If I wake up with a text message in Hangul it means I'm having a hwesik. You see the only texts I get in Hangul are from my school, and the only reason my school contacts me is if we're having a hwesik. These messages are not reminders, they're warnings.  

Many schools rarely host the teacher parties known as "hwesiks". My school has so many I felt obligated to write about them. The following update will therefore be dedicated to hwesiks, and only hwesiks.

So I'm trying to adopt this kitten. His name will be Richard. Of course you can call him Rich. A fellow teacher in town brought in a pregnant stray, and the result is a number of kittens up for grabs.

If I can figure out a long-term plan for a temporary pet then I'll move forward with it. But enough about animals, time to get back to hwesiks.

I started a garden recently. It's watered everyday after school. This works well because I usually have 10 minutes between my last class and snack meeting with the school nurse and librarian, the perfect amount of time to water a garden.

The garden has tomatoes, pumpkins, lettuce, cucumbers, and radishes. Oh and sweet potatoes. Some days when I sit at home with freshly picked vegetables on the table, a load of laundry on the drying rack and my Korea scrapbook on my lap, I have to resist the urge to download episodes of Oprah.

Oh, hwesiks. Well we did have one 17 hour gathering  worth describing. I foolishly showed up for this fatigued and under the assumption that 2 hours of sleep + a 5 hour energy = 7 hours of sleep. Things got started off early with teachers force feeding me soju for breakfast, chased by raw octopus. By 10 a.m. we were riding tandem bicycles and I had consumed the equivalent of a small octopus tentacle. My friend Mike calls me octopus for no apparent reason. I felt like such a cannibal.

I'm envious of the energy level my co-workers possess. Throughout the day we cycled, went spelunking, hiked a mountain, visited a temple, spent hours on a bus, took a funicular to a waterfall, and ate three full meals. After all the activity this still happened, and it went on for exactly two hours. The video quality is poor, but you'll get the idea.

This post must come to an end, as I'm now off to our weekly racist basketball game. About once a week some foreigners in Uljin meet up with locals to make basketball time.

We randomly choose teams but it seems to always end up foreigners versus Koreans. I don't know how. We'll play rock-paper-scissors, shoot for teams, pick numbers. Doesn't matter, same result.

No one has jerseys anyway though, so I guess it works out.

 

Neil Armstrong "died" today but I'm not sure if I believe it. I can't trust NASA after they lied about landing on the moon in the first place. Ironically on my walk home I noticed the moon had a little bit of an extra glow and a bizarre ring around it. Obviously a tribute to Neil.

Whenever I'm having a bad day I just try to remember these words:

It really helps, because recently I've been having quite a few bad days. I'm 26 years old and I have a bully.

His name is "Mr. Bear" and he's terrifying. I would put his picture here but there is absolutely no way I'll willingly get close enough to take one. Mr. Bear is in his forties, he is of large stature, sports tattoos, and he's described by a few college students in town as "mental low class."

The sad thing is it wasn't always this way. We used to be friends. He used to force feed me lettuce raps filled with pig intestines, a sure sign of affection.

Then one hot summer day I was walking down the street with a friend, admiring my freshly purchased ice cream cone. Across the road I noticed a car, slamming on its brakes. Traffic came to a halt, and out came a man who started walking towards me with purpose.

I recognized him, and said to my startled friend: "It's ok this guy is cool. His name is Mr. Bear. You'll like him."

My friend didn't like him. Here is the play by play of the events which followed.

Erik: "Mr. Bear! Annyeonghaseyo."
Mr. Bear: Says nothing. Stares at me inches from my face.
Erik: Takes a bite of ice cream.
Mr. Bear: Steals the ice cream, takes an obnoxiously selfish bite that I'm getting angry about while typing this. Puts the cone back in my hand.
Erik: Too astonished to me angry. Too hungry to not be angry. Tries to introduce friend in broken Korean but says something about flowers instead.
Mr. Bear: Not amused, still mute. Steals the cone again and eats another bite, then decides to keep the cone altogether.
Erik: Calculates that over 60% of the ice cream is now gone.
Mr. Bear: Breaks his silence by telling me I'm fat and that I don't need ice cream. Forces me to leave without the cone.
Erik: Laughs outside, cries inside, walks away.

All of this took place while Mr. Bear's car was running in the middle of traffic, on the busiest street in town.

By the end of the day, I somehow shook it off and was recovering to maybe 7th grade levels of self-esteem. A full recovery never took place though, because five hours later while walking home on the other side of town, I heard a man screaming my name.

It's Mr. Bear and he's approaching me with a handful of baked goods.

He started shouting something about drinking soju together. I was pretty fed up at this point, so just played dumb and ignored him while walking past, hoping Mr. Bear would simply leave me alone. He was pretty fed up too, and started shouting louder and walking faster, trying to physically keep me from leaving. I managed to round the corner just in time to get away...for now.  

Mr. Bear has legitimately affected my life. I had to alter my walking route to and from the bus station in order to avoid his restaurant, for fear of confrontation. There is now a square block of Uljin I will probably never see again. I want to teach him English just so he can read this: Mr. Bear you are mean.

Fortunately not everyone in Uljin is as cruel as Mr. Bear. Take "Bum" for example.

Bum is 31 years-old and quite mysterious. I once tried to figure out what he actually does, and he responded by typing something into his phone that came out in English as: "Preparing for employment."

I'm pretty sure he's a magician though because Bum is somehow everywhere at once. He is on street benches, around building corners, or hanging out of windows calling my name.

I was walking in the park one night at around midnight without a soul in sight. I heard a soft voice:

"A-dik". "Aaaaaaa-dik".  There was a pause while I looked around in the darkness, unable to see anything but trees.

Seconds later the voice returned. "Aaaaaa-dik....Bum."

 I never actually saw him that night but I know he was there. I see Bum on 20% of my days intentionally, and about 60% of them unintentionally. This is a good thing because he helps show me new sides of Korea, and frequently breaks into unannounced renditions of Gangnam Style, which I'm assuming is now famous outside of Korea. If you've never seen this video I promise watching it is the most important and least important thing you will do today. Unless you're from the future, then you might hate it by now.

I met Bum while playing volleyball, and all the regulars there possess a similarly jolly spirit. One evening at practice a player spontaneously said something in Korean that an English speaker translated into: "This man is saying he wants to give you an entire box of ramyon noodles as a present."

And I said sure, I would love a box of ramyon that I can set on fire and leave outside of Mr. Bear's restaurant.

A few years ago I was sitting down to a nice slice of pizza when a homeless man approached and asked for food. I offered him the rest of my slice, which had one bite taken out of it. He stared into my soul, then said:
"No it's alright, I don't want that. I'll just wait for someone to give me a full slice, or at least a different topping."

An argument ensued and I left the situation confused.

The moral of the story is beggars can in fact be choosers, but they really shouldn't be unless they are trying to confuse people.

So although my apartment conditions were less than ideal, I found it hard to complain about a free place - when I'm the one who chose to live in rural Korea. That being said, there's nothing wrong with capitalizing on an opportunity for improvement.

Those of you who read the last post (mom) might know my school offered to find a different apartment for me. I finally decided to take them up on the offer.

But I am in Korea, so this process was accompanied by the usual complications.

After packing up my entire life, I received a phone call telling me there was an issue with the new housing contract. With everything I own outside in boxes, on my scheduled moving day, I'm informed I no longer have an apartment. I'm then told to get into a car to look at a "bedroom" twenty minutes north.

At this point I'm homeless. 

I have no future apartment, no past apartment, and I'm being forced to move away from everyone I know, into a smaller town, further from the village where I teach.

The whole debacle revolved around a security deposit.

Korean landlords often demand unruly deposits which they invest while tenants pay rent, returning the deposits only after collecting significant interest through their investments. It's a clever business strategy that is difficult to get around, and my school wasn't up for playing games. The "bedroom" I was looking at turned out to actually be a "bed" lost in translation, and my school administrators miraculously pulled through on a deal last minute to salvage my ability to live indoors. 


After all the confusion my new and improved living situation looks like this:

But I am in Korea, so there were of course more complications.

It's uncomfortable and uncommon to challenge your "superiors" here, and because it was my Vice Principal who took me to look at the bed, I was pressured to bring it back to Uljin.

When I walked into my new apartment I found a perfectly comfortable and relatively new queen-sized bed, left for me by the previous owner. However, I now also had the other bed, which could fit maybe two dwarfs, sitting in the parking lot.

Everyone from school, in the interest of the Vice Principal, urged me to take the smaller bed which stops near my ankles. They were telling me this while I sat comfortable on the queen-sized bed which could fit four regular size people.

I didn't know what to do except buy time, and eventually most of the staff fizzled out while I remained in a stronghold with my my co-teacher, Kyu. Now Kyu is pretty awesome, and he agreed to help me keep the larger bed under one stipulation: I help him get rid of the evidence.

Somewhere along the way Kyu started treating the Vice Principal's bed like a dead body.

I dragged the bed outside in plain site and he panicked, frantically hiding it behind some pillars. He then walked around nervously in the parking area telling me to find somewhere to put it. I found a perfect fit in the no-parking zone, and we rushed to put the bed there. For now.

Everyday at school Kyu asks me about the bed.

"Has anyone seen it?"
"Do you know where we can put it?"
"Do you know someone that will take it for us?"

 Kyu then told me if the Vice Principal asks, "Don't lie but just tell him that the bed is great."

The whole ordeal is loaded with insight regarding the authoritative structure of Korea. Our Vice Principal is a wonderful human being, one surely capable of getting over the fact that the bed he found wasn't my best option, yet everyone seemed incredibly hesitant to break this news to him. I can understand their reluctance to a point, but it is just a bed. It's funny how professional titles get in the way of reason, though I suppose it happens in all societies.

I now spend more time each day thinking of places to put this bed than I do planning lessons. 

It is very important that we get rid of it soon though, because a young man, perhaps homeless, has started sleeping on it. 

I'm fine with him sleeping on the bed, but if he asks me for a slice of pizza he better actually eat it.