1, 2, 3, 5, 8, 13, ?, ?

I was doing patterns with one of my kindergarten classes the other day. Nothing too complicated... star circle square star circle square star circle square, and the like. They were getting them all very easily, so I decided to up it a little bit. 9 A 8 B 7 C 6 D, etc, and it took them a little bit longer, but they still picked it up pretty quickly.

So I decided to put something that was even more challenging. And that would be the pattern you see in the title. Some of you will probably crack it immediately; for others it may take a little longer. One of my students figured it out in her head within two minutes. She's six years old! Answer at the bottom.

That was interesting kindergarten incident #1 of the day. Number two occurred that afternoon. At the beginning of each kinder class, I draw a happy face and a sad face on the board; good behaviour and bad behaviour are recognized under the appropriate faces. I try to vary the faces each day - sometimes I'll draw cartoon people, other times anthropomorphized objects or animals. Yesterday I happened to do simple, almost geometric faces: dots for the eyes, accents circonflexes for the eyebrows, and so on. Upon seeing these, one of my students raised her hand and said, "teacher...emoticons?" Bear in mind, again, that these are six year-olds whose first language is not English, whose native alphabet is not Roman. The codebreaking left me impressed but not shocked; the emoticon incident (this, incidentally, would be a good name for an internet spy novel) left me flabbergasted and laughing. I asked her where she learned the word; apparently her mother and older sister were discussing it one day.

Thus, in honour of the occasion, I will end with a smile. :)

p.s. the next two numbers in the sequence are 21 and 34. Each number is the sum of the two preceding it: 1 + 2 = 3, 2 + 3 = 5, 3+ 5 = 8, and so on. Six years old! And she did it in her head!

And I remember Shanghai

How I wasn't sure just what was safe to eat
The chickens pecked and wandered at the barefoot ankles of the children hawking figurines of workers smiling
What's the Chinese word for cheese?

Thanks to Bishop Allen for the above lyrics. As it happened, I didn't see any live chickens, but I do, nevertheless, remember Shanghai.

In my previous Shanghai post, I mentioned the architecture downtown, which is radically different from that of Beijing, Seoul, and Busan. The guidebooks had made mention of this, however, so I wasn't completely unprepared. What I wasn't ready for was the traffic.

Oh, the traffic. The dizzying, exhilarating, anarchic traffic.

Shanghai!
A city where stoplights are suggestions at best.

Shanghai!
Where flocks of bicycles and scooters roam the streets.

Shanghai!
Where pedestrians defy death with every step off the sidewalk.

Springfield!
Where skateboard-riding youths urge you to eat their shorts.

Er, moving on.

Given my reputation, not as an expert economist, political theorist or even as a PhD. candidate in Sino-industrial history, but as someone who has spent more than eight days in China (four in Shanghai, five in Beijing), I feel particularly qualified to comment on the socio-political situation in contemporary China.

As I understand it, it's like this: China is still "communist" in much the same way that Stephen Harper is a "good prime minister." Between the condo developments and the Ferrari dealership, Shanghai does not show many signs of being a society in which property is shared equally. I think it's probably fair to say that communist China has never had such a society, but now there's isn't even any pretense of such a thing.

Historically speaking (or so we were told in Mrs. Findlay's Grade 13 Mod. West. Civ. class), revolutions have come from the middle class. When you're struggling to get enough food to feed your children, it can be hard to worry about more abstract issues such as voting. The reason Great Britain managed to avoid the equivalent of the French Revolution was that the nobility wasn't as rigidly hierarchical: those of sufficient wealth were able to buy their way into some form of power.

In China, the middle class is growing rapidly (though still dwarfed by those living day to day), but it's uncertain just how much power they have. At what point does one decide the Porsche isn't sufficient compensation for a lack of free speech? Is China's economic growth sustainable environmentally, economically, or socially?

I did enjoy the dumplings.

Oh, Ok

Well, 24 hours and much pedestring later, I return to the interweb to find that blogger is, in fact, accessible. Must just have been standard e-difficulties. I don't know whether to be relieved or disappointed to find that the Chinese government doesn't object to my writings.

You know what? That's all for now.

Interesting...

In attempting to update this blog from Shanghai, I seem to have run afoul of China's notorious internet censorship restrictions. At any rate, I am unable to access blogger in the usual manner. However, I have vague memories of setting up "blog by email" at some point in the past. So if you're reading this, it's because

a) Not only did I set up the blog by email (bbe) feature, I also
b) remembered the email address by which I can can use it.

If you're not reading this, of course, the point is moot, but since hope is the foundation upon which all creation must be built, I will proceed under the assumption that the blogging is proceeding as planned.

So...Shanghai.

First impressions? London mixed with Gotham City by way of Metropolis. The principal tourist area, known as the Bund, is filled with imposing Neo-Classical structures which date back to the late 19th and early 20th centuries. This gives the city (or parts thereof, I should say) a decidedly Western feel, most reminiscent to me of London. Across the river from the Bund, however, is the Pudong area, the exaggeratedly modern skyscraper district which seems like something out of a cheerful optimistic and future-looking comic (Metropolis). Yesterday, though, was dark and damp and foggy; the buildings loomed through the clouds as though screaming for Commissioner Gordon to shine the Bat Signal on them.

Today? Still cloudy, but no rain as of yet, fortunately. I've returned to the hostel for a mid-afternoon rest after much walking ce matin. The Shanghai Museum was interesting enough in its way, and comforting in the familiar museum-smell that seems to permeate all such institutions. I also took the time to meander through various roads and sidestreets, stopping only to sample an occasional steamed dumpling- which are, I am pleased to say, as exquisitely delicious as I had been led to believe. The Yuyuan Gardens, though not at their most floral in late December, were pleasing in their verdant, labyrinthine way, and I also made acquaintance with a most loquacious young man named Jimmy, who spewed forth a semi-prepared speech in such a manner as to turn Aaron Sorkin green with envy.

"Hello my friend where are you from? Oh, Canada! Canada is a very nice country. It rhymes with banana. I like to meet new and interesting foreigners and make conversation with them. You are very interesting looking with your blue eyes and many mustaches and big nose. You look very funny, don't you think? Anyway I am sixteen years old and I like to learn English but I cannot live at home anymore because my father beats me and my mother very much so I have had to leave home but under Chinese law children are not allowed to work so I have no means of supporting myself and I ask you my friend for some small money to help me feed myself-"

I gave him 5 yuan (roughly $0.60) and wondered, as I always do in these circumstances, whether I should have given more or nothing at all...

But now the city beckons once more. If nothing else, there are postcards to be written and street vendors' wares to be sampled.

Slideshow!

At long last...

This time next week, I'll be in Shanghai. In honour of this, and as an early Christmas present of sorts, I've put up a slideshow of selected photos from my Beijing trip. Enjoy.

And you read your Emily Dickinson, and I my Robert Frost

Points to anyone who catches the titular reference.

Over drinks at a friend's birthday party recently, discussion turned, in the improbably-hard-to-describe way that these things do, to student loans and the Booker Prize. Whether it was the champagne, my general lack of humility, or the fact that I possess Canadian, Irish and UK citizenship (making me thrice-eligible for the prize), I declared my intention to write a Booker Prize-winning novel and share the proceeds with the others to enable them to assist them with their edu-financial emancipation. While I did not specify the year in which my novel will take the literary world by storm, I am very aware of the fact that I am already 26, and thus have, by even particularly optimistic guesses, at best another 74 chances to win it. So there's much work to be done.

Setting aside any Booker aspirations, writing a novel is something I've always wanted to do. I have many beginnings, but few worth continuing. I have some ideas in mind, but I thought it would be fun to throw it to you, my faithful readers. What kind of novel should I write?

Please make your opinion known by voting in the poll in the sidebar. I do not promise to obey the wishes of my readers; truth be told, I suspect I already know which of the options provided will be the most popular, but I will take all votes and comments into consideration.

Confession

It's taken me a long time to get to a place where I feel comfortable admitting this, but I think I've been in denial long enough.

I don't like Korean food. There, I said it.

It's not to say that I don't like any Korean food, or that I am repulsed by it. Far from it. There are several dishes that are quite tasty, and I can generally find something edible at any of the restaurants near my apartment.

However, I remember going to a Korean supermarket in Toronto last Spring, and wandering the aisles with excitement and anticipation.

What does this package say?
What's in this box?
What are these ingredients for?
When I come back to Canada, I'll be able to cook all these great new dishes!

Sadly, no. This, in fact, is one of my greatest disappointments in Korea. I like food. A lot. I've eaten well on my travels in Mexico (taquitos from the street vendors), in Turkey (eggplant! and kebabs!), in Greece (eggplant again! and gyros dripping with tzatziki, and lamb stew), and Spain (where to begin? the tapas and the ham and the sangria and Portugal (codfish done six different ways, roast chicken, pasteis de belem). My one night in Japan, I had a delicous beefy brothy dish I won't even try to name. I'm already salivating at the thought of the cooking class I'll be taking in Thailand some six months from now. I like food.

Korean food, though...features seaweed. Prominently. And fish. But not fish in the way that I've come to like it. At a wedding buffet last weekend, breaded, fried, salmon fins were one of the options, and a popular selection at that.

I can eat the dried squid at the bar, and I do, but to me it tastes rubbery, vaguely fishy, and not all that appealing. The fish cakes that turn up in so many dishes here are chewy and flavourless. Much hot sauce is needed to make them palatable.

I'm disappointed, but it would be ridiculous for me to expect a country's cuisine to adapt itself to my palate. So I'm disappointed in me. I like the Korean bbq (dak galbi...mmm), and I like the dumplings, and some of the pastries. I like the Mongolian hot pot (which is also a Korean thing, name notwithstanding), but I haven't fallen in love with the everyday meals and the type of food my students eat on a regular basis. This annoys me.

But I've got another six months to get it right. Wish me luck.

Sundayosity

This Friday is the 6th mensiversary of my arrival in South Korea. Several things are happening or have already happened to mark the occasion:

-The mayor of Busan, Hur Nam-Sik, has declared next weekend to be a municipal holiday. There is to be a kimchi-tape parade downtown, and work will commence on a statue, 75m tall, in my likeness, to be placed on the summit of the highest mountain in the city.


-Kim Jong-Il is expected to resign as leader of North Korea and rededicate himself to his first love, yahtzee.

-I bought a winter jacket. In truth, this wasn't done specifically to commemorate my time here, but it seemed like a good idea, what with the encroachment of winter and so forth. The jacket itself is not entirely unattractive, should keep me reasonably warm, and was less than the price of a meal at a local Thai restaurant, assuming a glass of wine was consumed along with the food in said meal. So I'm satisfied with my purchase overall. What really, truly, delighted me about the jacket, though, is the descriptive blurb on the tag, reproduced here for your reading pleasure:

Leader's
The everything world mountain for acid is tracking, hiking, Seunosyuing, and until walking that is adventure and expression of travel in line of exploration! Offer everything. Experience culture that is different from nature and walk the earth. Express your happiness in step that step forward step by step. Open mind that is humble and respect. Finally, find your self, and supplement energy, and meet new place, the new world and new people and give meaning in your life at the street end.

I've been trying to stay away from posting about "konglish," as the Korean-English mishmash is known, for the simple reason that it's far too facile a topic to write about. It's a "what's the deal with airplane food" level of easy comedy, but the paragraph just appealed to me, and so I thought I'd share. Seunosyuing, incidentally, is snowshoeing, or so I would guess.

Last week's American Thanksgiving festivities were excellent. We bought a turkey dinner from The Seamen's Club, a USS centre which caters primarily to American military personnel and sailors, and it was delicious. My intended cheesecake was to be lime with a ginger snap crust, but due to supermarket restrictions it turned into a lemon cheesecake with a coconut cookie crust; also excellent, but my heart still prefers the lime.

Now that it's December, my thoughts have really started to trifurcate. I've been reflecting on the year gone by: North Bay, Kenya, Korea, and so on, thinking about my options for the second half of '08, while simultaneously wanting to stay grounded in the next 6 months. It's quite the juggling act, let me tell you. On the other hand, it's rare that I'm able to use "trifurcate," so this mollifies me somewhat.

More later today. Maybe.

Jeff's contribution to Yanksgiving dinner in Korea

(to nobody's great surprise)

Lemon Cheesecake
Makes 1-9 inch cheesecake (8 servings)

1 1/2 cups graham cracker crumbs
6 tablespoons butter, melted

24 ounces cream cheese,

softened 1 cup white sugar

1 tablespoon com starch

3 eggs

1 tablespoon grated lemon zest 2/3 cup lemon juice

Directions

1 Combine cookie or graham cracker crumbs with butter or margarine. Press into bottom and partially up sides of 9 inch springform pan. Refrigerate.

2 In a large bowl, beat with an electric mixer the cream cheese, sugar, lime peel, and cornstarch untif smooth fluffy. Beat in eggs one at a time, blending just until smooth. Add key lime juice with mixer on low. Finish mixing by hand. Do not overbeat, or cake will crack during baking. Pour batter into prepared crust.

Bake at 300 degrees F (150 degrees C) for 55 to 65
minutes, or until set. To minimize cracking, place a shallow
pan half full of hot water on lower rack during baking.

Turn oven off, and let cheesecake stand in oven 30
minutes with the door open at least 4 inches. Remove from
oven. Refrigerate cake overnight, and up to three days.

Adam Asks A Waeguk, Vol. 6.4

The latest in an ongoing series:

Dear Waeguk,

If I were to watch the Korean equivalent of
Sportscentre, what sport would be most likely to
feature as the lead story? Does Korea have its own
versions of the NBA, NHL, MLB, etc? Professional
leagues or associations for any other sports? Is any
particular Korean athlete the LeBron of the bunch
(meaning the anointed and most favoured one)?

The Waeguk responds:

Adam,

Korea has its own versions of the NBA (the Korean Basketball League, or KBL), and its own Professional Baseball League. Ice hockey, on the other hand, is virtually unheard of, at least in Busan.

Interestingly, most of Korea's most famous athletes do not play in Korea. These include Park Ji-Sung, who plays for Manchester United in Great Britain's Premier League, as well as almost a dozen Koreans who play in North America's Major League Baseball. The best known of these is the Los Angeles Dodgers' Chan Ho Park. Manchester United is quite popular because of the Park Ji-Sung connection, but I don't there's an overwhelming allegiance to any particular baseball team.

Another popular sporting figure in South Korea is the 7'2" kickboxer Choi Hong-Man, who dwarfs just about everyone. Choi is well-known because of his massive size and impressive record in the ring, but even despite his personal appeal, kickboxing is not a particularly popular sport here.

Almost all of my male students, as well as a number of my female students, attend taekwondo classes on a regular basis; it's not uncommon for boys to come to school in their taekwondo uniforms.

Ask A Waeguk, Vol. 6.3

The third question comes from A. Christopher Garskey, formerly of Lindsay, Ontario. Mr. Garskey writes:

Dear Waeguk,

What is kimchi, and why would schoolchildren complain when it is dry? Also, I’ve heard positive reviews of Korean barbeque, but have never experienced it myself.
Have you indulged, and if so, what are your thoughts?
Also, have you noticed any seasonal changes in the local food?

The Waeguk Responds :

Kimchi is a staple of Korean cuisine. It's spicy pickled vegetables (most commonly cabbage), and is served with almost every meal. Most of my students will eat kimchi for breakfast, lunch, and dinner. It's typically quite moist, and thus if it were dry schoolchildren would likely find it offensive to their finely honed palates.

As for Korean barbeque, it's one of my favourite types of food here in Korea. At the Korean barbeque restaurant I frequent most often, pork is the meat of choice. It's an almost bacon-like cut, brought raw to the table on plates piled high. Each table has its own little charcoal grill, and the meat is cooked with onions, hot peppers, garlic, and sliced potato. When done, one removes the bacon and vegetables from the grill and wraps it in mint or other leaves along with one's sauce of choice. It can be a bit messy at times, but is really quite delectable.

As for seasonal changes in the local food, I haven't noticed many as of yet. The persimmons and clementines are in season, and are being sold on the street along with the standards of fish and bananas, but I haven't yet detected any huge differences in the eating habits.

Ask A Waeguk, Vol. 6.2

The next question is from AC "Slater" Garskey in Ottawa, who writes:

"Dear Waeguk,

I recently heard that there are somewhere in the neighbourhood of 20 000 anglophones teaching English in Korea at the moment. Is the demand for any other languages strong in Korea, and if so, do you ever run into evidence of the presence of native speakers of those languages? (Note: by “evidence”, I more or less am thinking of observing young speakers of, say, French or Spanish on the subway who appear to be on their way to work or who appear to be somehow less transient than tourists. I’m not thinking along the lines of stool samples or footprints.) "

The Waeguk responds:

English is far and away the dominant second-language in Busan, and Korea as a whole. In terms of foreign-language education, the next most popular would likely be Mandarin, but it doesn't have even a tenth of the presence of English.

That's not to say that all the non-Koreans in Busan are anglophones, though. The interestingly-named Texas Street, for example, is home to Busan's Russian community, and many of the signs in the area are in the Cyrillic alphabet. I think the presence of the Russians is due largely to Busan's status as one of the major port cities in this corner of the world; Texas Street also plays host to a number of Indonesian and Philipino restaurants and is, or so rumour would have it, the recommended (and likely only) place to go for a Caucasian (possibly literally, in this case) prostitute.

There are a couple of French people in the Korean class which takes place before mine; I haven't spoken to them much, but I think they likely work for a multinational in the area, as I have seen absolutely no demand whatsoever for French teachers.

It has occurred to me on occasion that it would be amusing to procure myself a position as an English teacher in a rural area where nobody speaks the language, and proceed to teach the children French or Spanish instead, but the odds of my doing this are slim.

Ask A Waeguk, Vol. 6.1

The first of several questions today comes from Sara-Jane in High Park, who asks if Hallowe'en is celebrated in Korea.


The Waeguk responds:

Korea has numerous holidays. Some of them, such as Chuseok, have deep roots in this country, while others, such as Christmas, are newer additions but have still been adopted by a significant proportion of the population. Then there's Halloween. This seems to be celebrated exclusively at the hogwan (English academies) and Wageuk bars. Korean children come to English school dressed in costume and receive and candy and may participate in certain Halloween-themed activities. However, it's done much in the spirit that a Canadian school might have, for example, an "International Day," wherein students will organize cultural activities from different nations. That is to say, Halloween in Korea is celebrated almost exclusively within the school, rather than within the community as a whole.

As for your faithful correspondent, I amazed and delighted my pupils with my interpretation of Wolverine, the X-Man. I made claws of cardboard and tinfoil, and the Kindergardeners especially were quite impressed. We also had a haunted house, which is to say: a classroom with the lights turned off,black garbage bags draped from the ceiling, and a cd of scary sounds playing. I was quite skeptical of our ability to scare anyone, but I had neglected to take into account the fact that our target audience was 5 years old. Many kids refused to take more than 2 steps into the room, and those who did enter were oft shocked to find the mannequins coming to life and jumping out at them. But rest assured, 'twas all in good fun.

sigh...

Things my kindergarten students are learning:

"What's he like? He's handsome and smart."

"What's she like? She's quiet and shy."

Ask A Waeguk, Vol. 5

Our latest question comes from Dave in Ontario, who is impressed at the news of the Waeguk's Korean lessons, and wonders whether they include the alphabet, and the Waeguk's thoughts thereon.

As always, the Waeguk responds:

I'm learning both written and spoken Korean, which is a bit of a challenge, but also something I'm quite enjoying. The Korean is relatively straightforward to learn, and in fact is something I had a decent understanding of even before beginning the lessons, insofar as being able to sound out words, though not necesssarily to understand them.

One of the interesting things about Korean is how poorly it's transliterated into the Roman alphabet. For example, I live in the city of Busan, but until quite recently I would have been living in the city of Pusan. There is no real distinction in Korean between the English p and b, l and r,and j and z. My students are wont to talk about the "Jewkeeper" rather than the "zookeeper," which is not a mistake that will serve them well in most parts of the English-speaking world.

Traditionally, Korean has been transliterated into the Roman alphabet using the McCune-Reischauer system, but over the past decade or so this has been phased out in favour of the Revised Romanization system, and this is the reason for the Pusan/Busan switch. Essentially, this means that there are easier and simpler ways of having one sound in Korean correspond to its partner sound in English, and showing this on paper.

Learning to read Korean has also helped me sympathize somewhat with some of the difficulties facing any learner of a new alphabet. Most frustrating? Fonts! I can read the Korean equivalent of Times New Roman fairly easily, but anything artsy or stylized throws me off immediately. Writing is also a challenge given that my handwriting isn't exemplary at the best of times and in my native tongue, but at least under those circumstances I can extrapolate from my notes with confidence. In Korean? Not so much.

On the other hand, three tenses total does make for one happy language student...

Got a question for the Waeguk? Ask him here.

Kansas, Toto, etc. Part Two

A few more thoughts on how I know I'm not in Canada...

A student brought a fairly realistic toy gun to class the other day, with a working laser sight on it. Rather than call the police or at least send him to the office, I told him to put it away, but not before I went to the class next door and pointed it at one of my colleagues through the window. In a similar twist, many of my students carry x-acto knives with them to sharpen their pencils. We haven't had any stabbings yet.

In Korean class, tonight we played "two truths and a lie." One of my truths was the following: I've met Wayne Gretzky. My teacher had never heard of him.

Cellphones work even in the subways here. Not only that, but I have a cellphone. This may be the most shocking development of all.

Kansas, Toto, and all that

After a while, life begins to consist of routines, patterns and habits. Every day in Korea is no longer to the filled to the brim with glorious epiphanies, touching moments of intercultural understanding, and moments of intense revelation. This is not to say that these do not occur, merely that the quotidian living is, perhaps, less exotic than some might imagine it to be.

Having said that, I do often experience many things which remind me, subtly or overtly, that I am no longer living in the shadow of the CN Tower...

On Saturday, one of the secretaries at our school got married, and all the teachers were invited to the wedding.

As I waited for my coworkers before heading over to the wedding, a group of boys aged 12 or 13 passed by. Despite my wearing sunglasses, they were somehow able to deduce my anglophone nature, and called out to me, "very handsome!" with thumbs raised to underline their approval. On the one hand, it's simply a case of kids seizing the chance to practice their English outside of class, but on the other, it's an instance of young males commenting favourably (and without sarcasm, I assure you), on the appearance of another male. It must be said, of course, that I do look damn good in a tie.

Korea is a very conservative and homophobic country- there are very, very few openly out people here, and paradoxically, it may be for this reason that men are much more affectionate towards one another than they would be in Canada. It's not at all uncommon to see teenage boys sitting on each other's laps in the subway, or holding hands as they walk down the street. Being gay is so unheard of that one is able to engage in such affectionate activities without the fear of being called gay because being gay isn't even an option...but back to the wedding.

In many respects, it was a fairly Western affair: the bride wore a white dress, the groom wore a tux, and it was held in a wedding hall not hugely dissimilar from ones one might find in Mississauga or Don Mills. A major difference, though, was evident before the wedding, as the bride sat in a small room off the lobby and guests were invited in to pose for pictures beside her. During the actual ceremony, the parents of the bride and groom sat in big chairs on either side of the happy couple, who bowed to each set of progenitors (I do love me some big words every so often) at the conclusion of the nuptials.

I had my first Korean lesson today. It's mightily exciting, after four months in the country, to be finally learning the language in a formal, organized manner. It was even more exciting to learn that Korean verbs have only three tenses, and that there is no conjugation as such- the ending is the same for each person- I am, you am, he am, we am, and so on. Furthermore, Korean is largely a contextual language, so "are you going to Seoul" is written the same way as "you are going to Seoul" would be, with the only difference being the inflection at the end of the sentence to indicate a question.

Apart from the obvious advantages of speaking the language of the country in which I live, I think that learning will also be give me a better grasp of the perspective of my students, a from the general sense of learning a new language, but also of the differences between English and Korean specifically. I look forward to learning more.

As you may be aware, the leaders of North and South Korea have just completed another summit- the second since the end of the Korean War. Unfortunately, my grasp of Korean politics is not much stronger than my grasp of the Korean language. It isn't something which my coworkers discuss at all at work, or at least not in language, and I'm perhaps too careful when asking about it, because the relationship between the Koreas does fascinate me so.

As I touched upon at the beginning of this post, Koreans and non-Koreans may be distinguished from one another by purely physical characteristics, at least 99 times out of one hundred. There is a not inconsiderable number of Westerners in Busan, but I would venture to guess that at least 90% of them are English teachers. This is interesting because, a) it means that almost all white people (and the vast majority of English teachers here are white) in Busan are between the ages of 22 and 3o, and b) there isn't the same level of integration or assimilation as would occur under more conventional immigration patterns. It's not at all rare to be stared on the subway or the street, especially by children. This puzzled me for a little while because the number of Westerners, while only a tiny fraction of the overall population, is still substantial enough that I generally see another waeguk or two every time I go downtown.

But while a small town in Northern Ontario, for example, may be (and here we'll pick some numbers out of a hat), 10% Native Canadian, with the rest of the town being Canadian of European descent except for "that one Chinese family," the point is that even in that small town, the Chinese family is a family. There will be Chinese-Canadian kids in that family, and they will go to school with the other kids, and hang out with them, and so on. There may be racism and suspicion and so on, but there is also a level of interaction that is unusual here. The Western teachers and the Korean teachers may and do hang out, but there are no family picnics or family softball games, for the simple fact that there are almost no Western children here. It isn't rare to see white people (as mentioned, almost always between the ages of 22 and 30), but it's almost unheard of to see white children. A few months ago I was at the beach and hanging with a couple from Oregon who had their two small, blonde children with them. The kids fell asleep under a beach umbrella, and more than one Korean came up and asked to take their photo.

We are migrant workers, though more by choice than by necessity. Most teachers here will leave after a year. Some will stay on for a little while, but the vast majority will return within 3 years to Canada, the U.S., or whatever other corner of Anglophonia from whence they came.

And those are my thoughts for the day.

The waeguk is wondering if he's already answered all the possible questions you could have. If no, feel free to ask.

also worth a quick glance...

...is this.

Attention, Comrades

Warning: This entry may be a bit of a ramble.

How to describe the Beijing trip?

The easiest way might be by comparison. Today (Monday), I spent the day teaching English to children.

Last Monday, I climbed the Great Wall of China.

Of course, the comparison isn't fair, since vacation time outranks non-vacation by definition alone.

To evaluate the trip, then, we need to break it down into its base components:
the tour and the city.

Let's start with the tour.

As most people who are reading this probably know, I am not entirely bereft of experience in the group travel industry. Most of that experience, however, has come from the tour guide perspective, rather than that of the customer.

Anyhow, the tour was good. Not great, but very good. The essence of group tours, though, is such that to a large degree very good is the best you can hope for, in the sense that there will always be questions of time allocation and sights to see, etc, so you aim to please as many of the people as often as you can. Had I been on my own, I wouldn't have gone to the tea shop or the jade factory, but then neither would I have been staying in a 5 star hotel out in the suburbs of Beijing. I've always been happy with hostels- they're cheap, centrally located, though they don't have the swimming pools and bowling alleys our hotel did.

It was fun meeting new people and making some friends, but I've decided to prefer make my own through a new place, exploring at my leisure and at my own pace. While it's convenient simply to be told to be back at the bus at a certain time, it also removes a considerable of the chunk of the free-spirited wanderer mythos with which I strive to imbue myself at all times.

Beijing, then. The Forbidden City (home of the Chinese Royal Family for countless years) reminded me a lot of Versailles simply because of the sheer size and arrogance of the operation. "L'état, c'est moi," indeed. The thing that has often amazed me about monarchies is not so much the fact that people throughout history have proclaimed themselves definely superior to the masses, but that the masses have acquiesced and agreed with them. And while I realize that a large part of this was determined by which hand was holding the sword, let's face it- there was (generally) only one Emperor at a time, but he (and on occasion, she) controlled a hell of a lot of sword-holders.

But yeah. Setting aside the political thoughts (I've always maintained that standing in front of Versailles is the easiest way to understand the reasons for the French Revolution), the Forbidden City is fascinating because of its size...and here I was going to offer some thoughts of dubious originality and interest, but I've just come to the decision that even if it is possible to eliminate politics and social philosophy from the picture, to do so would be absurd and/or irresponsible. The entire palace complex (all 720,000 square metres) was constructed to hold the source of absolute power, and if you fail to acknowledge that when beholding, you are missing out on human history at its most basic.

The Great Wall of China can be viewed through much the same lens, but offers more panoramic and astoundingly scenic photos. Lots of stairs, and a definite highlight of the trip. For me, at least, the Wall was symbolic of an empire with all the positive and negative connotations therein, while I found the Forbidden City to offer more food for thought on human hierarchy and our willingness to subjugate ourselves to others, or have them do so to us. But what do I know.

The Great Wall of China goes on forever, if not in the literal sense then in the figurative. We didn't climb it for very long, but it was enough to get the slightest glimpse of the immense time and effort that went into its building.

From a tourist point of view, the Great Wall and the Forbidden City are the two structures that will remain at the forefront of my memories, but a conversation I had on the last night definitely bears mentioning.

A few of us tourists were making our way to the hotel bar when we noticed our tour guide at the front desk, and so we invited her to have a beer with us. It wasn't a particularly long discussion, but it meandered well, as all great discussions do. We were asking her for her thoughts on the present and the future of China, and in a nutshell this is what she said:

"when you look at China, you see a lot of problems. We don't have free speech, and people are thrown into jail for criticizing the government. But for us, we see that this is the best it's been in a thousand years."

It's an interesting way of looking at the situation. Not to look at it history in terms of years or decades or even centuries, but millennia. It's a slow, gradual, process. That day we had taken a rickshaw tour of a hutong, a traditional Beijing neighbourhood, and we had met a septuagenarian who lived there. I asked what was the greatest change she had seen since she was a child, and she replied that now food is plentiful and affordable.

Is this Mao's doing? Would China have better evolved under free-market capitalism? I have no idea.

I've picked up a biography of Mao, though, and hopefully that will give me some clues.

I'll try to come back to this and add more thoughts and commments over the next couple of days, so if you come back to reread this don't be surprised if it's been changed in some way.

Example of a haiku, as given by Jeff Teacher

I sit in my class

Outside it will soon be fall

I won't miss the heat

Chuseok is all around us

The kids are busy writing their lists for the Chuseok Bunny, and getting ready to go from house to house collecting teeth to stick under the pillow, while the parents stay home assembling the Chuseok pole in preparation for the Airing of Grievances.

In truth, I still don't know exactly what Chuseok entails. It is, essentially, the Korean Thanksgiving, and a time when most Koreans will return to the home of their parents or grandparents, pay homage to their ancestors, and eat a lot- including Songpyeon, a traditional Korean rice cake. Beyond that, though, it's all a big mystery.

It's just a couple of weeks away now, and the biggest indicator of an impending holiday is found, of course, in the supermarkets. There are a great number of gift baskets for sale, each one offering a selection from a given grocery aisle: fruit, cosmetics, spam.

Soon we'll start doing Chuseok activities with the students, and I'm curious to discover the local equivalent of Santa napkin rings or Turkey placemats. Gift baskets aside, what I've seen of pre-Chuseok Korea makes it seem a lot more low-key than Christmas or even Thanksgiving, but it may also simply be less commercial, though no less intense. I am given to understand that virtually everyone goes home for the week, and there are very few exceptions.

As for me, I'll be in Beijing. Assa!

Hills and Apartments

Every so often, I'll set out from the Jeffpad and meander through the streets of my neighbourhood. It's at these times that I am most aware of the fact that I am in a very different place.

Busan's main streets are very large, wide thoroughfares. It's rare that one can cross the street directly; most often pedestrians either take bridges over the road or tunnels underneath it. It's not uncommon to have two levels of road on the main strip, with a raised highway running more or less on top of a street. Usually I'll walk along one of these for a little bit, but I prefer to move off the main drags and meander through the side streets, which are fascinating. They're small, narrow, and curvy, frequently without sidewalks, and are almost invariably sloping up or down.

I'm reminded a little bit of the Flintstones travel parts, wherein the scenery loops as they drive along, because there seems to be a specific number of types of business establishments in the residential areas of Busan. These are as follows:

-the corner store: purveyors of Fanta, snack food, and the like, these can be quite tiny (the size of a walk-in closet) to relatively spacious (the size of a large bachelor apartment)

-the optician: apparently, there is a very high demand for glasses and glasses-related paraphernalia in Busan

-the bakery: these often have French names and serve Eurasian fused baked goods. Fresh bread (but not, sadly, baguettes) vie for space with red bean donuts, cakes, and buns.

-the pizza place: In addition to the not infrequent Dominos and Pizza Huts, most neighbourhoods have a local pizzeria or three as well. These are generally given names similar to ones which might be found in North America: Pizza Time, Mr. Pizza, and Royal Pizza are all within a short walk of my apartment

-the Korean restaurant: barbecue-, soup-, or bibimbap-oriented, Busan has many, many, many eateries. As I may have mentioned in previous posts, the cost of food in restaurants is quite cheap (a solid meal can be had for $3), while the supermarkets are relatively expensive.

On a given street, then, the order is often something like this:

variety store, barbecue restaurant, optician, barber, variety store, bibimbap restaurant, pizza place, bakery, barbecue restaurant, optician.

All of this, of course, is set against a backdrop of apartment buildings, which are themselves framed by the green mountains of Busan. It sounds scenic, and it in its own peculiar way I suppose it is... the city has a sort of old- modern feeling to it. Think of The Fifth Element. It looks like the City of the Future, but twenty or thirty years later. I'll need to put up some photos to do this description justice. For now you'll have to trust me.

Rejoice! and be cool

The heat has broken at long last.

Tonight I do not sit under the air conditioner while beads of sweat fill my eyes.

Went to the beach last weekend, and spent the day frolicking in the Sea of Japan.
Good times abounded. Every time I go to the beach, I am amazed anew by the sheer volume of people consorting on the sands and in the water. According to Wikipedia, as many as 100,000 people gather on the one-mile (1.6km) strip of beach on busy days, and I believe it. The umbrellas stretch off to infinity in either direction, and it is no small accomplishment to find valuable waterspace.

A follow-up to an earlier posting: the official site for the movie D-War (Korean title) may be visited here. Again, I heartily recommend it.

We've just started a book box at school, where in people can drop off books they've read, and pick up ones they haven't. I'm cautiously optimistic, but also desperate. I feel like (insert clever and humorous drug dependency-related reference here). I miss books. I quickly got through all those I brought with me, and while one of the bookstores here does have a reasonably comprehensive English-language section, I'd rather not spend money on books that I'll be leaving behind.

The book box also got me thinking about books on which I'm missing out back home. I've got the new Jasper Fforde on my list of to-reads, as well as Paul Shirley's memoir,and Joan Druett's Island of the Lost, among others, but I'm sure there are still many more that have slipped under my radar or will have done so by the time I once again in a land with English-language libraries. In order to keep track, and to hopefully assist anyone else looking for stuff to read, I've decided to keep a list on the side of books I want to read. Feel free to post suggestions on the blog or email them to me here. In the unlikely event that the Book Box proves successful beyond all imagining, I may well open up a second sidebar entitled "what I'm reading now" or somesuch, but this seems improbable at best, so don't hold your breath.

You'll note that the links on the sidebar all bring you to either a big Canadian or American e-retailer. This is simply for ease of information gathering. If you want to read any of these titles, I strongly suggest you go to your local neighbourhood bookstore and pick them up there. Or your library. Libraries rock. I strongly recommend the Toronto Public Library if you live in Toronto. I also strongly recommend Toronto itself.

Shameless Promotion

From my inbox:

"The new issue of Papertag is up, and looking delicious, but I'm hungry for more.


This is a call for your Food Channel styled, close up, soft lit photos of lunch, dessert, the bananas you have laying around, whatever. Accompany the photo with your best food fantasy. Explain that your lonely granola bar lunch is due to your totally unreasonable supervisor's constant demands on your time. Maybe you are obsessively eating Doritos ever since your girlfriend left you. I want photos of the carnage, and words that convey your pain.

Share how the smell of chocolate chip cookies reminds you of your mom. Send in photos of your famous no-bake brownies in progress, with the recipe attached. Explain why local food matters (along with images of soil-dusted carrots). Tell us how a giant bowl of hot buttered popcorn is a metaphor for the war-industrial complex.

We're not judging -- we want it all.

Send your food related creations, memories, instructions, tangents, inspirations and anything in between to papertag @ g mail dot com.

[themes are merely suggestions for fun and inspiration. send whatever floats your creative boat.]

Looking forward to your mouth watering submissions,

Erin http://papertag.ca"

Movie Recommendation

In the roughly ten weeks I've been in South Korea, I'd seen a couple of movies (Die Hard and Transformers) and hadn't felt the need to comment on either of them. This past week, though, I was privy to a cinematic phenomenon the likes of which I had never before witnessed, and in all probability never again will.

I'm speaking of the movie D-War, which opens in North America in September. In theory, this is a movie based on an old Korean legend involving giants snakes and dragons. In practice this largely holds true, but I would be remiss in describing it as such and leaving it at that. Suffice it to say that if you've ever wondered how supernatural pterodactyls would fare against military attack helicopters, this is the movie for you.

Imagine, if you will, a film that combines elements of Lord of the Rings, Transformers, Godzilla and The Terminator, with special effects that, at their best, rival those in any of the aforementioned movies. To this technical wizardry, add a screenplay that would be hard-pressed to earn a passing grade in an applied Grade 10 English class, and actors who, after their performances in this movie, will be lucky to find themselves called upon to play the role of "Bystander #3" in the next Vin Diesel film.

D-War is almost certainly the worst movie I have ever paid money to see, but fortunately its awfulness is such that it becomes one of the lucky few to fall squarely and inarguably into the hallowed "so bad it's good" hall of fame.

Step aside, Conan. You've got company.

August

is upon us, with everything that entails. Or doesn't entail, one could argue. Because my school year here doesn't follow the Canadian calendar, I'm working most of the month. I've been off this past week, though, and doing the tourist thing to a small degree.

In no particular order, a few random thoughts:

-Beaches are better when you have a frisbee.

-Korean movie theatres have assigned seating. This is useful if you get there early (you can pick your own seats and then show up again 5 minutes before the movie starts), but less useful if you show up late (you're stuck with whatever's left). Then again, people who show up late to movies are generally stuck with the leftovers anyway.

-The odds of being visited by Jehovah's Witnesses are considerably higher in Busan than in Toronto.

-If you choose to order at random from a menu by picking something you can read without having any idea what it is, it's probably soup.

-No matter how hot and sweaty you think you'll be when you go outside, you'll be hotter and sweatier.

-The electronics stores here sell crazy-tiny cellphones, super-advanced computers, nifty little gadgets of all shapes and sizes... and portable cassette players.

-Children like to practice their English when they see white people. Some days this is cute. Some days this is not. The variable cuteness has less to do with the children than the temperature.

-Speaking of cellphones, I'm (hopefully) getting one this weekend. I've never had a cellphone before, but I think this proves I am finally a Person of Consequence.

-Korean public baths are quite relaxing. Cheap, too! For about C$4 one can relax in a selection of hot,warm, cool and cold baths for as long as one likes. An excellent way to spend an hour after walking around a mountain.

The Poll is Closed...

... and the results have been tabulated.

On the North Korea Question, the people have spoken as follows:

Yes: 25%
Don't Know: 33%
No: 25%
Do What You Want: 17%

All in all, not the most conclusive of surveys, but that may be fitting. I probably won't be going to North Korea any time soon, but I'm not entirely ruling it out, either.

I've switched to a three-column blog; my hope is that this template will be the one that lasts for a while, but we'll see. The additional column should make for a less cluttered look, so that benefits everybody. Let me know what you think.

Oh, and I went to Japan last week. We left on Wednesday, came back on Thursday. From the little I saw of it, Fukuoka's a nice town, but not particularly exciting. It's cleaner than Busan, which is good, but there are fewer Korean restaurants, the value of which really corresponds to your opinion of Korean food.

Although I had a good 48 hours, I was surprised at the relief I felt upon returning to Korea, where even the modicum of Korean I speak far surpasses the amount of my Japanese. It's still a pretty pathetic amount, though. If anybody knows a KSL teacher, please give them my contact info.

2 Quick Notes

I've taken down the slideshow that was up for a little while on the right-hand side. Those of you who wish to view it may do so at our sister site.

There are only a few hours left to vote on the North Korea question, if you haven't already done so. Thanks to those who did vote, and especially those who explained the reasons behind their selection. I haven't completely made up my mind, but I'm leaning strongly in one direction.

mud-luscious and puddle wonderful, and a temple too

Thanks to e.e. cummings for part A of the title. Sadly, though, Mud Festival didn't quite live up to its billing. I had been led to expect a sea of mud stretching as far as the eye could see, with myriad opportunities to frolic and bathe. Instead, we found a nice enough beachtown, two little sections of which had been converted into mud-slides and mudwading pools, around of each of which was a line of people. Boryeong, the town in question, has a rather nice sand beach, but the region is well-known for the ostensible curative properties of the local mud, hence the impetus for the festival, and also my mild surprise at the relative lack of mud. The distribution of free bars of mud soap was a nice touch, though.

Upon rereading the above, I realize that you should be forgiven for inferring there was almost no mud at all, but that wasn't exactly the case. The mud was there, but only in such quantities that an effort had to be made in order to be muddy- the advertising for the festival gives the impression that great effort is needed in order to stay clean, and this is most definitely not true. Still, a valuable lesson was learned about forming expectations based on advertising, so not all is lost.

Beyond the mud was an excuse for thousands of people, waeguk-in and Koreans alike, to pass a weekend on a beach. As such, it was successful, though I was somewhat discomfited to find myself in what could, in many regards, have passed for a frosh week celebration at Wasaga or the like. I was also saddened that it took me most of the weekend to find a store selling frisbees- these generators of awesomeness do not have nearly the same ubiquity in Korea as they do back home. I'm further amused by the fact that I've just paired a comment on the surfeit of North Americans with one on the scarcity of North American beach toys, but so be it.


Today being Constitution Day, our pedagogical efforts were unneeded, so a colleague and I decided to explore Beomeosa, acclaimed by Wikipedia as "one of the country's leading urban temples."

After a short subway ride and an even shorter cab ride, we found ourselves high up a mountain and in a completely different world. One of the characteristics of Busan of which I'm less fond is the lack of green space, but the temple is essentially in the middle of the forest, and absolutely stunning to boot. It was originally constructed in the 7th Century, but has been destroyed and rebuilt a number of times since then.

The term temple is a bit of a misnomer, at least insofar as I have generally understood the term. Like the other Buddhist temples I've seen, Beomeosa isn't one single building, but is instead a collection of shrines, pagodas, statuary, and the like. For this reason, it makes an excellent place to wander around in slack-jawed awe, always a good state to be in, especially in a place of religion. It also makes one (meaning me) more conscious of the connection between people and the rest of nature. As impressive as, say, Notre-Dame de Paris is, when one enters into it one is definitely stepping into a human creation and leaving the rest behind. Beomeosa, while still obviously and inarguably a construct of humanity, is a part of its natural surroundings in a completely different way. The trees, the water, and the bamboo all form (to these Western eyes, at least) a part of the experience. That's a good thing.

Thoughts on a Train

What follows was, as will soon be obvious, first written on the overnight train from Seoul to Busan. Minor edits have been made for coherence and stylistic preference, but the essence, I would say, remains the same. For example, the conclusion does not bear nearly as much relation to the introduction as I would have liked, but we tamper with these things at our own risk.

At least since Einstein, if not long before him, we have known that time is relative. The physicists, no doubt, have all sorts of elegant mathematical proofs for this, but for me it is never clearer than when I am on a train. Not only does time stretch and collapse in ways beyond my understanding and descriptive capabilites, but it has an almost mystical ability to bridge together the various epochs of my quasi-adult life.

As I write these words I am returning to Busan, shortly after midnight- 12 minutes into a new Monday. That's the literal assessment of my situation. In some indescribably intangible way, however, I am not only in Korea, circa 2007. I am in 19 years old, taking the train to Ste-Foy, Qc, for a summer of Katimavikking. I am 23, on the night train from Paris to Amsterdam. I am staring out the window as the landscapes of Northern Spain, New Brunswick, and Southern Mexico all roll by.

Travel is, almost by definition, transitional, but I have found that trains hold a particular resonance with me. This may be attributed at least in part to the wanderlust stirred in me from a young age with every walk through Toronto's glorious Union Station and the inevitable backpack-clad youths on their way, no doubt, to places exotic.

It may also owe something to my youthful inhalation of the Canadian mythos of the Railroad As Nation-Builder And Uniter of Oceans. This inculcation of romance should not be underestimated, although it should of course be tempered with at least a cursory awareness of the difficulties and injustices involved in the construction of said railroad.

The most pragmatic explanation for my enduring state of train love is that if I am on a train I have escaped the mundane for at least the duration of the ride. I am either happily ensconced in anticipatory thoughts or enveloped in contemplation of sights freshly seen and deeds freshly done. I fall, it would seem, into un état ferroviaire- that particular combination of feeling and reflection endemic to travel by railroad. At any rate, the iron tracks bring me into a state of quiet Zen- until I am awakened in my couchette by the smell of smoke, and our train comes to a stop in the tranquil countryside somewhere outside Toulouse. But that's another story.

Schadenfreude (n)

"malicious joy in the misfortunes of others," 1922, from Ger., lit. "damage-joy," from schaden "damage, harm, injury" (see scathe) + freude, from O.H.G. frewida "joy," from fro "happy," lit. "hopping for joy," from P.Gmc. *frawa- (see frolic).

See also: Black, Conrad.

Tee-hee.

Ask A Waeguk, Vol.4

Haleigh from Nova Scotia writes: "How much English do your students already know when you (in the general, "someone who goes to teach English in Korea" sense) begin teaching them? And since you don't speak Korean, what tools do you use to make yourself understood, if the comprehension level is not already fairly high?"

The Waeguk Responds

It's interesting that you should ask, Haleigh. I'd been planning for some time to do a blog entry on my fledgling teaching career, and your question has provided the necessary incentive. Khansamneeda.

I teach a number of different age groups, and students of all levels of English-language ability. The teaching ranges from the relatively simple ("Some dinosaurs walk. Some dinosaurs run.") to the more advanced- one of my classes is reading The Wizard of Oz. Regardless of their age or ability, though, all of my students speak a level of English that is light-years ahead of my Korean. Even the kindergarten students understand the essentials needed for their classes:

-stand up

-sit down

-tidy up

-repeat after me

-cut here, then color*

And so on. I can also engage my kinders in conversation, as long as we stick to subjects they've studied (farm animals, feelings, health issues- sore throat, runny nose, et al- and dinosaurs). For those times when I'm in need of vocabulary they don't already know, a combination of mime and whiteboard sketching works wonders.

For the older students, of course, we tend to use more specialized vocabulary (I spent a class on the "present continuous" tense today, for example), but generally speaking they already have a relatively large English word-base, so I can work my way around using synonyms and the like. Failing that, there's always mime and whiteboard sketching. Usually, though, I just need to repeat myself more slowly, or rephrase myself. If I can make myself understood to one student, he or she can translate for the rest. That's not necessary very often, however, as the nature of the lessons is such that they're generally at a level the students can understand.

I teach at a private language academy, of which there are many (hundreds, I'd guess) in Busan alone. This means that my students (with the exception of the kinders) come after their regular school has concluded. Many students also go to an additional math, science or other school. For those whose parents can afford the additional education, it seems to be seen as something of a necessity.

As with any job, teaching has its ups and downs, though I suspect these may be more pronounced than in some careers. There are days when I walk out of class glowing with the satisfaction of a well-taught lesson, pleased by how well the students responded to my pedagogical brilliance, and there are days when I stagger out of class relieved the students haven't received a first-hand definition of defenestration.

The courses are very syllabus-oriented, meaning that I generally know which page of the textbook I'm teaching on any given day. This is useful in that relieves me of much of the burden of lesson-planning, but on the other hand it often forces me to figure out how to fill 40 minutes on something that I would otherwise try to teach in ten. Games are useful - a dull question and answer period is livened substantially if the students are allowed to play tic-tac-toe, wherein a correct answer gives them the chance to mark their square.

I'm able to keep the students relatively enthusiastic in most of my classes, but for those where I struggle (one class is notorious throughout the school for their lack of interest and manners) I try to remind myself not to take it personally. I taught the devil-class today, though, and it went fairly well, so maybe things are improving on that front. Keep your fingers crossed.

On a different note, I'm off to Mud Festival this weekend...Expect a dispatch early next week.

*My school teaches American English, or at least the spelling thereof. Thus, we talk about our favorite colors, and not our favourite colours.

Ask A Waeguk, Vol. 3

Since watching a soccer game in which the North Korean team was misidentified with the South Korean flag, Monti from Oakville wonders if South Koreans are offended if called North Koreans, and vice versa.

The Waeguk Responds

Up to now, Monti, I have not met a North Korean, nor have I made the mistake of mixing up North and South, so what I can offer you is only idle speculation.

At school (the site of the majority of my conversational interactions with bona fide citizens of the Republic of Korea), the topic of politics rarely comes up, and North Korea is mentioned even less frequently.

With very, very few exceptions, North Koreans stay in North Korea. It is not a country with anything even close to open borders. By and large, South Koreans are not allowed into the North, and citizens of other countries who wish to do so must go through China, such is the nature of the DMZ, the "world's most heavily fortified border," as countless websites and guidebooks are quick to tell us, breathlessly noting the 2 million soldiers who line its sides.

Given this, and the fact that the Korean peninsula was only one country until the end of the Second World War, one would think that the "rogue state" to the north would be frequent watercooler fare. From what I've seen, however, it isn't. It may be that the situation, although scary, has remained the same for long enough that there really isn't much to talk about on a day-by-day basis. It may be that it's not a topic one would choose to broach with colleagues as part of casual office chatter, particularly if those colleagues are Westerners and the topic is one with considerable emotional weight.

In terms of your question, Monti, my best guess is that South Koreans would be largely bemused if someone were to mix up the North and South, especially if that someone happened to be living in South Korea. Although they share four thousand years of heritage, the countries' paths since 1945 have been so radically different that to confuse the two would be akin to being unable to distinguish between the USA and the USSR, circa 1980.

Maybe I'll try flipping the names this week, just to test my hypothesis. But probably not.

Bright and shiny toy, shady and troublesome question

The more perspicacious and faithful of my readers may have already noticed the poll button to the right-hand side of the page. While this does, first and foremost, give you another way to focus your attention on me, it also gives me a way of getting feedback on my ponderables.

Currently, as the initial poll would suggest, the topic of North Korea is on my mind. It's a country I'm curious about for a number of reasons, from the apparent physical beauty of the landscape to the complete and utter power held by Kim Jong-Il. From everything I've heard and read, his is a dictatorship which wields power so thoroughly there's no chance to even contemplate any sort of dissent, let alone act on it. Death camps, repression, economic devastation and famine...

If I visit North Korea, my tourist dollars are, either implicitly or explicitly, going to finance and therefore support the regime. This is not a good thing. On the other hand, if tourism can encourage more dialogue with the rest of the world, it may in some tiny, minuscule way lead to a slight loosening of the fist, which can't be a bad thing.

Of course, by posting this entry I may find myself banned from entering it even if I do choose to do so.

Anyway, all you poli-sci, international studies, or generally opinionated people, let me know what you think.

Ask A Waeguk, Vol. 2.3

(N.B. This post has been edited after publishing: the three questions have been separated into separate posts for completely unnecessary reasons.)

In question 3, Adam notes that "according to rumour, South Koreans eat dog. According to [this] blog, puppies are available for sale on the sidewalks of Pusan," and he wonders if there is a connection.

The Waeguk Responds

Being of a not incurious mind myself, I endeavoured to do further research on the matter at hand, and consulted with one of my non-waeguk coworkers.

It is true, I learned, that dog is still eaten in Korea, but largely by the older generation. This seems to be predominantly a matter of changing tastes, but economist and sociologists would be better positioned than I to speculate at great length on the subject.

The puppies, then, are being sold not for food but as pets. This makes sense, really, because while it is relatively easy to sell live lobster or fish as food, a puppy, I would think, is quite another question. I would venture to guess that most dog meat sold comes from mature animals, as it wouldn't be worth the time or money for city dwellers to buy a pup and then spend the time and money waiting for it to grow to a size worth eating.

Interested in recipes for dog? Please click here. I haven't tried any of them myself as yet, and can't vouch for their quality, but I expect a full report from anyone who does try them out. I've heard standard poodle is particularly delicious.

Ask A Waeguk, Vol. 2.2

In Adam's second question, he wonders how one celebrates Canada Day in South Korea.

The Waeguk Responds

Disappointingly, Canada Day is not recognized by the government of Korea as a public holiday, which makes me wonder why I should pay taxes in either country. Beyond that, though, there are several options available to those who are interested in paying their respects to their (possibly former) Home and (arguably) Native Land.

The well-known bar Starface, in the Haeundae neighbourhood in Busan, had an all-you-can-drink night for KRW 15,000 (roughly Can $17.00). Although I did not attend, I have friends who did, and they have assured me that it more than satisfied their celebratory urges.

As for myself, I was feeling rather under the weather Saturday evening and all day Sunday, so I chose to take a more contemplative route. I pondered the events of July 1, 1916 (the opening day of the Battle of the Somme, as all history buffs should have noted), and attempted to count the number of countries in which I have found myself on the first of July. I can think of three at least (Canada, Costa Rica, and France-twice), but I wouldn't be surprised to learn I have been in the UK on at least one occasion as well.

You also wondered about the options available should one find oneself in North Korea, Adam, and to this I can only say: when I find out I'll let you know.

Ask A Waeguk, Vol. 2.1

Adam from Ottawa has written to the Waeguk with several questions. The Waeguk will tackle them one by one, so let's get started. Adam's first question:
If these questions are being directed to a "Waeguk", what's the term for the people sending them?

The Waeguk Responds:

Your question may actually have more depth than you intended, Adam, touching as it does a chord which rings within most relatively homogeneous societies. "Waeguk" in Korea, "Gringo" in Mexico, "Mzungu" in Kenya... These are all terms used to differentiate between the historical inhabitants of a country or region and those who are new to it, and most typically passing through.

Of the three terms I've mentioned above, gringo is probably the best-known. In theory, it refers to citizens of the United States of America who are in Mexico, but in practice it is used to refer to just about any person who does not fit into the user's idea of what a Mexican should be. Gringos, therefore, are usually white people who do not speak Spanish as their native language.

In the three countries under discussion, skin colour is likely the easiest and fastest way of determining whose ethnic background differs from that of the majority. This doesn't mean to say that you can't be of a traditionally Korean appearance and and not qualify as a waeguk, but it does mean that someone on the subway would be much less likely to make that judgment of you before you open your mouth.

As best I can tell, Waeguk is not a pejorative. Neither, and again this is to the best of my ability to say, is Mzungu. Gringo, in part because of the long and interesting relationship between Mexico and the U.S. may be slightly harder to evaluate, but suffice it to say that (in my experience, al menos) although it may not always be a perfectly friendly term, it's not necessarily one used to indicate complete and utter disdain for its subject.

This rather lengthy preamble may seem slightly superfluous to the question at hand, but it's necessary, given the (inadvertent, perhaps) complexity of the topic.

If you were here in Korea asking me the question, Adam, you would be a waeguk also- though not, it should be said, the Waeguk, as I reserve the title for myself. But when you ask me from Ottawa, you are still a foreigner, but a foreigner in her own land lacks the same need for labelling, methinks.

Put it this way: under most circumstances, someone who's 6'8" is considered very, very tall. On a professional basketball team, however, he no longer seems exceptional, and thus is not noticed solely because of his height.

I'm tempted to dredge up some "self-referential paradox" lingo from my undergrad, but for our purposes I think we will simply refer to our correspondents as "Friends of the Waeguk." FOTW, should there ever be a need for an acronym. So that's question 1 taken care of, hopefully to your satisfaction.

Seoul Train

Firstly, let me apologize for the obviousness of the titular pun. Unsubtle or not however, it is appropriate, given that I paid a visit to Korea's capital city over the weekend.

The city that jumps to mind most quickly, interestingly, is Athens. Seoul is much bigger than Athens, obviously, and has the whole Modern Asian Metropolis (MAM) thing going on, but what the two of them do have in common is the pieces of antiquity scattered in a seemingly random pattern throughout the city. Seoul has five (five!) palaces and various other shrines, pagodas, and other bits of history around every other corner.

There's something almost intoxicating about being let loose in a large and unfamiliar city. Every step teases with the promises of wonders as yet unseen. There's a rush of realizing you're going through what is, for you, uncharted territory. Even the mundane holds a special allure. You're not just riding the subway, you're riding the subway in Seoul. Awesome. I love new places. When that new place happens to be the second-largest city in the world? Double-awesome.

I don't think I'd quite realized it until arriving there, but Seoul has long held a special place in my...not heart, as such, but at least my consciousness. My memory of global events from the 1980s is sketchy at best. The first News item I remember is the Challenger explosion in '85. Sitting in the waiting room table at the dentist's office was a magazine (Time, I'd guess, but I really have no idea) with the astronauts on the cover. So that's the first thing I remember from outside my immediate sphere of reference. I also remember, albeit vaguely, the ascension of G.H. Bush to the U.S. Throne, and the 1988 Olympics. The Winter Games in Calgary were a big deal, obviously, taking as place as they did just to the west of Canada, but it's the Summer Games that stick out. You can attribute this to the fact I was eight months older by then (7 and a half years old), but I think it has more to do with the fact that a sprinter by the name of Ben Johnson happened to be stripped of his gold medal for steroid use. Remember that?

It's not to say that I only remember the Seoul Games because of our man on the track, but I think that what Johnson did do was give me a reference point for a city that would likely not have featured very prominently in my mind at all.

I just hope he got to see some of the sights.

Starts with a "K," ends with an "a"

Given my travels so far this year, it seems inevitable that I feel compelled to give my thoughts on a comparison of Kenya and Korea.

The question I find myself asking, however, concerns the best way to do this. The two most obvious option would be a humorous point-by-point look at the two countries in the "Kenya has cheetahs, Korea has chopsticks" vein. While not without merits, this approach runs the risk or reducing everything to its lowest comedic denominator, not something I particularly want to do with this topic especially.

So I think what I'm going to do is just do a kind of free-flowing ramble on the subject at hand and see what bubbles to the surface.

In one of my kindergarten classes the other day, I started humming "In the Jungle" as the students worked on their frog pictures. I was only a few bars in before some of the kids started singing along. Apparently it's one of the songs they've learned. It's also one of the songs I taught my Grade 5s in Kenya. The interesting thing, however, is that my middle-class students in Korea are more likely to have seen a real lion than my Kenyan students, despite the latter living a few hours away from one of the most famous wilderness preserves in Africa. Money, of course, is the eternal variable. The Koreans (and the Canadians, and the Europeans, etc.) can afford to go to the zoo, while the Kenyans at my school were struggling to get enough to eat.

This isn't meant as a "pity the poor Africans" post, nor a "damn those with money" one. If anything, it's more a reflection on the ridiculousness of modern life. The very fact that I can go from continent to continent so easily underlines how truly small our world is. Just because I can, however, doesn't mean I should. The environmental implications of air travel alone are staggering, to say nothing of the potential cultural ramifications of the linguistic imperial propaganda I carry with me. Of course, if I were truly concerned about either of these, I'd still be in Canada. And I'm not. But still.

I'm digressing now, so let's get back to the original Korea/Kenya question. Both make me think, assess myself and my place in the world, but for different reasons. Both make me laugh, and sigh, and leave me utterly exhausted at the end of the day.

The above stream is completely unedited and utterly unprocessed; I take no responsibility for faults of grammar, logic, quality of reflection or any other complaints you may choose to make. By visiting this site you absolve me absolutely of any responsbility and assume all literacy-related risks.


And so it is. More later.

Ask A Waeguk, Vol. 1

Today's question comes from Dave in Georgina, who wants to know how waeguk is spelled. He's also interested in learning more about written Korean in general.

The Waeguk Responds

I'm glad you asked, Dave. As you are no doubt aware, the word waeguk as you see it before you here is a rendering of the Korean alphabet known as hangeul. According to legend (and my Lonely Planet guide), hangeul was invented in the 15th century under the reign of King Sejong. It's a phonetic alphabet, and is widely admired for the simplicity and elegance of its system.

Unlike the Roman alphabet, which uses a strictly linear left-to-right placing of characters, hangeul characters are generally arranged in syllabic groupings, with up to three characters grouped together to be read in a clockwise fashion. For further information on how to read Korean, I suggest you to turn to Google and search for websites written by people who are far more apt at describing it than I am. I recommend Radio Korea's guide to learning the language. For the Korean spelling of waeguk, however, you've come to the right place...

외 국 There, isn't that cool?

The first grouping forms the "wae" sound, while the second composes the "guk."

The system really is very straightforward, and I need to sit down at some point and devote a couple of hours to it.

At this point I'm largely illiterate in hangeul, but I am slowly improving. I'm able to pick out certain menu items, and I can recognize a few other words as well. I'm slowed down considerably, however, by my inability to self-correct when reading. If I'm reading in one of the languages I do speak, for example, even if I come across an unfamiliar word I can be reasonably confident in my ability to read it correctly, be it in French, Spanish, English or even German. If it sounds strange when I read it I can reread it and ascertain whether I've made a mistake or whether the word is incorrectly or unusually spelled. Given the modicum of Korean under my belt, however, I have no way of checking whether I'm even ascribing the proper phonetics to the characters as I read them.

Many of my students are at the level where they mix up "chicken" and "kitchen." I'm still at the level where I mix up "chicken" and "hydrangea."

New Feature

In the 1800s, travel was restricted to the upper middle classes or to those who traveled out of necessity, be it for work or war. In Victorian England, it was customary for young adults with money to do a "tour of the Continent" as a rite of passage. The number of Western visitors to Asia, however, was considerably lower. Of those brave souls who did travel to the Orient over a century ago, only a tiny number had blogs, laptops and internet access being far more prohibitively expensive than they are today. For example, an 1894 IBM Thinkpad with teak inlay, ivory keys and a polished silver tracking ball cost the equivalent of a house.

Today, though, it would seem that just about any educated adult with a hankering to see the world can and does set off to do so, and as often as not will set up a website to detail their adventures. It is true, my friends: I am not the inventor of the travel blog.

On the other hand, it is my hope that I am the first to offer your very own personalized Canadian Answerer of Questions Relating to Korea service (CAQRs).

Ask A Waeguk will allow you do direct all of your Korea- and Jeff-related questions to me, where they will be posted and answered in a prompt, entertaining, and sometimes accurate fashion. Want to know what it's like to have random children come up and talk to you because of the colour of your skin? Ask a Waeguk! Want to know what Canadians do in Korea on a Saturday night? Ask a Waeguk! Want to know where to get good bibimbap in Pusan? Ask a Waeguk! For that last one, actually, you might be better off asking somebody who's lived in this city for more than 9 days, but the idea is clear.

Ask A Waeguk : You've got questions. I may even have answers.

Waeguk (n): Clever, handsome foreigner full of witty, perceptive and insightful observations pertaining to life in South Korea.

The Streets of Pusandelphia

I have a theory, which is still being refined, but the essence of it is as follows: anything one needs in Pusan can be bought from a street vendor. As I've been here for less than a week, I can't yet state it conclusively, but a short list of items available for purchase on the street would include:

-books
-vegetables
-sandals
-kitchen utensils
-puppies
-umbrellas
-fish, live
-fish, dead
-clothes
-songbirds
-CDs
-octopi, dead
-octopi, live

Rest assured I will remain vigilant and keep you, my faithful readers, apprised of any major additions to the above. Any city in which one can purchase both octopi and puppies without having to set foot in a store is a city worthy of the name.

안 녕 히 치 서ㅣ요!

On Language and Groceries

When one's entire knowledge of a language can be counted on two hands, communication becomes interesting. A smile seems to help a lot, but can only go so far. A typical exchange at the grocery store, then, may be summed up thusly:

Jeff: "Anheong heseyo (hello)!" + big smile
Cashier: "Anheong heseyo," +"koreankoreankoreankorean?"
At this point, I pull out the big smile again and shake my head, on the guess that she's asking if I want a plastic bag. I do know how to say no, but I don't want to commit myself in case she's actually asking me something completely different, like if brown is my natural hair colour. So far, the smile + head-shake has worked fairly well, and leads to the next bit, as follows.
Cashier: "koreankoreankorean?"
Jeff: Head-shake + smile. Please note that I don't use the big smile this time, for the simple reason I want to come across as a reasonably sane and intelligent foreigner who simply doesn't speak any korean, rather than as a foreigner of dubious sanity and intelligence for whom a trip to the grocery store is equivalent to a trip to LotteWorld, the Korean equivalent of DisneyWorld.
This second head-shake is based on my presumption that she's asking me if I have a customer loyalty card, which I do not.

(In the interests of full disclosure, it should be noted that my ability to decode even these two simple questions rests in my fortunate circumstances of once having a cashier who spoke some English, and was therefore able to communicate with me more fully.)

Finally, our transaction concludes with me looking at the digital display to see how much I owe, and taking out the appropriate amount. I finish with a hearty "khamsa hamneeda (goodbye)" and stroll off into the distance, impressed to no end by my ability to relate to people of all cultures.

안 녕 히 치 서ㅣ요!

The First 48

First impressions of Pusan? Big, noisy, a little smelly, but more or less what I expected. If anything, that's what has surprised me most of all so far- the lack of any major surprises.

When it comes to minor surprises, however, there have been several. When using a shower in a Korean love motel, always check to see where the drain is. If you find that it's outside of the shower stall, you're better off not using a shower mat, as it will become submerged in no short time.

If you want to be able to watch episodes of last year's American Idol, turn to Korean TV. The same applies for Home Alone (in June, at that!), Star Wars, Jean-Claude Van Damme movies, and various other seemingly random selections of American cinematography. All in English, with Korean subtitles.

Stay tuned for further updates...right now, my stomach is growling to the point I suspect an aide is running straight to Kim Jong-Il to warn him of strange sensor readings.


안 녕 히 치 서ㅣ요!