Wedding crashers ... Korean style!

Last Friday afternoon I received an invitation to a Korean wedding, which was scheduled to take place 2 days later on the Sunday. In typical dynamic Korean style, I had just two days notice which is probably generous by typical Korean standards. I decided to go along, and dragged Paul along so I didn't have to make conversation with myself all afternoon (at least I speak English).

I was invited by one of my co-teachers, as it was her brother-in-law's wedding. Her husband was the best man (or Korean equivalent) so we didn't feel too much like we were crashing a completely unknown wedding.

It was not a full, traditional Korean wedding, but a somewhat scaled-down and more modern variation. I was very sad to hear that, as apparently a custom of traditional Korean weddings is to tie a chicken and a rooster to the wedding table and ceremonially release them during the event, at which time the guests chase them in an attempt to capture them. Those who succeed are allowed to keep the rooster, which I imagine ends up on a Korean dinner table somewhere rather than as a pet or a wedding 'keepsake'.  I guess this part of the traditional ceremony is akin to the Western tradition of throwing the bouquet. I imagine throwing a rooster or two over your shoulder would be considerably more exciting, and the possibility of it crapping on your guests in mid-toss would add a whole new air of drama and anticipation to an otherwise boring tradition. I can only hope that in the unlikely event of me ever getting married that they allow roosters in Elvis's little white chapel in Vegas.

The roosters (so I'm told) are symbolic. The crowing of the rooster marks a new day, and a fresh start (like the marriage for the couple). The crowing is also meant to scare away evil spirits. The chicken represents fertility, and the hope that the bride will have many children, which was important in traditional agrarian societies - probably not so much in modern-day Korea!

But, I digress. The ceremony itself was pretty standard, with one notable exception. The ceremony was held in a hotel ballroom and lasted only 20 minutes. On any given day the hotels are booked out with weddings in half hourly slots - the venue is set up with your cake and standard plastic flowers and you are given only a short amount of time to herd your guests in and out before the next wedding (the time of which is conveniently signposted on the door outside). After the ceremony everyone departs for the banquet which is usually held nearby - in our case the same hotel in the basement restaurant. The food at this wedding was amazing - I didn't know where to start! Despite claims by my co-teacher that the food was not good (the Koreans are very self-deprecating), we ate and drank til we felt sick. So did the mosquitos, as I discovered.

It is also customary to give gifts at a Korean wedding, however it is very difficult to know what to get for a situation like this. Paul and I deliberated over what to offer as gift, and finally decided on a simple congratulatory card and some money. Our only remaining hurdle was deciding what to write in said card, particularly when (a) the recipients don't speak English, (b) have not met you, and (c) you do not know their names. Bearing this in mind, we decided a blank envelope with some money would suffice. If we were to write in the card however, we envisaged something along the lines of "to whom it may concern, congratulations on your marriage. Yours faithfully, the white people". As it transpired, our gift was rejected ("you are guests!" ..... er, yes....) so we needn't have worried.

The ceremony itself was very simple. The bride wore white and looked stunning, the groom looked terrified, the parents all looked grim and there were toe-tappin' oldies and errant children everywhere. The wedding cake looked amazing, particularly as it was nestled atop a smoke machine, and it was cut during the ceremony. On the bride's return down the aisle the bubble machine kicked into life, and the guests made a hasty exit to ensure their place at the buffet.

Chalk up another fantastic Korean experience!

Q.  How did the two guys in this picture get to be this old?
A.  With driving like this, I have absolutely no idea. Candidates for poorlifedecisions.com!

Spotted on the road near my house. I use the term 'road' loosely, as it's more of an eight lane highway. And yes, they are driving INTO the traffic. 

Teaching the teachers

Well, I'm almost at the end of my second week of teaching. So far it has been great - my confidence in the classroom has increased considerably and I'm slowly becoming a part of the furniture at the school.

Today I had my first teachers lesson - they've got me teaching the teachers English every Thursday afternoon which is a scary prospect. I foolishly asked them today what they would like to learn, hoping like hell it was nothing to do with songs and music. So what did they want? Songs and music! I agreed, with one caveat - they weren't to make fun of my atrocious singing. They thought that was hilarious, but I wasn't kidding. I am atrocious! My co-teacher sings like a bird and plays guitar like Hendrix (as well as being beautiful and elegant!) so I volunteered her to do the singing and playing - I think she thought I was kidding. Hah!

I also learned a very important lesson today - check your clothing before making important presentations. I realised just seconds before I entered the room full of teachers that the zipper on my pants was all the way down. Classy. Crisis averted - they probably wondered why I was laughing when I entered the room, and assumed it was nerves. Or I was a bit mad. They weren't far off on either count!

During the presentation I asked if any of the teachers had any questions. One of the few male teachers nudged one of the girls and she went bright red, and proceeded to announce in broken English in front of the entire teaching staff "he would like to have some one-on-one tutoring from you". This was after his previous (and very open) questions as to my age and marital status. Hmm. He wasn't bad looking but when he stood up the top of his head was approximately level with my chin. Not good. (shades of Green Wing - "you're better looking when you crouch down").

Today I also received my very first present from a little 1st grade student (very young and cute). I was accosted by her and her big sister and friends outside the school and she proudly presented me with .... an acorn. I was so honoured, and she was grinning from ear to ear (probably thinking "sucker, she's easily pleased"). How could I refuse a gift like that?!

Tomorrow I have the sixth grade all day. It's Friday, the weather is stinking hot, the class materials are truly awful and they are just not interested. I've decided to spice up the lesson with Mr Bean's Christmas (the one where he gets a turkey stuck on his head) as an exercise in past/present tense (a tenuous link I know, but I don't think they'll care!). Their current learning materials (namely the DVD) are absolutely awful. Today's one was a lesson in 'who is he' and 'who is she'. Cue token paedophile in knitted sweater lurking in playground saying "Who is she? She is pretty!" (speaking of a ten year old girl). In another episode he also lurks outside a store and says "Who is he? He is nice!" (talking of a small boy). It sounds a little odd, but what strikes me is that he is just Joe pedestrian - he doesn't have a name, he just lurks. Fishy!

And on a final note, this weekend is shaping up to be a big one. Tomorrow night everyone seems to be hitting the town, and Fatima arrives from Busan for the weekend! Saturday and Sunday is the annual Body Painting festival in Duryu park and Saturday night is K-pop night in town (lots of big stars coming out apparently). It all happens in Daegu!

More soon!

The final thought

Korea is an amazing place. Compared to life in Auckland and London it is not easy, but the challenges it throws at you make it an incredible experience, and one that I am very grateful to be having! The people are warm and friendly, I love my job, the weather is great and around every corner lies something new to be discovered – whether it be markets, a temple, a new restaurant or even new friends. Life here is crazy, and is constantly keeping me on my toes and that’s just the way I like it. I feel much more alive, more interested in things and less like I’m just a faceless cog in a big corporate wheel somewhere. No doubt there will be times when these good things begin to wear me down (after the honeymoon phase is over!), but at this point in time, life is good.

Keep it coming, Korea.

School life so far

In my first week, I invited students to ask me any questions they liked in order to get to know me better. These questions included How old am I? Am I married? Do I have a boyfriend? Are you fat? What is your blood type? What style of man do you like? Do you like giraffes/monsters/ghosts? (my 3rd graders pulling out all the random English vocab words there) Do you want to fight?

And from the “questions we’d like to ask but won’t” file... is watching porn at school acceptable? On my second day in the teachers office (which I share with 2 english teachers and a PE teacher), I turned around to find the PE teacher watching porn! Clearly he’s not fazed by the thought of his co-workers seeing this – perhaps it is acceptable behaviour? (although I doubt it!). I gave him the benefit of the doubt and thought it might have been some sort of video for anatomy/physiology, but after looking 10 minutes later I safely concluded that it was definitely for personal rather than educational purposes!

The naughtiest kid so far has been one of my fifth graders. On the first day he was loud, arrogant and obnoxious with my co-teacher, and I tried really hard to play him down when I was speaking. After my presentation, his question to me as he sat back in his chair with his arms folded and a smirk on his face was “What is my name?”. Fortunately I had a seating plan in front of me which he didn’t know I had – I held his gaze, quickly glanced down at my cheat sheet, back up again and said “Kim Dong Hun”. The entire class burst out laughing at him, his mouth dropped open and he went very quiet. I used my advantage to point the Aspden finger and say “I know exactly who you are and you’d better behave”. He was shell-shocked and didn’t know what else to do but nod. He has been an angel ever since.

Di = 1, Devil Child = 0!

Life in Korea

There are many things I am learning about Korea – here are just a few:

Road rules: as far as I can deduce, whoever is on the road makes the rules. Which, in a city of two and a half million makes for exciting driving anywhere you go! It is essentially a free-for-all, with no attention paid to road markings, give way rules, and the age-old ‘footpaths are for people’ school of thought. I think it was summed up precisely by the POE coordinator, who wrote “the main danger in Daegu comes from traffic, particularly motorbikes and scooters delivering food at break-neck speed on the sidewalk! Always keep your eyes open when walking around and, secondly, keep your taxi driver focused! Having your man turn around to you in the back to practise his English as you whiz round the schinchandero is not wise! Inform him of the turn in the road! The truck swaying into his lane! The police checkpoint! His glass of soju tipping, precarious...” and the scariest part is, it’s true.

Buses: I have discovered the ‘rapid’ bus, which leaves from near my house and goes straight to Jungangno in the city centre. As far as I can tell, the name ‘rapid’ bus comes from the nature of the driving – foot flat to the floor, hand on the horn and slamming on the brakes at the very last minute irrespective of how many little old ladies are on the bus. It seems as far as they’re concerned the more agima they can get plastered across the back seat the better. You have to just about take a running jump off the bus, as although the door opens, the bus doesn’t actually stop most of the time, it just slows down. That makes for exciting travel, particularly if you’re wearing heels and/or carrying bags! I also stand corrected when I say the bus doesn’t stop most of the time. It stops at 11pm. On the dot. Regardless of where it is. It might be half way through the bus route (and effectively the middle of nowhere as far as I am concerned as I don’t know the city at all!), and the moment the big hand hits 11, that bus stops. The driver will order everyone off and you can bloody well make your own way home from there! That’s not much fun after you’ve been in town drinking baggie drinks and you’re feeling a little tipsy, and even less fun when you forget to take your written address with you. After consulting with taxi drivers in broken Korean, English and really bad sign language you might eventually get where you want to go – if you’re lucky.

Food: amazing. I absolutely love the food here, and I can’t wait to try more of it! I’ve been getting the names of everything we have at school and writing it down so that one night when I’m too lazy to cook I can go down to one of my local takeaway stores (which are entirely Korean, no pictures or anything English) and order something. I really don’t like eating at western food places here, as it tends to be overpriced, predictable and a little bit strange. A good example of this is a place called ‘Bennigans’ in the city. It is supposedly an Irish pub in America that doesn’t serve Guinness. Go figure!

Baggie drinks: Yup, drinks in a plastic bag. The ultimate in class! They are large, hideously strong and really cheap (£2 for a massive long island iced tea/cosmo etc). They will pour the drink, pass it over and ask you to taste it and tell them if it needs more alcohol! (“Er, no thanks, I think I’ll just sit and sniff this until I pass out”). They also give you free stuff with them, like fireworks. Now that’s my kind of street stall! London, you can keep your £8 single G&Ts!

Clothing: The more English words the better, irrespective of how much sense it makes. The engrish over here is fantastic – I’m trying to write down some of my favourite ones I see around. So far these include “an oily substance” (proclamation on one of my 5th grade student’s shirts), “put on this cloth, stem boat willy” (seen on a mickey mouse tshirt in town) and a handbag shop called “the lord is my banner” (of course!).

A weekend in Busan

Since my arrival I’ve been lucky enough to explore not two but three cities. This weekend I jumped on the train from Daegu and headed down to Busan for a couple of days. It is a much larger city than Daegu (maybe twice the size?) and was a little overwhelming at first, but it seems like a pretty good city to be living in! Paul and Cameron have both been set up in pretty sweet apartments – Kevin and I were very jealous! That was another surprise – Kevin arrived from Incheon for the weekend so together with Fatima it was a mini-orientation reunion.

Friday night I arrived on the slow train from Daegu, where Paul met me at the station. We headed out for some dinner at a local restaurant before heading down to Hyundae Beach to meet Fatima and Kevin. The beach is great – very big, and the water was lovely and warm. We ended up getting a few bottles of soju and relaxing on the sand for most of the evening. I was especially excited about the fact there was no mosquitos, and I was able to sit in a dress, sans repellent and not spend the entire evening slapping at my ankles like a mad woman. After much soju was consumed, we made a futile attempt to get into the casino but it was a no-go without our passports (despite Paul’s best drunken efforts to convince them we had lots of money).

Saturday we headed to the seafood markets down near the beach and it was an amazing sight. The seafood was incredible and (for the most part) all still alive! I speak with particular reference to the escaped octopus we saw making an optimistic break for freedom down the street. It was promptly chased down, scolded and slapped by an ‘agima’ (little old lady) and plonked back in its bucket. That was one of the funniest things I’ve seen in a long time! For lunch we headed along to a restaurant, picked out an enormous live crab which was promptly thrown in the steamer, cooked and served up for our lunch. For the crab, a huge array of side dishes and a drink it came to a little under £10 each – not bad, although probably considered expensive by Korean standards!

Saturday night was spent cooking dinner at Cameron’s apartment, where the five of us ate and drank before heading out into the local town to check out a few bars. It turned into a true orientation-style night out, with things winding down at the noribang (karaoke room) at about 3am.

High point – octopus slapping, good company, amazing food
Low point - leaving

Thoughts on Korea so far...

Food: Love it! Very spicy – I have even learned to love (!) kimchi and have it every day with my lunch. We get a cooked meal at school which so far has been the highlight of each and every one of my working days. Sad, I know but the food is amazing! My friend Billy has promised to take me out for the local delicacy (cows intestines) and has also threatened to get me eating spine stew – I’m not convinced that it is going to be anywhere near as mouth-watering as what he tells me, but I guess I’ll try anything once. Verdict still to come – watch this space!

Television: Hilarious. I have cable at my apartment and I love flicking through the channels and finding the over-acted, melodramatic Korean soap operas. There are also many earnest advertisements on TV for what I can only assume is health insurance – every time I see them I laugh out loud as they are so atrociously acted and cheesy you just can’t take them seriously! I also have access to (wait for it...) the math channel! This generally involves some droll, gormless man standing next to a blackboard solving quadratic equations or something equally as mind numbing. Television’s answer to valium!

People: The people here are lovely. I often get approached in public by people wanting to know where I am from, and if I am a son saeng nim (teacher). Teachers are held in fairly high regard here so maybe they think I’m smart or something – go figure! I bought a pair of shoes the other day from a particularly amorous Korean salesman who enquired as to my age, marital and boyfriend status and proceeded to ask me out. There are many, many good looking Korean men in this country, but unfortunately for me he wasn’t one of them!

Arrival in Daegu

Day 1 - Hot, hot, HOT

The day of my arrival was stinking hot and humid – one of the hottest days Daegu has seen for some time. Fortunately I was dressed appropriately for the weather – jeans, a shirt and all my heavy bags! Excellent. I was met by my new co-teacher Hyemi, who, fortunately for me, speaks very good English. We headed straight to my new school to meet the principal (“hello, I’m your sweaty, stinky new teacher”) and then on to my new apartment to drop off my bags.

The area I am living in seems nice – it has many green spaces and the school backs onto a big park and mountain. My apartment is literally a 1 minute walk from the school, 5 minutes from the buses to the city and 10 minutes from the subway. There is also a large shopping district (uh oh) just a short walk away.

My first night was a little hard, although I’ve no doubt it was made harder by the fact I had only two and a half hours sleep the night before! As well as tired, I was feeling very apprehensive and sad to have left some new and amazing friends from orientation, who have since moved to other parts of the country – Gwangju, Incheon, Busan and Jeju.

High Point – a 12 hour sleep!
Low Point – acquiring 47 new mosquito bites during said 12 hour sleep

My apartment - needs furnishing! I have since bought a couch so my room doesn't seem quite so empty...

Day 2 - Exploring Daegu

I spent my first Saturday in Daegu exploring the city and doing some shopping with my co-teacher. By 12pm I was set up in my new apartment with everything I needed (except perhaps a spa, man-servant and personal chef). I spent the afternoon in town and eventually ended up meeting a big group of existing Daegu-ites who were heading out for a night of pub golf at various watering holes around the city. I joined the crawl and met a lot of new people which was great – it was an excellent night topped off with pizza in a cup (what more could a girl ask for?) and a 3am taxi ride home that rivalled the previous 4 hour trip from Incheon to Jeonju. This was effectively four hours worth of Jeonju-narcoleptic excitement crammed into an action-packed, pant-wetting, suicidal fifteen minutes! I have since made it my mission to avoid getting taxis wherever possible as every single driver appears to have been trained at the same school – excessively high speeds, no indication, veering in and out of lanes as they please and generally driving like they’re on speed.

Orientation - Jeonju University

How do you prepare 650 newbies for life as a teacher in Korea? As best you can! The rest is about luck, pluck, initiative, persistence and a little bit of charm (also known as ‘kissing butt’).

After being shipped to Jeonju University (“the place for superstars”), we were assigned rooms and given a list of classes and activities for the next nine days. The predominant activity we took part in was not on this list – extra-curricular soju drinking. That stuff is potent, but was the fuel for nine straight days of socialising with our fellow teachers from around Korea. It was an amazing week – I met some amazing people, had some amazing experiences and experienced some amazing hangovers. At 20% alcohol and 50 pence a bottle can you blame me?

We learned how to deal with elementary, middle and high school students; how to incorporate role plays and interactive learning; how to deal with our co-teachers; a brief history of Korea and finally to speak a little bit of Korean. This class wasn’t so popular as by 7pm when the class started most teachers had eaten, finally recovered from their previous nights hangover and were heading out to do it all over again. Learning the Korean alphabet wasn’t quite as high on the priority list as it should have been! I made it to two classes but decided against the other two.

I was very sad to see the end of orientation, but it was time to hit the real world and put everything into practice. Eek!

Touchdown!

I made it to Korea on time and in one piece after a nice short flight from Hong Kong. I was greeted at the airport by a member of the EPIK team, who escorted me straight to what looked like the longest queue in Asia. I proceeded to wait over an hour to eventually be given a number and herded onto a bus bound for Jeonju.

The drive down was relatively uneventful – most people had come off long flights and slept the whole way. I did the same although my slumber was largely attributable to laziness rather than jet lag. The 4 hour drive was quite the introduction to Korean roads. I can safely and unequivocally state that the drivers in this country are utterly insane. Our long and boring trip from Incheon to Jeonju was made infinitely more exciting by our narcoleptic bus driver but fortunately for us the constant blaring of car horns kept him awake for at least some of the journey and somehow we made it to Jeonju without collecting a single truck, car or pedestrian.

My first impressions of Seoul (as seen from the window of an erratically driven bus) were of a much more organised, less haphazard city than the likes of Hong Kong. Even from a distance it gave the impression of being a very modern, efficient place – one I can’t wait to explore in greater detail!

Despite such modern appearances, Koreans have a very strong sense of tradition, honour and pride, or ‘gibun’. I suspect it will take me a little time to get to grips with the complex social systems and hierarchies here, but hopefully any transgressions will be overlooked or forgiven as I am a foreigner!

I have found the language somewhat difficult to grasp, however with so much going on in terms of classes and general culture shock it comes as little surprise. I plan to enrol in Korean lessons when I get to Daegu at which point I hope to be a little more settled and focused. Until such time I will continue to bumble and mangle my way through various key phrases with help from my faithful Lonely Planet book (“bbop chi ma se yo!” I don’t want it extracted!)

So far I am feeling good about being here – nervous at the thought of being chucked in at the deep end but excited at the prospects and possibilities that lie ahead of me. Life as a san saeng nim will be a big change from corporate life in London, but I am looking forward to the challenge. Who knows, I might even develop a liking for small children! But let’s not get carried away just yet...

Bring it on, Korea.