A reflection on Korean society

In one of my earlier postings, I was complaining about the typhoon season and how I had to carry an umbrella with me all the time. Well, typhoon season is winding down and the sun is starting to come out some days. Yet, Korean women still carry (and use) their umbrellas. What is the reason for this you ask? I did some asking around and it turns out that Korean women always carry an umbrella no matter what the weather. The only time they don't use one is when it is a cloudy day, but not raining. They do not like the sun. Very white skin is cherished in Korean culture, at least for the women, so most will use an umbrella when the sun is out so they don't get a tan. That struck me bizarre so I thought I'd pass that along.

I have been teaching for a few weeks already and I have learned many things so far. For example, I have learned to hate some kids. Thinking back to elementary school, I remember that kid that was loud, distracting, and never did his work. Yet the teacher would not hate the kid (or at least show it publicly). I am finding that very hard to do with some kids. I don't know how my teachers did it...

One more day of school tomorrow and my coast to coast tour of Japan begins with stops in Osaka, Kyoto, Hiroshima and Tokyo with maybe some more stops along the way. After that, it is back to Korea's capital, Seoul for a few days to enjoy the sights. I do not think I will have much access to a computer during this time, but I will try to take many pictures that can be posted later.

At lunch today, I noticed for the first time that my chop stick ability has gotten better. I can pick up most anything with those suckers with accuracy and precision. Maybe I will ditch the knife and fork when I come back to Canada? I have been very busy the past few days with work and sightseeing, and partying/ meeting new people. Tonight, a night of relaxation and a full 8 hours sleep, hopefully!

I was wondering one last thing.. can anyone tell me if there are any new popular songs/TV shows right now? I know I have only been gone for a short while, but I already feel out of the loop. I tell some of the foreigners here about a TV show or movie and they have no idea what it is. I do not want to be like that! Well this was a longer entry than I expected, so I will cut it off there. Hope all is well at home.

More pictures...

I wasn't able to upload all of the pictures yesterday, so here are the rest of them from my journey around Jeonbuk University:
This is a picture of one of those old Asian-style gazeboes. It is hard to see, but there are many old people hanging out in it. For some reason elder Koreans seem to flock to anything with a roof over it. This thing, or even bridges. They spend most of their time playing this weird checkers-type game and drinking.

These are some famous Korean lawyer dudes that were from Jeonju. It was in the park by the university. They look like some serious fellas. I am glad I didn't meet them (note the cane the middle one is holding [hint: he wasn't crippled])

This is the entrance into the park/pond where the lotus blossoms grow.

This is at the performing arts center again. My previous work at a golf course has taught me to appreciate a good landscaping job. Notice the brick walls with grass in between, very nice!
There is a huge area where lotus blossoms grow. This is a close-up of the best one I could find. I was told that I went a little late to see the blossoms, but there are still a few left. They only last for a couple weeks a year. What a waste in my opinion!

Here is a panoramic view of those lotus blossoms. There are thousands of them. They grow directly out of a pond. I guess they need a lot of water?

Another weird Korean building so I wanted to take a picture. I am finding that there are a lot of these here, so I many not take so many pictures of them in the future as they are not very rare.

Jeonbuk University

After school today, I went to Jeonbuk University to check out some of the sights there. There is a huge fountain, but it is only working at certain times in a day and I was not there at that time. Anyway, here are some pictures:


This is the performing arts center of the province Jeollabuk-do of which my city, Jeonju is the capital. Many famous Korean pop stars go here. I hope to see a performance in the future.


This is some weird statue thing that they have out front of one of the buildings. The ball is made of thousands of pieces of metal. It looks pretty cool. It reminds me of ski jumping.


This is the outdoor performing arts center. It is a favourite study spot for students at the university located nearby. No back rests though... those Koreans don't mind being uncomfortable!

Another one of the buildings and in the foreground is this giant compass-like design made out of stone. That was pretty nifty so I decided to take a picture.

More seats in the outdoor performing arts center. Seen at the bottom of the picture is a student who was studying as mentioned earlier.

I love the weekends

The rain has finally let up a little, and it stopped just in time for the weekend. I don't think that it rained once from Friday night until Sunday (so far). I was really looking forward to the weekend after this last week. One of the other foreign teachers, Betsy went home to the US for vacation and I have had to cover a lot of her classes. Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays I have to be at school for 12 hours, but there is only one more week left of that.

I finally have all the luxuries of home now. My cable TV, air conditioner and internet are all working well. I did some shopping yesterday and picked up a microphone and webcam. If you have one and would like to talk on the internet for free, I recommend getting the program called 'Skype'. You can just go to google.com and search skype and it is easy to download. My name on there is 'trevor.lloyd1'. Once you add a contact, both people just have to be on the computer at the same time and you can have a normal conversation for free!

Since it was the weekend, I went to the foreigner bars with some co-workers. There are two in Jeonju and one I had not been to. Smoking is still allowed in bars here and EVERYONE smokes, so my clothes stunk very badly when I got home. And while we were in there my eyes were burning from the smoke. I guess that is what happens when you get used to smoke-free bars. I definately prefer it that way. As for the requests for outdoor pictures, I will do my best. I may try to go see these lotus blossoms that are in a park somewhere in the city, but I don't know where it is so it might not happen.

I am getting excited for my vacation! I leave in 6 days (next Saturday). I will be in Japan until Wednesday and then I am heading to Seoul, but I do not know how much time I will spend there. It depends on how much there is to do there I suppose. I just hope I remember to get the most important thing in Japan and the thing my school is sending me for, my work visa. I am strongly considering buying one of those scooter deals when I come back from vacation. They cost about $600 but when you sell it in a year, you only lose about $100 so it may be worth the investment. Don't worry, I will get a helmet! Now to try to explore some new places in this city...

Update and pictures of my apartment

The long weekend is over. I was able to get moved in and settled in my apartment for the most part. There are still a few random things that I need to pick up, but I am almost there! Yesterday was refreshingly cool. It rained for the better part of the day, but I am not going to complain as it kept the temperature of my apartment at a reasonable level. Since I have gotten settled, I have begun contemplated what I can do to keep myself busy besides teaching. I was thinking about signing up for Tae-Kwan-Do since there are lots of clubs in the city and it would not be a great distance to travel. I saw Pirates of the Carribean on the weekend. It was really good, but I was angry how they left it as a cliffhanger. I am pleasantly surprised with the new movie selection here. Theatres are cheap (about $7) and so are the snacks. Best yet, they don't mind if you bring your own food. The North American movies are subtitled, but after a while you don't even notice them on the screen. Next movie to be seen: Superman!
I have begun looking into what I will be doing for my holiday in two weeks. I have three cities in mind so far... Osaka and Tokyo, Japan and Seoul in Korea. While in Seoul I want to go to the demilitarized zone bordering the North because many people have said it was really cool and worth checking out. Don't worry, it's safe. There are lots of soldiers present.Well that is it.. nothing exciting going on. Another work week begins.
My air conditioner is here! No need to worry about the hot temperatures anymore and trying to avoid my apartment until night time. This is a very exciting time. On the downside, the installation required drilling a large hole into the side of my wall in order for the water to drain and this caused large amounts of dust and concrete debris to fly about my apartment. It has gotten everywhere: my clothes, the furniture, windows and of course the floor.But I suppose that is the price you pay to remain comfortable on a hot summer's day. Speaking of hot, I have heard the weather is very hot in Welland right now. I know the pain the of a 35 degree day. While on the topic of weather, it has rained non-stop for about 4 days now. When leaving your apartment, it is common to grab your unbrella without thinking twice about it. At least this way you don't even need to look out the window, you just know it will be raining. Yesterday, I was at school for 11 hours teaching because one of the other teachers is on vacation and I had to cover her classes. Although concerned at first, I was told I will be getting overtime pay so I don't really mind.

Here are some pictures of my apartment:

The big blue thing is where I keep my clothes and you can also see the foot of my bed.

This is the patio. It is where my washing machine is and where I hang my clothes to dry. It is an enclosed structure, so it is not used for much else. Also, note the English programming on the TV
This is my fridge to the left and my bathroom straight ahead. There is no enclosed shower structure. The entire bathroom is a drain. It took some gettting used to, but now I almost prefer this way. Much easier to clean!

This is the sitting area in my living room. The chairs look comfortable, but the wood frame can be easily felt. There are good for watching TV though, it encourages me not to do so for very long.

This is my kitchen or kitchenette if you prefer. That is my sink. No dishwasher and I only have a range, not an oven. It is quite common to have this type of kitchen in Korea.

This is my fridge and kitchen table. It is like a big version of your typical mini fridge with a freezer attachment. It is more than big enough for what I put in there.

This is what my apartment looks like as soon as you walk in the door. Kitchen to the left, bathroom straight ahead and bedroom/living room to the right.

This is my bed. It is very plain right now. Unfortunately my sheets do not fit on the bed. I think they are single bed sheets and this is a double, but I made it fit!

So I wrote a new blog..

I wrote a new blog on my laptop at home and put it on a USB key along with some pictures of my apartment, but the internet cafe I am at cannot read my USB key so I just wanted to write that I am disgruntled, but I will post it as soon as I can use the key.

Finally my own apartment!

I moved into my apartment yesterday after living out of my suitcase for a week. I was glad to be able to unpack things knowing I will not have to pack them up again any time soon. My apartment is pretty nice compared to others around here. It has a seperate room for the kitchen, bathroom and bedroom/living, which is rare in Korea I am told. The downside to my apartment is that it does not have air conditioning right now. It is ordered, but will take a few days before it will be delivered and installed. Without air, it is almost uninhabitable as I had one of the worst sleeps of my life last night. But it will be here any day now so I will survive. I have my Korean phone number hooked up. It is 63-273-0515 but I think you need to dial 011 and the country code before that number if you are trying to call from Canada. Also, please keep in mind that I am 13 hours ahead of Canada, so no 3pm phone calls please!

I have cable in my apartment right now. That has been keeping me busy when I am in there. There are some pretty good Western movies they play. There are only a handful of English channels, but something good always seems to be on (except on their vision of the Fox channel, it seems to be repeats of World's Worst Drivers Caught on tape and When Animals attack all the time). I do not have internet yet in my apartment so I have been relying on going to the school for updating my blog or going to an internet cafe which is where I am right now. This place is huge and full of people. They have taken the whole computer experience to a whole new level with really comfy chairs. It looks like you can order whatever you want without having to get off your chair.. a complete meal, pizza delivered, drinks (alcohol and non-alcohol), cigarettes. And the list goes on. I opted for only a coffee.

Last night I went to a "Western bar" with some of the other teachers from work. They call it a Western bar because they serve typical Western drinks and the bar has a Western decor (Simpsons posters on the wall, etc). It was good to sit back, drink a Budweiser (for a decent price in a bar!) and overhear conversations in English. It was also a good time to meet other foreigners in the city. There were quite a few out last night, which surprised me at first because I haven't really seen any in my day to day travels to this point. That is about it for now. I will take pictures of my apartment and post them as soon as I get unpacked and get the place cleaned up a little.

I took a taxi all by myself!

Today was the most independent and effective (in terms of getting things done) day in Korea that I have had. I only had to go to school for a few minutes today to talk to the director so Sandra and her friend Sam and I went to lunch after and walked around Jeonju. I have finally taken some pictures!

This is in the middle of the city. It was a place where visiting royalty would stay when visiting Korea during a certain dynasty. I am not up on my Korean history, so I am not sure which dynasty that it was.

This is Sam at the Vietnamese restaurant where we had lunch today. He is doing the Korean hand gesture that is popular to do when taking pictures.
These three pictures are just pictures of some of the streets I was walking down. I find the last picture to be a good idea of how Western and Asian culture have come together in the city. Although you could count the number of Western stores on both hands, they are still mixed into the culture. These pictures were taken earlier in the day. Shortly after this, I bought an umbrella since it seems to rain almost every day even though it was a sunny and hot day today. Next is the weather about two hours later:

It is hard to see, but the rain is coming down in buckets. The rain can come out of no where in Korea, but I am glad that I had my new umbrella! The gateway above the street goes into a street market area where cars are not supposed to go, but people drive everywhere in Korea (even on the sidewalks)!

I had been trying to buy an adapter for my laptop in order to use it in Korea since it uses a different voltage. It was difficult to describe and took me hours and many kilometers walking, but I found a store that had what I needed! Someone in one store drew out directions for me to get to the store that I needed to go to on a map and then when I asked someone on the street if I was getting close (of course they didnt understand me), they walked with me to the store, which was very nice of him and took almost half an hour from when I first asked him. Best yet, my adapter cost only 3000 Won or around $3. And I can finally use my laptop! I am on it now! I have my first day of teaching classes by myself tomorrow so I am excited but nervous at the same time, but I am sure it will go well. I will try to take more pictures now that I am out and walking the streets of Jeonju on my own (and get some pictures of the girls for you Uncle Peter).

A long day yesterday

Yesterday was my first long day of classes at school. We started at 10am and didn't finish until about 7pm. Every Monday/Wednesday/Thursday will be like this but having only 3 hours on Tuesdays and Thursdays makes up for it. I was trying to think of the best way to describe what I do here. The best analogy that I can come up with is in the movie Billy Madison when Adam Sandler is forced to repeat all grades in two weeks starting at kindergarten. I feel like Billy Madison when he is in kindergarten as there is a lot of running around and making crafts (yesterday we made some killer sunglasses). But no one has eaten any glue yet. The kids all seem to like me here and they all offer to give me things ( a sign of respect here) including their snacks and in some cases money (which i had to think about twice before refusing).

After class was done last night, I went out to dinner with all the teachers from my school, Korean and foreign. There was about twelve of us altogether. We got into the Soju rice liquor again. This time I had a few more shots and I found out why Koreans like it so much (it hits you pretty quickly). I also sampled some strange food items including fried jellyfish and raw stingray. Even some of the Koreans don't eat that stuff, but I thought I should try everything at least once. And yes, I am feeling OK today. I am excited to move into my own apartment. I will be able to do that on Saturday morning. And I just found out that this Monday is a holiday, so no school, hooray!

It looks like I came to Korea at a good time because not only do we get Monday off, but we get the whole first week in August off as a vacation week as well. I will be going to Japan that week since I still need to get my work Visa anyway and my school pays for my airfare and a night in a hotel. But I going to stay for 4 nights altogether so I can check out a lot of sights. We have today off as well since the students have gone camping with the Korean teachers so I am going to walk around downtown Jeonju and attempt to interact with the locals. I will finally take some pictures while walking around so you can see just how Korean Korea is.

A Compilation of blogs from the past few days...

Early Monday morning in Korea, July 11: I have finally arrived at my destination: Jeonju, South Korea. It has taken me over 32 hours from door to door (not includingthe time zone difference) to get here. I slept as soon as I got here because I could not sleep well on the plane or bus. I am staying at another teacher's apartment for the time being until the teacher doing my job is moved out of my new apartment.She is staying at another teacher's house right now to let me get used to the time difference. It is a good thing because it is 5:20 am here and I could not go back to bed if I tried. I am looking forward to when I will have my own apartment so I can finally unpack. After I woke up from my long nap this afternoon, a few of the other teachers and I went out to dinner. It was the traditional Korean experience. We sat on the floor and had these weird dishes that I had never seen before. Also, I was introduced to a famous (or infamous) Korean drink called Soju. It is a rice liquor that is a favourite among locals. One shot was enough for me, perhaps because I am still adjusting to the time difference and it was about 7am in Ontario at the time. Even though I expected to have a language barrier when I got here, it is much more pronounced than I had thought. WhenI arrived at the airport, it took me about half an hour to buy a calling card and figure out how to make a call, including how much it costs (it isn't as easy as putting in a quarter and dialing a number here). While at the airport I was able to catch the end of the world cup final. I am disappointed that France lost, but all of the Koreans seemed to be pleased that Italy won. On the plane to Korea I sat next to a Korean girl, Song-ngu I believe her name was, who had been in the US attending university. I mentioned to her that I was moving to Korea to teach English and she helped me with some common sayings and traditions. I soon realized that practicing on the plane and trying to interact with people on the street was a much different experience. All of the signs here are in Korean as well, so it looks like I will have to try to learn some of the written language if I want to understand what any of the stores are. I will try to take a picture of a street corner so I can show how overwhelming it is. I will be going to my school today at 930 for the first time to observe some classes and get trained. I will be in class teaching alone as early as Friday, so I hope the training is thorough yet efficient. I am technically not allowed to be teaching in Korea right now as I am in the country only as a visitor and I am not allowed to make money. I will be going to Japan sometime next week in order to get my work Visa papers in order, then once I return I can officially be paid. I won't complain about a free trip to Japan especially because it probably means time off of work as well. That just about wraps up my journey to Jeonju, a long one to say the least. But now I am here and my next goal is to be able to learn enough Korean in order to get by. You have no idea what it is like trying to figure out what things are in a grocery store here!

Tuesday July 12: Today was my first day at my school SLP. I observed some of the classes of the other teachers. It was a short day (as all Tuesdays and Thursdays will be!). We had class from only 10 until 1 pm. The rest of the day I spent with Betsy and Sandra driving around getting to know the city. Betsy, a teacher at the school has a car so that made getting around a lot easier. Sidenote: Koreans drive crazy. It's no stereotype, its the truth and I have witnessed it firsthand. Also, there has been non-stop heavy rain all day today. This is the heaviest consistent downpour that I have ever seen and apparently I'm not alone as others have mentioned similar thoughts. Apparently the rain is the result of some tropical storm or monsoon that came in through the South. I think that I am almost over my jetlag already. I was up at 5am today but it is almost 9pm now and I haven't napped yet, so I think I have it beat! We had another traditional Korean meal tonight and sat on the floor again. I don't know what we had but it was spicy again, but a little more tolerable than last night. For lunch today we went to Subway which was a good break from Korean food and was not a rediculous price. I had an odd drink today out of a vending machine. It was an aloe-based drink. It even had chunks of the inside of an aloe plant (the clear part) inside the can. It wasn't as bad as it seems. In fact, the chunks reminded me of that drink that used to be popular in Canada called Orbitz with the little floating colored balls inside. I have just found out that Monday is a vacation day (I have no idea whatholiday it is), but I will take the day off! I will also be getting a vacation in the first week of August so I am thinking aboutgoing to Japan for a few days since the school is willing to pay for my plane ticket because I still need to get my work Visafrom there. So I would like to spend a few days in Tokyo and maybe some other cities. Then I am thinking about checking outSeoul for a few days since I have driven through it but haven't really stopped to enjoy it. But we will see what happens. Thevacation is coming up soon and I have done no planning! Almost 9pm... off to bed (still getting used to the time difference)

The sequel to Sleepless in Seattle: Waiting in Chicago

Today I finally left for Korea and I had no idea what my actual travel plans were (despite my take-off time of 730pm) including how long it would take or how many layovers I was going to have. So I am writing the latest edition of my blog in O'Hare airport in Chicago as I have a 5 hour layover. Then at 1am I will finally be on my way to my new home (after a 4 hour bus ride once the plane arrives).
I discovered that it probably was not the best idea to stay up partying until almost 5am the night before you travel for almost 2 days straight, but now I know for next time. I also discovered that showing up for an international flight 3 hours prior to the departure time ensures a lot of time twiddling your thumbs. Luckily when I was in line at customs I got talking to a man in front of me who was on his was to Brazil for a few weeks. It turned out that he was a Western alumni so we decided to grab a pint while waiting for our flights and talk about the good old days of university. Fortunately for me, my good old days were mere months ago, while Hugh last attending during the Cuban Missile crisis as he graduated in '65, but he still remembered the Ceeps! Well that is it for now. Next entry shall be from Korea! Still can't believe I am a blogger now...