Everything is a Production in Korea




In Korea, there is no such thing as doing something half-assed. They go all out for everything. They work hard, play hard, and drink hard. At work, the Koreans can't leave work until their boss does. Even if they don't have work to do, they have to stay until their boss leaves. Sometimes they are at work until 3 a.m. Thank god these rules don't apply to me. Koreans are also very active people. They like to hike, in-line skate, bike, etc. When a Korean person goes hiking, he/she is decked out in the latest gear: soft shell pants, wicking shirt, hardcore hiking boots, trekking poles, and a backpack. The backpack generally has a tin cup hanging on the outside, and inside there is a full meal. Korean meals involve about a million side dishes, and those sides are not ever left out, even when it means that you have to carry 30 different little containers up your hike. You can't just throw on some shoes and go for a leisurely stroll. In Korea, you have to have the latest high-tech attire and equipment for whatever you are doing. The people on bikes are decked out in spandex, have hardcore racing helmets on, and have an outrageously expensive bike. If you in-line skate, you wear spandex, a helmet, knee pads, elbow pads, wrist pads, and pads for anything else you can think of. Koreans also go all out when they go drinking. They will stay out drinking until 5 a.m. It is a common thing to see a man passed out in the middle of the sidewalk, on the subway or even in the middle of the street. One night, Ariel and I watched a taxi driver spend 5 minutes trying to wake up the guy passed out in his taxi. In Korea, when you do something, you take it to the max. You give it everything you've got. This is why Korea is going to take over the world.



This is our "bike gang." We like to ride around Seoul. The sweat bands are a joke, but the Koreans give us lots of thumbs up when we wear them. They seem to think it's appropriate to live in the 80's.




We went to the beach this weekend, and we were the only white people there. It was an interesting experience. As usual, the Koreans go all out when they go to the beach. You can't just throw a towel in a bag and go to the beach. A trip to the beach involves a large cooler with ridiculous amounts of food, umbrellas to cover you from the evil sun (they think being tan is ugly here), and large inflatables to keep you from drowning. A large amount of Koreans don't know how to swim. They are too busy memorizing 300 English words a week to learn to swim. At the beach, there are lifeguards who blow whistles at you when you try to go in the water where you can't stand up. Everyone has some sort of flotation device and no one swims. Oh yeah, the men like to wear speedos.

Fun with Korean "mom"



I think I have already mentioned this, but once a week we have Korean lessons with our Korean "mom" (a woman who approached Paco naked in the suana and has now become our Korean family). She is adorable and we love her. She usually cooks us some Korean food also. Last week, we decided to make her cookies. She has an oven (which we do not) so we brought over cookie dough. What do you supposed she made for us to eat with cookies? Caviar and kimchi. Yes, that is right, fish eggs, fermented cabbage, and cookies go well together when you are in Korea. Seriously, these people could eat kimchi with ANYTHING. On a food sidenote, if you don't get kimchi with your food,you will get pickles. Everytime I have eaten pizza here, I get a little thing of pickles with it.

Dogs in Korea




Many people have little dogs as pets in Korea. Little dogs can be a bit prissy. Especially when you put clothes on them and give them cutsie haircuts. My personal favorite is when the dogs wear boots. There are seriously dogs running around in little booties. I have yet to get a picture of a dog in boots, but I promise I am trying to obtain one.



Oh yeah, I am finally on Skype if anyone would like to chat. My name is rachswenny.

An update on life.

We have just been working and living in a city. Last weekend, we finally made it out of the city to meet up with some Korea on the Rocks climbers in a park called Seonunsan (I don't think I spelled that right). Taking the subway to get on a bus to take a taxi to get to the park makes us consider trying to aquire a car while we are here. It would be a little wierd to drive again, but I think it would be worth it to be able to get out of the city.

Last night, we decided to frequent the local pub so we went to every bar in our apartment building (all two of them). One of them was a jazz bar where they serve you watermelon and dog jerky. And no, I don't mean the two mixed together, but seriously, it was dog. We asked the bartender what it was because we thought it might be dried squid and she replied, with a big smile, "It's dog. Korean Dog. Very good." She then picked up a piece and happily ate it. So we did too, and she was right. Don't hate me becaue I ate dog. I had already accidentally eaten it in China...

On another note, Paco has a class of little kids that think she is pregnant. No, it's not because they think she's fat (kids here tell you that you are fat all the time, it happens to all the western teachers), it's because of her chest. This boy points at Paco's chest and says, "Milk. For baby." So apparently having a rack means that you are pregnant in Korea.

The photo is for Kieth. I am giving a belay to Rick, a friend of Kieth's from back when he was in Korea. We finally met up with Rick last weekend.

Oh yeah, Andy the Kid Who Licks Everything quit. It was sad to see him go.....

He looks sweet and innocent, doesn't he? This is Andy, the kid who licks everything. I just thought that people might want to see a picture of the kid who is now terrorizing Ariel as well.



Not only does this kid lick, but he also does this thing where he tries to poke you right in the butthole. It is some crazy game that kids play. Apparently they play in Japan too because I found this picture there.

What a Real Job is Like....

So things are not necessarily logical in Korea. Not at all really. Today, I had to come to work early, 9:15 a.m. to be exact. Why did I have to come to work early? I was supposed to have parent-teacher meetings. I showed up in a suit, heels and panty hose. I was trying to look professional for the parents. When I arrived, I was summoned to a meeting where I sat for over an hour. I have no idea what the meeting was about because it was all in Korean. At one point, everyone looked at me so I am pretty sure that they were talking about me, but who knows what it was about. In the end, I ended up saying exactly zero words, I was never introduced, and for all I know parents were telling my boss how much they either love/hate me. As usual, logic is completely lost in Korea....

There is a museum about kimchi, and I have been there. My kids laughed at me for it, and apparently everyone thinks it is a joke. No one actually GOES there, except Paco and I. I thought it was interesting....

Flower Death

I previously wrote about Fan Death (the Korean phenomenon that if you sleep in a room with the windows and doors shut and a fan on, you will die), but this week I learned about its sister phenomenon, Flower Death. A student informed me that if you have too many flowers in your room that they can kill you. According to my student, the flowers will suck up all of the oxygen and suffocate you with carbon dioxide. Apparently photosynthesis works backwards in Korea. Plants make convert oxygen to carbon dioxide in Korea, while the process is the exact opposite in the rest of the world. The scary thing is that she claims she learned this at science academy.

Maybe this is why Paco found seven beautiful orchids in the garbage closet. Maybe the flowers killed someone and really were meant to be thrown away. I'll keep you posted on Paco's health. Oh yeah, she also found a couch at the garbage, I wonder what that was doing there. Next I will hear about Couch Death...

Climbing Gym at Last!!!

After a few weeks of unsuccessful attempts at finding a climbing gym that is open, I swore "That's it!!! I am not climbing in Korea...." Somehow, we managed to get to a gym that was open this weekend. We almost didn't find it. We got on the bus going the wrong way and almost ended up in China. Eventually we found the gym and elicited that we wanted to climb. When asked if we wanted shoes, we relied that we already had some. Well, we sort of had shoes. Ton Sai did not treat our shoes so well. I got a hole and Paco's shoes were moldy beyond belief. They were so stiff that we throught they might crack in half when she tried to put them on. They didn't crack, but they didn't fit either. So then we had to go back to the guy and show him our destroyed shoes and ask for some to wear. He laughed pretty hard and I felt like an idiot as usual. Nevertheless, we got to boulder in a gym. It was awesome!!!

The Great Wall of Korea

OK, I haven't posted a blog in a while. I know. I think that there are things that I could be writing about, but I am drawing a blank. Perhaps this is because I am tired from hanging out with seven year old children. They can really wear you out. I turn around and Soobin is leaping on top of her desk, Andy is licking someone else's pencil, Angella is crying because one of the twins hit her back after she hit him, Ted is pretending to be a gorilla (his nickname in class is Mr. Gorilla), or they are all trying to poke me in the butt, which is some game kind of game in Korea. Today I got to carry a kid to the office who said he felt sick. Sometimes I teach class literally holding a kid up in each arm. These poor kids have no time to be actual kids because they have school, academy, music and sports. I have things that are mandatory for me to teach, so I don't get to have much playtime with them. Sometimes I wonder what the hell I am trying to do, but I am rewarded every so often with presents and compliments which encourages me to continue on. Enough with excuses for not blogging and down to what else I have been doing.

Last week I spent too much time in bars with the guys I work with, so when I woke up on Saturday I declared myself a non-drinker. Not because I was hung over or had a guy puke on me again (neither of those things happened), but because I decided that drinking here is riduculous and lame. I promptly went to the store and bought a couple of bottles of wine and stated "Since I am now a non-drinker, I have more time to do things like drink wine." Then I decided that I would have to ammend the non-drinker part to an occasional-drinker.

Paco and I went to E-Mart (the Korean equivalent of Wal-Mart) to buy toaster ovens. Of course, they were out of toaster ovens when we got there, but I managed to load myself up with plenty of household items, like a shaker to put salt in and a broom. The things that you normally don't think about needing. When we left E-Mart, we discovered that it was raining cats and dogs. Also, E-Mart is the most ridiculously impossible place to get a taxi so we stood in the rain for a looooong time. Here is the newest edition of the Korea:Is that for Real column so get ready for it. First, a stranger held his umbrella over me for about five minutes. Then another stranger picked up a pillow that had flown out of my box of crap, held his umbrella over me and walked us into a building where he called us a cab. Upon finding out that it would take forever to get a taxi to us, he offered to drive us home himself. I would just like to reiterate that I live in the third largest city in the world in case you have forgotten, and a complete stranger offered to take us home. We finally saw a taxi when he went to get his car, so we jumped in the taxi to save the poor stranger who tried to help the white girls and found himself stuck driving them home. People are so incedible here. Yesterday a stranger stopped to help us in the subway and walked us to our platform. This is a totally normal thing in Korea. People go out of their way to help you.

On Sunday, we went hiking with a Korean teacher from our school. So far in Asia, the hiking has been hit and miss so I wasn't really expecting a whole lot. I should have known better from seeing all of the hardcore hikers on the subway and walking around town. There are constantly people dressed in intense outdoor gear wandering the city. We ended up going on a six hour hike that was pretty strenuous. There were times when we were scrambling up steep rock faces, clinging to a wire railing for our lives. We also discovered the crowds of people hiking in Korea, which you are constantly immersed in. It was an experience alright. There were also a lot of climbers, which just made us more annoyed that everytime we try to go to a climbing gym it is closed.

I'm sure that I could write more, but I won't bore you with anything else for now....

"That is something that I will never do. I will never puke on a chic." -AJ

It was a crazy night. AJ said this and then within a few hours puked on me. Seriously. I got puked on. I don't know whether to blame flip cup or Carnie Station. So here is the story:

There was a going away party for one of our co-workers last weekend. The festivities started with beer pong, which later turned into flip cup. Some people consumed a little too much thanks to generous pouring on AJ's part. AJ had woken up drunk that afternoon and proceeded to drink more thoughout the day. Later, Paco and I ended up in a cab with Greg and AJ on our way to Carnie Station, an all-you-can-eat/drink place. Somehow I instigated the boys to hug random Koreans in the street when they got out of the taxi. They were pretty wasted at that point. Using the help of a Korean translator, Greg then convinced a guy on a forklift to let him drive it on a busy street in Seoul. I don't know how/why that happened, but it did. We made it to Carnie Station and drank more beer, and AJ started looking pretty woozy. I told him not to puke on me and that's when he made the statement about not puking on a chic. Then I tried to help AJ home so that he didn't pass out and die in the middle of the street. On the way to the taxi, he fell and hit his head on a car, leaving a dent in it. On the way out of the taxi, he fell in the middle of the street. I helped him into his apartment and got him to lie down, but he promptly fell out of bed and puked on himself and me. So there you go. I was trying to be a good citizen, and I got vomit on my jeans as a reward.

Is That for real???
Sometimes in Asia you find a pot with seven orchids in the garbage closet. I am not really sure who thinks it is Ok to throw away beautiful blooming orchids, (I would value them at over $200 in the States) but there they were in the garbage closet. Is that for real??? Even though I don’t have the best track record with plants (I definitely killed the Bonsai plant my sister gave me and multiple others) I decided to take them to my apartment. There was no way I was going to watch them get thrown away, first I’ll torture them with my bad plant care skills. No I am really going to try and not murder them and keep them out of the garbage closet…I’ll keep you posted on how that goes. Meanwhile I am really hoping that there is no cultural misunderstanding occurring, such as Korean people sometimes store their orchids in the garbage closet, and I just stole them. I am betting that stealing someone’s orchids sends really bad karma your way…which is the last thing I need right now. So next time you see orchids in the plant nursery think to yourself: “In Korea people think it is OK to throw 7 of those away, is that for real?”

"It must be karma. What did we do wrong?"

We have been saying this for at least the past week. Does anyone have any ideas what we did? At the moment, I am not only being killed slowly by Yellow Dust but also from whatever chemicals they are using in the renovation of our office (our teacher's office area has now been reduced to a fraction of its normal size so that they can put in a glass wall- yipee! I always wanted to work in a fishbowl). So my runny nose is not getting any better...

Does anyone have any suggestions of things to do to get GOOD karma? Let us know.

I was thinking that I had profound things to say today, but in actuality, I do not. Instead I will leave you with a few quotes to describe how my life is going.

"We're going to like Korea dammit!!!"
-This was said after we heard numerous horror stories about Korea from everyone we encountered. We are determined to like it here, and so far it is working out for us reasonably well.

"I wrote it in pen, so I couldn't change my mind."
-Paco said this when she was telling me about her essay written at the Andy Prep interview. It turned out to be foreshadowing. Andy Prep told us they only had enough hours for one teacher so we took a job at another school. Four days later, Andy Prep offered us two positions due to increased enrollment, but we had already signed a contract with our school so we couldn't change our minds.

"Don't tell the school, they might not hire me."
-I felt a little like I was playing a part in a school play when I went on job interviews. I had on a costume and makeup and delivered the same lines about why I had come to Korea over and over.

"Who invented that?" -AJ "Invented what?" -me "Drinking..." -AJ
-This was what one of our co-workers said about the first night that we went out to the Owl (local bar) and stayed out until 5 a.m.

The "Is that for real?" column is born

So oftentimes in Asia I notice random things happening and think to myself "Is that for real?" So I have decided begin contributing to our blog and start a column entitled "Is that for real " to share these moments of confusion, bewilderment and/or awe with you.

"Is that fore real" by Paco
Article 1: Korean men carry purses
For some reason men in Korea carry around purses. When I say purses I don't mean the cool looking sachels you see in other parts of Asia and Latin America, but regular women's purses. It is quite commom to see a full grown man with a stylish black leather purse with silver buckles slung around his arm. For awhile I just thought Korean men were real gentlemen, carrying their girlfriends purses. After awhile I began to notice that many of these purse carrying men are not accompanied by a woman and the ones that are, have a lady friend that is carrying her own purse. I guess a bag is a bag and we all have stuff to carry around the city, but seeeing so many men sporting stylish purses made me say "Is this for real?"

Rachel reporting... I just wanted to add a little something. You may be wondering what a guy is carrying in that purse of his. Personally, I thought it was just all of that crap that guys carry around in their pockets and then empty onto the table every time they sit down, but it is a little more than that. Today at lunch, I watched a guy take out make-up and touch up his face. So he might be carrying the exact same thing in the purse as his girlfriend. You certainly can't have your boyfriend looking better than you, which is probably why women here are so obbsessed with their appearance and subsequently look so nice. Sometimes I feel like a slob since (1) I have no purse and (2) I never carry make-up with me.

Ok, so I was teaching a class on various health ailments today. I was explaining runny nose, stuffy nose and then nosebleeds. Literally within two minutes of explaining this, my nose started bleeding out of the blue. I don't normally get nosebleeds (even though I am a huge dork) so this was very unexpected and awkward for me. I pointed to the blood that had dripped on the floor and said "See. That is a nosebleed." And then I ran out of the room. How is that for a teachable moment? Good thing I wasn't explaining diarrhea...

So I think that the bloody nose may be from Yellow Dust, which is dust that is blown over from Mongolia or something like that. It can kill you, at least that is what they say. I don't know who they are, but if they claim that you will die, maybe we should all listen to them. They also say that fans may kill you. For all of you uniformed folk (that being any person not from South Korea), fan death is something we should all think about before going to bed each night. Simply ask yourself these two questions: Are the windows and doors closed? Is there a fan on in the room? If you answered yes to both questions then you will not wake up in the morning. In Korea, there is a widespread belief that if you sleep in a room with the windows and doors closed and a fan on, then you will DIE!!! Don't ask people to explain the physics of this to you because they won't have an answer, but they surely believe it.

There are things that are killing me slowly, that I think they should look into. First off, there are the parasites that I am 97% positive have been inhabiting my intesstines since New Year's. Then there is the lack of soap in the bathroom at work (which is really bad when you have snot-nosed kids hanging off of you all day long) and the lack of variety of vegetables and nutirents in my diet (you mean that eating cabbage, rice and eggs everyday is not good for you?!?!?!!?). Let's see, that was the Yellow Dust, worms, non-existent soap and nutirents. Yup, that about covers my health right now. Oh yeah, and my washing machine has also been sitting in the middle of my kitchen (not hooked up) since I moved in so I haven't had clean clothes in two weeks.

Korea is great. I can't blame any of my ailments on the country. Or can I?

Home Sweet Home

Yes, I now live in the third largest city in the world (by population), following Tokyo and Mexico City. This city is ginormous but it is nearly impossible to get totally lost in it. If you are confused, hold up a map and look around quizically. Within a few minutes a nice Korean person will stop and offer you help. If you don't want to bother the nice people, all you have to do is look for a subway station, and the place is littered with them like China was with garbage and shit. From the subway, you can always find your way home.

My new home is in a place called Daechong Tower, which has 26 floors, a subway station in the basement, two convenience stores, a cafe that only has one table, a gym that has a golf area, a quilting store, a dentist, a dermatologist, a bar, a bakery and a floor of restaurants that smells unappetizingly like fish. My apartment is a studio with a murphy bed (that means that it can fold up into the wall if I want more space) and a bathroom the size of a very small closet. I also have a small gas range with a little drawer of an oven. Ovens are almost non-existent in Asia. We made cookies in our guesthouse and the owner looked at the oven with shock, like she hadn't known that you could cook things in it. Since we like to make cookies, we tried to do this in my oven the other night, but something went wrong. I am not sure how, but the cookies caught on fire. I went to check on them and found them in flames. It literally took about 15 minutes to get them to go out. So there you go, flaming cookies in a mini-oven. Lesson learned: don't try to cook in the "oven" because that is not what it is meant for. I don't know what it is meant for, but obviously it's not for making cookies.

Down by the River

So unlike the rest of Asia, people in Korea are active. This activity can be best viewed on a weekend (read Sunday as most people work on Saturdays) down by the river. People are biking and roller blading, and maybe even doing a little urban camping. There is a fabulous path and along the path there are exercise machines. That's right, public exercise machines. A nice man named Mr. Kim (coincidentally 23% of people in Korea are Mr./Mrs. Kim) showed us how they all work one day. I think that I wrote about Mr. Kim before. Anyway, there are also places along the river to play games, like bocce ball or baseball or kicking volleyball. I don't really know what kicking volleyball is actually called, but it is played like volleyball except that you can't use your hands like soccer (or football if you are from any country other than the US). This game is played all over Asia. I don't think that I would be very good at it...

It's funny to me the silly things that trigger homesickness for me. Today I was hit with that feeling of distance and separation on the subway. I saw a woman talking on her mobile phone, and she suddenly grinned and then burst into laughter. That was enough to send a pang of homesickness through my body. When I was in Thailand, seeing a movie in a theater did the same thing to me. In contrast, there are times when I have to remind myself that I am in a foreign country. When I first arrived here, I was snoozing on a bus and I thought to myself I should really look out the window and see what Korea looks like. Oh yeah, I am in Korea!! I don't know how it's possible to forget that I am a strange land at one moment and in the next moment be struck by the realization that I am not, in fact, at home. I don't particularly understand the things that bring on the homesickness, and I think the surprise of the onslaught of emotion makes it feel more intense than it should be. However, the year in Korea is just starting so I had better suck it up and get used to it.

I had my first day of work teaching English today. I think that it went well.... well, sort of. I ended up teaching a class, but prepped the wrong lesson, which meant that I got to lead a discussion on a reading passage that I had no idea what was about. One thing I will say about these Korean kids is that they are damn smart, and cute also. I keep forgetting that English is the second language. They are probably on par with kids in the US speaking in English (or maybe even better), but English is not their native language. I guess that is what happens when kids go to school all day long- literally until about 10 p.m.

Destination Korea

After numerous hours of traveling overland (it's over a hundred), we made it to Korea. I was so excited that I took a picture of the first sign telling me that I was in Korea. Since being in Korea, I have been trying to get a job, which involves me sitting at a computer, swimming through a sea of emails of employment opportunities. It's insanity. So far we have had one interview with a school in a posh part of Seoul. You know it's posh because you pass two Starbucks (yes, that's right, two) and then turn at Hooters to get there. We put on our new suits and heels for the first time and went to an office with hardwood floors and leather chairs. In a conference room, we had an interview and then we were led to a room full of binders with titles like Yale, Harvard, Brown, etc. on them and asked to write an essays on how to improve English and what it means to be a good teacher. I left like a kid playing dress-up and make-believe. I think that we may have convinced them that we are not dirtbag travelers.

Today we escaped the computers by going for a run by the river, which somehow ended in drinking beer. Korean people are really active. They like to hike, walk, run, bike, and rollerblade. There are also public workout machines everywhere. We were exploring these workout machines and probably looking like idiots when Mr. Kim approached to show us the ropes. He showed us how to use every machine in several ways. He was so friendly and sweet that he let us ride his bike and then took us down to a stand and bought us drinks. Who doesn't like a beer after exercise? I must say that I LOVE Korea so far. To all of those wankers out there who said negative things to us, I can only shake my head in bewilderment. Every single time that we have been lost/confused some Korean person has walked up and offered to help us. People have been wonderful and inviting. Paco lost her to-go tea mug at a restaurant and we went back there two days later and they recognized us and brought it out to giddy Paco. Yeah, Seoul is a huge city, but it is clean with well-planned transportation and the people I have met have been wonderful. I heart Korea.