Foundation Day in Daegu

October 3rd is Foundation Day in Korea, the day Korea was created. The story goes something like: God (which God? I don't know) came to Korea and was lonely. He wanted a wife, but there were no people, only animals. The choice was between a tiger and a bear, so God sent them both into a cave and said he would marry whichever one could live in the cave for a month eating only garlic. The tiger gave up and God turned the bear into a woman and married her. So all Koreans are the descends of bears. At least, that's what I've put together.

Anyway, Foundation Day warranted a day off from work and I used it to the fullest. I went to Daegu, a city about an hour or so out from where I am.

When I was applying for jobs, Daegu was my first choice. I heard it was a beautiful city with lots of parks and lakes and historical sites. I was not disappointed at all! I arrived with two friends at about 9am. Daegu doesn't wake up until 10 so we walked around for a while until places opened.

The first big thing we did was spend the morning and a bit of the afternoon at Dongmu park. It's a park situated around a lake in the center. There are duck boats, water and jet skiing, a butterfly garden, and a hiking path that circles the park. We spent some time skipping rocks and then made asses of ourselves motoring around in a duck boat. Someone was water skiing on the other half of the lake, and the people who run the water skiing dock kept pressing in on the duck boat territory. We'd be well within the limits for boating and the speed boat would come in hot and honking. He even did it to a family where a toddler was driving the boat! (The boats went maybe 5 miles an hour, no cause for alarm). Maybe it's some kind of turf war between the resort and the old man who owns the duck boats. After that we went to see the butterfly garden. It was actually pretty boring and had hardly nothing for butterflies, but it was free and you get what you pay for.

DUCK BOAT!

The outside of the butterfly garden. More exciting than the inside.

After that, we made for one of Daegu's historical sites- 불로동 고분군 공원 (Bullodong Tombs Park). It's an ancient burial site for people that are believed to be rulers from Daegu. They were buried a particular way in the ground and then covered in mounds of dirt that are now overgrown with grass. There are 210 mounds, scattered around the park alone or in groups, all of different sizes. The hike is similar to the hiking at the park- exercise, but nothing strenuous. Along with the mounds were chestnut trees in a few spots around the park. People were harvesting the chestnuts, which come in bright green, sharp, prickly pods. We learned how to open them and get the nuts out, eating a few but giving the rest to the Korean family that was collecting them. They probably roast and sell them on the street. At one point (started by me, of course) we climbed up one of the trees to shake the pods out. We scared an elderly couple who didn't see us at first, but then they just laughed and took a few pictures for us. We gave them some chestnuts on our way past.

This is a chestnut pod, otherwise known as an "Ow dammit, that's sharp" plant. You have to step on them, working your feet back and forth until it pops open (the spines will prick you, so you have to use a sharp tool or your shoed feet). When it pops open, there are one or two chestnuts inside. It can be tricky to pick them out, but after you do, just peel off the thin layer of skin and enjoy! I had SO MUCH fun doing this. It really is the small things, right?


We stayed until the sun started to set and then used the subway to get downtown where we had AMAZING fire grilled meat for dinner, found an Auntie Annie's pretzel shop (ate that too), and headed for the bus stop. We missed the second to last bus home due to crowding that we never expected, but made it home just fine on the last. After a taxi ride and a short walk, I was home and it was 1am. I had quite a day.

Daegu was seriously such a beautiful city. I'm still kind of bitter that I didn't get offered a job there, but (spoiler alert!) I am most likely staying in Korea another year and I can try again if I don't go big and head to Seoul. I'll leave you with two last pictures, both taken at the Tombs Park. Happy Friday, everyone!

The sun setting over the burial mounds.

The view of Daegu from the top of 불로동 고분군 공원.

My First (boring!) Chuseok!

   This past week here in Korea was a holiday called 추석- Chuseok. It's a holiday very similar to China's Mid-Autumn festival or the American/Canadian Thanksgiving. It's a holiday centered around the Autumnal Equinox to celebrate the harvest. People leave their city lives to stay with their families in the countryside. They eat traditional Korean foods and exchange gifts. Some (most? I don't have statistics on this one) will dress in traditional Korean clothing called 한복 (hanbok).

Examples of hanboks as worn by the men of the band Super Junior.

Since Chuseok follows the lunar calendar it's different every year. This year it fell in such a way as to give us a 5-day vacation. Foreigners traveled. Koreans visited their grandparents.

And I stayed behind.

This isn't a new thing for me. When I was living in England I missed Thanksgiving. Being a college student at the time, my university's International Student Office put together a Thanksgiving for the foreigners. Instead, my family had kindly shipped what they could of a Thanksgiving meal (pumpkin pie mix, which does not exist in England, for example), I bought the rest of what I could there, and celebrated by giving my English (and Italian! And Welch! And Korean!) friends their first Thanksgiving in the family setting of our friend's home. At the time, someone tried to make me feel bad for not going to the dinner put on my the office.

"They didn't have to do anything for you, you know. You can at least go." He had said. But Thanksgiving, to me, is about family, not food. Yes, I would have had a good time talking with the other foreign exchange students and stuffing my face with catered dinner for an afternoon I'd walk away from and forget. But the day spent teaching my friends who had no previous experience how to prepare Thanksgiving dinner and answering earnest questions such as "what kind of presents do you give for Thanksgiving?" remains one of my fondest memories of England.

I think when it comes down to it, I really like the meaning behind holidays more than their modern interpretation. Thanksgiving (and Chuseok!) are meant to be family holidays. So while I think it's fantastic my English uni offered a Thanksgiving meal and that here in Korea a popular foreigner bar offered a traditional Korean dinner....in both cases I ended up in a small group at home. And I don't necessarily feel badly for that. Don't get me wrong, all of my friends who went abroad or partied their lives away over this vacation deserved it. Everyone who partook in the traditional Chuseok dinner had a very precious cultural experience that's worth it's weight in gold. But for me, my satisfaction with a holiday comes from personal connection.

I spent Chuseok with my boyfriend who was unable to go home due to work. We squeezed ourselves into an over-crowded movie theater for a horror film alongside countless other celebrating families. I brought him wine. He bought me an itchy sweater (that I love dearly because he knew just what color to pick). I cooked a (non-Korean) dinner that was heavy in honor of the gluttony Thanksgiving celebrators love to flourish in. We curled up close and watched some TV and read together. Later on, when work called him away, I joined some friends for some games at one of their houses. I spent all of Chuseok this way- at various friends' houses or stealing free moments with the boyfriend to have dinner or play darts at the bar or study at a cafe. Nothing any more ambitious than I would get up to on a typical weekend, but definitely good ways to spend free time.

I can't wait to hear all about the amazing things my friends who traveled this Chuseok did and saw and experienced. But I'm also going to go to bed tonight content that I just had a wonderful, low-stress, low-cost 5 days. And while I can't wait for the chance to travel to Japan, China, Vietnam, Laos, Cambodia, the rest of Europe, and Africa? I'm not sorry I didn't see one of those places this vacation.

I was busy with my family :)

The Communal Society That Plagiarizes Together, Stays Together

When I was in college, I took a Science Fiction Literature class. The course was reading-heavy and the only grades you would receive were on pop quizzes based on the reading homework. Each student was given a black/blue pen to take the quiz and a red pen to correct it after. I did fairly well, but was always confused why my classmates got perfect scores. At the end of the semester, complaining about the B+ I earned fair and square, my roommate looked shocked to find out I hadn't realized her and everyone else in class had merely switched the inkwells in the pens and were writing down the answers as he gave them during correction time.

"You were stupid." Said one of my 5th grade students, YJ, when I shared that story today during a writing class on plagiarism.

"What do you mean I was stupid?" I ask him as he laughs his evil little boy laugh. "I was honest!"

"Everybody plagiarizes so it's just...whatever." Says SJ when the class material turned to talking about the lack of punishment for plagiarism in a fictionalized school created for the sake of their workbooks.

"What do you mean everyone?" I ask

"Well, we are 5th grade, right?" YJ confirms. "So you go on Naver, type in our class grade and class number...and we can find all of our textbook answers."

"All of them?"

"Yes!" All 8 of my "angels" cry.

"Do your teachers know about this?"

"Of course!"

"What do they do about it?"

"Nothing," SJ answers with a shrug. "It's good for us. We all have to have the same answers."

The final consensus was that they all had to be perfect in school, so plagiarism was the only option. You have to have the right answers in your textbook to study to get the right answers on the test? Just go online and download them. Summer vacation reading homework? The internet has that, too! Right on Kakao Story, a popular game app, my students show me how they can download all of the information on the books they have to read and the journals they have to write.

"Research papers, too. Just copy paste." YJ adds, talking about a friend who handed in a term paper of completely plagiarized work. No one checked and he was never caught. He "earned" that 100 he'd have to get or else his parents would beat him.

__ __ __

I don't really know how to express my feelings after that conversation. Disappointed? Sad? Sanctioned plagiarism? Am I really living among a culture that cares SO MUCH for group-think and "we over I" that plagiarism is okay? Apparently so.

One of my biggest hurdles living in Korea is that people here are socially trained to always think of the group first. There is nothing worse than "embarrassment" or "loss of face" here. In juxtaposition to my own culture where individuality is encouraged, people are forced through their school years to fit into the same box for the rest of their lives.

It's not that I have a problem with communal culture. I find a lot of aspects of the culture I live in really great. Nothing makes me happier than when I see students pooling together their money between classes to buy a snack to share, or when two of my middle school boys will be sat in a hug with one sitting on the other and no one is worried they'll be called "gay" (as if that's an insult).

I have a problem with the paradoxical nature this lifestyle breeds. Everyone has to be the same so they all plagiarize off of someone who did the work who knows how long ago and posted on the internet. Okay. And then a teacher runs their paper through a scanning software and they get caught and punished for plagiarizing. Embarrassment is like being a leper here- what is more embarrassing than being caught not being able to do your own work so you copy?! I caught this particular class copying off of one student who did my homework and they were all instantly near tears when they knew that I knew they had done it.

I suppose it logically makes sense in a culture that puts such emphasis on the whole group people would turn to doing everything together. I see it in my first graders bouncing about my classroom making sure everyone found their words in the word search so no one is left embarrassed and frustrated. I see it in my elementary schoolers looking at their desk partner's book throughout class to fix their own answers. And I definitely see it in my middle schoolers who will wait until one student answers a question so the rest can all agree that they had the same answer. But at the same time, by the time they get into high school the lifestyle is to not share notes and do everything you can to get the highest score in class so you can get to college. Maybe this lack of cultural consistency is the reason myself and other foreigners have so much trouble in their workplaces. We ask for consistency with work, but they can't provide it because their culture isn't consistent.

Or maybe I'm horrible wrong and making no sense right now. Either way, it's wrong to plagiarize and you can bet my kids will get in trouble for doing it.

The Ocean Fixes All Things

It's strange that I've now officially lived halfway through my contracted time in Korea. I say strange mostly because, regardless of all the photos and posters on my walls, the contacts in my cell phone, the frequent buyer cards stuffing my wallet, and my ability to get pretty much anywhere in the country by myself without getting lost...I still don't feel like I live here in the sense of belonging.

I'm still confused by the fact that all children and more than half of the adults I meet can understand me when I speak to them in Korean, but as soon as I try to do something important, the pharmacist/cell phone contractor/ticket vendor can't understand me.

I don't understand how one day my coworker can wear a dress made for a runway to work one day and wear booty shorts and a printed t-shirt the next...and both of those things are considered "business casual" while I'm called "unprofessional for wearing leggings and knee-length dresses.

In any case, all of that was forgotten during yesterday's trip to Busan to spend the day at the beach. My closest friends, my boyfriend, and I piled into a car and drove out earlyish in the morning, only to find out that, since there were actually waves at the beach that day no one was allowed to swim. This didn't sit well with us, and we soon started playing a 5-person rock-paper-scissors game where the loser had to inch closer to the water. The end-game would not be when the lifeguard blew his whistle, but when he finally got so mad he came in person to yell at whoever was in the water. Somehow, after an hour or so of this game, it became okay for everyone to go swimming. Our game of Ocean Chicken turned into body surfing.

A calm fell over everything as we played in the ocean. We laughed as ourselves or our friends were dragged under and into the water by the current or were washed up on shore with bathing suits full of sand and rock scratches on our skin. We chased each other, dunked each other, lost a beer forever to the salty water, and played ourselves exhausted.

Then, we dug a whole and played a game of 31 Flavors to decide who we'd bury in it (spoiler alert: it was me), and did the whole tide game again.

We spent hours at the ocean before the last of us got tired and all of us were hungry. We showered, changed, walked to The Wolfhound (our favorite Irish Pub, although the service isn't as kind to one of us as it is to the rest) for dinner, and as I destroyed my boyfriend in a game of darts (beginners luck, I'm sure) I came to the realization that maybe I do belong here.

Six months in Korea and I no longer refuse to shower after swimming in the ocean because the showers are hidden by curtains and you stand completely exposed to anyone else who steps up to the long pipe you turn a breaker on to shoot water at you. Six months and I can read the roadsigns from home to Busan and back and know where we are and which way we're going.

At the end of the day, with my washer making that "I'm gonna break and it's gonna be terrible" noise as it washes our beach gear, I stepped out of yet another shower in my comfy pajamas and see my boyfriend on the floor, eating 파닭 (boneless fried chicken in sauce, covered in green onion) from the box, drinking a beer and watching a TV older than I am. I stop and think another six months of this wouldn't be so bad at all. Maybe another six years of this would be okay, too.

The ocean is magic.

Korea Ink

I don't know all the specifics, but I guess tattoos are illegal in Korea? I don't mean, "Hey! That guy has a tattoo, let's arrest him!" illegal, but apparently you aren't allowed to give someone a tattoo unless you have a medical license. At least that's the information I've found on the internet, and we know that the internet NEVER lies! I'm sure somewhere down the line men were using tattoos to get out of military service and it ruined the fun for everyone.

Well, in any case, I got one. Enough friends here have mentioned places in Seoul where people run legitimate tattoo parlors and the tattooists have their medical degrees or whatever, but that just wouldn't be fun, would it? I'm still young and stupid- why not find some underground place to get a tattoo? After all, I've seen tons of legal tattoo parlors. Sometimes you just have to have an experience, right? Why not go to a secret tattoo parlor?

A friend found out about a man not too far from our town who ran a tattoo studio out of his apartment. He has a long list of impressive credentials and we figured a consultation and a good look around his studio couldn't hurt. He was friendly, professional, and most importantly- he had an extremely clean work space. We decided to go for it. I've wanted wings tattooed on my back for a very long time. No special reason, I just felt like I needed to have a pair of wings. And why shouldn't I? So we scheduled our appointments and waited.

Cue appointment day!

Our appointment started mid-morning. We had to be on the bus by 7:30. I insisted on wearing comfortable clothes so I could nap. After a long bus ride, we had an almost longer subway ride, and then a short taxi ride to the studio. My friend went first, it being his first tattoo and a quick one. And then me. I think somewhere along the line your body convinces you that getting a tattoo didn't hurt as much as you thought it did. Because I do not remember my other tattoos hurting this much. After three hours I ended up with something unfinished that looked a bit like this:

Then came a week of having people help me keep it moisturized and complaining as the Vaseline and Lubriderm stained the backs of all of my shirts. I even woke up to my wings printed on my pillow one morning. But just when the last stage of healing (the itchy stage) began, I was due to go back to finish what I started (Even though it hurt and I didn't want to)

In the end I got this:

The tape and plastic wrap is meant to keep all the awesome in :)

When I was finished, the artist called me a strong woman, let me take a nap on his couch while he worked on my friend's tattoo, and that was that. We had our black market tattoo experience. Well, my friend still has one more session to go because he's done experiencing, but no pain, no gain! ;)

I have to say I'm quite proud of myself. I think he did beautiful work. The artist has spent more than 20 years traveling around the East and West as a professional tattoo artist. It's kind of an honor to me to have work done by someone who obviously cares very much about what he does. And I'm very glad to work in a place where tattoos aren't a big deal because my wings like to peek through some of my thinner shirts and give my kids a nice surprise.

Until next time!

My Day Trip With Jack the Ripper

I learned long ago that if I wanted to get any sort of life satisfaction in Korea that I wasn't going to get it from my job. Don't get me wrong, I love being a teacher and talking with other teachers here makes me realize I have a bunch of the best kids around, but for someone who emigrated for the purpose of working a job with a fantastic contract and promises of great experiences....well, the satisfaction is kind of lacking. So I decided to keep myself as busy as possible until next year when I'll be at a new school that might not suck as much horse anus as my current one does. I've dedicated myself to hapkido and studying Korean, and I've decided I will travel as much and far as I can in the very little time away from the office I get.

Back in April I wrote about being woken up at butt o'clock in the morning, ushered into a van, and driven all the way across the country for some 4 hour seminar. It was on that most unfortunate trip that I found a very special bus. The entire side of the bus was decked out in an advertisement for "Jack The Ripper- The Musical" and painted larger than life in one of the lead roles was Lee Sungmin, one of the members of a band here called Super Junior (They're pretty popular back home as well, and I have seen them perform in New York).

I had to go.

So as soon as I got home (at balls o'clock at night this time), I hit the internet. I searched for dates Sungmin would be performing (he shares the lead role with 3 other actors). I wanted decent seats. It had to be a weekend. Finally I found a ticket for Sunday, 4th row center and quickly ate it up. Then promptly realized I had no idea how to get back to Seoul, how to get to the venue, or how to get home when it was all said and done. Long story short, it got settled with the help of a friend, and I was all set to take a bus that would let me off no more than 1 subway stop and a 3 minute walk away from the show.....all I had to do was wait for June 23rd and I was golden...

And then I went and missed the bus.

In a panic, I got a rush ticket for the next bus to Seoul. Now, the show was in a place called Seongnam, which is in Seoul but really far from the center. I wouldn't know until the bus arrived what part of Seoul I was being dropped off in. I had never taken the subway. So when I got dropped off in Gangnam, I ran to the first old lady I found and asked for help. People understand my Korean much more easily in Seoul- I don't know if it's the fact that I learn standard Korean and they speak a country dialect where I live, or if they just expect to see more foreigners who speak Korean and can talk with them. Whatever the reason, the lady and I understood each other and she told me I picked the right subway, nodded at me when my stop came, and pointed at a list of transfers so I knew I wasn't done traveling yet. 10 more stops on the second subway and I arrived. I couldn't help but feel a little proud of myself. Except for apparently buying the wrong kind of subway pass and regrettably having to do a little elbow-throwing through the turnstile in Seongnam (>.>....) I made it to the Art Center with a half hour until showtime.

They were pretty clear on their no-picture policy, and I kind of stand out with three feet of blonde hair in a sea full of Koreans, so I didn't get any pictures of the show, but I did get a nice shot of the Art Center's Opera House flying the colors on my way up the hill to the show.

The show was FANTASTIC! Of course my initial interest was Lee Sungmin (and my unhealthy fascination with serial killers...), but even if I had gone on a night he wasn't performing I would have been just as happy. The guy who played Jack really stole the show for me. And the two female leads were SUPER talented and really beautiful. There wasn't a single performer who didn't give 200%. It went by so fast.

After the show I met a hapkido friend from home who had to go to training in Seoul for the weekend, we got some dinner and the bus home, taxied together from the bus terminal, played with my kitten, parted ways, and saw each other again less than 4 hours later for double-combo Hapkido/Korean practice- the Exhausted! edition.

To sum all of this rambling up, for one day I lived the life I've always wanted here in Korea. My town isn't all that bad, but there is nothing to do unless you bus out at least 20 minutes. I turned down positions in Seoul because I wanted to start off getting the realest idea of Korea. Seoul is Korea of course, but definitely the most Westernized part of it. I think I'm learning more Korean and more traditional culture here living in the backwoods where not many foreigners have dared to live. But I also wanted to have new experiences, not just get stared at by people as I walk around town for a lack of anything else to do. I want to see art and plays and concerts and festivals. That's something I've really missed out on. And after being stuck working 2 to 10 every day with my nose pressed to the grindstone for a boss who you can smell talking and who appreciates nothing? Jack the Ripper was welcome company.

A Busy Blogger Is A Blogless Blogger!

To say these past couple weeks have been busy would be a HUGE understatement, which means two things:
     1. I neglected to blog.
     2. I have SO MUCH to tell you.

Let's start from the top. May 17th was a national holiday here in Korea- Buddha's birthday. Since I had the day off from work I decided that I would go to a nearby temple to see what was going on. It's a small temple, but very beautiful and it was full of people when I arrived around noon to see what was going on. I was quickly noticed being the only foreigner in the bunch, but it didn't seem to bother anyone. Someone took me by the arm and showed me the proper way to pray to the shrine in the side hall and then had me join them for free lunch at the temple. They served a dish called bibimbap, meaning mixed rice. Bibimbap is one of my favorites here, but at temples it is a bit different. Since followers of Buddha don't eat meat it was solely vegetarian as opposed to the beef and chicken and ham thrown in that I'm used to. But it was still DELICIOUS.

This is a picture of the shrine a really kind temple-goer showed me how to pray to.

Lanterns strung up for Buddha in the square of my favorite shopping district.

The weekend after Buddha's birthday was my Hapkido competition. Boy was I surprised to find out it was a national competition instead of just regional. We woke up really early, put on our uniforms, and drove to the competition about 45 minutes away. My Master teaches twice a day- a morning class and a night class, so he entered us as two teams instead of trying to find time for us to practice together to enter as one.I have to say that my team really gave it their all. Maybe we were just excited by the wide space we had to perform in, and the music, and all of the other teams in their various uniforms, but by some luck of the draw my team took home SILVER. Can you believe it?! I've been studying Hapkido for 3 months and am already a part of a national silver-medal winning team. It was such a wonderful surprise and I can't begin to say how thankful I am to be a part of the team. You really did it, guys! Let's take gold next year, okay?

Both of our school's teams with our Master, taken just after we finished performing.

After competition I thought things would cool down, but my life is crazy so OF COURSE something else happened.

One of my Korean friends called me out of the blue one evening as I'm getting ready to meet a friend for dinner.

"I found a kitten," He tells me. "I can't keep it. Can you help me?"

I am not really a cat person, but for some reason I really wanted to help. I agree and we meet up for him to pass off the cat...

...and to my surprise the "kitten" was actually one a couple days old, still with an umbilical cord and with it's eyes and ears still closed.

"He has to be fed every four hours," my friend tells me. "Keep him warm, and make sure you help him use the bathroom. He can't go by himself."

I brought the cat to the vet as soon as I could, and he didn't seem very optimistic about my little guy's chances of survival but I wouldn't give up on him. I brought him to work, I kept him in towels with hot water bottles, I fed him with a syringe every 2-4 hours as much as I could get him to eat. But he wasn't gaining weight, he wasn't staying warm. I did everything I could for him....

And two weeks later, I now have a loud, obnoxious, wide-blue-eyed, three week old tabby kitten! In the time I was bringing him to school my students argued over what his name should be.

"김치만두! (kimchi mandu-kimchi dumplings)"  " 호랑이 (horangi- tiger)" "노숙자 (nosookja- homeless)"

Finally, the vet and I decided on the name 호범 (Hobum). Hobum is a Korean male name. I pick the Ho from horangi (tiger) and bum is a common name ending, but I later found out it also means tiger if you use the ancient word for tiger. So I guess his name is TigerTiger. I usually just call him Bummie. He's doing SO WELL now and I can't wait to bring him to the vet for his 7 week shots to really show off what a good job I did with him.

Most recent picture of my little man, looking guilty as I caught him trying to claw his way out of his box.

Annnnnd that is why I haven't been blogging lately. Currently I've got my cat on my hip, my computer on my lap, a book nearby, and some Oreos. Time to de-stress before another work-week starts.