Asia Travel Journal by Will

What, No Fried Fish?

// April 16th, 2010 // No Comments » // korea

Well there was quite a scene in the lunchroom today. When I first walked in, the ajummas were a little noisier than usual. The eldest one, Namsuk, was scooping food onto her plate, repeating, “Ani, ani, ani,” over and over. ‘Ani’ means ‘no.’ So she clearly wasn’t happy.

I got my food, sat down, and things are proceeding as they normally do. Mr. Shin asks politely for the pepper. I misunderstand him and hand him the Kleenex box. Mr. Shin and Hyeseon both say, “No, the pepper.” This time I understand and slide it over to him. He asks me where Song is. I say I don’t know. She’s always late, so I just said, “She’s late,” and in my head I add, “again.”

More ajummas file into the room and the decibel level adjusts accordingly as more exclamations of malcontentedness arise. Namsuk’s unintelligible rant finally stirs curiosity in me. “Hyeseon,” I begin, “Why is everyone yelling?”

“There’s no fried fish.”

“What?”

“The menu says fried fish. There’s no.”

“Ah, I see. Why isn’t there any fried fish?”

“Because some teachers can’t they like fried fish but so and there’s no.”

“Hmm, okay.”

I dropped it after that. Hyeseon can speak English pretty well, so I think that was her way of saying that she didn’t know. Koreans don’t like to admit being in the dark about anything, so they usually try and cover it up. Or maybe she did know, and I just didn’t hear her right. But then things get interesting.

One of the cooks bursts through the door and scuttles up to our table. She looks prepared to make an announcement. The din falls to a whisper. We wait in anticipation. She begins.

“ㅁㄴ이랒ㄷ겨ㅐㅑ키차ㅓㅍㅈ대ㅑㅕㅇ” and so on for 60 seconds. What I typed is the equivalent of “;alskdjfopwieura;vlkmasdl;ku” in Korean. I don’t really know what she said.

There are cries of protest. Ajummas ‘tsk tsk’ with displeasure. Some stand up and cross their arms. The noise level rises once again, and the cook gets into a heated discussion with Ju. Namsuk continues to mutter disquieting ramblings and continues to do so until the cook left.

I smile to myself. Because lunches are usually/always uneventful and boring. What excitement I have witnessed!

I put my empty tray with the others and leave the room. Outside, two ajummas are still going at it with the cook.

Lesson 1: If you break your word to a Korean, there will be hell to pay.
Lesson 2: Never, I repeat, NEVER, under any circumstances, fail to deliver the fried fish.

Cat in Korea

// March 22nd, 2010 // 1 Comment » // korea

Well, my sister Catherine just left the country after being here for a few days. It was her first visit to Asia, and she seemed to enjoy herself. I’m sure she has a lot more to say about her stay here than I do, but I’ll give you the gist of our itinerary.

Wednesday
I met her at the airport in the afternoon. We stopped by the apartment so she could drop off her bags and take a shower, and I could get in a quick run at the gym. Immediately after that, Yoonju (teacher at my school) and Sunny (Yoonju’s friend and my Korean language teacher) picked us up and took us to a traditional Korean restaurant in Jeongja. Well, almost traditional. We took off our shoes and ate a generic conglomeration of Korean foods, but we sat in chairs instead of on the floor.

We were then dropped off in front of Yong’s apartment, met up with him, and walked to a bar/restaurant to get some makkeoli (milky white alcohol made from rice, terrific stuff). Yong was my co-teacher for 5th grade for the second half of last semester. Now he works at another school. He lived in the U.S. for four years between the ages of 6 and 10, so he’s fluent in English and super easy to talk to. I don’t feel like I need to slow down my speech or avoid overusing expressions.

Thursday
I had to teach from 8:40-4:40, so Cat slept in and met me at school at the beginning of 4th period. This would allow her to witness one of my classes, eat lunch, and spend the rest of the afternoon in Seoul with Sunny. So all of that happened. She went to Gyeongbok Palace, and I don’t know about the rest. I’ll let her talk about it on her blog.

Then we went to Myeongdong in Seoul for dinner, shopping, and most importantly, the experience of weeknight nightlife in one of the most popular districts in Seoul. This was exemplified in the form of bright, flashing lights everywhere and a labyrinth of streets filled with young people out for a night on the town.

We wrapped up the evening by dropping by an almost-closed Namdaemun market. I picked up some Ginseng rice sweets, and she bought some things as well. Namdaemun is quite the hustling and bustling marketplace during the day on weekends.

Friday
I spent 8:40-4:40 at school again, so Cat once again stopped by school for 4th period and lunch. Though instead of being an observer, she and I co-taught the 40 minute 6th grade class lesson on the phrase “Is this York Street?” The lesson involved teaching directions for finding local businesses. They know right from left, but when you show them a map, they have a hard time figuring out right from left if the orientation point isn’t straight ahead. Most of them had to turn their bodies to face the same direction as the arrow to give the correct answer. Sounds like they could use some old school Grand Theft Auto (the really old one, in 2D).

After lunch, she headed off solo to Dongmyo to experience and photograph an interesting indoor flea market surrounded by blocks and blocks of an outdoor flea market selling everything from shields to roasted millipedes.

We spent Friday evening in Gangnam. Most of the night was spent at Rainbow, but we spent a half hour or so at Woodstock. Our cab driver back to Bundang set a new record for cab drivers driving me back to Bundang. We hit an astonishing 195 kph, or 120 mph high, though he spared us for most of the ride by driving at a comfortable, paced 160 kph (100 mph). I’ve taken longer to drive home from the grocery store back in the states than this guy got us out of Seoul and to the urburb where I live. I define urburb as a metropolitan suburb just outside a major metropolitan city.

Saturday
Idled around until noon. Met up with Lauren and Candace in Gangnam for some Dr. Fish. I don’t know if I’ve talked about Dr. Fish on this blog before, but it’s a name for the experience of placing your feet into a shallow aquarium built into the floor so fish can nibble away at the dead skin on your feet.

Then Lauren, Cat, and I took a bus to Jongno and walked to Insadong. We wandered past the souvenir shops and jewelry stores for awhile before taking the subway to Yongsan. Yongsan was really something else.

Normally, I go to Yongsan to get hard drives or power cords since it’s the electronics hub of Korea, but the three of us had a different goal in mind on Saturday. Across the street, literally, from the massive mall adjacent to the electronics superstore is an alley-like street just off the main drag where men, and presumably, only men, window shop. What commodity is behind the glass? Why, women, of course. Girls aged 20-26 sit on barstools, their immediate area adorned in a soft, pink light. So basically, it’s a “red light district.” It was quite alarming. I was shocked both at the proximity to what is quite probably the largest mall in Korea and the audacity of the display. It’s right next to the police station. And prostitution is illegal. I just couldn’t fathom how this works. So I googled it. Apparently, 20% of men aged 20-65 solicit a prostitute at least once a month.

Red light districts aren’t the only place to do this. It’s the only place you can window shop, but there are other methods of prostitution available. You can visit a massage parlor, which frequently provide “extra” services. There’s also the barbershops. One spinning barbershop pole means it’s legit. Two spinning barbershop poles mean it’s nearly legit, but not quite. Along with the standard row of barbershop chairs on opposite walls, there’s another chair behind a curtain where you get a haircut and a, well, use your imagination.

After the bewildering experience of walking through the pink light district, the three of us had some tea, took a bus back to Sunae, and went out for dinner. We had galbi, a Korean meal composed primarily of beef. There are different kinds of galbi, and I don’t know what this was. But it was fantastic.

Sunday
Cat and I had breakfast at Butterfinger Pancakes with Sunny and Yoonju, and then they drove us to a Buddhist temple in Seoul. It was built around 20 years ago by a monk who passed away a few days ago. So it was a very popular destination this weekend. Sunny taught me how to sit and breathe for meditating, and we ate the free lunch that was provided at the temple. Cat didn’t finish her rice, and this is a big no-no, so I had to finish it for her. Later, she said, “I can’t believe you ate all that rice.” Then she paused, and reflected, “I’m full.” I just gave her a look.

Sunny and Yoonju drove us to the bus stop where we could catch an airport bus. We went to the airport, she left, and that was it….for me, at least. She began her 30 hour journey back through North America on her way to Germany, where she’ll be studying design for the next 5 months.

Kind of Kidnapped

// February 24th, 2010 // No Comments » // Uncategorized

So it turns out I’m writing more in my e-mails to friends and family than I am writing in this blog, so I’m going to put e-mails and such up here every now and then.

Here’s the abridged version of an e-mail I wrote to my Dad a couple of days ago:

Dad,

I see that you called an hour ago or so. Your status says you are away now though. It’s 12:38 AM so I’m exhausted, but I’ll give you a little bit of news about my day before I go to sleep. I woke up at 10, ready Freakonomics until Noon, took a shower, ate cereal, and immediately after that Yoonju called me. She wanted to know if I had eaten lunch. I wasn’t really in the mood to go out, but I had made her pretty upset on Thursday by showing up for the spring camp class I teach by myself and telling the students they could all go home because I was sick. I woke up that morning with a slight fever, and I had had a sore throat for two nights in a row. I knew some illness was coming, and I didn’t want to exacerbate it by walking around and talking for three hours that morning.

Well apparently it’s a pretty big deal if the teacher cancels class. Korean kids can’t miss a day of education, and I underestimated how much anybody would care. Parents called Yoonju (the head teacher and one of my co-teachers), she called Hyeseon, Hyeseon called me and told me to call Yoonju. It was a big fiasco and caused more stress than would have occurred had I just taught the class that morning.

Anyway, I tell her, “Actually, yeah, I just had some cereal.” She then asks if I would come meet her family in Jeongja for coffee. I give in and she says to meet her in 20 minutes. I get to Jeongja and call her, she says she’ll pick me up. A few minutes later she picks me up in her car while on her cell phone so she doesn’t say anything to me and we drive. We drive and drive. We leave Jeongja. We head south. I realize I’ve just been kidnapped. After we’re far enough out that I have no chance of walking back, she gets off her cell phone and tells me we are going to her house so she can teach me how to make kimchi jigae. This is kimchi soup.

I believe she had four reasons for kidnapping me. She’s been wanting to teach me how to make this soup for awhile now, but I’ve always been busy. She’s upset with me for cancelling class and wants to punish me without making it look like punishment. Her sister’s family is at her house, and her brother-in-law likes hiking and would like to go hiking with me. She believes, as do many Koreans, that kimchi is a magical cure for everything, so kimchi jigae must be the holy grail of healing food for whatever caused me to cancel class on Thursday.

Her sister and brother-in-law were very, very nice. The sister does reasonably well at English, but her husband struggles a bit. For seven hours we snacked on fruit, dessert, made dinner, ate dinner, sat around watching TV, conversed, and I showed them my various photo albums on Facebook involving my time in Korea.

All in all, it was a good day, I suppose. I wouldn’t have done very much productive anyway, so I guess I can’t complain about meeting new people and experiencing some more culture exchange.

Love,
William

“Spending my afternoons smuggling cocaine”

// December 10th, 2009 // 1 Comment » // korea

I went back to the hospital today for a blood test (ouch) and a C.T. scan (weird). I had the blood test in my left arm, so they put the IV in my right arm for the C.T. I should have done some research because I had no idea what to expect. After laying on the table-like thing, having the IV fluid plugged into my arm, and being slid into a donut machine, a vertical particle accelerator-like device spun around me slowly until the table was slid back out again. At this point, the nurse came over and said, “During injection, warm your stomach.” “Warm?” I asked, wondering how I was supposed to warm my stomach. Did she mean relax? Was I too tense? Or did she say “warn?” Was she warning me? Despite my confused look, she hurriedly slid me back into the donut and sped up the particle accelerator.

This is where it got really weird. What I assume could only have been radiation was transmitted through me with such amplitude that every part of my body between my knees and my nose began to heat up. My tongue tingled, and if she hadn’t given me the now understood warning that my stomach would feel warm, I would have become very worried. The warmth felt unnatural, like that of a tanning bed. I was relieved to find it only lasted for 15-20 seconds. After that, I was allowed to get dressed and get out of there. My arms were sore, probably sorer than they needed to be. It took awhile for the blood test nurse to find my vein. I think I was a little dehydrated. I drank more water than usual this morning and last night, but then again, the events of last night didn’t help much.

At 1:30pm yesterday, Wednesday, all the teachers boarded a bus and headed toward Oh-i-do, an island popular for its multitude of hway, or sushi restaurants. Actually, sushi is a misnomer. In Korea, sushi means raw fish with rice. Sashimi is raw fish without rice. We had sashimi last night. After we unloaded from the bus, we had some time to walk around, climb to the top of the lighthouse, walk the shoreline. Then we all went to the restaurant where, as expected for most restaurants serving only Korean food, we took our shoes off and sat down on cushions at tables only a foot above the floor. The restaurant heating system was like every other indoor heating system in Korea. The heat is generated by an ondol under the floor.

Then we spent the next few hours eating about every form of sea life I’ve eaten before plus several more, and none of it cooked. I consumed twisting, sucking, octopus tentacles, shrimp that had been alive moments before, something like oysters in both clam-like shells and hermit crab shells. We ate four different types of fish, and I had a few squid, an unidentified, pinkish-red sea animal, and the ever present vegetable kimchi. I was shown how to eat a crab (break it in two and suck/munch the innards out of each half). Throughout all of this, dozens of bottles of alcoholic something, makshudo maybe, were consumed by the participants. My new co-teacher, Yong, who speaks better English than anyone I’ve encountered at the school, including most of the almost-native English ability students, left my side to have a conversation with the principal at one point during dinner. When he came back, I asked him what the principal said, and he said he didn’t really know because the principal was pretty drunk.

On the bus ride back to the school, karaoke was made possible by a microphone and TV screen at the front of the bus. At one point, the bus pulled over on the side of the highway. I asked Hyeseon why she stopped, and she explained that the CCTV cameras had recorded the raucous dancing in the aisle. I still didn’t understand why we stopped, turned off the karaoke, waited about 10 minutes, and then resumed both driving and the karaoke.

But Hyeseon rarely explains things to me in full. And when she does, it usually doesn’t make much sense, and that’s probably why she doesn’t provide a full explanation. One such example is when she gave me the news earlier this week that the four days I have to spend at the school between Christmas and New Year’s, without any students mind you, must be full 9-5 days. Earlier she had told me that I would probably only have to “work” during the mornings. As for the explanation, I should never have asked. Apparently some guy, a former native English teacher in Korea, left Korea but came back with a substantial quantity of cocaine and was caught. In response, the Office of Education has declared that native English teachers must spend every non-vacation day of Winter Break at school all day. I get 20 days off per year, so I’m using 8 for Winter Break and saving the other 12 for summer. For three weeks, I have to teach special Winter Break classes, so after those classes, the two holidays, and my eight vacation days, there are only four days I have to spend all day at school lesson planning with no students in attendance.

“So the afternoon thing is to prevent me from spending my afternoons smuggling cocaine into the country?” She laughed, but I was serious. She gave me the usual four word reply when I question the almighty Office of Education – “I don’t know why.”

But dinner was great. I actually really enjoyed all the food.