A trip to Japan

My second week of work didn't hold any surprises, but the weekend came with a huge bonus. After only being at work for 2 weeks I was getting a vacation! We had five days from Saturday to Wednesday, and to make things even better, Unium was going to use the holiday to send me to Japan for my Visa. For those of you who don't know, you can't get your working visa in Korea, so if your school brings you over without enough time to get a visa in your home country then they send you to Japan.

I went overnight on Monday and Tuesday. The school set me up with a ferry ticket and a hotel in Fukuoka. The ferry was actually pretty cool, it was a super fast hydro foil craft and the trip only took 3 hours. I had gotten all kinds of different directions on how to get from the docks to the Korean Embassy. But I decided the safest, quickest thing was to take a taxi. So on the ride over I rounded up 3 other foreign teachers who were also getting their visa and we shared the cost. Its a safe bet that most of the foreigners you meet on the ferry to Fukuoka are on a visa run.

Anyway, we got to the visa and took care of the paperwork by 3 pm which gave me the afternoon to kick around the city. The downside to this whole trip was that I was going before I had had my first pay day, which means I was quite short on funds. Japan is EXPENSIVE! Everything is 2-4 times more expensive than in Pusan. So with only $60 worth of Yen left in my pockets after paying for the taxi and visa my options were limited. I hooked up with a couple more foreign teachers outside the embassy and we wondered off to find lunch. We ended up at this little take away shop which was selling these little round balls of batter with octopus inside. They took 15 minutes to cool down to the point where you could actually eat them, but they were really good. After that we took the subway back to the downtown area where all our hotels were located. I spent an hour or two looking around the city, before heading back towards the hotel. I needed to make sure I had enough cash for the next day, so I ended up buying a bento box and a couple cans of Asahi from a corner store and eating in my hotel room. I ended the evening with a trip to the hotel's sauna, where they had steam rooms and different hot tubs. It was really lovely, the tubs were all black marble and we were on the top of the hotel with windows that looked out on the cityscape. Like all asian bath houses everyone was naked, but there were only a few people and because everyone acted like it was completely normal it actually didn't feel weird. It was a nice relaxing way to end the day. I figured that since my apartment doesn't have a tub, I ought to take advantage of the sauna. It's probably the last bath I will have for quite some time :)

Anyway, the next day I went off to the embassy and came back downtown to catch the ferry to Pusan. Not exactly an adventure, but I will get back to Japan again this year with more time and money to burn. To be honest, although it was a lovely looking city, clean, modern and well designed, in some ways I prefer the hectic mess of Pusan. There is a great energy here.

P.S. The picure I have attached to this post was taken from the ferry as I was arriving in Fukuoka harbor. Its quite a nice city view from the water.

A quick diversion

This is a current post outside of my "catching up with events" stuff. It happened just 15 minutes ago. I wil be back to catching up next post :).

I have always had a perverse pride in my self-definition as a geek. I think of myself as someone who is "good with gadgets."

Although this might seem like a stupid little anecdote, for some reason this made me feel really good. The day before yesterday, my TV channels all disappeared. As though they were cut off because I had not paid my bills. In fact that is what I thought had happened. Because I can't read any of the mail that appears in my mailbox, anything that looks important is given to my school and they take care of the bills.
So for all I know, they forgot to take care of the cable bill and I had been cut off. Anyway, the cable came back on tonight for no apparent reason. Unfortunately, the TV no longer recognised my remote and would not move up and down through the channels. This would not be a big deal, except for the fact that like everything else here, my remote and tv buttons are in Hangul (Korean script). The inability to understand what anything means can get frusterating here.

To cut a long story short, I actually managed to work out how to reprogram my tv in 3 minutes, without being able to read what a single button does!

I know, I know... you read that whole post for such a little climax, but I felt this completely disproportionate sense of self-accomplishment! Even in Korea, I can still kick a gadget's ASS!!!

Just a quick explanation.

To anyone who visits my lovely blog, I only got around to creating it after I had been in Korea for 5 weeks. So I am catching up on what has happened. I arrived here on the 19th of July, so when I speak of my "first" or "second week" here, think of that in reference to the 19th. Hopefully I will catch up quickly on what has happened in the past month or so and I can start posting about current events soon.

Enjoy!

The first week at work

My first week of work was a bit of a blur. Unlike most Hogwans where the teachers move around, at Unium (oh yeah, my school is called Unium College) we each get our own classrooms. This is a nice perk since we can make the room our own teaching space.
Anyway, when I first started I was told that I would be working from 9-4:40. The normal hours here are generally start from 2-4 pm and end between 8-10pm. Which works well for night owls like me. But during the summer and winter regular school vacations, the Hogwans (private English schools) go into normal day time hours while the children are not in school. Anyway, I went in for my first day of classes with trepidation. I hadn't had any training from the Hogwan on what my classes would entail (pretty usual) and I had never taught ESL before. In the end it wasn't that difficult. I was given a pretty good textbook which fit reasonably well within the time frame of the class. I made it through without to many screw ups. Although I did need to run to a computer a couple of times to look up grammar definitions between classes. The first shock came when late in the day the boss pulled me aside and asked me if I would be willing to do some overtime. The summer and winter holiday terms are the busiest times for any Hogwan. I said that it would be ok and then he laid it on me. He wanted me to take up 3 over time hours after classes on Monday, Wednesday and Friday. Now that doesn't sound so bad, does it? Well the classes were from 5:30 till 7:10 and then from 8:50 till 9:40. So what started as an 8 hour normal working day now becomes a 13 hour stretch filled with frusterating gaps with nothing to do. Well I knew that I could use as much money as possible in my first month so I said ok. On the plus side, when I counted it up the overtime would equal an extra $1000 in my first month. However to anyone out there who has ever worked double shifts, you have my sympathy. It can really kick your ass.
I actually got used to it and it certainly made the weeks pass quickly. Anyway, in case any of you are interested, the picture attached to this post is of me and one of my P600 classes (P600 stands right in the middle of the Pre-TOEFL/TOEFL series which goes from P100 to T600) A really fun bunch of kids.

Madcap weekend

The first weekend here was really fun. I hooked up with Ian Stotesbury and his girlfriend Ange and they gave me a great tour of the city. We have gone so many places together that it has all blurred together. But on that first weekend we went to Haeundae beach and to Seomyeon, which is downtown Busan. The city is really busy. Different people have told me different things, but I gather that the city has 4.5-5 million people in 763.3 square km. Which makes it quite similar to Toronto in population and size. Although the geography of Busan in far more interesting. The center of the city has a population density I have never experienced in Canada. Seomyeon was a chaotic series of flash impressions. I have a attached a photo of Ian and Ange in one of the Seomyeon shopping areas.

The evenings of that first weekend are what I really remember, although I don't remember getting home :)

We spent most of the saturday afternoon on Haeundae Beach. It was the first weekend after the heart of the rainy season. So it was beautiful and sunny, but the high season crowds had not hit yet. We spent our time swimming and drinking beer. I met a half dozen new people, all English teachers who Ian and Ange know. That evening we went out and had this wierd Korean dish with a western flavour. Korean food at certain restaurants is often a mixture of traditional and new influences. In this place they take a traditional fried rice and spicy chicken recipe and add cheese! Basically they take a flat wok and a server cooks up the chicken in front of you and then adds rice and cheese. Its like a wok casserole. Anyway, its perfect drinking food. So we ate and drank Soju, which is the rice liquor that everyone drinks here. You can buy what looks like glass pop bottle filled with Soju (21% alcohol) for a buck and it only takes 2 to get you most of the way to drunk. So we left the restaurant full and tipsy and hit some of the Waygouk (thats Korean for foreigner) bars. I ended up getting home about 5:30 in the morning :)

Welcome all!

Hi everyone, I guess I am going to be playing catch up on what has happened to me until I have my posts up to current events.

July 19th
Flying to Korea was both strange and familiar. In some ways it reminded me of all the times I went to Australia. Just like the flight from Los Angeles to Melbourne, the flight from Toronto to Seoul was 14 hours long. I flew on Air Canada an (unfortunately) familiar airline, and it was just as tiring and stressful as air travel always is. However, there was an excitement in me as each plane took off and landed which was unique to this trip.

The final plane ride was only an hour long. But I was so tired by that point that I slept through almost all of it. I woke to the sounds of the wheels being lowered. I opened my eyes and took in the sights of Busan. I admit that my perceptions my have been warped by jetlag but the city captured my attention completely. Even though it was completely dark I could see how the city wrapped itself around the mountains and coastline which define it’s geography.

Once I landed I was picked up by Monica one of the recruiters who had got me my job. She took me to a hotel which was much nicer than I had expected. I had barely had time to put down my luggage when she asked me if I wanted to go to a friend’s birthday party (she had spent the most of the time in the taxi and room on a cell phone to my school and various other people). I was pretty tired by that point but I decided that the whole reason I went to Korea was to have a more interesting life, so why not go out! Anyway, We went to western style bar where we met a bunch of other foreign teachers. Including some very cute Canadians! I had a couple of beers and a really nice time. I got home around midnight, had a bath and collapsed into bed. All in all I couldn’t have asked for a better introduction to Busan.

The next day I was taken to the school where I will be working. It was much nicer than I had expected. The walls are a beige marble (probably fake, but the effect is still nice) and the classrooms are very well equipped. Each teacher also gets their own classroom, which is not common here. I met with the bosses and we went over some paperwork and they provided me with my teaching materials. Then they took me to my apartment. When I first walked in I got a bit of a shock. The school had told me that they had only just signed for the apartment a couple of days ago, but what I did not realise was that this meant it wasn’t even furnished. It is a studio apartment, and the only thing in the room was a bed and a tv. They told me that they would get me furnishings within the next few days, but it was still quite stressful. They did get me internet, a desk, chair and dining table within three days, but I didn’t get a fridge until 5 days later. Anyway, that gives you an idea of what my first couple of days were like!

I am adding some photos to this post. The first photo was taken from the exit door of the plane to Korea. We actually flew over the arctic to get to Korea. All that white in the photo is arctic ice! The second photo is of my first view of Incheon Airport in Seoul. Its the most "technologically facilitated" airport in the world and was voted by the AETRA as the best airport in the world. It was certainly one of the nicest and most conveniant I have ever been in. The third photo is of me standing in Dong Bek park with Haeundae beach in the background (Korea's most famous beach). On my first full day in Korea I had the morning and early afternoon to kill before I was going to be picked up to see my school. I spent much of the time walking around the area. I ended up on a 2.5 hour walk that ended on the edge of Haeundae beach. I also ended up at the Building which Busan built specifically for the 2005 APEC conference in Korea. I took a couple shots including one from Paul Martin's chair! My last shot was taken at a food tent set up at Haeundae beach. There was dozens of these tents filled with aquariums containing fish, eel, urchins, crabs and more. All of which you can have them cook for you. Busan is where people go in Korea for the best seafood.


Arctic Ice!

Welcome to Seoul

In Dong Baek Park

In the presence of Greatness! :)

Et Tu, Paul Martin?

MMMM, Lunch!