Bi bim bap!

Today I removed my outer sweater in my hot classroom only to be serenaded with a chorus of gasps and huls. “Are you hot teacher?” asked a student. Yes, I was once again breaking another of Korea’s strictly-adhered-to rules of what you do–and don’t do–during certain seaons. This one was the rule against wearing short sleeved shirts before May, regardless of the actual temperature. So as not to forget, I asked my students to put a mark on my arm to show what should remain covered until that blessed first of May.

I break my long blog silence! Why? To declare my undying crush on this man:

Yu Jae-Seok!

Yu Jae-Seok is a comedian and one of six stars of Muhan Dojeon (Neverending Challenge), a show which is on Korean televison ubiquitously. It’s six fully-grown men doing silly things, like dressing up as superheroes or doing army bootcamp excercises in the snow, or being a terrible rock band or trying to play soccer with famous soccer players. Paris Hilton has guested on the show. It’s ridiculous and Yu Jae-seok has stolen my heart.

He’s my Valentine!!!!!!

From CBC.ca:

International police are closing in on the subject of a worldwide, three-year manhunt for a suspected pedophile who they believe is a 32-year-old Canadian travelling in Thailand, Interpol said Tuesday.

News reports identified the man in an unscrambled picture released last week as Christopher Paul Neil, who was working as an English teacher in South Korea.

…

The news reports don’t specify, but this man was teaching right here in Gwangju. A friend of mine worked with him, drank beer with him, and basically knew him as none other than a regular guy. Creeeeeepy!

That’s what the schools here get for not doing background checks! They’re so concerned that teachers have a proper university diploma, but neglect the possiblity of a criminal past.

…whenever I feel moved to post, anyway. I’ve taken up laziness as my new life strategy.

I’ve settled back in Gwangju, but this time on the other side of the tracks, so to speak–the cleaner, newer side of the tracks. A Korean city’s version of the suburbs, but with clusters of giant apartment towers, the glare of neon lights and marauding children everywhere replacing the cookie-cutter houses, SUV-filled monster garages and dearth of pedestrians that make up Canadian suburbs.

That’s my Pungam-dong!

I not in one of the towers lurking the background; I live in a much smaller, 6-story structure in the middle of the picture. I’m surrounded by churches, which means I’m usually woken by heavenly singing on Sunday mornings. There’s a church right across from my apartment, and I have no window coverings in my kitchen, which means I have to be careful not to cook in my underwear lest I shock the faithful. It’s a drag! I could cook in my underwear all I wanted in my old place.

My blood test checked out: I don’t have hepatitis, and my liver seems to be functioning properly. So my Korean doctor just loaded me up with vitamin C IV drip. I’m in Canada now so I have an excuse for not posting for the next two months until I get back to Gwangju. I’ll be eating a lot of sharp cheddar on rye, going to rock shows, drinking Pilsner Old Style and teaching bad habits to my niece and nephew (such as the incredibly annoying whine used by young Korean women when they are displeased). Two months to get fed up with Calgary city planning, urban cowboys and my parents. I’ll be ready to go back East.

Happy Canada Day!

Last November, a Chinese docotor told me I had a cold uterus; this week, a chest x-ray has shown that I posess an unusually small heart. Blood test results tomorrow–can’t wait!

Or the next best thing. Saturday I joined a group of waygooks at the München Meister (Bavarian-themed bar run by a Korean who spent a decade working at a brewery in Deutschland). Said group came to the establishment armed with toy pellet guns. So when the one guy goes up to sing, not only does he have to work out the complex phrasing on “Do You Really Want To Hurt Me?”, but also shoot and dodge bullets. To augment the violence, an aggro Korean stumbles up, shouts something angry, and pushes over the mic stand. He must really hate Culture Club!

Korean women are crazy for make-up. My co-workers come to work under pancaked masks, usually a few degrees lighter than their natural skin shade. On women with lesser make-up application skills, this produces a clear line of demarcation where make-up ends and bare skin starts. The Korean language actually has a word to describe a person who wears no make-up: saengeol. This is applied to me regularly by my students, especially when I occasion to remove my glasses. “Rebecca-teacher is saengeol!” they enthuse. According to my co-workers, this term is not an insult, simply a statement of fact: it means clean or natural, so I suppose I can choose to take it as a compliment. At any rate, I am not about to tart myself up for a bunch of elementary-school students; I’ll leave that for Saturday night. Heh heh.

The island/city/country of Singapore dangles off the bottom of Malaysia, about 100km north of the equator. It was hot, but not unpleasantly so–there were no random street stenches like we have in Korea. It’s the cleanest city I’ve been in since Kyoto last October. Our hotel was located near the Little India district, where we ate, and ate, and ate…. During the day we shopped and passed out by our rooftop pool; at night we walked around Little India, incense and Hindi music wafting over the street. I picked up some VCDs and a Bollywood gossip magazine to better educate myself–Hrithik Roshan is my new number-one crush. Thursday night Cassie and I saw a sign advertising live music; as we waited for the elevator, the doors opened to let out a cloud of cigar smoke, from which emerged a distinguishedly soused-looking gentleman. Upstairs we found a club with live Hindi music and sari-clad women dancing on a low stage. One of them bore a resemblance to R. Crumb’s Devil Girl. We hadn’t been sitting long–me with a Tiger beer, Cassie with her Jack and Coke–before Cassie was approached by a tall turban-headed man who insisted on a dance. So Cassie did her best to dance Indian-style, but it was hard to compete with the attractive man doing high kicks beside her.

Friday night we went to the Night Safari, a zoo that is open only in the evening. It is designed to make visitors feel like they are walking freely in the world of the animals; there were no bars or cages, just subtler barriers like ditches to keep the lions and tigers from mauling us. We walked through the bat area, where we could see the silhouettes of the flying rodents hanging in the trees just inches away from our heads.

The Singapore Slings were overpriced and watered down. We resorted to beer from the 7-11 after this one. 

Anyone remember this ad campaign from the 80s? Apparently it took twenty years to make it to Singapore. I have McDonald’s to thank for introducing me to the music of Kurt Weil. For reals!

Requisite shot of the Merlion. Raaaaaarrrrr:

And that’s Singapore. Nice city. Don’t spit though or you’ll get fined. Come to Korea if you’re a spitter.

Took the red-eye back from Singapore to Incheon, then a four-hour bus to Gwangju, rolling into town at noon, at work by 2. Not a lot of sleep. I ate so much food in Little India that I still have a stomache ache.

Pictures up soon.

Chinese food in Canada tastes better than Chinese food in Korea.

Why?

Because Canadian Chinese food is made by Chinese people, and Korean Chinese food is made by Korean people. And they don’t do it right. They Koreanize it. They take away the best elements of Chinese food: the gooey grease and the sweet, sweet sugar. They replace it with kimchi. Their most popular “Chinese” food, tang su yuk, is fried pork pieces. It looks like ginger beef. It should be delicious. It is not. It tastes like deep-fried chalk.

Happy St. Patrick’s Day.

The New Year is upon me again! This weekend is Seollal - the lunar new year. We get a three-day weekend, which the Koreans will use to visit their grandparents in the small towns and the waygooks will use to get extra blitzed at the bar. As for me, I will be off with a friend to Jeonju, a reputedly lovely town with a historical old-style hanok (hut) village, where people still live. Jeonju is also the birthplace of bi bim bap. I’ll be in rice heaven!

…

I recently finished up a tome entitled, simply, Cannabis, a somewhat dry summing-up of the use and abuse (mostly at the hands of lawmakers rather than lawbreakers) of one of the world’s most widely growing, hardiest and useful plants. Korea is very strict on the drugs, and pot is very hard to come by; spend any time with foreigners in a social setting, and there inevitably rises some fretting and complaining over the lack of available doobie. Battling my inner devils, as is my lot in life, I’ve been thinking lately how nice it would be to have a legal, safe, hangover-free method of simply getting out of my head. Leaving behind my usual neurotic raging hermit tendencies for a little brain beach holiday. Sadly I’m stuck with the usual vices.

I was recently reviewing past-tense expressions with my high-level middle school class, common activities such as washed the windows and took a shower. Each expression was accompanied by a small cartoon illustration; the latter prompted one student to query, “Teacher! Why is there a curtain in the bathtub?” Which obligated me to explain that, unlike in Korea where the entire room becomes a de facto shower stall, western-style bathrooms are kept dry by a plastic curtain, thus preempting a need for special bathroom slippers to keep one’s socks from sogginess. The student’s curiosity was satisified.

Luke’s pocket-friend Mike entered my bathroom for the first time last month and wondered, “Where’s the shower?” I pointed to the shower head affixed above the sink. The entire floor and wall surface is tiled. It’s a real space saver.

Blimey! I missed Robbie Burns Day!

Not that I need an excuse to drink Scotch. Though I am running short on single malt. I can’t find any in this country. I need to plan another trip so I can stock up in the duty free.

I recently spent one class making peanut butter sandwiches with my students. They were supposed to be peanut butter and jelly sandwiches; the trouble was, the Korean teacher who went supply shopping at the local Big Mart couldn’t find jelly. I guess she overlooked the good half-a-meter of shelf space which I personally know to be dedicated to jam. Today we made spaghetti. The recipe sheet instructed the students to, after boiling and rinsing the noodles, let the wetness go away. Also to cut the vegetables into eatable pieces. And now I’m hungry.

After 6+ months in Gwangju, I finally made it to one of the ubiquitous “jazz bars” that light up the night from where they sit squished between barbeque restaurants and nori-bangs. When I first came here, I thought that Koreans had a greater than usual appreciation for jazz; a Korean later explained that these bars hire attractive female staff and are frequented almost solely by men. They don’t play jazz music. I’ve always wanted to go to one, but with their reputation and light-impenetrable glass fronts they seemed a bit seedy for this waygook to visit alone, and, until now, none of my friends wanted to accompany me. Luckily, Yukon Luke and Mike are in town to be my sidekicks in cultural exploration. We walked half a block from my apartment to “Boston” jazz bar. The interior was dim and swanked out with the Koreans’ best approximation of what a glamorous American-style drinking hole should look like: blue lights running horizontally along the bar, black tiled floor, swivel stools and shelves lined with the generic blended scotch that is the only kind one can buy in Korea. It felt like being in a fish aquarium. We sat and were immediately presented with a pretty young Korean woman and a menu. The menu was impressive: cocktails, whisky, rum, cognac, beer. But upon requesting a rum and coke, we were informed that all drinks-except exorbitantly-priced bottles of whisky and beer-were unavailable. So we made do with Coronas and Heinekens. Within five minutes of sitting, we were entertained with the spectacle of a short Korean man toppling from his tall stool, bringing down the stool with him. Our lady behind the bar was a 22-year-old university student majoring in ceramics. She was on school break, and so was working seven nights a week, 7pm to 2am, at the jazz bar. Her job, it seemed, was to pour drinks and flirt with middle aged Koreans, so I imagine a trio of young Canadians might have been something out of the ordinary. Her English was pretty good, enough for us to eke out some conversation. She was impressed with Mike’s big eyes and small face (to Koreans, all whiteys have big eyes and small faces). Luke asked her his usual litany of ridonculous questions, to which she giggled and made herself cute. We got complimentary bar snacks of dried sardines, peanuts and something that tasted like Teddy Grahams. It was pleasant. I’d go back, but it’s cheaper to buy beer from the Mini-stop. And I have my own stash of single malt bought from airport duty frees.

Harpy New Year’s all. Hope you had someone to love at midnight, even if that someone was yourself.

Lucky me - I get to do it all over again come February’s Lunar New Year! A-saaaa.

I didn’t have any eggnog this Christmas!!

I did eat some fried perogies though. And “stuffed” eggs. No sour cream to be found in Gwangju, sadly.

I’d meant to do an extensive and witty recap of my trip to Beijing in November, but I unfortunately got caught up in the sickness and laziness of the season. So scroll down a ways for pics, but no humourous quips about Mao’s corpse, hard bargaining for fake Rolexes, crazy Beijing Opera, or the miserable weather.