Ridiculous

Yesterday, I was given a cucumber.

No special occasion, I was just leaving school yesterday and one of my coworkers came up to me, handed me a cucumber and said "for you". Which...yay? I was just thinking the other day that I needed to introduce more fruits and vegetables into my diet. And I do rather like cucumbers. But I am pretty sure this is the first time I have ever been given one as a gift.

My life here is pretty...well, ridiculous. Recently, a friend of mine asked me how life was here in Korea, to which responded "ridiculous as normal." I didn't mean this in a necessarily negative sense, though. It's more like...standard? I guess? Like someone gives me a cucumber for a gift, or I see an old ajosshi peeing on a street corner and now my brain goes "oh yes, that is the expectedly ridiculous Korea. This is perfectly normal."

*I should pause here to note that really, ALL cultures have their ridiculousness. Because humans are ridiculous creatures. You just don't necessarily notice how ridiculous your own culture is, because it seems perfectly normal to you - after all, it's what you've known your whole life.

Back to the story, though. I think this acceptance of the ridiculous is part of becoming more integrated to my surroundings. Which is a good thing! But sometimes, things just stand out.

Last week, as I was coming back to my househome from an evening jog along the river, I was walking in front of this middle aged guy, listening to my music. Now I'm not really sure what happened, but all of a sudden I felt something wet hit my leg. I briefly lost my stride, PRAYING that it was rain, or maybe even bird crap, but no. Of course it wouldn't be.

I had been spat on.

It didn't connect right away. I wasn't exactly expecting to be spit on just at that moment in time. I mean, really! Who (aside from possibly teevee star New York) would expect that?? So I didn't check my leg until I got to the streetlight to confirm my worse fears. I looked back, but the culprit, whoever he was, had gone.

I'd like to believe that it was an accident, a tragic byproduct of the excessive (and SERIOUSLY nasty) spitting culture here. But maybe not. Maybe I had done something to piss the guy off. Regardless, you'd better believe that if I had immediately recognized the loogie for what it was, I would have turned around and let holy hell loose on this guy. I REALLY wanted to have gone all VH1 reality star on this jackass...and not the juiced up testosterone gorilla alpha male kind. I'm talking about the weave-snatchin', nail-clawin', cat-fightin', brawlin' Classy Ladies they showcase on their Sophisticated Entertainment Programs. I think New York would have been proud.


Caution parents: The following video contains language not suitable for minors. Also some crazy-ass bitchez up in heah.




You $#@(*&%@^&@in' wh*re! You put your @#$(in' fingers in my face?? You spit in my $&%*#$&%*in' hair???

PS sorry for the formatting, but I am just not talented enough. Tom, if you want to help feel free.

Doctor Who? Doctor FISH!

OH MY GOSH IT'S BEEN LIKE 4 DAYS SINCE I POSTED I AM SO SORRY GUYS!!!!


To make up for it, here is a post about a gross thing I did (AND I LIKED IT!):


Every once in a while, we all just need a bit of pampering. Some of us want to watch a day-long marathon of Golden Girls, some of us want to read a book, and some of us want to get our feet eaten by fish.


Wait, what?


You heard me! Can't you read?? Well Capt. Illiterate, let me spell it out for you: there is a new spa treatment taking Asia by storm called Doctor Fish. Basically, they take these small fish, put them in a pool of water, and then you stick your feet in there. And the fish eat off all the dead skin. It is simultaneously horrific and awesome. And I did it this weekend! Totally randomly, too...I had no plans to have organisms consume any part of me, but sometimes things just work out that way. 

So without further ado, here are some pictures of me being eaten alive.

This feels like a Bond movie.

So when we got there, there were a few people already in the pool...and the whole thing had this terrible air of inevitability, like when James Bond is being lowered into a lagoon filled with sharks by whichever evil S.P.E.C.T.R.E. henchman is doing it at the time. I was about to willingly let myself be consumed by tiny sea monsters. So, steeling myself with thoughts of Bond, I took the (six-inch-deep) plunge.

 

Oh crap! Here they come!!!

The first couple of bites were the worst...so shocking. So unpleasant. And I could watch it all happen. I imagine this is what shark attack victims feel like during the process of their attack.

 Clearly I am delicious to demon sea-monster-fish

And then the swarm came. Like lions to a weak gazelle, the fish just kept coming. In droves. It was not long until most of my feet were covered. The above photo is only representative of about halfway there.

  WHAT IS HAPPENING TO ME????

I think this an appropriate face to have made. It actually felt okay after a while, just like having put my feet in seriously bubbly water. Until I looked down. And realized THAT MY FEET WERE BEING EATEN WTF IS WRONG WITH ME???

 Most delicious feet ever.

You should have seen how delicious the fish thought my feet were. I suppose technically you can see above. All the fishes loved my feet WAY more than the other feet in the pool. Which was just fantastic.

  The result.

Was it worth it? I'm not sure...it was weird, but also awesome. And it was mostly effective...I think one or two more treatments would do my feet some serious good. We'll see.

Young Love in the English Room

Today was not shaping up to be the greatest of days. The day dawned cloudy (though that might have been the thick layer of pollution) and seriously humid for about the fourth day in a row. Another day of threatening rain, but receiving none; one of those days where the atmosphere is pregnant with expectation and everyone seems just a little thrown off. Add to that the serious loss of South Korea to Argentina and my continued struggles to transfer money back to America, and I was in a very unpleasant mood. I wasn't snapping at people, more a general lethargy combined with a scowling depression. 

The morning didn't go particularly well, either. The atmosphere in the classroom was leaden from the humidity, lack of circulation and general disappointment, and it seemed like pulling teeth to get my students to participate in anything. But trudge on we did, and I made the decision to skip my lunch and try once and for all to do something about my money transferring problems.

One of the scarier parts of that particular issue was the fact that I had been carrying around 3,000,000 won in cash with me for about a day - yesterday I had tried to transfer the money, but was handed the cash from my bank and told "We can't wire money overseas here. Try the other bank next door". So I went there, and thinking my ARC would be better than my passport (we had to have our passport to get the ARC, after all), did not bring my passport. Of course the one thing I actually needed was my passport. So stuck with nearly $2500 in cash, in my bag, I raced home assuming every passing stranger was secretly a bandit who could smell the money and terror on me and would rob me in an instant.

So no lunch. Which did not help my mood any - I am a VERY unpleasant person when I skip meals, as many people who have ever known me can attest. Instead, I tried in vain to find a cab, walking most of the way to the bank before one would stop for me. Now I know what minorities in New York City feel like. But I got there, sticky-sweaty mess that I was, and got the money wired. Which was a huge relief. I picked up a sangwich and found a cab and headed back to school for my afternoon classes.

Which actually turned out to be a pretty decent part of the day. It was as if someone had flipped a switch - the kids were energetic, probably too energetic. My second class of the afternoon proved VERY difficult to control. But my second class of the afternoon also has my favorite students - namely, Goatcheese.

Now his name isn't actually Goatcheese. It's Gum Gongmin. But I call him Goatcheese. Not to his face! But when I am talking about him to friends. He's my favorite student, and I think I am one of his favorite teachers - he's basically a small anime character come to life. Every time I see him, it's "Hi Teacher!" and some sort of attack (the other day he tried to knock me over with a bear hug). When he came into class today, though, he was SO EXCITED to tell me about the result of his math test. He'd gotten a 100! I was seriously proud of him, even though I have never talked to him about math, and probably would have ruined his perfect score if I had.

But what made this especially exciting for me was that he was clearly excited to tell ME about it. I felt like Sally Field winning her second Oscar for Places in the Heart. You like me, you really like me! That was such a cool feeling.

AND THEN. He was equally excited about his result as he was for Kang Eunyoung, who had also scored a 100. Now Goatcheese and Eunyoung (I need to come up with a better name for her. You know, better than the one her parents gave her) have spend most of the semester "fighting" with each other - but the kind of elementary school fights boys and girls have. The kind that just give them an excuse to be close to each other. So I have been teasing them for the better part of 3 months about how they are in love - and you know what? I think I'm right. For Goatcheese, at least. He just seemed so genuinely excited about Eunyoung's result that it seems hard to come to another conclusion. 

Goatcheese is the class clown. And Eunyoung is definitely one of the pretty girls. So while they play now, I just don't see them going anywhere in the future. It'll be one of those John Hughes romances, only without the nerdy girl getting the jock or the nerdy best friend getting the girl whose nose he's been under since, well, forever.

They'll go their separate ways when middle school starts, she with her friends and he with his. They'll probably meet again one day, twenty years from now, and smile at each other. But it will be like two ships passing in the night. With a flicker os something once lost, they'll remember the carefree days of elementary school. But of couse they will be just too far apart by now. Already on their separate ways, down different paths. They'll be starting on their own lives by then, and there's no going back to those days. 


So maybe that was the promise of the morning. That what we have is the burden of the past, the oppressive knowledge of better times gone bye. But I'm not sure. I think that keeping those times with us - by remembering the past - we allow ourselves a more enriched present. For them, the memory of their lives way back when - not wishing they could go back but remembering - will be what they hold on to. 

Because that is something to hold on to. 

The ajumma landlady

Anyone of us spending some time teaching here in South Korea will, at some point or another, have an experience with our landlady (and I have yet to meet someone with a landlord, just in case you were wondering why that noun is so specifically gendered). The experience, in a word, will almost certainly prove to be...dynamic. For example:

Yesterday morning, I woke up, had a piece of toast-

Sorry, you don't want to hear about that part. What happened was I went into my laundry room to grab some clean clothes when I noticed there was an alarming amount of water pooled on the "floor". So I lifted the "floor" (because it is an inlaid linoleum that isn't even glued down), and I was SUPER excited to find that there was a quarter inch of water underneath my "floor"! EXACTLY HOW I WANTED TO START MY MORNING.

Photo courtesy

So my coteacher called my landlady and she said she'd be by between 5 and 7pm yesterday evening. Apparently the ajumma landladies here are in cahoots with the cable guys in America, because 7 rolled around and...nothing. Nothing at 7:30 either, and so I decided to go for my already-put-off run for the evening. I got back, and was walking up the stairs to my building when there she was! My ajumma landlady, shining in all her tiny ajumma glory (no visor, though :( ), only two hours late.

So I let her in, and she pokes around my laundry room, and through a series of wild gesticulations, she was either yelling at me to not lift the "floor" (which I did to try to prevent mold, thank you very much!), or telling me that she could not fix it tonight. Probably it was both, as she will be coming back today to (hopefully) shopvac all the water out from there and FIXITFIXITFIXIT!!! She also told me (I think) that the hose needs to be out the window to drain condensation (sorry for never having used a lame wall unit air conditioner before!) out of my househome. So.

Anyway, it will hopefully be fixed soon, and likely with lots more crazy gestures.The upshot is, it's making me clear out all the boxes I was "storing" back there. It'll be nice to have a free and clear (and dry!) laundry area again.

An open letter to the hot water heater in my apartment

Dear Hot Water Heater,

I know we haven't known each other for very long - only a little over three months - but I think we need to have a talk. You may think this forward of me, but I am a little upset with you. Perhaps I just haven't taken the time to get to know your quirks. I do try to spend a little time with you daily, whether it's in the shower or doing my dishes. I like to think we were starting to build a rapport together!

But a month or so ago, all that changed. I'm not sure what I did to anger you, but apparently it was bad. For some reason, the nice showers you gave me and the lovely heat you radiated from my floor just got to be all too much. And then you decided that 10 minutes of hot water was really all I needed. I'm not sure why you allotted me only 10 minutes, but I thought, "okay, I can work with this while I try to make amends to HWH."

Perhaps that was it. Perhaps the nickname came too early in our relationship. If that's the case, I am truly sorry. I can easily switch back to the more formal Hot Water Heater, if it will help us out. Because I do believe there can still be an us! We just have to work together to figure it all out - we are, after all, in this together. You and I, sailing down the whitewater rapids that is life in dynamic Korea.

But then again, maybe not. Maybe it is time to let go. Since yesterday, it seems like you have let go. Of course it happened while I had a guest over who needed to shower. I am not sure why you felt the need to take our fight public - a fight which, by the by, I wasn't even aware we were having. But to suddenly decide to produce no hot water whatsoever? Not cool! Not cool at all.

So now it's been two days. Two days, Hot Water Heater, of me being unable to shower, unable to wash my dishes. And that's just two days too long! I can understand the need to take a brief respite from your duties every once in a while. But it would be great if you took that rest and came back full force, ready to heat water to the best of your ability. Two days is just unacceptable. I am tired and dirty and just generally thrown off now! I need my morning shower like some people need their coffee - I just can't function without it.

And I miss you, Hot Water Heater. We had some good times, right? Me trying to figure out how to turn you on even though I can't read you. You alternating between boiling lava and ice at the slightest nudge of the faucet. I miss that! I miss...us. There I said it. I miss us! Come back to me, Hot Water Heater!

I know this will be difficult, but that's why I've enlisted some outside help. Yes, I called the landlord. Because I know we can get past this! But it's silly to try it on our own. We just need to admit that this is bigger than us. It's not something we can figure out on our own, but I am sure with the right professional help we can at the very least come to an understanding that will let coexist peacefully. Because Hot Water Heater, whatever I did to upset you, the dishes are starting to pile up. And I am starting to radiate stank lines. It's time for this standoff to end once and for all.

Please come back to me Hot Water Heater. I need you. I miss you.

With all my warmest affection and tenderness,
Nolen

My seafood-venture!

Those of you who are at all averse to fish or other sea-dwelling creatures, be advised: THERE WILL BE NO ESCAPE FROM THIS POST.

So last night, I went to dinner with a friend of mine from college who is hear visiting her family. This was possibly my last opportunity to visit with her before she goes back to America, so I am really glad I got the opportunity. However, I might have been a bit more hesitant had I fully comprehended the tremendous undertaking this dinner would be.

I knew from the outset that it would likely involve raw fish, but I was wholly unaware that it would also involve five hours total in transit time. That was just a lovely surprise! Hurray! So I left my school at my normal time, knowing that it would take me at least an hour to make it to the station where I was to meet my friend Junghee. Once I arrived, I was informed that we'd be taking a bus to get to Sorae fish market near Incheon harbor, and that the bus would be about an hour. And let me tell you! I was super excited for all this transit time!

It turns out I should have been...guys, fish caught fresh from the ocean is just AMAZING. Especially when it's only been killed approximately 90 seconds before you eat it. So we started out with a quick walk around the fish market to see what was there, and also to get a few amuse-bouches, such as sweet black bean cakes or roasted boll weevils. I know, right? And yes, I did try some of the boll weevils. They tasted like meat-flavored lima beans. Not terrible, but not something I think I'll order on my own.

Then we began walking the outer stalls in earnest. These are the stalls where you select your fish that is swimming around in the tank, and the owner then plucks it from its temporary home, kills it, and fillets it for you to eat raw. I believe the Korean word for this is hoe (the hangul on this computer doesn't work so I can't write it out for you in Korean, sorry. You can see our delicacy here:

Our fish included whitefish, flounder, these gross pink things that looked like wangs, and conch

The darker fish on either side of the very white flounder was our white fish. He splashed us, so we ate him. SUCKA.The whitefish, the flounder, and the wang-looking fish were good. The conch was not my favorite. We also had, not pictured here, sea cucumber. It has a very interesting texture, much firmer than I was expecting, and not a bad flavor at all!

And then they brought out the surprise. Sannakji, which literally means "live octopus". This particular octopus was no longer alive, but that was a VERY recent development in its personal history. The tentacles were still furiously wriggling, and the suckers were still...sucking... It's a delicacy here, and one I was not sure I would actually try, and definitely not so soon!

They are still wriggling around on the plate! It was mildly terrifying.

But as you can see, I definitely went for it. Really, it wasn't that bad! You just have to chew furiously as the tentacles are wriggling around in your mouth so the suckers don't stick to your throat on the way down and the octopus takes its final revenge. Death to the land-walkers!

I was scared. I think it's reasonable.

The taste was surprisingly good. Very mild, and it easily picks up whatever sauce you dip it in.

Following our raw course, it was time to move on to the main meal: GRILLED CLAMS.

I think this photo says it all

We had: approximately 2 and a half pounds of clams, plus oysters, and about a pound of shrimp grilled on a bed of rock salt.

It was delicioius!

And we ate the whole danged thing. The ajumma taking our money looked at our check and said "Yuk man won??" with a tone of incredulity that these three people could possibly have eaten 60000 won worth of seafood. Oh but we most certainly did.

Three hours later and I'm back at home exhausted, stuffed, and thoroughly happy with my decisions for my evening. It was a win if there ever was one.

In which I go hiking and get the meat sweats

Before we get started with today's entry into the wonderful world of Nolen, let me apologize for the lack of photos. I promise to look for a new camera this weekend so I can actually show you all everything.

Anyway. Yesterday was finally time for some school bonding. Most of my other teacher friends had gone through this (some several times already), and now it was my turn. Yesterday, we went hiking. Hiking, for those of you who don't know, is basically the national sport in Korea. It consists of medium to large sized groups of people walking up predetermined, well-defined trails up and down a mountain, often times as fast as you can, pausing only briefly at various scenic outlooks along the way. Like everything else here, hiking can only be described as super dynamic.

Initially, I was looking forward to the hiking - it's something I particularly enjoy doing, and it would be nice to spend some awkward time with the coworkers outside of school. But last week I got a pretty severe cold which has decided to return with a vengance. So I was definitely in the mood for hiking. Add to that the heavy rains from the previous 36 hours making the ground basically a giant, sucking mudpit and the clammy conditions outside, and it made for just a great day all around. But we all climbed into cars for the half hour (ish) drive to Suwon and the mountain anyway.

Of course, about 10 minutes into the drive, I took a Korean Transportation Nap, which seemed to help my disposition a bit, and when we arrived, my co-teacher and I and a couple of other teachers decided to just do a short walk around the pond. Which was actually rather pleasant! The area was beautiful, and the humidity was bearable and the conversation was less awkward than it usually is.

Along the trail, my coworkers pointed out a few interesting things to me: First, along the beginning of the trail, there was a lined path filled with pebbles, on which one walks without shoes, the idea being that it acts as a foot massage. I elected not to try this one, but mostly because I didn't want to deal with taking off my shoes and putting them back on again. Tired and lazy = missing out on cultural experiences. Ah well, there will likely be a next time. As we walked by the pond, my coteacher pointed out to me the Biggest. Effing. Koi fish. I have ever seen in all my born days. Seriously, these things were about the size of a steel worker's forearm! As we walked back from the pond/dammed portion of the stream, we sat down by what is apparently a foot bath. At least, that's how it was explained to me. So, not wanting to miss out on another experience, I took off my shoes and socks and plunged my feet into water that must come directly from the icy tail of a comet floating through deepest space. What I'm trying to say here is YA'LL IT WAS COLD. It is a shocker that my feet did not fall off right then and there. Of course, one of the teachers with me challenged me to a contest to see who could keep their feet in the longest. I lost (but since I got to take my feet out sooner, who is the real loser here?).

So we continued our slow meander back, stopping here and there, including at a honey farm. Seriously. Right there, on the side of the trail, was a woman who was selling honey that came directly from the SWARM OF BEES RIGHT BEHIND HER WHY WASN'T EVERYONE RUNNING FOR THEIR LIVES???? Ugh. Bees.

I did not go up to the honey stand (but they brought me back a sample anyway! hooray! Also, it was DELICIOUS), but my coworkers did end up buying some. Honey: fresh from the bee's butt (is that how it works? I assume so).

And then it was dinner time. Well for us, because we were like an hour ahead of everyone else, it was pre-dinner snack time. And you guys, it was fantastic. We had a soup made out of fresh acorn jelly (which normally I'm not the biggest fan of, but made fresh it ROCKS...kind of earthy, nutty, and a little salty taste all at the same time) and a potato pancake with zucchini cooked in it. Great stuff.

NOW it was dinner time, and this time it was the entire school (well, all the teachers and admins, anyway) eating. We went in this restaurant that specializes in grilled meat and sat down for yet another edition of Gigantic Korean Dinner. Of course, I was lucky enough to end up next to the principal, which is always an awkward time. See the thing is, he speaks no English and I speak like two words of Korean. But this doesn't stop him from talking to me! Oh no, he talks my ear off! And I have NO IDEA what on earth he is saying. So that's awesome, and then dinner came. We had: Scallion potato pancake with squid, acorn jelly salad with sesame leaf, turnip kimchi, real grilled meat (I had not realized just how much I missed the wonderful smoky taste of meat from a grill) in K-style tacos, tofu, some kind of steaming tofu curd, bean curd, more grilled meat (some beef, some pork I believe), and then even more meat.

I ate So. Much. Meat. It was wonderful, and then it was awful. You know that overheated, uncomfortable feeling you get when you eat too much meat? Yeah. I was there. We call it the "meat sweats". It's a thing, look it up!

And then it was time for us to make our surreptitious exit from the restaurant so as not to get roped into a night of excessive drinking and further awkwardness with the principal, and sped off home to lay in bed and recover from the meat sweats. Shudder.

Culture Tips

I just had to share this with you guys...this comes from the English teacher's guide to my fifth grade text book, the chapter on exclamatory and descriptive statements.

The Culture of Exclamation

Western people show exclamation even over trifles. This phenomenon isn't found in an oriental culture that appreciates people who control their feeling and taciturn. We can usually see Americans who are moved so easily by things that Koreans aren't effected by. This means they are accustomed to expressing feeling freely and frankly.

In western culture, they start a conversation about the weather when they meet someone for the first time: 'It's a lovely day, isn't it?'. This is referenced to the inclement weather in England.

The people who live in an area with nice weather like Korea aren't touched by this kind of thing but Englishmen can be impressed.

Translation: Westerners are weird. They like to state the obvious. A lot. Just go with it.

What is this I don't even.

Surprise Camping Trip!

Haha suckas! I found out yesterday that the fourth and fifth graders are going on a school camping trip to learn about nature or whatever. They will be gone Tuesday (today) and Wednesday (tomorrow), the positive upshot of which is my regular classes are all cancelled. Hooray! I still have to do my after school classes, though, so it's not all a free ride. But that's the thing about teaching public schools in Korea: nobody tells you when random things like this are happening, so it's always a surprise! In fact, one of my friends stayed up late last night and got up early this morning to hammer out some lesson plans, only to find out that she didn't have any classes today. SURPRISE! It's so dynamic!

Similarly, I'm going to be gone next week from Mon-Wed at an off-site GEPIK orientation/teaching seminar. So it'll be some time again before I have a full week of classes. Woot!

In other news, I'm hoping to go to Seoul this weekend to see the Steve McCurry exhibit that is showing there. If you aren't familiar with the name, Steve McCurry is a very prominent photojournalist who has focuses mainly on Asia. He rose to fame in the mid-80s with his chronicle of the Afghan War, first by being embedded amongst the actual fighters, and then through his documentation of the refugee situation. He is most famous for his iconic photograph, "Afghan Girl", which the National Geographic magazine ran as the cover to its June 1985 issue.

You can see why it's so famous. And hopefully why I am so excited to go see this guy's work. Out of anyone I've seen, he really has a serious knack for capturing some essential humanity in all of his subjects. Captivating.