video: the morning walk

here's the first of possibly many (or at least a few) video segments on my korean life. this one is simply the walk from my apartment to kwanchon elementary school. i had to do it in a few takes because my camera was running out of video space and battery. also, keep in mind its a tiny hand held so its super shaky and the video quality is super low because i had to upload it to this website. if you're so curious you'd like a higher resolution version (or have any questions!) just email me.

christmas with koreans

in the words of the great frank wheeler:

"although we may not be home in england for christmas, or any of our respective countries, we're here with our new friends in korea. and i can't think of a better christmas gift this year than being here with my new family, all of you."

yes, it brings a tear to my eye too. christmas this year was held in korea. there were around 25 people in attendance, 15 of which were koreans, 13 of which had never tasted turkey. games were played, some involving mouths precariously close to one another; foods were eaten of both eastern (ddokbokgi) and western (turkey, stuffing) varieties; fun was had. later there was dancing. beer was consumed. hearts were broken (on and off the dance floor).

christmas in korea ain't half bad. but it's still no christmas in the u.s. miss you all! merry christmas and happy new year!

skyping on christmas with weirdos.

she's a cholla. she'll cut you.

post exclusively for the enjoyment of jon moser

navy seals on korean television. picture or it didn't happen:


woo and that's enough posting for one night!

orion-suh!

basketball exists in south korea. i just thought i should mention that before posting a bunch of basketball pictures. it might startle some of my more skittish readers. daegu's team is named after a cookie manufacturer in south korea, orion (not pronounced 'o-ryan' but 'o-ree-un'). they're called the orions (again, this is pronounced 'o-ree-un-suh' because 's' by itself is not a proper syllable although that probably means nothing to anyone so ignore, ignore, ignore!). i have been to 4 or 5 games at this point because they're cheap, the gymnasium is smaller than nippert stadium and even some larger high schools so every seat is a good seat, and they have a lot of shows/games during the breaks. korean basketball is more or less the same as basketball in the u.s. (fouls work slightly different but i'm not really sure what the rules on them are yet) but they have some funny rules in place mostly involving foreign players. each team is allowed to have 2 foreign players. these are almost always (maybe always) big black guys who play power forward or center (the reason should be pretty obvious). koreans are actually really good shooters. i'm sort of curious what the shot percentage is like but i imagine its pretty high. anyways, out of these two foreign players only one can be on the court at a time. so usually they'll have one guy play the first half and the other play the second. a curious exception to this rule are korean-americans who they count as full-on koreans. the daegu orions, for instance, have a korean who grew up in america and played college ball in florida. he doesn't count as one of the two allowed foreigners though.

a typical play goes something like this: the korean guards will pass the ball around a billion times around the perimeter looking for a way to feed it into their big black guy. when the big black guy gets the ball he tries to out-maneuver the other team's big black guy to get an easy layup or fade-away jumper. a variation on this has the big black guy dishing the ball out to a korean shooter on the wing who puts up a 3-pointer (usually making it).

like i said earlier, i've been to a handful of games, but i've yet to see a win. daegu's probably in last place at this point. at least their baseball team is good? at least it's not cincinnati sports?

daegu orions' two foreigners: glen mcgowan (pepperdine) and george otis (headband, louisville). guy with the white headband is lee dong jun, the korean-american (not to mention korean lady killer).

time-out free throw contest. he won!

no idea whats going on here. the cheerleaders have at least 3 outfit changes a game.

the mascots are elves? i guess? they breakdance. breakdancing elves.

the other team's coach was having a bobby knight moment.

their heart pom poms say daegu on them.

how to not impress your co-workers in korea

this past wednesday the entire school staff left work around 1 in the afternoon to head to uslan, a decent sized town on south korea's eastern coast. the trip was presented as a "workshop" to wrap up the school year, but the only real item on our agenda was to eat sushi and throw back some bottles of soju. they're clever, these koreans, calling things one thing but meaning something totally different.

ulsan is about 2 hours away from daegu by bus which isn't terribly far. that's driving from inner-korea to a nice beach in the time it takes to get from cincinnati to columbus. see how easily you disappointment columbus? see how grandly you fall short of what two hours could be? you make me sick, columbus! sick! anyways, 2 hours isn't so bad, but the first thing i noticed when boarding the bus was the obvious lack of any sort of restroom. could be foreshadowing!

our first stop on our tour of ulsan was to visit the ulsan onggi museum. onggi is a traditional style of clay pot typically used to hold grains or other types of foodstuffs (although there was a particularly large example that was meant to be used as a toilet - i believe the placard said it was for the containment of human excrement to be exact). after a quick tour we headed to our second stop, a lighthouse on the eastern sea. although the korean teacher at my school taught me the name of the place about twenty times i can't recall it now for the life of me. it's apparently famous for watching the sun rise on new years because its one of the eastern most points of korea.

then onto the main event - fresh sushi and soju. korean sushi isn't really the same as the rolled style that most americans (myself included) are used to. chunks of cut up raw fish are brought out to you on giant leaves and you eat them with various dipping sauces. i'm a pretty big fan of sushi but for some reason korean style sushi just rubs me the wrong way. it's a little bland so it tends to be a mush of texture in your mouth unless you use one of the sauces (which im not a huge fan of). it might also be a subconscious aversion. the last time i had this style sushi was with the principal, vp, head teacher and p.e. teacher from my school. they fed me so much soju i had the worst hangover the next day - a pile of raw fish sitting in my stomach, sloshing around with korean rubbing alcohol. anyways, i still ate my share but i tried sticking mainly to beer as i thought it would help curb the uncomfortable memory of soju and sushi. try as i might though the principal would just not let me have my way and so soon enough we were slugging back shots of soju and slamming down glasses of poktanju, a bomb style drink with soju and beer. still, i don't think i drank that much and was relatively sober for the bus ride back. and yet, a bit of drunkeness was the least of my worries for that 2 hour voyage back to daegu.

rewind back to my first impression of our tour bus - no toilet. no toilet for two hours. admittedly, i am my father's son (which is a nice way of saying i have to pee a lot when i drink), but i've never had many problems when it comes to powering through a strong desire to take a leak. even now, im pretty sure i had some kind of bladder or kidney infection brought about by the potent mix of soju and fresh fish direct from the ocean. whatever the cause - infection or just too much to drink - i was soon bent over on the bus from the worst pain ever caused by the need to pee. it felt as if the whole of my insides would burst open and spray all over the other teachers. i begged my teacher to ask the driver to stop at a rest stop. this was about 30 minutes into the drive back.

we stopped but curiously, perhaps out of defiance for treating it with such neglect over these past few months and especially this night, my bladder would not cooperate. i knew i had to pee and yet so little was actually produced. disappointed and afraid, i headed back to the bus. after the rest the teachers decided it was my turn to sing a song (there was a built in noraebang in the bus, it was a noraebus). i wanted to go with something simple and quick that the teachers might be familiar with. i chose the song 'girl' by the beatles because i think its beautiful and i know the words. apparently i chose poorly. although i didn't find out until the next day, most of the teachers though the song was pretty flat and a little boring. my bad korea! i'm sorry i don't meet your karaoke expectations! did i mention my bladder had almost burst? did i mention my failure to properly address this problem?

fast-forward about an hour, through an excellent version of some k-pop song by my co-teacher ji won (apparently an accomplished and much admired singer), and here i am again, doubled over in my seat with terrible pains in my lower half. ashamed but helpless, i once again beg my co-teacher to ask the driver to stop. unfortunately we were only 20 minutes or so away from our destination and she doesn't see it fit to stop. i try to muster a bit of the british steel i've heard so much about but alas, i am american, not british at all, and it does not work. i am at my wits end. desperate things are about to transpire. if you have any pride in america i beg you not to read this next part. turn away. spare yourself the shame of one of your fellow citizens so that it might not also become your own.

not knowing what else to do, i suggested to my co-teacher, a small south korean mother of one, to-be of two, if it would be okay (as if its ever okay) to pee in a bottle in the back of the bus. yes! i did! and i did! everyone knew. there were no secrets on the bus that night. and although they all looked away, i feel it was not out of respect of my privacy, but in shame of what another human being had come to. only one teacher did not move. the same head teacher i had sushi with before. he was asleep in the back row from having had too much to drink. and as i peed in a bottle, he woke up, looked at me, gave me a knowing smile and said, "i understand." and went back to sleep. i feel that maybe he did understand. and in those few words, i felt the other teachers might also. either that or im just the freakish american now. what are you going to do aside from shrug it off and make a post about it so all the internet can read about your shameful korean experiences?

here are some pictures (none of me peeing in a bottle though):

the largest post box in south korea - i guess they have these sort of things too.

if you look into the distance you can see the beautiful smoke stacks of ulsan's industry centers

휘 (pronounced 'hwey') is the korean word for sushi. 게 (pronounced 'gae') is the korean word for crab. i was getting a korean lesson with fish sauce.

this is the first grade teacher who teaches me korean. her name is chun young-su. she's doing her best to introduce me to jesus although i keep trying to tell her i went to catholic school for 12 years. unfortunately she speaks about as much english as i do korean.

the p.e. teacher at my school and all-around good guy, kim hwan sun. we're drinking buddies. noraebus in the background.

*new* k-pop compendium: DJ DOC - i'm a guy like this

i dont know if im going to keep that entire title. its already annoying and this is post one. anyways, the idea of this segment is to introduce to some of my reading (and yes, neglected as of late) audience a taste of what is blasted at you every second of the day from every corner as you're walking through south korea. you could be walking through a farm in the country-side and i bet you would still hear the same five songs over and over blasting out of some hidden speaker in a corn husk.

first: a general thought on the current state of korean pop music. i don't want to sound like an asshole but its pretty obvious that most popular music being produced in asia is heavily motivated by what's been done in the states and other western countries. japan, for example, seems to have gone in the direction of synthesizers and electronic based pop music. korea, on the other hand, has latched aggressively onto the american hip-hop scene. so, as i go through some of these selections, you'll probably start to notice a lot of nods to the likes of missy elliot, gwen stafani, and 90's rap - especially the style/fashion.

okay! so my first selection here is in memory of the fantastic weekend i just had in seoul (shoutouts: connie, annie, kailey, joanne, andrew, lawrence, carolein, tony, miran, canadian dude, frenchman, makgeolli man, das rascists, etc.). this song is often played in tandem with LMFAO's shots (they have a really similar section that culminates in 'everybody' being shouted), but whereas shots is a really (really) stupid anthem to uh..shots, i'm a guy like this escalates into pure pop awesomeness. sure, you're watching the video and you're thinking, "this could be the worst thing i've ever seen. why would you even put this on a blog?" and i'll admit that the first 40 or 50 thousand times i heard it i was in the same boat. but right at number 50,001 something just clicks.

and it clicks right when they go into the "나 이런 사람이야" (it's the part that sounds like: na! ileon saram-iya!) section. it's an earworm. i don't even know what it means (although now that i know the title i'm thinking it means "i'm a guy like this" as the na part refers to "i" and "saram" means person - ie. miguk-saram means "america person" or "american" - whoa, long parenthetical) [rewind] i don't even know what it means but i find myself singing it all the time. it usually goes something like, "na! ileon saram-iya! arrest a kido! i need a shit-a! a centipede-a! (fading out...)something somethin somethin somethin somethin somethin ocho olay! (triumphant return!) na! ileon saram-iya!" etc. etc. also that beat is something straight out of a timbaland track.

apparently dj doc has been around since the 90's, which sort of explains how cornbread that dude looks with the curly hair and glasses (seriously, is he the other guys lame cousin who went to conservatory so they had to invite him), but the whole image is a big wtf? its like daddy yankee meets barenaked ladies. figure it out fellas! you can't be hip hop when half of your group belongs on the set of 'that thing you do' (maybe outkast would disagree). anyways, this was just an introduction. for the next installment i plan on taking a look at 2ne1, a real freakshow on this side of the pacific pond. but for now, here's dj doc doing i'm a guy like this:

♫: dolly parton - jolene (1974)

train keeps on a'rollin. its like kinetic energy on a frictionless plain. i can't stop this thing. content is just spewing from my fingertips like strained peas from a babies mouth (or bottom if we want to get really graphic, but let's not).

this is another music post long-time-coming. i fell in love with this song a little out of nowhere. shortly after it found a way into my karaoke rotation and for a few weeks in new york i think i drove my roommates insane listening to it and its various covers. i think i have a knack for attaching myself to songs whose protagonists are pitiful sad-sacks longing for something just out reach. and i guess this is the point where i wonder - "perhaps this suggests something about my own fragile place in this world? am i really the sad-sack? am i pitiful? am i always wanting what i can't have?" well i'm not going to give you the satisfaction of answering those questions. instead, i'm going to talk about this song.

the song's marching rhythm lends it something close to aggression towards the titular character, although you get the feeling that its a ferocity built out of fear rather than strength, like a cat backed into a corner. it's a far cry from the independent-woman-feminism of 9 to 5 parton. what i respond to most in "jolene" is the simplicity of the song's composition - a guitar, some drums and parton's vocals attached to a really fantastic melody. and the lyrics. again, nothing fancy, just a plea given in simple language ("and i can easily understand how you could easily take my man, but you don't know what he means to me, jolene").

do i get weird looks as i sing about losing my man to a more beautiful woman in the karaoke room? yes, obviously. but i don't care because i know there's at least one other person in the room who feels the same way i do when i hear this song. one person who can feel happiness slipping through their fingers as it crawls into someone else's. we all know that feeling. besides, i just really like singing it.

let's play with english

as i alluded to in my last post, all last week we had an english language experience (entitled, "let's play with english"), which meant all the classes had to try and introduce english into their lessons and we threw a big halloween party for every grade. i was responsible for helping the teachers create halloween themed games and activities for their classrooms and hosting the halloween party (with its own set of games and activities). this would have been fine if it was just for a day or two, but 5 straight days of halloween parties (1 party for each class in each grade, so 6 grades...that makes around...20 parties!) turned me into a teaching zombie. if there's an up-side at least it was appropriate for the lesson topic.

the main activity was a trick-or-treat game which loaded the kids up on candy (really it was only around 5 pieces each, but to them that's a lot), so regardless of whether they actually learned anything i think they had fun. but there were a few other games as well, such as a mummy wrap, a spider-web word game, and a zombie rock, paper, scissors game. most of the pictures are from the mummy wrap which involved only the first and second graders. they're the most photogenic of the bunch anyways.