"that macgyver sure is a handy fellow" or something like that

yesterday ben, bjorn, jason and i went to the k-1 world grand prix final 16 kickboxing at olympic gymnasium-1. we almost didn't make it though. we ended up at the only olympic park we knew and at the gymnasium there was a ping pong tournament. i mean, i'm a big fan of the game but i was looking for some blood and not a bunch of old ladies sipping green tea. we went to the olympic stadium next door and found yet more disappointment. it was cool to actually check out the place because it's a pretty awesome sight to see but on the field was not a bunch of muscle-bound giants but the opposite, a bunch of kids running around. there was apparently a tug-of-war going on.

anyway, an old man spoke to us in korean and we understood him when he said "k-1" and after about five minutes of trying to understand him, he led us to the taxi queue and told us it was at another olympic park further down the street (about two subway stops).

we finally made it and it wasn't sold out. it was 22,000 won or $25 cad which was decent when we were willing to pay about double that. there were some shady scalpers advertising half-price discounts but that would have been a last resort.

inside, the place was pretty packed and we had decent enough seats with a fairly good view. probably seated about 5,000(?) or so. the crowd was mostly korean but i hadn't seen that many foreigners in one place at one time since i got here. we missed the first couple fights but there were still like eight more. there were some decent competitive fights most of which only lasted a couple minutes. my favourite match was between glaube feitosa and chalid "die faust (the fist)". it lasted all three rounds and what was good about this one was that the german, guess which one, got knocked down a bunch of times and just kept getting back up. talk about persistance. he ended up losing on the judges' decision anyway.

the main event was between these two characters: one, a large american dude named mighty mo and the largest korean i've ever seen, choi hong man. he's 7'2 and 350lbs. in their previous fight mighty mo knocked him out. go figure. this time it was given to choi by decision. you can view the part where choi delivers mighty mo a low-blow here. awesome.

my favourite fighter of the night is this guy from holland that i've seen on the tv box before. remy bonjasky is a muay thai fighter and that means he throws flying knees everywhere. he beat this other dude pretty bad and pretty quickly. i got a really poor picture of him too. i swear that's him.

these are the official results of the matches.

i just got home from poker night. i lost about $3 in a little more than three hours. not bad, but i was up a few dollars about ten minutes before we called it quits which kinda sucks. these things happen. you live, you learn, you lose $3.

holidays are here again

today is chuseok. it's a national holiday for koreans, which means it's also a one-day (or for some two) work week. it's tuesday now and i've been off from skool since friday, duh. since then i've been busy for parts of the day and not so busy for other parts.

here's a breakdown of what's been going on:

friday: at skool we were to have a meeting with one of the heads of the english language program. she was a couple hours late and this is not of character here. for us though, it's just not done. you don't leave someone hanging when it comes to business back home. but here, it's commonplace because work is looked upon way different. work is life here and everything else is secondary while i'm figuring out that's the opposite, for most anyway myself included, back home. it's a cultural thing for them but more of a respect thing for us. our skool seems pretty disorganized when it comes to this new english language experiment and they're throwing out money like it's falling off trees. for example, the seven english language teachers are getting laptops. however, it hasn't been planned very well and it's making a lot of us upset. there is also constant miscommunication between the english speakers and the korean admin. this is obviously due to language barriers. we found out on friday that they want us to work an extra hour every day and that's not what is in our contract. in exchange they want to give us a two hour lunch break, which is not cool with me and a few others. that's basically a split-shift. on top of that, they messed up my pay on friday so i've no money in my korean account and i won't be able to get it fixed until i get back on friday so i'm forced to dip into the account back home and pay exorbitant bank feeds.

it's tough but we're working through the glitches.

oh, and at night we got quite ridiculous, because it was after all, pay day (for most of us). started by bbq, then soju, then a couple bars and then it got blurry. by the end of the night (ie. 4:30am) we were taking pictures with everyone that would talk to us. i even got a picture of a cop and i but that's not him waving, he just didn't want his picture taken. silly foreigners.

saturday: went to the doosan bears game with nine other english teachers. it may have been the last game of the season. it dragged on and on. it lasted from 5:10 until 10:26pm and it was only eleven innings. each at bat lasted ten minutes. brutal to sit through and i stayed totally sober. possibly the first time in who knows how long that i haven't had a beer. embarrassing.
i also met derek's friend ryan who is also here teaching. he's a good boy from toronto so it was nice to meet him too. after that we walked to the seven luck casino. i didn't gamble but was able to eat quesadillas and drink gin and tonic for free. unbelievable. my boy jason won 120,000 won playing 5,000 won minimum black jack. so he's da man.

sunday: ended up going to itaewon and ate turkish food at the top of hooker hill. lovely name. as well, there's a nice little mosque up there and a whole other community of muslim people as well as nigerians. go figure, smack dab in the middle of seoul. i don't get it but why ask questions. after that we ended up at "what the book" which apparently has the largest selection of english language books in the country. it's a small store and owned by a canuck who's a local celebrity. after that we had a couple at the wolf hound and cabbed it home.

monday: slept in, didn't do a whole lot. went to dinner with bob and jason at fresco's. i had the salad bar. one stop salad bar for 7,900 so i piled it up high. at that point everything ends up tasting the same. i won't be getting that again. after that jason and i headed to bjorn's place, another teacher at my skool and played poker. i lost twice. first buy-in was 5,000, the second was double. i was not happy. i usually don't lose that bad but these things happen. i'll get it back next time. jason and i walked home through outdoor markets where they sold everything from crappy adidas t-shirts to street food.

tuesday (today): today is chuesok so i celebrated by doing some laundry, and then met up with ryan and walked around our area for a whole lot of hours. took some awesome pictures of random "engrish" t-shirts that made no sense and just came back from a bar in our area. there's got to be some type of uzbekistani convention going on behind our residence. they're everywhere but i don't ask questions. it's best that way. now i'm home and that's that.

korean survival essentials

cass red (bareable beer)












soju (less than a dollar, scary)









air conditioner/heater (unbelievable technology)












emergency beeping flashlight (to protect us from kim jong-il?)









pizza school (extremely essential for your cheese diet)









t-money card (for subway travel)












sweet phone

typhoon-tastic

when it rains, it pours here. no joke. days on end. fortunately, we've been lucky this week until the first night of the weekend of course. it kept coming down straight for probably twelve hours. we were supposed to hit up the doosan bears baseball game last night but there was no way they were playing ball in those conditions. typhoons kind of put a damper on things when you're trying to unwind from that looooong stressful week of not doing a whole lot at skool. a few friends and i did eat a decent indian restaurant not too far from here so that was definitely a place i'll return to in the near future.

it was a good week though so no complaints. played some games, taught some lessons, hung out with the kwanghee english teacher posse and ate some good food. i'm getting more comfortable when ordering food in a proper korean restaurant (pizza school not included) but still i've a long way to go. found a grocery store not too far from here and it's kind of in a random spot but it's got everything you need. sure, it's no loblaws superstore but it does have your essentials: bean paste, mushrooms you've probably never eaten, banana milk, and microwave rice. what more do you need? am i right? RIGHT?!

anyway, the weekend is pretty wide open right now so i'll probably do some more exploring of the city today. tomorrow morning is our annual yahoo hockey fantasy pool online draft so i'm pretty excited about that. can't take hockey out of the boy and, well, you know the rest.
good day to you.

oh wait, here are two other blogs from friends in the co-op. alison's and will's. they're from north carolina and tennessee respectively. a different point of view, only similar. i'm sure they appreciate the hits.

korean shopping

i live in dongdaemun and we're the capital of shopping for the city. there are pretty much a zillion department stores and vendors. it's also pretty neat to see all sorts of different independent designers that set up their spaces and sell all of their custom-made clothing. mind you, i'd never wear anything they make because it's all very extravagant and full of weird sayings and of course, i probably would struggle with sizing too.
i went to the yongsan electronics market yesterday and that was the same deal. it was ten floors of electronics vendors (computers on one floor, video games on another, appliances, phones, etc.). i got a used phone that i'm pretty happy with. it's pretty sweet and i got it for about $100. you could get used phones for as little as about 30,000 krw to upwards of 500,000. i wanted something half decent though because i'm a bit of a gadget whore. it's pay-as-you-go so with a 10,000 krw card you can get about 300 texts or 27 minutes of talk time. incoming calls are free luckily but it definitely pays to text which fortunately, i'm used to. to get a contract here you have to be korean. i guess too many foreigners have skipped out on their contracts in the past. damn them all.

at night i went to insadong with other english teachers from my residence. bob, jason, alison and nicole (who lives out near hongdae but we don't judge). we walked through insadong and stumbled upon a batting cage, stumbled out of a couple bars, and ended our night at noribong (korean karaoke). although hesitant, it was actually a lot of fun. i'll do it again, not going to lie. more pictures here.

korean kids and korean skool

the above image is from a student's pencil case. correct me if i'm wrong but i'm pretty sure it's from a kylie minogue song. they think us white folk are such a novelty. everyday at skool i have fifty kids run up and yell to me "hi!" or "hello!" and then they giggle and run off. the advanced ones know how to ask for your name but that's about it. they're mostly hilarious and the sweetest kids in the world.

our skool is building this english education centre for immersion students. parents have to pay for their students to attend it in the afternoon on tuesday and thursday. it doesn't open until october 8th though so we'll only be teaching english in the mornings until then. the class that i will be teaching is Culture so i'll be preparing lessons on everything from national symbols of the world to landmarks of the world to the geographies of europe, north america, south america, etc. it should be pretty cool because, even though i have a korean dude who is giving me ideas for lessons, i'll be developing most of the curriculum myself so i have loads of freedom to do what i want. also, i'll have this insane classroom with a mock bedroom, kitchen and a couple other random rooms so i can use them for demonstrations while teaching. it should definitely be something.
it's also weird because our skool is not the newest and, therefore, nicest and most up to date but they have room to build this english language centre so they've chosen kwanghee.

there are seven of us native english teachers there. more than any other skool probably in all of the seoul metropolitan office of education. we all get along pretty well which makes for a decent working environment because we have been spending a lot of time together in the first week.

korean food

the picture is of a kimchi pancake bought from a street vendor along side dongdaemun stadium.

i'm not going to lie, i've eaten beef by accident once (possibly more), fish cake soup by accident (pretty much exactly like thin tofu and with no fishy taste at all), and fish oil is in pretty much everything including kimchi. korea is the exact opposite of a veggie-friendly place. bibimbap is the main dish here and basically it's a little hot pot. inside they stick rice, a couple root vegetables, cucumber, shredded carrots and an egg. you can ask for it without the beef but they look all confused as to why not.
they also have kimbap, which is a sushi-type roll but they don't give you soya sauce with it. that's for the japanese and they're evil. you have to ask for it without the little ham thing though or just pick it out on your own.
this is a pretty helpful and accurate korean food guide that goes over everything on a typical korean menu: http://maryeats.com/category/korean-food-guide/ check it out.

i'm still really struggling here in that department. a lot of soups and not a whole lot of variety. i'm right downtown so there are TONS of places to eat but not a whole lot of variety. if you like seafood and beef you're in heaven, otherwise you have to improvise. even if you ask for it without meat you'll probably find small chunks of ham or seafood in it. no joke. they don't get it. but whatever, there are other vegetarians that i know here that i'm suffering with.

first week (revised ed.)

howdy. it's been a couple days. the two pictures above are seoul's version of american street meat. on both hot dog and hamburger they already have on them pre-squeezed mustard and ketchup. they don't give you a choice but they sure do put it on in perfect zig-zags. the fried concoction to the right is basically a pogo with embedded french fries. yes, i bought one out of desperating and ate most of it. i obviously threw out the hot dog (and wooden stick). just awful.
did i mention it's next to impossible to eat vegetarian in korea? i'll either slowly wither away on bananas and vitamin pills or gain thirty pounds because i end up gorging myself on awful pizza (with sweet corn) and beer. i won't say which of the two is more probable.
the other picture is a bar in sinchon. it's either the judas or sabbath bar. they can't decide. there are a few foreign hangouts around there and that night a buddy i teach with named adam played host. another english teacher named alison and i tagged along and drank outside a 7-11 with about ten other friends of adam's. more pictures can be found here.

the last couple of days involved hanging around our new skool: kwanghee elementary school, going to take care of various tasks, eating lunch out at really decent restaurants for dirt cheap, etc.
the two other veggies and i from our skool found a really decent rare vegetarian restaurant yesterday. it's in insadong so i can't forget that.
last night i also went to jamsil sports complex, where the 1988 olympic games were held, and saw a baseball game between the doosan bears and the kia tigers with four other dudes from my co-op residence. baseball definitely ain't the same as back home. it's quite bizarre actually. on the third base line is one supporting section and on the first base line are the fans from the other team. they have all sorts of crazy cheers that they all do in unison using these blow-up balloon sticks. they've also each got a little stage where an enthusiastic dude with a whistle leads the cheers. of course they had four cheerleaders too. oh yeah, the bears whipped the tigers 10-3. none of these guys will make the majors back home let alone be a bat boy. ouch.
tata.

M-ill-E

hi there. this is my girlfriend emily and our two summer cats affectionately known as grey one and black one. you figure out which is which.

emily is not only my girlfriend, she is my best friend, my partner in crime, someone who is always there for me, extremely supportive and, on top of that, she's gorgeous. i'm very lucky that i've got her in my life and don't know what i would do without her, especially at times like this. what other girlfriend would be cool with their boyfriend packing up and leaving the country for upwards of a year? not many. she was understanding in my decision to take off at this point in my life and i'm looking forward to the time when i can see her again, most probably at incheon international airport in a few months when her contract is up with the city.

it's difficult for a relationship to function properly when the two people are so far apart, however, emily is always at my fingertips whether it's online or by phone. any time i need to talk to her to ease into this adjustment i can find her. that's pretty awesome i'd say. that's why i love her i guess. awwww.

anyway, she's in boston right now with her other best bud shannon. they went out last night and some dude, probably ben affleck, was hitting on her. she seemed pretty strong and obviously refused his advances. she came home and was a bit upset but told me how much she missed me because of this. far out. these are situations that we're going to have to deal with in the future i guess.

she's so great and i miss her.

lots of koreans in korea

so yeah, i've been here a week to the day and suffered through an orientation at the hyundai learning centre and met a few people that are pretty awesome. i've mostly kept to myself because, i don't know, i didn't feel like making the effort to make decent friends. the ones that i did befriend (ie. chris, mike, caitlin, allison and paul) i enjoyed their company and their experiences. they'll be good buddies in the future. it was a whole lot of learning about the korean culture, eating the food (who knew kimchi had fish oil in it?), lots of presentations and bonding and stuff. overall, my favourite part of the week was walking down the hill and into town and hanging out there with mike and paul and just observing small town korean culture. so yeah, now i'm here in seoul as of yesterday and it's overwhelmed me like nothing else. i'll post a video of my new place right here if i can figure out how things work.
as well, here is a link to pictures of the last day at orientation and first day in seoul. this blogging thing is a joke.