A short trip

I decided to get off my bony butt and go somewhere. Steve and I (no he is not my partner) went to Ulleongdo early last week. It is an island about 200km from the Korean mainland. It was supposed to be our jumping off point to visit Dokdo (which means chicken, or rice cake island or something like that, do=island) but tours weren't available until March. Dokdo is really just 2 barren rocks in the middle of the Sea of Japan (or if you are Korean, the East Sea) that the Koreans claim as theirs and the Japanese say is theirs (but they call it Takeshima.) When I brought up Japan during my camp classes, the kids would always say how evil Japan was and tried to explain how they were trying to steal Takesh...um...Dokdo from Korea. They did this all through song with fist raised fury. It just so happened to be Takeshima Day when we were planning on going, so we were hoping for some protests or some other nonsense. Unfortunately none was to be had.

On the plus side was that we avoided tourists somehow. Everywhere we went we were the only people around and everything was so peaceful. Walking through the forest we couldn't hear anything but the sounds of gentle streams trickling along the mountain trails and birds chirping away their siren in search of a springtime lover...sorry, I was trying to set the scene, I'll just go back to my nonsensitive style. Everyone on the island was more than friendly and it made up for my bad experiences the previous week. Our waiter in one restaurant even drove us to a cable car after we asked for directions.

Since it was off season (even though every student is on holiday) many of the restaurants and shops were closed. We had a pleasant evening in a DVD room (you rent a room with a giant TV and watch a movie) watching a Korean movie. Afterwards we went out to find so sort of night life. We popped into one disco which appeared to be completely empty but with 3 guys in suits working the door. They tried to get us to stay but we moved on to a bland bar where we had some crap beer.

The next day we walked along the bottom of the cliff coast to a lighthouse. Again, we saw almost nobody. The weather was perfect as well so all in all it was a good trip.

I also have a new little GPS device that I was using and after hooking it up to Google Earth I got this nifty little map. Hopefully I will learn how to use it better and when I go on my big trip in September (wherever I may end up going) I will be able to track it all. The image below is just of me riding the boat from Ulleongdo to the mainland. Posted some of the pictures for the trip as well so click the link on the right!

I am on vacation again. The Korean school system is quite screwed-up. My schedule:

Dec 3-7-finished teaching, give final exams
Dec 8-22-stay at school but don't teach, watch movies
Dec 23-Feb 4-vacation (I worked at a camp for extra money, some English teachers have to sit at the school and do nothing while the school is void of all students and other teachers)
Feb 5-Feb 16-stay at school but don't teach (can't watch movies because computer is broken)..End of school year
Feb 17-March 1-vacation (except for coming in on the 26th for a "meeting")
March 2 (Friday!!)first day of new school year

We have just wasted a month of school doing absolutely nothing. It isn't just my school but every single school in the country. When asked why the schedule is like this the only answer anyone gives is "that's the way it has always been."

So now I have 2 weeks off and nothing to do. I may see a bit of Korea,but it all looks the same, so I doubt it. Time to catch up on my reading I guess.

Pictures

I have been kind of negative in the last couple of posts so I've decided to post some pictures from my time away from home. There are some new sets and some new pictures were added to the old sets. I will be adding more on Sunday! Click the link to the right!

Even worse

I have been complaining a lot about Koreans but today was one of the worst. It started ok. I was riding the subway meeting a friend and part way through the journey an old Korean sat beside me and we had a nice little chat. Good guy. When I got off the subway and met my friend things instantly changed. My friend is a cute Korean girl. About a minute after meeting she noticed that people were staring and not giving very kind looks at us, but mostly directed towards her. This happened the entire evening. It was because she was Korean and was with a white face (me). I have gotten used to a bit of the xenophobia here but it really made me angry the way they treated her. It upset her so much that we ended the evening early. It didn't help that we ran into one of her friends and all he tried to do was make me look dumb in front of her. I held back as much as I could but a few little comments slipped out. I am not violent but this night has definitely made me want to whack a few Koreans in the head.

No I know how mixed couples in America (and elsewhere) feel when ignorant rednecks stare and make asinine comments. This girl is just a friend, it wasn't like we were walking arm in arm or anything. God I can't wait to get out of this backwards country.

In their defense, I did not see a single Korean female doing anything negative, just the guys...dickheads.

Grrrrr rabbit!

Here is a video of typical Korean men.

on and on and on...

It has been over a week now since camp has been over and I have had time to let my thoughts settle. I said before how unorganized it was and how things weren’t always so clear. Other than that though it was good. Most of the teachers and TAs were/are good people. I got along with almost everybody and those that I didn’t like I pretended to as best as I could.

During the third week of the camp we had to fill out evaluations for every student we had (for me it was 130). This included grading them on their effort and ability, their behavior and had to write comments about each. The next week we had to test them. The last day each student got a “report card” along with some certificate of completion. I looked at some of the report cards and the managers completely changed everything. I saw one girl’s, who earned an “F” on her test (she answered 2 out of 30 questions that I basically gave them the answers to), but on the report card it said she got a “C”!! I asked one of the managers about this and she went a bit pale (which is hard for Koreans to do) and quickly scampered away without saying anything. They also didn’t use any of the comments that they had us write. So basically we wasted our time. That being said, I’d work for the camp again as along as I don’t have to go through a recruiter, they took almost 20% of my paycheck last time!

We moved into a brand new high school this week. It is pretty nice but still has some typical shoddy Koreaness to it. All the signs are in Korean and English of some sort. I always complain about how the English in museum exhibits is always filled with grammar errors. It is no different with our signs here. Is it that hard to ask a native speaker (one whose native tongue is English) to check it over? You don’t have to be a genius to spot the errors, they are blatantly obvious. While at the DMZ museum we only had time to read a couple of signs but I spotted 4 or 5 errors in both! One even had white tape through a couple of sentences (but I think that was more becase it was trying to hide Korean propaganda. The tape wasn’t opaque enough to hide what it actually said, something about how it was the US’s fault for the war.

Our signs at school are crap. I work in the “Dministration Room”. I teach in “Language Room I” but the next class over is also “Language Room I”. If I want to go to the toilet I have to go to “Man’s restroom” and if I want to relax I go to “Man rest room”. If they ladies want to do their yoga (they won’t let me join) they go to “Women s rest room”. The only good thing is that the Man rest room has couches, a TV and a massage chair. The women have a wood floor.

I think that the Koreans are still confused with indoor plumbing. In my apartment all th pipes are on the outside of the walls and there is a big orange hose connecting my kitchen sink to the hot water for all the world (that visits my apartment) to see. I could understand if this was an old building but it is only a year old! It looks like it’s 20-30 years old already. Reminds me a lot of the panelaks in Czech (those ugly communist style apartment buildings). Even our brand new school has pipes just sticking out of the wall in the middle of halls.

I guess this is going to be a bitch about Korea post, didn’t mean for it to be. So continuing along with the theme… Our school is on a bit of an island. There is a convenient little walking bridge over the river that separates the school from the mainland (not really the mainland since that is also an island). I was told yesterday that we cannot use the bridge and must use the main entrance. That would be fine except that it will make my journey at least 10 minute longer. I have a strong feeling that whoever gave this order drives to school everyday. I am going to continue to use the bridge until I am confronted by the individual who ordered this nonsense. I know it is only a small thing (10 minutes) but when the rainy season starts it is going to be a pain in the ass. I guess that it is the Korean mentality that is getting to me. “What? Something is convenient and easy for people? We have to change that, how can we aggravate people more?”

Another month down

I went to Seoul on Wednesday to meet up with a couple friends and visit North Korea. Steve and I had to find a hotel and after wandering around for a while found what looked to be a nice place. As we were approaching it we saw a sign for another hotel and decided to check it out. It led us down an alley, then down another alley, and then finally down another one. When we got there it looked pretty dismal and shady. It was cheap so we took it. It is a place that would normally be used for prostitutes and their moneymakers, but it didn't phase us too bad. It appeared that they didn't change the sheets very often (if at all) and the bathroom had a big hole in the wall that was partially plugged up with a towel. You could still see into the other room's bathroom if you so inclined to. Sadly Steve won the floor so I had to sleep in the bed. I skipped on the pillow and used my jacket. I also slept fully clothed so as to minimize contact of the bed to my skin.

Before we went to sleep we headed out to watch Apocolyptico (sp?). I don't know if you have seen this but it doesn't have any English in it, just subtitles. We didn't know this until the movie started so Steve and I had an interesting time trying to figure out what was going on.

The next morning we met up with Rachel, an Irish girl that I met while teaching at the "camp". We piled into a minivan along with a German, and an Aussie and headed out to the border. With our first tour guide we went to some bridge and saw a bunch of flag/banners (you can see them in my pictures. We also saw a short movie. The movie was interesting but lame as well. At one point a cartoon butterfly flew around the screen and a bad child actor tried her best to point at it. I think there was some stuff about the war between the Koreas but all I remember is that damn butterfly. We were then led into a museum where our guide told us not to read anything because we can find it on the internet later.

We then went to a long tunnel that the North Koreans built to invade the South. The North said that it was a coal mine but it went straight south and had no coal. The North tried to show that there really was coal by painting the tunnel black. It didn't work too well. Later the North said that it was the South that was building the tunnel to attack them. After the South opened it up to tourists the North demanded some of the profit because it was theme that built the tunnel... you see why we are having problems with this country? Anyway, the tunnel was built for little Koreans so I and the rest of out group had to hunch over most of the time. No pictures were allowed in the cave and in a lot of other places as well.

We went to another place where a Korean with a London accent showed us, out of a giant glass wall, some interesting things about the North. We couldn't take any pictures. When we went outside there was a yellow line about 20 feet (6 meters) from the edge of the viewing platform where you could take pictures. At the edge were binoculars where you could look over at the wasteland that is the North. Not so sure why we couldn't take pictures from there though.

After a hearty lunch where I think I insulted the owners for questioning their prices we went to the border in a much larger bus with a bunch of Japanese tourists and a different tour guide. We were given forms to sign and were warned again and again not to take pictures or to point or make silly faces. Alcohol is also banned. While we were waiting at one checkpoint there was a bus in front of us for quite some time. Eventually we pulled around it and headed on our way. We later found out that one of the passengers had some alcohol on his person so the tour was canceled for the entire bus. The reason we needed a new tour guide was the first one lost her certificate because one of her charges did the same thing. Morons.

We finally got to the famous spot where the North and South soldiers stand 10 feet away from each other and stare. Sadly the North soldiers weren't out that day (maybe it was too cold) so the South soldiers were staring at nothing. You can see by the pictures (if you go to the link on the right) that the soldiers don't look so nice. Our tour was almost canceled because a Swiss tourist couldn't follow directions and didn't leave her camera case behind, the guard was kind and didn't kick us all out. We snapped some photos and were quickly ushered out. After a few more photo ops we headed back to Seoul.

All throughout the tour our guide was giving us tidbits of information through her broken English. One tasty gem was that if the Koreas united they'd be the 3rd world superpower (not the super power of the 3rd world), right behind the US and the EU. I guess she forgot about a few others.

Personally, after seeing how Korean organization works while at the camp, I would be a bit distraught at the thought of Korea having too much power. Also, Koreans don't seem to know where they live. I've said before about how people always try to open my apartment door, well, while I was staying in a dormitory at the camp someone actually walked first into the sitting area of our room and then just opened my bedroom door. I thought it was my roommate but nobody came in and when I checked I saw our front door slowly swinging shut. I know it wasn't the roommate because she was asleep in the next room. We had a proper lock put on our hallway door the next day (as our other one only locked/unlocked from the outside). The next evening the girls above me where in their sitting room when a Korean girl just walked in walked to the kitchenette opened some drawers then walked out all while saying nothing. Who are these people!?!?!?!?

Don't forget to check out the pictures!!