5 Funny/Ridiculous Things about Korea

Just a few things we've noticed since being here...

1. Musical paths: Pretty much most of the scenic paths around Korea have speakers connected to the lamp posts. So as you’re taking a nice relaxing walk through the woods or around the cliff tops you can listen to the romantic classical tones that your town council has selected for you. It’s so strange at first, but soon it kind of just feels like you’re in a movie scene or something!

2. Slippers to work: It’s not in all schools, but in my school for one there’s an ‘off at the door’ policy. It’s really quite weird dressing yourself up in a shirt and trousers on your first morning, donning some of your nice shoes that took up space and weight in your baggage to ‘give the right impression’, then getting to your school and taking them straight off. Oh, I’ll be teaching in slippers today will I? Right. Slippers and a shirt. Strange. You just damn well better not have holes in your socks. Instant Korean fail.

Actually, on that note… You must have ‘gym shoes’ in Korea - ones that you haven’t worn outside at all. Nice clean shoes for exercising inside, I get that! The stupid thing is that I got my nice clean gym shoes on for playing volleyball at school the other day, and the gym was a separate building, so you HAD to walk outside on a dirty path to get to the gym. Can you wear regular outside shoes in the gym? Oh, oh, no!!!It’s really quite an odd rule that just means I need to bring two pairs of shoes with me school if I want to play. That’s Korea!

3. Konglish: Probably the most hilarious thing about Korea. English is everywhere here on the signs, but you’ve got to remember that its kind of a redundant language for most kids to learn. I mean its one of four languages they’ll learn by the time they leave elementary school! This means that they often get it hilariously wrong. Here are a few of my favorites fromwhat I’ve managed to snap so far….

'Delicious love making just for you!' ....whatever they're selling, this has to be my favourite. I also never noticed 'Hair News since 1985' above it. What does that even mean?!

mmm...pencakes...

and of course, everyone wants a dead-u-bear.

coffee shops are clearly the worst offenders. just a poor effort all round...

4. I’ll just pop this in the bin… oh, maybe not: Weird thing. There are no public bins in Korea. You’ve just picked yourself up a tasty treat from the shop and you’ve got a wrapper in hand, looking for a little one on the corner, but it never comes. I’d say it’s the main difference between urban Japan and urban Korea. Apparently it came from some huge problem that the government had with people going through rubbish bins looking for recyclables (they have incentive schemes at the recycling depots as far as I know). In response the government got sick of people rummaging through and leaving the rubbish everywhere so they just got rid of all public bins. Still, to me it’s the lesser of two evils, because it just means that there’s a light scattering of litter instead of a rummaged through pile in the corner!

5. Being a Rock Star: I heard about this before I came but I had no idea how true it was. I think it’s mainly with the kids and teenagers here, but they just think you are the coolest guy on the planet. You come from far away, speaking this language that all the big, beautiful celebrities speak and knowing about football… Jesus. These guys just lap it up. Every time I leave my apartment I’ll see kids who all tap each other to stop talking and focus their attention on this stranger. Then they just watch in amazement, the girls usually getting pretty hysterical. It’s the same thing on the bus. If I look at them they just lose it totally. I also say ‘Hello' at least 200 times a day. Everyone wants to talk to the foreigner. It’s also pretty useful when going back to a shop or restaurant, because they always remember what the foreigner got last time. I returned an item a week after I bought it and the guy knew straight away what was going on. He remembered everything about when I was last there.

There is one down side to generally being a celebrity in your workplace or neighbourhood though. Peace and alone time. For any westerner coming to Korea, just know that outside of the two big cities, you’ll be being watched, or should I say ‘admired’ ALL THE TIME. So if you do anything stupid, they see it. If you blow your nose, they’re watching you. If you spill food down yourself, there are ten kids over there that saw you lose your dignity. It’s a lot of pressure! I kind of thought after a month it would’ve died down, but it really hasn’t! Some days I do think if I have to say ‘Hello!’ to another kid I’ll lose it. But, hey, I guess its better than being hated or just plain uninteresting to them!

A trip to Gyeongju! (경주)

So I said last week that we were off on a trip with one of the teachers at my school. He’s not an English teacher; he’s just a guy that I teach English to and he teaches Korean back. A good solid working relationship.

Anyway, this week Michelle and I got our ARC’s (Alien Residency Card)!

We are officially aliens! Trust me - you cannot live in Korea without this little baby. This meant that I could get a better bank account, pay my bills and my phone off, so generally some pretty useful stuff.

So on Sunday morning, bright and early at 8am, we set off to Gyeongju with 박 선생님and 윤 선생님. I don’t work with 윤 선생님, but he was going to be our guide and was a friend of the teacher at my school, 박 선생님 (박 = Park, as in his last name, and선생님 = teacher).

We started off going to Bulguksa Temple (불국사), which is kind of a big deal around these parts. As you can probably tell, I’ve been getting heavily into my Korean, so I can break down the name to explain its significance. So, ‘Bul (불)’ means Buddha, ‘guk (국)’ means country and ‘sa (사)’ means temple. So literally in English it means ‘Buddha’s Country Temple’. Buddhism ison a par with Christianity here as the biggest religion so it’s a huge spot for Buddhists. In fact its incredibly busy, hence the early start.

It was built 1500 years ago, but our guide told us that those pesky Jap’s messed it up a fairbut when they ruled Korea. Still, most of it is still in good nick. Having a Korean take us round was cool actually, because he told us all this stuff that we would have just never figured out.

First thing was that the wooden columns in Korea are actually convex (I think that’s the rightone?!) to make sure that the loads on them are diverted down effectively, hence why these 1500 year old bits of timber are still nailing their job.

Another cool thing was around each doorway. On the picture below you can see that there’s this bit of timber you need to step over to get through the doors. It seemed kind of awkward to me. I thought maybe it was for flood waters or something?! But no. Apparently it was incorporated in each doorway in Korean palaces and temples to keep ghosts out! Absolutely mental.

I forget the other interesting things he told us, probably because it was so damn early still. But here are a couple more pictures from 불국사….

Afterwards we met 박 선생님 again and he took us to see an ancient observatory and some tombs around the town. Oh, I should also say as well, Michelle and I were not allowed to pay for anything - it was all ‘taken care of’. We didn’t even get the chance to get our notes out, it was sneakily done before I even realised!

Here are a few pictures from the next few sights….

^Our two tour guides with Michelle^

^LOLZ^

After we saw all this, we were taken for lunch at this awesome little restaurant! Of course, we were not even given the option to pay, it was all done without us even realizing. It was a traditional place, where your shoes were off at the door, and there wasn’t a chair in the place. They actually prepare the meal in the kitchen on your table, and then bring it in. It was very cool. I think we must’ve had around thirty little dishes on the table, with a large portion of Bul-go-gi (불고기) in the centre. 불고기 is so delicious. It literally means ‘barbequed meat’, but it’s not. Its this fried beef in a sweet bbq style sauce. It’s so damn tasty. Here are a lovely little picture from the meal…

So, after this meal, we still weren’t done! We took off and went to the National Museum of Korea. It was alright, but after 3 hours of sight seeing and tucking into my fair share of 30 dishes, I wasn’t too fussed about some thousand year old gold earrings they recently dug up. They did have cool stone statues outside though. Oh, they also had some petro glyphs…

After this, we went home. It was a long day in the historical capital of Korea. Then came nap time.

A weekend in Ulsan (for once)...

I've been pretty damn lazy this past week. Sorry about that. I've gotta be better about updating before I forget. I'll start with last weekend....

Eric came up from Busan on saturday afternoon to watch the football. First we went to check out Ulsan's Stadium, Munsu. It was built for the Korea Japan World Cup, so it's pretty big, about 45000 capacity I think.

We wanted to get ourselves inside and see the dugouts and stuff, but weirdly enough all the lights were off in the entrance. It was supposed to be some big shrine to the stadium's importance in the World Cup but everything was in darkness. Kind of weird, we thought. So we wandered around a little, tried to get a little closer to the pitch, but it was all locked. I noticed lots of lights downstairs, so we got the escalator down and sure enough, there were people and lights. Was this the place for tours of the stadium? Maybe for a bit of info? Not in Korea. Hell no. They'd decided to build a wedding hall in the stadium, no joke. This place was kitted out too, with make-up rooms and multiple ceremony halls. It was so, so strange. So there was no stadium tour, not even lights on around the little entrance hall museum, but there was a place to get married?! I'm sure most people who check out the football on a saturday think, 'Damn, if only I could get hitched right here and bring my two loves together!'

Just for a bit of proof on this madness, check it out.

Ulsan World Cup Convention (yey!) ...and Wedding Hall. Oh.

We had to take ourselves to a dirty western bar, which was pretty terrible. This place was built just for the South Africa World Cup in 2010, so it's brand new, but for anyone back in England it's just like walking into a Wetherspoon's. Although the 'British' style had been exaggerated ten-fold. There was a red phone box next to the pool table and everything. I felt dirty being there. When we walked through the door I didn't even see a Korean face, everyone was foreign. There's this huge thing here about frequenting these kinds of bars. I mean, why come 9000 miles across the earth to sit next to a phone box, playing darts and drinking shit overpriced lager every weekend. It makes no sense, so it sucks that this was the only place I knew of showing the game. We just kept our heads down, and sat bang in front of a big TV. We did what we had to do and got the hell out of there. It was like having the idea of a city's Chinatown totally reversed. Weird.

On Sunday we went across to Grand Park. People kept telling me at work that it was awesome and they were not wrong. We rented a couple of bikes (Michelle broke hers, of course) and just cruised around all afternoon in the sun. It was sweet. There was some cool stuff there too. It started out looking like Amsterdam or something with this windmill and river, then we found some fighter jets and this huge war memorial, then loads of awesome little parks to learn how to ride on the road or do tricks. So cool.

There was also this park up by a giant butterfly house with these huge inflatable mounds on the floor, probably about 3m high and a few of them about 15m across. Kids were just going mental on them. I wish I got a picture. They look like the greatest invention of all time. Pretty sure the health and safety man has banned them in England. Anyway, after Grand Park we got some food at a cool little place near us where you wrote messages on the wall. Here was ours:

Oh snap. The food was pretty decent too. Freshly made Korean sushi (Kimbap: 김밥) for 2000W, which is just over £1. Bargain.

So it was nice to stay in Ulsan for once, seeing as though we always seem to be travelling away to places. We're both broke as fuck at the minute actually, so this weekend is kind of the same. Tomorrow a teacher from my school is driving us across to Gyeongju, the most historical city in Korea. They call it 'the museum without walls'. That's pretty deep, I know. I'll let you know how that goes.

The last week of teaching was kind of same-old. We both still think we're terrible at teaching, but it pays the bills at least. We're just hugely looking forward to payday. Dear God do we need it.

hard work in busan...

So a hard weeks work definitely needs a good weekend, or an eventful one at least. This definitely ticked both boxes.

After work on friday Michelle and I went to Ulsan World Music Festival. It was pretty good. We had the pleasure of hearing Lil John sung by a couple thousand Korean's. It was just magical....

We were on our way home when we ran into another teacher that I had worked with when I was doing some hours at another school in my first week. We ended up checking out a few bars with his friend. Our first time out in Ulsan. The only thing was that we were checking out the western bars, which made me feel strange. Here I was surrounded by westerners and all I felt was hugely uncomfortable. I think it's the fact that for everyone who comes across here, it's their little thing. It's such a big leap. To see fifty other people doing the exact same thing kind of ruins the whole mystery of living in the unknown. That said, a few whiskeys later, I cared not. I blame those Korean barmen and their long pours.

The next day we slept off any hangover and got a bus down to Busan to see some friends we met at orientation. Our aim was to check out this huge film festival that was going on, but as usual in Korea, it wasn't nearly as easy as you'd expect. First, we went to Jagalchi where we'd heard that you could buy tickets. The woman behind the desk ensured us that their weren't, and to check somewhere else. So no tickets, but there were around 1000 riot police hanging around and chilling out. I've never seen so many in my life...

I later got told that it was because of some march going on about jobs being taken away from Korea by a huge company. After that we checked out the fish market. What's really cool is that you can pick out anything and they will take it to the restaurant upstairs and cook it for you. So you can eat fish that was literally swimming around 5 minutes before. Pretty dang fresh if ask me.

Anyway, next we went to Centum City's cinema complex. Amazing building. Unbelievable at night. It sucks that my camera died before we got there. This is that picture I would have taken...

Apparently it opened last week. It's probably one of the best building's I've ever seen. Good job Korea!

Anyway, we got to the cinema centre at 10:30pm to find that the ticket office closed at 8pm. Ha. Amazing. People were even camped out by the ticket office waiting for them for the next day. It wasn't looking good. BUT, someone then remembered that there was an online ticket website which we could use to try book tickets for the next day. The only problem was that none of us could access it on our phones. All that money on a smart phones and Korea decides to only except Internet Explorer for it's film festival. Madness.

Aaanyway, we decided to wait it out until the morning, then get online and book for whatever we could that day. No problem...

By this point it was 11:30pm, and we had to hop back on the subway home as the last tube was around midnight. So we got on at 11:56pm, only for the subway to go through exactly 4 minutes of stops before it screeched to a halt and everyone got off. Exactly midnight. Unbelievable. Right in the middle of the line, a good 10 miles from where we needed to be. I guess when they say the subway stops at midnight they REALLY mean it.

We decided to all crash at one of our friends places in north Busan. The taxi ride was shared and pretty damn cheap this way. We got there and picked up a couple cans of Golden OB, easily the best Korean beer I've had here. The five of us bowed out at about 2am, all sprawled across the apartment...

In the morning Michelle and I went with Eric to book tickets. We went to a PC bang and went through all the steps. Brilliantly you could only book 2 tickets online at one time. Fantastic. A warning in Korean was translated on Google to tell us that you couldn't even buy on the day online. What a mess.

We decided to just go with it and find some when we got there. Literally, we would see anything. In the end it was 'Terrafirma', an Italian film about illegal immigrants on an island. So we went up and sat inside waiting to go watch it. When the time came we got up and went to give our tickets in, but Eric's had gone. Literally vanished. He'd shown it to a member of staff minutes earlier and now it was toast. We never did find out what happened to that little swine.

Thanks to an amazing member of staff there, we got in. He literally walked us all the way in, saw that there were actually three spare seats and just said it was no problem. Well, I guess thats what his Korean mumble meant anyway.

Pretty soon after the film we had to make tracks back to Ulsan. For dinner we got our first Mr Pizza, which was unbelievably delicious.

This week has been same old same old at work. I'm getting into the old Powerpoint games and the kids and my co-teacher seem to like them. Somehow I knew that my slick ppt skills wouldn't be forgotten after uni.

This afternoon at 3pm I went to play volleyball with the teachers in the gym also. It was awesome, if not a little daunting. My first time to do so much as handle a volleyball. I only made a fool of myself a few times as well! Playing against your principal, with your vice-principal behind you is a little scary though. The whole time I was just trying to not look stupid and to not hit my principal, directly across the net from me. Because i'm tall, they just stick me at the net to 'spike'. I just jump and slam the ball over when it comes to me. Simple really. High fives all round. Afterwards we ate grapes and drank Makgeolli, which is a sweet Korean rice wine. Not bad at all. They eat grapes weird here though. They suck the insides out and spit out the skin into a paper cup or something. It just odd. That's Korea I guess.

Settling In...

So another week down and we're getting into the groove a little. We've got ourselves a little Home Plus Extra down the road for shopping (its actually owned by Tesco... you just can't get away from them!) so our shopping bill for a week is at about £20. The cool thing about buying food in Ulsan is that the variety of fish and the price you get it for is just unbelievable. If you want a freshly ended 3-foot squid its yours for a couple pounds. They actually do this sweet dried squid here that tastes pretty damn astounding. I realise just how Korean that sounds.

At work I'm still the celebrity. I thought it would'vedied down by now but its definitely just as bad as day 1. I gave an interview for some 6th graders school project the other day and the girls just sat and giggled for 10 minutes and slunk off. It's very strange.

In fact my 6th graders are still being pretty forgiving. Not sure how long that will last. The 3rd graders are just full on insane. Those little guys just bounce off the wall for forty minutes whilst I try grab their attention. Everything is done on these interactive CD's as well, its pretty smart. It means that lesson planning is so much easier. Its less so for Michelle, whose school decide to stray from the trusty books and CD's to use other materials. This week she's had just too much fun writing lesson plans on classic books such as 'The Dark, Dark House'. Try getting some crazy 8 year olds to sit and listen to how dark and gloomy things are for 40-minutes whilst it's baking hot and sunny outside. Needless to say, they were having none of it.

Last weekend we had an awesome little explore of Ulsan. We went across to this place called Dae-wang-am, which means Great King Rock. It was cool as hell. Here's a little picture of the bridged walkway into the sea....

Along the way we got to see one of the beaches of Ulsan as well, over in Ilsan. I had actually heard that Ulsan's beaches were horrible, largely due to a combination of having the largest petrochemical and shipbuilding plants in the world. Anyway, it was actually awesome....

The next day we had a horrendous miscalculated trip across to Andong, about 100 miles north of Ulsan in Gyeongbuk province. We went to see a few friends and check out a mask festival that's kind of a big deal around these parts. Anyway we soon got stuck in traffic on the coach, soa 2 hour trip took 4.5 hours. Next the bus driver decided to throw us off the coach in the middle of Andong, not at the bus station. How far was the bus station? Oh, only a brisk 4k away. What a nice stroll for us to take. By the time we found the bus station, it was about 4:30pm. The mask festival was 40 minutes away, and the last bus back to Ulsan left in 2 hours. So, we hopped back on a bus to Ulsan for another nice 4 hour ride. A horrendously pointless day all in all. Not cool.

The next day was a little better. We went hiking up Mt. Munsu, a 400m high peak right near our apartment. We were invited to go up there with Michelle's teachers, but crossed-wires came into play yet again. Before we knew it, we were on a school trip on our day off. Another thing was that we got to the top and everything was great: a good view (check the picture!) and a nice bit of exercise.

So everything's all systems go when Michelle's co-teacher tells us that we're seeing a temple on the other side of the mountain about a third of the way back down. Oh nice, sounds good to me. So we take it in, pretty nice temple, as far as temples go. Then, instead of taking the route continuing down the mountain, we're told to scale back up to the top again! Our legs took a serious beating. The poor kids were a wreck as well! It was some military style training right there.

Anyway, this week I joined a gym as well! So I have my own bank account, phone and gym membership now. I'm fully settling in. Michelle and I are going across to Busan this weekend to check out this huge film festival too. It promises to be most excellent. I'll update later I'm sure.