So That Was a Typhoon??

One of the disadvantages about not speaking Korean is that we have no idea what the heck is going on in this country domestically. We get bits of information from the English language newspaper that is delivered to school, but it has only a little information in it. I know everything that's going on in the States because I read the internet everyday. Art and I have no TV so the computer is my main form of entertainment. Even in Spain and Africa though, I could listen to the news on TV, so I always knew what was up. Here I know hardly anything. Case in point:

South Korea was hit by Typhoon Nari on Sunday. It hit Jeju and swiped the southern part of the peninsula. It seems it destroyed some parts of Jeju City that we visited over the summer and killed 14 people. We didn't realize until yesterday, however, after reading it in the newspaper, that the torrential rain on Sunday was from a typhoon. No one had a clue a typhoon was even coming! I wonder what else is going on in this country that I don't know about...

The photo is one of my favorite examples of what we've dubbed 'family portraits'. We witnessed this funny Korean phenomenon over the summer. Koreans will be all laughing and having a good time up until the point the cameraman says "Kimchi!" For Koreans this is the signal to go straight faced and look as serious as possible. Once the photo is taken they go right back to laughing. It took several tries before we got good at keeping our faces straight for this photo.

Please feel free to comment on my blogs, by the way. I do like receiving them and it lets me know that all this is being appreciated by someone! Thanks to those who do comment!

It's Always the Weirdos

So it's been a month since my last post. Sorry for not writing anything. It's hard to keep up with this thing though and not much has happened in the past month.

Here's a story:

I went to the public pool a couple of the last warm weekends in August. There are several in the public parks along the Han River. Everyone lives in apartments (which don't have pools) so the public pools make up for it. An interesting incident happened one day at the pool. A Korean man, who was obviously mentally off, came up and started talking very loudly to me in pretty decent English. Immediately all the people sitting within earshot turned their heads toward me and gave me a look of sympathy. I actually laughed at the time because it was funny. After telling Tanja that she was very beautiful, and that I was too, for that matter, and then caressing our shoulders, the man would not leave us alone. He finally went into the pool and after we declined his gestures to join him, came back with a mouthful of water and spit it all over my back when I was trying to take a nap. Apparently he thought is was cute. Like I said, he was off. Instead he got two people screaming and cussing at him. That attracted a lot of attention and scared him away for about 15 minutes. He came back though, and before he could spit anymore water on me, I had the lifeguard escort him away.

As a foreigner in Korea, giving strangers free English practice is something you deal with. However, it's never cool people who come up and talk to you. It's always weirdos or old men. Another example: one night in Jeju the four of us were walking down the street and a man came up to us and began chatting with us. Then he followed us for about 20 minutes. At first, we thought he was going our way, then we did a complete U-turn because we realized we were going the wrong direction and he turned right around with us. We thought he was going to invite himself to dinner with us. Thank God he didn't. I would love to meet more Koreans, and I'm usually happy to oblige them in a conversation, but geez, I guess it's only the odd ones that have the courage to come up and speak to you.

So what else is new...?

I blew my nose on scented toilet paper two weeks ago. It made me sneeze and started a downhill snowball reaction. I've been coughing and sneezing and blowing my nose ever since. I'll never blow my nose on scented toilet paper again. Just not worth the risk.

My good friend Andrea is currently in town visiting. She's in Asia for the month traveling and visiting her mother and sister who also live and work in South Korea. It was really great seeing a familiar face from home. I'm going to see her again at the end of this month. Tanja also had a friend from home visiting this month. We took a sunset cruise on the Han River one evening. It was quite nice. The photos are from that cruise. The domed builiding to the right is the South Korean Parliament Building and the girl in red is Clare, Tanja's friend.


So here's a question: How do you tell a mother that her darling 6 year old son is a lazy liar who spends way too much time playing video games? That was my dilemma today. The answer is very subtly. I and Denis, my partner teacher, had to talk to a mother today who was worried that her son couldn't read and write. Turns out he does spectacularly at school, but when his mom asks him to to it at home he plays the 'stupid' card because he'd rather be playing Nintendo. She was quite surprised to learn he was so smart in school and I told her not to be afraid to push him more at home. The blunt part of me really wanted to come out today but I bit my tongue.



Next week is Chuseok, the Korean version of Thanksgiving. I'll try and let you know how it goes! The photo of Art, by the way, is why he never shaves his face; he looks like a child molester. Not sure what incited him, but thankfully it's already grown back.