Construction, Earthquakes, Fire, Floods and General Ramblings....

My school is old. Old old old. I have no idea when it may have been built, but I do know that there were pictures of it in the black and white photographs on display at the Mokpo History Museum, complete with dirt roads, ox carts and ladies in kimonos (photos were mostly from the Japanese occupation). It's obviously been renovated, re-wired, plumbing added... whatever.

The latest renovation has been demolishing the ground floor (it's a 3-storey building). The floorboards and dirt foundation were dug-up, new dirt was put in and packed down, and now a concrete floor has been poured (I've heard a rumour that a certain English teacher from Canada may or may not have accidentally stepped on the fresh concrete, then clumsily tried to cover it up in the hopes that it would look like a child did it... but I digress). The children have been generally playing around either old floorboards full of rusty nails, piles of dirt and mud puddles, digging machines, a crane (!!!!) and so on. So, right... it's been fun. Yesterday, the only way to get into the VP's office was to go outside and then climb a ladder to enter through the window, hop on the couch and from there to the floor (and then you have to bow, right? To appear dignified and all that....).

Last week, in response to the earthquakes in China, all the school children in Korea had to learn about emergency procedures. I wasn't witness to the video they watched, but I know that there were a lot of kids sitting under their desks at one point. This afternoon, they are (from what I can understand) burning something and putting it out. Or burning down the school?

Finally, one of Korea's most distinct seasons is back upon us - that being the really humid and rainy one (we had 100mm the other day, which turned all the stairways in my neighbourhood into waterfalls). No Meron, I don't know if these are the fabled "long rains" or "short rains" of which you speak...

Sonagi met a bunch of my teachers the other day. I was being a bit cheeky by introducing a kitten to a pile of people who generally hate cats, and I was quite happy and surprised by their reaction, which was mostly positive (except for the inevitable "dog soup" comments -- yes, fine, you beat dogs to death to make a cure for your impotence.... that's surely something to be proud of!). And, unless my school is really in denial, they will certainly have figured out by now that a) I have 2 cats in the apartment that last year's VP told me didn't allow pets (not true, there are dogs in the building) and b) Ty lives there too.

I'm feeling better and better about the coming year (my 3rd in Korea!!!) and, aside from a serious bout of culture shock - I've been through all the stages a million times since coming here - I'm actually looking forward to it.

A Wonderful Weekend of Nothing Much...

Given the fact that my past few weeks have been supremely hectic, I did NOTHING this weekend. It was quite nice to just relax.

I'm really looking forward to two things right now:

1) My friend Madeleine (who I taught with at the College in La Pocatiere) is coming for 3 weeks in July. Plans include a temple stay, a mud festival, Seoul and (I'm sure) lots and lots of laughing.

2) My travel plans for August are coming together. Amsterdam, Copenhagen and then a few days in Gothenburg, Sweden. WOW.

Can't wait...

New Visa!

Well, it's official - I'm staying for another year (at least). I went with my head teacher to the Immigration Office where, I swear, a 12-year-old in a t-shirt took a break from texting on his cell phone to shuffle through all my documents and then try to stamp my old (canceled) passport. Fortunately, a guy who knew what to do came along and took over from him....

Because of a change of laws in Korea, I had to re-do the entire visa process - that's three times in three years - but what had me the most stressed (and pissed) was the criminal check. Consider these facts:

• Getting fingerprints done: taxi + bus = $7, the first (fruitless) visit involved visiting 2 different police stations, then spending about an hour talking to someone who couldn't understand why I wanted fingerprints done. The second one took about an hour and half, and involved me translating the fingerprints form from Korean to English. Mailing fingerprints to Canada, with insurance = $15
• RCMP Criminal check: $25
• My mother had to courier the prints to the RCMP and then mail them back to me in Korea: $20
• Going to Busan for the Apostille stamp: bus = $45, taxi + subway in Busan = $9, hotel + supper + breakfast = $40, embassy stamp = $50 (NB: wonder what an "Apostille" stamp is? It's a smudged, blurry, crooked stamp that says "Government of Canada on it"). This process involved a 10-hour round-trip bus ride to Busan, about 26-hours of my personal and work time from start to finish.
• Finally, my head teacher and I spent about 45 minutes going to the central post office to pick up the stamped form.

Total (in Canadian): $201
Total personal/work time: about 30 hours
Emails between my coordinator and I figuring out what the whole process was, and what was involved and was it even necessary, since my last criminal check had been done in January 2006: too many to count

I do not have a problem with complying with government regulations. I mean, even Canada still has problems with illegal immigration and a few people who scam their way into social assistance and the like. As a person who has chosen to live and work in a foreign country, I must abide by the laws of that country and go through the necessary processes in order to keep my visa status. It works this way in every country - and that is fine.

My problem is that, after all this effort and inconvenience, they didn't even look at my criminal record form. When I handed it to the guy who was processing all my papers, he glanced at it and handed it back to me. Of course, I am keeping it - on one hand, in case they ask to see it (if they ever realize that it's missing) and as future proof that, unlike the CEO of Samsung, the current President of Korea and former the Korean President's son, to name a few, I have never been (allegedly) involved in any criminal activity.

5.18, Open Mic and saying goodbye to Carol

On Saturday, Ty and I headed up to Gwangju for an Open Mic night. It was a nice low-key evening, and he rocked the place with a few songs.


On our way to the Open Mic, we found ourselves in a sort of parade/protest that marked the 5.18 Gwangju Uprising. It was headed by a pick-up truck full of guys with (fake?) machine guns, and followed by hundreds (and no, I am not exaggerating) of people (all ages - from children to seniors) in traditional dress banging away on drums and cymbals as they walked along. It was pretty thrilling as the waves of drums circulated up and down the line.

You know, in any other country (and considering that there had been an anti-American protest earlier in the afternoon), I wouldn't have felt right taking photos and stuff. But here, people smiled and waved at us, including this guy who was dancing through the crowd of musicians:

At the end of all these musicians was a group of guys with big red flags.

I'm not sure what they were all about, but other people in the crowd were handing out anti-FTA signs and stuff (against the Free Trade Agreement between the US and Korea).

The next day, Sunday, I found myself on a bus to Busan for a very quick trip to get a stamp on some paperwork for my visa renewal (don't even get me started on what a huge pain the visa renewal process has been this year)... well, a quick trip, not including the 10 hours that I spent going there and back on the bus!

One good thing about this trip to Busan was being able to see my friend Carol from Suncheon one last time. She was flying out on Monday, and we shared a hotel room on Sunday night after a really wicked awesome INDIAN buffet.


We were sharing the hotel with one other little being - Carol's cat Lola, who was rescued by Nina from atop some video games in a bus terminal, and who I wrote about in my Cat Fancy article.

I spent Monday morning running around to the Canadian Consulate, then grabbed a bus back to Mokpo.

I'm still a bit nervous about the visa renewal - and probably for no reason. It's just that nothing here seems consistent. Some people had to show their degrees, some didn't. Some people had to send in their actual original diplomas (only to have them returned folded, torn, stapled or otherwise damaged...). Some needed criminal checks, some didn't. People have even paid different amounts for the visa stamp in their passport. Some people needed interviews, or different drug tests or whatever. I'm just keeping my fingers crossed that all my paperwork is in order and that I'll be good for another year.

Immigration and Teacher's Day...

- My E2 (work) visa expires next Saturday. My school has finally woken up to the fact that I can't work without my visa... and is in a state of panic. I am sitting back and enjoying the chaos (I've been reminding them for 3 months that I need this or that document or test or whatever for immigration) as I am ushered off to the hospital for mandatory drug tests and the like. Now that it's their problem, I don't need to worry about anything... safe in the knowledge that it will all work out in the end.

- I complimented one of my teachers on her earrings yesterday and she gave them to me!!!

- My lovely and talented fiancé will be taking the stage tonight at an Open Mic in Gwangju...fingers crossed! He'll be playing 3 songs on guitar and singing.

- I gave 2 bottles of barley soju from the barefoot marathon in Daejeon to my school for Teacher's Day and they were suitably impressed... they drank (repeatedly) to my health on Thursday afternoon (I wasn't there, but my soju was), and I was thanked profusely on Friday. It's called "buying their love"....

- Speaking of Teacher's Day, the 1st grade teacher got every student to make me a card... I honestly thought I was going to cry when a crowd of cute little kids came up to me in the morning and each handed me a card....

That's me in the green (underneath me it says "Virginia teacher"), and Ty in the blue (underneath him it says "Virginia teacher boyfriend"). This little boy once saw us at the bus stop and it made his day, apparently.

This girl obviously prefers me with "yellow" hair.

I can pick out a few of the words... like, my name, I love you, English... stuff like that, but can't read everything...

For the record... I have never worn a side ponytail.

Looking at these drawings makes me think of this Korean artist who took kids' drawings as an inspiration for some rather surreal photos.

And now for something completely different....

Lindsey, Nicola and Candace - giving props to Iguide Korea

Last week, Nicola e-mailed me about a "Masai Marathon", a barefoot hike to raise money for ecological issues in Korea. Our friend Lindsey was coordinating a few people through Iguide Korea, and it just seemed like a fun idea. It had been a while since I had done something different here - like, my first year here, everything was new and wonderful, but my 2nd year here seemed to include a lot of repetition (went to Jeju... again, went to Gwangju... again, went to Seoul... again, went to Busan... again).

I was totally unprepared for how amazingly different this weekend would turn out to be.

Whatever I was imagining, and whatever you might imagine would be involved in a barefoot walk for the environment... well... it was completely off the scale of surreal and awesome.

Candace and Melisa on the bus

On Saturday afternoon, I found Melisa and Candace in Gwangju and we grabbed a bus for Daejeon, which is my new favourite city in Korea (actual urban planning??? Here??? Multi-ethnic population? Wide open sidewalks, bridges, clean clean clean?? WOW!)... We headed to the Daejeon Convention Center, where we found Nicola and Lindsey (fresh from 3 days of camping) and their friend Eddy. We knew that there was an opening ceremony, but we certainly weren't prepared for the BLACK TIE affair that it was (we were most certainly under-dressed).

Opera Singers

The evening included a presentation (all in Korean) about the benefits of walking barefoot, a pansori (traditional Korean singing) performance, a string quartet, a gang of opera singers, a full meal (where you sit down and are faced with more forks than are really necessary) and more well-dressed Koreans than you can shake a stick at. I started getting nervous when they were showing video and pictures from last year's run -- featuring full-on kitted-out long distance runners (one guy said that he had been training for weeks, running barefoot on a track, for this event... errrmmmm). What were we getting ourselves into?

Free Soju

Our sponsor, a soju company, provided each table with quite a few bottles of free barley soju, and I'm not ashamed to say that some of the cutlery may or may not have walked away from our table as well.

The next day, our bus picked us up from a university campus, where we were joined by a few other people, including some American guys who had stayed up all night drinking, and we found ourselves at the base of a mountain (we'd already complained our way up a kilometer before we got to the registration table), under a bright blue sky and absolutely surrounded by all sorts of people in all sorts of outfits - from marathoners to hikers to casually dressed folks like us - and of all ages.

Candace and I pretending to have a pre-hike cocktail

We started UP the trail, and finally, after another kilometre, crossed the starting line (we were running a bit late, so missed the actual start). We walked along, up (and up) the dirt path, between trees, with views of mountains and lakes... at every kilometre, there was a sign to tell us how far we'd walked, someone cheering us on, music (either live or recorded), sometimes water and snacks, photographers and cameramen (I did a TV interview at one point).

Not very ECOLOGICAL!
(we picked up litter as we walked along)

The view from the top...

Nicola and her ocarina joining with the pros

One thing about walking barefoot is that it really slows you down. With every step, you become aware of your foot touching the ground, and you aren't sure if the next step will be soft, prickly, hard, gravelly.... as you gingerly place your foot down. For the most part, the trail was soft sand (except for one memorable kilometre or two of hard prickly gravel bits).

Nicola and I - we've changed so much in two years, but we're still like sisters

Walking...

The art of dancing...

At the 9th or 10th kilometre, we had a huge pool of mud to treat our feet to (giving us orange feet for the rest of the day). With only a few more kilometres to walk, the skin on the bottoms of my feet was just hurting hurting hurting... my legs didn't hurt, my ankles were fine... but ow ow ow said the soles of my feetsies.

The mud! Yay!

We reached the end - about 3 hours after we'd started (the people who ran it were finished in about an hour), got more free soju, a certificate and a wooden medallion.

At the finish line... my time (3 hours, 14 minutes - but don't forget that we started late... so maybe, like, 3 hours is more accurate...)

This man gave me two extra bottles of free soju...

The donation for the event was 13,000 Won (about $15 Canadian), which got me a banquet, a concert, gallons of free soju, a walk in the sun with friends, a wooden medallion thing, a sunburned chest and a real sense of accomplishment once I finally crossed the finish line and thought, "Hey, that wasn't so hard after all!"

Wee Update

1) Sonagi's tail fell off. When she was found, there was an elastic band around it - it's a Korean thing, and quite barbaric. So, now she has a little bob-tail.

2) On Sunday, I am walking 13km in my bare feet to raise money for the oil-spill clean up (oil spill that happened last December).... eeek.

3) Over summer vacation, I'm going to meet my mom in Amsterdam, then travel up to Copenhagen and then on to the UK.

4) I just signed my new contract for another year in Korea. Yay!

Busan Weekend!!!!!!!!!

Busan Busan Busan Busan Busan... Oh, how I love you, Busan.

We started our trip early Saturday morning. We lucked into a direct bus (that didn't do any of its normal milk-run stops) that had us crossing the entire Korean peninsula from west to east in five hours.

Haeundae Beach... where the Koreans are dressed and the foreigners aren't

My sexy fiancé in the water at Haeundae Beach....

After a wee subway trip, we found ourselves at Busan's famous (although decidedly urban) Haeundae Beach, surrounded by fully clothed Koreans and nearly naked Waygookin. It was a glorious blue-sky day and the first 3-day weekend of the summer (ergo, a lot of tourists around).

We managed to find a room in a dodgy hotel that was cheaper than all the other dodgy hotels around (the dodgy hotel that I'd stayed at in November had doubled its prices in anticipation of the influx of tourists). At any rate, we knew that we wouldn't be spending tons of time in the tiny room, the majority of which was taken up by the round bed (pink) and lit with a tasteful red light in the ceiling.

Lunch was Indian - at Ganga - where we ate and drank and ate some more (a bit expensive, but well worth it), followed by beachy time, until we wandered into the Busan Aquarium.

Clowning around with the clown fish at the Busan Aquarium

Being cheesy and romantic inside the shark mouth

The penguins were decidedly uncooperative, which made me sad, but the sharks certainly made up for it. The fun bit of two people who have recently been scuba diving in diverse parts of the world going to an aquarium is playing the "I've seen that fish/shark/lobstrosity/etc in Cuba/Indonesia/Cambodia/Mozambique.... " game at every single tank.

We met up with my friend Jack and, even though we were still full from lunch, managed to gobble amazingly delicious tacos from a lost taco stand surrounded by American GIs, sitting on plastic stools and avoiding cars that kept passing so close to us in the narrow alley that we thought they'd run over our feet. From there, Jack asked if we'd like to go to a local "Upara". A what?

Jack at the U-para shooting gallery

Me and Jack, being silly

U-para is like a Chuck E. Cheese for grown-ups (and kids, and teens, and families...anyway). For $4, you spend an hour wandering around playing video games, reading comics, playing billiards, shooting rifles, fishing, noraebanging, bowling... well, just about anything that you want to do. Our first stop was the massage chairs, of course, before we hit the arcade games. We probably could have spent a few more hours there and not noticed the time passing. It was really awesome and such a neat surprise....

After that, Ty and I headed to the Paradise Casino. It was absolutely packed. I'm assuming that it must be a long weekend in Japan and China too (Koreans are not allowed to gamble in Korean casinos - go figure)... anyway, after playing the same $10 for about 20 minutes on the slots, I wandered over to play Blackjack ($40) for the next hour or so. I was pretty happy, since my luck held out and let me play up and down for about 2 hours in all. Ty and I are pretty sure that we'd be gambling addicts if we ever actually moved to Busan....

Having lost all our money and giddy on free wine and beer, we went for another walk on Haeundae beach, where groups of people were lighting off fireworks.

The next day, Sunday, was a bit overcast. After some restorative Starbucks, we attempted to locate the famous Beomeosa Temple, one of Korea's oldest and most beautiful Buddhist temples. It was a bit of a mission, including a 30-minute wait for a bus that never came and a 20-minute wander around a random neighbourhood, but we finally found our way.

Decorations for Buddha's birthday

With Buddha's 2552nd birthday just one week away, the entire place was decorated up with colourful octagonal or lotus-shaped paper lanterns. Really really gorgeous.

We also decorated a roof tile. We just kind of started doodling a tree, and it started to look like the Shel Silverstein book... There isn't any deeper meaning, but we both love the story.

From Beomeosa, we went to "Shanghai Street". It really wasn't a typical Chinatown, since it seemed to have been misnamed - "Moscow Street" would have been more appropriate. All the signs were in Russian, with overly made-up women in tight black skirts lining the street, smiling at Ty (and saying, "helllllooooooo") and looking at me strangely. Um, yeah.

Toes in the sand... Starbuck's Vanilla Latte.... could life be any better?

Monday morning was absolutely gorgeous, and we took our Starbucks down to the beach for about an hour of people-watching and sand-playing before our return to Mokpo.

We hate the beach, obviously....

I've now got a year (mwahahahaha) to convince Ty that we should really really really move to Busan so that we may partake of its lush green mountains, diverse ethnic restaurants, casinos, beaches, and English-speaking cashiers.....

Resistance is Futile

You will be assimilated.

And, yes, I even participated in the group exercises (not this time, because I was filming):

Today was Sports Day, and I rocked my completely unflattering pink and black and silver tracksuit with pride....

Sonagi's story....

By the way, I don't think I've mentioned yet where Sonagi came from... here's the story, as told by her saviour, Monique:

...last week I heard this tiny little kitten meowing. It was so sad and pitiful, so young it shouldn't have been away from its mother, and tied up to a leash under a bench in the great outdoors - in the rain and cold weather recently it must have been horrible for the poor thing. It had no food and no water. I bought it some food from E-Mart for the kitten and it ate it all up because it was clearly starving.
...We feared somebody was going to hurt it, as in Korea cats are quite often seen as a cure for arthritis - and it was being mistreated as it was.
Today when we went to get it, it was quite dirty and so weak that it could barely lift its head. My boyfriend held an umbrella up to hide our faces from the nearby security cameras, I cut the leash with some scissors, and shoved the kitten in a shopping bag. Back to the apartment we went.
Upon returning, the kitten headed straight for the bowl of water we put out for it, then the food. My boyfriend cut off the elastic band on the kitten's tail - this was put there so that the tail would fall off. The tail is actually limp, the end of it is dead now, and will probably fall off sometime in the near future.

Oh, and for more on the state of animals in Korea, including an anti-dogmeat petition, please please please visit the KAPS website.

Jakob and Sonagi

Before she arrived, Jakob was quite content... sleeping upsidedown on his favourite hair-covered chair...


... or cuddling with one of his human slaves....


And then, this little street kitty arrived, backed him into a kitty-corner and growled at him.


He's pretty cool about the whole thing. They take turns chasing each other through the apartment, giving him some much-needed exercise. Look at the size of him!


They even ate from the same bowl... It's hard to believe that he was tinier than Sonagi when I first got him.


So, Jakob has to share his human slave with this little thing...


And he's still sort of trying to figure out WHAT she is.