Wednesday, October 22, 2008

Hanging from the Ceilings

Well, I've been trying to write a post for the past week or so, and honestly I just haven't been able to do it. It's not because I have nothing to write about, but I just cannot communicate my thoughts effectively on the subject. I will finish that post one day and hopefully be able to explain the culture here far better. Alas, after three failed attempts I figured that I should just simply write a blog about what's been going on.

I must first start this blog by announcing that somehow in one week I have gotten two girls phone numbers, and for some reason they actually like spending time with me. I actually have gotten several girls phone numbers here, but that is because your social life is run through your cell phone here. Many of you may be wondering then why it's such a big deal that I have these two ladies phone numbers. Well, simply put, and for lack of a better vocabulary, they like me. I guess being a waygook saram has its benefits (it means person from a foreign country). I guess it makes me semi-hot stuff in this country. That's right baby, Will is in demand out here. If only I could arrange an all girl smack down and then winner gets me. Now if you believe that one I'll tell you another one. However, being a foreigner does mean that it is pretty easy to talk to new people here. They are all really interested in who and what you are. It's really quite interesting. I've been adopted by many different groups of people while at a bar because they wanted to talk to me.

Besides going out to the bars and picking up Brenden and Carissa when they arrived life has pretty much settled into a quazi-routine. Life now consists of work, dinner, and going out or staying in. Now as boring as this routine may sound, it beats the hell out of my routine at home. My routine at home was work, work, and then work some more. Here I have time to go out and play sports, and time to go out and meet people. It's really refreshing to actually be able to enjoy life. Speaking of enjoying life, I have to say that I have been exceptionally happy since Brenden and Carissa have arrived. It's great to be able to see them again after such a long lay off. I guess I really did miss them while they were out and about in Georgia. Now I wonder if my friends will miss me as much. Something tells me I may be dreaming. Now just to reinforce the point to all my SD friends, there here with me. HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!!!!!!!!! I'll make sure to write about our adventures. Speaking of adventures, we are going to Roma, the local nightclub on Friday. Ohh god that ought to be fun. Hundreds of sweaty dancing Koreans and then the foreigners.

Other then turning into a chick magnent and Brenden and Carissa showing up, there haven't been any major adventures yet. That will all change shortly. When I have more to write about I will. Until then my dearest and most beloved friends I will see you when you get your booties out to Korea.

Monday, October 13, 2008

You Can't Escape it!!!!!



I'm not one to complain to much about music, even bad music has a place in life. There is a reason that I rock the Toto album on my Ipod. Very much the same way that Jordan rocks out the Europe and the Katey Perry. However, the Koreans are taking this to another level. The song above is currently the hottest thing ever in Korea. Not only is that bad enough, but I was at a bar the other day where they played that song on a loop for well over thirty minutes. I was the only person who noticed because I felt like the song was drilling into my soul. Honestly, I feel like I've been thrown back into Junior High School. Boy Band/Girl Band music is huge in Korea. I mean huge. We're talking worse then N-Sync, Backstreet Boys, and New Kids on the Block combined. You cannot escape this music. When you goto a bar you will hear the same five or six songs a minimum of four times. It's not that K-pop is necessarily evil, it's just that it annoys me to no end. To prove how bad it is here, most Koreans think that Westlife, is still insanely popular. Or how about some band called the A-Teens. They think all these bands are HUGE.

God save me, I didn't know the music would be this bad. Here is another wonderful video featuring those thugs in the picture above. Good luck trying not to laugh.


Now I know what you're thinking, it's just the young teenie boppers that are all about this music. Sadly, no. They adults love them too. Ok, enough of my complaining, I know many of you are far more interested in what embarrassing things I've done lately. Sadly, there have been no new incidents of exceptionally embossing behavior. Well, that is if you don't take my badminton skills into question Yeah folks, that's right. This boy has taken up badminton while in here. Needless to say that those few times I played with my sister in my early teens have not helped much. What has helped was my decades of Ping Pong and my semi-ability to play tennis. I have to say though, it's pretty daunting to watch competitive Korean's play this sport. We have an open gym at my school every Tuesday and Friday where we play Badminton. Several people who are really good show up here to play games. They're tough. Luckily they leave me alone and are too busy burying the birdie into each others faces to notice how poorly I'm playing. Ahh the fun of learning a new sport. There are rumors abounding that I might be taking up cricket while I'm here also. Many of the foreigners want to start playing, and I'm more then interested in showing them what a true baseball player can do at cricket. In other words I'm going to be absolutely horrible until I learn the basics.

One last thing that I have to say I am enjoying about this country is the emphasis on exercise through sport. I'm playing badminton and table tennis often, and starting tomorrow I will be playing Volleyball at my school. Any ideas on other hobbies I should pick up while here, besides working on my absolutely wonderful writing.

Ohh yeah one of the pictures a teacher took of me at camp. I mortified my student when I posed this way. Ahh the fun ways to torture your students.

Friday, October 3, 2008

6th Grade Camp



Well folks, after a rick rollicking weekend that saw me spend way too much money and drink three nights in a row, I headed off to my school's 6th Grade Camp. Now for those of you that are familiar with school camps you might assume as I did that we would be headed into the woods for a few days and be camping. Well I can say that our three days did involve lots of walking and two mountain hikes, but as for staying in insect infested cabins, that we did not. I think the problem was one of translation from Korean to English. In reality this would be more like a 3 day sixth grade field trip. We stayed in the capital of Gyeongsanbuk-Do province. Yeah it's a helluva mouthful, but as I've found out every province is a pain to pronounce. The city name however is much easier to say.

Gyeong-Ju has been described by several guide books as the museum without walls. For once I honestly think the guide books are true. Gyeong-Ju once was the capital of the Shilla empire which was the first empire to unify all of Korea. In this one small city lay several burial mounds of the Kings and several temples and parks constructed during these times. The city itself seems to thrive primarily on tourism as it is really quite small. The central section can be covered in about twenty minutes by foot. That's smaller then Seosan. However, while the city itself may be small, the surrounding districts encompass countless Korean National Treasures. Be it the burial mounds at Tummuli Park, Wolseong Park, Anapji Pond, Bunhwangsa which holds the oldest observatory in East Asia, and two of the several temples located nearby. These two temples, the Bulguksa which is absolutely beautiful and featured at the end of the video, or the Seokguram Grotto which has a large stone Buddha hidden in what else, a grotto. Aren't names great things, sometimes they actually tell you something about a place.

However, I am actually getting one day ahead. Day one consisted of a simple three hour bus ride to the middle of nowhere. You know as much as I enjoy Buddhist temples, they really have a bad habit of not only putting them in the middle of nowhere, but also putting them at the top of mountains. We stopped at one of the most famous temples in all of Korea called Haeinsa. This wonderful temple houses over 80,000 wood block carvings of traditional Buddhist texts. This is one of the largest collections of Buddhist script in the entire world, if not the largest. These wood blocks are preserved not in a modern facility, but in the original facility constructed to house them. The Korean government tried to build a modern place to house these priceless texts, but sample wood blocks quickly fell victim to mold. Located on a mountain in a well ventilated room these texts have not molded nor fallen victim to countless fires and invasions. Somehow they are perfectly preserved, which for those of you who do not know Korean history is an amazing feat. Not even the Japanese during their occupation were able to take these priceless treasures back to Japan. This needless to say is a point of pride in Korea.

After the wonderful mountain climb and visit to the temple we hopped back aboard the bus for our ride to the Korean National History museum in Gyeong-Ju. This is probably the best Korean History museum in the country. It houses thousands of pieces of Korean history ranging from the paleolithic age to the iron age. I feel a little bad however due to the fact that once you have been to ten or fifteen of these style museums, you have really seen them all. The artifacts may change but they all follow the same basic program. However, this museum did have a large collection of Buddhist art that was far different from anything I had seen before.

After the first day we went off and visited all the sites I mentioned already, and then also went to Posco, which is a giant steel plant. It was kinda cool, especially when we got to walk through the steel plate facility where they were pulling steel out and cooling it. Cool yes, but definitely not the highlight of the trip. Posco is the third largest company in Korea. It falls just behind Samsung and Lotte. After this we took the students to the Eastern Ocean. For many of these students it was the first time they saw a see where the waves break just off the beach. For the most part the Western Sea has large flat beaches where the waves don't break anywhere near the beach. This led to several students, and quite a few teachers getting their shoes and pants soaked when the waves came up farther then expected. For a veteran of Beaches like these, it was quite funny.

On the third day, after the two temples we hopped back up on the bus and drove home. Now this would seem like a great chance to relax after three hectic days with the students. However, not so. After stopping at a rest stop we decided to Nori-Bang the bus. That's right. You can Nori-Bang Korean buses. Needless to say for the next two hours we listened to pre-teens and some teens sing K-pop. 90% of the kids couldn't sing, and more importantly many of them were starting that wonderful process where our voices change. So there was lots of squeaking and squealing and bad music. By the way so you can have a taste of this music, here you go.