Recent Adventures

Live Octopus

Last night I went out for a farewell dinner with the language teachers from the girls school. The menu: sushi and live octopus. Koreans are well known for their appetite for live octopus. The stuff we had last night was cut up in small pieces (though they still moved) but many people eat whole baby octopus. There are consequences though: many people die every year from eating whole, live octopus because the octopus will unravel on it's way down, crawl it's way back up and bock air passage to your lungs. It's the one dish that will always fight back!

Anyhow, I gave it a try for the first time. It tasted like snot with the consistency of Ju-Ju Bees. Ick. Here's a video of my co-teacher Mrs. Shin trying live octopus for the first time too.



First Birthday

A couple weeks ago, Jeremy and I were invited to his co-worker's son's first birthday party (I mistakenly said earlier that it was the 100 day birthday--oops!). The first birthday is a big deal in Korea and this family, like so many others, rented a room at one of the numerous wedding halls in Korea. The party was held downstairs along with about 5 other first birthday parties in other rented rooms on the same floor. Each party shared food at a centrally located buffet 9which had GREAT food by the way!). The party was a little uneventful for the most part. You came in, ate, greeted the hosts, gave them your gifts, looked at baby pictures, and listened to the parents give a speech. The one big event--the part everyone goes for--is the futures game. In this game four items are placed before the child, each one representing a career, and the one the child picks up first is supposed to determine who/what he/she will be. The items are string to represent long life, a pencil to represent scholarly aptitude, a stethoscope to represent science, and money to represent wealth (obviously). All guests placed bets on what the child would choose before the ceremony began by placing their raffle ticket in a cup marked by each item. I chose the pencil and horray! The kid is going to be a scholar! The hosts later drew numbers from each cup and gave away prizes (which I didn't get any). It was pretty cool but the poor kid was really cranky because they kept changing his clothes throughout the party. One interesting side note: no cake was served. Strange. Birthdays just don't seem like birthdays without cake. There was one on the front table but no one ate it. I guess it was for show... Overall, I had a great time experiencing yet another fascinating aspect of Korean culture and meeting J's friends and co-workers for the first time. Good fun!

Taxi!

Last weekend Jeremy and I went out with some friends in Seoul for dinner and drinks to celebrate my recent acceptance to UQ. We all caught and shared a cab later back to Incheon and had what I'm sure will forever be my most memorable taxi ride. The first problem: it was raining like nuts and our driver was driving like nuts! With lots of standing water on the freeway, he was cruising at 150 km/h or 93.5 mi/h. Um, yeah. A little scary. The second problem: our driver didn't have GPS which is not a good sign in Korea (Koreans are terrible with directions and seem to need a GPS locator to find the bathroom in their own house!). We took the wrong exit in Incheon and had to stop another taxi driver to ask for directions. The third problem: on our way to Jeremy's house we got stuck in the Incheon red light district where our taxi driver was more than distracted--he was a few seconds short of picking up a prostitute! He slowed down to a near stop, oohing and ahhing at the scantily clad women walking up and down their brothel fronts. He even shouted hello to some of them! All of us were cracking up inside! I'm pretty sure he had never seen a hooker before and like most Koreans probably assumed this wasn't a problem in Korea. The fourth problem: we passed a group of gang members at one intersection and our driver was equally fascinated with them as he was with the hookers. This time he really did stop to say hello (the weird part was that despite his inability to communicate in English, he said this in English and not Korean). I was a little nervous--I remember running into some bad crowds in the U District a couple times... They paid us no heed though. The fifth problem: once he dropped off Jeremy and I, his next job was to drop of Lisa, Jeremy's newest co-worker. Lisa barely knows where she lives yet and doesn't have a cell phone. Jeremy and I didn't have the Korean skills to tell him where to take her. Oh, and this guy hardly had a clue where he was going or where he was. We ended up asking some other Koreans to tell him how to get to the nearest subway station to Lisa's house but even then each person in the small crowd that was forming had a different way of getting there. Talk about mass confusion!! Lisa doesn't have a cell phone so we never heard how her trip home went but I assume it went okay. If she hadn't shown up for work Monday morning I'm sure J would have said something!

Mung Yeoung Yo Go Hakkio Part 3

Welcome to Kortney's Jeomchon Tours! Today we will be exploring Mung Yeoung Yo Go Hakkio, a girls school established nearly 50 years ago yet completely rebuilt in 2004.

The main entrance.

The back entrance.

The two story sky bridge.

My desk!

The vice principals desk. The principals office is currently closed to visitors.

The teacher's office.

The teacher's exercise room.

2nd and 3rd year uniforms.

1st year uniforms.

The school field.

The cafeteria.

Every morning, the girls are given a carton of milk and these crates are where it's kept outside.

The homeroom teachers for each grade are given their own office on the grade floor. (EX: The fist grade floor has the first grade homeroom teacher's office.)

Students keep lockers in their classrooms. (Students don't move between classes like schools in America... Instead, the teacher's move.) Typical locker contents include books, electronic dictionary, personal blanket, a pillow, a toothbrush, and toothpaste--essentials as most students will spend several nights studying at school throughout the year.

Pencil cases define who is who in Korean schools. Here are two supreme examples of "cool" pencil cases. The one above has celebrity and musician photos. The one below is a little more typical with encouraging post-its inside, phone numbers, reminders, and one's favorite cartoon sticker--Gero (a Japanese cartoon character).

Students eager to show you their pencil cases. The girl with the pink one insisted that her's was the best. I thought it was lame.

A typical Korean classroom: minimalist.


Third year girls working hard.

But hard work is a little inconsistent. It's completely necessary to stop every 5 minutes and check your mirror to make sure every hair is in it's proper place and every zit sufficiently covered. I think most girls are vain beyond compare. They just really like looking at themselves. (The boys do this too and often carry similar mirrors in their pencil cases as well.)

An empty hallway.


The stairwell outside of the teacher's office leading to the first floor and the third floor.

All students are required to check their shoes at the classroom door. In the hallway, they put their shoes in these little cubbies and put on indoor slippers (a.k.a. slides or sandals).

Students getting coffee during class. Caffeine is essential to good studying, ergo, good test scores.


Your options (most cost between 20-30 cents).

Most Koreans prefer instant coffee from these non-descript machines over the fresh brewed kind. Weirdos.

A squatty potty in one of the hall bathrooms. These things really stink because Koreans don't flush toilet paper and instead choose to put it in trash bins. I rarely use the student toilets. Instead I go in the female teacher's bathroom which has a proper throne.

The bathroom at large.

The library.

The school store's stock of cookies, marshmallow pies, ramen, and chips.

The lady who manages the school store. She's always surprised when I understand the total of my purchases in Korean. She's cute. Always friendly. :)

The school park.

The gymnasium. Students are practicing for a singing competition where they can win $200 for their class fund.

While wandering the halls on tour, we stopped to take a peak in one 3rd year class and found a pizza party! These girls were really generous and sat me down with two slices of pizza and my own cup of coke. They were my students last year but are now too busy studying for their University Entrance Exams to study with me... Booo.... I miss them.

Ha! We caught one sleeping in class!

More sleepers!! It's quite common for Korean kids to either sleep during breaks or sleep during class. The teacher's tolerate it because the kids stay up studying until 1 or 2 am and are required to be at school everyday until 10:30 pm.

One of my 1st year students working very hard. She's a smart one.

Mung Yeoung Yo Go Hakkio Part 2

The Girls of Grade 1 at Mung Yeoung Yo Go (minus one class)

Class 1

Class 2 (they're a lively bunch!)

Class 3

Class 4

Class 5

Class 6

Class 7

Class 8

(Class 9 was cancelled on my last day because they needed to practice for some singing competition. Glad to know where the school's priorities are... Too bad. Class 9 was my favorite girl's class.)

Mung Yeoung Yo Go Hakkio Part 1

Mung Yeoung Yo Go Hakkio literally means "Yo-girls," "Go-high," "Hakkio-school."

These are my co-teachers at the girls school:

This is Ms Bae. She is just a couple years older than me and just started teaching here this year/semester. We sit next to each other in the teacher's office. We have lots of fun together. I think you can probably guess from her picture that she's really funny. Unfortunately for Bae, she has no place to live. She literally lives at the school. She sleeps in the female teacher's lounge. She eats every meal in the cafeteria. She uses the teacher's office for all of her personal computer needs. I often tease her that she's homeless... My hope is that when I leave, she can have my apartment and all it's furnishings. I'm going to miss her.

This is Mrs. Shin, whom I've recently started to complain about. We've had some rough times this semester. She used to be really nice to me but now I'm pretty sure her cool demeanor has a lot to do with jealousy. She is trapped in a marriage of convenience. She tries hard to make her husband happy but he's basically an ass and hardly ever wants to see her or his kids. So she stays in Jeomchon and sees her husband occasionally on the weekend. Her two sons are little monsters and they exhaust her to no end. She never has any time for herself because when she's not caring for her boys or catering to her husband, she's taking care of his parents who live in the same apartment building. But in Korea, it's not okay to be visibly unhappy. So she hides behind her husband's money (because he throws generous amounts at her to keep her happy) and her fancy clothes. But no one is convinced. Everyone knows she's unhappy and her pride in material possessions only makes her look vain and conceited. I once heard her insist that another teacher--to her face even!--wasn't happy in her marriage. This was all a ruse to make herself look good or to make her own marriage look just as good as everyone else's. Yesterday she confessed to me that all she really wants is some time for herself, to see her friends, to escape her life. I pity her and so does everyone else.

This is Mr. Nam. You should all know him by now. He's the most incompetent teacher on planet Earth. He hardly speaks a word of English and all of his students know it. Sometimes, if I say something simple like "How was your weekend?" he just answers, "Yes." And then he repeats it over and over and over. The other day, while planning my going away dinner, he asked what I wanted to eat. I said galbi (kind of a stirfry). But he didn't get it. He just kept repeating "Steak?" over and over. He truly is the one word man. The sad part is that someone else came up and tried to explain in Korean what I was trying to communicate and he still didn't get it! Yesterday, while in the car with him and Mrs. Shin, Shin and I were talking about police officers and in the middle of the conversation, Mr. Nam pipes up, "Policeman." That was it. Nothing more. I was so confused but later that day I realized that Mr. Nam is like a two year old learning to talk. He listens to other people talk and then randomly picks up single words, only to use them later completely out of context.

So now you know my girls school co-workers!

Jeomchon Night Life

Once in a while, Courtney, Lyndsay and I go out for cheese dakkalbi at a place called "Love You" (pronounced "Lub You"). The people who own the restaurant have come to know us pretty well and always take good care of us. Oh, and for those of you wondering, dakkalbi is a spicy chicken pan fried dish that you cook at your table with rice cake, cabbage and sweet potato. This place adds cheese and who doesn't love that?!

The owner's son was there that night with a fly swatter in hand. Start 'em young, I say.

The cute little guy with his grandma. :)

Afterwards, Lindsay and I walked Courtney to her private lesson and then continued on to explore Jeomchon by ourselves.

We found this cool park/farm in the middle of town and had a good time scaling the mountain. That's when we saw this old ajumma carrying her work down the mountain from her fields on top.

She sat down on the little park gazebo where we were sitting and I decided to take a few pictures of her. However, most were too blurry... And I didn't want to be insulting by taking a photo of her face.

Here's the view of "New Downtown" (or so Romeo says) from the top of the hill.

Yep, farms in the middle of apartment complexes.

More "New Downtown"...

A grave with a view. Yep, these two grassy mounds are graves. You find them everywhere in Korea. These lucky two get a view of some of Jeomchon's finest living quarters.