wow.
no updates since august. it's been a long long time, I'm not sure what exactly happened, guess i just got swept away in the hustle and bustle of living in a large metropolitan area.
so let's see... where to begin... My last entry, I do believe was in the Philippines, so it is just to be writing again today.
I have just bought a ticket to Thailand. There was a sweet deal, but its only for a 12 day trip. I had to cut the first and last weekend off of the vacation. so i leave here on a monday, and i get back on a friday. but the savings are about 400 bucks. so..... i think i can live with it. here in Korea, I have been moving about a bit, Courtney and I had a couple of excursions out of the city again, we went to Busan for Chuseok. Chuseok being the Korean Thanksgiving where the families all reunite for a long weekend (3 days) and they make these delicious little rice balls which i ate in large numbers from local stores for a few days after.
in busan we spent the last of the warm weather on a beach, and wandering the coast in the rain. we had sun on our first and last day there, but the second day... it was cold, windy and miserable. we managed to find a little buddhist temple, but not without a fight. the fight was what made it worth it though, we walked along the coast, seeing both the beauty and the desecration of the land in korea. trash littered the coast, as a family gave offerings to the sea right in the midst of it. a stunning juxtaposition of modern and traditional values.
we were tourists at the temple, i was unaware of all the traditions, but Courtney kindly filled me in with the details... don't point my toes at the idol, take my shoes off, maintain a kind, courteous and respectful attitude in the place. most of those tips i recognized and knew from examples of previous religious locales... the pointing of the toes... that was new..
we ate out the second night we were there. it was a gastronomic adventure of raw and squirming sea food. we knew the sea food to be epic and delightful there. its a coast town. its got a world famous fish market you know.
we searched the fish market, looking for a something delicious. but settled with a small restaurant across the street from the market. they had fresh wares, and a matronly lady accosted us, explaining how we should sit and eat at her place, or so i assume... i couldn't and still cant really understand a great deal of korean.
we sat down, began eating some scallops. an older korean gentleman was seated across from us. at a seperate table. he began jovially bantering with us. we obliged, but didn't have a clue what he was saying... not. a. clue.
scallops
after a while, he had a plate brought out to him. it was squirming and moving. and i realized it was the baby octopus, that they chop up and serve, still moving in its final throes. i asked him if it was good. (our entire conversation that night consisted of Delicious? delicious. - we placed emphasis on it in different ways to get different meanings. "masheesahyo." quite versatile). i just wanted to try a piece, but koreans don't share food. in fact it's very impolite to eat something off another person's plate. i realized this in hindsight.
but as i sat back down after looking at the squirming pile of legs and body, i saw the manager/owner who had also joined us get up and walk over to the fish tank - cutting board area. he was behind a red barrier, but he was looking at us, and talking in korean.
Courtney and i knew something was up. i gathered that he was cutting up a fresh live octopus that very moment for us. i was right. it was a squirming raw octopus coated in sesame oil and some sesame seeds. on a plate, right in front of our faces in no less than..... one minutes, yes minutes. in the heat of the moment i grabbed a big piece and ate it. chewed like hell - you have to or else the suckers stick to you throat and can choke you to death... crazy, a chopped up octopus can still kill you. it was pretty tasty. Courtney gobbled up a big ole' piece as well. impressed, the manager dumped all the still squirming pieces that we hadn't ate after a couple of servings of it raw into a tin on the grill. he comes out with a big pile of squirming eel. dumps it in, it writhes for a bit, before becoming still. then some weird things that look like.... sea penises. those squirmed for a bit too in the mix before becoming eerily silent. he also chopped up some kind of raw mussel... it had spikes on it, but it was very tender and delicious. he fed it to us raw. of course.
as we continued eating massive amounts of raw food and cooked fresh sea food, we began, as most people do, to grow full. i was almost done eating. couldn't do any more. he walks out.. and throws into the mix a whole, medium sized live octopus into the tin, in front of us.
it was very much alive. and i am assuming throwing it into a cooking tin of boiling hot seafood and broth wasn't exactly an ideal environment for it. it was dead within a minute, but that was pretty miserable to watch. it being totally alive and healthy just a minute before and dead the next not only set my mouth agape for a minute, but when the guy started chopping it up, we realized it still had all its parts inside. he lopped off the brain-head region with some scissors - its brains and ink slowly dribbled out. i put my foot down.
"no possible way am i going to eat those brains. i mean a guys got to draw the line somewhere right?" i said to Courtney.
"you're totally right." she says. rolling her eyes a bit, as she knows those brains are going to be eaten sooner or later, and that its going to be me that does the eating.
she was right. wisdom of a woman. the guy looks at me, snips the brain in half, says masheesahyo and mimes the consumption of it. i was thought to my self. "DAMN IT!" but i ate it. im a push over sometimes. they probably laughed their asses off afterward. no way does anyone eat that stuff. it was foul. sandy, gross. and filled my mouth with ink and filth. i have never come closer to yakking while eating than i did on the patio of that place. i was finished eating there. donezo. i chugged a beer, stuffed some kim chi in my mouth, and ferociously devoured anything and everything in my sight in an effort to get the overwhelmingly foul taste out of my mouth. it didn't help.
but it was super generous of the owner. all of the fresh and raw seafood, aside from the scallops we initially ordered, and some rice, and two beers we had, the rest of the rawness was on the house. super kind. super generous. maybe he was proud to have some foreigners in his place, maybe he was astonished one of them ate the brains of an octopi, but either way, he was the bee's knees.
another trip was to Jinju. a Lantern festival. We made the trip down to jinju following julian's last weekend in korea. I went out with Julian and crew Friday night to celebrate and shipped out saturday morning to Jinju. i was in... rough shape. tried to make it the whole night through, 4 taxis later, all of whom did not drive me to the proper location, i made it to the subway stop where the bus was scheduled to meet. i was 20 minutes early. the dunkin donuts was not open, so i sat down to rest on the side walk directly in front of where the bus would arrive.
i woke up a few minutes later, climbed on the bus. it had magically appeared. and i had slept on the street for 15 minutes. chalk that up in things i never want to do again.
the bus ride was about 4 hours. i passed out for most of it. when we arrived, we wandered about the river, up and down. it was pretty beautiful. there were stalls set up all about, food, ice cream, wares, clothes, games. it was a carnival of lights and lanterns, games and music.
the lanterns filled the river on floats, with tigers, castles, athletics and dragons being just a few of the motifs. children fired roman candles up at the sky as the sun set. we sat down in a soju tent, and ordered some pahjeong. a pancake like food filled with some vegetables and green onions. magkolei is the drink of choice with this food, a kind of unfiltered rice wine, tastes a little like grass, sweet and milky. and as it was raining, the meal was specifically catered to the weather ( on rainy days Koreans eat pahjeong and magkolei). we drank the rice wine for a bit, before switching to beers. we had a large group, and after a while, the group grew loud. i began to feel slightly embarrassed by the stereotypes we were fulfilling here, as we became the loud, obnoxious foreigners in a quiet Korean Soju Tent.
I only left the table occasionally to buy a kebab around the corner. they were most delicious.
we left the next morning and went to the coast, we climbed down onto a large rock, and basked in the sun. i climbed a little on the rock faces, and then took some pictures of another offering the the Goddess of the Sea.
we climbed of the huge rock in the sea, and went to the beach. it was similar to Nice, with large black pebbles making up the ground. my friend Ash and I began trying to throw up a rock and hit it out of the air with another, thrown pebble. it proved to be far more difficult than we imagined, but like children we were absorbed and did not desire to be beaten by so simple a task.
i was the first to succeed at it. and fortunately, there is photographic evidence of the success. the second rock thrown shattered on its impact with the first, and it split off in multiple directions... i retired content.
lets see... what happened next. Halloween arrived. Courtney and I purchased costumes of a Korean Couple. Its pretty hilarious. tight jeans, Korean couple "t-shirts" some hipster glasses. spot on Koreans.
then I had my large open class. my school opened up to the entire state of Gyeonggi-do. my co-teacher and i practiced the same lesson for two weeks. the kids were dead tired of the lesson. it was not a typical class. the kids were far too trained, I was not involved a great deal in the teaching process, and it carried a general aura of ...... not sure what the word is. but it was real fake.
I cannot understand why, when teaching, using the co-teaching method, I create the lessons, the material, the worksheets, games, and PowerPoint. but for the open classes, i am excluded from the process, i do not teach the class, and i do not have a roll in the instruction of the class. i am, for the most part, a big puppet at the front of the class, that speaks in English occasionally, and helps to decrease the xenophobic tendencies of the children in the classroom. This may not be the original intent of the school, but in the end, its what it feels like. it the open class is supposed to be indicative of what my teaching is like... one would think they would allow me to do the class as i have been doing it for the entirety of the year.
the open lesson, once complete though, lifted a weight off of my shoulders as well as the shoulders of the rest of the English staff. it was the completion of a two year research development program for English curriculum in Korea. funded by the federal government. my boss was stressing out like crazy. but once it was over, we went and had a huge dinner at the Shabu Shabu place. it was spot on. spicy, hot, amazing. a kind of hurricane tornado rain storm hit on the way there. i got soaked. but the food was good. my co teacher min kyung, to celebrate ordered a beer. it was the first beer i have ever seen any of the female teachers drink at my school. so it must have been a big deal to finish up the day.
the next week I had thursday off. i spent it going to a palace, and taking some pictures, that i hope turned out ok. the palace was really peaceful. the day off was a result of high school testing. not sure why the middle school didn't have class, but i'm not really complaining. a day off is a day off. ill take it.
we now have three weeks left before winter break starts.
i'm in the process of creating a winter camp, 15 classes, 3 classes for 5 days, administered two times. and maybe i will have to give two more classes, everyday, after lunch... but they wont let me know if i ave to do that until its the last possible minute. i certainly hope that isn't the case. I already have planned the winter camp right now. its harry potter themed. i think its gonna be pretty baller.
Think ill come back through and put in photos with this when i get home and have access to my computer.
