Further Observations

Geoje City

Geoje as a city is nice.  The main part near where I live is called 'Gohyeon'.  The bars are good, the food is decent.  They keep the place relatively clean (depending on the time of day) and it's pretty accessible to foreigners.  We have the Sea Spa which is a really nice jimjilbang, a movie theater, a few arcades, and a whole lot of clothing stores and barbecue places.  Can't complain.

Okpo

Okpo is... a neighborhood? Another city? I don't really know how Korea works, and less how the island works. But it's on the island.  It's also almost all foreigners.  Sometimes it seems there are more foreigners than Koreans there.  There's an Irish bar with huge beers, and they have the better McDonald's.

Busan

I've been to Busan three times since arriving, twice on purpose, once by accident. I'll tell that story later.  Busan is a nice city, in parts.  The area immediately near Sasang station seems kind of seedy, but there are some good restaurants.  My first time going there I went with a coworker to meet some friends.  I had just purchased a cell phone roughly an hour beforehand (prepaid) and ran around screaming 'WHERE IS A FREE WIFI SIGNAL WHERE IS A FREE WIFI SIGNAL WHERE IS oh there it is' trying to get access to my gmail and contact info for people, because writing things down is for old people.

Busan the first time was pretty good.  We went to a mall that was pretty nice and had a wax museum in it, got some Mexican food at Fuzzy Navel that was pretty decent, and wound up at the beach in Hongdae.  The beach had a videogame tournament taking place which is... well, welcome to Korea.  Wound up back in Geoje shortly after that for a going away party (which are pretty much a daily occurrence in Korea. Somebody is always going away and they never seem upset about it. . .)

Busan the second time was for a friend's birthday, and also was a pretty good time as far as I can remember.  Did some mart drinking, got a hotel room, went to Wolfgang's which has excellent fish fry, and then drank, and then kept drinking, and then drank a whole lot more, and then went to Rock n Roll Club and played beer pong and the rest of the night is pretty fuzzy, but I've been assured that I enjoyed myself, and videos from the night certainly back that argument up.  The morning after I stayed in Busan nursing a hangover, did some shopping (managed to find some Converse only a size too small that have stretched nicely to fit my gigantic American feet), and ate some pretty decent gyuudon at a restaurant next to Sasang station.

All in all, I'd recommend Busan pretty highly.

Mart Drinking

Mart drinking isn't something that happens from my experience stateside, at least if you aren't homeless. Probably cause it's illegal in most places.  But hanging out at convenience stores and getting sloshed is surprisingly not uncommon here. And by not uncommon, I mean I seem to be doing it a lot, I see other people doing it a lot, and the Koreans here seem to be pretty fond of it.

Buying beer from the mart is halfway between buying it at an actual grocery and at a bar, so it's much more affordable.  They provide chairs and tables and they clean up after you even if you throw everything on the ground, and there are public bathrooms or conveniently parked trucks near most of the locations I've been to.  There's also wifi, and access to a microwave.

They tend to be a great place to meet strangers.  Not in a Craigslist sort of way, no, but definitely in a talking to other travelers/teachers/foreigners randomly way.  Everyone goes to relax outside of marts.  I had a good experience in Seoul at a mart at the intersection of a bunch of clubs, sitting and chatting with random foreigners and English speaking Koreans.  They're a crossroads for drunk, friendly people in the country.  Most of the time you'll never see these people again, but for a brief period of time you're all best friends.  Strangers will buy you drinks and ice cream and tell you their most intimate secrets.

Basically, mart drinking is the best.

Garbage

Korea is filthy.

That's really all I would need to say on the matter, but I guess I can add onto that.

Korea is absolutely disgusting.

There is constantly garbage littering the streets.  There are no public garbage cans, for the most part, and the best a conscientious individual can attempt is at least throwing your trash onto the bigger piles of refuse lining the streets, or in front of a mart so that one of the workers will clean it up.

To add onto this problem, there tends to be a rainy season (it was 'right when I arrived' until 'now it's cold'), and there are tons of band flyers and the aforementioned prostitute trading cards slung everywhere people might walk, so they tend to get pasted to the ground via rainwater and the uncaring tread of passersby.  Also, there is a more open sewage system in Korea, where the fetid waters are closer to street level directly under the sewer grates, and the smell can seep through harshly out of nowhere.  There's a spot near where I live where you'll be walking along, enjoying the smell of a bakery, when suddenly you hit a wall of odorous war crime.  Never a pleasant experience.

The silver lining to this, is that all these problems tend to happen later in the day.  Every morning, before Korea wakes up, but after it comes home from drinking (so, roughly 6-9am) a group of workers comes out and sweeps up the streets.  If you're the first one awake in the morning, and then you went back home around noontime and didn't leave again for the rest of the day, you'd have no idea the country got so filthy.

I've heard a few explanations for the lack of trash bins.  The first I was told was a fear of terrorists, which doesn't make any sense, considering the few places there are public receptacles are in the areas of highest transit which would cause the most damage.  The second, more logical reason is simply that they don't have the willing  manpower to collect the bins multiple times a day, so letting it get dumped all over all day and then cleaning it up once early in the morning is actually more efficient.

And it is, but guys, Japan is right next to you and they are pristine.  If you ever had to invite them over for dinner you would be so embarrassed.

Confucianism and its effects

Confucianism has twofold very visible effects.  First, is the age hierarchy.  Somebody older than you is automatically right. No matter what. Even if irrefutable evidence proves them wrong, you're still morally wrong for trying to prove that.  As mentioned briefly with the ajumas that will elbow you into the ocean and spit on your bloated, floating corpse, it comes into play at work as well.  Your boss is your boss, they're older than you, you will respect them.  I've had younger bosses before (only a year or two of difference, but still) that were pretty cool, and this is just not something I could see standing up here.

The other part is your position as an educator.  You get a lot of cred for being a teacher here. People assume you're wealthy, you get treated like a king, mothers are throwing their virgin daughters in your direction in hopes to wed them to such a successful individual...

Well at least people assume you have good money, but that could be because of the foreigner thing.  Huzzah stereotyping!