jamie blog

i don't know if anyone still looks at this here blog (unless to post spam in the comments section. thanks, assholes), but i am back in the asia and have my own blog now to continue recording the korean saga.

word.

www.jamieleighmcgeorge.blogspot.com

Seon's School of Cooking and Acting

So I checked out my former school's website yesterday, because I wanted to show a co-worker some of my former students, but the only thing that came up on the site was a little icon that said "to be continued." So I figured the site was just down for maintenance. But then today I received an email telling me that Seon's school was shut down becuase he didn't pay bills; and all of those evil, horrible people who made up lies about us and didn't pay us are all out of jobs. That means Megan, Cindy and Abby. Abby is even back in the United States, and she had just gone back in August. Do I wish misfortune on other people? No, but I certainly won't lose any sleep over the fact that this place no longer exists and will no longer screw over ESL teachers (especially ESL teachers from Columbia).

Wow.

i'm a trivia whiz

normally i post my profanity-laden blogs on myspace, then just repost the g versions here. but i forgot to mention something on my most recent myspace post. and that is that me, jules and rory are all now officially trivia wizards. on friday night we particated in some benefit trivia night thing for cedar creek therapeutic riding or something like that (disabled peeps get on horses and it's good for them). anyhoo, our team--which consisted of me, jules, rory, al (dr. herde's husband), and 4 people i had never met before. besides winning and learning that i am indeed a superior being, i learned a very valuable trivia strategy: make sure you get peeps from all different age brackets and backgrounds, because us young stupid folks are the one's who know the stupid stuff like the names of tyra banks' tv shows. maybe i'm not well-versed in missouri history, but the stupid stuff is just as important. we killed it in the "books you should have read" section, guessed correctly that an octopus has 3 hearts, and knew the capitol of romania. 80/90 earned everyone at our table a bottle of wine. so i just had to brag for a little bit.

so that was friday night, now about the rest of my weekend.

it's no secret that i am deeply in like with calexico, specifically joey burns. there, i said it. i've had a pretty huge crush on the band/the man for a long long long time. random, but i just told julie i had a crush on a sandwich. specifically the big tomato (add bacon) from uprise where rory works. this shows to go you that i get crushes on anything and anyone. all that's required is that someone be nice to me or that they have tomato and bacon together in harmony on ciabatta bread. anyhoo... calexico played in st. louis over the weekend, so it seemed like a swell occassion to borrow my dad's grand marquis (it's a luxury car), pack up the wife and kids and go see their rock show. so me, jules and two visiting korean students set sail on saturday afternoon for the radisson st. louis.

not really an aside: i have been a staunch supporter of priceline.com since they treated me so well when i bought round trip tickets to europe a few summers ago, so i always use them to book hotels too. this was one of my best priceline experiences. the hotel itself wasn't particularly nice or luxurious, but we were on the 25th floor and had a balcony that looked right out at the arch and the river. i could almost reach out and touch either of those things if i had super long arms. alas, i don't, but i was still pleased as punch, right as rain, super duper.

anyhoo, we get to the hotel, and decide it's time to drink at the hotel bar. the barkeep--an old timer named steve--was not very friendly as far as personality goes, but he did give us a free beer for no apparent reason at all. unless it was because the popcorn machine viciously mangled my arm (is there any other way to mangle someone, except viciously? i think not). i like the thought of all the popcorn in the bar area of the radisson st. louis being contaminated with my blood. not that there's anything wrong with my blood...but still, it's blood.

post mai tai, we headed to university city. we went to blueberry hill and crammed too many people into a photo booth. and guess who's head doesn't show up in any of the stupid pictures? yup, mine. so we ate spicy wings and circular french fries, drank beers and julie ordered shots that normally taste good but not this time. our waitress had a cool motorhead t-shirt and very red hair. not that these two things matter, but it's all about the details, so i'll include them.

the next stop was vintage vinyl. i felt very weird when i walked in there for some reason--a little light headed or something. i could specifically explain why i felt weird, but i'll just be vague and say it had to do with being sweet on a musician.

after collecting lots of cds to ultimately refile after rationality kicked in, we went to a thrift store. the two korean dudes (american names jack and gun. yes, gun) had never been to a secondhand store before, so we said it was a cultural experience for them. i'm just thankful that their cultural experience resulted in my new cowboy boots and bracelet. i don't think they got anything.

it was now time to sup, and sup we did at some place called 609. jules and i had eaten there before on a prior trip. the food was pretty good, but also pretty expensive.

show time at mississippi nights. just like the last time i saw calexico in st. louis, except not at all because i was actually calm, unobsessed and unaffected by aforementioned crush on lead singer. which struck me as sort of tragic. part of the reason i became obsessed with this dude was because i perceived him to be unattainable by me, a non musician, but it seems like only on saturday did i actually care to stop worrying so much about whether or not i seemed awkward to him or worthy or whatever (note to me, i will always be awkward. it's cute. it's charming. it's a fact.). this is hard to explain. whatever... the most important lesson here is that he's just some dude in a band on a stage. just like lots of other dudes in bands on stages. but now i don't really have any crushes on anyone. and that brings me back to the tragedy of all this. perhaps others don't see this as tragic, but now who do i have to look forward to? who do i get to put on a pedestal now? i'm rambling. i'll probably regret this later.

after the show we went and bought lots of cheap wine (hooray, yellow tail!)and sat in plush chairs on the balcony of our 25th floor hotel palace, gazing drunkenly out at the arch. the nighttime arch is so much more interesting to look at than its sunny overpopulated daytime counterpart. it's a large living creature sleeping off the exhaustion and excitement of its busy, overworked daytime hours. and the moon and the river and the bridge and the relative tranquility were all pretty swell too.

random alert: i was thinking about a book i used to read when i was younger called Tallypo/Tailypo. amazon has this description: "A strange varmint haunts the woodsman who lopped off its tail." sounds about right. anyhoo, me jules and ma-licia used to record ourselves reading and it was nothing short of adorable, especially during my speech therapy years when i couldn't pronounce my "r"s. i'm a firm believer that there's nothing more adorable than a speech impediment. but there's a recording of jules and me reading tallypo to our cousin aimee. most of the time we are just yelling at her while intermittently screaming "tallypo!" this is one of those things that only julie and i think is funny...my mom used to babysit when we were little and we did lots of mean things when we were little and the daughters of the babysitter. children are cruel. i know i was. one of the girls that stayed at our house during the day was terrified of earth worms. so when she was taking a nap one afternoon, i put a bunch of worms on her face. she screamed and cried and i was impressed by my own evil. i guess i figured today was the time to come clean about that.

absence makes my blog grow fonder

here are some facts. since last i blogged i have driven to and from the stl airport at least 5 times (in large 15 passenger vans on a couple of occassions), i have eaten sea cucumber, i have gone up into the arch twice and i have gone on a float trip with 21 asians. i suppose there are other noteworthy things, but i've been two busy really to take the time to file away the details.

so i've been working at the asian affairs center on the mizzou campus. they were pretty great to me when i got back from korea and didn't want to work at the pizza place. when i first went and explained my trials and tribulations, they didn't sound very optimistic that they would be able to provide any work for me. but now it's a few months later and i'm working full time, getting the largest paychecks i've ever had in the united states. that's a pretty cool situation, it's also why the only things of note that have happened to me lately involve asians (and their cucumbers. heh heh). in the past couple of weeks i've met vietnamese students, korean students, chinese doctors, lawyers, professionals (i'm a language partner for the mayor of a small city in china), and thai professors. and for most of these people i am the first impression they get of the united states (or at least of columbia, mo). that feels pretty good.

when the thai professors got here on monday, julie and i got to be their tour guides of st. louis, which is sort of funny since i don't really know too much about how to get around st. louis, especially in a large van bursting with thai people and their luggage. but we did manage to get to the arch and go up it. it wasn't windy or anything, so i'd call it another let down. once you've been up there it doesn't really seem any different each time. next time i go i'll try to coincide with some precipitation or go at night. one of the gentlemen we were with was extremely afraid of heights. i've always heard of people being afraid of heights, but haven't really been in any situations where said phobics had to confront their fear. but he was sweating profusely and would only look at the floor while he held onto the ceiling. the rest of us had to escort him back to the exit tram. anyhoo, the thai professors were only here for 3 days, but julie and i were the main people who hung out with them on a regular basis. it's just bizarre for me as a totally normal, relative insignificant to be assigned the task of hobnobbing with really important people, on behalf of the asian affairs center of the university. i guess i have learned how to initiate really good small talk in broken english since i went to korea, so perhaps that's my qualifying factor. if only i could communicate this well with people who aren't foreign. when the thai people left, they gave julie and i various gifts including really bright yellow golf shirts that said something about the queen. i now have a drawer full of gifts received from visiting asians.

now comes the topic of the sea cucumber. i'm pretty pleased that i don't know anyone else who has eaten a sea cucumber (besides julie and the chinese dudes who cooked for us). there is an epac group (english proficiency and culture)--comprised of peeps from the city of chongqing and the shandong province of china--that will be in columbia for 6 months. julie and i volunteered to be cultural ambassadors of sorts, so we've done lots of field trips, grocery trips and have just been hanging out with them. in return, they wanted to cook dinner for us. so last friday, we went to the apartment of some of the epac members (all dudes). immediately we were given lots of beer, fruit and mao tai (sp? no need to know how to spell it, just know that it's a narsty chinese liquor that could probably be used to strip paint or kill large game. super narsty). it was quite funny to see this really serious looking chinese man (who actually looked like kim jong il) don an apron and dangle a cigarette out of his mouth while he cooked. all the food was delicious, but when i went to the refrigerator, i saw a very strange thing. there was a big pot full of brown wiggly things. i immediately associated the creatures with octopus and squid that i saw in korea. there are some things that simply look too foreign to eat. we continued to drink and chip away at the many plates of food before us, but then came the presentation of these tubular spiky things. i didn't want to be rude. the men wouldn't tell jules and i what we were eating until we had eaten it. so i ate it, and it wasn't terrible. sort of tasted like a sea mushroom. or like eating an ear that had been marinating in salt water. and they made sure to tell us that sea cucumber was very expensive. so i ate it all. it was a good night, but i don't think i need to eat a sea cucumber ever again.

there is a woman sitting 2 feet away from me screaming russian into her phone. i hope she's okay. she just laughed so that's probably a good sign.

thursday and friday (yesterday) julie and i were given the privilege of teaching the shandong esl class. we thought it would be good to get them out and about, so on thursday we decided to talk about theatre and then take them on a tour of the missouri theatre. so six dudes show up who can barely understand a word we say. jules and i were very excited to get to teach the class, but we had no idea that their level of speaking/understanding was so low. we were used to the college aged korean kids who understood pretty much everything. so thursday was like pulling teeth, poor english speaking teeth. they were pretty ambivalent about the tour of the theatre, so on friday we thought we could talk about pets and then take them to the humane society. but on the way to the humane society we took them to rock bridge state park. it just so happens that on the way to rock bridge (if you keep going down rock quarry) there is a family that owns a camel and a zebra as pets. so we parked the van and took pictures with the camel. it was initially about 50 yards away, but when the chinese men started yelling at it, it actually came over to the fence and didn't spit all over us. so some peeps took pictures and some were actually frightened by it. the zebra didn't want anything to do with us.

so we had just shown them a camel and a zebra and were feeling pretty good, but then we got to the humane society and they just didn't care. i don't know if it was because they don't like animals or they couldn't understand the tour guide or maybe it was a combination of both. they like hanging out with me and jules, but they don't necessarily want to listen to us. fair enough.

last topic for now, the epi float trip on the current river. there were a lot of asians. i happened to be stuck in a canoe with the two smallest girls who were afraid of the water and didn't wear swimsuits. so i made sure to tip us over within 15 minutes of departure. i also was the only person who drank while we floated. it seems sort of sacreligious not to drink when you're in a canoe. after we'd been on the river for a while, i saw some white trash people (in a canoe? really?) with a beer bong. they invited me to "party barge it up!" and i accepted their invitation. i'm quite sure that will be the only time the two girls i was with will ever see a beer bong.

the day after the float trip we spent 3 hours outlet mall shopping at the lake of ozark. it was whilst sitting half asleep in a cold stone creamery that one of the korean students asked me the profound question "don't you ever get lonely?" they all think there's something wrong with me because i'm 27 and single. both of my sisters are married, so there must be something wrong with me. the emotional and physical pain of not being married! woe is me.

other than asians, not too much going on. last summer i called myself "the party." "the party" did lots of stupid things involving alcohol, swimming and bicycles (the best events happening when all three drunkenly collided). this summer i have been productive and haven't really gone out too much. dear god i hope i'm not growing up.

scanners rule!

figured it was time to present this to the world...

things and stuff

i guess someone needs to write something new on here. so it will be me! i am getting ready to go to kansas city with the korean epi (english proficiency & internship) group. it should be a grand time. i'm just excited because i remembered to bring some cds with me for the drive. good thing it will be nice and hot when we get to the plaza.

2 weekends ago some of the epi gang came to videology ("indie" rock music videos on a big screen + dancing = happy fun time). it was pretty funny and we danced like idiots. all the hipster kids were wondering where the hell julie and i came from with a posse of asians in tow.

rex in effex

i know i probably didn't spell that correctly. but i have a funny carpentry story. first things first, my left foot stepped on a nail yesterday. that's it! that's my funny story! just kidding. it didn't go in very far, and it didn't really even bleed too much. so i guess that's good. it was quite the odd sensation. i've only stepped on a nail once before in my life, when i was little, and i cried/bled a lot then and dad wrapped my foot in a red bandana so i couldn't tell just how much blood was exiting my body (smart move, or maybe that's the only color he had. i dunno). anyhoo, i poured water on my foot then smeared some neosporin and a bandaid on the puncture wound and went back to work. and yes, i've had a tetanis (sp?) shot in recent years. i don't know when those things expire, but i guess i'll know when i get deathly ill here in the next couple of days....perhaps my foot will fall off. so it's a very good thing i'm right footed.

other stuff about the jobby job. i've only been really working in one house for the past two weeks. it's unfinished (duh) and i'm there to install baseboards and door frames and other random wood-requiring jobs--i put a picture frame type thing over the attic access in the garage yesterday so it doesn't just look like a hunk of debris falling out of the drywall sky. the two houses i've actually seen since i started working have been pretty ginormous and extravagant. the one i'm working in is the lesser of the two--i call it my practice house. i'm sure the future homeowners would love to know that their less than humble abode was my guinea pig. a wooden guinea pig. so we're there doing the wood stuff, and then the hardwood floor and tile people come and then the air conditioning folks. plus the contracter (who vaguely resembles einstein) walks around in his penny loafters inspecting everything and mumbling curse words under his breath.

it's kind of bizarre to think that i'm helping construct a kind of house i will never ever be able to afford. and neither will any of the other laborers there on their hands and knees. but i guess i don't really need a 3 million dollar house with a separate shower for the dog. surely there's a better way to display one's wealth...

but there is something really satisfying about going into an un-air conditioned house for 8 hours a day and messing up a bunch of wood. i don't remember ever sweating as much (except maybe show me state games basketball, but that's a whole nother beast), and i come home exhausted and covered in a thin layer of sawdust and random grime. for the most part i only work with one other person, and i get to work on "projects" all day long. there's no customer service to worry about--being polite to people for whom i have no respect--and i get to actually learn a trade. all in all, it's pretty great. i also like the fact that i'm the only chick. which leads me to rex in effex.

on wednesday, there was some other dude in the house i was working on. he never introduced himself, but i figured out his name was rex. he was installing doors and seemed to be struggling a bit with the miter saw. he couldn't get the angle to set because one of the handles was broken, replaced by a wrench. so i see this man having problems and i hesitated to tell him how to work the saw, because he looked like a good ol' boy from jeff city and would probably take offense to being instructed by a female in the arguably male domain. anyhoo, i show him how to use it and he doesn't say thank you or anything at all. he sort of snorted a little as if to say "i don't need your help. i'm a perfectly capable carpenter who knows how to work a saw with a wrench for a handle." but i guess that's reading a lot into a snort.

after that he wouldn't even look at me and he kept stealing my tools and saying "are you finished yet?" go get your own nail gun! then he was waiting behind me to use the saw and he's holding this giant door. so i finish with the saw, he waits for me to leave, then he goes and fetches the other guy who's working so he can help him hold the door while he cuts it. i was standing right there, but he didn't want to ask me for help. with my weaker female genes, there's no way i could hold up a man's door.

on thursday, rex doesn't come to work. apparently he wanted $30/hr. and he didn't like blacks or "mexicans." and when scott (my boss) told him that Jamie was a girl, his response was "you hired a girl?" i think that's funny. scott told him he didn't really have enough work for him anyway.

not really much more to report. things are relatively tame in my life right now. i will be starting some random work at the asian affairs center pretty soon. i get to take asians on field trips throughout missouri. and on tuesday i get to pick up a group of koreans from the stl airport. my smiling face will be their first glimpse of columbia, mo. and i think that's pretty damn cool.

high school reunion

i hate to change the subject from getting screwed over in korea to something new and pretty unremarkable, but i got an email the other day notifying me of my 10 year high school reunion next summer. the thought was initially pretty depressing--just seems like the whole point of those things is so a bunch of a-holes can get together and judge each other. upon further consideration, it seems like an interesting scenario (doesn't negate the depressing quality, however). there is the shallow part of me that wants to see all of my former peers' failures exposed (so and so got fat, so and so's a twice divorced alcoholic) and to finally realize just how insignificant high school is/was in the grand scheme of things. perhaps this speaks more about me than about the people to whom i'm condescending. anyhoo...

brighter note: got a job as a carpenter. i'm terrible at it, but i'd like to think i'm getting better with each passing day. it feels pretty cool to be acquiring an actual skill. i will certainly have a varied resume. here's hoping i don't cut off any digits. knock on wood.

The Truth About Seon's Cooking and Acting...

LET ME PREFACE THIS--THIS IS A LONG ONE. We have been back in the United States (Missouri, specifically) for about a week and a half. We have gotten used to telling our story, though often somewhat truncated. This is the whole, real deal...Here goes.

Before we even left for Korea, we were having problems. Myung Ja is the woman who is responsible for recruiting for our particular hokwan in Korea. We became friends with her, meeting her every week for breakfast at Ernie's, even taking her home with us for Thanksgiving. Like most everyone knows, we pushed our departure date for Korea back a few times. That should have indicated shadiness from the get-go, but because we wanted to go teach in Korea so badly, we let it slide. So August 2005 came and we changed our departure date to November 2005. November came and we changed our departure time to "the end of January or the beginning of February...". It ended up being February 2, 2006 to be exact. We were told that we wouldn't start teaching at the school until the end of April, because we would be conducting these "winter camp" trips back and forth between China and Korea for the first two months. We were told that Rory would have a job guaranteed with the school, so we didn't need to try to hunt for jobs we wouldn't find online--we just needed to get married, so it would be no problem. So, without telling anyone except my sister and the people who actually signed the paperwork, we got married (turns out it's very easy to do); no fanfare, no celebration (other than the excitement associated with having a really big secret), no gifts or pretty white dress. But it was okay, because Korea was both our honeymoon and the beginning of these great jobs that paid well and would help us get our financial lives in order (we could save for a house, for a family, for a vacation, all that).

Well, we got on the airplane and took a long-ass flight to Korea. Instead of driving us directly to our "furnished apartment" as specified in our contract, we were taken to what is known in Korea as a "love motel". These are everywhere, and they're not a problem, as long as you are going to them for the right reason. After traveling for damn near 24 hours, the three of us didn't want to share a bed or a bathroom that was see through. We shared this for at least 5 days. After that, Rory and I moved to an apartment, and Jamie moved to a different, shadier love motel for the next 11 days. At the school we realized that no one even knew that Rory was coming until we were already on the plane. There was no job for him--I found out finally (after 11 days of being in Korea) that Rory couldn't even legally work in Korea because he has no degree. That was a huge red flag--one of those tidbits of information that would have determined whether we came to Korea at all. In retrospect, yes, I should have done more of my own research, but like I said, Myung Ja was our friend. And we trusted her when she said "Don't worry about it." Big mistake. Anyway. Trips to China didn't exist, either. Never went. Myung Ja's excuse was "I thought you knew we weren't doing that anymore..." How would we know? No one told us anything, really. Also, we were promised free Korean lessons, which was one of those things that really excited us when we got there. Turns out "free Korean lessons" means asking Megan how to say "downtown" in a cab or how to tell the kids how to sit down. Another big lie of Myung Ja's was that pets weren't a part of Korean culture. She had told me for six months that it would be okay to bring Huey, my dog, as long as I was willing to go through all of the paperwork associated with taking an animal to a foreign country. Then, one month before we left, Myung Ja changed her tune. "Dogs aren't a part of Korean culture", she said. "Who will cook for Huey?" "You won't see dogs there at all...". Well, in our hotel that we stayed in, we were neighbors to a giant freaking vet clinic. For dogs. And I'm sure for other mythical animals that don't exist in Korea. We wrote to Myung Ja to ask her about all of these lies, and she responded with typical "I don't know" or "I didn't say that" or "I'm sorry if that's what you thought I meant", then she stopped responding altogether. That was in February. I haven't spoken with her since. Through all of this (and by "this", I mean most of our four month tenure in Korea and with the school), we continually praised Megan (the Korean girl who basically runs the office) for her efforts to appease us and for having to clean up Myung Ja's mess, and we apologized for her having to listen to our complaints over and over because we couldn't get any face time with Seon. Megan was our good friend, and initially she worked her butt off for us. Side note.

So next we decided to go to the source of the problem: Seon Baek, proprietor of Seon's Cooking and Acting Kids Co, Ltd. We met with Seon during the first two weeks we were at the school, which is pretty impressive, because he doesn't come around that often. We had our list of grievances in front of us (which I still have, by the way--I typed it up and dated it), and we addressed all of them with him. He refused to take responsibility for Myung Ja's promises, instead saying "well, Myung Ja promised that to you" like she was independent of his school or something. I reminded him that because he was not in the United States and Myung Ja was, she was his liason and he should accept responsibility for her promises. He also promised us that we would never have a problem being paid on time--we only brought this up because Abby, the other girl who works at the school, was having problems getting paid on time. I asked him to put something specifically about payment/pay dates in writing. He refused. But all in all (at that point), I felt like it was a good meeting--he promised to do everything to help us and to combat any reservations we had about the program thus far. Then he had a meeting with Abby, and he left. Abby told us afterwards that he was complaining about all of our grievances; he even told us "oh, you give me big headache", which I called him out on--who traveled for 24 hours only to share a bed with her sister and her man? And Jamie was still in a freaking sex hotel at this point. But the biggest thing that made me angry was that he didn't understand why I was so upset about Rory's work situation. I'd told him over and over it was a big dealbreaker, but he still didn't get it. So I made Megan dial up Seon, and I told him that I wanted him to come back to the school because I had heard from Abby that he was saying things behind my back--THIS IS THE FIRST TIME I EVER EVEN MET MY BOSS! red flag. I know. He comes back to school, and I basically tell him immediately (and this seems so junior high now, but that's how he was acting) "listen dude, I didn't give up everything to travel over here just to have you, a grown man, talk about me behind my back one classroom over. If you have something you would like to address, you tell it to me, to my face, and then we don't have any problems. I was offered several other jobs in Korea, and I am more than qualified for this one, so if you want me to teach here, then you have to honor the promises that Myung Ja made, and you have to be straightforward." He got the point. He started saying "No, no, I respect Rory...I think you are making too much out of this." He even said something along the lines of "this is only our first meeting", which in retrospect is really funny, because I only spoke with him two times after that.

The next four months are kind of a blur--a blur in a sense that every week there was something new to frustrate us (and I have documented attempts at correspondence with Seon and Megan). But for the most part, through it all, we only vaguely entertained the notion of being released from our contracts. We didn't come to Korea to quit anything, and we didn't have the $600 to reimburse the school for our initial plane tickets to get over there (after a 6 month period, you don't have to pay back the school, but legally, you have to give two months written notice if you plan on quitting the school or firing an employee. We would have been able to put in our two months notice on June 6th...). February was the biggest pain in the butt, though. I think that we were still new enough to Korea to remember very vividly all of the things that had been promised to us. And we were still very motivated and enthusiastic and wanted these children at the school to be getting the best education possible. So at some point, our gears shifted, we stopped thinking only about the problems we were having with the school, and we started thinking how awful this was for the children. They didn't have basic supplies, like pencils. It was awful. Hokwans are businesses, not schools, so ours had no problem cramming another chair (for a money-making little body to sit in) into the room before providing enough pencils to the pre-existing students. We were a cooking and acting school, we were supposed to be teaching conversational English, but it was just a mess. If we were cooking, even though Megan printed up a sheet for us with all of the ingredients and instructions (like baked spaghetti), she wouldn't go get the ingredients (even though there is a supermarket right behind our school) unless we wrote them down and gave them back to her a day before. Seems like we should be able to just skip a step, huh? And how was I supposed to teach conversational English to a three year old? My very first student was Trina--she was three, and still couldn't go to the bathroom on her own. She spent all of class crying, hopping and occasionally saying "apple" or "mouse". She could hardly speak Korean, and here I was throwing all of these English words at her, because that's what I was expected to do. We also experienced how fun it was to teach children with behavioral problems. I had to physically pick up "Bob" at least three times to remove him from my classroom. He swung at me every time. Once he was out of the classroom, too, he wasn't punished or put in time out--that would require some sort of surveillance on Megan's part. Instead they just let him play before everyone else. Thanks for the help, guys! Jamie's entire 3:00 class was full of kids who liked to eat boogers and hit each other (they had been handplucked from Abby's classes--because she didn't want them--and placed in Jamie's, because she was the new teacher). Every time we asked Megan or Cindy (the other Korean girl who worked at the school) to help us discipline the kids or explain something in Korean, they would come in and say "this is too hard." Well, I'm sorry if the abcs are too hard for the kids, but guess what--we have to start somewhere. Later we would get a lot of flak because we had the nerve to make the kids write their abcs. The kids could not be held accountable for anything, and neither could Megan or Cindy--they acted annoyed when we asked for their assistance, because they were always looking at online magazines or shopping, huddled around the one computer in the school. This is from an evaluation (sent to both Seon and Megan) that I wrote on February 27th (we had only been teaching for 21 days):

"I think that each day I come to work, I feel more and more frustrated. Whether it is logistical stupid stuff
I've had to deal with from day one, or the fact that the kids don't respect us, or the fact that we don't
have the supplies to make us anything more than a glorified day care, I am very unhappy here and
visualize my next yearlong contract as a year of practicing patience and biting my tongue. When I was
offered this job, I was told that I would be teaching 6-11 year old children and that I would be working
25 hours a week. It sounded like a pretty sweet deal. It hasn't been pretty sweet. I could be babysitting
English speakers in the United States, and my husband could be legally working. I didn't move across an
ocean, leaving my friends and family, only to feel like I'm a babysitter who doesn't get any respect. I'm
sorry I sound so bitter, but these kids need someone (obviously a Korean) to tell that about respect and
why they are coming to this school. But then again, how much are us as teachers respected by the
school if we don't even have textbooks or enough pencils for everyone? There are such grand
expectations from the parents (that their kids will learn english), I have certain expectations (enough
pencils for all of my prospective students, some sort of idea of what I'm going to be teaching a bunch of
preschoolers for 4 hours everyday), the kids have expectations (come here to do nothing and speak in
Korean the whole time). I moved here feeling so excited and more motivated than i ever have before,
and now I just feel depressed and frustrated that this is the situation I am stuck in. It is only Monday
and already I long for the weekend because then I don't have to think about how disorganized this
school is.

My advice: If you want to have the best hagwon in Chuncheon or in Korea or whatever, why don't you
sit us down, listen to how we can help and make us feel like it's worth our time and effort to be here.
This is so disheartening."

This is one of several attempts made to arrange some sort of meeting with Seon. Eventually (after I had been explaining to Megan and writing to Seon how difficult it was to live off of one paycheck), Seon showed up at our apartment one night, completely out of the blue. He sat in our chair and Rory and I went right into our good cop/bad cop routine. I asked about Rory's job (not a favor, simply making good on Myung-Ja's promises) and all of the b.s. we had been fed. He sat there, shaking. You could tell that he was nervous, and I felt really good seeing this powerful, rich little man reduced to nerves, twitching in my chair in my tiny little apartment. Seon guaranteed Rory a job tutoring at Citibank for $800 a month. I asked him if he would put it in writing because his word wasn't good enough for me. He said no, but that he would shake on his hokwan. Long story short (this subject anyway), Rory wasn't making $800 a month. But we needn't worry about Rory.

March was an okay month as far as lesson plans and motivation went. We had a new schedule, and Seon had told me that in order to compensate for Rory not having a job, I could work overtime. So I stayed at school an extra hour and fifteen minutes almost everyday, and I worked through our two hour-long breaks, coming up with really cool art and science projects and detailed lesson plans. I spent at least 10 hours making a complete set of abc flashcards for all 10 of my youngest students. I was given the impression that overtime was okay because a) Seon told me so and b) I had been paid 21 hours of overtime during the first month's work, when I didn't even have my own classes, and I was just observing Jamie and Abby's classes. We clocked in and out everyday with our fingerprints and Megan had given me a printout of my hours that first month, so I figured everything was cool. Well, payday came around and guess what--I had more than 35 hours of overtime logged; I got paid for 1. You could say that this made me angry. I told Megan that I wanted a printout of my hours. I never got it. I told her I didn't work for free, so I stopped doing evaluations, buddy buddy phone talk, clocking in altogether or making lesson plans for my classes. I told her that Seon had decided what kind of teacher he wanted me to be--mediocre, so I wasn't putting any effort into anything, at least until I got a print out of my hours. I never got them. At this point too, Rory was supposed to come observe two hours of classes a day (he had been doing it for a week) as well as the citibank tutoring. We decided he should just stop doing it altogether. So Monday rolled around and Megan asked where Rory was (he was also supposed to create a lesson plan for all the students to use for the entire week). I told her that we had decided that since he wasn't contractually obligated to anything school-related, that he should just not come anymore. We "want[ed] one less person to be thrown into this mess that is Seon Baek", I told her. Also, I reminded her that Seon hadn't done me any favors with my overtime, why would Rory return any favor now? She understood, but mostly she was angry because she was inconvenienced.

At the end of March (and some of these events are a little out of order), Sang Kim (our good friend/former employer from UMC's Asian Affairs Center) was going to be in Seoul, meeting with all of the Mizzou alum who were in Korea. We asked for a day off of classes more than a week in advance, and it became such a huge ordeal. If we were sick or had an emergency, we had to give an hour notice before class started, but here we were, giving more than a week’s notice and we were given such a hard time about it. The first week we worked at the school, we had to teach classes on a Saturday to make up for a former teacher’s missed class, so we knew that that was an option, but no. We didn’t get the day off of work. So we traveled to Seoul immediately after classes on a Wednesday, hung out with Sang and other Mizzou alum (in mine and Rory’s first trip to Seoul, by the way) until 5:00 in the morning, got on the first train back to Chuncheon and taught all day. Abby, who had also been with us, conveniently “missed” her train back to Chuncheon, so she got to stay in Seoul for a few more hours. I was livid, and Megan knew it, but she just laughed about it, like “Oh, that silly, drunken Abby! Whatever will she do next?” So we realized that we should have just conveniently missed our train back. I doubt we would have gotten laughs.

Around this time, Jamie and I were making a lot of photocopies to use in our classes. Megan noticed (they had started renting a $20,000 copy machine), and she seemed concerned that we were using too much paper (keep in mind that this is the same chick who would color copy entire books for the kids to take home to their parents. I'm sure Maurice Sendak would love that a bunch of Koreans are just photocopying Where the Wild Things Are whenever they feel like it...), so she said we should get workbooks. Revelation!!!! We had been saying this from the beginning. Every other (good) hokwan in Korea has a workbook so all of the students at the same levels are doing the same things. So the school made their own really terrible workbooks (three per kid, even) that had the recipes for these mythical food items we never had the ingredients or the means to make. One day we went in to school and the microwave had been replaced by a tiny convection oven, and the oven had been replaced by a dishwasher. The kids kept asking "when are we going to make pizzas again?" and I would say "as soon as you can figure out how to cook one in the dishwasher...". We got to choose our own workbooks for each of our classes, and when they finally got here, it was like Christmas. It was how we should have felt during that first week we were teaching, but instead it took us 2.5 months to get the damn books! Somewhere during this time, Megan asked Rory and I to perform a song at her wedding. We practiced, and we were excited, but it never happened, because we were sort of subtlely disinvited. I was still hounding Megan about my overtime, so I wrote to Seon about it, assuming I wouldn't get a response, because that's his style. I wrote (on April 7th): "Hello, Seon. Julie McGeorge here. We (me, Jamie and Rory) would like to meet with you next week to talk. Please let me know which day and what time." His response to my email (my email that was obviously very rude, right?) was this (on February 8th): "Hey, Julie. I think I am your boss. So don't treat me like I am your employee, okay? I am in Shanghai right now and I don't know when I go back to Korea. If you have any problem with anything, you better talk to your boss, Abby or Megan. You got that? Don't ever send me email like that." The only thing was, the reason we had been writing to Seon was because talking to Abby and Megan didn't help. Megan couldn't put money into our accounts. She could just sit there and say "I am sorry...I don't know..."

This should take us up to right around d-day. Abby left school for the summer to go back to Missouri before coming back and starting a new contract (she starts again in August), and there was a two-week period where the school needed help before Abby's summer replacement got here. So Megan begged Rory to do her a favor and to work for those two weeks while we waited for the new teacher. We had reservations, but $400 cash for two weeks of minimal work sounded pretty good. And we wanted to just help Megan out because she was our friend. We went to Abby's going-away party and it was fun. The next day we got up and went to Sokcho, a small fishing village on the East Sea. We had asked Megan if we were going to be paid (payday was that Saturday), and she assured us we would be, though maybe at 4 or 5 p.m. instead of at midnight. So that was kind of a bummer, but we knew we'd be okay if we could just last until that point. Rory and I had three dollars in our account. Well, 4 o'clock came, 5 o'clock came, no money. We didn't get paid until Monday. We were angry. We kept trying to contact Megan and Seon, and at first Megan was like "no money in your account! I can't believe it!" Then she stopped answering her phone altogether. We were very lucky that Jamie was there, because she had more money saved up--otherwise we would have been stuck in Sokcho. On Monday we told Megan we would take a cab and that we weren't coming to school until there was money in our account (this was the second month in a row where we didn't get paid on time). So we showed up to school late, and I told her that she had a lot of nerve asking us/Rory for a big favor, only to leave us hanging when we needed help in Sokcho. She just sort of sat there and listened. At this point I told her that I felt like we should have our bags packed at all times because Seon's the type of guy who would just fire us out of the blue. "I don't know why you would think that..." she told me over and over. The next day when we were using the computer at school, we saw the little MSN messenger come up. It was Abby's friend Marina, who we had all met at her going-away party. She was writing to Megan about some Russian friend of hers who would love to teach at our school. Jamie wrote back "Hi Marina. It's Jamie." No response. So we asked Megan about the Russian, and she made up something about how she was going to have him work here for those two weeks Abby was gone, but now she didn't need him because Rory was working. And we fell for it. She was a very good liar. The next week we noticed more Cindy and Megan alone time, where we would walk into an empty classroom where they were whispering, and then they would just stop talking altogether. Randomly, though, on the Monday the week we were fired, Megan and Cindy drove us around Chuncheon, pointing out all of the really cool places "we'll all go visit together...". It was really fun. On Thursday it was Rory's birthday. At school we noticed that Marina was writing back on MSN messenger again, but this time it was in Korean. So we copied, pasted and used an online translator to find out what it said. We had been asking to meet the new teacher, but Megan wasn't letting us communicate with her. When we stepped off the plane to get here, there was a big party and we went out to dinner as part of a welcome. None of that for the new teacher, we thought. That was shady, too. Turns out that Marina's message said something along the lines of "I can't wait to celebrate with the new teacher tonight." So she was going to celebrate with people who didn't even work at her school. Fishy. Megan told us she was at the hospital all day on Thursday because the doctor said she was paranoid and needed to take a month off of work. Jamie and I didn't believe it, though, because in Korea, if you are just in a horrible car accident or something, you are expected to work. They just don't care. Also, we found it insulting that Megan had to have a doctor tell her she was too stressed out--we'd been there for four months and didn't need some doctor to tell us we were stressed. I hypothesized that night that Megan was so stressed out because she was going to have to fire us, but I said it in sort of a joking fashion. So, needless to say, Megan and Cindy didn't come out for Rory's birthday (which we didn't get a chance to blog about, but it was incredible. Absolutely incredible. We had so much fun, and in retrospect, it was a really great way to spend our last "real" night in Chuncheon).

On Friday we came in and asked Megan if she was getting the ingredients for our strawberry shortcake with homemade whipped cream. She had even typed it up on the website the day before, to let all of the parents know what we were making. She said she would go get the ingredients. Well, during class, while Megan was gone (she'd been gone for at least an hour), Cindy came in and said "Megan cannot get the ingredients." At this point, a little light went off in my head, like "she's meeting the teachers that will be taking our places...". So Jamie and I joined our classes to play pictionary, and we decided we were going to have cooking day anyway. We asked the kids what they wanted for cooking day, and they all said "candy, chocolate, ice cream, soda..." all that kind of stuff. So on our lunch break and with our own money, Jamie and I went to the grocery store behind the school and got all of the things the kids asked for. When we walked back into the school, Megan was back. She gave us a death glare as all of our students crowded around us telling us how much they loved us. So the last class we ever had with our favorite students was a junk food buffet. Megan asked "are you guys having some kind of party?" and we just said, "it's a cooking school, they're supposed to be making things to eat. They shouldn't have to suffer because you couldn't get the ingredients. We just sort of overcompensated with all of the junk food..." Megan left again after the kindergarten class. Sometime during that break before our next classes started, Cindy came in and asked me for my alien identification card. I--being the gullible one--handed it over. Luckily for me, Jamie snatched it out of Cindy's hands and asked "Why?" Cindy did her usual "I don't know..." Jamie asked her "Are we being fired?" Again "I don't know." So Jamie called Megan. Megan (who had spoken really good English up to this point) said "I think that next week you will go to immigration and... oh, I don't know how to say in English." So Jamie asked Megan flat-out "Are we being fired?" Megan said "Why would you ask that? I don't know how to say in English." Jamie also asked her how the new teacher was going to teach next week since she hadn't trained at all. Megan said "I gave her a pamphlet." Cindy said Megan would be at the school at four. Around this time, Rory was supposed to leave, so I tried to call Megan from my cell phone, but it had been turned off. So had Jamie's. I called Megan from school and asked about Rory's payment (it was supposed to be in cash), and she said "we will talk about Rory's money stuffs when i come back to school." We told Cindy that we weren't teaching our last classes until Megan came. Megan never showed up, but she did call back and tell us to meet her at our apartments.

I didn't really know what was going on. I couldn't believe that it was happening. I was angry that I hadn't gotten to say goodbye to my students. I went into my classroom and grabbed all of my photocopies I had made from a website I paid to be a member of. I frantically wrote a note to the mother of my favorite student, Caleb. It said something along the lines of "I don't know what is happening right now, but if I'm not here on Monday, please know how much I enjoyed teaching both of your sons. You should know that this is not a good hokwan, and the man who runs it is a very dishonest, bad man. Please email me..." and I included my email address. I folded it up and wrote "Caleb's mom" on it, and I taped it in the back of his workbook. I assumed that I would never hear from her, because it would be intercepted by the new teacher or Caleb would pull it out in class and say "what's this?"... Anyway, we went to Jamie's apartment first. It was locked. We went to our apartment next. Locked. So we didn't have a phone, we were locked out of our apartments, and Megan was nowhere to be found. We went to our favorite restaurant across the street to use the phone and think. These were our good friends. We would drink with them often and go to the norae bong to sing with them. They thought we were just upset because we had been locked out of our apartments. So they called a locksmith. When we got into our apartments, the tv was gone, the coffee pot was gone, the phone was gone, and the internet connection had been disabled. While we had been out buying junk food for our students, Megan had been in our apartments, taking away any and all forms of communication with the outside world. So we went back across the street, and once our friends figured out what was going on, they said "don't cry, you can have a job at our restaurant." They gave us a free bottle of soju to calm us down, and I used the phone to call Megan. I said "We're here at our apartment--thanks for locking us out and turning off our phones." She said "okay." So we waited. Finally, Megan and Cindy walked around the corner with two goons (in case we decided to be violent, I guess. Yes, it had crossed my mind, but I would never ever have done anything. I'm not that stupid) and two pieces of paper that looked like Publisher's Clearing House notices--in big red letters (a sign of "unfriendliness" in Korea) JAMIE YOU ARE FIRED and JULIE YOU ARE FIRED, with a bunch of made up reasons and lies underneath. Lies like: we had to turn in our alien cards or we would be charged $100 per person each day we still had them. Guess which three Americans still have their cards? Yup. They told us this because once we turned over our cards, we would forfeit any rights we still had. The first reason listed for the firing was something along the lines of "failed to communicate with boss" which was obviously pulled out of thin air. I have at least ten emails where I ask for meetings, and I have the last correspondence I ever had with him (in email form) telling me to never write him an email again. It also said that we failed to bond with our students. Highly insulting. I loved my students, and I didn't even get to say goodbye to them. I'm still very bitter about that. We asked Megan if she thought all of the reasons we were fired were true. "Do you really think that we didn't bond with our students, Megan?" and she said "You better ask your friend Abby about that. She wrote it." Another blow. Abby, another freaking Mizzou alum and (we thought) our friend, had helped to fire us. So Jamie just stood there laughing, Rory sat down on the ground shaking his head, and I used the f word as many times as possible, up in Megan's face and into her phone when she had the nerve to take a phone call while she was firing us. During this time, all of our neighbors and friends (all of the restaurant workers on "meat street", as we liked to call it) came out and sort of just stood there watching it all unfold, arms across their chests, like "don't mess with our American friends..." Ultimately Megan and the posse left, and the last thing she said as she left was "F___ing Americans." It was a perfect ending in a sense that she completely summed up the Korean way of thinking (well, at least the three Koreans at school and the one Korean at immigration who governed our stay at the school and in Chuncheon). When I said early on that I didn't understand why Seon couldn't just meet us face to face and be honest with us, Megan said "oh, it's a cultural difference." Or when I asked who should be held accountable for all of Myung Ja's lies, I was told "Get used to it in Korea," and "culturally, it's just different." When I asked why it was okay for a kid with behavioral problems to swing at the teacher and have it be no big deal, I was told "it's a cultural difference." When we asked Megan why it was okay for her husband to hit her in the face, we were told "it's a cultural difference." When I was told at physical therapy (in a really juvenile way, by someone who wasn't even a doctor and who I'd never even spoken to before) that I needed to be at the diet clinic a few floors up instead of at physical therapy, and as I was standing in this little office crying, I was reassured over and over again "this is a cultural difference." That was my last trip to physical therapy, I might add. When I told Megan that one of my youngest kids' entire back was a giant bruise, and after I'd seen the way his uncle spanked him, I was told "oh, it's a cultural difference." ENOUGH! There is a huge discrimination between cultural differences and the inability to hold anyone accountable for their actions. I will believe that certain things are culturally different, but used as an excuse over and over gets really old--"I said no ketchup on my hot squid burger!" "Too bad--it's different culturally in Korea!" The whole time Megan was firing us, she said "oh, Seon said this and Abby wrote that" and she never once accepted any sort of responsibility for the way it was being handled. Rory even asked her "why do you have to do it like this? What did we do to justify being fired like this?" Megan's answer: "I don't know. I don't care." Of course we know that the culture is different in Korea--why else would we want to go?--these cultural differences are the things that we lauded in all of our other affirmative blogs, and these legitimate cultural differences are the very things that kept us sane in Korea outside of school drama. I digress...

So we started packing. We had to be out of our apartments ASAP, and we had until June 1st to get out of the country (if we had decided to quit, we could have given our notice, the legal way, on June 6th). We were getting ready to take a break and go eat at the restaurant across the street. I went to open the door, and standing there was our favorite waitress, her daughter and her daughter's friend who had just gotten back from studying English in Canada. They wanted to see if we were okay. So we walked across the street with them and ate dinner (they bought it for us, too). Our Korean sister (the waitress said she wanted to be our Korean mommy when we first met her) sat there while we ate, crying, while her friend (who spoke great English, by the way) made phone calls to the embassy and to whoever she thought could help. Later that night, Megan came to the apartment to get the cell phone back from us. Later still, she came over and Rory answered the door. Megan: "Are you okay?" Rory: "No, Megan, we're not okay." Megan: "Is Julie okay?" Rory: "Yes, she's just a little tired." Megan: "Is she drunk?" Rory: "No." So then I got up and came to the door. Megan awkwardly stood in our doorway for a really long time, saying "I really like you guys" and "I'm sorry--it was Seon, not me" and "I will help you find a job in Chuncheon..."

That weekend we spent building up a case for ourselves and looking for other jobs in Chuncheon and in Korea. I called every contact I ever had in Korea, and all of these people who didn't even know us wanted to help. It was a great feeling! The only thing we needed was a letter of release, which would allow us to work elsewhere in Korea without having to leave the country. I knew this as we were being fired. I asked Megan if our really rudimentary firing paper was the same as a letter of release--"is this what I show them at immigration and it's the official document?" She said yes. Another lie. Everyone I talked to said that there was no reason we shouldn't get the letter of release--there was no valid reason to not give it to us. Megan spent the weekend writing us nasty emails like "don't you try to contact Cindy and Abby. NEVER!" I printed off every email (all the way back to when we were in the United States) that indicated breaches of contract. They were all over the place, from the moment we stepped off of the plane, when we were supposed to be taken to our furnished apartments and instead were taken to a love motel. By Korean law, your employer has to give you 30 days written notice if he wishes to terminate you. In our contract it says two months written notice (the same goes for us if we decided to quit), and the only way an employer can get around this is if he proves that the teachers were a threat to the students. We hadn't done anything like that, so we were actually feeling pretty good about going to immigration. We were good teachers, our students loved us, and we had a killer defense team. We had tons of evidence, we had four Korean-speaking friends with us (including the secretary to the assistant to the minister of education in our province), and we were very determined to prove ourselves. We walked into immigration and waited for Megan. When she walked in, she looked like a wild animal. I'd never seen anything like it. So we ended up sitting around this secluded table, with Seon's friend from immigration, Megan and the seven of us. So it was seven versus one, but it didn't even matter. This guy at immigration (I'm not kidding when I say he's Seon's friend--they're buddies) had his mind made up, and he just looked at us with this smile on his face. We asked about the two months notice that is required legally. We noted how telling it was that Seon, our boss, didn't even have to be there to fire us. Megan freaked out and started shouting things in Korean like "They taught class drunk!" "They taught all of the children cuss words and how to say mean things to their parents!" "All of the parents complained about their tattoos!" (Side note: I had kept my tattoos covered. I only stopped worrying about it when Megan told both me and Rory "don't worry about covering them up. They've seen them before. Abby has a tattoo."). So basically Megan just started freaking out, shouting out all of these bogus lies, saying she wasn't giving us a letter of release because she didn't think we should ever teach in Korea again. It was horrible. The man at immigration tried to take our cards again, and we refused. This same man was the reason we didn't have to make a visa run to Japan when we first got to Korea--so he did favors for Seon and us at the beginning, but it came back to bite us in our asses at the end. After immigration we felt very defeated. Even though Megan had said all of these horrible lies, even our Korean friends probably thought some of them were true, simply because we lost the immigration battle. It is a horrible feeling to be standing there with your friends, wondering if they think any of what Megan said was true, knowing that they probably do believe some of it. Megan kept writing us emails, things like "don't worry, the kids don't even miss you" and really horrible petty things. We still didn't know what to do. We thought, we'll just fly to Japan, fly back, have tourist visas for 90 days and use that time to find a job--we had three contacts offering us jobs immediately already. But then Megan wrote Jamie and email that said "I know you worked at another hokwan and I know you had private tutors." She had read everything on Jamie's computer. They couldn't refire us, but Seon and Megan could threaten our friends, who were trying to open their own legitimate hokwan (yes, there are good hokwans in Korea), even though they had no proof and it was just a big nasty allegation. But it proved to us that even though we were fired and didn't have anything to do with Seon's school anymore, he wasn't going to stop digging until we were out of the country. So we each paid $750 for plane tickets and hopped a plane to Chicago (the fact that the school didn't make us reimburse them for our initial plane ticket to Korea is also an admittance of guilt--they just wanted us out of Korea to not be a thorn in our boss' side anymore). Rory's birthday on Thursday the 18th, fired on Friday, Immigration on Monday and plane ride home on Wednesday. What a blur.

We were in the airport in Tokyo when I checked my email at an internet kiosk. The very first email I saw had a Korean subject line, so I assumed it was from Megan, but I opened it and it said "This is Caleb's mom. I got your note. Caleb misses Julie teacher...what happened?" So I wrote her back and told her that the important thing was that she knows how much I enjoyed teaching her children and to give him a big hug. So at least I got to say goodbye. Sort of.

If you've made it this far, thanks for reading. We've told the story a lot, but I think that this is probably the most comprehensive version. If you are still wondering why we would ever consider going back to Korea, just read all of the other blogs and mass emails before this one, and look at the pictures. Though we went through a really horrible and scary experience, it was incredible because there were so many complete strangers who tried to help us. I think that Megan and Cindy and Seon and Abby Jo Grillo (from Warrenton, Missouri) just assumed that we were having a bad time in Korea because we were frustrated with the school, and that wasn't the case. I still cannot understand why Megan would fire us the way that she did. She wrote us an email that said: "this is what you wanted, isn't it? to not work for the school anymore?" I reminded her that there is no justification for the way we were treated. I firmly believe that no one should ever have to go through an experience similar to that last weekend in Chuncheon. Did I want to work somewhere else? Yes. Did I want to be fired in the most horrible way possible? No. I loved my life in Korea. It was a great vacation and a great honeymoon, but I think that I will work for a public school next time.

So yes, it is weird to be back. Don't get me wrong. It is great to see everyone, it's just still weird to see white people in genearal. And I'm freaking out because I don't have a job. I know that me crying and wondering why the hell this happened to us doesn't pay me an hourly wage. It's just such a shock (still) to be back after we waited so long to go. That's all.

We've been busy exploring!

This past weekend was jam-packed--so jam-packed, in fact, that it has taken us a few days to recover and not feel exhausted and to of course, report. It's still no excuse, though, I know. On Saturday we went to an area of Chuncheon that we hadn't really explored yet called "Gongjicheon" (I think). We were looking for these tent bars that Rory found on our Chuncheon "Fun Map" we got when we first moved here (god bless that fun map). It was nice outside so we decided we wanted to do some tent drinking and food sampling. So we got dropped off at the sculpture park, which it turns out is not very far from our house--cheaper to get to this place than to downtown, even. So we were walking around this sculpture park and we saw the duck boats. I saw the duck boats on a chuncheon web site before we ever even moved here, so I was like "hell yeah, we're riding those ducks!" So all three of us rode around in a duck boat, and it felt like a dream of mine had been fulfilled. I still would have liked to decapitate the duck by going under one of the strategically placed "fun bridge"s, but oh well. After that we went to a restaurant whose basement was right at water level; we ate dakgalbi and watched the bridge lights turn on as it got dark. We noticed this really cool temple at the top of a mountain/hill while we were eating dinner, so we decided that we would walk up to it when we were finished. It was sort of starting to rain, I sort of had dressier shoes on and the mountain didn't really have a path, so I ended up walking up the side of the thing barefoot, holding my purse and shoes in one hand and clinging to Rory for dear life with the other. It was fun. We found the top, and there was this gorgeous temple with a really, really old gigantic bell. And we were the only people there. It was beautiful up there. We got to see a part of Chuncheon that we don't ever really get to see. I mean, we had heard that Chuncheon is the city of lakes, but we hadn't really seen any lakes yet. From the top, at this temple, though, you could see it all. It was awesome. I think Rory got some pretty cool pictures. We will post those, too. So then we walked down the other side of this mountain and we saw this restaurant that was shaped like a barn and all lit up with Christmas lights--I had to get to that barn! So we walked over to it, and the closer we got we saw that there was this little winding path next to the barn that led back to godknowswhere--so of course we followed it, and we found ourselves walking through all these cool trees and little rock sculptures and fountains and chickens and little kids jumping on trampolines. And barbecue pits in tree stumps. It was gorgeous and unlike any other restaurant we'd seen in Chuncheon. So we decided to have dinner again. We ate under trees out of a tree while listening to this Korean music that sounded like '60s surf music. I asked our waiter and the only other table there if they knew what the music was, but no one had a clue. It was so pleasant. We bought the other table a bottle of soju and they bought us a bottle of beer. Turns out this place is really famous (we found that out later...). So after this place, we are still determined to find these damn tent bars. We walk for a little bit and then we see them--two parallel rows of these tented bars. They are big on eating and drinking out of tents over here--but these aren't your standard issue tents. These tents are very organized little infrastructures involving a lot of steel poles, very plush couches or benches and fully functioning kitchens. By this point we were very tired. We had been out and about for at least 6 hours (two dinners worth of time...), so we picked a spot and ordered some draft beer. Over here it is customary to order a side dish with your draft beer--this is how they make all of their money. It is not a rule or anything, but just one of those little things we've been told. If you order bottled beer you don't have to order a food item. But the food items on bar menus are like 10 bucks for a plate of fruit or fruit salad in sweet milk. No thanks. So we tried to order just three orders of rice ($1 each, the cheapest on the menu), and you could tell the waiters were annoyed and a little amused. So they brought us the rice and then gave us a free pot of chigay (stew that we actually like quite a bit). We drank maybe half of our beers and then left. It was a jampacked day.

So jampacked that we slept in a little bit the next day, but then we decided to catch a bus to Seoul. Imagine deciding at 1:00 in the afternoon--hey, I'll just pop over to NYC real quick. No problem. We were on a mission to find this used clothing/Goodwill type store called The Beautiful Store. Apparently it is one of a kind in Korea. So two hours later we were in Seoul on the subway, trying to find this place. We got off the subway and referred to my shoddily hand-drawn map I copied off of the website. We couldn't find the damn place. So finally, after wandering around in Insadong (white person central--yuck. all the white folks over here look like assholes, and based on our experiences with whiteys, most of them are assholes. We have met some nice ones, though. don't get me wrong. it's just that that is why we like chuncheon so much. no one looks like us, and it's not full of these hypermasculine US soldiers who come over here to get hot Korean wives), we got a map that looked a little more official (and accurate) than mine. We wound up at The Beautiful Store right as it closed. damn. But it was okay--we sat in little plastic chairs on a side street and drank beers while we waited to meet clayton so we could wander around insadong looking at all of the touristy stuff. It was nice to just wander around. We ended up eating at this tofu place that had the beef/tofu hot pot we had been searching for all over sokcho. Also we had some mackerel. They just brought out this little plate with two whole mackerels on it. It was a freaking side dish. So I thought I would give it a try, and really, it wasn't bad at all. A very tasty, cheap dining experience. We went to another spot to have a beer and look down over some busy Seoul side streets. Then we walked around a little more before heading back to the bus station (we caught our bus with 2 minutes to spare--it was a close one!) and riding back to chuncheon.

On Monday after school, Megan (the chick we work with) drove us all around Chuncheon--up on the mountain, to a really cool resort we might go to on Rory's birthday, past some hookers, all that good stuff. There is plenty to do here. And it's still awesome!

Okay, that's all for now. I will make Rory post the pictures later.

I'm Gonna Be Famous!

Last night Jamie called with a weird question. A friend of ours wanted to know if I could take some pictures with a man who's running for mayor of Chuncheon. He wanted two foreign men to take some pictures with him so he could look like he is cool with foreigners. I guess he has plans to open an english style village in Chuncheon. Anyway, about an hour ago, our bud picked me up at our apt., then we picked up our other white friend Chris. We headed to some big office building and sat in some kind of conference room. The candidate shows up, gets some make up put on, and then the photo shoot begins. The first part was me, the dude, and Chris sitting around an office table pretending to talk shop. We were supposed to smile and act naturally while he spoke to us. I had no problem, because it was ridiculous... and I don't know any Korean, really. The next shot was on the stairs.. then one of us "sealing the deal" walking out of an elevator. We then went outside and stood next to eachother looking towards the sky like we're looking forward to the future or something. It took about an hour. I think I'll be in some propaganda posters, and possibly the news paper. If I ever get a copy of any of these you can bet yer ass they'll be on the blog. That was my afternoon. Sheesh.

Sokcho

We just got back from the East Sea. We went to a small city up north called Sokcho. I guess the camera was on in my bag the whole bus ride, so I had no battery. The weather was kinda crummy yesterday and today, so there wasn't much to film anyway. We did get to hang out by the beach, go to a fish market, and eat some sun dubu. This afternoon we ate lunch in the back of a dried squid/fish shop with a really nice old lady who we had some drinks with the night before. Next time we visit, she wants to take us to the park. Also, Jamie has managed to find herself a "boyfriend." It's a cool city. We'll go back sometime soon with a fully charged camera.

Here's all the pictures I could get with 30 seconds of camera time.

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this is a long one, sorry....

it's been a long time since last i blogged. that said, it's been a busy couple o' weeks for one jamie mcgeorge. lots of meeting new people and then drinking and making a fool out of myself with them at the norae bong. i just want to give koreans a good impression of drunk american chicks. i'm pretty sure i'm succeeding, woo hoo! This sonsaengnim likes to party!!! Yup, Im a dork.

last week i was walking home and sort of cut off this dude when i was crossing the street. he was talking on the phone, but abruptly hung up and approached me. within 5 minutes of talking to him, we were making plans to meet and speak english together over beer and dinner. so that was cool. later that same night, i was at the bondaegi place (sp? hof with silkworm larvae as a side dish) and the server that we were convinced hated us wanted to go out sometime to drink and speak english. for a while i didn't even know his name, so when he would call or text message, it just said "bug guy" on my phone. actually, i know his name, but my phone still says "bug guy." he text messaged and called quite a few times. I guess that even if his english is lacking, at least he is persistent. i did end up going out with both of said dudes last week and was really glad that i chose to answer the phone instead of hide behind the caller id like i'm used to doing. the guy i met on the street (jong-heeeeeee) i ended up eating clam soup with (not a euphemism...) and we drank beer in my neighborhood. he had a list of questions for me when we went to the bar. out of all the koreans i've met here thusfar, he strikes me as the one the most earnest in his desire to learn english. he wants to go drink, but he also wants to address several pages of questions he has prepared. hopefully i will learn some korean from him as well.

I met bug guy in the university area a few days later. He had a friend with him who actually spoke better english, so he ended up translating most of our conversation. I know that as I relay all this, these sound like a string of really awkward interactions Im getting myself into (even other Koreans I know are constantly asking me what do you talk about with these people?)and we know how I pride myself on awkwardnessbut its really not like that at all. I would be lying if I said the conversation seems really natural, but the sentiment at least seems really natural. And there is this fascination constantly being reciprocated, confirmed, perpetuated why do Koreans do this? Why do Americans say that?

After drinking, went to the norae bong. For some reason, singing dont stop believing in the company of two dudes who have no idea who journey is is not as fun as my inebriated self thought it would be. Koreans at the norae bong are not like drunk Americans at karaoke. Koreans pick the most heartfelt, sentimental love songs and render them gut-wrenchingly. Americans pick the party jams and like to march in place as they sing (okay, by Americans, I mean me. Im a fan of marching in place in general). But the norae bong is the unofficial end of drinking activities, so I knew I would be going home soon anyway. Parted ways with bug guys friend, then bug guy walked me home (his apartment is near mine). When we got to my door, he asked if he could kiss me, so I awkwardly said uh, I guess on the cheek. So I turned my head and he ended up kissing my hair. So that, in all its awkward glory, is the most physical action I have had in at least 3 months (aside from creepy dude in seoul who tried to molest me, but Ill try to block that one out). Despite all this, it was a really good night and I will probably hang out with him again. It sounds silly, but I think these sort of awkward interactions are one of the purposes of my life. Awkward people gravitate toward other awkward people. And its a beautiful thing--or at least a highly uncoordinated, graceless thing.

On Friday night, met up with Jong-Hee and his friend, Mr. Ham. They were both eager to meet jules and rory. We drank with them for a while at a bar in jules neighborhood. Then my friend Michael met us and we went to another bar. We ended up drinking many many ginormous pitchers of beer and lots of soju. A very good night, and some pretty interesting cultural exchanges. We played so many drinking gameskorean and American--high low red black, bullshit, and several soju lid games. It was funny when we played bullshit though, because instead of calling "bullshit" they would say "you are a liar!" Michael walked me home and my normal walk from julies house ended up taking at least 30 minutes. I offered to make him some food, but before I had even cooked it he was passed out in my bed. So I slept on the floor. Somewhere in the middle of the night in my comatose/drunk state, we ended up switching spots. Then he ordered delivery Chinese food the next day as a hangover cure. So Friday night was great. One of us drinkers ended up making pizza (read: barfing a lot), but it wasnt me.

The next day I headed to seoul for the lotus lantern festival. I really like the city of seoul as a place to visit, but this third trip confirmed my belief that chuncheon or any of the smaller cities are the places to be. I think Im having a more unique experience maybe than the masses of foreigners in seoul, as I am basically forced to have much native Korean interaction. The opportunity to mingle with only other esl teachers is not as everpresent in chuncheon as it appears to be in seoul. It was a sort of reverse culture shock to be in seoul, as I again felt painfully self-conscious around all the judgmental whiteys. Of course Koreans are judgmental tooIm not a Korean, but Im living in koreabut their judgment seems so much more objective to me than that of other Caucasians.

Another aspect of seoul that was so tiring was the subway system. I guess its convenient, but I felt like I was underground or in a taxi or on a bus all day long. Whats the point of being surrounded by mountains if you cant even see them? I think overall, it was just the pace of life that I didnt like. Constant struggling to be somewhere, making plans and feeling pressure to keep them. I much prefer the relaxed, unhurried life in chuncheon. Things in korea seem to happen in double-time already--so much life compressed into a small timeframe. Why would I want to speed that up even more?

Anyhoo, that was Saturday. Lots of traveling, lots of walking around, lots of drinking. Lots of fun, but quite exhausting. There were no lantern festivities going on that night, so the focus was just on seeing different parts of seoul. We ended up at a bar called the beer factory. I dont know which brilliant person decided that serving 4 liters of beer in a giant column with a tap at your table was a good idea. But I want to personally thank him/her (look at rorys myspace picture. We couldnt even fit the whole thing in the camera frame). Who needs electricity, or the telephone, or the cotton gin? Things that facilitate inebriation are much more useful inventions.

On Saturday, woke up extremely late and decided that more drinking was in order. After all, when in seoul...do as you normally do in any other city. So we navigated the subway again, and ended up in the area of city hall, where the lantern festival would be taking place. There were many many tents set up and a major street closed off for the festival. So this part of the day was like an arts and grafts bazaar: make a lotus flower, paint the Buddha picture, make another lotus flower, etc. there were also lots o lanterns for sale. So Jules and rory bought a lot for other people, and I bought some for myself. At the end of the blocked-off street, there was a pagoda-ish area that had all these brightly-colored lanterns strung overhead, blocking any view of the sky. Other things of notelots of whiteys, lots of monks, lots of breakdancing, lots of everything.

Food was in order, so we went and ate some soup (remember, Im a soup fan) with more beef in it than even I am used to. Nothing makes a girl smile like a big plate of raw beef that she gets to cook in a boiling pot on her table. At this point, we three had been debating whether or not to stay for the actual parade or not. Pros: its a lantern festival in one of the largest cities in the world. And we dont even really know what that means. Cons: we live in chuncheon and have to work in the morning. Lantern festival means we stay overnight and spend more money and get up at 5:00 am to make it to work in chuncheon on time. After much debate, we made a wise decision and stayed for the parade. In Columbia or Jefferson city, mo a parade is a completely asinine thing. Merely an opportunity to get hit in the face withbut never actually catchcheap hard candy thrown from the floats of people you never really cared about (i.e. homecoming court, class of 79). So my standards for a parade are pretty low. After eating, we walked outside and turned a corner. And my mind was unmistakably blown. Besides the masses of people flanking both sides of the parade, there was an insane amount of people actually in the parade. This city that was the picture of exertion and activity had been gorgeously and elegantly reduced to a glowing sea of undulating people and lanterns. It was breathtaking, surreal, ethereal. A beautiful and soothingly clear reminder that we are in a foreign land. The sense of history in this country is a very palpable, everpresent thing. Everything Koreans do seems to pay homage to ancestors, elders, a hierarchy passed down through the ages, and somehow surviving, despite technology and modernization. Something los estados unidos is relatively devoid of.

Post parade, went to train station, and found a motel nearby. I also saw more prostitutes up close than Ive ever seen in my life. Not that a girl from Missouri is routinely exposed to people who have sex for money. anyhoo, they were all very pretty and friendly. And of course, they spoke english well. Yup, whores are bilingual.

I just noticed Ive had the same box of Kleenex for three months. I need to blow my nose more.

Rory and Julie's Video Blog 4

Okie doke. There was simply too much action for one video. So now there are two. The first one is some random crap from our first day, and the daytime activities at the lantern festival. The second video is devoted solely to the lantern parade.

soju party including me and lots of dudes

this blog will be short and sweet because i'm at work. i have plenty of other things to catch up on, so i will focus on last night in particular.

a friend of a friend told me he was going drinking, so i invited myself along. it was one of his friend's birthday and they were going to a traditional soju bar. so i met chang hun in kang de hu mun (university area) not really knowing what we were doing, just that i was meeting him. so we walk into this soju bar that has graffiti all over the walls and rows and rows of picnic tables to sit at--a very cool and dirty atmosphere. there were at least 10 guys at this table and i was the only girl. but when they all saw me, i felt like a movie star. everyone going "oh!" really surprised. i think chang hun told them he was bringing an american, but maybe they didn't think i would be as tall as i was. so instead of sitting down next to the one guy i know, they all have me sit down in the middle of them. commence to taking many many shots of soju, something i don't normally do. i felt sort of bad because when the guy whose birthday it was showed up, nobody was really paying any attention to him, they were all vying for my attention and asking me questions like "so what do you think about korean men?" "why aren't you married?" "do you have many boyfriends?" it was really really funny. they were also constantly asking me "do you feel comfortable? we want you to feel comfortable around us." "do you have many korean friends? we want to be your korean friends." they were all making fun of each other too: "this guy doesn't have any eyebrows." "this guy looks like a filipino monkey."

the whole situation was so unique, not only because i'm in south korea, but because in the u.s. i would never feel comfortable walking into a bar and sitting down with 10 complete male strangers. and chang hun kept asking me the whole time "are you okay?" and i was okay. i tried to convey that i was better than okay, so i hope that was understood.

birthday boy was a big hand talker. so his friends made fun of him for that. but he taught me the proper way to pour and receive soju.

when i went home, i had all these guys asking for my phone number and offering to "help me get home." i explained that i had taken taxis home by myself many times. but i got several phone calls and text messages making sure i was okay.

anyhoo, that's last night in brief. i will expound later with more details. just needed to get it down while it was fresh in my mind.

photos from the lantern festival

this is what we did this weekend. hopped a bus to seoul...and went to the lantern festival. i'll let one of the gals give the play by play. i've got a crap ton of footage to edit, but i'll try to get the video blog done asap.
peath.
roar

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weekend fun party with Clayton!

So yesterday we met my friend Clayton at the bus terminal/E Mart. Clayton is a good friend that we have known since high school, and he currently lives in Seoul. For all of you who remember me talking about our "friend in Seoul who tutors that stem cell guy..."--well, that's Clayton. He is also the person who initially told us to check out Asia for job opportunities, so we owe him a lot. Anyway...We showed him around Chuncheon a little bit, and it was a really fun day. We ate on dakgalbi street; went to the underground mall (and ran into the same group of middle school chicks we met last week. They were very excited that we remembered them at all); went to the street market, which was really packed and awesome; saw a Bruce Willis movie at the "cinema"; ate dinner at our famous BBQ restaurant across the street; went to a bar and met some really nice Russian chicks and then went dancing. We got home around 4:00 in the a.m. It was fun. Today we were going to go ride these swan-shaped paddle boats on Lake Chuncheon, but we woke up and it's raining. Who knows what we will do today? Recover perhaps... It is just nice to see Clayton, a familiar face from home; and it's also nice to sort of play tour guide, even though I'm still a newbie in this particular city. Next weekend we will go visit Clayton in Seoul, where there is a giant lantern festival to celebrate Buddha's birthday. I think that means we get a day off of work, so if that's the case--props to Buddha. I'm sure we will have some kickass lantern footage. I've heard it is supposed to be really incredible. We shall see.

It's been awhile...

Since last I blogged. Sorry, folks--we've been busy with school and partying. Just kidding sort of. Yesterday Rory and I walked around Myeongdong, trying to get lost because it was such a nice day. We were going to visit Soktcho, a town relatively close to ours (in the same province) that is on the sea and is said to have some of the most amazing landscape in korea. This is both easy and hard to believe, since Chuncheon and Korea in general (what I've seen of it) is so freaking beautiful. Soktcho for another day, I guess. But here in Chuncheon we got me some new shoes--I have big feet; the girl at the converse store knew very little english, but she did know "oh, very big" and pointed at my feet. Yup, I know. Even in the US of A they're big. Rory pointed to his feet and told her 13, and her eyes got really big. They simply do not grow them that large here in Korea. We ate at a vietnamese restaurant and tried this really good beer called 333--it was a light beer that tasted like a stout almost, so we bought a couple more and walked around all these little side, slummy streets with them (you can drink beer outside here, not like that rules our life, but it's still nice). We met about 7 high school/middle school chicks (all about nadine's age) who thought we were the coolest things they'd ever seen. We walked with them for a bit and they took pictures of us on their phones. I'm sure they are all trading those pictures back and forth. We went back to the first place we ever ate at here in Chuncheon--chan and chan's fried chicken--just for posterity and because we were in our old hood. It was nice to realize how much we have improved; we are no longer intimidated by eateries or korean characters (i sort of just rely on rory to tell me what i'm looking at. thanks...). All in all it was a pretty uneventful day, but it was one of those days where I felt like I was on vacation. It was awesome.