Interlude

We just got back from Beijing on Monday and it was a refreshing and fascinating escape from the sanctuary that has become Korea. I feel completely comfortable and at home in this country now, but it certainly is a nice thing to travel elsewhere for a while.

Because it will take me a while to organise the Beijing photos into a coherent narrative, I thought it timely to put up photos for this mini-post. These are from the weekend before we went to China, when we went out in Hwamyeong for dinner and drinks. I don't work for the Hwamyeong branch but Heather does, so sometimes I get to tag along and absorb more than my fair share of their merriment. In this photo are some of the Hwamyeong staff, slightly tipsy after a long dinner and eager to find ii-cha (the Korean word for 'any second establishment to drink at after finishing dinner').

Ii-cha turned out to be a karaoke room. Here food and wine flowed freely and all who were present imbibed dubious quantities while others serenaded dancing co-workers.

That guy with the tambourine is actually a bus driver for the school who became very jovial indeed. He stood up in the middle of dinner and announced to us "I driving Bus Number 2. Berry goot! Sankyou."
We finished up in the wee hours of the morning and I ended up hitting the sack around 5:30am.

That was well planned because the following day I had to get up at 7:30am to get the train to Seoul. At the train station I was feeling a little snoozy, but I still couldn't help noticing the name of this coffee and sandwich shop. I like coffee and I like sandwiches, but coffee in sandwich? What an amazing idea.

We walked into the train station, and with sandwiches on my mind I had to buy one. This thoughtful pearl of wisdom greeted me at the counter of another shop.

I chewed my sandwich a little more thoughtfully after reading that.

The reason we went to Seoul was for leadership training. The company paid for us to go up there and participate in a workshop at the Yeoksam Cultural Centre. We arrived around midday and had a quick lunch before meandering in.

The lecture theatre reminded me a little of my days at university. The presentations weren't too bad, a lot of things were fairly common knowledge but it wasn't a waste of time.
I met up with Ben, who you may possibly remember as my room mate in Seoul from Canada, who I lived with for a while during training. That was a long time ago. He's living in Daejeon now and engaged to a Korean woman.

After dinner we had optional team-building exercises which we were a little apprehensive of, especially when we had to take off our shoes. They actually turned out to be the highlight of the trip (as well as me winning $10 at the casino later that night, hooray).

These were the people running the show, various CDI workers from Seoul who each had a different challenge for us to complete as a team. We, the teams, had come from all across the country even as far as Jeju Island.

Before long we were blindfolded and frantically yelling orders to each other. In this exercise we had to cross an 'acid river' by stepping on tiles that could mysteriously wash away if no one was standing on them. Four out of seven of our team members were blindfolded which increased the difficulty by an order of magnitude. We passed.


This video is from a different challenge called Minefield. The mines consisted of sticky pieces that had to be avoided. The difficulty lay in that one person outside the minefield had to tell two others who were blindfolded how to step across the area. It was also a race, with both teams starting at opposite ends, resulting in an inevitable collision in the middle. The first team to cross the field received 3 points, but there was minus 1 point for every mine stepped on.

Here's the solution to a challenge called Toxic Waste, in which the teams had to dispose the contents of the green bucket into the orange bag while keeping well away from it. The only materials available were some strings and a piece of rubber. Good fun.
I came back to Busan by train the following day and left for Beijing three days later.

The next few posts will be all about Beijing, which is an enormous city of skyscrapers and history. I'll pop them out in succession as time permits.

See you then!

Gyeongju by Scooter

Over the past couple of weeks I've been out and about in various places. The new school term started at our branch and we also have a new teacher. I'll introduce you guys in a bit.

It was John's birthday a few weeks ago. He's the guy sitting in the white shirt on the left. This shot was taken later in the night when most people had gone home. Singing what may or may not have been a Backstreet Boys song in the foreground is Tim, with the appropriate facial expression. We ended up going home after a free breakfast at the casino that night.

But it all started off as a larger gathering of people, some of whom were enjoying a 4-player Halo 3 tournament at our apartment. That's a good way to start off any party, really.

Then we headed out for dinner at a dakgalbi restaurant. Dakgalbi is a fried rice and chicken dish cooked and served on your table.You choose the basic recipe and can add cheese, rice cake and other things to it. The waiters will stir-fry it for you until it's ready and our waiter made it into a loveheart at the end for the birthday boy.

Here's a video of the waiter at work. By this time it was smelling pretty good.

After dinner we went to a room at a booking club. Booking clubs are places to meet single people in Korea and are usually rather expensive. This one was no exception. It's usually best to pre-drink at a convenience store around the corner first.

The booking clubs, called naiteu in Korean (konglish for 'night'), sometimes put on stage shows with dancers. I made a video of this one too, but unfortunately the quality was not sufficiently Lee's Korea Blog-worthy.

And not long after John's birthday came Yang-min's. He's also there in a white birthday shirt and is married to a Canadian teacher at our company. Next week he's heading off to Canada with her to travel for a couple of months with their baby daughter. In this photo he's about to cut his cake in the reception area of my new branch.

Later that night we ended up at O'Brien's, the Irish bar near my old school. Yang-min is a fan of Irish Car Bombs, which are cocktails we introduced him to earlier in the year. For the first round, we lined up nine of them. It was a good night.

Last weekend the teachers from the Saha branch headed out to Gyeongju, an old city north of Busan. There were a lot of historical things to see like tombs, temples and museums, but I forgot my camera. These photos were taken by my co-workers. In Gyeongju, hiring a scooter for a day will cost you about twenty dollars. So all of us hopped on them and cruised around the city. It was freezing cold but a whole lot of fun. I'd highly recommend it. Photo: Nicole Kalisz

This is the Saha branch representing (themselves). 'Represent' is a catch-word that my American counterparts here like to use and it's starting to rub off on me. Everytime we go out together, someone will yell out 'Saha-Gu REPRESENT!', at least once or twice. In this photo we're posing in the carpark of a museum in Gyeongju. That's me on the right with Heather on the back.

The funny thing about hiring these scooters (which were brand new) was that the man who lent them to us didn't ask us to sign anything. He just took my identification and wanted us back by 7pm. He also told us to not get hurt because there was no insurance. Back in Australia, that would be considered reckless, but in Korea it's just 'mildly questionable'. Photo: Nicole Kalisz

The museum complex was pretty good but too much to see in one day. Here's a huge bell from the Shilla dynasty hanging in a specially-built structure. It weighs 30 tons and will resonate for over a minute if you gong it. We weren't allowed to gong it. Photo: Logan Fry

After that we went to Bulguksa Temple, one of the largest and most beautiful temple complexes in Korea. A lot of the structures in the complex are centuries old and the foundations were made by master stonemasons. Photo: Logan Fry

And then we came home by coach bus and ended up in Vinyl Underground, a western nightclub in Kyungsung. During the middle of the night we got a little tipsy and uninhibited. That's Logan and me up there dancing on the stage. Photo: Logan Fry

It's always nice to get some culture of a different kind, which is why I always say 'yes please' when Heather asks me out to one of these kinds of things. This is an orchestral performance by the Ukrainian National Orchestra in the same place we went to a few blogposts back. It was pretty good, partly because one of the percussionists misplaced his music sheet and spent some of the performance conspicuously wandering around and looking for it.

This is Andrew and his Korean wife on the day of their wedding two weeks ago. Andrew is the Australian half-owner of the O'Brien's pub and has been living here for five years. Recently he opened up another bar in Jangsan. He decided to tie the knot and after the wedding he opened up his bar for free drinks. Right now, he and his wife are honeymooning in the Maldives. How's that for a happy story?

Makchang is fast becoming a staple food of the Saha Branch. It's a barbecue type affair, in which you cook up marinated pig's intestines. Makchang is actually the large intestine of the pig, while gopchang is the small intestine. You then wrap it up in a leaf and eat it with garlic. I didn't like it the first time I tried it, but it grew on me. It tastes much better than it sounds. I've never met anyone here who hasn't tried it twice and not liked it.

On the left there is Nicole, our new teacher from New York. She's settled in pretty nicely, evident in the fact that she likes makchang already. She used to teach middle-schoolers in New York and has the necessary attitude to whip our little Korean students into academic powerhouses.

On the right is Christine, my new Korean tutor who works at the branch. I graduated from Korean school at the university with an 80% score which got me into Level 3, but I didn't enrol again because of timetabling difficulties. Now Christine is teaching me in the mornings and I'm paying her the same fee.

I'd never really known anything about American football until John started watching it on his computer. There's a small footballing community here in Korea and we went along to see a game. On the field in this photo are the Seoul and Busan teams, who had nearly identical uniforms.

Do you remember Mr Incredible from Halloween night? That's him right there, proudly sporting a Busan team jersey. Busan ended up beating Seoul by a ridiculous score (23 - 0?) and now they're in the finals. Hooray for Busan!

We just finished the first term at the new branch and went out to celebrate last Friday. This is from our company-sponsored dinner at a barbecue restaurant. Free food and alcohol are always enjoyable. Posing in the yellow is Julie, our super enthusiastic branch manager.

Here's a leaf wrap that I prepared for John. I remember when I first came to Korea I couldn't construct them properly and bits kept falling out onto my clothes. Now I'm a master engineer and can make works of culinary art. If you're ever out eating with me in Korea, I'll make one for you.

Here's some more thoughtful English in a noraebang in Seomyeon. What always amazes me is that they'll write these kinds of phrases anywhere, without checking whether it makes sense. Maybe it does make sense, in an abstract Korean way.

It says "I wake up to the sound. I fall a sleep purposely..'

And saying goodbye for us this week are two of my upper level reading students, Tony and Ben. On the last day of term I gave them a gymnastic task using a blind that fell off the window. You're supposed to step through the hole made by your arms, twice, without letting go and in the same direction. I did it once to show them but they couldn't do it, despite their best efforts. I know that Tony reads this blog so all I have to say is "Haha to you Tony, Mr Lee is more flexible than you!"

See you next time!

Birthdays and Another Aquarium

When our branch first opened 8 months ago, there were 3 teachers and 5 administration staff. We've been expanding steadily since then and now have 11 teachers and 6 admin. Our enrolments have settled to around 300 students, but we're aiming for 350.

Recently we had a staff dinner to celebrate our expansion. Seated here are all of the current Saha staff, minus me who took the photo. Dinners like these are always a good time to spin a yarn or two.

Here's me and Liz, who is an Australian adoptee from Sydney. She recently joined us as an April English teacher with her husband Simon. Liz was originally a reader of this blog back home, and after some correspondence between us, she ended up getting a job at the same branch. One day you might be working with me too!

The following day was Heather's birthday. We had dinner with some colleagues before heading off to the Pusan National University area, known as PNU in local lingo. In this photo Heather is posing with the necklace I bought her.
A pretty necklace for a pretty girl. Hoho.

We ate at a restaurant on Mount Keumjeong, where they sell goat meat as a delicacy. Although it's fairly close to the city, apparently this is the only area that will sell it in restaurants. I ate goat meat before in Australia because I used to live with a French flatmate whose friend liked hunting in the Australian outback. One day he showed up at the flat with the remains of a feral goat he had shot. We ended up cooking it with red wine sauce.
Goat meat is tasty, fairly chewy and similar to beef.

Then the following weekend it was Jef's birthday. I remember coming down on the bus with him from Seoul after training. Eighteen months later and we're still both here and going strong. Jef wanted to eat at an Italian place in Kyungsung-dae, which turned out to be quite nice. Although it was more authentic than the average Italian restaurant here, you will always be served with sweet pickles as a side dish. It's the substitute for the ubiquitous kimchi banchan. For some reason Koreans prefer the sweet spiced pickle over the arguably more delicious Polski ogorki. Give me the latter any day.

After that we went to the Kino-eye bar, a place with a cinematic theme to it. Jef had organised an extended happy hour for everyone. Are they all girls at his table? Well, yes.
Jef is tall and witty, hence being very popular with the ladies. Nearly as popular as me.

Ha.

On the right is my new friend from Pusan University, Min-Hyo. We speak a mixture of Korean and English to each other and get along well. He brought his friend along and we enjoyed some Long Islands together. Korean university students will generally choose Korean beer and soju over more pricey Western spirits.

And then in the wee hours of the morning we gathered a small crowd and went for some late supper. I think there needs to be a new name for the meal eaten at this time (between the hours of 3am and 6am, but before you have slept). It's not really a supper and it sure isn't breakfast.
Nestled in the blur of this photo is Maya, a Korean-American who recently joined the company. Here she's displaying the appropriate dispensal method of toilet paper after a minor spillage of alcohol at the table. There are numerous techniques for doing so.

Remember when I took you to the COEX Aquarium in Seoul all those months ago? Well it was only until last weekend that I ended up visiting Busan's very own aquarium in Haeundae. It's a little smaller than COEX, but is owned by some Australians from Queensland. Heather and I decided to visit on an otherwise lazy Sunday afternoon.

The tanks were big enough. I once saw a documentary on how they manufacture the glass for large aquarium windows. It's a complicated process.

Heather thinks these fish are ugly. I'm not sure what the purpose of the fleshy forehead is, but I think it looks kind of nice and reminds me of mandarin flesh.

Most of the fish were similar to the ones in COEX, so I'll spare you the details this time. These stripey eels were new though. Stripes can mean many things in the animal kingdom, but it usually means 'stay away from me please'.

Some cabbage eating tortoises. They would look nice in a knitted tea cosy.

This tank spanned two floors with double viewing platforms. It was designed to show the depth differences between the surface and bottom feeders. I liked the shimmering effect of the lights.

'Jellyfish' in Korean is haepari which literally means sea-fly. These ones were swimming around a fluorescently lit tank in a mildly mesmorising fashion. I stared at them for around 5 minutes. Those ones at the top seemed to have tangled themselves up and were all trying to swim in different directions. That's why you need to keep your tentacles to yourself.

Similar to the COEX Aquarium, there was also a walkthrough tube with sharks and turtles swimming overhead.

These kids were looking at the Haeundae display, a car that had been converted into an aquarium with large goldfish inside.

Since coming to Korea my eyesight has slowly gone fuzzy. According to Wikipedia it's because my eye's crystalline lens has lost elasticity resulting in a limited ability to change focus. So I went to the angwa, or opthamologist, for a diagnosis. It ended up that my sight wasn't all that bad, but I now have these particular glasses for when I need them. My eye test and glasses together cost me less than $100, but if I wanted the cheapest frames, it would have only cost a mere $30.

Maybe I need glasses because I'm studying too much these days. I go to Korean school on weekday mornings for 4 hours before heading off to work. Here is Ratana, one of my classmates, who I studied with back in the fall term last year. He's a Sri-Lankan Buddhist monk who lives at the Taejongdae temple. I asked him what he does in his spare time, and he said he likes to surf the net. Sometime soon he'll be visiting this website. Hi Ratana!

Sending us off this week are the students of my English Chip 3 class. They're a noisy bunch but full of energy and fast learners. It's always good to teach a few younger classes because they remind you how much fun it was before you really knew about the world.

That's all for this time! Spring has slowly started to arrive, so it's high time for some more outdoor activities.

Seeya!