Monday

There was such a slow transition from winter to spring, that I feel we missed most of spring and will soon be in summer.  Oh well. At least it isn't cold anymore. 

It's been a long time since we've updated, so here's the short version of what has happened:

--Week long trip to Jeju Island that was great but also cold, windy, and raining the entire time.

--Several more death threats from students; they seem to find it funny, but I'm not amused by 15 year olds holding exacto knives telling me that I will die.  Also, I have not been given a suitable explanation as to why all Korean kids carry exacto knives (I've heard something about pencil sharpeners, but that's what real pencil sharpeners are for).

--Three-day weekend for the Buddha's birthday and a trip to Busan, where our hotel (the Elysee Motel, which I highly recommend) was awesome, and of course the weather turned foul: cold, windy, rainy.

--An international report determined North Korea was responsible for the sinking of the Cheonan, which led to:

--North Korea said they didn't do it, and would respond to any aggression from the South with "all-out war" which led to:

--The value of the won dropped dramatically, and we lost about $2000 in our savings in a matter of 2 weeks.  The won has been very slowly rising again, since China has called for peace between the Koreas, and Clinton--along several dozen other U.S. diplomats--arrived in China for economic talks that inevitably turned towards the North-Korea-Problem.  We've recovered about $500 in value from that huge hit, and hoping for the strenghtening of the won to continue before wiring money home.

--I threw three girls out of my class after being tired of putting up with their rudeness and hostility for 3 months.  They stayed outside, but made faces in the door of all the other classrooms for the next 45 minutes, which was unfortunate because our manager was in one of those classes observing Nathan teach.  We had a talk, and so far it worked out well for me, because the girls were given a talk to, their parents were informed, and if they keep up the bad behavior they will be expelled from the school.  I don't want to cause the school to lose money, but these were the kind of girls that if I heard they were run over by the school's bus, I would have to try hard to feel anything other than relief.

--We got a new foreign teacher.  After 9 months of teaching more classes than any other English teachers at the other campuses, we finally got a fifth English teacher to (hopefully) help balance out the load.  So far, Nora and Jasper have their schedules, and they will be teaching 18, which is less than 19, but still not a very appreciable change.

--Our friend Jasper, aka the DJ of the one-man act Flirtphonic, put on his first public show this weekend at a small bar called Vent.  It was great fun.

And now it's Monday again.  The above mentioned horrible trio of girls are today, and our manager, Julihee, will be observing the class.  I hope they act their normal selves just one more time, and then hope that Julihee kicks them out of the school as promised.  Of course, that's the best possible scenario, and I never expect that to come about.  Somehow, I'm sure I'll be told I'm not disciplining them enough, to which I will ask how we may discipline them since we can only give detention (we assign no grades, we cannot strike them, we obviously can't speak to their parents), to which I will be replied with a reiteration that I need to discipline them better. It's all very circular and completely irrational, but that's how Korean management seems to be most of the time.

Anyway, it's a bright, (kind of) sunny day (thanks to the smog, it's never actually very sunny) and, all things considered, life is pretty good.

Monday

It's less than a week since North Korea announced that it would no longer abide by the armistice that halted the Korean War.  Since there was never a truce signed, the North and South have technically been at war this entire time, only both parties agreed to an armistice and to cease combat operations.

This is apparently not the first time North Korea has done this; a news story from the Korea Times on 27 May 2009 reports an increase in vigilance from South Korea after the North announced an end to the armistice earlier that day as well. 

Last week's announcement is likely just a scare tactic from Pyongyang to gain more leverage in its nuclear goals, and hopefully it will amount to nothing.  But in the past few months there have been several naval encounters where North and South Korean navies have fired upon one another. 

And to top it all off, this morning there were two series of alarm signals broadcast on loudspeakers that each went on for several minutes.  Having lived in a tornado prone area in Tennessee, it sounded like an emergency weather warning; having seen enough WWII movies, it also sounded like an air raid siren. 

If my students are to be believed, tornados don't hit South Korea, or any really bad weather for that matter.  So let's hope they were just testing the system.

-----------------------------------------------------------
Update: 27 March

A South Korean naval vessel sank in the Yellow Sea today after an "underwater explosion", with 46 sailors still missing.  Around the same time, other South Korean ships fired on an "unidentified vessel" on the North Korean side of the maritime border.  No word yet on the cause of the explosion, or whether the mystery vessel was involved.  Hopefully the two events were unrelated, and the unfortunate incident with the South Korean ship will be the result of accident or error, not northern aggression.  We really don't need anything to further exacerbate the tensions between the two Koreas.

Friday

yesterday at Costco i bought the largest pizza i've ever seen, and for only 12,500 won - and to top it off, there were only 6 slices, so each one was like an entire meal unto itself.

the job, as usual, is wearing thin.  but the good news is that we have passed the halfway point of our contracts, so hopefully it's all down hill from here.

this was a 4 day work week (aren't those so much nicer than 5 day weeks?  i wonder why we don't all work 4 10-hour days.  i'd much prefer that).  it was also the start of a brand new semester.  unfortunately, we don't have another break until our vacation starting april 19, so that's a bummer.  but the vacation should be really cool.  we're flying to Jeju island, off the southern coast of Korea.  you can learn more about this awesome sub-tropical getaway, the "Hawaii of Asia," on the offical government tourism site by clicking here 

and since we're such misers with our income, we decided for once to actually splurge, and we'll be staying at the hyatt regency.  it's a beautiful hotel, right on the beach, so it should make for a nice stay.  you can see pictures of it here

lastly, because i haven't taken advantage of our Amazon Associates affiliation before, and since they've finally come to an author-friendly agreement with McMillan and i can like them again, i thought i'd put a friendly reminder here.  i will still be in korea on my birthday, so anyone who wants to get me a present, and have it waiting for me when i get home, you could do a lot worse than buying the latest book in the Wheel of Time, The Gathering Storm (Wheel of Time, Book 12) by Robert Jordan and Brandon Sanderson.  just throwing that out there.

have a great weekend everyone

Seollal Weekend

We got a three day weekend for the lunar new year celebration, Seollal, and Nora and I came out of our cave for dinner and/or drinks Thursday, Friday, Saturday, and on our own on Sunday. 

Thursday we ate at our local barbecue joint - there are some pictures a few posts below of chicken on a grill in the middle of table from last time we ate there.

Friday we went out to Kundae with some of our friends after work for dinner.  This was a new variation on 'chicken ribs' - cooked in a pan with vegetables and oil, rather than grilled on a barbecue.  But it was equally good, and afterward you order a plate of rice and seaweed and make a quick, spicy chicken-fried rice.

Here's a picture of it all going into the pan

And here is what it looked like after it was finished cooking:

Very tasty

Afterward we went to a bar in the area called Woodstock, where they have pretty much every song imaginable.  It's where we found a condom dispenser with this advertisement:

I'm not sure exactly what the message is supposed to be.

The bar was cool for other reasons as well.  Nora licked a turtle, I lost at darts, and we all got Rick Rolled

I had a video of the rick roll, but apparently YouTube has "voluntarily disabled this functionality on kr.youtube.com because of the Korean real-name verification law," so I was unable to upload it.

On Saturday night we went out for our friend's birthday in Hongdae, which is basically a hipster hangout for people with money who like mixed drinks.  OK, it's a little more than that, but I'm not a big fan of Hongdae.  Still, we had fun, and I got to have a kebab made in the back of a pickup truck.  It was advertised to me as the "best kebab in Korea" by our friend Nathan.  While I can't say that for sure, it was a really good kebab.

Finally, on Sunday we went to the national palace, Gyeongbokgung and the National Folk Museum to take a look around at some of the festivities for Lunar New Year.  We were led to believe they would be really cool, and while they were interesting, they weren't all that exciting.  I would choose to spend the Seollal celebrations in some other Asian city if I had the choice.

But we did get to see a drum troupe, which basically involves the players wearing colorful outfits with long streamers on their heads.  As they play, they dance around and twirl the streamers.  It's really cool, but then it gets kind of old after the first several songs.

Here's a shot of some of them in motion:

Afterward we travelled to Gwangwhamun, the largest plaza downtown.  For the occasion, they shut it off to traffic (which they didn't even do for the international snowboard competition held a month ago), and had traditional Korean games, including: throwing sticks at a jar; whipping spinning tops with leather straps to keep them going; slamming folded paper on the ground to get it to turn over (similar to Pogs, if you remember those); rolling metal hoops on the ground; and flying kites.

Needless to say, Koreans used to be really hard up for fun. No wonder they're all so obsessed with computer games.  But the kites were kinda cool, especially seeing dozens and dozens of them flying over downtown.

Monday

You know how sometimes you get a TV theme song stuck in your head?  You know how sometimes you are at work, bored, surfing the internet?  Here is my result for those two scenarios today, in two parts:

Part One: The Fresh Prince of Seoul

Now this is the story all about how
My life got flipped, turned upside down
I’d like to take a minute, so put your life on hold
I’ll tell you how I became the prince of a town called Seoul
In Middle Tennessee I was born and raised
On the campus is where I spent most of my days
Chilling out, maxing, relaxing, slightly odd
Three degrees and unemployed, still hanging round the quad
When a couple of guys who were ugly and hairy
Started making trouble by the library
I got in one little fight and my mom grew cold
She said ‘you’re moving with your girlfriend to teach English in Seoul.”

I whistled for a cab, and when it came near
The window said “translation available” and there was gimbap on the mirror
My best guess was that this cab would do
So I threw caution to the winds, “Yo home to Mangu.”
I pulled up to the high rise about ten or eleven
And though it smelled like hell thought I’d make it my heaven
Looked at my kingdom, though I wasn’t yet sold
Till I tried the kimchi, became the fresh prince of Seoul.

Part Two: Ignition - Seoul Remix

Now, usually I don’t do this but

Go ahead and break em off with a little preview

Of the remix...

Now I’m not trying to be rude
But I can’t speak it just like you
The way you say the things you do
Sounds like you’re whining, baby boo
And now I’m all up in your grill
Trying to get a cheap fresh meal
I find it hard to understand
How you can give me such a deal

So ajuma give me that gimbap
And let me get some kimchi
Running her hands cross that seaweed
Making a tuna roll just for me
Watching variety shows on TV

It’s the remix to ignition
Hot and fresh from Seoul’s kitchen
Ajumas rolling those gimbaps
Got every man in here wishing
Sipping maekju and soju
I’m pretty drunk how bout you
It’s the freakin weekend
Baby I’m about to have me some fun

Now it’s like a cooking show
Except I’m sitting on the floor
There’s so much food that I don’t know
What to do except eat more
Girl you think that I don’t know
You want my pale face to up and go
I’m about to take 4,000 won
And say “annyong haseyo”

So ajuma give me that gimbap
And let me get some kimchi
Running her hands cross that seaweed
Making a tuna roll just for me
Watching variety shows on TV

It’s the remix to ignition
Hot and fresh from Seoul’s kitchen
Ajumas rolling those gimbaps
Got every man in here wishing
Sipping maekju and soju
I’m pretty drunk how bout you
It’s the freakin weekend
Baby I’m about to have me some fun

Rice wine popping
In the nore-bong later
So much food everywhere
You’d think this singing room was catered
We’ve got
Koreans to my left
Foreigners to my right
We bring em both together
We got drinking all night
Then after the nore-bong
It’s the street food vendor
And after the vendor
It’s time for the next damn bender
Yeah around about seven
You gotta clear all the clubs
And go to sleep until noon
Cause haegwons have no subs

So ajuma give me that gimbap
And let me get some kimchi
Running her hands cross that seaweed
Making a tuna roll just for me
Watching variety shows on TV

It’s the remix to ignition
Hot and fresh from Seoul’s kitchen
Ajumas rolling those gimbaps
Got every man in here wishing
Sipping maekju and soju
I’m pretty drunk how bout you
It’s the freakin weekend
Baby I’m about to have me some fun

Now we off in a cab
Rolling windows down
Annoying the cab driver
As we drive across town
Sliding round and round
Every turn in the back seat
To the remix
We just bumping the beat
 

Peace.