Hmmm... An Update You Say?

Sorry I've been so lazy about the blog! Life in Canada just seems so ridiculously normal. Right now I'm just working, and that's been going great so far. Cutting ice with chainsaws and chisels and other "cool" stuff like that. It's quite apt that my favourite time of year is winter and now I'm spending all day in a freezer!

See? I'm already done updating! Geez, my life is boring now. But I had a really horrible nightmare though! In the dream it was my wedding day. I'm already in the dress (which looked really nice on me by the way; I think I dreamt myself a little thinner!), but there's so much left to do. I'm freaking out about having to clean the house for guests but this problem is nothing compared to the fact that my wedding is to be held in a bar (the Bomber, where I worked during university! Yeeeccch!). For whatever reason it's my job to clear out a shitload of drunken students so that I can have my wedding. By this time I've turned into the bride from hell; yelling at everyone and freaking out as my beautiful wedding dress gets dirtier and dirtier. I still have a vivid image of a dirty ring around my hem and screaming at it in frustration. As I woke up I was ordering the catering staff to kick out any leftover students. I can't even remember who the groom was anymore since he was never actually there. What a jerk.

What this dream means (I think):
Both of my sisters are married and newly pregnant (Marcia's due in March, Tracy in April)!! I think my brain's also telling me I should never get married because I'll turn into a psycho!

And Stu, I update my blog just as much as YOU do!

In My Defense

This is for whomever wrote me the comment about selling out to "the man" (ALEXX!!!).

Awwww... why you gotta be so mean???

So today, just over two weeks after getting back to Canada I had my first day working for a company called "Ice Culture" (iceculture.com). I'm going to be working on "suspensions" (suspending objects in ice) and hopefully carving, which would mean spending all day in a freezer using a chainsaw to make sculptures or whatever else would be needed.

This is a life size ice car! Fun! And yeah, it sucks that I'm not going to get to do my cross-Canada trip yet, but I really wanted the job. Alex, if you want to fight me, then I will e-mail my address over here and see you in a couple of days. Hopefully you won't be feeling too jet-lagged when I pummel you!

My New Baby Boy

Not much going on over here in Canada, I've got to admit. Just eating lots of food and driving my new HOT car. Here are some pictures, just for Stu.

I know what you're thinking; where did Cathy get this sweet ride? This fierce machine I recently purchased is a 1999 Hyundai Accent (Korea Phighting!!!). His name is Pabo, because as I drove him home from the dealership the "check engine" light came on.

GASP! Pabo from another, equally magnificent angle. I know Stu's jealous by now. He's thinking "Bloody ripa! Why didn't I buy myself a Hyundai instead of my crappy BMW motorcycle???"

Ohhh, beautiful!! A shot of the rear end for all the fetishists out there (the parents homestead in the background). Do you think Pabo's going to make it all the way across Canada?

In other news, my "round Canada" trip is on hold while I wait to hear back about a job. My mother oh-so-subtly recommended that I find myself gainful employment and stop being such a worthless layabout so I applied on a whim to a company that makes ice sculptures (apparently the number one ice sculpture place in the world, shipping sculptures to foreign countries like Africa, Australia, Thailand etc. Cool!). I got an interview and went in, and now I want the damn job!!

I'm also missing my Korea friends! Why do you all have to be so far away?

Back in Canada!!

So yesterday at about 9:30pm I arrived in Toronto! The plane rides really sucked but it was totally worth it! Good to get back to some fresh air. It's nice and cool over here, which is so very excellent. For those who still read this thing every now and then, I'm going to continue the blog for my roadtrip around Canada to keep everyone updated. Thanks for reading about my Korean Adventures!

Beijing 2

Okay, basically this is going to be all of the other places I went.

This was part of a Chinese Traditional Opera that I saw at Laoshe Teahouse. All of the female roles were played by men, which made for some very interesting singing. At least once a day I would have a random person come up to me and ask where I was from. Then they'd ask to take me to a teahouse to have tea and practise their English. This of course was code for "Hey! I'm going to take you to a tea place that I work for. You'll end up spending about thirty bucks on a cup of "traditional tea" you sucker!" So I was always telling people that I was just about to meet up with some friends. The one I went to was nice and cheap since I went with this girl I met at my hostel from Rome who's Chinese was amazing (weird story: she'd been told by someone that someday China would be the biggest world power, so she's devoted a ridiculous amount of her time to learning Mandarin; is this brilliant or is she crazy? I'm not really sure).

"Snack Street" on Wangfujing. Selling the weirdest food on a stick you can find anywhere: scorpions, starfish, squid, baby lobsters, silkworm, mystery meats and other very random things.

The entrance to the Forbidden city. The most crowded place to be in all of Beijing I'm sure. It was big and old and under a massive amount of renovation to prepare for the 2008 Olympics.

Ming Tombs. This is the gate of life and death. We could only exit through it to enter the land of the living. Fun!
The Temple of Heaven. I got completely lost trying to find it and eventually had to hire a rickshaw to get there, which was interesting as well. This was on my last day in Beijing so I was already all "templed out", but it was still quite beautiful.

Beijing

Ni Hao! I've already talked about my China trip a few times, so this is just so I can put some photos up. I'll start with the Great Wall since that was my favourite part of the trip. First I took a 10km hike from Jinshangling to Simitai. Some pictures:went with a tour group comprised of a bunch of hardcore Swedish hikers who were filming everything. It was really rainy and foggy, so apart from Mongolian souvenir sellers, we were the only ones there.This part of the wall was about three hours away from Beijing and therefore much less popular and falling into ruin, which was a lot of fun. All of the stairs were crumbly and broken, making the steep climbs that much more interesting!It was the ultimate stairmaster! A few days later I went to the Badaling section which is much closer to Beijing and infinitely more touristy. But this time it was a gorgeous day.
The Badaling great wall was so very crowded, and had obviously been renovated and kept up several times, but still quite entertaining. Everyone scrambling for the perfect "On The Great Wall" shot (myself included). Lot's of dodging cameras and stopping so that people could take pictures.So here's my requisite shot, looking like a jerk as usual. The Badaling Great Wall was also the site of my worst bathroom experience in my entire life. without going into too much detail; I was feeling a little vomitus, so I rushed to the bathroom (which the tour guide had warned us was terrible). First I had to pay to get in, which seemed pretty wrong, but I shrugged off. Then I realized there was no toilet paper and there was a little old man, conveniently selling tissues. Brutal! TP in hand I went into the bathroom. On a hot, sunny and incredibly humid day I was immediately punched in the face by a horrible smell, which didn't help to make my fluish feelings dissipate! Then I realized that every single stall was a squatter and most of the stalls didn't even have doors. So there were all these old Chinese ladies squatting all over the place without a care in the world in a bathroom that most likely hadn't been cleaned in a month; have I gone too far into detail?

Templed Out

So today I went to have a look at the Temple of Heaven. Meh. My brain realizes that it's an interesting temple with a long history (blah blah blah), but I'm just templed out. I've seen too many!! No more!

In other news; feeling fine (since I've decided that Chinese food doesn't like me), I've got one more full day here then it's back to Korea to say goodbye to everyone!

Left My DNA on the Great Wall of China!! Cool!!

That's right, I fell down! Not all that surprising is it?

So yesterday I signed up for a tour to the great wall that involved a 10km walk from the Jinshinaling section to the Simitai section of the great wall. It's one of the less popular sections of the wall because it's so far from Beijing, so myself and the rest of the tour group were pretty much the only people there. It definitely wasn't what I was expecting! There were a few Mongolians on the wall trying to sell souvenirs (or waiting for me to pass out from the heat so they could steal my Canadian passport!), but beyond that it wasn't too much of a tourist trap at all! The wall is absolutely huge, and goes up and down mountains in an incredibly picturesque way! Shortly after the hike had begun though, it started to rain a little bit, so within five minutes of walking along the wall I tripped and slidd down a set of wet and very steep steps. Then the thunder and lightning began, which was scary and exhilarating since I was walking around above mountain peaks and through towers, feeling the reverberations from the nearby lightning. Very cool! Then it started pouring, so much so that there was water running down the steps as I walked, which made things a little slow, but definitely more interesting!

So today I'm taking a "reading and sitting around day" since I'm a little cut up/bruised and tired. Last night one of my dorm-mates opened the window in the night (AND the screen) letting in a little bastard mosquito that bit my face and even now my left eye is really swollen and grotesque looking, which has only added to me not wanting to do anything today!

Killin' Time

Today I walked through the Forbidden City and T'iannamen (sp?) Square, so I'm just taking a nice long indoor sitting-down break at the moment. The Forbidden City was pretty cool; I think the thing that most shocked and awed me was the mass amounts of humanity surrounding me at all times. SO MANY PEOPLE.



Funny/strange story: Yesterday I went to the Art Museum of China which was absolutely beautiful, and has a bunch of European Baroque style paintings in an exhibition right now (Tintoretto, Goya etc.). As I was entering that section of the gallery, there was a man yelling at one of the gallery workers (you know, one of those people who stands there and makes sure no one uses flash photography etc.). I was a little shocked and confused, wondering what he could possibly be upset about. Were the paintings not to his liking?). Then I hear yelling and screaming and the sound of people slapping eachother! I couldn't see what was going on since a crowd gathered in the span of five seconds, but it was very weird. I usually think of galleries as a quiet contemplative place, not a potential for violent outbursts!

I Made It!

Just a note to all the loyal readers (all two of you!) that I'm alive and well in Beijing! I'll be back to the RofK on the 12th. More later...

Holy Shit

Today is my last class EVER and tomorrow I'm going to China!! Holy shit!

Candy Teacher Has A Vision

Last night I had a dream that I was in China. For whatever reason I was also in university again and doing some sort of crazy art project for an old professor (Robert, a CRAAAAZY dude). I had to go to this huge department store and get supplies. This place was a big huge confusing Chinese maze. I pay for my purchases and walk off, then much too late I realize that my purse is just plain gone. I start panicking since I have no idea where I am or how to get back to the store where I must have left my purse. Of course in my purse I have my credit card, passport, beloved ipod, directions in Mandarin so that I can get back to my hotel, and all of my cash so I'm freaking out. Eventually I just had to wake myself up because I was getting nowhere. So today I'm going to buy myself one of those "money/passport belts" instead of carrying everything around a purse.

Summer Camps, Beijing and Country-Name-Dropping

Okay, the last couple of weeks have been a little crazy! We're now working through the second week of camps, which have been really awesome; in fact the perfect way to end my teaching year over here! The kids have been enthusiastic and entertaining. We just had a "Hokey Pokey" dance competition before sending them home for the day. So cute! Mrs. Kim's sister brought in her grade one aged daughter and she's not shy about dancing at the front of the class!

This Friday is my last day of classes, then on Saturday I'll be heading out to the Incheon Airport near Seoul and flying to CHINA!!! I couldn't find anyone who's going to be going to Beijing at the same time (most of the expats are either back to Canada for a visit or already off on their travels since school ended a couple of weeks ago), so it's going to be a solo mission, which I'm pretty excited/scared about!

Places on the agenda:

- The Great Wall of China!! Dude! There are several "sites" along the great wall to see, so I plan to go a few times.

- The Forbidden City (not really forbidden, actually a HUGE tourist attraction)

- The Temple of Heaven

- T'iannamen Square (spelling subject to complete wrongness)

- Shopping at Wangfujin, silk street etc. Oh, there will be lots of shopping

- Beijing Contemporary Art Gallery

- Mausoleum of Mao Zedong

- Random wandering and getting completely lost

- Sweating my ass off and evaporating into a dry shrivelled version of myself.

When I found out that I'd be travelling alone I had a moment's thought that maybe I should just skip it, then kicked myself in the head! What if I never come back to Asia and miss my chance to see the Great Wall?? That would be just plain ridiculous! After my week of sweating it out (apparently it's going to be ridiculously HOT) in Beijing, I will fly back to Korea to hang out for a week before heading back to Canada! Less than three weeks from now I'll be back in Ontario. It's a little surreal at this point.

I've really enjoyed my year over here, but at all costs I will try not to talk about it so much that people back home want to kill me. There's nothing worse than having one of those friends that is constantly Country-Name-Dropping. "You think that bathroom is dirty?? When I was climbing Mt. Kilimanjaro-- that's in Africa-- I didn't even have toilet paper, and the mosquitos were the size of my head... etc. etc." I will try to only talk about Korea when asked directly and keep it brief!

Now, for your enjoymeant, some summer camp pictures! Well, I guess to be honest it's for my enjoyment. I'm sure no one else will care!

This is from the first week of summer camp. The kids pretended they were chefs on a cooking show and made themselves sandwiches. Korean sandwich combinations are a little scary for me-- egg with ham and cheese and strawberry jam. Seriously! But when I tried to introduce olives into sandwiches, the kids acted like I was crazy; they'd laugh and point when I'd pop one in my mouth.

The ladies of summer camp one. This was after we'd finished our "flea market" class and everyone had all of the fake American dollars. These kids are obsessed with money. Everyone had to fill out an introduction form and under "hobbies" five or six of them wrote "I like money". Little punks.

The second week group. The rest of these pictures will be the kids doing the hokey pokey. It was hilarious.
And I'm spent.

To Honour Naju's Spirit

School's out for the summer, so all that's left is two weeks of summer camps in the English Town. So today we played some games, did some drawings, ate lunch and sent them on their way. Summer camp is awesome. After summer camps I'll be heading out to Beijing for a week to see some sights (if anyone has any tips, they are very welcome!). Then back to Korea for just over a week until I move back to Canada! Geez! To honour Naju's spirit, I will now post some pictures of Naju's top regional food (well, the restaurant)! Delicious Gomtang!!
Yep, that's a cow coming out of a bowl! Delicious!

Boryeong Mud Prevents Wrinkles!! Let's Have a Festival!!

Daaaammmnn I'm in a pissy mood today. Of course this is due to the sun, lack of sleep and Soju that I experienced over the weekend. On Saturday morning a big gang of people met up in Mokpo at 8am to meet our own personal bus (Thanks to Crystal and Miji for the arrangements!) that would take us to the Boryeong Mud Festival. The morning started off the right way in the bus with jello shots and much conversation on the way. When we got there, (Boryeong's about three hours north of Mokpo along the coast) I was astonished to find a perfect, smog-free sunny day. Maybe the first one EVER in Korea: very rarely are there clear days without a haze in the distance. When we got to the mudfest it was already in full swing with a ridiculous amount of people partaking in the fun. The beach was huge and beautiful but absolutely packed with people. We quickly found a place to get nice and muddy, and after that I had a sort of anti-climactic feeling. So... I got myself into a mudfight, but what do I do for the rest of the day? At this point I started wondering why this Mud Fest was even started (in 1998). I looked it up today and apparently the mud in this area is special, so the citizens of Boryeong wanted to share it with everyone by having them smear it all over eachother (prevents wrinkles!). Even though the mud frenzy wore off quickly, there was still fun to be had because big crowds equals people watching! There were so many big buff foreign guys (probably GI's from Seoul) without shirts; people in speedos to giggle at; men with pink parasols to protect them from the sun (I'm not lying); Korean ladies wearing high-heel flip-flops; and cute little kids playing in the sand and mud. At night we camped out on the beach watching fireworks and drinking, then all went to our "room" which was very big, but there were about fifteen of us packed in like muddy, drunken sardines. Good times! My face is wrinkle free, but very lobster-like at the moment.
The sleeping quarters. I woke up first, so I took a picture of everyone trying to sleep off the booze!These sharks were in a tank sitting in front of a restaurant! The bigger one is at least four feet long! Can you imagine ordering a shark at a restaurant and grilling it at your table??

General Pandemonium

No word of a lie, at least five students cried today (no jerks, it wasn't after I made a face at them). We've been working our way through the younger students, and they are really cute, but can get VERY upset over the whole "stamp reward" procedure! Today's class was very... high energy. I pulled apart several fights, yelled at kids who were screaming and chasing each other around the English Town, a boy got a question wrong on the quiz and went and cried in a corner; general pandemonium. As of today there are only five more classes of English Town students, two weeks of summer camp, then I'll never be in the English Town again. Holy crap!

Last night me, my co-teachers, the principal, a vp and a few other teachers went out for dinner at Venezia. Even though I can't have a conversation with my principal I found myself getting all teary-eyed when he was telling me that he appreciated my work etc. (translated through Mrs. Lee). I'm really going to miss my school!! Even the evil ringleader and his cronies!!

Sidenote: Our extra class with Elementary school students has gotten waaay bigger, so we split the group into two, which was much more bearable! And I also discovered for the first time that the evil ringleader (Gwang-sun) is much smarter than he ever appeared! Smaller classes are genius. In the past he would spend the entire time asking to go to the bathroom or get a drink of water, completely unwilling to speak English EVER. Then on Monday after we'd cut the classes in half I was attempting a ghetto form of Bingo. I got all of the students to name some countries as I wrote them on the board. Then I had them draw a four by four grid and write in any of the countries I'd mentioned. Then I called out random countries and the first student to get a line was victorious. And Gwang-sun actually did the exercise and WON!!! Then at the end of class he actually said goodbye to me (albeit in Korean). Geeez! If I had another five years to teach I might actually win this kid over.

Shuddering Even Now

Ahhhh, Seoul. A fun place to visit, but I could NEVER live there. So on Saturday morning I woke up at five thirty so I could catch the train out of Naju, arriving at Yongsan Station around ten to meet up with Laurel. My mission for the weekend was to buy lots of fun touristy items to give to people back home. So first we went to Dongdaemun, then Insadong, then Namdaemun, then finally Hongdae. Yeesh. It was so freaking hot as well; every chance we got we'd stop in a shop that had some sweet sweet air-con! We went out for some dinner at a restaurant called "Carne Station", which was interesting. For whatever reason there was about forty foreigners all having a get-together there and I had my first reverse culture shock moment! There were just so many of them, they were all drunk and loud and acting obnoxious. The girls were all dressed so very skanky. I've just become so accustomed to small town Korea that I was unaccountably annoyed after seeing all those foreigners. Don't get me wrong, it was nice seeing some diversity, but these people were OBNOXIOUS. The restaurant had an open bar, which would could probably account for them terrorizing the staff.

From there we went in search of a bar called "Tin Pan" (maybe?) that is supposed to be really good. All was well when we were just having a seat people watching. When we decided to get on the over-crowded dance floor, things went a little down hill. This guy came up to me and started flirting, which was a little uncomfortable (he was like thirty-five and more than a little creepy). It started off normally; where are you from? Are you a teacher? etc. etc. Then he decides that it's a good idea to divulge to me that he had slept with a couple of Korean girls but he didn't find them to his liking so he'd "gone back to white girls" all the while stroking my back and holding my hand as I tried to back away.

EWEWWWWWWWWWWW!!! YEEEEECCCCHHHHH!! Why?? Why?? Why would he think that I would want to know??? *shuddering even now* A fellow teacher had a theory about foreign guys in Korea, and I'm starting to believe it's true:

The Characteristics of Foreign Men who move to Korea:
1. Moved here with their girlfriend.
2. Moved to Korea so they could find themselves a Korean girlfriend/wife.
3. Moved to Korea to be bizarre creeps in another country.
(Note: this is a generalization! I know some guys who are none of these things, but for the most part it holds true)

The man I met was a former number two, moving on to a number three. Shortly after our conversation I motioned to Laurel that I was frightened and she informed myself and random creepy guy that we were meeting some friends and had to go. Boys reading this, never try to woo a girl by informing her that she's your race of choice. You may think it, but NEVER say it.

Okay, enough bitching about men! Here are some pictures that summed up this visit to Seoul nicely:

Me, (sporting a burn from shopping all day) in front of the "Luxury Ho Bar". This was one of several "Ho Bars" in the area, and apparently they're just regular bars with unfortunate names.

While walking through Insadong Laurel was just walking along looking at tourist items as an old homeless man walked by slapping her on the arm and laughing. I think he was crazy... and drunk... We were thinking that this might make a good t-shirt slogan so I wrote it down on a napkin and took a picture to preserve the memory. I'm fully aware of how weird I am. (Ruler is Laurel. Her name can be really hard to pronounce due to all the r's and l's, so that is usually what her students end up calling her.)

Veeeerrry Genius!

There are ridiculous amounts of billboards made in Korea. They cover every bit of commercial property and are used for even the most inane sort of advertising. Until now! When I saw this outside one of my co-teachers apartments, I had to take a picture.
Very genius.

Hajiiiiiimmmmaaaa!! (Stop That!)

I hate waiting for my elevator, so every morning I descend the twelve flights of stairs to get out of my building. As I was stepping down to the fifth floor there was an unmistakeable scent of urine. Awesome. Very rarely do people use stairs here, so they also seem to be a receptacle for cigarette butts, empty soju bottles and somewhere to dump pots of water (That's what I choose to believe. Why else would there be a puddle of water in the 10th floor stairwell?) .

I've also decided that my next door neighbours are the Korean version of "rednecks".
- Three or four children, all toddlers. Maybe they practice "natural family planning"?
- The mom is always yelling at her kids in the hallway, in a very public way.
- Instead of wheel-less trucks on cement blocks, all of the kids bikes and tricycles are lying around in the hall/balcony that I walk past to get to my apartment.
- There's a big tupperware container full of fermenting kimchi that's been sitting in the hallway for months. So that's kimchi that must get really HOT during the day. Sometimes I try not to breathe as I walk past.
- They are very nice though! The parents always say hi when the see me, and their kids are really cute (even though they like to play with my electronic door lock. They'll press buttons and wait for me to come out and point my finger at them saying "hajimmmmaaaa!!!". Then they laugh.)

In other news, no classes for the next couple of days since exams are coming again. So I've been preparing power points for the upcoming summer camp. Power point is my friend.

What a Wando-ful Hurricane it Was!

Today Mrs. Lee was checking out my blog and got me in trouble for not writing in it recently, so here I am!

So... this weekend: Stu decided it was a good idea to have a big party in Wando to celebrate the full moon and the birth of Canada, and I was all for it. Yes, it may be monsoon season, but up until now I hadn't experienced anything "monsoon-like"; just a bit of rain and a lot of humidity. So about a group of twenty crazy waygooks decided to pitch some tents near the beach. Saturday afternoon was beautiful! Nice and warm, and even a bit of sun. Once the sun had gone down though, it got a little cold and rainy, but that wasn't a big deal either. In the middle of the night, the wind really began to pick up. It sounded and felt like something was shaking the tent insessantly. I thought to myself "okay, that kind of sucks, but okay". Then the torrential downpour began. I was in a tent with Monique and Alex, and this tent wasn't so waterproof, so I was just trying to stay away from the edges. Then the thunder and lightning began, once striking so close that I FELT the reverberations (yeah... we were all in tents set up around the only trees in the area as well...). The rain was still pounding down soaking our tent so when the lightning let up, we took refuge in a big public restroom. Of course as I was running through the dark in the rain to the restroom I fell down twice, once into a huge puddle. Magnificent. Monique followed shortly thereafter and lost her sandal to the very same puddle I had fallen in! At this point sleep was certainly not an option and the sun had begun to rise somewhere behind the dreary dreary clouds. At about 5:30am we left the bathroom to start cleaning up our stuff and assess the damage. Someones motorcycle had fallen into the mud and broken the clutch, a big tent Stu had erected had fallen down, peoples tents were flooded and broken, and most heinous of all, I couldn't find my Korean won boxers (I'd left them to dry on a bench the previous evening and I thought they'd blown away. I later found them in my backpack). So we left camp at shortly after six (pouring rain still) to catch a bus back to our respective homes.

The guy wearing the Canada hat umbrella is just a random guy. Monique and I were on the beach and he came up to us asking to take pictures, and we gave him a bit of a glare, said no and walked away. Then as we were all sitting around drinking and chatting he came over again, telling us he was an "off duty coast guard", and wanting everyone's picture. So someone gave him a beer and we posed for some pictures.

All in all, a fun weekend! Thanks for the organization (and the curry!) Stu! A true adventure/disaster (there is no such thing as an adventure if there's no disaster!)!

Cathy's "Oh Crap I Fell Down Again!" Count: 2 678 895 and gaining everyday.