Korean Snacks

Here's some of snacks that Emily and I have encountered over the past 14 months (has it been that long already?) in Korea.

Available From A Cart on the Street:
Baked sweet potato (no butter, sour cream, etc. - just peel & eat with your hands)
Various dried seafood (including, but not limited to, squid, octopus and cuttlefish)
Fruit on a stick (pineapple, honeydew melon, strawberries dipped in melted sugar and covered in sprinkles)
Nut Cakes (Small sweet cakes with a variety of nuts available: peanut, walnut, chestnut)
Cotton Candy
Ice Cream
Silk Worms (always bubbling hot, ready for your enjoyment!)
Some sort of little hermit-crab type shellfish (like Spitz - just suck out the guts and spit out the shell!)
Waffles/Pancakes (the pancakes are stuffed with honey & peanuts and taste, strangely enough, exactly like cinnamon buns)

Other Snacks:
Cuttlefish Peanut Chips
Shrimp chips (like shrimp flavored puffed rice)
Dried corn
Chestnuts
Roasted potatoes with salt
Duk (Not like quack-quack duck, but a sticky rice cake)
Ramen noodles (like Ichiban noodles - they're everywhere!)

All in all, Korean snacks tend to lean more towards salty, healthy and vegetable-esque. Basically, Korean snacks are real food instead of processed forms of non-food (eg. chocolate bars, candy, pop, chips, etc.). It's all very admirably healthy and certanly unsatisfying.

Bargain Basement Medicine

I (Jon) have officially completed my first visit to a Korean hospital. Nothing was seriously wrong (I rolled my ankle playing soccer) but I figured it'd be best to go and see a doctor and get some X-Ray's, just in case. To make a long story short, I was admitted, saw the orthopedic surgeon (specialist fellow), got X-Rays, a follow up visit with the doc, discharged and picked up my medicine in less than an hour. The cost (including the prescription medication and the tensor bandage)? $17. Not too shabby.

A private medical system can be wonderfully efficient. Yes, yes, I know, slippery slope and all that. However, for those that do not have to visit the hospital very often, a cheap and efficient medial system can be a refreshing change from the emergency room in Canada.

An interesting aspect of Korean culture is that people go to the hospital for EVERYTHING it seems. If you are ever sick, you go to the hospital, especially if you are going to miss something due to said illness (school, work, appointment, etc.). It was shocking the first few times I asked a student "What did you do yesterday?" and they replied "I went to the hospital." It essentially means they went to the doctor, but it's a lot more extreme when you say "hospital."

In addition, once you've been to the hospital, many people continue on with their day. In Canada, if you are feeling sick with a cold or flu, you stay home and rest/feel better. That way, you get recover quickly and you don't get anyone else sick. However, many Korean people will come to work/school sick as a dog and proceed to spread it around. Generous? Yes. Appreciated? Not necessarily.

End of the Sports Day

The sports day has drawn to a close. The students have run, dodged, pulled and cheered (that was the girls/non-athletic boys part) and they have received their due. I did my share by not embarrassing all of Canada in a soccer game. Was I great? No. Did I suck as bad as everyone was assuming I was going to? No.

Be proud, Canada, be very proud.

Foreigners in Korea

When you move to another culture (or even just interact with that culture on a regular basis), you will be sure to experience friction due to the conflicting worldviews. This is just part of life and it's called culture shock. Everyone will go through it to some extent or another and different things will affect how well you overcome it.

Many people here in Korea have adjusted well. In Korea, things are done differently from Canada, which makes sense - Korea is Canada. Some people, especially a certain nationality, can not seem to grasp this concept. When moving to Korea, expect Korea. It's not wise or considerate to expect things your way or wonder why "they don't just learn English."

I read a quote about it on the internet the other day from the Government of Canada website on teaching English in Korea. Here it is:

"There are many foreigners in Korea who came and stayed; they have carved out their own niche in Korea and want to remain for a long time. Many others, however, eventually reach the point where they feel it is time to leave. With luck, you will realize this before it affects your life too profoundly. It is time to leave when you begin to be negative about the country and its people. When you no longer want to go to work, dislike your students, become irritated with everything and everyone and have angry discussions with others of like mind, it is time to go."

The same is true of Canadians in Canada. Don't like where you're at? Leave. As the saying goes, love it or leave it.

Sports Day

Today and tomorrow are sports days. This is the Korean version of the Track & Field day that all of us loved so much during elementary school. Essentially (to my understanding), it is a two day competition in which you compete in various sports (dodgeball, soccer, etc.). If you win, you continue. If you lose first thing in the morning on the first day, you are out and you get to watch everyone else play for the rest of the time.

Oh, and if you're a girl, don't worry about it. Girls can't play soccer anyway so they just sit and watch.

To translate this into relevance for me, I'm entertaining myself for the next two days. No classes, no duties (beyond the normal stuff, which is just about finished two hours into the first day) and nothing but free time.

Look for a few posts in the next couple of days!

Classroom Tales

Due to a relative lack of posting during the early days of my public school educational career (as a teacher, not a student), I shall occasionally blissfully recount some of the entertaining escapades that followed me on my journey.

I (apparently) am extremely hot stuff. Well, not anymore, but when I first arrived at my two schools, girls would wait for me outside the cafeteria just to watch me leave. The interest has diminished considerably since then, but I still receive calls of "Oh, handsome guy!", "Beautiful!" and "I love you!" from both female and male students. Not too bad of a way to start off a new job.

And now for something completely different... Our cheese was stolen. 2 kilograms of good ol' cheddar, gone. Right from our fridge. Strange, you think? There just so happens to be a perfectly logical explanation. Really.

Finally, I (Jon) will be appearing on the Korean version of American Idol. Seriously. Only it's not country wide, it's just our city. It's also just elementary school students competing. In English. So really, it's an English song contest for half of the city's elementary school students and I am one of the judges.

So I still get to be Simon Cowell.

Home Again, Naturally

Emily and I returned from our week long holiday on Sunday. We went to Seoul for Korean Thanksgiving (Chuseok) which was a six day holiday this year. Not too shabby! We had a good time going to a bunch of different restaurants and markets. Some friends of ours came and joined us on Thursday (we left Monday) and we spent a couple of days together. It was a grand ol' time!

As a sidenote, everyone here in South Korea (that we know) is fine. The nuclear test in the north has yet to affect us and (in all reality) they're not really aiming at us. It's quite interesting to be here in South Korea for this whole season of international politics. Emily and I have really seen a different side of things than is presented in North America. Basically, North Korea isn't as bad as they're made out to be (not saying that they're normal, just that they're not as bad) and America has a different international reputation than it portrays at home.

It's interesting to watch, to say the least.

Anyway, things are good and we're doing well. That's it for now!