Medical Attention

Our school got a bad run of eye infections. I don't know exactly what it was, only that dozens of students had pink-red eyes and had to sit in the back of the classroom to avoid contaminating others. The word on the street was that the going rate for rubbing an infected classmate's eyes was 500 Won per rub, plus an additional 500 Won bonus if you actually got sick. The school had to change its policy so that sick students were quarantined rather than sent home to curb the purposeful spreading of disease. Personally I thought 500 Won was a little cheap (about 50 cents). On the other hand, if you pay three different kids to rub their eyes (to increase your exposure), do you have to pay ALL of them the bonus if you get sick, since it'd be pretty hard to prove which was the "lucky" rub? I was wondering.

In other news, I hurt my knee a month ago while running for exercise. It still hasn't healed completely, and I was worried about it but avoiding the doctor, as usual. So Dong-Yun convinced me to go to acupuncture with her instead. I agreed since I've never done acupuncture and I was curious. Today was my second trip. So far there's been no noticeable change in my knee, but I did get to experience some traditional Korean healing. Plus some kind of electro-therapy.

I managed to snap a photo, too. Surprisingly, despite my childhood fear of needles, the pins didn't really bother me. They hurt just a little bit going in, but after that, it just feels a little prickly, but not painful. Both times the treatment included receiving some kind of electric pulse therapy (which did hurt) and an ice pack. We're going back on Wednesday. Dong-Yun, meanwhile, is in for a slipped disk. I guess it could be worse.

"Camping"

I forgot to post about this. At the end of the summer vacation, Mrs. Yu asked if I wanted to go "camping" with her church group. I like those people, so I was glad to say yes! I wasn't sure what to expect, and indeed, I didn't hear anything more about it until the day of the trip. So I threw a few extra things in my bag just in case I needed them. One of them was a swimsuit. Good thing I did! On the other hand, it wasn't what you or I would usually term "camping."

Basically, we stayed at a lodge in a small village resort spot. The whole area of the countryside was full of resorts, hotels, and swimming spots. The rivers were full of people playing and swimming. I spent much of the trip (including the car rides) with the Ha family, one of the members of the church group, and one I like very much. Their middle-school-aged daughter, Sun-Yoon, speaks good English and is exceptionally friendly, smart, and cute. She informed me that the rivers were full of Korean children and fathers, and that Korean mothers were all camped on the shore, hiding in the shade of the tents. She went on to teasingly explain that her mother, like all Korean mothers, was afraid of any water that was more than ankle-deep.

The resort was near a famous mountain spring which remains frozen all summer long, despite the heat. We hiked up to see it, although there was no ice at the moment, only blasts of cold air coming from under the rock. The weekend was a great one, with good weather, and the location was beautiful. Click on the cut for some photos!

New Apartment!

Last Friday, I moved into a new apartment. It's a brand new building, built by the Office of Education specifically to house foreigners. It's a little smaller than some people's previous apartments, but about the same size as mine, although the layout is very different. The amazing part, however, is that it is not only cute, bright, and clean (unlike my last place), but also ridiculously well-stocked with brand new appliances, furniture, and little luxuries. It has things like a humidifier, oven, computer, and wide-screen TV, things not required or promised by the contract. It also had two sets of brand new bedding and a ludicrously large fridge. In fact, I was a little embarrassed by these riches, since the teachers who helped me move all saw them, and there were some comments. I'm sure this all seems unecessarily generous for a bunch of under-qualified foreigners, half of whom use their time in Korea to drink and travel around Asia.

But, uh, hey. I guess I'll take it. I'm lucky because it's all brand new for me. My successor will be getting my hand-me-downs. To help show it, I took a short video tour. It's a bit shaky and short, but it makes its point.

Yesterday, with Hye-Jin's help, I ordered rice cakes to be delivered to school this morning for all the teachers and staff in celebration of my move. Interestingly, many people, including the vice principal and Mrs. Yu, asked me "Who told you to do that?" or "How did you know that was our custom?" When I told them I told myself to do it, they seemed shocked. But I've been here a whole year. I've noticed that whenever someone gets a new car, gets married, has a baby, or otherwise stumbles across good fortune, it's typical to share your happiness by having treats delivered to the teachers' office, usually rice cakes. It's happened a lot of times. And I've eaten lots of those rice cakes. It's funny that they thought I wouldn't figure it out for myself. Or maybe they just didn't think it would occur to a foreigner to actually go ahead and do it. There is, after all, a big difference in Western and Eastern approaches to sharing, community, and generosity. But I always feel bad that so much is given to me, when it's very hard for me to give back. In the past, I celebrated American holidays by baking cookies for the teachers and brought back bread treats from Gyeongju, but this was a totally authentic Korean move, and I'm so glad I pulled it off! (Thanks, Hye-Jin!)

Summer Camp

I had to do a three-day summer camp with Hye-Jin, having about 17 students and lasting about 4 hours each day. We tried hard to make some fun activities, since the kids are giving up part of their already short summer vacation. I like the camps to have themes so it's not just a series of unrelated lessons, and also so the same words can be repeated many times throughout.

This camp's theme was Peter Pan, a theme I tried out last winter with success. I taught them lots of useless English words like "sail," "treasure" and "pirate." Oh, wait. Pirate is a useful word, right? Then again, I don't think pirates have the same iconic coolness they have in the States.

Anyway, here's some photos to sum up what we did. The VP wanted us to take a lot. He also wanted us to videotape some of it and get the kids to write some kind of articles, but he didn't get those wishes. Oh, well. You can't have everything.

Korean Weddings

It's been a slow summer vacation for me here, since my summer vacation days are too short to do much with and I had things to accomplish at home, such as getting ready to move (hopefully) and working on my hanbok. So I figured I'd just make a post about some things that happened during the school year that I never wrote about: going to weddings.

I've been to two weddings here so far. The first was Dong-Yun's cousin's wedding, and the second was the wedding of a teacher at my school. I only took pictures at the first, but they will suffice to illustrate the general ideas in this post. Of course, two weddings out of a whole country don't build a complete picture, but it looks like these were pretty standard weddings, so I'm guessing a lot of the stuff is typical.

Click on the jump to read more!

Mud Festival

The Boryeong Mud Festival is THE most popular festival among foreigners in all Korea. The idea? Boryeong brings in mud from a nearby mud beach, and foreigners turn out by the busload to paint themselves with it, wrestle in it, slide down it, splash in it, and have people throw buckets of it over their heads. Added to that is the fact that the festival takes place on a large, beautiful beach, and the marts and restaurants stay open into the wee hours of the night. There were so many foreigners there, you could almost forget you were in Korea at all.

The festival was very fun and well worth the trip. For one thing, it's cheap. The entry fee was 5,000 Won, but there was lots of free stuff too, including free mud. For another thing, there's nothing quite like being covered in mud. The lines were really long, though, so it's worth it to get there early (we came up on Friday night) and get a motel near the beach. There are a lot of bare bones "pensions" in walking distance of the festival. They basically consist of a single room with a few sleeping mats in the corner, a TV, and a small kitchen. The floor was super hard and the mats super thin, so we were all sore in the morning, but the price was decent when split between five or six people. I didn't take very many pictures because it's hard to take pictures when your hands are covered in mud, and there are many, many far better pictures online if you just google the festival. However, I did snap a few quick shots, so here they are after the cut.

Public Transportation Day

A rare, picture-less entry. I felt this little anecdote was worth sharing. :)

A bit ago we had a Public Transportation Day to celebrate the fuel-saving, environmentally-friendly idea of using public transportation to get to school and work. In honor of this day, everyone is supposed to use public transportation if at all possible. Now, since everyone loves the environment, and nobody wants to look like a jerk, everybody feels duty-bound to follow through on this, if only to save face. On the day in question, I got a ride from Jung Mi-gyung as usual. She always takes a route that brings us around the back of the school, and we were just approaching the back entrance when she suddenly saw a big banner with “Public Transportation Day” on it hanging above the street. “Oh no,” she exclaimed, bringing the car to a screeching halt before executing a sudden u-turn. “It’s public transportation day!”

Right behind my school is the city sports stadium, complete with its own small parking lot. Mi-gyung pulled us into that parking lot and explained. “Let’s park here and walk the rest of the way, so we can pretend we took public transportation.” “Ok,” I said. “It’s our secret,” agreed Mi-gyung.

As we got out of the car, she did a double-take on the car parked next to us and checked the license plate. “Oh,” she laughed. “It’s the school cook’s car.”

At the end of the day, I was supposed to get a ride home from Mr. Lim. Since he sometimes forgets, I went to find him and confirm. “Yes, yes,” he said. “You ride with me. Let’s meet in 10 minutes.” “Ok,” I said, starting to walk away. “Oh, wait,” he exclaimed suddenly, beckoning me closer.  In hushed tones, he explained, “My car is in the back today. You know the stadium? In that parking lot. Because… today is Public Transportation Day.”

As I made my way down the hill towards the stadium, I couldn’t help laughing. Nobody actually wanted to take public transportation, but nobody was willing to admit it. The result: the stadium parking lot was suspiciously full for the middle of the day on a weekday!