getting bombed in South Korea: more fun than you might imagine

What's going on in the conflict between North and South Korea, you ask....friends and family ask. "Are you scared?" With a working vocabulary of fifty words or less, it's difficult to gage authentic media sources. My cable tv news sources include CNN, China Crossover Network, BBC, and Australia Net. Whenever I turn on the news, it doesn't take more than five minutes to remind me of what a political hotspot I'm living in.....besides the BP oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico, and the market, the market and the market, and the Gaza Flotilla attack it always comes back to Doomsday in Korea.

If I were that worried about it, I would have long ago joined a survivalist group and be equipped for the worst. Maybe I'd be living my life in a bomb shelter, but I think all of that surviving would kill me more painfully than the alternatives.

The English speaking Koreans I know don't seem terribly concerned. People seem to see the whole thing as just another bipolar episode on the part of Kim Jong Il. Last week I hiked Moak mountain where his ancestors are said to be buried. Several people have said that because Jeollabuk-do is near to the Dear Leaders heart, in this part of South Korea we are especially safe. Many believe that we are only in danger when he dies and someone else takes over...just as crazy but without the Jeollabuk-do connection.

Enough about all of that depressing end of the world stuff...

It's so much fun to hang out with Koreans, they are hilarious though sometimes it gets a little weird. we've learned at what point to cut off the party with certain people. One of my friend's adult students started doing a strip tease in the nori-bang (karaoke place where you get your own room). After the strip tease her state quickly transformed. She was barely able to stand up and seemed ready to pass out on the couch right there in the noribang. When it was time to go we tried to get her safely into a taxi but she began vomiting. The first taxi that stopped sped away. A very fun lady but she can get a little out of control.

Another very fun guy to hang out with is an extremely traditional Korean in his late 20's. He was the first Korean I noticed turning his head away and covering his mouth to take a drink in front of people who are older or have some kind of higher status in the situation.. Teacher-Student....

The other night we were all laughing for ten minutes when one of the intoxicated adult students tried to unsucessfully lead us to a Makali drinking establishment (rice wine, tastes like a mixture between beer and wine, rhymes with broccolli). He said "follow me, i didn't alcohol tonight." Probably had to be there and hear the intonation for it to be as hilarious as it was in the moment. I wanted to print it on a bumper sticker.

The first thing any Korean usually asks you is how old you are because they need to know how to fit you into the Korean gramatical scheme in their heads. things got complicated one day when two of us teachers and I kept trying to insist that in the bar we are 'Friend' not 'Teacher.' One night, the traditional young Korean man walked us back to our hagwons' tenament and was ready to climb through the window. It was potentially an awkward aftermath; but he was very embarrassed. After that, we learned to leave 'the scheme' alone and that in certain company it is especially important to know when to say when.

There are drinking rules in Korea that one needs to be keen on....never pour your own drink...when someone older than you is pouring your drink, hold the glass with two hands...if you don't want to get completely hammered try to drink slowly in order to avoid having an empty glass because an empty glass is soon a full glass. And just a bit off topic...never eat rice with chopsticks when dining with someone older than you. Have some common sense and a little respect and use a spoon!

Still haven't spent much time in the two foreigner hangouts in town. I imagine there must be some interesting foreigners out there, somewhere....I'm not exactly dying from social isolation. I think it's going to be a while before I'm really jonsing to wobble about on the dance floor with a bunch of completely inebriated foreigners while a cover band plays 'Hotel California' and Journey's 'Small Town Girl.' For some reason, when I was in Guatemala when I found myself surrounded by foreigners singing Hotel California and Journey, it made me unreasonaby testy as well. I did not fly over the Gulf of Mexico or the Pacific Ocean to deal with that nonsense.

The last night at the foreigner bar, myself and the single other 'native English teacher' meet one single cool person who befriends me by asking "why do you hate so much?" He doesn't live in our town but he came to visit us this weekend. It was a very unhealthy but very fun Saturday. He said the day felt like a Korean style Ferris Bueller's day off. The drinking activities began with bottles of Hite in the convenience store and ended with Soju and Wakey Potion (think sake bomb) I learned that the mysterious energy drink in the brown bottle I've come to favor is actually a very unnatural green color. There were batting cages, pool halls and many places I sort of remember in between...We had him walk into the 'O Bar' to check and see if it's actually a 'lady' bar (as in prostitution establishment). The girls that work there are always delighted when we show up. They always give us free shots and ask us what music we want to hear. There never seem to be any other women in the place and besides the bar area the place has weird booths with curtains.

It was such a great weekend, but I think one of my favorite moments was when we were sitting on benches at the Jeonju university campus, each of us with a Hite in one hand and a Red Bu ll in the other, talking about who we used to be, before Korea....My friend, the other teacher at my hagwon is a former dental hygentist/lawyer. We were making fun of our new friend for of all things being an accountant

How? Why????

I woke up with a terrible hangover that seemed to give me special powers.... It all started when I decided maybe a little bit of tea/some caffeine would make my headache a little better. I put the tea pot on the stove and went online and proceeded to forget about it. Suddenly, it was feeling very muggy in my apartment and I wondered if the monsoon season was starting. I had no idea what the weather was like since earlier in the day when I performed the hangover olympic feat of walking down the street to pick up some pizza. I was getting kind of mad about the missing remote control needed to operate my air conditioner. My friend called to see if I wanted to walk to the store just after I realized what the problem was. As it began to rain, neither of us had an umbrella, I remarked that I feared that I had created the rainclouds in my apartment with the teapot...When we got to the Hi Mart and needed to go to the second level and I saw that the escalator next to the stair case was not moving I whined in jest oh man we have to walk all the way up there. The next thing we knew the very attentive salesman we didn't realize understood English pushed a button and gestured to the escalator...Wow. We wondered if we stood there and whined instead of walking down the stairs on the way back if they would maybe push a button and make it go the other direction even though now there were people going up...

My special powers were also working the other day on a different walk that ended up along the river near the Hanok village. We had Wednesday off for the Korean election day and thought we'd try to find this Buddhist temple marked by a large statue on the mountain. We'd been walking for about three hours and just as I was thinking damn I'm starving! out of nowhere appears a man on a bicycle and from out of a bag he takes two wrapped up ice cream sundae cones and hands us each one. We were unsure what was going on, if it was some kind of high pressure sales or what. Next thing we new he was gesturing towards a convenience store place with tables. He disappeared on his bicycle and the woman in the store directs us to sit down. We were n't sure if we owed any money for the ice cream or not. She began speaking to us in Korean and gesturing... we inferred that the man saw us walking for a long time and taking pictures and thought that we must be hot, hungry, and in need of a little rest. WOW! That was amazing!

(sorry I haven't been able to upload any more than three photos here. Chalkboard keeps giving me an error message, but I have hundreds of photos)

Today as we walked home in the rain, I wondered outloud Where is the Korean that pops up out of nowhere to hand us an umbrella? Seconds later, we are standing at the crosswalk whan a woman invites us to stand under her umbrella.

My worse fear about the future in South Korea is actually that my hagwon manager would resign. He's nothing like the nightmares I read about on the internet before coming to Korea.