When 95% of the meals that you eat are variations on a theme, the odd occasion when something different does crop up means that no matter how full your stomach, you feel COMPELLED to continue eating just in case you don't get offered it again for a while. Yesterday they served us ham (read: Spam) and fried eggs (along with our rice, natch). I ended up eating four and a half eggs. Today I had three cartons of strawberry milk. It wasn't even that nice a brand of strawberry milk, it was artificial tasting and too sweet, yet for sheer novelty value alone, strawberry milk day still remains my second favorite day after chocolate milk day. Today we tried breakfast for the first time. We'd heard good things about the Monday breakfast - the kids don't get here until later so they do 'Western' style food for the teachers - meaning bacon and eggs, we were told. Course when I say bacon, it's really closer to Spam. Anyway, we must've got there too late, as although the menu advertised cereal, French toast and scrambled eggs, all that was left was the cereal. They did then bring out more toast, but, well, I ain't no expect on French toast, but this was just limp bread dipped in oil, so I don't know if that qualifies as ‘French’ or not. That said, I did eat three slices of the stuff with jam (cf. paragraph one: this doesn’t mean it was good). Then they brought out more eggs, but by the time I'd finished my bread the others had wolfed it all, the greedy swines. There weren't enough spoons so I had to wait until Emma was done with hers before I could get to my cornflakes, so of course they were way too soggy then. Oh, and even the pineapple juice managed to disappoint.. My Korean is still woeful, but I did recognize one of the few words I do know, 'u-yu', written on the side of the box. It means milk. Pineapple milk. Yum.
File under:
food
Because we are still without laundry facilities, I’ve had to use the same bed sheets for a month now, which would be bad anyway, but with the humidity here, it's intolerable. The school has been running a free laundry service, but it’s a three day turn-around, so impractical for such things as bedding and towels. Our case for teachers getting clean sheets when the kids do was thrown out: we were told we should just buy new sheets, but of course we haven't been paid yet. Yesterday, we saw huge piles of sheets being stockpiled in some unoccupied apartments near us, but we resisted temptation as
Anyway, it turns out that this is where the sheets are kept prior to them being sent to the laundry service. So, me and Emma are now up one soiled sheet each, and one extra under-blanket, which we didn't need but in my rush I mistook for a quilt.
File under:
misc
File under:
bugs,
food,
korea,
things I'm missing
Today's tea. Clockwise from top-left, we have: mini hamburger patties with rice cakes; omelette, a vegetable, radish kimchi, beansprout and cabbage soup; rice with cereal.
Relative to our usual fare, this is not bad. They've been a bit Oliver Twist with the portions though. I dared go back for seconds and was blessed with a third hamburger and more omelette. Emma had words with one of the dinnerladies yesterday after they refused her request for a second ring of pineapple, so we've learned which ones to try and avoid now. The 'vegetable' is kinda spinachy, but greyer. The kimchi (the cold pickled very spicey stuff that is their National dish which I'm now describing for the very last time) was softer than it usually is. I like it crunchy meself. The soup was dull. Spicey yet bland, like a lot of the Korean food we've tried, there's no subtlety of flavour, it's just...spice. And the rice was rice.
The girl doing most of the singing here is Heidi (American), the other two are Kane and Eva (a couple from New Zealand). This was taken the other week when we attempted to climb the mountain the name of which I should really learn. Heidi is trying to teach us a few words of Korean. Do you recognise the song?
We've been in South Korea one month as of today, and it has flown. I do wonder what it feels like for you guys back home though - does it feel like I've been gone a while? Or has it not been long enough yet? Probably not every month will pass so quickly. I've just read Lionel Shriver's Double Fault (which I heartily recommend), and there's a passage where she muses on the rhythms of a prison term:
The beginning went surprisingly fast. The early middle was the worst - the routine already grown tyrannical, an appalling preponderance of servitude to go. The vast middle-middle was almost restful, with no tempting parole in view; the walls of any cell must evolve to the walls of the world. The killer was glimpsing release...it is said that a convict may experience his final weeks of captivity as longer than the rest of his sentence.No I don't mean to sound like I'm comparing this place to a prison (though some of the rules are a little tyrannical) but maybe that's how time will pass here. Right now all is novelty so it goes fast. And before I left a few people told me that homesickness hits the worst after around three months, so that's the 'early middle' I guess. Time will tell. Anyway, everything's going well. I'm enjoying it and have few complaints. We're still waiting for the laundry room to be done. Apparently the laundry room is to double as a classroom (why we need a laundry-themed class escapes me, but whatever), but it seems the builders didn't know about the dual-purpose of the room - they thought it was supposed to be just a classroom, so they put in the washers and driers as planned - they just didn't both to sort out any plumbing for the building. Apart from that everything's in order. Ok, well maybe they could sort out some proper drainage for the place, but apart from that... I was going to celebrate this milestone by going into Suyu (our local district) for a night of kareoke, but since we don't get paid for another week, everyone's broke so don't think they'll be much of a turnout. I could afford to go, but I could not afford to get drunk first as would of course be strictly neccessary. Instead I'm gonna have beer and chocolate alone in my room and watch the next few episodes of Lost which I've downloaded. Yes, it's another hardcore Friday night at Seoul English Village. Which makes me realise: I haven't been drunk, or even what you might call tipsy, in a month. Don't woory, this will be rectified many times over when we finally get paid. Finally, here's some random pictures for your enjoyment while I get back to my beer: I don't know what this first one is but it's pretty. You get the strangest juxtaposition of old and new buildings all over Seoul. I don't know if this is actually old, but the point is, it's right by the main road, just outside a bookshop. I couldn't get any closer to find out what it is as just as I was taking this picture, me and Emma had a bit of a spat and she stormed off down into the subway ahead of me.
Apparently in South Korea, there is an official 'Teacher's Day' every year when the kids shower their teachers with presents. But that's at proper schools. The grand total of my gifts so far is: one candy, two pieces of bubblegum, one cup of coffee bought for me this afternoon from a vending machine, and this origami rose:
If the city weren't permantly covered in a layer of smog, this view would be stunning:
Goodnight y'all.
As soon as we left it began to pour. Maybe we could've made it up the mountain, semi-protected from the brunt of the rain by the trees, but we would've faced a landslide coming back. Instead we did sit-ups and push-ups (well maybe push-up would be closer) under the eaves of the cafeteria, defying stares by the arriving workmen. When the rain eased we went for a run through the neighbourhood. When we got back I couldn't tell sweat from rain. I had a shower and checked my email, but it was still not eight o'clock. With nothing to do for five more hours, I sunk into my body's impulses and slunk back to bed until eleven.
It's twenty mnutes after sunrise and I'm up and awake because I may be going for a hike this morning. I say may because it's started to drizzle a litle bit, and in Korea it rarely just drizzles for long, not at this time of year anyway. So I don't know if we're gonna want to cancel. Problem is I have no way of contacting the others until they come round for me, or don't. So I'm gonna wait in a state of semi-preparedness on the off-chance, and if nobody's come in half an hour, I'll go back to bed. I don't start work til half one today. I'm just eating my Frosties...
When I look at this site in Firefox everything always looks fine, but sometimes in Internet Explorer stuff looks kinda screwy. If anyone sees anything that seems to have gone awry, please let me know and I'll try and fix it. Or, just get Firefox, which is better.
File under:
misc
I scored 10 out of 18 on this site, which tests if you can tell Chinese, Japanese and Korean faces apart. I think that just about falls within the realm of guessing.
File under:
links
I wish I'd taken my camera to the canteen today. Today's lunch comprised: cold wet broccoli, rice with 'cereal', the ubiquitous radish kimchi, kimchi pancake and some kind of black beans (unidentified and untasted). The centrepiece of today's banquet though was baby octopi in chilli sauce. Whole baby octopi. Heads, tentacles, suckers. They were quite cute actually. Like the baby squiddy thing delivered by Will Smith in Men in Black. Yeah, cute. Cute and chewy.
Since I'm gonna be living here for the next year, I thought it would be a good idea to learn the basics, so I'm giving myself a little history lesson with this post. This is also for all those people who thought I was gonna be living in a mud hut or up a tree in the middle of nowhere.
First of all, Korea is here:
Close up, it kinda reminds me of Ireland:
One of the world's oldest civilisations, according to legend Korea was founded in 2333 BC. Despite numerous invasions over the centuries, Korea remained independent and unified under a single government until the twentieth century.
The official language is Korean, spoken by 78 million people worldwide. The classification of the language is debated. Some say Korean is related to languages spoken in Turkey, Mongolia and Siberia (Altaic languages). Others sources suggest links with Hungarian and Finnish; apparently ancient 12th century Hungarian poetry bares remarkable similarities to pure Korean. Then again it may be an isolated language. The written form is very easy to learn, as the alphabet is almost purely phonetic. I can read Korean myself, I just don't know what any of the words mean. Looks like this: 안녕하세요. Pronounced like this: annyeong haseyo. Means: Hello!
In 1910, Japan invaded and occupied the country until the end of the World War II. Korean culture and economy suffered heavy losses during this period. The Korean language was banned and Koreans were forced to support the Japanese war effort. Tens of thousands of men were conscripted into Japan's military. Approximately 200,000 girls and women, mostly from Korea and China, were conscripted as sex slaves. Anti-Japanese sentiment is still fairly strong in Korea, as a result of Japanese war crimes and continuing Korean-Japanese disputes. Kids in my class as young as ten years old have told me how they hate the Japanese as the Japanese killed many of their own people.
When Japan were defeated at the end of World War II, the UN developed plans for a trusteeship administration, the Soviet Union administering the northern end of the peninsula and the United States effectively administering the south. This was supposed to be temporary, but the now divided nation failed to come to an agreement on how the country would go forward. In 1948 two separate governments were formed, each modelled on the politics of the country that had been administering that region. The North became a Communist state, the South a liberal capitalist democracy. South Korea went on to prosper and has become the tenth largest economy in the world today. The North is a totalitarian dictatorship. It is still hoped that one day the country will be unified again, though technically they are still at War as the Korean Civil War (1950 - 1953) ended with a ceasefire rather than a peace treaty. All that now stops the North from invading the South are the 90,000 American Military personnel stationed in the DMZ, and I think about a million landmines, though actually South Korea has better relations with North Korea than most other countries do today.
South Koreans have high life expectancies, very high literacy levels (because the alphabet is so easy to learn!), good healthcare and infrastructure, cheap and efficient public transport. And! Mobile phones seem to work everywhere! Underground, on the tube - why can't ours do that? There are very few foreigners in South Korea. In Itaewon, a neighbourhood of Seoul, you do see a few black and white faces, mainly from the nearby military base, but elsewhere you can go a whole day walking around and see only Koreans. Well, maybe Chinese and Japanese too, but I can’t tell the difference to be honest. And the vast majority of people speak at best only a couple of words of English - which is why we’re here of course! Only thing we don’t like about Koreans is their very un-British way of barging right past if you’re standing in their way without saying a word. Seems very rude to us but seems to be the habit so best just get used to it.
North Korea spends around 25% of the nation's GDP on the military. It's estimated by aid workers that between 600,000 and 3.5 million people died in North Korea in the 1990's due to famine. By 1999 foreign aid was alleviating this problem, but with the recent missile testing crisis, aid is likely to decline again. Radio and TV sets in North Korea are pre-tuned to government stations that pump out a steady stream of propaganda. Mobile phones were outlawed in June 2004. There is no internet access. The state is officially athiest, and religious activities are heavily supressed. Amnesty International and other human rights organizations accuse North Korea of having one of the worst human rights records of any nation. Head of state Kim Jong-il was (according to official North Korean accounts) born in a log cabin at his father's guerrilla base on the country's highest mountain - an event marked by a double rainbow and a new star in the sky. The post of president has been assigned "eternally" to his late father.
Finally, Here's a quote from the first copy of The Korea Times I bought here, from a story about an American who made the mistake of voluntarily entering the North:
Without anaesthesia, a doctor removed the tattoo [of the words "US Army" alongside two crossed rifles] using knife and scissors: "anasthetics and painkillers are for heroes on the battlefield. There's nothing for you no matter how hard you scream now," were the doctor's calm words to writhing Jenkins.
File under:
korea
The creatures have been out in force recently. I thought I might get away with out being plagued by bees and wasps this year, but apparently a few have been spotted in the last day or so. I'm told the wasps will come right up and pester you, so not looking forward to meeting them. This sad chap (below) got into my room last night; he didn't last long. Death by slipper:
Then there's these guys, which are absolutely everywhere. They come out as night. Mostly.
In truth, they're even smaller than this one looks; I've zoomed right in. But what they lack in bulk they make up for in sheer force of numbers. Ugh, even just talking about it makes me feel like they're on me...
The question is though, which one of these swines did this to me:
This actually doesn't do it justice, as you can't see the swelling. It's like I'm growing a second elbow on my left arm. I have three or four bites but this is the worst. I can only blame myself though - last night we went out for a Mr. Pizza pizza (not as tacky as it sounds), and we ended up eating it outside. I'd had repellent on earlier but forgot that I'd showered since. I think everyone that went got a few bites each though, so am in good company.
Number 4: Found in my kitchen sink. And I'm ashamed to say I sent him straight down it. Well no, not straight down, he put up quite a fight first actually. He's probably still lurking in the u-bend waiting for an opportune moment to strike back.
Number 3: Don't know what this is. Maybe some kind of cricket/grasshopper? On my patio.
Number 2: Ant. Big ant. Probably scarier in real life. Maybe poisonous (purely conjecture). Seen everywhere.
Number 1: Haven't a clue what this last fella is. Found him on the inside of my bug screen. There's no way he got through those holes! He's still there now, trapped between the doors. I shook him off the screen but he's made no effort to go further.
If anyone uses Google Earth (or, I suppose, an atlas), you can fnd me at latitude 37.6396724258, longitude 127.008717226. Just cut and paste '37.6396724258, 127.008717226' into the search box. Everyone else click here. It's not the best quality picture, but if you pan out you can see the mountains to the West of us (and North and East if you pan far enough). The browny-green colour immediately surrounding our campus is the woody beginnings of the Bukansan National Park which we're set to go exploring tomorrow. As for the campus itself you can see the main building where most of the classrooms are and up in the North-West corner you can see the swimming pool which apparently will eventually be used for water polo lessons. We should be able to use it too after hours, but it's currently filled with sludge, we're hoping it's sorted while the weather's still good. This site used to be a sports centre, which must be when this photo was taken, as the accomodation blocks which would be at the top and on the right of the map have not yet been built. Finally, according to Google Earth, I am 5422 miles away from home...
File under:
misc
Relative to last night's children, tonight's were a delight and a relief. Incompetent at Dominos though.
I'm not sure what the peace sign's all about, but show them a camera and they all do it. It's like a cult or something.
At least these guys smile though. When we did this with an older class they all fell immediately into this 'attitude' mode: they'd do the V-sign and put on these ridiculous tough guy faces.
This next little guy's name is Jimmy. They all have an English name as well as an unpronouncable Korean name. I don't know who makes their names up for them, but so far I've met a 'Jesus', a 'God', a 'Hungry', a 'Robot', and about a dozen boys called 'June'.
At last, a different pose (possibly going for that more mature 'attitude' look)...
I'm on the afternoon shift this week, which means doing a two-hour evening activity with the kids before they go to bed. It's three or four teachers versus five or six groups of kids, and this week I've been on 'Domino Games' with Rebecca and Zak (both American). The gist of the game is that we give them a shape and the teams have to race to build it. We start off simple, with line, circle, heart etc, then have a freestyle round at the end where the best design wins. I just never considered how emotionally draining this was gonna be. Monday was just chaotic as we hadn't properly sorted out how we were gonna play the game. Most of the kids were just bored, and so were we. Tuesday was better. The rules were sharpened up, everybody knew what they were doing, and it was very almost fun. I usually try to help each team in turn at some point in the night, especially the underdogs who've had to start from scratch halfway through. I was helping one such team when one of the girls inadvertantly started the thing falling; trying to stop the tumble before it got too far, I stuck out my foot to kick a few dominos out of the way. Unfortunately I was unsuccessful in this, but worse, all that most of the team ever saw was my foot in the middle of their toppled dominos. I tried to explain, but they were having none of it. I barely escaped without a lynching, and I wasn't allowed back in their corner all night, and still every time I come across that class in the school they stop and growl what I'm sure are Korean expletives at me. Wednesday. On Wednesday we ran the whole gamut of human emotions. We had tears, and jubilation, and laughter, and frustration. I must stop myself from getting so involved though - there's always one dozy kid who starts the whole thing toppling before it's finished, and it's all I can to stop myself screaming out along with them. In fact, I'm torn between sympathising and doubling over in hysterics as they all throw themselves on top of their designs in an attempt to cut off the tumble, which invariably only makes matters worse. And tonight. If yesterday we had the tears, tonight we very nearly had the bloodshed. I was stuck the whole night patrolling a DMZ I was forced to construct on the border between teams eight and nine. A boy from team nine (accidentally or otherwise) knocked down team eight's first attempt at a straight line in round one, and though he apologised, I have never seen such a bunch of sore losers in my life. I spent the rest of the session simply as a buffer between the two teams - every time I left for a second a fight would break out, or one team would start lobbing domino missiles at the other team's constructions. I issued more red signs to these kids than I have in the previous three weeks. I had taken my camera with me, planning to take a few snaps of the kids playing, but they were such a bunch of swines I didn't feel like taking any pictures in the end. I'm hoping tomorrow will be better.
Luckily there's not that much that I won't eat so I've been coping alright here so far, but there's certain things that I don't think I'm ever gonna be likely to be trying...
This one is a pick-your-own, you see these tanks like these outside of all the local restaurants:
Possibly I could cope with the fish, though they tend to serve it full of bones I think, and I wouldn't be surprised if they also left the head and/or scales on:
I can't quite make out what this is supposed to be:
Sometimes it's better not to know:
Like when they serve us 'meat' soup. You just learn not to ask. Anyway, thank god, I've since found these, so rest assured I'll never be going hungry...
Hello at last. It's been three weeks almost to the hour since we arrived here at Seoul English Village in Korea, and finally the internet connections have been sorted out. Hallelujah. I wrote most of the following three days after we arrived (July 1st), the plan being that I would be able to publish it in the next day or so, but since the internet never materialised until now it’s been sat on my laptop’s hard drive ever since, so it's old news, but seeing as it's all about our journey here, it still seems the best place to start Neither me or Emma had heard much about the fire that broke out at Kings Cross Station until almost 10pm on Monday night (June 27th), and we were due to be going directly there on Tuesday afternoon. Sources online were vague but indicated that due to some dodgy gas canisters near the station that officials feared might catch fire, it probably would not reopen until Wednesday. Perfect. Until then trains would be terminating at Peterborough, where buses would be arranged to ferry people into London. Emma rang National Rail at the crack of dawn on Monday (I’d tried but wasn’t patient enough to hold for 20 minutes to talk to a real person like she was). The lady there suggested getting a train instead to Sheffield, and changing there for St. Pancras, just a few tube stops down for where we intended to be in the first place. Good plan, we thought. The inspector on board the train thought otherwise. She was not impressed at all, and though she eventually punched our tickets she still kept on saying that we shouldn't travel on that train with our tickets, and she scowled at us every time she walked through our cabin. In Sheffield, we were flatly told by two officials on the platform that we could not get on any train from Sheffield with our ticket, regardless of whatever we’d been told by National Rail. Thank god, that train’s controller guy happened to be walking by during the latter of these conversations, and on appeal he said that there was no point making a bad situation (the fire in London) worse so we may as well get on after all. So everybody send good vibes out to Alan the train guy in your prayers tonight. The rest of the journey was gladly uneventful: an hour stood up on the stuffy tube to get to Heathrow; couple of hours killing time at the shops there before boarding (including desperate hunt for internet connection as we’d both neglected to print out the instructions on where to go when once we’d actually reached Korea); an eleven-hour flight which felt every bit as long as it sounds (neither of us could sleep the time away as the seats were too uncomfortable, we had some music to listen to, though it seemed to be on a madness-inducing one-hour loop, and one film, Ultraviolet, which totally lived down to the reviews I’d read back in England - it was like watching a videogame, but with poorer graphics and plot. We did get two meals, one ‘English’, one Korean (I went for the Korean breakfast, which included a truly foul rice porridge with green tea which I‘d like to never experience again please), and free drinks (impressively I resisted free wine as apparently not good for jetlag - and Emma had forbidden me as didn‘t want a repeat of the Paris trip). Also got free gift package of sleeping mask, toothbrush and shocking-pink socks, which we both wore but regrettably had to return). Finally in Korea, after an hour queuing to get through immigration, we were accosted at the airport doors by a Korean taxi driver. He was extraordinarily critical of the bus route we were planning on taking (and had in fact been instructed to take). In our defense, we were well aware that we were being scammed here, but we had been travelling for almost 24 hours at this point so we just didn’t care. We didn’t anticipate just to what extent we were gonna be scammed (I’m not telling you how much we paid the driver, but it was at least ten times what the bus would’ve cost us). At least he was fast (like, double the speed limit fast) but we still got stuck in heavy traffic so that was another hour. And that was just to the hotel in Seoul where we were to meet a few of our fellow teachers, who we were picked up in a minivan with for the final leg. We arrived at Seoul English Village (SEV), where we will be working and living for the year, at around 9pm local time (around 30 hours since we’d last slept is all I’m sure of), were met by Ken, Braden and Margaret (the senior teachers), and ushered off to our rooms to finally, blissfully, sleep. Our rooms/studios are much nicer than we expected. We have a bed, desk and chair, wee little wardrobe, filing cabinet cum bedside table, internet connection, telly with cable TV that’s far too big for the room and will rarely watch anyway as only two English-Language channels, bathroom with shower, even a little kitchenette area which I wasn’t expecting comprising of hob (singular), worktop/draining board and sink, and fridge. Also have little balcony now with insect screen to keep the mozzies out. First night we had no screen and the door had been left open so the place was swarming. Much better now. Air-conditioning too thank god. There are about 30 new teachers here with us. Of those, there are two British (that would be us), the rest are mainly Yanks, with a healthy dose of Aussies and a smattering each of Kiwis and Canadians. Even among the existing staff there are no other British here, so be prepared for me and Emma coming back in a year with our accents completely warped. Already she caught me talking about when we would get cellphones, and I overheard her tell her mum on the phone that we had tunafish (which I know she has never said before) for lunch. In fact, I was trying out my laptop’s microphone earlier, and when I played what I’d said back to myself, I found to my bewilderment that I’d totally put on an Australian accent. Quite a good one too, although it was entirely unconscious. Unfortunately/fortunately I didn’t save the file otherwise could have uploaded it for your amusement/disgust. So I apologise in advance for the baloney I’ll be coming out with in a year’s time. Anyway, everyone I’ve spoken to seems real nice, and I’ll be sure to tell you more about folks later. I do have to just say though, that the guy living right across from me is the doppelganger, in looks, size, voice and mannerisms of Penn, as in ‘and Teller’. Or possibly maybe Teller. The big one anyway. Not the one who never speaks. That would just be creepy. Anyhow, welcome to Korea, please check back on me for time to time (when I get into a more stable routine I’m gonna aim for a post a day, even if only a photo). And maybe leave the odd comment, just so I know that I’m not just writing all this for my mum! There are a few posts either below or in the archives on the right that I wrote in the weeks leading up to us coming here to check out how everything worked, so feel free to look around if you like until I can get back to you… Y’all have a nice day now.
File under:
korea
