...About Korea

                                                                  2. "Yangnyeom" Chicken.

Korean yangnyeom chicken is the best I've ever had. I'm not sure of the recipe, but It's made with a sauce. A very special sauce. If I had to wrestle someone in this sauce I would try to eat them.

                                                                             3. "Pae-dahl."

Thanks to "pae-dahl" you can get yangnyeom chicken delivered to you. Anywhere. Your house, a park, you know...the top of a mountain. Pae-dahl is basically this guy on a motorbike who will come after you with food. I'm not sure if it's always the same guy in all of Korea, but he absolutely will find you. I once saw a pae-dahl delivery man drive into the front door of a building, full speed on his motorbike. 

                                                                               4. Dr. Fish.

There are several "Dr.Fish" cafe's scattered throughout Korea. You order a drink, put your feet in a small fish tank, and let minnows eat away at dead skin. If you dipped your feet in "yangnyeum" chicken sauce I would gladly be one of the fish.

                                              5. Seoul is the plastic surgery capital of the world.

There's a popular cartoon in Korea about a small penguin who lives on an island. His name is Pororo. Recently, even Pororo got plastic and laser eye surgery.

It's more prevalent in the cities than the countryside, but appearance is highly regarded here. There is a very specific look many young people try to emulate, even if they have to pay money to achieve it. Make of it what you will, but in Pororo's case I think surgery was a good idea. I mean look at his before picture. I wouldn't. Just saying.

                                                          6. Sometimes couples dress the same.

I walked past a Korean man wearing a "Lebanon, Pennsylvania" tee shirt the other day. Before I could get a closer look I was distracted by a "Franklin & Marshall" sweater. As I approached the "F&M" guy, I saw 2 couples dressed identically from head to toe. Sadly this is not rare. Below is a mild case.

                                                                           7. K-Pop Music. 

Most of the world's exposure to K-pop is unfortunately through "Gangnam Style," but the rest of this genre is just as catchy. Half of me loves it, half of me hates it, and half of me can't do maths. I've tried everyday for the last month to not like the song below, and I can't do it. Gangnam Style is only the tip of the ridiculous iceberg.

                                                              8. I'm sorry about number 7.

    9. Korean Dramas.

Korean Dramas = Soap operas + Korea - 500 years. 
Wait, so: Soap operas = Korean Dramas + 500 years - Korea?
I'm confused. Just watch.

                                                                 10. Shape of Hangul letters.

For the last 4 years, Hangul was voted "the easiest character system to learn out of systems that look like they would be hard." King Sejong is to credit with the simple brilliance of Hangul, although his list of accomplishments extends far beyond the language. An adult could probably learn the characters in a few hours. 

While English letters sometimes seem arbitrarily shaped, every Hangul character has a reason for it's appearance. Some characters, for example, are shaped like the position the throat makes while pronouncing their sound.

I've been working on the alphabet with 1st graders for a few months. An adult can learn Hangul in a few hours. I'm going to conclude written Hangul is much easier than English, even if I have to compare adults to 1st graders.

                                                                         11. Church steeples.

Small Korean towns can look like Las Vegas thanks to fluorescent lights illuminating the buildings. Interestingly, even churches join the trend, with glowing red crosses perched above the skyline. I've heard this is due to the Korea war. Apparently planes wouldn't bomb churches, so buildings of worship identified themselves with the high glowing crosses, easily visible from the air.

This raises the question: Why wouldn't all important buildings simply put these crosses above them? And the answer: Why don't you stop over analyzing everything?

                                     12. Rock Paper Scissors solves every argument here.

I think this is the case in many Asian countries, and I also think North and South Korea will eventually solve their disputes through RPS. Anyone with this robot could take over the Korean peninsula.

                                                                   13. Teacher Point System.

If a teacher has ambitions to become a vice or head principal, they have to achieve their goal through a very regulated point system. Teachers get more points per year for teaching in rural areas, and are also limited to a certain amount of years at each particular school, before being forcibly transferred elsewhere. The philosophy behind this system is to prevent school dynamics from going stale.

I want to keep going but I just can't. I'm really busy. I have to go make fake ice cream cones for my classroom. 

You might recall me talking about my garden. Yeah someone built a pipe and a sewer in it. 

I suspect it was my enemy, Mr. Bear. But with enemies come friends, and I've met four new ones to be exact: 

 "Golf Man", "Kim Chi Lady", "Village Guy", and "Evan." 

My first new comrade is an aged villager.

I crossed paths with this man while exploring a windy road near my new apartment. After about 30 minutes of walking, I found myself in a village with more stray animals than people. 

"Village Guy" was the first man I saw, and he forced me to sit down in an office chair while he went inside his hut to grab something. While sitting and waiting, two halmonis appeared. One told me to leave, the other one tried to give me a bottle of soju she pulled from a pile of trash. I was still deciding which halmoni to listen to when Village Guy returned with a stack of pictures. I quickly browsed through the photos while using my peripheral vision to avoid hand slaps from the halmoni that wanted me to leave.

Village Guy's disheveled appearance contradicted his picture collection. He showed me images of himself from every corner of the Earth, usually posing with a different foreigner at each location. My wizened friend next pulled out world map from the 80's to show me exactly where he'd been, but the halmoni slaps were increasing in strength so I literally ran away.

About a week later I returned, first scouting the area from a distance to make sure the angry halmoni wasn't there.
Village Guy was alone, so I approached. Sometimes you can tell by looking at someone they're just begging for a photo shoot, so we snapped a few photos and exchanged stories. Well we didn't exactly exchange stories, because he can't exactly, well, he can't talk guys.

It's funny how you gain a perception of someone strictly from body language, whether accurate or not. I think I accurately guessed that he wanted me to take all of his food and money.

After our "conversation" I returned home, ordered a few prints, and brought them back to him a month or so after. He seemed appreciative of the now updated picture collection, and I appreciated his willingness to charade with a stranger. If he's single, I've found just the right fit for him in Kim Chi Lady. But, they might have a hard time communicating.

I met this "chin-gu" on the way to work one day.

If there are two things I can count on seeing en route to school, it's a black goat and Kim Chi Lady. Our unlikely friendship has evolved despite the language barrier, and by that I mean she can't hear. It's a change of pace from Village Guy who can't speak. Kim Chi Lady that is. The goat's hearing is perfect.

I only know four things about her: she has cute puppies, she makes delicious kim chi, she can't hear, and she's camera shy (hence the distanced stalker photo).

Despite our vague understanding of each other we sit comfortably in silence from time to time while I stare in awe at the amount of red peppers she prepares on a daily basis. I'm lucky to have company near my remote apartment complex, and aside from Golf Man she's my only neighborhood acquiantance.

My third recent companion is Golf Man.

Golf Man is the owner of a screen-golf business (Sa-Ka-Reen Gol-Puh), and while screen golf is generally expensive he kindly lets me use the practice area for free. Fostering a bond with this man has paid off, but the problem is I rarely actually golf. Instead I end up in strange but friendly social rings listening to jokes that make me realize I need to work on my courtesy laugh. The last time I went to hit balls, I wound up sitting in a room with four Korean men and a dog. One of the men was "Golf Man," and the dog was their dinner.

Whether I'm able to practice or not, it's still nice to be around golf, which aside from Zak Metzger I miss more than anything. Golf man's English is ok enough to carry on Konglish conversations, but he's no Evan.

My friend count rose to an all time high of 4 when I met "Evan." He really should be an English teacher, he probably knows more about the language than I do. He's also one of my students.

Although Korean, Evan has lived in many English speaking countries as the product of missionaries. He's new at school, and after being surprised by his conversational ability on his first day, I decided to test Evan a bit against his peers. So we played a simple game. Basically, teams take turns writing sentences, with longer sentences being awarded more points.

Most students struggled to write things like "I like Dads" or "Mothers are OK." Evan wrote something like "Last weekend my sister and I were shopping and she came across a pair of nice shoes, but to be honest they really weren't her style, so I convinced her not to purchase them and to instead save her money, which we then spent on a bootlegged version of the overrated movie Toy Story 2." Evan's team won.

In some ways things are more difficult since his arrival because it's impossible to design a class that will simultaneously benefit Evan and his peers. He feels like more of a translator than a student. The other day Evan came up to me before class and whispered in my ear "Mr. Erik, if you want them to be quiet just get really angry at them." For hopefully the last time in my life, I took the advice of an 11 year old. I'll swallow my pride to control the nightmarish 4th graders. Its nice having Evan around.

It's quite nice having all my new friends around in fact. I think they should meet each other. I'm a bit afraid to introduce Golf Man to Kim-Chi Lady's puppies, but my goal is to get all these characters together as some sort of anti-Mr.Bear gang. Mostly just so I can watch Village Guy and Kim Chi Lady try to interact.

I just found out I've been using fabric softener instead of detergent for 7 months. There are 3 tee shirts in my freezer. Before you judge me for writing unrelated sentences, watch this surprisingly useful video.

Ok you can judge me now. 

Putting clothes in the freezer was my last attempt at salvaging a now mostly Korean wardrobe, that hasn't been washed with detergent for a long time. If you ever come to Korea in the summer, don't expect to bring any of your clothes home. I've never experienced weather like this year's monsoon season and the heat and humidity caused a mold epidemic among my favorite tee shirts. 

Thankfully, summer and monsoon season came to a close with the passing of typhoon Bolaven, and while I won't miss the summertime weather, I will miss the amount of free time I had. I used this time to improve classroom materials. The English room at school might have plenty of resources, but they aren't the best quality. Well I'll let you be the judge since you seem to be judging everything today.          
             
                                                The Disease Song Lyrics (From a Textbook)

"I have no appetite. I have a stomach virus. Face this way and don't move, take a deep breath and hold it. I stretched a muscle. My face is breaking out. I have a growth, it's leaking. Put this cream on it. Take one dose between meals. 30 minutes after meal. Do you have mosquito repellent? Do you carry Merthiolate?  Have you any cotton swabs? Do you carry lozenges? Give me band-aids."

During the summer months I'd usually work on materials like these for half of the day, then come home to my solitary confinement sentence and watch late night television. Every now and again it's nice to watch something in English, but this guy is on every channel so Korean shows are better.

Luckily the Olympics broadened my entertainment options. Viewing the games from a new coverage perspective was an interesting experience. It seemed like the only sports televised were judo, taekwondo, shooting and archery. Koreans appear to be good at all things violent.

If a Korean male wins an Olympic medal, he is exempt from the otherwise mandatory 2-year military term. Perhaps this incentive was the source of motivation needed Korea needed to defeat Japan in the bronze medal soccer match.   

Some controversy followed Korea's victory, when a South Korean player decided to incorporate a "political statement" into his celebration; suggesting that Dokdo island belongs to Korea rather than Japan.

Dokdo, or "Takeshima" to the Japanese, is basically a pile of rocks off the eastern coast of Korea, that both countries claim to own. It's not as much about the rocks as it is the economic potential of surrounding fishing areas.

The only residents on the island are South Korean, the only police officers on the island are South Korean, and the only lighthouse keepers on the island are South Korean. By looking at the facts it's pretty obvious that Dokdo belongs to America.

I'm not completely up to date on the issue but to the best of my knowledge the player never received his medal, but is still exempt from military duty.

As the Olympics wound down so did August, and sometimes the end of August means the beginning of September. The beginning of September meant a new principal at Maehwa Elementary School. 

I tried to make a good first impression on the new man in charge, who was a student at Maehwa himself many years ago. Things didn't go as planned. I showed up severely swollen on his first day of school, making him think I was hungover. I wasn't, my swelling was just the result of a high sodium kimbap eating contest the night before. 

You can't have a new principal without saying goodbye to an old one, and on his last day our formal principal, Mr. No, was dressed in his finest attire. He gave a tearful speech that shook up everyone in the room. Although I didn't understand much, it was unsettling to see such emotion from generally stoic people.

Mr. No then marched down the hall and for some reason everyone started following him with their heads bowed and hands folded. It was like being at a funeral for someone living. He is not a flashy man, but Mr. No did have one last trick for us.

He walked past the parking lot where his car usually rests, then behind a building, before seemingly vanishing into thin air, never to be seen again. It was a dramatic exit, but Mr. No didn't account for one thing. He lives four blocks from me so I'll probably see him tonight.