Mountains, Nakedness and a Few Things Inbetween

I'm pretty shit when it comes to women. Could be my poor hygiene, almost non-existent  listening skills or maybe it's just the aura of aloofness that i project wherever I go. However, there is the occasional girl who is intrigued by me and decides that it is in her best interest to pursue a man who should have existed in a simpler more primal time.

The main girl was from a place called Busan which is a large port city in the South East corner of the country. We used to go down on the train together, spend some time causing trouble in my run-down hotel room by the beach; then go off on our separate ways for most of the day. Due to these frequent trips, I became very familiar with the city by the ocean and was comfortable navigating everything from the fishy markets to the puke-stained streets of the party district.

One fine day, I decided to hike up this mountain located just outside the city with the purpose of checking out this temple at the top. I'm not religious at all, but it is nice to have a goal when you work your ass off dragging an alcohol polluted body up a steep incline.

 I reached the top fairly quickly and then started asking around about the temple. After talking to about half a dozen elderly people, the only people you really see on mountains in Korea, I was given some rough directions towards a partially overgrown footpath. The sun was setting so I set off on a light jog in order to cover more territory quickly in order to beat the falling sun.

After about an hour of intermittent jogging and walking, I finally saw a lone man hiking in the same direction I was going. I stopped behind him and inquired about the distance to the temple. Unlike most people I've dealt with around Korea, he was not phased by my presence and instead just told me to follow him. We tried to talk a bit, but my Korean was better than his English which meant we could hardly communicate anything in detail. A short time later, we popped out of the side trail, scurried down a dirt cliff and bounded off towards his car; which ended up being parked at the temple I was heading for.

I pulled open my satchel and pulled out a bottle of soju, the standard Korean liquor, and gave it to him. He smiled, took it and then gave me his phone which had some lady at the end of it. His daughter spoke much better English than her father, but seemed a bit perturbed by the situation. She continued to grill me on why I was there, if I had met her father before and whether or not I was trying to steal any of his stuff. After a minute or so of me explaining the situation, she calmed down and said that her father was going to take me to the nearest subway stop and drop me off. I told her thanks and handed the phone back to her father.

We got in the car and rolled off. I just about nodded off until I realized we had just shot by the subway station. I asked him where we were going and he said we were going to get some food. I was immediately calmed and resumed space out mode.

We got out of the car in front of a standard BBQ place and walked towards the entry way. Instead of going inside though, the man walked up some stairs that lead to a sauna. I stopped and thought for a second, but then just said
"What the hell"
and followed him inside.

He paid for both of us, gave me my key to the locker then stripped off all his clothes. I followed suit and walked off into the communal bathing area. I opened a door into a room full of naked men that were either laying down getting a massage or chilling in water baths of various temperatures.

These saunas were not a new experience for me, but the fact that I was with some strange man that I could not communicate with was a bit odd though. We walked over to a hot tub where lots of guys starting yelling at the guy I was with. Apparently they were his friends so we hopped on in. At this point, the oddest thing wasn't what had previously happened, but it was the fact that nobody there seemed to give my presence a second thought. It wasn't that I was the only foreigner in there or the fact that I was the youngest guy by at least 30 years, but the fact that all these guys must have known that this dude I came with had never met me before today.

We had a soak, got a bit drunk then headed off towards the showers for a rinse. As I was rinsing I all of a sudden felt some hands on my back. The man, had begun washing my back in a brisk manner and it actually felt pretty good. When he finished he tapped me on the shoulder and pointed towards his back; I began washing in a brisk fashion.

I felt great when we got out and the only thing that put a downer on the mood were the 6 missed calls and one angry message from the girl. As we got into the car he called his daughter again who in turn told me that he was going to take me to his house for dinner and then he wanted us, by us I mean me and his daughter, to meet. I told her that I can't because I have to meet this girl and she promptly asked to give the phone back her dad. With a heavy heart, the man ended up dropping me off at the subway station and gave me his card.

Next time I was in Busan I did end up giving him a ring, but to no avail. In retrospect, I probably should have sent him a picture of my back as a friendly reminder.

  

No Times like Island Times

My friend Mickey was an exceedingly lucky individual; and he knew it. He could show up late, get lost or not put any planning into a trip. It didn't matter. Wherever he was....good times were sure to follow.

Me and Mickey had taken a small boat out to a rural island off the west coast of Korea one Summer and had a great time. Beach camping, swimming, drinking and hitch hiking around the island on the backs of pickup trucks led to a pretty memorable experience and we knew we should do it again.
However, for some reason we thought it would be a good idea to do this again in February.

 Last time we were there, we had noticed that lots of people had opened up their houses and rented out rooms to individuals or groups. At that time we had not taken advantage of this because we could just sleep on the beach, but we figured this would work out great for February.

I woke up still a bit drunk on Mickey's floor Saturday morning and put on my rucksack. Five minutes later Mickey, our mutual friend Gustav (who we just called "Philly") and myself piled into a cab headed to the bus station. We looked a bit rough, but no worse then usual for a Saturday morning.

We got off the bus and were just able to catch the last little boat out to our little island paradise. The first time the boat was kinda full, but this time there was only us and 4 farmers that were carrying boxes of fruit. The sky was dark outside, waves rolled up against the sides of the boat and then it began to snow. I normally like boats, but the chaos that ensued the night before weakened my body to the point where I actually got seasick for the first time in my life. I now understand where the "face turning green" reference comes from.

We finally arrived to the snow swept island and got off the boat into what was essentially a ghost town. Besides the ticket guy and the fours farmers piling into a bus, things were totally deserted. Before we could decide if we could hop on the bus or not, it took off up the hill. Me and Philly were a bit concerned but Mickey was chill so we just decided to milk his luck and just start walking down the road to see if we could sort something out.

Two hours later, after being directed off of a military facility by a couple of young soldiers, we finally saw a pickup truck and flagged him down. We told him that we wanted to get to this town and he said no problem. We felt pretty relieved and 15 minutes later we got dumped off into the middle of this little beach town. As the truck went speeding away though we realized that just like the port town, this town also appeared to be deserted.

After walking around the town and finding nothing opened, we eventually found a barrel on the beach and turned it into a makeshift grill to cook some hotdogs. As we were silently munching our discount tube steaks, I noticed a pair of footprints in the snow so I followed them and eventually saw a woman out near the water. I walked cautiously out to her, as to not spook her, and asked her if she knew of any places that we could stay. She seemed befuddled by my appearance and even jumped back a bit when my other two friends walked over to us. She thought for a bit, then motioned us to follow her which we gladly did. She took us over to a building that look deserted on the outside and opened the door into an open room with a small TV. She told us that we could stay there and then thanked her profusely.

Most Korean homes have a heated floor system, which is lovely in the Winter, so we stripped down to only our boxers, cracked a few beers and started cooking some noodles on our stove. It was during this moment that the nice lady opened the door again and appeared  before us with an array of Korean food. She stopped briefly  when she saw 3 pasty, mostly naked, bearded individuals that had already begun drinking, but even so she continued on and put down the food in front of us. We were so thankfully that we didn't know what to say. We kept trying to give her money, but she would not accept it and just smiled and left.

Besides the one old lady we scared, presumably the other lady's mother, we didn't see anyone else the whole time we were in the town. After a day of hiking and cruising around we prepared to make the long march back to the hopefully awaiting boat on the other side of the island. We couldn't find the lady before we left, so we wrote a little note and then stuffed it into an envelope we had filled a good chunk of money in the mailbox outside her house.

Mickey claimed that it was his luck that saved us, but I think it just came down to one nice lady who didn't feel like watching three westerners freeze to death. Thank you nice Korean lady.

The Ping Pong Incident

If you do decide that you want to teach ESL in South Korea, getting a job at one of the public schools is key. The hours are better, the vacation is better, the perks are better and you get to have time to actually plan meaningful lessons that students actually enjoy. Like anything though, the public schools are not perfect but instead have their own  unique brand of absurdity attached to them.

In the US, teachers are massively under appreciated and some people actually outright despise them. This is not the case in South Korea. The teachers in South Korea work very hard to get there they are; testing, studying, achieving some of the highest scores in school and then more testing. They essentially worked their asses off to become teachers and do deserve the right to held up on a higher level then the average Korean individual. Given the fact that the teachers are highly respected, it would make sense that the principals of the schools are held in even higher esteem. However, the principal at my school must have been a special case.

My school contract said that I had to always be at school unless there was an official holiday. That sounds logical except for the fact that there are lots of unofficial holidays where nobody comes to school; except for the two idiot English teachers. This would have been exceedingly boring except for the fact that my co-worker, Edmund, and myself had located a special ping-pong room located above the gym. Once our paddles were purchased, fun times were had.

This room was a bit odd. It was surrounded on three sides by windows so it was very well lit. It also had a series of chairs along the walls that were all facing the central ping-pong table. I didn't really put it together that this room was made for the sole purpose of being a venue for ping-pong matches.

One fine unofficial holiday, Edmund and I were talking about our inane thoughts on the world while casually rallying back and forth. All of a sudden the door opened and in came the principal with 4 of the youngest and most attractive female teachers. They were all surprised at our presence, but very quickly the principals look of surprise turned into a sort of knowing smirk. He told us that he did not know we enjoyed playing ping-pong and asked one of us if we would like to play. Edmund immediately declined, but I said that it sounded fun.

I don't want to boast, but I am awesome at ping-pong. It wasn't that I was naturally good; I just played a lot of ping-pong in the garage with my dad growing up so my right hand knows how to kick some ass.

I asked him if he wanted to warm up, but he declined so we began. He started out with the ball and did some sort of one leg hop over the arm move thing that caught me off guard so he got a point. It wasn't that it was a good shot, it was more that I was just surprised at how absurd he looked. He gave a big smile, the girls all giggled and I decided that I was going to try my best to make this guy look like a complete asshole.

The next serve he did the same thing only this time I was ready. Without moving my feet, I back hand sliced it right towards the end of the table; my famous shot that is essentially impossible to get. He lunged forward, almost slipped and even so still wasn't even close to the ball.

The demeanor in the room had totally changed. No more giggles from the girls, no more prancing around and Edmund wore the only smile in the room. The game went on for a while. Even though the principal was a massive show-boater, he was still really good at ping pong. We were very evenly matched and it came right down to the last shot where I........missed the table and lost.

The fact that I had lost did not seem to have any affect on the room. The principal gave me small wave and then shuffled off with his gaggle of girls to parts unknown. I wasn't too bothered; we played a really good game and he deserved to win.

The next time I came back to play ping-pong with Edmund the table had disappeared. When I asked one of the other teachers where it had went, she just blushed and said that it had broke. Also, the principal never looked me in the eye after that game. He walked by me in the halls like I wasn't even there. One of the other teachers also told me that me and Edmund did not have to go on the field trips anymore. I asked her if I could still go if I wanted, but she said that wasn't anymore space.

It had appeared that my ping-ponging had slighted the big boss man so much that he wanted nothing to do with me anymore. Luckily he changed schools only a few months after that (some say it was due to some underhanded dealings with one of the renovation contractors) so I didn't have to really feel the pain for so long.

If I had to do it over again, the only thing I would change is that I would win the next time around. He might have my right-hand cut off, but that is a risk I am willing to take.

 

What a Mighty Fine Cult you Have!

Something close to 50 percent of South Korea identifies themselves as Christian. Generally speaking, this means the same as being a Christian back in the US except for the fact that many

1) Don't consume alcohol because they are Christian.
2) Try not to associate with other people who are not Christian.
3) Allow their churches to decide how much money each family donates each week by giving the church  access to their bank accounts.

Even though these traits seem a bit odd and a couple just not christian at all, the base-line Christians of Korea are generally a pleasant group of people that just go about their business.

However, whenever a country has a large percentage of devout religious followers, that country almost always has splinter groups that form which the rest of world lovingly refer to as cults. South Korea is no different.

I was walking back to my shitty apartment still a bit drunk from an all night bender up in Seoul that ended a few hours earlier. All the normal folk were out in about on that crisp Spring morning so I wanted to hurry back to my hovel before I scared any children. Up ahead of me I noticed a group of well dressed men walking together with books in their hands. I didn't feel like crossing to the other side of the street so I instead pushed on ahead. When I got close, one of them asked me if I wanted to stay and talk for a bit. I decided it could be kind of interesting so I said "what the hell, why not?"

The main guy that was doing all the talking could not speak English very well, but I did understand a few things. Basically he said that I looked sad and that I could use some help with my life. He said that he knew where I could get help and that I should follow them.

I decided that this could be interesting so I told them in Korean that we should go. The group of black suit wearing men jumped back with a look of surprise spread across their faces. I guess they did not think I was going to go with them and got really excited when I said I would.

We walked for about a half mile until we got to an unmarked five-story building. I followed them up to the fourth floor and we got off the elevator and stepped onto a floor that looked and smelled just like any old church. I took my shoes off, as per Korean custom, and followed them into a large room with a low ceiling that seemed to be meant for worshiping. Even though it was a big room full of many rows of pews, the room was devoid of life except for one young girl sitting alone.

The men I was with walked over to she shy looking girl, began talking and then pointed at me. The girl's face turned bright red and the men I was with just started smiling at me. They motioned for me to sit down next to her and then they all darted off somewhere. the girl paused for a minute, and then began speaking in perfect English and explained that she was asked by those men to teach me about their religion.

The girl explained to me that she was part of the "Church of the Holy Mother," which is, from what I gathered, a Christian sect that believes that God is a woman. She took out a bible that was written in both English and Korean and had lots of sticky notes sticking out of it and showed me passages that she said proved their religion is true. I don't know too much about the nuts and bolts of Christianity, but the passages she showed me looked pretty ambiguous. However, I just kind of played along and nodded my head up and down.

Suddenly without warning, the girl burst into tears and ran off. I was quite taken a back by this because I had done nothing out of the ordinary. I was just sitting their quietly listening. A minute later a large man came in and told me that he was sorry and that she was just too nervous to continue. The man then asked me if I wanted to have celebrate by having some food in the back room. It was at this point that I said I was done. I gave the ma fake name and number and said I really needed to go. The man seemed a bit annoyed and said that would call in an hour to make sure that I got home okay. I said that it was fine and bounded on out of there.

If you are ever in a train station and see some odd looking people about, there is a good chance that they are involved with the church of the holy mother. They desperately seek out non-Korean members because they think it will bring legitimacy to their church.

If I were you, just do what I do when I come across people like that. Say that you will convert right there on the spot if they give you 20,000 won (about 18 dollars).

It really throws them for a loop and you might get some money out of it!

The Great Hygiene Strike

The first job I ended up taking in Korea was at a private Kindergarten. This is a fairly common job for westerners in Korea and basically involves playing with children all day while trying to get them to speak a bit of English. My school however was a bit different then most.

After my first week of being thrown into a room with a bunch of children without training, my boss decided that me and my co-worker Dallas deserved an official welcoming party. This party consisted of Dallas, my boss, my co-workers and myself going to a singing room and getting fairly drunk while singing songs. Fair enough, it went on good for awhile until the boss decided to shoo away the woman folk and told me and Dallas that a special surprise was coming. A few minutes later, half a dozen women came into the room and proceeded to line up facing us. They all looked extremely uncomfortable and talked amongst themselves while adjusting their tight fitting colorful sparkly dresses.

My boss told me and Dallas to choose; so we did. Girls of our choosing came over to me and Dallas and proceeded to go to work. Eventually however, my boss told us that they didn't want to deal with foreigners so me and Dallas had to leave. After twenty minutes of waiting outside, we got bored and went off to a local bar we knew and had a few drinks. Happy first week!

The longer I was at the school the worse things got. Everyone could tell that the school was strapped for cash and it was getting difficult for the boss to hide it. One morning, the boss called me and Dallas into his office and sat us down. He politely asked me and Dallas to let him borrow half of our paychecks this month and that he would give us the money back next week with an extra 100,000 won included (roughly 90 bucks US).

Being the idiot that I was, I thought it was a good deal so I said it was totally fine. Dallas even agreed to it as well, but he was much more suspicious. After the third month in a row of borrowing money from me, I became outright angry and disgusted with myself for agreeing to such a proposal. I went down to the office everyday and asked about the money. Everyday, they told me it would all come the following week.

I started to get mad. I demanded my money from my boss. Shouting matches begun to happen everyday. It got so bad that at one point my boss just stopped coming to work. He changed his phone, stopped responding to his emails and essentially disappeared.

I was frantic. I went down to the head office and pounded on the big glass door to no avail. Luckily I was able to break into my boss's old office and found me and Dallas's college diplomas. This enabled us to be able to find a new job if we wanted. Dallas wanted to just ignore the money issue and move on, but I was out close to 1500 dollars and was going to either bring the school down or get my money.

I looked through my contract, which was very poorly written, and noticed that they made no mention of attire that should be worn at work. Everyone had always just worn semi-formal clothes, but now that I found out I didn't have to I said the hell with it. However, I took it a step further....

For the next two weeks I wore the same dirty white t-shirt, dirty pair of cargo shorts and some cheap flip-flips to work. I also did not shower and shave and I walked into class everyday and asked my students "What would you like to do today?"

Whatever they said, as long as it didn't hurt anyone of course, I allowed. It eventually got to the point where the kids were so offended by my presence in class that they refused to come so of course the parents called the school constantly trying to figure out what was going on. The administration tried to ignore it, but students were dropping rapidly and they were hemorrhaging even more money due to my behavior.

Finally, the sons of bitches actually invited me to come down to the administration office. With a smirk on my face and holding a copy of the contract, I casually walked down to their office 15 minutes late while eating a bag of chips. I walked in, didn't say anything and just sat down in the chair furthest from their desk and said "what's up?"

The man behind the desk stood up and asked me why I was embarrassing myself. I pleaded ignorance and told him that there was nothing in my contract about personal appearance. After a few heated exchanges, the man behind the desk became livid and started coming toward me. He swung a punch at me which I moved away from and then pushed him away from me. At this point, another person came out from a side room and jumped in front of us.

The first man ran out of the room and the other man beckoned me to come into side room he came out of. I quickly realized that I had finally met the true head of this collapsing organization. We sat down and he asked what I wanted. I told him that I want the money that was owed to me or I would continue to drive students away. He threatened to simply fire me, but I retorted that I would gladly take this to court and was willing to stay in the country as long as it took. I was hoping he would not see through my bluff. He finally agreed to give me my back pay if I wrote some formal letters of apology to the student's parents that had left. I said I would do that, but I wanted to come to the bank with him so I could make sure the money was transferred. He seemed insulted by this, but I really didn't care.

When we got back to the school I handed him a piece of paper with my two weeks notice on it. He looked at it and an image of disbelief entered his face. He said that I couldn't do that and that he would break my visa and not allow me to transfer it to another job. I simply said you are welcome to try, but that what he had been doing is illegal so I didn't need an official letter to transfer my work visa. I said that I would finish my work here and then move on. He asked me where I was going to transfer to but I just ignored him and walked back to class.

I never got my last paycheck from that company but I found out later that the incident between me and the management of the company led to an investigation that eventually caused the school to get shut down.

When all else fails, just don't shower!

Fresh off the Boat

2008 was a rough year for many recent college graduates. For many people, the smart people, it was a non-issue. They had made their contacts before they had graduated and slid nice and easy into a decent job out of college. However, this was not the case for many people including myself.

I spent months and months looking for jobs that, to be honest, I really didn't want. One day, I was poking around my job search site and found an advertisement the called for teachers in south Korea. I said "the hell with it," and applied. I got a call back 3 hours late, offered a job 6 hours later and was on a plane flying to Korea 2 months later.

When I arrived in Korea, I was told to "find a bus to Jinan-Jeom." I knew that they knew I had never been to Korea before and that I also had no Korean language experience so I figured it must be pretty easy to get around the country.

I got off the plane and walked over to one of the help desks and told the lady that I needed to get to
"Jinan-Jeom."
She pointed to a series of buses that were parked outside. I walked over to one of the counters and said the words
Jinan-Jeom."
The lady there pointed to another counter. I walked over to the second counter and again said
"Jinan-Jeom."
The lady at the second counter pointed to a sign and motioned like she wanted something. I handed her my credit card and then she gave me a ticket that said, lo and behold....
"Jinan-Jeom"
 I grabbed my gear and shuffled over to the sign and plopped down right in front; sitting on my bag. 25 minutes later, A bus rolled up and a man jumped out. I showed him my ticket and said to him "Jinan-Jeom"
He nodded, took my ticket and then grabbed my bag. I hopped on the bus and promptly fell asleep. It was almost midnight after all.

Over an hour later, I was brutally woken up by the bus driver yelling the words
"Jinan-Jeon"
at me. I was the only one on the bus at this point which was a bit unnerving, but I got off anyway and went around to the side of the bus to grab my bags.
As the bus roared away, I realized that I was totally alone. I was surrounded by a series of tall odd-looking buildings that did not have one light on. I was told that someone would meet me here so I sat on my bags and waited, hoping, that I didn't have to be forced to figure something out.

Lucky for me, an white van rolled up and a man jumped out and promptly said my name. I jumped up and said that it was me and threw my stuff in the back of this guy's van. The guy didn't speak any English, but I did glean from him that I was in fact in Jinan-Jeon and that he was supposed to pick me up.

A few minutes later, he dropped me off at my accommodation: A half-finished apartment building surrounded by rice paddies and other buildings in various stages of completion. My room was a small studio apartment that had nothing in it except a dirty mattress on the floor in one corner. The man said "goodbye" and promptly left.

I took out my clothes, made a make-shift nest on top of the mattress and fell asleep. Obviously, there were some things I needed to attend to but it would have to wait until the morning.
 Goodnight,
"Jinan-Jeom"

Why This Blog About Korea Exists

I've always hated the idea of blogging. No offense to blogger.com, but whenever someone said the word "blog" I automatically envisioned some sad person talking about a mundane experience similar to something that thousands of people have already done. They took a picture of a beach, talked about how scary it was to try some food or went bungee jumping and now their whole life is different.

Fuck all that shit.

Due to my initial negative exposure to the idea of blogging, I shied away from the idea and instead just told the stories that I collected from living in Korea 3.5 years at bars, parties or other times when a story seemed relevant to a conversation. Recently however, I have been told by many people that they thoroughly enjoy my stories and have been asking whether or not I kept up a blog that they could look at.

 After enduring this conversation many times, I have decided that there is enough interest from people about my time in Korea, when I say Korea I do mean South Korea, that some of my stories warrant a blog of their own to entertain, educate or give clarity to people who are curious about, traveling to or have already been to Korea.

A few things to consider:

I promise you that all of these stories are 100 percent accurate and are not meant to sway people into believing in anything in particular. They are just simply an account of what happened to me and the people around me while I was living in Korea for 3.5 years. However, I did change the names of people in the story to fictional ones. I know that in reality you will most likely never come across the people I named in the stories, but I just figured I did not ask their permission so it would be in bad taste for me to talk about them using their real names. Also, it will take me a while to write all my stories down so just be patient. If you like what you see, check in every once in a while because more are soon to follow.

Enjoy!