Kyle in Korea

This is my third year in a row now keeping a garden. The first year was in a very small corner of the backyard with my roommate Chris in a Lincoln rental house. We used a garden spade to dig up part of the lawn and then planted broccoli, onions, and peppers, I think. It had a little rabbit fence. I didn’t actually eat very much of what came out of the garden, except for some very small onions.

The second year, Ann and I spent $10 and had a good sized community garden plot. We ambitiously grew like 20 different things. I remember it especially fondly for the zucchini and green beans.

This year we have a garden here in Korea, right outside our small apartment building. The picture above is from about two months ago. The garden is planted in our landlord’s tree garden. Well, more like shrub garden. In any case, we have a nice little garden currently in production. In the back corner of the picture you can see our cucumber trellis. We have so far taken about a dozen excellent eating cucumbers so far with a couple on the vine now. Our tomato plants have now outgrown their trellis and are taller than I am, even though we have trimmed them down several times. I wanted to plant a dozen bell pepper plants, but lost somewhere in translation at the market, we ended up with three bell pepper plants and nine jalepeno-like pepper plants, except that they aren’t spicy. We also ad a good run of red lettuce. When the five broccoli heads grew all ragged like, it marked the third year in a row that I have failed to grow eatable broccoli.

I love Pringles, but even I couldn’t bring myself to buy these blueberry and hazelnut Pringles from the Caticlan airport in the Phillipines. Not pictured, but do exist: Crab flavored Pringles sold in Seoul.

I get 10 days paid vacation for the year, and recently used half of them for a trip to the tropical island of Boracay, in the Phillipines. To decide where to go, we basically googled best beaches in southeast Asia. Boracay was the place that showed up most often, so off we went.

We stayed for 6 nights and managed to pack a lot of stuff into what was ostensibly a “lay on the beach” vacation. I’ll do a quick rundown and then add a few pictures at the end.

1. There were so many good restaurants selling very reasonably priced food that we went light on breakfast and ate two lunches most days. Sometimes also two dinners.

2. I drank an obscene amount of San Miguel Pilsners, the delicious local brew that sells for around 60 cents a bottle.

3. Sunburn. I got sunburned. It felt good, except when it felt bad.

4. I spent large chunks of every day living in a Corona commercial.

5. Sunset was a major daily event, and we even once hired a private boat to take us closer to it.

6. Took advantage of our hotel’s free ocean kayaks. When you get tired of paddling, you can just float. Wonderful. So wonderful we did it a couple times.

7. It rained almost every day, but usually just for an hour or so in the evening.

7. Rainy season is actually great if you have a huge 4 chair and a table balcony at your hotel room equipped with wine, cheese, and Scrabble.

7. Three number sevens because I felt wildly lucky to be there.

8. The main mode of transport is a small carriage attached to a motorcycle that costs about 50 cents per ride.

9. Watched a baby monkey play with the big monkeys.

10. Should have taken more pictures, as I think about the monkeys.

11. Hired a private sailboat with two crew members for 3.5 hours to takes us sailing around the island and snorkeling. Cost: about $30.

12. The cost of living well in the Phillipines is very low. It’s unfortunate you have to work in a first world country to get paid first world wages.

13. Went several times to a bar with live music called the “Hobbit House”. Most of the staff were… uh, “little people”. Could not decide how I felt about finding this funny. They had to have done it on purpose, right?

14. Ann got beachside massages every day for like $3 each. I went to no less than three spas wherein I giggled throughout a pedicure, got a facial treatment for sunburn, and read trashy magazines. At the time, I swore Ann to secrecy, but I’ve now decided the world can know, no matter how shiny my toenails still are.

15. Almost forgot that I got my ears candled waxed. You lay down on your side and the spa lady sticks an 8 inch cone in  your ear and sets the fat end on fire. Physics cause all the wax in your ear to be sucked into the cone. I had about half a crayon worth of wax in each ear. I think Crayola would have called the color “Burnt Popcorn” in the 96 pack.

16. Completely missed a regional flight from Manila to Boracay because it rained in Manila and a normally 10 minute cab ride took over 2 hours. The road totally flooded and traffic was literally a parking lot. It was such a flooded parking lot that children splashed and played in between cars while adults sold refreshments and tried to wash windshields.

17. Heard dozens of languages being spoken. Boracay is really, really international. A few quick profiles:

18.  A guy from Saudi Arabia talked to a European about how drinking alcohol is illegal in his country, over beers in a beach side bar.

19. The Phillipines has the 5th most English speakers, but lots of Filipinos speak a dialect of Tagalog, which sounds a lot like Spanish. I tried speaking Spanish to several locals, but it didn’t work out. It’s OK, language difficulties are not new for me.

20. I lost it every time at the hotel when these Swedish parents scolded their toddler for doing something he wasn’t supposed to. Swedish is a hilarious/adorable sounding language.

21. Spent a (very late) night with an American who has been working “private security” in Iraq for 5 years. He gets paid low 6 figures and also gets 3 months of vacation a year. Did not have the heart or stomach to ask about any details of his job, but he was one of the most outwardly happy people I met in Boracay.
22. Did not leave with a good impression of Manila (stayed there one night). Extremely noisy and dangerous looking city. If you go to the 7/11 on the corner, you are greeted by someone wielding an enormous assault rifle. Everywhere you look, you see enormous assault rifles. I was later told that Manila is not actually dangerous, it just gives that impression.

23. I had a pack of vacation cigarettes in my pocket when I went through security at the airport.. The guard frisked me and asked me if he could have one. I said “yes”, but only because he referred to me as “friend”.

24. Drove a jet-ski for the first time. Was reminded of the Daniel Tosh stand-up bit about how it’s impossible to not look happy while riding a jet-ski. I tried to put on a serious face when I gunned it down a flat patch of water, but I broke into a smile 1.5 seconds later. Daniel Tosh was right.

25. Ann and I had a great time. Boracay is awesome.

Korea is very passionate about sports and athletics. The first day we arrived in Korea was the day of Kim Yu-na’s last performance at the 2010 Olympics. We were in the waiting room of a bank watching on the big screen. Five minutes prior to the performance, the bank filled with dozens of people who just walked in off the street and cheered loudly as she won the gold in dominant fashion. It was one of Korea’s 14 medals (6 gold) in Vancouver, just behind Russia and ahead of China; two countries with obvious passions for sports.

Like America, Koreans are passionate about a wide variety of sports (I went to a well-attended bodybuilding competition this weekend), but I think the national sport is really baseball. At night in every restaurant is a TV in the corner playing the Daegu baseball game. Sometimes before or after class when students are wearing headphones, I will ask them what they are listening to. Often the response is K-pop or some music. But almost as often the student responds: the baseball game. On the bus and around town I have noticed a very popular cell phone game for young people about baseball. People in general light up when you mention baseball.

I have been to one game, in Daegu.  Ann and I went with a few friends on a Sunday. Tickets were only about $5, and you simply sat wherever you could find room, which was rapidly filling up when we arrived an hour early. In fact, finding room for 5 people was so difficult we could only find seats in right field with a limited view. No matter, because simply siting in the stands was entertaining. The opposing team also had a large fanbase in attendance and the two sides exchanged spirited chants and cheers throughout the game. We were hungry and thirsty so, from our seats, we called a local fried chicken place, who delivered us food and drinks to our seats. They were not vendors at the game, just a restaurant who had someone handing out fliers with a phone number on it to people waiting in line to buy tickets outside of the stadium. I, of course, LOVED this.

The game itself was tied 1-1 until the 6th inning when the visiting team exploded for 7 runs. Scoreboards in America typically list three numbers: Runs (R), Hits (H), and Errors (E). In Korea, there is a fourth category: B, which stands for walks. The field is, I think, entirely Field Turf, which produced very high hops on ground balls. The teams had only one Westerner, who happened to be the right fielder, Garcia. After our food and drinks arrived, we even heckled him good-naturedly a little in English. I “made him look” once when I shouted his shoe was untied. The level of play was maybe about college ball in the U.S., although they do use wood bats. I was told the best Korean players mostly play overseas in Japan and elsewhere, including America, where about a dozen Koreans are on major league rosters (mostly pitchers).

Here’s some people at the stadium about an hour before the game.

Here’s a picture of my four companions at the game. Starting with Ann, who is the closest, we have Hyun-joo, Mi-jin, and Mi-jin’s Canadian husband Chris (can’t you tell by the Bluejays hat?) Naturally, I wore my A’s shirt (not pictured). The A’s are a popular team here, or at least they sell a lot of merchandise. Yankees and Red Sox are the most popular, and then probably Cleveland because they have the Choo Choo Train, Shin-Soo Choo. After that, I think I see A’s gear the most.

Here’s the bleacher bums sitting behind us. Notice the pairs of blue inflatable Thunder Sticks. These are like the Korea vuvuzuela: omnipresent and a bit annoying, although fun. Also, I like the guy sitting ten rows deep in right field optimistically holding up a catcher’s mitt!

If you have not been listening to the terrific “A History of the World in 100 objects”, well, you should be.

A recent entry featured a Korean roof tile from the 8th century. The place it is from, Gyeongu, is nearby where I live. Hoping to visit soon. Check out the link. Click on the “Listen to Programme” link on the right hand side. ( I know, those adorable English with their cute spellings- “Programme”!)

http://www.bbc.co.uk/ahistoryoftheworld/objects/aWLoINPHS4SHsBex527q7A

About a month ago we went to a neat little temple called Bongjang-sa. One of my  favorite things about the temple is that people build all kinds of little rock and pebble formations, an occupation I immediately fell in love with. Above is a picture of my own creation, not bad for 10 minutes eh?

A couple general blog notes…

Some of you have noticed it has been well over a month since my last blog entry. Do not fear, I am doing just fine. I think I will be changing the format of the blog a little bit. I think I will be writing less about more, if that makes sense. Less words but more often, and about a wider range of subjects.

Also, you may have noticed the Daily Mugshots link. A few days ago I started a project to take one picture of myself every day. The pictures are on dailymugshot.com and my username is kquinn3. They have a widget that sends the daily mugshot to my blog, but I’m still working out exactly how that works.

Also, please comment, email, or otherwise contact me with what you would like to see me write about!For now, please vote in my poll about what my next topic should be. Whatever topic as the most votes by Thursday, if there are any votes, will be the subject of my Thursday blog.

Note: If you don’t like reading or only have a few minutes, there are a couple of fun videos a the bottom you could scroll for.

Most of the time, I’m at school. I realized that based on reading this blog, you might think I am traveling most of the time. So hopefully this post should give you a better idea of my day-to-day.

I work Monday through Friday, 2 pm to 10 pm at a hagwon called Avalon. A hagwon is a private, for-profit school. There are over 70,000 of these schools located all over Korea specializing in math, science, art, and especially English language. Learning English is important for young Koreans because English language skills are part of the college entrance exams and learning English is widely viewed as very important to a student’s future success.

Our school is relatively new, having just opened in December of 2009. It is also relatively big- probably the biggest in Andong, with somewhere around 250 students, I think. I have maybe 70 or 80 of those students in my various classes. My day at work is basically split into two parts. Early in the day I have younger students and after 7 pm I have older students. The school’s calender year is split up into quarters and we are just finishing the spring quarter. I come into work at 2 pm everyday except once a week we have a short meeting that requires me to be there at 1:30. I clock in with a fingerprint reader at the door and walk into the lobby. This is the front door, located on the third floor of an 8 floor building.

The first thing I see after this is the front desk:

To my left is a small lobby type area from which I have to retrieve tardy children before the start of a lot of my classes:

I turn right and walk into the staff room:

There are twelve desks in the staff room, for 6 American and 6 Korean teachers. In this picture you can see Ay-yeoung and Hyunjoo, two university students who are teachers at Avalon. They are also our friends and neighbors in our apartment building. You can’t see my desk or Ann’s desk in the picture above, but here they are:

Both Ann and I have organized our classes into plastic folders, which you can see at our desks. I think I have 9 folders, representing about 9 different classes I teach throughout the week, most of them twice a week. This quarter, my first class was not until 4 pm, so to start the day I had 2 hours of prep time before my day really got started. It’s unlikely I will be so lucky next quarter, most teachers begin their teaching day earlier than that. Prep time basically consists of checking to see what work you need to accomplish in each class and reading through the class book to identify what topics you are covering, what is going to be difficult for kids and will need extra explaining, what the answers are to questions in the book, and making sure you have enough material and activities to easily fill the time allotted for the class. Extra activities might be a practice worksheet, a game, a short lecture, or whatever I feel like will help the students understand the material.

There are different levels for students at Avalon based mostly on skill level but maybe a little on age as well. There are well over a dozen different levels, many with multiple sections of students taught by different teachers. Each class gets some of its time with a Korean teacher, taught mostly in Korean, and some of its time with an English teacher. Class sizes are typically around 8-10 students, but can be smaller or bigger.I have some classes that I really like and some classes I don’t like as much. Behavior, maturity, and eagerness to learn vary widely among the students. Some are very excited to learn English, while some students are only in the classroom because their parents force them to come. Also, you should keep in mind that many of these students spend 10-12 hours in the classroom every day, followed by a considerable amount of homework, so school is also their primary place for socialization and entertainment.

Each English teacher has their own classroom, where they teach most of their classes. Each room has a caricature of the teacher on the door, a big whiteboard, and desks and chairs. Min is room 206, and here is what the door looks like:

The astute reader will notice from the light brown hair and fine features that my caricature does not look much like me. It is actually a friend of Ann’s named Justin, who attended a wedding we also went to shortly before we left. Since the pictures from the wedding showed us dressed up nicely and were recent, we sent them to the school before we arrived and anyways, at some point, Justin was mistaken for me.

If you aren’t yet bored of hearing about my school, here’s a video I took last week of some students from one of my Wednesday classes. This Wednesday class is focused on review and to help the students review, we played a game called Stop the Bus. The idea of the game is for students, in teams, to come up with an English word in each of four categories that begins with a specific letter that I choose. Popular categories include animals, food, and places, but always I include a couple that are class specific. This particular class has 4 books, Reading, Writing, Listening, and TOPS (Speaking). This makes review fun because I have a lot of material to choose from. When the team gets the answer to each of the categories, they are supposed to yell “Stop the Bus!”, and then write the answers on the board. Since I’m not very involved in the game once it gets rolling, I was free to record a couple games, which I normally can’t do in my regular classes, since I have enough trouble already with the kids getting distracted, and since watching the kids fill out the books and checking their work isn’t that exciting.

And here’s part of another game of Stop the Bus…

Although undoubtedly a highlight of the trip, our trip to Loveland was only one hour of our three day trip to Jeju. Another highlight was Udo island, a very small island off the island of Jeju. To get there you catch a car ferry from the ferry terminal that takes only about 15 minutes. I didn’t really know what a car ferry was, but it is actually just what it sounds like: a ferry that transports cars and has some room for people, too. Since only like 1700 people live on Udo island, they have to travel to Jeju frequently to go shopping, go to work, and visit friends and family. To do so, they simply drive their car right into the ferry and then 15 minutes later drive it right off the ferry and into traffic on Jeju. The car ferry held about a dozen sedan sized cars.

When  we got to Udo, we had only an hour an a half before the last ferry left for Jeju, so we rented a golf cart. Although I’m not usually that excited about golf carts, driving one around Udo Island was just tremendous. First of all, you actually drive it AROUND the island. There is very small road that hugs the coastline and took about 45 minutes for us to drive all the way around, including a couple brief stops. Check out a video of Ann driving the golf cart and me annoying her with questions.

Another day, we headed to the far southern end of Jeju for the city of Seogwipo. The best part about the city is its waterfalls and ocean front views. The waterfall we went to (Jeongbang Pokpo) dropped over 70 feet directly into the East China Sea.

Jeju is famous for “haenyeo”, who are female free divers who dive into the coastal areas around the island for seafood and seaweed. We found a couple of these women near the waterfall selling abalone to tourists. Ann and I bought one and tried it, and although I normally like shellfish, we both agreed that it was not very good raw.

The abalone are on the far left. I think the large middle bucket was full of sea cucumber and the bucket on the far right possibly contained sea squirt. I don’t actually even know that what we ate was abalone, I am only guessing because Jeju is well known for abalone, and also that people are unhappy because the price of abalone has shot up in recent years. We paid about 10 dollars for a single small one, served raw on the half shell, accompanied by garlic and a spicy red sauce. We ate about half of it and decided maybe to try it cooked, later on in the trip.

After hiking back up the cliffside from the waterfall, we treated ourselves to some coconut milk and talked about how we wished we enjoyed raw abalone, but actually did not.