Crashing into Cherry Blossom Trees...

The Heating is off and no longer necessary. I ride my scooter in leggings and no gloves. Every weekend there is a message to say “COME TO THE BEACH” and I have shocked at least a few Koreans with several barefoot showings. 

Never before have I truly known the meaning of spring like I do now. In fact, save for one little blossom tree at the bottom of the garden, when Spring came to South Africa there really wasn’t much of a change. Now, I am glad that I don’t have to deal with the ugly hopelessness that is the Korean winter at home but OH WOW the absolute joy and excitement that I have experienced while watching vile barren landscapes suddenly transform into an EXPLOSION of pink blossom trees and, after a few very short weeks of soft snowy petals scattering in the wind, the most heavenly GREEN has emerged from underneath, with brilliant coloured flowers lining the streets and thus, lining my heart.

Camping in a Korean Graveyard

Myself and 2 of my adventure buddies drove to Gyeongjiu where everyone goes to celebrate this mad blooming of the cherry blossoms. Thinking camping the night before the festival would be a vibe I asked my Supervisor about campsites but she seemed confused. “In Korea”, she said, “We just go to the lake. Then we put up… tent” What news! This elated me, not that I have a problem with just camping anywhere, but for it to be a legitimate cultural norm gave me that funny warm feeling that I feel quite often these days of “Oh I love Korea!” So we drove to Gyeongjiu the night before and went searching down some random farm roads to find a tiny path which we followed. This brought us into a little clearing with large grassy mounds which we know to be Korean graves. It was protected from the road, it was flat, I could see mountains and I don’t have an issue with sleeping near dead bodies (as long as I cannot smell them or see them) so the 3 of us huddled into our 2 man tent with 2 sleeping bags and spent an incredibly squashed and EXTREMELY chilly night. It wasn’t a picnic but I was camping in a Korean graveyard with 2 of my favourite people and it was Spring! 

So the cherry blossom festival wasn’t really a festival just a multitude of people and traffic going to one small town to see a mad load of cherry blossom trees. We tried to find some sort of festivities but I think the point was to rent a bicycle and cycle around the traffic while trying not to be killed by the bumper to bumper traffic. Luckily that is why the cool kids drive scooters; we rode through the traffic and under the blossoms and took in the mountains that had simply come alive with colour. After a long journey past lakes and mountains and hills and tiny towns surrounded by a ring of mountains, we arrived back in our city and rolled onto the beach where rugby, frisbee and handstanding activities continued into the evening.  

And so much sporting fun has exploded into action. I was climbing three times a week, and now I have added some squash, soccer and beach festivities to the mix. Exercise is something that the more you get the more you want and so on an energetic morning I woke up with the drive for a 2 hour cycle to this really pretty beach named Chilpo outside of Pohang (where I live). I was listening to my Ipod and happily humming along, glorying in the beautiful day and noticing how exquisitely green this forest below the road looked, when I glanced back at the ground to see the lovely smooth concrete had turned into a mesh of mounds and I was skidding along on the edge and finally tumbling into an almighty heap, for a second I was one with my bicycle and then I was lying there bloodying the pavement with a very twisted looking bicycle. The cars were zooming past (I wasn’t really on a cycling road methinks) and in telling myself repeatedly I was ok I jumped over the road barrier and down a hill so I could sit down and cry in peace without feeling the zoom of very fast cars go unsympathetically by. I viewed a bit of the damage. The bicycle handle bars looked like a backward cycling circus bike and my body looked like the makings of a good zombie movie. I was now next to the forest I had previously been appreciating and in my pain I started laughing. How glorious it is sometimes to be able to feel physical pain, to go for a huge tumble on a busy road and to be able to go and sit in the sun with blood pouring down and to realize that actually in fact, I will be alright, in fact, I AM alright and finally, I am ALIVE. In that time I felt my whole body just beating that strong beat of life. I cycled painfully back home, boasted about my new wounds on facebook (don’t we all love attention?) and headed off to work. The best place to be taken care of is definitely a kindergarten and concerned Korean motherly types put plasters on my face and antiseptic all over my mutualized arm.

My shoulder pain after the affair was no picnic and some painkillers later and forceful recommendations from various friends I thought it may be fun to see what the hospital has to say. With a sister who is a doctor and parents who tell me to go to bed or phone my sister when I’m sick I don’t get to go to doctors very often. And since I was younger I had always dreamed of being sick enough to go to the hospital. All that attention! How fabulous. I prayed and prayed for a tonsillitis that would take me to jelly and ice-cream and tonsil removal and when the doctor finally said “Next time you have tonsillitis you should get them removed” I never got tonsillitis again.

So I took myself to this most coveted place and had the most wonderful of times. The doctor examined me, the x-ray lady x-rayed me and stretched out my painful shoulder then the doctor told me I was fine and I should get some physiotherapy and the physiotherapist then proceeded to massage me, and then I lay down with deep heat cooling my shoulder and a heat pad heating it up, he returned and said “now, shock therapy, you know?” I freaked out a little bit as he put lots of weird things on my body and turned the shock on. Such a weird sensation but I lay there and got a text from my boss saying I didn’t have to come in in the morning if I was at the hospital and after being giving a  lot of colourful drugs and a ridiculously low bill I sauntered off home. Happy that I only had to work 3 hours on this sunny Friday.

The Bridge of No Return

Very very tall North Korean Flag Pole

So there are certain things one is supposed to do when you go to a country. Like seeing the Vatican if you are in Rome. And I suppose that’s the DMZ in Korea. Not that it’s the same thing but it’s the same sort of “You have to”. So as luck would have it, a dear friend of mine found a friend in the military and this military man said we could come to his military tour of the DMZ for free. I like free stuff so we concurred and soon we were standing at an American military base at 5.30 in the morning, herded into a bus with a very barky military man doing role call and on our way across the country to see this thing that I pretty much “had” to see. Well the bus was long and 5 hours later we stopped in Seoul at the American military base. After getting 2 sets of ID checked we were allowed in as military guests and we entered mini America within Korea. Gone were multitudes of Koreans and the ever present smell of fish or some other strange food and incomprehensible signs. There were American children on bicycles with their American parents enjoying a lazy Sunday, parks and buildings and shops and American fast food and, FAT PEOPLE. We ate a bunch of American/Mexican food, had some awkward conversations with military men, gaped at the fat people and got rejected from the military store because we didn’t have ration cards and our hopes of cheap cheese and wine were mutilated to the ground.

Stone Soldier

We returned to the bus with another barking military role call and another hour and a half found us in the Demilitared Zone. Another military man began his introduction to the tour, beginning his speech at such a pace I could not hear a word for a few sentences and after he slowed down a touch he used so many acronyms that I continued to be rather lost. We took photos of some sights where various scuffles with North Koreans had happened, and listened to a few insults about North Koreans, got told repeatedly to not make any unfavourable gestures towards the watching Koreans and to only take photos in certain directions. We were taken to a room where both the North Koreans and the South Koreans can use and we saw and photographed the stone soldiers, people who had to stand so still in a ready-to-fight position that I had to keep looking at the veins on their hands to really believe they were actually real people.  We took photos of the “Bridge of No Return” where North and South Korea’s prisoners of war were told that if they crossed it they could never return into the country they were coming from.  We took photos of the landscape and a very very tall flagpole in the distance as well as the anti-reception tower that cuts North Korea off from the rest of the world.

At the end of the journey we had a rather strange and expedition down a very, very long tunnel that I suppose takes you into North Korea. It was wet and we got cool hard hats but we seemed to be walking for ages waiting for the light at the end of it but instead a dead end saying “do not go further!” which was impossible in it being a dead end. I raced a military guy back up the tunnel and won which pleased me :) It was a long and steep and as it was the only exercise I had had all day besides eating it was welcome yet seemed a smidgeon pointless. It was an educational day, being with military men all with identical haircuts, going to a military base within Korea and thinking about how bizarre it is that this place of conflict is now opened as a tourist place.  I found it somewhat incomprehensible why we are invited to make this war a spectacle. It’s an extremely sad place and seemed portrayed in a “look at those North Koreans, what idiots” sort of way. I understand the tour is given by American soldiers who live there and deal with a constant war zone but I felt so strange about the whole thing, and really, me being there, taking pictures of such an ugly thing, of the stone soldiers who had to stand completely still in a rigid position during the entire tour and of a place that is STILL a war zone. It seemed wrong but I hope that in the future I will be able to see these countries become one country or at least become two amicable countries and then perhaps, I will be truly glad that I went on this day. 

Beach Fun

With incredibly mixed feelings I got back on the bus towards Seoul. I had arranged to see some friends in Seoul that evening, go to the second hand English bookstore, maybe buy some underwear that would actually fit me and ultimately, buy some cheese. However, this was when the American military brought out their favouite word “liability”. I asked the main military guy if I could leave them in Seoul but they said that because they took me to the DMZ, they have to take me back to Pohang. It was with a bit more than a frustrated sigh that I sat on that bus for a further 6 hours. Watching really loud obnoxious action movies and just dreaming of being out of the bus and in freedom. I was angry that they took up a whole Saturday of my time, how precious are these weekends I have! But then I realized, it wasn’t necessarily that the day was really, really bad, it was more that lately my days have been really really good, and I was just stamping my foot like a spoilt child “Why can’t I have fun ALL the time???”

Snowboarding in the forest... you don't go far, but man is it pretty

And fun all the time is how life normally is. Teaching itself of course is up and down and upside down and there is so much more to say, of classes and children and all the things Koreans say and other adventures but that will have to be another day and another time for now it is time to go back (after a week of shoulder recovery) to all the fun things that this fabulous spring has been offering to me.

Crying children and the laughter that follows...

Spring has sprung!

The grass is ris!

(Well the grass has not risen but it will, waiting for those cherry blossoms to brighten up the world!)

Ah there is so much happening. All the time. And I have acquired so many fabulous toys in the last month to keep me very entertained. Like a keyboard and a guitar and a scooter and a fancy I pod touch. Having money that I can spend on anything, (besides plane tickets and worries about impending unemployment), is such a good feeling. Working hard during a month to be rewarded with quite a comfortable life I must say, may sound boring, but after the last year of consistently having to eat whatever food I could scrape together, having to figure out creative ways to get anywhere, and consistently worrying if I’ll be able to make enough money- I am so pleased to have some peace of mind. I wonder if finally these are boring or un-daring or un-brave sentiments but how can I argue with that glorious thing that, is - peace of mind.

I had a birthday and turned the very-close-to-25 age of 24. But no matter, I worried enough about turning 23, I think I’ll deal with another random age for another year. I just remember being so mean to my sister when she turned 25, and well soon it will be my turn. I guess all these things come around. I went snowboarding for my birthday and my new friends cooked me an amazing curry dinner with WINE and CHEESE (unheard of luxuries in Korea) and an ANIMAL cake!!! I spent my day pretty sad in fact, mostly just missing people I loved on my birthday but when I arrived to that glorious celebration of 4 on a bedroom floor I realized again, how many reasons I have to be consistently grateful.

And my scooter has brought many new sights and sounds. I can now go anywhere at any time and I joined a meditation group which brought me to be introduced to this fabulously beautiful huge temple on the other side of the city. I don’t know if anything I do can be termed “meditation” as emptying my mind is like trying to removing all the concrete from the roads of the world, though I am trying to chip it away bit by bit. I try to concentrate on breathing and stilling my mind and then I think about breathing or about stilling my mind and then I think I’m thinking nothing but I’m thinking about thinking nothing and then I forget what I’m trying to do and I’m lost in memories of people I love or places I want to see again and things I will see and 5 minutes later I only remember what I am there for. Though being in the temple is such a beautiful thing in itself, old people and young people come to pray and they bow again and again - a full body now , so fully erect and then down, nose touching the ground and up again (my students complain about how much tiring bowing they have to do at holy holidays) and then the chanting begins. One starts and another joins and then another and the chants come together in this ethereal whirl of human voices that I get wholly lost in.

So I spend my week climbing 3 times a week (becoming a very strong monster of a woman) and trying to learn how to not think about how the other side of my life is very entrenched in a bunch of “listen and repeat” and “Stop talking”. Amidst parties and fun weekend trips as well as a board game center called the fun café and dreaming about the summer I don’t really find much time to write about what is going on in this funny country.

I am lucky in my job. It’s not actually a school as such it’s an afterschool program of extra English for rich students. Most Korean children will go to normal school and then go to a couple of these hagwons for maths, science, English, taekwondo and sometimes ping-pong. 9 year olds are encouraged to spend all their time studying, and often when we have “weekend share time” all they say is “study” (Or watch tv, play computer games and occasionally do something exciting like go to the supermarket.) Incidentally, here is also a study hagwon where they go to simply “study”.

The first day I got to my school on the 2^nd of January my supervisor told me “oh yes you have kindergarten class” and ushered me into a room of 7 crazed children. Apparently not all kindergarteners cry all the time but this class had all sorts of things going on with it. My first 40 minutes with them I tried all sorts of things from simple sharing time to a few games I learnt in Italy. After a flurry of, “Teacher! I don’t like”, I kind of let havoc ensue until the dreadful 40 minutes were over. The next day a similar thing happened though this time we had gym class and everyone thought everyone else was cheating and there was a whole class of crying kindergarteners looking at me to determine who was cheating and to stop the tears. Still again I tried to make things right with fun arts and crafts to hear a volley of “Teacher! Too hard!” Again, I tried with a seemingly innocent game where everyone was a different fruit or vegetable and we threw the ball at each other. Though one child started crying because he was a carrot and bunnies eat carrots and then the carrot dies. Never mind that humans eat strawberries but that kind of logic was too advanced even for my brain at the time and the game, yet again, dissolved in more tears.

Still jet lagged, I started having crazed dreams about these children, always crying, always coming to me and saying “Teacher, I don’t like” and seeing that dreaded clock, ticking so determinedly slowly. Until an email from a friend where she said in response to my complaints, “Oh I love little children, I just sing songs and let them colour.” Well that was a little life changing. Give a bunch of 6 year olds things to colour and you have a quiet happy class. It was bliss, no one was shouting, no one was punching each other, EVERYONE “liked”. Finally there I was, with 7 happy kindergarteners, quiet, controlled, all colouring and they were so focused that I started colouring too. Oh but this caused quite a stir because “Teacher! Mario is not pink! He’s red and white! And teacher! This is red Angry bird!” Oh I got in so much trouble colouring in everything wrong but I told them that anything in life could be any colour. Prince, the leader of this class, (the hardest child to keep happy and thus the most important child to keep happy) would tell the other children their colouring was all wrong and only occasionally could they remember that all things could be any colour, and if I didn’t step in in time more tears would be dropping on that already tear-soaked carpet.

Oh but we learn, I learnt to deal with them, of course in the end I learnt to love them and how to deal with different instances and how to (sometimes) get them in a line and also how to have lessons that they actually enjoy though unfortunately my class became unintentionally “colouring class” and soon every time they saw me they would say “teacher colouring!”. And as soon as this easy rhythm was firmly established of course, the year changed and a new set of challenges arrived.

So the new Korean school year begins in March and they have given me a class of 2 two year olds. TWO YEAR OLDS. I didn’t believe this to be possible but Korean’s go by a different age system. Basically when you are born you are 1 years old by default and you turn 2 years old at Korean New Year which is around the 20^th of January. Thus as of right now I am 25 and I will be 25 until Jan 20^th or so when I turn 26 and I don’t change my age on my birthday. Bearing this in mind my little screaming tribe of “4 year olds” are in fact somewhere between 2 and 3 years of age. So on the Monday I entered this class to find toddling Koreans, 2 boys and a crying girl and I played blocks and peekaboo while their teacher laughed and I tried to make them say hello. Day 1= fail.

Day 2 went in a similar fashion but Day 3 brought a greater havoc I have ever known. I am not only expected to have an “English class” with toddlers but apparently I have to do it alone some days of the week. So here I was chucked in a class with the 2 boys and the crying girl (normally attached full body to the teacher). The girl had now attached herself full body to Amy, a new Korean teacher, but she wouldn’t go near me amidst her crying and screaming. We tried to amuse her with toys and silly things but happiness was not welcome to her agonized mind. Then Amy said “Mary, I umm… I need to go to the toilet” and we looked at the impossible situation with this child and I said to Amy “She may scream, but she won’t die, so you are just going to have to run.” The child realized that Amy was going for the disentangle, and she wrestled like I have never seen any 2 year old wrestle, Amy, overcome by her strength and resolve looked as if she was to give in when I shouted “Amy! Run!” and she threw the child’s arms away and ran out the door. The child tried to make for the door but her grief choked her up the extent that she could no longer walk and she lay helpless on the floor with all the combined weight of the world’s pain and abandonment upon her. It was at this point, while I picked up the child who no longer had the resolve to cast me off that I started laughing at the situation. Here I am in this weird country across the world from my home with three 2 year olds watching a wrestling match of a grief stricken baby and a Korean young adult and I wondered, really, how did my life come to this? I have always been adamant and loud spoken about never teaching little children, let alone babies, and here I am, dealing with the precise reason why I did not want to teach these sub-human beings in the first place. How did this happen? Really?

Honestly it is only half an hour a day that brings me to these monsters and otherwise I have different kind of monsters to deal with. My bitchy group of 13 year olds has almost brought ME to tears more than a couple of times. Being a teacher is, it really is, really hard. You have to keep your cool all the time. You have to pretend to be angry at times but when you actually let yourself get angry or get affected you have lost it. And if you expect children to care that you are sick or hungry or just unhappy you will be disappointed. You have to soldier through everything you are going through and continue and teach and keep your head and never ever get emotionally involved. I would say I’m a very relaxed teacher, I don’t like rudeness and people talking in class but if that can be kept calmly under control there won’t be any problems. I have a flaring temper though and there’s a moment where repeated rudeness lights my spark and I am that screaming teacher I never wanted to be. I was sick last Thursday and on Thursdays and Tuesdays I teach at another school a 40 minute drive away in another town. For the most part I really like my children there, I teach 7 classes in a row for 1 hour each so it’s a bit of a long haul and I try many mind games to not think about class 2 as “class 2” because then it can make me crazy thinking about how far class 7 is away. Though, on Thursday I was sick and my body was aching with that flu ache and my head was in spinning. So my temper was shorter than normal and I snapped at a few children and let all the classes out early until class 5 when a student was sleeping on her desk and refused to sit up. I was joking to the other kids about throwing an eraser at her head when I finally got truly mad by her rudeness and threw the eraser across the room and screamed a long tirade, which of course they didn’t understand but they got the gist.

I don’t necessarily regret losing my temper like that, children need to know they cannot get away with rudeness and Jenna will never sleep on her desk again though I do wish in those moments that I did not have to such strong recollections of sitting in school watching various teachers have these kind of freak outs and wonder what the hell was wrong with them (and if they are this unhappy, WHY are they teachers?)

Teaching is a mystery, I don’t know what to do half the time but we are meant to know. Behavior control was something they did not seem able to teach us in university, they always said “you will find your own style” and well I’m finding it, but it’s not easy, to keep measured, keep calm, keep focused, only pretend to be angry and never let them get to you. When sometimes you just want to scream “Why are you so selfish???” (and yes I know my parents are laughing at me right now, it all comes back to you doesn’t it?)

Oh but they can be fun and funny and they give me sweets and make some ridiculous English errors and finally, they improve, which really, is so exciting. And now spring is springing, and there is a new hope of easier beach days in the air. And after much dark, I now walk home from school with the sunset.

Life, No Peace. Only Adventure . (to Hong Kong and back)

Today I will have been in the rollicking rolling country for next to a month. I have learnt a lot except any conversational Korean (it extends to “hello, thank you and how much?”). Well looking around myself I realize how blessed I really have been in this place. As said before, Korea is a shock to the system and it’s busy and dirty and those stretching landscapes of space I still haven’t seen but people have been kind. So kind.

Visas are always a nightmare; especially as a South African I have been told (more than a few times) that in fact” you can’t go there because of where you were born.” Well this weekend was one of the first times in my life (besides when I watched my American friend forced to give the Mozambiquan border police R1000) that my passport gave me something. As I am South African I cannot go to Japan to procure me Korean visa and thus I was bought a ticket to the crazed monster of a city that is Hong Kong. Not that I don’t want to go to Japan, but it is down the road whereas Hong Kong is somewhere I never will go otherwise. (Strange blessings with the guise of closed doors. Fabulous) So on Wednesday I took a bus then a plane at 11pm to be deposited into Hong Kong at the glorious hour of 12.45. Now a week before I had remembered that an Australian I had met two and half years before in Italy told me he was in Hong kong these days. After a facebook message or two he told me that not only would he meet up with me for a drink in Hong Kong but I HAD TO stay at his house and he would come find me at the airport.

So at the hour of 1am, Seth and his Cantonese girlfriend Sheks met me at the airport to take something like an hour bus ride back to his apartment (thus their mission was something like 3hours for a near stranger) where I was lead to a happy mattress which opened up its arms to my tired eyes. The next morning I woke to the sound of my alarm but immediately dozed off only to wake up and look at the time to see 12 ‘o clock. I rocketed out of bed, grabbed my passport and hoody and ran out the door, down the street and onto the subway. My whole reason for being in the country was to get my visa and I was meant to be at the visa office at 9! Feeling grateful that I had had enough experience on a subway to figure out what is going on (yes it’s not that hard but I can be brainless often enough) I looked around and thought “WOW Hong kong hello” there were people, and people and people, I couldn’t get the first train, or the second or the third as there wasn’t enough space for more people to squish next to more people. At this point I had reached half-awake freak out mode until I snuck a peak at someone’s watch. It said 8.30am. Knowing that this was not right I did some other watch snooping. 8.35am. This definitely accounted for the people traffic and what exhilarated relief. I was not going to botch up my one responsibility that I was sent there for.

Sometime later I handed in my visa documents and helped myself to a generous R30 breakfast and coffee from a restaurant. As I sat there, calmly eating breakfast I looked out the giant windows at the bright sky, I was so warm I wish I could have taken my shoes. There was no litter on the streets, the sun was out, the sky was blue and I finally there was English, EVERYWHERE.

One thing one must know about Hong Kong, is that it is no horizontal city. Now that could be said about Seoul perhaps too and the rest of Korean cities to an extent. There are buildings on buildings as space is precious and you may walk up 7 floors before getting to your desired shop or restaurant. But Hong Kong is different, it is like a smog filled ocean, you walk through the subway into a mall, up a floor and an escalator then to a business district and more restaurants and the mall connects to the next mall and the next street. No longer are we walking on the ground but we are up down and around and everything is so connected, you go through a mall which connects you to a staircase which goes down a corridor and out a door, into a door, past some shops up an escalator and you are in your apartment. I followed my hosts around amazed at the connectedness of it all, hazy mind following my feet as I took in sights and smells and the ever changing crowds of walking people, walking after and around more walking people.

In Hong Kong people live in minuscule apartments. Mine in Korea is small, theirs are unbreathable. The space is enough for a single bed and one can walk next to the bed. People don’t have kitchens, there is no space for a kitchen. Even the Hong Kong harbor grows smaller every year as more land for more people becomes the need they concrete the sparkling water so more people can walk on more ground and buy more things. Living in tiny holes in the wall their life is outside where people rush around and get more money just to spend more money and then get more money to spend some more. In this, Hong Kong opens up yet another dialogue in my head about my greatest fear, that life can be described as simply an accumulation of getting things, money to get things and then more money to get more things. Circular Boring. Mindless. Madness.

Now I had some time to relax and Seth’s girlfriend decided to show me around with her friend. How blessed to have some real Cantonese people showing me their city. We went to this amazing restaurant that served us all sorts of things from Chinese omelets to sugary sweet yet savory buns. They laughed at my chopstick skill (something I thought I was getting quite impressive at) and expounded on the ways of the Chinese language. Now, I know that perhaps everyone knows this but me (well I do know now) but I had no idea that Chinese was only a written language. That a Cantonese person living in Hong Kong cannot communicate with someone who speaks Mandarin but if they needed to they could communicate perfectly through writing to each other as Chinese is the standardized written language. Neither did I know that Chinese had no alphabet and that it was simply a flow of ideas and every idea has their own symbol. This blew my mind. I asked them how they read out loud in school as the written words to not correspond to phonetics at all and the answer I got was that they simply constantly translate while they read. And later when we went to a bookshop I saw them reading and laughing together. But they weren’t even reading as I know it! These ways of language completely blew my mind and I felt this thick burning jealousy for the Chinese as something so natural to them was so unfathomable to me.

And then on to half price sushi (with orange fish eggs on them- not my favourite) and on to Chinese huge bowls of noodle soup (by huge bowl, think of a big bowl and then make it bigger and then bigger and then fill it with lots of food and eat it by yourself) and on to electronic madness. We went to the place in Hong Kong where they sell cellphone after cellphone after cellphone and every toy imaginable and computers and climbing clips (probably not the ones that’ll save you from death) and batteries (a pack for R4) and and. Madness.. tiring. Madness.

That night I was given a gift. I was taken past the culture hall and I expressed an interest in watching the Hong Kong Philharmonic Orchestra. Let’s be honest first before I say I absolutely loved it. Orchestra’s definitely bring back days of being 9 years old and told to keep quiet AND still while I watched another performance of my sisters playing in orchestras and trying desperately to count the pages of the conductor, hoping at this page turn it was actually the last. There were definitely moments when this contempt came back strongly BUT it was magnificent. The musicians were in such perfect synch and harmony together, the amount of violins were many and their bows looking like a machine, every up bow, every down bow, the same. The concert pianist was delightful, the flute players haunting, the man with the harp so peculiar. (How long I did think about the social implications of being a man with a harp and I wanted to know his story and what lead him there)

And then onto a bus and back to the airport. The Hong Kong airport confused me, it was 1am, I was tired, everyone was tired and I waited for my plane almost breaking down into tears when I went to the wrong terminal twice. Next to my seat was a coupon for a free starbucks. I got some free hot chocolate. What luck! I got on the plane, people were talking but I fell asleep and woke in Busan at 6am (South Coast of Korea) and found a quiet seat to rest my head and woke up at 10am. Then took a subway to the beach and waited a few minutes until Tiffany and my new friend Heather arrived (New friend at that moment that is). We then trawled the streets until we found a love motel named the WOW motel(these are exactly what they sound like but they are inexpensive) and we got a huge bed to share, mirrors on the ceiling and a HUMONGOUS bath (big enough to fit 3 people)

Well we grabbed some Soju (Korean rice spirit thing) and beer and went to the beach and enjoyed ah, the pure prettiness of the day, and the beginning of the Chinese New Year (why we were free of work). It was not cold, it was sunny, people were playing on the beach (bundled up playing) and we talked we laughed and we went home and had a colossal jacuzzi bath and giggled some more. Sometime later we found ourselves in a restaurant and then the plan was to go out later (they had straightened my hair and put makeup on me in the way that girl’s love to take me on as a project) but exhaustedly the plan failed and I went to sleep and woke up at the glorious hour of 9am.

We spent the next day on the tourist scene and Heather tour guided us to a Buddhist temple on the beach. Wow beauty, real, true Korean beauty. This temple sits on the blue ocean and looks out over pretty rocks and freedom. Space. Much needed space seeped into my body. There was a huge golden Buddha smiling happily, and weird little Buddha dolls with a huge dragon and happy pig statues grinning delightfully. And we continued on our “cultural” day to the modern art museum of Busan

Well what can anyone say about modern art? Except that well, it’s a bit sad and unamazing. Unless you are a sucker for concept or something. Perhaps I am not deep enough but we wondered around in a kind of stupor thinking “really? What? Why” and not in the good way. We entered a dark stall which was a sort of disco party, and then some circular curtains where we listened to people’s laughter (rather frightening) and some screens with 3 people of different ages dancing in unison and well... But until I read the blurb about what it was I kind of found something in it. Or I just liked the sentiments. As far as I understood it was about the state of man today, how everyone in their search for happiness in different ways never finds peace, only the seeking of adventure. In this constant money grabbing, working life happiness is seen as connected to economic success. This, in the context of Korea is very relevant. Korea has one of the highest (if not THE highest) suicide rates because no longer do people have to worry about simply eating but about being more successful than the next person. If you don’t make a success of yourself in this highly competitive society you are nothing and thus money and physical beauty is rated highly when it comes to true happiness.

I liked the sentiment. We moved on. More bubbles and bath time and a silly useless sappy movie that I loved. A rather disappointing supper (too little yum salad) followed by a bar and some new friends. We went to a noraebang which is where people go to karaoke, found out heather has a sing star voice while I croaked along and after some more friends later we watched a friend win 300 dollars at a casino and returned after fireworks on the beach at 6am. Glorious.

Well now I am back here. And there is so much more to talk about. How much time I have not had to talk about school and my student’s and about how I now go climbing 3 times a week, have met some beautiful people and perhaps I’m not overly ecstatic about Korea but I am loving how I am suddenly here and not really anywhere else. Life cannot be exciting and beautiful and easy all the time. My student’s do a fantastic job at not paying attention and being insanely annoying. And the Kindergarteners complain and cry and hit each other and say selfish thing. And there are so many buildings. And it’s a useless cold. But yes. I am so blessed for how my first month has unfolded.

Hello Korea! How can life be unfun with a panda hat ?

New adventures normally start in a whirl. This happens that happens, you are trying to find your feet and your feet are running away at some colossal speed beneath you with your body only barely hanging on. This adventure whirl was no different.

I suppose I figured that, even though Koreans spoke Korean and also had a different alphabet from me, there are so many English teachers here that everyone would know how to speak English. In fact my worry was that when I arrived I would have nothing to teach them as they had been learning the language since babyhood and would know the rules of English better than I could ever dream of.

Well, of course, I was wrong. Korea is the weirdest, strangest, out of my world country I have ever been to. At least when traveling north of South Africa and being the only white face for miles I can at least recognise what kind of food is being sold on the street. Meat, potatoes, koeksisters. It all makes sense. Here it is an abyss of the unknown.

I would love to expound on all they do for pages but I will attempt a little account of what has happened in the last 11 days and a few impressions. SO many impressions, there are so many things that people can do differently, and I am so used to my way that I have always presumed it to be the only way when really, ways in which to do things are seemingly endless.

I arrived in Korea at 4.30pm to be greeted by a man with a sign with my name on it. I’ve always wanted someone to greet me at an airport with fancy sign but it wasn’t as glamorous as it sounds. He couldn’t speak English, and after some hand signals I realized I was to sit tight for 2 hours until my bus came. So I waited looking around at all the faces around me, at the signs in funny writing, at the weird sport they were playing on the tv. I then took a bus to Pohang (where I now live) and got in at midnight where my Supervisor met me and took me to my apartment (a room with a kitchen and bathroom attached) and she said “See you on Monday”. It was Wednesday and I was alone in a strange country with no plan and no understanding of anything around me.

So I wrote a to do list for the next day that read: Kettle

Pot

Internet

Phone

Food

Bin

Hairbrush

Well I got a kettle and a pot and some bananas. I walked out of my house and found a book shop that said “book shop” happily in English. So I went inside to find ALL the English books that I figured was advertised by the sign being in English. Well these English books didn’t actually exist but the books store man seemed to take a liking to me and leant me his computer and then pointed me to the supermarket across the road which he followed me to and further, followed me down all the aisles. All I could find that looked somewhat normal was some bananas, a weird roll thing in a packet (loaf of bread? Does that exist?) and a mountain dew. He happily paid for my purchases and I went back to his shop to eat a banana with him and then continued on my way.

So with food kind of out of the way, I entered an electronic store and asked for a phone. Again no one spoke English so the store man kindly opened a google translate page on his computer and we typed a pretty hilarious conversation on google chat. Well. It doesn’t work. We said all sorts of things about phone and contract and how I didn’t want a contract but he kept on harping about a contract. And we kept on nodding and smiling and when I realized nothing was going to happen without my Korean resident card he said “I have no foreign friend. Will you be my friend?” This I actually understood and I agreed but luckily I wasn’t lying when I said I had no phone number.

So, tired of being misunderstood, I decided it was time to leave Pohang and go back to Seoul which I had come from 2 nights before and spend time with a friend that I had there and we could speak English and lament about how weird and confusing the world was together (which is way more fun than doing it alone). So after many public phones not working and phone numbers wrongly written down I jumped on a bus back to Seoul and found some friendly faces on the other side (after figuring out the mad and very intricate subway system of Seoul). I was SO happy to speak English again, my friend Shaun who I have known since early high school took me to a market which was full of Korean food (the smell of fish strong and rather off-putting everywhere and cutesy Korean clothes like animal hats and amazing fun socks and people shouting and music and smells and just madness. I was kind of hungry but buying food was so hard as I didn’t recognize what people were selling and when I DID realize what it was I wasn’t so enticed(things like dried squid chips and cabbage and deepfried sausage on a stick)

I found a motel that night and the next day Shaun and I made our way to a ski resort for a little frolic in the slopes. The snow was terrible, it was all machine made and on the other side of the mountain it was all brown and devoid of snow. We were skiing on ice and I was frightened to try anything too fancy (as fancy as I can be) but yes, of course, it was fun. 2 days in Korea and already I’m snowboarding! Although it wasn’t really what I call snowboarding. There were only 3 runs really and between the runs there was no snow so it was difficult to get too much into the authenticity of the environment. But I love a new experience and I loved the, once again, out of my normal world experience.

So after the resort was closed we decided to summon the courage to eat some Korean food and on the way to the restaurant we saw a group of people sitting around a cake digging into it with chopsticks. Well, this was a really strange sight but on thinking about it this idea really struck me as so intelligent- I mean you normally get too big a slice of cake, or too little a slice of cake resulting in being overfull or underfed. How intelligent, eating exactly the amount of cake that is right for you in a social environment (I am definitely doing this on my birthday). So we went on to our own supper where we just pointed at some unknown Korean word which resulted in some rice and a weird tofu soup thing (watery Korean soup, not my favourite) and some weird cabbage that looks like it’s drenched in blood called gimchi. Apparently this is something Koreans eat with every meal and sometimes I ask my students more often than necessary what they have for breakfast because they DO say gimchi and rice (for breakfast? Really?)

The next night was New years and we met up with some friends of Shaun in this party place in Seoul which is full of American soldiers. I was so excited when I saw “cheese fries” on the menu and ordered that only to realize that, once again, cheese isn’t really cheese in America, it is plastic gooey liquid cheese and though disappointing I was happy to eat something that made some sort of sense to me. After a few drinks and revelry we went on to some other place on the subway and had an amazing Korean meal. We were with two people who have been Korea for a while and thus know what is safe to ingest and they bought a whole bunch of communal food (salads and stews and soups) for 5 people that came to the equivalent of 28 dollars. Madly cheap for the feast we had. I wish I could describe how weird the food is but I don’t even know what I’m eating most of the time. Anyway we then went onwards to a mad Korean bar where we danced into the new year and at 6am we left and I made my way to my bus back to Pohang at 7am and fell asleep and woke up, 5 hours later in Pohang (they have reclining seats and foot rests and the journey only costs R140.)

Well after all this fun I hadn’t really had time to think of the gravity of my situation. That I had just committed to living in a strange country for a year, I don’t have any friends in my town and I wasn’t so sure if I even liked this place. I spent Sunday in a huge downward spiral of thinking I had possibly made the worst flash decision in my life and the repercussions that follow are a lot longer than I have ever had to deal with before.

So I woke up the next day and entered my school expecting about a week of training but instead I was given my schedule and told I was teaching in 30 minutes. After a rather depressing New Year’s Day this news almost brought me to tears. But after a bit of a firm talking to myself about just being brave and that it’s just teaching children, I went into my classes unprepared bu it turned out alright.However, the next day, I hurtled back down to outer freak out mode as on Tuesday’s I go to another school 30 minutes away and have 7 hours straight conversation class. When I got home at 9pm I was trying to figure out ways to get out of my contract and then I had to, once again tell myself that I need to give things a chance before I go into sincere panic mode.

Not only was teaching a deep fear but also, where I live is quite ugly. There are lots filled with litter, the buildings reach sky high and all the grass is yellow and the trees are bare. But I am assured that this is simply the heart of winter and it gets better .For when I go on my journey to the other school I teach at we drive past some rather large pretty mountain-hill things and along a very beautiful ocean.

However, as the week continued I realized that in fact things are going to be ok. My coworker, Tiffany, invited me to dinner on Friday and after a meal of sitting on cushions on the floor and sharing a big pan filled with yummy stew (they cook it right on your table in front of you) with lots of interesting nutty cabbagey salady things on the side. And afterwards we went on to an English club where Koreans and English people come together to talk English. It was actually really fun, we have discussion topics and afterwards it turns into a bit of party with wine and some sort of dancing.

So my weekend continued in a social aspect with discovering amazingly that a friend of mine from Cape Town is in Pohang right now and we had a great catch up session and ate some waffles and icecream from a street vendor and I bought some amazing fluffy socks with coloufrul hearts on them and a fluffy top with a sheep on it so in fact I AM a sheep when I wear it. There are so many amazing fun clothes to buy here and the socks are to die for. I have actually landed in the center of sock heaven.

So with a bit of social fun and realizing that teaching is actually quite fun and I will be ok I am quite happy to be here. I’m still rather culture shocked and over awed by everything but I’m so excited to learn and experience more Asian madness as the days go by.