Art and Communication

Some of my students, kids and adults both, have commented on my drawing abilities. Not that I draw particularly well, but I draw well and quickly enough to use it as a language tool. I've used it to draw what I want for market vendors and to explain the meaning of a word to students.

I was watching The Children of Men (excellent film, by the way) and there's a scene where the main character draws a boat (screenshot above) so that he can communicate with a Russian lady. It really struck me how little importance our Western education places on this valuable skill.

I also watched The Thirteenth Warrior (for about the fiftieth time a favourite film) and realised that one of the main reasons I like this film is the theme of being adapting a strange culture and language. Pictured here is a screenshot of "Ibn" teaching Bulvi how to write (in Arabic.) This film is a retelling of Beowulf, if you are interested in mythology.



Every culture has small symbols that are used traditionally that we forget about. When I got here I recognised this little 'wind-blown cloud" pattern that appears on a lot of things. The interior of the YMCA elevators has a repeating motif of this but the Korean teachers haven't noticed it and when I ask about it they don't seem to notice how commonplace it is. It's also on the tiles in the Jagalchi subway station. (pictured at left)

Costco and Mosquitoes

"Sis" asked what I had bought at Costco on Saturday, knowing full well that I'm a shopping addict. I did manage to contain my shopping urge (everything at Costco comes in a box that'd last me about 5 years.) I bought crackers, because you can't get crackers here without sugar in them. I can get boxes of saltines, but they are pretty expensive for plain old crackers, in Korean they're used as hors d'oeuvre crackers. (SPAM is treated as a luxury or gift item at certain times of the year, it's a different country.) I bought broccoli-cheddar soup mix, because canned soup here is fairly hard to find, most people make their own fresh Korean soup at home. I bought instant mashed potatoes because I like them when I want something quick and you can't get them anywhere else that I've seen. I bought a bath towel because you can't really find western-style towels (or bedding) outside of Costco and a couple of other places. I also bought a gigantic block of cheddar because it was only US$12 and I paid US$7 for a tiny piece in a Korean supermarket.

The oddest purchase to consider was a bulk-pack of mosquito coils, they were about US$5 for 90 of them in tins. I've been getting mosquitoes in my apartment since the beginning of March and it's not even really warm yet.

The best part of the trip was the train ride. The KTX high-speed train was quiet and spacious. A first-class seat for the one-hour trip was about US$30 for the round-trip ticket. As Tanya said, you make up for the few dollars difference in ticket price in free waffles (more like a waffle-cookie than a waffle) and complimentary bottled water. Oh and you get free sleeping masks.

(You should check the flickr pages to see what the sign at the top of the post reads, I'm sure it was a great deal but I wasn't in the mood for any.)

School Daze

Half of the kids in my school have the flu. They've got no energy, which is not all bad; well, it's a change of pace from having to pick them off the ceiling. I'm still getting over a head cold that I had and I think I've got whatever it is the kids have because I've got had to drag myself around the past few days. I guess anyone who works closely with kids gets exposed to all the latest bugs, kinda like a new virus test lab.

I've also been asked to try out a new book on one of the classes. It's a story and a script for a simple play of "Beauty and the Beast". I mentioned that I'd done some theatre work while I was in university and now I think I'm going to be drafted to help stage a play with the kids. It'll definitely be interesting...

I've noticed things about language learning in the course of teaching the adults and kids. The older the students are the more difficulty they have getting the sounds of the new language. The youngest kids don't have much difficulty at all. The oldest students produce some very odd pronunciations of English. Korean has only one sound for F, V, P and B, plus a sort of variation on it that's produced by producing a puff of air when saying it. This leads to some strange sounding English pronunciations. I can't laugh because I know that my own pronunciations of Korean sounds is damned awful, and occasionally hilarious. The way I say "dong (district)" sounds like "dong (animal dung)", which the kids find hilarious. I knew something was up when they kept asking me which district I lived in. Evil tykes, I'll start teaching them colloquial Newfoundland English to get my revenge.

The oddest sounding pronunciations were when I asked one adult student
what he did in his company: "My company make palbis." I puzzled at it for a minute and wrote it out on the board, the student looked at it and said"No, PALBIS! V-A-L-V-E-S." Another adult student asks me to correct her every time she mispronounces anything. I usually let the occasional slip go without correcting students but since she asked me to, I correct everything. One morning she was reading a passage and had to say "fifty-five". "Bippity pibe", I corrected her and got her to try to say "fifty-five" a half-dozen times before I just let it go. It's hard to get someone's mouth to make sounds differently from the way they have for forty or fifty years.

The students were looking up my name in some kind of phonetic translation dictionary this afternoon. I came down the hall and they were saying something about "pig oil". My name maps into the phonetic translation "lard" in this crazy software. (Korean only has one character for R/L, and it's pronounced differently depending on position in a syallable. They pronounce my name as "rawd-uh" or "lawd-uh", I'm not sure why some say it one way and others say it another.) So I guess now I'll be Mr. Pig Oil. Fair enough.

Friday Day Off

I had today off because of something to do with teaching 20 days per month and there would be 21 days this month. I don't ask why much anymore, I just take everything at face value.

I skipped French class this morning (bad Rod!) to stay in bed and try to get rid of this cold that's been dogging me. I feel a lot better for the lazy day and I got my mountain of dishes washed into the bargain.

This evening I went down to my favourite outdoor shop in Busan, OKOutdoor in Nampo-dong (they're actually much better than OK, excellent service and good discounts on most things), to exchange a pair of hiking pants I bought. They were too big because they're American made and I'm used to grabbing the L or XL size for stuff made in Korea. I've never brought anything back to a store for exchange here so I had no idea how it would work when we can't speak each other's language but it was actually pretty straightforward with gesture and a few words of English. I wandered around Nampo-dong a bit and took a few photos and headed home.

On the way home I stopped in to talk to this astrologer guy, Hyun-sung, who sits in the pedestrian underpass near my place reading charts for people. I got him to do mine (I forgot to ask for the chart, doh) and for 5000 won (US$5) I got a one hour reading of my chart. It was really interesting. He took my name and the date and time of my birth did some kind of mathematical analysis on my name, examined my hands and then proceeded to look things up in a stack of other charts and write Chinese characters on my chart. This part took about a half-hour, after which he started looking up the things he had written in another set of charts and then proceeded to tell me all about me. It was uncannily accurate for someone who I've only met in passing once or twice to say hello to.

Tomorrow I'm off to Daegu by train with Chris and Tanya to make a trip to Costco. I'm mostly going just for the train trip and to see some more of Korea, I don't need 20 kgs of detergent or cheese just yet.

Multicultural night

The USS Ronald Reagan is in port. If I didn't know it was a large carrier I could have easily guessed it; there are about 2 or 3 thousand waygooks (foreigners) wandering *my* neighbourhood. It feels strange being surrounded by so many westerners, I think I've adapted to the culture here without any shock.

A friendly Russian guy (the usual foreign majority in my district) stopped me in the street and began to blather on in Russian. I gave him my only Russian phrase "Ya ne gavaru parusski." ("I don't speak Russian.") He looked momentarily confused and asked me "Amerikan?" I said "Kanadian." He said "Ahh, good, good.", which is the usual reaction I get when I tell people I'm Canadian. I don't think they know what else to say.

The Texas Street vendors trucked out their gaudiest wares for the shore-leave crowd. Switchblades, balisong, lighters shaped like handguns, etc. A drunk Korean guy started hassling me in Korean, I told him "Moradurussoyo" ("I don't understand") but he would not be dissuaded I have no idea what he was going on about except that he kept saying "miguk" (mee-gook, "American") I'm probably better off not knowing what it was all about, the junk-peddler started yelling at him in Korean and I just walked away.

French class is going to be challenging. I've started a week late and I'm skipping class tomorrow (I think) to catch up on some sleep and ditch this cold and sore throat that have been dogging me for the last week and a bit. The instructor is a French guy and the students are all college-age Korean girls. Sounds like a fun time, but I have to learn a lot more French before I can talk to anyone. The instructor speaks decent English, so I'm not completely lost yet.

Anyway, I'm off to eat my thousandth box of 5000 Won chicken, have a beer and hit the hay.

Jirisan Trip

I'm back from the Jirisan overnighter. We didn't have enough time to do any real hiking but we did visit a lot of interesting places in a short period of time thanks to Simpson Joe's tourist wrangling experience. Pictures have been posted to flickr, so take a look.

We stayed at a traditional-style resort with authentic Korean houses. After a quick walk to Hwaomsa Temple we started eating and drinking and didn't stop until almost dawn. Lots of sam gyup sal and bulgogi stew, hamburgers and hot dogs and marshmallows.

It was really great to get out and meet some more of the other teachers who are over here. Hopefully, there'll be other trips in the weeks ahead.

Things to Do

I'm all shopped out, being largely solo in Busan I've spent a lot of time these past few weeks kitting out my apartment so it'll be more homey and wandering the city figuring out where things are. Now I have to find things to do that will keep me active without costing too much. Shopping can be fun but it's an expensive hobby, especially when I have to pack it all up at the end of a year.

I've found the Alliance Francaise and I signed up for a 42 hour course. I took a placement test with the director this morning and he placed me in their 3rd level program. I'll have some catching up to do with regards to conjugations and noun genders but he said that my aural comprehension will be ahead of the rest of the class, so it should come out pretty even. As a bonus the Alliance has a lending library of French movies on DVD, some of them have English subtitles, the others will be practice. ;)

I also found the honorary German consulate and Goethe Institute (German language school) just around the corner from my apartment, so I'm going to see about taking a course or two there as well. I'll see how the French course goes first. Of course, I'm still learning Korean, albeit slowly, so if I can learn to use three languages to any degree in a year I'll be more than pleased (I'd say I'd be shocked, but it'll be fun anyway.) So, Juergen, perhaps in a year or so we can have a real conversation. Nicht wahr?

Hiking and climbing are a couple of things I'd like to do for physical activity/exercise. This past week I picked up some day-hiking gear: boots, light pack, etc. In the course of searching the shops (hiking is a *very* popular activity in Korea, there are a gajillion shops) I found one that has decent prices on good gear and I found a slightly more pricey one around the corner (3 minute walk) that has a small climbing gym. It costs 5000 won ($5) for the day or 30 000 won ($30) for the month! I have to check those prices with the guy at the shop again but it's not unlikely that it's really that cheap. I'm going back to pick up a cheap pair of climbing shoes and a chalk bag and start doing some bouldering a couple of times a week. They have some weights and stuff there too, so it'll be a pretty cheap gym membership with a climbing gym as a bonus!

The cheaper place gave me a hiking map for the Busan area with quite a few kilometers of mountain trails listed on it. I can read just enough Korean to figure out where the place names on it are. Next weekend I'm going to go and get myself lost on a mountain.

Tomorrow I'm going on a trip to Jiri Mountain with my recruiter and about 30 other teachers. Should be a good trip, it looks beautiful from the pictures (more here).

I-Day Redux!

I am now wired (in the electronic sense, that is.) The KT guy showed up minutes ago and set it all up. Yay! No more treks to the opium-den-like (full of gamers rather than drug addicts but there are many similarities) PC Bang to use the internet.

So this morning I bought trash bags and signed up for a French placement test at the Alliance Francaise; the two events are unrelated.

I stopped into the Alliance Francaise on my way home from school this morning. Having looked at the course schedules I realised that I'd missed the start date by a week (typical for me.) Since I had spoken a little french to the woman at the counter she asked where I was from and said that since I had already studied french I can write a placement test and possibly start in a class at my level. So I meet the director tomorrow for a test, I wonder how much french I can remember?

Buying trash bags was an adventure in gesture and patience. In Busan each district has its own official trash bags that pay for the cost of refuse removal. Each bag costs about a buck. I realised last night that I've been using bags from the wrong 'gu' and they were too small anyway, so I had to figure out how to get trash bags at my neighbourhood store, where the mom and pop don't speak any english. A customer in the store asked me to write it down, whereupon he could pronounce it but still had no idea what it meant. Finally, I saw the bags under a chair behind the counter whereupon the mission turned to getting pop to select the right thing I was pointing to. Then when I gave him enough for two bags he gave me back half until I gave it back to him pointed to the bag and held up two fingers. It took ten minutes to buy two garbage bags but I did finally remember the Korean word for garbage: "srigae" (or close to that)

Internet Day!

I've been waiting for weeks to get my internet connection set up, I had to get my alien resident card first (it's a photo ID, citizens have a similar card and it's used the way we might use a driver's license as ID.) The school set up the appointment with Hanaro Telecom and I got a call early yesterday morning but the guy on the phone only spoke Korean and there was a lot of laughing and he hung up. He called back later and said something like "internet, 10 o'clock", I just said okay and waited. I got another call at 10:30 from a guy who spoke English fairly well but I had some difficulty telling him where I lived (Korean addresses are very different from the way western countries use them. The buildings don't necessarily follow any logical order. More on that later.) He said that he'd come by at 12:30, which sounded fine. At 1 o'clock I got another call telling me that "the equipment wasn't prepared" and that he'd call me today to set up a time.

So, hopefully I only have to wait a few more hours until I can post from the convenience of my own apartment. Like I've said before, it's kinda weird for a guy who's been sitting at a computer connected to the internet for 10 years to be suddenly disconnected (like a normal person :D ) Maybe it's healthy for me to have gone through this withdrawal, but it's definitely put a cramp in my posting frequency.

I have a couple of stories to tell about things that have happened this week, but I'll post them later tonight. Maybe even from my apartment!

I put a clock showing my local time in the sidebar (thanks for the idea, Robyn), if you click on it it'll open another page with weather and a pile of other information.

Rainy day, long post

Today was pretty warm and rainy, not much going on besides cleaning my bathroom and some shopping at yet another giant department store.

I've uploaded a few more photos, hopefully I'l have my alien resident card by Tuesday and I'll have internet at home by the end of the week. If anyone wants my phone number drop me an e-mail. It's a bit expensive to call here I'd imagine, but I'll get around to calling everyone once I've got a normal phone.

I've had a couple of interesting cultural experiences during the past couple of weeks. The first was a Friday night outing to a noraebang (singing room.) It's sort of like karaoke but in a living room-sized room with tables, benches and a wall of video screens. There are funky lights and I think ours had a smoke machine, but nobody turned it on. They managed to get me up to sing twice. For my first number I sang My Way (Frank Sinatra) , it felt like it went on for about 10 minutes, my second choice was Play That Funky Music (Wild Cherry) and after that I felt like someone had taken hot irons to my vocal cords. It was a lot of fun and I can see how it is particular to Korean culture. Koreans seem to be really group and family oriented and they tend to seem shy out of a desire to not make a mistake or embarass themselves. A Korean explained to me that noraebang is a bonding activity, Koreans can get together with friends and sing without fear of embarassment. Makes sense to me; I did karaoke once at a bar back home (*cough*Sundance*cough*) with a bunch of people from an ad agency I was working with. Of course three of us got on stage, very drunk and realised that any one of us knew about one third of the lyrics of Mustang Sally. It was pretty funny. The Korean guy (an adult student of mine) who was telling me about noraebang said that the Korean perception is that many Westerners are much more bold in what they will do because they seem to have less fear of embarassment. I'm not sure that's true, and I told him so, but at the same time I'm starting to see how it might actually be true. I think some of my co-teachers (Koreans) are somewhat in awe of the fact that I'll get on the subway and go to a new corner of the city with just a map and my itty-bitty compass (I bought one because coming out of the subway is pretty disorienting, especially if you have no idea where you are.)

A few nights ago I went for dinner and some bowling with a group of Koreans. One of my adult students asked me out to dinner with his boss and co-workers (I think they wanted to see if they could get me to teach them privately: no dice, too risky right now.) His boss kept calling me 'Korean' or 'new Korean' because I ate like a Korean, and ate everything that was brought to the table. It was a damned good meal: kamjatang (potato stew), it's a thick soupy stew with potatoes, greens, and lengths of pork backbone with lots of meat kinda like ribs. It wasn't terribly spicy and afterwards the waitress brings a bunch of rice and seaweed and turns the soup leavings into a thick fried rice that's really great. After dinner we went to a bowling alley on the fifth floor of a building (Korean buildings are pretty heavy duty, lots of heavy concrete) They play ten-pin bowling here, as opposed to five-pin bolwing back home. I was hopelessly uncoordinated but I had a great time. When I got home I watched The Big Lebowski, it just seemed to be the thing to do.

I'm on a new schedule now, working 0630-0830 and then 1500-1830. Yes, many of you who know me will have a hard time believing that I get up at 0530 and I'm actually teaching classes by 0630!!! I barely believe it myself. I could have gotten out of it since it's not what my contract states, but it didn't seem fair to the school since I only had one adult student in the evening, now I have four adult students in the mornings.

And that note I'm off to home and bed, it's 10:30 pm here now.

Accent

Sophie, one of the Korean teachers at the school told me the other day that the kids are starting to sound like me. They pronounce their words the same way I do. Poor little things!

Most of the kids are really bright. One of the girls in the elementary class is reading Frankenstein and another kid can read a 200 page novel in a day (while at school.) Of course, they're still kids and I'm learning classroom management the hard way.