Girls' Generation

Girls' Generation - Gee. Pretty catchy song, but a little older. In Korean their name is 소녀시대. They go for the "cute" look. The shorts are still a very nice touch.

Oh yeah, and there are nine fucking girls in this group.

My kids

So the best part about this whole teaching thing is definitely the kids. A lot of the teachers here hate the kids and are only teaching because of the job security. Most of the English teachers, however, love the kids. They treat you like a god and almost all of them idolize you and love you.

So, here are the kids that are fucking awesome.

Elf - Elf is a 6th grade girl at Daedong. Elf is her English name, and she picked it. It's a fucking awesome name, and she's in my unofficial fan club, which is a group of girls that come and talk to me after lunch because I'm awesome. She looks like she cut her own hair, has a really stupid grin, yells a lot in Korean, and has terrible English. She's great.

Joy and a couple other girls whose names I don't remember - part of the unofficial fan club with Elf. All great kids.

C.T. Dragon - 5th grade boy at Daedong. His English name is C.T. Dragon. Enough said.

Flora - 5th grade girl who's just adorable.

Gordon - 6th grade boy, who told me his name was from Half-Life, and about shit his pants when I knew what he was talking about. Has idolized me since.

At Daemun, they don't have English names, so I'll go with the Korean names I actually know.

So Eun - 6th grade girl, always combs her hair to make sure her bangs are perfect. ALWAYS. She has her comb with her 24/7, and I took it once and she freaked out. Wants to be a k-pop star when she grows up, awwww.

Mike - I started calling this guy Mike cause he was annoying the shit out of me on my first day. Then I realized he's just ADD as shit, and since Adderall is considered a hard drug here, there's not really any helping him. All the other teachers hate him because he's so hyper, and he hates them too, but he loves me to death. As such, he ignores them when they tell him to be quiet, but he apologizes to me and does his best when I tell him to hush. It only lasts about three minutes, but that's three minutes longer than he can give the other teachers.

Soo Bin - Just found out this girl's name the other day. She was a transfer from another school with a better main English teacher, so she actually speaks a little English. It was right around Halloween, and I gave candy to some of the kids who did well in class. Since then, every time she sees me she holds her hands out and asks for candy. It's a little running joke between us.

Singing kid - First day of class, he asked me to sing for him. Yes, to sing for him. I now ask him to sing for me when I see him, and he does the same.

Jin Hwa - adorable little 5th grade with these big confused eyes all the time. Hates all the teachers and it's pretty obvious, and the only time she ever talks in class is when it's on the days I'm there.

Potato/Kimchi/Syndrome Plu/Cutu - A group of fifth grade girls that all hang out together and are in love with me. Those names are nicknames they gave each other, and they are awesome. They're all adorable.

My Angels - Two little girls. First is in third grade, and her English name is apparently Esther. She's definitely a hagwon kid, which means private school after normal school. Her class is fucking insane and I hate it, but she sits there and smiles at me and repeats every word I say. She's awesome and I don't get to teach her next semester and it really makes me sad. So, that's angel one. About three weeks ago, I'm finished with lunch, walking around, and this tiny little first grader comes up to me. She says "Chris hi my name is Maria!" She made a sentence most of my fifth graders can't make, and they don't even start studying English till third grade here. Turns out she's Esther's little sister and wanted to say hi and meet me since her sister talks about me all the time. They are both cute as hell and I'm going to steal them when I leave.

Merry Christmas

Merry Christmas everyone!

Park Bom

Park Bom is one of the members of 2NE1. She's the oldest member in the group, at 25 or so. She went to college in the U.S., so her English is pretty good when she's not speaking Korean. Also, from the look of things, she had a botched eyelid surgery, so it constantly looks like she's coked up.

This is her first solo song AFTER 2NE1...she was originally a solo artist but it never took off. Also, I have realized I know WAY too much about k-pop for a white male.

Last full day of school.

Today was the last full day of school for me. It's a relief in some ways, and really sad in others.

Awesome, because now things get a little easier. More slacking off and whatnot, which is going to be nice.

Really really sad though, because I won't be seeing some kids as often, and these kids are what make your day sometimes. I'll write up a full post about the kids sometime soon, but here's what happened today and inspired this post.

First, it's about 8:40am, and I haven't even fully awakened yet, but then there's a knock on the classroom door. My favorite student, Esther (you'll hear more about her in a few days) pokes her head in with a biiiig hello. She's come to bring me a Christmas card she made. It reads "Merry Cristmas" and there's a note inside it, all that. Basically she says she's really sad cause I won't be her teacher next year. Tore me up and made me sad too, cause I love seeing this kid, but at least she'll be in the same school.

Later, another great kid brought some cake for me. That was cool. Free cake is always fun.

What really did it, though, was one sixth grade girl. One of my favorites. On the first day of real class, we're going through the lesson like we will every day, and she's been doing for four years at this point. We reach a point in the lesson where I say "okay everyone, time to look and listen" and she just comes out with this really quiet, amazed sounding "Oh my god!" It was hilarious, and I thought she was awesome ever since.

Anyway, after sixth grade, they go to middle school. Some kids are excited about it, some aren't. Well, she pokes her head in the room and says hi after lunch today, and I talk to her a little. I ask her, "are you excited about middle school?" expecting a yes, as she's really excited on a normal day. She very emphatically says NO, so I ask her why. She's sad cause her friends and stuff won't be going to the same school as she will. When she's explaining this to me I can tell she's getting sad, but she's okay. Give her a pat on the back, tell her it will be all right, etc., etc. Then, she tells me she's also sad because "no more Chris teacher" and just starts to cry.

Fucking broke my heart. I'm really sad to see some of these kids go, too, but this is the first time one's openly admitted that they're going to miss me. I think most of them will, but this girl started crying at the thought of it. It was heartbreaking.

I asked her where her middle school is, and she showed me on the map. I see a ton of girls with one skirt type every morning, and we figured out they all go to that school, so it looks like I might still see her walking around the area. I hope so. Yeah it will be really weird when a 13 year old girl runs up and gives me a big hug on the street, but she's practically a daughter to me or a little sister now, so I think I can live with it. I do wish her all the best in middle school though, and the same to all my other kids, even though they'll never read this.

Fooooood, part 1.

One of the most important parts of any culture is the food, and Korea is no exception. You can find certain foods almost anywhere, and some are served with literally every meal. Like most Asian cultures, rice is a staple, but it's the unique foods that make Korea, well, Korea.

The most important food in any Korean's diet is kimchi (김치), as it is served with pretty much every Korean meal.

It's essentially a pickled, fermented vegetable, most commonly cabbage. What they do is take some cabbage (not the North American variety you're used to. Think Chinese cabbage) smother it in red pepper paste, along with other stuff, like oysters, fish sauce, etc. Then you throw the sucker into a clay jar and let it sit for a few months! There are over 200 different varieties of kimchi, all of which are displayed at the kimchi museum in Seoul. When you first try it, you probably won't like it. However, the shit grows on you like nothing else.

I would say the second most common food in Korea is soup, which sucks. All sorts of varieties, but damn soup is just boring to me.

I would say the most common go out to eat kind of food is probably samgyupsal (삼겹살) which is sorta like thick bacon.

You go to a place, order it, get your panchan (unlimited side dishes, always free: this is where you'll find your kimchi) and then they bring it out to you. There's a little grill on the table at these places, either circular or rectangular. You throw the raw meat on it, usually in strips, but sometimes pre-cut, and cook the shit. When it's almost ready you cut it up, and then dig in after it cooks a little longer. It's pretty simple, but damn is it delicious. It's usually eaten by wrapping it, along with some sauce and whatever else you want, in lettuce leaves.

My personal favorite dish is dak galbi (닭갈비) which is sort of hot chicken dish, with ddeok in it.

Ddeok is a sort of rice cake thing. It's really spongy and somewhat flavorless. You go into a restaurant that serves it, and there is a large pan in the middle of the table. They bring in chicken marinated in something with chili paste, as well as cabbage, radish/potato sticks, ddeok, and a giant helping of chili paste on top. Throw that in your pan with some water, let the shit cook (they do all the work, they're experts at it) and about ten minutes later you have a fucking delicious, hot meal. It's sort of sweet, but savory at the same time. Fucking amazing. I eat this stuff at least once every two weeks, usually more. It's even better when you get cheese ddeok, which is just ddeok with cheese inside.

This is all I'm going to throw up here for now. There's a lot of other types of food, and some really weird shit as well. They eat dog here. That's right dog. Also, blood sausage, silkworm larvae, all sorts of sea critters, etc. But that's for another day.

CL & Minzy - Please Don't Go

These two gals are from 2NE1, and this is their first song without the whole group. Since 2NE1 is the hottest thing since kimchi here right now, it is insanely popular and awesome. Plus, CL is my future wife, so of course it's amazing.

Oh, and the girl in the hat is 15.

The Samsung Empire

Samsung...the brand you all know and love.

What does Samsung make? Well that's obvious, right? Cell phones, computers, TVs, electronics. That's about it, right? RIIIIGHT?

FUCKING WRONG.

Samsung owns or does just about anything in this country.

One thing Samsung does that you don't know, is construction! They build tall shit. The Petronas towers in KL, Taipei 101, and the Burj Dubai just to name a few.

Grocery stores! There's a chain of stores called HomePlus here in South Korea that Samsung just happens to have their hand in.

Apparently they're partnered with a British brand, Tesco, as you can see on the sign there. However, from what I've gathered, there are more of these damn things here in South Korea than there are in Britain. I know of five in Daejeon, and we're the fifth largest city in the country.

Samsung also sponsors a shitload of sports teams. They sponsor EPL club Chelsea, one of the biggest names in all of soccer, as well as a Mexican and a Brazilian club. Australian rugby, Indian cricket, NASCAR, the NFL...they have their hand in these pots as well in one way or another. In Korea they own pro soccer, baseball, basketball, women's basketball, and volleyball teams, which means pretty much every sport they know how to play here.

Lastly, the thing that shocked me the most, is that Samsung makes CARS. Apparently Renault owns it now, as GM owns Daewoo, but still, fucking CARS! The guys that made your fucking TV are also making cars. Ain't that some shit?

LIVE AWESOME

Don't know why I feel the need to post this now, but I just remembered and the blog wasn't around back then so I think it's important.

As those of you knew him know, Kevin Carosa died on August 31st from germ cell cancer. Kevin was a great guy, and always in great spirits even when all that shit was going down. According to Rory, he wanted us to remember him doing being sweet as hell, which is hard not to do if you knew him at all. Well, his little slogan was not to "Live Strong" it was "Live Awesome" which is much more badass. Everyone who knew him has one of the bracelets (I had three as I needed extras in Korealand, just in case).

Well, when we went to Seoul in early October, we visited this place called N. Seoul Tower. It's basically a big tower in the middle of the city that you can see forever from. Well, at the base of the tower, people put locks on the railing. Usually it's couples making promises to stay together forever or something gay like that, but you can do it for whatever reason.

It looks pretty cool and all that, because this is honestly just a small fraction of them all.

Anway, long story short, I took off my Live Awesome bracelet and stuck it on the wall.

I guess it's sorta a tribute to the man. Live Awesome went global even though Kevin wasn't there to see it.

Miss you Kevin, everyone does. We will always remember you. Maybe some random Koreans will be inspired by your words too.

LIVE AWESOME.

Successful weekend!

This weekend, while nothing too interesting happened, was filled with lots of little things that made shit good.

Friday night, went and celebrated a friend's birthday. Got shitfaced. Found out about a number you can call that lets you call the states for free. That was exciting. As a result, my little brother got a phone call at about 8:30 am Friday morning from his very drunk older brother, who wasn't too sure he was actually calling him. Now, I don't have to buy phone cards, which is awesome.

Saturday went to a place called Kraze Burger. Pretty damn good burger. Was about 15 for burger and fries, which is expensive as shit for a meal, but I have been craving a good burger for months.

Saturday night, went to a show. Small venue, made just for rock shows. It was awesome! There's actually music here that's not k-pop, which is mind blowing. There were only four bands, and we didn't get there until the last two were on, but they were fun. First was two guys and three smoking hot girls who played Korean music only. The second band played some covers. Song 2, by Blur (you know, the WOOHOO song) and some Offspring...pretty fun. The shitty part was, the show started at 6 and was over by 8:15. Apparently, all but one band was composed of high school kids, and most of the people there were in high school. Sorta weird, but you gotta get music where you can.

After, went and drank at a Hof, which is a sit down place, then we went to Kevin's Bar, which is super expensive but was still fun. We went with a couple guys from one of the bands that a friend knows. They were from the band that WASN'T in high school. They knew more about good music, and metal and stuff like that than I did, which was crazy considering how unpopular real music is here.

Now, sitting here smoking a cigarette, passing the time. Going in a few hours to grab dinner, and then go to a room where you can play Wii and chill. Possibly hit up CostCo after that.

Only a week and a half of school left. Another weekend in the books!

Drunken Tiger

Drunken Tiger is a rap group, with Tiger JK being the big name in the group. He's that long haired guy who you see through most of the video.

Decent beat, don't know what they're saying. Video's a little boring, but whatever. It's Korean and it's not pop music...that's pretty damn amazing in itself.

Drunken Tiger - Monster. Enjoy.

Epik High

Epik High is a rap group made of like three guys. This is their video "Wannabe." I don't know any of their other stuff, but this is a pretty good song, and the song's pretty funny.

The video itself is sort of a parody of a Korean movie, "The Host" which is supposed to be pretty good.

Booze!

Korea has many different types of alcohol, and most of them are shitty. I CAN get real booze here, but for the most part it's super expensive. Good beers are about 3500won a bottle, liquor can range from a bit expensive to way overpriced compared to what you're used to. Most Korean shit though, is super cheap. Here's a nice semi-comprehensive list of the various types of booze!

First, when you go to a bar, just know that you can get a normal American size pitcher for about 7,000won average, or 6.50 USD. For around 13,000won you can get a 3,000ml pitcher, which is about double the size of an American pitcher. Yes, it's awesome. Oh, and they don't use pint glasses for beer...they're really small glasses, actually. It's extremely annoying because you have to keep refilling extremely often.

Anyway, the three main beers, in order from crappiest to least crappy.

Cass. A bunch of different varieties, some better than the regular Cass. Nothing special.

Hite. My usual choice. Tastes all right and gets the job done.

Max. The best flavor-wise, but can be a little heavy sometimes.

Now, another type of beverage in South Korea is makgeolli. It's made with rice, and is actually pretty tasty. At some places you can drink it the traditional way, out of a metal bowl. It will give you a hell of a hangover though. About 10% alcohol or so.

Now, the real poison of choice for most of Korea is soju. It's about 20% alcohol, comes in a bottle about the size of a beer bottle, and that costs about a dollar. Yes, 20% alcohol is cheaper than beer. The trade-off is it tastes like the worst vodka you've ever had, but worse, and gives you a hell of a hangover the next day. People here drink it like water, though. That's why you see people stumbling all over the place and passing out anywhere they please on the average weekend night. Oh, and the shot glass in this picture is bigger than it really is. They're about the size of a standard shot glass, or a little smaller.

They also sell 30L and 50L jugs of this shit at grocery stores. It's pretty much insane.

Winter's coming

It's getting fucking cold here now. Last night it was snowing. Not fun. It's snowed a few times already, but now it's getting the point where it's going to stay around those temperatures. I'm not used to the cold yet this winter. Hopefully I adjust soon.

Only three more weeks left in the semester. Then I lose my sixth graders to the evil that is middle school. I'm really going to miss some of these kids. Maybe I'll make a post about them at a later date.

Let's see, in other news, and according to one of my friend's Korean coworkers, the age of consent laws here are totally fucked. Basically, as long as they are in high school, and "they are in love" it's good to go. Pretty messed up, but it explains a few encounters I've had in Old Downtown that have boggled my mind.

Vacation

So I'm trying to decide what to do for vacation. It looks like my friends are looking at going to Thailand, which sounds awesome to me. However, all total, before daily expenses, it's looking to cost about 1,000,000won. Roughly 800USD, and over half of a paycheck.

So the dilemma is, do I stay here in Korea for winter vacation, MAYBE hop over to Japan for a night or something, or do I go to Thailand? If I go to Thailand I'm going to be broke until after I get back. And that's from right now. The trip wouldn't be until the middle of January.

Honestly, I still have a lot of Korea left to explore, so I'm leaning that way. There's snowboarding, Jeju, Busan, Gwanju, the DMZ, and lots of other shit to do. Plus, not EVERYONE is going overseas, so I'll have shit to do. And let's not forget the Koreans! One of my good friends got screwed by her school on her vacation, so she'll be here, and the other doesn't even have a passport, so I know they'll be in the country.

Right now, though, it's looking like I'll be staying in Korea over winter vacation. A little depressing to think about, but at the same time it makes me happy knowing that I'll still have money. I've got till the end of the week to decide, so we'll see what I actually end up doing.

G-Dragon

Today's foray into the magical world of Korean music brings us the musical styling's of "G-Dragon." This guy is basically one of the hottest men in Korea right now. Yes, this bleach blonde, extremely effeminate man. It blows my mind. Anyway, this song is everywhere, too. Oh, and apparently Sony is suing him for ripping it off of some rapper or something? I don't know.

Oh, at the end is like a preview YG put in there for another song of his, "Breathe". If that bit isn't gay, I don't know what is.

Ladies and gentlemen, I give you "Heartbreaker."

Aaaaand here's a lovely example of his excellent ripoff skills!