Wicked Weekend

On Saturday, my friend Kirsten - and her friend Candace - came to Mokpo. Kirsten only has one month left in Korea, while Candace hasn't even been here for a week yet! Thing were pretty cozy in our tiny apartment, but it was still a great time.

We went out to a Vietnamese restaurant for Monique's birthday. You grill your meat (I had duck) at the table, then make your own wraps with rice paper and tons of vegetables. It was really amazing.

I made a huge Sunday morning breakfast the next day, including potato latkes, which I'd never made before, but which are now my new favourite food. Candace's jetlag meant that she slept the morning away, while Ty, Kirsten and I chatted. It was a nice goodbye for Kirsten, who I'd first met two years ago in Suncheon. She's off to the UK now, and *we hope* our paths will surely cross again.

Field Trip to Gangjin!

Every few weeks, all the teachers at my school get together to do something like go hiking, have supper, whatever. I love going with them - when it's during the day (raw fish suppers just ain't my thang, ya know). Not only is it a great bonding experience, but it allows me to visit places in Korea that I wouldn't have gotten to otherwise.

This time, I was particularly happy to be invited along because I still needed to bond with the new staff... here are the people I work with now:

Back row: 1st grade, 6th grade, head teacher, island school principal, principal, 3rd grade, secretary, 1st grade (last year), special education
Front row: 5th grade, 2nd grade, 4th grade, custodian, special education (last year)

Wonder why I haven't introduced them by name? Well, it seems, in my school anyway, that you can address each other by your position - I get called Yong-a Sonsaengnim (English Teacher) by my younger students all the time. I think it has to do with the fact that certain last names are super common here (1st grade, 6th grade, 3rd grade are all Mrs Kim!) so, to avoid confusion, why not just use the title?

Anyway, it was a gorgeous day and we drove about an hour or so to Gangjin, a town made famous for traditional Korean celadon pottery (Meron, your cup is from here, Ann, your necklace thing, Mom, your saucer). Our first stop was the hospital (!) to visit Mr (4th grade) Yun's father (I didn't go in) before continuing on to Baekryeonsa, a temple known for, apparently, flowers and being really old.

We arrived and immediately piled into a wee tea shop for some very pricey and very good Korean green tea, then had (arrrgh) 5 minutes to explore the temple grounds.


I asked Mr (2nd grade) Pak about the huge bell and he, being the joker that he is, ran up and rang it. Such a lovely clear tone, followed by me and Mr Pak giggling together like little girls. Mr Pak is one of my favourite teachers - and one of the few staff members that I still know from last year.

Anyway, some pictures from the day:

View from up top

Through the tea-house window

Mrs (6th grade) Kim strikes a pose

The buildings

It had been a while for me since I'd last visited a Korean temple. Last year, I used to go all the time - like every other weekend - to hike and take pictures and stuff. This year... well, they just aren't as easily accessible here as Songwangsa and Seonamsa were in Suncheon.

The trip was special for another reason... I suddenly realized that I was understanding bits and pieces, words and numbers and things that my co-teachers were saying in Korean. I was trying to figure out just what I can do, after almost 2 years of pretty much just absorbing whatever comes to me in an informal setting...

• I can read and understand quite a lot... For example: signs around town... I know if a business is a florist, a pharmacy, a restaurant, a fish market, a hardware store etc (this is probably what I'm most proud of).
  
• I can understand numbers and count pretty high - tens (ship), hundreds (baek), thousands (chun), ten thousands (man)...
  
• With a bit of mental gymnastics, I can tell someone what time it is, as long as it's between 1:00 and 5:00. After that, I'm screwed.
  
• I can understand when someone is talking about me, or if someone is talking about something I did earlier (context context context), but if someone arrived and just started blabbing at me, I'd be lost.
• I can take a taxi, order in a restaurant, shop, understand if something is out of stock....
  
• I'm starting to be able to recognize the Korean language, which was gibberish for so long, as a sequence of individual sounds and even words.
• I can write (slowly)... the vowels still mess me up a lot
• I can "Romanize" a Korean text... for example, take a Korean name and write it in English - I had to for all my students.
• I have a bunch of catch phrases that I can use appropriately (I understand, I know, Let's go, I'm full, It's okay, Really?, Thank you, Hello, Goodbye (2 forms), I'm Canadian, I'm an English teacher, Sit down, Repeat please, Give it to me, Go away, etc....), and individual words like yesterday, today, tomorrow, months and dates and the like that help me function in an all-Korean school.
• Random vocabulary like certain animals, fruits, vegetables, school supplies...
  

As someone who has studied second language acquisition and worked to come up with ways to evaluate how much someone understands (or not) of a foreign language, it's really neat to find myself on the inside of this experience. I'm conscious of what stage I might be at, and when I'm in the middle of a full-on burst of language acquisition. I'm also aware of how hard it is to learn a new word, and how easy it is to fall back and lose what I've acquired. When I look at friends like Alex and Emanuel, I'm amazed at how able they are to communicate - they can read, write, use grammar. Jessica and Nicola, who took a Korean language course in Seoul in February, are also miles ahead of me. But, it's a start (A start? After two years... it's about time!).

... and next Monday, I start working with Rena's friend Sunny to (finally) start formally learning Korean.

A Very Full Weekend

The weekend started on Friday with the final Goodbye party for our friend Garrett, who has promised to return next September. During the evening, I mentioned that I'd lost rings at his place - Garrett's huge apartment was the perfect location for everyone to get together to celebrate Thanksgiving, both American and Canadian, and I'd lost my 2 favourite rings (one from India, one from Mexico) after a party at his place. His reply was something along the lines of: "Those were yours? Oh, I think I might have thrown them away....".


However, the next morning, my phone rang at 7:45am and I found myself running to the train station to a) see Garrett off one more time and b) get my rings - which he had found - back! Cue the happy dance!

We (me, Ty and Nicola) headed off to Gwangju for the day. We were meeting up with a few other people (Stu, Sarah and Victoria) to try to find some sort of gondola/cable cars that went up the side of a mountain. Victoria, Garrett and I had found ourselves at the base of said mountain lifty things when we had been trying to find the airport to go to Jeju a month ago (we'd taken the right bus in the wrong direction and had been slightly dismayed to find ourselves in the middle of nowhere at the base of a mountain instead of at the airport...).


What could possibly be at the top of this mountain? We hopped in our ski-lift-like chairs (not cable cars or gondolas) to find out.

There must have been something more touristy there before, but now, everything had the rusty feel of abandonment about it - an empty house, a broken fence, signs with the paint peeling off. We followed a path, our sights set on a sort of orange bridge. Surprisingly, we found ourselves at a mini-monorail station of sorts, creeping along through years of dead leaves, until we had no choice but to hop on the tracks to continue until the end.


Along the way, we found one dead mini-train, then continued on until we located the other dead mini-train, still in its berth.


Okay... for those of you who are familiar with Stephen King's Gunslinger series of books... this place smacked of the Cradle of Lud with Blaine the Pain (the crazy monorail), and Stu and I quoted continuously from the book as we walked along.


The crazier amongst us decided to walk on the narrow rails, while the saner folk headed further up the mountain to a sort of broken down two-storey look-out. We had a full view of the city of Gwangju (Korea's 5th largest city), but cloud and haze (and then rain) made it difficult to appreciate the urban scenery.

We returned to the city to get ready for an evening of live music at an Open Mic organized by our friend Matt. He gets everyone together for Open Mic nights about once every 2 months, with the proceeds going to a local orphanage. It was a great night, with a variety of performers, and a lot of really good music.

At the end of the evening, Ty, who had been quivering in his seat, aching to jump on stage, joined in for a group guitar jam.


The next day, Ty and I met up with Stu and Hayoung and went to a Korean music museum. We were going mostly for the room full of traditional Korean musical instruments that you can crash and bang and play with. Our cacophony was hardly traditional, and we had a blast killing the huge bells, drums and hanging chime things. I liked the big drum....



Finally, Ty and I headed to another part of town to attempt to locate an art museum I'd been to two years ago. Unfortunately, we ended up getting lost lost lost in a cold grey afternoon and went shopping instead (he bought a new camera).

Sometimes, weekends can be downright dull... obviously not the case this time.

Tormentuous Bloodletting with Nicola

Now, normally I don't mind acupuncture and bloodletting. I mean, I do it voluntarily, mainly because it's (mostly) relaxing and (generally) not too painful and I do feel better afterwards.

But...

Today, I went to the acupuncture clinic with Nicola, whose shoulder was aching after overdoing it a bit in rock climbing. I've just got a naggy left ankle and right knee (old war wounds) and was sick of periodically favouring one or the other. Using a mix of Korean, English and miming, Nicola and I explained to the doctor what our problems were. Thinking we would just be in for some pin-sticking and a bit of bleeding, we were slightly surprised when he picked up a paper and started reading to us about bee venom.

I believe his exact word were something like, "The injection of bee venom is extremely painful."

Right.

So, we were taken to the pin-sticking room, where, to our chagrin, they decided to bleed us first. I had two (very ouchy) spots on my ankle stabbed and bled and a spot on my knee, while Nicola had a dozen places over her shoulder and back done. Fortunately, we were able to giggle and grimace each other through it.

And then, our kindly doctor arrived with a syringe.

I looked at him with shock and awe.... to which he replied, "No bee venom. Um... mumble in Korean... hong-ah."

He then injected me repeatedly with the mysterious syringe. Laying back on the heated marble table, I laughed to Nicola that this felt like every time I go to the bank and have to sign 6 pages of contractual Korean, without understanding a word. It's just such an issue of trusting completely that whatever is being done to you is not going to harm you that much.

The nurse then arrived with Nicola's syringe and this one was the dreaded bee venom... which she took like a trooper - even though it was, yes, extremely painful.

As we went on to the pin-sticking, then electrocution and heat lamp portions of our treatment, I still kind of wondered what I'd been injected with. "Hong-ah" (which is the closest approximation that I can come up with) sounds an awful lot like the Korean word for skate (like the flat fish thing, not the hockey equipment thing).... will need to do more research on this, methinks....

With our wounds freshly taped up, we hobbled off, with Nicola scheduling another treatment in a few days, and me wondering how and why I've been dragging my friends (Jen, Ty, Nic) to this clinic -- misery loves company? Love to share the pain?

Anyway, happy first day of spring... if you're in Korea, you are probably enjoying the lovely mild temperatures and buds ready to burst on the trees. If you're in Canada, here's hoping that you can shovel yourself out from under that pile of snow before we have to contact the authorities.

My School's Website...

My school has a website - click here...

In true Korean fashion, it's

a) all in Korean
b) full of random flash animation and floaty things on the screen
c) bright (as in colour wise...)
d) features several annoying pop-ups that will clutter up your monitor.

Enjoy!

Doctor Fish

Do you have rough skin on your feet?
Do you have excess cuticles on your toenails?
Do you wish you could get rid of callouses in a unique and natural way?

Alright... welcome to Doctor Fish. You sit with your feet in a pool of inch-long fish who nibble on your toes until your feet are babysoft.

It's an exceedingly ticklish experience, but one that I am sure to attempt again.... Unfortunately, I have no pictures of this... so you'll have to make do with the Wikipedia page.

The Saga of the Cellphone

Arriving at Alex's last night for French Club, I reached automatically to my back pocket to grab my cellphone before I sat down... and my lovely lovely hand-eu-pone was GONE. Thinking I'd lost it on the walk up to Alex's place, I called it from Monique's phone, then went wandering outside to see if I could hear it ring.

After about 20 rings, it was answered by a woman who spoke as much English as I speak Korean. She explained that the phone was on the bus, as I tried to explain to her that I was a teacher at suchandsuch a school and could she get it back to me somehow???

Running back inside, I grabbed Alex (his Korean is way better than mine)... eventually, he found a solution and told me to wait at the bus stop near my school the next morning at 8:30am. And so, this morning, I stood by the bus stop for what felt like ages. Finally, a bus came, and I asked the perplexed driver to give me a cellphone.

And the bus driver looked at me like I was on crack, while I stepped back, stammering and embarrassed....

I headed to school, thinking as I walked that a) the phone had been free, thanks to Stu's generosity and b) I wasn't sad about the phone, but about losing all my friends' phone numbers....

I got to school, and announced to a very sympathetic audience of all my co-teachers that I had lost my phone. Mr Park, who I love, suggested calling the phone again, which another teacher did for me. The lady who had found my phone was a block away from the school - I ran out and met her - and she handed back my phone.

It's only now as I type this that I've figured out exactly what must have happened - the woman who found my phone, the woman who returned it to me, this lovely person who went out of her way to deliver my phone to me... she was the lady who was driving my bus last night!

So, yeah... another "I love Korea" moment....

Okay okay okay.....

Sorry for lack of updates... I wanted to leave the engagement announcement on top for a while as people were notified and/or found out by visiting the blog.

First off, to answer a few questions -- we don't know where or when yet (have to meet respective families first), and I'm not really in any rush... No, no rings as yet, but certainly want something original and that doesn't include any sort of blood diamond, or gold that has been mined by poisoning everyone around it with mercury.... Yes, you're invited!... No, not planning on having children... No, really, we're not... And, yes, we're both really happy and all that. A big thank you to everyone who commented/e-mailed/Facebooked us (gotta love technology for making the world a smaller place!!!) - it's been a wonderful wonderful week.

In other news, school is going well - with the kids still being their amazing selves, except when they are being demon-spawn. My school doesn't seem to notice/care when I leave early, and seem to have taken a "hands-off" approach this year, which is fine with me.

While Canada is being rocked with snowstorms, Korea is coming into spring -- the sort of days when everyone in Canada would have shorts on because it's, like, 15 degrees, dude!

Immigration stuff is being sorted, slowly but surely, and I don't foresee a deportation in my near future - which is good.

The upcoming weekends are filling themselves slowly with outings and social things, which means that all is as it should be in Korea-land.

Cheers!

Remember that thing I said I'd never do???

... because I was free and happy and didn't need no man to make me feel complete (hell no!)

So.... anyway.....

We're engaged.

And yes, I asked him first.

This one is for Katrina: Lost in Translation moments...

A few years ago, there was a movie out called "Lost in Translation". It was a great little movie, and showed the discombobulation that can come out of living in a culture that is not your own, in this case Japan. Bill Murray, as the male lead, plays an older actor who is filming a Santori whiskey ad for the Japanese market. Having seen the movie twice before moving here, including a few days before flying out the first time, its images of Asian fashions, all-nighters in Karaoke rooms, odd showers and 24-hour flashing neon seemed to be constantly in the back of my head as I experienced all these things firsthand, but in Korea.

The idea of US or British stars doing ads internationally is not a new one. Korea features people like Gwyneth Paltrow and David Beckham all over the place, and generally, their presence in an ad is not a jarring one. It's like "Oh, a celebrity... okay", and you may even pause to wonder if you're looking at an international ad (i.e. David Beckham for Motorola) or a strictly Korean one (i.e. Jessica Alba for a Korean skincare line).

But then came Wentworth Miller's French Cafe ads.... There's something very "Bill Murray in Lost in Translation" about Wentworth fixing the camera with a smoldering stare, holding up a disposable cup of instant coffee and saying "Enjoy the Premium, French Cafe". But, then... you be the judge: