Our 100th Post: "Clip Show"

You guys are in for a real treat, because this is our (drumroll, please...) 100th post! Whoopie!! I'm really glad that we've kept posting to this blog, because my brain is like mush and it'll be great to look back on someday. We've been in Korea for nearly 6 months now- hard to believe- and we've posted about anything and everything. But today, to honor the occassion of the 100th post we've decided to post all the photos you never got to see! It's kind of like watching a rerun, but with brand new footage. Enjoy :)

Having never lived in a city before, I spent the first week or so just taking photos of the skyscrapers. I like the perspective on this one, taken in Suyu just after we arrived- on our first outing alone.


A fruit vendor asleep on the job in Myeongdong. Koreans often put in 12 hours+ at work everyday, so you can't really blame the guy for snoozing- though it's probably not helping business.


A legless man begging for change in the middle of the market. The box he's pushing around plays music and makes it less likely that he'll be stepped on. There's a lot of these guys, and the first time I saw one it was pretty shocking.

Octopus on sale at Homever in Suyu- only 2580/each. You can have octopus cooked in many ways in korea, but the most interesting I've seen is the skewered octopus- 4 or 5 whole baby octopuses on a skewer. For refined tastes.

The shopping area called Dongdaemun market was built around this historic gate. It makes shopping for $10 shoes into a cultural experience.

The 63 building is the tallest in Korea, and isn't very hard to find even for lost tourists like us. It's mainly full of offices, but there was a Sea World, IMAX and skydeck inside. Nice view of the city!


Mel and I were made to pose with these bright dogs at the pet expo we visited. Came for the cats, stayed for the dogs.


Mel poses with some traditional Korean clothing at the National Museum.


When Mel and I visited Suwon in October, we didn't know where our school would be built. We took a lot of pictures, including this building, the old KBS TV building. It's now the English Village after getting a bad green paint job the following month.


Happy to have survived the hike up Buckhansan Mountain.


Suyu station was surrounded by yummy food vendors, and Mel and I often stopped for some spicy chicken on a stick. It was a good snack for only a dollar. This picture was taken on our last night in Suyu, when we ceremoniously devoured our beloved chicken for the last time.


Our apartment building in Suwon. There's a lovely clothing store, "Ruby", and a convenience store on the ground floor. We are conveniently located beside two parking lots and a fish restaraunt.


We were in Suwon for a month before our school had it's first students because construction was delayed. I snapped this footage of our diligant construction workers asleep in the grass a few weeks before we opened. You can see the bad green paint job in the background.


Friendly faces at Emma's going away party in Hongdae.


Interesting brick formations on a building inside Hwaseong Fortress.

On Mondays the new students at our school are given passports and they go through mock 'immigration' desks. That's Mel asking such difficult questions as "what is your favorite color" and "where are you from".

Random funny pig costume in Myeongdong.



Korean gas stations have long hoses. Just an observation, not that either of us would ever dare to drive around here.


If you're on the subway long enough, chances are someone will stop by your car to try and sell you something. It's great. A guy will wheel in a basket of flashlights and command the attention of the passengers, talking at great length. I can only imagine what he's saying, but it works- lots of people fork out their money. I think this is technically illegal, but there is no security on the subway and the vendors are super common. The guy in the above picture would like to sell you some CDs.


Melodie in action in Airplane class. The best part about the class is that the airplane crashes at the end.


Cool straw covered tree at a park near our apartment.


A statue at the same park. There must have been a sale on statues, because there's awesome statues on every street corner in Korea. I'm going to make a post about their overabundance one of these days, so look out for that.


Some of the washrooms in Korea are unisex, this is common especially in bars. Look- Mel, Dayna and I went to the bathroom at the same time.

Rock stars at the norebang in Hongdae.

See- wasn't this post awesome? You absolutely needed to see pictures like this. It's a booby pillow! aha aha ha aha aha ha a

ha ah booby

ah ha

ah ...ahem

sorry. We'll return to your regularly scheduled progamming shortly.

Osan and Seoul Grand Park Zoo

Since we had a 3 day weekend last week we only have Sunday off this week, so we tried to squeeze two days worth of fun into 24 hours. Saturday night after work, and after cleaning our filthy apartment, we went to Osan with Chris, Aaron and Sarah. Osan is closer than I realized-only 6 stops south by subway- and it's where US air force base is located. Because of this, there were scores of Americans with crew cuts wandering the slightly-seedy streets. We went to 2 different bars, played some darts, ate some wings, and watched a competetive game of beer pong, complete with ball-flashing. It was a fun night. Maybe I've been away too long but it's really weird to go into a bar and hear people speaking english everywhere. It makes for much better evesdropping than at the korean bars!

Fuzzy pic of the entrance gate to the Air Force base. The streets all around are lined with bars, even though drinking is so unpopular with the military.

There was even a Century 21 across from the bar we were at, just in case you need to buy some land in Korea after a night of soju and beers. I have a feeling these guys aren't associated with the Century 21 company at home, but may be in cahoots with the guy who runs the fake Tim Hortons in Suwon.



This afternoon we decided to go to Seoul Grand Park Zoo. The zoo is also pretty close- 11 stops north on the subway, and conveniently located on a mountain. Though the entrance fee to the zoo was only 1,500 won ($1.50) the chair lift up the mountain was 9,000 and it took 45 minutes!! The ride on the chair lift was scenic, with Seoul Land (an amusement park) to the left, and an arial view of the whole zoo to the right. This area will look even nicer in the summer when the grass is green, the trees look alive and their huge rose garden in bloom. It was still a nice 10 degree day, definately warmer than any February day I'd experienced at home!


This guy reminded us of our dear Rufus, being lazy in New Brunswick. Mehh!

I like this guy; he looks like he's got something up his sleeve.

You get the idea.

Korean deer, for mom and dad. Play nice!

This friendly elephant walked right up to us as soon as we got to him.

There was a really nice botanical garden on site as well. All of the cactuses got me a little sentimental about my precious cactus, Pokey though. Sidenote: the botanical garden was especially nice because it smelled a lot better than most of the zoo!

By the time we'd gotten to the giraffes they'd been brought inside for the night. I don't know how I feel about keeping half a dozen giraffes in a room the size of my apartment, but it was cool to see them so close up, even if it was through glass.

My favorite fowl, the ostrich was also represented! Now, I thought I knew everything there was to know about ostriches, but today I saw one take a crap... and it was very weird. If you really want to know why, you can e-mail me, I'll save everyone else from the details.

The view on the chair lift ride back down the mountain.

It was a fun day! We both really enjoyed walking around the zoo. The zoo itself was huge, so we definitely got a good workout today. There were lots of animals to see besides the ones we posted about like apes, zebras, tigers, otters, birds, a polar bear and some rhinos too. And if you were hungry, you were never far from a kind lady selling dried fish or silkworm pupa, though we stuck with churros for the day.

Funny Tea

The dynamic Lotte company makes a decent iced tea called "Ceylon Tea". I've tried it a couple of times but I usually opt for Lipton Iced Tea since I'm a sucker for brand names in this country full of unrecognizable brands. Tonight though, I picked up a can of Ceylon at the convenience store on the first floor of our apartment building (we never even have to leave the building... or even really get dressed to buy some beers or a cola, it's swell). I'd never really noticed the writing on the can, but it amused me enough to share it with you.

Mmmmm trippy tea.

A Taste of Egypt

That's me, standing in the middle of a normally busy 4-lane street in Suwon. This holiday weekend so many people leave town to spend time with their ancestors that Suwon and Seoul were actually kind of quiet. Korea is the only Asian country that observes Chinese New Year quietly. Other countries have parties and parades, but Koreans bore it up with something called 'family time'. The reduced number of people and cars was weird, but the best part was that we didn't have to stand on the subway! Yahoo!

Like I mentioned yesterday, most shops and restaraunts were closed for the weekend, so once again we found ourselves back in Itaewon to be fed. On the way to the restaurant I took these shots of 'Ostrich House', a cruel store the sells handbags made from the hide of my favorite bird.

Dayna, Mary and Vanessa from the Suyu English Villagey joined us at Ali Baba's, an egyptian restaraunt with hookah deserts. The place had a nice atmosphere but the portions were ridiculously small for the price. Still, it was nice to have some non-korean, non-italian food for a change. Mel had the lamb and I had some chicken with egyptian rice, pita bread and hummus. Yum!

Afterwards, we went back to Suyu and had drinks at Dragon Bar. The bar was nice and offered free popcorn, which was appreciated after such small suppers! The best thing was that the bar had an electronic Darts game, which was basically just a dartboard that calculated your score for you.

This is where most of my darts wound up: on the floor...

Random Boop graffiti.

Since we had Monday off because of the holiday, we were able to spend the night at Dayna's place. The pic is everyone feelin' good (thanks to some end-of-the-night McD's/Jager) on the bus ride back to campus. We played some Skip-Bo, and in typical fashion the name of the game was 'screw Shawn'! Well, that was pretty much it for our exciting 3-day weekend. I'm not really excited to go back to work tomorrow as I know there's only a one-day weekend waiting for me next week, but on the bright side...

...only 17 more days until we're chillin' on the sunny beaches of Phuket, Thailand!!! Wheee hee!!!! Can't wait.

Chinese Food for the Chinese New Year

Happy New Year, one and all! It is now the year of the pig, as if you didn't already know that. Tomorrow (Sunday), is the big holiday which will see the general population of Seoul migrate out-of-town to visit their ancestors and bow. Over the holiday, the younger generation bows to the elders and then they eat a traditional rice-cake soup (rice cake looks like rigatoni, but it's damn chewy and made of rice) and then they all age a year. Everyone ages on the same day in Korea, which is why if you ask a korean who was born in 1990 their age, they will tell you they are 18.

Though most english villages and schools in Korea close to observe the holiday week, Suwon English Village is boldly staying open, though we do have Monday off. We didn't have much planned for today, so Mel and I decided to head into Seoul to find a Canadian-style chinese restaraunt that we'd read about. My favorite kind of food is chinese, and there are a few chinese restaraunts in every town at home. Being so close geographically to China you'd think that there'd be an abundance of sweet-and-sour chicken places in Korea, but there isn't. You actually can't even find sweet and sour sauce at the grocery stores, and you all know that's my dipping sauce of choice when french fries are around. Although some restaraunts here identify themselves as being 'chinese', the stuff they serve still looks a heck of a lot like Korean to me.

It was a pretty nice day... about 6 or 7 degrees, and I only wore a light jacket. I've never experienced February weather like this, for sure, though if it were even warmer I wouldn't complain! In fact, it's been so mild lately that we've noticed some green grass growing in the field by the school. Weird! So, back on topic- we set out on this beautifully mild day in search of a restaraunt called "Ho Lee Chow".

There are a few Ho Lee Chows in Seoul, so we decided to go to the closest one, which is in Seolleung. When we got off the subway and noticed the lack of people in the streets we got to thinking.... is the Chinese New Year the best day to find a Chinese restaurant that's open for business? Answer: no. The place was closed, just like every other shop on the street, so we headed back to the subway station in the direction of the one place in Seoul that refuses to respect any culture or tradition: Itaewon!

It wasn't too hard to find and it tasted so awesome. The service was quick and the prices were on par with what you'd pay at home. We had sweet and sour chicken, kung pow beef and some fried rice. I would highly recommend Ho Lee Chow if you're in Korea and craving some good ol' chinese comfort food.

Mapagi

Alright, I won't blame you if you can't watch the whole video. It's a little foolish. But evvvvverrrry week in drama class one of the kids inevitably wears a bald wig and they exclaim with glee: "Mapagi!!!". The entire class bursts out laughing. It's hilarious.

Why? Gag comedy, sketch comedy, silly body language, candid camera-style humour is all the rage here. One very popular TV skit stars four bald men, their names are all variations of the word 'mapagi' and the gag is that each man slaps his bald head slightly differently. My favorite is the second guy that comes out.

Which is your favorite mapagi???

****BONUS****

even a one year old baby knows Mapagi...

Living the dream

Shawn is "living the dream" with a new friend

Due to popular demand, we've updated the post! Yes, we've slacked off with the posting lately as there hasn't been much to report! We found out that Mike was staying another month at our school and that Chris is the new head teacher. In hindsight, I'm glad I'm not the head teacher since I've now realized that it would be a lot more to deal with in terms of negotiations and teacher-employer issues. But, I really don't care one way or the other, as I'm sure Chris will do a good job. I'm now teaching "Broadcasting" and "Post Office" in addition to my regular airplane, homestay, homeroom, drama classes. It's a really nice change and the variety makes all the difference in the world. The kids are nice this week, but I'm somewhat concerned about one of Shawn's students. She has big red rashes around her eyes (like a raccoon). If it's anything like pink eye, I'll be getting it! It's strange because I've never seen that before.

As for our social life, last weekend, we played nintendo with a few of the other teachers in our apartment; checked out out the other side of Suwon known as Youngtong-dong; went shopping in Myeong-dong and ate dinner with Dayna. During the week we usually go home and make something for supper. Then we watch tv on our laptop and go to bed! So you can see how we might not be inspired to post about our excitement-free weeknights. Of course, this weekend coming up is the Lunar New Year. As per usual, YBM will give us a long weekend (woo hoo!) followed up by a Tuesday-Saturday week with a one day weekend (hmmmph!!!). This is how they can avoid paying us "holiday pay".

What are our plans for the new year? We're gonna be "living the dream", as England Shaun always says. This of course, will include meeting up with Dayna, drinking our faces off in Seoul, and singing alllll night long!

We Love Nintendo

Remember the time our Nintendo Gamecube caught on fire? Well, we ordered a new AC adaptor online and decided to try again. We had a voltage convertor, so what could go wrong? I'm not sure why, but it caught on fire again. Melodie was near-tears. We didn't use a voltage convertor the first time and I was sure that was the problem, but apparantly not. Well, this weekend we decided to go to Yongsan, Korea's crazy electronics district.

When we stepped off the subway train we saw this:



Men in computer costumes dancing around to "I will follow him". Priceless!!!

Black Market DVDs line the streets, and they're only $3 a piece for movies still in the theatre! We bought 3.

Street CD-R's anyone?

Yongsan is like a maze, with different pockets of the district specializing in different things. Some areas sell camcorders, some buildings are just full of cell phones. We walked over the video games section of town and found exactly what we were looking for: a korean gamecube! The price was 65,000 won which sounded well worth it since it came with a controller. Mel was smart enough to ask whether or not our North American games would work with the system, and unfortunately we were told they wouldn't. Then the guy had an idea, picked up the phone and told us that if we waited 20 minutes he could have a chip installed that would allow the system to play all kinds of discs. Sweet! When we returned, we happily forked over our won for a Gamecube with a funny little switch on the back to adjust the disc compatibility.

I'd also decided that I wanted to invest in a Nintendo DS, which is like the new version of the Gameboy, but with a touch screen. I wound up buying one from a guy that passed me a catalogue of games and told me he'd burn 20 games onto one disc for 200,000 won. Since the games are about 50,000 a piece and hard to find in Korea (Nintendo isn't popular here) I took him up on his offer. He had over 800 games to choose from and after making my selections he burned the games and I walked away with a DS and more games than I know what to do with. I'll be surprised if I ever buy another game!

On the way home we stopped in a little tarp-covered hut on the side of the road and ate some chicken balls, with some complementary soup for 2,000 won. It was very tasty and you could tell it was made with a lot of love. What a deal!

We decided to rush home, giddy to play our new video games. Unfortunately while we were passing the DS back and forth on the subway we went in the wrong direction and wound up halfway to the airport in Incheon! Well, we got off, got re-directed, and finally found our way back. It was a long, fun, expensive day and I can't wait to waste the rest of my weekend play Mario. It's been a lonnnng time coming!

Mutiny

There were signs even at the beginning...

Our head teacher's name is Mike and he is an odd man. At 40, he was the oldest teacher at our school, and having taught overseas twice before he was the perfect choice for head teacher. The role doesn't really have a lot of significance other than the fact that he had to MC morning assemblies, orientation and graduation. In turn he taught about a third of the classes we did so it was a cushy job, I think.

Before our school opened we spent a month in our freezing cold school planning and doing prep work. There were times that Mike would freak out over the smallest things, and he once stormed out of a meeting because one of the teachers turned the heat on. We didn't return to work for two days. He was always up and down. While we were hard at work making materials and powerpoints for our classes, Mike walked the halls grumbling about small details not being finished and just being generally unhelpful and negative.

On the third day the school was open he sent all the teachers an email suggesting that we quit, and gave us details as to how to do so. He loved to communicate by email (the day after we met him he sent us an email full of useful website links- including some porn links, "in case we got lonely"!) He also revealed that although he'd taught overseas before, he'd never completed a contract. Within days, teachers starting receiving e-mails calling them names, one email ordered a teacher to quit within three weeks even though Mike has no authority to suggest this, one male teacher got an email suggesting they 'hook up'!

One teacher discovered that he had a reputation in Seoul as being a creepy old man at the gay bars, who would sit at the bar, slamming back drink after drink while checking out the guys with a pervy look on his face. He wore tight shirts and his nickname was "wet suit"!! Hahahahahaha!!

In person he became ruder and ruder. He spoke in one word sentences or completely ignored you. His facial expressions were hateful. The way he spoke to our boss, Stella was disgusting. He talked to her with such contempt that it was amazing she hadn't bitch slapped him yet. His behavior around the kids got worse too. He bragged that he never learned any of his students' names, he screamed at them to "shut up" (inappropriate for any teacher anywhere), threatened to kill students and directed lazer pointers in their eyes to make an example of them. In their eyes!! And these were just the things we saw- who knows what went on when he was alone with them. Some of his students wrote on our website that they would never return to the school because of him. As our head teacher, he was supposed to be our role model?

Last month, the teachers staged an "intervention" with Mike. We wanted to deal with the issues as a group and not involve the YBM management. We wanted to be fair. I thought he took it like a man- it must have been embarrassing. He was quiet, he listened and he was humble. For a few weeks things seemed better. He talked to us, anyway.

Then it started again. We all got a couple of strongly worded e-mails. He grew silent and dismissive again. Old Mike was back. It didn't make any sense, because nobody had done anything to him. Monday afternoon he freaked out at Melodie minutes before her class because he couldn't see her in the hallway to dismiss her class. She was standing right there and that was not her fault. You could see the hate in his eyes. Nobody needs that minutes before a class. A few minutes later I went to Stella and set up a meeting.

We had a secret meeting in the storage room!! There are no cameras there LOL. I gave her the e-mails I received and a went over a list of concerns. The first thing she said (before I'd even said a word) was "He's so weird", so obviously she felt the same way we did. She apologized for not taking action sooner, but she didn't want to disrupt the group. She agreed that he was unhelpful and admitted that she regretted offering him the head teacher position. It was the e-mails that put it over the top for her, though. She went downstairs first, and I followed a few minutes later to be low-key about it.

About an hour later she came to me and asked me to tell her who should be the new head teacher. I was surprised. I just wanted her to speak to him, but it appeared he would be demoted. Then she asked if Dayna would like to come work at our school and it was obvious that Mike was going to be fired. Over lunch I told all of the teachers (to which there were many "yippees!") and we decided to nominate Mel and Chris to be the head teacher, and Stella could make her choice between the two of them. Dayna, of course, didn't want to move all the way down to Suwon, so we're going to be short a teacher for the indefinite future but it's for the best. We still don't know whether Mel or Chris will be the head teacher, but they'll both be great choices.

Oblivious, on Wednesday we got an e-mail from Mike in which he wrote that he "couldn't stand us teachers because they're young, inexperienced, unfocused and boring". Sorry for being so boring, man.

As far as I know, Mike was fired after work on Friday. I feel kind of guilty, but it was out of my hands, and I know he would not feel any guilt if it were me. In true Mike fashion, he spent his last minutes at work isolating himself in the corner of the faculty room, headphones on, laughing hysterically to himself at old Rat Pack skits. Annyong, dude.

Row Row Row Your Boat

One of the main selling points of our school to prospective students is the drama program. Our director really loves drama and thinks the program is pretty much the bees knees. Monday through Thursday each teacher works with a group of 15 students, and on Friday they put on a short play in english for the other students at the school. Sometimes it's cute, sometimes it's frustrating- it usually depends on the group of kids you have that week. We only have four or five different plays to choose from and I had done "Mud Puddle" for seven weeks straight, so I decided to write my own play to change it up for myself. "Mud Puddle" was a little too... conceptual. It was about this giant Mud Puddle monster that keeps getting a group of kids dirty. I found that the audience usually had no idea what the mud puddle was and it was hard to simulate a group of kids "getting dirty". The play I wrote is "Row Row Row Your Boat", which is so much simpler for the kids to remember, although I'll admit it needs a little work because it's probably a little too simple.

Anywho, Mel taped Friday's performance for me, so grab some popcorn and enjoy my masterpiece!