I Apologize

Sorry for the lack of updates. I'm really terrible with this thing. I honestly meant to update it tonight with a story. However, at 7 pm, I got a call from a friend inviting me out to eat hwe, (raw fish, which I used to call "sashimi," but I learned tonight that sashimi is the Japanese name and we don't care much for Japan here), and if there's one thing I've learned while here, it's to not say "no" because you'll miss out on something fun. Anyhoo, here was my plan for tonight:

Eat dinner
Read
Study Korean
Study Spanish
Update blog with a story

I did a tiny bit of reading before I got the call (I'm reading a book about Korea by a British traveler that traveled here 20 years ago. It's very interesting and gives a lot of information on contemporary history that I and every foreigner I've met is completely ignorant of. It's really helped me understand and respect the people here a lot more and is definitely something I'll try to do when I travel next year. (Thanks for the book, ma and pa)), I ate dinner with friends and now I'm about to study Spanish. So three out of five isn't too bad. Being flexible provides for many great experiences, maybe too many since I don't have the time nor energy to update this thing with all of them, so I'm sorry. I've really learned that what I love about being in a different place is the people. Going and sightseeing tourist attractions with others can be fun, and boring on your own, but having a normal evening with a good group of local people can't be beat. Expect the unexpected.

Music

Here's another thing I've been meaning to post. I've still been listening to quite a bit of music, even though I'm in a country where terrible pop songs reign supreme on the radio and with my naive middle school students. I remember that a lot of you liked music as well, so I thought I would suggest some good albums that I've heard from this year:

Girl Talk - Feed the Animals
This is like the Where's Waldo of music. He takes awful rap and pop and combines them with old instrumentals that match the vocal melodies well to make something completely new and really interesting. I think you can download this one for free and give a donation if you like it.

Hot Chip - Made in the Darkness
Good dance music.

Wolf Parade - At Mount Zoomer
One of my favorite bands. This is different from their first album, but still good.

Vampire Weekend - Vampire Weekend
Afrobeat rock.

Thao Nguyen and the Get Down Stay Down - We Brave Bee Stings and All
Really catchy laid back pop/rock.

Bon Iver - For Emma, Forever
Cut Copy - In Ghost Colours
Fleet Foxes - Ragged Wood/Fleet Foxes
Man Man - Rabbit Habits
Ratatat - LP3
Santagold - Santagold
The Hold Steady - Stay Positive
The Roots - Rising Down
M83 - Saturdays = Youth
Gnarles Barkely - The Odd Couple
Islands - Arm's Way
The Black Keys - Attack and Release

And here's some good stuff from last year:
Soundsystem - Sound of Silver
The National - Boxer
M.I.A. - Kala
Of Montreal - Hissing Fauna, Are you the Destroyer
The Arcade Fire - Neon Bible
!!! - Myth Takes
Andrew Bird - Armchair Apocrypha
Radiohead - In Rainbows
Battles - Mirrored
Spoon - Ga Ga Ga Ga Ga
The Twilight Sad - Fourteen Autumns & Fifteen Winters
Pinback - Autumn of the Seraphs
Daft Punk - Alive 2007
Menomena - Friend and Foe
Sunset Rubdown - Random Spirit Lover
Beirut - The Flying Club Cup
White Rabbits - Fort Nightly
Justice - Cross
Panda Bear - Person Pitch
Deerhoof - Friend Opportunity
The Good, the Bad & the Queen - The Good, the Bad & the Queen
Feist - The Reminder
Animal Collective - Strawberry Jam
Amy Winehouse - Back to Black
Lupe Fiasco - The Cool

It's Noon on a Saturday

I woke up at 5:30 AM and played soccer like I usually do. I joined a morning soccer club a couple of months ago and they are gooooooood. Before, I was going to the local soccer field every evening and practicing my ball handling skills. Sometimes, I would get to play, such as the time with the LG engineers that make the cell phone display screens and HDTVs, or the time with the subway drivers, but mostly I would just practice my dribbling on the sidelines while some official game or practice went on. A few times, I got to play with the 40+ year old team for the county when they scrimmaged and didn't have enough people. I could usually hold my own, but they were good. A couple of months ago they were scrimmaging and I got to play in the last 20 minutes. I did OK and nutmegged a guy near the goal, but the sweeper got the ball and then nutmegged me. After the game, the sweeper invited me to come and play soccer in the morning with his group. I've been going nearly every morning before school, from 6 to 7 AM.

Soccer is so much fun to play when the people you play with are good. It can be a very boring game when the players lack the necessary skills to trap and pass the ball, because the ball just ends up going around the field without any thought like a six year old playing pinball. They get the ball and they look down and kick it as hard as they can. However, this is far from the case with the morning crew I get to play with. These guys are good. They make the game look like an art. Each game is a masterpiece of one touch passing. I went to the World Cup qualifiying game between South Korea and North Korea, and the technical skill of the players then and of the players I play with seems quite marginal. A guy I was guarding a couple of weeks ago took a shot from 35 yards out and struck the ball with no spin and it went straight into the upper left-hand corner of the goal. Another guy hit a volley from 25 yards out with his left foot and powered it into the goal. Later, he made a goal from the halfway line when he noticed the keeper was off his line. I went to a picnic at one of their workplaces and the cupboard was so full of their soccer trophies that they had to put them out on the counter. The point is, they're very good, and it makes the game incredibly fun and challenging.

They're as nice as they are skilled as well. Today we played for a couple of hours, and then drove to the nearby town and had cow intestine soup for breakfast. Yum. This was the second time I've eaten it and it didn't seem so gross or weird. The first time it felt really weird, but now I knew what to expect. Of course, as with every Korean meal, we drank soju, the Korean hard liquor, and macoli, a rice wine. After our delicious breakfast we came back to our town and went to a convenience store and bought some more alcohol. There was a traveling market going on so we bought some ginormous prawns and clams and cooked them on a portable gas grill outside the convenience store, and ate seafood and canned fruit and drank for the next couple of hours. It's now noon, and the only thing that could make the day better was if the beautiful Angie was with me.

Why did the chicken cross the road?

MAJOR UPDATE!

Today, as I was leaving the school to go home, I saw a chicken running around inside our parking lot area. This hasn't been the first time I've seen the chicken there, but it still made me really happy to see it, and I'm not exactly sure why. It made me think of all of my old schools and how this is something that would have never happened to me at those places. I came here to experience something new, and I suppose I got it.

My town is a bit atypical. My other teaching friends have probably never seen a chicken at their school unless it was on the lunch tray. Sometimes I feel like I'm living in a DeLorean and going through a half dozen time periods each day. I'll see farmers cultivating crops by hand right next to our school. Old people will stop and just stare at me like I'm some sort of 1950s minority lost in a white neighborhood. Apartments rise as high as the Seattle downtown buildings. People on the subway watch TV on their telephones. I'm not sure what to make of it, but I guess don't need to.

Year of the Rat

My loyal reader recently asked me some questions about Koreans and their knowledge of US politics. This was an excellent question and quite relevant to some of my experiences here. I've been most fortunate to be in Korea during their own big election year. This was good because the public schools are used as voting centers and therefore school is canceled and I get a day to recover from replying to my daily 4,238 "hellos". I've experienced both a presidential election, which is held every five years, and a parliamentary election, which aren't very often either.

So what is unique and exciting about a Korean presidential election? I won't be able to delve too in depth (since I can't speak Korean unless it is something about food), but I saw a lot of interesting things so I can talk about that. One of the first things I noticed were all the big pictures of the candidates that didn't have their names next to them, but rather numbers. There were 12 candidates for the presidential election, and each one had a number. My friend Jeff brought up a good point; is there a problem with people voting for their favorite number? Does lucky number seven win more often than the other candidates? I asked my wise co-teacher about this and she didn't think it was a problem, but she did tell me that seven is considered a lucky number here and four is an unlucky number because the word for four in Chinese also means death. A lot of places don't have fourth floors just like we don't have thirteenth floors at some places in the United States. Superstition, another (irrational?) iron clad bond we share as humans.

Even more impressive than the number of candidates, is the promotion they do here. Posting a sign in a yard for who you support is the lazy American way, not the Korean way. So what do you instead? You dance.

Each candidate had their own theme song and dance that the supporters would do. I liked number six's music and dance the best and would have voted for him.

Can't dance? That's OK. You can drive a truck around that has a big video screen and speakers and play campaign ads for everyone. Forget about TV ads, the only way you'll see those is if you're watching a TV. This ensures that everyone hears your election jingle because you get to drive around and wake me up on my weekend mornings.

I never did see any TV campaign ads because I don't watch TV here. However, I found some of the ones made by supporters on the internet and they're much better than ones in the US.

I would have voted for this even before I knew that he could fly in a robot space suit. One of his workers gave me his business card which makes us friends, at least that's what I assume since all of my other friends have given me their business cards.

I found a TV ad for the eventual winner of the presidential election here. It is very sad, mainly because this poor candidate doesn't have a robot space suit.

My co-teacher didn't like him because she claimed he has shifty eyes like a rat or an evil villain or an evil rat villain. A whole lot of other people don't like him either. I was with my friend Hyung Kyung in Seoul about a month ago and a guy stopped us to talk to me about the new president's plan for a grand canal. The waterway of wonder would stretch from the northwest part of the country down to the southeast. I didn't have a problem with it, but the guy, whose name was "Universe," was very upset with this idea. He thought it was a bad idea since Korea is a peninsula. I kind of like islands, but Universe was very worried about the thought of Korea becoming one. After he left us alone, my friend commented on how it was odd that a Korean person would come and talk politics with me. I told him that I was used to it from Seattle with all of the activists around UW. Even so, Hyung Kyung pointed out how I am not a citizen of Korea and I therefore have no political power to make a change even if I did have a strong opinion about something.

I read a few weeks ago that the grand canal project has been abandoned. Universe won the battle, but the war continues for him and his friends. Arms have been taken up against a new deal that would allow US beef to be imported into the country once again. I had forgotten, but a few cows in the US were discovered to have mad cow disease a few years ago, and after that, US beef was banned in many countries throughout the world. Since then, I believe just about everywhere but Korea has allowed US beef back into their countries. A news program ran a special about US beef and mad cow disease after the new President signed an import agreement, and now it's caused quite a bit of hysteria. I thought it was really weird since no one in the US thinks twice about mad cow disease when they buy meat, and I think only three US citizens have ever died of the disease. However, my friend Ho Gun brought up a good point. He reminded me that Korean people eat much different cuts of meat than Americans. The spine of the cow and pig are often used in stews, and there is some evidence that I haven't bothered looking into too deeply, that claims the brain and spinal tissue are what transmits the disease between organisms. So there could be some danger in it. I also remain willfully ignorant of the practices of the US beef industry; my tongue trumps my brain for one of my favorite foods. However, I'm not going to go out to one of the candlelight protests that are becoming the style of the time for today's teenagers here. There's been a lot of misinformation spread about mad cow disease as well like how it spreads and that Koreans are genetically more susceptible to it. The Korean beef industry has a pretty good hold of the market, and bringing in American beef would definitely lower prices. I have no evidence of any relation between these these ideas, but generally when political disputes are going on, money isn't too far out of the way.

I find it interesting that it's only been a few months since the President, Lee Myung-bak, (or "2 Mega" as my co-teacher calls him since "Lee" means "2" and MB is "megabyte" in computer geek language) was elected. However, his approval rating is already at levels that rival our commander-in-chief back home. All I can think is wow, there might be people out there who do just as bad or maybe a worse job of researching and considering their president than Americans did before going out and voting last time. People were happy and felt they were getting what they wanted for at least a couple years after Bush was reelected. I asked my wise co-teacher what she thought of Koreans being so upset with 2 Mega after they had so recently decided on electing him as their leader. Her response: "I was right. I told them so." I agree, being right can be so difficult sometimes.

CT phone home

I was able to get by just fine without a cellular telephone during my first couple of months here. However, my co-teacher was insistent that I have one. Perhaps she was tired of trying to meet me at places where I would inevitably become lost, or maybe the strings of her heart were pulled a bit too taut after seeing the disgusted reactions from the other teachers, whenever they asked for my non-existent phone number. Whether it was out of pity, annoyance, or kindness, I'm grateful that my co-teacher helped me buy a phone.

In Korea, everyone has a cell phone. Nearly all of my students have them, and a large number of little elementary students have them too. I know this, because whenever they see me on the street, they pull out their phones and call their friends to report a Chris sighting. I'm pretty sure that their is some sort of tracking network going on for my whereabouts at all times.

So where do these young paparazzi get their phones? They are born with them. The phone is usually attached to the umbilical cord, but there have been some cases of it already being in the baby's hands when it enters this strange new world. This means that getting a phone can be a problem for a foreigner. My Canadian friend, Carl, had problems with stores closing early whenever he would walk in, or wanting ridiculously high-priced deposits. I was fortunate that my co-teacher knew how to find a phone shop and was able to haggle for me. I told her that I already had a phone and that it worked perfectly well for calling people back home and cracking open pine nuts here. She didn't agree and helped me get a new phone for $30 (they were out of the free models).


That's my new phone. I got the most basic one I could, but it can still do more than your phone can (if I knew how to work the thing, that is). I can listen to music on it, take pictures, use the internet, and I can even buy an extra antenna for it and watch TV on it. I see people on subway cars doing this every once in a while and it makes me feel like I've traveled into the future, and I mean more than the 16 hours from the change in time zones.

One of the students also gave me a little brown dangly ornament for my phone for Christmas. She told me that brown is a man color, and since I am a man, she got me a brown colored ornament. The powers of logical deduction are well alive in Korea. I'm thankful she got it for me. It's required by law that all residents must have an ornament on their phone. Being the upstanding citizen that I am, I plan on getting as many of these as possible. Like always, I'll be sure to keep you up to date on how that story unfolds.

I did make a good American half-hearted attempt at trying to learn how to use my phone. It came with a 121 page instruction book, that may have been in Korean, but it also had plenty of pictures for me to figure out the meaning.

For example, on this page I learned the valuable lesson of not putting my phone in the microwave. This was a close call as I was about to prepare my mushroom phone casserole in the microwave. Dogs shouldn't be using your cell phone either. The civilized dogs here all have their own special little clothes that they wear and I'm sure that they have their own dog phones as well.

Like little dogs, babies shouldn't use your phone either. While they are born with their own phones, they aren't allowed to use them until they're older because of the extravagant bills they rack up from their baby talk. One should also refrain from hammering their phone in order to fix it. It's very tempting, which makes me glad that I don't own a hammer.

From the first warning, you can see that you shouldn't look directly at your Medusa phone. I was dialing a whole lot of wrong numbers at first, but then I bought a nice pocket mirror from a friendly vendor on a subway car. The second picture is common sense, don't put your phone in a little box, but the other pictures were very helpful. Apparently, blowing up your phone with a bomb is just as bad as putting it in a microwave. In the last picture, if your phone has gone to hell, then don't use the skull spray on it. That just won't do.

Definitely, don't let your cell phone fly away. Don't let it wag its tail and become too spoiled neither. You must be fair and firm with it. Also, don't let it do art. It may seem creative, but it's not Jackson Pollock nor Michaelangelo, and it's just going to waste your nice materials.

As you can see, having a cell phone can be a big responsibility. I asked the other teachers about all of these warnings and they told me that it was for liability reasons. Besides the benefit of being able to get in touch with people through means other than random chance, I've learned that a lack of common sense isn't just a unique American trait, but that perhaps it is universal. Doing dumb things is something that links us as humans together and separates us from the animals (they usually are eaten if they make poor choices and are thus naturally selected against). We are fallible as humans and not as separate cultural entities, and we should forge our world bond on this principle and embracxe it.

How are you?

I...AM...FINE...THANK YOU...AND...YOU?

That's the response that nearly every single student struggles to get out when I ask the above question.

It's also how I'm doing as well. It's been a long time since I last updated this, so I'll try to write something this weekend.