The few reasons I'm not really homesick yet

This has been one superbly shitty week. And it’s only Wednesday. Record-setting unruliness in my classes, an indescribably frustrating inability to effectively communicate with my co-teacher, a 2-day fight with Nonghyup’s online banking system, insomnia, and the midterm election results (I am sorely disappointed in you, US voters) have collectively resulted in one very surly Caitlin. On the bright side, it’s hard to feel homesick when I’m just as annoyed with my home country as I am with this one. Perhaps I should have been knocking on doors back home instead of having my selfish little international adventure. But we’ll never know for sure, now will we?

Let me expound upon the harrowing experience that is dealing with online banking in Korea, as it is the only thing I can bitch about and still have my bitching be somewhat informative for you, dear readers. After the aforementioned inability to get my co-teacher to understand the nature of an automatic remittance account, I finally gave up and just asked if I could transfer money overseas through online banking. This way I won’t have to trek down to the bank during the rather restrictive Korean banking hours, armed to the hilt with passport and papers, every time I need to make a transfer. I filled out the forms, signed in the tiny spaces meant for signatures a third the size of most Western ones, received a few mysterious carbon copies and password cards, and 2 hours later, I was on my way to online banking convenience, just like I had back home, right?? Not so much. I knew that many Korean websites require the use of Internet Explorer – on a Windows machine only – in order to work properly. What I did not know is that the most recent version of IE has something troublesome about it that required me to downgrade my browser to use the online banking site. It took a while for me to figure this out, since the error message that kept appearing was in – you guessed it – Korean. When I finally got that sorted out, I had to jump through 50 bajillion hoops in order to log in for the first time. Now, about half of those hoops will be eliminated in the subsequent times that I log in, but that’s still 25 bajillion hoops every time I want to access my account online (and then again to pay a bill, or make a transfer, or check my balance….). These hoops are supposedly for security purposes, but Korea still insists on relying on ActiveX controls (the reason for the Windows IE requirement), which have widely known security flaws. Go figure. Some day I hope that Korea will cease its hostile campaign against any and all non-Windows users, but I doubt that day will come while I’m still here. In the mean time, I thank God for Parallels. Oh, and I’m sure you’re wondering if I ever actually got my money to my US account. It seemed that I finally figured everything out correctly on this end, but the answer remains to be seen during EST banking hours, which have not yet started for today.

So, in summary,
Points for Korean banks: awesome optical bill-scanner thingies on the ATMs, which make paying bills super fast and easy even though I can’t read them; on-demand printed bank statements rather than monthly ones in the mail; ease of making domestic deposits/payments/transfers via bank account numbers instead of checks or credit cards.
Points for American banks: reasonable hours; tellers who share my native tongue; online banking that doesn’t make me want to pull my hair out.

Fortunately, the happenings of last week were considerably cheerier. The fireworks festival in Busan was a blast (pun intended). I saw some fireworks like none I’ve ever seen before – cubes and flowers and strings of slowly floating lantern-like lights – and I also experienced crowds like I’ve never seen before. Even the 2008 inauguration was no comparison for the oppressive masses of the fireworks festival. The shoving was literally constant, and while I had no idea that so many tall Koreans even existed, they were all there at the festival, standing in front of me. Happily, fireworks are mostly in the sky, so I only had to stand on tiptoe and do some of my own shoving when the Gwangan bridge started raining sparkly fire. (Yes, raining fire. I’m trying to get a video to post in the photo collection.)

Friday was my official birthday celebration, since it’s never a good idea to drink on Mondays (at least not too much). I spent the afternoon looking after a student’s kitten that was rather unceremoniously dumped on me while the student was in class. I was quite happy to watch it, though my afternoon of lesson planning had to be scrapped and was replaced by gaggles of squealing ‘tweens (girls and boys), drawn by the siren song of cute that was climbing over my desk. I was unable to extract myself from the hordes, for fear that the kitten would be squashed or torn to bits by their eager hands. I then escaped to my apartment for a rousing yet all-too-short session of reliving college in the USA (a.k.a. beer pong), followed by a party at a bar in the nearby nightlife district. I was spoiled by all of my friends, sung to, fed cheesecake, and given the always en-vogue gifts of Engrish. Oh, and there was the Death in a Glass. I’m not sure if it’s common to feed the birthday girl a blue-flaming tumbler full of something akin to anise-flavored gasoline, but that’s what the bartender gave me, and demanded “One shot!” Ha! Who was he kidding? I had to share that thing with 5 other people before it was gone. Rough stuff, I tell you.

Apparently my birthday was such the occasion for everyone that some people even considered staying in on Saturday despite numerous Halloween parties being thrown by waygooks all over the city. Fortunately, they rallied and made it out. The party I attended featured a Mad Hatter with a very impressive homemade hat, a bust, a flasher, and FAN DEATH. I went as a Shot in the Dark – dressed all in black with a shot glass around my neck. Yes, it’s lame, but I must be allowed my occasional linguistic indulgences. Koreans don’t understand Halloween any better than they understand “a shot in the dark,” so what’s the difference?

School festival tomorrow. I currently have students running around me with tape, box cutters and giant roles of colored paper preparing for the circus that I’m sure it will be. They're all quite eager to have me visit their particular stations -- eager enough to come talk to me about it in English! I’ve also been roped into the performance part of the afternoon, and though we’ve been rehearsing our two songs for a month now, I was just informed this morning that I will be singing one of the verses as a duet with one of my co-teachers. That’s sure to clear the house in a hurry.