After 9 months here I've finally decided on a Korean name: "Ok-Su-Su." It means corn, and it's fitting because an Englishman in town named Jack wrongly assumed I'm from a corn farm in Iowa and constantly calls me "Corn Fed Erik."

Jack, my name is not corn fed Erik. My name is Ok-Su-Su. So why do I need a Korean name? Because I'm jealous my students get English names. Even the guy who helps people cross the street is known as "Turbo Man." I also needed a Korean name for the recently founded Uljin Korean Club. K-Club is a secret off-shoot of the already well established English Club. It's so secretive that I'm putting it on the internet. 

To gauge interest for K-Club, I sent out an email to a few friends in town, but after pressing "K" too many times I accidentally invited them to "KKK-Club." To my delight a few people responded, but it was bittersweet because they might be racist.

K-Club's few members are named Jack, Vinny, and Nashwin. Oh and Ok-Su-Su.

The best way I can describe Jack is by summarizing our last basketball game together. We were casually playing when two young Korean kids asked to join us. The game was running smoothly, until Jack scored and punched the basketball towards one of the kids, hitting him in the face and knocking his glasses off. Jack gave the ball back to the boy, then immediately proceeded to steal it from him and drive in for another lay-up. After scoring again, he tossed the ball in the same boy's direction and again hit him in the head. The Korean boy surprisingly recovered and tried to take a shot, but Jack used his 2-foot height advantage to reject him. A celebratory fist pump followed. All of this happened in less than a minute. The kids were maybe 14? Jack is 28.

The best way I can describe Vinny is that his business email address is "HongKongFury."

The best way I can describe Nashwin is by instead describing professional golfer Vijay Singh.

It wasn't on purpose, but Korean Club is turning out to be the exact opposite of English Club. We meet on Thursday mornings, English club meets on Thursday nights. Korean Club meets at 1st Coffee, English Club meets one building away at Uljin's other popular coffee shop, ToPresso.

ToPresso's owner Danny is a very friendly man, but I also love the hard working ladies of 1st Coffee. My only complaint is their unusually small toilet. 

It's my hope that K-Club pushes me to learn more about the culture and language driving my experience here. In attempt to get more in touch with the culture, I self-assigned some homework: go to more public bath houses. On my last visit I was surrounded by men reading laminated, water-proof newspapers. In attempt to further grasp the language, Vinny and I stopped speaking English to each other. It's improving our lingual skills but our friendship is deteriorating.

I'm not sure what will happen when English Club and Korean Club find out about each other, but I'm curious to see which language is exchanged.

The other day I got slapped in the face. The assailant fits the description of most criminals, he's a second grader named "Harry."

I guess it was a rite of passage. I mean,  every teacher gets slapped by a student at some point right?

Wrong.

In fairness it wasn't like Harry ran up to me and tried to attack the teacher, he just kind of had an excitement freakout and I happened to be in proximity. This kid can't control his limbs when he gets too happy and it was a happy day. Well it was supposed to be a happy day, but I ruined it.

I ruined Party Day.

"Party Day" comes about once every few months, if a class behaves consistently well enough to earn it. My second graders, without a doubt the star class at school, have earned quite a few of these. Even as Party Day veterans they still revel at the opportunity to eat snacks and watch English movies.

But then they started to push it. "Teacha Cookie Party Day?" Whoa take it easy guys I never mentioned cookies. 

Before I could veto the idea they were chanting "coo-kies, coo-kies" and I had no choice but to give in to an unprecedented "Cookie Party Day."

Now this is a big deal in the life of an elementary aged child, and I asked my co-teacher to help provide the cookies while I'd take care of the movie and other snacks. He agreed.

The days leading up to Cookie Party Day were intense. I couldn't have a conversation with one of the second graders without them mentioning chocolate chips. They were so excited they started to give me presents. A few students even brought me movie tickets (pictured left).

They were very happy and proud to give me the tickets, but I was moderately disappointed to receive them. I mean thanks kids but this plot looks terrible.

Finally the big day came and I biked to school early for last minute preparations. Most second graders stopped by the English room an hour before class just to set up their snacks. 


Harry was one of the exceptions, casually strolling in right as the bell rang. I say bell but it's more of a techno jingle, and its not as bizarre as the classical music that plays in our bathrooms. The classical music is not as bizarre as the fact students wave to me while I'm in the bathroom, because the doors are glass.

I'm not typically a mean teacher, but as my insta-rage took over those poor kids saw a different side of their English teacher. Within seconds Harry was hysterical in the hallway while the class was trying to wrap their heads around the event. I think this is when I received news that my co-teacher had abruptly gone on a business trip, meaning he would be absent, and more significantly meaning the cookies would be absent. 

I had to leave Harry crying in the hallway in order to deal with fifteen others about to cry in the classroom, then I had to tell them there were not going to be any cookies on cookie day.

"Teacha."...
"Teacha why?!"...
"Bad teacha."...
"A-dik teacha hate cookies."...
"Why you hate cookies teacha?"...

Yes I prefer salts over sweets but I do not hate cookies. No one tells me I hate cookies. Thank you for using English though.

At this point it's getting very uncomfortable inside the English room. Cookie Party Day involved no cookies, and consisted only of Youtube cartoons playing while every student angrily stared at me instead of the screen.

Eventually Harry returned under the agreement that he would apologize to the teacher and his classmates. He sat motionless at his desk while a few of the less violent students tried to force feed him chips. Harry loves food but his mouth wouldn't open. Every forced bite would just crumple on his closed lips and collect on the desk in front of him. This continued for the last ten minutes of class. Cookie Party Day ended, my second graders somberly left school, and I haven't seen them since.

Welp, next week should be fun.

 

This post is about a family. To protect their identity, well call them the "Stjernholms" and say they live near "Denver, Colorado."

You could say I have bad luck traveling with members of the Stjernholm family. Before I explain, I'll warn you this story might get rather lengthy. So if you don't want to hear about it, well, then I don't understand why you are still reading about it.

My first encounter with the Stjernholms was when though a man named Mike, pictured to the right. Mike Stjernholm is the one on top. He's been known to spontaneously break into fits of push ups or lunges, but would never hurt a fly.

Mike is affectionately known as "The Saint," and I met The Saint about 5 years ago while traveling. We went on a number of trips together that never went smoothly.

One time for example, Mike, myself, and three others decided to hike a mountain. Simple enough. We ended up detained by Malaysian immigration, and hours later Mike was inside a male flight attendant's house being pressured to join a local pornography ring. Without going into detail I'll just say that was the most normal part of the trip.

I learned many important things that trip, during our sleep deprived race to the top of Mt. Kinabalu. I learned the importance of planning mountain related activity, and I learned the importance of planning Stjernholm related activity.

When I learned Mike's brother, Matt, was also living in Korea, I knew I had to find him. Matt is a good friend, by which I mean I'd never met him before, but his last name enough convinced me the adventure would be worthwhile. 

So Matt and I got in touch, and began planning, something I'm terrible at. First we tried setting up a trip to Seoraksan National Park in northeastern Korea, but travel difficulties and a lack of vacation days killed the vision. Next, we failed a number of attempts to meet in larger cities, festivals, Et cetera. 

As months passed by,  it seemed I'd never meet Stjernholm version 2.0, until a few weekends opened up towards the end of September.

Matt came up with the good idea to head to Jirisan National Park, and four others agreed. Our group of six hikers was cut to five after a friend dropped out last minute. This friend starts every joke by saying "Ok everyone I have a joke to tell you. Are you ready. This is a joke." Maybe it's a good thing she couldn't make it. 

In order to traverse Jirisan, you need to sleep on the mountains and reserve cabin space exactly two weeks ahead of time. To the minute. 

At 10:00 a.m., two weeks in advance, the five of us logged onto the park website to make this happen. By 10:01 a.m., all of our computers were frozen and every single cabin had been booked. Man. Koreans are good at planning. I'm not. I may have mentioned that.

So yet again, Matt and I failed at meeting. I was ready to give up. Then I thought to myself, what would Mike Stjernholm do? Probably push ups. Or at least something related to not giving up. Ok, one more try.

The following week, again at exactly 10:00 a.m., we all met online and tried to find cabin space. This time we were on the Korean version of the website instead of the foreigner site. Not sure if it made a difference, but somehow  we snagged a reservation and the trip to Jirisan was on.

I told my mentor teacher, Kyu, about my plan to traverse the park, thinking he may have visited at some point.

After asking him if he was familiar with Jirisan, he replied "I know a little bit but not much." 

I probed to find out more:  "So a little bit, like you drove past it or know someone who went there?" Kyu said, "Well I been there about 15 times. Last time I went for five days by myself to decide whether or not to propose to my wife. Oh and I also should have died there one time. I almost fell off a cliff and slept in the rain because the cabin was full." 

You could say Kyu knows "a little bit" about Jirisan, and I was anxious to learn a little bit myself. But first I had to get there.

Our hike would be during "Chuseok", Korea's version of Thanksgiving, and while most Koreans don't travel much this particular weekend is a logistical travel nightmare. Still, I had two weeks to sort out the details and find a way to Suncheon, a town near Jirisan. All I had to do was make it to Suncheon by Saturday morning, easy task. Yeah not for me.

Knowing I would somehow struggle to find Suncheon, I began asking my school, every single day, to help me reserve a bus ticket. Every day they put it off, for almost a week and a half. With two days until Chuseok I still had no ticket, so I pestered a friend to navigate the Korean bus reservation website. Every bus to Suncheon was sold out through Saturday.

Defeated and facing the realization that I completely failed at meeting Stjernholm 2.0, I returned home and wrote a depressing email to Matt about my lack of transportation. He responded only with a blog about hitchhiking in Korea. What would Mike Stjernholm do? He might end up in a local pornography ring, but he wouldn't quit.

I began making signs to hold on the highway:


"I like your country please drive me somewhere"
"I NEED to get to Suncheon." 


The signs of course were in hangul, and "need" wasn't capitalized because Korean doesn't work that way. I made three or four versions of these signs and briefly considered buying a motorbike to drive to Jirisan myself, before falling asleep.

The next morning was the Thursday before our trip, and I bitterly informed my teachers all the bus tickets were sold out, and that my chance to see Jirisan was dismal. Their response was moving. 

All of the sudden, the same people who'd been ignoring me for weeks dropped all of their work and started helping me. There were three teachers on computers looking up every route to Jirisan possible while my Vice Principal was juggling schedules so I could take the next day off to travel. I think there were cell phone calls involved, and at one point our secretary mailed a package I'm assuming was related to helping me get to Jirisan.

The teacher-efforts resulted in a long shot route to Gwangyang, a city near Suncheon. I would have to wake up early on Friday and show up at an obscure no-reservation bus terminal in Daegu, 3 hours away, then wait in line hoping there was enough room for a final bus to Gwangyang.

A friend's birthday party had kept me out that Thursday night, and I woke up late Friday morning making it to Daegu hours after I should have. Armed with only a backpack and a piece of paper that looked like a treasure map, I found the obscure station. Luck was on my side for once, and I claimed one of the last seats for the two hour ride to Gwangyang. The aisles were lined with standing patrons who weren't so fortunate.

I met up with Matt and crashed in Gwangyang that night. Gwangyang is known for having a steel factory......moving along.

An early Saturday morning cab to "Gurye" on the west end of the park followed by a short bus ride put the five of us in the unlikely position of actually being inside Jirisan National Park. To make a very long story just moderately long, I'll summarize the days of hiking briefly.

Day 1: All of us underestimated the hike which ended up being about 6 hours and 15 kilometers. A nice couple gave me kimbap. The forecast for 0% chance of rain resulted in rain. Two people in our group were stranded after dark without headlamps. A woman gave us the chocolate bar pictured to the left.

Everyone finally made it to the Byeonksoryeong shelter somewhere in the neighborhood of 7 p.m., and after a quick meal lights were out within the hour.

Day 2: Kicked out of the shelter at 9 a.m., about 8.5 hours of hiking ensued over 17 km. By far the more difficult of the two days. The East side of the park is more beautiful and provides better views. Going downhill is overrated. I like grilled cheese sandwiches. The East face of Jirisan is also significantly steeper, if you ever hike across this park travel West to East. Two hikers from our crew took a shorter route home due to time restrictions. I am getting tired just thinking about this day.

To reach the summit it took 5 months of failed planning, 9 hours of traveling, and about 32 kilometers of hiking over 15 hours. But it was all worth it for the view from the top of Cheonwangbong peak.

Well not really, all we could see was clouds. Satisfying to reach the highest point of mainland South Korea nonetheless.