Happy New Year

Dear Reader(s), I'm so terribly sorry that I haven't written in so long. As a result, I have a million things to write about, but I don't want to drown you in text, so I'll try and break things up.

Here's some quick updates since I last posted:

- My extended contract will go from February 1st to July 31st. At the moment, I plan to return to Canada after my contract ends, so I can finish school.

- I'm trying to move out but I don't know if it will happen until January. I'm on the waitlist for a single room in another dormitory, but unfortunately, hardly anyone at the residence office speaks English, so I doubt this will come to fruition.

- Irene's in Japan right now, she comes home in a few days.

- Josh is in Japan also right now, he comes home also in a few days.

- I'm sick :( I'm pretty sure I've passed the apex of this virus and am winning the biological battle right now.

- Getting pretty stoked to come home for awhile!

- I was supposed to attend a teacher's event that my school invited me to. They were going on a teachers-only field trip to Muan, and asked me to come along. The morning of, I waited for the bus to get to Damyang for a full 30 minutes and it never came. Surprisingly, the teachers were leaving on schedule, so I told them not to wait for me. Unfortunate that I couldn't go along, but in the end, it might have been a better thing (can you imagine spending a whole day on a field trip with Korean speaking teachers? They're nice people and all, but I had a fair amount of dread about this event).

- I saw Les Mis and Wreck it Ralph (excuse me, "Fist King Ralph" over here) recently. Both very very good movies. Unfortunately, South Korea has a nasty habit of either not showing the movies with subtitles, or showing them in the mornings for a few days and then pulling them. Either way, it makes it difficult to enjoy the cinema.

- I found out recently that I have two weeks of vacation in February. My supervisor had told me about this before, but she said I would have to be at school for those two weeks, even though my students weren't there. However, recently I talked to her again and she said I didn't have to come to school those days (and I reconfirmed a few times just to make sure). As a result, I'm planning some trips in the near future.

- Recently I came back from my trip to Tokyo. I will write about that in a new post, as I'm still editing my pictures from said trip.

Happy New Year!

The Garlic Lady Returns!

I saw her again on the bus yesterday. This time, without a hint of garlic!
She still wanted to talk to me the whole way to Damyang, and this time she was so bold as to sit. right. next. to. me.

However, she shared her bag of goguma chips (sweet potato chips, but I thought they were made from some sort of nut. Either way, they were delicious) with me. In fact, she even fed some of them to me (a little strange, but I'll file it under "W" for "When in Rome").

On the university front, I wrote my last final yesterday. I think it went well, and I'm looking forward to the break from studies. In Korea, the universities have huge vacations--school starts in September and goes until December. Then it doesn't start again until March! Yes, they get 2 whole months of vacation here!

On the elementary school front, things are going well. I'm getting excited about teaching my kids about Christmas. I had wondered if I was going to be able to bring Jesus into the classroom (as in, teaching them about Jesus--I try to show them grace like Jesus would on a regular basis, but it's trying) since He is the reason for the season. To be honest, I don't know how athiest-militant the atmosphere is in school, but my impression is that it's more relaxed than in Canada. I asked my pastor about it, and he advised me that it would be okay to talk about Jesus. After all, he said, a lot of the kids in my class probably go to church with their parents or grandparents, so they would already know the Christian holiday of Christmas.

Now for a bad story :(

Here's some preface:

- Two nights ago, my roommate went to his hometown for a few days, so it was just me here.
- My roommate has a printer, his friend Junseong does not. My roommate has given Junseong free access to his printer, along with the passcode for our room so that he can use it when he needs it. Fine with me, it's not a problem. Junseong is a nice guy.

But this takes the cake...

At around 01:00am, I had just finished studying for my finals, took my shower, turned off the lights, and crawled into bed. No sooner than 1 or 2 minutes after closing my eyes, I hear a knock at the door.

"Oh, it's probably Junseong wanting to use the printer. But it's 1:00am and I'm going to sleep, so he can come tomorrow," I thought.

Another few knocks. Then the beeping sound of my door's keypad being activated.

"Are you serious!?" I thought.

Junseong came into my room, used his phone as a flashlight, turned on my roommate's computer, turned on his printer, printed several pages, and then left.

I was shocked and very angry. What gall! I'm sure he was rushing to meet some sort of perfectly ordinary 1:00AM deadline to hand in a physical copy of his assignment--except that he's not even enrolled in any classes here!

Yeesh. Now I'm angry again just from writing this. I'm going to have to discuss this matter with him later.

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Oh, also, a sad story. Today is the day that most of the international students at CNU leave for their home countries. At least, that's what's going on with our (Irene's and my) good friend Miyuki, who returns to her native Japan tomorrow afternoon. We're going to miss her :(

Oh, and a big news story!

My application for contract extension was approved! That means I will be in South Korea for another 6 months after January, which means I could be coming back to Canada in the middle of July. I'm pretty stoked about this, since I love Korea.

Also, another big news story:
I'm coming to Canada for a visit in January! I'll be there between January 18 and February 1st. Looking forward to seeing family and friends. People are assuming that I'm lonely here (in South Korean culture alone equals lonely)... but it's not the case :)

The First Snowfall and the Garlic Lady

It started snowing yesterday! Just for a few minutes, but it was pretty magical. I've never lived on a floor higher than the ground floor, so living on the 10th floor is pretty special--it's a nice view.

Gwangju has some of the warmest weather in Korea, so it doesn't
get much snow. The morning after yesterday's minuscule snowfall these
mountains had a light dusting.

I went to do a few errands the other day and noticed that the local Shinsegae department store had put up its Christmas decorations! Christmas decorations aren't a big thing in Korea, unfortunately, so it's always nice to see a bit of Christmas wherever you can find it.

A cute little Totoro display at Shinsegae's Christmas stand (Totoro 
is a well-known Japanese cartoon character)

They put up a Christmas tree by the cafeteria at my school! It's small,
but also precious and beautiful. Irene and I both feel very emotional
about this, so we both took pictures :)

Today my grade 3 kids were being naughty, but my grade 4's were pretty nice as usual (although the boys were really rowdy today), and grade 5 was awesome.

Because the grade 3s were insanely late, I gave them the option of staying in with the grade 4 lesson or they could leave if they wish. Surprisingly, they all stayed, which aggravated the grade 4s...I'm not sure why...

Even the one's who don't like my class chose to stay.... Seriously?

Anyway, I hope tomorrow's class goes better. It was a bit of a disaster having a combined class.

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Now, you might be wondering, based on the title of this post, who the Garlic Lady is. Well, let me tell you!

I can't remember if I wrote about it previously, but one day a few weeks ago, I got on the bus to Damyang and was quickly waved over by a Korean woman sitting near the back. I had never seen this woman before, and I certainly had no idea why she waved me over to sit near her. Anyway, she handed me a map/brochure/booklet of Damyang and all the cool things you can see and do there and then talked to me a little bit. By "talked to me a little bit", I mean she spoke Korean at a normal (read: fast) pace and expected me to understand perfectly. Anyway, I thanked her for the map, tried to go along with this horribly broken and one-sided conversation and then put my earphones in so I could listen to music and de-stress on my way to work. She wouldn't have it of course, and kept trying to talk to me. To be honest I was relieved when she moved to the front of the bus to sit.

Anyway, fast forward to today. I got on the bus and who happens to be there? It's the same woman! This time there was a really strong scent of garlic in that section of the bus, so I'm going to call her the Garlic Lady. Actually, she told me her name today, it's Mi Ok (as in, "me oak" like the tree).

Regardless, we had a very similar conversation to the one before, except this time she was ferociously munching on her gum like a rabbit and using her phone like a radio and playing her music really loudly at the back of the bus. I again tried to put my earphones in and pulled out a notebook to do some work before school, but she wouldn't have it. She interviewed me rapid-fire and then asked for my phone number so she could connect me via KakaoTalk (an insanely popular instant messaging service all Koreans use), or have me as some sort of exotic trophy on a list of friends. Either way, I freely gave out my information due to a combination of wanting to be a good ambassador for foreigners in Korea (remember, Korea has only recently been opened to non-Koreans, so there's a fair chance I am the first white person quite a few Koreans have seen), and that I judged her to be a low-risk, if somewhat odd, person.

The rest of the bus ride was somewhat tense, as she would look over at my notebook all the time to see what I was scribbling down and then ask me questions that I could partly understand.

The smell of garlic was everywhere.

It's the Garlic Lady.

The End of Classes and Maybe the End of Life

Hi Everyone!

Today was the last day of classes at university, which means final exams are coming up next week. I was supposed to present 2 final presentations today, but one of my classes was delayed, so I will present next Monday. I got to deliver a mind-blowing presentation about the Canadian berry market in my Agricultural Marketing class though, so that was a highlight of my day. I used Prezi to make my presentation, which is an online presentation maker--it's similar to powerpoint in that you have slides to convey your information, but there's lots more zooming and it looks like a movie or game when you present it. Good thing it's online too, since my memory stick wasn't working with the school computer. Too bad the students probably couldn't understand a word I said :( Oh well.

I might go shopping today, since my favourite cereal is on sale. This is what I bought last week: 

Fruit and Fibre is on sale this week!! I bought 4 750g boxes for $12.

Also, this past week my elementary school had its 3^rd annual English competition broadcast. They put me on the school’s TV channel and had me interview and quiz the best and brightest English students in the 3^rd, 4^th, 5^th, and 6^th grade. Some of these students are real good at English!

Yesterday the local office of education took me and the other Damyang TaLK teachers out for a Korean delicacy. We had hwoe (pronounced "hwae") which is the Korean version of Japanese sashimi (raw fish--different than Japanese sushi which is raw fish on rice, sashimi/hwoe is slabs of raw fish all by themselves). We arrived at the restaurant and made our way into a dining room where we sat down at a long table with trays of hwoe already prepared for us and waiting (not a good way to start in my opinion--you should serve the food after your guests arrive so they know you've freshly prepared it). The supervisor had started pouring the alcohol for us, but I think you could tell most of us were pretty nervous about eating such raw fish in front of us—especially Irene, this is her nightmare about Korea. 

Irene, overjoyed to face her biggest fears in Korea, and Sujie, her co-scholar to her right,
secretly laughing at all of us in her heart.

Reminds me of that scene from Mr. Bean when he is staying in the hotel and eats a bunch of expired oysters that give him a nightmare about seafood. Similar experience :S

Imagine 8 American young women eating raw seafood like this.

On the hwoe tray there was some white slabs of fish (probably the safest choice since it didn’t have eyes, innards, or limbs attached), some deep purple octopus tentacles (they’re kind of beautiful to look at actually), a couple oyster things (the one that looks kind of like black snot—sorry if you like oysters! Maybe it was a clam?), a couple strands of something red, and some perfectly pink, cooked, whole shrimp (big ones too! Maybe they were prawns).

At one point in the meal, someone noticed that the strips of red things were slightly moving…. Which brings us to our next course!  

Nakji is a Korean delicacy (why is it that cultural delicacies are always the weirdest foods??) of raw octopus. I’ve only heard about it in “Weirdest things about Korea” story books, blog posts, YouTube videos and the like.

But here it was, in real life, in front of me, expecting to be devoured by hungry Asians but instead delivered to a few terrified North American women (and myself).

Nakji is incredibly fresh—perhaps you can already see where I’m going with this—so fresh it’s practically alive. Basically they pluck some octopi from the big, enticing, quality assuring fish tanks out front of the store and then kill it, cut it up, put some sesame oil and sesame seeds on it and serve it to you, still raw and wriggling. *shudder* Sorry, I’m too North American to appreciate this…

I felt like this.

If you're up for it, I took a video of our group having a go at this crazy dish. It's a few minutes long: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I9EXraZ_Vuw&feature=youtu.be

That’s it for today J I hope I leave you with a positive mindset.

Weekend Update: Josh Comes to Korea

So this weekend I have spent visiting my friend Josh at his apartment in Bundang, a suburb of Seoul. It has been mildly successful and mildly disastrous.

1. On the way here, my bus was not full and so I had a whole seat to myself. Ooh luxurious :)

3. Josh and I went out to eat yesterday night at a restaurant chain that I had been to before. However, the menu was completely different (seriously?) and we ended up having to pay more than we thought, since the advertised price was per person.

2. I went to a Jimjilbang/sauna this morning with Josh. It was a pleasant experience, probably because I didn't have my glasses on haha. Still kind of weirds me out though...

3. I had spotted that there was a Daiso nearby and we went to find it in this huge Costco-esque farmer's market, but it turns out you need a membership card, so we couldn't purchase the armful of things we had selected.

4. We went looking for TWO Subway restaurants that were supposed to be here but did not exist in real life. I went after a third, but the bus route is much different than online and signage is terrrrrible in Seongnam. What a fiasco. I drowned my sorrows in chocolate bread from Tous Les Jours to make it better.

5. When we got to the terminal to go home, all the tickets for the next 2 hours were sold out...so here I am, waiting. I had to pay a lot more for the next quality of bus since all the cheap tickets were gone.

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So, after much trial and tribulation, I made it back to university. It seems every time I leave Gwangju I come away with a much stronger affinity for this place. I just love my town here :) Seoul is a black-hole of time-sucking transportation and expense.

The only other interesting thing I have to report today is about what happened to me at the bus stop this afternoon. I arrived at the bus stop, expecting to take the 184 to go downtown. Now, in Gwangju, they have these incredibly handy TV screens installed at the bus benches which tell you how many minutes until the bus you want will appear. However, my bus was on "standby" whatever that means.... anyway, I pulled out my phone to use the bus map application I have, so I could find an alternative route to where I wanted to go. I was in a bit of a hurry, since the bank I wanted to go to would close in an hour. I found out that the 7 express would get me close enough to where I wanted to go.

At that moment, a few young ladies approached me. "Excuse me" they said, first in Korean, then English. They wanted me to watch a short video on their cellphone and then answer a survey. They said it would take a few minutes (which I was hesitant about since I had to get going quickly). Anyway, I told them I had to go soon, but I would take part in their quest for public opinion.

They showed me a video about their cult, the "Church of God". Seriously, this isn't one of those, "is it a cult?" times, it was blatantly obvious. 
They were telling me all about how they believe in the heavenly mother as well as the heavenly father, who they claim is Jesus (they said she's from the "Jerusalem above" or something like that. They talked about the bible (not sure if I should capitalize, since they might be referring to their own book of lies)). They said when Jesus came, not many people recognized him, but now the heavenly mother is here, so everybody can recognize her. But they said she was some sort of secret (what?). It made me sad--their video was all of these non-Koreans coming to Korea to take part in their sinful indoctrination. In fact, there was a Korean woman in traditional Korean dress walking around and talking to people. I pointed and asked, "Is that the heavenly mother?" "Yes", they replied. Sigh.
At this point, my bus arrived and I was quite thankful. They quickly asked me how I felt after watching the video and talking with them. "Do you feel good or bad?" "Bad!" I replied with a big thumbs down, to which they gasped sadly.

Midweek update (3rd week of November)

Here's a quick recap of this week so far:

- My friend, a fellow UFV student, was admitted to hospital two days ago with appendicitis. They operated immediately and removed the problem. Word on the street is that she'll have to pay $2000 for it, but her health insurance will cover 90%.

- I submitted my application for extension yesterday, which means I will be here another 6 months after my contract ends in January. That means I'll come home next July.
Why did I choose to extend? Well, the main reason is that I simply like it here. It's a nice place to be and I am enjoying my life in Korea; I'm having a good time. I like my kids, I like my job, I like the food, I'm not doing too badly with the language, I'm not bored, I'm not too homesick, etc. Things are simply going well. On the more practical side of things, I wouldn't be able to start at UFV until fall of 2013 anyway, since I'd be coming home almost a month after school begins in January. As well, to be honest, I could really use another 6 months of pay in order to continue to finance my education.

- My school is having a "performance day" on Friday, which will involve some student plays, concerts, performances, etc. My grade 4's will be performing "The Rabbit and the Turtle". I'm so proud of them.

- I'm planning to go to Tokyo in December, to visit a friend and to see the sights. I got a smoking deal on airfare.

- I have 2 big projects coming due next week, and I'm not really excited about either of them. Actually, to be honest, I'm already finished with this semester of classes in my mind. I just don't want to keep going to them :( It doesn't help that my UFV GPA is unaffected by the grades I receive here.

- This past Sunday (November 11) was Pepero Day in Korea. It's a commercial holiday created by the Lotte conglomerate to celebrate and distribute Pepero, a Korean snack equivalent to Japanese Pocky (basically a long pretzel stick covered in chocolate). You're supposed to give a box of Pepero to someone you like and vice versa. It's similar in effect to Valentine's day actually, except Pepero day was created by a company. Can you imagine if we had a Lays or Oreo or Smarties day?

- I lost my voice on Wednesday. I sound like a frog (speaking of which, Korean frogs don't say "ribbit" they say "gaeguri" or something like that); it's quite embarrassing  I don't know how I'm going to teach Thursday's class.....

- Finally, I have some more, kind of random photos to share:

These are some photos from our Halloween party that I received.

I'm carving the pumpkins. I love them, but there's absolutely no way I would
trust any of my kids with a knife.

Me and JiAe, prolly the best-dressed student at the party.

Some of my grade 3 troublemakers. They didn't clue in that I had
a knife, so they tried scraping the skin off the pumpkin with their spoons.

Me, going inquisitor-like on that pumpkin.

I told my Dad that I would take a picture of the endless make-work projects in Korea. They simply can't get enough of road construction... Perfectly fine streets get plowed up all the time and then patched like below...

This street stinks. Literally.

Almost all the sidewalks in Korea are made from bricks like this.
That way, I guess they're easy to fix and replace--just pull out all the old
bricks and set new ones in place. It looks fine, but it becomes all uneven
and people trip all the time.

Also, I saw this out my window the other day. Wouldn't this be helpful at work??
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hB60lsH88t4
(1:12, SFW)

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- My roommate was in the process of getting hired for a big bank in Korea. It was a job he really wanted, and I'm sure he's qualified for it, but last week's interview (one of many) didn't go well and the results were posted yesterday. He didn't pass. I feel really bad for him, this is a pretty big setback, since Korean jobs are for life. But, he's choosing to keep a positive attitude, which is commendable. I'm sure some soju helps too.

- I went to get some more passport photos/resume photos today. Here's what I got:

The old Korean photo master airbrushed me
like crazy. He's actually really good with photoshop,
I was really impressed :)

Oh, and my voice is at 25% health today :(

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Here's a follow up to that incredibly wonderful moment that happened yesterday:

I got a letter from one of the students in my class (the same one that hugged me actually).

It was addressed to me; apparently I live at my school's English classroom :)

Today was one of the happiest days of my life

So, I was tired and a little grumpy today because it was much colder than usual, but something happened before my English class that turned my world around.

I had just gotten into school, and I was walking down the hallway so I could go upstairs to my classroom, when a gaggle of my grade 4 boys saw me.
"Ah! Daybeed!" They said, and then they swarmed around me and hugged me! One of my favourite students said to me with sincerity, "You're my friend!"

I could have died right there and then. I positively melted.

I love my job and my kids.