Chuseok

The last week has been an eventful one! Last weekend was Chuseok, which is Korean Thanksgiving. This meant that we got Monday off and had a glorious three-day weekend.

Saturday we slept in, then met up with our friends Godwin, Sarah, and Laura downtown. We spent the afternoon wandering between the various little parks in downtown Daegu- due to the holiday, there were lots of people hanging out in the parks and playing traditional games. We had a great time getting coached by little boys and old men on how to throw sticks into buckets, chase metal hoops around and keep a top going by slapping it with string. We must have been quite the spectacle, because we must have had a hundred pictures snapped of us. The guys (Godwin, Ace, and Godwin’s friend Mike) played a quick game of basketball with the tallest Korean guys I’ve ever seen. It was pretty cool to see how quickly and happily everybody accepted us into their activities, even though we couldn’t communicate at all. Later, we found a bookstore with a good selection of English books. I bought six! I was so thrilled to see a decent selection that I had to stock up. Right now I’m reading “Everything Is Illuminated” by Jonathan Safran Foer- it’s brilliant. It’s much better than the movie, of course.

We spent the rest of the evening getting a crash course in nighttime Korean activities- we ate (a lot, and in several different restaurants), drank Soju (the Korean national vice- like rice vodka, but not actually distilled from anything. MMM, cheap chemical liquor for only a dollar a bottle!), went to a really awesome hookah bar, played our first round of BilliBow (a cross between bowling and billiards- you hit a pool ball with a pool cue down a mini-bowling lane and knock over mini-pins- fun!), stopped in a local Foreigner bar, hit the NoriBong (a singing room- like Karaoke, but without the innocent bystanders- every group gets their own soundproof room!), and finished the night up in a dance club. WHEW! What makes this epic evening even more amazing is that, between the second restaurant and the hookah bar, it started pouring, so we all started sprinting for the hookah bar. Ace made it there safely, but when he tried to stop, he skidded on a metal grate- he didn’t notice anything wrong until he glanced at his foot and noticed it bleeding profusely. He got about 5 parallel gashes on his foot, and with the rain spreading out the blood, the entire area was just covered in red. It looked like something from a horror movie or something. But did Ace want to go home? Bah! He’s no quitter. So he spent the rest of the evening travelling to five other destinations hopping on his left foot and riding piggy-back on Godwin and Mike. A group of five foreigners in Daegu is spectacle enough, but when one of them is hopping through the bar district at one in the morning with horrifically bloody Kleenex wrapped around one bare foot, it’s pretty exciting for the onlookers. One of the funniest things was that when he was bleeding all over the hookah bar’s hallway, the only thing the doorman was worried about was that Ace take the flip-flop off of his other foot! Foreigners bleeding all over the hallway are ok, but absolutely no shoes allowed inside! Anyway, I was pretty worried all night, but we had a great time and Ace was a sport. His foot is healing up just fine now.

Sunday we (the same group minus Mike) took a bus about an hour outside of the city to a nearby mountain. It was gorgeous! It didn’t look too different from the forests at home- very lush and green, with lots of deciduous trees just starting to turn. I guess the mountains here are incredible once all the leaves are changing colors- everyone tells us fall is the time for hiking here. Anyway, we explored the mountain, which is a pretty big tourist area with tons of things to do. There were temples, an incredible hundreds-of-feet-tall standing stone Buddah, a climbing wall and lots of restaurants. There are tons of things to see there, but we only had time for a few. We ran into some other English teachers that Sarah and Godwin knew at the Buddah, and got to know them over dinner. Everyone here is so easy to get along with! We headed home and watched “Gone Baby Gone” at Sarah and Godwin’s, which was excellent

On Monday, our new friends that we met on the mountain had a barbeque, so we bought some chicken and some veggies and grilled up dinner on the rooftop at Josh’s apartment building. There were probably 18 other English teachers there, so we met a bunch more nice people. It was a really nice, chill evening- everyone grilled meat by the light of cell phones, chatted, smoked hookah and played guitars. We learned all sorts of stuff chatting with the other teachers. For example, have you ever heard of “fan death”? It’s an Korean urban legend that if you fall asleep with the fan on, it will deprive you of oxygen and you’ll die! This is accepted as Gospel truth by most Koreans and the Korean media. It has been cited by the Korean mass media as one of the top five causes of death! I’m not kidding! Please Wikipedia “fan death” for yourself. It’s there, I promise! Also, something that we discovered this weekend and found really interesting is that they’re terrified of Mad Cow disease over here, and won’t eat American or Canadian beef. All the major restaurants have signs posted advertising Australian or Korean beef.

So far, the rest of the week has gone really well. Ace and I got bicycles this week! We bought his used mountain bike at a shop on Wednesday, and after work on Wednesday night Sarah hooked me up with a free bike that had been left behind by an English teacher on her way home. It is, without a doubt, the coolest free bicycle ever. It’s a beat-up, cherry red cruiser-style one speed with a basket on the front and a horn. I’m completely in love with her. I named her Clementine. Thursday, we took our sweet new bikes out for a ride, and discovered this beautiful area that’s only about a 10 minute ride from our apartment. There’s a reservoir and a lovely little mountain with nice hiking trails on it- I guess the trails even connect to Mt. Apsan, which is the most popular hiking area nearby. We’re really excited to explore it some more this weekend.

Work is going well, too- we’re getting a little more comfortable and confident every day. Some days I teach the same thing 4 times in a row, which I think will get boring soon, but it’s fine, and the kids are mostly really nice kids. The students work so hard you wouldn’t believe it- the average student here has pretty much no life beyond studying. They usually go to school a few hours early for study groups, go to school for 6 or 7 hours, then spend all evening getting private lessons or going to extra academies for everything from origami to science and math to violin and piano, then come to our English school , sometimes as late as 10:30. Koreans pride themselves on working harder than anyone else, and they really do. The kids are made to understand extremely well how important an education is, and most parents are really involved in their kids’ education. The Korean teachers at MoonKkang spend a large part of the day talking on the phone with parents, filling them in on how their student did that day at school.

Well, as always, this has turned into a marathon blog. I guess I’ll leave it be for now! I’m working on getting a photo site set up so you can check out some pictures if you like. I’ll let you know as soon as I have the URL for it!

Love you and miss you all!

Kait