Something new...

On Friday, my school changed the whole schedule around so that we could go on a hike in the afternoon. The typhoons that have been hitting Taiwan lately were decidedly uncooperative, and our plans were literally blown away. Instead, I got to see a new island, recently joined to the mainland by a big huge bridge (which has been on most Mokpo tourist maps for the past 2 years). This bridge system also means that all the Shinan Islands are now connected together.

The island that I saw... one two-lane road rolling along fields and open spaces, past tiny buildings... just made me want to go back and check it out at a later date. All we got to do on Friday afternoon was drive there and back. Kind of a waste of time. I think I would have preferred the hike.

There are dozens of islands off the coast of Mokpo, quite a few of which are visible from my apartment window. I'm assuming, by their shapes and the fact that they remind me a lot of my view in La Pocatiere (facing the mountainous Charlevoix region of Quebec) that they are probably the tips of an underwater mountain chain. This is just an assumption though.

The island that dominates the view from my apartment is, of course, Gohado. I teach there once a month, and I guess I've spoken enough about it that it warranted a weekend visit. I'd gone to Gohado as a "tourist" with Jens, Randi and Jen last year, and we'd been mostly bored. Now, however, that I knew more about the island, I was sure that we'd have a better day.

It's supposed to resemble a sleeping dragon, with "Yong mori" (the dragon's head) extending along the waterfront of Old Mokpo, past Shinan beach and almost to the Maritime University. I live across from the "dragon's hip"... "hip" is how Koreans translate "bum".

Here is a good pic of the end of Gohado and Yong mori.

Bright and early Saturday, after a late evening of soju cocktails and noraebang, Ty, Zach and I boarded the ferry to Gohado (Terry decided to sleep instead). This ferry takes about 3 minutes to reach the island.... unless you get on the ferry that we got on, in which case it take 115 minutes, only hitting Gohado after it makes its rounds to every other island in that area. Still, it's fun to ride on a boat, right?


Anyway... We got to Gohado, and I decided to show the boys around the, ahem, less touristy parts: the road to my school, the farmers, the dog-farm made out of doors, the frog pond.... before heading up to the touristy bit of General Lee's monument thing.




Sitting on a rock, under a tree, listening to birds while we ate our lunch... it was just a wonderful place to be. You feel so far away from Mokpo, even though you are only a few kilometres of water away.



Now, it was time for us to conquer the dragon. After a few false starts (which led us to an abandoned church, another dog farm, a very quaint house, and made us bump into the same Jehovah's Witnesses three times), we finally found ourselves on a very nice, well-groomed forest path along the top of the dragon.

My school is the long pink building to the left of the twig in the centre of the photo.
My apartment building is the white cube on the far right... I'm on the top floor.

Posing with Yong Mori (Dragon's head) behind us... we didn't make it all the way.

Yudal mountain

With only 2 hours to make the trip there and back (so as not to miss the ferry home), we had to rush along a bit. The trail was great though... no garbage littering the way, lovely views of rice paddies below us on one side and Yudalsan and my neighbourhood across the water on the other side. Unfortunately, we also had to turn back before we got to the dragon's head (let's say that we made it to the dragon's shoulder or something, okay?).


Dying of thirst, we went to the ramshackle house/restaurant/store and bought some water. The ladies inside recognized me as the English teacher, and gave us a discount on our water! Nice! Then, while we sat on the pier waiting for the boat to come, one of the old old old ladies came over to us. She complimented me on my mad Korean skillz (in Korean), then offered us a bowl full of fresh figs. Just a super nice way to end the day.

But, the day was not yet over.

On Friday, before my outing with the school, and clad in my official "school activity sportswear" (bright pink jacket, black exercise pants, sneakers), I had received a memo from the Mokpo Education Office saying that they had tickets to a Korean musical to hand out. So, I ran off to the Office, dressed like Rizzo from Grease, and grabbed 2 tickets. It occured to me that I hadn't been to the theatre in AGES and this would certainly be entertaining (and free) and a different way to spend Saturday evening.


So, back from our hike, Ty and I got ourselves all tarted up (I wore heels instead of flip-flops, he wore a tie!) for a night at the opera. I kept my fingers crossed that the music would not be traditional discordant wailing, and I was in luck! It was a full-on opera. It was like any other musical production (big voices, dance numbers where everyone is on stage running around, tons of set changes, insane costumes) and I loved it! Fortunately, Mr Kim, the director of the Mokpo Language Program was 2 seats away from us, and was able to explain the story to us at the intermission and after the performance. In case you were wondering, it's the story of a prince in Suwon, near Seoul, who becomes a great ruler for his people, even though his grandfather killed his father, or something... and there was a love story bit too.

Even though we mostly didn't have a clue what was happening on stage, it was just great to be out on the town, listening to amazing voices, looking at super costumes... Talking about it afterwards, I realized that I'd been going to see performances of all kinds since I was a little girl. In Saudi Arabia, we used to see plays and musicals all the time, as a teenager I saw Cats, Phantom, some Shaw productions and a few smaller theatre productions in Niagara Falls. In University, I remember seeing Miss Saigon, the Nutcracker, Othello, Richard III and some university productions too. La Pocatiere feels like a never-ending series of student productions, dance recitals, and community theatre productions, punctuated by Notre-Dame de Paris (twice) and other shows. I didn't realize just how much I'd been missing live theatre!

Sunday was a suitably lazy day... and now we're in another 4-day week. We've got a day off on Friday (to celebrate my brother's birthday, I think), and we'll be heading to Jinju to check out this lantern festival.

Stomps feet, gnashes teeth, shakes fist, bangs head on wall...

Heyyyy.... remember, like, that time, when I, like, had to get a smudged stamp put on a piece of paper that said I hadn't committed any criminal acts in Canada even though I'd been living in Korea for 2 years AND had a less-than-2-year old criminal record check that had already been done before I could get my original visa processed here? Right... remember how I had to do all that to keep the same job at the same school instead of just getting a simple renewal stamp? Remember how all that cost me about $300 and wasted my time, my mom's time and even my school's time? Remember how the people at the Mokpo Immigration Office looked at it with puzzlement and handed the paper back to me because they couldn't understand why I was giving it to them?

Yeah.... good times.

It seems that South Korea feels that it is a "violation of basic human rights" for their citizens to have to provide a criminal background check to the US government in order to join the US's Visa Waiver Program.

You can find a well-researched comment written by an ex-pat, as well as a link to the original article here.

A weekend awaaaayyyy from Mokpo

This past weekend, Ty and I did our PADI Advanced Open Water certification, and returned home to find ourselves feeling like we'd spent a week away.

When I first arrived in Korea, I promised myself to only spend every other weekend in the town where I was living, and the other weekends off exploring. For the most part, it worked. It is easy, however, to get yourself into a rut and to forget that there is still a lot of Korea left to see. It was a weekend of meeting new people (Jackie! What's your blog address??), living new experiences, seeing new things, and generally enjoying ourselves in a new way.

On Friday, we took the KTX up to Seoul. Since we were meeting the dive people at 5am on Saturday morning (ugh), we decided against getting a hotel room and opted for a night in a jimjilbang instead.

The place we chose, the Dragon Spa, was just next to Yongsan Station, and decorated with everything from faux Chinese dragons and bridges to penguins (!) and King Tut masks (!!!). All tackiness aside, it was a pretty neat experience. We wandered around the (clothed) co-ed area in our shorts and t-shirts (provided), sipped a few beers, and tried to figure out how we could possibly even describe this to a person who had never seen one (we decided it was impossible). Anyway, since we were sleeping on the floor of a small heated room (the Green Air Spa) with 30 other people and a TV blaring a comedy show, we only got about 2 hours sleep.

We met up with our group at 5am (yay), and loaded up to head to a place near the north east coast of Korea. This is the part of the country where you're apt to still find barbed wire on the beaches and such, because of its proximity to North Korea.

As we were doing our Advanced O/W (Ty did his Open Water in South Africa 2 years ago, I did mine in Indonesia this year), we had been cramming all our reading in on the train and in the jimjilbang. We had 3 dives scheduled for Saturday, and 2 for Sunday, and we were pretty excited.

We started suiting up in preparation for the 1st dive, and I felt like my mask just wasn't right. As my University roommates can attest, I have a long, narrow head. And, although I was assured that my mask would be okay, I still just felt like it wasn't fitting right. As we descended for the first dive, I could feel the water trickling in, and decided to head up to fix it (since I was so near the surface). Once it seemed okay, I headed down again (with one of the Dive Masters). As we headed down on the rope, another diver was being rushed up to the surface. My DM told me to surface and then headed over to help out the other diver. This guy had not started his day in the best condition, then had been seasick on the boat ride over to the dive site, and then the seal on his mask had cracked underwater, flooding his mask. Poor guy. And so ended my first dive, not with a bang but a whimper... oh, and helping a guy in a wetsuit puke over the side of a boat.

And I got a new mask, which made me happy.

The 2nd and 3rd dives went well ~ we dove over 2 different wrecks. They were recent wrecks (I was kind of hoping for a nuclear sub or a tanker wrecked by Godzilla (we were in the Sea of Japan/East Sea afterall... within spitting distance of both Japan and North Korea), but it was still fun to dive around them. I really liked the 2nd one, which was all covered in algae and stuff. I was a bit disappointed by the lack of sealife. I think I saw about 3 fish the whole trip.

We also got to do some good by participating in a PADI Aware beach clean-up. We spent about an hour picking up garbage, tires and other bits (a table!) from the beach where we'd been diving. I'd like to organize a beach clean-up or two here in Mokpo, since I don't think our work would ever be done.

The next day, we went to Sokcho, to a specialized diver training centre. It was a hellish morning, for although I got all the above-water theory okay (would anyone like me to use a compass to walk them in a triangle? Because you know what? I can!), and knew all my stuff, it was nearly impossible to do anything once we were in the water, in surge, with 300 other divers landing on our heads (or just sort of hanging out in the water - grrrr), a retired military guy yelling at us (that would be our instructor), and equipment that was less than cooperative....

At any rate, we both have our Advanced O/W now, and will continue to dive as much as we can afford to over the next few years. Ty is looking towards going up to Dive Master, but I'm probably going to stick with the basics for now. I just want to go down, float around, look at some fish, tickle a few sharks, come back up, get a tan on the boat, write in my log book and then get ready for the next dive down.

Anyway, Sunday evening, we headed out with Ben (the seasick guy who was, thankfully, no longer seasick) to an awesome Thai restaurant, stuffed ourselves with green curry chicken and sweet and sour pork, then headed back home on the KTX again. We didn't actually make it back to our apartment before 1am (much to the chagrin of Sonagi and Jakob), but somehow, neither of us had the typical Monday morning slothful blues today, but more of a happy post-vacation energy...

In other news, both of our computers are messing up, which means no photos for a while. I can still use my school computer to access e-mail, but you know, I *do* have to work from time to time. The diveshop people were taking tons of photos above and underwater, so I'll post a link to their site once their photos are up.

The story about that guy who paid off all his debts in a year overseas...

While yes, it is possible to come here, scrimp and save every penny (or won) and then go home debt-free (and I have seen plenty of people do it), the reality is that the story that we all heard about making tons of money ESL teaching is reaching its end. You know, it was generally a friend of a friend who went to [insert country name here], and lived in a great house, and made, like, $100,000 and, like, came back to, you know, Canada having paid off all his student loans and then bought a house and a car, all paid for in cash.

Right.

I have paid off a credit card and a student loan. I have paid down my other student loan, other (active) credit card ~ meaning I still use it to buy things, and no, it's not in the freezer yet ~ and my line of credit. I've been to China, Japan, Malaysia, Singapore, India, Canada, Taiwan, Indonesia, Cambodia, The Netherlands, Denmark, Sweden and France, and I'm on my way to South Africa. I've bought a scooter and a motorcycle (uhh, for a month!), and lived very well (going out to eat, not always having to check prices in the grocery store before putting something in my cart ~ thankfully, I don't fit into the majority of clothes and shoes here, or I'd look like Carrie from S&TC). And yes, I can recognize that I have made certain lifestyle choices (like not working illegal extra classes for extra money, or choosing to take a taxi instead of a bus, or not eating ramyeon every day)...

But...

When I first arrived, I was making 2.1 million won a month (It's no big secret how much we are paid here: We all make pretty much the same wage and it is advertised everywhere on the internet and such). After deductions, I brought home about 1.9 million won. According to XE.com, I was bringing home roughly $2,300 CDN a month in 2006. Two years later, and with a contractual raise (after deductions, I am now bringing home just over 2.1 million won), as of today's really crappy exchange rates, my monthly salary is now worth a paltry $1,800 CDN.

Ouch. That's a $500 difference over 2 years.

Of course, the reasoning behind it all was that the cost-of-living and the taxation were a lot less than in Canada (and it is!!!!). But even that is no longer holding true, with even kimbap (the ever-popular rice and seaweed roll) showing a price increase of 20%!! Yes, Alex, I know that's a difference of $1 to $1.20, but it looks more shocking when it's a percentage....

I'm still fairly comfortable by average Korean standards (especially in my neighbourhood). And I'm still living well within my means here. It's just something of a shock to watch your salary dive because of banks in the US or the price of oil or whatever CNN says.

I guess this is just something to keep in mind if you're thinking that, you know, like, teaching English overseas is, you know, like a totally way-cool easy way to pay off your debts...

Chuseok and beyond...

This past weekend was Chuseok, the Korean Thanksgiving. It gave us a few extra days off, which was nice, but the timing wasn't really ideal (last year, I went to Taiwan for a few days ~ just having come back from Europe made that an impossibility).

Simon, the orphan kitten, is thriving with his new family. No news on what his real name is. It was great to watch him grow and develop over the few days we had him: he went from baby-bird-skinny to actually playing and running just over the weekend.

Nina and her friend Patty came up from Suncheon for Saturday and Sunday. We met them in Gwangju, with the idea of "guiding them back to Mokpo", which we didn't really do, since we had no clue which highway led where. It says something, though, that it was such a novelty to ride in a car that wasn't a taxi!

That evening, a group of people (mostly from Gwangju and mostly people I didn't know) got together on the wee Shinan beach down from my apartment. We had a bonfire (I even got marshmallows!!) and lit off firecrackers (thanks to Nina, who arrived with a ton of firepower). All in all, a very nice evening.

Yes, we *did* go to my Principal's house for Chuseok. I'll admit that I was expecting the traditional feast, complete with hanbok (traditional clothes) and song-pyeon (special rice cakes) and such. Instead, we had a really awesome casual Korean meal. I think they were impressed with how much Ty and I both ate: There's something to be said about home-made vs. school cafeteria food. The Principal's daughter, So-yeong, is a doctor in Seoul and fluent in English, so we did all of our communicating through her, but I learned a lot about my Principal too: For example, they have been a host family for 3 Fulbright exchange participants a few years ago. This is great news, meaning that he's dealt with foreigners before me, and is probably a bit more open to our strange behaviour (you know, like not eating meat). We still got a few typical Korean comments ("Oh, you can use chopsticks!"), but I was happy to discover that I have "lucky hands" and, according to the Principal's wife, that will make me *ahem* a good wife and mother.

On Tuesday, I met up with Zach and a new arrival named Terry on a leisurely stroll up Yudal mountain. Ha! We were soooo freaking hot and hungry that we ended our death march early and took a cab back to my apartment. It's fun having new blood in town, and it's nice to be able to help new people out. We took Terry on a "field-trip" to Homeplus. We'd all been in that situation of getting to a grocery store and not understanding a thing, so it was pretty cool to help her with that.

Now, Ty and I are looking forward to next weekend ~ like, in 2 days ~ when we'll be heading to the east side of Korea to do some Scuba diving and get our Advanced Open Water certification. We'll also be participating (as a part of the course) 2 beach cleanups and 2 underwater cleanups through PADI Aware. We're both, understandably, pretty psyched about this, but are also facing the reality that if we ever want to leave this place with our finances intact, we're going to have to start living on a "b-word" (that would be bbbbbbbbbbudget).

Simon

As always, there are cats in need of homes, or just a bit of kindness. New friends of ours, Cody and Desiree, have just adopted a wee wee wee kitten, but are out of town for the weekend. Ty and I were quite happy to give this little guy some much needed care and feeding. He's only just been found, so is in absolutely shocking condition. At this point, we're feeding him kitten formula, and hoping that he lasts the weekend.

I'm calling him Simon for the next few days.


Jakob and Sonagi are not impressed with this little guy, and have reacted with arched backs and howls of terror. We think that they might just be scared of little Simon.

(turn your sound on)




He goes back to his real parents on Monday...

Weird start to the day...

To celebrate Chuseok and to make my school love me even more, I brought some cookies to school this morning. Plans to bake a banana bread were waylaid by sheer laziness, but I think they enjoyed the store-bought delights.

Actually, if you've ever seen a group of older women around a box of cookies, you can pretty much imagine how quickly they all disappeared.

While we were stuffing ourselves with Danish butter cookies, the principal came in with a plastic thing that looked a bit like an octopus. It was one of those hand-held massage things... Anyway, he proceeded to talk on and on about it (like 10 minutes!), while we all stared in rapt attention.... then tried it out on each other. Another massager thing came out - and this one vibrates (!!) when you press on the handle, which is, um, surprising.

It was a great way to start the morning... and a good indication that I'm not entirely jaded by Korea yet.

No news is good news?

Ahh - sorry that it's been so long since I updated! I guess I was looking for something interesting to post, and I finally got something!

This is a link to another blog. This guy calls Mokpo "An outdoor museum of colonial Korea". He's posted quite a few pics of historical buildings and such, complete with explanations. The neat thing is that this is all my neighbourhood, or within 5 minutes of my front door. Definitely worth a look. Yes, I've been to most of those places, and am making it my mission to locate that garden at some point!

Mixed Feelings...

So, today I was chatting with a friend who mentioned that it might be time for me to leave Korea. Of course, this had been on my mind for a while... the idea that it was time to leave Mokpo for a bigger city (i.e. Busan) or just start looking elsewhere in the world for opportunities.

I don't think I'm excessively negative about the society and culture here. I wouldn't say that I *hate* it here, just that, sometimes, it's like trying to fit a square peg into a round hole...

The thing is that the things that I don't like now are the same things that I didn't like when I first arrived - being pushed, the food, a general overabundance of men being the kings of their castles and young women who look like some kind of painted dolls. But... and here's the but... it's definitely a case of mixed feelings.

Today was the first day of school, and I was surprised to discover that we have a new Principal and Vice Principal. There was, of course, no classes for me today (I've got all grades planned up to the end of next week, and a few grades planned up to October - yay!), and there was a teacher supper after school today.

Thus far, my reaction to school suppers has gone along these lines:
- 1st supper - attend and enjoy;
- 2nd supper - attend and leave early;
- 3rd, 4th, 5th, etc suppers - do not come along due to any excuse I can muster.

Tonight, I really did enjoy myself... and it was a really fun night - except for one thing (we'll get to that later).

We arrived at the hwei restaurant, and I was overwhelmed with the smell of raw fish. Hwei is an abundance of raw fish served with spicy sauces, raw garlic, hot peppers, and a million side dishes, wrapped in a lettuce leaf. If you like raw fish, I suppose this must be your idea of paradise. If you are me, the girl who once picked the fish off her sashimi in a rather upscale sushi restaurant in Montreal, this is *not* your idea of paradise. But I digress... there was enough tofu, hard-boiled quail eggs, broccoli, and (ohmygod) lightly battered fried sweet potato to keep me fed. One funny thing: it smelled so much like fish there that my cats haven't left me alone since I got home - my jeans must smell delicious.

So, everyone sits down and digs in. The beer and soju flows liberally. I make the rounds - serving the Principal, the VP, and the two oldest male teachers I work with. One of them, Mr Pak, is my favourite ajosshi ever. The other one, Mr Yoon, is simply because I think I should suck up to him a bit more. Focusing on our little sextet of women, I - as the youngest, unmarried one - and also to curry favour with the cook who hates me because I don't eat in the cafeteria and the lady whose job it is to deposit my paycheque - spend my evening getting their soju and beer to them before their cups are empty.

I actually don't mind this; especially as I notice that there is extra broccoli and sweet potato arriving in front of me from the other end of the table... they're all making sure that I won't leave hungry.

At one point, Mr Pak gets Mrs Kim (3rd grade teacher) to stand up and sing a song. Suddenly, it's my turn. I garble my way through "Yesterday", because it's a song that everybody knows (although my version goes something like "Yesterday, love was such an easy game to play and I la-la-la-la-la-la-la. Oh, I believe in yesterday"). And I'm still having fun...

We head off to a norae-bang, and I vow to remain for the entire hour. It's actually quite fun to watch the teachers cutting loose and having fun. It's the sort of sing-along bad dancing that one normally reserves for weddings, where it's just a pure, fun, excited time. The best part is, in Korea, tomorrow, nobody will be whining about their headache or glancing sideways at anyone who drank too much, which is a refreshing take on the morning after the night before.

After about 15 minutes, the Principal, who has been up and dancing at various times, calls Ms Kim (6th grade teacher) over. He is older than her, larger than her. He is the classic ajosshi in his open collar and flowered blue tie. He sits with his legs apart. He has a constant stream of people coming to pour him drinks -- there are already five in front of him. She is a younger, and very cute, teacher. She's got a sense of style that would blow your mind (and budget?) and, even in jeans, never looks sloppy. She can also handle a 6th grade classroom very well.

But that doesn't matter right now. While 15 people dance and sing about 2 metres away from them, he manages to make her into some sort of Geisha-like servant: First, she sits next to him, his hand grazes her knee. She stands up and gets the snack plate, pulls the head off a tiny dried fish and feeds it to him. Then sits back down and pours him another drink. The head teacher, Mrs Cheong, joins them, sitting on the other side of Mrs Kim who has, by this time, folded completely into herself. Her face is blank, her eyes are lowered. She would much rather be up with her colleagues, I am sure, singing and dancing and having fun... and it's really hard to watch. I know that there is nothing that I can do to save this woman, with whom I've taught 3 hours a week for the past 6 months, from what is happening.

That was hard to write. But much harder to watch. This is not a case of sexual harassment in the North American sense (but it is!), but a cultural event in which the youngest female is sitting next to her older male boss and feeding him fish. And she can't just stand up and say, "Ya, okay... I'm gonna go dance and sing now". It's almost the same as me scurrying around getting beer for the cook, except that I was doing that voluntarily.

Mrs Cheong suddenly appears next to me and points to the Principal. With her as our interpreter, we exchange pleasantries (and Ms Kim escapes to go dance and sing....) and I invite him to observe my class if he has time. He invites me to visit his family during Chuseok.

WHOA!

And here come the mixed feelings... Do you have any idea how big a deal this is? Chuseok is *the* Korean holiday. A Thanksgiving celebration when all the stores are full of special gifts, everyone dresses up in traditional clothes and you *must* return home to pay homage to your family and ancestors. Given that my first principal in Suncheon didn't really interact with any of the huge staff of teachers, and that my original principal in Mokpo didn't have that much time for me, this is a huge honour. I feel flattered... and, as if he were Don Corleone, this is an offer that I can't refuse.

I bow. I thank him. I wonder if this could really be happening.

At any rate, I'll just wait and see... but it's a pretty exciting prospect that Ty and I will get to celebrate a "real" Korean Chuseok.

I sing "Proud Mary" (aka lolling on a liver) with Mr Pak, then get ready to say goodbye and head home a bit earlier than my designated driver Mrs Kim (who I've been serving beer to since 6pm), but not before one last song that I can at least sing along to at the "Hahahahaha" part... hope you enjoy this, it's pretty much my favourite Korean song these days (believe it or not):



(p.s. Yes, this is what every Korean male under the age of 25 looks like)