View from Gangwon-do

My 10 Favorite Things About Living and Teaching in Korea

2009-08-13T16:37:00.007+09:00

I'm two days away from leaving Korea. In two years of living here, I have developed deeply ambivalent feelings about both my experience here and the society itself. A couple days ago, I was re-reading The Prophet, and I was surprised to find a section that echoed my feelings about leaving Korea:

The hero has been in a strange land for twelve years and upon seeing the ship that will return him to his homeland...

"the gates of his heart were flung open, and his joy flew far over the sea. And he closed his eyes and prayed in the silences of his soul.

But as he descended the hill, a sadness came upon him, and he thought in his heart: How shall I go in peace and without sorrow? Nay, not without a wound in the spirit shall I leave this city.

Long were the days of pain I have spent within its walls, and long were the nights of aloneness; and who can depart from his pain and his aloneness without regret?

Too many fragments of the spirit have I scatterd in these streets, and too many are the children of my longing that walk naked among these hills, and I cannot withdraw from them without a bruden and an ache.

It is not a garment I cast off this day, but a skin that I tear with my own hands.

Nor is it a thought I leave behind me, but a heart made sweet with hunger and with thirst.

Yet I cannot tarry longer.

The sea that calls all things unto her calls me, and I must embark.

For to stay, though the hours burn in the night, is to freeze and crystallize and be bound in a mould."

A bit dramatic perhaps, but it really nails how I'm feeling. But, moving along... last week I posted my 10 least favorite things about living and teaching here, and here are my 10 favorite things about living and teaching here, plus a few runners-up.

Runners-up

Ice cream bars -- This didn't make the top ten because it has been absolutely disastrous for my fitness. At every convenience store, and they're everywhere, there is a freezer full of delicious ice cream on a stick in every flavor you could imagine and more (one of my favorites is a chocolate bar on a stick, surrounded with "nano-silver vanilla", coated with chocolate and peanuts, another is melon, another still is watermelon flavored and shaped ice cream with hazelnut seeds). A full price bar is 700 won ($.55), and most places sell them at half price. I don't know how that can be profitable (and I probably don't want to), but it sure does make for a delicious, fattening summer.

Elders' robustness -- Before the monsoon came with its endless days of rain, I was playing tennis every morning with a 64 year old man that was in nearly as good of shape as I am. I never saw him eat an ice cream bar. On my way to school, I routinely see 80-something year old men and women hunched over working in the fields, digging up potatoes or planting chili pepper plants. I've never seen them eating ice cream bars either.

Lack of zoning -- Where I come from, an area is either commercial or residential, so people end up driving a lot. Here, everything is mixed together, so people walk. On one level, it's nice to have a convenience store (with ice cream bars) in the same building as my apartment. On another level, it gets people out in the streets and creates a mixing of people and a sense of community involvement that I think we could use more of at home.

Free time -- I am ambivalent about this. Every single day here, I've had hours of free time. I play guitar, watch TV, read, watch movies, cook, paint, play online games, meditate, etc. I have learned a lot from the reading I've done, I'm a better guitarist and singer and cook, and I'm a champion of Settlers of Catan (my online game of choice), but I'm also bored a lot and frequently feel like I'm wasting my life away. It is that feeling that compelled me to take the plunge into grad school at the end of my contract here.

Now, to the top ten....

10. Gardens everywhere --

This province, Gangwon-do, is notorious in Korea for being difficult to grow food. The people respond by growing food absolutely everywhere. Any land that is less than a 15% incline and is not paved over is growing food, without exception. That's true whether it's someone's front yard, a triangle of dirt between a bridge and road, or way up in the valleys that surround the towns. They're not farms, much more like what we think of as gardens. They grow chili peppers, corn, soy beans, onions, garlic, potatoes, greens, grapes and on the occasional flat section of land, rice. This is this old couple's yard. It's worth noting that it's September and they're planting, probably the third crop of the year. I'm certain they would think we are insane for the money, effort, fertilizer and pesticides we put into grass.

9. Jjimjilbang -- These are combination health club, sauna and recreation center. Admission is about $5 and for that you soak in hot tubs infused with jade or eucalyptus or whatever, sweat in the saunas and steam rooms, and get a sports massage or a scrub down from an old Korean man wearing nothing more than briefs. There are restaurants, but for reasons that escape me Koreans seem to prefer to pig out on hard boiled eggs at these places. There are barbers and televisions and computers and massage chairs and cold and hot rooms and salt rooms and charcoal rooms and oxygen rooms. A great place to hang out and warm up in the winter or sweat out in the summer.

8. Outdoorsiness -- Koreans love the outdoors, whether eating squid jerky and drinking rice wine behind an apartment building, or hiking through valleys (which they have done an excellent job of protecting by concentrating in the cities the population of 50 million people in a country the size of Indiana). I love the tendency toward the outdoors, especially in summer, when restaurants pull out their plastic tables and the dining room floors spill out into the streets. The images of dozens of Koreans eating, drinking and laughing in a courtyard on a warm summer night will stay with me for a long time.

7. The sweet kids --

Not all of them were, but the ones that were sweet were the cutest, kindest, funnest kids I've ever known.

6. The restaurants & the food -- A lot of foreigners here complain about the cuisine, and while I admit the flavors can get a bit monotonous (sesame oil, soy sauce, garlic and chilies), I love the food, even though much of it is off limits to me as a vegetarian. Restaurants typically specialize in just a few dishes, are usually owned and run by an old lady who might work with one other old lady to prepare the food, serve the food, clean the place and everything. My favorite restaurant in town is a place where a 4' 6" 60 year old lady serves grilled fish lettuce wraps (I'm a quasi-vegetarian here) and seems to rotate through being amused, confused, appreciative and fed-up with the foreigners that frequent her place. The prices, and there's no tax or tipping, so what you see on the menu on the wall is what you actually pay, for a typically quick meal might be $3, and unless it's a very special dish (or foreign food or drink), meals rarely exceed $10 per person.

Every meal comes with bancheon, side dishes, that always include kimchi and usually other fermented vegetables. In a cheap place, you might just get three little kimchis, in a nicer place, it's not uncommon to get over ten bancheon, and they might include fried fish or raw octopus or other treats that can be even better than the central meal itself. In most cases, everything is shared with everyone at the table. In fact, when eating with Koreans, even glasses are shared -- it's a neat little social device... if you see that someone is bored or if you want to chat with someone that you're not sitting near, you take them your empty glass and a bottle of soju (chemically fermented rice wine) and pour them a shot, and in that manner, over a meal that might last a few hours, people move around (everyone sits on the floor) and everyone talks with everyone, everyone shares germs and everyone gets drunk.

5. Community focus -- This is the highest ranking item that is really about Korean society, as the next four each have to do with my position here. On the whole, I'm not a big fan of Confucianism, at least as it operates in modern Korea. However, the focus on social harmony is really nice, and something that I think we North Americans could learn a lot from. Where I is the dominant pronoun in the US, we is here. Studies have shown that the different mindsets actually affect visual perception, such that Asians are more inclined to view ambiguous situations from a removed, more holistic perspective, whereas Westerners are more inclined to view the same situation from inside it, from a first person perspective. Unfortunately, because of the xenophobia here, foreigners are not always considered part of the community in the same way Koreans are, which I think makes being a foreigner here harder than it would be in a more individualistic society like the US. But, while I'm sure my Korean friends still think I'm terribly obstuse and inconsiderate, this mindset has implanted itself in my head, and I'm glad for it. I hope it stays with me through the years.

4. Income:expenses ratio -- The salary foreigners earn teaching in Korea isn't anything special, except that foreign teachers' apartments are paid for by employers, as are airfare here and home and immigration costs. Food is cheap, entertainment (at least out here in the boonies) is scarce, and buying stuff doesn't usually make sense when you know you have to fit everything you own into two suitcases at the end of the year. Health care is nationalized and very inexpensive and the tax structure is very progressive so even those who aren't exempt pay less than 4% income tax. I have been saving almost 80% of my salary, and on top of that I'll receive about two months' bonus pay at the end of my contract. No one has gotten rich doing it, but especially for folks right out of college or when the job market at home is what it is right now, it can be a very solid financial move.

3. Vacation time & neighboring destinations -- While I've been here, I've spent time in China, Vietnam, Laos, Japan, Thailand, and Thailand again. Spending almost the entire month of February in Thailand is about as good as it gets. And it was a relatively quick flight on a lovely Asian airline to get there.

2. Novelty in everything -- Living here is a bit like being a child. You never really know what's going on, you don't have responsibilities the same way you would at home, you're easily surprised, and routine events are novel and exciting. It's incredibly frustrating, but also really enjoyable.

1. Anonymity & outsiderness -- There is something comforting about knowing that no one knows you, and that no one can. If people are going to stare at me as I walk down the street, I might as well wear shorts and flip-flops and sing as I walk. If my students are going to think I'm a weird foreigner anyway, it's much easier to engage them with silly foolishness that I might hold back at home. At home, as soon as you see someone, you thin-slice their age, sex, body language, clothing, and a thousand other things and make a judgement about who they are and how they relate to you in society. In a culture as foreign as this, that's impossible. Advertising doesn't affect you, because it is designed to take advantage of the human mind's inability to stop thin slicing. And not understanding what that 16 year old girl on the bus won't stop talking about can be really nice.

I couldn't have named this at the time, but this is what brought me back to Korea for a second year. When you remove a person from their native culture, you force them to examine themselves in way that is otherwise impossible. We define ourselves by our relations: to our jobs, our achievements, our friends and family, our hobbies, and the culture we consume (and, less often it seems, create). Take away all those things and one has to look internally for a sense of identity. That transformation started for me in my first year here, but it didn't have time to run to completion. When I got home, I didn't identify in society as I had previously, but I was still looking to things like my friends and my job to define my position in society, my social identity, especially since it had been upended since I had left. I ended up feeling lost and floundering around for quite a while before returning to Korea. I don't know if that transition ever really reaches completion, but I know that I am going home with a much stronger internal compass than I had before I came to Korea, in addition to a much broader perspective on culture, politics and the world.

My 10 Least Favorite Things About Living and Teaching in Korea

2009-08-07T14:56:00.004+09:00

I've got a week left here in Korea before I go home to start grad school and say goodbye to the Sparkling Hermit Kingdom of Morning Calm for good. I've lived and taught here for two years, and it has been wonderful and terrible, glorious and excruciating, boring and exciting, eye opening and let-me-just-tune-out-the-world-and-watch-television-for-weeks-on-end.

I thought I'd finish out the year with two last posts: my ten favorite things about living here and my ten least favorite things. So that we end on a positive note, here are ten things that I have found consistently, repeatedly, powerfully annoying.

10. "Hello! Howareyou! Whereareyoufrom!" This is at the bottom of the list because in slightly modified form, it can actually be nice. When I pass an ajuma and her 4 year old granddaughter and the ajuma smiles and tells her granddaughter to say hello, it's really sweet. When I'm in the right mood, it can make me smile for a bunch of middle school girls to get over themselves and say hello and then giggle for fifteen seconds. But when I pass a group of college aged boys (or grown men!) across the street and one yells out "whereareyoufrom!" and the others start laughing uproariously, that's annoying.

9. Auto exhaust. I like to run and I walk everywhere, so I spend a lot of time "with" cars, trucks and scooters. I don't know what it is that our exhaust tests in the states get off the road, but the majority of autos here put out a foul, noxious gas that I'm sure is just destroying my lungs. Of course the tractors and scooters are even worse.

8. Sewers rising. Again, I don't know what they've done in the US to prevent the smells of sewers from rising into the streets, but they certainly haven't figured it out here. The national dish is kimchi -- rotting (er, sorry, fermenting) cabbage with garlic, fish sauce, shrimp paste and chilies. Unfortunately, that's what everyone shits and it smells even worse than you would imagine.

7. Fan death and other insanity. A lot of Koreans (maybe a majority. really. even doctors.) think that if you sleep with a fan on in your room you will die. A lot of Koreans also think that Korea is the pinnacle of culture and accomplishment. Logic here is... to be culturally sensitive, I'll say different, though having studied symbolic logic, I feel pretty comfortable saying it's just either missing or gets beat out by antiquated cultural beliefs. Ignorance and delusion are everywhere.

6. Logistical challenges. A lot of things are a lot harder in a foreign country. Often to buy something, I have to ask a Korean friend for help. I'm not going to miss feeling like a retarded four year old.

5. Volume and style of speech. Korean men are much worse than the women on this, though plenty of women are plenty annoying as well. Fresh from the west, you would honestly think a discussion on where to go to lunch was a boiling blood feud. Koreans love to eat and drink outside (which I love), and there's a nice spot just below my apartment window (which I don't love). For hours on end two women will sit pouring soju (the Korean version of sake, except it's vile) for men talking and yelling and interrupting and gesticulating at volumes I thought impossible. No time of day or location is off limits for this manner of communication.

4. Confucianism. Confucius mapped out social relationships to try to produce social harmony (the ultimate goal of Confucianism) in any situation. According to Confucianism, the younger, female or lower status should be deferential and obedient, which often seems more like meek and unquestioning. I think social harmony is an admiral goal, and I think deference and humility are lacking in westerners, but the rigid way Confucianism operates in modern Korea creates manifold problems. As my coteacher (a 31 year old woman) said when she learned we wouldn't be having a retirement party for our principal (a 64 year old man) because the government found out he has been stealing money from the school, "Why does he still have job? If I am stealing, I don't have job one more day!"

3. The staring. Maybe now I know what it's like to be a gorgeous woman. No, not the same. I am stared at constantly. This was less true (though still common) in the big city, but in this rural little town, I'd say around half of the people I see on the streets just fix their gaze on me. I almost always look back, try to summon compassion and acknowledge them. Maybe one in ten gives me a nice smile and bows back (usually the older women), the rest look away until I've stopped looking at them, and then fix their stare right back on me. What really makes this hard is what's behind the stare:

2. Xenophobia. Korea has long been called the Hermit Kingdom and with good reason. Throughout its existence, Korea has had to fight off domination from China and empires of the Japanese, Mongolians and others. Even in modern times, Korea has remained remarkably isolated. Besides the utter unfamiliarity with anything not-Korean, there is also a deep (and historically valid) antipathy toward foreigners. I once asked three wealthy, cosmopolitan middle school students from Busan if they would allow their children to marry foreigners and all three said absolutely not. I have received a tremendous amount of kindness and welcome from Koreans, but with a few notable exceptions, there is always an element of my being not quite the same, not quite human. What I'm about to write is completely unfair -- there are so many differences and what I have faced here doesn't even enter into the same arena -- but living here has given me emotional insight into what it must have been (and be) like to be black in many times and places in the United States.

1. Missing events and holidays at home. All of the above end when I leave in a week. But one of my best friends got married this summer, and I missed two Christmases with my family, and those are gone forever. I wouldn't trade the experiences I've had for those that I missed, but without exception, the hardest days here have been the days I have most wanted to be home.

What do you think waegookin seonsaengnim... what would you have included that I've left out?

Teaching English in Korea Interview

2009-03-29T17:58:00.002+09:00

I was recently asked to provide an interview about my experience teaching in Korea, my decision to move to Korea, stereotypes of English teachers in Asia, culture shock and cultural assimilation, EPIK, and some other general stuff about my experience teaching English in Korea. I thought I would go ahead and provide the interview here. I hope you find it helpful. There may be a follow up interview in the future, if so I'll post that as well.

----- Why did you first decide to move to Korea? Had you had previous
experience? Did you know others who had traveled to Korea before
deciding to relocate there? Please describe your decision making
process.

My decision to come here was very circumstantial. I was working as a research scientist in the US and was dating a Canadian when my grant got canceled and I was out of work. We didn't have a good way to be together in either of our countries, and she had friends who had paid off significant portions of their student loans teaching in Korea, so we started looking into it. We considered Taiwan most seriously as an alternative, but in the end the ease of the offers in Korea -- airfare paid, apartment ready when you get here -- and the excellent pay (at that time, in 2005, the exchange rate was about 40% better than it is now) lured us here. I had one friend that had taught in Japan with JET and had a decent experience but left before the end of the year. I read a lot about teaching in Korea before I came, espeically on forums.eslcafe.com/korea, which presents a particularly negative side of teaching here, but we decided to come anyway.

----- Was the process of moving different than what you expected? What
everyday difficulties, if any, do you encounter living in a foreign
country?

The process of moving was very easy and more-or-less what I expected. The shock of landing in a very foreign country was intense. I had never been outside of N. America before, and Korea is very different than home. Jet lag was severe, and I remember on our second night there we went out to eat, at an Italian restaurant of all places, and after being out for an hour or two, my energy just plummeted. I didn't know how I was going to make it back to the apartment. I think our minds have a filtering system that keeps us sane by blocking most of the massive amount of information that constantly surrounds us. It filters that which is the same, usual, because we don't need to be aware of that. But suddenly in a Korean city, nothing is usual, so the mind is very easily overloaded. You ask about culture shock later, but let me say here, I think there are two seperate events that are labeled as culture shock, and they are very different. There is the experience I just described, which was very intense for just a few hours on the first few nights, mostly just lasted a few days and fades away entirely with a week or two. Then there is another experience that sets in around 3 or 4 or 6 months into living in a foreign culture, when the novelty has worn off, and things get really hard. I talk about this at length in a blog post, here.

----- I know there has been a stereotype of inexperienced Americans and
Canadians going to foreign countries and working very briefly, using
the job as a means to pay for a vacation. Do you think this is still
the case? There also has been a history of foreigners being lured to
countries like Korea (or Thailand) with promises of great jobs and
money only to be met with disappointing living and working conditions.
Has this practice changed? What opinions do you have regarding
both sides of this complicated relationship between teachers and
recruiters? Do you think EPIK has changed this in Korea?

I don't know how qualified I am to speak generally about this, especially since I haven't lived in Seoul, and that's where the vast majority of foreigners are (that was even more true before the government's recent push to put native english speakers in every public school in the country). But here are some thoughts.

Yes, people use it as a way to get away from home, as an escape. The reality is that living and working here comes with a huge load of challenges. I don't want to say it's harder, that would depend on specific circumstances at home and here, but it's definitely hard. I don't know a single foreigner here that would disagree with that. And while I think Korea rightly has a reputation for being particularly difficult, I've heard similar complaints about Thailand, Japan, China, etc.. So if this job has a reputation for being an easy way to take a vacation, I think that's undeserved. I think we earn every won we make.

I had read a lot about people showing up and being given moldy, rat-filled apartments. I think that has always been a tiny, if highly vocal, minority, and even more so now as the arrangement has become more widespread and communication between foreigners living here and thinking about coming here has increased. That said, people definitely do get screwed from time to time. Hagwons, the private, after-school tutoring centers that outside of EPIK employ almost all of the foreign English teachers, are intensely for-profit, and every won saved on a foreigner is a won of profit for the owner. I worried a lot about what would happen at the end of my hagwon contract, because at the end of a contract foreigners generally receive a month's pay, a bonus month's pay called severance, approximately a month's pay from contributions the boss should have been making each month to the national pension fund that can be withdrawn as a lump sum by foreigners leaving the country, and return airfare home. That adds up to about 7 million won for most foreigners. In the end, I did get nearly everything I was owed, with a hundred thousand or two won, but I felt like if the boss had thought he could have pushed me around, he probably would have.

Recruiters are driven by profit motivation too, and they understand how few recourses a foreigner has once they have moved here. So I think it's terribly important for foreigners to get references for their recruiter and their hagwon before they sign a contract. With EPIK this is much less true because the contract is standardized and there isn't the same profit motivation present in public schools. EPIK is far from perfect, and there are plenty of complaints among my friends and I about the program, but it is much more secure than a hagwon gig.

----- Have you experienced significant "culture shock" as a foreigner in Korea?

Yes, see answer 2.

----- To what degree do you think it's important to assimilate to the
culture you are living in?

Again, I'm not sure how qualified I am, because I haven't ever assimilated into a foreign culture. Note that the vast, vast majority of foreigners living here don't assimilate to any noticeable degree. I suspect those that have would say that it's both difficult and important. I think it's particularly difficult in Korea, because Korea has a history of fending off foreign invasions (surrounded as have been, historically, by empires: Japanese, Mongolian, Chinese, etc.) and that has informed their culture around the treatment of foreigners. For a more thorough treatment of this, see Korea Unmasked, which is written by a Korean. I think xenophobia is common here, as is fetishization of foreigners. Racism is, I think, less common, but prevalent as well.

On a lighter note, learning some simple aspects of the language: the "alphabet," food, numbers, taxi directions, etc. is hugely helpful, and new arrivals should learn that stuff ASAP.

----- I know EPIK views their native English speakers as assistants to
the regular English teachers, do you think using native English
speakers is beneficial when teaching English?

It's true that we are titled Assistant Teachers. What this means in practice varies widely from province to province, county to county, school to school, and especially from elementary to middle to high schools. My understanding is that in elementary schools foreigners are often treated more like assistants, with Korean teachers planning the lessons and incorporating foreigners to degrees ranging from not at all (I had one coteacher, who I taught 4 hours a week with last semester, with whom I would literally sit in a student's chair, in front of the class, facing the class, which he taught, and often not say a word. I eventually started bringing books into class and sat there reading.) to true coteaching, where the teaching role is passed back and forth. There are also situations in elementary schools where the Korean teacher feels embarrassed about their English in front of a foreigner, or is just lazy, and has the foreigner do all of the lesson planning and teaching. This can be good for everyone, if the Korean stays engaged with the class to keep Korean norms around discipline and respect in order. If, as many do, the Korean sits silently in the back of the class or even walks out, it can be very frustrating. It is extremely difficult to teach beginners of a language without a common language, especially children, with their constantly ambling attention. This alone is sufficient for me to recommend EPIK over hagwons to incoming teachers -- in EPIK you have a coteacher, in hagwons you don't.

I think it could be valuable to use native teachers, and in many cases I think it is. But the systems to make it properly and be of real benefit to the students haven't been put in place yet. This initiative to have native English speakers in every school is very young, and they are still learning how it should be done. So, as with the example I mentioned above, it often ends up being worthless for the students, and I think very frequently is of marginal value. I think a native speaker is most valuable as a teacher to advanced language learners, and those aren't primary and secondary students in Korea. With the right sort of co-teaching, I think it can be valuable. It brings a new pedagogy to language learning in Korea, which I think is sorely needed. I think it may be most valuable in diminishing xenophobia. There are now foreigners in every town in the country, and every student will grow up knowing at least 12 different foreigners. It's an extremely expensive cultural reform, but I foresee it opening up Korea quite a bit, and Korea has been a rather closed culture. When I left Korea last time, I took a ferry over to China, and the first Chinese person that I spent any time with told me that he thought culturally, "Korea is more [traditional] Chinese than China."

----- What are some of the benefits of teaching overseas as opposed to
teaching in your home country? What are the negative aspects?

This is a huge question. I think most of the benefits come from living abroad, and after that working abroad, the actually teaching abroad, in my opinion, has marginal benefits.

For teaching, that it is easier to get into comes to mind. Anyone with a bachelors degree can get a job in Korea. It is also an easier job for most people, but this is balanced by it being harder to live and work here. The negative aspects of working here are primarily that you might not have much control over your curriculum if you teach in a public school, and you might not have much control over (or ability to communicate with) your students if you teach in a hagwon.

A lot is made about the potential to save money here, and I think it is misunderstood. A typical job here, and this includes probably 95%+ of the jobs here pays between 2.0 - 2.3 million won per month. In addition, your airfare to and from Korea is taken care of and apartment (minus utilities) is furnished and paid for. Income tax is much more progressively structured in Korea than in the US, so at these income levels, the tax rate is 3.3%, and in public schools there is a two-year exemption from even that. Health care is socialized and costs about 50,000 won/month for coverage and makes visits to the doctor/dentist/pharmacy extremely cheap. Add to that the fact that, outside of Seoul, there isn't a lot for foreigners to spend money on. Restaurants are cheap, public transportation is excellent, and most of us don't want to accumulate much stuff, because we have to get rid of it or find a way to get it home in a year or two, and desirable entertainment options are scarce. So, 2.2 million won isn't that much money (about $1600 right now) for a month's work, but some expenses are covered by employer, some are minimized by the policies of the Korean Government, and others just aren't present here.

The benefits of living and working abroad are significant, and I think under appreciated and misunderstood. Much has been made of President Obama having lived in many different cultures and his penchant for surrounding himself with advisors that have also lived in other cultures. People that have left their home for an extend period of time develop a different way of looking at the world. I think this comes from having the beliefs that are operant in your home society (which we don't notice because they are omnipresent) challenged. That leads people to have more nuanced perspectives that are less based on the beliefs that are instilled by our culture's stories. Leaving the culture you were raised in, even temporarily, is -- must be -- an eye opening experience. A friend asked me recently what made me come back to Korea when I had many grievances about my first year here. I told him that I felt like a transformation had started in my first year that I needed to continue and couldn't at home -- that by removing myself from the shared beliefs, common assumptions and homogeny of the society I grew up in, I was forced to look more closely at the people and events around me and deliver my own conclusions, because I couldn't rest on the beliefs I had picked up by osmosis at home. I also had to redefine myself, because those around me didn't see me through the same cultural lens I had always been seen. Those processes are extremely trying, and I think they are generates the culture shock that emerges after a few months of living in a foreign culture. Really living in a foreign culture is probably the only way to experience it. When one travels, one is not immersed in a culture the same way one is when they are, for example, working in a foreign culture. So that's a benefit and a negative aspect. I believe it is hugely important, and it's why I am here now in spite of the intense frustration and frequent loneliness. Well, that and student loans. And the food. And the proximity to Southeast Asia.

One last thing I'll mention is a certain sense of freedom that comes with living here. I think it is related to the redefinition I just wrote about at length, in that it comes from a lack of understanding between you and those around you, which comes from a lack of shared cultural stories/assumptions. But knowing that no one really gets you, and no one can, is frighteningly liberating. And not understanding what that 15 year old is talking about on her cellphone can be pretty nice too.

Teaching in Korea FAQ

2009-03-13T10:39:00.003+09:00

In my ongoing efforts to help people decide if teaching English in Korea is right for them, I thought I would post my responses to some questions I got from a friend of a friend who is thinking about making the move to Korea. I hope this helps. If there are any questions you think should be added to the list, let me know.

1. How did you apply for the position?

Through a recruiter. It is possible to apply to public school jobs directly, but there isn't any advantage to doing it that way, and it's more difficult and you have one less person in your corner should any issues come up. You could also come here to look for work... I think that makes the most sense for those with experience who are trying to land a highly competitive position, such as a university gig. One of the greatest benefits to starting in Korea is that everything is taken care of for you.... the recruiter will find you positions (for free, they're paid by the school), help you get everything in order for your visa and such, and then you'll be set up with a ticket (or airfare) and when you get here you'll have an apartment waiting for you. I can't imagine landing in Taiwan or Vietnam and trying to find a place to live at the same time as all the other new-arrival stuff.

2. Are you TESL/TEFLO certified?

No, and there's no need to be in Korea. For those who think Korea is a good fit, I would suggest starting here without it, and if after a year or two hear, you decide you want to stick with TEFL and possibly move somewhere where the certification is more important (particularly in the Middle East and a few particular Asian countries), then look into that.

3. How long did it take you from the begginning of your application process till ending up in Korea?

I started in May-ish, knowing that I wanted to come at the begining of the semester Sept. 1. One guy in my town did the whole thing in a couple weeks, but that's definitely on the fast end. The new school year just started last week.... there are always positions available, in public and private schools, but the big hiring pushes are for 3/1 and 9/1... I'd suggest starting several months before you want to come.

4. Is it easy to transfer teachig positions throughout Korea/Asia/World

I'm not sure what you mean by transfer. Korea runs almost 100% on 1-year contracts. One downside to Korea is that visas are non-transferable, so if you don't finish your contract, you have to get a release from your employer and go through the whole visa process again with your new employer. My understanding is that in Japan, for example, the visa is transferable. If you mean at the end of the contract, it's certainly easy to transfer within Korea... a year of experience here is a big plus because employers know you know what you're in for and that you can handle it. I imagine that's true with employers in other countries too. Two years experience and/or TEFL seems to be a commonly listed necessary experience for some of the more desireable jobs I've seen.

5. How hard is it to adapt socially (i.e. nightlife, dating,)

This is a huge question, and there are a lot of variables, most importantly you. I would suggest reading blogs of English teachers here... that's a nice window. Mine is at viewfromgangwon.blogspot.com... I'll probably refer you to a couple specific posts at some point.

In sum, Korea is not an easy place to adapt to. It is probably one of the lesser foreigner-friendly places on the planet. I have friends that have married into Korean families and are happy and plan to spend the rest of their lives here. But I know a lot more people that have come, foudn it very difficult, and are anxious to get out at the end of their contract. I think much of that is culture shock... the experience of living and working in a foreign culture after the novelty has worn off, and I do hear similar complaints from teachers in Japan and Thailand, but I'm not sure they are as ubiquitous or as strong as they are here.

If nightlife and dating are real concerns for you, I would suggest Seoul, or possibly Busan. Seoul is one of the biggest cities in the world, and you can find just about anything there, though I have never heard it refered to as cosmopolitan. Busan is a city of something like 3 million... I lived there for a year and quite liked it... it's on the beach and has a more moderate climate and a less hectic feel than Seoul, but also many many less foreigners and services for foreigners. Now I'm in a tiny town on the east coast, far from everything and very isolated. I took the job largely for the 5 week vacation, but it makes the other 47 weeks pretty tough, and I'm someone who likes a lot of time to himself for reading, guitar, exercise, etc.. Again, search for blogs of folks teaching in Seoul, Busan and other random places... the differences will be obvious.

6. What happens if i get sick/injured?

Korea has wonderful socialized medicine. About 50,000 won (~$30) of your monthly paycheck gets you medical care at prices you won't believe ($2 for a dentist visit, $.85 for a perscription fill, $300 for a crown treatment). Many doctors are trained at US medical schools. The bigger the city, the better in terms of quality of care and availability of ENglish speakers.

7. Have you been able to save money fairly easy?

Yes. This is the other advantage to living in the sticks... there's nothing to spend money on! Unfortunately, over the last six months, the exchange rate has moved massively against those of us saving won to convert to dollars (~40%). It hasn't affected prices here much, but it sucks when you transfer money home. Still, I will bank 5-figures this year, and that's with a 3-week trip to Thailand, buying the nicest food I can find and taking regular trips around the country. I don't, however, drink or smoke or eat meat, so I save money on all of those. The maxim is that you should be able to save half of your salary without trying. I save around 70%. When thinking about savings, don't forget that at the end of your contract you effectively get 2 months extra pay - one called severence and one from a pension.

8. How much stuff did you bring to Korea?

I brought the two largest suitcases I could get my hands on, and packed things like Clif bars, books, and a tennis racket. My parents send me a package every few months with my favorite foods and toiletries, which helps a lot.

9. have you picked up much of the language since your inception?

No, and most people don't, but that's stupid. Korean is one of the hardest languages for an English speaker to learn, but it can be done. Especially in Seoul, if you really wanted to commit to it, there are hagwons (a hagwon is like a tutoring center, they offer after school classes to students, especially in English, and employ most of the foreigners here) that teach Korean to foreigners.... If there were one here, I would do it. I have enough of the language to get around, but embarrassingly little for having lived 18 months here. I bought some books before coming and while here, but just haven't dug into it. I've heard people talk about acquiring languages like Hindi and Italian in less than a year because they loved the culture and always wanted to be immersed in it. I think the converse explains why most of us don't make much of an effort at Korean.

So there are some thoughts. Here are a few blog entries that might be valuable to consider:

several videos, if you want to get an idea of what life looks like in Korea.

differences between hagwon and public school teaching

general thoughts about being and teaching here. be sure to check out the comments section, as there are lots of valuable insights from readers there.

I hope all that helps. If it brings up any more questions, feel free to ask. If you decide you want to come, my recruiter was great before we got here, and in helping us when we needed to move. I'd be happy to set you up with them (I get a little kick-back if you end up signing on.)

First Cherry Blossoms of the Year!

2009-02-27T11:02:00.002+09:00

The cherry blossoms have arrived! We went up to Donghae last weekend and saw a few trees starting bloom next to the sea, up the road from E-Mart. I'm glad, and surprised, Melanie got to see them before she goes home next week.

Hwanseongul... the 2nd Largest Limestone Cave in Asia

2009-02-23T18:14:00.014+09:00

I figure it's time to start blogging again since I've been back from vacation for two weeks and have had the same post up here for over a month now. Actually, I kept it up because it turned into a great discussion of what prospective teachers in Gangwon-do's EPIK program can expect.

Anyway, a couple of weeks ago, Tom Cruise, our favorite of all the teachers at our school, invited us to go with him to Hwanseon Cave. Hwanseongul is the closest thing we have to a tourist attraction out here near Dogye, and as one of the largest caves in Asia, it's a pretty decent draw. Scientists have mapped out over 6km of it, and there's still more they haven't gotten to. All of the large caverns are accessible to tourists, and for scope, if nothing else, it was quite impressive.

The hike up to the entrance is only 1.6km long, but at an average grade of over 15%, it was trying (and tough on the knees on the way down). This whole area is quite beautiful, and the valley the cave is situated in is a nice example of that. Here's Melanie posing in front of a waterfall on the way up:

The beauty of the hike was tempered by awful music being played at stupidly-loud volume all the way up. Here's a little sample... try to catch the lyrics. ;)

I guess the water flowing into the cave is flowing too fast for stalactites and stalagmites to form, so instead there are lots of "flowstones," which look largely like curtains. Here's nice formation that was called something like "Shapely Woman Flowstone:"

And another one that was supposed to look like a statue of the Virgin Mary. I thought the semblance was striking.

Here's a picture of Melanie and I in front of one of the myriad caverns:

And a heart-shaped formation that made for an awkward moment. Melanie is leaving next week; we've decided to go our separate ways. But when we came to this formation Tom Cruise said he would take a picture of us in front of the heart because "Michael and Melanie love forever."

Melanie really wanted a picture with Tom Cruise, but thought it might be awkward to ask for it. So instead, she told me to point the camera at them with the flash ready, and she would get him to smile for the camera. And it worked:

All of the formations and constructions had names like "Melting Turtle" and "Palace of Dream." There were also two bridges, "Bridge of Heaven" and this one:

The "Bridge of Hell" was actually really wobbly, and quite scary with a many-hundred foot drop beneath it. Beneath that was a water pool so deep scientists haven't been able to determine its depth. Scary, but well worth the fear to be rid of our sins.

And finally, back down near the start of the hike:

The rock pinnacle in the upper-left corner of that last picture shows how dramatic the mountains can be around here. Many, if not most, are unclimbable (for me at least) because they're too steep to be hiked and too covered in dirt and trees to be climbed. Awfully good for looking at though.

It was well worth our time to visit the cave, mostly since it's less than half an hour away. We had a good time with Tom Cruise, who has decided to quit the teaching job that's obviously been making him unhappy for the last fifteen years to "follow his dream." He's a smart, caring guy, and we sure wish him luck in finding it. Thanks Tom Cruise, for being our one friend at Dogye Elementary School.

Teaching and Living in Korea, Gangwon-do Public School and Busan Hagwon

2009-01-16T08:38:00.004+09:00

After a year of teaching EFL in a Hagwon and a semester of teaching English in a public school in Gangwon-do, here are my thoughts on teaching English in Korea in general, and about the differences between the public school gig and the hagwon gig. I hope it will be helpful to those that are thinking about coming to Korea to teach English.

Before I get into it, I want to preface this by saying that real culture shock, in my experience and the experience of my friends that have lived in Korea and other foreign cultures, sets in around the three to four month mark. It is characterized by disdain for the local culture, frustration with other aspects of one's life, and a strong desire to escape the “shocking” culture. For more on culture shock, check out this post from about a month ago. I have been here about four and a half months, and I feel like I'm on the tail end of what has been a fairly severe culture shock. Just wanted to throw that in for completeness, for those readers contemplating coming to Korea, or to Gangwon-do to teach for EPIK in a public school.

Living in Korea

Korea is not particularly hospitable to foreigners. There is a lot of kindness in the Korean people as a whole, but there is more xenophobia (fear of foreigners). There is a historical reason for this: the Korean people have, throughout their history, had to fight off invading forces – Japanese, Mongol, Chinese, etc. The result is a people that are very insular and distrusting if not downright disrespectful toward foreigners. Of course there are exceptions – I've had friends (male and female) marry into Korean families and be, to varying degrees, accepted by the culture. There are also some teachers that come here for a year and enjoy the time they spend with Korean people. But the vast majority of foreigners I've talked to and emailed with feel isolated and disliked by Koreans and look forward to the day they get to go home or to another culture.

What is the difference between those who have a great time here and those who can't wait to leave? I've thought about this a lot, and I think I have some insight into the personalities that fit best and worst here.

Those that have the hardest time here are typically:

- Female – sorry ladies, but this is a culture of and for men. I've known a lot of strong women who have had a very hard time here. The disrespect I experience is multiplied several times over for women. I suspect beautiful women have it easier than others, with blond hair and thinness being primary qualities of beauty here. Also women that are okay with being less involved in conversations, decision making and the like will do better.

Those who have the best time here are typically:

- Drinkers/Smokers/Red Meat Eaters – I am none of these things, and that has proved hard. Had I come here just out of college, I would have been going to the bars and cook-your-own-meat-at-the-table restaurants with other teachers from my school three times a week, getting drunk and smoking cigarettes with them and building social bonds through that. This seems to be the primary social opportunity here. Of the people I've met that are happy in Korea and plan to stay, nearly 100% have enjoyed regularly consuming at least 2 of these 3 things.

The other big difference I see between those who are happy here and those who are not is sensitivity. Korea is not a place for sensitive westerners. Expressions of appreciation are few and far between and ostricization – most often expressed non-verbally – is constant. On the streets, smells of sewage hit you like a truck every couple of minutes. Buildings are aesthetically devoid and covered in advertisements, and loud noises are constant. Those who set their own emotional state, or who are relatively constant in their feelings, regardless of their surroundings, can do very well here, but this is not the place for those who are sensitive to their environment and the way they are received by the people they work with.

Teaching English in Korea

Public Schools

In public schools, foreigners are hired as assistant teachers, and we are more assistant than teacher. For the fall semester, which we've just finished, I had three co-teachers that I worked with at my primary school. With one of them, I taught eight hours a week (actually eight, forty minute classes) of sixth grade, for which I prepared one, forty minute lesson and usually got to deliver it to both sixth grade classes. Sometimes my lesson plans ended up in the trash because something took precedence – a special event or falling behind schedule or the children misbehaving and the teacher needing to take thirty minutes to yell at them (no kidding, that happened several times). With my two fifth grade teachers, with each of whom I taught four hours a week, I simply sat next to the desk while they taught. Sometimes I would be asked to speak words or phrases for the students to mimic the correct pronunciation; sometimes I would sit silently and do nothing for the entire class. Of the three teachers, one would consistently offer me his comfy teacher's chair; for the other two, I would sit in a fifth-grade-student-sized wooden chair.

That was the bulk of the semester. For winter vacation the students and most of the teachers get six weeks off. We get three (I'm leaving for Thailand tomorrow!), and run “winter camps” for the other three. Winter camps were hard, but rewarding. For one week, we had a budget, two Korean teachers who actually helped us and seven hours a day to do whatever we wanted with the kids. That was great, but very demanding. For the other two weeks, we had three hours a day with the kids, with no budget and no Korean teacher to translate or help us control the students. That was more difficult, but we got to go home at 12:30 everyday, which is nice. Summer vacation will probably be similar, except that it's a bit longer, and our vacation is shorter (two weeks), so there will probably be more camp and special education activities.

Our situation here isn't exceptional, but it isn't universal either. Some teachers have much better rapport with their schools. I think this is mostly just a crap shoot. One couple hasn't had to go into school at all over vacation and is teaching a winter camp after the spring semester starts. Lucky them. Where we are (in Samcheok County), situations like ours seem more common, but I think this county might be particularly tough on its foreign teachers.

Hagwons

In 2005 – 2006, I taught in a hagwon (a private after-school academy) in Busan. That teaching was very different than what I'm doing now. Much has been written on the internet about the hagwon-teaching experience, so I'll be brief. It was extremely tiring to teach without a Korean to translate for me, but on the other hand, I got to design my lessons and could teach anything I wanted. I taught six, fifty-minute classes a day, as opposed to four, forty-minute classes a day in my public school. Every day I would step outside between classes and think, “I can't do this any more, I've got to get out of here.” But I did do it, and so do lots of other people. I was always scared that my boss was going to cheat me out of money, but in the end he ended up paying me all I was owed, within a couple hundred dollars anyway. I suspect if he had sensed he could have pushed me around more, he would have. There were two big upsides to the hagwon gig: the hours – 3:30 to 10:30pm with an hour to go home for dinner beats the pants off 9-5 with lunch in the school cafeteria in my book. The other biggie is that you know exactly where you're going before you get on that plane. With the public schools, you typically know only the province you're going to before you leave home. We got massively unlucky in this regard, as we came to Gangwon-do, the mountainous, rural province the northeast corner of South Korea and ended up in one of the last remaining coal mining towns in the country. With a hagwon, not only do you know where you're going, but you can find out the details of who you'll be working with, how far your apartment is from your school (in my hagwon, I was a three minute walk away, in our public school we were initially placed a $3, forty-minute bus ride away), and even what your apartment looks like. Here as everywhere, the devil is in the details, and before you sign up with a hagwon, you can know a lot more of the details than with the public schools.

Conclusions

I would recommend teaching English in Korea primarily to guys strait out of college. If you want to do something interesting for a year or two, save a ton of money and put an interesting item on your resume, this can be a very good gig. If you want to go to the bars most nights, and would enjoy cooking beef at your table, you might even fit in with some of the people you work with. And of course there's travel – most people experience major personal growth while living here, and the opportunities for travel (either on vacations if you go with Gangwon-do public schools, or afterward if you don't have as much vacation) are second to none.

If I were doing it again, I would go with the public school over the hagwon – it's a ton less stress, but I would try to come at an off time (not 3/1 or 9/1), and I would want to know exactly where I was going to be placed before I signed anything. I would also make a huge effort to build report with the teachers and administrators in my school in the first weeks.

If you're interested in teaching in the public schools, we came with a recruiter, Jen, who did an excellent job of answering our questions before we came, and of representing us through our battle with the authorities to move closer to our school. If you'd like to get in tough with her, send me an email – mlevy79 (at) gmail (dot) com, and I'll put you in touch with her.

Whatever you decide to do, good luck, and if you do come to Korea, let me know how it goes.

***Edit***

Be sure to check out the comments below -- there is a lot of insight there from other westerners that are teaching here.

Seoul Trip II

2009-01-10T08:39:00.006+09:00

Last week we had Thursday and Friday off, so after a day of recovery from teaching English Camp, we went to Seoul on Friday for 3 days of recovery from living in small town Korea for months on end.

One of the coolest things we did was visiting Inwangsan - a shamanistic temple right in the middle of the city. The indigenous religion here, as I understand it, weaves together Buddhism, Shammanism, and ancestor-worship. I love the religion-customized for a people and place, and it creates unique sights like this temple where there are Buddhas carved into rock faces, families making offerings to ancestors and hundreds of scattered shrines around the grounds.

The pidgins at this temple were well fed with white rice, and their population reflected it!

Here are a few of them taking flight above the temple and above the city. Magical place for a temple, above and amidst the third largest city in the world.

These naturally formed shapes in this rock are supposed to resemble human figures. It was at least a bit spooky, and a major worship site immediately in front of the rocks.

In some cultures, you might think, "Weird, that a fifty-year-old woman is hula hooping in a shamanistic temple." But in Korea those are just as natural together as kimchi and chocolate.

The two of us, happy to be out hiking on a trip to a city.

A Buddha carving in a rock wall.

Of course, any trip to a major city is as much about food for me as anything else, and this trip was no exception. We stumbled upon this burrito shop totally by chance - the only authentic burrito I've had in Korea, and for like 8,000 won (US$6) with guacamole! To get there exit subway line 1 at Jonggak, exit 6 and go strait until you find Tomatillo, next to an Au Bon Pain.

Later we climbed Mt. Namsan, which is also right in the middle of Seoul and also provided some great views.

Kids chasing birds - cute in any culture.

I got some cotton candy for all the hiking...

...but decided to skip the spawn potage dinner on offer in Insadong.

Cheap Tickets to Thailand!

2009-01-01T14:02:00.004+09:00

We just booked tickets to Thailand for Jan. - Feb. for 580,000 won (US$460), and we should get some (about 80k) back based on taxes going down in the new year (see edit below). Amy at Shoestring travel hooked us up: emlee(at)shoestring.co.kr or 82-(0)2-333-4151. With the political instability in Thailand, we've been waiting for prices like these for a while. Glad they finally manifested.

Now I just have to keep telling myself: It will be 80 degrees and I'll be on the beach with delicious food in two weeks.

***edit***
The final price of our tickets were 483,800 won ($369) each. That's awesome.

Teaching Can Be Great! (I had forgotten)

2008-12-28T12:27:00.004+09:00

We're two days into the five day winter camp, which, in contrast to our normal routine, we actually get to plan and execute, with two Korean teachers to back us up. And it's great! The kids are having fun, they're getting exposed to real, situational English, they're getting conversational practice, and Melanie and I are happy and engaged. And of course we're working hard, because that's what people do when they're empowered and given responsibility.

If I could make one suggestion to EPIK, the program that spends hundreds of millions of Korean tax dollars every year to put a native English speaker in every public school in the country, it would be to give up a little control, and let the foreigners teach. We're almost worthless as the system is set up now. But if the students were exposed to our teaching style, cultural conventions, and language use day in and day out from first to twelfth grade, it would make a huge difference. But they've got to let us teach. And that would mean giving up control to foreigners, and younger ones at that, which is highly unlikely to happen, given Korean Confusionism and attitudes toward foreigners. Too bad.

K-Style Christmas

2008-12-26T08:11:00.005+09:00

Huge thanks to our friends Kate and Chad for throwing an excellent Christmas party last night. I had mostly been ignoring the fact that it was Christmas until then, to try to minimize the feelings of homesickness, but we had a great time with all our Samcheok friends last night. It really felt like Christmas.

Great potluck... good job with the food everyone. And thanks to Chad's Mom for the cookies, and Chad for sharing them!

Some friends during the Dirty Santa gift exchange (I always thought it was called White Elephant):

And on the way home, we saw two dogs, erh, stuck to each other, and a third sniffing out the situation. Here it is, your moment of zen...

I'm Singin' in Korean!

2008-12-18T07:20:00.003+09:00

Today I perform. In Korean.

Let me 'slpain. A couple of weeks ago we were asked to perform in a Korean speech contest. My, and everyone's, protests, which I centered largely on the argument that I don't know any Korean, fell on deaf ears. So in confirmation of the fact that I am a dancing English monkey at the command of my handlers, I will perform in Korean today in front of my boss, his boss, and probably his boss as well.

But memorizing a speech in Korean just seemed too boring. So instaed I found a Korean pop song that I actually don't hate, or rather didn't before hearing and practicing it hundreds of times, and will perform it this afternoon. I'll let you know how it goes. In the mean time, here's a video of the song. It's called Wero, which translates to consolation or comfort, and is by the artist Kim Sarang.

And in case you didn't get the singin' in Korean reference, watch this.

Korean video parody
~에 의해 업로드됨 MeowHouse

Frustration at Spa Vill

2008-12-17T19:37:00.001+09:00

My second school, where I teach on Tuesdays, lets me leave after my last class ends at 3:10. Since it's closer to the bigger towns of Samcheok and Donghae, I usually head to one of those on Tuesday evenings for some combination of shopping, dinner and entertainment.

Yesterday I went to Samcheok to get my haircut, workout, relax at the bath house and do some grocery shopping. The haircut went well considering the language barrier, and at 10,000 won (~US$7) for the cut with a shampoo and scalp massage, it's quite a deal. (The place is called Hair Doctor and is up the stairs about five doors down from the Duncan Donuts [toward Home Plus] in downtown Samcheok.)

The workout went less well. I get stared at more at the gym than in most places in Korea, though I'm not sure why. Yesterday was no different, especially from a man wearing elastic waist and ankle zebra pants who appeared to be training a group of rather large Korean men. But whatever, I just crank up my iPod and do my thing... it's just part of being here.

But when I got on the treadmill, I noticed I was getting even more attention. After about five minutes, the zebra pants-ed man came up to me and made some gestures that I interpreted as he thought I was stepping two hard on the treadmill. At that point though, I was tired of being stared at and just wanted to do my workout, so I shrugged my shoulders and put my headphones back on. A few minutes later, another man stepped onto the treadmill next to mine, pointed at me, and said “very strong step.” I shrugged my shoulders in an attempt to communicate something like “Seriously? / What do you want me to do about it? / What's your problem?” But he continued to say things like “soft step,” so eventually I relented and started running on the balls of my feet, and asked him “Okay?” but even that didn't seem to satisfy him. So I put my headphones back on and kept running, but got off after 12 minutes because I didn't like the way I was being looked at and was having a hard time focusing on my running. I was not at all happy with that, but sometimes it's just too much to fight it.

So I thought I'd go swimming, as I usually do after I workout there, but when I asked the clerk if she had goggles I could use, she politely informed me that it would be an additional 5,000won to swim. Well, at least I saved that money each time I used the pool before I found that out. ;)

I had a nice soak with a monk (how often do you get to bathe with a monk?), a sauna and a lovely 30 minute chair massage (as in the chair was massaging me, not like I was in a chair getting a massage) for 4,000won in the jimjilbang.

Then I went to the department store, did my grocery shopping, and when I plopped my stuff down on the checkout counter, the person in front of me happened to be Kim Sun, my co-teacher. What a small world! Okay, small Korean town, but still.

Busan Trip

2008-12-16T06:30:00.003+09:00

It's been too long since I've last posted. Here's a long-winded write-up of our trip to Busan last weekend...

Last Friday, we left school at noon to catch a bus for Busan where we would celebrate my birthday and soak up the refreshing cosmopolitanism of Korea's second city.

Because we live in the middle of nowhere in the mountains, we had to take a bus 45 minutes north in order to get the bus that would take us five hours south. That's frustrating. In fact, the time expense to travel around the country from eastern Gangwon-do has been one of the most frustrating aspects of living here, especially when half of the population is connected by a bullet train that crosses the country in two hours. If I had it to over again, I would probably ask to be on the western (Seoul) side of the province for this reason alone.

With that said, the bus ride wasn't too uncomfortable, and we got into Busan early enough to head to “Kebapistan,” the famous-among-foreigners Turkish restaurant in the PNU neighborhood of Busan. My multiple falafel sandwiches were lovely, though not quite as good as they were when I lived in Busan in 2006. That or my memory has inflated their taste in the intervening years.

One of the great things about traveling in Korea is the ubiquity of cheap accommodation. Koreans typically live with their parents until they are married, so, in response to the demand for private space for young men and women, thousands of “love motels” have sprung up across the country, where one can stay in a reasonable, clean room for between 20 and 50,000 won (US$15 – 37). We asked a table of foreigners if they knew of any such places near by and they pointed us to a neighborhood with two in every alley (half way to Jangjeon-dong on the main street in PNU) and we found a nice place for 20,000 won and after a brief walk around the neighborhood promptly crashed.

I had planned the whole trip around the restaurants I wanted to eat at in Busan, and on Saturday morning we headed to a place, also in the university district of Busan, that I remembered for their vegetable panini and tomato soup. We found it with surprising ease, and while it had the same cute decor and English books and games, the menu had taken a significant change for the worse. Gone were paninis and soups, in were sausages and ham sandwiches. The consolation prizes of a couple onion bagels and cup of coffee at Starbucks were not unwelcome though.

From their we went up to Beomeo-sa, the biggest and most famous Buddhist temple in Busan. It was lovely, as it has been every time I've been there. There were lots of paper lanterns strung up today, which was especially nice, something a little different.

We went for a lovely hike above the temple, up to a prominent ridge-line that can be seen from all over the northern part of the city. The weather was shockingly good for mid-December, the day was clear and it felt great to be out and get the blood pumping. We live in the middle of nowhere as far as Korea goes, yet the air was cleaner in Busan, because we live in coal-central in the middle of nowhere Korea, so that was a nice change as well. We met a nice man from Gwang-ju, a recently retired principal, with whom we had a nice conversation on the way up the trail, and who kindly took and emailed us our only picture of the trip.

From there we headed to the vegetarian buffet in Seomyeon, but found it closed (restaurant failure #2 for the day), so we grabbed a quick bi-bim-bap (mixed veggies and rice) and headed for Jagalchi, the gigantic fish market on the pier of Busan. It was as busy, smelly and strange as ever, and we had fully taken that in, we headed a few blocks over to Nampo-dong, the trendy downtown area of Busan.

Nampo-dong on a Saturday night was totally overwhelming. Thousands and thousands of little shops in maze like alleys, all illuminated by dozens of hanging fluorescent lights – shoe designers, clothes consolidators, traditional Korean goods for tourists. After what felt like hours of sifting through piles of clothes (a pastime for Melanie), we had a pieces of clothing we like and headed for the hole-in-the-wall Indian place in Nampo-dong, that I absolutely love. To get there, walk down the main street in Nampo-dong to the Pizza Hut, turn into that alley, walking on the Pizza Hut side, look for a steep, green staircase on your right, about 2/3 of the way down that alley. It's up there on the right.

The Indian Restaurant has only one vegetarian dish – masala curry, and it turned out to be too spicy for Melanie, which was big bummer. So I enjoyed mine as quickly as possible and we hit a second bi-bim-bap place on our way out of Nampo-dong.

Then we got foolish. We headed all the way across the city to go to what is reputed to be the largest bathhouse in Asia. When we got off the subway, we looked at our guidebook to see how to get there and learned that it closed at 9:00. Most bathhouses in Korea are open 24 hours and will let you sleep there, which was our plan, but not this one. So we back across the city, to the Haeundae Beach area, for another jimjilbang that was open 24 hours.

I had a nice soak, especially on the balcony that overlooks the beach – that was special. Melanie had an unfortunate run-in with what may have been a would-be thief (averted by her quick action), and when we met in the clothed, co-ed part of the jimjilbang, we realized there was no way we were going to sleep there. Some jimjilbangs have big sleeping rooms that are closed off from the activity of the rest of the place. This one didn't. So we left, nearing 11:00, eyes shutting and all.

Fortunately we found a reasonable motel fairly quickly (the first one tried to put us in a dirty room) and we got a much-needed good night's sleep.

On Sunday morning we went for a nice walk on Haeundae Beach, which was largely empty, so we tried to imagine what it would look like in July with tens of thousands of Koreans packed onto it. It was cold though, so we headed back to the vegetarian restaurant in Seomyeon, which was open this time. We had our favorite meal of the weekend here, and picked up some oatmeal, flax seed and dried mango on our way out.

I knew it would be pushing it to head to Busan for a normal weekend like this, but for Turkish and Indian food, it was well worth it. And, yes, the Korean temple, restaurant and bathhouse were nice too.

Novelty Lost - Thoughts on Culture Shock

2008-12-05T06:04:00.001+09:00

We've been here just over three months now, and it seems the novelty has worn us for us and for Korea. Culture shock is setting in for almost all of the foreigners I've talked with, and the folks in our school seem less interested in us everyday.

Most people think that culture shock comes immediately upon arriving in a new culture. The name makes such a mistake understandable. Culture weary might be a better title for this experience.

I had a bad case of culture shock my first year living in Korea (my first time outside of North America). From about 3 - 6 months, I mostly hated everything, and I plotted daily how I could and would go home. I was unhappy in general, and especially disliked anything and everyone Korean. It also manifested as resentment toward my girlfriend, distance from my friends and apathy for my hobbies. I look around at the teachers who arrived here at the end of August, and I see tired, weary looks that remind me of how hard that period was for me.

Culture shock is an incredibly valuable experience. It is hard growth at its essence. If you take the metaphor of a person as a tree, getting through culture shock is expanding the breadth of your trunk - imperceptible and inglorious at the time, but it yields stability and opens new possibilities for height in the future.

It comes when the fascination, the newness, of a foreign culture wears off and the fascination of you wears off for those around you. When that happens you are left with the day-to-day experience of living in a culture that doesn't understand you and doesn't support the image you have constructed of yourself over the course of your life. Without the cultural backdrop on which you have defined yourself, and which supports the notion of you that your ego maintains, you have to develop some other concept of self, one that doesn't depend on the perceptions of you that have been relatively constant in your home culture.

This is why I came back to Korea. This is the good stuff.

But when I get home after work, it feels like my heart has been leaking happiness and self-confidence all day.

This too shall pass.

School Festival

2008-11-30T07:18:00.009+09:00

In Korean public schools, it seems classes and whole days of classes are canceled as often as not. Last week, of the sixteen classes I normally teach at my primary school, I taught a total of six. Fine with me, though I wish that I had a private office to sit in during those canceled classes, instead of a desk in the room where the teachers and administrators come together in a cacophonous mess of 70 decibel Korean every ten minutes.

Anyway, Friday was School Festival Day, and the classes were gearing up for it all week, and even the week before. Each class got a five minute slot in which to perform, usually some sort of song and dance.

There were trucks in the parking lot of school selling cotton candy in cups and various plastic, flower bouquet-like contraptions. Many of the students were done-up in there traditional Korean best make-up and dresses. The librarian had been cutting out giant Korean characters for days. Anticipation was in the air!

The mothers, and their cameras, came out in hordes!

Two of my favorite students dressed up as bride and groom to play emcee.

One of the cutest little girls I've ever seen, performing a song with her first grade class.

Deep concentration was required by all. (don't think about cookies.... don't think about cookies....)

The whole thing was a giant whirl of colors!

This guy, who was clearly someone important, based on the greeting he got from the principal (whose ear is on the right), did what many high-status Korean men do -- ignored the hundreds of people behind him (and the zoom button, apparently) to get what he wanted.

One of my sixth grade classes performed a lovely enactment of "The Tortoise and the Hare" (in English), including this fight scene. I edited the script. Where I suggested that "the lesson of the story is..." should be maybe "the moral of the story is..." the final line of the play was "Maybe the moral of the story is..." Oh well, they like humility here. Maybe telling your elders what the moral of a story is would be presumptuous.

Then, unfortunately, the batteries in my camera died, so I have no pictures for you of the very cutest student of all, the amazing dance of Korean dragons to traditional Korean music, or the animated show my fifth grade class put on using 24 sketch pads held together in a giant square. Next time, charge the batteries the night before a big event!

It was a very entertaining afternoon. It was really fun to see the students so excited and to meet some (though too few) of their mothers. On the down side, it was followed by dinner at a grill-your-own-pig-meat-at-the-table restaurant, so we got home at 7:00 hungry, annoyed, and smelling like burnt pig flesh. But that's nothing that a change of clothes, a big bowl of popcorn, and an in bed screening of Oh Brother, Where Art Thou? can't cure.

Inappropriate!

2008-11-27T06:19:00.004+09:00

I just got out of one of my sixth grade classes. Kim Sun, my co-teacher, likes to show the students 2 second muted clips from Korean comedy television shows, for the students to say what the actors are doing using the language structure of the lesson.

***digression***

There are big screen TV's connected to a computer with high speed internet (very high speed) in every classroom in Korea. If the U.S. wants keep up we need a massive increase in our education funding.

***end digression***

The language structures for our current lesson are "Don't..." and "It's time to..."

For "Don't..." we watched an eight year old girl run full speed into a flying jump kick into the chest of one of her classmates, knocking him flat to the ground. "Don't kick your friends." Indeed.

For "It's time to..." we had (I couldn't make this up), a group of 20-somethings standing around a guy lying on his side, with his back to us, on what looked like an operating table. One of the friends put his hands together as if making a gun with his thumb and forefinger, and proceeded to poke his friend right in the cornhole. This looped over and over so as to create the motion of... no... I'm not going to write that here. But that's what our sixth graders got in class today. "It's time to wake up."

Interestingly, that didn't phase them a bit. What did phase them was last week, when the language structure was "Would you like to..." Kim Sun brought in a clip from a Korean soap of a man giving very tame kiss to a woman lying on a hospital bed. "Would you like to kiss me?" That sent the kids into hushed whispers that lasted until the clip was replaced with the next, maybe 30 seconds later. The tension was so palpable it made me uncomfortable. So, poking your friend in the butt - cool. Kissing a girl - seriously messed up.

Pictures of Dogye on a Clear Day

2008-11-24T05:43:00.007+09:00

Yesterday Melanie and I completed the traverse of the long ridge on the west side of Dogye. It was a beautiful, clear day, and warm for this time of year. Here are some pics:

This is our town, Dogye! Just to the left of the seam is the campus of our elementary school:

From left to right the buildings are: kindergarten, gymnasium, administration and grades 2, 3 and 6, the dirt field, and grades 1, 4 and 5 plus the Dogye English Experience Center, which looks closer to opening every day - very exciting!

Melanie about to cast a spell on me from an "improvement" to the trail. It's too bad they build these things, it would've been a nice 3rd class traverse without them, but Koreans love their metal staircases.

From the high vantage point on the ridge, we realized just how close we are to Taebaek, the big city just down the road... as the crow flies anyway. A couple weeks ago we took a cab from Taebaek out to this special agricultural zone and windfarm.

A Korean grave...

And its setting. Not a bad place to be buried, eh?

Playing in the leaves like a couple of little kids.

On our way out we crossed the river just below the major coal mine that operates in town. Of all the towns in Gangwon-do, we were placed in the one with two of Korea's three active coal mines. Anyway, don't drink the water.

We passed a couple of awesome sounding restaurants on our way home. This one is Appricca.

And Smoper. Did they kidnap Papa Smurf and dye him green?

My New Website

2008-11-21T06:23:00.004+09:00

Check out my new website, Growth Steps, where each month I'll document a new 30-day goal experiment.

I'm going to be creating at least one additional site in the near future, and each site will have a specialized purpose. The new one will be geared toward income generation, Growth Steps is designed to hold me accountable to my goals and for whatever benefit that sort of archive might have for readers setting similar goals, and this site is going to be more about my personal experience in Korea. I'm going to move away from political ranting and book reviews (since I didn't get to them, I'll say this now: read Jensen's Culture of Make Believe and Pollan's Omnivore's Dilemma. The former, in particular, is a life-changing book). This blog will focus on first person narrative and commentary on living and teaching in South Korea. And more pictures and videos. ;)

Thanks for reading.

EPIK Apartment Tour (Dogye)

2008-11-15T14:09:00.005+09:00

A little while ago I made a video tour of our neighborhood and the apartment EPIK Gangwon-do provided for us in Samcheok. Today, I thought I'd post a video tour of our new EPIK apartment in Dogye.

Before we moved, we were commuting about two hours a day to our school in Dogye. We told our co-teacher, then the adminstration at our school, the Samcheok Education Office, our recruiter at ESL Job Network and finally the Supervisor of Education for Gangwon Province that we needed to be closer to our school, and finally, after almost two months of our harassment, they found an apartment for us in Dogye. The problem it seems is that EPIK tells recruiters to tell prospective teachers that they will be provided an apartment within 10 or 15 minutes of their school, while a manual that EPIK gives to the schools says to get your English Teachers an apartment within an hour of the school.

In any case, it turned out fine for all the hassle. We lost a lot of apartment space, and our apartment here is quite a bit older. Dogye is much smaller, and feels it. It also feels like the coal mining town that it is. But to leave home at 8:45 and get home at 5:15 is, as the commercials say, priceless.

Here's a look at our apartment, from behind, with town beyond it:

And here's the video (6:02):

School Opening Day

2008-11-12T06:56:00.005+09:00

It's not what it sounds like.... Dogye Elementary School seems to have been open since at least the Korean War (1950 - '53). Instead, yesterday our school was "open" to teachers and administrators from all around Dogye Eub (an administrative region somewhat smaller than a county).

For days, everyone at school had been freaking out making artsy name tags, cleaning every last shoe-locker and polishing every last trophy. When we arrived yesterday, it felt more like we were walking into a sales convention or wedding reception than our school.

The entrance to the gymnasium.

Inside the gymnasium were scores of displays of students' artwork and stories, and teachers' methods, like the games we use in English class.

There were also a couple of banners (Koreans love banners). We were surprised to see that this one featured Melanie! And no, that's not a prison behind her. Those are the gym's offices.

After lunch, Kim Sun and I taught a demonstration class for about twenty other teachers and the elementary school supervisor for Samcheok County. Kim Sun - who just finished her "English Education Degree" - had planned this down to the last word (even my words), and was visibly nervous before we started. She's actually a great English teacher, and with her more than any other Korean teacher, we have a good natural dynamic in the classroom - both letting the other teach in their style and being there to support the other on pronunciation or complex directions or whatever. But yesterday she was just putting on a show, and had me relegated me to the talking stooge. In all of the feedback I heard, from Koreans and foreigners alike, was that I should have more of a role in the class. I don't know why Kim Sun set up that class the way she did - to show off, I suppose, but she is actually the one co-teacher I work with that doesn't need to hear that I should have more of a role in class... several of my other teachers really do need to hear that. Oh well. Hopefully she impressed whomever she was trying to impress.

After the demo class, we went into the freezing cold gymnasium, and Chantel (one of the three other foreigners who lives in Dogye) was asked to give a speech about her impressions of the demo class, the school, teaching in Korea and Korea in general. No need, apparently, for preparation, or for a translator. I would guess that less than 10% of the audience understood more than 10% of what she said.

Nevertheless, here she is trying to take the task seriously.

And here are the other foreigners trying not to laugh at her attribution of the children's good behavior to their nutritious lunches.

After two hours of not understanding anything in the gymnasium, we had had enough and scurried away to this restaurant for an awesome dinner. All of that, including drinks, for 8,500 won each (US$6.36).

And a bunch of happy campers after a good meal.

Al Gore - What We Need to Do

2008-11-10T14:18:00.005+09:00

In a NYTimes op-ed yesterday, Al Gore noted that the same steps can heal our economy, our planet, and our national energy security. He's not the first to say it, but it is eloquent and if the former VP says it can be so, who are we to say it can't?

It's may be too late already -- we may have already entered a feed-forward loop that will massively alter the ecology of the planet and it make it much less pleasant for humans to live here. But in case we haven't, we must take these steps now. There is no time to waste.

--

What follows is a five-part plan to repower America with a commitment to producing 100 percent of our electricity from carbon-free sources within 10 years. It is a plan that would simultaneously move us toward solutions to the climate crisis and the economic crisis — and create millions of new jobs that cannot be outsourced.

First, the new president and the new Congress should offer large-scale investment in incentives for the construction of concentrated solar thermal plants in the Southwestern deserts, wind farms in the corridor stretching from Texas to the Dakotas and advanced plants in geothermal hot spots that could produce large amounts of electricity.

Second, we should begin the planning and construction of a unified national smart grid for the transport of renewable electricity from the rural places where it is mostly generated to the cities where it is mostly used. New high-voltage, low-loss underground lines can be designed with “smart” features that provide consumers with sophisticated information and easy-to-use tools for conserving electricity, eliminating inefficiency and reducing their energy bills. The cost of this modern grid — $400 billion over 10 years — pales in comparison with the annual loss to American business of $120 billion due to the cascading failures that are endemic to our current balkanized and antiquated electricity lines.

Third, we should help America’s automobile industry (not only the Big Three but the innovative new startup companies as well) to convert quickly to plug-in hybrids that can run on the renewable electricity that will be available as the rest of this plan matures. In combination with the unified grid, a nationwide fleet of plug-in hybrids would also help to solve the problem of electricity storage. Think about it: with this sort of grid, cars could be charged during off-peak energy-use hours; during peak hours, when fewer cars are on the road, they could contribute their electricity back into the national grid.

Fourth, we should embark on a nationwide effort to retrofit buildings with better insulation and energy-efficient windows and lighting. Approximately 40 percent of carbon dioxide emissions in the United States come from buildings — and stopping that pollution saves money for homeowners and businesses. This initiative should be coupled with the proposal in Congress to help Americans who are burdened by mortgages that exceed the value of their homes.

Fifth, the United States should lead the way by putting a price on carbon here at home, and by leading the world’s efforts to replace the Kyoto treaty next year in Copenhagen with a more effective treaty that caps global carbon dioxide emissions and encourages nations to invest together in efficient ways to reduce global warming pollution quickly, including by sharply reducing deforestation.

Of course, the best way — indeed the only way — to secure a global agreement to safeguard our future is by re-establishing the United States as the country with the moral and political authority to lead the world toward a solution.

Looking ahead, I have great hope that we will have the courage to embrace the changes necessary to save our economy, our planet and ultimately ourselves.

Trip to Gangneung

2008-11-09T08:31:00.006+09:00

A couple weeks ago one of the teachers at our school asked if we wanted to go with him to Gangneung, the closest big town. After our plans were foiled last week by one of his students hitting another with a baseball bat and the subsequent necessity of dealing with the police, we arranged to go yesterday with him and another teacher from our school. Unfortunately, weather-wise, it was absolutely the worst day we've seen thus far in Korea.

The first stop was Okgye (pronounced "OK") Rest Stop off the Donghae Expressway, voted the most beautiful rest stop in Korea.

This little girl didn't seem to mind the rain.

The second stop was "Sun Cruise" - a huge hotel made in the image of a cruise ship.

Behind us you can see a smaller a ship. It didn't occur to me how weird it is that they had built a series of huge ships on hillsides until we got home and looked at these pictures.

The gardens at Sun Cruise were quite beautiful.

There was lots of sculpture, much of it on the theme of hands(?!).

We learned that this is how Korean symbolize a strong promise, not unlike pinkie swearing.

This was just inside the front gate. Those are decidedly non-Korean breasts!

Our group on a glass bottomed overlook. The teacher on the viewer's left we call "Tom Cruise" for his debonair ways. I teach two fifth grade classes with him. On the right is a teacher we call "Mirage" for our not having really noticed he exists for the first couple weeks we were there. Melanie teaches fourth grade with him. They are both exceptionally kind men.

After the Sun Cruise, we went to Tofu Town, a huge specialty restaurant for uncooked tofu dipped in soy sauce, tofu soup (I think it was really just soft tofu in water, with soy sauce for flavor), a delicious scallion-omelet, and some great side dishes.

Despite, or maybe because of, the surreal nature of the whole experience, it was a really nice day. It felt to me like we were a part of something in a new way, like we were genuinely on a friendly excursion with Koreans - no school-assignment or ulterior motives or feelings of obligation. Like we were part of a community of teachers, and like we were seeing Korea a little more from the inside. And as we talked about the upcoming hard winter in this town of 4,000 people, it was comforting to know there are at least a couple people we genuinely enjoy spending time with.

Tom Cruise's English is very broken (and the second best of all the teachers at school), but he seems to enjoy talking about ideas, which is extremely refreshing. Maybe this is true of all people and my perception of it just gets amplified with communication so limited, but prospects for conversation about anything meaningful have been few and far between. So a day of talking about the history of mining in our region and the effects of Korea's recent switch away from coal (negative population growth, poverty, the establishment of the only casino in Korea for domestic use), government, the election, the economies and how they relate was very welcome. It seems vocabulary is less a limiting factor for those sorts of conversations than is a willingness to slow down conversation and dig for the occasional big concept.

It's good to know that it's there.

Hike Above Our New Home

2008-11-07T07:43:00.002+09:00

When I move to a new town, I make it a priority to get some perspective as quickly as possible by climbing the hills surrounding the place. When I moved to Boulder and climbed the beautiful red rocks above Settlers Park, I remember thinking I can't imagine living on flatland where you couldn't climb above and look down on town. Since 2000, I've lived in California, Colorado and Korea and those have suited me just fine.

So last weekend, our first in this town, I looked out my window and found the biggest hill beside town, found a valley next to and started walking up it. I ran into several groups of students on the way to the hike, and then one with his family on the trail. It feels great to be living in the same place we're working, to be (in some few ways) part of a community. On the other hand, when I went to buy water at the convenience store under our apartment after work in my sweats and ran into two students in the store, I was a little less excited about community and more worried about privacy. Similarly yesterday when we ran into a student 50 meters from our apartment and he followed us like a lost puppy into our building, the concerns trumped the satisfaction.

Anyway, here are some pictures from the hike, of our new home, Dogye Village of Samcheok County of Gangwon Province of the Republic of Korea. If it's a bit hazy, that's because there was a fire just a valley over two days before. Helicopters overhead all day, but no serious damage done.

Dogye from above. Our apartment is on the left, the highest of the cluster of six large buildings. That valley that we back up to is this weekend.

This is the industry that keeps this region breathing (and warm during the winter... there are actual bricks of coal all over the place. They get them delivered to burn for heat).

Here are some dogs that I can only assume are being kept for food. To be honest, I feel only marginally worse for these creatures than I do for the millions of pics and cows kept all over the world for food, in the United States usually in much worse conditions than these dogs.

Persimmons are everywhere this time of year, a dime a dozen, if you will. When the leaves blow off the trees, leaving the orange bulbs alone with the dark brown branches, it's really quite a site. I'll have to work on getting a better shot of it than this.

And a reflexology footpath, in the shape of a foot, at the bottom of the valley. They're huge on reflexology here (it's a Traditional Chinese Medicine thing). The idea, as best I understand it, is that you walk on the stone paths barefoot to stimulate the points on the bottom of your feet to enhance the flow of qi. We just got a path in front of our school, which we've taken to using after lunch, until we're dragged away by the raucous group of second grade girls that kidnaps us to the playground everyday.

Fire Bag

2008-11-05T10:09:00.003+09:00

A few weeks ago, Samcheok hosted the "SAFEM Expo" - some sort of emergency preparedness and response convention. It was a big deal for the town - 70,000 people, $60 million, and two big-top tents. Our school took us there one afternoon. Unfortunately, I didn't have my camera with me, but I did grab this flier, from a booth selling fire preparedness equipment.

Zooming in on the boxes on the left reveals the design of this brilliant device...

Do you feel safe yet?

Beach Trip

2008-11-04T09:41:00.008+09:00

With a new hard drive to set up and no internet in the new apartment, it's been tough to blog lately. I have a back-log of pictures that I've been meaning to post though, so I think we'll do pictures for the next few days. That and probably some sort of comment on the election, beyond this: Vote!

A couple weeks ago a bunch of us foreigners from Samcheok went to Chuam Beach, between Samcheok and Donghae. We found the beach at koreaontherocks.com - it is supposed to have some nice bouldering. It was a quick 8,000 won taxi ride from the Samcheok Bus Terminal, and well worth the trip. Bouldering without shoes or chalk turned out to be less appealing than we had hoped, but it is an excellent beach, with no crouds, some nice restaurants and beautiful rock formations.

It is apparently cuttlefish drying season. The ladies that were hanging these didn't want me to photograph them, but I snuck this shot in before I asked.

They kind of look like aliens, don't they? The fish, I mean!

We did get some bouldering in. This is Mark and Chad on the rocks.

And Mark again, having climbed a bit.

This is where we had lunch - excellent dwaenjang jjigae (spicy fermented soybean paste stew). I thought it funny that the wall had a hand-painted fan and roll of toilet paper next to each other, so I asked Ben to pose with them, not thinking that he would try to dominate the funny of the picture.

Kate on Chad's long iron rod.

Melanie took special interest in the shells of the beach, an interest that ended up getting her in quite deep.

And Melanie with her well-earned, picture-perfect sand dollar. And no spare clothes.

Maybe next summer we'll come back for some cliff-jumping.

Review of Personal Development for Smart People by Steve Pavlina

2008-10-31T16:18:00.005+09:00

I first heard of Steve Pavlina when a friend referred me to his blog during his polyphasic sleep experiment. For over 150 days, Steve abandoned sleeping nights, and instead took six, twenty minute naps a day. I was immediately intrigued. And the more of his writing I read, the more I liked the message.

There are hundreds of articles on his website, all about how to grow as a person. His approach is an intriguing mix of hippie, mainstream American, and strait-up crazy person, and from my perspective, the best of each. His thinking and writing is decidedly left-brained, and he doesn’t shy away from financial or career growth issues. At the same time he eats a 100% raw-vegan diet and talks with dead people.

From no other author have I found such accessible, intelligent, practicable personal development advice, and rarely such a warm and inviting tone. So when Steve announced he was publishing a book and would offer free advance copies to bloggers who would review it, I immediatly wanted to participate. That was the original impetus to start and grow this blog, and this review is the result.

The aims of the book - Personal Development for Smart People: The Conscious Pursuit of Personal Growth - are ambitious on at least two counts:

To be sufficiently different from and superior to the hundreds of articles on his website to satisfy his massive readership (he claims two million visitors a month).

To lay out the fundamental principles of personal development.

The book is highly structured, and will probably work better for "thinkers" than for "feelers" on the MTBI T/F spectrum, which may be what Steve alludes to with his tag line “Personal Development for Smart People.”

The book is divided in two parts. The first is the seven fundamental principles of personal growth. Truth, love and power are the three primary principles. From those are derived oneness (truth + love), courage (love + power), and authority (power + truth). And the seventh is intelligence, which is defined as alignment with truth, love and power, and is the "highest form of human expression." Here’s a graphical representation:

I’m not convinced that these principles represent any sort of underlying order to personal growth, mostly because I'm unconvinced there is any such order. The three primary principles seem right to me, but the secondary ones feel forced. I’m not sure, for example, that courage is a combination of love and power. In the section on how to build courage, one of the suggestions is to educate yourself, which I agree is a great way to overcome timidity, but seems to come from the primary principle of truth, not love or power. I can also think of no compelling reason why personal growth should rest on such a neat foundation.

As a tool though, a way of thinking about and planning growth and handling life’s problems, I think this scaffolding will be valuable. Perhaps it is the neatest possible representation of an inherantly complex, chaotic pursuit.

Each of the seven principles is broken down into its key components. Truth, for example, breaks down to perception, prediction, accuracy, acceptance, and self-awareness. Each component is explained and described, and sometimes a how-to improve this component is given. On prediction, for example, he says, we grow from exposure to new patterns: when our expectations are met it reinforces our beliefs; when they are not, it forces us to build new ideas about how the world works. Thus we should seek stability and routine only as a launching pad for exploring new areas. In order to side-step denial we can bring the process into the conscious part of the mind by making conscious predictions and comparing our expectations to how reality turns out to operate. He also says that emotions are predictions: when we have negative expectations we feel bad and when we have positive expectations, we feel good. That’s just one component of one of the seven fundamental principles. I wanted to detail it to illustrate the depths the book reaches.

For each principle, he also lays out some common blocks to alignment with the principle. For truth, for example: media conditioning, social conditioning, false beliefs, emotional interference, addictions, immaturity, and secondary gain. And each block is described and explained with similar detail. As I read these, many of the obstacles to growth that I face, some of which I've been struggling for years to elucidate, become immediately clear.

Finally, for each principle, he provides several techniques for coming into better alignment. For truth, he suggests a quantitative self-evaluation in various aspects of life (the process is described in detail), journaling on a regular basis, and forgoing all media, at least for a trial period of time.

In the intelligence chapter, there are extensive quizzes and evaluative material to determine where and how you can best serve your personal growth.

The second part of the book details six primary areas of life: habits, career, money, health, relationships, and spirituality. Suggestions are offered for how to improve congruency in each area with each of the seven principles. If that sounds overwhelming, it reads as detailed and useful.

For example, in the section on habits and oneness, there is a discussion of how our habits influence others and how we might be role models to the world with them, and also how we can use habits to develop congruency with the principle of oneness, like going for long walks in nature, smiling at strangers on the street, or offering hugs instead of handshakes.

I thought there was more value in the first part of the book, and it was more fun to read than the second. When I return to the book to do the exercises suggested — which I will begin this weekend — I plan to spend more time in the first section. On the other hand, if I ever feel in need of help in a certain area of life, the organization of the second section would be of great value.

In sum, this is an excellent book and one that I will use for years to come. I fully recommend it to everyone, and especially those who prefer a rational/logical approach to complex issues (which can be hard to find in the “self help” section of a bookstore). I’m not sure that it succeeds in its most ambitious task, but it is still immensely valuable, even to someone who has read almost all of Steve Pavlina’s website.

9/10 stars.

Synchronicity

2008-10-31T11:06:00.003+09:00

One time a few years ago, my sister and I were doing the six hour drive from our parents' house in Denver to our college town, Durango. On this beautiful drive over and through the Colorado Rocky Mountains, you make one turn and stop at one stop sign, other than that, it's just keep driving southwest.

We had been driving for hours, listening to music and chatting it up as we always did about the meaning of life, or our lives or something, when our conversation slowly came to a natural stop, the album we were listening to ended, and we drove up to the single stop sign on the drive. Did a higher power intend those three things to happen at once? Was it just a coincidence, and I remember that time because it was anomalous? Did our subconsciouses notice that the song and car were slowing, causing us to slow and close our conversation?

I like when timings coincide. When after minutes of silence, two people suddenly start talking at the same time. When you can't make dinner without an onion you don't have, and then your partner comes home after stopping at the store for bread and got onions, just because they were on sale.

This seems like one of those times. Yesterday, after two months of begging for it, Melanie and I moved to Dogye, the town in which we teach. The day before that, after two and a half months of pleading for it, a Dell technician brought me a new, fully functional hard drive. And today, winter arrived in earnest in the Taebaek Mountains. So I today I have a new season, with a new home and a new computer system.

The impetus for me to start building this blog was an offer for an advance copy of a book on the condition that I review it, a review which I will post in a few hours. After that, I plan to change the focus and rhythm of this blog, and start putting more effort into two other websites I'm building. Next Wednesday, after the election, I'm starting a media fast, to free my mind from the information inundation I've been forcing upon it, and free-up a couple of hours a day, to put into yoga, guitar, and the above mentioned website building.

So things are changing, lots of things at once. And it feels great. More on the move, the book, and my various websites to come...

Wait... No... Not Quite Moving Day Yet

2008-10-29T15:04:00.006+09:00

It seems I blogged a bit too soon when I said that today was moving day.

My mistake was a common one for westerners in Korea. I assumed that plans in Korea are similar to commitments as we make them at home. That, of course, is silly. Decisions in Korea seem to be made hours, if not minutes, before important actions. Discussions and negotiations seem to be replaced by directives from above. Logic and responsibility are thrown out the window. And loud, raucous discussion is needed to sort anything that is even a hair's width outside of standard operating procedure.

Two hours before the moving was scheduled to begin we were informed that the school staff that we had been told would be helping us "with our burdens" was saying it wasn't their responsibility. That and because of the size of the refrigerator and the absence of an elevator in our new building, we would need to rent a large truck that could move the refrigerator through the large windows that are on the side of all Korean apartments. And that to operate the truck, we would need to hire two movers. So the cost will actually be 250,000 won ($173).

Following our insistance that the payment wasn't our responsibility, there was a tremendous amount of discussion, some with us, a lot without us, and finally we were told that we'd actually be moving tomorrow morning. That #4 will come to our apartment at 9:00 and that the question of cost will be settled later.

Will there be new surprises in the 18 hours before we move? It would be quite out of the mold if there weren't...

Moving Day

2008-10-29T06:47:00.003+09:00

After two months of expressing our desire to move closer to our school - to our school's administration, to the Samcheok County Education Office, to the Gangwondo EPIK Office, and finally to the head of education in Gangwondo - it's time to move from our old apartment in the 60,000 person seaside town of Samcheok to our new apartment in the 4,000 person mountain town of Dogye.

Last week we saw the apartment, which is roughly half the size and twice as old as the one we live in now. But instead of leaving at 7:40 to take an expensive, nauseating bus ride to get to school, we'll leave at 8:45 and walk down the street, and no amount of space can make up for that.

They keep telling us that the roads are going to be icy and they hope we won't hurt ourselves, and that the boiler has to stay on all the time or it will freeze and explode, and that if we are uncomfortable, they can't help us move again. Apparently, we are yet to convince them that we understand and made our decision conscoiusly. I don't think we've told them that we have both lived through Colorado winters in towns over 8,000 feet; maybe that would've helped. But after another round of what-you-might-not-like, and us agreeing to pay 70,000 won (US$48) for the move (they originally said we'd have to pay 600,000!), they expressed their satisfaction with us at their school, and we all left happy.

Monday we were told that Wednesday was moving day (I had assumed Sunday, so Wednesday is just fine with me), and yesterday we were taken to HomePlus, the local department store, to outfit our new kitchen (no more Teflon and aluminum cookware - yeah!).

Last night we frantically packed all our belongings back into the two suitcases each we brought them here in, plus a couple boxes for what we've already accumulated here. After our classes this morning (and a Dell technician coming to replace my hard drive -- busy day of many transitions), we figure the biggest men at the school will come help us get all our stuff and all the furniture 40km up the mountains to Dogye. How that will happen in a "big rental car" is so far unclear, but we just have to keep trusting and hoping that everything will work out. Speaking of which...

In our meeting on Monday, they asked if were going home for winter break (our contracts stipulate a three week vacation, which was the primary factor in choosing these positions). When I said we wanted to meet my family somewhere, they responded that right now is not a good time for booking travel (with the won's weakness there isn't a good time), but that they would tell us the dates soon, once they decided if "English Camp" would be one or three weeks. Yesterday they said it was to be one week. Which might mean that the other five weeks of vacation time are ours to be in a more hospitable place. It's too early to say for sure yet, but if true, that would more than make up for the trouble we've had so far.

Attacks in Syria, Pakistan

2008-10-27T06:50:00.004+09:00

Yesterday the U.S. killed eight people in Syria, just across the border from Iraq. Late last week, using an unpiloted plane, the U.S. killed at least eight children in Pakistan. And again yesterday, in another attack using an unpiloted plane, the U.S. killed ten people in Pakistan, at least in this one it was a militant training camp.

Eight days before the election, and the U.S. has committed what are generally considered acts of war against Pakistan and Syria. The attack in Syria was a first, and we don't know how they might respond. The attacks in Pakistan continue a sharply increasing trend, which has intensified since last week when the Pakistani Parliment unanimously passed a resolution calling on the government to "defend its sovereignty and expel foreign fighters from the region."

First of all, what are they doing attacking a school!? I don't care if it was Al Qaeda Middle School, they were children. How can people claim with a strait face that the U.S. is the primary force for good in the world? They targeted a school.

Secondly, right in lead up to the election, we're pissing off two countries that are most dangerous (Pakistan has nukes, Syria is supposedly armed by Iran), most volatile, and both of which have land disputes with critical allies of ours (Syria with Israel over the Golan Heights, Pakistan with India over Kashmir). A flare up of either of those, directly with the United States, or with our allies would be great for McCain in the election.

So why wouldn't we think that the Republicans controlling the executive are politically motivated in these actions? They've proven the moral laxness to do just about anything for political reasons time and again. Why not killing brown-skinned children?

Hopefully Syria and Pakistan, who like the rest of the world (save Al Qaeda) have an Obama presidency in the best interests, see through the tactics and restrain themselves.

***edit***
Yesterday (the 28th) Ali al-Dabbagh, the Iraqi Government Spokesman, reminded the U.S. that the Iraqi constitution disallows Iraqi land being used as a launching area for attacks on neighboring countries.

It's a tired point by now, but bares repeating: U.S. leaders talk about democracy promotion, but ignore the will of people when it doesn't serve us, as here with Iraq's constitution and a couple years ago with Hamas in Palestine.

Apartment Sutation Update

2008-10-24T06:49:00.003+09:00

When we got to Gangwon-do, we were placed in an apartment in Samcheok, about 40km from our school in Dogye. Samcheok has a population of over 50k (whereas I would guess Dogye is between 5k - 10k) and feels much more cosmopolitan, and less poor, than Dogye. It's a nice apartment, and I'm sure the administration had our best interests in mind when they chose it, but leaving at 7:40 every morning for a 4,000won bus ride to get to school at 9 just isn't what we had in mind.

So we asked the school what they could do. They said nothing. There are no apartments in Dogye, and besides it's: cold in the winter, no locks on the doors, heating is with oil and is expensive, there's too much poverty, and no cultural activities like Homeplus (the k-mart of Korea). We insisted it was where we wanted to be and after they came back to us and said that it was impossible, we started going up the chain of command asking what could be done. When we had gotten to the Director of Education for the province, we were told, at 4:55 on a Friday afternoon, that there were two places in Dogye that we could see next week. That was last Friday.

On Monday, we were taken to see one apartment that was about half the size of the one we're currently living in, and older, but fine. But it was the apartment of a mother of a student who had no plans to move. So what was available? We asked, through Kim Sun (a 24 year old female teacher who is supposed to be our translator and advocate in dealing with the bureaucracy that is numbers 1, 2, 3 & 4 at the school, all 50+ men in suits) and were repeatedly brushed off with answers like, if you say you like it, we'll contract an apartment.

We were also taken to see a "house" for which the front door entered into the bathroom. Walking strait from the front door, you entered an 8' by 10' room with a light bulb dangling from the ceiling, continuing strait you walk into the third room, 8' by 8' with crooked floors and mold growing through the wallpaper. No kitchen to be seen. So we said no to the house.

Then yesterday, on my way out of a class I was told by four different teachers to go to the teachers' room. When I got there a group of six people were talking about us (this happens a lot, we hear our names, but aren't looked at our attempted to communicate with), and eventually we got a "let's go." So we drove (up a hill that couldn't have been less than 10% and might have been pushing 15%) to an apartment that was also small, but fine. Nicer than the one we had seen the other day, with amazing views. Dogye is high up in the Taebaek Mountain Range, and we're going to be living high up in Dogye.

The apartment is surrounded by wild mountains, has massive windows and sunflowers painted on the wall by the entrance. It's small, but it's clean and feels good. And it's heated by gas, which will avert $400/month heating costs in the winter. And there's a lock on the door. ;)

So we left the apartment feeling great and were dropped off at school, at which point two admin went with the realtor, we could only assume to sign papers. Then in my next class, with Kim Sun, I was told that we could move anytime we wanted next week, and we will have to pay the moving costs. How much? About 600,000 won (~$450). At this I became visibly upset, the first time that's happened so far. I think I probably spoke too fast and hurt Kim Sun's head, but by that afternoon we were told that it had been taken care of and we wouldn't have to pay. You can't blame them for trying. Wait, yes, you can, and I do.

So we're almost done with this drama. The next task will be explaining that we can't possibly take all this furniture to that little apartment. The huge TV that's currently in a closet here can't come with us... I hope they have somewhere to take it. I had thought of asking for a travel reimbursement for the two months we did this crazy commute, but at this point I think I'll just settle for it being done.

Today is pay day #2. Both of our paychecks had errors last month... we'll see if that's been taken care of now, or if we'll have to beat our heads against the bureaucracy for that too. Either way, the won is trading at 1,400 to the dollar, fully a third less than when we decided to come here, and it's time for me to make a transfer to dollars. Yikes.

Voting from South Korea

2008-10-23T06:48:00.004+09:00

A couple of days ago, I sent in my absentee ballot - which I think ought to be renamed... can you think of one positive or even neutral phrase with the word absentee in it? All day after I mailed it, I had a Paul Simon line running through my head: "I registered to vote today, felt like fool."

It was expensive to vote from Korea. 16,500 won (US$11.60 today, because the won has been getting beaten on for a while now) for each of two mailings, but at least they could be split with Melanie and mailed together.

The Boulder County Clerks Office was on it. They answered our questions by email, helped with foreign addressing, and we can check if our votes have been counted online.

The whole transaction took a little over a month, with us shelling out for 3 - 4 day mailings each time. Because of an earliest date for requesting ballots, it's unclear whether we could have used surface mail. But at least we have a reliable public postal system here. In less developed countries, folks have to pay up for a private courier each time, which would get very expensive. I stumbled upon a suggestion to use the army's mailing system for all official election correspondence - seems like a good idea to me.

To the actual voting. I think my subconscious was calling me a fool because I voted strait down the party line. I like to think of myself as a critical thinking, independent, well-informed citizen. And in this, my most important civic duty, I could have just copied off the Boulder County Dem's cheat sheet.

I'm not at all embarrassed to have voted for Barrack Obama. I was a little bit with Kerry in '04, and I stand by my Nader vote (in Colorado) in 2000. As Noam Chomsky notes, despite the cliche, voting for the lesser of two evils is in fact voting for less evil, and the decision to do that should be balanced against the potential benefits of voting for a third-party candidate.

I am a little embarrassed to have voted for Mark Udall for the Senate. He's a Democrat that has been representing my congressional district for almost a decade. The Colorado 2nd is one of the most liberal districts in the country, and I would have liked to have seen more fierce advocacy on the environmental front and the stand-up-to-President-Bush front. But, I'd love to see the Democrats achieve a filibuster-proof majority (60-40) and push some real legislation through. I think there is some real chance for reform in the coming terms. And I'm not sure the legislative branch is the place for third party support - it seems a third party executive would be much more powerful.

On the amendments, I struggle with affirmative action and so was tempted to vote yes on amendment 46. I think it's the wrong way to right historical and contemporary racism. But it doesn't need to be banned in the constitution. And what really got me is this argument: we all know that many jobs are gotten by networking - who you know, rather than what you know. That tact doesn't work for someone with poor parents, who is striving to enter a new societal stratification. Affirmative action works to counter-act the old-(white)-boys club that clearly still dominates the sphere of power in the United States.

I wanted to vote for amendment 50, not so much on any ideology, but that I still play a bit of poker, and poker with $5 bet limits is a little like fat-free ice cream. But I find deplorable the political maneuvering that led to the increased revenues from increased betting limits going to community colleges (they should be funded, massively, but strait-away, not through this obvious political scheme). Highway 6, a two lane road up one of the most beautiful canyons I've even seen has become an accident magnet, and the new highway built to connect I-70 to the casino towns is a scar a top otherwise pristine mountains, save the new suburban-style subdivisions built there in the middle of nowhere. And as much as I'd like to be able to play real poker an 45 minutes from Boulder, it's just not worth having Atlantic City 45 minutes from my home.

Finally, my favorite amendment, 53 - criminal liability of executives for the actions of corporations - was withdrawn in order to get a group of influential business-owners to oppose an anti-union amendment elsewhere on the ballot. I nevertheless shaded in the yes box and quietly dreamed of a day when business will have no more power, no more wiggle room, and no less culpability than do us sentient beings.

Why Obama Supporters Can't Afford to Rest

2008-10-22T07:43:00.003+09:00

It's weird being abroad in the lead up to the election. I'm still connected to the US media, but only the media sources I deliberately choose. When you're in the US, you see headlines as you walk down the street, watch CNN as you wait for your teller at the bank and you hear people talking.

I get the sense that the feeling at home is that Obama has the election all but wrapped up. And with good reason - Obama has an real and steady lead, McCain's unfavorables are high and rising (and Palin's are worse) and Obama raised more money in the last month than McCain has had to spend in the entire campaign.

Nevertheless, I think the sentiment is dangerous. So when MoveOn sent out an email yesterday asking anyone with a blog to spell out some reasons why Obama supporters shouldn't be resting easy, I thought, yes I'd be happy to be your tool.

So here are six reasons why it's time to quiet the "it's in the bag" talk and get back to work:

1. The polls could be off. Many pundits are discounting the idea that voters may be disinclined to tell pollsters they're against Obama for fear of being perceived as racist. We've never had a national referendum on a black man before. No one knows what effect race may have on election day, but it absolutely could still be a factor.

2. Electioneering. Remember Ohio in 2004? Remember 2000? Wonder why Republicans are talking so much about ACORN? Voter suppression efforts have begun already, and the new requirement for a state-issued ID will make them much more effective than in the past. Note: 1/5 black people in the US don't have a state issued ID.

3. Obama's demographic. Lots of factors affect who shows up on election day and who stays home. Much of Obama's base is young and/or poor first time voters - folks that could easily stay home on election day under the impression that the contest was in the bag.

4. October surprise. For the last month or two, I've felt like the Bush Administration (I originally wrote "we" - ha!) has been trying to pick a fight with Pakistan or Venezuela/Bolivia. Anything like that, a terrorist attack, good news from Iraq or the bin Laden front would give McCain a huge bump.

5. Things change in the final weeks. Al Gore was seven points down just days before the 2000 election and went on to win the popular vote, in 1980 Regan was eight points down in late October. Almost all of the presidential contests in the last forty years have tightened in the final days. This one will too.

6. Margin matters. Political capital is earned in margins of victories. If Obama is at 353 today, getting to 380 means he could do more to get the country on the right track once in office. His efforts also help Democrats running for Congress, which I think has something to do with implementation of policy too.

So keep doing what you're doing. Spread the word that it's not over until, as my father taught me, the fat lady sings. And for the love of your country - vote!

Tomorrow, I'll discuss my experience voting from 6,000 miles away...

What Should Be & What Is

2008-10-20T22:25:00.004+09:00

"The preoccupation with what should be is estimable only when the respect for what is has been exhausted."

Suppose we substitute "concern" or some other more benign word for "preoccupation," what do you think of the idea?

I read it this afternoon and it has since proven to be a tough thought to shake. I'll explain the context in which it came up and some of my thoughts on it soon. But I'm interested to hear what anyone who is reading this might think about it...

Election Prediction

2008-10-20T06:54:00.004+09:00

Popular vote: 50% Obama, 48% McCain.

I hope I'm off on this. I hope momentum keeps building for Obama and he ends up with 350+ electors. But I think it will tighten. We'll see if before November 4th they can find bin Laden or goad Pakistan into a war. And we'll see just how badly they can suppress poor and black voters.

Anyway, this is my prediction. I'm happy to accept wagers.....

Review of Into Thin Air by Jon Krakauer

2008-10-19T10:14:00.004+09:00

I picked up this book - about an attempt to summit Mt. Everest gone horribly wrong - while in the middle of two non-fiction books. I wanted a story to read before bed one night and figured I'd read a bit and then put it down until some more convenient time. But Krakauer's writing has tremendous gravity - I find it very difficult to put down. After three days of reading before bed, on the bus and between classes, I had finished it. For those three days, I felt like I was part of an Everest expedition.

I should have seen it coming. I remember when I was given Into the Wild, Krakauer's story of recent Emory Univeresity graduate Chris McCandless running away from society and into the Alaskan wilderness. I read that with a similar voraciousness, and then read it again, and then again.

I think the draw is largely in the subject matter - I identified strongly with McCandless in my college years, and I find it easy now to identify with Krakauer and the tourist-come-climbers in Into Thin Air. Even more alluring though is Krakauer's writing style.

Krakauer writes in a very compelling manner. His ability to put the reader in situations far from anything we've experienced is second-to-none. While reading, I felt a part of the climb, as though I were on the mountain struggling to breathe the thin air while ascending the Lhotse Face against gale-force winds.

The story started as an assignment from Outside magazine to cover the commercial expeditions that guide clients up Everest in increasing numbers each year. It is a controversial subject, and one that landed square in the lime light after the tragedy described in Into Thin Air.

Krakauer travels to Everest with Adventure Consultants, the pre-eminent high alpine guiding company (and at $65,000 by far the most expensive). The group is led by Rob Hall, among the world's most accomplished climbers and guides. At the time they began, there were over a dozen groups on the mountain, ranging from outfits as tight as Rob's to a team shooting an IMAX movie to a solo Swede who had traveled from Stockholm to Everest entirely under his own power (on a bike to Kathmandu, then walking) to groups at best marginally qualified. Many mused early on that the lack of high alpine experience among climbers could cause trouble high on the mountain.

Krakauer does a marvelous job of describing the process of climbing Everest. The reader feels what it might be like to cross the massive crevasses of a glacier's fall out on lashed-together aluminum ladders in mountaineering boots and crampons; how it might feel to breathe air with just a third the oxygen we are used to; and what it's like to enter into a situation in which you know your life is on the line under a hired leader with other clients whose abilities you don't necessarily trust.

The bulk of the book takes place on "summit day," May 10, 1996, when 34 climbers, guides and Sherpas departed from 26,000 feet just after midnight to try to reach the top of the world. Krakauer aims for an objective journalist's reporting of the facts and analysis of the causes of the tragedy, and he does an admirable job for someone so deeply involved in the events.

In the end the book pulls off a rather amazing feat: it represents an objective journalistic account of an event, and at the same time an emotive, evocative narrative of one man's experience of an incredible situation.

If you have any interest in mountaineering and Everest, the limits of human potential, or group dynamics in high intensity situations, I would unhesitatingly recommend this book. It is also just a fine read.

10/10 stars.

What if... ?

2008-10-17T06:14:00.004+09:00

I got an email from my uncle this morning that does a nice job providing a fresh perspective on the qualifications and character history of the Obamas and the McCains. Maybe you know someone who needs to see this?

I think the double standard arises less, though not negligibly, out of racism, as the message portends. I think it grows more out of the treatment the two parties receive from the press, the way the two party's political operatives do their jobs (as I wrote about a couple days ago), and the sorts of people who, generally, support each party. For evidence of that, just look at the perception of the military service of Senator Kerry and President Bush in the 2004 campaign.

Anyway, here's the message. I'm curious, what do you all think -- is it racism or is it political affiliation-ism?

~~~

What if the Obamas had paraded five children across the stage, including a three month old infant and an unwed, pregnant teenage daughter?

What if John McCain was a former president of the Harvard Law Review?

What if Barack Obama finished fifth from the bottom of his graduating class?

What if McCain had only married once, and Obama was a divorcee?

What if Obama was the candidate who left his first wife after a severe disfiguring car accident?

What if Obama had met his second wife in a bar and had a long affair while he was still married?

What if Michelle Obama was the wife who not only became addicted to pain killers but also acquired them illegally through her charitable organization?

What if Cindy McCain graduated from Harvard?

What if Obama had been a member of the Keating Five? (The Keating Five were five United States Senators accused of corruption in 1989, igniting a major political scandal as part of the larger Savings and Loan crisis of the late 1980s and early 1990s.)

What if McCain was a charismatic, eloquent speaker?

What if Obama couldn't read from a teleprompter?

What if Obama was the one who had military experience that included discipline problems and a record of crashing seven planes?

What if Obama was the one who was known to display publicly, on many occasions, a serious anger management problem?

What if Michelle Obama's family had made their money from beer distribution?

What if the Obamas had adopted a white child?

You could easily add to this list. If these questions reflected reality, do you really believe the election numbers would be as close as they are?

This is what racism does. It covers up, rationalizes and minimizes positive qualities in one candidate and emphasizes negative qualities in another when there is a color difference.

Educational Background:

Barack Obama:
Columbia University - B.A. Political Science with a Specialization in International Relations.
Harvard - Juris Doctor (J.D.) Magna Cu m Laude

Joseph Biden:
University of Delaware - B.A. in History and B.A. in Political Science.
Syracuse University College of Law - Juris Doctor (J.D.)

vs.

John McCain:
United States Naval Acade my - Class rank: 894 of 899

Sarah Palin:

Hawaii Pacific University - 1 semester
North Idaho College - 2 semesters - general study
University of Idaho - 2 semesters - journalism
Matanuska-Susitna College - 1 semester
University of Idaho - 3 semesters - B.A. in Journalism

Education isn't everything, but this is about the two highest offices in the land as well as our standing in the world. You make the call.

"Brain-Machine Interface"

2008-10-16T07:12:00.002+09:00

Scientists in the US have announced a technology that connects the brain to muscles via an electronic gadget. In temporarily paralyzed monkeys, the gadget enabled contraction of arm muscles. The hope is that eventually a similar device would allow para- and quadri-plegic patients to use the limbs they had lost control of. Of course, that sort of treatment is a long-way off, and even further off is signal transmission in the other direction - from the limb to the brain, which is tremendously more complicated. But it's exciting news, isn't it?

The thing with biotechnology is, all progress that is exciting, and especially progress that points to treatment for conditions formerly deemed untreatable, also takes us closer to a hybridization of humanity and technology that most of us find repulsive on an intuitive level.

For example, suppose we had the technology to eliminate a disease such as sudden infant death syndrome (which is basically what the name suggests... apparently healthy babies, usually in their first year, suddenly die), or any other disease you'd hate to bare a child with. One way that might work is to examine the genetics present in several of the mother's eggs, choose one that is free of the gene responsible for the disease, then fertilize and implant that egg. If that technology were developed, we could effectively eliminate any hereditary condition in a generation. Putting aside the question of value in "disease" (have you hung out with a child with Down Syndrome recently?), the same technology opens the door to selecting for any other trait parents might want or not want. In China, where parents are allowed to have only one child, there are currently 1.11 boys born for every girl, probably as the result of selective abortion. It gets pretty freaky pretty fast from there.

Similarly with this technology... in this proof-of-concept study, the monkey's brain was connected to the electronics, which was connected to their arm. What would prevent researchers from connecting one monkey's brain to another monkey's arm? What if we went strait from a computer to the arm? As the technology gets to the point of providing feedback to the brain (which would probably be necessary for any sort of fine motor movement), well, you can use your imagination.

Such is the paradox of technology. The further we develop, seemingly always with the best intentions (ok, sometimes just with the intention of profit), the further we remove ourselves from our humanity.

Rachel Maddow and the difference between FOXNews and MSNBC

2008-10-15T06:36:00.004+09:00

What's the difference between Rachel Maddow and Keith Olbermann as opposed to Sean Hanity and Brit Hume? Rachel Maddow nails it in this interview with former Bush speechwriter, David Frum.

Frum comes on Maddow's show to say that the attacks coming from the McCain camp are hurting the country, and by the way, your show, Rachel, is doing the same thing. In the ensuing discourse it becomes clear, to those who weren't sure of it already, that Rachel Maddow is a heavyweight. She stays calm, holds her ground, stays on topic and embarrasses Frum (look for his downcast eyes - he knows he's beat).

But this discussion highlights a bigger, maybe the predominant, trend in today's national politics, especially since 2000. Democrats attack Republicans on issues of policy, experience and competence. Republicans, needing a response, and unwilling as always to defend themselves (After Katrina: "We're not going to play a blame game;" in the financial crisis: "When the house is on fire, you don't want to talk about how it was set."), have to find a way to counter-attack. Since, for the most part, they can't attack on policy matters, both because they've been doing such a crappy job and because the Democrats have been in opposition, they have to resort to personal attacks.

There are legitimate different approaches to policy between the Dem's and the GOP (the role of military force, the allotment of power to federal, state and local governments, etc.), and we see some discussion of them between the campaigns (albeit more from the Obama camp). When personal attacks are made, the Democrats, and Olbermann and Maddow, point to personal shortcomings that are relevant to the capacity to lead (involvement in political scandals, temper, competence), where Republicans and their supporters in the media seem to be simply grasping for any mud they can find (Clinton's voice makes men's balls shrivel, Obama is a terrorist), because it's all they can do right now.

School Meetings & Loving Kindness

2008-10-14T06:13:00.005+09:00

The administration at our school decided yesterday that we ought to be present for weekly meetings. I think these sorts of meetings, all the teachers and most of the admin, 4:30 - 5:00 on Monday afternoons, are quite common in Korean public schools, and if memory serves, I think it was stipulated in our Gangwon-do EPIK contracts that we must attend staff meetings. We had been excused from them for the last few weeks though, presumably on the grounds that we couldn't understand anything that was said during them, but I think the actual cause was a lack of chairs in the teachers' room, since the onus for reintroducing us seemed to be the delivery of two new chairs to the teachers' room.

So what do you do in a 30 minute meeting when you can't understand anything that's said? Probably much the same things you do in a 30 minute meeting when you can understand everything that's said.

I studied Korean fashion a bit. The three administrators sitting in front of us (#'s 1, 2 and 3, naturally) were wearing ties that were, respectively, pink with a red-white-green candy cane pattern, peach with a thick plaid pattern that could put my 1990's flannel shirts to shame, and purple with what seemed to be liberally applied glitter all over it.

After the fashion inquiry, I noticed there were exactly the same number of teachers wearing glasses and not wearing glasses, I memorized the days the week from the agenda (il, wul, hwa, su, mog, geum, to), and then did some loving-kindness meditation. This is something I learned in Vipassana courses as metta meditation, and had fallen out of the habit of doing since I last left Korea, but having come back to it, I just have to share it with you... it is almost magically powerful.

I simply look at a person and think some variant of 'we are of the same source, I feel deep love and compassion for you and wish for blessings in your life.' At the same time, I try to energetically open my heart to the person, which may sound pretty woowoo, but I suspect if you try it, you'll see that it's not so strange or difficult. When I do this, I notice a number of things, first I do feel a deep love for and connection with the individual I'm focused on, secondly I feel a deep peace and happiness come over me (The first time I did this was on a subway in Korea 2.5 years ago. I remember thinking that I had somehow cheated the emotional circuitry in my brain, because it couldn't possibly be that easy to be so deeply happy). Finally, I also notice that the body language of those surrounding me frequently opens toward me, probably as a result of changes in my body language, though I'm not yet ready to rule out a direct-mental communication that tips people off to my loving intentions. And if that sounds a lot woowoo, well sure, fine. But take fifteen seconds during your next meeting and try this, I think you'll be pleasantly surprised with the results.

The Trials of Living Abroad

2008-10-13T06:10:00.002+09:00

Life in rural Korea, in Samcheok, Gangwon-do, is hard. It's often frustratingly hard in surprising ways, and at the same time, it's often pleasantly easy in surprising places as well.

When I'm feeling frustrated by the difficulties, I often think of two groups in similar, but strikingly different situations. One are immigrants to the United States, especially Latinos, who come in as an economic underclass facing massive discrimination. In contrast, we are flown here, given apartments, paid well, and put in professional positions of respect. On top of that, our native culture is highly regarded, if not worshiped, by Koreans. I can't imagine struggling with everything we do here, and adding to that discrimination, economic hardship, and, for some, the constant anxiety of being perpetually vulnerable to arrest.

The other situation I frequently contrast against my own is those that lived in Korea, or any alien culture, ten, twenty or a hundred years ago. Today, I read the same media as I did at home in the morning and watch the same Daily Show at night. I can talk to my parents, or even video conference, at the push of a button with Skype. There are myriad websites, in English, to guide me, both literally and figuratively, through this strange land. I can get Chickpeas in Seoul and Turkish food in Busan. I could probably even order food from home if it got to that point.

Don't get me wrong, I do miss Triscuts, and it is still a massive pain in the ass to do something as simple as taking a bus (we tried and failed to get to a certain valley for a hike on Saturday... we got instructions from a reasonably-competent-at-English tourist kiosk, but when we got off the first bus at Donghae hyoga sa guri, the second bus to Mureung just wasn't there. What went wrong? How could we possibly know that?). There is precious little to normalize one's self to here, and it is deeply exhausting to be immersed in a foreign culture and foreign language for over 8 hours a day. I've noticed that lately I'm getting self-conscious about being hairy, something Koreans are conspicuously not.

But the things that really hurt are the goings-on at home that I'll have to miss for being so far away. I few weeks ago, I was backing up pictures and came across some videos my family had made last Christmas when we did an Iron Chef style cooking contest. I can eat double Triscuts in 2010 to make up for this year (and I will), but you only get so many Christmases, and it's mildly heart breaking to realize just what you're missing.

Yesterday, I got a pre-invitation to the wedding of one of my best friends from high school, and my first close male friend to be getting married. It's on a Friday next July, and all other obstacles aside, since I don't have any flexible vacation time, it's logistically impossible for me to get there. I once snuck out of a meditation retreat two days early to go to this guy's college graduation party, and now I'm going to miss the biggest celebration in his life. There are so many things from home I can download or mail order, but the people that are dear to me keep living their lives, and I miss a little bit of them every day I'm away.

I suppose the obvious retort to that is that I make new friends and gain new experiences here that I would otherwise miss, and that's true, and I think on balance, it's a good deal for me. But it's hard to know that friends' once-in-a-lifetime celebrations and those family gatherings that are the cornerstone of what makes living life so precious are being missed.

---

ps. That was a lot of sentimentalism. If you missed it, I posted some Korean drumming from The 2008 Seoul Drumming Festival, but it never showed up at the top of the blog. It's here.

3 Pictures, No Theme

2008-10-12T10:13:00.005+09:00

If Korea's economy is slowing (and it is), no one seems to have told the shoppers this E-Mart, a large department store, in Donghae.

"King of the Beetles." Certainly the weirdest video game I've seen to date.

Dinner. In my waxing omnivorism, this was the first time I've bought a fish from a store and prepared it myself in Korea. At the store, I pointed to a healthy looking fish, and (thankfully) a nice young man took it behind the counter and de-headed and de-gutted it for me. I was surprised to learn that the fish was priced by the fish, as opposed to by the weight. And at 2,400won (currently about $1.85) it was quite the deal. I think I'll be doing this more often. We made ssambap - lettuce wraps filled with rice, fish, vegetables and a fermented soybean and chili paste. I gotta say, for my first time frying fish, I think I did darn fine job of it.

Martial Law and Posse Comitatus

2008-10-10T06:57:00.004+09:00

The Army recently announced that the 3rd Infantry Division’s 1st Brigade Combat Team - which has spent 3 of the last 5 years on active duty in Iraq, including participating in the Battle of Fallujah - will be stationed on U.S. soil "as an on-call federal response force for natural or manmade emergencies and disasters... They may be called upon to help with civil unrest and crowd control" (Army Times, 9/30/08).

Add to that the John Warner Defense Authorization Act of 2007, which gives the President the ability to deploy troops domestically, basically whenever he determines they're needed to maintain order (note: that act expired this year, but Still-President Bush issued a signing order declaring he was not bound by its repeal).

Add to that the economic crisis ("manmade emergency?") and the upcoming election, and it starts to look like the stage is set for martial law. I've long had suspicions about the succession of President Bush. I have a deep fear that come hell or high water, the cabal that has been running the country for eight years is going to find a way to continue running it.

Speaking of martial law, check out the comments of Rep. Brad Sherman (D-CA), on the recent bailout bill: "The only way they can pass this bill is by creating and sustaining a panic atmosphere. That atmosphere is not justified. Many of us were told in private conversations that if we voted against this bill on Monday that the sky would fall, the market would drop two or three thousand points the first day, another couple of thousand the second day, and a few members were even told that there would be martial law in America if we voted no."

US Congresspeople were threatened with martial law. The Posse Comitatus Act of 1878 is dead. And taxpayer money continues to be given to the largest corporations in the country. Will there come a time when we apply the label fascist to the United States Government?

The Dirty Things Koreans Say

2008-10-09T15:49:00.004+09:00

My three favorite utterances thus far...

"I will ride you after work."
- My ever-so-sweet, 24 year old co-teacher, Kim Sun, trying to offer a ride home.

(to Melanie) - "Does Michael do good things to you?"
- Tom Cruise (a teacher so-named for his handsomeness and cool, detached demeanor), I hope asking about my kindness and not in the spirit of Springsteen's "does he do to you the things that I do?"

"I want to do the piano."
- A rambunctious 6th grade boy expressing the trials of puberty.

I've taken a pay cut of 25%

2008-10-08T05:24:00.005+09:00

The numbers on the left of the graph show how many won are needed to "buy" a US Dollar.

It just keeps getting worse and worse and worse. Our salaries have become worth fully a quarter less since we signed our contracts at the end of July.

When the exchange rate was bouncing around near 1,100 a few weeks ago, I wasn't really worried. I figure there's some volatility in these things, but they tend to be cyclic, and there must be psychological ties to the 1,000-to-1 exchange (there certainly are for those of us who live here, many of whom quote prices in dollars; eg. a 3,500 won bus fare is spoken of as $3.50 (though it's now more like $2.50)). But now, this is starting to freak me out. The ROI from a year in Korea is a lot less with the exchange rate at 1,350:1 than at 900:1 (where it was last time I traded won for dollars). I still think I'm right about the psychological ties to 1,000-to-1, I think it will return to that neighborhood... the questions is, will I be here long enough to see that return, and if not, how long can I wait before "cashing out" my won?

***edit***
I just saw that the Dow lost 500 points yesterday and is now below 9,500. And unemployment in the U.S. is over 6%. I still have a job, and I haven't lost any value in savings. To those who have lost jobs or are nearing retirement and wondering if it will be possible, I'm sorry. There's always a job teaching English in South Korea waiting for you.

Seoul Drum Festival Videos

2008-10-07T07:23:00.008+09:00

As promised, here are some videos from the 2008 Seoul Drumming Festival.

Hae Gum (Korean traditional stringed instrument) and drums. (1:10)

Drumming with multiple drumsticks and elegant dancers. (1:18)

What goes together better than fire and drums? (2:50)

And the finale. Dae Han Min Gook means South Korea... that's what the crowd is chanting. (0:52)

Seoul Trip

2008-10-06T06:01:00.012+09:00

Judging by what we lugged back, our trip to Seoul was a great success. We came home with a kilo of oatmeal and four of chickpeas, along with enough tahini to make hummus of all of it. We got lentils and spices galore and coconut milk and baking soda. We got guitars, each; paper lamps, each; and some nice artwork for our apartment's barren walls. Pictures of the booty later, for now here are a few from the trip, which was great fun in itself. Six of us went together, and we quickly found over a dozen others that had come from Gangwon-do, land of nature and quiet, to Seoul, the promised land of foreign food and nightlife, for the three-day weekend.

Our home for the weekend - the Golden Pond Hostel in Haehwa, Seoul - a nice clean place with internet and English-speaking staff. Not far from the action (Itaewon, Dongdaemun, Insadong) but on a subway line that made for a lot of transferring between trains.

Just down the street from our hostel, David poses in front of what must be a big draw for this movie theater. As an aside, Korea is so short on land that everything tends to be built vertically. Next to Gandolff is a box office, above that concession stands and six theaters stacked on top of themselves. After you buy your tickets in a Korean theater, you get on a (usually very crowded) elevator to get to your show.

Melanie lost in a sea of guitars at the Nagwon Arcade. There must have been over a thousand guitars in this shopping center, along with hundreds of pianos, woodwinds, and strings. How do you choose a guitar when there are a thousand at two dozen shops to choose from?

Many of the venders were just reselling goods made in China or Indonesia (I picked up a Korean-made acoustic electric, a "Mass," that I'm very happy with), but some, like this guy working on a flute, made studios of their little shops.

Breakfast! Itaewon - the foreigner district - was like heaven for all of us. We started off with an Indian buffet that had me moaning through the meal. This is Saturday's breakfast at the "Flying Pan" (pretty clever - Asians can't differentially pronounce R & L, so frying sounds like flying), which was soon followed with some Middle Eastern fare. After six weeks of kimchi, it's hard to explain how good this all tasted, though I suppose the smiles on our faces are something of a give-away.

This is in the subway. The superiority of Korean technology, and the integration and availability of it, never fails to amaze me. This woman is watching TV on a portable television, and she's doing it in the subway! What's most amazing about this to me though, is that the TV uses an old-school antenna, like the ones we had on our black and white TVs before cable was ubiquitous. Who would've guessed that that would be whats needed to watch TV on a moving train 80 feet under the earth?

My favorite shop in all of Korea.

When the others decided to go to the fashion district for some shopping Saturday night, Melanie and I broke off and headed for Seoul Forest and the 2008 Seoul Drum Festival. We got there a little late, but were impressed both by the festival, and by Seoul Forest - a nice, big park in a city that doesn't have a lot of them. Videos to come later.

I don't think this means what he thinks it means! I know articles are tough when your first language doesn't use them, but if you're printing thousands of copies of something to sell, don't you think you'd find someone to proof read it? Then again, for Koreans, all that seems to matter is that it has what appears to be English on it.

Finally, here's a 20-second video taken just off the main street in Insadong, the traditional-arts district in Seoul.

Random Pictures

2008-10-03T12:41:00.005+09:00

Today is "Sky Opening Day" in Korea, which celebrates the founding of the Korean World and something about a bear eating mugwart and mating with a God. When I asked my 5th grade students what it was, they got right to the point: "red day!" The date is colored red on calendars to indicate that official business, including schools, are closed.

So Melanie and I and some friends are off to Seoul for the long weekend for guitars and Indian food and enough chickpeas and tahini to last through the winter. So I won't be posting a few days and thought I'd leave you with a few pictures. In no particular order, nor with any sense of cohesion...

A home just across the river from the very rural school I teach at on Tuesdays. Looks like an orange tree, doesn't it? But...

A close-up of the fruit on the tree in the previous picture. To the first person that can identify this mystery fruit, I'll send you a prize package of kimchi chocolate.

Say what you will about Korea, they get sustainability here. Selective logging -- keep the forests, reduce the fire danger, create jobs for loggers and get the timber. Down side? Lower profits for logging companies. Another upside? There will still be forests in 50 years, so there might still be logging companies in 50 years.

Korean kids at play at one of our school's several playgrounds.

Spectacular cairns marking a trailhead.

This hive was at least as big as a basketball, and the wasp-like creatures as big as my thumbs. Thankfully not too aggressive though.

And the thing that keeps me sane here -- a lovely girlfriend that makes amazing Mexican food.

Goal Reached

2008-10-02T06:41:00.005+09:00

I just got word that I'm getting a free copy of Steve Pavlina's new book. When I started this blog a month ago, my first goal was to get to "a non-embarrassing level of readership" within a month, so that I could take part in Steve's offer of a free copy of the book in exchange for a review on the blog. I'd like genuinely thank all of you who have been reading and helped me reach my goal.

It has been empowering to watch readership and Google rankings for this blog grow. This blog now ranks on the first page of Google's results for many searches that include gangwon-do. As we've been (still) negotiating for an apartment closer to our school, I've felt quite confident knowing that I have this as leverage -- whichever way it turns out, every prospective teacher that does a modicum of research on the program will read about my experience. With a platform like this, I suddenly feel like the esteemed food critic sitting down at a fine restaurant while the kitchen staff goes into overdrive to get his dish just right.

More than that, I've had a long-term goal of building a stream of passive income through websites. This site isn't that, but it's reassuring to know that my writing does well over this medium, and that people will choose to visit a site that I've written. It makes that dream feel more attainable.

So it's worth repeating: thank you for reading.

I'm excited to read and review the book. I love Steve Pavlina's blog for personal development advice and inspiration. If you're not familiar with it, it's definitely worth having a look. And, no that plug was not a part of the book deal. ;^>

Won Continues to Decline

2008-10-01T07:08:00.004+09:00

Today the won has crossed the 1200 to 1 barrier. Our salaries have declined in value nearly 20% since we arrived in Korea one month ago, and even more since we decided to come here. This graph shows how many won it takes to buy a US dollar, over the period that we've been in Korea.

Every time there is bad news from the US markets, the won drops further. On the rare occasion that there is good news, it climbs back up a bit. Whatever happens in the US, I think the won will rebound. The fundamentals of the South Korean economy are sound. If, as John McCain says, American workers are the most productive in the world, Koreans are the hardest working. The average Korean works almost 2,400 hours a year, a full third more than the average American. A comparison of the time children spend studying is even more lopsided.

America is geopolitcally blessed, and South Korea is in a tough spot - no significant natural resources and cut off from Eurasia by North Korea - but the work ethic here will never fail to drive the economy. South Korea is perhaps the only country in the 20th century to have moved from the third-world to first, certainly the only one outside of Europe. If you doubt the resilience of the Korean economy, just look at what happened after the financial crisis and subsequent IMF-imposed disaster of 1997. South Korea will be fine, stronger than ever soon. The question is, will I stay here long enough for the exchange rate to move back in my favor?

Sports Day at the Dwarf School

2008-09-30T17:43:00.007+09:00

I just got home from "Sports Day" at Sindong Chodeung Hakkyo, the 25-student elementary school I go to on Tuesdays. It reminded me of field day from my elementary school days, but it was a much bigger production. I'll let the pictures do the story telling...

The school (for 25 students!) was all done up when I got there this morning.

Meet the student body of Sin Dong Elementary School. The other twelve are kindergarteners... most of the pictures that follow are of the littler ones because they're infinitely cuter.

The neighborhood old folks came out to watch, but were made to squat under the hot sun in the play ground. Meanwhile...

The elite old men, including the headmaster of my other school, sat covered, in their finest suits with flowers and candies and a cute teacher to serve them tea and coffee.

The kids ran regular races...

And funny races...

That involved hands-free popping of balloons...

And hands-free eating of lollipops in powdered sugar.

There were blind monster races...

And races for the elite old men...

And even games for the poor old women.

I don't know why this kid was so angry.

Or how this kid was so cute.

Eventually the kids dawned traditional Korean clothing and did a story-dance that seemed to be about courtship.

And there was even face painting for me, to reveal my duel loyalties.

But the highlight of the day was the elementary school kids, in their best traditional clothes, playing their hearts out on their traditional Korean instruments. Here's a 30 second video of it.

Happy Birthday Mom

2008-09-29T19:59:00.003+09:00

Mom and I just off the 14,265 foot summit of Quandary Peak near Breckenridge, Colorado.

I love you Mom.

Video Tour - Korean Gardens, Neighborhood & Apartment

2008-09-28T11:40:00.006+09:00

Since a picture is worth a thousand words and my camera shoots video at 30 frames per second, I thought I'd go ahead and take care of a couple months worth of blogging by shooting some video. Actually, I was walking home yesterday and thought the gardens were particularly beautiful this time of year, and thought it would be interesting to show how pretty and ubiquitous they are to everyone back home.

That got me to thinking about the power of video, and what people pondering a move to Korea, especially to Gangwon-do, and especially especially people considering coming to Gangwon-do to teach with EPIK, might want to see. So I put together three little video tours that might be of interest.

The first is a walk through of a few of the gardens in our neighborhood, in Samcheok City, Gangwon Province, South Korea.

The second is a more of the neighborhood - apartments and shops and quick tours of neighborhood kimbap place (a quick, cheap restaurant with stuff like mixed rice and vegetables, noodle soups, sushi-like rolls, etc.) and the grocery store.

And the last one is a quick glance at the apartment EPIK Gangwon-do provided for us, which, from what I've seen, is typical for a native-English-speaking couple teaching in public schools in Gangwon-do, and a look around from the roof. I hope you'll forgive me for not zooming out for the sign-off... it does provide a nice view of my kkeun kko (big nose), which by Korean standards is a major asset. ;)

Best Fire Escape Ever!

2008-09-25T21:29:00.004+09:00

If you had to get ninety kindergarteners out of a smokey, burning building, would you rather they all run down some steep, rusted, iron stairway, or slide down a colorful plastic twirly slide? Brilliant.

Review of Culture Jam by Kalle Lasn

2008-09-24T21:39:00.002+09:00

Kalle Lasn is the Chief Editor of the magazine Adbusters, which I've read as regularly as any other over the past five years. Adbusters central tenet is that corporations manipulate us to consume via marketing, and that process is destroying us psychologically, socially and ecologically.

The book is no different. For much of it I felt I was reading the same ideas that have been recycled through Adbusters over the years, perhaps because Culture Jam was published in 2001. The exploration in the book is more linear and more fact-based, where the magazine tends to offer a more right-brain experience, but the ideas are largely the same. Where the book differs, and where I found real value in it, was in the exploration of what Lasn thinks ought to be done.

He begins with an overview of what's wrong. For those whose are in the know about these things already, what he describes is what's expected, though the statistics are often shocking. For example, “worldwide rates of major depression in every age group have risen steadily since the 1940s... [and] as Asian countries Americanize, their rates of depression increase accordingly.” The average hour of American prime-time TV contains five acts of violence (killings, gunshots assaults, car chases, rapes). “Ninety percent of news editors surveyed... said they'd experienced 'direct pressure' from advertisers trying to influence content.” “In 1997, Chrysler, one of the five largest advertisers in the U.S., sent letters to one hundred newspaper and magazine editors demanding to review their publications for stories that could prove damaging or controversial... According to a spokesperson at Chrysler, every single letter was signed in agreement and returned.” 77% of American adults are afflicted with a psychological ailment. And so on.

The second part of the book attempts to flesh out how we've gotten to where we are. Neoclassical economics, and the rise of corporations, and how we've been molded into a nation of “Manchurian consumers.” How brand loyalty and consumerism enter our consciousness as adolescents. How the global economy is basically a pyramid scheme, and that our children and theirs will be the dupes. The analysis isn't so much off, in my opinion, as it is superficial. But this isn't a dissertation, it is a manifesto more than anything else, and an instruction manual, and Lasn has more to get to.

The third part is the heart of the book, what Lasn sees as opportunities for those who have grown dissatisfied. He uses many pages describing the ebb and flow of the Situationist movement in the late-fifties and sixties, and uses that as a spring board to suggest that ours is a “society of spectacle,” and that what's need is a massive detournement, a jujitsu-like approach to art and revolution in which the elements of the consumer marketing and mainstream media are used to create a subversive message that wins the minds of the people and turns them away from consumption. He describes what he calls “meme wars,” which are essentially battles for the consciousness of the society, where a meme is basically a contagious idea. He goes into detail about the meme wars that were fought against the tobacco companies, starting with anti-smoking ads in 1969 and leading to the massive law suits against those companies in the '90s as an example of what can be possible. Then he details battles that he sees as needing to be fought, for example, developing an economics that tells the ecological truth and getting rid of the idea that corporations have an intrinsic, or legal, right to exist.

Finally, the book closes with some ideas of what could be possible: two minutes of every hour on public airwaves reserved for public announcements granted on a first-come, first-serve basis. Anti-corporate activists that stand up to corporations while on the line with 800-numbers. TV anti-ads that combat the idea that Calvin Kline's image of cool is cool. General strikes and such.

I think many of his ideas are good ones, I think some are less useful. I didn't like that they were presented as a prescription, as if the one true way and the one true group that would bring about the revolution had been revealed. Rarely is an author's arrogance so palpable in text. If our culture is to heal, it will take more than one group of people to do it. And since culture jamming is a movement that aims to decentralize power, to restore the generation of culture to a bottom-up enterprise, surely we the readers and potential culture jammers can be entrusted to “jam” as we see fit.

Nevertheless, I agree with Lasn's aims, and I like many of the ideas he puts forth to get there. There are plenty of useful statistics in the first half of the book, and many worthy actions in the second half. For those who are unfamiliar with the ideas Adbusters explores and put off by its aesthetic or lack of evidential support, Culture Jam could be a transformative book. For regular readers of Adbusters, unless you're looking for specific ideas for actions, there's probably not a whole lot of value in the book, inspiration aside.

7/10 stars.

Dwarf School!

2008-09-23T17:28:00.004+09:00

I just got home from my first day teaching at my secondary school - Shin Dong (prodigy child), which I go to each Tuesday.

There are thirteen students in the school! Some grades have one single student! There are three teachers, no less than four administrators, a cook, and today there was construction going on all around the place. The building is two stories with a field and court and playground. I can't believe the resources that are going into educating these kids! The school I teach at the rest of the week is 20 minutes down the road. Why not have a bus take those thirteen kids to that school?

Anyway, it's a nice break in the week for me. The school is located in a gorgeous part of the valley - beautiful, thick foliage covered hills interrupted by big limestone cliffs. Today there were low clouds covering the peak and mist in the afternoon; I should carry a camera with me always. The kids are also really nice. It seems the further away from civilization one gets the nicer, if odder, the people get, especially the young ones.

Review of Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close by Jonathan Safran Foer

2008-09-23T06:36:00.005+09:00

Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close would be a tough book not to love. I laughed a lot reading it, and I cried some too. Foer creates characters so three dimensional that they feel like old friends, and for Melanie and I at least, come up in conversation as if they really were.

Set in New York City, Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close revolves around Oscar Schell, an adorable nine year old boy who lost his father in the 9/11 attacks. The story explores Oscar's search for understanding and meaning in his father's death, and through that reminds the reader of all that there is to be joyful for in life. In Oscar's suffering is revealed the purity and joy of childhood.

The parallel story is that of Oscar's father's father's life, and while the two work well together and come together in a nifty way toward the end of the book, I found the sections about the grandfather painful to read. Maybe because I loved reading from Oscar's perspective so much that I missed it when I was away from it, but during one particularly long and arduous grandfather passage, I put the book down for almost a month and might not have picked it back up if it weren't for Melanie's urgings. Some of the passages about the grandfather's youth are quite beautiful though, and the parallel story reveals something profound about the transformations that occur between having one's life to live to having lived one's life.

A very pleasant read, and plenty of meaning about joy, sorrow, grief, family and aging. I will definitely be picking up Foer's other novel Everything is Illuminated soon.

8/10 stars.

Teaching in Gangwondo (EPIK) vs. Hagwon

2008-09-22T20:12:00.003+09:00

I noticed that this blog is coming up in the first page of results for a google search for [gangwon EPIK], so if people are interested in my experience teaching in public schools, I thought I'd run through some thoughts from my first month participating in EPIK in Gangwondo and compare that experience to the one I had in a hagwon in Busan a couple of years ago.

With regard to the actual work, teaching in a public school is easier, by a long shot. There are a number of reasons for this, but the biggest is that I'm teaching four, forty-minute classes a day now (in an elementary school... middle and high school classes are a few minutes longer). In the hagwon, I taught six, fifty minute classes a day. So that's 160 classroom minutes a day for EPIK as opposed to 300 classroom minutes a day for the hagwon. And I rarely even teach the full 160 minutes in a day here, as classes frequently let out early.

Just as important, there's always a Korean teacher in the classroom with me. I see two big positives from this, and one negative. The positives are having a Korean teacher in the room means Korean etiquette and standards for respect and behavior are still in play. My biggest complaint in the hagwon was getting no respect from and being unable to control students in the classroom. The other positive is being able to give complex instructions to low-level students. For games and more involved activities, that's huge. On the downside, I don't have the freedom to plan lessons as I like. I am, as my contract states, an Assistant Teacher. The reality of this is determined by the co-teacher one works with. But all classes follow a (less than great) textbook. Some teachers say “teach” and sit down behind the class; others run the class almost as if I weren't there and just ask me to do the repeat-after-me's and walk around the class having brief conversations with each student. In my hagwon, I was provided a great textbook called Interchange, and told to teach. My classroom activities were never interfered with, but I also got no support or advice on how to teach EFL and couldn't do much with the lower half of my classes because they couldn't understand my instructions. I spent between 10 minutes and an hour planning each day's activities in the hagwon (and could have taught better if I had committed more time to planning). For the public school, for the entire week, I spent about ten minutes planning activities to supplement the textbook's. That could change with number of different classes one teaches and the approach of the co-teacher to co-teaching, but I think the pressure to plan is probably always less in public schools. There's also just less pressure as no one is as fervent about educating children as hagwon bosses are about making money.

At my hagwon there was no community, and it was tough to find help with things like getting a cell phone. Here there are plenty of people that are willing, if not happy, to help us with the business stuff that is hard without speaking Korean, and there is plenty of community (weekly after school sports, monthly outings, opportunities for friendships). One of the bigger challenges here is that there is very little English competency. We're in a rural town in a rural province, so EPIK participants in different provinces may have different experiences in this regard, but it's hard for us to know what's going on. We are often told of meetings and appointments and trips minutes before they begin, which can be quite challenging. At my hagwon, the director spoke English nearly fluently, so at least I always knew what was expected of me, what would be happening the next day, etc.

Of course the biggest benefit to teaching in Gangwondo's EPIK program, as opposed to other provinces and private schools, is the five week vacation allowance. I got ten days at my hagwon and managed to take seven of them, and taking even that many was tough. We also get some bonus holiday-days, like Monday two weeks ago was a national holiday and we got Tuesday off, some friends got Wednesday, and one got Friday too for a six-day weekend! In a hagwon there's no way you get more than Monday. Sick days should be much easier to take in the public school (and we have 15 of them), since there won't be any substitutions needed to cover my classes; in a hagwon calling in sick means a Korean teacher that already works many hours more than you everyday, plus Saturdays, will have to cover your classes, which breeds resentment fast. Also, in addition to the five weeks paid vacation, if we renew our contract, we get an extra two weeks vacation at the end of the first year, along with an airfare paid ticket to home or anywhere closer.

The pay for Gangwon-do EPIK is decent. I'll say that pay for EPIK elsewhere is sub-par. We get our first paychecks in a couple days, and I think mine will be about 2.3M won. I'll save about 60k won on income taxes (two year exemption from income tax for everyone but Canadians, though it's only ~3.3% at foreign teachers' salaries - super-progressive tax structure in Korea). My base salary (as a level 2 EPIK teacher, since I have one year experience) is 2.0M, then I get .1M for being in a province (as opposed to one of the seven major Korean cities or Gyeonggi Province surrounding Seoul), then an additional .1M for being in a rural location (ie., not in Chuncheon, Gangneung, Wonju, Taebaek or Seorak... which means you could get that bonus and still live and teach in some places that definitely feel like small cities, like Samcheok and Donghae, for example), and an additional something, maybe .1M for teaching at multiple schools. I don't understand why I'm paid more for that, as I simply go to a different school (that's closer to my apartment than my normal school) on Tuesdays, but I won't complain. At my hagwon, I was paid 2M. That was three years ago though, I suspect that would be 2.2-ish now.

Of course, here, I know my paycheck is coming – there's no motivation for anyone to withhold it. At my hagwon I was always nervous, especially coming up on the end of my contract. The director of my hagwon was clearly money hungry (and with relaxed morals, I suspected), and I had serious doubts about whether I would receive the 4.7 million won I was owed as of my last day (2M for salary, 2M for severance, 700k for airfare). That's a lot of money (over $5,000 at the time) to be worried about losing. I was lucky -- I did always get paid, but plenty of people don't. I had to fight to get on the national health care plan, and I was always scared about not getting paid. I suspect if I hadn't shown such fortitude in standing up to my boss on other matters, he may have tried to jerk me around toward the end of my contract.

The housing has been similar for me in EPIK and in the hagwon. I think I got extremely lucky with the hagwon – they provided my girlfriend (who was working at another hagwon) and I a large three-bedroom apartment, albeit far from the subway or city centers. Here, every couple I've talked to has been given a nice three-bedroom place (probably a Gangwon-do benefit, since property values here must be considerably less than in the more populated parts of the country). However, our apartment is a 40 minute drive from our school. And without a car it's nearly an hour and a half each way (25 minute walk to the bus station, 40 minutes on the bus, 15 minute walk to school). We're fighting to get that fixed. It is an anomaly, it is something we asked about before we came and were told we wouldn't have to worry about, and both our recruiter (Jen at ESL Job Network) and assistant coordinator (a foreign teacher that acts as a liaison between the county's teachers and administration) think it should be remedied. I'll update this to let you know how that battle turns out.

The length of the workday is my biggest complaint so far about EPIK. We leave our house at 7:40 and get home around 5:45 (we've been given rides almost every day on the way home, otherwise, that would be 6:30 or 7:00), and have to be at school from 9-5. In contrast, at my hagwon, I lived a three minute walk from the school. So I left my apartment at 3:20 and got home at 10:30. A weird schedule, but it left me tons of free time, and free time during the day to get out in the sun and hike or beach, or do business with banks and other offices that work the same hours as public school teachers. All that free time was a huge plus. If we can manage to get our apartment moved from Samcheok, where we are now, to Dogye, where we're teaching, that we be only a minor plus for the hagwon; as it stands now, we got unlucky and it's a big bummer.

As for the facilities.... Regarding office space, at the hagwon I had a desk in an office with the three other teachers, and I spent very little time in there since I wasn't required to be at the school beyond my teaching hours. At the public school, my “office” is a place in the huge horseshoe ring of tables in the teacher's room, which is headed by two big desks occupied by the Vice Principal and #3. So for the many hours each day I'm not teaching, I'm basically being watched by two Korean administrators, which is extremely uncomfortable. I should add, though, that it hasn't stopped me from doing my thing in my off time, as I'm writing this on my laptop, sitting in that room now. The classroom facilities are far superior in the public school, despite Dogye being on the poor end of the country and my neighborhood in Busan on the rich end – there are internet-connected computers hooked up to big screen TV's in each classroom, along with scissors, markers, paper and just about anything else you'd want. In the hagwon, I was lucky if I had a dry erase marker that worked consistently... Again, profit motivation at the hagwons makes for lots of trouble. There's none of that in EPIK.

Finally, there's a five-day orientation at the beginning of the Gangwondo EPIK program. Consider the 300k won settlement allowance payment for this. I thought it was boring and restrictive, but mostly because I've lived and taught in Korea before. If this were my first time, I imagine it would make for a much softer landing than being thrown into an apartment and classes strait away.

All and all, there's no way I'd trade this job for the hagwon. I'm not sure I'd even trade it for a uni gig. I feel secure here, well paid, involved in a community, and the teaching itself is really very easy. If I could get two more things – an apartment in the town I teach in and a private-ish office – it would be nearly perfect.

The Little Differences

2008-09-21T21:33:00.005+09:00

Melanie and I found a great hike just behind our apartment today. So much is the same in the US and Korea, and probably all developed countries - cars and buildings and commerce and marketing and friends and meals and love and struggle. But especially in nature, and especially between Gangwondo and Colorado - both being on the 38th parallel and both being mountainous, so much is the same. But there are also tons of differences, often in the details, and I'm trying to take note of them. Today they seemed to be popping out everywhere, and I had my camera with me, so without further rambling, here are some of the differences you might find on a Sunday afternoon hike in Gangwon-do, Korea as compared with Colorado, USA.

Cars parked on sidewalks (and motorbikes driving on sidewalks... Grrr.)

Enclosed trampolines by the side of the street that kids can pay to play on (a nice alternative to the ubiquitous and ever so popular "PC room").

Weird, unidentified pink fruit...

...that sometimes looks an awful lot like a turkey's head!

Spiky poof balls. Update: We asked a co-teacher, and it turns out these are chestnuts! The nuts grow inside these spiky balls on trees. Now if we can just figure out how to pick and open them safely.

Giant bat-moth-hummingbird creatures.

Lounge chairs on top of a mountain's ridge.

Signs in the wilderness (or this level of confusion from your partner!).

And my favorite, ubiquitous agriculture. This deserves its own post... they grow food everywhere! South Korea is a tiny country (smaller than Virginia) supporting a medium sized population (50 million people) and a gigantic economy (the 13th largest in the world). I heard someone say recently that self-sufficiency in food production is an essential component of national security. Well, Korea is working this one to the max. Between every apartment and sidewalk there are pumpkin vines and pepper plants, next to every parking lot is a plot of onions or soybeans. It's inspiring. I hope that by next spring we will know enough Korean to get involved in cultivating the land with the locals. What better a way to build community, self-reliance and security in the face of an increasingly unstable global order.

Chusok Lunch with Park Jung Sun's Family

2008-09-19T18:29:00.014+09:00

Last Monday was a national holiday because of Chusok (Harvest Moon Festival) the day before. Our K-friend Park Jung Sun invited us to do something (we weren't sure what before hand because we can't communicate very well in either language) at 11:00. She showed up with her grandmother, sister, niece and nephew, the last three who had lived in Vancouver for a couple of years, and so could communicate with us!

In our parking lot, we did introductions, grandma (who didn't live in Canada) said "Nice to meechuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuu" and laughed and laughed and laughed, we gave them some pears, and we had a lengthy discussion about what foods we liked. They decided something and off we went to get lunch, except that, being a big holiday everything was closed. So after a half hour driving around Samcheok, we went 6km up the coast to the slightly larger town of Donghae, where they had heard a restaurant that would be good for us vegetarians would be open.

The restaurant was good for us, and it was good. The theme of the place had something to do with mineral water and dolsot (the hot stone pots). The lunch we were served was amazing:

[Click on the picture to get a better view of what we were served.] That's a fish, a whole pike, I'm working on with my chopsticks there, and it really is hard work. (We're really more pescaterian than vegetarian.)

We were served rice (cooked with yams, pine nuts and a jujube) in little hot stone pots. After scooping the rice into a bowl, we poured hot water into the pots, covered them and set them aside. After the meal we went back to those pots, which then had hot water and rice that was simultaneously mushy and crispy coming off the sides. We drank the water and ate the crispy-mushy rice. It was delicious, and apparently good for health and digestion. We were also served some sort of cinnamon tea, with a single pine nut floating in the middle of each cup, that tasted incredibly good.

After lunch we were asked if we wanted to go shopping. I told them I was excited to go to E Mart (the biggest department store within an hour of our apartment). So we walked around town for a while:

We shopped for shoes for the kids and went "eye shopping" in the fancy Nike store and took lots of pictures:

We eventually went to E Mart, by which time everyone was pretty frazzled from trying to communicate across the language barrier, so we went shopping separately (and found cashews and unsweetened yogurt!), but not before Park Jung Sun, who is something of artist, took some arty shots:

It's always a treat to get to hang out with Koreans (especially since they have to struggle to speak our language, even though we are guests in their land). to get to hang out with a grandmother and a whole family and go to such a neat, traditional restaurant was really extra special. Happy Chusok everyone.

Dinner, Communication & Korean Manners

2008-09-19T18:29:00.003+09:00

As we were leaving school yesterday, one of the teachers, who we've taken to calling “The Matriarch,” said to us, "7:00, my house, meeting." "Tonight?" "Yae. Park Jung Sun... your aparte... (Konglish [a mutant language made up of words taken from English and made to suit the Korean tongue] for apartment) go." "Uh, okay."

So we get home just before six and complain to each other for a bit about being told without notice what we're doing, not having any control over our lives and in general how easily exhausted we are these days. Then, being hungry five hours after our lunch of rice, potatoes and kimchi, we ran down to the neighborhood restaurant for some bibimbap before our meeting. We rushed back to our apartment and were picked up at 7 by our friend Park Jung Sun, her “mother, English Teacher, Samcheok Elementary School” and about seven small children, three of whom I was to sit with in the back of Park Jung Sun's little Hyundai.

After a quick nightmare fantasy about how we were going to be made to have conversation with these kids, we dropped them off on the way to The Matriarch's aparte, where we found spread before us a full-on feast, laid out beautifully across a traditional Korean table (6" legs, for floor sitting). Koreans, like, it seems, everyone outside the US, know how to treat guests. There were five dolsot bibimbap (hot-stone pot rice and vegetables), doenjang jigae (a soybean paste stew), kimbap (Korean sushi), fried pumpkin slices, all kinds of steamed veggies and kimchis... basically all our favorite Korean foods. Unfortunately, we had gotten snarled in a language trap earlier.

When we were parting ways with the Matriarch after school, Melanie asked “should we have dinner at our apartment?” The Matriarch can understand slow, classroom English, but not so much “everyday English”. I'm guessing she heard “dinner”, thought about the fact that she was about to prepare a massive feast for us, and so said “yes”. When I saw what she had done, I wanted to cry. We had just been kvetching about how how inconsiderate everyone is toward us, and here was a feast, vegetarian none-the-less, made just for us.

We met the Matriarch's husband, a Math Professor, sat down, tried to explain, she apologized, we apologized a lot, Park Jung Sun called her cousin that speaks more English and had him translate “you can leave food remaining”, I put some more bibimbap and doenjang jigae into my already very full belly, and we toasted over very sweet wine (Manashevitz style). They didn't eat much beyond the bibimbap, as Korean politeness dictates, and we felt terrible. Melanie's eyes watered periodically through dinner.

Once the intensive eating part had passed though, it was a great evening. They brought over a second table, filled with peaches with pink-marbled flesh, grapes, miniature bananas and Gyeongju Bread (pancakes filled with sweet bean paste), a specialty of the husband's hometown and ancient capital of the peninsula. We talked about whatever we could find the language for, looked at pictures of their kids, took pictures of ourselves (are they prouder to have western friends or are we prouder to have Korean friends?) and watched some baseball.

***digression warning***

Korean baseball takes sponsorship to a whole new level... where in the US teams are identified more less equally by their home town and a name, in Korea they are identified primarily by the company that sponsors them, secondarily by a name (always English), and almost not-at-all by the city they play in. So the game last night was Samsung vs. KIA. My favorite team is the Lotte Giants, because they are also “Giants”, because they play in Busan, my first home in Korea, and because Lotte makes these delicious chocolate-covered pretzel cookies called Peppero. As another example of the extent of corporate reach in Korea, November 11 is “Peppero Day” (Peppero are long and strait, hence 11/11), for which every child in the country buys cases of the cookies and gives them to their teachers and friends. Last time I was here I had a cabinet full of Peppero that lasted me well into spring. It's kind of like another Valentine's Day, except that they have two of those in the spring, but we'll get to that in time...

***end digression***

The husband took out an atlas and showed us around Korea, and then a newspaper, and we looked through the news together -- my favorite! We talked about AIG and the strength of the Korean market (three words – massive dollar reserves), what we thought of “Faline... uh, Alaska... woman...” I've been told over and over not to get into politics with Koreans, so I tried to tone-down my response as much as possible, but I seem to have a condition that prohibits me not expressing my social/political opinions. The most I could water it down, in simple English, was “I don't think she can be President.” When that was met with silence I remembered that they strongly identify as Christians and started wondering how much favor I had just lost.

All and all, it was a lovely evening. We were sent home with a massive amount of food (“Gift... Korean culture.”) and a determination to simplify our English even further when anything logistical is on the line.

This afternoon, The Matriarch pulled me aside in the hallway, apologized and said in perfectly polished English, "we would like to have you over for dinner again."

Assa! (Awesome!)

The Teachers Begin to Teach (Two Weeks In)

2008-09-18T15:38:00.006+09:00

We've started teaching this week. Melanie and I have very different teaching routines. I'm working with three Korean teachers for 5th and 6th grade and will be spending four hours a week with each class; Melanie is working with eleven Korean teachers for 1st through 4th grade, plus an after school class for the "fool students" and spends one hour a week with each class. And I go to a different, very rural school on Tuesdays, where I'll have classes with students numbering in the mid-single-digits, as opposed to the classes of 37 I have here.

Right now, I'm feeling frustrated that every day I finish my classes by lunch, at 12:30, and must stay at school until 5. What I wouldn't give for a private office! On the other hand, I am sitting in the teachers' room now, blogging, so I suppose I don't have it too bad.

As much as I'd like to generalize, the range of personalities is huge - with with students, with teachers and with other foreigners. Students from yelling-over-me-introducing-myself to the cutest, sweetest kids I've ever met; teachers from bossy (in Korean) to sitting-aside-videotaping-Melanie-teaching to actual constructive co-teaching that may even evolve into co-lesson planning in the coming months; foreigners from strait-as-an-arrow, why-did-you-leave-your-corporate-job to oh-my, do-you-always-sweat-so-profusely, I-see-why-you-married-a-Philipino, I-doubt-you-could-function-in-US-society.

Well, having now set a personal best for concentration of hyphens in a paragraph, I'm going to get back to the only book left from those I brought, The Bible in Modern English. It's a slow read.

More Meetings, More (Meaty) Meals

2008-09-18T07:02:00.004+09:00

Last night we had a "meeting" at the Samcheok County Office of Education. We went with a teacher and two administrators from our school, and when we got there discovered banners reading "EPIK Conference 2008 - September 17, 2008 (Wed) 16:00". I've never before been to a conference that was identified by its time!

After being brought on stage and given roses (our second presentation of flowers from government), we sat in a big hall for ninety minutes with all the other foreign teachers in the county (and multiple handlers for each) while our contracts were read in Korean. I suppose it's good that the administration was forced to get familiar with the contracts, but wow was that a long ninety minutes.

I suppose as a reward for sitting quietly, we were then all (100+ people) taken to a restaurant for bulgogi - the famous Korean beef dish. Melanie and I are vegetarian, or almost so, and this was the second time we've sat at a table with the administrators while they eat meat and we eat rice. It feels like they're starting to resent us for it, but I suppose it's more likely just alienation. After dinner I was thinking about my pre-vegetarian days and the few occasions when I ate with vegetarians. I remember not making any effort to understand where they were coming from. I remember feeling like they were "soft". And I definitely remember feeling like they were different - out-group, if you will. And so it is here, by refusing the school lunches and the group dinners, we've alienated ourselves and excluded ourselves from the group, to whatever additional extent is possible from the starting point of being, literally, an alien.

On the upside, a Korean teacher overheard our boss talking, in Korean, about us not eating meat, and recommended to us a vegetarian restaurant here in Samcheok. It's called Cheongralae, and they serve Ssambap - rice and vegetables and fish wrapped in lettuce. I guess it's a locally famous restaurant. He even left the dinner table to get us business cards for the place. Seven days till payday, and then we'll definitely check it out.

Coming soon: book reviews. I've been meaning to review (and compare and contrast) Jarod Diamond's Collapse, Derrick Jensen'sThe Culture of Make Believe and Kalle Lasn's Culture Jam - three books about what's wrong with our society and what we need to heal - for some time now. And I've just finished Jonathan Safran Foer's excellent novel Extremely Loud And Incredibly Close, which definitely deserves a review. I had a dream last night that I was recommending books to my Aunt Ann - Derrick Jensen and Arundhati Roy. Perhaps I'm looking to push a certain perspective. See yesterday's post for a fleshing out of one aspect of what that perspective is.

Popcorn! And GMOs!

2008-09-17T07:07:00.005+09:00

Big thanks to Chad for helping us find popcorn. And popcorn that doesn't have "butter flavoring" in it and isn't made by ConAgra to boot!

On a hopefully unrelated note (but unlikely considering ConAgra's business), we did a little research yesterday and discovered to our dismay that Korea has ended its holdout against genetically modified foods - GMOs. And for what food? Corn, of course! The move was supposedly made to ease consumer burden from rising food prices. However, I can't help but notice the move came amid negotiations for a bilateral trade deal between Korea and the US. The United States, being the hegemon of the world, tends to throw its weight around pretty aggressively in these negotiations. At the same time, the US has been pushing GMO food products on the world; aggressively so even with the EU, perhaps the only group with economic strength to stand up to the US' might. The US is also the leading corn producer in the world, producing more than one-third the world's crop, much of it genetically modified.

Let me summerize...

1. Korea was one of the last two East Asian countries to ban GMOs (Japan being the other).
2. At the time South Korea decided to allow imports, they were in negotiations with the US for a bi-lateral trade agreement.
3. The US has a history of aggressively pushing for the loosening of restrictions surrounding GMOs.
4. The US has a special interest in the unfettered trade of genetically modified corn.
5. South Korea's first imported GMO food was corn, to be used as a component of sweeteners and starches.

Taebaeksan Trip

2008-09-16T13:33:00.005+09:00

We just had a 4-day weekend for Cheosok, so we decided to go up to Taebaek, the center of coal mining in South Korea, for a little climbing and relaxing with our friends Kate and Chad. Taebaeksan is one of the holiest mountains in Korea. Something having to do with the Dangun Wanggeom - the founder of Korea, whom we celebrate with the national holiday Gaecheonjeol (ie. day off work) October 3. So atop each of the mastiff's peaks there are alters built to Dangun Wanggeom. Exercise, views, friends and culture -- who could ask for more?

Downtown Taebaek - the most cosmopolitan environment we've seen in a while!

Evidence of the cosmopolitan nature of Taebaek!

Walking around Taebaek we found a bookstore with some western literature, perhaps turned pornographic?

We had dinner at a little ajuma's place. Clockwise from the top left: naeng kong guksu (cold, soymilk noodle soup... probably the least appealing vegetarian dish I've found in Korea), naeng guksu (cold noodle soup, only marginally better than the soymilk version), bibim naeng guksu (mixed vegetable noodle soup - that red paste made it less bland than the other two soups at the table, and the hot broth next to it made it warm. I wouldn't seek it out again, but definitely better than the other two), and bibimbap (mixed vegetables and rice, the old standby). Check out the size of the chunks of radish kimchi in front of my bowl! No one was crazy enough to try to put one of those down. Besides Melanie's bibimbap, no body ate much of their dinner, so Kate, Chad and I went out for pizza a couple hours later. I guess we can't claim to have it too hard here if we can always go get a pizza! ;^>

We stayed in a "love motel", a pretty modest one as these things go. It was nice, the elevator was trippy though!

This beautiful lonely red tree greeted us as we started our ascent of Taebaek Mountain (Taebaeksan).

About an hour into the hike we came upon this beautiful temple hidden in the woods.

Us inside a tree!

The top of one of the several peaks we summitted.

An airfield just off to the side of the mountain, with what seems to be a dirt runway and landing strip. Note to self: don't fly into Taebaek!

An alter atop another peak.

Us just beyond the previous alter.

At the end of the hike we found this lake, which is the shape of the Korean Peninsula, and has labels for each of the major cities, and Taebaek.

So that was long weekend number one. The next is only two weeks away, at which point we'll have been paid and will be running off to Seoul for chickpeas, Mexican food and exotic spices, like cinnamon.

19+!

2008-09-12T18:17:00.006+09:00

A couple of days ago, we were sitting in the teachers' room at school when one of the admin gave a Korean teacher sitting next to me a catalog to look through. So, being the diligent student of Korean culture I am, I looked through the catalog with her. Page 1 - watches and suitcases, page 2 - women's fashion, page 23 - men's fashion, page 32 - shoes, page 37 - makeup, and page 40 - whoa!

Korea is really a very conservative society. Women don't generally show their shoulders in public and while there is premarital sex (and even prostitution), my understanding is it's absolutely not to be talked about. So to say that the dildos and sex toys in the middle of "Corea Homeshopping" caught me a little off guard is putting it quite mildly. Who knew?

Naksan Temple

2008-09-12T17:43:00.004+09:00

During our orientation in Yang Yang, Gangwon-do a couple of weeks ago, we had the chance to visit Naksansa (sa = temple). Much of the temple burned several years ago, but the hillsides are reforesting nicely, and we saw restoration of what looked like the last building or two to be repaired while we were there. It's a beautiful temple on a hill over the ocean, and it has what may be the largest statue of Gwaneum (Guan Yin, the Goddess of Compassion) in East Asia.

Temples are typically built on hills here, so they collect the spring water into beautiful sinks from which the visitors can drink.

The coast of Gangwondo at Naksan, Korea.

Late blooming wildflowers (this was the last days of August).

An algae covered pond and temple structure. Notice the hollowed log behind the small statue, flowing spring water into the pond.

Kyle got into the spring water drinking, following the little girl's lead.

After much ascending we came to the giant Guan Yin statue.

It must have been 50 feet tall, and appeared to be in the sky, somehow seperate from us on the ground.

On our way out: myself, Melanie, Kim and Kyle.

Settling into Gangwon-do

2008-09-11T20:15:00.004+09:00

We're settling into our home and work in Korea nicely. We have a fine 3-bedroom apartment in Samcheok, and a great elementary school in Dogye with fantastic children. Our struggle is what's between the two -- 40 kilometers of mountain road. We're commuting about 2.5 hours a day right now, at a personal expense of ~US$7 a day. We walk about 25 minutes to the bus station, take a 45 minute bus ride, then walk about ten minutes to school. That's not what we had in mind when we applied to the EPIK program, which places native English speakers in public schools in Korea. We applied specifically to work in Gangwon-do, the rural-most province in Korea, because we thought it would be quiet and quaint and we'd settle into some mountain village and learn the language and get to know the locals. Our recruiter, ESL Job Network, assured us our commute would be 20 minutes or less. And yet here we are, each paying ~US$150 a month to commute 2.5 hours a day. That adds up fast -- 12.5 hours a week, over 60 in a month. That's a full work week and a half every month we're giving up commuting.

So yesterday we went to the administration at our school, via our translator, who speaks very broken English, to let them know how we're feeling and see if there was a possibility of finding an apartment near the school. Today we had a meeting with the Principal, Vice Principal and #4 (it's so hierarchical!), in which they basically said suck it up. Actually, it would've felt better if they had just said we couldn't find anything. Instead we were told that the Principal used to take the bus (he started at the school in 1971, basically before Korea had personal cars), that many of the teachers at the school make a similar or longer commute (as a part of the culture, they have more motivation to live in a city and hence make the commute, and they also each made that choice freely, whereas we were simply thrown into an apartment in a town 40km away), that Dogye has hard winters and there aren't locks on the doors, and can we please do the Principal a favor and endure our struggle. Oh, and that it would become familiar, that we'd become experienced at the commute. Each of those sentences came through in stuttered, butchered English, and after a 3-5 minute discussion between the three administrators. Then our translator asked us, "so how will you get to school?" We stared at her for what felt like an awful long time before saying, "well, we don't have any options." Then it was volleyball time. I guess the entire staff plays volleyball each week. Last week it was fun; today we hadn't been told to bring our "sports clothes" and weren't much in the mood, so we sat on the side of the gym and moped.

This evening, we talked with our recruiter - Jen at ESL Job Network - and she assured us that we were right to feel wronged; that we really had been assured we wouldn't have a commute like this before we signed our contracts; that we were going through the proper channels in the proper order (we have a meeting with the assistant coordinator for Samcheok County in 10 minutes); and made us feel like the situation could and would be remedied.

I must say, I feel empowered to be blogging about this. There's not a whole lot of English about teaching in Gangwon-do on the internet, and I imagine by the time the next hiring season rolls around, this blog should rank fairly high for a search for, for example, "Gangwon EPIK" or the name of our recruiter - ESL Job Network. Gangwon-do has traditionally had trouble filling its need for foreign teachers, so they've started upping vacation time and providing other incentives and positioning the province and the administration as foreigner friendly. They certainly have an interest in keeping me and my loud mouth happy.

9/11

2008-09-11T06:48:00.003+09:00

Here we are, seven years out from the 9/11 attacks. Almost 3,000 people were killed that day and our nation was shaken by the actions of a group of 15 Saudis, 1 Egyptian, 1 Lebanese and 2 men from the UAE, many of whom lived in the US. Our leaders responded by invading Afghanastan and Iraq. In the ensuing seven years, those decisions have lead to the deaths of hundreds of thousands of Iraqi and Afghanastan civilians and the injury of millions. Thousands of young Americans have died and tens of thousands been injured. We've spent over a trillion dollars causing those casualties, and it's looking more and more like that might be more than our economy can bear. now there is a Democratic nominee for President whom we're all very excited about, myself included, for how great a change he'll bring to Washington. Yet he wants more troops in Afghanastan, and while he calls for a reduction of forces in Iraq, it's a reduction on the order of two-thirds, not a withdrawl. At some point, we've got to stop thinking about moving our troops from one overseas post to another, and start thinking about how to change the paradigm.

Arundhati Roy is one of my favorite writers and activists. Six years ago today, she gave a brilliant speech about nations, power and what September 11 means to the world. That speach is here in video, and here in text.

"May we see the day when war and bloodshed cease
when a great peace will embrace the whole world

Then nation shall not threaten nation
and humankind will not again know war.

For all who live on earth shall realize
we have not come into being to hate or destroy

We have come into being
to praise, to labour and to love.

Compassionate God, bless all the leaders of all nations
with the power of compassion.

Fulfill the promise conveyed in Scripture:

"I will bring peace to the land,
and you shall lie down and no one shall terrify you.
I will rid the land of vicious beasts
and it shall not be ravaged by war."

Let love and justice flow like a mighty stream.

Let peace fill the earth as the waters fill the sea."

Oil near $100 - Buy!

2008-09-10T19:37:00.002+09:00

Oil is down around $100 a barrel today. If I had money, I'd buy a lot of it now. Granted, at 28 I have a lot of time to see what the price does. But even just looking a year or two out, does anyone think that price is going down? If we're looking a decade out, does anyone think it will be less than $200 a barrel in September 2018?

According to Bloomberg, a "Nymex Crude Future" is $103.37 today. I leave that as a proper noun because I honestly don't know how to make the grammar work for what I would indeed be buying. "I could buy a future barrel of oil"? "I could buy a barrel of future oil"? "I could buy an oil barrel future"? Anyway, in elementary school I was in a club in which each group got $1000 in play money to play investors. Today I'm buying a lot of oil futures with my play money. I'll let you know how I did when I decide to sell.

The Execution of Troy Davis

2008-09-10T06:25:00.004+09:00

Troy Davis was convicted 17 years ago for the murder of a police officer. He is scheduled to be executed by the state of Georgia in two weeks. In his trial, no physical evidence was presented to link him to the crime. He proclaimed his innocence but was convicted on the testimony of nine witness for the prosecution. Since then, seven of the nine witnesses have recanted their testimony, saying they were pressured or coerced by police. One of the other two witnesses is Sylvester "Red" Coles, the other principal suspect, who is implicated in the crime by affidavits signed by 9 people. Davis was issued a 90 day stay against his execution last summer, but his appeal to the Supreme Court has been denied.

In the interest of justice and sane policy with regard to the human rights of the citizens of our country, please sign Amnesty International's petition to stop the exectution of Troy Davis. Then, if you are so moved, write to your legislators and tell them what you think of a death penalty that is applied nearly exclusively to the black and poor.

Won Gains Over 6% in 5 Days

2008-09-09T21:30:00.002+09:00

Since I last posted about the won-dollar exchange rate - on Friday - the won has gained over 6% on the dollar. Incredible. And this over the period the massive bailout of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac was announced. I would think that would strengthen the dollar and cause the won to slide further, but clearly I don't understand. If anyone can explain this to me, I'd love to get it. Otherwise, I'll just sit happy with the 6% raise I got this weekend. ;^>

Vegetarian Mis-adventures in Korea-land

2008-09-09T21:01:00.000+09:00

We had our first big vegetarian failure in Korea tonight with the Tuesday Night Eating Club. We went to a Chinese restaurant downtown and foolishly thought that with the help of a Korean-American friend who is nearly fluent in Korean we'd be able to find or order dishes without beef, pork, chicken, dog, fish, crustaceans, cephalopods or any other animal, but that turned out to be too much to ask. We thought we'd try the yachae bokumbap (vegetable fried rice), and u dong (thick noodle soup).

Here's the u dong. Notice the tentacle in Melanie's chopsticks.

Several minutes into trying to suck down some of the noodles Melanie pulled a full prawn out - eyes and whiskers and all. We tried to keep putting it down for a bit, but it just wasn't happening.

The bokumbap looked more hopeful, and tasted great, until Melanie got something chewy and we realized there was beef in the black bean sauce. You'd never guess from looking at it would you? There's a lesson in there for vegetarians in Korea.

So we left a little nauseous and more than a little disappointed that we paid ~US$10 to get that way. On the way home I picked up the always reliable economic assistance kimbap and an asian pear and am feeling grateful for them both now.

Celebrating Pizza the Korean Way

2008-09-08T20:16:00.000+09:00

How else could you celebrate the opening of a neighborhood pizza restaurant, but with a 25-foot tall inflatable blue man, ten bulls eyes made of flowers, and a giant archway of balloons?

Gender Dynamics in Korea

2008-09-08T20:13:00.001+09:00

I don't want to say that this picture captures the gender dynamic in Korea, because men here work damn hard for their families. But this photo definitely resinates with much of what I've seen.

Trip to Seoraksan

2008-09-08T19:36:00.000+09:00

Seoraksan is the third highest mountain in South Korea, and the highest in the Taebaek Range, in which we find ourselves living. On the fourth day of our orientation to the Gangwon-do EPIK program, we were bussed up to Seorak National Park and let loose. Having been couped up in a hotel for five days, we were pretty excited to get out and do some hiking. So we took off from the group, hoping to get some exercise and a nice view, and were immediately impressed with the mountain.

We went in a ways and found this quite helpful, if slightly cartoonish, map of the park. It's amazing how they can turn just about anything into a cartoon here!

Just a bit further up the path, we came across a gigantic statue of Buddha. I'd estimate it at 40-50 feet high! I love this photograph. If ever one of my photos has captured the contrast of modern and traditional Korea, this must be it.

After that we started hustling, as we had about two hours and really wanted to make it up to a cave called Geumgangul and had heard it's a tough hike up there. It was indeed a tough hike up. This next picture is from a platform just below the cave. You can see how tough a hike it was by how proud I look to be there. In the interest of full disclosure, the man who took this picture was wearing loafers. I don't know how Koreans do it.

Here's a look at the hike that remained from there. Thankfully, in Korea, there tend to be stairs leading to just about anywhere you might want to go.

I had left Melanie a bit down the mountain because we thought we wouldn't have time to make it up together. But lo and behold, just as I was leaving the cave, up the stairs she came! Here's a look from within the very modest cave. It contained three small statues of Buddha, a woman selling Buddhist wares (and coffee, of course), and lots of these hanging lanterns, the significance I'm unsure of.

We made it back to the bus in just over two and a half hours. It was a great hike for such a short time... plenty of culture, beautiful scenery and athletic challenge.

LA Meat

2008-09-07T21:50:00.000+09:00

If you pay any attention to international news, surely you remember the massive protests recently held across Korea against the country resuming imports of US beef. After a Mad Cow Disease scare years ago, Korea suspended imports, then recently, I think as a condition to the bilateral trade agreement, was set to start importing again. The entire country it seems took to the streets against the policy, but it was pushed through in spite of the protests (shocking isn't it, that the protests were ineffectual?).

So with that in mind, you wouldn't expect a butcher on every corner to be wrapped in the American flag, calling themselves "LA Meat". But low and behold, on every corner here in Samcheok:

And they seem to be busy every hour of the day, US beef or not.

What I'm Eating, Vol. 1

2008-09-07T21:05:00.000+09:00

It's been a few days since I've posted, mostly due to the fact that the wireless I've been freeloading off of disappeared for a couple of days, but also in part to a severe lack of energy at the end of our first week at school. So I feel like I owe you one or two. I thought I'd offer a post on what is sure to be an oft-recurring theme, and one of my favorites - what I'm eating! The food here, though often challenging for a Boulderite, grown acustumed to easy access to organic, vegetarian cuisine, is one of the highlights of the culture. Perhaps that's true everywhere, but I've talked to plenty of foreigners who have taught here and had little good to say about the place, but that they love the food.

I've started taking my camera with me whenever I go out, to catch the oddities that always catch me off guard here, and also to document what I'm eating. I've also stolen a copy of the menu from our amazing neighborhood kimbap place and started to decode it. Kimbap is like veggie sushi - rice, veggies, egg, and usually ham (none the vegetarians, thanks) - and it's all over the place here. The reason I call the restaurant a kimbap place despite the fact that they offer about 50 different dishes is that kimbap requires a special setup, a place for the rolling to happen. A roll of kimbap cost 1,000 won (about US$1) last time I was here, but seems to have gotten a little more expensive... as has, I guess, all food all over the world in the last 24 months.

As I've started going through that copy of the neighborhood restaurant's menu, trying to figure out what each thing is and if it's possible to be made vegetarian, I came upon one that was tough to decode. 원조김밥 (wonjo kimbap). Looking wonjo up in my trusty Korean-English dictionary gave me these two definitions:
1) the founder, the originator
2) help, support, assistance, aid ... economic (financial, food) aid
Looking at the price list, I noticed it is 1,000 won, making it the cheapest item on the menu. So I'm calling it "economic assistance kimbap". Nice of the restaurant to help out those of us that can't afford the real deal, isn't it!? Anyway, after that, of course, I couldn't resist ordering it, and the usual 야채김밥(yachae - vegetable) kimbap, to compare. Here are the results of that experiment:

Seems just a mushroom and a shisho leaf that are missing, though the ham that we order the other kimbap without may not have been included in the economic assistance version either.

For lunch today, we had those two rolls and my all-time favorite korean dish, 돌솥 비빔밥 (dolsot bibimbop - mixed vegetables and rice in a hot stone pot). Here's what that looks like as served:

And then as it's meant to be eaten, mixed together with 고추장 (gochujang - hot chili pepper paste), and the rest of our table.

In Korea, you might order one dish each, or at the nicer places communal dishes for as many people as are eating, and you get all these side dishes for free with them. Here, we each have a slightly spicy broth, which we get each time at this restaurant, and then on the left a plate of three side dishes which change every time we go in. This time they were, from left to right, a savory eggplant and carrot mix; a concoction that could only show up in Korea - fruit, yogurt and ham; and kimchi, which is always present in one form or another. That's what Melanie has got in her chopsticks. I couldn't stand kimchi when I was first here, but I've come to tollerate it... at a meal like this (when no Korean whose opinion of me I care about is watching), I might have two or three pieces like that. It's fermented so it's good for the belly. If a Korean I'd like to impress is watching, as at lunch at school most days, I can eat that whole portion without complaint. I imagine soon I'll come to actually enjoy it. I'm almost there.

Yesterday we went to the same place for lunch (I imagine we'll patronise them hundreds of times this year. That would barely allow us the opportunity to try everything on the menu once, and frankly, with that whole table full of food above for about US$6, why not?), and since I was feeling sick, I went for a hot bowl of noodle soup. This is 칼국수 (kalguksu - thick noodles soup), and it was perfect for my sinuses.

Melanie ordered 비빔라면 (bibim ramyeon - mixed vegetable noodle soup), and got something much too spicy for her taste.

That big red patch in the middle is gochujang, chili paste, and it's what makes Korean food so spicy. It proved tough to scoop out of that bowl. Which meant I got two lunches. ;)

More to come on food soon, I'm sure, as frankly, it's my favorite.

Korean Economy Shows Signs of Confidence

2008-09-05T07:32:00.000+09:00

The lead story today in the Korea Herald (the leading English newspaper in South Korea) says, "Fears of a financial crisis began to subside yesterday... [and] that the government had resumed intervention to halt the won's further slide." That's good. To be honest, I didn't really know there were fears of a financial crisis, but check out what the won has done against the dollar in the last four months.

This basically the period between when we decided to move to Korea and when we started getting paid. That's like a 15% hit on our salaries! Thankfully, it doesn't really matter what the exchage rate is until we transfer money back to the US, which we're still several months away from. And what really matters is the rate a year from now. Here's a five year graph of the exchange rate, showing the point at which I arrived and departed last time I was here.

Will I be so lucky again this time around? Only time will tell. Then again, if you happen to be a currency speculator, feel free to leave your speculations ;).

Day 4 - The Longest Day

2008-09-04T18:24:00.000+09:00

This ought to be a quick one, because really, nothing happened today. Left at eight, got to school at 8:40, sat around for 3.5 hours, ate lunch, went for a ten minute walk (thank you God), sat around for four hours, came home. Had new cabinets delivered. Recuperating now. Start again in 12 hours.

Day 3 - Volleyball

2008-09-03T21:53:00.000+09:00

What I remember most about day 3 is that I'm getting sick. My nose is running like mad, which is tough in a society that views sneezing, blowing and rubbing one's nose as impolite. So all morning I sat in the teachers' office for 90 seconds, walked down the hall to the bathroom, blew my nose and walked back to the office. Wait 90 seconds and repeat.

On the up-side, I'm getting a good amount of Korean study in with all this empty time in the teachers office. The more I learn about this language, the more learning it becomes an overwhelming task. I learned today 23 ways to ask "Do you know?" 23 different conjugations of "know", for 23 different situations, ranging from the "formal, honorific (common)" to the "formal (never used)" to the "casual (common, especially with children)". There aren't just formal and informal conjugations of verbs but an entire spectrum of formality one can use in conjugating verbs. Phrases can also be conjugated for formality. There are also subject markers that differ based on formality. In addition, some verbs have two forms, two different words, depending on the level of formality. Instead of subjects and objects, there are subjects and topics, and subjects are usually omitted, so just sort of have to intuit who or what the speaker is talking about. In the sentence "I feel great today," the feeling is the subject! I, which would be the subject in English, is probably omitted, and today is the topic. Since the subject (or what would be the subject in English) is omitted, special characters can be used, in formal language, to indicate whether one is speaking the second or third person. For some verbs the subject and objects are switched, which actually brings the word order closer to English, since the normal Korean order is subject, object, verb; for example, I you love. But, for example, with the verb "to have", the subject and object are switched, so to form the Korean equivalent of "I have a computer," you would say "Computer I have." Kind of sounds like Yoda-speak. Kind of makes my want to stick to learning vocabulary and names of foods.

We went to the bank and set up accounts (with check cards - sweet!), which of course was a huge ordeal, despite having two Korean teachers with us, because nobody can communicate in English. We did, however, get served orange juice in paper cups, so that's cool.

*Breaking news alert!*

We just got a message from our (foreign) county coordinator that we'll be receiving a travel allowance on the order of $20 a day each for our commute. That'll add up over the year. I'm not sure it makes up for making our work days effectively 10 hours, but it sure is better than riding the bus on our own dime.

Yesterday we were told to bring "sport clothes" to school today. At 3:30 we were brought into the gymnasium where every teacher and administrator in the school was practicing their volleyball serves. We played two fairly competitive and quite fun volleyball games. Though I have to say, on the list of sports for which communication is essential, volleyball has got to be up there. Anyway, it was a lot of fun.

I would be stunned to find that level of extra-curricular involvement, sans students, in a school in the states. On the one hand, it's fantastic... it's a real community we've been brought into, and it gives us a pretty special opportunity to engage with the culture. On the other hand, this is our second after-school activity in three days. On the other other hand, it started at 3:30 and was almost finished by 4:30 (our go home time). Actually, at 4:30 everyone was eating thin sliced pork and chewing on pig bones. We were brought grapes, which is becoming habitual and is really sweet. We left at 5 and got home by 6, giving us our first evening to relax this week. If that sounds whiny for a Wednesday, sure, but it was desperately needed. I took a hot bath, Melanie made chili with noodles (we brought so much cumin and chili powder, and I'm so happy for that) and we had a lovely relaxing evening of chili and massages. If only we didn't have to go back to Korea World tomorrow. I don't mean that. Well, there's some level within me that doesn't mean it anyway. ;)

Day 2 - Hospital

2008-09-03T21:11:00.000+09:00

Day 2 at Dogye Elementary School was notable mostly for being entirely uneventful. We got picked up at 8, got there at 9, sat around for 3.5 hours, ate lunch - grilled tofu from home with kimchi and rice with millet from school, without chicken and beef stew from school, sat around for another hour, and then "Samcheok Education Office go." Okay. We were driven the 45 minutes back to Samcheok, the town we're living in, and introduced to the county Superintendent and many "School Inspectors" -- again, they're huge on titles here. I swear, people that seem unable to say anything more than "thank you" and "okay" in English can rattle off their titles and the titles of everyone else in their office without batting an eyelash.

The great thing was, we were introduced to the administrators with every other foreign public school teacher in the county. After 5 days in this very foreign land that was desperately needed. Melanie visibly relaxed upon seeing our friends from orientation. I didn't realize how much I needed to talk with someone in actual sentences until we went out for dinner and drinks later. As we were being herded (we've all taken to calling the people that guide us around schools and serve as our translators our "handlers". It's a surprisingly accurate label.) out of the meeting hall in the county office, we strained our necks to yell back to each other "6:30 at Dunkin Donuts - dinner!" "Okay, see you there!" That's actually not an exaggeration. It was like a scene from a bad movie with family that had been held separately by captors and then were pushed past each other in a hallway of a dank cave. But before we would have our dinner, Melanie and I were herded to the hospital.

At the beginning of 2008, Korea implemented new immigration policies for foreign teachers. Something about a pedophile teaching in Thailand. Anyway, we had to jump through a bunch of hoops in the US to secure our visas, and a few remain for us here. One is a medical test, supposedly for HIV and drug use. Which is why I was surprised when I was herded (there's no other word that describes it) to a chest x-ray machine. But somehow being in a world where I don't know what's going on 99% of the time puts me into an acquiescent state. So chest x-ray I had. And a blood test, pee test, vision test, height, weight, blood pressure and pulse, and colorblindness test. Because we can only imagine what would happen if Korea started letting in colorblind teachers. All that for the discount price of 35,000 won (about US$30). Seriously, it was a cheap physical, and I can't remember my last, so it was probably a good thing (no visible tumors in my chest... that's positive!), but when we found out that our friends Kate and Chad had been herded to the same thing and had said only blood and pee and gotten just those for about US$10, we were a little frustrated. But it's all part of the experience. Just gotta role with it. Roll with the hour commute, roll with sitting around in the teachers' office with nothing to do all day, roll with them wanting to charge us $35 a month for lunches we can't eat. Actually, we're not rolling with that one. But this whole experience is a fantastic exercises in releasing control.

After the hospital we met 11 foreigners downtown at the Dunkin Donuts. Dunkin Donuts and Baskin Robins are the two foreign chains we've seen in town so far. No McDonalds or KFC... it's refreshing to know there is a limit to the penetration they've achieved, retreating though it is. Six of us went to dinner at a neighborhood place -- sitting on the ground, served by the owner, big Korean menu on the wall. We ate huge communal dishes - one "tang", a very peppery soup with mushrooms and greens - and one "galbi", a very spicy beef rib soup/stew. I like spicy food. I had one sip of the galbi broth and it made me hiccup three times! We drank two bottles (very moderate by Korean standards) of soju and talked for hours about our first five days outside of orientation. It was absolutely blissful to chat it up with people sharing our experiences. After a few hours of alternating hysteric laughter and sighs of consolation, we agreed to form a Tuesday night eating group. That will be awesome. I'll bring my camera in the future to share what I can of the food with you.

Journalists Arrested

2008-09-03T07:20:00.000+09:00

I have only a few minutes before I need to get ready for work, and I had wanted to write about our visit to the hospital yesterday and dinner with friends last night, but I feel compelled to say something about the arrest of Amy Goodman and two producers of Democracy Now!

The three journalists were violently arrested yesterday in St. Paul while covering protests at the Republican National Convention. You can watch Nicole Salazar being arrested at 0:29 here.

If you find that abhorant (and if you don't, please ask yourself why not), what are you going to do? What did we, myself included, do when the Supreme Court overrode the will of the people and elected George Bush in 2000? What did we do, after saying we'd move to Canada if he were reelected, in 2004? The government of the United States monitors 90% of the communications in the country. It tortures and detains without trial those who it pleases without any oversight. Journalists are being violently arrested. Wealth is being transfered from the poor to the rich and our youth are being killed, dismembered and psychologically tortured in Iraq and Afghanistan in illegal wars.

At what point will we step out of our comfortable lives and rise up to bring about change?

Well, I gotta go to work. Then I'll be tired and probably want to go to bed, maybe after an episode of the Daily Show. Then I'll do the same tomorrow. My bank account will grow by a few dollars, and I'll continue to live in the absolute comfort that modern civilization produces, that we've all come to expect and that satiates us all.