An Update (Also Known as I'm Not Dead Yet)

[This was originally an email to some friends, since a few people have expressed some concern over the growing amount of crazy going on in North Korea and my proximity to them, but I figured I might as well post it here. It has been a crazy week in Korea.]

1. North Korea is getting a bit uppity with its weaponry. On Monday, North Korea tested something nuclear underground. On Tuesday, they launched some short-range missiles. On Wednesday, it was reported that a previously closed factory had reopened and was making weapons-grade plutonium again. The international community was all, "Oh bugger! I think North Korea is up to something!" and threatened to actually enforce the Proliferation Security Initiative, which would allow the US and other members to search and seize North Korean ships and ships entering North Korea territory. After dragging its heels for six years, South Korea finally joined the Proliferation Security Initiative on Wednesday, prompting Kim Jong-Il to respond, "Please, I will cut you," announce that North Korea was no longer bound by the 1953 armistice that ended the Korean War and threaten to invade South Korea if they so much as LOOKED at our cargo ships, Chiiiiiiiiiina, South Korea is touching me! Make it stop!
   
   The situation is obviously tense, especially since North Korea has that bomb and Seoul is really close to the DMZ, but ultimately, unless the Dear Leader has actually gone off his rocker, North Korea isn't going to attack. South Korea would crush the North like bug. South Korea has a large, modern standing army and international support, while North Korea is struggling to feed its people. My friend Tony visited North Korea last year and he said the juxtaposition at the DMZ was staggering. On one size you have the ripped, six-foot South Korean soldiers holding the latest in weapons and on the other side you have the North Koreans who, while definitely being a bit more crazy about the eyes, are a foot shorter and holding weapons that are a few decades old. Plus, the political climate has changed since the last time North Korea attacked and this time, Russia and China (probably) aren't going to back them. And this is what North Korea does. They make threats to garner international aid, and while these are definitely bigger threats, in all honesty, this is probably more of the same. So yeah, an attack is most likely not coming and unless there is an actual attack, I'm not leaving. I'll just plan on not taking the DMZ tour any time soon. In general, this latest posturing is barely making the South Korean news because...


2. Last Saturday, Roh Moo-Hyun, the former president of Korea, killed himself by jumping off a cliff. He was under investigation for corruption and bribery. If the North Koreans aren't making much of an impact on the South Koreans, it's because they're all too preoccupied with Roh's death. It's a big damn deal. There has been an huge outpouring of grief over this man's death. I have never wanted to be able to read the newspapers more than I do right now because I don't understand WHY his death is so important, but I can tell that it obviously is. One Korean blogger compared it to JFK's death. (ETA: Ask A Korean has a great retrospective of Roh's life and his importance here.)
   
   Roh's death has even affected my kiddos. I've had several groups of students try to explain what happened. Just for the record, watching a 5th grader try to explain suicide in broken English (with motions) is disturbing. (It went like this: “Roh Moo-Hyun mountain hiking. He fall. HE DIE!) On the other hand, listening to them explain corruption is hilarious. (A 5th grader told me that Roh was being investigated because he got a very expensive watch.)

Mourners for Roh Moo-hyun (노무현) near Gangnam Station in Seoul the night before his funeral. Each gu set up a memorial for people come and pay their respects to the former president. The line at Gangnam was five people deep and stretched at least a block.

Stitching and Bitching (and Some Studying)

Fishy says,"Om nom nom nom. Dead skin is delicious!"
I went to Gangnam on Thursday night for SnB. The Thursday night meetings are currently being held at Namu Keuneul, a coffee shop that has a Dr. Fish spa for 2,000 won ($1.60). The doctor fish (also called reddish log sucker and doctorfishen) is a type of tropical fish that eats dead skin. They were originally used to treat skin diseases, but in Korea and Japan, they're used in spas. Full body spas exist (and seriously creep me out), but the Dr. Fish at Namu Keuneul was just a foot spa.




First you wash your feet to prevent contaminating the pool. Then you soak your feet in the tubs for twenty minutes while the fish nibble on your toes. The dark clouds surround our feet are actually fish, which flocked to us as soon as we stuck our feet in.   It doesn't hurt at all, but it does tickle. A lot! Turns out, my feet are really ticklish. I believe the phrase "Pillsbury Doughboy" was used to describe my reaction. (Sarah, on my reaction: was not even remotely surprised.) I couldn't stop laughing! Marie, Siobhain and I took our knitting with us and knit while the fish nibbled.

Then on Sunday I went to Sinchon for the new Sunday meeting. It's very new - this is only the second meeting - and I was the only person for the first two hours. It's in a nice coffee shop, though, and I used the opportunity to make myself study Korean. Since I'm going to be staying in Korea for a second year, I figure it's time to get off my butt and start learning the language. 나는 한굴말를 공부해요. In Roman letters, that's Nanun Hangulmallul gongbuhaeyo, which means (I think) I study Korean. I can't form the past tense yet, but that's okay because this is more of an on-going (never ending?) project.

Swine Flu-rific!

A few weeks ago, when the Swine Flu hysteria was at its zenith in the US, I mentioned to my dad how relived I was that the first confirmed case of H1N1 virus in Korea was a Korean and not a foreigner. This was back when there only was one case of the Swine Flu in Korea, before the outbreak in Japan and before the H1N1 virus was any sort of threat to Asia. It was just a passing thought.

The reason I mention this is last week, a batch of 30+ native English speakers arrived in Korea and spent a week in training. One of them had Swine Flu. On Saturday, the Korean government started rounding up all the foreigners from the training and sent them to quarantine. Indefinitely. No one can get a straight answer, which could be a sign of something shady, but is most likely the result of the Korean medical system and the Korean government's way of dealing with foreigner (personal rights? telling people things? what's that?).

You'll note that I said that the government began to round up the foreigners. Not the Korean instructors who spent the week in the same close quarters with Patient Zero as the quarantined foreigners. Just the foreigners. Korea is a xenophobic society. Not on an individual level - I have personally faced very little discrimination - but as a society, Korea's not sure what they think about us, but it's not good. What I'm worried about is that this will escalate from quarantining people who have legitimately been exposed to an all-out witch hunt.

When I showed up to work this morning, before I'd seen the buzz on the Korean blogosphere (there's been no mention of the 50+ quarantined teachers in the news, but several of the quarantined teachers have blogs and it's all the English Korea blogs are talking about), my vice principal hurried up to me and asked how I felt. I told him I felt fine. He asked again, wanting to know if I was coughing and if I knew what the symptoms of the Pig Flu were. I told him no, but that I felt fine. He let it drop and I went about my business. (Keep in mind, I haven't been in the US for eight months and I haven't left Korea since before the Swine Flu outbreak. I have absolutely no greater chance of being infected that any other teacher at the school.)

This evening I read that the Ministry of Education is checking up on foreign teachers. Another source is saying that all public school teachers who arrived in May will be quarantined at home for a week. Another person said the Ministry of Education called his employer and asked if there were any Americans working there. There are several reports of hogwons (private academies that are super popular here), including some in my area, closing and their teachers being told not to leave their apartments. Quoting the Hub of Sparkle: So is this the latest xenophobic witch hunt? Last year, it was diseased American cows. This year it’s diseased American teachers?

I'm not really worried. I'm certainly not worried that I might catch the Swine Flu and from what I've read, the worst that could happen to me is that I get an enforced vacation and spend the week obsessively watching K-dramas and sleeping in. (When I put it that way, *cough, cough* I think I might have the piggy flu. Quarantine, yes please, make mine a double.) It's just annoying. It's annoying to be singled out for no valid reason. It's annoying that more fuel is being added to the already present xenophobic fire. And it's sure as hell is annoying for the teachers who are stuck in quarantine, all of whom where fresh off the plane and some of which weren't even at the training conference and where just tossed into quarantine because they were a foreigner and, don't you know, we all have the Pig Flu.

Signs that my anal retentiveness is reaching new and special heights:

This is my computer at work. I'm teaching the 5th graders how to tell time in English (Lesson 6: I Get Up at Seven Every Day) and I made a PowerPoint with a bunch of pictures of clocks and the time written out with various bits missing. The yellow bits of paper are the sticky part of a Post-It note, which I stuck to my screen so I could align the pictures in the EXACT same spot on each slide. Because the very slight difference was harshing my PowerPoint mellow.

Happy 스승의 날!

Happy 스승의 날! (There's all sorts of celebrations going on in these parts.) Today is Teacher's Day in Korea. I personally felt like that should result in me NOT having to be a teacher for the day, but that's not how it works in Korea. Instead, I was inundated with gifts (many many fake carnations, two heart-wrenchingly cute and grammatically suspect letters and several boxes of Vitamin C powder; either my kids think I'm looking a bit peaky or they just think that since I don't like kimchi, I must be on verge of death) and after class, all the teachers went on a hike and had dinner. A three hour long hike up a mountain in the rain. I've been cranky and NO NOT WANT about the hike all week. I don't like climbing mountains under the best of circumstances and hikes that don't end in the Great Wall of China are dead to me. Plus, school outings are always really awkward because no one will talk to me. (And yes I know that it's because I'm the foreigner and there's a language barrier and insert anthropological thoughts on insider/outsider culture here and I'm not really offended by it, but the end result is still the same and you never feel as lonely as when you're all by yourself in a big group of people.) Suffice to say, I wasn't exactly a happy camper when I showed up at the base of the mountain this afternoon. Shows you what I know; I ended up having a great time.

Instead of climbing the mountain, I "hiked" to a coffee shop with two of the kindergarten teachers. And by hiked, I mean we walked down the street to the taxi stand, caught a cab to Beomgye and spent the afternoon sitting in a cafe drinking mocha lattes, which is much more my scene. What happened was all the teachers were loitering in the parking lot at the base of the mountain, waiting for the stragglers to arrive. I was standing a bit apart when one of the kindergarten teachers sidled up to me and asked if I wanted to hike. (Her name is Hyun Ji, she's twenty seven, from Busan and until today, I didn't realize she spoke English.) I told her no, not so much, and we tried to avoid being seen. At one point we ducked behind a car. We were eventually caught and shooed down the trail, but Hyun Ji told me to walk very slowly and when the others teachers had industriously trekked out of sight, we abruptly about-faced and "hiked" to the main road, where we hailed a taxi and ten minutes later we were ordering our coffees. Hyun Ji and Joo Mi both teach kindergarten and speak some English and, combined with my Korean, the help of a cell phone dictionary and a LOT of hand motions, we were able to have a nice conversation while we waited for the others to finish their hike. We were even able to have a basic English/Korean lesson, and I know have two napkins of scribbled notes that I need to study. (We also weren't the only teachers to skip out on the hike. On our way to catch a taxi to the restaurant, we ran into one of the 6th grade teachers, who had gone shopping and was waiting for another teacher to come pick her up. And two of the 4th grade teachers were half an hour late to dinner. *g*)

Not only did I score enough Vitamin C to keep me healthy through the summer and manage to avoid getting soaked (I ended up merely damp), now I have some friends my age to talk to at school!

Happy 어린이 날!

¡Very Belated Feliz Cinco de Mayo! Or, as it's known in Korea, 어린이 날. No, that doesn't mean May 5th. It means Children's Day, which was Tuesday. On Monday, I asked my students what they were doing for Children's Day. I got the expected roars of "CANDY!", "PRESENTS!" and "NO SCHOOL!", but one little boy told me, "I will receive the presents from my parents." I hope he made off like a bandit. <3 Children's Day is a national holiday in Korea, which meant I was free to spend it celebrating Cinco de Mayo.


Tomitillo, a new Mexican grill in Seoul, held a Cinco de Mayo festival. There was Mexican beer (something beside Hite and Cass, yes please), half price margaritas and ₩2,000 tacos! Plus, live music. Decent Mexican food is expensive here, so I was excited. I wasn't the only one. The celebrations lasted from noon to eight. I showed up at three and wound up in a very long, very slow line. It was almost all expats, which caused the Koreans passing by to stare at us with open bafflement. Luckily I met up with Marie, Greg and Robin, so I wasn't too bored while I waited in line for an hour and a half.


The food was, well, the food was okay. By the time I reached the front of the line, most of the food was gone. They ran out completely by five. I think the organizers were surprised by the turn out and the quantity of food people bought. I spoke to a manager who told me they had prepared 700 tacos that morning, which would have been enough if each person had only ordered one or two, but after months of very shelling out ₩30,000 for On the Border, I know everyone in my group was planning on ordering 16 tacos a piece. (Actually, Marie wanted 17 margaritas. Alas, they ran out of tequila before we got any and I we had to make do with Dos Equis and Negra Modelo.) I will definitely be going back when they're not swamped, especially since it's just down the street from Kyobo, one of the better English bookstores.

Sports Day

6-4 class girls running (well, jumping) during a Sports Day race.
Friday was Sports Day at my school. It was a big deal; the kids practiced their performances for weeks. Every Monday morning all the students would gather in front of the school to practice the calisthenics routine and my 4-4 class was canceled for all of April because their teacher scheduled Sports Day dance practice during class. *disgruntled look* On Thursday, I asked my fifth graders what day was it tomorrow. They chorused, "It's Friday!" Then I asked them what classes they had on Friday. They stared at me, perplexed, trying to figure out how to explain Sports Day. Finally, they settled on this: "Teacher, class one, PE. Class two, PE. Class three, PE. All class, PE!" I love making them explain things they don't know the words for and seeing what they come up with!

The day started a little awkwardly when I was late to the festivities. I got to school at 8:30 as normal and the vice principal told me to be in front of the school at 9:30. I went up to my office to get some work done and at 9:20 I heard the national anthem begin to play. I rushed downstairs, but by the time I got to the front entrance, the principal had already started a lengthy speech directly in front of the main doors. I considered sneaking out a side entrance and mingling with the crowd (I wasn't sure where I was suppose to stand), but since in Korea you don't wear your street shoes in school and my shoes were kept in a cubby directly behind where the principal was standing, I was stuck inside. I awkwardly loitered in the hall until the school nurse found me, realized I had no clue what was going on and took me under her wing for the day. She plied me with kimbap and coffee, and we hung out in the administration office so we could still watch the opening activities.


Sports Day started with a synchronized calisthenics routine. I had seen the students practice it before, but I didn't realize it was going to be set to music! It was like interpretive dance, or possible Thai Chi to music. Whatever it was, it was amazing. It was also a little eerie watching a thousand children who all already look a bit the same, what with the same hair color and skin tone and matching white outfits, all move in unison. It also raises the question of could we ever pull that off back home. I don't think so. Korea is a far more collective society than America.








There were your normal Sports Days events, such as tug o' war. The fourth graders played a version of tug o' war involving a tire with ropes attached. The vice principal (who is fluent in English) asked me what the event would be called in English. I badly wanted to tell him that if it involves a tire and a dirt field, it's called "wrastlin' wit a tire", but I restrained myself and told him tug-of-war. Then the sixth graders came out and played a more traditional game of tug o' war, and I had to explain that really, English doesn't have an official term for wrestling over a tire.


There were also less orthodox games, such as sticking third graders in hula hoops and making them run around. As someone who actually teaches third graders, I think this is BRILLIANT and would like to be able to use this in class. "Jinho, if you don't sit down, I will stick you in a hula hoop with a group of your peers and make you camper about traffic cones, so help me God!" (Number of words in that sentence my third graders know: 0)






There were also races. Each class (four per grade, except for sixth grade, which has five) had a race to determine who the fastest boy and girl was. The youngest children ran a short 60 m race, but the students got older, the races got longer. The sixth graders ran more of an obstacle course than a race. There was a tumbling section, hula hoops and hurtles. After the grade races, there was a school-wide relay race. The fastest eight students from each grade formed four teams (two boy teams, two girl teams) and ran a relay race to determine who the fastest students in the school were. There was also races for the parents, who were surprisingly intense. Several of the fathers wiped out completely and had to limp off the track.











In addition to the regular Sports Day events, each grade had a special performance. The kindergartners dressed up like the Korean flag and danced (while waving actual Korean flags) to the song "Dokdo is Our Land." Which, of course they did. Indoctrination starts early here. (Dokdo [English name: Liancourt Rocks] is a group of small islands in the East Sea that both Korea and Japan claim sovereignty over. Due to the bad blood between Korea and Japan, it's a BIG DAMN DEAL to the Koreans and they feel STRONGLY that Dokdo is Korean territory and they will not hesitate to tell you about it. Even my little fourth graders have asked me if I know that Dokdo belongs to Korea. I can guarantee you that those kindergartners have been taught about Dokdo and how it belongs to Korea.) The sixth graders performed a dance with colored flags. They were originally suppose to perform buchaechum (Korean fan dance), but the teachers decided to switch with the fifth graders and my sixth grade girls were PISSED about it. I can understand why; buchaechum is so much cooler than waving colored flags about.




The second grade and fifth grade's special performances were traditional Korean dances. The second graders (top photo) performed a dance to a traditional Korean songs that, I must admit, sounds a little like someone strangling a goat. (My office is next to the music room, so after seven months here I'm pretty well versed in traditional Korean music. Most of it I like, but oh, this song is horrible.) The fifth graders danced the buchaechum. The outfits they're wearing are called hanboks, and are the traditional Korean outfit.  The students wore their own hanboks; each outfit was different. I made an absolute fool of myself cooing over how pretty they were.




This is Korea, so no Sports Day would be complete without a Taekwondo demonstration. The best of the fourth and fifth graders gave a Taekwondo demonstration in the gym after lunch. It was set to music, including Michael Jackson's "Billie Jean" and Queen's "We are the Champions." The kids were really good. Maybe I should think twice about reprimanding them in class. *g* There was also a Chinese dance troupe that performed, hence the Chinese on the banner behind the kids.




I talked with my fifth graders a lot during Sports Day. I ended up watching the festivities next to where they were sitting, and the second I moved away from the nurse, I was instantly mobbed by students. They crowded around me, challenging me to games of 가위바위보 (kawi bawi bo = rock-scissors-paper!), stealing my camera and asking me as many questions as their limited English would allow them. Since we weren't in the classroom, I used my pidgin Korean, which sent them into paroxysms of delight. (Oh my God! Teacher said 안녕하세요 (hello). Aaaaaaaah!! Let's go tell all our friend and spend the next hour begging her to say it again. Aaaaaaah!!) Because my classes are so large, I rarely get a chance to interact with students one-on-one for an extended period of time, so this was a good chance to get to know some of my newer students.

Ansan Asia Town

I went to Ansan Asia Town twice this week. (When Tina first called it Ansan Asia Town, I laughed and said, "We're in Korea. It's all Asia town," but according to the internet, she was right and the area is called Ansan Asia Town. My bad, Tina.) The city I live in, Ansan (a suburb of south of Seoul), has the largest foreign population in Korea, mostly laborers from SE Asia or Southern Asia. At Ansan Station, they formed Ansan Asia Town, a several block district full of ethnic restaurants, supermarkets and 3923590 places to buy an international calling card. (For any K-bloggers reading this, it's like Itaewon without the jacked up prices, American military presence or the Quiznos.) To get there, take Line 4 south (towards Oido) to Ansan Station. Take Exit 1, cross under the street and have at it.

On Wednesday, Tina and I went to the Thai market in Ansan Asia Town. Tina is Thai and wanted to make curry. I like Thai food and am incapable of cooking for myself. It was a good match. We bought several heavy bags worth of Thai food and carted them back to Tina's apartment. I chopped the vegetables (see above: peas, mushrooms and eggplant) while Tina did the cooking. We made Thai stirfry and oh my Lord, was it ever spicy!


Tina forgot that Thai peppers were spicier than Korean peppers, and consequently almost killed me. It was one of those meals where I couldn't stop crying and drank an entire litre of water, but it was too tasty to stop eating. I went back to Asia Town yesterday night with Marie and Greg. We ended up eating at an Indonesian restaurant because none of us had every tried Indonesian food before. We're pretty sure the place was a front for a brothel and as the only two women in the dinning area, Marie and I got a lot of interested looks. The food was tasty, even if we only got what the waiter could translate. (Rice. And chicken. And some fried rice called nasi goreng.) We were able to also order some fried fritter type thing (the internet tells me they are called gorengan) by pointing to another diner's table. We ate the fritters with a sweet viscous soy sauce we called Soylasses. (It's thicker than soy sauce, thinner than molasses. It's sweet, it's soy, its soylasses!) After dinner we wandered around for a while and salivated at all the other restaurant choices: Indian, Thai, Vietnamese, Chinese, Bangladeshi, Sri Lankan, Nepalese, Filipino. I might even be able to find some Middle Eastern restaurants there. I want to do my own version of Man Bites World.