Surprise!!!

So, it's Election day, and I'm called off for an emergency pickup basketball game. Steph has plans to go to a movie in the afternoon, so when I come back, I'm not expecting anyone to be home.
To my huge surprise, Steph has left a note on the table that says "Brent, Surprise! Look in the laundry room!"

Lo and behold, I open the door, expecting to see the drain backed up, or some dead pile of garbage... and I see this:

After playing with the little monster for about an hour, and realizing we now have a new dog, two of our friends showed up; Leah and Warren. Supposedly, it was their "New" baby that they are going to share. Steph was just house-sitting! The new parents have given us an open invitation to "borrow" the cute little girl "Star" whenever we need a puppy fix. I love puppies, but in Korea, she might tie us down from our adventurous tendancies!

What a relief!

It works! AVerKey100 Pro!

For all you laptop users in Korea, this may come in handy for you! In each classroom, we have this little Digital/Analogue converter that allows us to play lessons from our computers on the 50" flat screen TVs. My co-teacher told me that they retail for $150! - Korean electronics are not cheap. Looking through the Korean Ebay - Auction.com, I found this wicked little converter for $50.

My hopes were that this would let me avoid buying a DVD player (cheapest here was $120, and then I would have to somehow modify it to play North American style Region 1 DVDs) as well as let me play my many downloaded goods on our huge TV.

2 weeks after buying it, the converter showed up and does a pretty solid job! No audio, but we can listen through the computer speakers until I find an audio cable at one of the electronics stores!

I win!

Dinner of Kings... It's NeNe chicken!

Yes, you heard me right!
The ultimate in Korean fast food cuisine is the one, the only, NeNe Checken.
Translated into Korean, reads, "Yes Yes Chicken"... and is quite fitting.

The delicious and high quality breaded chicken strips contain NO chicken feet, no chicken heads, no chicken innerds, and not even a trace amount of dog! The meal retails for about $15 (which is a little pricey) but it feeds 2 with enough leftovers for another dinner for two.
The service is great and the people love us. What more could you ask for???

Say it with me now
YES YES CHICKEN!!!



I think this last entry is proof that I have too much time on my hands...

Contest for my canadian slackers

Ok, here it is.
A contest for my Canadian slacker friends.

First person to send me something in the mail, anything, will get a disproportionately better return gift in the mail. I know you are all busy, and I am not... so all you have to send, this time, is a postcard. The better the message, the better the return gift.

The first one here, wins. Sorry Family, you're excluded.
I reserve the right to disqualify your letter if it REALLY sucks.

Let the game begin.

Election Mayhem

As anyone from Korea can tell you, we are in the heat of election time here. The brilliance of it is that we actually get a day off (March 31st) to vote... well, I don't think foreigners can vote, so we just get the day off. Sweet!
The campaigns here don't really exude the same "respectability" as they do back home. Wait, did I just call politicians in Canada respectible? I've been away for too long. In Mokpo, the past week has been a blur of candidates 1-8 (that's how they are known) with coloured sashes with their numbers on them, being driven around the city in small floats on flatbed trucks, with miscellaneous "fighting!" songs bellowing in the background. One of the candidates has "Puff the magic dragon" as his song... Buddy, come on! One of the floats was made up to look like an ocean liner and candidate 2(?) was standing on the top barking out whatever to everyone on the block.

Every morning, one of the busy street corners I walk past on my way to school is manned by one of the candidates and an army of supporters - all bowing to the oncomming traffic and waving as their song blares in the background. Not surprisingly today, I watched in amazement as a driver barrelled into the back of another car that was distracted by the mob of waving people. This started a 3 car chain reaction.
Funny part was, the car that barrelled into the first car had enough time to hammer his/her horn! Next time, try the brakes!

Naju in the House!!! / We found Mark Freeman!

Another solid weekend that will take us a week to recover from. Bless this place! Our friends from orientation, Stuart and Max, came down from Naju (1 hour north by bus) on Friday night.
Of course the best part of going out on a Friday is that you feel like you've added another day to your weekend! One drawback is that a night out in Mokpo doesn't usually start until midnight, and runs well into Saturday. 2 bars, a billion beers and a pitcher of long island ice tea later, we were leaving a bar called "New York" for home.

Lesson of the night: Getting Leah Nebucett into a cab is like catching the wind... You never really have a chance because once you take your eye off her, she's off talking/dancing/handstanding with some stranger on the street. Total time to take Leah from the bar, 15 feet to street to catch a cab: 1.5 hours.

Saturday afternoon was capped off by the arrival of the legendary Mark "I'm really as amazing a person as Brent's mother says" Freeman. Mark took the KTX train in from just outside of Seoul (37°20'0.22"N, 127°15'42.93"E). We spent the afternoon catching up with Mark, checking out the HIGHLY over-rated Peace Square, "Eye shopping" at Lotte Mart, eating Samgyopsal (thick bacon strips you fry yourself at your table, cut into small bites and wrap in onion, red pepper sauce and romaine lettuce leaves) and then mosying over to P-club - the foreigner bar for some drinks... until 3am.

On Sunday, Mark, Max, Stuart, Steph and I headed to Mt. Yudal (for our 4th time - yeah, it's worth it) for a hike to the peak and then a march around old downtown, before we sent the boys home for the weekend. Now, all I want is a little sleep! Thanks for the awesome weekend guys!

Map it up!

Steph thought it would be a good idea to take a picture of a tourist map and mark out Mokpo for our Canadian hommies. Sounded like a good idear, so here it is! All kinds of important points of interest!

Zoom in for greater details! If you click the picture, it will open a little bigger, but if you hold your cursor over the picture, an icon will appear in the bottom right corner. Click it to zoom in!

It must be cool to be a redneck.

http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=4626696113827168327

Purple and White baby!!!

Anyone who has suffered through the last couple of years with the Toronto Raptors has shared in my misery. While things have been turned up in a big way over the last 6 months, they were still the 5th worst team in the league this year, with the possibilty for some improvement next year. Chris Bosh makes the games worth watching, as well as solid improvement from Charlie Villanueva.

Personally, all the hype about Bryan Colangelo is nothing but until I see him do something… BUT NOW HE’LL HAVE SOMETHING TO WORK WITH! God bless lady luck for shining her pretty face on Toronto this year and granting us the #1 lottery pick for the upcoming draft, when we should have gotten the #5 pick in the draft. We will see if Mr. Colangelo trades this pick – since it is a pretty homogeneous field, or if he picks up a big man.

And, for those who don’t know...yes, this is a big deal.
Yippooo!!!!!

Here are some links to simulations of the upcoming draft (Thanks Pops):
http://www.insidehoops.com/nba-mock-draft.shtml
http://www.hoopshype.com/draft.htm
http://www.nbadraft.net/

Recovery Weekend

After a week spent recovering from our trip to Suncheon last weekend, we were hoping to take it a little easier this one. The 2.5 hour bus ride each way to and from Suncheon felt like a month on the high seas; very barf-a-rific. The driver rode the brake and gas the whole way. We spent the night partying with Virginia, Steve and Nicola (superstars from our orientation) and came back on the Sunday. Unfortunately, we brought back with us, some nasty hacks and have been trying to nurse ourselves back to health ever since.

So this weekend, our buddy “Handsome Steve”, from Qualcum Beach, Vancouver came to visit us from his post in Muan. After weathering some pretty demanding requests from his school, Steve was starting to get on top of things, and was looking for some “waygook” interaction, since he was the only foreigner in Muan.

Saturday consisted of some shopping at Lottemart (They have un-hemmed dress pants there!!!), a big pizza lunch and a hike up Yudal Mountain at dusk (see Mokpo pictures on the sidebar) . The mountain is a solid climb, about 45 minutes, and after dark, they light up the peaks, making for a breath-taking sight. Of course, we waited for the lights to come on, but got tired… and as predicted, as we reached the bottom of the mountain, all the lights came on.

Boo!!! Shame on you, lights!

Still making me laugh

Don't ask me why he crossed my mind, but I just wanted to remind everyone that "Trogdor, The Burninator" is one of the funniest bits you are going to see on the internet.

Thank god for Home Star Runner!

Why all the yelling?

It’s no secret that the Korean kids are screaming monsters… cute, don’t get me wrong, but yelling machines. But that’s kids, right? That’s what they do.

What sometimes catches me off guard is the other places that you hear some good yelling. Grocery store... I’m looking at you. We do a lot of shopping at the “Big Mart” the “E-mart” (the e is probably for Extra delicious) and the “Lotte Mart”, all multi-level Walmart-like stores, to meet our daily need of coffee, pineapple and chocolate. Unlike Canadian grocery stores, where people generally don’t say a word to each other, Korean supermarkets usually have plenty of chanting, singing and greeting. E-mart even has "Toki" or rabbits in cages outside for the kids to play with... those things wouldn't last long in Canada.

Friday night at E-mart seems to take this trend to the next level. Upon arrival, you are greeted by two greeters with the regular “service bow” – full body bow to you. Once inside you are bombarded by a greeter at the end of pretty much each aisle. Some ladies were giving out food samplers, some were dressed in cheerleader outfits, chanting the virtues of their product of the day. Some greeters are roamers, responsible for asking you if you need any help should you show the remotest interest in something on the shelves.

As you can tell by my tone, the experience was a draining one, requiring a bucketfull of “Annyong Haseyo’s” and “Anio’s”, mixed with some “Moulayo’s” to get us out of confusing conversations. But the shopping choices are great, and we go back on a weekly basis for the 50 cent sushi…unbeatable deal.

I’ve put on a new round of pictures for show. There is also a video of our apartment, although Brett has told me that it is dreadfully boring. Sorry Bread, it’s a documentary, not a comedy. Comedy is your job. So is being smelly and jerky! Ha!

Finally, leaving comments is difficult on Korean computers (because the text is in Korean!) so here is a screen shot of a comment screen. As for the Canadian folk not leaving comments… you guys just suck!

:P

Back door

Today, my co-teacher had a headache, so she took me in the back door to the cafeteria. Her comment was: "Too loud today". My thoughts exactly.

As I've said before, the food here is awesome. I haven't lost a pound. But sometimes you get caught a little off guard by something you would never see in Canada.
Case and point:



Delicious Chicken?

OR








Scare of your life!

You really have to double check what you are eating sometimes!



Interesting things so far:

Most classrooms have 50" flat screen TVs in them.

The fruit trucks drive around like the Ice cream trucks in Canada, except instead of that crazy little song we all know, they have a megaphone with a short recorded message that repeats over and over and over. These guys are my personal nemesis'.

Many dogs in Korea (only those bread at farms are for eating) roam pretty much free and enjoy barking the loudest at 4:21 in the morning. They are Steph's personal Nemesis'.

The word "Hi" can be said in 24,000,000 different ways.

New Address!

We finally got someone to write down our address in something other than Hangul characters. Feel free to write us!

501 Ho, Soo Jeong officetel
San-Jeong Dong 1739 (27/1)
Mokpo JeonNam 530-820
South Korea

It isn't guarded and is in a big common area, so be warned, things may get snatched!

Happy Mother's Day!

Just a special word to the most wonderful woman in my life... My Mom!
Thank you for everything, Mom!

Volleyball is everything.

After 2 weeks of solid practice, the day has finally arrived! May 11th was Mokpo's annual Elementary school teachers volleyball tournament. In this tournament, every school puts together a men's and women's team, 9 players per team play at once, and everyone seems to serve underhand (how polite).
Now, if this were in Canada, with all due resepct to elementary school teachers everywhere, the games would probably suck pretty bad (again, sorry teachers).
These teachers are good. I guess when you play your entire life, and your principal forces you to practice once a week, all year for this one day, you are going to be marginally good, eh?

We arrive at 9:30 at the Mokpo sport arena (picture large arena, seats 6000 with plenty of room for 2 basketball or valleyball courts) and sit down for the opening ceremony. My principal gets me to sit next to him. As luck would have it, our team draws the first game.

Considering my SUPER DUPER inconsistent history in volleyball, I understandably started off a little nervous... but that quickly blew away as landed a couple of solid spikes on the 7 foot nets. (yes, 7 foot nets, and my flat foot reach is about 7'3") But let's not get ahead of ourselves here. With 9 players per side, there really isn't much room that isn't covered. On one play I landed 5 consecutive, hard spikes that were all dug up and returned to the delight of the crowd.

It was plays like that by the other team that eventually led to our defeat and an early end to our day. Each team seemed to have 9 guys who could dig up anything and one or two hitters (not to mention a blocker or two).

On the other hand, Steph and her school continued to win all day. Steph was under extreme pressure by her team all day, to "kill" the ball, and "hit down". They were making reference to another "waygook" on another team. "Karen", who clearly had been playing competitively for a long time, and was hammering balls down in each of her games and stirring up lots of "I love you"'s from her coach. (Karen's team went on to win the women's tournament... Congrats Karen!).

Steph was unphased by the pressure and took her team to the semifinals with a truckload of blocks, solid kills and some super tricky "placements" and redirections. She was a destroyer!
After the women's teams were eliminated (from my school and Steph's) we headed to watch Steph's men's team play in the final, which they won in a varsity calibre battle. A 10pm dinner celebration ensued.

All in all, what I thought was going to be a day off, ended up being a marathon of a day.

The Gauntlet

Needless to say, at 6'7", I am more an attention draw here than back home. Every day, I wonder if the good I do here offsets the total and absolute disruptive chaos I seem to create every time I walk down the halls at school. This is never so obvious than everyday at 12:30 when my co-teacher and I march to the school cafeteria, where they serve us some seriously delicious food for next to nothing.

The ridiculous part is that, on our way to the cafeteria, we have to walk across a 200 foot glas bridge that connects the north and south schools and leads directly into the cafeteria. As things are laid out, the kids line up along the length of the "bridge", on either side, waiting to be served at the cafeteria. As teachers, we are allowed to jump the line, by-passing the kids... but of course, as we walk by, the kids see me and go absolutely crazy! They see me, the freakishly tall "waygook", and one by one, the 1200 kids start screaming "Hi" and "hello!", waving their hands, desperately trying to get my attention, grabbing at my hands, pointing and yes, even some of this little girls screem with glee. 1200 kids... ages 6 to 12... imagine.

Never thought I would live to see this.

When did I become the ringer???

The first week here, the men at the school "recruited" me onto their volleyball team. Now, for a tall guy, I'm not very good. I can set and bump, but my hitting is garbage! That said, it is really nice to get out of school at 3 everyday to go play volleyball...
On Monday we played against some of the kids' dads... and a guy on the other team, who was clearly varsity calibre was hitting right around me each time I went up for a block. The next day the men at school scheduled (at noon...I always hear about everything last second) a practice for 3 that afternoon: a hitting practice... for ME! Haha! Gotta love these people... they spent 2 hours setting to me, over and over and over again. I think they're hoping I can learn to play before the city elementary school teachers tournament on May 11th!

So this practice goes on (I walk home at lunch to get my sports clothes for the 3rd time! - 20 minute walk to school is fantastic), I hit a ton, we rally and then head back to the teachers office. Out comes the Soju (a sweet potatoe vodka - 22%) and the eats! The food from the school's cafeteria is better than some restaurants in Canada... but the portions are huge!!! I've actually gained weight since I got here. I don't know how these people are so thin.

So back to the Soju... After 6 shots of soju (which the school buys in cases) and a lot of food, we all disperse and I head upstairs to change....
When I come back down, the school is empty and locked up like fort knox!

I proceed to the door I always come in and out of, unlock it to get out... and the alarm goes off! I try to lock the door and walk to the gate where I normally enter the school grounds, but it's padlocked and the walls are too high to climb.

I look back through the school and see that the main gate is still open so I break back into the school and unlock the front doors (trying to lock doors as I go through them).

As I cross the field towards the main gate - in my semi-buzzed state, A police cruiser pulls through the gate towards me! (turns out to be oncall security). They clearly (in korean) ask if I tripped the alarm. Through hand motions and my crude korean, we clear up that it was me that came out of the school and tripped the alarm... they still go over to the school and check things out. I'm sure the fact that I was dressed up (they like it here for the male teachers to be in business casual at least) sold them on the fact that I was a teacher, and not just a tall foreign theif!

All I can say is that I'm happy they bought it.

Mokpo, here we come!!!

After an awesome week in Gwangju, eating giant feasts for every meal at the Gwangju Prince hotel, we were finally picked up by our co-teachers and bused to Mokpo, Our new home for the next year.
Stephanie was a little upset to hear that Mokpo is a fishing village and that despite what she has been told, there is no beach here! It didn't help that she was also recovery from a hang over from her birthday partying the night before. Poor kid!

After a long ceremony we ate a solid 3 course meal of eel (delicious) with our co-teachers and my principal. It was a long day, but it was nice to finally get to our new home (video and pictures to follow).