Aliens in Daegu

Our Chuseok passed quietly and much too quickly.  We spent most of our time just resting.  However, during the weekend, we got out to see one of the Twelve Scenic Sites of Ulsan.  We made our way out to Jakgwaecheon (spelling variable).  It's this river out in the middle of nowhere that has been oddly eroded out.  Way back when, I've heard poets used to go there for inspiration.  Apparently, it is also the place where one of the first Korean movements against Japanese occupation took place.  It is a beautiful place.  

 There were families with picnics set up all along the river and just up the hill was a nice, serene wooded area.

Alan's a poet.

 The river itself is teeming with minnows.  There were several very wet daddies and laughing children with nets attempting to catch them.  I managed to catch a baby minnow.  











Work has been..rough..for me.  The stories I come home with every day seem to really amuse Alan, but I can't believe some of the things I've seen in my classes.  So this weekend was a welcomed break.  Friday night, I went to UNIST's gym to swim.  I haven't swam with any sort of consistency since I was a freshman in college, so it's always a downer realizing how out of shape you are.  But after sitting through my classes and on the bus all day, it felt really good to get some use out of my muscles.  I got a month-long membership, so maybe I'll get back into some light training.  

This week, I finally got my ARC (alien registration card), which means that I'm now legal in Korea.  It's very difficult to do anything in this country without it.  So now, Alan and I are able to get real phone plans instead of our current pre-paid, credit plan.  The nearest Olleh global store is in Daegu which is about a 30 min KTX train ride away.  Alan found some salsa dancing in the area, so we decided to make a day of it.  The Olleh store is just a short walk from the Banwoldang subway station (orange line), just a few stops away from the KTX station (Dongdaeguyeok in the subway), so we headed there first.  Unfortunately, it was a bust.  Olleh can't do anything with phone plans on the weekend, and we can't get to Daegu during the week.  Now come Monday evening, we're going to our Olleh store in town to try out our Korean skills and get phone plans.  It'll be an adventure.



Even though we couldn't get phone plans, we still had salsa dancing that evening, so we had a hotel booked.  We stayed at the Goodstay New Grand Hotel right outside Daegu Station (orange line).  It was clean, conveniently located, and had all the essentials.  The bed is hard as a rock, but then again, so are most beds in Korea.  

As a side note, this is how the subways in Daegu tell you when you're train is getting near.  They have a cute little train picture that shows up two, then one stop away.  This one is one stop away from us.  

 We found a Thai restaurant for dinner called MK Suki.  To get there, we got off at the Myeongdeok station (orange line) and took bus 402 until we got near the point where google maps said the restaurant was.  

It turned out that it was a Chinese-Thai restaurant and thus had a menu for each food genre.  I got my usual.  Pad Thai.  :)  It was good and they bring out jars of the add-ons so you can add as much pepper, peanuts, and sugar as you want.  Alan, who ordered a dish expecting some sort of fried rice, was not as pleased with his meal.  But it at least filled his belly.  The food was more authentic at this place than any other Thai restaurant I've been to.  The place itself, though not as grand as Arun Thai, was pretty and I liked the table setup.  

Chinese and Thai menus

They give you a big glass bottle of water that you
can pour your own glass from.  

That evening, we ventured out for salsa dancing.  The club was called Babalu and is generally run by the foreigner salsa community in Daegu.  They have a beginner-intermediate lesson every week from 7:30-9 and switch between salsa and bachata.  Sometimes they have salsa parties afterwards.  This week turned out to be their first week back after a summer hiatus and so only a couple people stayed after the lesson.  It was nearly empty when we showed up.  But after not having even elbow room at Bar Latino in Busan, it was nice being able to open up and dance as we pleased.  The music was also played at a much more acceptable volume.  Alan wasn't able to stay more than 10 minutes at Bar Latino for the pain in his ears.  Babalu was much more pleasant.  We're hoping to try the club again on one of their party nights to see how it is.  






More observations about Korea:


During a half mile walk down the street in Daegu, we saw 8 (EIGHT) guitar/violin shops.  It's like the coffee shop thing all over again.  Koreans don't seem to understand that they're just going to run each other out of business by setting up shop right next to each other.  There's a lot of turnover in Korea in terms of stores and shops.  Places often go out of business within a couple years.  They don't seem to have caught on to one of the major flaws in their business plans.  


Koreans like to party.  This morning, while on the platform waiting for the KTX train, Alan and I noticed a man passed out on the isolated platform across the tracks.  He was just sleeping on the ground next to the rails.  We at first took him for a homeless man.  After a while, some of the station staff went over and woke him up.  He was dressed in a suit and tie with a fancy messenger bag across his chest.  Definitely not homeless.  I'm pretty sure he was trashed last night and passed out on the ground. 

Because I'm foreign, people automatically assume I can't speak any Korean.  I've mentioned this before as the surprise they all have when Alan or I say the simplest of phrases.  So, when the Koreans can't speak English, this translates into a sort of fear of us.  I walked into a coffee shop last night and stood there for a moment looking at the menu.  The two young female cashiers looked at each other with wide eyes saying "Moat heyo, moat heyo".  The conversation was essentially, "I can't do it, you do it!"  "No!  I can't do it either!"  It was highly amusing, especially considering neither of them had any idea that I could understand them.  So when I decided that I didn't want anything on the menu and left with a quick "kamsahamida", the look of relief and confusion on their faces was great entertainment.  



Here's to a good weekend. 

First Salsa Trip to Busan

This weekend has been pretty decent.  Friday evening, Alan and I were recruited to teach a beginning ballroom lesson at UNIST for the English Commons program.  We introduced ourselves and we had the ever amusing "OOOOOOOOOO" of shock as Alan introduced me as his wife.  Everyone seems to think we're too young to be married.  XD But, I must say, I feel some of Samara's pain now.  She has a hard time getting Case engineering students comfortable touching each other.  Korean-raised engineering students were infinitely worse.  When we told the men to find a partner, you would have thought I told them to eat worms.  I had to push most of them across the room and then drag people by the wrists and make them dance with each other.  Very few seemed capable of actually asking a person to dance.  And even after physically forcing a couple together, some of them ran away.

That's not an exaggeration.  They ran away.


Once we had everyone organized, the lesson went very smoothly.  We taught cha cha first, just the basic, new yorker, and alemana.  And we spent the second half of the lesson on tango, just doing the basic and progressive link. We were a little worried that tango would be too hard to start out with, but everyone was able to do it by the end of the lesson.  Our voices weren't too fond of us by that time, though.  We really enjoyed ourselves, and though this one was a one-time event, we're hoping that next trimester it will become a regular thing.


Right after the lesson, we headed straight to Busan.  We were going to spend Friday and Saturday night dancing, but we were beat by the time we got to the hotel.  We stayed at the Goodstay Queens hotel in Seongmyeon and it was a really nice hotel.

Generally it is fully light out by 6:30am here, but these windows had shutters on them that blocked out every last photon.  We were able to sleep in comfortably.  We went back to Arun Thai for lunch. The place is a foreigner trap.  As it should be...if you google places to eat in Busan, it's pretty much the first thing that comes up.  It's probably one of my favorite restaurants in Korea now.  The food is delicious and the restaurant is beautiful.  And they serve you plum tea for desert after dinner.  I can't wait to go back again.



After lunch, we took a walk over to Busan Tower.  It's not hard to find from the restaurant, but you can only get in from one cardinal direction and the hill you have to climb is rather steep.  They had a few cute little picture points outside for couples that we took advantage of before going up the tower.

Busan Tower

The tower had a really good view of the city (which is absolutely enormous), but "pretty" is not necessarily the word either of us would use to describe it.  The city is dirty and the buildings are poorly made with little to no design put into the architecture.  Things are falling apart everywhere.  We came to the conclusion that because Korea was forced to rebuild everything so quickly after the wars just 60 years ago, that everything was just thrown together.  It's unfortunate, really.  Traditional Korean architecture is very pretty.

North side of Busan

That evening, Alan and I went to dinner at a TGI Friday's located on the 9th floor of the Lotte Department Store in Seongmyeon.  We discovered that this should be a rare treat.  Everything is about double the price it is in the States.  Our burgers were $15 each.  Western food is very expensive in Korea.  

This is all you can see from the street.  The club is down the stairs on the left..

We ventured out to go salsa dancing that evening.  We had found a club named Caribe online but discovered that it is no longer in existence.  It has been moved to a place called Bar Latino.  It was a hole in the wall down some side street, but the inside of the club was nice.  

We had heard that the cover was 10,000 won a person ($10), so we were stunned when she told us it was 20k won a person.  But, we soon found out that there was a performance going on that evening.  The cover typically is only 10k won.  

The club is extraordinarily loud.  Alan wasn't able to stay.  He went to walk around for 20-30 minutes and let me have a bit of dancing.  Such the gentlemen he always is.  :)  I soon found, however, that we are completely outclassed by the dancers there.  We had heard that the Korean salsa community is very advanced, but it made me feel like I was starting all over back at the View when I was a beginner being thrown everywhere.  And they dance on 2.  Which I was thankfully forced to learn during my brief dance partnership with Myriah.  :) But I guess I just need to practice before we go back.  

Next week is Chuseok!  Two day work week!  Woo!

Dance Dance REVOLUTION

I've had some absolutely wonderful days.  And I've had some excruciatingly horrible days.  On this spectrum also lies my like/dislike of children.  I change my decision about whether or not to have kids almost daily.

 My biggest problem, I believe, is my inability to explain to the children what I want from them in Korean.  When I'm scolding them for misbehavior, I'm sure it just sounds like a bunch of scary gibberish.  In fact, I know this to be true because I had a student today say, "Jessie Teacher!  We don't know what you want.  Say in Korean!"  My Korean is getting better.  Much better.  I can understand a lot of what my students are saying to me and even respond accordingly.  My scolding vocabulary is just rather scant.

On the topic of my Korean skills, whenever I speak Korean to my kids they either break off into fits of giggles or say, "OooooooOOoooo!"  I asked my 7 year olds today if I sounded funny.  They said no and told me that I sounded very good.  The teachers have told me that it just sounds cute when a foreigner tries to speak Korean.  But it's not just children that do this.  It's everyone.  Pretty much any Korean that I spend any amount of time around reacts thusly when I speak Korean to them.  It's a bit of a damper on your confidence, having someone laugh at you or go, "OooOooOo, you speak Korean!" (pronounce with thick asian accent).  But as it seems to be innocent enough and you can't get away from it, it's just something you have to get over.

Apparently my kids also speak Chinese.  One of the students broke out some Chinese in class.  This conversation ensued.

Random student: Jasper! This isn't the time for Chinese!

Me: Jasper, you can speak Chinese? 

Jasper: Yes, everyone can (gesturing to the class). 

Me: I can't. 

Jasper: (looks up at me) I know. 


Gee, thanks kid.  :P






It looks like I've started my new job in a time of political upheaval.  My old supervisor finished her last day of work at the end of my first week.  I had a new supervisor by my 6th day of work.  Since then, a war has ensued between her and the English teachers.  The battlefield was laid open today as I watched the women argue in rapid Korean. It seems the first battle went to my supervisor.  As a result, all of my fellow English teachers have put in notice and are quitting at the end of this month.

I'm rather nervous about it.  This is the second time a trainer(s) has thrown me into the deep end and walked away before I felt ready to swim.  We'll see how it goes.





Alan has been doing well with his new position.  The professor changed his research project but Alan seems to be rather indifferent about it.   So he's currently researching ways to make a new compound of interest.  I'll have to let him speak for himself in regards to what he's been up to.



We've started dancing again.  After about a month long hiatus, I was really starting to miss it (my feet might say otherwise).  Tomorrow evening, Alan and I are teaching a beginning ballroom lesson on campus at UNIST.  We practiced a bit this evening and it made me a bit nostalgic for the countless hours of dance practice we put in at Case.  We decided on cha cha and tango for tomorrow and get about an hour to teach them.  Afterwards, I believe we are heading out to spend a salsa-filled weekend in Busan.

songpyeon

Korean hanboks

Next week, is Chuseok.  The Korean Thansgiving, and the biggest holiday in Korea I believe.  The children have been dressing up in hanboks (traditional Korean attire) all week.  Alan and I both get three days off from work.  5 day weekend!  Woo!  We had originally planned to spend it in Thailand, but those plans fell through and we currently are void of any thoughts of how to spend the holiday.  We'll probably travel somewhere in Korea.  Typically however, families get together and eat loads of food.  Just like in the States.  I've been told that kids love Chuseok, but mothers hate it.  After all, the kids just get to run around and eat delicious food while all the mothers and grandmothers out there have to cook and clean for

Korean hanbok

their entire extended family.  Sound familiar?  Shame there's no turkey.  Instead, the traditional holiday food is called songpyeon.  They're essentially sweet rice cakes filled with nuts or other goodies and are steamed with pine needles.














More observations about Korea.

This was the best picture of the scars I could find.
On my kids, the scars are just older, paler, and faded.

I started noticing that a lot of my kids had these weird 3x3 grid scar patterns on their upper left arm.  Today I realized that it's not just some of the kids.  Every single child has one.  I asked my elementary students what it was from, but their English vocabulary only enabled them to tell me that they were shots received as infants.  I did some research and found out that they're from vaccines.  One 3x3 scar pattern is from the TB vaccine and the second one, below the first, is from the smallpox vaccine.

keloid scar

This grid-like pattern of injection seems to be a more recent implementation.  In earlier years, the vaccines were given as a single injection and often formed larger, raised scars called keloids.  I've actually seen these scars too, but never realized they were from shots.









If you were previous unaware, meals in Korea are communal.  Wherever you go.  At a restaurant, you do not order individual meals for yourselves like in the States.  You order for the table and then you just take what you want.  Better eat quickly too or all the good stuff will be gone!  My meals at school are like this too.  I share with the other English teachers (though I generally only eat the rice...I've found Korean food to be a little hard to enjoy).  It's not bad, but sometimes I do find myself missing my own plate of food.  Also, water is not served.  Generally, you can find a pitcher somewhere against the wall, but you go get it yourself.  I think Koreans just go indefinitely without water and I've established that they are biologically related to the camel.  Alan and I go through glass after glass of water at our table while the Koreans all around us don't even have cups.



You never see anyone exercising here, bicyclists being an exception.  Apparently all the runners come out at night.  You must be fit, but no one can see you working towards it.  Shhh.


I had heard rumors that Korean toothpaste does not contain fluoride, a component involved in enamel strengthening.  The consensus seems to be that fluoride-containing toothpaste is available but not as common.  Whatever the problem, most of my students have some degree of tooth rot.  The irony in this is that Koreans brush their teeth after every meal.  The students (and teachers!) all have toothbrushes at school and everyone brushes their teeth after eating.  Doesn't seem to be doing much for them.



So, that's it for today's update!