrassed. I should do it when there are lots of people around, normally there are only four kids in that class. Then I had a break, nothing exciting there, except that one of the mothers of a bad student brought a box of oranges or the staff to share. A really big box of oranges. I brought one for each of the students in my next class. We talked about oranges for awhile and how in Canada we call those kinds Christmas oranges because they popular around Christmas, when they are in season and cheap. Then we sat and played this “game” where I started with one word (orange) and the next person had to say a word that started with the last letter of my word and so on. It was their idea and we played for the rest of class, like forty minuets. It didn’t even get boring. On my last turn, the letter I had to use was “T”. I said The End! More then once, the kids had to tell me with what letter the word ended. I’m a bad speller, most of my students know that by now. They help me out when they can. Also, they all have better penmanship (Do people still use that word?) than I do. Even some of the youngest kids can write better than I can.
I had previously been told that New Year’s Eve would be a lax day with no classes and we would just have come in for a little bit. There are still no classes, but by a little bit apparently they meant six hours. I have to be at the school from one to seven on Wednesday, we don’t have six hours worth of work to do, that’s for sure. Anyway, I hope there are is food or something. It’s Sunny’s birthday and New Year’s Eve, there better be something that makes it worth it to be there for so long. I’ll bring my computer and my book. I hope the cute markers are there. Perhaps I'll actually talk to one of them.
Dee
December 30, 2008
Wednesday, December 31, 2008
Tuesday, December 30, 2008
Merry Christmas or Bananas are Always Phallic
Christmas Adventures with My Family in No Particular Order Pt. 1
Christmas Eve...
On the morning of Christmas Eve, I had to buy a couple of things for Sally’s Christmas present and for Amber’s secret Santa gift. I just bought Sally some coffee from the Lotte Department Store (I had already bought her a Joo Ji-Hoon calendar in Insadong, he’s a babe). I always felt classy shopping at the Bay downtown in Winnipeg. The Bay Downtown has nothing on any Lotte Department store. It took me a while to find the coffee section (I think there might be more than one) and then when I did, as soon as I appeared to be interested in coffee one of the employee’s was all over me. She showed me a sale that they were having and then she shoved some coffee beans under my nose. I took her up on the sale and decided to keep one pack for my self, now I have buy to coffee maker, at least a French Press. She also gave me two samples, one of which I put in Amber’s gift. But the lady put the coffee in a nice bag and smiled a lot, just walking around the store makes me feel classy, all the products are super high end and expensive. They carry all the big labels. I hope the coffee is good.
After the classy classy department store, I went to the Korean version of a dollar store and bought a few more random things for Amber and some chocolate for the teachers. I wanted to bring chocolate, fruit, and nuts for the teachers. In the end I didn’t go through with the fruit, but I could chocolate and some almonds to share. I ended up eating most of it. Unlike at home, chocolate at the dollar store here is not expired or old. It is just fine and fresh and delicious.
The gift I got for Amber was either awful or awesome. I think Amber will think it was awesome, I would love to get such a gift and I think she would agree. I just bought her a bunch of random things. The gift had a 30,000 won limit and seeing as I bought most of the things at the dollar store and in markets, it was actually pretty tough to meet that limit. I had a bag full of presents and I still don’t think I hit it. I gave her a couple of funny notebooks, some Band-Aids, some tissue (with some awesome English on the package), coffee samples, sparkly pink shower sandals, nail polish, samples from the beauty stores, two of my books that I had already read, a lot of chocolate, Big Bang socks (Tae Yang, yea!), more samples from beauty stores, a key chain, and some other stuff. I also made her a kick ass Big Bang Christmas card that took way longer than necessary to make, but was tones of fun. A lot of the stuff was free or very cheap, but I wrapped everything individually in a Korean Buy and Sell and gave it to her in a Lotte Mart grocery bag. Unfortunately, I couldn’t be at the party to deliver it in person because I had to hang out with my lame family, but I hear she thought it was pretty nifty.
At lunch time the family came over to my place. There were seven people in my apartment including me. That is way to many at one time. They all came in and started taking off their shoes and coats in my tiny tiny apartment. I thought they were going to drop of the suitcase of things I love and that would immediately go for lunch. I didn’t think they would want to hang out. Of course they wanted to explore my apartment. My closet-sized apartment. (Things I hoped they noticed: the two free condoms I got at Rubber Seoul, the two packs of cigarettes, the dirty haiku on the fridge, and the picture of de Beauvoir, Sartre, and their harem that I drew and hung on the wall.) They brought me a suitcase full of delicious and useful things. I’m not sure what I was most excited about Grandma’s chocolate peanut butter chip cookies or the nailbrushes from Lee Valley. Delicious vs. clean nails: super tough call. Anyway, there were also books (!!!) and chocolate, and tea, and raisins, and banana bread, and pepenate (pepper nuts for the Englishmen, a Christmas treat I claim to not care for, but it was the first thing I finished off, they were from Auntie Eddie and they were delicious), and big candy canes, and oatmeal, and granola. It was a treasure chest of all my favourite things. And there was snowman poop from my cousin Jackie. And the bag contained a present from Bryan’s mom, Rose, nice smelling lotion and body wash and a calendar from Katie H. A calendar of hot pin-up girls, I love pin-up girls, especially hot ones. After enough ogling and many expressions of how adorable my apartment is we finally left for lunch.
I tried to take them to a restaurant that I had been at a few weeks ago for Wednesday night madness, but it was closed. So I had to take them to the expensive place by the school. It is super delicious and very comfortable. We had samgupsal, which everybody loved. It is a fun meal to eat and it is a tasty delight. I wanted to get something really Korean for their first full meal here. This place is perfect because you have to cook the pork yourself over hot coals they bring to the table. Of course, the servers and the manager actually did all the cooking for us foreigners. They don’t trust our BBQ skills.
After lunch, I showed them the school. It is not really impressive but they were all impressed by it. We met Tasha and one of the part time teachers coming in, a part time teacher whose name I didn’t know. Which lead to a super awkward introduction, There was no way around the fact that I did not know her name. Apparently her name is Cindy (and she is totally a babe, by the way and she frequently gives me sweets. I like her I just didn’t know her name.). Anyway, Tasha and Sunny fawned over my brother again. They were both very excited that I had brought him around a second time. Seriously, it was as if a celebrity were visiting the office. They are silly.
Tasha is going through a Twilight phase right now, she has seen the movie three times and has read almost the entire series in less then two weeks. She ordered the books in English but couldn’t wait for them to arrive started reading the Korean versions. Alas, the newest one, Breaking Dawn (?) hasn’t been translated yet, so when she finishes Eclipse (which will happen today) she will have to wait for her English set to arrive before she can finish the series. She is in love with Edward, both the character in the book and the actor who plays him in the movie.
After they left, I bought out the Christmas treats that I had brought along and proceeded to make mounds of photocopies to give to my students. Christmas activities, that is, things to fill up the time that requires as little effort as possible from me. In English classes is OK to use the words Christmas and to learn about Christmas because it is all in English and everything contributes to a students vocabulary. So let’s use the words manger and Jesus next to Santa Claus and tree and present and joy and noel. I made one of my classes read this super lame Christmas story about Absalom the Reindeer Elf, it was way to advanced and they had no idea what was happening, furthermore, it's not even a good or well written story, but we pushed through until the end. Most of my classes did Christmas crosswords and word searchers and some word scrambles, but for the word scrambles I had to write the words on the board. They didn’t know most of the words. Jaemin and I made snowman paper dolls. I taught him the words toque, scarf, hat, tie, vest, and mitten. I gave him some Candy Canes and a some chocolate. He’s my favourite so only the best and most for Jaemin.
The next class I have on Wednesday's if full of little douche bags. They didn’t get Christmas activities because they still had work to do. I only gave candy canes to the two girls who were actually doing the dinosaur quiz that I made, the really easy dinosaur quiz that if anybody had even tried to do they would have easily finished and then could have done Christmas activities and everybody would have received a candy cane, but they are all douche bags and didn’t get anything. Seriously, a class of nine-year old douche bags. The last two classes of my day are two of my favourites. We are reading stupid lame versions of Black Beauty and The Lost World, but the classes are mostly well behaved and they liked the Candy Canes. Although, many of the kids were pissed that their candy canes were broken. How could one possible transport candy canes across an ocean without having some, if not all, of them break? I gave both of those classes a really lame word search, they are all too old for word searches, expecting that they would sit around and talk, but the Black Beauty class actually worked on it. However, The Lost World class (which also happens to contain one of my favourite students, John) did what I expected. Lisa and Julie flirted with John and everybody laughed a lot. There are only four students in the class. I like it because when Lisa reads she sounds like she has peanut butter in her mouth and Julie seems kind of badass and John speaks better English than some of the teachers, and Carly is quiet and doesn’t bother anybody. They don’t always listen as much as I would like, but I don’t blame them for not being interested in the boring and racist book. I haven’t read the original, but in this version, the “Indians” and the white dudes kill off all of the ape-men (all of them!!) the entire civilization and this is treated as a good thing. I was appalled. I tried to convey this to my students; it didn't really translate.
In talking to this class, I discovered that some of the students, although they don’t have to attend Kang Tae Woo on Christmas day, did have to attend some of their other hagwons on Christmas day. The Horror. They actually never get a break.
After school, I headed out to Insadong to meet my family. We had made plans to go to Seoul Tower and then out for supper. However, nobody expect for me had eaten since lunch and they were all super hungry and wanted Pizza fucking Hut and they wanted it now. Unfortunately, Pizza Hut was closing, as was Mr. Pizza (Made for Women, Love for Women) so we ended up an “Italian” restaurant that was full of couples on dates.
This was to become the theme of Christmas, couples. Suddenly Seoul was full of couples, only couples everywhere, all over the place. I guess Christmas is more of couples holiday than an family holiday. It’s like Santa pukes couples instead of delivers presents. It’s awful when your boyfriend is literally on the other side of the world. And Korean couples seem to be particularly affectionate, always touching and holding hands, hugging and stroking each other’s hair. These kinds of things are supposed to make me feel it because it’s disgusting, but instead they make me jealous, super, super jealous.
After supper it was pretty late and we all headed back to the hotel. Laura had helped me get a room at the hostel beside the hotel, Banana Back packers, I wasn’t sleepy and I knew that my book wouldn’t last an evening of reading, furthermore the subways were still running, which meant that the hostel wouldn’t be worth it if I went to bed right away. So I insisted that some more fun be had. Jamie and Laura were both tired, but Trav and Toban agreed to more fun. We headed over the area around the Jonggak subway station. there are tones of bars and hofs in the area around this subway station. It is super busy and there are no tourists. This is literally across the street from Insadong-gil, the main tourist destination in the city. Trav, Laura, and I had been there a few nights before, to be discussed in a later post. We wandered around a bit more and finally decided on the 70’s Radio Bar. There was a hof on the third floor and a bar on the fifth. We were not hungry and wanted the bar. However, it seems that we arrived on the third floor and sat down before we realized our mistake. Of course the cheapest thing on the menu was a fruit platter. The fruit and beer combination is starting to grow on me. We only stuck around for one beer each. Trav and Toban took full advantage of being able to smoke indoors.
Back at the Banana Backpackers, I found myself in a dark dorm room, one bed occupied by it’s sleeping occupant and the rest looked slept in even if there was nobody currently sleeping in them. They all actually looked like somebody had staked a claim, but there was supposed to be at least one for me. Earlier, when I had brought my bag to the room, I had asked a girl which one was empty, she vaguely pointed to one of the beds, but it could have been a couple of different beds. I just put down my bag and hoped to find out more information later. Later had arrived and I was even more unsure than before. So I finally just picked a bed, and hoped the former resident was either a chill hippy or gone. Anxious visions of a drunken girl coming back from Hongdae and trying to crawl into the top bunk with me kept me awake most of the night. Not that drunk babe would necessarily be a bad thing; I was more concerned about the angry kind of drunk girl. I slept real bad and was reliaved to finally get up in the morning....
Christmas Eve...
On the morning of Christmas Eve, I had to buy a couple of things for Sally’s Christmas present and for Amber’s secret Santa gift. I just bought Sally some coffee from the Lotte Department Store (I had already bought her a Joo Ji-Hoon calendar in Insadong, he’s a babe). I always felt classy shopping at the Bay downtown in Winnipeg. The Bay Downtown has nothing on any Lotte Department store. It took me a while to find the coffee section (I think there might be more than one) and then when I did, as soon as I appeared to be interested in coffee one of the employee’s was all over me. She showed me a sale that they were having and then she shoved some coffee beans under my nose. I took her up on the sale and decided to keep one pack for my self, now I have buy to coffee maker, at least a French Press. She also gave me two samples, one of which I put in Amber’s gift. But the lady put the coffee in a nice bag and smiled a lot, just walking around the store makes me feel classy, all the products are super high end and expensive. They carry all the big labels. I hope the coffee is good.
After the classy classy department store, I went to the Korean version of a dollar store and bought a few more random things for Amber and some chocolate for the teachers. I wanted to bring chocolate, fruit, and nuts for the teachers. In the end I didn’t go through with the fruit, but I could chocolate and some almonds to share. I ended up eating most of it. Unlike at home, chocolate at the dollar store here is not expired or old. It is just fine and fresh and delicious.
The gift I got for Amber was either awful or awesome. I think Amber will think it was awesome, I would love to get such a gift and I think she would agree. I just bought her a bunch of random things. The gift had a 30,000 won limit and seeing as I bought most of the things at the dollar store and in markets, it was actually pretty tough to meet that limit. I had a bag full of presents and I still don’t think I hit it. I gave her a couple of funny notebooks, some Band-Aids, some tissue (with some awesome English on the package), coffee samples, sparkly pink shower sandals, nail polish, samples from the beauty stores, two of my books that I had already read, a lot of chocolate, Big Bang socks (Tae Yang, yea!), more samples from beauty stores, a key chain, and some other stuff. I also made her a kick ass Big Bang Christmas card that took way longer than necessary to make, but was tones of fun. A lot of the stuff was free or very cheap, but I wrapped everything individually in a Korean Buy and Sell and gave it to her in a Lotte Mart grocery bag. Unfortunately, I couldn’t be at the party to deliver it in person because I had to hang out with my lame family, but I hear she thought it was pretty nifty.
At lunch time the family came over to my place. There were seven people in my apartment including me. That is way to many at one time. They all came in and started taking off their shoes and coats in my tiny tiny apartment. I thought they were going to drop of the suitcase of things I love and that would immediately go for lunch. I didn’t think they would want to hang out. Of course they wanted to explore my apartment. My closet-sized apartment. (Things I hoped they noticed: the two free condoms I got at Rubber Seoul, the two packs of cigarettes, the dirty haiku on the fridge, and the picture of de Beauvoir, Sartre, and their harem that I drew and hung on the wall.) They brought me a suitcase full of delicious and useful things. I’m not sure what I was most excited about Grandma’s chocolate peanut butter chip cookies or the nailbrushes from Lee Valley. Delicious vs. clean nails: super tough call. Anyway, there were also books (!!!) and chocolate, and tea, and raisins, and banana bread, and pepenate (pepper nuts for the Englishmen, a Christmas treat I claim to not care for, but it was the first thing I finished off, they were from Auntie Eddie and they were delicious), and big candy canes, and oatmeal, and granola. It was a treasure chest of all my favourite things. And there was snowman poop from my cousin Jackie. And the bag contained a present from Bryan’s mom, Rose, nice smelling lotion and body wash and a calendar from Katie H. A calendar of hot pin-up girls, I love pin-up girls, especially hot ones. After enough ogling and many expressions of how adorable my apartment is we finally left for lunch.
I tried to take them to a restaurant that I had been at a few weeks ago for Wednesday night madness, but it was closed. So I had to take them to the expensive place by the school. It is super delicious and very comfortable. We had samgupsal, which everybody loved. It is a fun meal to eat and it is a tasty delight. I wanted to get something really Korean for their first full meal here. This place is perfect because you have to cook the pork yourself over hot coals they bring to the table. Of course, the servers and the manager actually did all the cooking for us foreigners. They don’t trust our BBQ skills.
After lunch, I showed them the school. It is not really impressive but they were all impressed by it. We met Tasha and one of the part time teachers coming in, a part time teacher whose name I didn’t know. Which lead to a super awkward introduction, There was no way around the fact that I did not know her name. Apparently her name is Cindy (and she is totally a babe, by the way and she frequently gives me sweets. I like her I just didn’t know her name.). Anyway, Tasha and Sunny fawned over my brother again. They were both very excited that I had brought him around a second time. Seriously, it was as if a celebrity were visiting the office. They are silly.
Tasha is going through a Twilight phase right now, she has seen the movie three times and has read almost the entire series in less then two weeks. She ordered the books in English but couldn’t wait for them to arrive started reading the Korean versions. Alas, the newest one, Breaking Dawn (?) hasn’t been translated yet, so when she finishes Eclipse (which will happen today) she will have to wait for her English set to arrive before she can finish the series. She is in love with Edward, both the character in the book and the actor who plays him in the movie.
After they left, I bought out the Christmas treats that I had brought along and proceeded to make mounds of photocopies to give to my students. Christmas activities, that is, things to fill up the time that requires as little effort as possible from me. In English classes is OK to use the words Christmas and to learn about Christmas because it is all in English and everything contributes to a students vocabulary. So let’s use the words manger and Jesus next to Santa Claus and tree and present and joy and noel. I made one of my classes read this super lame Christmas story about Absalom the Reindeer Elf, it was way to advanced and they had no idea what was happening, furthermore, it's not even a good or well written story, but we pushed through until the end. Most of my classes did Christmas crosswords and word searchers and some word scrambles, but for the word scrambles I had to write the words on the board. They didn’t know most of the words. Jaemin and I made snowman paper dolls. I taught him the words toque, scarf, hat, tie, vest, and mitten. I gave him some Candy Canes and a some chocolate. He’s my favourite so only the best and most for Jaemin.
The next class I have on Wednesday's if full of little douche bags. They didn’t get Christmas activities because they still had work to do. I only gave candy canes to the two girls who were actually doing the dinosaur quiz that I made, the really easy dinosaur quiz that if anybody had even tried to do they would have easily finished and then could have done Christmas activities and everybody would have received a candy cane, but they are all douche bags and didn’t get anything. Seriously, a class of nine-year old douche bags. The last two classes of my day are two of my favourites. We are reading stupid lame versions of Black Beauty and The Lost World, but the classes are mostly well behaved and they liked the Candy Canes. Although, many of the kids were pissed that their candy canes were broken. How could one possible transport candy canes across an ocean without having some, if not all, of them break? I gave both of those classes a really lame word search, they are all too old for word searches, expecting that they would sit around and talk, but the Black Beauty class actually worked on it. However, The Lost World class (which also happens to contain one of my favourite students, John) did what I expected. Lisa and Julie flirted with John and everybody laughed a lot. There are only four students in the class. I like it because when Lisa reads she sounds like she has peanut butter in her mouth and Julie seems kind of badass and John speaks better English than some of the teachers, and Carly is quiet and doesn’t bother anybody. They don’t always listen as much as I would like, but I don’t blame them for not being interested in the boring and racist book. I haven’t read the original, but in this version, the “Indians” and the white dudes kill off all of the ape-men (all of them!!) the entire civilization and this is treated as a good thing. I was appalled. I tried to convey this to my students; it didn't really translate.
In talking to this class, I discovered that some of the students, although they don’t have to attend Kang Tae Woo on Christmas day, did have to attend some of their other hagwons on Christmas day. The Horror. They actually never get a break.
After school, I headed out to Insadong to meet my family. We had made plans to go to Seoul Tower and then out for supper. However, nobody expect for me had eaten since lunch and they were all super hungry and wanted Pizza fucking Hut and they wanted it now. Unfortunately, Pizza Hut was closing, as was Mr. Pizza (Made for Women, Love for Women) so we ended up an “Italian” restaurant that was full of couples on dates.
This was to become the theme of Christmas, couples. Suddenly Seoul was full of couples, only couples everywhere, all over the place. I guess Christmas is more of couples holiday than an family holiday. It’s like Santa pukes couples instead of delivers presents. It’s awful when your boyfriend is literally on the other side of the world. And Korean couples seem to be particularly affectionate, always touching and holding hands, hugging and stroking each other’s hair. These kinds of things are supposed to make me feel it because it’s disgusting, but instead they make me jealous, super, super jealous.
After supper it was pretty late and we all headed back to the hotel. Laura had helped me get a room at the hostel beside the hotel, Banana Back packers, I wasn’t sleepy and I knew that my book wouldn’t last an evening of reading, furthermore the subways were still running, which meant that the hostel wouldn’t be worth it if I went to bed right away. So I insisted that some more fun be had. Jamie and Laura were both tired, but Trav and Toban agreed to more fun. We headed over the area around the Jonggak subway station. there are tones of bars and hofs in the area around this subway station. It is super busy and there are no tourists. This is literally across the street from Insadong-gil, the main tourist destination in the city. Trav, Laura, and I had been there a few nights before, to be discussed in a later post. We wandered around a bit more and finally decided on the 70’s Radio Bar. There was a hof on the third floor and a bar on the fifth. We were not hungry and wanted the bar. However, it seems that we arrived on the third floor and sat down before we realized our mistake. Of course the cheapest thing on the menu was a fruit platter. The fruit and beer combination is starting to grow on me. We only stuck around for one beer each. Trav and Toban took full advantage of being able to smoke indoors.
Back at the Banana Backpackers, I found myself in a dark dorm room, one bed occupied by it’s sleeping occupant and the rest looked slept in even if there was nobody currently sleeping in them. They all actually looked like somebody had staked a claim, but there was supposed to be at least one for me. Earlier, when I had brought my bag to the room, I had asked a girl which one was empty, she vaguely pointed to one of the beds, but it could have been a couple of different beds. I just put down my bag and hoped to find out more information later. Later had arrived and I was even more unsure than before. So I finally just picked a bed, and hoped the former resident was either a chill hippy or gone. Anxious visions of a drunken girl coming back from Hongdae and trying to crawl into the top bunk with me kept me awake most of the night. Not that drunk babe would necessarily be a bad thing; I was more concerned about the angry kind of drunk girl. I slept real bad and was reliaved to finally get up in the morning....
Friday, December 19, 2008
I'll Have What She's Having, Three of Them
On Wednesday, Jaemin’s outfit was all repeats expect for his shoes. The kid has more shoes than I do. They were white Puma’s, three stripes of Velcro in three shades of green. They were very stylish, as usual.
I was looking forward to having Trav and Laura show up my school on Wednesday evening. I had no real plans for what to do with them, but I figured at least supper and we would see from there. On Wendesday morning, during my walk, after I just picked up glue (I accidentally left my glue out overnight with the lid off, oops, sorry Mr. Dress-up), my cell phone rang. I almost didn’t answer it when I saw that the caller was unknown. I have been getting a lot of telemarketers or something; they always start taking in Korean and I know immediately that it’s not someone I know. I tell them that I only speak English, they say some more stuff, I repeat that I only speak English, they sigh and hang-up. I sometimes get these calls a few time a day. It’s super annoying. Anyway, my phone rang and I assumed that it would just be another telemarketer, but I picked up anyway. It was JAMIE, I couldn’t believe it! She was calling me from Skype. She told me that Trav and Laura were delayed in Vancouver and wouldn’t arrive until late Wednesday evening. So I no longer had anything to look forward to that evening. I sent them a facebook message telling them to call me as soon as they arrived and we would hang out on Thursday morning.
On Wednesday evening, I worked on the Christmas card, watched Home Alone 2 and tried to get as much prep done as I could for my Thursday classes. I don’t have class until five on Thursdays, but all of my classes are in a row with no breaks, so I have to be fully prepared for everything. I tried to come up with Christmas activities for some of my kids to do and a Christmas lesson for my middle school speaking class. I wanted to have as much done as possible so that I could spend as much time as possible with Trav and Laura. I was up until 2:00 trying to accomplish everything.
Laura called at about 12:00 to say that they had arrived and were heading to their hotel. We made plans for me to meet them at 9:00 and I would bring them breakfast. I woke up 7:30 so that I could pick up things for breakfast and still get to them on time. I didn’t get out of my apartment until after 8:00 and then discovered that Lotte, the grocery store, was closed. So I had to alter my breakfast plan, which meant three stops to finally get everything I needed. I went to Tour Les Jours first. Unlike bakeries in Canada where all the product for the day is put out shortly after open, bakeries here have much of their stuff delivered and it doesn’t get delivered until later so the selection was very small. I ended up with a loaf of bread that was kind of like croissant, it was really delicious but not quite what I had in mind. Then I stopped at a convenience store for Juice for everybody, I left with orange juice and chocolate milk (I remembered at the last moment that Laura doesn’t really like orange juice, but the she, and everybody else, really likes chocolate milk). The store didn’t have any good yogurts nor did it have anything cereal related. So I had to stop again at a 7eleven. There I got yogurt and cereal bars and an espresso drink for me from the heated refrigerators.
By the time I got on the subway, it was already 8:37 according to my cell phone. I knew the subway ride would take at least 45 minuets, making me a very late girl. At that point there was nothing I could do but relax and pass the time reading my book. I am currently reading War and Peace, but it is far to big to haul around, never mind subway read, so I my carry on book is The City of Ladies, which I am enjoying far more than I expected.
I finally got to the hotel, not even too late, I guess the Subway is bit faster in the morning because the trains come more often. I walked up to the hotel and say Trav’s reflection in the window and then heard Laura say “I can see her reflection!” and suddenly there they were, we hugged and laughed. Back in their hotel room, we ate breakfast and the gave me Bryan’s Christmas present, the first part anyway, I am still waiting for the second part. He got me season one of She-Ra: Princess of Power. Yes, it is random, and yes, it is awesome.
After breakfast, we headed out and walked around Insadong for a while, seeing some of the sights of Seoul, at least the sights of Insadong. We walked around palaces and parks, saw a Buddhist temple that was pretty rad. We stopped for coffee before heading out on the Subway back to my end of town. I helped them buy T-Money cards first. We walked back to my apartment from the subway stop and on the way past the restaurant I was kind of thinking of taking them to. As we passed it, Laura commented on the dumplings that were on display outside of the restaurant, she thought they looked good, which sealed the deal. After I changed and got my school stuff we head back to the restaurant.
It was a floor seating only joint, the novelty of the floor seating wears off real quick, legs start to fall asleep and joints become sore and backs start to ache, but this was only going to be a short meal. So we went in. The menu was only the wall and only in Korean, so I quickly glanced around to see what people were eating. There was only one customer and what she had looked good. When the server came by I quickly pointed at what the lady was eating and held up three fingers. About 10 minuets later we were eating mandu duk guk. That is a dumping soup with this little rice cake noodle things. The mandu is like dumpling, I’m not sure what exactly what the filling is made of, but this mandu had kimchi in it. Also, the meal came with two types of kimchi, which Trav actually liked and Laura didn’t mind. The cook also brought us regular mandu to try and gave us some of the pickeled radish that I love so much. The whole meal only cost 12,000 won, that likes 12 bucks. Twelve dollars for all of us to eat and none of us finished our meals because they were too big. I love Korea.
After lunch we still had time before I needed to be at school, so we went back to my very messy apartment for instant coffee. It was nice. They came with me to school because they wanted to see where I work and meet some of my co-workers. We walked into the school (it is very unimpressive looking at first) and ran in to Julia in the hallway on her way to the bathroom. Once inside the school we ran into Mr. Lim who was very surprised but very happy to meet them. Then I took them into the teacher’s room. Tasha had just finished lunch an was very embarrassed to be caught without her teeth brushed and Sunny as usually smiled a lot and said little. Both Tasha and Sunny acted a little strange, but I didn’t think anything of it. Trav and Laura only stayed a moment, I gave them directions back to the subway and we made plans to hangout on Friday night.
As soon as they left the room, Tasha and Sunny both rounded on me. Tasha demanded to know why I had failed to mention that, in her words, my brother was so hot. Sunny had similar comments. They went on for like that for the rest of the day. I thought they would think Trav was a little dirty, but no, apparently they like that. They liked his “hippy style” and when I told them that he was drummer in a rock back, they just about died. It was super funny. I had to remind them that he is married and so are they.
It was so good to hang out with my Trav and Laura and I am looking forward to hanging out with them again tonight. I was a little nervous about having to the one who is in charge and has experience here, because I am never in charge. I have never even ordered for myself at a Korean restaurant, I always go with either Sally or Koreans who order for me. I have never had to direct a cab driver to my apartment and I have only bought waffle fish from street vendors, never anything more complicated than that. But I hope that having my family out here and depending on me a little bit will make me a little bolder. As least Trav and Laura thought it will make me a little bolder. Anyway, I’m late for school.
Dee
December 19, 2008
I was looking forward to having Trav and Laura show up my school on Wednesday evening. I had no real plans for what to do with them, but I figured at least supper and we would see from there. On Wendesday morning, during my walk, after I just picked up glue (I accidentally left my glue out overnight with the lid off, oops, sorry Mr. Dress-up), my cell phone rang. I almost didn’t answer it when I saw that the caller was unknown. I have been getting a lot of telemarketers or something; they always start taking in Korean and I know immediately that it’s not someone I know. I tell them that I only speak English, they say some more stuff, I repeat that I only speak English, they sigh and hang-up. I sometimes get these calls a few time a day. It’s super annoying. Anyway, my phone rang and I assumed that it would just be another telemarketer, but I picked up anyway. It was JAMIE, I couldn’t believe it! She was calling me from Skype. She told me that Trav and Laura were delayed in Vancouver and wouldn’t arrive until late Wednesday evening. So I no longer had anything to look forward to that evening. I sent them a facebook message telling them to call me as soon as they arrived and we would hang out on Thursday morning.
On Wednesday evening, I worked on the Christmas card, watched Home Alone 2 and tried to get as much prep done as I could for my Thursday classes. I don’t have class until five on Thursdays, but all of my classes are in a row with no breaks, so I have to be fully prepared for everything. I tried to come up with Christmas activities for some of my kids to do and a Christmas lesson for my middle school speaking class. I wanted to have as much done as possible so that I could spend as much time as possible with Trav and Laura. I was up until 2:00 trying to accomplish everything.
Laura called at about 12:00 to say that they had arrived and were heading to their hotel. We made plans for me to meet them at 9:00 and I would bring them breakfast. I woke up 7:30 so that I could pick up things for breakfast and still get to them on time. I didn’t get out of my apartment until after 8:00 and then discovered that Lotte, the grocery store, was closed. So I had to alter my breakfast plan, which meant three stops to finally get everything I needed. I went to Tour Les Jours first. Unlike bakeries in Canada where all the product for the day is put out shortly after open, bakeries here have much of their stuff delivered and it doesn’t get delivered until later so the selection was very small. I ended up with a loaf of bread that was kind of like croissant, it was really delicious but not quite what I had in mind. Then I stopped at a convenience store for Juice for everybody, I left with orange juice and chocolate milk (I remembered at the last moment that Laura doesn’t really like orange juice, but the she, and everybody else, really likes chocolate milk). The store didn’t have any good yogurts nor did it have anything cereal related. So I had to stop again at a 7eleven. There I got yogurt and cereal bars and an espresso drink for me from the heated refrigerators.
By the time I got on the subway, it was already 8:37 according to my cell phone. I knew the subway ride would take at least 45 minuets, making me a very late girl. At that point there was nothing I could do but relax and pass the time reading my book. I am currently reading War and Peace, but it is far to big to haul around, never mind subway read, so I my carry on book is The City of Ladies, which I am enjoying far more than I expected.
I finally got to the hotel, not even too late, I guess the Subway is bit faster in the morning because the trains come more often. I walked up to the hotel and say Trav’s reflection in the window and then heard Laura say “I can see her reflection!” and suddenly there they were, we hugged and laughed. Back in their hotel room, we ate breakfast and the gave me Bryan’s Christmas present, the first part anyway, I am still waiting for the second part. He got me season one of She-Ra: Princess of Power. Yes, it is random, and yes, it is awesome.
After breakfast, we headed out and walked around Insadong for a while, seeing some of the sights of Seoul, at least the sights of Insadong. We walked around palaces and parks, saw a Buddhist temple that was pretty rad. We stopped for coffee before heading out on the Subway back to my end of town. I helped them buy T-Money cards first. We walked back to my apartment from the subway stop and on the way past the restaurant I was kind of thinking of taking them to. As we passed it, Laura commented on the dumplings that were on display outside of the restaurant, she thought they looked good, which sealed the deal. After I changed and got my school stuff we head back to the restaurant.
It was a floor seating only joint, the novelty of the floor seating wears off real quick, legs start to fall asleep and joints become sore and backs start to ache, but this was only going to be a short meal. So we went in. The menu was only the wall and only in Korean, so I quickly glanced around to see what people were eating. There was only one customer and what she had looked good. When the server came by I quickly pointed at what the lady was eating and held up three fingers. About 10 minuets later we were eating mandu duk guk. That is a dumping soup with this little rice cake noodle things. The mandu is like dumpling, I’m not sure what exactly what the filling is made of, but this mandu had kimchi in it. Also, the meal came with two types of kimchi, which Trav actually liked and Laura didn’t mind. The cook also brought us regular mandu to try and gave us some of the pickeled radish that I love so much. The whole meal only cost 12,000 won, that likes 12 bucks. Twelve dollars for all of us to eat and none of us finished our meals because they were too big. I love Korea.
After lunch we still had time before I needed to be at school, so we went back to my very messy apartment for instant coffee. It was nice. They came with me to school because they wanted to see where I work and meet some of my co-workers. We walked into the school (it is very unimpressive looking at first) and ran in to Julia in the hallway on her way to the bathroom. Once inside the school we ran into Mr. Lim who was very surprised but very happy to meet them. Then I took them into the teacher’s room. Tasha had just finished lunch an was very embarrassed to be caught without her teeth brushed and Sunny as usually smiled a lot and said little. Both Tasha and Sunny acted a little strange, but I didn’t think anything of it. Trav and Laura only stayed a moment, I gave them directions back to the subway and we made plans to hangout on Friday night.
As soon as they left the room, Tasha and Sunny both rounded on me. Tasha demanded to know why I had failed to mention that, in her words, my brother was so hot. Sunny had similar comments. They went on for like that for the rest of the day. I thought they would think Trav was a little dirty, but no, apparently they like that. They liked his “hippy style” and when I told them that he was drummer in a rock back, they just about died. It was super funny. I had to remind them that he is married and so are they.
It was so good to hang out with my Trav and Laura and I am looking forward to hanging out with them again tonight. I was a little nervous about having to the one who is in charge and has experience here, because I am never in charge. I have never even ordered for myself at a Korean restaurant, I always go with either Sally or Koreans who order for me. I have never had to direct a cab driver to my apartment and I have only bought waffle fish from street vendors, never anything more complicated than that. But I hope that having my family out here and depending on me a little bit will make me a little bolder. As least Trav and Laura thought it will make me a little bolder. Anyway, I’m late for school.
Dee
December 19, 2008
Wednesday, December 17, 2008
If I Title My Blog "BIG BANG", Will My Blog Come Up when People Google Big Bang?
I had a great plan for Monday evening to watch a Christmas movie and make Christmas cards. Christmas in Korea is not a huge event, although there are definitely hints of it here and there, it is not nearly the massive psychotic stupid over indulgence that one experiences in North America. It is excited to see a Christmas tree, some areas of Seoul are decorated in the Christmas Spirit, but around Ssangmun, it would be difficult to tell if you were in mid November or mid December; the weather is the same. Anyway, before this turns into a big “I hate the consumerism of Christmas but never fail to participate” rant. I shall continue with my story. I wanted to feel a little Christmassy and thought the best way to do that would be to watch a Christmas movie while I make cards with a the art supplies I bought earlier in the day.
Unfortunately, all the streaming sights conspired against me and I was unable to find Elf, Home Alone, or Home Alone 2. Everything was either blocked in my region (I’ll block your region if I don’t get to watch any Christmas movies), or the trusty sights wouldn’t load. Everything decided to stop working at once.
I spent so much time trying to find a place to watch Home Alone that I only barely started one card. It is gonna be an awesome card though. The people that I hang out with here, I guess I could call them friends, but is seems to early for that, picked secret Santa’s and I am making a card for mine (to go with the present). It is going to be a Big Bang themed card. I even bought a teen mag that featured Big Bang to cut out pictures. I am pretty pumped about it. Also, I read Big Bang’s Wiki entry today, and I highly recommend it to everybody. It is clearly written a handful of adoring ESL girls and is pretty damn funny.
Instead of watching Christmas movies, I decided to listen to Christmas music, but the only Christmas album I have is Sufjan Steven’s Album Hark! Songs for Christmas. A good album to be sure, but it is also the only Christmas album that hipsters can feel good about listening too. It’s an essential part of the Hipster Christmas; I have heard this album a lot. Another problem with Sufjan is that he is so nice and pleasant to listen to that when the album is over you just want to continue listening to something equally pleasant and generally just end up listening to more Sufjan. He starts to become a little repetitive after a while. Anyway, I choose Patrick Watson to follow up Sufjan. This album reminds me of Raeanne. She would always put it in when we were studying on the main floor, studying during breaks between Nintendo games. Now that makes me think of Christmas, the cramming at the beginning of December.
I have been feeling a little under the weather, a little sick. Being sick makes me crave tea and toast. Black tea with milk and sugar and toast lightly buttered to be specific. By black tea, I mean not green tea or herb infusions. Now, let’s all go on a scavenger hunt for black tea in Korea, black tea in the land of tea, black tea that doesn’t cost a million dollars a bag. I did finally find some Yellow Label tea, which brings me back to Guatemala where I drank Yellow Label by the bucket load. But before I found the Yellow Label, I was pretty desperate, I went to the one place I knew I would be able to find a cup of Earl Grey tea (not all the coffee shops have tea, in fact lots don’t even have coffee, just espresso, you have order an Americano if you just want a cup of coffee). I paid a lot for one cup of earl grey tea. It was worth it. I added milk and sugar and drank it with delight and with a green tea and cranberry scone, heated up with some butter. Although, I didn’t actually use the butter, but I put it in my pocket on the way out, along with the jam. I’m saving it for toast.
On Monday, Jaemin was wearing the most kick ass shoes. Black Puma high tops with a shiny black strip on the side. They had pink laces and pink polka dots there was a Velcro strop over the top part of the laces. They were super awesome. He was also wearing the tan skinny pants again, this time with a grey sweatshirt (very hipster). Over top of the sweatshirt he was wearing a black “vintage” Adidas jacket: red stripes down the sleeves. Also, he wasn’t wearing it, but he had a black knitted toque with pompom on top. Jaemin is my style icon.
Unfortunately, all the streaming sights conspired against me and I was unable to find Elf, Home Alone, or Home Alone 2. Everything was either blocked in my region (I’ll block your region if I don’t get to watch any Christmas movies), or the trusty sights wouldn’t load. Everything decided to stop working at once.
I spent so much time trying to find a place to watch Home Alone that I only barely started one card. It is gonna be an awesome card though. The people that I hang out with here, I guess I could call them friends, but is seems to early for that, picked secret Santa’s and I am making a card for mine (to go with the present). It is going to be a Big Bang themed card. I even bought a teen mag that featured Big Bang to cut out pictures. I am pretty pumped about it. Also, I read Big Bang’s Wiki entry today, and I highly recommend it to everybody. It is clearly written a handful of adoring ESL girls and is pretty damn funny.
Instead of watching Christmas movies, I decided to listen to Christmas music, but the only Christmas album I have is Sufjan Steven’s Album Hark! Songs for Christmas. A good album to be sure, but it is also the only Christmas album that hipsters can feel good about listening too. It’s an essential part of the Hipster Christmas; I have heard this album a lot. Another problem with Sufjan is that he is so nice and pleasant to listen to that when the album is over you just want to continue listening to something equally pleasant and generally just end up listening to more Sufjan. He starts to become a little repetitive after a while. Anyway, I choose Patrick Watson to follow up Sufjan. This album reminds me of Raeanne. She would always put it in when we were studying on the main floor, studying during breaks between Nintendo games. Now that makes me think of Christmas, the cramming at the beginning of December.
I have been feeling a little under the weather, a little sick. Being sick makes me crave tea and toast. Black tea with milk and sugar and toast lightly buttered to be specific. By black tea, I mean not green tea or herb infusions. Now, let’s all go on a scavenger hunt for black tea in Korea, black tea in the land of tea, black tea that doesn’t cost a million dollars a bag. I did finally find some Yellow Label tea, which brings me back to Guatemala where I drank Yellow Label by the bucket load. But before I found the Yellow Label, I was pretty desperate, I went to the one place I knew I would be able to find a cup of Earl Grey tea (not all the coffee shops have tea, in fact lots don’t even have coffee, just espresso, you have order an Americano if you just want a cup of coffee). I paid a lot for one cup of earl grey tea. It was worth it. I added milk and sugar and drank it with delight and with a green tea and cranberry scone, heated up with some butter. Although, I didn’t actually use the butter, but I put it in my pocket on the way out, along with the jam. I’m saving it for toast.
On Monday, Jaemin was wearing the most kick ass shoes. Black Puma high tops with a shiny black strip on the side. They had pink laces and pink polka dots there was a Velcro strop over the top part of the laces. They were super awesome. He was also wearing the tan skinny pants again, this time with a grey sweatshirt (very hipster). Over top of the sweatshirt he was wearing a black “vintage” Adidas jacket: red stripes down the sleeves. Also, he wasn’t wearing it, but he had a black knitted toque with pompom on top. Jaemin is my style icon.
Sunday, December 14, 2008
“And that’s how Patou ties his shoes!”
Sally and I were riding the subway today and a lady sitting across from us took off her shoe, obviously uncomfortable for some reason. Sally leaned over and whispered that she had a bunion. I have no idea what a bunion is but I know that Patou had loads of them so he had to wear shoes. He just didn’t know how to tie them, so Edmund was trying to teach him. A dog wearing shoes, a kitten that used to be boy, a murderous owl wearing a monocle, a hussy hen, and a cock that wants to be Elvis, what a silly film. Stay away, you big old bad old rain cloud. (I just googled it to find out the correct spelling of Patou. Did you know that Christopher Plummer was the voice of the Grand Duke?!?)
I am currently listening to Band of Horses, which makes me think of Bryan. He hates Band of Horses. But he likes Fleet Foxes and My Morning Jacket. You don’t fool me Bryan, you don’t fool me. I just finished watching Penelope online, making me want to listen to Band of Horses. Although they are not on the sound track, one of their songs was used in a trailer. Watching the movie made me think of the trailer; the trailer was really good.
On Friday Jaemin was wearing the slim fit jeans again and the puma sneakers, a green strip on the side, very stylish. He was also wearing a three button collared shirt, navy blue with tiny white spots. His jacket was light blue with dark blue corduroy on the cuffs, the hood, the zipper, and on the detail over the shoulders. Metal snaps to hide the zipper. Have I mentioned previously that he has a Little Prince pencil case? The Little Prince is huge here. In Nowan there are various figures etched in the sidewalk down one popular street. One of the figures is the Little Prince and another is the picture that could be a snake eating an elephant or a hat. Today in Dongdaemun, I bought a long metal necklace with a Little Prince pendant. I don’t generally wear jewelry, but I might actually wear this. It’s pretty rad. It rests nicely on my bosom.
School felt strange this week. All the classes seemed smaller; all my least favourite students didn’t show up, only one class was full of the regular douche bags. I came up with activities that the kids actually enjoyed, like making them draw pictures of dinosaurs and what the bird saw on the other side of the hill. All the of the kids were well behaved, a couple even gave me stuff like chocolate and donuts. Two of my most frustrating classes behaved perfectly. It was strange.
Also, the teachers were giving stuff away left and right. I got some crackers, some chocolate, some delicious wafer things. It was great. I had to buy those crackers; they were really good. I have taken to pilfering as much Mocha Gold as I can from school and this week there wasn’t much to steal, but suddenly on Friday, there was a whole bunch in teachers’ room. I stashed a bunch in my desk and grabbed one for my pocket as I headed out after my last class. Mocha Gold makes the coffee snobs shiver, but I love it. Prepackaged “mocha coffee”, with the sugar and the whitener already added. It is kind of disgusting and too much gives me a stomachache, but I like to drink it at school and sometimes at home, especially when accompanied by a waffle fish or an apple dusted in cinnamon.
I went to see Australia with Sally and the Nowan kids (Sarah, Carolyn, and Ryan. Actually Amber would be considered a Nowan kid too, but she was busy) on Friday. It’s a pretty terrible film and I do not recommend it. On Saturday, I took a long walk and then headed into Insadong to find the hotel at which my dear family will be staying during their time here. I wanted to make sure I new for sure how to get there. I failed when I tired to find it on Wednesday. It seems that I just needed to go down the street that looks like a back alley: narrow and sidewalkless, squished between a brick wall and another brick wall. It actually wasn’t hard to find, I just didn’t read the as carefully as I ought to have. It looks like a decent place and it is super close to Insadong-gil and a number of the palaces.
After I found the hotel I walked down Insadong-gil and suddenly felt very lonely and a little bummed out. It was very busy, full of tourists and couples. There was once a time in my life when couples grossed me out. Now couples make me feel lonely and make me miss Bryan. I see couples hanging out and being coupley and I think, I wish I had that! And then I realize that I do have that, I just left in Canada, stupid girl. I’m ok, I just had a moment. Anyway, I was hungry but felt silly trying to eat street food by myself, which made me more bummed. I feel like I’m missing out on something important by not being willing to make a fool of myself by trying to buy stuff from street vendors when alone.
Eventually, after walking around for a bit, I found a coffee shop that was kind of out of the way and had a coffee and muffin, alone in a coffee shop full of Koreans in groups. I was the only lone person. Bummed, lonely, and completely lacking in self-esteem, I went to the only place that I knew would make me feel better. Bandi and Luni’s, the bookstore. Like I have mentioned before, their English literature section is decent. It is still very big though. I spent a lot of time combing through literature and through their classics section. Again feeling bummed by the number of people there with other people. Damn it! Anyway, I left with Stardust and Crime and Punishment. Sometimes you just need fluff and sometimes you need Dostoyevsky. While I was in the bookstore, Sally called and asked if I wanted to see Tropic Thunder. I quickly agreed and headed home.
In the subway station, I stood waiting for the subway, nearly in tears I felt so bad, and then I got off at the wrong place for the transfer and had to do the humiliated walk around a pole and hope that no one notices I’m getting back on the train I just go off. Then when I finally got to Ssangmun, I left through a different exit than I usually take and was all disoriented and walked down the street in the wrong direction and had to turn around in the middle of street. Like a crazy lost foreign person. I’m not crazy or lost just a little bummed which apparently turns me into a crazy lost person.
Sally and I walked to Nowan for the film. We ate Vietnamese noodles for supper, noodles that were super delicious. After Tropic Thunder, which I think is a very funny movie and this was the second time I have seen it, we walked back to Ssangmun. It’s long walk and it was pretty chilly, but still pleasant.
Sunday, we decided to check out the Dongdaemun Market between the Dongdaemun and the Dongdeamun Stadium subway stations. We didn’t really know exactly where it was besides that it was between the two subway stations. Being cold and Sunday, it wasn’t as hoping as I would have hopped, but it was still pretty cool and I got a tonne of Dalki things and some water colours, which I used to paint of picture of Dalki. Not all the shops were open and I cannot wait to go back with my family. On a Saturday when they are here. I think that would be lots of fun. Besides the market, there is also tonnes of other shopping around the area. It was packed around the subway stations, totally chocked with people. I find this less over whelming when I am with someone.
It was a pretty low-key weekend, which was nice. I’m going to be busy in the next couple of weeks because Trav and Laura arrive on Wednesday! And then the rest of the old folks arrive next Monday. In one week I’ll be with my entire family! Expect for Bryan. (Band of Horses just finished and now I am listening to Mum. I was going to listen to My Morning Jacket but got distracted on the way, “u” comes before “y”. How does this make you feel?)
Also, I finally got a charm for my cell phone. Taeyang of Big Bang now adorns my phone, making it just that much more awesome. I really wanted T.O.P. but he is clearly the most popular and was sold out. I would have taken G Dragon, but he is only cute in music videos. I like Taeyang too, he is kind of babe. If I find a Rain charm, I’m all over that. However, Dalki trumps everything, Dalki or one of her friends, which includes the guy with poop on his head. I think I saw a subway mini pass of that dude the other day. I might head back to Suyu with some cash tomorrow for no other reason than to find that dude.
Speaking of dudes, there is a guy that I often see riding around on a bicycle in Ssangmun; he is always in shorts and a t-shirt. I have seen him a few times. He rides on the road (which is super dangerous) and doesn’t really pay attention to the traffic rules (on a bicycle!) Today, during my walk, I saw him Suyu, again in shorts and a t-shirt. It was like -1 today, pretty cold to be riding a bike in shorts. He is a pretty curious fellow.
Dee
December 14, 2008
Taeyang on my cell phone
The little Prince. It know it's kind of blury.
All my Dalki themed art supplies.
Dalki in watercolours
Dalki in crayon (the kind that peel)
Space in pencil crayon. This is what I do when I am bored.
I am currently listening to Band of Horses, which makes me think of Bryan. He hates Band of Horses. But he likes Fleet Foxes and My Morning Jacket. You don’t fool me Bryan, you don’t fool me. I just finished watching Penelope online, making me want to listen to Band of Horses. Although they are not on the sound track, one of their songs was used in a trailer. Watching the movie made me think of the trailer; the trailer was really good.
On Friday Jaemin was wearing the slim fit jeans again and the puma sneakers, a green strip on the side, very stylish. He was also wearing a three button collared shirt, navy blue with tiny white spots. His jacket was light blue with dark blue corduroy on the cuffs, the hood, the zipper, and on the detail over the shoulders. Metal snaps to hide the zipper. Have I mentioned previously that he has a Little Prince pencil case? The Little Prince is huge here. In Nowan there are various figures etched in the sidewalk down one popular street. One of the figures is the Little Prince and another is the picture that could be a snake eating an elephant or a hat. Today in Dongdaemun, I bought a long metal necklace with a Little Prince pendant. I don’t generally wear jewelry, but I might actually wear this. It’s pretty rad. It rests nicely on my bosom.
School felt strange this week. All the classes seemed smaller; all my least favourite students didn’t show up, only one class was full of the regular douche bags. I came up with activities that the kids actually enjoyed, like making them draw pictures of dinosaurs and what the bird saw on the other side of the hill. All the of the kids were well behaved, a couple even gave me stuff like chocolate and donuts. Two of my most frustrating classes behaved perfectly. It was strange.
Also, the teachers were giving stuff away left and right. I got some crackers, some chocolate, some delicious wafer things. It was great. I had to buy those crackers; they were really good. I have taken to pilfering as much Mocha Gold as I can from school and this week there wasn’t much to steal, but suddenly on Friday, there was a whole bunch in teachers’ room. I stashed a bunch in my desk and grabbed one for my pocket as I headed out after my last class. Mocha Gold makes the coffee snobs shiver, but I love it. Prepackaged “mocha coffee”, with the sugar and the whitener already added. It is kind of disgusting and too much gives me a stomachache, but I like to drink it at school and sometimes at home, especially when accompanied by a waffle fish or an apple dusted in cinnamon.
I went to see Australia with Sally and the Nowan kids (Sarah, Carolyn, and Ryan. Actually Amber would be considered a Nowan kid too, but she was busy) on Friday. It’s a pretty terrible film and I do not recommend it. On Saturday, I took a long walk and then headed into Insadong to find the hotel at which my dear family will be staying during their time here. I wanted to make sure I new for sure how to get there. I failed when I tired to find it on Wednesday. It seems that I just needed to go down the street that looks like a back alley: narrow and sidewalkless, squished between a brick wall and another brick wall. It actually wasn’t hard to find, I just didn’t read the as carefully as I ought to have. It looks like a decent place and it is super close to Insadong-gil and a number of the palaces.
After I found the hotel I walked down Insadong-gil and suddenly felt very lonely and a little bummed out. It was very busy, full of tourists and couples. There was once a time in my life when couples grossed me out. Now couples make me feel lonely and make me miss Bryan. I see couples hanging out and being coupley and I think, I wish I had that! And then I realize that I do have that, I just left in Canada, stupid girl. I’m ok, I just had a moment. Anyway, I was hungry but felt silly trying to eat street food by myself, which made me more bummed. I feel like I’m missing out on something important by not being willing to make a fool of myself by trying to buy stuff from street vendors when alone.
Eventually, after walking around for a bit, I found a coffee shop that was kind of out of the way and had a coffee and muffin, alone in a coffee shop full of Koreans in groups. I was the only lone person. Bummed, lonely, and completely lacking in self-esteem, I went to the only place that I knew would make me feel better. Bandi and Luni’s, the bookstore. Like I have mentioned before, their English literature section is decent. It is still very big though. I spent a lot of time combing through literature and through their classics section. Again feeling bummed by the number of people there with other people. Damn it! Anyway, I left with Stardust and Crime and Punishment. Sometimes you just need fluff and sometimes you need Dostoyevsky. While I was in the bookstore, Sally called and asked if I wanted to see Tropic Thunder. I quickly agreed and headed home.
In the subway station, I stood waiting for the subway, nearly in tears I felt so bad, and then I got off at the wrong place for the transfer and had to do the humiliated walk around a pole and hope that no one notices I’m getting back on the train I just go off. Then when I finally got to Ssangmun, I left through a different exit than I usually take and was all disoriented and walked down the street in the wrong direction and had to turn around in the middle of street. Like a crazy lost foreign person. I’m not crazy or lost just a little bummed which apparently turns me into a crazy lost person.
Sally and I walked to Nowan for the film. We ate Vietnamese noodles for supper, noodles that were super delicious. After Tropic Thunder, which I think is a very funny movie and this was the second time I have seen it, we walked back to Ssangmun. It’s long walk and it was pretty chilly, but still pleasant.
Sunday, we decided to check out the Dongdaemun Market between the Dongdaemun and the Dongdeamun Stadium subway stations. We didn’t really know exactly where it was besides that it was between the two subway stations. Being cold and Sunday, it wasn’t as hoping as I would have hopped, but it was still pretty cool and I got a tonne of Dalki things and some water colours, which I used to paint of picture of Dalki. Not all the shops were open and I cannot wait to go back with my family. On a Saturday when they are here. I think that would be lots of fun. Besides the market, there is also tonnes of other shopping around the area. It was packed around the subway stations, totally chocked with people. I find this less over whelming when I am with someone.
It was a pretty low-key weekend, which was nice. I’m going to be busy in the next couple of weeks because Trav and Laura arrive on Wednesday! And then the rest of the old folks arrive next Monday. In one week I’ll be with my entire family! Expect for Bryan. (Band of Horses just finished and now I am listening to Mum. I was going to listen to My Morning Jacket but got distracted on the way, “u” comes before “y”. How does this make you feel?)
Also, I finally got a charm for my cell phone. Taeyang of Big Bang now adorns my phone, making it just that much more awesome. I really wanted T.O.P. but he is clearly the most popular and was sold out. I would have taken G Dragon, but he is only cute in music videos. I like Taeyang too, he is kind of babe. If I find a Rain charm, I’m all over that. However, Dalki trumps everything, Dalki or one of her friends, which includes the guy with poop on his head. I think I saw a subway mini pass of that dude the other day. I might head back to Suyu with some cash tomorrow for no other reason than to find that dude.
Speaking of dudes, there is a guy that I often see riding around on a bicycle in Ssangmun; he is always in shorts and a t-shirt. I have seen him a few times. He rides on the road (which is super dangerous) and doesn’t really pay attention to the traffic rules (on a bicycle!) Today, during my walk, I saw him Suyu, again in shorts and a t-shirt. It was like -1 today, pretty cold to be riding a bike in shorts. He is a pretty curious fellow.
Dee
December 14, 2008
Taeyang on my cell phone
The little Prince. It know it's kind of blury.
All my Dalki themed art supplies.
Dalki in watercolours
Dalki in crayon (the kind that peel)
Space in pencil crayon. This is what I do when I am bored.
Thursday, December 11, 2008
WWJD
I might just start a new blog called What Jaemin Wore or I will just change the name of this blog. He is far more interesting than me anyway. On Wednesday he was wearing tan skinny pants, light brown pointy shoes with skinny laces (like men’s dress shoes). On top he had a white cable knit sweater button up sweater. The buttons were big marble brown. Over top of the sweater, he was wearing a flannel black and red checked vest with metal snaps up the front. He also had a brown “trucker” hat with fake fur on the brim. I guess it was his hipster lumberjack day. And at the end of class he said, “see you next time teacher”. Broke my heart. On Friday I’m going to try to teach him “How are you?” and “I am fine/angry/tried/happy/sad...etc”. We’ll see how it goes.
On Wednesday evening a desire for bulgogi lead Sally, Director Lim, his girlfriend, Kim, Park (all the way out from wherever he works now), and I to a restaurant that doesn’t serve bulgogi. Getting that stuff is pretty difficult considering that it is everybody’s favourite food. If you even mention bulgogi, the eyes of most Koreans light up. But hardly any restaurants seem to serve it. Anyway, we settled for samgupsal. It was delicious, again, as usual. This time we had rice and soup with it too. In restaurants I have actually only eaten a few meals with rice. Everybody was all, I hope you like rice, but all the best meals don’t actually have rice unless you order it specifically on the side. Except the shabooshaboo, which is technically a Japanese dish (that I love).
A note on Lim and his lady friend. She works at a different KTW branch, and although there is no rule against it, they choose to mostly keep their relationship on the DL. I had never met her before Wednesday night. She is really cute and he is really cute when he is with her. He gets a little more manly, a little more take charge. It’s funny. Also funny is how at the end of the meal, as we stood to go, she grabbed the check and immediately handed it to him. I love that we all know who is paying for our meals. He’s the wonjongnim, the boss, so he is obviously going to pay.
After the meal, Lim and his lady left (he carrying her purse), Kim was tired so he took off too. Park took Sally and I out for a pint and fruit platter. I’m am going to leave this country thinking that beer and fruit are a actually a good combination and then in Canada get pissed off when I can’t find a fruit platter on the menu. The presentation is always lovely though. With everything cut and arranged all fancy and decorative paper cut outs on the edges. Also, the fruit is delicious and they don’t skimp on anything. This platter even had grapes (podo), grapes that are almost worth their weight in gold and apples (sagwa), which can also be quite expensive.
After a pint, we went for ice cream at the nearest convenience store. I had a frozen waffle fish with ice cream in the centre. Sub par to be sure, but I now harbour dreams of real fresh waffle fish, still warm, with a large dollop of ice cream and perhaps some chocolate sauce on top. This was just a pre-packaged manufactured variety. In Korean, the waffle fish are literally called fish bread. The word for bread is ppang or bbang; I don’t know the correct word for fish. I love them though. I really really do.
I am currently sitting at my kitchen table (I write that is if it is not also my bedroom, living room, dinning room, and entrance table as well) and I am trying to get an internet signal so that I can post this blog. Looking through the list of signals that my are floating around my head. One of them is named IloveJesus. Of course you need a password to access that signal, but I think that if you love really love Jesus you should share your Internet signal with me. That’s all I’m saying. WWJD. He would share with me and with all the little children of the world. Even the red and yellow ones, but not their adult parents, at least from what I understand.
I'll keep you posted on what Jaemin is wearing on Friday.
Less then a week until T-Fuck and Lolo!
Dee
December 11. 2008
On Wednesday evening a desire for bulgogi lead Sally, Director Lim, his girlfriend, Kim, Park (all the way out from wherever he works now), and I to a restaurant that doesn’t serve bulgogi. Getting that stuff is pretty difficult considering that it is everybody’s favourite food. If you even mention bulgogi, the eyes of most Koreans light up. But hardly any restaurants seem to serve it. Anyway, we settled for samgupsal. It was delicious, again, as usual. This time we had rice and soup with it too. In restaurants I have actually only eaten a few meals with rice. Everybody was all, I hope you like rice, but all the best meals don’t actually have rice unless you order it specifically on the side. Except the shabooshaboo, which is technically a Japanese dish (that I love).
A note on Lim and his lady friend. She works at a different KTW branch, and although there is no rule against it, they choose to mostly keep their relationship on the DL. I had never met her before Wednesday night. She is really cute and he is really cute when he is with her. He gets a little more manly, a little more take charge. It’s funny. Also funny is how at the end of the meal, as we stood to go, she grabbed the check and immediately handed it to him. I love that we all know who is paying for our meals. He’s the wonjongnim, the boss, so he is obviously going to pay.
After the meal, Lim and his lady left (he carrying her purse), Kim was tired so he took off too. Park took Sally and I out for a pint and fruit platter. I’m am going to leave this country thinking that beer and fruit are a actually a good combination and then in Canada get pissed off when I can’t find a fruit platter on the menu. The presentation is always lovely though. With everything cut and arranged all fancy and decorative paper cut outs on the edges. Also, the fruit is delicious and they don’t skimp on anything. This platter even had grapes (podo), grapes that are almost worth their weight in gold and apples (sagwa), which can also be quite expensive.
After a pint, we went for ice cream at the nearest convenience store. I had a frozen waffle fish with ice cream in the centre. Sub par to be sure, but I now harbour dreams of real fresh waffle fish, still warm, with a large dollop of ice cream and perhaps some chocolate sauce on top. This was just a pre-packaged manufactured variety. In Korean, the waffle fish are literally called fish bread. The word for bread is ppang or bbang; I don’t know the correct word for fish. I love them though. I really really do.
I am currently sitting at my kitchen table (I write that is if it is not also my bedroom, living room, dinning room, and entrance table as well) and I am trying to get an internet signal so that I can post this blog. Looking through the list of signals that my are floating around my head. One of them is named IloveJesus. Of course you need a password to access that signal, but I think that if you love really love Jesus you should share your Internet signal with me. That’s all I’m saying. WWJD. He would share with me and with all the little children of the world. Even the red and yellow ones, but not their adult parents, at least from what I understand.
I'll keep you posted on what Jaemin is wearing on Friday.
Less then a week until T-Fuck and Lolo!
Dee
December 11. 2008
Tuesday, December 9, 2008
Even the Children Have Better Style Than I Do
A near tragedy occurred last Monday (like two weeks ago by now): my favourite student, the parrot Sally (Yu Min) quit Kang Tae Woo. It seems as though her mother (rightly) assumed there was better ways to spend money on her daughter (unless she is being sent to a different hagwon: that would be upsetting to me). I was much saddened, although I must admit there was a moment of excitement at the thought of not having that class three times a week. However, just as Sally dropped out, a new student enrolled. Jaemin, and he is adorable. A young boy with unruly longish curly hair. A fur lined jacket, sweater vest with shiny shoes. He is a master of style and he is only (seven?) years old. He is really cute. His English is not too bad either. I was pretty worried, I had just kind of figured out Sally limits and now I have to start over again.
However, Jaemin has proved to be a most excellent student and an even better dresser. I would like to meet his mother. Today he was wearing a pink zip up hoodie that had light cuffs and a dark blue hood. Over the hoodie was a dark blue corduroy vest with a plaid lining and brown buttons. His jeans were dark blue with factory creasing around the shins and ankles, slim fit. He was wearing white Velcro Puma sneakers. He is also missing a couple of his front teeth. If there were one kid that I could take home, I would pick Jaemin. We are motoring through the Spell and Write book. I think he has finally understood that the period and question mark come at the end of a sentence and that a capital letter comes at the start of the sentence. Although I asked him how he was today and he said his name was Jaemin.
Learning about how to deal the students is sometimes tricky with some hits and misses.
Hit: word searches. I didn’t really have much faith; they are very boring. But Sally (the teacher) gave me a sample of one she had done. Using the stupid book I had to read with one class, I first made them find the word in the book by giving them sentences with a blank spot where the word belonged and a page number where they could find the word. They had to search through the book to find the word and then find it in the word search. It was amazing, one of my most feared and hated classes were quiet and intent for a 50 whole minuets. I did not have to scold one student for FIFTY MINUTES. It was amazing. That class usually hell (HELL!) and that day they were almost angelic.
Partial Hit: Hangman with a twist. I write whole phrases on the board. The students roll a dice and then guess a letter for every letter in the phrase they get as many points as the dice indicates. For example if they roll a 5 and the phrase has four “E’s” they get 20 points. I divided the classes into two teams. They like competition. Two of the classes with whom I tried it, loved it and got really into it, one class not so much but class is full of a bunch of douche bag kids.
Hit: connect four. I made a big grid on the whiteboard, filled it in with words. Again, I divided the class into two teams, X’s and O’s. During their turn they have to use on of the words on the board in a complete and correct sentence, if successful they get the square. They need to get four in a row for a point. This brought out some very interesting results. Like, discovering that some students have a lot of English in their brains that does not come in class: “This afternoon, I will go to the park”. WTF, that is better then I would have done. Also, the set up takes a long time and is interactive because I ask students for suggestions. I played this with my Tuesday speaking class, and we played the whole time. Sally gave me this game. Again, I was skeptical, but the kids really like it. It gives them a chance to be a bit creative. (I played with a couple of classes today and again, it took up a whole fifty minuets.)
Miss: any course work that I have to do. I have already ranted about the crappy curriculum that I am forced to teach. However, it does take away a lot of the pressure on me. If the course work sucks, its not my fault. And it is better then if I were to make up my own classes from scratch; that would be a disaster.
This week and last week, most of the middle school kids are preparing for testing that happens in real school. The hagwon helps out with the preparation. However, some of the kids have already finished their testing, depending on their age. So, I have to teach the kids that are already done. It is pretty easy to do, for two of the classes all I have to do is press play on CD player. Occasionally I torment them by forcing them to give me answers, one by one. I walk around the classroom and ask each student to tell me what they wrote. It is super boring, but I have been greatly amused by the CD, it is really lame. For the other class, I have to prepare a class based on a English newspaper that the Kang Tae Woo head office puts together full of “news” stories and “editorials”. The paper is full of mistakes and crappy writing in general.
I taught a class based on articles about a forum for international students to discuss how to make Seoul a better city for foreigners. This was actually the best and most teachable article in the paper. I lectured them on how these kinds are forums are more to make governments look good then to actually be of any use. I am positive that no one understood me. This class was difficult because I don’t think any of the obnoxious boys are cute. However, there is one geeky boy with ridiculously nice glasses that tries really hard and gets super embarrassed very time he talks to me. I really like him. I also like that in Korea even the geekiest of geeks have super styling glasses.
I find that in most classes, I have come to rely on a few select students to get me through the class and more or less ignore everybody else. I try to be inclusive, but when there are just two or three kids that are actually trying, I just end up teaching them. This is ok in some situations, like with a lot of the middle school kids, they don’t try and they don’t care, so to just focus on the kids who are trying, everybody gets what they want. However, with the younger kids, I find that some of the kids who aren’t trying don’t actually understand. But it is exhausting trying to get them to listen and to explain everything. And the kids who know that answers always yell them out, even if I am asking a specific student (in that teacher of way of trying to humiliate a student by asking a question that I know he or she can’t answer because they have not been paying attention, the things to which I resort, like the other day I almost asked a class if they thought I talked because I just like to hear the sound of my own voice. I stopped it before I came out; they wouldn’t have understood anyway, but still that is such a teacher thing to say).
Oh, and I have a cell phone now. I will no longer be forced to make plans way in advance. I can just call. And I no longer have to fear getting separated from my homies while clubbing in Hongdae. I can just call and be all where you at? I don’t have to worry about getting lost in Seoul, because I can just call somebody, I already have the numbers of six Koreans on my phone. I feel much safer and much more connected. Plus, now I have a timepiece.
My phone is pretty cool. I didn’t get to choose, which was kind of a bummer. But still. It has a Korean English dictionary, which I already found kind of helpful (I’m trying to learn emotions and fruit names). It has a subway map (in Korean so not that useful, but still cool), it has a fun game, and it makes cool noises, and it is a slidey phone. I’m hooked up Korean Style. And the phone feels like it could handle being dropped a few times.
I am continually amazed how my students bang up their phones, frequently dropping them or throwing them around, and how they never break. I am excited to get some cell phone ornaments with which to decorate my phone. I have seen a few gems out there and am looking forward to finding the perfect one or five. Also, it is possible to get t-money passes that you put on your phone. I might invest in one of those. I would feel so like I actually belonged here. I was pretty pumped on my T-money card, the cell phone charm subway pass would be even more awesome.
Mr. Kim took me to get my cell phone. An outing I assumed would be incredibly awkward. I was a little bit right. Kim is single man in his mid thirties. He is a computer nerd who does not own a computer. He does all his gaming at PC bangs, that is, Internet café’s. He seems like he may have never had a girlfriend and probably never will. He is awkward and a little strange. No a bad dude, just strange. Anyway, he took me to get my cell phone. Instead of going to one of the many (MANY!) cell phone stores around the school, we had to take the bus to one that was by the subway station.
Kim and I on a bus.
At the store, he doesn’t fill me in on anything that he and the cell phone guy are talking about, he gives me a phone, I sign some stuff and half an hour later we leave, cell phone in hand. Instead of saying, ok, see you later. Kim has to take me out for lunch. To Burger King.
Kim and I at Burger King.
He buys me a Jr. Whopper Meal (JR!). We sit and eat and soon I realize that I am offending him by not trying to make conversation. He thinks it is because of this English that I have trouble talking to him. It’s not, his English is passable, the problem is that I don’t what to talk about with him. It start with a safe topic; I talk about school. I ask him about his job. We talk about how much he loves the Internet. He shows me his English journal that he keeps to help improve his English. Burger King! Do you realize that almost any restaurant here has meals that are cheaper and way more delicious then any fast food joint? Never mind, even the street food is better and cheaper. I would much rather eat a kimbob, which is faster and tastier, then a fast food burger. I know, I am missing the point, he took me out, I should be grateful. Still. Burger King?
Anyway, Kim actually went to school to study, in his words, the Internet. He loves cell phones and the Internet. He has had a few jobs with various Internet companies and has done website support for some of the big Korean websites. I asked why he was now working in an English hagwon. He said he didn’t know. He has only worked at Kang Tae Woo for about two months. I was super curious, but tried not to pry. It’s just a job he said. He mentioned something about grad school; I think he wants to go back to university. I suggested that maybe he wanted to improve his English, but no, that is not the reason. He rarely gets to speak English at KTW; all he does is office work. Too bad. Anyway, like I said, not a bad dude. Did I mention that he ordered me a Jr. Whopper meal? Jr.! It actually wasn’t too bad.
He forgot that I had to buy the charger separately, so on Wednesday evening I had to find a cell phone store near the school and buy one on my own. I walked into the LG store and held out my phone and said “Charger?” The dude working had no idea. Then I said “battery?” He repeated it back. He seemed to think that I just wanted to charge my phone at the store and showed me the wall charger. No, I said making the no gesture (cross your hands to make an X). “I want to buy one”. He wasn’t sure, giving me a skeptical look, but took a charger out of the closet. I smiled “Yes, that’s it!” He told me “chil” and repeated it in English “seven”. Seven what? Chil Man won? Chil choen won? What? I took out my bankcard, my Korean bankcard, and he looked at me as though he had never seen one before. So I handed him a 10,000 won note. This was acceptable. I guess it was chil choen won. That’s like seven bucks. That is cheap isn’t it. Don’t chargers cost like thirty at home? And my phone came with two batteries and a holder so that I can charge one battery while the other is in my phone. Korea is awesome. (I discovered later that there is apparently a law in Korea that all cell phones have to be compatible with the same charger. Why is there no law like this in Canada?)
On Wednesday evening, Sally and I went on a really long walk because I wanted to search for cell phone charms in Nowan. We walked all the way to Nowan and through Nowan. A little too long, but pleasant. The temperature was perfect for walking. We were gone for like two hours though. I slept really well, that is always a bonus.
And this morning (Thursday) I walked to the Suyu subway station, one stop over in the opposite direction of Nowan. Suyu is happening, they have a Starbucks in Suyu. I only had 3000 won (sam choen won) in my pocket. On purpose so that I wouldn’t be tempted to buy expensive coffee if the opportunity arose. I have no will power so I have to make it actually impossible. The measure of how hopping a place is could be based on weather or not it has a Starbucks. Nowan has lots of coffee shops and also lots of beautiful people but now Starbucks. So it is only semi-hopping. Ssangmun has few coffee shops and few beautiful people. Coffee shops equal beautiful people. I drink fancy coffee at fancy coffee shops so I must be a beautiful person. Right?
I wrote this post over a couple of days, it started sometime last week. That is way everything is out of order and also why it is so long. Sorry. Also, I have moved on from Big Bang and am now all about Rain. He is a singer/actor/dancer. Check it out, he’s awesome. This one is good and so is this one. I look at it this way: Rain is like the Justin Timberlake of Korea and Bryan looks like Justin Timberlake so basically I’m dating Rain. I don’t need real logic; I’m a student of rhetoric.
Rainism.
I love Korea.
Dee
Babes. All of them.
Written between December 4 and December 8, 2008
However, Jaemin has proved to be a most excellent student and an even better dresser. I would like to meet his mother. Today he was wearing a pink zip up hoodie that had light cuffs and a dark blue hood. Over the hoodie was a dark blue corduroy vest with a plaid lining and brown buttons. His jeans were dark blue with factory creasing around the shins and ankles, slim fit. He was wearing white Velcro Puma sneakers. He is also missing a couple of his front teeth. If there were one kid that I could take home, I would pick Jaemin. We are motoring through the Spell and Write book. I think he has finally understood that the period and question mark come at the end of a sentence and that a capital letter comes at the start of the sentence. Although I asked him how he was today and he said his name was Jaemin.
Learning about how to deal the students is sometimes tricky with some hits and misses.
Hit: word searches. I didn’t really have much faith; they are very boring. But Sally (the teacher) gave me a sample of one she had done. Using the stupid book I had to read with one class, I first made them find the word in the book by giving them sentences with a blank spot where the word belonged and a page number where they could find the word. They had to search through the book to find the word and then find it in the word search. It was amazing, one of my most feared and hated classes were quiet and intent for a 50 whole minuets. I did not have to scold one student for FIFTY MINUTES. It was amazing. That class usually hell (HELL!) and that day they were almost angelic.
Partial Hit: Hangman with a twist. I write whole phrases on the board. The students roll a dice and then guess a letter for every letter in the phrase they get as many points as the dice indicates. For example if they roll a 5 and the phrase has four “E’s” they get 20 points. I divided the classes into two teams. They like competition. Two of the classes with whom I tried it, loved it and got really into it, one class not so much but class is full of a bunch of douche bag kids.
Hit: connect four. I made a big grid on the whiteboard, filled it in with words. Again, I divided the class into two teams, X’s and O’s. During their turn they have to use on of the words on the board in a complete and correct sentence, if successful they get the square. They need to get four in a row for a point. This brought out some very interesting results. Like, discovering that some students have a lot of English in their brains that does not come in class: “This afternoon, I will go to the park”. WTF, that is better then I would have done. Also, the set up takes a long time and is interactive because I ask students for suggestions. I played this with my Tuesday speaking class, and we played the whole time. Sally gave me this game. Again, I was skeptical, but the kids really like it. It gives them a chance to be a bit creative. (I played with a couple of classes today and again, it took up a whole fifty minuets.)
Miss: any course work that I have to do. I have already ranted about the crappy curriculum that I am forced to teach. However, it does take away a lot of the pressure on me. If the course work sucks, its not my fault. And it is better then if I were to make up my own classes from scratch; that would be a disaster.
This week and last week, most of the middle school kids are preparing for testing that happens in real school. The hagwon helps out with the preparation. However, some of the kids have already finished their testing, depending on their age. So, I have to teach the kids that are already done. It is pretty easy to do, for two of the classes all I have to do is press play on CD player. Occasionally I torment them by forcing them to give me answers, one by one. I walk around the classroom and ask each student to tell me what they wrote. It is super boring, but I have been greatly amused by the CD, it is really lame. For the other class, I have to prepare a class based on a English newspaper that the Kang Tae Woo head office puts together full of “news” stories and “editorials”. The paper is full of mistakes and crappy writing in general.
I taught a class based on articles about a forum for international students to discuss how to make Seoul a better city for foreigners. This was actually the best and most teachable article in the paper. I lectured them on how these kinds are forums are more to make governments look good then to actually be of any use. I am positive that no one understood me. This class was difficult because I don’t think any of the obnoxious boys are cute. However, there is one geeky boy with ridiculously nice glasses that tries really hard and gets super embarrassed very time he talks to me. I really like him. I also like that in Korea even the geekiest of geeks have super styling glasses.
I find that in most classes, I have come to rely on a few select students to get me through the class and more or less ignore everybody else. I try to be inclusive, but when there are just two or three kids that are actually trying, I just end up teaching them. This is ok in some situations, like with a lot of the middle school kids, they don’t try and they don’t care, so to just focus on the kids who are trying, everybody gets what they want. However, with the younger kids, I find that some of the kids who aren’t trying don’t actually understand. But it is exhausting trying to get them to listen and to explain everything. And the kids who know that answers always yell them out, even if I am asking a specific student (in that teacher of way of trying to humiliate a student by asking a question that I know he or she can’t answer because they have not been paying attention, the things to which I resort, like the other day I almost asked a class if they thought I talked because I just like to hear the sound of my own voice. I stopped it before I came out; they wouldn’t have understood anyway, but still that is such a teacher thing to say).
Oh, and I have a cell phone now. I will no longer be forced to make plans way in advance. I can just call. And I no longer have to fear getting separated from my homies while clubbing in Hongdae. I can just call and be all where you at? I don’t have to worry about getting lost in Seoul, because I can just call somebody, I already have the numbers of six Koreans on my phone. I feel much safer and much more connected. Plus, now I have a timepiece.
My phone is pretty cool. I didn’t get to choose, which was kind of a bummer. But still. It has a Korean English dictionary, which I already found kind of helpful (I’m trying to learn emotions and fruit names). It has a subway map (in Korean so not that useful, but still cool), it has a fun game, and it makes cool noises, and it is a slidey phone. I’m hooked up Korean Style. And the phone feels like it could handle being dropped a few times.
I am continually amazed how my students bang up their phones, frequently dropping them or throwing them around, and how they never break. I am excited to get some cell phone ornaments with which to decorate my phone. I have seen a few gems out there and am looking forward to finding the perfect one or five. Also, it is possible to get t-money passes that you put on your phone. I might invest in one of those. I would feel so like I actually belonged here. I was pretty pumped on my T-money card, the cell phone charm subway pass would be even more awesome.
Mr. Kim took me to get my cell phone. An outing I assumed would be incredibly awkward. I was a little bit right. Kim is single man in his mid thirties. He is a computer nerd who does not own a computer. He does all his gaming at PC bangs, that is, Internet café’s. He seems like he may have never had a girlfriend and probably never will. He is awkward and a little strange. No a bad dude, just strange. Anyway, he took me to get my cell phone. Instead of going to one of the many (MANY!) cell phone stores around the school, we had to take the bus to one that was by the subway station.
Kim and I on a bus.
At the store, he doesn’t fill me in on anything that he and the cell phone guy are talking about, he gives me a phone, I sign some stuff and half an hour later we leave, cell phone in hand. Instead of saying, ok, see you later. Kim has to take me out for lunch. To Burger King.
Kim and I at Burger King.
He buys me a Jr. Whopper Meal (JR!). We sit and eat and soon I realize that I am offending him by not trying to make conversation. He thinks it is because of this English that I have trouble talking to him. It’s not, his English is passable, the problem is that I don’t what to talk about with him. It start with a safe topic; I talk about school. I ask him about his job. We talk about how much he loves the Internet. He shows me his English journal that he keeps to help improve his English. Burger King! Do you realize that almost any restaurant here has meals that are cheaper and way more delicious then any fast food joint? Never mind, even the street food is better and cheaper. I would much rather eat a kimbob, which is faster and tastier, then a fast food burger. I know, I am missing the point, he took me out, I should be grateful. Still. Burger King?
Anyway, Kim actually went to school to study, in his words, the Internet. He loves cell phones and the Internet. He has had a few jobs with various Internet companies and has done website support for some of the big Korean websites. I asked why he was now working in an English hagwon. He said he didn’t know. He has only worked at Kang Tae Woo for about two months. I was super curious, but tried not to pry. It’s just a job he said. He mentioned something about grad school; I think he wants to go back to university. I suggested that maybe he wanted to improve his English, but no, that is not the reason. He rarely gets to speak English at KTW; all he does is office work. Too bad. Anyway, like I said, not a bad dude. Did I mention that he ordered me a Jr. Whopper meal? Jr.! It actually wasn’t too bad.
He forgot that I had to buy the charger separately, so on Wednesday evening I had to find a cell phone store near the school and buy one on my own. I walked into the LG store and held out my phone and said “Charger?” The dude working had no idea. Then I said “battery?” He repeated it back. He seemed to think that I just wanted to charge my phone at the store and showed me the wall charger. No, I said making the no gesture (cross your hands to make an X). “I want to buy one”. He wasn’t sure, giving me a skeptical look, but took a charger out of the closet. I smiled “Yes, that’s it!” He told me “chil” and repeated it in English “seven”. Seven what? Chil Man won? Chil choen won? What? I took out my bankcard, my Korean bankcard, and he looked at me as though he had never seen one before. So I handed him a 10,000 won note. This was acceptable. I guess it was chil choen won. That’s like seven bucks. That is cheap isn’t it. Don’t chargers cost like thirty at home? And my phone came with two batteries and a holder so that I can charge one battery while the other is in my phone. Korea is awesome. (I discovered later that there is apparently a law in Korea that all cell phones have to be compatible with the same charger. Why is there no law like this in Canada?)
On Wednesday evening, Sally and I went on a really long walk because I wanted to search for cell phone charms in Nowan. We walked all the way to Nowan and through Nowan. A little too long, but pleasant. The temperature was perfect for walking. We were gone for like two hours though. I slept really well, that is always a bonus.
And this morning (Thursday) I walked to the Suyu subway station, one stop over in the opposite direction of Nowan. Suyu is happening, they have a Starbucks in Suyu. I only had 3000 won (sam choen won) in my pocket. On purpose so that I wouldn’t be tempted to buy expensive coffee if the opportunity arose. I have no will power so I have to make it actually impossible. The measure of how hopping a place is could be based on weather or not it has a Starbucks. Nowan has lots of coffee shops and also lots of beautiful people but now Starbucks. So it is only semi-hopping. Ssangmun has few coffee shops and few beautiful people. Coffee shops equal beautiful people. I drink fancy coffee at fancy coffee shops so I must be a beautiful person. Right?
I wrote this post over a couple of days, it started sometime last week. That is way everything is out of order and also why it is so long. Sorry. Also, I have moved on from Big Bang and am now all about Rain. He is a singer/actor/dancer. Check it out, he’s awesome. This one is good and so is this one. I look at it this way: Rain is like the Justin Timberlake of Korea and Bryan looks like Justin Timberlake so basically I’m dating Rain. I don’t need real logic; I’m a student of rhetoric.
Rainism.
I love Korea.
Dee
Babes. All of them.Written between December 4 and December 8, 2008
Monday, December 8, 2008
Shortest Post Ever
On Sunday, Sally asked me to go for walk. As I stepped outside my apartment building I audibly gasped and entered a winter wonderland. There was a thick layer of sticky snow over everything and the snow was still falling. It was dark already and with all the streetlights reflecting off the snow, everything had a glowing orange hue. It was lovely.
We walked through a park that has a popular walking path. We walked past families enjoying the snow, kids making snowman wherever there was room: on the path, between the trees, on the sidewalks, in the street, wherever. We saw kids having epic snow fights, taking the snow from any surface they could find and hurling snowballs at each other as hard as they could.
The driving was treacherous, at least appeared to be treacherous, we were not driving. But at any hills the drivers were sliding about, when making illegal u-turns they slipped and skidded about. The deliverymen on their motorcycles were having the worst time. Their bikes are old and on many the tires are rather warn. I saw one man using his feet to guide the bike down the street and more motorcycles were on the sidewalk than usual.
Many people were carrying umbrellas to fend of the snow. They seem to be as afraid of the snow as they are of the rain. Even the slightest spit from the sky and everybody has their umbrellas out. Acid rain, Koreans are mortally afraid of baldness.
The snow was so think that I thought if would for sure be around for a couple of days. But this morning I woke up the sound of rain and then later it thundered. I haven’t opened my windows yet this morning, but I assume that the snow is gone. I should explain; I have two layers of the windows. The first layer is frosted for privacy’s sake. It is cold out, so I keep both layers closed. The frosted windows allow light, but are impossible to see out of. I don’t have any curtains so I don’t mind the frosted windows.
Dee
December 8, 2008
We walked through a park that has a popular walking path. We walked past families enjoying the snow, kids making snowman wherever there was room: on the path, between the trees, on the sidewalks, in the street, wherever. We saw kids having epic snow fights, taking the snow from any surface they could find and hurling snowballs at each other as hard as they could.
The driving was treacherous, at least appeared to be treacherous, we were not driving. But at any hills the drivers were sliding about, when making illegal u-turns they slipped and skidded about. The deliverymen on their motorcycles were having the worst time. Their bikes are old and on many the tires are rather warn. I saw one man using his feet to guide the bike down the street and more motorcycles were on the sidewalk than usual.
Many people were carrying umbrellas to fend of the snow. They seem to be as afraid of the snow as they are of the rain. Even the slightest spit from the sky and everybody has their umbrellas out. Acid rain, Koreans are mortally afraid of baldness.
The snow was so think that I thought if would for sure be around for a couple of days. But this morning I woke up the sound of rain and then later it thundered. I haven’t opened my windows yet this morning, but I assume that the snow is gone. I should explain; I have two layers of the windows. The first layer is frosted for privacy’s sake. It is cold out, so I keep both layers closed. The frosted windows allow light, but are impossible to see out of. I don’t have any curtains so I don’t mind the frosted windows.
Dee
December 8, 2008
Sunday, December 7, 2008
Thanksgiving and Seoul Stuff
Sally and I at Outback.
The gang at Outback
One of the reasons I love Hongdae; pictures with randoms.
Sally and at FF
Big Mike and I at FF
Seoul stuff kids at FF
Another reason I love Hongdae
More pictures with randoms. These guys just jumped in on our picture.
Other People's Suffering = GT's for Dee!
On Saturday night I fulfilled two life long dreams.
Life Long Dream Number One (at least since I have been to Korea): I ate street food. Ddeokbokki to be exact, with some fried stuff. It was amazing and delicious and served by a woman with perfect lipstick. (I just want to point out how much I hate Microsoft Word when it tries to correct passive sentences. Sometimes I want to write in the passive voice. Sometimes the passive voice adds style. Sometimes I want to control the flow of information. I understand that in business and in academic writing we generally want to avoid the passive. However, this blog is more of a creative non-fiction and therefore I can use a fucking passive sentence construction as much as I please. Granted, an economical use of words would sometimes be appreciated by my readers. I do tend to ramble on and the use of the active voice does save words. But who cares? It’s not like anybody reads the whole post anyway, but I digress...) When we walked by a couple of hours later, she was still serving her delicious ddeokbokki and still had perfect lipstick. I wonder about the people who work in the plastic restaurants. They must work all night, serving drunk people and then sleep all day. I hope they are happy with their existence. The money must be decent though.
Life Long Dream Number Two: I was totally hit on by a super hot babe. She was tallish and skinny with long blond hair and she thought I was beautiful. She danced with me for a while and then she released that I wasn’t gay, although for her I might I reconsidered my sexuality for one night (I’m kidding, Bryan), she told me I was beautiful. Later she confessed she had a girlfriend. I’m so hot I almost made her cheat! I also danced a little bit with a Korean girl; apparently the only thing hotter than a Korean boy is a Korean girl (Bryan, you are the only person I find attractive).
I also danced with a guy in drag. I think it was dare, I'm pretty sure he wasn't serious. It was a rather odd night, especially considering that I drank hardly at all. I was barely even buzzed at given point.
There was a fundraiser for World Aids Day in Hongdae; it was called Rubber Seoul. The cool teacher (as Sally and I call her because she is super cool) at my school gave us a pamphlet. There was a 10,000 won cover for four clubs. There were bands and DJs at each club. We spent most of our time at FF, again. FF is just a really good club; the DJ’s are usually pretty good, at least at first; the DJ sets always start out with really good songs and then kind of lose momentim after a while. We saw one band, Pink Elephant; they were a Korean “indie” band. Super adorable and not bad, much better then the bands we saw last weekend. After Pink Elephant, we decided to check out Club Sensation. They had a DJ playing music that is difficult to dance too and therefore nobody was dancing. We left Sensation and headed over the DGBD, the punk venue of the event. There was a band called Tear Jerks playing. They were a bunch of white dudes. I suppose they were comparable to Drop Kick Murphys, but not nearly as good. After Tear Jerks we found the street food and then headed back to FF.
The last band at FF was called We Need Surgery. They were all right. (I just checked out their my space and apparently they opened for Jens Lekman when he played in Seoul). Another band of white dudes, but this is no longer surprising at FF, pretty much everybody there is white. After they were done there was a DJ set. It started with Fat Boy Slim’s "Praise You" and after that we heard Justice, Daft Punk, a dance mix of Young Folks, Gorillaz, some Killers, and much much more awesomeness. It was during this dancing that I made a totally hot girl fall in love with my compelling beauty and graceful dance moves. She was babe, a BABE! It was during Daft Punk that she asked me to dance. We celebrated one more time, feeling so free.
Sally and left fairly early, it’s four AM and I am at home drinking chamomile tea thinking about the evening and how lovely it was. I went for two-hour walk today despite the cold, like -10 or something. Not really so bad and I dressed for it, but still two hours. Then I finally organized my recyclables for the first time since my arrival. The system here is a little complicated and differs depending in what style of housing you live in. For example, if you live in a house or in one of the gigantic apartment complexes, you have to put all your food garage into a separate bag. Also, if you live in the giant apartment complexes you can only bring out your recyclables on certain days. However, because I live in a small apartment, I don’t need to separate my food garage from other non-recyclables. So I have taken out my garbage on a regular basis. Although I try to do it when nobody will see. However, not being sure on the rules concerning the recyclables, I just horded them under my kitchen sink. It got to the point where I could no longer open the door without causing a small avalanche. So, I finally dug in. I discovered that I eat an amazing amount of fruit, vegetables, eggs, and milk. This is all the stuff that I have had since I moved here. So there were like six kiwi containers, like five milk cartons (rice pudding) like four or more egg boxes and many many many bags that once contained fruit or vegetables. In the grocery store, I always buy the prepackaged items because I don’t know what to do with the loose items. Once I filled a bag with oranges and the cashier had to run away to find the weight and put a sticker on it. To avoid this embarrassing situation again, I just stick the to prepackaged items.
After I finished the organizing, I did some yoga with Lisa and Charles on Yoga Zone and asked Sally if she wanted to go for Sushi. I have been craveing sushi for days and finally felt I deserved a reward for organizing everything. We had some delicious sashimi and maki rolls. Also, the sushi place served the radish kimchi, which is my favourite kind.
It was a good night, a strange night, but a good night.
Dee
December 6, 2008
Life Long Dream Number One (at least since I have been to Korea): I ate street food. Ddeokbokki to be exact, with some fried stuff. It was amazing and delicious and served by a woman with perfect lipstick. (I just want to point out how much I hate Microsoft Word when it tries to correct passive sentences. Sometimes I want to write in the passive voice. Sometimes the passive voice adds style. Sometimes I want to control the flow of information. I understand that in business and in academic writing we generally want to avoid the passive. However, this blog is more of a creative non-fiction and therefore I can use a fucking passive sentence construction as much as I please. Granted, an economical use of words would sometimes be appreciated by my readers. I do tend to ramble on and the use of the active voice does save words. But who cares? It’s not like anybody reads the whole post anyway, but I digress...) When we walked by a couple of hours later, she was still serving her delicious ddeokbokki and still had perfect lipstick. I wonder about the people who work in the plastic restaurants. They must work all night, serving drunk people and then sleep all day. I hope they are happy with their existence. The money must be decent though.
Life Long Dream Number Two: I was totally hit on by a super hot babe. She was tallish and skinny with long blond hair and she thought I was beautiful. She danced with me for a while and then she released that I wasn’t gay, although for her I might I reconsidered my sexuality for one night (I’m kidding, Bryan), she told me I was beautiful. Later she confessed she had a girlfriend. I’m so hot I almost made her cheat! I also danced a little bit with a Korean girl; apparently the only thing hotter than a Korean boy is a Korean girl (Bryan, you are the only person I find attractive).
I also danced with a guy in drag. I think it was dare, I'm pretty sure he wasn't serious. It was a rather odd night, especially considering that I drank hardly at all. I was barely even buzzed at given point.
There was a fundraiser for World Aids Day in Hongdae; it was called Rubber Seoul. The cool teacher (as Sally and I call her because she is super cool) at my school gave us a pamphlet. There was a 10,000 won cover for four clubs. There were bands and DJs at each club. We spent most of our time at FF, again. FF is just a really good club; the DJ’s are usually pretty good, at least at first; the DJ sets always start out with really good songs and then kind of lose momentim after a while. We saw one band, Pink Elephant; they were a Korean “indie” band. Super adorable and not bad, much better then the bands we saw last weekend. After Pink Elephant, we decided to check out Club Sensation. They had a DJ playing music that is difficult to dance too and therefore nobody was dancing. We left Sensation and headed over the DGBD, the punk venue of the event. There was a band called Tear Jerks playing. They were a bunch of white dudes. I suppose they were comparable to Drop Kick Murphys, but not nearly as good. After Tear Jerks we found the street food and then headed back to FF.
The last band at FF was called We Need Surgery. They were all right. (I just checked out their my space and apparently they opened for Jens Lekman when he played in Seoul). Another band of white dudes, but this is no longer surprising at FF, pretty much everybody there is white. After they were done there was a DJ set. It started with Fat Boy Slim’s "Praise You" and after that we heard Justice, Daft Punk, a dance mix of Young Folks, Gorillaz, some Killers, and much much more awesomeness. It was during this dancing that I made a totally hot girl fall in love with my compelling beauty and graceful dance moves. She was babe, a BABE! It was during Daft Punk that she asked me to dance. We celebrated one more time, feeling so free.
Sally and left fairly early, it’s four AM and I am at home drinking chamomile tea thinking about the evening and how lovely it was. I went for two-hour walk today despite the cold, like -10 or something. Not really so bad and I dressed for it, but still two hours. Then I finally organized my recyclables for the first time since my arrival. The system here is a little complicated and differs depending in what style of housing you live in. For example, if you live in a house or in one of the gigantic apartment complexes, you have to put all your food garage into a separate bag. Also, if you live in the giant apartment complexes you can only bring out your recyclables on certain days. However, because I live in a small apartment, I don’t need to separate my food garage from other non-recyclables. So I have taken out my garbage on a regular basis. Although I try to do it when nobody will see. However, not being sure on the rules concerning the recyclables, I just horded them under my kitchen sink. It got to the point where I could no longer open the door without causing a small avalanche. So, I finally dug in. I discovered that I eat an amazing amount of fruit, vegetables, eggs, and milk. This is all the stuff that I have had since I moved here. So there were like six kiwi containers, like five milk cartons (rice pudding) like four or more egg boxes and many many many bags that once contained fruit or vegetables. In the grocery store, I always buy the prepackaged items because I don’t know what to do with the loose items. Once I filled a bag with oranges and the cashier had to run away to find the weight and put a sticker on it. To avoid this embarrassing situation again, I just stick the to prepackaged items.
After I finished the organizing, I did some yoga with Lisa and Charles on Yoga Zone and asked Sally if she wanted to go for Sushi. I have been craveing sushi for days and finally felt I deserved a reward for organizing everything. We had some delicious sashimi and maki rolls. Also, the sushi place served the radish kimchi, which is my favourite kind.
It was a good night, a strange night, but a good night.
Dee
December 6, 2008
Monday, December 1, 2008
The Father of All Buns
After my long and beautiful walk on Saturday, I went home and wrote about it, then I ate a supper of instant noodles and YouTubed Big Bang music videos. At 7:30 I thought about how I was supposed to meet Sally at 7:30 and figured I could watch one more video. At ten to eight, Sally banged on my door, worried that I had alcohol poisoning from the night before or was lying dead somewhere. I let her in and apologized profusely. Luckily, she was not upset. I ran around my apartment for a few more minuets, trying to get the perfect balance of babe and I-so-don’t-care-about-how-look and probably failing. We headed out to Hongdae once again.
Sally is part of social networking site called Seoul Stuff, it is a group of people who live in Seoul like Koreans, English teachers, computer programmers, military people, etc. It is just a place to meet people, make friends, and provide Koreans with a chance to practice their English with native speakers. I went along because I do everything that Sally does and some of the people she described sounded interesting.
There was not a huge turnout and I already knew most of the people: Mike, Amber, and Sarah. However, I did meet Bobby, an military guy who has lived in Seoul for a very long time. He has been in the military for like 20 years, recently became engaged to a Korean women who came late, and is going to retire next year and stay in Seoul. I think he was like fortyish, maybe. Very interesting fellow. I actually liked him a lot, he was cool and not really what you might expect from a career military dude. His fiancé, whose name I never actually got, was also really cool. A lot more talkative and out going then Korean women generally are at first.
We started the night at a hof, eating crappy nachos and a strange potato pizza thing that was actually quite delicious and rice snacks that come are on the table at every bar and hof in the country and they are delicious. Well, they actually have no flavour, but they have a very satisfying crunch, highly additive, which is ok, because they also probably have no calories or fat. They are mostly air. We drank some beer, I took it easy on the soju this night.
After the hof, we went to Club FF and paid 13,000 won cover! That’s like $13.00ish, that’s stupid. Anyway, there were some live playing. After not hearing live music since I left Canada, I was little excited. I was quickly brought back to the reality of live music though. Most of it sucks and these bands sucked. They were all white dudes, I talked to one later who was from London. Not good. Not good at all. We tried to make them feel good by dancing a bit and trying to be excited. But both the bands we heard really sucked.
We didn’t stay out too late; everybody was pretty tired, except for Bobby who probably could have partied until noon the next day. And Sean, another guy who came late, a computer programmer from India. Apparently there are a lot of computer programmers in Korea from India. I don’t know why Korea needs to bring in programmers from other countries, I would think there were be enough here to choose from, but what do I know? Anyway, he also seemed nice and super funny. Good night.
On Sunday, I went to Hyeway for coffee and to buy a new zip up hoodie, success for both. I met Sally at two and we headed over to Nowan to celebrate American thanksgiving with the Americans. We ate at Outback steakhouse. I ordered the most Korean thing I could find on the menu: Kimchi fried rice with grilled chicken and shrimp. It also happened to be the cheapest thing on the menu. Eating at these American restaurants is ok, but usually they are way more expensive then eating at a Korean restaurant and they food is not nearly as good.
Before we could eat (there was a two hour wait at Outback) we wandered around the Lotte department store in Nowan. In the basement they have this grocery store and food court. We were walking through the bakery part and Mike suddenly stopped us because he had to buy this one thing. It was called Pappa Rottie. It is just a bun, a sugary white bun, covered in a sugary coffee flavoured powder. The inside is filled with butter, just straight plain butter. They are served warm and they are among the most disgusting delicious things I have eaten here so far. Pappa Rotie, the father of all buns.
After our early supper we headed over to Amber’s place to colour and gorge ourselves on deserts. Everybody contributed something and there was a lot of choice. Sally and I brought ice cream. Mike made a pumpkin pie and three small Oreo cookie pie like things. He had to make the crusts in the microwave; they turned out surprisingly well. Feo brought a cheesecake, just plain but so good. There was an apple pie. Someone brought Reeces Pieces. Ryan and Carolyn brought real Starbucks coffee and some wine. It was a feast of deliciousness. We made snowflakes, watched National Lampoon’s Christmas Vacation, and picked secret Santa names. It was a very nice evening. I am very lucky to have made these friends who were so willing to include me in their group.
I got home and discovered that I no longer had an Internet connection to steal, crap. So I watched part of Interview with the Vampire and went to bed. No more YouTubing of Big Bang music videos. I really must get my own, legal, Internet. This week. Maybe. And a cell phone.
Sally is part of social networking site called Seoul Stuff, it is a group of people who live in Seoul like Koreans, English teachers, computer programmers, military people, etc. It is just a place to meet people, make friends, and provide Koreans with a chance to practice their English with native speakers. I went along because I do everything that Sally does and some of the people she described sounded interesting.
There was not a huge turnout and I already knew most of the people: Mike, Amber, and Sarah. However, I did meet Bobby, an military guy who has lived in Seoul for a very long time. He has been in the military for like 20 years, recently became engaged to a Korean women who came late, and is going to retire next year and stay in Seoul. I think he was like fortyish, maybe. Very interesting fellow. I actually liked him a lot, he was cool and not really what you might expect from a career military dude. His fiancé, whose name I never actually got, was also really cool. A lot more talkative and out going then Korean women generally are at first.
We started the night at a hof, eating crappy nachos and a strange potato pizza thing that was actually quite delicious and rice snacks that come are on the table at every bar and hof in the country and they are delicious. Well, they actually have no flavour, but they have a very satisfying crunch, highly additive, which is ok, because they also probably have no calories or fat. They are mostly air. We drank some beer, I took it easy on the soju this night.
After the hof, we went to Club FF and paid 13,000 won cover! That’s like $13.00ish, that’s stupid. Anyway, there were some live playing. After not hearing live music since I left Canada, I was little excited. I was quickly brought back to the reality of live music though. Most of it sucks and these bands sucked. They were all white dudes, I talked to one later who was from London. Not good. Not good at all. We tried to make them feel good by dancing a bit and trying to be excited. But both the bands we heard really sucked.
We didn’t stay out too late; everybody was pretty tired, except for Bobby who probably could have partied until noon the next day. And Sean, another guy who came late, a computer programmer from India. Apparently there are a lot of computer programmers in Korea from India. I don’t know why Korea needs to bring in programmers from other countries, I would think there were be enough here to choose from, but what do I know? Anyway, he also seemed nice and super funny. Good night.
On Sunday, I went to Hyeway for coffee and to buy a new zip up hoodie, success for both. I met Sally at two and we headed over to Nowan to celebrate American thanksgiving with the Americans. We ate at Outback steakhouse. I ordered the most Korean thing I could find on the menu: Kimchi fried rice with grilled chicken and shrimp. It also happened to be the cheapest thing on the menu. Eating at these American restaurants is ok, but usually they are way more expensive then eating at a Korean restaurant and they food is not nearly as good.
Before we could eat (there was a two hour wait at Outback) we wandered around the Lotte department store in Nowan. In the basement they have this grocery store and food court. We were walking through the bakery part and Mike suddenly stopped us because he had to buy this one thing. It was called Pappa Rottie. It is just a bun, a sugary white bun, covered in a sugary coffee flavoured powder. The inside is filled with butter, just straight plain butter. They are served warm and they are among the most disgusting delicious things I have eaten here so far. Pappa Rotie, the father of all buns.
After our early supper we headed over to Amber’s place to colour and gorge ourselves on deserts. Everybody contributed something and there was a lot of choice. Sally and I brought ice cream. Mike made a pumpkin pie and three small Oreo cookie pie like things. He had to make the crusts in the microwave; they turned out surprisingly well. Feo brought a cheesecake, just plain but so good. There was an apple pie. Someone brought Reeces Pieces. Ryan and Carolyn brought real Starbucks coffee and some wine. It was a feast of deliciousness. We made snowflakes, watched National Lampoon’s Christmas Vacation, and picked secret Santa names. It was a very nice evening. I am very lucky to have made these friends who were so willing to include me in their group.
I got home and discovered that I no longer had an Internet connection to steal, crap. So I watched part of Interview with the Vampire and went to bed. No more YouTubing of Big Bang music videos. I really must get my own, legal, Internet. This week. Maybe. And a cell phone.
Saturday, November 29, 2008
Plastic Restaurants
I just came back from a walk that was as cold as it was beautiful. It temperature was apparently around five degrees and the sun was shinning brightly, but the wind was blowing hard and it was a cold wind. I walked down my street on my new favourite walking route, as I adjusted my headphones, playing Page Frances, I looked up and actually stopped and gasped (a sharp intake of air, because if they don’t understand gasp they will understand intake?). It was actually breathtaking, the view of the mountains. I don’t know why, but the air was totally clear and I could see the mountains in better focus, they were sharp and clear, no haze. They are always beautiful, when I can see them, but today they were amazing. I wasn’t really dressed for the wind and my long walk was cold. At one point it even started snowing a bit. At first I wasn’t sure what they were, the small white things floating in the air. It didn’t seem right that it could be snowing here, not yet. Even though the sun was still out, a dark cloud lingered near by and that dark cloud was snowing. It was almost nothing, but still lovely. I was near frozen by the time I arrived back at home. My arms were red and I could barely move my hands. I had difficulty working my key. It was worth it though, just looking at the mountains, every detail was perfect.
I also determined today that my washing machine is retarded. I thought it was all in my head, and then I thought it was the language barrier (all the buttons, and there are lots, are in Korean), and now I know that sometime is wrong. It gets stuck on the final cycle that it goes through and just rinse and spins over and over and over. There was about 8 minuets left on my load of whites, one hour later I finally paused it and had to just turn the thing off. However, because it is a front loader, it locks. It wouldn’t unlock even after I turned the machine off. So, I just ran them through another load, I had successfully washed a few things using the quick wash cycle (I had Julia translate the buttons for me) so I thought I would try that again. There were four minuets left when I went on my hour and half long walk, and there were four minuets left when I came home. Problematic. So I waited until it stopped spinning and had fully drained, and just before more water would be added I turned it off again. This time I had to jimmy open the door, I don’t think there was any damage, to get at my whites, all of which had to be wrung out by hand because they were still dripping wet. I find this aggravating and I am not sure with whom I should lodge a complaint.
Went out Friday night to mourn the loss of Mr. Park, he is being transferred to the Nowan branch. Now I have nobody on which to have a work crush. Sigh. We went out at night, came home in the morning. More distressing then the amount of soju I consumed is the amount of food I consumed, or devoured as if I were a starving animal. Drinking, which is already bad enough, must always be accompanied by copious amounts of food. Although there was a fruit plate, nothing goes better with weak beer than watermelon and persimmon, most of it was not good for me, but not necessarily bad either, but not in such amounts. I have no self-control when something is placed in front of me. There was an omelet like egg dish, some street bulgogi, Korean pancakes and this was at the second place.
A Korean night out usually has couple of stages. This one started at a hof with beer, fried chicken, the fruit platter, and some really disgusting looking hot dog type things that I did not touch (this required no self control, just looking at them was almost vomit inducing, never mind the smell). We moved to street level where we partook in soju and the Korean delicacies listed above in a plastic restaurant. In some places there are rows of plastic tent restaurants that serve surprisingly delicious food and are usually quite busy. After the street we went to a basement noraebang and sang a bit. I guess this night was the last Wednesday night madness it just happened to be on a Friday.
No more Park. It is distressing. Who knows what kind of person could replace him. I was just getting used to him and becoming more comfortable in asking for help. Now he is gone.
Friday night actually started with a movie: “Connected”. A Hong Kong version of the American made movie “Cellular”. It was really a terrible film, but because it was in Chinese with Korean subtitles the cheese factor was much less than it could have been or perhaps the cheese factor was increased, I’m not sure. Being a not-deep action movie, I was able to fully follow the plot. If they are going to remake American movies, they could at least remake good ones. Oh well, Kang Tae Woo paid for it, I’ll go see a free movie any day. He was there, Mr. Kang Tae Woo. Sally and I got into the elevator to go to the movie theater and Sally leans over and whispers at me, I think that guy is Mr. Kang Tae Woo, the one who looks like a Korean Conan O’Brian. He does look like a Korean Conan O’Brian. He didn’t talk to us. He seems important, got some schools named after him and whatnot. All of the teachers were invited to see the movie, only Julia, Sally, and I went. Julia bought popcorn. It was honey popcorn. It was delicious.
Today I also talked to my mom on Skype. It just short conversation, but it was nice to see her face and hear her voice.
I also determined today that my washing machine is retarded. I thought it was all in my head, and then I thought it was the language barrier (all the buttons, and there are lots, are in Korean), and now I know that sometime is wrong. It gets stuck on the final cycle that it goes through and just rinse and spins over and over and over. There was about 8 minuets left on my load of whites, one hour later I finally paused it and had to just turn the thing off. However, because it is a front loader, it locks. It wouldn’t unlock even after I turned the machine off. So, I just ran them through another load, I had successfully washed a few things using the quick wash cycle (I had Julia translate the buttons for me) so I thought I would try that again. There were four minuets left when I went on my hour and half long walk, and there were four minuets left when I came home. Problematic. So I waited until it stopped spinning and had fully drained, and just before more water would be added I turned it off again. This time I had to jimmy open the door, I don’t think there was any damage, to get at my whites, all of which had to be wrung out by hand because they were still dripping wet. I find this aggravating and I am not sure with whom I should lodge a complaint.
Went out Friday night to mourn the loss of Mr. Park, he is being transferred to the Nowan branch. Now I have nobody on which to have a work crush. Sigh. We went out at night, came home in the morning. More distressing then the amount of soju I consumed is the amount of food I consumed, or devoured as if I were a starving animal. Drinking, which is already bad enough, must always be accompanied by copious amounts of food. Although there was a fruit plate, nothing goes better with weak beer than watermelon and persimmon, most of it was not good for me, but not necessarily bad either, but not in such amounts. I have no self-control when something is placed in front of me. There was an omelet like egg dish, some street bulgogi, Korean pancakes and this was at the second place.
A Korean night out usually has couple of stages. This one started at a hof with beer, fried chicken, the fruit platter, and some really disgusting looking hot dog type things that I did not touch (this required no self control, just looking at them was almost vomit inducing, never mind the smell). We moved to street level where we partook in soju and the Korean delicacies listed above in a plastic restaurant. In some places there are rows of plastic tent restaurants that serve surprisingly delicious food and are usually quite busy. After the street we went to a basement noraebang and sang a bit. I guess this night was the last Wednesday night madness it just happened to be on a Friday.
No more Park. It is distressing. Who knows what kind of person could replace him. I was just getting used to him and becoming more comfortable in asking for help. Now he is gone.
Friday night actually started with a movie: “Connected”. A Hong Kong version of the American made movie “Cellular”. It was really a terrible film, but because it was in Chinese with Korean subtitles the cheese factor was much less than it could have been or perhaps the cheese factor was increased, I’m not sure. Being a not-deep action movie, I was able to fully follow the plot. If they are going to remake American movies, they could at least remake good ones. Oh well, Kang Tae Woo paid for it, I’ll go see a free movie any day. He was there, Mr. Kang Tae Woo. Sally and I got into the elevator to go to the movie theater and Sally leans over and whispers at me, I think that guy is Mr. Kang Tae Woo, the one who looks like a Korean Conan O’Brian. He does look like a Korean Conan O’Brian. He didn’t talk to us. He seems important, got some schools named after him and whatnot. All of the teachers were invited to see the movie, only Julia, Sally, and I went. Julia bought popcorn. It was honey popcorn. It was delicious.
Today I also talked to my mom on Skype. It just short conversation, but it was nice to see her face and hear her voice.
Monday, November 24, 2008
V is for Victory
Sally and I at Dragon Bar
Amber and I at Dragon Bar, V is for victory (over North Korea I think). I like Amber quite a bit.
At the hookah bar, that is me showing Sally her bag using a small flashlight.
Fire show at Dragon Bar, the whole tower was lit on fire. It was real neat.
During the best meal ever, boo.
Look I sing too sometimes, sometimes.
This is the group of people I hang out with sometimes. The guy in black shirt is one who gave the sermon, Feo. The red jackets are married, Ryan and Carolyn. The dudes in the back live together, Mike the birthday boy in the white jersey and Chris. Sarah is the girl in the plaid vest, Sally is behind her. I'm wearing a scarf becuase the bar was cold not because I was trying to be fashionable. Amber is taking the picture.
Sally and I at Dragon Bar.
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