I've Been a Bad Boy

Yes, I know that there may be some of you out there in Cyberspace who are a little upset with me. I do apologize about the lack of a consistent narrative the past month or so. In all honesty I've written two or three posts that I have not published, because I just don't think I am able to convey the culture in the proper way. In this frustration I have forgotten why many of you may actually be reading my blog. For most this is a way to keep tabs on what they're favorite globe trotting person is up to, and as such I should remember that I do need to have a running dialogue about my life and adventures. Well, I guess I should seriously stick to the misadventures, because those tend to happen more often. Alas, onto the embarrassing things I've been up to recently.

For starters I have made several comments in recent blogs about my exploits with the local womenfolk. Well, honestly it's turned into some of the most confusing dealings I've ever experienced. I mean, if you look at some of the women I've dated in my lifetime I tend to date very complex women. Yet, even with this complexity I was normally able to reach some level of understanding, where I could anticipate and interpret them correctly. Korean girls on the other hand, I just don't get. I mean I don't even think it's the language issue because some of these women speak English very well. I guess it just boils down to the fact that being a foreigner, you are hot stuff, but you are also just a curiosity to most. Confusion reigns supreme normally when it comes to foreigners trying to figure out Korean women. SUPREME I tell you.

Anyways, onto some of my more entertaining exploits. In all honesty most of these came from this weekend because well, this weekend was very entertaining at points. First off, let me tell you the normal process for finding a motel in Korea. If you are located in an area you know then it's quite easy. You just walk to which ever motel you like and just ask for a room. However, when wandering around neighborhoods you don't know in Seoul it becomes quite the challenge. There are some motels which you spot and just instantly know you won't walk in the door. Like the motel down the dark alley in Itaewon on the street that was 90% owned by the Russian Mafia. Ya just probably shouldn't walk into that place and expect to get a room that doesn't charge in twenty minute intervals. However, the hardest thing about finding a motel in Korea, is the fact that most the time you just can't find one. They are everywhere, but at the same time they are nowhere. Motels tend to bunch together in enclaves and sometimes, you just cannot see them. Another problem is what I've seen fit to dub as the, "ohh they're foreigners looking to stay the night they can only have one room" treatment. This happens several times, and basically they offer you a room, but the second you ask for two rooms they suddenly do not have any openings.

This weekend was a walking joke as we tried to find a motel. Besides deciding not to enter several establishments, and being told by several others that there were no openings, I must tell you about the motel we stayed in. Well, honestly it wasn't that bad for 40,000 a night. Yet, the reason this even matters is the old lady who was manning the desk when we checked in. Mind you this is at 10:45 at night. As we very tiredly sauntered into this establishment I started talking with woman who was working there. Now normally this procedure is very standard, and this time it was. What makes it so noteworthy however was the fact that this lady had fifteen wafer thin slices of cucumber on her face as we did it. Now I'm all for beauty treatments and what not, but honestly I don't really know what good can come out of have 15 wafer thin slices half hanging off you face as you sell someone a room for the night. It took every once of self restraint I had not to laugh at this woman because she seriously reminded me of the vegetable gremlin from Gremlins 2. Anyways I will update some more in the next day or so as I get some pictures in from friends. Warning many of these pictures will show me just hamming it up. Some just might even be cute. However, I seriously doubt that. Anyways here are a few pictures from life recently.

What the hell is this White Crap?

As a person who had spent the last 13 years of his life living in San Diego I have had precious few encounters with a white powdy substance. This substance has been known to invoke both intense excitement and severe depression. It has also been known to cause students to act in strange and uncontrollable ways. This substance can cause flashbacks to days of yore when men were men and sheep were nervous. Wait, scratch that, I'm not in New Zealand. Needless to say though, as a California boy, what the hell is this white stuff that is falling from the sky. Well honestly by now you all know that it is snow. Yes that's right, SNOW. It's snowing in November here. Winter has finally set in after a very wonderful and glorious fall. Fall here is really awesome because the temperature is really nice and it's actually fun to be out and about.

I must say that this city is exceptionally pretty with a nice dusting of white. Then again even L.A. would look nice with a dusting of white. Wait, it wouldn't, LA would still suck. Anyways, it has been really pretty out here the past few days and sadly I think that it will be shortly leaving us. The weather is just too warm for the snow to stick around.

Update

Well, the last few times I've written my blog I've kept it primarily about cultural differences and small things that really don't have much to do with my day to day operation of life out here. Well, this blog, will be no different. Well actually it will be different. I'm going to give you a quick rundown of the past few weeks.

In all honesty the past few weeks have developed along a pretty standardized schedule. I work some, drink some, and then sleep when I can. However, as boring as that sounds I do have few events that have happened in the past few days that I want to talk about. This past weekend my school held an English pop-song contest. Now, this is truly my definition of hell. Twenty groups of students performing bad English pop. I mean we're talking about hearing Dancing Queen and Honey, Honey by Abba. Wanna be, by the Spice Girls, etc. What made this even more torturous was the fact that it was Saturday morning the day after Halloween. Needless to say my head may have been hurting a little bit and I might not have gotten that much sleep.

Now after I have said all this, it actually turned out to be a lot better then I imagined. It honestly was really cute at times and well, some of the groups did a good job. The kids also really enjoyed it, and I guess it was fun. Even if I was hungover it was pretty fun. The music was abysmal but ohh well.

I guess now that I should get to the biggest piece of news that people will find interesting. I actually had a date last night. I know, Will had a date. The end of the world is coming, wait no that's tomorrow if Obama gets elected. Anyways it went very well. We had sam gyop sal, which for those of you who don't speak Korean is Korean BBQ. What's even more impressive is I managed to get a second date out of her. I don't know when exactly it will be because she works two jobs but I do know what it will involve. It's going to involve me cooking Chicken and us drinking beer. That was her idea. I volunteered to cook but it was her idea for Chicken. I'm actually relatively scared as to what I may have gotten myself into on this. The primary reason for that is because I don't have a BBQ here, and we all know that cooking on a BBQ is where I'm most comfortable. Ohh well, things will go well, because this girl likes me for some reason.

Alas, today is sports day at my school and I'm going to go take some pictures of my students and basically harass them.

Korean Fire Drill.

Well, we had a fire drill the other day at school. Now many of you who are products of the public education system in the United States, and well any education system in the United States are well aware of the countless fire drills. Well, here in Korea, its is completely different. I recently found some pictures that another teacher took so I'm going to post them to show just exactly what I'm talking about.

Now, in the U.S. a fire drill is an evacuation and assembly drill. The goal is to empty the campus of every student in a quick and most importantly an orderly fashion. Here, half the school didn't participate, and the other half was already outside when the drill technically started. Another point of difference I should mention is that, a fire drill here, really just means a fire show. For starters, the fire truck was there shooting water into the air to impress the students. Another point of departure was the lighting of, and use of a smoke canister that some of the students had to walk by.

Well, if that wasn't enough, for those pyros of you in my small but utterly devoted readership they decided to light cardboard boxes on fire. Then have a few of the teachers take turns hitting it with fire extinguishers. When the teachers failed to get the boxes out, the firemen who previously were busy shooting water in the air decided to take out the flames with some precision water shots.

If that isn't enough, they also do a casualty evacuation drill for the teachers during this time. This involves many different drills. One of which involves the movement of an injured student. While this may be good practice, it was more ridiculous then you'd think. First, they moved him in a wheel barrow. They then transferred him to a legitimate hard board stretcher where he was immobilized. After the immobilization they transferred him into an ambulance and off they drove.

I sit here and wonder about the image these drills give my students about fires. For many of them these drills are a time where they get to sit and laugh about what the teachers are doing. For others it's just a cool show to watch because there are flames and large geysers of water being shot out of hoses. Either way, I feel that if there was a real fire in this school, the students would not know how to evacuate safely, and I am honestly worried that in the case of a fire several students would be injured or worse because it would be utter chaos.

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.

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.

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.