COEX Mall and Aquarium madnessSeoul, South Korea

As an explanation for the above, Jessie and I went to COEX Mall this weekend, wherein an aquarium is housed, and boy was it awkward. The last two situations were, amazingly, not made up by me, along with tons other seemingly strange appearances of fish in random places.

Examples:

Fish in a big vertical tube;

Fish in a longer vertical tube;

Fish in a fake fire-hydrant;

A close up of his misery;

Fish in a Mario mailbox;

Fish in a...uhm...well, I guess they were just trying to kill Mario.

I know they're just fish, often considered no more than wallpaper, but where's the ethical treatment here? I feel dirty. All the older folk are looking at this going "Wow, well that's weird," whereas all the tiny squirts running around are thinking "Oh my god, I have to try this with my fish when I get home."

Maybe there's an afterlife ruled and presided over by fish where my thoughts will be justified, but until then, I'm probably just strange.

Asides from the aquarium, there were plenty of random things we saw and enjoyed, like:

Oh my God! The women have an ecret! I want one, too!

Oh my god, they will never die...

Since homesexuality "doesn't exist" in Korea, this is as close as you can get. "Bad Boy" indeed.

The title of this is "I Love Jesus." Damn.

Oops. They should probably retract this one.

Only in Asia would this be funny.

Yep. We also ran into a Kimchi Museum, which we'll post more about later, cuz this is a megaton post already - my apologies for the picture-orgy.

Jessie and I are now off for our midnight run of Kimchi-jjigae, so we'll update more later on.

-Jay out!

Good lord this takes foreverIlsan, South Korea

Anyway, finally finished coloring the second comic. This takes a lot longer than it appears, I assure you. I don't have photoshop, so all the online tutorials I've been able to find don't exactly apply to my program of choice (Fireworks), and the working of multiple layers with multiple colorations, shadows, highlights, text bubbles, glasses, clothing, etc, can be quite a hassle to manage. Still, it's great fun, and my new first-thing-to-do after work.
If I end up getting a Wacom tablet, that would make life easier. So here we are:


-Jay

Looking aheadIlsan, South Korea

We are officially more than halfway through our contracts (in our eighth month) and starting to consider what we will do next. Right before we came there was an incident in which a Canadian teaching English in Korea sexually assaulted some of his students before fleeing the country and hopping around Asia. He was finally caught in Thailand a few months into our stay here (late 2007).  As a result, the visa requirements have been significantly tightened (see this page for a full explanation): 

Under the new law, applicants for a new E2 visa or an extension have to submit their criminal background certificate and medical report. In addition, applicants are required to appear for a personal interview at the nearest Korean embassy or consulate in their home countries, with some exceptions such as, for example, mission location unreasonably distant from applicant's location. (Criminal-check records are also required for C4 visa candidates who plan to work in English language camps here for less than 90 days.)

In their initial application package, prospective teachers must fill out a short, unofficial health statement regarding infectious diseases, drug use, and psychological problems. Then, within three months after arriving here, the official medical data must be provided to the immigration office, as part of the application for residence registration. The medical exam to be conducted by government-approved public and general hospitals includes tests for narcotics use and HIV/AIDS, the ministry explained.

The academic-credentials check has also been toughened. The original degree, along with a copy of it, must be submitted. The original will be returned after the credentials are authenticated. The copy must be verified by the Korean consulate in applicants' home countries or the Korean Council for University Education (www.kcue.or.kr).

I understand the rationale for the HIV/AIDS/narcotics tests and the criminal background check. These are pretty standard requirements for visas and I already had to go through them for a student visa to Chile. But the personal interview is a pain and the academic credentials are actually more stringent than described here. Not only do they verify the authenticity of the documents, but they also insist that all names be identical on all forms. This is probably never going to pose a problem for me but if Jay, for instance, has Marrone, Jason Gutiérrez on his passport and Jason Marrone (or even Jason Gutierrez Marrone, without an accent, depending on just how picky the Korean worker is) on his diploma, he could be denied a visa. 

Theoretically, as we already have an E2 visa, we are considered relatively safe and will be allowed a bit more leniency and perhaps a waived interview if we apply for another E2 in the future. But the new laws come hand in hand with a president (Lee Myung-Bak, elected late '07 and currently in office) who wants to abolish the private academy (hagwon) system, plus a surge of distrust of foreigners thanks to that perverted pedophile that was molesting their students. (To be fair, the general distrust is understandable).  Basically, it looks like the private schools will be struggling to survive, so they will be putting even more stress on their teachers to turn profits, and it looks like the public schools are starting to exhibit the same poor behavior that made hagwons so infamous and on the whole disreputable in the first place. 

In short, we're revising our plan to come back to Korea after our contract finishes. Our dream of living in Jeju and biking around the island on the weekend faded into a nightmare of bureaucracy and xenophobia. Jay's currently researching opportunities in Vietnam and Taiwan, while I'm pushing for consideration of China or Thailand as well. But, despite the difficulties our school is causing us and the rest of the teachers right now, we still want to teach some more. This is a good sign, right? 

Before we start searching for a new contract, we have a glorious trip through Latin America to plan, a wedding to attend (Keith and Lisa's), and a much-needed Thanksgiving at home. Not in that order, of course.

On a rather un-related note, I had a very interesting little discussion in class on Tuesday evening, when Jerry, one of my most enthusiastic older students (he's maybe 13?). I had them write a short dialogue based on a picture and then read them in class. Right before he wrote his, he prefaced it with, "This is a sex-appeal story". 

I was very confused and ready to stop him, but he's a very well-behaved student and the story did not become inappropriate at any time (person A said person C was a liar, person B corroborated the story, and they planned to murder person C together), so I let the "sex-appeal" comment slide. Later though, perhaps picking up on my initial reaction, he asked, "Teacher, sex-appeal... it made Romeo and Juliet, right?" 

I faltered for a minute, weighing my options and the potential parent-fury before responding, "well, attraction was part of it, but I wouldn't say that sex-appeal caused their death..."

He nodded, but was still confused, so he followed up with, "Teacher, what is sex-appeal?"

Me: "Well, it's... where did you learn that word?"

Jerry: "We have it in Korean too."

Mentally, I considered whether it would be best to simply explain it in as age-appropriate a manner as possible, or to volley the question to Joe, our manager and another teacher of this particular class. Eventually, I picked up a highlighter from my basket and said, "well, if I wanted to sell you this highlighter, I could say, 'Hey! Buy this!' or I could find a really pretty woman and have HER say 'Hey! Buy this!' [insert commercial-style hair flip here].... and that's sex appeal." I was proud of myself for, in my opinion, satisfying my role as an educator without breaking that oh-so-awkward barrier into the sex-talk which all Americans are trained to fear and avoid at all costs. Go me. 

I was preparing to continue the lesson when he replied, "But... who made 'Romeo and Juliet'?"

"Oh god. Shakespeare. SSSHHaaaakespearrrre." I then elaborated with hand motions to emphasize "Sex appeal" on one side and "Shakespeare" on the other side, "very different." 

We then quickly proceeded on with the lesson before anyone could ask, in that case, for a clarification on sex appeal. It turns out that, given the way Korean is spoken, there is no real SH sound before an 'a', the sound to approximate 'a' in Shakespeare is pronounced as a cross between "ay" and "eh", and 'r' and 'l' are not mutually distinguishable. Hence, Shakespeare is easily changed to sex appeal. Oy vey. At least I amused the other teachers. And hey, maybe in five or so years, when Jerry learns what sex-appeal means, he will remember my age-appropriate attempt at an explanation and think "Ha! That teacher was awesome!" Maybe.

Fun at home

Belated updates and announcements

Hey everyone, sorry we haven't updated in so long. We've been back from Jeju Island (where we spent our luxurious 3-day vacation) for a few weeks now, but things have been hectic. The short summery: Jeju was beautiful (though much colder and snowier than we had expected), our school is reorganizing and rearranging everything and not keeping us up to date at all, Jay's computer is having a to-the-death duel with a virus, Costco arrived in Korea and brought good cheese with it, and it's finally warming up in Ilsan. 

Ta-da. Also, as some of you already know, we got engaged in Jeju. So there is something to be very excited about (along with the cheese and the new warmer weather, of course). For those who want the details, we've told the story so many times that my fingers cannot take typing it out, so forgive us if we simply copy the explanation from an e-mail:

Jay wanted to propose on Halla-san, the big volcano that is the center of Jeju island. We looked on a map and found the easiest trail. It said park rangers wanted people to start by 10:00 to reach the summit. We figured hey, it may be too snowy to get all the way to the top, but we'll start out and see how it works. And the trailhead looked like it wasn't too far away. Besides, it's "Korea's Hawaii" - how cold can it really get? 

So we got in a taxi and said to head to that area of the freeway (since we didn't know how the buses worked yet). We should have guessed something was wrong given the incredulous response (Korean): "Yeongshil course please" "Yeongshil course?" "yes" "Mt. Halla?!" "yes..." but he said okay and off we were. We went down the road for a while and then started to see snow on the sides of the road and thought "oh, we must be close". No dice. The taxi continued for another 20-30 minutes, gaining altitude, until we finally saw roadsigns for our course, at which point most of the cars were pulling over to put snowchains on their cars... but not taximan, he drove up the hill anyway. 

We arrive at the trailhead, which is covered in snow, and there are a bunch of cars/trucks with chains, and koreans dressed for skiing, and then we get out of our taxi wearing basically city clothes plus hiking boots (in my case). We felt like such jackasses. And after assessing for a few minutes, it was obvious that we were absolutely not summiting. In fact, we were not even going to try that course. but we felt like idiots already and the taxi ride cost $15 so we figured let's just explore and find another way down. So we walked around to a different path, which led to a pretty temple, for about 30 minutes, made snow angels, then turned around, snuck past the parking lot in case someone recognized us as the idiots who'd just arrived, and walked down the road. There was a bus-stop, so we got on the next bus down the mountain.

We had a full day still, as it was just after 10 or so, so we took another bus to the eastern side of the island: a port town called Seongsanpo. We walked around the coast and up a hike/hill ("Sunrise peak"). On the way, while I was busy taking pictures, he snagged a pretty flower from the side of the trail and hid it in my hood so i wouldn't see it. At the top, we made our way to a side area where there were fewer people, he had me turn around so he could grab the flower, and when i turned back he was on a knee, flower outstretched, and asked me to marry him. I said yes.

Funny things to note, in a situation that really could only happen with us:
1. It was a national park, so technically that flower was illegal to pick.
2. Since I'm not only his girlfriend (fiancé!), but also his very good friend/confidant, to whom did he confess his failed plan re: Halla-san? Me. When did he do it? While we were muttering about the embarrassing situation about the taxi. 

On the Halla mountain: 

Us: "My god we feel like jackasses" 

Jay: "Yeah, and I was going to propose at the top too, but now we can't go AND we feel like idiots, so that's a bad idea." 

Me: "...Jay?" 

Jay: "Yes?" 

Me: "You know, I like how you tell me stuff, but really, that's something you wanna hold back until you make an actual, successful proposal. You know, surprise factor?" 

Jay hangs his head in shame.

So there you have it. We're both very excited, but we aren't planning to get married for a couple years - we still have to finish our contracts, make a glorious trek through Latin America, and maybe teach for a year in Jeju.

Ah, and for those who like to see pictures, here are our rings.

My ring, which we bought after returning to Ilsan:

And Jay's ring, which I made. He didn't like any of the rings in the stores, and also vetoed any and all man-necklaces or watches (the later mainly because he only likes plastic, digital watches, and he already has two of those). So this is what we came up with. It's not as shiny, but it is sentimental and it doesn't interfere with his guitar playing (we must keep our priorities straight ^_^). 

In other news, Jay recently finished his teaching schedule at the Kindergarten, which culminated in an... interesting presentation by all the young kids. To see the videos (and the videos from Jeju), please go here. They are organized in reverse chronological order and our favorites are parts 11 and 12: "Dancing Queen" as performed by 5- to 7-year old Korean children in identical outfits and choreography. I think you will enjoy it too. And you have to love the little call to arms at the end. 

Additionally, links to Jeju photos can be found in the right-hand bar right over there --------> (and up a bit)

And now it's time for us to crash. Thank goodness for weekends and Super Metroid (although the latter might be related to the current death throes of Jay's computer).