Seoul (a little late...)

I should have already written this, but oh well. Last week we went to Seoul for the first time (refer to video blog...). It was pretty wicked, I'll be honest. Even the trip there was awesome--something about riding on a train, going through mountains and everything was really, really cool. It made me feel like I was on vacation or something, I don't know. I've just always liked trains. It was mine and Rory's first time out of Chuncheon since we've been here, and seeing parts of Korea that were really tiny, little communities was nice. Communities that looked like neon threw up on them, but still smaller than Chuncheon. We did a little train drinking, and soon enough we were there. So we had to navigate all of these subway/train lines and where they meet up, and we did it with a little help from some friendly Korean men. One of them was this super nice, older man, who had worked for AT&T for a long time. He spoke very good English and seemed amused by Rory and all of our collective love of dakgalbi and Korean food in general. He helped us through a stop and a transfer. Nice, nice man. When we actually got to the subway station we needed to be at, it was ginormous, like an underground mall--people everywhere in this giant maze. We found our terminal, and as soon as we walked out we saw our bar/restaurant where we were meeting people. The first two people we saw were sang and Clayton. It was so awesome to see Sang especially (no offense to Clayton, but we had already seen him in korea). It was a reminder of both home and the reason we are in Korea at all; we're definitely indebted to Sang. We also saw two girls from some MU TESOL (I think) programs. I will not butcher their names, but it was nice to see them. Did some "networking" (drinking) with the other MU alum, did a lot of eating, and moved to a different bar. Long story short, we went to two different bars and a karaoke room after that; Sang bought all of us so much freaking food, fruit and alcohol; Clayton made some clubworker feel really uncomfortable (some of the funniest stuff I've ever seen, i think); and Rory and Jamie both did solo dances in this giant, cheesy techno club. We partied until 6 in the morning, got on a train back to Chuncheon and had to work at 10:00. It was a long day.

Rory and Julie's Video Blog 3: Seoul + random pics

we took the train to seoul on wednesday. when we got there we partied.

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beatle bailey

i ate one of these. so did rory. it tasted like dirt. and also beetle.

www.flickr.com More of mcgwart's photos tagged with beatles

karaoke!

So this weekend was another fun one. It seems like now that I work 10-5 (ish) Monday through Friday, the weekend time has become more precious to me. Friday night we had another office party, which involved going to this bar called "Tombstone", drinking a lot of beer and watching these Korean bartenders "perform" bar shows for patrons and birthday girls. Apparently this is a common theme--you're not a bartender until you can chuck a bottle of flaming malibu behind your head and catch it. Frowny face. I thought just being charming and having a lot of cleavage made you a good bartender. Maybe I'll practice at home. But yeah, flaming bottles of alcohol, drinking crappy green beer and dancing, eating really cheap, undercooked corn dogs while waiting for a cab. Good times. The next night we hung out with a dude that Rory met at English Zone (the ESL bookstore). His name is Chris and he is from Vancouver. He runs his own hogwan (private english school, like the one we teach at...) out of his apartment with his Korean wife, English name "Miriam." They cooked us dinner and filled us in on Korean life. They were the coolest people we have met here thus far--not just because he is a white guy who speaks perfect English (we've actually been trying to stay away from white folks...), but because they were totally down-to-earth people with no pretense about them, ready and willing to show us everything or nothing about Korea if we wanted. Chris brought out his guitar and played some U2 and we sang along. Jamie joined us a little after they had already cleaned the table, but Miriam pulled everything out again and remade dinner for her. And they were just totally cool. The kind of folks who have traveled everywhere and lived all over and done incredible things but don't sound like they are just bragging about it when they talk about their experiences (they were like a Korean/Canadian version of Zsuzsa and Adam). And they did it all in a really kind of motivational, you can do whatever you want through "imagineering and engination" sort of way... And they took us to a karaoke singing room. It was so awesome. For $3 a person for however long, you can rent these little rooms and sing as loudly as you want. And they are totally set up with couches and 2 microphones; Korean and English songs. The first song we sang was "Don't stop believin'". It was just awesome. I think my voice is still recovering.

Today we made these cool oil/water/buttton/bead/glitter/bottle things--"light catchers", I called them (or convinced the kids to call them). Before they had gotten on the school bus, two kids dropped theirs on the floor, busting them and getting oil and glitter everywhere. Mine survived, though, and they look lovely in my classroom window. We also made sausage and egg biscuits. I had never made biscuits from scratch before--funny that I'm just now doing that in Korea.

SKYPE

thanks to the zsuzsa, i've been introduced to the wonderful world of SKYPE. it's an internet phone program. it's free. if any of yallz get the gumption to download it, our skype name is "roryjuliechuncheon" all you need is a computer mic, and maybe some headphones. i haven't tried it yet, but it seems pretty cool.
that is all.

Rock and Roll Party Tonight!

here's the footage from the concert we saw last friday night. it's just some short clips of songs from the 2 bands we saw. the first band did some american songs.... the second band said "we do improvisation."
good times.

Health insurance is a wonderful thing...

So today I went to the doctor for the first time in a long time--in general, not just in Korea. I went to have my back checked out after school (I was done around 5:15--doctor's offices stay open till at least 7 here), knowing it was going to be cheap, but figuring it would also be time consuming because it was so cheap. Rory and I walked in, I told them I had back pain, and then they did an x-ray. Immediately. There was no sitting down in the waiting area for an hour or anything like that. I went and did the x-ray and cried when the man tried to make me sit up really quickly. Then I went and started a 2 minute conversation with rory. Somewhere mid-conversation, I was asked to come look at my x-rays. This all took maybe 15 minutes from the time we got there. So I went and looked, and it turns out, I have a couple of herniated discs. And one side of my pelvis is higher than the other (which isn't actually too uncommon). So then I immediately got whisked into physical therapy. They are not kidding around with how efficient they are over here. Seriously. Quick quick quick. First a hot pad, then these giant massaging leg socks. At this point I was thinking, "wow, it's like a freaking spa. this is great." Then she came in to "massage" me. This tiny, tiny Korean woman (younger than me, probably) balled up her fists and went to down, beating the shit out of my back, lower back and upper, fleshy butt parts. I screamed like I have never screamed before and cried. It was some seriously intense pain. I asked for Rory, and she hooked up these electrode things to the same parts she had just pounded to death. It was one of the weirder sensations I've ever experienced. Then came a pretty deep rub down with some sort of icy hot concoction. It was sort of traumatizing. But I ended up getting an x-ray, physical and physical therapy for (US) $8.90. I also got my prescription filled--$3.4. It all cost the price of a Korean haircut. Unreal. I have to do physical therapy every day for the next 2 weeks. I'm not looking forward to it, but at least it will be cheap.

quick funny story

ok. so we just got back from a spicy chicken place in our hood. when we got there, there was a group of 50-60 year old women who were completely hammered. when they were leaving they hugged the owner lady a bunch and stumbled around all over the place. so one of them goes outside to get a cab, and the other two stay inside and are hugging each other swaying to and fro....until they sway too far and end up crashing into some potted plants and a divider=these two wasted old ladies on the floor laughing their asses off with stuff from the fake plants in their hair. julie runs over to see if they're ok, and they get up. they then hug julie and jump up and down saying "ok" over and over again.
koreans like to party.

Happy time fun weekend!

This weekend was one of the best yet (the title says it all, huh...). The son of the landlord from Jamie's apartment invited us to see a rock and roll show that his friends were playing in Venture town. Venture town (I don't really know much about it) is this area in Chuncheon that has ice sport competitions as well as the animation museum. But mostly I just know it as this place we went to that was really far away from our house and downtown and anything familiar at all here in chuncheon. We hopped in this really compact car with Young Sun (I think), a complete stranger to me and Rory and mostly a stranger to Jamie, and he drove like a madman out of our "hood." It was really weird being on the highway at night--the first time I've been on the highway since our initial drive from seoul to chuncheon, actually--and we were on our way to a rock and roll show. In Korea. I'll be honest, I wasn't sure how it would be, so at dinner we were trying to pump ourselves up--"even if it sucks, at least it sucks in Korea" and "at least it's not the shitty pop music they play on the radio..." In the car on the way there, I had one of those moments where it really hit me that we are in a foreign land, not just as visitors, but that we freaking live here. Chuncheon is our town now. Not to sound too cheesy or hokey, but it was really pretty at night, seeing views of these mountains that we hadn't really seen before and realizing that almost everyone in Chuncheon lives in a huge skyrise apartment building within a two-mile radius of us. We were being chauffered away from all of this busy-ness, and it was really nice. So we get there, and we walk into this club called "Sailing." It had big comfy couches, and there was a table right up front (maybe reserved for us? I don't know, but it was supposed to be a special set for "the americans who were coming..."). The band had already started playing, so we sat down, ordered a giant pitcher of beer and just tried to take it all in. To our surprise, they were good. They were very talented musicians, and though they were very technical like a lot of musicians you will see on tv here, they seemed earnest. They played songs about the Chuncheon moon and songs that had a lot of traditional Korean folk-y elements, and they were just great. One of the songs sounded like a tenacious d song, but I don't remember which one. It was so awesome! They also did two covers of American songs, which shall remain nameless (Rory will be posting video clips soon...). Giant pitcher number 2. After they played, we spoke with the main guitarist/vocalist guy, and we told him that we were interested in playing a set with them soon. They are on tour now, but they come through Chuncheon at least once a month. We exchanged email addresses and stuff, so we'll see how it goes. Our ride ended up leaving us because he had to go to some other city, so we drunkenly walked around venture town a little bit, trying to find a cab out in the middle of nowhere. This is when we met Michael. He was a friend of Young Sun's who had been to the show. He talked about guitars for a little bit with Rory and then showed us where we could find a cab. He was shocked when we said we were going home, so then we changed our minds and all rode to Miller Time, a bar close by our house. We talked and drank with him, this complete stranger who spoke really good English and is a doctor ("just a general practicioner"), and we exchanged phone numbers and promised to hang out. It was just a great night.

Today we went to Myeongdong again to have some Dakgalbi. This is our weekend thing now. We are going to try to go to a different joint every weekend and then start over. Today's place was a lot bigger inside than we thought it would be. It had two stories and we ended up at a window overlooking a different part of myeondong. Our waitress was really nice. When she came over to our table the first few times, I noticed she was just staring at me and smiling. Then she came back to our table, smiled some more and started speaking a lot of really soothing sounding Korean. She started touching my face with the back of her hand, petting me. It wasn't weird or anything, because I knew she was saying nice things and that her gesture was a nice one. But that's one of those things you would never expect to see in the US. Or the man on stilts in a clown uniform who walked past our window. Twice.

tofu and dormitories

i teach preschoolers up to 11 year olds (keep in mind, 11 in korea is 10 in the U.S. so yup, that makes me 28 and an "old maid" here...., hence the cabbies always asking the "why aren't you married" question). this week the themes in my syllabus were tofu (cooking on tuesday) and dormitories. pretty random and frustrating. i'm sposed to stage some vocabulary quiz over words like "dormitory" "cafeteria" "roommate" etc, when my kids don't even know the alphabet. don't get me wrong, they know the song, but if i show them letters and ask them what they are--no clue. i've found myself reprimanding them for things that aren't really their fault. are they to blame that they've been put in a school where they're sposed to already have a background in english? are the parents to blame? is my school to blame because it really just wants some money from whoever is willing to pay? i dunno. but it's frustrating. it would be easier to meet the kids halfway if i spoke any korean or they--conveniently--spoke any english. in the outline of the school it says specifically (yet vaguely, go figure) that the english i'm teaching will be conversational. so i spend most of my time here speaking truncated english and removing all articles and adjectives from my speech. but i still curse freely, because they don't know what i'm saying. it's all about those small comforts.

i also feel like i'm a joke to my students because i don't speak korean and therefore can't reprimand them when they are blatantly disrespectful, not just of me as their teacher, but of me as a human. i've noticed that a lot of my students, as well as other random koreans i've encountered, like to play dumb when it's convenient for them. i realize how judgemental i sound with this statement, but i can be because i'm not speaking korean only when it's convenient for me--i'm the first to admit that my korean pronunciation sounds like spanish and i really have no idea what i'm saying. that humility expressed, i am also in the unique position as an english speaker, hired expressly as a commodity, to be judgemental. when my students actually want to learn i am placed on a pedestal as some sort of english-speaking goddess, but when they don't it's "teacher is so dumb because she doesn't speak korean. ha ha. let's make fun of her because she's so stupid." also, i guess the korean culture is not one of disciplining their children, no matter what they do. so even if i assign homework, it's a joke because theirs is a culture of absolutely no consequences until a certain age. i've seen kids do some pretty terrible stuff in full view of their parentals, and the adults don't even blink.

blah blah blah. went to a bar called millertime where you can drink liters of mgd at a time. i don't know if that's something to be proud of or not, but right now, i choose to brag about that. even if i did have to give a lot of my beer away.

like i mentioned earlier, the cooking theme for the week was tofu dishes. but we were missing half the ingredients, so as per usual, i had to come up with something on a whim. julie's classes actually made some edible things, but with my classes, i just put all the shit in front of the kids and let them mix it all in a bowl, whatever amounts they wanted. so our tofu "stir fry?" ended up tasting like a salt lick. and who gets blamed for that? teacher. i'm not the one who mixed the tofu with two cups of soy sauce. the moreal is, if you add enough parmesean cheese, anything's edible. i guess i did teach my kids something this week...

so not much to report for the past week really. there's a new kid in one of my classes whose teeth are pretty much rotten. dude's not even 5 years old yet, but his whole grill is silver. yup, i just said "grill.." i guess i'm getting settled into some sort of routine, and even as i type that i don't like it. i've been here a month and the city is already starting to seem small to me. i haven't even explored too much of the touristy historical stuff. i do find that i'm the most excited when i go to a new restaraunt, because that seems to be the most real korean experience i can have here. but i balance out the authenticity of said meal but consuming copious amounts of shitty cheap beer. in that respect, it's just like i'm at home drinking a lot of keystone, be it ice or light.

i am excited about tomorrow night. i'm going to see live music in chuncheon. when i tell any natives that, they look at me like i said i saw a dinosaur walking around in my apartment. apparently, live music does not exist here. call me a paleontologist...

customer service

So we went to the bank the other day to get some traveler's checks to send back to the US to put in our old accounts (to pay random American bills that we have). We had an hour break between classes, so we thought: no problem, we can walk around downtown for a little bit after we get our checks. sweet. wrong. We went to the bank and were sent to the same woman who had opened our accounts for us. So we gave her our little piece of paper that said traveler's checks in Korean and told her we wanted those in US dollars. So she runs around and does all kinds of paperwork (this took about 15 minutes, I would say), and I see her getting ready to come back over to our area with just straight up cash. So we start saying no in both English and Korean, and the dude who runs the joint and has an awful combover came over and tried to communicate with us by writing stuff down. So we explained that we wanted traveler's checks and even let him talk to Megan from the school over the phone. No problem. So getting the actual correct traveler's checks took about 15 minutes, too. But Julie, you say, that's only half of the hour you had as a break. Where did the rest of it go? Well, I'll tell you. This was the most frustrating hour of interaction here thus far, and it's not like I don't do shit by myself all the time. The language barrier was not the problem, the misunderstanding was not the problem. My problem was that while Jamie and I were standing there trying to get stuff figured out, this woman helping us took at least 3 phone calls to help other people, completely halting what she was doing to cater to these phantom people on the phone. I would guesstimate that one of those calls took about 13 minutes (guesstimate, again). Evidently there was some problem with this person's account, so I saw her jotting down all of these numbers and then yelling back and forth with the other tellers who were busy interacting with actual people. So yeah, this happened too much for my liking. Like, did this bank (or all of Korea, if that's the case) not understand that you deal with real people standing in front of you over people on the phone? Hell, had I known this, I would have had Megan call it in so I could just go pick it up. As it was, I had to call Megan back anyway to have her tell them in Korean that it was okay for jamie to bring my traveler's checks back to me. I had to take a cab back cause we were late to teach our class. So then I had to start both mine and Jamie's classes together. Frustrating. So, here's some advice. Try not to bank in Korea.

Ate Dakgalbi last night on dakgalbi street. mmm. The waitress had dumped all of the stuff into the pan in front of us, and she had included a healthy dose of these really aromatic leaves that I didn't like (to eat, anyway--the smell like air freshener), so when she turned around we started picking them out really quickly and hiding them under the lettuce leaves (that we actually eat ) in the little basket in front of us. A few minutes later, a different waitress came over with a big plate of the leaves, and before I had a chance to explain it to her, she dumped them all back in. So I just started shaking my head and picking them out. Then she understood and we both apologized to each other a lot. I showed her the pile of the other leaves, hiding out. She wasn't amused, she just felt bad.

Rory and Julie's Video Blog 2... Again!

Well hellosagna. I don't know if this really counts as a new blog, but google finally got their act together! The blog is totally on the site now! Sweet! Since this was shot we've been to 4 other dakalbi places... but the one in the video was probably the best. We all love dakalbi, but we don't like having the farts....so it's a seesaw of emotions. Anyway, here it is again.