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!

Two years in Korea

According to the little purple stamp on my passport, July 21st 2006 was when I first landed in Korea's Incheon airport. Thinking back to that time, I realise that a lot has happened since. Every once in a while I rift through my earlier blog posts and in a strange way it sometimes feels like it was somebody else who was living that life. Maybe I should lay off the beer for a while.

A couple of weeks ago it was Heather's brother-in-law's birthday. We went to a buffet restaurant in Migliore called Todai. The food was quite spectacular and some of the earlier LKB readers may remember an old post about the Di Maris buffet in Jangsan. This restaurant was quite similar, but within walking distance of my apartment.

Todai is a franchise and apparently has outlets all over the world, even in Las Vegas. Koreans love family restaurants, so chains like VIPs, TGIF, Outback Steakhouse and this one are always packed on the weekends. The restaurant has a seating capacity of around 500, but you still have to make a reservation.

Here are Heather's father, mother and niece. They don't speak any English, but these days I talk to Heather's mother on the phone in Korean for conversation practice. I still speak Korean like a toddler though.

And here's Heather's brother-in-law. I don't think he appreciates being photographed, even if it's for a celebrity appearance on Lee's Korea Blog.

Yikes.

Heather's niece is called Ji-Ae. She is adored by the family and spends most of her time running around and exploring.

At the Todai buffet there was a chocolate fountain that you dip skewered fruit into. Ji-Ae was very interested in licking off the chocolate, but not so interested in eating the fruit.

"Hey! Who licked all the chocolate off my fruit??"

Here is a nicely sculptured watermelon. Back in the days when I used to cook, I could cut butterflies out of carrots.

Here are some of the Hwamyeong staff who I went to dinner with a while ago. The main reason I included this picture is because that white necked bottle on the left is $60 sake (Japanese rice wine). It tasted around 10% better than $5 sake.

As the weather warms up, house parties are more common among the English teaching community. I didn't know whose house this was, but it was a good time. There were around 30 of us crammed into a single room. The cops politely asked us to leave at around 1am and we obliged.

Here are Jef's friends, Maria Kwak (top), who is a CDI trainer in Seoul and Jennifer Esterline (bottom) who is an adoptee and designs mobile phones for Nokia.

Someone recently told me that I always make that face when I pose for cameras. Is it true?

Last post I was talking about how I landed a promotion at CDI. Now I have more responsibilities and am a little busier, but I'm enjoying it overall. Now I work in the office at the human resources department and interview new teachers as well as look after the April English program. This is part of the whiteboard in our office, showing our timeline for recruiting new teachers for the fall term. We have to bring in 30 new teachers by August 25th.


Korea is a little further ahead of Australia in terms of gadgets and things. My housekey and traffic card are microchip systems, rather than the aging technology I used back home. I shot this video last week of the fingerprint identification system that deactivates the alarm at my new workplace. Much cooler and more convenient than punching in a number password.

One of my co-workers, Kelly Park has decided to escape from the chaos and travel the world with her boyfriend, Joon Son. This is their travel plan over the next few years. Amazing, isn't it?

If any readers are living in any of these destinations and would like to help out two Koreans looking for part-time work, get in touch. They're not afraid to get their hands dirty and you'll find that they are overqualified for most positions. Joon was the previous CEO of the 13 CDI schools down here.

And for me the wheels of destiny are also turning. Recently I was accepted into Seoul National University for a doctoral program in biotechnology. I had declined a PhD offer in Australia in order to come to Korea, but it has always lingered in the back of my mind. Soon I will be traveling to Seoul to have a look at the campus, but my decision still isn't final. I really like the company that I currently work for and it does have an interesting set of challenges. I get more fulfillment from a place where I'm needed, rather than a place where I'm supposed to be.
If that makes any sense.

For the meantime, I've contacted the department head at SNU and deferred the position until January. Exciting times.

Last weekend was the 2008 Boryeong Mud Festival. I went last year and blogged it, but I decided to go again this year. Shiraz Moe, a fellow teacher in Busan, was nice enough to organise the whole trip for us, including booking the hotel and coach bus. So on Saturday morning, 30 English teachers congregated at the agreed meeting place and set off for the west coast of Korea.

It was a six hour journey. Along the highways of Korea there are numerous small towns that make their living from operating large rest stops. They are all very similar and have a cafeteria, some shops and high capacity toilets. The food available is so homogeneously identical that sometimes you wonder if you've traveled far at all.

Over the course of the day, coach buses and cars will continuously stream in. The cafeterias are set up to take your order and feed you within 20 minutes, which is the standard coach bus waiting time.

Erick was rummaging through the back alleys of the convenience store and found these curious oddities. They're called Dick Sticks.

He quipped "I wouldn't know what they'd taste like. "

On the way we also stopped off at the Hite beer factory. Hite is Korea's biggest brewer and holds 55% of the market share for domestic beer products. If you look closely in this photo, that worker in the middle has a patch over his eye. He might have been a beer pirate.

A woman from the company began to take us on a tour, but she couldn't speak any English. She called out and asked if anyone could translate for her. So Emily went up to the front and began translating a whole bunch of Hite facts for us. A bottle of beer takes 30 days from start to finish and the factory produces 1000 bottles per minute.

Then we walked around the factory, with Emily still translating along the way. Although she had never been a tour guide before, no one could tell. The real tour guide would whisper the information in her ear and then she'd announce it to the crowd.

This is what we looked like. There were so many of us that the ones at the back couldn't hear anything. I don't know why Erick is smiling like that. Maybe he just ate another one of his sticks.

This is a wax sculpture of Park Ji-Sung, a Korean who plays for Manchester United. He's wildly popular amongst elementary schoolers here. He is also a spokesperson for Hite beer.
Now that's an interesting combination.

This is the factory floor, with kilometres of conveyor belts winding their way through mechanical boxes and checkpoints. The factory was closed for the day, so everything was in suspended animation.

And here's where all the action happens - the beer master control room. If you work in this room, you literally have the power to stop and start the rivers of beer as it moves around the factory. It also has alerts for when there's not enough beer, which of course would be a critical situation. I like to imagine there's a place like this somewhere in my head.

And here are the kegs, ready to be shipped off to the happy dining tables of Koreans enjoying BBQ all over the country. I forgot how many litres of beer per day they make, but it was an impressive number.

Then at the end of the tour they gave us free unlimited beer, which was nice. We all got tanked up, with the beer being much crisper than normal. When we all got on the bus later, it wasn't long before half of us were begging the bus driver for a pee stop.

Here's Emily, with a well-earned beer after her tour guiding. Hite actually tastes pretty much identical to the two other major Korean beer brands, which are Oriental Brewery and Cass.

And here's Heather posing with her beer. She's saying to the LKB readers "A Hite a day keeps the doctor away."

In the same area they were selling this shirt, of which I bought the last one. It contains an interesting misprint and reads "Let's drink fresh teste of the Hite. Hite is our new good friend." I don't know how much of a good friend I am, but I don't have that kind of devotion. We actually told the lady behind the counter what it translated to and she was surprised. I think they'll fix it up for the next print run.

And here we are at the end of a long day of factory-touring. In the background is a wax sculpture of Jang-dong Gwan, a famous Korean movie actor.

I'll split this post up so that it wouldn't be too long. When I have time next I'll pick up where I left off and continue with the rest of the Mud Festival weekend.

See you soon!

Fifty posts

Well it doesn't sound like all that many, but this post marks the 50th entry into Lee's Korea Blog. I'm fairly pleased with what it has become and plan to keep it alive for as long as there are enough interesting things to show you all.

The first for this post being the Kenny Rogers karaoke bar. This is a franchise across Busan that is apparently doing well enough to warrant more than one outlet.

Rubbish (American: 'trash') is a rather complicated affair in Korea. You can only throw away rubbish on certain days of the week, and each day has a different kind of rubbish for collection. Food waste is collected and taken to the pig farms for food and recyclables are neatly sorted. You need to buy special bags that have a 'rubbish tax' on them to throw away general rubbish. Korea doesn't have a lot of land to spare, so people are encouraged to not be wasteful. One of the side effects of this though, is the spontaneous dumping of unmarked rubbish on the sides of roads. Sometimes the ajossis here will go through it like forensic scientists to determine who the culprits are.

Here's Jef and Maya walking down the road. Although it appears that Maya is a small child, she is actually 22 years old. And she's going to Harvard.
She's going to curse me for saying that again, but I can safely hide behind my monitor because she's in the States now.

Here's Jef, Maya and Swan at a pojang macha. These are street food outlets consisting of a tent and a few stools around a portable wagon. You sit down and eat various kinds of grilled foods and drink beer or soju. They're a good place to talk for hours and ponder the peculiarities of Korean culture.

Here's our favourite ajumma, at work in her tent, called The World Cup. She originally spelled it 'Wold Cup', but someone was kind enough to come along and correct the sign for her. In these places you basically just point out the food you want in the refrigerated partition and she'll cook it up for you.

We met Yu-jong, the girl in the pink, randomly in the Guri bar. Soon she was attached to us like a lost puppy. She didn't speak a considerable amount of English, but we were able to communicate effectively through the use of charades. In this photo, Maya is displaying the universal message for 'I like you'.

Daniel has fit into Busan life fairly well. He's speaking a lot of Korean these days and getting along with the locals. Here he's speaking to Yu-jong's friend, who is displaying the correct body language for 'I am interested in what you are saying'.

This rather more explosive gesture is open to interpretation.

Later that night we went for a song or two. We're a rather musical bunch and although there usually isn't a very updated selection available, we don't mind singing the classics. Local favourites include 'California Dreaming', 'It's Raining Men' and 'Like a Prayer'.

Four hours later we found ourselves on the streets with the sun in our eyes. I usually try to go home before this time, but sometimes you just get caught out. It's bad for my biological clock.

My latest purchase was this air-conditioner. Summers in Korea are stiflingly hot and the single unit in our living room just isn't enough. Heather ordered this one online for me and it arrived 3 days later, installed and running for only $350.

The following weekend it was Shira's birthday. Her nickname is Mum and she's been working with CDI for a while now. She's the girl on the left.

A lot of workers from across the city came and enjoyed beer, wine and Jef's amazing cream cheese and salsa dip.

Here's Jareb, Maya, Swan and Daniel posing with Tim's dog. Cute dogs like this will always be the star of a party, but they just make Jef more hungry. I still haven't gotten around to eating dog meat yet, but I intend to.

Swan and Heather have been working together at the Hwamyeong branch this past week. Swan is going back to Florida soon. I've never been to the States before, but I imagine that I would be more of a west-coast person. Probably because I listened to a lot of 2pac when I was growing up and 'West-side' just sounds cool.

Two weeks ago I was lucky enough to receive my second promotion in the company. I now work in the human resources department and am also the faculty manager of the April program. I'd never taught an April class before, so I was sent to Seoul last week for training at headquarters.

The Coatel hotel is where most new CDI workers stay while they receive their week of introductory training. Back when I first arrived, you may remember that we stayed at the Hotel Major in Gangnam, and we had a jacuzzi in our room.

The Coatel is not as interesting as the Hotel Major, but it was still fairly nice. I shared a room with Robin Choi, who turned out to be a cool guy. If your room-mate is cool, it makes the experience twice as good.

During the week I didn't go out much because I had to get up at 7:30am everyday and head across town. But on Thursday it was Josephine's birthday, so we went to this upmarket oyster bar nearby. Here you could buy three New Zealand oysters for $15.
We ate conservatively.

Traffic in Seoul has always been pretty bad. The standstills that occur for minutes at a time make me appreciate life in Busan. One trip to the training centre took us around 20 minutes, but on the way back there was a traffic jam and it took us over an hour to reach the hotel.

At the end of the week it was time to celebrate. We went out to Uncle Tom's Cabin in Apgujeong for some drinks. I met up with Eric and Maria, but looking through my camera, it seems that I didn't get around to taking any photos of us together. Eric just got back from a French summer camp, teaching French to young students.

This is from Club Circle, one of the trendiest places in Seoul. I also went there on the last gathering in Seoul. On this particular night, they had a Brazilian theme with dancers dressed up like they do in that festival they have there with lots of feathers and things. I'm sure it has a name.

Here's one of the dancers who was very popular with the ladies. Probably because of his quick wit and charming personality.

Or maybe it was his muscles.

Here's another nightclub called Mool, which means 'water' in Korean. These places are very expensive. A bottle of base spirits will cost you around $200.

But they're fun.

I don't teach on a regular basis anymore, filling in for teachers when they're sick or on leave. My main duties are in the office, coordinating various things and trying to keep people happy. I'm going to miss my students at the Saha branch who I've taught for the past year. They were remarkably well behaved.

For the last lesson, one of their new words was 'rifle'. Korean kids love guns and after breaktime I came back to see these drawings on the whiteboard. They're quite good and I'm pleased that they learned their new word. Although from a technical standpoint, I feel the need to mention that the ammunition magazines are curving the wrong way.

That's all for this time.

Thanks for reading!