When you are in another country, your own Country’s holidays gets a bit blurry. Every other foreigner here is from a different country. So we all simply adapt and there is also a chance you get to partake in a tradition that is not part of your own country. Not only are you already experiencing the culture of Korea but you also get to experience that of other countries depending on where your friends are from.

On the 27th of November a Thanksgiving party was organized at Liz’s place (thanks again Liz!!). It was a kind of ‘from 3pm onwards open door’ type of party. The bulk of people arrived early and some left, others came later. The food was ordered from a place called Dragon Hill (I liked it before we even tasted the food). Let’s see if I can recall what we got:

• 1.5 Turkeys
• Ham
• Mashed Potatoes
• Salad

Now the list is short but the amount of food was huge! We were told that it would feed up to 17 people, if I recall correctly.  From the pics below, you’ll see exactly how big the turkey’s were!

We had more than enough food, everyone took something home.  Music was playing nicely from Liz’s laptop in another room (she has a HUGE apartment!  We are sooo jealous) and people moved around from sitting on couch, floor and kitchen.

As you’ll also see, we had a number of Korean friends there, some whom have never experienced Thanksgiving, including turkey.  Everyone enjoyed the food and the massive pumpkin pie one of the girls bought form Costco(Yes, Costco is here).

There was one other guy who was Korea, so we were quite happy to be surrounded by all these beautiful women :)

We also talked about doing a ‘Dessert Safari’…..looking forward to that!

There are many times where most teachers simply want to scream, click their heels together and be back in their respective countries.  They become frustrated by the lack of consistency, the seeming-lack of courtesy, the lack of language comprehension and the lack of consideration given to ESL teachers.  Now that paints a pretty bleak picture but it is merely one side of the coin.  The experience, the culture, the beauty and the sense of accomplishment that a teacher does eventually achieve plays a major balancing act and usually is the winner when it comes to deciding if you like it here or not.

Bharati’s school put on a performance of various english skits.  Most were modified fables and stories to suit the number of students in each class.  Her school is in the outskirts of her town. It really should be classified as ‘rural’ as the immediate area is surrounded by ‘low end businesses’, to put it politiely.  Small farms, what looks like scrap yards and a convenience store.  Overall it looks like a part that has yet to be taken over by the urban sprawl.  Maybe I’ll get pictures of it some other time.

In order to get to her school, Bharati normall takes this little ‘school bus’ (meaning something slightly bigger than a mini-van where 40 kids + her gets squeezed into).  There is a public bus that runs ‘close’.  Close meaning dropped off then a 20min walk.  So with me going to see the performance we had to take the city bus.  Short enough trip (45mins including the walk) but there was this cool little stream that ran beside the road we walked along.

It was neat to see some ducks but they were severely skittish.

What I really love about this country is the scenerey.  The landscape has real character, unlike southwestern Ontario.  And the Hamilton ‘mountain’ is a real joke compared to something like this:

Nothing does wonder for the soul like a good scenery.

We arrived at the school and I got the customary tour and introductions to many people who understand I was Bharati’s “남편” (pronounced nom-peyong) husband.  All the little girls kept saying I was ‘handsome’.  The teachers were very polite and the principal smiled a lot (I don’t think he knows anything beyond hello and some other rudimentary english but I am sure he’s learning more each year).

Bharati has a very nice classroom, spacious and quite a number of computers for the kids.

Bharati’s room also includes the Library.

And here we have Bharati at her desk:

I’ve done the rest in an album slideshow, lest this post grow to 18 pages long :)

All-in-all, the kids did an amazing job.  They were funny and many of them spoke incredibly clear.  Bharati was also given to judge them with a sheet.  The Korean culture is very big on academics (another point in the Korean favour as Canada doesn’t seem to care at all in comparison) and it was interesting to see one of the parent check out Bharati’s sheet and the scores she was giving each grade level.  We got an invite for dinner from one parent, I am looking forward to that but also concerned that they will miss my strict ‘meatarian’ diet.

Since this is the topic on everyone’s mind back home let me enlighten you on how it all feels this side of the world.

Everyone is pointing to North Korea as the ones who ‘shot first’.  Maybe the did, maybe they didn’t.  I wasn’t there, I can’t say who’s in the right or wrong.  What I do know is that South Korea planned some ‘air excercises’ of this island (that’s been in debate for ages) and if I were to take a guess, I think that North Korea did fire first but only after South Korea ‘pushed the limits’ of their nerves by being in that area as well as giving North Korea reasons to push back from the corner they’ve put themselves into.

As for the general populace, life goes on.  I’ve not spoken with any locals but the general consensus amung the english teachers is that this is really nothing new.  Maybe more ‘fire exchange’ than in the past but there has always been skirmishes over this island.  Unless there is a drastic change in level of activity, it’s just one more notch in history of  ongoing Korean War. (You did know that it never ended right?)

North Korea’s only ally (China) is even staying somewhat neutral.  They have neither approved nor condemned the incident but at most said ‘the two should work harder at coming to peace’.

I’ve signed up with Canadian Government brach for registered Canadians abroad.  They keep track of such things and email updates on events like this.  Their last email said that neither country has raised any ‘alert levels’, a pointed indication that this is nothing more than two children fighting over one toy for the sake of pride now more than anything else.

Our adventure continues with some video and pics from our excursion to Nami Island.

First the train.

The first, and obvious, is the cartoonish character.  The whole culture over here seems child-like in advertising.  Soft and/or bright colours and a lot of cartoonish characters.  It’s kinda like re-living 50’s advertising in such a modern setting.

The next thing you’ll notice are the two vertical black marks on the door. I coulnd’t get a picture of the front of the train but it seems that either there are a lot of paint layers and they are cracking, and by layers I mean the type of layers you’d find when looking at a 50+year old house that has 20 layers of paint on it and peeling.  The front of the train looked worse.  The train itself was very comfortable and quiet.  So it’s not like the trains are falling apart, far from it.  The seats even reclined and you had curtains and coat hooks with tons of leg room.  So travelling anywhere of significant distance is pleasant.  They even have a lady with a food cart that goes around selling snacks and drinks.  Really smart people here.

Taking a break from walking around Nami Island.

The Musical/Art museum.

Break time again.  Big island (5 or 6km in circumference, depending on which sign you want to believe.)

2nd Break at Nami Island

More pictures around the island.

On the train home.

The train ride home.

On the train ride home, saw a cool shot of a sunset.

And finally, at the subway station grabbed this shot with the moon.

Living in another country will certainly open your eyes and spirit to different ways of thinking and believing.  The majority of people live in a bubble of their own realities and simply refuse to look beyond that bubble for fear it might not be the same.  Well of course it’s not, otherwise we’d all be in the same bubble.

Going with the bubble analogy, there are various levels of bubbles.  There is the world bubble, the country bubble, the regional bubble, the city bubble and then the personal bubble.  Have you ever watched a soapy/bubbly water mixture?  You’ve seen all the bubble there, they get along just fine.  When one bubble bursts, it is usually and calmly absorbed to make the next bubble bigger.  That is what I see happening to our world.  The problem is that so many people are afraid of becoming the next big bubble that it paralyzes them.  They fear what they don’t know.  If I were to meet an alien from another planet and he asks me to summarize human reactions, that’s the sentence I would use.  “Humans fear what they don’t know.”

There are tons of friends who are surprised and maybe even a bit jealous, of the fact that I simply up and moved to another country.  Many could not comprehend such a concept.  Yet there it is, right in front of them.  Someone they know just popped and joined a bigger bubble.  It doesn’t make me any better or any less than they are, it is simply a shift in perspective in the world.

Getting back to Korea specifically, there are many things here that would confuse a lot of people from the West.  Maybe so to the point of lashing out because they simply cannot understand the reasoning.  I’ll admit, I have tons still to learn but it will be fun.

Let’s talk about the people in general.  I have found that the Korean people in the service sectors (specifically retail and restaurants) are seriously polite.  Even when they are telling you that you’re wrong, they are polite.  A simple smile, a benign gesture and you feel like you can’t disobey because they seem to earnest and polite.  It’s like saying no to a kiss from Grandma.

Respect.  The Korean people have a huge amount of respect for ‘older’ people.  On the subway it is a common occurrence to see someone get out of their seat to allow an ‘older’ person to have it.  Being here you cannot help but appreciate such ideals.  I find myself almost wanting to have such a chance.  I did once and the gentleman, who by no means was incapable of standing for long periods of time, politely refused.  It was after some insistence that he took the seat with gratitude and I felt good that I was able to show respect for not only an elder but also a Korean.  The society even goes so far as to have seat reserved for older generations.  So if you are in a subway in Korea, don’t sit on the red-coloured seats or I hear you will actually get yelled at or at least a stern Korean lecture.  I suspect that regardless of your nationality, you’ll understand that you are not supposed to sit in those seats.

Transportation.  It is simply amazing how well things work here.  Their public transportation could teach North America a whole new perspective.  They have so many buses.  For example, the bus stop by our place has 6 different busses that stop there.  I think the longest wait time is something like 6 minutes for any given bus.  The busses are shorter than the ones back home and every single one of them is either diesel or Natural Gas, as well as being standard transmissions.

Everyone uses a bus card.  It’s a kind of pre-pay card with an RFID chip in it.  You simply hold the card (or wallet if it`s in it) to a scanner, it beeps, shows you your balance, and you take a seat.  When you leave, you must leave by the rear entrance (99% of the time, I think rush hours is the only exception) and you scan the car again.  Costs are based on distance travelled and your balance is shown once again.  This system works pretty damn well it seems.  Pay-for-use makes a lot of sense.  The fare itself isn’t expensive either.  I went from our town (Uijeongbu) into downtown Seoul and back for a whopping $2.00.  That is about 2hrs+ travelling time round trip between taking a bus to the subway station, the subway to downtown and the reverse back.

Automotive.  There seems to be this odd `pecking order` when it comes to traffic.  By that I mean who actually follows the exact rules of the road.  Taxis can turn from any lane through any colour of light.  That confused me for the longest time but it seems that if you are a paying customer, you get right of way regardless.  Busses are next.  For the most part they obey the majority of lights but the `yellow`is in no way a deterrent to making a turn to get to the next stop.  Mopeds are this kind of snaky little transportation that goes anywhere and everywhere.  They generally don`t try to take on big traffic but in smaller roads they will slip between cars and use sidewalks to turn if it suits them.  That would be because the vast majority of them are deliveries of some sort, typically food.  Cars would be next.  They generally respect all signs and lights.  Note I said generally.  Signals tend to be optional and parking is `where ever it can fit`.  Pedestrians seems to be at the bottom of this totem pole as I almost got run over from behind me while on a sidewalk!  It was by this stupid little Daewoo Damus.

This thing is smaller than a VW Microbus, if you can believe it.  It`s can fit almost anywhere and the one that almost ran me over was delivering newspapers/flyers in these holders on street posts.  I was waiting to cross the street when I heard this noise behind me and I saw this van come up right where I was standing!  He apologized, deposited the papers into the holder and continued off the sidewalk and onto the road.

Well, that is a brief summary for now.  There is still lots to write about but I’ll save that for another post