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Published: February 9th 2008
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Partying in Seoul
we bought cowboy hats from some random dude at the bar! I'm back from camp, or prison as we often referred to it!
We were stuck literally in the middle of nowhere. (by we I mean me and the other 2 teachers....it was just me and 2 guys) there was a tiny town about 10 minutes away with some korean restaurants and a pizza place. otherwise the closest city was over an hour away. On my one day off I went to the "big city" other than that I think I left the camp 3 times in the 3 weeks i was there. And by camp, I mean 2 buildings and a soccer field. The food there was so horrible even the koreans hated it. I ordered pizza like every 3 days! but their idea of pizza is dough, cheese and a while bunch of shit on top like corn, olives, mushrooms, onions, peppers and meat. when i asked for only cheese the pizza lady argued with me saying its not gonna be delicious (that's their favourite word). except that this all went down in korean so it took a while for pizza lady to understand that I actually liked it without weird toppings. in the end she snuck in some onions
Karaoke night
their favourite thing to do here! this is me and the 2 other teachers and we were both happy! the directors actually felt kinda bad that we were gonna die of starvation so they bought meat and BBQed for the staff a couple times. Not a huge change from the usual camp food but at least the meat was good. they just don't do dairy here....there's no variety in the food at all. One night they actually took us out for dinner and then of course to the Noray Bong....Karaoke. Its still weird to me that a group of adults would choose to spend their night in a small room together singing, while drunk of course. But then again there are lots of things about this culture I'll never understand!
There were 4 korean teachers assistants (without one in my class my kids didn't understand a word i said) so I learnt a bit about the korean culture from them. Here's what i found out:
1) nothing they do in korea makes any sense...actually i think i leant that last year but it was confirmed at camp! they are the most unproductive people and are so disorganized. its for this reason that they have to work 100 hours a week. they don't
me and my students
don't the look happy?!! actually get anything done while they are working but if they're physically at work all day then they at least feel like they're working. in high school, they stay at school until 1 am. they have a joke that if they get 4 hours of sleep a night they won't get into college because it means they sleep too much and don't study enough. Its probably also why they have the highest suicide rate in the world (k i have no idea if that's true but their suicide rate is REALLY high).
2) the way they calculate their age is completely fucked up. if they're 25, they'll say they're 27. the drinking age is 20, so really 18. for some reason, everyone turns a year older on jan 1st. no matter when their bday is. and they start at year 1 when they're born. so if theyre born dec 21, then jan 1st they turn 2 even though they are only a week old! they celebrate on their actual bday but just for fun not cuz they turn a year older on that day!!
3) one night they BBQed pork and all the kids were eating it from
the grill with their chopsticks. but they weren't just eating, apparently its a really big thing here to feed everyone else. they have no problems with sharing or eating from each other....kids kept coming up to me with a big piece of meat at the end of their chopsticks and shoving it into my mouth. at one point i didn't want it and the girl wouldn't take no for an answer, so i ran away and she chased me with the pork!!!
4) peer pressure is huge here. they have no problem making you feel really guilty if you don't do what they want you to do! like with drinking, the bosses at the camp took us out for dinner one night for sam-gip-sal. its basically cooking pork or beef on a burner in front of you, its so hard to stay kosher here!!!! but i digress....every time one of them wanted to take a shot they filled up everyone's glass. like they don't feel like an alcoholic if were all getting wasted or something. but i was getting pretty drunk and didn't wanna drink anymore. they make it impossible to say no. also not a good place for
an alcoholic!
oh and when someone older hands you something its disrespectful to accept it with one hand you have to use two....weird eh? try remembering that when you're drunk!
5) I learnt so many random words but still can't put together a sentence!! i mostly learnt words from my kids so i know how to say pencil and desk! guess i won't be getting that translator job.
6) the old women that cook the food at camp are so concerned about my eating cuz they want me to have a good experience in korea. one old woman came up to me at every meal for the first week and blabbed in korean about how i should try the food and people explained to her that i didn't like it so she offered to cook me something else! she told me that the bread i was eating at every meal would make me fat, or at least that's what it seemed like she was saying through her hand gestures!!! that must be what my students feel like in class...they don't really know what's going on but take guesses based on what i do with my hands!
7) its not normal for a guy and girl to be friends and hang out alone, without a group of people. but at camp it was just me and 2 guy teachers. so whenever i hung out with one of them alone the kids thought it meant we were dating. so there were rumours going around. it didn't help that they barged into my room without knocking while we were having sex....haha no just kdiding we were watching a movie on my ipod and lying close together cuz the screen's only 2 inches.
so i'm not allowed to hang out alone with a guy but they can walk into my room without knocking! they have NO sense of personal space here. it makes me feel like we're obssessed with it!
do you feel like you know enough about korea yet??!!
After camp, I came back to Seoul to hang out with Chris. Its now the lunar new year so to celebrate the holiday, we went with some of the other teachers at his school to a ski hill an hour away. So I got to snowboard and feel like i'm not missing out on my favorite winter activity
for a few days! The mountain was pretty tiny for montreal standards with only a couple decent runs but the weather was great and Chris and I had fun videoing each other board through the human obstacle course that was the ski hill. There were so many people, i felt like i went human bowling. and almost everyone was a beginner boarder. I saw at least 10 different people crash into each other! oh and the best is the way they ride the chair lift. they take off they board and hold it and when its time to get off they run so the chair wont scoop them up again!!! the rebel that I am decided not to partake in this (mostly cuz I was scared of dropping my board on someone skiing beneath me) and I decided to keep my board on! Luckily none of us got hurt and we might have even gotten a little tanned!
I was gonna stay in seoul a little longer and work some more. but I thought y spend my time working in a cold city when I can spend it relaxing and exploring new things in a tropical climate?!! I dare
Cleaning off my board
we found it so funny that they do this here. you just blow air onto your board to get all the snow off, its actually a really good idea. one of the few at this crowded hill with no organization and huge lines! you to disagree with that??!! So I'm probably headed off to Thailand next. Not quite sure of anything else at the moment and I'm loving it that way! I can't wait to see where I end up and I'll keep you informed along the way.
xoxo
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Mom
non-member comment
kosher?????
You really are going to have to go to the mikvah to clean up your insides or something after all that unkosher stuff. You are just used to our culture which is sort of strange sometimes also. At least you will want to come home, I hope. Enjoy Thailand and come home soon. Love Mom