Bird Flu = A.I.

Bird Flu...gasp, what?!, oh no! Haha that seems to be the reaction of people around here when bird flu is mentioned. I guess it is a bigger deal in this part of the world because it's way more prevalent here than the US. I still can't seem to take it seriously though.

Here in Korea bird flu is called A.I. I learned this because my kids in class one day could not stop talking about A.I. Finally I asked what A.I. was and they all freaked out because they couldn't believe that I didn't know. (of course I knew what it was, just by another name...they didn't understand that though.) Then they proceeded to tell me all about it. This was all told to me in Korean, English and mime though. Let me tell you it was quite funny. They would say something like 'you eat chicken, chicken sick' (then they'd all mutter in Korean to each other) then they'd mime themselves dying. They would grab their throats and start gasping and then fall to the ground. They did a great job of getting the point across. If I didn't already know what A.I. was then I sure did after their interpretation.

In the last few weeks there has been a lot of A.I. talk not just amongst the kids, but the news and everyone else too. Apparently all of the chickens in South Korea were butchered and are now being fed to the army. I don't know if this is true or not, but everyone is talking about it. I do know though, that you can get A.I. from other birds too...so do they plan on killing all the birds in Korea??!?? I just can't take this flu seriously, maybe because I haven't seen it with my own eyes. Speaking of...last week it was on the news that a man in Songpa (my neighborhood) was diagnosed with A.I. Everyone around here was freaking out because that means that if one person in our neighborhood was able to get it, then surely others would be able to get it too. Wrong! It turns out the man just had pneumonia...false alert. These people are paranoid.

All was well with me and the bird flu until the other night. So far I had not eaten any chicken since coming to Korea. This was not because I had chosen to stay away from it, but because they don't serve much chicken around here. It's mainly duck and pork or just rice and vegetables. Until the other night when we went to a restaurant that served only chicken. We figured, ehhh whatever lets just get the chicken, screw A.I., or bird flu, whatever it is. So we got the chicken which was surprisingly very spicy, and ate to our hearts content. A day after eating the chicken I start to feel weird. I've got the runs like no other and my stomach feels like it's being tied in knots. Then I start to get sick. I get flu like symptoms. My fever gets up to 103.2, my head pounds, my throat is swollen, my muscles ache and I can't even get out of bed. Oh no, I thought, I've got A.I.!!!!!! The timing for my flu coming right after I ate the chicken was perfect for it to seem like A.I., especially with all the hype going on about it. I feel much better today though and I am for sure that it was just the plain old flu brought on by my grubby little students putting their dirty hands all over me. 

....Thus my close, but not really close encounter with A.I. :)

warming weather

The weather is really warming up here and I feel that if this is a preview for the summer, then we're in for a hot one!

Saturday was beautiful and about 80 degrees, with high humidity and a light breeze. Heather and I headed out to see what treasures we could find at an expat garage sale near the center of Seoul. After riding the subway for about 45 minutes and observing all the different Korean people getting on and getting off...as well as being stared at by plenty of people, we arrived. We had no idea where the garage sale was going to be so we were depending on the posted signs. After following a few of the signs there weren't anymore signs. We had no idea where to go. So we backtracked and found a hidden sign leading up a narrow street. Finally we found the garage sale. The sale was at a school and turned out not to be very good. It was fun to find it though, like a treasure hunt!

Since we were already in the center or Seoul we decided to check out this flea market called Dongdaemun. It's said to be very interesting so we were pretty excited. When we got off the subway there really wasn't much that looked like a flea market. The neighborhood was somewhat run down and industrial looking. By this time we were really hot and in need of ice-cream. So we went out of our way to find a little store to buy melon pops. Mmmm, that made my day. After we got back on track we rounded a corner and there was the flea market in all it's glory! It was a huge two story structure with a roof, but not really walls. As we got closer we were able to see all the treasures. It looked like people took all the odds and ends that they could find around their house and decided to sell them. It was so interesting to look through the stuff. I guess the saying 'one man's trash, another man's treasure' is very true. Heather and I walked around for probably two hours looking with curiosity at everything. I was able to buy a small, light tripod for 10,000 won which is about $10 American. I could have bought plenty of other things, but it all required bartering and I don't quite have my Korean numbers down so it was a bit of a draining process. Now I'm going to make sure I learn my numbers so that I can go back and really barter up a storm. :)

Today, Sunday was also a very nice day. Warm, about 80 and less humidity, yay! Heather and I decided to spend the day in Olympic park relaxing, reading on our blanket, basking in the sun, enjoying the breeze, and korean-people watching. It was the most relaxing Sunday I've had yet.

Tomorrow it's back to the loud, wild kids and disorganized chaos of school.

Oddities of Korea

Here are some interesting/funny/different things that I have noticed upon coming to South Korea.

Korean's don't j-walk. They will stand and wait for the walk sign to flash green even if there are no cars coming. Speaking of green walking signs...even if a light turns red for cars they don't stop. So crossing the street is a daily life and death situation. I've lost track the of the number of times I've almost been hit by a car or bus. 

Cars here are mostly black, white or grey so that if/when they run into each other there won't be huge streaks of color resulting from the scrape or hit. People also put these funny little foam things on the side of their car to keep other cars from scraping them.

When going to a bar or restaurant you can usually find a doorbell'ish looking button on your table. Thats because it is a doorbell. Haha, you ring it when you need the waitress and she comes right away. How convenient! You also don't have to tip here.

When eating out you are given a large spoon and chopsticks. They are each used for different things. What I can never figure out is which food you use which for. I will be eating my rice with chopsticks, then look around and see everyone else using their spoons. Or I will eat my soup with the spoon, look around and see everyone else sipping their soup straight out of the bowl... It is also polite to slurp, chomp and eat loudly. It means you are enjoying the food. Speaking of chopsticks, I am now a master. (almost) I can pick up a single soybean with my shopsticks! :)

When putting trash out you have to use special 'city certified' trash bags. Heather and I didn't realize this until lately. Apparently you can get in huge trouble if you don't use the 'city certified' trash bags. Luckily we haven't been caught, but now we will try to find out where to buy these special trash bags.

People here don't sweat. I will be out walking around on an 80 degree day with capris and a tank top on and all the Korean women will be wearing jeans and long sleeved shirts. Just looking at them makes me hot and sweaty, but they don't even break a sweat.

A lot of women wear heels for hiking. In fact they wear heels everywhere!

Spitting is normal. Everyday I'll be walking to school or somewhere and I'll hear someone behind me hocking a huge wad of spit and then spit it on the side of the road. I was really grossed out at first, but now I'm used to it.

All the dirty work is done by little old ladies. All the janitors, cleaning people and such are little old ladies. I don't know if they enjoy the work, or if it's the only work they can get, but they are the only ones doing it. They clean floors and bathrooms with only a rag. Often I'll see a little old lady on her hands and knees washing the floor with a rag.

When we reach a transfer point on the subway they will play classical music to alert you of the transfer. How classy, I love it!

Broom handles don't get higher than the waist. If you want to sweep something up, you have to bend over to do it.

Parking garages often have car elevators.

The word for white people here actually means 'beautiful'. Heather and I were walking into a subway station the other day and were confronted by a group of teenage girls. They kept saying 'ohhh so beautiful, beautiful!' Then they wanted to take our pictures. We get this a lot.

Teachers Day

Yesterday was Teachers Day, but really we've been celebrating it all week. It's been pretty cool having a holiday celebrating your job. :) All week the children's parents have been bringing us all sorts of food. Some parents brought us pizza, others brought fancy cakes decorated like no other cakes I've ever seen, tons of parents brought sweets, all sorts of cookies and little muffin things. It's been fun to see what kind of goodie will show up next. Aside from the food the children made us cards or brought us gifts. I was given flowers by a few students and among the more interesting gifts I was given a fancy mascara and eyeliner set. Hhaha. I will definitely use it, but it just doesn't seem like a normal gift for a teacher. I also had a class throw me a surprise party. They decorated the classroom and brought snacks. I've enjoyed being papered as a teacher for a week.
The attached picture is of one of the goddy flowers that I was given. That flower alone made teachers day awesome!

Boobs, Butt, & Hair

It has been interesting being a foreigner in South Korea. For the most part I don't feel like I look that different. The main difference is that I have light colored hair, a butt and larger boobs than most Korean women. (even though mine are still small)

Walking down the street people will either completely ignore me (which I find normal for city life) or they will stare me down. I don't mind when people stare me down because it makes me feel like I am different and exciting. It's a confidence booster in some ways. Sometimes though, I get interesting reactions when people see me. Once I turned a corner and the man on the other side was so shocked to see a foreigner that he snorted. It was a full out loud snort with a shocked look on his face. I couldn't help but laugh as I walked away. Another time I walked past an old woman who was watching the ground as she walked. When I approached her wearing my flip flops she followed my feet straight up to my face, stopped mid-stride and stared at me with her mouth open like she'd never seen a foreigner before.

Children here love foreigners. If they are very young they will usually just point and smile. If they are school age some will come up to me and try to practice their English. Others will just walk by, stare, and finally muster up the courage to say ''hi'' and then run away. The other day I was walking to school and this pink blur shot past me. Up the sidewalk a ways the blur stopped, it was a little girl. She stood there and waited for me to walk by. As I walked by she grabbed my hand and we began walking hand in hand. She just looked up and me and smiled the most wonderful little smile. She proceeded to say hi and ask where I was going. I told her I was going to school because I was a teacher. She just smiled and continued walking and holding my hand. At the next corner she let go of my hand, said bye and ran the other way, once again becoming a pink blur.

Today in my kindergarten science class the kids kept pointing to my boobs and saying ''chu-chu''. I ignored it thinking they were just being the crazy kindergarteners they normally are. This continued for all class. When class was over I brought the class into the hall to meet the other kindergarteners. When they mixed with the other kids, they spread the whole pointing and "chu-chu'ing". All the little kids in the hall were pointing at my boobs, laughing and saying "chu-chu". I couldn't figure out what was going on. Finally one of the teachers told me that chu-chu is when a baby nurses. I guess kids just aren't used to seeing young women with boobs unless they have nursing babies. It was definitely interesting and somewhat embarrassing.

I have another class of middle school girls who just can't keep their hands off my hair. They call my hair golden and beautiful. They are always wanting to play with it, stoke it, or just touch it in any way they can. They told me that if they were to dye their hair my color they would be beaten for it at their public schools. I asked why and they said that the teachers would call them unclean. Apparently there are a lot of Russian prostitutes in Korea and most of them have 'golden' hair. So now I'm realizing that people on the street may think that I'm a Russian prostitute especially because I wear flip-flops showing my feet and tank-tops on hot days. (Korean women don't show their shoulders) This crazy society!

Public Bath

I went to the public bath for the first time the other day and it was an interesting experience to say the least. Korean apartments are pretty small and the bathrooms only have showers in them, if even that. So a lot of Koreans just go to the public bath to bathe. You pay your five won and are give a towel and a locker key. The women go to the right and the men go to the left. Upon entering the door on the right I was in a locker room for only shoes. So I placed my shoes in a locker and continued into the next room. The next room was a loungish area and had more lockers. I found a locker, took all my clothes off and walked to the room with all the baths. It was a different experience being naked with a bunch of other naked women. I was definitely stared at by everyone, but I sucked it up and enjoyed myself. The room itself was interesting. There were maybe four or five bathing pools of different temperatures, two saunas, a massage area with two massage ladies, and then lining the walls of the room were mirrors, shower heads and little plastic stools to sit on. The women would sit on a stool and scrub themselves in front of the mirrors, then they would was off and go sit in one of the bath pools. I didn't realize this so I just went straight to a bath pool and was yelled at by one of the women. After that I did what the other women were doing and scrubbed myself off first and then sat in one of the warm pools. After a while people stopped staring and I was able to relax in the hot pool and observe all the people around me. A lot of the women brought their little girls with them. They would hold the little girls down, scrub them good, rinse them off and then let them run wild around the bath room. I think it'd be a great way to clean your kids because you've got plenty of space and it ends up being fun because after you are clean you can have fun in the water, all the while never having to wear clothes. One of the girls even had bath toys with her.

Fan-death

So here's a funny little tid bit about Koreans. When we arrived we had a fan in our apartment. Despite the easy workings of a fan we had a hard time figuring out how to properly make our fan work because of all the Korean characters. We were finally able to get it to work, but sometimes it randomly shuts off on us. We figured this was because it was a crappy fan. We were wrong. The fan actually has a timer on it, so we were setting the timer and then the fan would turn off at the end of the timer. We thought the whole timer thing was dumb, but we just recently found out why there is a timer on all Korean fans. Koreans believe in something called fan-death. HAha, just writing it makes me giddy with laughter. So anyway, they believe that if you sleep with a fan on in a room with all the windows and doors closed that it will suck all the air out of the room and you will die. Hahaha! I have never ever heard such a thing?!? So they are paranoid about fans, but still use them because of the timer. Oh the funny ways of these Korean people.

Wild Weekend

#1 Gate that burnt down a few weeks ago.

Finally we had a weekend of good weather and not being sick! :)

Friday night Heather and I decided not to go out. We figured we should rest it up because Saturday was going to be a big day. Come Saturday we headed out with our new friend Brandon to the Dongdaemun Market. Normally the market is held in a stadium and there is all sorts of crazy weird cool stuff, but unfortunately the stadium was closed so there was just a market in the area surrounding the stadium. Supposedly it wasn't as good as it normally is, but we still had fun walking around and seeing everything. Next we went to Namdemun. This is also a market. On the way to Namdemun we saw Seoul cities' #1 Gate which burnt down a few weeks ago. The story is that the government was trying to buy a man's land in the southern part of Korea for a very low price. The man was pissed off that he was getting screwed over so he burnt down the #1 Gate. People are pretty big on fire demonstrations around here. I just heard that last week during the processional of the Olympic torch a guy set himself on fire. I'm not quite sure what he was demonstrating but that is one way to relay a message.

Namdaemun was a fun market. It was pretty large and sort of set back from the street. We walked the ally ways of market and didn't have to worry so much about getting run over by a car. In the market we saw all sorts of things. There was ginseng everywhere. That is the latest health rave around here. People were selling ginseng roots, ginseng roots in jars of amber colored water, ginseng powders, ginseng candies...everything ginseng. Other than ginseng we walked down the street to smells of seafood and other cooking food, we saw tons of people everywhere, all sorts of clothes, shoes, illegally imported foreigner goods such as deodorant, peanut butter, cheese, american snacks like cheetos...and all sorts of other things. As the day wore on and the sun beat down we decided to stop for an ice-cream bar. I chose melon, which is pretty much the best thing I've ever tasted. So we stood in front of a vendor selling roasted pigs feet, eating our ice-cream and discussing the random pigs head and pigs feet that were being cooked and sold right in front of us. It was a good time.

Next we went to visit Gyeongbokgung Palace. Lots of cultural activities are happening this weekend and next weekend because this weekend is the festival of the Spring and next weekend is Buddha's Birthday. Upon arriving at the Palace we could see the outside of the Palace and hear the music coming from inside. There were people dressed up in traditional costume, playing drums and bells. We decided to wander around the outside of the Palace since the ceremony was almost over. Then as we were leaving everyone came out of the Palace and we were able to get all sorts of fun pictures.

Finally around 7pm Heather and I parted ways with Brandon and headed home for some dinner and relaxation before our big night out. We left our apartment again around 11pm, rode the subway until it closed at 12pm and then took a taxi the rest of the way to World Cup Stadium. We were headed to the World DJ Fest so we looked for the lights and decided to head in that direction. Soon we came upon some other foreigners who told us we were going the wrong way. So we decided to abandon our route and follow the foreigners who had been lost for the last two hours. We wandered around the park talking and getting to know each other. Finally we found our way to where the DJ Fest was. People were everywhere, the music was pounding, the strobe lights were going and it was AWESOME! The location was in a park right next to the Han River and the scene was pretty much an outdoor rave. Heather and I jumped in and started dancing right away. The first DJ was crazy. I think he was from Canada and he kept coming out on stage with different costumes. At one point a fire dancer came out and performed too. The music was loud and wild and everyone was dancing. I met some random guy who said get up on my shoulders so I did and I was able to see the huge crowd and the stage even better. I danced on his shoulders for a while, had tons of people take pictures of me and then got down. It was an interesting way to meet someone. After a while Heather and I met back up with Brandon and hung out/danced with him for a bit. He left at about 3am, but Heather and I stayed. We danced and danced and met so many people. Finally the sun came up, but the party didn't stop. A lot of people were camping out since the DJ Fest goes for a few days, but Heather and I decided that we should probably head home. We slept the whole subway ride home, got back to our apartment and crashed. It was an INCREDIBLE night!!

Bad Day...school system

Yesterday was beautiful. The sun was shining, the sky was blue, a warm breeze blew and I could smell honey suckle on my walk to school. With the warmer days beginning everyone seems to be out and about enjoying the weather. When I arrived at the school it was just another day teaching English. Classes were going well, but a lot of the students were distracted by the approaching weekend. Finally I got to one of my quiet classes. In most of my classes the students are just dying to talk to me in English, ask questions, participate, and do their work. I usually reward them with candy or a game of hang man or UNO at the end of class as long as they behave. This quiet class though, doesn't do any of that. They sit there and stare at me, they don't participate, they don't really do their workbooks unless I give them the answers and even when they play games they are pretty quiet. I had a few good students in that class but slowly they have been moved to other classes, so now I am left with only quiet, non-working students. This is very frustrating especially because I take my job as a teacher seriously.

So I get to the class room and of course the students are sitting quietly. This is nice until I try to get them to read for me, the silence is almost deadly. No one will let out a peep. Usually I will read a section, or a dialogue and the class will repeat me but only one girl was repeating me and she was so quiet. The class knows some English and they know what speak and participate mean but they were refusing to do it. It was like pulling teeth!! There is one student in the class, Jack, who is usually pretty good about reading but sometimes he gives me attitude. Yesterday he gave me huge attitude. I asked him if he could repeat after me and he rolled his eyes at me. After asking a few more times it just got worse. I started getting mad at the whole class. So I threatened the class with no games if they didn't participate. Finally everyone participated but Jack. I asked him a few more times and just got more attitude. Then I got really mad, I yelled, I slammed my books on the table and I marched out of the room slamming the door. Wow, I didn't know I had it in me! I came back with a korean teacher who yelled at the whole class and then set Jack straight. I was so grateful for that because then everyone worked and I was a happy teacher again.

Later in the day one of the korean teachers approached me. She reprimanded me for getting mad at the class and especially for getting mad at Jack. I explained the whole situation to her and told her that Jack has progressively been having a worse and worse attitude. The frustrating thing is that I know he's a good student, but he just likes to give attitude. So the teacher said that they were going to move him to another class now. The korean teachers and my boss are afraid the students will report back bad things about the school and then the parents will move them to another school. So we are supposed to have fun and play games and ignore the bad or dumb or non-participating students. This is not right to me. In fact a lot of things about the way school is conducted are not right to me. I want to help the students learn English, but it's kind of a joke. All the school cares about is making money. The students mean money, so as long as the students are happy, the parents are happy and the school makes lots of money. The school doesn't care about education one bit. I have known this since beginning work, but I've been able to ignore it thus far. Yesterday I couldn't ignore it, so I confronted it and got in trouble for it. I need to figure out a good teaching strategy that will allow me to work around this crappy school system.

So that was my bad day. Today is Friday and it's a good day, yay! Tonight heather and I hope to check out a bath house. Then tomorrow I think we're going to some market and on Sunday there is a Seoul spring festival. We may go to a temple for some spring festivities. Monday is Children's day so everyone has the day off. Who knows what we'll get into...