So I think we have had 3 weeks of Korean strangeness so far. The orientation was interesting and frantic from the minute we arrived at the airport in Incheon we were rushed through the EPIK program intake thing, and bundled out of the terminal building at 11PM into an atmosphere that didnt really resemble the Wellington summer air. It was boneass skifield nasty cold, but it took a bit of time to realise this as the air seeped through the layers of jackets that I'd been wearing on the plane because of excess baggage requirements and a strange exit from Wellington. Maybe it was too early for the airport people there. "Go over there, unpack one bag, put all the excess in the other, that way you'll only have to pay one lot of 75 dollar charges." "Thanks" did that. Back in line. "Your bag is too heavy"
"Yes. Thank you. We are going to pay the excess."
"What's 58 minus 23?"
"I don't know" (also too early for me - 4.30am).
"Um... " fucking around with a calculator "Your bag is too heavy".
"Yes we know. We are going to pay the excess."
"oh... ok... um..." ticket printer stops working "um... er..." fucking around with ticket printer... "um... " paper in the wrong way, repeat process, printer works finally. Take bag to heavy luggage payment counter "Ok that'll be 50 dollars"
"um... ok." Take bag to place where heavy bags get loaded onto the luggage escalator
"Your bag is too heavy."
"Yes... we know... thats why we're here... this is a recipt from the excess baggage counter."
"Oh. ok... um..." You'd think that people would get to know their job after doing the same thing day in day out for who knows how long.
Gotta love NZ. Quaint isnt quite the word, retarded is too strong... somewhere in between would be better.
So we were rushed off in the night in the direction of I still dont know where as the nuclear powered neon of Incheon flashed by us, also flashing past us was a 40-50 metre high purple sequined knob statue. Sleep deprived? Culture shocked? No... I wasnt the only one who saw it. An exchange of bemused glances around a few people on the bus. Was that a...? Yes i think it was... Why? I think "Why?" is the most relevant of the 5Ws and an H in the Korean context. I'm guessing that we'll never know.
505 slightly worried soon to be English teachers completed our orientation. No washouts as far as I could tell, some near misses when 10% of the South Africans in the group failed the drug test because of high levels of morphene. They reckoned it was flu medication thats legal there but nowhere else in the world... I think the governments putting it in their water to calm them all down.
I think almost without fault the Korean people who we've met have been amazingly helpful, friendly and curious. They don't have the same dislike of tourists that you can see elsewhere in Asia, i guess because there are no tourists here. After a night of skipped dinner, we hit the couple toast (spam cheese and egg toasties) then the soju, and crashed a karaoke room that someone else had paid for. After they started chanting USA USA, the people from the rest of Englands colonies decided it was time to leave, and joined the Korean students in their room for a round of Creedence and Sk8r boi. Memories of Big Lebowski meets Generation Kill in some strange Korean alternate reality. They kicked us out of their room after we had entertained them with two songs... ok now pay or go. I love that there is a line here that you dont really cross.
We were split into groups for our orientation, ours somehow being the best (subjective I guess) and most patriotic despite my predisposition for a lack of participation, and we did a massive haka for our farewell peformance led by our invaluable kiwi asset James, which easily made up for the disappointing sad, and downright offensive effort of another group who looked more like wet fish, and had some kind of applause over the PA rather than the actual chant. The girls in our group performed the K-pop dance to a Korean song called "Sorry Sorry", which has been useful on several occasions, most recently at a reunification parade that a whole group of us waygooks (foreigners) were drawn into when we first ventured into Gumi town on our day off. They wouldnt let us leave, and got my thumb print in exchange for a free cup of coffee (universal currency), and filmed an interview with our 'team leader' Jessica who participates in everything, allowing others of us to thankfully get away with the bare minimum. Yusss! So interesting fact(?) waygook is korean for foreigner, and is quite possibly the reason why american soldiers in the vietnam (or american, depending again on subjectivity) war called the VC, and vietnamese in general, gooks. Kinda illustrates the lack of understanding that was pretty instrumental in the losing of that particular fight.
So we are in a town called Gumi, in a province that I still haven't figured out how to pronounce, it's just above Daegu close to the South East coast, on the northern boundary of the Busan pocket, if anyone is at all familiar with Korean War history. It's a modest size (400,000 people) and accounts for 10% of Koreas flatscreen production, which in turn accounts for the 10% of the tap water here that is composed entirely of lead. Well maybe thats not the flatscreens fault, more likely some other heavy industry, I hear Korea's batterys are pretty good. But despite the lead, the plants grow, and when spring comes I think this place will actually be pretty nice. It's a bit bleak now.
Some strange stuff... it's hard to know where to start. The public parks all have gym equipment installed in them, but absolutely noone uses it. We have scouted out a few remarkably good cafes, the best being 'Cafe Hong Coffee and Book' best coffee and the best name. They do a range of single origins, and are the only people so far that have been able to extract a shortie that I enjoyed. The menu is all in Korean, so its hard to get food there. We pointed at the menu and ordered the first two foods on it, and out came half a loaf of bread, unsliced, toasted, with butter melted into it... with a side of sweet whipped cream. Actually quite good. Next out was a sweet banana toastie with something like cheese but sweet in the middle. Not so good. It's next to impossible to buy bread here thats not sweetened. I dont know why. Also, all cheese is single serve plastic wrapped american style. An absolute nightmare considering my love of cheese and hatred of excess packaging. I have not yet purchased any cheese. They have a good recycling program though, a necessity I guess, with separate bags which you have to buy for food waste and general waste, and any bag with recycling in it will be collected for free. Which is good, but less packaging to begin with would be a more logical way around the problem. Also it is somehow cheaper to buy takeaway coffee than to drink from porcelain. Which makes me want to actually kill.
We departed on the weekend for a roadtrip to Busan to meet up with Mel and some other Incheon people. The train ticket buying experience was unbelievably easy compared to the push shove, lack of understanding, nothing written in English of Vietnam, the lack of trains in Cambodia, the deliberate bureaucratic misunderstanding of Thailand, and the we-dont-stop-at-the-border-so-fuck-you-if-you-want-an-exit-stamp-go-to-your-consulate-and-buy-one bullshit of Malaysia and Singapore. Actually come to think of it, getting a train ticket can sometimes be as hard as a border crossing. Not here though. They have 3 types of trains. Fast, slow, and slow standing up. Slow was about 30 times better than the standard commute to Wellington, and about as many times faster, so I cant wait to travel on the KTX, Korea's bullet trains, which travel god knows how bonesplittingly fast, 300 kmph or some such gorbage. We negotiated the subway out to the beach with as much ease, and hung out on the beach eating seafood on a stick and drinking absolutely rubbish local beer until our Mel and her mates showed up. From there it was a downward spiral of soju, golf (they have golf driving ranges above some carparks with big nets, and as many balls as you can smash in 70 minutes), dice, cards, whiskey, raw fish, taxis, blurred lights, some lady trying to sell me fireworks but I misunderstood, and tried to light the one she was holding, cause I thought she wanted to play. Actually kinda felt like a spaced out recollection of hammersmashing coconuts on the hood of my fireapple red convertable, feverishly muttering into my tape recorder something about "THIS IS THE PROPERTY OF THE WORLD BANK! THAT MONEY GOES TO ITALY." Anyway, it wasnt so good.
So my after school drinks last night were interesting, as i again had to revisit the raw fish and soju phenomenon, which is something of a big deal here, but I left before the dude who was standing up yelling in Korean waving fistfulls of yellow bills could drag us all into a karaoke room to have his evil way with the microphone. We also did not have to kill our own food, which we came very close to having to do in Busan. When we walked into the restaurant, Lissa and Iassumed that it was a petshop because of the large tanks filled with every available fish. The lady who we selected our dinner from seemed to like us though, as she threw in a couple of sea penises on the house. Thanks.
Our schools are interesting. Mine is old, not derelict, but definately run down in the old part of town coordinates 36.139967,128.414544 for anyone who knows how to use doogleearth. I have a heater in my office that runs on come kinda clear oil stuff, maybe paraffin. It starts with a click click, buzzzz BANG, and the exhaust vents directly into the room, so we have to work with the window open. I feel sorry for the girl who sits next to the window but far away from the heater. I'm a good distance between the two. Considering the oldness of the school, we have some pretty cool technology, computer in every class room hooked up to a massive flatscreen television, but the computer in my main room is clogged to the gunnels with spyware, so it crashes every time I try to load my prezi presentation, and i have to revert to the black board. Seems like a version of the future where we have tech as shit, but no natural resources left to maintain it, so we're living in caves. At least i know the rules. Don't live in the fancy cave, live ACROSS from the fancy cave, so at least you have a good view. Thanks Karl. Words of wisdom. Another pop culture word-of-advice, always be nice to the lunch lady. My school cafeteria ladys all look like little pink oompa loompas with their full body pink butchers aprons, gumboots, and white hats. All thats missing is the green hair. But if you say hello and thanks and have a good day to them (they dont speak english, so i guess i could ask them why is there a frog in my bidet and they'd smile and bow) they give you extra strawberries! Yus, it works! Thanks green wing.
Lissa's school is like 'The Jetson's'. She has hoverkids that play football on astroturf with a view of the mountains, and a supply room thats shrinkwrap-new and is bigger than my class room. I bet she even has a remote for her television damnit. I win though, because googlearth says that she lives in a pretty big hole in the ground. (36.140223,128.426195) its only a ten minute walk though, so when she gets some cred, im fully cafeteria crashing!
So thats about it, I'll update when I can be bothered, photos soon to be on facebook. Yay.
Aux
