QUICK INFO MAJIGGER

Thought I'd make a quick informational post about teaching in Korea for the two and a half of you that have asked me.

GETTING THERE
The process is super easy and I'm not gonna waste too much time talking through it all when that's a representative's job to do so for.  There are tons of companies, Teach ESL Korea, Aclipse, Epik,etc, and everybody has good things and bad things to say about each one.  From my experience, Aclipse and Epik seem to be pretty good to their candidates, but the school you get will determine your experience moreso than the recruiting company.

Some companies will have you front the cash for the plane ticket ahead of time, where others will pay for it all right away.  This can be different even in the same company, depending on your contract.  Plan for the possibility of not getting reimbursed for your costs for maybe a month after your arrival.

The whole process of getting to the country is pretty painless.  Be relaxed and friendly during your interview process, be professional in your video.  They're looking for confident individuals to stand in front of a group of kids and hold their attention for hours on end, try to be personable.
After you get accepted, the rest of the process is pretty simple.  Read through your contract.  No, seriously. READ YOUR CONTRACT.  There are some things you don't want to get blindsided by.  Costs of your apartment if there are any, health insurance, what they can and cannot request of you.  If you're going to a small private school they may try to get you to do things outside of the contract and honestly, there isn't a whole lot you can do about it.  If you are going to be working for a larger chain hagwon, then awesome, you'll have a headquarters (most likely in Seoul) that you can voice complaints to if need be.  Contracts are worthless here for the most part, and you can and will be asked to do things outside of them.  Be reasonable.  If it's something like attending a conference or team building exercise, go along with it.  If it's something like heavy custodial work, feel free to turn that down and hide behind your contract when doing so.

Getting your background check is the longest part of the process, and is primarily a waiting game.  Getting the apostilles can be done at banks, city hall, some universities, and various small shops and some libraries.  Your bank will quite likely do it for free for you, although they may give you a hard time about them not being able to do the right kind of apostille.  They can, don't worry about it.  Most recruiting agencies will do the whole process for you for a small fee as well.  Get everything done in a timely manner (you normally have a week or two for each part of the process) and just be patient.  My process went pretty quickly (I got everything through in three months) but some people can take as long as 6 months to get their whole background check and other information sorted out.  This process will be mentally exhausting and you will spend every day wondering if they're scamming you or they changed their mind and don't want you anymore.  If you've signed a contract already, you'll be going there, try not to worry too much.

Also customs coming into Korea is the easiest thing ever.  They pretty much just wave you through.  I'm serious, one of my friends was literally carrying a pocket knife when we came through and they told him it was okay.  I wouldn't try that a second time, though.


ARRIVING IN KOREA - THE SCHOOL
Your work should do a quick training situation with you. Most of them won't.  Some companies will send you on a training course for a week or so, some will just put you in your classroom the day you get there.  Be prepared for this.  If there is a training session available, take it.  TAKE IT.  Over the course of a week you may not see a lot of progress, but certain issues with your teaching style will be pointed out for you to at least address over the next few weeks, and being surrounded by newcomers is a great way to not feel completely alone.  You're in a new strange country, it's nice knowing there are other people in the same boat as you.  Some of these people will become your best friends in this strange country.  Treat them well.

When you get to your school you may not have your own classroom.  You may not have projection equipment or a computer.  You may not have any secretary staff that really speak any English.  You may, in fact, be the only foreigner at your location, and your boss may barely speak any English whatsoever.

I don't have any of these problems, but I've heard horror stories concerning various mixes of these scenarios from other teachers.  Be prepared for the worst and hope for the best.

Your school will most likely leave you alone for the most part.  There will probably be a CCTV camera in the classroom where your branch may or may not monitor your class activities.  Get used to it, everything has a security camera in Korea.  Even some bathrooms.  I'm kidding (I'm probably not kidding).  The school may use it to either give you constructive criticism or just the mean kind of criticism, or they may ignore it.  It may not have sound and just exist to absolve you of any claims of assaulting the children, in which case you should try to peak at the camera so you know which areas of the classroom are out of sight so as to be able to administer punishment.

The staff will be nice to you and probably compliment you on your appearance or call you fat.  It will be one of those things.  If they say you have a small face, this is a good thing.

You will not be invited to your staff meetings.  If you do go to the staff meetings, they will speak in Korean.  You'll probably get a separate, quick English meeting for the foreign teachers, but be prepared to be blindsided by random events they forgot to tell you about your entire time there, it will keep you on your toes.

A lot of your time will be spent 'deskwarming'.  This is when you're stuck sitting around in between or before classes, but your branch either discourages you from leaving in between classes or you don't have enough time to do so.  Either way, they expect you to be working on class prep materials. You won't have any.  It never takes that long to do these things, and even worse, some schools will make you come in for days purely dedicated to only doing classroom prep work.  You're probably going to get caught up on tumblr, watching movies and tv shows, and sleeping at your desk.  Sure, for the first month or two you'll try really hard to find work to do, but there's never enough work, and you stop feeling guilty after a while.

Right, the uh, actual teaching


Teaching will frustrate you.  Korean schools don't teach knowledge, they teach memorization.  This is your job to change that.  It may not be in your job description, but if you can get the kids into the habit of justifying their answer (after they answer just get them to explain 'why') it will be wonderful.  Otherwise the kids tend to do this thing where they listen for keywords and then sift through the reading looking for that word, and read out every sentence containing it until they have the right answer.  It's a great cheat code that the schools have invented, and they'll frequently get the right answer that way, but they won't understand it.

Most of the material you will disagree with like that.  Don't let it bother you.  Unless you get an opportunity to create your own curriculum, just teach the material they give you and try not to worry about it to much.  But keep an eye out for when they try to pass off konglish as grammatically correct.  When teaching synonyms, for example, I've had some examples run as: "main vocab: Keep it loose.  synonym: stay baggy".  "Stay baggy" is not a thing anybody has ever said.  Kids, cross that out.  You can teach them wrong on purpose as a joke if you think it's funny, but really, come on, don't do that.

Your classes will either be short, 30 minute long classes where you'll see tons of students every day, or they can be up to 3 hours long.  IF you teach the 3 hour classes you will be exhausted every day.  The students will be exhausted and bored and crazy.  These are the classes I myself teach and the kids definitely do not want to be there by the end of the period.  Do your best to stay energetic and interactive. Do jumping jacks and play games.  Be loud. Drink coffee and hotsix.  Drink Mountain Dew with 6 espresso shots in it.  Whatever it takes.

Take your students' cell phones.  In Korea it's totally fine to be on your cell phone at all times.  Store employees will be on their cell phones. Your coteachers will be on your cell phones.  If you go to a Korean wedding, everyone there will be on their cell phones during the reception.  Your students should not be on their cell phones, because then they can't hear the wisdom you're imparting on them.  If your school doesn't have this rule, make it one for your classroom.  You will not regret it.

Your students will probably call you fat or ugly, even if you aren't. What am I saying of course you aren't, you're a beautiful angel.  Moving past that, they totally will.  Just say it back to them and they'll laugh and move on.  The kids will ask you how old you are, if you have a boyfriend/girlfriend/spouse, how much you weigh, how much money you make, and where you live.  Lie to them.  Lie to them like you're getting paid for it.

Above all, if you act like you're enjoying being there, teaching with energy, and get all of your material done in class every day, it should be an enjoyable experience for a year or two or forever if you decide to get trapped.  The country is quirky and fun, they pay you a lot and more with each contract, the people are nice, the landscape is gorgeous, and nothing costs any money.   Once you settle in you find it hard to want to leave again.  Good luck!



OTHER QUICK TIPS
-LEARN HANGUL:  Korean writing. Seriously it takes like an hour YOU HAVE NO EXCUSE
-EAT THE KIMCHI: Not all kimchi is the same kimchi! Keep eating it until you like it.  You can get it in soup, mandu, mixed into rice, in kimbap.  It tastes different everywhere you go.  The prepackaged stuff is generally quite terrible, though.
-ANJUU: Lots of bars 'require' you to buy food with your drinks.  Being a foreigner, you'll realize pretty quickly that this is one of those things you get to ignore by pretending you don't speak any Korean (Waygook smash, yes?) but if you do buy it the owners will like you more.  On top of that, the food is never terrible and at worst bland, and there's generally more than you asked for for the price (The equivalent of 10 dollars at a bar where I live gets you a donkkasu platter [breaded pork cutlet] that also comes with chicken wings and french fries)
-You will never stop being a novelty: It's not necessarily a bad thing, though.  Students will walk up to you randomly on the street that you don't even know and ask you how you are in English and then walk away.  People will buy you drinks just because you're a foreigner.  Other foreigners will talk to you because you both speak English and now you're suddenly best friends.  It's a novelty less in a freakshow sense, and more of a houseguest sense.  A commodity? Something like that. 
-Mart Drinking: It's so much cheaper to drink at 7-11 or CU Mart. And they have chairs.  And soju is like a dollar for a whole bottle.

Jinju

Jinju has been a welcoming city in my experience here.  An attractive small city divided by the Nam River, it plays host to the Lantern Festival and my excuse to visit.

The Jinju Namgang Yudeun runs for two weeks, and has lots of activities to do for a festival that one would assume is centralized around just watching the lanterns float down the river.  There are tons of festival games, some rides, a market area, arts and crafts, traditional performances, contemporary performances, delicious food, riverside cafes. And of course the lanterns.

The lanterns are not merely the small floating paper lanterns as depicted in so many movies, though.  The lanterns in Jinju are elaborately constructed statues depicting scenes from folklore and popular media that are larger than life and light up the night.

And eldritch horrors from the deep

 I wound up at the festival two weekends in a row, and both were fantastic, if different, experiences.

The first weekend I was regrettably traveling solo.  I got to the festival in the daytime, and proceeded to go around taking photos of the statues, and really just trying to experience what a Korean festival was like.  I was having a good time somehow, and then managed in short measure to run into somebody I knew in a city I didn't.  Apparently someone from my training group was stationed out there, and I managed to not be so alone after all! I have the best luck.

So we wound up in a small group running around the festival,  playing with all the statues, trying all the foods, and we wound up inside the castle. Jinju has a castle (called a castle, more of a fortress. Called a fortress, more of a bunch of ruins) and it gets included in the festivities as well.  The lanterns extended all throughout the castle, and there were stages in the midst of it.   We happened upon a traditional dance performance that was real interesting, with a bearded historical figure and a....tiger with a rifle. We dubbed him Gun Tiger. It seemed fitting.  We were actually pulled into the dance at one point and it was a whole lot of fun.

 After a bit more cavorting into the evening, my friends decided to turn in, but seeing as how my plan for Korea is not to waste money on hotel rooms, I ended up staying out all night and trying to entertain myself.  There was a K-Drama section to the festival which was temporarily entertaining, and I was drinking and checking out the festival games, when I was approached by two foreign girls.  They cornered me and demanded to know the location of the best drinking sites in the city.  Because I tend to just osmose this information, I got us there and we quickly found a neat little bar with other friendly foreigners to waste the night away with.

Once we were kicked out of the bar (for closing reasons, not being rowdy) we decided we should stay out for the rest of the night.  A such, we grabbed some soju and....ran back to the festival, of course.   Ended up spending a night drinking with a t-rex lantern and then taking the first bus back in the morning.  All in all, a good time with friendly strangers. Traditional Korean experience so far.

The second festival day that I was around I actually went meeting up with friends, so a pretty good time from the get go. Before meeting up with them I ran into a survey taker, who claimed that every foreigner he spoke to was a teacher and I explained to him that we're all either teachers or military with a handful of engineers. Cause, well, it's true!

Meeting up with my friends was basically a repeat of the previous time.  A bit more time at the k-drama festival,   and these friends stayed out a lot later, but I still was avoiding a hotel room.  After ditching my friends in their hotel, I was wandering in the direction of the watering holes when I was beckoned over to a table by a Korean man with a plate of crab and a bottle of soju.  It's like he was speaking my language!

I sat down with the man and found out he absolutely did not speak my language.  Fortunately, two of his friends quickly showed up and we all got to drinking and half-communicating.  Turns out they were all bus drivers in the city, and one of them was a former nationals boxer.  Definitely some interesting drinking companions.  After a good chunk of the night passed, we parted ways and exchanged number in case any of use were ever around again.

I was tired at this point, and went to go sleep in the woods.  Because apparently I'm a hobo.  I found a nice bench and nestled in, and took an hour or so nap.  The night got too cold and I headed to a mart for some food to heat up.  I was eating some ramen outside when another traveler motioned me over for some conversation.   He was from Mongolia, and a few other Mongolians showed up.  We shared a bunch of drinks, some Budweisers and sojus, and I wound up staggering off in a movie-like stupor after the sun came up.  Found a nice cozy patch of concrete in the entrance nook of a public transit building and was woken up by a nice young usher who was opening the building in the morning after a rather comfortable nap.  I had accomplished a night of blackout korea, and luckily I don't own anything worth stealing so I made it out just fine.

Just this past Monday I wound up in Jinju again.  Funny story, everything in Jinju is closed on a Monday.  Regardless, myself and a fellow traveler I know wandered about through the castle area and a chunk of the city nearby and had a rather nice time.  The castle is a completely different experience in the daytime without the lanterns, so it was definitely worth heading back for the day trip.  We actually went and saw the monuments and shrines within and I'd recommend anyone make a stop there while in Korea.  The river is beautiful without the festival clogging the landscape, and the fortress itself is well maintained as well.

The city has other things to offer, such as a large theater, some fossils, a prehistory museum, and food worth trying, so definitely a good place to spend some time.

 

Amongst the less seen sights, we did happen to see a rather...passionate woman loving nature, though.  And by that I mean we were strolling through the castle when a woman walked toward a tree, greeted it, and began to hold it close while kissing it ever so tenderly.

Korea, am I right?

   

Fond of Korea, Take One

It's ridiculous to think that it's been three months already.  I think I understand how people end up staying her for so long. By the time you reach the age where you're out of college and into the real world, a year is absolutely no time. That's sort of frightening.

I intended to do this post a week ago, but you don't own me. To compensate I've downloaded the blogger android app, and luckily my phone has a keyboard so luckily my thumbs will only become a little mutilated from updating under these cramped circumstances. It's fine, they needed the workout.

I thought I'd make a quick update cataloguing some favorite moments of mine that I haven't mentioned yet. So in no particular order, here goes :

-The Running of the Ajashi
Ajashi are the old men in Korea. In a recent trip to Busan, I was walking in the underground path next to the subway when a group of something like 60 old people (mostly ajashi, a few ajuma ladies) burst out of the subway in a continuous wave just running and laughing and surrounding me in their migratory patterns before running off down the path. Was really strange for the dual reasons of it being a herd of old people, and also that they were laughing. Everyone always seems angry in public here, so it was really nice.

Porno trading cards-
Just every discussion relating to the prostitute cards and turning them into a CCG.  Everyone's all for it but we're all too lazy. Comes up a LOT though

Halloween-
I went to four parties dressed up as a Buffalo Soldier (camo jacket, airsoft rifle, buffalo hat).  The look on peoples' faces when they got the joke was worth how overheated it made me.

Mexican Birthdays-
Wound up at a friend's party who invited a bunch of her students. Was awkward at first, but it ended up being a rather enjoyable experience, like a family party, except not my family because I don't see them ever. Also there was a puppy there and everybody loved it.

The Simpsons-
My kids spazzed on me one day when I tried to convince them that the Simpsons are people. They argued that they couldn't be people because they're yellow, and I thanked my ability to not say dated racist things at my children. Don't give me that look there has never been a more perfect setup!

Fancy dog-
I was at a clothing store that had the greatest dog ever. It was fuzzy and happy with the softest fur. Me and everyone I was with wouldn't stop playing with him.  The owner guy came up to us and in English said 'You like? It's the expensive model.'  Was laughing so damn hard. Random English witticisms from a Korean street clothing venor? Yes please.

Drinking with a t-rex-
The temporary friends I made in Jinju and I going to the lantern festival at 4am to drink soju on a bench next to a giant glowing t-rex sculpture. Livin the dream.

The One Who Watches -
Wandering lost through Seoul after our taxi mishap, we ran into the most unsettling statue in a children's park that in our unsteady state (see: lost and drunk) we were convinced would follow us.

A week later in Jinju we came across a quite similar looking statue with the same unpeering gaze of dread.

Mr Park's -
There's this guy who runs a bar/cafe out of a shipping container in a parking lot near the main shopping center here. He is a delight, always smiling, and makes excellent drinks. Every visit here is great.

Let it go -
Me: correct! How did you know the answer?
Student: Women's intuition
Me:...fair enough

Nice try-
Student: Teacher I hate you because you are ugly!
Me: Well so are you.
Student: (laughing) Teacher I hate you because you are handsome!
Me: No it doesn't work that way

Guest speaker-
-discussing Jeju-
Me: Do you have to fly there? Can you drive there?
Friend: no it's way out there. Can you drive to Hawaii?
Me: yeah you can.
Friend: Bullshit!
Me: No, you can! Drive onto a ferry, the ferry goes to Hawaii, drive to Hawaii!
Friend: That doesn't count!
Cab Driver: You can't drive to Hawaii
Me: Dammit! (All laughing)

Dumb and proud-
Me: (student) what is the answer?
Student: (climbs onto desk and scream sings) I DON'T KNOW, TEACHER!
(I got asked about the kid cheering 'I don't know' later by the next class' teacher. Whoops)

The Best Chris-
-at bar for the third time-
Owner: you're the third Chris I've met. You are the most kind and gentle one. The best Chris.
Me: Well, thank you!

-a month later, after escorting a drunk friend out of the bar-
Owner: still the best Chris!
Me: yessssss
(And I get free drinks all the time here now too yes!)

A harsh truth-
Student: Teacher I want get rid of buffalo picture
Me: Why? I like the buffalo picture.
Student: It is ugly. You are ugly too.
Me: Well that's not very nice.
Student: No, but it is true.

A friendly dad-
-walking through Jinju castle-
-there is a man waving to me-
-I wave back-
Man: Hello
Me: Hello?
Man: -shaking my hand- Have a good time.
Me: Uhh...thanks?
-man smiles and pats his son on the head while walking away-

First rule-
-new students examining posters in room-
-student sees the 'no knife classroom' poster and covers the 'no'
Student: Teacher, now it's 'Knife Classroom!'
Me: oh heck yes, I will teach that class.

Waygook wayfail-
-at KFC-
Me: (struggling to read hangul) Su ma to cho ee su she tuh chuseyo?
Cashier: (in plain English) One smart choice set? For here or to go?
Me: oh uh....here please.
And then I noticed the menu right next to the one I had been reading in plain English text.

That's just a handful of stuff I remember at 3am. More to come!

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Chuseok Weekend

So, one of the advantages to my birthday (aside from sharing it with Confucius) is that staying in Korea means I get a nice vacation within a few days of it.  This year, Chuseok fell the weekend after my birthday, which meant I got a nice sexy long weekend to travel around a bit.

Chuseok is the one weekend of the year that pretty much everyone gets off, as opposed to the quite actually zero time off you get the rest of the year, or the occasional assigned vacation time you don't get to really plan for at your hagwon.  The one week that we all, altogether, get time off.

So of course I wasted it by going up to Seoul.

The bus ride up was long and boring and I was seated next to an old man who kept falling asleep on me.  To add to this, the friend I was staying with lived in Incheon, so I need to take an additional two hour subway ride to get to the Incheon area of Seoul, which is quite confusing itself.  Partially because I'm colorblind (the route maps are color coded of course!) and partially because there is a difference between Line 1 to Incheon and Incheon Line 1.  Of course I flubbed all over that, and wound up on the wrong part of Seoul, which caused me to be even later to my destination.  Luckily it was still early enough in the evening to go out, so after dropping off my luggage, we headed to Gangnam.

We wound up going to a hip hop nightclub that I'm still not entirely sure wasn't a gay club.  There were a whole bunch of guys grooving on each other, and some random Korean guy tried to get me to go up to the bathroom with him.  It was a pretty cool place despite the ridiculous cover charge, and there was a huge jampacked dance floor that served as evidence that Koreans don't know how to dance. Or at the very least, that every single one of them dances like a white person. Kind of grooving in place, nodding their head, shuffling slightly.  It's in direct contrast to the enormous popularity of dance teams in the country.  It's almost as if the teams need to channel energy from the rest of the population, leaving them void of the ability to pick up a beat. It turns them all into shuffling, arhythmic zombies, longing to belong to a world of music and festivities that they don't understand.

The club was densely packed, loud, and overpriced, and two stories as well.  Because too many places that are two stories end up separating the floors, this place counteracted that by having the staircases incorporated into the dance floor. In a club. With people drinking everywhere on the floor.  So needless to say, the tiled floor, which crawled up and around the staircases, were covered in spilled spirits, with bottles and broken glass littering the ground in all directions.  Each step would force you to slide across the floor, yet somehow we were drunkenly hopping around the whole place and from what I could tell not a single person died. It was truly a Chuseok miracle.

We did some mart drinking with some friendly strangers right outside the club until the subways started up again. I had to explain to one of them that there are no strip clubs, and no opening one up wouldn't be lucrative. There are girl bars. There are anma massage parlours. There are norejujangs. They don't need strip clubs because there are hookers everywhere, and a club with women you can't pay to sleep with would, unfortunately, crash and burn in the country.

When the subways reopened, I got to try dak galbi for the first time, which is essentially delicious stir fry in a spicy sauce. It's delicious and I want it forever.  We got the galbi in an area of Incheon that had just recently been built...or was in the process of being built.....or was in the process of being demolished.  As with most Korean construction, it's difficult to tell.  Point being, the place was a hazard, lawless wasteland. With delicious food.

I showered and took an our nap, and headed back out into the world to meet up with some of my friends from the states who were also in Seoul for the weekend. One of my friends had a visiting brother, so ideally that was going to lend itself to some touristy sightseeing, which is something I almost never do.  And it did!

We went to the Gyeongbak Palace which was definitely a good choice.  There were performances and festivities going on, and the whole palace was open to the public for the holiday.  We spent a good chunk of time there watching the dances and exploring the castle grounds.  At one point we were treated to a scene where we rounded the corner and some child had his pants down weeing in the castle grounds with his father's assistance, from which we quickly retreated.

We wound up in Itaewon for dinner, at a fantastic British pub with delicious burgers that I don't quite remember the name of, but it was definitely worth the price of admission.  Afterwards we needed to get ourselves to Incheon, which was becoming a problem with the swiftly approaching close of the subway lines, worsened by my friends getting cornered by another traveler when we stopped by their hostel.  So, we manage to get the last train out, with the intention of hopefully making it in time to connect to the Incheon Line 1, or at least from there it'd be affordable to get a taxi.

Neither of these things happened.

We were on the correct train when we got on.  I checked multiples of multiples of times.  You want to be certian when it's the last train.  There was an announcement at one point, which, due to the fact that none of use knew Korean (a fatal error) we assumed was simply the 'last train' announcement.

We were wrong.

The announcement was telling us that we would be traveling on the alternate route for the final train. Which took us... in the opposite direction that we needed to go from our destination.  The second we realized this, we hopped off and tried to flag down a taxi, which we did, and gave him directions to take us to the arts centre.  Or we tried to, anyways. The first cab we called over simply shook his head and drove off the second we said where we wanted to go.  After a bit of hiking, we managed to get a second cab, and climbed inside before telling him our destination so that he couldn't back out.  The cabbie spoke absolutely no English (which seems weird for being in Seoul)...which isn't a problem when you just want to go to a neighborhood or you know the name of your destination.  But we only knew the name of it in English.  There is the Arts Centre stop, and then also the Arts Gallery stop.  Our cab driver took us to the Arts Gallery stop, which unfortunately got us even further away from our destination than we were when getting onto the subway.  Also, it cost us 40,000 wan( ~$35SUSD)  After calling a friend to figure out where we were, and him laughing at us, we realized that we were, as it were, royally fucked.

Not wanting to pay for the cab all the way back, we decided to try trekking back toward Bupyeong station and take a cab from there to save some money.  We stopped a local and asked him how far away our destination was (after he kept trying to tell us the buses and subways were 'broken' because he didn't know 'closed', despite two buses driving by as we spoke to him) and he told us it was a three hour walk.

So, laughing, we headed off in our direction.

After we got over the initial irritation of the night, the walk wasa actually pretty fun.  We saw a whooooole lot of Seoul that I'm sure most foreigners never do.  We were quite actually at the edge of the city from the start of the walk, which is saying a lot being in a city that takes three hours to cross.

We wandered throught a few different districts; business districts, red light districts (where an angry Korean drunk got waaaay up in my face), terrifying children's playgrounds, rice fields.  Eventually we did make it to Bupyeong station, after a long trek of drinking at marts and wandering around a bit to do some sightseeing.  Bupyeong area turned out to be a pretty good destination for the night, as well.  It was the first place I've been in Korea that had, quite actually, no foreigners in it.  It was quite strange to see. The country is just filthy with westerners, Seoul especially, and not seeing a single other whiteface was a neat experience.   The district itself was alive well into the night, and we got some food and drinks in the area amongst friendly strangers. It's a pretty lively area, standard shopping district full of clothing stores and restaurants, but it's well put together.  We got some dak galbi again at my insistence, and then parted ways as the subway opened up.

The next day, my friend and I went to the International Business District.  From what we had heard, the International Business District was an area in Incheon that was lavishly built up with the intention of opening it to foreign businesses who needed a place to host conventions, or house their employees for long term projects.  Unfortunately, it had, allegedly failed miserably, and is currently in its renovation stages for its grand reopening in 2014.  As such, it's supposed to be entirely abandoned, almost a post apocalyptic city area.

Considering we went during Chuseok, apparently everybody wanted to see it, because the place was packed.  Not to say it wasn't impressive.  There is gorgeous architecture there, a beautiful modern canal, statues and sculpture everywhere, and well maintained gardens in every direction.  The place is pristine and awesome.  It was definitely worth the trip out to the area, and I'd highly recommend anyone in Seoul to venture out that way.

We stopped in a few buildings that were mostly empty. Not a whole lot of people live out there yet, so there aren't a lot of  businesses around.  As such, we did get to experience the abandoned city aspect of it.  Pretty much just walking 15 minutes in any direction will take you to an area that nobody is really going to, and in our case it was completed with a bunch of destroyed statues that were present in the otherwise empty parks.

After this adventure, I decided to head back to Geoje.  I had to travel by way of Busan, so I needed to get back early enough to purchase a ticket (this has become a reoccuring problem in my stay thus far).

I did not make it.

I took the KTX, which everybody compares to the shinkansen in Japan.  They shouldn't.  The KTX is garbage.  It's filthy and cramped, with stale air, and you really don't end up saving that much time on the trip for the extra money you're paying to use it.

The KTX dropped me off at Busan station, which was out of tickets, as it normally is, which is why we generally use Seobu/Sasang station (also because it's nicer).  Seobu was also out of tickets.  So I went to the night bus window. Which was also sold out.  There was a cab driver offering to ferry myself and three other passengers to Geoje for 30,000 a piece, but it's the same price to get a hotel room, so I did neither of those things.  Instead I found myself on the last train to the Pukyong University area to spend some time amongst the Busan nightlife crowd.

I wandered about, barhopping, marthopping, and talking to random strangers.  I won a bottle opener ring from a street game, and talked with some locals and generally had a good night of it, until I was exhausted from all of the not-sleep I got over the holiday so far.  Considering I was sticking to my not-spending-money-on-hotels policy, I had to find somewhere to sleep for cheap.

Because I've done my tutelage under the craftiest of vagrants, I found a 7th floor yoga studio that kept the mats outside its door.  I settled in and set the alarm for 7am on my phone, and took me a quick nap before the buses started up again.

After some good, quick rest, I ate some McDonald's breakfast, and headed home to sleep in an actual bed and get some actual sleep.

All in all, it was a pretty good Chuseok.

Oppan Gangnam Style

So, I guess I've avoided it for long enough.

There's this song called Gangnam Style. Maybe you've heard of it by now.

As of my writing this, the video has almost 665 million views worldwide since its release three-ish months ago, and I probably even got that number wrong. I'm sure it's at least three times that amount.  And from what I understand it's not slowing and may even be continuing to pick up momentum.

I'm sure everybody else can attest to its presence in the USA.  As I've been in Korea since roughly the beginning of its popularity, I'm not capable of doing so.  I remember seeing gifs of it on Tumblr as it started its onset to being the unholy result of Psy selling his soul to the Macarena, but it wasn't playing in bars, or football games, or encouraging drunks to horsey dance madly into oncoming traffic like I'm hearing secondhandedly is happening now.

Here in Korea, I can assure you that it's even worse. I've checked times. You can't go more than 12 hours without hearing the song, and that's provided you get eight hours of sleep in your own house.  It plays at least twice anytime I'm out at a bar, my students want me to play it in class, people have it as their ringtones, companies that Psy has done advertisements for blast the song or their own variant of the song constantly during their opening hours.

I've seen dollar stores that have replaced their entire signage with the cartoon image of Psy. You can purchase Psy's image on socks and tshirts on the street. Norebangs have his image plastered on them. If you talk to a Korean person for the first time, especially if you meet them in a bar, and double especially if they don't actually speak English, they are going to ask you if you know Gangnam Style, and then you will somehow end up doing the Gangnam dance with them and in all probability the music will start playing.  If you talk to anybody about Gangnam style, at some point you will hear the music, as if it is being summoned.  The song has become an abyssal fiend capable of infiltrating any part of existence where it is mentioned.

It is, quite actually, inescapable.

Take a second and let's think about why.

I want you to reflect for a second.  Think about everything you know about Korea.  Historical, customs, stereotypes, racism, all of it.

Alright. Get rid of the word 'kimchi'. Now take out the stuff that is the Korean War.  Take away North Korea. No Samsung or LG. Take out everything that is an overlap with your Chinese/Japanese/your collective Asian stereotypes (you monster).

Do you actually have anything left?  If you do, congratulations, most people I've attempted this exercise on go 'woah, I see your point, I know NOTHING about South Korea.'

I'm not going to lie, I was the same way before I came here.  What did I know about the country?  I knew the 'Gee Gee Baby' song from Girls' Generation.  I knew what Hanboks were from Koreans I spoke to when I was in Japan, and I knew a bit about the food because we had a Korean restaurant on my university campus.

But this is S.Korea's big foray into the world market.  Everybody here loves their country, but they're fully aware that it doesn't really exist in the world's collective consciousness. People go to Japan for vacation, Laos, Vietnam, Indonesia, the Phillippines, Singapore...somehow a lot of people overlook South Korea.  Maybe it's the threat of North Korea? Maybe they just generally don't think about it.  I'll admit in my shame that I never really paid attention to the South of Korea myself before I wound up here.

And that's a shame, because now the country is reduced to forming its media identity around an earworm song that gained international fame, that the original artist doesn't even like that much.

Don't be nervous. Close your eyes.

One of the events I for some reason neglected to mention for some reason (probably trauma related) was my doctor's visit shortly after arrival.  Luckily, it's now happened twice, thanks to my branch not registering me as an employee until after my results expired.  Which is fantastic, because I love the doctor. [/sarcasm]

The locations were quite different, but the experiences were the same.  The first visit was in Seoul, and, being the country's capital, the entire building down to the aglets on the nurses was pristine, glistening, and impressive.  It was the type of hospital medical practitioners could be proud of, and it shone with cleanliness.

The one in Geoje looked like the psych ward from a horror movie.

Oh yes. I feel healthier just being here.

Both hospitals shared the same procedures, though.  Differently between them, the Seoul hospital had us don sterilized ninja gis, and the Geoje branch took my measurements while I was wearing a loose dress shirt, so I'm sure they're a bit innacurate. The primarily similar method that you are exposed to is that you are sent to stations with one or two nurses (wo)manning each, and you're shuffled back and forth across them all depending on which station is available, and you will be confused for other foreigners because we all look the same.

The other shared factor is that you're kidding yourself if you think they have English staff.  They know enough English to do their jobs, but not to address your concerns.  At the first visit, I had to get an electrokardiogram. I've never had an EKG, so I just wanted to know what to expect.  The nurse told me to close my eyes, and not to be nervous, so I did as I was asked.  But while lying down with my eyes closed, I tried asking if I would feel a stinging, or an electric pulse, or anything. Her response was 'close your eyes, don't be nervous.' I tried insisting 'no, no I'm not nervous, I just want to kno-' which was interrupted with 'don't be nervous'.  At this point I was starting to get nervous, considering the nurse wouldn't answer my questions, and was holding me down on the table while she smeared jelly all over my exposed chest and told me 'not to be nervous' and 'close your eyes' over and over again.  Eventually we made it through foreplay and the EKG, but she never did address my concerns.

The Seoul hospital had a dental section which used a small camera and monitor (and the only Korean on staff who could speak fluent English) to show you how disgusting your teeth were.  I left feeling as though my mouth were trying to kill me from the inside out, despite getting a decent bill of health.

This site also had the 'head doctors' on staff, whose job it was to pull you in, ask you questions that you had previously answered on your forms, and sign off on you giving what sounded like similar answers.  Keep in mind that the only English speaking staff were in the dental ward, and understand that the two interviews we were forced through were probably the most unpleasant of the experiences in the process.

The urine test was also trying at both branches.  To admit a personal fact to the internet, I have a shy bladder  in the first place, and although it tends to go away with the introduction of alcohol in my system, the hospital didn't seem to approve of this method. Something about 'skewing the results'.  It was a non-issue in the Seoul test, although it took some careful hand eye coordination to be able to fill the test tube they gave us for the task.  At the Geoje hospital, however, I hadn't really drank any fluids for the day, and having a room full of people cheer you in does no help in this particular task.

The Geoje hospital more than made up for it with the best blood draw I've ever gotten. I quite actually felt nothing as the nurse pierced my skin with the needle, and I feel I'd have a much better relationship with them if this replaced my earliest memory of getting a shot where I had three nurses holding me down while I screamed.

In the end, I received an A+ to my health (as far as I know) both times and happily survived both incidents.  Which is good to know, because medical expenses are far cheaper in Korea than they are in the states, so any optional dentistry, optometry, or more complicated procedures are easily done an a quarter or less of the budget, so once the money starts flowing in more steadily, I foresee corrective health operation rooms as my second home.

Gonna come back home healthy as two horses stapled together.

HEY LOOK PICTURES

BAM THERE YA GO

http://s1296.photobucket.com/albums/ag3/KoreanRoshi/

Buncha pics from Korea.  Unorganized and without annotation.

I'll get to that later, but it's 4:30 in the morning here.

Edit 10/24:  Much, much later, the gallery buttons are updated! One button for the Japanese Gallery, one button for the Korean gallery!

Also adjusted some layout stuff and got rid of dead links as far as I know, lemme know if I missed something!