Thailand Trip

For the holiday season, my school gave us Christmas Day (Friday) and the next 5 workdays off. Dan was on holiday before me, so he went on an Indonesian adventure and planned to meet me in Thailand. My four other American co-workers and I all wanted about the same type of vacation - warm with lots of beach time - so we all decided to go to Thailand together.

We left on Christmas Day and froze our buns off in Seoul, not wanting to carry out winter coats with us while in Thailand. Travelling was long and wearing. We first took a 6-hour train to Seoul, hopped a few subway trains to get to the airport, which is almost an hour outside of Seoul, then took a 6-hour flight to Bangkok. Then the next day we took another hour-long plane ride to Phuket, a large island on the west coast of Thailand. It felt like it took forever to get there! We met Dan there, and while in Phuket we lounged on the beach and took day trips to other islands to see other beaches and to go snorkelling.


One of the days we took a trip to Koh Phi Phi, which is a gorgeous island chain where part of the movie "The Beach" was filmed. The trip was very exciting, but the stops were a big touristy. Besides being crowded, the stops weren't that great. We stopped at "Monkey Beach" for a few minutes to see these monkeys, and all the tour boats give their passengers bananas to feed the monkeys. Since it was high season, the beach was covered in old bananas, crawling with bugs. It was disgusting. The beach from the movie was beautiful, but crowded. We spent little time actually on Koh Phi Phi, then we were off to another random island with very little shade and a crappy beach that hurt to walk on because it was all corals. Dan and I got bit by fish there, probably because everybody was feeding the fish. It was pretty funny though, us standing in a few feet of water, shrieking about the fish biting us because we weren't sure what was biting, and unable to get back to shore because we couldn't run on the corals. We got a few confused stares needless to say.


The next day we took a much nicer tour to the Surin Islands, which have good snorkelling. The tour guides were much more eco-friendly, reminding all of us not to feed the fish or trash the place. The tiny islands were beautiful and the snorkelling was really nice. I'd hoped to see a shark or octopus, but wasn't lucky. I did see a giant blowfish though, and I found Nemo.


After about four days the group (minus Dan) went back to Bangkok for two days to tour that city and celebrate the new year. We stayed around Khaosan Road, the backpacker area. There were so many foreigners from all over the world, it was awesome! I talked to people from many countries and I really enjoyed that. Oh and the food! The food was amazing! It was even cheaper than Phuket - maybe a dollar for a pad thai meal, and about a quarter for a bottle of water. Wow. Oh and I got a half hour massage for about 5 bucks. We did a lot of shopping there, because unlike in Korea, Thailand has a lot of beautiful dresses and purses and things to buy. Bangkok was a great time.


On New Year's Day, Heather, Wendy and I went to see the Grand Palace. Because it is considered good luck to go there on New Year's Day (to assure good fortune for the year), it was not the best time to go see it. It was incredibly crowded and very hot. On top of that, we had to wear long pants and long sleeves inside to be respectful. I peeled the layers off when we were barely out! It was really neat though - the buildings are just crusted with glittering colored metals and glass pieces. The people-watching was good there too.


I didn't want to go home, although I was ready for some alone time back in my home. I'll miss the food and cheapness of Thailand for sure, although Korea is quite cheap as well. Korea's got nothing on Thai food though. It was nice to have vegetarian options again, and I could eat curry every day. I think the best parts of the trip were the speed boat trips on the sea (which were bumpy and fun), the Thai people (who are friendly and fun to joke with), and the constantly beautiful weather.

Swine Flu

Flu season has come! Koreans are reacting in many interesting ways, especially considering that both the regular flu and suicide are more common causes of death. Even though swine flu isn't airborne, people are commonly seen walking down the streets with masks on. People are really worried. Every little cold that a person gets is considered possibly swine flu so people rush to the doctor to make sure (even if the symptoms don't match). The tough thing about prevention here in Korea is the the culture includes lots of touching and germ sharing. It's very common for Korean friends to feed each other their food during mealtimes or eat out of the same dishes with their dirty chopsticks. It's just how they do things. There's also a fair amount of hand-holding between platonic, same-sex friends of any age. That stuff allows for quite a bit of exposure every day.

We had been told that if anyone at my school got swine flu, we would have to shut down for a week or so. When we did finally get a case (one of the morning kindergarteners), nobody was told, we all just came to school as normal and found no kids there. Our boss kept us there to talk about it for a bit, and then took the time to have a general teacher's meeting. Afternoon lessons went on as usual and we didn't miss another day. That makes sense, considering we can't just shut down for a week every time a kid gets the flu (often from a source outside the academy). More kids did get swine flu, but it seems obvious that it wasn't going around inside school considering the numbers and patterns of kids in different classes. Some healthy kids missed a week or even a month because their parents took them out for fear of the flu.

Flu prevention started a few months ago. First, the kids had to bring their own hand towels. In the bathrooms, we don't have paper towel dispensers, but regular cloth towels. We took them out and brought our own. Then it was water bottles. There are water dispensers on each floor of the school with plastic cups nearby - that the kids all share! So now each kid has a water bottle in their backpack that they regularly open during class and spill all over the place. I love it. Now we have those things plus the masks.

We all are supposed to wear masks at school all day, although, when we forget, we don't get yelled at or anything. It has relaxed a bit in the past month. It was not easy at first, trying to help children with their pronunciation while muffled by a surgical mask. So I would wear it to class, then pull it down when I had to talk to kids. Not the best way to prevent the spread of germs, but seeing a teacher's mouth helps incredibly when learning how to say a new word. I'm just not sure how else to do it. The masks aren't fun for many reasons. They rub on your face and are generally not comfortable. The kindergarteners can't help but play with them. They spin them around on their fingers then fling them across the room onto the floor. Then they put the masks back on their face! It's almost worse than not wearing them at all! Little cotton germ incubators is what they are when misused like this. Of course, you try to control what the kids are doing, but they are little miniature monsters with minds of their own!

Swine flu has also taken a toll on what we teachers get to do. In my school, we have cancelled the last three monthly field trips because of it. In the public schools, teachers are having some trouble going out of the country on vacation because the principals think they will come back with the flu. I've seen a few teachers have to stay home from work for a week without pay after coming home. One was even fired for leaving. Luckily, I have a more understanding and lenient boss who will be letting me use every one of my six days off this holiday season to go to Thailand. I'm sure he will remind us all to wear our masks on the plane though!

Halloween in Yeosu

Halloween was a lot of fun this year. Because my school is all-English and we focus on both Western and Korean customs, we celebrated Halloween all day! With the kindergarteners, we played games, carved jack-o-lanterns, and sang Halloween songs. In the photo, my jack-o-lantern is the one on the far right with the creepy grin. When the older kids came in the afternoon, they rotated classrooms where the teachers put on games and some of the teachers turned one classroom into a haunted house. Some of the little kids cried though, it was a bit scary for them. At school, I dressed up as the devil, since I'd brought some horns and a tail. The kids were devils, angels, princesses, and superheroes, just like when I was a kid. It was really cute. One teacher, Tara, from the US, dressed up as kimbap, a traditional Korean food which is veggies and meat wrapped in rice and seaweed, kind of like sushi (see photo).













Saturday, the actual day of Halloween, we had the Yeosu Halloween party. It's put on by foreigners and mostly attended by foreigners, but many Korean people came too. Koreans really don't celebrate Halloween and the kids don't go trick-or-treating. The party was pretty fun, there was a costume contest and a raffle, in which I won a copy of The Iliad (we all brought the prizes to avoid a cover charge). People got really creative with the costumes. I wore my devil costume, but with a white shirt with a yellow circle of felt on it - I was deviled eggs. Pretty silly, but it was more fun than being a plain ol' devil. Below is me, Dan as a backwards man, Ed as Quail Man with Rich the registered alien, Sean as Snow White Trash (complete with his skirt stuck in his underpants), Sang Jun as a ballerina, Brad as some kind of gangster with Carrie the cat, Geoff who is women's gift from god, and Jen the solar system with her husband Quail Man (from the cartoon Doug).

Fall in Yeosu

This fall has been a bit chilly so far. The weather went from warm and wonderful to chilly really fast! It's really cold riding the scooter around. At least I get to wear the awesome peacoat I got for Christmas last year (in Arizona it would hang in my closet most of the season).


The weekends have still been quite busy. They fill up so fast! After Beijing, I went to see my first soccer game - a Korean pro game in Gwangyang. Dan and I rode up with our friends Ed and Jen, a married couple from the states. That was really fun because my friend Joelle switched from teaching in Yeosu to Gwangyang and I got to hang out with her a bit. That was nice. Joelle is very energetic and we always have a blast.





Another weekend Dan went to Seoul to meet up with friends of his from America who are also traveling, so I went with about 15 girls to Gwangju for a girl's night to celebrate my friend Meghan's birthday. It was very cool! We shopped a little too much, slept a little too little, and drank just the right amount! =]





This weekend is Halloween. All week at school we've been doing tests, snack parties and lots of fun Halloween activities. Tomorrow I'll head some games, carve a pumpkin for my kindergarten class, and just play all day in the haunted house at school! I'll be dressing up as a devil. Another foreign teacher, Tara, is going to be kimbap! Kimbap is a Korean food that is kind of like a sushi roll, but generally the meat is cooked and it's got both warm and cold rice and veggies in it. The taste is quite different from sushi. Anyway, it should be hilarious! Saturday night is the huge foreigner Halloween party. Dan's dressing up as backwards man and I'll be deviled eggs - my devil costume plus some felt fried eggs. It's going to be a blast.

I still am having some pretty lonely feelings, but things are getting better. I've been hanging out with people from work a little more, there are more people showing up who I have been hanging out with, and I've been keeping busy. But going to work doesn't excite me in the least, and I tend to spend as much time away from work as I can. It's a good thing I don't have to get up early to go to work, or I might have a really hard time getting there on time. I have classes I like more than others, but in general, English is not very fun to teach. I like it when the subject matter is about science, but the students are almost never interested. The kindergarteners are generally the most interested in speaking English, but the stuff we teach them is pretty basic and boring. I'm learning so much though, about kids, the English language, the Korean language, and about lots of other subjects. I just taught about the Iditarod and learned all about that history, for instance. I hope my classes get better. I feel like I could be a teacher if the students gave a crap about learning and if the subject matter was fun to talk about. But this is just boring.

Beijing

In October, Koreans celebrate their harvest holiday, Chusok. It's a three-day holiday that depends on the lunar calendar, and this year it fell on a Friday, Saturday, and Sunday. What poor luck! If it were on three weekdays, we would have a very long weekend! Luckily, the boss decided to make it a four-day weekend to make up for the unfairly short holiday. So I went to visit Tanya in Beijing!

The traveling was awful. First, I had to take a five and a half hour train ride to Seoul Thursday night. Beforehand, I was in my apartment, getting ready to leave and hanging out with Dan, when I decided to double-check my train ticket. I realized that I had only 20 minutes to get to the train station, which is about a 10-15 minute cab ride away! Whoops! So Dan and I scurried around frantically, he got me into a cab in the rain, and I searched my Korean dictionary for the words "Step on it!" I failed at that, so I just showed the driver my train ticket and he started running red lights for me. Got there with only minutes to spare, thank god! Times like this I wish Koreans accepted tips, because he surely deserved it! When I got to Seoul, I had to navigate the subway system to figure out how to get to the airport. I ended up accidentally on the wrong train (going to Incheon and not Incheon AIRPORT!), but a friendly and half drunk Korean guy on the subway helped me out. It took a few hours to get to the airport, which is normally a 45-minute bus ride. Whoops! Luckily I had about 7 hours to waste before my flight.

I got to Beijing in the afternoon on Friday, met Tanya, and went to get some awesome Chinese food for dinner. That night we went to a KTX, which is the Chinese version of a karaoke room (here in Korea they are called noraebangs). There were maybe 20 of Tanya's friends there, and we had a great time. I liked hanging out with them a lot! Really felt like I was free to be my goofy self, something that I have trouble with in Korea.

On Saturday we went and saw an aerial view of the Forbidden City from a nearby hilltop temple (see first picture - behind me). Tanya said the tour is pretty boring and long, so we skipped it. Apparently they emptied out the buildings, so people just walk through and don't really see anything. We saw some beautiful buildings and art around the area though. Beijing really spruced up the city for the Olympics, so much of what I saw was brand new, but of course there were many ancient structures as well. That night we went out for dinner and a show (a friend of Tanya's is a singer). The bars in Beijing are incredibly smoky! We actually left the show early because we could hardly stand the smoke - my eyes were stinging terribly.









On Sunday we went to the Great Wall. It was amazing! I just couldn't believe how huge it really is. You can see it snaking off on top of the mountains like a ribbon that just fell on the land. I really loved seeing it and recommend that everyone goes to see it sometime in their lives. That evening we went to an open mic night that Tanya and her friends go to on most Sunday nights. Tanya is a pianist and many of her friends were also musicians, so I got to hear some awesome tunes (see the video below).










Getting home was also a bit of a nightmare because Tanya's alarm clock somehow didn't go off at 6:30, but at 7:15, and my flight was at 8:40! I packed and got ready all in about 5 minutes, crying and freaking out that I wasn't going to make my flight and meet Dan in Seoul! I got in a cab who sped me to the airport, which was maybe 20 minutes or more away, and in the airport I was so confused I started to cry again! I had to rush around to maybe four windows before figuring out how to get to my flight. It was not a normal airport to me because there aren't ticketing counters at first, but a long row of window with people behind glass. I didn't have my boarding pass, so I was totally lost. I finally got to my terminal just as we were boarding and let out a HUGE sigh when I got into my seat. I then proceeded to sleep through the whole flight.

Back in Seoul, my boyfriend Dan had gone up to take care of paperwork at the embassy, so we met up and got Mexican food, then took the train home together. As much fun as China was, I was happy to get back to a country where I at least knew how to say more than just "hi" and "thank you." China made me appreciate Korea a bit more. The people seem to be a little friendlier here and the language is easier to learn. I will miss the cool people I met though, and the food! Chinese food trumps Korean food by far! Also, in China, even a city as large as Beijing doesn't smell bad, and Seoul smells pretty nasty sometimes.

September update

This last week has been rather exciting. October 2-4 is one of the biggest Korean holidays, the harvest holiday, Chusok. Nice to get some time off, but unfortunately it fell on a weekend this year. It's governed by the lunar calendar, so it's at a different time every year. If it was during the week, we could have gotten a 5-day weekend or maybe more! I had considered going to Beijing for the holiday, but when I found out we only got Friday off, I reconsidered.

Then about a week ago my boss announced that we'd also get Monday off, since many children would be out of school anyway and he thought the holiday was too short. So I got my butt in gear and went to a travel agent to get my Chinese visa as quickly as possible. All tourists need visas to get into China, and because America screwed China in trade agreements somewhere in the recent past, China made it so that visas are really expensive only for Americans. Anyway, at least the plane tickets were cheap. I sent off my passport and bought plane tickets all for a fair price. Only thing is, I leave for Seoul (where I'll fly out of) on October 1st and I am supposed to get the visa on September 30th! I am really hoping there are no complications in the processing and shipping!

Last weekend was amazing and exciting as well. I had been planning to go camping with other teachers on an island nearby, but two days before I found out that my favorite electronic duo was going to be playing in Seoul that weekend! My friend Sean emailed me right when he found out and we started making plans to take the train up there and see them, Royksopp, as well as MSTRKRFT and Underworld, two other huge names in electronic music. Three other awesome friends came with and we had a blast! It was a bit pricey, but worth every cent.





Other than that, things here are alright. School is gradually becoming less stressful, and things are going well with Dan, the guy I'm dating. Dan is another English teacher here (of course), who went to school to be a teacher and is from California. He's very sweet and we have a lot of laughs together.


I can't say I'm not homesick and lonely though. I miss having girlfriends to hang out with. There are some fun people here for sure, but I haven't had that many close connections yet. Plus people just keep coming and going so much and we're all pretty busy, so it can be hard to get close to people. I'm sure things will get better though, just have to wait it out.

Tanya comes to visit: Part II

This one has taken a little while to post, sorry, here goes. Tanya came one weekend, went to Jeju Island for the week while I worked, and then came back for the next weekend before flying back to Beijing.

All that week, back in the States, my favorite art festival (Burning Man) was going on. In honor of the event and because I was sad I was missing it, I spent the week building my own version of the effigy of a man that they burn at the festival. The event consists of a week of camping and having fun, checking out very progressive art, then a burning of a large wooden man on Saturday night (see photo below). So the plan was to build the man and burn him Saturday night. This was also important because in 2007, Tanya helped make some of the art for that year's festival. She and some other burners in Beijing gathered white plastic trash and made leaves out of it, then sent them to San Francisco where burners there welded some trees and put the leaves on them for an environmental piece. Apparently there's a good amount of litter in China. Tanya was in Beijing though and was unable to go. I'm very much hoping I can get her to come with me in 2010!


We spent Friday night out at the foreigner bar I like to frequent, just hanging out and talking with friends. Saturday we went to the beach in the daytime and then that night it was a double-birthday party at another bar. One was a friend named Lou, and the other was the guy I am dating, Dan. It was such a good time! I'm not sure I've seen so many foreigners out in Yeosu at once! We partied like crazy until 2 or 3am, worked our way to a place to get some food, then left our friends at a noraebong (karaoke room) while we went off to burn the man with Dan and his friend Matt.







Only problem was that the man was made of wood that was too thin and spread out to ignite well and we forgot to get some gas to pour on him! I also couldn't track down fireworks, which is probably my favorite part of the real burn night at Burning Man. It was really fun anyway and I learned a bit about what it takes to burn the man. Tanya put in her help by not only helping me with glueing, but she made a heart and a hand for him, complete with his pinkie in the air, a tribute to our APB friends in the US!





Sunday was spent sleeping, recovering, and cleaning up from an awesome weekend. I saw Tanya off that evening, swearing to try and make it to Beijing to visit. It was so nice to see a familiar face over here, especially one as cool as hers!