Announcement

Virginia and Tyrone are pleased to announce the arrival of the latest addition to their family. Bouncing baby girl Sonagi Parker-Fowler was welcomed into the household last night. Big brother Jakob is intrigued, amused, curious and terrified, but is adjusting well.

Photos to come.

Field Trip!

This is what a child who has been eating nothing but sugar for 6 hours looks like...

As a teacher, you are often required to accompany kids on field trips. I've done shopping trips to Toronto (um, I mean, a museum visit....), ski trips in Quebec, the school band in Montreal, camping trips, and so on, and I've enjoyed them all. I was pretty excited when I learned earlier this week that my school would be going on a field trip to the Hampyeong Butterfly Festival. I was picturing flowers and gardens and butterflies and maybe even a few unicorns nibbling honeysuckle or something.

When I arrived at school this morning, it seemed like every single student was outside, chasing every other student through the parking lot. I was greeted with multitudes of dirty hands giving me candy. Hmm, these children had started off their day by eating pure sugar. Some kind soul had bestowed either a plastic sword, an exploding foam rubber ice cream cone projectile thing or a paper whippy coily thing upon each child, giving them a weapon with which to threaten, torment or attack their friends with.

I went into school where all the teachers had barricaded themselves in the staffroom, and waited until I was summoned to get into a car (YAY... not the bus with all the sugar-soaked howling brats), and off we went to Hampyeong. Approaching the site of the Butterfly Festival, I noticed tons of fun things - purple flowers coated every hillside, butterfly symbols had been worked into every bridge, bus stop, streetlight and mural in town.... further along, I could see a ferris wheel and tons of pavillions. The sky was blue, birds were singing, unicorns frolicking etc...

The only butterfly sighting of the whole day

We arrived in the middle of a dusty parking lot and began the TREK to the actual festival site. The crowd of eleventy billion was made up of 75% elementary school children, each armed with a bag of junk food and a weapon of some sort, 5% adult supervisors of the afore-mentioned children, and 4 trillion old women aka ajummas. Now, for those of you who have never experienced a pack? pride? gaggle? of Korean ajummas, they are a bit like a steel plated tank armed with a battering ram: They move for nobody, and woe betide thee who may get in their way, as you will be either knocked out of the way or trampled underfoot. Oh, and they are ALL nearsighted (and I am really not kidding), and skilled with a shoulder check that would put even the best hockey player to shame.

Kindergarten kids

I had allied myself with Mrs Myeong, the kindergarten teacher, figuring that she would need the most help with her pack of 6 tiny wandering children. Our first stop was... um... a sort of indoor business expo. Right. No butterflies here. Also, NOTHING OF INTEREST FOR A 4-YEAR OLD. From there, we dragged the kids off to a greenhouse. With visions of the Butterfly garden in Niagara Falls, I entered, wondering when I'd be able to see these wingéd jewels...

The greenhouse was NOT full of butterflies, but full of vegetables. Jostled by throngs of ajummas on a mission, I bravely mustered all the enthusiasm I could and pointed at things for the children. "Look!", I said, "Tomatoes!". I was rewarded with a junk food-induced, "Wow!", and soldiered bravely on, defending my wee charges from the onslaught of hips, purses and elbows that threatened them from all sides (We did end up misplacing a few children, one boy burst into tears and squealed for a full 5 minutes right next to me - thanks, as if I wasn't already being stared at enough for being the only foreigner - but we all survived our 15 minutes in the greenhouse).

"Where do we go now?" I asked Mrs Myeong. She wiped the sweat from her brow and smiled, "Lunchee time".

Lunch? It was barely 11 o'clock and we'd pretty much just arrived - and walked through a greenhouse. From out of nowhere, all the parents that belonged to the kindy and 1st graders appeared and dragged us off to a pagoda to feed everyone. I alternated between lurking in the background and setting off to explore on my own - not that there was really much to see or do, I had been trying to find a bathroom that didn't have 400 7-year olds or old ladies lined up for it for the whole morning, but to no avail (although I did find some stag beetle larvae) and I soon grew tired of fighting my way through crowds and crowds of people.

Stag beetle larva... ewww

At one point, one of the parents motioned to me to go to a different picnic spot, where the teachers' lunch was being set up (I will say this about Koreans, they have the best, longest, most food-filled picnics). Spying the plates of raw fish that were being set out, I decided to continue my foolish butterfly quest, and I was soon surrounded by my older students (who had wolfed down their lunches, then eaten their way through ice cream, chips, chocolate, cookies and candy), who were all bored as hell.

Because no Korean school outing is complete without the torture of small animals, several of the children had bought themselves hamsters and goldfish, which they joyously showed off to me, when they weren't stuffing me full of whatever they were eating (yay for the food-sharing culture). I wandered off in the direction of some faint music, with a few children in tow and we stumbled happily upon a group of Peruvian flautists who were giving a performance. With their "waygook radars" working in full force, they all smiled or waved at me (the only person who dared dance). I had some fun showing some of their instruments to my 5th grade girls. Once again, however, no butterflies.

Peruvian flautists

With the two-hour lunch break finally over, all the filthy children (each clutching a bag of chips or a hamster) were lined up and marched off in different directions. I escaped from kindergarten land and headed off with the older kids, with promises of seeing bats (actually, I was told "golden flying mouse", but figured it out for myself). We hiked up a hill, and while we all waited 15 minutes for 2 students to go to the bathroom, a few of the braver 6th grade girls staked their claim on a few of the taller 6th grade boys (as in the girls grabbed the boys' arms with their nails sinking into their skin and declared, "I am wife!", while the boys looked away, blushed or screamed, "NO! You clazy!").

A happy couple...

We walked into the "bat cave", where we were thrilled and entertained with.... drawings of bats, model bats, fake stalagmites and stalagtites and, well, not much else.

We continued dragging our asses up the hill, until we reached the top, which was full of NOTHING. Not even butterflies or unicorns. Have you ever listened to a 6th grader whine that they are hot? or tired? or bored? Right, multiply that by 50 billion. Eventually, we reached a playground, where I found a) a man dressed like a bee and b) the loveliest, cleanest, public washrooms I've ever seen in the world, complete with soap, toilet paper and hot water.

Me and the Bee man

By this point, both the 5th and 6th grade teachers were looking glassy-eyed and like they really needed a good stiff drink. When a girl fell in a fountain and soaked her jeans, leading her to scream and cry like the world was ending, we all just shrugged at each other and opened our cell phones to check the time.

We gathered everyone together for group pictures (showing just how much fun everyone had at the Butterfly-free Butterfly Festival) then hustled the gang off to the bus. Of course, as it was the end of the day, all 7 billion other children were all heading off to their buses too. Oh, and yes, all Korean children look EXACTLY the same.

Eventually, everyone found themselves on the correct bus home, where the children continued to eat junk food, until they fell asleep, entertained by a constantly looped blaring advertisement for the Busan Aquarium.

Saving the world from a giant stag beetle....

How I'm teaching my kids to count....

What a blast from the past, eh? And my little ones just love it!

Two Years....

A journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step. - Lao Tzu
These boots are made for walking, and that's just what they'll do. - Nancy Sinatra

... or a pair of sandals.

After two years here in Korea, meaning two years of working and traveling, I can think of no better way to express how far I've come than to show it through my shoes, and by shoes, I mean flip-flops and sandals.

Let's start with the red sandals on the bottom: From a spa in Taipei, Taiwan. I went there in September 2007 with Nina and Christa. We spent the afternoon in a bathhouse connected to the natural hot springs (which had been originally set up by the Japanese), and decided that the slippers they gave us were so comfortable, that we had to have a pair ourselves. I wore these sandals through Cambodia, climbing the ruins of Angkor Wat.

Moving counter-clockwise to the fake Birkenstocks. I picked these up in Melaka, Malaysia at the Chinese night market in July 2006. I had gone there with a few people from the hostel/guest house where I was staying. The sandals I'd brought with me were ready to die, and I needed new ones to see me through the rest of my journey. These sandals are now ready to kick the bucket, I am sure... but I just can't let go of them. They make me think of my first solo barely-planned Southeast Asian backpacking experience... .and Melaka is still one of my favourite places to be.

The blue beaded flip-flops are from Gili Trawangan, Lombok, Indonesia. They were bought after the flip-flops I was wearing (the ones with oranges all over them that I bought for $10 in Suncheon with Melissa and Jessica) suddenly exploded as I tripped over a cobblestone on the main walkway of Gili T. I was with Monique and we'd just enjoyed a few cocktails or two, while trying to avoid a creepy guy from Alberta, and admiring the waves that crashed into the rocks along the beach - sometimes even splashing the tables at the restaurant. Nina had brought me a similar pair of brown ones the year before (they broke) and Monique brought me another pair of light blue ones (which were too big, and now belong to my niece Bridget). Gili T was an amazing part of Indonesia for me - it's where I got my Open Water Scuba certification.

Hahaha. The next sandals were bought at Payless in Quebec and are as old as God! I do still hold on to some things that I brought with me from Canada. It seems that, although those items may be fewer and far(er) between, they are precious enough to keep forever.

The Indian sandals have only been worn once. When I was in Jaipur, India in January 2007, I picked up two pairs of shoes - these sandals and another pair of camel hide slippers. The slippers were worn to bits as I wandered around India for a month, but these ones were never actually worn. I've made a fair attempt to wear them, but I'll be the first to admit that they really hurt my feet. I bought similar sandals for my brother and sister in Jodhpur, but I haven't heard whether or not they've actually got any wear out of them.

The next sandals jingle when I walk, and they are my new favourites. Bought at the Old Market (Psar Chaa.. spelling???) in Siem Reap, Cambodia, they have proven themselves to be excessively comfortable (and did I mention jingly?). The lady who sold these to me (and a pair that I eventually sent to my sister) also sold Ty a pair of pants for his cousin and a scarf for me. We'd gone there on the afternoon of the Chinese New Year in February, 2008. Since many of the shops were Chinese owned, they were closed or closing early, and we (I) needed to get a lot of souvenir shopping done. After our shopping extravaganza, we found ourselves in a lovely Khmer massage salon, being pummeled in one of the few non-sleazy massage salons of Cambodia.

I did love my blue Korean sandals (I also bought a red pair - which makes me think of the red and blue design on the Korean flag). When I lived in Suncheon, I was in a large apartment complex featuring, amongst other things, two full-on department stores. I bought these sandals in defiance (I believe) of my feet being too big for most of the shoes in this country - unless it is a blatantly foreign brand, like Puma.

The next flip-flops are kind of ugly, but go along with a funny story... oh, and they are Japanese, but bought in Korea. I'd gone to Seoul to see Karen (who I'd traveled through India with) for the last time -- could it have really been a year ago?? -- Anyway, we'd been out dancing the night before, and I'd killed the sandals I was wearing (the ones Nina got me in Bali?) and had stolen the hard plastic shower sandals from the Love Motel we'd stayed at. As my feet got more cut up from our wanderings around Seoul, I knew I needed new shoes, so I bought these and left the terrible plastic ones behind in the store.

Finally, my embroidered Indian slippers from, where else... New Delhi, India. It was one of our last days in India, and Karen and I were shopping up a storm around Connaught Place in Delhi. I was bound and determined to get a pair of these slippers... and there they were. Horrid pink and purple things on the second floor of a shop along the government emporium strip (we spent the better part of a day there - picking up things that we'd not wanted to drag with us for our whole month - telling ourselves that we'd probably find the same thing later on in another shop).

It's fun. It's fun to point to a pair of shoes and say, "These are from Malaysia", or describe the airport of Taipei as if it were my second home. But these are only from fragmented weeks or days of traveling in a time where I've grown - personally as a person and professionally as a teacher - and not always the full blogged-about story.

I like this. I like being able to say that my sandals, or my clothes, or my earrings, or my friends, etc. come from dozens of different countries. And this is not boasting, although it may sometimes sound like it. I mean, for the most part, I live a normal, boring, domestic life but... I am also living a dream that I had for a long time... to see and taste and experience the world in a whole new way.

The past two years have represented a lot of different things for me - I've bought sandals, yes. But I've also done other things, like make friends with people who probably wouldn't have been my friends if I'd been in Canada, sadly saying goodbye to far too many. I've tasted things that I didn't know existed, danced on remote beaches, swum with pink dolphins, snorkeled with reef sharks. I've enjoyed and endured the privileges that come with being a free, Caucasian woman in a foreign land. I've watched debts disappear as I've lived more fully than I ever have before. I've filled my passport with stamps. I've lolled in a frangipani-filled tub while the rain drummed on the roof of the Balinesian spa. I've seen the Taj Mahal, the Forbidden City, Harajuku Street and Angkor Wat. I've smiled or cried my way out of police encounters in Korea and Indonesia. I've touched - or been touched by - Holy sites in India, Korea, Japan and Cambodia. I've been fortunate enough to smile and be smiled at by people in Korea, China, Japan, Malaysia, Singapore, Indonesia, Cambodia, Taiwan, the US and Canada.

How blessed am I?

I mean... really.

And this is just the beginning. As I begin the next chapter of my life... that of actually traveling with another person, I have plans to see more and more of this wonderful world. And I can't wait to see where my feet, and my sandals, will take me next.

Two Years!

It's been two years since I first arrived in Korea.... I've got to think about this a bit more before I write anything but, wow.

OH MY GOD!

So.... After my initial dye job a few weeks ago, I decided to try to recapture the dark brown.

Unfortunately, I have ended up with rather dark brown, almost BLACK, hair. Decided that if you can't cry, you may as well laugh, and had some fun using up a ton of black eyeliner and turning myself into a goth...

Well... here you go:

BEFORE:

(this was me back in January...)

AFTER:

And this is me now!

Think he's scared???

Flowers, Beach and Survival Korean

I got home from a long day of work (aka Facebooking and showing movies to my students) on Friday and had a lovely surprise. Ty had gone out and picked flowers from around our building - cherry blossoms, yellow things and pink stuff. I found it sweet... Jakob found it delicious.

He also gave me an mp3 player that he'd won from one of those games, you know, where you use a claw to pick stuff up? And usually it's just crap anyway? Well, the claw-game-things in Korea also have cool things like, apparently, mp3 players. He also loaded all my favourite playlists from my computer onto it. Such a nice surprise!

This was pretty much *the* weekend for cherry blossoms - they are just everywhere now, cropping up in unexpected places (who knew there were so many of these trees all over Korea?) and dropping their petals on all who walk among them.

On Saturday, a veritable gang of Mokpo-ites wandered over to Wando to play on the beach and also say goodbye to Stu, who will be leaving for a few months (but coming back in August!). It was quite windy, and a bit too chilly for all but the most intrepid of campers to sleep over, but it was just wonderful to run around on the beach again.

On the beach...

The Pagoda girls - me, Ha-young, Lindsey, Jessica

Under my sarong

In other news, I've finally started meeting Sunny for my Korean lessons. My ultimate goal is to work my way through the "Survival Korean" book, with her helping, explaining and testing me along the way. She also taught me how to use the Korean on my cellphone so that I can now send a text message in Korean! Woooo!

The Politics of Lunch

It's been almost two years since I left Canada and moved to Korea. Of all the things that I love about this country, the food is definitely not one of them. You have all heard me rant about this before. Not wanting to eat pork or beef, rejecting bait fish and octopus, or cold oyster-like things, or super spicy vegetable stems, or "I don't know, lives in sea".... these have been hard to justify to my work colleagues in both Suncheon and Mokpo. I still remember sitting with my first co-teacher in the cafeteria in Suncheon and her asking me, "Is this [fruit covered in ketchup and mayonnaise] delicious?", and the look on her face when I was like, "NO!".

And so it has been. I've stopped taking anything that contains any sort of sea creature, I can feel the bile rise in my throat when I smell fish-based soup. I have jumped back from a bowl that revealed itself to contain a whole crab.

A few months ago, I stopped eating rice - the main staple of every meal - too. I was literally gagging on it... I sometimes couldn't even lift the spoon to my mouth. I don't even eat rice at home either, or in a restaurant.... (it's just the Korean style rice that I don't like - white and flavourless... Dude, where's the basmati?).

I'm pretty lucky that my school and its teachers are so open and understanding and willing to understand me. I explained that I am not used to eating so much rice, and that I don't want to waste food, I told the kitchen ajummas that I did enjoy certain things, but that it was often too spicy (I once sat with a glass of water and rinsed off each piece of spicy lettuce and cucumber, but I digress).

The funny thing is that I go out for Korean food a few times a week... last night, I absolutely gobbled a bowl of kimchi... Ahhhh - why do I feel like I have to justify this?

But, back to the point. After months of school lunches (and to be fair, if a Korean went to a Canadian school and had to judge us by our cafeteria fare, what would they think???) that continued to get smaller and smaller (sometimes literally a spoonful of rice and a few chopstick-fulls of whatever vegetable was offered), after two years of sometimes skipping lunch and spending the day hungry, all the while having school lunch deducted from my pay to the tune of about $40 - 50 a month, I finally decided to either go home for lunch, or bring one with me. Keep in mind that this momentous decision has taken TWO YEARS to finally come to fruition. Food is such an important part of Korean culture, that to even imply that you don't like the taste of something (or, for example, enjoy this version of it, but not that) is a major insult.

Here's the hard part: Where should I eat? The fridge and microwave are in the teachers' room. The cafeteria is in a different building. Yesterday, I had something that needed heating, so I ate it in the teachers' room, stealthily, hoping no one would see that I was hiding away... and how ridiculous is that? Today, I've brought a cheese sandwich (cheddar, dijon mustard and dill pickles -- all bought at high expense from a foreign food store in Gwangju)... not something that needs microwaving. Today, I will finally sit in a school cafeteria and eat something completely different.

I will have to let you know how that goes.

Oh yeah... almost forgot. Last Friday, I made Kraft Dinner and brought a pot of it to school. I loved seeing the reactions on my colleagues' and students' faces. Some of them loved it - the kids were grabbing it by the handful. And, to be fair, most people at least tasted it.... even if their faces wrinkled up afterwards. Like I said, I'm pretty lucky to be in a rather open-minded school.

Mokpo University Flower Festival

So, I was supposed to start my Korean lessons this week with Sunny. However, on Monday, I was feeling so sick (combination of post-weekend fatigue, dreaded yellow dust from China and a real live cold) that I put it off to Thursday. Rena and Sunny both texted me repeatedly on Thursday to tell me to come to Mokpo Dae Hakkyo (University) for a "flower show". I was like... meh... okay... whatever.

After a 40 minute bus ride to the middle of nowhere, I met up with Sunny (who held my hand as we walked through the University campus - completely normal here in Korea) and she brought me to a HUGE stage which looked like it had been set up for the Rolling Stones or something, and featuring four scantily-clad women (and a crowd of cheering students) dancing up a storm. Okay... this was going to be an interesting "flower show".

These are not flowers, but they sure can dance.

At one point, Sunny grabbed me and said "water balloon", and we went running off to a target where we got to throw water balloons at university boys. It was so nice to be in such a youthful crowd - just brimming with that university energy. Everyone was dressed in hip Korean casual, couples were holding hands (which is somewhat rare here), and act after act graced the stage - singing, dancing, etc.

These are not flowers either, but you can throw water at them. Sunny is in the lower right. Guess which one is me.

The other cool thing was not having the "point and stare" waygook effect. I mean, they did look at me, but then just said "Hi" or whatever. It wasn't like elementary or middle school (or even high school) kids who point, stare, wave, scream "HELLO HELLO HELLO", then run away giggling when you answer back. Rena and a group of her friends joined us at one point, and I was overwhelmed with how friendly, happy and relaxed everyone was.

At one point, a mish-mash of people got on stage, featuring a woman with an afro, the world's tallest, fittest Korean man, 2 male dancers who looked like time-traveling cowboys, and a girl wearing as few clothes as she possibly could. They sang techno, and danced around. Every time the girl wearing shorts the size of a belt came to the center of the stage, the boys in the crowd went ballistic... then again... who could blame them?

Once again, not flowers.... but nobody seems to mind

Finally, I was just too cold to stay longer - although I really wanted to - and I headed home early from the flower show, without having seen a single flower....