Busan, Finale

 

Morning.

For various reasons, there was a blur between the end of the night before and the morning after. I awoke after not more than a few minutes of dozing in time to see a man and a younger guy putting in the first of what would be hundreds and hundreds of umbrellas. In a few hours Haeundae Beach in Busan would be crawling; our bed would be pretty crowded.

Turns out, it wasn’t our bed. The older of the two umbrella Nazis began shouting at me that we were in his way. We wouldn’t have been in his way for another hour anyway but I smacked Larry in the back and we moved further up.

All things told, there are worse places to be exhausted and hung-over than Haeundae Beach. Granted, my mouth tasted like black death and my skin was covered in grime and sand from the past 6 or so hours- the stink of bad barbeque hung around me in a shroud of regret. Luckily we were right next to a giant bathtub.

The water reminded me of Hampton Beach and Plum Island in that it was freezing almost to the point of ankle numbness but not quite there so it was refreshing.

Here’s something you should know about Haeundae Beach: you can’t swim until 9am. Why? Don’t know, perhaps you die. We were throwing around a tiny football when a lifeguard came running up and told us to get out of the water. Fun time was over. We spent another 15 minutes in pathetic childlike desperation. The beach was empty save for a few runners, the umbrella Gestapo, and Larry and I as we sat at the edge of the water and tossed a miniature nerf-ish football back and forth like 5 year olds who would drown in more than 2 inches of water.

At some point we fell asleep long enough to fry and woke up to take a quick dip and clean off a fraction of the sand that would cling to us until we were back home.

Our motel cost 90,000W. Not a bad price considering where we were. It was more than we were hoping to pay but it was close to the beach and let us check in at 10am so we took it.

Love Motels. These classy establishments of the cheap and fornicating are one of the coolest things about Korea. I don’t remember our hotel name (I remember spending 30 seconds sounding out the Hangul til we figured out that it had something to do with BEACH) but it was surrounded by a wall and curtains so that those who walked in would not be visible to the outside, more decent world.

There is a certain shame in these places despite that they are literally EVERYWHERE. They are generally a hell of a lot cheaper than a tourist hotel (90,000W is actually pretty damn expensive for a love hotel) and can be a hell of a lot nicer. Sure, they might come with a few questionable extras- battery-operated devices, an extra channel or two, a few brochures for a little company- point is love motels make a lot of sense for the budget traveler. Though, according to Lonely Planet, there is a love motel in Busan at which one can rent a sex machine for an hour- that place might warrant the covert entrances.

We lucked out with a measly condom machine in our room. I have stayed in some pretty shady places in my life (cough, Buffalo, uncough) and this, well, it wasn’t one of them. There was a giant TV hanging on the wall, the bathroom was large with a deep-but-broken whirlpool tub. We had a nice view to the ocean above a handful of buildings. Our beds were firm and comfortable despite being covered in sand within seconds. All in all it was a fine place. I collapsed onto my bed and looked up at the thing that was probably going to kill us in the end.

It reminded me of an enormous wagon wheel. It was deep brown and was fixed to the ceiling. The color went with the white ceiling but the thing was monstrous. I had visions of my end- killed by a giant wagon wheel in Korea next to Larry in a room with a condom machine.

The other thing that made me nervous was our fire escape. We were on the ninth floor and our only way out in an emergency was coiled behind some glass next to the window. Our fire escape was a rope. I am scared of heights and if there was a fire I was supposed to throw this NYLON rope out of the window and shimmy down to the ground? C’mon Korea, at least spring for a rope ladder. They might as well have left a Super Soaker 80 in there with a note that said “…sorry”.

Lunch was a disappointment. We stopped at a sit-down Chinese joint and pointed to several menu items that we wanted included in our “lunch special” and got almost none of them. Instead we got a handful of tiny sample dishes of pretty crappy food. The rolls were pretty good though. We should have sgone for the shark fin or the bird’s nest soup, both of which were listed on the menu.

Haeundae Beach looks a lot more socially acceptable in the day. For one thing, there were no obviously drunk sailors or old men from the GEORGE WASHINGTON looking for meat in exchange for cigarettes. The place was swarming with people. It is still strange to see non-Asians with any regularity but a good percentage of people we passed by or pushed through were from the West. The beach was completely covered in umbrellas and people in skimpy bathing suits. Wait, that last part was a lie. It wasn’t until after Larry brought it up that I really noticed, but Koreans aren’t fans of the newest suits with the least amount of material. Nope, Koreans are fans of wearing a full set of clothes, sometimes even an over shirt on top of their T-shirt, when they go swimming. Whatever they were wearing, the place was hopping. Restaurants were overflowing and convenience store patios were full of people enjoying one or several early afternoon drinks.

We walked with the beach to our left on our way to some sort of shore pathway that brought us to an island and back. It was nice. The last time Larry and I had walked together was at the mountain fortress in Cheongju so this was a breeze. A wooden walkway sat atop rocky cliffs and jetties. Below were families drinking Soju and hunting for shellfish or something else. There was no sand for them to sit on, they just perched themselves amongst the rocks.

The path led to somewhere that was pretty unexpected. It led us first to a small lighthouse within sight of a giant bridge, but it then took us to a big modern looking building. It was the APEC building. Just recently there was an APEC meeting held in Vietnam. In 2005 APEC was in Busan, apparently in the building that stood in front of us.

It was a pretty cool place if a little bit dry. It was preserved so that we might feel like we were present at the time. We saw replicas of the meals they ate (plastic kimchi, anyone?) and saw their huge round table and seats labeled with the country of the representative who sat in it. Outside the meeting room we got to see the chairs they sat on as they looked out over the water towards the bridge. Mind you, we weren’t allowed to sit in them. They looked comfortable.



I was looking forward to dinner. Earlier in the day we had walked past a place called Fuzzy Navel. It appeared to be a bar that was packed beyond capacity but I knew (from being pathetic and googling “burritos” and “Busan”) that they allegedly served half decent Mexican food.

We found a spot on the patio and watched as a woman with two yippy but totally obedient dogs walked around. People sat in a tent next to us as a man read their palms and lightning tore the sky off in the distance. We ordered our food and sipped our drinks as we waited. The waiter brought out drinks to us and I, for one, realized that a “lime tap cocktail” was in no way a margarita. It was some dull beer that was loaded with lime flavoring. If mine was bad I felt fortunate that I had not ordered Larry’s Kahlua version.

Finally our food came. Words can’t describe how excited I was. I dug into my beef burrito. It consisted of about a pound of lettuce, refried beans, rice (according to the menu, it wasn’t on my burrito), a few burnt shreds of beef, fake cheese, and sour cream. If I were at home I would have been pissed, but I am not. I was eating genuine sour cream and what was once beef.  All was right with the world.

Larry managed to order the worst burrito on earth. I finished it when he couldn’t eat any more and it consisted of fake cheese and hardening refried-beans. I lucked out on the meal.

Later, we walked for a time with the beach to our right. We passed a K-Pop concert with 8,000W beers, a mural and about a thousand people at a hundred restaurants. We walked until the bustle of the strip gave way to the port. Fishing boats bobbed in a marina as open air shops cleaned their fish tanks. The night darkened with the lack of florescent lighting and the people became less tourist oriented. We walked through a narrow street and finally came to the end of the way and turned around. On a flat spot on the edge of the jagged rocks before the sea sat a family eating a twilight picnic. On our way back we passed small family fish shops where ladies cleaned or cooked their dinner which was presumably very fresh seafood.

Our Busan experience ended with us sitting atop a lifeguard chair drinking a beer while watching the sea as Koreans laughed and drank soju next to us.

At least, that’s how I would like to think it ended. It actually ended with a lifeguard walking up to us and blowing his whistle so that we would get down. “Damn waygooks,” he probably thought. We then went back to the love motel and watched Independence Day and The Ruins and had one last sip of Mongolian vodka. Before we left I ate an authentic bacon-double-cheeseburger from Burgerking and all was right with the world.  Not a bad weekend.

 
What I ate today: jjajangmyeon (noodles with black bean sauce) and fried chicken.

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Busan, Part I

I spent this past weekend in the southern port of Busan. Larry and I had been planning on heading that way for quite awhile but things hadn’t been working out. Primarily, we were hoping to meet up with my friend Sun Young, with whom I spent days digging in Greece, but she is perpetually on the move or otherwise occupied. This time she was in China. It would have been nice to have somebody with us who 1: spoke the language and 2: knew the city like the back of her hand and could be our tour guide. We decided against postponing because Larry is down to his last few weeks in Korea. We are at the end of the line and he is checking out at the end of intensives.

There was something familiar about our trip to Busan: it reminded me of taking of on an adventure with Brandon. It had this nostalgic feeling despite being basically as far from home as I can get. If I had to put a finger on what kick-started my memory I would have to say is that we had NO PLAN WHATSOEVER.

I talked to Larry in the short breaks between a full schedule. Actually, he had a full schedule; Fridays are a joke on my end. I had three class scheduled and two of them didn’t even show up. I had a total of 30 minutes of classes on Friday.

The furthest along in the planning process we got was that I bought tickets for a KTX train leaving Daejeon, the next city over, at 10:45pm. We would arrive in Busan at about 1:45am. From there we had no idea what we would do. We barely got tickets as Busan is a pretty popular beach destination and figured it would be catastrophic to pay for a motel for two weekend nights. In which case the sensible thing to do is obviously to spend the night in a bar. Problem solved. Done. Worry about the rest after the hangover.

I spent 4,000W on a cab to the Cheongju bus terminal and 3,000W on a bus only to have it stop directly in front of my apartment in Gaesin-dong (my neighborhood). On the plus-side I had Popey’s. The first time I ever had Popey’s in my life was in Cheongju, Republic of Korea. Cool, I know.

From there Daejeon was about 45 minutes with a decent amount of local stops and traffic thrown in for good measure. I had a vested interest in this bus ride as two of my best friends have taken a contract in Daejeon so it is a trip I am expecting to make frequently. It was not bad at all and the way was scenic with the constantly-present mountains raising a bit more dramatically. What is more is that every now and again lightning tore through the black sky and vivid and often repeated flashes. I enjoyed the ride.

Another cab took me from the Daejeon bus terminal to the KTX station. Not too long ago Korea joined the handful of countries with ultra-high speed trains. The KTX has managed to shrink an already tiny country into a more convenient, bite-sized portion. The KTX runs from Seoul in the northern reaches to Busan in the very south with various outward stretches here and there. It’s top speed is 220 mph.

We got lucky with our train. It stopped only once or twice instead the handful of ordinary stops and brought us to Busan in the 2 hours it promised. We were unlucky in that we had to sit backwards the entire way. It is unsettling and a bit disorientating to travel 200 something miles-per-hour backwards in the dark. Further, we had to watch a little Thomas the Tank Engine type show that featured an animated KTX constantly being attacked by an angry train that often sent the KTX flying off the tracks and into the air. It was a pretty stupid thing to show.

Busan is the second largest city in Korea. It is the largest and most active port in the area and makes an attempt to be the vacation destination of the mainland. We figured that our best bet was to head to happening Haeundae beach; but not before we took a stroll down Texas Street.

We came across Texas Street accidentally. We chose to walk to the right and that’s where the street was. Texas Street, according to guidebooks, was a pretty good place to avoid at night. While it certainly had an appropriately seafaring level of seediness to it, it didn’t seem to warrant a “don’t go” label. The first thing we saw was a banner hanging that said “Welcome U.S. Navy!”

Larry and I picked a funny time to go to Busan. Somewhere, not too far away was the GEORGE WASHINGTON, a nuclear powered air-craft carrier that is currently serving as flagship while the combined forces of the U.S. and South Korea stomp their feet and make other very loud noises to show North Korea what’s what. Busan was crawling with U.S. Military.

For a time we walked with the Shore-leave “police” unit assigned to haul in the too-far-gone and misbehaving sailors on Texas Street. In a few hours that would probably be every sailor on the street, but at this point it all seemed pretty festive. There were Russian restaurants and bars with open doors. Signs written in Cyrillic hung here and there. Clubs pulsed to beckon the waterlogged and Russian whores stood by the doors. Definitely worth a walk through and it didn’t seem to be as far gone as Itaewon.

A taxi took us from Texas Street to Haeundae Beach. We were a lot further than we thought we were. Haeundae Beach was still hot and busy at 2am. Sailors and Koreans walked every which way, from bar to beach and back with a steady flow of booze.

We didn’t spend the night in a bar. Instead we classed it up by walking around the beach, dipping our feet in the freezing water and then spending the night drinking and laughing outside of a convenience store. At one point while we dangled our feet over a sea wall two Korean guys came up and asked if we had accomodations and seemed to be asking if they could stay with us. We replied that our accomodations were the beach and a bottle of horrid Mongolian vodka. Soon after, or during, an older Korean guy joined us and barraged us with drunken Korean and promptly ripped a fart and then we left.

We managed to stay awake until 6am, when we skulked into a BBQ restaurant in search of charred meat. A few minutes before we came across an old guy from the U.S. who was crossing the street with a pack of cigarettes. He told us that he had come from the GEORGE WASHINGTON and was also in search of meat.

“I just bought this Korean guy some cigarettes,” he said, “so hopefully that’ll work.” He then offered to buy us a drink or two with the rising sun but I got the impression we were both looking for different kinds of meat. We wished him luck and he to us and we parted.

The BBQ was horrible. Most likely, the older Korean women had served one too many drunk U.S. sailors and wasn’t too happy to see us walk in at dawn. The meat was pretty terrible and most of the food was tossed onto the table without so much as a smile. Scratch that, they were pretty openly pissed off at us for being there.

Bill paid, we found our way to the cool sand of Haeundae beach and built a couple of sand pillows and tried to sleep. Larry, was successful and was unconscious in seconds. I, on the other hand, have been having a lot of trouble sleeping on my bed, let alone on the sand. Ordinarily this would have resulted in me laying around irritated and grumpy. This time, though, I was rewarded with one of the funniest experiences of my life.

I saw the beach combers, 20 or so people dressed in orange with garbage pickers and little nets to clean the sand for the masses that would soon come, about a fifth of a mile away. I should have nudged Larry so that we might get out of their way or otherwise NOT look like a couple of foreigners sleeping in their clothes on a beach with no tent or sleeping bag- kind of gives off a bad impression. Instead, I said nothing pray Larry would not wake up and took out my camera.

It was everything I could have imagine. Larry laid like a little child as Koreans walked by and picked up the garbage that laid around us. They looked at us and gave us (me) a few laughs as I sat there taking photos and laughing in hysterics. One of them even had the amazing idea to pick up Larry’s glasses with her picker.

Alas, eventually they left and I had nothing to do but lay there and look out into the sea as the sun began to burn off the morning fog.  I guess it's not such a bad place to have insomnia...

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Intensives and Minnie

Summer is getting on here in Korea. At home kids have been out of school for at least a few weeks; here kids began their summer vacation yesterday. How do Korean school children celebrate the kick-off of Summer? Go to school!

I feel bad about my job sometimes. I feel bad that students and co-workers put so much effort into trying to communicate in English when it should be me that puts the greater effort into learning their language. Still, I am trying. I can say “I’m hungry,” “are you hungry,” “I’m tired,” “are you tired,” a few swears, and I can now count to four… sometimes.

I feel bad that I am profiting from the misery of little children. Who the hell wants to go to the English academy on their first day of summer vacation? For crying out loud I didn’t want to be there today. And these kids made it pretty obvious that they didn’t want to be there. I walked out of the office and found one of my favorite students crying. I thought perhaps he had gone and done something stupid (I have had to tackle him to keep him from trying to body slam the Smartboards). I asked Han what had happened and she said: “Nothing. He doesn’t want to study.”

I don’t blame the kid. It seems like that is all these kids do: study. They go to school every other Saturday and then go to a number of academies for math, music, English, whatever. We are open until 9 pm and for some of them we are not their last stop. Where they find the energy to do everything that they do is beyond me. Intensives are starting and I can’t even drag my ass out of bed for 9am.

Intensives. Before I came here I gathered that Intensives were a period of intense studying so that students passed some god of a test. In order to do this they spent more time at academies. This, I think is only part of the reason. Until sometime in late August our school hours are 9:30 am until 7 pm. Kids stay longer and our student body has increased by a good number. There is so much pressure for kids to succeed and get into the right schools that it is largely their parents dragging them to the academy. What is worse, the older kids come in earlier so that my first class of the day is now my last class. So now, instead of waking up early and going to school they get to wake up early and go to academy where they are greeted by me trying not to fall asleep on my desk.

This all seems like such a pain or annoyance, but its important to know that South Korea has the HIGHEST suicide rate in the developed world. The pressure of genuinely living in Korea is immense. Kids (and parents) want entry into the best schools. When I say that I am from Boston (more recognizable than Massachusetts) they ask if I went to Harvard and that I must be smart. I then usually hold my hand as high as I can and say “Harvard: there. My university: here” and make the sound of bomb falling to the ground.

So, I try to make it fun. I am a novelty here and I have no teaching experience so I do what I can. I try my hardest to tell when a kid is on the verge of a total meltdown. It is hard because even when a kid looks like they can’t possibly take in any more verbs or nouns academy teachers know that the mother will ask their kid what they learned. If the kid says “Oh, we played a game for 15 minutes” we could be in trouble. I already have two parents who want to come in and observe a class.

The parents (moms) are those of two of my favorites: Billy, who looks like a non-animated Chicken Little, and Minnie, the cutest little 8 year old ever. They are both smart kids. Hell, even the kids who are having trouble can speak bits of English. I am 26 years old, have been here for 3 months and can only count to four half of the time.

Billy’s mom speaks no English and just wants to see what my classes are like and that I do not cheat and speak Korean with him. This is what I am told and I understand. Minnie’s mom announced she wanted to observe my class an hour after Minnie left and probably told her Mom that we played games all class because she was starting to spread a little thin.

I like Minnie. She is smart and her English is impressive. I remember “interviewing” for placement in the academy and she was so quiet and shy. Now she constantly sticks her tongue out at me and locks me out of the class room when I go for water.  Every time she does this she looks through the lower porthole window of the yellow door and sticks her tongue out at me.

So, she is more advanced than kids a lot older than her. It doesn’t mean that she isn't a little child who can handle day after day of TO BE pounded into her brain because she is having trouble with it.

And she is having trouble with it. We have been going over past and present forms of TO BE for a couple of weeks now. She is starting to understand it more consistently but she is getting burnt out. She doesn’t smile or joke when she walks in anymore. She just sulks to the back of the class (she is the only one in the class) and plops down. When I walk in she looks at me and says “game?!” and I say no.

I don’t say: “well Minnie, I want to play a game with you because I am sick of doing this and we need a break. Only thing is I think your mom doesn’t think I am teaching you fast enough and I don’t feel like her complaining to my boss and having to deal with the consequences. If you mom pulls you from the school she will probably also pull your brother. That is a lot of money Minnie!”

Last week was particularly rough. I tried breaking things up. I let her play on the computer for five minutes but it was not enough. Every day was various forms of “Minnie, where WERE you YESTERDAY?” or “where ARE you NOW?” I try to do it different ways and make it seem fun but she is no fool. I made a game out of it once and she looked at me and said: “What!? This is game!? Real game?”

I told her that no, we had to keep going. She looked like she was going to cry.

The next day I didn’t have Minnie for class. I saw the receptionist wrapping a little Minnie Mouse purse in gift wrap. I asked her what it was for and she told me in a panic that she had forgotten it had been Minnie’s birthday the day before.

What a jerk. I almost made Minnie cry on her birthday.

So, today, at the start of intensives Minnie and I did absolutely nothing in class. I gave her a quarter from Mississippi that she seemed pretty thrilled with. I showed her photos of Mississippi and it took me a while to convince her that it was hers and that it was actually from America but her smile and laughter was back. She pointed to her eye to indicate she wanted me to make a squishy noise with my left eye (my eye is screwed up like that, but kids love it). She then whistled because she thinks whistling is her own freakish talent.  We played “Rock Paper Scissors” and “Heads or Tails” (Minnie wouldn’t flip the coin because she was scared she would lose it) and she wrote down her real name and I wrote mine. She now calls me Thomas and I call her Minnie because I can‘t pronounce her real name. Tomorrow it is back to TO BE and I will probably get yelled at for wasting a class with her but oh well.

If only proper adults could be won over by a quarter and my defective eyeball.

Oh!  You should all totally check out my buddy Marcus' site.  There is the first/only/last ever interview of yours truly.  Aside from being a cool dude, he you can find a million links to his various projects.  He is organizing a GREEN music festival complete with music and vendors that you should probably check out if you are in the Worcester County area.  On top of that he makes some pretty sweet shirts and plays in a band.  I once photographed a concert put on by Marcus at Tammany Hall at which my car was stolen.  I probably shouldn't have left my doors unlocked (or forgotten my keys ON THE CONSOLE) but when the cops found it it had a bunch of beer in it so go me.

What did I eat today: a tiny hamburger that was stored at room temperature for three hours that was pale beige and immediately made me sick. Kimbap. I am starving.

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The Angry Girl II

The weeks keep coming and going at a pace that is rewarding and alarming. Today marks my 80th day in Korea. Before I came here I spent a long time watching Michael Palin try to circle the globe following the way led by the fictional Phileas Fogg in 80 days without an airplane. I watched this series knowing that I would soon be leaving on my own adventure. Though my own trip would be longer than 80 days I wondered how I would fare and set that as my first benchmark.

So far, so good.

I have come to the conclusion that Korean schools are just as full of bullies as are American schools. It is pretty easy to tell when a kid is using brute strength and emotional abuse to strong arm another person into fear and anxiety. The bruises may fade but the mental anguish can last quite a long time.

It is hard for teachers to say something about the bullies sometimes, particularly when it is the teacher being bullied. Yes, I am talking about myself. I have a tormentor and she is 10 years old.

I have mentioned the Angry Girl before. She is often the topic of conversation amongst my coworkers and I as it seems that she scares the living daylights out of all of us. We have many names for her but her English name has become the Angry Girl because we felt bad calling her the Evil Girl.

In the beginning the Angry Girl was content with petty candy extortion. She would walk up to my desk, lightly smack my arm and then hold out her hand and wait for me to give her a few pieces of candy. If I didn’t have any candy I would put some garbage in her hand and she would give me another light smack and walk away.

The Angry Girl right before she smacked me
for taking her picture.

Sometimes, she would come up and make a typing motion with her fingers and say “Lady Gaga” or “Ke$ha” indicating that she wanted me to pull up a photo on the internet. I don’t like doing this because both of those people tend to have some pretty raunchy pictures that pop up but, well, I don’t want to die so I do it. She then smiles and says: “I hate Lady Gaga!” and walks away.

Last week she had a tiny sharp piece of metal in her hand. She walked up to me and pretended to be interested in what I was doing on the computer and then proceeded to rub the edge into my shoulder until it just barely hurt. She then smiled and walked away.

Once when I had her in class she tried to erase my tattoo and when the eraser wasn’t working she used her fingernail.

Anyway, general consensus was she either hated me or had a crush on me. Either way I thought she was hilarious (I still do, actually).

Last week I was sitting at the computer when I felt that familiar slug and she indicated that she wanted me to look up Michael Jackson. As I was typing I knew exactly where she was going with this but I figured she probably spent a significant part of her night thinking this one up so I went along with it.

“He die,” she said, her lips curling into her trademark super-villain smile.

“Yes, he did die,” I said.

“You die!” She said. Yep, saw that one coming and I am pretty sure thats the end of the “crush or hate” conundrum.
Still, there are times when she seems to like me. No, that’s not true. There are times when she seems to hate me less than somebody else in the room.

I was trying to teach her class which consisted of her friend, a new girl, and a boy who constantly picks on the new girl and has a loaded vocabulary of English and Korean swears. On this day the boy would not leave the new girl alone and I could not get them to shut up. I was getting frustrated and starting to get a little frazzled.

When I passed by the Angry Girl tapped my finger and made a hand movement that seemed to say that she wouldn’t tell on me or think any less of me if I just pulled back and decked the boy. In fact I think that might make me OK in her eyes.

She had been absent for a while and school had become a little bit stale. A new teacher started at the school today. She seems to be a nice Korean girl. I was talking to her as I saw the Angry Girl walk by the door and I mentioned that the little kid hated me. She laughed and asked me why, to which I shrugged my shoulders. She then said that she didn’t believe it and I walked out of the office to grab a cup of coffee.

I saw her as a shadow in my peripheral vision. By the time I turned my head I saw that maniacal grin as her feet left the ground. For a split second I thought I was going to get a hug. Then I realized that was probably not going to happen and that I would likely be dead in a second.

When I say this girl's feet left the ground I mean it. She jumped about three feet away and went totally airborne so that in addition to her own ability to induce pain she would have gravity to back her up.

I wish I could say that it sounded worse than it was. The whole school was quiet and the new girl looked as though she might not be sticking around for the rest of the day. I wish I could say that but the fact that I spent 30 minutes with a perfect red copy of her right hand on my arm would make that an utter lie.

Hopefully things don’t escalate too much further into the realm of shooting and stabbing.

Anyway, I've been feeling pretty lazy as far as photography goes so I started a little photoblog.  I am trying to put up a photo every day.  Check it out if you want!  Head this way

Things I ate today: No idea but it was spicy as hell.

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A Birthday in Cheonjgu

Burritos courtesy of Han.

Yesterday was my birthday. To be honest I was not expecting too much and wouldn’t have been disappointed if nobody so much as threw a “happy birthday” my way. In recent years I have not been a huge fan of my birthday. I could go without the presents if I could stop getting older

It would not be Korean for my birthday to pass unnoticed.

Actually, I knew that I would at the very least be getting a book from the Young Receptionist because she made me sit down and pick a book from the Korean equivalent of Amazon. I am very excited for this present as I am having problems finding books written in English. I am almost at the end of Road Fever by Tim Cahill and would have jumped straight into the Lord of the Rings trilogy but now I will be reading The Best American Travel Writing. I am not sure what edition it is but before I came I read a recent installment edited by Anthony Bourdain and I enjoyed it a lot. Some of the stories weren’t my cup of tea but all in all it was like reading a really great travel section in a Sunday paper.

As soon as I sat down in my little office Han gave me her present contained in a Tupperware container.

“Tom, I made you burritos,” she told me. I could have died. I am from the Northeast but have been craving American-perverted Mexican food for the past two months. I probably WILL take a two hour bus and subway ride to Itaewon just to go to Taco Bell whenever the place finally opens. To get a burrito on my birthday was like being given a car or a million dollars.

‘But,” Han went on, “I could not find a recipe so I made it up myself.”

This could be a problem, I thought. Even if they were the worst burritos on earth I still would have been appreciative but Koreans tend to put some pretty funky things in their foods. Still I was determined to down at least one even if a tentacle fell out when I bit into it.

There was no octopus inside, and no fish. They were as genuine as burritos got this far from Mexico. They were made with real beef, fresh tomatoes, onions, red and yellow peppers, and about a dozen tiny slices of fresh chili peppers that I didn’t see until it was too late.

It was that sort of food burn where you feel at first a tingle on your lips and think “this is going to be bad” before the pain kicks in and next thing you know your eyes are watering as your face is under the faucet. Still, they were amazing and I ate two of them.

Boram gave me travelers coffee cup with a picture of Seoul stretched around it. The Older Receptionist gave me a shirt but promptly took it back when she thought it was a little too big. I was pretty proud as I have lost 20 lbs since I have been here. My boss’ wife gave me some K-Swiss sandals.

If the day was like any other day I can say that we sure ate a lot more than usual. A few hours after the burritos the Young Receptionist brought us all Red and White burgers from Lotteria. I should point out that Lotteria calls everything a burger and they are not to be trusted as this was made out of shrimp.

Part of me genuinely thought that I would go home after work, maybe have a drink and get to bed like any other night. I have this thing where I think about what food I will eat when I get home if I was still hungry after dinner. Would I make chicken nuggets? Mandu? Donkkaseu (pork cutlet)? No, I wouldn’t make anything. I would go to the Kimbap joint next door and get the donkkaseu meal (cutlet, radish, salad, rice) or omurice (a sort of omelet with fried rice).

Everyone else knew we were going out but they didn’t tell me. Oh, don’t think that it was meant to be a surprise or anything like that- they just didn’t tell me. Nobody tells me nuthin’.

After work we hailed a cab and soon we were at Seduce in Downtown. In the beginning it was just Han, Boram, the Older Receptionist, the Younger Receptionist, and I. Several things happened at Seduce that likely played a hand in how the night turned out and the quality of teaching experienced by the kids the next day.

Boram and one of my birthday cakes.
Cellphone camera.

- We started with beer.

- We ended up doing a few tequila shots each. I learned that it is a horrible idea to be polite in Korea when it comes to alcohol. The Younger Receptionist told me that I could have more tequila if I wanted it. I stated that I would only have a shot if everybody else wanted one. Thus we found ourselves licking salt, downing the thing and sucking lemon for a fourth time.

- Albert’s wife showed up and ordered a cocktail that was mostly Bailey’s.

- Albert showed up in his shiny suit a cake from the exotic Baskin Robbins.

- The restaurant gave us free food, which was very nice. The food consisted of peanuts, cooked beef jerky (from a package- I know my jerky and I knew the brand), and heated mayonnaise. It might have been the trashiest thing that I have ever eaten.

- I had to choose between the cake brought by Albert and the cake brought by my coworkers. I don’t even like cake.

- Albert offered to extend my contract and hire my girlfriend when the school reaches 100 students.

- I was served a flaming shot of 151 which was pretty scary.

We walked out of Seduce at 11pm and I was feeling pretty happy. If I had to celebrate another birthday then I was happy with how it had turned out. I became a bit self-conscious as I was walking around with shopping bags and wearing socks with my new sandals. I thanked everyone as Albert and his wife, citing fatigue, went home.

“Ha! Tom,” Han said, “you think the night is over?”

No, of course the night wasn’t over. This is Korea. We went to another bar with a name that made it sound like an all-male strip club and found our way to a wooden table in the corner by the windows overlooking a fairly quiet night in Downtown.

There was more beer and a lot of conversation. I feel so bad sometimes that I can’t communicate with the two receptionists. They are trying to learn English when it should be me trying harder to learn Korean; I am, after all, a guest here.

Still, we all talked for what seemed like a very long time over a fiery hot chicken dish. One of the more poignant things that I have learned through international traveling is that communication is often not held down by language barriers. It is true, that 90% of the time I have no idea what the heck is going on or what anybody is saying but that didn’t seem important.

The night still did not end when we left. We made a trip to the horrible dance club Frog Rain only to find it closed. I thanked god for my luck and we found ourselves at noraebang.

Noraebang.
Cellphone Camera.

Ordinarily, I am not a fan of the karaoke rooms but tonight I did not care. I threw ego to the gutter which, given my song choices, was a very good thing. By the time we left the place at 4:30am I had willfully sang four songs while my coworkers danced on couches, banged tambourines, or smoked cigarettes in the corner as the colored lights pulsated.

What did I sing?  I’ll tell you.

Buddy Holly - Weezer

Semi-charmed Kind of Life - Third Eye Blind

Girlfriend - Avril Lavigne (…I know)

Bitch - Meredith Brooks

To say the least, students did not learn anything new the next day as we hung onto podiums just to stay vertical. Still, it was an awesome birthday in Cheongju.

Things I ate today:

Noodles with black bean sauce

Lettuce wraps with spicy pork and sauce.

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