1) At our Hogwan (English
school) they have an Open House twice a year. However, because many parents
don't speak English, instead of a meeting at night with the teacher and the
parents, parents just come in and, uh… AWKWARD, watch you teach. I had two of
them this week (for my two older classes) and they were horrible. They were
seriously awkward because the parents just set up chairs about ten feet away
from the table and stare. For forty minutes. And, of course, I have one super
nitpicky mother in one of my classes whose son was particularly nervous that
day. So she was "disappointed" in my class and now (after already
giving a list of all my faults, most of which are STUPID) to my boss, she wants
to have a meeting with my boss and me next week. Thank god the school year ends in a month.
2) The school year ends
in a month. In Korea their school year is March to February. Public schools get
spread out breaks, like year round schools in the states, but Hogwans do not
take the same breaks. We were supposed to get a workday in between the last day
of this year and the first day of next year, but because of the snow day that
happened right after winter break, we have to teach that day. Our schedules are
all getting switched around, and most of us won't be teaching the same classes
next year. In other words, we have no time to learn entire new curriculums,
prep for different language levels, or figure out what we’ll be doing. They
won't even tell us what classes we'll be teaching until the last week of
February.
3) I thought of two more
things to add to my previous list of things that are better in Korea: hooded sweatshirts
and take-out soup.
Rather than tiny hoods
which don't quite cover your head and squeeze your brains in, while allowing
any precipitation that might fall from the sky to soak the front inch of your
head, Korean hoods are extra large. The first time I threw my hood on, it
literally fell down and covered my entire face. There is actually room inside
of the hood. Novel concept.
Take out soup is
INCREDIBLE here. In the states they put it into flimsy cardboard cup-of-noodles
sized container with an ill-fitting lid. Here they give you a bowl, and put the
soup inside the bowl... but inside of a plastic bag that is tied shut. Meaning
they put the soup in a bag, tie it shut, and then put the bag into a bowl. So
you can eat it from a normal bowl, but when you carry it around the soup
magically doesn't spill. It can even fall out of the bowl and the soup just
rolls around in the bag. Wow, how easy and smart. Good job Korea. America-
fail.
4) I know I've said that
in Korea drinking is accepted at a level far beyond that in America, but I have
a few stories to demonstrate.
On Friday, Saturday,
Sunday, Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday nights you can find Korean businessmen
lying on the street, asleep and drunk.
I went to a large Korean
event recently (to be described in a second) and there were parent-child races.
Normal. Abnormal: the race was for parent and child to run across the ice (it
was an ice fishing festival) while holding a giant inflatable Soju bottle. Soju
is Korean rice liquor. Then they do a circle around a wooden bottle painted to
look like a Soju bottle. Then the kid climbs in a saucer-style sled and the
parent drags them back to the start line. In between rounds, men dressed as
wide-eyed, smiling Soju bottles danced to KPop (Korean Pop). That’s good, clean
family fun.
One of the teachers at my
school had her 28th birthday about a month ago. On the day of, she went to get
a manicure in the neighborhood. While talking to the woman painting her nails,
she mentioned that it was her birthday. The woman left (mid-manicure) and went
to the grocery store down the street. She bought two bottles of Soju. One she
gave to my friend as a gift. The other they drank together, taking shots while
the woman continued to paint her nails. So, you know, totally normal
interaction between a manicurist and patron.
5) I went to an
ice-fishing festival, which was actually a festival for trout, believe it or not.
It was the Hwachon Sancheoneo Festival, or the Hwachon Trout Festival. My
Korean friend Erica invited Tonya, Adeel (who is back in Korean for a few
months), and me. We had to leave at 6 am so we could make it to the subway
station from which the bus left. The bus was supposed to leave at 8 am, but we
were the last ones to get there at 7:55. They literally made us run and took
off as soon as we got on the bus. The
bus then took three hours. We got there at 11, and were greeted by an
interesting sight: a frozen river with hundreds of Koreans running around on
top. We went across a bridge on foot, and on the opposite end Adeel and I found
fish constructed of wire and paper. We couldn't figure out what they were at
first, but they had flags from all different countries underneath them, as well
as dates. When I looked closer I noticed a tiny U.N. insignia on each sign, and
I realized after inspecting a few of them that they were all the countries who
belong to the U.N. and that the dates were their dates of entry. Why? I have no
idea.
We finally got down to
the river (we had crossed the bridge because we saw this huge slide that was on
the other side, but it turns out that it wasn't a way down from the top of the
river bank, but an attraction you had to line up for on the river's surface and
then climb a giant ladder to go down) and walked across the frozen surface. It
wasn't as difficult as I had originally thought. We walked along the river for
a bit, dodging people who were on rented sleds. There were two kinds of sleds.
One kind was a small wooden square, on metal runners, which you sat on and two
pointy, metal tipped sticks with which you pulled yourself along the ice. The
other was a large bench with metal runners and a big handle at the back so
someone could push you along. We paid 10,000W to rent one of the large ones for
an hour (but they had no system to tell when that hour was up). After a while
on the sled we stopped to watch a Soju race (described above) during which I
noticed something.
At the first festival I
attended in Korea (the Hwasong Fortress Festival) three Korean photographers
who wanted to snap a photo of a white chick chased me. It was as if I was a
celebrity and they were the paparazzi, and the more embarrassed I got and
blocked my face, the more photos they took. As we sat watching tiny children being hauled
across ice by their fathers, all the while carrying giant bottles of liquor, I
noticed a photographer about twenty feet away taking photos of me. For ten
minutes. When we went to leave and go play with the sled some more, he stopped
us and spoke to Erica in Korean. He wanted to get photos of us on the sled. He
put me on the front. He made them push Adeel and I toward him and he snapped a
bunch of pictures. Then he made us do it again. Again, I was embarrassed and I
felt exposed. It was worse than earlier that day when we were walking around
and a 40-something year old woman kept yelling "hi" at me and waving
until I waved back and said "hi." Then she pointed at me and spoke
Korean to her friend for about five minutes. Then she started yelling
"bye" at me until I said "bye" back. She laughed as she
walked away. Fantastic.
He finally let us go, and
I can't even begin to explain how relieved I was. We turned the sled around...
and came face to face with another photographer who wanted to take our picture.
He rearranged everyone so that Tonya was on the sled with me (me still in front
of course, as the whitest person must always be in the forefront). Then he made
us run toward him. Then he made us turn around. Then he made us run toward him.
Then he made us turn around. After about the sixth round, the first
photographer reappeared and started taking photos with him. Again. We probably
did about fifteen rounds of running toward these guys while they snapped photos
and then turned around and went away from him so we could do it all over. It was
excruciating. I hated it. I was so embarrassed. We were all laughing, but I was
only doing it because I was uncomfortable.
We kept riding around
after the photographers left. At one point we were passing this kid who was
sitting on the big sled with his parents shoving him back and forth between
them. Just as we passed, his mom missed grabbing the sled and it looked like he
was going to T-bone us. I have never seen such terror on a child's face (he was
maybe 7 or 8 at most) and he was screaming like he was about to die. Really, it
was my legs that were about to die. At the last second his mom caught the back
of the sled and stopped him an inch from slamming into my left knee. Crisis
averted.
We also noticed some
AMAZING modes of transportation. There were these three-foot tall automated
robot bears. It's hard to describe. They looked like giant Pooh stuffed animals
(and there was actually a Mickey Mouse too) but they could move. They were
walking across the ice while strapped to RICKSHAWS that were carrying people.
People were literally riding in rickshaws being carried by animated Disney
characters. Are you kidding me? That's awesome; I don't care who you are.
We finally took the sled
back and went to get some lunch. When we returned the sled we got a 10,000W
voucher for food (so basically the sled was a throw in with lunch). We bought a
bunch of chicken skewers and some fried rice cake drizzled with honey which
were really good even though I'm not a huge fan of rice cake. We were still
hungry so we got some Udang, a really yummy soup with thick rice noodles in it.
The opposite side of the
river had elaborate carvings in the snow on the riverbank, so we went across to
see them. As we went across the ice Erica and Tonya grabbed my hands and tried
to pull me, which inevitably ended with me on the ice with a sore butt. A spastic
girl sliding on ice without autonomous use of her limbs? Bad idea. Oh well. I
lived.
It was worth it when we
got to the opposite side and saw the carvings. They had built huge carvings of
people, fish, tigers, the freaking Cheshire Cat, and a bunch of swirls and
designs. There was even a naked lady and a huge castle too. Inside the castle
was a cafe, some signs about the benefits of moving to the countryside, and a
big fence with fish tied all over it. People wrote their wishes on the side of
fishes and tied them to this fence. I couldn't read a word because it was all
in Korean, but I think there's a Dr. Seuss book in there somewhere. Who wants
to write it?
We went back outside and
I realized that the tiger's mouth was really the opening to a tunnel, Cave of
Wonders style. It was a long tunnel made
entirely of ice, with neon lights inside that changed colors. It was really
cool. I tried to take pictures, but with the flash you can't see the color and
without the flash everything is really shaky.
Over the top of the
carvings was a sort-of long ice slide that went at a gradual angle. We got in
line for it, even though it was mostly for kids. They had plastic-coated
cardboard sheets that you could sit on and slide down. There were stuffed
potato sacks at the bottom to keep you from hitting the ice at the end. I
thought it was going to be a really gentle, easy ride. OH MY GOD THAT THING WAS
FAST. I didn't think about the fact that the ice slide was a slide made of ice
and that ice is slippery. Stupid, I know, but it honestly never occurred to me.
It was really fun. I actually sent the potato sacks flying over the ice
barricade. Erica and Tonya screamed. So did Adeel, although Adeel's was
manlier. I didn't make a sound. Who's the man? This guy!
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