Konglish!

Well for those of you who don't know, there is a special variety of English that is alive and well in Korea....KONGLISH. It is the Korean take on English words. It is quite helpful to know these. For instance when you are shopping and you want two similiar items you should say "same-same." If you settled on just using one "same" there would be no way that would be understood. Also you must add an 'uh' or an 'ee' sound to the end of most words. For instance if you want to trade seats with somebody on the bus you would just look at them and say "changee' while making the appropriate hand gestures. Furthmore, despite the fact that they know we have a little bigger bodies it is still important to specify "largee sizuh" when buying t-shirts and the like. It is all quite simple once you get the hang of it.

Now moving on....

There is an abundance of signs and especially clothing in Korea that really shows Konglish at its best. One of my favourite shirts that I bought near my house is as follows, front: "I LOVE ROCK AND ROLE", back: "i like you. when the world is mine, you death shall be quick and painless." This isn't exactly the best example but it still demonstrates the total obscurity of some of them. Most people don't know what the thing says so you can see some real doozies being worn. Do you actually think the girl wearing the t-shirt that said "My step-parents are dearer to me than my real mother and father" had any idea what it meant? My friend Tess saw that gem when she was on the subway coming to my house... Or what about the 50 year old woman by my house who was wearing a t-shirt that said "I see you've me the twins" emblazoned across her chest. That made me chuckle a little, especially considering Korean endowments... ;)

Last but not least, I will leave you with a few pictures of some funny things I have seen and taken photos of with my cell phone...

"100% Happy Virus"...wow, I must buy this notepad. It really sounds nice and it will definately go with my Beautiful Infection totebag.

Hmmm....one has to wonder what sort of things take place in the MATE Testing room....

Why thank you. You enjoy your "Rice Day" too.

I should also mention that there are many other things which I have come across which are much less family friendly....

Lantern Festival

I went to a Lantern Festival a few weekends ago. It was held in honour of Buddha's Birthday, a national holiday in Korea. This year marked the 2545th year since the Buddha's birth. I'm not sure how long he actually lived for but I doubt it was too long considering how heavy that little guy was. He definitely died of heart trouble or possibly it was complications arising from diabetes



The highlight of the festival was a street parade in downtown Seoul. Pretty well everyone in the parade displayed some sort of lantern. I was wondering why the parade started at 7pm but once I got there it all made sense. The lanterns in the night made a pretty nice display and they also had some typical parade floats that were lit up like lanterns.

The procession of lantern holders like this went on forever:

My friends and I had the best seats in the house for the parade....on the side of the street there was a 6 foot high electrical transformer that we were able to climb onto (don't worry grandmas it was 100% safe). We managed to get 5 of us up there including lanterns and beer so it made for a fun time!

This was the area around the temple...sure was purrty:

A weird thing happened too because out of the thousands of Koreans streaming past as part of the parade, I met eyes with one of them who just happened to be the secretary of our school. She is one of my favorite Koreans. A definate sweetheart. I talked to her afterwards and she told me how her family was Buddhist and how she always participates in the parade. Considering how big Seoul is and how many people live here, I am always amazed when I have these weird encounters....

Who likes lanterns??? Me.

Til next time,

Clark

PS: Happy Birthday Mama!

A video of the parade as it passed. The quality's poor because it was dark out...

Korean Robots

I read an article the other day in the paper about Korea's plans to be the leader in the field of robotics. They are investing a lot of money to increase their technology so that one day they can be the world's premiere supplier of robots. What the Koreans don't realize is that they are already churning out robots at an alarming rate....the robots being their children.

Man do the majority of these people ever lack a personality!!! There are about 5 new teachers at work. Of those, 3 of them are definitely socially retarded. The others aren't exactly fireballs either. A lot of the children are the same. I have a girl in one of my classes who I have to check for a pulse every few minutes because I fear she may have died in class.

Look at all that black hair. The subway:

I think another big problem with the children and why they are so dead so much of the time is the serious lack of sleep that they are getting. I wonder just how much it impairs their development to get so little sleep. Today one of my students told me that she wanted to sleep in class and I asked why she was so tired. Her response was that she had went to bed at 2:30 and was just a little tired. So I did a poll of the class and out of 9 students, only one had got 8 hours of sleep. The rest of them were average about 5 hours each and this was just a typical day for them. These are 10 and 11 year old kids. I guess I can appreciate my mom making me go to bed so early now that I see these kids. One kid, Ralph, told me that one time during summer vacation he slept for 15 hours. I couldn't help but say "Good for you." Its so sad too when I am out on weekends and see parents out with their toddlers at 1 or 2 in the morning. I can't help but think that they are just training them for their days to come.

Late night buddy??? This was at about 6pm on a Thursday evening on the subway:

A lot of people have made predictions about robots taking over the world one day. Well just the same, Koreans and Asians with their incessant studying and 14 hour workdays may one day control the economic world. I say let them have it. They may make more money than us one day but you have to remember quality of life. I know I never want to be a robot. At what point does it cease to be life anymore?

Eberland!!!

I went to a Korean theme park, Everland, this past weekend. I was a little bit disappointed because although it may live up to its name as the best theme park in Korea, there were not too many rides. On their website they claim that they ranked in the top 5 theme parks in the world. I'm not sure who that ranking was from....maybe a Korean guy who had never been to another theme park....or maybe that was the ranking for Best Fishheads in a Theme Park...who knows?!? Unfortunately it rained so they had to shut a lot of the park down but we had been on almost all the rides anyways....after about 2 hours. There were a couple of roller coasters and then some thrill rides like you would see at exhibitions and fairs back home. Apart from the rain, we all had a pretty fun day anyways. By the way, they don't have the 'V' sound in Korean language so they have to use a B ~ Eberland!

Who can resist that perennial favourite...BUMPER CARS!!!

It isn't often that I get the urge to take photos in the washroom but I thought Everland's father/son toilet combo was the perfect opportunity! Really, do you have to be doing that at the same time?:

"Please waste here." Don't mind if I do, thank you very much!:

Now some stories about the kids:

I have some new kids and they are all pretty good. One of my classes is full of big story tellers...it gets quite funny sometimes and I egg them on to see just how massive the stories can become....

For instance, we were talking about animals the other day and one of the little girls, Jane, said that she knew about monkeys because her grandfather had a pet monkey. I thought this was a little bit odd but I guess it was pretty believable. Then we moved on to eagles, which her grandpa had one of two. Okay? This is getting more odd. Then it was bears...guess what, her Grandpa has a pet bear too? I said.."Oh your grandpa must live in the country" but she said, "No, he live in Seoul." I can just imagine the tiny little Korean apartment of this old Korean man filled with a monkey, eagle and a bear!

While talking about eagles, Jack also chimed in with his own little story....it seems one day Jack found himself in the forest. Don't ask me how but little Jack had a tomato in his hand. He continued to say "I threw the tomato up in the air as high as I could. I went to go see where the tomato had landed and I found it on the ground with a dead eagle." "Oh you killed an eagle?" "Yes teacher, but it was an accident." Jack had also seen many bears while walking in the forest with his grandfather. This is significant because of the fact that Korea has basically no wildlife. They ate basically anything with four legs, and during the time of the Korean war they were so desperate for food that they finished everything off that was still left at that time.

I love these stories. It's great to see the kids have imaginations. For a society that tries its best to stifle creativity and imagination, it is good to see that some kids can still just be kids.

Clark

Birthday Weekend

Friday marked the 24th anniversary of my glorious entry into this world. It was also the first birthday I spent in a foreign country. I had a few friends over to my house and then we hit up the Korean bar scene to celebrate. I didn't get home until 5am the next morning so it all must have been fun :)

Sunday was one of the best days I think Ive had in Korea. Tess and I decided to meet up and go to a historical Korean palace area in downtown Seoul. We took the subway there and on the walk from the subway station we stumbled upon a park with tons of people in it. There was people playing games (Asian variants of chess and checkers), singing karaoke and dancing. As we got looking around we started to mention how they all looked older - we later found out that seniors came to this park every Sunday. The old people were so nice though and they wanted us to dance with them and were so happy that we were there. I would never have expected to have so much fun there but it was really a good time.

Korean seniors playing Badu


Tess dancing with hooker grandma


We did manage to make it to the palace area which was also pretty nice. Not for the palace itself because it was a little bit lacking but for the surroundings. You never really see any foliage in Korea but on the walk to the palace we had nice trees all around us. There was also a little pond with ducks swimming in it that was sort of nice too. During this walk we stumbled upon a man selling traditional Korean hats. The Koreans weren't buying them but I did and I wore it around all day. The Koreans loved it...."Ohhhhhhhhh berry gooda!"

I have no use for baseball caps anymore....


Tess and I in the park



The whole experience felt quite foreign which was nice because I usually find Korea not to be foreign enough for me. Sure there are lots of Koreans everywhere and the language is different but for the most part I never feel like anything is too bizarre.