Strange things that Koreans believe: Lesson 2

Like Mickey Mouse ears, only not.

This week began with the school picnic. Growing up the U.S., a school picnic was just that: having pizza and popsicles in the schoolyard, playing field games like water balloon tosses and sack races, and just generally running around like the maniacs that we were at that age. Here, it means a trip to Family Land.

Family Land is a shabby little amusement park on the outskirts of the city with approximately 10 rides, all of which desperately needed a coat of paint 15 years ago. It also houses a shabby depressing little zoo in which animals roam around their tiny, plant-devoid enclosures looking melancholy/angry/mangy and occasionally threatening the passers-by. I’m not kidding – a monkey got up on the bars of his cage and threatened to throw a rock at me and my co-teacher. We left in a hurry. I can’t say I blame him, though. Being constantly on display can get a bit tiring. It’s a little like what we foreigners deal with a lot of the time (only we have far better accommodations). We’re like the local celebrities, and people of all ages feel completely free to stare at their leisure with no consideration as to how uncomfortable it might make us feel. Case in point: while standing outside the baboon cage, a chubby (and, I could just tell, obnoxious) little boy of about 8 pointed at me and yelled, “Waygook!” while frantically motioning for his friends to come over. Yes, kiddies, I am part of the show. I’ll even sign autographs with my surprisingly human-like paws if you have a pen and paper.

Don’t get me wrong; I honestly had a nice day. The second grade teachers (of which I am honorarily one, since I sit in their office) put together a lovely picnic of kimbap, fake onion ring snacks, bean paste walnut waffle thingies and clementines. Eating a picnic with chopsticks was kind of fun, and it was certainly better than the usual daily struggle of getting my kids to keep their chatting to a dull roar so I have a voice left at the end of the day. Yay for amusement parks and picnics!

And now, because I don’t have much material from this week, I present to you:
Strange Things That Koreans Believe: Lesson 2
First, blood type & personality. Much like zodiac signs (which I could include in a post about Strange Things That Westerners Believe), Koreans think that a person’s blood type largely determines his/her personality and compatibility with others. (“Hey baby, what’s your blood type?”) For reference, I’m type O. As far as my perceptions about myself go, this is completely inaccurate. But feel free to correct me. Either way, I do come off in a positive light when a Korean asks me my blood type – type O is not only very rare in Korea (and elsewhere in the world, je pense), it is also viewed very positively. Much like being born a white American female, this is another point on the Korean score board that I didn’t do anything to deserve. Great!

And item #2: Not drinking water with meals. Even though Korean food is almost universally spicy, Koreans never drink water with their meals. They believe that it interrupts digestion. However, they will drink water right after they’ve finished eating, or drink other things (like beer or soju) while they eat. Its’ just water, apparently, that does the damage. Please reference my discussion of logic in Korea.

That’s all for now, folks. I’m off to the Busan fireworks festival this weekend to watch sparkly things exploding in the sky. Pictures and/or video to come.

My budding Korean social life

This bit has little to do with Korea, but I feel that it’s necessary. On Wednesday night (morning in EST), my cat of 15 years passed through the veil to the state of true feline enlightenment (with lots of critters to chase and sun to lay in, I imagine). There’s nothing like the passing of a pet to make you feel both incredibly miserable and incredibly silly for feeling so incredibly miserable over an animal. I am fortunate to have friends here who understand, and was the recipient of one of the best group hugs EVER right when I needed it. Thanks, guys. You can all add “Comforter Extraordinaire” as a bullet point on your resume under the EPIK teaching section. I’ll even make you a certificate if you want, since everything in Korea comes with a certificate upon completion.

To follow up on a previous post, the purchase of my cell phone has come with a sizable boost on the Korean end of my social life. As far as Koreans are concerned, if you do not have a cell phone, you do not exist in the social sphere. But now that I have a phone to call, they are not afraid to call it. All of the promised outings are coming to fruition, fast and furious. A couple of weekends ago, one of my co-teachers invited me to go shopping with her, which was followed by several beers with her friends. Naturally, the very first question out of her friend’s mouth was, “Boyfriend?” But we’ve already covered that. It wasn’t long before we were chatting it up in halting elementary-level English, munching on dried squid and describing our ideal man. Dude, girl talk is so much more difficult with a language barrier. I have a hard enough time with fluent English speakers, let alone with people who don’t know anything beyond “tall” and “handsome” in my language. I eventually gave in to the temptation to just say the few words I knew they would understand and leave it at that. Despite (or maybe because of?) the fact that they have a somewhat skewed view of who I am and what I like, they told me that they “feel intimacy with” me and that I am like a Korean woman. I’m not sure what this means, exactly, but I’m taking it as a compliment.

This past week I was invited out with my other co-teachers for some makgeolli, a milky-looking traditional Korean alcohol typically served in an enormous metal tea-pot-looking thing that is then poured into and drunk from small bowls. [It should be noted that this time, we all decided together what day to go. I am a fan of this change in m.o.] It turns out that, contrary to what I hear about most Korean teachers, my co-teachers don’t drink very much. By contrast, I ended up looking like a lush with the fortitude and constitution of a rotund German man. Unlike my soju, I can hold my makgeolli pretty well. Conversation flowed freely with my flush-faced co-teachers and I’m sure we’re all better friends for it. In other social news of the week, I was invited to eat grapes in the administration room with the vice-principal and the music teacher this afternoon. I’m sure this has nothing to do with the cell phone, but it’s still a step in the right direction!

Last week we had midterms, which means that we had the afternoons free for lesson planning. Or, as was the case on Wednesday, sports day at the neighboring middle school! I am not a sports person. Sports may provide health and vitality for most people, but for me, they are a threat to my un-injured existence. I am clumsy, uncoordinated, and terrified of any and all balls that fly through the air, because in all likelihood, they will eventually hit me in the head. Somehow I made it through several rounds of a dodge ball-like game and another kickball-inspired game with some really weird twists without bruising or any major humiliation. Until the hula-hoop competition. Hula-hoops are a HUGE fad in Korea, and I’m pretty sure that all Koreans – men and women – spend several hours a day just practicing their hula-hoop technique. Probably while they watch those crazy TV shows about people in animal costumes with pop-up bubbles on the screen. They naturally assumed that this hooping prowess extended to me and the other native English teacher at the school we were visiting. They gave us three giant hula-hoops each and, when we protested that we couldn’t possibly manage all three at once, insisted that using just one would take too long. The first round was over in less than 5 seconds. The second round lasted maybe 10, but that’s because they let us use just one hoop each. We were then put to shame by two Korean teachers whose face-off lasted 5 entire minutes. With all three hoops. And I think they would’ve gone on longer if one of the teachers’ hoops hadn’t been slightly bent. We followed up the sports part of the afternoon with the eating part of the afternoon, an area in which I am much more skilled.

In food-related news, I tried my first persimmon a couple of weeks ago. Persimmons are very popular in many forms – fresh, dried, ripe, green, in teas and in sweets. I had to try one eventually, so a friend and I each purchased one from a halmoni (grandmother) on the street. We thought we’d been charged a rather steep price because we’re foreigners, but it turns out that may not have been the case. What we unknowingly purchased were the cream-of-the-crop persimmons, with very soft, brown insides and a particularly sweet/creamy taste. After that experience, one of my co-teachers brought me a huge bag of persimmons she picked herself that are now ripening in my kitchen. Being the nerd that I am, I’ve read up on persimmons and know to mind the laxative effect they can have if eaten in large quantities. I’m quite glad that I did my research this before eating the entire bag in one sitting. That could’ve been interesting. I also made it to the Costco in Daejeon last weekend, where I bought some proper cheese. There was no cheddar to be had (*sniff*), but they were selling some rather nice Parmesan (for a not-so-nice price, but what do you want?). Now the Parmesan from Daejeon is sitting in my fridge, beneath the personally picked persimmons, making me smile every time I open the door.

Baseball in Korea, or How to Cheer Nonstop for 3 Hours

Now that the baseball season has been over for several weeks -- at least, the Kia Tigers have no more home games -- I am finally getting around to posting this. Being as how this is my blog, sports will never take priority. We should just be glad it's getting up here at all, and that's mainly credit to the cheerleaders.

To put it shortly, baseball in Korea is INTENSE. Korean baseball fans make American baseball fans look like golf spectators. I'm not sure how baseball became so big in Korea, but it almost seems shameful to call it the American national pastime when the Koreans get so much more excited about it. In America, you wander in at some point during the game, probably not at the very beginning. You get up at intervals to get beer, buy a chili dog, talk to your friends, whatever. You may or may not yell anything at the batter or the umpire. In Korea, you arrive on time. You get your fried chicken and beer before you take your seat, and then you stay there. And you cheer. Nonstop. For the entire 9 innings.

And there are cheerleaders. Yes, cheerleaders at baseball games. They have a very big job, leading a different cheer for every player who comes up to bat, among other team cheers and team songs. They dance, they do costume changes, they wear white gloves and enormous sparkly bows that resemble odd animal ears more than proper decorative headgear. The guy who is the head cheerleader yells the entire game, and I have no idea how he does not lose his voice halfway through. Fans all participate eagerly, never missing a beat with their blow-up cheer sticks. A baseball game in Korea is not a time to kick back and relax with your beer. That beer is crucial nourishment for the task at hand: leading your team to victory through the sheer force of your collective voices, proudly singing your team song while ogling skinny cheerleaders in tiny shorts!

They really do put us Americans to shame.

Settling in

It’s hard to believe that I’ve been teaching in Gwangju for over a month, and been in Korea for over 6 weeks. I think I’m settling in quite nicely, especially since our ARCs (Alien Registration Cards) finally made a long-delayed and much-anticipated debut. Without them, none of the new batch of EPIK teachers could secure cell phones or regular internet service. We burned ridiculous amounts of time waiting for each other every time we met, hoping that last person who said they’d show up hadn’t gotten so severely lost we’d never see him/her again. Sometimes people would finally find their way after we’d left the meeting spot, and, well, sucked for them. Now we can finally function like normal people and just call someone when we’re late and/or lost. Yay for emergence from the dark ages of communication!

My phone, complete with requisite dangly bits (bus pass and screen poker thing). Next: internet.

On the same day we got the news about our ARCs, I also received a ginormous care package in the mail from Mom & Dad. [Insert Happy Dance here.] In it was a collection of winter clothing, much needed as the weather has suddenly turned cool; six boxes of Jiffy corn muffin mix (now I just need a muffin pan and an oven); a couple dozen Lara bars; Darn Good Chili mix and requisite tomato paste; tea cookies; some decent coffee; a few styling products so I can continue to fight the good fight against my hair; and other useful goodies (mainly aimed at the Woman Who Never Learned to Breathe Properly). Now that my winter boots and poofy coat are at the ready and my pantry is properly stocked, I feel that I can take on whatever Korean life has to throw at me this winter. There’s also a care package of Korean items going to the family pretty soon. Its contents won’t be nearly as useful, but they will be infinitely more interesting!

There are other signs that I am settling in well. I’m developing a taste for things I would go out of my way to avoid in the States. For example, K-pop, the ubiquitous Korean pop music that I hear on the streets and that my students sing at me every day. Here’s one of their favorites:

I am far more tolerant of sparkly things, shiny things, brightly colored things and things decorated with cutesy patterns and pictures. Hell, I’ve even voluntarily bought some of these things. I have also come to the realization that I actually crave kimchi when I go a day without it. And sometimes even between meals that do include kimchi. Is kimchi becoming my new yogurt? Is it even possible to be as obsessive about kimchi as I was/am about yogurt?? I’ll be curious to see whether these new tastes & habits will stick when I go back home, or if I will gradually readjust to my previous preferences.

Brie and the tastiest crackers/cookies ever

My preference for.…er….love affair with cheese has not changed, though. I’ve just had to scale back my intake. I can find it – within just 5 minutes of my apartment! – but it’s ridiculously expensive. The Home Plus charges 10,000 won for a rather small amount of mediocre brie, but I bought it anyway. Mmmmm, cheese.

[For more amusing musings about things we Westerners must adjust to in Korea, check out my friend's post.]

"Teacher, I love you!"

New relationships, always fraught with the potential for awkward situations, can be even more uncomfortable in Korea. I’ve seen multiple Western couples cornered by a Korean (be he a friend, acquaintance or total stranger) and asked,
“Do you love her?” (sometimes emphasized with a little heart shape made with the thumbs and index fingers), and
“When you get married?”
“Well, we just met a few weeks ago, so…”
A friend who’s been here for a while put it quite nicely: “Korea loves couples.” I mean, the hallmark of a committed couple is that they dress in matching unisex outfits. My favorite is the matching underwear sets in lingerie store windows. Yikes.

For native English teachers, there’s no escape during the work day. Students pepper me and my compatriots with weekly questions about the status of our love lives.
“Teacher, you have a boyfriend?”
“No, I don’t have a boyfriend.”
The very next week: “Teacher, you have boyfriend now?”
“No, and I don’t think I would tell you if I did.”
I could just make something up to get them off my back while keeping some semblance of privacy about my personal life, but I’m not sure I have the energy to create the exceedingly detailed fictional boyfriend that would be necessary to satisfy all of the questioning that would undoubtedly follow. To be fair, there are also plenty of inappropriate questions/comments that come from Westerners, but they’re usually the ones who’ve been in Korea for a while and have presumably lost some of their sense of propriety (if they ever had one). Privacy is not an expectation in Korea. I must find a productive way of dealing with this.

I can only speak from the point of view of a Westerner, of course, but I can’t help thinking Koreans must feel the same way to some extent. Koreans never really live on their own, staying in their parents’ home until they are married, when they may or may not still live with one of the spouses’ parents. Several generations often live under one roof, upping the number of all-seeing eyes and prying questions from not only parents but also from grandparents, siblings and the like. (We will add this to the list of reasons why I don’t really intend to date any Korean men while I’m here.) To combat this problem, Korean towns and cities have prevalent DVD-bangs (movie rooms) where you can rent a room with a couch, order in food and watch any number of movies in your own private space. As you might imagine, they basically serve as make-out rooms for young, randy, privacy-strapped couples. There are also scores of love motels that rent rooms by the hour and include things like heart-shaped beds and mirrors in odd places. These are also excellent, cheap places to stay for traveling Westerners who want something better than a hostel but don’t want to pay for a real hotel. We might get funny looks when four of us check into a room, but wallets have never been ashamed of a little thrift.

Now, you might think that my reluctance to date a Korean (relationships are difficult enough without such a severe language and culture barrier) might cut short my marriage prospects in this country. But you would be mistaken. As I was strolling around the school with two of the grade 2 teachers after lunch one day, several boys were following behind us like nervous puppies and talking to us in Korean. While it’s widely known that I speak no Korean, the students still expect me to magically understand what they say even when they’re not speaking English. Finally Moon-Sun (that’s phonetically correct, at least), the science and math teacher, told me that one of the boys was asking me to marry him. I laughed, and told the boy that we could talk about it in ten years. According to Moon-Sun, he then said that love and age are not the same. Cheeky little blighter. Or perhaps budding Korean Casanova? We’ll find out in about a decade.

Addendum: xkcd goes to Korea?

Beaches (but no Bette Midler)

It's been an exciting week. Lots of bus riding, lots of beaching and not much teaching. Since I'm quite good at sitting on the beach and taking in the scenery as I ride down the highway, but not so good at getting my students to shut up and learn, I feel it's been a good week. We all like what we're good at.

Last weekend I had my first camping experience (aside from a very vague memory of a church camping trip when I was fairly young, so that didn't count). Through the miracle that is Facebook, some bright and aspiring social organizer got together a group of about 50 EPIK and hagwon English teachers on Myeongsasipri beach in Wando, about a 2.5-hour bus ride from Gwangju. Any time after August 15th is officially the off-season in Korean minds, so we were treated to an empty beach despite the near-perfect weather. The water was warm but refreshing, the waves were ride-able but not too rough, and even the mosquitoes stayed mostly at bay. We cleaned out the 7-11 of all of their beer, soju and prepackaged kimbap, then spent the day playing beach soccer/volleyball/frisbee and finished off the night with a bonfire and roasted marshmallows. Just up from the beach is a camping area with elevated wooden platforms covered by canopies, complete with a light and a set of electrical outlets (public facilities here always amaze me). We pitched our tents there, though I suspect that the sand would have been a lot softer than those boards. Note for next time: beach camping should be done on the beach. Or something softer than wood.

We packed up and came back to a one-day work week preceding the Chuseok holiday, which included plenty of Mr. Bean for my classes and the new best comment (compliment?) from my students: "Your eyes! They are like horror movie! Scary!" Thanks, kids. Monday night brought another first for me: a proper game of darts at the bar. Apparently I've never known how to keep score correctly in a game of darts. I still don't know how, but at least I know what I was doing before was wrong. The right way is far more complicated. Thank goodness most dartboards in Korea, like everything else, are automated and keep score for you. [Editor’s note: I am aware that darts are not the most interesting thing I have written or will write about, but I was told I should include it in my blog. So there you have it.]

On Tuesday we departed for Busan with a slightly different group than originally planned, partly due to the weather forecast and partly due to women and the infatuation that we can sometimes cause. (We're nothing but trouble, I tell you. Always breaking up the group.) At any rate, five of us met at the U-Square bus terminal and four of us hopped on the 3-hour bus to Busan, where we arranged to meet up with several non-Gwangju (and therefore slightly less cool) friends from EPIK orientation. Over the course of three days wandering around the city, we ran into about half a dozen other friends from our orientation classes, which was always a lovely surprise, though it made actually getting from A to B somewhat slow and difficult since we stopped to talk to everyone we saw.

Busan, where I had originally requested placement, is the second largest city in Korea and the fifth largest port in the world. It is also home to the largest spa in Asia, if not the world, though of course it was closed for Chuseok when we tried to go. Instead I was treated to my own version of a day at the spa: a shower in a western-style bathroom, courtesy of Jess, who decided to get a decent hotel room rather than cram four people into a hostel room with a set of bunk beds and a couch like the rest of us. The weather was sunny and cool with a nice, light breeze. Except for Wednesday, which was a cold, wet, miserable mess, like someone threw a November day in DC into the middle of our vacation. My co-teachers had told me that it would be too cold to swim (post-August 15th, remember), and we feared they may have been right. Thank goodness things cleared up the very next day, as though the universe took pity on us and flipped the late summer/early fall switch back on. Many shops and restaurants were closed because of Chuseok, but that also meant far less foot traffic and crowds to negotiate. We mostly explored Seomyeon, where our hostel was, and the Haeundae beach area. In Seomyeon we were introduced to the Old Record, a bar decked out in 1960s-era pictures and posters of rock stars and naked women. The owner has amassed a mind-blowing collection of vinyl that he keeps spinning all night in the small, dimly lit room that smells of stale cigarette smoke and probably hasn’t been aired out since it was first built. Customers can also request just about any song or artist that exists, and he’ll find it online and play it for you. We spent the better part of 4 hours there on Wednesday evening, draining the keg and lounging on the greenish, crushed velvet couches and love seats that are so oddly common in Korean bars.



We also did plenty of shopping, not least because of the unexpectedly fall-like weather that has descended so quickly (sooo happy my winter clothing care package is on its way from home!). This was my first foray into shopping in Korea, since we just got paid this past Monday (yay!). I’ve found it to be a somewhat intimidating and frustrating experience. Salespeople tend to hover just over your shoulder, and no matter how carefully you replace that shoe in the display, they will readjust it. And Koreans are usually so nice and full of compliments that it sounds even worse by contrast when they say anything negative or critical. While wondering around the Busan Home Plus looking for beach towels, I spied a counter full of denim leggings carefully packaged in individual plastic bags. This was more interesting to me at the time than towels, so I stopped. The salesman behind the leggings took one look at me and motioned for me to move on, followed by a series of gestures expressing in no uncertain terms that my butt was too big to wear what he was selling. Perhaps I should be glad that this was the first time I've been called fat by a tiny Korean, but it was still a very blunt reminder that was driven home by my inability to find pants in anything close to my size when we were exploring the underground metro station shops the next day. Most Korean women have at least one hollow leg and can eat as much as they want without gaining so much as a centimeter around their midsections. I am not a Korean woman, and there are consequences to the fact that I have a healthy appreciation for food. This also means, however, that I am shaped like a proper woman rather than a young boy. So take that, leggings man! American men like my ass! I’m hoping the shopping trip that I have tentatively planned with some of my co-teachers will turn out a bit better.



No grade 2 classes this week, as they’re preparing for midterm exams. I am now heading home to rest and recover and plan lessons for the other two grades. And buy things for my home that were a post-paycheck priority. I am a nester; I will find a way to make my apartment look more homey than the white wallpapered box that it is right now.

DC in Korea

Well, the English teachers’ meeting that I was so worried about turned out to be more of a welcome dinner. We talked a bit about school, my teaching and the kids, but mostly it was light, fun conversation over seemingly endless plates of very tasty foods. There were two entire plates with nothing but different kinds of mushrooms! The Korean love for mushrooms is an affection after my own heart. All in all, it was a lovely time. And it made me appreciate even more what fantastic co-teachers I have. I knew as much – certainly in comparison with some of the stories of frustration and difficulty that some of my fellow teachers have had right off the bat – but I genuinely enjoy them as people, and we seem to get along fairly comfortably. I’m sure we’ll have our share of miscommunication and some frustrating situations down the road, but I’m equally sure we’ll get through it without too much difficulty. And I have a shopping date with the two younger women after pay day – yay! What better way to solidify a relationship than over a clothes wrack? Except perhaps over a bowl of some unknown fermented fruit-type Korean alcohol….but why not both??

However, in order to plan any sort of shopping outing, I need to get a reasonable budget lined up, and that includes cutting back on spending on things like coffee (*wince*). God help me, I just spent the approximate equivalent of $18 on a tub of Folgers. There is better coffee to be had, but it comes in tiny packets that only last about a week, and I’m sure the cost would add up to waaaay more than what I just paid for that Folgers. I’m so glad I found that coffee shop up the street: Kenya Coffee, Enjoy our espresso coffee, Sweet-Smelling like devils temptation and hot like hell fire. I’m serious – that’s what’s on their napkins. But that adds up, too. Hopefully the Folgers will last.

On the same grocery run that landed me the Folgers, I also bought pine tree flavored toothpaste. It makes my mouth taste like Christmas – even after I’ve rinsed with Listerine. An odd sensation, but kind of fun.

This morning I watched coverage of the DC mayoral race – including the speculation of whether Schools Chancelor Michelle Rhee will stay or go – on the news. Yes, the Korean news. It appears that DC’s local news is not only national news, it’s international news. Now if only I could find it in English without having to track down an internet connection!

In another odd DC tie-in, I got my first electric bill today. The electric company here is called KEPCO. Here’s hoping it’s a far cry from PEPCO when it comes to actual operating practices.