How to replace your lost passport in Korea

A few days ago I set out to send some money home and go to the pension office to cash ou of the Korean Pension Scheme.  This leads to the only informative thing in this blog. 

What do you do when you lose your passport less than two weeks before leaving Korea?

Here is what you do:

1. Panic.
2. Panic and google "Lost Passport," "Seoul," "Emergency," and various onscenities.
3. Look up how to get to the embassy the next day.  Then freak out when they tell you they do not take walk-ins on Wednesdays.
4. Try to make an appointment at the Embassy in Seoul via their convenient appointment program.
5. Swear when it doesn't work on the school computer.
6. Swear and throw stuff when it doesn't work on your computer at home.
7. Contact Larry and have him do it forward.  He got me into Korea and he can sure as hell get me out.
8. Thank him when he gets you an appointment.
9. Stay up all night watching Modern Family and get on a bus at 6am.
10. Fill out the passport application / list passport (also known as "you dumbass, how could you lose your passport).  
11. Arrive at the embassy and admire that it's in a really beautiful part of Seoul.
12. Stand at the security door awkwardly. 
13. Walk in and hand the man a printed paper indicating an official appointment / hand him a handwritten copy because you don't have a printer.
14. Give the man your bag and kiss your Kindle / phone goodbye (for the duration). 
*** Write down your phone number.  You look like an ass when they figure out you dont have it memorized.
15. Take your badge and cross a parking lot.
16. Walk in and stand at a window until somebody comes.
17. Explain (with a certain amount of shame) that you are, in fact, a dumbass and lost your passport.  Remember that the Embassy is a prominent and reoccurring character on Locked-Up Abroad and feel a little better.
18. Have your number called well before your meeting time.
19. Give them your passport photos.
IF NOT:
- Follow a horrible map to a building that has a photo company who will give you photos. 
- Get lost in a goddamn fire station because the map is crappy.
- Walk to the top floor of the right building (behind the fire station) and ask for the photo service.
- Be told that the photo service was the mall-photo machine you passed in one of the stairwells.
- Pay 8,000W with a 10,000W bill and be told afterwards that no change will be given.
- Take the worst passport photo possible.
- Navigate sizing options as a timer ticks down.  This, it should be noted, is a hell of a lot more stressful under the duress of losing your passport when you are leaving the country in a short amount of time.
- Avoid adding bigger eyes or cute birds as those are both options.
- Laugh and say "WTF Korea."
- Return, passing protests and a line of people at the back entrance looking to get a visa to the States.
20. Give over photos and think about how you will look like a sweaty pedophile in your passport for the next 10 years.
21. Fill out your address on a mailing card and pray to god it works because you can only get a cab to your apartment 50% of the time.
22. Swear an oath.
23. Be given map number 2. 
24. March down to the police station to file a report mostly to avoid identity theft.
25. Turn in report.
26. Leave.
27. Go to Dragon Hill Spa to sleep.
28. Eat Taco Bell in Itaewon to make sure you ruin the rest of the day.
29. Take a bus home with the hope of atleast accomplishing something that isn't a step backwards (like cleaning the apartment you trashed looking for your passport).
30. Be called into school to teach your last class.
31. Fall asleep at your computer.
32. Hope like hell you do not find your passport.

All in all, it wasn't too bad.  I am stressed as hell but the embassy was really helpful.  Shit happens, I guess.  It cost me about $130 for the replacement and it will take a couple weeks.  Casually, the woman told me that I shouldn't worry yet when asked if I should postpone my flight.  She then gave me a card and told me to call it if I didn't ge my passport the day before my flight and they would see what they could do to, which I take to mean an on-the-spot solution.
Also, I made friends with the security because I had to go in and out repeatedly.  Don't lose your passport right before you leave.  It feels horrible.

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Sundays

Another week gone by and another week closer to the end of this whole Korea thing. Earlier this week I received all of my pension information from my boss. I couldn’t make much out of it and the amount that has been paid into it seems to be out of date (at least, I sure hope it is out of ) but it told me how to go about getting my money when I leave.


Things are getting a little sad in Cheongju. My friends all arrived around the same time a couple of months before I did and they are all leaving in about a month. Amanda is staying another year and there are a few other people who came after I did, but most of the people I spend the bulk of my weekends with will be gone soon.

Ah, such is life.

Today is Sunday. It is about 9pm. I have to go into work Monday and Tuesday but then I will be on vacation until Monday. With Intensives, poor sleeping abilities, trying to get my portfolio back in order, I am really looking forward to some time off. The occasion is that it is the Lunar New Year. Koreans use this time to go to the home villages of their parents and grandparents. Just like the Chuseok holiday I couldn’t really get much about the traditions of this holiday out of my students.

Accordingly, apparently my kids are going to eat all of grandma’s Mandu-rice cake-soup and steal all of her money. They might wear some fancy Hanboks, though.

My plan is to head to the big mountain, Seoraksan, in the north-east with Rick and Lauren and try to make it to the top. It is no Everest or K2, but it’s a mile vertical anyway, so who knows if we will get all the way to the Summit, but I am going to give it a go. We will spend a couple of nights there before heading back. In my mind it is going to be awesome. Realistically, everything will probably be closed as it was on Chuseok so it will likely be a giant disaster. Oh well.

It seems that I have a firmly established routine on Sundays. I really do not know why given that it is totally unproductive and ends in me spending too much money, but it has become a solid part of my week:



8am- My alarm goes off. I have not woken up at 8am in months. I set this so that I wake up, realize how lucky I am to not have to be into work until 1pm. I then promptly go back to sleep.

12pm- Usually I am reasonably conscious by now. Now, remember, I am writing about Sundays in Korea. The thing with Sundays in Korea is that Saturdays in Korea routinely spill into Sundays in Korea. So, despite being conscious I rarely move. At the most, I might rotate my pillow if I happened to drool in my drunken sleep.

1pm- Think about getting out of bed. Actually, this is an inaccurate wording. This is more accurate: think about getting out of my floor mat. Usually, this is just a bluff.

1:15pm- Realize I am hungry.

1:16 - 1:30pm- Think about what I want to accomplish during the day. Realize that none of it will happen.

2pm- Finish my meal at Burger King.

2:15 - 3:15pm- Walk around Home Plus like a zombie.

That is basically a long way of saying that I spend too much time at Home Plus. This doesn’t really surprise me so much as it makes me worried. On days when I was really bored at home I would sometimes walk around Target. I would generally buy absolutely nothing. I am worried that I am predestined to become a routine part of the mall-walking circuit.

I never bought anything at Target largely because I was flat broke. Now, I am not flat broke. I have become one of those clichéd people who goes to the store for one thing (usually salsa) and walk out with 80 bucks worth of junk.

Now, every Sunday I do the same song and dance at Home Plus: buy salsa, fake pizza cheese, and tortilla chips. I start off on the first floor which is home goods. I like to look at the cameras and the fancy rice cookers. In the beginning of the year I thought about buying a small toaster oven so I could make food that doesn’t involve my pot or frying pan. Now, I have managed to stop myself from making any purchases that can’t be eaten by me as I do not have a very long time left in Korea.
Things I have bought in the home department:

Steaming rack

Floor sleeping mat

Shoe rods that don’t work

Christmas tree (aprox 6 inches)

2 pairs of jeans that I didn’t bother to try on (take that mom)

A Walther PPK BB-Gun (with a silencer).

Then I go down the escalator ramp to the food section. In order to get a huge number of shopping carts to the food floor the employees send them down the escalators in big groups. They become stationary on the ramp and are received by an employee at the bottom who quickly pulls them out of the way. Now, I have seen a few people almost get wrecked when their individual carts get stuck when the escalator ends and the floor begins. Always, I get stuck between two groups of carts and fear for my life enough to formulate an escape plan if the set of carts in front of me. I do not plan on dying via a shopping cart sandwich.

The food floor in Home Plus is almost always ridiculously crowded with people and their carts.

Usually, I am in a good mood until I get to the food floor. I usually walk around the produce and meat departments to see if anything pops out. I don’t usually buy too much food as I eat at school, but sometimes I like to mix it up. Last Sunday I had tacos.

The problem with Home Plus is the aisles. They are smaller than aisles at home and they are also a lot fuller. I often try to walk up and down the aisles looking for snacks but I usually only make it threw a handful before I start getting flustered.

I do not know if it is because of the narrow aisles or something else, but Korean shoppers have this tendency of just stopping in clusters in the middle of an aisle. If I could make eye contact with them or even get them to look at me without making an idiot of myself I would just scoot by. Often times they stop in groups big enough to make the passage into a dead end. So, I go to the next aisle and hope it has not already been sealed.

Within 10 minutes of trying to simply get to the other side of the store my mission of buying snacks turns into a mission of buying salsa and then getting the heck on out of there. As it is, I usually spend a lot of time swearing at everybody beneath my breath.

After this I go home, clean my apartment, eat and then wonder why I can’t fall asleep after sleeping until almost 2pm.

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Seoul, Part II

Sometimes travel is about all sorts of righteous ideals: self growth, lessons in understanding, adventures, etc. Sometimes, though, travel is about not losing your shit. By no fault of the Tomgi Hotel I did not sleep. It has been happening all too frequently that I go to bed and do not find sleep. I stare at the ceiling in misery as the room grows bright. I then have to face my day through the eyes of a guy who isn’t really there at all.


I was told upon my checkout from the Tomgi Hotel that I could extend my stay by another night, but it would cost me. One thing about Korea is that it is still common for a hotel to charge for four hour blocks of time during the day. Checkout was at noon, to leave my things in the room while I searched for an Xbox repair man would cost me 30,000W for the hours of 12 - 4 and another 30,000W for 4 - 8. Not willing to pay an extra 60,000W for what basically amounted to a very fancy storage locker I packed my bags and told the desk clerk that I would return at 8pm. I then set out with one heavy backpack and a camera bag. I was sweating profusely before I got to the first metro station.

Yongsan is miserable if you don’t have a plan. There was no giant neon sign that read: “Are you a moron!? Did you lug your Xbox power supply directly into the wall hoping to kill some zombies only to see death as the sparks flew by and your nose filled with ozone? I got your back-ee.” No, there was no sign. Instead there were about 5 floors with random groupings of computer parts dealers, speaker salesmen, and video game stores.

No problem, I thought. I would walk this building of the market first, then double back holding my broken equipment and saying “fix-ee?” until somebody helped me or I struck out. I would then begin walking the streets of Yongsan and hope for the best.

The first thing that went wrong (sans-insomnia) almost led to my unraveling: The escalators of the building were not working. I would be lying if I said I was appreciating the exercise of walking up and down 5 steep flights of dirty stairs with my bags hanging from my back. Whatever trouble I was having just to keep my eyes open was doubled by the sweat that was POURING into my eyes and all over my body. Others were eating ramen in the little convenience stores, some were buying parts to make a computer that could take down an entire nation's network if they weren’t so busy playing Starcraft II; I looked like I was about to keel over on Mt. Everest.

I walked around all five small but packed floors with no luck. I stepped off of the stairs hoping to find the advertised food court. I found only closed or long abandoned stores and a dirty floor with a few men who looked like they had taken in too much soju the night before. The basement, it seems, is where those defeated by Yongsan come to die. Promised the indulgence of a lunch and some coffee I found only despair and shoulder pain as I sat with the rest of the downtrodden trying to muster a collective will to go on.

A week later I would return to this very spot to meet Larry. I would walk down one dark hallway to find, of all things, one of two Hooters in Korea. Really Korea?

Somewhere inside I realized that I couldn’t eat or find somewhere to sleep or otherwise get on out of Yongsan until I found somebody to fix my power supply.

I walked up the first set of stairs and was let down by the first floor. Again, up the stairs and disappointed on the second floor. I was starting to wonder, on the third floor after being shooed away by a video game store, if I just looked like a lost cause. There I was, a derelict fool carrying a busted power supply with a full pack while sweating profusely like an addict who can no longer think straight without his stuff.

Floor number 4 was almost the end of me. There were 4 identical video game stores, each of which with a small line of 20-somethings asking questions or sampling games as the clerk fumbled beneath the counters for parts of hardware. I sat and sweated through three lines to be told “anio (no)” by three grumpy men. I was starting to think blowing $100 to have a new part shipped to me wasn’t so bad when the fourth clerk told me that he could fix the thing for 25,000W cash.

I could have cried. My interest in fighting fake wars or killing zombies was non existent; it had been replaced by the urge to stop carrying the damned power supply around. I asked him how long it would take, if I had time to eat. He told me I could pick it up in 4 days. Son of a bitch.

The heat and fatigue can make you do strange things. It was around 2pm; I left my hotel at 10am and I couldn’t return until 8pm. My pack was all the lighter without the power supply / bane of my existence but it was still there along with my camera.

I was completely soaked. I had spent a long time walking around Yongsan (there was classy mall next to the market) and I was starting to let my misery get the best of me. I couldn’t think straight and found myself just sitting on the curb listening to the cicadas and sweating.

The cicadas in the Korean heat are absurd. I leaned against a pole next to a street overloaded in traffic, pedestrians, and fog and listened as the buzz grew from distant to jackhammer loud in a wild crescendo. I looked for them in the trees like everybody else but found nothing- largely due to the fact that my glasses were sitting somewhere in Cheongju. At it’s peak I could not hear the traffic right in front of me because it was overpowered by the heat bugs.

I saw the building right where Larry said it would be. It looked something like Boston’s South Station with cfogged windows, neon writing, and a covered entrance. I stumbled half dead and delirious and sat under the trees next to a bubbling fountain and a vine covered wooden fence. I sat there for 15 minutes and watched as Koreans came and left before I mustered the courage to go through the doors and into the lobby. I heard splashing water and smelled chlorine. I stood in line for one minute before deciding that this was entirely too big of a leap along the path of “going native” for me to handle.

I left the sanctuary, walked a half mile or so and bought a metro ticket for Itaewon. Itaewon now has a Taco Bell and I guess my plan was to spend the next 6 or so hours eating tacos. I sat in the station looking utterly depressed and desperate until the sane part of my mind that had yet to be melted to its core told me a 6 hour taco binge was a bad idea. So, I headed back to the Dragon Hill Spa.

Dragon Hill Spa is a Korean bathhouse. While public bathhouses generally stir up stories of ancient Rome or less ancient San Francisco, they do not have the same connotation here. They are socially acceptable places to go to relax. Perhaps for the rarity of baths in Korean apartments, or for the desire for a relaxing social experience these places are a staple of Korean culture. They are a must according to any guidebook you read. Korean bathhouses are a place to distress, relax, and kill time (say 6 or so hours). Korean bathhouses are also butt-ass naked.

I will spare you the grim details and give you only vague ideas of my experience. They are like a giant locker room full of closet nudists. There are enough doors off of the changing area to inspire a legitimate fear in the heart of a westerner that he might accidentally walk out into the coed clothed area. There after showering one walks down a path and hop into a giant tub that is usually just shy of boiling and soak for as long as you can bare it. The water is often infused with herbs and the tubs are usually full beyond the capacity of awkwardness. You then jump into a small pool of cold water and repeat the process which produces a feeling of tingling euphoria.

If you are a westerner you spend most of your time staring at the ceiling and avoiding the kid swimming toward you with swimming goggles.

I spent a couple of hours in the tubs, most of which in the cold pool until I felt restored and headed to the sleeping room. I dried off, put on my uniform and stepped into one of the strangest places I have been to in Korea.

It was a room the size of a large classroom. It’s ceilings were low and everything was bathed in a warm light that passed through narrow, fogged windows. Here and there somebody slept on a mat or sprawled on the floor based on how much they rolled. Everybody wore the same faded shorts and t-shirt uniform. I laid down and drifted off to the soothing sound of the piped in crashing surf soundtrack that was drowned out by the sound of 25 mean with no self-awareness snoring like my father and grandfather had created some anti-sleep demon.

I woke up a few hours later. When I laid down the place truly seemed tranquil and I was at ease. I felt as though I was experiencing some vital part of Korean culture and that by stepping into a place like this I was being accepted in a strange sort of way. When I woke up it reminded me of some sort of hippie-cult commune and got one out of there. Manson probably had a sleeping room.

The rest of the night was uneventful. I ate a couple of tacos in Itaewon and made a little bit of peace with the neighborhood that gave me a bitter taste for Seoul. I accidentally took a metro back to Yongsan and had to backtrack and transfer to get back to Anguk, but soon enough I found myself enjoying a beer on a giant bed in a beautiful hotel room. The next day I would get lost and almost lose my marbles trying to get to a bus terminal and again do battle with the heat. That night though, I sat and watched The Office, Community, and a healthy dose of America’s Funniest Home Videos. All was right with the world.

What did I eat today?  Kimchi Jigae (kimchi soup, sour and spicy deliciousness), and Curry Dongas (pork cutlet with curry, made by me to get rid of the rest of my curry).

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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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Sweat and Sashes

Thursday began what would become a very long weekend. Friday, thanks to a huge population of Buddhists, would be another day off for me and almost every other expat teacher. Friday was the Buddha’s birthday. Happy birthday Buddha!

Thursday started off too early and way too uncomfortable. I was told by my coworkers that I would be attending a special meeting at the broadcasting station down the road. I tried several times to understand what it was that I would be going to and how important it was. Still, the most explanation that was given to me was that it was for the parents of our students and that I would be picked up by Boram in front of the Paris Baguette down the road at 8:45am.

Ok, fine, fair enough: 8:45am is not very early for most people but I haven’t woken up at a normal hour in I don’t know how long. One of the benefits of working for a nightlife magazine and then being unemployed is that your hours don’t really change all that much. Further, sleeping later has allowed me to forget that breakfast even exists outside of the realm of breakfast-for-dinner, or Ihop. Heck, there are times when I roll out of my bed to go into the school at 1pm. So, 8:45 was damn early to me.

I dragged my sorry behind, wearing fresh jeans and my favorite sweater, into the humid Korean morning a little early so that I might grab a little breakfast. I do not recommend pizza quesadillas and orange juice. It is not a good combination to start the day with.

Boram arrived shortly after and we were taken by cab to the broadcasting center where we met up with Han, the Younger Receptionist, Older Receptionist, the Directors Wife and apparently everybody who worked for our chain of schools. I walked and soon learned that jeans and my 5-inches-too-short Freddie Kueger sweater were a pretty bad idea. Of the 70 or so people in the lobby almost all were wearing dress pants and a tie at least; a few had full suits.

To make me look even more idiotic and uncomfortable I was given a blue sash with Hangul script and soon looked like an anti-beauty queen.

After standing about for 30 minutes or so the Younger Receptionist waved me over to the door.

“Thomas,” Han said, “you will be the greeting party!”

This day was turning into a nightmare. Here I was in jeans, Hadley’s worn out shoes and a sweater that looked like a belly shirt, ready to single-handedly cause every parent to turn around and pull their kids from the school. To make things even worse the pizza quesadilla and warm orange juice in my stomach were beginning to quarrel. Things had the potential to take a very bad turn.

Then, to my surprise I was joined by a handful of other Westerners just outside the entrance in the hot and humid late Korean morning. I was beginning to think that I was the only white person in this dirty little city. I didn’t even know what to say; it had been a little while since I had had a proper conversation in English that involved much more than noun, one adverb, verb.

There were three guys and we all asked the standard questions. All of them had been in Korea for a pretty significant amount of time and none of them had any immediate plans of returning. The three of them knew each other fairly well and were really nice. If any of that original three were from the States I do not remember but I remember at least two being from Canada.

The heat and humidity were oppressive. Each time somebody walked through the doors we bowed and said “hello” in Korean. While I know the word I generally lack confidence in my pronunciation skills so I spent most of the time bowing, sweating and mumbling.

After a time, another Westerner showed up with a beard in sunglasses. He might have been nursing a hangover but of this I don’t really know. As conversations sprung up amongst us I asked him where he was from, expecting another Canadian.

“New Hampshire.”

Another New Englander! I asked him what town he lived in and to my shock he said Rochester. I laughed and asked if he knew Larry Boire.

“Are you shitting me?”

He did know Larry Boire. Not only did he know Larry Boire but his aunt had been his neighbor at a summer house on some lake. Last he had heard of Larry was a newspaper article announcing Larry’s achievement of Eagle Scout.

It is a small world when it comes down to it.

One thing I was not prepared for in Korea was the humidity. Massachusetts summers are hot and humid but they have nothing on Korea. It would not have surprised me if upon reaching the entrance, a parent would have looked at the four of us pouring sweat and simply turned around and walked back to their car.

We stood there bowing and talking for over an hour until finally we were pulled from our posts and told to sit down until it was time to leave. It was then that we realized that our part at this special meeting was simply to show off that the school employed native speakers. That was it.

A couple of hours later we turned in our sashes, exchanged our phone numbers and were off to our respective schools in soaked through clothes.

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The Angry Girl

I have been in this place for over three weeks and it is still entirely foreign to me. On days in which I am not fed at school I find myself eating triangles (despite knowing their true name, I will continue to call them triangles mostly because my coworkers get a laugh at it). I have put a decent effort into learning Hangul if only so that I might be able to order a simple meal or two at the place next to my apartment.


Tonight, I walked into that place with my Lonely Planet in hand. The lady behind the counter looked at me and smiled. I looked at the menu on the wall and decided that this was not the day and just pointed to one of four photos of food they had above the kitchen.

Tteokbokki. I’ve had it a few times before but everything tastes a little better when you order it on your own. This was after all the firs meal that I had ordered what wasn’t a pizza or Mc. Donalds. Sure, I was still pointing at a picture but at least it wasn’t a recognizable picture.

Actually, it is more of a snack or a side than a meal but it hit the spot while I ate it sitting on my floor. Tteokbokki is a dish of pressed rice cakes, veggies and sometimes fish cakes in a spicy red sauce. It is not so far removed from a pasta dish at home and the rice cakes have the texture of gnocchi so it didn’t seem so foreign.

While three weeks has not been nearly enough time for me to learn the true names of the students at my school, it has certainly given me time to see their personalities. The prospect of standing and teaching a bunch of kids was daunting to me before I came. A lot of people at home have been given the impression that I hate kids. I do not hate kids; they intimidate me. I do not know why this is, but I never knew how to interact with a kid of any age. This, if nothing else, is being remedied.

I like all of the kids here. They are all hilarious beyond even that Kids Say the Darndest Things: Foreigner Edition level.

There is Clara who continues to come into the office and sit down next to me and give me candy or gum. Once she offered me a hunk of her dried fish. I would have politely accepted it but I had already politely accepted dried squid from the director’s wife and had just thrown it out the window when nobody was looking.

There is another boy who is just a bit younger. I do not even know this boy’s English name, but every day he comes into the office and plays with the magnetic darts or wants to play “Rock, Scissors, Paper.” We could be in the middle of class and I will just barely make eye contact and he will be shaking his hands ready to throw down rock. He always throws rock. He is hyper as hell but he is one of my favorites.

There is a group of three older girls that always ask me questions that they forget to translate into English and then laugh as I stare at them. Usually, they ask if I am married or if I have a girlfriend. Today, they asked why my hair looked so funny.

Then there is another girl in the same class as R.S.P Boy who hates me beyond anything else in this world. When I first had Angry Girl in my class I thought she was terribly shy. She would rarely answer any questions, seemed miserable playing any games, would not sing and simply never looked me in the eyes.

Being extremely shy as a kid is something I can relate to. Heck, I am still shy. I never pushed her to sing, and I never said anything to her about speaking up. I tried to be nice to her.

Over the past three weeks most of the students have warmed up to me. As they filter in through our sliding doors they always walk by my door and say “hello,” as I sit there and wave. Angry Girl will turn her head and walk by despite my waving.

Turns out, this girl is not shy: she might be evil.

It started with the Weather Game. The Weather Game is an incredibly lame game played on a board made of paper, with a big die made of paper. It is a simplified game that is something like Pictionary without any of the fun stuff. In turn, each player rolls the die and then moves their piece (usually an eraser) to the photo that matches the weather condition on the die. Needless to say R.P.C Boy loves this game. We played one round and he kept playing. Having nothing else planned we all kept playing. At one point everybody’s attention was turned elsewhere and Angry Girl smashed the paper die and threw it to the floor in one motion. She then acted as though the die never existed.

A few days ago I was standing in front of the Smart Board as the class came in. Each kid said “hello” to me. When Angry Girl came in she simply looked at me and said:

“No Hello!”

No smile whatsoever.

Her mannerisms give her away too. When a kid has a question or wants something repeated they will usually say something in unrecognizable English or in Korean. Angry Girl will just point at me and tap the desk with her fingers twice. Also, I kind of figured out she hated me when she flung a small glass of water at me when nobody was looking. Nothing vague about that one.

In an effort to make friends with her, I handed her a piece of gum a few days ago. She took the stick and demanded more, to which I obliged because I did not want her to stab me in the neck with a pair of scissors or something. She walked off with 5 sticks.

Honestly, I do not care if this girl hates me. I do not hate her and actually think that she is funny and at times I can’t help but crack up when she does something outlandish. On Friday we were demonstrating the concept of giving. The other kids “gave” me their pencils or books.

“Teacher, here is my pencil / book / bag / etc.“

When it came time for Angry Girl to give me something she looked around her desk until she found a piece of garbage.

“Here is some trash,” she said looking terribly pleased with herself. Point is, it was hilarious.

The reason I tell you all this is because I got my revenge. She walked into my office to find me chewing my last piece of gum. Without saying so much as “hi,” she walked over, held out her hands and said:

“Gum.”

I looked at her and she was not even smiling. To this I (a 25 year old man to a 10 year old girl) responded by spitting my gum out into my hand, holding it up and saying “here you go.”

“Ugggh! Teacher, you dirty!!”

Am I proud of myself? Yes. Yes I am.

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A Normal Day

I have been here a little over two weeks and already there is a routine in my life. I have no internet and I have no TV so my entertainment is largely self made. One of the things that I do to keep myself busy and avoid the homesickness (I figure if I keep my mind occupied I can delay it another 11 months and deal with it on my flight home) is write. I would say write in “this blog” but at this stage my writings are just on my computer. If I were a girl it would be a diary. Thankfully I am a guy with a journalism degree so I will call it a travel journal or something to the like.

Well, I have finally caught up to present time and have nothing else to write before I have the internet and go “live.” This means I am bored. Like, really bored. I would play solitaire but the other day I had as close to a perfect game as they come. I’m actually pretty stoked and I wish I wrote down my score but you never expect something to amazing to happen when you are sitting around in your underwear now do you? Almost every card dealt by the computer was in order and this will probably never happen again unless I get a physical deck and cheat. Come to think of it I probably spent my allotted luck in life on computer solitaire.

Here is my average day here in Korea:

10am - Wake up and decide against sitting around and playing solitaire until work. Set my alarm for 12:30pm or hit the snooze 30 times and go back to sleep.

12:30pm - After rolling around for an hour finally get up and get ready for work. Before work I usually walk to the convenience store and buy Kimbap and hope that is not filled with something disgusting.

1-2pm - Sit at my desk and read email and Facebook messages while drinking coffee and water from the machine.

2pm - 4pm- Help out in a few classes by reading various sentences and then repeating them. On really bad days I have to sing or do the hokey pokey or both.

4pm - Usually have lunch upstairs. This usually consists of rice and a half-dozen side dishes. I try to sample each dish but tend to veer away from the ones that have eyes that are still intact. Also, Koreans have a tendency of masking squid legs as noodles so beware!

5pm - There is a rush of various kids coming in. The three boys come along with a few girls of the same age. The girls walk by and say hello to me having briefly peeled my eyes away from Facebook. The three boys say hello only if they are physically dragged over and forced to. Also the girl called Clara comes in and usually plops herself down in the chair next to me and tries to talk to me. She almost never understands me and also sometimes forgets who I am and will speak Korean but she is a hoot. On the day of this writing they did not give us lunch and I skipped my Kimbap and was beginning to die from starvation (or at least get a bit honery). In walks Clara with a bag of food. She gave me half a jam sandwich and I didn’t even pretend to be polite and refuse it. So we sat eating our (her) sandwiches while everyone else worked. I felt kind of bad being the teacher that takes a students dinner but she did have two sandwiches and I didn‘t take any of her yogurt…

6pm - Teach a class or two and then return to Facebook to talk to Kelly who wakes up horribly early in the States.

7pm - Eat a dinner much the same as lunch. Once there were two cold chicken nuggets in the side dish container. I was pretty stoked about this. Also, sometimes they put out the sesame oil and a kind of spicy and thick ketchup that adds a whole ton of flavor to the rice.

8 - 9pm - Sit around on the computer (read: Facebook or the T&G website) while everyone else writes out progress reports.

9:10pm - Go home or, if I am still hungry, go buy another Kimbap or ramen.

9:10:45pm - Get home, perhaps drink a beer or two (or eight) while reading or studying. Currently, I am reading The Silmarillion despite the fact that I have tried a few times before but never made it through it. I already finished The Hobbit and I will read the rest of the trilogy after that. Hey, just being abroad does not cure nerdiness! I am also learning Hangul, the alphabet and written characters of Korea. I don’t have much hope in learning the language in just a year, but at least knowing the letters and pronunciation should improve my quality of life. As it is signs and menus appear to be written in Wingdings.

12 - 1am - After showering, go to sleep while listening to people talk as they walk into the building. The other day I heard Americans! I must find them and make them be my friends!

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Busses and Quizzes

The general layout of things.

The new apartment is fantastic. It has a more separated and natural layout. The kitchen is a bit more spacious and the bathroom is awesome. The walls and floor are laid with green tile meant to look like marble and it is much bigger than the last one which makes showering a bit easier given that the shower is just a hose pinned to the wall. The main living space has a much bigger fridge and even includes an actual freezer. What’s more is that inside the freezer is a big heavy bag with the picture of a cow and nothing else. The floors are made to look wooden, though they are still made of a sort of soft plastic or rubber. I even have a couple of closets!

My lovely bathroom.  Ignore the
Urkel style.

There are two problems however. The first is that when I close the sliding, foggy glass door between my room and the kitchen and then try and turn on the kitchen light in the dark it looks absurdly creepy and each time I think I see the girl from The Ring. Also, the bathroom sink’s pipes aren’t actually attached so that whenever I run the sink the water just pours out in the general direction of the drain. Oh, another issue is that I have no idea how to heat the floors, but this won’t be an issue until fall as it is starting to get pretty muggy.

A big plus is that this place is directly across the street from my school, so my commute takes about 40 seconds.

After much trial and error I figured out what was wrong with the computer, or rather what was wrong with me. The converter was unnecessary and was preventing enough wattage from getting to the computer; now all it takes is my cheapo adaptor plug. I should have brought more adaptors because as it is only one thing can be plugged in at a time.

Days at school pass by quickly. I get by on a lunch and dinner of rice, a platter of side dishes, a few slabs of spam and occasionally a cold chicken nugget. One thing I must say is that their ketchup is refreshing. For one thing they put it on the last things you would expect anybody to put ketchup on. Spam and sausage, for example, are always eaten with ketchup. Also, it has a much bolder flavor than our own being fortified with a heavier dose of garlic.

The view from my window.

On my first Saturday I walked out my door armed with a list of phrases written in Hangul that would get me to a bus station and then to Cheonan where I would be met by Larry. After, I would be taking part in a pub quiz in an expat bar called Adonis.

There could have been many reasons why I couldn’t get a cab to stop for me. It could have been because I was a foreigner and would be more bother than I was worth, it could have been because I was holding a piece of paper and they knew they would have to decipher from it what I wanted, it also could have been because I was holding my Lonely Planet guide to Korea and nothing good ever came from picking up somebody holding one of those. Whatever the issue, it took me 30 minutes to get into a cab.

I handed the cabbie my paper and assumed it would be a quick and quiet ride. Instead, he began asking me questions to which I just stared at him in utter fear. I said “bus terminal” and he said something impossible for me to understand. After this we both fell back on the idea that if you kept repeating the same statement over and over and louder and louder that it would break a language barrier. It doesn’t.

He drove aimlessly as I called Han and Boram, neither of whom answered. On a small road I called Albert as a last resort. I handed the phone to the driver and they had a long conversation with much laughter that could only be at my expense. After hanging up, the driver looked at me, smiled and said: “Tough driver!”

How I survived the ride is beyond me. He drove at speeds that exceeded even those of the other lunatics that occupy Korean roads. He would sometimes take the trouble to roll through red lights, but would generally just swerve around cars that actually stopped. At one point he took a left in front of 3 lanes of oncoming traffic and then cut in front of a city bus as he settled onto the new street. All the while he kept repeating the words “tough driver” with pride.

Interesting fact about Korea. Almost everybody has a suped up navigational system, and almost all of these are equipped so that they can and do watch television on them. It is horrifying.

So, finally we arrived at the bus station. No sooner had I gotten out of the car when I got a call from Albert. Albert, worried about my general incompetence, had just arrived at the bus station to ensure that I was put onto the appropriate bus. My self -esteem to say the least was on a downward slope.

The bus station was like any bus station in any country in the world. Albert got my ticket and escorted me to the line of people waiting beside the bus to Cheonan. There we waited for a time and Albert would not leave my side, only asked the driver if I might be let on early because I may be capable of somehow screwing that up.

Ten minutes passed and I was soon sitting in my seat watching Albert smoke his tiny cigarettes. A second later he was back on the bus and asking a 10 year old kid to make sure that I got off the bus when it arrived at Cheonan. Albert then patted me on the shoulder and gave me a coke. My self-esteem was somewhere south of Hell.

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The bus ride was great. I am a fan of slow speed transport and have always looked at bus rides as a great way to see a place if you are on your way to another place. I have taken busses across Mexico, to Canada, and from Athens to the edge of Albania and I often find myself too mesmerized to sleep despite utter exhaustion. This ride was no exception.

The land between Cheongju and Cheonan is rural. There were sparse villages and sloped tile roofs. Rice patties dominated the way, but every now and again there were the burial mounds from times forgotten or never recalled in Western memory.

Downtown Cheonan is massive. The bus station quickly becomes a four-story shopping center with a food court and cinema on top. I wandered for a time while I waited for Larry. Upon walking into the food court I remembered that I was starving and that if I was going to have anything to drink at all I needed food, or else I would be barfing after one beer.

There were so many options that I am ashamed that I fell on the American comfort food that is McDonalds. Please, please do not judge me too harshly: I was starving!

I sat alone, the only non-Asian in the place eating a Mc. Chicken and fries. I was fully aware that if there were a decent photographer present I would wind up in some article critical of fast food imperialism and our unwillingness to adapt to another culture.

After, I sat on a bench outside of the complex and watched people cross the street. This was something to behold. Koreans obey crosswalks and pedestrian signals as though they would be thrown away for life with no parole if they jaywalked. They will wait at the corner regardless of the fact that there are no cars coming.

When they do cross, though, now that is really something! By the time the cars stopped and the cross walk opened up there had to be over a hundred people going to opposite sides. It looked like two enormous waves crashing and breaking into one another.

Eventually, Larry and a friend found me and we were waiting for a taxi while he spoke to an American guy and his sister. A short cab ride took us to the suburbs of Cheonan: the domain of Larry Boire.

The drinking began instantly and I was thankful that I at least had a stomach full of Mc. Chicken. While Larry set off to make final arrangements for the pub quiz, I was left in the company of the first native English speakers I had met since home.

We sat around on the floor and played drinking games with orange juice and soju. We played a game I used to play a long time ago in an East Boston apartment off of Maverick Square and they all reminded me of old college friends who are lost now to life in time. They told me how bizarre it was to speak in proper sentences with adjectives after trying to speak simply to Koreans. Before we left we played poker with a big pile of cigarettes in the center of the floor and I felt like I was in prison.

The pub quiz at Adonis was something else. I came to Korea so that I might experience another culture for a year and that I might come away from it a little richer emotionally and monetarily. It is important though to take a breather every now and again. It is perfectly acceptable to go and get drunk with 60 other English teachers every now and again.

My team consisted of Larry’s friend CJ (actually Larry was friends with everybody) and a Canadian named Miranda. We somehow came up with the name Husky Hamsters. We also lost horribly, but I guess that is not really the point now is it?

We drank and drank and all became friends or at least something like it. Miranda was finishing up a job and would be on to at least another year in Korea. CJ was looking for another teaching job. I stepped outside with everyone else for a cigarette.

I remember talking to a guy who looked exactly like Kevin Bacon and the Pixies started playing. Out came the guy from the taxi stand that Larry was talking to. He had been in a motorcycle accident since we had last seen him and had gotten the worst of it. His shorts were stained with blood as well as his shirt. His limbs were covered in road rash and gashes. It was pretty obvious that he needed stitches, though I found out later he would be going to his doctor in the morning to avoid an expensive visit to the emergency room. It was a shock to see.

Still, the night wore on. The quiz ended but the beer kept coming. Miranda left and Larry and I sat in a booth watching people dance or generally have a good time while we finished our beers.

We headed back to his apartment, drank a bit more and called it a night. Larry apologized for a pounding head and what was apparently an early night for this crowd. It was 4am by the time my head hit his hard couch.

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