Adventures in an unexpected blink...

Yesterday was Chuseok - generally referred to as the Korean Thanksgiving. Traffic is usually utter mayhem the day before and the day after, as the entire country makes their way back to parents' or grandparents' homes. To be truthful, traffic in Korea usually has a twinge of mayhem in it anyway. Drivers are skillful, but often impatient and ... well... rude, by Canadian driving standards. Imagine my surprise while I was driving to church yesterday to recieve a 'courtesy blink' from another driver! A car came barelling up on my rear bumper at an alarming speed, so I squeezed myself in between two busses in the next lane to let him pass. Once he was passed, I pulled back out into my original lane. Imediately, the speedy car gave me a 2-flash 4-way flasher blink! It was a courtesy blink - the likes of which I've never seen in Korea before!!! I felt all warm and fuzzy inside.

Adventures in T-shirts

Twice a semester, I'm expected to proctor student examinations. That means that I spend 4-5 hours on a Saturday strolling around an auditorium while my students write the midterms and finals. It's a long, boring day. To amuse myself, I read what's written on my students' T-shirts. Here's a sampling of what I read last Saturday:

- I love school
- I'm a tosser
- Delicious Litmus
- Thank you for getting naked
- Happy?
- I see dead people
- A cup of my mind colors
- Mockingbird wish me luck
- The sound of a kiss is not as loud as that of a cannon but it's echo lasts a great deal longer

I would love to know who makes these shirts, and whether or not the students know what they mean...half the time, I sure don't (or wish I didn't!)

Adventures in Ssireum


Yesterday was the 33rd Gyeongsan JaIn Festival. As part of the festival, foreign women were invited to compete in a Ssireum wrestling tournament. Having never voluntarily competed in an athletic event, I don't know why I decided to sign up, but I did. I was expecting to eat sand in the first round and enjoy the rest of the festival from the benches. We had 1 hour of training/practice on Wednesday, then hopped on the bus on Saturday to go to the tournament.

In Ssireum, each match is determined by the winner of 2 out of 3 rounds. In order to win, you must throw your opponent to the ground, without your knees or hips touching the sand first. All this is done in ankle deep sand, and clutching your partner's satba or belt.

Somehow, I managed to win 2 of the 3 rounds in my first match. Apparently, I did the same in my 2nd match (time spent in the ring became increasingly blurry as I started getting tired and sore) and advanced to the semi-finals, where I was finally knocked out of the competition. I must say though, I'm glad I was beaten when I was. If I had won, the girl I'd have had to fight in the final was a bulldozer disguised as a woman.

Today, I'm sore and bruised (in places I hope to never be bruised again!!) but can admit I had a pretty good day - athletic event and all.

Adventures in Comparatives and Superlatives...

I love teaching Chapter 10. It's the last chapter in the book, and signifies we're on the home stretch towards the end of the semester, but that's not why I love it. I love watching my students react as I use my Canadian growing-up place, and Seoul to illustrate comparative sentence structures. First, I show them the picture of Seoul. Then , I show them the picture of Brockville. After a few rounds of examples like "Brockville is cleaner than Seoul." "Seoul is more interesting than Brockville." Eventually some bright young thing hits on "Seoul is more crowded than Brockville." This is my cue to introduce a few interesting demographics. It goes something like this:

"Which is more crowded: Seoul or Brockville?" I ask, just to be sure.
"Seoul," reply my students, thinking that perhaps, since it's the last chapter, they can get away without a complete sentence.
"Seoooooul..... iiiissssss..." I prompt, flapping my arms like a duck in my best please complete the sentence mime.
"Seoul is more crowded than Brockville," comes the grudging reply, putting me and my gesticulating appendages out of our misery.
"Hmmm, " say I, in a thoughtful way. "Which is more crowded: China or Korea?"
"CHINA!" Shout my students, with confidence.
"Really? Are you sure?" I ask doubtfully.
I flash my nifty demographic chart up on the screen, and wait for the squinty-eyed looks of confusion to appear. [please note: the squinty-eyed reference is to paint a mental picture of my students squinting at the screen to make sure they're seeing the numbers correctly, and has absolutely nothing to do with Asian facial features.] If they have learned nothing else all semester, my students did learn that Korea is more crowded than China. They're shocked.

Here's the scoop:
Korea has 485 people / km2
China has 135 people / km2
Canada has 3 people / km2

I show them the pictures of Seoul and Brockville again. I show them that there are no people in the picture in Brockville. I remind them that the picture was taken right smack in the middle of downtown Brockville. They laugh. Then I give them some homework and send them on their way.

Adventures in Concept Cars...

Perhaps this has been all over the news in North America, but I just saw it for the 1st time tonight. It's Nissan's concept car: Pivo. The cab swivels, and each tire has its own motor: no axles! The driver never has to back into a parking space. Just spin the cab and wheels around, and go in forwards, or sideways - whichever direction is preferred. I thought it looked pretty nifty. The fact that it looks like a cartoon bubble makes it a little difficult to take seriously. You could easily make the mistake of thinking it's made by Mattel, not Nissan. I don't know how it would handle on a highway, but as a city car, it would certainly have it's benefits. (I'm envisioning the parking garage at Costco on a Saturday afternoon.) Those of you at home with sprawling parking lots are probably thinking "What's the big deal?" Those of you here, picturing crowded, screechy parking garages are thinking "Oooh, I could swivel my way into that tiny spot in the corner!" Really, think of all the great things that swivel: office chairs, giant binoculars at scenic tourist spots, Elvis' hips. I've digressed. If you want to check out some Pivo videos, you can find them on both YouTube or Yahoo videos.

Adventures in Misadventure...

Last weekend was indeed a comedy of errors.

The Expectation:
A few friends and I would take a mini-road trip to Andong (about an hour and a half away). There, we would have dinner at a delicious galbi restaurant. We would stay at the Windmill hotel, take long relaxing baths in the whirlpool tubs, and go hiking around the adjacent lake. The next day, we would find a museum or folk village to explore for an hour or so before heading home.

Rise and Shine:
On the day of departure, I got up around 7 o'clock. It was still as dark as night outside. By 9 o'clock, the rain, thunder and lightening had begun. Eventually, the storm abated, and 3 of us loaded ourselves into the car. As soon as we got off campus, it started to hail. Undaunted, we began our trip as all good road trips should begin: with breakfast at McDonald's. I have never in my life had such slow service. We were the only 3 customers in the joint, yet I'm convinced a carton of expired yogurt could have moved faster than the waif behind the counter.

Andong! :
After a rocky start, but a good Egg McMuffin, and a little more hail, we made it to Andong. We drove straight to the hotel to unpack and settle in, only to discover that the hotel has gone out of business. Gone. Kaput. Abandoned. Stalwart travelers that we were, we made our way to the galbi restaurant to recoup and refuel. When we got there, we were the only customers around. The woman who owns the place remembered us from last time, and invited us to stay at her place next time we're in town. She was so happy to see us, she actually sat down next to me and not only cooked our food for us, but FED IT TO US too! It was more than a little odd.

The Mountain Cabin:
Will full bellies, we set out to remedy our accommodation difficulties. We found an ad for a mountain cabin that looked nice. (Hiking was still on our agenda, now that the rain had cleared.) We called, asked for rates, asked if they had a bathtub, and asked if they had room for the night. Receiving an acceptable answer to all of the above, we set of down the highway. Then up a hill...around a bend...through a village...up, up, up into the mountain and deep deep deep into the woods. We found the cabin, grabbed our bags and headed for the front desk; the empty front desk. We called the number again, and were informed that there was a special event on at the cabin this weekend, and they were all booked up. Right. Thanks. So we drove back out of the woods, back down the mountain, back through the village, back around the bend, back down the hill and onto the highway.

The Seaside Hotel:
Eventually, after driving back to Andong, through Andong and out of Andong again, we wound up in YoungDuk. We found a seaside hotel that looked promising. We went to the front desk and asked our standard round of questions: rates, bathtub, room for the night. We were good to go. We hauled our stuff up into the room, flopped on the beds, looked gloomily at the tubless shower, and had a cup of tea. By this point, the day was nearly spent, and we were looking forward to a nice walk on the beach, in lieu of a hike through the woods, the next morning.

The Next Morning:
Rising early-ish, we threw open the curtains to enjoy our ocean view. All we could see was noxious yellow sand. (For those of you who have been reading my blog for a while, you'll know all about this seasonal phenomenon. If you're not familiar with it, check out my post from April 18th of last year.) The sand levels were rated 'hazardous', and residents were warned to stay indoors with all doors and windows closed. We closed the window, watched a movie on TV in our hotel room, checked out and drove straight home.

The Icing on the Cake:
I sat down on Monday to chronicle this fun, entertaining, but disaster of a trip in my blog. Three sentences from the end, my computer froze and I lost the whole thing.

Adventures in Swoosh, Swoosh, Swooshing...
Happy Lunar New Year, everyone! The Year of the Pig got off to a great start at YeongPyong Ski Resort. Infact, we've decided that a Lunar New Year ski trip has now become an annual tradition. Saturday, Sunday and Monday were spent merrily on the slopes. Saturday began bright an early, leaving home at 4:10 a.m. in order to catch the 5:00 a.m. bus to the resort. 4 1/2 hours later, we arrived and got settled into our accomodation, got our equipment rented, our passes attached to our jackets, and our instructor secured.

The past two times I've gone skiing in Korea, I haven't bothered with an instructor, but the two people I was with wanted one, and I figured it had been so long since I'd had a lesson, I might learn something. (The fact that the instructor, John, was super-cute might have had a little something to do with that!) The lesson was 2 1/2 hours long, and by the end of it, we were all pretty confident of our skills on the beginner slopes. We continued skiing until the last possible moment our afternoon passes would allow, then trekked back to our room. After hot cups of tea or cocoa were consumed, and hot showers had by all, we slept soundly. The fantastic thing about Korean style rooms after a long day of skiing, is that you sleep on a thick pad right on the heated floor. It's like having a nice warm heating-pad directly applied to all your aching muscles.

I won't go into great detail about the rest of the trip (up the lift, down the hill, up the lift, down the hill, etc.) I'll just summarize like this: My favourite hill was 1400 meters high, with a run of 5.8km. It took me about 25 mintues to get to the bottom (I took my time), and the view was incredible. During the entire weekend, I only fell once, and that was just a little topple-over during my lesson. John was trying to teach me to swoosh, swoosh, swoosh, with my skis parallel, instead of the basic A-shaped snowplow. My swoosh, swoosh is going to take a little more practice! By the end of the weekend, my cheeks were (and still are) wind-burnt into a stunning shade of pink, my muscles feel a bit sore, but good, and my lungs are so full of mountain-fresh air, they think they've been in Canada.

If the rest of the Year of the Pig continues as well as it began, it's going to be a very good year!

Adventures in Cultural Differences...

I'm getting ready to go skiing for 3 days. Three of us will be leaving here at 4:10 tomorrow morning. ugh.

I was making sure I had everything prepared for the trip, and was going over some of the safety rules for the resort. I smiled when I came across the following notice:

Please use formal speak to other skiers. Often, it is hard to know the age and gender of fellow skiers due to shades, masks, and hats. Please use formal speak when addressing other skiers, just to be safe.

In Korea, 'formal speak' is used to talk to people higher than you on Confucious' Hierarchy of social importance. It requires different endings on the verbs to convey respect. While this is just an everyday thing I've gotten used to, it still came as a surprise to see it on the rules and regulations for a ski resort. Since I've picked up most of my Korean bit-by-bit, some of it I've learned with the respectful verb endings and some of it I've learned with just the regular, run-of-the-mill polite endings. I tend to bounce back and forth between them during any given exchange. That seems to be okay, because I'm a foreigner, and don't really fit anywhere on the hierarchy. Now, having read that notice, I'll be listening tomorrow to hear just how many folks on the slopes actaully heed the advice.