Korean Fashion: Totally 80's

I want to take this opportunity to talk about the fashion in Korea. I know every country has their own fashion trends but I have to believe that Korea has some of the more unique ones. I will start with the t-shirts. Every t-shirt in Korea is written in grammatically incorrect English. It is so bad, I have a theory that they make the shirts wrong on purpose, because you would think that if they didn't do it on purpose they would eventually get at least one shirt right. This type of English is called Konglish, or Korean English. Another odd thing is that you almost never see a shirt that is written in Korean and if you do it is usually from an event and the Korean is the details about the event. The last thing I will say about the t-shirts is they are stuck in the 80's. I mean bright neon pink, green, yellow and orange, you know what I mean. All the women under the age of 30 in Korea wear extremely short skirts 80% of the time. They also always wear high heels, the 3 inch kind, all the time. Even when they are at the beach in a bikini they wear high heals. Speaking of the beach, the Korean bikini is usually 4 pieces, the top, which is always padded, the bottom which is usually a boy short or modest cut, you wont see any thongs here. Then there is a waste wrap and some sort of top cover. I think that many of them wear less clothes on the bottom half of their body everyday then they do at the beach. This is not to say that western bikini's are not worn because they are, but most of the bikini's are the style I described. Now don't get the wrong idea, these are the most beautiful women I have ever seen and there are a lot of them but they just seem to have a problem with the beach. They also hate the sun, women walk down the street with umbrella's when their is no rain to keep the sun off of them. This is probably why many of them have such fair and healthy skin, but I still find it strange. I have also noticed an obscene amount of converse shoes. So many people where converse, I would say more people wear converse in Korea than did back in the 80's in the U.S. Next I will discuss the Flower Boy. This is the term for young Korean men, who take more time and look almost identical to the young women of their age. Many young men fall into this category. They wear man bags (purses), have long hair, wear pink, etc. The only way to tell the difference from 100 meters is by the pants, they don't wear skirts. Another interesting trend here in Korea is the couple shirt. After three months of dating someone in Korea it is customary to buy and wear matching rings. At this point and sometimes before it is also customary to buy and wear matching t-shirts. They are usually the exact same shirt, same color, everything. Sometimes they will vary the color slightly but it will still be the same design. Some crazy couples will even take it a step further and wear completely identical outfits, the same shoes, socks, pants (usually jeans of the exact same color and design), bags, watches, sunglasses, rings and even hats. I can only assume they wear matching underwear too. The last fashion trend I will mention is the socially acceptable trend of wearing the same outfit several days in a row. For some reason it is okay to wear the same clothes more than one day in a row without washing them. Don't get me wrong they don't wear dirty clothes, but as long as they stay clean they don't seem to mind wearing them again and no one else seems to think it is strange. I like this environmentally conscious trend, but I don't think they do it to save the earth. I think it has more to do with the fact that clothes are very expensive here and it costs to much to buy a lot of outfits, so they compensate by wearing the ones they do buy more often. This is just the tip of the iceberg of Korean fashion, I'm sure I will touch on this subject again in the future.

Boryeong Mud Festival

Well I guess I am now finally recovered from the Mud Festival, that is except for my cuts and scrapes which will need 1 more week to fully heal. It was crazy. We met up at the Waegook cook at 8:30am on Saturday morning and 45 of us got on a chartered bus(no bathroom) and headed to Boryeong. When I pulled up on my scooter I could already see people drinking, I think a few of them were still drinking from the night before. We drank so much on the way down that we had to stop every 45 minutes for someone to go to the bathroom, which was really annoying, but shit happens. My biggest complaint is that we didn't get a bus with a toilet in it, a minor issue. So our 2-3 hour trip turned into 4+ hours after all the stops, and everyone was drunk when we arrived. Boryeong is a Beach city located somewhere between where I live and Seoul. It is very nice, there are a lot of nice hotels and restaurants, but for the 10 days of the Mud Fest it is just a huge party town. We all got off the bus, there were 12 of us who reserved 2 rooms ahead of time at a hotel that was very close to the action. So the 12 of us walked to our hotel. We were led by some Korean girl who we asked for directions, and since Koreans are so nice she walked us to our hotel. There was also another 2 groups of people from our bus who stayed at the same hotel, the Brits and some other Americans( a shout out to Traci, this was her crew and I know she is reading this). The hotel was nice, we stayed in a traditional Korean style room, which means no beds just a floor and some blankets, which makes it easier to fit 6 in a regular size hotel room, we ended up sleeping 9 in there but that wasn't the plan. As soon as we set our bags down we got changed into our mud clothes and headed off for the beach, we first went into the mud pool, which is a big pool filled 1-2 feet high with muddy water and people wrestle, splash and play American style football and rugby in it. This is the place where I got most of my cuts, scrapes,bruises, etc. I am very tough to knock down it takes 3-4 people to do it, or one really, really big army guy as I learned. So everyone wanted to wrestle me and knock me over all the time. Korean men love to wrestle, their very homophobic but for some reason they like a lot of male contact, I don't understand but hey it's their country. So I wrestled a few old Korean guys, all my friends and a few army guys who of course take it very seriously. As usual the more I stayed up the worst I got it in the end, damn my low center of gravity and cat like reflexes. After this we went to the Mud Jail where you can paint yourself with mud with paintbrushes. It is really a gazebo with plastic jail bars where you paint and throw mud on everyone inside. Next to this was the mud wrestling ring, its a bounce house style ring. Also the kids mud pool, no one under 14 is allowed in the adult pool, which is good because they would probably get killed. Also nearby was the mud pool zip cord, where you zip down from a 25 foot platform to a pool of mud American Gladiators style. After we got all muddy we went to the ocean which is only 100-300 feet from the activities depending on the time of day(the tide really does move 200 feet). We swam for a while got the mud off then went to the mud painting area, its like the jail only there is more mud on tiki tables with a lot more paintbrushes, there are 100's of people painting themselves with mud in this area at all times, they even have colored mud to use here. SO after this we were really muddy and we went and did some of the activities again. I forgot to mention that we were drinking the whole time while doing all of this, at this point it is like 4pm and I have been drinking for over 7 hours. We did the mud obstacle course this time to, which starts off with a rope climb, then a slide, then a muddy hill climb and a slide, mud makes it all very difficult, it was also a inflatable thing ,everything I mentioned besides the pool was an inflatable thing. (like a bounce house at a carnival). Then we decided to go shower and eat. After eating we continued to drink but without the mud. I went to bed at like 4am, I was drunk the entire day, 20 hours straight, this is the longest I have ever drank. I easily drank 30 beers. I then passed out around 4am, woke up the next day around 10am, and went back and did it all over again, without the drinking, I didn't touch a beer on Sunday, but many of my friends did, their insane, literally. I ate Pizza for lunch/dinner then got on the bus around 5pm and headed back to Gumi. Oh and yes there were still people drinking on the bus ride back and we stopped every 45 minutes again, only this time it was more for puking and less for peeing. All in all I would say this is a once in a lifetime experience and I would recommend anyone who teaches in Korea to attend the Mud Festival, its every July, this was the 9th or 10th annual one, around 1 million people go the festival over 10 day period, or at least thats what I was told, a lot of people just go for 1-2 hours, its not that far from Seoul.

Final Exams

This week was the end of our Spring II session. We had our final exams this week. One of the disadvantages to working at a good School as opposed to one of the many crappy private schools (Hog wons) here in Korea is the amount of extra work I have to do compared to many of the teachers in Gumi. Most of the English schools here just do a minimum amount of work with the students, there are a lot of games and handing out worksheets and puzzles and that kind of stuff. However there are a few reputable schools and mine happens to be one of them. As a actual teacher I find this comforting because I do actually like teaching the kids English. But the downside to this is that I have a lot of extra work to do. Normally we give the students a test or essay every week which I have to grade, this is not normal most English teachers don't give or grade papers. We also design our own curriculum, I don't have to do all my classes but I have a fair share of all the classes we teach, there are 9 foreigners at my school so I design 1/9 of the curriculum. This is a lot more work than many of the other teachers in Gumi do, but I like the fact that my school isn't a joke. That said, I hate finals week. We have to design the tests, 2-3 for each of us. Then we have to administer the tests which is the easy part, but I have 100-120 students during the week, so I have to Grade 120 final exams, half of them long essays in 2 days, then tally the scores, also the session scores, quizzes homework, participation, etc. Then add all that up give them a grade, write a paragraph comment on each student, enter their scores in the computer, than handwrite them on their report cards( I don't know why this isn't electronic, but it isn't). I also have to write a review of each of our books. needless to say this isn't a fun week.

My only salvation is that I am leaving in just a little over 7 hours to go to the Mud Festival, its a party that draws around 1 million people to a resort town in Korea where they have a mud party, everyone gets all muddy and drinks excessively. It's gonna be awesome. I will write about it in my next blog.

Seoul, 4th of July and Canada Day

Last weekend I took my first trip to Seoul, S. Korea's capital city. I took the KTX train from Gumi to Seoul Station. Their are 3 types of trains that can get you from Gumi to Seoul. I don't know their Korean names but one is called the slow train by foreigner's, it stops at every stop between Seoul and Gumi, this train takes 3/12 to 4 hours and costs $15 each way. Then their is the regular train it only stops at major stations between Seoul and Gumi, it takes 3 hours and costs around $21 each way. The fastest train and most expensive, about $28 each way is the KTX train. It takes about 2 hours and 10 minutes if you can catch it in Gumi, it only stops in Gumi 2 times each day. The option I used was to take the regular train to Daejon and transfer to the KTX to Seoul that is the most common KTX option as you can do it at anytime of the day, this way takes about 2 1/2 hours and costs like $1 less. The KTX is the fastest because it makes the least stops and because it is a newer train and can travel at much faster speeds than the regular trains.

Once I arrived in Seoul I met a friend and she took me around the city. I got to go to a authentic Korean lunch at her family's house. I also went to the electronics market which is the largest in the world. Then we went to Gecko's which is one of the most famous foreigner bars in Seoul. It's in Itaewon, which is near the military base and where you will see the most foreigners in Seoul, its also where the most foreigners live in Seoul both military and civilian. I parted ways with my friend here and met up with some of my fellow teachers from gumi. It was the Saturday before
Canada day so all the Canuck's were looking to go drinking. We got 3 hotel rooms in the art district and then we cabbed it back to the Rocky Mountain Bar in Itaewon, this is another foreigner bar. It's located next to Hooker Hill which is pretty much what it sounds like but it is also the main street in Itaewon for bars and clubs. After a couple of hours we went to the UN Bar which is very close to the Rocky Mountain and Gecko's. We ended the night here and went back to our hotel at around 6 a.m. There is no official closing time for bars in Korea and I am finding out that leaving a bar when the sun is up is common.

We stayed at a really nice hotel and the weird thing is that you don't need a credit card to get a room in Korea. So I took full advantage of their trustfulness and stole two really nice 500 thread count pillow cases and a plush towel. What can I say nice linens are impossible to find in Korea. We checked out of our hotel around 2pm and went to Ali Baba's a middle eastern restaurant in Itaewon. We then went to the main shopping area in Seoul, I don't know its name but every designer shop I have ever heard of was here and hundreds I have never heard of. We then went to the electronics market again which is not near the other shopping area. We bought an espresso machine which was very tough to find in Korea and I bought a rice cooker for $35 which is a very good deal they sell for $60 in Gumi. We then went to an Italian restaurant which wasn't to bad and then took the regular train back to Gumi, we got in around 1am and then I scootered back to my place which is about a 10 minute ride from the train station.

The 4th was 2 days later I had to work 12 hours on the 4th because we had our textbook workshop in the morning before class. After work me and some fellow American's went to the Waegook Cook Bar and drank heavily, we then went to a local school playground and did what Americans do best, blow shit up! We bought fireworks at the Dollar Store and yes they are real fireworks not the grocery store crap from the U.S. We bought Roman Candles, big bottle rockets, spinners, sparklers, the ones that shoot colored fire out of them in the air, black cat's, etc. You can buy these everywhere its heaven!! We then got politely asked to leave by a maintenance guy who was very happy that we were picking up the trash and putting it in a bag, hey were inconsiderate Americans but were not litterers! But seriously we were being cheered on by a few Koreans, they were happy to see the show. We then went back to the Waegook drank some more and went home, not to bad of a 4th celebration for being half way around the world.