Crane Game

In Canada, you can sometimes find crane games at arcades, where you use the crane to pick up a stuffed animal in the hopes of winning it.  In Korea, they have the same thing, but much much cooler.  You can find these crane games outside of tons of convenience stores, and the prizes in them can range from lame key chains, to pretty sweet stuff like mp3 players and electric razors.  For one dollar, you can get six attempts at picking up a prize. Each prize is held inside a little wire box/cage and you need to pick up that box with the crane.  They will often put weights inside the boxes to make them more difficult to pick up.

I've been almost addicted to these things since we arrived.  Not to the point where I'm wasting tons of money on them, but it is hard for me to pass on without seeing what prizes are inside and giving it a try.  Initially, I couldn't win anything.  It seemed like some of the cranes were really weak and couldn't pick up the prizes very well.  For the longest time, I wasn't able to win anything.  Kristin won on one of her first tries, so I set a goal of winning something before the end of the year.  

Great news, I managed to achieve my goal as I won a nice ashtray at a convenience store just beside my apartment.  This happened to be the same place Kristin won her prize.  We came to the conclusion that this crane game was the shit, and the crane itself was clearly the most powerful in our neighborhood.  Obviously, if its the best, you have to keep playing it.  I've been back a couple times in the last week, and I own that crane now.  I've since won two more times, increasing my win total to 3.  Last night I won a nice utility knife, and today during a little break from school, I won a little box of candles and incense.  Ya, I know that sounds pretty lame, but you shouldn't judge me on the prizes I've won, but instead on my amazing ability to have three wins in the past week.  When you win, you need to bring the prize inside to the store owner so they can take it out of the little cage.  I'm certain that if I keep up this pace, I won't be allowed to play on that machine anymore.  Now that my goal has been easily surpassed, my new goal is to win 5 more times before New Years.  Surely amongst all these future wins will be a prize that will actually be worth a bit of money.

Annoyances and Random Thoughts

I tried to post a picture of the Dunkin Donuts with my last post, but I couldn't really figure out how to do it.  If your really bored though, you can look at it under my photos in my profile on this site, I think?

Speaking of Dunkin Donuts, I've been there many times since the incident and no one at the store ever brought it up.  I stopped by there though with a guy from my school, who happens to be Korean, and sure enough, the manager starts chatting it up with him and I'm certain that its about the window because no one really chats it up with the DD workers.  Turns out, it cost $80 to replace the window, and since no one that worked in the store could speak much English, they never told me.  Now they want me to pay $40 to replace it.  At first I thought I should pay because it did happen because I'm an idiot, but I decided against it.  I've come to my senses and think that they obviously should have had warning signs that there could be glass panes in your walking path while in the store.  If I was in the US, and was cut by that glass, I would have been a millionaire.

Now on to some of my annoyances.  In Canada, most people don't hock up loogies in public, and if they do, most are pretty discrete about it.  Not here, everyone does it, and loud and proud.  You'll even hear old women do it, its really gross.  Bodily noises don't seem to be a big concern here in general.  The old women will also burp loudly in public.  I've actually let a few farts slip out in class, and my students don't even laugh.  I beginning to think that elderly women tend to do whatever the hell they want.  Kristin and I were waiting for a cab one day, and when the cab pulled up, just as we were about to get in, a 70 year old woman stole the cab from us.  After that display, I'm not so nice to these old women.  They aren't kind, and its apparent they don't give a shit about me.

I'm told that the rules of the road are the same here as they are in Canada, but you'd never believe it if you were here for a day.  It's illegal to run a red light, but everyone does it.  They just treat them as a stop sign and proceed if no one is coming.  I nearly shit my pants when my cab driver was running them every chance he got.  Motorcycles and scooters, which there are tons of, will drive on the sidewalk.  It's also illegal, but everyone does it. You could be on a sidewalk that is packed full of people, and yet there will still be people driving there scooters.  I haven't been hit by one yet, but I know its gonna happen.  Korea has been rated as having the most auto accidents in the world, and its pretty obvious why.  They do whatever they want and you rarely see any police cars driving around, and even if you do, they never pull anyone over for any of this stuff.

I think its acceptable for couples to have outfits that look good together/don't clash, but never is it OK to match outfits.  This looks somewhat cute when people have twins and their 5 years old and under, but not when your 25 years old.  Couples will wear matching sweaters and ball caps (always MLB ones) or they'll having matching track suits, or matching plaid shirts.  Its retarded.  I don't know if there is a store where you can buy these matching outfits, or maybe the girl is wearing guys clothes, or vice versa.  Either way, whoever the hell is selling these things should be shot.  Its fuckin ridiculous looking.

Dunkin Donuts

I haven't been writing as much as I planned.  Also, I'm probably going to put up a lot of random thoughts on here, and events might not actually be in the order they happened.  You probably don't care, but yah. 

Last night, after I finished my last class, I was in the teachers lounge getting ready to go home.  A middle aged man stopped by my work, and asked to have a cover letter of his proofread by an english teacher.  I'm not excatly the best at english myself but one of the korean teachers asked me to do it, so I assumed that I was probably better than them, so I agreed to do it.  After I read the first paragraph, it was clear that the man who wrote this clearly had better writing skills than me (not that it takes much to be better than me) and I hardly needed to edit anything.  The man was a leading engineer with Samsung, and had a Ph. D in chemical engineering and led a number of major studies and tests on a wide range of things such as hydrogen fuel cell advancement and a ton of other things that were way over my head.   Afer looking at the cover letter for about 5 minutes, I brought it out to him and he thanked me for looking at it.  He tried to give my boss $5 for their efforts, but my boss refused it.  He gave it to me, and after trying to say no, I eventually accepted.  By accident, I kind of mumbled "This is the best money I've made since Ive been here."  Probably not a great thing to say right in front of my boss.  I said I would buy everyone bagels in the morning so it would look like I was putting the money towards everyone.  Turns out this was a bad idea.

The next morning, I go to Dunkin Donuts and buy four bagels. In Korea, all of the donuts, cookies, bagels, etc. are placed in the middle of the store in a display case and you grab a tray and get what you want and bring them to the cashier.  The display cases have glass doors, that open outwards and can slide back into the racks (similar to a door on a tv cabinet).  I hope that makes sense, but probably not. For some odd reason, it takes them nearly 10-15 minutes to toast the bagels and put cream cheese on them.  I have no idea how this is possible, unless they are toasting them with a lighter.   Anyways, as I'm waiting what seems like an eternity for my bagels, I think about how someone could walk into one of the glass doors if someone left them open/didn't push them back into the cabinet.  I think about how the donuts would all have glass on them, and my mind wanders for a good while.  Finally, my bagels are ready and the worker tells me that I get a free coffee with every bagel.  I only get one, because I didn't think I could carry four cups of coffee plus the bagels to work, due to my clumsiness.  She gives me coupons for the free coffees instead. As I walk towards the door, I notice that the lid on my coffee is not on properly, so I try to adjust it.  You probably have a good idea of what's about to happen now.  Sure enough, I'm not looking where I'm going and walk into one of the glass doors that somone left open.   I might have avoided it if there was something on the glass door like a sticker, at least something to catch my eye.  It twists back on the hinges, I try to grab it, I spill half of my coffee on myself, and the door falls to the ground and shatters.  I stand there looking like a complete moron.  Everyone in the store stares at me, but no one says a word.   At this point, the only brightside to the whole thing is that I didnt take all of the free coffees.  I say I'm sorry to the workers and offer to clean up the mess, they say no (I think thats what they said; they wouldn't give me the broom), possibly because they figured I would break something else.  I go to grab some tissues to clean up, and one of the workers offers me some free coffees, but I turn them down.  I just want to get the hell out of the store and go to work.  I told them I was sorry and I would come back tomorrow.  I don't know if they understood anything that I said.  I'm a little nervous about returning to the store, but I have a bunch of free coffee coupons now so I can't waste those. 

At the end of the day, and looking back over all of the events that led up to this situation, it clearly wasn't my fault.  The man who asked me to proofread his cover letter is partially at fault.  If he didn't give me the money, I wouldn't have got the damn bagels and I wouldn't have broke a glass door.  Or maybe, if the lid was placed on the cup properly, or someone would have closed the door.  At most, I'm 25% at fault.  Good news though, and a lovely ending to this story....everyone at work got to have a bagel.

Food and Rain

As you can imagine, there are definitely a number of differences in culture, and many problems can come up when you know very little of the language.  First off, I probably could have found my way home the other night if I knew Korean and could explain something to the cab drivers.  Instead, I was useless and turned into a long distance walker for one night.  I initially thought that eating in restaurants would be a problem, but most of the places have pictures in their menus, so you just point to something and hope its good.  For the most part, everything I've had has been pretty good, so this plan has worked out well. 

However, there are certainly some exceptions.  We have a cook at our school, who makes food everyday for lunch.  This allows me to try a lot of things before I try them in restaurants.  There are noodles here that look like rigatoni (long, hollow and narrow noodles), but they aren't hollow.   They come in a red sauce, that looks like spaghetti sauce.   The cook at school makes them, and I think they're great.  Most of the dishes here are pretty spicy, but nothing I can't handle.  Kristin and I decide to get a large portion of these noodles at a food court, assuming they will be good.  Kristin eats about 5 food noodles, I might have had a few more then that, and both of us were burning up.  I quickly looked like a tomato.  I felt like shit for a good while afterwards.  It certainly didn't taste like tomato sauce, and I later find out that its actually red pepper sauce.  Its not always that spicy but since I have no idea how to ask if something is spicy, I'm just going to avoid the damn things for a good while.  My first rule of life here is to understand that red sauce is definitely not spaghetti sauce and if I want to avoid a ring of fire, avoid it.

Apparently its rainy season here, something to do with typhoons (same as hurricanes).  Meaning it rains a shitload,  almost everyday it seems.  My first day of work it was pouring outside, so I'm forced buy an umbrella.  I think this may have actually been my first umbrella purchase of my life.   Days that start out sunny, soon turn to rain. Luckily, almost every store sells umbrellas, so when I get caught in the rain, I just buy a new one.  If its raining, its pretty damn hard to spot someone without an umbrella.  Everyone appears to be afraid of the rain. I guess that includes me because somehow I turned into a wimp and need to buy one for my two minute walk home after work when I forgot mine.  After one week, Kristin and I have three umbrellas.  I'm on pace to have about 150 umbrellas by the time I return to Canada. 

First couple days of class, and one big adventure

My first day of school was pretty basic, I mainly shadowed the other teachers to get a feel of how the classes were taught, and a little bit of how the curriculum was structured.  The school is run by McGraw-Hill. Although the text and additional reading material for the students is great, the structure that our school uses is pretty confusing, and not what is recommended.  However, the school is new, and I'm sure it'll take a while to work out all the kinks and allow everything to run smoothly.  I taught my first class and it was pretty easy.  Pretty sure I'm a pro already.  No education and no experience equals a sweet teacher.  My boss apparently tells the other teachers that she thinks I'm pretty cool, so that's a good first impression. Before I leave work though, I get them to write down my address to give to the cab drivers so I can find my way home.

Before I came to Korea, I was in contact with Brian Mann, who was leaving to go back to Canada a few days after I arrive.  After a little email tag, we arrange to meet at Suwon Station.  I haven't seen much of the city yet, so I have no idea how big it is, and figure that meeting at this place won't be overly difficult.  I decide that since it's only day two in the country, that attempting to figure out the bus schedule may be too much for me at this point, so I take a cab.  Before I leave, I get an alarm clock because I have no way of waking up in the morning without one.  I assume we'll be drinking and attempting to get up without one could be a problem.  I get it at HomePlus, a huge store that has a supermarket, appliances, and clothing.  Its huge, 5 floors.  Following a ten minute cab ride, I arrive at Suwon Station, the only subway station in my city.  I didn't expect the subway station to also be a huge shopping mall, that's 5 floors and packed with people.  Before I left, Brian told me to meet him at the top of the stairs by the escalators, or something along those lines, and if I had trouble to call his girlfriends phone number.  Seems pretty straightforward right?  Well, first off, I get to the front entrance of the place, and there are two big staircases and some escalators, right place? Nope.  Brian is no where in sight. I go into the mall, and of course, there are lots of escalators, so I move around the mall hoping to find a tall, scrawny white man.  No luck. 

I move onto plan B, call Brian's girlfriend.  You figure that in a huge mall, you would see numerous pay phones.  You don't.  Everyone here owns a cell phone.  The only reason I'm calling Soyoung (Brian's girlfriend) is because he lost his phone.  After wandering around the mall, I find a pay phone and call her.  Instead of a ringing noise, the play music while you wait for the other person to pick up the phone, so I figure that I called the wrong number.  She picks up, I'm shocked because I thought I definitely called the wrong number. Shes not with Brian, but tells me that he's out in front of the mall, where I already was.  I go back outside, and to my amazement, there he is.  We talk for a bit, then go down to the subway to find Soyoung. 

We decide to go and have supper, and eat sumgyupsal (pork that you fry on a grill built in the table) and drink a bunch of soju and wine. I forget my alarm clock there, but luckily I remember and we go pack to the restaurant and pick it up.  Shocking that no one would steal an alarm clock.  After supper, we hit up a pub, do some more drinking.  Following that, we go to a noraebang (a karaoke house).  You get your own pimped up room with tv and karaoke machine, and give er.  There are tons of these in Korea, and surprisingly they're all busy. At this point, I've obviously had a bit to drink because I'm not much of a singer.  We sing and drink some more and then we leave. 

Soyoung tells me that the address I have written down isn't a street address, but the area I live in.  They say to pick a place the cab driver knows near your place and get him to drop you off there.  I choose Homeplus.  He drops me off there, and since I had only been there once, and was sober when I did, I get pretty lost, and wander the streets of my area for about 4 hours.  Everything looks the same, so I keep thinking my apartment is on a specific street, I walk down it, check it out, and find out that its not my street.  At last, around 7am, I make it home, extremely relieved and still holding my alarm clock.  I grab a quick shower, and decide to lay down for a bit before school starts at 9.  I attempt to set my alarm clock and then dose off.  I wake up to a ringing at my door.  Its my coworker, and its 1030.  I bought a fucking alarm, put in a lot of effort to keep it with me all night, and couldn't set it properly. We go to school, and surprisingly my boss is happy that I came back and didn't run away as opposed to being mad that I was late.  I think its because she thought I was pretty cool.  The day seems like it lasts forever.  I'm not hungover, but incredibly tired and my legs feel like a ran a marathon.  Thankfully, it's Friday, and Kristin comes on Saturday.  I don't think I'll have any more of these adventures once she arrives.

Flight to Korea

After being packed and ready to leave for Korea for nearly a week, and thinking that I was suppose to leave on Saturday, Sept 2, but my ticket never actually got booked until that Monday, and I was taking off at 6am Tuesday.  Due to the lovely people at the Korean Consulate in Montreal, I wouldn't be flying with Kristin because they somehow managed to take 3 or 4 more days to process hers then mine.  We left our house around 2, got to the airport and nearly didn't get on the flight because there was some complications with the ticket so I had to call my recruiter at 4am and he had to call Korea and get some things sorted out.  Made the flight, and nothing exciting happened on the 18 hour trek as I slept most of it. 

I arrived in Korea, and was met by a man with a sign with my name on it at the airport.  I assumed he worked for the school but he was actually just a driver.  The drive to my school where I was getting dropped off was only 100km but it took us about 2 hours because the traffic.  This ride was my first experience witnessing the awesomeness that is Korean drivers.  There favorite thing to do is cut other people off, no matter the speed, and it appears as though that when you do it, you can just turn your four way flashers on, and I think that everyone all of a sudden is fine with it.  My driver had a sweet GPS system that even told him how much he would need to pay at the next toll station, and had TV and everything on it.  All I was really able to see on the drive was countless high rise apartments, sweet drivers and four way flashers.

I finally arrive at the school, which is on the 7th floor of a building but much smaller then I expected.  I really didn't know what to expect though because I had no details about the school except the name.  The school is very nice though, and I meet all of the staff which are very nice as well. There is another foreign teacher at the school from South Africa.  I'm pretty pumped about this because I expected everyone else to be Korean, and now Kristin and I will have someone to talk to in English.  Turns out all the other teachers speak good English too though, so it doesn't make a whole lot of difference. 

Following meeting everyone at school, they bring me to my new apartment, which is only a 2 minute walk to school.  Its a bachelor apartment, that still needs some things such as a stove, cable, and internet, but I have pretty much everything else.  The shower is something else, there is no shower stall, just a hose with the sink on one end and shower head on the other.  You have to turn on the hot water before you use it, and I was unable to figure this out so my first shower in Korea ended up being a ice cold one.  Without TV or internet I was forced to continue something I've been trying out lately and will probably be a huge shock to everyone............................reading.  I know, its pretty outrageous, but true.