Rewind 2013- Happy New Year!

Habits in Korea

Old habits die hard right? It's true! Some things you can't kick even when you try your best. However, when you are thrown into an entirely different culture, you may find yourself having to get over some of your vices and picking up new ones.
Jamie is an excellent study of a girl with her vices. Her happiness is in fact controlled by her vices. An example would be Diet Coke. In Korea, it is nealry impossible to find. When you do find it, it is a variation of Diet Coke called Coke Light (apparently it's not the same). And Perrier water- the ultimate hangover cure is very difficult to find. Some more things are bourbon, avocado, good wine, and cheese.

My canadian vices are good coffee and vegetarian food... both are nearly impossible to find here. Here at my cubicle, I find myself drinking some instant coffee after a lunch of pork and seafood soup and sulk that I can't have some freshly roasted coffee and an avocado and eggplant panini.
Things I miss about Canada:
1) As stated earlier, COFFEE.
2) Avocados and most especially avocado vegetarian sushi
3) Deoderant: There is this magical thing about Koreans.. they don't sweat. Or when they do they do not stink of body odour. It is a truly fascinating phenomenon. However, it does not matter how much kimchi and rice I eat, my pits will reek if I do not use deoderant. So, this is a hard thing to find.
4) Regular tasting toothpaste: For some reason I must have pick the worst toothpaste possible in Korea- salt flavoured. Just wrap your head around that.
5) Bread that is not sweet

However, like anything in life, there is an upside to Korea and I am sure I will have some tough habits to kick when I get back.

Things that are going to be hard to live without after Korea:
1) No tipping: Here, it is considered rude to tip anyone. They are insulted and feel as though you perceive them as a beggar. Also, tax is included in prices so splitting bills is never a huge issue with people's phone calculator's coming out.
2) Cheap transportation: A regular city bus ride is $1.30. A train ticket for a 5 hour train ride across the country is about $36.
3) Kimbap triangles: These delicious snacks are delicious (delicious has got to be Koreans favourite English word). You can buy these puppies at any 711 or corner store for about 80 cents and only 1 traingle has 96% of your daily calcium intake! Two of these are a hardy meal for me.

 

 

4) Server buttons: On tables at restaurants in Korea, they have this brilliant invention- a bell on each table. So you can look at the menu for a long time without the server awkwardly coming back to your table to see if you are ready yet. Then, once you have your food, you can eat without the constant fear that they are going to come back to do the "check" and you will have your mouth stuffed full of delicious food when they ask you "how is everything so far?". Instead, if you need some more spicy sauce or God forbid you run out of kimchi, you can just ring that bell and they'll come by. GENIUS!

5) Compliments: Being told you are beautiful every day and having little girls ask if you are a princess is not so bad. The flip side though, you cannot go anywhere without being stared at blatantly and even pointed at.

Other cool things:
1) Wedding Halls: I have yet to go to a wedding in Korea but I would really like to. I have talked a lot of them with my Korean co-teachers. Here you have a well-oiled marrying machine. There are halls similar to hotels scattered around cities where you choose your wedding. You rent a dress, go to the next room to have your hair and make-up done, then go to the next room where you have pictures taken with your guests as they arrive. Guests bring an envelope of cash between 30-100$ and then proceed to the buffet of food. As you eat, you watch the wedding ceremony. Wham bam tahnk you ma'am! The whole wedding is over in less than 40 minutes.

2)Dangerously cheap alcohol: Soju, tastes like watered down vodka and has horrible side effects like: drunkeness and the worst hangovers you will ever experience. The size of a mickey of soju is $1.10 at any corner store. Mekju (beer) is also some dangerously cheap stuff. If you are buying a 2 litre bottle of some Korean beer which tastes an awful lot like Coors Light or Molson Canadian (Yick!) it is about $4. Furthermore, the worst and best parts about drinking culture here is that: A) no tipping at bars, B) cheap drinks at bars, and C) no last call. Take a look at this site to fully appreciate how much Koreans drink... http://blackoutkorea.blogspot.kr/

 

Merry Christmas!

I made mugs last night for my co-workers :) And baked like a mad woman. Sadly, no chocolate crinkle cookies this year.

Korea and food

This is kimchi. Kimchi is served for every meal. I mean it... EVERY meal. It is a spicy fermented cabbage side dish that has been stewing in fish sauce, ginger, brine, radish and shrimp sauce fr a couple of months. It's not so bad but who really loves eating spicy, fishy cabbage at every meal?... except Koreans.

 This is a very typical lunch cafeteria meal. As you can see, you've got your kimchi and rice. God forbid if you went a day without rice and kimchi. You would most certainly suffer in some horrible way.. like fan death. (Remind me to tell you all about that if you haven't heard of it before). Moving on, you usually have some type of pork, chicken, fish, or if you are lucky like this guy, some quail eggs and beef. Then you have your standard spicy seaweed soup with some unknown seafood in it (may be octopus, mussels, clams.. who knows!)

 Now THIS. This is my love. This dish makes me love Koreans. It's bibimbap! Basically it is a bunch of vegetables on top of rice with spicy chili sauce and a raw egg. You get it in a hot stone pot and you mix it all together. The heat from the pot cooks the egg and the rest of the dish while you eat it. It is typically a vegetarian dish and is my go to in Kimbap nara restaurants (essentially a diner type restaurant for korean food) a dish like this will cost on average $3 to $7 at the most including tax.

The dish here is called ddukbokki which is a rice cake noodle. It is quite sweet and has some type of sweet chili sauce on it. They consider this kind of like "junk food" and they love this stuff. You can get a cup of it from street vendors like you would get a hotdog in Canada.

Considering how much extra sugar there is in the instant coffee, in the bread, and in their candy, it is surprising to find that desserts are not all that huge here. This is a traditional dessert though called songpyeon- it's a dumpling with black sesame paste that tastes a bit like peanuts in the middle.

 So you want a regular old night out for food the good old fashion Korean way? Korean BBQ or "bulgogi"  it is. They give you a ton of side dishes, a bunch of lettuce and leafs then you choose beef, pork or both. You throw it on a grill in the middle of the table, chuck those pieces of meat in a leaf with some bean paste or chili sauce, fold 'er up and shove it all in your mouth. Jamie and I aptly named it "meat and leaf restaurants". You really should have at least 3 people if you try to go to one of these places. My Canadian friend has told me of the one time she tried to eat at a meat and leaf by herself. They would not serve her and turned her away at the door. I couldn't imagine one person eating all that food, but c'mon.. let a person give it a try!

Season's Greetings!

Greetings from Korea! Because we have shit all in Korea regarding Christmas (our tree is a drawing of a tree taped to Jamie’s window) we decided to send you this beautiful festive greeting. So here are our updates and goings on from South Korea, where we currently reside. As you all know, we have traveled abroad this year to teach English in public schools in Jeollanamdo province, South Korea, the most rural province in the country. We arrived in mid-October and will be working here until October 2014. Living here so far has been an exciting adventure and not with- out its share of challenges. We have made a ton of friends, both Korean and from the in- ternational community, and are slowly settling in to our new lives. While the December holidays from home are not widely recognized here, we are looking forward to our vacation time in January, where we will spend a little under 3 weeks visiting Thailand, Cambodia and Vietnam with Tristan, Jenny and Jenn. Oh, what are you doing in January? Yea.

Jamie is living in Gwangju, which is the 6th largest city in Korea, and travels each day to a town 40 minutes away called Jangseong to work. She teaches at two schools, splitting her week between an all-boys middle school and a vocational high school. Her students are insane. Once they told her they wanted to lick maple syrup off of her, another time a male student tried to guess her bra size in front of the class. He was more successful than some of her previous lovers, but moving on…. In her free time, Jamie usually explores Gwangju’s vibrant culture (and nightlife) or visits friends in neighbouring cities with Dana to visit fresh and new nightlife. Because Jeollanamdo is less densely populated than the rest of Korea, she has had some chances to get out to the great outdoors and hike the beautiful mountains of this region. Jamie is very much looking forward to the spring, when she plans on buying a tent and spending as many weekends possible camping around the country.

This past year saw two moves for Jamie, almost ten years of being best friends with Dana, and yet another year of being single, all of which were pretty awesome things. In 2014 Jamie hopes to live each day like it’s her last, not get pregnant, make new friends, recreate a Kate Bush music video and learn how much soju is too much soju.*

Dana is living and working in Hwasun, a small county on the outskirts of Gwangju. Adjusting to the small town lifestyle has been no easy feat after spending 4 years in downtown Toronto, it has been a lot to get used to from having an old lady stroking her hair at a crosswalk to walking through paprika fields to get to work. Dana is working at an English Learning Centre that is tucked away in the town’s biggest elementary School with an amazing 1,000 students. Alongside 3 other teachers, they lead an English field-trip program for a new group of children every day. Currently, the activities are focused on popcorn making, origami with sea animals, feelings, and Dana’s hospital section where they learn phrases like “I have a stomachache” and “I have a fever”. It is repetitive but is a very fun and energetic environment; she loves the kids and the ridiculous things that they say. However, some days she wants to strangle them as she is yanking flyswatters out of the hands of flailing screaming children. Such is life!

Being a city kid at heart, Dana spends a lot of her free time in Gwangju with Jamie and taking Jamie home after too much of said soju* has been had. This year, Dana hopes that both her and Jamie will survive their introduction to Korean alcohol and no last call bars, avoid eating live octopus with her Korean co-teachers, and to only get herself completely lost on purpose.

We miss you all like crazy. Have a shot of some tasty Canadian whiskey for us.

All the love, Jamie and Dana
*Soju is a rice liquor that Koreans drink. Its like one dollar for a mickey and can be blamed for many life mistakes.

Updates

Hey all!

I figured I was due for an update on this thing. Not too much is new here. I have been keeping busy at school for the most part. We are in our last few weeks of regular school days, I think 4 more weeks, before we move into our winter camp session. This will be 10 days long over the course of 12 days (yes, I will be in school for two Saturdays, lame). My native English speaking co-worker and I will have our work cut out for us but we have a few free work days without classes or Englishtown groups to get ourselves ready. If you have any inspiring themes we could use, let me know!

Korea has been treating me well. It has been nice to fill my weekends up with visiting people, going out to international styled restaurants, and going to bars to meet foreigners. It really helps to be around new people to Korea too. K-pop has not grown on me and I doubt it ever will and as for the meat eating... I have a bit of a deal with my co-worker that I will eat her seafood if she eats my beef, chicken, and pork. I was adventurous at first but I must say that I am a true vegetarian through and through no matter how hard I try to like meat. I am sure I will continue to eat meat as it is served to me but when I can avoid it I definitely do.

This weekend, we went to see Catching Fire, went to a fundraiser, and went to what's called a dog cafe! You go and buy a coffee, which is a pretty steep $5, but then you get to play with the cutest and fluffiest puppies and dogs that wander around the cafe being pet by all the patrons. It was so cute! There is also a kitten cafe too which I'm sure jamie will drag me to soon.

As for future plans, we only get Christmas day off so a bunch of friends we have made will be going to Jamie's place in Gwangju to have a big Christmas Eve feast, have Christmas morning with each other, and then go back to our respective homes. As for New Year's, we only get the 1st of January off so we have not made any big plans for that yet. However, for our winter vacation (January 16th-February 2nd) Jmaie and I plan to meet up with her Queen's friends, Tristan and Jenny, in Bangkok and then travelling to Vietnam for our holidays. We will be booking our flights this week so we are extremely excited about this.

Wolchusan Mountain

We went for a hike.
Little did we know, this hike is for experts. Jamie, our two Brit friends, and I start walking up the hill to the base of the mountain. All the Korean people were already walking back down since we had started sometime around 2pm. We were giggling a bit at how dressed up all these people were. I mean they looked like intense hikers. They were blowing pressurized air on their boots, had matching coats and spandex pants, walking poles, music coming from their backpacks... everything. Us waygooks (foreigners) were wandering up the hill that we all expected to be Gatineau hill type of hike (maybe harder) and the three of them all smoking their cigarettes. Being already tired and really out of shape I made a joke how I was glad that at least I was doing this trek with a bunch of smokers.
Suffice to say we were not at all prepared and were in for quite the surprise when the rocky path turned into stairs and then to piles of rocks, ladders, and rocks with metal poles stuck in them.

Can you spot the two white guys?

I was trying to get a shot of where the bridge was on the mountain. (almost the peak) Instead, here's my friend Kris.

We huffed and puffed our unfit selves up the mountain and made it to the bridge which wasn't even the peak! We hiked for what was only about 2 kilometres  but "cloud bridge" where we stopped had an elevation of 120metres... soo we were going pretty vertical.

Wolchusan means "mountain where the moon rises" in Korean. It was beautiful and the pictures really don't do it any justice. We definitely wished we were more prepared and had left earlier but that's why you should do research before going somewhere right?

Desk Warming

Native English teachers have this awesome thing called desk warming. You literally have absolutely nothing to do except sit at your desk and try to look busy. Usually you have lessons to plans and things to mark but if you have a day like mine today, you have no idea how many classes you will teach next week or which classes. And so, the other native English speaker in my school and I have been just finding funny sites and laughing at funny pictures all afternoon. Sounds like a good deal that I'm getting paid to do this!

Hwasun

Engrish town

airport

Taxi/directions practice

basically New York right?

the play room, pretty much where i live

barber shop

Cold apartment

My first real class!

I have a group of 12 kids in grade 5/6 that I teach Monday to Thursday for an hour. They are incredibly lively and cute. 11 of them are girls so I feel pretty badly for the boy. You know how scared of the opposite sex you were at that age? Ya.. it's even more so for them. Their English is alright but I didn't have much of an idea as to what their level was when I started my lesson today. They were pretty rowdy since I was new to them and all but I showed them a slideshow about me and they were pretty interested in it.
When I let them ask questions about me they mostly just wanted to know if I had a boyfriend, why I didn't have a boyfriend, and if I was going to meet Korean men and date them.
Any way, I am hoping to take some pictures of my work place soon. It's like a little Museum of civilization where they can practice their English in real life settings. Tomorrow I get to dress up as a doctor and teach them phrases like "I have a headache" , "I have a stomachache", etc. I think it will be fun but I have a steep learning curve as I have never taught kids before.
Wish me luck!

My New Digs

The bedding came with the place obviously

Taken from my closed patio balcony thingy

My kitchen! The fridge is unnecessarily MASSIVE

My "dressing room". Here's the vanity and there's my heating mattress pad for the winter behind it.

Loads of clothing storage

I have an oven! It's a big deal here...

Showering might be interesting....

First Korean BBQ adventure

We went out for all you can eat Korean BBQ in Chinae (downtown) Gwangju last night. We tried the infamous Soju. It's like watered down vodka with a slight.. pine taste? It sells for only 1,300 KRW for a 375ml bottle and is about 20-30% alcohol. Not as bad as you might expect but also not my beloved rye whiskey.

They're really into camping in Jeollanamdo. Outside the Korean BBQ place you could, instead of a table, rent a tent and eat your dinner over a grill with your friends. 

A side dish that was served at the restaurant was silk worms and Jamie and our other Canadian comrade Torin bravely tried the delicacy first. I tried along with a few other people in the second wave. I'd have to say it was the most disgusting thing I have probably ever eaten. There was a crunch then a bunch of gritty guts... don't think I will be trying that again...ever.

Hopefully you can watch the video here:
https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?v=10201662713763448&l=2938386161580411077

A Day at Some Buddhist Temple in Hwasun

With raging hangovers, we all got on our party bus that blasted K-pop early Saturday morning to head to Hwasun (my new stomping grounds) for a day at a Buddhist temple. It was really really beautiful! The pictures won't do it any justice.

Anyway, we were taught how to meditate. Apparently my posture is pretty horrible because the monks kept coming by and straightening it out. The monk talking with us had to have been the most happy man I have ever encountered. I think he's got it figured out.

I was SO happy to have a good vegetarian meal. All the ingredients had been grown on the property and were incredibly fresh. We had a traditional Bibimbap meal with soup and a pumpkin rice drink. In the second part of the day we painted lotus flowers with vegetable paint on slices of maple (this is another form of mediation for them). My lotus flower, along with two others, won a bracelet. We then had a traditional tea ceremony of lotus tea and glutinous rice balls and ended the day with a short hike up the hill to a very old sculpture and headstone dedicated to a monk that died there in the 800AC times.

So I'm in South Korea

Hey everyone!

I know I've talked to a few of you about writing down some of my travel experiences on this blog. I guess it is kind of a continuation of my "it's all happening" times with Mass Exodus last year... except now MUCH more is happening!

We had a pretty hilarious time at the airport. Mum and Dad were lovely to have driven a couple of hungover and smelly fools to the airport and helped us unpack and rearrange the weight in our suitcases again, and again, and again. When we said good bye to our loved ones and passed through security.. what was there to do for 2 and a half hours on a sad day but have some unhealthy Canadian food and a couple of spicy caesars to help the hangover and blues.

Our flight was as good as a 14 hour flight could be.. except for the food. I imagine prisoners in Siberia eat better than we did. When we arrived in Incheon, Jamie and I along with 2 other Canadian girls teaching with us made our way to customs and we were already pointed out by someone who said to their friend "definitely Russians". This isn't a compliment in Korea. Here, pretty much any blonde foreigner is called Russian, which, to them is a stripper (apparently a lot of Russian girls come here to work as exotic dancers??)

We hopped on the bus to Gwangju from the airport which pretty much looked like a party bus. It had red leather seats, at least double the amount of space for your legs that you would find on a greyhound, plastic rhinestones on the ceiling, and fringed curtains.

By the time we got to Gwangju it was about midnight, without sleep and between 100-120lbs of luggage (each) to haul around and search for a cab. Suffice to say this was the toughest part of the trip. Attempting to explain to the taxi driver where to take us, how many people were going in each cab, and why we had so much stuff was challenging as he knew about the same amount of English as we did Korean...soo none.

Anyway! We are now at a training institute doing orientation for a total of 10 days. Jamie and I are rooming together in a typical college style dorm except both of our bed have a broken leg under our mattresses so we each have a sinkhole spot where we can't sit on the bed. It is also typical of Korean bathrooms to have a shower head beside the toilet and sink without a tub or separation so you really have to have all clothing out of the room when you shower. It is something that we are both getting used to.

As for the institution, it is quite nice! The food is pretty great too! We are fed for every meal which ALWAYS has rice and kimchi (very spicy fermented cabbage).. even for breakfast. We can tell that the cafeteria people are trying to serve us some "white people food" too though. We sometimes get eggs, tater tots, and corn flakes too. An they really love fried chicken and fish here. I have tried both and it is way better than anything I had tried at home. I'm still not brave enough to try the raw salmon or the whole shrimps though. Jamie bit one and its head crunched in her mouth and she still hasn't gotten over it yet. Today, the Jeollanamdo supervisors came to visit us at dinner with persimmons as gifts for all the teachers. We were all puzzled and biting into the skins like apples when they ran over giggling and showed us how to peel the fruit with a knife. It was definitely a stupid foreigner moment for the whole table but they got quite a laugh out of us.

In our daily seminars, we are covering everything from traditional Korean folk music, to K-pop, history, lesson planning, games, and technology in the classroom. In fact, during our technology lesson, the speaker mentioned that he lives in Hwasun, the county that I will be living in, so we chatted after class and he sent me a map of the town with little pins and notes on different parts of the town like;reat place to buy vegetables, the only place you can find dr.pepper, where to catch the bus so that you can snag a seat, etc. I plan on meeting up with him and his girlfriend next week to make some friends in my town that are Native English speakers.

We've had the chance to go out on the town a couple of nights which has been a very fun experience. One of the American guys at orientation on his second year of teaching had his birthday party this weekend. We were able to see all the foreigner bars but also to check out a few Korean ones. AND since Korean bars don't have a closing time like they do in Canada, we were out until 4am and had to rally to be on a bus at 8:30am for a field trip. I'll try to post some pictures soon of the institute, Gwangju, and our field trip-but for now I have a plate of kimchi and rice waiting for me!

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Daisy

 

The last dress! Now onto corrections and final touches!

This Side of Paradise

Dress number three! Named after the leading lady of "This Side of Paradise"... here she is: Rosalind.

Getting closer!

This weekend will be spent hand sewing and doing corrections on my earlier gowns. It's painstaking work but it must be done!