The Early Bird Gets the...

Entertainment.

There is never a lack of entertainment here in Korea. Day after day, I am continuously amused by something that would rarely, if ever, be seen back home. This morning, it was the opening routine of my local grocery store.

I was in desperate need of coffee and food supplies to get me through the next day and a half before leaving for Mongolia. I recalled that the other local supermarket didn't open before 9:00am so I knew I was taking a risk heading for this one at 8:45am. I rolled into the parking lot on my bike. There were no cars other than a work truck. The guy who I assumed belonged to the truck was out front doing some, well, work. I was checking the store front for hours when the guys said something to me in Korean that I interpreted as "Go ahead, it's open." So, I parked my bike and headed in.

Turns out I was the only customer in the store and every employee was busy stocking, or wiping down shelves, or doing some other task related to opening up a store for the day. But, nobody gave me a second look so I carried on with my business. Right when I was grabbing for my last item and about to head to the check-out, the real fun began.

I turned the corner only to find every single employee lined up in two lines, facing each other, at the front of the store. The man who I presume to be the manager was giving some sort of inspirational talk to his employees. I just continued to meander around, alone in the store, figuring this would last no more than a minute or two. I went to the back corner of the store and looked longingly at the ice cream, then I browsed the aisle with all the coffee mugs contemplating the purchase of a beautiful purple mug, then made my way to the opposite side of the store to take a gander at the produce. As I made my final turn into the bakery section, the last corner before I'd come full circle, all of the employees grasped the hands of the people next to them and started swinging their hands together in unison and singing a song that sounded quite similar to a combination of "If you're happy and you know it clap your hands" and another familiar song from childhood that I can't quite put a finger on. After about 30 seconds, they were finished and everybody was back to business.

Nope, never a dull moment here in Korea.

I love my life.

Sing It!

I made a little video compilation from the video I took during our weekend at the Boryeong Mud Festival... Unfortunately I never took my camera anywhere near the mud so most of the video is on the norae-bus (karaoke bus) and on the beach or at the pension. Ahhh, good times...

School's Out for the Summer!

So much to say...

Wednesday was the last full day of school (though, on Thursday there was a half day for the closing ceremony and cleaning). On that day several of the third grade (9th graders) middle school students decided to be cool and leave campus for lunch. Bad idea, especially in Korea where, though against the governments approval, physical and corporal punishment is still widely used. Near the end of the lunch period, students kept getting dragged into the teacher's office and were forced to kneel in front of the vice principal's desk, being hit and kicked and screamed at by one of the head teachers. I hate that stuff, but I also know that it is part of Korean culture and I usually just try to ignore it. Oh yeah, also on that day a student decided it would be a cool idea to throw his own feces from a fourth floor window in the school. Silly boys.

I had plans to take a three-ish week vacation to China, cruising around, seeing the sights. Turns out that on July 1st China changed their visa requirements for foreigners living in South Korea. Yes, only foreigners living in South Korea. So, long story short, a bunch of us got screwed and were unable to obtain a tourist visa for China. The woman at the travel agency (the only way to get a visa) said the following when we asked her why this change occurred: "Because... America... no buy... made in China." Hmph. Whatever the reason, it was completely out of the blue and has left a lot of people hanging with tickets to China that they can't use. Lucky for me, I hadn't purchased my ticket so I could easily change my travel plans, which leads me to...

MONGOLIA! I'll be flying to Mongolia on July 28th and will be there for three weeks. I couldn't be more excited, though I know nothing about the country and was certainly not expecting to be in Mongolia anytime soon. Ahhhh, the beauty of life...

It's now Sunday evening and I just returned home from a weekend excursion with nearly 40 other foreigners from Jinju to the Boryeong Mud Festival located right on the beach at Daechon Beach. While living in Korea, one really does forget about the responsible, working life maintained during the week because it's like we're on vacation every single weekend doing something novel and fun. The Mud Festival really is just what it sounds like: mud pits, mud puddles, mud pools, mud slides, mud wresting and more--set up for thousands and thousands of people to romp around in! Somebody in Jinju had the genius idea to rent a norae-bus (basically, a bus with karaoke and disco type lights) to drive us there and back, the drive being about four hours each way. We left Friday night after 9pm, so that bus ride can pretty much be described as a four-hour long party with non-stop karaoke singing. Epic. That certainly started the weekend off right...

We also had a pension to ourselves (similar to a condo, Korean style), so all 35 or so of us slept on the floors of the four rooms in the pension. Sleeping on floors lined up like sardines has become quite a natural part of my life over here and in fact, I think I am seriously going to miss it! Saturday's activities varied between playing in the mud (and all other things related like wrestling with strangers in pools of mud and going face-down a huge inflatable slide against the rules--oops!), swimming in the ocean, eating, napping, drinking, and marveling at all of the foreigners. I've never seen so many foreigners in one place for my entire duration here in Korea--it was a little strange! I actually didn't even feel like I was in Korea, between all of the other foreigners and wandering around the streets barefoot wearing only a bikini. That's quite liberal and risque for Korea...

Sunday, today, was far more relaxed. Since we had to check out of our pension at 11am, we just took all of our stuff down to the beach and spent the next several hours there until our 2pm departure. A few friends and myself went back to the mud area and got our bodies painted with red, blue and yellow mud and when we lined up together, our bodies said "I (heart) Jinju!" We were quite popular with the 50 or so photographers wandering around. There was a ring of them around us for about five solid minutes, asking us to pose this way or that--it was madness! They loved it.

I could say soooo much more about the weekend but I'm quite exhausted right now so I'll just say... it was yet ANOTHER epic weekend in Korea!

I didn't take my own camera to the mud, but here are some pictures from the bus ride and some pictures that I've stolen from facebook:

Musings from the House of Jinju

ON MAN LOVE

Not only is there no "unspoken rule" about personal space here, as there is back in the States, but there is also no assumption of homosexuality when two males, young or old, want to hold hands, put their arms around one another, or even spoon. Yes, spoon. Some things I've seen in my students:

One boy sitting on another boy's lap. Boy on bottom's arms wrapped around boy on top's waist, hands clasped.

Boy walking down the hall with arm around the shoulders of other boy.

Boy one sitting behind boy two. Boy one leans forward in his desk and puts his arms around boy two's neck, hands clasped.

Boy one and boy two laying together on a few desks pushed together--spooning. Literally.

It's great. We should really loosen up back home...

ON BUS DRIVERS

They're crazy. But, crazy in a very different way than the bus drivers I experienced in Guatemala, who were "I'm-about-to-die crazy." The crazy bus drivers here are just a step up from the already terrible drivers that make up most of Korean drivers...

BUT, I never thought they were crazy AND mean, until recently:

I was in the back of the bus with about ten other foreign friends on our way to the mountains for a nice weekend hike up one of Korea's taller peaks. It was a solid 3ish hour ride and we left early Saturday morning so a nap sounded more than appropriate (not to mention, the past few nights had been a little late--it had been a rough few weeks for many of us and admittedly, we literally wanted to drink our sorrows and frustrations away; healthy, we know).

My friend Paul was in the seat across the aisle from me and had spent the previous half hour stretched out with his feet in my seat. It was my turn next, so I took my shoes off and put my feet across the aisle, put my headphones on and got comfortable. Just as I got to that half-asleep, half-awake phase, I sensed something...

The bus had come to a complete halt. I opened my eyes to find the bus driver standing over me. I ripped the headphones out of my ears because he was looking straight at me. I suddenly realized that he was yelling at me, and angry. VERY angry. This man was literally yelling at me out of anger (and it definitely wasn't just a Gyeongnam way of speech, as they often sound angry when they speak--he was ANGRY). I didn't actually understand the words he was saying, but as I continue to find out the more I'm in countries that speak languages other than my own, one doesn't necessarily need to know words to know what somebody is actually saying. He yelled at me to sit up, face forward and put my shoes back on. Every single one of us was completely taken aback, and didn't know how to react to this situation. Naturally, I sat up and put my shoes on and the bus driver walked away and started driving again.

We were doing nothing wrong, and I will stand by that until the day I die. However, this man was scary enough that any time he even so much as looked back at us in his rear-view mirror, we all sat up a little straighter in our seats and shut our mouths.

When I got off the bus I made sure to tell him thank you in Korean and "Have a nice day" in English. And of course, I flashed the biggest, kindest smile I could...

Woman vs. Car

Korea, being the tiny little densely populated country that it is, not only packs it's people like sardines, but also it's people's cars. Every car has a little tag inside displaying the owner's cell phone number in case that car is blocking another car in. And, if this in fact is the case, the car is always conveniently left in neutral to allow others to push around at their leisure.

Take my school's parking lot, for example. Everyday there are about five cars parked in the middle of the small parking lot perpendicular to the rows of cars that are actually parked in a legit space, thus blocking in a number of cars. Well today, my co-teacher and I had to leave early for a meeting at the Office of Education. Not so surprisingly, her car was blocked in. There were four cars lined up front to back that needed to be moved. She thought it best to move the two on the left, toward the exit of the parking lot, rather than the two on the right and toward the school. Fair enough.

We start to push the outside car away from the center. A nice, smooth, easy roll. No problem! I was actually pretty excited to be participating in my first car-moving-shuffle-puzzle (makes me think of those games where you slide little numbered squares around in a larger square until you get them in the right order).

But suddenly, just as I was thinking about how fun it would be to just go around moving cars around all day, the car started rolling fast. OF COURSE! We were on a decline, the car heading right toward the exit of the parking lot, into the street and SMACK into the side of another car. My co-teacher and I ran around to the back and used all our might to stop the car from rolling any further (mind you, she's a tiny little Korean woman).

We were able to make it stop about 20 feet before it got to the street. We just held it there together, laughing and looking at each other. She thought it a good idea to LEAVE ME ALONE, holding the car (which still reeeaaalllly wanted to keep rolling backwards) while she went to solicit the help of some of our students.

For what felt like about five minutes, but in actuality was probably only about 90 seconds, I used all of my isometric force to hold the car in place. Yes, it was me vs. the car. I toyed around with letting it roll back a bit, hoping it would slow down, but had no luck. I then tried to muster up all my strength and, all in one motion, push the car forward. I got it moving, but not fast enough to keep it going before it started rolling back down again.

"Hurry!" I yelled toward my co-teacher, who was now out of sight.

All I could envision at this point was the car winning this battle and me having to choose between letting it smash into the little tin-can car that was in its direct path, or maintaining my stubborn and wannabe tough-girl personality and continuing to try to stop it, despite it's gaining speed (the latter in which I would have also ended up smashed like a sardine myself between the two cars).

Luckily, just in time, the woman who runs the little toasted sandwich shop across the street came running over in her red apron and red hat at the same time as my co-teacher, and the three of us were able to combine our muscle power and push the car back up to a full stop.

This cultural and logistical practice makes perfect sense, but I can only imagine how many accidents actually occur because somebody pushes a car downhill. Then again, maybe not...

Lesson learned: Cars are VERY heavy. Even little Korean cars.

World Cup Fever

The 2010 World Cup is indeed far from over, though one would think such a thought here in Korea after their heartbreaking 2-1 loss in their first game of the final stage against Uruguay. The people of South Korea have more pride than in any other country I've ever stepped foot in (hence their reputation for being a xenophobic society), and when Korea's World Cup team lost, the people here were crushed. So was their energetic high that they had maintained in the weeks prior.

Given the time difference between South Africa and South Korea, the world cup games fell at either 8:30pm, 11pm, or 3:30am here. This made for some very convenient evenings full of soccer, as well as some very sleepless nights.

Korea's very first game against Greece fell on a Saturday evening at 8:30pm, later followed by the USA vs. England game that same night--at 3:30am. As there are several Americans in Jinju as well as several Brits, we had it out in a bar that kindly stayed open for us foreigners just to watch the game. For Korea's game we got all decked out from head to toe in various red and pro-Korea attire (and it was a good night to be in Korea after their beautiful victory over Greece). A group of us watched the game outdoors along the river with at least a few thousand local residents of Jinju. Later on in the night we eagerly switched to attire representing our home nations (and, as Americans, were happy to have not gotten our butts kicked by the English).



This is along the river in Jinju where we watched Korea's first (and second) game along with all the locals. All the little red glowing lights are light-up devil horns, as apparently the Korean soccer team are the Red Devils. EVERYBODY was wearing them...


In addition to the devil horns, people were wearing Park Ji-Sung masks (the most famous Korean soccer player). This little boy was sitting in front of us and was quite the little character, dancing and running around with this mask on, waving his super cool light-saver...


My Aussie friend Lee and some random guy after Korea's win against Greece.


In a bar after the Korea game, waiting for 3:30am to roll around so the USA could battle it out with England.


Three Americans giving English Bill an idea of what was to come...


Stretching before the big game begun...

Korea made it into the final 16 and played Uruguay in their first game of the final round. Some girlfriends and I already had planned a trip to Seoul for the weekend, so an 11pm game Saturday night was perfect. Despite the rain, my friends and I joined the Koreans at City Hall in Seoul to watch the game, red devil horns and all. Such a heartbreaking loss that night (2-1 Uruguay; Korea definitely outplayed them, though). Later that night (well, at 3:30am), the US played their game against Ghana (also a disappointment). We ended up watching that game in an American type sports bar in a neighborhood (suberb?) called Itaewon. Itaewon is full of all things foreign, from the people who reside and visit the place, to all the shops and restaurants. It felt like we could have been in Anytown, USA, but it was nice for an evening of Thai food for dinner, a used bookstore full of books written in English and an amazing international foods store where I found (and, naturally, purchased) Tillamook cheese and Rosarita refried beans. HEAVEN. And so worth the $18 I spent on the two items.


City Hall madness in Seoul.


Group shot with our devil horns, ponchos and complimentary glow bracelets and blow-up noise-makers.




At the bar in Itaewon during the USA game later that night (see all the foreigners?!?!).


A tattoo I acquired earlier that evening...

I'm sad that the fun is over for Korea, but looking forward to the last few days of matches!

DAE-HAN-MIN-GUK! DAE-HAN-MIN-GUK! DAE-HAN-MIN-GUK!

Some Entertainment

I came across this music video before I moved to Korea. I found it amusing then, but now that I've been living here for over six months (wow, it's been over SIX MONTHS?!) it's all the more amusing because I understand so much more... It's catchy and hits (Korean) home, so it's not uncommon these days for one of my friends or I to bust out the chorus line--and naturally, everybody else around joins in (we were even in the city of Gwangju one weekend and somebody in our group started singing the song; the foreigner next to us was like "Oh! That's such a great song!").

Kickin' It in Geumchon

And, here is a great website of some guy's comics that he creates about foreigners living in Korea. Even if they don't specifically pertain to someone, a solid 99% of them are fully understood (as there are so many experiences here are shared by most foreigners).

Roketship Comics

ENJOY!!!